Message that you would have us
to know through the words of your preacher and we ask that
you would Just help us and hear us for the sake of Christ in
whose name we pray. Amen Thank you church Turn with me
in your Bibles to 1st Timothy chapter 4 and Then fine as we
close out our service today fine Hebrews chapter 12 It's been a minute. Yet the Lord is faithful when
we are faithless. He is true when we are liars.
And nothing catches Him by surprise. We do this little gig every week.
We come, we hear, we sing, we pray. We remember, we remind,
we're reminded, and then we leave and go about our lives. And one
of the greatest challenges of being the church and being the
elder shepherds of the church is that there is a huge disconnect
culturally from us coming here, doing this, and then us being
out there doing that. And there have been many attempts
in my life and in my training and my experiences, as have been
for you, where a lot of people, a lot of intelligent people have
worked very hard to work out things and plans and strategies
and ministries and books and all sorts of trainings and everything
else in between that could help us live the Christian life. But
as you've heard from Pastor Trey over the last month or so in
the teaching of the Word, and as is continually going to be
preached here from this pulpit to you, is that the Word of God
is sufficient for us here in this assembly, this gathering,
and then out there on the street. The Word of God is sufficient
for us in our homes. The Word of God is sufficient
for us in our jobs, with our finances, in the context of our
relationships, in every aspect of life. The Word of God is sufficient
for us, yet we find that one of the hardest things to do in
life is to depend upon the written scripture. We find that when everything
is good, we are extremely spiritual. We pray well. We serve well. We think well. But the slightest
bit of discomfort, the slightest bit of pain, the slightest bit
of illness or anything that interrupts what we would call the status
quo of normality or peace, it begins to rock to the core of
our humanity and that human core surely does shatter into the
dust of depravity. and we begin to see what we're
really made of. And then we have a dichotomy. We have a split
opportunity. We have two ways to go, and the
path of the world, even in its goodness, if I can say that in
a general sense, and its goodwill, will say, okay, you gotta be
strong, you gotta be bold, you gotta be resilient, you gotta
be confident, you gotta stand up. But the scripture says that
in our weakness, we are strong. God Himself, the Son, when He
came to earth, came in weakness. He didn't whirl out of the tempest. That's why I want to go to Hebrews
12 at the end. He didn't whirl out of the tempest and manifest
Himself into some ethereal body of magnificence like Thor. He didn't come out of the burning
bush into a twister of sulfur and thunder. and then stand with
brazen eyes and a cape. He didn't even walk out of the
sea like a behemoth with a sword in hand as he's depicted in the
metaphors and the imagery of John's apocalypse. He came into the womb of a woman,
blessed and glorious. through the natural means of
birth, lowly and frail, unable to eat or speak. Yet for some strange reason,
we as His people, we as the sheep of Christ, we have this uncanny
Americanized ideology that we are superheroes of the faith. And that if we aren't the strongest
of all things, if we're not Samson, but remember Samson was glorified
in weakness and death. He wasn't much of anything profitable
when he was walking around free. We're not to be these heroes. It's a lie from the enemy. It's
a lie from the world. It's a lie from our conscience.
That we are something else and that we are needed and that we
are special in the context of being so powerful and so strong
and so bold as examples. How many times have you heard
in your life, brothers and sisters, that you ought to be an example
to the world? You ought to be the example to
your siblings. You ought to be the example to the marriages
around you. You ought to be the example to
the world at large. You ought to be an example to
other believers. You ought to be an example to the world of
unbelievers. You ought to be an example. And
what does that do? It stirs in us this thing of
like, wow. Some of us who are a little narcissistic
might think, I got this. Others who are self-deprecating
go, what am I going to do? And most of us at all times in
every way are actors. We know what to say and what
to wear and what to think and how to sing and where to walk
and how to stand and how to do and all of this stuff. I mean,
when I go to a restaurant that has seven forks, I can pretend
like I know what to do with them all. I push six to the side,
wrap them up in a napkin, I eat with the one. And when the waiter
tries to take the one from it, no, this is my fork, you take
these. I don't care. But we can learn
to act. We can learn to wear the tuxedo.
We can learn to put on the mask. We can learn the language and
even the dialect. For us who are empathetic in
the context of society and culture, we can mold ourselves like chameleons. And beloved, I think the church
of Jesus Christ is nothing but a chameleon, pretending to be
what it is not when it tries to be Christ himself. Let's hear the word of the Lord
in 1 Timothy 4, starting in verse 7. Paul instructs this young
elder, have nothing to do, and we've already dealt with verses
7, 8, and 9, but we're going to pick up all this, talk about
a specific thing this morning, and then continue in the weeks
to come. Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Nothing. Instead, rather, train yourselves
in what? For godliness. For while bodily training is
of some value, health and fitness, godliness is of value in every
way, as it holds promise for the present life and for the
life to come. This saying, Paul says, is trustworthy
and deserving of full acceptance. He says this several times. I'm
telling you now, it's deserving of full acceptance. Embrace it.
