The Hope of Saints

Most of us know the traditional folk song “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Whether you have encountered it through Louis Armstrong’s famous jazz rendition or a marching band at your local parade or community event, the chances are good that you know the lyrics of at least a verse or two.

Yet I would venture to say that most people probably don’t know that this song is steeped in the eschatology (doctrine of last things) of the Bible, especially the book of Revelation, anticipating the time when the procession of Christian saints throughout history will finally reach its end as God completes His works of redemption. It speaks of trumpets sounding, horsemen riding, and the heavenly bodies burning up—“Oh, when the stars fall from the sky, oh, when the stars fall from the sky, oh Lord, I want to be in that number . . .”—all with the sure hope that one day the saints of God will march into His presence in the train of their Savior and dwell with Him for eternity because Jesus was slain, and by His blood He ransomed a people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation (Rev. 5:9).

This is the end of redemptive history, and it was the hope of the saints of the old covenant just as it is for saints of the new covenant. God creates all things with the promise of something more for His people; therefore, their lives, especially after the fall of Adam, are characterized by the expectation of a better country and kingdom, a heavenly one, even if during their mortal toil they greet the things promised only from afar (Heb. 11:13–16). Let’s examine this hope through the rolls of the saints as they lived and processed through the unfolding of God’s salvation.

the march begins

The Westminster Confession of Faith states:

It pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for the manifestation of the glory of his eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, in the beginning, to create, or make of nothing, the world, and all things therein whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days; and all very good. (4.1)

The confession goes on to state that our gracious God, in His voluntary condescension, His stooping down to make Himself known—which we call “covenant”—promised even more blessedness and reward: “The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam; and in him to his posterity, upon condition of perfect and personal obedience” (7.2). What a gift. Adam, endued with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness, made in the very image of God, received a command that held a promise: eternal life in the presence of God. Placed in a paradise sufficient for all his needs, given dominion over the earth and a good purpose within it, and privileged to host his Lord in regular visitation—what more could Adam have hoped for? But almighty God lavished on him even more: the sure promise of a permanent state of blessedness, perpetual access to and presence before Him. This was God’s goal for mankind. What could go wrong?

Of course, we know all too well the answer to this question. Adam and his posterity turned from life to death, seduced by Satan into breaking God’s command and eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. “By this sin they fell from their original righteousness and communion with God, and so became dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the parts and faculties of soul and body” (WCF 6.2). The Belgic Confession puts it this way: “[Adam] transgressed the commandment of life, which he had received, and by his sin he separated himself from God, who was his true life, having corrupted his entire nature” (art. 14). These two excellent summaries of Scripture capture the hopeless condition of mankind after those moments of rebellion in which we all shared through Adam, our representative. Yet only when we acknowledge the darkness of our despair can we appreciate fully the light of God’s salvation.

Amazingly, out of the darkness of that hopelessness came light (post tenebras lux). God the Promise-Giver issued another in the midst of His judgment against transgression: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15). How could we overstate the magnitude of this declaration? God’s goal for humanity did not change, but He would secure His people’s beatitude, their blessed destiny in His presence, through another—the last Adam, the second man, His very own Son. In other words, when Adam and Eve plunged themselves into sin and death, making themselves completely forlorn and miserable, God comforted them with words of hope (BC 17). Their eternal, powerful, wise, and good God would secure their hope at great cost to Himself, but the line of the woman, the line of His people, would strive and suffer long as they awaited the consummation of that hope, receiving only foretastes to satisfy their appetite for heaven, glimmers to catch and keep their eyes. Scripture exemplifies this weary tread in the lives of the patriarchs.

the long march of the patriarchs

Very few saints in Scripture capture the concept of a long and solitary sojourn as clearly as Abraham. The entirety of God’s work in and through him occurred during the twilight of his life—even his initial call to depart from Haran and take residence in Canaan as a foreigner came at the age of seventy-five. Nonetheless, God promised to Abraham that He would secure the ultimate blessing of His divine presence among His people through Abraham’s seed (singular, as Paul argues in Gal. 3), the fullness of which He will foreshadow in the bountiful land and numerous descendants He will give to Abraham (see Gen. 12:1–3). This land and progeny Abraham would experience only briefly and marginally, tempered by sorrow.

