235. Hope in your End
Jeremiah 31:17 And there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord, that thy children shall come again to their own border.
No matter how black, dark and bitter life in Exile seems to be right now there is hope in the end. There is light at the end of the tunnel, and the light is Christ and His eternal kingdom, the homeland to which we belong and to which we will return. Your end, your future, your destiny, is bright and hopeful. You are going somewhere beautiful; it is the bright and glorious end for which you have been redeemed. When we remember this glorious promise and when we know the hope of eternity we have the strength for dealing with the present.
The immediate promise, of course, is for the Jews, that they will in the end be brought back from Babylonian Exile and their future generations will dwell in the Home of the Promised Land. But, the promise is also for NT believers in Christ who will be brought out of this world (Babylon) back into the home of the Father’s kingdom, which is the Promised Land. This Land is our Land. We are going back to the Paradise from which we were expelled. This is your end.
This future hope is so real that it lives in our present, alongside the “valley of the shadow of death.” The hope of the end is the reality of present truth; it lives in the heart of the believer; the sufferings and troubles of this present exile from our Paradise Promised Homeland will not take over our lives and take us away from our Hope that is Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. It is potentially possible that we could lose everything, but we can never lose our Hope. Our end is sure, and if it is, then our present is secure.
Hope is the present reality of a future (and as yet unseen) promise. Jesus is the reason for the hope that is within us. It is seen by faith. Faith takes hold of the promise. The Holy Spirit gives this kind of faith through the preaching and ministering of the Gospel.