Overcoming the Folly of Frustration - Proverbs 13:12

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Good afternoon, brothers and sisters. It's wonderful to see you today, to be with you.

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It's an honor, as always, to preach God's word here in his house, gathered together around his throne.

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Would you please turn to the book of Proverbs? Book of Proverbs in chapter 13 is our text today.

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Proverbs chapter 13, and then one additional reading from chapter 10 today. These are the words of the living and the true

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God. Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.

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And then from chapter 10, just a few pages over in verse 28, the hope of the righteous brings joy, but the expectation of the wicked will perish.

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These are the words of God. We please ask the Lord to crown our offering today.

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Heavenly Father, we come into your presence as your people, gathered,

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Lord, around your word, ready to open our mouths and our hands and receive from you by faith the word that you would have for us today.

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Jesus, I pray that you would receive the reward for your suffering through the proclamation of your truth today.

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God, the Holy Spirit, will you illuminate us? Will you enlighten our minds?

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Will you show us, Lord, in the inward man, where we need to be corrected, where we need to be assured and filled up with the sustenance that will allow us to serve you in the days to come?

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God, I pray that you do what I cannot do today, and that is change hearts.

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As your word goes forth today, may it be like fire, and may we be as wood.

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And now, open my lips, Lord, and my mouth will declare your praise.

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And may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing and acceptable in your sight.

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Oh, Lord, our rock and our redeemer and all the saints of God said. The title of this message today is

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Overcoming the Folly of Frustration. Overcoming the

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Folly of Frustration. This is our

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Proverbs series that we are coming back to, Wisdom from Above. And one of the things that I've found personally invigorating about the

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Proverbs, it's not like teaching through one of the epistles of Paul, for example. It's much more challenging than that.

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You can kind of locate a systematic argument in the text, and then follow it from A to Z, and present the material, and make application, and so on and so forth.

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But we come to a passage like this today in the book of Proverbs, and it's really quite amazing.

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Some of us, I think we hear a verse like this, and we don't quite know where to file it. It's kind of like that piece of furniture when you're helping a friend move that doesn't have any handles in the right places for you to get a grip on it.

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You're lifting it up, and you're trying to get underneath it, and trying to get your hands around it, but it seems to evade you because it's not coming at you with an explicit admonition or prohibition.

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For example, if we were to read this morning from the book of Deuteronomy, there are commandments within these pages.

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There is positive command. Do this. There is negative command. Do not do this.

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Refrain from this behavior, from these actions. There is case law example in the text, describing how the law of God applies to a particular situation.

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Here's what happens if this happens. Here is the prescribed action that you are to take.

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But when we come to divine wisdom, we have to remember something. Law is not wisdom.

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Wisdom is embodied Torah. It's what happens when the law of God is so internalized within a person that they begin to walk around and move in the world and make application, not first to their social surroundings, to their environment, to the people in their lives and their relationship first and foremost, but to themselves.

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That is what God would have us realize, is that the application first needs to take place in us.

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We need to be interrogating ourselves. And we find it difficult to do that with a passage quite like this.

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Its purpose, Proverbs, is to give us principles. These principles come to us.

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Here's how God made the world. Here's the order. Here's the structure. Here's what you must conform your life to.

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If you want goodness, truth, beauty, and order to come out of the chaos of this fallen world, here's how you will conform your life to the wisdom that God has given.

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You notice the usage of these antonyms, wisdom, folly, life, death, the righteous, and the wicked.

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We look at verses like today, and instead of containing a particular prohibition or a command explicitly, it's simply an observation.

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It's an observation about the human condition. And that observation is this.

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Every single one of us have longings. Every single one of us have hopes and desires, have inward cravings.

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If you want to use the modern vernacular, we have dreams. We have things that we want to come true, that we are hoping for with confident expectation.

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Humans are unique in that way. We're different from the animals. We don't just have base needs and desires that we want.

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We have true and genuine longings internally that we work out with sustained effort over time, that we work very, very hard to bring to pass.

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So desires are not in and of themselves bad, but the word of God would call on us to evaluate, and if necessary, change our desires.

