REAL HOPE

This is inspired by God and a good friend. The words are mostly mine but the idea is his, thanks for the jump start to this weeks message.

There have been many great presidents of this country throughout the years. Washington, Lincoln, Kennedy and a host of other men have held the office. I am sure that it can be argued that one of the greats was Thomas Jefferson.

History tells us that Jefferson was not a great speaker and orator. Some men can use words to paint a picture in the imagination of a man’s soul. Thomas Jefferson could not do this with words but he could do this with a pen and ink.

Think about the words that Jefferson penned that are so famous. “We Hold these truths to be Self-evident, that all me are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Those are inspiring words. Words that have been the hinge pin for the dreams of anyone who calls themselves an American. Those words are capable of giving hope to the hopeless, the only problem is that those words, don’t inspire the real God given hope that we so desperately need.

You see the hope of those words can be taken away with the beginning of a new revolution, or even the sound of a gunshot. Jefferson’s pen has inspired so many people but it is his scissors that has taken real hope away from people.

What many people don’t know about Thomas Jefferson is that while he was a huge fan of Jesus and his moral teachings he could not, and would not accept anything miraculous in the Bible. So what Jefferson tried to do was what he saw as separating fact from fiction. He wanted to keep the moral teachings of Jesus and get rid of anything supernatural. By doing this any miracle found in the New Testament, he would take his scissors and clip it out and throw it way. Jesus healing a man born lame or blind, was not found in Jefferson’s Bible. The raising of Lazarus was nowhere to be found.

These are the Closing words of Jefferson’s new Bible. “There laid they Jesus, and rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher and departed.”

With one line Jefferson gave political hope to every American, and with another line he took away eternal hope for all humanity.

You see if Jesus had remained in his tomb then all hope is lost, and there is no future for any of us.

If Jesus had remained in his tomb, then the hours we spend in Bible study and prayer have all been spent in vain.

If Jesus had remained in his tomb all the hours we spend in worship is for nothing, because everything we have believed is a lie.

If Jesus had remained in his tomb then we might as well be Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, or even Atheists, because all hope of a life beyond this one would be gone.

Jefferson’s cut and paste Bible might have made sense to Thomas Jefferson, but it showed that he was a man without real Hope.

His pen carried a mighty message of hope, but his scissors betrayed him because they showed that he was without hope, because when you cut the resurrection of Jesus out of the Bible and out of your life then you are removing all Hope. Because that is what the resurrection give us. It gives us hope that there is eternal life after this life.

And while Jefferson did not have that hope, we do. Because since the apostles, we have celebrated this Hope.

That Hope has kept us going, when times are hard. When family strife and finical struggle drag us down, the Hope of eternal life picks us up.

That Hope has given us a firm footing when the storms of life threaten to pound us into oblivion. When we think about those that we have loved and lost, it gives us hope that while their physical bodies might be dead their spiritual bodies are alive and in the presence of the LIVING CHRIST.

That Hope inspires us worship the risen Jesus, and live a life of Holiness for Him.

The resurrection of Jesus is our REAL HOPE.