The Burning Man vs The Son of Man

Today I want to transition here and now talk about the sermon. And I'd like to talk about a topic I think is pretty important as we're going through this coronavirus together. And we're going through different things. It's been a few months since the feast. It's sort of the darkest days here in the winter. And that's the topic of hope. A topic of hope. And I'd like to talk today about the contrast between man's hope or human hope and godly hope.

About 500 years ago, Sir Thomas Moore wrote a book in Latin because at the time that was what the more intellectual books were written in. And if I attempted to read it to you in Latin, I think I would butcher it pretty badly. So I'm just going to read you the English translation of what this book was titled. And bear with me because you'll realize there's one word that you recognize in there. The book was titled, A Truly Golden Little Book, No Less Beneficial Than Entertaining, Of a Republic's Best State, and Of the New Island of Utopia.

And that this book became so popular that about 30 years after it was first published in Latin, it was translated into French, and a year later it was translated into English. And since that time, we've had this word, Utopia, in our vocabulary. And Sir Thomas Moore created this word, Utopia, from a Greek, from two Greek words. One of the words was oo, which means not, and the other one is topos, which means place.

And so the word Utopia in Greek means no place. Now he said that this Utopia, this island, is an island in the middle of the Atlantic. That was what he created, this sort of fictional place in the middle of the Atlantic, this little island. And he called it no place. And it was a place where everything was perfect. People got along, people had ability to work together, and society grew, and and yet he called it no place, as sort of the irony of the fact that any place like that would actually not even exist.

And that is interesting because that is such, is the nature of man's hope. It's sort of a wonderful idea, but it doesn't really exist any place. And over the years, this idea has been picked up by different people.

Voltaire picked it up when he wrote this, his famous Candide. H.G. Wells wrote a book called New Utopia in 1905. And ever since then, we've had this desire for Utopia. I think if you read, I think Darris MacDeely wrote an interesting article in Beyond today about the Utopian societies in the United States. You've probably heard of the Appliances of Amana. Amana Appliances were created by people who desired to have a Utopian society, and they set it up under certain rules of what that would look like. The Mormons famously christened their Utopian city, Salt Lake City, as a Utopian city.

And most recently, and this is where I wanted to share a slide, most recently in 1991, Larry Harvey of San Francisco founded what is today called the Burning Man Festival. How many people have heard of the Burning Man Festival? A lot of people, a lot of West Coast people here, yeah. My neighbors go every year. They didn't go this year because of COVID.

But my neighbors go every year. It's held in September in the Black Rock Desert Basin of Nevada. If you see the picture, this is a picture of the tents. In 2019, there were 70,000 people who went to Burning Man. Burning Man takes place in September, and it lasts for about a week, and people have to stay in temporary dwellings. Is this beginning to sound familiar? Yeah, they have to stay in tents or motor homes. It has to be temporary. Larry Harvey set up Burning Man to be something temporary. He wanted it to be utopia, and he knew it would never last.

So he said, we're going to have utopia for a week. So anybody that comes has to stay in some sort of temporary tent or some sort of temporary dwelling, and when it's done, you have to remove it completely.

And while you're there, you have to abide by 10 principles. So, you know, you start seeing these themes of how people begin to try and cope with the lack of hope that they have. People would come together for a week in the middle of the desert, where nothing exists except sand or rock, and they build a temporary city complete with street signs and temples and community gathering places.

And he says it has to be based upon unconditional giving, radical inclusion of all people, radical self-reliance, which we'll come back to in a moment. And it's become very popular. Larry Page, founder of Google, has been there. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook. Elon Musk, which anybody who might be aware of how Elon Musk and the Earth himself is probably not surprised that Elon Musk has been there. Hollywood movie stars, politicians, artists have all been to this festival that was created as an idea of a utopia, people struggling for utopia. And yet, everyone knows you can't have utopia because it's really no place. It exists maybe for a week, and then it must disappear because it can't exist in our human imagination.

We celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles each year, and we get a little bit of a picture of that. But you know, that's a picture of something that actually exists. That is a godly hope. And I think it's an interesting contrast to think about Burning Man versus the Son of Man, because through Jesus Christ, we have a sure hope. We have a firm hope of something that will come, and that does exist, not a no place like Burning Man represents. And so today, I'd like to talk about godly hope, as I said, and human hope. And the title of today's message is Burning Man versus Son of Man. And hopefully we know which one we're in. I'm going to go ahead and close the presentation now, if we switch back over here. Let's turn over to Hebrews 11.

