Optimism, Pessimism, or Christian Hope

[0:00] Father, sometimes, actually, Father, just about always, it's almost always easier for me and for many of us, maybe all of us, to see how your word applies to other people and not to ourselves.

[0:13] Father, we confess that we are way, way, way, way better at seeing specks in other people's eyes than seeing the planks in our own eyes.

[0:24] We also know, Father, that sometimes our hearts accuse us of, our conscience accuses us of things which your word doesn't accuse us of. Father, sometimes we're just a mess inside, hard to know what's right and what's wrong.

[0:40] So we thank you, Father, for your word. We thank you for Jesus, our blessed Savior and Redeemer, who loved us so much to die on the cross for us. We thank you for the Holy Spirit, your Holy Spirit, who is living and active and convicts us of sin and encourages us and exhorts us and draws us to you.

[1:00] Father, we thank you for all this. And we ask that the Holy Spirit would fall with gentle but deep power upon us this morning as we think upon your word. And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

[1:12] Please be seated. Amen. So, here's a little bit of an insight. So, I'm already getting a bit tongue-tied.

[1:25] This morning when I was driving in and all the way through the 8 o'clock service, I kept getting convicted by the Holy Spirit that I should change my sermon. And that's what I did.

[1:36] So, this isn't actually, this is a part of the sermon I worked on all week, but it's actually not the main part of the sermon that I worked on all week. It's very interesting. You see, what happened is, so the very first thing I do when I'm starting to work on a sermon is I take a good English translation of the Bible, like the English Standard Version.

[1:55] And the very first thing I do is just spend some time looking at the text just in the English, not with the help of language, helps, or commentaries. I look at what went on just before, I look at what's going to happen afterwards, and I try to go through the text prayerfully and quietly just with the English by myself.

[2:12] And when I did that on Monday morning, instantly, instantly, I saw that there is something in the text that really directly connected to me and to the Church of the Messiah.

[2:23] And I actually wrote on it a little bit. And then as I kept going through the text, I saw other types of things. And as the week went on, I thought, no, I'm not going to talk about that thing that sort of first I got convicted of about the text, or I really challenged by the text, or just something I had to deal with in the text.

[2:39] I moved away from that as the week went on. But this morning when I was driving in, the Holy Spirit convicted me that that first impression of me reading the text was what really I had to talk about that with you.

[2:52] And what it is, is I don't know how many of you remember when I just read John chapter 17, verses 20 to 26, but one of the big things, one of the big asks, of course, is that Christians would be one.

[3:09] And that's why, you see, the thing that went through my mind when I first read this text is that there's a whole pile of ministers in this city who would say, ah, this is going to be interesting, George talking about this, because George is the biggest hypocrite in the city if he's going to talk about the church being one, given all the things he's done.

[3:31] In fact, he says this is going to be, many people would say this is going to be a very interesting sermon because Church of the Messiah are some of the biggest hypocrites in the entire city in terms of this text.

[3:41] And that's the first thing I thought of when I was reading this text. Is that a fair description of me? Is it a fair description of you? That we are profound hypocrites when it comes to this text.

[3:56] So not only do we have to deal with whether or not we're hypocrites, and I'll explain why in a moment, but it also forces me, forces us to talk about something which is very uncomfortable for us to talk about in Canada right now because of cultural pressures and cultural expectations.

[4:14] So it's just a bit of a difficult text. So let's hopefully have your Bibles. If you don't have your Bibles, I know that the words are going to be up on the screen, but it's good to have your own Bibles to look along. And we're going to start reading.

[4:26] It's John chapter 17, verses 20 to 26. It's the end of the prayer. And just to remind you of the context, because this is John writing. It's one of the four eyewitness biographies of Jesus that exist in history.

[4:42] These four eyewitness accounts of the life of Jesus are also in what we now call the Bible, or the New Testament, or the Bible. And the way that John has structured his gospel is he has spent a long time sharing with us what went on between Jesus and his disciples, between the time that Judas left the room to go get the soldiers and take them to the place that he knew Jesus was going to go to outside the city when it was quiet, late, late, late at night to pray so they could capture him.

