Hope or Expectation?

Well, good afternoon, everyone. Good to see all of you here today. Let me thank Mrs. Kovanas for that special music. The words were very good and a good lead-in to the Sabbath services here this afternoon. So thank you to her and our virtual accompanist. We live in a great time, right, that we can do these things. Well, let me say hi to everyone again here. I look around and I see some visitors with us. It's good to have you with us here today. To those on the web, good to have you with us as well. It's been a few weeks since we've been in Cincinnati. We were down in Florida for a few weeks to, well, for some personal things as well as to do some other things. But we had quite an exciting time when we were down in Florida. A very satisfying time. I met my newest granddaughter for the first time. It was only a few weeks old when I was down there. And that was kind of just kind of a just kind of a really nice time when you meet your grandchild for the first time. And I realized when I saw how little she was that I hadn't been around the baby that little because our other two grandchildren we didn't see for the first few months that they were alive because they lived overseas at that time. How just the miracle of life, just the miracle of life that God does and how satisfying it is to see that circle of life. And then a week later, after I met her, my youngest son got married. So we had that joy. We had all the family in for the time. And that was very satisfying too, to see your children grow up, to find life, to find life and to know that they are set, that they can enjoy it going forward and have a fulfilled life. As we are coming back to Cincinnati, it dawned on me and I think Debbie as well, we've lived up here for a year now, which doesn't seem like as many years. It's gone by pretty quickly. But as we are coming back, Debbie said, it's good to be coming home. And I thought, well, that was a nice thing. That was a nice thing that Cincinnati is home. It's always nice to go back and we had so much enjoy the family down there and being able to visit with the church family in Orlando in Jacksonville as well. It was good to see them. As you all know, blood is a thick spirit is thicker. And to be with family is a wonderful thing, spiritual and physical. You know, as I was down there and as we were enjoying the time and what was going on in the family and these events that were happening, and if someone had said a year ago, you know, you'll be back down in Florida for a year or in a year from now, and these things would happen. I would have thought, no, but you know, God has a way of working things out. But it made me start thinking about life in a different way, because, you know, as we go through the physical life that we do, we do have we do learn spiritual lessons from it. And as I, you know, over the course of the time, since our daughter first told us that she was going to have a baby, you watch what's going on, and it brings back memories of when your children were being born and the excitement is there and the anticipation that's there. And she would call my wife and say things like, you know, oh, we found the crib. Oh, we have a stroller. Just the one we wanted. All these things that you do as you prepare for a child to be born. That's kind of an exciting time, even as you're going forward. I know, you know, Debbie, she was buying diapers, I mean, months before the baby was born. So she's set. She's set for a while.

But all these things you do, and it's a kind of a fun time in life when you anticipate what's going to happen. This is event that's going to happen. It's a real thing when you find out that there's a baby going to be born, and you have a date that is going to be born around, and your life kind of revolves around that. And you look forward to that date with anticipation. You know, the same thing, the same thing with a marriage. Your date is get set. You do all the preparations. You don't do them. In many cases, it's the bride and groom who are doing those preparations. And it's kind of a fun time. When I was growing up, I remember my dad saying, anticipation is 90% of the joy that you have in vacations and things like that. And I think he's right, because those times are kind of exciting. You're preparing for things going on. You're preparing for this event or that event. And the part of the fun and part of the joy in it is the preparation and the looking forward to it. And then the event occurs, and that's great. Sometimes when a vacation occurs, it's like, well, it's over. But not when a baby's born and not when a marriage takes place. It's just very good and very satisfying. So as I watched what I was thinking, and thinking about God, who is our Father, and who sees us as His children, and what does He think? What are His expectations? What is He doing? When He looks at you and me, and He sees our progress, what does He think about? You know, we get joy in all that as physical parents. What about God? What is He thinking about? So turn with me back to the Gospel of John. John 14. God, you know, He has expectations and He has joy as well. When He sees His children, His begotten children, do things, He's looking forward two times as well, as we will see. And John 14, as Jesus Christ is there on that Passover day, and by the end of the 14th of Abib, He's going to have sacrificed His life for all of mankind. And He's talking to His disciples after the Passover ceremony or observance, you will. And in chapter 14, He knows He's going away. The disciples don't understand that really yet, but in chapter 14, verse 1, He says, Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in Me. In my Father's house are many mansions or many dwellings. If it were not so, I would have told you, I go to prepare a place for you. And He's talking to you and me. I'm going away, but I am preparing a place for you.