And let's talk about faith and hope. If you turn with me to Hebrews 11 and verse 1, many of you can quote it. Hopefully we can memorize this. It says, it says, faith is the substance of things hoped for, for the evidence of things not seen.

You know, the mainstream Christian author John Piper once said that hope is faith in the future tense. Because we have a hope today, but we have a hope for tomorrow. We have a faith that in the future something is going to exist. That is beautiful. Where love and joy and peace and being able to work together and to be able to build something together without the risk of health issues, without the risk of people not getting along, without crime, without violence. This is what people have striven for for centuries, and yet it doesn't exist. Godly faith is an assurance of good news of future events. That's why we're here. I think that's why we stay around, right? Because we recognize that in this life we will have blessings as we follow God's laws, but we'll have persecutions. We'll have difficulties. But in the future, when Jesus Christ returns, there will be a millennial rule of peace, and we rejoice in the Feast of Tabernacles as we celebrate that. But you know, human hope is different from that. Human hope is about desiring something. Like, you know, I always hoped to go to France when I was growing up. Oh, I would love to go to Europe. Maybe, maybe, oh, I'd love to go to, you know, name your place. And sometimes that hope happens, and sometimes it doesn't. And we accept that. That's, you know, that's kind of how human hope is. But godly hope is not like that. Godly hope has an assurance. You know, you might say, well, I hope Mr. Peveritt doesn't speak too long, right? You know, that's kind of a human hope, right? Hopefully, you know, hopefully I'll respect the rules here, and we'll be on time.

Let's turn over to Hebrews 6, just a couple pages over. Hebrews 6, verse 9, it says, But beloved, we are confident of better things concerning you.

The previous context here was of people who had forsaken their calling, people who wanted to go back to the elementary principles, people who really didn't understand how God was working in their lives. He says, beloved, we are confident of better things concerning you. Yes, things that accompany salvation that we speak in this manner. For God is not unjust to forget your work and your labor of love, which you have shown towards His name, and that you have minister to the saints and do minister. He's speaking to those who were servants, who were striving to do the right thing, who were striving to serve and give and be part of their communities. And in verse 11, he says, And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope until the end.

You keep doing that because you have this hope. It's not in vain. What we do here, what we come to church, when we strive to do these things, we have Bible studies, we have Bible reading, we get together and we serve and we help one another. These things are not in vain. These things are so that we would have this hope until the end, that you do not become sluggish, but imitate those who, through faith and patience, inherit the promises.

It was the writer's desire that those he was writing to would show the sign of love and care and concern, one for another, and that they would be encouraged by that. They would mutually encourage one another as they went through difficulties in their lives, as they went through trials. We pray for people who have coronavirus. We were speaking about David and Joy Jones. I mean, wow, you know, just how many things can people be hit with? This is a family that has suffered, and we suffer with them when we hear these stories and when we know them.

I receive these prayer requests multiple a day, and you get these, and it's like, you know, God's people need support. We need to support one another. This is the community that we have been called into. Biblical hope expects these things to happen. These things are not just sort of, oh, well, it might happen or might not happen. We expect, we have full assurance, that these things are going to happen.

You know, we do these things because we connect, and we, our faith and our works go together, and when we do these things and we support one another through this, then our faith is strengthened, and there's this virtuous cycle that occurs. You know, my wife and I have been blessed to be married 31 years, and I say, well, I hope I'm going to stay married to my wife. I mean, if I said that to her, I think she'd be like, what do you mean you hope you're going to stay married to me? We've been married 31 years! No, we, it's, it, that's, but see, when we say things like that, we, that's kind of a human hope. But when we have worked on something, when we've diligently been part of something, then we don't have to use that hope word in the same way, because it's, it's more than just kind of a hope. It's more than just a human hope. Let's go back over here to Romans 10 now, in verse 22. You see, there's a lot in the book of Romans about hope, about faith. It said, let us draw near, Hebrews 10 verse 22, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience in our bodies washed with pure water.

