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Explaining Hope 1

Starting with Leviticus 18:

19“You shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness while she is in her menstrual uncleanness.  

20And you shall not lie sexually with your neighbor's wife and so make yourself unclean with her.  

21You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the LORD.  

22You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.  

23And you shall not lie with any animal and so make yourself unclean with it, neither shall any woman give herself to an animal to lie with it: it is perversion.

 24“Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things, for by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean,  

25and the land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants.  

26But you shall keep my statutes and my rules and do none of these abominations, either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you  

27(for the people of the land, who were before you, did all of these abominations, so that the land became unclean),  

28lest the land vomit you out when you make it unclean, as it vomited out the nation that was before you.  

29For everyone who does any of these abominations, the persons who do them shall be cut off from among their people.  

30So keep my charge never to practice any of these abominable customs that were practiced before you, and never to make yourselves unclean by them: I am the LORD your God.”

These are but a small section of God’s statutes to Israel. And all the weight of it is found in James: “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it (James 2:10).”

So what is our hope? The Bible has already declared: “All men have sinned!”

So what is our hope? What is your hope oh man? Can you hope to enter into the eternal dwellings of God? Or will you enter into eternal condemnation? Or do you hope that you will just disappear into non-existence?

It is easy to say, “I don’t believe in any of those.” But that’s like a lazy sales person in the mall who tells the customer, “We don’t have that item sir,” just because he is not sure and the inventory room is a bit far from his post.

To look away from it does not change anything. God will remain to be God whether we believe Him or not. The wages of sin is death whether we believe it or not. There is heaven and hell whether we believe it or not. And all men will be judged before God whether we believe it or not.

And you know deep down inside you, that if you are just shaking the issue off your shoulder, you know you could be making a gamble.

There is no other hope except Jesus Christ. His blood has blotted out the letters of the law so that any one who will receive Him will not perish but have eternal life.

And it is not by our own efforts so that no one can boast. It is a gift of God that we receive by repentance, which is the answer of a good conscience toward God.

This is our hope. That when Jesus comes back, He comes back to take us home. If you say it is still a gamble. I would say, it’s the safest bet. There is no way we can lose.

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