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Pastor Fletcher preaches from 1 Thessalonians 5:15-22, read for us in Hindi. Discussion points: Following Jesus allows us to consistently do good in a world filled with evil; forgiveness involves paying the debt of someone else; we can live in gratitude by looking for the things around us that are good, beautiful, and true.

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Scripture reader: Today's scripture reading is taken from 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, verse 15 to 22. I will be reading from the Hindi Standard Bible. At the end of the scripture reading, I will say this is the word of the Lord. Please respond with thanks be to God.

[See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil.]

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: Good morning. Good to see everybody this morning. My name is Fletcher. I'm the lead pastor of the church here and it's my joy to continue our First Thessalonians series. We only have one more, week after this one. we've been going through this series and now we've, we've entered the lightning round mode that you find at the end of many of Paul's books. what he does when he writes letters oftentimes is it's, it feels like you're leaving the house with your mother at home where he just starts listing off all the different things that you're supposed to remember before you leave the house. Like, did everyone remember to encourage every, encourage one another? Stay holy, keep the faith, rejoice always, pray all the time? OK, I think we're ready to go. All right.

So that's, that's kind of the way that all of his letters end, and that's certainly the way that this one ends. And this little list of commandments that we have at the end of First Thessalonians is interesting because when you first read it, it looks as though most of these commandments don't really have a lot in common with one another that it's just a laundry list of different things that you're supposed to do as a Christian. But I think that if you dig a little bit deeper into this little laundry list of things that you're supposed to do as a Christian, what you actually find is this beautiful vision for the Christian life. This beautiful vision for the Christian life.

Because if you actually lived up to all of the things that are described here, you would live a life that is attractive to all of your neighbors and friends. In fact, have we not experienced that? Those of us who have been around Christians long enough, maybe we don't feel like we always embody it, but have you never been around other Christians that you just say, wow, that is the good life. There's something beautiful, there's something true, there's something good about how this person lives their life. And that is the vision that we have from First Thessalonians today, the beautiful life of the Christian life, the absolute beauty of the Christian life.

Unfortunately Christians are far too often known for our political positions, our judgmental attitudes, God forbid our conspiracy theories, and we're not well known enough for the way that we live out what's described here in First Thessalonians, this beautiful story and way of living. If you're here this morning and you're not sure about the existence of God, as I described the way that Christians are allowed to live because of our belief in God and because of our faith and who Jesus is, I hope that you leave here thinking, you know, even if I'm not sure about God, I sure hope that he is real. I sure hope that he's real because this seems like a beautiful way to live.

So I have 3 beautiful realities about Christian life. Following Jesus gives you the ability to do these 3 things. First, the ability to consistently do good in a world full of evil. Following Jesus gives you the ability to consistently do good in a world full of evil.

Verse 15 first. See that no one repays anyone for evil, but always seek to do good to one another. And to everyone. And then also just to tag on at the end because it's similar, verse 21B through 22 it says hold fast to what is good, abstain from every form of evil. Now, no matter who you are, where you are, what part of the political spectrum that you're on, we all agree that the world is full of evil. Now we might not agree about what that evil is, but we do all agree that the world is broken and full of evil. Oftentimes we oversimplify the world though, and we, we like to think about the world as being like the good guys versus the bad guys that half the people in the world are the good guys and. The people in the world are the bad guys, and we really just need to do our best to be the good guys so that we don't continue to perpetuate the evils that we have in the world.

But this is really an oversimplified view of how the world is. Here's how I know. I went to a very bad movie one time called. The the the the Rise of Skywalker. I don't even remember the title. What's, what's the Star Wars Episode 9? The last Skywalker, The Rise of Skywalker. I got it right, called The Rise of Skywalker. I went in there and, you know, when you go to the Star Wars movies, they depict the world like there's good guys and there's bad guys, right? But here's what I noticed when I was leaving the movie theater. I didn't get the impression that anybody was like, you know, I really wish that the emperor would have won. That would have been better, you know, it, it, no one is in there rooting for the dark side. We're all in there rooting for the heroes. We're all in there hoping that good wins.

The reality is that because we're made in the image of God, every single person on this planet longs and hopes for good. We want good. Yes, we may disagree about what good looks like, but we all want good we all seek good and in the same way that we're created an image of God and we support good and we want good, even though some of our ideas of good become twisted and self-centered, we also, because we, we long for good in the same way, we're also made the image of God and we long for justice also. Because our God is not only a God who's good, we're made in this image, so we long for good, but we're made in his image so we long for justice. We want to see retribution happen to those who deserve it. I mean, if someone punches you in the face, what's the first thing that most of us want to do? Punch them back, or, you know, if you're a little bit smaller than them, hope someone bigger comes along to punch them, you know, hope that they get theirs. You, you want something to happen to the person who punches you in the face. Because our God is the God of justice. We have justice written on our heart. We have an eye for an eye written on our heart.

But when we seek retribution, what the Bible actually tells us is that we're not acting in the image of God. But we're trying to step into the shoes of God Himself. That we've stepped too far. So Romans chapter 12 verse 19 says, beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord. Now, this is why Christianity is beautiful though. Because Christianity says. And the life of a Christian is, gives you the ability to do good in the face of evil. That when someone wrongs you, you are able to do good despite being wronged.

And how is this possible but through this amazing thing that we talk about all the time and we don't really understand it completely called forgiveness and forgiveness is an amazing thing and I think that we just brush on the very tip of forgiveness to forgive. is to Exemplify the way that Jesus lived. Even while Jesus is being slowly tortured and executed. He prays, Father, forgive them. For they know not what they're doing. While these men are in the middle of what many might consider the most evil act in history, slowly torturing. And executing a man who truly did not deserve it, the only one who is truly innocent, he prays for their forgiveness.

My favorite illustration about forgiveness I've shared before, but I'll do it again, because I, I need to think about it pretty often. I borrowed it from or modified it from Tim Keller, many years ago and, he says that to forgive. is to absorb debt. So it's to take on a debt. So we know that from understanding forgiveness of debt. If someone forgives your debt, they absorb it, so they pay your debt on your behalf. It's not that it just disappears, but it's actually absorbed someone else is paying for your wrong. So for example, say you and I are down at the Market Basket, OK, down here in Union Square, that's my best Boston accent. You won't get it again. I'm sorry. I'm obviously Southern.

You're down at Market Basket, you know, just getting those deals and if you've been to Market Basket, you know that that place is wild, all right? Anybody, anybody been there? I mean like there's like sometimes fights going on in the aisles, OK, because like who can do without the coupon book, you know, we, we need to, we need to get our Market Basket on and say we're in the Market Basket and I'm backing my car out and you're just sitting in your parked car and I'm back into your car. And so, you know, we both get out of our cars we're like talking it over, people are screaming the F-bomb at us as we're blocking traffic because the parking lot's crazy and. You say, you know what, pastor, don't worry about it. I'll get my car fixed. It's all good.

It's not that you just forgave me and said it's nothing. It's that you actually absorbed the debt and decided to pay for me. Because you're having to get your car fixed, so I did a wrong to you and you are paying for my wrong that is forgiveness and so when we forgive a friend, it hurts forgiveness hurts. You can't forgive someone without paying for their debt. And that is the beauty of the Christian life, that Jesus has done that for us, and we are now empowered to do that for others. And isn't it beautiful? What a much more beautiful way to live. To be a forgiving person. Because even though we're made in the image of God and we want vengeance, we also understand and appreciate when we see someone truly forgiving. That can truly let go of a debt in that way. We have the ability to choose to live with forgiveness.

Now a couple of disclaimers and I'm gonna move on. Just very briefly, just because you forgive someone does not mean that someone's actions should not and and will not have legal ramifications. I think about Rachel Denhollander and Larry Nassar and the way that he abused so many young girls and how she was able to communicate forgiveness and also say, I hope the state comes down on you with the hardest penalty possible. While it's not our responsibility, it's still the responsibility of the state, and sometimes people need consequences. So it doesn't mean that you, you don't have any consequences. It doesn't mean that you let go of everything. There's still time where retribution from the state and retribution needs to happen in that way and and from God, God Himself, unless it falls on Jesus because Jesus paid the forgiveness for us.

And also just one other disclaimer before we move on, is that reconciliation and forgiveness are two different things. you can forgive someone without ever reconciling with them. Because to reconcile with someone would mean that that person recognizes that they did wrong, and that they ask you for forgiveness, and that they want forgiveness. But if they never, and you know it depends on how serious it is sometimes you can just drop something if someone's wronged you, and you can forgive them and you can move on and be reconciled without needing this, but sometimes reconciliation requires much more of a process than forgiveness does. And so I just want to emphasize that just because you forgive someone doesn't mean that everything's cool and then you're gonna move on. Sometimes it, it does take a little bit more. It takes this process, this beautiful process of reconciliation.

And the second thing that describes the beauty of the Christian life though in this passages just keep moving through. The second thing that describes this beautiful Christian life, not only do we have this ability to forgive other people. But we have the ability to rejoice always, pray always, and give thanks always. Now, I don't know about you, but there is almost nothing more annoying than someone who is literally rejoicing always. It I can't handle it. we had this older woman at one of our previous churches, and she was one of these people that just took this verse rare really literally and, man, she just always was rejoicing and I can look back on it and say, there's something beautiful about that but also like want to like grind my teeth and and like snarl at her at the same time.

I just remember one time she was washing dishes after a service. She, it was two little old ladies, so it was very sweet. They're probably both in their 60s and, you know, little old ladies, 60s, uh. They're probably in their 70s. I was in my 20s at the time. I, I'm coming up on 40 now, so, but there were two little old ladies and they were washing dishes. She just said, Betty, praise the Lord. Look, we have everything we need to wash these dishes. We've got soap. We've got sponges. The Lord's giving us water and I'm like, woman, if you do not close your mouth. I cannot handle this anymore. You were too cheery for me.

There's something about life that looks at people that are always positive and thinks they must be fake. It's this cynicism that's built within us, but I think that what the gospel actually does is empowers us to have a rejoicing and a prayer and a thanksgiving that is deeper. Then this outside facade that sometimes we put on. It's certainly the Lord's timing that I would preach this verse this week. It's been one of those weeks where prayer hasn't been hard. But rejoicing's been hard. Thanksgiving's been hard. But in the midst of difficult situations. The Lord is gracious. And I can't rejoice. Though my rejoicing might not look like my friend washing dishes.

Because there's this biblical category of lament. Do you guys know lament? lament means deep sorrow. And when you read the Psalms, what you see is that nearly half of the Psalms are Psalms of lament. 66 of the 150 Psalms, Psalms of lament, and that means that what's happening is that the psalmist. It's praying to the Lord. And he's saying, God, where are you? Why is life so hard? And all but one of them, and I think the one has some poetic liberty that they do it, but almost all of them, all but one. And with some type of resolution, but, but I will praise the Lord still. I will sing your praises. I will give thanks, and that is the Christian life that we're people that are able to see behind the curtain and know that God is active, even when we don't know and don't see that he is. That he is moving.

And so even when life is hard and we don't even see what's behind the curtain, and we can't tell what's behind the curtain. We're people that have confidence that something's going on behind the curtain. That we have confidence that God is up to more than what we can understand. And so we can still give thanks. We can still pray without ceasing, we can still trust in him. In no way is this commandment ever meant to be a bludgeon. If someone in this church. Ever looks at someone who's sorrowful and says, well, the Bible says rejoice always, just call me, OK? We'll take care of it. We'll take care of it. This is an invitation. To slow down and to enjoy life with God, to trust your life with Him.

I've been meditating on this this week. That the God of the universe. The one who created everything, who reigned supreme overall. Wants us to talk with him. And not only wants us to talk with him, wants us to talk with him unceasingly. I have children. Unceasing conversation with their father is not what I'm longing for. But our Father longs for unceasing prayer. Longs for us to trust in him. And he's eager to show us his love and so the reason why this has just been so profound to me this week is because if the God of the universe wants to be so near to us, how many of us intentionally zone him out. And look for ways to ignore him. And look for ways to not give thanks and not always rejoice because it might just be too much.

There's a way of life available to you where you can live in constant rejoicing and constant thankfulness because you can know the God of the universe. And so one thing that I've just been doing, just a quick application point here, lately is anytime I see something that's good, beautiful or true, those three things. Good, beautiful or true, I'm trying to vocalize it. Because I eat good food all the time, do you guys know how privileged we are to live in the 21st century where good food is like on every corner from all over the world just cultures come right here to us and we get to eat good food all the time, but how many of us just eat it. And move on with our lives. We have some of the most amazing art ever made to man streaming on our televisions. We don't even have to get up. Many of us don't pay for it. We just, we just stream it and we don't ever say that's beautiful.

This week I, we got pizza down at Ernesto's in Assembly. And it's not like I'm a big Ernesto's aficionado or pizza aficionado, but, this is the first of two pizza illustrations for today. And so, as I, as we were eating the pizza last Friday, I just took a bite and I said this pizza is really good. And then 2 minutes later, both of my boys were like, oh my gosh, this pizza is the best. There's something contagious and wonderful about people who can rejoice. And recognize when things are good. So that's my challenge to you. We live in this cynical world, you know, where we see through everything except for we can't see through the curtain that God's doing something. Why don't you just take a step back and recognize and appreciate when something's good, beautiful or true. And it might be a helpful way to reframe the way that you live, so that you can live always praising, always rejoicing and praying always.

The third thing that this passage describes the beautiful Christian life with is this the ability to always live with the Holy Spirit, the ability to always live with the Holy Spirit. So the verse here, verse 19, do not quench the Holy Spirit, do not despise prophecies, but test everything. And you know, this might be the most beautiful thing about being a Christian. Is that we don't only believe in a god, we believe in a God who has revealed himself, and we don't only believe in a God who has revealed himself, but we believe in a God who lives with us and among us, and we don't only believe in a God who lives with us and among us, but we believe in a God who loves us and cares for us and wants to be near to us.

Isn't that an amazing truth? Our secular society is completely dismissed the idea of a personal God. Even those who might admit to theism oftentimes fall short of this personal God. And where has that gotten us? As a society, as we've written God out of our lives, where have we gone? You know, I think that anxiety rates are higher than ever, depression rates are higher than ever. I don't think that we can say, you know, we got rid of God and we finally found happiness. I think that we have to say, I think that we're missing something here.

If you're here today and you're not sure about the existence of God, just consider this for a moment. If the claims of Christianity are true, and you could actually have a relationship with God Himself, if you could live with him day by day, wouldn't that be amazing? If you can just set aside your hesitancies for a moment, wouldn't it be amazing? It's just an awesome opportunity if that could be true. But I can't help but think that many of us who are Christians, can't help but feel a little disappointed in our relationship with the Holy Spirit and our experience thereof.

Our experience of the Holy Spirit is oftentimes like frozen pizza night in the Lang family. Where I say, hey, we're gonna have where the kids are looking forward to Ernesto's pizza and they come home and I've got the oven warming up. And they're like, I thought we were getting the good stuff. And I'm like, what are you talking about? This is good. Same thing, cheese, bread, you know, some little sauce. They're like, not the same thing.

How many of us would give up our entire experience of the Holy Spirit for one face to face with Jesus Christ? I mean, that sounds pretty awesome, right? To be able to look at Jesus in his eyes, to have a face to face conversation with him. How many of us would give up our entire experience with the Holy Spirit for that? But yet Jesus says that. He has to leave so that the Holy Spirit can come, because our experience with the Spirit will be better than our experience with Jesus himself.

John chapter 16 verse 7. Nevertheless, I tell you, this is Jesus speaking. It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. Do you hear that? He's saying, it's actually to your advantage if I go back to heaven, because then you get the Holy Spirit. And if I don't go, you don't get the Holy Spirit. And so, what is he saying? He's saying the personal. The aspect of your experiencing God will be superior with the Holy Spirit than it is with Jesus himself. But that's hard to believe, is it not?

And then we come back to our verse, do not quench the Holy Spirit. How much of our lives, I think, and I experience, and I do as well, do we spend quenching the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. The word quench here is the same word that is used to put out a fire. So to quench the Holy Spirit, it's, it's like you're, you're dousing the fire in water. in Acts chapter 2, the Holy Spirit came with what seemed to be tongues of fire. And the spirit brings warmth and light to the Christian life. So what does it mean to quench the spirit in your life? To quench the spirit would be the Pour water on the work of the Holy Spirit in your heart. To quench the spirit can be when you choose to sin or pursue your own idea of truth, instead of listening to and following God. You can quench the spirit when you refuse to joy to receive the joyful comfort of God.

A few years ago I was working with someone at the church who was going through a difficult spiritual time, and he had been going through it for several years and not several years, several months, and we've been walking with him and he was just, where is God? Where is God? And then he told me a story one day where he said he was sitting in his living, his bedroom and he finally felt the comfort of God. And he said, you shut up. I'm done with you. So God finally did speak to him, finally did give him that comfort, and he said, I don't want it. He quenched the spirit at that moment. He didn't allow himself to experience that truth.

You quench the spirit when you approach life with a perpetually skeptical attitude toward God. You quench the spirit when you reduce God to a set of doctrines as opposed to a real all powerful being who cares for you. I think that we need to just be reintroduced to the Holy Spirit pretty often and reminded of who he is. You know, they, they did a survey not that long ago. Where they said, true or false, the spirit is an impersonal being like the the the spirit is like a force in the world. An impersonal being like a force. And 60% of those who claim to be Christians said true. When the scripture clearly describes The Holy Spirit as a person. As the third person in the Trinity. As our wonderful counselor, as God Himself.

And his fantastic book that I often quote, it's on the Trinity, Michael Reeves says these things, and he says this about the spirit. He says the Spirit is about drawing us into a divine life. The Father is eternally delighted in the Son through the Spirit and the Son and the Father, the spirit's work and giving us new life then it's nothing less than bringing us to share in their mutual delight. Just one second more on that one. Can you just, just, just one more sec. The spirit is about drawing us into a divine life. This is what the gospel is. It's not just the forgiveness of your sins. The gospel, yes, you get forgiven of your sins, but more than that, the goal of the gospel is to be drawn into the divine life of God Himself, that he wants to share himself with you. He doesn't just want to forgive you of your sins. But he wants to share himself, that he is eternally delighted in the Son through the Spirit, and the Son and the Father and the Spirit's work is in giving us new life, then it's nothing less than bringing us to share in their mutual delight.

Here's another one from from Reeves. He says the spirit gives us his very self, that we might know and enjoy him, and so enjoy his fellowship with the Father and the Son. That we get to know and enjoy the spirit and enjoy the fellowship that he has among the Godhead. And lastly, the spirit's personal presence in us means we are brought to enjoy the spirit's own intimate communion. With the father and with the son. Now this might all sound really abstract, maybe lovey-dovey to some of you all. But don't quench the spirit.

What if this is the invitation for you? What if this is the invitation for each of us? That we get to experience the divine life. Don't pour a mountain of water on your heart and resist the nature of the love of God. The fact is that God cares for you. Right where you are. He wants to embrace you and share with you the love that he's enjoyed throughout eternity. Many of us, we might think that God, you know, he might have saved us, but that doesn't necessarily mean he likes us, OK? That like Jesus came and he died on the cross more as a duty than a delight. I mean, who would wanna do that? Why would God do that? Sure, he might save me, but that doesn't mean he's got time for me. But this shows our, our faulty understandings of who God is. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit blows that to pieces. Not only does God want to save us, he wants to live in a relationship with us.

Now, he's, this verse says something else, and it says, do not despise prophecies, but test them. that's interesting. prophecies, that's something that, you know, some people approach this, this type of thing with skepticism, but we don't have to be, we have to be open to the Holy Spirit speaking through other people and using his word to speak through it. At the same time, Paul wants us to test everything. And just because someone says I have a word of prophecy for you doesn't mean that they actually do have a word of prophecy. We are called to test this. Let me give you two examples, OK? 11, a good, a bad example of prophecy and one a good, OK, bad example. When I was in college, my best friend had a girlfriend. I won't tell you her name, just in case, you know, 20 years later she's, she's tuned in this morning on YouTube. He broke up with her. And she said, but God told me we're gonna be together. And he said, that's funny. I didn't get the memo. And he still broke up with her. Bad use of prophecy, you know. No evidence in the scripture, no, encouraging thing. It's just kind of like using the Holy Spirit to manipulate someone else to get what you want, right?

Let me give you a good illustration, and I've shared this with you guys before. one of our members here, his name is John Pardine. I'll just share him. John lives a different kind of life, you know, like modern day John the Baptist in many ways, um. John lives a different kind of life. If you know him, you know that's true. And, one day at our retreat this past year, he said, Fletcher, I need to talk to you. And he pulled me aside and he was like, I was out in the field with the flowers. That's how it started and. And he said, I was just praying. I started praying about you and I started telling God how disappointed I am in you. I was like thanks John. And I, I was saying, God, I, I just don't think that Fletcher has enough margin in my life. To to be the pastor I need. And at that moment God confronted me. And he said, Fletcher has exactly what you need at this moment. And also, I just felt like God was impressing upon me that I need to tell you. That he has equipped you with everything you need for life.

Which was just such a powerful moment, like I just swept at that moment. Because there's no way he would have known this. I was just so overtaxed with life. Being a parent of 3, being pastor, just like trying to make it through life, just overtaxed, and the Lord gave him a word of encouragement. And, and it wasn't, it wasn't anything extra biblical. Like any of you could walk up to any of you and say the same thing that he said to me that day, and it would be true. But it was a word for me through John at that moment. Does that make sense? I think that that's the way a prophecy works. It's truth personalized, so we do not quench the work of the Holy Spirit and friends, I think some of us despise prophecy because we're skeptical and we're skeptical that God might be laying something on our hearts to share with someone else, but I encourage you. Just, just share it. As long as you're not emotionally manipulating and it's founded in truth, you can be tested, maybe you test it first. But we do not despise this.

When we consider these three beautiful aspects of the Christian life, one, the ability to consistently do good in a world of evil, two, the ability to continually rejoice, pray and give thanks, and three, the ability to always live with the Holy Spirit. What we realized as we read those three is that though the Christian life gives us the ability to do these things, how many of us actually do them all the time? We're quite the failure at rejoicing always. We're quite the failure at forgiving always. We're quite the failure at walking with the Holy Spirit, always.

But Jesus never did. He never failed. He constantly did good, even when those did wrong to him. He always rejoiced in his own kind of way. He prayed unceasingly, finding time to talk with his father. He rejoiced and gave thanks. Jesus walked lockstep with the Holy Spirit every day of his life, understanding the love. That he had with his father and with the Holy Spirit. He constantly did good. Though he was a man of sorrows, he lived in continual rejoicing. He was sensitive to the spirit and never quenched him. Jesus is the author and perfecter of our faith.

And so when you feel weary from the weight of the world, look to him. And of all these things, here's the most beautiful thing about the Christian life. The most beautiful thing about the Christian life is that if you don't live it perfectly. You still have it perfectly. If you don't do it perfectly, Jesus is still given you His perfect life, that you still are perfected before God. The beautiful thing about the Christian life is that no matter how well you live it. It's never about how well you lived it. But about how good Jesus is.

Hear this from Hebrews chapter 12 as I close. 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 the throne of God. That is the Christian walk, that is the Christian faith. I encourage you to receive the faith from Jesus. That you don't quench the Holy Spirit. And today the Holy Spirit might be working in your heart. I wanna give you an opportunity to allow him to do that.

As we move into this next aspect of worship, we're going to receive a a sacred meal, but also I wanna encourage you if the Holy Spirit is doing something in your heart, don't quench it. If you need someone to pray with you, you can go and pray with one of the the prayer counselors in the back. If you need to sit and pray yourself and just talk with God about what the Holy Spirit is doing in your heart, do that. If you need a journal for a moment, do that. If you, if you need to speak a word to someone else of encouragement. Do that. This is an opportunity to not quench the Holy Spirit in your life. Whatever he's leading you to, whatever big steps. We're also gonna be practicing a sacred meal, and this is a sacred meal is a reminder of what Jesus has done for us.

Each week we participate in a communion meal, and it's a way that we recognize what Jesus has done and worship him, and what he has done. And if you're a believer here with us this morning, we encourage you to receive this because of Christ completed work on your behalf. But if you're not a Christian here today, we encourage you to receive the gospel of Jesus, the good news, and then you can receive communion with us next week or get baptized in the coming weeks and and receive it then, but we would encourage you to come and receive communion if you're walking with Christ as an opportunity for you to evaluate your life and to put aside any sin, because if you're not willing to put aside your sin, you need to think very hard about this. Jesus tells us to evaluate ourselves, before we receive it. So if you would join me in standing as we pray and prepare our hearts to receive this meal.

Our Father in heaven, we give you praise once again. We pray that you would help us to love you, that you that we would not quench your Holy Spirit, but that we would be open to his work in our life this morning. God help us just to experience it more. We, we don't need huge personal changes as much as we need a huge understanding of who you are and what you've done for us and would you continue to move in us and through us and God in this meal, would you encourage us. Father, we pray that you would delight in our worship to you and whatever work you're doing in someone else's heart. God, we pray that you would, that you would, that we would not quench it, that we would just be open to what you have. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from 1 Thessalonians 5:14. Discussion points: The love of God is tailor-made for the condition of your soul, admonishment is done with a spirit of reconciliation rather than aggression, Jesus knows exactly how best to love and admonish us in our specific situations.

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Scipture reader: [1 Thessalonians 5:14] And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: All right, good morning. How's everybody doing? It's good to see you all. Thanks a little bit of excitement over there. my name's Fletcher. I'm the lead pastor of the church, so it's a joy to have you this morning. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you, I'd love to have that opportunity to get to know you. there's few things in the world that I hate more than clothing that is labeled one size fits all. And that's because I have a very large head and let me tell you one size does not fit all. It, I went last night my wife and I were on a date and we were like searching for hats that might fit my head and we ended up on the HatsForBigheads.com website. One size is not something that works for everyone.

You may have heard the saying, to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Have you heard that one before? Well, to many Christians, all problems look like a sin to squash. Do you think about it like that at times? Have you, have you experienced that maybe in the church? All problems to a Christian many times look like a sin to squash. Are you feeling depressed? You better squash it. Are you feeling anxious? Well, that's a sin. Jesus tells you not to be anxious about anything. And so, squash that too. Stop sinning.

And the problem with the stop sinning approach is that it is, yes, OK, I want you to stop sinning, but that is a very oversimplified approach to our lives as complex human beings, in relation with one another and in relation to God. It's an oversimplified counterfeit to what the Bible actually teaches, because the Bible doesn't teach us to treat people all in the same way with the one size fits all approach. The love of God is not meant to be one size fits all, but the love of God, it's tailor-made for the size and condition of your soul. The love of God is tailor made for the condition of your soul.

Several years ago, I read an article that really changed my life, if I'm going to be honest with you. It was an article called Familial Counseling by a man named David Paulson. Now he's not a well known, pastor, so, so to speak, but to me he's a hero, and he died just a couple of years ago. I think that I cried more at his death than I did many other people that I've known personally, even though I've never met. David Paulson and in the article he really inspired me. I mean, I think that that article honestly did change my life, from what I read in that article and several others by, Paulson, it inspired me to it's what I spent a large portion of my doctorate, dissertation and and research on, it's what I spent. what motivated me to start with my wife, the Boston Center for Biblical Counseling, we were just really motivated by what we were reading and a lot of his writing.

And that article is called Familial Counseling, and what he does in the article is just about this verse. And so I'm just really excited to be able to camp out on this verse and be able to share what I've learned from him on this verse is one that I'm very familiar with and one that I use all of the time. So he compares what's going on with this verse with the life of a large family, have you ever seen one of those families, one of those that, you know, they have to own a van or maybe a bus to get around? Do you know someone like that? I don't know why this is. If you seem to have more than 4 children, it's like automatically you're homeschooling, but, you know, I don't wanna make stereotypes, but I don't know how many families of 10 kids I've seen in the public school system. It's just not something I've seen very often.

And he says that this verse is like a large family like that. I'm just curious. If you don't want to participate, don't participate. But I'm just curious, if you have 4 or more siblings, hands up. OK, keep your hands up, OK? 5. 6 siblings. If you don't want to participate, you don't have to, OK? But you, you, I'm, I'm gonna keep 7 siblings, 8 siblings right here, champion, OK. But he compares it to a large family because what do you see in a large family? You see the older siblings, what do they start doing? They start becoming like second parents. We only have 3 kids and we see this, OK, already. The older siblings, they start becoming second parents and taking care of the younger siblings.

Back when Megan and I were were fresh newlyweds, Megan used to say that she wanted to have a large family like this, that she wanted, you know, 7 or 8 kids in this kind of way. And I was like, you know, I think I'm good with 2 or 3, and she was like, no, I want 7. And I did the smartest thing I've ever done in my entire life. I did not argue with her, as is my normal tendency in any sort of issue. Instead, I simply found the largest family I could find, and I offered to babysit for them. So it's a wonderful family. I think that they've continued that he's actually visited our church before, the, the father in the family. I think they have like 12 kids now. At the time they had maybe 8, and I just found them at church and said, hey, we would like to babysit for you and we drove out and we, we babysat and went.

Well, the older kids were taking, I think the older kid like changed the diaper for the baby like they were like, if you need anything just ask this one he'll tell you where it is or this one she knows too like it was really clear that there was a pecking order in this family and they were helping each other and we had a great time. We watched Annie, the, the musical, the old one, it was good, on the way home, I kid you not, Megan said, I think I'm good with 2 or 3. That was my most proud moment of winning an argument.

We care for one another, the ways that in the way that siblings might care for one another in a large family. Every sibling has their own kind of issues, their own things that they need help with and those of you who have siblings, you know that some of your siblings kinda have their life more well put together, and others need more help constantly. Some of them are more prone to depression, anxiety. The others are more prone to just like being lazy or whatever it might be. And so as a family of God, we care for one another, the way that a large family might care for one another, and that is what Paul's saying. And so he gives us basically four categories for where people are in the church, and I want you to think about these four categories as kind of the primary colors of the state of your soul. And from these four categories you can have any sort of combination thereof. You can be a little bit of one and and a large bit of another one, but each one they should mix together to give us like a good synopsis and color for where our soul is.

Those, let's read the verse again and then I'll highlight the four. We urge you brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the faint hearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. So the 4 different types of children in the family of God are 1, the thriving, healthy child, mature, thriving. 2, the rebellious idle child. 3, the fearful faint hearted child. And 4, the helpless weak child. Let's walk through each one.

First, the thriving mature child. Now this isn't actually stated as a category in this passage on 1 Thessalonians 5, and that's because it's actually written to the thriving healthy child. It's not written about the thriving healthy child. It's written to the thriving health healthy child because these are the ones that. Paul is assuming it is going to receive this letter, are going to receive this letter, and they're going to be able to go and implement what he is saying to do. These are the Christians who are following the normal growth curve for Christian life. They're the ones that are having their devotions. They're the ones that are. Leading their family well, that are growing in their love for Jesus, that are not struggling with active addictions, who are taking care of their marriages, who are living an active life of faith.

And I praise God. Our church, if this was like one of the primary colors, this one would be spread all throughout our church. I'm so thankful that. Many, many of you have at least some of this in your color well. That the Lord has given you some thriving mature relationship with God, but specifically, these are your CG leaders, your elders, your deacons. These are the people that you expect to be thriving and implementing these things. It's not to say that these people are perfect, but they're able to care for other people. That's the whole point, that they're the older siblings. The other day I was, I walked in, we had a big party saying goodbye to Emmanuel and Erica, and I walked into a conversation. Where several people were talking about one of our elders, Michael, and they were like, he's like my big brother and I was like, that's it. That's that's what I'm talking about like a big brother. I was like, he's kind of like my little brother, but that's fine. We'll we'll go with it, but yeah, he's like a big brother that's what we're looking for we're looking for big brothers and big sisters in the family of God.

And one important note on this is just because a child is thriving doesn't mean that they don't need nurture. I mean, how many times do you see the healthy mature children? Get neglected. It's the ones that are quiet, they don't need anything. Those are the ones that we tend to ignore. But friends, as the church, we have to continue to care for them just because a child is healthy and mature, it doesn't mean they don't need a hug. It doesn't mean they don't need a good meal you we still have to care for them. So as we see healthy thriving people, we still have a word of encouragement. We still have fellowship, we still have confrontation and challenge at times.

And so the second type of person here that he says, he says, we urge you brothers, admonish the idle. And so here we have number 2, the rebellious idle child. Now the word for idle here, you get the idea of someone's idle, they're just kind of sitting back, they're lazy, they're not really participating. And it could also be translated into insubordinate or undisciplined or unruly. These are the believers who aren't taking their faith seriously. They're idle in the faith, you might say. They're sitting back and not pressing forward toward Christ. And I would also say that all of us have a tendency to slip into this where we just let other priorities take over our lives, where our minds are more captivated of visions of glory in work or in in play and recreation, whatever it might be, than it is with the glory of God.

This sort of Christian has a hard heart and has reverted to irreligion. They're deprioritizing their church friendships and relationships and worship of God in favor of any sort of other things, whether it be sleeping in or just hanging out or brunch or or drug usage or or or work or golf or whatever it might be, but their laziness is usually just one symptom of a greater disease. To be idle in the faith is just one symptom of greater disease, and it's just selfishness, and it's not, it it's taken over their soul. And there's usually other symptoms that are a part of it, bitterness, addictions, manipulation, explosive anger, lingering porn habits, adulterous relationships. These are all symptoms of the disease of sin and selfishness, and in many ways what the scripture tells us to do with those who are idle in the faith is the most clear of them all, because it just says admonish and to admonish someone is to warn someone is to tell them, hey, you're going the wrong way.

Now to admonish someone is not permission to beat someone up. It's not permission to tell them you're wrong about everything. Although a close friend might be able to say those things, those words to you, and at times you may need to hear it, but to admonish someone is to come alongside them and say, come on. Let's take this thing seriously. Let's work together. It's never meant to just beat up on folks. It's a loving correction, and if their heart is soft to Jesus, they should thank you for it afterwards, and I can't tell you how many people I've interacted with. And immediately, usually when you admonish someone, if they're ready for it, they'll say thank you. I've had dozens of that type of situation. A lot of times people get defensive. And then, they don't say anything, but you see the changes they implement in their lives. And it happens all the time.

The third type of child in the family of God is the fearful or faint-hearted child. Again, the, the passage says, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted. I love this word fainthearted. When you look at the, the root of this word for fainthearted, it literally means small souled. Do you feel as though your soul is small today? You are faint hearted. These are brothers and sisters who have lost hope, they're discouraged. They're the discouraged sibling over in the corner. They don't feel like they belong in the family, they're hurting, they're depressed, they're anxious, they're ready to give up. And in my experience as a pastor, many of the times that most of the time we would think that this person might be idle in the faith. The reality is they are actually faint hearted. That many of the people that come looking for help in their faith are faint-hearted believers who need encouragement. They need a word of encouragement. They're at the end of their rope, they feel like a failure, they're overwhelmed.

And so how do you encourage someone like this? The word for encourage, I think we can just find more there. In that word, it also can mean to comfort or to console. You see, it's very similar to admonishing except for with encouraging, you say, God is here with you. And what you're doing matters, and who you are matters. With the idle, you say God is with you and what you're doing is hurting your relationship with him. But with the faint hearted, you say God is here in this mess, along with you, and so am I. And I'm gonna walk alongside you and I'm gonna care for you every step of the way.

I coach, I coach a 3rd grade soccer team. It's a lot of fun. It's a joy. my team is the, the ADHD team for the most part, and here's one thing I've learned about this, not all of them, but a, a significant portion, They respond so much better to encouragement than they do criticism. Maybe you've experienced that in your own life, that encouragement's a lot easier to take than criticism. And one thing that I'm trying with my soccer team, I can stand out there, I mean they're 3rd graders, so I'm like they're doing everything wrong, you know. But if I just find the things that they're doing right, they'll replicate those things. They'll do it again. So every time I'm looking, what is this kid doing right? What's this kid doing right?

And friends, I encourage you, you might not know who is faint-hearted around you. Find the things that we're doing right. And work on those first. And then we'll work on the things that we're doing wrong. Far too often we admonished the faint hearted. To a nail, everything looks like a hammer. But sometimes we're just weak souled. And we need a word of encouragement, not an admonition.

Fourth, the helpless weak child. Paul says, help the weak and a family, it's easy to tell who the weak ones are. It's the infants, right? They're not able to take care of themselves and so the older siblings have to take care of the infants or if you are in a family that has someone with a disability, it is a weak person in your family that you must come alongside and help. And so in the church, we have those who are weak. In fact, Jesus loves those who are weak. My, my friend Mike, who shared a few words last week, Mike Hong, he's a pastor over at CoaH Brookline, and we, the church always has people that have some special needs that are, are either disabled or just have, need for, for more help than others might need, and it is exhausting often to take care of people with more needs, but what Mike always says, and it always gave me a better attitude is he would just be like, yeah, Jesus' favorite people. It's another one of Jesus' favorite people, and they're gonna take more of your bandwidth, but it's one of the ways that you become more like Jesus is by helping them.

And so in the church, we have to care for Jesus's favorite people, those with disabilities, mental and physical, the elderly, those with debilitating diseases, the abused, the abandoned, the victimized, the impoverished, those who have nothing to offer in return. And what does he say that we do? He says that we help, we help them. We help them, we hold on to them. We moved them along.

And then he adds at the very end of this verse. Be patient with them all. And I think that is a key, that we're patient with all of them. He's not in a hurry with any of them. Change is not a fast process. In fact, sometimes the goal isn't even change. How can you look at someone who has disabilities that you're helping, and you say, oh, this is a temporary thing, you'll change. Well, no, sometimes you just have to help the weak, and you have to keep helping the weak. The goal is not necessarily changed, but the goal is to care for them with the care of Christ and the love of Christ.

Friends, Christian care is not one size fits all. As brothers and sisters in Christ, we're called to care for one another with a tailored approach that reflects the love of Christ, because this is the way that Jesus loves us. Have you experienced his tailor fit custom made care in your own life? It looks so different. In fact, I would encourage you to ask a friend this week what the care of Jesus looks like and what was an example. And I guarantee you, sometimes people are gonna share things. I have, I have a brother who enjoyed, not a literal brother, I'm an only child, but I have a brother who, the word of the Lord to him often sounds like admonishment, and my weak small soul would be crushed often. Because the Lord is often having to come alongside me with a word of encouragement. Cause I, I'm not like the most bold, big souled person. I need, I need that that constant encouragement from the Lord.

I just think about the way that Jesus literally did this as he walked around on earth and how he, his care for different people was custom built. Think about Mary and Martha, OK? Martha is probably my favorite character in the entire New Testament. I know that might sound weird, but I'm, I'm definitely a a Martha supporter, OK? at one point, Type A people unite, OK? At one point in the scriptures, it says, now Jesus loved Martha and her sister, and I just like that because it doesn't even mention Mary. And most of the time people are like, oh, Mary, she's got a heart for God. And it's like, well, he didn't even say her name. He said Martha and her sister. I wonder how she felt about that.

When he shows up, so Jesus shows up, Mary and Martha, their sisters, several different stories in the scriptures about Mary and Martha. They have a brother named Lazarus, and at one point, Lazarus dies, and Jesus shows up too late. They know that Jesus could heal him, but he shows up too late. And so he walks in, Martha, being the type A older sister that she is, it doesn't say she's the older sister, but she's the older sister. She walks straight up to Jesus. I imagine the finger right in Jesus' face and says, Lord, if you were here, my brother would not have died. And so what does Jesus do? He engages with her in intellectual debate about the validity of the resurrection. And she like engages back, they start, he starts arguing with her. Because that's the way that you love Martha. Some people need to be argued with to be loved, amen. Anybody out there? Anybody's spouse out there? He argues with her and then he gives her a speech and he says, I am the way, the truth and the life. And then he moves on, he doesn't say I'm, I'm the I'm the resurrection of the life, excuse me. He says, I'm the resurrection and the life.

And then he moves in. And he finds Mary and Mary didn't go out to find him, he just finds her out in the home later, and he draws close, and Mary says the exact same thing to Jesus. She says, Jesus, if you were here, my brother would not have died. And how does Jesus respond? But he just weeps. You see, some of us need an argument. And some of us just need tears. We just need the loving, kind hand of God alongside of us, the love of Christ is custom built to the needs of your soul.

Look at another example, the woman at the well. This woman is an outcast in society, she's a Samaritan, she's an outcast among the outcasts. She goes to the well in the middle of the day when there's no one else going to the well. Jesus approaches her. He seeks her out. He starts a conversation with her. He makes sure his disciples are away out of the way, and then she's there getting water and he asked her for a drink of water. She's like, why are you talking to me? And every time that he talks to her, she tries to blow him off. She's like, Don't talk to me. What are you doing? You're a Jew. I'm a Samaritan. Why are we talking? And then he continues to engage with her and then she's like, well, you know, like get your theology right, man, and, and like if you were if you were a Samaritan, you know, we worship here, you worship there, maybe I can just distract him with that.

He is persistent to love her. And he reveals to her everything that her life has been about and then he reveals to her who he truly is. And in the book of John it's the first person that she, he reveals himself to in a public kind of way and it's amazing love that he pursues after her and cares for her in this way.

Now compare that with the rich young ruler who comes to Christ. Jesus sought out the woman at the well, the rich young ruler, complete opposite different stratosphere of the cultural and social structure of the time. He's rich, he's young, he's, he's a guy in finance, 6'5, blue eyes. He's, he's looking for Jesus because he wants to get everything right. And he finds Jesus, and he's got questions. And with every question, it's like Jesus is giving him one word responses. You know, with the, with the woman at the well, she couldn't get Jesus to shut up. She couldn't get Jesus to stop asking him questions, but with the rich young ruler, he's the one asking all the questions, and he's like, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And he's like, you've read the Torah, dude. Why are you asking me? He's like, yes, I've read the Torah. I'm glad you know that. I'm very good at reading the Torah. And so Jesus tells them, scriptures, tells them what the greatest of the commandments is, and, and he responds, and they have this conversation.

And then Jesus says one thing you lack. You have to go sell everything you own and give it to the poor. And the man went away sad. Why didn't he say that to the woman at the well? At the at the well, he's just like. You can be my follower. Come on, I see you. But with the rich young ruler, he says, you need to go sell everything, give it to the poor. Because Jesus has X-ray vision into our hearts and can see all the things that we care about more than what we care about than than him, and his love for us is custom built. That he'll say what we need to hear. And it might not be what my neighbor needs to hear.

And so friends, I'm just gonna encourage you this morning. That we meditate on this passage one more time, and that we open ourselves to hear what Christ has to say to us. I have just a couple of questions. I'm gonna read the passage and then I'm just gonna give, lead us in a, a guided meditation here as we wrap up.

Verse 14. And we urge you brothers, admonished the idle. Encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak. Be patient with them all. What is the condition of your soul? We have time So just bow your head if you want. Take a moment. Ask the Lord help me to see my own soul. Are you the healthy child? The idle rebellious child. The faint hearted small souled child, or the weak child. What combination thereof? Where are you in the family of God? What place And what does Jesus want to say to you? Given the condition of your soul. What's the weather report for your soul? Is it stormy, is it windy, is it? Sunny And what is the care of Jesus look like for you right now? What does he want to say? I'm just gonna encourage you to say. Your father, your servant is listening. Help me to remember truth. Just say that in your hearts. Because the truth is the answer to all of these. It's how you admonish, it's how you encourage, it's how you help. It's how you grow.

Here's some things that he might wanna say to you, and I'm just gonna invite you to hold on to one of these if it's, if it's one for you. But come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden. And I will give you rest. I think maybe someone needs to hear, ask and it will be given. Seek and you will find, knock and it will be open to you. Some may need to hear, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. But the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Whoever finds his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? And what or what shall a man give in return for his soul? The Lord may be encouraging you to lose your life so that you may find your soul. And I encourage you to take whatever steps necessary.

The goal today isn't to hit you over the head with the with the admonition. But it is to lovingly come alongside you with truth. And the grace of Christ. And encourage you that you are not enough. But that Christ is. And you can always find your sufficiency with him. And that he is always there to help and care for you. And as leaders in the church and as members of the church, we reflect his love by the way that we care for one another. And a custom made love of Christ. So you can come back if you, if you want.

I will, will encourage you if you are following Christ this morning. If you're able to engage with him, and you're saying, yeah, I'm willing, I'm, I'm following after you with all of my life, God. I encourage you to participate in the sacred meal that we're going to participate in in in just a moment, just called communion. And on the night that he was betrayed, Jesus took a loaf of bread and he broke it, and he said, this is my body broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And he took a cup and he said, this is the, the cup of the new covenant represents my blood. Do this in remembrance of me. And so each week we participate in the sacred meal here at our church, where we tear off a piece of the bread and we dip it in the juice or the wine, whichever our conscience permits, and, and you receive that, and you're being reminded that Christ's body was broken for you and his blood was shed for you, and he's with you in a very powerful way, as you take this meal, you're being reminded in this physical kind of way. For this next song, I invite you to stand and come and receive at one of these two aisles as we prepare our hearts for the communion meal.

Jesus, as we come to your table, we pray that you would help us to, to experience your love and your truth once again. That you would encourage us in our faith, that you would admonish or warn us where we're idle, help us to see the corners of our soul that we've left off limits to you. Father, I pray that we're able to be helped by you, when we are weak. You are strong. And so God, we pray that as we enjoy this meal, that You would enlarge our hearts and help us to receive your grace anew. Father, you are good. You are sufficient. And we ask these things in Christ's name, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from 1 Thessalonians 5:12-13 about needing a spiritual shepherd to guide us. Discussion points: We need guidance in our spiritual lives rather than just figuring things out ourselves; qualifications for a shepherd of the church include humility, leadership in their family, and repentance; God is our chief shepherd who we can follow wholeheartedly.

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Scripture reader: [1 Thessalonians 5:12-13] We ask you brothers to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves.

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: Alright, two simple verses this morning, pretty easy to explain. we've been working through First Thessalonians. Let's just dive in. Verse 12, we ask you brothers to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you. So Paul is just telling the church in Thessalonica to respect. And he has 3 different descriptors, and it's not describing 3 different groups of people. It's describing one group of people that do 3 different things. So he's describing a group of people who labor among the church, who are over you in the Lord, and who admonish you. He is just 3 parts described in the same person, same group of people, and this is like kind of obviously like pastors, elders, leaders in a church, right? That's that's who's doing these things, who's warning them, who's admonishing them, who's over them and who is leading them.

Verse 13, and to esteem them very highly in love, because of their work. And so he just continues and says, so you are to respect these people and you're to esteem them, and so he's telling the members of the church at Thessalonica, to respect their pastors and esteem them very highly in love. And so it's easy for you all to see why this passage is my favorite passage. And all the scripture. Respect me, love me, esteem me. All right, thus sayeth the Lord.

I, as much as I do love that application of this passage, I guess there's some truth to it, but the The real point is, is much deeper, I think for us today, and here's what God is wanting you to hear. You need a shepherd. You need a shepherd. The scripture oftentimes compares us to lost sheep. In need of a savior, in need of a shepherd. You may feel like your life is all put together, you may feel like you've got this thing under control, you may feel like you know the best next steps, you may feel like you don't need anyone. But you need a shepherd. In today's world, people are hesitant to trust pastors, and I understand why this is. There are many pastors who do not deserve your respect and love. Every week it seems like there's a new scandal about involving some pastor in the world.

Not only that, but there are a ton of pastors who feel called to ministry so that they might get the respect and esteem that this passage is talking about. Have you ever met a pastor like that who's so hungry for the love from his congregation that he forgets that he's called by God to sometimes say things to his congregation. Earlier this week, I came across an interview that a comedian, Tom Arnold, who I only know is the guy that was married to Roseanne in the 90s. That's the only way I know who he is, but I came across this interview from Tom Arnold after he had written a book called How I Lost 5 Pounds in Six Years. The interviewer, I guess that's funny, so maybe he's a funny guy. The interviewer asked why he had written the book and his response was astoundingly honest.

He stated that most entertainers are in show business, not because they have a passion for acting, but because they are broken people looking for affirmation. And he said this, the reason I wrote this book is because I really wanted something out there. So, I really wanted something out there so people would tell me they liked me. It's the reason behind almost everything I do. How honest is that? I saw Scott Saulz, another pastor, say that if you replace comedian with pastor and show business with ministry, you get exactly the same person with the same issues, only a different setting and career path. That so many pastors get in the business of becoming a pastor, so that they can get what they most so much want and need, which is the affirmation of other people.

And so I want to show you that this, this, this, this passage has valves on it, OK? It only moves in one direction. You as a pastor, you serve to admonish and to to serve as the Lord has called you to be over a group of people, to shepherd them, to care for them, to teach them, as called by God. And you you you do often times receive respect and and honor, but you only do it as you're called by God. You do not do it from receiving honor. The honor is only the, it's the evidence of the thing that you're doing that is not for the thing that you're doing, that you have an alternative purpose, which is, you desire for people to understand who Jesus is and for you to communicate clearly the gospel of Christ.

Another reason, and so let me just say, you need a pastor, once again, you need a shepherd, you need a pastor. Another reason why people are resistant to the idea that they need a shepherd is this. We live in a world where we feel like we don't need professionals at all. with, in a world with YouTube. And Chat GPT, why do you need any professional? Six years ago, we bought a house and my kitchen looked like something out of a Stephen King novel and so, we, we got, I got all of my friends, many of you were there probably, and probably not, not many of you, a couple of you were there and. And we ripped all the walls out of the kitchen and I went home that night and it was just a mess. I went home that night and just stared at my ceiling in my bedroom and thought, oh God, what have I done? I have no idea how to put this thing back together. I've, I've destroyed it. And so what did I do? But every Friday night I watched hours of YouTube as I downloaded the information necessary to do the next day's work on Saturday.

How many of us have gone to the YouTube university to become an expert in something that we previously were not an expert in? How many of us might go to chat GBT and might even use chat GBT as a counselor to say Chat GPT, you are my counselor. Now I, I'm not trying to give you any ideas, OK? Probably not the best counselor actually Chat BBC can do a pretty good job, but better than some real counselors that I've seen. We, we were resistant to this idea that we need professionals at all, but here's one thing that I've observed after living in in the Boston area for 13 years. When I first moved here, I was really intimidated because, you know, you guys go to Harvard and MIT and stuff and like where, where I came from I had only, I had only met one person in my entire life that had gone to an Ivy League school before I moved to the Boston area. Now like there is someone that went to an Ivy League school on every row in this in this place at least.

OK, like so many, so many really really intelligent people around here and so I was intimidated but what I, what I was amazed by when I got here was how really, really smart people are actually just sometimes dumb. Like you can have a PhD in molecular biology, but that doesn't mean that you know how to, you know, fold a table. Like I've seen it happen. Where people are like, I just don't understand the physics of how this arm can go into the table. I know some auto mechanics in Mississippi who have a greater breadth of general knowledge than some of you all who go to Harvard.

But you know what that actually reveals? And what what's nice about living in the Boston area is people are hesitant to speak on topics that they are not an expert in and people know what topics they're an expert in generally and they know that it is like the most nuanced small thing that they actually have contributed to at all in the in their field and so people have this kind of humility about them it's like the smarter you are, the more you know that you don't know. And so you're hesitant to speak on topics that you're not an expert in.

But friends, if you wouldn't speak on topics that you're not an expert in in your academic field or in your work life, why would you assume that you can be your own spiritual guide? That you can be an expert in your own spiritual life. You see, too many people approach their spirituality as if it's something that they need no guidance on. That they can just figure out on their own and what they end up doing is getting kind of an a la carte approach where they they might go through the buffet line and be like, I'll take a little bit of this and a little bit of that and it's not catered, it's not, it's not thought out really completely. They're just kind of grabbing things that look good, but friends, you need a shepherd. And a shepherd can guide you through each and every one of those things.

Many of us are functioning like the proverbial man who won't ask for directions. We're functioning like the frustrating patient who will not follow the care of the doctor, when it's just very clear what they need to do to move forward. You need a shepherd, you cannot lead yourself spiritually. But I get it I get it. Churches are oftentimes led by people that don't seem like someone you want to follow. The modern church has reduced the role of pastor from spiritual shepherd under shepherd of Christ, from spiritual shepherd to entertainer.

Just this week, I was scrolling through Instagram and I saw a pastor shooting basketball on stage. Anybody else see this? Shooting basketball on stage for like 5 minutes before he gave any sort of sermon. I saw a pastor, it may have been the same one, ride in on a stage on a homemade roller coaster. I saw a different pastor get up on stage. And do dumbbell bench presses. For repetition. I don't know what point he was making, but when we've reduced the pastor down to an entertainer, it's easy to understand why people might switch churches or go from one show to the next, like they might change the channel. Like I don't like what this guy is saying, what this clown over here is saying because we've really reduced the pastor to a clown for entertainment sake. I mean, you might as well put a a nose on some of those guys that I saw on Instagram and a big wig and everything.

But we've, when we've reduced the role of a pastor to an entertainer, then he's not there to, to be a spiritual guide. He's there to, to entertain me. And so when I'm not being entertained or I don't like what he has to say, I move on to the next church. But you need. A shepherd. You need a shepherd. And you need one of these shepherds who's not about building a name for themselves. Too often shepherds, the pastors of churches are about building their own name.

And this is one reason why I love Eugene Peterson. if you're unfamiliar with Eugene Peterson, you probably know the message translation of the Bible, which was somewhat controversial like 20 years ago, but he was a prolific author, a well known pastor, in his day, and wrote all kinds of things and was very popular, but he committed to never pastor a large church. In a time when mega churches were thriving, Eugene Peterson said, I never want to pastor a church so large where I can't know the name of every member. And that's just inspiring to me that he would say the church matters that much. I want to be a shepherd for these people. And now I wish I could make the same commitment. I'm not sure I'll ever have the opportunity to pastor a church larger than that, but. It's just a beautiful idea of what it means to resist the urge for more for me, and continue to be faithful to what God has called you to in that one place.

I'm honored that you would be here this morning. I'm honored that you would be willing to listen to what I have to say. Sometimes I feel like I don't deserve that honor, and if you're, if you're a committed member of this church, I'm honored that you would allow me to be your pastor. I don't always feel qualified for it, but God has me here and I'll keep going as long as he does. But if you're still church shopping or maybe you're moving soon, let me just emphasize this, you need a church. One pastor at least, a group of pastors, ideally, that you can trust. And the character of the pastor who teaches most often is oftentimes replicated throughout the church, right? Have you seen that? Where if you see a church led by someone who is super egotistical, who is domineering, that's gonna make ripple effects through the church.

So as you're looking for a church to plug into, if you're church shopping, we would love to have you here, but it, but there's other good churches in Boston for sure. If you find a church that has a pastor who's self-obsessed with the glory and respect the pastor can get them, you're gonna find a church with an ugly culture. And so let me just, I mean, First Timothy gives us qualifications for a pastor. Let me modernize them just a little bit. You the if I read the qualifications, it's gonna feel stale. So let me just modernize it a little bit.

When you visit a church, one of the questions you need to be asking is, does this church, is it led by a pastor or pastors? Who are humble. Does this person seem humble? Does he seem like a good dad? Seriously, that's one of the qualifications. And I say that with fear and trembling, OK? I'm not perfect in any means. Is he a good husband if he has a wife and a good dad if he has kids? Does he apparently love Christ and want to serve him? And want to point me to him, is he faithfully teaching God's word in a way that it comes alive for me. And if the answer is no to any of those questions, I think I phrased them all in the, in the right order to say no to all of them, but. You should go somewhere else. I mean maybe you maybe you're already in a church and you're a member there and you just address it and you talk to them and maybe you see repentance and that is like above all things repentance, like someone who, who will go to the Lord, who will repent and so that's more important, you know, even if life's a mess, my life's a mess often. But repentance, someone that will continue to seek after Christ.

I mean, I'm less humble than I would like to be. I'm not the father I always want to be. I can be a bit argumentative. From time to time. I've never had the joy of having a lot of money and so therefore I do not even know if I'm qualified with the love of money or not. what would happen if we had a lot? I don't know. But I approach being your pastor with fear and trembling, Christ be my help.

We ask you brothers to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work, be at peace among yourselves. So let me ask you, Who is keeping watch over your soul? Are you left to do that by yourself? You need someone you can trust with spiritual authority over you. You need someone you can trust who can admonish you and encourage you. The word admonish means warn you. You need someone who can confront you. Would you, are you willing to allow yourself to be confronted? This passage tells us that we should respect our church leaders, that we should esteem them very highly because of their work, and, because I'm uncomfortable receiving that kind of respect and esteem, I'm going to try to turn it to a few other people this morning because we are a small church that has leaders and I just wanna honor them for a moment.

Before we do that, I'm gonna do a disclaimer. Many churches, the pastor's wife is like part of the pastoral team. And my wife isn't even here this morning, um. She's, she's out of town. She's, uh, her sister had her sister got married last night. She's normally here, but. If you, if this is your church home, you probably realize this about Megan, but Megan is not a pastor. She is not female Fletcher. She is a Christian and a wonderfully marvelous Christian in that, someone who I respect her faith, but she's also like a busy professional. She has a full-time job and is demanding. She has 3 children, she has a husband who's obnoxious a lot. And like she's got a full plate, you know, and she's a wonderful person, but if you are expecting, if you come in with like kind of traditional pastor's wives expectations on my wife, we're going to disappoint you, because that we've just decided that that's not her calling and in fact we're kind of bucking against the whole system.

Because personally, and I, I know a lot of women find a lot of satisfaction in being a pastor's wife like that, and I'm not trying to, to, I'm not trying to rag on that at all, but I just think if a church has that type of expectation upon a wife that they should pay her also. Yeah thanks. I, I just, I, I don't think that's fair that you get the two for one deal, OK? This isn't BOGO, OK? This is, this is a church and I'm a pastor, my wife isn't.

But let me honor and esteem some people who are called to ministry here and, first, our, we have two other elders at the church who pastor alongside me, and you guys probably do not even know the half of what all they do. So first mark, over here with the red beard, I'll point them out like that, uh. Mark, Mark is a is a more quiet leader than many, but he is so faithful for so long and you guys don't even know the imprint that Mark has had on this church. Mark, in addition to the regular govern. Of the church and leading of the church and and care and stewardship that that goes into that Mark serves as our treasurer our church finances are more well run than any church I've been a part of before, and he does a very good job with that. I'm very thankful for that. He also teaches a CoaH kids class which is like a lot of elders I think would look at that and be like that's below me but no he's like serving and teaching like preschool kids monthly.

Mark is hosting a community group and has led many community groups. Before he's also leading our missions initiatives at the church and building connections with people internationally. There's just all kinds of things that Mark is involved in, not to mention just like all the pastoring things.

In addition, there's Michael who was leading us earlier. You guys do the same thing for Michael. Thank you. I don't know where I would be without Michael. Michael and Mark, like it just I don't think I have to be best friends with our elders, but I just happen to be, you know, and it is a joy to have them both here and Michael and his wife Alexa, who I think is the Lord has called her to have a very special ministry here as well, Michael doesn't get paid, so we don't have to worry about paying them the same, OK. But, Michael, Michael and Alexa, they coach multiple community groups. They're involved pastorally in many of your lives. I know serving as a shepherd and look, I look at their account. I went down to Michael's house last week and was like, look. You guys have people over here like every night. I, we gotta slow this down a little bit, OK? Like you, you have too much. Like I don't, I can't take any of it, but you have too much. But we've gotta figure out how to, how to do this. And so Michael also ran our AV for years, also teaches a coa kids class exemplifying the humility involved in that. He's just one of these guys that you call when you need something done and he gets it done.

Honoring a few other people. Calvin, who preaches for us regularly. Calvin has been reticent to take on the role of elder at our church, which is understandable given that he just served for 10 years in a church before moving here. And so we all understand and appreciate him and can treat him with respect and love that he deserves, although he is not currently a pastor at our church, we still invite him to all of our elder meetings and he comes. And he preaches like 6 or 7 times a year, so you know, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck. But really thankful for his leadership and his influence in those meetings. He always has winsome and helpful things to to share.

I'm gonna recognize the deacons also, just briefly, Emmanuel and Erica, we've already taken time to recognize, and so God, we're so thankful for you guys. Your last day is deacons here, before we send you off.

Alexis Donnelly, yeah, you, that's fine. We'll just keep this going. Alexis serves as our ministry associate and CoaH Kids director, and I can't tell you how much I respect Alexis and how many times I've been halfway through a sermon and told her my idea and she just gives me this look and then it's like I have to rewrite my sermon. Because I respect her and I think that the Lord has given her a great ministry here and she's a strong woman of faith and I'm very thankful for her and the work that she's done with our kids and we're, we'll be sad for her to be stepping out of that role in the in the coming months, but she'll be here at least through most of July. So, we'll see what the Lord has for her in the future and we're very proud of her and thankful for the ministry that she's laid.

Anneke Lim has has been leading our meals ministry for for like 2 years now and serving in all kinds of different ways with CoaH kids with worship. Also she bought a house in Framingham. They've been driving an hour every Sunday and they're gonna look for a church closer to home, which is sad, but we also, understand that and encouraged her to do that, because you need to be close to a church because she needs a shepherd that can be in her life regularly, right.

Riley Orrell, who's been who's who's been serving with our first impressions for years also, also leading a community group, also serving with CoaH kids. You just see these people they're everywhere serving all the time.

Chris Chestnut. Common thread here with our deacons also serving with kids, have I mentioned that we need more kids volunteers always, right? And he, he leads our announcements team, our men's ministry is very involved in different in a lot of different things going on.

And Leah Chestnut is is Chris's wife and she has been she actually she's she's full time with like a sciencey job that I never understand no matter how many times I ask her. I think it involves brains, of yeah, anyways, but she, she works for us just very part time and I swear she gets more done in like 3 hours a week than we could pay someone to do in 20, she's just like really great on top of getting a lot of things done and, and we're thankful for, for her serving in that way.

And we've got some new deacons coming very soon, but I just wanted to recognize these people as they're people who deserve your respect and your honor and not just through an applause. But through your words, and through your actions, and the way that you treat them, and, and they didn't deserve your encouragement also to keep going. but the point of the sermon is, is not just you need a shepherd in the church. But it's that you, you need a shepherd in your life, a greater shepherd. You need a shepherd. Yes, you need a shepherd in the church.

And let me just drive this point home real quick. I'm not talking about John Mark Comer. He doesn't live in Boston as far as I know. I'm not talking about John MacArthur. John Piper, I'm not talking about. Choose your, choose your pastor. I'm certainly not talking about Mike Todd or Joel Osteen. You need a shepherd who can take watch over your soul in a church. That, that's what Paul's saying. And I know I cannot guide every single one of you one on one here, but I will commit to loving you, to learning your name, caring for you, pouring my life into leaders who will pour their lives into others. And I'll commit to and and one of the ways that you commit to being shepherded is just by showing up on Sundays, being a part of what we're doing, sitting under the teaching of the church, being a part of the community groups and the regular ministries of the church.

It's like I'm leading most of those regular ministries and and that's one of the ways that we shepherd you is through the regular stuff that the church does. It's not all just like I need time with my pastor face to face. I will lose my mind if I meet with all of you face to face. I just like, I love you. I would love to meet with you face to face. I'm also an introvert. I don't know if you knew that or not, but like I can't, I can only handle so many meetings a day before I I just turn into goop on the floor.

But ultimately, more than a pastor, more than me, you need the Chief shepherd. And His name is Jesus of Nazareth. He loves you, and he laid down his life for his sheep, and here's the reality, I will fail you. You might be looking at me and thinking, man. Definitely not the shepherd I need. And I would agree with you. I'm not But I will point you to Christ, and I will do my best to follow after Him. That's all I've got, you know. I, I will tell you that the chief shepherd is so much more caring and loving and worthy of following than me. Have you met him? Have you talked with them recently? Have you let them care for your soul? Have you exposed yourself to his loving hand? Have you submitted your life to him?

Matthew chapter 9. It says when he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Our chief shepherd wants to care for us, wants to care for you. John chapter 6. He says this Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. And so I just wanna give you a moment before we shift to communion. We're gonna have a baptism testimony in a moment. To talk with the Chief shepherd, because why else are you here? If you have your Bibles, you can open to Psalm 23, but if not, I'm just gonna walk us through this, and I just want you to pray. OK, You don't need to open your Bible honestly you definitely don't need to open your phone, you're just gonna get distracted, so. Just bow with me and pray, OK?

The Lord is my shepherd. Would you own that church? I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. Would you let him do that right now? He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Not my name, his name. Every step God is for you. I would never walk through the righteous path by myself, but I need your guiding hand in shepherding. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I will fear no evil, God. And God, I pray for anybody who feels like they're in that valley today. Would you move them along and help them to fear nothing. Knowing that their chief shepherd defends them, and guards them because your rod and staff, they comfort me. You were with me, God, you were here with us this morning. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows. God, you've been so, so good to me. And to all of us here. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Yes, Some of you may have just interacted with the Chief shepherd for the first time. And I would encourage you to continue that process, that you need a shepherd. You need that shepherd. You need him. And in just a few moments we're going to be doing a baptism, and a baptism is this outward expression of an inward reality. That I am not my own, but I belong to God. It's what it means to have a shepherd. I am not my own, but I belong to God.

And so we're gonna celebrate a testimony with our sister Katie here in a few minutes after we're gonna sing a song and have communion. And, but when we do baptism, we ask, what is your sacred confession? And she declares. Jesus is Lord. It's a sacred and ancient confession. And so today, each of us, baptism is at the beginning of our Christian life typically, and we do communion each week to be reminded of that sacred confession. Jesus is Lord. And today, as you, as we open up the communion table, we invite all those who declare that Jesus is Lord to come and receive. And that means that I'm willing to submit to Jesus's authority in my life. And I'm willing to hear what he has for me and be cared for by him.

And so, if you're a Christian, we invite you to participate, but if you're not a Christian, we invite you to receive the Chief shepherd. And you can participate in communion next week, but we'd really encourage you to get baptized, would be the first step for you if, if that is new, if your faith is new in that way. So as we prepare our hearts, would you stand with me as we prepare to sing and to respond through a communion meal.

Christ Jesus, we're so thankful that you've never left us, that you're with us until the end of the age, and we pray that you would lead us and guide us, help us to walk in deeper humility and deeper obedience to your truth, help us to be light and salt in this world. And God, we pray that as we prepare our hearts to take this communion meal, that we would prepare ourselves to to declare Jesus is Lord. Overall that His will be done, not my will be done. That we will trust you with all things. I mean, what is prayer God? It's not, you are not a magical vending machine that we put prayer coins into, you want to bend our will to your will, and so would you do that now? Would you be our chief shepherd? We ask this in Christ's name, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11. Discussion points: We long for the day of the Lord when we will have rest and peace; our culture can easily lull us into spiritual sleep; we can armor ourselves against apathy and worldliness through faith, hope, and love.

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Scripture reader: [1 Thessalonians 5:1-11] Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying there's peace and security, then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness.

So then let us not sleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. For those who sleep sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the the breastplate of faith and love. And for helmet, the hope of salvation, for God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep, we might live with Him. Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up just as you are doing.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: All right, good morning. It's good to see everybody this morning. My name's Fletcher. I'm the lead pastor here at the church. If I haven't had a chance to meet you, I would love to meet you after the, service today and get to know you a little bit better. as a Christian, I don't know if you're with me on this, but sometimes I feel like I'm constantly trying to clarify I'm not like those Christians. those Christians that you see doing these sorts of things, that's, that's not me. We don't always send our best onto the news TV programs. You know, I'm always trying to clarify, what type of Christian I am, and sometimes you just feel embarrassed by the type of people that are out there and spreading, things and giving Christians a good or a bad name, I guess more a bad name by the ones that you feel embarrassed by.

Back in 2011, a lot of you were like in elementary school, OK, but, I was already in graduate school in 2011. Megan and I were living in Louisville, Kentucky, and we didn't have children yet. We did have a very puppy, like a little dog. Who's still with us, Maggie, she's, she was, she was born an old lady and she's still an old lady. She's just grumpy, so in 2011 there was this guy named Harold Camping. Does anybody know the name Harold Camping? Probably not. he was a radio personality, a Christian radio personality who was on like 150 stations around the United States. So very prevalent guy. He was very old by the time that 2011 rolled around, and he very famously predicted the end of the world is going to occur on the 21st of May 2011.

If you were around at that time, you may have seen one of these billboards. That were all over the world. Anybody does that look familiar to anybody from 2011? OK, a few folks you may have recognized it, they spent $5 million putting up billboards all over the United States. They had one in the middle of Times Square. They had them on cars. Driving around, you would just have like you know those advertisements that would be like on the back windshield of a car. People were putting them on their back windshields. They were everywhere. Judgment Day, May 21st, 2011. My favorite part of this is the stamp, the seal. The Bible guarantees it. It's just hilarious.

I just, I, I, how did he come up with this date? I looked into it. I've actually used this illustration before, so if you've been at the church long enough, you've probably heard this, but, it's not, I couldn't tell by the way that you recognized Harold Camping or the signs. He came up with this date. I, I've never looked this up before. It's wild. He basically said, OK, the word atonement. Let's say that word equals 5. The word completeness, let's say that word equals 10, and the word heaven, let's say that word equals 17. Now, when you multiply 5 times 10 times 17, and square it, you get 4 you get 722 and 500, 722,500. When you add 722,500 days from the day that Jesus died on the cross, May 21, 2011. That's how we came up with that.

And people gave him money. They gave him their money. And he put billboards all over the place. Never mind the fact. That Jesus very explicitly said, you will not know the day when I am to return. Never mind the fact that Harold Camping had done this before in 1994. He predicted the end of the world, and then when he was wrong on May 21st, what did he say? He said, oh, I just got it off by a little bit, it's October, something, something. And then that day passed and then they quietly said, OK, grandpa, let's go back home, OK?

I remember where I was on May 21st. I was in Louisville. my wife and I watched a really trippy movie. It was like, Black Swan with Natalie Portman in it, real weird movie, OK, I don't know if I recommend it. It was many years ago. OK, I don't remember much. I just remember being like that was weird. And then I it's like I've been seeing these billboards everywhere and then I'm taking my little puppy outside in my front yard and it's like around dusk time and the whole sky is orange like that color orange, and I'm like, Jesus? Alas, we're still here.

So. What does the Bible actually say about this day of the Lord? And why are some Christians just seem really excited about it? Like some people, it's like, you seem overly excited about judgment Day. And why is that? Why, what does the Bible actually teach? And and how does the Bible actually teach that we should be prepared for that day? That we should prepare for. That's what our passage handles today. That's what we're talking about today.

It seems like the question that Harold Camping is raising is the same question that the Thessalonians had, which is when? You see, the Thessalonians, when they received the gospel, we're going through this book on the Thessalonians, so if you've been with us, you've heard this, but they received the gospel. Paul was only in Thessalonica for 3 weeks. That means they got a. Crash Course in Christianity. The Gospels were not widely distributed by then. So the book, they didn't have the book of Matthew. They weren't able to read the words that Jesus said, like you won't be able to predict. So they're asking Paul, they're he sends Timothy to go hang out with the Thessalonians a little bit after they leave, and then they send send Paul send Timothy back to Paul to ask him questions.

And one of the questions that they have is, so about Jesus coming back. When's that happening? You know, cause they don't have any clue. They don't know, they haven't been taught, so they're asking then Paul's answering their questions. And when we're talking about Jesus coming back, we're really the word that we're talking about when we see, say judgment day, what we're talking about there, what the Bible usually says is the day of the Lord. Everyone say the day of the Lord. There I made you say it. Thank you. Um. This day is a day that ancient Jewish people usually thought about time like this. The way that they would think about time is they had this age, which is the age that we live in, which is really marked, if you think about it, it's, there's so many good things about this age, but really this age is also marked by poverty and war and hatred and evil and death and destruction and many really terrible things that are marked by this age.

And then you have the age to come, which every ancient person, every ancient Jewish person thought of the age to come as the day when God's king would reign, when God would reign as king, eternally, and that everything in this age would come to pass, and that the world would be as it should be in proper working order, that the king would return and everything would be made right. And so when we talk about the day of the Lord, it is when this age comes in contact with the age to come, and the age to come takes over, and we live in that age to come.

So yes, the day of the Lord is marked by judgment, but that's a weird thing to get excited about, honestly, unless you think about judgment. As judgment for those who really need it. And if you think about judgment as wider than just judgment for. the sins of people, evil people, but also evil spiritual beings, and death itself, evil will be eradicated on the day of the Lord, which is something that we should rejoice in. But more than that, the day of the Lord is when God makes the world new, when heaven invades earth and restores it to proper working order.

Every single time, as we did today, we prayed the Lord's prayer, and we said, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And so when we pray that Lord's prayer, what we're praying for is the day of the Lord. You're praying that the will of the Lord would be on earth as it is in heaven. That's what we long for, that the Lord would come and restore the world, judge evil, and reset it. You see, the day of the Lord is what we all long for. We're born with utopia on our hearts. For example, how many times have you said, and I know how many times have I said, if I can just get through this season of life, then things will slow down. I'll have rest and it'll be easy going. I'll, everything will be OK if I can just get through this season.

How many times have you told yourself that? And then you climb that hill and you finally get through this season only to see a full mountain range of problems that you need to continue to go through. It's a longing for the day of the Lord. How many times have you heard someone say, if we can just get this person in office, or this person out of office. Then everything will be all right. Our nation will be restored to proper working order. And you see, even in our political desires, we have a longing for the reigning of a king that is better than earthly kings. We have a longing for the day of the Lord. We have a longing for an age of rest, an age of peace, an age of security and joy.

And so, the Thessalonians are asking Paul, OK, when is this gonna happen? And when Paul writes him back, he's like, Yo, yo, yo, Thessalonians, you are asking the wrong questions. This is not what you should be concerned about. So check it out. Verse one. He says this. Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers, you have no need to have anything written to you. What, what a way to answer the question. sometimes he says that when he's like, you guys are doing great. With this one, he's like, I don't need to answer that question. You have no need for anything to be written to you cause you don't need to know the answer to that. And then he continues and basically saying, What you need to think about is not the when, but the what now, OK? So you're living in this time before the age to come. How do you live?

And really the question that this whole passage is answering is this, how do you live in this age, marked by death, evil, destruction, hatred, oppression, evil rulers, evil policies, whatever it might be. How do you live in this age? With the age to come in mind. Because as Christians, we're called to live for the age to come. But at the same time, we're present today. And so that is what Paul walks through. I have 4 points for how he tells us to live like this, and they're all kind of militaristic. It just ended up being that way. it's not how all my Germans are, but the first point is to resist the propaganda. The second point is to fight like a soldier. The 3rd point is to remember the good news, and the 4th point is to stick together, right? So let's walk through.

First point, resist the propaganda. Now what do I mean by propaganda? When you think of propaganda, what you usually might think of is fake news, right? Fake news, manipulating the people, but really propaganda is any source of media used to. Coerce someone to take your standpoint, use to coerce them to, to make them believe in what you're fighting for. So oftentimes propaganda is manipulative. I think you'll find that sometimes you actually might agree with it, and you might not want to call it propaganda when you agree with it, but that doesn't mean it's not propaganda. So, for example, I've got some Star Wars posters here for you, OK? So rebels are terrorists. Do you think they want peace? Now, if you saw enough of these around, you might think, man, there's rebels, terrorists, what are they doing? You can't do it alone, guys. You got to enlist in the empire.

Let's keep going. I've got lots of these. Support your, your, your empire, right? Build the tight fighters holding back the chaos, these stormtroopers, and I love this one. Do you know who's pulling their strings? Insinuating so my normal Star Wars fan is probably like can kill a kids. Where's Chris Chestnut, you know. But, insinuating that the evil crime syndicate run by the Hutt family is really in charge of the rebellion. Propaganda.

But also, if you were just to Google the word propaganda and go on the Wikipedia page, what might you find? But this picture of Uncle Sam himself, you might say, no, that, that's not propaganda, but it's literally on the Wikipedia page as the main picture. It is American propaganda, though we might not think anything of it, we might not think anything of Uncle Sam in that same kind of way. And how about this? How about you can take, take down Uncle Sam, but how about this, America. Land of the free and home of the brave. Now, I've got enough America within me where I'm like, that's right, we are land of the free and home of the brave, but I also recognize that maybe I was brought up in a certain culture that valued those things and maybe shaped by the world around me in such a way that led me to believe in American exceptionalism and superiority over all other nations and that. Never mind the fact that we win more Olympic medals and everything else goes with that. we still feel a little bit of exceptional and there's that's part of me, you know, like if you're American, that's just like part of the American identity, but it is still something that you believe because it's been taught to you in that way.

Now in today's passage, what you see is a bit of Roman propaganda that's going through. So Paul, Paul is addressing this little piece here. So let's look at it. He says, verse 2, for you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying there's peace and security, then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. Now this phrase, there was peace and security. This was actually an ancient phrase that was often said about the Roman Empire. See what people wanted you to think or what the Roman Empire want you to think, and it isn't even just what they wanted you to think. It is the truth that the Roman Empire brought peace and security. That when you were part of the Roman Empire, you had peace and security because it was a large empire. They had a huge military force.

Now how did they bring that peace and security but through oppression and enslavement and and taking over different areas through conquest and whatnot, but they did bring peace and security. And not only that, they brought prosperous prosperity to every city they went to. At this time, Thessalonica was booming because for the first time, what had the Romans done? They built roads and you can trade. You can trade all over the empire. It's like free trade for the first time. Thessalonica is booming better than it ever has been before and so people are feeling peace from their enemies because of what the Roman Empire has given them, and they're also feeling a sense of security from their enemies.

And what Paul is saying is don't believe the propaganda that the government cannot offer you the peace and security that you most long for, but only. Jesus can. With the day of the Lord, Jesus will show you that true what true peace and true security are like. There's a, there's a certain gravity. To, the comfort of the things that we have in this world. Living in Somerville. I mean, in my opinion it's just the best right? I love living here. I love the the neighborhood feel. There is peace and security on my street. I know my neighbors, you know, we're in a band together. We, we hang out, we like our are on the text threads together like, hey, can someone please figure out what's going on with this car alarm that's going off on the next street over, you know, like we're. We're connected.

And not only that, but, but Somerville is a really prosperous place. It's booming in many ways. It's a very happening place to live, it's a nice place and there's a gravity to it that says, I can be comfortable here. And It's propaganda. That all you need is what Somerville can offer. It's a lie from the evil one, dulling your senses and causing you to place your hope in the things of this world. Instead of the things of the age to come. Do not give in to the propaganda. Paul says that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While you're not expecting it. He says that the day of the Lord. Will come like a child in his mother's pregnant womb. That you cannot avoid it. Once that labor begins, it's coming. You can't do anything to stop it. This is way before the days of epidurals, that the pain is going to come and you can't stop it, it's inevitable.

And that's what he's teaching us to stay awake, stay sober minded. Don't allow yourself to be lulled to sleep by the comfort that the Roman Empire, that the Somervillian Empire might offer for you, that your culture, that your American heritage, that whatever heritage you might come from, that your world might offer you.

The second point that he brings up is fight like a soldier. Similarly, I think that really connected to what I was previously saying is that Boston is a place where cultural Christianity often comes to die. Now many of you are the, the remnant. You're like the, the dedicated few, I think like 3 or up to half of our church is from the Northeast and maybe a third is from this area ish, and the rest of us were transplants from all over the world and the United States and the world and really we're coming from oftentimes these places where the church was much more established than it is in Boston. And so if you're. Not here and very intentional to get yourself plugged into a church and to to follow Christ there, you're just gonna drift away.

I've seen it happen a thousand times. It's where cultural Christianity comes to die because there is no cultural Christianity in the Boston area. There's a remnant of this Catholic Christianity, but as far as any sort of church, like what we do with Protestantism, that culture is not very strong here. And so what Paul is telling them is that they have to resist this desire to blend in, this desire to be cynical as our neighbors are, this desire to just get your Dunkin and keep on moving on with your life. That's the easiest way to blend in, is just hold a Dunkin cup. We have to fight. With the age to come in mind while we're in this age. Now, this isn't a battle against culture, but it's a battle within yourself. So, check it out.

Verse 4. But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief, for you are all children of light, children of the day. We're not of the night or of the darkness, so then let us not sleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober, for those who sleep sleep at night, and those who get drunk get drunk at night. And so what he's, what he's saying, Is that we have to Keep ourselves awake, that we cannot be lulled to sleep by the culture around us, the comfort that we might have from the world around us.

He continues the illustration, verse 8, I love this illustration. He says, but since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet, the hope of salvation. Your enemy against the decay of the Christianity within your heart, of the love of Jesus within your heart. It's not cultural criticism. It's not seclusion, it's not isolation, it's not fighting back culturally, it's not, it is your weapons. Breastplate of faith and love. And the helmet of hope. Now, we can talk about those words and those words just sound like niceties, like something that a boomer would put on their wall, but But that's true, OK.

But there's way more to it. Think about what it means. Faith. Faith is not just this genuine belief like you might have faith in Santa Claus. Faith is a trusting in Jesus, as sufficient as enough. Think about love. Love is not just this sentimental feeling. Love is a self-sacrifice for the good of someone else. And hope, hope is not just this mere like wishful thinking. Hope is the assurance of things that aren't seen. And so how does he tell you to battle against the things of this world? Faith You lean on him. Love, self-sacrifice, and hope. The assurance, these are your weapons, these are your armor church, not that cultural sniping comment that you're gonna put on Instagram or whatever, your hope, your faith and love, those are your weapons against a world that wants to snatch you away from Christ. You're a soldier, going out to war. Why would you ever leave your armor? When you have to constantly put on faith, hope, and love.

The third thing here that he tells us to do as we live in a current age and long for the age to come is to remember the good news, remember the good news. Let's take the imagery a step further. Let's say you're a soldier in a war torn, a war torn land, and you get a message through the radio or whatever that the war is over, that they have surrendered. But for some reason, the bad guys are still using guerrilla warfare, they're still attacking you as you're on your way out of there. Well, what's going on? Obviously they haven't gotten the message or they don't care, they just hate you and still, so they're still attacking you.

That is the world that we live in. The war is over, the good news has been declared. Jesus wins triumphantly, war over, but you still have to fight. That's the world that we live today. You hear the good news, you have to remember that evil will not win. Isn't that a good reminder for us this morning? Evil will not win. Whatever you're facing in your life, whatever temptations you're struggling with. I just want you to think about that. To, to own that today. Evil will not win. It will not win in my life, because Jesus is victorious.

Verses verse 9, check this out. It says, for God has destined, God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep, we might live with Him. This is at the heart of Christian belief that Jesus has died for us. I'm going to use an illustration that's been used a lot of times before. I don't think I've ever told it, but I've heard several other preachers use this illustration. There was a pastor about mid-century to the 1900s, named Donald Gray Barnhouse, and his, he had 3 children under 12, which hits me because I have 3 children under 12, and his, wife was diagnosed with cancer and shortly died. Thereafter. And so he's in Philadelphia, he's driving his kids to the funeral of his wife, of their mother. And he's trying to help think, think through ways to help them cope with what's going on and and to to direct them toward Christ.

And he looks out the window and he says, guys, do you see that large semi truck outside the window? What do people call those here, tractor trailers or 18 wheelers, I don't know. Everybody has a different one. This large semi truck outside the window. Would you rather get hit by the truck or the shadow of the truck? And his oldest responses, well, obviously the shadow, the shadow can't hurt you. And he says, That's what happened to your mother. You see your mother was struck by the shadow of death, while Jesus was struck by the truck itself. You see, when we die we might experience a physical death, but Jesus, when we place our trust in him, he experienced the spiritual death that we deserve. He experienced the full weight of the wrath of God. He went through the death of the semi truck so that we might have the shadow of death and life with him, eternally. That's what it means that he died for us. That he would experience the full weight of death, everything that death means, and he would defeat it. That the final enemy is death itself, and that Jesus is victorious. Death, where is your sting?

He is victorious. He always wins. We have won. If you find yourself in Christ today, you can know that your final enemy, the stinger has been pulled out. That you will not experience the full weight of that. Because Christ experienced it on your behalf. You'll never be separated from God.

And the fourth point that he gives us for how we can live together is just this, keeping everything else in mind that you're resisting the propaganda, that you're fighting the fight of faith, hope and love, and that you're remembering the good news of the gospel. He tells us this, stick together. Stick together.

In verse 11, he says, therefore encourage one another and build one another up just as you were doing. And I feel like this is just kind of Christianity one on one, but it's something that needs to be said that you cannot be a healthy Christian without living in community. Let me just say that one more time. You cannot be a healthy Christian without living in community. This is what Paul is telling us. He's saying, therefore encourage one another and build one another up. Well, if you're not living in community, how are you doing those things? You cannot be a healthy Christian if all you do is watch YouTube videos about Christianity. Those things are great. I'm so thankful we're on YouTube. Praise the Lord, it's great. You can't be a healthy Christian by yourself.

Now, let me dig a little bit deeper into that because some of us, we might be at church, you are the ones that are at church and so I wanna preach to who's here. A lot of times we take Christian small talk, and we call that community. But that's not what it means to build up one another. You see, flattery is like the artificial sweetener of true Christian encouragement. Flattery, it's, you know, sometimes we need to learn a little bit of flattery. It's like relational lubricant, OK, flattery is not a bad thing, but to flatter someone is to tell them something good about themselves. But not necessarily to build them up, but to, usually it's to get them to like you more. Is it not? Is that not the purpose of flatter? Hey, I, I really like your hair today. It's like. I'm the type of person that noticed that your hair looks nice. Don't you like me? It's it's kind of like a, a backwards, but true encouragement.

Christian encouragement is looking at someone, expressing gratitude for them or for something that the Lord's done through them. Explicitly saying a fruit of the spirit that they see in their life, telling them thank you for something they've seen. When I first started this church or it kind of came and and became a pastor of this church, I was sent out from City on the Hill, Brookline. And they did such a good job of this with me, and I am so thankful for it. They, on my last week, they wrote letters and and gave me encouragement that I cherish. I cherished so much that I couldn't find them this week, as I was trying to go back through those letters, that I asked Megan and I was like, have you seen these letters? She's like, I didn't know they did that. But it, it was true encouragement, and several of them were, were really heartfelt, and several of them weren't, but. But they, many were, and so we have to encourage one another and build one another up and that's what it means to, to stick in it together.

So I know this is a heavy topic. Day of the Lord, this is why we teach through books of the Bible, because I would probably never choose this topic to teach on Memorial Day weekend. But God wanted us to hear it today, and I guess that the final application is this, that you just consider the day of the Lord. Consider that this life isn't going to last forever. Consider that your life isn't going to last forever. I'm boldly encouraging you to consider your morality, your mortality, and maybe your morality also. But consider your mortality. The fact that you are going to die, and everyone else you know is going to die. And that this life is only for a temporary amount of time, and that we have this siren tune telling us to find all of our salvation, our hope, and in the things of this world, when we have a holiday at sea, a joyous reality with Christ in the life to come, and the age to come, and we are children of that light.

So that means to be a child of the light, this is in the passage, to be a child of the light means that you are an emissary of the age to come. It means you shine, we are a city on a hill. You shine the age of to come cause it's alive within you. The age to come is alive within you if you're in Christ, and you shine that into a world that's marked by darkness and evil. So you are the emissaries of the age to come into the current age, that the age to come is invading it, that Jesus came and inaugurated the kingdom, and one day he will come again.

And so I want you to consider how you need to change, how you need to be. Loving Christ or changing the way that you are resisting sin, or changing the way that you're considering who might need to hear the gospel and who might need your love during this time, and who might need a word of encouragement during this time. These are all the many application points of the sermon. Take it where you want, but after the, in just a moment we're going to take a sacred meal and be reminded of what Christ has done for us, that he has paid our penalty, that we might have life with him and that we might know him forever in the age to come, and there will be some prayer counselors back here if you would like to pray with someone. Maybe this whole idea of the age to come scares you. The day of the Lord, it scares you, and maybe you just need to trust in Christ for the very first time. We'd encourage you to do that.

And if you do that, we would encourage you to come to the baptism class so that you might be able to be baptized with us next week. We have two people probably that were looking at baptizing and and hoping to to make that more if you would be interested in that. If you would stand as we prepare to respond to the Lord in song.

Jesus, we long for the day that you would return and make the world new. But in the meantime, we pray that we would live out these true statements, this truth from First Thessalonians that we would resist the propaganda of the world around us, that we would fight with faith, hope and love. That we would live with the age to come in mind as we live out in this age, that we would remember the good news of Christ, and that God we would do it all together, that you would make us a church that builds up, that doesn't beat up, that is in sweet community with one another.

God, would you, would you take someone here today who has closed off to others in their life and open their heart both to you and to others here today, would you cause them to join a community group or to start a conversation or to just be here and really open themselves up, if they're in a group even. God, we pray that you would cause people to open up and to build up, so that we open up so that we might build them up, and so that we might encourage them. Christ, you see us and you love us the same, and we praise you for that. And as we take this meal, would you prepare our hearts? In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

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Ministry Associate Calvin Chu preaches from 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. Discussion points: Grief exposes the gaps in our hope and faith, our relationships should be centered on not wanting others to miss out on God’s goodness.

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Scripture reader: [1 Thessalonians 4:13-18] But we do not want you to be uninformed brothers about those who are asleep that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep.

For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive who are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore, encourage one another with these words.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: Good morning. Seeing you all this morning. It's like you could tell when things starting to change and it's warm out like New England becomes a little bit friendlier. I'm from here. I can, I can say things like that. There's this particular silence that follows bad news. I don't know if you guys know what I'm talking about. Like when you receive a call or someone texts you and they say a thing that requires what feels like all time and space to pause so you can process it. In that first moment following is a silence that is so loud because it's telling you that there's a fundamental shift in your reality. We're going to have to let you go. I want to end this relationship. And most aligned with our passage this morning: I'm sorry. They didn't make it.

That deafening silence is the first moment of grief. And when grief comes, and it will come for you. Something happens within us. All of a sudden what's most important, what's most pressing comes to light. Because friends, grief has this revelatory nature to it, right? It exposes parts about ourselves that we did not know existed. And it cuts through the facades and reveals what we value, what we fear, what we trust in. And through that grief, we experienced the the revelation of who we are and what who we are, our life has been truly based on and drawn towards. And we'll see in this morning's passage that it's true for the Thessalonian Church that Paul was writing to, and I hope and pray that the spirit shows us this morning that this is true for us too and hopefully we'll also see some hope to navigate such grief. With that being said, let's pray for our hearts to hear God's word this morning one more time. Let's pray.

Father God, with a room full of this many people, people perhaps watching online, maybe because they're on the road or stuff is happening, or maybe people in the future who may discover this on YouTube years and years down the road, God, I can only imagine. That there are people here who are experiencing grief. Or they will soon experience grief, or they've experienced grief and they thought it was over and and God that it that reminder comes back. Grief is hard, God, and, and God, you know us so well that you give us this passage that we can understand a little bit better losses. And so God I pray that as we look at your word this morning that what we hear, what we see through your word would plant seeds of hope and encouragement into our minds and in our hearts so that if and when those moments come we are ready to turn to you. So God, we thank you that you hear our prayers and pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.

So we are continuing our series through Paul's letter to the Thessalonian Church. he's basically for the past few weeks especially, we've been going through very particular situations that Paul has found out about, and I'm not gonna rehash the whole thing. Go to our YouTube page, go watch our, the other sermons if you haven't had chance to. They've been really, really helpful for me personally in my spiritual life, and I, I, I trust that they'll be helpful for yours as well. Basically what we're reaching right now is basically now Paul is now focusing on a very particular situation in the for the Christians at Thessalonica. Basically he's speaking directly to a group of believers there who were grieving. These Christians there weren't just sad though, they were sort of like unsettled. There was something within their, their hearts and their souls that was uncomfortable.

Basically people they loved had died. And Jesus had not returned yet and their minds began racing. They go, Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what if, what if all these promises that we've been hearing about that we heard, you know, Paul teaching us in the, the three weeks that, you know, the, the that he was here, what about all the things that we, we, we read in the scriptures, what about all of that? What's happening with, with those who died, my, my, my family, my friends, my loved ones, my neighbors? What about them? We looked at scripture together, we worshiped together and now they're not here. What if? What's happening? What about that?

And so Paul out of his abundant love for them. Wanted to address it not with vague cliches, but actually he wanted to address it with truth. Amen. The baby feels it. We see in two verses here verses 13 and 18 in particular. Let me read them and we'll keep diving deeper into this. But we do not want you to be uninformed brothers about those who are asleep that you may not grieve as others who do not have hope. Verse 18. Therefore encourage one another with these words. Paul's goal here is not merely theological education, and there is a time and place for that. This is not like a you should skip the apologetics thing. Like I don't, but absolutely go to it. There's a time and place for it, but what Paul is doing here is not just an academic expansion of the mind.

He's actually giving pastoral encouragement here. And their grief exposed this gap in their thoughts and actions, and Paul knowing what they lacked. Responded not just giving them information but giving hope, a prescription for exactly what ailed their souls. And this is not just the star that comes with missing loved one, though clearly that's part of it as when anyone passes, anyone dies that we know and we love that's the baseline but there's something more here that we see in verses 13 and 14 would say. But we do not want you to be uninformed brothers about those who have fallen asleep that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope for since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. Their grief was a fear but those who died, though they had followed Christ, their fear was that they were lost and gone forever.

See the culture around them at that time believed that death was the end. And that suspicion that that sort of doubt leaked into the church with some folks and it turned this normal sorrow into panic. They're thinking maybe maybe God's timing failed, right? and and and our loved ones slipped out of his reach as if time and death outsmarted God. But Paul addresses this in a way, oh, in this way specifically because their grief wasn't just emotional, it was also theological. And so that's why he responds with gospel logic. If Jesus was raised, he will raise them too. So this is good news, knowing that physical death is not the end. And that those in Christ will one day be reunited with him. And that would be that that would be good. We could definitely leave it here like, OK, yeah, I love that. Praise God like that there, there is an incredible hope here and we can build off of that.

But as you continue to read, there's actually more. Apparently even though among those who believed in the resurrection, there was a second fear. Look at verse 15 here. For this we've been declared to you by a word from the Lord that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep. See some thought that the dead would be a like a spiritual disadvantage here when Jesus returned. It's almost as if they imagined like those who were living had like first class seats. In God's plan, right, and, and those who, you know, those who were breathing had the first class seats. Those who were buried were like just outside the airport trying to flap their wings trying to get up there. They're like, oh like, like this is, and this is not like a, this is not like a, an arrogance there like oh we're so much better because we're alive. Their, their heart was was almost they were it was broken. They were sad like, oh no like we're gonna be able to experience something here that they're not gonna be able to because we're breathing because they're buried we're gonna get it and they're not.

And these beloved brothers and sisters in Christ. Not being able to experience God's the fullness of God's plan, it bothered them, it hurt them. And it really pained them to think that maybe they were missing out. So Paul sets the record straight that no one is ahead or behind in God's plan for his people. Whether you're alive or sleep in Christ, he will not forget you, He will bring you with him. See Paul shared these theological insights to comfort and encourage the believers at Thessalonica to inject hope where it was needed most. Because grief identifies, it exposes the gap in our hope. And what God does is when we have that moment it's his truth. It's his hope that comes and reaches the part where we need it the most.

So what does this have to do with us today? I think there's there's many lenses that we could look at this through, but I think there's two in particular, that are, are most helpful for, for, this message this morning. I think the first thing, framing a few questions, I think the first question is, we have to ask ourselves. Where is my hope really? Some in Thessalonica pinned their hope on being physically alive, right? They thought that being alive gave them a spiritual advantage and thus being dead gave them a spiritual disadvantage and that only the living had access to God's care and that the dead were beyond his reach.

But Paul points out that their grief exposed that what they truly valued and trusted. Which is being alive, having a heartbeat. Was what was the the you know what where their hope could rely on and then I can only imagine that if they thought that they go oh no if I if I die, then I'm gonna miss out on God's promises. See they trusted in being alive they trust it in their heartbeat. More than anything else. And so he told them that their hope should be instead in Christ, right? For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. Paul makes it very clear that hope comes through Christ. Because of his death and resurrection, there is a future hope. The dead in Christ are not excluded from God's plan.

In fact, as Paul said, he will bring them with him. And we read earlier in verse 13 where it says the flip where in the culture that because there was no recognition of Christ, those would grieve, those would mourn as those who do not have hope they did not believe in the power that was big enough strong enough to be able to consider the dead in plans and that's that's why they had no hope when their loved ones died. But verse 16 and 17 really drive this hope home, especially the last part of it, which I'll I'll emphasize as I read it. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command with the voice of an archangel and with the sound of the trumpet of God and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive who are left will be caught up together and with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and so we will always be with the Lord.

I took a pause here, I, I wanna recognize that this section might feel a little odd, especially if some of you who have like heard a sermon on this passage before and it was preached primarily for like an end times sort of lens like a it's got a logical sort of view of like what will happen, and I'm not saying that sermon was wrong or anything like that but. and it could be helpful, and I think there is probably stuff to, to draw out from, from some messages like that. But I think if we look at it look at this passage only through that lens, I, I think we miss Paul's miss Paul's main concern here because his focus is not like prophecy charts or you know anything like that. He's not trying to read signs of like when Jesus is coming back. That's not his goal here, right? Again, it's pastoral care. He writes to calm, grieving believers not to map out clouds and trumpets. And so today I, I just wanna say it because some of you be like, OK, well here he's gonna talk about what what the millennium is and what about this and what about that and what about, which is the better left behind? if you don't know that then don't even worry about it.

But, but so I just wanna say today I'm gonna stay with I think Paul's original intent, which is how Christ's resurrection comforts people. And so if you wanna look into the end times there there's no shortage of people who have thoughts and opinions on it, but we won't touch that this morning.

That being said, Jesus' death and resurrection doesn't just usher believers into the next life. It gives us hope for this one we're living right now. It's a good insight to leave with that we have that hope. But I do think Paul's point goes even further. He knew that the church of Thessalonica loved Jesus and trusted his word. Yet their hope hadn't reached every corner of their hearts. And so we taught them so that they would know more so that hope could reach further, could reach deeper. And the same is true for us.

Many of us believe that God is good. We sing songs, praising we clap our hands, we raise our hands. Maybe we even sway a little bit like, you know, like sometimes the spirit moves powerfully in some of us activating hips that we didn't realize we had. I get it I get it. When grief hits and we we discover those pockets where Christ's hope hasn't taken quite enough root or reached far enough, there's that awareness.

So a couple of years ago, I like was coming home from something I don't remember I think it was maybe work and I, I, as I pulled in, I saw like one single shingle, like roof shingle in my driveway and I saw it and I go, oh. That must be my neighbor's shingle. You know, and so I go, I, I should probably tell her and then so I look, you know, I'm here. I look over and I go. Her house is a little bit lower than mine. I go, that's weird. None of the shingles on this side seem to be missing. So I go, And so I go, huh, and I look over my house, I go. I wonder if it's mine. So I grab, grabbed my drone. And I, I, I, I go and I like do the whole thing and I go and what I see up there I don't just see a missing shingle. I see, I kid you not, bald spots in my roof.

Like I knew, I knew like when we got the the the our home inspection like we were gonna have to work on the roof at some point but like it's one of those things of like, OK, sure, it sounds good like you're gonna take away, like so much of my my life. But OK, I will think about it in the back of my mind that I have to fix this roof at some point, and I went up and I go, wow, so that's what it looks like underneath shingles. That is, that's very cool. And so not only that, so we hire a roofer and when he gets, he goes up there and he, he texts he text me a picture he goes Calvin, just so you know, under the shingle there's like parts of your roof, like the wooden part of your roof, it's missing and so we're going to need to like go and fill in these things and that was expensive.

But but for the sake of this is not to complain about how expensive roofs are but it's really that I realized that. From from seeing a single shingle on my driveway to really going and taking that deep inventory of my roof that the damage was a lot deeper than I thought it was. And that's what grief can do to us. That moment of you realizing there's a shingle in my life is that mine. And then you realize, oh yes, it is mine, and oh, it's perhaps a lot worse than I thought it was. Sometimes you look back and you go, it looked fine from the curb. But when you look underneath the shingles, when you look behind the the siding. It's maybe a lot worse than than you realized.

And that loss and that hardship exposes these weak spots. But those are the areas that we need the hope of Christ the most. And so while we hate grief, while no one signs up for, you know, as much as we like paying through like Spartan races or ultra marathons, no one is like saying take tear my life apart. No one is signing up for the grief 5K, never mind a marathon, but sometimes it feels like that. But that grief, it's revelatory. It exposes the gaps, exposes the damage. And it's at that point where very often. We see what's broken. We begin to fix it.

So friends, brothers and sisters in Christ. What does your spiritual roof look like? You might be holding it together. What's it look like underneath? And this is not a condemnation. This is not a how dare you? You need to get in line. This is not a condemnation, this is an invitation. To deepen your faith, to clarify the hope we have in Christ that will raise the dead. The same power that can do that can change your life. Can take you from pain and grief. Turn the morning into joy. But it begins with an assessment of where is my hope really.

So I want to invite you guys. This is the first application, and there, I'll tell you there's 2 dad jokes in my sermon today, OK? There's 2 dad jokes. This is the first one, OK? Don't get a home inspection, get a hope inspection. A real knee slapper, OK? That's the first one, OK? Oh man, that was, that one was, that one was bad. OK. Ask yourself honestly. Where have I placed my trust? What areas of my life do I need the hope of Christ the most? And maybe by God's grace, you'll catch the rot before the grief comes. Or but if not, then this is the first day. Of the rest of your life, of you turning it around. And that's the gift of such reflection, the gift that comes about being made into a new creation empowered by the Holy Spirit, able to look into one's own self to see and ask God, God, where am I really trusting in and we know that the Holy Spirit can help us see. We are not lost, we are not blind, we are not alone. He is with us and he will always be with us.

Here's the other question. The other big question is. What should we define the relationships that we have as Christians, for those of us who follow Jesus, what should be the the defining factor, the central factor of our relationships in this life? And if you think about what binds us together, there's kind of like a lot of things it could be shared hobbies we we do the same thing we play the same game it could be the same industry. Oh well, you're a, you're a this. I'm also that it could be the same life stage your parents trying to trade, you know, tips on how to get your kids from, you know, cleaning up after themselves or whatever it is, right? It could be the same zip code. Oh, we, we live, we both live in Medford or we both live in Somerville or wherever. Sometimes it's a mutual benefit, you know, hey, listen, I'm gonna have lunch with you because if I have lunch with you, I know that I'm be more position to be able to be up for that promotion, right? Maybe, you know, you're friends with the right parents and then you know, hey, well, why don't we carpool? Why don't we take turns?

There's a lot of reasons, there's a lot of reasons for us to connect with other people. But for those of us who belong to Jesus, should the central tie of our relationships be different? And I think this passage shows us what it looks like when the driving force of one's relationship is a desire that no one missed out on God's goodness. See, I, I, I didn't see this when I first read this passage and I, I think I've looked at it a few times. I think very often I, I think about, oh they, they missed their theology, the theological point it was fuzzy and, and Paul had to clean up the theological, you know, floor here.

But at the heart of it looking through the lens that Paul wanted to encourage them that there was pastoral care here, the driving force of the relationships that I go, wait, our loved ones, the ones who have died, like they might miss out on God's goodness like what how does that work? We believe in God we believe he's good we believe in his word but but what about them? That that's unsettling to me. I don't that's uncomfortable to me. How can they miss out? I want, I want them so desperately to experience the fullness of God's goodness in his plan. And so, basically, I think I, I feel like what Paul says here in the last verse is basically, I, I keep that fire, keep that energy. But pointing in the right direction.

Right after sharing all this theology from verses 13 through 17, he ends with verse 18. Therefore, encourage one another, not just period full stop there, he says encourage one another with these words. He talking about you have this situation that you are feeling. And I've I've given you deeper truth so that the hope of Christ can go further into who you are, all the corners that they hadn't reached yet. And now that you know that. That desire to see people experience the fullness of God's goodness. Keep going. Keep encouraging one another. Paul doesn't slap their wrists, he enlarges their vision. Go ahead and weep, but do it with the whole gospel in view. Let the empty tomb reframe how we see the cemetery. And let that resurrection confidence overflow into the way you talk with one another, how you treat one another, how you love one another, how you care for one another.

Remind one another of the promises that cannot be broken. Especially during hardships when it's so easy to forget. That is a grief seasoned with theology and transformed into a mutual encouragement. And to be clear, just to be very clear, encouragement in Christ isn't always a pat on the back. Because we share the same hope for those who follow Christ, we can also call each other back to it. Sometimes the most hopeful sentence can sound like, brother, you're drifting. Sister, I, I think you need to consider what you're doing and stop. Hope both comforts and corrects as we saw Paul do here.

In other words, Christian friendships should be a hope share. Is the second dad joke. As in we should be lift drivers, as in like lift each other up, hope share, lift drivers. No? OK, that one wasn't as, that's OK. Christian friendship should be a hope share we we should be going around being vehicles to drive each other to greater hope. And there should be a pledge, a motivation that says I want you to know Christ to taste the joy of his return. I want to walk with you in this life and by his grace into the next. To live pointing others as the end of verse 17 promises that we will always be with the Lord.

And it's really easy to think of this as a call to evangelism, right? It's like, oh yeah, like my motivation should be that everyone gets to know Christ and, and I think that there's definitely fuel there and I, I think that that would not be a bad thought process and the Holy Spirit is motivating you to share the good news with your neighbors and your coworkers and your family then then that's the Holy Spirit working in you and and we pray for you that you would do that with great love and great success for the for God's glory. But I think for all of us. Primarily, it's a call to examine our existing relationships. In the same way we're asking what where is your hope really I think what really drives your relationships. Imagine friendships, relationships, marriages, small groups, interactions in our neighborhood where the deepest motive is that people experience God's goodness.

Friends, I Doesn't that sound like a community worth belonging to? One where we grieve but with hope, where we comfort and have accountability, where we are theologically encouraged and informed, where we have vulnerability and yet are unafraid, where no one walks alone or unchecked with a leaky roof. Brothers and sisters of Christ, this is only possible because Christ died and resurrected to make us a new creation. It's only possible when we continue to invite the hope of Christ into the furthest reaches of who we are and take root.

And I'm excited to see how CoaH continues to grow as we aim to live as hope share drivers. OK, but the 5 out of 5 stars. I would recommend. Let me pray, and then I'll invite Fletcher to lead us in communion.

Father God, thank you so much. Thank you so much that you give us this vision of a community of a life that is centered around the hope of Christ. That it is so driven and motivated by you, God, that it changes everything. And so God, for those of us who are grieving, maybe we have lost someone recently or maybe we are worried about a loved one. Help us to know that we can grieve. It is OK to grieve, but God, you want us to grieve as those who have hope, knowing what Christ has done for us. God, for those of us who may experience grief in some way, shape or form soon, my prayer is the same. Would you continue to plant deeper roots of your hope into our hearts? we pray all this in Jesus' name, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from 1 Thessalonians 4:9-12 (read for us in Amharic) about sanctification in our social lives and work lives. Discussion points: The gospel transforms our social lives as God teaches us how to love one another, work does not satisfy our search for identity or our search for meaning, our spiritual life spans all of life rather than just Sunday morning.

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Scripture reader: The scripture reading today is taken from 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, verse 9 to 12. I'll be speaking, I'll be reading it in my mother tongue of Amharic, and you're more than welcome to follow along on the screen and the English version. And when I finish reading, I'll say this is the word of the Lord, and please join me by saying thanks be to God.

