00:01: I hate cliques.
00:01: I hate when there are in-groups and out-groups, when there are folks excluded from the social gathering.
00:12: You've all seen them, right?
00:12: You go into any school setting, you're likely to observe it, whether it's at the lunch tables or selecting teams in gym or group projects or picking somebody for a team project.
00:30: And you see it in workplaces too, most workplaces at least.
00:37: The most memorable experience with clicks that I can recall was late high school at church.
00:45: My junior year of high school, I began attending church and youth group, and it was this really interesting thing where my first night at youth group, I was really welcomed by a few of the students.
00:56: They reached out to me, they talked with me, they visited with me, they let me know they hoped I'd come back again.
01:02: And that really stood out to me.
01:02: In fact, that was the main reason that I came back the next week.
01:09: And yet, even when I became a regular attender, and at that time, that youth group, they met on Wednesdays and Sundays, and I went to both just every single week.
01:19: It took months and months before I was part of the core group of that youth group.
01:26: Because a big chunk of them were a clique, and I wasn't part of their clique.
01:32: And so I experienced both inclusion and exclusion in my first experience of the church.
01:39: There ought not to be cliques in the church.
01:42: There ought not to be cliques in this church.
01:45: Now, it's good to have friends, and you're naturally going to be closer with some than others, and that's fine and expected and not an issue.
01:55: But God wants real unity among his people.
02:00: A unity that comes not because we decide that we're going to have unity.
02:04: A unity that comes because we're following Jesus together.
02:07: A unity that comes because for every one of us, our identity is formed definitively by who Jesus is for us and who we are in Christ.
02:19: Because of our union with Jesus, that shapes everything else about who we are and how we live.
02:24: And so there ought not to be any orphans in the church.
02:29: Every one of us has been adopted by God through faith in Jesus, if we are a believer, and therefore are adopted into the family of God.
02:37: And these are not your fellow church attenders around you.
02:40: These are brothers and sisters in Christ, if they also are Christians.
02:46: And we need to treat each other like that.
02:50: Jesus prayed for the unity of his followers in John 17 as part of his high priestly prayer.
02:55: In John 13, we read the story of Jesus washing his disciples' feet.
03:01: Something so unfathomably inappropriate for an exalted person to do that Peter rebukes him and says, No way are you doing that with me.
03:14: And in that context, Jesus calls his disciples to love one another in like manner.
03:21: He tells his followers, Make me, Jesus, the standard of how you love each other.
03:28: Right after he washes their dirty, stinky feet.
03:33: We got a bunch of our youth group at the district's youth conference this weekend.
03:40: And I was talking with Steve and he was telling me that from the very first night, there was what he calls teen spirit.
03:47: And that's also known as locker room smell.
03:52: All right, it's this.
03:55: The idea of washing the feet of 12 men who've been walking around all day.
04:03: Oh, that's nasty.
04:05: That's teen spirit on steroids.
04:07: And Jesus says, Let the kind of love that I've just shown and will show in going to the cross, let that be your standard for how you love one another.
04:15: And then at the end of verse 35, John 13, 35, he says, By this the world will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.
04:25: The way that we treat each other in love is to be a defining characteristic of Jesus' followers.
04:34: It's to be a key trait.
04:36: This morning we're turning to Romans chapter 15.
04:44: We're going to look at the first seven verses of it.
04:46: And so as you find your way to Romans 15, realize that while we are this morning in Romans 15, we're really in chapter 14.
04:54: Chapter 14 was all about the unity of believers when dealing with differing ideas, differing justified ideas of how to live for the glory of God.
05:07: Chapter 14 was all about Christians, some of whom had more sense of what they could do in their freedom in Christ, some with less.
05:15: Each of them, not in sin, each of them actively living for the glory of God, but having differing ideas of what the best way was for them personally to live that out.
05:25: This was not about either party choosing something that was wrong.
05:31: It was about differing choices that really did honor God and were not sin.
05:38: And that continues into chapter 15.
05:40: And one of the things that we need to remember as we read our Bibles and study our Bibles is that chapter breaks in Bibles, not from God.
05:49: Verse numbers in Bibles, not from God.
05:52: Those are like the study notes in a Bible, if you have a study note Bible, which is that it's a man-made addition put in the same binding to help us in some way.
