With or Without Hope

Brothers and sisters, after my scripture reading that I have done before we sat around the table, bringing into our minds what has just happened at the cross, and we see the women standing around the cross, the disciples standing around the cross, and people not knowing what to do when Jesus fulfilled all of the prophecies. There was also one man called Joseph of Arimathea, and he did not consent with the events that unfolded around the cross. He was perplexed, he was wondering what was happening. We know about him that he was a rich man, and that he had a tomb that was not used, something very special, which he offered to Jesus. We also know that he must have been influential, because he had access to Pilate.

He could actually go to Pilate and ask him, can I have the body of Jesus to bury him? He was an upright man, who looked around him, who saw people that were broken by the cross, by the fact that their Lord Jesus Christ was crucified. But he did the right thing, he stood up, and he offered up a tomb. What was it like for him? I think it is very personal when somebody dies.

I think it cannot be more personal than when somebody has died on a cross physically to be there. And for him, it was really personal because he came very close. After much prayer, I wanted to share an example for you to bring this message home where Jesus where Joseph was when Jesus died. When you come close to somebody dying on their deathbed or dying on a cross, it is very personal, and it comes very close to you. In another lifetime, I was 18 years old, and I had a similar experience in my life, which I'm going to share briefly with you.

I've shortened the whole thing. But I knew a bushman, and I was in a war, and we had contact with the enemy. And this bushman called Jacob was wounded in his face. He ended up in my arms after the contact, and I remember taking my sleeping bag and holding him close. And I had to make a decision, because I was not allowed to call for a helicopter to evacuate someone who did not have an identity number from the South African Army.

I called anyway. I got in trouble for it. The chopper came, and everything that happened with that man at the end of his life, I remember to this very day. The fact that he couldn't talk, the smells that I had with him so close to my body, it is personal. What is going through your mind, you cannot speak about.

And he left in the chopper, and he died. It touches you when somebody dies, somebody that you knew, somebody that you shared life with. The disciples, the ladies around the cross, and Joseph walked closely with Jesus, and what happened around that cross was personal for them. Their expectations was not what happened on the cross, and they were left thinking and wondering on what was going on. But Joseph, we see that his love for Jesus was just too strong. He could not keep silent.

He had to stand up. And because of his belief in Jesus Christ, he did what he could. Just in being obedient to the Lord. And this is exactly where we are today. To sit around the table of the Lord is very personal.

To remember what happened on the cross is personal for us as Christians on a day like today. His love was given to us. His body was broken for us. His blood was poured for us. We have the privilege to be able to read Romans chapter eight, verse 18, and it speaks about hope, but before it comes to the hope that we have received around the table, and the hope that we now know after interpreting and understanding what our Lord Jesus has done, after he appeared to so many people that we would look to on Sunday, on resurrection Sunday, we know that the hope that he has given us is far more than what we could have prayed for, or that is to the understanding of any man.

What we read this morning is that our sufferings do not measure up to the glory that will be ours in Jesus Christ. When we sat around this table this morning, we know that amidst our imperfections, that amidst losing loved ones to death, our Lord Jesus Christ gave us hope. He conquered death and he conquered sin. And in Jesus Christ, we can come with our broken hearts, we can come with our longings, we can come with our misunderstandings of what is happening in our lives, whatever we are struggling with. With this hope, we know that nothing that we can go through on this earth, even our own death, has been declared safe, because we are saved through Jesus Christ.

Coming back to Joseph, Joseph had to face the fact that the Lord has died on the cross. And although he didn't understand what was going on, although his expectations weren't met, he just knew something was up. He just knew that even with this overpowering feeling and numbness that death brings, he knew that something very significant has happened. Our Lord Jesus Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, and us interpreting what has happened around the cross, have hope. We are not left without hope.

It is was because of the love of our Lord Jesus that Joseph did what he did, he stood up, and he declared himself as a follower of Christ. This is who we are. Today, we need to stand up, we need to come before God, and we need to say, Lord, we know that we are not without hope. Even with all of our sufferings, even with all of our sickness, even if we have our loved ones not with us that are no longer in this life, we have hope. Jesus was crucified, but he rose again, and on Sunday, we will celebrate that fact, and the hope that he gives us is an eternal hope in eternal life.

