3-21-10 Three days
How many of you have ever been to a wedding? If you have been at a wedding, then you may have heard these words that Paul writes to the Corinthians: “Love is patient, love is kind, It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.” It goes on, but it ends this way, “And now these three remain: Faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love (1 Cor. 13).
Faith, Hope and love are like the trinity of the soul. They are essential for life. We talk a lot about love and we talk regularly about faith, but the idea of hope is not talked about much, so I’d like to ask you a few questions to get us tracking in that direction this morning.
Did you know that hope is very important for life? People with little hope get depressed. The less hope they have the more depressed they get. Did you know that people who feel hopeless often commit suicide? Without hope people die on the inside. Our innermost being dies without hope. People who commit suicide die on the inside first.
Have you ever thought about our need for hope? Hope is essential for life. Without hope something inside us dies. Hope is so essential to life that people can’t live without it. For you and I hope is as necessary for life as food, water, or air.
Here’s the definition of hope: Desire accompanied by expectation. We have hopes and we have a certain expectation that those hopes will come true.
The definition of hopelessness is: Desire accompanied by non-expectation. You still have hopes, desires and dreams, but you don’t expect that those things will ever come true. Hope is at it’s core an expectation of the heart. Hope is a dream for something better. Hope is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Now, we hope for a lot of things. When you’re hoping for some thing, you are hoping for a particular outcome—for a particular circumstance to turn out the way that you want it to.
Hope I get that job.
Hope I get that house.
Hope I get that girl.
Hope I get that girl, and she gets that job, and we get that house.
Sometimes we hope for something, even though we know it’s kind of a long shot with a remote possibility of happening.
Baseball season is starting again. Millions of us who grew up in Michigan hope this is the year the tigers will win the World Series. We’ve been hoping for a long time, but hope dies hard.
Sometimes the thing we hope for is focused on life and death.
Hope she comes back.
Hope we don’t lose him.
Hope it’s not cancer.
But one day it will be. If it’s not cancer, it will be something else.
When that happens, the question then is about your deeper hope … about your foundational hope Do you have someone you can put your hope in?
I want to tell you about Him this morning, because the whole testimony of the Scriptures points to this One Man … this one God … Jesus. The scriptures tell us to put our hope in him.
I want to start with kind of an obscure story in the Old Testament. This is a story you may or may not know. It’s early on in the history of Israel, after forty years when they’ve been wandering around in the desert carrying this box with them called the Ark of the Covenant.
They get to the Promised Land, but they’re struggling. They don’t
have a king. This is before the time of David and Solomon. Israel is fighting against the Philistines, and they are hoping for some thing, hoping for victory. They go into a battle with the Philistines, and they lose. Afterwards, they debrief, and they ask what happened. Where was God? We were counting on Him. Why didn’t He give us what we were hoping for? Then somebody gets an idea and says: Let’s go into battle with the Philistines another time, only this time, we’ll use our secret weapon. This time we’ll bring the Ark of the Covenant into the battle with us.
The Ark of the Covenant was a box where they kept some of the manna (the bread that God had provided during their time in the wilderness) and the Ten Commandments. But it was not just a box. It was like the “Presence of God.” The way they were thinking about it was like it was “God in a Box.” If they brought it into battle, God wouldn’t let the enemy capture the Ark of the Covenant. It would be like capturing God, and He wasn’t going to let that happen.
They thought to themselves, “Then God has to give us what we’re hoping for.” There’s a kind of odd theology behind this way of thinking. I’ll give you a picture of it.
There’s one episode of the TV show The Simpson’s where Homer pledges money to a PBS telethon fund drive, because he’s tired of the fund drive and wants it to end, but he doesn’t actually have the money. When the PBS people find out about it, they force him to serve with a bunch of missionaries on a tropical island. The people he’s serving with build a new church. Now Homer is not a theologically astute character, but he’s proud of their accomplishment. He sums it up like this: Well, I don’t know much about God, but we sure have built Him a nice little box.
This is kind of like the thinking of the Israelites, but the truth about God is: You just can’t keep Him in a box. He can’t be tamed or domesticated. You can’t force Him to give you the thing
you are hoping for. That’s what the Israelites try to do.
They go into battle a second time, and it’s a disaster. They lose seven times more soldiers in the second battle than they did the first time around. Worst of all, the Ark of the Covenant is captured. This is unthinkable. This is like losing the “Presence of God” that makes them distinct as a people. It’s like they lost everything. It’s as though there is no hope. It’s when they’ve lost
everything they’ve been hoping for that the story gets interesting.
