The God of Hope, Part 2 (Rev 21:1–5) from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

In order to get a “person on the street” perspective on hope as I studied it in Edinburgh, I did a little informal interviewing on the Royal Mile where you can always find people from all over the world. I asked what people thought of when they heard the word “hope.” A Scottish lady said, “Wishful,” while another in his twenties from the Ukraine, “what I have when looking for a job,” and yet another Scot, “something will go right.” Then I asked if hope played a part in their lives. One Canadian said that it didn’t, that she was lucky and made things happen. Another, a sixty-ish Scottish lady, replied, “Not too much, just get on with it.” What seemed quite apparent to me in the ten people that I quizzed was the failure to express a solid hope grounded in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Unfortunately, their misplaced hope is quite normal although not healthy and Christ-centered. Since those moments when temptation led to the fall, humanity has hoped for something better. Those collaborating at Babel hoped that through human effort in building a tower to heaven, they would bring about unity, satisfaction, and happiness for all. But their attempts toward that end excluded the Lord God, ending only in confusion, alienation, and division.

Solomon had every resource at his disposal and the power and freedom to do anything that he set his mind on. So he sought what he thought would be the perfect life. He experimented with food, wine, women, gardens, building projects, and even knowledge, but could only cry “Vanity! Vanity! Everything is vanity and chasing after the wind.”

Just a year before Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door at Wittenburg, Sir Thomas More wrote his famous novel Utopia, where he told of an island with perfectly organized cities, where everyone got along, where they swapped homes every few years and wore the same kind of clothing and had work equality. Ironically, More’s title in Greek literally meant, “no place” (eu-not; topos-place). Utopia didn’t exist. When communism attempted a similar model it only brought disaster and bondage.

But there is a place and eternal existence with life far beyond the imaginations of those at Babel, Solomon, or Thomas More. Yet for it to become reality the Lamb of God had to bear away at the cross the sin, corruption, and effects of the fall. When the Father raised Him from the dead, Jesus’ resurrection body became the first fruits of what He accomplished through His redemptive work. His resurrection assures His people’s hope for a new life unlike anything imaginable. That hope warms the hearts of believers in trials, illness, affliction, persecution, temptation, and in the face of death. Such hope, a partner with faith, “has more of a futuristic emphasis” to it than faith by itself. It is “faith directed toward the future fulfillment of the promises of God” [John Frame, Systematic Theology, 956].

When John wrote Revelation, he sought to encourage a people living under the experience and threat of persecution. They felt the heavy hand of Roman oppression, with more to come. But they were to live as overcomers despite the pressure, and they could as they learned to live in the hope bound up in the gospel’s promises. What does hope in Christ promise? We discover just a glimpse of it in this passage.

A contrast is set by John declaring, “the first heaven and the first earth passed away . . . the first things have passed away” and “Behold, I am making all things new.” He alerts us to a distinctive transition. What we have been seeing and experiencing around us will be changed. There’s still a heaven and earth but the “first things,” marred and corrupted by the fall, have given way to “all things new.” So John attempts to describe what has gone and what has come. He uses highly figurative, metaphorical, and symbolical apocalyptic language rather than literal language, as we shall see.[...]