There is an expectation that I have of you because you've been called, because you are part of God's family now. I am going to prepare a place for you. Much like new parents prepare a room, prepare their house for a new baby, much as a husband will prepare the place that he and his new bride are going to live and the things they're going to do. Jesus Christ. He's going and He's got an expectation down the road of something He's preparing the place for you and me. Verse 3, And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also. It's certain. It's not just a wish or not just a hope or just, you know, I hope this will happen. It's an expectation. He is preparing the place. He is coming again. He will receive those who live their lives in submission to Him, who grow and develop, and who progress from physical life and what can be to be born into the kingdom of God.

He will prepare that place. He does the same thing. And God the Father prepares a place for us too. He's got our future in mind. He's got an expectation of you and me, just as new parents have an expectation when they have that baby. What will she be like? What will he be like? What can I do to provide? What can I teach her? What can I train him in that he has a successful life? How can he grow up or she grow up to be a successful and a productive human being? So God looks at us as children, as we know, with those same type feelings that we have. If we go back to Jeremiah, you know, like a good father, God wants to give us a future.

He wants to provide for us those things that make our life meaningful. There is a plan down the road. There is a thing that we are being prepared for. There is something that we focus on, and he's got the end in sight. In Jeremiah 29 and verse 11, it's a very well-known verse, he says in he says, Jeremiah 29, 11, I know the thoughts that I think toward you.

This is what I think of you. I think of you with thoughts of peace and not of evil to give you a future and a hope. This is what I give you a future. I give you a hope. Those are some pretty powerful and loving words that God gives us. We're not here to just take things as they come. He gives us the future. He gives us the hope. When He gives that to us, it's absolutely, sure, absolutely certain. He goes on, and as He says, He says, then, you know, with this future and hope, then you'll call on Me and pray to Me, and I'll listen to you, and you'll seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. I'm here for you. I'm here for you always, God says. But I give you a future and a hope, and I want to look at that word hope for a moment, because it's a word that we hear a lot in the world today and a word that we hear in the church a lot about hope. And as we watch a world that is changing quickly, a world that a lot of people will look at and wonder what is going on in the world, and many people even in the world say, what? What is the purpose of it all? Where is it all going? Where is it all going to end? And some are looking for hope. God says He gives the future. He gives the hope. But if we look at this word hope, sometimes you have to go back and you have to look at words, what they are in the original Hebrew. Now, if you just have an Old King James version in your lap there, you'll see that it doesn't say hope in verse 11 there. It says, I know the thoughts of you, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and an end and expectation. They don't use the word hope in the Old King James, and that's an accurate translation from the original Hebrew word. That Hebrew word, I'm going to give you a number there because I don't feel like pronouncing it. I can't pronounce it. It's number 8615 Hebrew, and it literally means, I want to say this exactly, an expected end. I give you an expected end. Now, we look at the word hope, and that's a positive thing. We all want hope, but we look at the English word hope, and it can be misleading at times, right? Hope can be something we want to believe in, but it's not certain that it's going to come to pass.

When I looked it up in the English dictionary, Oxford and Webster's, they gave some examples. People want to believe, for instance, that something will happen, and they want to put their stock into it. They gave the example of, I hope someday there's a cure for cancer.

Well, that's a good hope, but it's not certain, is it? We might hope for something. When we're, when we just get married, we might hope that one day we have children. But then, when the wife tells you we're expecting a baby, it's no longer hope. It's an expectation. It's real. It's going to happen. It's time to do something about it and prepare for it, because your life is going to change. It is certain when that expectation is there. So God gives us a future, and He gives us an expectation. It's not just a hope, not we really hope this will happen. It is going to happen. It is certain. When God says it, it's going to come to pass. Now, when you look at some of the Hebrew words, you'll see that, you know, it will say, here's the meaning of this word, or here's what the translation of it is, and it has its origin in another word. In this case, this 8615 has its origin in another Hebrew word, and it's number 6960. I can pronounce this one. Kava. K-a-v-a.

And Kava has a meaning very much like expectation as well. Kava means to expect, Terry, look for and wait for something special, something you know is going to happen. It's what you do, for instance, when you are told we're having a baby, and you look to that date, you know that that's the expected time, you know that's going to happen, or when you get married and you set the date, I look forward to that time. It's not, I hope it's going to happen. It's going to happen. So 6960 is an important word. It shows up many times in the Old Testament.

The first time it shows up is a very telling place for it shows up. It shows up right at the beginning of the Bible. So let's turn back to Genesis 1. In Genesis 1, we find God doing for the first time what Jesus Christ was talking about in John 14. He said, I'm going to prepare a place for you. When I come again, that place is going to be prepared. But here in Genesis 1, we have God preparing a place for mankind.

