“This people have I formed for myself; they shall shew forth my praise.” These were the Lord God’s words to his servant Isaiah in chapter 43 and verse 21 of his self-titled book.
Apostle Paul in Romans 5 vs 1 and 2 puts it this way: “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.”
So, the best way we show forth God’s praise, according to God himself, is by being like Him: what He made us to be.
God is and that is why we can be. He speaks and that is why we can too. He hears, he sees, he thinks, he is blessed and that is why we can hear, see, think and be blessed. We simply cannot receive any thing unless the giver of it has it to give.
So, God being the God of hope (see also Romans 15 vs 13), it is the calling of His people to rejoice in the hope of his glory.
Note: there is the unshakeable glory of God, there is the hope of the glory of God (that keeps us pressing toward Him, to receive from Him and to eventually be inextricably bound to Him) and there is the hope of the glory of God (that His kingdom finally comes and His will is finally done). We rejoice in all of these.
Ruminating on this idea of the hope of his glory recalls some unfriendly bedfellows however. How, with the all-conquering love of God, His uncompromising consistency and His eternal preparedness, did we get to a place where we lived in hope as opposed to the full-bore reality of God’s power?
Verse one of Malachi 4 offers clues. One of the culprits is pride. Wickedness is another.
Notably, neither are from God. Even He cannot give what He does not have. Instead, these are the works carried out by workers of iniquity.
In fact, God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble (James 4 vs 6) and He neither has pleasure in wickedness nor does evil dwell with Him (Psalm 5 vs 4).
Pride and wickedness are devilish, human tendencies that will not always be tolerated by God.
The ones to whom He does, however, positively respond to are the ones that fear His name. To these ones, the Lord of Hosts makes promises of healing and joy. The Sun of righteousness “shall” arise upon them and they “shall” go forth and grow (Malachi 4 vs 2).
Note the use of the future tense and the hopefulness in the words. These promises for the future give hope in the present. But how do these promises from God differ from any old hope we have about anything?
Well, firstly, Malachi 4 vs 2 is an example of the hope of His calling (Ephesians 1 vs 18).
Digging into that phrase would seem to identify two disparate things: His calling and the hope of His calling. And to the naked eye, it could seem like His calling comes first and the hope of His calling second – after all, the feeling of hope is always secondary to the object of that hope – but with God this process is rather different.
If we consider the nature of hope, it will become evident that hope requires a knowledge that underpins it (for example, x, y or z has happened before so it could potentially happen again).
Two huge differences between God and us are that He is omniscient and we are not, and He is in the past, present and future at the same time and we are not. To us, hope feels secondary to the object of that hope because that is the order in which we live it out. However because God has all knowledge – knowing the beginning from the end and the end from the beginning – His hope is actually then dependable, coincident with knowledge and usable as truth.
A true testament of His unicorn worthiness.
So, the Sun of righteousness will rise. Healing will be in His wings. His people will go forth and grow up as “calves of the stall.” Note the change from “shall” to “will.” This is what differentiates God’s hope (hope that comes from Him) from any old hope.
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When the Apostle Paul discussed hope in Romans 5 vs 5, the experience of hope he spoke of was preceded by the “love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which [had been] given unto us.”
From verses 3 and 4, we see hope was also the result after: some work done in the hoper by tribulations, some work performed in the hoper by patience and some work carried out in the hoper by experience – all of which develops knowledge. That any of us persists long enough on this journey is a testament of our faith in God from God, which is developed also by knowledge.
Eventually, hope’s effect is to remove disappointment and shame.
Going back to verse one of Romans 5 – peace with God through Jesus Christ being the outcome – we see that justification by faith, the grace to stand, our rejoicing, our hope and God’s glory are all through Jesus Christ. The selfsame Sun of righteousness Malachi spoke of.
Verse one of Malachi 4 was bleak but with the Son’s rising, the horizons for those who choose His way – which is His Father’s way and which also is Holy Ghost’s way – are brighter and hopeful.
We are hopeful because He is hopeful.
He is hopeful that there are those that fear His name (i.e. there are those that fear His name.) He is hopeful that there are some who will put up with the tribulations (i.e. there are some who will.) He is hopeful that there are some who will be patient (i.e. there are some who will be.) He is hopeful that there are some who will invest the time to gather experience (i.e. there are some who will do that.)
In verses four, five and six of Malachi 4, He is hopeful that there are those who will remember His holy laws and hopeful that there will still be a world to save; that there will be something for Elijah to work with and people whose hearts are amenable to His change (i.e. all of this will happen.)
Apostle Peter clarified in 2 Peter 3 vs 9, “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”
He is longsuffering.
Longsuffering: patient, continued suffering. Or also, the steps towards hope. Even for the God of hope, hope’s Master.
That Christian Next Door 