Kept by God

We're going to be looking at this sermon series called Kept as we bring in 2021.

One of the questions that I've been asking myself and meditating on is this what if 2021 was as bad or worse than 2020?

And that's a legitimate possibility that we have to think through, right?

We kind of have this false sense of notion with new year that all this new stuff is going to happen.

And we all have been through that cyclical reality of uh you're going to have a new workout plan that's going to last for a little bit.

You're going to have a new way you eat that lasts for a little bit.

You have a new whatever.

And typically, typically, that lasts for a little bit and it fizzles and fades because we have this time, this sense of time created within ourselves that God has placed there, of seasons, right?

And and um and calendar and the way that we understand our lives.

And so we look to this new year as new, fresh, and then we have this optimism behind it.

It's going to be better than it was before.

And this is going to be the year.

And my prayer is honestly, for a lot of us, this is the year that we get more conformed to the image of Jesus, that we put more sin to death in our life, that we uh allow ourselves to be disciplined in the way that we uh live and the way that we conduct ourselves and use our resources.

Like I really hope for a lot of us we see victories in that this is the year that we not just build momentary uh uh practices of health and rhythms of health, but we lifelong ones, right?

I do really want to see that and pray for that in our lives, but the reality for a lot of us is this is gonna be about like what 2021 was or 2020 was.

And so what's really the difference?

The difference is not what circumstances actually happen in the world around us, the difference is gonna be how much do we trust more in the promises and finished work of Christ.

That's going to be the deciding factor.

Not what happens around you, but what happens in you.

And how much more are you gonna grow in your faith, grow in your trust in Jesus?

And so we're looking at this sermon series called Kept.

And we're gonna be looking at how God, in his power and strength, keeps us.

And no matter what happens in the world around us, it is only through him that we are kept, and he keeps us for mission.

He keeps us for his glory, he keeps us for our ultimate good.

And so we're kicking off this morning looking at kept by God.

This is an introduction to this sermon series where we're looking at 1 Peter 3, uh, 1, 3 through 5.

So we start off with verse 3, and Paul starts with this blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, when we look at this statement that Paul says, he says, bless, he blesses God, right?

He actually blesses him in this uh beginning phrase.

And when we look at what it means to bless someone, you see, God, when he blesses man, he creates their life better.

He adds to their life when he actually blesses them.

He blesses them with favor or riches or prosperity or whatever it might be.

But when man blesses God, you see, we can't add to God.

We're not increasing him or making him greater in any significant way.

If anything, all we're simply doing is expressing a praise of thankfulness.

Bless his name because God has accomplished for us what we could never accomplish on our own.

So when we look at summary of verse three, we look at this, we look and see that our hope is alive because Jesus is alive.

When we look at verse three, this is really the opening statement that Paul's making.

Our hope that we have is alive because Jesus is alive.

So Peter blesses God the Father.

He blesses him for his power and strength.

Because of his great mercy that he showed us, he caused us to be born again.

You see, because according to his great mercy, he caused us to be born again.

God the Father is the power and strength by which we now have a new life in Jesus.

Let's look at the two primary parts of this passage that he walks through.

He first says, Because of his great mercy.

So blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who by his great mercy, or because of his great mercy, or according to, why does God, the first question we have to ask ourselves when we read this, why does God have to extend mercy in the first place?

Why is mercy a necessary factor in Peter's blessing God for his power and strength?

You see, number one, God has to extend mercy to us because our sin caused us to be dead.

That means we had no life, no power, no ability or strength in our own selves to be able to accomplish what we needed.

Because our sin caused us to be dead, God showed mercy when He gave us new life.

Ephesians 2, 1 through 5 says this.

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins, in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

Verse 4 But God, being rich in what?

Mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace, you have been saved.

So God needed to show mercy to us because we were dead in our sin and we could not have new life unless it was for his power and strength.

Second reason that God needed to extend mercy to us, because our sin caused us to suffer under God's wrath-filled judgment.

Look at Romans 1, 18.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

You see, Peter acknowledges the necessity for mercy to be extended to us, and that's one of the primary emphasis of why he blesses God's name.

