Dawn Is Coming

Beginning with verse 3, and I'm going to read scripture here, we're going to kind of roll through this. Praise be to God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His great mercy He has given us new birth, into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice. Can I get a rejoice in here this morning?

In all this you greatly rejoice. Though now for a while you may have had to suffer grief and all kinds of trials, these have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith, of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire, may result in praise. Glory and honor when Christ Jesus is revealed. Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. And even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with what?

Inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Concerning the salvation, the prophets who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when He predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. It reveals to them that they are not serving themselves but you, also us today. When they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, and AKA even angels long to look into these things. And with that thought there, wow, let's go to the Lord in prayer.

Father, we just ask that you reveal to us your truth in this scripture, God. That the power of your gospel would just go forth, that eyes would open, that ears would hear, and that people would receive what you have for them. And may somebody here, or many even here today, open their hearts to the truth of your salvation, the very salvation you've sold, the whole hope that we hold onto, the anchor, our faith. In your name, amen. Amen.

So, the title of this series, or this message, this series of messages is Dawn is Coming. And that's Peter's message, that dawn is coming. No matter your hurt, no matter your pain, no matter your grief, no matter what you're going through, dawn is coming. As surely as the sun will rise, the Lord will come. He will come to us.

He is here. No matter what you're going through, the dawn is coming. The sun will rise again in the darkness. The greatest things come right before the dawn, and He's coming. And that's His hope in this message.

I think it's important for us to get a little background before we start this. We're going to be dealing with this for many weeks, actually, because when you do a study of scripture, you want to roll through it. We want to take our time with it. We want to hit each scripture. We want to hit each verse, and we want to get the best out of it.

So, it's important for us to spend some time. I think it's wise for us to spend some time getting some context for 1 Peter. And in the very first verse in the scripture, it says, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ. So, we get a greeting from Peter. This is a letter written by Peter.

And when they saw, when they opened the scroll and they saw Peter's name on it, they were like, wow, this is legit. This is Peter. This is the apostle of apostles. This is the man that walked with Jesus. This is the man that talked with Jesus.

This is the man that was frustrated with Jesus. This is the man that was on board and off board. And he was all those things. And when they opened scrolls, think about junk mail today. How good is junk mail these days?

It looks so legit. It's like the more legit it is, the more it isn't legit, right? It's like you look at these things and, man, that's so real right there. And that's so spam, you know? That's like, let's just throw that out.

I mean, you get things from the Department of the Treasurer that you need to honor this right away and you need to open it. And it's important for us as we look at things and read things to know who they're from, right? And when they opened the scroll, just as we put something at the end sincerely in Christ, Pastor Leon or whatever it might be, you know it's from me, right? So, Peter's writing a letter to the church. And as they opened the scrolls, they put it at the beginning because when they opened the scroll, they wanted to see who it was from.

Is this legit? And when they saw the apostle Peter, that he wrote this letter to them, they're like, we need to pay attention to this. We need to hear this because this is the apostle of apostles. But Peter was a bundle of contradictions, right? I mean, A.

W. Tozer said he's a bundle of contradictions. He was the first to confess Jesus as Lord, but the first to deny him. He had a mother-in-law, but we never see a wife. I mean, what's up with that?

I mean, there's nothing in Scripture about that. Jesus changed his name to Peter, a rock. He went, Simon Barjona, blessed are you, Simon Barjona, meaning Simon, son of Jonah. Blessed are you. And then five minutes later, he was calling him the devil.

He was a bundle of contradictions. He would give his, but at the end of the day, this contradicted, crazy guy who couldn't figure out where he stood at certain times, at the end of the day, worshipped Jesus as God. And he was willing to give his life and everything that he was for the glory of God. He gave his life for the cause. Everything that he had, he gave to God.

His debt. His debt. I'm going to go ahead. So when they opened this letter, they knew who this guy was. And, oh yeah, not even five years from this moment, he would give his life for Jesus.

Five years later, this was written in 62-64 A.D., and in church history, we learned that Peter was martyred. He was martyred about 67 A.D.

So did he give everything? He absolutely did. This guy who contradicted and didn't know, and he wrote this letter. In fact, he was so passionate about not being martyred by the same way that his Lord and Savior was martyred, he begged and pleaded with his torturers to crucify him upside down. And as Peter was being crucified, and the blood ran and raced to his head, I'm sure these scriptures were going through his head.