That's what Genesis 1 is. We read Genesis 1. You know what it says there. We have a planet earth. It's sitting there dormant. It's sitting there futile. It's there sitting there tohu and bohu, chaotic and confused. It's doing absolutely nothing. We know without going into the history of the Bible that indeed it had a history where Satan was cast down into it. God covered it in water, covered it in darkness, and is just laying there dormant waiting for something to happen.

In verse 2, we see God, the Spirit of God, hovering over the earth. He's getting ready to do something with this planet that has been sitting there for who knows how many millions or perhaps billions of years. He's prepared a plan for this planet earth. It includes a physical creation that we have in pretty much detail in Genesis, but not in nearly the detail that you and I recognize.

When we look around us and we see the variety of plants and trees. When we live in this day and age and you look at the web telescope and what's going on in the universe that now we know how is or the stuff that they can do underwater. You see all the things that God has planned for this earth and how he created it as a place for mankind. A place for mankind. So as you read down through Genesis, you see God dividing. He brings light. He divides.

He forms the firmament in heaven. As we come down to the third day, we see God creating or providing the dry land. Verse 9 of Genesis 1, it says, verse says, then God said, let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place and let the dry land appear. And it was so. Well, as God is preparing this place, it needed light. It needed day and night. It needed dry land so that plants and vegetables and animals and man could dry on it or live on it. So God's preparing this place.

And it's interesting when you look at the Hebrew that number 6960, kava, expectation, something that has expectation built into it, shows up in verse 9. But not in the words that you would expect because as the translators looked at this, perhaps they didn't understand God's plan. They didn't know that earth was being created for a reason. There was a plan that God had in mind. You and I know that because God's spirit opens our minds to understand what the purpose of this planet is, what the purpose of our physical life is, and what he had in mind.

So where it says, be gathered together in verse 9, that's actually that Hebrew word 6960, kava, expectation. Now, I don't know exactly how that would be worded, but built into verse 9 is expectation. When God created the earth, when dry land appeared, he had an expectation for what was going to happen with this place he was preparing. He had a plan in mind. We know that. We know that. And what he had in mind was a place for mankind to grow, a place for mankind to develop, a place for mankind to develop character, and that through this first part of the life he expected us to have, that we would be ready to be born into the kingdom of God.

What happened on this earth and you're in my life is very important to be ready to be born into the kingdom of God, which is what he had in mind, to bring many sons to glory. The earth was created in expectation of that great event, or that purpose that God had in mind. Let's go to the New Testament, Romans 8.

Bear in mind those two words that we looked in the Old Testament. We're going to look at two words in the New Testament, too, that have basically the same meaning. In Romans 8, of course, it's the Holy Spirit chapter. We sometimes call it, talks about our natural nature, which is enmity against God. In verse 14, let me go to verse 19 first. Romans 8-19. We are talking about the creation of the earth, preparing it for mankind to live on it, grow in it, develop in it, come the maturity in it. In Romans 8 and verse 19, it says, for the earnest expectation, not hope, but the earnest expectation. That's what God had in mind. The earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. I'm going to stop and have you look at the word waits. Very common English word. Happens to be Greek number 553. Greek number 553 means expect fully. Expects fully. So if we replace waits with that, for the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly, whenever you see an adverb that God puts in, pay attention to that adverb, right? Eagerly. Really looking forward to it. There's zeal behind it. There's anticipation of it. This is something we really are looking forward to. Just can't wait for it to occur. The earnest expectation of the creation eagerly expects fully, or waits for, the revealing of the sons of God. That's what the earth is waiting for, God says. There is a purpose that the earth is there, and it has this expectation too. It's sitting here, and it's there expecting, and what does it realize? What is it waiting for? The expectation is the revealing of the sons of God. Who are the sons of God? Well, it tells us in Romans 8.14, if you don't know already, Romans 8.14, for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. People who God has called, and it isn't his purpose to call every human being today, you and I are extremely honored, extremely privileged, extremely should be humbled, that God has called, and mercifully called us in this time, that our expectation can be the same of his, that he gives us that expectation and that future. But if we're waiting for the revealing of the sons of God, people who respond to that call, people who genuinely repent, people who are baptized, people who have hands laid on them, people who have received the Holy Spirit, which is God putting his essence in them. They now have the Spirit of God, much like a physical child has the Spirit of the Father, the physical Father in them. They become children of God. Verse 17 in Romans 8 says, or verse 16, the Spirit itself bears witness with our Spirit. We are children of God. God looks at you and me and everyone listening to this as his children. He's called. We've responded. We've received the Holy Spirit. And if children then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, and there's that word, if, our part, if indeed we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified together. The whole creation is anticipating and is expecting the revealing of the sons of God. That is one of the reasons or the reason that the worth was formed, that physical man was put on it. Let's go back here or forward here to verse 20 in this Romans 8. For the creation, as the earth was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope. There's that word again. It shows up several times in the New Testament, but it's put there in futility because God subjected it in hope. It's New Testament or Greek 1680. Greek 1680. Greek 1680 is. I want to read it exactly as it says.

