What Do We Expect From God

Well, thanks very much, and good afternoon to all of you. It's nice to be here with you today. Also say a big hello to those who are listening in. It sounds like we've got a number of people who are on phone hookup or Internet or other similar situations. Having lived overseas, going on six years now, my family and I are very familiar with being on the other end of an Internet connection. Often we watch things with a week's delay because of the time difference. So I want to say hello to everyone out there. I have to say, sometimes you get used to sitting back on a comfortable couch with your cat sitting next to you and watching services. So this is a little different, but would always elect to be with a group of God's people whenever we can on the Sabbath.

As was mentioned before, we are living right now in Zurich, Switzerland. My wife and two children, I have a son named Stephen who is going into his senior year of high school.

My daughter Madeline is 15. She's going into her sophomore year. We're looking forward to coming back in about a year or so somewhere into this area. We're not going to make any commitments yet. We'll be coming back this direction, living in this area. I look forward to getting to know all of the people here as well as the people in Cleveland better.

My family right now is out west in Oregon, going to the Northwest Camp, which is just wrapping up today, along with my sister and her husband and her three kids. They always enjoy coming back for that every year. I had a business trip, as was mentioned, for the week. John was nice enough to invite me to come over and stay with them and to join all of you. I'm glad I can do that here today. Just in terms of just brief background and history, I grew up back in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and have attended services there since I was probably about that age right there. I attended my first feast when I was a few months old back in 1966. So I have a long history in the church. I moved out to California to go to college back in the mid-1980s. I stayed out there working for the TV department at that time until 1994 and went to school at night during that time. When the telecast ended, I took a job with my current employer and have been working there ever since, going on 19 years now. We lived in Denver, Colorado, for almost 11 years, and then made the move to Warsaw, Poland, where we spent two years living in Poland. Then it's been three years since the summer of 2010 that we've been in Switzerland. We've enjoyed moving around.

I think this part of the country is a little more of a stable part of the country than the kind of life I've had over the last few years moving around. So we're looking forward to coming here and setting down roots here for a while and, like I said, getting to know all of you. I understand from John that you guys try to keep services to about three hours.

I'll try to keep my remarks within that timeframe. Actually, I was planning on a split sermon today, so we might end up wrapping up a little bit earlier than two hours, but so far I've not usually heard people complain very much about that.

All of that, of course, is part of setting your expectations, and that's what I'd like to spend a little bit of time talking about today. Those of you who know me know that I can sometimes have a bit of a cynical or sarcastic sense of humor, and one of my favorite sayings is, blessed are those who don't expect much because they will not be disappointed.

But it's really true in life, isn't it, that what we expect does a lot in terms of driving how we feel about things that happen, how we let it affect us, how we let it impact us.

A lot of it flows directly out of our expectations. So I'd like to spend a little time on that, and we see this a lot in the world around us, don't we? In politics, whenever the debates come up, when there's a presidential election, what do we hear people doing? The people from one candidate or the other start to say, well, he's really not a very good debater, the other guy's really talented. We think it's just a privilege to be on the same stage with him, and we hope that he'll finish the debate just without saying anything really stupid. And they're trying to lower people's expectations about how their candidate is going to do. So then when their candidate does normally, or even a little worse than normal, they can still say, he exceeded expectations. Nobody expected him to do anything good, and look how great he did. And of course, we can all think of situations where we've had big expectations that didn't come through, and the way that we process that and what it does to us in our lives. So I'd like to focus today for a bit on our expectations in life, and especially what our expectations are from God. What is it that we expect that God is going to do for us, especially in this life? And how does that impact our relationship with God, at times our faith in God, how we feel about our Christian life and our Christian walk?

Another way to think of this would be as we see people go through trials. Why is it that some people, as they hit bumps in the road in life, as everyone does, they get derailed?

They lose their faith, while others seem to get stronger and carry on with some sense of inner strength and joy that sometimes somewhat hard to understand. So I'd like to explore that a bit today and use as the centerpiece something that's been written about in a book called Good to Great by Jim Collins, and he calls it the Stockdale Paradox. How many of you remember a guy named H. Ross Perot when he was running for president? So I already told you I'm sometimes a bit of a sarcastic, cynical guy. I happen to like Dennis Miller a lot. And Dennis Miller likes to talk about what's wrong with American politics at times.