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Change how you feel. Now, that flies in the face of much of what we are familiar with in a modern context, and even a modern evangelical context, because after all, the heart wants what it wants.

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Does it not? Isn't that what the catechism of our culture is? You can't help what you feel.

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You just feel. Feelings are not right or wrong. They just are. Well, what happens when our deepest desires are not in accordance with God's truth?

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Are we prepared to look at those things, evaluate them, and change them, knowing that aside from what we are told today, everything that we live by in our current culture, that quick fix mentality, right?

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We love these things. Problem, solution. We like it nice and neat, tidily packaged, fitting in its nice and neat little box.

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I have this problem. I take this prescribed action, fixes it. Done. If I'm not feeling good, if I have a headache, then

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I take an aspirin. I don't feel any pain anymore. Done. If I can't figure it out that way, I go to the doctor, and I get this medication specially prescribed by him, or this treatment to try, or this regimen of eating to implement in my life, and that will fix the problem.

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Our family's not making enough money? No sweat. I can go drive Uber and Lyft and do door dash, and boom, there's the extra income that we need.

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Problem, solution, oriented. That's what we are. I have this problem.

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I take this action. I do this prescribed thing, and I get the proper results.

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Nice and neat. But wisdom, wisdom is a little bit different. Wisdom is not so simple.

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Wisdom requires slow, methodical change over time.

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That means that you're not just going to snap your fingers, and things are going to be different. That means that even our desires, which take time to change and conform to the character of God, are things that we must work at.

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Do you think it quite astounding, consider this for a minute, that God's word not only commands you what to do, but commands you what to feel?

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That God actually has authority over your emotions. He gets to tell you what to feel.

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He tells his people, for example, in the New Testament, in one of the epistles, have compassion towards one another.

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Have kind and tenderhearted sympathies towards one another. Well, even the person that I'm currently in conflict with?

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Yes, even that person. You are commanded to feel this way in regards to this person.

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That's difficult. That's hard. That confronts us. It's not so simple.

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Wisdom says, not take this pill, and it's over. Evaluate.

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Agonize over it. Strive with your maker, and prevail, and gradually emerge from the refiner's fire as a different man or woman than when you entered it.

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That takes time. And sometimes, as with our text today, it's not the things that are immediately recognizable to us that are in need of changing.

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It's more of those what you might call soft things. Our desires, our daydreams, our emotions.

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Maybe those are the things that need to be changed about us in order to be the people that God created us to be.

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You see, part of our human condition is just this. Our hopes, our dreams, our desires.

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God's word speaks to it. And as Christians, we don't get to do this. We don't get to cordon off an area of our lives and say

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God's authority does not get to speak to this. What's one thing that we say here all the time in Apology at Church?

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I'm sure you might be able to just finish it right away. There is no such thing as, wow, look at you.

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Neutrality. There is no neutrality. You're not with Christ, you're against him.

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How about this? No neutrality, right? If God's word confronts you with something, you don't like it, you don't get to discard it and close the proverbial book, so to speak, on that command and say, no,

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Lord, I might be honoring you with my wallet, I might be honoring you with my home, with my body, any number of things that I'm already doing right, but I won't submit this to you.

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I'm gonna cordon this off from your Lordship and from your authority, even though the blood of Jesus Christ did not just buy a portion of you, it bought you in totality.

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It bought all of you, every part of you, not just spiritual you on Sunday sitting in that pew, every single part of you.

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There's no neutrality, right? There's no neutrality with you, not even in the circumstances that you are now facing, not even in your trials and your sufferings.

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No part of us exists independently from the rule of Christ and his Lordship, and guess what? This is a long way to introduce this.

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That's good news. It's good news, because you know something?

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God knows exactly what to do with our desires, amen? He knows what to do with our hopes.

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He knows what to do with our longings, our cravings, our inward desires that come from our heart.

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You remember the heart, yes? That seat of intellect, emotions, our will, where the decisions are made at the core of our being, right?

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We have that soul. The biblical text talks about our soul, not just in that immaterial thing that leaves your body when you die.

