Good evening again, and a pleasure to be able to be with you and open God's word. And we will read, I will read, from John chapter 2, this first reading. And let me give you a warning up front. We won't approach the other readings until later on, because they have to be inserted at the right place. We're really talking about a topic here, and topical preaching is different from strictly exegetical preaching, and when you only have three shots at a group, I thought I was doing well to group it in faith, hope, and love. You can't develop a whole lot of passages with three nights, but let's hear this history from our Lord's early ministry, as John records it here in chapter two of John, and I'll be reading the first 11 verses. Hear God's word. On the third day, there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee. The mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, they have no wine. Jesus said to her, woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come. His mother said to the servants, do whatever he tells you. Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding 20 or 30 gallons. Jesus said to the servants, fill the jars with water. And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, now draw out some and take it to the master of the feast. So they took it. The master of the feast tasted the water, now become wine. He did not know where it came from. So the servants who had drawn the water knew. Master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, everyone serves the good wine first. And when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now. This is the first of his signs Jesus did at Cana in Galilee and manifested his glory and his disciples believed in him. I'm glad his blessing as he has promised to do to this reading of his word. We're now going to sing a song in the bulletin. Let me find it. Tim is going to assist Dwayne. your songbook and so I could take it home and I found this one on hope and I thought it was appropriate because we're going to be focusing on that tonight. So let's stand together and sing Christ our hope in life and death. Amen. Please be seated. Let's go once again to the Lord in prayer. We begin. Father in heaven, we thank you for your word and we thank you for this subject of hope with which the word is filled. Even when we deserve no hope, we had no hope apart from you. Indeed, you are our hope. So come, Spirit of God, as was prayed before, we ask again to bless this time together so that the words of my mouth, the meditations of our hearts, may be acceptable in your sight. You, Lord, who are our rock and our Redeemer, we pray for Christ's sake. Amen. Last time, we looked at this subject of faith. And we're looking at faith, hope, and, God willing, next Thursday evening, love, taking our cue from the last verse of 1 Corinthians 13, one of the famous words of now abide, these three, faith, hope, and love. But even in that chapter, as we noted in verse 7, we find out that love bears all things. Love believes all things, so love has faith. Love hopes all things, so love has hope. And love endures all things. So we see these three things as, as it were, almost interdependent. Or perhaps we could say faith and hope are preparing a solid foundation for biblical love, and that's biblical faith and biblical hope. It's striking how we see this trio elsewhere. Think of this passage from the end of Romans 4 and the beginning of Romans 5. He was delivered up, Christ was delivered up for our offenses and raised for our justification. Now watch for our key words. Therefore, being justified by faith, We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have also received access into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope. And hope does not make us ashamed, even though we also rejoice, I'm jumping ahead of myself, in tribulations, because tribulations work endurance, and endurance proven character, and proven character works Hope, here it is. And the reason hope does not make us ashamed, the love of God has been spread about and brought in our hearts through his Holy Spirit whom he's given to us. So, these three are very close friends and I trust we know them as believers and they're precious to us. We talked about faith last time and particularly focusing on, as we will tonight, our Lord Jesus Christ, as the author and finisher of the faith. And we thought of that verse, and we can think of it as Jesus being the object of our faith, of his work, being that which earns us the ability by his spirit to even believe and to hope and to go on to love. But we want to consider the Lord Jesus Christ's own exercise of faith. He was a man of faith. And the question tonight will be for us, this was a Puritan sermon, it will be the theme, is did Jesus Christ have hope? Can we find evidence for the expression of hope in our Lord's ministry as we look at the record that we have in the New Testament? Last time as we considered the exercise of faith by our Savior, It was already evident when he was 12 and in the temple and had stayed back from his parents' departure back home. They went a day, couldn't find him. They came back the third day they find him, and his mother says, why did you do this to us? And his answer is striking, showing, first of all, a test of faith on Mary's part, and we'll get to her