And if any of you remember, Ross Perot had a vice presidential candidate named James Stockdale. And after he appeared in a debate with Dan Quayle and Al Gore fumbling with his glasses looking like a crazy old uncle on television, he just about got laughed off the stage. And Dennis Miller went on one of his rants and he said, you know, here's a person who probably has more qualifications than anyone else out there to be president.

A former Medal of Honor winner, a renowned philosopher, a professor, someone who served many years in prison in Vietnam, and he committed the cardinal sin of American culture. He looked at that on television. So what I'd like to do today is to read you a bit of the story of James Stockdale and bring out what Jim Collins calls the Stockdale paradox and the impact that it can and should have on our Christian lives. So Collins writes in his book, the name refers to Admiral Jim Stockdale, who was the highest ranking United States military officer in the Hanoi Hilton prisoner of war camp during the height of the Vietnam war. Tortured over 20 times during his eight-year imprisonment from 1965 to 1973, Stockdale lived out the war without any prisoners' rights, no set release date, and no certainty as to whether he would ever survive to see his family again. He shouldered the burden of command doing everything he could to create conditions that would increase the number of prisoners who would survive unbroken while fighting an internal war against his captors and their attempts to use the prisoners for propaganda. At one point, he beat himself with a stool and cut himself with a razor, deliberately disfiguring himself so he could not be put on videotape as an example of a well-treated prisoner. He exchanged secret intelligence information with his wife through their letters, knowing that discovery would mean more torture and perhaps death.

Let me find my place again here. He instituted rules that would help people to deal with torture. No one can resist torture indefinitely, so he created a stepwise system. After a certain number of minutes, you can say certain things, and that gave the men milestones to survive towards. He instituted an elaborate internal communication system to reduce the sense of isolation that their captors tried to create. It used a 5x5 matrix of tap codes for alpha characters. So tap, tap equals the letter A. Tap, pause, tap, tap equals the letter B.

Tap, tap, pause, tap equals the letter F, and so forth, for 25 letters with C doubling for K.

At one point during an imposed silence, the prisoners mopped and swept the central yard using the code, swishing out, We Love You, to Stockdale, on the third anniversary of his being shot down. After his release, Stockdale became the first three-star officer in the history of the Navy to wear both aviator wings and the Congressional Medal of Honor.

So you can understand, then, my anticipation at the prospect of spending an afternoon with Stockdale. One of my students had written his paper on Stockdale, who happened to be a senior research fellow studying the Stoic philosophers at the Hoover Institution right across the street from my office, and Stockdale invited the two of us for lunch. In preparation, I read, in Love and War, the book Stockdale and his wife had written in alternating chapters, chronicling their experiences during those eight years.

As I moved through the book, I found myself getting depressed. It just seemed so bleak – the uncertainty of his fate, the brutality of his captors, and so forth. And then it dawned on me. Here I am, sitting in my warm and comfortable office, looking out over the beautiful Stanford campus on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I'm getting depressed reading this. And I know the end of the story. I know he gets out, reunites with his family, becomes a national hero, and gets to spend the later years of his life studying philosophy on this same beautiful campus. If it feels depressing for me, how on the earth did he deal with it when he was actually there and did not know the end of the story?

I never lost faith in the end of the story, he said, when I asked him. I never doubted that not only would I get out, but I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which in retrospect I would not trade.

I didn't say anything for many minutes, and we continued the slow walk toward the faculty club, stock-tail limping and arc-swinging his stiff leg that had never fully recovered from repeated torture. Finally, after about 100 meters of silence, I asked, who didn't make it out? Oh, that's easy, he said. The optimists. The optimists? I don't understand, I said, now completely confused, given what he'd said just 100 meters earlier. The optimists.

