The Key to A Generation

– First off, I would just like to honor my father, and just thank you for planning this church, for leading our family, and for blessing every man in this room, could you welcome him and join me in honoring my dad for being the man who he is. Thank you, Dad. I genuinely love you, and it’s a blessing to be up here with you men. Thank you for showing up tonight. I know I’m over a youth ministry, so a lot of our kids this week or last week did not show up because it is fall break right now, but apparently, you guys did not get the memo. In real life, you don’t get fall break. So thank you to each one of you who is here. Before I kick off in 1 Corinthians, I wanna give a little bit of a personal background, just who I am, what my values are, and the reason why I think that I have something to share with you men from the word of God tonight. My name is Zac Driscoll.
I am one of five Driscoll kids in our family, I’m the oldest boy, so second in the order, oldest boy, and I grew up in ministry. I think we actually have a photo of me as a little kid. This is when I got baptized with my dad on stage. I am slightly taller now, and I’m wearing shoes, so you’re welcome. But that was when I was, I think I was seven years old, I grew up in ministry. My dad has been a senior pastor for, I think, 27 years now. And I’m 23 years old. So it’s all I know, I grew up in the church. I’ve seen God save thousands of people, and I truly believe that Jesus is God. I truly believe that God is still working, that he’s still moving. And heck, I wouldn’t be here tonight, I wouldn’t care. I wouldn’t be involved in planning this church and building the kingdom if I didn’t personally believe that. I grew up playing baseball, baseball was my sport, big Seattle Mariners fan. And hey, if you watch baseball, which is probably like five of you, the Mariners are now in the playoffs for the first time since before I was born almost, so praise God for that, be praying, be praying against the Astros this week, and be praying for the Mariners. Grew up playing baseball, love sports, been an athlete, learned to work hard from a young age. And I am married as well, been married for a year and a half to my wife, Chloe. I think we got a photo of our wedding on the screen. I met her while we were in middle school. I was in just eighth grade and she was in seventh grade. And we met at a Christian school in chapel, and God spoke to me verbally and told me that that was my wife, which I had not heard the voice of God like that before, and I wasn’t a creep either. So I waited a couple years to tell her that, that would’ve been real awkward, she would’ve ran away, but it was God’s will, it was true, and glad to be married to my amazing wife. And we do ministry together here today at Trinity. We both were part of planning this church about six years ago and have served every weekend since. Like I said earlier, I run our student ministry. I’m our Student Director for 6 through 12th grade students. So if you have a son or daughter who’s in middle school or high school, I probably know him, I

probably hang out with him. And if you have a middle school boy, I probably told him to shut up. But, hey, it’s all for the glory of God. And yeah, so that’s a little bit of my personal life. And before we start off, we’re in 1 Corinthians 4, and I am part of Gen Z, which is about 25 years old to about 10 years old. And it’s the next generation in America. And we have some interesting problems, some difficult sins that our generation is stuck in. And I want to be able to speak tonight to all categories of men, wherever you’re at, whether you are a son, I lead a group of high school guys each week, and there’s guys who are 14, 15 years old who are pursuing Christ and trying to figure their life out and submit to the spirit. And then there’s some of you who are young adults, you may be older brothers, you may be newly married, don’t have kids yet, you got more time on your hands. There’s those of you who are fathers or spiritual fathers, you’re pouring into the next generation, and you have kids, and responsibility, and bills to pay. And then there’s some of you who are grandfathers, who are pouring into not just the next generation, but multiple generations. And it’s an honor to serve alongside of each of you men, wherever you’re at in life or wherever God has you in each of these four categories. And my goal tonight is to give a different perspective on the same truth and the same encouragement. And I think it’s good to hear some of the time from a younger man who I have a relationship with Christ and I care deeply about the church. And I want to encourage those of you who are younger men, that there is hope for a future, for generations after you to love and serve the Lord. And for those of you who are fathers and grandfathers, that we’re not screwed, we’re not done, we’re not out for the count. There is hope in the gospel, and I truly believe that, and I wanna share that tonight. So I’m gonna pray for us, and then we’re gonna kick off in 1 Corinthians 4:14-21. Lord, we thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight. I thank you for each one of these men, whether they’re 14 or 84, thank you that they’re here, that they’re pursuing you, that they want to hear a word from you, and they want to grow closer to you. I pray that this teaching that you would speak through me, that my words would be your will, and that we’d all get something out of it and come out of here as better men and as real men, in Jesus’ name, amen.

