A Living Hope

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, good morning, Sacred Mission Church.

We're so thankful that you're joining us via live stream this morning.

We've kind of been talking about this, the church scattered, still gathering together.

Praise God for technology and the ability to do that.

We're in our sermon series on 1 Peter called Hold Fast to Faith.

And we're kind of looking at what it means to uh experience trials, uh, but holding fast to the faith of which we have in Christ Jesus.

And this morning we're going to be looking at uh 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 3 through 12.

1 Peter 1:3–12

So if you have a Bible, get it out.

If you've got an app, go ahead and open that up.

And you know, at Sacred Mission Church, uh, when we're here gathered and we're able to and we read God's word, we stand up in reverence and honor of that word.

And so if you're sitting at home, uh feel free to get up and uh revere the word that is being read, for it's God's word spoken to us by his Holy Spirit, and it's something that we should uh uh find great joy and adoration in.

And so get there, 1 Peter, if you don't know where it's at, New Testament, almost kind of near the end.

You're you're you're kind of getting close to the back of the Bible, uh, but we're gonna be in chapter one, verses three through twelve, and it says this Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Though you have not seen him, you love him.

Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.

It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves, but you.

And the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.

This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Amen.

If you're joining us this morning, uh we want to encourage you to follow along in the sermon.

We've got sermon notes available to you.

It should be a link posted uh in our Facebook feed or underneath our YouTube description where you can find the notes for this morning.

But uh, you can follow along and use them for personal devotion later as you kind of go back and review those.

But uh again, we're gonna be looking again at 1 Peter 1, 3 through 12.

And so last week, when we kicked off the sermon series, we dove right into this really big theological uh kind of principle.

And it was this idea of being chosen by God and how the reality of us being chosen by God should bring comfort to us in the midst of trials.

And that can be a lofty theological thought, right?

That can be something that people really wrestle with maybe their whole life.

And if we're honest, we don't fully understand it, we don't fully have the capacity to wrap our minds around it.

Uh but this morning uh we're gonna be diving back into very robust theological principles and statements.

And the reason we're doing this is because Peter did it, right?

Well, all we're trying to do is simply look at the scriptures and mine from them what's there so that we can be nourished and strengthened in our faith and in our Christian life, right?

We're not trying to add anything to it, we're not trying to subtract away from it, we're just simply trying to extract out of it what it has.

And Peter is unrelenting in this kind of theological framework that he's laying out to bring comfort and joy to a people who are scattered throughout Asia Minor and are encountering various trials, both uh trials relationally, socially, uh religiously, politically.

And so uh we're gonna be continuing in this kind of deep dive of robust theological principles.

Now, we often see theology as something to debate, something to fight over, even something to uh divide over.

But Peter, Peter sees theology as something to bring comfort, to bring encouragement, and to strengthen the life and soul of the believer.

At Sacred Mission Church, we love good theology because we believe that healthy theology produces healthy disciples, healthy mission, and healthy worship.

Let me say that again.

We believe that healthy theology produces healthy disciples, healthy mission, healthy worship.

And so we want to dive in where the scripture speaks, we want to listen, we want to mind what's there to understand God better and more clearly for how he has revealed himself to be through his word.

And so let's get to work because we've got a lot to kind of walk through here.

So in verses three through five, I'm gonna kind of take that first section and separate it from the text so that we can kind of understand what's happening there.

But the way that I would summarize verses three through five is that I would say that God has caused us to be born again to a living hope, and that provokes our praise.

So God has caused us to be born again to a living hope, and that, that truth, provokes our praise.

So, flowing right from the opening of this letter, we see what we call a doxological phrase.

So last week we kind of walked through the introduction.

Peter's kind of greeting them, telling them who he is, and encouraging them a little bit.

But then when he gets into the body of this letter, he starts off with what we call a doxological phrase.

That's just a fancy word for a worshipful proclamation, right?

He begins to actually worship and bless God as he's writing to these people in the midst of their trials.