Oh, they were the ones who said, we're going to be out by Christmas, and Christmas would come and Christmas would go. Then they'd say, we're going to be out by Easter, and Easter would come and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again, and they died of a broken heart. After another long pause and more walking, then he turned to me and said, this is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end, which you cannot afford to lose, with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they are. To this day I carry a mental image of Stockdale admonishing the optimists. We're not getting out by Christmas, so get over it. So from this, the Stockdale paradox, which has two parts to it. First, retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties. And secondly, confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. Again, retain faith that you'll prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties. And at the same time, confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be. That's what I'd like to spend the rest of the message today talking about. So whenever you hear or read interesting stories like this, to me the most important thing, of course, is to first compare it to principles in the Bible and see how it stacks up. And I'd like to start out by doing the same thing with the Stockdale paradox. What parallels can we think of in the Bible to this way of approaching things that we encounter during life? How realistic versus unrealistically optimistic were the characters that we read about in the Bible? And what are some of the examples that you can think of? The first one I'd like to go to is in Daniel 3. Daniel 3, verses 17 and 18. This is, of course, a well-known story. Three young Jewish men, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, better known as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, which were their Babylonian names that were given to them in captivity.

And I think we recall the story, right? There was a large image that Nebuchadnezzar made, huge golden idol of himself. And he trotted all the people out, and he said, all of you need to bow down to this idol. And everybody who's not going to bow down, you're going to be thrown into the fiery furnace, because he was asking total and complete allegiance from everybody to him. Nothing else could come before him. And, of course, as those who believed in the true God, there was no way that they could do this.

I'd like to start reading here Daniel 3, verse 17. And breaking into the thought here, what does it say as they're talking to Nebuchadnezzar? It says, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us from your hand, O King.

So what does it say in verse 18? But if not, if not, let it be known to you, O King, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image that you've set up. Did they know 100% that God would deliver them from the fiery furnace? They didn't. They very clearly state that here. But they said, it doesn't matter if God delivers us or not.

We are going to follow him, because we know what his larger plan is, and it's bigger than this one incident. And so we're going to maintain our integrity, we're going to maintain our faith, and regardless of the consequences, regardless of what the outcome of the situation is, we will do what's right, and it will be a witness to you. Now, in this case, as we all know, the guards dragged them into the fiery furnace. It was so hot that even the guards died putting them in, and they were not damaged. And there was one like the Son of Man, like Jesus Christ, there in the furnace with them, and they came out not even smelling like smoke. But they didn't know, as we can see right here, they faced the brutal reality of the situation they were in, and the reality was they might die in that furnace. But they were not going to let it stop them from maintaining their faith and their following God. Let's turn to another example in 1 Samuel 17. 1 Samuel 17, this is the part of the Bible where we see David coming into his own as he's fighting Goliath. As we recall the story, Goliath is across hurling insults and profanity at not only the Israelites, but at God. Everybody's afraid to face him. He's huge. He's monstrous. He's bigger than anyone else. And at that time, often armies would put their champion out front. The opposing army would put their champion out front. The two would fight each other, and that would often decide what the outcome of the battle would be. And the Philistines, of course, figured they had it made with Samson.

It's an interesting story. When you go back, some of the warriors that they had, guys with six toes and six fingers on each hand, standing one or two heads taller than anybody else, some pretty amazing things that are written about that the Philistines had in terms of fighting ability and physical stature. So what did David do? He said, God's going to protect me. I'm going to go out there. But there's an interesting section here in verse 40 that often gets skipped over, but sometimes gets looked at. And what is it that David did? He took his staff in his hand in verse 40, and he chose out for himself five smooth stones. Why didn't he choose one? Because that's certain God was going to deliver him.

Why didn't he just take a single stone out there? I think he was ready for contingencies.

I think he knew that it might not... He probably didn't know for certain that he would kill Goliath. He certainly, based on what I see here, didn't think that he would kill him with one stone. He didn't know exactly what God was going to work out, but what he did know was that he could not stand for the Philistine hurling these insults, insulting God, and the rest of Israel as cowards standing there and letting it happen. And he was going to let God work out his purpose through him. But he picked up five stones, recognizing in a clear-headed way the situation that he was in the middle of.