Because God showed mercy to us, because our sin caused us to be dead, and our sin caused us to suffer under God's wrath-filled judgment.

His mercy, though, his mercy caused us to be alive and live anew under the riches of his blessing.

You see, his mercy gives us what we do not deserve.

And it's in his uh coming into our life with his mercy, through his power and strength, that Peter is acknowledging a necessity to bless his name.

So, number one reason is God's great mercy.

The second part of this is that it says he caused us.

Caused us.

God's power and strength is the cause producing the effect of our new life.

So Peter says, Blessed be the God and Father, according to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope.

God's power and strength is the cause of this new life that we have.

John 1, 12 through 13 says, But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

You see, we were unable to cause this new life in our own power and strength.

That's one thing that we have to look at this passage and realize and walk away from understanding is that this new life that we have in Christ and the experience of the riches of his blessing is not because of our own power and strength.

It's actually in stark contradiction to it.

We had no power.

We had no strength.

God caused our current state.

You see, in our own strength, in our own sin, we were dead.

In our own sin, we were under his wrath-filled judgment.

So God's name is blessed by those whom he caused to be brought into a new blessed life when they were unable to do so on their own.

We bless God because we are brought into a new blessed life through his power and strength.

But what does he cause us to be born again to?

It says a living hope.

A living hope.

Why?

Because his son Jesus has resurrected from the dead.

So he says, I've Peter acknowledges God's power and strength to cause us to be born again into a living hope.

A living hope because Jesus is no longer dead.

Our hope in what God has promised to us can be alive because Jesus is alive.

You see, if Jesus was still in the tomb, our hope in God would deservedly be buried there with it.

None of his promises would have any true weight to them because the weight of the stone would remain covering our dead Messiah.

You see, when we look at our life, a lot of times when we ask for what is our source of hope?

And there's a lot of us that can look at the sufferings that we've actually gone through in our life or that we're facing even now in our life, trials and sufferings.

But what we have to understand is that sometimes when we're going through those things, we're tempted to really question God's faithfulness.

Is his promises actually true?

Is he really as loving and as good as he says he is?

Why am I going through what I'm going through if God's promises are such?

Some of us might even come from a background where you were promised that as long as you did certain things, God was going to give you all this stuff.

And then you grew up to realize, where is it all?

Or what happened?

Or some of us face sufferings of sickness and disease, heartache and loss, all kinds of different things in this world.

And what we're tempted to do is look at God and say, Are your promises even true?

Can I trust you?

And what the Bible says time and time again, what Peter's even doing here is that you can trust God because you can look at an empty tomb.

Every aspect of God's promises are guaranteed and affirmed in the resurrected Jesus Christ.

Why can we have a hope that is alive?

Not because we're getting everything that we want, not because life is good and everything that we've ever asked for is given to us and in our possession, not because we're experiencing this high, blessed, favored life where no sickness, no disease, only prosperity, blessing, and multiplication is coming to my front door.

No, that's not how you can be guaranteed of the promises of God.

You can be guaranteed in it because Jesus is alive.

God says, you want to see that I am who I say I am, that I will do what I say I will do.

Look to Jesus.

Because here's what Peter says, and this is necessary for us to understand.

In verse 4, he says, You're being called to a living hope, a living hope because Jesus is raised from the dead.

Verse 4, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.

What?

Kept in heaven for you.

Not released on earth, not stored here in this perishing world.

It's kept in heaven for you.

Now I want us to understand this doesn't mean that we're not going to get tastes and morsels and glimpses of that.

But we would fool ourselves to ever believe that we will get the fullness of it here and now because it's being kept in heaven for you.

And we're going to see even in verse 5 that it's something awaiting to be revealed to us in glory.

When we look at verse 4, the summary of verse 4 would be that the earth is perishing, but the promises of God are everlasting.

The earth is perishing, but the promises of God are everlasting.

What we have around us is perishing.

And will ultimately be destroyed by God as He establishes the new heavens and earth.

So our living hope is not in what we have now, but what is promised we will have in the glory to come.

You see, this is something that I've been talking about and thinking through as well.