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That's not what it means. That's how our culture has come to redefine it, but biblically, the soul is literally the whole person, including the inner man.

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But within that, the heart, the center of it all, where your most cherished beliefs are, where your most cherished desires are, what determines the action that you will take, the decisions that you will make in your life, down to your heart, those are the things that we're dealing with today.

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So it's good news for us that God actually cares and that he knows what to do with our longings.

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Now, a word on hope here while we're on the subject. Human beings run on hope the way a toddler runs on mischief.

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Okay? Ask any of the little ones in the rows, the pews right now during the message, right?

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Or at home watching the message, right? If you have little ones, you understand this. They giggle for it.

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Mischief, right? Causing trouble, getting into trouble. Human beings run on hope the way a toddler runs on mischief.

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We cannot do without it. You have never met a person in your life, you have never met an image bearer of God that was not motivated by hope.

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It's why we do everything that we do. Think about it. Why do you get out of bed in the morning?

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Why do you take medicine when you're not feeling good? Why do you sneak to the refrigerator at night at 10 .30

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and have that third donut? Or stream that fifth episode on Netflix when you know you should be going to bed?

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Why do you get a gym membership? Why do you go on a date? Why do you eat paleo, keto, or carnivore?

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Why do we sacrifice to invest in our education and go to college? Why do we save and invest our money or scrap in order to pay off our debt?

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Why do we hope that supper doesn't burn or that our kids will be obedient or that our spouse will be faithful to their wedding vows or that the preacher doesn't go for too long or that when it's summertime and we're sitting in this room literally baking inside of an oven that it won't take too long for the preacher to get done?

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Hope is the answer, yes? Whether big or small, everything we do is motivated by hope.

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If you're single, you hope for a husband or a wife. We hope as families that our jobs and our businesses provide what's needed to support our families.

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We hope that our husbands and wives will be faithful, that our children will be successful, that they're provided for, that they don't grow up and abandon their heritage.

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Whether the desires we have are small or large, we are creatures of hope, all looking for a better and more glorious future.

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That's why we do all the things that we do. We hope that what is on the other side of these desires will make our present experience satisfying and fulfilling.

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Hope is the fuel our hearts run on, but with hope comes something else, and you've tasted it before.

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Whether you know what I'm about to say or not, you know what I'm talking about. Human beings have desires.

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We work towards things, sustained efforts over time, but all of us, no matter how long you have lived, have had to deal with the disappointment of an unmet expectation.

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Disappointment of an unmet expectation. You longed, you worked, you scrapped to see a certain outcome, and you didn't get the outcome that you were expecting.

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You've been looking forward to it, long coming, making preparations, thinking about it, praying about it, pouring yourself into it, and it didn't come to fruition.

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The dinner was burnt. The scale showed that you gained five pounds.

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The Christmas present that you ordered was delivered on the 26th of December. The close friend that you counted on lied to you.

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The medical bills were paid, but guess what? There's a new stack of envelopes on the counter when you get home. The house you were looking to buy fell through.

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The cancer came back. The baby didn't make it. There are few things more disheartening than an unmet expectation.

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Not in just not getting what we wanted, but in having it postponed or delayed, even in some cases what seems to be indefinitely.

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That's what makes us heart sick. Does it surprise you that the Bible talks about this?

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Shattered dreams, broken hearts, things that you have looked forward to being dashed against the rock, falling apart, crumbling in your hands.

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The Word of God speaks very, very clearly to this. Hope deferred makes the heart sick.

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What makes our hearts sick is the delaying of our hopes, our wishes not coming true. When our hopes and dreams are put on hold, it can sap our strength.

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It can demoralize us. And eventually, if gone on long enough, left unchecked, lead us to despair and despondency.

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A deferred hope, according to the text here, simply means a hope that is long drawn out.

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It's put off. You have to wait a long time for it. We understand that, don't we?

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Some of us know what it is to wait for a long time to get married. Some of us understand that intimately, don't we?

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The angst that comes from that, that can come from that. The heartache of not being able to find a godly man or woman to build your house with.

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Others of us have longed for professional advancement and promotions at work, only to be overlooked after putting in so much effort and so much time and so much sacrifice, time away from your family, and you get passed over.

