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THE HOPE WITHIN
US!
Have you ever seen a miserably one-sided baseball
game? You purchase your ticket, make yourself comfortable, and settle in
with the hope of watching your team win another game. But in the first
inning the opposing team puts fifteen runs across home plate and that turned
out to be just the beginning of a very bad day at the old ball park. In
fact, it got so bad that even the opposing team wasn't having a good time. And
your team? Well, they just wanted to get the game over with, go home, and
bury themselves under the covers.
Unfortunately, the home team doesn't have the
luxury the fans have under such miserable conditions. Those on the field
have to stay and play to the bitter end. The fans, on the other hand, have
the option of getting up and going home at any time. At first they trickle
out and then they leave in mass as if the game was over - for in actual fact,
it is over for all practical purposes. The fans leave because the inevitable
conclusion is just too painful to bear emotionally.
If you have ever witnessed such a game, and my
guess is you have, then you know that the sense of hopelessness is almost tangible. The
players on the home town team, as well as their fans, are down and out. They
have literally lost their passion for the game. They are sick of it, and
as such, do not have the will or the desire to live for the game or anything
else.
In the game of life, discouragement is one of
Satan's most effective tools. It keeps believers on the sidelines. It
keeps them from doing God's will for sick-hearted people just don't have the
drive to keep on keeping on. As the writer of Proverbs put it:
Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.
Consider Job's wife who lasted but a few rounds
before throwing in the towel. In Round 1, she and her husband, lost oxen,
donkeys, sheep, cattle, servants, and children at the hands of the Sabeans, the
Chaldeans, and natural disasters. In Round 2, her husband was placed in
an Intensive Care Unit at Banner in the land of Uz.
His wife, who by this time was down and out, visited
him in the hospital and gave him a Wallmark Card that read:
"Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!"
In hopelessness his wife had turned away from
God and encouraged her husband to do the same. In the past I've been
quick to criticize Job's wife. However, as I've reconsidered all that befell
her and her husband I can see how hopelessness, like one swift swipe of a knife,
severed her relationship with God. Hopelessness is like that - it severs
relationships!
Or consider the twelve Israelite spies who were
sent out to explore the land of Canaan. Upon seeing those who inhabited
the land that God had promised to give them, the land flowing with milk and honey,
ten of the twelve were disheartened and brought back a discouraging report. In
Numbers 13:26 - 33 we read:
They came back to Moses and Aaron and the whole
Israelite community at Kadesh in the Desert of Paran. There they reported to
them and to the whole assembly and showed them the fruit of the land. 27
They gave Moses this account: "We went into the land to which you sent us,
and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit. 28 But the people
who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We
even saw descendants of Anak there. 29 The Amalekites live in the Negev;
the Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites
live near the sea and along the Jordan."
Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and
said, "We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly
do it."
But the men who had gone up with him said, "We
can't attack those people; they are stronger than we are." 32 And
they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored.
They said, "The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people
we saw there are of great size. 33 We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants
of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes,
and we looked the same to them."
Ten of the twelve brought back such a discouraging
report that it literally sapped all hope out of the Israelites. That is
what hopelessness does to a person, a community, or a nation, it robs us of spiritual
vitality. On the personal level, it robs us of our energy to serve God
and others. For without a passion for God, we are useless to him.
Within ourselves, of course, we find little reason
to have hope for ourselves or for others. But Christ came into our world
and literally poured hope into the hopeless. He gave sight to the blind. He
touched lepers and restored them to their families. He healed those who
were ill. He raised some from the dead. He restored dignity to those
who had lost it. He showed his disciples what it meant to persevere. And
he replaced despair with laughter - on Easter morning.
Peter, in his first letter, challenges us to live
out our hope in God by being submissive to those in authority. In particular,
he challenged employees and/or slaves, to submit to their masters and wives to
submit to their husbands. This is the way people in the past put their
hope in God. In the midst of difficult circumstances they chose to do things
God's way while trusting him to exercise his power on their behalf.
Peter tells us that this is the way slaves commended
themselves to their master and this is the way the holy women of the past made
themselves beautiful - they put their hope in God.
In the same way, all of us are challenged to live
in harmony with one another, to be sympathetic with each other. We're not
to repay evil with evil. Nor are we to answer an insult with an insult. Instead,
we're to be a blessing to others. In other words, we're not to take the
world's approach to creating good relationships!
After all,
Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good?
Well, according to the gospel accounts, according
to what Peter himself said at the end of chapter two about Jesus, a lot of people! Ok,
so in the white space between verses 13 and 14 of chapter 3 Peter backs off his
previous statement and says,
But even if you should suffer for what is right,
you are blessed. "Do not fear what they fear; do not be frightened." But
in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord.
Or as Eugene Peterson puts it in The Message,
Even if you suffer for it, you're still better off. Don't give the opposition
a second thought. Through thick and thin, keep your hearts at attention,
in adoration before Christ.
Now why would that happen? We don't mean
harm to anyone! Quite the contrary - we're eager to do good and yet all
too often we end up suffering for doing that which is good. Why?
Well, there is a very good reason as to why this
happens. Flannery O'Connor put it this way,
"You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you odd."
Or as T. S. Eliot put it in The Family Reunion,
"In a world of fugitives the person taking the opposite direction will appear
to run away."
In short, breaking rank inevitably leads to social
grief. It puts us at odds with the world. Today, Christians in other
parts of the world expect to be persecuted as a normal consequence of breaking
rank.
In our culture, we won't be thrown to the lions but
we might meet with criticism for exposing the selfishness of our society. Nor
are we apt to be locked up but we will undoubtedly be locked out by "friends" who
don't want their sources of pleasure called into question.
On a side note, regardless of the form of persecution,
overt or subtle, we need to be sure it is for the right reason. We need
to be sure it is because we are simply living out the hope that is within us. We're
not to be self-righteous braggarts. We're not to be on the prowl for persecution. Daniel,
for example, was persecuted by being thrown in the lion's den, but while there
I suspect he didn't pull any tails! I suspect he simply bowed before God
and accepted whatever was in store for him.
In the midst of reality, Peter gives us some precise
instructions as to how to prepare ourselves for living in the real world. In
I Peter 3:15 - 16 we read:
But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always
be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for
the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, 16 keeping
a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior
in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.
First, we are to consciously set our hearts on
obeying God. We're to make up our minds ahead of time as to whom we are
going to serve.
Second, we need to be prepared to give others
a reason for the hope that is within us. We place our hope in God because:
- He is the One who stooped down and rescued us
out of darkness.
- He is the One who exercises his power on our
behalf.
- He is the One who knows our heart, and still
loves us.
- He is the One of steadfast love.
- He is the One who tells us the truth about all
things.
-
Finally, it's to be noted that God is the one
who gives us hope. For in Jeremiah 29:11 we read:
For I know the plans I have for you," declares
the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope
and a future.
God's plan for us has always included hope, hope
of a better future where everything will be restored to its original specifications. It's
perhaps for this reason that John tells us that hope prompts us to purify ourselves. For
in I John 3:2 - 3 we read:
Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been
made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall
see him as he is. 3 Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself,
just as he is pure.
PETER: THE MAN AND HIS LETTERS 3/09/08 1
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