Is that what we put our trust in, what we put our hope in in this world, government systems, economies, uh, education, whatever it might be, right?

Whatever we're putting our hope in in this world, we have to come to the realization God is going to burn it all up to establish his new heavens and new earth.

Ultimately to say, I'm gonna take all of this from you so that you can have all of me.

And so we have to look beyond what we can obtain or grasp in this life.

Because what's awaiting for us, a living hope to what?

An inheritance.

An inheritance that is three things, God says through Peter here in this letter.

Number one, imperishable.

It's without end.

The promises and riches of God are eternal.

Imagine what that means for us, right?

Imagine what it means when the promises of God are eternal.

That means that what they give to us and accomplish for us are eternal as well.

Many of us, we've already opened our Christmas presents, right?

And you got something and it's already kind of faded in the joy that it brought you when you opened it, right?

Maybe you already want to return half of it because you just really aren't happy with it.

Or maybe it just didn't perform or do for you what you thought it was going to do.

How quickly we can be gifted something and allow it to fade in what it brought to us in the first place.

But the promises of God are imperishable, they are eternal.

It says also that they're undefiled, meaning that they're without sin.

The promises and riches of God are pure and righteous.

They are for our good and our fullness of life.

And thirdly, they're unfading, they're without decay.

They do not decrease in joy, peace, comfort, glory.

You see, the original language was talking about this unfading.

It was actually speaking about a flower that never withered, that never died, that always stayed in bloom, this unfading beauty of which the promises of God, the inheritance of which He has for us, is.

You see, we're realizing this world is passing.

This world is perishing around us, and the things that we once put our hope in is perishing with it.

But God's promises, God's inheritance never will.

They're kept in heaven for you.

Like I said, there's a reality that we have to wrestle with.

That the fullness of our inheritance will never be known or grasped in this life.

It's not stored here where rust and moth can destroy it, but it's kept for us in heaven.

So we have to trust God that the momentary sufferings and trials we endure now will be eternally worth it in glory.

Because we're so journeying in kingdom labor toward the riches of Jesus that will be given to us in glory.

But we don't like to wait, right?

That's another problem with us in our culture.

We don't like to wait for things.

We want instant gratification.

We're gonna talk about this more in the sermon.

But there's something that we really have to realize is that oftentimes when we fail to wait for something, we actually accept cheaper things in its place.

When we fail to wait for something, we accept cheaper things in its place.

Let's just simply look at relationships.

Relationships, when we insert sexual gratification into a relationship off the bat, we are cheapening.

We're accepting something cheaper than what God has promised for us if we wait.

If we wait for covenant, for someone who says, I don't care when I get your body, as long as I get you in covenant relationship where me and you will promise to fight to the end to see the success of this marriage happen.

It doesn't matter when I have you in a sexual form.

It's what matters when I have you in covenant promise.

And then that makes all of that intimacy so much more rich and beautiful and deep and intimate.

You see, often in our life when we fail to wait, we accept cheap things in return.

And this is the same thing with the promises of God.

There's many people who will abandon the faith and abandon the uh serving the Lord because they're not getting what they want right now.

And what are they doing?

They're accepting cheaper, lesser things, weaker gods who have empty promises.

Verse 5 says, Who by God's power, that's speaking about us, who by God's power being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

We look at verse 5, we'd see that the one who caused us keeps us.

The one who caused us keeps us.

We can be comforted by this fact.

Right?

When we when we put our faith, when we put our salvation into our own hands and our own strength and our own power, we should be terrified.

Because we, you and I know, when we lay our heads down at night, how much we failed to live up to the holy standards of which God has called us to.

We know the thoughts that we had that no one else knew we had.

We knew the things we said in quiet or the things we did in private that no one else does.

But we know, we know the ways in which we failed to live up to the holy standards of God.

So when salvation comes into our own hands, we should tremble in fear.

But what comfort can be brought to us as children of God when we realize that our salvation is not only caused, but kept by God.

In His power, in His strength.

You see, understanding the sovereign power of God to both cause us and to keep us should bring immense comfort to us as Christians.

It's the power and strength of God that both makes us alive and keeps us in such a state.

