SPEAKER_01 0:04

This is the Kennesaw First Podcast. Life built on truth.

SPEAKER_07 0:10

What's up, guys? Welcome back to the Truth Behind the Sermon podcast. We're finally all back together again.

SPEAKER_06 0:19

Yeah, we're here.

SPEAKER_04 0:21

I got a question. Why do you always say what's up, guys? What's what's that? I don't know. I just just do it. It's a nervous habit. Is it?

SPEAKER_07 0:29

No, I'm never gonna do it again. When the ball in his head. When you miss, when you miss what's up, guys, next week, just know.

SPEAKER_05 0:37

Well, what's up with these guys is they've all come in with their sports gear on, and here I am in a regular shirt. So uh anyway, uh you got the stroves on today.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Yeah, I got the Astros on today. It's the second greatest day of the year. It's opening day for the MLB.

SPEAKER_07 0:53

Yeah, but what's the greatest day of the year?

SPEAKER_00 0:55

To me, it's Christmas.

SPEAKER_07 0:57

See, I would have argued that maybe last week was the second greatest day of the year. Because the first Thursday of March Madness is by far my favorite day of the year.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

I would also like to say that I am officially on the record talking about Texas getting annihilated, and now they're in the Sweet 16. So I guess I don't know ball, but no clue. I'm just as confused as you.

SPEAKER_05 1:19

We're hanging around the office this morning and talking about Nebraska and Vandy. That was a that was a heartburner.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

That was a fantastic game.

SPEAKER_05 1:27

It was a fantastic game, and if that one ball would have just rolled just less than an inch. Yeah. The other way, yeah, who bracket wouldn't be destroyed. Nebraska. Nebraska won.

SPEAKER_07 1:41

Man. I guess I was just busy ministering to people last night, so I didn't get the I'm just confused.

SPEAKER_05 1:51

He's behind in the times actually. Yeah, that was last weekend. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway. Oh well. Here we go.

SPEAKER_07 1:58

Nebraska was, and Vandy was last weekend, wasn't it? I was like, there wasn't a game last night, so I was very confused. March Madness is like the one tournament I keep up with all year.

SPEAKER_05 2:07

There you go. Anyway, we'll see. Still still pulling for Duke, who's who's on the Duke train. Me and Trey are. Absolutely. All right. You guys are Arizona. I'm checking.

SPEAKER_07 2:18

For anybody who is playing against Duke. Pretty much ever. Um, I actually picked Florida. Uh, so my bracket exploded last week. Not happening. Um, yeah, so now I think I've got uh Arizona winning it now. Uh, but they're gonna beat Michigan State in the championship. That's what's gonna happen. I can't pick against Tom Ezo. So Todd let you down, man. Yeah, yeah, no, it is what it is. So uh so we're jumping in. Uh we're continuing the Easter series look again. Pastor Perry, you spend some time talking about the mountains uh in this sermon. So as we're warming up, getting going, uh, if you're going to the mountains, guys, what is your one activity you've got to do? Like you don't feel like you've been in the mountains if you don't do this thing.

SPEAKER_05 3:08

Okay, I love I have a Jeep, so I love to take my Jeep over and ride up to Cade's Cove. And we just we just did that like last year, and it's when all the bears were out. Yeah, it was kind of fun because here we are driving underneath bears with the roof off, you know. It's like I guess that bear, if he fell out of the tree, we would be probably, you know, having an experience. But uh, you think you think about things like that, but but I love to ride up to Cage Cove and have the top down on the Jeep. It's like it's like just glory day for me. I just love that. So that's my favorite thing.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

I guess I really haven't spent much time in the mountains. I come from the flatlands, you know. Uh the mountain in our area was uh the top of the bridge, I guess. So uh, but I have been up to the mountains, uh, like in Tennessee. We went one time on a vacation, and um also on our honeymoon, we went to a little bit more of a hilly area up in uh Oklahoma. But one of my favorite things is um getting a good cup of coffee, finding a good view, whether it's at a cabin that we're at or we're we're out somewhere, um, and either watching the sunrise or the sunset, and just nothing. Like no sound, no music, no talking, no nothing, and just appreciating and and recognizing like, hey man, this is not not to brag, but my father in heaven made this. Yeah. And uh so that that's what I really appreciate about the mountains. You know, like even moving here, when we make that one curve uh on on one of the roads, I can't even remember what it's called, but Kennesaw Mountain just kind of comes out of the out of the distance, you know. I I still am just like, we live here, like that's so cool. Uh, and there's also this one place on 75 going towards Ackworth where you kind of hit the top of a hill and you can start to kind of see all of the hills and mountains in the background, and and I'm just like, man, I love this.

