The Hopeless Case

I must tell you hope, like diamonds, do not lie on top of the ground. Hope and its sister virtues are deep within the surface and you have to dig because you want to find her. The question is not, do you want hope? Why, if that were pulled by the University of Michigan, 100% would say, oh yeah, would you like more hope? You bet, I would. The question is not, do you want hope?

Everyone would say yes. The question is, how badly must you have it? Have you ever been in a situation where things seemed hopeless? We probably all have. Maybe that's your experience right now.

And of course, Stephen was correct in his comments a moment ago. Everyone wants hope, but how hard is it to believe when things seem hopeless? Have you been there? Have there been times in your life when all you had left was hope? We all need hope and hope is our theme today here on Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. God made Abraham a great promise, but then waited to deliver. For years, all Abraham had was the hope that God would keep his word. Let's join Stephen as we look deeper at this today. You have probably heard the story of Teddy Stalard before somewhere.

It has been emailed to me over the years at least a dozen times. Teddy Stalard was a boy that his teacher, Ms. Thompson, really didn't care a lot for. He didn't really care a lot for life, it seemed. He wasn't interested in school. He had a blank expression on his face throughout the course of the classes, and whenever she spoke to Teddy, he always answered in monosyllables. His clothes were unkempt, his face a little dirty, his hair in need of brushing. He wasn't an attractive boy and really wasn't liked by the other students. She should have known better given the fact that she was a Christian.

She should have known better given the fact that she had access to his records, and they told more than she really wanted to admit. The records read, first grade, Teddy shows promise with his work and attitude, but a poor situation at home. Second grade, Teddy could do better. His mother is seriously ill. He receives little help at home. Third grade, Teddy is a good boy, but too serious. He's a slow learner. His mother died this year. Fourth grade, Teddy is very slow but well behaved.

His father shows little interest in him, his school, his world. Christmas came and the boys and girls in Ms. Thompson's class brought her Christmas presents and they gathered around, crowded around her desk to watch her open them. She was surprised to find one from Teddy, Stollard, wrapped in brown paper and held together by scotch tape, words simply written on it for Ms. Thompson from Teddy. When she opened Teddy's present, out fell a rhinestone bracelet with half the stones missing and a bottle of half used inexpensive perfume. The boys and girls began to snicker and smirk over Teddy's gifts, but Ms. Thompson at least had the sense to silence them by immediately putting on the bracelet and a little perfume on her wrist and holding it up, saying, Doesn't it smell wonderful, children? Children smelled her wrist and said, Oh, it does.

The problem of further embarrassment was averted. When the day was over, Teddy lingered behind and slowly came over to her desk and said quietly to her, Ms. Thompson, you smell just like my mother and her bracelet looks really pretty on you, too. Well, when Teddy left, Ms. Thompson got down on her knees and asked the Lord to forgive her.

She had missed the precious calling that she had been given. The next day, when the children came to school, they were met by a new teacher, one who now viewed herself as an agent of God, committed to loving her children. She began to pay particular attention to the slow learners, especially Teddy Stallard. By the end of the school year, Teddy had shown incredible improvement as she had intersected his life with care. He caught up with most of the students, in fact, was ahead of a few of them. The next year, he was in another class and she didn't see him often.

Sometimes he came by to say hello and months blended into years. And then one day she received a note that read, Dear Ms. Thompson, I will be graduating from high school second in my class. I wanted you to be the first to know. Love, Teddy Stallard.

Four years later, another note came. Dear Ms. Thompson, they have just informed me I will be graduating with highest honors. I wanted you to be the first to know.

The university has not been easy, but I have enjoyed it. Love, Teddy Stallard. Four years again later, Dear Ms. Thompson, as of today, I am Theodore Stallard, M.D. How about that? I wanted you to be the first to know.

Oh, and I'm getting married next month, the 26th to be exact. I would like you to come and sit where my mother would have sat if she were alive. So Ms. Thompson went to the wedding and sat where Teddy's mother would have sat. She deserved to sit there because years earlier she had given him the one thing he needed the most.

She had given him the gift of hope. John Maxwell, an author and speaker, once told the story of a small town in Maine that was proposed as the site of a new hydroelectric plant. A dam was going to be built across the river and the town would eventually be submerged into a broadened new river as a result. And when the project was announced and the votes had been played out and all of the wrangling was finished, the people were given many months to arrange their affairs and relocate, knowing their city, their little town would be submerged in water.

