When Life Doesn't Match the Promise | Stay Close

😔 What do you do when you believe in God… but your life doesn't look anything like you expected?

Sometimes being a Christian can feel like being forced to eat the grossest food imaginable. You know you're supposed to trust God, but the circumstances in front of you are hard to swallow.

The book of Hebrews was written to Christians who were struggling with exactly that. They were suffering, discouraged, and tempted to give up.

But Hebrews reminds us that Jesus is greater—and God's promises are still true.

In this message from the Stay Close series, we look at why we can't judge Jesus by the brokenness of the world around us.

🌎 This world isn't what God intended it to be.
💔 Sin has broken what was meant for good.
✝️ Jesus entered that brokenness Himself.
🙏 And God's promises remain trustworthy.

If you're struggling to understand why a good God allows hard things, this message is for you.

You can trust God even when you don't understand what He's doing.

You can stay close to Jesus even when life hurts.

And you don't have to pretend everything is okay to come to Him.

At Fierce Church, we're Helping You Walk with Jesus Step-By-Step because The Best U is in Community.

💬 What's one promise from God you're holding onto in a difficult season?

#Christianity #GodsPromises #Hebrews #Jesus #ChristianEncouragement #Faith #FierceChurch

Transcript

The World’s Grossest Foods

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Before we start, I thought it might be appropriate to walk through some of the grossest tasting foods in the world. Are you ready? Um believe it or not, people like online magazines make lists of this kind of thing. And so let's just go through a few. One of them is called Hakari. It's fermented Greenland shark, and it's highly poisonous unless you ferment it. And even when you do, I haven't had it, but apparently it just has a horrible stench of ammonia. And but if you ever just want to try something really disgusting, I suggest some fermented Greenland shark. This next one, I had to give you the most PG version of an image for it, okay? Because if you go look this up, dude, you will you might hurl or you might like you just might feel icky after you see it. So this is fermented duck egg. Um now I am not so, yeah, that's the pretty picture. Um if you if you go to Google Images, dude, be be ready. I just discourage you from even going at all because it's just what you think. You're just eating the fetus of a duck, like beak, feathers, like formed like, dude, it's like yeah, I ain't dissing anybody's culture, but yeah, man, that's that's strange. Apparently, it also tastes really bad. You think? Yeah, it does. Now, you could, if you had to try one of them, you could try one of those, or you could hold out for maggot cheese. Do you know about maggot cheese? Yeah, it's just cheese, but it's not done until the fly larvae kind of turn it into almost liquid. That's when it's done. That's maggot cheese. So um, I don't know if you've ever tried any of those. If you have, hey, praise God for you. But I would think it would be really, really hard. Jesus tasted something really, really hard.

Why Faith Still Feels Hard

SPEAKER_00 1:50

We're gonna come back to that in the middle of the message, but we're in a series called Stay Close. And we're gonna spend most of the fall in this series. This is a series on the book of Hebrews. And some of you remember, we talked about it last week. This is written to a group of people that were probably a lot like the fictional character we introduced last weekend, which is Demetrius. These are folks that have maybe a Jewish background, but because they've become a Christian, they're undergoing significant difficulty. They are now maybe kicked out of their job and they have to take the lowest paying jobs. They're socially ostracized. They have a lot of shame that they're taking with them. They might have even lost property. They're getting probably very fatigued, and they're thinking about maybe I'll just sneak out the back. Maybe this Jesus thing is just too tough. Maybe I shouldn't do this because the price is too high. And as they think about going back, a pastor writes the book of Hebrews. It's really just a sermon. And he writes it to all the Christians in the area. And he says, Hey, just so you know, I know that it's hard, but there's no going back. There's no reverting. God has had the season of you know, sacrifice and the law and the temple, and that was a season. And if you were alive in that season, that was what you should do. But now God has moved on, and he's moved on to the Jesus phase. And Jesus is so important, he's a greater thing than what came before him. He's so important, he is the image of the Father. Like if you see Jesus, you know exactly what the Father is like. He is greater than any angel, he's greater than any human, he is just the greatest, and he paid for all of your sins, and he's over sovereign over all the world. Now, if you would have been Demetrius, or you might have been one of his friends, or the folks that he rolled with in church, you might have said, Hey man, I hear that. Like I hear that, and that that's good news, but even so, if he's like if that's such a great deal, why is it still so hard? Like, why am I still in this situation? I believe that he's really superior and he's really reigning, but why is there still so much injustice? And why am I still stressed out? And why is there still disease? And why are there still enemies? Why is my life not going the way that I thought? Why am I tempted like I am? And why is there still death?