– [Audience] Amen!

– All right, so I’m gonna start off in verse 14, a quick overview. In 1 Corinthians, it’s written by a guy named Paul. If you’ve read the Bible at all, you’ve probably read a book by Paul. And the church in Corinth has some familiar problems to my generation. Some of the things that Paul lists in 1 Corinthians, tell me if these are familiar, sexual sin, idolatry, a lack of direction and identity, as well as false teachers, and just flat out sin over all. And I think that Gen Z looks a lot like the church in Corinth, and whether or not, it’s the exact same sins, it’s from the same spirit, and it’s from Satan. And I want to address those and look at, as Paul looks at, what true Christian leadership is, and how that can go into the next generation and build a legacy for the next generation. So here in these verses, we’re gonna look at Paul’s heartfelt personal appeal toward the young men in the church in Corinth as a spiritual father. And we’re gonna focus on spiritual fatherhood tonight. And Paul really, he really cares, he counts himself as a dad almost to a lot of the men in the church in Corinth. And he doesn’t just say this or write a letter, but he actually shows up, and he visits them and he pastors them and prays for them. And one thing

that I see that Paul does here, he does not idolize the next generation or put them on a soap box and talk to them like they’re perfect. He also does not demonize the next generation and tell them that they’re hopeless. He encourages them and and admonishes them. And that’s where we’re starting. So verse 14 right here, this first section is on identity, and it says, “I do not write these things to make you ashamed, “but to admonish you as my beloved children.” So Paul here starts off by calling them his beloved children. He is a spiritual father who cares deeply for the church in Corinth. And he starts off by giving them an identity. And this identity is as his spiritual children. And he says here, he wants to admonish them. He does not want to give them shame or make them ashamed, but he wants to admonish them, which means that he wants to counsel their behavior. He wants to be a witness to them, and he wants them to live from the identity of a son that he has given them. And in my personal experience, the majority of my job here at Trinity with students is to admonish young men, it’s to look him in the eyes and say,
“Hey, you don’t know everything, “but good news, there’s a God who does. “And maybe if you thought through things differently, “and you took an opportunity to humble your heart “and let me admonish you here, “then we could work some things out. “Maybe you could be set up for the future “better than the generation before you.” And we’ve have a lot of men even in this room who have partnered with the church family and volunteered and put time and effort into admonishing the next generation. And I would just like to thank you for doing that. If you’ve done that, I would like to thank each man who has poured into kids and teens and led life groups, ’cause God knows it’s not a easy job to watch kids or teenagers and teach ’em about the gospel. And we have a similar problem to the church in Corinth. We have a generation that lacks identity. And the way that the Bible looks at identity is that we are supposed to work from our identity, not work for it. And we have a whole generation that has been told that you can choose your identity, and that’s a load of crap. You do not choose your identity. No four-year-old should be choosing who they are and how to live their life. God gives us an identity, and if we’re not children of God, our identity is shame. If we are not children of God, our identity comes from Adam, which is an identity of sin and brokenness. And that leads to, just like in Genesis 3, hiding, we’re ashamed. We don’t draw near to God until he calls us his children, until he places an identity on us as children of God. And that’s depicted in Romans 8, one of my favorite chapters of the Bible, that we are sons of God, that we are heirs with Christ. An example from my life that has really impacted me to this day, and I vividly can visually remember it and see it in my mind’s eye. When I was in fifth grade, going into fifth grade, I switched schools. And as a little kid, it can be difficult, it can be overwhelming to come into a new environment with people you don’t know, and it’s uncomfortable. And I walked in on the orientation day with my dad, and my dad’s standing next to me, just little me. And I’m shaking, I’m scared, I’m trying to put the tough guy look on my face like any little kid does. And my dad sees right through it, of course, ’cause he knows me, he knows my identity. And he looked at me, and he got down on my level, which he can’t do anymore, because I’m six foot two and he’s not. But he got down on my level, when I was in fifth grade, and he looked me in the eyes, and he gave me an identity, he gave me an identity that I could live out of. And what he said, he said, “Zac, look at me. “I love you, you’re my son, you are going to be okay. “You can do this, and here’s why,” he said, “You’re a leader.” He told me, “You’re a leader.” And he put that identity on me when I was in fifth grade. And that was a beautiful thing, because I had not looked at myself as a leader, I was timid. I was

