House Rules: Week 1, 1 Timothy 1:1-11

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And let's get started.

So when Pam and I were newlyweds, we were at Cumberland College in Williamsburg, Kentucky.

We were married college students.

We married when we were just 19 years of age.

And so as we're kind of working our way through our junior and heading into our senior year, we're like, okay, what is going to be next for us?

Right?

What's that next step?

And my wife very quickly said, I believe God is calling us overseas to be missionaries.

And I'm like, no, he's not.

He just really is so, he's just so not doing that.

But my wife kept on persisting in this.

In fact, she filled out an application for the Journeyman program with the International Mission Board.

And I had not even, didn't even tell me.

She just sent it in.

They sent her back a very nice letter and said, Dear Mrs.

Zimbert, in order for us to consider your application, your husband has to want to go too, right?

And so it seemed like things were on hold, but one thing leads to another.

And turns out that God was indeed speaking through my wife.

And we wind up both applying for the Journeyman program.

And we get this letter that says, Hey, we, you know, really think based on your application, there's some potential here.

Will you come to Candidate Weekend?

That was a big deal.

So we fly to Richmond, Virginia, and they're paying for it, which made it a lot of fun for us, right?

And so we fly up there and we get interviewed, I don't know how many times, and psychological profiles, and you name it, all of that happens.

And we've on one day we they walk us into this huge room, and around the room are all these tables, and on all the tables are all these folders, and each folder is a different ministry opportunity somewhere around the world.

It's organized by regions.

So Pam and are like, oh, this is like a candy store.

So we start walking through this room and we pick up the folder and we read about this job.

No, that's not a fit.

No, that's not a fit.

Hey, what about this?

And we do that, and we spend hours in this room.

And we come across out of that room, and we've made, we were told to make three choices, top our top three.

And here were the top three that we chose.

The first one was a coastal city in Brazil.

Can y'all not hear God speaking right now through that image?

Okay.

The second choice was a town among the castles of Belgium.

Yes, am I right?

Here I am, send me, Lord, right?

The other was a large urban city in Africa.

See this?

Yeah.

Doesn't that speak to you the same way the other two pictures spoke to you?

It just not quite the same.

So we go home and we wait, right?

And this is before there's text messages and email and all this.

This is a long time ago when things were done on paper, you know, and you couldn't go and just check your status, you know, of your application every 30 seconds.

You couldn't do none of that was possible.

Instead, they said to us, hey, you're gonna receive a letter through FedEx, and it's gonna come on this day, which I was pretty amazed by.

That was like, that's pretty drilled down that they can tell you the very day the letter's gonna arrive.

I'm like, sweet, okay.

So the waiting game is on, and I'm waiting and waiting and waiting because FedEx is gonna deliver this letter that's gonna tell us we're gonna spend the next two years of our lives and if we're accepted and all of that.

And so for weeks, you all, my hope was wrapped up in a FedEx envelope.

I really believe that that envelope would determine my future.

Was I gonna be Dave the missionary?

Was I gonna be Dave living in a very exotic location?

Or was I gonna be Dave the unemployed college student trying to figure out how to get in seminary?

Which was it gonna be?

Right?

My whole future was wrapped up in that envelope and the anticipation, y'all, it was brutal.

Every time I heard a delivery truck drive down our road, I was like, is that it?

Is it FedEx?

Right?

I would look, no, no, not FedEx.

And all this time I'm wondering where it's gonna be, right?

If we get selected, I'll be honest with y'all, I had my preferences.

Okay.

I'm pulling for Brazil pretty hard, right?

Because I wanted to learn how to scuba dive, and I didn't think that was gonna be that easy to do in Africa, so that's what I was pulling for, right?

Finally, the day arrives, and the FedEx truck comes along, and Pam and I get the envelope, we tear it open.

And the first line have y'all received a letter like this, where really the first line kind of tells you everything you need to know.

You know what I'm talking about?

And the first line says, We are happy to inform you.

And in our little tiny little college, you know, husband and wife house, a party broke out.

We were like, Woo! You know, we're going crazy.

And then I don't know whether it was Pam or me, but one of us went, Hey, where are we going?

We kept reading down the letter, and it wasn't Brazil, so not our first option.

Is it Belgium?

No, it's not Belgium, it's it's Africa.

And we were a little disappointed at first, not gonna lie, because when you're thinking beaches and castles, you know, but we y'all y'all know this part of my story.

We didn't spend two years in Africa, did we?

We spent 10 years in Africa, right?

I mean, it became such an important place to us.