Let's look at Hebrews 12, 2.

It says this looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Jesus is here in Hebrews mentioned or described as the author and the perfecter of our faith, or the starter and the finisher of our faith.

And the Bible goes on in several places to talk about how Jesus is the one who initiates and sustains and completes the faith that we have in him.

It says that he who began a good work in you is faithful and just to see it to completion, that nothing can pluck us out of his hands once we are in Christ, that he is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

So Christ is the reason we are able to be saved and to be kept in that salvation.

It is God who both gives us our faith and perfects or finishes that faith in us.

It is through this faith that He uh that has been given to us that we are being kept.

So it's through this actual gift of faith that we've been given to believe and trust in the fact that Jesus is risen from the dead.

This is the agent that gives us active, trust filled confidence that God will accomplish all that He has promised to us.

You see, we have Have an inheritance.

We have an inheritance waiting for us in glory because God is merciful to us and by his power is assuring it to be our possession.

So our main idea this morning is that we are kept by God for a glory beyond this world.

We are kept by God for a glory beyond this world.

We have to set our gaze toward heaven.

As a people, we can't keep just looking at what's in front of us.

We can't just keep looking at what's going on in the world around us.

We have to set our gaze toward heaven.

We must treasure in our hearts that which we have not yet fully attained, but has been promised to us through God.

You see, if we allow ourselves to stay fixed on this world, we'll lose ourselves to perishing, defiled, decaying idols that have no power to actually keep us.

The things of this world cannot last.

They have no ability to provide the things that they promised to us.

All of their promises are empty and vain.

Promises of joy, comfort, peace are vanity because they have no power or strength to actually keep them.

All day, every day.

And every single one of those promises have no true power to do anything that they say they can.

You think God is beyond?

Don't we realize God is beyond this virus?

God is beyond this pandemic.

Make a virus or make a vaccine to cure this virus.

He is God of all creation.

If he wants to unleash another virus on all mankind that we could never even cure, so be it his will.

God is beyond all of our circumstances, all of our economy, all of our government, everything that we try to put trust into, God is beyond that because God will accomplish his perfect, holy will through his power and strength.

And we are foolish if we think that our human ingenuity, that our human power, that our human anything could thwart, offset, or delay his perfect will.

We can't.

God is beyond this.

And so if we put, if we take the bite, if we take the bait that they put out in front of us about all of these promises that they are going to provide for us, we are nothing but fools ourselves.

They have no power to do what they say they can.

They have no power to sustain your life, they have no power to make you rich beyond your imagination, they have no power to do anything that they actually say they can.

It is all vanity.

You see, God alone is the great I am.

Because he alone has no other name under heaven and earth by which he can make these promises to his children.

Do we realize the power and might of God?

That when he said, I'm gonna do what I say I'm going to do, I'm going to come through on my promises.

And this is what he he says to us as his people.

He says, I searched heaven and earth by another name of which I could make these promises.

Right?

When we're kids, you ever promised on your mama, right?

I'm gonna I'm promised on, or then if if you had like a relative who had passed, you promised on their grave.

I don't know where that came from.

That's really morbid and uh and gross.

But however, we would promise what?

Beyond a name, a name beyond ourselves, we would make these promises.

Why?

Because it brought weight or validity that we're actually going to do, or else my family's name would be put to shame.

God said, I searched all of heaven and earth by which another name I could make these promises.

I found none.

So what did I do?

I made them by my name.

What that dictates is that if God does not come through on even one of his promises, he ceases to be God.

It is his power and strength that is our assurance that our inheritance and glory is certain.

His mark of guarantee is an empty tomb where a crucified Messiah once laid.

And now there is power to both cause and guarantee new life because Jesus is alive.

You see, but many of us keep our heads down, fixed on the things of this world and seeking to acquire them through our own power and strength.

You see, some of us, we believe this world is all there truly is to have.

We believe this world is all there truly is to have.

We, as a people, can't see past our own nose.

We live for immediate gratification, often leading us to settle for cheaper and lesser things.

We are like the younger brother in the parable of the prodigal son.

What did he do?

He the younger brother in the parable, he goes to his father and asks for his inheritance now.

