A Living Hope

[0:00] Good morning, One Harbor. How are you guys doing? How's doing well? Yeah. So good to see you, man. I just love being here on a Sunday. I love you guys. This place fills me with so much joy getting to see your faces, spending time with you, and all that. I was really, really just encouraged by that little community moment we just had and the buzz in the room and all that. So I just love that. If you're new, this is a great time to be with us. We're launching into a new series. Those of you who couldn't be with us today, probably listening to this online in our podcast, whatever it may be, later on in the week, wish you could be here with us, but to understand sometimes you could be deployed, sick, training, whatever it may be, look forward to having you back with us here on a Sunday. Like I said, we're starting this new series. We're calling it Hope in Exile. And so what we're doing is we're going through the book of 1 Peter and we're looking at what it means to be a people in exile. We're going to package that in a moment. And so what this letter does, it was written at a time when it wasn't really popular to be a Christian. It was really unpopular. And because of that,

[1:05] Christians suffered quite a bit. They suffered a lot because of their beliefs. It's not because they were jerks, but because of what they believed in. They believed in Jesus as this king. They believed in his coming kingdom. And so because of that, because of what they believed in, the way they lived, it was so countercultural to their cultural moment that a lot of people didn't like it. And that came out in the way they treated them. And so this letter was written to encourage them, encourage them to hold fast to their faith and persevere. And it was meant to be a letter that was spread and shared to churches in a really wide geographic region. It was meant to really have a far reach. And so we get to enjoy 1 Peter today because it's relevant to us today. It teaches us who we are in Christ.

[1:51] And how we're meant to follow him and hold fast to our faith. And again, just like them, we also need to constantly be reminded of this because we are called to live counterculture, right? And that is the great difficulty of following Jesus. Our values are so different to the values of the world we live in. And every generation of Christianity comes up against that. It's not unique to us. And those values that we live out, they often make us targets of ridicule and possibly worse things sometimes. If you think about the life of Jesus, he was condemned. He was persecuted, right? He told his disciples, man, they're going to hate you, but guess what? They hated me first, all right? You're in good company, right? He was condemned by the legalists, the guys who kept all the rules. And he was rejected by the licentious, the guys that hated all the rules. And the legalists and the licentious, man, those things are always calling to us. It's the message of the world. They're calling us, man, come and join our side. And these conflicting messages of worldly wisdom, what they do is they seep their way in and they corrupt and they distort our faith. And what they really do is they often cause gospel amnesia, right? We're always in the danger of forgetting the gospel. We forget who we are, who we belong to, and why we're here. So Peter kicks off this letter by reminding us who we are.

[3:13] I love this. 1 Peter 1.1. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. Notice he doesn't open and say, hey, I'm writing to the church, to the church spread out in these various places. No, he wants us to know something different. You and I are exiles. What does that mean? Well, he's trying to tell us something, guys. Here is not our home. Where we stand, where we live, this isn't ultimately our home.

[3:47] The word for exile here is often translated as sojourner, right? You're probably thinking like, okay, not a really common word we use today. You know, we're not like walking up and saying like, hey, bro, how's your sojourning going, right? It's not something we do. Not a really common word.

[4:05] But sojourner, back then, that was a well-known word. Think of sojourner as someone who has like a temporary workers visa, right? Or you guys in the military, think of a sojourner as someone who's like placed in a place for a period of time, but you know you're going to move on at some point, right? And so Peter is saying, hey, guys, you are exiles. You are in a foreign land. You are living as resident aliens for a protracted period of time. You live there and you work and you become neighbors. You become part of the community. But you have to realize at some point, sojourners, they head home. Sojourners pick up and they leave. They never forget they belong to another nation.

[4:49] They belong to another place. If you want to think about this, it's like pilgrims passing through. That's who we are, Christians. We're just pilgrims passing through. Paul, I mean Peter actually, not Paul, calls out real places where these guys are at, right? Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. They're scattered throughout all these places. He's saying, hey, that is where you live.

[5:17] Christian, you're reading this. You're listening to this in a church somewhere. You're in Bithynia. Bithynia. Great, but you don't belong to Bithynia. What he wants us to understand, here is not home.

