Our Hope: How God Works in History, Part 1

How do we pierce the darkness? We pierce it in our personal lives and in our homes and neighborhoods and this city and beyond. And so, we are not going to figure out who to blame about the darkness, we are not going to complain about the darkness, we are going to ask God to do something in us and then through us where we actually, we pierce it.

And so, what I’m going to talk about today is our hope. And part of piercing the darkness is getting perspective. It’s pretty easy to feel like things are really, really, really dark and there’s maybe not a lot of hope when you look at circumstances.

In fact, let me ask you a few questions. Today, sitting here, how hopeful are you about the future of America? About the current state of the family? How hopeful are you about the economy? How hopeful are you about things getting resolved in the Middle East? I mean, honestly. How hopeful? Is it like, “Yeah, I think this is going to work out okay.” How hopeful are you about the threats of China? or Russia? How hopeful are you about the next generation and the things that we see right now?

I don’t know about you, but those things make me feel like, Wow, Lord, where is, where is the hope? What are You going to do about it? How does it all work? And so, I have given you some notes. I want you to pull them out if you will, and historically, I have an operating system. And by an operating system, these are premises sort of everyone goes into every situation in life with: here are some basic presuppositions that you believe.

And the Church, for over two thousand years have had seven or eight things that we have all believed, regardless of denomination or background. And I want to run through those real quickly, because I believe these, I’m assuming most of you all do. But it changes how you look at everything. Premise number one: No purpose of God can be thwarted. Job 42:2, “I know, O Lord, that You can do all things and no purpose of Yours can be thwarted.” Psalm 33 talks about, “God frustrates the plans of nations, He frustrates the plans of peoples, but the plans and purposes of God are steadfast and cannot be changed.”

Second, the gospel is going to go to the whole world. Jesus said, “Go into all the world and make disciples.” He says, “This gospel will be preached all around the world.” It’s’ going to happen. Third, God’s will for every single believer is that we become a mature, Christ-like Christian. In other words, His desire, His agenda – Romans 8:28 – He is conforming all of us to the likeness of His Son. He’s going to make you and me like Jesus. And He uses everything up, down, hard, good, Romans 8:28, to accomplish that.

Fourth, the greatest apologetic in the world is Christians loving fellow Christians radically, authentically, sacrificially. Jesus’ last words were, “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another in the same way that I loved you. By this, all the world will really know that you are My disciples.”

Number five, or six, I lose track of the numbers, but [it] is the greatest need in the Church today, in fact, in the world today, is for Christians to live like Christians. When Christians live and are not just thinking about, not even agreeing with, but actually living like and acting like Jesus, there are ripples that have always happened in every season of world history. And when they don’t, the opposite is true.

And then finally, God’s agent of change, His hope for the world, is the Church. For better or worse, this body of Christ, followers of Jesus, you are, I am, we are the light of the world. And Jesus is coming back and He will judge the world justly and everything will one day be fair and there will be a new heaven and a new earth. And all will be made right one day. And until then, He has left us here to help bring that about.

So, with that, there are five realities that I want to go through. And what I hope you’ll leave with is a couple things. One, a real sense of hope, because those early things, you should have seen your face when I was going through how hopeful are you about…right? I’m not too hopeful humanly speaking. But when you look at it through the lens of: how does God work? And what does He want to do? What does He promise to do? Then it’s really helpful.

So, reality number one, Max DePree says is that’s the job of leaders is to define reality, is we are living in a dark world locally, nationally, and globally. Can you agree with that? Here’s the deal. Problems don’t get fixed until problems get faced. It’s dark locally, it’s dark nationally, and it’s dark globally. Second reality is God’s story from beginning to end gives us – underline this – a certain hope to pierce the darkness.

It’s not like, oh, all is lost. What is going to happen? You’ll notice I put a little picture and John chapter 1, verses 1 to 4 is on one end and Revelation chapter 21 is at the other end. And I put the cross right there in the middle. Here’s what I want you to get is that from the very beginning, the piercing of the darkness is guaranteed, so we have hope.

And I’m going to ask you to go ahead and open your Bibles to John chapter 1, here’s what I want you to get. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him and apart from Him nothing has come into being that has come into being.”

