Hope (The Story of Hope)

This talk was given at CSF on January 24th, 2023, as the start of our Bible Words series.

Hey everyone.

If you don’t know me, I’m Leah and I’ve been on staff here at CSF for almost three years, which is crazy honestly. When I was in college, I came here as a student, so I’ve actually been around much longer than that. I majored in Creative Writing and Religious Studies, both of which taught me a lot of stories, and a lot about stories. I’m a story nerd; I love a good story. Reading one, writing one, hearing about one—I’m in. You got a story? I’d love to hear it… It’s always been a dream of mine to be a teller of stories; I love to write and make up worlds and characters and see what they would do in certain scenarios. I hope one day to be an author. 

It’s a new semester, a new year. I imagine that a lot of you have made some resolutions or goals. I did. And I don’t wanna speak too soon, but my goals are going pretty great so far. One of my goals is to work on my writing more and to pursue publication with my completed works. Since it’s a dream of mine to be a published author, submitting my work is definitely the next right step. I’ve been hard at work on an application for a few weeks now, and I just submitted my novel this past Thursday to a publishing house. Which is crazy. I am not super great at dealing with rejections, so every time I submit something, it’s super scary for me. But I always hope that it’ll be accepted. I hope to get published. 

And that’s what I want to talk about today: publishing. Just kidding, we’re going to talk about hope. 

I’m kicking off our Bible Words series here at CSF, where our goal is to demystify the Bible words that get thrown around in church or wherever and really get into what it’s all about, especially in context of the Bible. Of course, we know that from this stage tonight, I can’t tell you everything there is to know about hope or whatever I’m talking about, but I’m hoping to give you an overview, a place where you can start to feel like, oh, I mostly know what this whole hope thing is about. And I want to show you the best thing to put your hope in. 

Let’s pray before we get started: Dear Lord…

So what is hope? Hope, according to Google, is a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. We hope that we’ll get a good grade on our exams, that our mom’s will stop nagging us about doing our laundry, that that guy or girl we like will like us back. We sometimes hope more seriously about our future career goal—we hope that we’ll get into our dream graduate school or one day become an astronaut or something. I hope to become an author. This kind of hope, all these kinds of hope, are good but they have a hint of doubt. You hope for it, but you’re not really sure if it’s going to happen. 

Biblical hope, the hope we mean when Christians throw around the word hope, when the Bible talks about hope, is slightly different. Our hope is a bit more secure than that. 

But I’m going to have to back up a bit before I get into that. As a lover of stories, I feel it’s only fitting for me to tell you the story of hope. I could talk all night about this story, because I love it so much, but I’ll try to keep it short. 

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and all the things on the earth, and then, he created people–Adam and Eve. His design was perfect. He made Adam and Eve in charge of the whole garden, to rule over it, and to spend time with Him. To commune perfectly with God–Father, Son, and Spirit. God called His creation good and the humans he called very good. The book of Genesis says that God walked in the garden. Can you imagine God walking with them in the garden every day? How cool would that be? God told them that they could eat from any tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. One rule. Just trust that God knew best for them and obey and they would live forever in perfect communion with Him, in this beautiful garden, walking with Him forever. 

But it didn’t quite go that way. A serpent tempted Adam and Eve to doubt God and what He said, so they chose to disobey and eat the fruit anyway. God, in accordance with His word, cast them out of the garden for their disobedience. And sin and death entered the world. Now, there was brokenness—the perfect communion between God and man was severed. And suddenly, humanity was on the path to eternal separateness from the Creator, condemned to what we call Hell. 

But God—I love that phrase—But God promised that He would not abandon us. Even as He cast Adam and Eve from the garden, He promised that someone would come and defeat the enemy who tempted humanity out of communion with Him. 

Genesis 3:15 is known as the proto-euangelion, the first gospel or good news. And it says: And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.

The “he” in that statement refers to someone who will defeat the enemy, someone who will right the wrongs that occurred that day in the garden and restore God’s design. 

God even chose a people and promised to bless the world through them in Genesis 12:2-3. And that’s just the first 12 chapters of the book. The rest of the Old Testament is about that group of people growing into a great nation and how they navigated the world and tried to commune with God. God gave them laws and commandments to show them how to live rightly so they could be in communion with Him. And God promised that He would make a way for them to be with Him, that He would rescue them from their certain death. 

So throughout the Old Testament, the people of Israel, the writers of the Scriptures, constantly talked about the afflictions they were facing and the hope they had in God, the hope that He would rescue them. 