And I look back at that and I think about that FedEx envelope, and that that envelope became so much more than just a letter.

For a season of my life, that letter became my hope, and that hope shaped how I thought, how I responded, how I acted, what I wanted, what I desired.

That hope changed and affected everything about me.

You get what I'm saying?

Now here's the thing: every single one of us, every single one of us has an envelope.

Every single one of us has something on which we hang our hope.

It might be your career, it might be a relationship, it might be your children, it might be your health, it might be your retirement, it might be a dream that you have been chasing for years, but every single one of us is hanging our hope on something.

We're all convinced that something out there is gonna dictate and determine our future, and so we count on that thing and we place our hope in that thing.

And I want you to understand how important this is because no matter where your hope lies, your hope is gonna shape you.

It's gonna shape your priorities, it's gonna shape your decisions, it's gonna shape the kind of person you're gonna become.

So here's the question I want you to think about this morning.

Where is your hope?

Think about it right now, just in your mind, place that.

Because if your hope shapes you, then identifying what your hope really is maybe the most important thing you do today.

It may be what makes worth coming to church today, man.

Fortunately, as we as we begin First Timothy, Paul begins this little letter to Timothy at this very place.

He begins with a discussion about hope.

He answers this question: What is your hope?

Look at it in 1 Timothy chapter 1, the first two verses.

1 Timothy 1 · chapter mention

It says, Paul, an apostle of Christ, Jesus, by the command of God our Savior, and of Christ Jesus, what?

Our hope.

To Timothy, my true son in the faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

I just love this, by the way.

Paul can barely introduce himself without also introducing Jesus.

Okay?

He manages to make it in the original language three whole words before he's talking about Jesus.

It's just a part of who he is.

So he he doesn't point to himself as he begins to write this letter.

He points to God our Savior and to Christ Jesus, our hope.

So it turns out we learn right away that hope is not a what.

Hope is a who, right?

It's a person.

Paul says, I'm an apostle commissioned by the risen Christ to proclaim the gospel and to help lay the foundation of the church.

But he what he really wants us to see here is not his position.

It's not that he's an apostle.

That's not the headline.

The headline is his Savior.

Paul says, hey, listen, if you want to know who I am, you first have to know whose I am, right?

And when Jesus became Paul's hope, it totally changed who he was.

You might know Paul's story, right?

Saved in a very dramatic fashion, when Paul came to know Jesus, it changed everything.

And it turns out that Paul's identity wasn't rooted in his education, though it was extensive.

It wasn't rooted in his achievements, though they were many.

Paul's identity was rooted in Jesus Christ, his hope.

I want to just draw from this.

I believe there's a lesson here for you and for me.

Here it is.

Your hope shapes who you are.

When you think about, well, who am I?

What's my identity?

What you're hoping in is going to kind of clarify that for you.

See, we all have a tendency to anchor our hope in our pursuits or in our aspirations.

If your big hope is that, hey man, one day I'm going to be an athletic success.

Or if your hope is one day my kid's going to be an athletic success and therefore pay for his own college with a wonderful athletic scholarship, right?

If that becomes your aspiration, then suddenly that consumes your whole life, right?

Your hope is built on that aspiration.

Your hope shapes who you are.

Who are you?

I'm a football player.

Who are you?

I'm a baseball player.

Who are you?

I'm a really good, I'm a straight A student, right?

Whatever it might be, your hope shapes who you are.

It shapes your priorities, your decisions, and even the way you see yourself, right?

Who are you?

I'm a husband.

Who are you?

I'm a wife.

There's nothing wrong with that.

There's nothing wrong with having those things in our life, right?

They're all gifts from God, but they were never meant to be the source of our hope.

Paul says, hey man, there's a better hope for you out there.

It's founded in a person.

Jesus Christ is our hope.

And Jesus, our hope, doesn't just shape your future.

He shapes who you are.

Paul says, I'm an apostle.

I have this identity because of Jesus Christ.

I'm a messenger of the greatest news in all of human history.

Why?

Because Jesus is our hope.

You want to see why I am who I am, Paul is saying?

It's all because of Jesus.

Now there's another reason that Jesus, that rather, Paul tells us about who he is here, about why he says he is an apostle.

An apostle is someone who is commissioned by Jesus Christ himself to lead the church.

And this is a really big deal.

Paul needs to establish this because he's about to tell Timothy, who's this his young apprentice, and so he's about to tell him to do something that's really, really difficult to do.

Timothy, this very young man, is being commanded to go and confront a group of men in the church who are teaching false doctrine.

