On 2024 Alliance.
The insurance company did a study on the wealthiest generation, and it
may not come as a surprise to you, but they determined that in history,
the wealthiest generation ever to live is the baby boomer generation.
So if that's you this morning, congrats.
You are among the richest ever to live.
You may not feel that way this morning.
Some of you're wondering, uh, who they talked to to get that information.
Uh, hey, if you're a millennial this morning, and I would count
myself in that group, congrats.
You are the worst off generation ever to live, financially speaking.
So, uh, maybe that gives you some comfort.
Millennials, if you're going, why am I not further along than I thought I would be?
Well, the answer is, uh, we had the 2008 financial crisis.
We had COVID happen, um, inflation recently.
Thanks.
Nevermind.
I won't say that.
Um, what are you laughing at?
You don't even know what I was gonna say, do you?
Yeah.
I mean, you think about it and, and you think about the, the, the spread of
wealth throughout the world, over the time of, of history and I don't know, it's,
it's kind of maybe comparing apples to oranges to, to try to figure this out.
Or what's the wealthiest generation?
You'll notice on your your notes it says the, the richest generation, the
sermon's titled The Happiest Generation.
That's my fault.
I changed the title this morning.
I can do that because I'm the senior pastor and I, I wanted to do that.
But it's not a typo on, on Kelly's part, that's my fault.
I had it titled one thing and I changed it, and hopefully you'll
see why by the end of the sermon.
Otherwise, I didn't do my job very well.
Regardless of who the richest generation is, I think all of us in this room need
to understand that this is who we are.
We are or should be the happiest generation.
Spiritually speaking, we could argue that we are the wealthiest
generation that's ever lived.
I I if you think about what we have access to today as Christians, the, the wealth
of resources available literally at our fingertips, the, the apps that we have
on our phones that take up less than a gig, well less than a gig that contained
the full revelation of God's word.
That we have the full revelation of God's word in scripture in the
Bible, that we have all of these riches, all of this wealth, all of
this access that, that is an amazing.
Amazing thing that no generation prior to ours has had this much access to God's
word and helps to understand God's word.
As we enjoy today, the question is, what are we doing with it?
What are we doing with that privilege?
And what I wanna argue this morning is that privilege.
And, and Peter's gonna unpack some of that for us as well.
Uh, that privilege should lead to or result in us being the
happiest people in the world, the happiest people in the world.
And maybe you don't feel that way this morning, but I hope in our text you'll
see why no matter where you're at this morning, there's reason for us to
be the happiest people in the world.
So take your Bibles and open up to First Peter chapter one,
verses eight through nine.
First Peter, chapter one, verses eight through nine.
We're gonna start there.
We're gonna go down through verse 12 together as we work our way all the
way through the text this morning.
But starting in verse eight, we read this.
Peter writes, 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.
Peter says, though you have not seen him, and though you do not now see him, there's
something that Peter's original audience had in common with you and I today, and,
and that is they had never seen Jesus.
Now, Peter had, Peter was one of the original disciples, one of the apostles.
He had been an eye witness of both Jesus during his earthly ministry
and during his resurrection ministry.
But those that Peter was writing to had never seen Jesus in that tracks.
If they were Roman converts, if they had been living in the area of Rome, in
that region and had been, uh, saved at some point later on, then they would've
never encountered the risen Jesus, let alone Jesus during his earthly ministry.
We share something in common with them.
And yet Peter says, though, you do not see him, you love him and you believe him.
We often like to see the things that we believe in.
In fact, a lot of times that we feel like helps us believe
when we can see something.
And yet seeing isn't always necessary for believing.
Case in point, wifi, you can't see wifi.
Some of you think that wifi is, is doing things in our brains that it
shouldn't be doing, and that's fine.
But still you can't see that, right?
You can't see wifi signals.
You also can't see electricity.
You can't see cell phone signals.
You can't see the center of the earth.
But from the time that we were little, we were brought up to
know that it's magna, right?
We, we don't see these things yet.
We believe in them, and we believe in these things because we see their effects.
Wifi, you, you've experienced the effects of wifi because you've been
able to get on the internet, which I'm struggling to do, to be able to control
my slides right now, funnily enough.
Uh, but, but you've seen the effects.
You've, you've been on online or cell phone signals.
You, you know that those are there and you believe in them because
you've sent the text message or you've made a phone call, right?
And so you've experienced the effects.
Electricity, we all believe in electricity because of the, the lights that are on.
And just like that, God gave me connection to my, my phone and
slides to be able to work there.
Thank you Lord.
Um, because you can see the lights on.
And so, you know, electricity exists and you believe in it.
You believe in, in the center of the earth because volcanoes erupt and
magma comes out as lava and explodes.
So seeing isn't always necessary for believing.
But what made Peter's audience believe and what makes us
believe today, is it evidence?
Is it that we've experienced the, the results of who Jesus was during
his earthly ministry and is today.
In part it is, but evidence alone is not enough to save anyone.
What makes us believe is the same thing that made Peter's audience
believe, and that's in context.
If we back up to verse three, the fact that God has caused us to
be born again to a living hope.
We believe even though we don't see Him, we love him.
Even though we don't see him, we rejoice with the joy that's inexpressible and
filled with glory, even though we don't see him, because God has caused us to
be born again to a living hope or to go back to week one, he has regenerated us.
