Reliable Hope

Again Isaiah says, "THERE SHALL COME THE ROOT OF JESSE, AND HE WHO ARISES TO RULE OVER THE GENTILES, IN HIM SHALL THE GENTILES HOPE." Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:12-13)

Living presently during the intensifying heat of rhetoric in the most contested season of our country's politics, I can't help observing some of the massive use of spin on facts and the desperate struggle to capture the minds and hearts of millions of voters by both sides in this contest. Almost nothing is left untried and the temptation to indulge in deception and slander is one that is almost assumed to just be part of doing business in politics today.

As I read this text this morning I saw a parallel in what God is doing on this earth to what politicians are attempting to do in the world's counterfeit system of government. Like God, they are trying to convince as many as possible that they are the people's best hope for the future. In fact, just like God they are also very intent on trying to capture the confidence and allegiance particularly of those who are not presently considered to be on their side. There is an intense battle going on between conflicting fundamental views of reality right now and what should be done to better our situations. This is rather obvious on the political front but it is far more intense in the spiritual realm where it has far more significance for our future than any politician could ever hope to offer. And by “spiritual” I am not talking about religion here.

Spirituality simply means the things having to do with our spirit. Every person on this planet has a spirit and whether or not they are aware of it or in touch with it, their spirit is the most important aspect of their existence. It is with our spirit that we interact with others and with supernatural beings in a way that remains mysterious to most of us. But just because we cannot explain it easily in the “natural” realm of logic and words does not reduce the powerful impact that our spirit plays in our life. It is with our spirit that we deeply connect with friends and loved ones. It is with our spirit that we hate our enemies and indulge in prejudice against people we don't even know. Our spirit can be poisoned with bitterness or inspire us to amazing creativity. It is even with our spirit that we somehow receive and give important messages that we are often consciously unaware of but that deeply affect how others feel about us and relate to us – even in our relations with lower life-forms such as animals and other living things.

Jesus made it explicitly clear that God is a Spirit and those who worship Him must do so with their spirit as well as in truth. One of our greatest failures in Christianity today is that we are so ignorant about the true nature or even existence of our own spirit that we are rendered nearly incompetent in our ability to enter into any real and significantly meaningful, life-changing worship of the Father of our spirits. That is not because we do not have a spirit or even that our spirit is not worshiping. Our spirit is the part of us that is created to worship and worship it will do. But the direction and focal point of our worship may be rather surprising when the light of truth is shone on the real condition of our hearts.

So what does this have to do with politicians and a God of hope? A great deal more than might be supposed at first. While politicians right now are in a desperate struggle to outdo each other in vying for positions of power to control the lives and destinies of millions of people, God is even more intensely working to attract the affections of billions of people who still know very little about His existence and even less about the truth of His perfect, loving character.

Unlike politicians, God will never stoop to even the slightest hint of deception to gain the allegiance of the children He has created to live in His presence with joy. Because real love requires the pure environment of total freedom of choice and thrives on truth, God fiercely protects our right to choose Him freely without any coercion or distortions of truth that may play on our selfish desires. Instead of pandering to the conflicting self-interests of each group of people that wants their own desires met at the cost of others like politicians are so apt to do, God is busy forming a unified family of believers from all groups of people who are connected to Him directly as their own personal Savior.

In the previous verses in this passage Paul touches on one of the most sensitive areas of the gospel that triggered the prejudice of Jews in his day. The Jews had clearly been selected as God's chosen people many centuries before and they had become extremely proud of this fact – too proud. However, due their misconceptions of the nature and purposes of God, they misinterpreted God's motives and turned His favors into excuses for exclusiveness to prevent anyone else from joining into the family of God.

God's original purpose and intent for His chosen people was to make them the core of His plan to attract all the peoples of the earth to come into fellowship with Him. If they had followed God's purpose for their nation, instead of looking on the nations around them with prejudice and disdain they would have seen the intense need of others who were hurting and dysfunctional because of the many lies they believed about the their true Father in heaven. And if the Children of Israel had caught the passion of God for lost souls they would have allowed Him to so transform them into examples of the results of living in harmony with the God of heaven that all the world would have been streaming to Israel to discover the secret of their riches, their success and most of all the source of their happiness, joy and peace.