SPEAKER_05 5:28

You feel like you live in the forest because you know, when I was in Texas, they would always say, Hey, this forest is up here, and I would drive past a grub mesquite tree. Four trees. I'm like, what are you talking about? That's what you put on your smoker. But anyway, that's great. I'm glad you enjoy Kennestall Mountain. It's uh go run up that thing sometime. You'll really enjoy it.

SPEAKER_00 5:54

I'll try that.

SPEAKER_05 5:57

I've done that once. This actually is uh fun coming down. That's all I gotta say.

SPEAKER_07 6:02

That is true. It's probably much more fun coming down than going up.

SPEAKER_03 6:06

Yeah, Trey, what you got, man? I think I'm gonna opt out of this question. You don't like the mountains. You don't like the mountains? It's not that I don't like the mountains. I just I don't really go to the mountains, so I can't honestly answer that question without creating something.

SPEAKER_07 6:21

So let's fix that, Trey. My new mission in life is to get Trey in the mountains. I feel a bro camping trip coming on.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_07 6:30

Yeah. Wait a minute. I'll go to the mountains in a hotel room. I said nothing about camping. Go glamping.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

There we go.

SPEAKER_07 6:39

Mary's gonna camper. We'll do a podcast on location. Yeah, there we go. We can definitely do that.

SPEAKER_05 6:47

We can give you an experience.

SPEAKER_07 6:49

Uh so I grew up going to the mountains. Um, we you know, living in Greenville, we weren't necessarily in the mountains, we were in the foothills, kind of similar to the Kennesaw area geographically. Um, and so it was just something we did. Me and my dad all the time were in the mountains. Uh, so I love riding on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Um especially in the fall, obviously, getting to see the colors, getting to see all the leaves uh in the trees, getting to see animals that you just don't see around here. Um, you know, is awesome. But there's nothing like uh sitting at an overlook, and like you said, Jason, just being able to look. And when I see the mountains, I think of how big God is and I think of how creative He is, right? To know that like the hills and the waves that you see in the mountains uh were intentional, right? It's just such a reminder. They're like, God, you crafted this on purpose. Yeah, yeah, this is so cool. Now, if you get the chance to go out west and see like the Rockies, man, that's just impressive. It's I mean, I haven't been to the Tetons, but I've been to Yellowstone. Uh, and it, I mean, you just look around and you're like, man, I've never been in the mountains before. Like, I've been in the mountains my whole life. But when I got out there, I was like, I've never been in these mountains to those levels.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

There's levels to this. So there's a very important mountain that we that we see here uh this week. It's the Mount of Olives. And uh it really is the the place where a lot of very important events in the Bible happen. And um we we see here in uh the the passage that we're studying this week the the triumphal entry of Jesus into uh into Jerusalem. And uh so it's really interesting, Pastor Perry, how you have highlighted some parallels and some contrasts between the triumphal entry uh here outlined and the second coming of Christ. So can you take us through that a little bit?

SPEAKER_05 8:51

Yeah, both of them are going to be um, you know, when you think about it scripturally, both of those events are a for sure a mount of olive experience. Because when you see Jesus coming in on Palm Sunday, he's coming down that mountain, down the Palm Sunday trail, which I've walked many times, which is amazing to do that. And then you see Jesus when you read in the book of Zechariah, you learn that Jesus is going to come back in his second coming, and he's gonna place his foot up on Mount Olivet. And same place where he also ascended to heaven, uh, he's going to put his hand foot down there. And when he does, actually what they were shouting for on Palm Sunday will happen at the second triumphal entry as opposed to what happened in the first triumphal entry. So uh what they were saying is save now. They wanted complete salvation, they wanted uh, you know, uh to overthrow the governments of Rome, they wanted to see true peace be ushered in, and that will come if you study eschatology, that will come, of course, when Jesus Christ comes again. And so that's um that's really kind of the kind of the starting point for the message is to recognize that uh beauty of the first triumphal entry and then ultimately the second triumphal entry that will happen at Jesus' second coming.