He has foreknown us, and now we have the faith to believe in
Jesus for the forgiveness of sins.
So we believe, even though we don't see him, and we love him, even
though we don't see him, because of God's work on our behalf.
So we believe we love, and also we rejoice knowing that one day we will be with him.
That's what Peter means in verse nine when he says that they have rejoiced with joy.
That's inexpressible obtaining the outcome.
Of your faith, the salvation of your souls, the outcome of their faith was,
uh, the, the, the being with Jesus.
The word outcome there is the Greek word te us, which is the
word that means end purpose result.
When we go to be with Christ, when we go to glory, when we go to heaven, then we
no longer need faith because at that point we will walk by sight and not by by faith.
So the tell us the outcome, the result, the end of our faith is that we will
go and we will get to be with Jesus.
And Peter says that causes us to love him, to believe in him, and to rejoice
with a joy that's inexpressible y'all.
Our salvation is about Jesus.
Our salvation is about being with him.
Our salvation is about the future that he secured for us through
his death and resurrection.
Our salvation is about a life free from the penalty, from the
power and the presence of sin, because we will be with Jesus.
Our salvation is about seeing Jesus face to face.
Our salvation is about hearing well done good and faithful servant from Jesus.
So this Christianity, according to Peter, looks like believing
in Jesus, loving Jesus and rejoicing about being with Jesus.
But what's so hard about that is what he identifies here.
We've never seen him, and so we don't, in some ways know what this is gonna be like.
You know what it is to love your family because you get to see them.
You get to talk with them, you get to, to FaceTime.
If they're not here, you get to call them on a phone.
You get to send them text messages and, and so you have this dynamic back and
forth relationship with your family that stirs your affections for them in such a
way that you know what it is to love them.
You don't struggle with that and you rejoice at the thought of being
with them when they come to visit or when you get to be with them
because you've experienced that.
You know what that is to be with them.
And yet, if we're honest with ourselves, we don't know yet what
it will be like to be with Jesus.
We have some help in the Bible to understand that, but so much of
what the Bible describes about what eternity with Jesus is gonna be like
is so beyond our comprehension, y'all.
I think this is why when a TV show comes out that is about to be or, or that
is supposedly about the life of Jesus, or when we hear about Mel Gibson's
the passion of the Christ, right?
We gravitate towards those things because I think there's an inherent
curiosity within us to know what would it have been like to be with Jesus.
In some ways, even though it's not, our faith can feel like
a, a one way relationship.
Like it's, it's us pursuing him.
Because what we're left with to hear from him is we're left with the word of
God, we're left with the Holy Spirit.
And, and that's not nothing that's far from nothing.
But at the same time, it's different than the relationship that we have with
people that we're around all the time.
So this means that we have to work at this, right?
We have, we have to work to love Jesus, to believe in Jesus and what Peter says here,
to rejoice with joy that's inexpressible and filled with glory about the future
that we're gonna have with Jesus.
I think for Peter's audience, that part was probably a little
bit easier than it is for us.
Remember, they're in exile.
They're not on vacation, they're in exile.
They're, uh, living in a place they didn't plan to live away from
their family, away from what they knew to and what they held dear.
They didn't choose to go.
They were forced out there.
Add to that, there's a rising tide of persecution against believers.
Nero is ascending the throne, and Nero is gonna do awful things
to Christians during his reign.
And it's not hard for them in that context to believe that man, yeah, life with Jesus
is gonna be better than life where I'm at.
We have an uphill battle on that one because of where we live in the time
that we live in, the context that we live, like we talked about in week
one, we face the regular battle to fall into the mindset of being a vacationing
church instead of the exiled church because it's comfortable for us,
because we have things at our disposal.
Because generally speaking, especially when you consider the world at large,
we live in a very, very wealthy area, and most of us in the room
would be on the world standard, considered very, very wealthy.
It's easy for, in that context, our affections for Jesus to wane, for our
desires to be with Jesus, to fade.
It's easy for us even to take Jesus for a test run to say, well, let me
try this whole Christianity thing out, because it really doesn't cost
us anything to be a follower of Jesus.
It can often be hard for us, unlike Peter's original audience, to remember
or to imagine that life with Jesus is gonna be better than anything
this life offers us here and now.
But Jesus should be just as desirable for us as he was for them.
The thought of being with Jesus should inspire us and excite us and cause
us joy just like it did for them.
The thing is, we're gonna have to work at that to work to remember that our
greatest wealth, our greatest source of happiness is not our possessions or the
numbers in our bank accounts or anything else this world offers us, but that
we should be the happiest generation because of what we have in Jesus.
Point number one this week is this work?
Or keep rather your affections stirred for Jesus.
Keep your affections stirred for Jesus.
When I said work, I meant we're gonna have to work to do this, to keep
our affections stirred for Jesus.
If you've been around me, you've heard that phrase, it's not mine
originally, I think I got it from Matt Chandler is the first one that I heard
about, stirring your affections for Jesus, and it's just stuck with me.
And, and if you're around much longer, you're gonna hear it again
and again and again from me because this is the life of being a, a
believer of being a follower of Jesus.
We live in a world that wants to rob our affections from Jesus
that wants to put our affections on anything other than Jesus.
