What is our greatest hope and how does it affect our daily lives?

<p>What is our greatest hope and how does it affect our daily lives?</p>

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Granite Bay SDA Church

Shawn Brummund

Our Greatest Hope

This was recorded at the Granite Bay Hilltop SDA Church, located in Granite Bay, California.

Hope you are blessed by the message and that it draws you closer to God.

It is strictly a tradition as far as Easter weekend goes.

There is nothing holy about tomorrow, even though there are many of our Christian friends that understand that tomorrow is a holy day.

And the most painful part of that is that today is actually the only holy day this week.

And so, but nevertheless this is the season in which Jesus died and rose again to glory.

And so certainly is a fitting time for us to be able to remember that some 2, 000 years ago during the same spring season, Jesus died for the sins of the world.

And we're looking at that greatest hope even here today, both his death and his resurrection.

So I want to thank Mike for his prayers for us, the Holy Spirit to be with us.

I want to invite you to start our study here this morning in Acts chapter 17.

As we come to Acts chapter 17, we come to a very big milestone in the ministry of Paul.

Paul has been traveling through the Roman Empire, has been preaching the gospel in different cities that have never heard the gospel, he's been planting churches.

My wife and I had the advantage of, privilege of being there about 3 or 4 years ago, doing an archeological tour, and as we went to Athens, we of course went to Corinth and saw the archeological sites there, but in Athens, it turns out Athens is the oldest city in the world.

It's the oldest continually occupied city in the world.

And not only that, but he also had the privilege of preaching at the Europagus, Mars Hill, the Hill of Aries, which is this famous, it's not a big rock by the way, I thought the hill, I thought there was a big Parthenon.

That's a pagan thing up on top of the highest point of the second highest point of Athens.

But no, Europagus is down below the Parthenon.

And its rock is only about, I don't know, maybe 30 feet long, about 15, 20 feet wide.

And on the top of this rock, and it was a very simple meeting place, but it was 1 of the most prestigious places in the world to meet, because this is where all the greatest minds of philosophy met and exchanged ideas.

And so it's a small rock, but it's a big place as far as its symbolism and what it represented in the culture of Paul's day.

Verse 22, it says, then Paul stood in the midst of the Oropagus and said, men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious.

There was lots of religious people, you know, Atheism was not a trendy philosophy back then.

So religion was even found in the minds of the greatest intellects of Paul's day.

Verse 23, it says, For as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I found an altar with his inscription to the unknown God." Now again, remember, Paul is speaking to a very prestigious audience here.

And he says, listen, I see that you have all kinds of different objects of worship, idols, man-made gods of different sorts, but I found 1 that just to make sure you have all your bases covered, you even have 1 that's to the unknown God.

Therefore the 1 for whom I worship that you worship without knowing him I proclaim to you." And so Paul uses the context of the culture and of Athens to be able to find an inroad into the hearts and the minds of his listeners as he's about to do something very politically incorrect.

He's about to debunk all of the other gods that weren't to the unknown God.

And he goes and proceeds and does that in the following verses.

And then he introduces in the midst of all that the true God of heaven that made heaven and earth of which we find our breath and which all human beings have been made from.

And so God is the source of all human beings and life forms upon the planet, the maker of heaven and earth.

After Paul is done doing this, he comes to his conclusion and we fast forward now to verse 30 where it says, truly these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands men everywhere to repent.

And so he's making his appeal now, isn't he?

He said, listen, God understands that you didn't know better up until this point, but now that you know better, as with all men and when they come to know new truth, more light, God calls you to repent from your error, repent from your sin, and choose what is truth and choose what is righteousness.

In verse 31 it says, "...because he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man..." Now most translations will have man, capital M, because the context here is pointing to none other than Jesus Christ, whom he has ordained, he has given assurance of this to all by raising him from the dead.

And so Jesus was dead when he was pulled off of the cross and he was reverently buried within the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, but he didn't remain there did he?

The scripture records tell us at the end of all 4 gospel records you have Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, not 1 of them of course neglected to record the most important events.

Some of them left out certain things and included certain events and teachings, but none of them left out the death and the resurrection of Christ.

And so, we have 4 biblical historical records in all 4 Gospel books.

And so both the Roman soldiers that were stationed to guard the tomb, those first disciples or followers of Christ laid their eyes upon the risen Christ, didn't they?