How many of y'all are thinking that's the job I want, right?

Timothy must feel terribly outgunned here.

And Paul's saying, hey, listen, man, I'm coming at you with some authority here.

I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ.

I'm appointed by God Himself to have this role of responsibility in the life of the church.

And with all that, I'm using it to say to you, go, and I want you to solve a problem for me.

Okay?

See, there was a group of men in the church at Ephesus where Timothy was.

And they were leading the church away from the hope of Jesus.

And to make matters worse, the church was allowing it to occur.

Paul says, This has got to stop.

This has got to stop.

So look at what he says beginning in verse 3.

I urged you when I went to Macedonia, remain in Ephesus so that you may instruct certain people.

We're not going to call any names just yet.

Instruct certain people not to teach false doctrine or to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies.

These promote empty speculations rather than God's plan, which operates by faith.

Now the goal of our instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.

Some have departed from these and turned aside to fruitless discussion.

They want to be teachers of the law, although they don't understand what they are saying or what they are insisting on.

All right, now let's break all of this down.

What's going on here?

Paul says, Timothy, I left you in Ephesus to solve a problem.

The church there in Ephesus is completely adrift.

It's placed the wrong people into leadership in their church, and it's led them to take their eyes off the gospel.

They're believing all the wrong things.

This teaches us a little something else about hope.

And it's simply this: your hope shapes what you believe.

If Christ is your hope, okay, you're going to want to consume teaching that points you toward him, that makes you draw closer to him.

But if you don't guard your heart, something other than the gospel can capture it.

And that new thing will reshape your beliefs.

You can get off track in a real hurry, can't you?

Pastor Nate, Nate's our missions pastor, and he's back out in Salt Lake City again this week.

So I can tell on him while he's gone, okay?

So a few weeks ago, Nate and I go out to Salt Lake City together.

He gets there a couple of days before I do, and so he rents the car.

The car is in his name, so he's listed as the driver.

And so for the whole week that we were there, Nate is driving me around Salt Lake City.

And you might think, man, that's really great, Dave.

You had a chauffeur.

Or you might think, Dave, that's really terrifying because of how Nate drives.

It can go either way, right?

So we're riding around Salt Lake City together.

Nate does not know this city all that well.

And we're zipping along down the interstates and so.

And y'all, he's got the GPS right there, right?

It's right there.

It's a map.

It's saying turn right, turn right.

And they just right by it.

And I'm like, dude, really?

And no, he doesn't do this once, once is no big deal.

Have you ever done that?

Right?

And you're like, well, I should have seen it.

It's right here in front of me.

It's on the map.

What is wrong with me?

Okay, I'll fix it the next time.

Nate, mm-mm.

Next time we need to turn right to get back to the right turn that we missed before.

I'm like, really?

Again?

What are we driving to Idaho, man?

What are we doing?

Right?

Over and over and over.

And finally, Nate says, I got a confession to make.

I said, What is that?

He says, I'm such a bad driver.

I said, Really?

I would have never guessed this.

I said, Nate, you got a GPS, man.

It's literally telling you where to go.

How can you keep missing it?

Y'all, I'll simply ask that you pray for Britney and the girls the next time they go on a family vacation.

Okay.

Pray that Brittany drives or we may never see them again.

Okay.

Y'all, that's exactly what's going on here in the church in Ephesus.

Okay?

That's exactly what's happening.

Instead of following the clear teachings of Jesus Christ, the church is allowing these false teachers to steer them in the wrong direction.

Okay?

These men weren't helping the church know Christ better.

They were distracting the people of the church from Jesus.

They were filling people's minds with myths and speculations and pulling them away from the gospel.

So Paul says to Timothy, Timothy, you've got to put a stop to this.

Now I want you to imagine just for a moment that you are Timothy, that you're in that role, that you've been given that instruction.

You are to stop false teachers.

How would you handle it?

If it were me, I would just focus on bringing the hammer, right?

You see what I'm saying?

It would be like slice and dice, scorched earth.

I mean, I would be like looking at them going, you false teacher, out.

Don't come back.

Just be gone with you.

Okay?

That would be my personality type.

I would have none of it.

But that's not what Paul tells Timothy to do here.

Zoom in on verse five here.

Just kind of pull in on that.

Now, the goal of our instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith.

Just let that verse challenge you for just a moment, okay?

These false teachers are just hammering the church and they've got to be stopped.

Paul's clear about that.

But then he says, Hey, Timothy, I don't want you to crush these people.

I don't want that for them.