Hebrews 2 And Psalm 8

SPEAKER_00 4:13

So let's pick it up in Hebrews chapter 2. We're gonna skip verse 5 and go right on to verse 6. For somewhere in the scripture it says, now, this pastor is quoting an Old Testament Psalm, it's Psalm 8, he says, very familiar to the folks of the time, what is man that you should think of him, and the Son of Man that you should care for him? For a little while, you made him lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and honor. You gave him authority over all things. Now, the Jews of the time would have said, Yeah, that's 100%, that is what God has done for mankind. That's man. And it was true, it is about man. But it's also weird when you read closely, because you gave him authority over all things. Some of your translations would say, You subjected all things to his authority. Everything is under his authority, everything is he's ruling over all of it. And it seems like, well, I know man is like he's kind of ruling the world, but he's not. Like the world isn't doing what man says. And yet he goes on. Now, when it says all things, it means nothing is left out. But here now here's the rub. But we have not yet seen all this happen. So he's over all things, and all things are supposed to be subject to him. He's supposed to be ruling, everything's supposed to do it exactly what he wants, and yet it's not happening. That's not what we see. We don't see that. Verse 9. But we do see Jesus. And Jesus is the true man, Psalm 8 is about. And he tells us right here, who for a little while was made lower than the angels. That's his incarnation. That's when Jesus chooses to, for a brief time, shed his glory and not choose to access all of his God powers, and he's born of a virgin. He's made, he's higher than the angels, but for a little while he's made lower than the angels. And now, first he was lowered, now he's crowned with glory and honor. Because he suffered death for us, yes, by God's grace, Jesus tasted death for everyone in all the world. And it was only right that God, who made everything and for whom everything was made, should bring his many children into glory through the suffering of Jesus. God made him a perfect leader, one fit to bring them into their salvation. We're gonna skip down to verse 14. Because God's children are human beings made of flesh and blood, Jesus also became flesh and blood by being born in human form. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the devil who had the power of death. Only in this way could he deliver those us who have lived all their lives as slaves to the fear of dying. We know that Jesus came to help the descendants of Abraham, not to help the angels. Therefore, it was necessary for Jesus to be in every respect like us, his brothers and sisters, so that he could be our merciful and faithful high priest before God. Then he could offer a sacrifice that would take away the sins of the people. Since he himself has gone, here we go, through the suffering and temptation, he is able to help. Somebody say he's able to help. He's able to help us when we're tempted. Tempted in the face of despair, tempted in the face of the devil, tempted in the face of death. See, Jesus was victorious, but it was through, he left us the recipe. It was through humiliation and suffering that he was victorious. So Demetrius and the crew, they're asking, why is there all this suffering? Why am I so humiliated in front of others? And he's saying, Well, that's actually the way that Jesus brought about the victory. It doesn't look like everything's resolved right now. We do not yet see everything, though. Everything is subject subject to him, really. He really is an authority over everything, but we don't see it all yet. What we see is Jesus. If it's looking hard, take a look at Jesus. That means, those of you who are Christ followers, we don't deny the fact that there are really hard things. We don't deny the fact that there's injustice right now. We don't deny the fact that we are like, even though humans are like the highest species on the planet, there's a whole lot that is not going right for us. We're not controlling it well. We don't deny the fact that death still happens and cancer breaks out and people hurt each other and murder each other. We don't deny that that's happening. What we do remind ourselves of, though, and the passage reminds us, is that Jesus is currently reigning and ruling. We just don't see it yet. We just don't see it yet. We we own the resurrection does not explain every tragedy now, but everything is still subject to Jesus right now.