tonight as well, and on our Lord's part, and he says, And this was a sinless act, as were all his acts, and done in obedience to his father's will and the Old Testament scriptures about his mission. Why were you looking for me? Doesn't seem a very logical statement for a child that was lost to firstborn, who is as precious to them as any firstborn would have been. Didn't you know? I have to be about my father's business, or could be translated, I have to be in my father's house. And so we hear in this answer the expression of a faith in our savior, in the word of God, and in his mission that was already sufficient to be able to make this statement, and to jarringly, as it would have been, for Mary and Joseph to hear this, and what do we read was their response? They did not understand what he said to them. We could ask, Mary, don't you remember the angel? Joseph, don't you remember the angel, what they said to you? And of what you heard from the shepherds, what you heard from the magi, what you heard from Simeon? Is this boy's going to be different? So what we're doing then, as we looked last time and tonight at the subject of hope, we looked at faith, is the expression of faith in our Savior and of his mother as a contrast, and yet it's something, as we pursue this, I think you're going to see the most remarkable example the way our Lord shows what true faith, hope, and love are, and that to his closest human person, his own mother. So we ask this question, and it's going to pursue us as we continue tonight. Did our Lord Jesus Christ have hope? From age 12 to 30, 18 years, what was he doing? He didn't have a cell phone. He didn't have distractions like we have with electronic things. I'm sure there were plenty of distractions. He would have gone to over 900 Sabbath gatherings in those years. He would have been listening to the law read. He would have been thinking on it. And his sinless soul realizing at 12 he had to be about his father's house and business As this grew and as time passed, becoming clearer and clearer as he began to master the Old Testament scriptures, following his father's will. You know, we send men to seminary for three years. Here's 18 of ways to be instructed. In my view, one of the passages that might have guided him the most is Psalm 119. Have you wondered about all that long Psalm and how to think about it? I would argue that other than three or four verses at the most, Psalm 119 could have been a complete primer for Christ. You remember how it starts. Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart. who also do no wrong but walk in his ways. How many of Jesus' peers could say this? He could say it. And yet the struggles that are there in the prayers of Psalm 119 as we read them, those regarding even pain and struggle and focusing on God's law and walking in his ways would have befitted him as he was tempted and tried. Remember, he was tempted in all points and at all stages of his life. like we are, yet without sin. What was his hope? Well, think about his family at this point, during those years. We have very little to go, we don't really have anything except one incident. So we don't know, but we have examples in scripture of what it would have been like. Paul says about Ishmael and Isaac, that when Ishmael was mocking little Isaac as a baby, that this is really a representation of the way the unbeliever attacks and doesn't want to go along with the believer. We know that from the first men that were born. Cain killed his brother Abel. Why, 1 John tells us. Because Abel's life was righteous and Cain's was wicked. It was simply because he hated his righteous brother. And just think of the life of Joseph, the one righteous boy in his family of quasi-murderers. In fact, Levi and Simeon, they were murderers. Horrible. And they spared his life, but hated him and was wanting to kill him, and they committed another capital crime in the Old Testament by selling him into slavery. And he persevered. Think of David's early life and what he suffered. These are models, I would suggest to us, of what it was like for the Lord Jesus, because if these two, like Joseph and David, suffered as sinners, they were not born without sin, what would it have been like for Jesus? Day after day, in a family who we know as late as John 7, and our Lord's ministry, and his brothers didn't believe in him. So he was in a faithless household that had hopes or faith in something else wholly apart from himself and his work. We know that our Lord was called the carpenter's son, and so therefore he worked with his hands during these years. And at some point, Joseph disappears. We don't know how. It's just assumed that he died. Perhaps he was considerably older than Mary, we don't know. And so the firstborn would become head of the household with all that responsibility. So in addition to what he would be studying in the scriptures and hearing, there would have been much continual prayer, communion with his father, sorting out what he was reading and thinking on and coming to realize. and wrestling with the reality of what the picture of the Messiah was going to be and how he was going to suffer. What his life on this earth would seem to end like. Psalm 22, Isaiah 53, many other Psalms about the suffering of the righteous before the wicked. What was his hope? It's a