06:03: The chapter divisions weren't added until 1205 A.D.
06:07: The verse numbers weren't added until about 1551.
06:12: And so somebody along the way made a decision.
06:15: I think we'll break it up into a chunk here and call this chapter 1 or 3 or 5 or whatever it is.
06:19: And we'll break this up and call this a verse and that a verse and so on.
06:24: Chapter 15 is not the right place for this chapter break, almost certainly, because he's still dealing with the same thing.
06:30: So realize, go back pre-Advent to Romans 14 issues as we dig into chapter 15.
06:39: Verses 1 through 7.
06:45: We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves.
06:53: Let each of us please his neighbor for his good to build him up.
07:00: For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.
07:07: For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope.
07:18: May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Jesus Christ, that together you may, with one voice, glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
07:35: Therefore, welcome one another, as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God.
07:41: This is about the unity of God's people, especially in the context where there are not right and wrong answers, where there's more than one legitimate right answer.
07:56: Focus in on verses 1 and 2.
07:58: We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves.
08:03: Let each of us please his neighbor for his good to build him up.
08:06: Now, in context, when he talks about the strong and the weak, he's not talking about muscles.
08:10: He's not talking about knowledge.
08:12: He's talking about faith issues, which is exactly what he's talking about in 14, and he used that language of weak a couple of times in chapter 14 to make this point.
08:22: Some Christians have a stronger or a weaker sense of what they can do as following Jesus and living for his glory.
08:32: And Paul says in verse 1 that we, contextually Christians, who are strong, that is knowing and being comfortable using our legitimate freedom in Christ as we live for the glory of God, we who are strong, we have an obligation or a duty to bear with the failings of the weak.
08:52: Sometimes those who don't have as much of an understanding of what they can do as Christians draw the line in a different place.
09:01: And those who understand that they don't have to be that way are to bear with them as opposed to give up on them.
09:12: Throw in the towel.
09:13: I'm done with you.
09:14: You drive me nuts.
09:14: I can't do this anymore, right?
09:17: No.
09:17: Bear with them.
09:20: Stick with them.
09:21: And an obligation or duty not to please ourselves.
09:27: Which does not mean that if you're strong in the Christian faith, you never get to do anything you like.
09:31: That's not what it's talking about here.
09:33: Rather, in context, it means that we need to make choices that help those who are weaker in the faith rather than making the choices that simply let us do what we want to do.
09:44: Sometimes you need to make the choice that is good for others, not simply the choice that's good for you.
09:52: Let me give you a non-spiritual illustration of this.
09:57: I had to watch Big Hero 6 years ago.
09:59: That's an older movie.
10:01: My kids were younger at the time.
10:02: And Carrie said, Hey, let's watch Big Hero 6 as a family.
10:05: I hear it's really good.
10:07: I'm like, well, I haven't heard about it.
10:07: What is that?
10:08: And I looked at it.
10:09: I'm like, it's a cartoon.
10:10: I'm a grown man.
10:13: I don't want to watch a cartoon.
10:15: And then I said, All right.
10:18: For the kids.
10:21: It was a really good movie.
10:22: I thoroughly enjoyed it.
10:24: Fa la la la la.
10:25: Right?
10:26: It was so much fun.
10:28: And I made the choice I made because it was good for someone else.
10:33: And in the process, it turned out to be good for me too.
10:36: But even if I hadn't liked the movie, it was still the right choice to make that day.
10:42: You, as believers, sometimes are free to make the choice that you prefer.
10:49: And sometimes you need to make the choice that's good for someone else.
10:53: Depends on the context.
10:54: Are you with someone else that needs you to make that other choice?
10:58: Make it.
10:59: With a smile on your face and gladness in your heart.
11:02: Chapter 14, verses 20 and 21.
11:10: This is just a couple verses before our passage.
11:13: Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God.
11:18: Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats.
11:23: It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble.
11:30: Now, using that example in chapter 14, Paul is saying the Christian who wants to enjoy a glass of wine with dinner or a cold beer on a summer afternoon is free to do so.
11:42: But not if he's spending time with other Christians for whom that's going to be an issue.
11:49: The obvious issue today would be maybe somebody that struggles with alcohol addiction or alcohol abuse.
