Why Read the Bible: To Learn the Basis of Real Hope

And now the LORD says—
he who formed me in the womb to be his servant
to bring Jacob back to him
and gather Israel to himself,
for I am honored in the eyes of the LORD
and my God has been my strength—
he says:
“It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
to restore the tribes of Jacob
and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”

–Isaiah 49.5-6 (NIV)

On Monday we looked at the various ways God expresses his love for us. Today’s passage comes from the Second Servant Song of Isaiah (49.1-7 or 1-11). Here we are reminded of God’s great love for us which forms (or should form) the basis of our Christian hope.

God has just chastised his people for acting unfaithfully, an act of love in itself. But here we see the breathtaking beauty of God’s great love for us that we can more readily understand. Through his Servant, whom the Church has always recognized as Jesus, God promises to restore the faithful remnant of his wayward and rebellious people. Ostensibly, God is talking about the day he will end their upcoming exile in Babylon, but in Christ we are reminded that God’s promise runs much deeper than this. In and through Jesus, God promises to end our exile from him permanently, an exile caused by our sin and its resulting alienation from God and each other. None of us deserves this but God wants it for us. Can you imagine anything like that?

What this effectively means for us is that God has given us a real reason to have hope and we dare not blow that off. I am not talking about some pie-in-the-sky or otherworldly hope in which we sit around and wish for the day we will go to heaven. I am talking about real hope here and now (and so is Isaiah). It is a hope with a future. It is the hope of resurrection and New Creation and it is vital for us if we are ever to really live as hope-filled individuals.

Think about it. You are in the middle of a long trip and are too far along to make a return home possible. All of a sudden it becomes terribly apparent to you that you are lost and have no hope of ever reaching your destination. What would you do? There’s a good chance that you would give up and stop making an effort to go forward. In other words, you would lose hope and when that happens we cease having a reason for living. Unfortunately, we see this awful dynamic happening in those who attempt or succeed in committing suicide. Most have simply lost all hope.

But here the prophet reminds us that we do have a reason to go on living. We do have a reason to hope. And this helps give our life real meaning and purpose. It reminds us we are destined for something far better than we dare imagine. It reminds us we are no longer hostile toward God (or he toward us) so that we can experience real peace in our lives right here and now.

And passages like today’s also remind us we have a wonderful opportunity to help Jesus help others to learn to know God, and that is nothing to be sneezed at. It means we are not to sit around engaging in introspective navel-gazing. It means instead that we are to roll up our sleeves and get to work in helping God bring about his promised New Creation. I can’t tell you what that will look like in your own particular life but Jesus sure can. Why don’t you stop and ask him (if you haven’t already)?

If you are one who is struggling with hope, spend some time reflecting on the passage above. Read it slowly, carefully, and repeatedly. Before you do, ask God to send down his Spirit on you to enlighten your understanding and open your eyes to his great love for you. Admit to Jesus that you are struggling to find real hope in your life and you need him. Dare to ask Jesus to help you and to give you real hope to sustain you. It won’t make you immune to all (or perhaps any) of life’s problems, but it will help you deal with them with grace and power.

When you are Christ’s you have real hope because you have a real future and a hope-filled present. What are you waiting for?