Let's take our Bibles at this time and go to the book of Hebrews chapter 2 together. The psychological factors that are at play when you make New Year's resolutions are fascinating, and they're powerful. At the outset, you're pumped, you're psyched, right? A new year is about to begin, and so you say to yourself, hey, I'm going to exercise every single day. I'm going to join the 5 a.m. club, you know, like I read that book. I'm in. I'm going to do it. 5 a.m. every day. I'm going to lose 20 pounds. I'm going to feel and look amazing. I'm going to cut all sweets out of my diet. And you're doing really well, I don't know, a couple of days, a couple of months. And then that momentum shifts fast somewhere in there. And you're going to bed one night, and you think to yourself, 5 AM is really, really, really early. Maybe just one day I won't set my alarm. Or you're two months in, and you go, I've only lost half a pound. This is going way slower than what I thought. Or, I really, really, really miss ice cream. Or, this isn't paying off like I thought it would. I think I'm done. Well, the same kind of thing tends to happen in the Christian life. You can be so fired up, and you're ready to live for Jesus, and maybe you are, and off you go to serve the Lord and live for Him. And then, oftentimes, throughout the Christian life, it's like all that momentum that's moving one direction feels like it can shift and literally go the opposite. The momentum changes, you find yourself not really feeling motivated at all. And suddenly it seems like things have gotten hard, and you feel discouraged, maybe frustrated, and things start to really feel like work. Maybe you're not seeing the fruit or results that you want, or something happened that you didn't like, or that really rattled you, you couldn't piece it all together, and it really unsettled you. Living for Jesus maybe suddenly seems to be costing you something. And as you wrestle with sin, it seems like it's this ever-dominating force that you can't seem to conquer. You feel like, oh, I don't even think I can actually win. And maybe go, honestly, I don't even really want to fight. I just kind of want to take it easy. This is too hard, too much work. Spiritually speaking, you don't want to get up and go out and wage spiritual war every single day. I mean, wouldn't you rather be like sitting on the beach in Hawaii, working on your suntan and consuming all kinds of amazing calories through food and drink? Like, that sounds like the awesome spiritual life, just easy and nice. People don't always feel motivated to live for Jesus, and honestly, I think it's pretty common. I think this is something all of us understand and we can resonate with, and it certainly seemed to be the case for the recipients of Hebrews as this book came to them. They had several demotivating factors in their lives, and as they looked out at their world, they thought, wow, what a mess. And they were experiencing that mess firsthand, even through persecution and the loss of their belongings and property and just feeling like this whole world, we don't really fit in it here with our love for Jesus. Have you ever felt that same loss of momentum in your faith? I mean, you've started strong and you were doing really well, and then life came back and it hit hard. And your excitement seemed to fade and suddenly living for Jesus starts to feel more like a struggle than than a joy. If you've been there, you're not alone. In Hebrews chapter two, really, I think it just it speaks right to you where you're living. I want to encourage you to get out of bed tomorrow morning and live your life for Jesus. Let's look at just a few verses. Hebrews 2 verses 5 to 9 will be our text here today. Verse 5, for it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. It has been testified somewhere, and then Psalm 8 is referenced here, what is man that you are mindful of him? Or the son of man that you, speaking of God, care for him. You made him for a little while lower than the angels. You have crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet. Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside of his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him, but we see him who for a little while was made lower than angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone. As we work through this text, we're gonna draw our attention to three motivations for getting up and living your life for Jesus. And so here's our first one, live for Jesus because He reigns over all things. At the end of verse eight says this, now in putting everything in subjection to Him, putting everything in subjection to Jesus, He, speaking of God the Father, left nothing outside His, Jesus' control. That's really the whole point of verses 5 to 8, and that theme's going to show up all throughout these verses. Verses 5 to 8, you see in verse 5, you read there that God subjected the world to come to Jesus. And maybe you read that and your mind immediately goes to the future. But you keep reading verse 8, it says, putting everything in subjection under his or Jesus' feet. And that seems to be talking about now. And again in