Hope for Generations

Go ahead and turn to Psalm chapter seventy eight, and when you get there,

notice that that's a giant Psalm. We're not going to read every word

of that today. We're just going to do the first eight verses. I'm

going to ask from mister Jordan if he would come and read that again.

Psalm seventy eight, verses one through eight a mascul of Asap. Give year

on my people to my teaching. Incline your ears to the words of my

mouth. I will open my mouth into parable I will utter dark sayings from

of old things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told

us. We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the

coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord and his might, and the wonders

that he has done. He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law

in Israel which he commanded our fathers to teach their children that the next generation

might know them the children yet unborn and arise, and tell them to their

children, so that they should set their hope in God, and not forget

the works of God, but keep his commandments, and that they should not

be like their fathers. A stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation whose heart

was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God. This is the

word of the Lord. Thank you brother. So you may know this already.

But we're very much into what we call a vacation season around here,

and this is our family's first time to kind of live in what is a

destination city. People come to San Antonio to do stuff like go to Six

Flags or go to Sea World or the Almo because we're supposed to remember that.

It's very important. We don't all know why, but it's very important.

And so like, depending on where you are in town, you can

see different you know, like things coming up out of the trees, like

the Six Flags, the big giant what do you call them? Roller coasters?

And now on the west side of town kind of where we just we

just recently moved over to the west side of town in preparation for church plant

coming up next year, and we were into the house on that so excited

that we're all excited about that. But from about where we are over on

that side of town, you can see like the Sea World kind of popping

out of the trees and all of that kind of stuff. It's funny we

if you've ever been to one of these places, never been to one of

these theme park places before, you know that you see little family pods of

people kind of running around like you can see a whole family. Generally,

there's there's two different kinds of parents leading those groups. It's it's not and

I'll say again, as I said in first service, this is not from

a story that I heard from one of you this week. Okay, so

just preface it with that. But generally there's at least two different kinds of

pearance. The first one is the one that is just kind of going along

to get along, right. We'll call him dad. Generally that's Dad.

He is happy to be there, and he is happy to not rock the

boat. He's happy to do whatever is necessary to make sure that the boat

is not rocked. And then there's another person, and just for the sake

of argument, let's call her mom. It's not always dad and mom necessarily,

but if there's someone in that group who is determined to get their money's

worth of fun out of that experience, usually it's mom. I'm just this

has been my experience before, and so they're kind of running around. You're

gonna get like, we gotta get in this line. We got to get

to that place when I went to something not too long ago with my own

bride. She was the one who was making sure that we knew the moment

that we were supposed to get in line. Because she's the one who planned

all of that sort of stuff. We're gonna squeeze everything that we can out

of it. Now. That doesn't always mean that they're short tempered. That

doesn't always mean that it's not going to go well. It doesn't all always

meaning that people blow up and get angry and frustrated. But generally speaking,

in places like that, you can see who has put the most hope into

having a really good time today, right, and they're the ones grabbing,

and generally speaking, it can be seen. I can just say that where

their hope is set is obvious. Can we say that? And you've seen

it? You may have experienced it yourself, You may have experienced it last

week, But I promised this story is not about you. It happens,

though, the reality is that we often have opportunities to place our hope in

the things of this world. And it's not wrong to want to have a

good vacation it's not wrong to want to have a great time at six Flags

or whatever. It's not another things are not wrong. But the problem comes

in when when your hope is tested and everyone around you can see that obviously

that was what you were counting on and maybe just a little bit too much.