He says, Timothy, I want you to confront them in such a way that if they repented, they could be brought right back into the truth.

The goal of our instruction is love.

Now, just for a moment, I want you to bring this bit of instruction into your own life.

Have you ever had to, and please don't raise your hands?

Have you ever had to confront somebody in your life that was making complete mess of things?

Ever had to do that?

Right?

Ever had to just really get up into somebody's face?

Maybe it was a coworker, maybe a family member, maybe another believer who's wandered from the truth?

How do you confront somebody so that their behavior has changed without, one, them being crushed and broken by it, and two, without you being proud and arrogant and self-righteous about it, right?

How do you do that, right?

So that they're restored and not just disposed of?

We'll go back to verse five.

Paul says it begins with a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith.

In other words, before you confront someone else's heart, make sure you've examined your own.

So Paul says, Timothy, you gotta bring this change.

But the way that you handle this problem, it's gonna reveal what you really believe about Jesus.

So, yes, stop the false teaching.

Yes, protect the church, but do it believing that the same gospel is powerful enough to save sinners, it's also powerful enough to restore those who have wandered from the truth.

Don't just bring the hammer and do away with them.

Do this in such a way that they're restored.

I just want to remind you what these men have done.

The Bible says here that they've taken portions of scripture that are seemingly harmless, the genealogies.

If you've you ever looked through the Old Testament and you read all the genealogies, some of you all, let's be honest, we think of it as flyover country of the Bible, right?

It's like, uh we can skip all of that, right?

We don't need all the baguettes and all that stuff.

We can skip all of that stuff.

Well, what they were doing is they were taking those genealogies and they were turning them into a source of false belief, okay?

They were extracting from those genealogies these fanciful stories, and they were saying, see, that's how you're supposed to live.

So-and-so is right here in the Bible, okay?

So they were just abusing the scripture.

They were twisting the laws of the Old Testament that they didn't really even understand, according to Paul, and they were twisting them for their own gain.

And so Paul says, Man, this is the problem.

You've got to stop.

You you've got to help them put this behind them.

And as Paul lays out what these false teachers have done, he anticipates kind of the question that would be in everybody's mind.

He wants to make sure he's not misunderstood.

So Paul's concerned that when he speaks against these false teachers who are abusing the law of the Old Testament, that someone might hear him say, the law of the Old Testament is wrong.

Okay?

So he's just gonna pursue that question for a moment.

Look at what he says in verse 8, found through verse 11.

But we know that the law is good, provided one uses it legitimately.

Hear that?

Little tone there.

We know that the law is not meant for a righteous person, but the law, but for the lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinful, for the unholy and irreverent, for those who kill their fathers and mothers for murderers, for the sexually immoral, and males who have sex with males for slave traders, liars, perjurers, and for whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching that conforms to the gospel concerning the glory of the blessed God, which was entrusted to me.

Well.

So Paul.

Just says, hey man, these people are taking a law that's actually good for us.

They're twisting it and abusing it.

He says, Hey, listen, am I saying to you that we should live by the letter of the law?

He said, No, man, that's not what I'm saying at all.

He makes it real clear that we live by a different standard, right?

He makes it real clear that our hope in Jesus is what shapes how we live, right?

Go ahead and bring that up.

It's our hope in Jesus that shapes how we live.

That's the standard.

It's our relationship with Christ that defines our behavior.

But he says, the law is really helpful in that it serves as a lens for me to see what godly living actually looks like.

Okay.

A while back I had to go to the eye doctor.

I was I spent a lot of time looking at a computer screen because of what I do for a living.

And um I got to wear, I couldn't see the screen all that well.

I wear trifocals, right?

Years ago, the doctor said, Hey, one of these days you're going to need bifocals.

And I was like, Oh no, I'm not.

I am so not.

And so sure enough, when my arm was long enough, you know, and I just I just pretended, I just kind of faked it until I made it.

I don't know what I did.

I go back to the eye doctor.

He says, Congratulations, you do not need bifocals.

I'm like, he said, you need trifocals.

See, anyway, I get to where I couldn't see the computer screen all that well.

And so I go back to the eye doctor.

Are there quadfocals?

What's my next step?

He said, no, no, no.

What you need is you need a certain plane of your trifocals.

One of those planes needs to be expanded so that as you're looking straight ahead at the computer screen, you're looking at through the correct plane.

And he said, then we're gonna like eliminate distance vision from them and and we'll leave you a little bit of a reading plane.

So if you glance down and you're reading something, you can still see it, you know.

