Sermon 5, A Hope to Come

Sermon 5 – Community 5th Sunday Service
Preached August 29th, 6:00PM at Victory Full Gospel Church

A Hope to Come
Matthew 8:23-26

This is the fifth and final sermon in a series on worship. To catch up the rest of our Community of Faith gathered here today, we have looked at how our worship is not simply something we do, an event we come to see on Sunday mornings. Our worship is a part of who we are. Our worship is a part of our daily lives that we live, beyond the walls of our church. Our worship is our life. Paul urges us in Romans 12:1, “in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.” Our Corporate Worship arises from this life of worship we have lived through the week. While we live our worship daily, we gather together as the Body of Christ to Corporately praise God for who God is and what God has done. We come together Sacramentally, in other words when we gather in worship our time together should point toward our Baptism into Christ and our rememberance of the Sacrifice of Christ. We gather as a community of faith that works toward unity that the world may be drawn to Christ through His Body – us. And as we gather as believers we recognize the Incarnation Of Christ – that God become one of us, a human, in all our frailty and weakness. As we recognize this, we then go back out into the world as the Body of Christ, the embodiment of Christ in the world around us as we minister to and reach out to the least, the last, and the lost.
Finally as we come to this the final sermon in our series, we are to see that our Corporate Worship points to a hope that is to come. We gather to worship a God that is greater than anything we can imagine.

Open your Bibles with me today and let's look at a passage from Matthew 14:22-33...

I love warning labels. Don't you? Those labels like the one on a hair dryer that said, “Not to be used while showering.”
Well, Ted Frank is an attorney and the president and founder of The Center for Class Action Fairness and he has compiled a list of his favorite wacky warning labels. Here are a few of his favorites:
A warning on a wood router says: “This product not intended for use as a dental drill”
A five inch fishing lure with the caution: “Harmful if swallowed”
A warning on a baby stroller that warns: “Remove baby before folding.”
How about the portable toilet seat called the “Off-Road Commode”. It seems you insert it into your trailer hitch receiver for use while camping or off in the woods. The warning: “Not for use when vehicle is in motion.”
Or I think my favorite is the label on a small tractor that warns: “Danger! Avoid Death.”

We are surrounded by warning signs aren't we. Labels on products, chemicals, and medicines warn of dangers to our life but more than that we are surrounded by warning signs of the end of our days on this earth as we know it. We read the gospels and see that the signs of the end of times are:
Wars – we have plenty of those don't we.
Earthquakes – According to the USGS Website, this past month we have seen over 700 earthquakes greater then a 2.5 magniture with the most significant being a 7.1 in Ecuador.
Famines – The fires in Russia and the Floods in Pakistan are just two areas across the world where famine is being seen. Add Africa, South America, the Far East and other such places and we see that there are desperate needs around the globe due to famine.

There are other warning signs too but I think that is enough to remind us that our days are numbered. But, it is also important that we remember that these signs have existed since soon after Jesus warned us about them. Now some are going to tell us that we are seeing more famine, wars, and earthquakes today than ever before – the truth is, we are seeing the same numbers as always, they are just being reported globally today. I was able to obtain the information about all the earthquakes in 5 minutes by logging on to the USGS website and counting. Not something our prior generations could have done. The perception is that there are more and that must mean that Jesus is coming back tomorrow. The reality is that these signs have existed for 2000 years and the only thing we can say with certainty is that today we are one day closer to the end of days than we were yesterday.

What's my point? When I was growing up evangelism was based upon scaring the Hell out of everyone, literally. We hoped that we could scare a non-believer enough with images and movies of the end of times, the Tribulation, and what Hell was like that they would come to church and get saved so they wouldn't go to Hell, then join the church, begin tithing, and become a committee member. We would ask them, “If you were to die tonight, where would you spend eternity?” The point, to scare them – by the way it's the same tactic I was taught to sell Death Insurance – well most of us call it Life Insurance but what you are insuring against is the financial implications of death. We try to scare people by thinking about death and to a point it worked. The problem is that when you are simply saved from Hell and death is the focus you still don't understand the Hope of Heaven and the joy of the abundant life Jesus promised.

Our Corporate Worship should not point toward the the pain of Hell or the dangers that the “Left Behind Series” points toward but rather a Hope of something greater and better than anything we could imagine. In our passage today we see the disciples gathered in the boat, some of which are seasoned sailors, yet they are battling against the waves for the the wind was against them... Do you ever feel that way, “the wind is against you and you are battling the waves of life?”
You haven't found that job you've been looking for.
You are struggling with the pain of the divorce
You are dealing with the injury that will not heal
The winds are against you and you are battling the waves as they lap over the bow of your boat.
Well, take heart, because that is not the end of the story.

So, what was so fearful about the water? It was thought to be the abode of the demons. When Jesus cast the demons from the man in the cemetery they went into the swine, & where did they go? Into the sea – they went home. So as the disciples battled the tempest and saw a ghost walking on the water, surly they thought their days were through. The demons were rising form the water to get them but instead it was Jesus, the embodiment of God, the Word become flesh, that walked on the water to meet them. After Peter's swimming lesson and test of faith, Jesus gets in the boat and the storm ceases.
When those tempests of life come against you, let Jesus in your boat, only he can calm the storms. And then... Worship him.

That is what the disciples did. Max Lucado wrote in, “In the Eye of the Storm” that
"After the storm, [the disciples] worshiped him. They had never, as a group, done that before. Never. Check it out. Open your Bible. Search for a time when the disciples coporately praised him.
You won't find it.
You won't find them worshiping when he heals the leper. Forgives the adulteress. Preaches to the masses. They were willing to follow. Willing to leave family. Willing to cast out demons. Willing to be in the army.
But only after the incident on the sea did they worship him. Why?
Simple. This time they were the ones who were saved."

We worship God, privately with our lives and Corporately as the Body because we are the ones that are saved. Now I don't mean saved from Hell, or the Tribulation, or anything like that, that's a given. No, I mean we are the ones that are saved from ourselves. We are the ones saved from our sin. We are the ones that are saved from the things that separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. It is because we are saved that we can have the abundant life that Jesus promised; both today and tomorrow.

We have a future hope. A hope to come that points us toward heaven. We have a hope that endures the test of time and guides our steps today. We have a hope that doesn't end with us but continues with a life that has been offered to us and we must pass on to others.

When we gather in Corporate Worship we point toward a hope that can only be found in Christ and can only be offered through the life changing sacrifice of the Cross. We look toward a hope that guides every aspect of our life, from the joy of new life to the grief of a life that has passed. We look toward a hope that is to be offered to others. A hope that is offered right now to any who choose to believe.