Isn't it wonderful to know that we serve and worship a God for whom there is nothing too difficult. He is a God who is able to do exceeding above all that we ask, exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think. And so he is able to take our ordinary lives and do something extraordinary because that is the kind of a God he is. Would you open your Bible with me this morning to 1 Thessalonians once more as we look in chapter 1 again and we will be focusing on a phrase in verse 3.
As we think about the church that I want to join. Now as I have said before it is not that I am looking for a church to join because I belong to a church and I am glad I belong here and I hope you feel the same way. Thank you Frank, I am glad you do and others of you as well. But as we think about the kind of a church we would like to belong to, how would we characterize the ideal church knowing that there really is no such thing as a perfect church.
So what kind of a church would you want to belong to if you were in a community brand new looking to join? What would your standards be? How would you go about evaluating or measuring a church that you might join? Well the apostle Paul helps us out in the book of 1 Thessalonians. One of the things he seems to say to us is that this church in Thessalonica was known for a hope that dominated the congregation. Hope is a powerful motivator. It moves good people to greatness.
Jim Collins wrote a book about that subject a few years ago called Good to Great in which he describes a series of companies that were good but which became great companies. He researched these particular companies as well as some others and formulated a list of characteristics of the companies that were good but became great.
One of the things he discovered was that those companies that went from good to great confronted the brutal facts about their own existence but never lost faith as they did that. They honestly confronted their hard current reality but they didn't let the harsh reality they saw dispirit them. I quote him. He says, they hit the realities of their situation head on. As a result they emerged from adversity even stronger. He says that these companies had hope.
That hope was the absolute certainty that they would prevail in the end. You see hope produces the mindset of a winner. In the context of a church, hope, a spirit, an attitude, a culture of hope can make the difference between just a church, an average church, and one that rises to enormous effectiveness in reaching people for Jesus Christ. Hope leads people to mountain size challenges with a vision of what things can look like from the top of the mountain.
Hope motivates people to risk everything to attain a certain desired future. It doesn't always work. As we saw for example in the twins from Iran who hoped to be separated. They were conjoined, you remember, the adult ladies. And this last week they hoped to be separated successfully but both of them died in the surgery. And yet we all applaud their courage and the hope that motivated them to take that risk. Hope isn't present where things are perfect. It isn't needed.
Why would you need hope if everything was already the perfect way it ought to be? The apostle Paul says as much in Romans 8 when he says, hope that is seen, that's already attained is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? You see, hope functions where there is the realization that things are not perfect. We are not in a perfect world. It is a broken and fallen world. And we are broken and fallen people as part of that. We desperately long for hope. Indeed, hope is essential to life.
If you take away hope from a person, that person will begin immediately to shrivel and will ultimately die. Our world searches for hope, but it cannot produce the kind of hope that lasts beyond this life. You see, hope that goes beyond the few years of our existence here is a hope that only comes from God. I want to join a church where hope dominates, where hope is infectious and life-changing, where it dominates the life and the spirit of the ministry of the people in that church.
That kind of a church is a church that's a happy place to be because wherever hope is dominant there is joy. Paul says in Romans 12, 12, be joyful in hope. He knew, as we know, that hope produces joy in the heart. The Thessalonian church was that kind of a place. It was in a culture where there was no hope. The pagans had no hope beyond this life. To them when one died, that was the end of it all. They knew that when a person died they would never see that person again.
There was absolutely no hope among the pagans in Thessalonica. And among the Jewish population that was there, there was this bondage, an obligation to their legalistic religion as it had become. And so they had no real hope either because of the bondage of the law that pressed them down. In the midst of this culture of hopelessness, the Thessalonian church was planted and it took root.
The apostle Paul describes it in the words of verse 2 and verse 3 where he says, we always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers. We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. You notice immediately the triad of graces that are found throughout the New Testament, faith, love, and hope. Those three are always together in the experience of the Christian.
We've talked about faith and love on previous Sundays. Today I want us to think about hope. You see, hope makes you a positive person. Hope keeps you going when things are tough. That was certainly true of the Thessalonian believers. Things were tough in the city of Thessalonica. Later in this first chapter he says, for example, in verse 6, you became imitators of us and of the Lord in spite of severe suffering. He is talking about persecution that came from all sides.
The pagans as well as the religious Jews attacked this church. He says, in spite of severe suffering, you welcomed the message, the gospel, with joy given by the Holy Spirit. Here was a church that was positive and optimistic and joyful in the midst of tough circumstances. It is a church motivated and dominated by hope. Now, hope has a specific foundation, a specific foundation. That foundation is nothing less than the character of God himself. Read with me this verse from Romans chapter 15.
