Legacies of Light: Johann Sebastian Bach

What if hope isn’t a mood but a muscle that holds under weight? We take a clear-eyed look at the difference between wishful thinking and a living hope anchored in God’s promises, then trace how that kind of hope changes how we suffer, work, and speak. Starting with everyday longings and honest humor, we move into the deeper currents: why hearts grow sick without hope, why confident expectation is not denial, and how Scripture trains our desires to rest on what God has said about our past, present, and future.

From there, we focus on the question people actually ask when life gets loud: why do you still have hope? Peter’s call to be ready with a gentle answer shapes our approach—no swagger, no arguments for sport, just credible lives and clear words. Along the way, we confront our rush for cultural quick fixes and see how God loves long timelines. The story of Johann Sebastian Bach becomes our case study: an orphaned musician who prayed “Jesus, help me,” signed “Soli Deo Gloria,” suffered deeply, died forgotten, and yet helped carry the gospel of hope across oceans and centuries.

The arc reaches modern Japan, where rituals have thinned and despair often wins the day. Through performances of the Passion of St. Matthew, conversations bloomed around a single theme: hope in the midst of suffering and a future secured by the resurrection. Choirs formed, skeptics listened, and some found faith—not through a lecture, but through beauty done with excellence. That’s the invitation for us too: use the craft we’ve been given, work with integrity, and let daily prayers turn labor into witness.

If your world is tapping out the old question—Is there any hope?—the answer is yes. Let’s learn to name it, live it, and share it with humility and joy. If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs courage, and leave a review telling us how you’ve seen hope show up this week.

