ANNOUNCER: The following program is sponsored by generous
friends and partners of Real Life.
ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Real Life with Jack Hibbs.
JACK: Faith is an active word. It's always on the go.
It's always on the move. It's always producing. Why?
Because of the object of the faith is Jesus Christ
himself and happily Jesus is on the move because Jesus
is alive and that's a wonderful truth.
ANNOUNCER: Jesus says, the greater love has no man than
to lay down one's life for another. Today's message
will inspire you to consider and realize what Christ has
done for you and the message hope rising.
ANNOUNCER: Has your spiritual life stalled out? Do you find
yourself on the side of the road watching others drive
past, unable to move forward because of fear, indifference
or maybe distraction? It's time to get your spiritual
motor started and begin living a life of purpose,
joy, and effortless faith. "Ignite Your Life" is a brand
new book from gifted businessman and car enthusiast,
Barry Meguiar, with an energizing passion
for living every day with fearless faith, Barry helps
you conduct a spiritual tuneup to get you back on the track in
the race of life. Ready to live a joy-filled purpose-driven
God-honoring life? Order your copy of "Ignite Your Life" by
making a gift of any amount to the ministry of Real Life. Get
your copy by going to jackhibbs.com or by calling
(877)777-2346. On your mark, get set, go.
JACK: Hey friends, listen up. This is a message of hope
and if you're like me, you can't get enough of hope.
In fact, you and I put so much stock in hope that when
our hopes are dashed, we've got a tendency to
be crushed. Well, the reason why hope is often dashed
in our lives is because of the one that gave us the
promise. And when somebody promises us and they can't come
through, then our hopes are dashed, right? Well, God gives
us promises and hope that cannot fail. Jesus came to this world
to seek and to save those who are lost. And you might say,
well, that doesn't bring much hope. Oh my friends, yes it
does. Listen up. He came to seek and to save those who are lost.
And so when you realize that without Jesus Christ in your
life, you're living a life of void, void, meaning you're
filling it with everything, but you still have no more hope,
you're still the same person, but maybe now you're broke or
maybe now you are disillusioned. Well friends, listen, Jesus said
it Himself, no greater love does a man have than the man who lays
down his life for his friends, and Jesus did that for you. So
listen, let this message speak to you about the fact that He
loved you so much that He went to the cross for you and that
resurrected Jesus that lives today is the Jesus who gives you
hope, that endures. It's a hope that will continue. So listen,
let's grab our Bibles. Let's get our notepads out and let's go to
class as it were learning about hope. Put your hope in Him.
He'll never let you down.
JACK: The word worthy is axios and it means this in
the negative sense right here. It is in the negative, not
worthy. It means that there's nothing in this world
that is weighty enough, nothing substantial enough, nothing
that you can even detect as it were in the radar, not
even being in the same league, somebody would say, not
deserving of attention in comparison, what heaven is
for us and we're in route to heaven. This cancer, this
diabetes, this broken marriage, this injured life,
this broken mind is nothing compared to what's going
to happen to you in heaven. God has got an awesome plan and
Christ is the answer on how to get there. It's not your works,
it's not your efforts, it's all on Him. As you turn to Him and
you cry out to Him, oh Lord God have mercy on me. He delights in
that He loves it and we need to remember His perspective. He
imparts that to us by the Holy Spirit. Don't let these things
of this world bring us down. Come on, let's be honest. The
things of this world have a tendency to, you can almost hear
sometimes the trials of life with a sucking kind of a drain
noise. It's like somebody pulled the plug in the tub and
everything's going down. And look, if you don't get a
perspective from the Bible on what's happening, you can get
sucked up into depression. You can get pulled down into
darkness. That's why when we need to love on one another,
this ridiculous world has no authority, nor is it qualified
to talk about the word love. God is love, the Bible says, and
that is a love that is enduring. It's a yielding love and it's a
defensive love. It's offensive love and is a protective love.
God loves and it's a wonderful thing to see. And the worthiness
of heaven is something that we can only dream about as it were.
And He gives us those glimpses by the way of an earth that in
some little tiny bit still bears resemblance of His goodness. And
so here we pick it up, part three of our message found at
the latter end of verse 18 is that time is running out and
church, we need to be looking forward to the beginning. I love
this part. It says in verse 18 that our sufferings now are not
worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in
us. Man, you want to talk about pregnant truth scripture, it's
right here, with the glory which shall be revealed in us. The
glory talking about heaven. This is a test. This is a quiz.
Number one. Jesus said, the kingdom of heaven is where?
