Finding Hope in the Emptiness

He is not here. He is risen.

I'd like to welcome you to Watermark Community Church if this is your first time here.

It is normally this chaotic, but at this time we let the kids go,

but this time we are not letting the kids go because we have a special treat planned for the kids right after this service.

And so we thought we would do a shorter version of this service, involve the kids,

and then afterwards there's about 2,000 Easter eggs and candy that the kids are going to go and they're going to take part in.

So hopefully the kids are really patient and quiet for 10 minutes.

Then they get to get all that candy and Easter eggs and all those things.

My name is Tobin, and I'm the teaching pastor here at Watermark,

and I have been given the task to preach on hope in 10 minutes.

I don't think I can do an illustration normally in 10 minutes.

If you've been here for a long time, you know that my illustrations are longer than 10 minutes.

But, you know, I think that there is probably no greater topic or subject that we need to talk on in the world today.

As I look around and I see people, I read books, historians, sociologists,

just most of them would say that today we live in the age of skepticism,

that we live in the age of crisis, we live in the age of meaningless,

and that most of the people around the world, even in Hong Kong,

have a hard time finding hope in their daily lives.

In fact, many people would say that they would say that the world, history has lost its story,

history has lost its meaning, that there's no purpose in life,

and it seems like they just go day to day to day to try to get by and try to figure out what's going on.

One of my favorite historians and philosophers said it this way as he struggled with hope.

He looked at his life, he looked at the world around him,

and this is the illustration he gave for us today.

He said,

I don't know if you feel like that, but I know that often we feel like that in our world is out of control,

and we feel like we're on this long march,

and we're getting hit by all different types of foes,

and all kinds of things are trying to drag us down,

and we wonder if we're ever going to get to the destination we want to get to.

We wonder if we're ever going to become that principal or that teacher.

We wonder if we're ever going to be that professor.

We wonder if we're ever going to be that managing director.

We wonder if we're ever going to get there,

and we keep hoping towards that direction.

And the question we have to ask ourselves is,

will we get there, and what does it look like?

Another one of my favorite readers and philosophers and historians,

as he looked at the world around him today,

he tried to compare and try to figure out what was going on,

and his philosophy of life came down to this.

He said,

we came from nothingness,

we're going to nothingness,

and our life right now is nothingness.

He looked at the world,

and he realized there was no hope.

There was nothing that he could cling to.

If he was really honest with himself and his heart,

all the things that he was gathering for,

all those things he was going for,

as he got to them,

he felt dissatisfied,

and he felt empty.

So the question I have to ask us today in eight minutes

is, where do you find your hope?

Because you can't live in the emptiness.

I mean, you can't live in the darkness.

If you live in the darkness and the emptiness,

you just go crazy,

and you become crazy people.

So where do you find your hope?

Where do you find that thing that you cling to?

Where do you find that thing that you depend on

when things get really difficult and really hard?

What is it that you're hoping in?

And when I use the word hope,

I'm not saying like in English,

because I think English words have been kind of changed

and diluted.

But when you think of English,

we say, I hope.

It means maybe, probability,

maybe this will happen.

I don't know, but it could happen.

It's uncertain.

But when I talk about hope,

what I mean is,

like the Greek and the Hebrew authors would say,

in Hebrew, the word is tekvah.

I usually don't like to use words

because I don't want to show off,

but I don't try not to show off,

but I think it's an important word.

Tekvah.

Hope.

It means something solid,

something strong,

something certain,

something you know is going to happen.

It's not something you doubt.

It's something that you're holding onto.

You're grasping onto it.

You depend on it for your whole life.

And actually, the word in Hebrew means rope,

a strong rope.

And so the imagery is this.

Your life is like this carabiner,

and you're walking through life,

and you're hooking onto something.

And this strong rope,

this tekvah,

is going to hold onto you.

It's going to support you.

It's going to take you through the difficult times.

It's going to take you through the simple times.

It's going to take you through the happy times.

It's never going to let you down.

It's never going to disappoint you.

What is the tekvah that you grasp onto?

What is the tekvah,

the rope that you hook onto your life and say,

I'm going to put my life on this.

I'm going to depend on this.

And no matter what happens,

it's not going to let me down.

You can answer that question for yourself.

And my prayer for everybody in here,

I just prayed one thing.

I prayed that in our prayer time,

I said,

I hope in these 10 minutes,

in seven minutes,

I hope in these seven minutes

that all of us would have a chance

to look at our life honestly

for five minutes and say,

what is it that we really hope in?

What is really my tekvah?

What is the thing that I'm clapping my life onto,

and I'm going to say,

this is going to support me.

This is going to keep me alive.

This will never fail me.

You can find that out for yourself

by answering this question.

