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[0:00] Amen. Amen. Well, good morning, church.! In this life, those who have been called out, that belong to Christ, and we are in chapter one.

[0:40] We'll be looking at a couple verses this morning, and we will pick up speed after this morning. So don't worry. You guys are making good ground in your neighborhood groups.

[0:51] If you're not connected to a discipleship group, 9 a.m. we gather downstairs. And join us next week. You find myself or Scott or Melissa or any of the staff, and we will direct you.

[1:02] We will get you plugged in. And it's how we are able to walk in community with one another. This is opportunity to hear from God's Word, kind of sitting side by side. When we gather at 9 a.m., it's when we get to sit face to face.

[1:16] And so I want to encourage you in that. To be a part of a church is to be known. And that's a good way to begin that process. So let me pray for our study, and then we will launch into the text this morning, looking at 1 Peter.

[1:32] But let's pray. The psalmist writes, Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him.

[1:46] Lord, I pray that we would see, we would taste and see that You're good this morning. Father, we want to have taste buds, affections that are for You. And so if we've come here this morning, maybe feeling discouraged or distracted, we ask that You would draw our hearts back to Yourself.

[2:06] And that we would begin this week in fellowship with You. That we would experience communion with You. And so Lord, would You use this morning the adoration, the sermon, the Lord's table to draw our affections to Yourself.

[2:30] Lord, whatever we brought in, we want to give that to You. We want to offer it to You. We want our burdens to be unloaded to You, our worries. Father, if there's sin to confess, we want to get right this morning so that we can enter this week well.

[2:45] We commit our time to You, Jesus. We ask that You would speak through the power of Your Word. Your Spirit would be moving amongst us. In Jesus' name, amen. So it occurred to me last week, after about 30 years of being a parent, that parenting is a lot of work.

[3:08] I'm a little slow on the uptake sometimes. But I think parents, at some point, every parent is going to experience weariness in that task.

[3:29] And sometimes even pastors that are parents feel that. And on those occasions, what I tend to do mentally, aside from talk to the Lord about whatever scenario, things happening in the life of the family, I will actually do a couple of things mentally.

[3:52] I will either think about the future or I will think about the past to help with my parenting fatigue.

[4:02] I might imagine the future of children grown up, not in my house, being responsible, leading their own families, discipling their own kids, paying their own mortgages.

[4:19] Sometimes I have a really great thought of, like, them paying my mortgage someday. And so I'll think about the future. Or I will imagine the past.

[4:32] I will think about my children as young, as adorable, as sweet. And just, I'll remember good memories and how cute they once were.

[4:49] And so I will do that sometimes in the midst of my parenting weariness. Well, what's interesting to me is in 1 Peter, Peter does something similar for those living under persecution for their faith.

[5:05] For those that are not parent weary, but spiritually weary. And perhaps about to lose heart. Peter has already told us, look ahead, look to the future.

[5:16] Verse 4, look to your inheritance. Heaven awaits. Home is real. It's a place without tears. It's a place without goodbyes. It's real. Or he will say, look backwards.

[5:30] Consider your rescue. In verse 3 he says that according to his mercy, his great mercy, he caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

[5:42] And then in verse 6 he says, in this, in these things you rejoice. Your past is forgiven. Your future is secure. Now you can live today, fellow Christian, despite the trial.

[5:53] You can live with joy, even in the difficult. And church, it was difficult to be a follower of Jesus in the first century. Christians were seen as outsiders.

[6:06] That's nothing new, friends. We don't have it the hardest it's ever been for the church. They were hated, the Christians. Specifically for the fires that burnt the crown jewel of the empire and Nero blamed the Christians.

[6:25] Their beliefs were strange. Monotheism was out of... It was just... It was rare outside of the Jews.

[6:38] And so if you did not, like a good Roman, worship the pantheon of gods, you were seen as strange. You're limiting your worship to just one God? And in a kind of a strange way, it was the Christians that in that culture were seen as the spiritual atheists.

[6:58] Interesting. Today, Peter continues to exhort those who are spiritually weary. And he's going to encourage us again to look back for help.

[7:09] Look back for encouragement. Only today, he suggests that we look even further back than the cross. Let's draw encouragement from a rather unlikely place.

[7:21] Actually, let's be encouraged by the Old Testament prophets. Very curious. But I love this text. And this morning, we're actually going to consider...