And I know it's here. It was here this morning.

It means, again, it has the word expectation in it. 1680. Where is 1680?

1680. Joyful and confident expectation of eternal salvation. Joyful and confident expectation. That's what 1680 means. So if you replace hope with what the real meaning of that word is, it's joyful and confident expectation. That's what God subjected this world in. There's an expectation, not just a hope the way we think of it in the English language. It is going to happen. Verse 21, because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption.

Now that's going to decay. It's going to be burned up. It's a physical earth. We're told in 2 Peter, the earth, when the purpose for the creation is done, the earth is going to be dissolved. It's going to burn up. It's not going to be here anymore. It's here for now. It's for its, it'll fulfill its purpose, and then it'll be placed with a new heaven and a new earth in which God dwells with man. That's the future. That's the expectation. That's what the plan is. That is what's going to happen. It's a certainty. God said it. God said it. It's part of the plan of the earth.

So it's in corruption, just like you and I, you and me, who have the physical bodies we live in today.

They're corruptible. They're temporary. There is an expected end. Hebrews 9, 27 says it is appointed to all men to die once. These physical bodies die. But if we have followed God, if we have yielded to Him, if we have allowed Him to develop us into who He wants us to become, led by His Holy Spirit in this lifetime, we will be born out of these corruptible bodies into spirit bodies in the kingdom when Christ returns, when the revealing of the sons of God occurs. It's part of the expectation.

It's part of what you and I should live for, should be central in our mind, that as we go through life, this is the expectation. That's what God has called us for. That's what He's preparing us for. Well, let me read 21 again. Because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now.

You know, throughout the Bible, God uses birth pangs, labor, the process of birth, because this is a birth process. He does look forward. When you read through Revelation and you see the praises that come to Christ, it's you are worthy. Now is the time. We've been waiting for this time. We've been waiting for the revealing of the sons of God, where we've been waiting for Christ to go back and save the world from the destruction it's going to bring upon itself.

So the world groans and labors with birth pangs. It's ready. It's expecting. Let's just do it. We are eagerly waiting for what is coming. Not only that, but we, that's you and me also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit. In Pentecost, we talked about firstfruits. We're firstfruits. This is God's time. This is our time to let be letting God develop us. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan. We want that time to come. We're looking forward to the time of the revealing of the sons of God. We're looking forward to the return of Jesus Christ because we know what certainty it is and we know the purpose and the glory and the wonder that God is going to has prepared for a world that doesn't know where any answers are, but you and I do. It's a belief deep in our hearts that should drive us, focus us, and settle us. We ourselves groan within ourselves. There's that word eagerly again. Not wishing as far off, but eagerly. When God, how much longer as you read in Revelation of those souls, you know, symbolically that God is talking about how much longer we are looking forward to. That world will be so much better than this world for all of mankind.

Even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting. There's that 553 again, expecting fully, expecting fully, not wishing, not hoping, expecting fully because we know it's going to occur. Eagerly waiting for the adoption. That should be sonship because we are literal children of God, the redemption of our body. For we were saved in this...there's 1680. There's that word, hope. Replace it with expectation in your mind. For we were saved in this expectation. But expectation that is not seen or that is seen is not expectation. It hasn't happened yet. When you expect a baby, you're looking forward to the time it's born. But once the baby's born, you're no longer expecting it. It's here. So you're no longer expecting it. It's here. So we haven't seen that yet. That birth hasn't occurred yet. We're still waiting for it, eagerly waiting for it. Expectation, and I'm replacing expectation with the literal, what the Greek word means, expectation that is seen, is not expectation for why does one still expect for what he sees. But if we have the expectation for what we don't see, we eagerly, 553, expect fully. We haven't seen it yet, but we expect fully that it will come, and we wait for it with perseverance. Believing in it, having faith in it, knowing it will come about. Exactly as God said in his time, with all the aspects that go along with it, everything that Jesus Christ said. Now, when we're expecting something, when we have that expectation, we prepare, right? So if we prepare for a child to be born, or we prepare for a wedding, and we prepare when we're expecting the kingdom of God. We'll come back to that a little bit later, but we prepare ourselves. And knowing that there are some not so pleasant things that precede that expectation, and the revealing of the sons of God, we prepare ourselves for that too, because that's just part of the plan. That's just part of what goes on. The impetus is on us to do those things, and to become, and use this time to become, the people that God wants us to become.

