Words of Hope

A Word Study on the Biblical Word "Hope"

Study #53 - Hope Toward God

As we work our way through the message of hope in the Book of Acts we are constantly reminded that the believer's hope is the hope of the resurrection.  This was the great Apostolic message:  that the atoning death, burial, and bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is the sole basis of man's salvation, and that this salvation includes not only the full and free forgiveness of all our sins but the gift of everlasting life through faith in the Person and Saving Work of Christ, and that this gift of everlasting life includes the physical resurrection of the believer's body from the grave so that we may live in a glorified state, perfected in body and soul to live for all eternity in the Presence of our God and Savior.  As the Apostle Paul preached this Gospel of the Risen Christ he began to be persecuted by those who refused to believe in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, largely because they refused to believe that He was indeed the promised Messiah.  This placed Paul in a position to defend his preaching of the Risen Savior before both Jewish and Roman authorities.  And the more he was attacked for proclaiming the Resurrection of Christ the more he defended his message by appealing to the Old Testament Scriptures that prophesied the future resurrection of the dead which even his persecutors claimed to believe.  We may trace his defense of this great doctrine as follows:  First, before the Jewish Sanhedrin he divided his accusers by proclaiming that the doctrine of the future resurrection of the dead was at the very core of his message:  "But when Paul perceived that the one part were Sadducees, and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, Men and brethren ... of the hope of the resurrection of the dead I am called in question" (Acts 23:6).  This produced an immediate division between the sect of the Pharisees who believed in the doctrine of a resurrection and the sect of the Sadducees who did not (vs. 7-9).  It is clear that Paul was appealing to the historical belief of the more conservative Jews while exposing the radical departure from that belief among the liberal and unbelieving among them.  It is a grave error of modern so-called "scholars" who deny that the Jewish people had any concept of a resurrection or of life beyond death.  So much so that Paul could later declare before the Jewish elders of Rome that the very doctrine of the resurrection was the ancient "hope of Israel" (Acts 28:20).  Secondly, Paul not only appealed to the ancient faith of Israel in his defense of the resurrection, he attached that doctrine to his faith in God:  "But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and the prophets: and have hope toward God, which they also allow, that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust" (Acts 24:14,15).  In this great defense before the Roman Governor Felix, the Apostle Paul made it clear that to deny the resurrection  would amount to a denial of his faith in the God of the Bible!  This would be so for at least two reasons:  1) To deny the resurrection would be a denial of the Word of God, that is, all that is written in the Old Testament Scriptures (the law and the prophets); and 2) To deny the resurrection would amount to denying the Power of God, that is, that God is able to perform what He had in fact promised!  These two arguments are laid out before King Agrippa by the Apostle Paul in Acts 26 where he first speaks of the resurrection as "the hope of the promise" (vs.6,7) and then challenges Agrippa's unbelief by asking, "Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?" (vs.8).  In other words, to assume that belief in the resurrection of the dead is unreasonable or to dismiss it as an impossibility is paramount to doubting God's veracity on the one hand and denying God's ability on the other!  When our hope is fixed upon God, the hope of the resurrection is not only believable, it is inevitable, for God cannot and will not deny Himself or fail to perform everything He has promised!