Hey everybody, I'm Tim McEy and this is my podcast Exploring My Strange Bible.

I am a card carrying Bible history and language nerd who thinks that Jesus of Nazareth is

utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have.

On this podcast I'm putting together the last ten years worth of lectures and sermons

where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites

us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith.

And I hope this can be helpful for you too.

I also help start this thing called the Bible Project.

We make animated videos and podcasts about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology.

You can find those resources at thebibelproject.com.

With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week.

Alright, well in this episode we are going to explore a number of passages from the book of Isaiah

in Old Testament.

This was part of an Advent series but it was kind of a standalone message the week before Christmas,

kind of the culmination of Advent.

It's a reflection on the meaning of hope in the Old Testament scriptures and the meaning of biblical hope.

And what a profound and important thing hope is as a virtue, almost to cultivate it's something that

God's people have to actively build and cultivate as they go through other lives.

And the hope for the Messiah in the Old Testament was a kind of hope that actually followers of Jesus

still need to be anticipating even though that he's come and done the first main stage of his deal.

There's still a lot more yet to be fulfilled in the promise of his return.

And so that's what we focus on is how what you hope for shapes, what you live for.

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