Now, let's go back. Let's go back to the Old Testament. Now, and I can turn to the Book of Isaiah, and I'll be looking at chapter 5. You know, as you look at that, remember number 6960, Kava. Kava, which means expect, look for, wait, something that is expected and certain.

That word that first shows up in Genesis 1.9 shows up, I think, if I remember correctly, 42 times in the Old Testament. The most books that it shows up in are the Book of Psalms and Isaiah. So let's look at Isaiah 5 here, because it's a very good example of expectations and how the word is used. And in this chapter, these first few verses we read, we see that it is translated exactly as it should be. Isaiah 51 or 5, it's talking about God's vineyard. It's a beautiful story, right, about how God prepares everything just perfectly. And we know that God gives us absolutely everything we need to succeed. Everything we need to succeed, He gives us every tool, every opportunity. He's always with us. We lack nothing. But if we don't do it right, if we don't use it right, if we take it, if we don't do it right, it's not going to work. God gives it, but there is something that we need to do as well. Isaiah 5 kind of shows us that. Let's begin in verse 1. Let me sing to my well beloved. A song of my beloved regarding his vineyard. My well beloved has a vineyard on a very fruitful hill. So the location, the environment, was right. He dug it up, cleared out its stones, planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in its midst and also made a winepress in it. So here he kind of outlines what he did. He did everything right with preparing that vineyard. He gave it everything needed. God does everything right. So we're going on to verse 2. So he expected, that word is number 6960, kava. So he expected it to bring forth good grapes.

Well, why wouldn't he expect it to bring forth? He did everything right. He provided everything.

But it didn't bring forth good grapes. It brought forth wild grapes.

Was the fault God's? No, he provided everything it needed. It was in the right place, all the right tools. Everything was done absolutely perfectly, but something didn't work. It brought forth wild grapes. Verse 3, he asks, symbolically, O and now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem, Amen of Judah, judge, please, between me and my vineyard, what more could have been done to my vineyard that I have done in it? So he puts the question, did I overlook something? Is there something you would have done differently? Is there something that I didn't bother providing? I just kind of forgot. The answer, of course, no. God doesn't forget anything. He has all the answers. He provides everything we need. And so he asked the question. He says, well, why then, when I expected—there's number 6960 again, Hava—when I expected it to bring forth good grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes? What happened? Was the fault mine? Did I forget something? No, God doesn't forget anything. He provides everything we need. He never leaves us. He's always by our side through good times, difficult times. He's there because he wants us to—he wants us to succeed. He wants us to come to spiritual maturity. He wants us to be born into his kingdom. And so then, in verse 5, in verse 5, he says he's going to dig up the vineyard because it didn't do what he expected it to do. The problem was with what was growing in the vineyard. It wasn't the people of that. Here in verse 7, he says, what the vineyard is, the vineyard of the Lord of hosts, is the house of Israel. And the men of Judah are his pleasant plant. He looked for—there's number 6960—he expected, looked for, he looked for justice, but instead it yielded oppression. He looked for righteousness. He provided all the elements of it, but behold, just a cry. He expected, and he did everything right. Didn't have the result. Not God's fault. Our fault. If we don't have the same expectation as he does. If we somehow fall short in that. As long as we're in Isaiah, let's look at a few other scriptures that have kava in it. Let's begin in chapter 40. Chapter 40.

And verse 31. Every time we see the word, weight, in these verses we're going to read—in fact, every time you see the word, weight, in the Old Testament, you might just take the time to click on one of those interlinear Bibles and see, is it number 6960? Is it expectfully? Or is it a different word? Most of the times you're going to find it's expectfully. Verse 31. But those who wait on the Lord, those who wait on the Lord, those who expect fully what God has in mind, they shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. Those who have that expectation, those who are looking and expect fully God to provide and to do what he says he's going to do, which is absolutely certain.