[7:32] I love the prophets, so this is great. Thank you, Scott. Thank you. We're going to consider three ways that the prophets of old can encourage weary disciples of King Jesus in every age.

[7:48] Yes, even for us today. So let's read the text together. 1 Peter 1, verses 10 through 12. Peter writes, The first way the prophets of old encourage us in our striving to walk in courage with Jesus in this world is they remind us that we are not alone in striving to walk in courage in the face of difficulty.

[9:01] They remind us that we're not alone. There were prophets that walked with God in courage before you and me who were looking forward to Jesus, to his suffering, to his rule.

[9:15] Prophets who also journeyed through difficulty and trial, often feeling very alone. There's a rich heritage of faith behind us, church.

[9:26] And by faith, we have entered into this heritage. This is like our family tree, if you will. Now, why should we draw encouragement from the prophets in particular?

[9:40] First, let's make sure that we actually know what we're talking about here. What is a prophet? Let me give us a definition in terms of their function, and we can draw this from Exodus chapter 7.

[9:55] We have a definition of their prophetic function. It says here, Exodus 7, verse 1, So how does a prophet function?

[10:21] A prophet functions, it's one speaking on behalf of another. And here, God selects Aaron to speak on behalf of Moses. So God speaks to Moses, Moses to Aaron, and Aaron then speaks on behalf of God and Moses to Pharaoh.

[10:37] A prophet speaks on behalf of another. And these two kind of main spiritual roles in the Old Testament, we have the priest and we have the prophet. A priest is one who represents man speaking to God.

[10:53] A prophet is one who speaks for God towards man. And you can think of them as a priest has his back to man and face to God, and a prophet has his back to God and his face towards man.

[11:07] Now, to speak for God, is this always an easy task, church? No. Is it often an easy task?

[11:21] No. These are softball questions. They will ramp up as we continue through the sermon. It's not easy.

[11:31] When you consider that you're speaking to perhaps a rebellious culture. You're speaking to compromised leadership. You are often influenced or people try to influence you to alter your message.

[11:50] Don't say things so harshly. We actually have an example of this. King Ahab, his messenger, tells the prophet Micaiah to alter the message that he was going to bring to the king, align with four other compromised prophets, guaranteeing success in battle.

[12:15] And he tries to put the pressure, the squeeze on Micaiah. And it says in 1 Kings 22, 14, But Micaiah said, As the Lord lives, what the Lord says to me, that I will speak.

[12:28] So I'm not going to alter the message, although there is often pressure to alter the message. There's nothing new here, church. Because although Scott and myself are not prophets, we fulfill a prophetic or a prophet type role in terms of proclaiming, forth telling God's word.

[12:47] And there's pressure to alter it. And we will not. It's a hard job description.

[13:01] They killed the prophets. Remember the prophet Jonah? He's like, it's so hard, I'm running away. Prophets face trials and discouragement.

[13:15] Things that would make one weary. Let's just consider a few this morning. And I think I'm sharing these examples because it's a reminder, we don't have it as hard as we think we do, and we're actually not alone.

[13:27] Because there are other faithful people that walk before us. Specifically, God's Old Testament prophets. Consider Isaiah. Prophet to Judah. Sent to a people who, it says in Isaiah 6-9, kept hearing, but they did not understand.

[13:44] Difficult audience. He had harsh words for God's people. He had harsh words for other nations. And it says here in Isaiah 23, he spoke to Egypt and he says, and the Lord said, as my servant Isaiah has walked naked and barefoot for three years as a sign and a portent against Egypt and Cush.

[14:05] So he didn't have, Isaiah didn't just have a difficult message. He had, he was doing things that were very strange. He's like walking around. I don't think here he's completely in his birthday suit, but his undergarments, he probably wasn't invited over for dinner.

[14:26] But for three years, he's walking around like an outcast. Difficult job. You know, according to tradition, he eventually is murdered for his efforts.

[14:39] And it actually may be that Hebrews 11 is talking about Isaiah, Isaiah, and maybe you've never seen this before, but Isaiah 11, 37, it says, they were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with a sword, they were about, they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated.

[14:54] Isaiah, it says here, they were sawn in two. That's probably referring to the prophet Isaiah. Because ancient Jewish Christian traditions suggest Isaiah was martyred by King Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah.

[15:06] And according to tradition, Isaiah was tied inside a sack, placed within the hollow of a tree trunk, and then sawn in two. And that comes from a first century book.