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. How does God identify himself? What is the name he gives himself in this verse? The God of what? The God of hope. He is the source of hope. Paul says essentially the same thing in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 and verse 16.
Turn over there and look at this verse where he says, may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father who loved us and by his grace, by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope. God is the source of hope. It rests upon his character. Again in the book of Jeremiah in verse 14, verse 8 of chapter 14, it says, oh hope of Israel, its savior in times of distress. Jeremiah is praying to God and he says, oh God, you are the hope of Israel.
I want you to know today that God is the only hope there is for this world. He is the only hope that there is. Because he is the kind of God he is, he is a God who keeps his promises. God can be counted on to keep his promises. In the last chapter of this book of 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 and verse 23, Paul says a brief prayer. He says, may God himself, the God of peace sanctify you through and through.
He says, may your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Then he says, the one who calls you is faithful and what? He will do it. God is faithful and he will do it. He will keep his promise, his promise that someday you and I will be perfectly conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. And really that's the hope that Paul had in mind as he commends the Thessalonians for the hope that dominated their church.
However brief a time Paul was there, he taught them about future things. He made sure that they understood that Christ is coming again. We need to keep that in the foremost of our minds, that Christ is coming again. He is coming. In fact did you know that every chapter of this book ends with a reference to the coming of Christ? Just look at it. Look at the end of verse 10 in chapter 1. He talks about Jesus whom he raised from the dead who rescues us from the coming wrath.
And I skipped the part I wanted to read in verse 10, to wait for his son from heaven who rescues us from the coming wrath. Look at the end of chapter 2. He speaks about the Thessalonians being his joy and his crown and he says, we will glory in you in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes. Look at the end of chapter 3. He says, may he strengthen your heart so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of God our Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy angels.
Chapter 4, the whole last part of the chapter deals with the rapture of the church and Jesus coming and our being caught up together with him to meet the Lord in the air and to be with him forever. Chapter 5 continues with that theme and it begins to close as he speaks about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in verse 23. That is the specific hope of the Thessalonians. They were a church dominated by hope.
Their hope was founded upon the character of God himself that God always keeps his promises and God has promised to send his Son again from heaven. He is coming again and because of that you and I, whatever our circumstances, can be a people of hope. We know the final chapter. We know where this story comes out at the end as dark or as bleak as it may be from day to day or month to month in our nation or other parts of the world.
We know where it's all going and it's going to end with the coming of Jesus Christ. Therefore we are a people of hope. This world is not going to end in some sort of an atomic bomb explosion that's going to unleash fire and destroy everybody and all the earth will go back to the dark. No, no, no. It's not going to end that way. Jesus Christ is coming again and he's going to establish his kingdom on the earth and that is the hope of the believer. We are dominated by that hope.
Hope also has a specific fruit and that fruit is perseverance. Paul talks about the endurance that is prompted by their hope and inspired by their hope. The perseverance to hang in there, the patient waiting. You see hope enables us to bear hard things because we know that through these hard things there is a wonderful goal coming. My granddaughter is with us this weekend. It's a good weekend around our house.
We celebrated her second birthday yesterday just a little bit early and of course Kelly and Cory surprised us and came yesterday from Los Angeles where he's been on business and so we're all together today and Kelly is carrying our grandson. Isn't that good news? That's wonderful news. He's going to be born in October and on Friday we got to go to the doctor and we saw him. We saw him. He looks just like me. Sort of alien-like at this point. You know what I'm saying?
They're not really beautiful at this point except the grandparents and parents but it was so exciting to be able to see him and we look forward to his arrival in God's time. Kelly has passed the sickness at this point and you mothers, you know what it's like. You're sick. You just feel like you can't go another day but you have no choice. You go on and on in the sickness and finally for many people it lets up for a while and then there is this state of mind called labor.
My wife's teaching Sunday school so I don't have to worry about that this morning. No, there's a real thing called labor. It's painful. What is it that causes a mother to put her life right on the line and to endure the travail and the agony of labor? It is the goal. She is able to patiently wait for those months and then for those hours of labor because of what's going to come at the end of that. It's the wonderful goal that is coming of holding that baby in her arms.
If there's no hope, it's easy to give up. We want to be a church that is dominated by hope. Paul says in this book that hope guards your thoughts. Look at chapter 5 and verse 8. He says it in a picture but that's what he means. He says put on faith and love as a breastplate and the hope of salvation as a helmet. The helmet of course goes over the head. It protects the brain, the thoughts. He is saying that hope guards your thoughts.