And so for us, our daily task is to stir our affections for Jesus.
What does it look like?
Well, let's like, let's break it down the way that Peter did in this first point.
We need to be loving Jesus, trusting Jesus and rejoicing in being with Jesus.
Let's talk about our love for Jesus.
Peter says it this way, though, you have not seen him.
You love him.
This is the agape love there in the Greek.
Again, we have to work for this.
You don't have to work super hard, I hope to, to love those that
are closest to you in your life.
Again, you're why, because you're with them.
You get to have that, that close, intimate relationship with them, and so you have
a natural love that overflows from that.
But we can't see, feel, hear, or touch Jesus, at least not in the
traditional sense, so, so how do we stir our affections for one like that?
How can I increase my love for Jesus when I don't know what it is to be with him?
I've never experienced that on this side of eternity.
A few thoughts here.
First is this.
If you want to love Jesus, fill your life with things that make you love Jesus.
Fill your life with things that make you love Jesus.
What does that look like?
Well, for me, this place makes me love Jesus.
I, I love being here.
I love being with you.
I love being with, with the saints week in and week out there.
There's something here that is significant, not just temporarily
speaking, but eternally speaking, that we are around each other as brothers and
sisters in Christ that are going to spend forever and ever and ever with one another
in heaven that's unique to this place.
I love being here.
Y'all make me love Jesus more.
I love when we're worshiping and I hear the voices lifted in song praising Jesus.
Something else that makes me love Jesus more is good coffee
in my Bible in the morning that stirs my affections for Jesus.
Good audio books on my drive stirs my affections for Jesus.
But how do I know?
How do I know what makes me love Jesus more?
How can I identify some of these things?
Well, lemme suggest that we look for things that increase our devotion to
him, that increase our worship of him, and that increase our obedience of him.
Loving Jesus.
Looks like my devotion goes up, my worship increases and my obedience increases.
And so that looks like adding things that make me think of him more often.
To be devoted to somebody is to have them at the forefront of your mind.
You can't be devoted to somebody and, and go through out of outta
sight, outta mind with that person.
Can you, we do wedding rings in our culture, right?
And, and one of the reasons we do wedding rings is to tell other
people, Hey, back off, I'm taken.
Right?
But the other reason we do a wedding ring is so that when we look down
at our hand and we see that ring, we're reminded of the person that
we are devoted to in this life.
It's the same thing with an engagement ring.
That's why we do an engagement ring so that the person who has the
engagement ring, the woman can look down at that ring and re be reminded
of the promise that that man has made to say, I'm devoted to you.
Yo.
We need to fill our lives with things that make us think about Jesus.
Like the wedding ring or the engagement ring.
That cause your thoughts to be on him regularly.
It's hard for us to love someone on a consistent basis if
we're not thinking about them.
So things that you can add into your life would be things like scripture, memory,
worship playlists, devotional books.
These are things that can cause you to think about Jesus on a daily basis.
So add the things that make you think of him, but but also remove the things
from your life that he died for.
And also the things that cause you to be entertained by things that he died for.
So, so sin, put sin off in other words.
And then also a, a lot of times y'all, we will put sin off, but then we will
be entertained by watching things that glorify that which Christ died for.
And that's wrong too, whether it's a TV show or we're listening
to music or it's a podcast.
If, if this is.
Building entertainment off something that Christ died for, then we as Christians
should not be entertained by these things that doesn't increase my love for Jesus.
Also, consider how neutral things could also stir your affections for Jesus.
So not only add things into your life that make you think about him again, scripture,
memory, worship, playlists like that.
Remove things that he died for, and then finally consider how even the neutral
things, okay, so this is not celebrating something that he died for, but, but
how does this make me love Jesus more?
And look for those, those ways.
For example, a a ball game.
You go to watch a ball game with your family that can make you
love Jesus more because you get to create memories with your family.
You'd be thankful for that.
Going on a walk outside can make you love Jesus more.
'cause you can look up at the sky and see creation and be in awe of him.
And so love Jesus.
More.
Right?
That's one of the ways that we stir our affections for Christ, even though
we're not with him, we love him.
Maybe a close parallel to something like this is when we carry on a
tradition of someone we love, after they they die, after they pass away.
Maybe you keep making the meal that they was their favorite meal and it causes
you to think about them and remember them fondly when you do that, or you keep
cheering for their favorite sports team 'cause it, it's connected to that person.
Or you keep remembering their birthday because of how important
they were to you in significant.
Or maybe you've got a note saved from them, or maybe you've got a
voicemail still on your phone with their voice on it that you'll go back
to and listen to because it stirs your affections anew for that person.
That's what we need to do with Jesus, even though he is not here, even though
we don't see him with us physically, at least we should stir our love for him.
Not just our love, but also our trust.
So we love him and we believe in him.
If you want to trust Jesus more like love, fill your life with
things that make you trust him more.
And this is one of those areas, as Christians, we think, well, well trust.
I've done that.
I repent it from my sins and I put my trust in Jesus as my savior.
So I'm done with the trust part.
No, we're not.
Trust is dynamic, not static.
And if you don't work out your trust muscle, it will atrophy.
If you don't put things in your life that bolster your faith in Christ,
your faith in Christ will weaken.