[15:19] There's some things in it that are a little bit fantastical, but this description of his death, it comes from the ascension of Isaiah, and it tells the story of his death. That's a difficult thing.

[15:30] He had a hard ministry. How about Jeremiah? Jeremiah, another prophet to Judah. We know he had a difficult ministry because he's known as the what? The weeping prophet.

[15:44] I said they were going to get harder, but that was easy. Yeah, he was a weeping prophet. As God's people dismissed his warnings to repent.

[15:54] And we have in Jeremiah 13, 17, it says, But if you will not listen, my soul will weep in secret for your pride. My eyes will weep bitterly and run down with tears because the Lord's flock has been taken captive.

[16:10] So he wept over the rebellion of God's people. And they didn't just dismiss him, they attacked him for his words. Because later in Jeremiah 22, it says, Then Pasher, who's a priest in the temple, beat Jeremiah the prophet, put him in stocks that were in the upper Benjamin gate of the house of the Lord.

[16:31] So he's beaten with a leather whip. He's proclaiming God's word, and he's beaten for it. Probably took 40 lashes for that. He's put in stocks. And stocks weren't just for restraint, they were for torture.

[16:46] He's being tortured for proclaiming God's word. Later we actually read of him in chapter 38 of Jeremiah, he's thrown into a cistern full of mire.

[16:58] We don't like what you're saying, we're going to throw you down into this pit. His ministry was so hard that God actually asked him to remain single.

[17:11] It says in Jeremiah 16, 2, it says, You shall not take a wife, nor shall you have sons or daughters in this place. I think the ministry was so hard, God's like, it's not for you, Jeremiah.

[17:25] You think he got weary? Yes, he got weary. In fact, on more than one occasion, God actually tells Jeremiah, the people that you're preaching to, don't pray for them.

[17:37] Don't pray for them. Because God's saying they're not going to listen. How disheartening. How difficult. Your ministry is going to have zero effect.

[17:50] Ministry is so hard, he lamented of his very life in Jeremiah 20. He says this, verse 14, Cursed be the day on which I was born, the day when my mother bore me.

[18:00] Let it not be blessed. Cursed be the man who brought the news to my father. A son is born to you, making him very glad. And then church history actually records that Jeremiah, Tertullian specifically, records that Jeremiah was taken to Egypt by Jewish rebels and then stoned there.

[18:19] And so actually, in Hebrews 11, verse 37, the first two phrases, they were stoned and they were sawn in two. I think that's speaking specifically of Jeremiah and then Isaiah.

[18:31] Difficult ministry. And then how about Hosea, right? First of the minor prophets. Probably had the longest, most difficult ministry of any prophet.

[18:42] He served during seven kings of the north. Probably had a ministry that stretched 60 to 70 years. How many righteous kings did Israel have? Zero.

[18:54] Spiritually adulterous nation towards Yahweh. So God used Hosea as a teaching aid. Had him marry a gal by the name of Gomer.

[19:06] Gomer. Young men, if your parents introduce you to a young lady and say she's great catch, and you find out her name's Gomer, you just go through the back door.

[19:19] Drive away. This was a prostitute. She was unfaithful to Hosea, just as Israel was to God. You know, God even blessed Israel with prosperity and independence during his tenure as a prophet.

[19:39] And as their fortune soared, their moral fabric declined. Hosea writes in Hosea 4-7, the more they increased, the more they sinned against me.

[19:50] I will change their glory into shame. So God was actually blessing this northern kingdom. And who did Israel thank for their prosperity?

[20:03] Hosea 4-12 says, So God gives them a gift, and they basically say, thank you, Baal.

[20:22] Thank you, Baal. It's the world in which we live. Blessing comes into a person's life. Oh, thank you, universe. Thank you. Thank you. Could you imagine parents being around your Christmas tree Christmas morning, and you're giving gifts, and your kids keep receiving these things that you buy, and they look over at you, and then they look to the tree and say, thank you, Christmas tree.

[20:43] You'd be like, what? What? That's what Israel's doing to their God. Hosea, he even had to name his kids to reflect the ministry that he was called to as he dealt with this rebellious nation.

[20:57] So one of his children, little Ami, basically translates, your name's not my people. And then to his other child, your name is not favored.

[21:09] Can you imagine being Hosea's kid on the first day of class? Hey, what's your name? Prefer not to say. Difficult ministry. Isolating.