It keeps you thinking right when there are all kinds of false ideas coming against you. It prevents you from getting into disillusionment and depression and deception. Have you ever suffered from depression? Depression has many roots. It can come from a lot of sources. I have suffered from depression. My particular depression was caused because of the lack of sunlight in Minnesota. You can laugh. I'm telling you the truth. It's easy to laugh in California. That's funny. It's easy to laugh here.
It's not easy to laugh when you're living there in January. The lack of light combined with the cold and the snow put me into a prison. The last five or six winters I was there. I would feel it coming on about September or October. I bought a light in Canada. They have a lot of lights in Canada. They need them in Canada because there's so much darkness there. This was a special light and an expensive light.
It was supposed to produce a certain amount of lumens or a certain kind of light that if you put it before you 15 minutes or maybe a half an hour a day, it would fool your brain into thinking that you were experiencing more sunlight than you really were. Good theory. Just a little bit of help with the depression I experienced. I finally found an herb that was a real help to me in the last couple of years I was there.
If you've not experienced depression in your life, you don't know how debilitating that can be. You don't know how it can drag your thoughts right to the bottom. When you're experiencing depression, what can really help is to focus on hope. And even though your emotions, because of body chemistry, as in my case, or because of circumstances that you're passing through, if you can begin to focus on the hope and on praise, it begins to free you from the muck of depression.
Hope helps guard our thoughts. It is a helmet that we can put on. Hope also lifts your spirits. Chapter 2 in verses 17 through 19, Paul says, brothers, when we were torn away from you for a short time, in person, not in thought, out of our intense longing, we made every effort to see you, but we wanted to come to you again, but certainly I, Paul, did again and again, but Satan stopped us.
Paul is here expressing his frustration, the loneliness of his spirits, because he could not be with these people he loved so desperately. He says, what is our hope, our joy, or crown of rejoicing, in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when He comes? When you and I are tempted to be down, it is hope that picks us up. In Psalms 42 and 43, which really belong together. The psalmist cries out in his depression, and he speaks to his own soul.
He says, my soul, why are you so depressed? Why are you so disquieted? What is going on in you that you are so low right now? And as he speaks to himself about that, he goes on in his self-talk to say to himself, hope in God. Put your hope in God. He gave his own medicine, his own answer to his depression, to his thoughts, to his depressed spirit. He says, hope in God, because hope in God lifts your spirits. Hope also fills you with comfort.
You can lack hope because your heart has been torn out by sadness of loss. That was the case with the Thessalonians, some of the believers had died. And someone had come along saying to them, well, you're not going to see them again. And Paul writes to say, no, that is not true. He says, brothers, in verse 13 of chapter 4, we don't want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep or to grieve like the rest of men who have no hope.
He is saying here, it's okay to grieve, but don't grieve like the pagans. They have no hope. They have a certain kind of grief, and you grieve, but it's a grief that has hope underneath it. There is a comfort that is yours in the midst of your sorrow. I have stood before a number of graves and wept my heart out at the loss that that grave represented to me. And many of you have too. How I thank God for the hope.
The hope that enables me to weep and to grieve and yet to know that that is not the final chapter of the story. Thanks be to God who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. That is the hope of the resurrection from the dead. And our loved ones who have departed from this world are present with Him. And we will see them again. We will meet them again and be together with the Lord and them forever. That is our hope, and it comforts us. What does hope in a life or in a church look like?
What do you think hope looks like? How would you answer that question? What does hope look like in a church that is dominated by it? Joy. Okay. Anybody else? Peace. Grace. That's the sermon a couple of weeks from now, so we'll hang on to that one. So we fellowship in the sense that we mourn with those who mourn, but we also share joy with those who are rejoicing. Anybody else? I missed this one. Long suffering. Holding up. What was the one over here? To believe, to hang on.
I've thought a lot about this. I want to tell you why. I love being your pastor. I feel it's the honor of my life to be here as your pastor. You know, when I came here almost four years ago, someone said to me, why in the world did you want to come here? Well, thank you. I'm glad to be here too. And it wasn't a put down of me, but it was an expression of an agony of that soul. And there have been at least two other people in the last four years who've said almost the same thing to me.
Now I don't remember who they were, so if that was you, don't think I'm talking to you or about you because I have no idea who said this. I just know it happened. I have a wonderful memory. It's just that it's full or something and it doesn't retain things real well anymore. And people have said to me, why did you want to come here? And I wanted to say, well, did you know I lived in Minnesota? No, no, I didn't say that. But I thought about that question.
