Hope

In the liturgical Church calendar, the weeks leading up to Christmas are called Advent. They teach us to mark the time with ancient Israel as they waited for the promised King who would restore their Kingdom and make them a blessing to the nations after they had lost everything. After just 3 kings, the united kingdom split into two and both had kings who worshipped anything but the Lord their God. Because of this, along with injustice, greed, and pride, they were in violation of the covenant they’d had with God from the time he freed them from slavery in Egypt. 

So, God let other nations take them into exile. This was common for kingdoms to do to defeated people groups in the ancient world, but it was especially devastating for ancient Israel because a key feature of their covenant with God and his promises to them was possession of their own land and kingdom from which they could bless the whole world. When they went into exile, they had neither king nor kingdom. 

After a short time of exile, about 70 years, God begins to bring the people back to their land, but they are no longer a sovereign nation. The royal line endures, but they no longer have a king. They rebuild the temple, but God’s presence does not descend on it in a cloud as it had done when the first temple was completed. 

Nevertheless, the prophets continued to promise that God would come and restore the temple and Jerusalem, the capital city. So, the people waited. They waited for over 400 years in hope – the first theme of Advent. We’ll cover peace, joy, and love in the coming weeks. 

The Old Testament can be an intimidating and confusing series of books. Not only are there a variety of literary styles, but there are also a variety of authors. Further, it is an ancient book written for an ancient people whose language we do not understand. Nonetheless, there are many major themes that help us trace the story and the purpose of the ancient text. For this focus on Advent themes, I’d like to look at the major Old Testament covenants and how they relate to them as well as how they tell a cohesive, continuous story of God’s character and heart that none of his precious children should perish (1 Pt. 3:9). 

First, there is the Noahic covenant that God makes with Noah and his sons and their wives after the flood. Then, there is the Abrahamic covenant that God makes with Abraham and confirms with his son Isaac and his son Jacob, who becomes the father of the 12 tribes of Israel. Next, we have the Mosaic covenant between God and the 12 tribes of Israel after they are freed from slavery in Egypt. After that, God makes a covenant with David, the 2nd King of Israel and ancestor of Jesus. Finally, we’ll look at shadows of the New covenant, as they are seen in the Old Testament, established by Jesus after his death and resurrection. 

Now, to hope. Why do we need it? 

I don’t know about you, but I would not have survived my life thus far without hope. Our personal experiences can leave us wounded, disillusioned, and confused about others, the world, and ourselves. We need hope to make sense that, somehow, this all matters and that it will turn out good in the end. Our world can seem dark and bleak – I wouldn’t get up in the morning, most days, if I didn’t have hope that we can build a bright and lively world to counter all that darkness. The world is dark and bleak and our relationships and experiences disappoint us because, as GK Chesterton suggests, we are the problem. None of us are perfect in body, mind, or spirit. We’re born with literal and metaphorical fractures and cracks at the heart of our souls. And so, we can’t seem to get this humanity thing right. The world aches with us (Rm. 8:22). 

St. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, tells is that “hope does not disappoint us” (Rm. 5:5). We love that. It makes us feel good. What doesn’t make us feel as good are his words before that: 

Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. (Rm. 5:3-4, NIV) 

The prophet Habakkuk, who most likely prophesied during the last days before exile, told the people of Israel to take hold of hope and believe that God would keep his promises to restore Jerusalem, the kingship, and dwell with them again, even when it seemed impossible. He used the metaphor of a vine that is supposed to produce grapes for wine and told them to hope even though, “there are no grapes on the vines” (Hb 3:17). 

Abram, who would later be called Abraham, is promised a child. God tells him that he will give him more children than the stars in the sky, in fact. One problem: Abram and his wife are old enough to be great-grandparents. Yet, God tells him, repeatedly, to trust in him, to believe, to hope. And the promise is fulfilled: Isaac is born. 

Throughout the Scriptures, God invites his people to hope against impossible odds. Just from these three examples, we find invitations to hope for food when it looks like there will be none, trust in God’s promises when they are physically impossible, and trust that hope is a direct result of suffering. Our culture tends to characterize hope as this bright, sunshiny thing, but, Biblically speaking, it’s gritty. 