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

The writer here is assuring us that this, this thing that we talk about, these examples of faith that he's going to share in just a few verses, these people have a hope that can be, that can be counted on, something that they expect to have happen. It's not about, you know, maybe you've watched your favorite sports team and maybe they've been down. I remember as a, as a kid, I grew up in Southern California and I was a Dodger fan and I remember there was one World Series where the Dodgers were just getting beaten so badly and, you know, I just hoped and I hoped and I hoped, you know, and I think it was something like seven to three or something. And I'm like, well, you know, they get, they get all the guys on base and then somebody hits a great, you know, hits a home run, they'll, they'll get them all, you know, that, that's kind of the human hope that we have sometimes. We just hope and hope and hope. But that's not what we're talking about here.

It's a confident hope. We'll go over in Romans 4 verse 18 because I think here we see an example how Abraham worked through concepts of hope and faith. Because here in Romans 4 verse 18, we see a contrast, a contrast between human hope and godly hope.

Romans 4, Romans 4 verse 18, it says, who contrary to hope and hope believed. It's an interesting phrasing. The, the King James Version, if you have the King James Version, says, who against hope, believed in hope. The New Living Translation says, for even when there was no hope for hope, Abraham kept hoping. You see, this is a contrast that from a human standpoint, there was no hope.

But from a godly standpoint, he had a full assurance that this was going to happen. Let's read more about what happens here. Who contrary to hope and hope believed, so that he became the father of many nations according to what was spoken.

So shall your descendants be. Verse 19, and not being weak in faith, he did not consider his own body already dead since he was already a hundred years old and the deadness of Sarah's womb. See, humanly speaking, he had no hope. But godly speaking, he had a great hope. He had an assurance of God's word that said he was going to be the father of many nations. This is the difference between the human hope and the godly hope.

And we as God's people have to make that transition in our minds to be supported and to understand that God knows how we're living and what we're going to go through. And he knows and he's going to guide us through those difficult circumstances.

Human hope is the hope that says, well, a hundred-year-old man and a woman who's already been past her time is going to have a child. That's human hope.

You know, human hope is the Palestinians and the Israelis are going to solve their problem.

You know, peace in the Middle East, that's a human hope.

You know, Golda Meir, who was one of the early prime ministers of Israel in the early 1970s, she once said, we will have peace when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us. You know, 1970s, here we are, you know, 50 years later. We still talk about these things. And this has been going on for hundreds and sadly even thousands of years. Human hope says, you know, we're going to, this government's going to get back on track and, you know, it's going to do good things. And, you know, we want leaders that tell us it's going to get better. It's going to get better because that's human hope. We want somebody to come along and save us. That's human hope. And, you know, I go to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and you've got to keep money in your pocket because you're just bribing people all day long. You go to the airport and somebody comes up and says, I'll take your bags and check them in. And you're like, really? Yep.

And so you pay that person to do that. And then somebody comes along and says, I'm going to walk you to your gate. And so you pay them for them to walk you to the gate and so forth and so on. And that corruption is so deep there. And it's so deep in world, in countries all across the world. Human hope says that's going to get fixed. But it's not going to get fixed as we recognize.

You know, there's, being human as we are, we think we can solve these things. And I think it's interesting that the Burning Man Festival, one of the great principles, is this concept of radical self-reliance. We're going to rely on ourselves and we're going to solve these things together. If only we can work together, we can solve this. And this is what Israel wanted. Israel wanted a king to lead them in a certain direction because they wanted hope that they were going to be in a certain place. We continue here in verse 20. He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that what he had promised he was able to perform. You know, when we have difficulties that we go through and we do, it's verses like these that they challenge us, that God is faithful, and that we are convinced that he will give us what he has promised. Verse 22, and therefore it was accounted to him for righteousness. A lot of times we think about righteousness about what we do. Righteous acts.

Well, this was a righteous act, having faith that God was going to come through and do what he had promised. And so we can act in a righteous way, but if we want to be righteous, it's about understanding that God is going to be there for us. That's being righteous. That's what being righteous means, that we have faith that God will support us and take us through these things.