The Unfinished World Problem

SPEAKER_00 9:00

I don't know if this has ever happened to any of you. Maybe you were having some construction done. Maybe you tried to do some construction yourself, or you had something, some kind of project, and maybe in the home, you you've got the plan laid out. Oh man, it's gonna look so good. And then your friend, the construction person, shows up at the house and it's they're there in the vision with you, yeah, it's gonna go so great. And then they drop a bunch of stuff in your house, and then you don't see them for six months, and the stuff is just in your house, or it's in your yard. It's all there, and maybe even the dust is there, and it started and it's working on, and the plan is there, but then what is there does not match the plan. Like what happened? It's a little bit like that right now. We see Jesus, and Jesus says, Yo, I really am reigning and ruling, but you look around, it doesn't look like it totally yet. But I believe, see, the construction project does get done though. It eventually gets done, at least in Jesus' version, maybe not for all of us, but in Jesus' version, it gets done. He really is reigning, and someday we're going to see it. We do not yet see everything, but we see Jesus. So what one of our challenges is don't judge Jesus by this unfinished world. Don't judge Jesus by the unfinished world. Rather, by faith, judge the unfinished world by the glory and the power and the awesomeness and the majesty of Jesus. See, someday he's gonna wrap it all up and it's gonna be just like he wanted it. And then you'll see it. But right now, what do we do? We go through difficulty, we go through pain, we go through temptation, we even go through death in faith, in confidence that Jesus really is the king. How does he help us? We said that he helped us. How does he do it?

Restored Royalty And Defiant Hope

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Only a suffering savior could, number one, restore royalty and dominion. This is trippy, dude. In fact, if you think it's trippy and exciting, I hope that you give me a lot of amens. Because it really is. Some of us haven't even heard this, but it's real. Restore royalty and dominion. You gave him authority over all things. So that's mankind, and it's also really Jesus. Now, when it says all things, it means nothing left out. See, here's what happened. Guys, we messed up the planet. Like we did. It's not just social uh powers, it's not just that people don't have enough somewhere, it's not that there's just some greedy cabal somewhere that's kind of like making everything bad. Sin in us has caused the world to be the way it was. God made us to rule. But because we allowed, and God warned us about it, he's like, dude, don't do this. It's gonna jack up the whole world. But then we we did it anyway. And so now sin is loose in the world, causing all of this difficulty and hardship and confusion. And Jesus comes along to help us, and he does it in two ways. One, he mourns with us, he like owns this is bad, and this hurts. When Lazarus was dead, Jesus looked at that death and wept because he knew I'm not denying the fact that this is death is bad, like death is an enemy. This isn't how it was supposed to be. This is what how humans were supposed to rule. But then also, he wants us to have confident defiance. Do you have any confident defiance today? It's confident defiance that yes, things are bad, but this is not the way that they're staying because Jesus restored royalty and dominion to us. Yes, our sin brought us into slavery. Yes, our sin brought about death. Yes, our sin brought about curse on us and everybody we've ever seen. And yes, we're frustrated. Because, like, like, do you get it, dude? There's something in you and I that was made to be royalty and to rule in good ways. That means everything on the planet was supposed to cooperate with us. And yet we now we reach and we grasp and we're trying to like control stuff, and like so much of the time, like that didn't work at all. It's not obeying my will. This planet is like against me in some ways. Like, I'm trying to work the system, but the system pushes back. I'm trying to help somebody, and then people get in the way and make me regret that I even tried. The planet is pushing back against our rulership, and that's not the way it's supposed to be, and we can feel it. And it feels so tragic because there's something in you that was actually made to rule in good ways. And in Christ, if you've trusted Jesus Christ, you will. This will be undone, this will be reversed, it will happen. See, Jesus put the beat down on the enemy. He's the second Adam, he's the real man, he's the rightful king. And now he shares his authority over everybody over everything with his people, but we can't see it yet. All we can see is Jesus. But his plan is to share this with his family, his family that he bought back through his blood. He wants to share this future world that is completely restored and renewed where everything is cooperative, nothing pushes back. We reign like the kings and queens that we were supposed to be. And there's no injustice, and there's no death. None of that's happening. Maybe a way you can you could visualize it is this picture of an abandoned community lot. If you look at this picture, you can see there are pieces of life there. There are things that there's some green, and there's some there's some things humans did. They created buildings, and there's even some weird old barrels and a sofa there. There's things that are like they're pieces of culture, but everything's damaged, and everything's rotting, and everything's not what it maybe should have been or could have been. That is a picture, if we could just go there figuratively, that's a picture of what sin has done to the world. Whatever we make, whatever we do, it's still like if you could see it spiritually, it's like that. No matter how cool the tech is, no matter how far uh we progress in technology or culture or you know, how we think, whatever, the the sin is still in the world. That's what it is, and that's what we build. And it's pushing back and it's saying, no, dude, you guys are supposed to be rulers, but you jacked it up. And now this is all you can get. And and dear hearts, those who might believe the myth that we're just gonna progress ourselves into utopia, we won't. We won't. It will not. In fact, I've read the ending of the book. We don't. And we couldn't. Because no matter what we make out there, the problem is still in here. This is what's keeping us from ruling in the right ways.

