How To Live A More Interesting Life

How can building intentional spiritual habits and understanding biblical history give you deep, lasting hope in a chaotic world?

In this sermon on Acts 3, Lead Pastor Neil McClendon walks through the miraculous healing of the man at the Beautiful Gate and Peter’s subsequent sermon to the crowd. Pastor Neil breaks down three key principles for living a more compelling and faith-filled life: cultivating holy habits (spiritual disciplines) that shape daily behavior, knowing biblical history to contextualize who Jesus is, and ending with unshakable gospel hope. Discover how God uses ordinary moments, faithful routines, and the truth of Christ to bring genuine spiritual refreshing and transformation.

In this episode, we cover:

• The Power of Holy Habits: How spiritual disciplines like prayer, Scripture meditation, and faithful gathering yield long-term spiritual strength.
• Understanding Your History: Why seeing Jesus as the fulfillment of Old Testament redemptive history grounds your faith.
• Contextualizing the Gospel: Learning how to start with what people cannot deny to explain the truths of Christ.
• Five Foundations of Gospel Hope: Discovering how God’s faithfulness, complete forgiveness, times of refreshing, sovereign plan, and ultimate blessing secure your future

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

This podcast is brought to you by Grand Parkway Baptist Church, helping people to know, enjoy, and glorify God. For more information about Grand Parkway, visit Grandparkway.org for a moment.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

We've not come today to uh to double down on our uh self-sufficiency. We've come to confess that we need God. We didn't just need him when we came to faith, we need him every day. And every day you turn on the TV and you see that all the things that people trust in are becoming untrustworthy. You're gonna need him even more. And so if you're like, man, that is the song of my heart, you're in a good place. Because God rises and comes to people that need him. And so, Lord, we just pray to you today. Uh, that is a confession of our heart, it's not just a song we sing, it is the posture of our being that we need you, we've never not needed you, and we will never, ever, ever not need you. And so we're not here just to bask and being needy, we're here to boast in your sufficiency for everything we need. And so, Holy Spirit, illuminate the scriptures today. Cause them to come to life and give life, put life, stir the life that is in us, awaken that in us, God. Remind us that there's things that we are the scripture requires of us, not out of effort, but because of intimacy, because of who we are in Christ. And so, Holy Spirit, say something today that has our name on it, we pray. We pray this in Jesus' name, and everyone said, Amen. Amen. You can have a seat if you've got a Bible, I invite you to take it and open up to Acts chapter three. We're preaching through the book of Acts, uh, and we're up to chapter three. And in chapter three, actually, what happens in chapter three takes up two chapters in the in the book of Acts. There's actually 28 chapters in Acts, and what happens here is so significant that two chapters get uh get designated to it to kind of explain and unpack it. It's kind of an event and an explanation. And the event is the guy gets healed, and everybody kind of gets crazy about that. But the real meat of the passage is, and where we're gonna put the plow in the ground this morning, is in the explanation that it's required because of what happened. And so I want to begin with a question. When is the last time something happened in your life that required an explanation? That the people that saw it or heard about it had no frame of reference for it, and they said, wait up, wait a minute, back up. Could you please explain to me what just happened? Because this is what happens here in Acts chapter three. And so I want to talk to you this morning about how to live a more interesting life. How to live a more interesting life. And I'll just say this from the get-go. If you're visiting, this is not a self-help pop psychology kind of gospel. When I say how to live a more interesting life, I mean one thing you'll see in the book of Acts is that crowds were flocking to the disciples. And they never once had some marketing, branding meeting or whatever. How do we get our brand out there? Uh they they they were so compelling. Uh that they live such a compelling life that crowds of people were drawn to them. And I just want to say, trying to be more interesting is not uh uh uh you say, how do you live a more interesting life? I'll just give you the three things I'm gonna point to in the text. You gotta have some habits, you gotta know your history, and you have to end with hope. You have to have some habits. Your life is a byproduct of the habits that you have, good or bad. Secondly, you got to know your history. When these people were asked questions like, hey, what just happened? They just could kind of contextualize what happened in light of biblical history. We sing a song here a lot, we hadn't sang in a while, but there's a line in the song that says, I know how the story ends. We will be with you again. The problem with most Christians is we know how the story begins and we know how it ends, but we're kind of not good on the part in the middle. The part in the middle is what explains the day-to-day living, and this is where we got to get better at. And so, how to live a more interesting life? You gotta have some habits, you gotta know