Dear Friends,
We celebrate Easter again this month.
Of course, truth be told, we celebrate Easter every week when we gather for our regular Sunday services of worship: and, in many ways, we’re celebrating Easter every day we live when we rise from our beds once night is past and greet the new morning.
But this month’s celebrations cast a brighter, fuller spotlight on those three important days which changed the world. And those Easter celebrations serve to underscore just how unique, and how distinctive, is the integral reality of hope for those who’ve come to place their trust in Christ.
Hope is now the hallmark of our living, hopefulness now a fundamental quality in how we live our lives.
We live in hope. We labour – in hope: we face adversity – in hope: we grow old – in hope: we suffer – in hope. Even the pain and darkness of sorrow, we bear that – in hope: “we do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope,” as Paul declares in his letter to the church at Thessalonica (1 Thess.4.13).
It’s something entirely distinctive, this hope which so characterizes our living. Outside of Christ, outside of the covenant of promise, we are (whatever we may like to think about ourselves) – without hope, and without God in the world. And what a wretched condition that is.
To be sure, the Scriptures mean something very specific when they speak of ‘hope’.
They’re not talking about some blind and baseless optimism, the sometimes-attractive personality trait of the happy-go-lucky individual who always seems to land on his feet and blandly presumes that, of course, it’ll all be all right in the end.
Neither are they talking at all about any sort of superstitious wishful thinking, nor the formulaic exercise of so-called ‘positive thinking’ – a kind of self-induced and self-indulgent DIY brain-washing course, designed to leave you feeling really good about yourself and to help you make your dreams come somehow magically true.
The Scriptures aren’t talking about any sort of cross-your-fingers and hope-for-the-best way of life. They mean instead a keen anticipation of a guaranteed conclusion which still lies ahead, a firmly held assurance that there’s something so much better still to come.
The letter to the Hebrews is full of this, not least in its wonderful chapter on faith. Faith, which is always combined with this hope. Men and women who are always ‘looking forward’: looking forward to ‘the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God’: looking forward to ‘a country of their own’: looking forward to ‘a better country – a heavenly one’.
Noah looking forward to a better world. Moses looking forward to the promised land. David looking forward to a kingdom still more glorious. All of them looking forward to Jesus. Looking forward to a future which would far outshine their present.
Such is the band believers join. We are a people who are always looking forward with that sort of eager expectation. This is not, remember, any kind of shut-your-eyes, cross-your-fingers, and hope-for-the-best sort of confidence. It is, rather, an assurance, a no-real-doubt-about-it sort of confidence, a guaranteed conclusion sort of confidence which has its strong, substantial roots in two unshakeable realities – namely, what God has said and what God has done.
What God has said is a promise. The whole of the Bible is promise. The promise of God. The promise of the God who does not lie. The promise of the God who never, but never, is found to renege on His Word. That’s what Joshua had impressed on the people of God at the end of his life. “You yourselves know with all your heart and soul that not one of all the good promises the LORD your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled: not one has failed” (Josh.23.14).
What an astonishing testimony! Think how long the man had lived – 110 years. Think of all the man had been through – slavery in Egypt, deliverance from Pharaoh, the parting of the Red Sea, the provisions for hundreds of thousands for close on 40 years through the barren Sinai wilderness, the holding back of the waters of the Jordan in spate, the collapse of the walls of Jericho, the systematic occupation of the promised land. Astonishing! Not one of all the promises had ever failed. God always and emphatically so totally true to His word.
That’s why we grieve in hope. Because God has said that we who are found in the Lord Jesus Christ will be raised to life at the last. “According to the Lord’s word ..,” wrote Paul. That’s why – and the only reason why – we can be so totally sure. Because God has promised it will be so.
Well, not the only reason why (though reason enough in itself). Because there’s also what God has done. Which brings us back to Easter. Jesus died and rose again. The God who’s made that remarkable promise has a great track record already of raising the dead!
That’s the hope we have: the specific hope which is set before us in the gospel. And in that hope and towards that hope we press on, confident and eager in our anticipation of that wonderful day which is guaranteed, twice over, to us in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
But.
But it’s not just that very particular hope, the hope of resurrection, which is meant by the Scriptures when they speak of us living in hope, when they bracket our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ with both love and hope as well. They mean something more than that. They mean that whatever it is we may presently know – be it painful and sore, or pleasant, heart-warming and good – the best is still to come.
Always. We are always, as the psalmist says – whatever our present experience may be – we are always like ‘watchmen waiting for the morning’. Things may be hard, but a new day will dawn and there’ll be times so much better ahead. Or things may be good at the moment, but even then there’s better still to come. We live in hope. We are like watchmen waiting for the morning. Always. That’s what characterizes Christians.
I wonder if you noticed that great ‘oddity’ ingrained within the whole creation narrative. “And there was evening, and there was morning .. and there was evening, and there was morning ..” It’s one of the wonderful ‘drum-beats’ rolling through the Bible’s opening symphony of truth. But isn’t it ‘odd’?