You just say,

blank will never fail me.

Fill in the blank.

My work will never fail me.

Tekvah.

My friends will never fail me.

My family will never fail me.

My spouse will never fail me.

My mind will never fail me.

My body will never fail me.

My fortune will never fail me.

My MPF will never fail me.

My boss will never fail me.

Whatever you stick in that sentence,

that is what your tekvah is.

That's what you're clinging to.

That's what you're saying.

This is where hope,

this is where I'm going to find hope.

I realize in this group,

we're all trying to find hope

because we are deeply hope-oriented people

in Hong Kong, aren't we?

I mean, what we hope is going to happen

in the future determines

how we act right now.

I mean, if you have no chance

of becoming managing director,

you're going to get out of that job.

If you don't have a chance

of getting that raise,

you're going to find another job.

If you don't have a chance

of finding happiness

and true contentment,

you're going to divorce that spouse.

If your friends are jerks,

you're going to get rid of those friends

and get new friends

because you're looking towards the hope

and you're wondering,

if I can hope in this,

then I'm going to stay here

because the hope is going to be worth it.

And I realize that all of us in this room

try to find hope in different ways.

Some of us try to find hope

in just gathering stuff.

We want to gather life.

We want to gather money.

We want to gather people.

We want to gather titles.

We want to gather positions.

We want to gather cars,

spouses, friends.

And our hope is that we gather enough,

if we get enough stuff,

if we get the right type of things,

then we will have hope

and our life will be satisfied

and we can go click

and everything's going to be okay.

Now hopefully you're only thinking that way

if you're young

because if you've been older,

you've had some years put on you,

you've been fired,

you've lost a job,

you've lost a spouse

or a good friend who's left you,

or you've had a heart attack,

and your health has failed you,

then you start looking for another tech ball.

You look for something else to cling on to

because those things,

you realize really quickly,

they don't satisfy you.

Now there might be some of us in here

who say,

yeah, but I'm going to do it differently.

I'm going to have it all.

I'm going to make it all.

I'm going to experience it all.

I'm going to have it all.

Everybody else before me has failed,

but I'm going to do it right.

My life's going to be perfect.

I'm going to have all the money.

I'm going to have the job.

I'm going to have the experience.

I'm going to have the spouse.

I'm going to have the kids.

Everything.

I'm going to do it right.

Einstein called those crazy people.

Einstein said,

that's crazy.

Einstein said,

craziness is when you do the same experiment

over and over and over, and you expect the same result.

And some of us are doing the same experiment

over and over and over, and we expect the same result,

and Einstein says, that's crazy.

It's not going to work.

It doesn't work in the life.

It doesn't work in the lab.

It won't cling on to you.

Now, there's some of us in here,

we're trying to find our tech ba in being good,

being perfect, being dutiful,

doing all the right things,

doing and saying all the right things.

Those of you who are in families,

and you're trying to be the perfect son and daughter,

you know who I'm talking to,

and what I'm talking about.

Some of us try to find that hope

in doing all the right things, being the right things,

but you know, after a while,

that becomes really, really tiring, doesn't it?

I mean, we get tired.

We get tired because we do the right thing

over and over and over,

but we never get the result that we expect.

And after a while, we go,

why am I doing this?

This is craziness,

because I try to be the good son,

good daughter, good employer,

good employee, good whatever,

and no matter how hard I try,

I always get let down,

and my tech ba fails me.

And I go back to the nothingness,

I go back to the emptiness,

and I try to reinvent myself.

The passage today is the third type of tech ba.

It's the gospel passage.

It's the Easter passage.

When you look in the passage,

you realize something really quickly.

None of Jesus' disciples expected him

to raise from the dead.

There's no one at the tomb.

I mean, just think about it.

Jesus had been,

he'd been betrayed,

he'd been tortured,

he'd been captured,

he'd been sentenced,

he'd been crucified,

he'd been buried all in record time.

All of it was illegal,

according to Roman law.

It was all illegal.

It should never have happened that way.

And all of his disciples,

they just scattered.

They ran away,

and they just started thinking,

hey, I'm next.

I'm going to be the one

who gets killed next.

And historians tell us

that in that time,

there were at least

two dozen other messiahs.

Did you know that?

There were two dozen other messiahs

that came on the scene.

And they said,

I'm the messiah,

I'm the anointed one,

I'm ready to come.

And the same thing happened to them

that happened to Jesus.

The Romans grabbed him,

they tortured him,

they crucified him,

and immediately after

they were crucified,

the movement stopped.

The movement stopped.

But something different happened

with Jesus' followers.

Because we're told in the passage

that no one was waiting,

it was the Sabbath,

so Friday evening ended,

so the Sabbath ends

on Saturday evening,

so they didn't even go to the grave

until Sunday morning,

so it's 12 hours later,

because no one expected

anything to happen.

