“A Hope That Won’t Disappoint” 2 Cor. 4.13-5.1, Pentecost 2B, June ‘15

1.      Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Hope is the key word in today’s worship service. Because we know and trust in Jesus Christ, our Savior, we’re confident that we will live forever with him. This hope refreshes our hearts as we face the difficulties and disappointments of life.  The message from God’s Word is taken from 2 Cor. 4:13-5:1 and is entitled, “A Hope that Won’t Disappoint,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.      Discouragement is a part of every Christian’s life. This shouldn’t surprise us, for the Devil is determined to regain us for his kingdom of darkness. It should also not surprise us to learn that pastors, like the apostle Paul himself, become discouraged too, for they are also human. This explains why, in today’s Epistle, Paul reminds the Corinthians (and us) that in times of discouragement, our hope in Jesus won’t disappoint us.

3.      Our hope is based upon the past, 2 Cor. 4:13 says, “13Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak.” Jesus’ death and resurrection give us hope because:  He made complete payment for our sins. We see this in our Old Testament Lesson today. Genesis 3 tells us that in robbed all humanity of life and hope, but God restores hope in his promise that the woman’s offspring, Jesus our Messiah, will crush Satan’s head. And, in the Gospel lesson from Mark 3 we see that we have hope for the future because Jesus, God’s strong man, has bound Satan, by freeing us from Satan’s rule, and has made us members of God’s family.  Through Baptism, in which we died to sin and rose to new life, we’re now a part of God’s family.  That’s why in our Gospel lesson from Mark 3 Jesus refers to all believers as his “mother and brothers.”

4.      Our hope focuses upon the future, 2 Cor. 4:14 says, “14knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence...”  Our eventual death and the Second Coming of our Lord don’t fill us with fear, for we know it will be the beginning of our eternal life in heaven. While our Christian faith takes seriously both temporal blessings and temporal problems, our hope ultimately focuses on the next life.

5.      Non-Christians do not have this hope for the future. For them, life is a “dead-end street,” and the death of a loved one is a time for inconsolable grief (1 Thess 4:13).  Our hope of eternal life is the focal point of our Christian faith. The Apostles’ Creed ends with the declaration, “I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” Without this hope, Christianity is of no value and no solid foundation.  St. Paul says 1 Cor 15:19-20, “⁹If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. ²⁰But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.”  And, St. Peter refers to our faith as a “living hope” (1 Pet 1:3), in contrast to a hope that is wishfully “whistling in the dark.”

6.      St. Paul says in 2 Cor. 4:15-18 that our hope is evident in our daily lives.  Listen again to what he writes, “15For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. 16So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. 17For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.:.  As long as we keep our eyes fixed on Christ, we Christians will be optimistic about the future, for we know that the “bottom line” is eternal life in Christ. Though we live in the visible world, our focus is on what is not seen (v 18). The Nicene Creed ends, “I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”

7.      The Christian Church enables us to glorify God in our lives as daily our hearts are refreshed with the hope of heaven (v 15).  Because our hearts are refreshed by the hope of heaven, we who believe in Christ keep smiling in spite of troubles in life (v 16). This doesn’t mean that our troubles aren’t real and painful. But instead of “crying on the inside and laughing on the outside,” as many people do, we Christians do the reverse: while outwardly our lives may waste away, inwardly we are renewed day by day through the living hope we have in the living Christ.

8.      There’s no comparison between our present heartaches and the glory of eternal life. You couldn’t balance them against each other on scales, because the eternal glory for which we hope far outweighs all else.  Paul says in Romans 8:17–18 that, “[we are] ¹⁷…heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. ¹⁸For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”  And, St. Paul reminds us in 2 Cor. 5:1, “1For we know that if the tent, which is our earthly home, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

9.      It would be very discouraging to have no hope for the future. One Lutheran pastor likes to quote the words his wife spoke as they left the church at the conclusion of his father’s funeral. His wife squeezed his arm and whispered, “Honey, I don’t know how someone who doesn’t have our Christian hope could take the death of a loved one!”  To be a Christian does not free us from disappointment, discouragement, or disaster; but we know that through Jesus’ cross and empty tomb, we have a hope that won’t disappoint.  Amen.