The Spirit of Hope

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Rev. Dr. David M. Oliver

First United Methodist Church

Massillon, Ohio

July 19, 2026

Text: Romans 8:11-25

Opening Prayer: Almighty God, whose Word is authority and power and whose way is love, grant unto us clear minds, understanding hearts, and willing spirits so that we may wisely appropriate your Word of Truth. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.

My father was a farmer. I am a gardener. Both the farmer and gardener plant with hope. We hope that the seed is good. We hope that there is adequate rain and that the soil is balanced in a way that will richly feed the plants. We hope that insects and animals won’t decimate the crops. We hope for a good, abundant harvest. Every time we plant, weed, and water, we are doing so in faith, hope, and trust that our efforts will be productive.

The difference between the farmer and the gardener is in volume. The difference is also in whether you are working the ground as the source of your livelihood, and the feeding of your family, or if it’s a hobby.

When my father retired from ministry he became a farmer and grew things for sale at a local farmer’s market. He sold asparagus, rhubarb, potatoes, lettuce, cabbage, beans, strawberries, raspberries and more.

My father’s interest in farming has been lifelong. He grew up on a farm outside of Albany, New York. He never lost his connection with the earth. At 98, dad still plants a one-quarter acre garden and grows thousands of pounds of winter squash and great variety of other produce for the Veggie-Care ministry of the church in his community.

Throughout our years of growing up, my father had a one-acre garden of fruits, berries, and vegetables. We grew as much as we could to provide food for a year. We canned. We froze. We pickled. It was a family affair. Everyone participated in providing food for the family and we never had a case of cyclosporiasis that is plaguing the food chain these days.

I vividly recall the many summers in which dad gave us daily assignments of what needed to be planted, weeded, harvested, or sold door to door. These assignments would typically take three hours for each of us children. For example, when it was strawberry season in June, we had a hundred foot row to pick. We would go out in the morning and pick all the strawberries in a couple of hours. Every other day my three siblings and I would each take a section and pick berries until it was all done.

When we had put up all the frozen strawberries and strawberry jam we needed for the year, we loaded up my little red wagon and peddled those beautiful, sweet berries door to door in the neighborhood. Guess how much we got for a heaping quart of ripe, fresh-picked strawberries? Twenty-five cents!  Imagine!  That was cheap even for the time.

I share this story because we learned in our family to have hope in God and God’s provision. We prepared the soil and planted in hope. We weeded and watered with hope. We harvested with joy, seeing the fulfillment of hope. The writer Anne Lamott once heard someone say that “hope is faith with a track record.”  I like that. That is the hope our family had with decades of experience to back it up.

We learned to care for God’s earth, God’s beautiful, fragile creation. We farmed organically before it was popular. We felt it was important to be good stewards of the land and we still do. We worked together to care for one another and to provide healthy food not only for our family but for others.

If you wish to complete the sermon listening guide in your bulletin, please take it out at this time.

From this story of my upbringing, and from this account of Paul, we learn some things about creation and about hope.

The apostle Paul writes several things about creation and hope in the passage we read. As you hear them again remember that you and I are also part of this creation.

Verse 19: For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God,

Verse 20: the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope

8:21that the creation itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

8:22We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor,

8:23and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

8:24For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what one already sees?

8:25But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Let’s explore this concept of hope more fully. In his study of emotional intelligence, Daniel Goleman writes, “Having hope means that one will not give in to overwhelming anxiety, a defeatist attitude, or depression in the face of difficult challenges or setbacks. Hope is “more than the sunny view that everything will turn out all right”; it is “believing that you have the will and the way to accomplish your goals.”

In the Bible, hope is not wishful thinking or a vague “finger-crossing” desire. It is a confident expectation and firm assurance in God’s promises, rooted in the resurrection of Jesus. Christians need hope to endure present suffering, to anchor our souls, and to experience peace and joy.

As I speak to this matter of hope, I have listed biblical texts that you may look up on your own as confirmation and affirmation of these principles. Let’s look together at why Christians need hope.

Why Christians Need Hope

1. Endurance through Trials: Biblical hope acts as an anchor. It sustains believers through adversity and persecution by focusing on eternal truths rather than outwardly pleasant circumstances (e.g., Romans 5:1-5; 8:18; 8:28).

You may recall that Paul was chained day and night to a Roman soldier as he wrote this letter to the Romans and several others. By faith he saw beyond his circumstances and was anchored in the hope of salvation in Christ. He wasn’t hoping for deliverance from prison as much as he hoped in Christ in the midst of his suffering and adversity.

Sometime today I invite you to think about how Christ has helped you to have hope as you have endured trials.

2. Anticipation of Eternal Life: Hope provides the firm assurance of salvation, the forgiveness of sins, and the promise of the resurrection and eternal life in Christ (e.g., Titus 3:5-7).

Most of us have experienced the death of friends and loved ones. Our hope in Christ is grounded in the fact that he is the resurrection and the life. Even though we die, yet shall we live. Jesus said, “Whoever lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:25-26). This is our strong hope as Christ-followers.