The only land that Abraham owned during his sojourn in Canaan was a small field in Machpelah, east of Mamre, purchased for the cave that would serve as the tomb for his deceased wife, Sarah, and for himself (chs. 23; 25). Likewise, Abraham had his children late in life—when he was “as good as dead,” according to Hebrews 11:12— all of whom he would send away except Isaac, the son of promise whom Sarah birthed to him when Abraham was a hundred years old (Gen. 21:5). Yet these gifts were enough to keep Abraham looking toward “the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Heb. 12:10). In fact, God reveals to Abraham details of the great salvation through which He would bring His people into His holy and eternal presence.

In Genesis 15, Abraham received a command from God to prepare a covenant-ratification ceremony by digging a trench and filling it with the blood of cut-up animals. Likely expecting to proceed alone through this mire under the watchful eye of his sovereign Lord—an act of fealty acknowledging curses for disobedience—Abraham suddenly fell into a deep, trancelike sleep, in which he witnessed a manifestation of almighty God pass through the pieces, signaling God’s sworn commitment to bless Abraham. God previewed this for Abraham again on the other side of the birth of Isaac, pulling back the curtain of heaven on Mount Moriah ever so slightly to draw Abraham’s ailing eyes upward. When Abraham raised the knife over his bound son—surely wondering how Isaac’s life could possibly soothe God’s wrath against sin and enable divine access—God delayed the blow and provided a vicarious, innocent substitute, a ram caught in a nearby thicket (ch. 22). In this moment, God gave Abraham back his son, foreshadowing that another would be necessary for the altar.

Isaac, too, would sojourn in hope. Apart from his binding, Scripture records few other remarkable events in Isaac’s life. Compared to the narratives of the other patriarchs, Isaac’s sojourning appears rather prosaic. Rather than seeing this as a subtle chastisement for his shortcomings as some do, we should view this as God’s gift of peace, a sign of the ultimate hope for those who seek and obey his will, as Isaac did on Moriah. Two episodes in particular reveal that Isaac clung to the promises to which his rescue pointed. First, Genesis 26:12–13 records that “Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. The Lord blessed him, and the man became rich, and gained more and more until he became very wealthy.” Isaac reaped more than he sowed—a tangible gift as well as tantalizing herald for the future—but Isaac’s sowing has further significance. An alien in the land, Isaac performed the generational activity of sedentary settlers, envisioning a later time when his descendants would enjoy the produce of this small endeavor, savoring the produce of a land in which they did not sow (see Josh. 24:13). At the very least, Isaac had these promises in mind when he “invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau,” his sons (Gen. 27; Heb. 11:20). His eyes dim (speaking literally of his blindness and figuratively of his ignorance of Rebekah’s and God’s plans for the succession of his younger son) eventually the eyes of his heart saw truly into the patterns of redemption by which God works near and far—preferring that which seems weak and unimportant in this world, as Isaac himself was. He passed on the hope of humanity to his children, with Jacob, the younger son, carrying the promise of the seed.

If Isaac’s narrative strikes us as relatively uneventful, Jacob’s life and trials more than make up for the doldrums. His life seems the polar opposite of Isaac’s: Jacob was a cunning and industrious fellow who moved from one struggle to the next, unsure of the promises of God even as they unfolded around him. Shortly after he fled from Esau’s wrath, God visited him in a dream, in which Jacob witnessed

a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” (Gen. 28:12–15)

The vision and declaration confirm that God would bridge the gap between heaven and earth, visiting through a divine ladder issuing forth from Jacob to consummate promised blessedness (see John 1:51).

God bestowed on Jacob gift after gift to assure him of His presence and promise—great physical possessions, a large family, peace with Esau, return to the land—but rather than cultivating hope and worship in Jacob, these gifts brought Jacob sorrow, for he anchored his hope in the provision rather than the Provider. For instance, he virtually abandoned his role as patriarch for fear of the inhabitants of the land, leading to the resentment of his sons, which culminated in their cruel treatment of their brother Joseph, the deception of their father, and Jacob’s lingering distrust of and disappointment in the lot of them (see Gen. 34–45). Only decades later and upon hearing the news that Joseph lived did Jacob’s spirit revive (45:27). Scripture includes this detail to indicate not merely physical refreshment but also, most importantly, the revival of Jacob’s hope in God’s promises. The Lord broke His silence and spoke to Jacob again (46:1–4), assuring Jacob of the hope of His presence, whether in Egypt, the land of Canaan, or even in death—for that would overtake him.