SPEAKER_03 10:35

So, for my first question, um, as you gave us a brief introduction to your uh sermon, uh why is it important that Jesus came first as a suffering king before returning as a reigning king?

SPEAKER_07 10:49

Man, what a great question, Trey. Um a lot of that comes down to the fact that that Jesus had to come to reconcile us, right? Um his purpose in the incarnation, right, and becoming man was to serve as our sufficient sacrifice. In the theological word uh world, we use the word propitiation. Um, and so if you see our students, ask them what propitiation means because they get that word a lot from me. Um, but Jesus came because God's wrath had to be satisfied, right? And before God's wrath to be satisfied, there had to be uh a sacrifice that satisfied the requirements of the law. The law required death as payment for sin. And so the Israelites for for generations and generations had to prepare these sacrifices and had very specific requirements of the animals that could be sacrificed uh to make uh pardon for sin. Jesus comes and suffers that death, suffers that penalty for us to pay that price and pay that wrath that we could be restored. That had to happen before he then comes as a reigning king, as you said, uh to rule over the people that he reconciled. Right, to to basically uh one was the the purchase, the other is the is the redemption, right? Uh the coming back to pick up, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

Yeah, and uh the atonement um of Jesus is you know a huge thing of of why he came, you know. God's part of God's plan was that he wanted to reconcile with us before he he could reign. And why? I don't know. We don't understand. That's part of God's sovereignty. But man, I'm just so thankful that Jesus Christ did that. Uh, you know, I'm I'm always drawn to when he's when he's praying that prayer right before he's arrested, he's saying, Father, will you let this cup pass right? Like he he his human state, he didn't he didn't want that to happen, but he knew and God knew that in his sovereignty that was part of the plan. And um it it happened, but we still we live in this present hope. We live with a we live with a with a past thankfulness and a and a past reconciliation, but we live with a present hope that he is coming again and that he is going to reign. And so, man, I just really love the way that you broke that down real quick.

SPEAKER_03 13:33

So let's talk about our expectations versus God's plan. Um we all have our expectations to where we feel we should be, or what we even think God should do for us, and we don't have that right. But my question is, where do you see people today misunderstanding who Jesus is or what they expect him to do in their lives?

SPEAKER_05 13:57

That is such a great question again. And what people often they misunderstand is they misunderstand the very nature of how God addresses evil. We have evil in the world, and what they misunderstand is they misunderstand that they're like, Well, God, why don't you just get rid of the devil? Why did you even have the devil in the first place? Uh, why didn't you just annihilate him and his evil from the very beginning? And uh, I guess the same question comes along, uh, which I recently heard a preacher talking about. He said, Well, what about your evil? What about the fact that if God said, I'm gonna annihilate all evil at midnight tonight, would you exist at 1201? And the answer would be obviously in ourselves, the answer would be no. And so what God did for us is because he's a holy God, God chose to come and do what only he could do with evil, and that is to redeem it. And when he came down and he saw our sin, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. But what we often do is we flip the coin and say, okay, God's standing up in glory down here, throwing lightning bolts down at me, and God must be mad at me about this, and God must be whatever. And the reality is God is not surprised by our sin. He already knew it before we were even born. You know, uh, he knew this. And what God did was is God chose to redeem us through Jesus. And so, yeah, he had to come as a suffering servant, as you were talking about, uh, Ryan. What God did is as he satisfied the law through Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ satisfied that law and became the rightful one who could redeem us. God could have chosen, you know, hey, I don't want that cup, I'm not doing that. Uh and all of our eternities would be the same. Yep. And we would all be condemned by our own sin, by our own evil. But often people look at God and they go, oh, God's up there mean. God's wanting to put out his wrath, God's wanting to pour out a bowl of wrath on me. When in reality, if you study scripture, he's doing everything in his power to keep us from experiencing that wrath because of his holiness and because of our sinfulness, he bridges that through the person of Jesus Christ. Without him, he's Jesus is no band-aid, he's our only hope. And so um, so when when we look at life, we look at life through the when we look at through the perspective of what would have been our options when it came to our evil. Uh, our options where we had no options, God chose to act upon his only option. So people don't understand that. They often look at God and say, oh, God's trying to, he's you know, he's keeping score against me. And the reality is, is if we fail in one point of the law, we fail in every point. Jesus is the only hope.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