verse eight, putting everything in subjection to him, and finally there in verse eight, this massive statement, he left nothing outside of his control. Do you believe that everything is under the feet of Jesus right now? Do you believe that Jesus Christ has been crowned with glory and honor and is now exercising total dominion? The middle of verse eight says that he is. Do you believe that? Not do you believe that Jesus is exercising partial dominion and he's got all of this under control. But but then there's this over here that's it's not really he doesn't seem to have that. Verse eight says that he left nothing outside of his control and nothing means nothing. And in making this point, the writer of Hebrews highlights that God actually gave man dominion. The writer of Hebrews is gonna take us all the way back to the very first chapter of our Bibles, Genesis 1, where God gives man dominion, and that's in part why he includes the quotation from Psalm 8. This Psalm, Psalm 8, marvels at the fact that the God who hung the sun, moon, and stars in their place, and the God who stretched out the galaxies over massive amounts of space, would place such great attention and affection on mankind. Because in the midst of such a massive, glorious, awesome creation, what is man? He's kind of small. But God, as we read in the opening chapters of the Bible, made man in his own image. And then God gave man dominion over the created order. Do you remember that? In Genesis chapter one, 26 and 27 were literally first chapter of the Bible. God creates man and then he gives him dominion. Well, Adam and Eve proved to be absolute terrible kings, rulers and exercisers of dominion. By the time we get to chapter three, everything's already gone completely sideways and it's been turned up on its head and dominion is a disaster. Through sin, man wrecked this whole dominion thing. But the writer of Hebrews takes this psalm, which takes our attention all the way back to the book of Genesis, but then shoves our mind forward into time to Jesus Christ himself because the writer of Hebrews takes this psalm and he applies it to Jesus Christ. The second Adam and our perfect representative. The first Adam failed. And then here comes Jesus. God gave a second man total dominion. Jesus came from heaven to earth, and we know that when he did that, he took on humanity. He took on flesh and blood. And in so doing, we read here in Hebrews that he was made for a little while lower than the angels that he had created. And then through his death and resurrection, he has now been crowned with glory and honor. and ascended into heaven, he sat down and taken his place at the right hand of the majesty on high, as we saw in chapter one. And God, the father, has put everything in subjection to Jesus. He's the perfect man, the God man stepping in where all men have failed. Never sinned, never does anything wrong, lives perfectly righteous, and now he's living and reigning, exercising perfect dominion. God gave Adam and Eve dominion over the animals, you may recall there in Genesis chapter 1. So maybe I can illustrate what's going on with the dominion idea this way. Sometimes we've decided over the years to let our chickens out of the chicken run and just free-range them kind of in our yard or they'll kind of creep into a pasture next to the coop. And what I found about chickens once we got them is that they're amazing, right? Like the sun, it starts to get dark. You don't have to like ring a bell or go gather all the chickens. It's like they just come and they put themselves to bed and it's all good. 99% of the time. But we've found almost in every flock of chickens that we've had, there's like one rogue chicken in every flock, right? And so a few times we decided, well, we need to come back in the run a little bit early, and we're shooing all these chickens back in the run. And it's typically my son and I, my oldest son, and we're like, okay, we got this. And well, there's this rogue chicken over here, and it's like, you stand on this side of the coop, I'll stand on this side of the coop, and I'll chase it around, and we'll chase it this way, we'll chase it that way, and we'll get it right in the run, and we'll shut the door. Well, we've done that, we've chased it around this side of the coop, and we've chased it around that side of the coop, and then it went under the coop, and then it's out in the yard, and my son and I chasing it this way, that way, ugh, finally get the little bird in the coop. It can be harder than you might think. You know, when it comes to Jesus and his dominion over everything, it truly is over everything. And to put it this way, we might say that Jesus has no quote-unquote rogue chickens. Nothing like that, that somehow managed to evade his dominion. Well, I've got all this, but there's this rogue chicken over here, there's this situation going on that I don't have control over. Nothing like that at all. Everything is under the feet of Jesus. And that means that ultimately, there are no rogue chickens running around in your life. Because everything's under the feet of Jesus Christ. Which means that you can get out of bed