The Philistines, the army that the Israelites were fighting against, carry the Ark of the Covenant off to their city called Ashdod. It’s where the temple of Dagon is. Dagon is their biggest god, their most powerful god. The priests take the Ark inside and place it next to the statue of Dagon. Then all the Philistines cheer and celebrate, because they think that Dagon has prevailed over Yahweh, over the God of the Israelites. They have a big feast. They chant their favorite chants. They tell their battle stories. They lock up and everybody goes home for the night. There is no one present to see or hear what happens that night.
The priests come in at dawn, and the text says:
When the people of Ashdod came in early the next day, there was Dagon fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the Lord. (I Samuel 5: 3)
The text does not tell us what the priests thought: Maybe it was an accident? Maybe it was just a coincidence? But it looks suspiciously as if Dagon has bowed down to worship the God of Israel. It looks as if the God of Israel is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
Dagon’s priests realize that it does not look good to have their god bowing down to the God of Israel, Yahweh. So they dust their god off and prop him back up. All day long, on the second day, Philistines come into the temple to celebrate their victory and offer sacrifices and sing songs to great Dagon. Then it’s night, and the priests lock up, turn off the lights, and go home. They leave Dagon alone with the great Yahweh.
The next morning when the priests come in, they once more find that Dagon has fallen on the ground before the Ark of the Lord. Not only that, but this time his head and his hands have been cut off and laid neatly across the threshold of the temple, and all that was left of Dagon inside the temple was a stump.
Wouldn’t you love to know what happened? The text doesn’t tell us. All we know is this is a “Three Day Story.” The first day is a very dark day. It looks like the God of Israel is defeated and the glory is gone.
In fact, there is a part of the story that’s very interesting. After they lose the battle and the Ark is captured, the priest of Israel, Eli, dies. His two sons die and his daughter-in-law dies. When his daughter-in-law, who is in childbirth, hears that Israel has lost, that everybody has died, and that the Ark of the Covenant (the Presence of God) has been captured by the Philistines, she says that she wants her son named Ichabad.
Chabad—kind of the main word in this whole story—is the Hebrew word for “glory.” When you put an “i” in front of a word, it makes it the negative. “Ichabad” meant “the glory is gone.” What she’s saying is:
The whole thing is a pipe dream. Abraham was wrong. Moses was just wandering around in the wilderness. There’s no God … no Yahweh. No glory. Life doesn’t mean anything. There is no hope. You’re born. You die. That’s it. Our son might as well know that as soon as he’s grown up. Ichabad. Glory’s gone.
That’s the first day. Heaven is silent. No hope. No glory. No one can understand why. Some days are like that. Then there’s the second day, and the second day is a day of hidden combat. It is shrouded in mystery. It is a day of ambiguity and anxiety. Some days are like that.
But this is a Third Day Story. On the third day, the story takes a 180-degree turn. The idol is chopped up, cut down, and overturned. They tried to put God in a box, but you can’t put God in a box. The Philistines fear the presence of Yahweh, because of what he’s done to Dagon, so they take him back to Israel. God is taken back to his people, because the third day is God’s day. That’s the day of hope.
He’s the “Third Day God.” This is kind of a pattern in the Old Testament. Often the people of Israel are told they are going to have to wait. They’ve been disappointed. Deliverance is coming. Rescue is coming, but the waiting period is generally three days. It’s a time of anticipation.
When a hero named Joseph was in prison, he said to Pharaoh’s cupbearer:
… In three days, Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your job … (Genesis 40: 13)
When Israel was trapped in slavery, Moses asked Pharaoh: Let us go three days into the wilderness. (Exodus 5: 3)
When the Israelites arrive at Sinai, God says: Consecrate the people and make them ready by the third day, because on that day, the Lord will come down. And on the morning of the third day, it came to pass. (Exodus 19:10)
When Israel was threatened with genocide, a harem girl, Esther, says that she will fast for three days. Then she will go to the King to seek deliverance for her people.
When Jonah is swallowed and is in the belly of the big fish … does anybody want to take a guess how many days he’s there? He’s there three days before he’s released.
When Israel was afraid to go into the Promised Land, God said to Israel: Don’t be afraid. Don’t be discouraged. Three days from now, you will cross the Jordan to possess the land the
Lord has given you. (from Joshua 1: 9-11)
The third day was used so frequently in this way that it became kind of a technical expression meaning a time to wait for deliverance. Right now, things are messed up. Right now, hope is being crushed. Right now, hearts are disappointed, but a better day is coming.