And so that's what we'll give you.

And he said, just be sure that you don't go out and drive in them or something because you won't be able to see down the road.

And unfortunately, I got frames that were just basically exactly like these, and from time to time I get in my car and I'm driving down the road.

I'm like, oh man, you know, I'm in the wrong glasses, right?

Well, those computer glasses do, those computer glasses serve as a lens through which I can actually see my computer screen.

Do you get it?

What's the law do for us?

The law is like a lens, we look through it and we can see what it means to live a godly and righteous life.

Okay?

It's not that we're hidebound to the law.

Our allegiance is to Jesus Christ, but as we pursue Jesus, what we find is that the law consistently points out to us what it means to live for Christ.

So he lays out here in these verses, 8 through 11, he basically takes the Ten Commandments and he kind of presents them in a little bit of a different way.

He says, Hey man, this is all valuable stuff.

If you look at these verses, he's not just giving us a catalog of bad behavior, he's painting us a picture of the difference between a life that's still in rebellion against God and a life that's been transformed by the gospel.

So people whose hope in Christ don't approach God with irreverent reverence.

They don't treat people as if they're disposable.

They don't uh use their bodies however they please, they don't lie or deceive.

Why?

Because our hope is in the Savior who fulfilled the law and he has changed us and he's called us to be like him.

So our hope in Jesus shapes how we live.

When people look at our lives, they see him, Jesus, at work in us.

And Paul is saying, Timothy, we've got to help this church.

We've got to bring them back from the brink with these false teachers.

We've got to help them to reattach themselves to the grace and goodness of Jesus Christ and to pursue a legitimate, God-honoring life.

Okay?

That's just a few verses that we've looked at here in 1 Timothy, but there's already some huge takeaways for us, things that we need to begin putting into practice right now, today, this week.

Okay, so let me just give you a couple.

First one is this, as I'm looking at this, this one just jumped out at me.

Folks, we need to make sure that we let Jesus shape who we are.

We said that our hope is what shapes us, right?

Well, our hope needs to firmly be in Jesus Christ, and it needs to be evident to ourselves and others that Jesus is the one who's shaping who we are.

So Paul says, hey man, my whole identity comes from Jesus.

Let me just ask you, what about you?

Is that where your identity comes from?

Let me just give you a simple challenge on this.

Tomorrow morning, when you wake up, and uh, and for those of you who are going to work tomorrow, when you wake up tomorrow, before you look at your phone, before you look at your calendar, before you do any of that stuff, just as you lay there in bed, just say, Jesus, before anything else today, I want to make sure that my identity is found in you.

And just really grind on that truth.

My identity comes from Christ.

My hope in Jesus is what is what shapes who I am, right?

It's all about Him and what He's doing in my life.

And after you've prayed that down, then open your calendar and look at your meetings and the appointments and the conversations and the to-do list.

Look at all of that stuff.

Now ask yourself, as someone who's shaped by Christ, how do I stand for the hope of Jesus in each of these moments?

How do I reflect Jesus in that difficult meeting that I've got today?

What's that gonna look like?

I know it's gonna be a toughie.

How do I get through that difficult meeting and reflect Jesus?

How do I confront that problem while still seeking to restore that person?

Not crush them or break them, but restore them.

How do I write that difficult email in a way that reflects the gospel, right?

Just make your mind up.

My identity is in Christ.

It is Jesus who shapes me.

So as I go through my day, as I'm facing the challenging and difficult obstacles that just come up with any day, I'm gonna make sure that Jesus is the one who drives that.

That's exactly what Paul did.

Before he confronted the problem of false teachers, he pointed to everybody and said, Hey, listen, I want y'all to see that Jesus Christ is my hope.

This is the person from whom I draw my identity from.

I draw my identity from Jesus.

And so as we think about dealing with these difficult false teachers, let's make sure we're dealing with it rightly and correctly.

You and I need to be the same, right?

Who am I?

Who am I in Jesus?

Let that be what identifies me, and then deal with the emails, deal with the meetings, deal with the difficult conversations so that every responsibility that you have flows from the hope that you have in Jesus Christ.

All right?

Here's another takeaway for you.

Man, this one is just, it just, it's right where we live.

Whenever you face conflict, don't lose your faith.

Use your faith.

Okay.

Whenever you face conflict, don't lose your faith.

Use your faith.

I think you all for a lot of us, you know, we're, you know, we'll come to church on Sunday, but we'll find ourselves in a difficult situation on Monday, and we're like, gonna bring the heat, baby.