your history, and you have to end with hope. End with hope sounds like this innocuous. Oh, well, you're one of that things that started with an H. No. Uh actually, I'm gonna point to five things in the text that we could derive hope from because if you look around today and just watch people look deeper in their eyes, you'll realize there's not a lot of hope in our culture. And it's not gonna get better. Mr. Happy's here to tell you, it's gonna get probably feel a little bit more and more helpless because people look to institutions, the government, society to help them, and it's becoming more and more godless. And it's a great dark backdrop for the glorious light of the gospel to shine bright like never before. Kind of like the Bible says, we shine like stars in the universe. And so, how to live a more interesting life. I'm gonna read a long section of Acts chapter 3, starting in verse 1. This is the event and the explanation. It says, Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour, and a man lame from birth was being carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple that is called the beautiful gate, to ask for alms of those entering the temple. Seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked to receive alms. And Peter directed his gaze at him, as did John, and said, Look at us. And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them. But Peter said, I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you in the name of Jesus of Christ of Nazareth. Rise up and walk. He took him by the right hand and he raised him up, and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. And leaping up, he stood and began to walk. And he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God. And all the people saw him walking and praising God and recognized him as the one who sat at the beautiful gate of the temple, asking for alms, and they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him. While he clung to Peter and John, all the people, utterly astounded, ran together to them in the portico called Solomon's. And when Peter saw it, he addressed the people, Men of Israel, why do you wonder at this? Or why do you stare at us as though by our own power or piety we have made him walk? The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate when he had decided to release him. But you denied the holy and righteous one and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and you killed the author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. And his name, by faith in his name, has made this man strong, whom you see and know. And the faith that is through Jesus has given this man the perfect health in the presence of you all. And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your fathers, your rulers. But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. Repent, therefore, and turn back that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago. Moses said, The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him and whatever he tells you. And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people. And all the prophets whom have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, have proclaimed these days. You are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your father, saying to Abraham, And in your offspring shall the families of the earth be blessed. God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness. Actually, I said I was gonna read 26 verses. It's the entire chapter, okay? Uh and so it kind of sets the stage for what happens here, how to live a more interesting life. By the way, if you have the NIV version of the Bible, chapter three starts with these two words one day. Does it not? Look at it. Does it not start one day? Now they plan this. Hey, we're gonna do this, then we're gonna do this, and no, no, no. They are just going. So, how do you live a more interesting life? First of all, you have to have some habits. It's verses one to ten. People with good habits have good experiences, people with bad habits have bad experiences. Look at verse one. Here's a good habit at the hour of prayer. This is why it's three o'clock in the afternoon, okay? There's two really common hours of prayer. One was nine in the morning, one was three in the afternoon. Uh, and so it is the hour of prayer. This is why Peter and John are doing what they're doing. They're going up to the temple because this is what they would do. This is how they worship God in the tradition of the day. This is a good habit. Look at verse 2. It has this phrase in it whom they laid, there was this crippled man whom they laid at the gate of the temple that is called beautiful. This is a bad habit, okay? Now you may be thinking, why did they take this guy to church with them? Because he was ceremonially unclean as somebody that had a physical deformity. He was not allowed to go into the temple. So they laid him at the gate of the that is called the beautiful gate. Please do not miss the irony of this. Here is this person with a deformed body, and they put him by this gate that's called beautiful, and they said, We're gonna go to church. You stay here, beg for money, we'll get back. Beloved, that's an ugly way to be against the backdrop of something the Bible calls beautiful. But you gotta have some habits. And so Peter and John, one day, not they didn't have to buy tickets for this. This wasn't being sold on Ticketmaster, it wasn't a concert. They were just basically going to church because this is their habit. According to a study conducted by Duke University, habits account for 40% of your behaviors