Creation’s Renewal And Real Grief

SPEAKER_00 16:00

In fact, Romans 8 20 says this against its will, all creation was subjected to God's curse. Not because of him, but because of us. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God's children in glorious freedom from death and decay. Guys, even the very universe, the things around you, there's gonna come a day when God doesn't abandon it. He doesn't just like chuck it on the fire. He doesn't like, okay, let's start over. No, no, no. God's way too cool for that, he's way too powerful for that, he doesn't give up, he's just gonna renew the whole thing. So maybe, and now this looks like a very AI picture. It is an AI picture, but this maybe is a little bit more in the spirit what the redeemed planet will look like. And check it out. There's a lot more life, but even the things that humans make, now they're not corrupt. See, I believe right now, if we study the book of Revelation, if we study heaven, we can see in heaven right now there's still culture happening. Humans are still building and doing and working and all the awesome things that they were originally supposed to do. It's still all happening. But there, it's untainted by sin. It's untainted by selfishness, it's untainted by the effects of sin. Because God has already reclaimed the hearts of his people there completely and even reclaimed, gotten rid of their old sinful body. But he's it's not just death that's gonna do that. Someday God is gonna do that to the whole doggone planet. I thought somebody would be more excited about it than this. So it's not just pollution, dude. It's not like we just we do, we want to take care of the environment, we want to get rid of pollution, but it it shows up in in much more fealable ways sometimes. So when you experience discrimination, that's it happening. That's the wrong ruling happening. When you have lack, when everything is scarce, that's the wrong ruling happening. When you've got someone who is you love very much is slowly disappearing in their mind. Their memories are going in such a way that you don't even know if it's really still even them because there's so much of it that is gone. Even though that's happening, God says, I promise I'm gonna undo this curse one day. And if this person distrusts your Christ, you're gonna see them again, and they're gonna be fine and dandy, and they're never gonna malfunction again. We don't deny it. What we do is we mourn it and we meet it with defiant confidence. Yes, it is sad, but baby, this is not where we're staying. And you gotta do that in your life, dude. When when you get the beat down one day at work, when you're like your whole week was just ugh, there has to be something in you says, I received this, this is hard, but this is not where I'm staying. This is the you gotta have hope, dude. That's why Jesus tells us about this stuff. You gotta have hope. This is not where I go, this is not who I am. What's really happening, you and dude, no one can say this for you. You've got to grab it. I am a king or I am a queen, and I was made to rule a heavenly place that is not like this one. And I will feel much more at home there. And every day will be awesome and fantastic and blow my mind. So I am here on mission temporarily, but baby, it is almost over, and I'm gonna be I'm gonna be out of here. And I cannot wait. We do not yet see everything, we just see Jesus.

