What is your hope based on?

1 Peter 3:15 “Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.”

Why would people ask that question?

Why would they look at our lives and ask about hope? Because the life Peter is calling for can be explained only by a hope that the world does not know.

We can have a sure hope because God is Faithfull

This weekend was 15 years since we constituted as a church, God has been faithful. To me personally with all that went on before and starting over from nothing with many of you. When you put your faith in God and you are really not sure how this thing will turn out but you trust if you do what you understand the scripture to do, God will bless.

God made a promise to Abram

Genesis 12:1 Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee: 2 And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: 3 And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.4 So Abram departed, as the LORD had spoken unto him; and Lot went with him: and Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran.

How Quickly God’s People Sinned at Mount Sinai

Exodus 32:1 And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we know not what is become of him. 2And Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden rings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them unto me. 3And all the people brake off the golden rings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron. 4And he received it at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, and made it a molten calf: and they said, These are thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. 5And when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To-morrow shall be a feast to Jehovah. 6And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt-offerings, and brought peace-offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.

7And Jehovah spake unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people, that thou broughtest up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves: 8they have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them: they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed unto it, and said, These are thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. 9And Jehovah said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people: 10now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation.

God is Faithful to Forgive His People

Exodus 34:1 And Jehovah said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first: and I will write upon the tables the words that were on the first tables, which thou brakest. 2And be ready by the morning, and come up in the morning unto mount Sinai, and present thyself there to me on the top of the mount. 3And no man shall come up with thee; neither let any man be seen throughout all the mount; neither let the flocks nor herds feed before that mount. 4And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first; and Moses rose up early in the morning, and went up unto mount Sinai, as Jehovah had commanded him, and took in his hand two tables of stone. 5And Jehovah descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of Jehovah. 6And Jehovah passed by before him, and proclaimed, Jehovah, Jehovah, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in lovingkindness and truth; 7keeping lovingkindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin; and that will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation. 8And Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped. 9And he said, If now I have found favor in thy sight, O Lord, let the Lord, I pray thee, go in the midst of us; for it is a stiffnecked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance.

The subsequent story of God and his people is based on the clearest affirmation of the Abrahamic paradigm: God is faithful. This was the climactic statement of the Exodus, delivered to Moses on Sinai in the wake of the people’s apostasy:

Yahweh had indeed remembered his promises to Abraham and been faithful to his word (see Gen. 15:13–14) even in the face of his people’s iniquity and transgression.

Even the unthinkable was entertained: perhaps Yahweh could not be trusted after all. This sentiment was expressed clearly in several psalms. Psalm 89:1–37 faithfulness you swore to your servant David’ 39–51. The parting blessing (v. 52) simply adds insult to injury. (Ps. 44.)

How has God been faithful to you?

Even Jeremiah questioned God’s faithfulness but then corrected it.

There are four distinct periods in Jeremiah’s ministry: (1) 627–609, from the date of his call to the death of King Josiah; (2) 609–597, from Josiah’s death to the deportation of King Jehoiachin to Babylon; (3) 597–587, the years of the reign of King Zedekiah to the fall of Jerusalem; and (4) from the fall of Jerusalem in 587 to Jeremiah’s involuntary flight to Egypt, where the story abruptly ends. The reader is told nothing about his final years or his death.

The best known passage in Lamentations is undoubtedly the resounding affirmation of faith to be found in 3:22–24. However, to read these words in isolation from their context is to diminish the victory of faith embodied in their utterance. They should not be divorced from the preceding bleak picture of desolation and dejection (3:1–18). There the speaker does not simply record past experiences from which he has emerged and which have been superseded by the joy of morning. The suffering and the circumstances which gave rise to his inner darkness continue to afflict him ( 3:3, 20), but now alongside them he is aware of true ground for hope in the character of the LORD, and he sets out his personal experience so that it may become a paradigm for those around him.

Jeremiah says God has not been faithful to take care of him.

Lamentations 3:3 I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. 2He hath led me and caused me to walk in darkness, and not in light. 3Surely against me he turneth his hand again and again all the day. 4My flesh and my skin hath he made old; he hath broken my bones

Jeremiah then remembers God’s Faithfulness

3:22 It is of Jehovah’s lovingkindnesses that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. 23They are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness. 24Jehovah is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. 25Jehovah is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.

God is Faithful He is Our Hope

1John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

1 John 2:2 My little children, these things write I unto you that ye may not sin. And if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: 2and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world. 3And hereby we know that we know him, if we keep his commandments.

Let’s look for a minute what this atoning sacrifice is. The word in older English Bibles is propitiation. He is the propitiation for our sins. What does that mean? It means is he is the one who makes God propitious. He makes God favorable. Propitiation is the act of making God propitious.

This was understood almost universally in the Western church until about 60 years ago, and the way it was understood was God was angry with us and our sin, but in his mercy he, nevertheless, sent along his dear Son, and the Son, by dying for us, taking our place, bearing our guilt, made God propitious, made God favorable toward us, and that act was called propitiation. In this view, what Christ does on the cross is not simply take away our sin but does something with respect to the Father. He makes God propitious toward us.

The essence of Christianity is God who so loved the world that he gave his Son, so how can we speak of the Son making God propitious? He’s already so propitious that he gave the Son. So he wanted to speak instead of expiate.”

Propitiation, the word was often used by the pagans in antiquity, for they thought of their gods as unpredictable beings, liable to become angry with their worshipers for any trifle. When disaster struck it was often thought that a god was angry and was therefore punishing his worshipers. The remedy was to offer a sacrifice without delay. A well-chosen offering would appease the god and put him in a good mood again. This process was called propitiation.

Despite his principled, righteous anger with us (this anger which is a function of his holiness), he loves us so much he sends his Son. Do you see what that does? In paganism, we offer the sacrifices and the gods are propitiated. They are made propitious. In biblical Christianity, God sends the sacrifice and he propitiates himself.

God, in Christianity, is both the subject and the object of propitiation. He is the one who is angry with us. He is the one who loves us enough to send his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. He turns aside his own wrath, because as it were, his own righteous indignation flames out in judgment on his Son as a kind of marker for all that he thinks of sin, for the fact that sin must be punished, that we cannot escape from it.

God has been faithful not only to die for us, take our sinful place, but at the same time satisfying Himself so that He can be favorable toward us.

God Is Faithful