During those months, a rather interesting thing happened. He writes, all improvements ceased. No painting was done.

No repairs were made on any of the buildings, the roads, the sidewalks. Day by day, the entire town and all of its homes grew shabbier and shabbier. A long time before the waters were supposed to sweep through that town, it looked abandoned and uncared for, even though the people had yet not moved away. One citizen was interviewed and explained it this way, where there is no faith in the future, there is no power in the present. It knew that its future was hopeless and so it lived the same way. One author quoted in that famous quote of his, we can live 40 days without food, eight days without water, four minutes without air, less than one minute without hope. I have spent some time this week thinking about those things that seem to steal us of our hope, the things that tend to rob our hearts of a sense of hope, came up with a list, unmet needs, unwanted circumstances, unrelenting pressure, unexpected trials, unfulfilled promises. I believe, after thinking about this for some time, that you could boil all of the reasons for losing hope down to basically one statement. A loss of hope begins when you realize you are not getting out of life what you thought you would and it culminates in the conviction that you never will. In other words, you take a person whose life has enough losses or reversals or difficulties or disappointments and you string them together and you will find a person who eventually may come to the conviction that life will never produce that conviction is called hopelessness. Every person that I will speak to today will have reasons at some point in your life, maybe you're feeling that way today, where you calculate life to be hopeless. You're not getting out of it what you thought you would and you are coming slowly but surely to the conviction that you never will.

Like most of the people polled in that survey, left alone by ourselves, we may come to that conviction or that conclusion that life is hopeless. But for Teddy Stallard, the difference was there was a teacher that invaded his life. I want to go back and sit at the feet again of our teacher, the one who intersects our life with objective truth, the one through whose teaching we can hear the Holy Spirit again today whisper into our hearts, there is hope. I want to just point out his lesson plan.

It's in Romans chapter 4. He is going to teach once again by merely retelling the story of a hopeless case, a man named Abraham. We have studied him for some time and you know by now, you want to talk about unmet needs?

You want to talk about unrelenting pressure? You talk about unexpected difficulties and reversals? Most importantly, talk about an unfulfilled promise. He had one and this promise was not one from Sarah that she failed to fulfill or some promise from his father, Tara, that he never came through for his boy or maybe a promise from his nephew, Lot, that he didn't live up to. No, this was a promise from God. And at a number of points, Abraham could have come to the calculation that his life was hopeless because the promise wouldn't come true. Perhaps the greatest reason Abraham is considered the father of faith, the prime example in the Word of God of living faith is because his case was indeed unarguably hopeless.

But in his story, as it's retold, you discover some of those things that will create and foster and fertilize and cultivate and promote and develop and nurture hope. Let's look at what our teacher Paul says to us today. Let's go back to verse 17.

As it is written, here's the promise. A father of many nations have I made you. In the sight of him whom he believed, even God who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist. In hope against hope he believed. In order that he might become a father of many nations, according to that which had been spoken, so shall your descendants be. And without becoming weak in faith, he contemplated his own body now as good as dead since he was about 100 years old and the deadness of Sarah's womb. Yet with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God and fully assured, being fully assured that what God had promised he was able also to perform. These verses provide several powerful ingredients which when mixed together will produce the sweet manna of hope. Eugene Peterson in his paraphrase of the New Testament entitled The Message put verse 18 in hope against hope he believed in a wonderful way, a very lucid way. He wrote it this way. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway. I love that. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway.

How? Eugene Peterson goes on to paraphrase. He decided to live not on the basis of what he saw he could not do, but on the basis of what God said he would do. And so, ladies and gentlemen, I commend to you this morning the first ingredient of hope. It is the resolution to believe without clearly seeing. And let me quickly say if you were hoping for some quick pill, you know, some quick principle, some quick easy ingredient from which you could concoct the salve of hope, I must tell you hope like diamonds do not lie on top of the ground. Hope and its sister virtues are deep within the surface and you have to dig because you want to find her. The question is not do you want hope? Why, if that were pulled by the University of Michigan, 100% would say, oh, yeah, would you like more hope? You bet, I would. The question is not do you want hope? Everyone would say yes.