11:56: Back in that context, it largely had to do with religious associations with some of these things.
12:01: And can I do that as a Christian or is that a pagan thing to do?
12:06: But the solution is not for that Christian that wants the glass of wine with dinner or the cold beer on a summer afternoon.
12:14: The solution is not to say, well, I'll just avoid those Christians.
12:18: I'll avoid the ones that don't drink alcohol or who don't think it's a good idea for Christians to drink alcohol.
12:23: You don't avoid them.
12:24: You bear with them.
12:26: You stick with them.
12:27: You maintain the relationship.
12:29: You still have them over for dinner or the backyard barbecue or what have you, and you just don't have alcohol at that gathering because you love your brother or sister in Christ more than you love the alcohol.
12:43: And the solution is not, well, I'm just going to go ahead and do it because it's fine for me to do it, and I can honor Jesus by doing this, and so I'm going to do it.
12:49: And you do it anyway in front of them.
12:50: No, that's not the answer either.
12:54: That would be what verse 2 is talking about, just pleasing yourself.
12:59: Don't do what you want just because it's a legitimate choice.
13:03: Instead, you say, what's good for this other person?
13:06: How can I show hospitality?
13:09: How can I be in relationship?
13:11: How can I be in Christian community in a way that those around me are better off for having spent time with me?
13:19: That's what we're supposed to be doing.
13:24: There cannot be orphans in the church.
13:27: There can't be anybody without friends in this church.
13:32: There can't be anyone without spiritual family in this church.
13:37: No one who is going through life functionally alone as a believer.
13:44: We're not meant for that.
13:46: We're not designed for that.
13:47: And so I want to encourage you to consider the way that you relate to the other people in this church.
13:54: All of us deal in one of two ways.
13:58: We're either in the construction business or the demolition business.
14:02: We're either building up or tearing down.
14:06: And tearing down can be as simple as isolation, not doing anything.
14:09: We are all called to be in the construction business, building one another up, choosing what is good for your fellow believer, doing what may cause them to stumble in their faith is out of bounds.
14:23: That's demolition.
14:24: Excluding them, that's demolition.
14:25: So let's get practical.
14:28: Are you excluding someone?
14:33: Are there people in this church that you're like, avoid them?
14:39: Maybe somebody who dresses differently, different income.
14:44: Maybe somebody that tells terrible dad jokes.
14:46: I don't know what the issue is.
14:48: You figure out what that might be, but if there's somebody that you're like, oh, keep my distance from that person, I'm going to call you to bring that before the Lord and ask him to speak to your heart on that issue.
15:01: I think it might be just as likely that some of you are excluding yourselves.
15:09: You're keeping everyone at a distance and saying, I'm not going to spend my time with fellow Christians.
15:16: I don't want them in my life.
15:17: I don't want them influencing me in a direction that I'm not already wanting to go.
15:20: I don't want that.
15:24: That's not the right choice either.
15:28: God calls us into community.
15:31: In fact, the most severe punishment in the New Testament that God authorizes his people to implement is to remove a Christian from community in the church.
15:42: Don't choose that for yourself.
15:43: I'm calling on every single one of you to have meaningful, ongoing, mutually beneficial relationships with other people in this church family who are not part of your immediate household.
16:02: Maybe you're somebody who's being excluded.
16:05: You're like, I don't have friends here.
16:07: I don't have people that I connect with.
16:09: I'm sorry for that.
16:11: I wish it wasn't that way if that happens to be your case.
16:15: But let me invite you to be part of the solution.
16:20: Don't just wish that somebody else would start inviting you to do something.
16:24: You step out.
16:26: Even if you're an introvert and begin creating relationships with others.
16:31: Invite people to do things with you.
16:33: It could be as simple as, hey, can we pray right now about whatever you're talking about?
16:37: It could be just visiting before or after church.
16:42: You could talk about, hey, I'm going to go do this thing to help somebody.
16:45: Would you like to come with me?
16:47: It could be, hey, let's go get a bite to eat or come on over for a snack or for dinner or what have you.
16:55: Share life together.
16:56: Invite people.
16:57: And you may find that you invite this person or that person and it's not really the right fit for the deeper, closer relationship you're looking for.
17:03: And that's okay.
17:05: Keep going.
17:06: Until you find the right ones that are just the right match for you to go deeper with.