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Disappointment. Frustration. Or we've waited for our businesses that we've started to gain traction so that we can finally leave what feels like a soul -sucking cubicle existence.

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Many of us have waited to relocate our families to a better living situation so we can free ourselves of debt and put our families in a better position.

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Some of us, even at this moment, are walking through a season of intense grief because we've lost those closest to us.

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Is there a future for me after this, Lord? Is joy possible?

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How about this? Some of us have been fighting for a long, long, long, long time to recover from a chronic illness.

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That can make your heart sick, even if it's not your heart that's sick.

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And I know people with sick hearts. Literally, that's the issue, is the heart. But even if it's not your heart that's sick, the dejection, the frustration that you are reduced to at certain points, even as you believe you're doing everything right,

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I'm taking all the steps, I'm eating all the right ways, I'm taking the right supplements,

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I'm following the right protocol, and it doesn't seem to be getting better. Frustration, despair can result.

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When will I be back to normal? When will I be able to do the things that I used to do?

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Will I? When will my body start working like it's supposed to again?

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When will I stop waking up in pain every day? We have members of our body right now, and I know

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Pastor Zach alluded to this in prayer, right now that can't come to church or even leave their house due to illness.

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When will it end, Lord? When will it end? Hope deferred, put off, postponed, makes the heart sick.

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These things can sap our strength, demoralize us, and lead us to despair. And I just wanna say one thing briefly to those who are suffering in our family, in our church family.

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Some of you right now, as I am saying this, as you're listening to it, as you're watching it live, or you will watch it live later, later, this isn't just theory for you, it's reality.

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You're walking through an intense period of suffering right now, or grief, or loss.

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It might be infertility, it might be miscarriage, it might be your wayward, prodigal child, your rocky marriage, your undiagnosed illness.

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I wanna tell you something as your brother. Your suffering is not a sign that God does not love you.

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Your suffering is not a sign that God does not love you. You see,

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I think sometimes our really good theology can be clouded by our own circumstances. What do I mean by that?

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We're good Calvinists here, right? Amen? We believe in the sovereignty of God. You believe that?

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You believe that God is utterly sovereign? There's no maverick molecule in all the universe? You believe that God actively foreordains all that comes to pass, and if he doesn't actively foreordain it, he allows it by divine permission?

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Do you believe that? Good, me too. But here's the thing, when we suffer, here's the reasoning that we tend to go on.

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I'm hurting, I'm in pain, I'm suffering.

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God knew this would happen. He knew it would happen.

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Not only did he know that it would happen, he didn't stop it.

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He has chosen not to stop it. He could have, but he didn't.

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And this is where it goes off the rails. Therefore, he is not good. That is where our very good theology starts to go off the rails.

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God knew he could have stopped it, he hasn't stopped it. Therefore, he's not for me.

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That's the lie we need to identify. That leads us to believing in a false gospel.

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What did I do? Why is God angry with me? Perhaps if I do enough or show him how sorry

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I am, he will take away my pain and my suffering and love me again.

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He will take away my pain and my suffering. Beloved, and I say that because that's how the

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Bible talks to those who are enduring suffering. God calls them beloved. The object of his illimitable love.

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Beloved, that is not the saving gospel by which you were saved.

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God declared you righteous, not on the basis of your work's righteousness, but on the basis of his mercy and the washing of regeneration and the forgiveness of your sins and the positive crediting of his perfect righteousness to your negative accounts, making you able to stand before him and be seen as completely blameless in his sight.

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That is the gospel. Not any deficiency that you perceive within yourself that you can make up because you think

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God is against you because you're hurting. Here's the truth.

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God is totally sovereign. He is totally good, and he is totally for you in Christ.

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Did you know that Christians, and this is really good for us, by the way, because if you don't have a theology of suffering yet, you better get one before you walk through it.

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Or before you attempt to counsel someone who is going through it. I would encourage you with that as your brother.

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Only Christians can say that God puts suffering on a leash, on a chain, and he uses even those circumstances of the suffering and the pain and the heartache and the misery and the shattered dreams to serve his people.