The question is how badly must you have it? I'm reminded of the young man who approached Aristotle one afternoon and asked him how can I have wisdom? Aristotle got up and he said follow me. And he walked down several streets, turned several corners and then finally made it to the center plaza of the town and there was the pool and without any pause Aristotle gathered up his garment and he just waited right in. Well, the young student thought, well, I suppose I'm supposed to since he said to follow me and so he waited in as well. And when they got into the middle of the pool, Aristotle turned suddenly and grabbed the young man by the nap on the neck and put his head under the water and held him there.

The man flailed with his arms. The young student, of course, was panic stricken and in the last possible moment Aristotle picked him up and brought him back to the edge and set him there. He was sputtering out his amazement and Aristotle said to him, young man, when I held you underwater, what is the one thing you wanted more than anything? And the young man said err, sir, err. And Aristotle said if you desire wisdom with that same passion, you will find it.

And he walked away. Everybody wants wisdom. Most people you know can live without it. Everybody wants a little more hope, but most don't care to dig for it. You see, my friends, hope is discovered by those who cannot live without it, by those who want it so badly that they will resolve like Abraham resolved to believe the promise of God even when they do not see it come to pass. And for Abraham he will never see it come to pass. No wonder he is the example.

I could wait a month or a year, maybe two or three. He waited twenty-five years and even then the fulfillment of the promise seemed so short to the magnificence of the promise that God had given him. Go back to verse seventeen in this paragraph and from the human perspective notice the absurdity of the tense of the verb. A father of many nations I have made you. Not a father of many nations will I make you.

A father of many nations, Abram, have I made you. See from God's perspective it had already happened. It was spoken of here in this text as if it was actualized in God's sight it was already done but Abraham never saw it happen. Where are the nations, Abraham?

I don't see them either. God said he has already made you as if it were now a true occurrence, reality. Where are your descendants, Abraham?

Where are they that number as the sands of the shore and the stars in the heavens? That's his promise. What's even more ironic is the fact that his name was Abram which meant father of many. He wasn't the father of many, he was the father of none.

We can't imagine. It becomes even a greater test to his faith and the promise of God, his resolve to believe. In Genesis seventeen God will again meet with Abram. It's been thirteen years since the birth of Ishmael whom Abram fathered through Sarah's servant girl Hagar.

He has now become the father of one. But now God meets with him to reiterate his promise of a multitude of nations coming from Abram and in that meeting God changes his name. Barnhouse adds with humor these words, I cannot help but think of what must have happened when Abram broke the news to his family that God was changing his name. They all knew the thorn of his former name Abram, father of many. So we can imagine the stir of interest and curiosity when he announced, God is going to change my name.

Were there some who said to themselves with a laugh? Well the old man couldn't take it. It finally got under his skin. After all, to be the father of nobody for eighty-six years and then to be the father of only one with a name like he has, father of many, must have had its rough moment. So he is going to change his name after all.

I wonder what it will be. Then the old man spoke, I am now to be known as Abraham, father of multitudes. You can almost hear the silence of the stunned moment as the truth breaks upon them. Father of multitudes. Then the laughter broke forth behind the scenes. The old man has gone crazy. He had one child when he was eighty-six and now at ninety-nine he is beginning to get even grander ideas.

Father of a multitude, how ridiculous. So let's see. My friend, you let the news slip out in that dormitory, on that campus.

You let the news out at your job. You believe what? You mean you actually believe there is a literal heaven? You actually believe that God is going to take you there? You actually believe that God is in control of this messed up world? You actually believe that he is going to create a new earth and a new heaven and he is going to sit on a throne in the new Jerusalem and you believe that? Are you crazy?

Have you seen any of that? In the heart of a person who believes without clearly seeing and may I add without completely understanding you discover the ancient treasure called hope. The second ingredient of hope is the choice to trust without corresponding evidence. Verse 19, he says, and without becoming weak in faith. See if the first ingredient of hope is the resolution to believe without seeing it fulfilled then clearly the second ingredient is to trust without corresponding evidence being supplied. And it's as if Paul here emphasizes Abraham's dilemma. My body is as good as dead.

I'm a hundred. Sarah and I aren't going to have any children. See how do you trust the word of God in the face of such evidence? Is this not the stumbling block to our faith? Is this issue not the reason why so few have hope? Because we calculate hope based upon evidence that we see rather than upon the promise of God, do we not?