In the book of Hosea, the prophet says it like this: Come, let us return to the Lord. After two days, He will revive us. On the third day, He will restore us that we may live in His presence. (Hosea 6:1-2)
One day, deliverance came in a way that nobody was looking for. God came back to His people, not in a box, but in a Man.
The Word became flesh, the Bible says, and dwelt among us. (John 1:14)
All of this language is very evocative. The word for dwelt literally is the word that they used for “tabernacle” — “he tabernacled among us.” The tabernacle was the place where the Ark of the Covenant was. That was where they thought of God being.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt (tabernacled) among us. We beheld His glory (His “chabad”), the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father. (John 1:14)
But it was a funny kind of glory. It came in a strange combination of humility, passion, and fearlessness. Nobody could tame Jesus. Nobody—not the politicians, not the Zealots, not the religious leaders—nobody could use Him. Nobody could manipulate Him to get what they wanted. Nobody could shut Him up. So in the end, those who were in power took Him and lashed Him with a whip and pierced Him with a sword and hung Him on a cross and laid Him in a tomb.
That was the first day. That was a dark day. His followers were crushed. They had seen the glory for a while, and now it was gone. Now it was lying in a tomb. Now it was Ichabad. The presence and glory of God was gone. There seemed to be no hope.
The second day, it didn’t look any better. On the second day, Pontius Pilate posted a guard to stand watch over the tomb, because he was in control now. He wanted to make sure that nothing happened … nobody came in and did anything funny with that body. On the second day, Pontius Pilate posted a guard and said to himself: Well, I guess that’s the end of that. Well I guess we won’t hear any more about that movement. I don’t know much about this Jesus, but we sure have built Him a nice little box.
But the thing about Jesus is, you just can’t keep Him in a box. He never was a box kind of guy. They didn’t know it, but death wasn’t defeat for Him. The Bible says that He died for our sins. He died to do what you and I, with all our little efforts at self-improvement—trying to do better, give enough, go to church enough, do enough nice things—could never do. He was setting everything right between God and us. He was dying the death that, by all rights, you and I should have died.
That was the second day. That was a dark day. That was a disappointing day.But the story of Jesus is a “Three-Day Story.”
Followers of Jesus had a claim to make. They said: You know, the first day was a real dark day. That’s the day they laid Him in the tomb. The second day, the guard was posted. That was a real dark day. We thought it was done. We thought that the thing that we were hoping for was never going to come true.
What we found out was there was Someone we could hope in. That was way better news than anything we were hoping for. Because of Him, the Third Day came.
v The Third Day is God’s day.
v The Third Day is the day when prisoners of Pharaoh get set free.
v The Third Day is the day the people come to the mountains and the mountains shake and rivers are parted and people go into the Promised Land.
v The Third Day is the day when harem girls like Esther face down powerful, giant kings
v The Third Day is the day that prophets like Jonah are dropped off at seaside ports by giant fish.
v The Third Day is the day that idols like Dagon come tumbling down, and God starts coming home to His people.
v The Third Day is the day stones are rolled away.
v The Third Day is the day a crucified carpenter came back to life.
v You never know what God is going to do, because God is “God of the Third Day.”
That’s the good news of the gospel!!
v Without God’s involvement there would be no hope.
v Without God there would be no hope that things would ever get better. There would be no hope that you or I, or our boss could get better.
v Without God there is no hope that our marriage will get better.
v Without God there is no hope that life will get better
v Without God all this is meaningless, there is no hope. We live, we work, and we die. There is no purpose apart from God.
It is a matter of historical record that once there was a time when a little band of frightened, foolish men and women said:
We don’t know how it happened, but the Third Day came.”
The Third Day is the only explanation for how that little band of frightened, faltering men and women became the church, where they would, without fear, be hung on crosses, be pierced with swords, give up their very lives for the one who gave up his life for them.
If it were not true … if the Third Day had not come. Nobody would be willing to die for a pile of bones, but for a Third Day God … people would willingly give their lives for that, because of
what lies on the other side of the Third Day.
How about you? How about me? I don’t know what thing you’re hoping for. Maybe it’s a wonderful thing. Maybe you were hoping for something for health, for healing, for something good that didn’t happen.
The question is: What are you putting your ultimate hope in? Your foundation hope in? What do you build your life on? A lot of people are putting their ultimate hope in some thing, some circumstance, some outcome, some situation. Maybe it’s a marriage. Maybe it’s a job. Maybe it’s health. Maybe it’s money. Maybe it’s success. Maybe it’s security. Maybe it’s power. Maybe it’s affection. But each of these things are fallen and they will eventually let you down.
