Acts 28:17-31 - Unhindered

I went to dinner with my wife last night. Another couple came out of the restaurant and was surprised to see it snowing last night, and my wife is walking in our car, it's snowing she gets very upset at me.

Now you say why is my wife upset at me? It's not my fault that it's snowing. She's upset at me because I have a habit of prematurely declaring an end to winter. It's a bad habit. I have I should know better. I've lived in Kansas City my entire life, but every year it gets me. You get that warm day and I say to my wife, winter is over. Spring is here, get out your shorts, put away the snow shovel, take the ice scraper out of your car. I'm officially declaring right now the end of winter, the beginning of spring, and she always gets upset when I'm wrong and I'm wrong every year.

In fact, not only is it a habit I have with her, I kind of have a reputation for it. I last night got on my phone. I saw a Facebook notification and clicked on it. Jason Thompson commented and said, and it's snowing in the middle of March. And I thought, why is Jason Thompson telling me that it's snowing in of March? I looked at the post. It's actually a comment on my post from February the 20th when on Facebook I declared the end of winter and he went back to tell me that I indeed was wrong.

I looked a little closer, Chad Melton. You had a comment on my Facebook post from February 11th saying, hey, I think I've heard this before. And I scrolled down a little further and lo and behold, there was a screenshot of my post from January the 21st when I declared for the first time this year, the end of winter and the beginning of spring.

And so it's kind of a habit and it's kind of something I've got a reputation for. The point is, do not listen to me when I declare the end of winter and the beginning of spring. Why? Because when I tell you that winter is over, what I'm really saying is, I really, really hope winter is over. It might be over, could be over. I sure hope it's over, and it's not really a reliable prediction from a meteorologist. It's just wishful thinking from someone who really doesn't like winter and really loves spring.

Now, I say that today because we're going to talk about the word hope today. The word hope shows up in our passage as we wrap up the end of the book of Acts in actually chapter 28 here at the end of we're doing jump in there in just a second. Paul is going to—it's going to say Luke's going to write there that Paul spoke in his final verses of this chapter, Paul spoke to the people gathered that day about the hope, the hope of Israel.

People today are looking for hope, not wishful thinking, not blind optimism, but real genuine hope. And the word hope is defined differently from our culture today to the use of the word in the Bible. When we say the word hope, we mean hope like Matt means hope, when I hope winter's over, when I hope the Chiefs will win the Super Bowl. It's wishful thinking. And in some most seasons of my life, blind optimism. I hope, I hope it's gonna happen, means I really, really wish it will happen.

When the Bible uses the word hope, the Bible is not talking about blind optimism or wishful thinking. When the Bible uses the word hope, you could define that word as confident expectation. Confident expectation, not wishful thinking. Confident expectation anchored in the sovereignty and the reliability of God. And that's what people need today—confident hope, anchored in God's sovereignty, anchored in God's promises, anchored in the reliability of God.

As I studied this passage the past couple of weeks and prepared this message in the past few days, I began to think about two groups of people who might need to hear this message today. And I'm going to guess that in a gathering of this size, there are many in this room right now who fall into one, if not both of these groups.

One of those groups of people are people searching for real hope in a season of hopelessness. Something's happened in your life and you found yourself desperately seeking some source of hope. This is what feels right now feels to be a very hopeless time in your life. And I hope you'll see today that there is real hope anchored in the sovereignty of God.

There's another group of people and maybe you find yourself in both of these as another group today who are walking through a difficult and uncertain circumstance. Something that has happened to you that you didn't expect, you didn't anticipate, you didn't desire, and you find yourself facing unwelcomed, undesirable, maybe even unfortunate circumstances that have seemed to be thrust upon you, and you're trying to make sense of that. You're trying to find some meaning or purpose of why God might be putting you through this particular circumstance right now.

I think if you're in one of those two camps, my hope is anyway, that today you'll find some encouragement from God's word. As we look at these final verses of the book of Acts, we're going to see Paul's message, a message of hope, a message of certainty, and we're going to see in Paul's example, someone who leveraged his unfortunate circumstance for the ultimate advancement of the gospel and the glory of God.

So my desire today is that you will find hope in Jesus. Hope that is eternal and everlasting, and you will find today, in the midst of your difficult circumstances, some ray of hope of how God might use this for his greater glory.