Keeping Hope Alive

Take your Bibles and turn in them to Isaiah chapter 40. We are going to read the first two verses. Then we're going to go down to verse 15 and read through the end of the chapter.

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins.

Verse 15. Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket. They are regarded as dust on the scales. He weighs the islands as though they were fine dust.

Lebanon is not sufficient for altar fires, nor its animals enough for burnt offerings. Before him, all the nations are as nothing. They are regarded by him as worthless and less than nothing.

To whom, then, will you compare God? What image will you compare him to? As for an idol, a craftsman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold and fashions silver chains for it.

A man too poor to present such an offering selects wood that will not rot. He looks for a skilled craftsman to set up an idol that will not topple. Do you not know?

Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood since the earth was founded? He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers.

He stretches out the heavens like a canopy and spreads them out like a tent to live in. He brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing.

No sooner are they planted. No sooner are they sown. No sooner do they take root in the ground than he blows on them and they wither, and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff.

To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal? Says the Holy One. Lift your eyes and look to the heavens.

Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls them each by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.

Amen. Why do you say, O Jacob, and complain, O Israel, my way is hidden from the Lord.

My cause is disregarded by my God. Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth.

He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall.

But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not be faint.

Hope. Hope. The confident expectation of future good. As long as a man has hope, he can endure a lot.

But once hope is gone, he is doomed. Viktor Frankl was a leading psychiatrist in Europe, but because he was Jewish, from 1942 to 45, he was imprisoned in Auschwitz and three other Nazi concentration camps.

He witnessed firsthand many men who died and many others who survived. And he noted that the difference was not due to their physical constitution and health, but rather the difference between living and dying among those prisoners was this element of hope.

Hope. Those who had it, those who held on to the hope of life beyond the barbed wire, had incredible endurance, while those who lost all hope soon caved in to death and simply gave up the will to live.

Now what Frankl observed in the concentration camps is something of what, in another sense, the Apostle Paul observed in the Thessalonian church as it was being persecuted and suffering greatly.

And Paul writes to them in 1 Thessalonians and says, We always thank God for all of you remembering your endurance inspired by hope.

Hope inspires endurance. Hope is a critical grace then in the believer's life.

We simply don't do well without it. Hope is an inspiring, a restoring, a renewing, and reviving grace.

It enables you to soar on wings like eagles and to run and not grow weary and to walk and not be faint. Hope. But without hope, you do grow weary.

Without hope, you do faint and want to give up and quit the fight. Paul calls hope the helmet, an important piece of armor in the spiritual battle of life.

is it any wonder then that Satan is out to steal hope from men to beat us down with despondency and despair?

The stories told of the devil putting his tools up for sale and on display were all sorts of treacherous implements, hatred, envy, lust, pride, greed, and then laid aside from the rest was a harmless looking device which, although well worn, was priced very highly.

What's the name of this tool? Someone asked. That's discouragement was the reply. Why do you price it so high? Because it is more useful to me than any of the others.

With it, I can pry a man's heart open when I cannot get near him with any other tool. It is badly worn because I've used it on almost everyone since few people seem to know that it belongs to me.

Discouragement is the erosion of hope. Discouragement is losing that confident expectation of future good from the hand of God.

and we dare not treat discouragement lightly. Do you know we're in danger when we're discouraged? Discouragement renders us vulnerable to a host of temptations that we otherwise are not vulnerable to.

It's when we're no longer expecting good from our Father in Heaven that we turn aside to idols and God's substitutes to get good from them.

and we start seeking in the world the good that we should be expecting from God. Discouragement drains us of hope and strength and courage to go on and it tempts us to quit to quit running the Christian race.

Perhaps you're in such a situation today where the future seems bleak and as you look at in the out the front end of your car as you're going through life you can't see how anything good can come from that dark horizon.

You're growing weary. You're tempted to give up. That's all of us from time to time isn't it? Is there anyone here that's not known that kind of discouragement?

And the devil whispers what's the use? God doesn't care for you. He's finished with you. You're on your own now. That was the situation that Isaiah was speaking into some 700 years before the birth of Christ in our text.

He told the Israelites about the coming disaster at the hands of the Babylonians in chapter 39 and when they came they would and when that event of captivity in Babylon came the people would grow despondent and everywhere they looked they would see reason to be discouraged.