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That is utterly unique. You won't find it anywhere outside of Christianity. Suffering is on a leash, and only

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God can use that to serve his people. Do you understand how unique that is? Do you understand that I cannot stop things like recurring chronic asthma?

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I cannot stop things like recurring chronic migraines that are debilitating. I cannot stop back pain or a myriad of neurological symptoms.

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Do you know why? Because my love is limited, and so is yours. If you know someone that's suffering, you understand this.

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They're close to you, and you have prayed to God that you will do anything if you could just take that suffering from them and take it upon yourself, right?

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I would love to take this, but you know you can't, because your love is limited.

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It's not like God's flawless love. Do you know God's flawless love? Do you know what that looks like?

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Do you know how unlimited it is? Do you know the God of the universe can actually take all of time and all of space and all of reality and actually bend it to serve his people?

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That's the measure of his love. If you understand what Romans chapter eight says, that amazing passage that the

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Apostle Paul gives us, what does it say? Nothing will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

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How can God, through the Apostle Paul, say that? Because in Christ, God can bend every circumstance toward the service of his people, even their suffering.

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We can't do that. We can't love like that. We can't love flawlessly the way our

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Father in heaven can, who knows what we need better than we do.

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So stand firm in his grace, dear brother or sister. Though frustrated you may be, nothing can separate you from his love or prevent him from proving your faith through this fiery trial, because that's what it's for, to prove our faith, to show that it's real.

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He will sustain you. Arm yourselves against the accusations of Job's wife, right, isn't that what sufferers are tempted to do?

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They've been suffering for so long, they hear Job's wife in their ear. Why don't you just curse

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God and die? Would an all -knowing, all -powerful

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God allow this? If he's good? That's the voice that we have to contend with, right?

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These are the lies of the enemy that we have to take up the shield of faith in order to extinguish all the fiery darts that he would seek to aim at us, to take us down.

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What does Job say to that, by the way? Does anyone remember? The Lord gives, the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the

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Lord. So with our brother

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Peter, I will say this, let those who suffer according to God's will and trust their souls to a faithful creator while doing good.

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Back to our text here. Hope deferred makes the heart sick, makes the heart sick.

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But a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. This is the second part of the verse now.

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A longing fulfilled, when the desire comes to pass, when it happens, oh boy, it came.

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It's got this refreshing effect upon us, doesn't it? It revitalizes our energy, it lifts our spirits, right?

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It's like that glass of cold water in the Arizona desert on a hot day. You know what that feels like, don't you? When that ice cold water hits your throat, it just lifts you up.

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It literally, you can feel yourself reviving again, right? And the language here is incredible, right?

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When we're elated, the Bible says it's like a tree of life. Okay, well our mind should go to something when we hear that terminology, right?

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The tree of life. Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.

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The tree of life is what's equated with the desire actually coming to pass. When the expectation is realized, there, right there, we see the picture of refreshment and joy from the

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Edenic paradise of our first parents. That's the picture, that's the symbol, that's the image that we get, right there.

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The tree of life. Even if you've had an awful, awful week, if the thing that you were looking forward to happens, you are walking on sunshine, and don't it feel good?

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By the end of the week, you are elated, electric. You're revived, you're renewed, you're ready to keep going.

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The tree of life in Genesis is that source of refreshment in the midst of the howling wilderness in which

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God put paradise, this garden oasis for his creatures to be in.

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And what did the tree of life do? Well, first and foremost, it didn't do anything.

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It was beautiful. It was gorgeous to look at. But it also provided fruit to nourish and to sustain.

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But there was another tree in the garden. It wasn't there. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

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We might call it the tree of autonomy. The tree of autonomy.

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And ultimately, because of our sin, the tree of life is what we were prevented from partaking of when man ate from the tree of autonomy instead of waiting for the mature fruit of the tree of life.

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The mature fruit. Time, process, shaping in which

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God does, takes time. If you remember, one of the main curses for disobedience included frustration and toil for Adam that the ground would bear thorns and thistles.