[1 Thessalonians 4:9-12] Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, 10 for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more, 11 and to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, 12 so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: All right, good morning, my name's Fletcher. I'm the lead pastor here. It's a joy to welcome you and hopefully you're, up and awake and lively. I know yesterday was Porchfest. A lot of people were walking around for Porchfest, so you know, some, some folks might be a little tired this morning, but it's sunny outside, OK, so let's rejoice. This passage today, we're, we're, we are working our way through a series on the book of of 1 Thessalonians and in 1 Thessalonians, the whole first half of the book is dedicated to kind of explaining to us what the gospel is and who Jesus is and, and reminding the Thessalonians of what they had already received from Paul when he planted the church there.

Now the second half of this letter, like many of Paul's letters, shifts in tone and starts to talk about how you live. About your faith and so it's very helpful for us, but then we also have to go back and be reminded of the first couple chapters of First Thessalonians. We can't leave it alone. We have to kind of read it as a whole. The letter was meant to be read in one sitting, honestly, it was meant to be read at a church gathering where you read it out loud to everybody in the church. And so while we're going verse by verse, at the same time, we need to think about the whole letter together.

Today we're getting to this aspect where we're just kind of continuing what we did last week. Last week Paul started talking about sanctification, which is this Christianese word for how a Christian grows, and this week we're continuing the conversation about sanctification. Growth as a Christian can be frustratingly slow. Amen. Yeah Sometimes when I think about the things that. I struggle with today, the sins that I struggle with today. Oftentimes they're just like a more grown up version of the sins that I struggled with 20 years ago. I just see in my own life that it is more slow than what I would like for it to be oftentimes, and I think another aspect of Christian growth or sanctification that's difficult is the lack of metrics for Christian growth.

If you're familiar with thinking about metrics, it's just what do you use to decide if someone's growing. Like in my house we have this, this wall, maybe you're familiar with a wall like this in your own home, where every year on your birthday. You get to mark how tall you are now for me and mom we might not do this anymore because it'd be the same mark every year, hopefully Lord willing, we're not going down too quickly, but for our kids sometimes it's very remarkable. It's like, oh my gosh, can you believe how much you've grown in the past year.

For the past 4 years solid, Shepherd, my middle child, has been making considerate gains. If you've seen this kid, I promise you we feed him normal food. Yesterday he ate 5 hot dogs for lunch, OK, but we feed him normal food. He, he's 8 years old and he's like, you know, 7 ft tall, but we, he, he just has been making these gains and every year I say he's gonna pass his older sister Kennedy. She's 3 years older than him and every year he doesn't because she continues to grow also.

And so we, we have this metric though. It's easy to see how you grow in height. You can just see it, you can see children growing. But with your spiritual life, how do you even measure this thing? Most of us only have like one point of reference for spiritual growth, one metric, and it's how long do you pray, right? But isn't it kind of wrong to measure all of spiritual growth in like a prayer endurance test? Like, I think there's probably a little bit more to spirituality than how long you can pray and how much of your Bible you can read. At least I hope that there is, because I'll be honest with you. I have children, and my prayer life is maybe not as vibrant as it has been at other times in my life when I had less responsibility. There were times in my life where I could spend as long as I wanted in prayer, and you would think, Fletcher, you're the pastor, don't we pay you to do that? And the answer is yes, but there are other responsibilities too. I have lots of responsibilities and so maybe I'm not winning the prayer endurance test quite in the same way that I may have used to win that endurance test.

And so what other metrics do I have? What other ways do I think about how I grow as a Christian and I think that Paul outlines several different ways for us to grow and oftentimes we think about our Christian life as just like what we do at church, what we do during the quiet time, but Paul is basically telling. Thessalonians, your Christian life invades all the different parts of your life, and here's some ways to live out your Christianity at work. Here's some ways to live out your Christianity with the way that you relate with other people, with your sexuality. All of these different things are aspects of your growth as a Christian.

So last week, we started to cover over this, and we talked about sanctification and how growth is oftentimes as a Christian. We like to think of it as linear, but like, you know, you start here and then you just keep on growing until you die and then you shoot off to heaven or however that works. I do know how that works. It's not however that works. That's a different sermon, um. But, the, it's more like the stock market, where, you know, there's days where it's down, days where it's up, but in general, over time, the market grows and in general, over time, Christians are to grow in a similar kind of fashion.

And last week we gave the first illustration of sanctification and sex, OK? So if you weren't here, then you, you, you know, you're spared the, the sex sermon, I suppose. So this week we're going to talk about the next two. So he basically gives three different illustrations of ways that we grow. And the first one is the gospel transforms your sex life, covered, OK, last week. The, the next two that we're going to cover this week are 1, the gospel transforms your social life, and 2, the gospel transforms your work life. So the gospel transforms your social life, and the gospel transforms your work life.

Point number one, how the gospel transforms your social life. Now let me be really clear before I start this, because I've heard too many pastors in too many churches do this and make a mistake with it. What they end up saying is that the gospel gives you a social life. Oh, you want a social life? Do you want friends? Are you lonely? Come to church. And that's not wrong. If you are lonely, and if you want friends, church is a great place to meet people. It's a great place to connect. But when we make. Church is the goal of church to build community. We're missing the goal of church, which is to grow an intimacy with Christ and to grow closer to God. Yes, community is an aspect of it, but it's not all of it.

And I know this too, it's not the best selling point for the church always, because I know lots of people who do not go to church who have wonderful social lives. Lots of people, it's not that is not a selling point for everyone. It's a selling point for some, but not for everyone. So I just wanna be careful with that. I'm not trying to say it will give you friends. I'm just trying to say it transforms the way that you relate with your friends.

Let's look at verse 9. Now now concerning brotherly love. Ah, we come to a Greek word that everyone in this room knows, Brotherly love. Philadelphia, there we go. It is literally Philadelphia, the city that does not represent its name. sorry, it's funny. I'm looking around at those from Philly and they're like, ha ha that's true, but it, it is. One of those words that almost everyone understands outside of the New Testament, the word Philadelphia is almost exclusively used, and not in reference to the city, but almost exclusively used to talk about the love between siblings. To talk about this this brotherly or sisterly this sibling kind of love. Now I'm an only child, so that is not something that I know firsthand, but I get to parent siblings, and this is what I get to observe about siblings in the way that they love one another, that siblings can annoy one another without mercy. And yet unconditionally love one another at the same time. That siblings can annoy one another without mercy, and yet somehow still love one another unconditionally. But never admit it. Never admit it. That's the key.

This past week I was looking through the New York Times app and I don't literally get paper to my home. Do people still do that? I don't know, but I was looking through the New York Times and there was a whole article on the love between siblings and how the love between they're finally studying this thing. Most psychologists have thought about only the love of parents towards children and how that shapes children and their development, but recently there's been more research into the love between siblings and how that develops people and what they found is astonishing what they've actually found is that the relationship between siblings oftentimes has just as much if not more, impact on someone than the relationship with their parents. True? Those of you who have siblings, especially if you're a younger sibling, you're looking at your older siblings and trying to figure out life.

Brotherly love, Philadelphia, sisterly love, whatever it is, sibling love, Philadelphia. It's very important to be a Christian, is to be a part of a family. That's what he's telling us from the beginning, a family that knows no ethnic boundaries, the way that all of our families do.

This past summer I was on sabbatical. I took, a longer trip to France, which was really fancy, very nice. I wanted to prepare myself as much as I could. I studied the language like with as much dedication as I possibly could. We dressed a little bit more fancy during that time, OK? You gotta, you gotta look the part, you know, I learned how to say ooh la la and that type of thing and no matter how much we tried, we still felt like we stuck out, you know, we're Americans, we're loud, we lean on things. It's just uh. But there was one place where we did feel like home and it was church we went to church every week that we were there and it was astonishing how we could go into this place where we are foreign everywhere we look different just by our being yet. It feels so familiar. Like we don't speak the language very well, but yet we're loved by people, even when they can't communicate with us very clearly.

Being part of a Christ being a Christian means that you're part of a family that spans cultures that you have siblings all over the world, which is one of the reasons why we read the the scripture in different languages so we can be reminded that this is not just for us, it's for people all over the world and it's one reason why we. Strive to have a community that is multi-ethnic, multicultural so that we can be reminded that we're not alone, that we are bound by Christ, that we have become brothers and sisters in that way.

Verse 9 now concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you. What a great compliment from Paul, you know, I don't even need to write to you about this for you yourselves have been taught by God how to love one another. So what does Paul mean when he says that you've been taught by God how to love one another? He could have several things in mind. He could be thinking about the new commandment that Jesus gave the disciples on the night that he was betrayed, and when he said in John chapter 13, a new commandment I give you, that you love one another just as I have loved you. You also are to love one another. But by by this all people will know you are my disciples if you have love for one another. He could be thinking about that.

Paul could also be thinking about. Their own experience of the love of God. And how experiencing the love of God enables you and empowers you to love other people in the way that God has loved you. Because they've been so loved by God, they can love others. I think often times when we talk about what it means to be a Christian, we can get lost in all of the theology of the gospel, we can get lost in all the details and we forget the very foundation of the thing that draws us together, which is the fact that there is a Creator God who reigns over all of the universe and loves us. That he loves us and has poured out his love to us.

In fact, one of the things that's most foundational to who God is, is the fact that he is love. First John chapter 4. In this love, in this, the love of God was made manifest. Among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, that we might live through him. God has always existed as love. This is one of those divine mysteries of the Bible, but God did not exist. As a, that's why the Trinity is so important, because he has always had someone to list, to love. He has existed as one God, three persons throughout all eternity past.

And so through eternity past, God has been loving someone else. He's been pouring out his affection, the Father upon the Son, the Son upon the Father, the Spirit upon the the Son and the Father. It's like that that Spider-Man meme, OK, where they're all just point. Each other they've been loving one another, the three members of the Godhead throughout eternity past. And so when Jesus comes on the scene, it's not something new. Look at it, it said, in this, the love of God was made manifest among you. It preexisted this time, but it was revealed. This, this word for made manifest could also be translated, revealed. The word of God, the love of God was revealed among you. In the person of Jesus Christ as God sent His Son into the world.

The love that we experience from God is an extension of the love that God has experienced throughout eternity passed among himself. In the Trinity. Because we've been loved in this kind of way, because we've experienced the deep eternal wells of the love of God, we can in turn love one another. Just a few verses later in 1 John chapter 4, beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

I love this quote, and just talking about how the love of God teaches us to love one another. Robert Murray M'Cheyne, he's a Scottish pastor, put it this way, from a long time ago. He says, for every look at yourself, take 10 looks at Christ. He is altogether lovely. Such infinite majesty, and yet such meekness and grace, and all for sinners, even the chief. Live much in the smiles of God, bask in his beams, feel his all-seeing eyes settled on you in love, and repose in his almighty arms. Let your soul be filled with a heart ravishing sense of the sweetness and excellency of Christ and all that is in him.

Friends, if you want to grow as a Christian, this is where you start. You have no reason for me to write to you about brotherly love, because you've experienced the love of God in such a rich and profound kind of way that it has motivated you, inspired you, and allowed you to love one another. And so if you want to grow, you have to sit in the love of God. Maybe not literally sit, but you have to bask in it. You have to set your eyes upon him, be reminded of the love of God for you. Day after day. Verse 10 for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia, but we urge you brothers to do this more and more.

If you remember last week Paul gave us another one of these commandments. He said, to avoid sexual immorality as you are doing, but do it more and more. And this week he says, you are exemplary and brotherly love. Do it more. It's like you made an A on the test. Make an A plus keep going, keep making those A's, whatever it is. He's basically saying no one arrives. You don't arrive in Christianity. The nature of Christian love is that it is always practiced but never perfected. And so do it more and more.

And I think the same could be said for our church. When I look around in our church, I see a church that is exemplary in the way that they love one another. But I maybe I can give you just a couple of challenges or encouragements with that just looking at our church where we're at right now and and where we're we need to go. I think that there are many people who do a great job of loving one another, so many and some who are especially, especially exemplary in the love for one another. But I will say that our church is growing, and this one of the challenges always with the church that is in a city, that's transient, that's growing, where it feels like half the people here feel new. Where you don't feel the ownership to be the one that exemplifies what it means to be a Christian.

And so I'll just say this, if you've been here since 2024, you're no longer new. And you now are being called by reaching out and being exemplary in the way that you love one another. And we're all called to this. We can't a couple people can't do it. It's something that we as a church have to do together, and there's several people who are newer to the church that are on the fringes of what we're doing or who just feel left out at times that we have to make a step toward to reach and to love. And so I'm not saying you're doing a bad job. I'm saying you're doing a great job. Keep it up, do it more and more. And I'm just trying to give you a practical way that you might want to do that and think about it.

So the gospel transforms your social life. It gives you this ability to love people even when they might wrong you, when they might not be like you, when they might not be into the same things as you, it transforms your social life.

But the gospel also transforms your work life. So he's just from talking about how we love one another to how we work. Oftentimes we present Christianity as something that people do in their time off. It's like you come to, you come to church, you, might pray in the morning or get together with a community group in the evening, but rarely do we talk about the way that the gospel or Jesus interacts with your 9 to 5. What does being a Christian mean for the time when you're not in your time off?

I love the way that Dorothy Sayers puts this, this she's a novelist in the early 20th century, and she says it like this. How can anyone remain interested in a religion which seems to have no concern with 9/10 of his life? The church's approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to extorting, exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours and to come to church on Sundays. What the church should be telling him is this, that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables. She goes on to say, I'm sure that the tables in Nazareth were crafted quite finely. And shorter than ours. They, they sat on the ground.

Most people in our city approach work in one of two different ways. We have a tendency to overvalue our work. I've been doing ministry in Boston for 13 years this Sunday actually, 13 years. Thanks. And and if I observe anything is that people don't work to live, they live to work here. A lot of times people don't care how much they make, they want to make a lot of money, don't get me wrong, but it matters a lot more to folks. How many papers they get their name on. How many rungs on the corporate ladder they can climb, where they can end up in their career, who respects them, what their title is, what letters are after their name. These are all the things that tend to matter more to people here.

And so often times our careers can just be a veiled attempt to build our identity. Who am I? How do I know I'm not a lazy bum. I have a good career. I'm respected in my workplace, but usually what happens when people do that for long enough, they, they might have some success and Boston tends to attract people that have have success in the workplace, but then. They either get burned. Or they get burnt out. You get burned or you get burnt out. And then you oscillate to the other side of the work life, where it says, I don't care about building my identity anymore. I'm just gonna collect a paycheck and have hobbies, and that's gonna be my life. I'm gonna travel, I'm gonna take my time off. I'm gonna collect the paycheck, move on with my life. And what happens there? You get bored.

And so you go back to step one, like, OK, no, I have to find my identity in my work because this is so boring for me to just live for my hobbies. Does this feel familiar to anybody the cycle, I think that we, most of us have gone through this at one time.

As Christians, we have to recognize that the purpose of our work isn't just to make money, and it's definitely not to build your identity on your career. Instead, the purpose of our work is to reflect our Lord, to glorify Him, and to fulfill the commandment to cultivate the earth. If you go back to the original creative mandate for God that he gave to Adam and Eve in the garden, Genesis chapter 2, all the way back, we see that he gives them this creative mandate to to not only be fruitful and multiply, we talk about that one pretty often, be fruitful and multiply, but in the same breath, he says, To fill the earth and subdue it. What does it mean to subdue the earth? He's talking about bringing order out of chaos, contributing to society we were created to work often times we think about work as this bad thing that we have to do, but we were created to work. It's not a result of the fall. Work existed before the fall and work will exist into eternity. It will be without frustration. It will be without sin. But it will continue to exist.

We were created to cultivate the earth, to make contributions. And so as Christians, we're able to say, work is important, but it's not everything. And we're able to love our jobs and not expect our jobs to love us back. Because oftentimes we want our jobs to love us back, but then when we do, we dedicate religious fervor to our job that only God can receive and, and do with well. So Paul has 3 commands in 1 Thessalonians that reflect everything I've just taught you. First, verse 11, they're all in verse 11, and then he has the results of what happens after that.

Verse 11, and aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands as we instructed you. So first, aspire to live quietly. He's basically saying, be ambitious to not be ambitious. It's like a little irony that's happening there. Aspire to live quietly. Don't. Don't let your job control your life. That's basically what he's saying. Don't let your job control your life. Don't live to work. Just do your job. Don't feel the need to constantly climb the corporate ladder. It won't save you. It won't give you the satisfaction you're looking for. Don't give in to the temptation to make recognition what you live for. Aspire to live quietly. It's not wrong to climb the corporate ladder, but if that becomes your sole goal, then you're going to have a soul sickness.

Second, he says, mind your own affairs. Basically mind your own business. Don't worry. In fact, I think the more literal translation is mind your own business. it's just probably not appropriate for the Bible to say mind your own business. Don't worry about what other people think about you or say about you. Do your job, get in, get out, do a good job as if to the Lord. Mind your own business. We can get so wrapped up in the opinions of others.

Lastly, work with your hands. This is an interesting commandment. I will volunteer and say that I've had one job in my entire life where I worked with my hands. I have been a desk worker for my entire life, but when I was in high school, I, took a job with my uncle who's an auto mechanic, and I worked with my hands in his shop, and I learned a lot of important things like how a push broom works and, how to look busy when you're not busy. And how your employer has to pay you to go to the bathroom and learned these important things at that job and at the end of that job, my uncle said you might be better cut out for desk work. And I think he was right. He said, you have lots of books since and no common sense. I, you, you move on now.

I don't think that the passage is saying that you have to work with your hands. He's not saying, hey, white collar folks, go get blue collar jobs. I think what he's saying is work hard and don't let any work be below you because in this ancient culture, manual labor was oftentimes seen as something that slaves will do. And so, most people thought it was below them to do manual labor. And so what he's saying is, no, manual labor is not below you. Do the work in front of you. Get, get your hands dirty, do the work that you have in front of you. Don't be afraid of the dirty work. Be humble in your work.

So those are the 3 commandments, and then Paul tells us why these are important. He says, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and depend on no one. So that you may walk properly before outsiders and depend upon no one. Show of hands, who here hates group work as much as I do? Hopefully I hate group work. It was, it was the worst. that's why I don't do it anymore. I do group work all the time, but, I. I hated group work and the reason why I hated group work is because I'm highly strong and will if I feel like someone's being lazy, I'm not gonna take a B, OK? I'm gonna go in there. I'm gonna get all the work done by resonate a little bit where you feel like other people are just riding your coattails the whole time you did the the group project.

Never mind the fact that that's basically the gospel, OK? That Jesus does all the work and we get all the benefit, OK? That's basically what we believe. I don't like it, OK? but what he's saying here, Is that You have to do your job because we all work in jobs that have group work for the most part. And if you aren't contributing, that you're a bad testimony to the gospel. That you are a bad person. You people will see you as a bad person if you don't contribute to society.

And so what he says is that you may walk properly before outsiders if you wanna walk properly before outsiders, you have to do your job and do it well. It's part of you have to have a strong work ethic and be dependent upon no one. As Christians, we, we want to be able to contribute to society. It it's interesting because he's like, you could make money, do it, be dependent upon no one. Don't be in debt if you can avoid it. Don't like be out there begging if you can avoid it. He's not, he's not making a condemnation upon unemployment, don't get me wrong, sometimes we go through times like that, but if you were able to work, work. It seems like in the Thessalonian church, there were some who thought that Jesus would return very soon, and so they quit working. They gave up.

But he's saying, no, part of your creative mandate is to work and to work hard. And as Christians, we have more reason than anyone to work hard. 1 Corinthians 10. So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God. And so when we work, we're doing it with this glory of God in mind. Now, how do you do it? I'm just gonna conclude here, OK. You might be in a job that you feel like doesn't have purpose, and so you, a lot of times when you preach this type of sermon, people are like, that's it. I'm gonna find the most purpose-filled job I can find. I'm quitting what I'm doing, I'm going to seminary. I'm a pastor now. That's not the calling on most of you, OK? That was the calling for me, but not for most of us.

There's plenty of ways that you can contribute to society and be a Christian without being a pastor. And anything that contributes to society can be like this. Something as simple as driving the street sweeping truck through Somerville. I'm grateful for that. Our streets are clean. It's nice. You know what I'm really grateful for? Air conditioning. You know who you have to, I wish it was on now, um. You know what you have to have to have air conditioning. You have to have engineers contributing to society. You have to have people inventing these things. You have to have chemists thinking about the Freon and everything that goes with that. You have to have the HVAC repair guys praise the Lord for them who maybe one will answer my phone call if we just praise them enough.

You have to have people contributing to society. I'm thankful for the Department of Public Works person who empties the trash in the in the park so that I have somewhere to throw my coffee cup when I'm done. Whatever you are doing, try to find a creative purpose for it. The way that it helps people contributes to society, and it will give more meaning and purpose to your job.

Now sometimes I do see employers abuse this. Has anybody ever experienced this where they're they're like, you're here for a purpose, think of all the lives you're going to save, work harder. That's why we work 80 hour weeks here. And it's an abuse on the truth that we know that's why it's so effective because it is the truth it's the best way to be motivated, but when you twist that and manipulate it, it becomes an abuse and that's not the way that God would want that to happen, so you have to protect yourself from that also.

But as a Christian, your work, your primary purpose can't be to simply make money, you'll get bored and miserable, and it's definitely cannot be to build an identity for yourself. You'll burn out and only experience pain. You have to instead see your work as a calling. And to do everything to the glory of the Lord. To work for his glory and his pleasure and contribute to society, even if it's not and and use your work as you can, as the Lord gives you money, you contribute to those who are in need. As the Lord gives you opportunity, you share the gospel in work. There's ways to do these things in the workplace, but also just the work that you do brings glory to the Lord, even if it doesn't feel sacred, maybe very secular, but it brings glory to the Lord.

So to wrap things up, you cannot measure your spiritual growth simply by looking at your, your prayer chart, or how many boxes you check off your, your reading list that month. One, you have to look that those are some indicators you need to do those things, but. Your spiritual life spans all of life, and that's what Paul's saying, that your spiritual life spans all of life, that you look at your relationships, the way that you love others, the way that you include others. You look at your work, the way that you work hard with your whole life, that it all matters to God, that what you are doing from your 9 to 5, matters to God. It's not good news. Good news.

Each week we take a sacred meal to be reminded of the way that Jesus has given his life for us, that we might live in response to him, and we call it communion or Eucharist or Lord's supper, whatever you might want to call it. But on the night that he was betrayed, Jesus broke a piece of bread and he he said, this is my body broken for you. And then he took a cup and he said, this is my blood shed for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And so each week we do this, we're reminded that Jesus is with us all the time. Not just here at church, but 9 to 5, the Holy Spirit is with us, that he matters and that our work matters to God.

And the way that we, and, and so if you're a believer here, we encourage you to come and receive this because Christ's body has been broken for you but let's take a moment to prepare our hearts to receive this meal, and I'll invite you to stand as the band makes their way, back on the stage and and pray with me.

Father, we, we thank you for the good news of Jesus, that we've been set free from our sin, and God, would you help us to be people who love well, who live exemplary, who love you in the way that we work. That our work would bring you glory. God help us to find our purpose in our work, even if it's small, even if it's menial, help us to find our purpose in our work. And God, we pray for those who feel like their work doesn't have a purpose. We pray that you would help them to figure out the best way to use their life and to leverage it for you. And God, we, we thank you for this communion meal. We pray that you would be present with us during this time. And God, we, we thank you that that you have given your son, you've poured out your love upon us, that we might receive the love of God and be a part of that. And so we ask all of this in Christ's name, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8. Discussion points: Sanctification is about pleasing God; sanctification is slow, progressive but not constant growth; our creator defines what is good about our sexuality; living to please God is more satisfying than living for your desires.

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Scripture reader: [1 Thessalonians 4:1-8] Finally then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. For what you, for you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God. That no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you, for God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore, whoever disregards this disregards not man but God, who gives His Holy Spirit to you.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: All right, good morning. It's good, good to see everybody this morning. My name's Fletcher. I'm the lead pastor of the church. last week I was out of town. My, my family took a vacation to Southern California, and, that was a great time and I, the whole time there actually when we first got there, I took a shower in the hotel and immediately start breaking out into the hives, because I guess I was allergic to the soap or something like that so I had to start taking prednisone in the middle. This this trip which was terrible just to combat these horrible hives and I wore long sleeves so I have no sun like the sun didn't touch me in sunny California and then yesterday I coached my son's soccer game and I'm one of those guys who I don't really tan. I just kind of burn and freckle. That's like the pattern of of skin, that I have and, yesterday I was coaching my son's soccer game for an hour in Massachusetts and I got sunburned, so, I'm not tanned from vacation. I'm tanned from just stupidity of standing in the sun for an hour.

But anyways, here we are in First Thessalonians and I know that's what everybody was asking like, oh, he looks tan, not really it, OK, not really it. for the past several months we've been working our way through a letter in the New Testament written by Paul called First Thessalonians, and what we find in Paul's letters, and this is true in almost all of Paul's letters, is that the first half of the letter includes the truths of the gospel, what we are to believe as Christians, and the. The second half of the letter includes all the practical implications of the truths of the gospel. So we almost always starts with declaration and moves to exhortation. He starts with the indicatives of the gospel and moves to the imperatives of the gospel. That is our pattern for how these books work.

So today, in 1 Thessalonians, the difference between chapter 3 and chapter 4 is that chapter 3 was still in that encouragement, that, that declaration, that doctrine part of the book, and chapter 4 starts the practical implications. How do you live these things out? And so the, the topic of concern for Paul today is how do you grow as a Christian? How do you take these things that you've heard and apply them to your heart and live them out? How does it actually change who you are and the way that you live?

The word that he uses is a long Christianese word that some of us might not be super familiar with, but it's sanctification. It literally means to sanctify or to make holy. The process of sanctification in the life of the believer is to grow in your faith, to become a deeper and more familiar with who God is type of believer. We like to think about the process of sanctification like a steady climb, right? Like you become a Christian and then you just become a little bit better of a Christian every day until you eventually make it to heaven, right?

That's the way we usually think about the process of sanctification, but the process of sanctification looks more like the S&P 500 or the stock market. Which, you know, you, you might become, you might have your, your, your, what is it when you go public, your IP or whatever it is. I don't know what it is, your IPO there we go. Sorry, I've worked in a church my whole life. OK, guys, you might have your IPO we're not doing one of those around here. But you might have your IPO that might be when you become a Christian, and then you like to, even I think companies are deceptive enough to themselves to believe that they're just gonna see growth until then, but then your president puts tariffs on you and your stocks go down and all the different things happen and the stock market.

If you look at it on a day to day basis, It can look really discouraging, can't it? Like you look at it today, it doesn't look very good. But then, year over year, decade over decade, the market grows. Always, it, it like historically that is what happens for the past 100 years, whatever, that's what happens year over year, decade over decade, the market grows, so you keep investing your money even when it takes a dip, you keep investing your money. That's how the process of sanctification is day to day you're gonna see setbacks day to day you're not gonna be the person you want to be. But the process of sanctification is year over year, decade over decade, you see growth. And Paul knows this. This is why he says, in in chapter 4, what we're looking at here.

Verse 1. Finally then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. So when he assumes that you're not doing it perfectly, you're doing it, but you can do it more. And more The process of sanctification is this gradual growth that happens to us. So here's how the sermon works today, OK? we're gonna start with this big picture view, zoomed out. Of sanctification and talking about what to be sanctified means because that's what Paul's talking about. But then what Paul does is he takes the camera and he zooms it in and he says let's look at one aspect of your sanctification which is your sexuality and then we're gonna zoom back out and talk about some principles that work for all of life, OK? So I, I got everybody's attention now we're gonna talk about sex, it's coming, OK? But sanctification, sex, sanctification in sex, sanctification again. OK? That's, that's how we're going today.

In this very first verse that we just read. We learn a lot about sanctification, at least 3 things. I'm gonna highlight these 3 things that we learned about sanctification in this one verse. There's at least 3 things. There's probably more than that. First, sanctification is not optional. You cannot Simply become a Christian and then coast off of that for your entire life. It is something that you must grow in. It is not optional. When Paul was in Thessalonica, we've talked about this lots of times. Paul only spent like 3 weeks in Thessalonica before an angry mob ran him away to Berea, and then they were so angry with him that he, they chased him to Berea and ran him away across the ocean to to Athens. He got on a boat to go to Athens. Not really an ocean to sea.

But during his short time in Thessalonica, Paul had to teach the Thessalonians everything they needed to know about Christianity. He arrived at Thessalonica, and yeah, he was teaching at the synagogue, so they had some basic idea of the Old Testament and who God was, but they did not have any, they'd never heard the name Jesus. So Paul is here. He has to teach these people everything there is to know about being a Christian, everything about Jesus, everything about doctrine. And he only has 3 weeks.

Can you imagine designing a course to teach someone everything they need to know about Christianity in 3 weeks? And it can't be a full-time course. It's your part-time course. It's like after work and on the weekends and that sort of thing, because Paul had a job, the Thessalonians had a job. He taught them everything they needed to know for the most part. That's why he's writing letters to fill in the gaps. But he taught them, he spent time teaching them that they have to follow Jesus. That they have to obey him more and more. He prioritized that. It's not an optional thing. It's not, maybe we'll get to that. It's, that is what it means to be a Christian. To be a Christian means not only that you believe in who Jesus is, but that you follow him as your Lord and Savior, that you obey what he has to say to you.

Sanctification, the second thing we learned about sanctification is that sanctification is about pleasing God. It's about pleasing God. Look at it. It says. Finally then, brothers, we ask and urge you and the Lord Jesus, that you, that as you receive from us, how you ought to walk and to please God. Pleasing God. We can oftentimes think about the Christian life, not so much as pleasing God, but as appeasing God. We think about God as someone who has a lot of rules. And that we have to obey his rules to appease him, to make him happy with us. But there's a big difference between living to please God and living to appease God. When you appease someone, you don't necessarily do it out of love, but when you live to please someone, it's based off of the love that you have received from them, and the love that you have in return for that person.

And so what Paul is saying is that sanctification is not just about following the rules, it's about living this life of love with God to please him. You want to bring him pleasure because you love him, because he loves you first. This is the order of sanctification. Third thing that we learned about sanctification is that sanctification is progressive. As we mentioned earlier, it's something that you do more and more. It's slow. Amen. Yeah, frustratingly so sometimes, is it not? Especially in your lives. I'm way more frustrated by this lack of sanctification in another person's life than I am in my own, but it's slow in my life too. I don't mean that. I, it's a joke, OK. It is slow, but it is something that we have to do more and more.

So if you look at yourself and you're like, I'm not the person I want to be. Welcome to the club. That is, that is who we are here today. A collection of people who are not the person that we want to be. Worshiping next to another person who is not the person that they want to be today. And that is the process of sanctification, that maybe we can become a little bit more like Christ, each and every one of us, more and more, each and every day. So Paul opens up the topic on sanctification, but then what he does is he zooms in on one aspect of our sanctification, and it's an important one. He zooms in on this example of sex.

And I think it's fitting because you cannot have a conversation with someone, especially in Somerville. About becoming a Christian without talking about the Christian sexual ethic. We stand out like a thumb, do we not? The Christian sexual ethic is unlike the world around us. And friends, it was unlike the world around them 2000 years ago too. It's not like we find ourselves in this place that's finally been sexually freed and has open rules about sexuality, and no one has ever seen this before. The world in Thessalonica was a sexually liberated place much like the world of Somerville might be. And so it's a fitting example because it is something that everybody has to consider when they're becoming a Christian. It is a different way of living. Verse 2. For you know What instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification. That you abstain from sexual immorality.

Now a lot of people have proposed that Christians should loosen up about our views of sexuality and that we might be able to gain more adherence to the faith. But it seems to me that the churches that have loosened up about the sexuality rules are the ones that are not gaining adherence to the faith. Those are the ones that tend to be dying. Because when you look at the message of Christianity, it's not simply that we believe Jesus, but we have to follow him. And so you have to follow the teachings of Christianity, and it is baked in there, the Christian sexual ethic, there's no way around it. There's no way around it.

Sam Allbery, who is a well known speaker and author, he wrote a book, Why does God care who I sleep with. And I'll kind of borrow a little bit in this section from his book. But one of the things that he says in that book, which is great, you can pick it up, is this this one verse actually sums up the biblical view of sex. Paul does not say avoid sexual behavior as though sex itself was a problem, and Christians should avoid it. The reality is that Christians, we're not anti-sex. Christians are pro-sex. We believe that God designed sex. We are anti-sexual immorality. So why are Christians so worried about sexual immorality? Why is it that we think that, that we teach and that we talk about sexual immorality and that God does care who you sleep with?

And it's because we believe that God is the creator of the universe, which means that he is our designer as human beings and the designer gets to write the operation manual for humans. I have a friend who used to be a member of our church several years ago. His name's Todd. he is an, a pilot for the US Air Force. He flies F-22s. It's a, oh, that's a, it's a pretty awesome airplane, and that's like the one you see in all the movies and everything, OK? It's like a just a pure fighter jet. So they teach you how to be a pilot first before they ever throw you in one of those things, OK? And he was telling me one day that every airplane you get into as an as a pilot, you have to read the manual first because you, you gotta figure out how you're supposed to fly the airplane and what the airplane is designed to do and what it can't do and what it can do and he was telling me that you know he's done this dozens of times and then they finally let him look at the manual for the F-22 and it says this plane is designed to be flown with reckless abandon, have fun. Just like do whatever you want to do, we got it. That's what this plan is designed for. But if you got into a commercial airline jet and tried to fly it like an F-22. It would not last very long. That plane would go down.

And so God, as the designer of human beings gets to say, this is the way that your body is meant to live. This is the way that your soul is meant to live. This is how you are designed to function and to flourish. This is the best way for you. And so God gets to set the definitions of what it means to live a sexually right or wrong kind of way. Sam Albury in his book, he puts it like this, and I love this quote, he says, God cares about who we sleep with because he cares deeply about the people who are doing the sleeping. He cares because sex was his idea, not ours. He cares because misusing sex can cause profound hurt and damage. He cares because he regards us as worthy of his care.

And in fact, that care is not only seen in telling us how we should use sex, but also in how he makes forgiveness and healing available to us when we mess this up. And we all inevitably will. That's why Paul tells us, just as you have, learn from us on how to obey, do this more and more. It is somewhere we have to grow in. Sometimes you hear people use the argument we're just we're just all animals, we have appetites. Let's just do as the animals do or if you are a middle school boy around the same time as I was, you might know the, the blood, well the bloodhound gang song, you know, it says you and me, baby, you aren't nothing but mammals ain't I think it was ain't. You and me baby ain't nothing but mammals, so why don't we do it like we do on the Discovery Channel. And that was like a middle school boy's dream song, OK? That's like what you're gonna talk about MTV at the, at its finest.

This argument basically says that we shouldn't have any restrictions on sex, that we should just be able to be the animals that we were designed to be. That we should not restrain our appetites, but we should treat it like any other appetite. But the reality is we all put restrictions on sex. Christians aren't unique in this. We might put it in a different place, but everybody thinks that there should be restrictions. For example, we all believe, I hope. That consent is required for sexual relations. Thank you. Amen. We, we also all believe that even if a minor were to give consent. That that is not appropriate still to have relations with a minor. Restrictions in sex. It's not saying we have no restrictions we certainly have restrictions. We are not just like the animals, you know, when I go to the dog park, I don't see any dogs asking like, hey, how old are you before I go after this one? OK, they're not asking consent, right?

We are not just animals and and here's the thing. We are certainly not just animals. And sex is certainly more than just sex. God's intended design for sex is for two people to be to be united. It is the most intense. Part of the marriage that is meant to reflect the gospel. You have a relationship with another human being in the confines of marriage. It's meant to reflect the way that God loves His people, and sex is this point in that. Where you get to have the most deep intimacy imaginable. And it's all meant to reflect something bigger than what we experienced.

The word for sexual immorality here in First Thessalonians is the Greek word pornea. And it's a catch-all term for any pre-marital sex, any extramarital sex, prostitution, incest, sexual sexual impropriety. It's the word that we get our word pornography from. And sometimes it's, it's used, you hear people say that Jesus never talked about sex the same way that Paul does. You know, this is why I have a problem with Paul as I read 1 Thessalonians. You know, that's just Paul. What about Jesus? Jesus uses the same word. Mark chapter 7. And this is what Jesus says. He says, what comes out of a person is what defiles him, but for from within, out of the heart of man come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, sexual immorality, that's Pornea, theft, murder, adultery.

So he's even, he's like, not just Pornea, like this blanket term for all of it, but he gives you some specific parts of it, adultery, covenantness, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness, all these evil things come from within, and they defile a person. In ancient Greece, The culture was very sexually open. As he says in verse 5, he, he says, not that we're supposed to handle ourselves with self-control, not in the passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God. It was normal for sexual immorality to happen in Greece. Men oftentimes had mistresses, or, and this is evil, of course I'm not condoning this at all, whatever they, they would use their slaves for their sexual purposes. And this is included as a restriction with the word pornea that this is sexual immorality. Ritual sex and cults was common.

In many ways, ancient Thessalonica was not, I mean, hopefully no one's having ritual sex and cults in Somerville, but it was not all that much unlike Somerville, sex was free and open. And so the reason why I pointed all this out is the Christian sexual ethic. Is something that will make you stand out. You will look weird And it always has been. I have no way. Of telling you how you can be a Christian without standing out. It's just reality. It's part of what it means to follow Christ. And It's this idea that sex is powerful. I want to convince you a little bit more of why we believe this because sex is powerful, it's designed by God to unite two people. And so every time you have sex, it's like a covenant renewal ceremony.

We believe that marriage is meant to reflect the relationship that God has with his people, and you have intimacies in marriage. And so when you have sex, it's you saying to the other person, I belong completely, totally to you, your pleasure is my pleasure. And because marriage is meant to reflect our relationship with God, sex is meant to be a concentrated time of the deepest intimacy that two people can enjoy. And so it is sacred. We believe it is a sacred gift from God, and you cannot treat it flippantly.

All that to be said. The reality is that we're all a bit of a mess on this topic. Because all of us, every person in this room is sexually broken. No one here has all this stuff figured out. No one. And that is why Paul is addressing it. He wouldn't address an issue that wasn't practical, but it's also why he's teaching us to obey Jesus more and more, to grow in this, to take steps of obedience, and it's also why it's in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 and not in chapter 1. Because he spent so much time teaching you, you are a new creation in Christ, that Christ is perfect on your behalf, that if you were a mess. That it, God, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, that he loves you as Christ is loved by the Father.

And so we can, I do, I, I do not want to talk about sex without emphasizing the gospel, because it is so important to us as we grow in this. If you want to grow closer to Jesus, you are going to have to avoid sexual immorality. In all of its forms. And if you are going to avoid, if you want to avoid sexual immorality, you're going to have to learn how to be self-controlled in all of life. So if you want to grow closer to Jesus, you have to avoid sexual immorality. And if you want to avoid sexual immorality, you have to learn how to be controlled in all of life. The only way to fight against the gravity of sexual immorality, and there is a real gravity to it. It is a constant draw for everyone, because we are broken in this way.

But the only way to fight against it is to be disciplined in all of life. Verse 4. That each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor. So this is the part of the sermon where we, you know, we started zoomed in, we started zoomed out, we zoomed in. I'm gonna zoom back out. Because I don't think that you can handle sexual immorality in isolation. But I think that if you are Grow, I think you have to grow in all of your Christian life to grow in this area. That you have to grow in all of your Christian life, cause you can't be completely undisciplined. Out of control. In all these other areas of life, and then in control in this one area of life, discipline.

And one part of life leads to discipline in all of life. For example, you can't be, if you want to grow in sexual in like controlling your body. I think that just learning how to control your body through something like controlling your diet. It is important. I think that that's why there's a spiritual rhythm of fasting that we find in scripture for you to learn how to control your desires. It's an important practice for Christians. But I also think that just control everywhere in life is, is needed. That if we live out of control, we become subject to our own desires, and we forget to live for the pleasure of God. So just a few examples, control over the substances you put in your body. I'm talking about alcohol or weed or whatever it is. You don't let those run rampant. In your life, you control in your physical fitness, the things you say about other people, some people have a tongue that is out of control. Some people have criticism and critical thoughts that are out of control. You might be sitting there thinking, why is that guy so red up there? That's just your critical thoughts, out of control. The things you watch on TV, the reels you scroll through.

Living a life to please God. It's so, so much better and more satisfying than the temporary pleasure of any of these things. Living a life to please God is better than any sexual experience that you might have. It might not feel so feel like it in the moment, but it is in the long run.

Now look, I recognize that by nature I am a more disciplined human being than a lot and that's just kind of how God made me I was I was like an only child. I, have all that first child energy with the third child attention, OK? I, I watch what I eat, I work out, I am a disciplined human. I had no problem studying when I was in college, we'll put it like that. But this is hard for me, OK? Because look, Easter was 1 week and a half ago, or 2 weeks, 1 week and a half hours that Easter was, Easter was, was 2 weeks ago. And the season of Lent ended with Easter, so Lent is like a time where we go into extra control of our body, right? Where we're like, I'm going to fast from some stuff.

So I was like being really intentional and then Easter happened, which is like you work up to it and then I immediately went on vacation. And that's like the double whammy, you know, it's like forget every bit of discipline I've had over the past 2, over the past 40 days. I'm just gonna, whatever, you know, I'm just gonna scroll on my phone, eat whatever I want. We're we're just gonna do this thing. And so since then. I have seen myself this week. Being so lazy in the mornings. I just lay in the bed and it's like I'm just given to comfort. My, my sweet wife gets our kids ready for school, as I'm just lazy this week. Praise her. That's amen. And the Lord. I'm just scrolling through my phone, just like undisciplined. In the evenings I find myself revisiting the candy drawer in our kitchen over and over again. It's like the kids are yelling about something. I'm like, shut up. I'm just gonna have some candy over here.

I, I have just lost some of that disci, and here's the thing, when you kind of get out of it. It It's hard to get back into it. And the farther you get out of it, the harder it is to get back into it. And so here I am, I'm just confessing to you guys, like this ferocious cycle of lack of discipline, I'm experiencing it in my life at the moment and I need to sit down. And say Enough's enough. I'm in control of my own self. I'm not subject to my own desires. I can do this.

Now I'm not saying. Hear me right, that this sermon, I've wrestled with this sermon, because this sermon is so much like you can do it. I hate that, OK? That is not Christianity. Now there is some of Christianity that's like, follow Jesus, obey Him, be self-disciplined. I think that that is right, and you need to make the right decision there, but again, 1 Thessalonians 4 comes after 1 through 3. And I'm not just telling you, hey, be a better person because that is not gonna work. This is not self help.

I'm here not to condemn you and in fact a sermon on sex, like everybody in the room is feeling some level of guilt and shame when we talk about a sermon on sex. It's just it's just the reality. And I'm not here to condemn you. The arms of Jesus are wide. And he loves broken people like you and me. And the only way that you can. Experience his love. It's to just go to him, broken as you are, lay it before him, and allow yourself to experience again and experience the love that he has for you, so that you might want to live a life for his pleasure. Because I You have to want it. You're gonna do the things you want to do.

If you decide that you enjoy living for your own pleasure more than God, that's what you're gonna do, no matter how disciplined you are. There, there's lots of people who aren't Christians who are disciplined in certain ways. But I'm telling you. That as a Christian, You have to go back to God and be reminded that living a life to please God is so much better and more satisfying than the temporary pleasure that you might get from any sort of sexual experience or anything else. I'm also here to remind you that sanctification is a process, and that this doctrine of justification. Comes in an instant. Sanctification is a process, justification, which is this idea of what it means to be saved by God, that Jesus died for me, that he bore my sins on the cross, and that he was buried and rose again to new life. And because of my faith in Jesus, I have new life with God. I know God, I am loved by God.

That in an instant, the second you trust in Christ, you have that and have it into the full. And so whether you are the most messy sinner in the room, or if you're hearing the sermon and you're feeling really good about yourself, do not raise your hand. We don't wanna see you. In Christ, you are equals. That's what justification says. That Your works do not get you to heaven. It doesn't get you, it doesn't get you closer to God, cause here's the thing, you, you have your IPO, you hit the stock market. But when you die or when Jesus returns, you. You're, you're, you're up there. There's no, there's no up or down. We're all in the same place. And yeah, you can grow closer to communion with God, communion with God ebbs and flows and you get closer, but union with God is there, the second you're justified.

And so I don't want you leaving this place feeling condemned. But I want you leaving this place feeling motivated to live in a deeper communion with God. Are we clear? I, I don't want you to get works righteousness out of me. OK? That's, that's why I've wrestled with this, cause like, I'm a gospel guy. I like wanna tell you the good news about Jesus. I don't wanna tell you that it's up to you. But at the same time, I wanna tell you what Paul tells you, which is. We ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that as you receive from us, how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you were doing, that you do it more and more.

So that is what I have for you, friends. Just as you are doing, if you are a Christian in the room, do it more. And more. And this is extra biblical, but and more. In just a moment we're going to have an opportunity to meditate on these things. And each week we practice a sacred meal here at the church, and it's something that reminds us of what Christ has done for us. It's a gospel message and a meal. And so we call it communion, Eucharist, Lord's supper, whatever you wanna call it. And on the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took a loaf of bread and he broke it, and he instituted this meal for us, and he said, do this in remembrance of me. And so what we do is we tear off a piece of the bread and it represents the body of Christ broken for us. And then we dip it in the juice of the wine, whichever your conscious permits, the wine is marked with a piece of twine or string along the bottom.

And we're reminded that his blood was shed for us, his body was broken for us. It's not our own obedience that gets us to God, but his obedience on our behalf. And so, if you are a believer here today, if you're calling on Christ and following him, we would encourage you to come and receive. And to enjoy this meal and be reminded in a fresh kind of way, experiencing the presence of Christ in a special kind of way, that's mysterious. But if you are not a believer, instead, we encourage you. Today is the day to trust in Christ.

And in fact, if you are here today feeling, you know, that guilt and shame that I mentioned just a moment ago, most of us are, but today is a day that you can confess your sins to the Lord, especially sins of sexual immorality, and run to him. And let me just tell you what he gives is better. And so we're going to have some prayer counselors for you in the back over in that corner. And if you would like to pray with someone during the communion meal, we would invite you to pray with someone.

And another thing that you can meditate on as we prepare our hearts to take this meal and to, to continue in worship, is you can meditate upon. Where you lack discipline and what changes you need to make in your life this week. I'm gonna, OK, I'm gonna hit both both sides of the spectrum. If you're type A like me. Choose one thing. OK. I'm kind of like, I'm gonna be more disciplined. And so I'm like intermittent fasting and lifting weights 5 days a week and like threw my phone out the car window on the way home like that choose one thing, OK. Baby steps. And if you're on the other side of the spectrum. Choose one thing. OK. Find something that you can be more disciplined in this week. Your sanctification depends upon it, that we have to learn to control our bodies, for his glory. So if you would stand with me.

Father, we thank you this morning for your opportunity. For this opportunity to bring you pleasure. We know that you're pleased by our praises, and God I pray for anyone who feels like a mess this morning that they would trust in the justification that we have received in Christ, they would look to Jesus and feel free of their sin and forgiven, but God also pray for anyone who just needs to do it more, who just needs to take obedient steps towards you, and to be in control of their own bodies, and to glorify you more and more. And God, we, we pray that you would be moving in this time, that your Holy Spirit would be active, that we would feel the love of Christ in a fresh and new kind of way. Despite our own brokenness, and we ask these things in Christ's name this morning, Amen.

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Pastor Tyler Speck from CoaH Brookline preaches from 1 Thessalonians 3:6-13. Discussion points: Your faith encourages others towards Christ, interwoven faith requires deeper relationships within our Christian family, there is always someone younger than you in their faith that you can encourage, the faith of others prompts us to thank and praise God.

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Scripture reader: [1 Thessalonians 3:6-13] But now that Timothy has come to us from you and has brought us the good news of your faith and love and reported that you always remember us kindly and longed to see us as we long to see you, for this reason, brothers, in all our distress and affliction, we've been comforted about you through your faith. For now we live if you are standing fast in the Lord. For what thanksgiving can we return to God for you, for all the joy that we feel for your sake before our God, as we pray most earnestly night and day that we may see you face to face and supply what is lacking in your faith.

Now may our God and Father Himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you, and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: How's everyone doing? You could tell your lead pastor is much taller than me. It always just feels so way too chest level for me. one small note about the COA Cobras. I actually incidentally play for the other COA, team, and I've nothing else to say except for we won last year against you guys and. That's all. I distinctly remember making one of the best catches of my church softball career off of a hit from Michael in the outfield, so, you can just remind him about that as you sign up for the team.

Again, my name is Tyler. I'm one of the pastors on staff at CoaH Brookline, with how much I get to be with you guys, I should say I'm a part-time pastor on staff here. I say that with a complete amount of gratitude, by the way, I, I, it's a joy to be with you all just like Paul and Silas in our passage. We're so encouraged to hear about how the Thessalonians were doing over the years. I've just been so encouraged when Fletcher shares about how CoaH Somerville, how you all are doing. I get so encouraged when I get to come in and spend some time with you guys. So it's truly truly a joy to be clear, I am not a part-time pastor on staff here. I'm just here as a guest, but it is a joy, to be with you all.

About a month ago I went to Orlando, which, you know, March in Boston, good time to go down south for a week. I went down there for a conference, a church planning conference, and. I stayed a day or two after because I actually have a good friend who lives in the area. He was actually my best friend in high school, and that friendship has kind of endured. He was the best man at my wedding. we've kind of kept in contact and so, he lives nearby. He, he drove down and picked me up after the conference and, we got to hang out for the afternoon, into the evening and then early the next morning he, he dropped me off at the airport.

Mike, his, his name isn't actually Mike, but for the sake of privacy. Mike, he, he grew up Catholic, and definitely, drifted from religion, which is what I would kind of say or suspect he had more than a relationship with God, going through college into his mid-20s, into his late 20s, and now he's in his 30s, he, he drifted away from God, and, for me that was sad to see. I became a Christian when I was 19 and we were still very close friends at that point and we're still close friends now. but that was sad to see, and I at times would encourage him to try to take his faith seriously, to try to take this idea of walking with Jesus seriously, but there was no kind of getting around the fact that like the two trajectories of our lives were, were going in opposite directions, and it's a bit ironic actually. My, my senior year of high school when we got to see each other almost every day, I would go to Catholic mass with him and it was actually him that was influencing me, to think about this Jesus person who I didn't know at that time.

But it's quite clear that he was drifting farther from God, and that as I read the scriptures more, prayed more, I, I just spent more time at church, like I was drifting closer and closer, not drifting, I was moving closer and closer to God. and here's the thing, right? I, I, I wasn't sure, if he was saved or not. I wasn't sure if he was walking with the Lord at all. Those are things that I would pray about. So for the past. 10 plus years, this is just kind of a constant on and off prayer of mine, right? This is for this friend, for this friend Mike, and similar to, to Paul and Silas and First Thessalonians, like I didn't know how he was doing. Right all this, this love I had for my good friend, all this time in prayer I spent for my good friend, I didn't know how he was doing faith wise.

And if you're here a few weeks ago, we covered 1 Thessalonians 3 verses 1 through 5, before Easter, and Paul essentially says, therefore we could bear it no longer. This, this not knowing how the Thessalonians were doing. He just couldn't, he couldn't contain it. He had to know. Right, he was, he had to know so much so that we are willing to be left behind at Athens, it says in verse one, and they sent out Timothy to Thessalonians, right, to establish and exhort you in your faith. And so they sent Timothy out to disciple them, to care for them, but also because Paul just had this itch. He's like, I have to know how the Thessalonians are doing.

And so for my friend, over the years I, I tried to kind of poke and prod at various times and we, we never really had substantial conversations about it though we kind of avoided or redirected, but I was dying to know and I didn't send a guy out named Timothy, 800 miles to kind of figure it out for me, but, about a year ago I got to visit the same friend and we had some slight conversations and it was good to hear that like. He had started going to church, he and his wife and their kid but there wasn't any small group involvement. I don't think there was engaging with the word of God, the scriptures outside of Sunday service. It was kind of a a check box sort of thing and so I left that trip with actually more questions than answers and maybe feeling a little more worried about my dear friend than when I'd come to visit.

But I continued to pray for him. Right, then back to this time about a month ago when I was with him for the day we spent the day in Orlando and just kind of walked around and ate food and and had drinks and just kind of catching up right at this point in the evening no real substantial talk about religion, about faith, about church involvement, and we kind of decided at this point too, you know what, like we see each other, we've seen each other twice over the past 5 years. We both have young kids like we're not going to do this very often. Let's like, let's like ball out a little bit. Let's, let's go a little hard so we make this reservation at like this fancy steakhouse, it's so fancy that that Mike walks in and like. They make him take off his hat because he can't wear the hat in there.

I was like, OK, we got a bottle of wine, we got we got steaks, we got lobster, bacon mac and cheese, like all these fancy things and good stuff and we're ending, going towards the end of the meal, and I finally kind of muster up the courage to ask, how's church going, and, and I, I'm not scared to ask because of asking, but I'm scared to ask because of the answer that might potentially be behind that and and he looks at me and kind of looks down and just says not, not great. and I'm kind of preparing myself like a little bit of disappointment, a little bit of like, man, it's just praying for this guy for 10 years and trying and trying and trying and just kind of mentally preparing for like, all right, it's not the Lord's timing or if I'm completely honest with you, like a little bit of disappointment.

So I'm kind of preparing for the worst and he goes on to say, the church that we go to right now does not preach the word of God. He goes on to essentially say, I read the word of God, I believe the word of God. I want to hear the word of God preach for me and my family on Sunday mornings. Now I could go down like a whole spiral of like why you should and shouldn't leave a church. The church certainly should be preaching the word of God, but that's beside the point. But just like Paul and Silas, I was like overjoyed and he was saying this and it was kind of awkward because he's like complaining and sad about how this church has failed and now I'm like, let's go like, like let's go. that my friend who I had been praying for for 10 years was taking his faith seriously and reading the Bible and could tell when a church wasn't preaching the gospel and he wants to hear the gospel preached and like it just took all my power to not have this massive grin about talking about how sad he is at church and like oh my gosh, it was like let's go and I, I get back home and I'm like tearing up as I, I tell my wife, like this is, this is 10 years in the making and the the impact of, of Mike's faith and his growth, right? It, it was so encouraging to me. It was so encouraging to me.

And it's just exactly the kind of same thing we see in our passage too. Paul and Silas. They had a great sense of joy, a great sense of encouragement when they heard about the Thessalonians faith. Right, a long time, I, I, I don't know exactly how much time between the, when they planted the church and when they wrote this letter, but let's just assume it's substantial amount of time. That they're just like, how is it going? Alright, and if you remember the story of the Thessalonian Church plant, Paul got out of there in like 3 weeks. Like they went to Thessalonica and They preached the gospel and got kicked out of the city and then the city went in an uproar. There was a mob, right? The guy that hosted Paul was dragged out of his house for hosting Paul and preaching the gospel like it was not a good start. Like when you think about church planning strategies, that's not one of them get kicked out of the city you're trying to reach is not, not how it goes, not how it's supposed to go, it's not what you plan for.

And so it's safe to assume that's, that's Paul's like last memory contact point, substantial contact point with the Thessalonians and so he's just like, what a rough start. Like, are they still even walking with Jesus? Like, I love these people. And he hears back from Timothy and their faith encouraged him. The faith of the Thessalonians encouraged Paul. So our main point for today as we look at this passage, as we look at our lives, is this your faith encourages others, the faith of others encourages you. Your faith encourages others, your faith ought to encourage others. The faith of others ought to encourage you. and we're gonna talk about it by answering two questions.

First, how to have encouraging faith. You can see that mostly in verses 6 through 8, and then secondly, how to be encouraged by faith, how to be encouraged by the faith of others in verses 9 through 10, and they'll close by looking at 11 through 13 as well, which is not the end of the letter, but it kind of reads like a beautiful benediction of sorts. So first, how to have encouraging faith verses 6 through 8. I'm gonna read it one more time.

But now that Timothy has come to us from you - remember Timothy was sent out to them and then came back with this news. But now that Timothy has come to us from you and has brought us the good news of your faith and love and reported that you always remember us kindly and long to see us as we long to see you, for this reason, brothers, in all our distress, in all our affliction, we have been comforted. We've been comforted about you through your faith. For now we live if you are standing fast in the Lord.

So in this scenario, we pretend that we're the Thessalonians. Right, that we are those with the faith that is encouraging to Paul and and and how is Paul encouraged? Well, two things, right? I mentioned he mentioned comfort. And then he mentions this kind of hyperbolic idea of being alive. Right, but to start, actually I would actually kind of argue we don't often think about our faith being an encouragement to others. Mainly because we don't view our faith in the context of a deeply connected community. Right, I might walk around thinking, how can I encourage you today? What nice words can I say to you today, but I don't necessarily think about how can my faith encourage you today.

I think the average American Christian views their faith as their own thing. I think many of us in this room, myself included, view our faith as our own thing. That we just happen to do with other people around. Right, when it comes to people in our faith, it's more about kind of living that out singularly within proximity to other people that are trying to do the same thing. Rather than living it out with other people. Does that make sense? There's a, there's a distinction there. It's kind of like, you know, professional athletes on different teams. They're doing the same things. The same kind of training, the same type of travel, the same kind of lifestyle. But completely separate teams, completely separate goals, largely not impacted by each other, right? They just happen to play the same sport.

But the Christian life lived out in local churches just like this one is meant to be like professional athletes on the same team. You're working for the same goal. When I work on my skills and abilities and I get better, the team gets better. When I slack and I lack. I don't try subsequently, it doesn't just make me worse. It hurts the body of Christ as well. It's exactly what Paul is saying in First Corinthians, right? If you've read the passage where he compares to the church to a physical human body, right? First Corinthians, he says, for the body does not consist of one member, but of many. If the foot should say, because I'm not a hand, I do not belong to the body. That would not make it any less part of the body. And if the ear should say because I'm not an I, I do not belong to the body, that would make it not make it any less part of the body. He goes on to say that all of these things, there are many parts yet one body, that there may be no division in the body. But that the members may have the same care for one another, if one member suffers, all suffer together. If one member is honored, all rejoice together. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

In other words, we need each other. Right, we're all important. We all have roles to play. This is one of the beautiful things about Christianity is it bestows honor and a place of importance to you regardless of where you stand as long as you believe in Christ Jesus. Right, you could be a toenail. That's kind of weird, I guess. Yeah. You could be a toenail in the body of Christ and you are just as important, just as valued in the eyes of God as the brain, as the lung, as the eye. We were made to work together, to be with each other, to encourage each other. Our faith is meant to encourage each other.

You might say, understandably so, how in the world, like Tyler, you don't know what I did last night. Like how can my faith encourage anyone? I'm doubting all the time I struggle with this sin or that sin. Like I'm not just the toenail. I'm the toenail that hasn't been clipped in like 4 months and dirty. And while that may be, It is always the case that there is someone who isn't as far along as you. There is always some, there's always someone who wishes they were where you are in your faith. That's not to say be content with where you're at, where where where you're at in your faith, but that's to say there's always someone that could be encouraged by where you are at. There's always someone who could be encouraged by your faith.

To be clear, the goal with this too, by the way, kind of like an upper level goal is not just to like reflect on our own lives and reflect on the lives of others and how we can encourage each other that's part of it. It's actually meant to be kind of a cultural shift in the church. Not just like Church capital C, but church like CoaH Somerville Church. And I can't, I know I joked. I'm a part-time preacher here. I can't answer specific questions as to like what does that look like, how should that look at CoaH Somerville? What does it look like for you all as a church to grow in encouragement to encourage each other and to receive encouragement?

But let me just throw out 3 observations, 3 assumptions even you could call them, 3 observations about how this happens, about how you can have a faith that encourages others. First, encouraging faith is not private. We've talked about this already. Right, your faith is not to be practiced in isolation. Are there parts, are there parts of your faith and times in your faith where, as Jesus would encourage you, you're alone in your room and you're praying to God. Yes. Are there parts of your faith that are only between you and the Lord? Yes, but faith, the Christian life in general is a communal thing. You look in the New Testament, you see the word you all the time, right? You, you, you, you, you do this, you do that, like you've received this, you've received that. Did you know 2 out of 3 times it's actually plural? The Greek is actually plural there, you all. It's talking to a people, a collective people, a group of people.

Encouraging faith is not private, right? Faith is private is a little bit of like the motto of the day. It's a little bit like, hey, I don't care what you believe in and what you do, just kind of keep it to yourself. Do it in your, do what you want to do in your own home. That's what the world thinks and if we're not careful, that sort of thing starts to drift into the culture of the church too. Right, we like kind of subconsciously carry that view into the way we live our lives in this body of believers. So encouraging faith is not private.

Two, encouraging faith is interwoven with others. It's like that's the same thing, no it's not. Right, it's different than not being private. That's step one. Interwoven faith is a step further. Right, faith that is interwoven with others, it's more than just Sunday attendance, it's more than just showing up to community group. It's actively caring. It's actively loving. It's actively pursuing the other brothers and sisters in Christ around you. Right, so this idea of encouraging faith is not private. That just means you live out your faith with other people. This idea that encouraging faith is interwoven with others, it means that you go deeper with other people. Means that you know what's going on in their lives and they know what's going on in your life.

Third, encouraging faith is a lifeline. Verse 8, Paul says this, for now we live. For now, we live. Now I am alive. If you are standing fast in the Lord. How should your faith encourage others? Well, the faith of the Thessalonians in a certain sense, Paul is saying here, gave him life. It's a bit of hyperbole. But the inverse of that actually I think maybe might clarify a little more what Paul is actually saying, right? The inverse of that is Paul saying if the Thessalonians aren't walking with the Lord. All that work, all that sacrifice, all that love, all that those prayers that we spent for and on the Thessalonians, the deep care that I have for them. If they aren't walking with the Lord, I'm gonna be devastated. I'm gonna be in ruins. I am. You're just gonna be destroyed.

But the Thessalonians, they were walking in faith. So he is the opposite of those things, he is life, he is joy, he is happiness, he's gladness. And here's something to ponder. This was a bit of, this is super convicting for me personally. If we don't have this kind of joy. Over the faith of others, something is off. And I, I'm, I'm really preaching to myself here. I can easily get numb to the incredible work of God in other people's lives. An example like at Cove Brookline right now we got some really cool things happening with people that. are coming in with no Christian background all of a sudden. Meeting Jesus and beautiful things are happening and we're, we're gonna baptize like 6 or 8 people in the next month, and it's incredible, but. You know, sometimes when my mind first goes to. Means I got to get there early and fill up the baptistry and lug it out of the closet. My work's doubled. I gotta work with these people about figuring out how to write their testimony to share with the church. I'm already a busy man.

You know what that makes me? The older brother in the parable of the prodigal son. There's a stained glass windows you guys have them all around, but the ones straight back, the one of the ones on the left depicts that, that, that parable. And on the bottom, there's a guy half dressed. Looking at pigs going like this. And and I'm not sure if he's kind of, I'm not sure what he's doing, he's in despair. if you know the story, the younger son took his father's inheritance and ran off and wasted it all and is living in a life of sin and. that's the bottom half. He's, he's, he's eating with the pigs. That's what the story says.

And then the top half of the stained glass window, you're all gonna go look at it now after the service. You gotta form a little line after that. I bet everyone's gonna go look, the, the top half is, is the father welcoming home and, and on the, the far right side there's another figure there who's who's nicely dressed. He's kind of standing there. It's kind of a funny expression, but he's looking like this and he's very displeased. See, we hear the story of the prodigal sign and what do we think of? We, of course, we think of the the younger son that ran away and lived in sin and the welcoming love of the Father who takes him back in, which is extremely beautiful picture of God's love.

But actually a lot of the people who were present when they heard that story would have focused on the older son. Right, who when he saw his younger brother return, which represents returning to God or coming to God for the first time. When he saw his younger brother return and how happy the father was, he was bitter. He was jealous. The passage says he was angry. It literally angered him. What does the father do with this? Notice. Actually quite beautifully. I noticed this for the first time. The father did the same thing with the older son that he did with the younger son, he went out to the older son. A small kind of side note, something beautiful here, the kindness of God to you when you first come to him. It's just as strong as the kindness of God to you when when you've been walking with him for 20 years.

The older son, he says this to the Father, he says, look, these many years I've served you and I've never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a party. That I might celebrate If we're not careful, if I'm not careful. My heart can slide into that posture. With God, faith, others. Right, it becomes, how did you get that or I have to go do that, not, not look what God gave you. Not look what God has done in your life. Here's a good heart check. Someone with a lot of problems and needs and is new to the faith steps into your community group. They're a new believer, you know you're gonna have to disciple them. You know, you're gonna have to help them logistically with some life stuff. You know it's going to take time. You know it's going to cost you. Are you overjoyed to walk with that person as Christ walks with you? Or do you immediately view them as a burden? Or immediately view them as something someone to be handed off to another person in the group.

Our faith ought to encourage others. That's first, how to have encouraging faith. Second, how to be encouraged by the faith of others, which full disclosure, these things like totally overlap, like, how do you encourage others with faith? You comfort them. How are you encouraged by others with faith, you're comforted, right? Like.

But verses 9 through 10, For what thanksgiving can we return to God for you, for all the joy that we feel for your sake before our God, as we pray most earnestly night and day that we may see you face to face and supply what is lacking in your faith. So in this scenario, we, we are Paul. Right? And we're encouraged by the Thessalonians in the same way, right? We're, we're comforted, we're, we're being made alive, so to speak. Right? Paul overflows with thankfulness and joy. But key part here Not because of his own faith. Not because of his own circumstances. Right, but because of the faith of others.

In the circumstances of others would seem to be quite better than his own circumstances, right? Paul's circumstances were trash, which it kind of feels like his whole life, that's just always the case. Yet he's so encouraged. So happy, so overjoyed about the faith circumstances, scenario that these other Christians are living in. He doesn't say why can't that be me? He's happy and he says, I desperately want to see you someday soon. And the encouragement he received leads him to what? To praise God. Right, verse 9, for what Thanksgiving can we return to God for you? That's hyperbole again. He's not actually saying like there's no sufficient way to thank God. There's no doubt he's thinking, God. Right, the faith of others was so encouraging to him that he lifted up, that he lifted up his spirits. It prompted him to pray, it prompted him to praise.

So three ways again to be encouraged by the faith of others, or rather how to have an encouraged faith. So first was encouraging faith, now we're encouraged faith. And they're kind of the same thing. Which drills down the importance of these things. Encouraged faith first is surrounded by other believers. You can't see what God is doing in people if you're not around God's people. You just can't Yes, that's an invitation to show up here on Sundays. That's an invitation to go to community group consistently. That's an invitation to partake in the life of the church. Encouraged faith is surrounded by other believers.

Second, encourage faith praises God for the work he does in others. So just like the first two with encouraging faith, right? Step 1 is kind of showing up. Step 2 is going deeper. It's the same thing. Encourage faith praises God for the work he does in others. You have to know other people, you have to know what God's doing in their lives to be able to do that sort of thing. And in other words, when we're properly encouraged in our faith and by the faith of others, it ought to prompt us to pray, it ought to prompt us to to praise and to thank God. Right, not the person. Right, when we're seeing scenarios properly, when we rightly understand circumstances, it ought to lead us to say, wow, look what God did for you. That's not to say we don't appreciate when someone makes a bold move of faith and we say that was awesome. You did a that was a really courageous step thing you did. It's not like we don't say that, but we understand there's something higher, someone more powerful pulling the strings, prompting the hearts of the people behind that. Encouraged faith praises God for the work he does in others.

And third, encouraged faith desperately wants others to do well. It's not jealous. It's not indifferent. Encourage faith desperately wants the people sitting beside you to succeed in their Christian life, whatever that looks like or means in a godly way. Encouraged faith is so deeply moved and this, this comes from a deep love for those people, by the way. We desperately want others to do well because we so deeply love them and we so deeply care for them. And I'm sure many of you have the moment. Where you say you, you pray for someone, right, they shared something like oh I'll pray for you and you see them a week later. Like, hey, that thing happened and it went well, thanks for praying, and you're like, oh. Yeah, I'm glad it worked out. Like you're not lying, but you're not, you're definitely not like, yeah, I definitely didn't pray for you like. Like, well, like sometimes, and I get it too. I'm not, I'm not guilting anyone like I, I, I have two kids under the age of 4 and. They're not sleeping well. I've been sick for like 12 weeks straight and you know, all these things that are just like, I don't know what day it is, I don't know what church I'm on staff at anymore and like all these things and so, so there's some grace for that.

I'm not saying like feel bad if you just got so much going on that you genuinely forget, but if I'm honest. Completely honest with you guys. I forget often because I don't love. Because I don't care enough. Cause I prioritize the things going on in my life, more than the things going on in the other person's life.

You don't see that in the life of Jesus, do you? You know how much Jesus had going on in his life? You know how much he had on his mind. How many people he wanted to talk to, how many people wanted to talk to him and. This looming Death that was coming his way. But he still cared. He still loved and what's beautiful about the scriptures is you see him loving both the church corporately, but you also see him loving individual people by name, their particular circumstance. He cared, he remembered he prayed because he loved. He loved God and he loved the people in front of him.

So as we close, I wanna look at the last three verses 11 to 13. Because if I'm honest, if I, if, if I ended the sermon here. It's, it's not enough. It's not enough to just encourage you all to be encouraging. It's not enough to just give practical how-tos. When it comes to having encouraging faith or being encouraged by others, because ultimately, The question is how does the gospel enable this to happen? How does a resurrected Christ, like we celebrated and focused on so intently last week, how does a resurrected Christ bring this idea of encouraging faith to bear on our lives? I think we see a glimpse of it in verses 11 to 13 or at least the main principle.

Eleven to 13 again. Now may the God and Father Himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you, and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all as we do for you, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. Just one thing I want us to see. Look at all the actions being described, all the things going on. Ways are being directed. There's an increase in abundance of love for one another. There's an establishment in a in a blameless and holy heart before God.

Who's doing all of those things in the passage? We aren't doing any of it. Paul's not doing any of it. The Thessalonians aren't doing any of it. If you want to have an encouraging faith. If you want to be encouraged by the faith of others, realize this, it's not the actual faith in and of itself, it's Christ. Faith is only enabled by God. Faith is a gift from God. Who's doing the things mentioned in these verses. Now, may God Himself, may Jesus Himself direct you. May the Lord Jesus make you increase in a bound and love for another. May he, Christ, establish your hearts blameless and holy. God does it. We don't.

Whether you want to be encouraged, whether you want to encourage others want to, whether you want to grow in your faith or share your faith, realize it's not about the quality of your faith, it's about the object of your faith. It's about the God of your faith. It starts with God moving. It starts with God encouraging. It's not just you, it's not just the person beside you, that we have important parts to play. But it's God, and that is the essence of the gospel. It's God. It's God who does it. He saves us by his own good works. Not ours. He saves us out of his own good love for us, not our love for him. And that principle that it's God, it spills over into every part of the Christian life. It's God always working in and through us. And so the encouragement you give and the encouragement you receive, yes, we need to be thankful for how God has used the people involved with that, but ultimately that raises into thankfulness and praises and prayers to God.

Mutual encouragement. Encouraging others, being encouraged from others should come from a shared faith. Which is really a shared savior. From a shared belief and appreciation and love for Jesus. Let's pray.

God thank you that you've called us together. Not to just live out the same faith in silo, but to live out the same faith together. God, I pray that this church, everyone in this room, God that they would lean into you, Jesus, and encourage the people around them because of it. That there would be mutual encouragement. God, that we would point each other back to you, Jesus in all things and in all ways that we would look at what's going on in the lives of other people and be encouraged at how you're at work, not jealous, not dissatisfied, not angry, not bitter God, but pleased with you. God I'm thankful for your son. I'm thankful for how you saved us. Help us to trust this, believe this, know this, to see it as beautiful and true. In your name, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about a post-resurrection story about Jesus from Luke 24:13-35. Discussion points: Jesus’s followers’ perspective was limited to a political and worldly salvation, there are many stories from the Old Testament that point to and foreshadow Christ’s coming, God is always alongside us even when we can’t see his perspective.

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Scripture reader: [Luke 24:30-35] When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them, and their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, "Did not our hearts burn with us within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?" And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem, and they found the were and those who are with them gathered together, saying, The Lord has risen indeed and has appeared to Simon. Then they told what had happened on the road and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: Hi, good morning. He has risen. It's good to see you all. My name is Fletcher. I'm the lead pastor here at the church. Always joyous time to get together for Easter and to celebrate this wonderful day together. Back when I was a kid growing up in the late 1900s, my. The, the, the things that we call cell phones these days, you know, or just phones, they didn't exist. It was like if you were really wealthy, you would have like a bag phone that you had in your car that you could call someone from. Anybody remember the bag phone? Don't you you don't have to admit to having one, OK? That would be a confession. I already said that you're, you would be really wealthy in my mind if you had a bag phone as a kid.

Or you had this big, Zack from Saved by the Bell phones that had the antenna that would come out. There was, there was all kinds of situations that you would get into that you could really need a cell phone. And this is one example. When I was a kid, I was probably 3 years old, so maybe 1989, my father was not home and we were living in Midtown Memphis at the time and in an apartment there my, my mother was vacuuming and I was just playing climbing on something. This is my earliest memory of my entire life and as I'm climbing on something I fall down and I just crack my head open in the middle of the room. And there's blood kind of everywhere. It's bleeding. My mom, she just stops the vacuum immediately and leaves it there, picks me up, puts me in the car, and takes me to the emergency room because it's very obvious.

Now when we get to the emergency room, everything's fine, no, no brain damage that we know of. they just stitched me up and send me on my way, but my father got home before we did, and so you can just imagine what he walked into. He walks into a room, vacuum in the middle of the floor, blood everywhere, family gone. He's like going into a Liam Neeson kind of moment here. He's like, who has taken my family? he's gonna become a bad man very soon. but we got home soon after, and that is one of the reasons why you always leave a note.

Our perspectives color our reality. As humans, our perspectives are limited. We can only see things from one side. There are some people who have the gift of being able to see things from other people's point of views, and we tend to pay them far too little money and call them mental health therapists. But God has the ultimate view of reality. He sees everything and the amazing complexity from a heavenly viewpoint. And I promise you that if you could see your life from God's point of view. It would change the way you think about everything.

With it being Easter, we normally preach through books of the Bible, kind of verse by verse or, or idea by idea at least. With it being Easter, I decided that we're just gonna take a pause in our first Thessalonians series and go over to a story about the resurrection in the book of Luke. So this story of the resurrection is one of my favorite stories in the entire Bible. It's about the the walk on the way to Emmaus, and two men who meet Jesus, actually we don't know if one of them is men. We only one of them is identified as Cleopas, and the other one is not identified at all. So two people on the way to Emmaus. And they're talking about things.

And as you see, these two people who are on their way to this town known as Emmaus. They're discussing what they have experienced over the past few days, and they only have one perspective of what's happening, but very soon their perspectives are widened and they're able to see things from God's point of view and it changes the way they see everything. So let's dive into this two points for today. First, our perspective. Second, God's perspective, as easy as that.

First, our perspective. So the story starts on the same day that the tomb is found empty. We're going to start in verse 13, and we're not going to go we we read only verses 30 through 35, but we're going to start in verse 13 so we can get the full story. And so in verse 13, what you see are we see that very day, two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about 7 miles from Jerusalem. One of these people is named Cleopas. We don't actually know who the other person is, and Emmaus as it says, is 7 miles from Jerusalem.

I don't know how many of you have taken a 7 mile trek. We know that Jerusalem is on top of a hill, so it's downhill most of the way. And so you can do a 7 mile walk down an incline in about 2 hours. That's your average time, you know, you can walk 3 miles in an hour. That's not too crazy, 3.5 miles in an hour. So we're thinking about this being a 2, maybe 3 hour walk that they're taking. If they go slowly, and they're talking about the things that have happened over the past 3 days, and then someone shows up, and we know it to be Jesus himself, but they didn't recognize him at first. Verse 16, it says that their eyes, but their eyes were kept from recognizing Jesus as he drew near.

Now, this probably means that God supernaturally kept them from recognizing Jesus in that moment. It also is likely that they were not Jesus's closest followers. They also did not expect Jesus to be risen from the dead and so they weren't looking for him and they weren't his closest followers, but ultimately I think it was because God had supernatural. Actually cause them to not be able to recognize who he is so that they, they could have this experience that they're going to have over the next 2 hours or so walking with him on the way to Emmaus.

And so Jesus asked the two of them, he says, what's this conversation that you're holding as you walk? Do not miss their first response. It's so great. They say they stood still looking sad. They were mourning. How the irony is just dripping here. They stood still looking sad because Jesus was dead, yet he was standing right in front of them. And Jesus responded, and they responded to Jesus actually. Jesus didn't respond. They responded to Jesus after they looked sad, they said, are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened in these days? What a hilarious question. In fact, Jesus is the only one who knows what has happened in these days. You all think, Jesus might be able to say, you all think that I'm dead and buried, defeated, but I'm alive and death is defeated.

Jesus simply asked them what's happening and what has happened. And so they explained the story to Jesus from their point of view, the story of Jesus to Jesus as they see it. They cannot see things from God's point of view, from Jesus's point of view. So there's parts of the story they're just off as they recount it.

Verse 19, Cleopas recounts the story. He says the story of concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a mighty prophet in deed and word before God and all the people. So let's look at that for just a second. Jesus was primary word he said was. A mighty was mighty indeed and word. He was a prophet mighty indeed and word before God and all people. He's this man from Nazareth. Notice what he doesn't say. He does not say that he was the Messiah, that he was the Christ. He's missing important information about who Jesus is, and he continues and how our chief priests and rulers delivered Jesus up to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he would be the one to redeem Israel. And so here Cleopas says, speaking to Jesus, saying we had big hopes for Jesus, but he was quite a failure. He, we thought he was going to redeem Israel, but he did not succeed.

In his efforts to redeem Israel, you see, Cleopas understood that Israel needed to be redeemed, but he had no idea what Israel needed to be redeemed from. He thought that the problem that Israel was facing was Rome, that the Romans had taken over the land, and that they needed to be liberated from their captors so that they could reign as a mighty kingdom once again as they had under the great King David. But his perspective is limited, is it not? He does not see the great slavery captivity to sin that all of us sit under and the actual thing that Jesus came to accomplish, which is not a political liberation, but a spiritual liberation from death and sin and defeat. His perspective Is limited. Friends, if you start to see Jesus as a failure, you might need to rethink your definition of success. Let's look at it from God's perspective.

Number 2, God's perspective. You see, Cleopas's dreams of Jesus rising to power were far too small. And shortsighted, sure he had these big dreams in his mind it was an amazing thing that Jesus was going to come to power he was going to kick the Romans out he was going to become the great king that they had longed for for all of these years. Those are big dreams, big visions. If any of you told me that one day you want to become president of a nation or king of a nation and liberate them from captors, whatever it might be, I might be like, whoa, you got big dreams. But his dreams, Cleopas's dreams for Jesus, were far too small for what Jesus had in mind. Because an earthly king can only do so much. And every earthly king has died relatively quickly. Jesus was set on something far bigger.

The redemption that Jesus is thinking of is not only for Israel but for the whole world, for all those who would believe, not from political powers, but from the evil of sin that lives within us all. So how does Jesus respond to Cleopas? This is what he says. He says, Oh foolish ones and slow of hard to believe. It's almost like he says it aside, right? Like he's not even speaking to Cleopas. It's almost like he's just kind of like, these guys again. But he, he says, Oh foolish ones, and when he says foolish, he's not saying you're so dumb. That's not what he's saying when he says foolish, what he's saying is a moral statement in the Bible to be foolish is a moral statement. The Bible says that the fool says in his heart that there is no God, and so he's saying that they're not hearing what I'm saying about this, and Jesus says. Without them knowing as Jesus still. Was it not necessary that the Christ suffered these things and enter into his glory?

You see, Cleopas cannot think of any reason why Jesus might have in his plan to die. He's got other plans for Jesus. But Jesus says, was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things? Friends, it was necessary that the Christ should suffer these things. It was necessary for a lot of reasons. Jesus had to suffer like this to rescue his people from the curse of sin. Jesus had to suffer, and I often think this, and many of you might think this, why can't God just forgive people? Why did Jesus have to die on the cross?

And the reality is if you have a God who is always just. Then you have a God who must punish every sin. He cannot allow evil to go unpunished. This is what gives people who withstand oppression great hope, to know that those who oppress them, those who sin against them will not be left. Off the hook for their sins, for their evil. Every sin must be paid for, but at the same time, God is gracious and he wants to give us salvation. So therefore, the only way that he could do this was to pay the cosmic penalty for sin himself. It is an amazing reality that Christ said that it must. Necessary for him to die because he took on the sins so that God would still be proven righteous and just a just judge, but yet at the same time generous and loving, he stands between those two on the cross, where God's wrath and his mercy meet.

By suffering like this, Jesus both satisfied the justice of God and welcomed us into relationship with God. And in so doing, Jesus inaugurated what we call the kingdom of heaven. Where the reign and rule of God exists today. In part, not in full. But through the lives of those who follow Christ, I love the way that NT Wright, an Anglican bishop or former bishop, puts it, he says Jesus' resurrection is the beginning of God's new project, not to snatch people away from earth to heaven, but to colonize Earth with the life of heaven.

So Cleopas thought that Jesus was a failure. But he just lacked perspective of what God was doing. And then Jesus says, And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted, and then the scripture says, sorry, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted them. All the scriptures, the things concerning himself. As Jesus is walking on this road to Emmaus, he does a little Bible study. He takes what's left of their 2 hours and he just starts walking through the Bible and of course he cannot speak about every story in the Bible, but he does an overview of the entire story and these, these were Jewish followers they certainly knew their Bible, they certainly knew their Old Testament, but Jesus gave them new eyes to see who Jesus really was. Again, they still don't even recognize that this is Jesus, yet he's walking through the scriptures and explaining to them how Jesus, his name is on every page and beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted them in all the scriptures, the things concerning himself.

I don't know what he brought up at that moment, but I would suspect it might be a few of these things. That he might have started with Genesis. And in the story of Genesis, he might have started with Adam and Eve, as many of our stories do start with Adam and Eve, and he may have talked about the first promise of the gospel that we have in Genesis chapter 3. When after Adam and Eve's sin, God says that he would put enmity between Satan and the child of Eve, and he says to the evil one, he says to Satan, he says, the child of Eve, he will bruise your heel, but you, but you will bruise his heel, but you will, but he will crush your head. Let me say that one more time. You will bruise his heel, Satan, but he will crush your head. And on the cross Jesus' heel was bruised and the head of Satan was crushed.

Then he may have walked, just jumped over to the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham, if you remember the father of all of Israel, Father Abraham. Had many sons. and he might have told the story of Abraham and Isaac walking up the mountain as Abraham has to carry the wood for the sacrifice, and as Isaac has to carry this wood for the sacrifice, and Isaac's asking, where is the sacrifice, Father? and he's like God's going to provide the sacrifice. And God has told Abraham that he must sacrifice his very own son Isaac, and they're climbing up Mount Moriah. And when they get to the top, Abraham has a knife over Isaac ready to kill his own son for love of his father, God in heaven and God stops him and he sees a a ram caught in the thicket. And he sacrifices the ram instead. And then fast forward many years later that mountain, Mount Moriah has been renamed Mount Golgotha. As the very same mountain where Christ climbed with his wooden cross on his back, the Son of God Himself. And was placed but this time, he would be both the ram and the son taking the penalty for our sins.

He may have moved on to the story of Joseph. The young man betrayed by his brothers sold into slavery, left for dead. Betrayed Given up Walked away from, but yet this brother, he would be the one that would go before them to prepare the way for them to go to the promised land just as Christ would be betrayed by his disciples and go before them to prepare the way to the promised land. He may have gone to the story of Passover in the book of Exodus. Where Pharaoh and the people of Egypt have had plague after plague after plague, and they finally get to the final plague and it's the plague of the first born son, and in this story with the first born son, there's the story there's the angel of death that's going to come through the camp and kill every first born son in the entire camp unless. You take the blood of a lamb, a spotless lamb, and you put it over your doorpost. You see, even that blood is my blood, Jesus would say. That the angel of death, when you have the blood of Christ on you, skips over, passes over you, that you might continue to live.

He might have moved on to the time of the great kings and King David himself, and he might have drawn out how he himself is a descendant of the great King David. That he comes from the royal line of David and the tribe of Judah.

He might have moved on to the book of Daniel, the great prophet of Daniel. We, we just did a whole series on Daniel spent over 10 weeks or so in the book of Daniel. There's so many different things you could pick up on there, but he almost certainly talked about how he's the son of man. Come to destroy the beast, to set his people free, the beast that lives within each of us, the evil desires and sin that we have.

He may have moved on, he almost certainly did move on to the book of Isaiah. Isaiah 53 in particular, and he may have shared this passage which seems so descriptive, it is hard to believe it is in the Old Testament. Like if you take this passage and show someone and say, tell me which testament this is in, they're almost always gonna be like that's obviously New Testament. This is Old Testament 500 years or more before Jesus was born. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

It's really amazing that Cleopas and his friend, they get this opportunity to hear the Bible taught as it's meant to be understood. For the first time. The first people to understand the Bible in all of its perspective from a heavenly point of view. And after they get done with the walk they finally go and they eat, they sit down and they're eating and as they're eating, Jesus prays and serves them the food and they're still like, who is this guy walking with us? And at that moment their eyes are open and they see who he is and it's so crazy this story, I don't really get it then it it just says he vanishes. And it's like I don't know. I don't know how he vanished, OK? I wish, I think personally I'm like, I think it was just like mic dropped out of the room, OK? I'm getting out of here. I got other things to do. You see who I am, my point is received, but who knows how he vanishes.

It just says he vanishes and God works like that, doesn't he? How we're going through life, we're suffering, we're struggling. He's walking with us all along the way. And we just don't recognize it. And then our eyes open, we're finally able to see that he's with us, that he's been with us this whole time, in fact. Because we just didn't have his perspective. We need some of that heavenly perspective, do we not? But the challenge is you can't just get it. You can pray and ask God, help me see things the way that you see it. In fact, that is a bold prayer. I would encourage you today. God, help me to see my life the way you see my life. In fact, there's almost no better prayer for you to see how well you were loved, to see how well you're taken care of.

But many of us, we go through difficult dark days. And we just don't see where God is acting and where he's moving, but, but he's got his plan and his perspective on things. I can think of one time, when I was in grad school I was dating someone and I thought that it was the right relationship. It was before Megan and I even met and um. That it wasn't, it wasn't right for me and I think if you've been through a breakup that you thought was going to work out, you know that's a really painful experience. It's there's almost nothing like being like I'm gonna be with this person and then it's like no you're not. And I, I was kind of on a breakup set calendar for like several weeks where I was like it's been 2 weeks since I got broken up with. And, but actually I got broken up with on a Friday. And I'm still on that calendar I guess.

So two days later, almost like Good Friday and Easter here, OK? Two days, on the third day, I go to serve in in my, at my church and I just substitute. Get this, there were 4 services at this church. I was so lonely that I decided to teach 2 kids classes at 2 different services that day, so I go to substitute teach. At the 11 a.m. service and I'm in a room with 15, 4 and 5 year olds by myself. That's not legal. I'm not sure what they were doing and my wife is placed in the room with me to be my future wife at that point. I didn't know who she was and at that point I decided to sign up to serve every week at that service, no longer a substitute, just put me in. I couldn't see what God's perspective was on this. I had had this serial problem of going into a relationship. Too too fast and not allowing myself to to show discernment, not allowing myself to to slow down, but with this one I made a promise to the Lord probably on that Saturday that I wasn't going to date anyone for 6 months and then he places me in a children's room with my future wife the next day. And I waited 6 months and then I asked her out and and the rest is history. We're still together. Praise the Lord. Amen. Hallelujah.

But I can't the point of that story is sometimes you just don't have God's perspective. God had a plan for what he was going to do in my life. I just didn't see it at the time and maybe he has a plan for what's going on in your life and you could be going through a difficult time and you just don't see that plan yet. A lot of us today, we're walking through life like Cleopas. We're lacking perspective, are we not? Maybe you're in a dead-end job. Maybe your personal life is falling apart. Maybe you're impossibly lonely. Maybe you're suffering from a chronic illness. I don't know what it is.

And look, friends, I'm not here to tell you it's all going to work out in this life. You see, I share that story with you to say sometimes God gives you the ability to see what his plan was eventually. And sometimes he doesn't. But we have to trust, and that is what trust is to say, I trust that you have a plan. I trust that you are going to see this through. And friends, I will share this with you, that if this life is all that there is, if there is no resurrection. Then a lot of our life is going to feel pointless and depressing. When you get down to it, it's just going to feel that way. We have no hope in life without eternity with God.

Many of us, we are walking that way. We're walking like Cleopas. We're walking as if the resurrection did not occur. We're walking as if it is not real, as if Jesus did not get out of that grave, as if he did not promise that we would join him in that life. We feel stuck or depressed because this life is our only hope, and if this life is your only hope, you're in the same boat as Cleopas thinking about only your perspective. But today is an invitation to see your life from God's point of view. To understand that the resurrection means that your story is not over. It means that there is always hope that Jesus has conquered death itself. And because of that, whatever you're going through in this life, you know that there is more to life than this. You have a heavenly eternal hope.

Death is swallowed up in victory. Oh death, where is your victory? Oh death, where is your sting? He has risen. He's risen Friends, the resurrection completely changed the way that Cleopas saw his life. Once he realized that Jesus was resurrected, it changed everything. He was able to understand God's perspective, and it can do the same for you, as DA Carson, the famous theologian says. You are not suffering from anything that a good resurrection won't fix. Our God is not dead. The cross isn't the end of the story. He's alive. And because he lives, we live with him.

This life is not all that there is. We need that resurrection perspective, and today I'm going to invite you if you need that perspective in your life today over that we're going to have a couple of songs in time to respond, and this is really a time to respond in a couple different ways. You can go to the Lord and say God, I've never had your perspective on my life. I've seen my life as my own and all that there is in life. And so I am inviting you to give me that heavenly perspective. Or you might just say in this area, or in this area, I haven't had your perspective on things and I'm inviting you to help me to see things from your perspective, God. You can pray with someone in the back. That'd be an awesome opportunity for you to take that next step. Nothing like Easter to allow yourself to open yourself to what God might have for you in that way.

But also as an opportunity to receive a communion meal each week we participate in the sacred meal that Jesus established on the night that he was betrayed. And on the night that he was betrayed, he took a loaf of bread and he broke it and he said, this is my body broken for you and he took a cup and he said, this is my blood shed for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And so each week we participate in this sacred meal here at the church, whether you call it communion, Eucharist, Lord's supper, whatever you might call it, and it's a way for us to be reminded that Jesus is with us and that he is continuing to work in our lives that his body and his blood broken for us is sufficient that we don't have to continue our own tasks of making it ourselves but his body, his blood is broken and he is resurrected.

And so as we participate in this meal we're reminding ourselves of what he's done for us, the penalty that he's paid, and we do it until he returns one day. So if you would stand with me as we pray, if you are able.

Father, we pray now that this meal would be something that we can delight in, that you can delight in. That as we enjoy communion with you, that you would remind us of your perspective on our lives, help us to see things from your point of view, help us to understand the easy yolk, the gentle way. That you are with us. God, we pray that you would gift us with forgiveness of sins that you would see you would help us to see why it was necessary for you to die, that we would not have the same perspective as Cleopas with just political agendas, but that we might have the perspective of heaven and that we might delight in you. We ask these things in Christ's name, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from 1 Thessalonians 3:1-5, read for us in German. Discussion points: Paul sent Timothy as a teacher and encourager for the Thessalonian church, we need other Christians around us to help mature us in our faith, no one accidentally becomes like Jesus.

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Scripture reader: [1 Thessalonians 3:1-5, read in German] Therefore when we could bear it no longer, we were willing to be left behind at Athens alone, and we sent Timothy, our brother and God's coworker in the gospel of Christ, to establish and exhort you in your faith, that no one be moved by these afflictions. For you yourselves know that we are destined for this. For when we were with you, we kept telling you beforehand that we were to suffer affliction, just as it has come to pass, and just as you know. For this reason, when I could bear it no longer, I sent to learn about your faith, for fear that somehow the tempter had tempted you and our labor would be in vain.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks.

Preacher: Hi, good morning. It's good to see everybody. my name is Fletcher. I'm the lead pastor here at the church. a few years ago, the city of Somerville showed up in front of my house at least I thought it was in front of my house. It turned up it was in front of my neighbor's house and they started pulling up the concrete and I had no idea what was happening, but the next thing I knew there was a nice beautiful young sapling in the sidewalk next to my house and I was very excited about this that, you know, they planted the sapling and I don't know if you've seen this before, but they put little flyers on new trees saying, Will you adopt me? And with a QR code and so if you scan that QR code as I did immediately, I saw it out there, you know, they, they drive the truck away. I'm like, let me see the tree and I scan the QR code and they allow you to name the tree.

It is now your tree. You get to take care of it and I, I named the tree. I named it Melissa Maple Senor after my favorite mid-level SNL, cast member. so Melissa Maple Senor and I, became quite good friends over the next couple years, and, I, I watered her. I, you know, it only took about a week and one of my neighbors backed their truck into one of the stakes that was holding her up and so then Maples, Melissa had like kind of a lean to one side and after about a dozen calls to the city they still didn't come and replace the stake. I'm like, why would you spend the time. Digging up the sidewalk and planting a tree and then you won't even put the stake back in like all it needs you come to 4 minutes anyways, I was upset. I just drove to Home Depot and I bought a new stake, put it in the ground. I loved this tree. The the the leaves started to turn brown, and I did a little googling and discovered that they were turning brown. Because of all the dog pee at that time, dogs were walking down our street every day all day long because there was a a a lot that they were using as a dog park, down the street and so they were all peeing on the tree.

So I went and bought a nice little fence and put it around, Melissa Maple Senor and I, I continued to take care. I watered her like every week. It, it was a long summer and I actually had to buy a second hose to attach to my hose because like I said it wasn't in front of my house. It was in front of my neighbor's house. And then one day a nor'easter hit. And poor Melissa went to tree heaven. She, she got knocked out and the next thing I knew, you know, for some reason those guys who wouldn't come replace the stake, they'll come take the tree like the next day, you know, they showed up, picked up the tree, and they graciously put another tree in its place, which I think is still growing to this day, but I'm not taking care of it, OK? Melissa was my child. I'm, I'm not, I'm not taking care of the new one.

We've been going through a series in the book of First Thessalonians, and as we've said several times over the past few weeks, Paul planted this church in a hurry. He planted it. He was only in Thessalonica for like 3 weeks and then he had to hightail it out of town because an angry mob of people were coming after him. And at this point in the book, you're starting to get his heart for the Thessalonians. He's saying, hey, I know I planted you that this church is there because of the grace of God that he shared with me, that I shared with you, but I'm a little concerned. Are you doing OK, basically? And today is his encouragement to this young sapling of a church plant about his concern for them. It seems like he feared that the church would meet the same demise as little Melissa.

And so he was sending his disciple Timothy to encourage her. And he didn't have enough time to get this church established, so he was worried that the storms of life, the afflictions that we go through might topple the church, which leads us to the question, what causes a church to be resilient? What causes a church plant to make it beyond the church plant years into a church? What causes, and even better than that, like what would cause a Christian to be resilient. Lots of people grow up in church, and if you're here and you grew up in church, you're probably familiar with this. Lots of people grew up in church that we grew up with, many of us who are no longer following Jesus.

What sets apart a resilient Christian from a non-resilient Christian? And how can we as Christians, be prepared for the afflictions in life, and be able to be resilient through them all. As a church here, we are a 7 year old church plant. I would still call us a church plant. We're still somewhat in that sapling stage, and we have a vision as a church to thrive for the next 100 years. Lord willing, we will continue to exist as a church long after everyone in this room is dead and gone. What causes the church to be resilient to where they can last. To the next generation. And how can we establish the roots necessary over the next 5 years to be able to be a church that is resilient for the next 100 after that? How can we set ourselves up for the long haul?

Let's dive into the text. All these things we're gonna find here. Verse one. Therefore, when we could bear it no longer, we were willing to be left behind at Athens alone. OK, I'll do a quick run through of Paul's travels here because I find them interesting. Maybe you'll find them interesting also. Also, I don't speak German, so you know, just take in the the verses in English if you don't speak German as well, um. The history here is, and you can read about this in Acts 16:17. what happened is Paul is run out of Thessalonica by the angry mob. He goes to Berea, the angry mob follows. That's 50 miles, you know, they weren't just like going to the next town over. They were like that's like a two day journey. Three day journey for them to get to the next town. They were quite upset with Paul running him out of town and then after they get to Berea, he's like, OK, I gotta get really far away.

So he, gets on a boat and goes to Athens, which is like over 200 miles away. and then his, his comrades, his friends, Timothy and Silas, they joined him there. Actually, I think that he goes first and then they join him later. It seems like what happens and then, he becomes so concerned with what's happening in the church. Churches that he had just planted, he sends Timothy back to Thessalonica to check on the Thessalonians. He also sends Silas away, so he's left alone in Athens. We don't actually know exactly where Silas went. Most people kind of suspect he might have gone to Philippi, but we really don't know. And then Paul does this thing in Athens, and he moves to Corinth where he stays for 3 years, and that's where Paul, where Timothy and Silas catch back up with Paul. So that's the second missionary journey of Paul in a nutshell, basically what happens.

Verse 2, and we sent Timothy, our brother, and God's co-worker in the Gospel of Christ, to establish and exhort you in your faith. So it's well known throughout scripture that Timothy was a disciple of Paul. If you have been in the church for a while, you've probably heard someone say, Who's your Timothy? Who are you discipling? Who's someone that you're pouring into that everyone needs a Paul in their life and everyone needs a Timothy in their life, and I think that that is true. But I just love the way that Paul talks about Timothy. He doesn't say, and here is my little Padowan Timothy that I've sent to you. No, he says, here is my friend, my brother, and God's co-worker, not even my co-worker, but someone that is God's co-worker in the gospel that I'm sending to you. He doesn't look down upon Timothy. He treats Timothy as an equal, someone that he loves.

So often our discipleship efforts when we think about someone discipling us, we think that they're going to look down on us, and I actually think that prevents us from pursuing discipleship relationships in our own lives. That's a place of humility and it is a place of humility, but at the same time as people who disciple, we must not look down our our nose at anyone else that we're trying to. Disciple in the faith. In fact, if you have to be more spiritually mature than the one that you're discipling, then what, what are you doing? You're kind of making that would mean that I guess I have to be the most spiritually mature, which I don't assume that I am, because I don't want to just at at some point you're just making smaller and smaller Christians. I want to be, I want you to flourish in your faith. I want you to grow beyond where I am even.

And if that's my desire as someone who's discipling, then I can't look down my nose at you. I have to say there's great potential in you. Anyways, this is the way that Paul looks at Timothy, he looks at him with respect, and he sends Timothy to establish and exhort the Thessalonians. To exhort in the Greek is the word percaleo, and it means to encourage. You see this word show up pretty often. And one thing that I thought I would bring out about percoleo is it's a word used to the Holy Spirit. It's used of God Himself, and of the Holy Spirit, you, you see it used more as a noun, so you see it written as paralete, which is a very kind of famous word for the Holy Spirit that means comforter or advocate.

And so Timothy is being sent to encourage the Thessalonians as a comforter, as an advocate, as someone to give strength to them, to establish the church, the first word, establish and exhort you in your faith. He wants to see that that ground well laid, that foundation well laid. Verse 3, and no one be moved by these afflictions. So these afflictions are what Paul is concerned about why he's sending sending Timothy. He didn't have much time to be there. He wants to make sure that the stakes in the church are well placed so that it can withstand the storms of life and still resilience.

Continuing verse 3. For you yourselves know that we are destined for this. For when we were with you, we kept telling you beforehand that we were to suffer affliction, just as it has come to pass. And just as you know, So Paul says here that we are destined for affliction. Now this isn't to say that Paul is telling the future so much as to say that Paul just knows that every Christian, in fact, every person is destined for affliction. That suffering happens in our lives, and especially as Christians, we have suffering occur in our life, that the Christian life is difficult. Many of us wish that the Christian life was like the weather in sunny San Diego. You know, where its sun's almost the sun's shining. It might rain, you know, like twice a year, and you just stay inside for a day, and then the next day it's beautiful again. In fact, it's a little cooler.

But the weather in the Christian life is more like the weather in Boston. Where you're sunny one day, the next day you're shoveling snow in in April, you know, you have to wear your your parka to go to a Red Sox game. I went to a Red Sox game this week and my the guys in my community group went we all were wearing like insulated underwear and our and our winter boots. I'm pretty sure that the guys who were playing couldn't even feel their, their fingers as they were playing at the end they were just like, let's get this game over with as quickly as possible. Which means the Red Sox were like we will just lose. You can take the win. you, you, you have it, Blue Jays. they weren't even keeping the beer in fridges, they just had it out on the counter. It was like colder there, they only were selling high alcohol stuff because it was the only stuff that wouldn't freeze, you know, it was just, I'm just kidding, I'm making things up at the moment.

Verse 5. For this reason, when I could bear it no longer, I sent to learn about your faith for fear that somehow the tempter had tempted you and our labor would be in vain. I wonder if Paul, as he's writing this, has the par wool sewer in his mind. Because that's what I think of when I see this. I wonder if he's worried he's thinking about that famous story of Jesus, and Jesus tells this parable of a farmer that goes out and throws seed, and the seed lands on 4 different types of soil. The first soil it lands on is the path, and then on that, soil, the, the bird comes and takes away the seed immediately.

And Paul knows that the church at Thessalonica is not like the path. Because the path is where it doesn't even sprout up. Instead, he's concerned that maybe the church in Thessalonica, it might be like the seed that fell upon the rocky soil or the the seed that fell upon the thorny soil. And on the rocky ground, the the plant shoots up quickly, but then the cares, but then the afflictions of the world cause it to die. It's becomes scorched and it dies. And so Paul's probably thinking of this, saying, Church in Thessalonica, I hope that you're not like the seed on the thorn on the rocky ground. He's probably also saying Church in Thessalonica, I hope that you're not like the seed that fell on the thorny ground where it sprouts up, but then the cares of the life suffocate it and it dies. And the, the temptations of the world, the deceitfulness of riches, choke out the word and it proves unfruitful. That's what he's saying when he's saying that he had feared that the tempter might tempt them and their labor would be building the church in vain.

Our church is surprisingly like the church in Thessalonica, in a few different ways. When people ask me, did you start the church? I usually say, yeah, sure, because it's like a half truth, honestly. I did not start this church, it in the most true sense of the, the term starting the church. Instead there was a Paul, his name was Claude Ocho, and he started a, a church here called it had a totally different name. It was called Redeemer, and at that time I was the executive pastor over at City on a Hill in Brookline. Redeemer was meeting across the hallway, a great band of of folks there might be a few Redeemer-ites around here, still, oh there we go, yeah, a few excite a little bit of excitement around here and Claude, wonderful preacher, great guy, good friend, he's a published author.

We wanted to plan a church in this area and but we didn't want to plant on top of Claude because we're friends with him and so we said, hey, would you guys want to become part of the city on a hill network of churches? And he said, yeah, I think, I think that sounds good. So he led the church through the transition and then a couple of months later he moved to Memphis and since then he's moved again and he's planted another church he's doing well. But after he moved, I came and and led the church at that point, and I think that you could easily say that the church was not established. In fact, if we had not been able to step in, that the church could have met the same demise that Paul fears here, because at that point there were no elders, there were no deacons. There was no membership process.

It was just like a great group of people meeting in this building, which is fantastic and with a little bit of money in the bank and so we were able to see the church become established and be able to be more fruitful for years to come as a result of it. So we're looking at the next steps that we need to take. How can we be an unignorable light? In in the city for years and years to come. God has been so faithful, but we want to become even more resilient. What does it look like to be a city on a hill? What does it look like to be a church that can reach people in our community with the gospel to be a force for good and flourishing? We want to be a church that can plant more churches that can be healthy enough that you can take, you know, a, a, a little portion and put it in a jar and, and get it, rooted up again and be able to plant another church from where we are.

We want to be a church that can send out missionaries. We want to be a church that can be established for the next 100 years, and that's what we're. Praying about and it's gonna take a lot of different things to get us there. We're gonna have to continue to do the normal stuff the gospel has to be at the core of what we do. We have to be continued to be discipled in who Christ is. We have to continue the the life of sacrificial service. We have to continue all the normal things that a church would do raising up leaders, having a healthy membership process, all that type of stuff. But we're also looking at things like hiring another staff member. We're looking to hire a second full-time staff member this year, Lord willing.

And we're it's going to take things like money, it's going to take things like prayer. We would love one day in the next 5 years to be in a place where we could own a building, whether it be this building or another one in the Somerville area. We would love to be in the place where we could own a building because I cannot imagine. Renting a building for the next 100 years, that doesn't seem like a good stewardship of God's funds. And so we're praying about what the Lord would have, but the most important thing for us to be a church that is resilient is to be a church that's filled with resilient disciples. Because you can't be a resilient church unless you're filled with resilient Christians, Christians who are not moved by the afflictions and temptations of the world.

The Barna group is well known and well respected, Christian surveying and research group, and they have put together a lot of different studies on faith, culture, church life, and a few years ago they put together a study on 4 different kinds of exiles. I have the slide for you. So this was in 2019, I believe, so six years ago now. So it says 18 to 29 year olds who grew up in as Christians and so you can just add 6 years to that because that's who it's still talking about and maybe the statistics are different now, but I think that it's somewhat similar, so you might be talking about 24, 23 to 34 year olds, who grew up as Christians, which is, you know, the, the majority of people in our church, honestly.

And so they tend to fall into one of these four categories as they get older and the first is prodigals so these are people who have left the church who no longer are interested in what the church is doing they they de-churched or they they've deconstructed their faith, thank you. the second one is the nomads, and these are lapsed Christians. These are people who would still call themselves Christians, but who are no longer going to church at all, not really practicing their faith, but they would still say, yes, I'm a Christian. The third one is the habitual churchgoers, so these are people who go to church at least once a month, but it is not the most essential or most important part of their life anymore.

And the fourth one is the resilient disciples is what they've called it. And they have 4 different parts of what it means to be a resilient disciple. We have another slide for that. And a resilient disciple is someone who attends church at least monthly and engages with their church more than just attending worship services. They trust firmly in the authority of the Bible. They are committed to Jesus personally and affirm he was crucified and raised from the dead to conquer sin and death, and they express a desire to transform the broader society as an outcome of their faith.

So let's just compare that with someone who might not be a resilient disciple, a non resilient disciple. What are they like? A non resilient disciple does not attend church at least monthly and engage with their church more than just attending worship services. A non-resilient church, a non resilient Christian thinks that they can do the Christian life by themselves, that all that they might need is the energy to be able to listen to good sermons that but they're missing out on these essential aspects of what it means to be in the church. They're oftentimes isolated, not committed to a church body, not having someone intentionally disciple them and not having a pastor.

It was important for Paul to send Timothy because he knew that they needed a leader, that Christians need to have a pastor, that they need to have a leader to establish them. This passage shows us if nothing else that we need the church and to make mature disciples that we need to have other Christians to walk alongside us. Resilient Christians also trust, non-resilient Christians also might not trust firmly in the authority of the Bible, so they probably don't read it very often. Non-resilient Christians are. Not committed to Jesus personally and affirmed that he was crucified. They probably affirm that he was crucified and raised, but they probably don't have that intimate relationship with Christ that you might see in a resilient believer. And they also might desire to transform the broader society, but it might not have anything to do with being an outcome of their faith. It might just be something that they want to do themselves.