If they looked at their temple they saw it in ashes. If they looked at their capital city it was fallen. If they looked for their king and their brightest men young men they were off in Babylonian exile.

They looked to the land it was decimated. What future is there for us? And year after year just drags on and we're still in exile. It's nearly 70 years.

You know that's a whole lifetime for some people isn't it? And so they will complain. Verse 27 says this is what they will say in those times. Whether inwardly or aloud this is what they're thinking.

This is what they're feeling. My way is hidden from the Lord. He doesn't care. My cause is disregarded by my God.

I should say first he doesn't know. My way is hidden from the Lord. He doesn't know. My cause is disregarded by my God. He doesn't care. Doesn't know.

Doesn't care. Now how does God meet his people when they're thinking such thoughts? He meets them with comfort. He meets them with encouragement. He comes in chapter 40 to such a downhearted people with a message of hope.

Comfort my people says your God. That's the message of chapter 40. And he gives many precious and great promises to do just that. To comfort.

To encourage us. And then he reminds them and us how great the God is who has promised us these wonderful things. So here's the message needed to keep hope alive in the hearts of God's people in their darkest hour.

What is it? Behold your God. Look at him. Consider him. Meditate on him. Our greatest need is essentially theological.

The study of God. It's to think right about him. To think right thoughts. Big thoughts of God. And our problems in life are often due to being out of touch with who God is in some aspect of our lives.

We think we're wiser than God. We know what he should do in our lives and when. This is what he should do if he loves us. And if he doesn't do that, then he just obviously doesn't love me.

He doesn't care. Well, God doesn't allow such irrational thoughts to go unchallenged. He comes and meets them head on. Do you not know?

Have you not heard? He says it a couple times in this passage, doesn't he? You need to think again. You need to reapply who your God is. For behind all of our discouragement is a forgetfulness of who God is.

So realign your thoughts and expectation with God. So lesson in theology 101 begins by going outside at night and looking up.

Lift your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these? He who brings out the starry hosts one by one and calls them each by name because of his great power and mighty strength.

Not one of them is missing. That's where we begin this morning. Who created all these? This starry host, this army of God.

There's a lot in the all these. Do you know how many stars there are in the heavens? Well, if you took a dime out at night and you held it at arm's length away from your eye, how many stars do you think are hiding behind that dime?

Wherever you pointed, in all the night sky, how many stars are behind that dime? Well, I don't know, but you can do the math. A hundred thousand galaxies are behind that dime.

And most galaxies have a billion stars. stars. That's a lot of stars behind that dime and move it over a half an inch and there's another hundred thousand galaxies.

Another. In other words, there's a lot of stars. When he says, who created all these? It's not a small number that you can count. It's beyond what man can count.

count. We now realize that what looks to the naked eye like one star is in fact millions of stars, but they're just so far away that they look like one single star.

That's not true of every star you see, but some of them. So man keeps needing to recalculate. Two years ago, we discovered that there are three times the amount of stars that we had thought.

It seems that we had overlooked a lot of the small, cool, dim stars. Yes, there's some that are cool and dim, and we hadn't seen all of them, so now we're told there's around 300 sextillion stars.

That's three, followed by 23 zeros. And Isaiah is saying, whatever the number, God is the one who made every one of them, and he's the one who brings them out one, by one.

Do you see the emphasis on individuality in this verse? He brings them out one by one. He not only knows the exact number, but he calls each one by name.

And as he calls them, they come out. It's like you call your pet by name here, Fido, and he comes. God calls each of the stars by name, and they come out.

don't think the stars come out each night on their own. Don't think that you live in the deist world where God is far off and his universe just happens to flow in order.

No, God is the one who brings it out every night, who holds each star in its place, who knows everything about every star. That's what it means to be able to name it.

He knows all that there is about it. His great power and mighty strength orchestrates the starry host each night.

And in the face of such realities, how can you say, O Israel, my way is hidden from the Lord? Not one cool, dim star is hidden from the Lord.

Do you think you can somehow miss his eye? No, no. He knows all there is to know about everything in his universe, including you.

He knows every bird in the forest. He knows every sparrows fall every time it falls. He knows the number of hairs on your head. He counts the tears that fall from your eyes.