on any given day. Let me say that again. Duke University did a study years ago, and 40% of your behaviors tomorrow will be a reflection of what your habits are. Some of you get up early in the morning, and you know how we know that? You tell everybody, okay? My father-in-law gets up. He used to, not anymore, that sucker is 89. He's discovered sleeping in. He said, He said, Man, I slept till 9:30. If I knew this was so enjoyable, I would have done it a long time ago. But when I first started dating my the woman who's now my wife, like in like 1991, that sucker would go to bed at 8:30 and get up at 5. I'd come rolling out when I was at their house in Florida, beautiful house overlooking the bay. I'd get up at 11 o'clock, come stumbling out. He'd be like, My gracious, you gonna sleep all day? I was like, listen, if I went to bed at 8:30, I can get up at 5 too. I was up till one talking to your daughter, so I gotta sleep in. No, but everyone's got habits. Some of you get up early, some of you get some of you back your truck in every parking space you ever over. That's because you work in the oil industry or you work at a plant. People, one day somebody's there and say, Why is guys back up? I said, Most of them because they work at a plant, where if they pull in forward, they get fired. He's like, Shut up, and I'm like, No, you shut up. It's a habit. You work in a plant, it's an insurance thing. They say more people have accents backing out. So we're gonna back into parking space and you pull out forward. It's a habit. You can't turn it off. It just happens. 40% of what you do tomorrow will be a byproduct of the habits that you have in your life. Now, a guy named James Clear wrote a book called Atomic Habits, and in the book, he has a little section where he talks about how habits are formed. How habits are formed. And it's basically a four-step process. It's cue, craving, response, and reward. Q craving, response, and reward. The cue is the thing that triggers the habit. It's like here's a here's a not good habit. You walk by the you walk into the kitchen at 10:30 at night and you see the refrigerator, and something cues in your brain and says, hmm, there's something in there. You've already eaten. By the way, this lady told me the other day she does she does not eat supper at all. She eats one meal a day at 1:30. And she said, Supper is a habit, it's not a need. And I was like, You, you, you, you shut your filthy mouth, lady. What happens though is it gets cute. I do think we eat too much in America, and we've been trained by the food industry to do it, but I digress. Uh, the cue, it triggers the habit, it triggers a behavior, uh, a thought in you, and then the craving. The craving is the feeling that comes after the cue. This is where you get in trouble because the cue kind of dings, and then your body kind of craves, okay? And then the response, this is the action that results from the craving and then the reward. This is the feeling you get from the response. It's called the dopamine hit. It's students why when your phone dings, you feel so good, you feel so popular, you still feel so wanted. It's just a dopamine hit. It's just a device that you carry around that trains you what to orient your life around. If you want to really see what your habit is, tomorrow ask yourself, what can I do without all day and not miss it? You're like, you don't want me to write that down, do you? Yes. Yes. Because you just the way you become, you live a more interesting life is that you have some habits, you have the right kind of habits. Your life is a byproduct. My life is a byproduct of the good habits and the bad habits that combine together to inform and influence the decisions, the cues that you get every day, the cravings they elicit, the response that you give, and the reward that you feel. This is what happens. And so when I say have some habits, everyone's walking by this guy. But Peter and John in Acts chapter 3, they have this, they've been given the Holy Spirit, and so they look at the world through a different lens. You have to, you may already have some good habits. So most of our good habits that we have, it comes to our health or our children or our work or our finances. Those are the four things we idolize in America: our health, our children, our work, or our finances. We're gonna get habits around that. But what we don't get very much is what's called the holy habit or a spiritual discipline. Uh, this is any activity that'll help you live the life God created you to live. Habits such as prayer, fasting, Bible reading, church attendance. Remember when church attendance was a habit and not an extraterrestrial activity? Well, if we don't have a tournament on Sunday, because you know if we win, we get then, whoa, we got that. That that's your habits are in the wrong place. Serving, solitude, scripture meditation, these are all holy habits that men and women of the faith for years have incorporated into their life. And you look at their life and think, oh, they're just better than me. No, no, no. They're not better than you, they're not even more disciplined than you. They have habits that you do not have. And these spiritual habits they help us to have spiritual power. And so I'll get I'll point to one right here in verse seven. Uh, look, look at verse seven of Acts chapter three. Everybody, and the guy's like, look at us, and he fixes attention at them and he expects to receive something. And Peter says, I have no silver and gold, but what I have I give to you in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Rise up and walk. Now, look