[5:30] Here is a far country from where we long to be. Home is heaven, right? Home is heaven. Not like heaven, like angels playing harps on fluffy cloud kind of heaven. Like heaven, this picture we get from the Bible and this revelation from God of what it's like. It's a place where Jesus rules, where God rules and reigns without opposition, without rebellion. Heaven is where there's no more sorrow.

[5:57] Heaven is where there's no more suffering. Heaven is where there's no sin. Heaven is what we long for, what we look forward to. But here's the thing, we can't snap our fingers and get there, right?

[6:08] Man, we would like to, especially when the going gets tough. It's like, sweet. I wish I could get to heaven right now and be there. The reality is, for many of us, we're here for a long time.

[6:19] We're walking out this journey of faith for a long time. We are away from home for a long time. And let's be honest, absence doesn't always make the heart grow fonder.

[6:31] In our waiting, in our longing for home, oftentimes, we start to either fall in love with here more than home, or we start to think that home's forgotten about us. Too often, Christians fall in love with here more than their true home. So before I was a pastor, I had this job that took me to Costa Rica for long periods of time. Took me away from my family for weeks, sometimes months. And while it was cool and Costa Rica was beautiful, it was no match for wanting to be home with my family, right? Man, what would it look like if I loved being in Costa Rica more than being at home with my family? I would have been making up excuses to get there all the time. I would have been too busy while I was down there to keep in touch with my wife and my kids. I would have probably stopped acting like I was married. And I would have probably forgot my responsibilities back home, stopped paying the bills, stopped doing those things. But because I didn't forget about home, I lived differently while I was there. Even though I was in a far country, far from home,

[7:35] I sojourned, as I was sojourning in Costa Rica, if you will, with home, I was doing it with home at the forefront of my mind the whole time. Yeah, I worked hard. And I kept my head down. And I was there. And I didn't flirt. I didn't date. I didn't do any of those things, man, because I love my family. I cared for them. I made sure the bills were paid. I emailed, I called, I texted, we kept in touch, you know. And that's the thing. One of the biggest fights we have to fight as Christians is this drift into loving here more than home. We begin to neglect the things that keep us rooted into remembering why home is better, why we want to be there. You know, if you think about, like, okay, I'm going on a trip to Costa Rica saying bye to Haley and the kids, it would have been weird for me and Haley to say, like, you know what would be best for our relationship in this moment for the next month? Let's just cut each other off totally. No phone calls, no emails, don't send me pictures, don't send me texts. Wouldn't that be great? Wouldn't that make you long for home even more?

[8:34] Well, you would say no, stupid. It wouldn't, right? That wouldn't, no. It would be the opposite, right? We're packing up and we're, like, triple checking. Do I have my phone? Yes. Is the charger for your phone there? Yes. I want to make sure that it's charged and ready to go.

[8:49] So, these are the things that we need to be thinking about, the habits that we can form in our lives that keep our love for home burning strong, right? And these habits, they're not, like, impressive things. They're just the old school things that have just been the things that people do all the time. There's the public worship that we do. It's coming together like this and we come and we build each other up in the faith and we do what we did with getting with each other and talking and seeing how things are going on. Then we worship together. We turn our attention and focus on God and remember who He is and what He's done and we listen to the gospel and let it wash over us again. But then we also do that in private. We do our private worship on a regular basis. It's not just something we get a little hit of on a Sunday and then wait until Sunday comes around again. No, in our private worship on a regular basis, we're coming and we're enjoying God. We're remembering who He is.

[9:40] We're going to His Word. We're getting afresh that revelation. His Word gives us that revelation of who He is. And so going to that, and that's a constant thing. That's the constant touches. That's the constant emails and text messages and keeping in touch with God and keeping in touch with home so that love for home keeps burning and that longing in there keeps just growing and growing and stays strong. Our love for home gets rekindled. Man, I can remember when Haley would email me or text or call or send me a pic of the kids. Man, it was the best because, man, it would be like, oh, man, I miss my kids so much. And just being able to see a glimpse of them was just like, oh, that was so amazing because it reminded me that I hadn't been forgotten by them. And sometimes for some of us, it can feel like God is so distant that He's forgotten about us. But the truth is that He's never going to do that.

