Handing Down Hope // Legacy // John Isemann

Thank you, Isaac. You know, every week I watch that video along with you on a Monday. Is there anything I want to point out that's really super important? And this week, I'm like, it's all super important.

Every one of those things. Do want to encourage you, if you're not signed up for Mark Rexton that kicks off Friday night, we have a lot of people coming to that, but there is still room for you. Go to mhcc.life, get yourself signed up. And Mark is going to be with us next Sunday morning too.

So it's a full weekend with Mark Rexton next week. All right, we are in the middle of a series which, I don't know, maybe it's kind of like a self counseling session for me, as I'm trying to think through, at my age, and where I am my stage of life, what it is that I'm investing my life in, and what is it that I'm leaving behind. All of us want to leave a legacy. And as I've said over and over, all of us are leaving a legacy.

It's just a matter of what you're leaving. Is it unintentional or is it intentional? Now many of you know the story, if you back in your grammar school days or middle school days, the story of Pandora and that infamous box of hers, right? According to Greek legend, she was the first mortal woman whose curiosity set in motion a chain of events that eternally plagued mankind.

The story is maybe, thank you, Isaac. Every week I watch that video along with you on a Monday. Is there anything I want to point out that's really super important? And this week I'm like, it's all super important.

Every one of those things. Do want to encourage you if you're not signed up for Mark Gregson that kicks off Friday night. We have a lot of people coming to that, but there is still room for you. Go to mhcc.life, get yourself signed up.

And Mark is going to be with us next Sunday morning too. So it's a full weekend with Mark Gregson next week. All right, we are in the middle of a series which, I don't know, maybe it's kind of like a self counseling session for me, as I'm trying to think through, at my age, and where I am my stage of life, what it is that I'm investing my life in, and what is it that I'm leaving behind. All of us want to leave a legacy.

And as I said over and over, all of us are leaving a legacy. It's just a matter of what you're leaving. Is it unintentional or is it intentional? Now many of you know the story, if you, back in your grammar school days or middle school days, the story of Pandora and that infamous box of hers, right?

According to Greek legend, she was the first mortal woman whose curiosity set in motion, a chain of events that eternally plagued mankind. The story, as maybe you might remember, was that she was given by the Greek god Zeus two traits before set onto earth. The first was curiosity. And the second was that infamous box.

She was told not to open it under any circumstances, that its contents were not fit for human eyes. But curiosity and don't look in here, make for a bad result. Unable to contain her, her wandering mind, she eventually used you, no crack open the box. And at that moment, according to Teil, all of the forces of evil on earth, that Zeus had hidden away in the box, were released on earth, greed and envy, hatred, pain, disease, hunger, poverty, war, death.

They all flew out of the box. Of course, not knowing what to do, right? She tried her best to get them back in, but there was no continuing, so she quickly slammed the lid shut. Once again, her curiosity got the best of her, so she decided to see if there was anything left in the now nearly empty box.

Much to her surprise, one thing remained. In the midst of all that misery, hope was still left. Hope still remained. Now, it's interesting, as I was looking at the story, there's actually versions of the story, right?

Some of the versions of the story have hope being the last thing that flies out of the box. So that even in the world amidst the sorrow and the pain of this world, there is still hope. But in either version, it's interesting. There's one thing that remains amidst all of the pain of this life.

There is always, there is still hope. In 1861, Emily Dickinson came to a similar conclusion. She wrote a poem. It's a short poem.

It's pretty cool. It's called, I like the title. Hope is the thing with feathers. Have you heard of this?

Hope is the thing with feathers. Here's what she said. Hope is the thing with feathers that purchase in the soul and sings the tune without words and never stops at all. And sweetest in the gale is heard, and sore must be the storm that could have bashed that little bird that kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chilis land, and on the strange sea, yet never in extremity, it asks a crumb of me, the power of hope. It has feathers. It has wings. It flies.

It remains. Hope. Hope is used to write about its own writer's use to sing about it. Now, psychologists and doctors are actually studying it, using it, and prescribing it.

I mean, hope, while it's an emotion, it is very real and powerful. The studies are very clear on this now. There are actually, there's a whole study of hope. Hope produces greater happiness, better academic achievement, higher productivity, lower anxiety, and a discernable, a measurable lowering of the risk of death.

I actually took a hope test this week. They're available online. Super interesting. Here's the problem with hope.