at the text. He tells him in verse six, rise up and walk, and nothing happens. The guy doesn't jump up and go, Thank you for saying that. Look at me. Here's this moment of awkward vulnerability where Peter says something and then he reaches out his hand and he takes a crippled guy who's been lame from birth, he's never walked in his life, he takes him by the hand and he lifts him up. Now, either God's gonna do something that moment or he's gonna drag a cripple to church. Now, this is the thing. Some of you, he speaks to it, but he doesn't just speak to it, he takes a hold of it. Some of you in this room have been speaking to things for so long that you've never reached out and taken a hold of. And that's the moment of vulnerability where you can say it, oh, in the name of Jesus, rise and walk. Here's where you put yourself on the line. You reach your hand out and say, Take my hand. And he he raises the man up. And again, in that moment, nothing has happened. You got a Bible, it's right there. He says all the right thing. But then in verse 7, and he took him by the right hand and raised him up. Either he's gonna get a lawsuit filed for abusing a cripple, or God's gonna come through. Some of you have been saying all the right things, but you've been speaking to it, you've never taken a hold of it. Now, some of you are like, oh, that sounds good. I'm gonna write that down. Let me give you some granularity around what that looks like. Years ago in marriage counseling, a lady came to me and her husband had a gaming system, and she said, My husband goes to work, he comes home, he has supper, he goes upstairs, he sets in his surround sound gaming chair, and he does online gaming. I put the kids to bed, I mean, I get them bathed, I have them homework, I get them to bed, and then my husband, I go check on him and he's like, Hey, hey, could you refresh my drink? And I'm like, What? And she said, I am so sick. I've told him, I've asked him, and I said to her, You've been speaking to some things that you need to take a hold of. The next day he came home and she filled up the bathtub with water, took his gaming system, unplugged it, and threw it in the bathtub. Yeah. And so he came to see me and he said, Hey man, you owe me a gaming system. I said, I don't know you're nothing. I don't know what you're talking about. He goes, You said something my wife about speaking to something and taking a hold of something. I said, Yeah, it's a spiritual principle, it's a habit that we should have in our life. He goes, Well, I don't have a gaming system. I said, But you got a wife and kids. Stop crying, man. You are 39 years old and you spend five hours a night online shooting imaginary bad guys with strangers all over the world, and you forsake your wife and kids. I got no pity for you. And they were at that awkward moment. We're gonna either fight or we're gonna hug, and I'm okay with either one. I'm just like you, by the way, you know who's mad right now? All the gamers in the room. I'll fight you after this is over. Hey, listen, if you're forsaking your wife and kids to play online games today, your wife should throw your gaming system in the bathtub today. Stop talking, ladies. Take a hold of it. And just shrug and kind of go. I listened to the sermon. Clearly, you didn't. Yes. What is one habit you want to form in the next 30 days? If you want to live, stop talking about how you want to be interesting, okay? Wanting to be interesting is not a habit, it's a confession. Don't you have you figured out yet? No one really cares about your life. Stop posting what you had for lunch, what you went on vacation, what your kids look like in a bikini. Listen, girls, there's parts of you no one should see but your husband. And I don't care if your mom took the picture, it doesn't make it okay. Your mom's an insecure woman that needs therapy. You're welcome. Where's the bearded guy from last week? Can he come back? He was so much nicer. Bless rhythms. Come on, man. Come on, please. Have some habits. Secondly, know your history. It's verses 11 to 16. What do you mean, know your history? I want you to just point to this verse 13, verse 14, and verse 16. Verse 13, Jesus, I mean, Peter, he starts with the historicity of Jesus. He grounds Jesus in the Old Testament redemptive history with this timeline that sounds like something that Jews would be familiar with. He says, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers. Now, why is that a big deal? He starts in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If you go backwards, it's Jacob, Isaac, Abraham. He's going all the way back in Old Testament redemptive history. Here's why that's a big deal. It's called contextualization. We'll get to that in just a minute, but look at me. When Jesus would be talking to the Jews in the New Testament and the Gospels, they would that their big get out of jail free card was, we have Abraham as our father. And Jesus is like, hey, my father can make sons of Abraham from these stones right here. Because they they appeal to their national heritage. You ever talk to anybody about spiritual things? They'll say, Oh, well, I'm Southern Baptist. Oh, I'm Catholic. Oh, I'm a Presbyterian. What does that mean? That just tells me the kind of church you go to. That doesn't tell me anything about your relationship with God. You can be a Baptist and go to hell when you die. You know that, right? Because you're just like you're you're claiming national heritage, like, oh, oh, oh, we have Abraham as my father. My grandfather was a Baptist preacher. So what? That does nothing to your