afraid in that moment, and I did not feel like a leader. And my dad walked out of the classroom that day, and the rest of the day, in my head, I knew I was going to be okay. I’m a son of God, and I have a good earthly father as well, and I’m a leader, and I can do this. And that identity that he put on me changed my action. I could now work out of that identity instead of trying to earn that, I could work from that. And with students, I see this lack of identity all the time, whether it be gender confusion, or kids not having a purpose, or a lack of confidence. And one example, as I was prepping this sermon, that came to my mind immediately was a high school guy who I’ve had the opportunity to minister to. And he struggled with identity his whole life. His parents are split, difficult situation. And he came to summer camp with us, and it was such a blessing to get to hang out with him and get time with him. And you could just tell, he’s shaking, he’s got anxiety. He double takes any answer that people give him, and he’s timid, and he’s afraid, and he has shame. He’s living out of that identity of shame. And we are going through the book of Ephesians, and Ephesians talks a lot about how we are children of God, that we’ve been given a new identity as sons and daughters of God. And I’m sitting next to this kid, middle of teaching, at summer camp, and he just starts bawling his eyes out, and I look over at him, and I pray over him, and he collects his thoughts. And after the teaching, I go over to him like, “What’s up man, are you okay?” And he said, “No one’s ever told me that before “then I’m a son of God.” He said, “I thought I could lose my salvation “every time I sinned. “And now that I know that I can’t lose my salvation, “that my identity’s not in shame, “I just have this new joy, and I couldn’t help but cry.” And you know high school guys, they’re not gonna cry a lot. It took a lot to get him there. He had to receive a new identity and be filled with the Holy Spirit and just say, “My shame’s gone. “The Holy Spirit’s filled me. “I have new life, I have hope for a future. “I can work out of the identity that God has given me.” And something that simple literally changed this kid’s whole life, his whole character, the way that he carries himself, he has confidence not in himself, but in Christ. And he has newfound joy. And that was such a beautiful, amazing thing to be able to take a part in. So what Paul does here, he admonishes, and he puts an identity on the young men in the church. And I would encourage you, whether you’re an older gentleman, you have an opportunity with your words, you ought to be careful, because the things that you say carry weight, and you give your children and your grandchildren and your spiritual children an identity. And when you place those words upon them, those have weight, a spiritual weight that matters. So please think of your words and be giving life with your words to place an identity in your children and grandchildren. And if you’re a young man, and no man has ever looked you in the eyes and told you that God loves you, and that you can be a child of God, and you don’t have to live in shame and sin, man, come talk to me after, ’cause I would love to pray for you and help you receive that new identity. This takes us to versus 15 and 16, where he goes on to talk about leadership. And it says, “For though you have countless guides in Christ,” some translations say 10,000 or tens of thousands, “You do not have many fathers. “For I became your father in Christ Jesus “through the gospel. “And I urge you, then, be imitators of me.” So in this section, Paul is not just addressing them as his beloved children, but he’s telling them to imitate him. And one thing that was going on in that church is there were a lot of people who had opinions and ideas and words to say about the gospel and about truth. But the thing that they lacked was fathers. And see, in our culture and their culture, this lack of identity caused a lot of problems. It caused young men’s eyes to wander. It caused idolatry, it caused