Hope might float, but recently, and let's be honest, it kind of seems like hope's on the run. Seemingly, waning in these last few days, like never before, at least in my lifetime, and it's discernable. Apart from the recent COVID interruption, so you can take that out because that's not what's going on here. We listen to this, guys, we are the only rich country in the world where mortality rates are going up rather than down.

And that is not being driven by heart attacks or cancer. Those are actually decreasing amongst us. It's being driven by preventable deaths due to suicide, drug overdose, and alcohol-related diseases. This has become so prevalent.

It's been named. They're called deaths of despair. In the last 20 years, deaths of despair have almost tripled. In Western societies, rates of marriage and birth rates are declining.

Young people are wondering, you know, is it worth it? I mean, all these marriages seem to end in misery. So many people wind up divorced. Is it worth it?

I mean, look at the world. Look at the trouble, Warren. Do I really want to bring kids into this world? Is it worth it?

I'd encourage you to ask your kids if they're thinking what they're thinking, because I think they would tell you, yeah, I think about those things. Now, if you step back, really, what are those? There's nothing but questions of hope. What will tomorrow be like?

Will it be better or worse? Look, at this point, we don't know the stats. I'll give you a few more of them. Depression, anxiety, or upper-munk-style ages, but most up between the ages of 12 and 17.

We had Diane Grossman here a few months ago. Some of your remember, her 12-year-old daughter, Mallory, committed suicide. And why? Well, she introduced us when she was here to something few of us understood the depth of bullying, which now includes cyberbullying.

You want to know something that ticks me off as a parent of four years. And the journal revealed, wrote about this, that Facebook is aware of how Instagram, which they own, harms children and teens in a myriad of ways. Yet they downplayed the research that shows links between increased social media use and anxiety and depression. Internally, however, their researchers have shown that Instagram use specifically can be linked specifically to body dysphoria, disorder-eating, and worse in mental health.

Even worse, Facebook began planning its Instagram use platform after it was aware of how Instagram harmed kids. It's like there's a war on hope. And our kids are caught in the middle. In many ways, this whole generation is dying because of hopelessness.

Hope matters. Hope is literally a treasure. And I want to hand it down. I want to leave.

Many of you know, my daughter, Courtney, is pregnant. I want to leave my granddaughter. She's having a little girl. And my grandchildren to come.

I want to leave them to follow a legacy of hope. Because the truth is, there is a war of what? And they're going to need it to endure. See, here's the amazing thing about us as Christians, as followers of Jesus.

We were once, and I don't really know what happened. But we were the Christians were once the dispensaries of hope. In many ways, the concept of hope originated with Jesus and his followers. Ancient cultures, you should go through these.

The Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans. Virtually every culture and ancient times saw history as cyclical, or maybe that there was a past golden age and declining. But Jesus shows up on the scene. And his church follows him, and they begin declaring a different message.

That you should not give up. But that God is overseeing everything. That God is actually intimately involved in his creation. He hasn't left alone.

And he's so involved that one day he's going to bring his creation, fall and instead with sin and pain that it is. But someday he's going to bring it back and restore it to the way it was meant to be. A day where evil would be judged and everything would be set right. That was what the Christians were to dispense into the world.

That's why the Bible, particularly in the New Testament, is so weighted down with this concept of hope. It's all over the Scriptures. It's of primary importance to believers. Paul, who wrote most of the New Testament, he speaks a bit often.

I mean, the letter he wrote to the church that was in Rome, particularly chapter eight, goes on and on and on about hope. It's interesting because the Roman world didn't think much about hope. Today we know its value. We see it as a virtue.

But to Romans, and this is super interesting, I've seen all of the quotes on this. In Rome in that day, hope was for the week. It was seen as a promise of something better, which they thought was just pure escapism. Men should forget about hope and just deal with reality.

Paul writes to these believers in Rome, he goes, no, no, no. I know how that's how they think out there. But he says, here, we need to think differently. In fact, I think Paul would have said to the church in Rome, what should make us stand out from everybody else is the same thing that should distinguish.

Now, listen to me, my friends. It's the same thing that should distinguish the church in Mendem and Chester. Hope. Where do we call the most hopeful people on earth?

But I fear, I mean, I can only speak about me, I guess, although I do hang out with some of you. I fear that as believers, we've given off, we've given away, we've sold our birthright of hope. We forgot this is the great treasure that we were to be stewards of and to fear that we're not people of great hope, but we've traded, we've made a trade as Christians as the church. We've traded a dose of hope for a pound of cynicism.