This idea was going through his head, hold on, people, because dawn is coming. Hold on, people, because there's something greater on the other side. There's something more powerful that we're going to experience. Though you live in trials right now, hold on because dawn, so I'm giving my life. Look, and when people saw Peter, and they said, we've got to listen to this guy, because this guy was a mess.

Yeah, he gave his life for Jesus, and we want what he had. What did he have? He walked full of contradictions, yet worshiped Jesus as God, as Lord. And then it's fair that we look at the audience. So we have, to God's elect, strangers in this world scattered throughout.

Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bethania, five cities. That's the direct audience, and some of you are like, well, so what? Who cares, man? I mean, you know, cities in that particular time. And those are the immediate audience.

That's in Asia Minor. It was kind of in that area, modern-day Turkey. He was speaking to churches in modern-day Turkey. But the larger audience, and God's intention through the Holy Spirit was that the larger audience would be the church. That throughout generations, the church would be listening to these messages, and listening to this book, and this letter to the church.

It would inspire them. It would move them on. It would put a hope in them when they felt like there was no hope. And it would be eventually to all Christians. And he called them scattered strangers.

They were scattered. And in a sense, we all feel scattered. Sometimes we feel scattered. Sometimes we feel alone, right? We feel like we're the only Christian.

We're the only Christian in our world. We're the only Christian in our work environment. We're the only Christian in our neighborhood. We're the only Christian among our spheres of influence. We're the only Christian in our peer groups.

And it feels like we're scattered, but the truth is that you're probably not. There probably is another Christian around the corner. There's probably somebody nearby. But isn't that the point to be scattered? Isn't that the point that we are to go from this place and be scattered into the world, making a difference in the world, making a difference in our worlds?

That we gather, we don't forsake the gathering of the saints together on Sundays or on days of celebration, and we're equipped and we're empowered to go out into the world. But eventually, we can't keep the salt in the salt shaker. The salt has to go out. The salt changes the world, and that's who we are. Salt always makes a difference, right?

And a little bit of salt goes a long way, and you're a little bit of salt. You're a little bit of salt. You're a little bit of salt, and it can't stay in the salt shaker. We are scattered into our worlds. We gather together, and we scatter, and we are scattered to change and affect the world.

And then it says we are strangers in the world. In a certain sense, that might mean we are different. We are certainly different people, that's for sure, than the world. In fact, if we look at it within the context of this scripture, this was during the Roman Empire, and the promotion of that kind of culture that you were loose with your bed and tight with your money. And then the Christian church comes along and talks about, you know, we need to be stingy with our bed and loose with our money, and we should be generous with our money, and we should be married to one person.

It just kind of blew their mind. They're like, wait, what's going on? You mean, I can't, I can't. I mean, it was no surprise to go to somebody's house, have a meal, and after dessert literally have an orgy. I mean, that was the culture in that day.

And then the Christian church comes along and says, hey, and Jesus comes along and says, hey, you're not to do that. You are to be married to one person, and you have a sexual relationship with one person, and that just blew the, oh, wow, I didn't know. I better write this down, because this is just foreign to me. I've never seen this. Look at the book of 2 Corinthians.

I mean, they're like, wow, this is just so different, and the church was just kind of figuring this out for the first time. Wow, this is something that, this is revolutionary stuff. I've never heard this or seen this before, because we are different, because living a Christian life is different. But it also says we are strangers in the sense that we are literally exiles. Other versions say we are exiles.

We are foreigners to this world, that this isn't our home, that we're, at this moment, the moment we became believers, this was no longer our home. We have a home in heaven, and we're literally exiled to this world, but not in a bad way, in a good way, because we're representing. The Scripture tells us we are ambassadors of Jesus Christ, so our job is, we're not home, we're, we're, we're living here in this world, and we're going home, and we're bringing home here, and we're developing a home, and we're growing a home, and, and we are working as ambassadors. What is an ambassador to it? It represents a city, a country, a state, a nation, and we have a heavenly nation that we are representing.

We are ambassadors, and we are, we are bringing people as citizens into the kingdom of God. So we are exiles. We are, it's not the homeland, it's just a place we are right now, but, but right now we live far from home. We are far from home. So we scatter effectively to bring heaven to earth as exiles on this earth.

