My Deliverer is Coming

Hope is a powerful thing.  Once it is lost, life looks pretty grim.  I'm a lover of the fantasy/sci-fi epic story.  The most epic story in this genre I've ever encountered is The Lord of the Rings.  If you know me well, you probably just rolled your eyes and said to yourself, "here we go again with The Lord of the Rings.  When is the Star Wars reference coming?"  Rest assured that Star Wars will make its way into a post I'm sure, just not this one.  Anyway, back to the epic story.

Middle Earth looks all but lost.  Men and elves have come together to fight against a growing evil in the east and yet they find themselves outnumbered and weakened.  Mordor, the land of the evil wizard Sauron, is preparing to launch its final attack on the last obstacle standing in its way of world domination.  All seems lost.  However, there is a faint, flickering hope.  Somewhere in the land of Mordor, is a hobbit with a ring.  A hobbit cannot fight like a warrior but its strength lies not in a sword but in stealth for the hobbits are little folk.  This hobbit's name is Frodo, and if he succeeds in destroying the ring in the volcano in which it was forged then Mordor will be defeated.  The odds are pushed up against Frodo and everybody is aware of this.  Though none have lost hope because while Frodo lives, hope floats.

If you read Genesis 3, it's easy to become discouraged.  I mean, come on!  If Adam and Eve, who were sinless, fell into sin so quickly, what hope then is there for us?  There lies our problem, really.  Whenever I lose hope, which seems to happen a lot, I can find the root of the problem.  Am I wrong in despairing?  It depends, because I really believe there are times when there truly is no hope.

First let me elaborate on what I mean by the fact that there is sometimes no hope.  As a human, I love to touch and feel and know that what I believe in is tangible and certain.  Many times my hope is often misdirected and misplaced on a person or dare I say, myself.  I really want to believe that others can fix my problems and yet they fail.  Or I want to have full control and yet I come up short.  If my hope is found in myself or in another person, pastor, leader, etc. then perhaps there is really little or no hope left.  "But there is always hope!" one may shout or "Hope floats" (which only reminds of a movie that I did not enjoy very much).  Of course there is always hope, but what good is hope if it is a hope misplaced?  Is that not referred to as "false hope?" I think Rich Mullins' song My Deliverer really speaks about the real hope we must set our lives on.  I particularly like DC Talk's version of it because it was adjusted for the movie The Prince of Egypt.

My Deliverer is coming, my Deliverer is standing by

Isn't that the point of our lives?  If God has forgotten about us, then what's the purpose?  I don't want to this post to take a philosophical turn so I won't attempt to discredit any self-centered worldviews at this time.  I just want to focus on my Deliverer.  Actually, He's not just my Deliverer but He is your Deliverer as well.  Actually, from the beginning of time, humanity has set its eyes on our Deliverer.  From the moment Adam and Eve fell, they were looking ahead toward someone that could deliver them from their sin and while they did not know exactly to whom they were looking toward, they knew that God offered hope.  The Song begins:

Joseph took his wife and child and they went to Africa
To escape the rage of a deadly king
There along the banks of the Nile they listened to the song
That the captive children used to sing
They were singing... My Deliverer is coming, my Deliverer is standing by

Joseph took Mary and Jesus to Egypt to avoid a deadly confrontation with King Herod.  We know that Jesus is the Deliverer and at first glance, it may appear that He arrived too late.  The captive children referred to here were enslaved by pharaoh thousands of years before Christ was born.  Was He too late?  Exodus 2 reminds us that God did not ignore their slavery those many years before the birth of our Deliverer.

During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God.  And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.  God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.

Exodus 2:23-25, ESV

So God raised up a man from the tribe of Levi named Moses to miraculously deliver Israel out of Egypt's hands.  This is where I like DC Talk's variation on the song.  The next verse focuses on Moses' longing for a Deliverer  because even he understood that he was not ultimately Israel's savior.  For though Moses delivered Israel physically from Egypt (through the power of God so that even Moses could not take credit for it), he could not deliver Israel spiritually from their own sin.  In fact, not even Moses could deliver himself from sin.  So Moses, arguably the greatest prophet of the Old Testament, longed for a Deliverer and sang the song as well:

My Deliverer is coming, my Deliverer is standing by

This is where we must all check out egos at the door.  If Moses needed a Deliverer, then so do we.  Well, the Word of God tells us that this Deliverer, Jesus Christ, arrived around two thousand years ago.  He not only set a high standard for the way we live our lives, his death would deliver us from our sin.  He was arrested and then executed as a blasphemer.  He physically rose from the grave three days later.  He commissioned his disciples and then ascended, in bodily form, to heaven.  But it doesn't end there.  This is where our hope now lies.  It's not good enough for us to think of Jesus only in the past tense because Jesus transcends time.  The Bible is very clear that Jesus will return.  But will He?  Rich Mullins reminds us why we can trust what the Bible says:

He will never break His promise, He has written it upon the sky

God never breaks promises.  He has written it upon the sky.  The sky?  Remember the rainbow after God destroyed all life, save those on the ark, in a flood?  Hollywood loves to make movies about the end of the world.  But rest assured that they've all got it wrong.  God has already promised not to destroy mankind like that before He returns.  Every time we see a rainbow (or even a double rainbow - and by the way, it's not becoming a triple rainbow), we can be reminded about God's promises. You know what's even better?  God's promises are true whether we believe them or not.  Read Rich Mullins' amazingly honest says:

I will never doubt His promise, though I doubt my heart, I doubt my eyes

We all doubt sometimes and yet God is steadfast.  And it's His steadfastness that's keeps us hoping that He will make true on His promises.  He has not left us here to die but is coming back for us.

The Lord of the Rings is more than just a geeky fantasy story, it's a picture of life.  We live in a world that seems hopeless.  At times, it seems the world is spinning out of control and yet, there is hope.  This hope is not in a hobbit, a wizard, or a good-looking bearded heir to the throne of Gondor.  This hope is in the One that has never broken a promise - the ultimate Promise Keeper.  This hope is in the One that is Faithful and True, even when we are faithless liars.  When Christ said He would return, He meant it.  When He said that He would be with us always, He spoke truth.  My Deliverer is coming and because of that, I have hope to carry on everyday.