I fear as followers of Jesus, we've become cynics of the highest order. I know I'm guilty of it. You know, I can tell you why, because I can't tell you how many times when I thought about my yet to be born granddaughter, I have said to some of you or spoken these words, even to my daughter, oh my gosh, think about the world my poor granddaughter is going to grow up in. You ever said that?

What are life lessons? I've verbalized to my kids. And I know there's truth to it, OK? But here's what I've thought them over and over.

If you want to know why something is the way it is, follow the money. That's what I've taught them over and over. And look, there's truth to those things. But when all we do is look at something with a raised eyebrow or believe the worst things were people.

That's why we lead the world in conspiracy theory beliefs, right? We hand down, right? We might hand down a cute saying about the thing about the money. But we've also passed down cynicism and squash hope.

I started becoming aware of this a while ago with my kids. And then I noticed they were catching on. Isn't it so annoying that they do what you do? It's so annoying.

And so one day, I realized they were all becoming cynics. So I made what we called a cynicism jar. I've told some of you this. And we put it on the counter underneath the TV.

And every time somebody said something cynical, you had to put a dollar in the jar. We went to Great Adventure after one weekend. That's what we've become. That's what we teach.

That's the legacy we leave. Don't believe it's going to get better. It's just going to get worse. See, I don't want to be the grandpa that hands down cynicism to my kids.

They don't need anymore cynicism. It's free. I want to give them hope. Cynicism's cheap.

It's no treasure. But it rots their souls. Now, this is not just some new discovery I'm making, right? This is all over the scriptures.

Hand down hope. Hand down hope. The Psalmist declared, he gave his instructions to Israel, speaking of God, and he commanded our ancestors to teach them to their children. So the next generation might know them, even the children not yet born, and they, in turn, will teach their own children.

And why? Super important. So each generation should set its hope anew on God. Maybe you want a pretty cool visual about our role in terms of handing down hope?

How about this from Paul? I should write this in my grandpa journal. May the God of hope, I love that. If I ask many of you to tell me about God, God is what?

I know most of us would go, God is love, and he is. But how about that? The God of hope. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him so that you may overflow with hope.

I mean, imagine that. Wouldn't you be attracted to somebody like that? That you're just overflowing with hope. There's more than enough for you.

It's just washing over. You're shedding hope, right? Overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. See, I am determined to be the pop-pop of hope.

I don't know if I'm going by pop-pop yet. I'm not sure that that's right. But I'll figure it out. I want to be the dispenser, the overflowing one in the family of hope for my kids and their kids.

I want my kids to shine in the darkness of a cynical world. And so towards that goal, and I think it's a shared one I think my you would like to be more hopeful and you'd like to pass it down, I want to look at what hope is, what hope isn't, and what hope does. What hope is, what hope isn't, and what hope does. Now last week, we talked about leaving a legacy of faith.

Super important. Faith and hope are different. Here's what we discussed last week. Remember, faith is the rational sense, we talk about why it's rational, of certain expectation.

Joy is different. Or excuse me, hope is different. Hope is an emotional sense of joyful expectation. Faith and hope have different purposes and results in our lives.

Faith changes the way we live our lives. There's evidence, and so we change the way we live based on the evidence. Hebrews 11, all of the heroes of faith that are listed there, we went through them last week. Why did they do what they did?

Because they had faith. Hope changes the way we feel, how we see things, how they impact our heart. You know how important that is. So with that said, let me ask you a question.

All of you have something you're hoping for. What are you hoping for? Like literally, if somebody asks you outside, now don't get all religious on me, because you're in church. What are you hoping for?

I mean, I'm hoping you haven't given up on hope. When I woke up this morning, it was 70 degrees outside. I know some of you, if you're like me, are hoping really bad for spring. Remember what you were hoping for before maybe cynicism came in?

In our Western culture, especially here in Amendment, Chester, in Long Island, Randall, we have a lot of common and similar hopes this morning, other than being warm, right? Maybe you're hoping for something at work. The promotion that has been kind of put off, or maybe promised, you want the deal to come through or close. Lots of us have hopes for relationships.

We'd like to start one. Maybe we hope some one of them will end. Or we could repair a broken one. I get the prayer requests here every week, and I pray through all of them.

