Even the church feels the weight of brokenness, frustrated dreams, and loneliness. It is hard to have perspective in a world that is constantly throwing us stories that urge us to live in fear and dread of things we can’t control, or condemnation of all the things that should be fixed but can’t. Even though we are prosperous, despair is on the rise, and it’s hard to remember why we are here. God’s word offers us a better hope as it gives us His perspective on our lives and on our world. We get a God’s eye view of history as we see stories of how He works in and through broken people.
Some notes on hope:
- Hope is invisible. Romans 8:24 says, “Hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees?”
- Hope is available from God’s Word. Romans 15:4, “For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.”
- Hope is intentional and repeated. Lamentations 3:21-24 “This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope: through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I hope in Him.’”
- God is both the source and the object of our hope. Romans 15:13: “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
- Hope is our guarantee. Romans 5:5-6 “Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.”
Let’s look at hope through God’s story.
Creation
In the beginning, we see a good God, who creates the universe with beauty and order, for the flourishing of man whom He makes in His image. He gifts people with three relationships at the beginning—with Him, to live in intimacy; with His world, to live as His image in it, forming and filling it under His blessing; and with one another, to walk together in unity and fellowship and multiply as image bearers. These three relationships are broken by sin in the garden, and God speaks hope, through the promise of the seed of the woman to crush the head of the serpent, and the offering of the blood of the innocent on behalf of the guilty. Why? “This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope; through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed.” He gives them strong promises and visuals that they can remember and teach to their children after them.
We have the story of Cain and Abel, and then the two lineages, and by the time we get to Noah, the whole earth is full of such violence that God decides to destroy it. But Noah finds grace in the eyes of the Lord, because he walks with God. He has walked with God, alone, for five hundred years, and in none of that time has he ever thought that he would be the one through whom God would save the world. Think how lonely that would be—to be the only believer in a world gone mad. He trusts God, builds the ark, and God saves him and his family. He offers his sacrifice afterwards, and God responds by speaking hope. He will not flood the earth again, He repeats His blessings over people, and He gives a rainbow as the sign of His promise. Why? “This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope.”
Patriarchs
Ten generations pass, and God speaks hope to a man who is not special. The only thing that makes Abraham different from the idol-worshipers around him is that he doesn’t have kids—can’t have kids. Imagine those broken dreams, that loneliness, dealing with a lifetime of infertility. He has no idea that he is going to be the father of the promised seed. And then God speaks hope: “Get out of your country, From your family And from your father’s house, To a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” God’s promises transform Abraham’s life, and He gives him strong reminders of His promises—his descendants will be as many as the dust on the earth and the stars in the sky. So everyone sees the same dust, but Abraham sees the God behind the dust. And everyone sees the same stars, but Abraham sees the God behind the stars. Why? “This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope.” God is making a hope-full people.
These promises get passed down, though two generations later the family is a shambles. And yet God speaks hope. Leah, Jacob’s unloved wife, has no idea that she’s going to bear the line of priests and kings, and of the hope of Israel. She is literally the bearer of the promise. Tamar, Judah’s rejected daughter-in-law, also becomes the bearer of the promise.
And Joseph is God’s sleeper agent in Egypt. He had no idea when his brothers threw him in the pit that God was going to use him to save Egypt. All he had was heartbreak, rejection, and isolation—broken dreams and loneliness—until God spoke hope and he saw that his brothers meant it for evil, but God meant it for good and for the saving of many lives. Why do we have this story? “Because whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that through the patience and the comfort of the Scriptures we might have hope.”
Exodus
Four hundred years pass, and God is fulfilling His promise to Abraham in Genesis 15. In a time of slavery and the murder of children, Moses is born. He’s filled with intense purpose but falls in murder, and then spends 40 years as a shepherd, with no idea God still intends to use him. He is living in loneliness and broken dreams, until God speaks hope, and sends him to deliver His people. God gives the ten plagues and the Passover so His people will be people of memory, that they will remember that their God is the God who brought them out of Egypt, and He gives them His Word so they can remember and have hope. Why? “Whatever things were written before were written for our learning, so that we though the patience and the comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.” God’s Word helps us endure pain!