But while we're here, oh yeah, we're, we're going to experience pain. We're going to experience trials. So why? Both of these things are like super hard to do already. You're telling me, oh, we're going to add on, okay, you're going to have trials.

Jesus said, you're going to have trouble. You know, I didn't come to give you a perfect life, no, I'm going to tell you there's going to be troubles, but I'm going to offer you a way to overcome. And it's going to be hard, but it's going to be really great at the end. It really is. It's going to be super hard, but it's going to be great at the end.

And when it happens, don't think that when something happens to your life that it's, well, what's going on? What did I do? What's God doing? What's going on? Because it's God's plan.

Don't be mad at God. Be mad at yourself. Be mad at sin. Because, see, God's intention is to come into this world and fix the broken world we've already broken. He didn't come here to cause pain and cause shame and cause heartbreak.

He come to fix the things that we have already fallen in. Man, so suffering is a reality, and that's why God went away. Jesus said, I went away. It's going to be hard, but I will send my spirit. And if you hold on, it's going to be really wickedly rad one day.

It's going to be awesome. It's going to be incredible. So, if you were experiencing trials right now, let me just say this. You are perfectly suited for this series. You're perfectly suited for this letter from Peter.

If things are going great, awesome, you know? If your life's going great, awesome. But you will experience trials. They're coming. And you need to know how to be equipped, because trials and troubles will come.

And we can get fuzzy, pretty messages about how good God is, but in God's goodness, there's still trials, and there's still hurt, and people pass away, and deaths happen. And 100% of people pass from this world. We're going to lose friends. We're going to lose loved ones. Things are going to happen to us.

Hardship is coming. And Peter knew this as well as anyone, because around this time, he watched his friend Paul beheaded. And he knew it wasn't going to bode well for him in the future, because what they were preaching was contrary to anything that the government had going on right now. Now, because Caesar was considered God, yet they were preaching and teaching that Jesus was God, and he knew at some point it was going to come to a head, and the church was going to go through persecution. And not even five years later, we see Paul face his own death.

Massive waves of imperial persecution would come to the church through Nero, through Hadrian, through Trajan, through Diocletian, through so many different Caesars. We would have waves of massive persecution to the church. And it's nice to go to Rome and Italy, and go and see the sights, and see the old buildings. And one of my friends says there's actually a coffee shop over near the Colosseum where Christians were martyred, and it was called Nero's Coffee. And you get to go and have a nice cup of coffee, and cross your legs, and enjoy the sights of Italy.

And I'm telling you, I love this idea, you know, of going to Italy. It's one of my, it's on my bucket list to be able to see the life and mission of the apostles, and kind of walk through there and think about that, and the history and stuff like that. But the fact, the real literal fact is that Christians, just simply for believing in Jesus, were martyred in that very stadium, in that very Colosseum. So Peter is saying it's going to get worse before it gets better. But here's the key phrase for the book of Peter.

It's triumph. It's triumph. We can have a life of triumph. Here's what G. Campbell Morgan says.

The great theme of his letter is that the Christian life is a life of triumph. So we can be triumphant in our pains. We can be triumphant, guys. We can live a life full of glory, even through our pains. And we can say, you know what?

Bring it on, Satan. Bring it on all you can. It just makes me stronger. It makes me pure. It makes me greater.

It makes me more like Jesus. So send the trials my way. Sin, this journey is triumph. So what are some things that we triumph in? First of all, it's new life.

We triumph in new life. In new life. Verse 3 kind of talks about that. That when we give our lives to Jesus, something so traumatically, almost violently happens to us, that it only can be compared to childbirth. Like something radically changes inside of us.

This new life. It's like giving birth to a baby. It's like giving birth to a child. And it changes everything. And this is possible only by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

It's tied to this thing, this idea that the Son of God is resurrected. Look what 1 Peter says, praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope. What through that's tied to, that's anchored to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because we believe that Christ rose, therefore it's possible for us to experience this new life inside through resurrection.

This is where our faith is anchored. This is because we have a living Lord and a living hope. It's not a dead hope. It's not a hope in something that doesn't exist. There is a living God that exists and rose from the dead.

And his name is Jesus. And we can anchor our hope. We can anchor new life in that very thing. That's where our hope is. And nothing else in this world.