So basically, all that was created was by the Word. We’ll learn who the Word is and most of you all know who it is. It’s Jesus. I want you to get this, “In Him,” Jesus, “was life and the life,” - underline that – “was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness could not overcome it.” Some of your translations will say, “comprehend it,” both are true.

And then, if you will, maybe it has been a while since you’ve read all the way. It’s probably the last page of your Bible. What I want you to see is there will come a day, speaking of light and truth and perfection and goodness and peace and no tears and no pain and no disease and no violence – this Jesus who pierced the darkness. Follow along as I read verse 22 through 27 of Revelation chapter 21.

This is the new heaven has come on a new earth. All judgements are over. He says, “I saw no temple, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are His temple. And the city has no need for sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God has illuminated it, and its Lamb is the light. And the nations shall walk by its light and the kings of the earth shall bring forth glory into it. And in the daytime, for there will be no night there, for the gates shall never be closed and they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it. And nothing unclean, no one who practices an abomination or lying shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”

And what I want you to get is reality number one is that it is a dark world right now, that we are in a crisis. And second is God’s story from beginning to end - there is hope. And from the early Church, Peter would write this in the midst of Nero burning Christians at the stake. He said, “Be sober, get your mind girded or fixed on the hope that is coming at the revelation of Christ.”

In other words, the anchor is this is how it is going to end, this is where we are now, and here are the problems that we have. If you just look at circumstance, you’ll be tempted to blame other people, you’ll be tempted to whine and complain, you’ll be tempted to do anything but be the very light and say, “There is hope,” and what we are going to talk about this morning is: How do we pierce the darkness? How did Jesus do it and how does it work?

Light brings a number of wonderful things. It brings God’s presence and glory. When there’s light there’s trust, when there is light there is purity, when there is light there is holiness and freedom. His Word is light, His will is light, His path gives us a light about how to live in every relationship. Light gives perspective and light gives guidance.

By contrast, we live in a world where there is darkness, evil, chaos, disobedience, perversion, violence, secrets, immorality, impurity, people are blind, nations are blind, deception, bondage.

Now, the temptation when you think about light is that it’s like this metaphor. Oh, there’s light and there’s darkness. Here’s what I want you to get, and I’m almost ashamed to say this. I have studied the Bible for a quite a few years. About a year ago, there was an insight and I don’t know why I didn’t see it, about light that I read over for years. I had even memorized the passage. Because, I think, yes, there’s light and there is God’s Word and we need to pierce the darkness.

But it gets super clear. See, it’s not just a metaphor. You know what the light actually is? Turn the page. You know what the light actually is? We read it. The light is the life of Christ. In other words, what changes things, what pierces, what brings about life and what does things in families and individuals and cultures and nations – it’s not just an idea and it’s not just truth.

It says Jesus’ life was the light of men. In fact, if you skip down to verse 18 [John, Chapter 1], it says, “No man has seen God at any time, but He, Jesus, explained Him.” The word is exegete in Greek. In other words, if you’re a Bible student you maybe heard someone, “I am reading this text and I am going to exegete it.” That means I am going to explain what it really means.

Jesus came to explain what God is like, how He thinks, what He values. He would say, “When you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.” The Word became flesh, verse 14, and dwelt among us.” And He lived this perfect life and how, it was how He lived, not just how He spoke. It’s how He treated people, it’s how He responded to evil.

See, His actual life – what He actually did, not just said, was the light that pierced the darkness. And then notice it wasn’t just His life, but His ministry wasn’t about – “You’re my disciples now. I want you to learn all that I will tell you and someday I want people to sit in small groups and read the Bible and agree with what I have said.”

When you would follow a rabbi in Jesus’ day, there were three [four] goals. Number one, you wanted to be with him, you wanted to become like him, you wanted to learn everything that he had learned, and then you wanted to reproduce or teach others in exactly the way that your teacher or your rabbi - Jesus didn’t say, “Come and learn about Me and agree with this truth and come and listen to someone talk a few times a month and then sing some good songs and go live over here.” He didn’t say, “Become the light, try hard to be light.”

He said, “You come follow Me.” Here’s the path and this path is life. And it cuts through the darkness of the world. Imagine this. You, if you’re a follower of Jesus, you are the light of the world. And so, God brought you here so you could be His disciples who pierce the darkness and change what happens. See, the answer isn’t out there. The answer isn’t someone else. You are the light of the world. So, what does He say?