And these ladies go to the grave,

and the first thing they see

on the cover of your bulletin

is the stone,

this huge stone is rolled away.

It's massive stone,

you couldn't do it by yourself.

And they walk in,

and there's no one there,

and all of a sudden

these two men appear.

And the scripture's really clear,

it says that they had

lightning for clothes.

Right away,

the women knew

that they were angels,

they were special visitors.

And these men said the word,

the tekvah,

the third option

that we have in our life

that changed history,

and they said this,

why do you look for the living

among the dead?

You know he's not here.

He's risen.

And those words

have been the tekvah

that Christians have held on to

for 2,000 years,

because those words

have changed everything.

Think about it.

An empty tomb

and Jesus walking around

means that death did not win,

that death is not the end,

that maybe we were made

for something else.

An empty tomb

and Jesus walking around

meant that Jesus' words were true,

that we could trust him,

that we never had the doubt

about our future,

we never had the doubt

about our past,

we never had a doubt

about our sins,

we never had a doubt

about our brokenness,

because he said he came

to heal all those things,

and the fact that he rose again

meant that God

was pleased with him,

and that he was a tekvah

that we could cling to.

An empty tomb

and a savior walking around

meant that you and I

have something greater

than we can hope for,

something that is not

of this world.

One of my favorite books

I was reading at C.S. Lewis,

it's called Mere Christianity,

and in chapter 10 on hope,

he says something

very interesting,

he says,

the reason that we go

through life

and we grab things

and we collect things,

we get a wife,

we get kids,

we get a job,

we experience a new car,

and the minute we get

these things,

we're really excited,

but all of a sudden

we just become,

huh.

He says there's something

that's missing there,

that the thing that we wanted to,

the hope that we wanted

to get into it,

the minute we got it,

it dissipated somehow.

And Lewis says this,

he says if we are having

or experiencing a need

for hope,

and we can't get that

satisfied completely

and wholly in this world,

then maybe it means

that you and I

were made for another world.

Maybe it means

that you and I

were made for another world.

So the question

I have for you today,

one minute,

what is your tech bot?

What are you hoping in?

What is the thing

in your life

that you say

this will never fail me?

This is going to take me

all the way to the end.

This is going to take me

through cancer.

This is going to take me

through my kids

not getting into Harvard

or Yale.

That's a joke.

This is going to take me

through losing my job.

This is going to take me

through not getting

my 12-month bonus.

This is going to take me

through Hong Kong

to my next destination.

What is it

that you cling to?

And the passage today

says that the only thing

that we can cling to,

the only thing

that is sure,

the only thing

that is true

is Jesus Christ.

And the question is,

will we allow Him

to be our rope

that we hang on to?

Will we allow Him

to be the rope

that brings us home?

Will we allow Him

to be the rope

that helps us scale

this journey

which is crazy

called life?

Or will we try

something else?

What's your hope?

the empty tomb

and Jesus walking around

and everybody sees Him

says that God loves you.

He came to set you free.

He came to give you

a new hope.

And the question is,

will we trust Him?

And we accept that

for ourselves.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank You

for this day.

We thank You

for Your goodness

and Your mercy

in our life.

We thank You

that You are

the true hope

that we never have to

worry about.

You are the true hope

that we never have to doubt.

You are the rope.

You are the certainty.

You are the strong

anchor

that we can cling to

and that we know

that wherever

or whatever

and whoever

comes through our life

and blows in

as a storm

that we have a rope

that is strong

and has finished everything

and we can trust You.

Father, I pray for some of us

in here right now

who have never accepted

that truth

who doubt

and they're skeptical

and they're still clinging

on to other things.

I pray just in this moment

that they would at least

look at what they cling to

and they would ask themselves,

is this really what

I want to hope in

for the rest of my life?

Has this really been secure

for me up until this point?

Or I'm like Einstein

trying to do the same experiment

over and over and over

but expecting different results.

Lord, I pray that in that moment

those friends of ours

who are here today,

they would just ask themselves

what is it that they hope in?

And Father, I pray for the rest of us

who've hoped in You

but sometimes we forget.

Sometimes we go on

the busyness of journey

and the craziness of life

and we forget

what we're hoping in

and we start to hope in

other kava

that we used to

and all of a sudden

we find our lives slipping

and we find the rope breaking

and we find our life in chaos

and we wonder

what the heck is going on.

Father, we just come to You

and we just ask Your forgiveness.

And on this Easter

we realize over and over again

that You are the God

of second chances

and that You've come

to give us an ultimate

and true hope.

A hope that we can cling to

forever

and into eternity.

We pray these things

in Your Son Jesus' name.

Amen.