There are plenty of other examples that we can think about. I'd like to refer just to one other one, and that's the 23rd Psalm. We won't turn there, but many of us have memorized the 23rd Psalm at some point in our lives as children, perhaps. And again, an area in that Psalm that doesn't always get thought about very carefully, but one that I think makes a lot of sense in this context, where the Psalmist says, Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for God is with me. Notice he doesn't say, God will not lead me through the valley of the shadow of death. He doesn't say, God will lead me around the valley of the shadow of death. He says, even though I will walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will not fear the evil. Again, a clear-headed view of life and the fact that it's not all an easy and straight path, it's not always a safe path, it's not always a path where everything that we expect or that we want is going to happen to us. But the key is that we cannot let that shake our faith. So I'd like to delve into these two parts now, having shown, I hope, that the Stockdale Paradox has biblical applicability and makes sense. I'd like to look at the two elements of it. I'd like to start with the second one, actually, to begin with, which is the brutal facts of our current reality. What are the brutal facts that we need to face within our current reality? There's certainly a large number of individual things that can and do happen to us. I think if we all spend time and when we spend time talking with each other, we recognize the sometimes very severe trials and difficulties that many of us have gone through. But there are two facts that I'd like to talk about today in this section, in terms of the brutal facts of our current reality that I think broadly cover the things we need to think about. The first one being that we are promised suffering. We are promised suffering. It's easy, especially in the kind of life that we see today, especially depicted on television and going on around us, to believe that the thing that we should expect from life is to be happy and healthy and have a lot of money and live until we're 90 years old with all the quality of life and doing all the things that we want to, living on the golf course. But that's not real life, as all of us know.

But there's an expectation, again, that's been built up. And when we look at this time period in history that we live in, just these few hundred years even in the U.S., and we think about how unique is this time for people who've lived and all of the history of humanity.

How many people have been able to enjoy a period of time, no matter what each of our individual situations are right now, how many people in the history of the world have been able to enjoy the level of prosperity, standard of living, and everything else that we have around us? You know, when you think about it, even in today's world, the percentage of the population that lives in anything near the type of lifestyle that we have is much smaller than you would think. I don't have the statistics with me anymore, but there's an email that went around a few years ago about if the world was an island. It talks about if the world were an island with 30 people on it, how many would have a cell phone, how many would have a full meal to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And I don't remember the statistics anymore, but it's staggeringly small. Even in today's world, how many people have these things, as we heard in the sermonette, that we take for granted.

But it builds up expectations, I think, that somehow this is real life, and this is the way it is and should be for everyone, and we should expect it to continue to go on like this for us, no matter what.

Let's turn, if you would, to 1 Peter 4. 1 Peter 4, and we'll read verses 12 through 14.

Just one of a number of passages in the Bible were this point, and frankly, this expectation is brought out. In an essence, Peter, in this section, through the inspiration of God, is trying to adjust our expectations in life so that we don't get unreasonable expectations that will shake our faith in God. 1 Peter 4, verses 12 through 14.

Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you. But rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ's sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy. If you are reproach for the name of Christ, blessed are you, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. On their part He is blasphemed, but on your part He is glorified.

In specific here, it's talking about suffering for keeping God's way of life. But certainly when we read other parts of the Bible as well, we know in the passages, for example, that we read in the Passover, where Jesus Christ is praying to God. What does He say?

He says, Father, I don't pray that you remove them from the world. God deliberately has left us in this world to suffer and also to enjoy the same thing that those around us do, and to go through that suffering but to learn something from it. Again, adjusting the expectations that we should have from our Christian lives.

Before we mature as Christians, we can often equate the things that happen from day to day in our lives and look at them all as individual rewards and punishments, perhaps, for the way that we live our lives. I can remember a time when I was much younger where I would think about, you know, if I can just pray so many more minutes a day, just think how much better my life will go.

But, you know, as we grow up and mature as Christians, we realize that it's not this direct correlation where God says, you know, the more righteous you are, the more I'm going to bless you with physical blessings in this world the way you want them when you want them. But rather, there's a course that our lives will take, all of which is according to His will, and which is certainly going to include things that we don't want to happen.

Things that are frankly tragedies, things that are painful, but He's with us all the way throughout those things, regardless of how it feels and what we're experiencing in those moments. That's where I'd like to go on to the second part of this point. Beyond the fact that we're promised suffering, God works out His will in our lives. He works out His will in our lives and not our own will.