We would say, many of us, especially in the church, like

our hope is in God, and so we read along in Psalm seventy eight

and say like, oh, well, I'm calling others to set their hope

in God. The reality is, sometimes it's more obvious than you would like

to realize that maybe your hope is set elsewhere. It's easy for us to

place our hope practically or ultimately and in ways that others are able to both

see and do the same, to place our hope on something other than the

God that we say we hope in. And it might be comical to see

this happening in front of your face at a theme park. It might be

mildly comical for you to see it happen in a clear way when you say,

come home at the end of the day and you just want to sit

down and just relax. You just want to just give me five minutes to

scroll on my phone where somebody's not going to be judging me or looking over

my shoulder. Right, just give me just a minute. Yeah, I

know, I know, because I resemble that. I just need a little

bit of meat time when those things get challenged, when you don't get to

sit down, when the traffic makes you a half an hour late and you

no longer have that time, when you come home to find a mess rather

than a well ordered kingdom, when your hopes don't come to fruition, how

does that usually go for you? These are the testing grounds of our real

hope, the ordinary, every day, mundane disturbances of the peace and the

rest that show you what your heart is really trusting in. Left to ourselves

on our own power, we will not live in a way that others want

to emulate our hope. Nonetheless, this passage today calls us to do what

very straightforwardly and clearly says, here's the main idea that I want you to

see today. Teach Yahweh faithfully so that many generations might hope in Christ.

Teach Yahweh faithfully so that many generations might hope in Christ. As we are,

as we do right, We're going take this into two movements, so

we don't have three points, we have two. So just track with me

here. It's good. We look at first at the first four verses.

Teach what he has done. Teach what he has done. Asaf comes in,

he jumps right into this story and he says, put on your listening

years, I've got something that I want you to hear. Listen up.

He says, he's going to speak to particularly ways. He talks about parables,

he talks about dark sayings from of old, because he's going to need

to interpret reality in such a way that they're able to understand true things about

themselves and true things about yeahweh God has so ordered the world. He so

put things in order as to reveal the truth for those that will listen to

it and to see it, and those who hear it and see it need

to tell it. And I'll make no mistake here. This was a song

that was written to teach. It's a seventy two verse psalm written to teach.

Right. This is not a this is I love Jesus loves me,

I really do. But this was this was an sort of a catechism that

they would best understand the person of God. This is not just relating sort

of bare historical details. This is it's not just dates and happenings without any

commentary. He is relating reality with Yahweh at the center. Now Yahweh.

In your English translations, if you see the word l o r D all

caps capital l O r D, that's when the author is using the covenantal

name for God. It was a sacred thing. So in our English translations

you'll see l O r D all caps. In the rena verra in it's

almost satente iocho, you will find Jehovah in the same place. This is

the name that Israel used to refer to the reality that God was her covenant

God. So I'll kind of use those back and forth. I'm talking about

the same God. The latest that this song could have been, we're if

this happened. When he's talking about it is during the reign of David.

He shows David his servant you see in verse seventy, So that's around a

thousand BC. So by that time, it's been many hundreds of years since

the exodus, since the timing of the things that he talks about in this

These stories have already been passed down from the fathers, to the children,

to generations imperfectly but been passed down and again not just presented as though they're

just bare facts, as though there ever was such a thing. Right,

if you've read a news story lately, you know there's no such thing as

a bare fact. You could read the same story of the same happening from

two different people, and how is that even the same idea. There's always

a motive behind, right, So what I'm telling you as clearly as I

can say it is your motive in telling the story of your life and God

in the middle of it, should be to tell of what God has done.

You don't just tell bear facts. We don't just state like this happened

and then I grew up and I live in this place, and this was

the color of the room that I grew up in and all of that.

Your motivation and telling the story should be to communicate reality with Yahweh at the

center. That's true. Just like these other parables. He talks about parables

and dark sayings. He's talking about the kinds of stories that can hide the

meaning, the real meaning right in plain sight. It's easy to misunderstand or

to misinterpret some of these things without the proper context. And what is the

proper context, what's the frame that has to be present to make these stories

make sense well. In verse four he explains the glorious deeds of the Lord

and his might and the wonders that he has done, talking about the covenantal

God who has kept faith with Israel even though she has not kept faith with

him. What he's saying is, you will not understand stand these stories apart

from your understanding, right understanding, true understanding of God's role in them.