For to this end, we toil, strive, we work, we labor, because we
have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all
people, especially of those who believe. There we go. And verse
10, the first part of it, is where I'm going to focus my time
today. we have our hope set on the living
God. All those things that I said
in the beginning, all these things that I've stirred in your thoughts
and minds as we begin our worship this morning, to think about,
to consider, puts us in a place where the dichotomy that I was
talking, and I never finished talking about, is that we are
either going to embrace the world's way of being strong and bold,
or we're going to embrace the word's way of promise that we
are strong in weakness. Why are we strong in weakness?
Because we have a hope that is not of this world. Now see, that
too, is problematic because we think of the hope, and yes, it's
not of this world, but we oftentimes sit around and think, oh, I can't
wait to die, I can't wait to go to heaven, I can't wait to
be done, and there's nothing wrong with that. Paul had that
same problem. It is far better for me, he would
say, to be with the Lord, but it is far better for you that
I remain. And I'm here to submit, and we're not going to go through
that today, but I'm here to submit to you that Paul's joy was not
reduced in the fact that he did not have the fulfillment of it
by being with Christ. It was continually at the top
of his hope, even when he was imprisoned, even when he was
suffering, even when he was alone, even when he was rejected. The
same thing is true for Jesus and his humanity. He was hated
and rejected, belittled, not talk about the physical things
that he went through or the judicial way in which he was mistreated. He was hungry. He wept over these things. He
labored in prayer over these things. He felt anguish. He felt
fear. He felt despair, but he never
lost his hope. So we need to realize that The
life of abundance is not just getting out of this world, it's
also being in this world with a hope of a glory that is ours. And
I want you to hear that, church. I want to say it again. The Christian
life and its joy and its hope and its abundance is not just
about eternal life, though that is its tether. The Word of God
teaches us that in the midst of all things, we can have the
abundant life here. Now, defining abundant life,
I've had that question in the last few weeks online, but that's
something that the Word must do. And as we grow to understand
the scripture, we will understand what that is. And it's not just
as a parting shot on this topic, on this particular point. It
is not about prosperity, peace, and parties. The Christian life
will have very few of those things that last very long. Paul tells Timothy to have nothing
to do with these myths, to teach the church to not worry about
arguing these things. For example, even with what I've
just said, it would be very fruitless for us to debate a non-biblical
idea that God wants us rich. It'd be ridiculous. We're not
even going to debate it. Not only are we not going to debate it, we're
not going to debate those who debate it. We're not going to
give party to these things. We're not going to call it out.
We're not going to do an expose. It's a waste of time. My children,
as they grew up, we bought them toys that replicated real life
adult things. We bought them little cars. We
bought them little trucks. We bought them little guns. We
bought them little kitchen sets. Little kitchen mitts, little
tools, and all these things, when they got to a certain age
and they needed the real, they had to leave these little things
to the side. There's a lot of things that
are being replicated in this world. There's a lot of things that
are going on in the name of truth and in the name of Christ that
are just little toys, little replications of falsehoods. And we don't need to spend time
on those. It's not healthy. What does the PhD debate look
like if you want to talk about the psychology of a young child
who learns to cook Legos in their playroom at four and then to
be the next top chef? It doesn't matter. Who cares? What does it matter that every
iteration, that out of every breath, even us, beloved, out
of every breath, it is the probability and highly possible that we are
actually saying something that is a little off kilter from the
context of the truth of scripture. We might even be sharing a heresy
right now. But God's word will teach us. And the worst thing to do is
to throw ourself into a fire because we forgot to lace our
shoes, or zip our pants, or take our vitamins. Just tie, zip,
and eat. I hope you get the point. See, our hope when it is in this
world, when it is in the temporal things, we've misunderstood. We've misunderstood what the
Bible is teaching us, and we're not to walk around downtrodden
to the point where we think, oh, wow, we are promised destruction. No, we're not, we're promised
life. So when our hope is in our health,
or our hope is in our mental health, or our hope is in our
physical health, or our hope is in our financial health, or our
relational health, or our career health, or the health of our
marriage, or the health of our relationship with our children,
or the health of any of these things, then we are in trouble
when one of those slides into the trash. We're in trouble when
we get that report. Sorry, it's not good. You're
not gonna survive. We're in trouble when everything
that we thought we knew, we don't know anymore. We're in trouble when the little
voices in our head are louder than the trains on the tracks
outside. We're in trouble when we wake
up at 2, and 3, and 4, and 5, and 5.15, and 5.25, and 5.27,
and 5.29 every day, and somebody's already talking. It's us. We're in trouble when we strive
and toil in the world to try to work through these things
in a manner that's incongruent with what God has promised in
His sovereignty. See, we talk the sovereignty
game. Paul says to not have anything
to do with these silliness. And there's a context there.