Learn more: https://www.wisdomonline.org/

Transcript

Defining Real Hope

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He defined hope this way: confidence in a future event, an opinion grounded in evidence. And then he even added an illustration to his definition. Hope is founded on God's gracious promises. That's an excellent definition that mirrors this biblical theology of hope. You are not wishing upon a star. You are anticipating the promises of your Savior. Well, I read the true account of the 19th-century best-selling author Leo Tolstoy, who wrote Word Peace, among other classics. As a nine-year-old boy, he became convinced that if he had enough faith, God would allow him to fly. So he mustered up all the faith he could and jumped from his second story bedroom window and discovered he evidently didn't have enough faith because he didn't go anywhere but down. Well, maybe you've wished for something recently. Maybe nothing miraculous like flying through the air, but you know, something that would be nice. Maybe your 13-year-old saying to you one evening, Mom, you've worked hard all day. Why don't you sit and rest and I'll clean the kitchen? That would be a miracle, but it'd be great, wouldn't it? Or the mechanic saying to you, all that smoke billowing up from underneath the hood of your car, I just had to tighten the fan belt, no charge. You're good to go. Or the state patrolman saying to you after pulling you over on Tryon Road, oh, you were only going 45 miles an hour and my radar isn't working right. I'm sorry, sir. I don't want to bother you, you just continue on your way, Pastor. I made that one up, actually, hypothetically speaking. Or your husband coming home, you know, the leftovers. Hamburger helper again. Fantastic, right? Listen, if your husband complains, here's something you can try. A woman was overhood overheard saying to her friend, I have the perfect recipe for meatloaf. It works every time. I simply mention it to my husband, and he says, Let's go out to eat tonight. Well, what are you hoping for in life? What'd you come in here struggling with, worried about, anxious, troubled? Something miraculous maybe needs to happen. Maybe something nice. A wish that you would like to see come true. Someone has said that you can live forty days without food, eight days without water, four minutes without air, but only a few seconds without hope. Solomon put it this way: when hope is lost, the heart becomes sick. Desire fulfilled is a tree of life. I'm convinced that our world is on a mad hunt for hope. They won't call it that. In fact, they don't realize it as such, but they don't have an answer for that hole in their heart that was designed for hope. The world around us, their hope is really nothing more fragile than wishing upon a star. The truth remains, though, one author in my library wrote, Without hope, prisoners of war languish and die. Without hope, students grow discouraged and drop out. Without hope, athletic teams fall into slumps. Without hope, writers longing to be published give up. Without hope, addicts return to their old habits. Without hope, marriage partners decide to divorce. Without hope, inventors and artists shelve their creativity. Hope plays a vital role in every aspect of life. On December 17th, 1927, I read the USS S-4 submarine was conducting speed drills off the coast of Massachusetts. An American naval destroyer was patrolling the same area, and when that submarine began to surface, in spite of evasive actions, the destroyer collided with that sub, puncturing its hull and sending it to the ocean floor. Most of the crew in that submarine quickly died, but six crewmen were alive. They'd been sealed inside the torpedo room. But in spite of every valiant effort to provide an air supply, to raise that submarine, by the time they did, four days later, all the crew members had perished. Well, during the rescue efforts, I read one deep sea diver was down there and he heard tapping, the tapping of a message in Morse code on the steel wall of that submarine. And it was a message that simply repeated over and over again. Is there any hope? And there was none. I need some hope here. I need some hope. Isn't it great to sing that our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus, blood and righteousness? The Bible happens to say a lot about the subject of hope. Now, the word hope can be misleading, kind of like you hope your teenager is going to clean up the kitchen, or you hope you could fly through the air. But in 1828, Noah Webster completed his English dictionary, and he defined hope this way: a belief that is obtainable, confidence in a future event, an opinion grounded in evidence. And then he even added an illustration to his definition. Hope is founded on God's gracious promises. That's an excellent definition that mirrors this biblical theology, the concept we have of hope. You are not wishing upon a star. You are anticipating the promises of your Savior. Biblical hope is simply this: it is confident expectation about what God has said. Regarding your past, he's forgiving. Regarding your present, he's sovereign. Regarding your future, he's returning. And eternity will just be beginning. You ever thought about the fact that one of the characteristic distinctives that separates you and me from the unbelieving world is that you happen to have hope. Confident expectation based upon the promises of God. Maybe, and we need to be reminded today that we've been sent out, as it were, into the world on a rescue mission. We ought to be alert with this message. Ready. Peter writes it this way in 1 Peter 3.15, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. So in a world of hopeless people, your attitude, your perspective, your life provokes curiosity and interest. You have something your world doesn't have. And they got to find out how you got it. So Peter says, get ready, be ready for that moment when they ask you about it. By the way, the word for ask in that verse, everyone who asks you for a reason, is an informal term in the original language used by Peter. It's not some kind of formal inquiry. In other words, they're not asking you to make a speech. This is informal, a normal conversation, the kind that takes place at work or during break time at the shop or in a classroom after the bell rings. Peter says, they're going to ask you, they want you to give an answer, a defense. The original word is apologia, gives us our word apologetics or an apology. That doesn't mean you've got to be good at apologizing, although that's a good trait to develop. Apologetics means that you're ready with an answer. Now, according to what Peter writes, unbelievers might ask you to give them all kinds of answers, and you might, in your thinking, uh