standing before God. But Peter, when he stands up and he begins to talk and he wants his people to understand it's who Jesus is, not what Jesus did that is your problem, people. It's not that Jesus said, Hey, you tear down this temple and I'm gonna raise it up in three days. He sinned against the temple. He said that he was Lord, Caesar's Lord. No, no, no, no. It's nothing that he did, as threatening as that was to the religious power structure of the day. It's who he is. This is why in verse 13, Peter very clearly says, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate when he had decided to release him. Now, why is that a big deal? Because he's not connecting Jesus to these Old Testament patriarchs of the faith. But but what he is doing is he's saying that the God that these men worship, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he glorified his servant Jesus, whom you killed. And it's about now they're starting to it's beginning, they're beginning to realize the depth of what they've done. Let me give you a modern-day application. Uh, there's a movie, there's like a fourth one coming out. But the original one was a movie called John Wick. If you know what John Wick is, say amen. It's a great, all men are like, yeah. John Wick, it's a movie about a hitman that kids like 150 people in every film. He can't die. Okay, he's got a suit that's bulletproof. I've got one of those as well. But anyway, uh in the first John Wick movie, which I love by the way, because justice prevails, uh, there's this Russian mobster. He has a son that steals John Wick's car. Bad idea. And basically the father's trying to explain to the son the magnitude of what he's done. And the son pops off and goes, Who is he? The boogeyman? And the dad goes, He's the man you send to kill the boogeyman. And everybody in the theater I was in was kind of like, uh oh. This is what happens here. He says, Hey, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God that you people claim, oh, we're Abraham was our father. Jesus is his servant. All of a sudden it begins to settle in on them. This is what happens when you know your history. Look at verse 14. People ask me all the time, how could religious people get it so wrong? Look at verse 14. They didn't get it wrong. They fulfilled the plan of God. He says, But you, verse 14, but you denied the holy and righteous one and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and you killed the author of life, and we, whom God raised from the dead, to this we are witnesses. Now, you don't miss the irony. You asked for a murderer to be granted to you. Basically, Jesus was murdered, so a murderer called Barabbas could go free. Now, by the way, this is just, this is, we'll get to I'll say that big word in just a minute. But when I say Barabbas, a lot of people think Barabbas was like a bad guy. He was anti-God. No, Barabbas was in prison by the Romans because he led insurrections against the Romans. Let me contextualize it for you. If it was January the 6th in America, Barabbas would have been there. Yes, he wasn't like anti-God, he was anti-Rome. And so he was kicking back against them, oppressing people. And so he's in prison. But the people are like, and I had a guy say to me one time, he said, I mean, I mean, you want me to believe in somebody that his own people didn't believe in? And I said, He, but it was basically the question: how could religious people get it so wrong? Basically, they chose Barabbas instead of Jesus. And I just, here's the thing: the choice between Jesus and Barabbas was like voting nowadays. People make the decision about who they're going to vote for based on who they hate the most, not who they believe is going to do a better job of running our country. This is why you can get people in positions of power that have no sense of being there. It's just that we hated the other guy more than this guy. My email is N-E-I-L at Grand Park. It's not N-E-A. I don't get those, okay? I don't get those. See, here's what's happening in our country. It is going to hell in a handbasket. And some of you are trying to defend your political allegiance, and you send me emails going, I wish you wouldn't be political. I'm not being political at all. It's my job as your pastor to state the obvious and say, you might want to batten down the hatches because it's coming, folks. It is coming. You say, How can you get it wrong? See, the issue is not about people getting it wrong when it comes to Jesus or Barabbas. The issue is about God getting it right. By doing what God does on the cross the way he does it, two things happen. Number one, God establishes universal guilt. God establishes universal guilt. And guilt, by the way, is not a feeling, it's a state of being. People say, I'll tell you, I don't feel guilty. Guilt's not a feeling. Uh we we we our country that is godless has really the the cultural narrative is hey, guilt is unnecessary. So no one feels guilty anymore. We just have mental health issues. It's guilt because of sin. Yeah, he establishes universal guilt, so you cannot feel guilty and be guilty. Here's the second thing happens substitutionary atonement. A murderer gets set free and Jesus is murdered in his place. Remind you of anybody? Now Barabbas, you and me. Substitutionary atonement. This is the doctrine. When it says in chapter 2, and they continue steadfast in the apostles' doctrine. This is the doctrine that the people devoted themselves to. And this is what they preached in Acts. Christ died for our sins in our place. We are the guilty criminal who deserved death and got set free because Jesus