The congregation is in verse four to promise to tell their father's children of the

glorious deeds in might and wonders of Yahweh. If you can excuse the pun

here, the history is in fact his story. It is a story of

his work, his might, his deeds, his doings, what he has

done. And when you read the Psalms, one way to help you to

understand or to interpret them is to see the parallelism and what the author is

trying to communicate in a beautiful Way's word is beautiful, but he uses a

parallel here. In verse four a and verse he talks about I'm not going

to hide them, We will not hide them from their children, but tell

them to the coming generation. Tell them to the coming generation, is what

we're called to do. If we don't tell them, we are, in

essence hiding them, hiding the meaning, the reality, the reality with God

at the center. The effect of all of this is that I can't not

tell. I must tell. I don't need to hide the things that have

been told me to our children. And yes, this happened in Israel,

and yes it happened over and over again. Is we're going to see in

the next two sermons that I get to preach from Psalm seventy eight. We'll

get to the rest of Psalm seventy eight. I encourage you to read ahead.

We'll get picked back up, not next week, but the next But

this happened. They didn't always tell like they were supposed to. They didn't

always pass this one from generation to generation, and the effects of that were

cataclysmic. I notice also here in verse four that whose children these are?

Because there's some among us who are not at this point in life, fathers

and mothers of biological children. And so at some level, when you read

a passage like this, it's talking a lot about children. It's talking a

lot about fathers, and so you might be tempted to sort of check out

just a bit. This is essentially talking about somebody whom I'm not, But

I want you to see in verse four the first line, look with me,

we will not hide them, these things from their children, our father's

children. So they're not just ours. They may be ours in one sense,

and that we have a certain like stewardship over them, but they certainly

don't belong only to us. And the generation that's around us now is not

merely and only ours. And so if you find yourself, as I've noticed

many of you this morning, alive right now, this is for you.

Your father's children are among you, and your stewardship is is This is a

stewardship for you as well, to communicate these things to your father's children.

You may not be a biological parent, but you're still not off the hook

to teach these things. He says, specifically the second half of verse four,

these glorious deeds of the Lord, these these praise worthy actions that our

God has done. It's like what Moses gets to an exit chapter fifteen and

the Song of Moses, when he says, who is like you, oh

Lord? Among the gods, Who is like you, majestic and holiness,

awesome and glorious deeds and doing wonders what he'd he'd just seen, he'd just

seen them walk through the Red Sea on dry ground. Who is like that

God? Let me just say, that's a rhetorical question. There's no one

like that God. There's no one like him among the gods. The answer

is nobody. Who can do this? Only Yeah, weeh and teach of

his might his power. Like in Psalm one five six, they those who

call upon your name shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds, and

I I too, will declare your greatness. There's a reason that from a

fairly early age I was discipled to reserve the word awesome for the deeds of

this God. Teach of his might and his glory, barious deeds, and

his wonders, his miraculous acts, the things that he does out of the

ordinary, that are conspicuous and different. As he says the Nextodus chapter three,

God says he's going to do these certain things. He says, I'm

going to stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all of the wonders that

I will do in it, and after that he Pharaoh will let you go.

God told them that they were that he was going to do what he

ends up talking about, and the rest of the Psalm he promised that he

would. We're to teach every follower of Yahweh is to communicate to those under

his or her influence the awesome things that he has done, which at the

very least include everything to the left of this command in your Bible. That's

this first half over here. All of these things. We're pretty good most

of the time. Teach a lot of the New Testament stories and stories about

Jesus. Those are great. And I'll say also, just because I'm involved

in discipling your children on a fairly regular basis, either in kids ministry or

in student ministry, they're all doing a great job communicating of these wonderful deeds

of the Lord. So like we can talk about these things and I say,

like, you know, like when Moses did this, and they're like,

oh, yeah, I have a category for that, So praise the

Lord and what you're doing. Continue to do so more and more. And

yet at some level they can see those things, they can know them,

and they know the Sunday School answers and know the answers. They would know

the sort of bear literary facts, but not understand how they actually fit also

into the narrative of their life. Your life. It's not just the happenings

that happened, but it's rather also the wonderful, glorious deeds and might of

God and the things that He's done in your life as well. Here's what

I mean by fitting them into the narrative of their lives. I regularly have

conversations and counseling where I'll ask some version of the question, tell me how

we got here? Right? Tell me, like what it was like for

you to grow up, what it was like for what it was like in

your home, you know, tell me a little bit about your life in

the last few years. How did we get How did we get here?