17:15: I think this is so important.
17:17: Now we can look at it from a merely human perspective and say, well, you know, for the church to be healthy and everyone gets along and there's not conflict and there's not division and those are all good and true.
17:26: But the bigger purpose is found at the end of the passage, verses six and seven.
17:30: In these verses, Paul is talking about the glory of God.
17:34: In verse six, Paul talks about the purpose of his prayers on these matters, verse five, being that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
17:47: His goal is that Christians will live together in such unity that God gets the glory.
17:52: Let's be blunt.
17:54: If we don't have greater community, greater closeness and relationship with each other than the non-Christians around us do, we're not glorifying God in this.
18:06: Right?
18:07: He's calling us to something more than what unbelievers have outside the church.
18:12: A greater unity than that.
18:15: And so we need to lean into this in the way that God has called us to.
18:22: We don't fight and divide and exclude over the kinds of things that Romans 14 is talking about.
18:26: I tried to brainstorm what some of those things might be.
18:29: Drinking alcohol or not drinking alcohol.
18:33: Vegetarianism.
18:36: Veganism.
18:37: My brother-in-law and his wife did a stint for a while a few years ago where they decided to eat vegan for an extended time.
18:43: I was like, oh, you poor man.
18:46: God loves you and must have a better plan for your life.
18:50: But just because I know I'm close, right?
18:52: And this is my brother-in-law and we get along real well.
18:55: But there was nothing wrong with that.
18:57: And if anyone here is doing veganism, God bless you.
19:01: No problem.
19:03: You can glorify God doing that.
19:05: Absolutely.
19:06: No doubt about it.
19:08: Don't feel like you're less than anyway.
19:10: That's just me picking on my brother-in-law.
19:11: I'm not picking on you.
19:13: I totally respect you doing that for God's glory.
19:16: How about celebrating Christmas and Easter?
19:18: I've shared before about a guy that couldn't handle that because he thought it was tied to pagan backgrounds.
19:22: Probably nobody in this church struggles with that, but a lot of times there's people in churches like ours that struggle with the idea of anybody celebrating Halloween.
19:31: That's not out of bounds for Christians.
19:34: We don't look down or divide with people over that.
19:37: How about parents making differing educational choices for their children?
19:43: Public school, home school, private school?
19:46: No.
19:47: Not one of those is a God-dishonoring choice.
19:53: I've had a couple of times where Christians have treated me like I hated my children and I was just giving them to the devil for letting them go to public school.
20:03: That's not right.
20:06: Whether you choose any of those options or some option I've never even heard of, we're not going to divide over that kind of thing.
20:12: You can glorify God in any of those choices.
20:14: Paul reiterates the goal of God's glory in verse 7.
20:19: Therefore, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God.
20:27: Welcome is not a thing that you write on a slab of rubber and leave out in front of your front doorstep.
20:32: Welcome is where you engage with the person.
20:34: You say, come on in.
20:36: Hey, I see you standing there.
20:37: Join us in this conversation.
20:39: It's inclusive, proactively.
20:42: And he says, make the standard for you doing this the kind of welcome that Jesus has given you.
20:49: Did Jesus wait for you to be lovely before he loved you?
20:52: Did Jesus wait for you to get your act together before he called you to himself?
20:56: Did Jesus say, you need to make a few changes and then you can be part of my group?
21:02: No.
21:02: Jesus said, I love you.
21:06: Come on in.
21:07: And he received you with open arms without you fixing yourself up at all before that.
21:14: Simply coming to Jesus was all that was required.
21:17: Come on in.
21:19: That's the way that we need to welcome one another.
21:21: We have life groups in this church not because we couldn't get anybody to go to Bible studies.
21:32: We have good attendance when we have Bible studies.
21:34: Not because we couldn't get good attendance at book studies.
21:36: People show up for book studies.
21:38: We did it because we wanted an intentional context for people to do life together, to be in relationship with each other.
21:46: And we wanted it to be an option for newer folks to the church to have an on-ramp into community.
21:54: So let me plead with you that if you are in this church and you regularly attend here, this is your church, and you're not in community with fellow Christians in this church, please consider being part of a life group.
22:09: They're there for that very purpose to welcome you into community.