Jacob’s response—to bless Joseph’s and Judah’s line with expectation of a kingdom of peace and plenty for his descendants—demonstrates more clarity of foresight than his father, Isaac, demonstrated. Even Joseph, faithful and obedient, didn’t fully understand why Jacob crossed his hands to bless Ephraim over Manasseh, Joseph’s younger son over the older (48:8–22), and there must have been a few eyebrows raised at the tremendous blessing issued to his unruly fourth son, Judah, from whom a scepter would emerge and not depart (49:8–12). Yet Jacob finally envisioned the promises of God developing, building, and growing; he saw the trajectory of a kingdom not established by the hands of men. Joseph, having ascended to the heights of Egyptian rule and hegemony, finally witnessed again something that the alleged god-king Pharaoh and all his mortuary temples could never offer: the promise of eternal life in the presence of almighty God. On his own deathbed, Joseph made his brothers swear to return his bones to the earthly land that God had promised would witness the bridge between heaven and earth (50:22–26; see Heb. 11:22).

the long march of the nation

Egypt transformed from a refuge for the promises of God and His people into a potential wasteland that threatened to extinguish them, epitomized in the slaughter of the Hebrew infants cast into the Nile (Ex. 1:8–22). Yet when the waters of death appeared close to encompassing God’s people, out of it Pharaoh’s daughter drew Moses. Though being “instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians” (Acts 7:22), Moses later

refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. (Heb. 11:24–26)

Neither the temptation of the luxuries of Egypt nor the fierce visage of Pharaoh, adorned with the uraeus—the serpent crown—on his brow, captured and enslaved Moses’ vision, for he had eyes only for “him who is invisible” (v. 27).

Moses longed for the establishment of his Hebrew brethren into a nation, the next development of the promise, because this would mean a greater knowledge of, intimacy with, and access to “the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ex. 34:6). In fact, Moses remained so sure of the ultimate blessing of God’s presence that he admitted that inheriting and inhabiting the promised land would be futile unless God went with the Israelites (33:16). Only after God assured him that He would accompany them (v. 14), confirming it by the construction of the tabernacle, establishment of the sacrificial system, and ordination of the priests—all of which speak to how the people will dwell with and approach God—did Moses lead this nascent nation toward Canaan. With God’s light leading His people toward the promised land—reflected in the pillar of fire and cloud, as well as in the face of Moses—the consummation of God’s promise to bless all the nations through Israel seemed closer than ever. Yet the people’s disobedience on the brink of bliss again halted progression, and even Moses failed to usher in the full fruition of God’s promises. His disobedience barred him from entering the promised land (Num. 20:10–13), but God gave him a blessed glimpse of the land of hope from Mount Nebo before the waters of death closed around his mortal body (Deut. 34).

To Joshua was given the task to lead God’s people through the Jordan River on dry ground—to enter as a renewed, sanctified people and to purify the land in which they would dwell with their holy God. God’s program by which He would bless all the nations of the earth began with the tiny land of Canaan, described as a new garden of Eden, flowing with milk and honey. He desired that this sanctified land of peace would serve as a sign of the ultimate reality that He has planned for all creation. It began well under Joshua with the battle of Jericho. The mighty walls of Jericho tumbled down without a finger raised, the sound of the people’s worship the means by which the stronghold toppled (Josh. 6:1–27). This glimpse of power, executed by the Commander of the Army of the Lord who appeared to Joshua before the battle (5:13–15), previewed God’s assault on darkness through the seed of the woman (see Eph. 2:1–6), but the full assault and its overwhelming victory did not materialize under the faithful leader Joshua, for this kingdom of priests faltered shortly after Jericho. From the deceit of Achan onward, the old covenant church failed to possess the land fully, forgetting the promises of God and conforming to the ways of the nations around them rather than striving for the heavenly kingdom ahead of them (Josh. 7; Judg. 1:1–3:6). The descendants of Abraham took up residence in the promised land, beleaguered under threat of corruption and destruction. Joshua renewed the covenant with Israel and was buried in his own inheritance (Josh. 24), a sure fulfillment of the promises of God and more than enough to fan the flames of hope for the succeeding generations. Yet tasting God’s goodness would not come without hunger pangs.