And I could tell you 90% of what I pray for is people's health. We're hoping, right, the test comes back negative, or the prognosis improves. In one way, we do all often leave this American dream of hope to our kids. We hand that hope down, the hope of the American dream.

It will be better for your generation than it is for mine. When you're a kid in high school, what are you hoping for? What are you hoping to get in the right college? When you get in the right college, what are you hoping for?

Well, you can offer the right job. Then when you get the right job, what are you hoping for? Well, you get the corner office. And along the way, you hope to meet the right person, and then buy the starter house, and then get the bigger house.

And you hope to fill it with the right furniture. While you're hoping for the bigger house, you hope to meet some money, and eventually you hope to retire. That should sound familiar. That's what we all do.

Now I have a visual this morning here that somebody actually shared, and I saw it, and it just resonated so deeply in my soul, right? Here's the problem when that is what you deem as hope. And I've done this to my kids. I need to repent of this before you.

I have handed down hope in this pattern, right? Handed it down. See, all these things that I'm going to show you, are things that I've taught them to hope for. Like, for example, I put this baby together last night, so I could show you all.

I mean, how many of us hope for the house? And we live in an area that's got really nice houses. And as I said, I remember when Joan and I bought our first house, and we bought the house, and I wasn't long after it until I was thinking about what the next house was going to be, right? I mean, who doesn't want to have a house?

This is what we raise our, I mean, one of the things I tell my kids all the time is don't have to move out. You stay here and save somebody for a house. Here's the problem. When I keep getting them to set their hopes on a house, here's the truth.

One day they're going to leave the house. It's not going to be theirs anymore. And that house is going to stand for, I don't know, 100 years or 200 years, but eventually the house winds up in the trash. So what happens when you set your hopes on a house?

That's not just houses, right? Like cars. This is a viper, which is it's such a cool car that they make these die casts, whatever things of them. Because for most people it's a dream.

I have several friends that have vipers. I mean, cars are really cool. I know who doesn't. I mean, my guy.

Who doesn't like a car? And so we set our hopes on cars. The problem with cars are eventually they rust, where they get hit, where they're out of date, or out of style. And so cars, just like houses, wind up in the same place.

The trash, they're destined for the trash. See this? This is my chartered financial analyst degree. It's my CFA degree.

I got it in 1999. It's still in here. So here's the thing about that degree. That was really hard to get.

Most people would tell you it's the hardest degree to get in finance. It's three years of self-study. I have four kids. I went to the library every night and studied really hard to get this CFA.

Back then, it was an all essay test. And it built on one another. So if you got the first question wrong, you likely got it wrong the whole way through. The pass rates were in the 50%.

And they gave the test once a year. And if you didn't pass the test, congratulations. You failed. Like half of everybody that took it.

Here's the problem with my CFA. At the end of the day, I had really hoped to get it. And the reality is, it's going to wind up in the trash. I haven't even taken it out of the roller-came.

Now, this one's one we all struggle with, right? I wanted to be serious about the cash thing this morning. So I didn't want to get monopoly money or anything. I wanted to get some real cash.

So I went to Terri Arbokheeper and I said, hey, can you get me a stack of hundreds because I want to show, just so I have no ability to get money and I can't even sign a check here. So the only way I can get any cash is to get somebody to give it to me. And they're aware that I'm doing this this this morning. And I mean, so many of us, right?

We put our hope in this. This is where we set our hope. But you know what's going to happen to this cash? It's going to wind up in the garbage, too.

LAUGHTER Just to make sure everybody, I'll put it back. And just so you know, it's mostly dollar bills. So my friend Eric much more tells the story that states when we all the time was parents were moving out of their house. They lived in their whole lives.

They had the same thing that my parents had at one point. They had a stereo that was built into a cabinet. And Eric's father was walking out of the house. And it was a dumpster in the driveway.

And the last thing that was in the dumpster was that stereo cabinet. It was sticking out over the top. And Eric's dad looked at it. I'm telling you, he's worried about it for 15 years or something.

Eric's dad looked at it and goes, you know, for 50 years you wouldn't let me put a drink down on that. And now look. It's where it's all going. This is why Paul writes to Timothy, concerning people like you and I.

He goes, command those who are rich in this present world, not to be arrogant in order to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God. This is right here, a foundation principle about Christian hope that is different than the hope of the world. He says, put your hope in God, in God. See, we teach our kids.