dies in our place. Here's the last thing I want you to see knowing your history. Look at verse 16. Since verse 16, he says this. And his name, by faith in his name, has made this man strong, whom you see and know. The faith that is through Jesus. Faith doesn't come through the church, through your religious traditions. Faith comes through Jesus. If your faith is not in Jesus, you're not a Christian. If your faith is in some denomination, whatever it is, Baptist or whatever, that's just a religious tradition. It's not a personal relationship. He says the faith that is through Jesus has given this man this perfect health in the presence of all of you. Now you may be thinking, why is that such a big deal? You seem to be really amped up about this. Peter starts with something they cannot deny. This man that you know who laid every day at the gate called beautiful on the way to go to church, you guys did nothing about. He starts with something they cannot deny to explain something they do not believe. And slays these people. The modern-day word for this is contextualization. He starts with something that they cannot deny. When you're talking with people about Christ, start with something they cannot deny. And he's like, hey, this man that you know, and then whether they go and say, Oh, we don't know him. No, you walk by him every day on the way to church. You throw down a dollar and feel better about yourself. It's just conscious salve. This guy that you know, contextualization is a big word. Let me define it for you. It's a process of considering something in relation to the situation in which it happens or exists. Let me say that again. It is a process of considering something. Check this guy out. Let's think about this man right here in relation to the situation in which it happens or exists. And so what Peter is asking these people to do is to consider this man in relation to what just happened and explain it from apart uh apart from God. Help me help you. Explain this. This man was crippled from birth. You all knew it, you know his name, you've given him money. How'd this happen? And they have no explanation. And here's the reason they have no explanation because Peter knew his history. By the way, Peter wasn't like an A student. Peter was the guy that denied Jesus. Peter was the bloviate and blowhard that over-talked, over-promised, and under-delivered. And then at Pentecost, he gets the Holy Spirit, like all believers since then have. Here's the third way you become interesting. You you I mean, you live this interesting life. You you end with hope. It's verses 17 to 26. The longer you talk to someone that you should make it more and more personal. You say, What do you mean? Verse 12, he starts off, men of Israel. Here in verse 17, he says, and now brothers. Men of Israel, look at me. I'll give you a visual. Talking to someone, having a spiritual conversation is like a funnel. The longer it goes on, the closer you get to the bottom, the more narrow and focused it be it gets. Men of Israel, hey, and now brothers. And he takes off five things from which we could derive hope today. These are true back then, they're true today. Now, look at me. I don't want you to walk out there and kind of go, whoo, man, Pastor Dillon thinks the world's going to hell in a handbasket. No, I don't. I believe God's in charge of the world. I believe he's sovereign over the affairs of the world, but he's not responsible for the day-to-day happenings because people have a free will. Oftentimes they use it for good, but even more often they use it for evil. Okay? You just turn on your TV every day, someone's shooting somebody else. Okay? And you want to tell me man's inherently good? No, he's not. You cannot explain the existence of the world, the state of the world as it is, apart from an understanding of sin. So how do you have hope in a world like this? Five things. The first one's in verse 18. God's faithfulness gives us a foundation for our faith. Look at verse 18. And his name, by faith in his name, has made, and in verse 18 he says, But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. This is the foundation of the whole thing. If this isn't true, then the rest doesn't matter. God's faithfulness gives us a foundation for our faith. Everything he promised, he has fulfilled. A friend of mine sent me this just yesterday. He said, It's amazing what you find on Instagram. And it was a post from a guy, and I and I brought it. Some guy named Sean Ryan says this today I began reading the Bible, something I've never done. I believe this is the only truth left here on earth, maybe the only truth there ever was. Everyone else has turned to nothing but deception and lies. All of it. I don't know who Sean Ryan is, but he's my new best friend. So if you're on Instagram, break the brother off a message and tell him, hey, my pastor quoted you this morning. Yes. I just thought, today I began reading the Bible, something I've never done. This is a person that is evolved in his thinking to realize, you know what? I've been lied to my whole life. I believe the cultural narrative over biblical truth. See, God's faithfulness gives us a foundation for our faith. Here's the second reason you can have hope. Your failure is not final. Look at verse 19. He says, Repent, therefore, and turn back that your sins may be blotted out. That your sins may be blotted out. That's a weird sounding. What do you mean? This is used because back then they didn't have paper and they didn't even have uh parchment yet. They used what's called papyri to they wrote on that. And the ink would not soak