sexual sin, and it opened up young men to darkness that they shouldn’t have been opened up to. And these sons, in our generation and in the church in Corinth, were left looking for guidance. They were seeking guidance, and they had countless guides, but that did not fix the problem. What they needed was spiritual fathers like Paul. And I think today, in culture, we have a lack, an utter lack of spiritual fathers. And this leads a generation, my generation, Gen Z, it leads us looking to social media and YouTube and Google and horrible examples of quote unquote “men” of what it looks like to be a real man. And we’re not finding that in culture. We’re just finding ungodly, countless guides. We have everything from men like Andrew Tate, if you’ve heard of him, who’s a social media influencer, he has this persona of being a macho man, you know, he can do whatever he wants with women and sleep with whoever and make a lot of money and drive nice cars, and men look to him as a pillar of success. And then on the other side, not just the lions, as we would call them, like Andrew Tate, we have, I see it all the time, every time I watch a YouTube video, there’s a Google ad with drag queens in it. Like come on, that’s not an example of a real man, that’s not an example of a spiritual father that I want the next generation to follow. And we have this unhealthy balance of drag queens and men like Andrew Tate, and there’s no spiritual fathers to actually guide men in the spirit and in God’s word in between. And this chasm that we’ve created has left a whole generation without identity and with a complete lack of leadership. Our Men’s director, Mark Stirton, I love Mark, wherever you are, thank you for your leadership. He says this all the time, If you’re one of our men’s leaders, you know this, “Leadership is influence,” “Leadership is influence.” And if you are a leader, and you want to influence people, they will end up imitating you. If you have a son, if you have a little boy, or if you ever had a little son, or raised a son, you know this. You know that everything that you do as a father, your child is gonna imitate you. If you drink coffee in the morning, your four-year-olds want to drink coffee in the morning. If you like football, your kid’s gonna want a jersey, and he is gonna wanna sit on the couch while you drink a beer and drink from his sippy cup and watch football with you on Sunday. He will imitate you because you are his father. And leadership equals influence, which leads to imitation, as Paul says here. And he urges them not to be imitators of Andrew Tate or a drag queen, but to be an imitator of a godly man, to mirror Christ, and to walk in the spirit. And the best way to be a leader, you just have to start by showing up. I wanna encourage you, I wanna give you the opportunity, men, man, if you want to be a leader, if you’ve sat in the back your whole life and said, “I don’t know how to lead, “I don’t think God can use me,” just show up, just see what he does with you. You don’t have to have all the answers, you don’t have to know all of the knowledge. You don’t have to have that. Just start by showing up, just be there. I can’t tell you what a difference it makes in the lives of the students that I get to lead, if their dad just shows up. He doesn’t even have to be a good dad. He doesn’t even have to pray for them for it to make a difference, just start by showing up. And if you’re an older man who’s a grandpa, or maybe you’ve had kids, and maybe it didn’t go well, maybe they’re apostate or out of the house and not following Christ, it’s not too late, you can still show up in their lives, and you can still make a difference, God will use you. And I wanna ask you the question today, as we talk about leadership and showing up and imitation, how will the next generation know how to be godly men if we never show them? we can give ’em all the right things to say, we can put ’em in a youth ministry, we can send them to a good school. But man, if they don’t see their dad reading his Bible, if they don’t see their dad praying,