[5:14] Jesus knows that Judas is gone. He knows the soldiers are coming. He knows that the next day he's going to be crucified and he's going to die. He also knows he's going to rise from the dead. And the disciples don't know these things.

[5:27] And John spends a long time sharing with us what went on with Jesus and the disciples between, let's say, 6.30 at night and 2 o'clock in the morning.

[5:38] And what John shares is that the last thing that Jesus did was pray over the men, the 11 men who happened to be in front of him. And the way John describes this prayer, where Jesus is praying over these 11 men, Jesus knows that they're all going to be scattered.

[5:55] They're all going to be in hiding. He knows that Peter is going to deny him. He knows that none of them are prepared for him dying on the cross. None of them are prepared for him rising from the dead.

[6:06] In fact, none of them believe that he's going to rise from the dead, even though he's told them that many times. He knows all of these things. And so John records Jesus praying over these men. And what we're going to see here in a moment, every week, this is the third week we've looked at this prayer, every week I've said that Jesus prays about himself.

[6:23] He prays for the men in front of him, and he prays for you and me. He prays not just for you and me, but he prays for the Christians who met in Uganda this morning. He prays for the Christians who met in China earlier today.

[6:36] He prays for the people who met in Sydney, Australia, people who've met in London, England, Mississippi, in Ottawa, Cairo. He prays for all Christians. And my claim about that, that's what we're going to see right now, the beginning of this third part of the prayer.

[6:53] So there it is. It said, this is Jesus speaking, I do not ask for these only, the 11 men in front of him, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.

[7:05] Now we're going to pause there. I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. And I'm not...

[7:18] So here's what's going on. It's very interesting. I spoke at church on Wednesday, and I actually mentioned this on my Ash Wednesday service at the 10 o'clock service.

[7:32] I made reference to this verse, but in different ways. This text, the word word, has sort of a double meaning, has more than a double meaning, but it's irrelevant to two different meanings right here.

[7:47] On the first hand, on one hand, when he says, I do not ask for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, what Jesus is talking about is that it's because of the apostolic testimony, which we now call the New Testament, that Christians continue to know about Jesus.

[8:10] So in a very, very real sense, it was through the word of those 11 men who not... They didn't all write the New Testament, but they all had a very, very important hand in guaranteeing that the things that were written that we now call the New Testament were in fact consistent with the teaching of Jesus, reflected the teaching of Jesus.

[8:34] And these 11 men had a very, very special and unique and non-repeatable role in this because God used them for the writing of what we now call the New Testament. And it's through this that we also trust what we call the Old Testament.

[8:46] Our Jewish friends call it the Tanakh, but we call it the Old Testament. But the word word has a second... Well, it has more than two meanings, but it's a second word that translation or sense that's relevant to us.

[9:00] It can also mean testimony. It can also mean testimony. And that's really, really important because it shows the importance of not only reading the Bible in church, but reading the Bible in church is not enough.

[9:15] There has to be testimony to the word. There has to be, in a sense, an opening of the word to us. It's one of the reasons why, when I was speaking at church on Wednesday, on Wednesday, and I knew there was a Baptist minister sitting right over there and wanted to make a little bit of a dig, I knew there were two cradle Anglicans as well sitting with the Baptist.

[9:39] And I said, you know, one of the funny things in the world is that in any Anglican church today, there will be far more Bible read than there will be in most Baptist or Pentecostal churches.

[9:52] That's just probably scientifically, objectively true, that if you go to the average Anglican church, there's far more of the Bible read than in a Baptist or Pentecostal church. Yet why is it that virtually very few people in most Anglican churches actually believe the Bible?

[10:09] And why does the Bible have very little power? But it seems to in Baptist churches. And the missing bit is testimony. You see, it's not enough for me just to say, you know what, I'm not going to preach a sermon.

[10:22] I'm just going to get up and read the Bible. Reading the Bible is missing an important ingredient, which is my testimony that comes from the word and makes the word clear and plain and encourages and exhorts and defends and challenges.

[10:39] That human component of testimony is absolutely essential. And that's captured in these wonderful words of Jesus when he says, I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.