And it's a it's a wonderful stewardship, a beautiful moment to get to hear

and be entrusted with the stories of people, because it's because it's precious and

it's sweet. And I often have to remind people, Okay, so how

and in what way do you see God in this story? Tell me about

how you came to faith, Tell me about where you learned about God.

Tell me about how the Gospel has an actual impact on your life on a

semi regular basis, And sometimes if I don't bring that up, often I

won't hear anything about God's work in the context of a person telling their story,

because they're only thinking of their own context, and they're not thinking of

the fact that they're also in God's story, That God himself is at the

center of what is really real, That the glorious deeds in might and wonders

of God actually have an impact on their life, That the seemingly mundane moments

that have gotten them to where they are are actually a part of what God

himself has been doing, but made the facts. But they don't understand God

at the center of their story, and they may be able to paint the

entire picture of their life without God ever coming into the frame. You must

not do that for the coming generations. You must communicate to the coming generations

how God is in the frame, how God has brought you thus far.

One of the ways that I've sought to learn this here in our own home,

I learned it from you. I learned it from many of you.

Is that when we pray for things as a family. And God responds,

not only do we want to not forget that, we've gotten too the pattern

now where we've got this big glass, this sort of stand up thing,

and like black rocks that I can write in a little sharpie, like when

God answers specific prayers that we have prayed as a family, we write on

the rock, We write when He answered it, how he answered it,

and we put it right there as a stone of remembrance. And I'm not

saying that say, hey, look what we did, because I learned it

from y'all. I'm just saying, like, there has to be some way

for you to be able to communicate to your coming generations. This, This

is what God has done. This is the glorious deeds in his might and

his wonders that He has worked in our life, in your life, communicating

about reality with Yahweh at the center, each of us are responsible for conveying

the reality that is permeated with God at the center of what is really real.

We're not given the up. We should not just talk about facts that

of course, we're going to teach what's to the left and to the right,

teach the entire Council of God but it also means that we're going to

have to be intentional in the way that we interpret. If you look at

the beginning of this, he says, I'm gonna utter, I'm gonna open

my mouth in a parable I will utter dark sayings from of old. If

I just look at the facts and I don't interpret them in light of the

fact that God is working in and through them, then it's going to be

the kinds of things where God's there, he's working, and he's moving,

but I'm not telling the story that way. God's not the central character.

It would mean, among other things, that if I got a new job,

isn't just that you were offered a new opportunity that could help you provide

for your family, but that God worked in such a way that gave you

peace about shifting your productive energies, and then he blessed you with an opportunity

to try something new. How great and merciful and good is he in that

He's the same thing. I got a new job. But the other one

says, here's what God did. It means that I'm going to school.

Isn't just that you were accepted and that they're going to be happy to send

you a bill in the fall, but that God has so created you with

gifts and talents and abilities that you graduated from your last thing, and he's

gifting you with his opportunity to learn more about his world, to be interacting

with more of his people in it in this coming season. And believe me,

for anybody who had a hand in educating you to get up into this

point, we can say, truly, what wonders he has done. It

means. It means that a landscape, when you see it, is not

just beautiful because the colors work right. A leaf isn't just intricate because it's

cool looking. A sunset isn't just colorful. A perfectly cooked steak is not

just yummy right. All of these things come from the hand of a heavenly

father who graciously gives you these things to enjoy. Reality has God at the

center, and the way that we teach to these coming generations is going to

impact the way that they interpret their reality as well. Parents, there are

many enemies to this kind of God framing, including your own flesh, because

maybe you weren't raised that way. You're gonna have to press through what sometimes

feels weird for the sake of those who need to hear and see the facts

framed in the context of God. Church member, Sometimes when you're engaging with

somebody just in your small group who's having a real big problem, those problems

are going to loom so large that the context and the circumstances of those problems

are going to be the only thing that crowds out your conversation. That's going

to be all you talk about. You have to be intentional about driving the

conversation back to but what has God done in this? How has God worked?