[10:40] While we live far from home, we are never forgotten. In the verse 2, it says, okay, you guys are exiles spread out through all this area. You know what, though? It's according to the foreknowledge of God, your Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and for the sprinkling with His blood. We're going to unpackage that a little bit. This sojourning, this time here on earth that we're doing from home, it's not because God drove off to heaven and forgot about us and left us behind accidentally, right? Parents in the room, let's be honest, has that happened with your kids before? I know it's happened with ours, right? No, God wasn't like, oh, shoot, I'm in heaven. I forgot.

[11:26] All these wonderful people. No, it's not like that at all. This is all according to plan. This is all according to His plan. It says, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, God foreknew that this is what is going to happen. Check this out. Acts 17.26 picks up on this. He may from one man, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth. Okay, truth bomb. Having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, God has determined the times and the places that we are going to live. You know why you are sitting in your seat right now or listening to this from wherever you are right now? Because God has determined the time you were meant to be born, this particular time in history and this place. That's a hard thing to wrap your mind around, but it's true because you know what? You think about it. This gives us this huge comfort in knowing that God has planned for our life to be this way. We don't sit here and be like, oh, we're sojourning. Oh my gosh, we're victims. This is horrible. We're suffering. Where's God in all this? He's forgotten about it. Now this is according to plan. He's saying to us, you sojourners dispersed throughout Havelock and Newbern and Harlow and Newport and on Cherry Point. You live here at this time of history for a reason. That means you're not rocking around like you're a product of some cosmic accident. You're more than a mass of particles running around driven by chemical reactions.

[13:04] You are here because of God's great purpose for you. And he's not this impersonal, distant God. What does it say? The foreknowledge of God, the Father. Man, let that comfort you. He is God, our Father. He's righteous and he's caring and he's loving. He's a dad with a plan. He's not up in heaven running around like the little Dutch boy trying to plug all the holes of everything that seems to be messing up in our lives. Man, he didn't give us a plan and stand at a distance and saying, all right, there's the plan.

[13:46] Get to it, guys. By the way, good luck. You're on your own. No. His plan is worked out in his presence. While we're living far from home, we live in God's presence, right? What does it say? According to the foreknowledge of God, the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit. In the sanctification of the Spirit, the sojourning happens with God, not apart from God. Actually, that idea is we're surrounded by God, filled by him. And so what we gather from this little phrase is that the whole realm of our Christian existence is lived with or in the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit isn't like this impersonal cosmic force that's just out there. No, he's a person. He's part of the God. The Christian faith says we serve one God. He's one God, three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

[14:43] We have the Holy Spirit with us, and he isn't with us like some silent partner. He is busy at work in our lives. What does he do? Well, it says he's here to sanctify us, right? We're in the sanctification of the Spirit. To sanctify is to be freed from sin, is to be free from sin, is to be purified from sin. Hey, that sounds like a good thing. I want some of that. Thank you, Holy Spirit.

[15:08] This is what the Holy Spirit is doing in us all the time, right? And what does that look like? What does it look like to be freed from sin and purified from sin for the Holy Spirit to be at work within us?

[15:20] It says, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for the sprinkling with his blood. The Holy Spirit is setting us more and more free from sin, which means we are becoming more obedient to Jesus, right? We have this little like kid's catechism, right? And it talks about the two parts of sanctification, dying to sin and living to righteousness. We get that from Galatians 2.

[15:47] It's a powerful picture of what God, the Holy Spirit, is doing in us. He's making us more obedient to Jesus. And the second thing that he's doing is that what he's doing is he's applying this redemption that Jesus has purchased for us. He's cleansing us from our sin when we do sin, right? The sprinkling of his blood, what it talks about, because God isn't up there saying, okay, you have to obey Jesus and you have to do it perfectly. And if you don't do it perfectly and you mess up, sorry, bud, you're out. That's not what is happening here. God knows. If you read the first chapter of 1 John, it talks about, man, no, we don't go on sinning, but at the same time, we don't pretend that we don't sin, right? And you know what happens when we do sin? It says, man, if you confess your sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. And the sprinkling of his blood lived out in the sanctification of the Spirit.