[10:51] This sort of a double meaning at that last bit, not only the word that ultimately becomes the New Testament, but also the fact that the apostles would go house to house and they would go to different cities and they would not just read the words of Jesus, but they would explain them, they would exhort, they would encourage them.

[11:08] And that aspect of testimony is absolutely, absolutely essential. So if you could put up my first point, that would be very helpful. And not all of them, but there's sort of three prayers that are the heart of this sermon.

[11:24] We're going to spend the longest time on the next prayer. This is just setting the stage. But here's a prayer that comes out of the fact that if you hear Jesus praying over us and praying over the 11 men, then probably one of the main ways that we are to respond to this text is to also pray.

[11:47] And so I've just tried to help us by putting something in words that we can use as a prayer or grow into our own prayer. Righteous Father, please grow in me a humble confidence in the trustworthiness and truthfulness of your word and a confidence to bear clear witness about Jesus.

[12:13] Righteous Father, please grow in me a humble confidence in the trustworthiness and truthfulness of your word and a confidence to bear witness about Jesus. This isn't just a prayer for a minister.

[12:24] It's a prayer for every Christian. Like it's so wonderful that moms and tots are going to start and that at some point in time during that, they're going to open the word. And that means, I'm assuming it's going to be Anya. Anya, we can be praying and we can be praying for Anya that she is able to bear testimony to the word.

[12:39] It's for the interns. It's for what's going on in Sunday school right now that the teachers can bear testimony to the word. It's what happens in your small groups which are so important to be part of a small group.

[12:52] It's the act of giving testimony is something that we should be praying about. Not only to trust the Bible and to believe that it's true, but to ask the Lord that we can be competent.

[13:05] I know, you know, competent in terms of where we are in life. I know some of you, you lead a Bible study group, you work demanding jobs, you have a child which is wonderful but also demanding, and you do volunteer work and you still try to bear testimony to work.

[13:21] And that's obviously going to be a little bit different than me bearing testimony to the word when I have far more time to study and prepare. But this is a prayer for every Christian to believe and trust the word of God and to ask that when it comes to be able to bear witness to the word, we can do it well, as well as we can, to the glory of God.

[13:44] Now, I could keep going on and on and on and on and then I could avoid the very awkward part. But the awkward part, you know, maybe what we'll do is we'll read the awkward part, which is verses 22, 21 to 23, and then we'll bring it home to you as to why it's awkward.

[14:03] So Jesus continues, that they may all be one, sorry, well, you don't have 20 up there. I'll say 20 and you can just catch up with 21. I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

[14:29] The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one, even as we are one. I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and love them, even as you loved me.

[14:46] It's a very, very beautiful and powerful text. For 22 plus years, I was a priest of the Anglican Church of Canada. For 143 years, this congregation was part of the Anglican Church.

[15:01] First, I don't know what the original diocese was because this congregation actually is older than the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa. And on February 16, 2008, this congregation voted to leave the Anglican Church of Canada and become part of a different Anglican jurisdiction.

[15:28] And for legal reasons, I didn't leave the Anglican Church of Canada right away, which is a whole other topic, but I left within a day or something like that.

[15:40] And I sent a formal letter to the bishop announcing that I was leaving his jurisdiction and I was coming under another Anglican jurisdiction. And that is why just about every Anglican minister in the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa and most ministers in the Anglican Church of Canada would say that I and this congregation are in massive violation of the Bible.

[16:11] Isn't that what the Bible says, that you should pray that they be one? George, didn't you leave? Didn't you create division? Isn't that a sin?

[16:25] So, George, how are you going to be dancing around up front around this particular one? And to... If those of you who weren't here at that time, which is probably many of you, the issue becomes even harder for us in the sense that for the presenting issue that led us to leave the Anglican Church of Canada was the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa and the Anglican Churches of Canada decision to bless same-sex unions and same-sex marriages, which for most people in Canada is a sign that we don't like gay and lesbians.

[17:11] And we definitely stood against the flow of the culture in that particular moment. So for many people in the Anglican Church of Canada and the United Church and most Lutheran churches and most Presbyterian churches, they would look at us and they would see that we're acting in a hateful...