22:16: And everyone in this church needs friends in this church, people who know them, support them, encourage them, pray for them, and can walk with them through whatever they're going through when life is hard.
22:27: Show of hands, how many of you in the last five years have had to go through something, an extended period of time of some sort that was not easy?
22:38: I'm assuming every hand is up unless you have both arms that are broken, right?
22:43: Whether it was a health issue, a conflict issue, the pandemic, whether it's something with your workplace or your educational situation, all of us go through hard things at times, right?
22:57: Maybe difficulty in marriage, maybe something with parenting or dealing with aging parents or whatever it might be.
23:03: We need to do it and we need to do it together.
23:06: Now how do we do this?
23:08: How do we move in this direction?
23:11: I know believers often struggle when they read their Bible to figure out what does this have to do with me?
23:16: How do I live this out?
23:17: Right?
23:17: And that's understandable to a degree.
23:19: But I also know that the Bible speaks to that more than we sometimes recognize.
23:26: For example, I've read this whole passage, verses one through seven.
23:29: How many of you noticed that there was at least four tips for application already in the passage?
23:35: Let's go back and look at them.
23:36: The first one is found in verse three.
23:40: For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.
23:47: In context here, he is telling us to follow the example of Jesus.
23:54: Right?
23:55: It's connected with verse two.
23:57: He's saying, you don't live to just get what you want.
23:59: You live for the good of others like Jesus did.
24:02: So one of the first applications we can do is say, well, how do I do this?
24:06: Well, how did Jesus do it?
24:07: What did it look like in Jesus's life?
24:11: They invented the dumbest thing.
24:13: I think it came out when I was in high school.
24:15: That's when I first encountered it at least.
24:18: WWJD bracelets.
24:19: You guys familiar with these?
24:21: They were everywhere.
24:23: And then once they sold a lot of those, they came out with frog bracelets.
24:26: Fully rely on God.
24:28: Let's have a new acronym so that we can sell more bracelets.
24:30: Right?
24:32: I'm not a big fan of WWJD bracelets.
24:35: But, there's some truth to it.
24:39: Jesus is our example.
24:41: And while we aren't to follow him precisely, like, hey, he died on a cross.
24:46: That's how I want to go.
24:47: Right?
24:48: He gave himself as a sacrifice for sins.
24:51: I'm going to give myself as a sacrifice for sins.
24:52: Not in that way.
24:54: But as he lived for God, we are to follow his example.
24:57: And so look to Jesus as an example for how you live out your Christian faith.
25:02: I mean, it seems obvious, but there it is, right in the passage.
25:06: Jesus is our example.
25:07: So when you're trying to figure out what would Jesus do, you're on the right track.
25:14: We can look at the cross, ultimately.
25:18: What would Jesus do?
25:18: He would sacrifice himself even unto death for the good of others.
25:22: He would prioritize others above himself, which is what Philippians 2 says, right?
25:28: Consider others more important than yourselves.
25:30: That's just referencing what Jesus did, right?
25:33: Or you can go back to John 13 with the foot washing scene.
25:37: That was the yuckiest job in the household.
25:40: Nobody wanted to do that, right?
25:42: And Jesus said, sign me up.
25:44: I'll do that.
25:45: I'll do that so that you don't have to.
25:46: I'll do that and bless you.
25:49: The stinkiest, nastiest, dirtiest jobs should be the ones that get snatched up first.
25:54: The second thing I find in verses 3 and 4, and it has to do with the Bible.
26:04: I want this church, every believer in this church, to be people of God's word more thoroughly than ever before.
26:12: This year, dig into God's word afresh.
26:15: Notice how Paul talks about the scripture in verses 3 and 4.
26:18: He says, for Christ did not please himself, but, as it is written, the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.
26:26: For, whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope.
26:38: There's a few things I see in there.
26:39: Number one, he cites the Old Testament.
26:42: Right?
26:42: He's quoting from Psalm 69, 9 as a source of instruction for the Christians to whom he's writing.
26:48: That's that, the reproaches part.
26:50: He's pulling that straight out of the Psalms.
26:53: So he's using it and saying, hey, there's lessons in the Bible for us as Christians.
26:58: Secondly, he explains that the Old Testament was written for our instruction, our being Christians.