Now, not to the point of you abandoning and walking away, no, but to the point
of lacking assurance or confidence to the hurt and and detriment of your
testimony, your witness with other people.
And so fill your life with things that increase your trust in Jesus.
This is a, I think an area where apologetics can be most helpful
for the Christian apologetics is helpful in in our witness.
Sure.
But apologetics is also helpful for us as individuals.
When we read about archeological evidence that confirms something in
the Bible that should fire you up, that should be like, yes, this is awesome.
Praise God.
When you think about the force of gravity that that we're not either crushed under
the weight of our own bodies or floating into outer space because this world is so
fine tuned, this earth is so fine tuned.
Not just the force of gravity, the tilt of the Earth's axis, the
amount of oxygen in our atmosphere, that's just right for life to exist.
When you think about those things that should increase your trust in
Jesus, right, that should fire you up.
That should get you excited.
That should stir your affections for Christ.
So apologetics is key on that.
Something else that's key on that is spending time daily in his Word.
The more you know the word of God, the more you will be prone to
trust him during times of trial.
So spending time in his word.
That's why we do our daily Bible reading program here as the church.
So love him, trust him.
And then third, under this first point here, rejoice.
Rejoice over your future with him.
Rejoice, he says, with joy, that's inexpressible, filled with glory,
obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your soul.
We rejoice even though we're not yet there.
My wife and I are coming up on 19 years of marriage on Tuesday, and
we, uh, got engaged and then I moved to New Braunfels, uh, for about
six months before we got married.
And, and that was a long six months.
Uh, not only 'cause I, I lived in an apartment with a futon with no cushions.
Um, he finds a wife finds a good thing because you get cushions
on your couch afterwards.
Other reasons to, but that's one of them.
But it was long because I wanted to be with her and she was back in California.
And, and so for those six months, I had this joy that I knew was going to be
mine that was sustaining me through those six months as I waited for that time.
Paul says in Philippians chapter four, he says, rejoice always
again, I will say rejoice.
Rejoice always.
Again, I'll say rejoice.
The word that Peter uses here though, for rejoice is actually
a stronger word in the Greek.
It's a word that means to exalt in, in when it's used in in scripture,
it, it is to exalt it in worship.
And so this is used in context of worshiping God.
So here Peter is calling us to rejoice with the joy that's inexpressible about
this future being with Jesus that should cause us to worship God in response.
Now, I I, I know what you may be thinking.
Yes, but Pastor Pier joy is different from happiness.
Joy is not dependent on my, upon my circumstances,
isn't it though?
In other words,
I think we say that to excuse a lack of faith in how good
eternity with Jesus is gonna be.
I think we say that to let ourselves off the hook of not being so monomania
focused on the trial that I'm going through, that I don't zoom out and
remember how good Eternity's gonna be.
We should be.
Randy Alcorn says this in his book, happiness, which I would
commend to you by the way.
We should be the happiest people on earth because we're
going to be with Jesus someday
and that joy should be a sustaining, abiding joy, and I get it.
There's going to be the trial, there's going to be the
value you are going to weep.
The Bible says we need to weep with those who weep.
And yet the Bible also says that we should be sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.
I think about the Protestant reformers during the English reformation who
were burned at the stake and they were singing hymns to the Lord
as they were being burned alive.
Man, that is a joy, that's a tangible joy that is not circumstantial
and yet is still expressed.
There are no eos in Christianity.
God has saved you.
Right?
And, and so yeah, we may be like the kid who's looking forward to
summer vacation and yet we still got final, final exams in front of us.
But man, find the, the summer vacation's coming.
Yeah, we still gotta study.
We still gotta go through the difficulty.
We still have to do the hard part, but we're willing to do that because we
see the end, Christian, whether the end for you is in a year, five years,
10 years, 40 years, 50 years or five days, that end is to be with Jesus.
And that's why today you can rejoice with joy.
That's inexpressible.
My son, Jonathan, I love him, but he struggles to tell a story.
I love it because this is what I think about with joy that's inexpressible.
He'll be so amped up about what he wants to tell us that he false starts like
400 times trying to get this story out.
And what's awesome is when he, it's something that he thinks is funny.
He cracks himself up, he's laughing about it.
And that just makes it harder for him to get the good news out to us.
You know, that's how much the gospel should excite us.
That's how much being with Jesus should excite us.
And, and I think the thing that the,
the fact that we find that so hard to do is just more indicative of the brokenness
and lostness and fallenness of this world that we live in than it is a deficiency
in the joy that we have in Christ.
The joy that we have in, in Jesus is plenty,
but like this point says, we have to, we have to keep our
affections stirred up for that.
We have to work at that.
So I hope this morning you're working to love him, to trust him, and to
rejoice in the future that you have guaranteed with him because of Jesus.
Speaking of that salvation, Peter continues in verses 10 through 12.
He writes this, he says, concerning this salvation, which is that salvation
that you are rejoicing about with the joy that's inexpressible and filled
with glory, concerning this salvation that is to be with Jesus, 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 was in them,
was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories
to come, the subsequent glories.
If we were to pull the room for everybody's favorite Bible verses,
my guess is what we would get is a lot of New Testament verses.
