Alexander MacLaren :: Sure and Certain Hope (Hebrews 6:11)

Sure and Certain Hope

'We desire that every one of you do shew the same diligence to the fall assurance of hope unto the end.' — Hebrews 6:11.

Many of us have seen a picture in which the artist paints 'Hope' as a pale, fragile figure, blind, and bent, wistfully listening to the poor music which her own finger draws from a broken one-stringed lyre. It is a profoundly true and pathetic confession. So sad, languid, blind, yearning, self-beguiled is Hope, as most men know her.

Put side by side with that the figure which an unknown sculptor has carved on one of the capitals of the ducal palace in Venice, where Hope lifts up praying hands and a waiting, confident face to a hand stretched out towards her from a glory of sunbeams. Or set by the side of the picture our own great poet's picture —

'Upon her arm a silver Anchor lay, On which she leaned ever, as befell; And ever up to Heaven as she did pray, Her steadfast eyes were bent, nor swerved other way.'

Who does not feel the contrast between the two conceptions? What makes the difference? The upward look. When Hope is directed heavenwards she is strong, assured, and glad.

My text speaks of the certitude and the blessedness of Christian hope, and of the discipline by which it is to be cultivated.

1. Let us look then, first, at the certainty of Christian hope.

   Universal experience tells us that hope means an anticipation which is less than sure. Hopes and fears are bracketed together in common language, as always united, like a double star, one black and the other brilliant, which revolve round a common axis, and are knit together by invisible bands. But if we avail ourselves of the possibilities in reference to the future, which Christianity puts into our hands, our hope may be no less certain than our memory, and even more sure than it. For the grounds on which Christian men may forecast their future as infinitely bright and blessed, as the possession of an inheritance incorruptible, as absolute and entire conformity to the likeness of God, which is peace and joy, are triple, each of them affording certitude.

   The Christian hope is built on no mere projection of our longings into a hypothetical and questionable future. It is no mere deduction from probabilities, from guesses. It is no mere child of a wish, but it rests, immovable, on these three solid pillars — an eternal God to whom all Time is subject, a past fact and a present experience.

   It rests upon the eternal God to whom all the future is certain and upon His faithful word, which makes it as certain to us. In the Old Testament God is 'the Hope of Israel,' and the devout heart's language is, 'I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait; and in His word do I hope.' In the New, Christ is our hope; and, as the context here tells us, the two immutable things, God's promise and His oath, lay the foundation for unshaken confidence. And not only so, but our hope further rests on a past fact: 'He hath begotten us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.' The one real proof that when we paint heaven we are not painting mist and moonshine is the fact that Jesus Christ rose again from the dead. Men before Him have hoped and feared, and said: 'Perhaps it may be; "I am afraid it is," or "I hope it is "'; but there is all the difference in the world between saying, 'A man can possibly live again'; or 'he may probably live again'; or, he will, I believe, live again'; and saying, 'a Man has lived again, and having died has risen.' There were many reasons for believing in America before Columbus came back and said, 'I have been there.' And there are many reasons, no doubt, that may incline sanguine spirits and wearied spirits and desiring spirits, and even sin-stricken and guilty spirits, to anticipate a life beyond, which shall be a hope or a dread; but there is only one ground upon which men can say. 'We know that it is not cloud-land, but solid earth'; and that is, that our Brother has come back from the bourne from which 'no traveller returns'; that He thereby has shown us all, not by argumentation but by historical fact, that to die is not to cease to be; that to die draws after it the resurrection of the body. We lift our eyes to the heavens, and though 'the cloud receive Him out of our sight,' hope, which is better than vision, pierces the cloud and travels straight on to the throne whilst He bends from His crowned glory and says:

   'Because I live ye shall live also.'
   'Our everlasting hopes arise
   Above the ruinable skies,'

   and they are built upon no dreams of our own, nor is the music drawn from the lyre by our poor fingers, but they are built on the steadfast word of the eternal God, to whom past, present, and future are one; and they are built on the historical fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

   And then, still further, the Christian hope is based, not only on these two strong pillars, but on a third — namely, on present experience.

   The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Romans, has, in two different places, a very interesting and instructive genealogy, if I might so call it, of Christian hope; and in both places (the fifth and the fifteenth chapters) he traces the hope of the Christian to a double and apparently opposite source. He says: 'Being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.' And in the similar passage, in the other chapter, he speaks about being filled with 'joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope.' So then, there he traces the Christian hope to the present experience of forgiveness, and of access by faith into present grace; or, as he puts it in briefer words in the other place, to the present experience of 'joy and peace in believing.'

   But there is another side to our experience which likewise issues in hope.

