Hope Rising

Real life presents the Jack Hibbs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture. Faith is an active word. It's always on the go. It's always on the move. It's always producing. Why? Because of the object of the faith is Jesus Christ Himself and happily Jesus is on the move because Jesus is alive and that's a wonderful truth. You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibbs.com slash podcast. Today, if this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five star ratings. To us, that's like saying amen or yes, then that rating will encourage others to listen. Now open your hearts to what God's word has to say to you. Here is Jack Hibbs. The word worthy is Axios and it means this in the negative sense. Right here, it is in the negative, not worthy. It means that there's nothing in this world that is weighty enough, nothing substantial enough, nothing that you can even detect as it were in the radar, not even being in the same league, somebody would say, not deserving of attention in comparison. What heaven is for us and we're in route to heaven? This cancer, this diabetes, this broken marriage, this injured life, this broken mind is nothing compared to what's going to happen to you in heaven. God has got an awesome plan and Christ is the answer on how to get there. It's not your works, it's not your efforts, it's all on him. As you turn to him and you cry out to him, oh Lord God have mercy on me. He delights in that. He loves it and we need to remember his perspective. He imparts that to us by the Holy Spirit. Don't let these things of this world bring us down. Come on, let's be honest, the things of this world have a tendency to, you can almost hear sometimes the trials of life with a sucking kind of a drain noise. It's like somebody pulled the plug in the tub and everything's going down. If you don't get a perspective from the Bible on what's happening, you can get sucked up into depression, you can get pulled down into darkness. That's why we need to love on one another. This ridiculous world has no authority nor is it qualified to talk about the word love. God is love the Bible says and that is a love that is enduring. It's a yielding love and it's a defensive love. It's offensive love and it's a protective love. God loves us and it's a wonderful thing to see. The worthiness of heaven is something that we can only dream about as it were. He gives us those glimpses by the way of an earth that in some tiny bit still bears resemblance of his goodness. Here we pick it up, part three of our message. Found at the latter end of verse 18 is that time is running out and church, we need to be looking forward to the beginning. I love this part. It says in verse 18 that our sufferings now are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. Man, you want to talk about pregnant truth scripture. It's right here with the glory which shall be revealed in us. The glory talking about heaven. This is a test. This is a quiz. Number one, Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is where? Anybody know? He said in you. Number two, Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is near you or around you. Interesting conversation, right? Jesus also said the kingdom of heaven is coming. Now you think about yourself for a moment. You and I in this world spiritually speaking are suspended between heaven and hell. You're in the place of what Tolkien would say middle earth. And there's two worlds pulling on you. One, pure love. The Puritans used to say the spirit of God is wooing you to God. The other side is pure death. All of the flesh, all of sin, all of the darkness, all of hell is pulling. And you're in the middle. You are the great prize in this grand scheme of what's taking place. Christ died on the cross for your sins, for mine personally. Listen, it wasn't a good man dying on the cross because a good man couldn't take in all of our own drama. You understand that? Well, I believe Jesus was a good man. Do you now? Then that's an insult to God. He wasn't a good man. He was the God man. He was born in Bethlehem just like the prophets foretold. He was God come to earth in human skin. Read Isaiah chapter seven. Read Isaiah chapter nine. And Christ was born into this world. God's Messiah, the second person of the Holy Trinity, Jesus Christ, the eternal God who was at creation of the physical world. And he comes and he takes upon the form of you and I, a human, not angels by the way. Jesus did not die for angels. Isn't that amazing? I love that. He died for us. And he rose again from the dead to guarantee your salvation. All you need to do is to recognize what he says is true. He says that we're sinners. He says that he's the Savior. Repent of your sin that means agree with him. Heck, Homo Lageo is to say the same word about sin that God says about it. And then you want to meternoya. You want to change your mind. So you don't have to get a weird religious about, oh, you know, what do I do? What do I do next? Do I do this? Do I kneel? Do I stand? Do I jump? What do I do? Jesus says this is the work