Matthew chapter 5, verses 14 through 16. “Let your light so shine before men that they might see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” That’s the agenda. The light isn’t a concept, the light isn’t just getting people to read the Bible. They have got to see the truth in ordinary people like you and me.

So, reality number three is that Jesus’ life is the light that overcomes. Not just concepts, not just truth. Reality number four, God’s greatest work has always occurred in the darkest moments of human history. There’s an historical pattern and the pattern goes something like this. There’s a very, very great need and this great need is caused by a very, very great sin. And the great sin produces bondage.

What’s the narrative that the Bible always goes back to, right? Children of Israel, in Egypt, in bondage, four hundred and thirty years, the Judges, same thing. Seasons of kings, same thing. Four hundred silent years, the same thing. There’s great need and the great need is because people say, “This is God’s path; we are not going to live His path.” And so, they end up in bondage. It’s a lot like us, right?

You know, you get discouraged, you get depressed, so you start eating a bunch of food or you drink more alcohol than you should or you start, you know, you want to do something that will sort of ease the pain and whether it’s logging onto something or spending money in a certain way. And then you do it and it feels good short-term. And then pretty soon – what? You can’t stop eating, you can’t stop drinking, you find yourself in debt up to your ears, you find yourself in a – we call it an addiction. See, the world always offers a quick fix.

And here’s the pattern that happens. When God sees people in bondage, He has compassion. And when that word is used of Jesus, the word is splagchna. It’s, it literally means coming out of the bowels. When God sees people that are hurting that He loves, literally, something hurts deeply inside of Him to the point that He has to act. That’s the word compassion.

When you see it in the New Testament in Jesus, when it says He has compassion, He will immediately do something. He either heals someone or begins teaching and helping.

And it’s interesting that God’s compassion, when you look at these big historical cycles, out of His compassion He allows judgment to occur. So, in other words, He actually, like a velvet vise, when we are on this path, God allows us to experience the consequences of behavior that is wrong so that we feel the pain, so that we feel the pain, so we feel the pain. So, guess what, “Help!” Didn’t that happen in the pandemic? Didn’t a lot of people turn to God like never before? I have some friends that are evangelists here and around the world, they said they had never seen an outpouring of people coming to Christ…

But then the [way] He does it is He raises up a deliverer. And whether it’s a Noah during a time of violence, whether it’s a Moses, whether it’s a Joshua, whether it’s an Esther, whether it’s a Nehemiah – He raises up a deliverer and here’s the key: the process. It’s usually through a clear, strong vision that meets the great need and I love this, usually through ordinary people.

I mean, think about when Jesus decided to pierce the darkness and change, not just world history, but I mean, change everything. He chose twelve very ordinary people. And He chose them from backgrounds that they would never get along on their own. A few fishermen leave their business, now they are going to be good Jews with a tax collector who is despised and a radical. They’ve got a guy who is not just a traitor, but he’s a terrorist.

And He takes this group of people and He says, “This is what is really important. I am what is important, God’s agenda is important, and it’s more than your Jewishness, it’s more than your background, it’s more than your politics, it’s more than your bias, it’s more than how you used to view people. This is the light and I want you to follow Me, I want you to know Me, and I am going to reveal the Father. And we are going to walk together and the world is going to be completely changed.

And over and over and over, He delivers by ordinary people. I mean, whether it was a Martin Luther, or an Esther. When things get really, really bad, He finds a man or a woman or a student whose heart is fully His who just can’t stand the status quo, that are sick and tired of whining and complaining and blaming other people and just says, “God, if there is something I could do, I will do whatever You want me to do.”

And He says, “Okay, I will use you.” And He seems to have this weird deal where He likes to take the most unlikely people that aren’t necessarily the smartest, not always the best educated, don’t always come from the best stock so that when it happens, everyone knows it couldn’t have been that person. And He gets the glory.

And God takes someone who is light and who is very ordinary, who is willing to not just agree with what the Bible says or agree that I’m a Christian, but actually will do what Jesus did and actually teach what Jesus taught. And here’s the final part of this reality, is that Jesus’ life, what He actually did launched His kingdom of light movement by starting small, dreaming big, and going deep.