Is There Hope?

In the Book of Ezra we find the children of Israel returning to the land after seventy years of exile.  They had fallen away from God and given themselves over to idolatrous worship and pagan practices.  But God, in His mercy had decreed through Cyrus King of Persia to release the Jews with his blessing to return to the land and rebuild the temple.  Ezra was spearheading the restoration of worship when he discovers that the people haven’t separated themselves from the evil practices of the pagan peoples.  Not only that, they have begun to intermarry with the people of the land (Ezra 9:1-2).  Ezra is broken in heart over it, rips his clothes, weeps, and finally just crumples down astonished at what has happened.  After all, this was what had gotten them into trouble with God in the first place.

Continuing in chapter 9 on over into chapter 10 we find Ezra weeping, praying, confessing, and totally broken over the sin of God’s people.  Reading in verse 15 of chapter 9 he states, “O LORD God of Israel, you are righteous: for we remain yet escaped, as it is this day: behold, we are before you in our trespasses: for we cannot stand before you because of this.”  He feels hopeless and condemned because of what has occurred.  And I think he probably felt personally responsible since he was a scribe, which was a teacher of the law to God’s people.

Ezra is a defeated, demoralized, discouraged man.  He has no hope and in the midst of we read ‘Ezra 10:2 And Shecaniah the son of Jehiel, one of the sons of Elam, answered and said unto Ezra, We have trespassed against our God, and have married foreign wives of the people of the land: yet now there is hope in Israel concerning this thing.’  Notice a few words in his statement of faith.

1  He says, “yet”.  He’s saying, “Ezra, it’s not over, it’s not finished.  The final nail has not been driven in our coffin.”  Sometimes we think we are past restoring or maybe ‘fixing’, but God isn’t finished with us yet!

2.  He says too, “in spite of this”.  In other words, as Paul said in Romans 5:20 ‘But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound:’

3.  Shecaniah said ‘there is hope’.  Where would we be without hope?  Where would we be without a light at the end of the tunnel?  Where would we be without a future?

Let me share a story I read a few years back.  I think it illustrates the hope we have in Christ.

The school system in a large city had a program to help children keep up with their school work during stays in the city’s hospitals. One day a teacher who was assigned to the program received a routine call asking her to visit a particular child. She took the child’s name and room number and talked briefly with the child’s regular class teacher. “We’re studying nouns and adverbs in his class now,” the regular teacher said, “and I’d be grateful if you could help him understand them so he doesn’t fall too far behind.”

The hospital program teacher went to see the boy that afternoon. No one had mentioned to her that the boy had been badly burned and was in great pain. Upset at the sight of the boy, she stammered as she told him, “I’ve been sent by your school to help you with nouns and adverbs.” When she left she felt she hadn’t accomplished much. But the next day, a nurse asked her, “What did you do to that boy?” The teacher felt she must have done something wrong and began to apologize. “No, no,” said the nurse. “You don’t know what I mean. We’ve been worried about that little boy, but ever since yesterday, his whole attitude has changed. He’s fighting back, responding to treatment. It’s as though he’s decided to live.”

Two weeks later the boy explained that he had completely given up hope until the teacher arrived. Everything changed when he came to a simple realization. He expressed it this way: “They wouldn’t send a teacher to work on nouns and adverbs with a dying boy, would they?”

The bottom line for us is that God would not have sent His Son to die for us if there were no hope.  Think on that….