Advent: Hope

- 1 Peter 1:3-4
- Romans 5:3-5
- Hope does not disappoint
- Isaiah 65:17-19a
- Isaiah 65:19b-25
- If I find myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probably explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others do the same. (CS Lewis)
- Genesis 3:15
- Three Problems with Hope
- We convince ourselves we don’t need hope
- We think hope = optimism
- Yakhal: To wait for
- Qavah: to wait with tension and expectation
- Isaiah 8:17
- Elpis: Expectation of good, joyful, and confident expectation of eternal salvation
- Three Problems with Hope
- We convince ourselves we don’t need hope
- We think hope = optimism
- We put our hope in all the wrong things
- Revelation 21:1-5
- Hope is one of the theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. it does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at heaven and you will get earth “thrown in”; Aim at earth and you will get neither. (CS Lewis)
- Romans 15:13