(This excerpt is from the sermon I preached Sunday, August 28, 2011 on Hebrews 10: 19-25)
When I was growing up, my grandmother would call us in October each year and tell us that it was time to take to take a look at the “wishbook.” By this, she meant the big Sears catalog which contained pretty much their entire inventory. We were told to go through each page carefully and circle the things we might want for Christmas.
And we did so with great enthusiasm, sometimes letting our imaginations get away from reality. For as my brothers and I eventually learned, just because we circled something in the “wishbook” in October didn’t mean that it would automatically appear under the tree on Christmas morning. Sometimes, our wishes came true. Sometimes they didn’t.
As Christians, we can sometimes think about the Bible and the promises it contains as our spiritual “wishbook.” We might flip through its pages, read over some of the verses, circle the ones that we really like, and then hope that they turn out to be true. Which means that we sometimes think of God like a loving grandparent at Christmas, dispensing presents and making all of our wishes come true.
But just like wishing for an expensive toy at Christmas, approaching the Christian faith like that can also lead to disappointment. When we see God as nothing more than a granter of wishes, we start to lower our spiritual expectations as a lot of those wishes fail to come true. And we begin see the Bible as nothing more than a book of improbable dreams. Before long, the disappointment can cause us to stop believing the promises of God’s Word altogether.
But the good news is that the Word of God is not a wishbook. It’s not something that we leaf through in order to think about the things that we want. Instead, the Scriptures could be called our “hopebook.” As we will see by looking at today’s passage from Hebrews 10, the difference between what the word “wish” means and what the word “hope” means makes all the difference.
According to Webster’s dictionary, “to wish” is to “desire or long for something, to make a request.” “To hope,” means “to wait for something with a feeling of confident expectation.” Those last two words, “confident expectation,” are the key to what we have in our Christian hope. It’s not a matter of maybe it will happen, maybe it won’t. Hope involves certainty, conviction, and perseverance. Listen to the phrases that emerge as the author of Hebrews describes the hope that he has in the salvation that is in Jesus Christ:
“Since we have the confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus.”
“Let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith.”
“Let us hold fast to our confession of our hope without wavering.”
“For he who has promised is faithful.”
And finally, it’s all done as “we see the Day approaching” – meaning that all of our certainty about the things we hope for comes from the knowledge the Kingdom of God is at hand.
Unfortunately, when I was a kid flipping through the Sears wishbook, I never had that level of confidence in what I was circling. If I had truly hoped instead of just wishing for what would appear under the tree on Christmas, I would have gotten that BMX bicycle; video game system; that ultimate LEGO set; and even that gigantic backyard waterslide. All of those fantastic toys that I never received would have been mine.
Fortunately, as we seek to know Jesus Christ, to grow in grace, and to go forth into the world with hope – we do have that certain confidence. Because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the promises of the Kingdom are not a matter of “if” – they’re a matter of “when.” They’re not a matter of “might,” they’re a matter of “shall.” And they’re not a matter of “maybe,” they’re a matter of “absolutely.”
