Hope in Times of HopelessnessPrøve

## Enduring Hope Through Christ This passage teaches us that we can either choose to let our hardships drag us down into hopelessness or, in our hardships, we can allow the gospel to lift us into the New Testament hope that we have in Christ. Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, closes with God’s message reminding His people of His coming judgment and His Word of hope for their discouragements and sense of hopelessness. When the New Testament opens 400 years after Malachi, just as Malachi prophesied, John the Baptist comes as the new Elijah, calling people to turn from their sins to faith in the coming Messiah. Christ Jesus the Messiah did come. For those who turn from their sins to faith in Christ, as Rom. 8:1-2 assures us, there is, therefore, now no condemnation before God for us as we await expectantly for the final glorious day of the Lord. Obviously, the flip side of this is that, at the Second Coming of Christ, those who have not repented of their sin and placed their faith in Christ will face God’s impending judgment like stubble set on fire, as Malachi declares in Mal. 4:1 of this passage. This is why it is desperately important for all of us to repent of our sin, place our faith in Christ, and thereby receive God’s salvation to ensure our names are written in the Lord’s Book of Life in heaven. The good news is that, for Christians today who have placed our faith in Christ, hopelessness about our hardships cannot be the last word in our lives because our sure New Testament hope is that our faithful God controls our lives in the present with His love and power. He also controls the future, and He will make everything right in the fullness of His time. The Lord Jesus Christ has come alongside us through the gospel, with all the New Testament hope we need, to hold us on and bring us across the finish line. This is how Heb. 12:1-2 puts it: Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith . In other words, Christ began our race and will enable us to complete the race, no matter what hardships we go through. He is the ultimate source of all our hopes in all our hardships and the enduring antidote for our sense of hopelessness today.