There's nothing about he knows where you live. He knows your name. He knows everything about you. Don't you think and don't you say and don't you feel like God that your way is hidden from him.

He doesn't handle their doubts with kid gloves, but challenges them head on. You see, why do you say this? Oh, Judah, why do you complain? Oh, Israel, my cause is disregarded by my God.

Now the charge seems to be he doesn't care. Okay, maybe he sees me, but he doesn't care. He just keeps disregarding my plea. I'm making my case and he keeps disregarding it.

He doesn't answer my prayers. Nothing's happening. He's not doing anything to help me. Perhaps he's too busy.

This great God is so big and wonderful that he doesn't have time to think about little me down here. And to really care what's keeping me awake at night. Well, that's the wrong lesson to draw from the greatness of God.

The lesson we draw from the greatness of God is not that he's so great that he doesn't care what's happening in my life. The lesson to draw is that he's so great that he cannot but care for me, his child.

Notice God refers to his people here in verse 27 as Jacob and Israel. That's their father, their great ancestor, Jacob, who was given the new name Israel.

And he refers to his people here by them. You remember how Jacob spent much of his lifetime away from his home, way out there. He went a long way away to Uncle Laban's house, a distant land.

God didn't forget him there. He didn't get out from under God's eye. God came to him in a distant place and met him far from home in his helplessness and in his time of need.

And so you, oh, Jacob, you people of Israel, wherever you may roam, yes, even if you roam all the way down to Babylon and captivity in a far off land, I will be there.

I know what you're going through and I can help you. You know, it's a common thing when people are under long and difficult trials to feel that God doesn't care.

Does he care? It's a question that just nags us when the problems don't go away, when the problems are difficult. You remember Jesus was sleeping in the boat with the disciples and the storm blows up and they're terrified and think they're going to drown and they wake up Jesus and they say, teacher, don't you care that we're going to drown?

There it is again. Don't you care how irrational were their thoughts? Why in the world is the Son of God in a boat on the Sea of Galilee with his disciples in the first place?

Why is he not in heaven? Why is he anywhere on this earth at all? It was because he so loved us that he would come and live his life perfectly where we couldn't obey and he would lay down his life to save us and they're asking him, don't you care?

What do you mean care? Why will it be in a few days later, months later, that this Jesus will be dying on a cross? It will be because he so cared for them and loved them that he would be willing to be damned by God in their place for them.

You see, Calvary demonstrates God's care for us, friends. So cast all your cares upon him. He does care for you.

He cannot but care for you, for he's made you one of his own. You're as the apple of his eye engraved on the palms of his hands.

So if it's not that he doesn't know, if it's not that he doesn't care, then could it be that he knows better than I what is best for me? Could it be that he knows better than I how to love me?

God's remedy is theological. You need to rethink your problem in the light of who God is. Return to what you already know. Do you not know?

Verse 28. Do you not know? Have you not heard? He just reminds them of rich truths about God that shows the folly of such thoughts that God doesn't see, that God doesn't care.

The next thought is that the Lord is the everlasting God. The Lord is the everlasting God. Verse 28. He's the God of eternity. Now we're creatures of time.

He isn't. He's working out his eternal purposes in his own time, fulfilling his promises at his own pace. As we said, Israel would be down in Babylon for 70 years.

That's a whole lifetime for some people. But think what a sliver of time 70 years is to the eternal one.

And think how foolish it is living in this sliver of time to judge the purposes and promises of this God of eternity. He's got all the time in the world.

He is pursuing his great plan in his own time. And little man in his little sliver of time says, Oh, I don't think God cares. I don't know. I don't think he's going to keep his promise.

He said he'd get us out of Babylon. How's it going to happen? Don't think it will happen. Don't see it happening. Do you not know the Lord is the everlasting God?

As he said, his love on you once, then from everlasting to everlasting, his love is with you. He never will stop loving you. Oh, we are creatures of time, and that is no small part of our frustration in our trials.

That minister Philip Brooks was nervously pacing the floor of his study, and when asked what was wrong, he said, I'm in a hurry, but God isn't. Here I am in my little sliver of time, and it's got to get done now, this week, today, before noon.

And God exists in the heavens in a thousand years, or like an evening that has just gone by. See your God as the eternal God.

