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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Hope Lord Always Before

Hope: Setting the Lord ALWAYS before you

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The only Biblical purpose for faith is to serve as a firm foundation for what we can rightly expect of God. So faith is the foundation of the House of Hope.

Because our hope MUST be founded upon Who God really is – His character, nature and intentions for us as those who bear His image – coming to know the Lord by way of experience is an indispensable necessity.

As such, the words of David ring true from Psalm 16:8 which say, “I have set the Lord continually before me; because He is at my right hand I will not be shaken.”

We used this as our text of focus this morning and considered its application to our growing understanding of Faith and Hope.

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Proverb 29 Dreams

Good thing Paul didn’t pursue his dreams!

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This is the final chapter in the second division of the greater book of Proverbs, which is comprised of a collection of Solomon’s wise saying collected and compiled by the order of King Hezekiah many years after Solomon’s death.

Perhaps the most noteworthy verse in chapter 29 is verse 18 and we spend a fair amount of time with it.

Ironically, what makes this verse noteworthy is not due to any particularly outstanding truth it reveals, but because of how often it is misunderstood and mistaught in the church today as a justification for selfish pursuits and materialist lives.

To accomplish this amazing feat of diabolical twisting of the passage, Proverbs 29:18 is typically never quoted in its entirety. Additionally, it is artificially connected with partial and misquotes of Habakkuk 1:5 and 2:2.

If Paul had been raised under and followed the modern misteachings of this verse, prior to his Apostolic ministry, he would have gone to the Jews and the New Testament as we know it would not even exist.

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Proverb Parable Prodigal

When a Proverb becomes a Parable

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So much is lost to many in this generation, due to their desire to protect themselves from what they misunderstand or perceive as a threat to their freedom. I speak in regard to their primitive understanding of the Law and its role in the life of the New Covenant believer. This is only exacerbated through poor teaching. So many things Paul said are read & only understood on a surface level without any thought to the duplicity it creates throughout the rest of the New Testament, not to mention scripture as a whole.

If every favorable reference to the teachings & life guiding principles of the Old Testament were removed from the New, along with all lead in & out material written solely for those references, what would remain of the New Testament would be an exceedingly brief number of pages filled with loose & disconnected thoughts.

The body of the New Testament contains about 5,000 verses, and many estimates place the quotes, references & allusions to the Old Testament to be between 2,000-4,000. That is a serious amount of material to remove!

I say this because I believe many do not even read the Old Testament & those that do, often miss where these exact words, thoughts, teachings or illustrations are mentioned in the New Testament & I believe that is precisely what happened with Proverbs 28:7.

If Jesus was not referencing this passage in His parable of the prodigal, it would be quite surprising indeed!

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