We can put our hope in anything else. And you will come out empty. But he's our hope in new life. We also get a deepening in our hardship. A deepening in our hardship.

Verse 7 says, These have come so that your faith of greater worth than gold, a faith greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire, may be proven genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. So it's compared to a refining fire. That when we go through trials, when we go through difficulties, that God is refining us. And on the other end, it's purifying. And it's coming through clearer.

And it's more valuable. And these things that come out of our character, and who we are, and how we're walking with Jesus, and who he's making us, it's a refining fire. It's purifying us. It's making us more like him. And you know what's cool about this?

That those trials and tribulations that you're facing right now in your life, they won't go to heaven with you. They'll be gone. That wheelchair will be gone. That chronic disease will be gone. That depression you're feeling that you can't get away from, it's going to be gone one day.

Those trials will be gone, but you know what will be with you forever? Is that thing that when you go through those trials and that refining fire and that character and those pure gold faith things that are put in your life through that refining moment will be carried with you forever. Those are the things that you're going to be able to keep and it's going to be used in eternity. So not only now, but eternity you'll be able to carry those things to heaven with you. And then we have an access to joy.

It talks about having access to joy. And it looks like praise and worship. That's why I wanted you guys to be praising. That's why I wanted you guys to be worshiping. There's praise and worship.

It looks like that and it leads to inexpressible and full of glory. It's a joy unspeakable and full of glory as scripture tells us. I love how the Passion Translation puts it, through believing in Him you are saturated with an ecstatic joy, indescribably sublime, and immersed in glory. Wow. That means there's a power you can tap in on your hardest days.

And it's in the form of praise. So when you feel like cursing, you praise Him. When you feel like, why, God, did you allow this to happen? You praise Him. God, I don't understand why that situation happened.

Why did you bring that to my house? You praise Him. Why did you allow that storm to happen? Why did you allow that? You praise Him anyway, because we wouldn't even begin to understand anyway, and I'm going to praise Him anyway.

Hallelujah. We have a joy that we can tap into, and it's not happiness. It's joy. And this is a really good one. And then He talks about an inheritance, that we can have an inheritance, that we're in His will.

We're in the will. We've been written in the will. Isn't that cool? We've been written into a will. But you know what's different about that will as opposed to a normal will, an earthly will, is that this will isn't triggered by death.

It's triggered by resurrection. This will doesn't divide sons and daughters. You know, wills divide people, you know, divide family members. We need to divide that out. There's fights and stuff, but it doesn't divide sons and daughters.

It creates sons and daughters. It's a will that creates sons and daughters. It builds a family. This will, it doesn't, you know, we separate belongings in a regular will, right? We want belongings, belongings here, and belongings.

But this isn't about belonging. It's about belonging. It's about a Father who says, we belong. And here, I'm putting you in my will, and I'll never take this away from you. And you know, in a regular will, you have to kind of worry about it, towing around, you know, yourself and that person so that you're not written out of the will.

Well, in this will, you aren't ever written out of the will. It doesn't matter what you've done, because He saved you when you were at your lease. He knew your thoughts. He knew the things that you had done in your path, and yet He wrote you in His will. Now, He did that.

He says, you will never be blotted out of my book, of my will. You are written in the will. When we were yet sinners, we were a part of His will. We have an inheritance in Him. We are written in a will.

In our sin, He wrote us in. It's a will that can't be taken away from us, and that should give us joy and hope. I want to, but I don't, I want to leave you with some thoughts, begin to wrap this up and kind of bring this back down. I want to leave you with this thought today. It's great that the sun will rise, which means either the return of Christ, the return of Christ, everything will be made right.

We'll experience joy then, or when we die and go to heaven to be with the Lord, we'll experience Him then. But some of you are like, well, that's good and everything, but geez, you know, I'm going through stuff now. I mean, in 50 years, you know, in 50 years, I'll, you know, I'll just hang on, and one day I'll be with the Lord. I mean, yippee, you know, yay. Hooray.

Thanks, pastor. That really goes a long way for me, but I'm, you know, I'm dealing with things right now. His message wasn't, well, life sucks. It's going to be hard, but, you know, one day when you die, you'll go to heaven, and you'll be all right, you know. And that kind of thinking, that kind of lofty thinking is what has hurt people.