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And throughout the revelation of God, we even see up to the climax of this story that God is telling thorny men, eventually crowning our

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God at the crucifixion with a ring of thorns in the attempt to frustrate his desires, but to no avail.

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Christ, our ladder to heaven. Because, by the way, that's what trees are.

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Did you know that? Ladders to heaven. Why do you think that our young boys are so eager to climb them and reach the glory that is there?

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To strive, to reach, to achieve. Trees are ladders to heaven.

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In many ways, they're like altars where sacrifices are offered.

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Trees. Christ, our ladder to heaven. That's, by the way, a quote from the

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Bible. According to the Gospel of John, remember in the first couple chapters there, Jesus is talking to one of his followers, and he says, on me you will see angels ascending and descending.

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Referring to Jacob's dream in the Old Testament in Genesis where he was there and he was with God.

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The presence of God was there. And Jesus says of himself, I am the ladder to heaven.

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Angels are ascending and descending on me. You will see these things and you will be astounded. Jesus, our ladder to heaven, was put to death on a tree that we may eat of his fruit.

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Turn with me to Isaiah chapter 53. I'm sure you know where to find it. I'm sure you know it very well.

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Isaiah 53. This is the prophecy of the suffering servant of Yahweh.

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Isaiah 53. Give you a second.

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We're gonna start reading here from verse 10. Isaiah 53, verse 10.

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Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him. He has put him to grief when his soul was broken.

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His soul makes an offering for guilt. He shall see his offspring. He shall prolong his days.

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The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied.

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By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous and he shall bear their iniquities.

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Jesus, the ladder of heaven, the tree of life.

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Jesus, the tree of life. He was offered up so that we, that's you and that's me, could be replanted as evergreens.

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Isn't that what Psalm one is all about? Planted as an evergreen tree, nourished by the rivers of living water and yielding up our own fruit in and out of season.

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The Lord talks about himself in scripture in the book of Hosea, for example, as a luxuriant cypress tree that gives fruit, that provides beauty and also shade from the sun.

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What's attractive about shade from the sun, Arizonans? What's attractive about that?

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You wanna take refuge there. And it says that the

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Lord is a tree. He's like a tree, gives shade.

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And God's people are also like trees planted around him in his holy tabernacle.

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That's why the book of Revelation depicts us as trees whose food is good and whose leaves will heal the nations as we are fed from the flowing streams of the sanctuary.

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The nations look to take refuge there.

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That is God's aspiration. That is his desire.

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And his plans, unlike ours, brothers and sisters, are never frustrated. His desires always come to pass.

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What was Christ's ultimate desire? Of course, you might say it was to glorify his father in heaven, to accomplish the mission that his father had given him.

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But another answer to that would be this. What was Christ's ultimate desire? Well, we just read

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Isaiah 53 in verse 11. Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied.

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What is he seeing? He's seeing you. He's seeing me.

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Christ's ultimate desire was, yes, to glorify his father, but it was to save you and create a kingdom of people who delight in God eternally.

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But the desire of his soul could only be realized through suffering. This is the cruciform way of life we are called on to make our own, suffering and glory.

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That's what the gospel is about, suffering and subsequent glory, death and resurrection.

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What does it say about Jesus in the epistles? He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

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This is the substitutionary element of the gospel in which Christ takes our place.

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He suffers in our place as our substitute. And what awaited him on the other side of that cross?

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Glory. The glory that was his with the father in eternity.

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And this is what we are called upon to emulate. Our desires are to be that of Christ's desires, are to be that of the father in heaven's desires.

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Turn with me quickly to Hebrews chapter 12, one and two. This is one of my favorite passages.

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Hebrews 12, one and two. Coming off the heels here of the great cloud of witnesses, the hall of faith in Hebrews 11.

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Listen to this. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame and is seated at the right hand of God.

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When Jesus was going to the cross, he was looking at the cross, but he was looking also beyond the cross.

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He was looking through the cross. He was looking on the other side of that suffering to subsequent glory with his father and a kingdom of priests that would worship and delight and glorify

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God forever. Saints, I'm gonna ask you a question. What is the chief end of man?

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Let's try it again. What is the chief end of man? Another way to ask that is, what are you for?