Verse 22, and therefore it was accounted to him for righteousness. Now it was not written, and this is what's important, it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him, but also for us. It was written for us. It shall be imputed to us who believe in him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead. This is who we are. We are Christians. We are followers of Jesus Christ, who was delivered up because of our offenses and was raised because of our justification. This is the great story of faith and hope, and it was not just written for Abraham, but it was written for us. That's why we're talking about it today. It was written for us to teach us what it means to be righteous. To be righteous means to trust in God as Abraham trusts in God, that when things don't look like they should work out, just like it didn't look like it was going to work out for him to have that child, they do work out. God does have a plan, and we're part of that plan.

Now Paul spoke about hope. He wrote about hope. We see here things written about hope.

Hope was not a concept that did not exist in the ancient world. Hope was something that was discussed, and this kind of hope in the ancient world was considered foolishness, just like this kind of hope in our modern world is considered foolish. If you're atheist, diagnostic, you look at this and say, this man who lived 2,000 years ago, why is that? Why does that mean anything? Let's look over in 1 Corinthians 1, and we'll see how Paul described how this hope was considered foolish to the ancients. 1 Corinthians 1 verse 18.

We need to understand this because, you know, a lot of people aren't going to get what we're talking about because they weren't called, they're not called right now, or they just struggle with it. It just seems kind of silly. 1 Corinthians 1 verse 18. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

It is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputing of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

Now, we might read that and go, well, okay, yeah, that's interesting. But I think Paul had something very particular in mind when he wrote that because he talks about disputors of this age. And these were the Greeks. The Greeks had a deep mythology. Probably, you know, if you're older, you might remember when you read about, you read Greek mythology. I don't know, maybe you fell asleep in school when you had to do that. But, you know, there are the two great works written in Greek today are Homer's Iliad, the Odyssey of the Iliad, and the New Testament. Those are the two great surviving works of literature written in Greek that we still study today. The Greeks had a deep mythology, and they had a mythology related to hope. So when Paul speaks about hope, as we'll see here in a moment, he no doubt had in mind what the Greeks thought about hope. So just because it might have been a while since you studied what the Greeks thought about hope, I thought I'd share just a little bit of Greek mythology with you for a moment. So there was this guy named Prometheus.

I've heard of the Promethean flame, right? So Prometheus steals fire from heaven, and Zeus was very upset with Prometheus for doing this. So Zeus concocted a plan to get back at Prometheus by sending him somebody named Pandora. Now, of course, we have Pandora radio, Pandora jewelry, but this was the original Pandora. So he sent Pandora to basically be with Prometheus's brother, Epimetheus. And so Pandora was going to get married then to Prometheus's brother, and she received a wedding gift, this famous box, right? Or jar. And she received this wedding gift, and she was told, don't open this jar, this box. What do you do? Do not open this box.

And of course, we know the story that she did, and she opened the famous Pandora's box.

And when Pandora's box opened, all sorts of evil escaped into the world, all over the earth.

And as she realized all this evil was escaping, she went to close the container to stop all of this evil from going all over the earth. And everything escaped except one thing. And that's what most people don't realize. There was one thing in Pandora's box that did not escape, and it was hope.

Hope was in that box, and it did not escape under Greek mythology. Hope stayed in the box. And there's been debate among the Greeks since that time as to why, under Greek mythology, hope never left the box.

One theory says that it was there for man to go get. It would be available to man if man needed that hope. The other theory said that it was deprived from man, that man would never have hope. See, the Greeks had a very deep mythology around the concept of hope. It was either there for man to get, or it was deprived from man. And so when Paul speaks about foolishness, this message of the cross, the Greeks were like, yeah, we know about hope. You know, they had a lot of writing about the concept of hope already at that time. And so if we continue here down in verse 23, it says, but we preach Christ crucified to the Jews a stumbling block, to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness. To the Greeks, this was just foolishness. Verse 24, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

So the Greeks consider this to be foolishness. And I think our world today isn't much different than the world of the first century. You know, they had the Pax Romana, we have the Pax Americana.

If you wanted something to happen in the ancient world, it happened in Rome. Everything went from Rome. We live in a world today where the United States has enormous cultural influence.

And back then, people said, huh?

This guy was executed by the Romans. He was kind of a Jew, and yet he gives hope in us. Really? Paul went to Mars Hill. He talked about these things. You know, we don't hear a lot about the church in Athens, do we?

You know, we hear about the church in Jerusalem. We hear about the church in Rome. We don't hear a lot about the church in Athens.