27:06: You don't get to say, well, I only need the New Testament because I'm a Christian and the Old Testament's hard and it's weird and it's got odd stuff that I don't always understand.
27:13: I'm going to skip that part.
27:14: Paul says, no, that's written for Christians.
27:19: Now, we need to handle it a little bit differently than the New Testament.
27:22: We're recognizing that we're not under the Old Covenant but every part of the Old Testament rightly handled is relevant for Christians.
27:29: There's no part of it that doesn't have a benefit for believers.
27:35: It's written for our instruction.
27:37: That implies something.
27:38: If Jesus wrote something for you, what should you do with it?
27:45: Read it.
27:46: Can you imagine if your loved, your significant other, your husband, your wife, maybe your grandmother or grandfather, granddaughter, grandson, wrote you something with your name on it and you're like, all right, and you just put it on the shelf and you never opened it?
28:04: I would be seriously concerned about you if that's the way you handled stuff from your loved ones.
28:10: It was written to you.
28:11: Read it.
28:13: God's Word is written for you, Christian.
28:14: Read it over and over again.
28:19: And why is this so important?
28:21: So that we have endurance and encouragement.
28:25: We need endurance and encouragement.
28:28: And that comes through the Scriptures.
28:31: There's a kind of hanging in there that says, I'm just going to keep going.
28:36: And there's a kind of encouragement that says, I have a growing sense of optimism that God's at work in this and that this is going to be worth it.
28:45: And it's going to play out right in the end.
28:47: We might call it the first one that just hanging in there and taking the beating, the Rocky Christian life, right?
28:54: You guys remember the Rocky movies?
28:55: Some of you older folks remember these.
28:58: It's Sylvester Stallone playing a boxer from Philly, right?
29:02: And he's not that good.
29:03: Basically, what he does is he gets punched in the head a hundred million times and they can't knock him out.
29:08: Like, that's the whole movie.
29:09: He's just like, hey, punch me until you're tired and then I'll beat you up.
29:13: That's a Rocky movie.
29:15: That's not the Christian life.
29:18: That's not the Christian life.
29:19: The Christian life says, yeah, I'm taking some hits along the way, but I know that he's in control.
29:24: I know that he's good.
29:25: I know that he has purpose and I know how this story ends and so I'm not giving up.
29:30: And you know what?
29:31: For you to do that, you need to know what his promises are.
29:35: You need to understand from his word how he's working.
29:37: You need to know where the story's going.
29:40: Which brings us into the last thing I see here.
29:42: The fourth thing.
29:44: Hope.
29:46: Hope.
29:46: We need hope.
29:47: Right?
29:49: Without hope, you just give up.
29:52: You throw in the towel, you're done.
29:54: You need hope.
29:56: Now, realize what verse four says here.
30:01: For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope.
30:14: You could abridge that and accurately say the scriptures in the Old Testament were written that we might have hope.
30:26: God's word to you is meant to produce hope.
30:32: There's other purposes as well.
30:34: It's meant to provide hope.
30:35: If you read the Bible as just a list of do's and don'ts, oh, you're forfeiting something beautiful.
30:42: It's meant to provide hope.
30:44: Now, that's going to make more sense once we define hope.
30:47: Hope in contemporary language means something like I wish it would be nice if, right?
30:54: I hope I get to take a nap this afternoon.
30:57: Probably not going to happen.
30:58: Right?
30:58: But I could hope for it.
30:59: I could wish for it.
31:00: Right?
31:01: That's not New Testament hope.
31:03: New Testament hope means something like I know this is true.
31:06: I don't have it in hand yet, but it's guaranteed and I'm positive that this is going to happen.
31:12: Right?
31:13: Like, you know the outcome ahead of time.
31:17: My dad was great and horrible in unique ways, just like most people are, right?
31:24: And one of his distinctives was he would never make a promise to do things for or with us kids.
31:32: He would always say, I'll do my best or I think that I can do that or whatever because for him, he didn't want us to bank on something unless he was positive he could follow through.
31:42: And so we very rarely got told, just straight up, I'm going to do this.
31:48: God tells us what he's going to do and his word is more sure than my father's ever was.
31:55: It's more sure than yours ever will be in this life.
31:59: And when he says things like, he who began a good work in you will carry it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus, that's guaranteed.