But that is not how they chose to live. Because God's blessings were so selfishly abused and His favors were so misunderstood, instead of Israel becoming the magnet of God in the earth they became the laughing stalk of the world and God's reputation was blasphemed in the way His representatives on earth portrayed Him to the world. Because they failed to believe the real truth about God and His blessings for them, they used His blessings for selfish consumption and used His favors to them as a people as an excuse to hate all those who were not born into their lineage.

This became so deeply entrenched in their hearts that finally God had to “divorce” them and start over with a whole new group of people. When Jesus came to earth to make one last offer of “marriage” to His chosen bride and was stood up and stiffed at the point of matrimony, sadly God had to accept their final rejection of His overtures and begin to form a new bride that would be more inclined to respond to His romances. At this time He changed the status of the Israelites and declared that they were no longer His exclusive people but that the status of “chosenness” would be opened up to all people everywhere who would respond to the drawing grace and love demonstrated by Jesus when He was lifted up on the cross.

"Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself." (John 12:31-32)

This is what Paul is talking about here in Romans 15. He is celebrating the new position of the Gentiles who are now invited, even urged to join in with the Jews in praising and worshiping God. The Gentiles are to consider God as their real ruler and as a result of this new relationship they would discover their hearts becoming full of hope.

Hope is exactly what all of the politicians are trying to convince everyone that they have to offer for the future. With all of the wild uncertainty occurring right now in the world financial markets and all of the unrest and threat of war and violence facing our nation, people are becoming much more acutely aware of their need for real hope. And most politicians are eager to exploit that deep craving on the part of millions in their desperate rush to secure votes of confidence so as to usher themselves into high positions of trust and power.

However, one does not have to go very far in asking people about the integrity of politicians before it will become obvious that almost no one really believes that politicians are truthful or honest to a great extent. Skepticism and cynicism are so pervasive in politics today that is has become lucrative fuel for humor and entertainment as comedians poke fun at the obvious discrepancies in the claims and assertions of politicians of every stripe. To even say the words “honest politician” can produce howls of laughter from generally any direction as people just simply believe that those words paired together are nothing more than an oxymoron.

And yet, people are so desperate for hope that they will suppress their obvious skepticism as the promises and platitudes are ratcheted ever higher the closer election day approaches. They will temporarily suspend their skepticism and induce a level of amnesia to cover all of their previous experiences with broken promises while whipping themselves and each other into a frenzy of emotion in order to promote their favorite candidate of deception. Of course, if they could really be honest with themselves many would likely admit that they suspect in a few months, or years at the most, they will be in regret for their avid choices today and will be ready to move on to the next person who can promote themselves so effectively as to once again blind the sensibilities of people with their loud promises of hope.

Do I sound a bit cynical? Well, in contrast right now with the madness of politicians and the intensity of their followers I am sure my words are very out of sync and unwelcome. But as I ponder the real meaning of these verses I see a wonderful alternative that is still being offered as a source of genuine hope that will not leave one empty and ashamed in the future. And our real source of this hope is not a futile alternative to the real-life politics of today as many would try to assert. For each person who is willing to actually submit to the authority and rulership of the true God of heaven will tap into the only source of real hope that will actually accomplish all of the promises that come along with it.

But it gets even better. Instead of waking up a few weeks or months down the road with a serious hang-over after the intoxication of the political season has faded away and deep regrets replace the false hopes whipped up during the campaigns, God's election in our lives will result in an infilling of joy and peace in believing. Instead of regrets, we will find ourselves being swept up into the everlasting excitement of the winning ticket and our hearts will continue to expand and abound with hope as we are filled with the power of the Holy Spirit which is the very passion of God Himself.

This may at first sound like so much religious jargon to an unbeliever. But this is a reality that is far more intense and with far more important results than any politician could ever promise or deliver. If one chooses to cling to their unbelief and put their trust in earthly heroes, they will sooner or later find their dreams crumbling into ashes. But the Word of the Lord lasts forever and the God behind all of these promises is perfectly good, kind and compassionate consistently.

Father, I vote for You and only for You. I select You to be the supreme authority in my life, my soul and my spirit. Fill me with Your hope that never makes ashamed and fill my mind with Your promises that can produce new life within me. I choose to praise You with all the others who are discovering the truth about how good You are. Thank-you for this fresh revelation of Your heart this morning.

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