And so as resilient Christians, we want to be like these people, like, like these deeply rooted trees that we can withstand the storms of life. We want to encounter Jesus and God on a regular basis. In fact, I think this is the number one thing that differentiates resilient Christians from non-resilient Christians is that resilient Christians don't just believe the gospel, they encounter the gospel. Resilient Christians don't just believe that Jesus is who he says he is, but resilient Christians experience the goodness of who God is on a personal level. They have experienced the sweetness of the resurrection. They have experienced the unity with Christ and the joy of fellowship. The spirit, they've experienced who God is, that they look to God, and they can see that they are a sinner in need of a savior, and they can trust that He is enough for them. And so they have those moments of quiet stillness in the morning or in the evening as they read their scriptures, and they're encouraged by what they read. But they also have this regular rhythm of experiencing the grace of Christ. And it keeps getting deeper and sweeter and they also have spiritual practices to support their walk of faith they're committed to a church. These are all things that resilient disciples have.

So I actually have a little bit of a chart here for you of how someone become goes from vulnerable to resilient. And so if you look at this passage, this is kind of the way, the direction it goes that the church in Thessalonica, they were vulnerable, and then and then Timothy was sent to establish and encourage them, and Lord willing, they become resilient as a result of that. And then I think the next step that we oftentimes neglect is this co-working or planting aspect we want. Believers to not just be, be a consumer of what the church has but to turn and and contribute as well. And so they become co-working with God, planting, and how does it all happen but through the teaching and discipleship that Timothy offers and through just the regular suffering, they become strong and resilient.

This is all very similar to the process that I think that Brooke mentioned this earlier in the announcements with the practicing the way course or maybe it was Anneke, mentioned this, sorry. Anneke mentioned this talking about the, the meal ministry, but with the practicing the way. Of course we're we're introduced to this chart of Christian growth, and I think that this is the goal of the practicing the way course and I think that I would like to share it with you here. First, he shares this is all from John Mark Comer. I didn't make this stuff up, but he shares unintentional spiritual formation looks like this. The stories we believe these are the things that control and that shape us and so the things that we are controlling are the stories that we believe in the environment where we are with our habits and our relationships.

So these are the things that we can control, but then over time through experiences we're shaped into the people we become. This is how you become who you become. And this is how it happens in almost everyone's lives. It's unintentional. It's just the habits we develop, the relationships we have. And so the next page that we have here is this intentional spiritual formation. Where in an intentional spiritual formation, the environment that you're in actually the environment's supposed to say Holy Spirit right there so you can just imagine that says Holy Spirit. you have the, the teaching of the word and then the practice of following after Christ, the practices of the the way of Christ, along with the community that God puts around you. And so those things are the things that you control, sitting under the teaching, being with regular practices and community. And then over time, through suffering, we become more like Christ.

And so here's the deal, guys, I think sometimes we really overcomplicate this Christian life thing. If you do this, you're doing, you're you're going to be shaped into a resilient Christian. Over time, if you're doing the practices, if you're under good teaching, if you're experiencing community, and then you're weathering the storms of life well, that's going to shape you like Christ. And we can overcomplicate it and our Christian lives can be so filled with guilt, can they not? Like we're just never doing enough is what it feels like. Just take a step and just remind yourself, Jesus is enough. You don't have to prove yourself with God. You might want to be shaped more like him, just do the simple things. Do the simple things. And take one step closer to him, sit under the teaching of God, be in your church community, practice the spiritual practices, even if it's a simple one. Open your Bible, set a timer for 10 minutes. Open your Bible, pray for a minute or two in that time. Take a moment to practice it. And hopefully that becomes longer. I want it to be longer, but if you're having a hard time just spending any time in the world, just time or 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Where you're going to give it some focus.

Start those practices and right now the Practicing the Way course has been great for us. It, it gets a lot deeper than that. You can do many more things with the practices, but I just wanna take the guilt off. I just want to say that if you wanna become a resilient disciple, that you just need to be intentional with your spiritual formation. A resilient church requires resilient disciples. And so here's my question for you today. Are you a resilient disciple? Are you someone ready to weather the storms of life? Are you being shaped more by the Holy Spirit, or by the environment of the world? What steps do you need to take toward resiliency?

For some of you, it could be that first step of praying with someone today, saying, hey, I'm, I'm in a church, I'm in a community, I would love to pray with someone, there's people in the back to pray with you. And that would be a great step for you to take, potentially today. For some of you, you might need to take that next step of saying, hey, I'm gonna enter into a community and commit to being a part of a community group, and actually let people into my life in that time. For others, it might be a renewed commitment to the practices of following after Jesus. I, we have lots of resources we can give you if that's something that you're interested in.

But guys, take a step out of the unintentional spiritual formation, and we have to step into the intentional spiritual formation, because no one unintentionally becomes like Christ. You had to take a step into intentionally following Christ and following him so that you can become more like him, because the storms of life, they'll turn you into a colder, harder person unless you're regularly encountering the good news of who God is and seeing the world from his point of view, because God has a different perspective on the world than we do.

Each week we participate in a sacred meal, and it's one of the ways that we remind ourselves of what Christ has done for us. It's one of the ways that we are shaped in his image. It is a spiritual practice for us to take of this meal, and it's different traditions call it different things. We call it communion or the Eucharist or the Lord's supper, whatever you may call it. this is a meal that Jesus initiated on the night that he was betrayed. He said, this is my body broken for you. He took a loaf of bread, and he said, this is my blood shed for you with a cup of wine and. As we do this, we're remembering what he's done. We're also being drawn near to him and being reminded of what he's done for us on a personal level.

So over the next song you're invited to come forward, make your way through, and go to go back to your seat. You can take it just right there or walk back to your seat if you would like. I invite you to stand if you're able, and we will, prepare our hearts to, to sing in response.

Father, as we prepare ourselves to receive this meal, we pray that you would be honored, magnified, that you would create in us a resiliency, a seeing and savoring of the things of Christ. That our practices would match our beliefs, that our lives would follow after your way. God, we pray that the gospel would become sweeter and more rich, that our lives would be more dedicated to you because we want nothing more than to be near to you. And help us to see life from your perspective, help us to weather the storms of life and to become stronger over time as a result of weathering the storms over time, and we ask that you would bless us in this time. I, I pray for anyone here who needs to take the next step to become a more resilient disciple. I pray that you would meet them in that moment. And that they would be committed to following after you, that they would receive your grace and experience it anew. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher teaches about pursuing deep relationships even in a transient community from 1 Thessalonians 2:17-20. Discussion points: Transient relationships can have an eternal impact on the world and our hearts, we can take courage to invest deeply in relationships, community requires commitment before certainty.

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Scripture reader: [1 Thessalonians 2:17-20] But since we were torn away from you, brothers for a short time, in person, not in heart, we endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face, because we wanted to come to you - I, Paul, again and again - but Satan hindered us. For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? For you are our glory and joy.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: All right, good morning. How's everybody doing this morning? Good, good to see you all. in his classic book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell is very famous in saying that you can become an expert in anything if you spend 10,000 hours on that thing. So if you want to become a chess grandmaster, it's going to require 10,000 hours. If you want to, that's why it takes so long to earn a PhD, 10,000 hours before you can call yourself an expert in. Any particular field, an amazing computer programmer, 10,000 hours, a master musician, 10,000 hours, and I think you can take the same principle and apply it to relationships that it takes 10,000 hours to really know someone inside and out so well to where you, you can just think their thoughts after them and you can master that person.

This is why so many of us build such great relationships in college because we have so much time, at least I did look, I did not go to Ivy League school like so many of you guys did. I went to a state school in Mississippi. It was very easy. There was, it was not, there was not a lot of studying happening there. I like to say that I got, I double majored in math and psychology and I double minored in intramural sports and Mario Kart Double Dash. That was like how we spent our time in college and the relationships that I built in college have really stuck with me. I have several friends that I stay in touch with to this day. For some reason I was at a secular school, but for some reason we all became pastors and so I have all these friends who are pastors all over the country and that I get to stay in touch with and and and continue our friendship.

In today's passage, Paul's expressing a deep love and affection for the Thessalonians, but the thing with the Thessalonians is it's kind of weird because he didn't actually get to spend anywhere near 10,000 hours with them, even though he's expressing this deep love and affection. He spent like. Three weeks with these people before he was ran off and so it's an odd passage to think in that way, but what he's teaching us is that you can still make friendships that can fill up your soul for years to come in a short amount of time. let's dive in the passage. We like to just work through the Bible here. I'm just going to start in verse 17, and we're gonna work our way through.

Verse 17, but since we were to, since we were torn away from you, brothers, for a short time, in person, not in heart, we endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face, because we wanted to come to you, I, Paul, again and again. But Satan hindered us.

OK, quick recap, we've been going through the book of Thessalonians. This is probably the first letter that Paul wrote of several letters that he wrote to different churches, and in this, book we're reminded of the way that Paul originally came to Thessalonica, which is a city in Greece. It's still to this day the 2nd largest city in Greece and. When he came to the city, he preached for 3 weeks before a mob of angry Jewish, followers came and chased him out of town. In fact, he went to a town several miles away, Berea, and the mob followed him there and chased him out of that town as well. And so when he says that he was torn away from the Thessalonians, he means that he was chased away by an angry mob and what he says though, is that he has endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see the Thessalonians again face to face.

What's actually happened is Paul has sent his disciple, Timothy to go and check on the Thessalonians, be like, Yo, we were only there for 3 weeks. Can you go make sure that the church still exists? And if they have any questions, which yeah, they should have questions after 3 weeks. Send them, send the questions back and I'll write them a letter and answer their questions. So that's what's happening here. And so, he says that we long to see you face to face with great desire.

There is a great value in face to face relationships. We all felt this during the COVID pandemic, did we not? Well we long to see each other face to face? And if you're online today, we're so glad that you you found us. We're glad that people watch our YouTube videos where maybe you're checking out different churches and trying to decide where you need to be, or maybe you're one of these people that can't make it to church for one reason or another, but we would encourage you that if you are able. To come in person because there is just a value, something sacred that happens with face to face relationships. It's not church isn't just this thing that you consume as like a message, OK, there's way better preachers than I am out there and so if it is, you can find someone better than me online, but it's the value of the face to face relationships.

And so Paul says that Satan hindered them from coming to visit. Now he doesn't elaborate on how Satan hindered them, and so anything that I share would be a conjecture. And so I'm just gonna stay away from that. Verse 19, for what is, what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord at his coming? Is it not you? For you are our crown, our glory and our joy.

Now the word crown here, this is actually really interesting. I didn't know this before this week in Greek there's two words that are often used for crown. we use a crown, we only have one word for crown in the same kind of way. So this, this word here is Stefanos, Stefanos, and it's specifically talking about a victor's wreath. So you know, like the wreath that you would make out of olive branches sometimes they actually made them out of celery so I learned and it was something that you would give to those who completed a race in ancient times. They, they would wear a victor's wreath and this is completely different than the word for royal crowns. Now if a crown made of gold, that's a different word, it's diadema, and you would. get them confused unless you're an English speaker and you only have one word for crown. So when it talks about like crowns in heaven, don't think royal crowns because that's not the right word. It's talking about the victory crown, which is a, a cool nuance.

And that let's go back to the verse one more time. For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming? Is it not you? For you are our glory and our joy. Now the word for coming here, Perusia, is oftentimes used for Jesus' second coming. Paul is looking forward to the day that Jesus comes to restore the world back to working order. It's what many of us refer to heaven, but really the Bible talks about a new heaven and a new earth when Jesus comes to reunite heaven and earth, so that we can live forever with him. And he says that what will be his crown, what will be his boast, what will be his hope and his joy on that day will be the faith of the Thessalonians and the relationship that he has with them. What he says is that his investment into the life of the Thessalonians is what will really matter when his days are done.

And I think that the principle that he's teaching us in this passage is really simple principle. It's this. Transient relationships can have an eternal impact. Transient relationships can have an eternal impact. Though Paul did not know the Thessalonians for long, Paul made an impact on them, and they made an impact on Paul. And even though they don't get much time together on earth, they will get the opportunity to spend eternity together.

Now it's really interesting how we just preach through books of the Bible, and then we get to passages like this and you're like, well, Fletcher, you obviously chose that one for our church today. Because we're going through a period in the church of amplified transience, are we not? Where people that we love dearly who have served our church faithfully are moving too far away to be a meaningful member of what we're doing in our community here. And so the Lord has provided for us and he will provide for us, but it's one of those difficult times. And in fact, I would just say that a place like Somerville is a place with amplified transience more often than other places we have people, amazing people who come and study at one of the great universities that we have in the area. We have people who take great jobs at one of the, the jobs here that tend to churn through people on a regular basis, and we have people come and go here. I would say that in my 7 years as pastor of this church there probably been 500 different people who have called this their church home, although that is not how large of a church we are whatsoever, right?

And so the transience it has its pluses and minuses, but what Paul wants to remind us of is that transient relationships, temporary relationships can have an eternal impact, and I will just say, even though Somerville might be a place of amplified transience, I've lived in the Boston area for like 13 years now and all of Boston is that way but I've come to find out from talking to friends in other places that like the world is just more that way these days than it used to be like it's not just Boston you might move away from Boston being like I wanna find somewhere with less transience and then you're gonna get there and be like, it's still transient here. I think the world's just more transient than it was 20 years ago. People just move more often and then that's just the thing. It's not right or wrong, it's just, it just is.

And for those of us who call the Boston area home though, it can be so difficult to say goodbye so often, right? Emotionally exhausting might be a word that we could use here and sometimes we could be looking at our relationships and we think. Why bother? Why bother investing in another relationship? If you have not been here for longer than like 5 years, a lot of the sermon might not apply at this point, OK? Because you're like, yeah, relationships, let's go, new people, but if you've been here and you're like a gritty, like you've been here for a long time, you've been through it, you've been to that point where you're like, I will not go to your goodbye party. Like, I, I just cannot do another goodbye party. if you've made it to that point, congratulations, this sermon is for you. And but we, we oftentimes have this thought, why bother?

I have a story. I hope it is not too cringe. I cringe a little bit with this story. when I was in college, I worked at a camp called Central Hills, and at Central Hills it was, it was a royal ambassador's camp, which is like Baptist Boy Scouts, basically is what's happening here and so I worked there they would. People, this was crazy. I don't know why people did this sort of thing. They, they would come and drop off like 200 of their young elementary school boys and people would come and drop off all of their, their boys, and we had a great time. We would walk them around the woods and do horseback riding and swimming and swimming in the lake and just a great time and at the end of every week, and I still remember a lot of these kids that I was the camp counselor for, but at the end of every week we would, the counselors would all get up on the fireplace mantel and we were secretly very, very happy that they were leaving. It was, it was the best time of the whole week, but they were all very sad, so we got up in front of them, we locked arms and we would sing the Michael W. Smith classic Friends Are Friends Forever. Does anybody know it? Friends are friends forever. If the Lord's the Lord of them, cause a friend will not say never, know it well. It the welcome will not end though it's hard to let you go in the Father's hands we know. That a friend? It's not long to live as friends. Thank you, thank you. Well done. The first and only time I've sung in front of people. It's corny, it's corny, but there's a truth to that song, that our temporary transient relationships have eternal potential.

A few years ago there was a member of our church, a young man, by the name of Jeff Houston, who you guys remember Jeff, a few of you do at least, and, Jeff was a member of our church for like 2 or 3 years. He had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. I hope he listens to this and, and hears me say that, and he just came in and he like was wearing a backpack his first week which I'm like, where are you going with that backpack, bro? And and we built a relationship and he was a baby Christian in many ways and around the same time that he joined our church, my family bought a house and with the Vioba family and and we started a major renovation project in our house so we tore out our entire kitchen. I ripped it out all the walls and then I went home and I laid in my bed and I said I'm not sure I know how to put it back together.

So every Friday night I would watch YouTube videos until about midnight and then I would wake up and and beg all of my friends to come help me work on the house and many of you came and helped work on the house and Jeff was at my house almost every Saturday for like 8 weeks in a row. and we're not talking just for a couple of hours, like 8 to 10 hour days, like swinging a hammer, working on the house, and we would talk and hang out and a couple, about a year ago, I went and visited Jeff, and he, he only was here for 2 or 3 years, then he moved to New York where he's still at. And I was hanging out with Jeff and he was like, man, you guys, you remember when we were working on your house? I think I got more out of that than you ever could have with the time. And it hurt so much when Jeff moved, like it's someone I had poured my life into. But forever, our lives are together and also impacted because of this transient relationship.

A few years before that, maybe 10, 12 years ago at this point, there was a young couple who came and joined our church back when Megan and I, I was working at City on the Hill Brookline as the executive pastor over there, named Joel and Bailey Wilpis, and, Joel and Bailey, they got married. One week and then the following week we're moving into a 4, 4 story walk up in Jamaica Plain where Megan and I were living at that point and they did not know a soul in Boston so I recruited like 3 people and we went and helped them move and they had, I kid you not, like 70 nutcrackers in that in that U-Haul and I was like, Joel, what are you doing, man? He's like, I had no idea that she came with so many nutcrackers. And so we, we were friends for a couple of years. They joined our community group.

We got to know them quite well, but after they were only here for like 2 years, Joel, showed up at our house one day and told us that they were moving to Amsterdam or somewhere in the Netherlands. it's in it all Amsterdam? And so they they were moving and it hurt. We weren't like, we weren't hardened yet, you know, we were still young, little babies in, in Jamaica Plain. And it's like, no, we're not coming to your goodbye party. I think that was the first good part goodbye party that we skipped just because it was too hard to say goodbye to people who we thought we were gonna do life with for so long. So they moved to to the Netherlands, then they moved to Chicago then randomly enough they moved to Louisville, Kentucky, which is where Megan and I met. I went to seminary in Kentucky. Megan went to high school in Kentucky, and so we, we got to kind of guide them and tell them about the church that I worked at when I was in seminary called Sojourn Community Church, and they, they joined that church actually.

Then about 2 or 3 years ago, Bailey was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. they had had 3 children, bought a house in the suburbs, live in the dream, and she has this cancer and she fought quite hard, until late last year, just a few months ago, Bailey went to be with the Lord. She was early 30s, left 3 kids with Joel. Just a really terrible situation. And then Joel gave me a call like last week actually. I think I had the flu and I was like, I'm just gonna pretend like I don't cause I wanna talk to him, and he just wanted to encourage me.

He wanted to say, I, I want you to know that we spent 2 years in Boston. And I thought a lot of the things that you guys did as a church were really weird. Like, you sang sad songs. I never had wanted to sing a sad song in my entire life. You did this thing during your worship services called a lament where you were sad intentionally. Why would someone ever wake up to go to that on a Sunday morning? But I get it now. And those 2 years that we spent in Boston, even though we lived in the Netherlands and Chicago in between, they led us to the church that we joined in, in Louisville. And they had, Bailey had over 1000 people at her funeral, well loved. And he's staying in Louisville even though he's from Texas because the church has cared for him so much so he just wanted to let me know that the short time that I invested in him, he joined like this Tuesday morning book club that Mark and I, Mark Schmeissing and I were a part of. The short time that I invested in him had an eternal impact on his life. Because he was able to make it through, and he's still making it through with this community that has surrounded him, because he found it through the time that we spent here.

When I was a young man, I had a youth pastor for 2 years. 10th grade and 11th grade, formational years in my life. His name was Jason Robertson. Spiritual father? And That man took me under his wing. My father wasn't around. And so he took me to Like, hang out all the time. We spent so much time together. He would take, he took me to every home Mississippi State football game, which was exciting back then. I don't know how exciting it is these days. that was 2.5 hours away from my home, a lot of time in the car. I don't remember anything in particular that we talked about, except for one time, I was telling him about a girl and he was like, I don't think that's a good idea. But that was the only time I can remember him saying anything negative to me.

He's actually the one that after a year of this, he said, I think the Lord's calling you to ministry. I think that you're gonna be a pastor. And so, I look at my life and I say, every bit of fruit that I've experienced in my life. From a spiritual perspective, whether that be something like pastoring a church and pouring into the lives of others, or it's just being a husband and a father. I thank God for Jason. This man who invested in my life for a short period of time, and we did not talk much after that. We've gotten, we talk maybe every other year at this point. And we didn't talk much after he moved, honestly. Temporary relationships have the potential of eternal impact.

And if you invest yourself wisely, that eternal impact can be exponential. No matter how long someone is in your life, whether it's 3 weeks or 3 decades, there's eternal potential in that relationship. Which is why I take meetings with people that I oftentimes probably shouldn't from a productivity standpoint. And it's like, I don't, this person probably isn't gonna live here in 6 months. Why am I taking a meeting with this person? But it's each, these temporary relationships have the potential for eternal impact.

Listen to what Paul says again after 3 weeks with the Thessalonians. For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? For you are, for you are our glory and joy. I have two points of application for us from that. And there are two points of encouragement, and I mean that in the literal sense, because there are two things to take courage to go and do. They're going to take courage, and so it's a literal encouragement. I want you to take a step of courage after today, whatever that might look like for you.

And the first point here is you need to have the courage to dig into relationships. Now, when I preached this sermon. And when I get to this point, I oftentimes feel like pastors approach this, like, you need to, you introverts need to have the courage to be more extroverted. And that is not the point here, OK? I'm not saying be someone you're not. I'm saying have the courage to enter relationships. Because an introvert has this gift to have a much deeper relationship oftentimes than an extrovert does. It's not just have a a a breadth of relationship, it's like dive into relationships, have friendships. The average human lives to be about 75 or 85, and that means that you live about 4000 weeks. There's a famous book about this. That's a shockingly short amount of time, is it not? 4000 weeks? Are you investing yourself into what will live after that 4000 weeks? Which are relationships.

To have a relationship with another human being is a risky thing, because to have a real relationship with another human being is to open yourself up to hurt. Each of these relationships that I just shared about. I felt hurt at one point in that relationship. And I'm sure they felt hurt from me. But you cannot have a real relationship without the potential for her. I love the way that CS Lewis describes this in his book, The Four Loves. He says this, to love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything in your heart will be wrong and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it around your hobbies and little luxuries. Avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. Put in the casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken, it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable to love is to be vulnerable.

Friends, my, my encouragement to you is to have the courage to be vulnerable. To invest yourself in a relationship, that might break your heart. That might hurt at the end of it. In fact, you might be looking at relationships and say, is this worth it? Is this really, is it worth it for me to do this? And I would just respond with saying, aren't all relationships temporary? I mean, I've been married for almost going on 15 years this this year. I hope that I have another, you know, 40 in me, maybe a few more than that, Lord willing. But still, our, our marriage is momentary. It's, it's not gonna last forever. There's no there's no marriage in heaven and marriage is meant to reflect what heaven's all about, which is intimacy with God. And so all marriage, all relationships are temporary.

Some people will move 12 times looking for community that takes a lifetime to build. Some people will go to 10 different churches a year looking for community that you cannot have without commitment. That's why we have this, this community commitment that we make with one another, just something that we say here all the time is that community requires commitment before certainty. Because our FOMO so much, so often keeps us from really committing to a community, to a group, and saying these are my people, cause we might be afraid that there might be better people out there for us somewhere. But if you want to find your people, you're never gonna know they're your people without committing to them first.

Community requires commitment before certainty. Some of us have likewise been looking for certainty with God before engaging in relationship with Him. And I would say that community requires commitment before certainty in a relationship with God as well. I'm not trying to tell you to put your doubts on the back burner. There are answers to many of your questions. I want you to investigate those. we can get you connected with someone to talk through those things. Talk About Doubts.com, former member of our church, put that together.

But what I'm saying is if you really wanna have a relationship with God, there will come a day where you just have to say faith is important and. I'm going to take a step of commit committing myself to the Lord without all of my questions answered because some of us have that scientific inquisitive mind that can just, if you're a scientist, you all of your questions are never answered, OK? That's, I just know that about scientists after living here for long enough. You're never gonna answer them all. And, and so it requires some commitment before you get to that certainty. You have to be willing to open yourself up to him. Here's the thing, we were created, created to live in a relationship with God.

That's the whole point of the gospel, that Jesus came to establish a relationship with us. He paid the penalty that we deserve, so that we might have a relationship with God. He was resurrected from the dead so that we might live with him. And the second encouragement that I have for you, OK? So that's the first one, the courage. To form relationships and honestly, that one is easy compared to the second one to have courage to do. Cause I think that a lot of you are like, OK, I buy it, you know, I'll, I'll have the courage to step into a relationship and maybe you just need to jot down a name right now, someone that you're gonna, gonna try to reach out to a little bit more. Don't put too much pressure on it, OK? That's a good way to smother a relationship.

But have the courage to put yourself out there, to step into relationships, to show up to community group regularly to say I'm gonna be there every week and and to be there, to show up to church regularly. I'm gonna, it's, it's that face time, that regular face time that oftentimes builds a relationship. It's amazing. Just how much an hour on a Sunday of just being in the same room can build you up with another person. But then you also have to have conversations and everything. So that, that's one step, take that courage of of relationships.

The second step is the courage to bring Christ into the relationship. And that one's a lot harder for a lot of us, is it not? Relationships centered on Christ have maximum investment potential though. Because a relationship centered on Christ doesn't have a cap. Relationships in this life have a cap. It's like 80, 90 years maybe if you're lucky. Relationships centered on Christ have an eternal. Growth potential. You can know that person into the next life. As Christians, we do face the reality that our friends who don't know Christ, are looking at eternity separated from us and separated from God.

And so therefore, we must invest into those relationships, not just with our own love, as Paul said, he said he laid himself out, he, he invested himself, but we also invest the love of Christ. That's why they're his joy and crown, not just because they're people that he knows and he loves, but because he's invested the word of Christ into them, the revelation of God, because they've come to true faith in who Jesus is. That's why they are his crown of boasting, and his joy and his glory. I know this takes a tremendous amount of courage, a tremendous amount of courage, but honestly, you're limiting your friendship if you refuse to bring God into the relationship, because there's so much more potential for joy and glory in a relationship where Christ is at the center of it.

And I'm not trying to say, I think that some of us make a mistake here, and we say, OK, I'm gonna limit my relationships to Christians then. That's called living in a bubble. That's also not what Paul is wanting to do. He's meeting people who aren't Christians and trying to bring Christ into it. Maybe we have relationships with Christians or a marriage that we won't need to bring Christ into our marriage, Christ into my relationship with another believer, we can do that and that's a really thing, a great thing that requires some courage, but it requires even more courage to share your faith with another with another person who might not share it.

But let me tell you this, that feels really scary to us. We're afraid that we're gonna make it weird or, or something, and it's OK sometimes you play the long game, but some of us have been playing the long game for way too long, and I, I'll tell you this that people that I've talked to about faith oftentimes have been waiting to have the conversation. They want to talk about these things. They don't wanna make it weird. They don't wanna put you on the spot if they know you're a Christian, but it's not hard to start a simple conversation. Don't be pushy, but be invitational into my life, into the message of Christ, into the good news of the gospel.

What you have is not snake oil that you're trying to like deceive them into. You are not a used car salesman. You have the message of the hope of the world. Why keep it to yourself? Why keep it to yourself? It is not something fake, you're not trying to deceive anybody. You're trying to give them the good news. It does require courage. It requires a lot of confidence in what Christ thinks of you, that Christ loves me, and even if I'm rejected by this friend, I'm still loved. And I, it also requires a church community, because you, if you go and do this by yourself and you get rejected. Without a church community to like fall back on, how much is that gonna hurt? It's gonna be worse. I don't know where you're at with these things. Maybe I think that the steps for us are one, if you are new to Christianity or you're questioning your faith, maybe today is the day that you take a step of courage into that commitment before certainty with God. And so you might want to pray with someone after the service and tell them I want to invite God into my life. And that would be an opportunity for you to trust in him.

Maybe you need to take that step of courage into a real relationship with another person. Maybe you've been hurt and you've closed yourself off to others, or maybe you're just starting to go down that path. Today could be a day where you say, OK, I'm gonna open myself up again to being hurt again, but to stepping into a relationship, or maybe you have a relationship, a friendship that you could bring Christ into it. And you might need to pray with someone about a specific friend today, and I would invite you to to pray with, we have prayer counselors in the back after the worship gathering today.

But wherever you are in that, if you are a believer here today, you're called to friendship and relationship with God. It's such a wonderful invitation and each week we participate in a sacred meal that symbolizes our friendship with God. It symbolizes what he has done to establish relationship with us that his body was broken for us and the body of Christ was broken, the blood of Christ was shed, that we might enjoy fellowship with him forever. So each week we take a a sacred meal. On the night that he was betrayed Jesus initiated the sacred meal, and it, it's almost as if we go back in time to sitting around that table with Jesus, and we remind ourselves of what Jesus has done for us and that we get to have a relationship with him throughout all eternity. So if you're a believer here today, we're gonna encourage you, to come and receive this communion meal. With that being said, I'm gonna invite you to receive this over the next song and why don't we stand up if you're able as we prepare our hearts to receive this communion meal.

Father, we thank you for the good news of the gospel that encouraged us day in and day out. Would you give us courage today? Would you fill our, our souls with the joy of, of Christian relationship with the joy of the fruit that you've invested in us. God, we pray that you would give us the courage to step out there to share the good news of Jesus, but also the courage to step out there in relationship and to really be willing to allow ourselves to be hurt again, even though it's difficult. God, we pray that you would bless this communion meal. Anyone who, who needs fellowship with you today, would they come and, and receive it in a special way? Would you be with them in this time? We ask this in Christ's name, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher continues our sermon series with 1 Thessalonians 2:13-16. Discussion points: The word of God refers to any revelation of who God is, we have to be active and alert to kill the sin in our lives through God’s power, Jesus wants to renovate our hearts to more perfectly reflect the gospel.

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Scripture reader: [1 Thessalonians 2:13-16] And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at in your believers. For you brothers became imitators of the churches of God and Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you suffered the same thing from your own countrymen as they did. The Jews who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and drove us out and displeased God and opposed all mankind by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved so as always to fill the measure of their sins. But wrath has come upon them at last.

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you. All right. Good job, guys. All right, I'm gonna start with one of those awkward first date questions, OK? if your soul was a home. How would the real estate agent list it? Would you be a real fixer upper, which if you've ever done real estate shopping in this area, you know that's shorthand for a piece of junk, for something that's been sitting there dilapidated, the roof's caving in, the foundation's cracked, everything's wrong, but it has real potential. $2 million please. Have you neglected your soul for years pushing the feelings deep down into the fixer upper stage?

Maybe your soul would be listed as a historic home. OK, again, that's a red flag if you see that historic home means beautiful on the outside, but in order to do any work on it, you not only have to get a permit, you have to ask an entire society of old ladies if you're allowed to touch your home. And it's often times quite difficult and so when you get to the inside it's like the electricity was installed by Benjamin Franklin himself and it's like what am I supposed to do with this thing, but maybe you are your your soul might resemble that in some ways maybe you grew up in a home where. The gospel was taught when you grew up in a church you know the historical reliability of everything and you have that good kind of like outward appearance of religion, but inwardly it's all outdated you're not sure what's happening and you really have doubts yourself about what's what's going on.

Some of you might have a soul that's it's like one of those homes that the real estate agent is ashamed to put pictures of online because it's been filled with hoarders for the past 50 years and so you've got newspapers from like the 90s laying around. And maybe your soul is just so cluttered that you're afraid to ask anyone to come into it. You're afraid of what it might look like.

And then others of us, we might have souls like those houses in Newburyport that are on the news every time that there's a nor'easter, you guys know the ones I'm talking about, right? Every single time there's a major storm they go out there and they film these homes on the beach in Newburyport and, they're just waiting on them to fall in the ocean, I mean. Literally they are waiting on the make great TV, be a terrible thing to happen, but they're, they're ready for it to happen. And so maybe you've got these great views and ambitions, but you're susceptible to sudden disaster. When all falls in.

What is the condition of your soul? How would you describe it? People often people oftentimes say things like, I'm gonna take some time to work on myself. And that's all fair and good, but. Maybe this morning you can take some time to invite God to work on you. I guarantee that he is more skillful than you are, Adam. And so let's just take a moment to pray. This is what we're doing today is we're gonna take a moment to ask the Lord to work on us. And I would invite you to pray with me, so if you would like to, you can bow your head. And make the these words your words.

God, I'm inviting you to work on my soul this morning. However you want to renovate my inward being, I'm receptive. You can be the architect and and the contractor. I trust whatever you want to do. Amen.

So we're going through a series working slowly through the book of 1 Thessalonians, mainly just like a few verses at a time, 4 more verses today. Last week we did 4 verses today we do 4 verses and we're really camping out on verse 13 today because I believe that verse 13 teaches the main thing about this passage and then verses 14 through 16. are the kind of implications of verse 4 verse 13. So I'm going to read verse 13 for us one more time. And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you receive the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you, believers.

So let me recap that. What Paul is saying is he's saying that when we came to you the Thessalonians, we preached a word to you and you accepted it not just as our opinion but as the actual word of God and that word of God is at work in your heart and your lives and it's apparent to even us who are far away, it's apparent that God is working in your life like that. It's God's word that's doing the renovation in your hearts.

And so as we explore this passage, we're going to look at it and with 3 different points. First, what do we mean by God's word? Second, how does God's word do the work in our hearts? And third, how do you know that God's word is working in you? So first, what do we mean by God's word in this? Most of the time when we are reading the Bible, and most of the time as Christians, when we talk about God's word, what we tend to think about is this right here, is it not? When I say God's word is a lamp into my path. Then what am I thinking about? I'm thinking about the scriptures in front of me and surely the scriptures are God's word. Anything that is a revelation from God is the word of God. In Psalm 119, it says, I've stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Obviously, the Psalm is just talking about the law of the Lord, storing up the law of the Lord that he might not sin against, but the word, word in the Bible in ancient times has a far wider semantical range.

So the word in Greek for word is logos. Everybody say logos. That's an easy one, OK? lambda omicron gamma omicron sigma, OK? L O G O S, Logos. And what logos means is word, but it has a wider range than that because dating all the way back to the 6th century BC we see the word logos being used by philosophers of the day to talk about the underlying idea of reality behind all things. They saw the Logos as the divine principle that made sense of everything else. It's like a golden key. It's the thing that all the universe is based upon. And so this wasn't just religious philosophers, this was all philosophers. It was the stoics talked about this. Plato talked about this. We see philosophers talking about the, the logos, the sacred thing that made the universe work, made it all make sense.

And so when the gospel author John starts his gospel by saying in the beginning was the Logos. And the logos was with God, and the logos was God. OK. No, no hesitation thus far by the modern philosophers. They would say, OK, I, I get where you're coming from with that. But then the next verse is where the old philosopher heads will turn because what he says is he was in the beginning with God. And not only is the logos here, according to the Gospel author of John, the unifying factor of all of the universe, the logos here is a person. He was with God in the beginning.

So John is making an astounding claim, saying that Jesus Christ of Nazareth is the divine Logos that is the key to understanding the entire world. It's an amazing claim. And so when we see this thing about the word of God, what that's talking about when we see Word of God in the scripture anywhere, it's talking about revelation about who God is. You can have word of God as the scripture, you can have Word of God as the prophet receiving a message from God and delivering a word of God to the people. You can have the word of God being the divine law as Jesus Christ Himself. You can have the word of God being the message of the good news of the gospel, which is the revelation of God's heart for humans that he doesn't want us to live separate from him, but he sent his son to die the death for our sins that we might have relationship with God.

And so all of these are a way to talk about the word of God. And so which one is he talking about here? When Paul says that the word of God was at work within you, well, like I said, we normally would think about scripture that the scriptures at work within us, but here I'm pretty sure that's not what he's talking about because in First Thessalonians, that's like the first letter that Paul wrote and so he can't be talking about the New Testament. He might be talking about the Old Testament, but more likely he's talking about this gospel message that he came to preach to the Thessalonians that they received as the word of God themselves. And so here in Thessalonians, Paul is telling them, thank you. I'm so glad that you received the this gospel message, not as a word from men, but as the word of God, revelation of who God is, himself.

And so, point number 2, how does God's word do its work? If his word is any revelation about himself, but here he's talking about the gospel message of what Jesus Christ came to do, how does that work in us? Let's remind ourselves of the verse one more time, OK? And in verse 13 again, and we also thank God constantly for this, that you, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us. OK, so if he was talking about the scriptures, it wouldn't just be that you heard from us because, you know, surely he's teaching at the temple, they, they know the scriptures it's not something that they just heard from him so that you heard from us, you accepted it not as word of men, but as what it really is the word of God, which is at work in you.

And so how does the word of God work in us? OK, a few different ideas here. First, Paul says the word that is at work in you believers. We oftentimes think about the gospel as something that we accept once at the beginning of our lives, and then. We live the best that we can to glorify God after that. That it's something for new Christians, but not as continual Christians, but here, what does he say? He says that the word is at work in you believers. He's not saying that You become a Christian through the gospel, and then you move on to bigger and better things. He's saying that the gospel is actually the thing that matures you as a Christian. It doesn't just save you, but it continues to save you. It continues to be at work in you.

I love this old story from Martin Luther, where Martin Luther, he would preach the gospel week in and week out at church, and one day an older lady came up to him and said, Pastor Luther, every week you preach the gospel, surely we're ready to move on to deeper and better things. And Martin Luther said, Well, whenever you start acting like you've heard the gospel, I'll move on to deeper and better things. It's very Lutheresque, is it not?

The Bible teaches that the gospel is what saves you, but it is also what sanctifies you. The word of God is at work in you believers, continual, this is a present tense verb. It is at work continuing to work in you. It is not something you believe once and then move on from. This is why we have this commitment in our church, and it's one that sometimes people you have to like explain it a little bit, but we have these community commitments in our church. There's 10 of them, and one of them is we speak good news before we give good advice because if you have a friend coming to you that tells you a problem that they're suffering from, your initial reaction is I can give you a word of advice about how to handle that. But what humans most desperately need and what we see in this passage is not just good advice but good news about what God has done for them.

And so if a friend comes to you with a problem, you start. was reminding them of their identity in Christ, of encouraging them toward Christ, and reminding them of how all things are an opportunity to trust him more. And then you might move into some good advice eventually. We do need advice oftentimes in our lives, but we know that it's the word of God that works in us. If we can get to the position of worship in our heart, often times the other things will, will kind of reveal themselves to us and help us to, we'll be able to walk through them with God.

It's not simply that, and this is, let me just clarify this because I think that this, this idea of Christianity gets messed up often. It's not simply that we believe that Jesus is real. And then we try our best to be good people. That's a lie that's made its way into the church about what it means to be a Christian. That's not what it means to be a Christian though. That's a counterfeit Christianity that's slowly suffocating Christians. Instead, we received the word of God, which is the gospel. And then that gospel message does its work from the inside out.

So how does that work? How does that work? Well, first of all, it helps you to see the world in a new light. When you become a Christian, when you trust the the word of God, it's as if you put on some of those goofy looking Apple vision pros, OK? You, you know, the, the goggles that you put on, and those are like augmented reality from what I understand. I've never actually worn a pair. Maybe I should go to the Apple store. You might wanna go afterwards. But you, you put them on, how do they work for visually impaired people such as myself? I don't, I don't know, maybe I can wear my glasses under them, but you, you put them on and you can still see the world, but it gives you more things to be able to interact with basically is the way that these work.

And this is the way that the Christian life works is you see the world the same way, but it's as if you see them with see things with God's eyes. And so the things that you used to think would bring you joy. That nothing else could bring you joy, such as maybe wealth or building your own ego and pride or or whatever it might be some type of hedonism that that might satisfy you for a moment you're suddenly able to see it as God would see it with the with the gospel goggles on and you're able to know that that thing isn't going to bring me lasting joy in life because I see the world the way that God has created it to be. And so God has given us this, ability to see the world in that way.

But not only that, I think the gospel does change you from the inside out, and the more that, honestly, I, I really cannot emphasize this enough, that the gospel is at the heart of all all of our sin at the heart is a belief problem. We're not believing something about who God said he is and what he has promised to do for us. But I will also say this, I'm not trying to tell you, and this is another lie that snuck its way into the church. I'm not trying to tell you that the answer is let go and let God. I think that there's times that you can say that phrase and it's fine, and we know what you mean, OK? I, I'm not, there are times you do need to let go and let God, of course, of course. But if that's your mantra. Then how are you killing the sin in your life before it's killing you? Because when you read all of script, you can't just read one passage, right? That's, that's like a rule of reading the Bible. Don't just read one verse. You have to read the whole Bible and read it in, in context because let go and let God, if you use that to the place that I've seen some people do it, it almost means that like you don't fight against sin.

But the scriptures very clear that we do have to. Romans chapter 6. It says this, for the death that Jesus died, he died to sin once for all, but the life that he lives, he lives to God. OK, so that's the gospel. You believe this. Paul always puts the gospel imperatives after the indicatives. That means that he tells us the truth about the gospel and then he tells us what to do with it. So Jesus did this, so verse 11, so you also must consider yourselves dead to sin because of what Christ has done for you and alive to God in Christ Jesus. So what does that mean? It means you have to kill the sin in your life. You, you can't just let go and let God. You have to pursue after God and run after him. He has completed the work for you. He's defeated sin on your behalf, but you consider yourself dead to those things.

If we look to God, the founder and perfecter of our faith, our holy Savior, who calls us into His kingdom and into his glory, but that doesn't mean that we just sit back. He is at work in us, but we run alongside with him. We don't contribute anything to our salvation, but after we are saved, we follow after him with all that we have. He contributes everything to our salvation. So there's a lot of nuance there theologically. I'd be happy to answer questions about that, but for now, I'm just gonna move on to verse 3, to, to number 3, the third point for today.

And it's this, how do you know the word is working in you? How do you know if this is true for you? It's it's hard to tell that construction is solid unless you put it through something like a stress test, right? For example, those three little pigs were quite happy in their homes until the stress test of the big bad wolf came along. And when he blew, you saw which one had the faulty construction, which ones, and which one had the good construction in their life, which one had had the best renovation. And so similarly, the best way to tell if the word of God is at work in your heart, is by how you'd respond to adversity and challenges to your faith. By how you respond to adversity and challenges to your faith.

So for Thessalonica, let's look and see what happened. Now this is, this is gonna get kinda heavy pretty quick. Verse 14 for you brothers became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. For you suffered the same thing from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets and drove us out and displeased God and oppose all mankind by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved, so as always to fill up the measure of their sins, but wrath has come upon them at last. Oh, you know, just what we're looking for at the end of the sermon is like a full exposition of the wrath of God, for you all today. I'm not gonna be able to go into it all, but I will say this, that this isn't just Paul. This is Paul quoting, drawing from Matthew and, drawing from Jesus in Matthew 23.

So Jesus is talking about the Pharisees there and how they're filling up their sins, and the wrath of God is falling upon them, and here Paul is drawing from that, and he's basically saying people who think that they have life figured out, these religious people, but without any humility, they're inviting God's judgment upon themselves, is what he's saying. And so he's using this example of how the word of God has worked in the lives of the Thessalonians. He, he knows that the word of God is at work in the lives of the Thessalonians, because when they suffered under persecution. They suffered and stayed faithful to the gospel. They had a stress test. They were rejected by those around them. But yet their faith remained true.

Those around them, they, they didn't necessarily want, they weren't trying to be evil people necessarily. They thought that what they were doing was right, but yet they were displeasing God and opposing all mankind by preventing the good news of the gospel to go forward. I know that many of you have your own version of stress tests going on in your life right now. Whatever that might be for you, relationships or marriages that are broken. Jobs that feel pointless, boring, depressing. Debilitating physical illness, financial struggles that keep you up at night, the pressure to conform to a culture that rejects what you believe, the weight of grieving someone or something that is now gone or soon to be gone.

But Jesus, the great renovation contractor of the soul, he is ready to work in you. I don't know how many of you guys have worked with a contractor before. Have, have you worked with a contractor before? I get a few giggles because, you, you probably know what's happening, contractors, there are some good ones, OK? But let's talk about the ones that aren't, uh. This past over the past couple of years, I have these screen doors on my house that are terrible. I mean they squeak the whole neighborhood knows when I'm entering or exiting my house because it's like what. And it's just like it swings in the in the in in the wind, it's terrible, it's, it's horrid and I've paid two different guys. Enough money to replace this door and they've both run off with my money and refused to answer a phone call or an email after that. To where I have now just done YouTube University. I know how to replace the, the door. I've ordered the doors, OK, I'm just gonna replace it myself in, in, in about 3 weeks when they come in.

Contractors, the thing with the contractor is you, you never really know when they're gonna show up, OK? They'll tell you one thing. They're not necessarily coming that day. It's like, oh yeah, something happened, sorry, you know, and you, you can't do anything about it. You're just stuck there. It's like I don't know how to fix the plumbing in my house, so like, OK, you're gonna come tomorrow? OK, yeah, I guess. And then they come in like 3 weeks and you're like, well, you're here, so get to work I guess. I, I, you know, I'm not ready for you to, I have a party today but. Like you're here, OK, that's, that's what we're doing. I, we gotta get it done and I don't know if you're ever gonna come again, so just do it right now, please finish the work. It's not like what you see on TV, you know, and TV they come in, they demo it they replace it, it's like one week later, let's move the boss and see your new home. No, no, never. They leave the job half finished or almost finished. They're constantly trying to upcharge you for things that they that were unforeseen that they totally should have seen and they probably did, but they're just gonna get more money.

Jesus isn't like that. He's not. The renovator of your soul is not like that. He doesn't leave you hanging. In fact, the scripture says that he's waiting at the door. Revelation chapter 3, he says, behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him, and he with me. Jesus, he doesn't cut corners. He finishes the job, he's got all the finishing touches. Philippians chapter one, he says, and I'm sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Maybe you feel like you have a half finished project. And it's time to invite the contractor to come back into your soul. And to continue the work that he has begun.

Sometimes the work of the word of God requires a bit of demo. And for some of us it's more demo than others, and especially if you're at the beginning of this Christian life, you're gonna see that there's walls that keep coming down and as they come down. It's always replaced with something better. He wants to build in you a a beautiful home. He wants you to experience the glory of God where he can dine with you and be with you, but sometimes he's got to take out some of the junk in your life. He's got to declutter things so that you can hear the voice of God. He's got to take out the walls of resentment in your heart.

How does, what does God want to do in your heart today? What work is the word eager to do in your life? And this is just where I'm gonna end things today and let you meditate on this for a moment. What word what work does the word of God want to accomplish in your life? Just, just take a moment, close your eyes and and consider. Take a deep breath in. What work Needs to happen in your soul, maybe you haven't looked around in a little while, look around. Does God want you to grow in patience? Oh, that's, I was told never to pray for patience. But it is a virtue, it's a beautiful thing. Does God want you to grow in humility? Has your life been too much about yourself? Generosity Maybe God wants to add a contentment wing to your home. Where you can finally be happy with what he's given to you. Discontentment, it's such an, an evil thing that that plagues most of us. Maybe he wants to tear down those walls of resentment, declutter the distractions.

Friends, don't resist the demo. Know that he's going to build something for you with his word if you go to him and ask him to. I invite you to come back here and each week we, we take a moment. To recognize what Christ has done for us through a sacred meal called communion. And if you are inviting the contractor of the soul and your heart and into your life, I encourage you to come and receive this meal that what does Jesus do when he's standing at the door waiting, knocking? He wants to come in and dine with us, right? And so this is like a little appetizer of our eternal reality of being with Christ. And if you are a Christian here today, you're following after Christ, we invite you to receive this meal. You don't have to be, have everything put together, the word of God is at work in you. And if you would like to pray with someone today, if God's doing work in your heart, if you need him to do more work in your heart, we'll have some prayer counselors in the back, that would love to pray with you today. With that being said, let me invite you to stand and we'll pray and respond to God.

Father, we, we invite you now. We invite your Holy Spirit to do the work of renovation in our heart, that the gospel would continue to move us and change us, that the gospel would continue to shape us in the image of Christ. Father, we pray for anyone here who is resistant to demo day, that they would let the walls come down and that they would let and that they would trust that your word is better, that the life that you have for them is better than the life that they can build themselves that. They're really just kind of building the straw houses, the, the wood twig houses, but that God you want to build them something with a strong foundation that will last throughout all eternity. And so God, we pray that you would help us to encounter you today. Would your Holy Spirit fill us. God, thank you for the sacred meal, may we take it in a way that honors you. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher continues our sermon series with 1 Thessalonians 2:9-12, discussing how Paul approached sharing the gospel with the Thessalonians. Discussion points: There are many ways to misrepresent the gospel as we live as Christians, we are called to live above reproach among our neighbors, we can balance challenge with encouragement or love with truth as we tell others about Jesus.

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Scripture reader: [1 Thessalonians 2:9-12] For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil. We worked night and day that we might not be a burden to any of you while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers. For you know how like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: All right, good morning. It's good to see everybody this morning. My name is Fletcher. I'm the lead pastor of the church. Um. One thing my wife and I love to do is to eat a nice meal. Anybody with me? it's a great thing to do, have good meals and Boston has a lot of great restaurants. Can I get a name man? there's lots of great places to eat here. The selections sometimes feel overwhelming. We've lived in the Boston area for like 13 years, and there's like places that have been on our list for 13 years that we still haven't made ourselves, go to. And at the same time, there's just more and more restaurants all the time.

We've actually been watching the TV show The Bear a little bit and that's a it's a good show applause for The Bear wow, OK, and but you know, language warning with the bear but other than that it's like pretty, pretty good show and in that show they like are like trying to make a restaurant and what it looks like so I don't wanna ruin anything, but I just want to take a moment for you to imagine with me that you've opened a new restaurant. It's your favorite style of food, whatever it might be. It's, it's fancy. You go into all the trouble to, to make it really nice. You make the vibes just right, the ambiance is on point. The service is impeccable. The food is impossibly delicious. I mean just the perfect restaurant location right where you want it. Everything is great.

The only problem is now that the only people who know about it are your close friends and family. You have no online presence, you have no background as a chef except for the food that you're making is amazing, but no one knows about it. So what do you do? Well, you decide that you're going to hire some ambassadors to go and tell people about the restaurant, but you delegate that task to an employee, and that was your mistake, OK? Because as you delegate that task to an employee, what do they go and do? They go take the wad of cash that you hand them. And find the local teenagers and give them each $20 to go and hand out flyers for your restaurant and so while they're handing out flyers for your restaurant, this amazing secret joint that you've created out of all that you have, they're also vandalizing buildings and they're eating their McDonald's as they hand out flyers to your restaurant. Whoa, really? McDonald's while you're while they're handing out these flyers. They can't answer any questions about the restaurant. They don't know anything about what it's actually like.

And here's the reality, if people would actually just come with the invitation, they would have the most amazing time, would they not? I mean, this, you've designed everything to a T. But they have done such a terrible job. Of advertising this restaurant. They have misrepresented your heart and what you've set out to do in such a gross way. That no one is interested. This is how so many people experience Christianity, is it not? They might hear about Jesus, they might know a few of Jesus' teachings, but then they meet the people who call themselves Christians. And we oftentimes misrepresent what Jesus is all about.

You know, the word Christian actually means like little Christ. That's like where it came from. To be a Christian means you are a representative of who Christ is meant to be, but oftentimes as Christians, we fail to represent the actual call of what it means to follow Christianity. That's why we need Jesus, most, most assuredly, it doesn't mean that you're a terrible person in the sense that God doesn't love you. God still loves you, even when you miss. Represent his kingdom, but at the same time, we're not always the best advertisement for the kingdom and the glory of who Christ is. I mean, if you really know who Jesus is, you have experienced and tasted the manifold presence of the Holy Spirit in your life, I think that you would be the first one to say, I am not always the best advertisement for this great thing that I have experienced who God is. Right? I do not always best represented. But God does call us to represent his kingdom, nonetheless.

And that is what Paul is talking about today. Paul is writing to the Thessalonians. We've been going through a series through the first Thessalonians, and in his letter today he's continuing the argument that he was making last week. Last week he talked about how they were, how he and Silas were when they visited the Thessalonians and how they. They were not, like the celebrity pastors, taking advantage of their position to grow wealth and, and to boost their ego. No, they were gentle and and gracious and genuine with the Thessalonians. And today Paul continues. To make this argument, he continues to explain what he was like and what he wasn't like. And so as we look at this, one way that we can break up the way that Paul is writing this letter is by saying three ways that he could have misrepresented Christianity. If he had acted in these ways that the Thessalonians might assume that one would act, he would have misrepresented who Jesus is. And so as we explore this, we're going to look at these three ways that Christians misrepresent Christianity. And then, after we get done with that, we'll look at the real invitation into what Christianity is all about.

OK. So, 1st, 3 ways that Christians misrepresent Christianity. And with each of these, what you'll see is that Paul starts each verse. There, we're only looking at 4 verses today, OK? So the 1st 3 verses, they each start with You'll remember, he says it 3 times. He's like, well, you remember, for you know. Your witnesses, each time he's like, you remember, this is what we were like when we came to you, because remember this, this letter was probably the first letter that Paul ever wrote. to a church and it was just a couple of years after he had visited and planted the church and so he's able to recall you remember what we were like when we were with you.

So this first way that Christians often misrepresent Christianity is by being a burden upon those that they are trying to reach. Much like the teenagers handing out flyers for your all-star restaurant, the teenagers, they might, they might ask for a little bit of money as they hand out the flyer like, hey, can I bum, can I bum a dollar as they're handing out these flyers? That would not represent what you're trying to do in that restaurant very well, would it? But yet Christians often can misrepresent Christianity in the call of Christ, by being a burden upon those. I just have visions of televangelists, do you not? of saying, I will pray for you, just send me money. Send me as always the call for money.

Verse 9, this is what Paul says, For you remember brothers our labor and toil. We worked night and day that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. And so for Paul, it's very important that the Thessalonians remember that he was not a burden. In fact, Paul was what we call bi-vocational. Now what do I mean? By vocational is actually a bit of a misnomer because it makes you think that if someone's bi-vocational that they have two vocations where they're earning money in both places to make ends meet. No, usually when we use the term bi vocational, what we mean is that someone has a full time job where they are working and making their money and then but their true calling is found in their ministry and for Paul, he had this full time job of making tents.

Now for many of you, you might have full-time jobs. But for Paul, he's not known as a tent maker, is he not? That's like one of those things that you kinda, it's like Bible trivia, like Paul was a tent maker, on, on the side, and that's how he actually on the side, notice like, it's like, but this actually his career. Even though his calling was to start churches from place to place, many of you might have careers that enable you to have a calling to serve the Lord, and many of you do, you just don't consider, you don't call yourself by vocational, but I see it and we see it around you and the Lord sees that also. And so Paul has this bi-vocational life, and it was largely because he doesn't want to be a burden upon the Thessalonians. He doesn't wanna go there, preach the gospel, and be like, now you gotta pay me because I'm not gonna be able to live if you don't pay me.

Now he's not saying that it is wrong for pastors to make a living off of what they do to serve a local church. In fact, he makes the argument in other places. Don't, he says it weirdly, but he's to us, he says, don't thresh, don't, don't muzzle the ox while it's threshing. Which what he's saying is don't make the pastor, I'm not gonna go into all the details with what that means necessarily with from the agricultural standpoint, but what he's saying is don't make the pastor's life so unduly difficult to where he cannot do the work that God has called him to do. And so I don't think that it's wrong. I, I make a salary here. This is my full time job. It is my calling and my vocation, but I don't think Paul's saying that it's wrong to do that. I think that for him though, he didn't want to be this itinerant preacher going from place to place, also having to make money in a different way than, through the church. So that's what he was trying to do.

And so for Christians today, we misrepresent Christianity when we're a burden on those we're trying to reach. In what ways might we be a burden? Well, I think financially it's probably the primary way in mind. And there's lots of different things we can think about. We always mention giving during our worship gatherings, but I hope no one gets the idea that the reason why we do these gatherings is for money. I, I hope that we don't present it in such a way that you get that impression. Additionally, I think that many pastors might ask for money in a way that isn't appropriate though. maybe on TV you see the pastors that are selling indulgences for money, basically selling different things or their prayers or. Whatever it might be, some churches, they might pass a plate for for money. You guys been in those churches before, right?

And I actually don't have anything against passing a plate. Some churches, they might pass that plate one more time. Anybody been in one of those churches that might pass the plate again? Has anybody been in the perfect trifecta where they've passed it 3, 4, it's happened, it happens guys there are churches that do this and it does give the impression that the ministry is a burden and so as we seek to reach people with the gospel, we cannot be a burden on them.

I think just some other practical things that we can think about with being a burden upon people is being a burden upon people's time. I've got nothing against something like door to door evangelism like that's fine, but it does feel a bit intrusive, does it not? And I don't know if I'm gonna go door to door with my neighbors and demand that they speak to me about things because they know me and then it might change their opinion of me as I'm trying to witness to them through having a a loving relationship over time and sharing with them. As the opportunity allows itself, and so I don't know if I'm gonna seek those times of being a huge burden, but I know people who have been saved that way who have come to meet the Lord. So I'm not dissing it completely. There's probably a place and a time for it, but I'm gonna be careful and discerning about that.

Also, I think that sometimes churches demand way too much time from people, do they not? And we can make Christianity into a burden. All right, don't give me those looks. We're really intentional to try to keep things mostly simple here, but you know I had a conversation with my mechanic a couple of years ago and he was telling me that he he he was turned off to the church because his mother spent her every day at the church, and he just couldn't imagine fathom it. And I think that sometimes that's a blessing to some people they want to spend their time that way and that that's great, but it can be presented as a burden where you need to give every moment of your life. And yes, you need to give your whole life to Jesus, but it can look in different ways. So that's the first way that Christians can oftentimes misrepresent Christianity.

The second way that Christians can oftentimes misrepresent Christianity is by being hypocrites. This is like the teenagers handing out the flyers for the restaurant while they eat their McDonald's. Now don't get me wrong, a McDonald's fry might make its way into my restaurant, but not the, the fish filet. OK, that is not gonna make it the McRib, they get lost. No way, no way is that coming in. So verse 10, you are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you, believers. That's, that's a lot of like descriptive words that describe really good behavior. How holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct. Paul is saying, we were not hypocrites, we practiced what we preach.

Now I have a difficult time with this verse sometimes though, because I look at this and I'm like, well, didn't Paul? Maybe he could just grew in wisdom over the years because a few years after that, he wrote a letter and he called himself the chief of sinners, did he not? And so here we have the chief of sinners calling himself holy, righteous and blameless. And I think that the best way to read this passage to read both of them to be true, that Paul. Is living his life at in an exemplary kind of way, while at the same time knowing that in his heart he can be and he is the chief of sinners. That it does not mean that he's perfect in every way, but that he exemplifies what he preaches at the same time.

This is the life of a Christian, is it not? That we are called the holy righteous living, yet at the same time, we are sinners, and we fall so short of that all the time. This is Christian this feels like Christianity one on one stuff, but it probably isn't. If you call yourself a Christian, but you ignore the teachings of the Bible, you are misrepresenting Jesus. Period. That's all there is to that. If you call yourself a Christian, but you ignore the teachings of Jesus, you're misrepresenting Jesus. Especially on things like sexuality or drunkenness or financial dealings or gossip or loving your enemy.

If you don't follow the scriptures on these things, you are misrepresenting what it means to be a Christian. And it does terrible damage to the cause of Christ. In the same way that no one wants to see their oncologist smoking cigarettes behind the hospital. No one wants to see their Christian neighbor hosting a brothel out of their in-law suite. You don't want to misrepresent Christianity by the way that you live your life. And so we must endeavor to live in a way that is holy and righteous. And above reproach.

Number 3, the third way that Christians misrepresent Christianity. It's by being unbalanced with love and truth. Being unbalanced with love and truth. The message of Christianity always comes with both love and truth. And how many times does our message Major on the one and minor on the other. And I know that you know, maybe I can even pinpoint where you are on your political spectrum based upon where you are on this, you know, maybe if you lean a little left, you might lean a little more towards the love, and if you lean right, it's like we gotta tell the truth and be more truth speakers and I think that the Christian message demands both love and truth.

Verse 11, for you know. I love everyone, he's like, you know how you're witnesses. You remember, for you know how like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God. So check it out. First he calls himself a father, we'll get back to that in a second, but then he says, we exhorted you, each one of you, and encouraged you. So he has this encouragement, and then he has this charged you to walk in a manner worthy of the of the gospel, worthy of God. Both, he's encouraging them along saying you can do this, you've got this. Let me encourage you, while at the same time he's challenging them to live up to the standards that Christ has for them. Like a good father, like a loving father.

A father must walk this balance very carefully because we can discourage our children if all we do is offer challenge, how many of us have a father who just felt like they always needed to be challenging us and they lacked that encouragement and that soft touch? And what did that do to your psyche of who you are and who you became? While at the same time, if all you got was a soft touch, and no. Tough truth. You're not gonna be able to be the person that God has called you to be. We need to have both, the encouragement, the love, the embrace, the keep going at it-ness. The one to celebrate the small wins, the encouragement, the exhortation. And we need the challenge.

Paul walked this tightrope quite well, and if you love and encourage, if that's all you do, what you're going to end up doing is cheapening the gospel because the gospel has some very tough things in it. There's some very tough things about what it means to follow Jesus. And so it can't just be that, but at the same time, if all you do is preach the tough things without the love and encouragement that we have in Christ, you miss the whole picture and you harden the gospel. You make it impossible, you make it like a lozenge that you can't actually ever get any flavor from. Can you, it's just like sucking on a bead in that situation. Like you don't make it something that's enjoyable. And you miss the whole thing.

And so the gospel requires a fine balance of the two. And we misrepresent Christianity when we only offer one or the other. And so that's the 3 ways that we oftentimes misrepresent Christianity that Paul talked about. And so with that we are covering many of the things that if you're not a Christian here today, you've seen these things and maybe they've made Christianity feel dis distasteful to you and I hope that you can get to this next point where it's what is at the heart of the real gospel. What is at the heart of this thing? What is the real message of Christianity?

Verse 12, and it's really just the last part of verse 12. He emphasizes this in the last, you know, 8 words of this thing. He says this, We exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory. That those last 8 words, who, who, I think it's 8 words, 12345679 words, 8 if you don't count "and". "Who calls you into his own kingdom and glory."

This is the linchpin of this entire passage. In fact, this could be the linchpin for all of Christianity, for what it is that we're doing here, what this is all about. This is the real Christian message. This is what you're actually being invited in. This is not the teenager handing out the flyer, this is the flyer. That you made for the restaurant. This is what it's actually about and if you just look at this and you don't look at the misrepresentations all around, then you'll get the heart of what God is actually calling us to. First, let me just break it down. I'm gonna break down several little pieces of this first, it is God who calls us. It is God who calls us. He has called us into His kingdom and his glory, his own kingdom and his own glory. He has called us.

How often do we think about Christianity as being a moral system that we might pick up ourselves? We think about Christianity as something that we might pick up like a hobby. Yeah, I'm kinda getting into Christianity these days. But what it says is that God calls us, the message of Christianity isn't a hobby or a moral system, a code of conduct to live your life. It is an invitation by God to live into his own kingdom and his glory. Second. You might notice that it says, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory, who calls you, not who called you. It is a present, active participle, indicative. I'm gonna keep on going with my Greek nerdiness here, but it is present tense. It is not past tense and that what that means is that it has this idea of continual action that God is continuing to call you. And it is true that he has called you in the past, but he is continuing to call you today and into the future.

And what does that mean for us? It means that Christianity is not a one-time decision that you might make to dedicate your life to the Lord. It is not something that happened in your past to you, but it is that you might have experienced once, but it is an invitation today. To experience and enjoy the kingdom of God and the glory of God. And third, what does he call us into but his own kingdom and glory. This is so much bigger than how we sell Christianity often, oftentimes we sell Christianity, and these things are true, but they're just small, OK? And maybe it's a childlike faith and that's glorious, but we sell Christianity as like a relationship with God. As having Jesus as my friend. But it's so much more than that. Because it's described not only as a friendship with God, but you are invited into the kingdom of God. So much bigger. You're invited to enjoy the glory of God.

Just imagine that the triune God who has existed throughout eternity past before all of creation was made. Existing in loving relationship where one person pours out their love on the other persons of the of the Trinity. They have existed in glorious splendor throughout all of eternity. They invite you to share in their glory and the light of their glory shines so brightly that we will not even need a sun that we will just enjoy. The majesty of who they are. who God is. This is the glory that we're being invited into. Far more descriptive.

Look, we all recognize that there must be more to the world. We are all glory hungry people. We're all looking for a way to make a name for ourselves, to make our our lives feel worthy. In fact, the Old Testament word for glory, the Hebrew word for glory is cabode, which means heavy weight. We're looking for a weightiness to our life. CS Lewis puts it this way, he says, if I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. How many celebrities do we know who have gotten the whole world and just it never felt like enough? It was never enough. I look at the people in our government, had all the world available to them, and they continue to want more, right? Every billionaire wants to start something new, wants more money, wants more glory.

I just wish that we could look at someone like, this is really, I, I use this quote at least once a year, but Jim Carrey. Once said it's like my favorite because Jim Carrey to me he's like the all star of all star. My kids just know him as Doctor Robotnik in the Sonic movies. I'm like one day we'll introduce you to Dumber and Dumber Dumb and Dumber, and your life will never be the same, but this is what he says. He says, I wish that everyone. They could be rich and famous and have everything they ever dreamed of, so that they could see. That it's never enough. I wish everyone could have everything they ever dreamed of so that they could see that it will not fulfill you. Because these longings for the glory in our heart are there to show us that our hearts were made for the glory of God. And that the glory only of God is what can satisfy this longing for glory that we have.

Paul tells us this answer. He says all the moments of glory in life, they point forward to the desire for the glory of the Lord. When in 12 Corinthians 3, it says it like this, and we all with unveiled faith, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed currently, are being transformed. We Christians, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed. Into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord, who is the spirit. Friends, you are not just an employee, a parent, a student, but you were called by the king of the universe into his glory and his kingdom.

Now, isn't that so much better than what we make it out to be oftentimes? And it's like, how do you experience this? It's difficult. But let's go back to the restaurant illustration for a second. You would never recommend that restaurant based upon what the teenagers' representation, but if you did happen to wander in there. And you tasted how great that food is. And you had the impeccable service that was designed to leave every desire. Satisfied. And the vibes were just killing it. And the price was good. And everything was just the most amazing experience. Well, then, You might actually turn and become an evangelist for that restaurant yourself. You might become an ambassador for that restaurant yourself.

And friends, that is the invitation of Christianity. It is the reality that God has called us into His kingdom, and how has he called us, but through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ our King, that he has come to pay our penalty of for our sin and to make a way for us to enjoy life with eternity forever. And this is the call of the gospel that he calls us into, and we so often misrepresent it, but God has called us, those who of us who have experienced the joys of the gospel, to go and be his ambassadors in the world today. If it is true, if these things are true, if Christianity is this invitation to the glory and kingdom of God, we cannot keep it to ourselves. We have to share it, which is why our vision as a church is that God has called us to be a city on a hill, sending and shining the light of Christ into Somerville. And beyond for generations to come, the Somerville area and beyond.

The only way that we're going to see this vision come to fruition is if every person owns the vision for themselves. It's not my restaurant, I work at it, OK? I might be an employee of the restaurant, it's God's restaurant. But now that you've enjoyed it, we must all go and share the good news of God's kingdom with those who are around us. God has called us to enjoy his kingdom and to share it.

And so today, I want you to just consider which one of those two. You, I, I would defend that you will always misrepresent the kingdom of God if you haven't enjoyed it first. And so what stage are you in? Do you need to enjoy some of this kingdom of God? Because you will misrepresent if I just tell you go and share about it, you're gonna be like those teenagers eat eating the McDonald's McFish over there, OK? It's, it's, it's not gonna be good. You're not gonna have much to say. You're not gonna be able to answer the question, but if you go take a seat. At the table and taste and see that the Lord is good and oh friends, it is good. The food is good. Then you have something to share.

And so today, I invite you. Maybe you have known about Christianity for a long time, but you haven't taken a step into it. Today could be that day, or maybe you, it's just been a while since you had a meal and you're like, I need a refresher how good this is. We invite you to come and to receive that. As we close up today, we're gonna invite you to to a meal. And this is a sacred meal. It's a holy meal. It's one where Christ is present with us in a special kind of way, where we tear off a piece of the bread that represents his body, and we take up the juice or the wine which represents his blood for us, and we remember and we meditate on what he has done for us.

And as you come and receive this meal, be renewed. But maybe you are in a place where you haven't. received that as him as your savior in the first place, and we invite you instead to receive Christ. And we would invite you whether you need, you just need know you need to dine more of Christ, that you need more of his life in your life or not. If you just want to take that step today we invite you we we're gonna have some prayer counselors for you in the back and after the service up here, but in the back during the next song, if you would like to just pray with someone like, hey, I've seen following Christ as more of a burden than a joy. I want to make a change. I want to see it as a joy again. I invite you to to receive that today. As we turn ourselves to prayer, would you stand with me?

Father, I pray that you would help us today to enjoy the kingdom and glory of Christ. For anyone who has seen it as a burden and not a delight, would they receive the easy yoke of Jesus, be delivered from their sins, and made new. Would they turn from their seeing you as a moral code, moral system and see you as a loving father who's called us into His kingdom and his glory and God, would you just shine your glory on us as we sing these praises to you, as we take of this meal, would you remind us of the sacredness of who you are? And God, I ask that you will also use us as your ambassadors, and that we will reach Somerville and beyond for your, your good news. And invite people to the table to enjoy with you. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher continues our sermon series with 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8. Discussion points: Paul does not present the gospel like a used car salesman but as a cure to the human condition; Paul lived to please God and not men; Paul was gentle with the Thessalonians when preaching the gospel, but that doesn’t mean he was passive.

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Scripture reader: [1 Thessalonians 2:1-8] For you yourselves know, brothers, that our coming to you was not in vain, but though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict, for our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive. But just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak not to please man but to please God, who tests our hearts.

For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed - God is witness. Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ, but we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. So being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves because you had become very dear to us.

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: Jimmy Jimmy Swaggart was a famous televangelist from the 80s and given that most of us are children of the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, give it up 2000s, what's up? That not many of us are gonna know who Jimmy Swaggart is, but he was very famous. His broadcasts reviewed by millions of people every week and his ministry earned millions of dollars annually for years and years and years throughout the 80s. And then in 1988, Jimmy Swaggart was caught outside of a Louisiana motel, which is a word that you don't hear as often these days, but that's like a hotel with the doors on the outside, um. And with a, with a prostitute at the time and so he came out and he confessed his sin. And took a step back, but then he stepped back in until 2 years later, 3 years later, he was yet again caught with another prostitute. you would think that after happening twice that Swaggart would take a step down, but he continues to pastor to this day, running a, a television program.

Jim Baker, was called, was another famous televangelists in the 70s and 80s. In 1987, it became public that he had paid hush money to one of his secretaries who he had sexually assaulted earlier in the decade. He was also later convicted of federal fraud and sent to prison. This is not a collection of someone who you would think would be qualified to be a pastor, but after exiting prison. Mr. Baker returned to his television ministry, where he continues to minister. Ted Haggard, former leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, resigned after allegations of drug use and sexual misconduct with a male escort.

Carl Lentz, former Hillsong New York City pastor known specifically for deep V-necks, and being friends with Justin Bieber. Joe Rogan said something so funny about him, but I can repeat it. Today Was fired in 2020 for adultery and toxic leadership. Mark Driscoll, former pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, almost was fired, but he resigned just before due to chronic toxic leadership and abuse of power.

Bill Hibels, founder of Willow Creek Church in Chicago, and those of you who weren't around for the early 2000s, you might not know. How big of a deal Bill Hibels and Willow Creek were, I mean, everybody was trying to copy what they were doing. He was the, he's the granddaddy of the mega church movement. Willow Creek at its height, 25,000 people every week, huge, huge, huge church, and he really applied business techniques to ministry in a way that had not been done previously. He started what's known as the seeker sensitive movement, basically, it might have started before that, but he's the one that really brought it into the forefront. He resigned in 2018 after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct and abuse of power. He's had the sense to stay out of ministry since then.

Ravi Zacharias was a very famous apologist, someone that I respected and appreciated what he had to share posthumously after he died. It was revealed that he had engaged in sexual misconduct for years. Creflo Dollar With a name like that, I mean, what's coming next, you know. Joel Osteen. TD Jakes. Kenneth Copeland. All own private jets, designer suits. Million multi-million dollar mansions and luxury vehicles such as Rolls-Royce. They preach what we call the prosperity gospel, but it's funny that. When you preach the prosperity gospel, the only people that seem to prosper are the preachers themselves. Don't get me started on the wealth and sexual scandals among the Roman Catholic Church. That's affected our city in huge ways.

When so many pastors use their power and influence to gratify their sexual desires. To fill their wallets and to boost their ego. It's quite difficult for us. To see the message that's behind that, the true message of who Jesus is. Is it not? When you think about sharing with your friends, are you not afraid? That they're gonna see you as just another one of these. Hypocrites. It's easy for people to believe that our beliefs are a scam, in fact. Like one of those phone calls that you might just ignore on your phone.

If you're here and you're not a Christian or you're new to Christianity, don't let these guys warp your idea of who Jesus is. I know that that they are the most high profile among us, but there are for every one of these that I just listed, there are hundreds of pastors and thousands of Christians who truly believe the message of Jesus and live in his ways. It's just there's something about the human nature, that when you put someone in front of other people. They want to consume the power and use it for themselves instead of laying themselves down for the good of others.

It's easy to think that these are modern issues exasperated by things such as TV and maybe they have been. Internet certainly hasn't been great for Christians at all times. But Paul talks of some of these same issues all the way back in the 1st century that this is what 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 is talking about. 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, this is the passage we read earlier. We're just gonna walk through it and I'll, I'll bring it out as we go.

First, he says, for you know, brothers that are coming to you was not in vain. Now what's he talking about there? Of course they know it's not in vain. They're Christians. That's obvious. His coming wasn't in vain that there's a church that exists in Thessalonica. I think that what one way you could read this instead is it wasn't in in our own vein. So Paul is saying we weren't there just to boost our own ego. It wasn't out of our vanity that we came to you. It wasn't in vain that we came to you. But verse two, but though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of such conflict.

Now we were, we covered this a few weeks ago, but a quick recap. Thessalonica was a city that Paul visited on his 2nd missionary journey, and before he went to Thessalonica, he had gone to the city of Philippi, where he had been shamefully treated as an understatement. Paul was publicly stripped and flogged. He was thrown into prison with shackles around his ankles before the Lord released him from prison and the the jailer himself became a Christian after that. And then Paul was basically run out of town and he went to to the Thessalonians, so he was treated very shamefully in Philippi. But then when he made it to Thessalonica, he was only there for 3 weeks preaching the gospel before he was run out of Thessalonica by an angry mob that followed him all the way to Berea, where he was trying to preach in Berea, but the angry mob of Thessalonians had chased him and chased him out of Berea as well.

And so after all of this, when he's treated so shamefully, you have Paul come to Thessalonica, and yet he still has boldness to declare the gospel in Thessalonica after he's been treated so poorly in Philippi, which is kind of a crazy thing. If you're treated so poorly trying to do your job, you're gonna have a little bit of traumas. One time I was. Treated a little bit with disrespect on the subway, and I avoided riding the subway for the next two weeks. There's grocery stores that I don't like going to because someone was mean to me one time. But yet Paul, though he's publicly flogged. Treated shamefully for presenting the gospel, continues to have the boldness to preach the gospel.

And the question, the implied question of all of this is how, why? What empowers him to continue to be bold, even though he's treated so poorly? And there's really only two answers to that question. The first is, there's something in it for Paul. He's getting something out of it. He's getting some type of shameful dis shameful gain. He's getting some type of money he's getting some type of sexual pleasure. He's getting some type of ego boost out of this process. So there's something in it for him that he likes more and that would cause him to continue to go even though he's shamefully treated.

Or the other answer is he doesn't care because he has a greater joy somewhere else than what this world can provide. Let's look at how Paul explains it. Verse 3, for our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive. Paul's basically saying, look, I'm, I'm not a used car salesman. I don't know if you've ever dealt with used car salesman. We, we bought a car. Not the one we currently have because we bought a newer car then, but we bought a used car, and for weeks we would drive around to these different used car lots and we would get sold a piece of trash you know they would try to sell us this car and then when I told him like, oh yeah, I'm gonna take it to a mechanic, he'd be like, look, look, look, why don't you check out this car over here because your mechanic, he's not gonna actually like this one very much that I've been trying to sell you.

I'm always reminded when I think about a used car sale salesman, I'm always reminded of the 90s hit Matilda. You guys remember that one. Her dad, played by Danny DeVito, was a used car salesman and at one point in the movie. they go to his lot and he's showing the kids all of his tricks of the trade for selling, selling cars, and he says, we really should weld these bumpers on, but that takes time, equipment, money, so we're gonna use super super glue instead. Matilda responds, won't it fall off? Definitely. Isn't that dangerous? Not to me. Scene changes. Transmission. The sawdust quiets the gears and lets the the engine run sweet as a nut for a couple of miles. Daddy, that's cheating. Of course it's cheating. No one ever got rich telling the truth. So her dad says.

This is what many people see Christians as doing like we're used car salesmen, and that's what Paul is saying. He's like, look, I'm not a used car salesman. I didn't come to you with error and impurity and any attempt to deceive. I wasn't trying to fool you into this thing, and we often have, have you ever tried to share the gospel and felt like you were a used car salesman? Like You're trying to like frame the gospel in a way that the person might buy it. Even though they don't seem interested in it. Well, look, friends, You don't have to do that.

Because we don't have to come to with the gospel that is some we don't have to come with some cheap imitation dollar store generic brand gospel, OK? We come with the message that has changed millions of lives throughout the entire world. That's universally applicable to all peoples throughout the past 2000 years. We come with a message that brings life and truth, and more than that, it's not only that the message works, it's that it is true. That if Jesus really is who he said he is, you are not some used car salesman, you're someone trying to give away this great cure you're like a doctor who's gone and he has the the cure to a a terrible disease and all you want is to give out the cure and people are saying, I don't trust what you have and you're like, would you please trust me? I have the cure to your soul.

That is the gospel. You are not a used car salesman. You are someone with the cure to the human condition. Which is known as the grace of God, forgiveness for your sins. And you long to give that away. That is where Paul is standing. That is what he's trying to do. He's trying to give away the costly, genuine, sweet, good news of the true message of Jesus. And so many pastors have peddled an erroneous gospel for impure motives attempting to deceive others. You see, when you make the gospel about you when you make sharing the gospel about something you can gain from that. It ruins the very nature of what it is that you are sharing.

Listen again to Paul, for our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts. So what gave Paul the ability to stand confidently, though he was shamefully treated time and time again? What gave him that confidence to stand before people declaring the same message once again? It was that he did not live to please men, but rather he lived to please God Himself. He lived for the approval of one, and it was not those who might accept him or reject him that were in front of him. Because he knows that he has been entrusted with the gospel.

Have you ever been entrusted with anything? Maybe a family heirloom. You know, my my dad one time gave me a ring that I was allowed to keep. And I felt like. Admit the world And there was no way I would ever sell that or give it away. You know, if you're entrusted with a family heirloom that's been in your family for centuries. You're not gonna put that on eBay, are you not? You, you don't have the right to put it on eBay you don't have the right to sell it it's not really yours, it's your family's you've just been given the honor of taking care of it for a little while so that you can pass it on to the generation that goes after you. If you've been entrusted with something of such great value, that means you have to be responsible with it. I'm getting Frodo with the ring vibes here, you know, you have to be responsible with this precious thing that's been entrusted to you.

And Paul says that he's been entrusted with the message of the good news about Jesus. And the reality is that the message isn't Paul's message, it belongs to God. And so he can't change the message to make it more amenable to what people might want to hear. He has to present the message. It doesn't belong to him, it belongs to God. All Christians have been entrusted with the same message. When Jesus left and was ascended into heaven, he says, I'm giving authority to you, all of you, not just the leaders. I'm entrusting you with the gospel message to go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to follow my ways and baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

You, my friends, have been given the gift of the good news of the gospel. And many times though we have been entrusted with this gift what we choose to do with it, it might not be, we might not cheapen it and selling it on eBay that's like takes a very special type of personality to want to do that, but what we might do is like find a secret closet in our hearts and in our lives and shove it in there and say yeah I'll hold on to that. Thank you very much. When God wants you to put it out on display to show it and maybe. You can make a copy of it and give it, you can give, you can entrust it to others, pass it to the next generation.

This message of the love of God for sinners like you and I, this is what he's entrusted to us, this good news that Jesus has paid our debt before God. I can receive the love of God and have life with him throughout all eternity, and all I have to do is trust in what He has done for me. This is a message of good news that it's not what I do, but it's what he's done for us. That I need to pass on, and so Paul is able to boldly share the gospel, not because he's a used car salesman, but because it's true, he wants people to hear the good news. He's been entrusted with it. When you share the message of Jesus.

And I know here's the difficult thing. It, it is, it is hard because message of Jesus is not always popular. There's something inherent about the message of Jesus that is slightly offensive, is it not? Because the message of Jesus says, That all people are living for themselves, ultimately. And that Jesus has come to set us free from self-service that we might understand what we're really created for. But that means that when you're sharing it with someone, you have to say the way that you are living. Is wrong It is not the best way to live. That little thing, that feels so offensive, does it not? But what you're doing isn't just saying, you're wrong, I'm right, that would be, you know, if we cope before them trying to prove ourselves right. And that's your goal you're gonna lose. Your goal isn't to prove yourself right your goal is just to share the good news.

Look, I have good news for you. That Jesus, he has done what your works could never do. He has made you right with God. You can share in the love of Jesus. It's a beautiful thing. It's not about us. You see Paul had this gift of self forgetfulness, which is really the thing that tortures us more than anything is our self obsession, our worries about how other people's perceive us. He's unconcerned about how other people perceive him because he knows he's been entrusted with this message, and he lives to please God, not people. And so he basically has, well, he kind of reiterates the message.

Let me go over this first. He reiterates the message in verse 5 he says, for we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed. God is witness, nor do we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ. And so Paul here, he's just reiterating what we've been saying. He's saying it in a different way. He's kind of repeating himself once more. And then he goes through and he describes the way he did try to share it. So I've given you a lot of how not to share the gospel this morning. OK, how not to and why not to, but how do you? Do this in a way that's faithful and that's what Paul talks about next.

And there's really 2, 2 points he brings up here with how to do this in a way that's not like a celebrity pastor. First is gently. And the second is genuinely. That's what he says. And, and I know you're sitting there and you're like, yeah, that sounds like a modern way to do it. No, that's what Paul said he did in Thessalonica. He shared it gently and genuinely. Verse 71, gently here, two ways that people talk about that that to talk to people about the gospel from Paul, gently and genuinely. First gently, verse 7, but you, but we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children.

What does it mean to be gentle? That's a question. When we think about being gentle, we might think of someone who's meek, who's lowly, and those things are probably true, but also when I think about being gentle, I think of it like this that to be gentle means you use the exact amount of force necessary and not an ounce more. Let's say you break your arm. And you have to go into the hospital to have your arm set. And just before your arm is set by a doctor, you look at the doctor and you say, doctor, be gentle. Now, to set an arm, I assume I'm not a doctor, but the way they used to do this at least they had to yank on the thing pretty hard to to get the bones to go back into place. When you look at that doctor and you say, be gentle, you're not saying. Don't pull my arm very hard. You're saying, use the exact amount of force necessary and not an ounce more, please God. Don't pull my arm harder than you have to. That's what it means to be gentle in that situation.

And so for us when we think about Paul, he's using the exact amount of force necessary and not an ounce more. A gentle parent is the one who uses the right amount of force with their children. A gentle friend is the one who uses the right amount of force with their friends. It doesn't mean that there's no force, but oftentimes, and you know we had to decipher this for ourselves sometimes. We use too little force and we, we aren't gentle and we use too little force. In fact, that's just, that's just torture, is it not? for the doctor to pull your arm a little bit, but not quite enough. It's like, oh, that's not good. And many of us use too much force and so we have to think about that when we go into a place where we want to share the gospel, oftentimes we think, OK, our our battle is not with flesh and blood, it's against the powers and principalities of the of the kingdom of the the air and and the the enemy and everything.

So we're thinking we need to go in with our bazookas ready, right? Have you ever argued with someone who had bazookas tied to them at that moment? They're just ready to decimate anything. That's not how Paul was. He didn't go in with his bazookas, armed. You know, he went in. Being precise, willing to share about the gospel, willing to give of his life, to give of himself. It says that like a nursing mother. He was. With his own children. A nursing mother knows intuitively how much force to use with her children. She knows how to be gentle. Children are delicate they're fragile and so he knew that the Thessalonians, they were fragile and so when you have fragile people, you use little force. Now a nursing mother if you threaten her children, she will turn green and come at you and to smash. But other than that, with her children, she knows to be delicate, to be gentle.

And so Paul says that we were like a nursing mother. What does that mean? They were patient. They were loving, they showed the fruit of the spirit. Imagine that. Kind, not forceful. Or maybe just with enough. But they also were presenting the message still. And when we think about Jesus himself was gentle, I've quoted this a million times. It doesn't mean weak, gentle doesn't mean weak always. It means humble, lowly, gentle, and when Jesus describes his own self. He only describes his own self one time throughout all of the scripture, and it's in Matthew chapter 11, and Jesus says, for I am gentle and lowly of heart. That's how he describes himself. And so what if you wanna understand who Jesus is, that's probably the best place to go, to read him describing what he's like, that he is gentle and lowly of heart.

The second way that Paul shares the gospel is genuinely. Genuinely, gently and genuinely. Verse 8. So being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel. Of of God, but also of our own selves because you had become very dear to us. So Paul and Silas, but Silas was with him on this trip, and they had become affectionately desirous of the Thessalonians. That means that he genuinely liked them. He genuinely loved them. He wanted to spend time with them. He, he liked the Thessalononians. They weren't just a project for him.

Sometimes, people treat evangelism like sharing the gospel as a project. Like another notch on their evangelism belt that they can tack on there when I was in seminary, this was definitely the attitude of many seminarians. I remember my first couple of weeks there in seminary some people approached me and were like, we're gonna go share the gospel and we got out there and it was without genuine, without being genuine, without being gentle, we just went out onto like the busiest street in the city and tried to stop people from having a good time and. tell them about Jesus, which I mean in some ways that works. I've heard people who have come to know Jesus that way and you know I guess any faithfulness in this is better than none, but at the same time what Paul is saying is that he was genuinely affectious towards them. He wanted to be with them. He wanted to be near them. It wasn't just another notch on his belt that he could say, look, I, and we would come back after doing that, and be like, yeah, we shared the gospel with each of us would share how many people we talked to. And it was, you know, it's fun, it's fine, but at the same time, maybe not the best way.

Because Paul here, he's describing himself as having this, this affectionately desirous attitude toward them. Look, people can tell when you see them as a project. They can tell if you if you only have the desire for them to become a Christian to prove that you're right and they're wrong or whatever it might be, that is like the wrong attitude to have. That is not a Christ-like attitude because what Paul says is we desire not only to share about the gospel with God but our own selves. We had become so affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but our own selves because you had become very dear to us.

Your goal when you're sharing the gospel with someone isn't just to fix them, but is that you share even your own life with them, that you're friends with them. Because that's the way that Jesus loves us, is it not? Jesus didn't just come declaring the message of the good news about the kingdom of God, but he came sharing who he is. His very self. He came to give himself up in that way. He doesn't just come to tell us that all the ways that we're a failure. Many people misread Christianity is like it's just a list of do's and don'ts and all the ways that I'm a failure, but Jesus comes to us gently showing us love and compassion. His, his love leads us to repentance. His kindness, but Romans chapter 2, verse 4, God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.

So a few points of application here before we end. First, how does your idea of Christianity need to change? Because maybe you have encountered some people in your life or televangelists in your life who have used the gospel for personal gain, and it's left you with a really nasty taste in your mouth. Maybe it's impacted the way that you think about Christianity, and maybe you need to just get back to what Jesus taught. And look at the hundreds of pastors that are out there faithfully living this out. And, and the hundreds of Christians who are out there faithfully living this out. Ask the Lord today to help you to see Jesus with fresh eyes.

Maybe there's just a, maybe today's just a day of healing for someone. I know that with a room this large, with this many people, that undoubtedly there's a few of you that come from churches that had abusive leadership. That had leadership that were for selfish gain. And today can be a day of healing. Jesus would love to deliver you from those mistakes of others. Would you come to him and see how sweet the true gospel is? And would you maybe have forgiveness for people that don't deserve it? And maybe you've seen Christianity as a list of do's and don'ts, but now you're realizing that there's so much more to it. That's a message about the love of God for undeserving people. And today can be a day where you reconcile that once again. Where you connect with God in a different kind of way.

Another way you could apply this, do you see the gospel as something to keep to yourself or something to share with others? If you've been entrusted with this thing that you're keeping deeply locked up, you know, maybe it's in a safe somewhere, you know, you don't want anything to happen to it because it, it you can bring it out. It's fireproof, OK? That's, the very nature of what the thing is you, you bring it out and allow yourself to share it. Maybe you need to just take that step, maybe. You have this thing where Paul says that he was affectionately desirous of the Thessalonians, and I'm just gonna place the challenge on you. Who has the Lord given you an affectionate desire for? Alright, single dudes, single ladies, I'm not talking about the other, you know, the that. I'm, I'm talking about who in your life. Has the Lord given you a desire to love and to be with? And how can you share not only the gospel of God, it assumes that you're sharing the gospel of God. I think our default is not to share that one, but it assumes you're sharing the gospel of God, but also share your very self. Will you make room for them in your life? Your friends, it's OK to play the slow game sometimes, you know, it's not even a game it's just like you be with someone.

There's this famous quote from Saint Francis of Assisi, that wasn't actually a true it wasn't actually Saint Francis of Assisi. It was it someone made it up and attributed it to him, but it says share the gospel at all times, use words if necessary now. That what's wrong, because words are necessary to share the gospel, but I love the heart behind it because it says that we're not only supposed to share with words but we're supposed to share with the way that we give of ourselves. So use, share the gospel at all times using words. When you can, and sharing yourself at all times with others is the best way to think about that.

I encourage you, who is the Lord placed on your heart like that? Maybe you need to write that name down. Maybe you just need someone to pray with you after the service for this one friend. You don't have to share their name or you can just share their first name. Maybe you want to join us on Tuesday mornings through the period of Lent, 7 a.m. at the community space where we pray and you can take your name and you can pray for your friend and pray for opportunities that you might be able to share yourself and with them. You can share, you can pray after service today. We'll have time after the service is over up here. If anybody would like to pray, you can come and pray for your friend.

If we're honest with ourselves as we look at all these mega church pastors and the damage that they've caused. The reality is, while we know that there's something especially insidious about pastors behaving in that kind of way and especially continuing a ministry after behaving in that kind of way. We know that many of the ugly desires and sins that live in them live also in us, do they not? That the seeds of that type of sin is. Present in each of our hearts. And it's especially And it's especially shameful when a when a leader fails in that way, but each of us has had a desire to build, to build our own kingdoms and wealth in a similar kind of way.

And so as we go to Christ and remind ourselves that we all need Jesus, that we're not actually any better than this list of names that I brought to you at the beginning. Some of us hide our sin more, some of us, we might not have been caught in the same. Patterns of sin, but the seeds still live there. And so what the gospel says is that Jesus. Didn't just come to proclaim the kingdom of God, but he came to give of him his very self. And what Paul is saying is that to follow Jesus, you don't just come to proclaim the kingdom of God, but you give of your very self the way that Christ has for you.

And so when we celebrate the gospel, we recognize that Jesus didn't just teach us how to live, but he gave his very life for our lives, that his body was broken for us, that his blood was shed for us, that we might have life with God forever throughout all eternity. And so each week we participate in a sacred meal where we're we're remembering what Christ has done and he's present with us and it's a physical way of remembering what he has done and being reminded of that truth once and again. And so each week we participate in this communion meal. If you are a believer here with us, we encourage you to come and receive this, be reminded of it once again in this physical tangible way. So let's stand as we prepare to respond to God's word and to sing praises to Him and receive this meal over the next song.

God, we pray this morning that you would help us to, to see that you've given your very self for us and that you would help us to live in response to that by giving of our very selves for you. And by loving others in this personal tangible kind of way. God I pray for anyone here who has a misconception of Christianity that you would heal that for them, help them to understand the message of Jesus truly. And we pray for our friends and family who might not know Jesus. And God, we, we confess that we have failed in the way that we have shared. God have forgiveness, have mercy for us. And give us the power and strength to move forward in love and compassion. We ask these things in Christ's name, Amen.

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Ministry Associate Calvin Chu preaches from 1 Thessalonians 1:5b-10. Discussion points: Faith that never undergoes struggle can be too weak for the real world and the person may fall away from God, everyone goes through suffering and it is intended to refine our faith, true faith serves no one and nothing but God.

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Scripture reader: [1 Thessalonians 1:5b-10] You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake, and you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything, for they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: My name is Calvin, get the pleasure of sharing God's word with you this morning and um. Like, I feel like I said, every single time I come up I feel like, oh I need a little bit of context for kind of where I come from. So, before I started coming to CoaH, I the youth ministry, well, student ministry, worked a lot with youth, work, work with, you know, college students, and then, you know, obviously adult volunteers and stuff, but, doing student ministry meant that I had the, distinct. Privilege and challenge of sharing the gospel with people who are like at the very beginning of their faith journeys, you know, I was able to see students who like knew nothing about Jesus, learn about who he is, what he's done, and like come to faith.

And that's like an incredible blessing to be able to see and again because they're younger than the beginning you you get to see that, for, you know, a good chunk of some folks. I also get to see some young Christians deep in their faith, like throughout, you know. Middle school and high school, you see them as they we mentioned someone hitting puberty, congratulations to that that young man. it's, it's, it's everyone enjoys it, um. And then the people who are outside beginning to see just really think it's just a really incredible time, but kind of going through and seeing them go from this, you know, growing into their body and growing into their like spirituality and come out of it especially like as a senior in high school it's like, wow, like you seem to have like a lot more put together now like you understand a lot more about the world, since you've been through the years.

But one of the things that I also would be able to see was seeing. Something that kind of honestly broke my heart and seeing those same people who seemed like they're more put together than them when they were like in middle school and they graduate and then they kind of go away to college and then you come back and you connect with them and you see that oh actually they like once took their faith seriously and they kind of like stopped taking their faith seriously or maybe they don't consider themselves a follower of Jesus at all.

And that that was difficult to see and, and, and you know, people who grew up in the church weren't necessarily like immune to that like just because you were born literally in the church doesn't mean that you didn't face those struggles. so for years I wrestled with like why does this happen and what can I do to prevent it and. You know I'd ask myself what what programmatic changes can I make, what, what discipleship changes can I make, how can I preach differently, so that I can sort of prevent these things from happening.

And while I made adjustments and and the Lord gave me insight and and and inspiration, the pattern still continued. You'd still see people who took their faith seriously and things would happen and then they would grow up and grow out of their faith. And It's not just like a student issue, right? It's actually something that we all see maybe we're all wrestling with plenty of adults step away, plenty of people who, you know, for years after high school, after college, well into their careers, well into establishing their families, they too run into situations and they also step away and grow out of their faith.

And you know I, I, I don't assume that every single person here is a Christian. Maybe you're here because you stumbled in because it's cold out and you want a place to sit. Maybe you are coming back to the church for the first time in a long time and you just saw this church building and you walked in and you heard music playing, and if you're here and you're a Christian, I don't assume that everything is going well in your faith that you're not struggling, that you don't have doubts. in fact, I don't know, I, I just have a sense within my heart that like. There is a weight here, uh, in some of us, and, and I, I do wonder if maybe some of us are having doubts right now. And I, I can imagine that if you're here, or if you're watching this online, that maybe you are wondering, is God here? Is God good? Is God on my side versus the other side, wherever the other side is in our minds.

And I think often these doubts come when we're experiencing these particular moments, these hardships, these challenges. We tend to question God when life is not going our way, when things are difficult. And we assume that these difficult circumstances are bad for our faith. That these trials are actually pushing us away from God, rather than drawing us closer to Him. Or if anything, they, they make us doubt God's existence at all cause if God were real, then surely my life wouldn't look like this. And that is the topic we're gonna be talking about today. What is it about our life? What is it about our faith, and how does that match? With the difficulties and hardships that we face. That every single person faces that maybe you right now are facing and maybe that's the reason you're here listening to me, listening to this worship and and and trying to see what is real about God and and I. For that task I need to pray, because we really need God to open up our eyes and soften our hearts so that we can really hear him this morning.

So let's pray. Father God, it's not just the hour lost for some of us. Some of us are tired in a much deeper sense of I didn't get a full night's rest. Some of us, maybe even in this room right now are existentially tired, emotionally tired, psychologically tired. And so God, for those of us who are there and maybe on on the cusp of really doubting or maybe we're we're sort of beyond the doubt, we're on the road out already, God, would your spirit. Just catch us by the sleeve, grab us by the collar and and tell us to hold on and wait to hear from you this morning. And God, for those of us who are not there, would this be something that is implanted into our minds, implanted into our hearts so that when the difficulties come we are ready to face them the way that you want us to face them. And God, we need you far more than me in my preparations, God, we need your spirit to move amongst us so that we can hear specifically what you want us to hear through your word this morning, and we thank you that you are a God who is powerful enough, loving enough to do that for us right here. And pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.

So as a little bit of context for the passage here, I really appreciate Fletcher sharing kind of what was happening before for Paul and his and his companions. basically he is right to the Thessalonian Church because he he's sort of saying like, wow, this is like I'm excited for you like verse two, which we didn't read this morning we did read last week, it says we. Give thanks to God always for you constantly mentioning mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. He's writing, he's so excited because Paul and his his his missions team was only able to be in that space for a very short while. He couldn't finish the discipleship program like the, the, the 8 the 8 week program that you know, the Alpha of that day like they weren't able to finish it.

And for some of us that would be like terrifying like oh no like will there ever, can there ever be believers because we didn't get to week like week 8 like but and so I think naturally we we'd be like inclined to to to feel that way because basically a riot broke out and all that stuff. Reading in acts it's awesome. basically Paul had to run. They, they had like hide him and like let him escape else they were gonna like beat him up or something.

And so he's writing, he's writing with a sense of deep gratitude because he says wow, God is doing something even though I was limited, even though I couldn't finish the job, he's he's grateful because he sees that God is doing it for 4, for we know brothers loved by God that he has chosen you because our gospel came to you not only in word but also in power and in the Holy Spirit with full conviction. In other words, he's excited about the faith he sees in the Christians in Thessalonica, right, the city there, and he's affirmed in their faith, knowing that God has chosen them. In other words, he sees their faith as a true faith, and that that's so exciting to them. He, he just is so filled with great gratitude and he's filled with gratefulness because he sees God working. And he, the thing that gets him so fired up is what we saw in the the passage this morning.

Read verse 5B, but then I'll read verse 6 as well. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake, and you became imitators of us and the Lord, for you receive the word in much affliction with the joy of the Holy Spirit. He sees their faith as true, not only because of the the results of it which we'll get to, but he sees their faith as true because it was formed, it grew, it matured under duress. Their faith was built upon affliction. Not despite the affliction, but in because of the affliction. A faith in the midst of storms is one that see, is one that sees the object of their faith much clearer. The faith that grows in adversity sees God's fingerprints.

If our faith only thrives when things are easy, then it's, it's not truly strong, it's untested. But a faith that endures through hardship, but one that has been refined and strengthened and made more resilient. Just like when you go to the gym. And you lift weights. Or you're running on a treadmill. Your muscles are getting stronger, not. Because it's easy. It's because specifically because it's difficult if sitting on the couch made us stronger, we would have the anti-digital fast. We'd be a digital, you know, binge, and then we'd just be the strongest believers in the faith ever because we're sitting on the couch that we got the Netflix going, we got the we got the iPad, we have our phone, we're just building up strength because it's easy. We do things like a digital fast or any sort of fasting because the affliction, the difficulty is what makes us grow stronger. And so Paul saw God work despite being unable to complete the program. And he know, he knew even more so that God was real and was working because of that.

I shared previously, that I didn't grow up in a Christian home most of my childhood. The only time that I ever heard the name Jesus is in Cantonese, and it's when my mom would say to me, basically the, the, it says don't talk Jesus to me, and, and it was this, I don't know if it's like a, a phrase that she made up or something that was popular where she grew up in Hong Kong. but basically when I was trying to like convince her of something like, hey, can I have this? Like can I written this she's like, don't talk Jesus to me. and so it wasn't about like a faith thing, it was just don't try to evangelize to me about not the gospel but something else, something about me.

And I've been thinking a lot about my mom, recently because the anniversary of her passing was this past Monday. And I've shared previously about, you know, what you know had happened with my mom and how she had gotten sick, and I find God's timing funny because we're talking about origins of faith happening under duress, and the origin of my faith is actually under duress it was, you know, when I was young, my mom got sick. She had a heart attack in her mid-thirties, she had a triple bypass surgery and she in on the, on the operating table she fell into a coma for like a little while and so in my 6th grade mind. Hearing and and experiencing my mom being sick and not knowing what's going to happen.

My aunt who was the first believer in my my family, she came with her church and embodied the gospel in word and in deed. And when she shared the gospel with me, expressing my need for savior. I was like, yeah, OK, like I, I, I see that. I feel that um. And you know, Like facing that dire situation, I, I, I wanted to see God move and he did, and, and again, as I shared previously that she, she, she got out of that. She lived for many years beyond that.

You know, as like a side note, like my, I, I don't like go into every single time I'm preaching to like I'm gonna talk about my mom or I'm gonna talk about, you know, like these, these, these difficult situations in my family, but I, I, I can't help but really realize that God has used the life of my mother and the difficulties that she went through to form my faith. And it's not just my mom, you know, you know, obviously I talked about how she died with dementia and ALS and so you know that's a huge dose of that, but my father-in-law, you know, the year after, you know, my my wife Lindsay and I got married, he had a stroke and it was debilitating and he had to go to like a nursing home and then in 2020 there's this new disease that came around and you know, he obviously being a stroke victim, being in a nursing home, we were really, really concerned and then. He got COVID when we didn't really know what it was when we were still spray spraying fruit with like bleach. There's no, there's no vaccines. There's none of those things like we didn't and, and he succumbed to COVID. And then even now, you know, my, my sister, she gave birth to her son on October 5th and then October 18th she found out that she has pancreatic cancer the day before her birthday.

And you know, if anyone, and I'm, I'm not saying that my life is hard, or the hardest of all lives. But if someone has a couple of, you know, stones to throw at the throne of, of, of, of God, I feel like I can kind of throw a couple of them his way. Yet the way I see the world is different. Because of these things. I see these challenges as God's fingerprints. I see how God has delivered despite difficulty.

And maybe you soon may face a situation. Maybe you're in a situation right now and you're just like, I don't know. Where is God? How is God going to deliver me from this? And I just am hopeful for you because if you. Hold on, you continue to let your faith grow in the midst of this hardship. I think, and I, I love that we chose this song this morning, the, the story I'll tell, it says, I know that down through the years I'll look on this moment and see your hand on it and know you were here. But there is an element that we have to cling on, we have to hold on to the promises that we read about in scripture to know that God is faithful. And then when we get through that, then we see That God was there.

And look, I, I know that God can bring unbearable difficulties and, and you know, my faith will be tested soon, I'm sure. I know I'm not immune to doubts just because I've experienced a lot of losses in my life. But as I stand right now, I can say that my faith is stronger because of the afflictions I faced, not despite them. But my story isn't the point. What God does in the midst of affliction is, the truth is, faith that endures hardship is not just powerful, it's noticeable. When people see that kind of faith, a real tested, unshaken faith, it has an impact. It spreads. A true faith doesn't just sustain you through difficult times, it also inspires others.

As we read in the next few verses, start in verse 6. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction and with joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere so that we need not say anything.

I mean, imagine that, imagine you go on a missions trip. Or you go, you know, I'm gonna share, share the, the good news with my co-worker, share the good news with my neighbor, you're like, you kind of figure out the awkward like, so what do you think about Jesus? And they go, oh no, we know about Jesus. Oh really? You know what Jesus, yeah, yeah, you know, you know, Fletcher, you know, he, he is from Somerville, like he, he came, he went, he, he was sharing the gospel with everybody. He's just telling everyone about Jesus, like, oh, OK, so, so you don't, you, you, yeah, yeah, we believe in Jesus. Yeah, Fletcher, man, just. He did the thing. Oh, OK. Um. Cool, see you on Sunday? Like, yeah, yeah, I'll see you there. I mean, imagine what that would feel like you kind of do all this planning, all this thinking, and you just see that someone has already laid the foundation for your work and you just get to see and experience it.

That's basically what Paul is saying like he, we didn't have to preach the gospel because the church of Thessalonica, them, they, they were so on fire. Their faith was so genuine, it was so real, and they, they just talked about it and they got to see and experience and just it, it set ablaze. And again, it's not because they had the best program. It's not because they bought the right curriculum. It's not because they studied the demographics the right way or enough, right? Not not say those are important. But really it's that they were living out their faith through these difficulties and still having the sense of joy.

And I think it really breaks down to two things of why this type of faith is so like inspirational and infectious. And the first thing is true faith when that's tested and endures difficulty, it embraces reality. What I mean is it's not, it's one that's prepared for real life. You know, life is unpredictable. I mean, you all know this, but in a faith who has been through some things has roots that go deep. A faith that has seen death, destruction, despair. And come, come out of that. Is a much stronger one.

I was reading a book recently I forget which one but it was talking about the biosphere. I don't know if y'all are old enough to remember the biosphere. You may remember it from a Pauly Shore movie called Biodome. If you know Biodome, it's based off of Ri basically I think it's in California. or maybe Arizona somewhere warm, they said that we're going to create a giant dome and we're gonna plant all this like you know animals and plants and whatever and they had and they said that in this dome can we create the idyllic, you know, living conditions for Earth. And what they had said was, or what they had realized was they had planted these like tropical trees, and because it's in a dome, there was no wind, right? And so they were able to put these, I forget what type of tree is, I apologize, but the type of tree that they put into the ground, it grows really, really fast and so it grows just rock it up these giant trees, and then very soon after they realized that the trees were dying. The way this we're we're watering, it's getting plenty of sun, we're we're taking care of it. What's happening here? And what they realize is that trees. Are anti-fragile. What it means is that it needs wind to blow at it the the the the the tsunami or monsoon season, the the the hurricanes that blow against these trees is necessary because when it blows this way it strengthens up the other side of it and strengthens up here but if it just grows up with no challenges it just topples over.

Friends, church, we are built the same way. We need these difficulties to strengthen our faith. If our faith goes untested, if it is unprepared for real life, it will. topple over. In a faith that understands that trials are not signs of God's absence. But there's something that is an evidence of his refining work. Then we know that that is a true faith that is prepared for the reality of life. And it becomes infectious because everyone goes through suffering and everyone is trying to figure out how do I get through it and we all have our own solutions whether it's getting lost on the phone, getting lost in substances, getting lost in all the things that we can get lost in or we can find the solution, the one that really works that gets lost in the goodness of God.

And the other reason, or sorry, the other problem is that a lot of people, even Christians, we struggle to embrace this reality. Because I think of two things. I think the thing that we, we struggle with is when we respond, some of us run away from difficulties. We, we equate difficulties as bad for our faith. We think that if life isn't smooth and comfortable, then something must be wrong. And so we chase ease, we chase comfort, we avoid discomfort. We stay in our lane and run Christianprogramming.exe and we just feel like, OK, we're gonna just keep chugging along here. And then we avoid challenges that might stretch us and grow us. I think on the other hand, Some of us run away, not from difficulty but we run away from God.

We assume that if life is hard, then God must not be real or he must not be good and we become bitter and convinced that he either doesn't care or he's not worthy of our devotion. Especially if he's allowing us or making us suffer. Without true faith we walk away bitter or delusional. We either break under the weight of suffering or we fade out, we fade down the lazy river of self-indulgent comfort. We either become lukewarm Christians or we become former Christians.