   'And not only so, but we glory in tribulation also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience,' — brave endurance, and that brave endurance of ours, inasmuch as it is something beyond our own reach and strength, works in us the proof of a divine power operating upon us; and that proof of a divine power operating upon us produces in us hope, and hope 'makes not ashamed.' That is to say, the dark as well as the bright side of the Christian. experience, its sorrows as well as its joys, the burdens which have been borne, the trials which we have survived, demonstrate to us that we are not left to fight alone, but that a mighty hand is ever around us, and a gracious arm holding us up, and therefore all these darker and sadder moments of the Christian life do likewise tend towards the enkindling in the spirit of a 'hope that maketh not ashamed.'

   So, both by reason of what we experience of peace and joy, and by reason of what we experience of trial, disaster, difficulty borne, and unwelcome duties done, in the might of God, we are entitled to say — we know that a rest remains, where trouble is done with, and all that was here tendency shall be perfected, and the divine and immortal elements of joy and peace shall enfold themselves completely in our happy experience. You can tell a cedar of Lebanon, though it is not yet bigger than a dandelion, and know what it is coming to. You can tell the infant prince. And the joy and peace of faith, feeble and interrupted as they may be in our present experience, have on them the stamp of supremacy and are manifestly destined for dominion over our whole nature. They are indeed experiences 'whose very sweetness yieldeth proof that they were horn for immortality.' I have often seen in rich men's greenhouses some exotic plant grown right up to the roof, which had to be raised in order to let it go higher. The Christian life here is plainly an exotic, growing where it cannot attain its full height, and it presses against the fragile over-arching glass, yearning upwards to the open sky and the throne of God. So, because we can love so much and do love so little, because we can trust thus far and do trust no more, because we have some spark of the divine life in us, and that spark so contradicted and thwarted and oppressed, there must he somewhere a region which shall correspond to this our deepest nature, and the time must come when the righteous, who here shone but so dimly, shall 'blaze forth like the sun in the Kingdom of the Father.'

   Blessed it is that this guiding torch of Christian hope can be kindled from both of these sources. We can light it both with the sunbeams of joy and peace, focused in the burning glass of faith, and with a spark struck by the sharp collision of the hard steel and flint, in the night of sorrow. Thus all the experience of a believing soul is evidence of the certainty of the Christian hope.

   Brethren! do not trust yourselves to a hope that is less than certitude, nor grovel along these low levels, concerning which the warning is always to be repeated: 'Boast not thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest not what the day may bring forth,' but aspire and lift your hope to heaven, then you may be sure that 'To-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant.'

2. Now let me say a word in the next place as to the assurance of the Christian hope.

   Certainty is one thing, and assurance is another. A man may have the most firm conviction based upon the most unsubstantial foundation. His expectation may have no roots to it, and yet the confidence with which he cherishes the expectation may be perfect. There may be entire assurance without any certainty; and there may be what people call objective certainty with a very tremulous and unworthy subjective assurance.

   But the only temper that corresponds to and is worthy of the absolute certainties with which the Christian man has to deal is the temper of unwavering and assured confidence. Do not disgrace the sure and steadfast anchor by fastening a slim piece of packthread to it that may snap at any moment. Do not build flimsy structures upon the reek and put up upon such a foundation canvas shanties that any puff of wind may sweep away. If you have a staff to lean upon which will neither give, nor warp, nor crack, whatever stress is put upon it, see that you lean upon it, not with a tremulous finger, but with your whole hand. The wavering, hesitating, half and half confidence with which a largo number of us grasp the absolute certainties of our hope, is a degradation to the hope and a disgrace to the hoper. There is nothing that is worthy of certitude but assurance; and he who knows that his hope is not vain ought to make a conscience of having a response to the outward certainty in the inward unwavering confidence. But so far is that from being the case that there is a type of Christian life, not so common nowadays, perhaps, as it used to be, which makes a merit of not being sure, and takes it as the sign of Christian humility not to venture on saying, 'I know in whom I have believed and that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him.'

   O dear friends! these dim expectations, clouded all over with earthly doubts and indifference, those languid hopes with which we lift scarcely interested and almost incredulous eyes to the crown, are the opprobrium of our Christianity, and the weakness of our whole lives.

   Be sure of this, that the more certain the assurance of hope, the more calm and sober it will be. It is the element of uncertainty in anticipation that makes it feverish. When it is fully confident and grasps the thing that it knows is coming, the pulse throbs no faster nor more irregularly, though, thank God I far more fully, by reason of the blessed hope. If we want to live in 'sober certainty' of coming bliss, and calmed, and steadied, and made ready for all service, endurance, and suffering, by the brightness of our hope, we must see to it that it is not dim and wavering, but sure and steadfast, certain as God, as the history of Christ, as the present. It is certain. Make it assured.