What is God doing? How has God worked mightily in your past?

That would give you hope for what He's doing even now. And it's not

going to be easy, and it's feel weird. And that's what we're called

to do. Because stuff and problems can easily take center stage. You have

to be diligent. What I call this a fancy five dollars ten dollars word

called doxological diligence, meaning you have to work very hard. Doxological just means

we're working to praise. We are intentionally trying to turn this to praise.

Be diligent in this. We want to be the kinds of weird people who

are praising God at all times, in all circumstances, through the pain,

for who he is and for what He's done. Don't pass these opportunities up.

Do not pass these opportunities up. If you pay attention to them,

it's going to inflame your heart with a kind of love for God and an

affection for God because you're actually paying attention to the things that he's done,

You're paying attention to who he is. Your love for him will grow as

you pay attention to what He's done for you. And not only do you

want that for yourself, you want that for others. I remember back in

the day when Daniel and I were dating, back in the late nineteen hundreds,

as the kids like to call it, we would get this. We

would write letters to each other, right. We still have some of these

for those of you who don't know. It's an ancient form of communication,

whereby you would take a piece of graphite wrapped around up, maybe a piece

of wood, and you would scratch on a parchment or a piece of notebook

paper some of your thoughts about all kinds of stuff. Really, what I

noticed over time, I found fairly early that when I had sort of an

attack of affection, or I just thought of another way in which my beloved

was sweet to me that our relationship was strengthened when I mentioned it, which

makes sense, Husbands, I'm just telling you our relationship was stronger when I

paid attention to who she was, sought to cherish her in ways that were

right, and tell her about it. Why do we get so divorced from

that? When we're talking about God? Do we take the time to consider

what he's done, to consider ways in which his character is beautiful and praiseworthy,

and of course don't be shocked when that happens, to inflame and grow

your affection for him, your real heart love for him. And how should

we be surprised when when we don't do that, it doesn't happen. We

teach, we meditate on, we communicate what he has done as we're teaching

yahweh. Secondly, starting in verse five through verse eight, teach what he's

said. What he said he says. In verse five he speaks of the

words of God in two ways. He talks about a testimony. He established

a testimony in Jacob, he appointed a law in Israel. In parallel,

again, he's speaking just about the words of God. God had ensured that

his people would hear of his word through the testimony of their fathers and through

the law of Israel. Was there anything special? This is kind of a

this is a real question. Was there anything special about Israel? I mean,

if you read the Old Testament, it seems that God goes to great

pains at several points to say there wasn't any particular reason why he chose them.

They weren't more numerous than the other nations. See that in Jureomy seven.

They weren't particularly prone to obedience as you follow. Sorry, I don't

mean that to be sarcastic. It's just they weren't particularly prone to obedience.

Even in this passage, he's saying specifically, they did not obey. They

were not obey obedient, and God explains it. He explains it several times

in ways like this. In Juteronomy seven, he says to the people,

you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God

has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all

the people who were on the face of the earth. It is because the

Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that He swore to your fathers that

the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the

house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Because

he loved you, you always chose to set his love on them and to

keep going after them, even when they ran the other direction. He kept

his word to their fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

Because he loved them, he gave them his word. He did not

give his word to any other nation on earth Psalm one forty seven twenty Has

he dealt thus with any other nation? They do not know his rules.

I don't know how many people were on the face of the earth at the

time, but the only nation that had the words of God was Israel.

God chose to establish a testimony in Jacob. It was not it was given

to them. It just wasn't only given for them. They were to teach

to their children next generation might know. God commanded that the fathers of Israel

would teach their children, who would teach it to their children, so that

ultimately children from generations yet unborn would be told to set their hope in him.

You hear an echo of Fir Timothy to two. When Paul says,

what you've received from me, you and trust the faithful men who will be

able to go and entrust it to others. Also, multi generational discipleship.