if they don’t see their dad caring for the family, then they don’t have any reason to follow that, because the words are empty. So I would encourage you, whether you’re a young man, you have an immense amount of time to build your character if you’re a young man. There is nothing to do, the world has told you that you don’t have to go to work. Go take opportunities, show up, build your character and find spiritual fathers that you can imitate and you can grow in faith alongside. And if you are in a stage of life where you’re a parent or a grandparent, there is so much opportunity. There are so many men my age and younger who lack spiritual fathers, and they don’t even know where to start. They don’t know where to ask. I would plea with you that you would reach out to some men and just start by showing up. And I love, one part of this that I love, it says countless guides, tens of thousands, tens of thousands of people with an opinion. But what if we just had one father who looked us in the eyes and gave us an identity and taught not just the right things to do, but showed us how to do them. And that takes us to the next section of teaching. Verse 17 is where we pick up. And here he sends Timothy, he says, “That’s why I sent Timothy to you, “my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, “to remind you of my ways in Christ, “as I teach them everywhere in every church. “Some are arrogant, as though I were not coming to you. “But I will come to you soon if the Lord wills, “and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people, “but their power.” This section makes me think, Paul calls himself spiritual father, so it makes me think, I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this when you’re a young man, but I would test my father’s leadership some of the time, and I would hypothetically fight back every once in a while and push a couple buttons. And it sounds like there’s some people in the church in Corinth who are arrogant, and anyone ever met an arrogant young man? Another question, anyone ever been a man? Yeah, it’s the same thing actually. Arrogance is built in in a man, come on. Arrogance is literally built in, it’s the default. And C.S. Lewis calls it chronological snobbery. It’s that, “That since I’m young, “and I got all this energy and knowledge in my head, “man, let me teach you old guys a lesson. “I got everything figured out by the age of 12.” And then you go into the real world, and you find out you probably should have listened, and you didn’t have anything figured out. And teaching is such an important thing, because Satan is currently teaching the next generation. Satan is already in the curriculum, he’s got that down. He’s in every elementary school, every public elementary school in America, Satan, he’s got social media down, he knows the algorithms, he totally understands TikTok. He’s real good with Gen Z and getting them hooked on sin. Satan is teaching the next generation already through media, through curriculum, through pop culture, and outside of the church. And we have a real problem with teaching in Gen Z. There’s some stats from pure research that show 95% of my generation, 95% own a smartphone, 83% own a laptop, 78% own a gaming system, 57% have a desktop computer, and 29% of my generation stays up on their smartphone every single night past midnight, 29%. I would state that maybe we have enough information, and we don’t need more knowledge. And this brings us to a biblical truth. It’s wisdom versus knowledge. See, the world offers a lot of knowledge, especially the Gen Z, and all that builds, like Paul says, it just builds arrogance. All it builds is arrogant people, without power, just more knowledge, more information coming in all the time. But God calls us to grow in wisdom. See, we have three-year-olds who can use Google, but we have 21-year-old men who can’t work. This is a problem, because we have knowledge and not wisdom. And to teach knowledge, like Paul says, it builds arrogance, and if you know more, it’s easy to be popular. If you know more, it doesn’t