Basically, what he said to his father is, I'd rather you be dead and have your stuff than wait and have you.

And when he father gave him all that was his and his inheritance, he went and squandered it on the pleasures of this world.

He wanted immediate gratification.

And where did it end him up?

Eating out of a pig trough, groveling back to his father, begging him to take him in even as a servant in his house.

But the beauty of the grace of the Father is that he fell on his neck as he saw him walking down the road.

He put his coat on him and a ring on his finger, and he kissed him and he said, You're my son, welcome home.

That's what God does for us, even though we continually pursue immediate gratification, settling for cheaper things rather than what God has in store for us.

You see, God is not pressured by time like we are.

God's time is beyond our time.

And I can tell you there's many things where like I like things to happen now.

You want to see me go from zero to 100 in like anger mode?

Let an electronic device not do what it's supposed to do, right?

It's like it's like if this remote button doesn't do what it's supposed to do, I'm gonna throw it through the TV.

That's what's gonna happen.

Or this phone locks up on me and it's not, I'm going to get angry, right?

That that's something me, if you don't do what you're supposed to do, if I don't have that immediate sense of gratification, I am going to get floored.

But you know, I'm like that, not just in simple little foolish electronics.

I'm like that in so many different things where I try to press God and pressure God into my timeline to get what actually I want, not being submissive and patient to what He wants for me.

And you know what that often leads to?

Cheapness.

Cheapness in my spiritual life, cheapness in my marriage, in my relationship with my children, cheapness in my bank accounts and finances, cheapness in the things the way I fix my, right?

You ever you ever do cheap fix?

What happens when you cheap fix something in your home?

It's cheap and it breaks, and you got to fix it again.

Like that's what happens when we don't, when we are unwilling to be patient for what is good for us.

We cling to the things of this world because ultimately we don't trust God.

We don't trust there is anything waiting for us.

Like, honestly, all of us in this room for just a moment, think about this.

Think about the way you live your life, think about the way that you trust God and really ponder this next statement.

I believe many of us fear that on the other side of this life there's just the emptiness of death.

So, what do we have to do?

We have to obtain all that we can now.

What if death was just the beginning of the true life that God has for us?

You see, our hearts often have enough measure of doubt that God isn't really who he says he is, and that his promises can't be trusted.

So we have to live this life to the fullest.

Because at the end of it, it's all there is.

The end.

Don't we live that way a lot, though?

If we're really honest, don't we live that way a lot?

Like, what if just at the end of this life is just the emptiness of death and God really isn't there and his promises really can't be trusted, and I really don't know what happens next.

A lot of our decision-making process, the way that we live our lives and the resources that we have and the decisions that we make, if we understand it's rooted in that, that we don't really trust that there's a God on the other side of death who's promising a life that we could never have here with an inheritance that will never fade or decay or be blemished by sin.

But some of us we believe that we have that we're kept by our own power.

Some of us believe we're kept by our own power.

We might believe that God's promises of future glory are true, but if we're going to preserve, uh persevere to obtain them, it's gonna be by our own power and strength.

So again, we might believe that God's promises of future glory are true.

But if we're gonna actually persevere to obtain them, it's gonna be by our own power and strength.

It'll be by our faithfulness, our holiness, our obedience that proves to be the means to obtain them.

Anything that is promised of God is acquired through our own works, an award for labor and toil.

You see, we fail to understand that both the offering of glory and the obtaining of it is through the great mercy of God alone.

He does not need in us a champion to win the bounty of heaven.

Christ is his champion.

And in Christ we are made more than champions.

Our inheritance is freely given to us because he has made us alive to obtain it, and his power has kept both it and us to enjoy it forever.

You see, we can't act like we get saved by grace and then we are saved by our own strength and works.

We can't act like all that we're going to obtain in glory is by our own power and strength.

We have to realize that it is Christ alone.

We see this in this passage that God alone causes us and keeps us.

This world is not all there is.

It is but a fading, fleeting, empty promise of glory.

True and eternal glory is waiting for us as we sojourn through this life, being kept by God's power and strength.

All of our being is for his glory and our good.