   Let me remind you further that this assured hope is permanent. 'The full assurance unto the end,' my text says. 'Unto the end.' How many a lighthouse that you and I once steered towards is behind us now! As we get older, how many of the aims and hopes that drew us on have sunk below the horizon! And how much less there is left for us people with grey hairs in our heads and years on our backs to hope for, than we used to think there was! But, dear brethren, what does it matter though the sea be washing away the coast on one side the channel if it is depositing fertile land on the other? What does it matter though the earthly hopes are becoming fewer and those few graver and sadder, if the one great hope is shining brighter? Winter nights are made brilliant by keener stars than soft summer evenings show, and the violet and red and green streamers that fill the northern heavens only come in the late year. So it is well and blessed for us if, when the leaves fall, we see a wider sky; and if, as hope dies for earth, it revives and lives again for heaven. 'The full assurance of hope to the end.'

3. Lastly, note here the culture of this certitude of hope.

   My text is an exhortation to all Christian people 'to show the same diligence' in order to such an assurance. The same diligence as what? The same diligence as they had shown 'in their work and labour of love towards God's name.' That is to say, the people to whom my Epistle was sent had been extremely diligent and vigorous in what I may call practical Christianity. The writer wants them to be as diligent in reference to the emotional and experimental side of Christianity. Now, that fits a good many of us. The fashionable type of a Christian to-day is a worker. By common consent theology seems put into the background, and by almost as common consent there is comparatively little said about what our fathers used to call, experimental religion,' feelings, emotions, inward experiences, but everything is drive, drive, drive at getting people to work. God forbid that I should say one word against that. But 'we desire that ye should show the same diligence' as in your mission-halls and schools and various other benevolent operations, in cultivating the emotions and sentiments — yes, and the doctrinal beliefs of the Christian life, or else you will be lop-aided Christians.

   Further, did it ever occur to you, Christian people, that your hope was a thing to be cultivated, that you ought to set yourselves to distinct and specific efforts for that purpose? Have you ever done so? How is it to be done? What I was saying a few minutes ago as to its grounds carries the answer to that question. Get into the habit of meditating upon the objects towards which it is directed, and the grounds on which it is built. If you never lift your eyes to the goal you will never be drawn towards it. If you never think about heaven it will have no attraction for you. If you never go over the basis of your hope your hope will get dim, and there will be little realisation or Hiring power in it. I believe that the great bulk of nominal Christians in England to-day rarely think about their future certainties, and, more rarely still, test their foundation and see that it stands firm. No wonder, then, that hope so seldom lends her light, and that such dim one, to shine upon their paths.

   Let me say, lastly, in the matter of practical advice, that this cultivation of the assurance of hope is largely to be effected by pruning the wild luxuriance and earth-ward-stooping tendrils of our hope. The Apostle Peter has a wise word: — 'Gird up the loins of your mind; be sober, and hope to the end.' That is to say, the perfection of Christian anticipation and assurance is only possible as the result of effort, and rigid abstinence from many earthly treasures. If you want the tree to grow high, nip the side shoots and the leader will gain strength. If you desire that your hope should ever be vigorous you must be abstinent from, or temperate in, earthly things. Neither love nor hope can serve two masters; and if you are always occupied in forecasting earthly good, you will have little faculty left over, out of which to weave the far fairer fabric of eternal blessedness. If you pluck the wing feathers out of your hope, by your worldliness, by your selfishness, by your sin, it will be like some free forest bird, caught, clipped, and condemned to the barn-yard, only going about there picking up corn, instead of rising to heaven with its song.

   Dear brethren, God has given every one of us this great and strange faculty of forecasting the future. Surely He gave it to us for some better purpose than that we should taste our earthly pleasures twice, or be impelled along our worldly course by a series of illusions. If you keep it flown on the low levels of the contingent and the perishable and the temporal, and send it out only to bring you hack tidings from the world, it will play you false; and you will find out that the disappointments of realised hopes are often as bitter as the disappointments of unfulfilled ones.

   Do not be slaves of that pale, sad maiden with the blinded eyes and the broken lyre. Do not listen to the singing in your own ears and mistake it for heavenly music. There is one region where your hope can expatiate among certainties. Grasp Christ and you will then lift expectant eyes that will not look in vain to the Hand that reaches to you out of the blaze of the sunbeams, and is laden with blessednesses for the present which are sure promises for the future. The Christian man alone is certain of what he anticipates; and he alone will have to say 'The half hath not been told me.' For all others 'their hope shall be cut off, and their trust shall be as a spider's web.'