That brings up a point I think you and I were talking about yesterday, Pastor Perry, is how patient God is with us. And like if it were if it were up to us, like we would have just given up at this point. And uh it's it's so amazing. It's like we keep messing up and messing up and messing up, and you just look at humanity and it's like, oh man, it's we deserve God's judgment, but we were we receive something that we don't deserve in Jesus Christ. That's who Jesus is. And so, you know, to go back to your question of recognizing who Jesus is, we recognize him, you know, in his state as fully God, fully man, but we also recognize him as um, you know, the the substitution, like you talked about, uh, the the replacement uh for us on the cross in taking away our sins.

SPEAKER_07 18:11

You know, and it this misunderstanding of who God is, it can go all the way to the beginning, right? Um one question that we're starting to see more of uh from the student ministry world is uh kind of a variation of of the question you mentioned, Pastor Perry, of this idea of like, well, why would God even create them? Like, like would why would a loving God create this whole thing if he knew that some of his creation were gonna die and go to hell? And the problem with that question is it completely negates the fact that God understood the cost of redemption prior to creating and chose to create anyways. You know, so we we miss the love of Christ because of the outcome of our choices, and so that's just a challenge for for us when we get in those moments. And maybe you have a friend who who's asked you that question before of like, well, why would this loving God, you know, why wouldn't he just annihilate the devil? Well, because if he's annihilating evil, we're on the list too, right? We're on the chopping block. But two, um, we're missing the fact that he loved us so much that he knew we would reject him and he still chose to create us and give us the opportunity to come to him. He loved us so much that he knew the cost was his son, and he still chose to go through with it. Jesus wasn't the band-aid, Jesus wasn't the backup plan. Jesus was the plan the whole time.

SPEAKER_03 19:34

So let's um let's jump to our point two. Um and Perry, you mentioned you put emphasis on um that Jesus is coming back to the same mountain. And we knew that he was coming back for real based off of your sermon. And it wasn't a symbolic moment, it's a promise that he did that and that he said that. So, how does truly believing that Jesus is coming back today change the way that we live day to day?

SPEAKER_05 20:01

Oh my goodness, it changes everything. It's our paraousia, is a big word. It's our living hope. And um, you know, we were just talking about that just a second ago. We were talking about, you know, in this world, there's a lot of fallenness in the world. And there's sickness, there's illness, there's everything because the world's broken, it kind of comes down on us ultimately, and we struggle with those things. And when Jesus to think of Jesus as coming back means this world is going to be put into proper order when you read that Zechariah 14 uh 4. It says, In that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives. And by the way, just on a side note, that's how we know there's a difference between the rapture and the second coming. The rapture, you know, uh, you know, there will be this almost surprise mystery to it. And then with the second coming, what we know is his feet are gonna stand on the Mount of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives will be split in the middle from the east to the west. That's no surprise, guys. I mean, you people are gonna know something geographically has radically happened in Jerusalem because Jesus, his foot has landed back where God promised it would. And it says, so half the mountain will move toward the north and the other half to the south. Jesus, of course, will march down, go through the eastern gate, go set on the throne of David. And when he does, he'll rule and reign. And the Bible teaches this uh when we study the book of Revelation that he will reign for a thousand years. And then following that, there'll be a there'll be a brief interlude of evil allowed into the world, and then final judgment will take place. So that's kind of how it works out on the prophetic calendar. But when we look at that, what we know is this in the final end. God is what was broken, God is going to restore. And that's what God's business is. God is a restoring God, He is a redeeming God. He's not only going to redeem us and redeem us through Christ when we come to Him for salvation, but He's going to redeem the whole world. The Bible talks about the whole earth is groaning for this moment, uh, desiring for that. And so when we see uh Isaiah 24-23, it says, The Lord of hosts will reign on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, and his glory will be before the elders. Uh, we're those elders, we're the we're the Christians that are going to be standing there. So listen, no matter what you're going through today, uh, somebody said this one time. I like this. Our future is so bright, we ought to wear its shade, you know. Uh it's kind of a corny little thing they said, but at the same time, it's true. We have a bright future and we have a hope. So, how does that help us walk today? Well, we like we're walking in freedom, we're walking in hope. We're knowing no matter what I'm facing today, there's a better day of coming. So that is a future hope, and uh his coming is wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

