Living Hope

[SPEAKER_00]: You are listening to audio from Citizens Church located in Plano, Texas for more information about this ministry or to give to this ministry Please visit citizenschurch.com Good morning.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is risen.

[SPEAKER_00]: Feel a Bible turned to first Peter, chapter one, and we're gonna be in verses three and four together.

[SPEAKER_00]: My name's Jayman, I'm one of the pastors here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope.

[SPEAKER_00]: through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfaithing, kept in heaven for you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hope I get to live a long life, and I hope that I die surrounded by family.

[SPEAKER_00]: My grandmother passed away a couple months ago.

[SPEAKER_00]: She was 84, and there was plenty that was sad about that.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was a lot that was beautiful about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: At her bedside was her daughter and her son and her grandkids, and then in the next room were her great-grandkids.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I told Carrie, my wife, I hope I get eight decades.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I hope that when it's my time, I'm surrounded by family, and I hope they like each other, and it's kids, and grandkids, and maybe even great grandkids, and I hope that's true.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hope today goes well.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've never done four services before.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a little nervous about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: This service right before I walked on, I was told that I think we're turning people away, and so it makes me nervous about that.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you're here and you don't usually come to church,

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe a baggage about church, maybe your experience with church is it's full of, you know, fake people who think they're perfect, and I just, I hope you feel welcome here, I hope you come back, I hope, we're not a perfect people, Jesus is the hero of Citizens Church, he's all we got, and I hope that you experience that today.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hope the Dallas Mavericks win multiple NBA titles in my lifetime.

[SPEAKER_00]: They already won the most meaningful one with Dirk, and I hope they win more.

[SPEAKER_00]: You could do this, you could do this.

[SPEAKER_00]: You could stand up here, which maybe that's what you hope.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're like, I hope I never stand up there, but you could do this, you could say I hope.

[SPEAKER_00]: and then fill in the blank.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hope this relationship pans out.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hope I get out of this job and into what I actually like.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hope we have kids one day.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hope our kids live good lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hope I stay healthy.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hope I get healthier.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or maybe even bigger hopes than that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know what you would say, but if you stood up here and you had to fill in the blank, you would have something to say because we all hope.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what we're talking about when we use hope that way is there's things that we want for our life that we're not sure we're going to get.

[SPEAKER_00]: because the future is uncertain and we're not in control.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so what we're left with is hope.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how long I'll live.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can't control how services go this morning.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can't make my team win games.

[SPEAKER_00]: So often when we use the word, the kind of hope we're describing is like a wishful hope or an uncertain hope.

[SPEAKER_00]: And for many of us, what happens is actually becomes a kind of anxious hope.

[SPEAKER_00]: because we hope, but we don't just hope, but we also worry, like we're afraid that the things we hope for aren't gonna actually happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so hope is the word that we put, it's like a positive spin on the things that we fear, and it's an anxious hope, can't say something.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's not the kind of hope we're here to celebrate.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hope I'm raised to life like Jesus was raised to life.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hope to live forever with Christ in a defless, sinless, timeless world.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hope for the return of Jesus to make all things right.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's a different quality of hope.

[SPEAKER_00]: Christian hope is not uncertain desire.

[SPEAKER_00]: Christian hope is desire for what God has promised, which is to hope in what will happen because God always keeps His promises.

[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not wishful hope, it's not uncertain hope, it's not anxious hope.

[SPEAKER_00]: Peter calls it something else.

[SPEAKER_00]: living hope.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a hope that will survive because Jesus came back to life.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is a hope that is as sure as Jesus is alive.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want to lean into how this passage describes it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a living hope to an inheritance that is three things.

[SPEAKER_00]: And these three things that the inheritance is is the opposite of what our current life is.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's imperishable, undefiled and unfading

[SPEAKER_00]: And she looks around at the living room and kind of looks around at the house.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she looks at me and she says, Dad, when you and mom finish your journey, can I have this house?

[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, honey, do you mean when we die?

[SPEAKER_00]: And she goes, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought about it, and I was like, actually, yes, when we die, you can have this house.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would love for you to live here, you know, for the rest of your life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she's asking that question because of our relationship.