into the papyries, this reeds they would smash. The reed, the ink wouldn't soak in like it does paper nowadays. The ink kind of sat on the surface. And so what they would do, removing the ink was easy. And so when he says your sins may be blotted out, it removes, it means this a removal that leaves no trace. A removal that your sins may be blotted out. See, God doesn't just forgive your sins, he removes them and they leave no trace on you. It's like Daniel and his three friends uh uh in the fiery furnace. They come out and they don't have the smoke, the smell of smoke on them. It's the same principle. All through the Bible, God says, Hey, you're this way, but I can make you like you've never been that way. He said, Hey, hey, this is this is where you have hope. God's faithfulness gives us a foundation for our faith. Secondly, your failure is not final. What Peter is saying is that the penalty of sin is removed completely and forever. If you've ever, and you're in this room right now and you've ever done something that you wish to God never comes to light, no one ever finds out about, say amen. You're surrounded by people. Yes, just like you. So if you ever come to church and think, oh, these church people got it all together, you're in the right place. You see, here's why you can have hope, okay? Here's why we as Christians have hope. We don't look at our past and go, oh, God forgave me, no big deal. No, God blotted that out, and that act of mercy and grace and forgiveness propels me to not live that way anymore. Here's the third reason you can have hope. It won't always feel this way. It won't always feel this way. It's verse 20. After he tells them, uh, hey, repent therefore and turn back that your sins may be blotted out. Here's why you don't always feel this way. The times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. That times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. I remember getting in trouble as a kid, uh, and it usually involves some form of corporal punishment. Is that PC enough? Yeah. We got whippings where I grew up. Uh and then my dad, after he whipped you, he'd say, Now quit crying. That's the hardest thing in the world to stop crying when you're crying. I mean it, boy, you better knock it up. But here's times of refreshing. You're trying to stop crying, you know, and then you get that first deep breath. And it's over. And my dad would go, no wash your face. I remember going to the bathroom, washing my face. I'd come out like I was born again. I felt 10 pounds lighter, no more lying. My dad knew, oh, I took the punishment. I cried. I actually was able to get a deep breath. So anytime I read, so that times of refreshing, you think God wants you to walk around going emotionally hyperventilating because you can't get your stuff together? No. God says, repent. What does that mean? It means to turn from and turn to. To turn from means I turn from my sin, but I also turn to God. And only when you do that do you experience this times of refreshing that removes fear from you. And you're like, oh my gosh, I've been washed. It's like somebody washed my hot, sticky, tear-stained face with cold water. Man, do I feel better? Here's another reason you can have hope. The fourth reason God has a plan for the world. Look at verse 21. Put a star by this in your Bible. He says, The Lord, for that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus. Verse 21, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago. Hear that phrase again. He talks about Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things. Who sets that time? Now look at me. We're done in two minutes. Don't you understand this? The Bible says right here, and all through the Bible, that God has set a time in the future where God is going to restore everything back to the way it should be. So if you look around, if you watch the news, I told you a couple weeks ago, people stop watching the news because they can't take any more negativity. And I get it. But the Bible's very clear that we're not just at the mercy of a crazy world and crooked politicians on both sides of the aisle, okay? Give me a break. And so we're not at the mercy of this world and the narrative that they spin up on the news every night. God has set a time. So God has a plan for the world. It's easy to look around and wonder how it's all gonna turn out. God already knows and he has a plan. He's sovereign over it all, but he's not responsible for it. We are responsible. And here's the last thing I want you to see from the Bible. God raised Jesus to bless you. Verse 26. He said, Where do you get that? Right out of the Bible. God, having raised up his servant, that's Jesus, sent him to you first to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness. The way God blesses you is not giving you a new house and a new car and all the money you ever need. The way God blesses you according to God is he turned you from your wickedness. Well, why didn't God just bless me? Because God will not bless you if you're living in your depravity, because God would be participating in that which is going to destroy you. And God loves you too much to bless that which is going to destroy you, that being sin. The Bible's very clear the wages of sin is death. He says, Hey, he raised up his servant. God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first, talking to the Jewish people, to bless you. How? By turning every one of you from your wickedness. By turning every one of you from your wickedness. This is how these people live this life. That crowds flock to them. Why? Because they had some