[17:33] They would say that we're acting in a hateful manner to many people in Canada. And at the same time, we are in complete rebellion against what Jesus was praying.

[17:45] If I pose the problem well enough for us, it's really important to pose the problem as powerfully and accurately as we can. Now, I'm going to tell you I don't think we're in violation of this text.

[17:59] I, in fact, think that it's precisely because of this text that we took the actions that we took. But we need to sort of do a little bit of unpacking of this particular text.

[18:14] Andrew... Sorry, not Andrew. Rebecca, could you put up my first point? And we're going to go back to the text. This is where I... You know, I can't... I guess we could toggle back and forth between this and the text, but it's...

[18:26] Rather than just looking at the text on the screen, it's really helpful to have it in your hands so you can go back and forward. So here's what's going on. Jesus became one with you to make you right with God.

[18:39] By faith in him, you become one with him and are made right with God. I'll say that again. Jesus became one with you to make you right with God.

[18:49] By faith in him, you become one with him and are made right with God. If you go back and look at the text, all this very, very wonderful language of being one, it's very, very powerful.

[19:03] But it's not as if all of this language of being one is somehow or another separate from how it is that a person becomes a Christian. And remember, Christian isn't a code word for a good person or a smart person.

[19:16] It's a word for a person who has become Jesus' own. We trust Jesus as our Savior. We trust him as our Lord. We trust him to make us right with God.

[19:28] We trust him that he will fit us for eternity. And we've put all of our trust, as much as we possibly can, on him and what he's done for us on the cross. And so what's actually happening when you put your faith and trust in Jesus?

[19:45] It's actually really quite amazing. And this text is really bringing it home to us. I'll read the text again. When it talks here about how that they may all be one just as you, Father, are in me and I in you that they also may be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

[20:01] The glory that you have given me I have given to them that they may be one even as we are one. I in them and you in me. I in them and you in me that they may become perfectly one so that the world may know that you have sent me and love them even as you have loved me.

[20:21] The very heart of salvation is that Jesus leaves the glory of the Father and the God, the Son of God sets aside his glory and honor and prerogatives and appearance of God and remaining fully and completely God by nature takes into himself our human nature and becomes human and walks amongst us.

[20:42] And that means that that is the beginning of his profound identification with you and me. His offer to be the representative for you and me.

[20:52] His offer to be a substitute for you and me. His offer to be a sacrifice whereby he exchanges what he has done for what we have done and in a very powerful way both in a negative way and in a powerful way.

[21:08] And it's not only the beginning of this identification with us but what happens is when by faith, by an act and a sense of our heart, we reach out to Jesus and touch him to be our Savior and Lord.

[21:25] Well, what we discover is this, that at the very deepest level of who we are, Jesus embraces us. Like, Jesus actually becomes closer to me than I am to my breath.

[21:39] He actually becomes closer to me than I am to myself. I can't remember the things I've done. I flatter myself too much to detect or hate the things I've done.

[21:52] I give a very good account of why I fail to do the good I should do and I give a very good account of why the wrong thing I did is not actually wrong. But Jesus sees me perfectly and seeing me perfectly He is going to die for everything that I have done wrong.

[22:14] He's going to die for everything that I've done wrong to break things, to hurt things, to sin. He's going to deal with my shame. And that means in a sense that He embraces it and becomes closer to it.

[22:27] The sins that I have forgotten, He comes so close to me that it goes on Him. Like, if you think about it for a moment, if there is a man who is a terrible racist, if there is a woman who is completely and utterly consumed with envy, if there is a man who is spending hours and hours and hours looking at very, very, very horrific pornography, Jesus actually embraces and touches those parts of who we are because He embraces us at the most fundamental level of who we are and every wrong act, every wrong thought, every lack of forgiveness, our memory, our imagination, our affections, our desires, there is nothing in me, no matter how foul or how vile, that does not, is not embraced by Jesus and He takes it in Himself for me.

[23:43] And so what happens when I put my faith and trust in Jesus? Jesus has already crossed the infinite distance to come and die upon the cross and He has such a close union with me when I put my faith and trust in Him that all of these things and if you think about it, how much of my identity or your identity is connected to owning stuff or is connected to our memories of terrible things we've done in the past or memories of our failures or imagination of future failures, how much of who we understand ourselves to be is connected with all of these things of boasting and of pride and of horror and of shame and all of these things and all of that is taken upon Jesus, all of that with nothing left over.

