August 14
August 14
Your hope in this life and the one to come is covenant hope.
Every human being who has ever lived has searched for hope. Hope is what gets us up in the morning and gives us a reason to keep grinding. Hope is where we look for meaning and purpose. Hope tells us that somehow and in some way things will be okay. Hope keeps us going even when things are hard. Your hope is your light in the darkness. Hope always has two parts: an expectation and an object. You long for something, and you look to something or someone to deliver it. For example, you long for love and you search for someone to love you. Sadly, most of our hopes disappoint us, because we place our hope in the wrong person or thing. But we don’t give up; we get up off the floor to hope once again, because we have been hardwired for hope. God did this so that our hope-longing would drive us to him.
In all of this life and the one to come, only one kind of hope will not disappoint. It is secure and trustworthy and will always deliver what it has promised. This hope is offered again and again throughout Scripture. It is dependable hope because it doesn’t look to a fallen creation to do what fallen creation cannot do. It is reliable because it doesn’t look for hope in another person, who by nature has limited wisdom, righteousness, and strength. No, this hope is found in the one who cannot lie but has the power and authority to deliver every single one of his promises, in just the right place and at just the right time. But this hope is even more specific: it is found in the unalterable covenant that God has made with his children. He will never break his covenant promises:
Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and will remember their sin no more. (Jer. 31:31–34)
We have hope because God has made beautiful and eternal covenant promises that he will not break.