[SPEAKER_00]: You would not ask me that question.

[SPEAKER_00]: You wouldn't say, hey, Jamen, when you die, can I have your house?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a certain thing that only a child can ask for because of the relationship.

[SPEAKER_00]: because in the relationship built into it is this expectation that what belongs to my parents will one day belong to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have a right to it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she does because she's my daughter and in fact there's no one in this world that I would rather give what is mine too than my children.

[SPEAKER_00]: Our scripture says you have been born again into a living hope.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a familial metaphor.

[SPEAKER_00]: Every Christians born twice before they die once.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are born into this world and then we're born again into the family of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: And because of that second birth you have an inheritance.

[SPEAKER_00]: You are Heavenly Father will one day give you his home as a father who delights in giving what is his to his children.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus rose and he one day will return.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when he returns he brings with him a healed world that will be the forever home of every Christian.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Peter calls it an inheritance.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the beauty is in the adjectives.

[SPEAKER_00]: The beauty is in the three words that he uses to describe the inheritance.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.

[SPEAKER_00]: It means it's a future life that is deathless, and sinless, and timeless.

[SPEAKER_00]: And whether your hope is in that life or in this life is the difference between whether your hope is anxious or living.

[SPEAKER_00]: My center and I watched Interstellar last week.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you don't know the movie, here's the plot.

[SPEAKER_00]: Earth is not viable for life anymore, so they send this team to explore if other planets could sustain life.

[SPEAKER_00]: Matthew, we kind of haze the main character.

[SPEAKER_00]: He leaves two kids behind on Earth to try and save the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, time works different on other planets, and it doesn't Earth.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, real quick, I'm going to spoil this movie.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm so sorry, but it came out in 2014, so you had 12 years to watch it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But one hour on this planet that they're exploring is seven years on earth.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so the plan is to not waste any time, to get in and get out as fast as possible, the plan doesn't work, and they get back to their space shuttle, and it's been over 20 years on earth.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so they missed two decades of life back home.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you've seen anything from this movie, you've seen the clip of Matthew McConaughey watching these videos of his kids that they sent him over the years, and just sobbing because of all that he's missed.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason that moment resonates is because you don't have to go to space to know what it feels like to watch life go faster than you want it to, or to feel like you missed out on the best parts and you can't get it back.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he asks one of the scientists, can we go back?

[SPEAKER_00]: Can we get that time back?

[SPEAKER_00]: And she says something like, of all that we don't know about time, what we do know is it doesn't run backwards.

[SPEAKER_00]: Once it's gone, it's gone.

[SPEAKER_00]: The wisdom literature in Scripture talks about time this way.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a vapor.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a mist.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's there in the morning, and it's gone in the morning.

[SPEAKER_00]: Life is short, and in this life, time erodes life.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's fading.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when what you hope in in this life can't endure time, what you're left with is regret.

[SPEAKER_00]: I should have used the time differently, but it's gone.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wish I could go back, but I can't.

[SPEAKER_00]: This life is threatened by time.

[SPEAKER_00]: This life is defiled by sin.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a way to talk about this, about the sin around us and the evil in the world around us and that's true, and it's also defiled by the sin within us.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know what's frustrating?

[SPEAKER_00]: No matter how hard I try, I cannot make myself who I want to be.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can't.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's the dad that I want to be, and then there's the dad that I am, and there's the husband I wanna be, and then there's the husband that I am.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's the pastor I want to be, and the pastor that I am.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's the athlete I want to be, and I've just given up, trying.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what happens in most of that is I just keep getting in my own way.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the sanitized way to say it.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the church way to say it.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Bible names it much more honestly than that.

[SPEAKER_00]: My problem is sin, and your problem is sin.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's evil in the world, yes, and there's evil in my heart, and then your heart.

[SPEAKER_00]: So even the good aspirations we have for our own life, they are sabotaged by our own selfishness, and our own pride, and our own disordered loves.

[SPEAKER_00]: And how most of us react to that is by either blame-shifting.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's their problem, not mine.