[24:32] There is nothing through therapy or hypnosis or dreams that I might remember about my past and the future that Jesus does not know when He takes me as His own.

[24:43] There will never be, I can still be surprised at things I've done in the past and how I've hurt people but Jesus knew that. He takes all of that with nothing left over and all of the sin and all of the shame and all of the failure and all of the brokenness and all of the horror, all of those things that we could never share with another people for fear that if they knew that about us they would never want to talk to us again.

[25:09] that is His. And at the same time as all of that which is in me now becomes His, the perfect standing and affection and love that He has with the Father becomes mine.

[25:31] And so this text is helping us to understand is the profound act of union that is involved in salvation. And that union continues.

[25:45] It's not just a story, it's not just imagination, the union is mystical and real. That when I put my faith, when you put your faith and trust in Jesus, that deep identification and representation and substitution and exchange, that deep union and oneness becomes real and it continues on into all eternity.

[26:09] I am in Jesus, Jesus is in me. Jesus is in me. You see, I have friends who are gay and lesbian, probably other bisexual and transsexual as well.

[26:30] And it can be a very hard thing to confess to them that I am a Christian and to say these, to say that I am a Christian. But you see, a text like this shows how deeply Jesus loves those who would self-identify as lesbians and gay and bisexual and transsexual because no one embraces them like Jesus.

[27:03] And part of the Christian life and Christian growth is the process whereby I begin to lose the way that I use my, maybe the fact that I'm Canadian or my youth or my strength or my accomplishments or my power or my money or my sexuality as a source of my identity, a source of how I understand myself as just and right and justify myself.

[27:32] And part of the growth of the Christian life is that we slowly start to die to all of these things by which we justify ourselves or make ourselves think that we are whole to receive a completely and utterly new identity that comes from being embraced by our creator to be restored to how he created us to be and to fit us to spend eternity in the new heaven and the new earth.

[28:02] And part of the growth of discipleship is getting and learning and experiencing a new identity in Christ. I'm not going to get into it right now.

[28:18] It's a point for another sermon. But even most people in the gay community would acknowledge that the Bible, those within the church who believe that the Bible teaches that God blesses a gay lifestyle or a lesbian lifestyle, most voices in the gay and lesbian community would know that that's not true.

[28:39] They would agree with me. They would agree with me. They would agree with most of us here if you agree with me. It's a delusion for people in churches who are trained to be ministers to think that the Bible teaches that God blesses an identity based around a man's sexual attraction and sexual knowing of another man or a woman's sexual desires and sexual knowing of another woman.

[29:10] And the Bible teaches that those things are wrong. And to deny that means at a very fundamental level you don't believe in the trustworthiness and the truth of the word and you have refused to bear testimony to it.

[29:26] In fact, you are bearing testimony to something completely and utterly different. But this same text, see this very, very same text on one hand it doesn't just confront those of us who are gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender it confronts every single one of us because it is in fact a characteristic of every human being that we find our identity and self-worth and justification and righteousness in something apart from God.

[29:57] And this is a gospel text to all of us and we are not bearing testimony to Jesus if we somehow or another are afraid to say that to certain people because the fact of the matter is the deep desire of our heart the true desire of our heart is ultimately to be embraced by God our creator and the one for whom we were made.

[30:26] If you could put up the next point Rebecca the believer's union with the Godhead right when Jesus here is talking about I'm in him and he's in me and the father is in Jesus and Jesus is in the father and I am in Jesus and therefore the father is in me and it's all this very very complicated complex but wonderful language the believer's union with the Godhead forms a unity among believers that bears witness to the Lord Jesus to the ends of the world and here at this point in time we are we do have a lot to say we have to confess that we have been sinful here that there is far much far too much division amongst Christians and we just have to confess that it's very easy for us to know that a person is a true