And so that actually works to reestablish God as the center of our affection and our adoration.

You see, great theology produces passionate doxology.

The more that we understand God and the more rightly we understand God, not based on our own inference or based on our own speculation, but based on the way that he's revealed himself to be in his word, the more rightly we submit our mind and our heart to knowing him rightly, the greater our worship, the more passionate our worship will be.

In fact, our theology should curate for us passionate, expressive worship.

We see this a lot in the scriptures, where a right and clear understanding of God makes his people burst into worshipful expression.

And Peter's no different.

Nobody wants to hang out with him, and he's the dude in church who just sits there like he's dead, like Jesus hasn't raised from the dead, come out of the grave, ascended to the Father, seated on his right hand in glory and majesty, that he hasn't caused that person to be made alive, resurrected with him, seated with him on high, uh the beneficiary of all of his blessings and righteousness.

You would think this dude has no pulse sitting there.

Why?

Because he doesn't understand that to know God rightly, passionately, intimately, should produce expressive, passionate worship.

And so we work to know God rightly so that our worship might be magnifying him instead of us.

I love this quote from Stephen Lawson.

He's the professor of preaching and overseer of the Doctor of Ministry program at Master's Seminary.

He says this high theology produces high doxology.

The higher our view of God, the higher our praise will rise to Him.

And Peter's doing this for us in this letter, right?

He's the one that's actually working to establish theological framework of theological, God-centered worldview that is encouraging to the person that's resulting in worship.

Look at how big God is in that opening statement.

Look every aspect of that opening statement in that body, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And then from there, he just starts going of how great and powerful and how big God is.

Every aspect points directly to the boasting of God and his work.

He is the initiator, he is the sustainer, he is the finisher of all the blessing, privilege, and favor that you and I have.

It's all about God.

It's not about us, and Peter is opening our eyes and our hearts to this truth and this reality.

So why is Peter applying glory to God's name?

Because he and he alone has caused us to be born again to a living hope.

He and he alone has caused us to be born again to a living hope.

And so let's take that three through five, and let's break down every statement that Peter makes about God and how it affects us as his people.

And the first part he says, according to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again.

You see, it's only by the mercy of God that we are actually born again.

There is nothing in this phrase here outlined in 1 Peter or anywhere else, anywhere else in the New Testament that places any emphasis on us when it comes to God's choosing.

When it comes to God's choosing of his people, when it comes to how we have been born again, how we have been made alive when we were once dead, there is nothing in this passage, and there is nowhere in the entire New Testament that puts any emphasis on self, our ability, our will, our merit, our anything.

It puts it all on God.

All of it on him.

And it's by his great mercy which he has caused us to be born again.

All of it always points to the sovereign action and will of God alone.

We are born again because God chose in his free will to display his mercy on those whom he has chosen in place of displaying his justice.

And so this is what Peter's trying to help them understand.

Really, if we kind of boil this down and try to work through it, what we see is that you have been made born again.

You have been born again by God, by the extension of his mercy, because you and I, apart from the finished work of Jesus, do not deserve God's mercy.

We don't earn God's mercy.

We should not have it displayed or lavished upon us.

What we should have is God's justice.

And you and I don't want to come face to face with God's justice.

Praise God.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who by his mercy caused us to be born again.

Then the next part says, to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

What have we been born again to?

Well, we've been born again to a living hope.

What makes this hope living, right?

That sounds like a that sounds like a kind of weird statement to throw in there.

That it's not a dead hope, it's a living hope.

But what actually makes this hope living?

It's that the hope is through the resurrection of Jesus the Christ.

The hope is alive because Jesus is alive.

Fundamentally, if Christ were to have stayed in the tomb, if he would have remained in death's bed, then the hope that we have would be dead.

It would be pointless, it would be without any benefit to us.

But because Christ rose, because he is the firstborn among many brothers, because he conquered death, hell, and the grave, the hope that you and I have is now alive because it resides in a risen, resurrected, living Lord.