If you’re putting your ultimate hope in somebody you’re going to be disappointed, because they will never be enough for you.
If you’re putting your hope in a pile of money or a bunch of things, it will disappoint you in the end.
Hope is an expectation of the heart. Hope is about a dream of something better. One time Jesus taught his disciples how to pray and he said that we ought to pray for God’s kingdom to come and for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Jesus taught his disciples to pray for up there to be down here, for heaven to invade earth. That is God’s dream, and he wants you and I to hope for that to.
Jesus’ followers would say to you and me, “Put your ultimate hope in Jesus and he will make that dream come true. Put your hope in Jesus and when you begin following him, heaven will begin to invade your life in small, remarkable, almost miraculous ways”
You can do that right now. Confess your sin, confess that you’re not perfect and not always living your life in a way that honors God and then ask for his forgiveness. Begin to love the one who loved you so much that he was willing to die for your sins. Follow Jesus and begin how to live life in a way that blesses you and those around you. Receive life. Put your life and your eternal destiny in His hands.
And when you do that, when you do that, you have put your hope in the one place on earth where no power can touch it, no circumstance, no disappointment, no accident, no guilt, no regret, no mistake … not death itself can touch it.
One day, Christ died for our sins, and then was raised from the dead on the third day.
We’re Third Day People now, and you can be too.
PRAYER – I want to give you a moment, just you and God, to talk with God and maybe to make a decision. Maybe you haven’t been around churches much, and you’re just at the beginning stages of thinking about God and faith, and you have a lot of questions and not much information. I’d encourage you to make this decision this morning … to say:
God, I don’t even know if You’re out there or not, but I’m going to make this a priority. I realize this is the most serious question in the world. I’m going to get a Bible. I’m going to start going to a church. I’m going to seek answers for questions. I’m going to take this really seriously.
If that’s where you are, I’d encourage you to make that decision. That’s a really important road to travel on.
Maybe you understand the story about Jesus and about His life and His death on the cross and about how He was raised on the third day, but you have never clearly, personally responded to this. You’ve been around churches some, and you’ve heard the story, but you’ve never really had that moment to put a stake in the ground and say, “All right God. I’m in.” What a great day for you to do that!
You can do that right now. You can talk to God in your own heart and say:
I understand about Jesus now and about His love for me. I acknowledge … I understand … I have sinned. I have messed up. I have made mistakes. I have hurt others and myself and You. Now on this day, I receive Your forgiveness and Your life, because of what Jesus did in my place.
It may be that you’re here today, and your heart’s just filled with gratitude and joy, because so many hopes have been fulfilled as gifts, and you want to say “Thank you” to God for that.
But maybe not. Maybe you are here today, and there’s a disappointment that is sitting heavy on your spirit. Maybe there is something that fills you with fear or worry and kind of has you down.
I think what Jesus would say to you is: I want you to give it to Me. I want you to give Me your disappointment. I want you to give Me your hopes. Give it all to Me. Put it all on Me. I understand all about pain and disappointment and suffering. I was there. I was on the cross.
I think what Jesus would say to you is:
I understand all about hope, because I’m the Lord of the Third Day. I want you to be My son, My daughter, My Child of Hope.
So, God, would You speak hope into every heart here? Oh, God, how we need it in this world. Would You be one more time the “Light that shines in the darkness,” and the “Life that is victorious over the grave?”
Thank You so much that You are the God of the Third Day. Amen
Life Link:
- Name a time when you had to wait a long time for something, but the waiting was worth it, because at the end you received something special to you?
- What was Sunday’s message about?
- Was there anything in Sunday’s message that confused, you challenged you, or that you disagreed with?
- Have you ever felt hopeless either completely or in part because something or someone in your life went really wrong?
- Do you think it’s part of God’s plan for us to feel hopeless? Why or why not? If not, then why do we feel this way some time. How is hopelessness replaced by hope?
- What is the difference between hoping in something or someone and hoping in the eternal hope of Jesus? How does Jesus’ eternal hope help us to live again? Why is it necessary to put our hope in Jesus for us to become all that God created us to be? How is hope and life affected when we put our hope in Jesus?
- How does eternal hope in Jesus help us to live through dark, difficult times?
- How is hope like the light at the end of the tunnel?
- Challenge Question: Why is God a Third day God instead of giving us on the first day or the second day when things look so dark?
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