We would hear a lot of John three 16 or Philippians four six, or Ephesians
two, eight and nine, maybe Matthew 28, 19 through 20, we would get a
lot of New Testament verses, maybe some Psalms mixed in there as well.
But generally speaking, we as the church gravitate towards the New Testament.
And that's understandable because the New Testament was
written primarily for the church.
But what Peter's saying is, so is the Old Testament.
In other words, our faith in Jesus, the gospel that we believe in, the
gospel that is realized and applied in the New Testament was foreshadowed and
forecasted, and prophesied about in the Old Testament, the cross is not plan B.
It's not as though God watched the Old Testament unfold with Israel and was
like, Jesus, this is not working out.
We gotta do something about these people.
I know I sent them the prophets.
They, they're killing them.
They're not listening.
So, Jesus, I'm, I'm gonna have to send you.
The cross was not plan B.
From the moment God said, let there be light, the cross was in view.
And we know this because right away, so Genesis three,
we've got the fall of mankind.
Genesis three 16, you've got what's known as the proto un gian in the
Greek, which means the first gospel and Genesis three 16 is, is God, is,
is issuing forth the judgment for sin.
He says this to Satan.
He says, the offspring of the woman, he says, you are going to strike his
heel, but he's going to crush your head.
The offspring of that woman is Jesus and Jesus at the cross.
His heel would be struck by the enemy, but at the cross, Jesus
would crush the head of the enemy.
So we see that the, the cross was never plan B.
It's been from the beginning of time, and that's why Peter says this,
the, the, the, the prophets of old.
They, they wanted to understand the things that you and I now
know so freely and so easily.
Again, reason for us to be so joyful and happy that we understand these things.
Jeremiah, Isaiah, Micah, Zechariah, and the others.
They didn't know what you and I know today.
You know, more sitting here this morning than Moses knew when Moses was alive.
You know, more sitting here this morning than David knew.
You know, more sitting here this morning than Isaiah knew, than Daniel.
Hannah and I, Azariah, Misha, you know, more than all of they,
them put together knew concerning the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Think about Isaiah 53.
Isaiah's writing Isaiah 53.
About how God was gonna lay on him, the iniquities of all that.
It was the, the Lord's good pleasure to crush him.
Think about this.
Isaiah's writing that knowing that he's writing about the Messiah, but having no
clue how this is gonna work itself out.
And what Peter says is that Isaiah was searching and inquiring, longing to know,
to understand who it was and what the time was gonna be that he was writing
about, that the spirit of Christ was indicating in the things that he wrote.
And so Isaiah's writing these things under the inspiration of the spirit, the
authority of God's word, and yet he's writing them wanting desperately to know,
in fact, that word searched when it says he searched these things, or any of the
prophets search these things that word searched it means to intensely desire.
It's used in Hebrews chapter 12, verse 17, when it says that Esau
searched or sought, that he might also receive a blessing from his father.
After Jacob stole the blessing from Esau, Esau, and desperation was desperately
seeking another blessing from his father.
That's the way the prophets felt about understanding the things
that they were writing about.
Things that we now know freely inquiring what person or time the
spirit in Christ and them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of
Christ and the subsequent glories.
How would the Messiah suffer?
Why would he suffer and why can't we understand?
That's what they were asking.
And yet, verse 12 says, it was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves
but us, not themselves but us, in
the things that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good
news to you, the grace, as he says in verse 10, the grace that was to be ours.
And so, Jeremiah, Isaiah, David, Zechariah, Micah, et
cetera, they were serving us.
So that we would better understand the gospel when it was then preached to us,
and now God has caused us to be born again in this time, in this position in history
with the full corpus of God's revealed word in our possessions, taking up less
than a gig on our phones, and we have it all and we have it in our possession.
The question is, what are we doing with it?
What are we doing with it?
A major component, y'all, to our happiness in exile as the exile church is what we
do with the, with the precious riches that we have in the full revealed word of God.
You, you think about if, if Isaiah was here and you said, Isaiah
here, I've got a gift for you.
I want you to read this.
Can you imagine?
He doesn't want to be here now, by the way, he's good.
He's good where he is.
He's got the full revealed word of God right in front of him in Jesus.
He knows now.
But, but can you imagine how precious this would've been in the side of
the eyes of the Old Testament saints?
In fact, the writer of Hebrews in the Hall of Faith says,
by faith, by faith, by faith.
All of these people.
And then the very end of chapter Hebrews chapter 11, he says, and
yet they would not be made perfect.
They would not be brought to completion except for what we now
know, except for our, our arrival here.
Not because of us, but because we have seen the cross realized so that
the object of their faith in the Old Testament is now fully realized
in the person of Jesus Christ.
They were believing something that they couldn't fully comprehend.
We get the whole thing again.
A major component of our happiness as exiles in this world
is what we do with the Bible.
Point number two along those lines this morning is this work to
mine the gold of God's word work to mine the gold of God's word.
You've probably heard by now that they've banned cell phones in
schools here in the state of Texas.
Uh, it's ruining lives left and right.
I have two that are.
Uh, recipients, I guess is, is the one way to put it of that band and,
and wishing that it wasn't that way.
Right.
Thi this was one of those moments though, as my, my teenagers were complaining to
me, where I finally got the chance to be the old man that I was born to be.