People are hurting and having, have severe things going on in their lives. But I'm not trying to tell you that the message of 1 Peter is that very statement. But here's what I want to say. Dawn is not just a noun. Yes, it's a noun.

Dawn is coming for sure. It's something that we see coming, but it also can be used as a verb. It's an action word that it dawned upon us. It dawned upon me. It woke me up.

I saw something. It's something that dawned upon me. It's not just something that happens in front of you. It's something that happens inside of you. And some of you need that inside of you, that new birth to happen inside of you so that you see.

It's not the dawning of a brand new day. It's dawning of a brand new way of living life in joy and hope and trusting in God. And it comes in the form of, I give you my life and I give you everything. And the way we deal with hardship, it's a new approach to living. It makes us better in our relationships.

It makes us better in our marriages. It makes us better in our finances. It makes us better. And it's a whole new approach to life. It's a whole new way of living.

He said, I came to give you life and life abundantly. He didn't hope to just give you life one day. He wants to give you life now. It's available to you now. So as we end this message, I want to give you just a few things here.

First of all, you've got to name your pain. Name your pain. Name it. Don't be like, oh, it's no big deal. It is.

It is. It hurts. It's painful. You need to tell God, look, God, I'm hurting right now. I'm in pain.

I need you, God. You need to name it. But don't stop there. You need perspective on what you're going through. See, it doesn't stop with examination.

It's examination and then comparison. We don't just look at our trials and examine how bad they are. When we compare it to glory that awaits us, it doesn't. It doesn't seem that bad. What takes a big trial, if a big trial comes our way, and we tend to intensify it, even if it's a small trial, but when we look at the weight of glory, as Paul talks about this temporary, momentary, small afflictions that we are dealing with is nothing compared to the weight of glory that is made in heaven for us, that is created in heaven for us, that is waiting for us, and all of a sudden it doesn't look that big because we have that to look forward to.

It's like a flat tire can ruin your day, but you know you've got paradise waiting for you in Hawaii for two weeks, and it's not such a big deal anymore. Right? I'm heading to Hawaii next week. The tire's no big deal. That's how our life, that's that perspective, it's all about putting things in perspective.

And it becomes small when we compare it to forever. Forever. Secondly, we just need to walk it off. Walk it off. Walk it off.

Sometimes you just need to walk, literally just walk. Just go for a walk. I do that all the time, I just go outside the house, I walk around, I walk around my neighborhood when I'm going through stuff. I just need to walk, I need to talk to God. Secondly, it's metaphorically, I need to walk with Jesus.

I need to walk with Jesus. We need to walk with Jesus. We need to walk beside Him, with Him. Walk with Jesus. Don't walk away from Jesus, walk with Jesus.

And then thirdly, vicariously. You've got to put yourself in other people's shoes. And this is where that statement, prophets and angels, comes in. Prophets and angels. When you go through pain, what do you do?

You begin to complain. We begin to complain. But remember that there were these people that lived before us, and they were called prophets. And they could, they were preaching, and they were teaching, and they were getting signs of the things that we are experiencing now. And the things that they, the things that we deal with now, they just, they were dreaming, and they died for, and they lived for, and they had hopes.

And they, they were trying to touch it, they were trying to describe an elephant, but it only could get parts of that elephant. They, they, they couldn't, they couldn't tell you exactly what it was, but they, they died, they, they died, but, and, and dreamed of having the relationship that you have with Jesus, with, that you have with God today. That was their dream. And having, on the other side of the cross, they could live on the other side of the cross. That they can actually have the Holy Spirit live inside them like He lives inside us.

And that, that they could have the Word, the revelation of God before us that guides us, that strengthens us by the power of the Holy Spirit. That, what you wish you could get rid of, other people would do anything to just get a taste of. Just to get a taste of what you're experiencing now on the side of heaven. And the angels desire to look into these things. The angels.

The angels. That just blows my mind. You got people worshiping angels, but we were created in His image. And now, now the angels, it's not that the angels want the pain and the trials, but they want what's produced from those into eternity. That's their desire.

They made us, God made us like Him. As we walk with Jesus, He fashions us and makes us more like Him. And these are the things that these heavenly beings, when they look at humans, that they desire and they, they, they, they, what? Look at what God has done. If only they could get a taste of what you're able to experience in this world.