You know, no doubt there were believers in Athens, but it just never really took off because the Greeks just thought that was foolishness. And people look at us. They look at what we do, and they go, huh? Really? Okay. And we're going to see more and more of that as we go along. It was nice, you know, maybe to have some mainstream Christian roots in this country for hundreds of years, but we see fewer and fewer people believing in this mainstream Christian culture that we're used to. Fewer and fewer people as things go along. Atheists and agnostics would say the world will go on unless collectively we kill ourselves.

Or, you know, some nuclear power or something comes in and, you know, sort of influences us. Maybe the Chinese will put their stamp on things, and it'll be a Chinese sort of control of the world. Let's go over to 1 Peter 1 and verse 3. 1 Peter 1 and verse 3. Because we see Peter, who was with Jesus, also understood this great hope that we have.

1 Peter 1 and verse 3.

It says, "...blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. 2 Peter 1 and verse 3. To an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who, that speaking of us, are kept by the power of God through salvation, sorry, through faith, for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last days." We're kept by the power of God. It is available to us. When we have struggles of hope, that is the time when we can get on our knees and God's Holy Spirit can strengthen us. It can encourage us. God's Spirit can guide us through those difficult times.

You know, 2 Chronicles 7 verse 14, you don't have to, we don't have to turn there, but this is often quoted by mainstream Christians today. They'll say, if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves, I will heal their land.

And there's a whole movement around that. And you know, that was referring, you know, you know that was talking to, right? That was talking to the children of Israel, and it was talking about physical land. But we are God's people. That is a beautiful metaphor to speak to God's church today. Not about some land, not about the United States, not about any of that, but about a future homeland, a future city that Abraham looked to, that we look to. If we will humble ourselves, God will heal our land. That is, He will bring to us His kingdom that He has prepared for us and is ready. We are called by God's name. We are in God's church. God is working with us. We are God's firstfruits who are kept by the power of God, verse 5, through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials. It's interesting how he puts it. You greatly rejoice, though, now for a little while. If it so occurs, you have been grieved. That the genuineness, this is important, so the grieving has a purpose. Verse 7, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it be tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

There is a reason why we are tested in these ways. There's a reason why we go through these things. There's a reason why Abraham went through this in hope, contrary to hope, in hope believed. That is the difference between the two hopes. We have to move from the human hope of, I hope this is going to work out okay, to I know that God has a plan.

That's the transition that we must make between these two hopes.

Verse 8, whom having not seen you love, though now you do not see him, yet believing you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory. And this was interesting because Peter had actually seen Christ. He knew he existed. He was with him for three and a half years. We didn't get to see him, just like who Peter was writing to. Those people didn't get to see him. But he says, though we have not seen him, we still love him. And we have that joy, receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls. That's the end result. That's that future tense of hope that John Piper described. Of this salvation, the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you. This is what we have been given. It is a great gift that we have to understand what these things mean. Now, we can speak of that future tense of what's ahead, but we also have to live in the present. And sometimes that can be a little bit challenging because we can say, well, I understand these things ahead, but the fact is I have issues right now. I have whatever a challenge might be, whether that's health or a job. The pandemic might have derailed a lot of plans for us. Let me turn over Mark 10 and verse 30 for a moment, because this is a promise that we have even today. Because we talk about the resurrection, we talk about the kingdom of God, we talk about Abraham looking for that city. But you know, Abraham wanted to have a son, too, in that life. And he was promised, and he was looking forward to that. And so in Mark 10 verse 30, Mark 10 verse 30, we're told here, who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions and in the age to come eternal life. The context of this verse is that basically the disciples were wondering, you know, what they were going to get. And you know, Peter says in verse 28, he says, see, we've left all and followed you. You know, what are we going to get? And in that sense, sometimes we maybe might ask that same question. What are we going to get? God, you know, we're doing all these things. And what about us? God knows who we are. He knows we have hopes and we have dreams. We have plans. And we like these things to come to pass. And so I think it's interesting that Jesus allowed and he put this out. Jesus could have said, Peter, get your act together. You know, don't you realize this human world you're going through right now? This is a no place. This is a this life doesn't count. You know, what really matters is the character you build through suffering and difficulty. He could have said that. But he allowed. He's like, okay, okay, Peter, let me tell you what this is going to mean for you. You will receive a hundred fold in this time of all these things. Whatever you've given up, you'll receive a hundred fold with persecutions. That is with difficulties. I think God knows who we are as human beings, that we'd like to have some comfort. We'd like to have some of these plans take place.