Temptation, Condemnation, And The Scammer

SPEAKER_00 19:31

Only a suffering savior could restore royalty and dominion, and only a suffering savior could defeat Satan. Verse 14, and only by dying could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. See, Satan, he's still tempts and he still condemns. That's largely the power of death that Satan has. Okay, it's not that he's like the Lord of death and he decides who lives or dies. God does that. But just like when Adam and Eve were in the garden, what did Satan do to get them killed? He tempted, said, if you if you'll just do this, everything will be fine. And God had already told him, No, if you do this, you will die. And so he tempts. But many of you know this, he also condemns. It's his it's like his two-step plan, man. So he will talk you into something and be like, hey, why don't you do this? Why don't you do this? And the second that you've done it, and it'll be like, dude, you can't return to God now. I mean, look, look at you. You can't bring that to him. He's just gonna reject you, dude. He's just gonna punish you. You're just gonna have to pay for this sin again and again and again. You better run, that's what you better do. And Jesus comes along, and because he dies in our place, he cancels the whole condemnation thing and he helps us in the temptation thing. That's what he does. The devil tells you there's no escape, and Jesus walks up to the devil and he takes his elbow and he like pushes it right in his throat, and like the devil's eyes pop way out like this, and then he falls. Yeah, that's that's what Jesus does to the devil. He takes away the condemnation, but he also helps us in the temptation. Dude, I'm so thankful that Jesus doesn't leave me alone in the temptation. You know what he really does? He puts on my back and on your back, he puts a robe of righteousness. He says, devil, quit messing around with my people. I don't know if you if if you've if you ever gotten like a scam caller. I sometimes worry, okay, don't take this the wrong way, all right? I worry about the old people sometimes because they just believe every email and every you know text that they get that's like, hey man, you're you'll get one that says, your account's in trouble. Hey, this is the fraud department, your account's in trouble. You need to click on this link right now and then give us your social security number so that we can secure your account and make sure your money gets where it's supposed to go. And then you call up your bank or you look online, no, my money's fine. There's no That was a scammer. That was someone telling me, someone had taken all my stuff, but my stuff is right there. The scammer doesn't have access to my account. And check it out. The devil doesn't have access to your account. See, your account, if you're in Christ, is filled up with the credits of Jesus. Like you have all the merit of Jesus, you have all the favor of Jesus. You have all the righteousness, all the obedience that Jesus ever had. That's all in your account. And the devil can say, tell you, oh man, you're condemned now. You can't go back now. He's mad at you now. You say, devil, you're just a scammer. You don't have access to my account. You can't affect it at all. You're just a liar. Click. That's all you got to do. He doesn't have access to your account. Jesus gave it. The devil can't take it away. Now here's what's powerful. Even when we find ourselves in a sin loop, even when we we keep stumbling. For those that are born of the Spirit of God and have that Holy Spirit in them and that is grieved when we sin and push, puts a desire in us, I can't stay here. And we even can become very, very sad because we keep sinning in particular ways. Like, dude, if you keep going with Jesus, sin should make you sad. Like you get sadder about it because you realize how much you're hurting him. But then Jesus comes along and he says, It's not only that I take away the guilt, I'm gonna help you in the temptation. See, I've been where you are. I've personally, Jesus says, I've been where you are. I experienced all the temptations, yet I'm without sin. And I can help you, I can empower you. And even if you jack it up, even if you get in a lust cycle, even if you get in a fear cycle, even if that happens, he makes this promise from Philippians 1 6. God who began the good work within you will continue his work until it's finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns. He's gonna keep on doing it, dude. You and I are gonna do this. Is what the reformers and the Puritans called it. We're gonna mortify the flesh, and Jesus is going to sanctify us. But then we're gonna get to the end of our life and we're not entirely sanctified, and he's just gonna deliver us entirely. Meaning that sin nature is slowly going away because Jesus defeated the devil on the cross. Even though it looks bad, we look to Jesus and we walk in faith. Oh no, baby, he's got me. Somebody say, He's got me. Slap your neighbor and say, No, baby, he's got me. Lord, I'm asking for you to like, if you got a bucket of caffeine up there, would you just throw it on my people right now? Here's the last one.