good thing to think about. What hope did he have? What caused him to persevere? Certainly his faith. And then the time came for his public ministry. Baptism, temptation of the wilderness. Then he selects these disciples. And I don't think he was the slightest bit surprised. In fact, would have affirmed it when he heard John introduce him not as the son of David, not as the king to come and reign over Jacob and the household, not a son of man, but the Lamb who will take away...the Lamb of God who will take away the sins of the world. And so, the Lord Jesus makes His public appearance already as a potential sacrifice, knowing these things. So we ask again, what hope could there have been for him? What was it that made him persevere in hope? Remarkably, Peter gives us a hint in his sermon at Pentecost when he quotes from Psalm 16. And in that quote, he applies it specifically to Jesus. Here's the quote. David says concerning him, Peter said, I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken. Therefore, my heart was glad and my tongue rejoiced. My flesh also will dwell in hope. For you will not abandon my soul to Hades or let your Holy One see corruption. You have made known to me the paths of life. You will make me full of gladness with your presence." So the hope that's here from Psalm 16, spoken by David, but really applicable most clearly to our Lord Jesus Christ was the hope of the Father's presence with him and the joy that was set before him. And so we ask the question again, what was his hope beyond, if it was beyond, the joy that was set before him so that he could endure the cross, despising the shame, and then be set down at the right hand of the throne of God? I want to suggest to you it was something even more extraordinary, his hope. The goal of our Lord Jesus Christ in his ministry included us. We were part of that hope. Every one for whom the lamb would be slain to purchase, they were his hope. They were the future. They were the eternity to come for the eternal son of God in our nature and come into the world. You need to grasp this. a future of unending joy in the new heavens and the new earth with his blood-bought saints in glory." This is astonishing. I think this is a perfectly reasonable deduction from the fact that he came to do this. Oh, yes, to honor his father. Oh, yes, persevering. Persevering through a life, dear friends, that for us, if we look at it carefully and if we thought about living it, And any measure would say, where's the hope here? When will this opposition cease? When will I cease to be followed around by a crowd that is looking for nothing more than to see me stumble and fail? Attributing my works to the devil, as if the devil's divided against himself. He may be horrible, but he's not stupid. That was his life. And then to face what he was going to face at the end. I ask, how? Easy was it to maintain this hope. It was a fight. I'm sure it was a battle. At one point, you remember, he comes down from the Mount of Transfiguration, and the disciples weren't able to cast out this demon of the son of a man who was desperate to get help. Jesus says, oh, faithless generation, how long am I with you? And then he says, bring me the boy. Struggle, that's just a little glimmer, I think, into what he would have experienced. All right, let us leave our Lord for the moment, and let's turn to Mary. And let's ask ourselves about our Lord's mother. What was her expectation, her hope for this boy, this firstborn? How can we tell even? Well, I don't think we can know until we examine the times that she appears in the gospels. Just not a great number of times, and the passage that I read first for us tonight from John 2 is one of those passages. Now, first of all, we ought to note how different the life of Jesus was from John the Baptist. John the Baptist would have never showed up someplace where they were drinking wine like this. I mean, after all, they didn't have any locusts or wild honey. What was he going to eat if he came? He was very abstemious. He lived apart. But here's our Lord coming to a wedding. He was invited, and the disciples were invited. One might wonder and guess if they ran out of wine because the disciples were there. I would hope not, but you remember the Lord was called a winebibber and a glutton, whereas John had been called a demon because he wouldn't associate with people. He lived out like a wild animal almost. They run out of wine. Mary seems to have had some sort of prominence here. Maybe it was a relative of hers or something. Nazareth isn't that far away from Cana. And so she comes to Jesus and she said they've run out of wine. Then he says something to her that's even stronger than what he said in the temple. It's a phrase that occurs at least five times in the Old Testament and twice in the Gospels. And the two times in the Gospels, it's when a demon-possessed person is speaking to Jesus. So literally it is, what to me and to you, or in the brashest of terms, what do we have to do with each other? What is the relation that we have? And I say, despite all the commentators here always wanting to soften this phrase, because it's just so hard for them to believe that the sinless son of God and his love for his mother, which of course would have never altered and always been present, would say something like