You know, one thing that the—I mean, if last time I was here, I believe I gave a sermon called Where Hope Begins. And in that sermon, I talked about if we still have hope in the world—and I'm going to use the word hope and not expectation—if we have hope that the world is somehow going to correct the course that it's on, if we have some faith in some government or some system or some of these number of gods that God has, or that mankind has advised for herself, if we're looking to that, we need to look and think again. We need to be expecting fully in God because there is only one Savior. There is only one answer for this world. There is no answer coming from any nation, from any group of nations, from any association on the earth. There may be periodic times of time of peace and safety, as it says in 1st or 2nd Thessalonians, but the world will destroy itself, except for Jesus Christ, who will return. He is the only answer. So while we're here in Isaiah 40, let's look at Isaiah 43 because God says that specifically, and we need to be people who realize our expectation is in the return of Jesus Christ. He is returning, and that is the salvation of the world. In verse 11 of Isaiah 43, he says that in pretty clear language. He says in verse 11, I, even I, am the eternal, and besides me there is no Savior. There is no Savior. You can read that, and in this section of Isaiah that begins in chapter 40, you see the promises of God. You get a look into God's heart of who He is, the mercy that He has, the love that He has for mankind. He even gives proofs of who He is, and as symbolically, He's there talking to the people that He's bringing back to the promised land after He returns, He challenges them with questions.

Who else? What else? And you see God systematically proving to them what God will prove, that they will know that He is God, and He alone is God. You and I work toward that same thing today. The world will learn it later. You and I learn it today. He is the only God. He is the only Savior.

Let's go back to Isaiah 33, and there's 14 times that this word, kava, number 6960, shows up in the book of Isaiah. I'm not going to look at all of them, but let's look at verse 2 of chapter 33, another place that it appears. In verse 2, O Lord, be gracious to us. We have waited for you. We have waited for you. Our expectation was on you. We didn't waver. We didn't doubt. We didn't go looking for other places. We didn't look to make allies. We didn't go to other gods. We waited fully, and we expected fully that you were going to come. We have waited for you, expected fully what God has promised. Back in chapter 25 and verse 9. Chapter 25 verse 9. It will be said, verse 8, you can see he's talking about the future time. God will wipe away tears from all the faces, the rebuke of his people we take away from all the earth. We know the time frame we're talking about. Jesus Christ has returned to earth. It will be said in that day, verse 9, behold, this is our God. We have waited for him.

This is why we endured through all the things that we went through. This is why we endured persecutions, tribulation, trials, people hating us, wanting to do away with us, wanting to censor us, wanting to cancel us. That's why we did it because we had this absolute belief and expectation that indeed this was going to happen. This was God. This was God's will. We have waited for him. He will save us. No uncertainty there. No doubt there. This is the Lord. We've, it says it again, we've waited for him. We wait for him and we will be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

Let's look at just one in Psalms, the book of Psalms in Psalm 27.

And verse 14.

27, 14. You know, sometimes when you're going through trials and you need something, this is a verse I go to sometimes, and it's like, God will provide the answer. He'll provide it in his time, but we wait for him because we know he knows the direction. He knows the way. Jesus Christ said, I am the way. I am the truth. I am the life. Sometimes we just have faith that we know God's going to provide whatever it is we need to do in our personal lives and in his work. In verse 14, you see Kava show up in the very first word, number 6960, wait. Wait on the Lord. He will provide. Don't run off to other places. Don't look for answers in other places. Wait on God. Expect fully. He will provide. He will answer. Wait on the Lord. Be of good courage and he will strengthen your heart. Wait, number 6960. Wait, I say, on the Lord. Good instruction for us.

When we have that expectation, when we know fully, we are willing to build the faith and wait on God, knowing he will surely deliver. He will surely provide. In Hebrews 11, you don't need to turn to Hebrews 11. You know, we call that the faith chapter. And the very first verse there in Hebrews 11, it talks about faith is the substance of things not seen, the evidence of things hoped for.

There's your number 1680, the expectation, the things that we expect God to do.

And you look at the faith chapter and you see men who live their lives in total commitment to God. It talks about men and women who were tortured, sawn in two, and they let it happen to them. They were waiting. They were expecting the Messiah. They fully believed, and this physical life did not mean that much to them that they would say, I will trade it from what my expectation is. I know that the Messiah is coming. That's expectation. That's the expectation you and I have. So if times come in our life, and we really fully expect the return of Jesus Christ, if we really believe His promises that He is returning, that the sons of God will be revealed, that there will be us, you and me, who follow God and who really yield to Him and allow Him to mold us into who He wants us to be so that we look like Him, act like Him, become like Him in this lifetime that we are born into that kingdom, we wouldn't count this life worthy to hold on to. There wouldn't be any compromise. There wouldn't be any, let me do something else. We would be willing to give it because we firmly believe in what God has said. That's what expectation does when we have that mindset.

That mindset that God wants us to have.

He looks at us as His children. He wants us to have a future. He wants to give us everything that He said He wants to give us. He's made promises. He outlines them in the Bible.