that God would have you to do. Everybody held their breath. What is it? Because you know, our flesh is saying you got to pick up 500 pounds. You got to give a million dollars. You got to walk 35,000 miles, right? Jesus says believe on him whom God has sent. That was the answer. Trust in him. Put your faith in him. Lean upon him whom God has said that's the work of God. But religion will muddy all that up and make it impossible. Don't do that. Now the fact of the matter is for us as believers, we look forward to the beginning. And it's quite awesome because to experience the glory and to experience what we're seeing here as the word revealed, then we've got to embrace a word that we kind of relate to. It's a little bit of a different use of the word here. But you like the book of Revelation. I love it. It's my favorite book. The book of Revelation is the book of apocalyptic or apocalypse, the unveiling. So let's read that again. With the glory which shall be unveiled or revealed or made known in us. The kingdom that is around us is the kingdom that is within us. And if the kingdom to which we're going to, and it's basically this, it's God's governance over our lives. Nobody can control that. I talked to a family after first service. I'm not going to tell you what country they're from because they'll just, it's not helped me to say what country. I'm going to be there soon. So I don't want them to not let me in through customs. But they live in a country where the government controls the sermons. The government controls the church. The government says what it can and cannot do. And the government says where they can and cannot go. And that's quite shocking to hear in the 21st century, isn't it? But it is what it is. No, for the believer, hallelujah, everybody, this world is not the consummation of our faith. This world is not the end of our journey. Our beginning actually really happens when you and I enter into glory. There's a glory that we're going to go to. We talked about that last time together. We're in route. We talked about the word terminus. We're in route to the termination of our journey. And for the believer, the termination of our journey is simply the end of our opportunities as believers to be faithful to God. When that's done, it's home. It's the presence of God. And that is such a joyous thing. The word glories, that word docks up, to the praise of, to the honor of. So think about all the suffering. It's nothing in comparison to the glory that shall be revealed. Why is that? The praise, the honor, to the glory of, to the brightness and the beauty of God's glory and majesty. Be all glory, we would say, to the eternal pleasure and joy, here it is, of being in His presence. Look, that is both true in the future. But to exercise faith today, it's true for us right here right now. How do you live today? You know, we have to be careful that as believers, we don't say, oh, you know, the days to come, you know, when that time comes, when that happens, you know, we long for that moment. Yes, we long for that moment. But as believers, we live this life around us in the here and now, from that position, that is our inheritance. But we represent the kingdom now, which is why the Bible calls us ambassadors for the Lord Jesus Christ, okay? So very, very important. So listen, I want to repeat two verses from a few weeks ago. Titus chapter 2 verse 11, Titus 2 11 says, for the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. Past tense, it's Jesus. Teaching us that denying and godliness and worldly lust, we should live soberly, righteousnessly and godly in this present age. That's impossible without the Holy Spirit controlling your life. Verse 13, one of my favorite verses of the entire Bible. Looking for, you have to circle the word looking because it means expecting, longing, yearning for the blessed hope and the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, who is it? Jesus Christ, verse 14, who gave Himself for us that we might, that He might redeem us. What a God. What a God. Listen, then Judaism, you don't have this. You just have rules and regulations. And Mormonism, Jehovah Witness, Islam, all of its performance. Somebody's wrong. I'll submit to you this argument. The biblical argument is the most humbling. It is the most difficult to accept because it causes you and I to take the backseat and trust God that He'll take care of it all. The other one, oh yeah, yeah, we believe in Jesus, but we're going to add this. You just fall from grace. The Bible says, in the book of Galatians, it says, you're not a real believer, you're not true. You have fallen from grace. The moment you put works out in front. Oh, if I could just get accepted by God. You want to get accepted by God? You've got to be in Christ. Imagine being inserted as it were inside the righteousness of God, because that's exactly what it means. You are hidden by the blood of Jesus. But that is such an awesome supernatural reality that your life on the inside is transformed. You're made new. Colossians 3 verse 4, when Christ who is our life appears, is he