come to the conclusion, well, I'm not prepared. I gotta, you know, get more training. He's not saying the world's gonna ask you necessarily, you know, hard questions like an explanation for the Trinity. Or uh when did dinosaurs roam the earth? Or why did God create the devil? Or where did Cain get his wife from? Or how did those snails reach the ark before it started to rain? You know, hard questions like like that. They might ask you tough questions. Peter reminds us that what they're really after is why in the world do you have hope? Peter writes, they're not asking you for a reason for your faith. A reason for your hope. Again, he writes, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope. See, they're mystified. Not necessarily about the gospel you believe, not about the church you attend, but about the hope you have. How do you have this kind of confident expectation in life? How do you have such confidence that your sins are forgiven? How do you have such confidence that you're going to heaven? By the way, being ready with an answer doesn't mean you have a perfect life. You might have pain and sorrow and trouble. There is a difference. You sorrow, yet not as those without what? Hope. 1 Thessalonians 4.13. Being ready with an answer doesn't mean you have a perfect life. They're going to watch you go through difficulties in life. Being ready doesn't mean you have to have a perfect record in life. Believers sin, fail, mess up. We're not delivering a message of hope in ourselves. We have a message of hope in our Savior. So you don't need a perfect record. You just need to tell them about your perfect Savior. Peter adds in verse 15 when they ask you for a reason for your hope, give them an answer with gentleness and reverence. It's important to remember that. Gentleness and reverence. In other words, don't answer them with some kind of superiority, some kind of arrogance, some kind of rudeness. You're trying to win arguments. You're trying to win people to this gospel of hope. Well, how do you reach people without hope? How do you reach into a nation of hopeless people? Most Christians would think that God would need to do something immediately. If there's any hope for any nation, he's got to do something quickly. Most Christians I talk to today think the solution for our country is for God to do something now in our lifetime, or all is lost. Many Christians I talk to think God's running out of time. He's got to hurry. We tend to think in terms of our lifetime, our generation. But God has planned the ages for his gospel to reach around the world. I think of the country of Japan today, a nation filled with atheists. I've preached in Japan. We support missionaries in Japan. It's difficult. It's a difficult country to reach. Buddhism, Shintuism, the nation's traditional religions have lost credibility today among the people. They're really nothing more than ceremonies and parades. The temples are for the most part a tourist attraction. No other country in the world has as many palm readers as Japan. Suicide is the leading cause of death among men ages 20 to 44, and among women ages 15 to 34. Sixty percent of the population surveyed responded that they feel afraid, hopeless, every day. One Japanese professor wrote, and I quote, hope is a foreign idea here in Japan. Even our language does not have an appropriate word for the concept of hope, like we have in English. When I read that, I reached out to a member of our church who's from Japan and asked her about it. And she wrote me in response, and I quote, it's true, in Japan there is no sense of hope as we know it. There's no word for that kind of assurance. It's more like a wish. And I thought it's kind of like a wish upon a star. How could God reach people in Japan with the gospel of hope? Well, one of many means is something he began to do in someone he prepared 350 years ago in Germany. This young man had no idea that he would leave a legacy of light in a country like Japan. In fact, he never once left Germany. If he lived in North Carolina, he never traveled any further than Virginia. He never learned the Japanese language. He was an orphan by the age of 10. He had witnessed the deaths of his mother and father to diseases that ravaged Europe during the 1600s. His brother was a musician who, by trade, who took his little brother in and in the meantime gave him music lessons. But his little brother wanted to learn more and more quickly. So every night he would get out of bed quietly and he'd creep over to the cabinet. Inside was a book of difficult piano compositions. He'd reach his little hand through the grill work and he'd pull that book out quietly, not to wake up the family. And then by moonlight, he copied handwritten copies of that music onto sheets of paper. Now, evidently, he didn't know it, but what he was doing was illegal. And when he was discovered by his older brother, his older brother took all those manuscripts, nearly a year's work, and threw them in the fireplace. One biographer writes, but the notes, the harmonies, the rhythms that had been thrown into the fire had already burned into his soul. They would never stop driving him into the night hours, into the deepest reaches of his spirit, into the enthralling presence of God, where he would somehow hear music from another world. By the time he was 15, he had committed his life to Jesus Christ. His name was Johann Sebastian Bach. When he was 15, he went off to a boarding school, continued his musical training. It wasn't long before he proved himself as an excellent violinist. He actually landed his first job as a church organist. He would spend the next 50 years of his life playing and composing what he called, and I quote, music where God's gracious presence is at hand. He purchased Martin Luther, the reformer's three-volume translation of the Bible into German. And he poured over it. He underlined passages and he made comments in the margins, even corrected some of the grammar Martin Luther missed. And then even turned that some passage of scripture into music. Now, in a day when musicians composed a cantata, a long piece, we think of them as cantatas, oratorias, maybe one a year. He was writing one a week. 200 have survived. His most well-known work is a cantata that lasts nearly two hours, called The Passion of Saint Matthew. You can go online as I have and listen to it and let it thrill your soul. It was designed to be sung for the first time on Good Friday. Then he wrote another piece of music of the resurrection of Christ to be sung the following Easter Sunday. The Passion of Saint Matthew was composed brilliantly, emotionally. In fact, one author wrote, When the lyrics spoke of a troubled heart, the violins would tremble on their bows. When Peter was