Conquest
When Israel enters the promised land, the story zooms in on Rahab, a working girl in Jericho. She’s part of a people that God has doomed to destruction, and her very life speaks of broken dreams and loneliness. But God speaks hope. She hears the story of the Exodus and believes, and is saved along with her whole family, and she too becomes the bearer of the promised seed, just like Leah and Tamar. Why do we have her story? “This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed.” No one who will trust God is ever rejected.
Judges
Israel settles the land, and for 350 years there is no mention of God’s word. From the state of His people and their repeated sin cycles, it looks like the dream has died. Then we have a tale of two widows. Naomi and Ruth have both lost their husbands when they move back to the little town of Bethlehem, and they have no idea what God intends to do with them. They are trusting God in the middle of their broken dreams and loneliness, and God speaks hope. Ruth too becomes the bearer of the promised seed, and God restores Naomi’s joy. Because of God, grief isn’t the end of their story.
Kingdom
After the Judges Era, Israel seeks a king like the nations, but Saul is not Israel’s hope. God chooses David to establish the line of the promised seed, but David is just a boy, not important enough to his father to count as his son when Samuel comes looking. He’s alone with the sheep, and unseen. But God sees him, and God speaks hope, choosing David as the next king. David then has to live through years of waiting, betrayal, and loss, with nothing to stand on but God’s promise. And God keeps His promise. Even when David’s life is marked by violence and unfaithfulness such that he cannot build the temple, God speaks hope. He will build David a house that will endure forever. And He gives promises in Psalm 22, 16, and 110 of the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the priest after the order of Melchizedek. Why? Whatever things were written before were written for our learning, so that we through the patience and the comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.” Even David is not Israel’s hope. He points to a better king.
Divided Kingdom
In the era of the Divided Kingdom, we have 20 kings in the north, none of whom is righteous. Speaking of broken dreams and loneliness, the Syrian general Naaman has a little Israelite slave girl, who is a sleeper agent in his house to speak of a prophet in Israel who can heal his leprosy. Gentile women receive their children back to life after they have died through the ministries of Elijah and Elisha. Why? God is showing Israel that He is still at work, even in their enemies. Why? “This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope.” God is bigger than His people’s failure to witness about Him.
There are also 19 kings and one queen in the south, only five of whom are righteous. In this time God speaks hope through Isaiah with the promise of 7:14 and 9:6, the picture of Isaiah 53, and the glorious pictures of life in His new kingdom. He speaks also through Jeremiah’s eyewitness account of the destruction of his land, and the promises of the new covenant and the branch of the line of David. Jeremiah’s words are all the more poignant as he speaks them with eyes on his ruined city and destroyed temple: “This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope: through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I hope in Him.’”
Exile
This whole era is broken dreams and loneliness, but God embeds sleeper agents in Babylon and Persia. When Ezekiel is taken captive as a young man, his dreams of serving in the temple die, but he sees the new temple and gets the vision of the heart of stone made flesh, and of the dry bones that will live again. God speaks hope to and through a man who is in exile because of other people’s sin.
Daniel too is taken captive, and it looks like his dreams have died. In fact, he never returns to Israel, but God speaks hope through him in the rise and fall of the four empires, the Son of Man on the throne of heaven, and his great prayer based on Jeremiah and Deuteronomy in chapter 9. Why can Daniel pray with such hope? “Whatever things were written before were written for our learning, so that we through the patience and the comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.” Daniel holds fast to God’s word, and God is faithful to fulfill it.
Return
At this point Israel has learned to make a life in exile. God activates new sleeper agents: Ezra, who has faithfully dedicated himself to knowing God’s law without knowing what God intends to do, is raised up to rebuild the nation on God’s word. For Nehemiah, God uses his goofy secular job as a cupbearer to prepare him for politics and intrigue as He calls him to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. God speaks hope to them in the rehearsal of His word, drawing His people to repentance. Why? “Whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and the comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.” God also speaks hope through the prophecies of the Messiah to come, riding on the donkey, to have His hands and feet pierced, and of the pouring out of His Spirit on all His sons and daughters.
