Finding Hope in Dark Times: A Word for a Heavy Week
Pastor Keith Roberson came into Sunday with a different sermon ready. The Foundations series was scheduled to close with a message about prayer, about the lies of the enemy that keep us from a rich, deep life in prayer. He had it finished. And then he set it aside.
“One day there will be an amazing message I’m gonna give to you at some point,” he told the room. But not this Sunday. Because this was the week Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist and a vocal follower of Jesus, was assassinated for being willing to share his beliefs out loud instead of keeping them silent. And if you’re preaching a series called Foundations, a series built around the question of how you put your feet on a rock in the middle of life’s storms, Keith said it would feel almost disingenuous not to take the time to answer the question in real time: how do we find our feet on a rock in the middle of a storm like this?
Before he went anywhere else, he widened the circle. You don’t have to be conservative, or Republican, or anything else, to feel shaken when someone loses his life because of his beliefs. You could have deep disagreement with Charlie Kirk’s opinions and still feel incredibly grieved that he was killed for sharing them. Keith was honest that he could name plenty of politicians he deeply disagrees with whose deaths would break his heart in exactly the same way.
“Can we just acknowledge what happened was evil? It’s wrong. And it doesn’t really matter where you stand politically. It’s wrong and it hurts.” — Pastor Keith Roberson
What followed was not a political message. It was a diagnosis, and then three reasons for hope.
What this sermon is about
The question on the table is the one a lot of people in Franklin were quietly asking that week: how did we get here? And underneath it, a more personal one: how do you live with hope in a world that keeps proving how dark it can be?
Pastor Keith’s answer comes in two movements. First, the bad news, told straight: the darkness is not new, and it is not finally a political or philosophical problem. Then the good news: Jesus answered this exact question on the eve of the darkest night in human history, and what He said is still the most solid place a person can stand.
The bad news: we don’t have a political problem
Keith started with homework. Read Acts 17, he said, just as an expression of what happens when you carry faith into the public sphere. In that one chapter, Paul preaches the same message in three cities, that there is one God who made you and that you can be reconciled to your Maker, and in Thessalonica a mob runs him out of town, in Berea a mob runs him out of town, and in Athens he stands up in the city’s center for learning, points at the altar to an unknown God, and proclaims the God they claim not to know. Carrying this gospel has always ruffled feathers. They did it to Paul. They did it to Jesus, who had to slip an angry mob more than once before the crucifixion, which Keith called the ultimate expression of hatred for belief.
So if you’re asking how someone could be assassinated for his beliefs in 2025, the answer is the same thing that was going on 2,000 years ago. Sin.
Romans 5:12 — “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned…”
Keith described sin as a voracious cancer that eats you from the inside out, and the problem is that every one of us is infected. It infects Democrats and Republicans, young and old, men and women. No one is free from it. In Romans 1, Paul traces where it leads: “they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.” When sin goes untouched, we become self-worshipers, and there is not enough in this world to satisfy the hunger of self-worship. Not enough achievement, accumulation, wealth, power, or fame. The hole never leaves.
“We will be enticed to believe that we have a political problem, and a philosophical problem, and a tolerance problem. None of those are the reason we’re at where we’re at. We have a sin problem. It infects everyone.” — Pastor Keith Roberson
And here is the hard corollary, straight from Jesus himself. John 15:18-19 — “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you… because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” Don’t believe for two seconds, Keith said, that if we do our faith with kindness and truth and sincerity and mercy, it will never elicit anger. They did it to Jesus. They did it to Paul. They will do it to you and me.
Having landed all of that, Keith looked up and deadpanned: “Thank you, pastor. Really encouraging message this morning.” The room needed the laugh. And then came the turn: so how on earth do we live with hope in a dark, dark world? Because he had no intention of sending anyone home without it. There were baptisms scheduled at noon.
Take heart: Jesus has overcome the world
Jesus answers the hope question on the eve of the darkest moment in all of human history. In John 16, hours before the cross, He looks at His followers and tells them the truth: you will weep and lament while the world rejoices. You’ll be scattered. You’ll fall short. He says it to men He knows are about to abandon Him. And then He says this:
John 16:33 — “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”
You want to live with hope right now? It’s not in a circumstance, and it’s not in our ability to fix things. You put your whole hope in the one man who overcame it all, who willingly went to the cross and into the grave and came out alive, so that you and I would always have an overcomer to look at. When you see darkness, Keith said, you can literally take your face and plant it to the sky and remember there is a King on the throne.
And it goes further. 1 John 4:4 — “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” John writes that everyone born of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory: our faith.
“Not only did Jesus Christ overcome the world, he’s giving you his overcomer authority. He’s offered it to you. You now are the overcomer in him.” — Pastor Keith Roberson
It’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to walk through dark days. But in those moments we look to Him, remember He’s conquered it all, and live in the light instead of a dark shell.