weeping bitterly, the orchestration would sound like it was rolling on the waves of the sea. When the whip scourged the back of the Savior, the music would writhe in tragic pain with a driving rhythm. Yet the predominant theme running throughout this cantata is the theme of hope. Woven into the lyrics was hope in the believer's heart in spite of suffering, hope in the will of God, hope in patient endurance, hope because of Christ's resurrection, hope in our future redemption. In fact, his close his closing lyrics translated into English about Christ's death and then coming resurrection, provided for us he would write a soft pillow, a soft pillow where we can find rest and hope. It was his custom that when he sat down to compose, he would spread out these blank manuscripts with only the staff there, no notes yet, written. And he would write at the top of the first page, Yesu Yuva. Jesus, help me. And then after hours, sometimes days, when he finished that composition, he would write on the last page, not his signature, but three letters. S D G. Soli Deo Gloria. To God alone be glory. His most famous works were never signed. Just those three letters. As far as he was concerned, Jesus had helped him. And God alone deserved the credit and the glory. Well, if he could fast forward, finally in his 60s at the end of 50 years of productive compositions, he was growing blind. He was never paid well, unable to hire a skilled surgeon. So he hired a traveling doctor. We would call them a quack today. He wasn't an eye surgeon, as he claimed. In fact, discovered later he wasn't a doctor at all. After two botched eye surgeries, Bach became completely blind, suffered with intense pain and swelling, infection. Within a year of those surgeries, his life ended. At the age of 65. He died penniless. In fact, the church demanded his widow return what little he had left her to pay off their debts. Another organist was hired, and box music was forgotten. I have read that some of his manuscripts were used to wrap garbage and then disposed. Of the 1,000 pieces, we have 202. His music would have been forgotten to the ages if it weren't for a young musician by the name of Felix Mendelssohn, who discovered them. Nearly a hundred years after Bach's death, Mendelssohn retrieved these manuscripts from dusty files. He recognized this musical genius and the inspiration of Bach's attempt to deliver the gospel of hope through music. And so Mendelssohn assembled an orchestra and a choir and for the first time in decades performed Bach's Passion of Saint Matthew. And for the past 200 years, it has been translated and performed around the world. Because of Bach's desire, by the way, to deliver the gospel through his craft, his talent, he earned the nickname the Fifth Evangelist, after Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And the passion of St. Matthew, they called it the fifth gospel. How do you influence your world with the truth of Christ? Well, you use what God has given you, the talent He's given you, the job where He's assigned you, where those conversations, informal conversations, take place. The water cooler, over the backyard fence, in a classroom. And you work with excellence. Here's a way to begin your day. Jesus, help me. Isn't that good? Pretty simple. Jesus, help me. And at the end of the day, oh, to God alone belongs all the glory from whatever has happened through his strength. Now, how do you open the eyes of a nation to hear the gospel? A nation of atheists. A nation where missionary work is incredibly difficult. A nation like Japan. Well, a Japanese conductor is a believer by the name of Masaki Suzuki. I always thought that was just with motorcycles, but he's a musician. He began leading performances of St. Matthew's Passion about 30 years ago. He noticed that after each concert, people would crowd the podium wanting to talk to him about what they'd heard, this theme of hope that Bach had woven into his cantata. And Masahaki was able to answer them. They would ask this question what is this hope Christians have? One Japanese journalist wrote a few years ago: there is now a Bach boom that has been sweeping the country for the past 20 years. Performances of Bach's Christmas Oratorio and St. Matthew's Passion are being sold out every time they are performed, even though tickets are$800 and up. Performances are sold out. The impact, even on the musicians, has been amazing. I read of one Japanese musician who traveled all the way to Germany to study the basis for box compositions. He ended up seeking out an evangelical pastor and saying to him, it is not enough to read these Christian lyrics. I now want to become a Christian myself. Today, in Japan, there are 200 choirs devoted to singing box music. Masaaki Suzuki was interviewed just this last month. Just turned 71. And he said this, and I quote, there are tens of thousands of Japanese who've come to faith in Christ through the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Isn't that great? I mean, what a legacy of light. A legacy, by the way, that really didn't seem to shine all that brightly in his lifetime. In fact, he was soon forgotten. But God had a plan. A plan that 350 years after he dies will begin to shine. And in this nation especially. The world around you, this country, is effectively tapping out the same message. Is there any hope? And the answer is yes. The Apostle Paul writes of the ministry of the Holy Spirit, which produces this sense of confident expectation, the sense of assurance. He writes, now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. Romans 15, 13. He writes of the power of God's word, that through the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. Romans 15, 4. So the Word of God gives us this settled assurance. The Bible talks about our hope of heaven, our assurance based upon the Word of God, 1 Peter 1:3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, unfading, kept in heaven for you. The world is asking, is there any hope? That's what they're really asking. They might want to ask you about Cain's wife. What they're really wondering about is your hope. You might have to say, I don't have a clue. He got her from somewhere. How those snails reach the earth? I wasn't watching. The issue is they lack hope. And we have it. So the answer is yes. In fact, when you think about it, Christianity has cornered the market on true, genuine, lasting hope. But it isn't ours to keep to ourselves. Be ready to give an answer to the hopeless when they ask you for a reason for the hope that is within you. The answer then is yes. We are not wishing upon some star. That's because our hope, as we've sung it, studied it, and we learned it, is nothing less than confident expectation based upon the promises of God.