Before we trace the seeds of hope in the Old Testament covenants that God makes with his people, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out the seeds of hope even before that, right after the first people break a covenant of sorts with God. In Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve have rebelled, God says to the Serpent, who led them into rebellion, 

And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. (Gn. 3:15) 

Don’t miss this – it is critical for understanding everything that follows. From the moment of humanity’s first rebellion, when the fractures crackled and splintered to death in our souls, God gave a promise of hope. But not, please note, without suffering. The offspring of the Serpent, the enemy of our souls, would be defeated, but only through suffering. This is the foundation of hope. 

Many years later, humanity again rebels against God. This time, so severely that God decides that he must destroy them all from the Earth. But God, being God, has mercy on Noah and his family. Not because Noah is particularly good, but because he has the capacity to trust God and he does. Noah and his family are rescued through the flood and God promises that he won’t destroy humanity again, even though they will continue to rebel. This covenant, like the promise in Genesis 3:15 and some covenants to follow, is unconditional. This means that God will make sure that it happens, no matter what kind of rebellion humanity invents next. The sign of this covenant is a rainbow, pointed like a bow made for hunting, into the sky or heaven. This further signifies that God himself will ensure that humanity does not incur his wrath against rebellion and death any longer. 

I mentioned God’s promises to Abram, later Abraham, briefly above. The covenant that God makes with Abraham is also unconditional. This time, it is ratified by God passing through butchered animals as a firepot, all alone. In the ancient near east, the message would have been impossible to miss: God himself will uphold the covenant and will be slaughtered like the animals in order to do so. Another hopeful feature of this covenant is that Abraham’s descendants, literally “seed”, will bless the whole world. This is significant because “seed” is singular, referencing Christ. 

The Mosaic Covenant comes centuries later and it is the first conditional covenant that we have in the Bible, if you don’t want to count God’s initial promises and consequences as laid out for Adam and Eve. The terms of this covenant give us a hopeful glimpse of what a just, holy community where God dwells could look like. Who should we protect? Who should we elevate? What does it mean for God to dwell with us and how should we then live? The Mosaic Covenant answers these questions and many more. It gives us hope that God wants to live with his people, even in the midst of their fractured souls. But it is conditional – if the Israelites keep it, they will be blessed and be a blessing. If they don’t, they will be cursed and be a curse. They do not keep it. 

The Davidic Covenant has both conditional and unconditional elements to it. God promises that he will unconditionally never take his love away from David’s descendants, but he will conditionally maintain a strong and prosperous kingdom if the king rules justly and worships God alone. There is hope in this covenant as one of the unconditional elements is that a descendent of David will always sit on his throne. As the kings fail to uphold both the Davidic and Mosaic covenants, it looks like God won’t be able to make this happen. But the prophets reference this part of the covenant over and over again, pointing to the eternal King, Jesus, who will be a good and just king. 

Finally, like the Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, and Davidic covenants, the New covenant involves blood. Even the promise of Genesis 3:15 is sealed in blood as God kills animals to make clothes for Adam and Eve before they leave the Garden. The story of the Old Testament makes clear that blood is necessary to heal the fractures and cracks in the soul of humanity. Thus, Jesus, God himself, is brutally murdered, shedding much blood, in order to inaugurate the New covenant that is better and more permanent than any that came before it. It is more unconditional because we could not break it if we tried. When all the other covenants are ratified, it is the blood of animals that is shed. The prophets repeatedly tell us and ancient Israel that this isn’t really what God wants, though, – he wants his people to “act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). Further, in the Mosaic covenant, sin offerings were mostly for accidental or unintentional sins. If you murdered someone or intentionally acted with greed and dishonesty, the penalty was death – there was no forgiveness for these sins. But, thanks be to God, through Jesus’ blood, better and more precious than any animal’s, there is forgiveness for even the worst sins.  

Suffering leads to hope. It has been the same story all along. It is a bittersweet and poignant reality that to really have hope, we must really suffer. And yet, hope will not disappoint us. Habakkuk's grape vines will produce fruit. Abraham and Sarah will have a child. Israel will have a king who reigns with justice and mercy forever and ever and ever, Amen.  

Though God makes many promises and there are many covenants, the message is always the same: hope in God, oh people of the Earth, for he alone is “mighty to save” (Zeph. 3:17). Advent invites us to learn this each year, anew.