Words of Hope

A Word Study on the Biblical Word "Hope"

Study #46 - The Messianic Hope

We have been considering the close association and relationship between faith and hope in the New Testament Scriptures.  We have seen that while hope is an element of faith it is not strictly equivalent to it.  Our hope as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ is a product or fruit of our faith in Him.  In faith we look back upon what Christ has done and trust in Him in the present to save us from our sins.  In hope we look ahead in anticipation and expectation of all that has been promised to us in our salvation.  As Richard Lenski wrote:

"As to faith and hope, the former embraces salvation as it is present, the latter embraces salvation as what is yet in the future.  Hope rests on faith; faith always bears hope with it." 

But before Christ came as the Savior of mankind the promise of a Redeemer and the possibility of redemption from the guilt and bondage of sin was all in the future.  Everything in the Old Testament pointed forward to the day when the Messiah would come and actually accomplish all that was foreshadowed in the sacrificial offerings and the Levitical priesthood.  While New Testament believers are justified before God by looking back in faith upon the Christ who has come, the believers under the Old Testament were saved by looking ahead in faith for the Christ who was yet to come.  For this reason, the faith of the Old Testament saints has often been described as their Messianic Hope.  For them, their faith was indeed inseparable from their hope and expectation of a future Messiah.  We have noted that the word "hope" is actually quite rare in the Gospel accounts, perhaps due to the fact that the message of the Gospel was designed to prove that this promised Messiah had actually come, and that "hope" or "expectation" was to give way to "faith" and "trust" in the now present Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ.  But the Messianic hope was indeed quite strong among the Jewish people at the time of our Savior's Advent even though there were conflicting and even erroneous views among the rabbis and scribes as to the nature of that hope and the identity or nature of the Messiah.  H. E. Dana, in his book entitled The New Testament World, noted that: "At the dawn of the Christian Era no other element held a larger place in Jewish life at large than this Messianic expectation. Whatever of hope the future contained was associated with it.  It was the vital center of Jewish religion ... It was the preserving salt of Jewish religious life, and did more than any other historical cause in preparing an audience for Jesus."  We hope to look at the various forms this Messianic hope took during the days of our Lord in future posts.  It is truly an enlightening study for this time of year as we approach the Christmas season.  One of the first references to "hope" in the New Testament deals with this Messianic Hope - the expectation of a coming Redeemer:  "Behold my servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall show judgment to the Gentiles ... And in his name shall the Gentiles trust" (Matthew 12:18,21).  Here the Greek word elpizo (hope) is translated in the King James Version as trust.  In the context, Matthew was quoting from Isaiah 42:1-3 to show that the Lord Jesus in His message, ministry, and methods was fulfilling in detail this prophecy of the Messiah.  It is significant to note that this prophecy was one of many that extended the Messianic hope of the Jewish people to include the Gentile nations.  The promised Messiah was to be sent, not to the Jewish nation only, but to the whole world.  While this was a hard concept for many among the Jews to accept, God had made this fact abundantly clear:  The provision of salvation and spiritual redemption through the coming Messiah was to be offered to people of all nations because all people need to be saved from their sins.  Even apart from God's special revelation to Israel in the Old Testament Scriptures, the hope for a Messiah was often expressed even in the pagan world.  The details the Messianic hope were different, but the desire was the same.  The prophet Haggai had referred to the Messiah as "the desire of all nations" (Haggai 2:6).  Again we may quote Dana:  "The Messianic hope was by no means peculiar to Judaism. The history of religion discloses that in varying forms it appears in the majority of the ancient religions ... Jesus of Nazareth was the culmination and highest expression of a noble hope which was all but universal in the ancient religious mind."  We may attribute this in part to the dispersion of the Jews throughout much of the world.  Wherever the Jewish people went they took the hope of the Messiah with them.  This may help to explain how the "wise men" of the East knew about the Messiah who was to be born in Bethlehem and that a "star" was to herald His birth.  The prophecy of Isaiah had declared that "the isles shall wait (Hebrew yahal) for his law."  Matthew, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit interprets this and translates it accordingly.  Lenski explains as follows:  "The inhabitants of the islands were Gentiles.  To wait for is to hope.  And Torah ('law') is his Name ... 'the revelation' which makes Christ (or God) known to men ... This waiting and hoping expresses the great need of Christ on the part of the pagan world.  In the whole world the heathen find nothing that can save them; their only hope is Christ" (emphasis mine).  The message of Christmas is that this Promised Hope has come in the incarnate Son of God who was born as a baby in Bethlehem!  Have you put your hope and trust in Him?