[16:43] While we're here on earth, man, it's this amazing grace that we get a God. He doesn't say like, hey, I covered your sin one time. Now you have to live perfectly. He's like, hey, every time you mess up, as you're trying to, and you're working out your obedience to Jesus Christ, man, you mess up, you can come. My blood sprinkles you clean. It washes you clean.

[16:59] You get a fresh start. You get renewed in me. And this is an amazing thing. We don't cower away from God in fear. We don't walk around in shame and guilt because we messed up. And we push in. We say, man, I love this. I'm just a sojourner, man, in the sanctification of the Spirit, walking out my obedience to Jesus. And Lord, thank you. And when I do mess up, when I get it wrong, when I kick the dog and I get angry, whatever it may be, we yell at my spouse, I can go and say, man, Lord, thank you.

[17:32] Please wash me clean of that sin. And he does. We don't have to carry it anymore. And that gives us the confidence that we're not forgotten and forsaken. God, the Holy Spirit is at work transforming us from the inside out. Jesus said, you can know a tree by its fruit, right? A good tree, he said, produces good fruit. A bad tree produces bad fruit. And fruit, what is fruit? Fruit is just simply, just a manifestation of inward life, right? It's an outward sign of inward life, right? If a tree ain't producing leaves when it's supposed to be producing leaf, it's not producing fruit when it's supposed to be producing fruit, you have a inward life problem. Life is not flowing to the branches.

[18:12] It's not getting to where it needs to go. But when a tree is producing fruit, you know that there's life. You know that there's inward life happening. And we don't really like that idea of how transformation takes place in our life and sanctification works out in our life because that really takes it out of our control. A disciplined person, man, hey, I'm disciplined. I can manage my behavior. I can change my behavior. Even if I don't like it, I'll do it. But man, you know what? It takes a change of heart.

[18:41] It takes a whole new heart to begin to love being obedient to Jesus and to even want to repent of sin. And that's what the Holy Spirit does. That's how he helps us in our life. That's the evidence that he is with us, that we want to do those things. They're proofs. And when we see God's faithfulness in this way outworking today in our very lives, man, it gives us a hope for his promises tomorrow. Check this out. God's presence today, and we see it and experience it, is a guarantee we will possess his promises tomorrow. We may live far from home, but we live with a living hope.

[19:16] Verse 3, You and I, Christians, you and I are being born into a life filled with broken promises and hopes that have filled us. If you're here and you're not a Christian, you know this to be true. We're born into this life, and we come, and we have all these hopes. We have all these aspirations. But the longer you live life, the more you see, man, those hopes going unfulfilled. You experience promises broken time and again. And those things we want to put our hope in, those promises we hope come through, they fail us over and over and over again. What this is saying? Listen to this, by the mercies of God, not because of what we've done, by the mercies of God, we are reborn into his promises and his hope. Not only did Jesus die on the cross to free us from sin, he rose from the dead to set us free from death. And through faith in his death and resurrection, we're born again into this living hope. You know, too often, we can emphasize the power of the cross, but neglect the power of the resurrection. And it's good for us to remember both of those things, the cross and those of the resurrection, they are huge and massive, and we hold them together as our salvation. The cross helps us today. It reminds us that our sins are forgiven and washed clean with Jesus's sacrificial death. We stand justified before God, just before God. But the resurrection says that, you know what? We've died to our old self. We are no longer who we once were. We're raised with Christ in his resurrection power to walk in newness of life. We walk in resurrection power, and we live this out. We're born again. Ephesians says the Holy Spirit comes and he seals us through God's power to an inheritance. Verses 13 and 14 in Ephesians 1, in him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.

[21:54] You think about that word sealed. In that moment, in that time, what would happen? A king would have this unique seal. And then when he would enact a decree that was meant to be kept into law, if he put his seal on it, it was irrevocable. It could not be changed, even by the king. And we are marked with the king's seal. This promised Holy Spirit, there is an irrevocable truth that you and I have in us when we recognize and see that we have the Spirit, we're saved by him, and that seal is a guarantee. That is irrevocable. That is unchangeable. We know it to be true. And it's a guarantee of our inheritance that we are going to acquire possession of one day to the praise of his glory. The Holy Spirit is that deposit. The cross freed us from sin's power. One day we will be freed from its very presence at the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The inheritance, this inheritance of ours is a resurrection into eternal life.