I, I finally got the chance to be able to bring out unironically.
You know, back in my day, back in my day, we didn't have it back in my day.
We didn't have fantasy sports back in my day.
We didn't have Spotify back in my day.
We didn't have streaming back in my day.
Yeah.
But I think we could all admit that the way things used to be
isn't always the better way, is it?
And, and I think we should say that about where we find ourselves
today with the access to God's word and the rich resources that
we have to help us understand God's word that are unprecedented.
I, I wouldn't wanna go back to the time of Whitfield Edwards and Spurgeon.
I wouldn't wanna go back to the time of the early church fathers when
things were written down on a scroll.
I, I, I love the fact that we have the Bible so readily available to us.
Can you imagine what Spurgeon Edwards Whitfield, CT stud, Adam Irem, Judson
Hudson Taylor, can you imagine what they could have done with logos, Bible
software at their disposal, or having an iPhone with instant translations of
the Bible ready at their fingertips?
Although perhaps if they had an iPhone, they wouldn't have
been as productive as they were.
I want you to imagine something for a second.
If you woke up tomorrow in a world where you no longer had your Bible
gone, physical copies gone, digital copy's gone, you have no more Bible,
how much of that word, how much of the Bible, how much of God's
word would you have stored up in your heart, in your mind?
To be able to recall it and still read it even though it wouldn't
be in your possession anymore.
How much of this treasure trove do you have within you such that if it
were taken away completely, you'd still be able to quote, unquote read
it even though you don't possess it?
There are stories of, of POWs during World War II who were in prison camps
and they had said, Hey, what, what kept you going when they were released?
And a lot of them said, it was the scripture that I had memorized,
that I kept going over in my mind.
How much would you have stored up?
Now, I want you to, and, and this is where I step on my own
toes as well, so, so don't be too offended here, but compare that.
Compare that to how much of sports statistics you have
sorted up in your mind.
Rosters you have memorized.
Ladies, Taylor Swift lyrics.
If that hurt, just shake it off.
I'm a dad.
I'm allowed to do it.
Political knowledge, right?
Images from TikTok and Instagram.
We, we chase the fool's gold that the world offers us.
Instead of mining the, the, the pure gold of God's word.
We have an amazing treasure trove right in our laps on our phones, at our disposal
that Saints of old would've loved and given anything to have what we have.
And I wonder if they showed up, if we'd be more excited to show them the
latest meme that we found instead of showing them that we have the Bible.
Why don't we go to the Bible more often than we do?
Why don't we choose to pick up the word instead of doom scrolling.
Why are we more enthralled with fantasy sports than we are
with being in the scriptures?
I think if we're honest, we might say, well, we're, we're more entertained
by those things than we are the Bible.
But there are times that we find the Bible boring.
If we're honest, we might say, well, those things, they, they, they satisfy
me more than reading The Bible does.
If we're honest, we might say, well, the, the Bible is difficult,
and I often find it confusing.
It's hard work.
I think those are some reasons why we don't go to the Bible more often
than we do, and this is where we have to acknowledge and admit that
yes, it is hard work, just like mining for gold is hard work, but
the things that are most worth it in the end usually do involve hard work.
John MacArthur was asked about his sermon prep process, and one of the things he
said, one of the, the key components of preparing his sermons was this keeping his
rear end in the seat until it was done.
Some of us need that approach when it comes to the Bible, and I find the Bible
to not be super exciting and entertaining.
Keep your rear end in the seat and push through.
Read the DBR passage for the day.
Discipline yourself to get through.
Pray.
God enliven your word in my heart.
Cause me to crave your word in, in my as I read it.
Or maybe if, if you find the Bible difficult to understand,
confusing, you're not alone in that.
In fact, even Peter said, man, some of the things that Paul
wrote pretty hard to understand,
but once again, let me remind us that we live in a time of unprecedented access
to helps in understanding his word.
Logus Bible software is a great help.
The ESV study Bible is a great help.
The Bible Knowledge commentary is a great help.
The MacArthur single volume commentary on the Bible is a great help.
We have other things to help us mine the gold from God's Word, so we don't
have to say, well, it's just, it's just too hard for me to understand.
There's resources at our disposal to help understand these things.
Maybe another help that would be beneficial for you, if you're
saying, man, I, I want to jump start, jumpstart my time in the word.
I just, maybe you've been in, in one translation for so long that you find it
difficult to come to the Bible afresh.
Change up your translation.
I know that's heretical in some circles, not here.
It's okay.
It depending on your translation,
we preach from the ESV because we find the ESV to be one of the more
faithful versions when it comes to the original languages, and that's
important when it comes to exe, the text exing the scriptures, right?
If you're reading the Bible at home, pick picking up.
Another translation is, is not anathema.
Reading the csb, the Christian Standard Bible, great version of the, the Bible.
It's, it's a little bit more readable than the ESV is picking up that NIV reading.
The NIV more readable than the ESV and the CSB.
You can go one step further.
NLT there's a difference between reading and studying and, and we can have
that conversation at a different time.
But man, reading God's word and, and maybe one of those other translations
is gonna help you see things afresh and different and that may enable you to mine
more of God's gold out of the scriptures.
And if it excites you to be in the Bible by changing up your translation
a little bit that you're reading on a regular basis, praise God.