Four generations from Paul's original investment, and here you see four or five,

depending on how you count it. We read about the fathers teaching their children

so that the next generation might know the laws and the testimony of God,

so that even children yet unborn would arise and tell it to their children,

and on and on and on, that they would set their hopes in God,

that they would hope in God as we do. There's an end to

this. There's a purpose for this that we would tell the next generation and

the coming generations after that. God, it is worth hoping in. He

can be trusted. You take him at his word, and you walk in

faith. This is the way of faithfulness, and it's good for you.

God wants his people to pass on his commands to the next generations in ways

that soberly worn Verse eight. Soberly worn as well as winsomely call them to

place their hope in Yaqueh I am not I am not dispassionate in the way

that I communicate to my children when it comes to these things, I want

them to trust the Lord. I'm not dispassionate. You can hopefully tell as

I'm communicating these things to you, I want you to trust the Lord because

I believe that he can be trusted and most the very best way that you

can live is to find your hope in Christ. And Israel wasn't merely to

communicate the commands of God passionately, just give them the facts, but rather

they would have a vibrant hope in their covenant God. It meant that they

would have to, as I heard at a wedding this last weekend, they'd

have to be aware of the bad news so that the good news would make

some kind of sense. Their fathers were not faithful. Their fathers were not

faithful. They were stubborn, they were stiff necked, they were rebellious,

and they were not steadfast and their love for Yahweh. They did bad stuff.

But look at verse eight and notice why the very last half of verse

eight was because their heart was not said fast, their spirit was not faithful

to God. The same problem that the Israelites had, and being faithful to

the commands and the laws of Yahweh are the very same ones that we are

born with were born rebels against God's kingdom, and unless He works in our

heart to change that, it won't. The problem for Israel wasn't primarily disobedience,

but a lack of faith in Yahweh from the heart. If you were

an Israelite in the reign of David, then setting your hope in God would

have looked like faithfully keeping remembering the laws and the commandments of God, maintaining

faithfulness to the mosaic sacrificial system. When it was time to bring the lamb

or the dove, or whatever the sacrifice you brought it, you would draw

near to God by the means that He appointed, all the while at a

heart level, actually trusting and hoping in Him with your whole heart and soul

and mind and strength. That's old Testament, by the way, it's not

just new. Faithfulness was never merely about obedience and unfaithfulness was never merely about

disobedience. It was always about obedience from the heart. And so this then

was the goal of the ultimate goal of Israelite discipleship, so that they would

not only hear and know the facts, but that they would be transformed by

those facts and set their hope in God, their faith be firmly fixed in

God. And you should know that right now. Everything that's happening, both

happening right now and happening as a part of this church body on a regular

basis, is leveraged in a similar way towards the mission of making disciples.

Make no mistake about it. Whatever we're doing, we're doing for the purpose

of making and developing disciples. We want you to set your hope in God.

We want the coming generations to know, to hear, to set their

hope in God. There's a lot of things we could be about, but

what we must be about as the Church of Jesus Christ is about making disciples.

And what is a disciple other than the one who has begun and is

growing to set their hope in God through Jesus Christ. See, it's different

for you than it is for an Israelite. They trusted according that the appointed

means that God had given was the law of Moses. For you, we

no longer draw near to God by that means, right, not the festivals

and new moons and sabbaths and cleanliness laws. Whether we're talking about civil,

ceremonial or moral. Christ is the end of the law for righteousness for everyone

who trusts in Him. We draw near now through Christ, not by means

of the law. Jesus kept every law, He fulfilled every command for obedience.

He never sinned in thought, in word, or indeed, and so

he was able to serve as the perfect lamb of God, whose blood would

cover over the sins of every single one who would call upon his name.

And if you've never considered what it would be like to have your sins forgiven,

you should know. That's what Jesus lived and died to do. We

want that for you. I'm glad you're here. What we want for you

is the same thing we want for coming generations, that you would set your

hope in God through Christ, that you would learn to walk in His ways

and live in a way that remembers His works. Everything we do here is

leveraged to see that happen. More and more so for inn Israelite to put

their hope in God meant to rely on his appointed means, to keep the

law externally while hoping in remembering and obeying God at a heart level. And

that's always, generally speaking, pretty easy when things are going well. Forgive

the crudeness of this illustration. I grew up in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I

have had now four children, five children, but four remain and we have

I have always raised them to be Alabama football fans. I'm not ashamed of

that. But I am afraid now that we no longer have the Nick saban

era, that the experience that they've had the last twenty something years is about

to change. They've only known winning, and I remember the Shula years,

I remember the two thousands. When I was there, it was just not

the same. Any of you in the room who might have remembered the Cowboys

in the sixties, like, it was just just winning. It was going

to the playoffs every single year. It was just what it was. And

then you've had the last thirty years. I don't mean to I'm sorry.