Our hope is alive because Jesus is alive.

The means of our new birth, the life-giving agent of our hope is the fact of the resurrection of Jesus.

It's not the message of the resurrection, it's not the philosophy of the resurrection, it's not the theory of the resurrection, it's because the tomb is empty.

The fact of Christ's resurrection gives us confidence and assurance that the hope we have is living.

Jesus is the only begotten Son, conqueror of death, firstborn among many brothers.

And if he had stayed in the grave, then our hope would have remained dead with him.

You see, the beauty of this hope is that it's anchored in the past because Jesus rose.

Our hope remains in the present because Jesus lives.

And our hope is completed in the future because surely Jesus is coming.

Church, we have a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, not in anything else.

In him and him alone.

And then Paul says, to an inheritance, or Peter, sorry, Peter says, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.

For you.

And it's unfading, means that it's free from all decay.

Every aspect of this inheritance that is being kept for you, it has full assurance because it's God's inheritance that He is keeping for us, and there is nothing, nothing that can bring any sense of detriment, that can bring any sense of destruction, that can bring any sense of decay to this inheritance of which we have.

No way less, they were beginning chapter one of the great story, which no one on earth has read, which goes on forever, in which every chapter is better than the one before.

That is what we are being called to.

That is what is being kept for us.

This better and better progressive beauty and glory and holiness and joy and peace and fullness of relationship with God our Father.

Let me tell you something.

There is no best life now.

It can't be obtained.

It's beyond our grasp.

There is nothing within this world that can provide for us a best life.

Our best life has yet to begin.

Anything we can know, anything we can have or taste or touch or hear, anything that we can experience in this world is nothing but a fragment, a morsel, a crumb of what we are called to experience in glory, of what we will obtain on the day of our salvation.

Everything in this world pales miserably in comparison with what he has kept for us.

And then Peter kind of finishes out this section of three through five.

He says, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

This hope is guaranteed to us by the keeping power of God the Father.

So again, every aspect of this three through five is all about God.

Every single aspect of it.

And so all of our hope has to be centralized on him, not on us.

Even the faith of which we have is being guarded by him.

This hope is guaranteed to us by the keeping power of God the Father.

The emphasis switches from the inheritance being kept to we as his people being kept.

Nothing is going to penetrate inside to bring harm or any sense of danger to his people, right?

Imagine a city that's fornicated to where no enemy can come in and plunder, no enemy can come in and steal, no enemy can come in and cause harm to his people.

God is the mighty fortress of which our faith rests.

He guards it.

And we can have confidence in the hope.

We can have confidence in the inheritance.

We can have confidence in the faith to finish the race because it all relies on God's sovereign power.

What confidence, what comfort that should bring us as his people.

No matter what we go through in this life, it should bring us complete confidence.

For what?

For something that's yet to be revealed.

For something that we haven't even seen yet, something that we can't even fathom in our finite minds.

It's going to be revealed to us when Christ returns.

The fullness of salvation will be ours.

You can dream all you want.

You can try to idealize, right?

Sometimes me and my wife play this fun game.

What would you do if you won the lottery?

Right?

And you kind of start thinking through.

Any of you guys do that at home?

If I won the lottery, I would do A, B, C, right?

You can you could imagine you just won$50 billion and start thinking about all the things you your mind can't even handle that$50 billion.

You can't understand how you would spend all of that money.

Your mind definitely cannot understand or begin to comprehend the fullness of salvation being poured out on you.

You at the coming of Jesus Christ.

You can't do it.

It's that magnificent, it's that glorious, it's that encompassing of self, you can't do it.

The fullness of salvation will be ours, and the inheritance of God is kept for us, and the beauty of this is that we are kept for Him.

So the inheritance is kept for us, and we are kept for Him.

As we move on down the passage, we see verses six through nine.

If we were going to kind of summarize this as the next section of this letter that Peter's writing, we would say this: that we face sufferings now, but glories shall follow.