It will happen, absolutely as sure as you and I are here in this room today. It is going to happen. There is no doubt. There is no question about it. There is no uncertainty in it. It is absolutely certain. And as God's people, we might need to change our mindset from one of hope, hope, a word of the world, to expectation. What is the expectation? Because when it's an expectation, we behave differently. When that child is being expected, you prepare. You're ready. When your wedding date is set and that girl says yes, you're preparing. You're preparing. It's no longer a hope. It's an expectation. It is going to happen. So as we expect what God has said, that we will be born into His kingdom if we have that expectation in us, not just the hope, but the expectation because we know it is, what happens? Now, I've talked a lot about birth and the birth born into the kingdom of God. You know at the time that the sons of God are revealed? There's also a wedding supper, right? There's also a wedding supper that occurs at that time or in the general vicinity of that time. So weddings are, you know, births are a wonderful and a joyous and a great time of life. Weddings are a great time of rejoicing and celebration too.

But there's that wedding supper that's talked about in Revelation 19. Let's go back there and look at that for just a second. Revelation 19 verse 7. You can see the anticipation in these verses. The excitement that we should feel when we look and have that vision of what God has put for us, that expectation that should be part of us. In verse 7 in Revelation 19, it says, let us be glad and rejoice. Let it bring joy to your heart. Let it bring anticipation. Let it bring zeal. Let it bring the excitement that it should. Let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His wife has made herself ready. Well, He's ready. He's the perfect groom. But His wife needs to make herself ready. How does she make herself ready? Well, in real life, those who have been married or engaged, you know kind of what the bride does to make herself ready and the preparation she goes through. What do we, as the wife in this scenario, do to make ourselves ready? Is it just a matter of going out and buying that perfect dress, making sure your hair is done just the right way so that those pictures look good forever? Well, part of the array, the arrayment is there. Verse 8, to her, because she made herself ready by the things that she did, all the tools were there. Money wasn't an issue. Any of the accretiments weren't an issue, but the wife had to do it. She had to make herself ready. And to her, it was granted to be a raid in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. What she does, how she lives, the way she's developed, how she has become that picture of Proverbs, the Proverbs 31 woman. All the wrong attitudes gone, wiped out over the course of time. All the sins gone that God allows us to see and then expects that we will put them out with the power of his Holy Spirit and follow him completely. All the little wrinkles, all the little spots, all those little things that make us different from what God wants his bride to be and he expects his bride or Christ's bride to be. That happens in the preparation phase, which for you and me is now. Now. It's too late to worry about it when Christ returns and the wedding supper is there.

The wedding supper is for those who have made themselves ready.

I'm not going to turn there, but if you're taking notes, or you can remember Luke 14 and Matthew 22. Maybe you can go back later and look at that. Christ had a couple of wedding parables that he talked about. In Luke 14, he talks about this wedding supper that is being thrown and he invites people to the supper, just like he's invited you and me to the supper. Make no mistake, everyone here has been invited to that wedding supper. Whether we accept the invitation, it's not God's made it, it's up to us whether we accept the invitation. But in Luke 14, you see, well, I'm too busy. I bought a piece of land and I need to do that instead. Can't make time for that wedding supper today. This is more important to me than that. And another one has another excuse. And when you look through Luke 14 and that parable, you see there's people who make excuses. They just don't count it important. That calling isn't important. All the cares of the world, all the things that go on around it, that's what's more important than the wedding supper that God invited them to or the master invited them to. Same thing in Matthew 22. There's another supper. They're being invited. But you can see as you read through that parable, they just don't take it seriously. Eh, whatever. We've got things to do. And the person inviting, the master they're inviting, gets pretty angry and says, just go out and find anyone. I will fill the wedding supper. There will be people here that take this seriously and mean it and want to be at that supper, not those who take it carelessly and everything else. And so here in Revelation 19, we see that this bride has made herself ready. She wanted to be there. She's taken it upon herself to do these things.

And we have this beautiful supper. I hope as we read about it, this isn't a wedding supper any of us would want to miss, is it? We wouldn't want to say, whoops, whoops, I forgot that date. Or no, that's just that important. I would hope all of us as we read these things, no, I want to be there. I want to be there. Verse 9, he said to me right, blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb, you and I are, and he said to me, these are the true sayings of God. This is going to happen. Not a wish, it's an expectation, it will happen.

That's the mindset. That's what we were called to be and to be there.

Let me look at a few verses here.

