Rabbi Schneider - Things Can Get Better
The God, beloved, that you and I serve, the one that has called us by His own grace through Messiah Yeshua, He is the God of hope. People need hope today. They're lost. They're confused. I mean, people don't know which way to turn. I was just talking to a relative of mine who teaches a high school. And he came home from school one day and he was so discouraged because the kids had become so apathetic. Like they're blank. They have like zero desire to learn. Maybe "zero" is too strong of a word. But like little desire to learn. They sit there completely uninterested, unambitious, no initiative. They don't have a passion for living. They don't have a goal in life.
And I think that coming out of COVID, which is behind us now, I think, but I think it broke a lot of people down and it just confused people, and so many things shifted and changed in society. I think it accelerated hopelessness in people. People just became... they don't know which way is up and which way is down. They don't know which way is left in which way is right. They don't know if they're a boy or a girl. They don't know right from wrong. There's all this division, all this hatred. People are struggling and they need hope. But you know what? The one that's called us is a God of hope. Our hope is in Him.
And so, Paul starts out this biblical benediction. "Now may the God of hope..." So we have hope, right? We've got hope that the Lord is presently working in our life today. He is. Even if you're going through a hard time, it's not wasted. God is always working in the lives of His beloved ones. Remember Job? Job was called the most righteous man in all the East. I mean, the suffering and the struggle, the sickness and the death and the misery and the loss of possessions that Job experienced, it wasn't because he was such a terrible sinner. The contrary. The book of Job opens up by calling Joe the most righteous man in all the East.
Now the suffering came upon him because God was going to do something for him as a result of going through the suffering. So the end of Job's struggle, at the very end of the book of Job after he had been going through such tremendous, horrendous pain and difficulty, Job got threw down and he said this: "Father God, before I had heard about you, I knew you and my mind. But now, he said, that I've been through all this with you," he said, "Now, I know you".
What's the point? The hope that we have is regardless of whether we're going through a season in life where we're feeling refreshed and blessed or whether we're going through a season in life where we're discouraged because things are being... we're challenged with relationships, or loved ones, or our work, or whatever it might be, regardless of whether you're going through a season or you're enjoying life, or whether you're going through a season where life is difficult, the hope that we have is that the God of hope is working in our lives in all ways and at all times.
And the promise is that God causes - what? All things to work together for good. Everything that you and I go through, God is good a cause and is causing to work together for good. Doesn't it give you hope? The opposite of purposelessness is hope. We have hope. God's doing something good. We can rejoice by an act of our will because we know that our God is a good God, that He loves us, that He's doing something good right now. And beloved, because we know things are gonna get better.