this. It's one of those times when commentators try to get the context and then sort of soften what's going on. And we'll give them credit, and we should. We should always recognize the context. I was talking to Bruce about that this morning. But it's a strong statement. Why are you bringing me into this? And then what he says is, my hour has not come. What hour? Well, John, as you know, as readers of John, and I trust you are, often mentions this hour that's coming. And in John chapter 17, our Lord begins the prayer by saying, Father, the hour has come. But it hadn't come yet. And therefore, there was perseverance needed, the further exercise of Jesus Faith, and we know love, because there's so many places, and I don't want to get ahead of myself for next week, where he expresses it and shows it. But in spite of Mary's inadvertence and Jesus' response, he turns this massive amount of water that they bring in at some time to go lug this in here. They didn't turn on the faucet and fill these things up. This took a while. And the wine is the best wine of the party. We won't stay on that long because we could really get distracted, but what a magnificent gift to this couple. There's enough wine in there and quality to be able to set them up. Maybe they could get a down payment on a house with that. Beautiful story. But the break with the mother, the sense that there has to be a distinction, my dear mother, between us. And you have to recognize it. So we ask, what was Mary thinking? What would she have thought hearing this? Well, let's move on to the Mark 3 passage. And I'll read these words from Mark chapter three, verse 13. And Jesus went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired and they came to him. And what follows in the next verses are a list of the disciples. Skip down to verse 20. Then Jesus went home and the crowd gathered again so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to seize him. For they were saying, he is out of his mind. Now, Mary was with them because we have a few verses after this and we have a reference again to his family. We'll look at that in a moment, but think about this. What was Mary's expectation? What were his brother's thoughts here? I've written something that might be something like it. her expectation for her firstborn. What is my boy doing with this hodgepodge group of men walking over Galilee, even down to Judea, depending on the gifts of others, including these women who go along with them, supporting them with their own funds? This is almost scandalous. This can't be the right path for one who is to rule over the house of Jacob forever. He doesn't have a job. They've left their families. This just looks like something irresponsible. And with all these people following him around, expecting him to sort of take care of them, he doesn't have time to eat. He's going to be destroyed. The motherly instinct is all over this, isn't it? It is dead wrong. That's a revelation of what was going on with Mary to cope with the no doubt conflicting feelings in her heart and love for this firstborn and all of his kindness. All those years, those 18 years after the 12-year-old experience and his stepping up and providing, what is happening to him? I think we need to reflect on this and how serious and difficult it would have been But then a few verses later, as I say in verse 31 of Mark 3, we read this. And his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, your mother and your brothers are outside seeking you. He answered them, who are my mother and my brothers? And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother. So from Mary's point of view at this moment, there with the family, hoping that he would at least respond and talk to them, doesn't even go out. And he asked this rhetorical question as if he had no parent. He had no mother. And yet what he's doing here and elsewhere, but particularly in a passage like this, is introducing the new humanity. The new humanity are those who respond in a proper way to the Lord Jesus Christ and his words and understand them and understand his works So these two groups are created. They existed before, but now, in the Old Testament, the righteous and the wicked, but now everything is related to the Savior of those in the Old Testament who believe and everybody else who will believe, the people of God, those who do the will of God. And so family, friend, other distinctions, they matter, but in comparison to the love of Christ and doing his will, they don't. Very, very strong statement and quite an act. What would Mary think? What is the hope for my boy? We don't know. We're left with it. We can imagine ourselves. One final passage from Luke 11, verses 27 and 28, which add to this picture. As Jesus said these things, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts at which you nursed. He said, blessed rather are those who hear the word of God Keep it. This is a furtherance of the distinction between these two classes. Only two. Do you hear what I'm saying? Do you have ears to hear what I'm saying? Does it take hold of you in a way that says, I must do this. I must go in this way. I must follow this man and obey him. And I say, I don't know that, certainly from the human nature of our Savior, that it was even easy to say these things. But to realize he had a priority from