Second, and next in verse 28, he's the creator of the ends of the earth. And I think there's special emphasis here on the ends of the earth, the whole earth, not just where you live, but the very ends of the earth.

He's not limited by time. He's the eternal God, neither is he limited by space. He created and rules over the ends of the earth. Maybe you feel like you're in some forsaken, forgotten corner of the earth.

Israel would feel that way down in Babylon, far from the promised land, far from their homeland where God dwelt in the temple. And God is saying, do you think that's the only place I dwell?

Do I not fill heaven and earth? I'm the creator of the ends of the earth. There's not, I'm not some localized deity that just rules over one little nation and territory.

No, I am the ruler of the ends of the earth. There's not one square foot of all the earth but where Jesus reigns as its creator and Lord.

And so I will remind myself that wherever I am, I am where Jesus reigns. That's where I am. He reigns and he reigns here in this family, in this workplace, in this neighborhood, in this prison, in this hospital room, in this sick bed, in this location, in this situation.

He who has all the power and wisdom to create will have no trouble keeping his word for he reigns over it all. the next truth is he will not grow tired and weary.

Why is it that some of your projects have not been finished at home? Well, you got tired and grew weary and you quit. Is God going to give up on his project? Is he going to give up on his plan, which included redeeming Israel out of Babylon and from Israel bringing a savior who would live and die to save a multitude of sinners that no man can number?

Is God giving up on his plan because he might grow tired and weary like we are? That's how they're thinking and so they must be confronted. He doesn't grow tired and weary. You do. You realize we spend about a third of our lives in bed sleeping?

Why? Because we grow tired and weary. God never slumbers or sleep. God never gets tired. Don't think that God rested on the seventh day of creation because he was worn out by the six days creation.

No, he rested on the seventh day to enjoy his worst, to look back upon them and enjoy them and to set an example for us who do grow tired and weary and need a day of rest each week.

But don't you ever think that he gets tired and weary? Has he set himself to do something? He will do it.

God's love for you and his understanding. And so I will consider each promise that I find in the Bible to be guaranteed by the inexhaustible strength of God.

He doesn't get tired or weary, so he'll see it through to the end. And then 28 finishes with this phrase, and his understanding no one can fathom.

I'm a creature of time. He exists in eternity. I will not judge his eternal plans by my 70 or 80 year perspective.

I will not expect to understand everything that God is doing in my life because his understanding no one can fathom. I will expect surprises, mystery, secrets, much that I cannot figure out.

I will not demand to understand why. I will not live by explanations, but by faith in what he has said. And so I will not complain that God doesn't know and God doesn't care about me, that he doesn't love me, that he isn't good to me, but I'll believe his truth as revealed in scripture, that even his way of loving me is wiser than I can understand, that even in my long trials he is still doing good to me by them and has never once stopped loving me, never once and never will.

Do you see how rich theology is meant to put us right in the mind and in the heart so that we have a right view of God with which to connect to our life and our troubles and our problems, our discouragements?

God. The better we know God, the more we expect, the more we hope in him. Hope grows as we meditate on God. Now the next characteristic of God is his rich generosity.

Verse 29, he gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Not only does he have strength, he gives strength. Not only does he not grow weary, he gives strength to those who do grow weary.

Oh, what generosity there is in God. He gives strength to the weary. That's a word that means those who are worn out under life's pressures.

I wonder if there's any of those here today. Don't we live in a state of weariness, worn out from life's pressures, overcome by its difficulties.

He gives strength to the weary and and and increases the power of the weak. Those are those who have no vitality, no strength of their own, weak and weary. Those who have exhausted all their resources and it's still not noon.

The trial lingers on. You don't understand it. Your resolve is weakening. The spring in your step is long gone from you. You're hitting the wall, that point in the race where every cell in your body cries quit.

Stop now. Don't go any further. Even the best of men, those in their prime are not exempt. Verse 30 says, even youths.

Don't think it's just the weaklings in this race of humanity that are weak and weary. No, no. Even youths grow tired and weary.

Even Olympic athletes grow tired and weary. And young men stumble and fall.

That's part of our frail humanity. We're a breath and without the next one we die. We're just that weak. Whatever our age, we grow tired and weary. We stumble and fall under the trials and pressures and burdens of life.