But true faith embraces reality. It says, yes, life is hard. And it doesn't just help us navigate every challenge. It doesn't just it doesn't deny that hardship is not real or doesn't exist. And it doesn't give in to the bitterness and anger and outrage that's so common in our world today. It's a true faith faces life with both clear eyed. Awareness and an unshakeable joy.

Verses 9 and 10. For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you and how you turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for his son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.

The other thing that makes this type of faith contagious is that true faith serves no one and nothing but God. Let me say that one more time, true faith serves no one and nothing but God. The defining mark in the church at Thessalonica was that how they turned from their idols to serve God and that that probably feels really obvious to some of us, especially if you grew up in the church. But there's a nuance here that I think that we often miss. Many Christians try to serve God and. Right, many Christians serve God answer God and serve their family, serve God and serve their career, serve God and serve their political party, their relationships, their financial goals, and the list goes on, the scripture is clear we cannot serve two masters. Jesus said that we will be devoted to one and despise the other.

Yet we as as Christians, we, we're pretty good at doing, trying to do both. And the world is watching. And that kind of faith looks hypocritical. It's confusing, it's frustrating. It looks like a performance rather than a genuine way of life. No one respects a faith that code switches, that mode switches. That depending on the situation, I'm this type of Christian, then I'm the type of that type of Christian. And I, and honestly I, I, especially working with young people. They can smell in inauthenticity really, really far away. And I think that's why you know you you hear talk about the rise of the nones, rise of people who are no longer interested in faith and no longer interested in religion, which I know this this is seem to be changing, but I think of the rise that we've seen is because of that.

I think there's been a lot of people who've been saying, yeah, I serve God during these hours only, and then these times I serve everything else. And people can tell. They see Christians who claim to trust God. But panic when life gets difficult or cling to other ideals in the name of Jesus. They preach love but refuse to extend grace. It doesn't inspire people, it repels them. I think because deep down people are searching for something real. A faith that bends and shifts to fit the moment doesn't look real, it looks fake. If even Christians don't seem fully convinced of their own faith, why would anyone else take it seriously? That's why true faith serves God alone. Not not God and our comfort, not God and our ambitions, not God and whatever makes life easier. True faith is anchored in God first. And then everything else falls into place from there.

This passage calls us to truly turn fully and truly to God, which means turning away from anything that competes for our devotion. Don't get me, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying go and abandon everything in your life and go live in the wilderness, you know, rejecting all the people, all, all the material belongings, that's not what I'm saying. What I am saying is that. We have to focus on serving God first. God is the central piece of our life. And then we end up serving God through serving our community. We serve God through serving our family. We serve God through serving our career, through our finances, through our time management, not at the same time, but through these things. God isn't just another priority on a list. He is the foundation of everything on that list as a whole.

And I don't wanna overpromise it. It doesn't mean that if you do this, that everyone's gonna be like, wow, Christians are great. They're amazing, wow, I love Christians. No, probably not. But it does mean we position ourselves to be used by God to reflect his image and draw others to himself like how he did in Thessalonica with the believers there. And friends. That's where the joy comes in. The hope is that as you go through these difficulties with a hope with a understanding that you are being strengthened you are growing and as you do these things and hope that others will see. Your goodness not for not as a performance for them, but see your goodness so that they can see your God that your life reflects as a mirror to him and you go, wow, what is an amazing opportunity for me to reflect God's love to those around me. And it's just you're just excited to do the thing.

You know, some of you have children. Some of you do not. Some of you work with children closely. Some of you do not. One of the things, that all the parenting books talk about and you get to experience if you see it is when there's a little kid that wants to do the thing the grown up does, being able to like be a part of that is very, very exciting, you know, when I was, when there's there's taking a different couple different stages because my, my kids are a little bit older now, but when I was really, really young, I remember. There was a time I was, I was mowing the lawn, which doesn't happen very, very often because I don't love doing it, but I remember I was mowing the lawn and you know my, my eldest, who was obviously the biggest of, of my, my, my pair, he would come and he'd be like, oh, I wanna, I wanna come and help, and just like. OK, this is definitely gonna slow it down, a lot, but I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'll let him do it so because again the parenting books, and so I, I let him push alongside, you know, with me and, and when I was doing that there was, there was just an incredible joy that's there. To being able to be a part of his father's work. I am a part of this thing and I get to be like my daddy. It's a small thing, but for him, it's a lot.

And I think that's a, that's a reflection of how God is with us. We don't, he doesn't need us to reflect his love. He's perfectly shown it through the blood of Christ. And if he wanted to make everyone know it, he could make everyone know it, but for whatever reason. Probably because he loves us, probably because he wants us to to know that he loves us and he wants us to be part of his kingdom work. He says, yeah. Reflect my love to the world. I'm going to use you to reach them. And there's joy there, knowing that you get to push the mower. That he is really driving, but you get to be a part of it.

And so friends, I hope that you will embrace a faith that grows in hardship. I hope you will embrace a faith that serves God and God alone. Yes, for yourself. Yes, so you can get through difficulties. Yes, so you can become stronger in your faith for yourself. But I also hope that you will do that because it naturally impacts those around us. I know we're talking about the vision for our church for the next 5 years and part of that does talk about those around us. It does talk about how we are invited to participate in this vision. I use Fletcher as an example, but Fletcher isn't literally going to do everything that's there. He already does a lot.

But this is part of the invitation for all of us to do our God-given duty, responsibility, privilege to be partners in the gospel. For his glory And so then I guess my question to you is. What type of faith are you modeling? If we were to take a slice of your time, your finances, your energy, your attention. And we would put it on display, because that's what it is doing already. What would it say? What would those who don't know Jesus think about that? Would they go, wow, this whole Jesus guy? I mean, I don't really understand about it, but OK, he's, you take him pretty seriously. Or Is your understanding of Jesus like my understanding when I was a kid. It's just this thing you say when You're just trying to be clever. It's a thing you say so that you can try to fit in. It's just a word of many words that you put into your sentences that doesn't really have a significance, that doesn't really have meaning.

I don't want you to leave here being like, oh, OK, I'm like ease up. It's, we didn't, we lost an hour of sleep. It's a little, a little heavy for me right now. Here's the good news. The good news is that we don't do it on our own strength. Verse 10 here is very, very clear. And for every verse 9 and 10, for they themselves report concerning to us the kind of reception we had among you and how you turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God and wait for His Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead. Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come. That same Jesus that delivered us from the consequences of our sin. The thing that we couldn't even pretend to do, although we try. He's gonna give us that. Surely if he's inviting us to reflect his love to the world around us, to be an impact in our cities, in our workplaces, in our schools. What's giving us the strength to do that if he's taking care of our sin. That's nothing.

And so friends again, it's this is the the beauty of the of this circle here. God empowers us, so we can serve Him, we can serve him and Him only. And so that he can take the reflections that he is giving to us so we reflect it to the world out there. And so I hope that we will be the kind of people whose faith stands out in the best way. In a real steady faith empowered by the Holy Spirit. Anchored in the work of Christ that others look at our lives and say, I want that. I don't, I, I don't really understand it, but your approach to the difficulties of life, your consistency, your integrity. Tell me more about how you're living because I'm tired of trying to solve my own problems to numb myself from the world around us because I can't deal with it. How are you doing it? And you'll have the opportunity, both in word and indeed to share the good news with them.

Which is why we gather every single Sunday and we commemorate that by taking communion. Communion is is an opportunity for believers to come together and recognize that Jesus sacrificed for us. And hopefully that, you know, communion meal reminds us of what God has done and what God will continue to do, and how he invites us to participate in this kingdom work.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from 1 Thessalonians 1:1-5 [read for us in Korean]. Discussion points: The gospel is true good news, not just good advice for how to be a nice person; the power of the gospel comes from God and not from our intellect or church-planting strategy or influence; the Spirit of God comes with gifts and with conviction of your heart.

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Scripture reader: [1 Thessalonians 1:1-5a, read in Korean] Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: grace to you and peace. We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: All right, good morning. How are we doing? Wow. You know, everybody's talking about the weather this morning, and, you know, it's, it's a little cold again. If you're new to Boston, let me explain to you what just happened, OK? that was the first fall spring that we experienced the past couple of days. There will be a second fall spring. And then there will come a time in about in April when you think it's actual spring. No, that's 3rd fall spring, then we're gonna get another snowstorm, like mid to late April, and then we'll go into spring, OK? Spring has not sprung until May in Boston, just accept it, OK? You're gonna be wearing sweaters until May. That's, that's life. Today we're starting a new series on the book of First Thessalonians. First Thessalonians, if you're new to the church or, or, or new, to Christianity, First Thessalonians is what you call an epistle, and, an epistle is really just something Christians call letters. Because it literally means letter. And so it is one of the letters written by the apostle Paul to one of the first churches that he planted.

In fact, 1 Thessalonians is what we think to be probably the first letter that Paul wrote to any of the churches, and these letters were written. There's about 13 of them written by Paul, and there's a few other epistles written by. John and Peter, and these are just letters. It's what makes up the majority of your New Testament, which if you are new to the church, I would, I would encourage you to start with the New Testament, to read through there first and, and learn about Jesus. And so, this is Paul's, kind of encouragement to the church at Thessalonica and how and honestly answering a lot of their questions.

I would like for you to take a moment, since this is our first epistle in quite a little while that we've been going through, to consider the apostle Paul. Most people have heard of Paul, and I just want you to think, what would Paul be like today if he was around today? Do you think he would be a celebrity pastor? Do you think that like all the different churches would be clamoring to get him to come and visit? Maybe he would have some snazzy sneakers, they get on preachers and sneakers, Instagram channel. Maybe, maybe Paul would have to keep up with the travel demands and feel the pressure to get a private jet to go between those things, like one of the televangelists on TV. We'd like to imagine that if Paul was around today, that we would be excited and encouraged to hear what he has to say.

I think many of us would be, oh, Paul's preaching, this place would be packed. Like everybody would be here to hear what Paul has to say. But the reality is Paul wasn't always very popular. Especially in Thessalonica. In fact, on the 2nd missionary journey, so Paul took 4 missionary journeys, and he visited Thessalonica on his 2nd missionary journey. First he went to Philippi, and, before he got to Thessalonica, he was in Philippi, and while he was in Philippi, he got thrown into prison and then there was an the earthquake and the chains around his ankles, they broke and he was let out of prison and the Philippian jailer was like, oh no, they're going to kill me, so I'm just going to kill myself first.

So he starts to go kill himself before all the prisoners escape and Paul is just like, Hey, stop it, don't do that, you know, hey, we're not going anywhere. And they still kind of get run out of town. The the Philippian jailer becomes a Christian. His whole family becomes Christians, and then Paul kind of gets run out of town after being thrown in prison, and he goes to Thessalonica.

And when he goes to Thessalonica, he spends in which Thessalonica was a major city at the time, and it still is a major city. Thessalonica at the time, probably 100,000 people today, maybe 300,000 in the in the city and then a million in the metro. It's the second largest city in the entire nation of Greece and in Thessalonica, Paul goes to the synagogue for 3 sequential Sundays, and this is all you can find all of this in Acts chapter 17. It records what happened with Paul. He goes to the synagogue for 3 Sundays, and he preaches the good news of Jesus. He preaches the message that Jesus is the king, and what he actually does is he exposes what's happening throughout the Old Testament and he reasons with the people in Thessalonica, helping them to see that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah.

Several people come to know the Lord, but after a little while, some people get angry that Paul is doing this. So after just 3 Sundays, an angry mob comes together and they kidnap a dude named Jason, and they hold him ransom, and they're like, get out of our city. And so Paul and his companion Silas and Timothy, we assume, all had to run. Out of Thessalonica, they go to the next town over Berea. All right, so they're in Berea. They're seeing fruit. Lots of good things are happening. Who shows up? But the angry mob from Thessalonica, they follow him to the next. How much do you have to hate someone to follow him to the next town over, OK? I'm not going over to Medford if I can avoid it, let alone, like all the way down to Berea.

So, Paul not universally loved. Many of the people of Thessalonica hated him. And when I read this, I'm always a little surprised that Paul would even write a letter to the Thessalonians, because if I'm Paul, I'm just marking that one in now, OK? Like, nothing happened in Thessalonica. I saw a few people coming of the Lord. There's no way that church is surviving though. 3 Sundays. I had 3 Sundays to teach them everything they need to know about Jesus. People had never heard the name of Jesus, the Bible, the New Testament's not written. Everything they need to know about Jesus. He taught them in 3 Sundays, and then he left, and he had the gall to write a letter to that church.

He has better faith than I do. I mean, for me, our church is still at the point to where like, I feel a little nervous if I take off a Sunday, let alone just 33 weeks. I mean, Paul has greater faith than I do, and I just love where he finds his assurance that the church will survive because my anxious feelings aren't about you guys, they're about me. And for me, too often, I have this overblown sense of self-importance that God needs me here to build His church. But look at Paul, he's like, that church doesn't need me. All they need is the gospel. And the gospel came to them, and it changed them. You know, last week I, I, we did the, the vision Sunday and I cast the vision for where we want to be in 5 years so that we can continue to be a church in 100 years. And our vision was this, that City on a Hill is a community of faith that cannot be hidden, shining and sending the light of Christ in Somerville and beyond for generations to come.

And when we proclaim that vision, it's easy to focus on the practicalities of it, what all it will take for a City on a Hill to last for that long. We can talk about stuff like building facilities. We can talk about parking, we can talk about leaders, we can talk about budget, all this different stuff, but that stuff is not what makes a church last for the long haul. What makes a church last for the long haul is the message of the good news of Jesus, piercing the hearts of the people of God. And helping them to see God for who He is. God makes the mission move forward.

Paul was confident that the church would continue because they received the good news of Jesus. He also sent back his, his, mentor, Timothy, and Timothy went to the church in Thessalonica and he checked on them and but yeah, so he, he sent his, his servant Timothy, his mentor Timothy, and then Timothy comes back, and we assume 1 Thessalonians is probably like a list of answers to the Thessalonians questions. I'm sure that they had a lot of questions. If they only heard the gospel for 3 weeks, they had a lot of different things that they had were wondering about after that.

So we're just gonna dive in. We're gonna look at the first 4, 5 verses of this passage, and then, we'll continue through this. We're gonna be in this book through like the middle of June. So we're gonna be going through it verse by verse pretty slowly.

So the letter starts with a customary introduction. Paul, Sylvanus, and Timothy, to the church of the Thessalonians in God, the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, grace unto you and peace. Three names, Paul, Sylvanus, and Timothy. I'm gonna teach you something that you probably don't know at the moment. Sylvanus is just kind of the Greek form of the word. Silas of the name Silas. And so he's saying Sylvanus, even though Acts talked about Silas. Paul really just kind of the Greek form of the name Saul. It's not, he didn't have an Abraham, Abraham moment. It's just like the Greek version of Saul, that he called Paul.

Then Paul tells them that he's been praying for him. All of this is really customary. We get, he says this verse 2, we give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, that is, that's beautiful, and we could spend time looking at that, but really this is kind of customary for Paul's letters to start with like a short prayer. It's almost the same as us saying dear dear Sirs or madam or to whom it may concern at the beginning of the letter.

What I really want to focus on for the rest of our time this morning is this next passage, verses 4 and 5. Where it says this, for we know brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. Paul visited the city of Thessalonica for 3 weeks. Preaching the message of Jesus and somehow there's a whole church that continued to endure year after year. Probably generations after that, and how it's because they received the gospel. The church that lasts for the long haul is one where the people have fully received and been transformed by the gospel. And so he lists 4 different ways that the gospel changes people, 4 different things about it that people receive, how the gospel comes to people, and they are this. The gospel comes in word, the gospel comes in power, the gospel comes in the Holy Spirit, and the gospel comes with full conviction.

Number 1, the gospel comes in word. We're just gonna work through these four. The gospel comes in word. Verse 4, for we know, brothers, loved by God that He has chosen you because our gospel came to you not only in Word, but this assumes that the gospel must come in word. So to be a Christian, it means that you must accept the good news of the gospel as a mental thing. You must believe it. You must look at the the historicity of the resurrection, which there is good reason for, and believe that it is true, that Jesus really did raise from the dead. The word gospel means good news. It means good news. That's what the word means and we talk about the gospel all the time.

But to be good news, it means that it is not advice. This is not the advice column. This is the news. And to be news, it means that something happened in history. That we receive as good news, not as advice. Too many people treat the gospel as its advice for how to live your life, as it's a few moral lessons for how to move forward with being a good person. But the gospel is not moral lessons to be a good person. The gospel is the good news of what Jesus has. Accomplished on our behalf that God sent His one and only Son to live the life that we should have lived and to die the death that we deserve to die.

And how often do we turn the gospel into advice instead of news, where we say, I'm not following Jesus like I should be, I need to do more so that Jesus will love me more. That is not the gospel. It's a careful, cheap imitation of the gospel. You just have to be careful with this. Because the gospel is, I'm loved perfectly because of Christ's obedience for me. And we have to go back to that over and over again. It's so easy to turn Christianity into moralism, to say, I need to do things so that God will love me more. But that is not the gospel. The gospel is Jesus obeyed completely for you, and because of that, you follow God. You see, religion says, I obey, therefore God loves me. When the gospel says, God loves me, therefore I obey. Does that make sense?

So this is what he proclaimed to them. We actually know exactly what he proclaimed to them. In the book of Acts, he says, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews, and Paul went, as was his custom, and on 3 Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and rise from the dead, and saying, this Jesus whom I proclaim to you is the Christ. And then later on, they, the reason why the mob comes after him is they say, he's claiming there's another king other than Caesar. So, he's also proclaiming that Jesus is king.

And I just want you to take a moment and see this, that, a lot of times we as Christians, we do a failure to people, because we say, hey, don't think about it, just believe. That's not what Paul is saying. What Paul is saying is that he spent weeks reasoning with them, arguing with them, helping them to understand and to think about their faith. Your faith is something that you should understand and think about. It's, that's not where it should stop because that's what he says, that the gospel not only came to you in word, but the gospel came to you through these other means. The gospel came to you through in power also.

That's what he says, verse 5, look at this with me. Because our gospel came to you not only in word but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. So you can believe the right things about who God is and not be a Christian. Because the gospel is not simply knowing the answers. If you grew up in church, it's not simply knowing the answers, but it's receiving this thing with the power and with the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. Look, the scripture says that even the demons believe. The demons know who Jesus is.

And Philippi, before Paul goes to Thessalonica, they have this little girl following him around who's possessed by a demon, and she is declaring that these men serve Jesus, the Lord Most High. She's not a Christian, she just knows the truth. And then he turns around, he casts the demon out of the woman, out of the little girl, and then the slave, the slave owners get upset because she was doing, she was telling fortunes because of this demonic presence in her life, and that's when they send them to to prison. And so you can understand who Jesus is. Sorry, I hope that didn't throw any of you off the logical, it's like demons, OK. But you can believe right things about who Jesus is and not be a Christian. Because the gospel doesn't only come in word, but it also comes with power.

What does it mean for the gospel to come with power? It means that when you receive the message of Jesus, you believe it, and that it changes you. That the gospel has power, that it changes you from the inside out. It's transformational. You don't merely believe the gospel, you experience the truth of it. The message of Jesus changes you. You experience the love of God in such a way that it changes you. You don't live for the things you once did. The allure of the things of this world grow strangely dim.

For the gospel to come in power means that when the gospel is preached, God acts. The power isn't found in Paul's eloquence or any church growth strategy. The power is not found in the Thessalonians intellectual capacity. The power is God's power to awaken hearts and bring them to life. And friends, this is good news, and we've seen it, but you need to be reminded of this, that the gospel. The simple message of who Jesus is, can change the most ardent atheist into a follower of Jesus. We've heard the stories of people who are anti-Jesus, anti-religion, but yet they hear the good news, they meet some Christians who love them, and they're brought into the kingdom. The gospel changes them.

It can also change the most self-sufficient moralist into a follower of Christ. And let me tell you, the second one is harder than the first one. Because you're, if you're a self-sufficient moralist, you don't feel like you need religion at all. But it can even turn that person into a worshiper, understanding their created purpose and what they live for. The, the gospel comes with power. It always does. And the gospel can come with power in your life. Where do you want to see change? Ask the Lord to move. Ask him to move with power. He can bring change to your life.

Point number 3, the gospel comes in the with the Holy Spirit. Let's read the verse again, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit. Let me hear my Pentecostal say amen. All right. Well, there's more of you than I thought. I hope you like the rest of this. so what does it mean for the gospel to come with the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit is the 3rd person of the Trinity. The Holy Spirit is God's presence and dwelling in every believer. Every believer has the Holy Spirit. But not only that, the Holy Spirit has been around since the beginning. When you read Genesis chapter 1, it says, and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters of the deep. That's the Holy Spirit right there, all the way from the beginning.

He's described as an advocate, as a counselor, and we have to be careful because many times people describe the Holy Spirit as in it, the Holy Spirit is a person. He, we, we use the, we use the third that pronoun, he, that he is a counselor, he's an advocate. He wants to help us. He helps us in temptation. He gives us wisdom. He helps us to pray and interceding for us. So the gospel, it's not just a message, it's an encounter with God Himself. That's what that means. That this isn't just a message that you think about and you believe. It's an encounter with God Himself that the gospel comes with the Holy Spirit, with God. And when you receive the gospel, it comes with the Holy Spirit. It's the job of the Holy Spirit to pour out the love of the Father into your heart.

When you think about the Holy Spirit, what a lot of people think about with the Holy Spirit is, the the physical manifestations of the Holy Spirit, right? Things like speaking in tongues or speaking prophecy or any of the spiritual gifts that we might see. But when we read the scripture, the emphasis on the Holy Spirit is love. Love, love, love. When Paul is giving a teaching on the gifts of the Spirit. In 1 Corinthians 12 to 14, he takes a chapter and says, hold on. In the very middle of it, he like stops his argument and he's like, wait a second, but let's talk about this. If you don't have love, you got nothing. If you can speak in tongues, no one cares if you're not loving. The job of the Holy Spirit is to pour out the love of the Father in your life so that you can pour it out in the life of others. Amen. That's what he does.

But many times, it does come with physical manifestations of the gifts of the Spirit. To speak in tongues is to speak a a spiritual language. In some situations, such as this in a public setting, you would need an interpreter to help people understand. So it's not helpful to speak in tongues unless you feel though there's an interpreter or that God's gonna give an interpreter in that. Situation, unless you're, you're in your private place. If you have a personal private prayer language, that's fine, and many people do in this church. And if that freaks you out, I'm sorry, but that just is oftentimes a gift of the spirit. Personally, I've never spoken in tongues. I've tried to. I've asked the Lord, Lord, can I have this gift? And I was like, maybe I just need to kickstart it. So I was like, Hala Kamala, you got a Honda. And I just started, and then I just heard the Lord say, no. And so I stopped, you know, I've never spoken in tongues, but that doesn't mean that I don't have the Holy Spirit.

You can be filled with the Holy Spirit without all of the, the gifts in that way. And I, I'm envious at times of people who have that private spiritual prayer language. But here's what I'll, I'll tell you that I don't have any shortage of giftings from the Holy Spirit because the love of the Father has been poured into my heart. And I get to enjoy that day in and day out. And it brings God to light to pour the love of the Father into your heart too. He wants to do that, no matter where you are in life. You can be filled with the Holy Spirit. If you've never received the Holy Spirit before, we encourage you to be, to receive Him, to trust in that power. Maybe you've been resistant to it, to say like, I kind of believe the gospel, but I don't know about this Holy Spirit thing, and I don't know if I want to even like go there, go there, OK? You have to open yourself to, to go there.

And so maybe that's a step of courage for some of you to step into allowing yourself to be filled with the Holy Spirit. And for many of us, we've been following Jesus for a long time and as I said, every believer is dwelled with the Holy Spirit. But many times we don't live in connection with Him. We don't listening for Him. We aren't sensitive to Him, and we aren't experiencing his presence, but he wants to help you to experience His presence in the full.

Now let me tell you about a friend. My friend who I can think of when I thought of, I, I was just like, I want to tell a story about someone who is filled with the spirit, and this is a friend who was more filled with the spirit than anyone I could think of at the moment. His name was Justin Linky. I think he lives in in Kentucky today. I went to seminary with him. He was my next door neighbor in seminary. Justin Linky, I am willing to bet money. If that's not a sin, I'm not sure if it is or not, but I'm willing to bet money that Justin Linky has never spoken in tongues. OK, this man wears khakis every day of his life. But I'll tell you this, he was, he was my, neighbor, we shared a bathroom. He sings hymns, he sings hymns in the shower, even if he doesn't speak tongues. And he was well respected by everyone. He was the guy that everyone, all the dudes in the dorm back when we were single, would go to his room to seek wisdom. He was so loving and open, even to those who were nervous or shy or not so open, who are pretentious as I was, or thought that they were better than others. He was just loving and kind, and it's because he just had this connection with the Lord. He's the Lord's praises all the time. He was a man who I would say, filled with the spirit and left a mark on me.

The Lord wants to use you in a similar way, and he is, and he has. I could name names, if it wouldn't blow up your heads too big or, I mean, make anybody feel left out. But there are many in this church who are filled with the spirit in such a way that is just visibly noticeable. And I'm so thankful for you. The gospel comes with the Spirit.

And lastly, the gospel comes with full conviction. Verse 5, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. And this means that with this full conviction, it comes in two different ways. First, the conviction to stop sinning, and the conviction also to live for God. That being a Christian isn't just about what you don't do, but it's about pursuing God and being with them and how you must live.

To live in full conviction means that you experience the conviction of sin, you feel true remorse when you've gone your own way. And remember, sin is not just a list of do's and don'ts. Sin is not just you did this thing, but sin is to live your own way, to live selfishly in light of the Lord. You can do a good thing with a sinful heart. If you try to make it about yourself, or you're not doing it for His glory, you can do a good thing with a sinful heart. But also full conviction of how you should live. When you receive the gospel, it changes what you live for. You live for the kingdom of God, which is the mission of the church.

And the church is not simply this thing that we go to, but we are the church, and we've received this conviction that we live out the mission of the church to go and make disciples of all nations. And so church, as I wrap things up here. I just want to tell you I'm thankful for you. In the same similar way that Paul was thankful to the Thessalonians. That the gospel came to them, not only in word, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.

And we're going to give you a moment this morning to meditate on these realities. Have you received the gospel in this way? What part of it Are you holding off on? Has it, or maybe you're still at this place where you're debating whether it's true or not, and we invite those conversations. We'd love to connect you with someone that you can talk to about your logical doubts. There are lots of good people out there who would love to talk to you about that. Maybe you're not someone who's been really experienced the power of the gospel. Maybe you've been closed off to this whole Holy Spirit thing, cause it is not spooky. That's why we changed the name from ghost to Spirit, OK? It is, it is not spooky. It is the spirit of God pouring the Father's love. He wants you to experience the love of the Father.

That's the whole reason Jesus came, was that we might be invited in to the loving relationship that he's enjoyed within the Trinity throughout eternity path that we might be invited, that's what Jesus prayed, that they might experience your love in the same way that I've experienced your love. That's what Jesus is praying. That's what God most wants for you, that you might experience His love, but it also comes with full conviction. And maybe you're in a place where you've just held out on, on allowing yourself to follow him with full conviction. You've held on to your own personal pursuits. And whatever that means, however you need to loosen up your hands, whether it's through this digital fasting, or whatever it might be, we encourage you to follow Christ in those things.

So today is a day of all days, as we talk about the Holy Spirit and receiving the Holy Spirit, and if you just feel distant from him, or if you haven't ever received Him, I'm going to invite you. To open yourself To receive the Spirit, or to acknowledge his presence more dearly, to savor it. And there'll be some people in the back, ready to pray for you, and they would love to not weirdly place a hand on your shoulder and pray with you. And you know, sometimes, sometimes. God really moves in that moment. And the call is open today. I would love to see a line back there. So, if you would like to receive prayer, you're open, you're, we're willing to give it to you.

But today is a day where it could be a breakthrough moment for you where you really experience Jesus in a powerful way. And that is kind of the point of the communion meal, is to experience the presence of God. Now, we don't believe that God is in the actual elements. OK, that, that would be like a Roman Catholic belief. But what we believe is that Jesus is spiritually present with us as we're taking the bread and the cup. And as we do these things, we're reminded that his body was broken for us and his blood was shed for us. And as we take them, we're reminded that he's with us in a really personal kind of way. And in fact, he's with us in this moment. And we do this to remember him, but also to draw near to him, to be, to have this tangible physical reminder of who he is.

And so each week we participate in a sacred meal that we call communion or Eucharist or Lord's Supper, whatever you want to call it. And if you are a believer here today, we would encourage you and invite you to receive this. Remember, the gospel is not advice on how to live, but it's good news. So if you've received the good news, then we invite you to receive this meal. With that being said, I want to invite you to stand if you are able, and we will end with a prayer and a, and singing praises to our God.

Father, we, we pray now. I want to ask that, anyone who is resistant to receiving or to sdmitting or just being near to the Holy Spirit, that you would open their minds and their hearts to receive your love in a new kind of way. God, would you help us to hear from you. Would you pour out the love of the Son, your love for your Son on us. That we might experience the gospel as good news in a powerful kind of way. We ask these things in Christ's name, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about our church’s vision for the next five years, reading from Matthew 5:14-16. Discussion points: Boston is outsized in its influence and potential impact on the world because of its wealth and education, we have goals to raise up new Christians and equip and send missionaries, we want to raise up servants and leaders to fill our church’s needs and allow us to grow, God is the one who builds the house and makes all our efforts mean something.

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Scripture reader: [Matthew 5:14-16] You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: Hi, good morning. How are we? Good, it's good to see everybody. My name's Fletcher. I'm the lead pastor here at the church. it's a joy to be with everybody. It's been like 3 weeks since I saw a lot of you. the snow has been ruthless. It's a real winter. Amen. it's been a long time. It's been a long time. It's, it's joyful to have this much snow. Who was here in 2015? OK, there was a few of us, nothing compared to 2015, right? Once you lived through that, you, you feel like you can live through everything. We got the most snow on record in Boston in that year, and so we're, we're doing fine these days, but it's still a lot of snow.

Today is Vision Sunday. Last week we finished up our series and Daniel, and what we normally like to do as a church is work through books of the Bible because what I have to say is like a lot less interesting than what God has to say, and I just want to be able to proclaim God's word to you all, week after week. So next week we're going to start a series through First Thessalonians, and we'll. Working through the First Thessalonians for like the next couple of months. So we're just going through books of the Bibles generally what we do every once in a while, we'll do a topical thing, but it's very rare.

But today we're going to take a moment and talk about our vision as a church. So if you were a guest with us today, you get to look, take an inside look at where we're going and what we're believing and why. How we're gonna get there and I hope that it's compelling for you, but if you're, if you don't call this your church home, maybe this will just be something that can maybe be inspiring to you. Otherwise we're just guys, this is like our church family, this is what we're doing and like it's really good for us to have, consider to consider where we're going because vision is so important without a vision. What do, what do organizations do? They flounder. They, they float at best and at worst, they fail. If you don't know where you're going, you can't move forward, you're stuck. The most surefire way to waste your potential, personally and in an organization, is to lack vision. We have to have a vision for where we're going.

For example, OK, the classic example, most of you can, can smell it coming. OK. Back in the 90s, there was a little floundering tech company that had no focus and they, it was on the brink of failure and at that time, Microsoft was dominating the industry. If you're like me, you're a Windows kid, you know, you just played Window with Windows all the time and. meanwhile, Apple was developing an overwhelming number of products and lacking a clear, any clear strategy and focus and then that turtleneck wearing tech messiah named Steve Jobs came in and gave them vision. Now I know that afterwards someone is gonna come to me and be like, it wasn't actually Steve Jobs, you know, they had these other guys and I'm like, cool, OK, we. We do live where we live and you have a lot of knowledge, thank you, but this is how the story goes, OK? At this point it's just like downloaded into our collective psyche and this is how the story goes. Turtleneck Jesus walked in tech Jesus walked in and he saved the the tech world by saying that we're going to develop only products that function intuitively and are designed beautifully. And as a result, they created what is almost human cyborgs where we all have our phones in our hands at all times with like instant access to the world's information.

And so we see with that vision, they were able to turn this floundering little company into one of the most profitable in the world. your vision is really important. It directs where you go. We need a vision and as a church, we don't just wanna come up with our vision, but we need God's vision for us. We wanna know what God wants for us as a church. So that's why we're having the little abbreviated service nights for anyone who's in kids, any of you who wanna be there, anyone who online or anyone who just couldn't make it this morning, but also so we could come together and pray. And ask the Lord to make this his vision for us as a church.

Our vision is baked into our name. It it comes from Jesus himself in the sermon on the Mountain, as we just read a few moments ago, Jesus says, you are the light of the world. A city set upon a hill cannot be hidden. So for us, God has called us to be a city on a hill. Shining and sending the light of Christ throughout Somerville and beyond for generations to come. And that is the simple vision that we have. It is nothing beyond what the Bible tells us to do as Christians, but as we collectively come together to consider where God is calling us, that is the vision that he has given our leaders at this point.

So 4 points as we walk through this vision. First, where has God placed us? Second, What is the vision that he's given to us? Third, what are the obstacles to this vision? And fourth, how are we going to do it? How are we going to accomplish this vision? So, #1, where has God placed us? Alright, so this comes with a little story also, and it's, the second story behind our name, because the first story is very obvious. Our name comes from Matthew chapter 5. Jesus telling the Christians to be a city set upon a hill.

But back in 1630, there was a ship that crossed the Atlantic Sea called the Arbela. And it was coming from England to Massachusetts full of those wonderfully cheery people known as Puritans and as they were on their way across the ocean, they contained many of the people who would go on to establish Massachusetts as one of the first colonies of the United States, including a man named John Winthrop who would go on to become the first governor of Massachusetts and as they're on their way. Across the Atlantic, Winthrop stands up and he delivers a sermon, and it's a sermon that's been quoted many times over. It became very popular after JFK quoted it in one of his presidential inau in his presidential inauguration speech. We also saw Ronald Reagan quote it. We also saw Obama quoted. Almost every president since JFK has quoted it at some point. It is in, it's just been downloaded into the American psyche as who we are meant to be.

And the the the sermon was called a model of Christian charity, but it's become more widely known as the city on a hill sermon and what Winthrop was preaching is he was saying we are going to establish this colony as a city on a hill, shining the light of the gospel back to the heathens in England. Boston will be an exemplary place. The whole Massachusetts colony will be an exemplary place of Christian love and charity, and that was the vision behind this area, so much so to where Boston is still known as the city upon a hill. You still see that nickname thrown out there. If you Wikipedia, Boston, you see City on a Hill written there. If you go to Showtime and look at the, the, the TV show City on the Hill has Kevin Bacon in it, OK? It's only a few years old. About 5 years ago they were just driving buses everywhere that had our free advertisement on it. City on the Hill was just written everywhere throughout all of Boston.

But Boston is a far cry from the vision that John Winthrop first had. We continue to be a city on a hill, but not in the ways that he said we should be. Less about 2% of the population of Boston belongs or attends regularly a gospel believing church. That would put us into unreached people groups throughout the globe. That's like lower than than like almost any other nation. It's a very low percentage of people who would say that that is what they believe. the greater Boston area is known as the 3rd least church city in the country. Only ranking behind the Bay Area and Burlington, Vermont. But yeah, Burlington Vermont. I mean, OK, let's just call ourselves second, OK? Like is that city, you know. That, yeah, anyways, Vermont catching, catching strays on a Sunday morning. Sorry, Vermont, we like to ski up there, but you know, just because you have one street with a lot of markets on it and a bunch of Birkenstocks and an ice cream shop close by does not make you a metropolitan area.

Massachusetts is a very - sorry, Vermont - a very influential place but instead of being known for the gospel as Winthrop, imagine Boston is known, the Boston area is known for education, innovation, and utter sports dominance. Any locals? OK, where Boston is a global city. We're a global city. Back in 2011 when we first started looking at Global City Index, when I first started looking at it, Boston was ranked way into the 20ths into Global City Index, which is this index that's put together by Oxford Publishing Group, and they look at different things like. they like, the, the standard of living and economics and education and and environment and all these different things they put them together and they rank the global cities, which is basically saying the most influential cities are the best cities to live and advance your career where influential people might come from.

And Boston used to be back in the 20s, just like 10 years ago, but we've gone from 21st to 11th in the past 10 years. So since 2015, all the way up to 11th, published in 2024. And one of the crazy things about Boston being the 11th most influential or global city in the world is that we are just so much smaller than every other city in front of us. The cities in front of us are the cities like Paris, London, New York, and Boston. I'm sorry, we're tiny little brother. To all of those cities, it's just a little, but I love that Onion article where it says, people of Boston wake up on Monday pretending they live in a real city and they get on their cute little trains and, and ride into town. That's, that's us, OK? It's like a, you know, it's a cute little city at the same time. Vermont catches strays, but so does Boston and.

At the same time, we're the 13th on the global cities. We have the 13th, we're 11th on global cities. We have the 13th largest GDP in the entire world. Isn't that kind of crazy that a small place like Boston would have the 13th largest GDP and the 6th largest GDP in terms of per person. So what you have in Boston. Is that you have people from all over the world coming to study in this area, Boston, Cambridge, I'm using Boston as the general area here. Some choose to stay, but others leave and do important thing influential things all around the world. How many of us have met someone that came and studied for a short amount of time and then went to go lead something amazing somewhere else in the world? And I've heard it said now there is no way to verify this quote. This is just like a made up statistic, but I think you'll go with it. 1 out of every 5 world leaders has done substantial time in Boston, whether that be leading or interning or studying, whatever that might be, they've spent substantial time here.

I mean, when Barack Obama went to Harvard Law School, where did he live? Like two blocks over there they have a little painting of him painted on the sidewalk. the same guy who owns our community space, our landlord, he owns the building that Obama, lived in, and so he loves telling that story too, about, and they call it the Rose Garden now. It's actually like on Google. It's like the Rose Garden. There's an American there's like a White House flag in front of it. Just look, you'll see it it's across the street right over there. But influential people tend to spend time in this area.

And so the question is, what would happen if there was a true movement of God in our area? What would happen if God really did something? We have the opportunity to reach tomorrow's global leaders because we're such an international place also. I haven't counted literally, but I would guess there's at least a dozen different native languages represented just in our church, just an international place. What an opportunity.

In fact, one could make the argument that the Boston area is the most important place or most influential and possibly most strategic place to reach with the gospel. Due to the global potential impact that we could have, in particular, I think Somerville is a strategic place. As I said, people moved to Somerville and live here. Somerville is a highly dense place in case you haven't noticed, OK? If you've ever lived with your windows open during the summer and you hear your neighbor chewing their potato chips, you know what I'm talking about. And that has happened to many of us, OK? Usually it's either they're fighting or they're chewing something very loudly, and that's what you hear. It's a very dense place. In fact, the only city in the entire country that is as dense as we are, but has more population than us is New York City. Somerville is a very dense place and so it's where the people are.

And as you reach people, you are moving the mission of God forward. Isn't that what God has sent us to do, but to reach people. Our church is currently about 6 years old, maybe 6.5, creeping up on 7, you know, we're like that, that older, gentleman who might or or lady who might not want to admit their age at this point. We're creeping up on 7, we're 615 and um. I just am wondering what God wants to do with us in the next 5 years. We're gonna say one of those years from the 6.5, we're just not gonna count it, it was COVID, OK? Everyone just subtract one from their age, it's totally fine. Nothing happened that year, um. And so, we've been around for about 5 years.

Where is God going to take us the next 5 years? I really do believe that most churches, by the time they hit 10 years, should have a pretty good idea of what God has called them to be who God has called them to be. And so where has God called us to be in the year 2030? In 1630, John Winthrop came over on the Arbela and delivered his sermon. And so our vision as a church is in the next 5 years that we can be established well enough to prepare us to last for the next 100 years where no one in this room is alive, but the church continues to go and the mission of God continues to move forward in Somerville and beyond. So that we can celebrate the 100th anniversary of John Winthrop's sermon.

No, none of us will, Lord willing, be in heaven, or in the kingdom to come, may, may he come before this happens. But may we establish a church that can last beyond us. For my children, my children's children and your children, and for the generations that will come and study at the great institutions that we have in this area, for the people that will come and start companies. We want to see city on a hill. Last, sending and shining. The good news of Jesus for generations to come, may he establish that.

And so what is the vision that God has given us? Point number 2, what is the vision that God has given us? It's, it's simply that the city on a hill is a community of faith that cannot be hidden, shining and sending the light of Christ in Somerville and beyond for generations to come. As I said, this whole thing is feeding off of Jesus' vision that he gives us in Matthew chapter 5, and when we say that we're a community of faith that cannot be hidden, a community of faith that cannot be hidden. He's talking about a city on a hill that cannot be hidden. I really wanted to use the word unignorable here, but my elders, my elders, they're not my elders, your elders, wouldn't. Let me because it's not a word, and they said Fletcher, you can't make up a word to put into our vision statement. And so we're not using unignorable because unignorable also has this connotation that it could be obnoxious, you know, if someone's unignorable they're obnoxious. Lots of churches are obnoxious and I don't want to be one of those, so let's just not use unignorable.

Let's say that we cannot be hidden. And that the, the vision that God has is that we could be this church that is unignorably unobnoxious because we shine the love of Christ, we display authentic faith in action. And this is, I think the antidote antidote to skepticism in our area. People believe all kinds of crazy things about Christians, do they not? Have you ever had a conversation with someone who just thought Christians were crazy or evil or whatever it might be, and it became very apparent early on that they did not know you were a Christian.

This has happened to many of us, and I really do believe that most people think these unfortunate things about Christians, because they don't know a single Christian that they respect. They only see what they, what happens on TV or on the internet, which we are not sending our best on the TV. Let's just be honest. And. They haven't actually met a Christian that they respect. So what would happen if everyone in Somerville knew at least one Christian that they respect? And someone who's worthy of the honor of the name of Christ. They might not convert, but it would definitely open their mind to the things of Christianity, would it not? God has called us to be the shining light to our community.

Now, let me just be cautious here. I'm cautious putting numerical goals on a vision for a church. I think that we just are called to be faithful and whatever that looks like, whatever God has for us for the next 5 years, hands are open, you know? Hands are open. Also, there's no part of me that wants to be a mega church pastor. That's just not part of who I am. I don't think I would be a good mega church pastor, that's just not for me, but I do want us to be ambitious in reaching our community to know Christ because Jesus has given us the mission to go and make disciples of all nations, and I think that we have a strategic place to do that.

So let's just put it this way. What would happen? If over the next 5 years, we just developed this pattern of seeing people come to know Christ, and we see. 50 people Come to know Jesus. That's including children growing up, meeting Jesus, but also just 50 people from the community. That's 10 a year. It doesn't feel that outrageous to consider that. It's a little bit faster than we're currently seeing, but it's not that crazy. But what would happen if we just dropped 50 new believers in our church right now? Well, could we disciple them? Could we teach them to follow Jesus? Do we have enough believers owning the mission of God to disciple that many new believers? Probably not.

And so as we grow as a church, we need to not only grow in new Christians, I hope we grow in new Christians that are disciples that make disciples that go on to make more disciples, but also we need established believers to partner with us in the mission that we have here. It will also require us to scale up everything. I mean, if we are going to reach that many people, we're going to have to consider what it, what it will take to do that.

So if we just take who we are right now. 150 people call this church home, probably that's probably something around there. You don't often see them on all on the same Sunday, but we probably have 150 people who call this church home. If we were to add 50 new believers, we'd probably need to add double the number of established believers in that process. So around double the size that we are now, like 300. If God wants to bring us to 300 in 5 years, I'm all here for it. Although there are lots of obstacles that we're gonna face, everything will have to scale, our budget will have to scale, our our services, everything that we're doing will have to scale.

We'll have to consider a lot of different things, but if we want to continue to shine the light for generations to come, this is certainly one of the ambitious goals the Lord could give to us. Not only that, but we also want to send the light of Christ all over Boston and throughout the world. We want to continue to plant churches. I don't wanna overlook that. I hope that in the next 5 years that we're ready to send or we have already sent a church plant out of our church. And if we just say, hey, 300 is the cat, we're never gonna grow beyond that, we just wanna keep on planting churches all throughout New England and the world.

I think that this is such a strategic place to send missionaries from because we have people who speak native languages of all over the world. And so my prayer is that through the city on a hill network of churches that in the next 10 years we might send 50 missionaries and maybe a lot of them are are bi vocational, because I don't think we could fund 50 missionaries out of our church, but maybe some of them are full-time vocational missionaries, and maybe God has called some of you to consider what it might be like to be that type of missionary.

And this is a big vision, and whenever I think about it, I don't wanna make it about me, I wanna make it about God, and I'm just reminded. I can be daunted, but I'm reminded of, of what Jesus told his disciples in Matthew chapter 9, verse 37, he says, then he said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.

So point 3, what are some of the obstacles? I think that you're already thinking through them as I lay out a big vision like this, you're already thinking, well, that would mean this and that would mean this. So I'm just gonna lay out a few obstacles that we have. OK, let's just, let's just speak them into being, OK? so that you, we all can acknowledge the things they're saying in the way. First is church size dynamics. If we grow as a church, things are gonna change as we are a church. Those of you who were with us 6 years ago. Things have changed over the past 6 years as we've grown as a church. Your decision making processes change over that time, your complexity changes, and as the church grows in size, it doesn't just grow in complexity, at the same rate, but your complexity is almost exponential.

So a church of double the size is 4 times more complicated and it tends to be like that with any organization as they continue to grow. And the second obstacle that we have to this vision are our facilities. So, this church. What a blessing from the Lord, you guys, but also this church building. What a blessing from the Lord. We've been in this church building since we got started. And it's just been a great place for us to be. It is owned by an organization by a church called Vida Real International. We are so thankful for Vida Real. They have been fair with us and they are a Bible believing church. They, are a gospel believing church. We have so much in common with them. We're thankful for that. We wanna emphasize what we have in common with them and just really grateful for partners in the gospel in many ways. And so, in no way am I trying to say anything about our landlords or our building. I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea. We are so thankful for where God's put us.

But this building sometimes feels like your first apartment out of college, you know, where it's like, hey, on first it's nice, let's check it out and then you get in it's like, oh we have roommates cool and then it's like, oh, I people keep on leaving their dishes places and there's someone sleeping on the couch and it's kind of dirtier than what I would prefer and you know if I had this apartment to myself, things would look a little bit different than they do. And if you are a member or a regular volunteer or a deacon here you certainly know what I'm saying, that there's lots of things in this building that may not be the exact same way that we would do it if we had exclusive use. I mean, for example, every single Sunday it requires 20 plus volunteers to come and get things set up. The chairs are usually in a different position, the, the CoaH kids is different. They have a school that meets here throughout the week.

It just takes people put out signs and everything that goes with that. Not only that, but our sound techs, they're just back there like tapping wires together, trying, trying to figure out what's working, like you'll, it's like a couple of weeks ago we couldn't get the TVs to work. It was playing like. Lifetime movie or something and I one of our volunteers just crawled underneath the table and start plugging in random cords just like I hope this works and then they found one that said City on a hill do not unplug written on it it was unplugged so they just stuck it back in there OK? We have roommates. That's what happens when you have roommates, people change things.

A couple weeks ago or a couple of months ago, I showed up one Sunday and there was a an aquarium. In the entry. And look. I'm not a fish guy, OK, but that fish was way too large. OK, God's, that fish was too large for that aquarium, OK, like that's one of God's creatures and how are you gonna do that to Oscar, the blue koi fish that belongs in a pond somewhere, not a little aquarium. Guys, Oscar lived too short of a life. Rest in peace, Oscar. Rest in peace. One Sunday we showed up. Oscar was swimming around and it was like Oscar looks kind of sad, guys. Like, he's not happy in this aquarium anymore. It's time for him to go on to be with fish Jesus and, and we came in here, we did church, we came back out there. We had to put a body bag over Oscar. He, he, he went on to the next life, during my sermon, I, I finally did it. I bored someone to death.

So let's just put it like this, OK? If this was our building, there would be a few changes that we would do around here. Also, if our vision is to last until. 2130. Are we really gonna rent a building for the next 100 years like this, you know, are we gonna? No matter how good our partnership is and how thankful we are for Vida Real, we really are very thankful for them, and it has just been a great place for us. I think that we have to pray forward where God wants us to be facility wise, and if our vision is to double in size, we have to pray for where God wants us to be facility wise. I would love for God to give us this church building. I would love for God to give us a church building. I would love for God to open up another situation, maybe one with parking. Wouldn't that be amazing? This church building comes with zero parking spots. It is a true city building, but we're just going to pray for that God might do something. And, and give us a place to be long term.

The third obstacle to accomplishing our vision is transience. Who's felt that? Yeah. Doesn't it just hurt, you know, I've been here for 13 years. I'm just relationally exhausted. To be really honest with you guys, we've been here for 13 years. I feel like we're on like our 10th set of friends, over that 13 years, and we're really thankful for those, for those friends, for the friends that we have is I'm not trying to cast any shade on our friends, you know, living in Boston it's like this two-edged sword where you get awesome people all the time moving here. You're like, you're so interesting, you're an interesting person, you're really gonna do great things, and then they move though because it's just that way. And it's just this thing that we experienced.

I think that over the past 6 years that probably 3 or 400 people have called our church church home, you know, it's not like we're not reaching people. We are reaching people. It's just transience, it's hard and so it's certainly an obstacle. I think that there's an opportunity there. I think that one we need to mourn that, OK? If you're, if you've been here for a while, it's OK to mourn. It's also OK to come together and say, hey, we're gonna stay, and that's gonna be an application point in just a moment that some of us need to stay.

If we're gonna see this mission of God move forward, if we're really gonna reach this influential important place for the gospel, but at the same time. We have such potential to be a missionary sending place. I mean we have to start seeing ourselves that way or we're not gonna survive. We have to start seeing ourselves as people who can send people if we're gonna reach this place for the gospel, we're going to be able to see people move and. And reach other people with the gospel, but we do need a certain number of people to stay and, and look, I, I'll put it this way, OK? I have no plans on leaving, but if anyone tells me today that they're leaving, just not today, OK? if anyone tells me today that they're leaving, I might just lay down on the stage and let my soul leave my body, OK? I'm we're not doing that today, OK? Next week if you're moving, let me know that's fine, we'll pray for you, we'll send you out, but not today, right?

Bad enough, this is particularly a year that we've experienced more transience than we have in a little while. we had an elderly and his family, Jeremy and Virginia and their 3 kids. They left back in November, and, it's just, and, and there's been several other key leaders that we'd love and it's just like the Lord calls people other places and we're happy for you, but we just don't wanna hear about it today, OK?

So, point 4, how are we going to accomplish this vision? How are we going to accomplish this vision? Am I? I'm coming unclipped, sorry. Not unhinged, OK, just unclipped, um. How are we going to accomplish this vision? Well, we've already started with prayer. We've already started with prayer. Are you as leaders of the church, we've gotten together as elders and talked through this several times. We brought in the deacons, had a whole vision meeting about it and the staff, and we, and we prayed these things forward, and we're just going to continue to, to pray these things forward. And if God decides, nope, this vision isn't for you. Then that's fine. We're, it's just open hands guys, but we want to be open to maybe this is the vision, and we're going to pursue this until God you, you set, you close the door for us.

And so if we don't accomplish any of these goals, it doesn't mean that we're a failure, it just means that God wanted something else for us. And so we're going to be praying. That's one reason why we're inviting you to come tonight. It's, I'm going to give an abbreviated version of this vision, and then we're just going to pray it forward and sing some songs, and that's what we're going to be this evening. Don't feel any pressure to be there, but we would, we're going to be praying this forward. And if you want to know just how we're going to be accomplishing this, some of the next steps, well, it starts with just our overall strategy.

Now we've been going over this in the member class for the past 2, so we've been trialing it out. I haven't, but then if you went through the membership class before these 2, or you haven't been through the membership class, this will all be new to you. So this is our strategy as a church. This is how we're going to accomplish the mission that God has given to us, and this might feel somewhat new but also familiar. So here we have it here.

Gospel people seek the presence of God in worship, are shaped into the image of Christ through discipleship and are sent out by the Holy Spirit on mission. I love this mission statement, for a lot of different reasons, we have a little chart to help you see how this is shaped. so the first one we seek the Father in worship, we're shaped by the Son through discipleship and we're sent by the Holy Spirit on mission. And it's like these, these action verbs seeking shaped sent with it it's the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I think if you have, if you get anything in Christianity, it has to be that that's what we're all about. And then the, the different models of worship, the different things that we do, we do worship, discipleship and mission and this is what we are all about. This is the regular stuff for us as a church. It's just norm do the normal Christian stuff, but do it with an intentionality.

And then there, I have 4 specific next steps for us as we pursue the vision of God that he has for us. And here we go. The first one is this. That we live sent, number one, that we live sent that we think like a missionary and if you call this your church home, I pray that you will consider this vision, not just your church's vision, but your vision because the church is a people and it's a people united together and it's our vision together so you have your own life that you live with a purpose, and you're not just a member here, you're a part of our family, and so this vision is your vision.

This means that you consider the mission of God in all of your decisions. What will help you to accomplish this mission not only in your home, but in your workplace and everywhere else. We cannot, and you, you don't you don't sever your spiritual life from your real life. These things go together. And for some of you, maybe God is calling you to live sent right here, but really this is what I want us to embody, that you are thinking like a missionary, living sent wherever you are. So if you move, you don't leave, OK? Let me, you don't leave, we send you. Alright, we have a, a missionary mindset, and if you move on from our place, we're sending you there. It's not you, you're like a missionary for us, for God, wherever you go.

And so you, but if you stay here, you're a lower case missionary here also. And so that's one, the first step that we own the vision together, that we live sent thinking like a missionary. The second is lead. we need more leaders at our church. If we're going to grow this rapidly in the next 5 years, we're going to have to scale everything and it just comes with increased, complexity, and not only that, but also we have transience in our leadership team at times. And so what we're going to need to continue to develop more leaders as a church. We need more community group leaders almost every single community group at our church feels pretty full at the moment to where I'm kind of like emailing folks being like. Hey, who could take on one more person? All right, who, who wants them and everybody's such a trooper and everybody's, no one's told me no so far, OK, that we can't take anybody else, but we need more community group leaders.

Maybe God is calling you to step into that need to train as a community group leader. We're going to be having a, a community group leader training and if you're interested in that, we'd love for you to dive in. We're going to need more deacons in the coming. In the coming year our deacons serve 1 year terms that can be renewed year after year, but several are going to be stepping down and so we need more deacons. Well, Michael has been a production deacon for several years and he's been out of town for 2 weeks and hence people are just like tapping wires together back there trying to make things work, facetiming folks and showing them pictures of, of what needs to happen, but we need someone to take on the tech for our church and say, I will be the production deacon, I will figure out how everything works, I will be the person that the buck stops here.

Lord willing, you don't get called very often and you don't have to make a lot of changes because we do have a good system, but we need someone to be the buck stops here person with that. We need that production deacon because Michael is going to be becoming an elder, Lord willing, in March and so this is something we need in the next couple of weeks for someone to step up into that. And basically I told, I told Alexa because we did an interview with his wife Alexa and she was like, I'm a little concerned it's a lot of responsibility on top of what he's currently doing. I'm like, Alexa, Michael will not be the production deacon after he becomes an elder so I have to live up to that word so step up, we need you.

And we, we're going to need more elders, also. If you don't wanna lead, maybe a first step towards leading, if you're not ready for that is serving. We always need er er servants at our church. the old saying, many of you have heard this, that 20% of the people do 80% of the work, certainly true at many churches, certainly true. I can look out here. Many of you are serving in many different ways. I can honor some people. I'll, I'll honor Anneke, who's leading us in in worship today. Her, her husband Matt's leading a community group, setting up chairs many Sundays. She leads worship. Teaches a kids class and does meals and is the meals Ministry leader, which we have an info meeting about today, right? After the service. So if you're interested in Meals Ministry, we would love for you to join and hear more about that. We just need more people to be serving and doing these things. We're constantly looking for volunteers.

Lord, praise God. I asked Alexis, how like how, how are we doing on kids volunteers? And I don't ask that question because I know the answer is always we need more. And for the first time in my entire 20 years of ministry, she was like, we're doing pretty good. And I was like, wow, all right, good, good on you all thank you for serving but we do always just need more volunteers and if you wanna step in there one place that we're looking to create a new team is a facilities team someone not only that can handle some of the basic maintenance around here that isn't always taken care of um. Things that we might cause or might want to see change and happen, but also we need another team to help us look for a long term home, that's somewhere that we can thrive for the next 100 years.

So if God's calling you to serve or lead in any of these ways, talk to me. We're still a small enough church where I can just be like, yo, just talk to me, OK? I'll write down your name, we'll make it happen. and the fourth is give. all this takes money, and I hate asking for money, and I will confidently say that so far in the history of our church, money has not ever been a hindrance to anything we've wanted to do for the gospel. Praise God. That it, it hasn't been a barrier, and that's really what I want to see continue is that finances are not a barrier to what God has for us here at this church.

And so if you call this your church home, I pray that you'll give and give in proportion of what the Lord has given to you, but if we're going to continue to grow, our budget has to grow proportionally and this year we are planning on and going to hire a second full-time staff member, someone to help do spiritual formations at our church and with other things as well. And so that is something that we're excited about, but we have to continue to see the finances not get in the way. And so maybe God is just calling you to be to be generous towards this vision to say, hey, I want to see this church last for generations to come and and your step might just be some generosity there. Thank you for being generous. We do have a generous church to wrap things up, I just wanna take a moment and pray.

And invite you to come pray with us tonight. Be reminded of 1 Corinthians chapter 3 where it says, so neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything but only God who makes the growth. It's not about us. And so if this is not your church home, you got a sneak peek into what we're doing and what we're thinking and where we're going, but if this is your church home, we hope that you will own this vision that this will be for you. And each week, one thing that we do during our worship gathering is we participate in a sacred meal. And it's to remind us that we're not alone in this mission.

What does Jesus say when he sends us on mission? Matthew 28. Let's look at it briefly. I haven't memorized, but I'm also gonna read it for you, just in case I mess it up. Um. Matthew chapter 28. He gives us the great commission. And he says this, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you, and behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. This mission that God has given to us is not possible and it in fact it's pointless unless Jesus is with us, and that's really what our goal is, is to be near to Jesus and for him to make himself known to those around us.

So when we come to the table, we're coming to Jesus. When we come to receive this meal, the spiritual presence of Jesus is with us, and he's being reminded I've not left you alone. I'm with you still. That he has taken our penalty, died the death that we deserve, and been resurrected to new life so that we might have life in him. And that's the reason why we do all these things is for this good news that Jesus has given us. So if Jesus is your savior, if you're owning this vision, if this is part of who you are, that you are following Jesus, we invite you to the table. Evaluate yourself, think through how you can better follow Christ, and repent of your sins, but you are invited to the table because Jesus is enough for you.

And over the next song we invite you to come and receive communion. So if you would, if you are able to stand as we come to the table and prepare our hearts.

Father, we thank you for this opportunity to come to Christ again, and God, we pray for this vision. God, would you do a great thing in our church? Would would we do it together? God, I, I don't if it's up to me, we're not doing it, but Holy Spirit, we pray that you would do a great thing here because we believe in the mission that you've given to us and we pray that you would help this church to be established for generations to come, reaching our neighbors and shining and sending the the light of Christ throughout Somerville and throughout the world. Father, I pray for anyone here who is struggling with your presence and struggling to feel excited about this mission because they feel just distant from you. I pray that you would meet them in this moment. And then as we, as we come to you, that you would give us the bread of life, and you would give us life and joy, and we ask this in Christ's name, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher concludes our Daniel sermon series with Daniel 11-12. Discussion points: Our hope is not in this broken world, God gives Daniel a look at the future kings which correspond to real historical figures in our understanding, power begets oppression in an unending cycle, our calling is to invest in eternal things instead of earthly things.

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Scripture reader: [Daniel 12:1-4] At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there should be a time of trouble such as never has been since there was a nation till that time. But at that time, your people shall be delivered. Everyone whose name shall be found written in the book. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above, and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever. But you, Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book until the time of the end. Many shall run to and fro and knowledge shall increase.

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: Alright, it's the last, chapter of Daniel last two chapters of Daniel, we're handling Daniel 11 and 12 this week. Last week we handled Daniel 10. Tyler graciously nearly died on his journey to preach for us and was able to declare God's word from Daniel chapter 10. And today we're looking at 11 and 12, and really the Daniel 10 through 12 is all one vision. At the end of Daniel, we see 3 visions given. We see the vision of Daniel 7, then we see Daniel 8, and then Daniel 9 is a prayer, and then he kind of starts to receive a he has a vision there at the end, and then Daniel 10 through 12, all one vision that we're given at the end of Daniel.

And really Daniel is this book that has been really joyful to work through, although very difficult at times is, apocalyptic literature, so it's just difficult to, interpret at times. The first six chapters of Daniel, no, no. They are the most famous children's stories in the Bible. We got Daniel in the lion's den, Shadrack, Meshach, and Bendigo going into the fiery furnace. We got Nebuchadnezzar saying bow down that statue, and, and Daniel saying no way, and, you just got all this stuff that that we're familiar with, and then Daniel 7 through 12, it's just hard.

And so I am grateful to be moving on from Daniel after that I'm telling you like a Daniel sermon twice as long to prepare for. I've been like struggling to get all of the stuff done every week these days. So, I've got one meme to show you to to sum up, the way I feel about Daniel and and there that's it. So this week we are firmly in that like one year old drawing of the horse's head at the end. OK, that's how I feel about my interpretation of Daniel as we get farther along through the series, OK. so you can, you can go back to the, the blank screen there, thanks.

Daniel, like I said, it's like an art house film, it's mysterious. Daniel's an ideogram 4 on the ideogram. He's just like this artsy guy, and you never go to a museum and you look at a piece of art and you're like, I don't know what this means, but I know how it makes me feel. And that's kind of what's supposed to be happening when we read apocalyptic literature we're not supposed to understand every single thing in it it's not written to be understood in that kind of way. It's not written to be a 1 to 1 correspondence with everything happening in life. There are mysterious portions of this book.

But it is supposed to elicit a sense of feeling from God and a sense of what God is doing in our world and there is so much that we can gather, you know, so much of the Bible is very direct and applicable, easy to read if you think about it, there's an ancient document 2000 years or older everywhere through it and almost everywhere in the Bible, if you pick it up and read it, you will understand it. Isn't that amazing that you are reading, you can't, who, who here actually could read Shakespeare and understand what it's saying? Very few of us, native English speakers could read something written in our own language. But nevertheless we picked this up and we're able to understand almost all of it and then we do get to portions and today is a difficult portion that's really hard to understand but God still has a word for us from this book today so I, I think it's actually really cool, OK?

I'm gonna this is a Bible nerd sermon. I am sorry if you are not a Bible nerd, but this is a Bible nerd sermon and if you are, you're just, or if you're not, you're just gonna get to see a one in the wild, OK? Like you, it's like a zoo, OK? See how excited I am about this passage at least, but I just think it's really cool what's happening.

Chapter 11, it reads like a prophetic history book. Basically what happens is Daniel is given a word of prophecy from God. And as he goes through all of Daniel 11, God basically tells him what's going to happen for the next 400 years. It's so well put together and articulated with what's happening over the next 400 years that many more liberal scholars who don't believe that God actually could disclose the future to someone said that it must have been written much later than what we believe it was written. It wasn't written by Daniel, they say it must have been written by someone who lived after all these things happen because who could summarize history like this? But for us who believes that God knows the future and can disclose it to people, it's no problem for us to believe that Daniel actually wrote these things that God actually disclosed the future events throughout the history of Israel to Daniel at that time.

And so as we read through Daniel, that Daniel 11, that's what's happening. And then in Daniel 12, we have this reminder to put our hope in the kingdom of God. And so through the whole thing, the main point of Daniel is this. The world is stuck in a cycle of brokenness. But our hope is not in this world. The world is stuck in a cycle of brokenness, but our hope is not. In this world, OK, so let's dive into Daniel chapter 11. Here's the deal. I'm gonna go through some of this. I'm gonna show you enough to be like, here are my receipts. I'm only gonna show you about a quarter of my receipts, OK? and I'm just gonna assume that you give me the benefit of the doubt with the rest of it, but if you want more receipts with what's happening, just like open up, go to the the ESV study Bible, very well said in there I think. That it's free on the ESV app. I will give you a physical copy if it's something that would really benefit you. I will order it and have it sent to you, OK? But the ESV study Bible has all this really well done in there. There's other places you could find it, but I'm just gonna show you, a little bit just so you know what I'm talking about.

Verse 1, Daniel chapter 11. And as for me, in the first year of Darius the Mede, I stood up to confirm and strengthen him. So most historians believe Darius the Mede to be the same person as Cyrus, King Cyrus of Persia, which is the first king to tell the people of Israel that they can go back home out of exile. And then verse 2. And now I will show you the truth. Behold, three more kings shall arise. So this is Daniel giving a vision, OK? Behold, three more kings shall arise in Persia. And one shall be far richer than all of them. And and when he has become strong through his riches, he shall stir up all against the kingdom of Greece.

OK, so there's a lot of texts here, but you'll see what's happening. there's 3 kings that happened after Cyrus in Persia, you have these three kings. You have Smirdas, Darius the 1, I'm not even gonna try to say that, and Xerxes the 1, and you see the years that they were living in. And the third was richer Xerxes, richer than Smirdas and Darius the 1st, and you remember Xerxes from he's been in movies, fought against the Greeks, went and attacked the Greeks, historical guy, and that's who this is referring to. He fought the Greeks, but then he lost, and out of them comes what is called a mighty king.

In verse 3, then a mighty king shall arise and shall rule with great dominion and do as he wills. And who is this referring to, but Alexander the Great. And if you've. In world history courses you know who Alexander the Great is. Alexander the Great was famous for having never lost a battle. He conquered a lot of territory. He conquered all of, all of Persia in addition to what he had in Greece. So at the time, Persia was the largest empire in the history of the world, and then Alexander the Great conquered all of Persia. So you see this map, everything that's colored. Here is what Alexander the Great conquered. He conquered all of that and then he just left his mark everywhere.

Alexander the Great, he really thought he was great, so he would start cities all throughout the empire and what would he name them, but Alexander or Alexandria. So that's why you have so many Egypt, Alexandria and Egypt. You have so many Alexandria throughout this entire empire because Alex the Great conquered it all. And took it all over and he's the one that gave the world a common language in many ways. So that's why Greek was what was spoken in all of these lands, and that's why the Bible was eventually written in Greek, even though it was a Roman colony at the time. It was written in Greek because Alexander the Greek took over all of this land and everybody learned Greek because the Greek Empire had taken it over.

But he died at a young age. Alexander the Great did all this in his 30s, and then he went out of the world. He, he didn't live to an old age, and he died and he did not have a successor. As far as we know, Alexander the Great did not have any children. And so what happened, but they had to take his empire and it divided and it was divi divided among different leaders, 4 different empires, and, and they were ruled by others, and that is what verse 4 is telling us. In verse 4, it says, as soon as he has arisen. His kingdom shall be broken and divided toward the four winds of heaven, and not to his posterity, nor according to the authority with which he ruled, for his kingdom shall be plucked up and go to others beside these.

Now remember, this is like hundreds of years after Daniel's writing these things and he's just describing future events in so much detail, it's really amazing what is happening in this passage, even if it feels like a history lesson. It is amazing that God is not only knowing the future, but he's disclosing the future. It's really awesome that this is happening. So it's divided in four different areas. I'll, I'll explain it. The blue here is the the Seleucid empire. OK, the Seleucid kingdom, the green is the Ptolemaic, and then the other two are the Antigonid and the Hellenistic province that we have there. And so where is Israel? Israel's in the green in the Ptolemaic area, right? So Israel right on the east, eastern side of the Mediterranean Sea, you see where that is and it's in green, but what's it very close to the blue, right? And so what we see happen. Over the next several hundred years after this is divided is that the green guys and the blue guys fight each other constantly.

OK, the Seleucid Empire, the king is known as the king of the north, and the Ptolemaic Empire is known as the king of the South, and they're constantly fighting one another for the land of Israel, known as the holy land or the or the glorious land. And what's happening throughout the rest of Daniel 11 is you see him referencing the kings of the north. And the kings of the South, and this is who he's talking about, is the the Ptolemaic Empire and the Seleucid Empire. For the next 300 years they're just going back and forth back and forth. So here's a slide of the different rulers of the different empires. So on the left, the southern rulers, I'm not gonna read them all, they're all Ptolemy 1st through 6th, and then on the north you have, the different kings of the north. So you have kings of the north, kings of the south, here they are, and the years that they lived in.

And then if you want to see a quick summary of how Daniel summarizes their efforts, go to the next slide, and we have a quick summary here of just a few of these. So like I said, receipts, OK? I'm not gonna read through all of this, but I'll read the first one, OK, verse 5. Then the king of the South shall be strong, but one of his. Princes shall be stronger than he and shall rule, and his authority shall be a great authority. OK, so this is talking about when the first king of the north, Seleucid, the first, he fled to Ptolemy the first, the king of the south for a short time and served as a prince there.

So it's like referencing these things that happen in real life. But it, if you were just reading this without any knowledge of it, without any historical understanding of it, without looking at a study Bible, it would be like. OK, like what is this, how does this matter to me? It's amazing because God is giving this history of the future and we do get this idea coming out of it. So go ahead and go then if you want more receipts, I can give you all the receipts. I've got them written down. I wanted to just do a straight up history lesson today, but I figured you might be a little bored. So here's just like if you want to know exactly which leaders correspond to which verses, here you go. There's the verses with the leaders referenced in each verse, and as you see, we're going all the way from the time of Daniel, like 500 BC-ish all the way to about 175 BC, and I wanna take just a minute to talk about this.

Antiochus the 4th Epiphanes Antiochus the 4th Epiphanes because he was a bad dude. And so the very end. Almost the entire, last portion of it is dedicated to this one guy, Antiochus Epiphanes and Antiochus Epiphanes, he's, known as the big king of the north, OK, so when you get towards the end of Daniel chapter 11, I think like basically from verse 29 onward, 2, 29 onward essentially it's talking about Antiochus Epiphanies, maybe 2021 onward talking about Attius, Attius Epiphanies, and that's because he's just a really bad bad character if you, if you're familiar with the books of the Maccabees, if you grew up in a Catholic background, you might have had those in your Bible. The, the apocrypha it again you're getting a lot of Bible nerd stuff today, OK? Bible nerd stuff, good stuff to know, but it's Bible nerdy.

There's a portion of books included in the Roman Catholic Bibles, and that are fine for any of us to read, but I don't believe they've ever been recognized as divinely inspired. I think they're good history, just not divinely inspired, which is why Protestant Bibles don't contain them. And these books are a history of the intercanonical time period, OK? So what is an intercanonical time period was the time between Malachi and Matthew. There's like a, a 400, 500 year period, 400 year period of silence. No prophets were around and even the Apocrypha would say that there weren't prophets in those days. And so you have no word from God for 400 years. And then John the Baptist and Jesus come and that breaks the 400 year cycle.

But you, we do have history from those 400 years and some of that's recorded by the Maccabees, the Maccabean revolt, and in that is the record of Antiochus Epiphanies attacking Jerusalem, and he did terrible things. I mean horrid things. First of all, he outlawed Judaism in Israel. And he said, if you're caught practicing the Sabbath or the the cleanliness laws, you're gonna be sent to prison or worse. Like he outlawed religion. It's, it's absurd. Then what he did is he put a statue of Zeus in the temple. And he said, Jewish people come and bow down to your new god Zeus, and if you don't, to prison or worse. And then he took a pig, the most filthy animal, to Jerusalem to to Israelite people, and he took it into the altar and he slaughtered a pig on the altar of God. I mean you cannot get any more sacrilegious and offensive than what he did. I absolute worst things you can imagine to a Jewish person at that time.

And so he is this big bad king of the north, and Daniel is recording the bad king of the north at the end of Daniel 11. Now it is disputed what's going on in verses 36 to 45. I don't expect you to get super deep into this if you unless you really want to. Some people think it's talking about Antiochus more. Some people think that this last part is talking about Rome, Herod the Great, John Calvin thought he was talking about the Pope. some people think it's talking about Constantine and some people think it's talking about an a still end of the age antichrist. And I'll let you decide there I kind of like the idea of Rome. I kinda like the idea of Antiochus. I don't know. No one knows. This is like really mysterious nor did Daniel know when he wrote it, nor do I think it's the point for us to know exactly everything that's happening here because I think that the point is, is merely this.

That all of these kings described throughout Daniel chapter 11 are paradigmatic of the fact that the world is in a state of brokenness. And that it's stuck in a cycle of brokenness. It's like a tilter world, you know, the tilter world rides, except for like it's broken and you just can't get off of it and it just keeps on going. The bad evil leaders, they, they just keep on coming and they won't stop coming. And It's nothing we can do. To get off of the ride even though we want to get off the ride, and we feel that, right? That's what Daniel is telling us. It's like, look, it's not just one king in the north, there's gonna be a succession of kings of the north. There's gonna be a succession of kings of the south, and they're selfish people seeking their own ends and it's a cycle.

It's not like you get over one and then the world is better. Because what happens once you get rid of one selfish dictator. Another one pops up. Imagine the joy that the world experienced when Hitler died. And what comes after Hitler? More evil? Hopefully not as evil, but there is evil. And there's never been evil. There's never been a time in the world. When there haven't been evil leaders oppressing people, not in the history of the world, there's always been evil leaders and you'll never get away from that. Should we, should we resist them? Yes, we should, but you will never get away from evil leaders in this world and that is what this passage is telling us that we will always have evil leaders.

It's it's not just paradigmatic of evil leaders, but of human nature as itself. All of these kings, they're showing us what the human condition is actually like. That the human condition. I stuck in a state of brokenness. And left to my own devices, I will seek power. And I will seek selfishness, and I will make the world around me and if you give me more power, I will just seek more power. That is human nature and the more we are unconstrained in that, separate from God, the more beastly we become and the more we seek it. And so the, the nature of humans is that we seek power and as we get more power, we seek more power.

You see this in our politics. You see this in our companies, do you not? You see this in academia. You see this in every field in which you might be in that those who get power just seek more power and as you get more power, you don't care who you're stepping on as in your in your you're seeking to find more power even if it's just power in your own little home with your own little kingdom. As people are given that, they become abusive and the and they become oppressive, and we're stuck in a cycle where we see abuse and oppression continue and continue.

God created us to be co-heirs of the world, to rule and reign in his place as his vice regents here. He created all of humanity to be made in the image of God. We were made in the image of God, meant to reflect him in the way that we love and serve and rule, but instead, because of sin, we have become more like the beasts, and now we rule for our own selfish pleasure. And so what are we to do as the world is stuck in a cycle of brokenness? That's what Daniel's helping us see.

And there's two points, 2 applications, then I'll be done, OK? First, Resist the beastly urges within ourselves, resist the beastly urges within yourself and it's easy to look around the world and see those who have beastly urges within them. We can think about world leaders, we can think about people in our companies, we can think about people in our academic institutions, whatever it might be. And we might say like yeah they're power hungry seeking that power they're they're just getting more they're oppressing others but it's not easy to turn the mirror and to look at ourselves and see how we have the beastly urges within ourselves and Christians, I encourage you to do that, to resist the beastly urges that are exemplified in this line of evil kings that lives within each of us.

In fact, is it, it's not like a lot of, of the teachings of Jesus on this topic itself. Doesn't Jesus just kind of tell us to resist the beastly urges to gain more power? I mean, when Jesus is speaking and teaching us, he says, if someone strikes you. What do you do? You turn the cheek You give away the power. Though Jesus, the exemplary of all of this, though he was equal with God, what did he do? He did not consider equality with God something to be taken advantage of, but instead, he selflessly laid his life down. When Jesus teaches on of someone borrowing money. What does he tell us to do? If someone doesn't pay you, at the end of the, at the end of the day, you don't yield your you don't wield your power, you yield it, and you forgive.

Jesus has taught us a way of forgiveness, a way of laying your life down, that is contrary to the ways, the evil, selfish cycles of brokenness that we live in. He's the ultimate example of what humanity was meant to be. We're meant to have communion with God, to love one another sacrificially. And so when you place your faith in Jesus, that the ability to do that is given to you. That it's like the ability to truly lay yourself down as Christ has laid himself down for you is given to you. But also you're made right with God. As if Jesus lived in your place, cause he did. When you place your faith in him, you're loved and embraced. And you're forgiven of your own seeking power and your own beastly urges, and your own way to oppress others, and to live selfishly, however that might be, even in small ways. So it allows you this process of rediscovering your true humanity, what it means to reflect God.

But what else do we do in light of the state of the brokenness, the cyclical brokenness in our world, but it's this, #2, take solace that our hope is not in this world, but the world to come. This is where Daniel lands the ship, OK? So this is where he, he comes in, he just ends everything. Daniel chapter 12 and the book basically ends with Daniel saying, look, These evil kings, they keep coming. If the world stuck in a cycle of brokenness, but They're all gonna die. It's basically what he says. Daniel 11 basically ends with the king of the north dying. And so he's being reminded that all these kings are gonna die, and that they're. Their plight for power is temporary, that they will not remain forever.

In fact, all life is temporary and that's where Daniel ends. I wish, you know, when I was exploring this, I was like, where's he gonna end this? How do we end this book? Like there's gotta be some new realization and then as I read it I was like, this is just normal Christianity. This is like what we're preaching throughout Corinthians is what they're preaching throughout the New Testament. It's the same thing and it's this do not find your hope in this world. Find your hope in the world to come. Because we're stuck in a cycle of brokenness in this world. And the more we invest in this world, the more we're gonna see that we're disappointed.

And so I wish, you know, God, he shows us that he knows the future in this passage, right? And he knows the future for you. What that future might be you might be really in a state of brokenness right now whether it's in your home or in our our world, however that looks and he knows the future and I wish I could tell you that he's got this really positive future for you where it's all gonna work out your marital problems are gonna work out your your financial problems are gonna work out your job problems are gonna work out, and they might, but that is not the promise of scripture. The promise of scripture is that there's more to this world than these things.

That there is a greater kingdom to come, and this is where Daniel lands it. It's really kind of amazing. It's just the same thing that we preach every week, which is invest in the kingdom of God where rust and moth have no place, where there is no decay. Because anything in this life can be taken from you. Daniel 12:1, I'm just gonna show you how he says these things, and it is in the most complicated kind of way. It's not easy, but just check it out.

Verse 1, 2nd half of verse one, and there shall be a time of trouble such as never has been since, since there was a nation till that time. But at that time your people shall be delivered. Everyone whose name shall be found written in the book. And what's what book is he talking about? The book of life. Revelation talks about this as well. That God knows all those he will save. And all those who are saved by God, they will be delivered. And what he's saying is not in this life, but in the life to come, because many died in this process. And so that's not that you're gonna avoid all trouble in this life, but you have to invest and look forward to the time to come. Those who follow Christ, their names are written in this book.

Daniel 12:2, and many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake some to everlasting life. And some to shame and everlasting contempt. And what he's showing us here is that there are real consequences to what happened to what we do in this life. That those who are following after Christ and seeking to to reflect God, In this life, they will wake up one day after death and be resurrected to new life with God, reigning and ruling the world as we are meant to, without sin, without brokenness. We're freed from the the cycle of brokenness, but there will be some that receive the justice of God. The justice of God is not something that we have to run away from, but he will make all things right, and we take a lot of solace in that.

The fact that evil people will not prevail throughout eternity, but evil will come to an end. That's good news, even though it's hard to, to, it's like a difficult, it's like it's like a difficult vegetable, OK? It's like one of those things it is good news, but it's difficult sometimes for us to wrap our heads around it, and I'm not gonna get into all of it right now, but it is good news that God is just and that he will bring evil doers to a rightful end. And Daniel, which we all deserve, by the way, as I said, we all have those beastly urges, but Christ paid the penalty for us.

Daniel 12:3. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above, and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever. What an amazing description of the future that waits for us who are following Christ. We will shine like stars forever and ever. Our God will eventually deliver us from death. We will go and have kingdom life with him. And that is where we find our solace and I just wanna, let's just find something a little bit easier, OK, this is your dessert. OK, we've been eating some pretty, protein rich things here. Let's, let's just go to 1 Corinthians chapter 15 for a minute, OK? I just want to end with some New Testament, something that's saying basically the same thing but maybe a little bit more familiar and easier for us as we look at it, and I just think that is really helpful for us as we think about the resurrection from the dead.

1 Corinthians 15. Verse 52. In a moment And the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on the immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. Oh death, where is your victory? Oh death, where is your sting? So the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

And that's just a great way for us to kinda end Daniel because that is where Daniel ends is with our hope in the Lord. So I just wanna take a moment we're gonna pray through this last verse a little bit as we seek the Lord, and then we'll we'll shift into communion. So if you join me in prayer and meditation here. Just consider this. Therefore, my family, my beloved family, my brothers and sisters. Because of our hope and the resurrection. Be steadfast and immovable. Where is God calling you to take those steps of courage? Would you seek Him, the steps of being steadfast and immovable. You have a great hope. That is beyond this world. Always abounding in the work of the Lord. Knowing that the that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. Everything you do can be a work for the Lord, if you do it as an act of worship for him. So, would you just give the Lord your work? Give him your life this morning.

We're going to come to a time of communion and communion is a time where we get to physically be reminded and celebrate what Christ has done for us in a spiritual way that Christ's body was broken for us, that his blood was shed for us, that because of what he has done for us, we get to have life with him. And if you are a believer here this morning who has repented of their sin and is falling after Christ, you are invited to the table. But if there's an area in in your life that you need to turn, we encourage you to evaluate yourself, repent of your sins, and come to the Lord once again. So if you would, if you are able, we invite you to stand as we respond to Christ and just respond to what God is doing in your heart this morning.

Father, we pray that you would break us out of the cycle of brokenness that each of us personally and us corporately as a church would be light, that we would shine like stars in this world that you would help us to shine the light of the reign and rule of Christ who has come to inaugurate the kingdom. And God, we pray that our hope would be in the world to come, that we would not be hoping just in things here, but in the things to come. And God, we pray that these would become very real things for us, that our relationship with you would be a very intimate thing and help us to reflect you as we live our lives for you. Help us to be steadfast and immovable because of the grace that you've given to us in Christ. We ask this in Christ's name, Amen.

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Pastor Tyler Speck from CoaH Brookline preaches from Daniel 10 about the spiritual forces acting behind the scenes in our world. Discussion points: Spiritual forces behind the scenes are always influencing what we can see in the physical world, it is possible that the man who came to Daniel was the preincarnate Jesus, we can trust that God is good and working in our world even when we can’t see it.

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Scripture reader: [Daniel 10:1-14] In the third year of Cyrus, King of Persia, a word was revealed to Daniel, who was named Beltashazzar, and the word was true, and it was a great conflict, and he understood the word and had understanding of the vision. In those days I, Daniel, was mourning for 3 weeks. I ate no delicacies, no meat or wine entered my mouth, nor did I anoint myself at all for the full 3 weeks.

On the 24th day of the first month as I was standing on the bank of the great river, that is the Tigris, I lifted up my eyes and looked, and behold, a man clothed in linen with a belt of fine gold from Uphaz around his waist. His body was like beryl. His, his face like the appearance of lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and the sound of his words like the sound of a multitude. And I, Daniel, alone, saw the vision, for the men who were with me did not see the vision, but a great trembling fell upon them, and they fled to hide themselves.

So I was left alone and saw this great vision. And no strength was left in me. My radiant appearance was fearfully changed, and I retained no strength. Then I heard the sound of his word, and as I heard the sound of his word, I fell on my face in deep sleep with my face to the ground. And behold, a hand touched me and set me trembling on my hands and knees, and he said to me, O Daniel, man greatly loved, understand the words that I speak to you and stand upright, for now I have been sent to you. And when he had spoken this word to me, I stood up trembling.

Then he said to me, Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand and humbled yourself before God, your words have been heard, and I have come because of your words. The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me 21 days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I was left there with the kings of Persia and came to make you understand what is to happen to your people in the latter days, for the vision is for days yet to come.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: Good morning. Good to be with you all. Like Fletcher said, my name's Tyler. Always a privilege and a joy to come and be with you all, a number, number of times over the past few years. And so really great to see you guys. almost didn't make it. my Uber driver decided it was a really good idea to speed this morning, and at one of the lights we were approaching, the, the car started just drifting sideways and I was like, you're gonna hit that car in front of you and. Luckily he didn't, the car stopped and I'm not kidding, this dude puts it in park and turns off the car. I think he just needed to reset his like body, mind and soul after that experience.

So but we made it, you guys made it the great snowstorm apocalypse of 2025, right, where we got a foot of snow. Just continuously disappointed the past two years. I just, I, I feel like my hot take right now, there is nothing worse than 4 inches of snow because it's just enough that you're annoyed. But not enough that you're excited, so it's just like, come on, I don't know, maybe next week we'll get a foot of snow that's, that's what I was hoping for, but anyways, glad to be with you guys, glad to dive into Daniel 10.

So many years ago, more than you kind of, might think my best friend, his name is Josh and I, we auditioned for, the school musical, kind of honestly a little bit as a joke, we had absolutely no acting ability, no acting background, no musical ability, whether it's our, our voices or instruments, no background in that, we just kind of thought like this would be a fun way to just be absolutely ridiculous together. no interest, no expectations, no anything like that, but for whatever reason we thought it'd be a good idea, we thought it'd be fun, we tried out and to our surprise we both actually got roles, and I think maybe there's this idea of like two seniors and, I don't think there are actually any seniors in the kind of theater group at that point in time, having them, kind of join the play would be a good thing. I remember hearing a year later that they actually used us as a way to try to get people to join the play, and they said, I, I, this is a quote, they said, Josh and I were examples of being able to be in the play without much ability.

The roles we were given, they weren't main characters, right? They were minor roles, but, but they were more than just kind of like an ensemble like background role, or a behind the scene kind of role. there were a couple of times the play was Grease by the way, there are a couple of times where there were only like 3 or 4 people on stage and we were 2 of them for like a couple of entire songs singing and dancing and doing cartwheels and and kind of some things of that nature, and, so it was fun. Prove it. No, yeah, I said this was a long time ago. Yeah, I kid you not, yesterday was the first time I hurt my back without doing anything. I just, yeah, yeah, yeah, I just like stood up and I'm like that hurt. And it kept hurting.

So anyways, but we got, we, we, we did this play. It was a fun time I remember entering into this world of theater, this world of singing and acting that I was not familiar with, and something that took me by surprise was how big the team behind the curtain was. whether it's the tech team or stage managers, the director, prop creation, choreography, there's actually more people behind the scenes at every single point in time than there ever was kind of on the stage in the scene, and I initially kind of arrogantly thought at first like that they were kind of maybe less important that those teams behind the scenes were less important, but if you spend any time in theater, or any time in even the kind of movie production or anything like that, you actually realize the show doesn't happen without them. Right?

Without a playwright who goes unseen in the play, the play, the musical doesn't even exist, right? With a stage director, the things you see unfold wouldn't have even been brought to life to begin with. Now of course the actors and actresses and the musicians on stage, they are important, right? They're doing very important work and their job is very difficult and they bring a certain personality and certain skill set to the thing but the reality is they wouldn't be up there doing the things they're doing without the people behind the stage kind of behind the scene. In other words, what I'm really getting at, the thing that surprised me was that really it was the unseen, kind of the behind the curtain things that people, the behind the curtain things and people that dictated the play.

Right and this is something that's true not just for plays and musicals, but many aspects of life. Right, politicians and governments, businesses, many movies, right, whether it's The Wizard of Oz, it's kind of like the, the, the, the ultimate behind the, the curtain scene, right? Or, Thanos in the first two Avengers movies, right, kind of unseen pulling the strings, sports organizations, right? You saw this this week with Luca if you know, you know.

But maybe, arguably, definitely, most importantly. We see this with spiritual things, supernatural things. When I say spiritual, I don't just mean spiritual beings, God, angels, demons, right, the devil, and I don't just mean this kind of generic idea of religion. When I say spiritually, I kinda mean that holistically for your own self too. And I mean that personally. I mean, why do certain things happen in your life? Right, maybe you're here in a constant refrain in your life is sort of just like God, like why? You look around and you're confused and and what do we do with that? We're very logical people, right? We try to take stock and inventory of what's happened up to this point and try to kinda trace this narrative to make sense of things and. We look at what's in front of us, right? We look at what's on the stage, we don't look behind the scenes.

But what our passage would actually show us today is that there's far more to it than just what's on the stage. Right, our passage shows us that there are things behind the curtain. Whether it's with just a scene like this or whether it's with the entirety of reality, right? Scripture actually challenges our version of reality because there's far more to our reality than what we just see. What I mean, well, for example, that terrible relationship with your boss who's constantly demeaning you, taking credit for your work and it's just rude, there's probably more to it than just that's the way he is. That crippling anxiety you feel when you're about to step out in faith and do something bold and the anxiety kinda keeps you back from it, there's a good chance it's more than just oh you struggle with anxiety. Right, the current administration, whether you have a positive view or a negative view. There's more to it than just this is just what this country needs or our country will never be the same.

But there's more to it than what meets the eye. There are forces unseen, good and evil unseen behind all of these things. As Daniel says in verse one, there's a great conflict that is happening. You see, to understand what's going on here, your life, your relationships, your mind. To understand what's going on here, you have to understand what's going on up there. And the unfortunate side note of that is we can't always do that as mere humans, by the way. Abraham Kuyper has a good thought, and he speaks to this he says if once the curtain were pulled back and the spiritual world behind it came to view, it would expose to our spiritual vision a struggle so intense, so convulsive, sweeping everything within its range that the fiercest battle ever fought on earth would seem by comparison, a mere game, not here but up there. That is where the real conflict is waged. Our earthly struggles drones in its backlash.

We see this idea all over our passage, and this is quite frankly a theme that reverberates through the entirety of the book of Daniel, right, but it's really on display in our passage we get a glimpse into the unseen, right, an unseen angelic and demonic battle, cosmic battle going on that we see that what is unseen is dictating the scene conflicts. We see that idea broadly speaking that what is unseen is dictating the scene. And that's our main point for today as we look at this passage, as we work through it, the unseen dictates the scene. we're just gonna do two things, two kind of questions we're gonna answer. What does it mean as we work through the passage and then why does it matter? In other words, why should I care? What does this do for me?

So before we dive in to what it means just to very briefly catch everyone up to speed, Daniel 1 through 6 stories that if you grew up in church you probably learned about, right? Daniel and the lion's den, the handwriting on the wall, the fiery furnace, all of these kind of, fun stories that are true but they're very memorable, your kids, if you have kids will probably learn about the MOA kids. Daniel 7 through 12, not so much. Right, things you probably don't remember or didn't learn about if you grew up in church. And these are decisively more difficult passages to understand, right? That's why Fletcher himself said he needed a break, right? You can only do so many of these tough passages in a row, and, and quite frankly it's a different style of literature, right? if Daniel 1 through 6, it's a little bit of more narrative it's kinda for the most part one story, one event after another that you can kind of read and understand, but then the genre kind of shifts a little bit, right?

And it's apocalyptic literature is what we would call it, if you've been around the church, you've seen Left Behind. Or any kind of crazy doomsday movie that's probably what images come to your head and that's not entirely incorrect, right, but it's not just wow look at how the world ends or wow look at what's going to happen in this crazy end of times kind of cosmic battle. But it's much more intentional than that. It's much more kind of particular. The word apocalyptic can be translated as unveiling secret or revealed. In other words, God is showing Daniel something. I remember this vision along with the others that Daniel's received at this point is at a given to him at a particular time in a particular place in a particular culture and for a particular purpose. It's God revealing something to Daniel that he wants Daniel and us to see.

But if you remember Daniel's culture by the way, a particular time place and culture that is increasingly godless in thought and action, increasingly anti-God and increasingly difficult to be Jewish. Compare that to our current particular time, place, and culture that is mostly godless in thought and action, increasingly anti-God of the Bible and increasingly difficult to be a Christian. To you and I, we're not being thrown into the lion's den. We're not being forced into an oven, but we do desperately need in the same way that Daniel did to know what God is communicating through these through these things and just what kind of the message or the purpose is behind these things.

So first, should be noted, what is actually happening in the majority of this passage is Daniel is being prepared to receive another vision in chapters 11 through 12, which you guys will be covering next week. But when you consider just chapter 10, I think what is kind of, what we said earlier, what's being shown is that there are unseen forces, things, beings at work that are really kind of pulling the strings. So to walk through, what does it mean?

Daniel, at this point, if you didn't know, he's probably I think towards the end of his life he's in his 80s, to kind of put that in the frame of the rest of the book, he was likely 1415, 16, and Daniel won, and so he's in his old age and in his old age he's fasting, right, verse 2. In those days I, Daniel was mourning for 3 weeks. I ate no delicacies, no meat or wine entered my mouth, nor did I anoint myself at all for the full 3 weeks. Why is you fasting? Well, most likely if you know your Bible, biblical timeline or the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, you know Cyrus, the king of Persia, says decree that the, the Jewish people could go back into the land of Judah and go back and start rebuilding their temple, and that process started, but it kind of came to a screeching halt. There were politicians, other governments, people that just didn't want to see that happen, and so they're kind of infringing upon that, making that more difficult.

And so, most think that this is kind of maybe the reason why Daniel is fasting. He's so troubled by this that he wants to stop and fast and seek God and say God, why is this happening to my people? We aren't sure why he's not with them. Maybe it's his old age. Maybe it's kind of his place in, the government and the place he was serving and was in maybe it made sense for him to stay there, but this might be why he was fasting and after 3 weeks in, he sees a vision or the, the Daniel calls it a word, right? A word was revealed to him.

He sees a vision of a man, verse verse 5. I lifted up my eyes and looked and behold, a man clothed in linen with a belt of fine gold around his waist. His body was like beryl, his face like the appearance of lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the glee of burnished bronze, and the sound of his words like the sound of a multitude. The pastor goes on to say that just seeing this man just brought Daniel to utter ruin. He had no strength, right, he completely collapsed, he couldn't speak, he couldn't move, so it seems, and he fell into a deep sleep.

Who is this man? Who is this man that could cause such a thing to happen? Admittedly it's debatable, right? Most scholars and commentaries either think it's an angel, who is representing the very power of God, or some scholars and commentators think it is the pre-incarnate Christ that Daniel got a glimpse of the Jesus before he came to earth. Now the thing with with this kind of vision that he saw in any of the other prophecies in Daniel, we can only go as far as scripture will allow us, and scripture does not definitively identify this man and so at the end of the day we have to say that we cannot 100% know.

But to give you my two cents, I do personally think Daniel saw a glimpse of Jesus. But I think that well the parallels for when other people across scripture came into contact contact with Christ are pretty similar. Take Revelation for example, John, who wrote Revelation, has a vision where he sees Jesus, where Daniel describes this man as clothed with a linen garment which is and can be a robe. John in Revelation 13 described Jesus also in a vision as dressed in a robe. Where Daniel describes him as as as wearing a belt with gold, Revelation describes him as wearing a wide golden belt. Or Daniel describes him as having a face with the appearance of lightning and eyes as flaming torches. Revelation describes his face shining like the sun and his eyes like a fiery flame.

And it goes on and there's a lot more parallels like this and beyond Jesus's physical description, also the, the way that people reacted in his presence are very similar too. Daniel, John and Paul all kind of fell at the presence of Jesus, all kind of shuddered at his presence. And also what adds to this, I think more likely being Jesus is that it isn't the first time Jesus is mentioned in the book of Daniel, this is Jesus. He's actually shown up a number of times with visions and prophecies, right? Daniel too, if you remember there's a little line about a stone being cut out of the mountain that trumps other kings and kingdoms. This is Jesus. Jesus is quite possibly the fourth man in the fire in Daniel 3. Jesus is the fuller picture of Daniel in the lion's den in chapter 6, an innocent man being put to death for the sins of other people that he didn't commit.

Jesus is the son of man in Daniel 7. If you remember that, he's given dominion and glory in a kingdom that all peoples, nations and languages should serve him. And so this picture of Christ in chapter 10 is not new to the book of Daniel and to use some language from a commentary, it's the culmination or crescendo of Messianic revelation in the book of Daniel, the climax of the revealing of Jesus in the book of Daniel. And it brings him to utter ruin.

The men that were with Daniel began to tremble. And they couldn't even see what Daniel saw. Again, the unseen dictating the scene. And Daniel has no strength and he falls asleep until verse 11. An angel comes and speaks to Daniel and the angel says this oh Daniel man greatly loved, understand the words that I speak to you and stand upright, for now I have been sent to you. Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you have been you have set your heart to understand and humbled yourself before God, your words have been heard, and I've come because of your words.

Two quick things I want to point out that this angel kind of sheds light on. Don't forget Daniel, he's absolutely overwhelmed at this point. Right, we, we read that idea and it kind of just in and out of our minds maybe like always having our time or always kind of on the ground, but that's not too far off from you receiving the worst possible news that you could think of and all you can do is just collapse to the floor and cry can't move, can't be consoled. That's what kind of situation the angel is entering into and what does this heavenly being do?

First he encourages Daniel to not be afraid. But look closely though, he encourages them not to be afraid for a very specific reason. If you caught it, What he doesn't say I don't be afraid because God is going to work out everything in the way that you hope he's going to when it comes to your people and their situation. What he doesn't say is fear not, God is going to make sense of your life. What he doesn't say is fear not. God is going to eventually make you understand every little part of the vision that you're seeing. Now, what does he say? He says, fear not because God hears you.

I think some of us would do well to realize that there is far greater comfort, resolve, strength and courage available to us in knowing that God hears us. Rather than knowing or thinking that it's going to be OK. Why? Well, roots are being OK in the person and presence of God rather than our being OK being in circumstance or understanding.

This angel goes on to mention that he was delayed. During the time that Daniel was fasting, verse 13, the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me 21 days. But Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I was left there with the king of Persia. What do we do with that? I think it's actually an interesting look into how real life events were impacted by the unseen. If you caught in the first part of the passage, how long was Daniel fasting and mourning? 3 weeks, 21 days. How long was the angel delayed? 21 days. In other words, this battle the angel was involved in had a real-time impact. The unseen battle that the angel was involved in had a real life impact on Daniel. And is waiting.

This shows a side note that it's very possible that the delay and the waiting that you might feel in your life is far more than just God's not showing up. The silence you feel from God, it's more than just he's not answering and remember what we said a minute ago, right? That the comfort comes in knowing that he actually hears you. After all this, the angel says all that and Daniel's overwhelmed again. But once again be strengthened and encouraged by the heavenly beings and the angel says to Daniel, oh man, greatly love, fear not, peace be with you. Be strong and of good courage. Now I will return to fight against the Prince of Persia and when I go out, behold, the prince of Greece will come.

In other words, the cosmic battle rages on. And later on Greece is going to be involved. Some think that this is a reference directly to Alexander the Great. But at the very least what this is saying is that more nations more kingdoms, more kings, more powers will come into this conflict in the future and will be heavily involved in this ongoing cosmic battle. So that's sort of What it means, what's happened in this passage. But the more relevant question is maybe why does it matter? This battle that we know rages on to this day but is depicted in our passage 2500 years ago. Why does it matter? Why does it matter for me? What bearing, what impact does this have on my life?

Three things we see and then we'll close. First thing is to recognize that there are spiritual forces behind worldly forces, worldly powers. If God sets up and takes away certain governments and authorities as Romans 13 tells us, that also means that as we see in our passage, those who oppose God are working to do the same thing. Now what are we to do that with that I think it's something to simply be acknowledged rather than figured out. The only thing scripture actually has us do when it comes to that, is to obey so as long as we're in line with the biblical commands and to pray for those in places of authority. Romans 13 let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.

Or 1 Timothy 2. First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life godly and dignified in every way. In other words, it's not our job to figure out who's kind of behind these people in places of power. Which side note if I could be blunt. Depending on your political leanings, especially if you have very strong feelings, it's pretty easy to see whomever is in power, whether someone like Donald Trump or Joe Biden as totally sent by God or as totally a servant of the devil. But I think scripture would actually challenge us with that. Remember our main idea there's so much more going on that we can't see and don't understand.

And quite frankly, the stories across scripture would disagree with that idea, right? There's so many people in power across all of scripture that did morally detestable things, yet God completely ordained them to be in that position of power for his purposes. And the flip side of that is true too. There are people all across scripture that are fairly righteous, good people, and guess what? They didn't even come close to a position of authority or high influence. What do we do with those uncomfortable thoughts?

I think one, it ought to bring us to a place of humility. There's a greater plan going on that we can't grasp. Now we would likely won't know his reasoning for placing certain people in power. We won't know his reasoning for removing kings and kingdoms, presidents, nations. The unseen is dictating the scene and it's not our job to figure it out figure it out, it's our job to trust the God behind it all. That's what scripture encourages us to do. And a key distinction here is we're not supposed to trust that God's gonna work it out in the way we want it to, we're supposed to trust that his plans are good even when it doesn't make sense. And we're supposed to trust that he is good even when it doesn't seem like it from the outside.

So first, there are spiritual forces behind worldly forces. Second, spiritual warfare is a real is real and it impacts you personally. Spiritual warfare is real and it impacts us personally. It's not just some far off battle that's depicted in our passage in Daniel. And it's not just only over nations and kings and kingdoms and people and places of high authority though that is certainly a key strategy. It's real and it impacts us personally. Whether you know it or not, you've likely been involved in this. Some sort of spiritual attack. Whether it's you or your family, your job, your mental health. And it could be easy when you think of these things, by the way, to kind of fall into extreme thinking.

CS Lewis, one of his more famous quotes, there are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence, the other is to believe and feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. And so I would argue that most of us actually typically probably do one of the one of two things. We either overestimate how much spiritual attack comes our way and us underestimate how much sin and our own faulty decisions play into things or we underestimate how real spiritual attack and spiritual warfare is and overestimate ourselves.

So what do we do with this? The third and last thing we see. We see Daniel do this as we are to engage in this. How, why? Well, without even knowing, so it seems he doesn't know, Daniel is engaging in this. Ready fasted and prayed, verse 2 again. And then the angel came to him in verse 12 and said, What? Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand and humble yourself before your god, was to say your words have been heard. And I have come because of your words.

The prayers of Daniel literally prompted an angel to do something. The prayer and the fasting, the seeking God that Daniel did prompted heavenly beings to do something, prompted God to act. We have to be encouraged by that. Right, we ought to engage in that. We ought to be in prayer and fast and seek God about these sorts of things. Paul in the New Testamenty gives us an even more kind of more direction and more clarity as to what that looks like. Ephesians 6 verse 10, finally be strong in the Lord and the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, having done all to stand stand firm.

This whole chapter, people tend to naturally so move beyond that and look to kind of the armor of God, right, the belt of truth, breastplate of righteousness, shield of faith, and so on. But look at verse 10 how Paul actually sums up all of this. He says finally be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. In other words, At the end of the day, we engage in this spiritual battle. We engage in spiritual warfare by engaging with God. And we engage in this battle knowing that it's his strength and it's his power and it's his might that wins. And he always wins, by the way. Your demons, your spiritual struggles, your sins, Jesus always wins that fight for you.

And it's Jesus' fight, by the way. It's in Jesus that we see this ultimate victory. Right? Jesus proved God's strength over demonic forces in his life on earth, right? And how much he casted out demons and how he had authority over them. But he proved God's strength over death and evil and existence itself by dying and raising from the dead. It is through that, through the gospel that we can engage in this battle by engaging with God. It is through that that we can partner with God as he does his work, things that we can't see, can't understand, and yet we can partake in them. Because of what Christ has done, we get to step into these things because of what Christ has done, the unseen dictates the scene, but we can trust the ultimate God behind the scene and the unseen. That in Christ we are safe. No matter what happens on the stage of your life, no matter what happens with the scene. We can be confident. The unseen dictates the scene. Through Christ we can be confident that we can participate in this. In God's good plans, God's good good actions. Let's pray.

God, we are thankful for you. Thankful that you are majestic and beautiful and powerful. God, that everything we see and don't see falls under your control and your authority. God thank you that we get to partner with you and be in right relationship with you because of Jesus. And that we get to engage in your plans, your purposes, the things that you're carrying out, even we can't fully understand it, help us help us to trust that. Help us to trust you in your name, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Daniel 9 about God’s response to Daniel’s prayer. Discussion points: We can be in a difficult and dark place and still be greatly loved by God, Jesus was the suffering servant and anointed one from Gabriel’s message, we can return from exile to God because of Jesus’s sacrifice for us.

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Scripture reader: [Daniel 9:20-27] While I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my plea before the Lord my God for the holy hill of my God, while I was speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the first, came to me in swift flight at the time of the evening sacrifice. He made me understand speaking with me and saying, oh Daniel, I have now come out to give you insight and understanding. At the beginning of your pleas for mercy, a word went out, and I have come to tell it to you, for you are greatly loved.

Therefore, consider the word and understand the vision. Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city to finish a transgression, to put an end to sin and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. Know therefore, and understand that from going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be 7 weeks. Then for 62 weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time. And after the 62 weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed, and he shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: All right, good morning. so last week I was planning on preaching all of Daniel 9, and then I got into it and I got to this part of Daniel 9 and I said, what is happening? And I had no clue and I've read the Bible through probably, you know, like over a dozen times at this point, uh, I probably a good bit more than that. I've been a Christian for like 20 years and I've read it most years, um. And, and I was just like, oh, I don't know what's happening here and so I have then decided to slow down and say we're gonna handle the first half of Daniel 9 last week as we've been going through this series and Daniel, it's been, it's been great.

And then you get towards the end of Daniel and it gets like real. yeah, like, difficult, it's tough. There's a lot of visions and, and difficult things to interpret. You know, most of the Bible is very easy to interpret, not, it's an ancient document if you think about the Bible, it's like over 2000 years old for most of it or right at 2000 years old for most of it and um. You can understand it like the normal person off the street can pick it up and understand this ancient document. How often do we expect? I, I can't even read Shakespeare and understand it. Like I need someone telling me what's what's happening. That was written just, you know, a few 100 years ago. But you can read this and understand the majority of the Bible, but sometimes you get to passages that are just really tricky. And so I've spent the entire week this, I've probably more time than I've spent on almost any other sermon, but just trying to figure out what is happening in this passage.

And I came to find out that this passage is like one of the most controversial passages in the entire Bible. Now, I didn't know that. Did you know that? That this passage with this little thing, like with the 70 weeks. It's like super controversial and if you just do a little peripheral Google searching, you're gonna find a lot of different opinions about different ways to understand this passage. So I've had a lot of fun, this week digging into this. This really is fun for me. I've enjoyed it, but it's been new and and a a fun muscle to to get to flex as I go through it.

Not only is this passage really controversial, there's like entire theological systems built off of this passage as like one of the, the roots of this whole system. For example, how many of you all grew up in the late 1900s as I did and, were exposed or. Obsessed with the Left Behind series at some point. All right, hold on, I do need the hands, OK? Now, if you were, if you were sent into an anxious spiral because of the Left Behind series, leave your hands up. All right, hey, somehow more hands came up when I mentioned the anxious spiral associated with the Left Behind series. For those of you who were spared the Left Behind series, it was a series of like 1516 books written between the years 1997 and 96 and 2007, something like that. The guy who put together the Chosen, you know, the Chosen, the TV series, his dad. He is also an author, and he wrote the Left Behind series, which is kind of crazy. This Jenkins family, man, they just dominated the Christian education sphere education well, education. I meant entertainment, but it has ended up becoming more education than anything else.