We already know what they are. There's 20 some odd weeks of teaching
already in this text. I know it's been a few months,
but it still is there. You know what Paul's talking
about. Use of the law, this, that, and the other, theological
debates. How much faith does Woodchuck have? What does faith
look like? Well, I don't have faith in my
faith, thank God. I have faith given to me by the
Spirit in the faithfulness of Christ, even when I don't believe
it. And anyone that says, well, I've
never not believed the gospel, then they probably don't believe
it now. Because when we are swirling
in just the destructive nuances of this world, and we are spiraling
in small little twister things, you know those little dust things
that you see during the summer months, Well, a little tournament,
we used to play in them. When we're doing that, there
are times when we look up and go, is this even real? Is this
real life? Am I praying to my ceiling fan
every day? And I hope that you've not had
that journey, but let me tell you something. I'd be a liar to say that it
doesn't cross my mind at least weekly. Sometimes. I'd be a liar to say that there
may be several times a day when I'm laboring in my flesh, into
spiritual disciplines, where I'm thinking, what am I doing?
And you know what the Spirit of God does? There's your strength. Weakness. Because if I haven't
figured out, if I know what I know that I know that I know, then
I am the only thing keeping me standing. God's work is a divine work.
He is a divine being. He is supernaturally powerful
and sovereign. He is our hope in this world. This world offers no hope. And we look into the world and
what we see and think and what we know and understand is always
at odds. So Paul tells Timothy, rather
than dealing with all this stuff, rather than fighting all the
time in the flesh, rather than trying to evade or get out of
these things that cause us to suffer, why are we not training
ourselves for godliness? Now see, this is where my introduction
needs to have teeth. Because there's a specific way
in which God's Word tells us to train for godliness. It doesn't
tell us to train for godliness by exposing the darkness. And that's our mantra. Dark,
dark, dark, dark, dark. Because guess what? We're an
evangelist for evil. It doesn't tell us to train for
godliness by changing and acting in a certain way that fits the
culture around us in the name of Christian living. What kind of blouse should a
woman wear? Depends on the weather and her comfort level. If you don't like it, look in the mirror. What kind of music should a Christian
listen to? I don't know. I don't like some of y'all's
music and you don't like some of mine. How about what the scripture
teaches, whatever's praiseworthy? Well, is that ban praiseworthy? Probably not. Let that be your
conviction. It may not be mine. And if we
don't share the same conviction, guess what? Yay. Don't argue over irreverent things
and silly things. And I'm not making light. See,
oh, Antonin, live it up. No, live free. And when God, the Spirit, gets
to things that will help you in your joy and your service
to the church, which are the only real things that matter
at this point in our doing until those things are perfected in
love, we ought not worry about the finer details. God will handle
those. As some heretic said many years
ago in August of 1988, He said, those are the get-tos. Yeah,
really, I heard him say it. Those are the get-tos. God will
get to those things in your life as he is determined to do them,
when he is determined to do them. So we strive, train ourselves
in godliness, because bodily training, nutrition, good things,
beloved, I'm a big proponent of the physical body being healthy. Because when it's not, the spiritual
body and the mental body is not as healthy. But guess what? Those
things are out of our control. Disease and genetics and trauma
and everything else is out of our control. I don't care what
you eat or how good you eat or what you buy or how pure the
product is. When God wants you to be sick
and he's determined it, you're gonna be sick. And it doesn't
make us uber spiritual to do anything differently. We'll lay hands on your Big Mac
and we'll pray over it. Just like your organic chicken
that costs $40 a pound. We strive and we toil. Godliness
is a value in every way. And beloved, I believe that what
godly discipline does is it teaches us to hold the promise of this
life and the life to come according to this text. Because what Paul
says in verse 9, the saying is trustworthy and deserving of
full acceptance. That means embrace it. Don't doubt it. Don't hesitate. Embrace it. Eat it. Digest it.
Let it be the nutrient for your life is that everything that
is good and profitable according to the promises of God is yours
to count as yours. Trey's been in Ephesians for
a while and you know, it's hard to get out of chapter 1. It's
impossible to get out of chapter one. So I think we ought to be
there every single day in our spiritual lives and the lives
of those around us because when we're there we keep our perspective
on who God really is and whose we really are. So to this end of the promises
of God, we work and we toil. We work hard with diligence. We work hard with purpose. We
work hard with power, energy, moving toward a goal. And this
is the discipline of the Christian life. The question then is, what
is the goal? The goal is not to have high-brow theological
chops. Those are hobbies. The goal is not to finish all
sorts of great things that the world can take pictures of and
praise you for doing the work of God. It's not going to happen. There were more dedicated and
determined and sacrificial people that have done greater things
in the name of Christ in this world than the apostles did.