We face sufferings now, but glories shall follow.

In this you rejoice.

That's how he starts this next section of the passage.

In this you rejoice.

What is this?

What is it?

It's the reality of our living hope, our inheritance, the revealing of our full salvation.

This rejoicing is not based on our circumstance.

In fact, it's actually based completely in spite of them.

Our trials shall be various in both modes and degrees, but our rejoicing is not rooted in what we experience in this life.

It is rooted in what shall be experienced in the life to come.

We with weary eyes and lowered heads in the midst of trials must raise our gaze to the glory which awaits us.

This will cause us to have joy no matter what we face.

Right?

The people that Peter is writing to are experiencing various kinds of trials.

There's not a specific thing that they're experienced at this point in time.

This is really being written before there was major, major persecution happening to the church throughout the Roman Empire.

And so they're experiencing various trials, both modes and degrees.

It wasn't just simply because of their faith.

It could have been because of resources, it could have been because of sickness, it could have been all kinds of different circumstances.

Peter knows that.

And what he's saying is that you don't rejoice in your circumstance, you rejoice in this.

What's this?

God.

God is the one who in his mercy chose you.

God is the one who has established an inheritance for you, who is keeping that.

God is the one who sustains you in your faith so that the inheritance and the fullness of salvation can be yours.

It's in this you rejoice, not looking at the trials in front of you, but looking ahead, setting your gaze beyond the circumstance so that you can rejoice in what is promised.

And then Peter gives us insight to part of the purpose of our trials, part of the purpose of our sufferings.

He says that our faith, it's so that our faith may be tested and found authentic and established.

It's gold tested in fire.

Right?

And so God allows for us to experience and walk through various trials, both in modes and degrees, so that for us, our faith might be purified.

You see, God allows us to suffer for our good.

And that needs to be a deep part of our theology, especially as an American people.

We need to realize that it is the will of God for you to go through suffering so that your good might be multiplied to you.

We have to understand this.

We have to work to apply this as a part of who we are in the thought, theology of which we hold.

God allows us to be tested.

God allows us to suffer, to go through trials, so that we might experience his ultimate good for us.

Now, when we look at this, Peter actually takes this testing of our faith, this purifying of our faith, and kind of builds this analogy around it of the way that gold is purified.

And when we look at the process of gold being purified, the process is not to make the gold more gold, right?

It's not that you're taking the gold and and putting it through this refiner's fire, you're making it more gold.

That's not what's happening.

What's happening is that the gold there is being separated from the impurities, diminishing its true glory.

And so our faith, when we go through trials and suffering, is not being given to us more faith, but the impurities that are still within our flesh, that are still within our being, are being pulled away, are being drawn out from us so that the true glories of the faith of which we have been given through the finished work of Jesus Christ might be more evidently displayed for us in the world around us.

Our faith given to us by God is pure, it is strong, and it is true.

Suffering through trials will work to prove that.

Suffering through trials will work to prove that.

Any outcome of suffering that pulls us away from God only puts on display the falsehood of the faith that we had confessed.

So if we can have confidence as we walk through trials, as we walk through sufferings, us who are His will confidently come out on the other side with stronger faith.

If we encounter trials, if we encounter sufferings, and those circumstances pull us away from God, then we should be gravely concerned that the faith we said we have isn't actually there.

That it was a false confession, that it was something that wasn't established or genuine.

Because, see, the trials God puts us through, we who are his children, is for the purpose of a more glorious faith at the end of it.

You see, in the end, when Jesus is revealed in his glory, we will fully share in glory with him.

You see, we have not seen Jesus.

We are not seeing Jesus, but surely, church, we will see Jesus.

Though we have not seen him, though we are awaiting the fullness of our salvation, we can have joy here and now because the assurance of our hope has been accomplished and is waiting to be revealed.

In part, we live in a future that is already present to us, not simply in expectation alone, but in realization here and now.

And so something that's evident about this passage is that Peter's saying, rejoice.

Rejoice in this, in what?

