Zechariah 9:12 Turn you to the strong hold, you prisoners of hope: even to day do I declare that I will render double to you; Fear and hope have two things in common. They are both prospective. They regard the future as possible. We neither hope nor fear that which cannot conceivably affect us. With these two points of resemblance, Hope and Fear are in all else opposite and contradictory to each other. Fear is the apprehension of a future possible evil. Hope is the anticipation of a future possible good. Human life is largely indebted to hope: almost all that redeems it from gloom and misery is, if you look into it, hope more than happiness. Hope, not fruition, is the happiness, while we are in the body, of man that must die. This hope has degrees. One man is full of it. He puts his hand to nothing without intending, expecting, resolving to succeed. And the hope which cheers also strengthens. Expectation is success — unless the calculation has been utterly fanciful, and the sum wrongly added. Certainly the absence of hope is a bar to success. Depression is always weakness. A man is not entirely responsible for it; health, temperament, nature, may alone be to blame. More often there is blame; a man has not braced himself by early discipline: he has let the fibre of character become loose and feeble; he has admitted into the memory, into the conscience, into the life, something of that which is utter weakness — sin. Great things are never done, even small successes are never achieved, where there is no hope. Not to hope is not to have. The Gospel will have a place for hope. We are to ask what it is. How does Christ use this powerful principle? He makes it everything. St. Paul even says, "We are saved by hope." Of Christ it is said, "For the joy which was set before Him, He endured the Cross." The anticipation of a blessed future, which is the definition of hope, supported our Lord in working out our redemption. You will find that every thing ever done bravely and effectively in the strength of Christ by His people, has been done in the power of hope. Fear may teach watchfulness. Fear may keep a man to his duty. Fear may constrain a man to combat a sin, or shake off a bad companion, or to resolve to make his life less purposeless, and more decided; but fear, if it stood alone, could make no man a hero, nor a martyr, nor a saint. That is left for hope. We see in education the stimulus of hope. How largely do we use it in every school system that is worth the name! But there is a use of hope which is fallacious and mischievous. Hope is not irrational because it is sanguine. There is no encouragement in man's life, or in God's Word, for that kind of hope which either dreams of reaping without sowing, or looks for sudden counteractions of influences wantonly indulged. There are men whose whole life is spent in reckoning upon results to which they have contributed nothing but hindrance. There are men who may call themselves waiters upon providence, but whom God would rather describe as gamblers in chances. It is so in reference to the things of this life; it is so in reference to a more serious thing — the condition of the soul, and the destinies of eternity. Gospel hope has for its object Gospel promise. See some of those future good things which God has promised, and therefore the Christian hopes for. One of these is growth, progress, at last perfection, in holiness. To a Christian person the prospect of becoming holy is the most blessed, most glorious revelation. If it be a revelation, certainly it is a hope. Holiness is sometimes preached as a duty, not preached as a promise. That is not God's method. Scripture sets holiness before us rather as a gift than as a toil. I have called this one of the objects of a Christian hope, but it is the sum of all. I knit into one the hope of holiness and the hope of heaven. I know indeed that many talk of heaven who have no thought for the way to it. Scum hope to meet there lost friends; some dream pleasantly of the trouble of conflict ended, and the repose of the everlasting unbroken. But all this is vague and unsatisfactory: there is nothing of it in the Bible....Then love too well Him who is your hope to count anything too difficult to do, or too precious to sacrifice for Him! Saved by hope, hope to the end. Where He went before, follow after! (C. J. Vaughan, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Turn you to the strong hold, ye prisoners of hope: even to day do I declare that I will render double unto thee; |
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