Sermon entitled "An Unfailing Hope". Primary Text: Psalm 33.
From http://www.ozemail.com.au/~gsmunro/resource.htm
G.S. Munro. Panania-Milperra Anglican Church, Sunday 7th January, 2000.

Are you an optimist or a pessimist? I am by nature mostly a pessimist, as anyone who's played golf with me knows! The cartoon character I best relate to is Charlie Brown, who as his creator Charles Schultz said last week after he drew the final Peanuts strip, never did get to kick that football!

Of course pessimists don't think of themselves as pessimistic, they call it realistic! Well, when you look at the state of our world at the beginning of the third millennium, there seems little cause for optimism about the future of the human race. Not to mention a few hundred thousand other endangered species! Pollution is killing us, the hole in the Ozone layer won't go away, the world's climate appears to be warming up. On the level of human society, the past century has seen more wars than any other. More bloodshed, tyranny and oppression than the whole of the rest of history put together. At the tail end of the century we are seeing an incredible rise in wealth, luxury and amazing new technology - but only for about a tenth of the population of planet earth. The rich are getting richer and the poor are starving. On the disease front, back in the middle of the twentieth century we thought the future for us was bright. We expected that by the year 2000 many many diseases would be eradicated. But now, of the thousands of infectious diseases you can die from, or be crippled by, how many have we got rid of from the face of the earth? Precisely one (smallpox). By a few years time, that may rise to two, if polio is eradicated from India and a few other places. And many diseases that were controlled by antibiotics are now becoming resistant. We heard just last week of the death of a man in an American hospital from a staph infection that did not respond to the strongest drugs available. People in developed nations are still smoking, drinking too much, taking harmful drugs, and eating the wrong foods. And in the rest of the world they don't have enough food. How anyone can connect this coming millenium with the upward progress of the human race beats me.

In the novel, "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., an important book comes to light. It is titled "What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?" The chief character is anxious to read it. But when he does, he finds that it doesn't take long. The whole book consists of one word: "Nothing."

And never mind the big picture. What about me? How can I survive another week in the rat-race? How can I cope with the problems I have, and with a world that is changing too fast for me to keep up with? Sometimes life can seem pretty hopeless.

But to look only at the situation from our human perspective is to miss out on the true hope that God wants us to have. If we are pessimistic we might despair. If we are optimists we might put our trust in the ability of the human race to adapt and lift ourselves up by our own bootlaces. But we must neither despair nor be over-confident. We must place our sole hope for the future, in God's promises alone. And if we do we will find that he gives us hope for tomorrow and strength for today, no matter how bleak our world may become at times.

We're continuing today our series throughout January called Psalms of Hope. And today in Psalm 33 we see that Christians have an unfailing hope, because it is based on the unfailing love of the Lord.

In verses 1-3 of this Psalm we are urged to sing and praise the Lord. And the following verses give us the reasons for praising God, no matter what our world is like:
For the word of the LORD is right and true; he is faithful in all he does.
The LORD loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love.

And the next few verses spell out how that love is seen in creation and the affairs of humanity.
It is not all bleak. God is still at work, despite the best attempts of mankind to wreck this world.
The Psalmist points us first to God's great power in Creation.
By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth.
He tells us that God spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.

Then he reminds us that God's power is still in operation - God is still active in this world. He is not an absent landlord who does not care. He sees and knows and cares about all that happens, and it is not outside of his control. The basic message of this middle part of the psalm can be summed up in verse 18: "the eyes of the LORD are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love…"

Christians can afford to be optimistic about the future, because the Lord's love never fails. It never fails because He is in absolute sovereign control of the universe. By his word he made everything, and by his word he chose a people to redeem for himself. His purposes won't fail and he will be true to his promises to us.

Now this faith is sometimes tested.

It can be tested by illness or loss. Like Job, we may lose our health, wealth, or even those we love. But God does not stop being faithful when bad things happen to us. On the contrary, he promises, in Romans 8:28 that he is working everything out, good things and bad things, for our ultimate good.