They've just dominated this Christian entertainment sphere for like over 20 years now, going on 30 years, and what the whole story is about. Is the end of times and the rapture. So in the Left Behind series, you have a series of characters who are left behind after the Christian rapture occurs, and then they're trying to figure out what to do and so they lived through the years of the tribulation. And so these books, I read several of them as a, a young man growing up in the church, and then, they started making movies. Anybody watched the movies? Kirk Cameron, OK, let's see the Kirk Cameron folks. OK. Anybody in the Nicholas Cage generation Gen Z, let me see you. I don't know, Nicolas Cage starred in the Left Behind. He did not find the Declaration of Independence as far as I know, but he was in the Left Behind movies. They just made another one. Come to find out. I had no clue. I've never seen any of these movies. they just made another one with Kevin Sorbo. That's right. Hercules himself is in the new Left Behind movies.

I say all this because the Left Behind series, it's based off of dispensationalism and a lot of dispensationalism is based off of this passage and Left Behind has just dominated the Christian evangelical. World for like 30 years now my wife, I was telling my wife in fact every time I, I mentioned this to a few people like hey I can pick on Left Behind, right? Like that's OK. I can make fun of that and they were like, yeah you can make fun of that but I mentioned it to my wife and she was like, oh, I was always so anxious because of those books and then she just had like story after story that just left me rolling like she said that if she couldn't find her parents in her house, her immediate first thought was rapture. Like this is the anxiety that we lived under in the late 90s, OK?

But she said that even after we got married, to the point, I'm notoriously terrible about leaving a pile of clothes and locations. But for someone who has anxiety around, around Left Behind series, that's a bad decision. She was constantly thinking that I've been zapped up to Jesus while she was left here. If you guys know her, she's definitely the one that would be zapped to Jesus first.

But, a dispensationalist understanding, so actually in the Left Behind series you see several of the characters, from the series using Daniel 9, this portion of Daniel 9, to kind of explain what is happening at the end of days. And so a dispensationalist understanding of this, and I'm not gonna get all up into the details because here's the deal. I'm, I'm not a dispensationalist. I don't think about it the same way. I'm gonna give you the way that I understand it, but I have good friends who are and like it's, it's an open-handed issue. It's like third tier issue. It's like not a big deal if you are a dispensationalist like. If you're one of the few that's like studied that and like you're set on it, like that's cool we can be friends you can be a leader here like it's an open handed issue I but but I'm not.

And so I'm gonna give it to you the way that I understand it, but this passage, the way that dispensationalists would understand it is that there's like this prophecy. And then there's this big gap in time where we're waiting on the events of the 70th year to still occur, or at least the events of the second half of the 70th week to occur in this time, and that would also mark the seven year tribulation and the rapture and everything that goes with that. But here I'm, I, I'm not gonna pretend that I have a comprehensive understanding of this passage. You would have to like write your PhD thesis on this passage to have a comprehensive understanding of it. It is a lot of work. There's a lot of stuff written on this, but here's what I'll tell you. I'm just gonna try to make it as simple as I can to give us a basic understanding because I think God's word can still be understood in a more simplistic way.

And it it's this: I don't think this passage about is about the end times, like at all. I think that there's some echoes about the end times, some stuff that we can learn, but I don't think that it's about the end time. I think that this is relevant to where Daniel's at at the time, a vision that he received, and there's things that we can take from it. So let's just dive into it. OK, there's a lot to look at and we're gonna get into it.

So Daniel chapter 9 verse 20. And I'm just gonna walk through the passage. While I was speaking and praying, this is Daniel speaking, and if you were here last week, you heard his prayer, he's praying that they would get to return to the promised land, and here he is, while I was speaking and praying, confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel and presenting my plea before the Lord my God for the holy hill of my God. So this kind of summarizes the entire prayer that we went over last week.

Here's a quick recap, what's happened and where they're at if you're new and you haven't been with us through the whole Daniel series, we've been doing this series since like back in November or October or something, but it, it summarizes the story of four young men who have been exiled, from their land in Israel and the land was taken over by a foreign power named Babylon. And Nebuchadnezzar was the king, and they took the land over and then as an ancient form of oppression, societal oppression, they moved many of the people of Israel out of the land and into their own land, into the Babylonian land, where they had to live and thrive for years to come. So this follows the story of these four young men who are trying to be faithful as a religious minority in a world that is counter to everything that they know to be true and real. Which sound familiar to anybody. I mean, this is the life of a Christian to, to thrive as a religious minority in a secular world.

And so that's what the story is basically about. And now, at this point, Daniel is an old man, that's no longer Babylon that is ruling the land. We've moved on to the Meadow Persian Empire. They, Babylon's been conquered, they've fallen. And now Daniel is an older man. He's recognizing that from the prophet Jeremiah that the exile should be about over by now. Like what we've been almost 70 years here. And so he decides to pray and to confess the sins of the people of Israel. And as he does that, he's confessing their sins and pleading and his question the whole time is when, when can we go home? When can we go home? And then as he's praying, he receives an answer.

Verse 21, while I was speaking in prayer, the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the first, came to me in swift flight at the time of the evening sacrifice. So Gabriel shows up and he's described as a man, but he's also a man who comes to him in swift flight, so it's not like a man that we know of. We understand Gabriel to be a messenger from the Lord, which the Hebrew word, or the Greek word for messenger at least, my Hebrew is not as good as my Greek. The Hebrew word for messenger is the same as angel, and so we understand Gabriel to be an angel from the Lord. And he, but he also looks like a man, so it's left to our, we don't get any more description of his appearance. I know that everybody's kind of obsessed about the appearance of these things. We don't get any more description of it. It's left up to your imagination a little bit, I suppose.

But this man, this angel, this messenger from God, whoever he is, he's a messenger from God, and he comes and he comes with this important message from God. He comes to him in swift flight. And I think it is important that it's Gabriel, so just stick a pin in that one, OK? We're gonna come back to Gabriel as we go through this passage later on. But for right now just make a mental note, Gabriel making this, this, vision clear to Daniel.

Verse 22. He made me understand, speaking with me and saying, oh Daniel, I've now come out to give you insight and understanding. At the beginning of your pleas for mercy, a word went out, and I have come to tell it to you, for you are greatly loved. Therefore, consider the word and understand the vision. So Gabriel basically says, Daniel, I'm here to answer your prayers. I'm here to tell you the answers that you're looking for. Look, remember, the question that Daniel's looking for is how long, how much, how long must we stay in this terrible place? When can we go back home, go back to the promised land? And Gabriel shows up and he tells Daniel the first thing he says is, you are greatly loved.

And I'm just gonna pause for just a moment. Because I think it's a good thing for us to meditate on as Christians, that you can be in a place of exile. In a place where you feel like nothing is going your way. And still be greatly loved. You can be in a place that you have no desires to be in. You can be in a place where you long to be somewhere completely else and still be greatly loved, and that's what Gabriel starts this message with. You are greatly loved by God our Father. And so I've come to tell you the answer to your prayers. God can still love you and care for you while you are in the deepest and darkest valleys of life. Even if you were brought into that valley because of your own stupidity, it doesn't mean that you are not loved. The dark valleys does not mean that God doesn't care.

Then Gabriel gives a vision from God that is surprising, challenging, and encouraging. basically he, he builds off this idea. So there's a lot going on here, as I've said many times, but you, and it takes almost encyclopedic knowledge of the entire Old Testament to really interpret it, which is why I don't have comprehensive knowledge of it, but Gabriel. Comes with this background information that we have from Isaiah. So Isaiah is another prophet, it's a very long prophet in, in, in the Bible, earlier in the Bible. And what Isaiah says is that the return from exile is going to be a two-stage process. So Isaiah explains that the first stage of return from exile is going to be a physical return from exile. It's going to be led by King Cyrus, and this is going to take place from Isaiah 44 to Isaiah 48. It's described as this physical return from exile.

But then Isaiah also describes a greater and a more spiritual return from exile. That's described in verse in chapters Isaiah 49-53. That's where we get the famous. Suffering servant passage. And so the people of Israel, they're brought back physically, according to Isaiah, and, and before they're brought back spiritually, and they're brought back physically by great worldly king, they're brought back spiritually by the great heavenly spiritual king, which is described as the servant who suffers, he's an anointed leader. And so this is what they understand is happening, that you have physical return, Babylon to Israel, which is what Daniel's praying about, but Gabriel comes and starts talking to him about the spiritual return to God, where God's people are restored to right relationship with God Himself.

It's been put like this before, you can get the people out of Babylon, but how are you going to get the Babylon out of the people? And so that's the spiritual, return that the people have. You can think about it like this. Imagine you are a late teenager and your parents have rules that you don't like. And so you rebel against their rules for years, for years you rebel against their rules and then eventually your parents say that's enough, you're out of here and so they kick you out but where you end up is not so great itself and so you're really struggling and so you go back to your parents and say, can I move back in? And they graciously allow you to physically move back in their home, but does that mean that the relationship is all hunky dory, that everything is healed. No. So just because Daniel and his people might return back to Israel doesn't mean that spiritually or relationally they've been made right with God. There's still work to be done there.

And so that is what the prophet Isaiah tells us, and now that's essentially the same thing that's happening here with his response. Daniel's prayer is about the first return, the physical return, but Gabriel's message is about the anointed leader who will put a finish to transgression, put an end to sin, who will atone for iniquity, who will bring everlasting righteousness, and who will restore God's place. Does that sound like the physical return or the spiritual one? The spiritual one, right? So Daniel was asking, when will we go home, and Gabriel basically responds, you'll get to go home soon, but it's going to take a while before it feels like home. So let's dig into how he says it.

He says this verse 24, seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and profit, and to anoint a most holy place. All right, lots of controversy. About this, when we read this 70 weeks, OK, almost all of your Bibles, if you have your Bible open, you can look at it. It has what we call a superscription there. mine has the number 3 superscripted right there. And if you look at the footnote for this for weeks, it says or 7 also twice in verse 25 and once in verse 26. The Hebrew word for weak is the same as the Hebrew word for seven, which makes sense, does it not? There's 7 days in a week, but it's up to context clues to know whether it's talking about weeks or sevens. And most scholars interpret this to say 7 sevens, not 70 weeks. So 7 sevens are decreed about your people in the holy city.

And what it's basically saying is, Daniel, you've waited 70 years to go into the promised land, and your time is almost up, but I'm here to tell you, it's going to take 7 times longer to have the spiritual return. 7 7s, 7 70s, if you might. The, the whatever mathematical rule that is, that you can flip them, it works that way too. 7 70s is how long you're gonna have to wait for the spiritual return from exile.

This is connected to this Old Testament principle of the year of Jubilee. So in Leviticus 25, is that part of the Bible. Some of you are probably getting close to it in your in your yearly Bible plans. Is that part of the Bible that's really easy to skip over because it's like what is happening? Why is this relevant? But Leviticus 25 describes what we know as Sabbath years and the year of Jubilee. So Sabbath years are this thing that was written into the, I just love this chapter, honestly, OK, this is Bible geek time, OK? I hope you like geeking out with me on this one.

The sabbatical years were written about in Leviticus 25 to say that your land deserves itself a Sabbath year. That you take a break every 7 days. Your land gets a break every 7 years, and that makes sense from an agricultural standpoint. Nowadays we don't do it anymore because they like, I have family that's farmers. I texted them this week to figure out how this works. It's like they, they have other ways of making sure that the nutrients in the ground aren't, all zapped, but this was like the way that they did. They gave the ground a break for 1 year every 7 years, and the Lord provided for them. And then every 7, every 7 sabbatical years. So on the 49th year you prepared and the next year you would celebrate the year of Jubilee.

So 7 sabbatical years and it's like this big party and what happened with the year of Jubilee was really amazing. I have the passage for us here. Leviticus 25. And you shall consecrate the 50th year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all of its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee to you. When each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan. So what's he saying? He's saying, this is crazy. Every 50 years, OK, or 49 years, however you wanna think about it, um. All of the stuff that you've accumulated, all the possessions and, and maybe not all of your wealth, but all of the land you've accumulated, and if you have any contractual slaves that you've accumulated to work for you, it all gets wiped out and you all go back to the ground zero. You all start from a level playing field. Every 50 years, the entire society basically says back to zero, nothing.

This is how they kept this was like the laws for social justice in this day, basically saying no one can get so much and keep on accumulating more because there does become an advantage once you have a certain amount that you just keep on, can get more. You just keep on consuming. And so what it was written about was saying no one can do that in ancient Israel. You go back to to nothing after 50 years and everybody starts with a level playing field again. Keep things fair. Now, there's a lot of controversy, not actually that much controversy. I highly think that this was never practiced, that it was written about in the law, and the Israelite people never did it. there's probably some laws and, you know, it's like that, that 45 mile per hour speed limit on the interstate, OK? It's just like no one's ever gonna keep that. I don't think they ever did it. But it was written and it was the way that social justice was woven into their society.

So back to Gabriel. What Gabriel is describing, 7 7s. Is what he's saying is going to be like a, if you think about it in years, OK, 70 years and you're gonna have 7 times that it's 490 years, you're gonna have like a super mega jubilee. Kind of like the jubilee that we were supposed to be celebrating, but even to a greater degree, sin will be ended, iniquity atoned for everlasting righteousness. And then he goes on in the verse, in the passage to describe what the next 70 years will look like, what the next 7 7s will, will look like, OK? First, he says that Jerusalem will be built during the 1st 70 for during the 1st 7 weeks, which we understand weeks to mean years basically here. So, and then during the next, not years, it's like 10 times that. I get a little confused with the numbers myself.

Then in the next 62 weeks figuratively, there will be nothing particularly noteworthy to happen. And then in the last week of years, there will be a lot of action. The covenant will be upheld, offerings and sacrifices will be will cease and the temple will be destroyed. So that's what I'm about to read, that he's breaking it down like this. And I'm just trying to help you understand the Bible. I know it's not like the most exciting thing of all time, but it's like a passage in the Bible, and it's good to understand. So he basically says, for the 1st 7 years, you'll get to go back. 1st 7 years, 7 weeks, which is like 7 times 7, so 1st 49 years, and then for the next 62 weeks, not much is gonna happen. And then after that, a lot of action is gonna happen in the last week. That's basically what it says.

Verse 25, know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be 7 weeks. Then for 62 weeks. It shall be built again with squares and moats, but in a troubled time. And after 62 weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war, desolations are decreed. So I know this is like a little bit difficult to understand, but it's intentionally written that way. It's apocalyptic literature, it's meant to be unders difficult to understand and what seems clear from it is this that Daniel's praying for a physical return from exile. And Gabriel has come to tell him that that's going to happen soon, but the spiritual return is going to take 490 years.

And when the spiritual return does happen, there will be an anointed leader. And this anointed leader, he will atone for the sins of the people. He will put an end to the iniquity, he will bring everlasting righteousness. He'll be cut off from his own people, and he'll have nothing, and the temple will be destroyed on account of him. Well, who does that sound like to you? Sitting here in a church on a Sunday morning. But Jesus Christ of Nazareth, does it not? And this is where this thing blew my mind as I was reading it, but who shows up? 490 years after the people are allowed to go back is to go back to the promised land. But the messenger Gabriel. To a young unwed woman who was found to be with child. And who declares to her that she's going to give birth to the promised anointed leader. To the one who is going to bring the spiritual renewal that the people have longed.

The Bible is this amazing thing, where we have this prophecy and then it comes. This is undoubtedly. Who Gabriel is talking about is undoubtedly who Jesus understood himself to be. Jesus understood himself to be this man. You cannot say that Jesus did not understand himself to be the Messiah, because he says it clearly, he just doesn't say it clearly to Westerners. He says it clearly to the people he's talking to.

Look at Luke chapter 4, OK? This is one time Jesus goes to his hometown. I don't know. I got to preach in my hometown a couple of years ago. I love the people in my hometown, but um. Yeah, it's like weird, you know, it's weird it's like we went to high school together. I don't know there's they weren't mean at all they were really nice. Some my grandmother's like watching I'm sure right now. they, they were nice and it was great, but it was weird it's a weird moment and so Jesus goes back to his hometown of Nazareth and he goes to the temple and they hand him a and they hand him a scroll. And they they hand him the scroll of Isaiah, and he goes and finds a specific passage in Isaiah. OK.

Luke 4 chapter verse 16, and he came to Nazarth where he had been brought up, and as was the custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day and he stood up to read. And there and and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, and then he quotes from Isaiah 61. And he says, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

What does that sound like? The year of Jubilee, right? Maybe a mega jubilee, maybe the big one. And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. Mike, drop. I love that. I love just like the details, like he rolled up the scroll and gave it back and went and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And they begin to say, today. You would think they would be like, who's this guy? And they did say that sometimes, but at that moment, they, they looked and they said, And he said, today, Jesus said to him, today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

Wow. Jesus is the promised anointed one. He's describing this year of mega jubilee, I don't have any other way to describe it. He is the predictive Messiah. He is the promised rescuer. He came to proclaim good news to the poor. He to pay for our sins through a sacrifice to end the sacrificial system because his blood is the toning sacrifice. It's the continual sacrifice. We don't need the sacrificial system anymore. So he came to destroy the temple as they knew it, so that the whole world might enjoy. The presence of God. The temple is where the presence of God dwelt. And so he came to destroy it as they knew it when he died on the cross, the temple curtain was torn into two symbolizing the presence of God spreading throughout all the world to all the peoples and nations and tongues that everyone might might know God and experience His presence.

He came to give that through the Holy Spirit. He came to give liberty to the oppressed and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. That is for you today, Christians. That we still live in this year of the Lord's favor. We still live in this jubilee time. As Sinclair Ferguson put it, God's ultimate purpose was not a temple made with hands and holy face entered, holy place entered once a year. His son was the place in which men were to approach God. His sacrifice was the one which would bring forgiveness. Now I, I think that most of this passage is about what happened when Jesus came, and I think that that's what it's describing, and the temple was destroyed and everything that goes with that. I do think that there's echoes for us to look forward to. Because we know that the kingdom has been inaugurated, but we wait for Jesus to return to make all these things come true in the full.

So though he has declared these things to be true, it's still true that we live in a broken world, and we long for him, our our king, to come back. And to do all these things in the fullness that he will one day. And so I do think it has an echo of what we're looking for in the future, but I think that the scripture tells us about Jesus, and that's the most important thing, however you want to slice. However you wanna understand it, it's about Jesus, about what we will receive from him and what we have received from Him.

And so just a couple of quick words of application this morning with this passage. Have you ever felt like you're in exile? Like the presence of God is just being kept from you. Or maybe the good things of God. Feel just out of reach. Like you're not given God's best. Like it's being like you're being punished. Have you ever felt this way? Whether it be financial struggles. Whether it be relational struggles. Maybe you desire a different stage of life than the one that you live in. Maybe you desire for God to finally hear one of those prayers that feels so unheard. Whether that be because of sin that you've committed or that's because of sin that's been committed against you.

Many times we feel as though we live in a type of spiritual exile. And this passage tells us that one you can be deeply loved while in the darkest valley. But also, that Jesus is the anointed leader to restore the right relationship with God for you. That because of what Jesus has done. You can be made spiritually right with God. And you can be brought home from exile in right relation. Open arms, it's like the parable of the the lost son, right? Where he goes back to his father and his father forgives everything, and that is true for us because of what Jesus has done for us, that we are welcomed warmly back into the home of our Father, whether we committed those sins or they were sins against us, but he has open arms for us.

Would you just submit your life to him? Whatever that might mean. Whatever that might be. For me, sometimes the best medicine for the soul when I feel like I'm in one of those dark valleys with the time of exile is simply. To look at Jesus. Because in this passage I've been like scratching my head like how do I apply this thing? Like I have no, it's all kind of like cool like exciting, but how do I apply it? And I've just realized that the best application for me is just to see Jesus in a new light and to be excited about that and allow that to encourage my heart and expand who I think God is.

And so this series on Daniel has been doing that for me every week. It's just expanded this idea of this great and glorious God that I get to have relationship with. There's no better illustration than that, no better application than that, that you get to have a relationship with this real God because of what he has done. Jesus is the promised anointed one, and he came to give you spiritual deliverance from the slavery from sin that we find ourselves in. And the second point of application that I'll bring and then, and then we'll have a little bit of time for prayer.

The second point of application is this. How often do we pray for something? That we just know is what is the deepest longing of our heart. And God answers that prayer with something completely different. Here you see Daniel saying, just let me go home. Just let me go home. I just wanna go home, God. We confess that you win all of our sins. I confess it's all our fault. Let us go home. And Gabriel comes to him and says, you're right in some ways, but what you really long is for the spiritual presence of the Lord, and that's not coming for another 490.

And how often do we long for one thing? We just know it's the thing that God wants for us and that we need for life and happiness. When what we really need is what Jesus has already given us. And this spiritual deliverance from the slavery to self. That we have. We pray for riches, but God wants to give us the riches of the soul. We pray for success, but God wants to give us a deeper satisfaction and success. We pray for things and beauty. We pray for security and safety. And yet God has given us all this and more. More than what we can imagine and.

And so to close today before we come to the table for communion and respond to God and worship, I, I'm gonna lead us in another prayer this morning. Where I want to encourage you to talk to the Lord about these things. So would you join me in prayer? You, you can enter whatever posture you want for that. And Would you talk to the Lord about your relationship with him for just a moment.

Do you maybe you're in the house and you don't have the relational peace that you so desire with God. Maybe you feel like you're in a place of spiritual exile. Where the good things are being kept from you. Maybe there is sin in your life that has perpetuated that place of spiritual exile. Sin always separate. You relationally from the that person that you sin against and ultimately all sin is against God. Would you have the courage to confess that as Daniel did? And to receive The gift that Christ is already given. Friend received this gift that Christ is the anointed leader for you. That he has paid your penalty and you're welcome because the righteousness that he gives.

Also, take a moment to to pray about your biggest prayer. I want you to boldly ask for that prayer, but also ask for God to answer it however you want, however he wants. But his way is better than yours, just say that, just say that. That your way is better than mine. Would you declare that to the Lord this morning? Your way is better than mine. I will receive whatever you have for me. Amen.

I, that's a dangerous prayer, is it not? I prayed that prayer once. Probably about 10 years ago when my daughter was young and um. I was praying that prayer and I said, I want whatever you want because I want to be nearer to you than than anything and whatever you want will make you more in my life and that's what I want. And at that moment I said anything but my child. Cause I, that's like a, a pain that like I don't. I don't think I can take, you know, and it was at that moment that the Lord impressed on me, well, that's what I gave for you.

And it, it affected me in this deep and profound way and not this is like, I don't know the mysteries of God, but like not long after that, my wife went through a miscarriage and It just made That prayer means so much to me. And know that. The Lord cares for me in so so many different ways and I I think I had to go through that to be ready to understand you know miscarriage is a complicated thing. Many people go through it lots of us here have gone through it and it's, it's, it's not. Something that we talk about very easily, but it still feels like death and mourning. And I had to go through that moment of prayer with the Lord to be prepared for to to respond to that in a way that would bring him glory, so. It's, it's a scary prayer, but I, I know it, it was what was the best for me, and I, I pray that. It'll be the best for you as well.

On the night that he was betrayed, Jesus broke a loaf of bread, and he said, this is my body broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. He took a cup, and he said, this is my blood shed for you. Do this a remembrance of me. And every week we practice this sacred meal to be reminded that Christ paid our penalty that we might have a relationship with God. Let us respond to the Lord. You can use this as a time to pray. You can use this as a time to seek Him. And if you would like to pray with someone this morning, there will be some prayer counselors in the back, who would be glad to pray with you, to ask the Lord for His guidance for you, to, to maybe just be with you for a moment. And so whatever that might look like.

Father, we, we do give you our lives, and we know that whatever you want is better. And God, we, we just thank you for the relational nearness that we get to experience. And God, we pray that you would fill our church with people that are hungry for the spiritual deliverance more than the physical deliverance. Would you make us a people that yearn for your presence more than the presence of wealth, more than the presence of place, more than the presence of self, more than anything that this world can provide, more than the promised land. Would you make us yearn for the promised land of relational peace with you? God, we long for you. Would you fill this place? Would you fill our hearts with that? And we thank you for Christ, our leader, our ruler who has suffered in our place. We ask this in Christ's name, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about Daniel’s prayer from Daniel 9. Discussion points: The book of Daniel is like a prayer journal for us to learn from, Daniel didn’t hesitate to ask God for things that were already promised him, our righteous God shows us both discipline and mercy.

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Scripture reader: [Daniel 9:1-10] In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, descent a Mede, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books, perceived in the books the number of years that according to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet must pass before the end of the desolation of Jerusalem, namely 70 years. Then I turned my face to the Lord seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.

And I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession saying, oh Lord, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and rules. We have not listened to your servants the prophets who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes and our fathers and to all the people of the land. To you, oh Lord, belongs righteousness, but to, but to us open shame. As at this day to the men of Judah, to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to all Israel, those who are near to those who are far away and all the lands to which you have driven them, because of the treachery that they have committed against you, to us, oh Lord, belongs open shame to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers because we have sinned against you. To the Lord our God belongs to mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God by walking in His laws which he set before us by his servants, the prophets.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: All right, good morning. It's good to see everybody this morning. My name is Fletcher. I'm the lead pastor here at the church. it's a joy to be with you this morning. let me just start in this way. Do you ever wish that your prayers could feel more genuine and meaningful? I'm sure that many of us feel that way. Many of us feel like our prayer life may be on life support, like our prayer life might not be what it's supposed to be. I think that is a very common thing for Christians today to actually feel like they're writing a letter to some distant rich relative, as opposed to talking to a father who loves them. They, we might pray in such a way where we say, dear God, thank you for this and that. I will use it in this and that way. Please help me with this and that other thing. Amen. Sincerely me.

And that might be the way that we think about how we pray, writing this letter to God. We hope that it gets there, almost like a letter to Santa Claus. You just stick it in the airmail and hope that it gets there some way that God might hear your prayer and might answer you. Our prayers feel distant, they feel formal, they even feel transactional at times, do they not? Like, you know, God, I haven't scratched your back enough yet. Maybe if I do a few things, then you could give me these things that I'm asking for. And friends, I, I'm really here to tell you, it's not supposed to feel that way. It's not supposed to be that way though that way is so normal. I feel that it's, it's just a normal way that we that we struggle as Christians to really get this idea of what is prayer.

So I want to invite you just for a moment to imagine in your mind, each person might have a different person here who in your life has the most vibrant prayer life that you can imagine. Maybe it's a friend, maybe it's like an older grandparent that's just been a faithful saint for years and years. Maybe it's like a famous Christian, you know, you, you've got like your John Piper's and your your, your, I don't know, Elizabeth Elliott or, or you've got like your, Tony Evans, whoever it might be. Imagine that this. holy person who walks with the Lord. has collected their prayer journals for years and years. And inside of their prayer journals is their heart toward the Lord, what their prayer life actually looked like. They wrote down the way that they related with God. And in their will, when they go to be with the Lord, they've left it to you. What a sacred, what a sacred treasure, is that not? Because in that prayer journal, you don't only get the heart of this person that you love, you get to see what they valued and what they cared about, but you, you also get like a little bit of a picture of the heart of God, do you not?

Because these people who we know and we can imagine with these vibrant prayer lives, we feel like, and we actually kind of deep down know that they have a greater understanding of the character of God than we do. One person for me that I might think about with this is is a pastor named Eugene Peterson. Some of you might be familiar with Eugene Peterson. He is most famous for writing a book called The Message, which was kind of his way of taking the Bible and putting it in modern day language. It got a lot of flack, mainly because people were like, it's not the Bible, and Eugene Peterson said, I know it's not the Bible, it's not meant to be the Bible. It's the way that I imagine what it means. Means for me, it's just a a paraphrase in my own words of what the Bible says. He wrote many other things. I just think that Eugene Peterson is the type of person. I read his biography not that long ago, who's just got this sacred presence about him.

The, the biography starts with the story of his son coming to get Eugene for a, a time of eating for like a dinner or something like that. So his son goes. He goes over to his father's office, and I imagine his son probably being 7 or 8 years old, and peeks into his father's office and he sees his father there with his, he said that he has a Jewish prayer shawl laid over his lap. He's in a rocking chair and then he has his Bible open and he sees that his father's eyes are closed and he's praying, and his son Eric says the moment is just too holy to interrupt him. And so I go back down, I tell my mother, my father is still praying. Now, I don't care if Jesus himself is in my office. My kids would not mind interrupting that moment. But it's still like this great impression upon me. That he had this connection with God that I aspire towards. I wish that I could have that sacred moment with God in that way.

Maybe you've had moments like that, and it just doesn't feel regular. Well, here we have one of the saints, who is known as one of the greatest men of God, one of the people that walked with the Lord. Honestly, one of the greatest men of prayer in the history of the world, and that is a man named Daniel. And we know that because we've already learned this about Daniel. He prayed 3 times a day, he would kneel in front of his window, no matter what. And at this point in his life, we know he's old. He's an old man, he's been doing this for a long time. And at this point in the book, we know these things about Daniel, but we don't know what his prayers actually looked like.

But here in Daniel chapter 9, it's as though we get a look into Daniel's prayer journal. We get to look and see how did he actually relate with God. And so here's what I want to offer to you as we walk through this. We're just going to walk through the very first, the, the first half of Daniel 9, OK? So this is Daniel's prayer, and then next week, God answers his prayer in this really kind of powerful, profound and weird way. Anybody ever had a weird response to a prayer? Well, Daniel certainly did. An angel named Gabriel came and and revealed it to him in an apocalyptic vision. It's kind of nuts, so come back next week as we go through the answer to God's prayer, to Daniel's prayer that God has for him.

But today we're just going to walk through Daniel's prayer, and I just want to make several observations along the way for us that I think can help our prayer lives to look a little bit more like his. If you were to read your, you know, your grandparents or whoever that sacred person's journal is, what would be some observations that you would make? And I think that we can do that as we walk through Daniel's prayer here today. So. 6 observations for us, 6, honestly, shifts. It's, we pray normally in this way, but look at how Daniel is doing it. And as we go through it, I think that this will be helpful for your prayer life as well. So 6 different ways to go.

First of all, just before I jump into that, last week we did Daniel chapter 6, or we did Daniel chapter 7, should I say, and I love Daniel chapter 7. It's one of my favorite books of the Bible. I got really excited about it. I got really excited about the Son of Man and this title, and I just loved that, and I got so excited about it. I was supposed to talk about Daniel chapter 8 as well, which is very similar to chapter 7, and I just forgot. OK, so it's not. That I'm skipping chapter 8. I wrote it about it in the newsletter. If you're not signed up for the newsletter, this is my plug for the newsletter. I gave you all the information that I think is necessary to know about Chapter 8, so you can sign up for that, just fill out a connection card. But anyways, we're gonna do chapter 9 today. It's not that I'm trying to avoid anything in Chapter 8. Verse 1, Daniel chapter 9. And you know, most of you guys probably didn't even notice that we skipped chapter 8, so. In the first, yeah, if you didn't notice and now you're offended, I think you just need to check your heart, OK?

In the first year of Darius, the son, I'm so glad that Alex looked up how to say this word because as he did, I was like, I have not read that out loud. I get to it and I say, in the first year of Darius son of some king by descent a Mede, that's what is in my mind, but whatever he said is the way you say it. At least to me, so in the first year of Darius, the son of somebody, by descent a Mede, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans.

OK, so we need to pause just briefly before we get to all these lessons about prayer because, Daniel is a complicated book. It's not in sequential order. A lot of times when we pick up a book, one thing that we expect is that it is in order, but Daniel's kind of written like Slaughterhouse 5 if you know. Slaughterhouse 5. It's like nothing is in order. What is happening here? I've got no idea. I'm lost. And with Daniel, you kinda need to stop and and take a second. He does orient you at the beginning of every chapter what's going on, but it's not always easy to tell.

So here we have the in the first year of Darius the Mede. So if we remember Darius the Mede was the king when Daniel was thrown into the lion's den, this is after what we learned in chapter 7. but it's before the acts of chapter 6. So things are a little bit out of order here. It's before it gets thrown to the to the lions.

In the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books, the number of years that according to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet must pass before the end of the desolation of Jerusalem, namely 70 years. So what's happening here? Daniel. he's reading his Bible. That's what's happening. He's got his, he's got his scroll open, his codex, whatever he's got at that point, he's got it open, and he's reading in Jeremiah. And, and Jeremiah chapter 25, we see the prophet Jeremiah predict from the Lord, give this prophecy that Israel will be in exile for 70 years. And now Daniel's looking at that and he's like, It's been about 70 years. He got hauled away when he was a young man, and now he's been sitting there and so he's like, Where is God? It's been almost 70 years now and it's just dawned on me that we need to return to the promised land, that this should not continue like this anymore.

And so here we find the first thing that we need to shift in our prayer lives and it's this number one, we hesitate, we hesitate to ask God for things, but Daniel asked for things that were already promised. We hesitate to ask God for things, but Daniel. Ask for things already promised. Isn't that true of you and me that oftentimes when we go to God and prayer, we just feel embarrassed maybe to ask for things like we're being too needy or maybe too selfish, or even worse, we look at the Bible and we say, well, God's promised this, and so I shouldn't have to pray for it. But we look at Daniel. And God had promised to take his people home after 70 years. But what does Daniel do? He starts pleading and asking God to take them home.

Now what is it? Why, why do we even pray there? If God is sovereign, if he's gonna do what he's promised to do, why even pray? And look, there's a divine mystery here. I will just say that there is tension. That there's tension that God is always sovereign, He is always going to come through on his on his promises, but there's also this real life thing that our prayers do matter and that God loves accomplishing his means through the prayers of his people. God loves accomplishing his means through the prayers of His people. And so even if God has promised something to you, peace that transcends all understanding, whatever it might be that you read and you're like, this is what I should be having, it's not an invitation to sit back and let God do His work. It's an invitation to lean in. To lean into it.

I, I love the quote. Now I would be more on the reformed side of things theologically, very open about that, but I love the quote that's pray like an Armenian and sleep like a Calvinist. And that's what I believe here, OK? Like I pray like it's all up to me and I sleep like it's all like up to God. And that's just kind of where I stand on that issue. I think that I have to pray things forward, and God loves to use my prayers to accomplish his means, but at the same time, I rest easy because I know that God is sovereign. And that's the tension that we have to walk in as Christians.

Another shift just from this verse in verse two that I want to point out is this, the second shift that we have is we pray from the poverty of our hearts, but Daniel is praying from the richness of God's word. What prompts Daniel's prayer? He's in his word, right? He's got the Bible open, he's reading Jeremiah, and it dawns on him. God, you've promised to bring us home. Would you bring us home, God? And it prompts him to pray that could he have said that prayer without reading Jeremiah first? Sure. But it came alive to him as he was reading in the scriptures, it just opened up God's life to him. He saw it, and this thing that we say at the prayer meeting all the time is this quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and he says this, the richness of the word of God ought to determine our prayer, not the poverty of our heart.

And so if you don't know what to pray, if you're looking for something to stoke the flames to get you going, I just recommend that you open your word and you open your word not to, OK, you can, if you're good, you can do this anywhere in the entire Bible. Leviticus, it's all, it's all good, OK? You can do it from anywhere. It takes a little bit more work, OK? But open it, if you're newer to this, I would open it to a New Testament passage or to a Psalm. And this is what I think that you have to do sometimes. It's like. The word is this water and your soul is like a teabag and you just have to steep in it for a minute. You just have to steep in it for a few minutes. So open it up, read the passage, read it again, ask God to bring a certain verse to life for you. And as you do that, don't be afraid to take anything that's coming into your mind to prayer. Allow it to take you to prayer to spur you forward. This is the way that the the scripture itself can move us to prayer. You need to steep in the passage like a bag of tea and hot water, and as you do that, God will show you what you need to pray.

Verse 3, let's continue, and before we haven't even gotten to Daniel's prayer yet, we're just looking at his posture before God, before he starts to pray. And it's this, the 3rd, the third verse is this. Then I turned my face to the Lord, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. There's Old Testament saints, they have a flair for the dramatic, don't they? What would we do? What would you do right now if someone came in here wearing a potato sack with ashes all over their face? I think that some of us might be calling the authorities because a crazy person obviously just walked into our church service, especially if they're wailing and crying. But here's what Daniel does, that we don't always do very well. And I think there is something to learn here, even if I think he might be a little bit more dramatic than what our modern culture does.

And this is #3. The third shift we can make is we seek God with our thoughts, but Daniel seek praise with his whole being. He allows the posture of his body and his life to reflect the posture of his soul. His soul is in a place of mourning, he realizes it's been nearly 70 years. I'm so sad at what I've missed. And so what does he do? It sends him into a mode of fasting. Of prayer, of wailing, of mourning. Daniel allows his physical self to reflect his soul. Now I think that one thing that we can learn from this, and as modern people, what does this look like? I think it looks a variety of different ways, and, and you can really kind of use your creativity to for what this looks like. I'm not gonna tell you exactly what this looks like. Some of you might have more of a flair for the dramatic, like if you're a drama club kid, like go for it, you know, but that, that wasn't me, you know.

But one thing that I think I can point out is that fasting oftentimes for Christians today. It's, we use it more like a hunger strike than the way that they used it in scripture, you know, when we really want something, we're like, well, I'm just gonna fast for it. And it's like, God, I'm not gonna eat again until you give me what I'm looking for. And it's like, well, that's not really the way the scripture describes fasting. What the way the scripture describes fasting almost always. Now there's a few other situations that the scripture does describe fasting, but usually, It is to allow your body to catch up with your soul. Now it's also weaning yourself from the things of the world, and I think it's depriving yourself of that and it's a good thing in that way.

But and as we do the practicing the wake course, we're going to talk about fasting over the next 8 weeks or so as we're going through this. But I think that one of the primary things for fasting is when you're in one of these points in life where you're in a period of mourning or a period of undecision, indecision, undecision, or crossroads moment in your life, and you're like, I need this is a serious moment. And I need to allow my body to catch up with my soul. I think fasting is one of the ways that we can do that as Christians, whether that be depriving ourselves for one meal or for a day or whatever that might look like, maybe longer for some of us, but I think that sometimes we need to allow our bodies to reflect the way that we're feeling on the inside so that we can seek the Lord with our whole being. If you're extra super holy, some of us, we, we might get down on our knees, and I think that's great. Maybe we lay prostrate before the Lord, whatever that needs to look like.

And here for Daniel, it's not necessarily I think that sometimes we don't wanna do this for show either. I think that if you aren't doing that in your own prayer closet at home, please don't come in here and do it, OK, as if you're just showing off. I've got no problem with people and whatever posture and worship. I, I don't care as long as you're like home life is reflecting. What you're doing here, that's great. But I just think that allowing ourselves to have a, a bodily posture, that's why sometimes I'll just raise, sometimes I'm not even feeling it. I'm just like, I need to feel this, and I, I'm gonna raise my hand so that my soul can catch up with my body and let let myself get there. And sometimes I do that in worship. I'm not telling you have to raise your hand. We tend to have the frozen chosen, quiet type of people here, but like, maybe, maybe you allow yourself to get there, OK?

Verse 4. I prayed to the Lord, my God, and made confessions saying, oh Lord, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love Him and keep His commandments. OK, I'm just gonna, we're, we're going to move through more of this prayer. It's gonna start moving more quickly, but I have to pause again here for one more observation, and it's this, the fourth one, our prayers are letters to God oftentimes. Dear God, help me with this and this. Thank you for this and this. But Daniel's prayers are worshipful conversation. And one of the ways that we know that is just the way that he talks to the Lord. And up until this point, chapter 9 of Daniel. We've known that Daniel believes in in a God, but the sacred name of God has not appeared anywhere in the book of Daniel until right here in chapter 9.

Now, when you know, the only way you can know the sacred word of God in most translations, some translations will spell it out, but in most translations, including the ESV, the sacred name of God was too sacred for the ancient people to say. So when they would come to the sacred name of God Yahweh, they would say Adonai, which is the, a different, a different way of saying Lord. It's not his name, but it's more just like Lord, like my lord, like the owner of a property would be a lord. And so, you know, think Downton Abbey language here, OK? So here is the first time that we see the covenant name of God spoken or written in the entire book of Daniel, and the way you can tell that is when you come to it and it has Lord and it's all caps, if you've ever wondered why it's all caps, that's when it's Yahweh as opposed to Adonai. So or in the New Testament it does it sometimes as well, but the Yahweh, Lord, all caps in that way.

And so, we see Daniel coming to God. And the first thing he does is he just praises God. He adores him. Verse 4, I prayed to the Lord my God who made confessions saying, Oh Lord, the great and awesome God who keeps his covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments. He's just praising who God is. Before he gets to any of his needs, before he gets to what he came to talk about, he's like, I'm gonna praise you for who you are. He starts with worship, and this is another thing that we say in the prayer meeting all the time, but if you've been given 10 minutes to pray. Your time is probably best spent spending the first 8 in worship. Because our prayers and our worship are two sides of the same coin. When we come to God, we want to know him as he is, and if you see God as he truly is, if you are relating with him. That will push your prayers forward so much more than anything else.

Our worship and our prayer are two sides of the same coin. And it's going to be almost impossible for you to connect with God, to pray, to seek Him, if you're not worshiping Him, if you're not seeing him as he truly is, because if you see him as he truly is, your first thought isn't, God help me, but it's like, God, praise be to you. You're an amazing creator. You're an amazing God who rules and reigns. There's this old acronym that many people use for prayer. You might have heard of this before. Acts. Have you guys heard of the Acts prayer? You see, Daniel almost followed the Acts prayer to a T. It's almost prescriptive, although it's not, because the Acts prayer stands for adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication. I'll use this in my prayer all the time. Almost always, I'm praying through a passage, I'm praying through the Acts prayer, or I'm praying through the Lord's prayer. That's almost That's almost 100% of my prayers are, are what I just told you. Where, where we go through that.

Now with Daniel, he goes through adoration, confession, he doesn't have much to be thankful for, and so he goes straight to supplication. It's like the, the ACS prayer. He doesn't have any of the tea in there. He's just acts with no tea. And that's OK. It's not prescriptive, and sometimes we don't have things that we can really praise God for. He's in that, that mood where he doesn't. The 5th thing that we see, but that's a shift from Daniel's prayer to our prayer, is this, we bargain with God according to our obedience. When Daniel's prayers are fueled by God's righteousness, not his own. So normally, if you want something from God, what do you do? If you want, if you want God to do something, if you really have a prayer that you would like God to answer, what do you do? You start bargaining, right? It's like, God, if you answer this prayer, I promise you I will be at church every week for the next year. Some of you might be here today because you've made that prayer, and you are so welcome. I'm so glad you're here. God, I promise, if you will answer this prayer, I will stop looking at pornography. I will stop spending so much time on my phone. God, I promise, if you will answer this prayer, I will start tithing. I promise, if you will answer this prayer, I will follow you in this or that. I will quit this, I will do that, whatever it might be. We bargain with God.

And it comes with this assumption that our obedience is driving God's faithfulness. Daniel does not found any of his prayer based upon his own obedience though. Daniel is saying, God answer my prayers because you are righteous. He spends the first half just confessing his sins, OK? He does start with confession. He, he starts with adoration, he goes straight into confession. He's confessing a sin. Listen to this, he just goes on and on. He waxes on eloquently about his sin. We have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled. How many different ways can you say that the same thing, Daniel? Turning aside from your commandments and rules, we have not listened to your servants, the prophets who spoke in the name, in your name to our kings, our princes. Our fathers and to all the people of the land. He goes on like this for a while. There's like several more verses where he is just confessing, confessing and confessing.

There's something good about confession in our heart. When we go before the Lord and we confess our sins, it allows us to be more honest and vulnerable with who he is. And honestly as a natural response to seeing him for who he is, you know that you have fallen short of that. It's a vital part of his prayer, but he does not base his appeal of God being faithful upon his own obedience. Never, not at all. He doesn't say, we will turn, we'll do better next time, God, just have, have mercy on us today. That's not what he says. He bases it on God's righteousness. It's super curious. This whole passage so interesting because he bases the reason why they're in exile upon God's righteousness. He says, God, you are righteous, and that's why we're in exile. And then two verses later, he says, God, you are righteous, so get us out of exile. How can it be? He says, You're righteous, that's why we're here. You're righteous, so send us home. It's like God's righteousness is fueling both of them.

Look, I'll read the verses to you, verse 14. Therefore, the Lord, the, the sacred name of God, therefore, Yahweh has kept ready the calamity and has brought it upon us, for the, the Lord Yahweh, our God is righteous in all the works that he has done, and we have not obeyed his voice. So God is righteous in everything he's done, so therefore we are in exile. We are distant from Him and out of our promised land. Now two verses later, verse 16. Oh Lord, according to all your righteous acts, let your anger and your wrath turn away from your city, Jerusalem, your holy hell, because of our sins. And for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and your people have become a byword among all those around us.

So he says, according to your righteous acts, let your anger and wrath be turned away. So which is it, which is it, Daniel? Is it that we deserve to be in exile? Or is it that we deserve to go home because of your righteousness, God? And it's both. It, it's like parenting, OK? Parenting is hard, for those of you who aren't parents yet, it's hard. Those of you who are parents, just let me get an amen. All right. and those, those of us who, who don't have kids or have kids, it's, our parents, they just, you know, they're making it up, OK? so, like more grace for our parents, hopefully through this process. But With parenting, If you have a child You have to show that child discipline. You have to show that child that there's lines that you don't cross. Children are looking for lines. And you want to, and you have to, as a parent, show them those lines and show them discipline. You have to show them that there are consequences to their behavior. Because if you don't show them any consequences to their behavior. You're an unloving parent. Because life has consequences, does it not? You have to show them the right way to behave before the Lord. It is the loving thing to do.

At the same time, if you were a parent you have to be willing to overlook and absorb some of your kids' stupidness and their sin. You have to, it can't be all discipline, or you're not loving. You're not a loving parent if all you do is show them law, law, law, it has to be law and grace, and as a parent you can't be a loving parent unless you show them these strong lines. This is a line you do not cross or there will be consequences. At the same time you cross the line and guess what? I still love you. And you're still my child, and it's OK, I'll take the, I'll take the, the, the suffering on that one, child. You know, I'll, I'll forgive you and move past it. You have to be willing to eat some of it as a parent.

And that's what, that's what God does for us and, and that's what he's saying to be right, to be righteous means that you both show discipline and mercy. And how does God do that? How can a God be just yet at the same time merciful? And the way that our God has done it, is by sending his one and only Son to bear the penalty on our behalf so that he's fully just all the time, that that our disobedience has led to a consequence, and the consequence of sin is death, but Jesus Christ, our God Himself has bore that for us. And because Jesus bore the penalty of sin, we get to receive mercy. So you see, God is able to be right. All the time through mercy and justice for us. So Daniel bases his appeal on what he wants, not upon his obedience, but on God's righteousness. So when we go to God in prayer, we ask for the things that will bring God glory and are that are based upon his righteousness. Do this for me, God, because of your righteousness.

Which leads us perfectly to the last point, which is number 6. We often pray for things. That will just make us happy or great. Daniel's prayers focus on what will make God happy and great. Again, I think any prayer is no prayer is better than no prayer at all. Jesus tells us to go before him and ask for whatever we want, and if we ask for something that's not good, that God just won't give it to us, because our God is like a good father who has, who what good father would give his child a stone when he asked for bread, or God's not gonna give. is something that's bad for us. You can go to God with anything, ask him for anything. It doesn't mean you're gonna get everything, but you can go to him for anything.

But the prayers that are most effective, and the ones that he takes most delight in, are the ones that are focused on what would bring him glory. What would bring God glory the most? And if what would bring him glory is you not getting the answer to that prayer, that's what he's gonna do. Because he is worthy of all the glory. Daniel has this really God-focused prayer. Verse 17, just check this out. How many times are our prayers like this? Now, therefore, oh our God, listen to the prayer of your servant, and to his pleas for mercy, and for your sake, oh Lord, make your face to shine upon your sanctuary, which is desolate. For your sake, God. Make your face shine here. For your own sake, make your face shine upon your sanctuary, which is desolate. Deliver us. We want you to answer our prayers for your name, for your glory.

Verse 18. 0 my God, incline your ear in here. Open your eyes and see our desolations in the city that is called by your name, for we do not present our pleas before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great mercy. Daniel wants what is best for God. He's praying this God-centered prayer. This is what I want, because it would bring you glory, and you are worthy of that. And so I'm just gonna end like this. What Can you seek from God that would make God happy? What would make God happy in your life? What can you pray? Not just what can you change? I'm like, what, what God sent her prayers? Do you need to bring? Cause we oftentimes come to God seeking our own happiness, and I think that God is most, he wants us to be happy, but he wants us to be happy in Him.

As we delight ourselves in the Lord, he gives us the desires of our heart. He makes us happy. So how can your prayer shift to be about God's glory and his happiness? As we, as we're just about to turn to worship God and as I said, our, our prayers begin with worship. I want to give you an opportunity. To seek God. I wanna give you an opportunity to pray for just a moment. And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put all 6 of the points about the prayer shift up here. And I'm just going to take a moment and let's just pray through these things. I just want to give you an opportunity to seek the Lord, and then we're going to turn to God in worship and communion, OK? So let's just take one moment. Everybody, if you would like to bow your heads, if you'd like to close your eyes, whatever posture makes sense. If you want to go on your knees, you're welcome to. But, just take a deep breath.

We hesitate to ask God for things. What are you hesitating to ask God for? Go ahead and ask him. Be bold We pray from the poverty of our hearts, when Daniel prays from the riches of God's word. Ask God to bring a scripture to mind. A word of assurance, a word of comfort, maybe it's the only scripture you have memorized. Maybe he's just calling you to open your Bible, but take a moment to ask him to bring a promise or a scripture to your mind. We seek God with our thoughts, but Daniel prays with this whole being. What steps do you need to take to better allow your. Physical posture to reflect your your spiritual posture. We write these letters to God in our prayers, but Daniel's prayer is a worshipful conversation. Maybe you just need to say hello to God. Maybe it's been a long time since you just said hi, here I am. Your child I'm willing to listen. I'm willing to receive. I'm willing to change.

We bargain with God. According to our own obedience, but Daniel's prayers are fueled with God's righteousness. Would you confess your disobedience to him, but also to confess what you're trying to be moralistic to say, if I do the right thing that God will reward me. Would you confess, where you've fallen short, but, but also just knowing that it's his righteousness that he answers prayers, not your, not your faithfulness. Lastly, we pray for things that. Will make us happier or great, but Daniel's prayers focus on what will make God happier great. So would you go before the Lord and ask him, God, would you, would you show me your glory, would you show me how to live in accordance with you.

Or maybe you just have a big God-centered prayer. For me this week, as I've been praying this, I, one thing that I've been praying is that God would build his church, and then God reveals that, you know, some of that's based upon me wanting to build myself up. As a pastor, those, those are really, so it's like good ambitions, but like my own selfishness getting in the way. Where is your selfishness getting in the way? How can you pursue the Lord? Maybe you're even afraid to ask God, this God-centered thing. I think some of us come to God and we're like, oh, if I put that before him, he's gonna do it. I just want to give you the courage that you will not regret that. You will not regret him doing. In your life. So just lay it before him.

We're gonna turn in worship and I want us to take a moment, you can continue to seek the Lord wherever you are. We're gonna, we're gonna sing a song. You can, you can seek Him. But each week we're invited to the table to enjoy the presence of God, which is what we do in prayer, enjoying the presence of God. We come to a communion table. And this is Christ's body being broken on our behalf and his blood being shed on our behalf. It represents this beautiful reality of God's love for us, not because we deserve it, but because he's given it to us. And if you're a Christian here today, I invite you to the table to experience God's presence in a tangible kind of way. I'm gonna invite us to stand if you'd like, if you're willing or able and invite the band to come back up and I'll pray for us as we continue in, in this moment of worship.

Father, we want to be people that seek you, who seek change, who seek your righteousness. God, we pray that you would give us big God-centered prayers, that this church would just be full of these prayers that want your name above all things. And would you lead us, God? Would this church be for you? Would we be seeking your name and your glory? Father, thank you for this. The wisdom that we have and the way that your servant Daniel went before us and and taught us to pray and would we seek your glory in a similar kind of way and would you bring us back from our own personal exiles as we confess our sin and seek who you are? We ask these things in Christ's name, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about Daniel’s crazy dreams from Daniel 7-8. The scripture reading today was read for us in Mandarin. Discussion points: It’s likely that the beasts Daniel saw represented ancient empires, Daniel saw Jesus as both God and man being given dominion over the whole world, Jesus claimed the title Son of Man many times in the gospels.

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Scripture reader: [Daniel 7:13-14, read for us in Mandarin] I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: All right, we are in the middle of a series on the Book of Daniel. Good morning, everyone. My name's Fletcher. I'm the lead pastor here. we're in the middle of a series on the Book of Daniel, and the Book of Daniel is really a great book. The 1st 6 chapters, awesome stories in every children's Bible. The last 7 chapters, the weirdest stuff that you're gonna find anywhere in the Bible. It is just bizarre and welcome to Bizarro world. OK, we're there, we're gonna be camped out there for a few weeks now.

This week, you know, sometimes you buy the Bible is 66 different books. There's lots of different genres in those 66. It's a very unique, work of literature given that it is a collection of many different authors writing in different genres in the Bible. Bible you have some awesome works of of the law. You have these gospel biographies of who Jesus is. You have these letters written to churches. You have some amazing poetry. You have one book full of semi-erotic love poetry. People love it when I say semi erotic from the pulpit, just I see everyone like, uh, my pastor said erotic. You, you have like some amazing proverbs in there, and then you just have the really weird stuff that's like a weird dream that Daniel had and he wrote down.

I mean, do you have, do you ever have weird dreams? I have weird dreams. I wake up, I'm eating my cereal. I'm telling my family about my dream and about halfway through my dream I'm like, this doesn't make any sense. It did when while I was sleeping, but now it doesn't, but it left an impression on me. And so Daniel, he writes down his dreams and unlike your dreams, his dreams have been read by millions of people across the world, across different religions and interpreted by many, many, many millions of people over the years. His dreams have a meaning. And they are important for us today.

So we're going to dive into this dream. We looked at that central character of the Son of man in our scripture reading, but I'm just going to start at the beginning of Daniel's dream and walk our way through it. Are you guys ready to walk through the weird stuff? And Daniel, let's go, weirdness. All right. Daniel chapter 7. Daniel chapter 7 does act as a hinge book. OK, as I said, there's a hinge chapter. There's 13 chapters in Daniel. Daniel 7, right in the middle of the book, it is also the last chapter that's in Aramaic. If you've been here this whole series, half of Daniel's written in Aramaic chapters 2 through 7 are written in Aramaic, and that was just a, a literary device that the author was using to help show that this is a book for many different nations and ethnicities, but also it's just kind of an interesting literary device that he used. He was an artsy writer, like an 824 director.

And he has this one chapter. It's still in Aramaic, but we've switched tone. OK. The first six chapters are kind of narrative. This one no longer narrative. So it's like the rest of the book is visions and the previous parts of the book was mainly Aramaic, and this one's coming. Both, so it's the central heart of the book, and in fact I would tell you that Daniel chapter 7 is one of the most important chapters in the entire Bible. If you want to understand who Jesus is, you have to understand this chapter. I never really saw that until this week, as I was reading it, and then. All of the gospels came to life in a new kind of way, as I was reading it. I knew some of this stuff. I did go to seminary, OK, for a long time, but. I had never seen it like this.

If you want to understand who Jesus thinks he is. You have to understand this chapter. You have to, you have to understand Daniel's dream. There's no other way for you to understand what Jesus is talking about many of the times when he's referring to who he is and what he's come to do. It's so important that we get this, and it's so weird, and we're going to enjoy it. OK, verse one, before it gets too weird.

In the year of Belshazzar, king of Babylon, Daniel saw a dream and visions of his head as he lay in his bed. Then he wrote the dream and told the sum of the matter. Daniel declared, we'll stop right there. First of all, the first thing you might notice, as I said, the author of Daniel, this like a 24 director, he's skipping around all over the place. We've got time, we've got a time jump, OK? We've seen all kind well he's changed point of views. He told a whole story from Nebuchadnezzar's point of view. Now we have a time jump, and it's not a jump forward, but it's a jump backward. And so we, we come here, we've already been in Darius the Mede, who is the of the Persian, the Medo-Persian Empire. Now we're going back to Belshazzar, who was the last king of the Babylonian Empire. So this is about 10 years prior to last week's passage. Daniel's still an old man, but maybe not quite as old as what he was when he was, hanging out with the lions as God closed their mouth.

So that's what's going on. Then we have this really bizarre dream, and Daniel declared, I saw in my vision. By night and and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up in the great sea, and 4 great beasts came out of the sea different from one another. The first was like a lion and had eagle's wings. Then as I looked, its wings were plucked off and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on 2 ft like a man, and the mind of a man was given to it. And behold another beast, a second one, like a bear. It was raised up on one side. It had 3 ribs in its mouth between. Its teeth and it was told arise, devour much flesh. I told you guys it's weird.

After this I looked and behold another like a leopard, not quite a leopard, but kind of like a leopard with four wings on with four wings of a bird on its back, and the beast had 4 heads and dominion was given to it. And this I saw on the night visions and behold, a 4th beast, terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth. It devoured and broken pieces and stamped what was left for its feet. It was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had 10 horns. I considered the horns, and behold, there came up among them another horn, a little one, before which 3 of the first horns were plucked up by the roots, and behold, in this horn were eyes of the eyes of a man and a mouth speaking great things.

Weird stuff. OK, so if you follow that, you know, it's just like this weird dream. He's got this dream of 4 beasts coming out of a great sea. One of them, I'll, I'll just recap. One of them is like a lion, and it has wings like an eagle. The second one is like a bear and it has 3 ribs in its mouth. The third one's like a leopard, but it's got 4 wings like a bird and 4 heads also. And then the final one, it's not like any animal. It's beyond what we can even describe as an animal. He said all he had to say about that one is that it was terrifying, more terrifying than all the other ones, and it had iron teeth. There's nothing more terrifying than iron teeth, OK? That is really something, and it had 10 horns, OK? Don't think trumpets, think like goat horns and 10 horns growing out of its head, horns always represent kind of kings in the biblical standpoint, and one of them is this little horn that pokes up and the little horn has a lot of things to say and won't shut his mouth. Saying incredible things.

That's the dream. Now, as I said, it's more like a nightmare. And many millions of people have weighed into this. You have people giving all kinds of interpretations for this book, and many people looking into every little detail. Does anyone have an uncle on Facebook who has talked about these things and tried to equate them with modern day life? Most of us do, many, many of us do. And I think that this dream is kind of best read and thought about like we might think about. The TV show Lost. Was anybody there in the early 2000s back when I was cool, you know, and we had this TV show that was just, it, it rocked the world. It was called Lost anyone, yes, a few, a few of you have watched Lost. It was like Severance, but 20 years ago, OK, if anybody's into that show that that just started yesterday.

So Lost, lots of mystery. Lots of details, lots of like what is happening here, and people try to interpret every little detail on Lost, and I think that they kind of missed the forest for the trees at at times, you know, wondering about all the characters in every little detail and sure maybe the authors didn't do as great of a job of Daniel. OK, Daniel didn't make any mistakes. The authors of Lost certainly made some mistakes along the way. They were learning. But if you watch that TV show, I think there's a right way to watch that TV show, and that's don't get wrapped up in every little detail look for the overall picture.

And that's what we're gonna do today, OK? I'm gonna make a few presumptuous interpretive moves. I'm gonna tell you what I think, but I'm telling you. Millions of people have read this. There have been scholars that come down in different places than me on a lot of these things. And so if you disagree, that's probably fine, but hopefully the general thrust of what's going to happen in this chapter remains the same. So let's talk about what it means, what does it mean? Daniel chapter 7. I think on one level the beasts do represent something specific that has happened in history, and then on the other level it's meant to show us something true for all peoples at all times.

So let's talk about the thing that's specific first. I think that God is giving Daniel this vision, this dream to understand some specific events in world history. It's a word of prophecy. And you oftentimes see empires represented by animals, do you not? What United States, if you want to represent the United States, you just throw a bald eagle into a cartoon. Everybody understands that's the United States. If you throw a bear into the cartoon, that's Russia. If you throw a dragon into the cartoon, that's China. There's some animals that are instantly relatable to the nation, and with this one, the lion, almost no scholars disagree. That the lion was representing Babylon, that's like where all the scholars agree because the lion was the national emblem of Babylon. And so we, we know that to be true.

Did you know that Benjamin Franklin, I've heard this at least. Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national image of the United States, but the other founding fathers like vetoed the idea because they were like, it's not ferocious and intimidating enough, and I have this to say. They did not meet the urban turkeys of Somerville. Those urban turkeys, they are merciless. They look at you like you owe them rent. And they will chase you down the street. I am of a different opinion than the founding fathers. I think we should have put it on our flag to scare people to say we have turkeys, stay away. The second beast is meant to represent the Persian-Medo Empire.

OK, this is where I'm getting a little presumptuous, but I'm gonna just tell you how I see these things, and, and scholars do disagree in some places, but I think that most scholars believe this. The second beast is meant to represent the Persian meadow empire. And with this empire represented by a large bear, it's an empire that devoured other empires to become the greatest empire in the history of the world at the time. Hence, he has three ribs in his mouth. He's just devoured other empires and the the Medo-Persian Empire was actually a combination of three different empires that were kind of, consumed by the the Persians at the time and the, the Medo-Persian Empire.

The third beast, I think, represents the Greek Empire. It's a leopard. What do we know about leopards? They're fast, right? And so it's got these wings and it's this fast thing, and I think it represents the Greek Empire, Alexander the Great, anyone who took over the world in about 30 years' time, just took it over super quickly, and then it said it has. Four heads and again a little bit presumptuous. I don't wanna make points where there aren't points, but history tells us that whenever Alexander died, he didn't have an heir and so the kingdom was split into 4 different groups and so that could be representing that. I don't know that for sure, but I think it is representing the Greek Empire and the final empire would be Rome.

Rome is a beast unlike any of the others. At that point, no one had ever seen anything like Rome before, just as this beast was indescribable to Daniel. He had no way to describe it, and the only way that he describes it is he says it trampled everything under its feet. And isn't that what Rome did? where it came and stamped the Roman way of life everywhere it went, defeated all of its enemies. Rome was a beast, unlike anything the world had ever seen before. And that's the basic idea of the beast, OK? That's the basic idea of what Daniel saw at the time. What happens next?

Verse 9. As I looked, thrones were placed in the ancient of days took his seat. His clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool. His throne was fiery flames and its wheel was burning fire. A stream of fire issued and came out from him before him. A thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him. The court sat in judgment and the books were open.

OK, so it goes straight from this, this, this vision of these beasts and this little horn talking, which is certainly some mouthy leader at the time. And then it starts talking about the ancient days. And this ancient of days character is meant to be obviously a deity. This is obviously God. It's not meaning like old, it's meaning like before the days were created, ancient of days has. It the it and you can tell Daniel is just looking for words to describe what he's like. Basically it's it's like so glorious you can't, he can't even describe it and I love the way he says and there were thousands standing before him and thousands times ten thousands, just an unimaginable amount of people standing before and he serves as a judge and he has a throne.

And then I love what happened. Verse 11. I looked then because of the sound of the great words that the horn was speaking, and as I looked, the beast was killed and its body destroyed and given over to be burned with fire. It's like the horn is just talking and talking and then it's dead. Like there's no like end of speech at. I did a nerd Alert last week, Nerd Alert part two, OK, Lord of the Rings version here at the at the in the third movie book, the mouth of Sauron, it comes out and starts talking and then Aragorn it's just talking and talking. Aragorn just walks over there and chops off its head. End of story. We're not listening to your talking anymore and that's kind of what's happening here is the Ancient of Days just isn't putting up with this little horn that's talking. Weird stuff, but it's still powerful and and gets the, the point across.

Then we're introduced, and this is the most important part, in my opinion. One of the most important passages in all the Bible to this character called the Son of Man. And he just starts talking about the son of man, verse 13, I think I have this one for you, yeah. Verse 13, he said, I saw on the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven, there came one like a son of man. And he came to the ancient of days and was presented before him, and to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away and his kingdom, one that shall not be destroyed.

Now this is really interesting because we have the ancient of days who is certainly God, and then we have another character who seems like man, but also is portrayed as God. And he's given dominion, and all peoples of all tribes and tongues shall worship him. He is given a kingdom that will not be destroyed. He has a dominion, that's an everlasting dominion. Well, who is that? Who came along as a son of man during the Roman Empire to turn the world upside down? To knock down the kingdoms of this world. Though they didn't even realize it. Who was enthroned in a place of humility. Whose cross was where he was crowned, but as Jesus himself.

And in fact, not only do Christians understand Jesus to be this Daniel chapter 7 son of man. But that's who Jesus understood himself to be. Make no bones about it. This is Jesus's favorite nickname for himself. As I've read the Bible, and I've read it several times, I've all, many times, I know that this is alluding to Daniel chapter 7. I've known that for a long time. I haven't always known that. For the first several years of my life, I would read Son of Man and think, well, that's talking about his human side. You know Jesus is 100% God, he's 100% human, he's the son of God. He's the son of man. But no, that is not what Jesus means when he says I am the son of man. Jesus is clearly referring to Daniel chapter 7, and this, this, this being who takes this place with the ancient of days, who is God, but yet also a man.

A few of my favorite times that Jesus said that he's the son of man, and even like in the Gospels, almost 90 times in the book of Matthew, so just one gospel, 27 times, Jesus claims to be the Son of man. There's no doubt about it. Matthew 9 chapter 6. This is him claiming to be the Son of man for sure. He says, but that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. He then said to the paralytic, Rise, pick up your bed, and go home. Jesus is saying, the Son of Man has authority, and then what does he do? Has authority to forgive sins, and then what does he do? He forgives the man's sins and tells him to go home, claiming to be the son of man, that's. Matthew chapter 24, he says, then will appear in heaven the sign of the son of the man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. There is no doubt he is thinking in his mind, Daniel chapter 7. This character, the son of man riding on the clouds.

Then we reach a climax in all of the gospels. When Jesus is arrested and he's brought before the high priest. Now of all the people in Israel who would know Daniel chapter 7, it would be the high priest. The high priest is the most highly trained, highly respected religious official in the entire nation. It is almost certain with 99.8% accuracy here that the high priest has. All of Daniel memorized. Like Daniel chapter 7, he's just got it. He knows it. And so they bring Jesus to the high priest and the high priest says, is it true? Are you the Son of God, the Messiah?

Now I've heard people often say that Jesus never claimed to be God. He never claimed to be the Christ, and I have this to say, that's just because you are biblically illiterate that you would make that claim, because if you know your Bible as the high priest did, you would see that he does it right here, because the high priest says. I drew Matthew chapter 26, verse 63 through 68. Jesus remained silent, and the high priest said to him, I drew you by the living God. Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God. And Jesus said to him, you have said so. Such a Jesus answer, but I tell you, from now on, you will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven. Mike drop, no doubt who Jesus is referring to. No doubt who Jesus is claiming to be. It's as if Jesus is saying, you might think I'm the one on trial here. But at the end, I'm going to be judging you.

And Jesus continues, and he says, then, verse 65, look at what the high priest says. The high priest tore his robes and says he's uttered blasphemy. What further witnesses do you need? You have now heard his blasphemy. What is your judgment? It's obvious he knows what Jesus is saying. We miss it because we don't know our Bibles well enough often, but he, the high priest, there's no missing it. He knows it. They answered, he deserves death. Then they spit in his face and struck him, and some slapped him saying, prophesy to us, you Christ. Who is it that struck you? There's no doubt who Jesus understands himself to be. There's no way that a first century Jew could understand Jesus's claims as anything short of Messianic. He is absolutely claiming to be the Christ.

Jesus is the Son of man. The promised Messiah who would conquer the beast of the kingdoms of this world and reigned throughout all of eternity. He is the true son of man. He is who Adam never lived up to be. God created Adam to be a co-regent, to rule the world. He gave Adam dominion and authority. He said, rule the world, have dominion here. But what did Adam do? He chose sin and selfishness. And as so he became like a beast. He chose to have dominion with sin. And ever since then, all of us, if we're really honest, have a bit of this beast-like character in us. Where we don't just want to rule the world on behalf of God, we want to rule the world for ourselves. We want the world to submit to us and our will in the way we want life.

But Jesus is the true man, the true Adam, who came to rule the world but without sin. Who was victorious over sin, Satan, and death, who died the death that we deserve to die because of the way that we have beastly, in a beastly way ruled, the way that we have sought for ourselves. And as a result, we get to have life with him because of what the Son of Man has done for us, we get to be co-heirs with him once again. He restores our humanity and the beastly parts of us get to be said no to, and we follow after the true Adam, the true and better Adam, the true son of man, the one who actually follows the way of God.

And so for us as believers today, I think that what Jesus is calling us to do is to be His kingdom representative. He represents a greater kingdom. And he has called us to be the light of his kingdom to bring peace and mercy to be his coworker, should you, should you say, to reign in the world with justice with mercy, with forgiveness, with love, with kindness, with patience, with endurance. That we would stand firm, not letting the evil days and the beasts surround us. Overtake us. But that we would be emissaries of the kingdom of God. That is the Christian profession, not just in the future but today.

And Jesus tells us this. He says it, OK, when he's talking about the Son of Man, Matthew chapter 19, check it out. He says this, Jesus said to them, truly I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne. You who have followed me will also sit on 12 thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel. What he's saying is if you follow after me. You will be a co-worker with me. You will reign alongside of me, but in righteousness, mercy, and goodness.

What does this look like for us today to be a co-worker with God? I can think of no better example than the man we are going to celebrate tomorrow. Martin Luther King Junior. Now, I get emotional about Martin Luther King Junior because I think that what he did was not in his own strength, but I see a man fulfilling his calling to serve the Lord. It always makes me emotional, especially in a secular place like Somerville that basically says like, hey, religion has no value, and I'm like, well, why do we have a holiday for a, a religious man like this? Why do we have a day where we celebrate a man who was a pastor first, and always.

You see, I look at I'm OK and I I've had this conversation with my kids so many times where it's like. And I guess if you had a holiday devoted to someone of your profession, you might feel similarly, but um. But like, isn't it, isn't it cool that in our secular world we take one day a year to celebrate a pasture. Like, isn't that awesome? And they're like, Sure, dad. But it's just really powerful because I really see what he did as as not just being doing the right thing, but as someone who wants to follow Jesus to what it really means to follow Jesus, to stand up for what is right, not just because it's what's right, but because of what it means to follow after Christ.

I just want to end the sermon with a lengthy quote from the Doctor King. And I think it's one of its most powerful and in honor of Martin Luther King Day, I would encourage you to go and read this entire, this entire message that I'm going to quote from. It's called Letters from a letter from a Birmingham jail if you've never. Read it before. And I hope you do. Here's what he has to say, and it won't be anywhere near as good as he, how he would say it.

Human progress never rolls on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God. And without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively in the knowledge that the time is always right to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

He goes on to say, There was a time when the church was very powerful. In the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days, the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion, it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being disturbers of peace. And outside the agitators. But the Christians, they pressed on in the conviction that they were a colony of heaven called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God intoxicated to be astronomically intimidated. By their effort and example, they brought an end to such such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial conquests. These things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often is an arch defender of the status quo, far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are.

May we be half the man that we're called to be. Half the people that were called to be. And being co-workers with God. And seeing Doctor King's vision continue into a new generation. We cannot think that his work is done because he wasn't working just for civil rights. It's great that we achieved so many civil rights that the work there obviously isn't done. We see racial injustice in our world. We still see prejudices in our world, but also the work isn't done because there's so much other injustices, so many other things that we must continue. To pray forward, to fight against, fight for. And to strive to see the world flourish.

And we can only do it with the help of the Son of Man, the Ancient of Days. The triune God, the Holy Spirit. Friends, you, if you aren't a follower of Jesus today, I implore you. If you want to make a difference in the world, I think it's the best way. Also, I implore you that it is that if he is the son of man, as we've said, you are in danger if you don't follow after him. He is the true and living God. And if that's a true thing, shouldn't your heart go after that? Shouldn't you submit yourself to that? And so you have opportunity today, as always, to, to trust and follow him.

As we conclude, I just want to read one more passage that talks about the that talks about the son of man just to to bring it full circle. Revelation chapter one. Revelation and Daniel, they're like cousins, OK? Revelation is like the New Testament version of Daniel, and it's equally weird in many places. Revelation chapter 1 the kind of refers, makes all these references to what we see happening in Daniel's dream. I just think it's beautiful.

Chapter 1 verse 5. And from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the first born of the dead and the ruler of kings on earth, to Him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Behold. He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Daniel 6 about Daniel facing the lion’s den. Discussion points: Daniel continued the same spiritual practices he had been establishing for years before, Daniel’s faithfulness influenced the king to make God’s name known throughout the world, God does not promise us safety and prosperity because of our faithfulness to him.

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Scripture reader: [Daniel 6:16-23] Then the king commanded, and Daniel was brought and cast into the den of lions. The king declared to Daniel, "May your God, whom you serve continually, deliver you." And the stone was brought and laid on the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet and with the signet of his lords, that nothing might be changed concerning Daniel. Then the king went to his palace and spent the night fasting. No diversions were brought to him, and sleep fled from him.

Then at break of day the king arose and went in haste to the den of lions. As he came near to the den where Daniel was, he cried out in a tone of anguish. The king declared to Daniel, "O Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to deliver you from the lions?" Then Daniel said to the king, "O king, live forever. My God sent his angel and shut the lion's mouths, and they have not harmed me because I was found blameless before him, and also before you, O king, I have done no harm."

Then the king was exceedingly glad and commanded that Daniel be taken up out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den and no kind of harm was found on him because he had trusted in his God.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: Good morning. It's good to see everybody today. My name is Fletcher. I'm the lead pastor for the church. It's a joy to be able to be with you and be able to walk through God's word, alongside you this morning. So today we find ourselves and Daniel continuing our series on the book of Daniel, and it's been a great series. I don't really wanna waste much time. I have, a lot that's to talk about today.

This is a wonderful passage. What a classic. If you grew up in the church, you certainly grew up. Hearing about Daniel and the lion's den, it is the story that I have read the most over the past 10 years as I have 3 children, and every children's Bible includes a Daniel in the lion's den story. So, lots of time to meditate on this passage and think about it and bring God's word for you today. Let's just dive in. I just want to walk through it all. This whole series of Daniel is teaching us how to be a religious minority in a secular society. And that's the whole idea of what's happening, how you can be a religious minority and thrive as that religious minority as people of God, and, and carry out the message of God and live the way of God in a society that seems against that in every kind of way, and many at many times seems really anti-faith or anti what we believe in God.

And so let's dive in verse one. It pleased Darius to set, OK, let's just stop right there. You don't get very far sometimes when we, when we start these passages. Darius, This is a guy named Darius the Mead and Daniel is this crazy book. It's only, you know, 12 chapters long, but it spans 80 years, 70, 80 years of history and in chapter one we see the nation of Israel taken over by the Babylonians and then they're sent on exile and so they take many of the Israelite people and move them to a foreign nation hundreds of miles away to live in exile there. It's a way of oppression. It's a way to make sure that the Babylonians stay on top.

If you move people to an area where they don't speak natively the language and everything feels foreign, it's a way to oppress them. And so now actually what we've seen happen is the nation of Babylon gone. It's gone. OK, the last king, Belshazzar, he was partying until he wasn't, and then that night, his his life left him, and he, was taken over by the Persian meadow. Empire and so that's where we find ourselves today.

Darius is a new king, but it's the same old story for Daniel. Daniel has been in leadership in the nation for, for years and years now. This is roughly 60 years after the events of chapter one. A lot of time has passed for our boy Daniel, and our boy is now 80 years old, so he's an old man walking around there. He's at least 80, he's around that age. He was a young strapping gentleman when Nebuchadnezzar became king. No one is calling Daniel a handsome man anymore. You don't see that happening. Anymore he's just an old dude. He's an old fart and as you'll see, he is quite an old fart. I think that that is a theme that goes throughout this entire passage here.

But OK, so let's dive back in. It pleased Darius to set over the kingdom 120 satraps to be throughout the whole kingdom. And over them 3 high officials, of whom Daniel was one to whom these satraps should give an account so that the king might suffer no loss. Now the Medo-Persian Empire was the largest empire in the history of the world at this point in this area, at least. To these people who lived in the Meadow Persian Empire, there was no other world. These people were like the kings of the world. It stretched from Egypt all the way to India and so for these people, they would never travel out of that area and to them that was the world. This guy is like the king of the world.

And when you're the king of the world in that sense, there there's obviously people that are living in other places of the world, but the lack of communication technology, they don't really know about what's going on. And so, but when you're living in that sense with that kind of power. You're going to need some governors that are working. You can't rule everything. You can't make every decision. And so that's what these satraps are. Satrap is an ancient Persian governor and so we had 120 governors to be throughout the whole kingdom, and he had 3 high officials who were kind of supervising the governors. So I guess you would have 40 satraps that sat under you as a as a high official, and and Daniel was one of them.

Verse 3. Then this Daniel became distinguished above all the other high officials and satraps because an excellent spirit was with him, was in him, and the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom and so Daniel had favor with the king. It's another day, another king still, he has favor with the king and the king wants to set him above all the other satraps, basically wants to make him #2 in charge, or essentially the prime minister. He wants to make him the guy who's running the things that happened in the entire kingdom, wants to make him kind of like the king. Because he has this excellent spirit, the spirit of excellence, he's faithful.

Verse 4, then the high officials in the satraps sought to find a ground for complaint against Daniel with regard to the kingdom. Now what is it about human nature that anytime someone is like kind of lifted up high, we just wanna knock them down a couple of rungs. Does that happen to you sometimes, you know, you see someone, you're like, you get a little too big for your britches over there, buddy. Let's. I'll give you a little cut down. There's just something about that. We don't know why the satraps and the high officials are against Daniel, but we just know that whether it be jealousy or just this human nature to like knock someone down when they're up, they don't like him much. Maybe it's because he's a foreigner, he doesn't represent everything that they represent who knows what's going on there.

But they're looking for a reason to file a complaint, but check this out, but they could find no ground for complaint or any fault because he was faithful, and no error was found in him. So it's like they went and they did the all the all the background research it's like the FBI, you know, I don't know if you ever gotten a call from someone that's trying to get a job with the FBI it's like they're doing all their homework. It's like they got TMZ out there with cameras looking for them trying to get the paparazzi to catch them in the act of something evil, and they just can. Yeah, Daniel is this rare person who it says is he was faithful and no error or fault was found in him.

And what that means, it doesn't mean he's completely innocent, but it means that he's a faithful dude. It means that he is not only a good dude, but he's good at his job. How often do you find someone that's both of those things? OK? Lots of us work with people that are good at their jobs, and lots of us know people that are good dudes or good people, but you know, they don't always go together, but for Daniel, they did, they went together. And so verse 5, they scheme a trap for Daniel.

Verse 5, these men said, we shall not find any ground for complaining against this Daniel, unless we find it in connection with the law of God. So they see his weakness, they see his Achilles heel. They know if we can find something dealing with his religion, he's so devout, so committed to his God, and that's different than the rest of us. So that is the way that we can take him out. And so they devised a scheme, here it is, verse 6.

Then these high officials and satraps came by agreement to the king and said to him, OK, you just gotta see, these guys are kind of suck ups as they go, OK? So the voice just comes out. I've read this story a lot of times in children's books. You just gonna have to go with it. I'm sorry. Oh, King Darius, live forever. All the high officials of the kingdom, the prefects and the satraps and the counselors and the governors are agreed that the king should establish an ordinance and enforce an injunction that whoever makes petition to any god or man for 30 days, except you, O king, of course, shall be cast into the den of lions.

So, what are they doing? They're, they're appealing to the king's own ego. And using political strategy to trap Daniel. It's a good political strategy. any nation that's been established at this point, that lasted a long time had a national religion. And so they say, you, your kingdom, it spans all these different religions. Why don't you make a national religion just for 30 days? You can almost think about it like a fast. Fast from your religions gives ultimate allegiance to the king for 30 days, and it'll bring us all together, King. And don't you see, then your name would be lifted up, you would be made much of.

Now, if the king had done his history lessons, he would know that just 60 years earlier, there was another king in this exact same place with the same counselor, Daniel, who tried the same thing, Nebuchadnezzar. He set up a a statue of himself and said, if no one bows, if, if you bow down to the statue, you get to live. If you do not bow down to the statue into the fiery furnace, you go, and that's the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego that we did from Daniel chapter 3. And so Daniel chapter 6 is kind of like a parallel passage this time with lions. And so we have the, the king who's falling prey to this trap. And check out what happens.

Verse 10. When Daniel knew that the document had been signed. He went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber. Open toward Jerusalem. He got down on his knees 3 times a day. And prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously. There's a few things to notice here, OK? First, Daniel knows what's happened. He's not oblivious to the law that's been signed. He's in a position of authority, and it says right there, verse 10, when Daniel knew that the document had been signed. But yet, Daniel still goes to his window and gets down on his knees to pray. It's a 30 day prohibition on public prayer. That's basically what's happening. A 30-day prohibition on public prayer. And Daniel will not follow it. He says, I've been praying in this window for years. I'm going to continue to pray in this window for years.

It's kind of like an old fart, as I said. He refuses to change, and you might be looking at this and thinking, Daniel. What's the big deal, dude? OK. 30 days, just take a 30 day fast from praying, man. I don't know what to tell you. Like, like, how many of us can really say that if we gave up our prayer habits for 30 days, we would really notice all that much. I mean, it's not Like we have the the greatest prayer rhythms all the time, but Daniel said, no, I will commit myself to pray as I have before. OK, Daniel, you're gonna pray, just don't pray in the window, dude. Like, just go, just go sit in your closet or something and, and pray there. You don't need to make it a public spectacle.

But you have to see it from Daniel's point of view. He's been praying in this window for years and years, and that's the whole nature of the trap. So what does it say about Daniel and his faith in God if he refuses to pray in the window now if he's prayed in this window for years and years, dozens of years, more than likely, and then all of a sudden the, the king issues an an edict saying no one prays to me. No one prays except to me. And look, they know that Daniel's gonna do this. Daniel says, what does it say? It says that he's compromised if he doesn't pray in the window. It says he's giving in to the government. It says that he's following the king and not his God. And he knows that's not the way that he's gonna roll. He can't do that.

And so I just like to imagine all these satraps and governors that want to trap him. He, they're all like standing outside his window knowing that it's almost going to strike noon that he's going to come and kneel in front of that window and they're just waiting for it to happen so that they can catch him. It's almost as if he knows he's going to get caught and he does not care. There might be a sense of him that's a bit curmudgeony, OK? Sometimes old men just, have you ever tried to change an old man's mind? Like it's, it's nearly impossible.

My grandfather, I love him. He is 88 years old. He retired from teaching. He taught, university, at our the local university taught human, AMP for years and years. He retired from teaching 25 years ago because they told him he was going to have to enter his grades on a computer. My grandfather has never used a computer. My grandfather never will use a computer. He's the last generation that's, he's like, I'm not touching that thing. I retire. I quit. You can't convince an old guy sometimes to do something different.

And so, here we have Daniel. He's like, you know what? They're just gonna have to kill me. I'm gonna pray in that window. That's what I'm, I've been doing it, I'm gonna do it. So, he goes and makes his way to the window. If you observe chapter 3, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are punished, and they're sent to the fiery furnace for what they refuse to do. They refuse to bow down to the statue. Daniel, on the other hand, is sent to the lion's den for what he refuses to stop doing. He refuses to stop praying.

Verse 11. These men came by agreement and found Daniel making petition and plea before his God. Like I said, I just imagined them waiting out the outside the window. Daniel knows they're there. Everybody knows what's happening. Everybody but the king, though. The king is clueless to this. Remember, the king likes Daniel. He wants to make Daniel the prime minister of the entire land. And so the guys, they have to, these guys are trying to trap Daniel, they have to kind of make it sound like it's the king's idea. That's how you talk to a king.

So verse 12. Then they came near and said before the king concerning the injunction, O king. Did you not sign an injunction? Did you not sign an injunction that anyone who makes petition to any god or man within 30 days except you, O king, shall be cast into the den of the lions? The king answered and said, The thing stands fast according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which cannot be revoked. Then they answered and said before the king, Daniel, who is one of the exiles from Judah - as if he doesn't know who Daniel is - pays no attention to you, King, or the injunction that you have signed, but makes his petition 3 times a day. they got him, they got him. The king doesn't want to do this, but he's kind of caught in a catch 22. He has to uphold the law.

Verse 14. Then the king, when he heard these words, was much distressed in his mind to deliver and set his mind to deliver Daniel, and he labored till the sun went down to rescue him. The king does not want to send Daniel. He's thinking about it. He's brainstorming. He's trying to figure out how can I get out of this mess, but there is no way to get out of it. He has signed the, the edict. Daniel has disobeyed it to the lion's den, he must go. The king has to uphold the law. Verse 16. Then the king commanded, actually, verse 15 is really funny. I'm gonna read that. I, let me make sure I don't miss this.

Then the, these men came by agreement to the king and said to the king after he had been up all night trying to think of how to get the king out, how to get Daniel out of it. No, a king, that it's the law of the means and Persians that no injunction or ordinance that the king established can be changed. Thanks guys, thanks.

Alright, verse 16. Then the king commanded, and Daniel was brought and cast into the den of lions. The king declared to Daniel, may your God, whom you serve continually deliver you. So though it was brought tears to his eyes, he throws his friend into the den of lions. You just seeing, uh, Darius and Daniel as friends. And Darius is probably an old man also. They probably do old man things together like get McDonald's coffee and sit around or something like that. He throws them into the den of lions, and the king answered and said, the thing, oh wait, no, wrong, wrong verse, hold on.

They throw him into the den of lions, verse 17, and a stone was brought and laid on the mouth of the den. And the king sealed it with his own signet, and the signet of his lords, that nothing might be changed concerning Daniel. Then the king went into his palace and spent the night fasting. No diversions were brought to him, and sleep fled from him, so he's up all night worried. About Daniel, he knows that there's a chance because Daniel is always served who he believed, who Daniel obviously believes to be the one true God and the king knows that if Daniel's right that it is the one true God that there's a chance that he could be delivered but you know, he's not banking on it.

Also, when I, this is kind of like side note, when every time I read this passage, I always think about Jabba the Hut and the rancor. I don't know if you're a nerd, but if you're a nerd that connects with you, and if not, I'll just continue, OK.

This was called a a trial by ordeal. And it was a popular way to torture people and to kill them, to to do the to do the death penalty in the ancient society. Basically a tribal ordeal said we're gonna put you in a situation, you should not live it. You should not live through it, we're gonna burn you, we're going to drown you, whatever it might be, we're going to throw you to the lions. But if for some reason you can live through it, we consider that to be divine interference. And you're free to go. You're obviously in innocent. God has freed you. So, if you can live through this crazy act that we're gonna do, this trial by ordeal, you're innocent, you're free to go. So that's what's going on here. It's a trial by ordeal.

Verse 19. Then at day, at the break of day. The king arose and went in haste to the den of lions, and as he came near to the den, I love how the author just, he just pulls all this out. The author could have told us what happened in the den already, but we get it from the king's point of view. As the king goes to the den, he, he cries out, he pulls away the stone, he cries out in there in a tone of anguish, the king declared to Daniel, Oh, Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually been able to deliver you from the lions. Then Daniel said to the king, O king, live forever. My God sent his angel and shut the mouths of the lions, and they have not harmed me because I was found blameless before him, and also before you, O king, I have done no harm.

He's proven innocent. He survived. God sent an angel to shut the mouths of the lions. They did not harm him. The trap backfires. In fact, it backfires strong and in pure like biblical ironic form in this brutal society, the men who tried to trap Daniel were thrown into the lion's den. Themselves and it says that their bones were immediately broken. They were found to be guilty when Daniel was found to be guiltless, not only them but in this ancient society, and this is just kind of brutal, they were thrown into the lion's den with their whole families. Everyone was thrown into the lion's den.

Now, sometimes you just. Had to take a sidebar to say everything and you read your Bible, you shouldn't imitate, OK? Just because it's in your Bible, you imitate it. We're not gonna throw, we're not gonna punish people's entire families in the lion's den because the Bible says to do that. Obviously, sometimes the Bible's just descriptive, not prescriptive. It's not saying endorsing that. Verse 25, just, just in case you were wondering if the Bible endorses, you know, murder by lions for entire families, no.

Verse 25, the then King Darius wrote to all the peoples, nations and languages that dwell on the earth, in all the earth. Because to them at this point, it is all the earth, it's everyone that they can think of. Peace be multiplied to you. I make a decree that in all my royal dominion, people are to tremble and fear before the God of Daniel, for he is a living God, enduring forever. His kingdom shall never be destroyed, and his dominion shall be to the end. He delivers and rescues. He works signs and wonders in heaven and on earth. He who has saved Daniel from the power of the lions. So this Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian.

I just want you to see how Daniel, this one man's obedience and faithfulness, led to this letter being written to all the peoples of the world. That Daniel's God is the one true God, and that they should fear him, love him, serve him. It's kind of an amazing reality and many scholars, when you get to this last verse, OK, this is gonna get a little heady for just a moment. Just go with me for a minute. When you get to this last verse and it says, so this Daniel prospered during the reign of King Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian, many scholars interpret that to say, not and the reign of Cyrus. But that is the reign of Cyrus the Persian, because we don't actually have a good historical reliable record for this Darius the Mede. We don't know exactly who he is from like an extra biblical point of view.

And so many scholars actually say that this Darius the Mede is also Cyrus the Persian, who we know had Medo maternal side and so maybe he's kind of making a secret who the king is until he gets to the ends and then he's dropping the bomb. We're not exactly sure, but if it is Cyrus the Persian, which historically would be like significant it would matter, even though many of us were not ancient historians and so it doesn't matter to us. But if it is, then we need to connect 2 Chronicles chapter 36. I love when the Bible just connects things, OK? This is the last verse in the Hebrew Bible. Chronicles goes at the end of the Hebrew Bible. It's kind of a retelling of everything that happened in ancient Israel.

And you get to this, and you realize what how influential Daniel is. I mean, this really kind of magnifies it a bit more, because it says now in the first year of Cyrus, King of Persia. That the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled. The Lord stirred up in the spirit of Cyrus, King of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and, and also put it in writing. Thus says, King Cyrus of Persia, the Lord, the God of heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may the Lord his God be with him. Let him go up.

Isn't this amazing? That God would use Daniel. Regardless of this Cyrus and and here are the same person, it doesn't really matter, but he did use the acts of Daniel. To influence the kings to serve the one true God. And not only that, but Cyrus is sending the people of Israel back home because potentially the acts of Daniel of acts of God through Daniel and his faithfulness he's saying, OK, you can go back home. I've seen the faithfulness and the reality of who the true God is not only are they being sent home, they're being endorsed to go home by the king, it's really an amazing amazing thing that we see happen here.

Isn't it amazing that God could use one man's faithfulness to release his entire people's freedom to give all of them their freedom using Daniel's faithfulness in that way. An amazing reality. Now, I just want to take the rest of the brief amount of time that we have left, this morning, and I just want to try to take it and apply it to our lives. How do you take the story of Daniel and apply it to your life? And I, I, the main, there's kind of two different things, but the main thing that I wanna say is this, that Spiritual practices, regular spiritual practices, unlock spiritual power.

Back when I was growing up in the, in the late 1900s, we had this thing, called a WWJD bracelet. So anybody familiar with the WWJD bracelet? Are they still around? Anybody got one on? If you've got one on. We've got one. Yes, WWJD lives. OK. I had one, I wore it all the time. It in case you're. Out of the loop WWJD stands for what would Jesus do? right? I should've let you say that. I wore it all through high school and the idea is this, that you're in any particular situation and you just look down and you're like, oh my friends want me to do this, what would Jesus do? Alright, I'm gonna do this, you know, it's a way to stand firm against temptation and the thing, the, the heart of it is really good. It's a, it's a good thing you to look at your bracelet and be reminded.

And in some ways, I'm kind of glad it's fallen out of primary fashion, you know, back in the 90s, like 3. percent of us would have had one on. I'm kind of glad it's fallen out of primary fashion because, well, I still respect it and love it. the reality is I can't do everything that Jesus did. Like the wine ran out of the party. What would Jesus do? Oh, bring over some water. my, my friends just left me while I was taking a nap, but now they're on the boat, they're halfway across. What would Jesus do? I'm just gonna walk on that water. Let's go.

Now, sometimes you can't do the things that Jesus did. And so it's, it's not helpful always. But we all love the idea of it. I want to make decisions like what Jesus would make. As a follower of Jesus, I want to follow Jesus. I want to make these big important decisions. I want to live my life to glorify Him. I want to love my enemies. I want to offer forgiveness to those who don't deserve it. I want to refuse temptation. I want to lay down my life for for others. But the problem is, that very few of us, though, we want to have the spiritual power and those moments to resist temptation. To be filled with the Holy Spirit. Very few of us want to live the day to day reality of following the way that Jesus lived. You have to live the way of Jesus if you want to make decisions like Jesus.

Let me give you another illustration here. I love basketball. I watch so much basketball. I'm a huge Memphis Grizzlies fan. The Grizzlies moved to Memphis, my hometown, when I was 15 years old, and I just started watching all, you know, I became a fan immediately, but then they got good like maybe 12 years ago. Grit and Grind Grizzlies, Tony Allen, Marc Gasol, Zach Randolph, Mike Conley. I can name all the other ones, but I'll let you off the hook on that, um. And I just watched all their games. I would say over the past 10 years that I've probably, there's 82 regular season Grizzlies games. I probably watch like 70 of them every year. Stop judging me. You guys watch TV too, OK? I see that judgmental air, but it's like you, I'm listening to podcasts. I watch YouTube videos, all that stuff. It, it's like, a hobby, OK. I, I like the look here I got something for you. Grizzly socks, OK. I, I, I am a Grizzlies fan. I watch a lot of basketball.

But just because I've watched a lot of basketball. Does not mean I'm ready to check in to the game. I've been a spectator, maybe even a student at times, but I've never practiced basketball. As you can see, any CoaH church retreat that we go to when we start playing basketball is like Flesher's never done this before, obviously. And that is How we oftentimes treat our faith. We're a spectator to the faith, sometimes we're a student, but how often are we practicing our faith? Do we get in there and we live as Jesus lived, that we practice the things that Jesus practiced. How many of us are a spectator to the way of Jesus, but have never practiced it.

I know people that want to have the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit, the mountain top, high experiences, and the moments of glory, but they're not willing to follow Jesus from the day to day in their regular habits. I love this quote by Dallas Willard. We cannot behave on the spot as he did and taught if in the rest of our time, we live as everybody else does. GK Chesterton, put it this way: Christianity has not so much been tried and found wanting, as it has been found difficult and left untried.

The way of Jesus is one of continual denial of self. It's of communing with God, fellowshipping with Him, remembering Him, and all that we do, and practicing the habits of grace that Jesus practiced, things like solitude, Sabbath. Things like prayer, like fasting. These are all just regular prac practices in the way of Jesus. So what should we do? Well, first of all, if you're here, I just wanna commend you. One of the practices of Jesus was to go to the temple regularly. You see Jesus going to the temple, and you are here, and this is a practice of the Christian faith. How many Christians have given up on the church as a means of grace in their life? And I'm so thankful that you are making that step to be here. So that's, that's huge. That is the first step. I'm proud of you.

But I will also encourage you, Jesus lived in community with a small group of people of followers that he was involved deeply. They were involved deeply into each other's lives, and that's what we're trying to do with our community groups. It's had this small group of Christians, they are deeply involved in one another's lives that can pray for one another, support one another. Our community groups are not perfect, but we're working on it, and we're working toward Jesus together.

And one thing that our community groups are going to be doing this next semester is we're going to be going through a course called Practicing the Way, by a pastor in Portland named John Mark Comer. I don't think he lives there anymore, but he's associated permanently with Portland, by vibe and by location, um. And this practicing the way course, it's like an 8 week course we'll do it sometime over the next 12 weeks. Our community groups, you know, you're gonna have some breaks in there as your group leaders deem, but over the next 12 weeks we'll be going through this practicing the way course. So if you want to consider practicing the way of Jesus, like, maybe that's just a great next step for you is to hop into one of these community groups and to participate in this course alongside everybody, the, the, the other members of our church. It's something that we're all doing together.

Maybe for you, you can start incorporating some of the spiritual practices in your life. I can recommend books if you want to read books on spiritual practices. Maybe you just wanna do what Daniel did and take 3 times a day and get on your knees. Next to a window if that window happens to face east, you know, whatever, he was looking at Jerusalem. A lot of authors have made too much out of that. He was looking toward Jerusalem just because he's trying to remember that Babylon's not my home. I'm in a position of power now. I have luxury. Babylon's not my home. I'm looking back to my home, which is Jerusalem for us, we would look toward heaven. We'd say, I want to be with God. Anyways, that's, that's side note, but we. Maybe you just need to take a few moments of prayer.

I got this little devotional a few months ago, that has two devotions per day, and it's like a page each each one, and it's just been so good. Like halfway through the day I feel restless, like, oh I got so much to get done or maybe I feel tired. I just like read another page, it reorients my heart. I'm back with God, it's great. It's also where this whole co-working idea came from as I was working on this sermon this week. one of the ideas with the coworking space is that living out your secular job but with a community of faith and fellowship, it's good for ideas. There's lots of good things about coworking, it's good for mental health, all that type of stuff.

But also I would love to just host kind of like a 10 minute prayer session 3 times a day where maybe we ring the church bells, maybe I get like a little ding bell to to ring in there or something like that. but I would love to just have like a little, little devotion, a little prayer time at like 8:50, noon, and maybe like 4:30 before people start heading home. And of course if you do come, you don't have to participate in that if you're like in the zone or in, in a meeting or something, of course, but that that's just an idea is that we shape our lives to have regular reminders that we are not our own, but we belong to God. How can you shape your life to have a regular reminder? That's the whole idea of the practices. Have a regular reminder that you are not your own, but you, you belong to God.

Now, I would be remiss if I ended the sermon right here, and many sermons have been ended right here, and they've been ended with this application. If you are faithful, like Daniel was faithful. Then you can face the lions in your life, and God will shut their mouths too. You'll be kept safe. But that is not the message of Daniel. Hebrews 12, anyone? Have you read Hebrews 12? Hebrews 12 goes through a hall of faith is what it says. You get people, God doing great thing after great thing, and then it gets there, and it says, Some were mocked, some were imprisoned, some were tortured, some were stoned, some were sawn in two, yet the world was not worthy of them.

And so in no way is God promising to you believer that if you are just faithful like Daniel's faithful, that you too will be spared from the lions whenever it comes. Terrible things could happen. To you for being faithful to the word of God. In no way does God promise to protect us from harm like he did, Daniel, if we simply pray 3 times a day. Yes, you should pray, but ultimately, Daniel doesn't point us to ourselves, telling us to be like Jesus, but points us to something greater, which is Jesus himself. That Jesus is the greater Daniel. That like Daniel, Jesus was innocent, but he was even more innocent, more truly innocent than Daniel was. That like Daniel, Jesus was also accused by a mob, and then trapped by a political leader who did not really want to sentence him to death, but yet he was sentenced to death anyway.

Like Daniel before him, Jesus was sentenced to death and thrown in a tomb, and had a stone rolled over on top of it. And like Daniel before him, when the stone was rolled away, Jesus walked out of the tomb. Victorious over death. You see, Daniel doesn't tell us to be more like him. It says, there's one that's coming. Who will through his faithfulness, will set all of his people free. That you and I, we're not free because we have walked out of the tomb, but because Jesus did, just as the Israel the lights were not set free because of what they had done, but because Daniel's faithfulness before them allowed them to go home.

You and I are free to go home because Jesus' faithfulness on our behalf. This is the gospel, that you'll never be good enough, no matter how much you practice these spiritual practices. But that Jesus has done it for us. And ultimately though the spiritual practices help us to walk the way of Jesus and have spiritual power, I do think that the practices unlock the power that we have. Ultimately, Jesus is the one who has done it all for us, and Daniel points us to that. That his death has set us free from our captivity to sin and death. Amen.

Each week we have a sacred meal where we're reminded of this. And we're reminded that Christ's body was broken for us, and his blood was shed for us. And with the sacred meal, the, we do it to be reminded of what Christ has done for us. If you're a believer with us today. We invite you to come and receive this, be reminded of what Christ has done for you. Examine yourself, where are you failing to follow Jesus? And this is an opportunity for you to re-evaluate your life and say, I want to follow Jesus anew. But ultimately Jesus has done all the work. So I'm gonna invite you all to stand and invite the band back up here to to lead us in a couple of closing songs as we respond to God this morning and his his good news.

Father, our hearts are full. The grace of Jesus this morning, we just thank you for, this message from Daniel. God, we pray that you would give us ambition to follow after you always, that you would help us to, to practice the way of Jesus, but also just give us an eye to see the Christ who's gone before us. God, help us to worship him. Father, we pray that you would lay our lives on the firm foundation that is Christ and help us to build on nothing else other than Him. And Father, would we be a light and salt in our community? Would we be people that shine your good news, and God, would you help us to, to see what Jesus has done for us once again today. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Daniel 5 about King Belshazzar and the writing on the wall. Discussion points: Belshazzar glorified himself and God humbled him, facing our mortality should affect the decisions we make and how we spend our time, only the kingdom of God will last past this mortal life.

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Scripture reader: [Daniel 5:1-12] King Belshazzar made a great feast for a thousand of his lords and drank wine in front of the thousand. Belshazzar, when he tasted the wine, commanded that the vessels of gold and of silver that Nebuchadnezzar, his father, had taken out of the temple in Jerusalem be brought, that the kings and his lords, his wives and his concubines might drink from them. Then they brought in the golden vessels that had been taken out of the temple, the house of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines drank from them. They drank wine and praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone.

Immediately the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall of the king's palace opposite the lampstand. And the king saw the hand as it wrote. Then the king's color changed, and his thoughts alarmed him. His limbs gave way and his knees knocked together. The king called loudly to bring in the enchanters, the Chaldeans, and the astrologers. The king declared to the wise men of Babylon, "Whoever reads this writing and shows me its interpretation shall be clothed in purple and have a chain of gold around his neck and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom."

Then all the king's wise men came in. They, but they could not read the writing or make known to the king the interpretation. Then King Belshazzar was greatly alarmed and his color changed and the and his lords were perplexed. The queen, because of the words of the king and his lords, came into the banqueting hall, and the queen declared, "O king, live forever. Let not your thoughts alarm you or your color change. There is a man in your kingdom in whom is the spirit of the holy gods. In the days of your father, light and understanding and wisdom like the wisdom of the gods were found in him. And King Nebuchadnezzar, your father, your father the king, made him chief of the magicians, enchanters, Chaldeans, and astrologers, because an excellent spirit, knowledge and understanding to interpret dreams, explain riddles and solve problems were found in this Daniel, whom the king named Belteshazzar. Now let Daniel be called and he will show the interpretation."

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: Happy New Year. if you're anything like us, the new year has been, slow to get started for the Lang family, we always take the week between Christmas and New Year's completely off full hibernation mode. We're going dormant and this year was unlike any other because I was the only one in the Lang household that did not catch a terrible cold. And so everybody else in my house, we woke up, you know, Christmas Eve was great. We were here, hope you were here too if you were around. Christmas Eve was fantastic. We all went home, woke up the next morning. We're opening presents. Megan looked half dead on the couch as all the children were opening presents. So after the kids got done opening their gifts, she went to bed and then I didn't see her again until 5 p.m. and I came in there and I was like, would you like some dinner? And she said, What time is it? And I told her it was 5. She could not believe it. It just the day had gone completely away from us.

So I cooked Christmas dinner, by myself, which is the first time I've ever cooked. Christmas dinner in my entire life and we had like a nice spiral cut ham and some mashed potatoes. The only problem was after I served it to everyone, no one was hungry except for me. So there I am alone with 10 pounds of mashed potatoes just hammering it, you know, just, just going for it. I was living my best life with the mashed potatoes and for the next week, basically, because that's what I had to eat for the rest of the, the, the holiday break. And if you're anything like me, the holiday break. It kind of comes to an abrupt ending, right? It's like January 2nd, you're expected to function as a full human being that hasn't been eating mashed potatoes for the past seven days. And I just wasn't ready for it.

I don't know if you were ready for it coming back to work after the holiday break, it was, it was a little tough, and that's a little bit how I feel coming back to the book of Daniel now. All right, we've had 4 weeks where we've been in Advent, we did the short series on witnesses. To the birth of Christ and now we're back to the book of Daniel which we started way back when sometime in November, October something like that, but it's a joy to be back in Daniel and Daniel is a wonderful book with a timely message for us. But to get you a little caught up, I think, I think we need to prime the pumps a little bit. I think we need to get everybody back up into the story, the where we were before we took the break, before the holiday.

So I created just a a little brief, this is not. Bible project worthy artwork or anything, but I created a brief summary of what we've done in Daniel so far to catch you up. OK, so I'm just gonna give you a quick synopsis of where we are, and then we're gonna jump into chapter 5, OK? Because if you were like me, you don't remember anything that happened earlier in the book. I preached it all and I was still like, what happens in that chapter? I had to go back and look some things up and remind myself. So, let's, let's walk through there here.

Chapter one. The events of Daniel, they're taking place before chapter one, just to set the, the, the scene. The events of Daniel are taking place 605 BC, the nation of Babylon conquers Israel. They take the Israeli people, the Israelite people out of Israel, and they remove them into Babylon. And the reason why they would do this was an ancient form of a. Oppression they would move them out of their home nation so that they would be foreigners and that they could could control the nation that they had conquered. And so the people of Israel are brought out of the land of Israel and into Babylon, where they're in exile. And while they're in Babylon, we get the story of four young men in Babylon. And one of them is Daniel, then he has 3 friends, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. You may know them from VeggieTales fame.

So the first chapter is Daniel being pressured to compromise and to convert to Babylonian life through isolation, indoctrination, provision and re-identification. He's given a new name, Belteshazzar, and he is asked to eat the things that the that the Babylonians eat and instead Daniel says, no, let me eat what I want to eat, and he ends up being stronger as a result because of God's power through that. So that happens in chapter one.

And then in the whole book of Daniel we have this interesting thing where the first chapters written in Hebrew and then chapters 2 through 7 are written in Aramaic, which was the, the language kind of the the lingua franca of the day it was the common, the most common language in the entire region, but it's an interesting choice for the author to write the book in two different languages. I mean, just imagine you pick up a book and then in chapter 2 it switches from English into French. It would be a little bit difficult. Most of us. And so here we have an Aramaic section that is starting here in chapter 2, and what you have in the Aramaic section is a lot of symmetry. You have 3 chapters and then you have 3 other chapters that kind of correspond to it. So I just want to point this out to you because it's so interesting.

Chapter 2 is Daniel interpreting the dream of Nebuchadnezzar. All the earthly kingdoms, this is what the dream basically means that all earthly kingdoms will fall. But only the kingdom of God will endure forever. We did that one the week of the election. It was a great time. I was very nervous about that. Chapter 3, we have the fiery furnace. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, refuse to allow their faith to be co-opted for political gain, and so they're thrown into a fiery furnace, where they are seen with a 4th person in the fire, and they are delivered by God.

Chapter 4. This is the last sermon that we went over. Nebuchadnezzar becomes a beast. Daniel interprets the second dream by Nebuchadnezzar. This time he actually remembers his dream. The first time Nebuchadnezzar is like, I want you to interpret my dream and I want you to tell me what my dream is, which was a difficult. Ask for those around him, but this time Nebuchadnezzar remembers his dream, and Daniel interprets his dream, and King Nebuchadnezzar is humbled. He becomes, he, he becomes a beast for 7 years, literally, he goes and lives in the wilderness and eats like a beast and grows his hair out long and his fingernails out long, and he, he becomes this really humbled figure, and then his sanity is restored, and he comes back to rule as king. And it is this lesson that God will humble the proud, but give grace to the humble.