Anybody know? He said in you, number two, Jesus says, the
kingdom of heaven is near you or around you. Interesting
conversation. Right? Jesus also said, the kingdom of heaven is
coming. Now you think about yourself for a moment. You and I
in this world, spiritually speaking, are suspended between
heaven and hell. You're in the place of what Tolkien would say
middle earth, and there's two worlds pulling on you. One pure
love. The Puritans used to say the spirit of God is wooing you
to God. The other side is pure death. All of the flesh, all of
sin, all of the darkness, all of hell is pulling and you're in
the middle. You are the great prize in this grand scheme of
what's taking place. Christ died on the cross for your sins, for
mine personally. Listen, it wasn't a good man dying on the
cross because a good man couldn't take in all of our own
drama. You understand that? Well, I believe Jesus was a good
man. Do you now? Then that's an insult to God. He wasn't a good
man. He was the God man. He was born in Bethlehem, just like the
prophets foretold. He was God come to earth in human skin.
Read Isaiah chapter 7, read Isaiah chapter 9, and Christ was
born into this world, God's Messiah, the second person of
the Holy Trinity, Jesus Christ, the eternal God who was at
creation of the physical world. And He comes and He takes upon
the form of you and I, a human, not angels by the way, Jesus did
not die for angels. Isn't that amazing? I love that, He died
for us and He rose again from the dead to guarantee your
salvation. All you need to do is to recognize what he says is
true. He says that we're sinners. He says that He's the
savior. Repent of your sin. That means agree with Him, homologeo
is to say the same word about sin that God says about it. And
then you want to metanoia, you want to change your mind so you
don't have to get all weird religious about, oh, what do I
do? What do I do next? Do I do this? Do I kneel? Do I stand? Do
I jump? What do I do? Jesus says, this is the work that God
would have you to do. Everybody held their breath. What is it?
Because our flesh is saying, you got to pick up 500 pounds. You
got to give a million dollars. You got to walk 35,000 miles,
right? Jesus says, believe on Him whom God has sent. That was
the answer. Trust in Him. Put your faith in Him. Lean upon Him
whom God has sent. That's the work of God. But religion will
muddy all that up and make it impossible. Don't do that. Now,
the fact of the matter is for us as believers, we look forward to
the beginning and it's quite awesome because to experience
the glory and to experience what we're seeing here is the word
revealed, then we've got to embrace a word that we kind of
relate to. It's a little bit of a different use of the word
here, but you like the Book of Revelation. I love it. It's my
favorite book. The book of Revelation is the book of
Apocalypto or apocalypse, the unveiling. So let's read that
again with the glory which shall be unveiled or revealed or made
known in us. The king that is around us is the kingdom that is
within us and it's the kingdom to which we're going to. And
it's basically this. It's God's governance over our lives.
Nobody can control that. I talked to a family after first
service. I'm not going to tell you what country they're from
because it doesn't help me to say what country I'm going to be
there soon. So I don't want them to not let me in through
customs. But they live in a country where the government
controls the sermons, the government controls the church.
The government says what it can and cannot do, and the
government says where they can and cannot go. And that's quite
shocking to hear in the 21st century, isn't it? But it is
what it is. No, for the believer. Hallelujah, everybody.
This world is not the consummation of our faith. This
world is not the end of our journey. Our beginning actually
really happens when you and I enter into glory, there's a
glory that we're going to go to. We talked about that last time
together. We're in route. We talked about the word terminus.
We're in route to the termination of our journey. And
for the believer, the termination of our journey is
simply the end of our opportunities as believers to be
faithful to God. When that's done, it's home. It's the
presence of God. And that is such a joyous thing. The word
glory is that word doxa, to the praise of, to the honor of. So
think about all the suffering. It's nothing in comparison to
the glory that shall be revealed. Why is that? The
praise, the honor to the glory of, to the brightness and the
beauty of God's glory and majesty be all glory, we would
say to the eternal pleasure and joy here it is of being in His
presence. Look, that is both true in the future, but to
exercise faith today, it's true for us right here, right now.
How do you live today? You know we have to be careful that as
believers, we don't say, oh, you know the days to come when that
time comes, when that happens, we long for that moment. Yes, we
long for that moment, but as believers, we live this life
around us in the here and now from that position, that is our
inheritance, but we represent the kingdom now, which is why
the Bible calls us ambassadors for the Lord Jesus Christ. Okay?
So very, very important. So listen, I want to repeat two
verses from a few weeks ago. Titus chapter 2 verse 11. Titus
2:11 says, for the grace of God that brings salvation has
appeared to all men past tense. It's Jesus, teaching us that
denying ungodliness and wordly lust, we should live soberly,
righteously, and godly in this present age. That's impossible
without the Holy Spirit controlling your life. Verse 13,
one of my favorite verses of the entire Bible looking for you got
to circle the word looking because it means expecting,
longing, yearning for the blessed hope and the glorious
appearing of our great God and Savior. Who is it? Jesus Christ.
