Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus according to the commandment of God our Savior, and of Christ Jesus, who is our hope. 1 Timothy 1:1.

Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 1:13.

For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans for shalom and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Jeremiah 29:11.

Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:

A future and a hope, that is where your life in Christ is headed. Christ Jesus is your hope for that glorious future that is in My plan for you of shalom and not evil. And your future and your hope is based on one thing: the Blood of Jesus. The hope of your glory.

As we continue our study of how to live your life IN CHRIST, today’s life lesson is “A Life of Hope.” For in hope you have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? But if you hope for what you do not see, with perseverance you wait eagerly for it. Romans 8:24-25. Faith is the assurance of (title deed to) things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1. And hope based on faith in My promises never disappoints; it is the anchor of your soul.

Faith, hope, and love are eternal, these three alone remain before Me to show the life you lived in the flesh on earth. It is time you walked in the eternal, for temporal things all change and pass away but the spiritual realities are eternal. They do not change.

The word you see translated as “hope” in the Old Testament is the word “Tikvah (תִּקְוָה).” Its literal meaning is a cord. And that is all. It simply means a cord. But everywhere other than Joshua 2, the word “Tikvah” is translated as hope and a few times as expectation or longing. It is the word used in Jeremiah 29:11 where I tell you that My plans for you are shalom and not evil, to give you a future and a hope (Tikvah). Based on this verse, Ha Tikvah (The Hope) is today the national anthem of Israel. You see the same Word you see in Jeremiah 31:17 “There is HOPE (Tikvah) in your future.” And because of Jesus, there is.

The first time I use the word Tikvah in the Bible is in the second chapter of the book of Joshua, the book about the conquest of the land I promised Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and brought the descendants out to Egypt to possess. It was for Abraham a hope to which he was called, but I told him it would not be realized until after his descendants had been enslaved for four hundred years in a foreign land. But I showed him the land and he lived in it among its inhabitants, who had not yet filled up the cup of their abominations so that My driving them out would be totally justified. When the cup was full of their evil deeds, and justice could be done, I redeemed My people from slavery to bring them into the hope of their blessing.

Before Joshua led forth the army of Israel to conquer Jericho, which was the first city they approached as they entered the Promised Land, Joshua sent two spies ahead to check out the city and its fortifications. Their presence was detected and they would have been taken captive if it had not been for a harlot named Rahab, who was a woman of great faith. She had heard of Me and the marvels I had done for My people in bringing them out of Egypt with a mighty arm and she wanted to join into so great a nation and so mighty a God. Her faith saved her, just as Abraham’s had done. She had faith I would take the whole land for My people, something the generation of Israelites I redeemed did not have, even though they had seen with their own eyes the great wonders and signs I had performed among them and Rahab had only heard about the wonders, but she believed, for faith comes by hearing, and hearing My Word about Christ, salvation.

Rahab hid the spies and helped them escape through a window in her house which was a part of the wall of the city. In exchange she asked the spies to swear that when the people of Israel conquered Jericho she and her family would be spared and could join with them and become one of their own. The spies agreed under certain conditions, saying, “We shall be free from this oath to you which you have made us swear, unless, when we come into the land, you tie this (את) cord (Tikvah) of scarlet (shani) thread (chut) in the window through which you let us down, and gather to yourself into the house your father and your mother and your brothers and all your father’s household. It shall come about that anyone who goes out of the doors of your house into the street, his blood shall be on his own head, and we shall be free; but anyone who is with you in the house, his blood shall be on our head if a hand is laid on him.” Joshua 2:17-18.

The spies from Israel had a cord of strands of scarlet thread to give her to bind in her window. Does the make you think of another deliverance from destruction? Yes, the Passover, when I instructed the Israelites to take the blood from the sacrifice of an unblemished lamb and put it on the doorposts and lintels of their dwellings so that the destroyer would pass over their homes and not strike. No one under the blood was prey to the destroyer, the blood covered them and kept them safe and blessed. This was the shadow and type the substance of which is the blood of Christ, for Christ your Passover has been sacrificed and you are under the blood of the Lamb, which shields you from the wrath to come and gives you entrance by a new and living way to the Holy of holies. And you overcome your adversary the devil by the blood of the Lamb and the word of your testimony. Revelation 12:11.

And Rahab said to the spies as she let them down out of her window to escape, “According to your words, so be it.” So she sent them away, and they departed; and she bound the (את) scarlet (shani) cord (Tikvah) in the window. Joshua 2:21.

She kept that scarlet chord (Tikvah) in the window and when the army of Israel shouted after marching around the walls of Jericho and the walls descended into the lower regions of the earth, only one part of the wall remained. Yes, where Rahab’s house was in the wall. And she joined with the nation of Israel, her and her parents and siblings, and the prince of the tribe of Judah, Salmon, loved and married her, and their son was Boaz. Sound familiar? Yes, the Boaz who married Ruth and became the great grandfather of David, whom I made king of Israel and Judah, and from whose line the Messiah was born.

But there is more about the scarlet cord.

In front of the “Tikvah” in Joshua 2:18, 21 is the את. You do not see this in the translations from Hebrew but it is there in the Hebrew scrolls. They do not know what it means. Many call it a direct object marker, but My Son explained it to John on Patmos. He is the aleph and the tav (in Greek, the alpha and the omega) which are the first and last letters of the Hebrew aleph-bet. It signifies the entire Hebrew aleph-bet from the first letter to the last and all Words in the Old Testament are formed from those letters. So the aleph tav represents My Word and that is who Jesus is. And Jesus is your hope for in Him alone is redemption, the forgiveness of your sins. As He told the self-righteous Pharisees, “If you do not believe that I AM you will die in your sins.” Only by faith in Him, will His blood cleanse you of all sin and make you righteous before Me. For in Him, you have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of your trespasses, according to the riches of My grace which I lavished on you in Him. And in Him you are covered by the Blood.