So, I have a question. So, with that, we do have this future hope. What would you guys say to someone who has this idea of, hey, listen, now I know I'm saved. Why not just hit cruise control? Because I know that there's heaven waiting on me. I know that there's this second coming that's gonna happen. Why not just as a Christian, just hit cruise control or just say, Oh, well, I'm just gonna chill out until until it's my time because I know I got heaven in the future. What would y'all say to them?

SPEAKER_07 23:50

I'm gonna answer this twofold, Ryan. If this is like my friend, I'm gonna say, I think you missed actually seeing Jesus. Like if it's someone that I can be direct with, because there's no way that you can see Jesus clearly and understand your own sin and say, I'm gonna press the clutch in, I'm just gonna cruise on. Now, if I'm talking to a student, right? If I'm talking or if I'm talking to a parent or someone that I'm ministering to um in the context of pastorally, uh, I'm gonna ask them to zoom out, right? And we're gonna weigh some of some of the results of that mentality, right? So that they would still get to the same place, right? But in a much better or a much more tactful approach. Now, there are some students that I could look at and be like, what are you talking about, dude? Like you you haven't seen it, like if you know, but it if we see Jesus clearly, there's no way we can be content with just cruising on, you know, doing whatever until he comes back or until we end up there, right? We it's what we want other people to have. We've seen it. We're like, hey, you need this, I promise. It's crazy, I get it, but come on, get in the car, like you're going. You need to go. Let's go. There's there's no way you can see Jesus clearly and not not feel that.

SPEAKER_05 25:12

Yeah. Do you want anybody to go with you?

SPEAKER_00 25:14

That that's that would be my answer as well. Is like, if you live with that mentality, you've completely missed, like you said, Jesus, but also our holy calling and the Great Commission. Like, if you knew the bridge was out and you were and somebody told you and saved you from going off the the edge of the bridge or the cliff or whatever, and you turned around and then didn't tell anybody else that the bridge was out, well, you've completely missed it. And so that was just fun exercise I wanted us to do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 25:46

You know, I was thinking about that this morning um when um I was just kind of recalling uh a guy that we we baptized. He was well into his 90s, uh back a year ago Christmas, and his name was Ray, and he I went to go see him and I asked him, I said, Do you believe in the resurrection of Jesus? He said, I don't know. And my response was what happens when you die? And he says, Well, I see Jesus. I said, Well, you do believe in the resurrection because he's alive. And so he said, I guess I do. And I said, You have to believe in that to be saved. And he goes, Well, I want to be saved. And the guy was gloriously saved, he really was. He was so excited. Um, I will, I will never forget our guys picking up a wheelchair in uh our baptistry area. You know, we have two areas in our on our campus for baptisms, and this area where he was baptized was, I mean, it was quite a little bit of a of a I mean it takes more than an attempt to get somebody in a wheelchair up to that baptistry area. And our guys did that, got him up there, and he was baptized. And I was thinking, you know, he has passed away within the last year. Where would he be right now? Where would he be if God had not somehow, and it's not to my glory, it really is to God's glory, you know, that we got together and had that conversation, and his whole eternity forever would have been different. And when you pause and you think about your life as a Christian, that very thing, if that's the only thing that I ever experienced as a Christian in obedience to the Great Commission, uh my goodness, that was worth it. And when we see him in heaven someday, we see him in this new Jerusalem, and he's celebrating and he's serving the Lord, the glory that he's giving to Jesus is just gonna echo through uh our lives and echo from really our ministry here. So everything we do has an eternal, an eternal consequence. And what we do every single day as believers is that is eternal. It outlasts this life. So I guess that's the question. What do you want to do in your life that's gonna outlast it? And I think living, sharing, showing people Jesus is so exciting. It's it's one of the most exciting things that anybody could ever continue, continue to live by following Jesus and sharing Jesus. It's everything.