Chapter 5, where we are today. I'm gonna go ahead and go all the way through the book so that you know where we're going. chapter 5, the king is humbled Part 2. Belshazzar sees writing on the wall, and Daniel interprets the vision of Belshazzar, and he's brought down. Chapter 6. This is Daniel and the lions' den. It's fiery furnace part two, this time with lions. It's, basically the a very similar story, but with lions this time. And then chapter 7, we have crazy dreams part two.

So you see there's, there's some symmetry between, the first chapter, the last chapter, the second chapter, and, the, the 3rd chapter and the 6th chapter of the. chapter in the 5th chapter with two kings being humbled and then chapter 7 this time dream, Daniel's doing the dreaming and that's what ends the Aramaic section. So we'll do chapter 7 in 2 weeks and we'll keep on going. Then we have, back to a Hebrew section.

I'll just show you the whole overview here. Chapter 1, it's in, in Hebrew, we already talked about that. Chapters 2 through 7, that's the main story. Of the book of Daniel, and it's how they survive and thrive in exile. And then chapters 8 through 12 are all of these crazy apocalyptic visions, which is gonna be really interesting for us to dive into, but it's back in Hebrew, and we, we finished the book with Daniel's prayer and his visions and everything that goes with that. So that's where we're going. All right, quick overview. Everybody's caught up. We're ready to dive into chapter 5. Let's go. All right.

Chapter 5, verse 1, let's go. King Belshazzar made a great feast for a thousand of his lords and drank wine in front of the thousand. Alright, just a couple things here before we dive too deep into here. Who, first of all, who's this King Belshazzar? Wasn't Nebuchadnezzar the king? In fact, chapter 4, it ends. If you look, if you have your Bibles open, chapter 4 ends with, now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the king of heaven, for all his works are right and his ways are just, and those who walk in pride he is able to humble. Chapter 5. Next word. King Belshazzar made a great feast for a thousand. That is an abrupt change. It's not just an abrupt change in characters, an abrupt change in voice. We went from, Nebuchadnezzar speaking in first person back to the third person narrative story that we have in Daniel chapter 5, and this is just all Daniel is just a very kind of artsy book of the Bible. He changed his voice, he changed his perspective.

Here we have King Belshazzar. Couple of things to note about him. His name sounds really familiar if you remember in chapter one, Daniel was given a new name and his name is Belteshazzar. You gotta get that tough in there, OK? So Daniel's, Babylonian name is Belteshazzar. This is Belshazzar. They mean very similar things. I'm not a master at ancient names, but from what I understand, Belshazzar means, may Bel, the god of Babylonia of Babylon, may he protect the king. And then Belteshazzar, it either means may Bel, the god of Babylon of Babylon, protect his life or it means, may the lady of Bel protect the king. So very similar names, whatever it is, it's very similar names.

And in verse two, we're told that Nebuchadnezzar is the father of Belshazzar. I'm not gonna bore you with all the details here. We have lots of extrabiblical act of extrabiblical information. In fact, we didn't know who Belshazzar was until not that long ago, but the from some extra things that we found that aren't included in the Bible, we've learned that Belshazzar is actually. Probably not the literal son of Nebuchadnezzar, but in ancient days, they didn't have words for like grandfather, they didn't use it. It's basically saying he is a direct, in the direct lineage of Nebuchadnezzar. He's probably a generation or two removed from from Nebuchadnezzar. And what most scholars think is that, he was, his father was a man named Nabonidus, with whom he shared a co-regency during the closing years of the Babylonian monarchy, and, so he's, he's basically serving as the king, but he's kind of like the party boy prince while his dad, the, the, the king is off somewhere else doing something else.

And so we have Belshazzar, and he is throwing a party. That's what we know about Belshazzar, and that's the important thing to know is that he's king at this time, and he likes to party. He's got a thousand of his lords, the most important men in the entire empire, right in front of him, probably with members of their family. And he's like, you guys are here to see me drink wine, and I'm good at it. So you guys check this out. Could you imagine the type of power that he was drunk off of to bring that many people together to drink wine for their entertainment.

Verse 2, Belshazzar, when he tasted the wine, he commanded that the vessels of gold and of silver that Nebuchadnezzar, his father had taken out of the temple in Jerusalem, be brought, that the king and his lords, his wives and his concubines might drink from them. Now you don't need a PhD in the Old Testament to know that this is a very bad idea. He is taking the sacred items from the temple, and he is using them to get drunk in his own party for his own pleasure, for his own pride. God will not be mocked. This is blasphemous. What he is doing here.

Verse 4, they drink wine and praise the gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone. To take God's sacred items and to praise the gods have created things such as this. And in fact, if we look at those words, they're, they're pretty familiar to us, because if you could think back to chapter one, Nebuchadnezzar had a dream of a statue that was made out of what? Gold, silver, bronze, iron, clay, and then a stone came from heaven and crushed it. And so here, there's a little bit of foreshadowing that's happening, where the author is saying, hey, you remember that dream from chapter one, and how this this guy was made out of these things, and he was brought down. Belshazzar is about to be brought down.

Verse 5. Immediately, the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall of the king's palace opposite the lampstand. And the king saw the hand as it wrote. You may have heard the phrase, the writing was on the wall. And you probably have friends that have said that and have no idea that that comes from the Bible. The idea of the writing on the wall is that Belshazzar saw this writing on the wall. He did not know how to interpret it, but he should have known that the end is nigh. And so he sees kind of a a dismembered hand floating in the air, writing on the wall, and it has a message for him, and he doesn't understand the message, he just knows that it's bad.

Verse 6, then the color, the king's color changed. Have you ever met someone whose color changed? Usually when they're embarrassed, but if someone is really afraid. Their color changes, and his thoughts alarmed him, his limbs gave way, his knees started knocking together. He's been living a secular life. Ignoring God, ignoring the fact that he would die one day, and all of a sudden he is snapped out of his secular drunkenness, and he's brought back to a a sobriety that tells him that life is temporary and fleeting.

And so at that moment, he calls in what it says, the wise men. Now, if you were here during Advent, you know that more than likely, these are the same class of, scholars that visited Jesus as a young child, the wise men in the Advent story, but he calls in his wise men, the magi. To help him to understand what these words mean. But none of the wise men are able to read the writing or interpret it for Daniel. For Daniel, for, for Belshazzar.

But then the queen comes in, and so the queen is introduced, and we know from hearing earlier that his that Belshazzar's wives and his concubines are already at this feast, and so we are led to assume that this is probably not one of his wives, but this is the queen mother. This is the queen queen, the real queen, as he's serving as the party prince, this is the queen, and his mom walks in, and his mom has things to say. And she says this, "There is a man in your kingdom in whom is the spirit of the holy gods. In the days of your father, light and understanding and wisdom like the wisdom of the gods were found in him. And King Nebuchadnezzar, your father, your father, the king, made him chief of the magicians, enchanters, Chaldeans, and astrologers, because an excellent spirit, knowledge, and understanding to interpret dreams, explain riddles, and solve problems were found in this Daniel, whom the king named Belteshazzar. Now let Daniel be called, and he will show the interpretation."

Now, it's interesting because at this point, Daniel should have already been called. If he was made the chief of the wise men, of the magi, of the interpreters, the astrologers, and all of those people, wouldn't he have already come to the king to interpret these things? No, but he hasn't. Daniel has obviously had a demotion under Belteshazzar. I bet he was harsh in the vibes of the party prince. And so Daniel comes before Belteshazzar, Belshazzar. And Belshazzar says, Daniel, if you can tell me what these words mean, you will live like a king. Riches beyond what you can imagine. And Daniel responds by saying, keep your riches. I don't care about that stuff, but I'll tell you what it means.

And then he recounts the story of Nebuchadnezzar. Who was prideful. And who God brought low. Like a beast in the field. But yet he humbled himself. And his power was restored. And then Daniel applies the same lesson that Nebuchadnezzar had to learn to Belshazzar, verse 22. And you, his son Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, though you knew all of this. But you have lifted up yourself against the Lord of heaven. And the vessels of his house have been brought in before you. And you and your lords, your wives, your lords, your wives and your concubines have drunk wine from them. What were you thinking? Read between the lines, that's what Daniel's saying. What were you thinking? Why have you been so prideful?

And so here's what the writing on the wall says. Verse 25, and this is the writing that was inscribed, Mene Mene Tekel Parsin. Now when When Belshazzar looks at this, he probably interprets it as nouns, seeing it, and what you would think it means is, a mene mene, that's a unit of measurement. A tekel is like a portion of that unit of measurement, and a parsin is like a smaller portion even of that. And so, he's looking at that and he doesn't understand what that means even though he knows it's bad, but in Hebrew and in Aramaic, it's really kind of interesting in the written form, even today in modern Hebrew, there is, there are usually not vowels included unless you're teaching it to someone. You write the language with just the consonants and the vowels in Hebrew are like little marks above and to the sides of the vowel of the consonants. So they're not like full letters in the way that we have letters in our language. It's just a very different language.

And so in Aramaic, it's the same thing. You have a word written, and then there's like little vowels and. With this writing on the wall, likelihood there are no vowels on there. And so there's some openness to interpretation. You have to kind of have context clues to understand what the language means when you're reading it. It makes sense to them, not to me. If you speak another language that's like not a Western language, you probably understand this a little bit since there's so much differences between the ways that languages are communicated. And so Daniel says you're reading it all wrong. This is what it means.

Verse 26, Mene. God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end. Mene means number, if you change it to change the vowels to mean to be verbs, the words mean numbered, numbered, weighed, and divided instead of unit of measurement, unit of measurement, smaller unit of measurements, smaller unit of measurement. So numbered numbered, weighed and divided. So he says, Mene, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end. Tekel, you've been weighed in the balances and found wanting. And Peres, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.

At that moment, Belshazzar, he knew that his days were numbered. He knew that it was all over, but he still lived up to his word. He gave Daniel purple clothes to wear, the sign of royalty, very expensive in that day, gave him gold jewelry, got him all the drip going and everything, and he became a ruler in the kingdom, but the, the story ends with a strong warning, verse 30. That very night, Belshazzar, the Chaldean king, was killed, and Darius the Mead received the kingdom. Of being about 62 years old. So Belshazzar, he partied until he dropped, and we don't really know what killed Belshazzar. It could have just been a sudden act of God. It could have been, and many interpreters do see it this way, as actually the entire city of Babylon is actually being sieged under under siege during this entire party. But the walls of Babylon are so strong. If you remember Nebuchadnezzar, very powerful, had 2, 2 lanes of walls, very strong. They had lots of food, and he was so prideful though, that his walls and his, material would last, that he just had the party until the very end. And so some interpreters say that that's when they broke through and they killed Belshazzar, and it was taken over by the other kingdoms.

This story, it's meant to help us, to consider our life in light of mortality. We don't think about mortality very often. But we're meant to think about mortality more often than what we do. We're so isolated from death, are we not? We put people who are dying in the places where we don't have to see them. Our society is more isolated from death than it ever has been, but this story is here to remind us that we are mortal. It's the time of year where we make resolutions and many of us have made great resolutions, you know, you might want to lose a few pounds, gain a little bit of muscle, you might want to stop drinking as much or stop another habit that you dislike or stop it with all the screen time, whatever that might be.

All these things are good things. But I am here, once again to remind you. And I feel like I could just do this every week, and it would probably be, what if we just all come together and this is what I said every week, it'd be great. It's just a really good reminder, you are going to die. Let me just put that in a different, I'm just gonna say that a few times for us, OK? And different emphasizing different things. You are going to die. You are going to die. You're going to die. What do your resolutions mean in light of mortality? How has your life been spent? If your life ended tomorrow, what would that mean for you? How would you have been living your life? And what does that mean for your little resolutions?

There was a famous Puritan pastor from Western Massachusetts. I don't, you know, I'm not gonna endorse everything about the Puritans, but sometimes they have great quotes in here. Jonathan Edwards, famous for a list of resolutions involving mortality. And he said this, he's resolved that I will live so as I shall wish I had done when I come to die. Or how about this one? Resolved never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do if it were the last hour of my life. He's an intense dude. That that's an intense thing, but sometimes I look at my life and I'm like, I, I think about that quote all the time actually, all the time. Over Christmas break, I'm like playing Legos with my sons. And I'm like, you know what? If I had an hour left, probably how I'd want to spend it. Or sometimes I go to sleep. And I'm like, really? Is this how I would spend my last hour? And I'm like, yeah, I'm tired. I love sleep. It's the best way.

Sometimes simple things can be spent in a way that glorifies the Lord. We don't have to go all intensity all the time. But I think that keeping mortality The front of our mind, really important. Now, I know some of you have that reminder of mortality. Whether it be from debilitating disease, or the loss of a loved one, or maybe you just have a loved one suffering with the debilitating disease to where you know death is coming. Maybe you've been to a funeral recently. Those are surreal moments for us. And when we look at mortality, It causes us to evaluate our lives. What better way to start the year than considering your own mortality. And evaluating your life. You know, it's a point that every man live once, and after that he dies. And he or she will face the judgment of God.

You can party like Belshazzar, live your best life now. But you will face the judgment of God. And Maybe you don't believe in God and and that's all good. Maybe, maybe you don't believe in God. And if you, and if there isn't a God, That is the best way to look. The Bible actually says it, that if there is no resurrection from the dead, if there is no God, eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. But, and this should terrify you if you're living like this. If there is a God. You will stand judgment for the way that you lived. And only those who have a perfect record before God. would be able to claim righteousness, and to live in heaven with him forever. If there is a heaven and hell, These are extremely important things.

And for us as Christians, it's not because we're so good as to why God would let us into heaven or let us enjoy eternity with them. It's only because of what Christ has done. And so I urge you today. This is just kind of step number one. I urge you today, if you're not walking with Christ, if you're not following Him, place your trust in Him, your hope in Him. He is your only hope through eternity. Because none of us, not a single one of us has righteousness before God. You can't, you can't claim that. No one claims that. I certainly can't claim that. But only through Christ, and I praise Christ for that, that he has lived the life that I should have lived and died the death that I deserve and been resurrected so that I'll be resurrected with him.

This whole thing, it reminds me of this parable that Jesus told, the rich fool. Are you familiar with the parable? Jesus tell us a parable. I'm just gonna read it for us. I think it's helpful. Luke chapter 12. Someone in the crowd said to him, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. But Jesus said to him, man, who made me judge or arbitrator over you? And he said to them, take care and be on your guard against covetousness, for one's life does not consist of the abundance of his possessions. And he told them a parable saying, the land of a rich man produced plentiful. And he thought to himself, what shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops? And he said, I'll do this. I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store my all of my grain and my goods. And I will say in my soul, Soul, You have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink and be merry. But God said to him, Fool. This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So is the one who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.

I can't think of a better parable or a better application or illustration of this parable, then Belshazzar. Who had everything this life could offer. Except for anything beyond what this life has to offer. Several years ago, when I was an associate pastor in Brookline at City on the Hill in Brookline, there was a member of our church. His name was John Cortines, and he was a member of our church for just a couple of years. He had moved to the Boston area to go to Harvard Business School. He previously had worked at Chevron where he did quite well working in the oil business, and he had gotten into Harvard Business School where most people do quite well after they go to the Harvard Business School, and he had goals in life. He had a goal to make a million dollars by the time he turned 30, a millionaire by 30. He had a goal to retire by the time he was 40. Which he's probably getting close to these days.

And while he was at Harvard Business School, God had different plans for him because during his time at Harvard he took a class at the divinity school. You're allowed to do that when you're a business student you can come take other classes at other schools. He took a class at the divinity school called God and wealth or God and and Money, something like that. And his entire perspective for his life changed. And he went from making A lot of money To deciding that he wants to spend the rest of his life convincing people to give their wealth away. So for years he worked for generous Giving an organization that goes around and and convinces wealthy people to give away their wealth, and he wrote a book with a friend from the Harvard Business School, and the book is actually well received and and kind of well known. It's called God and Money. And he gave a presentation to our church about it. It was a real honor to have him, be able to be a member of our church when all of this happened.

God working in a small way with it, but in the book, he retells the story of the rich fool with modern day language and I think it might hit home a little bit better for us this morning, from his. So, in modern language, the rich fool, someone in the crowd said to Jesus, Teacher, tell my boss to pay the full year in performance bonus, he promised me. But he said to a man, who made me judge an arbitrator over you? And he said to them, Take care and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. And he told them a parable saying, the stock options belonging to a manager vested after a major run up in share price, and he thought to himself, What shall I do? For I already have enough to save enough saved to send my kids to college. My house is paid off and I already maxed out my 401k every year.

And he said, I'll do this. I'll open an investment account and create a passive income portfolio, and I'll exercise my options and put the money there and I'll say to my soul soul, you have a big enough portfolio to be financially independent, retire early, plan some vacations, play golf. But God said to him, fool. This night, your soul is required of you. And the portfolio you've built, what use will it be then? So is the one who endlessly builds his net worth and is not rich toward God.

Friends, I'll say it again. You are going to die. No exceptions. Unless the Lord Jesus comes back. Which we hope he will But you will And even then, you'll meet him in the sky, you'll stand in judgment even in that case. You, your life here on earth will end. It'll soon, it'll come sooner than you think and what you want. And only what's done for Christ will last. So just consider that. Consider that as the year begins. How do you want to invest in the kingdom of God? How do you want to, how do you want to invest in the one gift of life that you have? If God is real, if there is a heaven and hell, if you and I were created for something more than this world can provide, if humans are truly eternal beings, meant to reflect and live in harmony with our Creator, then we should live very differently than the rest of the world, with where we find our value and our worth.

And so I don't know exactly how to apply this message to you individually. I just want you to consider it. Consider your decisions. Your purchases, your life, your investments, your time, your energy, in light of eternity. That sobering truth. No one gets to the end of their life and says, you know what, I really wish I'd worked a whole lot more. At the end of the life, I, I know this, OK? I don't know exactly how to apply it to you, but I do know, I've talked to people near the end of their life on multiple occasions, and I do know that the things they talk about. The regrets that they have usually center around relationships. Gone Or broken. Family. Forgotten about, or left behind. And meaning and purpose. That they've had in life.

So I just encourage you to find your meaning, find your purpose, and I'm also here to tell you that there is more purpose and meaning in following Christ than in any other place in life that you can find it. If you put your purpose and meaning in your work, you'll be let down. If you put your purpose and meaning into something else, into a relationship, you'll be let down and to some type of success, you'll be let down. But if you invest in the kingdom of God, he will undo you with purpose. Your only hope, in light of this mortality is what Christ has done for you.

And on the night that before Christ died, he also had a bit of a party with his friends, who watched him drink wine. When he took a cup He said, this is my blood shed for you. He took a loaf of bread and he said, this is my body broken for you. Unlike Belshazzar, Jesus was not there. To pridefully assert himself over everyone else, but instead, he removed his clothes, put on a towel. He bent down and he served. In the last hours of his life, he got down and he washed the feet of others, resolved to not spend any moment as if it were not his last. He spent his dying day washing the feet of those who followed him. And at this meal, he told us to remember this meal. To practice it. And to be reminded of the way that he laid down his life for us, that he was the he took on the penalty for the sin of the world, that he took on the penalty for even his enemies, and he loved them.

And so as his followers, we lay down our lives for our friends, for our enemies, and we practiced the sacred meal, reminded of what Christ has done that we could never do. So this is your opportunity to respond to Christ this morning as we participate in the sacred meal. So let me invite you to stand. And pray with me as the band makes their way back up on the stage, so that we can respond to God with a few songs.

Father, thank you for this opportunity, to be reminded of our mortality. We need more opportunities for this to evaluate our lives in light of mortality. How we should invest our time, our, our wealth, our attention. God, would you help us to put into practice some resolutions with mortality in in mind. Hey God, would you help us also to just prepare for death, and to have a right relationship with you and to make right with others. God bless this meal, we thank you for it. We thank you for what Christ has done on our behalf, we pray that you would fill us with your Holy Spirit this morning. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

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Ministry Associate Calvin Chu preaches from Mark 14:32-41. Discussion points: Jesus may have felt very alone before his death because his disciples didn’t believe him, following Jesus doesn’t mean that we present as perfectly happy every day, knowing what is to come doesn’t comfort us, Jesus wept and asked for help in the midst of his suffering.

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Scripture reader: [Mark 14:32-41] And they went to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, "Sit here while I pray." And he took with him Peter and James and John and began to be greatly distressed and troubled, and he said to them, "My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch." And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, "Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will."

And he came and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, "Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy, and they did not know what to answer him.

And he came the third time and said to them, "Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough. The hour has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners."

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: Good morning church. Good seeing you all. Yes, I am an extrovert, thanks for exposing me, Michael. merry Christmas. Happy new year. I find that the holiday season is like. One of the toughest times to like not be OK, you know what I'm saying, like I, I like if you're struggling, it could be one of those difficult seasons, especially if you, you feel kind of miserable like forget happy this, forget marry that like honestly if you're not doing well during the season, like ba humbug kind of makes too much sense, you know what I mean like you, I'm like I kind of get it, you know.

But I find actually it's particularly challenging for Christians because it's like we're doing all this, the trees and the carols and it's like we we're celebrating and acknowledging the birth of the savior, right? And so like if you're not doing well as a Christian during the season it's just like oh like what's wrong with me? Like it's almost like un-Christian. If you're not doing well during this time, it's like, oh, so, so then I think a lot of times we end up sort of like putting up this front of like yay, joy to the world, even though internally we're just sort of like oh. Or maybe even worse.

And I think You know, a lot of times Christians, you know, particularly in my previous context, you know, I, I grew up, in a, Chinese heritage church and so in terms of Chinese culture there's this thing called like saving face. It's not that we have the market cornered in it, but it, it's something that's very, very strong for us and so the idea of like how you show up in public is really, really important because if you were to show up not fully put together then you're like bringing shame upon yourself and maybe even your family.

Again, a big part of of my culture, growing up and, and so then it's like admit you weren't OK. I mean whether Christmas or not, it's like really, really bad and again this and that sort of doubles even more so for Christians because it's just like, well yes, you can't bring shame to your family but also like you should that that we have this pressure of like you should recognize that you've been so blessed like Jesus died for your sins. Like what do you have to complain about? And so I think a lot of times there's this like unspoken, unwritten belief that like to be a good Christian means like never showing the hard stuff.

I, I kind of wonder, you know, I'm still relatively new here and I, I love, I love CoaH. It doesn't, it's my home church, and one thing that I love about it is like I've seen like people up here tearing up and crying and it's like, oh, that's really refreshing cause, cause especially concerning coming from my previous context. But I do still wonder like how much of that like face saving still shows up here too maybe not every single week but I imagine that we all have moments where we try to like keep quiet maybe we think I I I don't wanna bother anyone with my problems you know they've got enough going on and they don't have to deal with my stuff too and so we kind of quietly suffer, you know what I'm saying?

Or I think the big one is like, well, Jesus died for my sins, so like. This isn't really a big deal. Like that's taken care of, so all this other sadness or anger or frustration or loneliness. Yeah, it's not, I'm now I'll just sweep it under the rug because that's what good Christians do. you know, we, we, as we suffer by ourselves, we, we almost justify thinking like. God helps those who help themselves, which is not in the Bible, or, or like good Christians depend on Christ and Christ alone, like nothing else.

But where do these ideas come from? Like where does this idea that to live a Christian life, to truly follow Christ, is to do it by ourselves and to not show our weakness and not show vulnerability. Is that really what God wants from us? And I, I think as we've already read the passage, but I think what what passage will will further see as we continue to dive into it, I think it tells a really, really different story. And as we look at it, I think we'll get a deeper understanding of, of who Jesus is and the example that he sets for us.

And so, for some context, this is like a very well known passage, we see the classic things of this passage. It's Jesus praying in the garden of Assemane, the disciples falling asleep, and Jesus like seemingly calling them out for their weaknesses and um. I think a lot of sermons that I've heard and even some commentaries that I read it talks about like, are you ready to stay awake for the Lord, you know, like, and it's, it's like those messages are true. I think that that that's like that's in the text for sure of like, you know, the spirit is willing but the the flesh is weak, but I think as we take a closer look from a different angle, I think we gain a clear understanding of Jesus and and the the deep insight that We can gain for how we can live inspired by his example.

So let me pray for us one more time as we prepare to look at this passage a little bit more. Let's pray. Father God, I just thank you, that we do get to celebrate Christmas, that we do get to look forward to a new year, and yes, merry Christmas, happy New Year, those things are all true. God, I do pray for all those of us here who Maybe aren't feeling it maybe aren't exactly in a great place right now and and God I pray for those of us who are quietly suffering by ourselves, God and I pray that your word, that your Holy Spirit would open up our eyes, open up our hearts to see and to feel and to to really know that God you want us to live perhaps differently than how we have been. And so God, we, we know that that requires trust in you and trust in one another. So God, we pray that that would begin for many of us, maybe a lot of us from seeing this passage and seeing, Christ's example, here. And so Lord, we thank you that you hear our prayers and look forward to how you will change us from the hearing of your word and pray all this is Jesus' name. Amen.

And so let's, let's begin by what leads up to this passage, right? So it's fair to say that this is probably like the hardest few days of Jesus's life. I mean, you know, he, he's going to die on the cross. Suffer brutal beatings and, and so like, but like what leads up to it is actually just as hard and so in in the I it's not we didn't read it but I'm gonna read some some text here.

So the verses that precede this starting at 25 to 28, it says this truly I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God. And when they have sung a hymn, they went out to the mount of Olives. And this is Jesus saying, you will all fall away, for it is written, I will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered, but after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.

So what's on Jesus's mind? Just on these, these few verses right here, we see that he knows his death is coming. He knows it will be painful, it'll be humiliating, it'll be embarrassing, and, and it'll be just, just brutal. And he knows it'll be unjust and he knows it won't be deserved, right? So he, he's talking about he he basically saying I know I'm going to die. And then he goes and he's talking to his friends, his disciples, and he's saying. Look, When this happens, when I die, you will all abandon me. And he doesn't talk about the fact that he's gonna be betrayed by one of his closest friends or one of his closest colleagues for money basically. He doesn't even talk about that, but that's surely gotta be on his mind.

And so if you put yourself into Jesus' shoes, he knows he's going to die. He knows his friends are going to abandon him. He knows that one of them is the reason that, you know, at least in terms of the legal system, he's going to die. And then what happens is he tries to tell his friends after countless prophecies, countless miracles, having just sort of divine like wisdom and like understanding, and as he tells it to them they go, Nah, Jesus, you're crazy like no, we will never abandon you. We are strong like we love you we salute you we like you don't have to worry about that Jesus. You're wrong.

And so as Jesus is going through like the psychological anguish of knowing his end is coming. And telling his friends that like, listen, you're you're gonna scatter. They totally invalidate him and invalidate his understanding, basically discounting all the things that he's already done. And so not only that, like one of his closest friends, like which is Peter, he says this, even though they, they all fall away, I will not. But Jesus replies, truly I tell you this very night before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times. Still, Peter insists in fact, if I must die with you, I will not deny you. And all the and the others all echo the same sentiment, like no Jesus, you're crazy. There's no way. There's no way.

And so this sort of sets up this like how like crazy difficult this moment is going to be because I imagine Jesus feels incredibly alone here. He knows he's going to die the death that he's going to die, that he doesn't deserve. And as he sort of tells his friends, his, his, his colleagues, the disciples, he's like, listen, you're, you're going to do this and like I want you to know. And then they're like, no, Jesus, quiet Jesus, you, you need to stop. Instead of sort of like being on the same page. And Jesus is sort of like sitting in this all by himself.

And so it brings us to Gethsemane. Which we already read but I'll read it one more time and they went to the place called Gethsemane and he said to his disciples, sit here while I pray. And then he took with him, so they're, they're in one, the, the disciples are with them in one place, but then he takes Peter and James and John and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. And he said to them, my soul is very sorrowful, even to death, remain here and watch. And going a little further, farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from him.

And so again, Jesus knows he's going to die. He knows his friends will abandon him and in the case of Judas betray him, and he knows that he alone can bear that burden. And you see it because in verse 33, the, the, it says he became greatly distressed and troubled, verse 34 it says his soul is sorrowful even to death. The word sorrowful here means very sad. And so Jesus is like emotionally low. He's probably anxious. He knows he's going to die soon and hoping he could avoid it.

So honestly he's probably just emotionally tired. He's like carrying this weight and this is the first we hear of it, but it's probably on the back of his mind for a while. And then the word distress in verse 33 at one of the commentaries that I said this, it describes it as the greatest possible degree of horror and suffering, allowing us to see that Jesus suffering psychological anguish before his physical suffering.

So it's, it's really easy for us to think of what Jesus through the lens of his divinity. Like what Jesus, he, he performed miracles. He, he walked on water. He healed people, right? He, he, he did he multiplied bread and fish. Like he, we, we think about Jesus through his divinity and, and that is true that Jesus was fully God. But I feel like we also have to remember that Jesus was fully human. And I think if we look at it from his the the lens of his humanity. Then I think We we really see what he's going through. I mean imagine this was you you had to go through something difficult and you knew it was coming and you tell your friends like this is gonna happen like no you're it's not gonna happen. Don't don't worry about you, but you know it's going to happen and you know it's gonna be painful. How alone would you feel? And I imagine that's a fraction of what Jesus was going to what Jesus felt that.

And I think this reality that Jesus suffered alone and in his anguish like he he felt deep anguish, deep anxiety, deep sadness, deep distress. I think it does two things for us actually. I think the first is, it means to be a Christian, mean to follow Christ. It means that Going through hard things is normal. Let me say that one more time. If you are here, and I don't assume that we're all Christian or we're all good with Jesus, but if you're here, you have to understand that following Jesus does not mean that everything is perfect. Following Jesus does not mean that you have to present like go tell it on the mountain every single day of the year, every moment of your life.

To be a follower of Christ is to follow Jesus into the darkness. Jesus went there he was incredibly distressed. He showed it to his friends. And so for us here, if we're follower of Jesus, then follow his example. Know that that is a reality that Jesus showed us to exemplify. And so, I think it's worthy for us to really take a gut check and see. Is Christ our inspiration for how we're behaving when we show up through the walls of this building, when we show up for prayer time on a Tuesday, when we show up for CG.

When we see our Christian, you know, brother or sister in, in the neighborhood or the the co-worker we know who is a Christian at work, how do we present ourselves? And do we have this pressure to seem like all this hunky dory. And where does that come from? Is Jesus your inspiration or is it something else? I think for a lot of us, it's, it's, it's probably something else. Or maybe we're not fully understanding that Jesus was fully human and he suffered, and he showed it. I'm really curious to see. What a community looks like when we exemplify that, that example that God shows to us through Jesus' sufferings in the tough times that he faced. So we have an idea of how it is when we show up through the tough times that we face.

I think the other thing that happens is, I think a lot of times when we go through hard times. We, we, we do, we do, we do two things, I think a lot of times we jump straight to God and that's good. for those of us who are Christian, we, we, we can definitely jump straight to God, and I think we ask for, for two things. I think the first thing is to go, God, take it away like, God, this hard thing is happening or it's gonna happen. God make it not so. And I, and I think that's good. asking God to solve our problems is, is not a bad thing. I think God wants that type of relationship where we see Him as our primary source of deliverance and comfort and support.

But very often God doesn't just make it happen and make it go away. And, and I think that when that happens, I think very often we go to God and we go. God will just, just at least tell me how it'll end up. God, show me, give me wisdom, help me discern, like what the end will be. and I think it's it manifests like God just, just tell me what the, the diagnosis is, you know, God, just tell me, whether this relationship will make it or not. God would show me if I will ever get the thing that I want so badly, God, just just just tell me. It just just if, if I'm not gonna just at least let me know. God, will I make it or will I won't make it? Just, just, just tell me, God, so I can deal with it. And I think the reason we we go there.

And I think it's the same reason that a lot of us go to God first to solve it for us is because we're sort of. We want the control. We want to know because we want to like if I know the destination at least I get to determine how I get there and it's like, OK God, just tell it to me and then I'll know the city I'm supposed to end in but I'll take a plane or take a train or I'll drive there however it is again metaphorical city. And so that we can sort of control what's going to happen. And we can get it there on our own terms.

But in life's most difficult cir circumstances, like we don't really ever have control. And I don't think that knowing the end. Automatically makes it like better or makes it like tangibly better at least. Previously I talked about how my mom passed away a few years ago, um. And when my eldest son was born he my my mom was like over the moon like she was like so excited and she would like show up like multiple times a day sometimes she would like show up, drop something off and just be like hey like here's this thing I got you and she's like OK bye and just like would drive off and then she would show up within like another like. It's 20 minutes and just be like oh hey I got this thing for you. OK bye and like a you know when you're first, at least my experience like when you first have a baby, especially your a first baby, you're just like you have no idea what's going on. You, you're just completely lost and so like. It just seemed like kind of weird what's happening with my mom, but it's like she's just probably really, really excited.

And so, but as time progressed and we noticed like some of the behaviors were like happening like kind of prolonged like over multiple days and weeks and months, we, we were just like OK this something something is weird here and so we went and we, we took her to a neurologist and we found out that the uh. The the thing that was inspiring her was in part the, the grandchild, but we, we found out that she had, dementia. It's, it's frontotemporal dementia if, if you want to know what type, but the thing I reason to say that is because it's, a big, symptom of that is lack of impulse control and so basically like that's why my mom was like, oh, I wanna do this thing, drive off. Oh, and this other thing, drive back and then just she would be doing things like that. And basically we found out, basically after we had that diagnosis she had about 5 to 10 years of life remaining from, you know, general range of what would happen. She was relatively young of course and so you know we knew that like this is this is happening like we knew that. Her life would be shortened greatly, from, from what we had expected, and, and so we knew that, you know, we, we would have maybe 5 to 10 more years, and, and the, the, the neurologist was saying that it's it's a degenerative disease so she's actually probably had it for longer. It's just it doesn't show up until it gets to a certain degree.

And so we as a family we have tried to figure it out and and we knew we had time, but it still made like the next few years really really difficult part of it is because we knew that she had FTD but also like so that was about, yeah, 2015 and then like a little over a year after we got that diagnosis we noticed her arms and all of a sudden she couldn't raise her arms above her elbows. And so that's weird. Like, is that because of like an impulse culture? Is that the dementia? And so we took her back to the doctor. And they said, yeah, like we did some scans and we, we realized that There's a, there's a genetic mutation, there's a link between FTD and ALS and so basically it's like the same mutation that causes both of them and so there's like a 10% chance that people who get FTD are gonna get ALS and that happened to my mom and so the the chances of survival is from from 5 to 10 to about 2 to 5 and so we're just sort of shaving the years off at this point.

It's obviously incredibly difficult to deal with someone that has dementia and then it's incredibly difficult to have someone that has ALS and then it's incredibly difficult to have someone that has both. And so this whole time we're fully aware we know everything that the doctors are telling us we know the timelines we know all the the the symptoms, we know all the things that we can do we acknowledge is not the problem. But knowledge alone did not bring comfort.

And I think so often, we think knowledge alone will bring comfort, like all the comfort that's all we need. God just tell me, just show me, just, just, just help me understand and once I know, it'll automatically be better. But it does And I think if you're sitting here and you think about it. Yeah, it would be great to know what happens. But sometimes knowing doesn't actually do anything to provide comfort and support. It does not automatically make things easier. So what does?

I believe the key difference lies in Jesus's example in this passage. He knew exactly what was ahead of him, the betrayal, the abandonment, the injustice, the suffering. He had complete understanding about what was about to happen and unfold. Yet that knowledge didn't take away his distress. In fact, in verse 35, he literally falls on the ground. He's so distressed. He still endured that deep pain and anguish. But rather than just sort of like suffer alone. He wanted comfort and support from those around him. Right? He he it's not like the disciples provided some kind word or some deep theological insight. It's not like they prayed a prayer that like changed things for Jesus. But actually he just wants them here.

I'll read it one more time. And they went to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to the disciples, sit here while I pray. And he took Peter and James and John and began to be greatly distressed and troubled, and he said to them, My soul is very sorrowful even to death, remain here and watch. And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me, yet not what I will, but what you will. And he came and found them sleeping and said to Peter, Simon, are you sleeping? Could you not watch one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit is indeed willing but the flesh is weak. And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. And again he came back and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy and did not know what to answer him. And they came the 3rd time and said to them, are you sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough. The hour has come, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.

What do we see here? Jesus asked his friends for help. He invited them into the mess. He invited them into the pain. Their presence was important. They didn't do anything really. They fell asleep and understandably they were tired. They've been up a long time. It was like basically like midnight, like end of the day. And yet he still says, come and he he goes there, comes back 3 times. I don't know if I would have had that patience. I listen guys, I need you guys to do something. You're not doing it. Just, just get out of here. It's probably how I would feel. But their presence is so important. That he, even though they're sleeping 3 times. He still comes back, still connects with them. It's like, are you sleeping? I, I, I really want you guys, I really need you guys to help me. I really need you to watch and pray. And don't do it. And yet Jesus does not kick them out.

And like we talk so much in the church about following Jesus and modeling his examples and, and I think we look into things like, you know, like. When Jesus flips over table it's like, yeah, that's my Jesus. I'm gonna, I'm coming for all heresy. Like I'm gonna flip all tables, you know, it's like we do that or we have this idea of like, oh you want during like communion with like you look at Jesus's, you know, his hands are pierced his feet were pierces it's like, you know, to, to, to just to suffer, to carry our cross daily.

And I think we have this sense of like a strong, like rugged Jesus. And we say, well, you know, Jesus, he, he did all this teaching and all these mirrors. What can't he do? Well, he, he couldn't get through suffering without asking for help. And so all the things that we think about Jesus that he can do and has done, did do. Yes, that's true. That's a sign of his strength. It's a sign of how amazing he was. And yet while he suffered, He still asks for help. While he suffered, he still wept amongst his friends.

So, I mean, I don't wanna, I don't want to get it twisted like Jesus does turn to the Father, like the main reason that he's there is to pray. So yes, Jesus's primary source of strength and solace is the Father. You know, in, in fact, in the, the, the word ABA, and maybe you know this, if you grew up in the church a long time, ABA is like a, like a, a word of like intimacy. I don't know if you have friends or or other churches or like your college, you know, or, or, you know, fellowships or small groups or whatever, and you know, you ever have someone that's. Pray that Daddy, like heavenly daddy or like like anyway that you're just a cow. What are you talking about? Abba is basically the equivalent of like daddy. It's like a, it's like a a word of affection. And so the only place that Jesus uses this term for the Father. And so it it points to this deep intimacy that he has with the Father, but at the same time, the Father does not answer the prayer that Jesus asks in the way that he wants. He said, if you would remove this cup and and the father does not do it.

And, and I think that's a big reason why he, he, he invited those disciples with him. Because he needed the comfort, he needed the support. But it's not an either or situation. It's not. I go to the Father or I go to the friends. So when my friends aren't available, then I go to God. I I don't think that's right. If I go to the God, well then I don't need to go to my friends. I don't think it's it's not mutually exclusive. I think both can exist at the same time. Jesus valued the relationship that he had with the Father. But he also valued the relationship he had with his community, with his friends.

And so and of course, this looks different for us because we're not Jesus, we're not called to suffer like Jesus did here. We can't like that he went through that agony and death on the cross alone because only he could do it. So that is not for us, and he did it for us. He is on behalf of us. But I do think it's part of the normal Christian experience that we should prepare to, yes, agonize in prayer. But also agonized in community. As we wait the answer for prayer as we await complete redemption when Jesus returns.

And like I, I get it. I get this is hard, you know, you're all very accomplished in your lives like this I've met many impressive people here at COA for sure and, and, and I, I, I know it must be hard for you to have be one of the most brilliant minds in your fields, but I don't, I don't need to be the top of my field and I'm not, trust me, but I know, I know it's hard to ask for help because you wanna know why? because I shop at Costco. And I don't mean like the long lines leaving that Everett Plaza if you know what I'm talking about, then you know what I'm talking about. This is what I mean. I, I mean I know it's hard because if you go to Costco, you get giant size products. You, you, you want 6 gallons of of yogurt, you got it. You want 3 gallons of mayonnaise? OK, that's cool. That's, that's awesome.

And so for me, I, when I was growing up, one of my primary responsibilities was taking the groceries in from the car. We didn't shop at Costco, but just the, the standard like plastic shopping bags, and so I perfected this technique and you can ask my family because they will attest to this. I. People think, oh, well, you have two things that you can hold bags with. No, no, no, no, no. I can hold at least 8 bags in my hands because each one of these is a bag holder and I also have these and so for me I prided myself on being able to get in from the car with the groceries in hand like this and so it's, you know, plastic bags aren't really as much in anymore and it's fine and you can't put stuff in pla pla plastic bags from Costco because that's where I go shopping.

And so if you drive by my house after I've done a Costco run, you will see a 40 year old man carrying 6 gallons of mayonnaise, you know, you know, 3 spiral hands in one pack. You see I'm gonna be carrying it like this from my car and I was just walking here. And then you know my wife like could you need help? I'm like, no, I got it. I'm good. I'm just lumbering to think and then you get to the screen door and well I, I can't put it down because it's a very tenuous balance, you know, I got eggs on my shoulders, you know. And so I'll take the one spare pinky that I have in the finger and I'll, I'll just do the, I'll press the door and I'll take the pinky and I'll fling it open, not dropping anything because I'm nice like that and I'll do a catch with my foot. And I'll do the the the the the pick and roll and I'll spin in. And I'll get to it and I'll lock the door. Cause I'm nice like that. It's a sight to behold.

And it's like funny to imagine me doing this. It's like why would, why don't you just ask for help, Calvin? That's ridiculous. You know, I've got strong young boys, they can surely, yes, he's volunteering right now, so great. I've got kids. They can go get it for love. No, no, no, no. I, I got this. I got this. And it's silly and it's funny to imagine me doing it. But yet when you and I choose to suffer by ourselves. It is exactly that. We're putting an unnecessary weight on us to do to suffer by ourselves when there are plenty of people around who want to who can carry the burden with you.

Do we see that the faith that Jesus exemplified is a communal one? Do we see it as one where we get into life's messes with one another? Where we carry the load together. Or do we feel like following Jesus? Is a solo adventure. One that should have neat boundaries where we never ask for help, we're entirely self-sufficient we never appear weak, we never appear vulnerable, never burden other people. If you fall into a later ladder camp. I think it's worth taking a closer look at the Jesus we see in this passage. And so we should be like Jesus, pray fervently, ask the Father in faith and openness to his will. Yes, we should wait on his timing and desire for his will to be done over our will. But we should also ask for help from our brothers and sisters in Christ because to ask for help is to be like Christ.

I truly believe that as we deepen our friendships with one another here at CoaH, our community will be transformed. This doesn't mean that we need to constantly share our most deepest and darkest difficult parts of our lives. But I think Especially if we're gonna be in the resolution. Mode, making plans and hoping for changes in the new year. That maybe we think about resolving to growing vulnerability. To the people that we worship with, maybe it means going and checking out one of our CGs. Maybe you've been really hesitant to go because you're like, Oh well, really, what's the point? Like I, I can do this on my own. I got YouTube's got plenty of sermons. I can listen to plenty of podcasts that teach me how to live the Christian life, and there's plenty of books. So why do I need other people?

Well. If you don't feel like you don't need other people, then maybe you're misunderstanding what Jesus did. Because he needed people. He needed to be vulnerable. He needed to open up. His life and invite people in. But his sacrifices what not only is the example. But it's also the means. When Jesus died on the cross for us. It changes us and makes us a new creation. It turns us into something that is totally and entirely different one that no that goes we go from seeing us as the sole provider for ourselves our sole deliverer our own personal savior to understanding that Jesus is that savior. And that when the Holy Spirit dwells within us, it allows us to see the world differently, better see our own needs. And better see the people around us who yeah. Maybe we're afraid that they're gonna hurt us. Maybe we're afraid that they're gonna let us down. But Jesus was let down by his community. And he showed them grace. Not once, not 2, 3 times in a very short amount of time.

And so I hope that we see that his sacrifice not only exemplifies the vulnerability. But it gives us that new heart and that new identity in him. And I really believe that with the spirit is at work in us, it helped us build. A kind of trust that makes the type of connection that we're talking about here possible. So as we prepare to take communion. I I I hope that we will really reflect. And what are the, who, who was our savior? If we say Jesus, then right. Who is our example? We say Jesus, then great. But then I, then I hope that we will say, OK, well, God, how, how have I not been inviting people into my life or God, how have I not been the type of person that people want to invite? Maybe I've been blocking people off because I'm afraid of letting people down.

And as we get right with God and as as God gives us insight and God opens our eyes and opens our hearts to see how he may want us to change, then I then I think this communion meal will hopefully taste sweeter, better. Because it knows that change will come. I'll pray for us for the communion meal and invite the, the worship team to come up while I pray.

Father God, I know that this is not the easiest message to hear, cause God, maybe some of us really like to suffer quietly on our own. We don't want to be disrupted. We've got a, a rhythm going. We figured it out, we, we figured out how to function with the yuck. But God help us to see that you don't want us to live and suffer alone. Truly that is something that only Jesus could do. And so God, would you help us? Especially as we take this communion meal. To be, yes, remem remembering Christ's sacrifice, but also may it be the beginning of an invitation for the community around us. To comfort us, to support us, to love us so God we, we, we pray for the change in the coming days we pray for change in the coming year and God would you show us clearly the community that we have around us and the community that we can be in Christ. So Lord, we thank you and pray all this in Jesus' name, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Matthew 1:18-25 about Joseph, the father of Jesus. Discussion points: The Lord worked through a dream to convince Joseph to move forward with marrying Mary, Joseph is Jesus’s real father while not being his biological father, we are not outsiders or second rate children in God’s family.

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Scripture reader: [Matthew 1:18-25] Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save His people from their sins."

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel," which means God with us. When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: Good morning. My name is Fletcher. It's a joy to have you all, today. And a joy to be able to bring God's word for you this morning. Do you ever have any example in your life of a time that you were roped into something that you maybe did not sign up for? Like maybe you were volun-told to organize a holiday party for your, your office? Anybody ever have one of those situations occur to them. for me, when we first got married, my wife was very adamant that we needed a dog. Very adamant that we needed a dog. I made like a PowerPoint presentation for her, with all the reasons why we did not need a dog, you know, I pulled up the charts. This is the total investment that a dog is going to actually take. It's like thousands of that you have no idea. It's like it would be better for you to buy a BMW than for you to buy a dog, OK? It is very expensive owning a dog.

And as things went on though, as things do happen, she won and we got a dog and there I remember I came to her one morning I was like, OK, I've been praying. I think that we can get a dog that afternoon we had a dog like it it went quickly we had a dog, a little white fluffy named Maggie. She's absolutely ferocious and I talk about her a lot now, um. To this day, I don't think I understood. What I was getting myself into or what I was getting roped into. I didn't want a dog. I didn't want someone to pick up poop after and take outside 2 or 3 times a day and feed and to this day I'm still roped into that task of caring for the elderly dog. I'm bandaging the wounds from the bite marks on my fingers that she leaves on me. If you know my dog, she is um. A very ferocious West Highland white terrier, yeah, who's grumpy.

Anyways, maybe you were drafted into a nativity play when you were a kid and you, some of you may have been all about that, like nativity. Play Let's go. I, I can't wait to be Mary or be Joseph or or be a shepherd but some of you might have been there standing with a, a shepherd staff made out of cardboard and a bathrobe on being like, how did I end up here? we get roped into things that we don't necessarily sign up for.

And I can't help but think that that must be a little bit of how Joseph felt. Getting roped into something he did not sign up for. I mean, he's just living his life. He's a carpenter, he's working, he's betrothed to a woman, he's excited about the future he has, and all of a sudden the angel appears and says that your wife is pregnant. Deal with it, stick with her. That's basically his life. And so Joseph in that moment has to figure out what to do.

Today is the 4th and final Sunday of Advent, and we're walking through the traditional hope, peace, joy and love themes through a series that we're calling The Light Has Come Witnesses to the Birth of Christ. And so today we're considering love from the perspective of Joseph and as. As we often do, I'm just going to walk through the passage and help us to understand the fatherly love that Joseph shows to us.

So let's dive in the first verse, chapter 1 of the Gospel of Matthew, verse 18. Now, the birth of Jesus took place in this way. When his mother, Mary had been betrothed to Joseph. Now for many of us, it's a familiar story, but I don't want to skip over any of the details in case it's new, and I hope that maybe some of these old details might become new to us today. But in the ancient society of Israel, betrothal was not the same thing as we think of as engagement. Engagement is an exciting thing today, and it comes with commitment like you spent money on that ring. There's some commitment that went that's going between these two people. You tell all your family and friends you might update a status on Facebook or post a picture on Instagram. There's certainly some social shame to breaking off an engagement.

But if you were to break off an engagement, no one is calling a lawyer to help you negotiate the divorce. It just doesn't work that way in today's society, but in an ancient society, a betrothal was a more serious commitment because oftentimes in ancient society, you would have arranged marriages between two families and everything would be drawn up. There would be a dowry involved, there would be financial commitment. You were bringing two families together. It wasn't our Western individualized society. It was a near eastern society where you were bringing families together. And so this came almost as a legal contract between two family groups.

So to break off a betrothal in the ancient world, this is not a small deal. This is a big deal. It doesn't just come with social shame, it comes with legal responsibility, but Joseph has been. he's, he is currently betrothed to Mary. And just to give you a little bit of detail about what we expect with their ages, Mary most likely is a young teenager. this is, if it's following Jewish customs, she would be 1314 years old, somewhere around there. Joseph, we really have no idea how old Joseph is. He could be as young as 15 or 16. He could be much older than that, as Jewish customs would go. The scripture doesn't tell us how old Joseph is. We do know that Joseph is in this story, and he's in a story of Jesus being left at the temple, when Jesus is 12, and then you don't see Joseph mentioned again. So we assume that Joseph dies. Most scholars have assumed that Joseph dies by the time that Jesus is later in his life into his ministry, but we really don't know, and we have no idea how Joseph, how old Joseph is in this.

But there's this peculiarity to their engagement, which is Mary is found to be pregnant. So the second half of verse 18, before they came together in a biblical sense, should we say, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Before the marriage had been consummated, Mary was found to be pregnant. And so Joseph discovered this either. Because Mary told him or because he started to notice her appearance changing and you know, Joseph knows how these things work, and he assumed the only logical reason that she could be pregnant is that she has betrayed him. That is the obvious conclusion. That is what he is to assume here.

And how terrible that must have felt as Joseph. To be betrothed to a woman, to have your family united together and expecting the marriage, all that's waiting is the marriage ceremony and for her to move in. Everything else is a done deal. Undoubtedly, he had feelings for Mary. But now he's been betrayed. And being a just man, a man who cares that other people are cared for, he decides to handle it quietly. He could have made a big deal of Mary's betrayal to him. It, it would have been within his rights to make a large deal of this. He could have shamed her publicly and let everyone know what had happened, but instead, Joseph decides to issue her a quiet divorce. He could have given her a scarlet letter, but instead he handles things quietly.

Verse 19, and her husband Joseph being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. And I love how God's timing works here, because God's timing always works like this. It's not the 11th hour. It's not actually salvation unless it's the 11th hour. It's not the 11th hour unless it's actually the 11th hour. And here we see him, it's as if he is drawing up the divorce papers and what happens to him. Maybe he said let me sleep on it one more night, and he goes to bed and he has a dream. And like his namesake from the Old Testament, Joseph's dreams mean things. He has a dream of an angel appearing to him and declaring to him the truth.

Verse 20, but as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. So the angel appears to Joseph and says, move forward with the wedding, Joseph. You do not have to fear. This is Mary's being truthful. This is from the Lord. This is of the Holy Spirit. I'm sure it came with some apprehension. It's not as if shotgun weddings were necessarily kosher in the Jewish world. But that is what Joseph decided to move forward with.

I love how the angel addresses Joseph, and this is very important. It's kind of the heart of our sermon here today. The the angel addresses Joseph as Joseph, son of David. He reminds Joseph of his royal lineage. Joseph is of the house of David, of the tribe of Judah. And what do we know about the house of David, but that all of the prophecies throughout the Old Testament foresee the ruler, the Messiah, the king to come, the one that would restore the fortunes of Israel as a member of the house of David that he again would have a son. That would come and reign and rule. And restore Israel to her glory. And so we know that all of Israel is waiting for a son of David to come, and here we have Joseph, a son of David.

But this child, it isn't even his. Not a single piece of Joseph's genetic material is used. In the person of Jesus. He's not a legitimate, so to speak, child of Joseph. Yet Joseph is the real father of Jesus. I want us to contemplate this truth for a moment. That when Matthew writes his genealogy, just a couple verses earlier. Just a couple verses earlier. Actually, it's just the verses before this. So we have a genealogy that leads into this story, and he traces the genealogy from Abraham, Father Abraham, all the way through to Joseph. But Joseph is not Jesus's genetic biological father. Yet, the lineage is traced through Joseph.

How powerful is that? That as Joseph welcomes Jesus as his real son, that the biblical authors do too, that God sees Joseph as Jesus' real father, so much so to where the lineage, the genealogy can be traced through Joseph's line. And this is important because if Jesus doesn't come from the line of David, he's not fulfilling the prophecies. Joseph has to be Jesus' real father. You see, we see Joseph so often as just an usher to get married to the stable in Bethlehem, and we don't see the significance behind him actually being the father of Jesus. We have further proof that Joseph adopted Jesus in this sense.

In just a couple of verses in Matthew chapter 1 verse 24, it says, when Joseph woke woke from his sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife. But knew her not, again, in the biblical sense, wink wink, until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus. So who calls his name Jesus? Is it they called his name Jesus? No. In the ancient society, the father was to give the name to the child. And Joseph is the one who named Jesus. He gave Jesus the name. Joseph sees Jesus as his real son, though he is not his biological son.

This, I love adopted families. I think adoptive families are some of the most amazing families in the world, but this is not how our culture handles adoption many times. I've spoken to so many adoptive families and just heard stories of people putting their foot in their mouth, their feet in their foots in their mouth, their foot in their mouth. By saying things like, so which child is your real child? As if the adoptive children are fake children and not real children. Joseph sees Jesus as his real child.

For years, if you had asked me what my favorite movie is, OK, little illustration here, but if, if you'd asked me what my favorite movie is, I would have told you that my favorite movie is The Royal Tenenbaums. Now I don't know how many of you have seen the Royal Tenenbaums a couple of years ago I decided that movie might be a little too dark, to be your pastor's favorite movie, but I still, I have a warm spot in my heart for the Royal Tenenbaums. It's a Wes Anderson movie with the normal cast of characters from a Wes Anderson movie. it might also be a little too pretentious to be your pastor's, favorite movie, but thus it is, or it was. I don't, I don't claim it anymore I don't suppose.

But it's this Wes Anderson movie and one of the children, it's a, it's a story about three children who are geniuses and their father also being a genius, and they're brought up and they're all very highly successful people and one of the children is named Margo Tenenbaum. And Margo is played by the actress Gwyneth Paltrow. And Margo Tenant Bob is is introduced in the story. By this, Margot Tenenbaum was adopted at age 2. Her father had always noted this when introducing her. He would say, this is my adopted daughter, Margot Tenenbaum. And throughout the whole movie, Margot is seen as an outsider. Throughout the entire movie, she's addressed as an outsider.

At one point, the father's telling his, children, they're adult children by this point, he's telling them your grandmother died and his son says, Well, I haven't seen her since I was 6, and Margo says I've never met her and he says, well, she wasn't your real grandmother. I wasn't sure that if you wanted to meet her or not. He, she's just treated as this outsider all moving along, and it's as if she really wants to be accepted into the family and so she does all kinds of things to figure out who she is. In fact, her style even today is influencing runways. Runways, whatever those are called, catwalks, you know, where the, yeah, fashion runways. Is that is that the right word? OK, thank you. I saw a Vogue magazine article written about the style of Margo Tenenbaum this week, quite a stylish person.

At one point in the movie, she decides that she wants to meet her, her real parents, her, biological parents, and so she takes a trip to Indiana, and this is not how I know any of the Indiana people in our church to be, but these people were quite country and my country accent comes out as I speak of them, and as she meets her, the only thing that we see with them is when she helps them chopping wood and she has her hand on the, on the block of wood and he chops off her finger. Which symbolically shows that she does not belong in that family, that she's been chopped out of that family, and that there's a piece of her always missing.

And so in the movie, I think that that's really a a huge symbol throughout the whole movie is that there's a piece of Margot missing. Margo ends up marrying a neurologist obviously drawn together because of the deep brokenness in one in one another. I say all this about Margo Tenenbaum. Because I think she's the perfect illustration of what it feels like to be an outsider in your own family. She's just as successful and acclaimed as the rest of the family, if not more so. She has seen her need to prove herself and has sought hard and worked hard to prove herself. But she never truly feels accepted or that she belongs. She feels the need to express herself through her wardrobe and through her mysterious persona. She hides her promiscuity and her smoking habit. But no matter how successful she becomes, she never feels complete.

Now, I don't know what Christmas has in store for you. I, I appreciate looking around. I see a lot of our Boston natives here, OK? A lot of people from the area or at least from New England, or with family too far away to visit easily for Christmas. And I don't know who you are watching online today, but. I will say this, that many of us. We are going to go be in a place for Christmas, whether that be with family near or far. And many of us will feel like an outsider in some way at Christmas this year. Like we don't truly belong, whether it's with your family, your friends, or or just with Netflix, there's a chance that you might feel a bit like Margo Tenenbaum as an outsider.

Whether it's from the crippling expectations from your family, broken relationships within your family. Many of us do not feel like we have a place where we can belong with our family. It's the natural way that many of us feel that we're not completely known, that we might be known in part, but that we're unknown in many ways. Maybe you have a loving family, but you just get the subliminal message that your feelings don't matter. And if your feelings don't matter, then you don't matter. Or maybe it's something way less nefarious. Maybe it's just that your parents moved. And so all of those childhood memories are forever locked away. You'll never experience those again. Or maybe you lost someone dear to you that unlocked a piece of your personality, that only that person could unlock. And the feeling of wholeness and acceptance and belonging is missing.

In my own story, I will tell you that I have been, I have thought of myself oftentimes throughout my childhood, especially as an outsider. I grew up in Memphis. And then when I was in early elementary school, we moved to rural Mississippi. And at that point I had no interest in hunting or anything like that, which the other boys did. I was more into like Star Wars, you know, I was, I've always been a nerdy kid still to the day, you know, I'm, I'm trying to, to show that all the time. I, I. I'm just a nerdy guy and I wasn't accepted by others. I felt like an outsider school and in many ways I felt like an outsider in my family because why my, my mother's family is very loving and warm and I love them and hi Nana, she watches online every Sunday morning.

I, I didn't really know my father's family very well. He left when I was young. And so it leaves a sense of brokenness in who you are, to grow up feeling like your father doesn't care to know you. Even in my, I always felt loved by my mother and I am very loved by my mother, but I, my mother had a partner who lived with her, who outwardly did not care for children. It just wasn't something he didn't care for children, so I spent a lot of time in my room as a child trying to avoid him for the most part, including meal times and and all times. I just didn't, which wasn't weird to me until I had kids and then I realized how much time we spend around the table spending with one another.

I, I always felt like a bit of an outsider, and if I'm honest, I, I still do in some ways. And that is what made my relationship with Christ so significant. Because my wife and I often joke that if the statistics were in favor for me, that I would be selling meth somewhere in Mississippi. But by the Lord's grace, that is not the plan that he had for me. Because for me, and I think this might be easier in some ways, because I felt like so much of a father because my father wasn't around. God is my real father. In all the ways that I can express that he is my father. That he counsels me and cares for me, that he has provided for me. And has loved me. And I felt so accepted by him. Because he's all that I've ever had.

And so I've found my identity as a child of God. Not, you know, a lot of times we look at, at being a child of God, and you, I might preach this, you might say, yeah, yeah, yeah, a child of God. I get it. But it's like an adoptive child of God, like a Margo Tenenbaum, like, hi, this is my adopted child, Fletcher. And the, the one I'm proud of is Jesus over here, and I've adopted him into my family as well. And we think that we're second-rate children of God, and so we've had this. Feeling as like second rate adoptive children of God, that, that we had to prove ourselves to Him. Like, look what I did, God. I, I've finally achieved enough. I've earned enough, or, or even to ourselves.

But to God, Adoption doesn't work that way. That when we come into his family, We're stamped with full approval. That we are given full status to be the children of God, that he loves us as he loved his very own Son Jesus. That everything that's true about Jesus is true about us. You see, God sent his son to become the child of Joseph, that you and I might become the child of God. The heart of God is that of an adoptive father, which is a real father. Just as Jesus is the real, just as Joseph is the real father of Jesus, God is our real Father.

It's not that God merely tolerates us as his adoptive children in a Margo Tenenbaum kind of way, it's that he loves us and cares for us that we cannot earn his love. Romans chapter 8 verse 15. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of what? Adoption. As sons. By whom we cry, Abba Father. The spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. The spirit himself bears witness. That we are the children of God, and if children then heirs, full rights to everything that's true of Jesus, true of us. And fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with Him.

You see the mystery of the gospel is that Jesus came as the son of Joseph, son of God, fully human, fully God at the same time. To make a way for us to be adopted. Into the family of God. And delighting in the Trinity, which is just a book that I keep coming back to over and over and over again to quote, because it's so quotable. Michael Reeves says this. The father sent his son to make himself known. Meaning not that he wanted simply to download some information about himself, but that the love the Father eternally had for the son might be in those who believe in him, and that and that we might enjoy the son as the Father always has. Ultimately, the Father sent the son because the father so loved the son and wanted to share that love and fellowship.

See, that's the goal, is that God shares the kind of love and fellowship that he's had with Jesus, the Son, throughout eternity past with you as you're adopted as a child of God. His love for the world is the overflow of his almighty love for his son.

Let's continue through our passage. Verse 21. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from. His The name Jesus means Yahweh saves. The, the sacred name of God saves. Because of our sin, we are separated from God. But that is why Jesus came to save his people from their sins that we might be called children of God. Ephesians chapter 2, verse 12. Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, but having no hope and without God in the world. But now Jesus has saved us from our sin. He's given us a new identity. We're no longer strangers, but we're children, accepted, co-heirs with Christ. Our Father delights in us.

To finish things up, verse 22 and 23. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear his son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. Jesus is God with us. The message of Christmas is that God sent his son not only to be with us, but also to make us a part of his family, no longer outsiders. But daughters and sons of the king. And so as we have those feelings of outsiders like we don't belong, that, that points us to this deep longing in our heart that we have for who God is.

I can't tell you how to avoid those feelings. But I can tell you that they're a, a dim reflection of the longing in your heart that says that you Belong with God. And I know that many of you are looking around here this morning, and you may be even asking. I know, hopefully for many of you, the answer is yes, you, you do, but many of you may be looking around here saying, do I belong here? Especially if you're a guest, this is your first time. That's, that's a very natural question to be asking yourself when you visit a church for the first time. Do I belong here? Are these my people? Am I dressed appropriately? Am I looking strange at the moment? Can I be myself here? Can I be really known or do I have to put on that face that I put on for my work friends, so that they don't judge me?

Maybe you feel like a bit of an outsider even here, and these are all just very normal feelings. I want to just acknowledge that. And I hope that in some ways you do feel like a little bit of an outsider because I do not want the church to be a place where everyone is just the same culturally, the. Church is to reflect the diversity of God's kingdom and there's lots of churches where you can walk into and be like, yo, I feel understood here because everyone here also likes Texas college sports and so everyone else here is from Texas, so I feel known. We want people from everywhere. We want to be that diverse community, but it is gonna come with feelings that you're an outsider.

But let me tell you, you were crafted by the same God who crafted the person sitting in front of you, behind you, and maybe to your left and right. And that God wants to know you and adopt you as his own. You belong here. And we as a community need to and have to work hard to help you to feel. That belonging. Cause it's not always easy. We have to work to make sure that we love and welcome outsiders.

Now, no church is perfect. The church that I found when I was 1213, 14, when I first started going to church wasn't perfect. I felt loved, but I still felt like an outsider at times. But there were definitely people that loved me there at the same time, and I hope no church is perfect. If you find a perfect church don't join it because you'll mess it up, OK? Because you're, you're just not perfect, but we, we are really glad to have you here and you do belong, and we want you to feel that belonging in the family of God, but ultimately, it's a belonging with God Himself. So you can only belong so much to broken people, because we all have those feelings of being an outsider. But we're pointing you to the belonging that you can have with God.

So I don't know what your Christmas festivities might look like this year, but I pray that you might find love and acceptance, a place of belonging with God your Father in heaven. I pray that you might know him as Father, as Joseph knew Jesus. I pray that you might no longer be seen as a stranger or an outsider, but a participant in the hope that we have in the gospel.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Matthew 2:1-12 about the wise men who came to visit baby Jesus. Discussion points: The Magi may have been similar in training to the wise men or astrologers from Daniel’s time, Jesus is a threat to our love of worldly things, the Magi were overjoyed to see and experience Jesus.

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Scripture reader: [Matthew 2:1-12] Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the King, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he who has been born the king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled and all Jerusalem with him, and assembling all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born.

They told him in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet. And you, oh Bethlehem, in the land of Judah are by no means least of the rulers of Judah, for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared, and he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word that I too may come and worship him.

After listening to the king, they went on their way, and behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy, and going into the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him.

Then opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their own country by another way.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: Good morning. my name is Fletcher. It's a joy to be with you this morning. I'm the lead pastor of the church, and, today is the 3rd Sunday of Advent as we've been. talking about all morning and celebrating, we're doing a short series right now called The Light Has Come Witnesses to the Birth of Christ. Last week we discussed the, shepherds and how they were witnesses to the birth of Christ and the angels came and declared to them the, that there was a child that was born. And so they went and met the new child, our our Lord Jesus, and today we get to look at another staple of nativity scenes all over the world, which is the wise men.

I know when we think about the wise men, we think about these guys, they, they're usually wearing, fancy robes and they're bent down at the manger. Many of you probably had nativity scenes like this growing up. Some of you probably still have them. And as is tradition at City on a hill around the Christmas Advent season, I'm here to ruin all of your nativity scenes. Because that is not actually how the Bible describes the wise men whatsoever. In fact, as we read the wise men, as we'll see as we learn about them more, what we're going to find is that they probably did not see Jesus as an infant. It, it could have been up to 2 years later when the wise men finally found their way to Jesus. And so your nativity scenes are wrong. I'm sorry. They're still cute though, you can keep them. I mean, I'm not telling you to throw anything away, but they're, but they're wrong.

So, you know, we called the series witnesses to the birth of Christ. That seems wrong also, you know, like if we're saying that they didn't get there until 2 years later, they weren't necessarily witnesses to the birth of Christ. It's like more witnesses to the childhood of Jesus or what I really wish we could just rename the whole series to like destroying the nativity scene. That would be a good, name for it.

So who are these wise men and why does that matter to us today? That's, I just wanna walk through the passage and talk about the wise men and what They are, and what they're doing, what is their role here in this story? So let's look at verse one, would we? Verse one, now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, and the in the days of King Herod the King, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem. Now we sing a song we sang it this morning. I requested that we sing it this morning, OK? Because we three kings of Orient are. We've heard this song before, no? this is a famous Christmas carol, and again, as we are destroying nativity scenes, there is no Christmas tradition left untouched.

We will also destroy the song because almost every single word in that song is wrong. We three kings of Orient are there. We have no idea how many of them there were. They certainly were not kings, and what we think of Orient is not where they were coming from. So what are we left with? We are. That's it. So, 3, the reason why that we say that there are 3 oftentimes is because these wise men, they give their gifts to Jesus and how many gifts do they have but 3. And so the tradition goes that there's 3 of them. But nowhere does it say actually how many of them there are. There could have been dozens, there could have been 2. We have no idea how many of these wise men that there are. They are certainly not kings. The scripture does not describe them as kings. The word is not king that we come to in this passage.

In fact, the word wise men probably isn't even the best word for them either, even though that's how the English standard version translates the word into wise men. I mean, what is a wise man? Have you ever considered this? Like you're explaining the nativity scene to a child and like, who are these guys? Those are the wise men, honey. OK. You're like, what's their job? What are they doing? What's a wise man? How do I apply? A wise man in the Greek, the original word was Magloi, which is, magi. We get the word magi from it. So it's more to be translated. I love the way that Eugene Peterson translates it. he says that it's a band of scholars, and we'll talk more about what that means in just a minute and where these guys came from, but I don't know where the idea of kings came from. It's in no Bible translation that I could find. but we'll get to it.

Third, orient is misleading, OK? Orient is the word orient actually means east. So, They did come from the east, which is accurate, but in our modern sensibilities we see Orient as an outdated way of talking about an Asian person. And so how many children thought about we three kings of Orient are and just imagined three Asian kings coming to visit Jesus. Many, I'm sure, but it's misleading because it's not actually, they're not from Far East Asia. OK, these men are probably from much closer to Jerusalem than Eastern Asia.

So who are the wise men? The word magi, it comes from Persia and it's used to refer to interpreters of astrological signs and dreams. Which you know, if we think about this for just a minute we've been going through a series and these guys should sound kind of familiar, right? Because before we started doing our Advent series we were going through a series on Daniel and and Daniel we have some astrologers and dream interpreters who keep on popping up, right? these guys that Nebuchadnezzar keeps on calling to translate to to interpret his dream. And they are described in the Greek version of Daniel as magi, so that is the only other place in the scripture that I know of where magi are described.

And so I love the theory we don't really know where they come from, but I love the theory of these are the same. Not the exact same scholars, not the same people that saw Daniel, that was 500 years earlier, OK? But from the same line of school, same school. We have these magi coming from Babylon. And which would be also appropriate since Babylon is constantly described as to the east of Israel. So we don't really know exactly where they're from, but I love the idea of the same school of of learned scholars coming from Babylon over to visit baby Jesus to give God all of the glory there. Matthew also constantly alludes to Daniel, and so it would totally make sense for that to happen.

But basically Magi are ancient scholars and dignitaries. We see other extra biblical accounts of Magi visiting other kings or emperors as they're being inaugurated. You see them visit King the Emperor Nero from, from, Rome. And so, what they saw. And they interpreted they saw this sign and they interpreted it as a they saw this star and they interpreted it as a sign that the new king of Israel was born so they made the trek.

Now it's really interesting how they would have made that trek because most scholars agree that the trek to visit Jesus probably would have taken weeks if not months, and it probably would have taken them up to 2 years since Herod is saying, hey, kill all, later in the passage, Herod says kill all the children 2 years and under. And so it's possible that it could have taken up to 2 years for them to get there. They must have been quite. Convinced that this was the king of Israel that was being born.

Let's look at verse 2. It says, so verse 1, now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem. Verse 2. Saying, where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. This star must have been quite convincing to the magi to make that trek all the way across the ancient Near East. To see a child that was just born. I mean, they loaded up their camels, great sacrifice. They loaded up their donkeys, made the trek weeks at a time, and they eventually ended up at Harrod's palace. You don't just do that. You don't just go to a foreign king and say, hey, where's the new king that's been born? Unless you're 100% convinced that what you saw was accurate.

Now there's a few things here. First, the Magi must have been familiar with the Old Testament prophecies because they're interpreting these Old Testament prophecies and looking for signs in the stars, and they are people that study the stars, we know that, but we also know that they must be familiar.

We also know that they have to be quite convinced that what they saw is accurate to the stars and to what they see described in the prophecies. I don't know about you, but I it I require 37 different reviews on Google. Before I'll even make the trek down the street to try new tacos, OK? I don't know what they saw in the, in the stars that night, but it must have been pretty convincing, more convincing than like a best of Yelp sticker that they might put in the window. These guys. Very convinced that Jesus was the king.

Now, this star, I've never actually thought about this star. I'm not the type of guy who really like analyzes this type of thing very in depth unless I have to teach on it because then I know that some of you. Thinking about this, like, what's going on with the star, right? Did the new star just appear? Did God just create a temporary star and track it throughout the cosmos? Wouldn't that throw some things off? I'm not like an astrologist, but I. Think that that sounds a little crazy, that there would just be a new star to appear.

So what is going on with the star? Some people think that it may have just been an angel. Some people think that God temporarily suspended the laws of physics to create a star to move around and hover over the home of Jesus. More recently, I saw a good theory. I won't spend too long on this. I just think it's an interesting point, but I saw a really good theory, put together in a book written by a Cambridge PhD, so it's not like some quack out there, OK, on the internet, but a book, that was published, it's like 500 pages long and it's called The Great Christ Comment revealing the True Star of Bethlehem.

And this author puts together a great defense for the star of Bethlehem actually being a comet, which would make sense because it moves more like a comet might move throughout the sky and then it says that it can't comes to rest above the home of Jesus and that it's pointing to the home which the only way that you can think about a star pointing is if it has a tail. And so we think about a comet having a tail and so I don't know if that theory is true or not. I love the idea of that theory. I also love the idea of us putting the wrong thing on top of our Christmas trees because I'm here to destroy all of your Christmas traditions. We should be putting comets on top of these Christmas trees here.

Whatever it was, whether it was supernatural, common or something else, the important thing is that God used it to convincingly fulfill the prophecies and to draw the magi to Jesus. Verse 3. When Herod, the king heard this, he was troubled in all Jerusalem with him. Now that's interesting, is it not? That when King Herod heard it, he was troubled. Why would he be troubled? Shouldn't he be glad? The Messiah has come, the one that they've been waiting upon for. Years and years and years he's come.

Why is Herod troubled? That's what you would think, that he would be glad. But that's because we don't know Herod. Herod was king of the at the time in Israel, but he didn't have absolute authority. So Herod is what we call a client ruler. Of Rome, meaning that Rome was still in charge, but that he got to reign as king. And so at this point, Herod was near the end of his life, and we know from extra biblical writings that Herod had grown increasingly paranoid as he had gotten older. So Herod was known as someone who would put people to death if they posed a threat to him. So there's record of Herod putting putting to death his own sons, his own wives. He's putting to death many people around him, which is why Caesar Augustus famously quipped that he would rather be Herod's pig than be Herod's son, which in Greek those two words rhyme, so it's way punnier in Greek, but still funny.

Herod sees the fulfillment of the prophecies, and he's troubled because he sees Jesus as a threat to his power and to his rule. If there is a Messiah, if the Messiah has come. And he has been born, then he is the true king of Israel and that means Herod's days are numbered so he allows his paranoia to drive him into a murderous rage where he just wants to kill a lot of children. Verse 7. Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. And he said, and he sent them to Bethlehem saying, go and search diligently for the child. And when you found him, bring me word that I may come and worship him. Then quick look to the executioner, wink, wink, "worship him".

And that's what they did. The magi went and found Jesus, but before they could return, they were warned in a dream not to return to Herod, so they went home. And then verse 9, after listening to the king, they went on their way, and behold the star that they had seen when it rose, went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.

Herod sees Jesus as a threat To his rule, to his power. But how did the magi see Jesus? But they see Jesus as a source of exceeding joy. Which leads us to the big question for us today. How do you see Jesus? Do you see Jesus like Herod as a threat? To your life, or do you see Jesus like the magi? As a source of exceedingly abundant joy.

Jesus is a threat for many people, and you might not think of him as a threat in the same way that the magi thought of Jesus, or as Herod thought of Jesus as a threat. But Jesus is a threat. If your worth is found in the things of this world. Because Jesus says that the things of this world will not last, but only the kingdom of heaven will last. Jesus is a threat. To the self-righteous, to those who feel like they have accomplished enough to prove themselves before God. Because Jesus says that only he can prove sinners right before God. Jesus is a threat to the accomplice, to those who have many accolades, because God calls us to find our worth and what Christ has done for us and not what we have done for ourselves.

Jesus is a threat for those with material wealth. Because Jesus calls his followers to generously share with one another and with the poor. Jesus is a threat to those who are comfortable. Because he calls us to sacrifice. Jesus is a threat if you think you have life all figured out, if you don't need help, because he invites his followers to see the world from God's perspective and to see that we don't have it all figured out, but that God cares for us.

But at the same time, if you are at the end of your wits. If you are burnt out and in need of rest. If you are lowly, grieving, and longing for comfort. If you are burdened by guilt and desperate for forgiveness. If you feel lost and searching for purpose, if you're lonely and in need of a friend. If you're tired of the hustle and ready to receive grace. If you're disillusioned by what this world has to offer and looking for hope. If you're spiritually hungry. And willing to be humbled, then Jesus is a joy.

You see, church, we have a choice to see either Jesus as a threat to the kingdom and the world that we have built for ourselves, or to see Jesus as joy that he has built a kingdom for us and we get to be a part of it. Herod chose paranoid delusions of autonomy, apart from God. He sought the good life apart from anything that God can offer. This spun him into this murderous obsession, and this is like movie villain kind of stuff. In fact, I think they did make a, make him into a movie villain recently. I'm sure it didn't start with that. I'm sure he just got into the position of power and decided he wanted to keep it and started making small decisions to keep himself in the position of power and the small decisions spun out into the madness that we see described in Matthew chapter 2.

The magi, on the other hand, chose to follow the star and to find true joy. Verse 10. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. This isn't a polite or casual excitement. It's not fake, they're filled. It says that they're filled with joy, they're overabundantly enjoying what they have found. A joy that grips the heart and refuses to let go. That's what they experienced.

It reminds me of the parable of Jesus in Matthew, that we read in chapter 13. The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. Have you heard this one? It's a one line parable. It's my favorite kind. the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has. And buys that field. Do you see what's happening here? A man stumbles upon something in a parcel that's for sale. And he doesn't have to count the cost. He knows what he's found. He goes instantly, he says, I need to sell whatever I can sell all that I have so that I can buy that parcel so that I can have that treasure because it is of infinite more worth than all the things that I have.

This is the kingdom of God. When we find Jesus, we see it, we rejoice with a joy that is exceedingly abundant, and we're willing to give up all that we have so that we can experience more of that joy. For the magi, it was worth it to leave their homes, to cross the desert, to give up weeks if not months of their life, just to bow before this child to lay gifts at his feet of frankincense, gold, and myrrh. When you see Jesus as he truly is, as they did as the fulfillment to the prophecies, as the king of the universe as the Messiah who has come to rescue his people as one who loves sinners like you and I. You are willing to bow low and to receive the joy that he has to give. Recognizing that all you have will suddenly grow strangely dim. And all you have, all you need is Jesus.

When was the last time you felt this kind of joy in meeting with Christ? If you're a Christian here today, when was the last time you felt this kind of joy in meeting with Christ? How do you get there again? I'm not talking about the satisfaction of checking a passage of a Bible reading plan. But I'm talking about the soul stirring joy of being loved by God Himself. Maybe it was in a moment of prayer when the weight of the world was lifted. Maybe it was in a kind or prophetic word. Maybe it was while you were reading your scripture one day.

I'll tell you for me, one time recently, at the retreat just, you know, 6 weeks ago or so, a month and a half, we were at a church-wide retreat and, I was there and enjoying myself, but it was a busy time. I forced myself to go to the retreat. I really didn't. I wanted to go, but Megan and I were out of town leading up to that. We flew in the day before the retreat or the day of the retreat. I flew in with the kids by myself. I have an 11 year old, an eight year old, and a 4 year old flying. it's not the easiest thing on the planet with 3 children by yourself, OK? I'm usually very dependent upon my wife, when doing all of that.

So I flew in by myself with the kids and then we loaded up the car the next day and drove up to the retreat in early in the morning. So I was like a little at my wits end and not only that, but I feel a lot of pressure in my life. I'm like the type of guy that is maybe a little bit too tightly wound at times. I, take on a lot of responsibility for myself first children, you know, let's let's unite here. I just feel more responsibility than what I should, uh, for things, and I just kind of bear the weight of it all, so. You know, obviously I should find myself in a position where I'm the pastor of a church that's growing and has a lot. I feel a lot of responsibility for everything that happens here and for my family. I've got a lot of, I want my kids to like really feel and know how much they are loved. And so I just feel pressure all the time. I just never feel like I have enough. I never feel like I have enough margin to give.

I wish I could be there like a, like a family member, and I really feel the demand to be a spiritual father to so many people. And as someone like I'm in my late 30s, I'm like older than a lot of people here. I just feel the need to to be that spiritual father for like everyone, and I just feel so limited. Oh my gosh, cause I, it's just time, there's only so much, you know, and like I'm kinda introverted. Anyways, I'm not trying to go into everything about me.

A friend, a member here actually, came up to me at the retreat and said, hey, I, I think I have a word for you, and if it's from the Lord, that'd be great. I'm, I'm not sure, but I was praying and, you know, I was praying, expressing a little disappointment to the Lord about your availability for me. I was like, oh. Like, like that's the worst thing ever. And, and I just heard the Lord say really clearly to me. Stop. The Lord confronted me in that moment. And said, Fletcher has Jesus. He has everything that he needs to do the work that I've given him. And it was like a warm hug from the Lord. It was it it I don't know if it was like directly from the the Lord there or not, but it felt like it was. Something I needed to hear.

Just the joy of knowing that I'm loved despite my limitations, despite the fact that I'm not able to be everything for everyone, but I'm not Jesus, I'm not supposed to be, right? But I want to be, but that's my own issue, you know, and that's when, when Jesus is a threat to my life and to my role is when I want to be him. You see, like, if I want to be Jesus, then I'm saying Jesus, you take the back seat, let me take the front seat here. Let me drive the car for a little while. Let me be in charge. Let me get the glory of helping people with their lives. But that's not my job. You see, it's Jesus's job to to help you with your life. And I'm merely here to point you in that direction. Hence, I have everything I need, right?

What might it look like for you to experience the joy of Jesus again? Well, I think it might take a little personal reflection. I think you might need to see. What you actually need from him at the moment. You might need to take a moment. And put down your phone and contemplate. What am I looking for? If Jesus were to show up in the sky, in my life, what would he even have to do to get my attention? Or have I just filled my life so much with noise that I can't hear from him anymore or ever.

Maybe you should just go for a quiet walk or sit down with a cup of tea, pour out your heart to the Lord and speak with him. Open your Bible and listen for his voice, connect with a friend, and here's a really scary thought. Say, what do you think the Lord needs to say to me? Wow, that takes courage. That takes courage. If you were to say, really, I want to hear whatever you think the Lord needs to say to me, give it to me. You might want to pray about what friend did you go to before that happens.

Maybe there's something that you have to surrender that's making Jesus more of a threat than a joy in your life. Whatever it is, seek the joy of Christ, like the first time. Let me, let me end with this. How did Jesus originally draw you? How did he draw you to himself? For me in high school it was through a weird set of circumstances. It wasn't like I was drawn to Jesus initially. I started going to church because there was a girl that I was interested in at church. I struck out with the girl, but you know, I ended up becoming Christian and learning about who Jesus is. And so it was definitely a better situation for me. I actually won in that.

But for others, I don't know what brought you to Jesus for the first time. Or maybe you're here today and you're here for a reason. Maybe this is the first time that you're like, man, I'm listening to this stuff. It might make sense. And I just encourage you. To look for Christ. I have friends that have found Jesus in in many different ways. Maybe you grew up in a home with two parents that loved the Lord and loved you. Maybe I have a friend who became a Christian by listening to one of those terrible fundamentalist preachers on the radio. Seriously, I was like, what? Really? That works? Like uh. Yeah, became, trusted Christ, and he's now a pastor.

I've heard stories of people in some nations where Christianity is, it's much more frowned upon having dreams about, hey, you need to go to this place at this time, and they did and they met a Christian at that moment. I don't know what it is that would bring you to Jesus as the star brought the magi to Jesus. But maybe look for a way for Jesus to draw you back to himself. How is he drawing you to himself today? And allow yourself to fall before him and to experience the joy of Christ.

We'll give you a moment to contemplate that, and as we do that, we'll prepare our hearts for a sacred meal that we call communion that we Eucharist or the Lord's supper, whatever you wanna call it. Each week we celebrate this meal. If you are a believer here today, you are here because of what Christ has done, not because of what you've done, we encourage you to come and receive this. Why don't we stand as we prepare ourselves to receive this meal and we'll sing another song before the benediction.

So God, as we are coming to you today, we ask that you would draw us back to yourself. That you would remind us of our first love and the joy that we have in Christ. Would you help us to find him again, to, to seek the Lord and while he may be found? God, I pray for all those who are here contemplating how you might be restoring joy to their life, bringing purpose and meaning. Would you, would you work on us today from the inside out, would you bring your gospel peace? And help us to have the joy that the magi had in finding Christ. We ask these things in Christ's name, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Luke 2:8-20. Discussion points: Shepherds who were looked down on in their society but were chosen to witness Jesus’ birth, we are awaiting Jesus’ second arrival on earth, the peace that the angels were announcing was peace between God and humanity.

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Scripture reader: [Luke 2:8-20] And in the same region, there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, "Fear not. For behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a savior who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you. You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger."

And suddenly there was with the angel, a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased." When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has made known to us." And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child, and all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them.

But Mary treasured up all these things pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen as it had been told to them.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: All right, good morning. It's good to see everybody today. I don't know about you, but every time I hear that passage being read in front of a group of people, I I can't help but think of Linus dragging his little blanket onto the stage and the spotlight falling on him and just, it's warm and fuzzy feelings. Is it not Christmas? It's really nice. Charlie Brown peanuts. We get it all and with, with this passage, We find ourselves today in the second Sunday of Advent and we're taking a brief pause from our series on the book of Daniel, which has been a joy, really exciting book to be working through, we will resume Daniel in the New Year in January.

But for now, we're going to do a short series on the incarnation and the series is called The Light has Come Witnesses to the birth of Christ. And with this series, we're going to be looking at some classic Christmas passages. We're just going to be trying to think through the passages and the people that witnessed the birth of Christ that we were given a description of in the New Testament. So this week we're going to be talking about the shepherds and what the shepherds saw and how they responded to that. And as witnesses to Christ next week, we'll be talking about the magi who brought Jesus gifts.

And then, the week following that, I actually haven't, 100% decided what we're doing. I'm leaning towards Joseph because, you know, we're all wondering if Mary knew, but like, what about Joseph? Let's like, dig in there a little bit. So maybe, maybe we'll do a, a sermon on Joseph. I've never heard that before, but we'll see what happens, you know, keep you on the edge of your seats for a few weeks from now. You can show up and, and figure out what we decided to preach on that week.

In today's story, an army of angels appear to a group of shepherds and they declare glory to God in the highest and on earth. Peace among those with whom he is pleased for some of these, for some of the, for some of us, as we hear these words, glory to God in the highest and peace on earth. They ring hollow. You know, it's just something on the cover of a Hallmark card, is it not? Peace on earth, Glory to God in the highest. We don't really contemplate what that means.

For others of us, we might hear that and we might look at it with an eye of suspicion and say really? Peace on earth. Well, Jesus came 2000 years ago and I'm looking around and, it looks like he did a pretty crap job of it. I don't see a lot of peace on earth. We still have war, we still have Brokenness. In fact, we might look at that passage and not just think skeptically, we might just think that it's just sheer contradiction when we look at it because didn't Jesus himself claim that he's not bringing peace, but instead he's bringing division. Look at all the wars that have been fought in the name of Jesus.

In fact, many people have proposed the idea that religion doesn't help with violence. It causes more violence and that if we actually want to have peace on earth, the first thing we need to do is get rid of the religion. Listen to how Bertrand Russell said this nearly 100 years ago between the world wars. He said religion prevents us from removing the fundamental causes of war. It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age. But if so, it will be necessary to slay the dragon that guards the door and this dragon is religion.

I don't know how you're looking at what the angels had to say, how you receive that today. But I know that you are looking for what they declared all of us have a deep longing in our heart for peace. This is why every Christmas movie ends with a scene of peace. They all start with some type of suspense and then the suspense was relieved at the end when you know, the family comes home from their trip to France and you're reunited, or the, the angel finally gets his wings as the family is singing the Carol together in the living room, we are all, it all just reflects this thing that we're looking for, which is peace. We are all looking for peace.

So let's look at the passage. We're going to handle some of those questions that I brought up a few moments ago as we walk our way through the passage. Before we get to the shepherds, I want to take a moment to set the scene. OK. We started in verse eight today and that picks up in the middle of a story. And so for many of us, the story of Christ being born is familiar, but I think it deserves another retelling this morning and maybe we can see it with fresh eyes and for maybe some of us, we might not be as familiar with the birth story of Christ. And so I would love to be able to, to share that with you today.

So chapter two of Luke, Luke is a historian. He's, he's a physician actually who's writing an account of Jesus. and he's one of Jesus' followers. And so he starts it with a lot, he gives a lot more details throughout his gospel than the other gospel writers because he does have that more scientific mindset to him. And so he starts off chapter two by saying that at that time, there was an emperor in Rome named Caesar Augustus heard of him. Many of us have he called for a census. Now, back in that day, they didn't have the US postal service. Ok. When we have a census, I get something in the mail, I fill it out or I follow the link online and I tell them how many people are living in my home. That is not the way that they would do it back then because there wasn't postal service and whatnot. So instead everyone had to go to their ancestral hometown. That means you went to where all your relatives lived and then you, they were logged, everybody was logged and they wanted a good number.

So Mary and Joseph had to make their way to their ancestral hometown at the time. They were living in Nazareth, which is where Joseph had kind of made his life, but they had to make their 90 mile trek to Bethlehem. The only problem is Mary is nine months pregnant and that was not the baby moon that she was expecting. I will guarantee you that. Now I don't think that any of us would be dumb enough to do this, but just in case you were wondering, your wife does not want to travel 90 miles on the back of a donkey. Nine months pregnant to visit her in-laws. You're not gonna make it 90 miles. I'd be surprised if you make it one, but Mary was better than most of us, I suppose. And so they, they made it all the way.

But when they get there, Mary is ready to pop and I don't want to ruin your nativity scenes, but I'm going to. Ok. So in your nativity scenes, how many of us have seen the nativity scene that has, you know, Mary and Joseph baby Jesus in a barn in a stable. We've all seen that but you get to this and it says that there was no room in the end and we get this idea of a nasty innkeeper being like no room for you go stay within the barn. That's probably not actually what's happening. Ok. Maybe it doesn't give us a lot of details, but the word for in, in the passage is the same word that we would use for guest room. And so when they get there, they are probably, it would make sense for them to be trying to stay with family. Would it not since it's his ancestral hometown, he probably still has family in Bethlehem.

And when they get there, the guest room is not ready for childbirth. Neither is mine. Ok. So where do they go? But they probably are situated in the family room of a, of a, of a family member and the family room is kind of like the main living space. And what they would do back in that day is when it was cold outside. You had animals, your animals were your livelihood. They would let the animals come into the family room to be warm from the cold weather. And so many scholars, most in fact, probably believe that they're actually giving birth in the family room of Joseph's extended family here. Could he be in a barn if you like that idea? Go for it. You know, the, the text doesn't say, but I just thought I would bust your bubble a little bit this morning.

So this leads us to verse eight where we're introduced to the Shepherds. And in verse it says in verse eight, first verse that we looked at this morning and in the same region, there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. Shepherds play this dramatically overemphasized role throughout all of scripture. So if you've read the Bible, you've come across Shepherd story after Shepherd story. And I don't know how many of you have met a shepherd in real life. I have not ever met a shepherd in real life. I assumed that they were more prevalent back then. But I assume that, that, that they are not like every other person you meet is a shepherd in ancient times.

And so it's almost as if God has a soft spot for shepherds. They pop up all throughout the scripture. You look all the way throughout the history. Father Abraham, he kept livestock. He was a shepherd. You see Moses, when he ran away from Pharaoh, he went and lived with his, with his father in law Jethro who was a shepherd and he kept livestock. You see, King David, the lowly shepherd boy who was chosen and risen into kingship, lifted up into it. Many of the Psalms and prophets refer to God as our shepherd. And with all this emphasis, it's easy to miss the irony because in the first century shepherds were not generally revered, but they were denigrated, they were looked down upon.

And so shepherds were seen as, you know, kind of laborers. They weren't really the high class. They were not even allowed to give witness or testimony in the court of law. And so it's to these blue collar dudes working the night shift that the angels come and reveal themselves and that they are invited, who can't even give witness in the court of testimony. They are invited to witness the birth of Christ, the first born of all creation. It's really an amazing thing that emphasizes God's flips priorities. God doesn't always look for the high, the exalted, the rich the powerful, but God often looks for the humble and the lowly to lift up and to put into high positions and to give great honor to.

So then the angel appears to these guys and verse nine, an angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were filled with great fear. Well, I would be too if I'm just working the night shift and the glory of the Lord appears to me. It's a little frightening, but let's talk about the angel for just a moment. There's a lot of angel obsession out there and a lot of our notions about who angels are, are misconceived notions about who angels are angels.

We don't know what they look like, but we know that almost all movies get them completely wrong because the first thing an angel says when he shows up, well, the first thing a human does when an angel shows up isn't say, say, oh, that's cute. You know, it's not like a baby with wings flying there. They're not helping any baseball teams in the outfield. You have angels, they show up and what's the first thing that they say? They say fear not. Ok. Modern translation. It's cool. Don't freak out.

Ok, like something crazy is happening when an angel appears, we know that the word angel actually means messenger. And so an angel is a heavenly being who is a messenger for God. And the most common things that they say is just, don't freak out imagine working the night shift, just mind your own business. And then the glory of the Lord shines and a bunch of angels come and they start speaking to you. And this is what the shepherds experience. Verse 10. What did the angels say? And the angel said to them fear not for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a savior who is Christ, the Lord.

I love the way that the angel says this. The angel says for not and then fear not. Excuse me, fear not. And then why does the angel say? Fear, not fear not for I bring you good news. That's right. Good news alleviates our fears and brings us peace. The word for good news here is the Greek word that we often translate into gospel. When we're gospel people, we are good news people. The gospel simply means good news. The angel brings good news, good news brings us peace.

Let me give you an example. Back in 2013, my wife and I were living in Boston. It was our first full year to live in Boston. We moved to Boston in 2012. In 2013, we were living here. My wife was expecting, she wasn't quite as far along as Mary in our story, but she was expecting and we went to go see the Boston Marathon with some friends on Beacon Street. And so we were about a mile from the finish line and was anybody else here in 2013? A few? Ok. well, you know where the story's going, I suppose. So we leave the party, we're there for a while and then, you know, you see all the elites run by, you see the wheelchairs, first guys in, in the fatigues walking by, then you see all the elites run by and then you get the mere mortals coming about like 30 minutes after that.

And so we're like deep into the mere mortals when we decide had to go home. So we, at that point, we don't have a car. And so we get on the t we ride our way home. We're living in JP at the time and we go, we must have gone through Copley and then taken, interchange downtown, I believe and got back. And by the time we got to our, our tea stop in JP, we started getting texts from friends and family and they were all very concerned and saying, are you OK? And we responded back. Yeah, of course. What's up? How you doing? And it's at that moment that we got the news that there had been a bomb at the Boston Marathon. And I'm telling you, we must have passed through Copley right before it went off because by the time we were home, it had already happened.

Each of our friends as they sent us, this message were in a state of suspense, awaiting longing for our response. And the good news of our safety brought them peace. Now, a few days after the marathon bombing, there was a huge manhunt throughout all of Boston. They were, they sh, I, in fact, one night it all went down, there was a, like a, a shootout over at MIT and then they shut down the entire city. I mean, it was wild. It was only thing it was similar to were like those first couple weeks of COVID. that was somewhat similar to it but Boston, like they were like, do not leave your home, scary stuff. Like we have armed gunmen running around the city. We do not know where they are.

So they gave us this range from like Watertown to Dorchester and said, like, do not leave your house. And it's like, that's a million people guys, you're wanting us all to stay home. So we all stayed home. We did the one thing that it was probably the last time I ever did this tuned in to local news. You know, I had to like, get the bunny ears going on the TV, just to see what's happening. And we had to sit at home all day long and at the end of the day as we're sitting in suspense, what do we get? But the good news, we got them, we, we found the bomber. You can leave your home again and we all did. We went for a walk at that moment. I think everybody in Boston said time for a walk and we all went outside and walked around for a few moments.

Now, how does good news that the angel is declaring? Bring us peace? Well, similar to the stories I told the whole world is in a sin, is in a state of suspense. The book Romans says that creation is groaning under the Brokenness of sin. The whole world is anticipating a deliverer someone to come and right all of the wrongs to make the world new again, to eliminate the enemy, the evil one, Satan himself to defeat sin and to release us from our slavery to self and sin and Brokenness. And the angel is coming to say he's here. The savior is here. I bring you good news. The wait is over. The Messiah, the Christ, the anointed one. He is here. Your wait is over.

So what did the angel say next? Verse 12. And this will be a sign for you. You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel. A multitude of heavenly host, host is a word that you could use, army. A heavenly army, praising God and saying glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace among those with whom he is well pleased. Now, you might read that passage, peace, peace on Earth among those with whom he is well pleased. And you might think that's not quite how I remember that verse going. It's a very famous verse. You're probably as I am more familiar with the old King James version that says on earth, peace, goodwill towards men. I feel like we sing that one in a few of our carols.

And though it sounds warm and fuzzy, there's essentially universal acceptance among scholars that the old King Jimmy version, there is not the most accurate version for us. The angels aren't promising peace to the entire world. The a the angels are declaring peace to a specific group with those with whom God is pleased. If the angels were declaring political peace or an end to international strife, then the past 2000 years would have looked very different. I'm sure God could have done that, but instead they're declaring something deeper and more lasting and that is peace with God, peace with God for all those who would look for him. And the first line of Hark the Herald angel sings one of my favorite Christmas carols. If not my favorite. It's definitely on the Mount Rushmore of Christmas carols. It says peace on earth and mercy, mild God and sinners reconciled.

This is the piece that he's talking about the peace of God is peace with God. The peace that you are all longing for, that we desire so much in our life is ultimately peace with God. If the main thing Jesus offers is peace with God. Let me ask the question. Does that mean that Jesus promotes war and division among people? Of course not, of course not. There have been many wars fought in the name of Jesus, but Jesus was not, was always an advocate for nonviolence. What, what did he say? When Peter chops off the ear of the guy in the garden, he says, put your sword down, Peter. That's not the way we're going. That's not what we're doing here, but put your sword away.

You see Jesus being led away, led away to a death that he did not deserve. And as he's going, he did not fight back. He did not call down the legions of angels. He went peacefully and with the confidence that he was doing the will of God. And after Jesus is led that way through Nonviolence, what do all of his followers do? We see? We see record of many of the disciples following his exact path of Nonviolence all the way to their own demise. Yes. Religion has often been used to justify war and violence exhibit a the crusades, but just because someone is fighting a war in the name of Jesus doesn't actually mean that Jesus endorses the war. Many people are just looking for an excuse to fight wars as part of the brokenness that lives within us.

Humans are looking for a way to leverage their beliefs or to shape their beliefs into what they're already wanting. How many, how many times have you found someone that wants to do something? And then all of a sudden they convince themselves that that's what God wants them to do. They shape God in their own image instead of allowing themselves to be shaped in the image of God.

I love the way that Rebecca McLaughlin says this when she's talking about does religion cause violence? Look at this from her book, Confronting Christianity. Does religion cause violence? It certainly can. But millions of people are driven by their faith to love and serve others. And Christianity in particular has served as a fertilizer for democracy, a motivation for justice and a mandate for healing. If we think the world would be less violent without it, we may need to check our facts.

But that does, we still have to grapple with Jesus own words because Jesus says I come not to give you peace but to give you division. Let's look at that later in the book of Luke Jesus says this, do you think I've come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you but rather division from now on in one house, there will be five divided three against two and two against three. And for some of us, we might read that and it is unsettling to us. And that's because we live in an American place where most of us can make our own individual choices about our religious beliefs and live at peace with our parents because we've been taught that we're individuals in that way.

But what the scriptures teach us is that Jesus brings this, this, there, there's a sense of disruption in our lives. When we come to Christ, it does change us and you'll understand what he thinks way more clearly. If you just imagine in a Muslim nation that two members of a household become Christ followers. Well, that's going to bring some disruption and some division among the household. We might not all be as accepting of different ideas for better or worse as we are in the West. And so the peace that Jesus offers is peace with God, not necessarily peace with all those around us. If you follow Jesus, it's going to disrupt your life, it's going to cause wreak some havoc and sometimes.

But at the same time, book of John Jesus says this, you know, sometimes Jesus says, contradictory things, you just have to tease these out and, and hold them in tension and understand that they're both true because this is what he says in the book of John. He says, John chapter 14 verse 27 peace, I leave with you. My peace I give you. Not as the world gives do I give you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. And so here we have Jesus telling his disciples, I do give you peace. I give you a deeper and greater peace than the world can offer. Because I give you peace with God, acceptance by God. You are loved by the creator and sustainer of the universe. We get to spend eternity and perfect fellowship with Him.

The peace that Jesus brings is peace with God for you today. Have you ever experienced the peace with God in that way? I'm not going to assume that all of us have. And so maybe today is your first day to take a step and under and say, I want peace with God. I want to understand what it means to be accepted by God. I feel like such a failure, but yet I can have peace with God. And today is an opportunity you are invited to trust in Christ and to receive the peace of God. But for many of us, we've been Christians for a long time and we've been taught this truth that we can have peace with God and we understand the gospel, but we only only understand the gospel as the ABCs of Christianity. You know, we're taught this in children's ministry oftentimes that the gospel is the ABCs.

You admit anybody you've ever learned this in children's ministry when you were a kid, admit believe and commit, right? So you admit that you're a sinner, you believe that Christ died for you and you commit your life to follow after him. And for many of us, that's where it ends. We stop right there and we just say ABC S now I have peace with God. I'm good to go. But the gospel is not the good news of Jesus is not the ABCs but it is the A to Z of faith. it's everything. And so as we live in our lives, as we continue to follow, after Christ, we have to see that many of the problems that we have in our lives. The lack of peace that we experience is actually because a lack of trusting in the gospel, lack of belief.

We have to go back to that first thing, which is the good news of what God is, a lack of trust that God is who He says He is and he will do what he says. He will do so to experience the peace of God, whether for the first time or the 100th, the answer is still the same. Like go back to the good news and examine what you're believing. You might have to replace your old ways of thinking with new ways of thinking. We have these unhelpful patterns.

Let me give you a couple of examples you might believe or you might think something like this. If anyone really knew me, they would reject me and you might not actually think that but it's like one step behind the thoughts that you have in your head. Like if you really knew me, you would reject me. And so you spend all of your life trying to cover up who you really are and to put a face forward, you think through how you can actually dress and how you can speak and what you can do to put the right foot forward and the right face in front of people so that you won't be rejected. But friends, the gospel says you are accepted, not because of what you have done or what face you put forward. But because of what Christ has done for you, you have a greater acceptance than what you even realize.

And so you combat this thought when you think no one will accept me if they knew the real me, you combat it with the truth. God knows me better than anyone. He knows me all the way to my core and yet he loves and accepts me. Isn't that good news?

I'll give you another example. You might think I've been a good person. I've tried my hardest. I've done good things. Why doesn't God reward me? And this thought it reveals something that you believe about who God is and how He operates. And it's not the gospel because the gospel says that God rewards you fully in Christ, not because of what you have done, but because of what Jesus has done. And so this is revealing a type of works, righteousness in your own life saying if I do good things, then God will give me good in return. And so instead of this, I've been a good person, try my hardest. Why doesn't God reward me?

We have to have this contra belief, this, this truth spoken into our life that says God doesn't reward me because of what I've done. But because of what Christ has done, I've been blessed in the heavenly realms. I have all that I need. Jesus came to give me peace, not so that I can earn it. He came to give it to me there. These are just two examples of ways that we have to return to our first love.

We have to return to this continual belief in our life looking for the lies that we're believing that are preventing us from having full faith in Christ and replacing those with the truth of the Gospel because the, it's really the lies that cause us so much anguish and steal our peace and the truth of Christ sets us free and allows us to live in peace with God. Ultimately, we do believe that Christ actually will bring peace to all the earth though you see, he came first to inaugurate the kingdom as a lowly infant, bringing the kingdom of God to all of us. And we live in a time between arrivals.

Advent means arrival. And so we celebrate the first arrival of Christ. And now we long for his second arrival because we believe that Christ will return and that he will make all the world right again, that he will reign and rule as the king of the world. And that he will bring peace throughout all of the world. That the glory that shone on the shepherds in the field will shine on us all that the kingdom of God will fill the entire earth. And this is what we remember in this advent season, we long to see the future arrival of Christ. Who may it come quickly come quickly, Lord Jesus.

Each week, we participate in a sacred meal. And one of the things that we say as we take this meal is come quickly, Lord Jesus, we long to know you in full. This meal is just a, a part. It's just a, a piece. It's a reminder that we have peace with God today, but we still live in a broken world. And we long for the day when Christ would come and bring the kingdom in full. So if you would let's stand and prepare our hearts to receive this meal as the band makes their way back up here. And I will pray for us.

Father, as we come to your table today, would you give us a divine sense of peace and to know that you were with us in a really special kind of way. And that if God is on my side, that nothing can hold me down, that you give me more peace than what I ever could imagine, a deeper sense of peace, than I am accepted, loved, redeemed. That I, I have been lifted up, Though I am lowly, you have made much of me. You've given me a, a place in your kingdom. And so God, I pray that you would replace our harmful thought patterns, the lies that we so often fall into. You will help us to identify those lies and that you would help us to replace those with true belief in who you are and what you've done. God as we come to your table, we pray that you would help us to repent of those things and to receive the truth in you. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

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CoaH member Jonathan Simpson preaches from Luke 5:17-26. Discussion points: The paralytic needed a group of friends to help him get to Jesus, Jesus healed the man’s root issue as well as the surface problem, the Pharisees didn’t recognize Jesus’s authority to forgive sins.

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Scripture reader: [Luke 5:17-26] On one of those days as he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there who had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with him to heal. And behold, some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed, and they were seeking to bring him in and lay him before Jesus. But finding no way to bring him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles into the midst before Jesus.

And when he saw their faith, he said, "Man, your sins are forgiven you." And the scribes and the Pharisees began to question saying, "Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?" When Jesus perceived their thoughts, he answered them, "Why do you question in your hearts? Which is easier to say, 'your sins are forgiven you' or to say 'rise and walk?' But that you may know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins." He said to the man who is paralyzed, "I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home." And immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God. And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying "We have seen extraordinary things today."

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: All right, good morning church. It's thank you Fletcher for the introduction. It's my pleasure and my privilege to be with you here this morning and to be sharing God's word with you. And this morning, as we're celebrating advent, we, we look forward to the arrival of Christ over the next four weeks. But today, I want to look at this passage from Luke chapter five. And I wonder if you have ever read those stories in the news where someone goes to the doctor for something minor and then the doctor discovers a life threatening condition.

I read this news article a while ago where a 21 year old woman from Manchester in England had trouble seeing things and she thought she needed new glasses. So she went to the optometrist and the eye doctor takes a look at her eyes but discovers that both of her optic nerves are swollen. So I suspect something more serious is up. So they send her straight to the hospital and the doctors have a look and it turns out that she had a benign brain tumor that was causing a build up of excess fluid in her brain. The doctors were able to perform a procedure to fix the problem but said that she could have died if she had have waited even 12 hours longer. This woman thought that she was going to get new glasses to fix her vision. She instead got treatment that saved her life.

So this morning, we're looking at this passage where like this woman, a man receives a far greater healing than he expected. And the story teaches us that Jesus sees and heals our greatest sickness. So Jesus was in Capernaum in northern Israel. And at this point in his ministry, he had performed many miraculous healings. Verse 15 says that word had gotten around and great crowds were gathering to hear his teaching and be healed of their diseases.

In verse 17, we read that Jesus was teaching inside a house and the account of the story and Mark tells us that this was actually the house where Jesus was living in Capernaum at that time. And a large crowd of people made up of scribes and Pharisees the religious leaders in Israel in that day had come from the towns and villages in the surrounding countryside, from Judea and Galilee. And some had come from even as far away as Jerusalem to hear Jesus' teaching. And so there was this crowd that was so large that it was, it was spilling out the doors of the house.

