Hope for Desperate People
There are no hopeless helpless cases with Jesus Christ.
Jesus always invites desperate, helpless, and seemingly
hopeless people to come to Him. He issued the greatest invitation to all
hopeless and helpless sinners when He said, “Come to Me, all who are weary and
heavy-laden, and I wil give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). “He looked over the
multitudes and felt compassion for them because they were distressed and
downcast” (9:36).
Do you feel harassed and thrown aside? To the weary and
tired who are ready to give up Jesus says, “Come to Me.” To those who feel like
they have been “skinned alive,” harassed, trouble, worried, importuned; He
invites to come to Him. To those who have been cast down from a mortal wound and
feel helpless, He gives hope and life.
You do not have to look far into the Scriptures before you
realize that God’s people suffered. “They were stoned, they were sawn in two,
they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in
sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated” (Hebrews
11:37). No wonder they were, and still are, “men whom the world was
not worthy” (v. 38a). Rejected and forsaken by men, but not of God.
The central and most important emphasis in the Bible is
Jesus’ ability to take away our sin and our reproach to God, and to restore us
to spiritual health.
Jesus felt compassion for the multitudes and gave them His
rest. Matthew, the tax collector became Matthew the apostle. He was
politically unacceptable, religiously, and socially an outcast, but not so with
Jesus.
To the paralyzed man Jesus said, “Your sins are forgiven.”
Before you scream that is irrelevant, Jesus not only forgave the man’s sins, but
He also healed him both physically and spiritually. It is clear only God can
forgive sin, and Jesus is God (Matt. 9:5-8). To every helpless and hopeless
person Jesus says, “Your sins are forgiven.”
Jesus confronted the hosts of hell and they asked, “What
will you do with us, Son of God?” Have you come here to torture us before the
appointed time?” (8:29). Because Jesus is the Son of God, He alone can cast out
the demons in a person’s life and dispose of them as He wishes (vv. 30-31).
To the woman caught in sins He said, “Go and sin no more”
(John 8:11). To the incurable woman who had gone to all the doctors for 12
years as her condition steadily grew worse without any help or hope, Jesus
brought healing to her from that moment (Matt. 9:22). Jesus took a dead girl by
the hand, and she got up being raised from the dead (9:24-25). Jesus can raise
the dead because He is God. He touched the eyes of the blind, and “their eyes
were opened” (v. 29-30).
In the person of Jesus Christ, there is hope for the
hopeless. Apart from the grace of God, our case is hopeless. We are sinners,
and we cannot cleanse ourselves. Because we are dead in trespasses and sins,
God has raised us up with Jesus and has seated us up with Him in the
heavenlies. He has made us alive in Christ. We too can declare there are no
helpless and hopeless cases with Jesus.
We are all unclean, isolated, hopeless, and dead in our
sins without Christ. To be saved from sin, we must have the powerful,
cleansing, and forgiving grace of God. Other than that, we are desperate
people.
Moreover, the Spirit of God “helps us in our present
limitations” (Rom. 8:26, Phillips). When we are in a hopeless circumstance, the
Holy Spirit comes and renews our hope. When we do not know how or for what to
pray, He intercedes according to the will of God because there are no hopeless
and helpless circumstances.
When our hearts are filled with blinding fear, He sheds the
light of His presence and knowledge all about us.
In our state of desperate hopelessness, the Spirit of God
comes and instills His hope.
Selah!
Message by Wil Pounds (c) 2006
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