3. Inspiration for Holiness: Believers purify themselves in the present because of the hope of Christ’s return and the desire to be like him (e.g., 1 John 3:2-3).

When we understand all that Jesus has done for us, we want to be our best and to live as God always intended – free from sin, shame, guilt. We put our hope in Jesus’ blood and perfect sacrifice which frees us from sin and empowers us to be holy even as he is holy.

This is not some grudging, grinding, legalistic holiness to which I am referring. Our hope is in Christ who said, “I have come that you might have life and that abundantly” (John 10:10). “I have come that you may have joy and that your joy would be full” (John 15:11)

4. Freedom from Anxiety: Because hope is anchored in God’s faithfulness and sovereignty, it frees Christians from worldly worry and fear about the future (e.g., Matthew 6:31-32). I love what Paul writes in Romans 15:13, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

This kind of hope is enlivening. It is Holy Spirit empowered. It breaks the chains of worry and anxiety. It offers profound assurance to us that we are loved now, this very moment. Christ’s love, and our faith in him, has opened the way for us to experience an eternity of unbroken fellowship with the God of love. This is the good news!  Thanks be to God!

Essentials of Christian Hope

Let’s look at three essentials of biblical hope:

1. Divine Salvation: Our hope is grounded in the recognition that Christ fulfilled the Old Testament promises and provides present and future redemption (Titus 2:14).

2. The Holy Spirit: The Holy Spirit’s indwelling our lives serves as the guarantee and down payment of the believer’s future inheritance (e.g., Romans 8:24-25). This gives us great hope and helps us to keep moving forward, serving God even when life is difficult.

3. Enduring Virtue: Along with faith and love, hope is a foundational virtue of the Christian life that inspires endurance and boldness (e.g., 1 Corinthians 13:13, Hebrews 6:18-19).

Three Dimensions of Biblical Hope

The Bible almost never uses the word “hope” the way we do. For many of us, hope refers to something like a wish or a dream. But in the Bible, hope refers to a confident expectation, a future certainty. These two ideas are radically different from what we think of as hope. One is something we do. The other is something we have.

The hope of the Christian faith is three-dimensional. First, it is oriented toward the future. Second, it is grounded in the past. Third, it is sustained in the present.

Oriented toward the Future

Isaiah’s prophecies offered great hope to God’s people who had been ravaged by invading nations. The biblical storyline picks up this prophecy in Matthew 3, showing us how Israel’s hope and our hope come together in the work of Jesus Christ. As Isaiah 40 alludes, there is not only a coming King, there is also a coming kingdom. This is the hope of the Christian faith: Life together with God’s people, under God’s reign, enjoying God’s rule and blessing through Christ the King.

It all sounds wonderful, but its wonder can begin to fade when we turn and look at ourselves (clumsily, partially trying to follow Jesus), and when we look at our world (still incredibly broken). So how sure is our hope to come? What makes it an expectation rather than a distant wish?

This future hope becomes sure when we see how it is grounded in the past and sustained in the present.

Grounded in the past

Our future hope is grounded in what has already happened in the past. The apostle Paul writes, “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ…and we boast in the hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:1–2, emphasis added).

God has been faithful to God’s promises by sending his son. Christ’s birth addressed the problem of our alienation from God which began with Adam and Eve’s sin and continues in us today.

By becoming like us, by becoming human, God reconciled us to himself in Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:16-19). Christ’s death addressed the problem of our sin. He has canceled the record of our sin, our debt, by nailing it to the cross (Colossians 2:14). Jesus’ resurrection has addressed the problem of our decaying bodies and broken world, for the glory of his resurrection was a preview of the same resurrection all God’s people will experience in his kingdom, the new creation (Romans 8:19–21). Our future hope is grounded in what Christ has already done for us in history: he came, he died, and he rose victorious…for you and me.

Sustained in the Present

Our hope is not only grounded in Christ’s past work; it is also sustained in the present. Paul writes in Romans 5:3-5, “³ And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, ⁴ and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵ and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

I want to underscore that he says “…hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5). Our hope is sustained as we look to God’s present faithfulness through the Holy Spirit at work creating new faith where it doesn’t presently exist and strengthening the faith of those who believe.

The kingdom of God is breaking into our present world through the Holy Spirit as he makes new creations out of people like you and me, bringing us to faith in Christ and enrolling us as citizens of this coming kingdom. “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

We may experience great despair and hopelessness in life, but we are sustained by hope. As we look to the past we receive courage to move forward in the present, looking ahead to the future glory that awaits.

May we praise God for his grace and hold fast to the hope we have been given in Christ Jesus.

Let us pray.

Lord Jesus, we thank you for the hope that is more than wishful thinking—a confident assurance rooted in your life, death, resurrection, and promised return. As creation groans and we ourselves wait with patience for the fullness of redemption, strengthen us by your Holy Spirit to endure trials, to live in holiness, to release our anxieties, and to trust your faithful promises. Teach us to care for your creation, to serve one another with joy, and to hold fast to the future you are bringing, when all things will be made new in your kingdom. Amen.