And now at this point, a group of four men approached the house and this group of men are carrying a man on a stretcher. This man is a paralytic who cannot walk. He, he relies entirely on his friends to get him around. And now it can be easy to hear the word paralytic here. And I'm sure many of us are familiar with this story but not really think what that would have meant, but just take a moment to think what it would have been like to be a paralyzed person in this society, you wouldn't be able to earn a living because for the most part that depended on your ability to do physical work. So you wouldn't have any income and you wouldn't be able to offer sacrifices in the temple. Like the law required you to do, you would be completely and utterly dependent on your friends and family for survival.

This paralytic would have suffered greatly for years and, and on top of that, there would have been no hope for recovery. I mean, even today, modern medicine does not know how to, to cure, to heal most forms of paralysis. So when these men heard that Jesus, this teacher who was healing people in miraculous ways was in their village, it was worth every effort for them to get him before Jesus. But there's a problem, of course, we're told that the crowd was so large that they couldn't find a way through. in to see Jesus.

But these friends were determined, they believed that Jesus could heal their friend and they weren't going to let this opportunity slip away from them. So in their creativeness and in their determination, they get up onto the flat topped roof of this house, probably fire an external staircase, which was quite common in those days. And they literally start just removing the roof tiles from the house. Now, just take a minute to think how crazy this really is. They essentially destroyed someone's property, like made a big hole in someone's house in order to get their friend before Jesus.

It would be like if Taylor Swift and bear with me here, it would be like if Taylor Swift were performing at TD Garden and I so desperately wanted to go and see her, but the crowd was so big and it was sold out that I get a bunch of you together and we climb up onto the roof and take a sledgehammer and like bust a hole into the roof and then abseil down to get front row seats. Ok? Maybe it wouldn't be like that. I'm not sure if I'd have any friends if I tried to do that. And for the record, this is purely analogy. I, I am not a Swifty but you get the point.

They went to pretty extreme lengths to get this man before Jesus and this a lesson here for us. It says in verse 20 that Jesus saw their faith plural, the determination of these men to get their friends before Jesus was an outwork of their confident faith that Jesus could heal their paralyzed friend. And Jesus alone, you know how determined and persistent are we are we with our friends to point them to Jesus when they need healing and deliverance and salvation. I can tell you several stories in my experience and, and you might have them too where people are brought to Jesus and receive healing and salvation because of the persistent prayers and acts of love and, and faith of a group of family or friends.

When I was in college, I was involved in a campus ministry called the Navigators. And I was one of a, a core group of people that formed the, the sort of the core of this chapter. And one day, one of my friends in this group brought along a classmate that I think she had met in her philosophy or math class. And I still clearly remember the moment that I met this guy for the first time. We were having a beginning of semester launch event, sort of standing around eating pizza in the park, that sort of thing. I didn't know who this guy was, but we got talking.

And in the course of our conversation, I asked him whether he went to a church to which he confidently replied, oh, no, I'm an atheist. When I told him that I had grown up in the church. He again, very confidently said something to the effect of, oh, so you're just another one of those kids that's been brainwashed from childhood. Then suffice to say that I was a bit taken aback. And to be honest, I didn't think I was going to see this guy around again, but the semester continues and he keeps showing up to events and you might think, well, why would such a confident atheist keep coming back to a Christian group?

And, you know, initially, I think he had this misguided belief that he was going to convince us how ridiculous Christianity really was. But really the main reason he kept coming back was because he started to make friends. He was really looking for a community to be around that loved and accepted him. And as he made friends, his curiosity about the Bible and Jesus grew, he started to read the Bible with a few of us and, and the, and he became more interested in faith until he eventually did come to accept Jesus.

And the funny part is is that it was actually none of us who were with him when he realized this and came to believe the gospel. It was actually, it actually happened when he was in the met at a random evangelist in the park across from campus. The point being that God chose to use us as a group to bring our friend to faith. It wasn't just up to one of us, but we were all faithful to play our part in loving our friend and consistently pointing him to Jesus because we believe that Jesus was really the one who was he, he was looking for.

You know, often times in our Christian walk, I think we can feel like we're failing. If we haven't let a person to faith from start to finish or if we're not the one leading the group, or if we're not the one who's seen, who's up the front on the stage. Or alternatively, perhaps we don't want to let our brothers and sisters in to help us because I have to be the one that brings this person to faith or this is my responsibility and only I can do it. But you know, the paralytic would have never gotten into Jesus if it was just one of his friends dragging him along the ground.

See, it's not whether or not we can do it on our own, that matters what matters is that we are convinced like these men that Jesus is the one who is able to save people. And we are faithful to play our part in the communities and circles that we are in to consistently point people to Jesus. And it's a really beautiful and joyful thing to be part of, to strive together in faith, to see individuals receive salvation and healing from Jesus.

I mean, isn't this the whole reason why the church exists on this earth. If you think of what John Jesus prayed in John chapter 17, he prayed that the church, the people would be united so that they would see the Father's love for Jesus and for his people. And I'm so thankful that we do this in our church. We are united in love for one another and we do work together to point people to Jesus. You know, I've seen it happening, but let's do it more. Let's strive together as a team in faith to get people to see and experience Jesus. But now back to the story, we read that it's because of their persistent faith that these men receive what they came to Jesus for.

Jesus says to the paralytic at the end of verse 24 and says, rise, pick up your bed and go home verse 25 and immediately he rose up before them. He picked up what he had been lying on and went home glorifying God. How good is that? Like this man who was paralyzed on his bed, possibly for his whole life just gets up at Jesus's word. He picks up his bed and goes home, busts out through the crowd glorifying God. Just think of what he would have been feeling, the joy and freedom of being able to walk and move again and the thankfulness to Jesus and to God for healing him and, and also the hope of the completely transformed life that he now had before him and imagine the joy that his friends would have felt too, their persistent faith had paid off and the friend was now healed. I'm sure that they would have been rejoicing greatly with him and with God.

And then this reaction of the crowd, verse 26 says, that amazement seized them all and they glorified God and were filled with awe saying we have seen extraordinary things today. You know, oftentimes when I read these stories in the gospel and in the Bible, I wish we could just take just transplant, take those feelings and transplant them into us, the emotions and feelings and thoughts that these people would have been experiencing during these stories. Because I think our rational sigh convinces us of how impossible this is. So we struggled to really imagine what it would have been like to see that happen. But I'm sure that if you or I were there, then we would also feel the sense of amazement and awe at just the miraculous thing that had happened before us. So we see that Jesus had the power to miraculously heal this man.

But at this point, I have to confess something and you may have picked up on this and I've seen some people like looking at their, their Bibles. but I skipped over a whole part of the story that really forms the core of what is being taught here. Shows us that Jesus didn't just have power to heal physical disabilities and sicknesses. Now, Jesus had the, the power and authority to see and heal this man's greatest sickness. See the first words that Jesus said to the man when he was lowered through the roof and landed at his feet were not rise, pick up your bed and go home. Now, the first thing that Jesus said to the man after seeing him appear before him and realizing his faith was this man. Your sins are forgiven you, your sins are forgiven you.

This paralytic had got his friends to bring him to Jesus hoping that he would be able to make him walk again. They removed the roof of this house and lowered him down so that Jesus could heal him. And the first thing that he hears Jesus say to him is your sins are forgiven you. Now, this seems a little strange at first glance, doesn't it? Like, imagine if I went to the dentist to get my wisdom teeth pulled out and I have a particularly difficult case. So the dentist administers a sedative for the procedure and then they performed the tooth extraction. And after a while after the sedative wears off, I asked the dentist how it went and they reply, it went great. I removed both of your tonsils with no issues. Like what? I came here to have my teeth removed and you removed my tonsils instead.

Like if this happened to you. What, what would you be thinking aside from it being a pretty serious medical malpractice, I think I'd be confused and angry and I'd have a whole bunch of questions. Like, why did the dentist remove my tonsils and not my teeth? Why did they even think that my tonsils needed to be taken out in the first place? And, and what authority and what skill does the dentist have to perform the surgical procedure?

You know, we're not told the reaction of the paralytic after Jesus says your sins are forgiven. But I wonder if it was a bit like hearing the dentist say I removed your tonsils, he came to Jesus to be healed from his disability and Jesus forgives him of his sins. Ok? Maybe he wasn't angry or annoyed that Jesus said this, but perhaps he was a little bit confused that this was the first thing that Jesus said to him.

And you might be wondering, oh, well, maybe this man had just done something really bad. Well, maybe Jesus saw that this man was paralyzed. And so inferred that he must have sinned in some big way and, and it was punishment from God that he was paralyzed. And so that's why he leads with your sins are forgiven, but that is definitely not what is going on here. We know, for example, from John chapter nine, where Jesus heals the man born blind that we can't say that a disability like this is punishment from God for a particular sin.

So then why does Jesus seemingly overlook the man's disability at first and jump straight to talking about his sin? You know, I like how Dane Orland puts this. He says that Jesus cannot even wait for the friends to ask him what they want. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, take heart, my son, your sins are forgiven before they could even open their mouths to ask for help. Jesus couldn't stop himself. Words of reassurance and calm tumbled out. You see, Jesus was chomping at the bit to forgive this man's sins, the physical disabilities and illnesses that Jesus saw in people drew out such great compassion and pity.

I mean, the gospel accounts filled with, with stories of Jesus healing and restoring people physically, but what broke his heart most was to see people live spiritually dead in sin and separated from the love and the life that he knew with his heavenly father. And Jesus is not like that lazy contractor who comes to your house and hammers in a few nails to fix the sagging floorboards and the leaning boards. Now, he's like that contractor who sees that the fundamental problem is the rotten beams that are holding up the floorboards. And so he, he replaces the beams with, with new ones that won't rot.

Jesus is always concerned with restoring the whole person, not just fixing the symptoms because Jesus knew that sin is the fundamental disease that infects every person, the root cause of all the pain and suffering and Brokenness that he saw around him. And so when he sees this paralyzed man of faith, Jesus' first impulse and, and his greatest desire was to deliver him from sin.

Now, you would think and hope that the Pharisees these learned religious leaders would have understood these things and rejoiced that Jesus forgave the man sin. But the reaction is quite the opposite. They were annoyed. They were not happy that Jesus spoke like he was the one who had authority to forgive the man's sin. Verse 21 says that they began to question saying who is this? Who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone? And to be fair, they, they have a point. Note that Jesus isn't saying I forgive you in the same way that if I stole your lunch and then asked for forgiveness. Now, he's saying all of your sins now and forever are forgiven and God does not hold them against you.

But what does that actually mean? You know, it's easy to come along to church and hear the word sin and, and forgiveness and it becomes so familiar. So we gloss over it and don't really stop to think what it means. But the Bible defines sin as any thought or action or attitude or anything about you that is inconsistent or opposed to God's perfect character. So we have to define sin in terms of who God is. He existed eternally imperfect holiness before anything else existed. He is perfect in goodness and love and in power and he's the best there is in the fullest sense of that word inside and outside the universe. He's worthy of all praise and adoration and, and glory and sin.

Sin is that thing in us that says, hm, I don't know about that. I think I know better. I don't think I really want or need God. I don't want to worship God. You see sin is opposition to God. It's, it's an affront to who God is. And so when Jesus speaks to this, this man, he's saying all of your sins, past present future are forgiven. God does not hold them against you. Let's think about this from the perspective of these first century Jewish religious leaders, the Israelites had been offering animal sacrifices to God for the atonement of their sins for hundreds of years before this according to the mosaic law. So if you sinned, then you would take your animal sacrifice and you would go to the temple and the priest would offer it for you and you, you would receive atonement for sin.

But now here's Jesus who the Pharisees just know as this religiously untrained carpenter from Nazareth. And he comes along and says to this man, all your sins of past present future are forgiven. There's no animal sacrifice needed God doesn't hold it against you. And so the Pharisees are thinking, you just can't say that that's not how this works. Not even Moses or David or any of the other prophets were so presumptuous to say what you were saying. Who are you to be playing the role of God? Only God himself can declare someone innocent.

But Jesus knows their thoughts. And so he asks them in verse 23 which is easier to say your sins are forgiven you or to say rise and walk. And it's at this point in the story where Jesus turns to the paralytic and says, rise, pick up your bed and go home. And of course, the logic here is that if Jesus can do the impossible and heal this paralyzed man by saying rise, pick up your bed and go home, then we better believe that He did in fact have the authority to forgive the man's sin. And if he had the authority to forgive sins, then the only logical conclusion is that he must be God. And if he is God, then we can trust that he both sees our greatest need most clearly. And that He truly is the only one who can forgive us.

And this is why the story is such good news for us today. And I want to bring this home for us with, with two points. The first is just like the paralytic, Jesus sees that our most urgent need is His forgiveness. We of course, just like everyone else who has ever lived, suffer from the same eternal life ending disease that this paralytic suffered from. But the problem with sin is that it prevents us from seeing just how deeply sinful we are. Our sinfulness causes us to continually justify ourselves and convince us that everything's ok. We don't need God. But remember the woman from Manchester who went to the optometrist, the story that I shared at the beginning, she had no idea that in reality, she was in a life-threatening situation hours away from death. It was only the doctors who had the skill and the ability to see what was going on, who could truly see the seriousness of the situation.

And so when it comes to the condition of our soul and our whole being, we ought to trust the diag the diagnosis of the one who created us and, and not rely on our own flawed assessment. When Jesus looks at you and me, he sees that our most urgent and fundamental need is to be delivered from our sin and to be restored to wholeness with him. And if this is the first time that you've heard this or this is the first time that it's really stirring in your heart, then I just want to please ask you to not ignore that God is inviting you to trust Him and receive his forgiveness. Come and talk with me or, or someone else we'll have prayer counselors at the back after the service and we'd love to talk to you about that and pray with you.

But for many of us, we, we have trusted Jesus assessment that we need God's forgiveness. We believe that and, and God has forgiven our sins in Jesus. But oh, how we need to be reminded of that? Isn't it so easy to slip back into the mindset that, that we're doing OK? Apart from Jesus or I am going to follow the rules. I'm just gonna be good myself. And that's how I win God's approval. But the more that we understand and remember just how needy we really are of Jesus' forgiveness and love, the more we can enjoy the experience of living in the light of the fact that he has indeed forgiven us and blessed us with eternal life with him.

And that brings me to my second point for us, which is really just to delight in the fact that Jesus is out here and that, that he has forgiven us. You know, if I asked you all what Jesus's greatest healing was in the gospel accounts, then I might get a few different responses. Some of you might say that this story, the healing of the paralytic is the greatest or perhaps the raising of Jairus daughter to life and, and surely the raising of Lazarus from the dead after three days has got a score pretty highly on that list.

And all these stories are amazing demonstrations of Jesus' power and compassion. But they were all a physical picture of his greatest act of healing the forgiveness of our sins leading to eternal life. Remember the reaction of the crowd when the paralytic rose from his bed and walked out the door, amazement seized them. They were filled with awe. They glorified God for this wonderful and amazing act of healing. Remember the reaction of the paralytic how he bounded out the door with overflowing joy and elation, just glorifying God. These reactions are meant to be just a taste of the glory and wonder of what it means. When Jesus in both his love and compassion and power toward us, speaks over us. The words, your sins are forgiven because those words are the start of eternal life. It's freedom from bondage to death. It's the way by which we experience the greatest joy and pleasure and fulfillment. And it's the beginning of the life that God designed us to live with Him.

So let's remember that and just delight in the fact that Jesus has forgiven us and blessed us with eternal life. Today, as we've said marks the first day of the season of Advent, a time of preparation and anticipation leading up to Christmas that prepares us for the celebration of Christ's arrival. And while you wouldn't traditionally consider this story, a Christmas story, it is certainly a glorious declaration that our savior has come you know, the Pharisees were expecting a great and powerful political and military figure who was going to deliver them from the rule of Rome.

But isn't the reality far greater and far sweeter for us that it was Jesus, this lowly carpenter from Nazareth, this, this one born in a manger in Bethlehem who humbly came to give his life to purchase our forgiveness from sin. He saw our greatest need and he gave himself to heal us from our greatest sickness. You know, I hope and pray that we all experience the joy of that reality as we meditate on it in the coming weeks of advent. Let's pray.

Heavenly father, we just thank you and praise you that you have forgiven us and that you have healed us. We praise you Jesus that you came, and you came to give your life so that we could be healed from our greatest sickness. And Lord I just pray that if any of us here today haven't come to believe that and accept that that today would be the day where, where they believe you and trust your forgiveness and receive a new life just like the paralytic received new life. And Father, I pray that we would all delight in the fact that you are our healer that you have forgiven us, that you gave yourself for our salvation. And I pray that that would fill us with great joy in the coming weeks as we look forward to your celebrating your arrival at Christmas. So we thank you and love you Lord and pray all these things in your powerful and precious name, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Daniel 4 about King Nebuchadnezzar being humbled by God. Discussion points: Christians follow God by practicing righteousness and showing mercy to the oppressed, Nebuchadnezzar’s outward appearance matched his character when he became like a beast, we can look for places in our lives that need humility and more dependence on God.

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Scripture reader: [Daniel 4:28-37] All this came upon King Nebuchadnezzar. At the end of the 12 months, he was walking on the roof of the royal palace of Babylon. And the king answered and said, "Is not this great Babylon which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?" While the words were still in the king's mouth, there fell a voice from heaven. "O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken. The kingdom has departed from you and you shall be driven from among men and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field and you shall be made to eat grass like an ox. And seven periods of time shall pass over you until you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will."

Immediately, the word was fulfilled against Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men and ate grass like an ox and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles feathers and his nails were like birds claws. At the end of the days, I Nebuchadnezzar lifted my eyes to heaven. And my reason returned to me and I blessed the Most High and praised and honored him who lives for ever. For his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing. And he does according to his will, among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth and none can stay his hand or say to him, what have you done?

At the same time, my reason returned to me and for the glory of my kingdom, my majesty and splendor returned to me. My counselors and my lords sought me and I was established in my kingdom and still more greatness was added to me. Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honor the king of heaven, for all his works are right and his ways are just, and those who walk in pride, he is able to humble.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: So we're going through a series on the book of Daniel. And we're in chapter four. This week, I was going to do chapter four and chapter five together. But it was like one of those moments about halfway through sermon prep where I was just like we just got to camp out in chapter four. Chapter five is great. We're going to take a break for the next four weeks and do advent a series talking about advent. We'll have one sermon that's kind of outside of that, that series. And then we'll have a Christmas Eve service here also on December 24th. But, for the next and then we'll go back to Daniel in January. So we're gonna be skipping and, but it will be a great time to go back to Daniel. A lot of the same themes will be going through.

Let me just start with this question. Why is it that so often we see people who, and this really breaks my heart. People who did used to follow the Lord and we're Christians and then they stopped going to church and they stopped practicing Christianity. And for some reason, they like seem happier. Have you ever met anyone like this that, you know, maybe, maybe we have like for me, I have lots of neighbors and friends who aren't Christians don't go to church. They seem perfectly happy.

And why is that like, why is it that, that we have committed so much of our life to coming to church, to being a part of a community, to following the Lord, to denying ourselves and serving others and yet other people who might not have the same values that we say are good and will bring happiness to my life. But they might not have the same values. But yet they, they also seem happy. Like what are we doing all of this for if we can have happiness outside of this. Do you know how much skiing I could do if I wasn't committed to being at church every week and giving away 10% of my income? Like, do you know how much I could do with that? It would be great in some ways. Vacation home. Here we go.

Think of all that you could achieve at work if you didn't have this principle of others before myself. If you didn't have this principle of, I had to deny myself and lift others up or if you didn't have this principle that hey, rest is a requirement for me as a believer and God worked for six days and rested for one. So therefore, I'm gonna take a day off every week. You know, there are other people at your jobs who don't do that and maybe they're getting ahead of you and you feel that and you feel the loss and you think only if I could work a little bit more, I could get that promotion, I could be happy like they are.

Think about how much easier life would be. If instead of having to forgive people, you could just cut them out of your life, right? You could just say yep, done. OK. Don't have to worry about forgiveness, but Christ compels us to forgive our enemies to love them. In fact, not just forgive them being a Christian is difficult and there are lots of people who don't follow the Lord who seem happy, do they not?

And this is actually where we find King Nebuchadnezzar this week. King Nebuchadnezzar had it all; dude was rich, dude had everything that he could imagine. We'll go into the details on that. We just know from history. Nebuchadnezzar was a famous guy, had a lot of wealth, had a lot of things. He seemed happy, he was living the dream. He was just kind of like reminiscing over all the dream. And in that instant, he lost his mind and he went crazy for seven days walking around like a on all fours like a cow out in the field. That's wild.

And what was the purpose of all that? He seemed happy. He could have just died there happy. But yet God saw it fit to return his reason and to help him to see how he had been living. Let's just dive into the passage as we see that Nebuchadnezzar he had all that life could offer. But yet it still was not enough. It still was not enough. All right, we're going to dive in the way that we do this. Normally here is we just work through the passage. I'll read several of the verses and then we'll talk about it as we go through.

Verse one, King Nebuchadnezzar to all peoples nations and languages that dwell in all the earth. Peace be multiplied to you. It has seemed good to me to show the signs and wonders that the most high God has done for me. How great are His signs? How mighty his wonders, His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom. And his dominion endures from generation to generation. Now, wait a second. OK. Let's just if you've been reading this book, you know that something weird is happening right now because as we've been going through Daniel, first of all, Daniel is being spoken, there's a narrator in Daniel. Ok. The narrator is telling us the story of this entire book and it's like a third perspective on it. The bird's eye view telling us what's happening.

Now we start chapter four with no real introduction. Other than it's like Nebuchadnezzar is looking at the camera and speaking to us, OK, we, we're having a perspective shift and Nebuchadnezzar is like, now you get to hear my story. This is like a very artsy move that the author of Daniel is doing. This is like a movie that you would go to see at the Somerville theater. OK? It's like an independent flick. It's half in English half in something else. You know, it's like you don't know what's happening. The subtitles are going on. Daniel has written half in Hebrew, half in Aramaic, very artistic. And now we have all of a sudden chapter four, no introduction, a change in perspective.

And we have Nebuchadnezzar the kind of the villain through most of the book. And he's like, now you get to hear my story. And for some reason, he starts his story with saying peace be multiplied to you. And I'm like, weren't you the one threatening to pull people apart limb by limb like a Wookie? And now you're saying peace be multiplied to me. I don't understand. We're about to get the rest of his story. This is a self told story, like an open letter of a man who had it all who lost his ever loving mind, just completely lost it and then was restored to sanity and to right relationship with God.

Verse four, I Nebuchadnezzar was at ease in my house and prospering in my palace. Isn't that the dream? Isn't that what you want? This Thanksgiving at ease in your house and prospering in your palace with the TV. On watching some Dallas cowboys lose another game. Yet again. Verse five, I saw a dream that made me afraid as I lay in the bed, the fancies and the visions of my dream in my head alarmed me. Now, if you remember Nebuchadnezzar has had dreams before. If we go back to chapter two, we see that he had this dream that he was that of the statue. And the statue had this rock that fell from heaven and it tumbled the statue and then it grew into a, a mountain that filled the entire earth representing the kingdom of God trampling over all the kingdoms of man.

And so now we have Nebuchadnezzar dreaming again. And so he is sensitive to dreams and he's like, I gotta figure out what's going on with this dream. And so if you'll remember from the last time, what did he do? He went and he called all the magicians and all of the people, the the leaders and the wise people throughout all of Babylon. He told them, he didn't actually tell them to dream. He said, you need to tell me the dream and tell me the interpretation. This time, Nebuchadnezzar remembers his dream. So he's willing to tell them his dream and but if you remember none of them could do it. But who could? Daniel, right? So Daniel comes and interpret and tells the king his dream and interprets it for him.

So obviously, this time, the king, he's not gonna go to all those schmucks who don't know what the dream is or the meaning of it. He's just gonna go straight to Daniel right wrong. He goes right back to the schmucks and he's like, no, you guys interpret my dream for me. And as he tells them the dream, they don't have an interpretation for him. So he does end up turning to Daniel. And when Daniel walks in, it's as if he doesn't know Daniel. OK? Because Daniel walks in Nebuchadnezzar. Last chapter we saw Nebuchadnezzar see the fourth man in the fire and let Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego out of the fiery furnace and it's like he, and then he declared, OK, the God of, of the Israelites is ok to worship anyone worshiping him is OK.

But now we see him bringing Daniel in and what does he actually say? But he actually like, kind of gets a lot of things wrong here. He doesn't know who God is. He calls Daniel the chief of the magicians. That's not it. Come on, man. And he says, I know that you are filled with the who the spirit of the Gods. How offensive if you're Daniel, this is like when your boss's boss that you've been working with for like your entire career calls you in and gets your job title completely wrong. Doesn't know what you do at the company whatsoever. That's Nebuchadnezzar. He's just brainless. He's like, I don't know, you're a monkey that's supposed to interpret my dream. Now, dream monkey interpret this for me.

And so Daniel, he has grace for him. And and Nebuchadnezzar tells him his dream and this is what the dream is. Ok. It's a weird dream. Go with me as we, as we talk through this dream as dreams are OK. Has anybody ever shared a dream with you at the end of it? You're almost always like, well, that was cool. All right. Next like, what do we talk about now? That's weird. So the dream is this that he dreamed of a giant tree reaching all the way into the heavens, the tree huge. It had great branches that offered shade for all the world. The fruit from its branches were growing out. It was an illustrious tree providing shelter for birds and animals. Not just as a tree, it's the centerpiece of the entire world.

But then something unsettling happens. A messenger comes from heaven. And what does the messenger do? He chops down, he, he comes down and he commands that the tree is chopped down, its branches are stripped, its leaves are scattered, its fruit is destroyed. Only a stump is left behind and the stump is bound in iron and bronze. And then the messenger says that the, the tree and the stump represent a person and that this person will lose their mind and live like a wild animal and eat grass like an ox in the field for seven periods of time which we interpret to be seven years that they'll be completely humiliated.

And the messenger ends the dream like this by telling the moral of the dream. The messenger says this is what you should learn and this is what everyone should learn from your dream. Nebuchadnezzar that the most high rules the kingdom of men and gives to it whom he will and sets over it, the lowliest of men. Well, it doesn't seem like there needs to be a lot of interpretation to get the point of this dream. But yet Nebuchadnezzar still calls on Daniel to interpret the dream. And as Daniel receives the dream, he starts to look a little bit nervous and he's like, I don't know if I want to tell you what this dream means, Nebby. Ok, you have a tendency to, to Wookie-fy some people around here.

And Nebuchadnezzar is like, no, hit me with it. I, I need to hear the meaning of the dream. So Daniel says, well, I wish this dream was about your enemies and not about you because this is what it's about. You. Nebuchadnezzar. You are the tree. Your kingdom has been established all the way to the heavens. You rule over the known world, Nebuchadnezzar. You are offering shade and, and fruit for all of those under your kingdom. But your kingdom is about to fall. You are about to be chopped down but you're not without hope because they will leave a stump and the stump will be bound. But you Nebuchadnezzar, you will live like that wild animal for seven periods of a time so that you can get the lesson that the most high rules the kingdom of man that he does as he wishes and the lowly will be made great. That is the meaning of your dream, Nebuchadnezzar.

And so he, he ends it with this encouragement. Therefore, verse 27. Therefore, o king let my counsel be acceptable to you break off your sins by practicing righteousness and your iniquities by showing mercy to the oppressed that there may be perhaps a lengthening of your prosperity. Quick sidebar here. OK. We're, we're just gonna just take one second step out of the story. I just want to talk about this first for one second. There's a direct connection all over the Bible, not just in this verse, but all over the Bible with following God. And these two things practicing righteousness and showing mercy to the oppressed.

Why is it that almost every Christian only gets half the formula? We either practice righteousness, personal morality or we're willing to show mercy to the oppressed. But as people who follow God, you have to have both, you can't have one or the other, you have to have both. It requires both care for the oppressed and personal morality. Back to the story. OK. Sidebar over, all right. A year later, nothing happens after that. Nebuchadnezzar is like, OK, thanks Daniel. See you later. OK? He doesn't change his life. He doesn't do anything.

A year later, Nebuchadnezzar is living it up. He is walking on the roof of his palace. Doesn't that sound nice? You know, walking on the roof of your palace and he looks out and this is what he says. He's, he's reflecting on his life. He's near the end. He's getting older, his career, you know, is established. He's hitting retirement age and this is what he said.

Verse 30. It's not this great Babylon which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my Majesty? He's looking at his life and he's living the dream. He's living your dream, should I say. He has everything. He's created this large empire, he's conquered kingdoms. He's built an outer wall to Babylon. Now, this is crazy. The outer wall of Babylon. Babylon, when Nebuchadnezzar was started, a lot of this is from stuff that we know outside of the Bible also because Nebuchadnezzar is a well known historical figure that Babylon had a wall when he became king. Nebuchadnezzar wasn't happy with one wall. He wanted to make Babylon Impenetrable. So what did he do? He built a moat outside the wall and he said that's not enough. I'm gonna build another wall outside of that and I'm gonna make them pay. No, not really. And then I'm gonna build the other wall here and it's gonna be wide enough for a chariot race to occur on top of the outer wall.

He has built himself an Impenetrable fortress. Not only that, but he's paved the pro processional way with limestone, a beautiful road leading all the way through. He's cut canals. Imagine the type of infrastructure require the demand of the king and the riches that a nation must have to cut canals so that agriculture and trade could be bolstered. He's built a house. I love the name of his house. Ok. He, he built a house that's known within history that the name of his house is the marvel of mankind. What a palace that he's built for himself.

And then he went and married a woman and her name. Well, she was a Median princess named Amytis of Media and she was from the land of Media. I'm not sure where that is. I should have looked that up. But who, but in her land it had green mountains that were growing. And in Media, she wanted to have that where she was in Babylon now. So what did Nebuchadnezzar do? But he bought the property next door or he just bulldozed it one. He probably doesn't have to buy much and he built the hanging gardens of Ban, which is one of the seven wonders of the world. It, it was supposed to be a architectural masterpiece. They had to figure out how to get the water up the, up the hill and to make this beautiful garden. That's how powerful he was where he was able just to build one of the seven marvels of the, of the world for his bride.

Now, you don't have to look far to find a modern equivalent to a Nebuchadnezzar who are the most powerful in our society. But the tech billionaires of Silicon Valley, right? You, you look at an Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, they're able to build their co their empire by acquiring other country, other companies and they're able to displace the leaders and move them around like pawns in their game. They're able to build the great headquarters for their for their tech company and they're able to build themselves a palace.

Imagine what that kind of wealth might be able to provide for you in a Somerville Massachusetts. You could buy a single family home with more than one bathroom. Oh, they say you can't buy happiness. With three children, that would be happiness. But not only that you could buy the house next door. And if you say your spouse is from Vermont, just convert it to a log cabin, make them fill it home, fill it up with maple syrup, you know, and cheeses and white people wearing flannel. It'll be like they're right there.

You know, maybe your ambitions aren't quite so high. Maybe you're happy with your, you know, apartment. Maybe you just want to make a little bit more money, buy a condo one day, maybe invest in some backyard landscaping. No, not necessarily the hanging tower, the hanging gardens of Somerville. You might not be trying to conquer the world, but the same temptations remain. Do they not whether it's the corner office or the cozy backyard? It's easy to think a little more, a little higher on the ORG chart. And finally, I'll have enough. And then when you're an old man or an old woman, you can take a step back from your life's work and to see all that you've accomplished and feel good about it. You know, I lived a good life. I have a good family I've provided for them. I've done everything. Is not life great. Look at all that I've built.

That's the dream, is it not? That's exactly where Nebuchadnezzar finds himself. There's nothing wrong with that dream and to some extent. But then he's walking along his roof, enjoying his life's work and a voice from heaven falls on him and he hears this from God, verse 31. While the words were still in the king's mouth. How great is Babylon that I've built for my power and my glory. There fell a voice from heaven. O King Nebuchadnezzar to you it is spoken. The kingdom has departed from you and you shall be driven from among men and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field and you shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and seven periods of time shall pass over you until you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will.

At that moment, Nebuchadnezzar loses his mind. He goes insane. He starts acting like a cow out in the field. Look verse 33, Immediately, the word was fulfilled against Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men and ate grass like an ox and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles feathers and his nails were like birds claws. Now he just stopped cutting his fingernails and he grew out his hair and he acted like a cow.

There, there are modern times that this has happened. I did a little bit of research during COVID. There was a woman who due to loneliness and, and other things, she had a psychotic break. She started acting like a dog, including like eating dog food and barking and not speaking and walking on all fours and doing her business like a dog and everything that goes with that, it's called the, the medical term for it is zoanthropy. I believe zoo zoanthropy, I don't know, not, not a physician. And it's a rare delusional disorder where a person believes that he or she is an animal.

And so for Nebuchadnezzar, he ate grass, walked on four legs and grew out his hair. He acted like a cow for seven years. Could you imagine that the most powerful person in the world acting like an animal for seven whole years? And during this time, his inner character was exposed and Nebuchadnezzar, he may have been a powerful man, but deep down in his heart, it was exposed to him that he was a beast. You see his outer behavior start to reflect his inner quality of character.

I love the way that Tim Mackey from the Bible project puts this. He said it like this. I should have it on the screen for you. Oh, there it is good. Nebuchadnezzar refuses to humble himself. So as humanity is removed from him, only after he humbles himself before God is his humanity restored, humans were made to be the royal image of God to rule on God's behalf. But when humans rebel and make themselves God, they become less than human, like violent beasts who will face God's justice.

As a child of the nineties, my mind is only going to one story and that is beauty and the beast. Ok. So I you we we've all familiar with the story of the, the prince, the arrogant prince who is just a beast on the inside, powerful on the outside but arrogant and he's this terrible and he is transformed literally into a terrible beast until he learns the ability to love selflessly. His external appearance is made to match his internal character.

And that's essentially what happened to Nebuchadnezzar without the talking teapot. He, he didn't necessarily become literally a beast, but he grew out his hair like a beast. He stopped cutting his fingernails. He started acting like a beast in the field, no physical metamorphosis, but essentially the same as humanity is removed until he's willing to acknowledge God as true king of kings. The first and primary thing that we need before we can come to God that Nebuchadnezzar learned is an accurate view of self. Who am I really? And why do I need God? No one will go to God unless they see their need for him.

And so the first thing we need is to be brought to a place of humility. You see, Nebuchadnezzar had it all. He did not see his need for God, but then God revealed to him the inner quality of his character. And all of a sudden it took a while, but he did eventually learn that he needs God. After this seven year period, Nebuchadnezzar lifts his eyes to heaven and I love the way it says this. It is the best thing. I my heart's being renewed today. As I think about this, he lifts his eyes to heaven and it says that his reason returned.

I wonder how many of us need to have our reason returned to us. How many of us have been living according to the, the beast within instead of the God of heaven, living for ourselves, self consumed, whatever it might mean. And we think that it looks reasonable. That is the essence of sin. Is it not sin, is to convince yourself that you can define what is right and wrong apart from what God defines as right and wrong. And so we live this life and we think we're living reasonably. But then Nebuchadnezzar, eventually, he raised his eyes to heaven and his reason returned.

And that's my prayer for all of us today that we might have a moment where we lift our eyes to heaven and allow our reason to return his reason returned and then he reflects on it. In verse 37 he says, now I Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the king of heaven for all his works are right and his ways are just and those who walk in pride, he is able to humble. What a great lesson he's able to learn. What lessons did we learn here as we go through.

The voice that fell from heaven during Nebuchadnezzar's dream had three things that he wanted Nebuchadnezzar to learn. I think they're great things for us to reflect on. First, the Most High rules the kingdoms of men. Second, he does as he pleases, he gives to whom he will. And third, God sets over the world the lowliest of men. That's what the angel said as he brought the message down.

So I return to, to the first question that we asked at the beginning of the message. Why is it that people so often seem happier without God? It's not an easy question to answer and I can't answer it holistically. But I do know this from Nebuchadnezzar that God gives to whom He will. That that is God's decision and it's not my decision, it's his world. And we also know that just because people seem happier, doesn't actually mean that they are happier. Some sometimes people seem happier and they're miserable on the inside. That wasn't the case with Nebuchadnezzar. It didn't seem though, it seemed like he truly was content with what he had.

And so sometimes people do seem happier without God. And I had a friend pose this question to me the other day. And I was like, yeah, why is it help me? And it was another pastor and, and he said, well, yeah, it seems that way and it is that way until you look down the infinite tunnel that we call eternity. And at that moment, it was like, I just like the camera zoomed out and I was just like, what? Yeah, like there's more to life than right here. Once I start looking down that tunnel and I'm like, there's so much more, there's no way I could be content with what's right here because what's right here isn't forever. It's all gonna go away. It's a lie from the evil one that says you can be happy right now. Just don't worry about the future. Don't look down that tunnel.

That's the message. The greatest gift that God gave to Nebuchadnezzar. It wasn't the hanging gardens of Babylon. It wasn't all the powerful nations that he conquered. It wasn't the, the what did, what did we call it? The what was this house called? The Marvel of mankind? Wow. What a name? The greatest gift that God gave to Nebuchadnezzar was a seven year period of insanity. A seven year period of insanity. It showed him that he needed. God. It changed his whole perspective of this material wealth and the kingdom that He ruled over.

Sometimes the greatest gift that God can give you is a humbling experience where you're reminded that you need God. Are you living a self consumed, self sufficient life? I know most of you and I know the answer is mostly no, I'm trying to follow after Christ. But yeah, there's part of me that I'm still putting to death that I'm still working through, humble yourself or God will humble you. Hopefully, that humility will occur in this life and not the next or maybe you're just barely holding it together if you're here today and you're barely holding it together so glad that you're making it. And, and maybe he's been humbled recently.

I have a friend that I like to say is one of Jesus' favorite people that Jesus just loves him too much because he's constantly humbled. It's like humbling experience after humbling experience. And I'm like, yeah, I'm sorry, like Jesus just loves you too much to let you not go through humility and God might be being persistent with you. Don't see it as a mark of his displeasure, but see it as a pursuit of you.

And the last thing that we learn from this though and I love the way it says it. The, the messenger said, God sets over the world the lowliest of men, humble will inherit the earth is what he's saying. And who is the lowliest of all men, but the one who's self described as gentle and lowly of heart, Jesus of Nazareth who came not through a processional way paved with limestone but came humbly to a virgin born in a manger, laid in a feeding trough.

Jesus is described in Philippians two as someone who is God himself, yet he did not see equality with God as something to be taken advantage of. Instead, Jesus chose to take the form of a servant born as a weak and limited human, humbled to the point of death, even death. On the most agonizing and humiliating means possible crucifixion. But as a result, God exalted him and bestowed on him. The name that is above all names, the name that is above Nebuchadnezzar, the name that is above Bezos and Zuckerberg and Musk. The name that all other names will bow down to, the name of Jesus. Every name will bow, every knee will bow in heaven and earth and under the earth and every tongue will declare that Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father, Amen.

Friends, today, will you humble yourself? I think the message is the same. Will you humble yourself? And as Christians, we just need need to be reminded of this. Our reason must return to us once again, our reason has to constantly return. I don't know how you humble yourself. I don't know where you're showing pride in your life. You have to take that and say where am I living self consumed or self sufficiently? And where must I humble myself? Where have I said no to allowing God to be a part of my life? Whether that's hey, I just wanna live this Christian life by myself with no one else involved in it. And God says I want to use community to build something in your life.

Or maybe you're just trying to pursue your job through your own means. You have this divorce, sacred/secular thing in your mind where you have, you know, I do my job. That's for me. And then I go to church on Sunday and that's for God. God doesn't he? He wants to bring you low in everything. But you're a Christian all the way through, through every part of your week, every part of your day. When you trust in Christ as your messiah, as your one and only God. He shares this with you. He shares not just salvation, but he shares that name with you. You know what the name of Jesus, every knee will bow and every tongue will declare that He is Lord.

But at the end, we're invited to sit on the throne with him. We're invited to be a part of who he is. We're invited to enjoy relationship with the king of kings. We have so much more in the heavenly realm than the billionaires have today. And so I, I just want to take a moment, I'm gonna read a passage and then we're gonna pray and this is a passage from the New Testament. And, I just want you to be sensitive to the spirit's nudge in your life. Whether you've trusted Christ for the first time or you're wandering, you're wanting to trust him again, surrendering part of your life that you've been holding back, letting your reason return whatever it might look like. Maybe you need to pray for a friend that you just see living as a beast in the field though, they don't recognize it. We'll have some people to pray for you and pray with you back there.

But let me, let me read this passage and then I'll pray for us. James chapter four, but he gives more grace. Therefore, it says God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners and purify your hearts, you double minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom, humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you.

Let's pray. Father, we come to you with hearts that are so often full of pride. Teach us to humble ourselves before you. Let us not rely on our strength or our achievements, but on the grace of Christ. Help us to see true greatness is found in surrendering to you, the king of kings. We long to draw near to you, God, knowing that as we do, you will draw near to us. Thank you for your promise to lift us up in due time. We trust you with our lives and our futures. In Christ's name. Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Daniel 3 about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego standing up to King Nebuchadnezzar. Discussion points: Religion can be coopted and twisted to support political agendas, the three men would not submit to the king’s order even though they didn’t know that God would save them, Jesus has received our sin which allows us to receive God’s approval.

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Scripture reader: [Daniel 3:19-25] Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with fury and the expression of his face was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He ordered the furnace heated seven times more than it was usually heated. And he ordered some of the mighty men of his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and to cast them into the burning fiery furnace. Then these men were bound in their cloaks, their tunics, their hats and their other garments and they were thrown into the burning fiery furnace. Because the king's order was urgent and the furnace overheated, the flame of the fire killed those men who took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And these three men, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abedego fell bound into the fiery furnace.

Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up in haste. He declared to his counselors, "Did we not cast three men bound into the fire?" They answered and said to the king, "True, O king." He answered and said, "But I see four men unbound walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt. And the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods."

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: Well, this was I did not grow up going to church very often as a, as a kid. But this was my favorite story that I ever learned as a child. In fact, it is the only story that I remember learning as a child. Anybody with me did was this anybody else's favorite when you were growing up? No. OK. Maybe one. Wow. Well, if you didn't grow up in church, you're in for a treat. This is a really great story, but it's not just a children's story. There is just so much value to what's going in and what's going on in this story. This passage is way more than a children's story.

This passage is about the way that people use power, use the way that people use religion to gain power for themselves. And it's about what it means as Christians and as people who are faithful to God, to stand firm and not to allow our religion and our faith to be co opted by those looking for power or to be compromised by the culture around us. Does that sound fitting at all to what's going on? You know, when we first planned the, the series on Daniel, we said, let's do it around election season. That would be great. And I was like very applicable, lots of themes that are gonna go great. And then now we're in it and I'm like, I wish we didn't.

Yeah, I'm having second thoughts because now it just feels like I'm talking politics every week. it's kind of like when your family plans a, a, vacation to Florida and, then you're, you're looking forward to it, you're planning it the whole time and then you're ready to go and there's a hurricane coming and it's like, oh, yeah. I knew that was possible but I wasn't actually counting on it happening and it's like, can we, can we go somewhere else? Can we rebook the tickets? No, you can't. Well, kids, I hope you like wind. We're going to Florida. So here we are, we're in Florida and we're going to continue to go through this series on, on Daniel.

Let's just dive in. OK. Verse one, I'm just going to walk through the passage and then I'll apply it at, at the end. OK? Verse one, King Nebuchadnezzar. We only read six verses in the very middle and I'm not gonna have most of the verses on the screen for you today. So you had to turn in your Bibles if you have them. But we are, I'm gonna tell you the whole story and leading up to the part that we just read and you'll see it's a really great story.

Verse one. King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold whose height was 60 cubits and its breadth six cubits. He set it up on the plain of Dura in the province of Babylon. OK. So we pick up the story right after Daniel chapter two. And if you remember Daniel chapter two, the king has a dream and he has this dream of a large statue. And the whole point of the dream is that earthly kingdoms are going to fall and that we need to invest our time into the Kingdom of God because the Kingdom of God is going to come with power and it's going to fill the entire earth. That's what Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar when he had the dream.

And Nebuchadnezzar said, oh good. I'm good for a little while. It's not, I'm not gonna fall. It's going to be one of the Kingdoms that comes after me that falls. And so what does he do? He goes and makes a giant statue. Now, the passage doesn't tell us what the statue actually looks like. It could have been a statue of Nebuchadnezzar himself. which seems likely it could have just been like an oblique like like the Bunker Hill monument or something like that. It was just a statue, but the statue was 60 cubits tall. Now, a cubit is like 1.5 ft. So it's 90 ft tall. I don't know if you have a perception of how tall 90 ft is. It's really tall like it is way taller than this church building. It is, it is probably double this height. If not more 90 ft tall would be equal to like one of the tallest buildings in all of Somerville. It is at least eight stories tall. Just imagine a tall, not one of those.

You know, you, when you go look at light houses, you got like the little wimpy ones you're like, that's cute. And then you got like the real lighthouses, you know, imagine like a tall lighthouse in the middle of a corn field because this is in the plains of Dura. That is what this thing looks like. You're gonna be able to see this from miles and miles away. And that is what he set up.

So he set up this huge statue and really what he's trying to do, the statue is an embodiment, embodiment of the natural of the national identity of Babylon. The statue is an embodiment of the national identity of Babylon. So what Nebuchadnezzar is trying to do? He is an emperor. He has gone and conquered many other lands and he has people of many different religions. And what does religion do well, but it unites people well.

And so what he's trying to do is he's trying to create a state sponsored religion to unite his empire. That is what's happening. He wants everyone to bow down to the same God so that they can all believe in the same way. And have a state sponsored U Union with one another. It's a celebration of all things. Babylon is, this is the religion basically. Then verse two, then Nebuchadnezzar sent to gather the satraps, the prefects and the governors, the councilors, the treasurers, the justices, the Magistrates and all the officials of the provinces to come to the dedication of the image that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up. That's a long list of officials, isn't it? And they really seem overlapping. What it's basically saying is like everyone was there, everyone from every country that he, every nation that he's conquered is required to go to this thing and they all have to bow down to the statue that he has created. The who's who of Ancient Babylonian society.

Verse four. And the Herald proclaimed aloud. You are commanded o peoples nations and languages. I don't, that's how the Herald talks. That when you hear the sound of the horn, the pipe, lyre, trigon. Well, I don't know what that is. A harp, a bagpipe. I doubt it's the Scottish bagpipe, but I like to imagine it's just like someone in a kilt with a bagpipe out there. The bagpipe and every kind of music you are to fall down and worship the golden image that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up and whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace.

Nebuchadnezzar is a bloodthirsty dude. He likes death. As we'll see as we go through this story and this, this furnace, basically, he has a whole orchestra. That's what we're supposed to see when it lists all these instruments. It's not just saying random instruments. It's like all the instruments were there and they were playing in unison. It was an orchestra to celebrate and to worship the image that Nebuchadnezzar had set up for himself. And he's trying to unite all of these people into one polytheistic religion, a pluralism religion.

He's basically saying you can keep your gods, but you're going to bow down to the God of Babylon also. And who is the God of Babylon. But it's me, Nebuchadnezzar, you're going to bow down to who we are so you can keep your gods as long as you acknowledge ours as well. This is a strategy used by many totalitarian regimes think, OK, just the most obvious one, think Hitler, OK. The German people were united in common religion and they co opted that religion to support Nazism. There's this guy, his name is Baldur von Schirach. I don't speak German, Balder von I-don't-speak-German. And he's the leader of the Hitler youth at the time.

If you're not familiar with the Hitler youth, crazy. It's basically like Nazi boy scouts. OK? And they had every, they did all these boy scout type of things. Step four, they had to give all their allegiance to Hitler and Hitler was their God and Hitler drove them to do everything. There's been lots of stuff put out about the, Hitler youth in recent days, Jojo Rabbit, a movie about the Hitler youth. There's also All the Light We Cannot See, a book that I read recently. I think I got the title right, about the Hitler Youth.

And the leader of the Hitler youth says this about state sponsored religion. He says one cannot be a good German and at the same time deny God, but an arousal of faith in the eternal German is at the same time an arousal of faith in the eternal God. If we as true Germans, we act according to the law of God. Whoever serves Adolf Hitler, the Fuhrer serves Germany and whoever serves Germany serves God.

Do you see that move that he's making? He's saying you can have your religion as long as your religion endorses our state sponsored leader, he's taking their religion and co-opting it to support their totalitarian emperor slash dictator. And we know where that led them to the horror most horror filled part of the past 100 years. And it's, it's true of totalitarian regimes that they co opt religion this way. It's also true of pluralistic societies in, in many of the same ways that you can privately believe whatever you want to believe. As long as you publicly show tolerance and acceptance for everyone, as long as you get in line but don't dare claim an exclusivity of your religion over anyone else's.

Pluralism wants to privatize your faith and publicize your tolerance. And there's some aspects of that that are great. I love living in a pluralistic society where we can decide what we believe for ourselves. That is a good thing is a good thing that we have freedom of religion in our country where you're free to practice Islam, if you'd like free to practice Judaism, if you'd like free to practice Christianity, the only problem is when it becomes a religion in and of itself that says, you have to accept all Gods and the God of our nation and you cannot have a thoughtful conversation about if one is exclusive over the other, if one is true and others aren't. You see, we pluralism becomes the God.

And so we have to be careful that we don't just fall into the culture and say everyone is right because the, the gods have truth, claims that in and of themselves aren't competing with one another. You cannot believe in a pluralism like that. Although living in a plural society is a good thing, you see, that's what Nebuchadnezzar wanted. He wanted privatized faith and public commitment to the national ethos of Babylon.

Well, you can see how this might be a problem for Daniel and his friends because they are people who are faithful to the one and true God. Yahweh. And if you believe in an exclusive, I believe this God, this God is real. I'm not going to believe in the other gods. It's going to become a problem and Daniel is not in this chapter as we see, this is all about his friends, Shadrach, Michach and Abednego. Those are their Babylonian names that they're called by throughout this chapter. And these three men, they follow the one true God. We don't really know where Daniel is. We assume he's like back in the Capitol somewhere. We're in the plains of Dura now. So Daniel's just not in this chapter. Ok?

But these guys, they kind of won't participate. They're at, they're in the plains of Dura, they're refusing to bow down and that's really not a big deal. There's so many people there, the king's never gonna notice, but they're snitches. All right. And the snitches are called the Chaldeans. They're astrologers and there are people that the king called to interpret his dream in the last chapter and they couldn't do it. They couldn't tell the king his dream and what it meant. And so now they're trying to get back in the good graces of the king and what better way to get into the good grace of someone then be a tattle tail, ok? They're brown, they brown noses here.

Listen, verse eight. Therefore, at that time, certain Chaldeans came for, I like how Daniel writes this. Ok? Certain Chaldeans, there were certain people he came they came forward and maliciously accused the Jews. They declared to King Nebuchadnezzar. O king live forever. Suck up. You O King have made a decree that every man who hears the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, bagpipe and every other kind of music fall down and worship the golden image and whoever does not fall down and worship shall be cast into a burning fiery furnace. Well, we found some people that deserve the furnace king. Would you throw them in? There are certain Jews whom you've appointed over the affairs of the province of Babylon, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. These men o king pay no attention to you. They do not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you've set up.

Now, just let's just step back for one moment and notice how Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego quietly resist the command to worship Nebuchadnezzar and the statue that he set up. They're not putting together their picket line to go and protest in the plains of Dura. Ok? They're, they don't have all their signs. They're not out there, you know, no God but the real God, whatever it is. They're just quietly refusing to bow down. They're just kind of like, nah not for me. You know, I'm gonna sit this one out. You guys, you guys go bow down. They're quietly not participating in this aspect of culture, but the king is hot and he's ready to play with his easy bake oven.

And so he calls Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego before him and he says, bow or burn, that's you, bow or burn. And what will they do? Will they stand and die or will they bow and live? Those are their choices. Listen to how they respond.

Verse 16, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answer the king. Oh Nebuchadnezzar, we have, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the fiery furnace and he will deliver us out of your hand O king. But if not be it known to you O king that we will not serve your gods nor worship the golden image you have set up. Yeah. You know, that's like, that's like really, really bold. That's a great way of saying that he doesn't notice that they're not saying God will deliver us. They're saying he's able, God is able to deliver us even from this. But if he doesn't, I'm still not bowing down to your gods Nebuchadnezzar. Just bold, confident, cool headed, great. There's some things that are more important than life itself. There are some things that are more important.

Verse 19, this is what we read earlier. Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with fury and the expression of his face changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Every cartoon movie has that scene where the, where the there's a supposed good guy and then all of a sudden his face changes and becomes a bad guy. That's what's happening. He ordered the furnace heated seven times more than usually heated. He's like, we're gonna go. All right, you guys are gonna be instant dust. And he ordered some of the mighty men of his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and to cast them into the fiery burning furnace. These men were bound in their cloaks, their tunics, their hats and their other garments.

So Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they're not some like, like lowly poor people. Ok. These are, these are aristocrats, they're nobility. They're dressed well. They're wearing nice things and they have their hats on their fancy hats. They, they would look silly in our day and age. They're dressed so up. And they're thrown into the furnace with all of their nice clothes on. And because the king's order was urgent and the furnace overheated, the flame of the fire killed those men who took Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. The soldiers couldn't even survive the furnace. They got close to the door and they died as they threw them into the furnace. And these three men Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego fell down into the burning fiery furnace, and, but what's Nebuchadnezzar doing? He's peeking through the window. He's look, he's watching from a distance. What's happening and what he sees surprises him.

Verse 24. Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up. He declared to his counselors, did we not cast three men bound into the fire? They answered him. Yes, O King. That's right. Yeah. May you live forever. He answered them and said, but I see four men all unbound walking in the midst of the fire and they are not hurt. And the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods. This, this word that's being used here. It's an Aramaic, this portion of Daniel's written in Aramaic and this word that's being used for like a son of the gods. It's really just the best word that we have for like a divine being. This, this guy's glowing, he's like a divine being. Later on, Nebuchadnezzar calls him an angel walking through the furnace.

With them, many Christian traditions had taken the fourth person in the fire to be the second person of the Trinity. Jesus Christ himself. Have you guys heard that one before it? I like that theory. I mean, it could very of very well be true. This is called a theophany. A theophany is when the incarnate, God becomes pre incarnate. So before he's in before the incarnation, when Jesus was born, we see Jesus or the second member of the Trinity show up multiple times throughout the Old Testament, usually through the person of the angel of the Lord. And when you see that phrase, the angel of the Lord usually we think about that as being the person of the Trinity is like the presence of God manifested on earth before the incarnation of Jesus in this passage that very well could be what is happening.

But we only see things from Nebuchadnezzar's point of view. We only see it described by Nebuchadnezzar and he doesn't know Jesus. He doesn't know Yahweh. He doesn't know who that fourth person is in the fire. So it could be Jesus himself. It could be an angel. I don't really know, I don't really care. The, the point is the same that God was with them in the fiery furnace, that God was with them in the fiery furnace that God delivered Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. He was present with them in that great moment of need.

So they let them out of the furnace and they were completely ok. Their clothes weren't even burned. They didn't even smell like smoke. Verse 28 Nebuchadnezzar answered and said, blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants who trusted in him and set aside the king's command and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any God except their own. Therefore, I make a decree any people nation or language that speaks anything against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego shall be torn limb from limb and their houses laid in ruins, for there's no other God who is able to rescue in this way. Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the province of Babylon.

What is with this guy and his fixation on, like pulling people apart limb from limb like a Wookie. He's just, he's just bloodthirsty. I mean, he gave them a promotion. That's cool, I guess. And he's saying like you can worship Yahweh. But then he's like, and if you speak ill of Yahweh, we're gonna pull you apart from your toes first. We're gonna start with your toes and pull you apart piece by piece. That sounds terrible. Still not good. Nebuchadnezzar. Look, we need to work. That's a baby Christian. If I, no, I don't, I don't think so. I, I don't, there's no reason to think that Nebuchadnezzar was actually converted. Ok? You could, you could, some people say that he was but like if he was converted, this is what I'd expect him to do. I'd expect him to be like tear down the statue. Yahweh is God. We're following the God of Yahweh now. But instead he just applies more tolerance for people who follow Yahweh here, which is good. It's a win. You gotta count your wins. Ok?

Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace may feel removed from our lives and his demand for public conformity might not be something that we feel in the same kind of way, but we all feel it in a way. Do we not whether it's political leaders, cultural pressures or workplace expectations. Christians are often asked to privatize our faith and to go along with the crowd. I'm gonna give you a few examples of what this looks like. But before I do this, I'm gonna talk about courage and how you can have courage to stand. When you feel the pressure to conform. The way that you can have courage is to have the same, the faith in the same God that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had faith in who is able to save. We have to rest on his approval and his presence.

Just as God was with them in the fiery furnace, Jesus promised to be with believers today. The last words of Jesus before he ascended to heaven in the gospel of Matthew are this. He says, and behold, I'm with you always to the end of the age. And so even as new covenant believers, you know, I used to think, well, we don't experience the same type of stuff that they have in the Old Testament. They had God just so tangibly. It's really the opposite. The old Testament believers were longing for what we have, which is like the presence of God with us through the Holy Spirit that we have Jesus with us. Always until the end of the age in a much more real way, you can depend upon Jesus being with you, than even Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego could.

And so we can stand firm that Jesus is with us and as his followers, he helps us in our moments of fear, which is really what happens when we're stood, when we're up against con con conformity. Most of us are afraid of rejection and the more significant the person in our lives to reject us, the more we're afraid of it. So if I'm rejected by someone, I'm walking down the street, they, they, if they yell at me, you know, which is kind of if I'm drive, if I'm like riding my bike and they yell at me, I don't care that much. Ok? It's like I'm never gonna see that person again. But if that happens to be one of you, it's gonna matter a little bit more to me. If you reject me, if it ends up being a member of my own family, and I feel rejection from them will that matter significantly more.

And who could we fear rejection from more than God himself? He's the most significant person there is. And so we fear rejection from Him. But we also know that we have full approval because Jesus has received what we most fear. When Jesus was on the cross, he was removed from the approval of God and the presence of God and the full wrath of God was placed on Him on our behalf, all the sins of the world placed on Christ, bearing the full wrath of God. So that we can live our lives assured that we will not have to be removed from the presence of God.

That is the gospel, that Jesus received the re the, the separation from God that our sins deserve. He received the wrath of God that our sins deserve. And so we can live our lives with this confidence that He's never going to reject us, that he walks with us, that He's with us each and every moment. And so we have this confidence that Jesus was tossed into the fiery furnace of God's wrath. So we don't have to be separated from the loving presence of God.

And I have two applications for how we might apply this courage into our life. And the first is we will not allow our faith to be co opted for someone else's power. And the second is we will not allow our faith to be compromised by the culture around us. All right, this is where I get in a little trouble, ok. Whether you're right or left, you're probably gonna be angry with me by the end. And let's just hope that you're, that you're Jesus, ok? That you're, you're, you're going for that. We will not allow our faith to be co opted. We will not allow powerful people to use our faith to gain more power. Karl Marx, the famous communist once said that religion is the opiate of the people. I, I've heard another person say that religion is more like the cocaine of the people just revving them up to, to do whatever the politicians want them to do.

Our example of Hitler from before is, is fitting, is it not the leaders of Germany said that to hit serve Hitler is to serve God, they co opted the faith of millions to serve their power. But there was a quiet resistance. There was a quiet resistance even in Germany at that time, I want to share a picture with you. This picture is of a man named August Landmesser. I love this guy. You see him. He has like it took me. It was like where, where's Waldo the first picture until I put the circle on there. OK? Because I heard there's one guy that's not saluting when they say Hail Hitler and he's just, you know, he's just got his arms folded like nah bro, I'm good like he's no, I'm, I'm not gonna salute you. I'm not bowing down to your statue, Hitler. I am not doing that. Quiet resistance can look like that. Just say, count me out. I'm not doing it right now.

In America right now in America, both the left and the right want to co opt your sense of righteousness and justice to gain political power for themselves. There's many people in this country who see Christianity as just an excuse to moralize the platform of the Republican Party to those Christianity has lost their credibility. Christianity has to be more than that, or it becomes culturally irrelevant in a place like Somerville.

And I don't care if you're a Republican or you're democrat really. I do not care. Look, if it's like, if it's like, economic policy that makes you lean more conservative. I'm kind of like, cool, whatever. I don't, I'm not an economist. I don't know what will work. Like, I don't, I really don't know, like when Ron Paul was running, back in, like, 20 years ago or something at this point, I was kinda like, well, let's just throw him in there. See what happen, you know, like, I don't know, like, he's, he's like a libertarian. I was like, maybe like, something different would be good. I don't have a lot of thoughtful, I opinions on economic policy. And so if you are more conservative or more liberal in your economic policy, cool. That's fine with me.

But what I don't like is when we just moralize everything in religion. And so what happens is that Christianity gets co opted often times by the, by the Republican party. the Republicans are far more likely to try to co opt our faithfulness to Jesus for their political power. At the same time, though Democrats do the same trick. It's the same party trick. They, they just co opt a secular religion of morality and justice to say. And they're both saying this, if you're not with us you are not a good person. Do you feel that where it's just this, this separation where they both say if you're not with us, you are an evil person. That's, it doesn't have to be that way. We don't have to make religion have this and we don't have to make politics have this religious push to it.

We just have to stand firm and, and say that that's not us, that we will not allow our faith to define our politics. And I'm not gonna support you just because I'm a faithful person just because I'm a Christian. It doesn't mean that I'm gonna vote for someone who supposedly represents Christianity even though they might not be morally qualified to represent our country or so it, it doesn't mean that it, it doesn't mean that you are forced to vote a certain way when you're a Christian.

I love how Russell Moore, the, the editor in chief of Christianity today says this, he says that courage isn't just the dissident, refusing to deny Christ when tortured by a dictator, but the Christian in a free country who refuses to define his faith by loyalty to a politician of any sort.

Marilyn Robinson is a famous novelist. She wrote a Pulitzer Pulitzer Prize winning book a few years ago and she says it like this, a society is moving to a dangerous ground when loyalty to the truth is seen as disloyalty to some supposed higher interest.

We will not allow our faith to be co opted. The message of the gospel is not a thing that you can hijack to gain political power because the second, you hijack the gospel to gain power for yourselves. You rob it of all of its power. The gospel is this message that says the first shall be last and the last shall be first. The gospel is this message that says that we must serve one another. It is not something you use to gain power. If you want to use the gospel, you will probably end up becoming less wealthy, more generous, less powerful, more humble servant of all. That is what it means to follow Jesus.

And if that's not appealing to you this morning, I'm going to pray and ask the Lord to make that appealing to you because it is the best way to live worldly. Power is temporary, but the Gospel is powerful for eternity. Amen. We must not allow our faith to be co opted for political gain, but we must not allow our faith to be compromised. At the same time. This is a major theme throughout all of Daniel. We've been talking about this lazy river of cultural con conformity to American culture for the past several weeks. And Daniel is the story of remaining faithful. When the culture around you is hostile to your faith, we have to quietly refuse to allow our faith to be compromised.

You don't have to make a big deal about it. But there's just some things that you can't participate in as Christians and you have to take a stand, a quiet stand of resistance. Look at them, they're, they're not making a big deal about it. They have tattle tales and they have to stand before the king and then they have to be bold once they get told on like that, but they are just quietly resisting as Christians.

Here's some examples. Everyone around us thinks that you're absolutely crazy. If you get married to someone that you've never had sex with, they also think you're absolutely crazy if you get married to someone that you've never lived with, never mind all the statistics that say that actually divorce is more likely for you live with someone before you get married to them. But they think you're absolutely crazy. If you pursue a biblical sexual ethic as Christians, we have to have courage to hold on to what might seem like an outdated sexual ethic because we trust that following God's design for sexuality is better than following the world's design. And so sometimes we just have to quietly say no, that's not for me.

When you're out with friends and they're having one drink after another. We have to know our limits as Christians. The Bible talks about drunkenness often. And so I don't know what it is for you and I don't know what that looks like. Exactly. Maybe it's like the second drink comes, you're like, no, I'm good. And you might have friends. They're like, hey, you sure what's up? Like, we're having a good time. You're like, no, you know, I had one. I feel good and I'm good. Maybe it's the third drink. I don't know where you're, some of this is the first drink. Ok? And, and you just have to know your limits. You have to know where you are and you don't have to, you have to know where the line is.

And the same goes for drugs that might cause you to have some mental effects as drunkenness. We have to look and say, you know, it doesn't glorify God if I'm out of my mind, if I can't control myself, I'm not glorifying God. So I'm not gonna go there. I'm just gonna say no thanks. I think we live in a culture that can respect that one usually, but sometimes you might feel pressure to conform when everyone I'm gonna keep going. Ok? There's like several here that are like this is the, these are hard areas for us as Christians to just quietly refuse you. We don't have to make a big deal about it.

When everyone's watching the new Raunchy HBO series. Sometimes you just have to say that's not for me, you know, like I can't, I can't have that conversation with you. Sorry, I missed it. You know, like it, you might feel left out and sometimes you, you might, you know, feel like that drain on a friendship, but sometimes you just have to know where your lines are. The other day. I sat down to watch an Academy Award winning movie. I made it 15 minutes and I said, no, this one's not for me. I turned it off. I had to, it wasn't, it wasn't gonna encourage my walk with Jesus at all. I could tell after 15 minutes. And so I just, I just stepped out. I said I don't, this is, this movie is gonna cause me to objectify people and other people's bodies are not for my objectification. They're, they're made in the image of God that I'm meant to honor them because of how they're created. I'm not, I can't do that. I can't allow my brain to go to those places and it just affects the way that I think about people. If I start to see people as objects, I start to treat them like objects. It's a really horrid thing. We have to control our thought life.

Maybe you're out shopping and you see, you see something you wanna buy, all your friends are buying stuff and there's a, a bag or a gadget or whatever it is. You're like, I want that. And sometimes you just have to say I got 17 bags at home. I don't need another one. I don't, I don't need one right now. Jesus calls me to live simply and to live generously. And as a Christian, I'm gonna just deny myself at the moment and say no, I'm good.

Quietly resist the cultural flow that tells you you can only be happy with more things. Maybe you feel pressure to cut corners to fudge numbers to take shortcuts at work, to get ahead. But the grace of God compels us to live with integrity. You have to be the same person all the way through. You can't live without integrity at work and with integrity in other places, you have to be an integral person all the way. And if you practice non participation like this, you're going to probably feel a little bit of resistance. You're gonna feel like ju like like you're gonna feel judged but not judged in the same way, you're gonna feel judged that you're being judgmental. That's what's gonna happen, right? Like, like why are you being such a stick in the mud? And it's like, no, I'm not trying to be a stick in the mud. I can't teach you how to make it to where people won't think that you're being judgmental. I can just teach you how not to be judgmental. OK?

And you have to let them have their own idea of who you are, you and you have to know that the presence of God is with you and that you're approved by Him and his approval matters more. His approval matters more. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were willing to go to the fiery furnace even though they didn't know if God would actually save them. I like to think though what had ha what would have happened if they had actually been burned? Ok. They were willing to go if they had been burned. If, if God wouldn't have showed up, the story probably would never have showed up in the Bible. Right. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, we wouldn't know their names and be like and they were thrown into the furnace and they were no more next story. Daniel chapter four, but it still would have been the right decision. It still would have been the right decision.

Hebrews 11. It's called the Hall of Faith. When we go to Hebrews 11, it just list faithful person after faithful person. And it says that this person did this great thing. They shut the mouths of lions, they they did all these amazing things. And then you get to the end of the chapter Hebrews chapter 35 the second half of it through 38. Even though after it's explained this great faith of what these people have done. It says some were tortured, refusing to accept release so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging and others chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword, they went about in skins of sheep and goats. Destitute and afflicted, mistreated of whom the world was not worthy. Wandering about in deserts and mountains and in dens and caves of the earth.

Even if they had been burned, their faith would have been worth it. It would not have been in vain. Similarly, I've asked myself, this is just something I've, I've been thinking about recently. Where were the, where were like the anti segregation, white pastors in the fifties? Ok. Like is a fiery time. Like you read about the civil rights movement and it's like, praise God for Doctor King and for those who led the civil rights movement. But where were the white pastors? Like, why wasn't anybody standing up in a moment when we needed someone to stand up?

And the more I thought about it is it probably wasn't that the white pastors just weren't saying anything. It's that they said something one week and then they were fired the next and then they lived their life in obscurity, maybe like mopping floors somewhere or something like that. And the world was not worthy of them. We have to have courage to stand, to not participate when our faith is being co opted or compromised and to live out faithfully. The calling to Jesus, there are some things more important than life itself.

Soren Kirkegaard says this, he says the majority of people are not so afraid of holding a wrong opinion as they are of holding an opinion alone. And friends. You are not alone, you're surrounded by. This is one reason why we have to be a solid community of faith. We need to be there for one another. We need to be in each other's lives to remind one another to see like we're, it's not just that we're standing alone against the lazy river of cultural conformity. We're linking arms and doing it together, holding one another in place, your brothers and your sisters, they got your back. We're all together.

But also you're not alone because Jesus has promised to be with you, though you may fear the fiery furnace of life. You're surrounded by his love and his approval and he's with you. So friends, let's have a quiet rebellion, shall we, against the status quo, against, against conformity and co-opting and being faithful to our God who has always been faithful to us. Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Daniel 2 (read for us in Portuguese) about the king’s dream and Daniel’s response. Discussion points: Worldly kingdoms are fragile and temporary, this world is only our temporary home, we should invest in the kingdom of God rather than in worldly kingdoms that are temporary.

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Preacher: All right, good morning. My name is Fletcher. It's a joy to be with you this morning. You know, when you were a kid and you would be given a deck of cards, but you don't know how to play cards. So you just start building card houses, you know, and, and you just put the two cards together and if you are lucky enough to get those two to stay, you might put two more next to that. And then you, you know, the, the crowning jewel would be to put one across the span of the two TP houses that you just made and then you put, you keep going, you, you just build a house. But then inevitably if you have a sibling, they just breathe in your direction and the whole thing falls apart. Or maybe you have a younger sibling and they just like, kind of run down the hallway and the house shakes. Just a little.

Anybody know, you know what I'm talking about. You know, your ho anybody feel like your life is just kind of like that house where, where you just barely holding it together like you, it's like if I just barely tipped to this one this way, the whole thing would fall over. Yeah. Life, life kind of feels like that sometimes, doesn't it? Like we can barely balance it all, we can barely hold it all together. What if I told you though? That that's not necessarily a bad thing and that's probably how your life should feel. In fact, that's how our lives feel in general. All of us. You're not alone. That should give you a little bit of solace to know that you're not alone.

And normally it would be a lot more encouraging for a pastor to be like, you know, it's not really like that, you know, like your house is gonna, your, your life is gonna be fun. But what, what if it really was kind of like a house of cards that could fall over at any moment? That feels more true, does it not.

Daniel 2 tells us that that is true. And in fact, Daniel 2 tells us this is a common passage and it was planned this way that we would preach this on the week of the election because no matter which way this election went, this is gonna be a message that we all need to hear. We have people on both sides of the political spectrum in our church. There's people who are happy about the results. Somerville in general, 90% of Somerville voted for Harris. So I suspect that there's many people that are not happy about the results of the election as well.

And what Daniel chapter two does is it teaches us that our lives are fragile, our kingdoms are fragile but that God reigns eternal. Amen. It's a good truth for us to have this morning D Daniel chapter two just in some, OK. We only read a small, a small portion of the, the book when we read through it just now. We just read Daniel's praise to God. We'll get to that in a few minutes. But it basically tells the story of a tyrannical leader named Nebuchadnezzar who wakes up one morning on the wrong side of the bed. He has a dream and he wants to understand what it means. In fact, he goes so extreme with this interpretation of the dream that he falls into. He succumbs to a murderous rage and threatens to kill, not just his own supervisors, his own advisor, but he threatens to kill all the wise people in the entire land. All those who claim they might be able to give meaning to dreams. He threatens to kill.

And it's at that moment when Young Daniel, I mean, this dude's, he's probably just a teenager. Honestly, he has to step in and stand firm on behalf of the people of God and on behalf of all of those who might be killed by this crazy leader that they have of a global power, probably the strongest nation in the world at this time. It's an apt message for us today. So without any further ado, let's just jump into it. Ok? So if you have your bibles, you can turn, we'll also be putting the, the passages on the screen for you as we go through.

Verse number one, we're just gonna work our way through the passage. We might not read every single verse. It's a long chapter, but we'll, we'll get through most of it. And verse one in the second year of the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar. Now, remember from last week, if you were here last week, a lot of things were building. This is a story that builds throughout the week. So it will help you to, to hear week after week. But last week, we learned that when it gives you like in the second year and whatever year of a Pacific king that's basically telling you the historical date in which this event occurred. So because of what we read here, we know that this happened two or three years since Daniel and his friends were removed from the land and they were put into the ba the Babylon Leadership Development School for boys who look good.

And remember Daniel, he was like a a well looking guy, Nebuchadnezzar said, hey, go get the, the good looking nobility guys and bring them to me. He's like looking for a guy who's you, I'm looking for a man like Daniel youthful without blemish 65 blue eyes. Nebuchadnezzar had dreams though. Verse one, he had dreams, his spirit was troubled and his sleep left him. Anybody ever had a night of sleep like that, you just have dreams and your sleep. It's I love the way I put it. It says his spirit was trouble and his sleep left him. Well, where did it go? Well, how can I get it to come back? I don't want my sleep to leave me. I love sleep. I mean, I, I feel like this is just a recurring theme in sermons. Just how much I love sleep. When you have three kids, you just are reminded of how much you love sleep. Verse two, the I have nothing else to say about that other than that no spiritual meaning to that. I just love it. I thought I'd let you guys know.

Verse two, then the king commanded the magicians, the enchanters, the sorcerers and the Chaldeans be summoned to tell the king his dreams. So they came in and stood before the king and the king said to them, I had a dream and my spirit is troubled to know the dream. Then the Chaldeans said to the king and Aramaic o king live forever. Tell your servants the dream and we will show you the interpretation.

All right, a couple of things to note here first, the language switches to Aramaic, right? When it says the word Chaldeans verse four, then the Chaldeans and then it says, it said to the king and Aramaic, everything after that in this book. And through chapter seven is in Aramaic, that's a big shift. You would never know it if you're reading in English. But from here forward, we have Aramaic. Half of Daniel is written in Aramaic and then it switches back to Hebrew. That's bizarre. It ha it's hardly the only book of ancient times. This is a, a artistic choice that the author of Daniel made. There's other books written in ancient world that's half one language and half another. And Aramaic is this cousin language that we have to Hebrews. So a lot of people who spoke Aramaic could also speak Hebrew.

In fact, Jesus himself, his primary language was Aramaic. That might be surprising to you. But Jesus walked around, most of his teaching was in Arabic it was the, the lingua franca of the day. It was the primary language that people spoke in this time. And so it's swapping back to Arama and it's like one of those things where it's why, why is it doing this? And there's a lot of different reasons. No one really knows why Daniel is switching to Aramaic. But one thing that we do know is that it's a choice that he made. So one thing that we can think about is maybe this is just an artistic choice. Ok.

Like this summer, my wife and I, or maybe it was last summer whenever Oppenheimer came through Oppenheimer, Oppenheimer, whichever one when it came to the theater, we like went to the Jordan's theater and got the, the good IMAX experience of Oppenheimer. And in that movie, there's saying, I'm not gonna give away anything, although it's a historical movie. So it's all given away on Wikipedia. But the, there's scenes in the movie that you're watching, you're like this one's in black and white and the other ones are in color and you're just spending the whole movie. Like why is this part in black and white? I don't really understand and it's trying to communicate to you with the shift of the color tone that something different is happening.

Maybe that's what Daniel's doing. Maybe he's saying, look, chapters two through 71 coherent thing. They go together and then you have the, the, the prologue and then the post log after that, maybe that's kind of what's happening also because Aramaic was a more popularly spoken language. Maybe the book of Daniel is meant to be written for people who are outside, not just inside of the people of God. Maybe it's written in a more accessible language so that more people can read Daniel and understand it. We don't know exactly why, but there's a few, a few things and I just felt like it was worth noting to you all, even if I didn't have an exact reason, like, hey major language change here also. Ok.

So Nebuchadnezzar calls his servants over. I love how he says it. He says, so they came in and stood before the king and the king said to them, I had a dream and my spirit is troubled to know the dream. OK? Hold that in your mind for just a minute. His sir, the Chaldeans, they respond to him. O King live forever. Huh? If you've read the story before, it's supposed to be funny. It's a funny remark because that's exactly what the dream does not mean. The dream means, the king is not going to live forever. That's like the meaning of the dream. And so when he calls in his yes men to come and tell him the meaning of the dream. The first thing they say is the exact opposite of what the dream means. Oh, King live forever. No, no, that's actually not it, but they say sure we can interpret the dream. Just tell us the dream. We'd love to know the dream, we can do that.

And the king answered the, the Chaldeans and said to the Chaldeans and he said the word from me is firm. If you do not make known to me, the dream and its interpretation, you shall be torn limb from limb and your houses shall be laid in ruins. oh, the king is grumpy kingy weeny didn't get enough sleepy. This is not a good situation. They want, he wants them to tell him not just the meaning of the dream, but the dream itself. Now why? Maybe he forgot the dream that happens. Sometimes your sleep leaves you and you're like, I was having a dream. I think it means something. I don't remember what the dream was.

Maybe he remembers the dream and he knows that these advisers that he's brought in are yes men. There are people that just want to tell the king what the king wants to hear. Maybe the king doesn't want to hear just what they he thinks. They think he wants to hear. Maybe the king wants to hear what the dream actually means. So he said, if you have an actual interpretation of the dream from a God or the gods or whoever God is. Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar's mind, if you have an actual interpretation, then you could tell me not just the meaning of the dream, you could tell me the dream itself because if you're hearing from God, why couldn't God tell you the dream too? And so maybe he's just putting them to the test, whatever his rationale is, the penalty is dismemberment like that is not good.

The wise man to the king responded, bro, they answered the king and said, this is not, there is not a man on earth who can meet the king's demand for no great and powerful king has a asked such a thing of any magician or enchanter or Chaldean. The thing that the king asks is difficult and no one can show it to the king except the gods whose dwelling is not with flesh. Mr King. This is an impossible task. Only a true person from God or the gods themselves could tell you the answer to what you're looking for.

Well, the king didn't like that response and it made him more angry. And because of this, the king was so angry and furious verse 12 and commanded that all the wise men of Babylon, not just those standing before him who failed, but all the wise men of Babylon be destroyed, of which Daniel is included and his friends that we know most commonly by their Babylonian name, Shadrack, Meshach and Abednego. Well, that's not good either. So Daniel goes to this guy, he gets word that of what's happening. So he goes to this guy, his name is Arioch. And it says in the ESV that he's the captain of the King's guard. But in many translations, it says that he's the captain of the executioners.

So Daniel knows he's about to get killed because they can't translate the, they can't interpret or tell the king his dream. So he goes to the chief of the executioners or the captain of the king's guard and he says, give me a shot. I want a shot. Why are you gonna put me to death? I haven't even had it. My try. So give me a shot. And the captain of the king's guard is like, really, you wanna do this? And Daniel said, yes, I have a God who can tell me the king's dream and its interpretation.

That's faith. Look at Daniel stepping up. He hasn't received the interpretation of the dream. He hasn't received the dream. He's just like, well, this is my chance. This is my only shot. Give me a chance, give me a chance. Give my God a chance. He is real. And so Daniel has the faith that God will reveal this dream. So he goes home and he tells Hananiah, Meshael and Azariah, AKA Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego about the situation and they start praying.

That's the first thing they do. They turn to prayer, they turn to prayer and they, they seek mercy from God begging God to give them insight into the King's dream and begging God to, to help them to be able to interpret it. And so Daniel then receives the insight and he responds to God in poetic form. So God delivers them. God gives them the dream. He tells them the meaning of it. And Daniel receives all of this in a vision or something and he responds to God.

It's written in poetic format. It's what we read earlier. But anytime you're reading through your Bible, well, if you're, if you have your Bible open, you'll see that there's just this big chunk of narrative. And then you get to this section right here and it's written as prose. It's, it's poetry here. And when you have something written like that in your Bible, it's meant to be read more slowly. OK? When you see that, just slow down, read it twice, maybe three times. OK? This, you can read once because it's the story. You get to this slow down a little bit. Let's just think about that one. You're supposed to ponder it a little bit, maybe have a cup of tea. How look out the window for a second in between readings, something like that.

So we're just gonna read it again. I think it's helpful. Verse 19. Then the mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision of the night. Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven and Daniel answered and said, blessed be the name of God forever and ever to whom belong wisdom and might. He changes times and seasons. He removes kings and sets up kings. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding. He reveals deep and hidden things. He knows what is in the darkness and the light dwells with Him. To you, O God of my fathers I give thanks and praise for you have given me wisdom and might and have now made known to me what we asked of you. For you have made known to us the king's matter.

I just want you to see one. It has so much truth in, in the little poem. It's, it's a fantastic little piece of poetry that Daniel wrote. But I also want you to see that Daniel lacks anxiety in these dealings. He knew that God would reveal the dream. That's why he went to the captain of the king's guard. And then after he received the meaning of the dream, the vision, he doesn't run in anxiety to tell the king. He pauses and he gives thanks to God. He recognizes that all good things come from God, that this vision has come from God and that God deserves his praise, so many great things here.

After this, Daniel does go to meet with the king and verse 26, 26 it says the king declared to Daniel whose name was Belteshazzar. That's his Babylonian name. Are you able to make known to me the dream that I have seen and its interpretation? I just want you to see the power dynamics that are going on here. The Daniel, the, the king is probably on his throne, the leader of the, the most globally powerful nation in the world at this time. And he's speaking to little Israelite, Daniel who's come up through his development program, but who he probably doesn't have a close relationship with.

And Daniel answered the king and said, no wise men, enchanters, magicians or astrologers can show to the king the mystery that the king has asked. But there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries. And he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar, what will be in the latter day. Nebuchadnezzar likes to think of himself as a God. All the ancient kings did, but Daniel is witnessing to Nebuchadnezzar. He's speaking truth to power in this moment. And he's telling Nebuchadnezzar there is a real God and he can give you the meaning of this dream.

And here's the dream. I'm just going to describe it. I'm not going to read it. Ok. So the dream is Nebuchadnezzar was watching and he saw a, a giant statue, a huge statue before him. And the statue was made in his own likeness. It was a, it was an image or a statue that's actually the same word in Aramaic image and statue. And it was huge, bright and actually unnerving. Have you ever seen something that's like so large it's like unnerving to you. When you see this up close, the head of the statue was made of gold. The torso of the statue was made of silver. The the mid part of the statue was made of bronze and the feet were made of iron and clay. They were half iron, half clay.

So there's this huge statue made of four different materials that kind of decrease in value as they go down. And then what he sees is the stone fly in and strike the feet of the statue. And the whole thing comes toppling down. And in fact, in the dream, not only does the statue come toppling down, but it turns into chaff, it's like dust, it becomes nothing. And then the stone that flies in from heaven or wherever hits the ground, it starts small and it grows into a huge mountain and then it's over, that's the dream. It's unnerving and I can see why his sleep left him.

And so Daniel explains what the dream means to King Nebuchadnezzar. And he says, king, the head, the gold head, it represents you and your kingdom, this Babylonian empire that you've created, that is who you are. The glorious part. And each level below that represents a kingdom that would come. And so we know from history and we know from later in this book, how, how it's described that there are four kingdoms that come after Nebuchadnezzar and the first kingdom of Silver is represented, that's representative of the Meadow Persian Empire.

The next kingdom is the, the Greek empire and the next kingdom is the Roman Empire. And so as it goes down, it's representing these four different empires throughout the history of the world. And what is teaching that is that in the days of the, of the empire represented? I don't know if Daniel had these exact words, but this is what we, we gather from the book of Daniel in the days when that's represented by the iron and the clay, there will come a stone to topple them all and that God will set up a new kingdom that shall never be destroyed, it will break into pieces all other kingdoms and it will grow to fill the entire world is what it says, that the mountain filled the entire world.

That's the interpretation. That is what Daniel told him that all kingdoms are going to be toppled and that the kingdom of God is going to come and fill the earth. So how did Nebuchadnezzar receive this? If I was in Nebuchadnezzar's shoes, I would be like, well, that doesn't sound good for me, but instead Nebuchadnezzar, he hears it and he, it's like he stops listening whenever Daniel says, you're the head made of gold and he's like awesome. That's great. It's like he doesn't even care about anything after that. And you know, he stops listening because what he actually does, this is wild. I never saw this until this week. He receives this horrible dream about the statue. Look at the first verse of chapter three, we split it up.

But then the first verse chapter three, King Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold whose height was 60 cubits and its breadth six cubits. He just went and made the statue. He did not listen, did not care. He completely missed the point. He said, I'm the good part, everything else, I'm leaving to someone else, but the king does reward Daniel and his friends. He gives them many gifts and positions of influence in his government. And so that's where we're going to pick up the story next week.

What do we do with all this? How do we apply it? How do we work it into our lives? I think that there's a, a few different ways you can do that as we think about what is the point here. Some people might say so, work to a position of influence so that you can speak truth to power when the time comes. And well, that's not a bad thing. And you see that example happen in the Bible often. I don't think that that's the point. I think that the point is this earthly kingdoms, they come and they go, but the Kingdom of God rains forever earthly kingdoms, they come and they go. But the Kingdom of God remains, I have two points to apply things. OK? As I as I apply all this, all this story in chapter two to your life.

The first point is this: worldly kingdoms are fragile and temporary. Worldly kingdoms are fragile and temporary. This is at the heart of this passage. No matter how strong and how glorious worldly kingdoms are, they will all fall, every worldly kingdom will fall. That's the point of the dream. That's the point. Look at the history of the world, even no kingdom reigns forever. Look at a map of the world from 100 years ago. There's gonna be nations on that map that do not exist today. They are going to be borders that are different. The world changes. Kingdoms, they come and they go, our nation is fragile.

I grew up thinking and you know, part of me still thinks this at times, you know, America is the greatest nation in the world in the history of the world. Any American grew up thinking that that is what you think as an American. Ok? If you're from another country, I'm sorry. The the stereotypes are true. That is what we think. Ok, America does Americans do feel like America is the best that's just baked into the cultural ethos. But America is temporary and fragile. We even say it in our pledge of allegiance. We have a pledge of allegiance to the flag, other, other people from other countries think this is crazy Children in our nation stand and put their heart, hand over their heart and look at a flag and recite a declaration to it every single morning. They still do this in schools, so I learned.

And they say one nation under God indivisible. And what, what are we trying to say? We're basically saying that America cannot fall. But the truth is we are divisible. We've been divided. It wasn't that long ago. We had a civil war in this nation. Our country will not last forever. You might as well just graft in the Statue of Liberty into Nebuchadnezzar stream. It will also fall. And I know that's like not a, not a very uplifting thing, but it's something we need to remember that the kingdoms of this world do fall but not only are nations fragile and temporary, the small kingdoms that we build around ourselves are temporary and fragile.

You might not be a powerful person in government, but there is somewhere that you feel power, whether that be only within your own home or you reign as tyrant or whether it's at work or school. Maybe you just have a video game where you feel very powerful. Maybe you're an online troll. God help us. The kingdoms that we build around ourselves are fragile and temporary.

I'm going to use a case study here of a man named Ronnie Coleman. Does anybody know Ronnie Coleman? Yeah, Ronnie Coleman, the greatest bodybuilder of all time. This man could squat and dead lift 800 pounds. He was massive. Oh, just, and he was unstoppable. He made Arnold Schwarzenegger look puny. I mean, Ronnie Coleman is where the action was at. This dude was jacked. And for eight years he won Mr Olympia eight years in a row, he won best physique in the world. I mean, this, he had muscles on muscles, ok? He, he made the rock look little. It was just, oh, this guy was huge. He's the goat. Look up what he's doing now though. He's 60 years old. That's not that old. Ok. He can't walk, he's in a wheelchair, he can't lift weights the way he did. He could just do a little bit of upper body stuff.

No matter how powerful you are at the moment. It is temporary and fragile. All earthly kingdoms are. But that's good news to us because when we realize that earthly kingdoms are temporary and fragile, it makes it easier for us to resist the temptation to invest in the things of this world. It makes it easier.

When Megan and I first moved to Boston, we moved to Boston, 12 years ago, over 12 years ago now, 12.5 years ago. and when we first moved here we did what almost everyone does and we moved into an apartment on Com Ave, for a short amount of time. Ok. Many of us, I'm sure know people that have lived on Com Ave. So we were on Com Ave and we were living right at the end near B see, and we found this delightful little apartment, it had a pool for the apartment complex. It was a one bedroom. It was perfect for us before we had kids and we had our little dog and, and we moved in and, you know, there were some frustrations about it. Like BC students would puke out in the little grass in front of our, our house and our dog would roll in that puke and we'd have to wash her all the time and, but it was really a nice apartment.

We liked it so much that when we got it, we went and we said, hey, let's make it feel home like and we painted every surface in that apartment. Oh my gosh. I don't think I've, you can ask me to help you with your house, but I don't paint. Ok. That's just, I don't do it anymore. That house broke me. And we painted every single surface. We painted all the walls, we painted the trim. I swear we were painting the ceiling in this place. And we, we wanted to stay there for a little while, but then come to find out our landlord had made a mistake and he came to us and he said, look, I made a mistake. I thought you could have a dog in this condo. But the condo association has informed me that you cannot have a dog in here and that you actually need to move because of your dog or get rid of the dog. And trust me, I was thinking about getting rid of the dog after all of that paint. That was a better option to me, but we moved out and we still have the dog. She's a geriatric Westie. Here's a picture. She's still getting into trouble rolling in things that she shouldn't be, but that is, that is her.

And I tell you that story because I just wanna ask you this question if you're renting, if you're renting, do you invest in the apartment that you're renting in? Like sure you might throw, you might throw some, some paint on the walls, but you're not gonna rip out the cabinets and put a new counter in. OK? That's, that's something that you only do if you own the place. If that's your permanent home, when you have somewhere that you know, is your temporary home, you do not invest significantly into it and this world is not your permanent home, it is a temporary place. And so we, we should temper how much we invest into it.

Now, I know some of you are thinking you might be drawing conclusions. OK? I am saying that invest in the things of God. Don't invest in this world. Some of you though have used this to neglect being involved in a church or to making true community or becoming a member in a church and I just wanna give you the encouragement that, that's not what I'm saying. Ok. So don't use it in that way if you think, if you want to think about it that way. that, that's, that's not what I'm trying to say at all. Really, you don't know how long you're going to be in Boston. No one does.

When, when my wife and I met, it was only because she was planning on going to college. But she had started attending this local church and she ran into the pastor one day and the pastor was like, hey, you should think about being a member. She's like, oh, I'm about to move to college and he's like, well, you know, go ahead and become a member. You really don't know what's gonna happen. You, we, you can come back or you can join another church when you go there. But you know, this way you at least you have a church home and she did, she became a member of the church and then the God God just changed all her plan. She ended up going to college at a different school. Everything changed. And she already had a church where she was a member and that's where we met was at that church.

And I'm just saying, you don't know how long God has you here. You, you should invest while you can be completely where you are, and when you invest in the church, you're investing in the Kingdom of God, which is always worth it. And so I'm just saying, don't, don't use it as an excuse to get out of investing in relationships, the temporary nature because aren't all of our relationships temporary when you think of on a grander scale.

Friends, do you feel like you're barely holding it together? Like the life that you've built is really just a house of cards waiting for a firm wind to blow. And I'm here to tell you the good news that that is true that it is fragile and temporary. The Kingdom of God comes to shatter our kingdoms and that's good news.

The second point. And really, I'm gonna conclude with this is the Kingdom of God is powerful. The Kingdom of God is eternal and the Kingdom of God is subversive. How does Daniel describe the Kingdom of God? The Kingdom of God is this stone that comes from somewhere? We recognize it as heaven itself and it comes and it shatters the kingdoms of this world and it hits the ground. It starts so small and it becomes a huge mountain that fills the entire world. And we understand this translation to being that it hits that we interpret it, it hits the feet, which is the Roman Empire itself and it fills the whole world.

What's he talking about? Well, if you grow up in church or if you're a Christian. It should be rather obvious of the cornerstone sent from heaven. Jesus Christ as a young child come to bring the kernel of the kingdom of God that though it's the smallest seed, when it's planted as the mustard seed, it becomes the largest tree in all of the garden. Jesus is described in the New Testament as the cornerstone. He is the king of kings sent from heaven to topple the kingdoms of this world. And he established a kingdom that is powerful and eternal, but it is subversive. It is not what you expect because the way that it topples the kingdoms of this world isn't through might and power but is through subversive, denial of self and love of neighbor.

Daniel says it like this. And in the days of those kings, the God of Heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom of kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all the kingdoms and bring them to an end and it shall stand forever. But this subversive kingdom isn't what we think. Listen to a few of Jesus' teachings. He says, blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the kingdom of God. He said, blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. He teaches that the first shall be last and the last shall be first.

He says, that if you want to become great, you must become the servant of all the true love. He said none other than this that a, that a man lay down his life for his friends. That if you really wanna follow the kingdom of heaven, that you don't just have to love your friends, but you have to love your enemies turning the cheek. When others revile you, you see the Kingdom of God is not like an earthly kingdom. It infiltrates all of the earthly kingdoms. It is subversive and we are to be a counter kingdom in the world that we live in a kingdom of love of compassion. But that kingdom is powerful and eternal and it will never be toppled. A kingdom of humility and love.

Friends, if you're not a believer here this morning, if you're not a part of that kingdom, I invite you to join us. It's a powerful place to be that will never be toppled, that will last eternally. The invitation is open for you to put down your personal kingdom and to follow the king of kings. But if you are a believer, I just want to give you next steps and, and they're so simple. I'm just gonna quote from Jesus and I'm gonna let you draw the conclusions. OK? Two Jesus quotes. And that's all I've got this morning.

Matthew six chapter 19. Do not lay for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is your heart will be. Also Matthew chapter five verse 14, you are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the stand and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

Friends invest in the kingdom, shine the light of Christ, invest in the kingdom. Shine the light of Christ. That's the message in this moment. We're going to have an opportunity to respond. If you'd like someone to pray with you, I know it's a heavy week for many of us. You, you're allowed to feel that. Look, I I'm up here saying that like I'm not up here saying, hey, the world's not ending. I'm up here saying the world's gonna end, ok, like all of our kingdoms are, are going to end and that's heavy for, for many of us.

So if you'd like someone to pray with you this morning, we invite you to, to receive prayer, we'll have some prayer counselors in the back that would love to pray with you. But if you would like to receive this meal. We do a sacred meal each week, which is a communion meal that on the night that he was betrayed, Jesus initiated this meal and he took a loaf of bread and he broke it and he said, this is my body broken for you. And he took a, he took the cup and he said, this is my bloodshed for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And so when we take of the bread and the, the, the wine or the juice, we're reminded that Christ had to die so that we could be made one with God.

He died on behalf of our sins so that we could be brought into relationship with them and join the kingdom of God. But it's actually where he was enthroned as king. You know, he was put on the cross crown of thorns cape, they nailed above him in three different languages, not just two, they nailed above him, king of the Jews. And it was in that moment of weakness that he was made king of kings. And here we're saying I want to be like him and follow him and I'm going to die to myself, to live for him. And so if that is true of you this morning, you're reminded of the grace of God, you can come and participate with this communion meal. It's not because of anything you've done, but it's because of what he has done. Would you stand as we prepare our hearts to respond and to, to follow after Chris this morning.

Father, as we come to this table, we, we thank you for providing the way for us. And God, we pray that you would help us to delight in you as our king to follow after you and to be a kingdom representative shining the light into our world. Father, I pray for those who are anxious. Would you help them to see that the Kingdom of God lasts forever? And how God would you comfort them in their pain? And would you, would you help them to connect with you? And God, we pray for, for those who, who feel on top of the world today, God, we, we pray that they would see also that they need you and that we all do. And so God as we receive this meal, would you just remind us what Christ has done for us, fill our hearts with love and affection for Him and help us to shine as his light and invest into His kingdom. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher begins our new sermon series on the book of Daniel. Discussion points: The Babylonians aimed to convert and assimilate the Israelites in exile so they wouldn’t rebel, our modern culture can work in a similar way to separate us from our faith, God will help us to stand firm against the current of culture.

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Scripture reader: [Daniel 1:1-8] In the third year of the reign of Jehoash king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And the Lord gave Jehoash king of Judah into his hand with some of the vessels of the house of God. And he brought them to the land of ShinR, to the house of his God and placed the vessels in the treasury of his God. Then the king commanded Ashpenaz his chief eunuch to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility, youths without blemish, of good appearance and skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding, learning and competent to stand in the king's palace and to teach them the literature and the language of the Chaldeans.

The king assigned them a daily portion of the food that the king ate and of the wine that he drank. They were to be educated for three years and at the end of that time, they were to stand before the king. Among these were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah of the tribe of Judah. And the chief of the eunuchs gave them names: Daniel he called Belteshazzar, Hananiah he called Shadrach, Mishael he called Meshach, and Azariah he called Abednego. But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king's food or with the wine that he drank.

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: All right. Well, we have a little election this week, don't? We thought I would just start with something to get your attention. little election going on. You know, we have two parties and it feels very much like we have two very different visions of the future of the United States. Does it not? We have, we have these two parties. It feels like there's a lot at stake. And, you know, I grew up believing that one party had the moral high ground over the other party. And I believe that's strong. In fact, it was like a repulsive thing and I, I think that people still believe this in different places and I wouldn't be surprised if many of you still believe this, that if someone told me they were voting for the other party, I would almost have like a, a visceral reaction.

Like it was just something deep within me that just felt like it was morally wrong to vote for the other party. I felt like one party represented the cause of Christ more than the other. It was out of my, my religious beliefs in many ways that I was fueled, to think this way but the older I've gotten, the more I have felt like a political misfit, is anybody with me? The more I feel like I just don't fit in to either. The more I've realized that neither party really has a corner on the vision of the good life that Jesus proclaimed. It's not like one party is espousing the sermon on the mount while the other one is just spewing hate and vitriol. Ok? It is not like that at all.

Both parties have might have different visions for the future of America. But neither of them necessarily have a Jesus vision for the United States of America. It's hard to defend it like that deep down. In fact, I think that both of the parties are more similar than what they would care to admit they might have different policies. But these policies come out of a secular world view that fuels just different ways of expressing the same secular world view.

There's one author named Mark Sayers. He's an Australian theologian, philosopher guy. He wrote a book called Disappearing Church and this was almost 10 years ago now. So one of these is, is kind of dated at this point, I feel like, but he came up with seven different ways that our culture has these beliefs that shape what we, what we believe and how our politics work. So here are several different ways and all of them you'll find are at odds with Christianity in one way or another. The first view, both both of the left and the right. I think they both believe these things and just have different applications of it.

Number one, the highest good is individual freedom, happiness, self definition and self expression. Number two traditions, religions received wisdom, regulations and social ties that restrict individual freedom, happiness, self definition and self expression must be reshaped, deconstructed or destroyed. Number three, the world will inevitably improve as the scope of individual freedom grows. Technology and particular, the internet will motor this progression toward utopia. And this is the one that I'm like, we don't think so positively anymore. I don't think that we're thinking that technology is going to usher in utopia. This was eight years ago.

Number four, but we do still have this idea that that the world will inevitably improve as the scope of individual freedom improves. That is something that our world still believes. Number four, the primary social ethic is tolerance of everyone else's self defined quest for individual freedom and self expression. Any deviation from this ethic of tolerance is dangerous and must not be tolerated. Therefore, social issue, social justice is less about economic and class inequality and more about issues of equality relating to individual identity, self expression and personal autonomy.

Number five, humans are inherently good. Number six, large scale structures and institutions are suspicious at best and evil at worst. And number seven forms of external authority are rejected and personal authenticity is loaded.

And so as Christians, when we read through these things, we should feel like we are swimming upstream against the current of the current culture. We do feel a slight resistance to these things. And if you don't feel any resistance upon your faith from the way that the the world view of the modern secular person is, it's probably because you're either one secluded. So you're not talking to anyone who doesn't share your worldview or two, you are assimilated. You've been converted by the culture and you now hold the culture's views to be your own views instead of allowing your world view to be shaped by the teachings of Christ.

John Mark Ker puts it this way. He says a growing number of our secular friends and neighbors think of us, not just as weird because we skew premarital sex, give away a percentage of our income and refuse to be held captive by a political party or ideology. But they actually view us as dangerous as a threat to secularism's alternative vision of human flourishing. Now. No longer can we hold the moral high ground because it's been flipped on us. And from the secular perspective, we are now the bad guys in many people's eyes, the biblical world.

The biblical word that best describes what we're currently experiencing as Westerners in the 21st century is the word exile, exile. The theologian Walter Brugman defined exile like this he says that exile is the experience of knowing that one is alien and perhaps even in a hostile environment where the dominant values run counter to one's own. Another definition by Wendy and Wendy Everett and Peter Wagstaff, put it, puts it like this, the, the sense of exile or alienation may result for the individual who is marginalized, cast adrift by the inability or unwillingness to conform to the tyranny of majority opinion, the tyranny of majority opinion. Anybody else feel that I feel like a strong, a strong sense of what the majority opinion is and that I should conform to that or I will be further exiled.

Culture seems to be coming at us as a rushing river. Does it not coming at us quickly? How do we stay afloat? How do we as Christians survive the barrage of the cultural waves that are battering us at all times as we're maligned, misrepresented and pressured to conform? Where can we find the strength to stay faithful to God's kingdom? This is where Daniel helps us. Daniel is a book of the Bible that was written in in the time after the the people of God have been exiled. So this is after David, after Solomon way after Adam and Eve. Way after Noah. OK. And so this is a book about a group of people who have been exiled in a foreign nation. And there it follows four young men and their path to staying faithful while living in exile.

Daniel tells this story about these four men. They, they find themselves thrust into the foreign culture where their faith, their identity and loyalty to God are tested in every way. And so today's passage is about Babylonians attempt to convert the Israelites to assimilate them into the culture. So we're just gonna walk through the passage. That's how I like to do it. We're gonna open up the Bible. If you have your Bibles, you can turn it to Daniel. Daniel's kind of about two thirds through your Bible is where you'll find it in the English Bible. And it's right after Ezekiel. So if you find, if you find Jeremiah, if you find Ezekiel, just keep going a few more pages and you'll get to Daniel. And I'm just gonna read the, this whole first chapter and we'll, we'll pause and reflect as we go through.

In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim - we'll also have the words on the screen if that's helpful for you - in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. And if you're thinking right now, I've heard this story somewhere before. It may have involved dancing, singing vegetables. OK? Maybe. But there's a lot more to it than the singing vegetables. Tell you and the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand with some of the vessels of the House of God and he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his god and placed the vessels in the treasury of his god.

OK. So we, we read this and we think snooze fest, ok. This is kind of boring with what's happening right here at the beginning. It says in the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim. Now this is ancient language to tell you what year this occurred in. They didn't have the AD BC system that we have instead, what they would have to tell you is who was king and what year it was in their reign. And that's, that is orienting us to when all of this is happening in history. This is basically like saying not a long, long time ago in a, in a place far, far away. This is saying in 605 BC, it happened where one came, came and, and, and kidnapped an entire people and moved them to a different land.

This is a historical story, something that actually happened. It's not a fairy tale. This is something that we have archaeological evidence for that. We have language evidence for this being accurate to the time in 605 BC, the nation of Judah, which is the southern half of Israel. So if you're unfamiliar with ancient Israel in the Old Testament, basically, what happens is the nation of Israel is established. King Saul is the first king, King David is the second king. King Solomon is the third king. And after that, there's never a single king that reigns over all of the land of Israel. The, the nation splits into two. You have Israel, that's the north half and you have Judah, that's the southern half. And Judah remains more faithful to God than Israel, but they both go they both go in and out of faithfulness.

And so Israel is captured first, the upper kingdom, Judah is remains as part as unconquered for a little while. But then eventually they are also conquered. And so they are conquered by the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar and they are torched. I mean, Babylon takes over. They have got no shot at all. Babylon is this nation to the east in modern day Iraq. they're the strongest nation in the area at the time and, and the, and they represent a way of life that's completely contrary to the people of Israel. Completely contrary, if we think back, we've heard Babylon before, have we not? Where, what does that sound? Kind of like Babel. Genesis 11 is the same general area where the people and what does Babel represent? But they're building a tower to reach to the heavens and this was all about them being self sufficient. They're saying we want to live without God, we can reach the heavens without God.

And so Babel and Babylon represent everything contrary to what Israel represents. Israel says, we depend upon God Babylon says we can be self sufficient without him. So after conquering the land, the Babylonians know that the likelihood of rebellion is far greater if they leave the people of Israel in the land. Ok. So just think about it, a foreign nation takes over our land. If they leave us all here, maybe we're familiar with the land, we know our neighbors, maybe we can band together and revolt one day we can rebel, rebel. If they take us and move us to a land that we're unfamiliar with where no one speaks our language. We're going to have a hard time even buying food like it's just difficult to make it.

So this was an ancient way of control. And so they said we're not gonna leave them there. We want to control them. So we're going to move them out of their land and into our land. It was a common tactic in the ancient days that was used. And the Babylonians, they don't just move the people, but they move the items from the temple out of the temple into their own. And it's basically a way for them to say, look, our God beat your God, we're taking your stuff. All your God's stuff now belongs to our God. They have dominated Israel here and Israel is taken off into exile in a foreign land, hundreds of miles away from where they're used to. Not speaking the language, everything is different.

Verse three. Then the king commanded Ashpenaz, the chief, his chief eunuch to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility, youths without blemish of good appearance and skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding, learning and competent to stand in the king's palace and to teach them the literature and the language of the Chaldeans. Now, Nebuchadnezzar is brutal. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon. He's a strong man. He's brutal, but he's not stupid. He's a smart dude. And so what he knows is, hey, if I take them force only lasts so long, they will revolt against me. What I need is I need to convert some significant influential leaders of Israel and get them to advocate for me. So this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to go look in their nobility and find impressionable young attractive men and I'm going to indoctrinate them with the cultures of Babylon.

So that as they grow older and the people become restless, these guys might be my mouthpieces. They can code switch and they can communicate to people that they should remain faithful to Babylon. So what does he look for? He goes looking for some strapping young leaders. This is the ancient version. What we see him say is that he's looking, he's looking for some, some young men without blemish, good appearance, skillful and wisdom. This is an ancient version of, I'm looking for a man in finance, trust fund, 6-5, blue eyes. All right. So if you got a dating profile and you want to make that more biblical, you can just say I'm looking for a man like Daniel, youthful, without blemish, endowed with knowledge.

So he goes and finds those men and he finds these four men and we know them from the, the stories and you probably know them more from their Babylonian names than their, their Hebrew names. But let's listen to what he says. verse five, this is his plan to convert them to the Babylonian way of life. The king assigned them a daily portion of the food that the king ate and of the wine that he drank. They were to be educated for three years and at the end of that time, they were to stand before the king. Among those were Daniel, Hananaiah, Mishael, and Azariah of the tribe of Judah and the chief of the eunuchs gave them names: Daniel, he called Belteshazzar, Hananiah he called Shadrach, Mishael he called Meshach, and Azariah he called Abednego.

So in this little passage, we see how he is converting the Israelites to Babylon. And he has four basic tactics that we can outline. There might be other things, but I'm gonna summarize it in four. And the first thing he does is he isolates them. He takes them out of their home, out of their community. Of faith and he brings them into probably his own palace. Where else could they be educated, where else could they receive the king's food? But in the king's own palace. And so he isolates these young impressionable young men away from their community of faith.