tomorrow morning, and you can live for Jesus knowing he reigns over all. When you wake up tomorrow morning, I think there's a strong likelihood that you need to get up and you need to preach that truth to yourself because you may not believe it. Or maybe you do intellectually, but practically, you live as if you're not convinced of it. You need to wake up in the morning and preach this truth to yourself and believe it. Your work situation's under the feet of Jesus. So when you wake up tomorrow morning, and as this often goes, you wake up and you're just dreading that difficult conversation that's going to happen at work. Maybe it's going to be difficult because what's being said to you, or maybe it's going to be difficult because of what you need to say to someone else. And you can remember there in that instance that Jesus is reigning even over that. And so you can go into that conversation, you can go into work with confidence even if you're nervous and afraid. Your relationships are under the feet of Jesus. Your health is under the feet of Jesus. You go to the doctor and you're nervous and you're not sure how it's gonna play out. Well, you can know with confidence, okay, whatever this doctor tells me, it's under the feet of Jesus. Your future is under the feet of Jesus. All your needs are under the feet of Jesus. Your troublesome coworker that you have to interact with every single day is also under the feet of Jesus. Your pregnancy is under the feet of Jesus. We have several ladies right now in our church who are pregnant which we're all excited with them about and maybe for some of them it's your very first pregnancy. And it's so exciting and yet there are like nerves and uncertainties and all of that. It's under the feet of Jesus. Your relationship status is under the feet of Jesus. Right here in our church, the challenges and difficulties that you face, as every church does, church can be complex. It's all under the feet of Jesus. The fruit of your labors and all that you're giving your time and attention to, it's all under the feet of Jesus. The massive project that you have on the go is under the feet of Jesus. The thing that is stressing you out, it's on your mind when you go to bed at night, and when you wake up in the morning, there it is. The thing that really is raising your heart rate, it's under the feet of Jesus. The chaotic world that you see and operate and run around in is under the feet of Jesus. Also, you might think about this, as you struggle with sin, which is every single one of us, since Jesus has total dominion, that means that there's not some sin in your life that's too strong for Jesus to help you overcome. And that's true even when sin feels dominant, as it often does. Most of us have probably at least a sin or two that we've been fighting for a very, very long time, and it's like, man, it's so hard for me to even grow in this space. I've struggled with this forever. You can wage war against your sin in hope. You take your lust or your anger or your laziness and you can, no, no, no, that's not too big for Jesus and his power. That one sin that keeps tripping you up, the one that makes you feel like a failure and maybe reminds you, oh man, I just sinned so much, it's not too strong for Jesus. His dominion means that you don't have to fight alone and when you're struggling with your sin, you're gonna go, okay, I know a king. who has all power and all dominion, and he's risen from the grave, and when it comes down to me fighting my sin, I can go to that King and I can say, Jesus King, Lord of all, Master of all, I need your help. I can't win against my sin on my own, but with your help, it can be conquered. As you struggle with fear and anxiety, again, something that I think most of us do, what if you took the time to pause and remind yourself and meditate on the fact that the chaos is not somehow outside from underneath the feet of Jesus? It's not outside his control. You might find memorizing scripture to be a challenge, but what if you just memorized the middle part of verse eight? It's pretty short. You just memorized that little bit right there in the middle. That would help you. Before we move on to a second motivation, one more thought from these first few verses. Based on the quotation from Psalm 8, I think we also need to remind ourselves that this great king who exercises dominion and he's been crowned with glory and honor, what does he think about every person on the face of the universe? Well, we know that God places immense value on every human being, born and unborn, because every human being is made in the image of God. We live in a time where life is cheap, and we're like, oh, yeah, whatever. And you think about the ways this is showing up in our society right now. Abortion, for example, you go and you have all of your checkups throughout pregnancy. And if the doctor spots something, they'll be like, wow, right here in this chromosome, this gene, we're noticing a problem. Do you know you could abort your baby? Whoa. God says that that child is made in the image of God. That's God's thoughts. Euthanasia, you get to the end of life, and life is hard. And