In something you haven't fully obtained yet.

But just because we haven't fully obtained it, just because we're looking ahead to the day of when it will fully be ours, this inheritance, doesn't mean that we can't have taste and parts of it here and now.

And so we're not just simply Christians looking on to glory land in some type of expectation, but we are Christians who are living in the fullness of the are living in these promises in realization, in part, waiting for the fullness to come.

And so we can rejoice now because the future is also present.

And then verses 10 through 12, as we close out this section of the passage, I would summarize it this way.

It says, All the promises of hope are fulfilled in Jesus.

10 through 12 summary, all the promises of hope are fulfilled in Jesus.

In the concluding portion of this passage, Peter outlines for us the ways in which God has used people to reveal his son, Jesus.

So throughout time, Peter's gonna walk through these two primary categories of people who have the Spirit has used to reveal the glory and person of Jesus the Son.

We have two categories.

Prophets of the Old Testament is the first one that Peter walks through, and they they prophesied the promises of deliverance and salvation, working to understand who these prophecies were referring to and when they would be fulfilled.

Through the Spirit, they discovered the who was Jesus in the when was the age of the New Testament church.

So that's what Peter's kind of walking through.

He says, they that long ago in history past, the Spirit was already speaking to men about the Christ.

We see this uh all throughout the Old Testament, and the initiator of this is God Himself.

When he in the garden, after Adam and Eve had fallen, after they had eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he starts, God walks through the garden, he starts laying curses upon the man, upon the woman, and upon the serpent who tempted them.

And God declared the first gospel, this proto-evangelion, this first declaration of the coming sun, when he looked at the snake and in cursing he told him, Surely the seed of the woman is coming, and you will bruise his heel, but he will crush your head.

And from then on, the Spirit of Christ started working through men as they were being revealed the mysteries of God, as they were being shown in visions and in prophecies of this one who was coming.

And they tried to wrestle who's this person gonna be?

And when is he gonna show up?

And what they resolved, what they were able to discover is that the person was Jesus.

And then the beauty of what Peter says is that they discovered this epiphany.

They weren't serving themselves, they were serving you and I, because the time was the New Testament church.

And then Peter says that we heard this.

We were made aware of this through preaching of the gospel.

And so the second category of men that God used was preachers of the good news.

We were delivered these promises, revealed by those who preach the gospel, also empowered by the Spirit, just like the prophets of the Old Testament, the revelation of Jesus is the agent by which you and I obtain our salvation.

And so the prophets were declaring what was going to come, and then the the preachers of the gospel proclaimed how it came through the person and work of Jesus Christ.

When we heard that good news, that Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, that he lived a perfect and sinless life, that he died a substitutionary death on the cross in our place, that he was buried, but resurrected from the grave three days later.

When that good news was proclaimed to us, that became the agent of which our born again occurred.

And so to know Christ is to know salvation.

We cannot know salvation apart from Christ.

We can have no hope apart from Christ.

This revelation, this abounding grace, this hope that has been given to us causes jealousy even among the angels.

Isn't that kind of a just weird phrase that Peter puts on the end of there, right?

He's talking about how glorious what we have is.

He's talking about how majestic what we have is.

He's talking about how how uh beautiful what we have is.

And he says that even angels long to gaze.

Even angels long to look.

If they gaze in from the outside with longing to have what we possess, then how much more should we rejoice as a people who have obtained it?

Think about that.

The angels of God look on in longing.

And we sometimes sit here as if what we have obtained doesn't even matter to us.

What more should we rejoice?

As a people who have obtained the very thing even angels are jealous over.

The main idea of this passage of Scripture is this for us this morning.

We are able to rejoice while enduring trials now because of the hope he has given us.

We are able to rejoice while enduring trials now because of the hope he has given us.

Look, no matter what we go through, we have a reason to rejoice.

Not just a reason, we have the means to be able to rejoice.

We are people full of the Spirit of God.

We have been given the blessing and privilege of being a part of God's family.