[31:31] Christian and yet for us to nourish suspicion or envy or jealousy or refusal to have fellowship with them and this text should prick our conscience if you could put up the final point turning it into a prayer righteous father please grow in me grow in all true Christians deep bonds of affection and partnership and mission so that every people group will know that Jesus loves them and died to save them righteous father please grow in all true Christians deep bonds of affection and partnership and mission so that every people group will know that Jesus loves them and died to save them you see

[32:31] I guess I probably should have spent a bit longer on the previous point but this stay here with this because this sort of captures the point what Jesus is talking about isn't institutional unity he's not talking about uniformity and what he's doing is he's directly challenging the many many different ways that the visible church can have unity which is actually not the right type of unity that he's wanting it for and we don't see it as much in Canadian culture it isn't seen as much when they look at the Anglican Church of Canada we see it often when we look at other countries or other parts of the world where we see the horrible horrible horrible horrible things when a unity of a church is based on race or the unity of a church is based on politics or the unity of the church is based on class or the unity of the church is based on particular sexual preferences and the unity of the church is based just on some type of ethnic continuity a friend of mine who goes to a large, large ethnic church in the city he asked me a couple of weeks ago how many people I had at my attendance and I told him and he said, well we had a lot more people at our church this past Sunday it's a funny thing to have a conversation with him because he's an atheist but he was at the church service and I said, oh that's interesting but I said, you only wanted that church so you could make business connections and he smiled and said, I left a big stack of my business cards at the back table and then he said, you know what, that's why everybody goes to my church

[34:10] I don't know if any of us believe any of that stuff but it's a great place to meet real estate agents and doctors and lawyers and dentists and promote your business he smiled, he confessed that that's why they met and we would see that and we would say that that's abhorrent so it is, we came to the conclusion that the visible church known as the Anglican Church of Canada had turned its back on the doctrine that Jesus Christ is Lord that he is the one who determines what is right and wrong he is the one who determines how salvation works he is the one who determines how sanctification works and we came to the conclusion that the visible church known as the Anglican Church of Canada had departed from maintaining the very, very basic fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith and if we wanted to continue to be in fellowship with Anglican churches and others that were true to the word we had to separate from them so that we could reconnect and continue to be part of the wider church and that by the way is objectively true 80% of all the Anglicans in the world we are in fellowship with them 80% of all the Anglicans in the world we are in fellowship with them it's one of the reasons Deanna

[35:33] I don't think she's able to be here today that she's with us rather than another church I just have a few minutes left and there's another very important act ask in this prayer and I want to still look at it and it has to do with this very important doctrine of hope actually the way I had originally designed this sermon was that my whole sermon was primarily going to be about hope and the difference between hope and pessimism and hope and optimism and hope in lesser goods and hope in the supreme good and it was this that I had developed my whole sermon around that the Holy Spirit convicted me that I had to talk about the first ask more than the second ask but I still like to at least leave us with the second ask so if you just read along the next ask the final ask that Jesus makes verse 24 Father I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world

[36:42] O righteous Father even though the world does not know you I know you and these know that you have sent me I made known to them your name and I will continue to make it known that the love which you have loved me may be in them and I in them and just before we get to the point in verse 26 I have made known to them your name I shared with you last week I don't know if you if you sort of cottoned on or if you were here when in the New Testament and in the Old Testament when it uses the word the name of God it's it's trying to point at a bigger reality the analogy that I used is if we wanted to refer if I referred to Wall Street you know that I'm not just talking about a street Wall Street is a way for me to talk about capitalism and banks and investment and stock markets and all of that a whole big world of things if I talk about Hollywood I'm talking about actors and stories and movies and a whole range of things and in the same way when people refer to the name of God it isn't just as if God has this big deal about having his name right name is a short form for describing who God is the truth about who God is the truth about who he isn't the truth about why he has acted why he is acting what he's done what he's doing what he will do why he did what he did why he's doing what he's doing why he's going to do things in the future it's all connected to the heart and the character and the very nature and identity of God and so what this is saying here in verse 26