Get in God's Word.
Let me ask you, church, do you believe that we serve a God
who desires to be known by us?
Do you believe that we serve a God who's revealed himself to us in the scripture?
Do you believe that we serve a God who has given us the Spirit
to understand the word of God?
Then we need to give ourselves over to its study and pursuit.
So here's my challenge for you this week, for the next seven days, I,
I want to challenge you to do this.
When you're normally tempted to pick up your phone to doom scroll, pick
up the Bible instead and read it.
I, I've been doing this the last week in preparation for this, and it has been
convicting how often I'm tempted to just reach over and grab my phone and open up
Twitter and, and scroll through Twitter.
Pick up your phone and, and go to the Bible app instead.
When you would normally be tempted to, to check your fantasy scores,
pick up the Bible app, open it up.
Check your Bible app.
Check the word of God instead, when you'd be tempted to get in the car and,
and turn on talk radio or, or whatever.
Taylor Swift, definitely more than Taylor Swift.
Pick up your Bible instead.
Put on the audio Bible in the card Dwell audio Bible app.
Great resource there.
Worth the investment.
I think it's like 35 bucks for the year.
Well worth it.
Well worth it on that.
When you go to the bathroom, we're getting a little in the kitchen,
a little personal here, I guess, in the bathroom here, right?
Take your Bible with you.
Take your Bible with you at a seminary prophet.
He said, I always keep a Bible on the back of my toilet to be
reminded of the stench of my sin.
That's mine and gold from God's word.
But I want you to do that for the next week.
And here's why.
It, it, it's not that I'm asking you to completely give up all of those
other things, but sometimes just like physically and, and for our
health, we need to, we need to reset.
We've had so much junk in our lives that we need to reset and, and we do a
cleanse or something like that so that then we can get back to a, a healthy
position and then we can begin to add things back in, in, in moderation.
Church, I'm, I'm saying spiritually, let's get a reset.
Let's flood ourselves this next week with the word of God.
And, and I think you're gonna see a payoff.
I think you're gonna find that.
Scripture is more quick to come to your mind during your free time.
I think you're gonna find that it's gonna help you respond to difficult
situations in difficult people.
I think you're gonna find that it's going to just richly bless you, that
you're gonna notice things from these passages that you've never noticed before.
If you'll do this with us for the next week, to work hard to mind the gold of
God's word, because God has given us immeasurable riches in the pages of the
Bible, and it's one of the key components in us being the happiest generation.
Finally, look at the last phrase here in verse 12.
He says, through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit
sent from heaven, and this is it.
Things into which angels long to look things into.
Which angels long to look a, a little angel ology for us here,
angels are not saved, okay?
'cause to be saved implies that you are delivered from something.
When we talk about being saved, we're talking about being delivered from sin.
There are elect angels and there are the non elect angels.
Okay?
So there are angels that are in the presence of God.
There are angels that are in the service of God.
Those are the elect angels.
Uh, they are electing that God, from the moment before he, or from
before time before he created them, he chose them to be the elect.
Angels.
There are other angels that we know as demons, the chief demon being Satan
himself that rebelled against God and fell from heaven before creation.
Those angels have no gospel.
The the fallen angels have no shot at ever being saved.
They're condemned to darkness.
In fact, some of them, those from Genesis six, we believe are committed to chains
of darkness until the very end times.
So Satan and his angels, there's no good news to be preached to them, and, and that
means also for the elect angels in heaven.
They never had anything from which they needed to repent and
trust in Jesus for salvation.
And, and so Peter says, the elect angels who are in heaven with God.
So fascinating is the gospel.
So amazing and incredible is the good news of the gospel.
That the angels who exist in the presence of God long to understand it.
The angels think about that.
Who exist in the eternity, in in the presence of God.
They want to know what the gospel's all about
and what do we do with the gospel?
Oh yeah, the gospel.
It's good news.
Oh yeah, the gospel.
Jesus died for my sins.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
Good.
That's, that's great.
But what's next?
I'm just saying on this third point, as we think about being the happiest generation,
we, we have such a rich treasure in the good news of the gospel.
And it's so easy for us to, to think of about the gospel and just to
think, okay, yeah, that was great, but, but, but, but what's next?
Understanding the good news and how great it truly is.
Great enough to capture the attention of the angels in the presence of
God is another reason for us to be the happiest generation on Earth.
Final point this morning is this, don't treat the good news, like old
news, don't treat the good news.
Like old news
y'all, I went to from Texas.
I, I moved up to, to Kansas City for a few years and in Kansas City
they've got barbecue up there.
It's not as good as Texas barbecue, but it's good.
It's good.
And so I was there for a few years and, and it was all right.
It was passable.
And then from there, I, I moved out to Arizona and there's some Texas
establishments in Arizona and it was okay.
It was, it was all right.
It wasn't Kansas City, it definitely wasn't Texas.
It was okay.
I went to California and I found, I, I barbecue.
Per perdition.
Lemme put it that way.
Barbecue does not exist in California anywhere unless it's
in your backyard on your smoker.
They have this place called Lucille's.
You've, you've probably heard me talk about this before.
Lucille's is the Mormonism of barbecue.
Okay?
Because here's the deal.
Mormons will tell you, oh, we're Christians.
We're Christians.
