Hope Triumphant
I just wrote this to a friend, and thought it might encourage other people too. :)
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It's really encouraging when I think about how God fulfilled his promises in Christ, and what that means for my life. The Jews in exile in Babylon must have felt so abandoned, lied to—didn't God promise David, after all, that "Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever" (2 Sam 7:16)? So why is the king, the son of David, now cut off and humiliated before the power of Babylon? Why is the temple destroyed? Why has God abandoned us, and abandoned His promises to us? When you read Psalm 89 in this context, it's so heartbreaking—in verses 19-37 the writer (Ethan the Ezrahite) talks about the promise God made to David:
"Once for all, I have sworn by my holiness—
and I will not lie to David—
that his line will continue forever...
"But you have rejected, you have spurned,
you have been very angry with your anointed one.
"You have renounced the covenant with your servant
and have defiled his crown in the dust."
What is going on? the psalmist wonders. How can God break His own promise, which he swore to David He would uphold forever?
And yet, the reality of God's promise to David was so much bigger than simply having a descendant of his to always reign as king over the political state of Judah. God's promise was fulfilled in Jesus, in a way that was so much bigger and greater than anything Ethan and the other exiles could have imagined—something that took the people of Israel's sinful desire for a king and turned it into a glorious expression of God's faithfulness.
The same thing can be shown with the crucifixion and the resurrection. What must the disciples have felt when they saw Jesus rejected, crushed, humiliated, and killed at the hands of the Romans and the Jewish leaders? What kind of teacher were they following? They must have felt so let down, disappointed, maybe even deceived in a way. No wonder Thomas didn't want to believe. Behind his doubts was his broken heart, his broken hopes. "I don't want to hope again until I know without a doubt—it would hurt too much to be disappointed again." Jesus understood and was merciful to him—he came and showed him the reality of God's promise fulfilled. The cross was not a failure, but the most incredible and shocking triumph of God in history. And God was shown to be faithful—even if the way He fulfilled His promises was not always what the people were expecting, it was much better than they could have imagined.
Praise God! When I think of how He's done this in the past, it encourages me to believe that God can and will fulfill His promises to me, even in times when I can't see how that could happen. It makes me want to never lose hope, to always believe and trust in God even when I fear my hopes being broken and my dreams being shattered, because even if God does end up breaking some of my hopes, the reality of what He replaces it with will always be better than I could have hoped for, as in the end we will all clearly see.
Read the entirety of Psalm 89 here.
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It's really encouraging when I think about how God fulfilled his promises in Christ, and what that means for my life. The Jews in exile in Babylon must have felt so abandoned, lied to—didn't God promise David, after all, that "Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever" (2 Sam 7:16)? So why is the king, the son of David, now cut off and humiliated before the power of Babylon? Why is the temple destroyed? Why has God abandoned us, and abandoned His promises to us? When you read Psalm 89 in this context, it's so heartbreaking—in verses 19-37 the writer (Ethan the Ezrahite) talks about the promise God made to David:
"Once for all, I have sworn by my holiness—
and I will not lie to David—
that his line will continue forever...
"But you have rejected, you have spurned,
you have been very angry with your anointed one.
"You have renounced the covenant with your servant
and have defiled his crown in the dust."
What is going on? the psalmist wonders. How can God break His own promise, which he swore to David He would uphold forever?
And yet, the reality of God's promise to David was so much bigger than simply having a descendant of his to always reign as king over the political state of Judah. God's promise was fulfilled in Jesus, in a way that was so much bigger and greater than anything Ethan and the other exiles could have imagined—something that took the people of Israel's sinful desire for a king and turned it into a glorious expression of God's faithfulness.
The same thing can be shown with the crucifixion and the resurrection. What must the disciples have felt when they saw Jesus rejected, crushed, humiliated, and killed at the hands of the Romans and the Jewish leaders? What kind of teacher were they following? They must have felt so let down, disappointed, maybe even deceived in a way. No wonder Thomas didn't want to believe. Behind his doubts was his broken heart, his broken hopes. "I don't want to hope again until I know without a doubt—it would hurt too much to be disappointed again." Jesus understood and was merciful to him—he came and showed him the reality of God's promise fulfilled. The cross was not a failure, but the most incredible and shocking triumph of God in history. And God was shown to be faithful—even if the way He fulfilled His promises was not always what the people were expecting, it was much better than they could have imagined.
Praise God! When I think of how He's done this in the past, it encourages me to believe that God can and will fulfill His promises to me, even in times when I can't see how that could happen. It makes me want to never lose hope, to always believe and trust in God even when I fear my hopes being broken and my dreams being shattered, because even if God does end up breaking some of my hopes, the reality of what He replaces it with will always be better than I could have hoped for, as in the end we will all clearly see.
Read the entirety of Psalm 89 here.
posted by Seth | 2:23 PM
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