Verse 14, who gave Himself for us that we might, He might
redeem us. What a God. What a God. Listen, in Judaism, you
don't have this. You just have rules and regulations. And
Mormonism, Jehovah witness, Islam, all of its performance.
Somebody's wrong. I'll submit to you this argument. The biblical
argument is the most humbling. It is the most difficult to
accept because it causes you and I to take the backseat and trust
God that He'll take care of it all. The other one, oh yeah,
yeah, we believe in Jesus. But we're going to add this. You
just fall from grace. The Bible says in the book of Galatians,
it says, you're not a real believer. You're not true. You
have fallen from grace. The moment you put works out in
front, oh, if I could just get accepted by God, you want to get
accepted by God, you've got to be in Christ. Imagine being
inserted as it were inside the righteousness of God, because
that's exactly what it means. You are hidden by the blood of
Jesus. But that is such an awesome supernatural reality
that your life on the insides transformed. You're made new.
Colossians 3 verse 4 when Christ, who is our life appears,
is He your life? Then we also will appear with Him in glory.
That's a great verse. When He comes to pick us up, which is
whom we're living for, we will be glorified. Lord, now please.
Number two in our argument is verses 19 to 21. And that is
what are we waiting for when hope is increasing? It's true
hope's increasing right now in this world, 21st century, right
here, right now, this month, this week, today, hope is
increasing. If you understand the scriptures, if you're
waiting for God to do something next in your life, hope's
increasing. If you're waiting for some scriptures, some event,
you're looking to the horizon as it were for God, what's the next
move? Hope is increasing. Look, here you are today. Not sure if
you know this or not, most of you do, but today is Sunday and
Sunday is the first day of the week. A lot of people don't know
that. Monday's the second day of the week, Sunday has always been
the first day of the week. The disciples, for example, 2000
years ago, on the first day of the week, they met together. It
was Sunday. Even in Judaism, the Sabbath is Saturday. The next
new day that starts the week, their Monday so to speak, is
Sunday, right? You got that? Jews go to work on Sunday, to
them it's like our Monday, our first day in this nation and in
the Judeo-Christian western world for the last 2000 years,
the first day of the week was dedicated to God because
everything's dedicated to God. We're following the pattern of
the early believers. First day of the week is Sunday, second
day of the week we give that to the world. Are you hearing me?
So what's very, very cool about this is the church worships the
first day of the week. Look, I grew up in a land far, far away
in a distant galaxy. When I was young, I grew up in a country
that you had to do everything on Friday and Saturday because on
Sundays everything was closed in honor of God. Did you know that?
It wasn't until what? How many, maybe the last 40 years, 50
years. Everything was closed on Sundays in America, everything.
It was the first day of the week. That was our
Judeo-Christian founding of our nation. It was always like that.
And can you imagine today, if I were to imagine being a
congressman in Washington DC and you say, I like to propose a
bill, that we shut down everything on Sundays,
everything shut down by order of the government. We shut down
everything on Sundays and people can either play basketball, go
fishing, hang out with their kids, go to church, not
whatever, but we're going to dedicate this day. Can you
imagine that? There'd be riots. There'd be riots. Imagine if I
just said this, there'd still be riots. We're just going to take
a day off as a nation and strengthen our families. Dads
are going to play baseball with their kids and they're going to
go to the beach together, fly a kite, just unplugged from the
world one day a week. Can you imagine? People would get upset
over that. What are you talking about, family, who needs a
family? It's like some people get in a fight with an ant. They
just got to argue about everything. But could you
imagine? I grew up in a world like that. That's the time warp
I come from. But I got to tell you, when you're focusing your
heart and your life on God, there's a hope that starts to
increase in your life. It's just the way that it is. And in verse
19, we see this in nature. Nature is waiting. Look at verse
19. It says, for the earnest expectation of the creation, not
the evolution, the creation, there's evidence of creation.
There's no evidence of evolution. And I love to say
that because it upsets people. So lemme say it again. There's
evidence of creation. There's no evidence of evolution. You need
to know that. I've never heard that before. What about the
fossils? You want to talk fossils. We'll have to talk
about it some other time, but the fossils actually proves the
opposite of what you're thinking about. The fossils scream
creation. But that's for another day, but I hope it comes soon.
That's a great conversation. Maybe next time. But the
creation the Bible says is in the state of expectancy, it's
eagerly waiting for the revealing of the sons of God.