It can be tested by our own sense of failure and sinfulness. But we need to remember the Apostle John's words. "If anyone sins, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense, Jesus Christ the righteous one, and he is the perfect offering for our sins…"

The great Reformer Martin Luther said, "Samson, David, and many other celebrated men full of the Holy Spirit fell into grievous sins. Job and Jeremiah cursed the day of their birth; Elijah and Jonah were weary of life and desired death. No one has ever fallen so grievously that he may not rise again. Conversely, no one stands so firmly that he may not fall. If Peter (and Paul and Barnabas) fell, I too may fall. If they rose again, I too may rise again." - Martin Luther

Don't stop hoping in God because you sin or fail. Turn back to him and keep on going.

Our hope in God can be tested when God's people are having a hard time. When we read of the terrible things that are being done to Christians for their faith around the world, we ask how God can let this happen. In Sudan, Christian children are kidnapped from the their parents, forced to convert to Islam and enslaved or put in the army. In less dramatic ways, you may encounter terrible opposition from family members or colleagues, who disparage your faith in Christ. Or you may see people who seem to get away with blaspheming God every day and are prosperous and healthy and wealthy and happy. But none of that changes the facts that this psalm reminds us of. Verse ten says:
The LORD foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples.
But the plans of the LORD stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.

There is nothing that can separate us from God's loving purposes for us in Jesus. Nothing! His faithfulness to his promises is unfailing, and so our Hope is an unfailing hope, even if at times it burns dim. God's promise is that our hope will never be snuffed out. In fact he says so in almost as many words. In Isaiah 42, Isaiah prophesied about Jesus "A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench, till he leads justice to victory. In his name the nations will put their hope."

We have put our hope in one who will not snuff out a smoldering wick. You may feel sometimes that your faith is like that smoldering wick, on the edge of extinction. But then the breath of the Spirit blows on us and fans it into life once more.

Winston Churchill when he was an old man once got up to give a speech. It was a very short speech. It was his last speech. He simply said, "Never give up. NEVER give up. NEVER give up." And then he sat down, to tumultuous applause.

That's what our Lord Jesus is saying to us through this Psalm as we read it. Never give up. But we have a better foundation for that than Churchill. Churchill's speech in the end was based on no more than bravado. It's just a brilliant piece of rhetoric, backed up by a brave life. But it has no real foundation. It can't withstand the question 'why not?'

However, when God tells us not to give up, he promises what we need to sustain us to the end. He has promised, and we have an unfailing hope based on a sure foundation.

Don't hope in things that cannot save. Look at verses sixteen and seventeen.
No king is saved by the size of his army; no warrior escapes by his great strength.
A horse is a vain hope for deliverance; despite all its great strength it cannot save.

There is nothing in this world, nothing in humanity, that you can trust one hundred percent.
Not power, not health, strength, money, career, family, friends, or any human philosophy or religion. At some point they will let you down. Nothing in the world can give you a real and sure reason for not giving up.

A little over a month before he died, the famous atheist Jean-Paul Sartre declared that he so strongly resisted feelings of despair that he would say to himself, "I know I shall die in hope." Then in profound sadness, he would add, "But hope needs a foundation." [Our Daily Bread, April 17, 1995]

Now where is the foundation for our Hope? We see it in verse 4. For the word of the LORD is right and true; he is faithful in all he does." We have a sure foundation for our hope, and that is in the Word of God. If God has not spoken, in Creation and in Christ, then we have no more hope than Jean-Paul Sartre. But the Word of the Lord is right and true. We can depend upon it. We know that not only because it has sustained attacks on it for centuries by those who would discredit it, not only because it is historically reliable, reasonable, and accurate, but also because the proof of the pudding is in the eating. As we take God at His Word, we see that it works, in our lives and the lives of others around us. In history we see that it works in society, wherever laws and social convention has been modelled on godly principles. It was interesting to read in an editorial in the Daily Telegraph newspaper yesterday about the way that Christian job employment agencies used by the Government, and other Christian charities and schools, etc, have been criticised for discriminating by employing only Christian staff. The journalist rightly pointed out how unfair that criticism was, and suggested that Christians seemed to be the only people with the motivation to do this kind of thing as a service to the community and not just to make money. To force them to employ people without that motivation, he said, would be to undermine their effectiveness. Wherever the Word of God is taken seriously, by individuals and by organizations, it results in a more just, humane, society. The Word of God works. When a church and a people put their hope in the Lord, it has great power to transform lives. As Psalm 33 says, the Word of the Lord is right and true, and God is faithful in all he does. When we have his Word for our foundation we will also act rightly and truly and with faithfulness.