And so he allows this a hundred fold in this time. But you know, what's interesting is that it's still to some degree a human hope because that's what we would like to do, isn't it? Those are our kind of hopes and dreams. That's what we would like. And now we're kind of back into the human hope where we have to realize whatever hopes we might have on a human level, those do need to be submitted to God to see whether God would think that makes sense for us.

Let's go to 1 Corinthians 13 for a moment because this is a scripture that has always fascinated me.

1 Corinthians 13 verse 13. Well, a lot of times we start in 1 Corinthians 1 and we read the love chapter and we read about these incredible things of how love is described. Love is described as, it suffers long and it does not envy and it does not parade itself and it's not puffed up.

It describes the beauty of love. And at the end of this incredible discussion, Paul ends with this, and now abide, faith, hope, love. These three, but the greatest of these is love.

And you know, when you're done reading that, you know, 1 Corinthians 13, you're just like, wow, this is amazing, this discussion of love. But what about hope? What about faith? You know, I mean, hope's important, isn't it? We just, I've just been talking to you about hope.

I've been talking to you about faith. And yet love is greater than hope and faith.

The greatest of these is love. So if you think about the fruits of the Spirit, Galatians 5 22, love is the first fruit. But where's faith and hope in the fruits of the Spirit?

See, this is interesting, isn't it? If you think about where faith and hope fit with love.

So if we imagine, you know, love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, right?

So we read this verse a lot of times and we focus on love, but hope is wonderful and good and important. And faith and hope, those are things that we have to have, but we have to understand how faith and hope fit together both in this current life in terms of our hopes and our dreams and in the world to come, as it says, eternal life. That's what Jesus said we would have for the life that we live, for what we do. And so whether it's a hope for this life or the next, we have to live according to the Spirit. And the thing that we have to start with, the greatest of these things, is love. Love towards God, the greatest of all commandments. Love towards our neighbor, right? That would follow with it, which encompasses the Ten Commandments.

Love toward God means submitting our will to His and recognize that whatever those hopes and dreams that we might have, we submit those to the Father. We submit those to the Father and Jesus Christ, and we recognize that they will grant those things in due time for us, if that is their will, because we love God. That is the greatest. And after we love God and understand God, we then follow through in that hope and that faith to know that He will provide those things for us in this life and give us this wonderful, beautiful hope of this next life that we would have. And that's why we live a different way of life. It's not a way of life that we came up with or we designed. It's not based on Greek mythology and hope stuck in a box, right? There for us to try and get to or deprived of. No, we have hope that is given to us. It's a deeper thing than some Greek mythology. And we don't make up the rules as we go along, which is sort of the secular humanistic view of how things work. And we exercise self-control and we allow God's Spirit to flow through us, to lead us and to guide us, and to allow us to manifest love towards our neighbor and to have joy in the face of adversity.

We have peace even when there's conflict around us. We have long suffering when we face hardships because we know that God knows our needs before we even ask. You know, if you've thought about just spending time with God on your knees and just spending time with them, you know, God just wants to spend time with us. A lot of times we come before God because we've got a lot of needs, don't we? God, I need this. I need this help. I need this. I need that. But God just wants to spend time with us. He knows what we need before we ask, but He wants us to ask. He's okay with that, but a lot of times we're just like, it's the list. It's the prayer list. And that's good. Prayer lists are good, but it's a lot of times it's just the list. What's the biggest thing? How would be thy name? Okay, I said that. Now let's get to what we need. A lot of times that's how we think about our prayers. Today I've talked about two different types of hope.

A hope that is a human hope, which is about utopia, burning man, your favorite sports team, getting to the playoffs, right? Whatever hope, human hope you have, and godly hope, which is both a hope for today, whether that be a child in the case of Abraham, whether that be some dream of a career or family or whatever it might be that you have and submitting that hope to God. And that full assurance of that God is going to grant these things to us and ultimately give us his kingdom, which is the ultimate hope for mankind. I hope we can consider hope in this context and I hope that you can study more about this human hope and godly hope. Thank you.