It should be the other way round. At least it would have been the other way round, the way we tend to think. There was morning and there was evening – the end of the day. But the pattern there in the way God works is always the reverse: the evening into the morning.
Always, I say. Isn’t that exactly what you find in the way the great creator God effects His great salvation in His Son? The darkness of that dreadful Friday evening, as the lacerated corpse of Jesus was downloaded from the cross and buried in the tomb: then the early crisp, fresh brightness of a stunning Sunday morning, as the stone was rolled away and Jesus Christ, the Son of God so gloriously raised to life. Darkness turned to light. There was evening, and there was morning. The first day, all over again.
That’s the way that God works. Always. Evening to morning. And that’s why believers are likened to watchmen – because we’ve learned now enough about God and His whole way of working to be waiting ourselves for the morning. Isn’t that the striking, basic ’rhythm’ of the book we know as Judges? Evening – as the people go to sleep on the job, fall into decline and go spiralling into the night: and then morning – as God raises up a deliverer, as God again graciously speaks light into all of the darkness.
There was evening and there was morning. And there’s something progressive as well through that strangely encouraging book by the name of ‘Judges’. As the time and the chapters go by the ‘nights’ get progressively darker – indeed by the time you get to the end of the book it feels like it’s really pitch dark, does it not! And yet, the ‘mornings’ which follow get progressively brighter as well – is that not the case as well? Bigger, better, brighter. So that come the end of the book of Judges there’s the lovely bright dawn of the day of Ruth, giving way to a whole long series of books describing the ‘morning’ they’ve longed for, as the Lord does a stunning new thing, raising up for His people a champion, a leader, a king. Better by far.
There was evening, and there was morning. The ebb and flow of the Lord’s great work down the years. And every time the tide comes in, it’s further up the shore. Every time a new day dawns it’s brighter and more glorious than the one before. And so it went on beyond David, of course. So it’s gone on through the story of Christ’s church. And so, we’re assured, it will go on, through time and through eternity. We are, as believers, always like those watchmen, waiting for the morning: waiting, always waiting with a growing, great expectancy, waiting for the morning. The best is still to come. Always.
“The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn shining ever brighter till the full light of day” (Prov.4.18). But .. what then happens when we finally reach the ‘full day’?
I remember as a schoolboy reading and being struck by something D H Lawrence wrote. ‘To travel is better than to arrive,’ he wrote, acknowledging that he’d cribbed the thought from someone else (R L Stevenson). The statement intrigued me, and for long enough it slightly bothered me as I wondered what he meant. Until, while in South Africa some 50 plus years ago, I travelled slowly down ‘the Garden Route’ towards my goal of Capetown and its famous Table Mountain – a dream I’d cherished from childhood days: then to come at last, one evening as the sun was starting to set, to come to the brow of a hill and to look far away to the west and see, some 20 miles and more away, the stunning sight of the awesome Table Mountain rising up from the vast flat terrain and set against the backdrop of the early evening light – it took my breath away. It felt like I had been travelling, for years and years, always travelling onwards and forwards towards this dreamed-of destination; and here at last it was – rising high and majestic at the end of the huge expansive plains I’d still to cross. It felt that I’d finally arrived at the end of the world.
But what an anti-climax, once I’d finally arrived! I’d finally reached the end of the road. I’d arrived. And this was it. The travelling in hope, longing, expectation, was better than the having at last arrived. I understood what the guy had meant. The best was no longer ahead: it was here. There was nothing more to look forward to.
And I wondered then, Is that what it’s like when the day of resurrection finally comes? If that’s where the story will finally end, when you reach the end of the story are you left simply longing for more? Is that hope we have, the so-called ‘blessed hope’ .. is that hope which we have in Jesus Christ, that specific, particular hope, is that hope of resurrection where the whole thing ends? Is that the Table Mountain of our travelling? Is that the proverbial ‘full light of day’?
If that final consummation of the purposes of God is indeed the ultimate climax .. isn’t the rest of eternity bound to be (dare I say it) something of an anti-climax? I think that’s perhaps the deep, unspoken dread so many have, which makes them fear that heaven may actually be something of a ‘let-down’.
But no. Remember the famous chapter on ‘love’? ‘Now these three remain: faith, hope and love ..’ (1 Cor.13.13). There’s still hope in heaven! How important to grasp that truth. We continue, through all eternity, we continue to be as watchmen waiting for the morning, as children anticipating Christmas: there’s always more to look forward to and enjoy. Even when the best has come, the best is still to come! The path of the righteous keeps on getting better and better through all the aeons of eternity!
Hope, in other words, is as integral a part of that life we’ll enjoy in heaven and eternity as it is in time and here on earth. All because of who God is and how God works. ‘My Father is always at His work ..’, insisted Jesus: the great Creator God for whom through all eternity there’s always another morning still to come. Because He’s always working, we’re always watching, waiting and discovering again and again that even though the best has come there’s better still to come. Always!
What cause we have to celebrate in the midst of all the darkness of these days!
Yours in expectant hope,
Jeremy Middleton