[22:54] That's our living hope. That's what we're looking forward to. We're living in that. We're experiencing a foretaste of it now, a little bit of it now, but man, it's going to be in the fullness one day. It says we will live forever and ever. It's imperishable. This inheritance is imperishable.

[23:10] This living hope is imperishable. It's undefiled. It's going to be the experience of life absent of sin, right? It's unfading. It is life lived in perfect fullness and vigor and passion and joy. Man, this is what it looks like to be in heaven in the unmediated presence of God.

[23:30] We're going to see him for all who he is. We're going to worship him for all who he is. This is our living hope. That's what we're saved into by the grace of God.

[23:42] And this living hope is guarded by God. It's guarded by his power through faith. We don't earn it in our own strength. We don't keep it in our own strength. We don't tell God at any point, thank you very much. We got it from here. I'll see you in heaven, right? We don't do that. A fool would do that. Why? Because if we're honest with ourselves, we would fail. Let's be honest. We would fail. You and I live far from home. We live in a place that isn't friendly to our faith.

[24:11] It's assaulting our faith. It's coming at our faith. It wants to corrupt and distort and taint our faith all the time. We need God's power guarding our faith in this living hope because our living hope fuels our faithfulness. In verse 6 of 1 Peter, it says, In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. These four verses, man, so awesome. They start with the phrase, in this you rejoice. And then they close with the phrase, you rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. And man, you would think if you hadn't read that verse, man, in this you rejoice with a joy that is inexpressible, full of glory. Man, I would love to know what comes in between that.

[25:22] I bet you I can figure it out. It's probably this waterfall of blessings, right? It's going to talk about new cars. It's going to talk about bigger houses. It's going to talk about more money. It's going to talk about long life. It's going to talk about our kids listening to us. It's going to talk about our spouse thinking we're the most amazing thing in the world, right? And if you are a Miss America contestant, it's going to talk about world peace, right? So no, no, that's not what is sandwiched in between those two phrases. It says, for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials. It's like, whoa, Peter, wet blanket. What in the world is wrong with you, man? How can you rejoice if we're being grieved by various trials? How does joy and grief, how are they able to coexist?

[26:11] And when he gets at it, he's saying, man, guys, it all depends on your joy source. Where's your joy source? If it's health and wealth and prosperity, then you know what? We're not going to find joy in the trial. See, people, possessions, power is where you find joy if you love here more than home. Okay? People, possessions, power is where you're going to find joy if you love here more than home. But Peter tells us, man, the unbeatable and shakable, unchanging joy source is Jesus.

[26:45] That's it. It's Jesus. Verse seven, so that the tested genuineness of your faith more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire. Man, this is better than gold. It may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. When Jesus is our greatest love, we will see the greater purpose within the grieving trial. Trial tests the genuineness of our faith, right? And this great picture, I've used it before, but it's so good, I'll just use it again. Pressure can produce cracks, you know it, but it can also produce diamonds. So pressure comes on us, the trial comes on us, and with faith, we persevere. With faith, we trust in God. With faith, we receive the trial. We don't try to run away from it and refuse it, right? We also don't try to chase after trials so that we can seem super spiritual, but when they come, we just say, okay, God, what are you doing in this trial? How are you using this trial? I'm feeling the pressure of the trial. You know what? God uses those moments, those pressure moments to produce treasures of righteousness and holiness in us.

[28:11] He makes us more Christ-like. That's what we want. Christian faith, as it grows, Christian faith, as we mature in it, man, it falls more in love with Jesus. It begins to believe and trust in him more and more, even though we don't see him. And this faith and our faithfulness is fueled by this living hope that one day we will see him. And this keeps us from giving up. Our living hope fuels our faith when it's hard to believe. Our living hope fuels our faithfulness when it's hard to obey. And our living hope not only keeps us from giving up, it keeps us from shutting up. Our living hope comes through hearing the gospel. And it's important that we remember this. Verse 10, it says, concerning this salvation, the prophets, servants of God, who spoke the words of God, the prophets who prophesied about the grace, the unmerited favor of God that was to be yours, searched, inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of

[29:21] Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves, but you. They didn't speak for their own glory. They didn't speak for their own advancement. They spoke because there was something more important. They were serving us. And so we get to also serve in return. And the things that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Things into which angels long to look. Man, God was speaking the gospel through his prophets long before Jesus ever came. The gospel isn't something relegated to the New Testament part of the Bible. The gospel is everywhere. It's from Genesis to Revelation. And all of it proclaims the same thing. The living hope in Jesus Christ. Our living hope in Jesus. And guys, God is proclaiming the same message through his church today. The church is God's prophetic people proclaiming who he is. We aren't meant to keep this living hope to ourselves. We share it with our friends and our neighbors and our co-workers, fellow students, family members, everyone we come into contact with.