your life? Then we also will appear with Him in glory. That's a great verse. When He comes to pick us up, which is whom we're living for, we will be glorified. Lord, now please. Number 2 in our argument is verses 19 to 21, and that is what are we waiting for when hope is increasing? It's true. Hope is increasing. Right now in this world, 21st century, right here right now. This month, this week, today, hope is increasing if you understand the Scriptures. If you're waiting for God to do something next in your life, hope's increasing. If you're waiting for some Scriptures, some event, you're looking to the horizon as it were for God, then God, what's the next move? Hope is increasing. Look, here you are today, not sure if you know this or not, most of you do, but today is Sunday. And Sunday is the first day of the week. What do people don't know that? Monday is the second day of the week. Sunday has always been the first day of the week. The disciples, for example, 2000 years ago, on the first day of the week, they met together. It was Sunday. Even in Judaism, the Sabbath is Saturday, the next new day that starts the week, their Monday, so to speak, is Sunday. Right? You got that? Jews go to work on Sunday. To them, it's like our Monday. Our first day in this nation, and in the Judeo-Christian Western world, for the last 2000 years, the first day of the week was dedicated to God, because everything's dedicated to God. We're following the pattern of the early believers. First day of the week is Sunday. Second day of the week, we give that to the world. Are you hearing me? So what's very, very cool about this is the church worships the first day of the week. Look, I grew up in a land far, far away in a distant galaxy. When I was young, I grew up in a country that you had to do everything on Friday and Saturday, because on Sundays, everything was closed in honor of God. Did you know that? It wasn't until how many, maybe the last 40 years, 50 years. Everything was closed on Sundays in America. Everything. It was the first day of the week. That was our Judeo-Christian founding of our nation. It was always like that. And can you imagine today, if I were to imagine being a congressman in Washington DC, and you say, I like to propose a bill that we shut down everything on Sundays. Everything is shut down. By order of the government, we shut down everything on Sundays, and people can either play basketball, go fishing, hang out with their kids, go to church, not whatever, but we're going to dedicate this day. Can you imagine that? There'd be riots. There'd be riots. Imagine if I just said this, there'd still be riots. We're just going to take a day off as a nation and strengthen our families. Dads are going to play baseball with their kids, and they're going to go to the beach together, fly a kite, just unplug from the world one day away. Can you imagine? People would get upset over that. What are you talking about family? Who needs a family? They'll be... It's like some people get in a fight with an aunt. They just got to argue about everything. But could you imagine? I grew up in a world like that. That's the time where I come from. But I got to tell you, when you're focusing your heart and your life on God, there's a hope that starts to increase in your life. It's just the way that it is. In verse 19, we see this in nature. Nature is waiting. Look at verse 19. It says, for the earnest expectation of the creation, not the evolution, the creation. There's evidence of creation. There's no evidence of evolution. And I love to say that because it upsets people. So let me say it again. There's evidence of creation. There's no evidence of evolution. You need to know that. Do I never heard that before? What about the fossils? You want to talk fossils? We'll have to talk about it some other time. But the fossils actually proves the opposite of what you're thinking about. The fossils scream creation. But that's for another day. But I hope it comes soon. That's a great conversation. Maybe next time. But the creation, the Bible says, is in a state of expectancy. It's eagerly waiting for the revealing of the sons of God. What does that mean? It means that nature itself is under the grip of sins effect. And it's waiting. The word in Greek means this is pretty awesome. It means that it's up on the tips of its toes. And we're supposed to be like that too. To look over it. It means with expectation to be on the tips of your toes to be looking like over a crowd. You're done that. You're like, why can't you see anything? That's how the believer's supposed to be. And I know we have to walk around normal in life. Hey, how you doing? Nice to see you. This is how, hey, God, you're here. But inside we should be going, yeah, probably you're here. Is it any signs of Jesus coming? Is God moving? You know, a truck, huh? Is that it? Are we going up? No, it's just a truck horn. It's okay. You know what I'm saying? It's like, you know, there's this hope spiritually where to be living like that. Not silly, but expected. 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