Their lives were very short and very, very myopic and very restricted. But yet their lives, through
the scripture, are continually being used by God to grow His
people and teach His people. But all these great heroes of
the faith aren't in the Bible. Because the point of the Bible
is not to praise them. None of them sought glory. Jesus,
the Son of God, did not even seek glory. He glorified the
Father. And when the Father glorified
Him, It was owed him. And by the way, the Spirit of
God only testifies to Christ, not himself. For recent news. So we toil, we work hard to rest
in the promises of God, in the disciplines of the faith. We
don't be working hard to try to clean our lives up. Working
hard to understand the gospel and to live a gospel intimacy
with other people, starting with our own homes. We don't need Puritan revival. God help me. I don't want that in my life. That was not godly. We don't
want Rome revival. We don't want legalism revival. We want grace. And what is the ultimate end
of striving to be disciplined, to learn the word, and to live
the word out? To the praise of His glory, and then what's the
point? Why are we here? To serve one
another. And that serving, is done here
in this building every Lord's Day as we listen to each other
sing, as we agree in prayer, and as we all eat and hear the
instruction of the word by the elders for your benefit for the
mutual growth of the body. And you are here and you are
serving one another by sitting here. Did you know that? Yes, I'm telling you are. What
am I supposed to do? This is step one, step two, step
three, step four, step five, and when this is all said and
done, out of this will come the world. So when we leave here,
remember my introduction? When we leave here, then we go
into the world, we live life together as we're able with each other,
as we're gifted, as opportunity permits it. If we've got the
flu, our plans are shot. If my head falls off, well, I'm
not gonna be singing for you. out of my hands. I have no power
over that, so you have to get together with somebody else who
can meet your needs. I don't even think it's about
Bible study. You wanna hear that? I don't even think there's any
real profitable example of in-home Bible studies that I've seen
in 20 years when they've been, you know what, I'm gonna recant
that. Yes, I have. Yes, I have. recently in the
last year or so. I'm talking about church led,
church sanctioned. Oh, we're going to start doing
this. But I have seen people in their daily lives bring the
word of God alive in their homes with other people that they love.
That's the way it works. It's not about what the elders
create a system for you to follow in your house. Where's your small
group? And I'm not knocking what people
do. I'm just saying for me and mine, it don't work like that.
Or as my dad would say, that dog don't hunt. It just doesn't.
It sits there. Bird, okay, you go get it. What does work is us learning
and living. And it's about the ministry of
the saints. Paul is talking to the elder of the church in Ephesus
about him doing the ministry to the saints. We toil, we strive. It's everywhere else. The exhortation,
the encouragement to be and to know the gospel. What does Paul
say to the Philippians? Holding fast to the word of life
so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not
labor or run in vain. And there's dozens of places.
Paul's discussion with the Romans. Greet those workers in the Lord,
and you probably can't pronounce those names there in Romans chapter
16, Traphanea and Traphosa, or however
else they're supposed to be pronounced. Greet the beloved Persis, who
has worked hard in the Lord. You see, Paul was not the guy
doing all the work of the ministry. Paul was teaching the church
and there were thousands and tens of thousands of people being
used by God to love each other. And it looks nothing like what
we see in the culture today. It was organic and led by God. So what do we do? We meet needs
and we create ministry as we need it. When you need something,
express your needs and we will do it. The worst thing to do
is walk into a restaurant and be told what you're going to
eat. You are special today and the only thing on the menu is
the blackened grilled cheese, deep fried in lard. Now for some
of you are going, side of chips. No, Brussels sprouts, I don't want that, I want chicken.
No chicken here, buddy. Sorry. You take your chicken
self out somewhere else. But it is crispy chicken, not
today. It's crispy cheese. You see? It's nothing worse than
to be in the ministry of God's spiritual family and be told,
this is what you shall do to grow. This is what you need. Well, I can't open my mouth that
wide. Well, eat it anyway. I mean, it's terrible. It's not
good. The ministry of the saints is
the point. That's why I'm standing here,
to minister to you, to teach you, and to encourage you, and
to exhort you, and to admonish you, to hear the truth of the
gospel of Christ, so that your hope can always rest on the living
God. We must labor for the sake of
the Lord in every sense, beyond our worldly pursuits, and also
within them. See, some people say, we gotta
put away everything that the world offers. Quit your jobs,
turn off your TVs, unplug your lights, burn down your outhouses. What? No, there's no prescription
to poverty, a command to that kind of stuff. There's a command
to, I mean, if everybody was in poverty, we'd be one bad bunch
of people. We wouldn't even be able to afford
the permit to stand on the sidewalk to ask for food. It's not a call
to the church. It's something that could happen
through persecution, famine. For those of you who've ever
worked with the church overseas, you've seen it. We've got it
made over here. But we labor within our worldly
pursuits. But why? What difference does
it make? Because it's unto the Lord. This is written for our
good that we may learn. It is unto the Lord, and because
we have set our hope on the living God. And look what it says there.