There is nothing in this earth that we could walk through that would be able to steal that from us because it wasn't our work, it wasn't our merit that obtained it in the first place, but God in his mercy gave it to us when he caused us to be born again.

And so when we focus on the reality, the bigger reality, so that's the problem.

We're so short-sighted, we're so narrow-visioned that we just look at the circumstance of which is in front of us and we lose sight at setting our gaze as to the glory and majesty of God alone, that when we fix our eyes on this, we lose hope.

When we fix our eyes on this, we mourn and mumble.

When we fix our eyes on this, we gripe and complain.

But if we were able to lift our heads and reset our gaze on the glory of Christ and His majesty, then there is nothing in all of this world that we could ever go through without rejoicing, without praise and worship.

Because when we set our eyes on how he's revealed himself to be, as we magnify God, our worship of him will be magnified also.

But we make our problems bigger than God.

So often we fall into this trap, into this pit.

I think there's two ways that we primarily kind of lose sight of this reality, two ways that we fall short in sin in response to what Peter has just laid out for the church here in this passage.

The first way is this for some of us, our immediate trials are greater than the hope of our future salvation.

For some of us, our immediate trials are greater than the hope of our future salvation.

We surrender in the face of trials and suffering because we don't see it worth the reward of our hope.

And this is this is devastating, right?

And here's a real simple way we can see this.

Some of you probably back in the day remember this TV show called The Biggest Loser, right?

And there would be people who would come on in there and they would uh have these weight issues that they were trying to conquer, and they were gonna be put on this strict regimen of eating and exercise.

And at the beginning of the show, what you just start watching is people drop like flies.

They don't actually, not all of them make it all the way through the end.

They're people who quit and give up.

And what do they do?

They see the immediate trial is greater than the future reward.

They can't set their eyes beyond their current circumstance.

And so they drop out one by one of the competition on the show because they fall into the same trap that you and I do, just on a much more smaller, if we're honest, uh much more smaller and simplistic scale.

We're talking about eternity.

They're talking about three months, and they can't even do it.

We struggle with this concept of eternal glory, of eternal salvation, and we see the immediate trial greater than the hope of the future.

We want to be blessed now, right?

We're in immediate gratification culture.

We want gratification now.

We want to be blessed now.

We want to have our best life now.

We, you, and I are just like the younger brother in the prodigal son story.

We'd rather have our stuff than have the father.

That's what that younger brother did.

He went to the father and he said, I really just kind of wish you were dead because what's waiting for me, I want it now.

I'd rather have your stuff than have you.

We want immediate gratification.

We want our inheritance, we want our blessing, we want our reward now.

We won't suffer now for an inheritance later.

If the hope we hold in Jesus is not of ultimate greater value than a life without Jesus, then we'll walk away in the midst of trials.

Hebrews 11, 24 through 26 says this that by faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.

He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.

That's the model that we should be practicing in us, church.

That's the that's the behavior pattern that we should be looking for in us.

Moses at his very grasp, and with that was laid in his lap, was all the treasures of Egypt.

Mean you can't even fathom what those treasures were like.

What kind of what kind of pleasure awaited him?

He would never need anything.

He would be served day and night.

Everything would be at his disposal.

And what did he see?

He looked out beyond his circumstance and saw the greater reward of Christ and counted the reproach of Jesus greater than the blessing of this world.

That's the heart that you and I should have.

But too often we see the immediate trial greater than the hope of the future.

Another way that I think we do this is that others of us are willing to endure trials as long as we can have what we really want at the end of it.

We're willing to endure trials as long as we can have what we really want at the end of it.

And the problem here is that sometimes what you want and what God wants for you are very different things.

You see, we endure suffering often to reach our own defined reward.

We can see this in every aspect of our life, whether it be through the college path that we take, the career path that we take, sometimes the marriages that we choose, sometimes the children that we have.

Sometimes we make these choices and we endure these trials because we are confident in obtaining what we really want in the end, but we often are left so devastated and empty-handed.