And you know what it suggests to me is that there are some of us who don't have hope for this church. In fact, I have talked to people and I have seen a little of this myself, that there is a little bit of a spirit of heaviness that hangs over us. One person said to me, there's a sadness in that church. And I understand a little of that.
Being a megachurch, as you were at one time, although many of us don't remember those days, being on television, being the talk of the valley, being the place where people from across the nation came to observe and to learn. I mean, that's heady stuff when that happens to a church.
And then when there is a tragedy and there's a loss of trust in leaders and there's a humiliation that comes from losing the status that you once had and then there's the repeated cycle of people who are leaving because of one thing or another. And there is a circling of the wagons sort of thinking that sets in a defense posture to protect. All of this takes a heavy toll on the soul of a congregation. This is a little bit visible. Let me explain what I mean.
Have you ever noticed that when you visit somebody's house, the condition of the house says something about what's going on with them? Now, not when you're going as an invited guest necessarily because we all clean up, right? But when you just pop in, it tells you a little bit about the marriage perhaps. It tells you about a little bit perhaps about the emotional state that they're in. A home tends to reveal something about the immaterial part of the person or the family living there.
I have visited the home of seniors and seen in the condition of the home that this couple needs help. They need someone to intervene at this point in their lives because they're not able to manage the cleaning of their home and the upkeep of their home. And thank God there are people who are willing and wanting to do that sort of thing. I've gone into the rooms of teenagers, my own, and I said, Lord, what is going on in their life?
You look around, if someone came into my garage right now, they'd probably wonder if I'm a Christian. The condition of that garage, it just seems to be continually the collection point of things we don't know what to do with. You know what I'm saying? It tells you a little bit something about the soul. So does our building tell us a little bit about the soul of our church. We meet in a lovely worship center that was remodeled in 1995.
It probably needs a little bit of work, but I'm thinking about some other parts of our building where a lot of us never go. There are a couple of rooms. By the way, I'm not criticizing anyone in saying this to you. Most of all, our maintenance staff, our custodial staff, okay? I'm just making a reflection in general just to help you see what I'm saying. There are a couple of rooms where our school students go.
If I were a parent going on a tour to see where my kids were going to study that year, I would say, let's check out the next school. We talk about the nursery where there is real need. I don't have to talk about some of the bathrooms. You ladies know exactly what I'm talking about in the condition of them, and you have voiced that many times. And God bless you, you're absolutely correct. The facility here is not only dated. It reflects a little bit of sadness and depression and loss of hope.
And again, that's not to criticize, it's to observe. And it's to say that as we invite people onto our campus, they pick up on stuff like this that fast. A visitor here, especially a needy person, immediately senses the heart of the congregation. Now, they may not be 100% accurate, but they get a pretty good picture just walking in and observing. What does hope in the church look like? Well, I've got some very quick answers. It needs to be quick because the hour is going on.
First of all, I would say that hope in a church is seen in a positive way of thinking. You see, hope does not ignore the brutal facts of the situation, but it sees beyond them. It has a lens. Hope produces a lens that enables us to see the brutal reality and yet at the same time, see the possibilities. There are some people who consider themselves to be positive thinkers because they refuse to look at the realities around them. They deceive themselves because they don't want to see the reality.
But that's not hope. That kind of positive thinking is not hope. Hope's positive thinking is able to look at the truth, be confronted with the brutal facts, and yet see beyond those to what the possibilities are because God is able. Secondly, hope looks like this. It is an expectation of the best in people. You see, hope knows that, as Chuck Swindoll says, people will be people.
Hope knows that people will fail, that they will sin and mess up, that they don't listen, that they don't follow through, that they have bad breath, that they disappoint you. But hope produces a certain patient endurance with them. You expect the best of them. You put them in the best light. You trust them. You risk with them. You believe with your heart that inside of that little guy who gives you a Sunday school class such moments of terror is a hero, a success story, a future Billy Graham.
You see, hope that dominates a congregation causes that congregation to see the best in people and expect the best of them, knowing that the reality is something less than that for all of us. And then hope produces a confidence in the face of trials, in the face of tough times when the enemy attacks. There is this sense, we're going to come through this. We're going to make it. We're not going to be defeated by the grace of God. I think of Daniel's three buddies. Remember them?