And the beauty of the gospel church this morning is this that Jesus rose from the dead to bring us into a hope that never dies.

Jesus rose from the dead to bring us into a hope that never dies.

You see, we can have hope.

I'm not trying to preach a message of doom and gloom.

If anything, I hope you leave here more excited, more joy-filled, more comforted, more at peace because you're actually clinging on to real hope, not fake hope, not false hope.

You can have hope because the source and object of our hope lives.

If we want to see that God's promises are worth trusting in, we simply need to look at the empty grave.

Jesus alone is the guarantor of all of God's promises.

It is with his blood that he paid the debt we owed from our sin, and it is the riches of heaven that he pledges to us.

There is glory that awaits us.

Bowed before the Lamb, Jesus the King, who rose as conqueror over all that entrapped us.

You see, we no longer have to cling to the empty promises of this world because Jesus clung to the cross.

Everything that we could ever place our hope in is seen and known and realized in that Jesus is alive.

If Jesus didn't come out of the grave, if he didn't rise again from dead, Paul says that we are to be pitied above all people.

Because we are reorganizing and fashioning our lives around the truth that Jesus is alive.

And if he isn't, if he's just a dead martyr, some false messiah who the Romans killed in a political, swift action, then what are we doing?

Why are we here this morning?

Why are we committing our lives in this way to live as Christians?

You see, Jesus is the guarantor because Jesus is risen.

And we no longer have to toil to pay back what we owe because Jesus paid it all.

We persevere through this life to obtain the fullness of God's promises, which is seen first and foremost in the resurrected Jesus.

Jesus is alive, assuring our hope is not in vain, and that all of God's promises are yes and amen in Him.

So what do we do?

How do we live our lives then, if this is true?

Number one is we have to trust in what God is doing and in what He has promised.

Trust in what God is doing and in what He has promised.

Failure to trust in God always leads us to sinfully work to take things into our own hands.

Right?

When we don't trust God, what do we do?

When we're impatient, when we're absent of trust, we insert ourselves in our own power and strength.

We sinfully take the situation into our own hands, and we try to produce or manufacture on the other side of it what we really want.

How does that work out for us?

If we're honest.

How does that really work out for us?

You see, this is what happens when we fail to trust God and what he's doing and what he's promised to us, we are constantly going to be tempted and we are going to be provoked into taking any situation into our own hands, working to produce our own end result.

We have to be a patient people to allow God to do what he's doing in our lives, in our families, in our communities, in city.

God is not uh held back by processes, right?

God is not thwarted by human power or strength.

God is going to fully accomplish all that he wills when he wants to.

So why can't we be more patient?

Why can't we just allow God to do what he's doing?

Why can't we trust him more?

You know, a lot of times what we see throughout the Bible is that God brought his glory and the good of his people through circumstances we would have never seen done.

Right?

When you look at the stories throughout the Bible, you would say, God, I wouldn't have done it that way.

Uh, but hey, you do you.

I'm gonna try and trust that a little bit, right?

And don't we see this ultimately in Jesus?

If you were God and you were gonna save the world, how would you do it?

Think about that.

Have you ever pondered that question for even a moment?

Like, God, was this really the best way to kill your son?

You couldn't have done it better, like more loving, uh, more gracious, more whatever, right?

When you try to insert yourself as God, what do you do?

You mess everything up.

Don't we see this in the disciples?

When they saw Jesus, what did they do?

They didn't trust God, and they tried to take the situation into their own hands, where Peter, who wrote this very epistle, takes a sword and chops off the ear of a guard who comes to arrest Jesus.

And Jesus says, No, you don't understand, this is supposed to happen.

This is what God planned, this is what God willed to save us, to save his people from their sin.

This is what was supposed to happen, but an impatient, untrusting disciple tried to take it in his own hands.

But the reality is we're all Peter.

In every situation of our life, we try to do the exact same thing because we have so little patience and we have so little trust.

This year, I pray that we trust deeper in what God is doing and what He has promised.

Secondly, we need to treasure what we have obtained but do not yet have.

How have we obtained it?

We have obtained it through Christ.