now you're laying in a hospital bed, or you're laying in an old folks home, and it's just difficult. Oh yeah, we can take care of that for you. We'll peacefully bring you out of life. made medical assistance in dying. I mean, this is like a really, really big thing in our world, in Canada. And God would say all that is murder. None of it is acceptable in his eyes. God says that every man, every woman, every child, born or unborn, is made in my image. As you look at these first few verses about Jesus reigning, you might go, okay, so Jesus is reigning, but I'm confused. Why does my life still feel so chaotic? Right? I mean, Jesus said he's reigning. I believe it, but I don't get it. And the writer of Hebrews, that's exactly where he goes next, anticipating that. Motivation number two, live for Jesus even when life doesn't look like he's reigning. The end of verse eight says, at present, so right here and now, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. You might say, yeah, that's a huge understatement. Have you seen the world that we're living in? It is a world that always seems to be at war somewhere. Sometimes the whole world is at war together. We live in a world that's full of chaos. It's dominated by political upheaval. It's full of broken and fractured relationships. It's full of evil and injustice and wrongdoing, and often people do this, they do that, it's evil, and there are no consequences for that. This is a world that's full of hurt, pain, and sorrow, and all of those things come straight to your doorstep, and they don't knock, right? It's just, hey, my name's Payne, and I'm coming right into your life. You say, I don't want you. I'm coming in. And sorrow and difficulty and all these things, you don't invite them, and yet, in they come to your life. Well, the book of Hebrews maintains a tension between here and now, right now, and what's yet to come, the not yet. And we see that tension in this passage. We see it a couple different ways. We see that the world to come is subjected to Jesus in verse five, and we're like, okay, yeah, awesome, but we're not there yet. But apparently, the world to come is now, in some sense, because verse eight talks about everything being subject to Jesus right now. Also, we see this tension in the Psalms that are quoted. When Psalm 8 is quoted in chapter 2, verse 8, it speaks about all things being under Jesus' feet right now. But if you look back up at the end of the previous chapter, when Psalm 110 is quoted in chapter 1, verse 13, it speaks of a dominion that is yet to come. You read the word until there. So which is true? Is it now or is it not yet? And the answer is both, yes. Jesus' rule and reign, we might say, has been inaugurated. He's been crowned, and the grand and glorious consummation is coming in full force. So as we await that consummation, we see quite the mess down here. We experience quite the mess down here. And that's what our eyes see. And yet the writer of Hebrews, God himself, tell us that Jesus reigns. All the nastiness and all the evil that you see in the world and that you experience, whatever may come, whatever you see, God says, actually, that is all under the feet of my son. even if it doesn't look like it, even if the grand consummation of all things hasn't come yet. The Christian life or pilgrimage is much like flying through a storm, and maybe you look out the cockpit window, and you're like, wow, I can't see anything. Like, I literally can't see three feet ahead through the chaos. And meanwhile, there are dangers everywhere. Crashing is a perpetual threat when you can't see well. Like, where's the ground, and where are the mountains on either side of me? This is horrifying. Well, the writer of Hebrews here is calling you to fly not by looking out the window and looking at all the chaos, but to fly instead by looking at your instruments. And if you look out the windshield of life, all you're going to see oftentimes is chaos. Or it may look great. You may feel like you see really clearly one day, and then it's like, boom, now I cannot make sense of this. But your instruments don't lie. What do they say? The instruments say that Jesus reigns. He still reigns. He is reigning. He will reign. And it's on such a conviction that you as a Christian must live your life and fly through all the chaos. No matter what my eyes tell me, what I know for sure is that Jesus reigns. If you imagine watching a really great world champion chess player play chess, it might be really confusing to you. I don't know if I told you about the time I got destroyed in chess by a junior hire. My wife and I, we went to South Africa, I don't know, probably five or six years ago now to visit our missionaries, Herb and Janet Hunter. Some of the work they do is in the local schools there. And so they wanted my wife and I to come with them at lunchtime. And over the lunch break, all the junior hires would get out all these chess boards and pieces and play chess. Well, they all wanted to play me. And so they get like their reigning junior high chess champion. And there we are playing chess together. He literally beat me, I think it was like in less