Nebuchadnezzar was going to throw them into the fiery furnace because they would not bow down and worship the image. And they said, oh Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it. And he will rescue us from your hand, oh King. But even if he does not, we want you to know, oh King, that we will not serve your gods. That's hope, my friends. A confidence in the face of trial.
God will rescue us. But even if he doesn't, we're going to obey him. It's a confidence in the face of trials. It's a whole mindset in tough times. And then hope looks like this. It's an influence that attracts other people. I want to tell you that hope is infectious. We live in a valley that needs hope. I heard this week that 18% of the population of Santa Clara County has left in the last three years. That's almost one out of five people in the last three years gone.
About a month ago I heard a figure that blew me away. I said that the real unemployment rate, not just those on the rolls, but those who are now off the rolls because they've been unemployed so long, that the real unemployment rate in our valley is 16%. We have 18 families at least in our church, or individuals in our church without jobs. This is a valley that needs hope.
When hope dominates a congregation, you almost have to lock the doors to keep people out because they will flock to where there is hope. Where can you find hope? Let me say in the first place, you find hope in God. You find hope in God. I call this to mind, says Jeremiah in Lamentations. He is weeping about the city of Jerusalem. Gaza is destroyed, the people are taken away captive. He weeps, he says, yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope.
Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for His compassion never fails. Hope is found in God. The psalmist said, now Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you. We find hope in God, my friend, and if you're here today and you need hope, that's where you'll find it.
In the God of the Bible, the God who makes promises and who keeps them, the God who will rescue you from your sin and bring you into His family and lavish His love upon you and direct your life from now right into eternity in heaven with Him. He's the God of hope for you. But I also want to say this. Where can you find hope? in God's church. Peter says, in your hearts, set apart Christ as Lord.
Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have. You see, hope when it dominates a congregation of people is so attractive. People say, what's different about you? How can you be so positive? How can you be so optimistic? How can you press ahead in light of your circumstances? And we're ready to give an answer. You see, hope is found in God's church when God's church is dominated by hope. I have to close.
But I want to tell you the story of two men who were both seriously ill and who occupied the very same hospital room. One man was well enough to be allowed to sit up in his bed for an hour every afternoon so that he could help drain the fluid out of his lungs. His bed was the only one next to a window. The other man in the room spent all of his time flat on the bed. These two men talked for hours. They spoke of their wives and their families and their homes. They talked about their past.
And every afternoon, the man in the bed by the window, when he was sat up, he would pass the time by describing to his roommate all the things that he could see outside the window. The other man began to live for those one hour periods where his world that was only the ceiling would be broadened and enlivened by the activity and the color of the world outside. The window overlooked a park with a lovely lake. Ducks and swans played on the water while children sailed their model boats.
Young lovers walked arm in arm in the midst of flowers of every color. Grand old trees graced the landscape and a fine view of the city's skyline could be seen in the distance. As the man by the window described all this in exquisite detail, the man on the other side of the room would close his eyes and he would imagine a picturesque scene. One warm afternoon, the man by the window described a parade passing by.
Although the man on the other side couldn't hear the band, he could see in his mind's eye as the gentleman by the window portrayed it with descriptive words. And day after day, this would happen. Then one morning, the nurse arrived to bring water for their baths only to find that the man by the window was dead. He had died peacefully in his sleep. She was saddened by this and she called the hospital attendants to take his body away.
As soon as it seemed appropriate, the other man asked if he could be moved next to the window. The nurse was happy to make the switch and after making sure he was comfortable, she left him alone. He couldn't stand just to be flat in the bed. So slowly and painfully, he propped himself up on one elbow and he took his first look outside that window. He wanted the joy of finally seeing all of this for himself and as he strained up on his elbow to look out that window, it faced a blank wall.
The man asked the nurse what could have compelled his roommate who described such wonderful things outside his window to give him such hope. The woman responded that in fact that man was blind and he could not even have seen the wall, she said. I think he simply wanted to give you some hope. Friends, you and I are not blind. There's not a wall outside the window. You and I can see the vistas of eternity in the distance.
We understand the context of life and there are people all around us who are dying because they can't see out that window and we have the opportunity to be a people of hope. The kind of a church that's dominated by this trust and this hope in the living God. The kind of a church that thinks the best of people. The kind of a church that perseveres through tough times. The kind of a church that is so filled with hope that people come in these doors because they just want to be a part of a place.
They just want to be a part of a place. They just want to be a part of a place. They just want to be a part of a place. They just want to be a part of a place. They just want to be a part of a place. They just want to be a part of a place. They just want to be a part of a place. They just want to be a part of a place.