Through a relationship, the way we relate to God, the creator, the magnificent Yahweh, holy is the Lord. And He came down, and He, and yet we complain, and we're, you know, and the angels will offer these things. It's our character. It's, it's the gold that God develops as we go through those trials. The, the refining fire that makes us more like Him and makes us better people.

Ultimately, fashioning us into His image. And then we need to act as though. We need to act as though we have a freaking clue what's going on. Because we don't. We don't have a clue.

Act as though, we, we know why God is allowing things to happen. Because we don't, but we, we act as though because we trust in Him. We believe in Him. He has the power over everything. He has authority over all things.

So we act as though today that everything is okay. That I understand why that happened to that country over there. I understand why that earthquake. I understand why that storm. I understand why that person lost that child the way they did.

I, I understand. I don't. And, and, and, and if He told me, I'd praise Him anyway, you know. Hallelujah. Praise God because I would, but what, by the Apostle Paul says, that we look through a mirror dimly.

We can't see things the way. But one day when we're with Him, when we're before Him, we will know and know Him fully. And we will get it then. So right now is your test of faith as you walk through this life that you can't see it all. You don't know what He's doing.

But I can surely trust in Him because I know His promises. And I know what He's up to on the greater scale of things. And I can take the pain, and I can look at it, and I know that He's using it for His good. Because the most beautiful colors don't come at sunrise. They come just before dawn.

Because dawn is coming. But the most beautiful things happen right before sunrise, right? You're in the before dawn, just before the light. You're at first light of the dawn right now. And the most beautiful colors in the sky that stream across the sky, the beautiful, if you go out to the ocean, just go out to the ocean.

I want your homework assignment is to go out to the ocean one morning, stand out on the sand, watch the sun come up, and see the beauty of it. And then you know the glory of the Lord, that He's doing things even in your life right now. Although you can't see it, it's coming. There is a dawn. There is a new day coming.

And we can experience it right now. And then finally, we've got to deal with the slack. If I can get some music here. We've got to deal with the slack, guys. We've got to deal with some slack, what do we do about that?

Hallelujah! Because hope, Hebrews tells us hope is like an anchor. And just as an anchor has rope, we're pulling that rope in. And an anchor, what's that hope attached to? Hope can be attached to anything, guys, but we have a firm hope.

And that hope, that anchor that we throw out, it goes through the veil. The veil that separated us from God, and it connects to Jesus Christ. That's our hope. But we have slack. We have slack we have to work on.

And how do we get closer to heaven? How do we pull that rope in when we're pulling that boat in? When we're pulling that rope in, we're pulling towards our hope and our faith and our trust. And how do we do that? We do that through praise.

We do that through praise. This is the coolest thing. I want you to think of it this way. In the Garden of Eden, God breathed the breath of life into us. This breath that we have in our body, it all started when God breathed it into our very beings.

The living God, the living God lives inside of us, and when we praise, that breath is going to heaven. You know, it's going into heaven. Incense is stirred up in heaven. That very breath. You know what?

We're not in heaven yet fully. Our feet aren't there yet, but our breath can be there. Our breath can call out to Him, and it connects us to heaven, and it pulls in hope. It pulls heaven towards us, and we experience the joy. We experience the hope.

We experience the sublime, sublime and inexpressible joy that is available to us through heaven. Through heaven, it's available to us. So we reel in the slack by, we praise Him. We have belief. We have trust.

We worship. We honor. Because we are exiles, and we are far from home. We were given breath in the garden, and that breath is continuing to go up to heaven and anchors to heaven. And what does that do?

That joy that we feel, it causes us to pivot and say, man, this joy inspires me to want to share it with others. It inspires us to go out and scatter into the world to make a difference, to reach other people, to grow our family, to serve as an ambassador of Jesus Christ. That's what that joy does, that we want to reach the world. We want to reach people because we have this joy. We have this hope that we don't want hidden in a closet.

We want everyone to know because we've experienced heaven through the anchor of hope. I love how Warren Wiersbe says it, a commentator, he says, this hope does not put us in a rocking chair where we complacently await the return of Christ. Instead, it puts us in the marketplace, on the battlefield, and keeps us going when the burdens are heavy and the battles are hard. Hope is not a sedative, it's a shot of adrenaline. That's what hope does.