It's sometimes difficult to deal with that because we all, if you're anything like me, have strong wills and we know how we want things to go in life. But they go according to His will and not ours.

I'd like to turn to a passage that demonstrates this, I think, in an interesting way. John 6. We're not going to read through this whole section, but in John 6 it goes through the miracle of the fishes and the loaves. If we remember, Jesus at this point was preaching to some very large multitudes of people, thousands of people who were following Him.

They were there on the hillside and one kid had his lunch there of a few fish and loaves and he prayed over it, he multiplied it, and he fed thousands with food to spare. All of these things that He was doing, the miracles He was performing, the following that He was gathering, was really moving up to a crescendo. For people living in that world, under Roman oppression in the nation of Israel or Judah at that time, were looking for a physical Savior, weren't they? They were believing and looking for a Messiah that was going to come, overthrow Roman rule, restore Jewish rule, the belief in God, the temple system in Israel for them.

That's not what God had in mind. But there were many people that were of this mindset who were also following Jesus Christ. If we read in verse 15 of John 6, 15 of John 6, Therefore Jesus perceived that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king. And He departed again to the mountain by Himself alone. So at this point, they'd seen enough. They'd seen enough miracles. They'd seen His preaching. They saw the people following Him. These people wanted to crown Him king because they figured with all of these miracles that He did, He had the power to overthrow the Romans and finally bring rule and autonomy back to the Jewish state at that time.

But as we know, that's not what God wanted. There's interesting commentary out there as well that even implies that Judas is carriot. One of the theories about why Judas betrayed Jesus Christ was that he was actually of this belief. He was one of the zealots who wanted to see Jesus Christ become a physical king and overthrow the Jews. And one theory that you'll see written about in commentaries and other places is that the reason Judas betrayed Jesus Christ is he was trying to force His hand and make Him stand up and use His power to overthrow the Romans.

And he figured it would happen if they came and they tried to take Him into captivity and tried to take His life. Of course, that was, if that's true, Judas trying to force His will on the way things were going rather than giving in to what God's will was.

Certainly we can say, as it points out in the Scriptures here, if not Judas, there were certainly others that were following who wanted to make Jesus Christ a physical king. So what does Jesus do next if we read in verse 50? Starting in verse 50, Jesus says, This is the bread that comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.

And the bread that I shall give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.

Now these were strange words to the Jews. They really didn't know what to do with them, a lot of his followers. In verse 52, they were quarreling among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? This whole thing is getting kind of weird.

We've got this guy, he's doing all these miracles. He's our great hope. We think he can overthrow the Romans. And now he's talking about this strange stuff of bread and flesh to eat and everlasting life. This isn't what we need. We need someone to come in, crush the Romans, and put our people back in charge.

And in verse 53, Jesus said to them, Most assuredly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

And what does verse 66 say when all of this finished?

From that time on, many of his disciples went back, and they walked with him no more.

Many of the people, even who were following Jesus Christ in the flesh, as they began to understand what he was really about, what the message was that he was preaching, what his mission was, decided it wasn't what they wanted. And they walked away.

Now they probably saved themselves a lot of suffering, if you look at what the twelve apostles eventually went through. But look at what else they lost by following their own will, rather than the will of Jesus Christ. The opportunity that they had, and you know, we look at it from today's viewpoint and think, wow, I mean, if Jesus Christ was here, we would give up anything to go and follow him, to listen to his words and to do as he's saying. But I think as we know, as human beings, we would probably be no different than these people, and we would fight the same inclinations and the same struggles about whether we were really ready to follow his will, or if we would try to impose our own will on the situation in terms of how things would be turning out.

The other element of this, in terms of God working out his will in our lives, rather than our own, is that he treats us all as individual children, each of us individually.

Now I think anyone here who has children, who's worked with children, who has watched children doing the things that they do, you know how different individual children can be. I've got two kids, and by mentality, inclinations, proclivities, aptitudes, everything, they're very different from each other. Grew up in the same house, same parents, but they're very different from one another. And that's not unusual, it's just the way it is, because as human beings, we're all individuals and we're all different. But it's easy, again, to sometimes think that we should all have our lives work out the same way that they work out for everybody else. But as a loving Father, God knows what's best for each one of us individually. What each one of us needs, what we can and should experience, what we need to learn from it, how much we can take, and He has it figured out for each of us.

