Hope become Hope
Let me encourage you this morning to read all of Isaiah chapter 59. It sets the verses I want to highlight in their proper context. In verses nine and eleven, Isaiah repeats the phrase, “We hope for…but…” Here he is not using “hope” in the New Testament sense of a confident expectation based upon the promises of God. He is using it in the more common way that we might use it today. It is the “we hope it doesn’t rain,” when dark clouds are low and rolling over us kind of way.
Their hope was for light, brightness, justice, and salvation. What they were getting was darkness, gloom, injustice, and death.
Isaiah explains why their hopes were continually being dashed. “For our transgressions are multiplied before you, and our sins testify against us; for our transgressions are with us, and we know our iniquities; transgressing and denying the LORD and turning back from following our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart lying words.” (Verses 12 and 13).
They were sowing what they had reaped. You can hope for good health but if all you ever consume are Sinckers and Coke, good health won’t be knocking on your door anytime soon. They could hope for light and salvation, but transgression, iniquity, turning their backs on God, and lying wasn’t going to give them the results they hoped for.
This is a solemn chapter. Paul quotes from it in Romans when he describes the universal fallen human condition. In other words, this isn’t a chapter where we point the finger at the other guy. This is a chapter of deep self-examination and reflection. So, much of what our heart desires go unfulfilled because of our sinfulness. The good things we hope for remain out of reach or slip through our grasp because of our transgressing. We can’t expect to find the good things of God when we are “turning back from following our God.” (Verse 13).
Isaiah’s aim here is not to leave us without hope. That is why reading the whole chapter is crucial. Chapter 59 begins with these hopeful words: “Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull that he cannot hear…” It is then that Isaiah launches into his explanation of the problem that “your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.”
So, what is to be done? How can we bridge the chasm our sins have formed? Unfortunately, there is nothing any man can do to build a bridge to God. All is not lost though. We need not be left to wander in the wilderness of sin, longing for and hoping for better things that never materialize. When God sees “that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intercede; then his own arm brought him salvation…” (verse 16).
Isaiah finishes the chapter by declaring, “And a Redeemer will come to Zion…”
That promise was fulfilled by the coming of Jesus Christ. After history and human experience had demonstrated that man was and is incapable of saving himself, God himself came to save in the person of Jesus Christ.
In Jesus Christ, hope became more than misty fog that burns away each morning under the burning sun of reality. In Christ hope becomes a certain future that is full of promise, full of light, brightness, justice, and salvation. Because in Christ, that which creates the chasm between man and his God, transgression, and iniquity, is removed by His blood. As Paul wrote, all who believe in Him will not be disappointed.
Praise be to God!