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Why do you exist? To glorify God and to delight and joy to find

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Christ to be your ultimate treasure through eternity. We need to understand on hope being deferred, but the desire coming to pass being a tree of life.

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If we're here today and our hopes have been postponed, if they have been delayed, we need to know and understand that it's not wrong to want good things like health, success, or material possessions.

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It's not wrong to have those desires. But our hopes must be ordered by being anchored to the ultimate hope because all lesser hopes are subject to perishing, defiling, and fading away.

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But what is the inheritance that the Bible tells us is ours forevermore in Christ Jesus?

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Imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. This eternal inheritance that is kept, it's reserved in heaven for you where Christ is.

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Do you think it's going anywhere? Jesus would have to die again. And he's not going to do that because death is a defeated enemy.

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Everything else that you can think of, every other lesser hope is subject to sin's corruption.

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It has an expiration date on it. And it is all subject to the law of diminishing returns.

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By the way, what is that? I mentioned the donuts earlier, right? You eat that first Krispy Kreme donut and it is incredible.

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Passes underneath that waterfall glaze of icing. It comes out, they put it in a napkin and you take a bite of it and you just close your eyes and sit there for a second.

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So good. But then you have the second donut and it's a little bit less good than the first one.

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And then you have the third donut and it's even less satisfying. Maybe, maybe for some of you, you get to number six and you're like,

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I'm going strong. Everything in this world is subject to the law of diminishing returns.

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Everything but the living hope. And the living hope is Christ. And that means something for us, brothers and sisters, because if you,

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God forbid, end up standing over the grave of your own child or children, when you end up standing over the graves of your parents, if that was where your hope was, it won't be strong enough to hold.

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If that was the hook that all of your hope was hanging on, it will not bear the weight of that.

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If our greatest hopes are not anchored and joined to the living hope, they will not be seen in right relation.

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They will be out of proportion and they will not be able to withstand the trials and the suffering and the grief and the despondency and the frustration if it's not anchored to the living hope.

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And the living hope, of course, is that resurrection hope of Jesus from the dead.

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It cannot be exhausted. It does not have a limit. It is infinitely satisfying.

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And that is the point, brothers and sisters. Eternal life is not just something satisfying when we get there in heaven with Jesus.

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If you know Christ, if he lives in you right now, then joy is possible now.

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Maybe that's what you need to hear today. Is there a future after this, Lord? Is there a future after my frustrated hopes?

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Do I have a future? Is joy possible? Well, what's your greatest desire?

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What's your greatest desire? Is it to know him more fully?

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To become more godly? To worship him more truthfully in the beauty of holiness?

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While eternity is not yet, we can experience joy in the present by knowing and believing

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God has a glorious future for us. That's why the promises of God are so important. Because as we are right now in these bodies, faith has not become sight yet.

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We groan inwardly, don't we? Eagerly awaiting the redemption of our bodies and the renewal of this order.

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This world has been redeemed, yes and amen, but it has not yet been completely renovated and restored.

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And we find ourselves right here, needing to be reminded that God has a glorious future for us, a glorious future for us.

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Your mind and imagination cannot even conceive of it. Eye has not seen nor ear has heard, nor has been put into the heart of man what

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God has prepared for those who love him. You can't even imagine.

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God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation.

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So that what is perishable may be clothed with what is eternal, and so our hopes will not be put off forever.

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Know this, though the fiery trial raged, though your dreams and your plans be deferred for a while, here it is, you will not be eternally frustrated.

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Like the wicked, right? Go back with me,

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Proverbs 10, 28, Proverbs 10, 28.

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The hope of the righteous brings joy, but the expectation of the wicked will perish.

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That's the promise. Yes, your faith may be tried.

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It will be tried. Scratch that, it's going to be tried. If suffering isn't here yet, it's coming.

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Yes, your faith will be tried, but your every desire will be fulfilled in the everlasting presence of the

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Lord, if you know Christ, if you're in him. That's the promise.

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How are you preparing for that now? Do you hunger and thirst for righteousness?

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Does your soul pant for it, like deer for the flowing streams of water?