Jesus had appeared just hours after you resurrected on that early on that Sunday morning by the time evening came he miraculously appeared on the other side of the locked door the bolted door in which the disciples were waiting behind in fear, hiding behind that door.

Jesus stands before them and he says, peace be with you, because of course he knew that they needed peace.

And then he said, you know, touch the holes in my hands, come Thomas." Thomas wasn't there that first time, but he said, come and look at the cut in my side.

Jesus wanted to demonstrate to them that he was not a, he was not a ghost, but he was the resurrected Christ.

He was not at some spirit of Christ, he was the Christ.

He was the same Jesus that they had walked and talked with and ministered with for the last 3 and a half years.

They had all found an empty tomb, They had all laid eyes upon the resurrected Christ.

And not only that, but the Gospel records also tell us that when Jesus rose to glory, He didn't rise alone.

But there were several others that had died in the past, in faith, in cooperation, and as co-laborers with Christ.

Some of the same tombs that were shaken open when Jesus died on the cross just 3 days before that Friday afternoon, when the tombs were shaken because there was that massive earthquake and some of those same people that had died by faith also resurrected and they too had gone through Jerusalem and through the streets and had proclaimed that Christ was risen again.

And not only that, but then the Bible record also tells us, as we already just read in our scripture reading, that indeed Jesus rose and there was 1 event where 500 living eyewitnesses laid eyes upon the resurrected Christ.

And so when Paul is preaching to the crowd here, this prestigious crowd in the city of Athens, surely he would have shared some of these details.

You know, sometimes I think that, In my opinion, we make the mistake of believing sometimes when we read the sermon of Peter in Pentecost in Acts chapter 2 or Paul's letter, or in this case a sermon in Acts chapter 17, that this was every word and only the words that he spoke.

But I would like to submit to you that the writings that we find here is a summary, it's a condensed version of the sermon that Paul had presented to the Athenians that afternoon or that morning.

The reason I say that is because I did a bit of a test and I just read through it.

I read it out loud as if I were Paul preaching.

I didn't read it fast, but I read it in a very natural state.

In fact, I even slowed it down a little bit just to see how long it would take to read that.

Now I find it hard to believe that Paul took advantage of that opportunity that he had to preach to the Athenians for only 1 and a half minutes.

And so Paul as he moved into the doctrine and the truth of the resurrected Christ, But not only that, but as we're going to read here in a moment, that he went then to preach also about the resurrection of the dead in general.

The hope that God has set before us as Jesus and those first symbolic believers that came out of the grave with him, were just but the first fruits.

And that every 1 of us that die in Christ will 1 day rise again.

That 1 day we will rise in glory with the same body that Jesus received when he rose in glory some 2, 000 years ago.

Now of course, as many of us have already read this passage, we discover that the Athenians were far too rational in their thinking, were far too intellectual and tied to their human logic to be able to absorb and be able to even consider the truth about the historical resurrection of Christ, those who had resurrected with him, let alone the resurrection of millions of believers that will take place in the future.

They were highly intelligent, highly talented in their intellect, and yet they had made the mistake, many of them, as many of us do in our modern day and age today, limiting ourselves to our own rational thinking, limiting ourselves to our own human logic.

And if you cannot explain it to me with some formula, if you cannot explain it to me with some points of logic in which I see A connected to B connected to C connected to D, I cannot accept it, I cannot believe it.

Can anyone here explain the resurrection of Christ?

Can anyone here explain how God creates entire planets with life with just His Word, just by speaking it into existence?

Can you explain how God brings matter to existence that never existed previous to that?

In fact, I don't even try to understand these things, do you?

Because I'm not God, and God's thoughts and abilities are far high, as far as the heavens are above the earth are my thoughts above your thoughts, God tells us.

And this is the mistake that the Athenians made, did they not?

They were too wrapped up in their own limits of human reasoning and philosophy.

Their mindset and their limits were very much parallel to the idols and the false gods in which they had created for themselves with their own limits, with their own thinking, with their own logic, and making idols with their own hands.

It was limited by human rational and logical thinking, and yet God is greater than our rational thinking.

God is much higher than your logic or not.

You can take the greatest, most talented, most intellectual scientist in the world and he can't hold a candle to God.

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Our Greatest Hope

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