But let us keep going into this marvelous hope you have in Jesus for all My good promises to be manifested in your life. After Abraham obeyed My voice and went to Mt. Moriah to sacrifice Isaac to Me as a burnt offering, by which I taught Abraham the Gospel ahead of time, I stopped him from completing the sacrifice of his son by showing him the day of Jesus, the true Lamb of God that I Myself would supply and gave him the substitution of the ram caught in the thicket. But then I made a promise to Him, “By Myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son, indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of His enemies. In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.” Genesis 22:16-18. You see here it is seed singular, referring to Christ, who according to the flesh would be born of his line due to his obedience and willingness to teach his children and household about Me and instruct them in following My ways. And upon the rock of the revelation of the Son of God the church would be built and the gates of hell would not prevail against it. Why? Jesus, the head of His body the church, has crushed the head of Satan and taken back the keys to death and the nether world.

In the New Testament I quote this again, telling you that I swore by Myself that in blessing I would bless you and in multiplying I would multiply you, for in Jesus you are descendants of Abraham, Galatians 3:29. So in the Letter to the Hebrews it is written: “For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself, saying, “I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply you.” And so, having patiently waited, he obtained the promise. For men swear by one greater than themselves, and with them an oath given as confirmation is an end of every dispute. In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” Hebrews 6:13-20.

An anchor is on a rope, a strong cord or chain, and when the anchor is lowered and sinks into the bedrock of the ocean floor the harder the storm blows the deeper the anchor sinks down as the storm pulls on the ship. Hope is like that; it sinks in its anchor to My Word to stand fast through the attacks of the devil and it gets embedded deeper and deeper each time he steps up the storm. But if the cord attaching the anchor the ship is not strong, or if you let the devil tug that rope away from you, the ship will break away from the anchor and you may have your life end in a shipwreck. Paul warned Timothy that some have shipwreck if they let go of their faith, which is the substance of hope. 1 Timothy 1:19.

But what is that cord that attaches you and enters your anchor into the very Holy of holies at My throne of grace?

How did Jesus enter as a forerunner for you, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek? If you look back at the shadow of the good things to come, you will see that the high priest under the Law could only enter with the blood of the unblemished sacrifice of the burnt offering and the sin offering and sprinkle that blood on the mercy seat to cover the sins of the people. Leviticus 16:15-16. This was done on the day of atonement when the scapegoat was also released. But your answer here is found in Hebrews 9: “But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. Hebrews 9:11-12.

He entered as your forerunner by His blood. And that is what redeemed, made atonement for, and ransomed you. The scarlet cord that keeps you firmly anchored in the Holy of holies behind the veil, My very throne of grace, is the Blood of Jesus. As it is written under inspiration of My Spirit, who testifies to Jesus, “Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful . . . Hebrews 10:19-23.

Hold fast to your confession of hope without drawing back and you shall have what you have hoped for.

Rahab, though her life to the point she met the spies from Israel had been a sinful unfruitful life lived among a people who knew nothing of My Word and worshipped idols and were involved in evil deeds, her life changed when she took hold of the scarlet cord (Tikvah) and bound it in the window of her house. And each day she looked at her hope of deliverance from her futile way of life in a city that was doomed for destruction; for I put that city and all in it under the ban. And she knew it tied her into a new community of My people of the people for whom God was fighting on their behalf. She had professed her faith before the spies she protected, “for the LORD your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath. Now therefore, please swear to me by the LORD, since I have dealt kindly with you, that you also will deal kindly with my father’s household, and give me a pledge of truth, and spare my father and my mother and my brothers and my sisters, with all who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death.” Joshua 2:13.

When you believe in the Lord Jesus, you and your whole household are saved. Acts 16:31 (“Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.”). When the blood of the Passover lamb was put on the doors of their homes, everyone in that home was saved from the destroyer. Put the blood over our home and over your children. Remember the description of a worthy wife in Proverbs 31:10-31? And remember I have espoused you to Me forever, your Maker has become your husband, that is, the bride is the church and every member of it, male or female, for all are one in Christ. And what does she do? “She is not afraid of the snow (the cold) for her household, for all her household are clothed with scarlet.” Proverbs 31:21. In prayer cover your family and all your household with the blood. Clothe them in Christ. Apply the blood in prayer. Offer spiritual sacrifice—speak the blood and the Word and overcome the devil every time.

You have a future and a hope. Tikvah. Never let go of that scarlet את cord.

And if you are losing hope, the pray in the Spirit, for “In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” Romans 8:26-27. And the result? “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28. Never let go of your scarlet cord that is attached to the anchor that holds you firm in the Holy of holies in every storm.

When a storm begins to blow in your life, and I mean any affliction, illness, pain, loss, or any other work of the devil, LOWER YOUR ANCHOR and embed it deeply in the rock of My Word and you will still be standing your ground, redemption ground, when it is over. And how do you lower it once the storm has started? By praise and worship. I surround you in the secret place with songs of deliverance. And those are victory songs. The more you thank and praise the deeper it goes and the stronger you have hold of the scarlet chord. Never let go no matter what and you will win the tug of war.

I love you. And that is why I gave you the precious blood of Jesus. “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life that makes atonement.” Leviticus 17:11. And the blood of Jesus speaks mercy. Hebrews 12:24. And that is your hope. A future and a hope. Christ has opened the way and has given you the hope of eternal life. Titus 1:2; Titus 3:7.