They watch us do this all the time. We put our hope in things that we hope for. Christian hope is not hope for. We don't hope for.

We hope in radically different concept. Jesus is disciple Peter. You know, he walked on water, Peter, Peter, who denied Jesus three times, but the resurrected Jesus full of grace and mercy. Jesus restores Peter and commissions him to lead his church after his ascension.

And Peter does that, but he does it at great personal cost. Back in his letter that I'm gonna share with you. Peter is writing to a persecuted church because he himself has been persecuted in Jason, beaten, and now as he writes this, he's in prison and Rome. And from a jail cell, he writes a circular letter.

To all these other churches, whose circumstances are terrible. They're all facing persecution. And you know what the first thing he says is? Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Really, Peter? Really? And he goes, yeah. In his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

Peter goes, hey, church, remember what our hope is? It's not for something. It's not in our circumstances. I mean, I'm writing to you from prison.

Our hope is not in things. We have a living, breathing alive hope. His name is Jesus. Peter would say, I saw him arrested.

I betrayed him. My friends and I, we saw him beaten and killed and buried. And then we saw him alive. That is my hope.

This stuff is, of course, I look at this stuff. I'm going to get depressed. My hope is a living hope. I have hope in Jesus.

When he nails, why it's so important for them to understand this. And this is why it's so important for us to understand it. And why it's so important that we teach this to our kids. I have to stop telling them the hope in this.

He says that this hope, this living hope, it comes with it, something. He says that we are born into this living hope and then into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade. An inheritance of hope is different, unlike the things that we keep telling our kids to hope for. Hope in.

Our hope doesn't wind up in dumpsters. It's eternal. It's different. It's a living hope.

And it has within an inheritance. And what is the inheritance? What is the legacy of hope? What's the inheritance of hope?

It's twofold. First, it's that we regain and reclaim the idea that history is going somewhere. Please stop with the things that are just going to get worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. They're not going to get worse and worse and worse.

God is still in control of what's going on. God is alive and at work. His kingdom has begun in this world. His spirit is here on Earth.

The kingdom is coming. It's growing. It's accessible. We're agents of it.

One day, it's going to bloom in full. Remember, the apostle John was given a vision of it, the cycle John. Here's how he described what is coming. He goes, I saw a new heaven and a new earth.

For the first heaven and the first earth that passed away, there was no longer any seed. I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, look, look. God's glelling place is now among the people.

He'll dwell with them. They'll be as people and God himself will be with them. And he'll be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes.

There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. For the old order of things has passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, I'll make everything. Do you know the hope that you even call to?

Everything new, everything. A living hope who offers this and herons. This is what's coming. This is not harps and floating on clouds.

That's no hope. I'm not looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to this. Heaven is not a long church service.

It's everything made right right here. Us together on earth restored and renewed with God. Everything made right. And the importance of hope, right?

There's one, the inheritance. One is a corporate. We'll organ a share in that. But hope is also personal.

I have to teach this to my kids too. Because sometimes the corporate's not enough. There is on the days coming. Heck, I'm am a man in and around.

No, you can put a number on it. But I don't have all that much time left, right? And so it's coming for me soon. There is a new world waiting for each of us.

And there is a personal inheritance there for me. You get that? It's not just a corporate hope, which is wonderful. But there is a personal inheritance waiting there for me.

Jesus said, don't store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where here it is once again, where moths and vermin destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin don't destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. Store up for yourselves by the way you live in this life, rewards in the next life that are eternal, that you will enjoy forever and ever and ever. They're never going in the trash.

Believe this, this is our great hope. Put your hope here. In fact, Jesus concludes this. He goes, for where your treasure is, that's where your heart is going to be.

See, I want to leave a legacy of hope in, not hope for. I want to encourage my kids and my grandkids to work for eternal treasures because it impacts their hearts now, how they feel. If I just keep telling them, showing them that what matters is building up treasures on earth, the scripture seems to indicate if I keep doing that, their hearts get focused here on earth, right? They're feelings the way they feel about themselves, where their passions lie.

If I keep telling them to build up treasures here, their hearts get focused here and their hearts get hurt. A lot of times, it's because these treasures are mirages. Even when you get them, they don't satisfy. You get the house you want to bigger house.

You get the car, it gets hit at a light. You find the perfect soulmate after a few years of the magic wanes. This is why so many of us, so many of our kids get so depressed, especially wealthy areas. This is why so many of them get depressed in disillusioned because they actually have some of these things and it doesn't satisfy.