[21:22] Isolating assignment. Church, do you ever feel isolated? We talked about that in our neighborhood group this morning. I do. Sometimes I'm just like, I don't belong. Last night I picked up four individuals dressed in black, just pretty cool as the world would, you know, set forth.

[21:42] And I'm driving down to the knitting factory because there's some death metal concert going on. And I'm just, you know, he's just Pastor Jay doing the taxi to the death metal concert.

[21:52] And like, they're sharing like all these bands they listen to. And I'm like, and they're like, you know, this one. I'm like, nope. How about this one? Never heard of them. I contributed nothing. I'm like, you know, you ever heard of like Toby Mack?

[22:04] Like, I was just there. I, all right, there's five people who doesn't belong, right? It's very easy to feel like an outsider here, church.

[22:15] And the prophets understood this. Church, we're not alone as we pursue Christ in this life. We have a whole heritage of faithful followers of God before us.

[22:30] And what's really wild is their ministry was actually for us. They wrote about a Savior they hadn't yet met, which we've experienced today.

[22:40] In fact, verse 12 says, it was revealed to them that they were serving, not themselves, but you. They served in faith even when fruit was often absent.

[22:55] Whoo! If that doesn't describe ministry some days. And we draw encouragement from them. Be encouraged, friends. You're not alone in your allegiance to the God of heaven.

[23:06] There's this entire cloud of witnesses that have lived with great courage before us. The prophets. Church, perspective.

[23:20] Have I been thrown in a cistern for preaching the gospel? No. This is not hard. The prophets bring us that perspective. Be encouraged. Second way they encourage us, the prophets remind us that our salvation and knowledge of Jesus, it's precious.

[23:37] And yet, they never understood fully. It's something they didn't get to understand. Like, they were weary and they didn't understand.

[23:50] We may be weary today, but we have the privilege to understand. We have God's Word in totality. We have this amazing revelation of the gospel to enjoy today.

[24:06] We see the fulfillment of what they were talking about. See, the prophets didn't fully understand what they foretold. Verse 10 and 11, concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully.

[24:20] They didn't have it. inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them, that's a cool statement, right? The Holy Spirit, Spirit of Christ, there in the Old Testament, oh yeah, was indicating when he predicted the suffering of Christ and the subsequent glories.

[24:39] So the prophets, they saw these two mountain peaks in the future, but they didn't have any concept of the last 2,000 years of the life of the church. We call it like this valley of grace.

[24:51] Between Christ's suffering and his yet future return. They wrote about it, but they did not understand. How about the prophet Daniel?

[25:02] He got a revelation. Daniel 12, 80 says, I heard, but I did not understand. Then I said, oh my Lord, what shall be the outcome of these things? And of course, talking about future, yet future events, we have a whole nother book.

[25:18] Revelation. Revelation. That's a lot of color to what Daniel was penning. Prophets didn't understand, in part, actually, just by the nature of revelation.

[25:32] To be a prophet? So, for example, Moses. Aaron and Miriam were jealous of Moses.

[25:44] Moses. In fact, they come at him, they don't like the wife that he chose. This Kishai woman. Either she's Sudanese or perhaps Ethiopian.

[25:56] She's not a Hebrew. We don't like that. And then, in Numbers 12, too, they said, has God indeed spoken only through Moses? He speaks to us, too.

[26:06] And then, in Numbers 12, verse 5, it says, and the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the entrance of the tent. How would you like that?

[26:17] Siblings, you're not getting along and just, God, just, okay, we're going to deal with this now. Called Mary, Aaron and Miriam, worst moment of their lives, and they both came forward.

[26:31] And he said, hear my words, if there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, make myself known to him in a vision. I speak with him in a dream, not so with my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house.

[26:43] With him, I speak mouth to mouth clearly, not in riddles. And he beholds the form of the Lord. Why then, were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?

[26:55] So we learn something here about the nature of prophecy. God spoke to Moses clearly like a friend. All the other Old Testament prophets that followed received revelation from God differently.

[27:09] They got visions, they got dreams, and they got riddles. No wonder they didn't always understand what they were writing. And perhaps this is why we don't read the prophets.

[27:21] Because often they're difficult to understand. You got to really get in and study. But what's wild here is not just the prophets didn't understand what we have, but the angels didn't understand either.