take a relationship. You can just tell people the facts and tell people what you think, and you don’t actually have to care about them or want to help them grow in their life in wisdom. And ultimately, it’s unfulfilling. You can have all the knowledge in the world and get nowhere with it. It can make no difference in your personal life. And we see this with Gen Z. They’re the most educated generation, but we also have the least purpose out of any generation ever. So the education, the knowledge, it hasn’t fixed it at all. And the difference between knowledge and wisdom is here, that wisdom, it’s not easy, it’s a lot more difficult to grow in wisdom. And you need the Holy Spirit, the spirit of wisdom to guide you in wisdom. And that will lead to generational change and regeneration and faithfulness and legacy that is completely different than if you just give someone a textbook or give them knowledge. And that is the difference between knowledge and wisdom that I want. I want us to look at, as men of God tonight, that there’s power in the spirit of wisdom, that there’s arrogance in knowledge without the spirit, and we don’t need more information, we need more of God’s information. And sometimes, as Paul says here, I love this, he speaks like a father. He comes to remind them, he sends Timothy to remind them. And if you have a kid, man, they need reminding some of the time, if you ask your kid to take out the trash, you’re gonna have to ask him six more times before it actually happens, because children need reminding. And I’ll submit to you that that’s okay, it’s a process. And Paul was faithful to send Timothy to remind them of the truth, to remind them that they need wisdom. So if you’re dealing with a kid who’s my age, who may be arrogant, don’t give up on the process, they think they have all the knowledge, keep praying for ’em to receive the spirit of wisdom, keep praying that their heart would be changed, and continue reminding them that the only thing that will truly change them is the gospel. One example that I have from my experience in ministry, planting this church, I’ve worked in the kids’ ministry, I don’t even know how many hours, countless hours. And I love, truly love hanging out with the little kids and seeing them grow up. And I’ve served with my wife in the kids’ ministry for the last six years, and our influence, we’ve been able to see kids in pre-K, kids who have literally pooped on me, are now in my youth ministry. And I don’t think they remember it, so it’s not awkward, but I remember it. So in case I ever need to use it against them, it’s like, “Hey, hey Jim, sit down. “Remember that one time in pre-K where you pooped on me? “Yeah, we’re not doing that again. “I could embarrass you in front of everybody, “so stop talking.” And we’ve seen these kids grow up, we’ve seen these kids meet Christ, we’ve seen these kids get baptized, we’ve seen these kids serve in the church, and it’s such a beautiful thing to be able to have that responsibility to teach them and to remind them. And some of these kids, man, they need a lot of reminding. I had a middle school boy who I’ve known him for over five years, and I saw him every single week from fourth grade all the way through middle school. And you know what, he needed reminding, and it took him five years of me telling him the gospel, and other people at this church telling him the gospel, for him to finally realize that he needed Jesus. Who’d have thought, who’d have thought, right? It’s like I just told him, and his light switch went off one day, and I was more surprised than he was. “I’ve been telling you this for five years, buddy. “Thank you for waking up and writing something down. “This is amazing.” And a couple weeks ago, he came to me, and he walked up, he was like, “Hey Zac, how you doing, hope you’re doing well. “Thanks for praying for me this week. “I have a question, “I have a question about Leviticus 19:28, “what do you think on the Old Testament stance on tattoos?” And I looked at him, and I saw this kid, and I

remembered, when he was in fourth grade, and he would scream and cry and tell me to shut up and go away. And I just remembered the last five years, and now this kid is asking me bible questions about Leviticus 19:28. We’ve come a long way, and he needed some reminder, amen. And it’s such a blessing to be able to be a part of that process. God is so good, and this is where we’re gonna end tonight, with worship. So as we give the next generation and identity in Christ, as we tell them that they need to submit to godly leadership and find spiritual fathers, that they need to be taught the word of God and the will of God and to walk in the spirit of God, we also ought to teach them how to worship. And that’s where Paul picks up in verse 20 right here. So it’s, “For the kingdom of God “does not consist in talk, but in power.” And he asks a question, it’s kind of a backhanded question here. He says, “What do you wish? “Shall I come to you with a rod, “or with love and a spirit of gentleness?” He says, “What do you want? “I can bring the wooden spoon and spank you, “or we can hang out and have a good time, “and I can be gentle with you.” And we have this generation lacking fathers, and they don’t understand what a relationship with a God, who is a father, is like. If we don’t have fathers to look up to, we don’t understand the beauty and the connection that we have with God, the Father, the source of life, the creator, and the holy God. And that leads my generation, it leads us in a place where we don’t know how to properly worship. And in this “Act Like Men” series, we’ve talked a lot about worship and properly worshiping God, because we’re all made to worship, we’re all worshiping at all times. And we’ve worshiped our way into a lot of trouble, especially, in America, we’ve taken for granted the freedoms that we’ve had. We’ve lived in idolatry and sin, and we’ve run away like the prodigal son. We’ve run away from God, the Father, and we’ve also run away from any spiritual fathers that we have. And I would submit that the solution to this, the solution to our worship problem is to rally the troops, ’cause we’re at war, worship is a war. And man, we’re not gonna take any ground by sitting around and hoping that one day, our children meet Christ, hoping one day that the kids of Gen Z would learn how to worship. We ought to rally the troops and bring men together, like all the men in this room, to worship God, to come together, to raise our hands, to say “Thank you, God. “You deserve all of the glory, “you deserve all of the praise. “And we give you that.” Man, if your sons are in here with you, and they see you raise your hands in worship, they see you on your knees praying, they see you submitting to spiritual leadership, that will change the trajectory of your family’s legacy. It’s such a beautiful thing that we get to be a part of that. And Paul says that the kingdom, the kingdom that we’re building, as we rally the troops, the kingdom of God does not consist in talk, but in power. And that power that we live by is the spirit of God. We are filled, as Christians, with the spirit of God to advance the kingdom so that we can understand the word of God, and this word of God, it’s not just words on a page, it’s not paragraphs and lines, it’s the will of God written down so that we may advance the kingdom and we know the truth that God wants us to live by in worship. And one thing I was thinking of as I was prepping this message, we often use the term gentleman, and I was thinking about how do I come up and talk to the men, do I introduce myself and say, “Hello, gentlemen!” And I thought, what a stupid, stupid thing. None of the men in here are gentle men. Like come on, there’s men in here who could literally pick me up and throw me through a wall. And I’m kind of scared of that. But the good news is that through somehow, through the spirit of God, men who could throw me through a wall, I see ’em in the back afterward playing with kids and getting their son’s juice boxes and hanging out on the play set and hugging little girls and

