In a world like ours – a world where sin reigns, where the devil goes around tempting sinners with all the skill of a corrupt but powerful mind – it is not surprising that so many people feel hopeless as they consider their present circumstances or look into the future. It is particularly sad when a sense of hopelessness drives people to suicide. It is tremendously solemn for anyone to plunge into a lost eternity, described as “the blackness of darkness for ever” (Jude 1:13), where no ray of hope can ever penetrate. However hopeless people’s prospects may seem in this life, they must in reality be hugely better than what sinners experience in hell.
After God had created Adam and Eve, their hearts were filled with hopeful attitudes; as they looked into the future they could expect to experience entire blessedness and nothing else. But that all changed when Satan came into the Garden of Eden in the form of a serpent and successfully tempted both human beings to sin against God. When they heard the voice of the Lord God in the Garden, their hearts were most certainly not filled with hope. They could only believe that God was against them as a result of their sin; they had no right to expect anything from Him but judgement. If they had understood their position properly, their hearts would have been filled with deep, dark despair.
Yet God, in infinite kindness, gave a revelation of mercy. He made known that the Seed of the woman would come to bruise the serpent’s head, while His own heel would be bruised – in other words, He must suffer. After this revelation, no one who heard it had any need to feel hopeless. Abel had no need to feel hopeless, and by faith he offered up a sacrifice according to the revealed mind of God, one which involved the shedding of the blood of an animal, as a substitute for himself. Accordingly his offering was accepted and, though his life was violently taken from him, his soul was at once brought into a state of irreversible, total blessedness.
With Cain it was otherwise. His sacrifice was not according to the mind of God; he brought an offering which he imagined was appropriate. But it was not; there was no death of a substitute; Cain rejected the truth that “without shedding of blood is no remission” of sin (Heb 9:22). In contrast with Abel, Cain did not exercise faith in the Seed of the woman, the Saviour who was to come in the fullness of time, who was typified by every sacrifice that was offered in obedience to God’s revelation. Though God dealt with Cain in a very restrained way in this life, Cain seems to have looked into the future with a feeling of hopelessness; he said, “My punishment is greater than I can bear” (Gen 4:13). What reason those who reject God’s revelation, of free and full salvation in Christ, have to consider seriously how hopeless their position will be beyond death if they continue in their rebellion.
Throughout the Old Testament period, no one had any reason to despair who heard of the way of salvation revealed by the Lord, in connection with sacrifice. The time of Moses was a period of further revelation; from then on, any soul conscious of danger because of the guilt of sin was to bring an offering to the place that God had appointed. While the sacrifice itself could not take away sin, any more than Abel’s did, that person’s guilt was taken away if by faith he looked forward to the coming of the Messiah, to whom the sacrifice pointed. That person, conscious also of the power of sin in his soul and his need to be cleansed from his corruption, was to look to the ceremonies of cleansing appointed by God and see that they pointed to a divine cleansing of the soul.
No one who had heard that the true God is a God of mercy had any need to despair in the face of sin; indeed they had no right to despair. W S Plumer remarks, in his Commentary on the Psalms: “As despair is a great sin, so it is our duty to hope in the Lord . . . it is no presumption in us to embrace the glad tidings and hope in God’s mercy. . . . Owen: ‘The Lord Jehovah is the only hope for distressed souls’” (on Ps 130:5,7). One might say that a sinner in Israel approaching the tabernacle or the temple could picture a banner over it bearing the word hope. So David could sing, “Let Israel hope in the Lord: for with the Lord there is mercy, and with Him is plenteous redemption. And He shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities” (Ps 130:7,8).
Here Israel were encouraged to hope in the Lord and receive spiritual blessings through trusting in Him as He had revealed Himself; they knew of God’s merciful provision for sinners. God’s spiritual Israel, His believing people, are in New Testament times to hope in the Lord in all circumstances; by faith they have received God’s testimony to His merciful provision in Christ. And the unconverted who belong to the visible Church and hear that testimony in the Scriptures and in the preaching of the Word must not despair; it is their duty to trust in the Lord and in Jesus Christ, whom the Father sent into the world to suffer and die in the place of sinners.
Plumer remarks on Psalm 130:7: “How glorious is redemption – the re-redemption purchased by Christ! It is so full, so safe for man, so honourable to God. It exactly meets the demands of the law and the necessities of sinners. There is no limit to its sufficiency. It rescues from all sin, all guilt, all punishment. . . . Owen: ‘The ground of all hope and expectation of relief in sinners is mere grace, mercy and redemption. All other grounds of hope are false and deceiving. Inexhaustible stores of mercy and redemption are needful for the encouragement of sinners to rest and wait on God.'”
How glorious is the merciful provision for sinners in the New Testament age, especially as it is revealed with so much greater clarity than before! Now sinners are not confined any longer to a revelation which largely consists in types and shadows, but one that looks back to the Messiah, who has actually come into the world and finished the work which He was given to do for the salvation of rebels against God. Indeed no matter how hopeless people might feel in their particular circumstances, there is no need to despair, seeing the throne of grace is open to them.
When Philip found Nathanael and told him about finding “Him of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph”, he was telling Nathanael that the Messiah had come. What hope there was now for sinners like Nathanael, especially when the Saviour told him that He was the One to whom Jacob’s ladder pointed: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man” (Jn 1:51). As both God and man, Jesus of Nazareth was the Mediator between heaven and earth, the means of communion between God and man. In Him there is hope of the communion being restored which was lost, through Satan’s evil temptation, in the Garden of Eden. Sinners need not enter the regions of despair in a lost eternity; through the work of Christ, made known in the gospel message, they are shown how they may enter into fellowship with their Maker.
When Paul and Silas were in Philippi, they preached the gospel of Jesus Christ. So, when they found the group of women beside the river outside the city, it was a message of hope that Paul proclaimed to them. And these truths were blessed to Lydia, when her heart was opened by the Holy Spirit. Again, when the jailor was in despair, on the verge of suicide – assuming that all the prisoners had fled following the earthquake – he asked Paul and Silas: “What must I do to be saved?” Their answer was the only one that could bring hope in such a situation: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved”. It is still the same message that is needed today. The gospel is the one reliable message of hope, even in a generation which is so bent on rejecting God. Every sinner should believe that the idea of hope is to be recognised whenever they listen to the gospel.