[27:37] As you think about just the beauty, the blessing of the good news, the gospel, it actually says in verse 12, that's something that angels, things into which angels long to look.

[27:50] So think about this. The prophets didn't get this. Angels didn't get this. We understand it. Like we live in the day where Christ has already come and died in our place, resurrected.

[28:06] We have so much more revelation. Angels didn't get this. We fascinate them. Now, we don't scare angels.

[28:16] angels, we will never say to an angel, fear not. It's always the other way around. But we are interesting to them. They're interested in salvation.

[28:31] Like they have the best seats in the house to observe God's story being written. The story of redemption. And it actually says they long to look, they long to understand and this word long to look is to stoop, to stoop and to look into, to look over, to understand more intently.

[28:52] I want a better look is this word. I took our children when they were younger to the horse races because I wanted them to learn about the world.

[29:03] And so we went to the horse races on the west side, Emerald Downs, and we were the only family there not gambling, betting on horses. But we went because my wife has this thing for horses.

[29:14] and I can still remember sitting in the bleachers and there was people kind of peppered throughout the stands and looking at their tickets and we're just like, we're there. And I can remember the gun going off and we're just sitting there.

[29:26] I thought, we're going to have a nice time. We're going to watch some horses run by. And all of a sudden, my wife, she's not here so I can just, I can speak freely. She, I just, I never remember.

[29:40] I cannot forget the scene. She gets up and she just, she, she sprints down the bleachers as close as she could get to the rail where the horses run by.

[29:53] And I'm like, that was weird. And she, and she's, she's peering over and she, and I'm like, what are you doing after, you know, she's like, I wanted to get so close.

[30:07] I wanted to smell the horses as they ran by. Great. She wanted to know what it's like to be a jockey. She will never be one, but she wanted to experience as much as she could.

[30:20] And, and I still have this image of her getting as close as she can. She's peering in looking. That's this word. Angels are peering in. They're like watching us. I mean, we're not like a bunch of, it breaks down at some point.

[30:32] But they're so interested, like, what is this? This salvation thing. They want to get a better look. They're fascinated by us. We're a curiosity. They've never been spiritually dead, aside from the, the fallen angels.

[30:46] We call them demons. They've never been separated and then made new, but they serve the same king we do. We're a curiosity to them.

[30:57] Like, we know the sweetness of salvation in a way they never will. We understand the redeemed life and the beauty of it. We've experienced it. They never will.

[31:09] And we're a curiosity to them. So angels didn't understand. Neither did the prophets fully. And yet, the prophets' ministry was a gift to us.

[31:21] It says, verse 12, it was revealed to them they were serving not themselves, but you. Church, we are blessed because of the revelation and the day in which we live.

[31:33] Amen? Regardless of the difficulty, it is such a, a privilege to have God's Word. And I think we just neglect and we just think, yeah, I got a Bible.

[31:46] I got a bunch of Bibles. But are we people of a book where we're studying, where we're getting into it? That's why I want you in a neighborhood group at 9 a.m. because that's what we're doing in those groups.

[31:57] We're getting in, trying to understand the text. We're so privileged to have God's Word. We're blessed. It says in Matthew 13, 16, but blessed are your eyes for they see and your ears for they hear.

[32:13] For truly I say to you, many prophets and righteous people long to see what you see and did not see it and to hear what you hear and did not hear it.

[32:27] Church, let us not be slack in our study of the text. It's remarkable. This story, written over 1,500 years, and it's true.

[32:43] But we live in the age where we get to have all the authors compiled, all the words, men moved by God's Spirit, and we get to have it now. And we get to live it.

[32:54] We're part of it. And I would say then the third way that the prophets encourage us, they encourage us because they remind us that truth is on our side. Amen?

[33:07] Even if the world around you says Christianity is untrue, Jesus is a fairy tale, know this, truth is on your side. And there's this rich heritage of faith that we are connected with.

[33:25] These are not strange ideas that are being embraced. These words are true. I had a conversation recently with an individual that asked the question, like, why do you read, why do you, why do you guys care about the Bible so much?

[33:42] I thought we care about it because, and we read it so much and we study so much because actually we think it's the best explanation of why things are the way they are.

[33:53] It actually aligns with kind of what we experience in life. It explains things so well. We understand why man is very beautiful but he's also very broken.

[34:04] He was created in God's image. But then he rebelled. It explains life. It's the best explanation of things as they actually are.