There's nothing left for them to hope for. I remember when I was a kid, there was a wealthy family in the community and we didn't have any money growing up. This wealthy family, whenever their kids turned 17, they would buy their kids cars. No disparaging thing about this.

But the first son got a BMW and then the second one got a Trans Am, like with the big thing on the front and everything, right? And I remember my dad was working his butt off at night. He just goes, I have no idea what those kids are hoping for in the future, right? And see so many of our kids get these things and then it's like, well, it didn't really satisfy.

See us Lewis and Mira Christianity. His chapter on hope, which would be mandated for every believer. He says that when this happens, we have two human responses. Well, the first is to double down on earthly rewards, to keep our hope here.

So I have the BMW 3 series, but I think once I get the 7, I'll really, it'll be better, right? So we spent our lives pursuing the next thing, because this thing didn't do the trick for my soul. The bigger house, the newer car, the hotter life. We went up leaving lives of chasing after thing, after thing, after thing, after thing, after thing, all the while, right?

Never satisfying this inner longing. We hope for these things, but when we get them, they don't give us what we're looking for. The truth is most of us fall into this camp. This is the common camp.

Now, there's a second camp, Lewis would say, that smarter people wind up in. I'm not smart enough to get into this camp. But smarter people will actually come to a point where they realize, this is all futile. This is silly.

I've gotten a lot of these things. King Solomon in the Bible, right? He was the smartest guy wealthy, he's got everything. He goes, it's all air.

And so what happens to those people? Well, they become cynical. Trust the old curmudgeons. Lewis calls them sprigs.

Self-righteous men and women who are above all the materialism. But what they do is they just kind of quash this desire, and they're so they repress their desires for anything more. They repress an internal desire for satisfaction or joy. And they just say, it can't be found.

And so they teach their kids, there is no joy here. Just grind it out, grind it out. Until the meaningless of it all comes to an end. Lewis famously, and maybe you've heard this, he says there's a third way to respond.

And here's where hope comes in. He calls it hope the Christian way. He says, creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger while there's such a thing as food.

A duckling wants to swim. There's such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire. There's such a thing as sex.

If I find in myself a desire which no earthly experience can satisfy, the most probable explanation is I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasure satisfy it, that doesn't prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy, but only to arouse, to suggest the real thing. If that's so, listen to this conclusion.

If that's so, I must take care on the one hand, never to despise or be unthankful for earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for something else, of which they are only a kind of copy or echo or mirage. I must keep alive of myself, the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death. I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside. I must make the main object of life, listen out, to press on to that other country and help others do the same.

I must make the main object of life, to press on to that other country and help others do the same. That is a legacy of hope, that other country that John saw in his image, right? It's there for each of us, the reward that we've been trying to find here. It's there, build it there.

Paul had such an interesting take on this reward, this hope that's waiting for you in the kingdom to come. I'm not sure that we teach this well in the church, because there's a corporate reward where our hope should be and there's a personal reward. Here's what Paul said. He said, on the Judgment Day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done.

The fire will show if a person's work has any value. If the work survives, that builder will receive a reward. But if the work is burned up, if everything that you achieved is just in the trash, right? The builder will suffer great loss.

Yeah, it's all gone. The builder will be saved, because we're not saved by our works, we're saved by grace. The builder will be saved, but like somebody barely escaping through a wall of flames. Listen, I can only speak for me, but I want my kids to show up in the kingdom of God with castles and not crumbs.

Make no mistake about it, crumbs in the kingdom of God are better than castles in this world, but I want to set their hopes there and not here, and that's why I've got to start setting mine. And not here. This is what hope is. We hope in, we don't hope for, we get into eternal inheritance, we don't hope for things that go into garbage.

There are eternal benefits for hope, but I'm just going to close by giving you two significant ones in this age, the ones that my granddaughter is going to need, and so do your kids. First, remember the writers of the New Testament, right? You've got to remember who's writing this. They never write from a place of enjoying great circumstances, none of them.

Peter's letter was from prison, so we're most of Paul's. They didn't write enjoying wonderful circumstances. In fact, they didn't write to people enjoying wonderful circumstances. Most of the letters they wrote to were written to people who were persecuted or oppressed, and were about to give up and give in.

