I love the song that says “Hope has a name. His name is Jesus.” But I don’t invest my time and energy in hope because of a song. I trust hope because Jesus gives it. Just listen to some of these verses. Psalm 42.5, “Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God!” In Psalm 119 David says “My soul longs for your salvation; I hope in your Word!” Paul writes in Romans 5, “…we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God! More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Don’t you love those words! “God’s love as been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” Man, that’s good news! 

Hope does not disappoint. When I think about Jesus, I think about hope. When the time was just right—spiritual darkness was at a fever pitch—Jesus put on flesh and entered this world. When hope was at an all time low, God invited John to call out sin and help people get right with Him. Just when people thought God forgot them, Jesus bursts onto the scene changing water into wine, healing people and raising people from the dead! Could it be? Is God really restoring hope or is this just a flash in the pan? 

Lots of people promise hope and don’t deliver. Some of them even do fantastic things and live pretty good lives. But in the end, their offers are empty. Jesus is the only One in history who made hope as real as flesh and blood. He’s the only One who stepped up to the plate with the extravagant offers of Heaven and delivered. When you press on Him, His invitation doesn’t crumble; it’s not an empty bag of promises. Jesus gives real hope.

All of Jesus’ promises hinge on one thing: the resurrection. Peter tells us this in the first chapter of his first letter. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…” 

This is the Sunday we celebrate the new life God gave Jesus when He raised Him from the dead. This week! Do you realize everything believers are, everything the Church claims to be, every hope we have of eternal life all comes down to Jesus rising from the dead? If He stayed in the tomb, He would still be a good man, but He wouldn’t be God. Good guys die all the time. They do lots of good things. They offer people a lot of hope and this hope always dies with them. But Jesus made good on every promise He ever made! There is so much riding on this and SO MUCH EVIDENCE that it really happened. 

Luke tells us over 500 people saw, ate with, talked and walked with Jesus after He rose from the dead. Over 500 eyewitnesses! Most lawyers would call that a solid case. Jesus told His disciples to wait in Jerusalem for the coming of the Spirit. The proof of His coming is in the historical fact that thousands of lives were radically changed in the days following Pentecost. This launched the early Church. As it spread all throughout the known world, the resurrection of Jesus became common knowledge. No one would argue against this. The New Testament letters are proof of this fact. 

If Jesus is God and He did exactly what He said He would do, that means we can’t treat Him like we’d treat any other good man/teacher. He’s in an entirely new category all by Himself. We have two choices when it comes to Jesus. Either we totally ignore Him and walk away from His invitation to new life OR we worship and follow Him as our Lord. We can’t casually be friends with Jesus. There is no room for us to be undecided. What say you?

I pray you will step in with your whole heart this weekend. What a time to begin following Jesus! If you are on the fence about who Jesus is and what He claims to be, I pray this weekend is your deciding moment. Open your Bible. Pray. Go meet with other believers. One way or the other, I pray you make up your mind about who Jesus is and what He invites you to become. Hope is near enough we can touch it. Reach out and take a handful this weekend!