And the reality is that we don't realize that we're just settling.

What we really want is so minuscule and pathetic compared to what God wants for us.

Anything we can know, anything we can have, taste, or touch now is yet a fragment of all that will be obtained on the day of our salvation.

Our true reward, though it will include comforts and riches, is rooted in being connected to the Father through Jesus.

Listen, the true reward is to have him, not have his stuff.

It's to have him.

But we labor, we toil, we endure certain trials because what we want, we believe is worth suffering through.

But at the end of it, what we don't realize is that what we need is him.

The fullness of our salvation is not having God's stuff, but it is to fully and wholly have Him.

Too often, us who are like this, we're just like Israel, right?

Think about Israel.

As they were promised the land of Canaan, they were promised all the blessing and fruitfulness that this land would provide to them.

And they they would suffer.

They would suffer through all kinds of trials and situations so that they could obtain this thing.

And what they could never see is that God didn't want to just give you the land of Canaan.

God wanted to give you Himself.

The whole purpose of releasing the Israelites out of the bondage of Egypt is so that he could be their.

God and they would be his people.

But their eyes got set on something different because ultimately they didn't want him, they just wanted his stuff.

And so they were able to endure certain trials, they were able to endure certain sufferings so that they could obtain what they really wanted: blessing, fruitfulness, all kinds of riches and wealth.

And when they had it in their grasp, it left them empty, it left them dead inside, and it left them in judgment and disconnected from God.

Because all the time he's saying, Lift up your heads, set your gaze on something else other than my stuff.

Look at me.

The purpose of the blessing, the purpose of deliverance, the purpose of all of this work of God is so that he can be our God and we can be his people.

Not so that we can have his stuff.

Man, how great is it that we get his stuff?

How great is it that comfort comes, riches comes, no more sickness, no more death, all of these things.

And these are the things that we write the songs about, of the stuff that we won't have to go through anymore.

But rarely do we write songs about the ability to fully obtain the relationship and communion with God Himself.

But the beauty of the gospel for us is this that Jesus endured trials with rejoicing, having hope in his inheritance.

Jesus endured the trials with rejoicing.

Jesus went through all kinds of different suffering, temptations, trials, rejections, heartbrokenness, pain.

He went through it all rejoicing.

He went through it all because he had his eyes set and fixed on the hoped-for future.

Hebrews 12, 2 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.

You see, it's only because of Jesus that we have an inheritance.

It's only because of Jesus that we have a hope.

While the glory of God the Father is the supremacy of the cross, the salvation of our souls mystically builds into that end goal.

His elect, his chosen people filled him with joy.

His bride pushed him to endure.

Jesus set his gaze not on his immediate trials, but on the promise of the glory beyond them.

And his inheritance has now exalted him to the right hand of the Father, where we have been seated with him.

What beneficiaries of his endurance that we are.

What great rejoicing is the object of our hope.

Church, he suffered to gain us.

Can we not suffer to gain him?

And how would we live this out?

How would we try to take this passage of scripture and apply it to our lives in a way that we can walk this truth out in our very everyday lives?

I have three points to make.

Number one is this let our view of God be higher so that our worship of Him might increase.

We say this all the time.

Everyone's a theologian.

The question isn't, are you a theologian?

The question is, are you a good one or are you a bad one?

We have been so blessed, so greatly blessed to have God's word, the very instrument of which he has used to reveal himself to us.

We don't have to live in speculation.

We don't have to live in wonder.

We can know him because he's revealed himself to us.

And the more that we study this Bible, the more that we study his word to seek understanding, to know what is this Bible talking about?

Look, every ounce of this Bible is talking about Jesus and his finished work on our behalf.

And the more and more that we mine those truths out, the more and more that we work to exposite or extract the glories of Christ written in these words, the greater that our worship will increase.

I mean, think about it.

Think about it in just the last few weeks.

As you face certain trials, right?