There are two main Hebrew words that are used throughout Scripture that we take to mean hope. Yakhal means to wait for. Qavah (from the root word qav that means cord) is the feeling of tension while you wait for something to happen. So like when you pull a cord tight and you are waiting for and expecting release, whether that’s a release of the pressure holding it tight or the cord breaking and releasing the tension that way. Hope is rooted in waiting. Waiting expectantly for something. 

The people of Israel, God’s chosen people, were waiting for God to fulfill His promise to rescue them, for Him to send the someone that was promised all the way back in Genesis 3. They called this person the Messiah. Depending on the affliction that they were facing at the time, they expected this Messiah to rescue them from different oppressors or change their circumstances here on earth. For example, when they were exiled from the Promised Land, they prayed and hoped for the Messiah to come and rescue them from Babylon or Assyria, depending on where they were or when exactly we’re talking about. They waited expectantly, knowing and trusting that God would one day fulfill His promise of a deliverer. That He would do what He said He would. 

That’s the difference between putting our hope in God versus putting it in the things that we mentioned before. Those things usually aren’t bad or wrong, but it’s different because it’s not certain the way that God’s promises are. While it’s not certain that I will one day become an author or you’ll do well on your exam or whatever, it is completely certain that God will do what He says He will do. That certainty isn't dependent on you or me or our belief or anything other than who God is. We may doubt but that doesn’t make it untrue. 

The people in the Old Testament were waiting for the Messiah. God, of course, was faithful to Word. He sent His own Son, Jesus, to save the world. The release of the tension, the fulfillment of all the Old Testament law, the perfect way that God would rescue His people and restore our perfect communion with Him—the answer to the hope, to the waiting, was Jesus. How? He lived perfectly—did everything right in God’s eyes, was the perfect human essentially—and then took the consequences of brokenness that everyone else—who doesn’t live in perfect communion with God and others—he took the consequences we deserved on himself when he was killed on the cross. All so that we could have peace with God, so that we could commune with Him again. 

John 3:16-18 says that God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.

So the Messiah came. He didn’t look exactly like what the people of Israel expected. Israel was under the oppression of Rome when Jesus came, so they were expecting him to rescue them from that oppression. However, God had a different enemy in mind when He promised rescue and restoration: the sin that separated God and His people. God was faithful to His word. He did what He said He would. He sent the One who would save them. 

Romans 15:4 says that everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.  

We can look back at the story of hope, the story of the Bible, and have hope. But Jesus already came. The Messiah came. He released the tension that the people of God were waiting for. Now what? What are we hoping for? What are we waiting for? Well, the story doesn’t end with Jesus’s death. Jesus died our death, yes, but he also was raised to life again. He defeated our death, too, not just our sin. God’s plan from the beginning was to live forever in perfect communion with His creation. Because of what Jesus did, taking our death and defeating it, we don’t have to die. We don’t have to be separated from God forever. One of the pastors at my church said it this way, and it really stuck with me: He died that I might not have to die, that I might have LIFE eternal with Him. God wants to be with us. He wants us. 

1 Peter 1:3-4 says this: 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, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. 

This hope transcends death. Anything else that we put our hope in will die, a dying hope. We don’t want a dying hope; it will only disappoint and there’s no certainty that it will happen. And even if it does happen, it cannot save you from the path of destruction that all humanity is on. Only God can make a way to be with Him forever. 

And He promised that he would come back again. We’ve already been rescued; now we’re waiting for the restoration that God promised along with it. He promised to make all things new. We’re waiting for eternity. We’re hoping for eternity. 

There’s much left in the promises of God concerning the restoration that we are waiting for. God promised to wipe away every tear. Isaiah 25:8 says he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove his people’s disgrace from all the earth. The Lord has spoken. 

And He promises it still. Revelation has a beautiful description of what God promises. If you haven’t read Revelation, you should. Revelation 21:1-4 says: Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

One day, we will be with God forever, perfectly communing with him, walking with him in the City, the New Jerusalem promised in Revelation. We will be who God created us to be, with no pain or sorrow or brokenness. God’s perfect design will be restored. God wanted us from the beginning and He won’t let anything stand in the way if we want Him back. 

That, all that I just said, is the Gospel. Gospel just means good news. The good news is this: Even though we were condemned to an eternity apart from Him, God did not give up on us and we hope—we wait with joyful expectation—for His return so that He will restore us to perfect harmony with Him and His creation. 

So what are you hoping in? Are you putting your hope in the faithful God who has done everything so that He can be with you? Or is your hope dying? 

Romans 15:13 says, 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. 

I pray that over you.