If you call on him as Father, who without respect of persons judges according to each man's work, pass the time of your living as strangers here in reverent fear:
Now from the beginning they did not understand how that the Messiah could suffer and die. They only took those scriptures of the Old Testament that spoke about the Messiah reigning, and they were planning their place in the kingdom when He set up His kingdom and He began to reign as King. And they would even argue among themselves as who's going to be the greatest. I'm going to be this, I'm going to be that. And of course, James and John's mother came and said, "Lord, I want a favor. When You establish Your kingdom, let my two sons sit on Your right hand." And they were looking forward to the immediate establishing of the kingdom of God.And whenever Jesus would talk to them about His impending death, they would get upset. When Jesus started talking about it just after Peter said, "You're the Messiah", and He started talking about His death, Peter began to rebuke Him and said, "Lord, be that far from thee". They did not understand the place of the cross in redemption until after the resurrection.So during those three days when Jesus died, they died. Hope died. I mean, they were shattered. And when Jesus met the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and they were walking down the path so disconsolate, Jesus said to them, What's the problem, fellows? How come you look so sad? What happened?They said, You must be a stranger around here if you don't know the things that have been going on lately in Jerusalem.He said, What things? What you talking about?How Jesus of Nazareth, a man of God, mighty in the word and in deed, who went about doing good, healing the sick, and we had hoped in Him for the salvation of Israel; but they crucified Him. They killed Him. We had hoped that He was the Messiah. We had hoped that He was the deliverer. But they killed Him, it's all over. Hope is dead.And Jesus said, "O fools and slow of heart. Haven't you read the scriptures?" And He began from Moses and on through the Old Testament, began to expound the scriptures that referred to the suffering and the death of Messiah. And when they came to Emmaus, Jesus pretended like He was going to continue on and they said, Oh, no, no, it's too late; you come with us.And so as He broke bread, they recognized Him and He disappeared. And they said, Oh, didn't our hearts burn within us as He spoke the word to us on the road? We should have known. And they ran all the way back to Jerusalem, some nine miles, to share with these other disciples that Jesus is risen indeed. We had hoped; hope was dead.Now Peter is saying, "Thank God, blessed be God who has . . . we've been born again. The hope was dead but we've been born again, but now it's a living hope because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead."You see, the hope that we have tonight is a living hope and the basis of our hope in eternal life. The basis of our hope for the kingdom of God is the fact that Jesus rose from the dead. That's the foundation of the hope that we have tonight.Had Jesus not been raised from the dead, then there would be no Christian church. There'd be no basis for a Christian church. But His resurrection has made the hope more than just a hope, it's a living hope that we have tonight as the result of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. But it's more than that. It's the hope of the inheritance that is ours as sons of God, joint heirs with Jesus Christ.