The certainty of Christian faith or the certainty of hope is a certainty that is rooted in the character of the revealed will of God manifested in Jesus Christ,

and the certainty of a relationship is rooted in the character of a person perceived over an extended period of time in many situations.

So what impact should biblical hope have upon how we think about the future as Christians?

That's the question that John Piper answers from Hebrew 6, 1 to 12 in this episode of Light and Truth. This sermon was originally preached at

Bethlehem Baptist Church on April 6th, 1986.

But young woman from California came to me last Sunday night and asked for an interview because she was doing a psychology project on forgiveness.

She's at the Fuller School of Psychology out in California and she needed to take some interviews with some pastors.

Sure.

So we met after the festival and the first question she asked was something like this,

but what are some of the feelings you have when you forgive somebody?

And the first thing I thought of was,

I got to have hope to forgive somebody. I've got to feel that there's hope in my life or I don't

have the emotional strength to absorb the offense and not retaliate.

This is the way it works for me. I think this is the biblical pattern. Hope is supposed to be like a

reservoir behind the dam of your life and when somebody puts you down, squash.

You dip, this is the way I work anyway, I dip into the reservoir of hope

and I gain resources of strength to absorb the offense and not retaliate or sink into self-pity and

self-defense. No hope though, no power. Or suppose I have setbacks in my life. I have

plans and then I get sick or I have plans and then the board meeting doesn't

go the way I had hoped. I dip into the reservoir of my biblical hope and I gain emotional resources and strength to keep

on going up over the obstacle on into the future.

Or suppose I face temptation to be dishonest or to lie or to steal or to lust.

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