Ruth and Hannah are two examples during who grew in hope through their struggles rather than in spite of them. The Moabitess Ruth came to these promises from outside the family of faith, introduced to them through the faith of her husband and through her mother-in-law, Naomi (Ruth 1:1–5). She came to desire a better land, a better family, a better promise under a better God, willing to exchange a comfortable, secure life within the confines of her native family for a life of want, beggary, and hope in a final, heavenly rest. God bestowed on her a taste of His riches by writing her a new lineage, secure in the land as well as in His own family, the direct line of promise (4:13–22).

Hannah, too, endured much hardship as she waited for the Lord’s intervention in her barrenness. Amazingly, her prayers and vow to offer up her son to lifelong ministry reveal an undying hope that God could add her own descendants to the long roll of the saints and that their greatest joy would be in His presence (1 Sam. 1:11). Her song of exultation not only recalls her own salvation (speaking socially and redemptively) but also indicates that she saw in her own predicament a pattern of God’s purposes and works toward all His people: “The Lord makes poor and makes rich; he brings low and he exalts. He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor” (2:7–8). Hannah envisioned the time when God would consecrate and raise the old covenant church to be emissaries of His blessing throughout the whole world, not merely Canaan. The creator God’s agenda had to advance well beyond these boundaries, and her son, Samuel, would anoint Israel’s greatest hope of its fruition: David.

In David, a son of Jesse, Scripture reveals both the greatest paragon of hope and the fullest representation of how this hope will find its consummation. “A man after God’s own heart” (see 1 Sam. 13:14; Acts 13:22), David longed for the consummation of God’s promises, actively working toward their fulfillment. He united God’s people in one kingdom, brought peace and extension to the land of promise, and desired uninhibited enjoyment and worship in the presence of God. Thus, he brought the ark of the covenant—God’s footstool and nexus between heaven and earth—into Jerusalem, intending to build his Lord a permanent house in the midst of His people (2 Sam. 6:1–19). God, however, prohibited David from building Him a temple on account of the blood he had shed (see 1 Chron. 22:6–10). Yet God blessed him with the most precious blossom from the seed of promise that had grown from its inception in the garden: David’s dynasty would never falter, and the blameless substitute, the seed of the woman, would proceed from his line to secure this blessing for him and for all the families of the earth (2 Sam. 7). David drew plans, organized peoples, and collected materials for the construction of the temple under his son Solomon, commissioning Israel and Solomon with the ultimate goal: seeking the presence of the Lord:

“Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever.” (1 Chron. 28:9)

the end of the march

Unfortunately, the kingdom of David waned under his successors—with notable exceptions such as Josiah—dividing, shrinking, and ultimately being reduced to a remnant inhabiting the small territory of Judah, or even just Jerusalem (e.g., under the Assyrian incursion; see 2 Kings 18 ). The prophets would serve as God’s primary emissaries of hope, calling His people to keep their eyes tilted heavenward to anticipate the arrival of the day of the Lord, even though they

suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated. (Heb. 11:36–37)

The prophet Isaiah serves as this paradigmatic figure. In a time of significant turmoil and apostasy, he prophesied that a true Ruler in the mold of David would surpass his predecessor. He would be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
     Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and of peace
     there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over his kingdom,
     to establish it and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
     from this time forth and forevermore. (Isa. 9:6–7)

As the offspring of Abraham committed apostasy and suffered exile; as foreign rulers occupied, carved up, and redistributed the land; and as God disciplined His people by withdrawing the blessing of His presence, Isaiah and the other prophets called God’s people to look to His faithfulness in the past and the present—however faintly He might signal it—as a hope for His full condescension and rescue from sin and death, as a hope in the arrival of the seed. Having witnessed fully the state of despair in which God’s people were languishing, Isaiah, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, called on God’s saints to anticipate God’s salvation through a better Isaac, who can make “an offering for guilt” (Isa. 53:10): a better Moses, who can make full intercession for the transgressors (v. 12); a better Joshua, anointed with the Spirit of the Lord “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God” (61:2); and a better David, who will establish a new Jerusalem as the celestial capital of the new heavens and the new earth, in which there will be only gladness and rejoicing forever (65:18; see 2 Sam. 5:6–10; Rev. 21). Isaiah continues to call God’s people to look to the Christ, Jesus, in whom God will consummate all His promises and through whom all the saints of the old and new covenants will march into the heavenly Jerusalem, through “gates made of a single pearl, . . . and his servants will worship him” (Rev. 21:21; 22:3).