And I'm going to talk about this in more depth as we move through
the weeks. For to this end, verse 10 of
1 Timothy 4, we toil and strive because we have our hope set
on the living God. To what end? spiritual disciplines,
working, serving, loving. That's where we're at. And it's
just a pickup. You might wanna go back and listen to my last
sermon in December on this. And then he talks about who this
living God is, who is the savior of all people, especially the
savior of those who are believing. And that's a simple thing. God
is, according to the text, and I could show you, I don't have
time to carry us through all the usage of this idea through
the Old and New Testament, but just the same, we know that there
is nothing in scripture that teaches a general eternal salvation,
that Jesus died and the whole world's saved through that. We
know that there's nothing in the scripture that teaches that
Jesus intended to save the whole of humanity. We also don't want
to butcher this text and take it out of context and say, well,
he's just talking about all types of people here. No, but we can see throughout
the Old and New Testament that there is a sense, generally,
that God and what He does in the world saves some people,
temporally. He saves a bunch of knuckleheads
out of Egypt. He saves a bunch of knuckleheads
out of this place and out of that place. He does this. He
answers prayers. He does all sorts of stuff, so
the idea of Savior in the Old and New Testament is not always
tethered to eternal life, redemption, justification, all that. It also has a general idea, and
that's what Paul's talking about here. I mean, the whole world
knows that everything that everybody has comes from God, and God saves
us from the floods, and saves us from this, and saves us from
that. He's talking generally, but then he says particularly.
This is the contrast there grammatically. He saves eternally those who
are his, who believe. And this salvation, this promise
to the elect of God, this absolute certainty, the gospel is not
an offer of salvation, it is a proclamation of a finished,
guaranteed salvation. It is a finished work. It is
something that has been done and accomplished and already
applied eternally. And faith rests in that proclamation. Faith rests in that promise.
Faith rests in that hope. And so now I'm going to juggle
the word faith and hope. Into the same ball. This is why we can know and trust
God and what he does in the world among humanity, and especially
how he saves his own people. Those who have been born of grace,
who have been born of the Spirit, who have been born and given
faith are recognized as those who are justified in the Lord's
mercy and power, in whom we put our hope. And for the reason
that we endure and the reason that we continue to toil in each
part of our lives every single day, And so because of this,
there's some things, there's some affirmations. Here we go.
We're going to get a little bit psychological. There's some things that you
can say as a believer because of the sovereignty of God and
because of the promises of God and the Word of God, you can
say, I can hold fast because He holds me fast. You can say,
I can handle it. I can deal with it. I can survive
it because He's been raised to life. You can say, I can hear
and know the truth no matter what I'm thinking or how bad
my mind may be or how frustrated my emotions may be or how hard
the circumstances may be. I can know and hear the truth
because the sheep know the voice of their shepherd. Because this is all about the
faithfulness of God, right? The faithfulness of God is our
hope. The faithfulness of God is where
we stand. And beloved, it is so easy. Some of us think, well, you know,
well, let me do this. Here's some examples. There have
been times in all of our lives where we've looked at ourselves
in a present state and gone, oh, I wish I could be like I
was, spiritually speaking. I wish I could have the feelings
that I had. I wish I could be as content
as I used to be. I wish spiritually my life was
the way it used to be. You ever been there? I wish my
children were as obedient as they used to be. I wish my such
and such. Don't look at your kids like
that. That ain't right. You know, I wish such and such. I wish my friendships
were better. I wish my marriage was like it
used to. No, no, no, no, no. This is wrong thinking. We don't gauge our spiritual
lives that way. We gauge our spiritual lives
by no matter where I am now, my God hasn't moved an inch.
No matter where my faith is, where is it? I don't know. I
lost it. Is it with the other socks in
the dryer? The matching pair? My faith is
gone. I have no faith. Help me in my
unbelief. But I have this weird, uncanny,
ridiculous, absolutely psychotic ideology and resting hope that,
you know what, God's got it. I guess when Christ comes, he's
going to teach us all things. This is what God does. This is
saving faith. If we can call it that. In spite
of unbelief, we believe. because that is the work of God.
And then some of us are thinking, well, I'm so disciplined, I really
won't ever fall into unbelief. And some of us think that that
takes a long time of neglect. Listen, you miss one Sunday,
you are in a state of neglect, but you can be here every Sunday and still lose your faith. You can do everything right.
You can be walking high. You can have a marathon that
you've trained for and you are doing time that could break a
record. And you get up at four o'clock
in the morning of and you step on a Lego and it's over. It's
over. You're not running anywhere but
to add the new words that you just spoke into the sailor's
handbook. You see, it only takes a second. And then we burn ourselves to
death with guilt and frustration, and then we try to fix it. It's
not our fixing to fix. It's not our power to fix. It's
His faithfulness. So, the faithfulness of God is
our hope. He cannot fail. Paul tells Timothy
that in the second letter. When we are faithless, He remains
faithful, for He cannot deny Himself. See, the faithfulness
of God must be our anchor to our joy. to our hope, to the
resolution of our lives. The faithfulness of God must
be the anchor to having contentment in our relationships, in our
jobs, in our marriages, in our church. As we live as the people
of Christ, we are living out a picture of Christ and the picture
of Christ is a picture of humility, a picture of brokenness, a picture
of weakness that the father carried him and brought him to the cross
and crushed him by his purpose. That's why Paul makes this parallel
with the sufferings of Christ as something that's incredibly
glorious, that it actually feeds the soul of Paul to suffer for
the sake of being in the faith. And not everything that Paul
suffered was a result of the faith, but he put it there. He
had one category of his suffering for the sake of Christ. His disease, His body. Him being
a believer didn't cause that to happen. God used that for
His purposes in the life of Paul. So we are a picture of Christ
and his as his church, just like our marriages are a picture of
Christ and his church. And it's an essential understanding.