Our strength does not last. And he's not just speaking of physical strength. I believe he's speaking more to the issue of spiritual strength. We're weak in faith.

We're weak in courage. We're weak in holiness. We're weak in endurance. We lack the strength to keep saying no to ungodliness and to worldly passions and to the flesh that cries out for satisfaction within.

We're weak. We're so weak. We can't deny ourselves any longer. We're so weak that we find it too hard to do the hard right. And we cave into the easy wrong.

We lack strength to put sin to death and to keep pursuing holiness. Yes, that's what he's saying. Left to ourselves. We grow tired and quit.

Our own strength is insufficient, quickly spent. But, do you see how the chapter ends? But, don't miss that, but, though it's true that all humanity, the strongest of us are weak and weary quitters.

But, those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not be faint.

We're not doomed to our own weakness. We're not doomed to live on our own resources. That's what he's saying. There's a power available to us that will not fail us in life's many and long trials.

It's a promise of renewed strength. Renewed strength. Have you wakened up in the morning with renewed strength? Maybe not every morning is like that.

But, you know that morning when you wake up and you had a good night and you feel renewed strength? That's what he's talking about. That's why we sleep, to renew our strength.

But, he uses other images. Of renewed strength. Have you ever seen an eagle soar? That's the image he's using. Now, around here, you might have to settle for a hawk or a turkey vulture.

But, they too soar, don't they? How do they fly? It's no wild beating of the wings, is it? But, it's almost an effortless soaring as they catch these updrafts of thermal currents that just lift them higher and higher.

They soar. That's the picture that Isaiah uses to talk about the kind of strength being renewed.

It's like you grow wings and you fly and you go up where you otherwise could never soar without hope in the Lord. it. Several weeks ago, on Saturday afternoon, I turned on the sports channel wanting to catch a little of the French Open Tennis Tournament.

But, instead of tennis, I saw a man run and not grow weary. It was an international track meet in Eugene, Oregon. It was the mile run.

Just as I turned it on, they were running the mile. They ran a crazy fast pace, the lead changing several times, and then on the last half of the last half, a runner partially back in the pack decided it was time to put the hammer down, and he pulled out and left the pack behind and won it going away.

Kiprop, it was the Kenyan, Asbel Kiprop. It was one of those seven-foot string beans that looked like they could run forever. But what happened after the race impressed me more than the way he ran the race.

Because as they zoomed in on the winner for a close-up, he didn't have sweat pouring from his face. His chest wasn't heaving and his heart beating out of his chest.

He wasn't gasping for breath. He wasn't breathing hard at all. In fact, he looked, his face was so relaxed. He looked like he just had a walk in the park.

He's just getting warmed up to run. He ran and did not grow weary. How many of you would look like that if you ran a three minutes and 54 second mile?

all. But I see something even more amazing than Ashbell Kiprock every week in this place.

brothers and sisters who've been pressed down hard by life's trials.

Some of you have been running in your trial for many, many miles. As you look ahead, you don't have half a lap to go.

You have the rest of your life to go and you realize this trial is here for life. This is one of those that don't go away. This side of heaven. And you're here every Lord's Day singing the praises of God.

You're still in the race. You're still saying God is good. My God is my strength and my help. Some of you are facing temptations in which the arrows fly as thick as hail.

And you've not given up the race and just caved into them. You're fighting. You're saying no to that temptation. You're fighting on. Here you are running.

You're still in the race. You're carrying burdens that would make strong men quit. But you've got the wind of heaven beneath your wings.

The breath of the Holy Spirit, the strength of God carrying you. There's the sufficiency of grace in Jesus. And from his fullness you keep on receiving grace upon grace upon grace.

And so you just keep going from strength to strength. And you're a puzzle to yourself. You don't understand yourself.

You don't know how you go on. You don't feel anything special. You don't feel grace popping you with some kind of five-hour energy kick. None of that. You're just keeping the race.

You don't realize the power of God that is being unleashed in your life. It's not natural strength, but it's God's own unwearying supernatural strength.

It's his incomparably great power for us who believe. It's being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience.

That's the power we need to keep in the race and not quit. No other power will do. Being strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Now Isaiah is just talking to ordinary people like you and me who are weary and weak, who are discouraged and doubting due to the severe trials that face us like the Babylonian captivity.