[SPEAKER_00]: Or we just pretend to be doing better than we actually are.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we wear a mask that this part of the world is really, really quick to sell us.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's that car, and that house, and those clothes in a little bit of religion, and then hide the secrets.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hide what's actually happening in the home, and hide what's actually happening in my heart, because if we can't become, if we can't become, who we know we should be, at least we can pretend that's who we are.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that works until it doesn't.

[SPEAKER_00]: This life is to file by our own sin.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the problem is we don't just have hopes for our circumstances, we have hopes for our character and our reputation and our influence.

[SPEAKER_00]: No one in the room hopes to be remembered by their failures, no one.

[SPEAKER_00]: And nothing will defy all that hope and ruin that and keep us from that like our own sin.

[SPEAKER_00]: This life is haunted by death, it's haunted by death.

[SPEAKER_00]: Ecclesiastes says, it is better to go to the house of mourning than the house of feasting for this is the end of all mankind.

[SPEAKER_00]: And here's what that means.

[SPEAKER_00]: The funeral is better than the feast because the funeral reminds us that we too will die.

[SPEAKER_00]: Happy Easter.

[SPEAKER_00]: Death is a thief.

[SPEAKER_00]: Death is the most powerful weapon that hell has.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's so simple, it's almost silly to say this out loud, but there's not a single thing you want in this life that Death can't take.

[SPEAKER_00]: It'll take your money, it'll take your talents, it'll take your friends, it'll shadow your dreams, it'll haunt your sleep, and we can respond in a lot of ways, we can ignore it, we can numb it, we can be afraid of it, what we can't do is we can't escape it.

[SPEAKER_00]: This life is threatened by time and marred by our own sin and hunted by death.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so you know what kind of hope we will have if we hope in this life only, the best, the best we will have is an anxious hope, anxious hope.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because that hope will disappoint, it will fail.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's so a fragile and frail.

[SPEAKER_00]: The beauty friends is in the agitives.

[SPEAKER_00]: You are heavenly father by his mercy guarded by his power, has a sure and certain future for you, and it is imperishable and undefiled and unfading.

[SPEAKER_00]: It means this, it's timeless, it's timeless.

[SPEAKER_00]: This life that Jesus brings when he returns, it's eternal, there's no clock, the sun doesn't set, it is uninterrupted joy in the presence of God that will never erode and never fade.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's no regret, there's no missing out, there's no I wish I could go back, it's just fully present, full satisfaction, the longer it lasts, the better it gets and it never ends, life with God.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is sinless.

[SPEAKER_00]: The person you cannot become on your own Christian.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus is making you.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when he returns, he will present you holy and blameless in above reproach before God.

[SPEAKER_00]: You will be everything you were meant to be, undefiled by your sin and undefined by your failures.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it is deathless.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's imperishable.

[SPEAKER_00]: This inheritance is ours.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is to a reverberate inheritance that is imperishable and defile and fading.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is through the resurrection of Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus loves you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Will you look right at me?

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus loves you so much.

[SPEAKER_00]: that he entered into the eternal God's second person of the Trinity, entered into a perishable, defiled and fading world, and he took it all onto himself.

[SPEAKER_00]: He surrendered to a time-bound world as the seconds of his life slipped away, and he died a defiled death, not for his own sins, but for mine and for yours, he who has always lived laid down his life in death.

[SPEAKER_00]: But Jesus, the Christ did not stay dead.

[SPEAKER_00]: Stronger than time and stronger than sin and stronger than death is our risen Lord Christ Himself is imperishable and undefiled and unfading and when you hope in his resurrection and when you hope in the inheritance that will come because he rose that's a living hope that's a hope that survives and it will sustain you.

[SPEAKER_00]: If I think about how I've experienced it in just the last few week like what I'm

[SPEAKER_00]: As I'm zealous for you to know that the truth of the resurrected Jesus who will one day return will actually sustain you when the things of this life try to take your hope away.

[SPEAKER_00]: My little brother, and Surgery last Tuesday, he's lived a very hard life, he was born with a birth defect.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he's had hundreds of surgeries in his life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this one was especially hard on my mom, because it was the first surgery without her mom, who was always there for every single surgery.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so for my mom, her son is in surgery, and her mom is painfully absent, and she's just sitting there in those minutes waiting.

