Hope Faith Support

The Type of Hope, Faith will support

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For WEEKS I have pressed the need for Hope in order for Faith to have something to support.

I have pressed the fact that our Hope MUST be based upon what we can RIGHTLY expect of God.

There are 3 primary sources of Hope:
God’s inspired, written word.
The inward witness, leading, counsel and teaching of the Holy Spirit.
What we have come to experience of God ourselves.

The 2nd and 3rd in this list NEVER go beyond what the written Word has already revealed!

But the most powerful of all three is our experience because it is relational and we see this and the basis for faith among many of those set forth as our examples in scripture!

TODAY however, I wanted to play the other side of the field a bit regarding hope from experience. All REALLY hope cannot go beyond God’s personal self-disclosure in scripture and it cannot go against Hope’s primary purpose in the life of the believer – which is producing the Image of Christ!

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Bathsheba Solomon Proverbs 31

A Mother’s counsel to a Prince… marry well!

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This is the final chapter of the book of Proverbs as well as its fourth and final division.

Chapter 31 was written by King Lemuel which most likely was a lovingly familial name for Solomon, perhaps given by Bathsheba his mother.

This chapter is divided into two parts with greater emphasis given to the most important topic:

• Advice for kings and rulers to follow
• A description of a godly, virtuous woman who fears God and honors her husband.

These, too, seem to speak to Solomon’s authorship since he was a king who received godly advice regarding ruling. Additionally, he unwisely allowed his heart to be carried off by pagan women and so he knew something about the value and need of a godly wife.

The importance of a God fearing wife who possesses godly character cannot be overstated for ANY man, but all the more for a King!

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God Creation Hope

Hope in God through what He’s made

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Regardless of how God first caught our attention, be it:
• The splendor of the Creation itself
• A word from one of God’s children
• a passage from the Bible
• the inner awareness we are all born with that there is more going on behind the scene of life than we can figure out with our minds
• by a direct inward work of the Holy Spirit
…whatever we saw, bid us to come, and come we did!

Over the course of the last two weeks, we’ve discovered that there are 3 basic sources of Hope in relation to God.

God’s inspired, written word
The inward witness, leading, counsel and teaching of the Holy Spirit
What we have come to experience of God ourselves

But the most powerful of all is our experience and discovering God in what He has made, in the most ordinary of life experiences recorded in scripture and in the person, ministry and human interactions of Jesus – God incarnate is where you will be encouraged to turn to develop your Hope in God which your faith can support!

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Proverbs 30 Agur Paul job

Where Agur’s wisdom, Job’s correction & Paul’s letter to Rome intersect

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This chapter is itself the 3rd major division within the greater book of Proverbs. It is written by Agur, a man unknown in scripture who like Balaam of Beor may very well have been a non-Israelite prophet of God.

Agur begins by a self-effacing statement regarding his own wisdom apart from God.

He then offers a list of five statements which are presented in a way which brings God’s correction and confrontation with Job irresistibly to mind.

This list includes the most clear and pointed reference to the incarnate Messiah in the entire book of Proverbs, calling Him the Holy One, speaking of Him as the son of God and asking who would ascend to bring Him down, or descent to bring Him back up. These words are also quoted by Paul in Romans 10 and his reference material may have been both Agur’s proverb and Moses’ statement in Deuteronomy 30:12–14.

The rest of this proverb uses God’s wisdom and ways seen in His creation to highlight things which are insatiable, mysterious, possess social order, wisdom and majesty.

All of this too is very similar to the confrontation of God with Job in Job 38-41.

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