And little of their writings, gosh, I wish we'd get this right as a church, little of their writings predicted the arrival of imminently great circumstances. Very little of their letters say things like, just name the blessing, and God will have to give it to you. It's not there. See, those who knew Christ understood in ways that their law in this life might be to suffer life Christ.

And so when they wrote about hope, which they did over and over, they did so because they knew hope would do two things. The first is it would help their readers not to give up. I don't want my granddaughter to give up. I can't sell her false hope.

They didn't want the readers to give up because of their circumstances. They were saying, look, I know what you see. Don't trust in that. That's how our hope is.

I mean, it is over and over and over. Almost every time in the scriptures you see hope, it's written to an audience that's suffering, and it's there so that they'll keep going on. Go back to Peter's letter where he entrused Jesus as the living hope. He goes on, he goes, this inheritance is kept in heaven for you.

Right? We just talked about that. Who's through faith or shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this, here it is, you greatly rejoice.

So now for a little while, you may have to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith, of greater work than gold, which perishes, even though refined by fire, may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus is revealed. Peter says, endure, endure. Your hope is not for things.

It is there. Put it there. And when you do, when Jesus comes, it will result in praise and glory and honor over and over and over. Paul tells the Thessalonians, we remember before our God and Father, your work produced by faith, remember I told you faith changes the way you live, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope.

You could, some of you have this verse on a pillow, like your house I guarantee you never thought about it this way. What's your pillow at home say? Those, it's got to eat a lot of it all the time. Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.

They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not be faint. Those who hope in the Lord will endure.

They won't give up. Hope, you don't give up hope. We don't hope for. Don't settle for hope for things.

Don't sell your kids on hope for things. Teach them to hope in God, and they'll endure. Tell them to look up and not look at. Pull toward the Corinthians.

Our hope is not about the circumstances. Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us and eternal glory. Don't look here. Don't look down.

Look up that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what's seen, but what's unseen since what's seen is temporary, but what's unseen is eternal. Hope brings endurance. My kids, my grandkids are going to need that, because in this world circumstances are going to lie to them.

And lastly, that hope is going to do for my little granddaughter and my grandchildren to come. I mean, we read of hope having wings. We say interestingly enough that hope floats, right? You've heard that.

The scripture is actually described in a completely different way. Here's what the writer of Hebrews says. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm, and secure. Where everything is relative in the world, where everything is relative, where the slope gets quite slippery, hope is an anchor.

It steadies us. It keeps us from moving. It informs how we live. If I could get my kids and my grandkids out hoping Christ, it is an anchor for their soul in a world that is so deceptive.

Here's what Paul told Titus. He said, for the grace of God has appeared that while for salvation all people, it teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled upright and godly lives in this present edge while we wait for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great god and Savior Jesus. Church, don't you understand what you teach your children to have hope for, what you teach them to have hope in. It will change the way they live their lives, what they will say yes to, and what they will say no to, who they will say yes to, and who they will say no to.

It is based on their hope. That's how important it is for this life. I want to leave a legacy of hope. I want to hand down hope.

In order to do that, I have to be a man, and I need to help me on this. If you're my friend and you're my life, I need to be a man who moves from hope for to hope in. I have to live that way in front of my kids. They have to see me storing up treasures in heaven.

I have to encourage them to do the same things. I have to warn them about the lives of putting hopes and titles and treasures of this world. I have to talk about it more. I have to teach about it more.

I have to share about the excitement. I have to talk about the excitement of the coming of the kingdom of God and what awaits me and what awaits them. See, my prayer for me and you this morning in terms of hope, it's the same prayer that Paul had for the church in Ephesus. He said to them, I pray that the eyes of your heart might be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance.

I'm done, that's a lot on hope. I want to leave it so badly for my kids, don't you? I don't want them to be hopeless in this world. Paul kept it a lot shorter in this one blurb that he wrote to the Colossians.

He actually summed up the gospel, the whole gospel in just a couple of words. I'll close with it. It's the message translation, I love it so much. He calls the gospel the mystery, the mystery of the grace of God through Jesus.

He says this mystery has been kept in the dark for a long time, but now it's out in the open. God wanted everyone, not just Jews, to know this rich and glorious secret inside and out, regardless of their background, regardless of their religious standing, the mystery in a nutshell is just this. I love this, here it is. The mystery that the gospel in a nutshell is just this, Christ is in you, so therefore you can look forward to sharing in God's glory.

It's that simple, that is the substance of our message. Hope.