We have obtained all the riches of heaven, all the fullness of our inheritance has already been obtained for us in Christ, yet we do not fully yet have it.

Again, we want instant gratification, and we fail to be patient in receiving something truly better.

And there's going to be at the end of time a hell full of people who wanted instant gratification and not be patient to have the Son of God revealed to them.

To see that he is better, to have him and to obtain him and to enjoy him forever is eternally better than having whatever you sacrificed all that for on earth.

I was listening to a podcast not too long ago uh on the art of manliness, right?

Because I'm trying to be more manly.

And um uh it was about it was about our time and how we use our time.

And he was interviewing someone, uh, uh a uh psychologist who had who had interviewed many men at the end of their life to study time and understand it better.

And and the psychologist said, I've never met a man who at the end of his life ever said, I wish I would have worked more, I wish I would have spent more money on this, or I wish I would have done more of all these things.

It's I wish I would have spent more time on my marriage, spent more time with my children, spent more time, if they are men of faith, serving the Lord.

You see, we have to treasure what we have obtained, but do not yet have.

Our desire for now often leads us to obtain cheaper things that at the end of our life we wish we had never pursued in the first place.

You have an opportunity this year in 2021 to change that about your life.

To look at the ways that you're using your time, energy, and resources on what?

And at the end of your life, are you going to be satisfied to look back and say, I spent it where I should have?

Are you gonna be filled with regret?

Are you gonna look back and say, I didn't do what I should have done?

I I settled for cheaper things.

One of my favorite quotes from Charles Spurgeon, a pastor in London from the 1800s, is that six feet of dirt make all men equal.

No matter what you work and labor to obtain in this world, when you're gone, it's gone with you.

So we have to treasure what we have obtained, but do not yet have.

Number three, trade the perishing things of this world for the imperishable riches of Jesus.

You see, church, so much of what we cling to now for our hope, it will fail us.

It will.

It's meant to.

It will be destroyed by God as He gives us all that we truly need, which is Himself in full.

That's what God wants to do in our lives.

He wants to get away all the distraction, get away all the cheap things of this world, get away all the things that we put our hope in that isn't really going to come through on its promises.

And he wants to give us the fullness of himself, because in himself is fullness of joy everlasting.

I want to start trading the perishing things of this world for the imperishable riches of Jesus.

I want to start examining my life, taking to account the things that I treasure that are just fading, right?

That that that are just right before my eyes, perishing.

That won't last, that won't make it.

I actually had this situation last night.

I got on an app where you buy like used clothes, and uh I was looking for a new pair of Red Wing boots, and I was like, well, I don't know.

I guess on this app you can put in an offer, and then if they accept it, then they just charge your card.

Um who knew that?

And so I uh I put in this offer, I put in a pretty low offer for these Red Wing boots, and I got a notification at um uh late at night that said, Congratulations, you you now owe this person money.

And it was like, oh wow, and I told I told Katie, like, I got these boots, this is what happened, so I can just rewind a little bit.

Katie said I needed nicer boots for when I preach, so I was like, okay, fine, I'll look for nicer boots.

I think I have decent boots, but um, she said I needed nicer ones, so I looked for nicer ones, and I ended up uh uh shelling out more money than I wanted to.

And and here's what I immediately I thought, like, how long will these boots really last?

How much money did I just spend on them?

And and what are they really gonna give to me?

What are they really gonna do for me?

What are they really gonna accomplish?

The church won't grow because I have nicer boots, right?

No, the first time guest comes in, like, man, that dude has some nice boots.

Where can I give my money?

Um, that that that doesn't happen, that's not gonna happen, right?

What was I expecting?

I I wanted something now.

I set my gaze on something that's perishing right before me.

And I should have put that time and energy and resource into treasuring the imperishable riches of Jesus.

I could have taken that time on that app to read the Bible with my kids or pray with my wife or get out of the guitar and worship Jesus.

I could have done so many better things, right?

So my prayer for 2021 for us, as we're understanding how we're kept by the power and strength of God, is that our refrain of our heart would be this take the world, but give me Jesus.

All its joys are but a name.

But his love abideth ever through eternal years the same.

Take the world, but give me Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's pray.