[34:18] But in addition to that, we have prophecies in this book that have been fulfilled in the person of Jesus. This book should scare us a little bit. Over 300 prophecies fulfilled in the first advent of Christ?

[34:33] It's remarkable. Isaiah wrote in Isaiah 7, 14, Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and he shall call his name Emmanuel.

[34:44] Fast forward to the Gospels. And by the way, the Gospels, virtually every historian recognizes the Gospels as being authentic to first century literature.

[34:59] And we have here in Matthew 1, Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.

[35:14] Oh. Well, that's magical. Wow. That's so lucky. Man. So glad Jesus was born of a virgin. Whoo! Isaiah 53, 12, Therefore I'll divide him a portion with the many and shall divide the spoil with the strong because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with transgressors.

[35:38] Yet he bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors. And then in Matthew 27, 38, two robbers were crucified with him, one on the right, one on the left. He's numbered with transgressors.

[35:50] Prophecy given, prophecy fulfilled. And by the way, Isaiah wrote those things 700 years before Jesus came. Guys, truth is on our side.

[36:07] I've shared this with you before. Prior to 1947, the oldest Isaiah manuscript we had was a 10th century document. 10th century A.D. document.

[36:17] The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has given us now a complete copy, not the original, but a copy of Isaiah that's like a thousand years younger.

[36:31] It's dated to 125 B.C. That's 150 years prior to the crucifixion. So read Isaiah, knowing these words were penned before they occurred.

[36:44] Isaiah 53, 5, He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities. Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds were healed.

[36:55] That's remarkable that our God is like, I will give of myself. Do you understand that every other world religion, every other false God demands a sacrifice?

[37:09] What is unique about Christianity? Our God became the sacrifice. That's the epicenter of Christianity, the crucifixion of God. And then His resurrection, praise God.

[37:23] And if the words of the Old Testament prophets have come about, why would we not also trust the promises within the New Testament to draw encouragement from, friends? Believe.

[37:35] We're in this story war. This is what God says is true. Will I trust it? Will I believe it? 2 Corinthians 5. If anyone's in Christ, they're a new creation.

[37:47] I think I did something. I just, no, you're new. You're new. But I... How about this one?

[37:58] Let's look ahead. 1 Corinthians 15, 53. This perishable body must put on the imperishable, and the mortal body must put on the immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory.

[38:19] Death is swallowed up by life. And then Paul goes on and says, death, where is your sting? For the unbeliever, death is a sting.

[38:31] When the serpent bites, there's venom there, there's fangs. But for the believer, it's just gummy. There's nothing. Scorpion, no sting. Can you...

[38:42] It's such a... Death... There's no sting. And there's a day when we are going to put on the imperishable. Immortality.

[38:55] Like, death is swallowed up in victory. Death is transition home into the presence of God. Church, that's wonderful news. That's wonderful news. Like, death doesn't hold its sting.

[39:08] That reunion's promised. I mean, do you know what this means? It means that today, if you go to a funeral for a believer, that person that died in Christ is actually conscious.

[39:23] They're not present, but they're far more alive than actually the rest of us as we continue to live in the land of the dying.

[39:34] Church, be encouraged. I hope you're encouraged and I would suggest, man, if you've not spent time reading the prophets, go back and let them encourage you.

[39:45] These were individuals that were courageous, they were faithful, they endured, and I think we can draw encouragement from them, my friends. Amen?

[39:57] Father, we thank You for Your Word and Lord, it's so interesting to me that we can draw encouragement from a very unlikely place. And yet, Lord, we love the fact that even as we discussed in our neighborhood groups that we are part of this beautiful building, this metaphor of the church, that we're this living temple, living stones being placed one on top of the other, next to, on top of, and Lord, there are some that are maybe a few stories below that have already been faithful, that have run their race, that we can draw encouragement from.

[40:34] And I pray, Lord, that we would, that we would draw encouragement from those that were faithful, that were courageous, that actually walked in very difficult. And maybe that's enough for us to say, today I can do that again.

[40:47] Today I can be courageous in front of my coworkers. I can engage in discipling my kids, be faithful to that task, to speak on your behalf to them.

[41:00] Lord, we want to be a people used of you. Our challenge is we don't want it to cost. And so, Lord, thank you for the example of the prophets. We love you, Jesus, and commit our day and our week to you.

[41:13]  It's in your name we pray. Amen.