habits. They went to church, and every day wasn't what a journal entry. Today was one of those days that set in motion its thing. You're going to see next week. Leo's going to preach next week about how these people they get arrested. They get flogged, which means they get beat. And they tell them, Don't talk anymore. And they said, We can't help it. And then they get out of there and then they pray. And you know how they pray? They start their prayer after they just got beat. Oh, sovereign Lord. And in two weeks, I'm going to ask you this question Can you get a beat and God still be sovereign? Can your boyfriend break up with you and God still be sovereign? Can your girlfriend break up with you and God still be sovereign? Can you not get the promotion at work that you think you deserve or you know you deserve it? Maybe you rightfully deserve and God still be sovereign. See, the Bible gets down into the nooks and crannies of our head and our heart and says, think about these things. And today here's what God wants you to think about. Hey, how do you want to live an interesting life? Establish some good, godly habits. Secondly, know your biblical history. Stop being a person who all you know about is the beginning and the end, but you can't fill in the gaps in the middle. And lastly, always end with hope. Are you a hopeful person? Do people experience you as hopeful? Are you as just as afraid as everybody else around you? Let's pray together. If you're our guests, just relax. We like to teach the Bible, then we take some time to think about what we've heard from the Bible. So I'll voice a prayer and some questions come up on the screen for us to talk about in our community groups when we meet again. Let me pray. Holy Spirit, thank you that the Bible is sufficient. It's not a diving board that we spring off of and we preach sermons about habits and our stuff. No, no, no. We stay in it. It is enough, it is sufficient, it's got everything we need. So, Holy Spirit, brood over us. There's any habits that are in our lives that are bad habits that lead us to a dopamine hit that's not godly, doesn't, doesn't bless, doesn't glorify God. Just expose that. Lord, just brood over us as we think about what your word has said to us today. Father, our confession today is we're honest, isn't it? Holy habits, spiritual disciplines are more of a hobby. It's something we do when we don't have anything else to do, or we're desperate. It's not part of the warp and woof of our life. The day-to-day. This influences me. This affects the kind of a dopamine hit my brain gets. So, Holy Spirit, would you just brood over us? We're not little kids, we're young men and women. We're old men and women. We know better, but we do it anyway. That's a reflection of our habits. Thank you that you so structured the world that we have to repent. We have to turn from sin and turn to God to experience the blessing of God. And for anyone in this room that thinks, oh, I'm I'm not doing that and I'm being blessed, no, they're not, they're being given over. And that is an ultimate form of judgment in the Bible. And so, Holy Spirit, help them to understand the difference. We pray all this in Jesus' name. And everyone said, Amen. Amen. If you're our guests, uh, let me say thank you for being here today. You're always welcome. If you have any questions about anything you saw or heard today, some of our pastors be available down front. We'd love to answer any questions you may have. Uh, we always have things going on in the life of our church. We don't we don't want to overwhelm you, uh, but we program with a purpose. And so here's some things coming up in the next couple of weeks or months that we want you to be aware of. So by way of video announcement.

SPEAKER_00 41:12

Here's a look at what's happening at Grand Park Way Baptist Church. If you're new, text welcome to 281-626-5707. This way we can know you're here and get you connected with the church. We hope you have prepared your singing voices because our hymn sing is tonight. Join us in the student building from 6 to 7 p.m. as we sing the hymns of the faith. Everyone is welcome, so bring a friend. We're so excited to offer discipleship groups for our kids again this summer. These groups are for kids in second through sixth grade who will meet for six weeks on Mondays from 1.30 to 3 p.m. throughout the summer, beginning on June 5th and continuing until July 31st. Kids will be placed into small groups and have solid team leaders guiding their weekly conversations. There will be short daily devotionals as well as weekly family discussions. This is a great way to build a strong foundation for our kids, teach them the value of studying the word, and connecting with other believers. Finally, on Friday, May 12th, we will host a golf scramble at the Golf Club at Cinco Ranch. It begins at 2 p.m. For $50, you will get all the range balls you can hit, the joy of participating in our scramble and priceless entertainment. To register for our events, please head over to Grandparkway.org. If you have questions or want someone to pray for you, find one of our pastors at the front of the stage at the conclusion of our service.

SPEAKER_02 42:37

We'd like to conclude our service with a spoken blessing, so stand to your feet if you would. And hold your hands out. May the Lord bless you and keep you. Cause his face to shine upon you. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, turn his face towards you. May the Lord let you see him seeing you. May He give you peace. In the name of the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.