And that's something we have to have unshakable faith in. I'd like to turn to a section of the Bible that you might find a little odd in this context at first, but that actually fully backs this up. And it's Hebrews 11. Hebrews 11 talks about the heroes of faith.

And at first glance, when you turn there, you would think, the heroes of faith, these are people, everything, you know, God gave them victory, right? It's the one thing you can count on for each and every one of them, right? Things turned out well. Absolutely not the case. Things worked out individually and differently for these people.

Let's turn to Hebrews 11. We'll read verses 32 through verse 40.

Hebrews 11 verse 32. And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. But that's not the end of the passage. Verse 35. Women received their dead raised to life again. But what's the next sentence? Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance that they might obtain a better resurrection. Others had trial of mockings and scourgings and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned. They were sawn in two. They were tempted. They were slain with the sword. They wandered around in sheepskins, goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom this world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains and dens and caves of the earth. And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise. God, having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us. So what can you generalize from this in terms of how God treated these people who are mentioned in Hebrews 11 as heroes of faith? You know, at first when you read it, we all want to be in that verse 32 through 34-35 category, don't we? We want God to stop the mouths of lions for us. We want to become valiant in battle. We want to be the great overcomers who are given strength.

But what's made clear in these passages is there are people of faith, of equal faith.

In this very same passage, you had very, very different things happen to them in the end.

When it talks about them destitute, afflicted, wandering around, essentially homeless, but still people of faith. People that God puts right next to David and other heroes of the Bible that we look up to because of the way that God intervened for them. But we don't always think of the other side of the coin, even as brought out here in Hebrews 11. So to me, this section of Hebrews 11 stands for the proposition that even being a hero of faith, knowing God and doing His way, does not guarantee a specific outcome in this life.

That absolutely includes a specific outcome at the end of the story, and we must have faith in that. But our expectations in terms of what happens in this life, we can't build an expectation as a promise from God in these passages that we see that our life is going to end up being a very certain way. In my opinion, as people coming up through the church and trying to deal with all of the things that get thrown at us, it is so incredibly important that we know what we can put our faith in and which things we can wish will happen but are not exactly things that God promised. And I think when we think about it, we can probably all identify people that we've known who perhaps put their faith that God would give them an outcome that when you got down to it, you realize was a wish more than a promise that they could absolutely count on God to fulfill for them in this life.

For some people, that type of misplaced faith in the end can really shake them because they're not taking into account the brutal reality. Stockdale used that word for a reason, the brutal reality that we're in the middle of in the lives that we live. And as unfortunate as it is, God does not promise that He will heal us of every single disease that happens or we would all live forever. But what He does promise is what I want to turn to next in this next section, which is faith in the ultimate outcome. So it gets a little depressing dwelling on the brutal reality. But the good thing is that the ultimate outcome that God has for us, the things that He gives to us that we can have 100% absolute faith will happen are fantastic, miraculous, better than anything we could ever dream of. And all of us already know that. We sometimes don't focus on it perhaps as much as we could, but we know it. Let's start in 1 John. 1 John 1 verse 9. An absolute promise that God has made for us. 1 John 1 and verse 9. Here John writes, If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Notice that little three-letter word that got snuck in there, all unrighteousness. How often, at the same time that we have expectations that God might do something for us in this physical world that He's not promised, do we at the same time doubt whether God has really forgiven us of our sins? Which one of those is written in the Bible as a promise that we can count on 100%? He will cleanse us from all unrighteousness. How incredibly fantastic is that? When we each look at ourselves and realize our humanity, the weaknesses we have, what we're capable of when we're not being governed by God's Spirit, God says He can wipe all of that away, and not just that He can, that He does, and He looks at us as completely clean before us. Think of what a miracle this is. We're not going to turn there, but Psalm 103, verse 12. Psalm 103, verse 12 said, God removes our sins as far as the east is from the west.

Isaiah 1, verse 18 says, though our sins are as scarlet, they will be white as snow. Amazing.