Many of us have kids who are now home and we have to somehow educate them on the fly.

We've had to set up offices in our home where there wasn't any anymore.

Churches have had to set up these live stream broadcasts from zero, zilch, nada, right?

Nothing.

We've had to work and we've experienced all these different trials and these different situations in our lives.

And has our gaze been fixed on the circumstance in front of us?

Or has our gaze been continually fixed on who Christ is and what he has done for us as revealed in this word?

Because if you've been suffering with anger, if you've been suffering with a short temper, if you've been suffering with frustration, or if if the people in your life and in your family have been inflicted by your short temper lately, it's because the gaze has been fixed on the circumstance, not on the future glory awaiting us.

And our lives have been absent of worship because our circumstance grew bigger rather than our awareness and knowledge of who God is growing bigger.

I know that's been true for me.

I know my wife and my children have felt the blunt end of my aggravation, of me trying to carry the weight through these trials, carry the weight through this situation.

And my response, my life, my language has been so absent of worship.

And I have to preach the gospel to myself.

I don't have to carry the weight of this trial because Christ already carried it in the cross.

And so what I can do is I can rest, I can find comfort, and I can allow my language to be filled with worship rather than frustration because my circumstance should be drastically smaller than my vision of God.

Number two, we would rejoice in God in spite of our circumstance.

We would be people who rejoice in God in spite of our circumstance because look, this will all burn away.

Right?

Let's just imagine that this situation goes full force beyond our wildest dreams and all of earth dies.

It does nothing about who God is.

It does nothing about his promises.

And for us who are his, for us who belong to him, it only expedites our future hope anyway.

So what in the world are we worried about?

What in the world are we scared about?

Now, faith is not an enemy of pragmatism.

I'm not saying to be risky, or I'm not saying to be uneducatedly just going out there in this blind faith of uh that you're some type of uh superhero that can't be harmed by our current trials and situation.

But what I am saying is that why are we fretting more than we're rejoicing?

Why are we worried more than we're worshiping?

It's because our gaze is set here on the circumstance, not on him.

Rejoice in God.

Rejoice in God in spite of our circumstance.

Because the likelihood is that we're gonna get through this.

As a people, as a nation, as a world, more than likely we're gonna get through this.

But the reality is that in the rest of your life, there will be constant trials and different modes and measures that come into your life, and each one is gonna contend and fight for the rejoicing of which goes to God.

And you have to be a person who's dogged down committed to rejoicing in God in spite of any circumstance that you face in this life.

Number three, we should weigh our trials next to his promises.

Weigh our trials next to his promises.

Look, at the end of the day, if we did this rightly, if we looked at all the promises of God that has been revealed to us in Jesus and through his word, oh my gosh, the scale would never be able to come off the ground in light of our trials and the circumstances that we face.

If we weigh God's promises next to our trials, we would never fear, we would never fret, we would never worry, because God has this.

Remember, every aspect of what we're experiencing, every aspect of our soul, our being, our faith, our hope, our future, every single aspect was initiated by God, is sustained by God, and shall be finished by God alone.

Stop giving yourself so much credit.

Because it's not about you, it's about Him.

And then you and I, when we're white knuckling our career, when we're white knuckling our 401k, when we're white knuckling our children, we're white knuckling these things that we have obtained through our work, even if those, even if that work was littered with trials and sufferings and we obtain the things that we really want, we will with empty hands let go when we weigh God's promises next to our child and say, anything you can have is yours because you were the one who gave it to me in the first place.

Even if you want to destroy my very life, I'll glorify you.

I'll worship and rejoice in you.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for the joy and the beauty of the gospel.

And we thank you for the promises of which we have in Christ Jesus.

That because He's alive and risen from the dead, our hope can be alive.

It can be confident and assured because it's being kept for us as an inheritance in heaven, and the faith of which we obtain it is being guarded by your power.

We can breathe a deep sigh of relief.

What comfort, what confidence as your people.

We praise you, glorify you in Jesus' name.