[38:13] I've made known to them your name and I will continue to make it known that the love which you have loved me may be in them and I in them it means that God continues to teach us through his word the Holy Spirit will continue to bring us to deeper truths in the word so that we have a clearer and clearer understand through the word of who God is and what he's done and who Jesus is and who the Holy Spirit is and the nature of sin and the nature of our need and the nature of the church that God will continue to reveal more and more and more truth to us as we read the word but the big thing is if you could put up this final point here's the big thing in closing today the big ask Jesus the ask that Jesus makes he shares his heart with you and me he says to George and he says to Missy and he says to Leah and he says to Daniel and Christine and he says and to Anne and he says to each of us you know what is in my deep deep deep heart for each one of you what is in my deep heart for each one of you is that day when you stand in my presence and you don't only see my glory but the word for seeing or beholding is also a word for entering in or participating in what I'm really looking forward to as I pray over you is for you to know that I am so looking forward to that day when you stand before me face to face right now you are frail and you are weak right now you are beset times by doubts and by worries and by anxieties right now some of you are very great in the world and some of you are failures in the world and some of you feel like failures or feel like great but there will come a time and that is what I am praying for there will come a time and I am looking forward to it when you stand in my presence and you stand in my presence

[40:21] I have redeemed you and you can stand in my presence and you will see me as I am it will no longer be faith but you will see me and when you see me you will see my glory and when you see me and you see my glory you will be like me and you will enter into and participate and drink and eat and breathe and be at one with my great glory and that is my hope for every person who knows Jesus and God made us to hope I don't know what Jeremiah said in the learner's exchange but Buddhism has something seriously wrong one of the things George somehow that triggered Siri maybe we're saying Buddhism said it was wrong Siri was going to challenge me on that it was seriously wrong yeah yeah oh that's why I said Siri ah okay okay it's just so weird eh anyway

[41:32] I guess you couldn't hear that because it's a bit far from the mic but God made us as human beings not just to always live in the moment but God made us as human beings to be fruitful and multiply and being fruitful and multiply means that you want to bear fruit which means you look to the future my wife loves gardening she's already making plans about the seeds that she's going to buy and other types of things that she can plant them so she can see fruit and it's not a bad thing in fact hope this view of the future and a concern for the future is a food for the soul we need to hope and we struggle we might struggle with optimism we might struggle with pessimism but what God wants and that's what he's trying to express here in this prayer is that Jesus wants us to pray something like this righteous father please grip me with the gospel and so free and heal my heart that day by day I will feed on the sure and certain hope that I will behold and enter in to the eternal weight of glory of the Lord Jesus Christ you see

[42:41] Jesus tells us that this is his desire so that we know what his desire is sometimes our discipleship will be very hard sometimes being a faithful witness of Jesus means that people will not like us they won't want to invite us to their parties we might lose promotions over it we might lose placements over it because we bear witness to Jesus and that can be very hard and in the midst of hardship we still hope and Jesus wants us to feed on the promises that he has made that are sure and trustworthy and certain and the sure and trustworthy and certain promise that he has made is that one day if we are in him we will behold his glory and enter into his glory and as we walk and as we live and as we plan and as we do what we do as we deal with failure and as we deal with success in the midst of all of that

[43:41] Jesus wants the Holy Spirit to move within you in a mighty and powerful way that you might live each day day by day with hope the sure and certain hope let's bow our heads actually please stand Father we thank you for Jesus we thank you that he saw everything there is to see about us that he sees the things which are really bright and shining and glorious and beautiful and he sees the things which are dark and dank and ugly and evil and still he loved us and still he was willing to die on the cross for us and still he was willing to embrace all of who we are all of how each one of us is and take that into himself that he might bear the consequences for it and he might give us his glory and his goodness

[44:45] Father we thank you for Jesus we ask that you would grip us with the gospel and what it is that Jesus has done for us and who he is and that you might fill each one of us day by day with hope Father you know we you know that we have to have hopes for other things for for meals and jobs and you do not despise those things Father but we know that all of our lesser hopes are purified and made perfect by this deep Christian hope of what our ultimate end and destiny is amongst the changes and chances of this fleeting world that you have called us to see and behold and enter in to an eternal weight of glory the eternal weight of glory of the Lord Jesus Christ our Lord and our Savior so Father grow hope within us and we ask this in Jesus' name Amen