Emerging Hope

Jeremiah 33:14-16

Introduction

One of the most difficult things to hold onto, depending upon your circumstances, is hope. In fact, we may be afraid to even try to hope. I recently came across this statement in Psychology Today about the danger of hope:

“The emotion of hope pertains to that which hasn’t yet transpired. So it’s only natural that the more favorable our expectations of the future, the greater will be our disappointment—or disillusionment—when these expectations aren’t met or are irrevocably crushed. In this sense, it’s much better to consciously restrain our hopes so we can also limit the hurt that a defeat, failure, or setback likely would engender. Hoping may be pleasurable, but hope defeated can be quite painful.”

How do you feel as you hear those words? Does that ring true or are you shocked that someone would say something like that? When I was younger, I would tell people that I always expected the worst because I would always either be right or pleasantly surprised.

Going back to that quote I read to you, there is truth in it. Hope by itself does not do anything. If you get diagnosed with an illness and instead of seeking treatment, you just hope that you get better, you will be disappointed. If instead of trying to get a job, you just hope all the bills will get paid and food will appear on the table, you might have some trouble. 

Hope in hope is a false hope. Hope only works when it is hope in someone or something that is trustworthy. As a child, I always hoped that I would have a roof over my head and food on my table. Not every child has that hope fulfilled. But I knew my parents and knew that they had both the means and the desire to provide in that way. It was a well founded hope.

What is hope? Franklin D. Roosevelt said: “We have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon.” 

We are living in a time when people are desperately seeking hope. People are hoping in the medical professionals, in the government, in their own research, whatever it may be. Some things have a better claim to our hope than others. To prevent disappointment, we need to make sure that our hope is well placed.

The Bible has much to say about hope and specifically placing our hope in God. We are going to look at a passage that makes sense to us but would have been very challenging to the original audience.

Hope For Israel

Jeremiah was a prophet who lived in the seventh and sixth centuries before Christ. This was a very difficult time for his people. You might even say: hopeless. The northern kingdom of Israel had been exiled by the Assyrians. Now the southern kingdom of Judah was under pressure from the Babylonians. After a strong king with Josiah, who reigned for 31 years, there was a series of weaker kings. It was looking like all of Israel and Judah would disappear as had so many peoples before them. The once mighty throne of David would soon to come to an end as well.

Now there had been promises. God had promised Abraham that a great people would come from him. God had promised David that his line of kings would last forever. But how do you hold onto hope when everything around you is looking so hopeless?

People tried to hope. For some, their hope was in Egypt. Despite being the place the Hebrews had once been in slavery, they were the enemy of the Babylonians. Perhaps if Judah threw its support behind Egypt, together they could stop the Babylonians. But Egypt was not the same Egypt that it was during the time of Joseph and Moses. They too had been a time of decline and would be lucky to keep their own independence, much less be able to protect Judah.

It was in this context that Jeremiah prophesied. Jeremiah was not a popular prophet. What the people wanted to hear was that God was going to step in and wipe out the Babylonians before their eyes. But that is not what Jeremiah told them. Rather he told them that this was God’s punishment and that they needed to submit to this discipline and not fight back against Babylon and to especially not rely on the Egyptians. You can imagine how well that went over.

Jeremiah came across as a prophet of doom but he was also a prophet of hope. The Babylonians would take Jerusalem but that was not the end of the story. The key phrase is “The days are coming.” This is what we need to remember about hope. Hope is not about immediate relief. Hope is about a day coming that will overcome all the suffering that happened  before it.

This prophecy of hope is about a branch from David’s line. Have you ever had a plant that you thought was dead and then suddenly new growth appears? That is what God would do with David’s line. At the time, people hoped that this branch would be a king that would appear soon and defeat the Babylonians. Instead it was a branch that would appear centuries later in Jesus Christ. God plays the long game and hope is always looking to the future. God was faithful and any hope that was put in God was well founded.

Hope For the Church

We have an advantage over the people of Jeremiah’s day in that we are living on the other side of the fulfillment of that prophecy. The righteous branch has appeared through Jesus Christ. The Son of David is ruling in a way far beyond the best of the Davidic kings of the past. Jesus is on the throne and he is the King of kings.

But that does not mean that we cease to struggle with hope. We are going to feel the sting of physical or mental illness, of financial or relational struggles. We are still living in the midst of a pandemic. Two weeks to flatten the curve. Just wait until summer. Once the vaccine appears. All of these things have helped and yet here we are, still with an uncertain future.

The point of all of this is that God is worthy of our hope. God fulfilled the prophecy in a way that even Jeremiah could not have imagined. The Son of God died for our sins and was raised on the third day. That changes everything.

Here we are as individuals and as a Christian community, surrounded with reasons to be hopeless and yet we cling to hope. We can hope because of who God is. That does not mean that we have no role in our future. Nor does it mean that things will get better immediately. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. said “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” In his case, MLK died before seeing what he was working toward and in many areas, the fight continues. But he trusted in God and knew that infinite hope was worth reaching for.

As individuals and a congregation, we will experience circumstances that are discouraging. But we are never hopeless because our hope is in God.

Conclusion

How are you feeling right now? Are you feeling hopeful or hopeless? We all go through times of feeling hopeless. I’m sure that the people Jeremiah was prophesying to were feeling hopeless.

But here is what I want you to hear: Feeling hopeless and being hopeless are not the same thing. It is natural for us to feel hopeless but reality is not determined by our feelings. God was at work in Israel and God was at work in the Church. God is at work in our congregation and is at work in our lives. God is bringing us from one place to a better place on a timetable that we do not understand. But the truth of that statement means that we can always have hope even when the feelings are not cooperating.