So the foundation of our unfailing hope is the Word of the Lord. We also see the foundation of our hope in verse 12, which speaks of the choice and purpose of the Lord:

12 Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people he chose for his inheritance.

Now most sermons on this passage I have read take this as a promise that if our nation acknowleges God, then we as a people will be blessed - politically, materially, socially and so on. There may be some truth in that, but that's not what Psalm 33 is saying. First of all, Scripture says that in creation God sends his sunshine and rain on the righteous and the unrighteous alike. Nations that acknowlege God are just as likely to suffer national disasters, earthquakes, floods, storms, as those that do not. Those things are a result of living in a fallen world. This is not a promise that if we can get Australia to pass more godly laws or have more godly morals, then God will bless us and make us prosper as a nation, and keep us from physical disaster.

No, the key to understanding this verse from the Psalm is in the second line. Because there it clearly defines what nation the Psalmist is talking about. Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people he chose for his inheritance. The Old Testament leaves us in no doubt that God chose one nation for his inheritance, and it was the nation Israel. And the New Testament is likewise clear that in Christ, his church has inherited all the promises made to Israel. Listen to what the Apostle Peter says to the Christians:

"But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy." [1 Pe 2:9-10]

And hear what the Apostle Paul says [Eph 1: 4-5]:
"[God] chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will."

He also says[Gal 3:26-4:7]:
"You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. …So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.

So from a New Testament perspective, when Psalm 33 talks of 'the nation whose God is the LORD, [and] the people he chose for his inheritance,' it interprets that nation as the church of Jesus Christ. Those from all nations, including Jews, who become part of this new spiritual nation by faith in Christ, inherit God's promise of choice and blessing. So when you read verse 12, it applies to you. As a follower of Christ, you are in God's nation, the people he chose for his inheritance. We are blessed because he chose us in Christ. And so our hope rests on the sure foundation of God's choice and purpose for us in him.

So where is your Hope? Is it an unfailing hope?
God does not change in our society of shifting sands.
He is the anchor point. He is our unfailing hope.

Well, the Psalmist has told us that we should praise God because we have a sure foundation for unfailing hope, in the word of God and in his choice of us as his people. He is faithful and will not fail us.

But what is the right way to respond to this information? Because we are not just interested in information. What we need is transformation. We see three right responses in verse 20 to 23.

Verse 20, We wait in hope for the LORD; he is our help and our shield.

The first thing to do is to wait. I don't know about you, but waiting is one of my least favourite pastimes! Waiting is not one of the things we desperately want in life is it? In fact we spend a lot of time avoiding it, or complaining about the waiting we can't avoid. Do you enjoy waiting in supermarket lines? How many people really get turned on by traffic jams?! Waiting is something we naturally avoid. But God tells us to wait.

Now this is not just any old kind of waiting. It is waiting in hope for the Lord. Waiting for him to act. Waiting for him to fix things. Waiting for his Son to return from heaven. And not trying to rely on our own strength or ability. We mustn't be like the little boy who asks his father to fix a toy, and then impatiently snatches it back because his father is taking too long or not doing it the way the child wants him to do it. Waiting takes faith in God's goodness and power. He is our help, that is, he is the one who provides the real strength and motivation for living. And he is our shield. That is, he will protect us from our enemies, and especially from the Evil One. We wait on the Lord in hope.

The second response is rejoicing. Verse 21: In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name.
Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say it. Rejoice! Says the Apostle Paul. This is a joy that can only come from trusting in him. It is a joy we can have even in sadness. It is a joy that springs from hope.

Finally, we read in verse 22, a prayer.
May your unfailing love rest upon us, O LORD, even as we put our hope in you.

The third response is prayer. Prayer and waiting on the Lord go hand in hand. You can't do one without the other. Verse 22 is a prayer of humble trust.

This Psalm "tells us, "I know the world is changing. I know there are enemies from without and enemies from within. I know there are physical problems, spiritual problems, emotional problems, social problems and economic problems. But in the midst of all the rapid change, the confusion, fear, anxiety, and doubt, I want you to know and I do not want you ever to forget that God does not change." In a changing society we can depend on a changeless God who will be consistent to his
nature and to his name. The author of Hebrews says, "He is the same yesterday, today, and forever."" [quote from Ron R. Ritchie, Peninsula Bible Church]

We have an unfailing hope.
Let's together pray this prayer from our hearts as we go out into this new week.

May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you.