It's easy when it's going well, right, It's easy when everything's going well.

The reality is that your hope is going to be tested. It's going

to be tested, and it's only tested when things are difficult. If your

fandom has never been tested, then when it comes you'll actually know where your

hope really is. Hope is easy, when I am getting what I want.

What happens when they see the mettle of my hope tested, when the

enemies are surrounding the camp, when the diagnosis is the worst that I could

have gotten. When somebody wrongs us, wrongs our family, when we sin

against our kids, for there's no parent that doesn't. When the money is

running low, when our anxiety or depression is trying to gain a new stranglehold.

Are we going to hope in yahueh Will we take him at his word

that he has been faithful for and so he's going to be faithful now?

Because that's when our hope is really proven. The goal in discipleship is to

convey information in a way that transforms and strengthens hope. We want to believe

that our faith is going to stand the test of the test of testing.

I hope would that God would use our spirit empowered grip that really tells us

more about his grip and his strength than ours, to show us that he

can be trusted. I'll just leave you with just a few things. Teach

what he's done, Teach what he's said. It's going to leave you with

a few things, And then in a moment We're going to have an opportunity

as those who are in Christ to receive communion together as an act of faith,

taking Him at his word, believing and hoping in him according to his

appointed means. In just a minute. There's three ways, just three ways

that you can accomplish these things as you're teaching what He's done and teaching what

he's said, And all of them you'll see, have to do with the

Word. They're not complicated. We're not splitting atoms here. This is just

basic level discipleship things. Three practices from very old, very dead people that

have reminded us and helped us along the way to know how to communicate the

Word. One is just to read it. And when I say read it,

I mean read it out loud to the people who are under your influence.

It shouldn't be weird for you to sit down and open the Word and

just read it to somebody. You don't have to always know the answer,

and you don't always have to be on some particular kind of plan. But

in your home, the reading of the Word of God should be a regular

thing. Make it a habit. Now. As I mentioned earlier, that's

Old Testament and New Testament. The New Testament only makes sense in light of

the Old Testament. Read both, and don't be afraid to read the actual

Bible to your younger children. I love Bible story books. Jesus Storybook Bible

was consistently one of our favorites as parents, and read the actual word.

Read the Bible. Secondly, sorry, more on that just for a second.

Again, Notice that this is a psalm that is seventy two verses long,

intended to teach children. Okay, so it's not just small, tiny

little snippets. Read the word. Secondly, pray the word. There are

some ways we teach around here pretty regularly. In prayer. Come to a

first Wednesday. We try to always turn like go from the scripture into a

prayer. What we do is just sort of a twofold way of saying,

God is worthy. How can we praise and worship the Lord from what we're

reading in this passage? And then also we are needy? So He is

worthy and we are needy. Doesn't have to be complex. Again, we're

not splitting atoms. We're just trying to take the word and take it back

to Him in prayer. Read the word, Pray the word, and Thirdly,

and maybe most weirdly, sing the word. Sing the word. We've

done that here today already, we do that on a regular basis here.

But anybody who remembers what it was like during COVID and we were all of

a sudden supposed to have worship in our living rooms remembers like, hmm,

that felt a little weird, right, Maybe it was just me. I

don't think it was just me, but that whole Like, oh, so

we're supposed to sing as a family on our couch, Well, yeah,

that should be norm Like most of the psalms and hymns and spiritual songs in

the scriptures would have been learned and mostly sung in holmes use these songs to

teach Yakway's works. And his word doesn't have to just be Jesus loves me

this. I know you can do some thicker things than that.