Having Hope

Sometimes we feel like David when he said in 1 Chronicles 29:15 We are aliens and strangers in your sight, as were all our forefathers. Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope.

What does it mean to be without hope? To hope is to trust in, wait for or desire – to expect something beneficial in the future. So to be without hope is to have nothing to wait for, nothing to expect from the future. In this day and age, we see many people who say there is no God, that there is no heaven, that they live and they die and that’s the end. Although those people would hate to hear this, they are by definition hopeless. They have no hope. They have no expectations of the future and so they busy themselves with themselves, and their hope is short-term, selfish and unfulfilling.

But what about people who do believe in God? What does the Bible say about hope?

Hope as defined in the earlier parts of the OT is based on Trusting or Waiting on God for this world and this life – delivery from their enemies, health for the sick, land, peace and prosperity. The early OT writers were very concerned over this life and they sound very similar to the rest of the world. Except that their hope was based God.

Trust

Jer 14:22
“Our Hope is in You Lord”

Ps 25:2-3

And they waited for God hopefully

Ps 25:21
May integrity and uprightness protect me, because my hope is in you.

Ps 27:14
Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.

However, there was little hope for those who died.

Eccl 9:4-6, 10
4 Anyone who is among the living has hope —even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!

  5 For the living know that they will die,
       but the dead know nothing;
       they have no further reward,
       and even the memory of them is forgotten.

  6 Their love, their hate
       and their jealousy have long since vanished;
       never again will they have a part
       in anything that happens under the sun.

10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.

As a side, it is important to understand that Ecclesiastes is a philosophical book in the Bible and is very different than many other books we might read. It is written from dual viewpoints – one is someone who didn’t know about God (or actually who had forgotten about Him) and the other viewpoint is from the wisdom of experience of one who finally comes to recognize that life is folly and all is in vain if you do not trust and hope in God. These verses from Ecclesiastes are spoken from the first point of view and shows us how the typical, non-God believing person would have thought at the time. What we see is that it isn’t much different than the thoughts of those today who also don’t believe in God. Without Hope in God, there is no hope for those who died.

However, at the end of the OT, the prophets received messages of everlasting kingdoms.

Dan 2:44

Dan 7:13-14

Raising the Dead

Dan 12:2
Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.

End of Death
Is 25:7-8

Dead shall rise again
Is 26:19

Waiting for Salvation
Is 25:9

As time goes on, we see in the New Testament, that their understanding of a future life and resurrection continued to grow and upon the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, it is transformed into a new reality. Waiting and Trusting is still part of hope but Hope becomes much more. It becomes eschatological (hoping upon the future).

For instance, the Blessed Hope is the return of Jesus to Rapture us up to be with him forever.

Titus 2:13
while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ,

Why is the return and appearance of Jesus called the blessed hope? It is because whether we are alive or even dead, we hope to go to heaven and be with Christ. In fact, when the time comes for God to call us home, we should rejoice! We think it is better to stay alive on this earth but…

Phil 1:23
I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far;

However, since we are not yet dead, which may be better, as we continue to hope for the future, we hope for salvation

1 Thes 5:8-9
But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

What a picture - Putting on the hope of salvation as a helmet! The hope of salvation protects our brains, protects our thoughts. When we put on the helmet of salvation, we remember that though swords and arrows may attack our heads and our thoughts, we are protected by a great hope! And that hope of salvation is not just a spiritual salvation but a physical one – it is called Resurrection

Acts 23:6
"My brothers, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee. I stand on trial because of my hope in the resurrection of the dead."

Acts 24:15
and I have the same hope in God as these men, that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked.

A quick aside teaches us that both the righteous and the wicked have eternal life and will be resurrected, so those who say that the wicked just disappear have no basis in the Bible for it other than taking verses like this to mean something they do not. That said, the physical resurrection of our bodies is only part of what will occur. There is not just a resurrection of our bodies but a resurrection of all creation!

Rom 8:22-24a
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved.

When we fell to sin, we were not the only ones cursed, but all creation as well. Since that day, all creation awaits the resurrection, the New Heaven and New Earth that is promised in the Old and New Testaments. When that time comes, we have the hope of Eternal Life.

Titus 1:2
a faith and knowledge resting on the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time,

Titus 3:7
so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.

Notice that if we hope to have Eternal Life in heaven, we must first be justified by His grace. What does that mean? Justified means to be made right with God. Since we are sinners (which simply means that no one’s perfect), we cannot enter into the presence of a perfect God, because to put imperfection (ourselves and our sinfulness or lack of perfection) together with perfection (God) would cause the perfect to become imperfect – or in other words, God could not be God! The only way we can enter into His presence (which is where we want to be if we want to go to Heaven since Heaven is defined by being where God is!) is to be made right with God – justified. And the only way to be washed of the imperfection we have is for God to wash it away – we cannot wash away our own imperfections no more than a muddy child can clean himself with a muddy cloth. Only a clean cloth can clean a muddy child. In the same way, only God can justify us and He does so through faith in His son Jesus – faith in (in other words, trusting in) Jesus is the only way we can become clean! When we do this, we are justified with God. What a gift He has given us – a way to be justified for Eternal Life! As sinners (imperfect people), we don’t deserve it, but God is love and love provides Grace and Grace is the act of giving or doing something for someone though they don’t deserve it. The Bible tells us that when we are justified by His grace, we have the hope of Eternal Life and become children of God!

Now that we are children of God, we find that we will be like him when he does appear

1 John 3:2-3
Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.

What an amazing hope we have! Jesus coming, being with God when we die, salvation and resurrection to come, new creation, new bodies, being children of God! Our hope for the future is amazingly bright! If our hope is only for our present existence, it is pitiful

1 Cor 15:19
If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

Let’s not be like the people of this world, who do not believe and have no Hope! Those people are to be pitied. Christians who only hope for this life are to be pitied. We have a hope much greater than just this life! May we overflow with this hope!

Rom 15:13
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Rom 12:12
Be joyful in hope

When we have this hope, our faith and our love becomes evident!

Col 1:4-5
because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints— the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven and that you have already heard about in the word of truth, the gospel

You want to love more? You want to have more faith? The Bible tells us that those come from hope! This is quite different than the thinking of the rest of the world!

1 Thes 4:13
Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope.

The rest of the world may look happy on the outside, but most of them are struggling in the inside. They do not have the hope that we have. If you want true joy, look no further than the promises of the Bible. Within those promises, we see that there is a God who has told us of things to come – 2,500 prophecies – of which 2,000 have been fulfilled exactly. The last 500 are yet to come. If the Bible is that accurate with what has happened, it is a pretty sure bet to be right about the promises yet to be fulfilled. We only need to wait…and to Hope.

1 Cor 15:54-55
When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."
  "Where, O death, is your victory?
      Where, O death, is your sting?"

1 Peter 1:3-9
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, 5who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Heb 10:23
Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.

Heb 11:1
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

Ephesians 1:18
I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints,

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Last modified: July 20, 2008