than five moves. And I thought, what just happened? I mean, I just moved like three pawns, and he just took me out. Wow. Okay, take like world champion chess player. Someone like that with that kind of skill, they're maybe thinking 20 moves in a row. They're thinking way beyond the next move. I'm not. I'm just like, yeah, maybe I'll move this pawn. I don't know. See how it goes. But a world champion chess player, maybe 20 moves ahead, and what looks maybe like, well, that doesn't make any sense. Why would you do this? Why would you do that? But it's all there working together towards this great end goal. You know, we may not see everything under Jesus' feet right now. We may not be able to make sense of, well, why did he make this move? And why did he make that move? Why did he do this? Why did he make that? I don't know. But he knows. He has triumphed, will triumph. His triumph is sure. He knows the end from the beginning. And that means for you that you can wake up tomorrow morning, you can get out of bed and say, okay, no matter what my eyes see, I'm gonna live for this king. Even when it doesn't look like he's reigning. When you wake up tomorrow morning, what if you were to choose to look at your instruments instead of out the window? And if you find yourself in a situation where you have been looking out the window and you're like, oh, man, I don't like what I'm seeing. In those moments when things are particularly chaotic, those should be the times when we're all the more going to God's word and saying, hey, this is what I know is fact. This is the instrument. This is the reading that's never wrong. So I'm going to open it up, and I'm going to stick my nose in God's word, and I'm going to read, and I'm going to read some more, and I'm going to say, okay, these are God's facts. This is God's truth. I'm going to anchor and build my life on this. Also, when dealing with your personal failures, sometimes what happens for us, we get so discouraged, and we end up spiraling down and down and down into discouragement. And one of the things that you and I have the joy of doing in those moments is preaching to ourselves, well, Jesus is crowned with glory, honor, and victory. And what that means even for me is my failures, my sins, those things are actually not what define me. Jesus does. In his victory over sin, death, and the grave, and the curse, Jesus defines me. And his work defines my life, which means that you get to get back up and live for Jesus again. Okay, Jesus, I sinned, forgive me. I'm not gonna pretend like that's not a big deal. I'm gonna confess it, I'm gonna own it, I'm gonna rejoice in your forgiveness, and forward I go. It's one thing, though, to know that Jesus reigns. It's altogether a different thing to feel like that changes your life somehow. And that's why our final motivation is really the best news of all. Motivation number three reminds us that Jesus has already won for you. Number three, live for Jesus because he won the victory for you. We don't presently see everything in subjection to Jesus' feet. That's not what we see in our world. However, verse nine says, okay, we don't see that, but what do we see? Verse nine says, but we see Jesus crowned with glory and honor. What does that mean? Well, it means that by faith we see and we believe that Jesus has remedied the real, real problem, the true problem. He's addressed the problem at its very source. He's gone right to the heart of the matter and he's dealt with it. And that comes to us kind of in a few different lines of thought. Jesus' crowning comes, here's the language of the writer of Hebrews, because he suffered death for you. Look at verse nine. But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, we see him what, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death. so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone. I don't know if you caught it there, but the crowning of Jesus is directly tied to the fact that he suffered death. It's because of the suffering of death. Okay, so if that's the Father's plan for the Son, you've kind of followed the trajectory of what happened with Jesus, it's suffering followed by glory. Would it then be fair to say that God has called his people down that same path? That God would have called his people often to a life of suffering and difficulty in a very broken world, but that path of suffering is followed by glory. You will struggle and suffer in this life. If you live for Jesus, there are gonna be difficulties, and you will experience a world that does not presently appear to be under the control of Jesus. You know what's interesting? Jesus experienced that too. He experienced that same broken world, tainted and tarnished by sin and the curse. That's the quote from the Psalms, made lower than the angels. How do you live in that world? Well, apparently Jesus did it. So how do you live in it? Well, by following, leaning on, and looking to Jesus, and the verses that come will highlight that. You have Jesus' example, and so you can cherish that and go, okay, my Lord and King, who's now crowned with glory and honor, he came here, and he lived here, and he is my