[SPEAKER_00]: And anxious hopes as I can't do this,

[SPEAKER_00]: Anxious Hope says, how many more years of my life will I spend in hospitals?

[SPEAKER_00]: Anxious Hope says there is no future.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is too much and living Hope sounds different than that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the verse, my mom text me.

[SPEAKER_00]: First Peter 5, 10, and after you've suffered a little while.

[SPEAKER_00]: The God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself, restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you to him be dominion forever and ever amen.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is a hope that is surviving painful minutes because Jesus lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: A few weeks ago, a friend confessed sin.

[SPEAKER_00]: That was hard to confess.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's painful and embarrassing and consequential and costly sin, and he confessed it.

[SPEAKER_00]: An anxious hope says, I'm too far gone, my sins too much.

[SPEAKER_00]: I will always be this way.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is no hope for me, so I might as well hide my reputations ruined.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have run out of grace, and instead he said, I just want more of Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if other people knowing about my sin means getting more of my Savior than it's worth it, that's a living hope.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not who I should be, but I'm not who I was.

[SPEAKER_00]: He who began a good work in me will complete what he started.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've not run out of grace.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's a living hope that's surviving even my own failures.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of my dearest friends lost her baby boy a few years ago.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this week, the grief was just overwhelming for her.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we sat and we prayed together.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she said, I just miss him so much.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hope in Christ does not take grief away.

[SPEAKER_00]: Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hope in Christ doesn't take grief away, but it also doesn't leave it by itself.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you know what she said?

[SPEAKER_00]: Anxious hope says it's always did none of this matters.

[SPEAKER_00]: God is absent, my pain is meaningless.

[SPEAKER_00]: My dreams are all shattered.

[SPEAKER_00]: What she said was, come Lord Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: Come Lord Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because when Jesus returns,

[SPEAKER_00]: And with Him, He brings our inheritance.

[SPEAKER_00]: All that's lost will then be gained.

[SPEAKER_00]: And mothers will be reunited with sons and tears are wiped away forever and ever.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a living hope that is surviving even death because for the Christian death does not get the last word.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's real.

[SPEAKER_00]: What kind of hope do you have?

[SPEAKER_00]: If you're here and you're not a follower of Jesus,

[SPEAKER_00]: The best you can hope for in this life is the best life of fading, sinful, death-hunted world has to offer.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's not altogether meaningless.

[SPEAKER_00]: You were just made for more.

[SPEAKER_00]: See, as Lewis says at this way, if we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the best explanation is that we were made for another world.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that other world that you were made for is the one that Jesus will bring, the one that God's children will inherit, and He brought you here this Easter because He wants to save you, wants to save you.

[SPEAKER_00]: He died on the cross for your sins, He rose in victory over sin time and death, and if you today turn to Him in repentance and faith, you will have a hope that survives.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hope that lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: Christian, you have a living hope.

[SPEAKER_00]: Goodness,

[SPEAKER_00]: You might not always believe that.

[SPEAKER_00]: You might not even feel very hopeful this Easter Sunday, but praise God, Christian hope is not based on the strength that you're feeling.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's based on the strength of our grave empty in God.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can stand, you can stand today.

[SPEAKER_00]: And say, I hope I'm raised like Jesus was raised.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hope I live forever with Christ in a deathless, sinless, timeless world.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hope for the return of Jesus to make all things right.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that hope that you have is unthreatened by time and undefiled by sin and it is stronger than death.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's living because you're Savior lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: God, we love you and we need you.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we confess Jesus, as your people, Jesus' brothers and sisters of our Savior, that Christ has died and Christ is risen, and Christ will come again.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so Lord, would you,

[SPEAKER_00]: You know your people, you know what we need and you have what we need.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so for the Christian and the room that would describe their deeper hope in life as being weak or anxious or frail or disappointing, I pray that a vision of an empty tomb and

[SPEAKER_00]: And I thank you that the reality of our hope is not dependent on the experience of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But on the victory of Jesus over the grave.

[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, we love you and we need you, which we worship you, Lord Jesus, for your goodness and your grace.

[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.