We were saved. We were saved in his hope. Now this morning, I want to say that when people look at hope, there's a pretty ordinary way that people see hope, and I just want to help us to understand what biblical hope means, to understand this interpretation of what Christ has done. Romans 8:24-25 reads like this, for in this hope, we were saved. In this hope, we were saved.

Hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it in patience. You see, that's different. That's different. When you're a follower of Christ, you wait in patience.

We don't give each other hope by saying, I hope you have a good night tonight, or I hope you have a great Easter weekend, or I hope everything goes well with you in your new job. So as if we want to say, I know there's a fifty fifty percent chance of things working out. This is not the hope, because our hope is in Christ, and our hope is in the promises that our Lord Jesus Christ has made. We have the Holy Spirit in our lives. If you read further in Romans 8 from verse 26, and if you pray through the Spirit, you will see that everything works to the good for those that the Lord loves, and we abide in His love.

Our hope and promises are built on top of the work that our Lord Jesus Christ has done. So to ask the question when you are suffering, when you are going through turbulent times, or trials in your life, just know this, our hope is in Jesus Christ, and we are not without hope. We are not saying that we have a fifty fifty percent chance. No, we are 100 percent guaranteed that our life will lead into life eternal. And we need to wait patiently like the disciples, like the women that ran to the tomb where that stone was rolled away that we sang about this morning.

Like them, we have to wait in patience and in anticipation of what God will do through Jesus Christ, His son, when he sends him back for his second coming, when he comes to collect us. That is the message of this table. Personal. When the Lord personally comes to take you to be with him forever and ever. Through the eyes of Jesus, God will see us.

We are saved, and in this hope, the fact that we were saved comes to bring an eternal hope. Only through the work of our Lord Jesus Christ, you and I have done nothing. He has done everything. All we need to do is to surrender, like we prayed after the bread and the wine, that we had communion with him and communion with each other in saying, Lord, here we are. Let your work be shown through us as a congregation.

Good Friday is very personal. It is a privilege for us to serve him, just like Joseph served him by offering his tomb. Our hope is based on our Lord Jesus Christ. It is personal. He loves you by name, and he loves you forever and evermore.

May we have a personal relationship with our Lord during the whole Easter. May we serve him and come back on Sunday to hear that he has sent us out into this world to share the gospel, and we will look into all four gospels to put the message together, what the Lord has called us to do. I would like to close by saying that Joseph from Arimathea, even that he didn't know or understand what was going on, even if he looked around him and the situation didn't make sense to him, he stood upright. He believed in Jesus, and he did what he was called to do. Jacob, the tracker, the bushman that I was following when he was running on the tracks, died.

But somehow, in that year before he died, God called me to share the gospel to all the Bushman people and their wives and their children, although they didn't have an identification number, they lived with us in our base. And I know that he is saved. We are saved by what happened to Jesus on the cross. It is personal. May our love for our Lord Jesus Christ be so strong until the end, until the very day, and may we wait patiently for the day when he will come to collect us, to be with him and our loved ones forever and ever.

We believe in Jesus. He is now, right now, sitting at the right hand of God, our Father. Amen. Lord, when we work with your word, we find that your word works with us. Every time we open your word, we read something new.

Holy Spirit, thank you that we know that you intercede for us, that you will intercede for each and every one of us until that very day when our Lord Jesus comes to this earth. We believe in the power of the resurrection, which we will come back on Sunday to celebrate the fact that you have conquered death so that we can have life. We now pray that as we go out from this church building, where we have met you personally, that we will go out each and every one of us, and according to our call, just like Joseph did, just do what needs to be done. Lord, open our hearts and our minds so that we, from open house, can have open hearts, so that you can write on our hearts what you want us to do. Help us with our friends and family later through this weekend, help us to celebrate the whole weekend, help us to show and to communicate and to bring the word and the gospel to those around us that are in need of being saved by you.

Even as we go back to work after the long weekend, we pray that your Holy Spirit will lay it on our hearts, that we will be upright and standing up in our faith, and that we will be able to say, our Lord Jesus was not sent to this earth to condemn the world, but to save everyone that believed in him. Lord Jesus, you are our personal Lord and Saviour, and we want to thank you for everything that you have done for each and every one of us. In your wonderful name, we pray this. Amen.