We are one with each other. We are one with Christ. We are
one together this morning as one body, one body. How easy
it is to lose sight of his faithfulness, of his promises, of his covenant,
of his of His power and of His promise that He will not fail
us, we can count on Him being faithful. Now there's something
that I don't think that I should do this morning, so I won't,
but I was writing out and looking all different places and I had
160 some odd things that I had listed out with little scripture
references of where people in the Bible alone had trusted and
hoped in God. So the next 40 minutes, I'm going
to read those out. Joking, some of you like slumped
in your seat. Looking at the watch that you
aren't wearing. I'm going to list 48 of them.
Very quickly. Abraham hoped in God's promises
to make him the father of many nations. Sarah hoped in God's
faithfulness to fulfill his promise of a son. Isaac hoped in God's
promises to Father Abraham. Ruth hoped in God's provision
and protection as she followed Naomi to Bethlehem. King Asa
hoped in God's help to defeat the Ethiopians. Jehoshaphat hoped
in God's protection and deliverance. Ezra hoped in God's grace and
mercy. as he rebuilt the temple. Nehemiah,
companions, hoped in God's help to finish the temple walls. Jacob
hoped in God's blessings and guidance. Joseph hoped in God's
purpose of suffering. Think about Joseph for a minute.
I could just go there and talk about him for an hour. That's
why I'm reading in my daily Bible reading. Joseph is co-regent
and now this morning, Jacob's going to Egypt. to eat the provision
of God through the son that his other sons left for dead. Caleb hoped in the promises of
God when everyone else saw giants and hopelessness. Hannah hoped
in God's faithfulness. to answer her prayers for a child.
And David hoped in God's protection and salvation from his enemies.
And then as he wrote the Psalms, the Psalmist hoped in God's goodness
and mercy, Psalm 23, Psalm 27. He also hoped in God's deliverance,
hoped in God's salvation of righteousness, God's strength and protection,
Psalm 71, God's forgiveness and redemption, Psalm 130. The prophet
Isaiah hoped in God's comfort and restoration, The prophet
Jeremiah hoped in salvation in the midst of suffering. You ever
read Lamentations? That's where that incredible
text comes. It says, His mercies are new
every day. Mercies are new when we're going
through it. They're stale when we're not. Ezekiel. hoped in the promises of God
to restore the land of Israel. Solomon hoped that God would
give him understanding and all that wisdom. Elijah hoped in
God's power to defeat the prophets of Baal and to bring rain on
the land. Hezekiah hoped in God's power
to deliver them from the Assyrians. And Nehemiah again continued
to rebuild the wall just like his people did. Esther hoped
in God's protection for her people. And what was happening there?
Genocide. Job hoped in God's faithfulness.
The Lord gives and the Lord takes. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
That's where that comes from. When did he say that? When he
was told that a house fell down and killed all of his children. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Daniel hoped in God's deliverance. Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego also
Zechariah and Elizabeth hoped in the promise of God for their
son, John, and Mary hoped in God's plan to use her to bring
the Savior into the world. John the Baptist hoped in the
coming of the Lamb of God and the centurion in the days of
Jesus hoped in the authority that he had to heal his servant.
The woman with the issue of blood hoped as she reached out and
grabbed the hem of his garment. Jairus hoped in Jesus power to
heal his daughter. The blind man hoped in the mercy
and the power of God to restore his sight. Martha and Mary hoped
in the power of Christ to raise Lazarus from the dead. Stephen
hoped in the promise of eternal life as he was looking into the
heavens and his life was being taken from him by stones. Paul
hoped and the grace and power of God to preach the gospel while
he was persecuted and beaten and left for dead and imprisoned.
The early Christians in Rome hoped in God's salvation and
righteousness, not in their works. The Corinthians hoped in God's
power to raise them from the dead. The Thessalonians hoped
in God's promise of eternal life and comfort. Timothy hoped in
God's strength as he led the church of Ephesus. The writer
Paul of Hebrews encouraged his readers to place their hope in
Christ as their only high priest. Peter encouraged Christians to
place their hope in God's grace and the promise of his return.
The apostle John, as we'll just close it out with Revelation,
hoped in the fulfillment of God's promises to bring his people
to the marriage supper for himself. And like I say, I had a hundred
and nearly seventy. But our emotions, our thinking,
we look at them sometimes as this just curse. But in the reality
of the gospel and what God has shown me today, today, is that my grief awakens my joy. Because it tears away the tethers
of anything temporal. And God is faithful to restore
it to Himself. That's insanity. Heartbreak and horror and stress
and anxiety are the building blocks of rejoicing. according to the Scripture. Our emotions are awakened in
our grief to grasp the picture and the purpose of everything.