Here it comes.

Okay?

Bad days about to come out, right?

And we've we've trained ourselves to believe that my faith in Christ is for when things are good, not when things are bad.

And when things are easy, not when things are difficult.

Now I would submit to you, the Bible teaches us that Jesus is for us when things are easy, and Jesus is for us when things are hard, too, right?

So as you go through and you think about the times that you've been hurt deeply, or you know, any of those hardship conversations you've got to have, and as you unpackage all of that, you need to say, okay, I've got to handle this in such a way that I lean and rely on my faith in Jesus Christ.

Look back at verse 5 again.

The goal of our instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, good conscience, sincere faith.

Those are three important words, aren't they?

Three important things, right?

Make sure that those things identify you.

Your goal isn't just to win the argument, right?

Your goal is to stop harm, if that's what's on the table, right?

And then to see that person restored.

You all, is that easy?

No.

Is it optional?

No.

That's who we are supposed to be in Christ.

Use your faith.

The other person may respond with anger, they may be a gossip, they may slander you, they may try to tear you down.

You don't have to fall into any of that.

Okay?

Your job is to say, okay, my hope is in Christ.

That's going to shape my identity, that's going to shape my behavior, that's going to shape my response.

I'll give you one more here.

One more.

We've made it clear throughout the morning that the only reason, the only real reason that we have real hope is Jesus.

The only real reason to have real hope is Jesus.

I would just say to you this: you need to act on that.

The Bible begins, remember the book of Genesis?

The Bible begins with a man and a woman who are walking with God in the Garden of Eden, right?

They enjoy his presence.

It's face-to-face fellowship.

They're with him all the time.

And then sin enters the world and everything changes.

The relationship is destroyed.

They're driven from God's presence.

And outside of that, the presence of God, there's only one destination for them, and that destination is death, right?

And that's why Jesus came.

Jesus lived the life that you and I could never live.

He died the death that we deserve to die.

He paid the penalty for our sin so that everybody who places their faith in him could be brought back into fellowship with God.

See, the beauty of the cross is that what was lost in the garden is restored in Jesus.

So in Jesus, we're we're no longer separated from God.

We're no longer walking alone.

His Spirit lives in us, his grace sustains us, his mercies are new every morning, right?

Every morning.

His peace guards our hearts.

And one day we'll walk with him face to face forever.

You all, you know what that is?

That's hope.

And that's a hope that's built on the person of Jesus Christ.

Not our circumstances, not our career, not our health, not our dreams.

All those things change.

It's a hope that's built on Jesus.

That's why Paul doesn't just say that Jesus gives us hope.

He says, Christ Jesus is our hope.

So today I'm asking you the most important question you'll ever answer.

Who's your hope?

Who's your hope?

If your hope is wrapped up in what you can do, if your hope is wrapped up in your family or your finances or even your own goodness, I'm promising you.

Your hope will let you down.

But Jesus won't.

Jesus won't.

So today put your hope in him.

If you've never trusted Jesus before, trust him today.

Trust him to forgive your sin and reconcile you to God.

Trust him with your future, trust him with your eternity.

Today's the day.

And if you already know Jesus, then keep putting your hope in him tomorrow and the next day and the day after that.

Because your hope shapes you, it shapes who you are, it shapes what you believe, and it shapes how you live.

And Jesus Christ is our hope.

Let's pray together right now.

Lord, we're grateful and thankful that Jesus is our hope.

Because of Jesus, Father, we can face our eternity with enormous confidence.

We know about the future.

Not because we have some sort of strange vision about what it might be, but because we know Jesus.

And we know that Jesus Christ is our hope.

We can count on him, we can trust him.

Father, I just want to pray for anyone who's here right now who's never trusted in Jesus Christ.

Let today be the day that that changes for them.

Let today be the day that they say, I believe in Jesus Christ.

And Father, for those who are in this room today who are dealing with just tremendous hardship and difficulty, maybe it's at work, maybe it's at school, wherever it might be, I pray that they allow the hope of Jesus Christ to shape them so that their responses, the way that they love, the way that they deal with conflict, it all looks like Jesus Christ.

Thank you, Father, for the hope of the gospel and for the hope of Jesus.

We pray this in the beautiful name of Jesus Christ.

And everyone agreed and said, Amen.

Thanks for joining us on the Celebration Baptist Church podcast.

We hope today's conversation helps you take another step in your faith journey.

For more resources, upcoming events, and to join us live, visit iCelebration.org.

Until next time, keep connecting with God, connecting with others, and living on mission.