God will take your deepest pain and turn it for good
The second reason for hope is a promise, and Keith was careful about what the promise is not. It is not that you’ll be spared the darkness. It is that in the deepest darkness you will ever face, no matter how tragic, God will turn it for your good.
He told the story of Joseph from Genesis 37-50: betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, years in an Egyptian prison, and then raised up by the kindness of God to second in command over all of Egypt. When his brothers finally stand in front of him, begging for mercy, Joseph holds every card. Revenge is right there. And instead:
Genesis 50:20 — “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”
There is no evil deed in this world that God cannot take and bring about for our deepest good, Keith said. The most heinous thing that ever happened, the murder of the Son of God, became the greatest good the world has ever known. And the promise extends to us: Romans 8:28 — “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
“If you want hope for your deepest pain, do not look to the world to fix it. Look your God square in the eye and say, I believe you will turn this for my good.” — Pastor Keith Roberson
When will you see it? How will it come about? Keith was honest: I don’t know. I don’t have those answers. All we know is that God is faithful when we walk through darkness. He pointed out that the room had already seen this posture on display that very week, in the public response of Charlie Kirk’s wife, and encouraged anyone who hadn’t heard it to go listen.
This life is a flash. Your forever is secure.
The third reason for hope is perspective. “We’re here for one hour, church,” Keith said. “It feels a little longer.” A long life is tempting to treat as a long time. He’s got the white hairs to show he’s been around a while. But this life is a flash, and our forever is glorious and secure.
In John 11, Jesus stands in front of one of His closest friends, who is broken because her brother has died and wondering why Jesus didn’t come earlier and fix the circumstances. And into a death that felt utterly final, Jesus speaks:
John 11:25-26 — “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
Do you believe it, Keith asked, that a person could be tragically snuffed out in this life and yet never die? That’s where our brother Charlie is right now, he said. It is a robbery and it is sick that his life was taken from his wife and children, and we feel that and we grieve it. But the glory he is experiencing right now is beyond what we can imagine. He is with his King.
Then Keith asked the whole room to stand, and read the end of the story over them:
Revelation 21:3-4 — “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man… He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
That is the promise. Hope everlasting. And if you’ve never believed on Jesus, Keith said, everything just described can be yours right now if you will ask for it.
What this means for your week in Franklin
If you take this sermon seriously, four things change about this week.
- Grieve without apologizing for it. Hurt, sadness, and anger are normal things to feel when evil happens. Naming something as evil isn’t a political act. Feel it honestly, and refuse to let anyone rush you past it.
- Stop expecting the world to fix a sin problem. Every solution that doesn’t touch the root cause will leave you with empty hope. The strain and tension you feel in the culture isn’t solved by a better election cycle. It was answered at a cross.
- Plant your face to the sky. When the news cycle gets dark this week, practice the actual move Keith described: look up, and remind your heart that there is a King on the throne who has already overcome the world, and that He has handed you His victory.
- Look God in the eye with your deepest pain. Not better circumstances. Not a timeline. Just the honest declaration: I believe you will turn this for my good. You won’t have the how or the when. You’ll have His faithfulness, which is better.
Watch the full message
The full sermon — “Living With Hope” from the Foundations series — is in the video above. We post a new message every Sunday from New River Church in Franklin, TN. Browse our message library for more from the Foundations series and other recent teaching.
Coming Sunday at New River Church in Franklin, TN
If this message resonated and you’d like to experience worship and community in person, we’d love to have you with us. New River Church meets Sundays at 9:00 AM and 10:45 AM at 1153 Lewisburg Pike in Franklin, TN 37064 — just minutes from downtown Franklin and easy to reach from across Williamson County, Brentwood, and Spring Hill.
You don’t need to dress up. You don’t need a good voice. You don’t need to know much about church or the Bible to come. We’re a community of ordinary people walking through ordinary life, trying to do it together with Jesus at the center. Whether you’ve been a Christian for forty years or you’ve never set foot in a church, you are welcome here.
If you’re new to the area or new to faith, our First Time Guest page walks through everything you need to know before your first visit: parking, what to expect on Sunday morning, what your kids will experience in River Kids, and how to find us when you arrive.
If you’re looking for deeper community beyond Sunday morning, our Community Groups meet across Franklin and the surrounding area throughout the week. Groups are where Sunday morning faith becomes Tuesday afternoon real life.
Whatever you’re carrying right now, you don’t have to carry it alone. There’s a place for you at New River Church in Franklin, Tennessee. Come as you are.
Watch more sermons: newriverfranklin.com/messages Plan your visit: newriverfranklin.com/firsttimeguest Find a group: newriverfranklin.com/groups
📍 New River Church | 1153 Lewisburg Pike, Franklin, TN 37064 | Sundays 9:00 AM & 10:45 AM
