Thread by @EntitledPublic

#ThankYouTimKeller
From gospelinlife.com/downloads/hope…

Here is what hope means. Let me give you a literal translation of Hebrews 11:1: “Faith is the confidence of things hoped for, the certainty of things not seen.” Biblical hope is life-shaping certainty about the future.

Or, put it another way, biblical hope is living now in a way that is completely changed because of what you know will happen in the future. That is hope—being certain about the future, something that is not here yet but that you are being affected by now.

The best illustration I know (you may have heard this before, but I can’t think of a better one, so it is too useful to omit) is of two people: put them in two rooms; same size rooms, same lighting, same humidity, same temperature.

Give them exactly the same job: screw part A on part B over and over and over again for ten hours a day—same circumstances, same setting, same conditions. But tell the person in this room, “At the end of the year you will have made ten thousand dollars,”

and tell the person in the second room, “At the end of the year you will have made a billion dollars.”
Same job. But it is not the same job now, is it? Because how you do your job and how you process your job depends on what you believe the future is.

The person in the first room is saying to the person in the second room, “This is so tedious. This is so boring. This is unbearable. I think I might quit. Don’t you find this tedious and unbearable?” And the person in the other room will say, “No! It is not so bad.

Actually, it is not bad at all.”
Why? Identical circumstances are being processed in completely different ways because they have two different futures that they believe in. You and I are unavoidably and irreducibly hope-based creatures. We are controlled—how we live now—by our

understanding of the ultimate future state.
Let me reiterate that, and this is very important to hear. Christian hope has to do with the ultimate future state, not the immediate. I used an illustration that talks about hoping for a billion dollars a year from now.

Christianity is not about that, although many people think it is. Many people say, “If I live a good life and I try very hard and I give myself to the Lord, my salary will go up. Bad things won’t happen to me.” In other words, they think Christian hope is “If I live a good life

now, I will have peace and prosperity in this life.” Their hope is for here and for now. That is not how Christian hope works at all! Not at all. You are forgetting somebody.

There is only one person that really lived a great life, who gave himself to the Lord completely, who lived a perfectly godly, wonderful life. And yet he was rejected, betrayed, tortured, and crucified. You say, “Jesus—well, he was different.”

Why? He says he is not different: “A servant is not above his master” (John 13:16); “if they hated me, they will hate you” (Matthew 10:22).

Put it another way. Jonathan Edwards, in his sermon on Christian hope and happiness, says there are three
things you need to know. Your bad things will turn out for the ultimate good; your good things can never
be taken away from you; and the best things are yet to come.

First of all, your bad things will turn out for good, ultimately. Look at Jesus. Look at what a mess of a life
he had—look at the rejection, the loneliness, the misunderstanding. Look at the torture, the injustice,
and his death.

Yes, God brought so much good out of it—infinite good. Of course he did. But think about it:
In the middle of all that trouble, the disciples were completely confused, and was Jesus whistling a happy
tune?

Was he saying, “I know God is going to bring good out of this crucifixion”? No! It was horrible. It was
terrible. There was confusion. There was pain. There was suffering. Because what is Christian hope really
about? The ultimate future.

Christian hope is not that you are going to have a good, easy life. That is why it is so effective. If you know
that the best things are yet to come, if you understand what is guaranteed out there is ultimate good—great
wisdom, everything turning out for good,

getting all the things that you have ever wanted in your life and
your heart—ultimately but not immediately, that means Christians do not expect an easy life. That means you
are patient when you don’t have an easy life.

People who do not have a proper understanding of Christian
hope are always freaked out by everything going wrong, because they don’t properly understand hope.
Christian hope is ultimate future, and that is what affects the way in which you live now.