Silence
In these four hundred years, God is silent, but He is still active, and He still speaks through His word. The empires rise and fall, Greece gives the world a language, and Rome gives the world a structure. The unnamed translators create the Septuagint so that Jews across the empire can read God’s word, and the synagogue structure is created. It’s still a world of chaos and war, and especially oppression for the Jews, and they hunger for the Messiah. The promises of God from His word have given them something to look forward to.
Gospel
Into this silence God speaks hope again, to Zechariah and Elisabeth, faithfully serving God though they can’t have children. He picks these people with their broken dreams to bring John the Baptist into the world. He speaks to Mary, who per Rebecca McLaughlin is “just another Mary,” a name so common that one woman in five had it. He fulfills His promise that the virgin will conceive and bear a child called Immanuel, “God with us.” Jesus is born, and when He is eight days old they take him to the temple to be circumcised, and there is Simeon, who has waited his whole life for the consolation of Israel, and he gets to hold Him in his arms. And Anna, an 84-year-old widow, waiting on God day and night in the temple, meets Him and finds a reason to tell everyone waiting in Jerusalem that redemption has finally come.
At 30 years old, Jesus the sleeper agent activates, and God speaks hope to the world. According to New Testament professor Dr. Warren Carter, the Roman Empire promised to be the hope for the world and to bring healing, but Jesus is the real hope. “I am the Bread of Life,” He says, and He feeds the 5000. “I am the light,” He says, and he shines like the sun into people’s darkness. “I am the Good Shepherd,” He says, and He goes looking for His lost sheep. “I am the resurrection and the life,” He says, and He breaks the bonds of death with just a word. “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” He says, and He shows us the Father. “I am going to prepare a place for you,” He says. “I will be taken, betrayed, beaten, spat upon, and killed, but on the third day I will rise.”
When He is killed, the disciples lose hope, to the point that they don’t really believe the women who have witnessed the resurrected Jesus. When Jesus comes upon two of them on the way to Emmaus, they say, “We had hoped that He would be the one to redeem Israel.” He rebukes them for their foolishness and slowness of heart to believe, and then He opens the Scriptures, showing them that the whole story is about Him.
He speaks hope: ““All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
“Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.”
Church
God speaks hope into the world through His church, empowered by the Holy Spirit. At Pentecost, all the gathered nations hear His message in their own languages, and God works through apostles, women, deacons, Samaritans, Gentiles, to speak the hope of Christ in a world of false hopes. They are rejected, ridiculed, beaten, and killed, because a disciple will be like his master. Even in this, God speaks hope into Saul the persecutor’s life, and calls him to suffer many things and to speak to kings, and God speaks hope to the Gentile Cornelius through Peter. God’s church is able to speak peace and hope to their own enemies, and God makes enemies friends through the message of the gospel.
Missions
God speaks hope to the nations through the ministry of Paul, and we still get this hope today. After all, Paul writes to us that God chose us in Jesus before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love. Peter also writes to us, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith—the salvation of your souls.” And we get to share this hope with the world too. God is sending us out to the world, just the same as He sent Paul, with the message of hope in Jesus Christ.
End/New Beginning
Because one day God won’t need to speak hope anymore. As Romans says, Hope that is seen is not hope, for why does one still hope for what he sees?” One day, Jesus will come back, and we will see Him face to face. He will judge the living and the dead, and everyone whose name is written in the Book of Life will be with Him forever, and everyone whose name is not written in the book will experience the second death, which is forever. And He will marry His church, and He will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and we will have our hope fulfilled.
Not one of these people in these stories knew what God was doing in their lives, and that didn’t stop Him doing it. Neither do we, and that still doesn’t stop Him doing it.
So my challenge and comfort to you today is this: Be in the Word, so you have a hope to recall to your mind. Be in the Word, so that you can trust that God is working under your broken dreams, heartache, and loneliness. Abide in Jesus, abide in the vine, so that your hearts can stay tender toward Him and others when the world seems like it’s going mad. And share your living hope with the world around you as you refuse to despair in the worst of circumstances. And may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
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