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If you’ve been driving on them for too long, your mechanic will recommend you realign your tires. If your teeth are crooked, an orthodontist may recommend getting braces to align your teeth. If you’re suffering from back pain, a chiropractor may recommend an adjustment which aims to realign the spinal column. But in each of these cases, it’s important that the practitioner has a standard to which he or she is aligning things.

The same is true for hope. God has given us a standard to which our hope must be aligned. We are called to align our hope to something firm and concrete. Look at 1 Peter 1:13, “. . . set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Notice, Peter isn’t talking about a grace that we’ve been given or a grace we already have, but a grace that we will be given. And notice when we’ll be given this grace. “At the revelation of Jesus Christ.” What does that mean? It’s referring to the end of time when Jesus will reveal Himself to this earth in all His glory. Peter is saying, set your hope fully on the grace that you’ll receive when Jesus returns. This is what John Piper calls faith in “future grace.”[i]

Here’s how it works. Imagine you’ve been given a six-month all expenses paid vacation to a secluded and plush resort in Tahiti. Crystal clear water, white sand, a secluded bungalow, delicious gourmet food, being waited on hand and foot. All that is waiting for you, but first you must endure a 13-hour flight.

Imagine you’ve been assigned a horrible seat. You’ve got a middle seat at the back of the plain between a hygiene-deprived sumo wrestler and a frazzled mom with a colicky infant and a wild toddler. Your light doesn’t work, neither does your air conditioning vent. Your meal tastes like a cardboard box. You’re close to the restroom, which means you’re privy to a host of unseemly smells. You’re thirsty, but the flight attendants run out of drinks before they reach your aisle. The toddler gets peanut butter and jelly all over your pants. The sumo wrestler is dripping sweat on your arm. The television in front of you works, but the only choices are a marathon of Blues Clues, High School Musical, or The Phantom Menace. But it doesn’t matter because your headphones don’t work. It’s the most miserable flight you’ve ever endured. So what do you do? You close your eyes and you remind yourself that you’re going to Tahiti. You set your hope fully on the grace that is to be yours at the revelation of Tahiti.

Or let’s imagine a different scenario. Same vacation, but this time you’ve been upgraded to first class. You’ve got a reclining seat that turns into a bed. You have enough leg room to completely stretch out without touching anybody. You’re greeted with a glass of champagne. The menu offers your choice of prime rib or lobster tail. You order both. You’re given a warm blanket and a pair of Bose headphones to enjoy your Ultra 4K personal television set where you can binge watch Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. Your light not only works, you’ve been given an adjustable lamp on the corner of your seat that makes it much easier to read from the complementary Kindle pre-loaded with all your favorite books.

Even though your flight is much more comfortable, you’re in no less danger than the person with the horrible experience in the backseat. The person with a horrible flight experience is tempted to forget about the future grace of Tahiti because his flight is so painful. The person in first class is tempted to forget about the future grace of Tahiti because his flight is so pleasurable. But no matter how good the flight is, only a fool would unpack his bags and start hanging pictures on the wall of the airplane. You know these pleasures are temporary. You don’t get too attached to them because your hope is set fully on the grace that is to be yours at the revelation of Tahiti.

This life is like a flight. It may feel long sometimes, but in the grand scheme of things it’s nothing. If you’re a Christian, what awaits you at the end of this life is something so amazing that a thousand Tahiti vacations is like comparing a drop of water to the ocean. When you’re threatened by pain, you align your hope to the grace that is to be yours at the revelation of Jesus Christ. You remind yourself that “this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17). Your pain is temporary.

When you’re tempted by pleasure, you align your hope to the grace that is to be yours at the revelation of Jesus Christ. You follow the example of Moses. Hebrews 11:24-26 says, “By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter ,choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.”

If you’re reading this and you’re not a Christian, I want you to understand that becoming a Christian is in your best interest. It may not seem like it right now. You might be thinking about all the things you’d have to give up. You know Jesus says you must believe, but you don’t want to believe. You like living like there is no God, no sin, no pending judgment. Believing your sin was so great that God sent His Son to live a sinless life and die a sinner’s death in your place is just a little too much to swallow. You know Jesus says you must repent, but you don’t want to repent. You like doing what you want to do.

Have you ever heard of a monkey trap? It’s deceptively simple. You take a gourd or some similar object and drill a hole just large enough for a monkey’s hand to pass through. You then fill the trap with rocks or sand to weight it down and put a nut or some fruit on top. Then leave the trap where a monkey will find it. The monkey sticks his hand through the hole to get the food, but with the prize in its grasp, the monkey cannot get its hand back out. The hole is too small for the monkey’s hand to pass through so long as it’s holding the treat, and the gourd is too heavy for the creature to carry. Because the monkey will not let go of its prize, it becomes trapped. The animal gives up its freedom to hold on to a small piece of food.[ii]

If you’re reading this and you’re not a Christian, you’re caught in a monkey trap. You’re holding onto this amazing prize—your sin, your freedom, your autonomy, your works, whatever. But as long as you hold onto it you’re not really free. If you will simply let go—turn away whatever it is you’re holding onto—and turn to Jesus you can be truly free! You can have a hope better than anything you’re holding onto! We invite you to let go right now and put your hope in future grace.

But to the Christians reading this, we’re often like a monkey who has been freed from the trap, and then goes right back to the same trap and gets caught all over again.

In his classic talk, The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis says, “If we consider the unblushing promise of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”[iii]

Christian, are you far too easily pleased? Are you caught in the monkey trap? Are you setting your hope on things smaller than Jesus? Are you aligning your hope on future grace?

 

[i] John Piper, Future Grace: The Purifying Power of the Promises of God (Colorado Springs: Multnomah Books, 1995).   [ii] Guy Finley, The Monkey Trap. http://www.teachthesoul.com/2012/02/the-monkey-trap/. Accessed August 20, 2020.   [iii] C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 26.