Hope gives us power, it gives us energy, it gives us adrenaline. Let me leave you with this last story. So this man walks into a thrift shop and finds this piece of parchment paper in a jug, and it's a distressed piece of parchment paper. He pulls it up and he realizes it's a copy of the Declaration of Independence, thought it would be cool. He bought it for like about $2, and he takes it and he hangs it up in his garage.

And for years, for ten years that piece of paper sits there, and he was a handyman. He worked in the garage. And then one day he got engaged. And you know how you've got a clean house because you're getting married, and you've got to make room, and things like that. So they're going through, they're doing the, you know, do we keep this?

Do we keep that? Do we keep this? And then they came across this piece of paper, and she decided you don't need to keep that. Let's get rid of that. Well, he couldn't throw it away, so he took it back and he donated it to a shop.

And a man named Michael Sparks walks into this, he rummages through this bin and he found it. And he saw it and he says, you know what, it's only a few bucks, so you know, I'll take this. It looks really neat. It's kind of cool. I'll take it.

It's a good price. Why not? So he and a friend were looking at it one day and his friend says, you know, this distressed piece of paper, this doesn't look like a copy. This looks like something real. It looks like something legit, something about this.

So he takes it to one of these, you know, antique show type deals and gets it looked at. And he discovers, he discovers that this is one of 200 original copies that John Quincy Adams had commissioned in the year 1820 all across the world. And he ended up selling that piece of paper for $400,000. When this other man found out about that, I wondered what the conversation was with his wife that day. I would like to have been a fly on the room, in the room when that happened.

But what I want to say, the point I'm trying to make about that story is, I don't want my copy to be hidden in a basement. When I appear before Jesus, when I'm before Jesus one day, I don't want my copy, my copy of the Declaration of Independence, my $400,000 treasure, the living God, the God who lives, the God who raised Jesus from the dead that I have. I don't want it hidden in a basement. I want to use it for your glory, Lord. I want to use it.

It's very valuable. And I want to use it to affect the world, to help people know you, to help to change the world together. That's what we do. I want this for you, Lord. I want to give this to you, God.

We are in the will. You are in the will. We have an inheritance in heaven. We want more people to have that inheritance. We got plenty to share because God has something available for everyone who believes in him.

It's available. Pull poor people into the will. Pull people more towards this hope in him. If we would love that you may have ở there or leave them to sleep is not a problem. Your commission in mountains.

Yeah. Hyman has got nothing good at using the cannot be made. With all heads bowed and all eyes closed for just a minute as we invite the Holy Spirit to really touch us today as we close this message, how many of you would be honest that you're going through time right now? It's hard. You're going through some hurt.

You're going through some pain. You're going through some trouble. I'm dealing with a lot right now, Pastor. If that's you, just raise up your hand. Yeah, yeah, I see you.

Your hands are going up. Be honest. Name your pain. Name your pain. Lord, I pray in the name of Jesus over everybody here that have raised their hand and said, I'm going through something, Lord.

I'm going through some hard stuff. That you would give them a clear view of eternity. That you would give them laser clear focus on what you're up to, even though they don't really know for sure. That you would help and show them the hope. And the peace that you have for them, that inscribable joy as we look into the future.

God, transform them, shape them, mold them, help them see. Heads bowed and eyes closed still, continuing that spirit of prayer. Some of you, maybe you haven't made a decision for Jesus. Maybe this is the time to do that. That eternity weighs in the balance right now.

That you can't even have hope because you don't have an anchor to really attach that hope to. Can I tell you? Can I tell you that you are welcomed and you are wanted in God's kingdom? He has a will available for you that he wants to write your name in. He loves you so much that he gave his life for you, even when you, he knows the most darkest places you've been.

You don't hide anything from God, but he doesn't care. He just wants you. If you would pray this with me, if that's you today, in your heart, you said, that's me. That's me, pastor. That's me.

I'm ready to give my life. I'm ready to recommit my life to Christ. I'm ready. I'm ready to be all in. Let me just, let me just pray with you.

If you pray this prayer with me, Father, come into my life. Come into my heart. I receive you as Lord and Savior over my life. Cleanse me of my sin. I believe that you are the Son of God, that you died on the cross.

And my hope is that you rose again, and I believe that today. Change my life. Transform me from the inside out. In your name, in your mighty name, in your powerful name, in the power of the gospel. Amen.