his father, from the scriptures that defined who he was to be and what was to happen with him, that took place over everything else. Faith focused on it. They say he had a hope after his sufferings. I want to suggest two other ways that will help us to think of the hope of our Lord Jesus Christ. We go to Luke, again, chapter 22, and probably to something that happened right after Jesus had washed the disciples' feet, which as you know is only mentioned by John in his gospel. This is what we read, Luke 22, verse 14. When the hour came, Jesus reclined at the table and the apostles with him. Then he said to them, I have fervently desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks, he said, take this and share it among yourselves, for I tell you, from now on, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. He had this fervent desire to eat a meal with them, these 12 men, one of whom, he says at the end of John, has a devil, Judas, before he suffers. And then he makes this emphatic vow of fasting and turning away from that which, even in his glorified nature, human nature, would have been perfectly appropriate, although he didn't need to eat. He did eat after the resurrection. He had a little piece of fish with the disciples to prove that he wasn't a spirit, because spirits don't eat. At least you don't see them eat. and he ate probably with the disciples in John 21 when they all met. But what I think he means here is there will be no such celebration as this, this last Paschal meal, which was always about me. It was always promising that a lamb would come, and I am the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. They couldn't, those lambs. I can and will. because you are so important to me, and my father's will to accomplish your salvation, I'll not eat until we can eat together. It's a staggering reality. But there's even one other thing that Luke also mentions earlier in chapter 12 that I think, well, it's just, this is overwhelming for me, the presbytery meeting, Yesterday, the officiant at the table quoted this passage, and in a perfect setting, it had to do with diaconal ministry, service, and it was never a servant like our Lord Jesus Christ. Here's the passage in Luke 12, verse 35. Stay dressed for action, the Lord said, and keep your lamps burning, and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks. Listen to these words. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table. He will come and serve them. You know, we think of whatever recognition, and Christ has promised recognition to his servants who serve him, and little or much. And that that recognition, in whatever form it takes, it's talked about as crowns in Revelation, will be given back to Jesus because he's the one who earned it. He's the one who bought them. Here, he says he will serve his servants. Folks, we need to think on things like this with absolute staggering astonishment. The Lord of glory, the creator of heaven and earth, has said he will demonstrate his love and care for us when we're glorified. In some manner, I can't imagine. I can't imagine the physics of heaven anyway. He said it, so it must happen. So I say, Christ's hope and the joy that was set before him and those for whom he died and with whom he labored, these 11 plus the Apostle Paul will be committed with everything that he came to accomplish, to tell the nations about. And here we are, their descendants. And I'd like us to reflect on and go home thinking about and pray over this staggering reality and ask ourselves, do I really have the hope that Christ had? Do I love the saints the way he loved these disciples? And they were often highly unlovable. At this very meal where he was telling them he wouldn't eat or drink anymore, They end up talking about who is the greatest. That's yet who he says he's going to serve. Here we are as well. Well, we sing a song. We're not going to sing it tonight, but we sing, in Christ alone, my what is found, my hope is found. If you, believer, are our Savior's hope and joy and crown, as Paul talked about the believers in his churches, and if it's true for Paul, it's certainly much more true for our Savior. Stay awake so that you live for this glorious master and him alone. That way you will not be ashamed when he comes back to serve you. Let's pray. Father, you know how unworthy I am to even deal with subjects like this, to think on the magnificence of this, that you, the Lord of glory, the eternal Son, with the Father and the Spirit, needing nothing from all eternity, wholly satisfied in your own being, have done what you've done. Would you help us, Lord, to realize the idols that even out of good things, we are so prone to construct. And when they disappoint us, what we don't do is repent and come back to you. We try to find other ones. And we pray that you liberate us from this. And in a new sense, come Spirit of the Lord Jesus. Give us a greater sense of what a privilege it is to serve you in whatever place you put us, whatever age, these kids that are here, in their schoolwork, we who are working, in jobs, driving, working at home, retired, weary, struggling. Help us to grasp your hope and be strengthened to persevere in the means of grace until you come and do what you promised, which we thank you for the faith to believe. We pray this in Christ's name.