What does that mean? It means that nature itself is under the
grip of sins effect and it's waiting. The word in Greek means
this is pretty awesome. It means that it's up on the tips of its
toes, and we're supposed to be like that too. To look over. It
means with expectation to be on the tips of your toes to be
looking like over a crowd. Have you ever done that? You're like,
what? Can you see anything? That's how the believer's
supposed to be. Now I know we have to walk around normal in
life. It's like, Hey, how you doing? Nice to see you. This is
how, Hey, glad you're here. But inside we should be going. Yeah,
glad you're here. Any signs of Jesus coming? You see anything?
Is God moving? You know a truck honks it's horn? Is that it? Are
we going up? No, it's just a truck horn. It's okay. You know
what I'm saying? It's like, yo. There's this hope spiritually
we're to be living like that. Not silly but expectant.
JACK: Well, listen, I can tell you right now from personal
experience that when I accepted Christ at the age of 19
in Southern California, there was a lot going
on, like there always is a lot going on in life and
in the world, and things didn't come together for me until
I became a Christian. And then all this stuff of life that was
so disappointing going from one promise broken to the
next promise broken. Listen, when that happens, it has a
tendency to cause you to shut down from experiences and from
relationships. But listen, here's the great news to find
out that you have the absolute hope in heaven because
it's the hope of heaven, and that's Jesus Christ Himself.
The fact that Christ could come back at any time.
Listen, I have two overriding hopes. The fact that
Christ could come back for me at any time keeps me ready and
excited. And also the fact that if I die of old age or get hit
by a truck that comforts me because I know I'm going to
heaven. Why? How can I be so sure? Because Christ has
promised me, and here's the great thing. God cannot lie.
Jesus cannot lie. Jesus Himself said that all men are liars. He
didn't say that to insult us, but come on, you and I bragged
about how big the fish was, right? You and I brag about we
had such a great time when it wasn't all that great. Well,
listen, we have a tendency to tell lies because we are liars
by nature, because we're fallen by nature. And I don't say that
to insult you, and I sure don't say that to rob hope from you. I
say it to do the opposite. Friend, He loves you. He died on
the cross for you. And I want to pray right now for you to invite
hope into your life. Are you ready for this? Simply follow
this. Dear Lord Jesus, I want you to be the hope of my life. I
want you to be the one who takes control of me from top to bottom
that you would surround my life with your promises, which can
never fail because you're the God who keeps His Word. And when
you said you'll never reject anyone who comes to you, well
Lord, I'm taking you up on that offer and I confidently receive
that now because you're good to me. Because you're good to all
those who seek your face, I give you my life in exchange. You
give me your righteousness according to your Bible, and I
thank you for that in Jesus' name. Friends, if you prayed
that prayer, let us know. You can go to jackhibbs.com. Reach
out to us there. We'd love to know if you've prayed that
prayer. Until next time, my friends, God bless you.
ANNOUNCER: You are watching real life with Jack Hibbs.
ANNOUNCER: Has your spiritual life stalled out? Do you find
yourself on the side of the road watching others
drive past, unable to move forward because
of fear, indifference or maybe distraction? It's time to
get your spiritual motor started and begin living a life
of purpose, joy, and effortless faith. "Ignite
Your Life" is a brand new book from gifted businessman
and car enthusiast, Barry Meguiar, with an energizing
passion for living every day with fearless faith, Barry helps
you conduct a spiritual tuneup to get you back on the track in
the race of life. Ready to live a joy-filled purpose-driven
God-honoring life? Order your copy of "Ignite Your Life" by
making a gift of any amount to the ministry of Real Life. Get
your copy by going to jackhibbs.com or by calling
(877)777-2346. On your mark, get set, go.
ANNOUNCER: Life is full of fear, doubt and worry. The more
you listen to and see the world today, the easier
it is to feel hopeless and helpless. Amidst the confusion
a voice of hope has emerged. The Real Life Network
founded by Jack Hibbs, the Real Life Network is a
free digital media platform void of the noise of secular
media that attacked people of faith. Click on the QR
code or sign up for free at reallifenetwork.com.
Fast forward your faith.
ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Real Life Radio with Jack Hibbs.
JACK: God's Word never will return void. God's Word
is spirit, it's power, and it has its effect. God
did not give us Bible prophecy to scare us, but to
prepare us. You are the light of the world Jesus
said, you are the salt of the earth. How does that happen?
ANNOUNCER: Jack Hibbs truly believes we are living in some
of the most exciting days in history, which
brings some great opportunities to share with the world
a powerful no-nonsense presentation of the gospel
to this generation who are searching for answers and
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