SPEAKER_00 28:50

My wife told me one of the most profound things I've probably ever heard in my life. We were talking about uh Olivia, we were talking about some family discipleship stuff, and there was one night she was just so burdened. Um, I don't remember exactly what it was, but we were talking, just having one of those heart-to-heart conversations. And she paused and she looked at me and she said, When I look at Olivia, which is our daughter, when I look at Olivia, I don't just see a child, I see a life on the line, I see an eternity that's at stake. And that just smacked me in the face. And it's like each one of us has an eternal, has eternity that's at stake. And so when we start to view each other, when we start to view ourselves like that, it radically changes how we live in this world. And uh when we carry the burden of our own uh, you know, thinking of our own sinfulness and thinking of the price that Jesus paid, you know, it's like uh it's like an acts when it's like we can't help, we can't help but tell of the goodness of Jesus.

SPEAKER_05 30:10

And that's what's great about Easter season, too, is uh people want to hear it. You know, it's not like I'm gonna get up on Easter morning and go up and you know, they're gonna want to hear a sermon. People are gonna hear his sermon about whatever, you know. Uh they want to hear about the resurrection of Christ. We want to hear about that hope. And that hope the reason why is because that hope is an eternal hope. And um, so I I love that about the season that it's it people are primed and ready, just like at Christmas time, to hear the good news.

SPEAKER_03 30:51

And we should share it. Jason, I want to take a moment and answer your question. Um, you guys have given a theological approach to it, but I want to answer it as a someone who's not coming from that background. I would simply tell that person, you're a lazy, unauthentic Christian. To be uh and I'm just I'm just being a good thing. And the reason being is because just for an analogy, just because you bathe today, you go out into the world, you're dirty. Doesn't mean that you don't bathe tomorrow or you can't bathe the next day. You have to continue following Jesus' word. You have to. You have to live out the gospel truth day by day. Just because I said, hey, I'm a technical director today doesn't necessarily mean that I'm gonna be that tomorrow if I don't continue to do those steps that I need to do in order to be that person. So I hate to say it in a harsh way, but that's what it is. You know, just be authentic. If if you want to take that step and get baptized and be a Christian and follow God and do that. But that also you you need to know what's at stake too as well, just as you stated. You need to know that you need to put your left foot forward every day. So I just wanted to answer that in a non-theological way.

SPEAKER_05 32:25

So you can tell who's the hardest preacher in the house right there. It's not me. And you know what? And it's and it's just what what you've what you've come on is something that is absolutely completely pure and transparent. We ought to. There's something wrong in the Christian life if we do not have that sense of this is what I ought to do, and this is what I want to do, and this is how I desire to live. Um, and it's it's just innate. It's on the inside of us. We know that. When the Spirit lives there, he's gonna convict us, he's gonna give those hard words like what you just gave, you know. And it's not different. Uh, you know, God used this same wording uh when he talked about the parable of the talents. He said, You lazy servant of you, you know, you know, he he was straight up about it. And I think sometimes in our culture today, we just don't want anybody to be straight up and just say it the way it is. And what you just did is you did it the way I think so often God does it, and Jesus does in the Word. He's very straightforward and makes it extremely clear. Listen, this is not a crutch. This is this is this is, as they say, ground to walk on. This is how we're gonna live our life. And uh and we should want to. Something's wrong if we don't have that want to.

SPEAKER_03 34:00

Yeah. So, Perry, in your initial response, you use the word restore, restoration. And we know that when Jesus returns, everything that was broken, um, everything that has pain, everything that has sickness, just injustice, it all will be restored. So, why do we think that holding on to the future hope is so important, especially in a world like today?

SPEAKER_05 34:27

Yeah, that hope is a continued hope. It's a recognition that I'm living life and I'm headed in the right trajectory. Sometimes in life, you feel like there's a lot of valleys and there's a lot of mountaintops, and then there's a lot of you know, points in the road where it's like, okay, do I want to continue this journey or not? Um, as far as following Jesus. And that hope is in the end, I I am going to see his salvation. I'm living for something that's like I said, beyond eternity. So that hope is is something that Jesus only provides. And um that's that's kind of the center core of the joy of the gospel, which is we have a, as the Bible says, a living hope. It's something that's alive in us.