model and example through all of this. If I wanna know what to do, and I wanna know how to live, then I look at him. You need Jesus' help, and so you can lean on him. In your heart, you might be saying, okay, yep, yep, yep, I wanna do that, this is great, Jesus reigns, and I wanna live for him, but I just have this one burning question. Why? Why must life here and now be so difficult? Why does it have to be like this? Well, verse nine also shows that Jesus' crowning comes after humbly tasting death for you. Look at verse nine again. But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor, because of the suffering of death. And then this last part of the verse, so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone. You might be asking, why do I have to suffer? Why do why do I have to live in this mess down here? Maybe if we step back for a moment and ask a much, much larger question, because you're thinking about you and you're asking, why do I have to do this and why? Why? Why? Why is it like this for me, me, me? If we step back and we ask a much larger question, I think that we may end up finding some resolution. Here's the question, why did Jesus have to suffer? I mean, maybe we could kind of find, some of your messes are probably messes of your own making, right? Mine certainly would be for me. You look at Jesus, did he make any messes for himself? Did he ever sin? Did he ever do anything wrong? Why would Jesus have to suffer? And that is a question that you and I can answer clearly. In the Father's plan, Jesus had to suffer, we read here, or taste death for everyone. Why? So that by grace, you might be saved. And just like that, I think we have a lot of clarity. That the God who allows suffering always has good purposes. I may not be able to piece together why God would have me go through all this mess here and now, but I can look at Jesus and I can go, why did he have to suffer? He certainly didn't deserve that. And I get this really clear answer, Jesus suffered so that I could have salvation as a free gift. God always has good purposes, and I see that in Jesus. And if I can see that in Jesus, then I can know it's true of God's plan for my life too. We may not see God's good purposes here and now in our own lives, but one day we will. And it'll be as clear to us as we see God's good purposes in Jesus. Can you trust this God with your suffering? The answer should be yes. Look what he did for you and Jesus. And if you're not sure exactly what God did for you and Jesus, just let me draw your attention to that last part of the verse, verse nine, so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone. That's talking about Jesus. Jesus came and he experienced death for me, for you, for everyone. Because man's sin brings death. What happened in the garden, what man did, the result of sin is death and eternal judgment and condemnation. at God's hand. And Jesus comes, he lowers himself below the angels, he takes on flesh and blood. He lives perfectly, and he takes death. And the Father pours out all of his judgment on Jesus, and this verse says that he did that for everyone. He did that in your place, in my place. And this verse also highlights that, that it's by the grace of God. Jesus did that for you by the grace of God. What that means is you don't have to work for salvation. You don't have to work to be right with God. You don't have to work to have your sins forgiven. This is a gift. God says everything that needed to happen, I've already done for you through Jesus Christ. Jesus has done it. You just take the gift. And so Jesus calling to each of us is you need to repent and you need to believe that good news. You need to say, I am a sinner. I do deserve death and eternal destruction, but Jesus took it for me. Jesus, will you forgive me? Will you give me new life through your work, through your death and resurrection? Do you know what else we learn here, actually, is that Jesus' crowning, it actually ensures your own crowning. Look at verse 10. This is actually in the text for next time, so we'll just pop into it for a moment. For it was fitting that he for whom and by whom all things exist and bringing many sons to glory should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. As I mentioned, we'll look at that text next time, but let's just grab this. Through the suffering and crowning of Jesus, what happens? Many sons are brought to glory. Jesus' destiny through his death and resurrection actually ends up becoming our destiny, that we would be crowned with glory and honor and rule and reign with him. By coming and standing in your stead and dying in your place, Jesus makes glory your destiny. You will rule and reign with him if you're a Christian, if Jesus is your savior. You certainly don't deserve that. And that's what every Christian gets. So get out of bed tomorrow morning and live your life for Jesus because he's already won. And by faith we see that Jesus, he has already won and he's remedied the big problem that we're dealing with that creates all the chaos and disaster and heartache in the first place. You and I, one way I might think of it is that you and I actually