putting hands on their wife in prayer and loving the people around them and worshiping together. And I love that. I love that I get to be a part of this church and see men who are gentle not by accident, but gentle by the spirit. And I’d say that’s real power, that’s real power, yeah. Yeah, and Jesus was a perfect example of that. Jesus came to earth the first time, he came to earth with a spirit of gentleness, with love, to serve us, to sacrifice himself for a relationship. And he came down to show us, he came down to show us, man, how to worship the father, How to live a life that serves God and loves people and is a life of worship. And Jesus is coming back, if you didn’t know that. And the second time he’s not coming in love and a spirit of gentleness, he’s coming with the rod. And I don’t want you to walk out of here tonight on the wrong side of eternity. I want you to be in a right place with Jesus, with the spirit of gentleness in your soul, so that when Jesus returns to earth, we’re on the right side of the battle, that we conquer, and that we take ground in worship for the kingdom, ’cause Jesus is coming in power, and he is coming to be worshiped, amen.

– [Audience] Amen.

– Amen. And I have a final encouragement for you guys, and I’ll close, and we’ll go into groups.
1 Corinthians has a final encouragement, but it was about kissing one another, so I’m not gonna do that one. We’re gonna go with Romans. And this final encouragement, Romans 15:13 says, “May the God of hope fill you “with all joy and peace in believing, “so that by the power of the Holy Spirit, “you may abound in hope.” And I would submit to you, I don’t just think, I believe that there is hope for the future generation because of the Holy Spirit working in men in this room and men like you who are worshipers, who will tell their sons and their grandsons and spiritual sons, that they have an identity in Christ, and they will teach them the word of God and the will of God, and they will show them how to worship. And thank you men for being here and doing that. We have a hope and a future here at Trinity Church. There are already generations being impacted. I have seen some families that have four generations at this church who love the Lord and are serving together. And God is raising up sons, he is raising up older brothers. He is raising up spiritual fathers and spiritual grandfathers in this church. And I wanna build a legacy, I want my family to be a part of what God is doing here. I want my wife to be here and see the power of God moving. I wanna raise my future kids here, because I know that God is raising up men who are filled with the spirit of God to go and take ground, to go worship, and to go impact the next generation. So I would encourage you men, this church is in good hands, and that’s because you are good men filled with the spirit of God. And that’s all we can ask for, a community that is led by men who love the truth, who love the word of God, who are filled by the spirit of God, to be worshipers by the power of the Holy Spirit. And that is the key to the next generation, thank you, man.