SPEAKER_00 35:26

Well, and I think also this hope kind of brings us back to an equilibrium. Uh, I know, especially being a younger person and looking at the news cycle, getting on social media, it's like it never stops. And it just feels like it gets worse and worse and worse every single day. And, you know, now there's bombings, now there's war. You're we're talking about troops on the ground, we're talking about gas prices up to four dollars, and it just feels like it's swallowing you, and and it's just so overwhelming. And you're like, how are we ever gonna get out of this? Where is the light at the end of the tunnel? The light at the end of the tunnel is gonna come riding a white horse, and that's the hope that we live in. We don't we don't quit toiling like we just talked about, but we also do see that and we say, okay, let's pause. Let's remember who is in control of all this, let's remember whose hand is on this, and that I belong to him. I've been adopted as a son into in into his family. And now I live in relationship and in communion and union with that one. And so that's the hope that kind of brings us back down, ironically, brings us back down to earth. Um, but it it kind of establishes establishes some of that equilibrium again and brings us back to that homeostasis.

SPEAKER_03 37:01

So to conclude, Perry, you ended your message with a challenge. Are you ready?

SPEAKER_05 37:09

That's a that's a great question. Are people ready? Am I ready? And am I ready for the coming of Jesus? And um, you know, there's a whole lot of pieces and parts to what we call eschatology. There's a lot of opinions people have about eschatology, like you know, the all millennial millennialists believe that everything's gonna progress to better, but yet, from my viewpoint of scripture, you know, it's going to escalate to a point where God pours out his wrath upon the earth and so forth. And uh, you know, but no matter what your viewpoint is, here's what we all agree on: Jesus is coming again. And if we know we're going to look at him eyeball to eyeball, face to face, that one day I will see Jesus. Whether or not I'm a Christian or non-Christian, that the the final, the final stand that we will take is a stand before God who created us. And we will stand and look at him. And uh the question is, where will I be? What will my situation be? Will I have an advocate in Jesus being with me at that moment? Will I be representing myself standing alone? There's no way to stand before God, the great and mighty judge of all, on your own. You have to have an advocate, and I have to have an advocate. I'm so grateful that while I will stand and I will look face to face upon the face of the living creating God, that I have Jesus with me. And so that's the joy of the salvation message, the gospel message, is that we are never alone, and yea, although I walk through the valley of shadow death, I'll fear no evil. There's no fear. So the question is standing before God, is there going to be fear because I'm alone? Or is there going to be faith because I have Jesus standing with me? And that causes me to ask the question Am I ready? How do I get ready? I get ready by making sure that I have a relationship, a real living, saving, glorified confidence that Jesus Christ will be with me at that moment. That's the question that causes us to ask the question, Am I ready for Jesus to come? He's coming. He's either coming through, I like to say, the undertaker or the uppertaker. And uh, you know, if if I die before the second coming of Jesus, before the rapture of the church, the the beauty is going to be, I know Jesus is gonna be with me. But even as as Jesus said to Peter, speaking of John, if he lives until the very end, until I come again, what's that to you? What is that to you? You follow me. And that's what Jesus is saying to all of us today. You can look around at everybody else, you can compare yourself to everybody else, you can try to build a religion based upon your good works versus somebody else. But when it comes down to it, am I following Jesus? Do I know that I know that I know that he's with me? If he is, you're walking troths behind, right there beside him, and he's with you.

SPEAKER_03 41:25

So the truth is the same Jesus who rode into Jerusalem on a donkey is coming back again on a white horse. The first time he came to be rejected. The next time he comes to reign. And here's the question for all of us are we just aware of that or are we actually ready for it? Because when Jesus comes back, every wrong will be made right, every broken thing will be restored, and every knee will bow. So don't just admire the moment. Don't just wave the palm branch.

SPEAKER_02 42:05

Live like your king is coming back. Gentlemen, see you next week. See you next week. Peace.

SPEAKER_01 42:19

We're glad you joined us for today's segment. We believe a life built on truth is a life that transforms everything. To stay connected, share this message, subscribe, or visit us online at Kinnesoft First.church. We'll see you next time. Keep building your life on truth.