HOPELESS TIMES 12 | PRAISEWORTHY HOPE

1. Hopeless Times

a) The times we live in are so troubled.  People losing their jobs, the stock market falls, natural catastrophes, and uncertainty in what the future holds.  In today’s economy there is little to hope  for the future however God is never caught off guard or by surprise.  God knows the future.  You are not the only one that has felt that there is no hope.  Even Bible heroes had their times when they wanted to give up.  Job, Moses, Jonah, Jeremiah, even the powerful prophet in the Old Testament, Elijah.

b) Humans have definitions of hope that are different from God’s.   We might hope our team wins the game, or we might hope we don’t lose our jobs or our house.  But the biblical definition of hope is not a hope-so but a know-so.  Our hope in God is surer than the sun rising in the morning.  

Psalms 119:74
"Those who fear You will be glad when they see me,
Because I have hoped in Your word."

c) Here is real hope.  When a person reads the Word of God (Bible) they can know for certain that they have a secure and certain future for God will never allow us to suffer beyond our own capabilities to handle it.  There is nothing on this earth more certain than hope in God.  He will never leave us nor will He ever forsake us.  He is our anchor in the present and for the future.

2. Praiseworthy Hope

Psalms 42:11
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.

a) Here the Psalmist examines his own heart in asking, Why am I so downcast? Why am I so disturbed? When really he has no reason to be because when hope is in God we have reason to praise our Savior and our God.  If you do not know Christ, then we would agree that there is every good reason to be downcast, to be depressed, and to be so disturbed.  The world is the most uncertain place to live in today above any other day but not so for those whose hope is in God.  

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