Meanwhile, they'll lead to anyone that joins them straight to hell.
Lucille says, we're barbecue.
And yet they lead Anyone who attends there straight to barbecue,
perdition, it's not barbecue.
They put brisket on your plate and you're like, who roasted this in the oven?
Where?
Where's the smoke?
This is not seen smoke ever.
They're doing damage to the cows that are, are being killed to put
food like they're dishonoring them.
That's how bad it is.
What's my point in all this other than to say, don't try
to get barbecue in California.
They've got other things that are great.
Don't do barbecue there.
My point in all this is, is I didn't realize what I had here until I went
there and it wasn't there anymore.
It was commonplace here.
It was like, oh yeah, barbecue's great.
We can go, you know, wherever and get good barbecue around here.
Coming back here, not only returning to the promised land, but getting
the sweet manna of Hutchins brisket of tender ribs from tender barbecue.
I know it's lunchtime.
This is cruel, huh?
That was like I realized all over again.
Just how, how good we have it here with the barbecue that we have y'all.
The gospel
is so good, and yet we can become so familiar with it that it loses its impact.
It loses the fact that it's one of the reasons why we should be the
happiest people on earth because of the good news of the gospel.
There's an old worship song and there's a line in it.
The the worship song is called Above All, and, and the line in it that I take
issue with the line, but there's some something there that I do wanna draw out.
The line says this, like a rose trampled on the ground.
He took the fall and thought of you above all
the, the issue I take is this, Jesus Christ has never thought of anyone
above all, other than the Father and His glory and the, the glory of the Godhead.
Okay?
That's the issue I have with the line.
What I appreciate about it is understanding that he did die for you.
He did love you so much.
The Son of God loved you so much that he went to the cross and took your sin
and died in your place, that he bore the full wrath of God on your behalf.
That right now he sits at the right hand of the father interceding for
you, such that the writer of Hebrew is able to say that he, he is able to save
to the uttermost, those who draw near to him because he ever lives, he ever
lives to make intercession for you.
He will never fail to intercede for you before the father, which
is why you are secure in him.
And you will one day be delivered into his presence.
And
we're like, oh yeah, the gospel.
That's, that's great.
Yeah.
It's, it's good.
Yeah.
I'm a, I'm a Christian.
What's next?
And we, we can never get over the gospel.
We can never get over the gospel
in, in the text.
I notice this, it says they were serving not themselves but you.
They were serving you in the things that have now been announced to
you through those who preach the good news, the, the gospel to you.
Things that capture the attention of the angels in heaven.
And we have the gospel.
Jesus died for us.
That's one of the reasons why we can rejoice with joy that's inexpressible
and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of our faith, the salvation of
the souls, because the gospel is true.
There's nothing that can take that away from you this week
because the gospel is true.
You can weep with those who weep and yet rejoice when you zoom out to say, but
we don't mourn as those without hope.
'cause
you know where you're going.
You know that you're going to be with your living hope you know
you're going to be with Jesus.
Listen, y'all, next week we're gonna get into this new series on
how we respond to our living hope.
But, but this is, is a fitting transition as we land here because the, one of the
key ways that we should be responding to our living hope is carrying with
us the joy that is in expressible and filled with glory over the outcome
of our faith, the salvation of our souls, that we get to be with Jesus.
One of the ways that we should be a, a known entity here in this world as
an exiled church is people should look at us and say, what is wrong with you?
Why are you so happy?
Why are you so joyful?
And they should also look at us and say, I want that.
How do I get it?
How are we representing the riches that we have in Christ to the world around
us that's watching us and looking at us?
When your neighbors find out that you're a Christian,
are they thinking to themselves, oh man, that must be why
there is joyful as they are.
To whom much has been given, much will be required.
And church, make no mistake, we have received so much from the Lord.
The riches that we have in the Word of God are abundant, and it's a reason
for us to be the happiest generation as we go from this place this week, I
pray that we would give ourselves over more and afresh and new this week to
plunging ourselves into the word of God.
To say, God, show me more about who you are.
More about who I am and more about the glories of what you've
done about that through Jesus Christ, by grace through faith.
Will you stand with me?
And then we'll pray and be dismissed,
Lord God, what glorious realities that we have entertained this morning as we've
studied your word, as we've looked at what Peter wrote about our living hope,
Lord, the call to be those that rejoice with the joy that's inexpressible and
filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of our faith, the salvation of our souls.
Sometimes it's easy to preach about that on Sunday morning when everybody's
dressed up and looking nice and here at church, and we're thinking
about barbecue after the service.
But that's a different reality to live out when Monday hits, when we go back
to work, when we step back into the reality, when we have to deal again with
the sick family member or the loved one.
And so, God, I pray about your spirit.
You would help us to live out the truths contain in your word that
we've just studied together, not just in concept, but in reality.
Lord, use your people to encourage one another this week to be those
that have this great joy in Christ.
We do want to be a church that does weep with those who weep,
but not as those without hope.
Lord, we always wanna be those that are ready to zoom out and to look
to our future with you, with Jesus.
And we do pray.
Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly for your bride, the church.
But until that time, may we be found faithful, may we be found
joyful, and may we be found effective in our pursuit of Christ.
We pray this all in Jesus' name.
Amen.