Think about what that's like if you have a nosebleed and you've got a clean white linen handkerchief and you've got a nosebleed and you try to wash that thing and get everything out of it. It's always going to turn out, if you know that you had a nosebleed, it's going to turn out having a little bit of a gray spot in there. You're always going to see it. What does God say? As white as snow. You can take every bit of that away, clean it, take away all unrighteousness. God's able to do something that for us as humans, it's miraculous. We can't even conceive of it. I certainly can't. When somebody does something to you, can you forgive them? Yes, you probably can. Can you ever really forget what they did? Somehow, even when we forgive people, what they did sticks there in our memory, doesn't it? Because as humans, we just can't forget it. When we were kids, we'd play a game, and whenever I wanted to bug my sisters and really wanted them to remember something, I'd say, try to forget this. Anything you really try hard to forget, every time you try to forget it, you remember it, and therefore you'll always remember it. But God says He forgets our sins. He removes them as far as east or from the west. He makes them as white as snow. Whatever analogy we want to use, it's talking about that same miracle. God, we stand before God because of this forgiveness that He gives, completely cleansed, and we can move forward. We can look at a guy like David. Would we let David sit in our congregation, an adulterer, at least a single, if not a multiple, murderer?

Would we let him sit in a congregation like this? God says He's a man after His own heart, after He did all of those things. Because of this forgiveness that He grants, because He's able to wash Him completely clean through Jesus Christ's sacrifice through repentance.

What a miracle that is! We can't afford to lose faith in that when we think about the ultimate outcome, what God has done for us, and how He's removed our sins. Secondly, God's commitment to us. Because it's not only about that event that happened for us as we repented and have our sins removed from us, but it's the ongoing commitment that God has to us afterwards. And again, it's not a guarantee of specific things to happen for us in this life, but as we heard in the Bible study, it's that hope, the long-term hope of what He has for us in the resurrection and the Kingdom that He has coming. Philippians 1, verse 6, "...being confident of this very thing, that he who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ." How incredible is that? He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. I heard someone give a sermon once talking about trees, kind of an odd topic maybe for a sermon. But when you look in the wintertime at a tree that's dead, you'd often be tempted just to chop it down, right? It's sitting out there in the middle of nowhere, not a single leaf in sight. The bark looks like it's kind of decrepit, and it's just standing there stark with nothing attached to it. And as far as you would know, that tree is completely lifeless. And often you'd look at it, and if you didn't have much experience with trees, you'd probably be tempted just to go ahead and chop it down. But when God looks at us, and sometimes perhaps we are dead and lifeless with no fruit on our branches, but God says He will complete a work like a gardener who's looking at that tree and knows that when the springtime comes, when the right situation is there, when it's given, the fertilizer that it needs, the water that it needs, the sunshine that it needs, that tree will sprout, bring out leaves, and bring forth fruit. And God's the same way with us. We go through periods of our lives when we might walk away, when we might not do the things that we need to in terms of keeping our commitment to Him, living the kind of lives that we need to. But as it says here, God does not walk away from us. We walk away from Him at times, but He wants to complete His work in us. Again, when we think of the things that we need to have faith in, that we sometimes lose sight of, God has a commitment to us. I think of another passage in the Bible, which I don't have in my notes today, but it says, you're bought with a price, therefore honor God with your bodies, with your lives. And as a businessperson, that speaks very loudly to me, right? Because there's a difference, for those of you who've had anything to do with accounting, there's a difference between an expense and a capital investment, isn't there? So an expense is something you buy, you buy a Big Mac, you eat it, you've incurred the expense, and the thing that you bought is gone. On the other hand, there's an investment.