They're undeserving people feeling forgotten and forsaken by God. They're worn out weaklings who would otherwise quit. But they're finding strength in God and so they run on and do not grow weary.

But don't miss the role of hope in all of this. The place of hope in all of this. Not all have their strength renewed in trials. Not all soar as wings on eagles.

Not all run and do not grow weary. It's those who hope in the Lord. Hope is the reviving, restoring, renewing grace.

It's by means of hope that our strength is renewed. Hope inspires endurance. Hope gives us a reason to go on another lap, another day.

Hope is what gives us strength to persevere to the end. It's what lifts up the chin and lifts up the arms that hang down and the limp knees that are ready to give way.

Be strong and take heart all you who hope in the Lord. That's the strengthening grace. It's hope. Just a few things about hope and we're done.

Hope inspires endurance. We said the next thing, hope involves trusting. Hope involves trusting, trusting in him who promised that he who promised is faithful and will do all that he has said.

So I hope I trust in his faithfulness. Hope involves waiting, doesn't it? Indeed, some translations have this. Those who wait upon the Lord will renew their strength because there is waiting in all true hope because hope is expectation of future good.

It's not yet arrived. Romans 8 25. If we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. There is waiting involved in true hope, but it's not the boring waiting of the doctor's office.

hope. No, it's the expectant hope. It's the waiting of the boy on the last day of school and the clock just can't get there quite fast enough and as soon as it rings he's a free man for two months summer vacation.

Expectancy. That's the kind of hope. It's expectant of good from God. it's the expectant wait living in eager suspense.

What is God going to do this time to fulfill his promise to me? How is he going to get sufficient grace to me in this trouble? How is he going to reveal his glory in saving me out of this temptation?

That's the expectancy of hope that has us waiting with bated breath to get to know our God's faithfulness even better.

Hope involves trusting it involves waiting and it involves thirdly submitting submitting your plan to God's plan your will to his will your timing to his timing as long as we're complaining of not getting our way we'll be discouraged and tired and in danger of turning to other things to do us good instead of God maybe the reason some of you are having trouble finding hope for life is because you're hanging on to your version of life I want life this way and if I don't get it this way then God doesn't love me he doesn't care he must not see and so on if you try to keep your life you'll lose it but if you will submit and lose your life Jesus says you will find it and what you will find will be far better than anything you could have ever drawn up for yourself you need to come and bow to Christ submit your will to his not my will but yours be done have thine own way

Lord have thine own way a song we need to daily sing to our savior and in that sweet surrender of faith your hope will be revived your strength will be renewed so what have we seen in chapter 40 of Isaiah we've seen that long and difficult trials like the Babylonian captivity can easily erode our hope in the Lord when instead of expectancy of good from God we grow discouraged we're in a dangerous state would you hear me if you're discouraged don't don't ever take it lightly don't just say well everybody's got to go through discouragements yeah but not everybody goes through them with hope in the Lord oh put your hope in the Lord draw strength supernatural from him get to know him better let your discouragement be a bell ringing in your ears I need to see my God again

I need to think more clearly about the fact that he's eternal he doesn't grow weary he rules to the ends of the earth where I live in my trouble he knows in every star by name he knows me in every aspect of my life as no one else could know I need to know him better that I might put my hope in him and as my hope in him grows my strength in him grows too so we're unable to soar on wings and run and not grow weary and even walk and not be faint dear friend where are you putting your hope is it in Christ or is it in all the wrong places you know to live without God and without Christ in this world is to live without hope Christ is the hope of glory Christ in you is he in you have you received him is he yours if not he will be yours he offers himself to you receive him by faith take him as what as a savior to save you from your sins because without a savior you must pay for your sins in hell but if you will take him as your savior all of your sins were punished on him at calvary take him as your lord as the one to be your master the one to obey the one to follow through life receive the lord jesus even now as we sing you can receive him right there in your seat confess your sin to him and trust in him alone for salvation we're going to sing number 28 which is a response to this passage that we've studied this morning let's stand and sing number 28 hast thou not known have you not heard have you not known number 28 may the god of hope fill you with all joy and peace that comes from believing so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the holy spirit amen may may may may may