[30:36] We want to share it with. Spurgeon said something like this. He's like, man, I don't think you could taste the sweetness of the honey of the gospel and be content to keep it to yourself.

[30:49] Here's the gospel. God sent his only son, Jesus Christ, to suffer and die in our place for the forgiveness of our sins. He raised Jesus from the dead in power, conquering death. Then Jesus ascended into heaven where now he is ruling and reigning until one day he will return for the final judgment of the living and the dead. If I could have the band come up. If you're here and not a Christian, do you have this living hope? Do you believe in this good news? That Jesus, he died and he rose again for you and that he is coming again one day. Do you have that living hope? I want to invite you to put your faith in that living hope. That's all it takes. You don't have to prove yourself anyway. It simply says believe, trust in Jesus, right? You believe that he died for your sins. You believe that he rose again.

[31:42] You will be saved. If you're here and a Christian, I want to ask us this. I want to remind us, hey, here is not our home. Do we love here more than home? Are we falling in love with this place a little bit too much? Or perhaps you're here and you feel like home has forgotten you. Maybe you're going through it right now, right? Going through a tough time and you're thinking, man, God, where are you in my trial? I feel abandoned. I feel forsaken. Maybe you're not, you don't see the greater purpose of your trial and you just need more faith and more hope. Man, God's grace for you is pressing and ask him, Lord, help me. Man, I'm struggling in my family, struggling with my living hope at this moment.

[32:29] Come and help me. And man, you know what? He loves you so much. He's, I believe he is going to meet you right where you're at. Just cry out to him. And you can also get other people of faith, friends, your community group people. Man, raise up your hand. Say, guys, I'm struggling. They can get around you and they can help you build up your faith and encourage you. And as Christians, we're going to continue to respond by coming to communion. Communion is this time that we remember. That we remember, man, our living hope is anchored in Jesus Christ. It is unshakable in Jesus Christ. It's a time that we get to be restored. And we get restored by getting restored in the gospel. We remember who we are. We remember who he is. And we remember that we're a part of this amazing plan that we're not forgotten exiles. We're not forgotten sojourners. Man, man, God knows exactly where we are. He placed us here for this time right now. And in this moment, man, be thankful for that. Be thankful that you're here and be reminded that, you know what, you get to live this life knowing that Jesus died for your sin.

[33:36] Your body, his body was broken. His blood was shed for you and me. He was the original sojourner, right? He came. He lived with us. And then he returned home. And we not only remember his suffering in this moment, we actually remember his triumph. When he instituted communion with his disciples on the night he was betrayed, you know what he told them? He's like, I'm not going to eat. I'm not going to drink of this cup. I'm not going to drink of the partake of the vine until I return with my kingdom. He's going to, he is his promise. And so what we do is as we take communion, man, we're remembering what he's done, but we're also proclaiming that he's coming again.

[34:18] We're also proclaiming our living hope in him. So come with faith, with this living hope and what Jesus has done, that he's trustworthy, that remember that we are going to feast with him one day.

[34:31] We're not forgotten and we don't forget. Let's eat and remember. Pray with me. Jesus, I thank you. I thank you so much that you, yeah, you work through men like Peter to write these truths that are so helpful to us on how to live this life, how to live in your grace, in your mercy that has multiplied to us as sons and daughters. Thank you that you are a loving God. He knows the time and the places where we're meant to live. Thank you that you have us walk this life out in the spirit, in the presence of the spirit, your abiding presence, your presence that works in us and works through us. We thank you for that, God. We thank you that you guard our salvation. We thank you that we're sealed in you, Holy Spirit. Man, what an amazing salvation we have. We cannot help but celebrate you. Amen.