live downstream of something that Jesus has done upstream. Upstream, Jesus has remedied the problem of sin, death, and the curse, but the lines between that work and where we live, it's like they haven't quite run clean or clear yet. But what he's accomplished upstream will eventually make its way down to us in its fullness and grandeur. Imagine with me for a moment that you're standing. I don't know how you ended up here But you're standing at the base of this massive culvert drain pipe thing that maybe it's supposed to be like freshwater runoff from somewhere up above you and that's where you live your life and somehow this massive massive culvert this massive line has become contaminated and The sewers, or the city's main sewer line, maybe somebody, you know, they didn't read the blueprint right, the plan right, and they tied the sewer line right into this fresh line. And so now where you're standing downstream of that, right below this culvert, you're just getting pummeled with all this nastiness and grossness and muck and disgust. It's sewage, right? What in the world? I'm like, this is where I live. And you don't like it. And frankly, I think the Christian life can feel like that, right? Like, here I am, I'm trying to live for Jesus, and this just stinks. Like, I don't like what's happening. I don't like the consequences of sin and the curse. I don't like our broken world, and I'm just getting beat up, and I'm living in this nastiness 24-7, and it's all hitting me in the face with unrelenting full force. And yet you might think of Jesus as actually having gone upstream from where you're living. And he's remedied that problem. It's like he shut off that main sewer line, and then he disconnected it from the fresh water source, and actually just, he blew the whole thing up. Like, it's gone. The problem has been dealt with at its source, but the pipe from the place of Jesus' work to where you live, it's still filled with all that nastiness, and you're still, like, it's still coming, pummeling you in the face. But the problem has been dealt with, and that's going to continue, all that garbage is gonna continue to flow through the pipes until one day it runs clear, and it certainly will, because the issue was dealt with. That day is coming and it is sure. How do we know? Well, Jesus tells us in verse nine, I came lower than the angels and I took death for everyone so that by the grace of God you could experience the fountain of my mercy and my goodness and my love and my glory and my reign. That day is coming, it is sure, and we know it because Jesus is alive and he sits enthroned in the heavens. So again, that means that you can get up in the morning, no matter what's in front of you, and you can live for Jesus because you know, oh, he's in the heavens and he's conquered death and he's ascended and he's been crowned and he's sat down at the majesty of on high and everything's under his feet. And though you may feel overwhelmed, you can choose to think about Christ's death and His work and the cross and you can rejoice and say, no, my King reigns. He suffered, which means that you can follow in His steps with confidence and not be caught off guard when suffering enters your life and this life is hard. He understands, which means you can lean on him and rely on him. He's not some God that's so far away in the heavens. He's literally come here and he's lived where you live. In flesh and blood, he gets it. And that means that you can take your burdens and struggles and your pains and you can take every single one of those to him knowing that this is not foreign to him. Anything I've been through, my king has been through worse. And I can take all these things to him in prayer, and I can ask for help, and I can rejoice that he reigns. He's triumphed, which means that you can face your day with hope. When you wake up, you feel so depressed. You feel so discouraged or maybe, you know, you're going to some medical appointment and all, you know, treatments. And it just feels like I don't even know what I'm doing here. Like this is just it feels like this is just prolonging and delaying the inevitable and the sin, curse, broken world. And it's no fun. And you can remind yourself that Jesus is crowned and you can live in joy and hope, knowing that the present will soon give way to the consummation of the king. and all will be made right, and the water will run fresh and clear." Jesus says, live in hope. Do you think I'm dead? Do you think that cross killed me and I'm still in a tomb somewhere? Do you actually think I'm dead? Because I'm alive, and I rule in rain. So live in hope. Before your feet hit the floor tomorrow morning, I just encourage you to preach to yourself, to slow down. You're probably already waking up with something on your mind. What if you slow down and before your feet hit the floor, you remind yourself and you preach to yourself, Jesus, my savior reigns and my life is in his hands and I'm gonna get up and by his grace and with his help, I'm gonna live for him today. And then with his help, go do that. And when you blow it, okay, no, like back up we go in hope by the grace of God.