Jesus Tastes Death For Us

SPEAKER_00 24:36

Only a suffering savior could defeat death. Only a suffering savior could defeat death. See, even though we've already inherited eternal life, death still haunts, death still threatens, death is still fearful. And yet again, Jesus asks us to face it with a confident defiance. It's not that it's not real, but for those who are in Christ, death becomes something else. Death becomes a transition. Death becomes a place of, I'm gonna go from the lesser to the greater, I'm gonna go to the slightly blessed to completely blessed. I'm gonna go from some bondage to entire freedom. I'm gonna go from a place of darkness and not really understanding what's going on to a place of complete light where I finally really understand what's going on. By God's grace, Jesus tasted death for everyone in all the world. Let's say it's life or death, dude. One of those three foods, the shark poison bites, the um maggot cheese, or the nasty fetus egg. You've gotta eat one or you die. And you don't have to just like taste it. You gotta like put it in your mouth and you're gonna taste it for six hours. That's how long Jesus was on the cross. Like you're gonna hold it in your mouth. That's how long you gotta taste it. And then Jesus comes along and says, I'll taste it. You sit down, I'll I'll take this. I'm gonna taste how bad it is, and I'm gonna taste it as a man. So he's not he's not coming as a superman. It's not like when Jesus was on the cross, it was like, Well, I mean, you know, guys, I'm God, so this doesn't really hurt me. No, he took our entire nature upon him so it hurt. And it wasn't even just the pain, it was the sorrow with it. It was the sorrow starting in the garden where he's aware the wrath of God, it's not even just like death, it's the wrath of God is going to be poured out on me, and my heavenly Father is going to turn his back on me because that's what he must do to sin. That's the sorrow that he experienced as you're in my substitute. He tasted death for each one of us. And because of that, my my dear friend, if you are in Christ, you'll never really die. You'll never really experience the eternal condemnation that comes from death. Instead, it will just be a transition. Instead, it will just be the blink of an eye. Instead, you'll just suddenly be with Jesus. It'll it'll be like you've just graduated. You know, it's it's the difference between the baby experiencing the womb and the baby experiencing the earth. That's how different it will be. It's a little bit like a graduation, like a commencement. When there's a commencement, maybe you experience this. You're graduating now, you're a little sad because you're leaving friends behind and experiences behind, but you're also going somewhere else. Ideally, life is gonna get a whole lot different and better and higher and cooler. I'm not trying to compare like a funeral to a commencement because it's way heavier, but it's still a little bit like that in the sense of it is sad, but you are going someplace better by far. And so Jesus comes along and he kills our enemy death, and it's still happening, but for you it's going to be different. I'd like to invite the band back up at this point. What

Mourning With Confidence In Christ

SPEAKER_00 28:08

do we do with death? We mourn it because it's real. Jesus mourned it, but we mourn it with the defiant confidence. That means, dude, if you have had a miscarriage or two, like Kenzie and I have, there is a mourning for those lives, but there's also when the devil comes to try to give make you give up hope and all despair, say, devil, I trust my Jesus. I don't see my babies right now, but I see Jesus, and I trust that he is all wise and all good, and they are in heaven right now. Or if you are in the hospital and you are afraid of dying alone, and that death is telling you, you're gonna die all alone. Can I tell you, if you're in Christ, you are not alone, you're not going to die alone. Your master is gonna be there to shepherd you all the way through. He's not going to abandon you. Here's the thing Jesus wants. It would be easy, guys, if the whole world was transformed right now and all death was gone. It'd be super easy to trust God because it'd all be right there, right in front of your face. It'd all be sight. Jesus wants to be trusted while there is no sight of anything but Him. He's saying, I want you to so be my guy or girl that you'll say, My God will not fail, though the world around me crumbles, though he slay me, yet I will trust the Lord. So you and I have got two options. We can look to what we see and panic and walk in slavery to fear. Or we can see him who is presently high and lifted up and has subjugated everything to himself. And know I'm not experiencing the entire reality right now, but I definitely will. Because we don't yet see everything. But if you will look with the eyes of your heart, you will see Jesus.

Prayer And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 30:20

Let's bow our heads. Lord, I want to pray for those especially who are going through something really hard right now. God, there's ones who they've got a lot of fear. Maybe of loss, maybe that it's endless, maybe of death. I'm asking you to give a clearer picture of Jesus. Lord, the ones who are discouraged by just the state of the world, I'm asking you that you give them a clearer picture of Jesus and the confident defiance that it is this way, but it will not stay this way. God, train our hearts to be fixed on heaven and everything you're going to do in our future, more than fixed on right now. In Jesus' name. Amen. All right, folks, that's all the time we have, but thank you so much for listening to this sermon. If you got a lot out of it, feel free to share this with somebody who might need it. Also, there's a ton more content on our website, on our YouTube channel, on our Instagram channel, on our TikTok channel. Feel free to check all that kind of thing out. Also, if you're interested in leadership type stuff, go ahead and check out our other podcast or any other blogs or videos or anything over at BibleLeadership.com. And whatever else you do, make sure that you click on the big thing.