32:08: Know that, believe it, let that be part of what your hope is, what you're banking on, what you're relying on.
32:15: Look at the way scripture describes what's ahead for us.
32:18: We're going to encounter Jesus face to face.
32:20: Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God according to Matthew chapter 5 in the Beatitudes.
32:25: It says that we're going to be in the very presence of God in the new heavens and the new earth.
32:29: There won't be a son because Jesus, the son of God, will be our light.
32:34: No more tears, no more suffering, no more pain.
32:38: That is our sure hope.
32:39: It's guaranteed.
32:41: There's going to come a day when justice will be exhaustively rendered and there will be no more rebellion.
32:50: There's coming a day when not only will I never sin again, I will never want to sin again.
32:55: I will never encounter a temptation that has appeal for me.
33:01: It'll be done.
33:03: There will be no more sin.
33:05: I won't sin against anyone else.
33:07: No one else will sin against me.
33:08: There won't be conflict anymore.
33:11: That's part of what we're looking ahead to.
33:13: That is our hope.
33:14: And if we can say, I know this is what is ahead, that helps us massively in getting from here to there.
33:21: We can say, I don't know why I'm going through what I'm going through right now.
33:24: I don't know why life needs to be this hard in this situation or that situation, but I know where God's taking me and I know he's going to get us there.
33:34: So if this is what the journey needs to be, okay, I'll bear with it because I know what I can bank on.
33:42: I know what God has promised.
33:43: That's what my hope is.
33:47: I like the way that Romans 4 illustrates this.
33:49: In Romans chapter 4, Paul is talking about Abraham being an example of faith and it says a couple of things that just crack me up every time I read it.
33:59: It says in verse 18 through 21, in hope, he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations as he has been told socially or offspring being.
34:10: So Abraham was told by God, I'm going to make you into a great nation with many descendants and he's hoping for that.
34:15: He's banking on that, right?
34:17: God's going to come through on this promise.
34:19: Verse 19, he did not weaken in his faith as he considered his own body which was as good as dead since he was about 100 years old or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb.
34:32: I love that.
34:33: He's like, God said this and there ain't nothing about my circumstance that makes that make sense, right?
34:39: When scripture calls you as good as dead in your agedness, that's not the most complimentary description, right?
34:48: If you're in a nursing home, that's not what you want the doctor to say about you, right?
34:53: If you're going into a fertility clinic, that's not what you want to hear the doctor say, oh, well, you're as good as dead when it comes to having babies.
35:00: No.
35:02: Sarah's been barren.
35:03: She's not in this verse but 90 and has never had a kid.
35:07: 90-year-olds don't have babies and he says, but his circumstances didn't matter.
35:14: Didn't weaken his faith because he knew what his hope was.
35:16: He knew what God had promised.
35:17: No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he promised.
35:29: Here's the trick.
35:30: Here's the secret from this passage.
35:31: You say, I don't know how this situation is going to be used by God to get me there but I know for sure God's going to take me there because he's promised it.
35:40: And so, when I look at this, I just think, God's going to do something great because that's the only way to get from here to there.
35:47: And it grows our faith.
35:50: Does that make sense?
35:52: We don't have growing faith if we look at our circumstances the way the world does and sees only what our eyes can see.
35:58: Our faith grows if we look at the promises of God, the hope that is sure and set before us.
36:06: That's how we do this.
36:09: If I look around this room, I mean this in a complimentary way but man, we're a ragtag, motley crew bunch of people, aren't we?
36:17: There's all kinds of weirdness represented in this room.
36:20: I love that.
36:22: And we're going to be family together forever.
36:24: We're going to be in the presence of God for eternity together.
36:29: Gene and John are never getting away from me.
36:34: Forever.
36:37: Because we are family in Christ.
36:39: And if I know that, and if you know that, we can face what comes in the meantime together following Jesus' example as a unified family of God.
36:53: Amen?
36:55: Let's pray.
36:58: God, we want to follow you.
37:01: We want to live for you.
37:02: We want to trust that you are going to accomplish all good things that are needful in our lives.
37:14: Give us a growing love for one another.
37:17: Help us to be so heavenly and eternally minded, centered on the hope that is ours in Christ, that we are a world of earthly good to one another.
37:27: We pray this in Jesus' name.
37:29: Amen.