If we do not suffer, we are not experiencing the joy of the Lord
on the opposite side. We are not experiencing humanity. We're not experiencing life.
We're not investing in the rest that is ours in Christ Jesus.
We're not rejoicing. We're just going. We're just
living. We're just blase. We're just
happy. We're just thankful. For what? To whom? Without pain, we will not grow. We will not find our deeper emotions
that I hate. that flow from the tender affection
of those around us to tell us the truth, to embrace us and
give us encouragement, and moreover, to replicate the tender affections
of our Father who is in heaven and our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ who came from the Father to sacrifice Himself for our
glory, for our joy. Beloved, the patience that comes
through our suffering is, in my estimation, the road map that
takes us through the journey. So in our weakness, we are strong.
That is Christ. In our sadness, we are joyful. That is Christ. In our worry,
we are cared for. I don't have to read 900 pages
of Scripture. You know where these are. You
know that the Scripture says in our weakness, we are strong. That is authoritative over you.
Whether you have the verse number or not, they weren't written
down originally. In our weakness, we are strong. He is our strength. My grace
is sufficient. That is the Word of the Lord. In our sadness, we'll be turned
to gladness. We are joyful. 1 Peter chapter
1. Though for a little while, if necessary, we face various
trials and sorrows, But in that trial, our faith that is more
precious than gold, and by the way, gold perishes under the
right temperature. Our faith will result in the
praise and the glory and the honor of Christ, and our joy
is inexpressible. Sometimes it sounds like, God
help me, I can't make it. And he says, no, but I can. And
beloved, I might not believe that at one o'clock this afternoon. So I need you to remind me of
it. It's a humdinger when you meet
an unbeliever in the streets. And you've decided to be honest
when people say, how are you doing? And I say, I'm not feeling
well, and I'm not doing well, and I'm honestly having a pretty
bad day. And they say, oh boy, have you ever thought about praying? And the apologist in me wanted
to really get in the form, you know? The evangelist said, yes,
I don't know what you believe in, but I know that God can work
it all out. I'm going to push this gas thing
on your head. I'm not going to answer another
person in public. It's true, though, right? I mean, God can
prophesy through an ass, Balaam's. I say that so the children would
go, what did he say? Pay attention. God can prophesy through a bush,
through a tree, through a bird, through a child. Trey did a good
job of keeping our focus on what prophecy really is last Sunday. It is proclaiming the Word of
God. It doesn't matter who says it, what says it, if it's written
on the wall, if it's written on the bathroom stall, if it's
being screamed from a roller coaster. It's authoritative and
it works. When we worry, we don't have
to worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will take care of itself. Yesterday's
gone. I don't want to be cliche, but you know the old thing. Today's
a present. It's a gift to you. Thanks. Let our lives today be testimonies
of His power. What can do this for me? What can give me this? Folks,
I am not a strong and together person. And I know you don't
believe that, I'm not. And I've been warned against
saying stuff like this to you by people who love me. But when I don't say it, I'm
a liar. I am not a strong and put together
person. I may be Fancy James when I stand
here, or I may have the act down of oratory, and my personality
may come through in my teaching, but ultimately, I'm broken. And you are too. So don't look to me as your tether
to joy, because you're going to have a real hard time when
I fall apart and I can't be there for you. You know what I can
do? God can give me the strength to come in here and teach. And
every single day, all day long, pray. Until I can't. Okay? That's what
I can do. What can you do? You can rest. You can remember. You can remind.
There's an R, sermon. See, Christ He cried in anguish. He cried in fear. He cried in
loneliness. When? My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me? That's loneliness. And He's righteous. He's our perfect substitute.
He's our lamb. He's our life. He's our Lord. See, the elders are called to
do these things. Tickle in my throat. To teach
and to encourage and to equip and to stay the course. And that's
what we're going to do. And so I ask that you pray for
me, that you pray for Trey. That as we teach and we do these
things, that we do them first in our homes. And we preach to ourselves and
to each other in our lives. And then we teach them to our
church and then we teach them to our community because we are
bound to also proclaim to our community the grace of God. Do the work of an evangelist.
Let's close and I want to read something. Hebrews chapter 12. Eleven is
a list of all these people who hoped in God. And who never really in the life
that they lived in their bodies received the ultimate hope that
they were promised, but they rested anyway. And the scripture
says that they were looking for something that was better. But
beloved, I'm here to remind you that even when it's bad, it's
still good. Not because we can ignore it
and look past it, but we can know that there's a purpose in
it. And if we're believers together, we can see great reconciliation. If we truly believe the Gospel
and the Spirit of God is in us, we can see great growth and maturity.