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Because if you are, that's what you want. If you sit around thinking, how can I be more godly, Lord? How can

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I be more righteous? And I mean that in the Christian sense, not more self -righteous.

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How can I, as someone whose position has been restored to my

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God through the propitiatory action of Jesus Christ, I am sealed in Christ, my sins have been forgiven,

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God does not count me against him. What we're talking about here is the image of God being renewed in us.

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The sanctification element of our salvation, right? Not just the justification element where our sins are forgiven, that one -time action that God has taken.

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We're talking about this continual, ongoing, inward renovation and renewal of our whole person by the

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Spirit of God. Do you hunger and thirst for righteousness because your

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Lord promises that if you do that, you will be filled? Do you believe it? You will be filled.

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Consider how the people of old had their hopes deferred for hundreds of years, thousands of years, as they awaited the coming

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Messiah that you now possess and call Lord. Think of that, the dejected hope.

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Has he come yet? How long, how long? God promised we would be free from exile, we would be brought back.

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He promised us a Savior. He promised us a Redeemer that would set everything right and bring justice in the earth and reconcile men to God.

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And it hasn't happened yet. It's put off and it's put off and it's put off and it's put off and it's put off.

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But when the desire comes, it's a tree of life. And that tree and its leaves are currently, at this moment, healing the nations.

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As the stream goes forth from the sanctuary into the world, the point is, is it a pure stream?

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Are your desires pure? Do you hunger and thirst for righteousness? God says, if you do, that you will be filled.

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God did not create the desire within you unless he intended for it to be met by him. That's why it's there.

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The pure in heart will see God. Do you want to see God? How are your desires?

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If they're wrong, change them. Proverbs tells us there are desires that we have that are not according to knowledge.

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We shouldn't have them. If we got them, they would likely undo us. Kind of like grumbling Israel in the wilderness.

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You remember? What did they want so badly? They grumbled and grumbled to Moses. Feed us with quail, feed us with quail.

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And God did send that quail, but he also sent a plague that destroyed them. They got what they wanted.

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They got their desire and it ended up killing them. How many times in our lives, I know I can think of several,

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BC, where I asked God for something and he was so gracious to say no. How many things in your life have been like that?

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Your desires were not rightly ordered and you were seeking God's face about it and he said no, because he knows.

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Even if you don't realize it at the time. So if we don't have the right desires, remember who he is.

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Remember that in Christ, he has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

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Everything we need to strengthen us, sustain us and satisfy us has been provided.

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Well, I don't have the desire. I don't have it. Can't create it out of thin air.

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Well, there's good news. The call of God upon your life actually creates what it commands, right?

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We talked about irresistible grace last week on Apology Radio, right? The eye and the tulip acrostic.

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The call of God, his effectual calling. Oh, that sounds like one of our catechism questions, right?

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Effectual calling. What are the benefits that accompany that? Sanctification. See why the catechism matters?

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Sanctification. That's what this is about. About the image of God being renewed in us if you don't have the right desires.

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Trust in Christ. Have him as the greatest hope and your treasure of all treasures.

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And the call of God will create what it commands in you. Because it's not dependent upon you.

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It's based on God's power. You will be holy for I am holy.

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That's what God's promise is. It's a guarantee. You shall be holy for I am holy.

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Our passage reminds us, once again, of a main theme in Proverbs. It's wisdom or folly.

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It's the wisdom of eternal hope or the folly of endless frustration.

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It's the wisdom of eternal hope or the folly of endless frustration.

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This is how we overcome it. There are those who are headed for final despair leading to death, and there are those headed for the fulfillment of every desire in the tree of life,

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Jesus Christ, our Lord. The hope of the righteous brings joy, but the expectation of the wicked will perish.

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Amen? Pray with me. Oh, Holy Father, thank you so much,

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God, for your word. It is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. Lord, plant us like trees as we lay hold of the fruit of eternal life and seek to disseminate that fruit gloriously to the nations.

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Let our desires be pure. Let Christ be our all in all. Let us be sanctified,

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God, and more closely conformed to his image, and it's in Jesus' mighty name we pray.