You buy a washer, you're going to spend, you know, several Big Macs for a washer, several hundred Big Macs for a washer. But the next day after you wash your clothes for the first time, the washing machine is still there, isn't it? You've made an investment in a machine that's going to keep serving you for many years to come. And probably some of us have had washers or dryers for 20 plus years, and they're still cranking away after that investment of however many hundred Big Macs it took to get it. God's saying the same thing when He says He bought us with a price. He made an investment in us. You think of the things written in the Bible about Jesus Christ and His sacrifice, and what that meant, not only for Jesus Christ but for God Himself. God invested in us, and He's not just going to walk away from that investment. He's going to do everything He can to get the payoff on that investment, to bring us all the way through, as we see here in Philippians, through to the end of the story and through to the promises that He's made to us. So we must have faith in God's commitment to us, which is clearly laid out in the Scriptures. And finally, when we think about our expectations and what it is that we need to hold on to our faith in, let's think about what the end is that God has for us. What's the reward that He has for us at the end of the story? Let's turn to Romans 8. We'll read a little bit longer section here of Romans 8. For me, this is my absolute 100% favorite passage of the entire Bible, Romans 8, starting in verse 18. And we'll read down through to the end of the chapter. It's important for us to focus on this, because life gets discouraging.

As we read about in Stockdale's situation, being in prison, I can't imagine what that must have been like for eight years, and holding on through all of that to the faith that the war would be over and He would get out. But we're very much in a similar circumstance in terms of living this life and having to hold on to the faith of what the ultimate outcome is going to be. So we need to keep these things in the front of our mind and rehearse them often. Romans 8 and verse 18, For I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that's going to be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God, for the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope, the hope of what was to come. 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. And not only that, but we also, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves, we groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. For we're saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope, for why does one still hope for something that he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance, persevering and having faith till the very end. And likewise the Spirit helps us in our weaknesses. For we don't know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit makes intercession for us with groanings that can't be uttered. And he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose, for whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many, brethren. Moreover, whom he predestined, these he called, and whom he called he justified, and whom he justified he also glorified. These same passages going through exactly what we've been talking about, right? Both the difficulty and the hope that we have to maintain our focus and our faith in. Verse 31, What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all. He made that investment. How shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? It's God who justifies. Who is it that condemns? It's Christ who died and furthermore is risen, who is at the right hand of God and makes intercession for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? As it is written, for your sake we are killed all day long and we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Yet in all of these things were more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth or any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ our Lord. How fantastic is that? And what else can you throw into those verses in verses 38 and 39? He basically covers everything you can think of. So it doesn't matter what it is. Nothing can stand in the way of that commitment that God has to us.

We just have to continue to remain close to him and to call on him and to have continued faith in what he's working out in our lives. One last section of verses and then we will move towards the conclusion. Revelation 21 verses 1 through 7. Always great to look at the end of the story and to realize what it is that's coming. And like we've heard about in the Bible study that hope to keep that very strongly in the forefront of our minds.

Revelation 21 verses 1 through 7. I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no more sea. And then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven, saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they will be his people. And God himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe every tear from their eyes.

There will be no more death, no sorrow, no crying, no pain, for these former things have passed away. And then he who sat on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said to me, Write, for these words are true and faithful. These words are true and faithful.

And he said to me, It's done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

I will give the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts. He who overcomes will inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. So if we reflect back on the Stockdale principle, to me this sums it all up. Christianity requires sacrifice, and when we're honest about it, acknowledges the fact that we will have suffering.

And let's be frank, as it says in the Bible as well, even if we weren't believers in God, we would still have suffering, because that's just part of this human life. But we have it for a purpose because of what God is working out in us. At the same time, we have to be careful because false expectations, or what Stockdale would call false optimism in putting false hopes out there of things that were not promised to us, can destroy our faith. And we have to look for those things. And we have to question ourselves in the end and think about, is God asking us, or are we putting faith in the things that God has promised us? Or are we putting faith in the things that we hope that God might give us? And we have to stand back and ask ourselves that honestly at the right times in our lives so that we make sure we're focused on the right things and keep our feet focused in the right path. We can have absolute faith in the powerful promises that God has made to us, and we've read through a few of these today. And when we really think and focus on those, how incredible are those promises, so much beyond anything that we can hope for in our lives today? So as we go on going through our day-to-day lives, I'd like to encourage you to think about what expectations each of us holds in our lives. What expectations are we focused on, and are we putting our faith in the right things, the things that God has absolutely promised us, that he will deliver for us in the end? And the words of the Stockdale Paradox facing the brutal reality of the facts and the situation that we're in, but at the same time never wavering in the faith that we have in the good outcome at the end.