The question is will you trust him without evidence? The Lord asked his disciples to do that in John 14. Their hearts were losing hope.

They were troubled. They were filled with anguish and Jesus said to them in that upper room, he said, don't let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me. Now you need to know this has nothing to do with believing so you can go to heaven.

It has to do with believing so you can survive through life. And why would the disciples face such a great test to their belief in him? Why would the Lord say keep believing in me?

Why? Because of the evidence. Jesus had claimed to be eternal God. He said he was the Messiah.

He was the King of kings. But the evidence, the evidence is Judas. The evidence is Caiaphas.

The evidence is burly Roman soldiers with whips. The evidence is the crucifixion. The evidence is death.

The evidence is a tomb. That's the evidence. So he said keep on believing because you're not going to have the evidence that goes along with the promise in a few hours. Now I do want to say that faith and hope do not ignore the evidence. Hope doesn't ignore the evidence.

It just doesn't stop with evidence. Hope doesn't minimize the difficulty either. I'm not going to say to you go out plaster a smile on your face and say I've got hope.

Everything's okay. Hope recognizes the evidence. It recognizes the insurmountable difficulties and knows that God must intersect life. In the book of Numbers chapter 13 Joshua and Caleb you remember along with ten other spies entered the promised land to spy out their challenges to possessing the land. God promised them that they could go in and possess it and they came back. You remember the majority report from the ten spies said oh there are giants in the land and we are but puny grasshoppers. That was the evidence and it was correct. The other spies Joshua and Caleb they said we can overcome the giants. They didn't ignore the evidence but they trusted the promise. You see what was happening is that the ten spies were calculating all of their evidence. Joshua and Caleb were calculating Providence.

The ten spies were preoccupied with giants. Joshua and Caleb were preoccupied with God. Hope happens to be a matter of preoccupation. What are you preoccupied with the evidence or the promise. When you are preoccupied with God nothing within his will is impossible even as most outlandish promises will come true. See my friends when you believe without seeing fully and you trust in the face of the evidence to the contrary you will have the necessary ingredients and you mix them together and then you bake them in the oven of fiery trials like unmet needs and unwanted circumstances and unrelenting pressure and unexpected difficulty and reversal and what comes out is the sweet bread of hope. Thousands of Christians in North America have learned one of Don Mohen's praise songs. It talks about God's sovereign involvement in our lives.

Most of us sing the lyrics without knowing the hopeless condition out of which the lyrics came. Several years ago Don was awakened in the middle of the night. The telephone rang and his mother-in-law was calling to tell he and his wife of a tragic car accident that would impact their entire family. Don's wife's sister Susan and her husband Craig along with her four little boys were on a trip when tragedy struck.

They were in a car accident and all of them were seriously injured and their eight year old son would die. As Don and his wife grieved over this and poured out their hearts to the Lord they felt helpless in communicating any kind of hope to Susan and Craig. Don recalls asking the Lord to give him a way to communicate hope to his family and in a matter of a few moments Don had scratched out some lyrics and he had composed the music for a little chorus.

These are the lyrics. God will make a way when there seems to be no way. He works in ways we cannot see. He will make a way for me. He will be my guide. Hold me closely to his side with love and strength for each new day.

He will make a way. That song made me think of the verse of scripture from Jeremiah 29 11 where God says I know the plans that I have for you plans for welfare and not calamity to give you a future and a what hope to put it simply the only way to have hope is to have him. And for those that do have him the only way to possess daily hope is to daily pursue Paul in writing to these same believers in the city of Rome in Italy. He comes to the conclusion of his letter and he says to them these wonderful words now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. What kind of life is that what kind of life is the Abraham life. It's the only life worth living. It is the only life that has discovered the rare treasure called hope God has made us some great and wonderful promises many of those promises have not yet come to pass but they will and we can have hope that God will keep his word this is wisdom for the heart with Stephen Davey as Stephen was speaking maybe the Lord brought someone to your mind who's struggling if you'd like to share this lesson with your friend you can send them the link to our website you can also download and share Stephen's written manuscript or the audio file and if you need help navigating our website call us at eight six six forty eight Bible that's eight six six four eight two four two five three I'll also mention that this nine part series called Father Abraham is available as a set of CDs that you can add to your collection of biblical resources that's all for today we'll be back with another message tomorrow make plans to join us then right here on wisdom for the heart you