Therefore, because we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses,
let us also lay aside every weight. I preach this. There's a list. Let us lay aside every sin that
clings so closely and trips us up, so that we may run with endurance
the race that is set before us, as we look to Jesus, the founder
and, new word in the English, perfecter of our faith, who,
for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising
the shame, and is now seated at the right hand of the throne
of God. Consider Him, Paul says. Consider Him. As Paul tells Timothy, we have our hopes set on the
living God, our Savior, our stronghold. So consider Him. who endured
from sinners such hostility against Himself, so that you and I may
not grow weary or faint-hearted. In your struggle against sin,
you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.
Have you forgotten that exhortation given to you as children? My
son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be
weary when reproved by Him. For the Lord disciplines the
one He loves and chastises every son whom He receives. See, it
is for discipline, Paul says, that you have to endure. God
is treating you as beloved children. For what child, what son is there
whom his father does not discipline? If you're left without it, in
which all have participated, then you're illegitimate. You're
not a child. You're not a son. Besides this,
we have earthly fathers who discipline us and we respect them. Shall
not much more we be subject to the Father's spirits and live?
For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them,
but He disciplines us for our good that we may share in His
holiness, in His separateness. We may share His glory. For the
moment, all of it seems very painful rather than pleasant,
but later it produces the peaceful food of righteousness to those
who have been trained by it. Therefore, lift your drooping
hands and strengthen your weak knees. And this is an allusion
to Moses. And make straight paths to your
feet so that what is lame may not be out of joint, but rather
be healed. Strive for peace with everyone. and for the holiness
without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one
fails to obtain the grace of God, that no, listen to this,
root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and by it
many become defiled, that no one is sexually immoral or unholy
like Esau, who sold his entire birthright for some food. For
you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing,
he was rejected, for he found no chance to change his mind,
though he sought it with tears. Verse 18, and the whole point
of it, is you've not come to what may be touched. So we come
to the world and all of its issues and we come to our own proclivities
and pain and we come to the experiences of this world and it's just overwhelming. What do we do? How do we do it?
What are we going to do? We can survive it. Because we've not come to these
things. Just like at Sinai, which is where Paul goes right here,
they came to that mountain that could be touched. They could
see it, they could feel it, they could smell the smoke, they could see
the tempest of God. They heard, as you'll see in a minute, the
command of God that if an animal touches this mountain, kill it,
for I'm holy. Do not approach me. Nothing can
approach me. That's not where we live. You
have not come to what may be touched. a blazing fire, and
darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and
a voice whose words made the hearers beg, no more! For they could not endure the
order that was given. If a beast touches the mountain, it shall
be stoned. Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said,
I tremble with fear. But you have not come to that.
You have come to Mount Zion. You have come to the city of
the living God. You have been embraced and welcomed
in the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the innumerable angels in
festal gathering, and to the church, to the assembly, to the
ecclesia of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven. And you
have come to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous
made perfect. And you've come to Jesus, the mediator of a new promise. And to the sprinkled blood of
Jesus that speaks a much better word than the blood of Abel.
The blood of Abel spoke recompense, vengeance, justice. The blood of Jesus speaks, it
is finished. It is finished. Sometimes we
think our boldness and our confidence and our strength will make us
stand firm and be something to behold. It'll make us tall and
powerful, we think. And when we put these things
in our minds and we act out these silly little childish pretend,
it's like cooking on that little oven when we were three. Nobody's
eating that Lego. They're going to step on it and
ruin the marathon. It's not a potato. We get there, we're just playing
the role when we think that our strength and confidence and boldness
and convictions are going to make us stand tall and powerful.
We've misunderstood the principle reality of the human condition. And we may esteem others who
seem to have that gift, but they really don't. There's no one who is strong
alone. And the children of God will
never be strong in the world apart from weakness. Jesus is
the essence of our hope. He is the life. He is the point. See, life takes time, beloved. Love takes time. Joy takes time. And there's going to be a lot
of sticky stuff in between all those joyful, loving, living
things. The currency of these outcomes
is hoping in God during it all. The economy of God's promises
and grace are the only thing that we can truly invest in and
stand on. We have to hope in the promises
of God. We have to see that Jesus Christ
has set us free from sin and death and promised us an abundant
life today as we traverse these painful times. Let's pray. We thank you, Lord, that your
love for us, that the blood of your Son, Jesus Christ, cleanses
us. We thank you, Lord, that through
hardship trials that you show us joy, that you increase our hope. And Lord, we can't learn it all
today. We can't practice it all and get the discipline right
today. It's going to take time. So help us to be patient, help us
to be patient with each other, help us to be purposeful in the
lives of one another, that we may be wise and slow to speak. and that we may breathe life
into the lives of those around us instead of being constantly
overwhelmed by the despair of the world. Whatever is lovely,
whatever is honorable, whatever is true, whatever is praiseworthy,
Father, help us to think on these things. Help us to be content
with this. Help us to know that even in
The handwriting before us may say it is not going to be good. We can say it already is. For you are our good Father.
and you cause all things to work together for our good, according
to your great purpose, according to the purpose of your will,
from which you counted us yours before we ever were. In Christ
Jesus, we stand. In Christ Jesus, we are strong.
In Christ Jesus, we pray. Amen.