As we talk about replacing in our minds hope with expectation and the mindset and the change in mindset that that will bring upon us. Sometimes when we, well, let me turn to 1 Peter 1. Let's go back to 1 Peter 1. And again, as you read through the New Testament and the Old Testament, you see that word hope show up. You might want to stop and go back and look at the concordance to see what is it? Yeah, it's expectation, not just hope the way the world looks for. 1 Peter 1, verse 3.

Peter, who through his life learned and grew and understood the expectation that God put before him and us. Verse 3, he 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. A living, a very real, a very vibrant, a living expectation through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you.

That's the expectation. That's what God wants. You who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time, ready to be revealed in the last time. You take this same thing in 1 Peter 3, verse 15. A verse that we're well aware of, but just look at it as well since we're in 1 Peter. 1 Peter 3, 15. It says, Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. I mean, set him apart. He's separate than all the other things that we might look at. Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and always be ready to give a defense or an answer to anyone who asks you a reason for the... replace hope with expectation because it's the same word there... to ask you for a reason for the expectation that is in you with meekness and fear.

So as time goes on and someone says, Why are you doing this? Why are you allowing people to say this about you? Why are you willing to be cancelled? Why won't you just give in? Why won't you just say what you need to say? Even if you don't mean it in your heart, just say it! Just get the authorities off your back. Just get the people who are downing you on your back. It'll sound so appealing. It's the same tactic that Satan used with Christ in Matthew 4, right? It'll seem so appealing, but you are ready because you prepared your minds. You have the expectation. You can explain. This is the plan of God, and if I lose my life, so be it, because I know that's just part of the part of the plan that God has for me, for you, for all of mankind. Not everyone called in this day and age, but in the second resurrection, they'll have the same opportunity that you and I do. Be ready with that answer. You've got to know it in your heart to give an answer at that time.

It's the mindset that we need to have. Let's go back a couple books. Nope. Forward a couple books, or one book to 1 John 3. People will ask sometimes, okay, now that we know this, now that you've talked about it, what do we do? What do we do now that we have this expectation, now that we get it? This is what we look for. This is what we live for. This is the center part of our life. We do the things and live life the way God said, living by every word of God, because his word and his instruction book is here. Jesus Christ said, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. He's all of it. We have his word here. And the answer is right here, very simply. Last time I spoke, I used this verse as well. But let me begin in verse 1 of 1 John 3. Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us that we, not you and me, should be called children of God. That is amazing that God has called us to that. Therefore, the world doesn't know us because it didn't know him. Beloved, now we are children of God, not yet born into the kingdom of God, but he is expecting and he is looking forward to it. We should eagerly be looking forward to that time when we are born into the kingdom of God. Beloved, we are now we are children of God, and it hasn't yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when he's revealed, we will be like him, for we shall see him as he is. His Holy Spirit in us gives us the mind of Christ. It does get us to the point where we think like him, act like him, react like him, know the truth like he does, and have everything that God wants us to have. Verse 3 is the answer. Everyone who has this expectation, replace that word hope, everyone who has this expectation, who is living with that, what does he do? He purifies himself just as Christ is pure. How do we purify ourselves? Led by the Holy Spirit. Repent when God shows us faulty attitudes, wrong attitudes, sins, wrong way of looking things, becoming more and more like him. Purifies himself as he is pure, the bride who makes herself ready by doing those things. If you have that expectation, then you want to be pure. You want all those attitudes and all those things that hold us back from being everything that God wants. You want them out of your life because they no longer fit with the vision you have that God has for you. If we're holding on to that, if we still have petty little things that we're holding on to or attitudes, then we aren't there yet. We need to grow, and the sins that God lets us have, everyone who has this expectation purifies himself because we want to be ready to be born into the kingdom of God when that time comes. The answer is there.

The answer is there. We know what to do. Let me close in Hebrews 10.

But I do hope that we can change our mindset if we need to from hope to expectation. The world doesn't know what we know. The world has hope. They can put it in false hope, and this is going to happen. This is going to happen. This person can do that. This government can do that. This, whatever thing can do that, only one Savior. Only one Savior, and that's God. Hebrews 10.

And if we change our mindset to expectation from hope, it will help us get on there. Hebrews 10 and verse 23. Hebrews 10.23. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope. Let us hold fast the confession. We believe it. We state it. We are ready to tell anyone what we believe, not ashamed of it. Let us hold fast the confession of our...there's that Greek 1680 again. Let us hold fast the confession of our expectation without wavering. No doubt. No ifs, ands, or buts. It's going to happen. It's real. God said it. It will happen. Let us hold the confession of our expectation without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. Let's hold God to his word. Let's be people of faith and build that faith and build in our minds the expectation and look for it eagerly.