Second, he indoctrinates them. He, he teaches them the language and literature of the Chaldeans. He educates them for three years, relearning history, literature and language from a different point of view. I just want you to imagine that you have to go, you, you're moved to Russia and you relearn world history is gonna be pretty different. They're gonna have a much different perspective on the way that the world has developed in the history of the world and all the wars that we've been in, it's gonna be two completely different. So he re educates them. He indoctrinates them with the Babylonian thought process.

Next, he provides for them provision. So he isolates them. He indoctrinates them, then he provides for them. They're given food from his own table. Now, what does that mean? It's gonna be some good food, right? Like the king is not, he's not eating table scraps. The king is eating well. And so these young men they're being provided for well, it's like he gives them a good salary, basically is what they say he's gonna provide for them. But also it's got this ulterior thing where he's like, remember, remember who feeds you, remember who provides your daily bread. It's Nebuchadnezzar. It's Nebuchadnezzar.

You, you remember that young young men? And last he re identifies them, he reifies them. Finally, they're given these new names, Daniel and they're these new names. It's really, it's really terrible in ancient days. Your name means a lot. It says something dear about who you are. It, it communicates something and so he gives them these new names and it's significant what he changes them to. Daniel goes from Daniel is a Hebrew word that means God is my judge and he renamed him Belteshazzar, which means oh lady wife of the God Bell. Protect the king. The significant thing with Daniel is that Daniel never refers to himself with that name. It's like he doesn't accept it. He continues to refer to himself as Daniel and it's, it's actually really funny. the author of Daniel who many people believe to be Daniel himself, which is one reason why Daniel is referred to as Daniel over and over and not Belteshazzar.

The author is like misspelling the Babylonian names all the time when you look at the original languages. Daniel is one of the only books of the Bible that's written partly in Hebrew and then a big chunk of it is in Aramaic, which is a a language that we don't see very often in other places of the Bible and then it goes back to Hebrew and when he's using the Aramaic. He's misspelling the Babylonian names often. It's almost like he's saying like these names. They don't matter as like they, many scholars are like, why is the author mispronouncing it? Maybe it's a scribe. That's messed up. No, it's like the author just as intentionally. I don't care about these names. It's, it's actually kind of funny, you know, ancient language is funny. So Hananiah goes from Yahweh is gracious and then he becomes Shadrach commander of Aku, the moon, the moon God. Mishael, his name means who is what God is, he becomes Meshach, which is who is like Aku. Azariah, he goes from Yahweh is a helper and he becomes Abednego, servant of the shining one. Never.

And so he gives them these Babylonian names. And this is a classic tactic of cults that you see even used to today where if, if someone joins a cult, if you join a, a religious movement and they ask you to change your name that should the light should be going off. Ok? Not a good sign, not a good sign. And, and Colts, they oftentimes are given a new name by their leader. In fact, I think it's a power move to give someone a nickname, which is why if anyone calls me Fletch, I am suspicious of them. What are you trying to do to me? What are you trying to convince me of is a power move? When we look at these methods of indoctrination and assimilation and conversion.

What we actually see is that our culture today uses the same methods. Boston uses the same methods that Babylon used isolation. Just think about the way that the evil one uses these things in our city to lead people away from God isolation. Many people moved to Boston to study or for a job. Many of you several of you grew up here. I will proudly say several of you grew up here. Many of you did not and you moved here for a job or for study. OK. Let's just quick show of hands. OK. Boston natives. Let me see you. Let's what's up. Let's go. All right. If you moved here for study or for, or for work. All right. So we're not quite 5050. OK. The transplants are still winning right now. One day we'll, we'll get up.

What you see happen over and over again is that people move to Boston and they had these strong communities of faith where they grew up, people that knew them and loved them and then they moved to Boston and they don't know anyone and they're isolated. In fact, I don't know if there's a more lonely city in the United States than Boston. There's people from all over the world here. The sun goes down at 4 p.m. for half the year. It's hard to make friends at times. Everyone's competing against one, everyone else. It can be a lonely place to live. And so we feel isolated, not only that, but people are busy, amen. People are busy, too busy for people and too busy for friends. The second thing that we see Boston doing that similar to, to Babylon is indoctrinating.

I've seen this hundreds of times. So someone moves here for school or they move here for a job and then all of a sudden they have a, a coming of age moment where they say, you know, when I was a kid and back when I was in my strong community of faith that held me to the truth. I used to believe those fairy tales that we see in the Bible. But now that I've grown up, I've realized that I don't believe the Bible anymore. I don't believe in God anymore. And then you ask them. So tell me the strongest argument that led you away from that belief against God. Tell me the strongest argument against God that you've got crickets. It's like they do. They believe the story that you grow up and move beyond God, but they don't actually look at the arguments, rarely do. They do. And if they do, it's usually a pretty weak argument that can be quickly and easily handled with a quick Google search like it's not very hard to, to help people work through these things.

Sometimes people have real doubts and if you are here, someone, if you are here today as someone with real doubts, we welcome you. We're so glad you're here. We want to be a source for you because there are answers to your questions and we want to be part of God's purposes in helping you with those things. But what we see over and over again is that people just get caught up in the current of what the culture believes. They start to assimilate into the commonly held beliefs of this area and just feels right to deconstruct. They don't know why it just feels right to deconstruct and they don't have their faith family to remind them of the truth.

And then third provision, we see that, that people in Boston, they oftentimes forget that the Lord provides their daily bread. Eventually people will bow their knee to their career. We get so busy, do we not so much going on? And we just end up prioritizing Jesus out of our lives. Church attendance starts to slide in the hustle culture of this city is something that's really hard to say no to. And if you're new to Boston, you need to stand warned, you need to know that there's a magnetic pool for these things here and that you have to be on guard against it.

If you're going to make it as a whole person following after Christ here and it ends with re identification much as it did with, with Babylon are we might not have a shift in our names. But we have a shift in the way that we identify ourselves. So no longer am I Christian first, but I'm doctor first or engineer, first or scientist first. And I start with the second. You start allowing your career to define who you are. Babylon is winning the battle for your heart.

Friends. I I need you to see this though. I know I've depicted a culture as this raging river and many of us feel that. But what I really want you to see is that culture is not a raging river. It is a lazy river. It moves so slowly that you don't even see it. These changes are gradual. That's by design. It takes years. It took them three years to be indoctrinated in the ways of the Chaldeans. It takes years for us to slowly come around. It's like when you're at the beach and you're out playing in the water now you can catch me in the water in New England. It is way too cold. Ok? We gotta fly south somewhere and find a warmer beach where I can play in the water. But there's some of you that like playing in the water here in New England, you're crazy, but that's ok. But when you're out in the water and you're playing the first it happens all the time, you look up and it's like my towel is a mile away. How did I end up over here? I didn't even know I was moving. I've just been standing here the whole time.

That's the current of culture. And how do you fight against the lazy river when you don't go swinging and slashing? And you just have to lean against it. That's all there is to it. You just have to stand firm. It's so easy to let go and to just float along and what the world says is true and what the world says we should do, but we just stand firm. My brother Michael preached a sermon two weeks ago on the armor of God. And what does it say? Ephesians chapter six, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. All we have to do when we see the current of culture is just stand firm and lean forward, lean into it against it.

And how does Daniel do this? How, how do we stand firm? How can Christians remain faithful? Let's look at like how Daniel did it verse eight, but Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king's food or with the wine that he drank. Therefore, he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself. So what does he do? Daniel says, I'm resolving in myself not to compromise. He resolved not to defile himself with the king's food.

Now, why is it that, that's where he draws the line he's like, you can call me Belshazzar. That's fine. But I'm not eating your food. Why is it that he drew the line? We're not 100% sure. No, it doesn't really say exactly why that was the line. Some people think that it's because the food of Babylonia of Babylon is not kosher. And so Daniel is like, I will not defile myself with un un kosher, not kosher food. And, but if that's true, then any food prepared by the Babylonians would not be kosher. And so he asked for vegetables after this and maybe it's like a level of, you know, maybe he's eating pork and then he's like, OK, maybe I can be somewhat, not kosher, but I can't eat pork. And so I'm just gonna eat vegetables, something like that. That could be true, but it could also be true. And I think it's more likely that he would not eat the king's meat because it was a compromise to his allegiance to eat from the king's table is to commit oneself to serve the king. It's acknowledging that my food comes from Nebuchadnezzar. And so he refuses to commit himself wholeheartedly to the king and he has so he can stay loyal to Yahweh, his God.

And so let's look at verse nine and what happens after he commits himself to, to not eat the food. And verse nine, and God gave Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the chief of the eunuchs and the chief of the eunuchs said to Daniel, I fear my Lord the king. He who assigned your food and your drink for? Why should he see that you are in a worse condition than the youths who are of your age? So you would endanger my head with the king. And then Daniel said to the steward whom the chief of the eunuchs had assigned over to Daniel, Hananiah, Meshael, and Azariah, "Test your servants for 10 days. Let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then let our appearance and the appearance of the youths who eat the king's food be observed by you and deal with your servants according to what you see." So he listened to them in this matter and tested them for 10 days.

I don't know how many of you work in the pharmaceutical or biotech industry, but this is a proper clinical study. OK. He's, he's got his experiment group himself, give me veggies. He's got the control group, which is the other youths who are eating the meat and then he's got a time, he's got a hypothesis. Let's test it. Let's test and see if this is right. He's using the scientific method right here. And so what basically he says is give us only vegetables and water, they can eat meat and wine. And then let's see what happens after 10 days. Who's healthier.

Verse 15 at the end of 10 days. It was seen that they were in better appearance and fatter and flesh than all the youths who ate the king's food. So the steward took away their food and the wine that they were to drink and gave them only vegetables. It worked, they only ate veggies, they only drank water and they ended up healthier than everyone else. And all the vegan said, I've seen some silly and I'm gonna just go ahead and say it's silly. Biblically sponsored weight loss plans called the Daniel Diet. Has anybody ever seen these? Now, if you want to just eat veggies and drink water? Awesome. That's great. It's not prescriptive. You don't have to. Ok. But I'm sure you might lose a few pounds if that's what you do. Ok? You eliminate wine, you eliminate a lot of protein. Yeah, you're gonna lose a few pounds. But in no way that's like the worst b for you to say this is the way that God wants us to eat. You can't make that stuff. Ok. But it is, something that people do often. This is not prescriptive. It's merely descriptive.

Actually, when we read about the diet, it's, it's actually quite the opposite. Ok. Eating veggies and only drinking water is supposed to make them look weaker. It's not the quality of the diet that gives them the strength. It's the quality of God. It's set up to where they're supposed to fail. But yet God is faithful and he blesses them, despite the fact that they're eating worse, that's the whole point. And so really the Daniel diet is kind of opposite of that. It might be nice for a fast. It's something that you can do be my guest. But that's not the point. The point is to prove that God is superior. The God of Israel is the real God and that he took care of Daniel.

Verse 17, as for these four youths, God gave them learning and skill in all literature and wisdom. And Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams. At the end of the time when the king had commanded that they should be brought in, the chief of the eunuchs brought them in before Nebuchadnezzar and the king spoke with them and among all of them, none was found like Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, therefore, they stood before the king and in every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king inquired of them, he found them 10 times better than all the magicians and enchanters that were in his all in his kingdom. And Daniel was there until the first year of King Cyrus.

And so Daniel resolved himself to stand against the culture and God gave him success. So how did he stand firm in this culture where he was a minority, a religious minority that many of us feel? The primary thing is that God was with him. That's the primary thing OK, we can't look after that. We can't, we can't look past that. The second thing is that he resolved within himself to serve only God. He resolved within himself to serve only God. Something that we learned later in Daniel. We're gonna get to this in a few weeks. This series is going to be about eight weeks. We're gonna do four and then we're gonna break for four for advent and then we'll pick it back up after the new year.

But in a few weeks, we're gonna see that Daniel practiced regular spiritual habits. We might call them spiritual practices, spiritual disciplines. He practiced these and it is one of the ways that he leaned against the current of the Lazy River of culture, allowing himself to stand firm and he still worked with the king. He was in the king's government. He was he worked in the government of Babylon. Yet he prioritized his identity as a person who follows God.

And so I want you to consider, as we're considering, as we're kind of rounding the corner here, as we're considering what it looks like to compromise for our culture and all the different ways that the world wants to assimilate us to their way of thinking and its way of being. I want you to think, where have you been compromised by the culture? Where have you been sliding into assimilation? Where have you been lacking? Just that little lean of resistance? Maybe you're way over committed to your identity and your career, the cultural, the culture of the city will tempt you to prioritize networking, reputation, and advancement over family, church and spiritual practices. I want you to think about these.

I'm gonna list off a few more. I you can just take some time later this week. Write down two or three different ways that you have not been leaning against the current of the lazy river of culture. Maybe you're constantly hustling, you simply don't have time for community or personal spiritual development. Maybe you've de prioritized Sabbath rest in your life. Maybe your political identity has overshadowed your identity in Christ. If you give God a moment, if you just take a moment and you say to God, show me where I've compromised and you give him two minutes of silence, I almost will guarantee you that you'll, you'll, you'll hear from Him that you'll think of where you've compromised. It's, it will come. The Holy Spirit will help you in that.

If you're not actively leaning against the current of culture, you will end up far away from where you belong. How many of us have had friends who have done this? And you look, and you're like, how did they end up there? It was a slow and gradual without the lean.

So to conclude, I want you to think about this, let's consider, where do we, where else do we see these tactics that work in scripture, nowhere else but Matthew chapter four in Matthew chapter four, we see our Lord Jesus Christ being led out into the wilderness into a kind of exile isolated from his community and vulnerable. And Satan shows up and launches into a series of tactics that look familiar to what we see in Babylon attempting to convert and indoctrinate Jesus with twisted versions of his own teachings, quoting and twisting the scripture manipulating Jesus saying things like if you are really the Son of God, you could command these stones to become bread. He's re identifying Jesus. He's making Jesus, he's trying to make Jesus doubt his identity as the son of God, attempting to cause him to question who he really is. And Satan promises Jesus prosperity. He leads him up to a tall place and he says, I'll give you everything you can see if you will just follow me instead of God.

But Jesus stands firm. He doesn't waver. He confronts the lies with truth. And here's the good news that Jesus did all of this, not just as an example, but as our savior because the reality is that everyone in this room has compromised, we've all drifted down the lazy river, have we not? We've all given in to the lies that we're surrounded with and we felt that subtle drift, but Jesus doesn't leave us there, condemned to live, live a life of compromise.

He loves us in our weakness and in our failure to stand firm. Jesus loves you in your weakness and in your failures in the places where you have compromised He is pursuing after you. He was uncompromising on our behalf and therefore we can return to God time and time again, knowing that Jesus was our perfect sacrifice, knowing that we have right relationship with God because of Jesus's faithfulness that He lived, the life that we should have lived and that He died, the death that we deserve to die all. So we could be brought back into fellowship with God. Made new, given a fresh start over and over again, fresh start every day.

And so let's take some time as we contemplate these things, these ways that we're subtly giving in to the culture. And let's confess them to the Lord and draw near to his grace again this morning. I know some of you wanna go home and think about that. But this morning, if you would like someone to pray with you, we'll have some prayer leaders in the, in the back and then after the service, they'll be up front to pray with you. And they would love to, to just pray with you, lay a hand on you, speak a word of truth to you, hear you. They're here to help, they would love to do that with you. So if you would, let's stand and welcome the band back up as we prepare our hearts to respond to God.

Father, as we prepare ourselves to receive this meal, we ask that you would move in our hearts and in our lives that you would give us insight into the ways that we might be yielding to the current of culture and help us to be people of light, people of faith, people of strength, help us to stand firm. Father, you have gifted us with, with who Jesus is and help us to keep our eyes on him and not on the current that that lays below, but keep our eyes on Him striving for what you have already done for us. And God, we thank you for this meal, help us to be reminded that your work is complete and that we're accepted because of what you have done. And we ask these things in Christ's name, Amen.

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Ministry Associate Calvin Chu preaches from 1 Corinthians 3:4-15. Discussion points: We as seed planters are nothing, for it is God who makes the seeds grow; we’ve all been influenced and grown by faithful, forgotten nobodies, what we build on the foundation of Christ matters and will be tested.

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Scripture reader: [1 Corinthians 3:4-15] For when one says, I follow Paul and another, I follow Apollos, are you not being merely human? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither He who plants, nor He who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one and each will receive His wages according to his labor. For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building. According to the grace of God given to me like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation and someone else is building upon it.

Let each one take care how he builds upon it for no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now, if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay straw, each one's work will become manifest for the day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: Good morning church. It's good seeing you all. My name is Calvin and one of the things some of the other like, I know we have like a good cycle of people who kind of come in and they're checking out churches or they're like new. It's one of the cool things about being in the Greater Boston area, somewhere below Cambridge, Medford and all the the area here is that there's a good amount of people kind of float in and out. So every single time I come here, I'm like, oh, should I explain some of my background?

I probably should because I thought things won't make that much sense. So, for me, like I I was, I worked previously at a church with like a very wide range of people. So one of the thing that's really, really cool about it is because I was I had responsibilities over like middle school, high school, but then in college, but then I'd also work with like, you know, adults like recent grads and then obviously like people at my peer level. And one thing that's really, really interesting about being able to kind of be a little bit of a fly in the wall, like, hearing conversations with such a wide range of ages is that you get to hear what other people think about other generations, like, what other ages.

And so, for instance, like, a lot of times adults, they'll be, like talking about, you know, a student and they go, oh, my gosh. Did you hear this person? They're talking about their future. It was all laid out. Their 10 year plan was perfectly, like, you know, everything was set into place and they're like, do you even know the difference between A W-2 and A W-4 and an I nine? Do you even know your, your social security number yet? Like, there's this whole, like, oh my gosh, you're so clueless. And on the other side, the young people will look at the older people and they go, oh my gosh, like for instance, me at this current moment, I'm giving negative aura.

So, and they go, wait, you don't, you, they both look at each other and they go, you have no idea how the world works. And it's so funny because both are kind of right, like older people are looking at younger people, they're kind of right. And younger people are looking at older people and they're kind of right. And I think it's so funny because, there is, there are definitely differences of how we kind of look at the world and what we understand about it. But one thing that's interesting and kind of traversing amongst all these populations is there is there are a few things that are true about all of us.

But the one thing that's relevant to our passage this morning is a good chunk of people maybe close to all, maybe most of them, we all have this pressure to get things right. Get things perfect even. And that feeling can very often prevent us from like having a sense of confidence in the things that we're doing. It can help uh can prevent us from even doing things at all or trying things. I mean, it's like we have this decision paralysis because we don't wanna make the wrong decision or we, we know what we wanna do, but we don't wanna start it because if I start it, that means I'm doing it. And if I'm doing it, what happens if I don't actually do it?

And I love that this is the passage that I, I chose because I think in this passage for people who are in that space, whether you're younger or whether you're older is, I think there's two things in this passage. There's an incredible encouragement. And there's an incredible challenge. And so just for the context of this passage, and then I'll pray for us. the context is that there's basically a division between certain pockets of the church. And so there are some that said, they followed a Paulus who was a leader in the church. And then there were some that followed Paul, who, who's the writer of this, this letter? And Paul responds to this to break up this division and put some perspective about what's the most important thing for those who follow Christ, for the church to really be emphasizing on like, what, what, what, what should we really think about? What should we take into consideration when we kind of walk day to day in our Christ following lives?

And, and the thing that he talks about here and we'll see it as we dig into deeper is that we are all part of a legacy. And I hope we'll see that today. But let me, let me pray for us and then we'll dive into the passage a little bit more.

Father God, I thank you for the opportunity to come and to worship you this morning again. We, we lift up those who are at the retreat. Lord, we pray that they're being able to truly rest and be restored as they're stepping away from their day to day lives in their day to day spaces. And God, we just pray for us here because whether we weren't able to, we didn't know about it or we're happy that we don't have to go to New Hampshire or in the woods, God, wherever we are, God, we just thank you that we get to be here and hear your word this morning. And yeah, we, we pray that your will be done in our lives as a, as a result of hearing your word. And we pray all of us in Jesus's name, Amen.

So, as I said earlier, there is this great encouragement and a great challenge. And so let's start with the encouragement here. We actually see in verses 4 to 9, there's this analogy of like planters or like farmers. and, and Paul brings his attention to the readers who are at the center of the conflict and he actually talks about himself and the Paul is like, he, he basically does this thing. It's like, oh, I know that you guys have been talking about me and this other guy and he actually dresses, addresses it directly and for some of us that's like, not a comfortable thing. Like some of us try to be like a little bit more round about. So I really love how Paul is like, yeah, I heard you was talking about me and this other guy and I'm gonna tell you about it. Exactly.

And so it's not comfortable for me and, and to have been in this space because a lot of people that I've grown up with in my com community, like we didn't necessarily address things directly like this. a lot of times I, I, I'm Chinese and, and so when I grew up, I was one of two Chinese families in the town that I grew up in. And you can imagine that's like a fun thing because you kind of know the other. and and so, like, we intersected a little bit but we were, we were kind of different but like, you know, the parents would get together at like, you know, parent teacher things or like bake sale type of stuff. and, like, genuinely, like, on paper, their kids were definitely better than, like, me and my sister and like, it was one of the, like, like, you know, the, the, and it's so funny.

I'm the son, I have a sister, and, and they also had a boy and a girl and, the son who, of course I was kind of focused a little bit more on because, you know, I, I gotta try to keep up with him. Not really, he was like, he was like, played violin and he was, like, really, really good at it and he, like, played tennis and was, like, really, really good at it and like, I just, I like, played Super Nintendo a lot and it's like, that was kind of my thing. And then what's funny is that, like, like was like, I remember them talking about, like, the kids and they, they would just do it in this way. That's like, it's not like they compete about which kid was better. Like the parents, the parents, they would always compete about which kid was worse.

I don't know if you have like families that, that do this. My family definitely they'll be like, oh, they'll call him Frank or whatever, but Frank is so smart. Not like Calvin, he's so lazy and they, no, no, no, no, no, no. Frank is much worse than you think he is. You know, he is not, he's, he's just as lazy. He's the fact that he's more lazy and like, they would do this thing, they would kind of go back and forth almost like and its like, again, we, we're all with an earshot and it's like, like, what exactly are you trying to say? I don't think my parents like, liked playing this game that much but like the saving face and preventing people from like feeling bad thing of it all or like, or seem like they didn't recognize that they were much more accomplished in their very, very young life.

I think that they, we didn't hang out with them much, but this is an experience that like many like at least from you know, Chinese American American born Chinese kid or maybe children of immigrants or maybe not even maybe you are like your multiple generations here in this country and you also feel this and that is just not what is happening here like to be so direct. And so like I'm gonna address it specifically and I'm not gonna talk around it. I think it's really, really powerful. But is it Paul tells the readers that both are just servants with their particular role to play in God's Kingdom.

And I, I don't wanna read verses 4 to 7 here, but I want to point us to particularly to verse seven when I read it. So, but verse four starts like this for when one says, I follow Paul and another, I follow a Paulus. Are you not being merely human? What then is a pus? What is Paul servants through whom you believed as the lo Lord assigned to each I planted Apollos watered but God gave the growth. So neither He who plants nor he who waters is anything but only God who gives the growth. So here's the encouragement. You are nothing. You are nothing and you go away.

Calvin, that sounds kind of like I, if I, if we were in school, I would raise my hand and tell the the teacher on you for being so discouraging. How dare you say I'm nothing, Calvin. That's rude. That's me. But it, it truly isn't, it's an encouragement because then the thought process is you and I are not responsible for the results, right? You and I do not need to work harder to make the thing happen. We just have to be responsible for our part.

You are nothing is an encouragement because it says the task that God puts before us in our lives, that's all we're responsible for whatever God puts into your sphere, into your workplace, into your school, into your neighborhood, into your own personal development. That's all you're responsible for and you, and this is why it's so hard for us to move forward because we could go, I don't know what's gonna happen from my effort. Therefore, I don't move forward. Therefore, I don't do the thing. God, it's very clear. I know you want me to go in there, but I'm not gonna do it because it's too scary because what happens after that? What's the result of that action? And we get so petrified and stunned and paralyzed, but we just have to put the seeds in the ground. What else standing there and waiting? OK. See you're in the ground now. Grow, no, grow like really grow now!

Like we think it has time or we water and we're staring and we're looking and we're waiting and we're worrying. God is saying just do that plant seeds, you can walk away, water the seeds, you can walk away. Why? Because we're not in there, we're not shrinking to the micro level and breaking the seed apart and making sure that it does the thing that's God doing that. God designed the seeds to be that way in the same way that he designed our lives to do the same thing. So the thing that is before you, that God wants you to do the task is set in your life, do that part and trust that he will bring the growth.

I had some friends who they the campus ministry around the, the the country, but they had a season that they came back. And I remember one of the things that was just stuck with me for years is their definition of success. They said success is stepping out in faith, doing what Jesus called them to and leaving the results to God. That's the definition of success. Definition of success is that I did the thing and I accomplished the goal and here are my metrics like a resume bullet point. No, this is you step out in faith being obedient to God and you leave God to do the growth. And I love that because I think that if we, if we were able to embody that if we were to live that, understand that we are nothing, in terms of the responsibility for making the thing happen, for the growth to happen, then we would be so much freer the anxiety, the pressure that we feel in our day to day life, we would, we would feel so much lighter.

If we said, OK, God, I can only see this thing. So I will be faithful to that and God, whatever you do with it. I trust you. II, I hope that you feel that encouragement because I, I look around young, too old and we feel this pressure to get things perfect to be exactly the thing that we planned out. Exactly the thing that we think the world wants us to be and we're killing ourselves genuinely. We're stressing into these incredibly tightly wound balls and we're trying to get through life and of course, when something outside of our plan comes into it, we're like, wait, wait, if we could just go, ok, God, some of us who are like more control, you know, oriented. OK? God, this is the thing, OK? I'm gonna do that. OK? God, I'm doing this and then I'm gonna trust you for some of us who are on that. We, we go, OK? Got, what do you want me to do? Ok, I'll do it and then, but then I have to look for the next thing, you know, that's a whole other thought process.

And so, you know, when I stepped away, I felt this very I, I was at a, a previous church working in full time ministry and when I stepped away, like I felt this like very, very close to like my heart because when you leave anything for a long period of time, you, you have to kind of leave the comforts and the, the work that you have and you know, especially in, in ministry but any work, the work is never fully, fully done. Like there, you know, I worked in student ministry so there were six graders who I had, like, one year with. And I go, ok, well, I don't, I don't know what's gonna happen to them. I shared the gospel with them. I encouraged them. I met with them from time to time and I, I don't know what's going to happen with them, you know.

So when I left, I had to like process a lot of it because there was parts where I would sort of mourn that or like question that I'm like, oh, like, is that, is that wrong? That I didn't finish the task? And the thing that encouraged me was thinking about my past, right? Because in a lot of ways, there were people in my life who walked alongside me that prayed for me because as a kid, I definitely needed prayer. They, they came alongside me and they, they started things but they also left and you know, they, they, you know, I, I'm talking about Tommy, Danny, Gary, Josh, Ruth, Regan, Phil, Jack. And I just said these first names to a room of people who have no idea who they are. Like, like there's no sense of like, wait, those are, yeah, man. You know, Jack was so influential. You're right. You have no idea what Jack I'm talking about.

But that's the point. The church is built every single one of us who follow the Lord. We are all part of the legacy of nobodies, unrecognizable nobodies who had an influence in our life. And all they did was be faithful to the task that they had. Whether there was to pray for you, whether it was to be your, you know, V BS counselor, whether it was be your college fellowship leader, whatever it was like, we don't know any of them, but you do. And most importantly, the Lord does. And as you stand here with whatever growth you have experienced that that person, those people had a part of that but not because they brought the growth.

They just happened to be used by God to plant the seed, to water the seed, to put a little bit of miracle grow in there. And my friends, that's the encouragement for you. We don't feel like we have to be that person. We can just do the thing that we have set before us. Be faithful to that and let God do the growth. They were just faithful, forgotten nobodies and I encourage my hope for you is you feel like man, it would be great to be a faithful, forgotten nobody because that's who God uses in the same way you guys experienced that.

I've only been here for about a year and sometimes someone will say a name and they're like, oh, they are so great. They were so kind. They were so good. And I'm like, oh yeah. And then they'll do like the, oh they did, they, they give me like the, the 12th like description of them and I go, oh, that's cool. That's what praise God. Like, I'm, I'm glad that they had that impact on you. And you know, I know that if, if you guys are part of like our regular church life and you look at the announcement, one of our elders and their family, Jeremy, they're gonna be leaving soon and like we're all here. So we all feel that like very, very closely like, oh man, the colors are so great. Jeremy's so faithful as a, as you know, as a an elder here, it's so good. They're so, they're so amazing for this church and they are.

And while their impact will be felt for the, the, the entire history of this church, they too, at one point will have to be, oh yeah. Yeah. I was talking to Jeremy the other day and then someone new in one year, two years, three years, they go. Who's Jeremy? Oh, well, he was an elder here and he was here and, and he too will be forgotten.

But do you guys not see that? That's not a waste that he's not remembered. It's because he helped build the foundation he's faithful for the thing that God set before him and then he's forgotten to those who come after. But those he had impact on us. We know his impact. We knew what He did in God, us because God is the one that takes their efforts and grows them. So we don't have to worry about getting credit because it's not about us.

Verse 8-9 say this. He who plants and he who waters are one and each will receive his wages according to his labor for. We are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building. And so again, they're talking about division. They're talking about who is better or whatever. But I think the thing that we can really draw from this is that what matters is what we're doing together as a team, as God's people to make His name great in the spaces that we go through and work at school in our neighborhoods and beyond. That's encouragement. We're 10 to 15 here and for the, for the challenge. And then we have another analogy here. I love that Paul. He goes from a field analogy to a building one and he tells us how we are to do the work before us. Let's read verses 10 to 15 here.

According to the grace of God given to me like a skilled master builder. I laid a foundation and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it for no one can lay a foundation other than what is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now, if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay straws. Each one's work will become manifest, for the day will disclose it because it will be revealed by fire and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

Paul tells us raises that he laid down a foundation and someone else is building upon it. And he says, let each one take care of how he builds upon it and this is so so crucial. He tells us that the foundation of all work, all work that lasts is one that is built on the foundation of the work of Christ. And so that's like step one. We have to understand that the, the foundation of the things that you and I do the task that God set before us. The first test is, do we understand that Christ is the foundation of it? And so that could talk for like religious work, ministry work all that and that, that sort of thing, very obvious parts of it. I'm I'm I'm serving at outside greeting people. I am vacuuming after you know, service is done. That's very clear like, well, this, I'm doing it for the Lord and hopefully, but it doesn't say just ministry work.

It doesn't say if you are serving in the church, you have to do it as Christ as your foundation and in other areas have some other type of foundation. Because I think very often we feel like there's a sacred and secular divide that says, well, when on Sundays and the day that I have CG, that's when I work for the Lord. But like Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, that work is for fill in the blank of your boss or fill in the blank for my paycheck. But now even that I think is really important for us to understand that that is also a spiritual work, a spiritual act. If you're, if you're running Excel sheets, you can do that with Jesus as your foundation. And, and I think that's, that's so so important because when it says, if anyone builds his foundation with and he says a split here, gold, silver, precious stones, things that would survive the fire and would hay and straw, which would not survive the fire.

I think that there's an element that the way, the way that we actually do this work, the way that we approach life actually matters, how we build upon that foundation makes a difference. And so basically, this, this symbolic fire is that we will be tested, what we built with, what we built our life with what we did and how we did, it will be tested. And so what this is saying is are we building well on top of the foundation that was laid before you Jesus as the base, the bedrock of it all.

But those who came before you, those who invested in you, those who prayed for you, if it's your parents who, who brought you to the Lord, the investment that they had, the aunties and uncles who invested in that brought you to church. You maybe your parents didn't go to church. Are you building upon what they had? Their Sunday school teachers, your youth fellowship leaders, your college fellowship staff, are you building upon what they had on that base foundation of Jesus? And then on top of that, and when the moment comes this moment right now that you are alive and you're hearing this word, you have to recognize that you are part of that line and you continue to be a part of that line.

God does not design it so that we are the end result that the, the work stops with us. And so the question is, how are you and I continuing to build that work, obviously, they didn't understand how plants work on like the microscopic level, but there's a lot happening. I'm not a biologist or scientist by any means, but even I know that and so from all the tasks that need to happen from a seed to a full blown tree, stuff needs to happen in the same way that from somebody who hears the gospel for the first time at a summer, a sleep away camp and says, yes, II, I recognize that I'm a sinner in need of a savior from that person. Then to a, to the, the moment that they're about to pass and they say God has been good to me. I praise him even though this is my life now and this world is ending, that whole process requires investment. Why is people caring for you and caring for them?

And so my friends, how are you building? What are you building your life with the, the things that you're focused on the things that are important to you? The the first thing you go to when you open up your phone, the first thing you open up your wallet to what are those things? And it doesn't have to be all, all Jesus, all Jesus is all Jesus. But what's your thought process? What's your approach? Because what it tells us is that through our actions and through the decisions that we make, we are building a life and this tells us that we are, we should be building a life on the right foundation with the right materials because it's really hard to build a life that lasts on a foundation that should be Jesus.

If it's not, if we know the foundation is over here, this poured concrete, perfect and it's built and it's strong, it's been tested and we take it and we take all of our life and we go to the sandiest, windiest, rockiest, like pebbly beach and we start building it there because I think that we can do that. I think it's really easy to do that because there are a lot of things that tell us that that's the thing that's gonna make us complete.

And then what this passage is telling us is no, that's not. That won't actually make you complete. You build a life on any other foundation. It will, it will not survive that test. You have to build it on the foundation of Christ. And so I think some things to think about is, is what I'm doing, encouraging and enabling people to worship the true and living God in holiness and in truth. If not, am I perhaps being untrue to the foundation that has been laid? Am I showing God's love and truth in my life or am I throwing hay on the ground and hoping that it will withstand the fire that will come when Jesus returns and tests every single person's contributions or lack thereof to the kingdom of God? I hope it's the former guys. I hope it's the former not so that we act out of fear because God does not want that for us because that is the way to build a life that lasts a life that truly matters.

It's a light analogy here to kind of shift the tone just the hair. I'm a patriots fan. I'm sorry, but I'm like, especially sorry now because we're like, really, really bad. And then thinking about legacy, I thought about that a lot because for years, you know, I, I, I'm of an age where I remember the first Super Bowl win against the greatest show on turf and like, I don't know what is this feeling of, like, seeing my football team do well? Like, it's like it was exciting and I got to see all of that and all through and all the, you know, the controversies and whatever. I'm not gonna talk about that. and then, like, seeing the end happen of, like, the legacy, the dynasty and it's just like, well, maybe it'll be ok, but Cam Newton is, like, pretty good at one point. Like, he, he could carry the torch after Tom Brady. No.

And then we have, like, other, other, I'm not gonna go into the whole sports thing or whatever, but we have other players and all this and then now the coach, so Tom Brady left and then Bill Belichick left recently too. And it's just like, ah, and then I think that the debate of who is better between Bill and Tom, like, that's definitely still there and like, who had the greatest influence on the Patriots during the years that they were winning? And that's fine. But if you look at the team right now, what was it built on? What was the foundation? And if that foundation, whether it's Bill or whether it's Tom is gone, then you're really not building a great football team, you're really not building a great legacy.

No one's gonna be like, hey, guys, remember 2024 Patriots? Wow, what a memorable, not memorable for the good way, maybe. And so I guess I say that so for you to recognize that this is a whole life thing. There is no, we've made it just in the same way that the 49ers in the eighties and the Cowboys in the nineties. If you're not into sports, you're like, oh my gosh, this classic, like new England preacher, talk about sports thing in the, in the eighties, the San Francisco 49ers were good in the nineties. The Dallas Cowboys were good and then the two thousands, the Patriots were, that's all you need to know. Yeah, I enjoyed that. Thank you. Thank you. I didn't want to flex too much, Fletcher.

All those things ended because they were unsustainable legacies. They were unsustainable dynasties because they were built on flawed or sorry. Limited resources, limited foundations, the arm of a certain quarterback, the coaching style of another person, the general manager that brought these teams together. But you and I, my friends, if you follow Jesus, we have an everlasting all powerful, all good foundation in Jesus Christ. And that's why you and I can expect that the legacy that we are a part of the dynasty that we are a part of will not cease. There is no need to rebuild the legacy of Christ because he has built it and he said it is finished and he has already won. The growth is not up to you.

And I, we just need to participate, grab our helmet, grab our pads and show up to practice when he tells us to show up to practice, show up the game day when he tells us to show up the game day. And with the trust that at the end of the season, that trophy will be ours, not because we want it because he did. And I hope you guys feel that. I hope you guys see that. And I think that's what Paul is calling us to do. If any, if the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

I hope that you will see that and be on the, the winning team. Our walks with Christ can go up and down. There'll be hard seasons, there'll be joyful seasons. But the thing that helps us go, the distance is building a life with the the right materials with the right motivation building on the right foundation. Let's pray.

Father God, I know that there are seasons where I'm just piling hay on dirt. Thank God, you have been merciful because you have moved me apart from the things that have distracted me. And God, if there are folks here who have been not been building on the legacy and the foundation that you have set before us, God, I pray that you would redirect us. I pray you would give us the wake up call to know that you want us to be a part of the foundation, the building that survives. And God would you help us to not feel the pressure that thinks that we're responsible for the results, but help us to just be responsible for the thing that you have us to be a part of which is the everyday faithful step by step following of Christ. And it's in his name that we pray, Amen.

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Deacon Michael Villalobos preaches from Ephesians 6:10-18. Discussion points: We are tempted to trust in our own strength to fight spiritual battles, prayer is how we get marching orders from God, we can put away the armor of man and trust in the armor of Christ.

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Scripture reader: [Ephesians 6:10-18] Finally be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand firm.

Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness and the shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace in all circumstances, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the spirit with all prayer and supplication.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: Good morning church. It's good to see you all this morning. As Mark said, my name is Michael. I'm very loud but that's ok. And I am a deacon and community group leader here and I, I'm very excited to be bringing the word of the Lord to you this morning. Yeah. I am, I'm blessed to be married to my wife, Alexa of over 10 years now. And the Lord has recently blessed us with a, a second child as well. So my, my cup is full and I am, I am overjoyed at what the Lord has given us and out of that joy.

I am also humbled to be sharing the burden of preaching this morning and bringing the word of the Lord to you. We just wrapped up a series in our church called Life Reimagined, which is about looking at our lives and the literature of the, the Bible and understanding what our lives would look like the way that God intends us to live them.

Today's passage is not the start of a new series, at least not that I know of. I, I think we're doing Daniel next. But it is a personal passage for me. something that the Lord laid on my heart some time ago and something that I've been chewing on for a while. and that I am excited to bring to you this morning. As we move into our, our time of unpacking this passage and what Paul has to say to us about the armor of God. I ask that you would pray with me. Father in heaven, we pray that you would open the eyes of our hearts that in hearing your word, we might see your truth to understand the identity of what we wrestle against and know our identity in you. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

So Paul opens this, this final exhortation to the church with finally be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his mighty power. But what does this mean? What does it mean to be strong in something? Is this just the good old buck up or is it something else? I'd like to say that it is. Let me ask you something. What are you good at? You know, if I asked you to beat me in a concert and I said, I'll give you a million dollars if you can beat me at something, what would you pick if lebron James were here? He would obviously choose basketball. If Magnus Carlsen chess fans. Yeah. Yeah. Chess, right? If Fletcher Lang, he would choose Radiohead trivia because he loves radiohead. and he would definitely beat me at that because I don't know anything. I don't even know what the lead singer's name is.

So these are things that you are strong in internally, right? This is internally drive, strength things that you know, that you're good at and confident in and in your ability to execute on something based on your own experience. But what is it to be strong in another? Right? What is it to be strong in the Lord? You know, as a kid on the playground, you might have met a bully's advances with my daddy is bigger than you and thereby deriving strength from your father in Boston. in this area, we often derive strength from institutions. Well, she went to Harvard. So she's clearly a great candidate or Tony Stark here, went to MIT and studied there. So he's obviously a good hero for us. For some of you here. This may be a point of, you know, personal self, pep talk, you know, like come on, I can figure out how to miter the angles on this right triangle that I made out of two by six. Douglas fir, I went to U VA engineering like, you know, clearly this isn't going to take me four days to make a right triangle out of some wood. It did, it was horrible. I will tell anybody who wants to hear more about it as more than they would ever want to know.

But yeah, that external strength wasn't good enough in that moment anyway. So we see two ideas here. Strength, one that is internal and one that is external and for this external strength, it is your ability to derive confidence from another's ability to operate on your behalf in some subject. I'll note that the operating on your behalf is, is relevant here because I may be confident in Jeff bezos' ability to run a company. But that is entirely relevant to me unless I work for that company. For us. We are in the flock of God and we can be very confident in our shepherd's ability to defend us from the wolves that Paul is warning us about.

So Paul's command to be strong in the Lord is to have confidence in God's ability to stand against the schemes of the devil rather than in our own ability to do so. This is important because we need to understand what we are standing against because strength cannot really be demonstrated at rest. What I mean here is that if you look at any definition of strength, it's going to talk about the capacity for exertion or endurance or the ability to withstand great force or pressure, none of which can be demonstrated out of context, whether it's a heavyweight or, or large distances or cosmic forces in heavenly places, you need to understand what that strength is being exerted against for it to be meaningful.

So, think of it this way. Have you heard of the sailfish? This is a, I found out that this is a topic of some debate amongst the marine biology world. But for the purposes of this analogy, we're going to assume that the sailfish is, in fact the fastest swimmer in the world. And some studies show that it can swim a staggering highway speed of 68 MPH through the water. Right. Yeah, it's crazy. can you imagine if you had that kind of strength? So if we do some quick maths here and we say that, you know, the fastest human swimmer in the world can swim six MPH.

I'm not assuming that we're all elite swimmers, but let's just for fun. So 68 is more than 11 times that, so imagine if you could move through life at 11 times that pace, right? So I could walk 33 miles an hour without breaking a sweat. I could run 82 miles an hour, which means I could get all the way to Jamaica plane in eight minutes rather than the 45 it takes, I will never get over that in the Boston area. How long it takes to go like less like miles that I can count on my fingers. It's like, no, that's gonna take an hour like dang.

Anyway. So this would definitely be all any of you would talk about if you could move this quickly and have this kind of strength. But if we come back to our friend whose strength we borrowed for this thought exercise and we take him out of the water where his strength is quite evident and we put him say on land. Now, suddenly out of context, his strength is meaningless, all the the muscle, the hydrodynamics. Everything else about the way that he was formed by his creator is meaningless to face oxygen. And he was not going to win any race anytime soon, let alone be able to survive for very long.

Friends, I would submit to you today that that is our situation that regardless of your capabilities, your training, the technology you have available to you that none of that is meaningful in the face of the enemy that is against us. And so we need strength that we don't have, we need strength from the Lord. So I would then practically group us today into three different camps. Those who don't know the Lord and are in fact facing these powers that Paul describes under their own strength, those who do know the Lord but are not taking advantage of his strength. They're not asking their father for strength and are functionally in the same camp as the first and are basically going against the devil unarmed. And then those who know the Lord and are borrowing his strength and are wearing this armor that we're going to unpack together and are 10 ft tall and bulletproof are their daddy is bigger than the enemy that they face and they are walking with confidence and the Lord's strength against the powers that are against them.

One other way that I like to think about this is, it's kind of like a game of rock paper scissors, where God is the rock and can't actually lose anything and made the scissor in papers and lets the paper borrow the rock strength. And if you don't borrow the rock strength, then the, because the paper can beat the scissors when it borrows the rock strength. But then the scissors, otherwise it's just going to cut the paper up and make it a subservient slate for the rest of eternity. Otherwise that that's the game of rock paper scissors anyway.

So maybe I don't need to feed a fed horse here. but when I read this passage, I, I really think about, and I really think about how to be strong and why I need to be strong. It does take me a while to understand my enemy. Get past my own pride and think about why I need strength that I don't have. So now that we've understood this little bit about strength and why we need it. Let's move into understanding how we take advantage of the strength, what it is as we look at the, the armor of God, we did easily, we're not going to, but we could easily spend a whole series talking about the armor of God and some have, in fact, I wish I could say he was my good friend. It feels like I should, but it's not, I don't know him at all.

But Tim Keller did a whole series on the Armor of God, including like a three part series just on the Belt of Truth. It's great. I would encourage you to listen to it. I've borrowed heavily from that material today. You know, of course, I'm just gonna put it out there. but we're going to use some of that information to summarize what the armor of God is so that we can understand how to utilize it. Firstly, we have the belt of truth. This is the basis upon which everything else is tied together. The truth is that our God is love that He created us to glorify himself and enjoy him forever and is through Christ's death on the cross alone that we can find eternal salvation.

These truths of the gospel are foundational. They're the most foundational understanding that we could ever need. There are other truths that God reveals about himself, but all of it is pointing to these truths that tie together everything else that we are going to be unpacking. So this is the bedrock of our understanding of how we operate and how we employ the rest of God's strength. Next, we have the breastplate of righteousness, which is Christ purchase Christ's perfect righteousness transferred to us through our faith in Him, through his work on the cross and subsequent resurrection. With this righteousness guarding our lives, we have no fear.

Of course, to bear this breastplate of Christ with the cross and place in the cross. It is not a trite thing. It is not as though we can then assume cheap grace by saying, well, I have Christ's righteousness, I can do whatever I want. The breastplate then acts upon you and encourages you not to practice hypocrisy as you walk in his righteousness continuing down. We're going to look at the shoes of the readiness of the gospel of peace since the war between God and man has been ended in what Christ did by making a way for us to be called a friend of God, which is wild. We can walk in that peace and be people of peace, carrying the good news of the gospel to our friends and neighbors.

This freedom that this piece enables is incredible knowing that we don't have a scary enemy up in the sky who is just causing bad things to happen to us for no reason, but he loves us so much so that he sacrificed his own child, which by the way, once you have a kid, it, it just, it changes the way you think about instead of giving up your own kid to save someone else. That kind of love is something that I, I can't understand because I would never give up my kids for anything. Next. We have the helmet of salvation similar to the breastplate. Our confidence is in our salvation that is received by grace. Our mind is enrolled in this truth that the victory has been won for us already. No doubt or anxiety about our eternal destiny need have any home in our heads.

On one hand, we hold the shield of faith. This act of defense, our faith in the gospel must be taken up in all circumstances. Paul tells us to continually take up this shield to every day, actively pick up our faith to use it as a shield against the flaming darts of the enemy. These darts are doubts, fears, temptations that God is not real, that we are not loved that nothing we do matters that we don't matter. Our faith is our assurance that we do have a good father who is love and that by glorifying him, we not only do what we were made for, but we also take part in pointing others into the kingdom.

Friends. If you're ever worried about impact about whether or not you know what you're doing in life matters, consider the fact that if you take even a small part in helping move a non-believer one degree closer to the Lord, that is to have an infinite impact because that is an eternal soul whose trajectory you've been part of moving. So take joy in that, that the Lord lets us, you know, put our hands on his work as he moves through and and creates new believers.

Finally, in the other hand, we have the sword of the spirit, the only weapon listed here. and one described throughout scripture in other places, says about itself in the book of Hebrews that the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two edged sword piercing to the division of soul and spirit of joints and marrow and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. This is the same sword that Jesus used in the desert when the devil came to tempt him after he'd been fasting for 40 days and 40 nights and is the same that proceeds from his mouth in John's revelation. This is that same sword that is granted to us and is able to cut through the lies that are continually cast upon us and to pierce even the heart of stone to bring those who are dead in their trespasses and sins back to life.

Not so finally, actually, we have also prayer. This one doesn't get a cool analogy the way that the rest of them do. But prayer is still an incredibly important component to our overall way of operating in the world. Our defense against the enemy prayer is how we get our marching orders from the Lord, an army without communication. Zab. And so we church are not a mob, we are the body of Christ and we are able to talk to our commander to understand where he would have to go, what he would have to do, what of his word he would bring to mind for any given situation. And we're able to tell him how we feel about the assignments that he's given us because it is a two way street.

So each of these pieces describe how we put our strength in the Lord by believing that he is who he says he is and trusting in these aspects of the gospel. We're able to deal with these with the things that come to us in life. So we have this idea of this winning strategy that Paul presents in scripture.

But I know and this is something that the Lord let on my heart that I don't always trust in this winning strategy. And I, in fact, trust in myself still, I still have this temptation. And I, I wanna ask you church this morning to consider what you are trusting in for your strength. When your boss gives you negative feedback or you miss a deadline or a loved one cuts you down. Or you're faced with a choice about how you're going to provide for yourself or for your family, or what you're going to do with your life. Are you taking up the armor of God to deal with those challenges? Or is your confidence found in armor of your own making?

The Lord warns us of this inclination multiple times in scripture. I find the way that God spoke through his prophet Jeremiah particularly compelling where he says thus says the Lord cursed is the man who trusts in a man and makes flesh, his strength whose heart turns away from the Lord. He is like a shrub in the desert and shall not see any good come. He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness in an uninhabited salt land. But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water that sends out its roots by the stream and does not fear when heat comes for its leaves remain green and is not anxious in the year of drought. For does not cease to bear fruit.

This is a beautiful image. This idea of not being afraid even when heat comes and when drought comes and when the thing that I need for existence is is taken from me. I'm still not afraid because I have the Lord. But it concludes, this passage goes on to conclude was something I think that is essential that we must confront because it, it is counter to the rhetoric that we often hear outside of these walls. Verse nine says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it.

Church, it's worth spending a moment on this point. Your heart will not lead you to a victorious life, love of and from other creatures. Other created things will not satisfy. When Christ was being tempted by Satan, the offer presented to him was to have everything, all the kingdoms of the man given to him if he would only bow down and worship the adversary. Satan doesn't start there for most of us. It usually begins with momentary pleasures and can escalate to all the money you can buy and to everything that's offered Christ, but, but nothing that is created will satisfy the way that God's love us.

I would submit to you that each of us is wearing armor of some kind, either the armor of God or armor of your own making. The Puritan author Thomas Brooks wrote a little book called Precious Remedies against Satan's devices. I actually kind of got really into Puritan literature during the course of writing the sermon. It's like amazing. So we definitely recommend but I would argue that these same devices that Brooks mentions, these devices from the enemy are, in fact the coverings that we manufacture for ourselves that we think are going to keep us safe in the world.

I wanna take some time together with you to look in this dark mirror of devices that are not from the Lord. And as we look at these things, I, I pray that the spirit would reveal to you if any of these are devices that you are in fact trusting in for your strength rather than in the armor of God friends. If your life is girded with truth, that is not from God, then you wear the rags of folly, the rags of folly said another way, a lack of respect for God's truth that would consider man's ideas as equivalent or greater than what God has revealed to us as truth.

To go further, some of these human ideas that misunderstand God go beyond just folly and into outright lies. I think most of these lies take the form of well, a loving God wouldn't fill in the blank. These are things that often come up when we don't understand God. When we don't submit to what he has said about who He is and what his character is. And that basis then becomes the seed that unravels our faith. I'll confess that I find the conjecture that we as created beings tell God that He's not loving is about as fair as my daughter telling me that I'm not loving when I fail to give her ice cream for every single meal.

God has revealed his truth to us in his word. And it says in Second Peter 1 that his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and Godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us to his own glory and excellence by which He is granted to us, his precious and very great promises. So that through them, you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in this world because of sinful desire. There is word God has granted to us all things that pertain to life and Godliness.

Church, we need nothing more. If you aren't trusting in Christ's righteousness that's been imputed to you, then you may be wearing the right, the breastplate of self righteousness or how we might say it around here religion, right? You don't need Christ's righteousness because you've got your own and you don't really want or need grace from anyone because you're that good. You're confident in your own moral conduct to the degree that you don't really need grace. My friends, this breastplate is attached to your body with nails driven in from the outside, nails made of pride. And the more hits that it takes, the deeper they drive in, the more they wound you and the more it drives you further and further into depression because you will never live up to the standard that God has given to us on your own rather than the shield of faith.

You hold up a lens of doubt that scrutinizes the flaming darts of the enemy as they come to you rather than shielding yourself from them. You're more interested in what they do as they fly through the air and what they do is they land in your body and look at them as they wreak havoc and as their poison seeps into your veins. If your feet are not equipped with the gospel of peace, you may find yourself stuck in the steel toed boots of self protection, unable to share the good news of the gospel for fear of man. This is a subtle one. But one that I even experienced this week, as I thought about the fact that we're recording this right future employers could come and be like, oh, look, here's Michael. It's a raving lunatic talking about. I know God, what is he doing? But as I think about that is my hope in those who are watching this recording or those who are evaluating me for any job prospects or is it in the one who created everything and who holds the world in his hands? I'm grateful to say that it's in the latter.

Perhaps external sources aren't as much of a problem for you rather than the helmet of salvation. You may wear the crown of thorns of anxiety and condemnation. This is one that is so familiar to many that I love it first woos you with good test scores and strong performance helps you win at things and get into institutions and perform well. But it then begins to sing sweet shoots into your ear. You should do this, you should do that. You should do better all the while jabbing its thorns deeper into you and flooding you with bitter condemnation as you fail to live up to those SHS If this one is you, I'm so sorry. It is a horrible device, but there is hope from all these things. There is hope and it comes through the saving work of our savior who made good devices for us that do protect us from these evil things that the enemy would tempt us with.

And finally, without the sword of the spirit in your hand, you instead hold a bouquet of surrender, courting the enemy and saying, come on, what else do you have for me? I've already taken on all the other devices that you have and I'm interested in seeing how far I can go in this world and how high it will take me. I surrender to you and your will give me all the kingdoms of man. I bow down to you friends. This will lead to destruction to court the enemy. He is not love. Our father in heaven is love. He has made a way for us.

I want to share a, a dream as we, as we come out of this, this dark mirror of these terrible things. I want to share a dream that I had with you that I think is relevant for us this morning. The Lord used it to illustrate some powerful truth to me and I, I want to share it with you in, in hopes that you may find it helpful as well. In this dream. I was in sort of a a town square, not unlike Davis square, right? And as I was walking around it was in gray scale, I'll say kind of two dimensional maybe cell shaded if my, my video game fans out there know what I'm talking about. And there were these gaunt zombie like creatures lumbering about and there were also dead versions of these gray scale zombie like creatures that were laying on the ground strewn about in various places with birds and rodents, just sort of pecking at them.

And I saw these, these zombies lumber over and kind of congregate in one place. And it was clear to me that this was a church and that they were there to feed and then they lumbered out and went around doing their thing, ambling about with the dead. This is all very depressing and weird. And then through the wall next to me, this guy burst through it and he was huge and jacked and electric blue and the three dimensional. And he just gave me kind of like the Uncle Sam Point and that was about it. But what, what this, what the Lord I think revealed to me through this is that there are those who are dead in their trespasses and sins. There are those who are alive in Christ, but you are not taking advantage of the strength that he offers. And there are those who are abundantly alive in Christ who wear the armor of God who take their strength from the Lord and walk about in his power, pursuing the building of the kingdom.

Friends, I am, I am not a, you know, blue John Cena bursting through the wall, Kool aid man kind of person, right? I I am, I'm I'm not there. I don't stand up here to claim to be something that I'm not. But but that is what I want to be. I don't believe that Jesus was blue but I believe that that is the idea of pursuing him that spiritually we wanna be violently alive in the building of the kingdom as we do that, we need to love our neighbors and those around us, we need to do the work of investing, texting back being curious, not because we want to have a trophy or a medal on our stash for having helped bring someone along.

But because God loves each and every one of those people that we encounter and we, if we love Him ought to love what he loves Christians, I pray that if the spirit convicts you, that you are not trusting in Him for your full protection, but are instead relying on any such armor of man that you will prayerfully seek to put away these tools that may seem effective in the short term, but our death in the long term and instead put on Christ.

And if you're here today and you don't know what I'm talking about and I do sound new and wild to you. I do urge you to seriously evaluate the strength that I'm talking about. The power to not be afraid even when things are scary. The power to be able to trust in the one who loves you, who knows you, who sees you better than any other human ever could. And the one who is waiting to welcome you into eternity.

I'm going to invite the band to come up now. And my brother Mark is going to come up as well and introduce communion for us. As they do, would you pray with me.

Father, thank you for lending us your strength. We thank you for making a way for us to receive it through your son's work on the cross. Help us to see our devices as you see them, help us to take them off. And really, truly, maybe for the first time in our lives, trust in your strength. Teach us how to wear the armor you've provided to us and aid us in our fight against the enemy. Use us, we pray, in the work of building your kingdom of winning ground and reclaiming what has been lost. To the glory of your almighty name, your son's precious name, we pray, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Song of Solomon about sex. Discussion points: The song is a glimpse into the heart of God who wants to know and be known by us, Christians should be known more for how we love than for what we’re against, you are fully known and fully accepted by God because of Jesus’s atonement.

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Preacher: The song of songs, which is Solomon's. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. For your love is better than wine. Your anointing oils are fragrant. Your name is oil poured out. Therefore, virgins love you. Draw me after you, let us run. The king has brought me into his chambers.

This is the word of the Lord.

Wow, you are you sure you're thankful for that one. All right, today's sermon on the song of Solomon. Now, if you're familiar with the Song of Salmon, you may already know that things can get, let's say spicy as we go through this book. So if you've got a little one in tow, who still thinks that the birds and the bees are about things that fly, you might want to navigate a strategic exit or maybe today is the day that they do learn about some of these biblical truths should we say? in which case, hey, your call, do whatever you wanna do.

We're here doing an overview series on the song of Solomon on the Well, we are doing an overview sermon on the song of Solomon. We're doing an overview series on the Wisdom Literature and this is the final week and it's been a fun series. Honestly, to me, it has been too fast. Like I haven't ever really spent a lot of time with the wisdom literature and every week I'm kinda like, man, I wish I had like 10 weeks just to do this one book. So it's one of those things that we might have to come back to some of these wisdom books and learn a little bit more about what God has to say to us from these books.

But overview, it's been fun. It's been great. I'm, I'm looking forward to our next series also, which is going to be on the book of Daniel and diving into the deep prophecy that we have there. You know, I got a whole year where I got to go through John, which was relatively easy for me as someone explained in God's word. And now I'm doing wisdom literature and Daniel, which is just like high prophecy at times and it's harder. So pray for me as we're going through Daniel, that's, that's gonna be a fun series for us too.

So let's just dive right on in to the Song of Solomon and figure out what's going on here. The first verse from Song of Solomon says, the song of songs, which is Solomon's. So we just learned and this is really the only book of the Bible that I can think of that does this. But depending on which version of the Bible you pick up, it's, this book is going to be titled differently. Some versions call it the song of Solomon. Some version call it versions call it the song of songs. And that's because the, the proper name is the song of songs.

But the song of Solomon is a little bit more, it, it seems a little bit more descriptive about what's happening because it is of Solomon. It belongs to Solomon. Song of songs means the greatest song. It's kind of the Hebrew way of emphasizing something. So we see this over and over time over and over again throughout the scripture. He is the Lord of Lords and the king of Yeah, we have the Holy of Holies, right? So we see when we have something that's really emphasis. That's the superb, that's the best. That's the greatest of all time that we just repeat the word and that's how Hebrew works a lot of times. So here we have the song of songs which means the greatest song that we can find.

And since this is the greatest song that we have in the scripture, and it also has some pretty steamy lyrics in it, I thought we might play a game this morning called, is it a song of Solomon verse or a Taylor Swift lyric? All right, I'll let you vote. I don't want to look at anything else now that I saw you. What do you say? Everybody says Swift. Solomon. It's Taylor Swift. It's Taylor Swift. Yeah. How about this one? Your lips drip sweetness like a honey comb. All right. Solomon Swift. It's song, a song, a good job, guys. I didn't get you on that one. It's chapter four verse 11. How about this one? You have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes. We got Swift. We got so Solomon. That one is the song song of songs. Chapter four, verse nine, your touch brought forth an incandescent glow Swift. Solomon. That one is Taylor Swift. I once believed love would be burning red, but it's Golden Swift. Solomon. That one also Swift. Your two breasts are like two fawns like twin fawns of a gazelle that browse among the lilies. That one is not Taylor Swift.

All right. That was fun. Maybe a little revealing. At times it's interesting how love and romance have captivated the hearts of humans for millennia. Is it not? We're writing about songs that are were the same things we were writing about back then. Ancient poetry, modern music. Now I know talking about love and intimacy is especially when it comes to sex can feel uncomfortable. And one of the reasons why is because our society over sexualize everything, everything is over sexualized in our society.

At the same time, the church has often been silent on this topic which has love left us with confusion shame and even misunderstandings about what God has intended for sex. So as we take a deeper look at what the song of Solomon teaches us, not just about human love and the good gift from God that we call sex, but also we're going to see the about, we're going to learn about the kind of intimacy that we can have with God. There are a few books in the Bible that have puzzled scholars as much as the song has has confused them, puzzled them. And I'm going to be referring to the song because it's like the song of songs. Sometimes I'll call it just the song. So you know what I'm talking about.

There's a few books of puzzled scholars as much as the song. There's a broader range of interpretation for the song of Solomon or the song of songs than there is for any other book of the Bible. For example, Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth century, he interpreted song of Solomon chapter one verse 13 which says this my beloved is to me, a sachet of myrrh resting between my breasts. This is how he interpreted it. Jesus is that sachet of myrrh with one breast representing the Old Testament and the other, the new. That's unhinged. That's crazy. There's nothing in the text to suggest that one breast might be referring to the old testament. I don't know what that means about the breast that Gregory of Nysa was exposed to, but there's nothing to suggest this in the scripture. It breaks every single rule of biblical interpretation that we know of.

We cannot interpret the song of songs as a manual for sex. It was never intended to be a manual for sex. I've heard sermon series preached on the song of Solomon song of songs as if it were a manual for sex where the pastor got up front described in detail, very crude sexual acts at times and then would give kind of his interpretation of what's in bounds and out of bounds for Christianity. And as you might guess, the church grew because people like talking about these things, but that is not what the book is intending to do for us. The book is not intended to be used as a manual for sex.

The song of songs at its most basic level is semi erotic, love poetry, semi erotic love poetry. It does get into some of the sexual lines. In fact, every single line is kind of packed with double entendre. I mean, every single line it is made to make you blush. That is the way that this thing is written. It would be Michael Scott's favorite book of the Bible. It is just double entendre. That's what she said, joke after. Except for you don't even have to joke. It's just literally what she said as you read the thing.

Some scholars believe that this is all that there is to the song and that's a, a very commonly held view of the songs today. In fact, that's what I learned in seminary about the song of songs that it wa that it is simply semi erotic love poetry. And that's all that it is and that it's God's semi erotic love poetry, I suppose. But I just had this question of like, OK, well, why is it in the Bible if that's all it is, is like love poetry. And I'm gonna keep saying semi erotic because it makes you all uncomfortable love poetry. Why is it in the Bible? Personally, I think that the topic of sex has made these scholars uncomfortable and they haven't really considered what all the previous scholars up until the 1900s had to say about the song.

Up until about the 1900s, it was universally accepted among all scholars that there was a deeper spiritual meaning to the song. It's more of a modern fear of sexuality that drives some of these interpretations to say that it is simply a a book of semi erotic love poetry on the surface we have on the song, this, this love poetry and then under the surface, both Hebrew and Christian scholars alike agree that there's stuff going on that there are deeper layers of meaning that we have. And you see this in a lot of different scripture that you have to find the layers of interpretation.

So on the surface, we have love, love poetry under the surface from a Hebrew perspective. The song is about the pursuit of wisdom. And so when you read the song, one thing that you might see is that many of the things that happened in the song remind us of things that we read about in Proverbs. And since they're both related to King Solomon, that would make sense. And so what many Jewish interpreters have described the song to mean is that it's Lady Wisdom who were introduced in the first nine chapters of Proverbs seeking out her lover that is lady wisdom, seeking out. So it's almost like Proverbs one through nine is advice from a father to a to a son and then about how to find wisdom. And this is almost like goddess or like wisdom finding God's people. And so that's how Hebrew scholars have generally approached the book.

But from a Christian perspective, we believe that we have an even deeper and more meaningful layer of interpretation that we can find here that we understand the meaning of this passage to reflect the relationship between Christ and His people. And one of the reasons for that is because in the New Testament, we see that marriage and really throughout the whole Bible marriage is a reflection of God's relationship with His people. It's meant to be a symbol of the way that God loves his people. Marriage is reflects God's love for us just as a bridegroom Longs for his bride Christ Longs to be with us.

When we read the song of Solomon, we're invited to see a reflection of Christ's passionate pursuit for us. That's what we see as Christians. When we read this, we're invited to see Christ's passionate pursuit for us. This is how Paul says that in Ephesians when he talks about marriage, this is what he says. Ephesians chapter five verse 31. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. And this mystery is profound and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church friends. The song of Solomon is more than just beautiful words. It's a glimpse into the heart of God who desires to know us fully and to be fully known by us.

There's not much story to this book as you go through it. Eight chapters, I think about 173 verses and what you see isn't like a story. It's more like a collection of poems and it's cyclical. The same thing tends to happen over and over again. You have a lover and a beloved, you have she and he in some translations, in other translations, it is the, the beloved and the lover and the beloved would be the the female character from it and the lover would be the male character from it. And they're both expressing their desire for one another. And then you see them go out looking for one another and calling to one another and then they find one another and they speak lovingly to one another. And just when you think that they're about to hook up, it starts over and they're like, I lost him. Where did he go? And then their desires start again and they start looking for one another again. It's got the cyclical pattern to it.

And the whole book is about the search for intimacy. The search for intimacy. Intimacy is about this being fully known and not rejected. Isn't that beautiful to be fully known and not reject it. It's about knowing all the way to the core and to being loved. The same sex is just the most powerful, an intense version of intimacy that two humans can have with one another. That's why the Bible describes marriage as being as becoming one flesh. Sex is so powerful that it has the potential to create life. In fact, when you look at scientists who are creating life or artificial life or they often times what we say is that they're playing God, what else has the power to create life than something as powerful as sex.

Sex was designed by God to be between one man and one woman in the covenant of marriage for life. Now, pretty much every word that I just spoke is controversial. OK, one man, one woman covenant of marriage for life. I'm not looking for the smoke. Ok. Trust me, I prefer to be liked. Ok, I'm not trying to be disliked. But that is what Christians have always believed about marriage. That is what Christians have always believed about sex. That is what the Bible clearly teaches about sex. And we believe that not because we're repressive bigots here. We know that we stand out to the culture around us, but we believe it just because we believe that the image of marriage that we have in scripture is really important. We believe that who God is is what you believe about who God is is the most important thing about you.

And if what you believe about who God is is important and he tells us that marriage is something that reflects upon who He is, then we better get this thing, right? I want it to look like if I have an image of my wife sitting on my desk, I don't want it to be a distorted image of my wife. I want it to be the most accurate image of my wife because I love her and I love looking at her and I don't want this distorted image. So because marriage is an image of of God's love for us, we want to get the image right? And we want to look at how he describes it and what it says for us, marriage is meant to reflect God's love for us.

Now today is not the day for me to go into all the details of the Christian sexual ethic. I've done that before. many times. I would point you to the sermons online that you can go and watch if you want to. We can sit down, we can talk about these things. But let me just say this. Ok. I've already said a few controversial things that no doubt, some of you disagree with me. We are in Somerville, Massachusetts after all. And no doubt, some of you disagree with me on some of these things. But let me just tell you another thing that Jesus teaches Jesus teaches us, Jesus teaches me as a Christian to love my enemies. He says, love your enemies. And if you disagree with me on these things, I do not even see you as my enemy to disagree with someone. Although our culture says it is like this to disagree with someone is not that does not make them your enemy, you simply disagree. And so if I'm called to love my enemies, and I don't even see you as my enemy. How much more am I called to love you?

So as Christians, I'm not here to just wag my finger finger and tell you how much of a sinner you are. I'm here to love you and to care for you. We should be known more for how we love than for what we're against as Christians. We should be known more for how we love than what we're against. So sex was designed by God to be, to reflect the way that He loves us, designed by God for, to be between one man and one woman in the covenant of marriage for life.

And one of the reasons why this is is because we often think about sex as a covenant renewal ceremony. Now when we get married, we make a covenant to one another for richer and for, for better and for in sickness and in, to have and to until death do us part. That's a covenant. That's not just promises. That's a covenant between God and between people that you're getting married in front of and between two couples and uh two couples between two people and a couple. Every time you have sex as a married couple, you are renewing that covenant with sex. You're looking at the person that you have committed your life to and you're saying I belong to you, I'm absolutely 100% committed to you. Your joy is my joy and I desire you more than anyone else in the entire world.

It's a beautiful thing about, about sex and marriage is that you can say these things much like getting baptized once and committing your life to Christ. You make this covenant with Christ and then that covenant you, we're given another symbol to remind us of it every week where we, we cut you know, the baptism is a symbol of our relationship with God. And then we're given another symbol that we practice every week, which is communion where we're renewing that and being reminded of the love that we have for God and Christ's love for us. It's a physical reminder of Christ's love for us.

And so much in the same way when, when a married couple has sex, they're renewing their covenant with one another. Sometimes I get asked by married couples to officiate a covenant renewal ceremony. And I just say, oh, you don't want me there because they need to go get his, I'm like, go have sex. That's your covenant renewal ceremony. I don't wanna see it. I don't want to have anything to do with it. But you go, go have sex like that. That is the way that you renew this covenant and that you remind one another of your love for each other.

And so if you're dating someone and you have sex before you're married, there's grace guys, there's grace for everyone. We're all sexually broken people. Every person in here. Ok. I almost want to just be like the, like everybody raise your hand and say hi, I'm sexually broken, but I'm not gonna do that because it's weird. But we're all sexually broken people. Ok. There's grace. But if you're having sex outside of the confines of marriage, you have to know that you're practicing a covenant renewal ceremony that you're giving each other the physical reminder of that covenant without the deeper commitments that are required for it to be as pleasurable and as meaningful as you can. And so guess what if you were doing that before you're married and then you break up, it's going to be a lot harder. It's going to be a lot more difficult because you've been practicing a renewal, a covenant renewal ceremony for a covenant that you haven't ever made.

And so that's one reason as Christians, why we encourage you to, to not awaken love until it desires. As the song might say, the act of sex is a physical expression of a deeper longing to know and be known completely. Sex points us toward an intense desire and longing for intimacy. And ultimately our intimacy with God that we deeply long for the deepest kind of intimacy is not just physical or emotional, but it's spiritual, human relationships as wonderful as they are point us toward something greater. Our ultimate intimacy with God.

This is why we often feel unsatisfied even in good relationships because our souls are longing for something deeper, something eternal chasing physical satisfaction, whether that's through casual encounters or pornography or even emotional affairs always leaves us empty. Those things promise intimacy, but they can't deliver the kind of communion. Our hearts are longing for and are made for each of these separate the physical act of sex from the relational intimacy that we desire.

Christopher West puts it like this. He says your, but this is a, this is a graphic quote, but I think it's good. Your body wants an orgasm, but your soul wants something much deeper communion. What we truly crave is to be known and loved by God. Your soul wants to touch the mystery that's at the heart of the Trinity. True intimacy and love is at the very heart of who God is. When we think about the Trinity, when we think about God being triune, meaning father, son and Holy Spirit throughout eternity past, the three persons of the Godhead have been enjoying an intimate loving relationship with one another. He has always existed as love.

And the whole point of Christianity is to pull you into that relationship. And so true intimacy is that and love is at the very heart of who God is. The whole point is to pull you into it. When you place your faith in Christ, you are united with Jesus, you get to share in the glorious love that the Father has for the son, you are fully known and not rejected.

That is the message of the gospel that you are fully known better than any human can ever know you. And that when you come to Christ, you are not rejected, you are accepted based upon his merits and not your own today church. This is at the heart of Song of Songs and it's hard to do an overview. Like I wish that we could just spend more time as we look at every verse. But today Jesus is inviting you into a more intimate and more passionate and more truly satisfying relationship than any romantic human relationship can touch. The message of the song is that Jesus desires to be with you.

Now that turns everything on my head that turns everything I know upside down. And here's why because I don't think about my spirituality and my relationship with God like that. I don't think about Jesus desiring to be with me. I think about me desiring to be with Jesus, which is true. I do desire to be with Jesus. And even when I look at the scriptures, I think about all the different passages where people are pleading to be with Jesus. I think about Moses in Exodus chapter 33 when he says, God, show me your face, I'm not moving from this place until you show me your face. I want to be with you and showing me your face is a way of colloquially expressing, show me who you are your fullness. I want to know you. And so you have Moses pleading to see his face you see in the Psalms, it's repeated over and over again.

Psalm 105 verse four. Seek the Lord in his strength, seek his presence continually again. That's me seeking the Lord Psalm 27. You have said seek my face. My heart says to you your face, Lord do I seek? But what the song does for us is it reminds us that Jesus also seeks our faith that God loves us. Now. That's a powerful truth. And you know one that also often feels trite. Does it? Not if a friend says Jesus loves you. It's even in that tone, right? Jesus loves you and it feels just so trite and childish. But it is such a good reminder.

Song of Solomon chapter two verse 14. Oh my dove in the clefts of the rock and the crannies of the cliff. Let me see your face. Let me hear your voice. Your voice is sweet and your face is lovely and this is what the Lord wants us to hear from him today, that he wants to see your face, that he desires to be with us. In fact, he desired to be with us so much that he sent his one and only son to pay our penalty so that we might be with Him. It is not outside of the gospel. We often times think about God as just being stodgy and not wanting to share his love. And we had to go to Him to get the love. But that is not Him.

You look at the parables. What happens when the shepherd loses the sheep? He leaves the 99 to go find the one. Are you the one? What happens when the prodigal son leaves his father and he starts his way home. Where is the father? Is he sitting inside saying no, he needs to come all the way here and kiss my feet before I'll bless him with my affection. The father is longing to be with the son. He's standing on his porch looking and when he sees his son very undignified Lee, he pulls up his garment and starts running. That is the love of the father for us. That is the love of Jesus for us.

The song of songs reminds us that Christ is seeking our face like a lover. He not only wants us to love him, he's searching for us. Now, I want you to imagine a young couple on a date. the the young man, he just wants to see his new bride's face. He just wants to spend time with her, but she's distracted. She's, she's got her phone and she's just reeling or whatever it might be. That's what I say. At least that's like, yeah, I'm 38. Ok. I'm old. You know, she's tiktoking and I don't know what she's doing. He wants her attention. He wants eye contact. Why? Because her voice is sweet to him. He finds her lovely and that's how Jesus feels about us.

That's hard to believe, right? That Christ would find me lovely or you lovely friends. Jesus is looking for you. Are you attentive to his attention to his pursuit? Or have you lost your first love? Like the Church of Ephesus? You know, we, we get this awesome letter to the Ephesians, one of the best letters in The New Testament. Every preacher wants to preach to Ephesians every three or four years because it's just got so much good stuff in it. And then you see that church pop back up in Revelation. And what does it say? You Ephesians, you've lost your first love. They had the best book of the Bible written to them. They had the best letter and what happens? They lost their first love. They're pursuing other lovers. They're doing other things.

Have you abandoned the love you had for Jesus at first? Are you looking for meaning and intimacy and purpose? Apart from him? Our hearts are wayward. Are they not? This is a weekly thing for me. OK. It's not, you can go, you know, there's big cycles and little cycles pursue. Maybe you're pursuing other lovers that, you know, cannot satisfy. They tickle the itch but they cannot truly satisfy or maybe you're just constantly distracted, numbing yourself.

I'm, I'm just gonna talk about the screens for another minute. I think that the epidemic of screen usage is destroying and there's been a lot of s science out there that is destroying our mental health. I think that's true. I think it's doing even more destruction to our spiritual health. Yesterday, I was grilling some burgers, some turkey burgers ok, for my family and, I went outside with my and fully intended on just looking at my phone while I was waiting on the grill. And instead I looked up at a bird in a tree and I prayed for 10 minutes and it was the best 10 minutes. I had the whole day just getting away from the device and looking for God.

What's the first thing you look at when you wake up in the morning for me? It's not the face of the savior who loves me. It's the memes that entertained me on my device that amuse me. Our devices, our devices are destroying our relationships and our mental health. Here's the good news with this. I think that most of the world sees this and I think that this is one of the few areas that the church can lead the way on and that we have to lead the way on. We have the spiritual resources to see what's going on to see how we're addicted to our screens and that we need to pay attention to greater realities and we can, and we will lead the way on this as a church in the next year.

We're going to be taking a, a digital fast. We're going to be stepping away from that. I want you to join me if you don't wanna do it. You're welcome here. But we're gonna be doing this. Ok. We're going to be stepping away from our devices intentionally trying to cut the screen time down. I think that the church can lead the way in this. I think that our world will be a better place as a result. Are you addicted to your screen?

One line repeated over and over, it it happens often in the song of songs is your love is better than wine. And I thought for a really long time, what that's talking about? Wine is intoxicating. Sure. I think it, I think it plays into that. Wine is good. You know, too much wine, not a great thing but a little bit of wine. It gladdens the heart of man. That's the Bible. OK. Don't argue with me. It's, it's not a bad thing. It has the potential to ruin lives. And so if that's you stay away from it, of course. But why would the scripture choose the most addictive thing and say you that it knows of at that time, wine is addictive and say your love is better than even the thing that can, that can, can be so addictive. We have to say that about our devices as well. Do we not that your love is better than what my device can give me.

Jesus desires to be with us. There's a book written on the song of Solomon, just as a devotional. It's actually really great. I highly recommend it. It's called Jesus Lover of my Soul. And he the author, Julian Hardiman, I believe. unpacks it. It's not a commentary, but it's just reflection on the song of Solomon. And he has this really great this really great prayer, this conversation that he has with God about God being after him and seeking his face. And I just want to share it with you. Oh, gosh, it's, it's 730 already. I'm late. Too late for a quiet time. I suppose the Lord will understand but the Lord responds, show me your face but I'm too busy. Just show me your face. But you've got lots of other disciples. God could, why can't you pick on one whose alarm clock went off on time? Show me your face but I haven't had time to shave. Lots of people are going to want to see my face. Lots of people are not going to want to see my face at this rate. Show me your face. But I I my face isn't worth seeing. Show me your face.

Lord even I don't like my face very much, let alone what's behind it and you have much higher standards than I do. Show me your face. For your face is lovely. Oh no, it's not. It's lopsided and blotchy and I've got revolting spots on my forehead. Show me your face for your face is lovely. You aren't going to give up. Are you Lord? Show me your face for your face is lovely. OK? I think you've got my attention now. But what can I say? Let me hear your voice. C Lord. Well, I think that's happening, isn't it? I can't imagine you're enjoying it particularly though. Let me hear your voice. For your voice is sweet, but I have a sore throat and seriously, all I'm doing is moaning. Your voice is sweet. Oh Lord. Ok, you win. This isn't about me, is it right? This is about you. You just want me. Well, I love you and your face is beautiful to me and your voice is love you lovelier than any other voice. Thank you.

And I don't know how many times I've had that conversation with the Lord, but it does seem as though I get about two lines into it and then I just numb myself, right? Find a way to avoid God calling out saying show me your face, show me your face as we wrap up today. We've talked about how our souls long for intimacy, how we're wired for connection that goes beyond the physical. And maybe today you feel that longing deeply. Maybe you've sought fulfillment in human relationships or fleeting pleasures, but you still feel empty. Maybe you've even doubted that you could ever be fully known and fully loved, known fully and not rejected.

Here's the good news, Jesus knows you better than anyone ever could. He knows your deepest fears, your hidden struggles, your darkest secrets. And he still says, let me see your face for your face is lovely. He's not waiting on you to get your life cleaned up. That is not the gospel. The gospel is not. I go clean up my life and then God invites me into a loving relationship with them. No, it is. Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. It's about receiving from Christ, the righteousness that we could never achieve. It's about going to him and seeing that he desires to be with you.

He's pursuing you now, just as you are, he desires to know you to love you and to bring you into the intimacy of the Father, son and Holy Spirit. That's at the crux of Christianity. The question for us today is, will we turn toward him? Will we let him see our face if you've been distracted, if you've been running after lesser loves? Today is the day you can come home. His love is better than wine. His love is better than anything this world can offer. So let's just take a moment of silence and in our heart, let's turn to him and say, Lord, here I am. Show me your face. OK? Would you pray with me?

Father, we are so grateful for your pursuing love. Thank you that in Jesus, we see a love that goes beyond what we could ever imagine. Help us to stop running to lesser things and instead to seek intimacy with you, heal our hearts, draw us close and help us to know your love in a way that transforms us from the inside out. In Jesus's name, Amen.

On the night that he was betrayed, Jesus took a loaf of bread and he broke it and he said, this is my body broken for you, do this in remembrance of me. And he took a cup and he said this is my blood shed for you. The cup of the new covenant take this in remembrance of me. And so each week as a church family, we come together to celebrate this reflection of God's love for us. This physical reminder that his body was broken and his blood was shed on our behalf. Would you stand as we pray.

Father, as we come to your table, we pray that you would satisfy us, that we would be reminded that you are enough, that we don't have to we don't have to find our own meaning and significance but that you give us meaning and significance, that you are enough for us. We praise you and we thank you. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher teaches from Proverbs about money. Discussion points: Jesus wants to free us from the grip money has on our souls, having money will numb our felt need for God, the early church modeled simple living and radical generosity.

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Preacher: We're in the middle of a series on the wisdom literature at the moment that we're calling life reimagined. And the wisdom literature is given to us by God in his word for us to imagine what the good life is like. It's this intentionally poetic section of your Bibles that is traditionally difficult to understand. I mean, a lot of these books require you to think hard and there's something to that, that you shouldn't have to be. It's not just a how-to manual. The Bible is not written as a manual of how-to.

The Bible is a collection of different books and different genres that you really have to think about. And it all tells one cohesive story about how God created the world, but the world became broken because of sin. But the God sent his only begotten son Jesus Christ to live the life that we should live, die, the death that we deserve to die, be resurrected. And that all, all of history culminated in that moment. And now we're living on the other side of Jesus' life, death, resurrection, and ascension and we're waiting for him to return.

So the Bible is the story of what God has done. It is not just a manual for how we live our lives. And so when we look at the wisdom literature, though, what we do find in the wisdom literature are some general teachings about how we can best live our lives. And we also see Christ in the Wisdom literature as we study it. Last week, we looked at the Book of Proverbs and I just did an overview of the book of Proverbs. The past several weeks have been major overview sermons. So I did an overview of Ecclesiastes, overview of the Book of Job. We've done a few Psalms this week. We've got Proverbs next week of Pal of Psalm.

And, and so this week and we'll have some Proverbs in next week too. But last week, I, I did this overview of Proverbs and today I want to dig a little bit deeper into one area that the Proverbs are teaching us about. So last week, we learned that to live wisely, the key to living wisely according to the Proverbs. Wouldn't it be cool? This is what I've always wanted to do with the Proverbs just because it sounds cool. I just want to memorize a bunch of them, you know, and then like in any given situation, like, say I'm outside with my, my kids and we have a situation, I'm like, hey, the Proverb says this and then I just rattle off one of the Proverbs. And they're like, wow, you are so wise dad. And they're just, I just astound them with my wisdom. And that's how I've always read the Proverbs and thought about the Proverbs.

But then last week I came to the realization that living by the Proverbs is not meant to be a memorization of all the Proverbs and then trying to live out each one. In fact, we'd be in trouble if we tried to do that. But it's looking for the common bread that goes through all of the proverbs, which is this idea of the fear of the Lord. And we're not talking about like fear like spooky. Ok. I'm not talking about like boo like Halloween fear. I'm talking about fear as in this respectful reverent awe before the Lord. And that is the thread. If you live your life with respect, a worship of the Lord love for him. A love that leaves you astounded a bit, then you will be a person of wisdom. And that's what the Proverbs teach us.

And so when we read the Proverbs, we're looking for that thread and we found it. And so today, we're going to pick up on the proverbs and specifically the teaching of money because money is where wisdom hits the road. It's where the the rubber meets the road with wisdom, right? Because we might make decisions in our lives. But often times those decisions don't become real until we start spending our money on it. Right. It's like, how, how do I decide where I'm gonna spend my money? A lot of times we don't even think about this. Right. It's just kind of like, second, it's in the back of our head. We don't even think about. It's just, I'm gonna spend my money how I want.

But really the way that you live can be often times be traced to how you spend your money. Just I invite you, open up your, your checking account, your credit card account, whatever it is. Look at the last 10 purchases you made and tell me what it tells you, tells me about yourself. What does it tell me about what you value about who you are? Oftentimes the way we spend our money defines what are our priorities.

Now, no matter who you are, you've struggled with money in some way, in some form. I don't care if you grew up in the suburbs with a pool in your backyard or if you grew up in the projects, you know what it's like to struggle with money. Whether you're renting a garden level apartment, which let's face it. That's just a fancy basement. Ok. Garden level. You're not fooling me landlords or you can afford a single family home in this crazy place that we call Somerville, Massachusetts. All right. Props if you can do that, I got respect. Ok, you've, you've managed some money well or you inherited some somewhere along the way. You know what it's like to struggle with money though all of us do.

Personally, just to give you some perspective. I grew up poor. I grew up in rural Mississippi between, I lived in Memphis for several years. Then we moved to rural Mississippi. the poorest community in the entire country and I was in the poor section of the poorest community of the entire country. My, one of my earliest memories is going to retrieve my father from a gas station back room that had an illegal slot machine in it as he gambled away all of our family's grocery money. When my parents divorced. When I was five, we went and lived with my grandparents which now I'm thinking back, I'm like that was humbling I'm sure for my mother to go back and move in with her parents, but they were always loving. I always had a loving home and let me tell you this. My mom did admirably admirably providing for every one of our needs. My mom provided and nurtured for us. Ton of respect.

But I was an only child, single parent home. We were poor. I grew up in government housing, government subsidized housing. we, you know, I, I did not love wearing Walmart blue jeans to school or getting dropped off in my mom's 1984 Capri Classic. Anybody even know what that car looks like? It's terrible. Ok. It's a terrible looking car. The upholstery was falling off the ceiling. It rattled, like, like you knew she was coming because the brakes were squealing and the whole thing was rattling. And I was, like, eventually by the time I was old enough I was like, mom, please drop me off around the corner. I do not want my friends seeing me get out of this car. I'm so embarrassed by your vehicle.

Ah, we, we grew up poor. And so you gotta imagine my culture shock when we moved to Boston because in Boston a lot of times people consider themselves poor when they vacation on the cape instead of Aruba. You know, it's like, that's poor here for a lot of people. But that's not the case, guys, we got it easy up here for the most part. Now that we do have poor with us also, we have people that struggle with finances, whether you grew up rich with a pool in your backyard. Like I said, that's my idea of rich. Ok. I don't know. I grew up, I grew up nowhere near a pool. Ok. We went to the city pool. I got dropped off. That was, that was all I had. If you grew up with a pool in your backyard, I'm like, you are rich. That's all I got. Or if you, if you grew up poor like me, you know what it's like to struggle with money.

We all, we all do. We all struggle with it. It's, it's hard, it's hard. Partly due to how I was raised and partly due just a personal temperament. some of this is just who I am. I am a hoarder. I save everything and it's only been under my wife's careful tutelage that I have learned the secret of letting go of things that might be useful one day like that entire drawer filled with socks without a match. Finally getting rid of those or the drawer that has all the phone chargers of every phone that I've ever owned in my entire life that I might need one day. Finally getting rid of those things. I tend to be a saver, a hoarder.

Our money and our things, they tend to have a hold on our hearts, do they not? They, do they have a hold on our hearts. We worry about money. We obsess about money. The most tense 30 minutes of our entire week, every week is the Friday. When I'm managing our budget on, you need a budget.com. That's my favorite website. I'm gonna bring it up again if you've never seen it, write it down. Go YNAB you need a budget. Ok YNAB.com. Go to a start a budget. You need one. This has not been paid for but you need a budget. It is just a free commercial. If you would like a referral code though, I can help you with that. We worry about money. We obsess about it. It's powerful.

But friends Jesus wants to free you from the grip that money has on your soul. He wants to free you from the grip that money has on your soul. So we spend so much time talking about money thinking about, oh, we spend so much time thinking about money, not talking about money. It is a taboo topic to talk about yet. The Bible teaches us so much about money. Jesus, other than the, the Kingdom of God, Jesus talked about money more than anything else during his life. Why are we so afraid to talk about it? It is a cultural idol of our day.

And many times I have fallen into this, I found myself afraid to speak to this powerful cultural idol because I'm afraid of the backlash. I'm afraid that I offend you if I just tell you what the Bible says, but that's not, that's not true. I'm afraid of that. That's a messenger from Satan. You guys, I know you, you're my church family. You want to hear what Jesus has to say on this, do you not? We want what Jesus has to say on this. We want the freedom from our, the grip that the money has on us. And the Proverbs has so much to say about money. Now, one thing that the proverb says all the time is what is the opposite of wisdom. It's being wise in your own eyes. Right. That's foolishness. Being wise in your own eyes.

How many of us know people? I'm not saying that how many of us ourselves? Ok. It's always like we're, it's easier to see other people sin than our own. How many of us know people who are wise in their own eyes with their finances. I'm talking people buying lotto tickets in bulk. You know, maybe they're, they're buying one of those 1st 100 cyber trucks. If that's you, that's ridiculous. You are wise in your own eyes. Ok. I've seen several driving around. So it's very possible.

The Bible talks about money all the time. The Proverbs talks about it all the time. In fact, Proverbs mentions wealth, money, poverty, prosperity or riches 130 times and 31 chapters. That's roughly like four or five mentions per chapter of money or riches or wealth. In fact, the very first chapter of Proverbs, once you get past the prologue is this long speech of a father to a son saying, hey, don't scam people don't rip people off. That's like the first thing that the Proverbs kicks off with.

So the money, money is such a great way to apply wisdom because when we're wise with our money, we're probably living wise in all of the other areas of our lives as well. So I want to highlight three themes from the Proverbs for us today. The first one is how to gain money wisely. I don't have slides for you today. I'm sorry, I was late putting it together. The first is how to gain money wisely. The second is the dangers of money. And the third is how to spend money wisely. So how to gain money wisely. The dangers of money and how to spend money wisely.

First, how to gain money wisely. Of the 130 proverbs about money, 40% of them are teaching us how to gain money wisely. And almost all of them have the same simple formula. They almost always say, work hard, plan diligently, do not rip other people off. That's, that's the basic message of Proverbs work hard. Not of all Proverbs, but that's like the basic wisdom of how to gain money wisely. Work hard plan wisely. Do not rip people off. Proverbs chapter 10 verse four, it says this a slack hand causes poverty. But that hand of the diligence makes rich a slack hand causes poverty. But the hand of the diligent makes rich.

Chapter 12 verse 11, whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits, lacks sense. When I hear that I can't help but think about all the reels that are trying to tell me that passive income is the way to go. He who works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits, lacks sense. That's, that's just tell me find a good job one that will provide for yourself and your family. If you have one and work it hard. Don't try to find get rich quick schemes.

Chapter 13, verse 11, wealth gained hastily will dwindle. But whoever gathers little by little will increase it. So what's the wise way to, to gain in wealth? Work hard. Don't procrastinate. Make money little by little. Make a plan, plan for the future. You need a budget. You really do. Go to the web. I've saved thousands of dollars through the website. I promise you. It is like the right way to do this. It will help you. If you let me say this also, I've seen, I've been a pastor for a long time, so I've seen this a lot of times I see people who are like, hey, I'm really struggling in my budget. Can you and then who do they go ask for help when they're struggling with their budget? Rarely do they come to me? They're like, who's the richest person? I know I'm gonna go ask them how to, to make my budget.

That's a really bad idea. Rich people don't know how to make a budget because, well, some of them do, they really do know how to penny pinch, you know, you need to. Well, here's what you need to find. You need to find the, the smartest poor person that you can find that really knows how to stretch it. You know, like someone that's lived it out and like, has really made more with less. That's who you need to find and ask them. Hey, how do I, how do I manage my money? And then they'll look at it and things that rich people see. And they're like, oh, that's reasonable. Be like, no, it's not stop doing that. You know, they'll tell you how it really is anyways. That's, that's Fletcher's 21:11. That's just my opinion.

Proverbs 21 chapter five, the plans of the diligence lead surely to abundance. But everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty, make a plan. You gotta make a plan. If you don't have a budget, you gotta make a budget. That's, that's scripture for you basically make a plan is what it's saying.

The Proverbs also highlight major foolish ways to gain wealth. Two major foolish ways to gain gain wealth. The first is through scamming through stealing through robbing others. And you know, I don't even have to preach on this because if you're sitting in church on a Sunday morning, you know that's wrong. Ok? You're not, I would be willing to bet that we're not the type of folks for the most part who are stealing Christmas presents off of other people's front porch. But if we are, I hope you get one of those that Mark Rober turned into a glitter bomb. So that when you open it, it just glitter all over your house and fart spray and all of the stuff that goes with it.

My kids love those videos and we watch it, all the time. We've watched like four of them now and it's like, I'm always shocked at the people that do steal, they catch them on camera after they, they steal a package that's been engineered to, to throw glitter everywhere in their home and then spray fart spray everywhere and they have four cameras so they can see the people. And I'm always shocked by the people who actually steal the packages because it's not who you would think. Always. It's like a lot of times you see it and it's like parents with little kids. And I'm like, that's a bad example that you're setting for your kids. That's not how you should be doing this. But like I said, that's not the wise way. The scriptures talk about that a lot. I don't feel like I need to apply that a whole bunch to us. If you are doing that, I encourage you to repent and go back to the Lord. That's not a good idea.

The other foolish way to gain wealth is one that we're much more familiar with. And the, the Proverbs have a lot to say about it is debt. The Proverbs have almost as much to say about debt as it does scamming people. That is this thing that's so normalized in our world today. I get a credit card advertisement every other day in the mail. And look, I'm gonna be real honest with you. I have credit cards. I pay off my credit cards at the end of every month. If you follow my wife on Instagram, you know, we have credit cards because we like to take advantage of the extra bonus miles that you can get through credit cards and we play that game to where we can travel for less money. And, but it's not a good idea if you aren't paying off your credit cards every month.

The only way that's a good money is if you're gaming the system, but look, the banks usually win. They, they know like a casino, ok? They know if you put this out there for enough people, some people are gonna win like my wife and I, we know how to win the game but lots more people lose the banks know that they're gonna make money with credit cards and for a lot of us, we just don't even need to have them. We just need to cut them up because the credit card debt just isn't worth it.

Proverbs chapter 22 verse seven, the rich rules over the poor and the borrower is the slave of the lender, the rich rules over the poor and the borrower is the slave of the lender debt is this thing that gives you the illusion of wealth, but it really just makes you a slave. It gives you the illusion of wealth. But really just makes you a slave.

I could leave here today and go with all the credit cards that I have. I wouldn't even have to make a trip to the bank to get a loan. I have credit cards. I can go leave here today and live it up. I mean, guys, you got no idea, ok with money that I don't have, I do not have the money to do it, but I could go do almost anything I want to do after church today. But I would regret it because it would make me a slave to the lender for the rest of my life. They would eventually come and take all of my stuff and I would no longer ever have fun.

A mortgage, I wanna say this, not all debts are the same. I do understand that a mortgage far better than, than credit card debt. It's almost unavoidable for most of us in today's world to have a mortgage. If you're gonna buy a house, it's almost impossible to pay in cash it. But I will say this as far as the proverb and you know, mortgages didn't exist when the Proverbs were written. Ok? Like the world was different. Like I don't think that they were out there buying houses like we were. But debt is to be avoided if at all possible if you're in debt, especially credit card debt and there's different there's different levels of debt. I just encourage you get out of it as quick as you can because you do not want to be a slave to the lender, be faithful with what you have.

And here's really what it comes down to what Proverbs is teaching us gaining money wisely. It's like live within your means, live within your means. Make a budget. Watch a few Dave Dave Ramsey videos on youtube or something. If you don't know who that is, he'll yell at you a lot more than me about making a budget and sticking with it and getting out of debt. and some of us might need that. You might need to watch a few Dave Ramsey videos and hear that, but it's like if you can get out of debt and not be a slave to the lender that is wise with your money.

All right. So that's a few ways to foolishly or wisely gain money. But the Proverbs also highlight number two, the danger of more money, the danger of more money. I just want to put like this that when I think about money, I think about handling money a lot like handling plutonium. All right. Plutonium is the fuel that we use for the nuclear power plants. And with, I think it might be uranium. I'm not sure. Am I no nuclear engineers in the house? OK. I'm gonna say plutonium because it sounds cool. All right. plutonium. And the thing with plutonium is, it's not bad. It's a good thing. It has a lot of power to it. We can power so many homes throughout a region with plutonium. But if you handle it without the proper precautions and without the proper armor on, it will rot your insides out. You will be dead before you even realize it. You, you will die from the inside out.

And that is how money is. Money is morally neutral. Contrary to what many of people say the Bible does not say that money is the root of all evil. The Bible says the love of money is the roots of all kinds of evil. And that is true, but money itself is a moral neutral. But what the Bible teaches us about money is we have to be very careful because it is dangerous to our souls. And in much the same way that plutonium would be to us.

CS Lewis says this, one of the dangers of having a lot of money is that you may be quite satisfied with the kinds of happiness money can give and so fail to realize your need for God. If everything seems to come simply by signing checks, you may forget that you are at every moment, totally dependent on God. And so according to CS Lewis, money works like a spiritual anesthetic, anesthesia and whatever that word is, it, it's like spiritual anesthetic, anesthetic. I'm getting close anesthetic there we go. I'm not an anesthesiologist. but maybe the bank is the anesthesiologist. Anyways, money works as a spiritual anesthetic.

Having money will always numb your felt need for God. You won't realize your spiritual debt. You just won't realize your spiritual debt to the same level when you have material affluence. There's a reason why Jesus says it's easier for a rich man to go through the eye of a, for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to go into the kingdom of Heaven. It's because it's difficult to see your spiritual death when you have material affluence. And I had a pastor tell me this one time and I just thought it was really helpful. Because many times we like to put ourselves in that category of not having the spiritual affluence. But he just said, hey, glo globally speaking, if you chose what shoes to put on this morning, you're in the affluent category, which that's just helpful for some of us to be like, you know what? I still have some of that anesthetic running through my veins. Even if I don't feel it as much as maybe Elon Musk might over here.

This is what's at the heart of greed. OK. Greed is the absolute hardest sermon, hardest text, the topic, hardest topic to preach on and here's why no one thinks they're greedy. It just blinds us because it's that spiritual anesthetic that just numbs us. We don't see our greed. It like the first thing greed does is it blindfolds you and then it takes over your heart. You don't see greed sneak up on you. I can tell you this. I've had people confess to me over my almost 20 years of pastoring almost every sin in the book. Even some surprising ones sometimes. But greed is almost never something that someone has confessed to. Maybe once or twice over 20 years have I heard someone say, I'm really greedy. It just isn't the case.

Have you guys ever seen that TV show Hoarders? All right. A&E masterpiece hoarders. It's the show that tracks people who have, they actually have like a disclaimer before it saying like this is a mental disorder that people have this thing where they feel like they cannot let go of their things. They just have to hold on to it all. And so what they end up doing is they go into these houses and I mean, there's just piles of stuff on the floor this deep. The people aren't even, they can't even see their floor. They're walking around on their things and it's all trash just filled with trash. And what always strikes me about this TV show is that the people on the TV show do not even realize that they're do what they're doing. Almost always. They, they don't even realize how bad it is or that they're hoarding things at all.

They're blind to it and that is how greed works. It sneaks up on us. We think we're just being careful or responsible, but slowly we start clinging to more than we need and it consumes us just like those houses filled with stuff. Proverbs chapter one verse 19. Such are the ways of everyone who is greedy for unjust gain. It takes away the life of its possessors. We think about our things as th those are things that I have. But in the reality, when you have a greedy heart, your things have you, your things have you, you've been trapped. Money is dangerous.

Do you feel the grip of money on your soul? I do. This is a fight. This is a struggle. Here are the truths that I tell myself when I just feel like I can't hoard enough because that's how I am. Everything I own belongs to God, everything I own belongs to God. It's not really mine. Money is just this thing. It's just a thing. Can't take it with me. It's just a thing God loves me and he's always provided for me. Why do I doubt that he'll provide for me tomorrow? Why do I doubt that there will be enough? Look at the birds, that's what Jesus invites us to do. Look at the birds. No one's feeding them. Ok? Maybe some people are feeding them. There's some crazy pigeon ladies out there. Ok? But the Lord sees them and he takes care of them and aren't you of more value than they?

The way you use your money will actually free you from its grip, the way you use your money will actually free you from its crap. There's this quote that sticks with me. This is point number three, how to use money wisely. There's this po, this quote that sticks with me and it's actually stupid. Ok, this is the stupidest quote I'll give you. but it sticks with me for one reason or another and maybe you'll, you'll find it helpful. The, the key to using money wisely is to spend as much as you can save as much as you can and give as much as you can. Now that's stupid because it's like, what does that even mean?

But at the same time, it helps me realize like spending money is ok. That for me, that's like that was a revolution to be like, oh, I can spend money. And when you look at scripture, you see they're throwing feasts, they're having a good time. There's times when they spend money, there's people that own homes. Lydia had a church meeting in her home. We know that she's a wealthy woman in Philippi, but we also see people making plans. We see the ant celebrated as someone who collects for the winter. We see people giving all three of these ways are ways that we can reflect the glory of God, it's wise to do all of them.

But if you want to truly learn how to escape the grip of money on your soul, you're going to have to learn how to give it away. You're going to have to learn how to give it away. If you want to follow the teachings of Jesus. And the examples of the earliest Christians, I don't have to give you, I don't even have to tell you this very much. But obviously, the teachings of Jesus and the earliest Christians are those that tell us live more simply give more away, very simply. We see that happening all throughout Acts and in, in the teachings of Jesus, there's a ton of Proverbs about generosity.

One of my favorite is this one. Proverbs 11 verse 24. One gives freely yet grows all the richer. Another withholds what he should give and only suffers, want whoever brings blessing will be enriched, will be enriched and who one who waters will himself be watered. Now, we have to remember that the Proverbs aren't telling us. This is how it always is, but they're general truth. General truth statements for us that are saying this is often the way it works. This is often the way that the world works and what he's what the Proverbs are saying right here is that when we're generous, God provides for us and when we're stingy, we never feel like we have enough. When we're generous God provides for us. And when we're stingy, we never feel like we have enough.

As people who have experienced the generosity of God, Jesus Christ himself, who was rich yet became poor for us, who had all yet was born in a lowly manger who took on the debt that we could never afford all the spiritual debt that we owe. God. He took on and paid our payment. If he can be generous to us like that, there is no community on the earth who should be more generous than Christians. And historically, there is no community on earth that has been more generous than Christians. This is baked in to what it means to be a Christian.

I've experienced it on the, the night before my wedding, I went to bed. I woke up an envelope was I was poor when we got married. Ok. I was making like 10 grand a year working for a church. It was not enough. It was in Louisville, Kentucky. Our rent was 450 a month. Ok? For a little two bedroom house, cute with a yard. Good luck ever finding that again. But someone had slid $600 cash under my door. Maybe that doesn't sound like a lot to you. But to me, like I broke down in tears and they just wrote like from your comedian group on it and it has meant the world to me.

I think about another time when I was in seminary and I was a poor seminary student, as I said, and my, one of my pastors one day just showed up and he had a box and he said, hey, I got something for you and it was a box. This is such a seminary story. It was a box of Calvin's commentaries. OK. So we're talking about like 30 volumes of commentaries on the Bible. It cost him 100 bucks on Christian book distributor.com or something. But I was so overwhelmed with gratitude that someone would love me like that.

Over and over, I can tell you stories of people that have been generous with me because of what Christ has done for them. And so I wanna give you just before we leave, I wanna give you two examples of spiritual practices that you can put into place in your life that will teach you to be wise with your money. The first that I wanna challenge you with is to fast from spending just take a month. OK? If you see yourself in the grip of money, whatever. However, it is maybe you see yourself in the grip of money of saving and you need to go out there and spend a little bit on someone else or be generous in some way.

But I just, most of us is spending, that's gonna be the problem and some of us just detox, you know, there's a dopamine hit that happens when you buy stuff and your brain could use a detox and maybe you just take a month and be like, I'm not buying anything for myself. This month, the world will keep spending. I promise you if you don't buy anything for yourself in the next month. Buy food, please. Ok. Buy deodorant because we all need that. That's generosity. Ok? You can go ahead and move that in your generosity category, but maybe don't buy any clothes or furniture or coffee. If you, if you can afford that, you know, just buy the beans and take them home. Sometimes that fast will really help us.

And the second spiritual practice is the spiritual practice of generosity. And it is a spiritual practice and it's a theme in the Bible that we see. And if you're looking for a place to start, you have to prioritize giving to the kingdom of God giving to God through the local church. Proverbs chapter three verse nine says this honor the Lord with your wealth and the first fruits of all of your produce, then your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats will be bursting with wine.

And of course, there's exceptions to this. That's what Ecclesiastes and Job are about. That's why we're studying all together. But in general, he's saying, hey, honor the Lord with your first fruits and you'll actually have more than if you didn't. That's what he's teaching us. That is a principle that is true. Not always but often. What does he mean by first fruits? The first fruits were the literal first fruits that came in from the harvest and they were often in the best. Have you had that first? You know, we have blueberries here in, in New England. And when you go pick blueberries, tho those are the best blueberries. When the first ones you get off, you're like, I've never had blueberries like this before. And then nothing else all year compares to it. You know, you just can't have it like that or peaches, a nice ripe peach in the middle of the summer. You cannot find that in January. I don't care where you look.

And what he's saying is that you have to honor the Lord with your first fruits. That means you don't give out of your leftovers, you give your best. This is connected to the Old Testament principle of the tithe, which was where the people of God gave. At least 10%. Many scholars say it was actually probably more than that, that they would end up regularly giving to God to support the temple and priest.

And look, I'm gonna be real clear with this. Ok? As New covenant Christians, we're not bound by the tithe anymore. It's not, it's an Old Testament standard. Nowhere in the New Testament is the tithe taught, but instead we're encouraged to be generous. And in fact, the examples set in the New Testament are more radical than the tithe in the Old Testament. People are laying down everything that they have that I still think that the 10% tithe is a good standard for us much in the same way that the Sabbath is a good standard for us. We're no longer bound by the Sabbath either. But friends, you need a day off, you need to take a day off, you need to rest. God rested, we rest. It's part of how we we're built.

God is generous. So we are generous. And when we get to the ch church, it allows us to pull our money to push the mission of God forward in our city and around the world, we literally can do more by working together with our resource. So this is all, if all of this is abstract, let me just put something concrete, a very low bar for you. If you're not giving anything at the moment. Are you still trying to think about that? If you are a Christian, I don't think that there's any excuse for anyone to spend more on going out to drink coffee or alcohol than they would to give away to others. That's as low a bar as I can set. OK. That's a low bar. But I just think that's true that there's not an excuse, even if it's $5 you just gotta get something right.

You have to, you have to start there with being faithful. And look, we don't talk about money often as a church. Super, like how many of you guys have been here? Many of you for years. How many sermons have you heard on money? This is probably the first. Ok. I think I've taught on money one other time at city on a hill, Somerville in six years. This is not something that we regularly teach on, but it is a theme throughout Proverbs and it's so applicable to our life.

So I just want to share a little bit with you about our church budget. I value transparency, we value transparency. I want to let you know what's going on. We present a a a quarterly financial analysis to our members so that they know where we are. So we're not all just hiding it. And yearly we vote on a budget altogether so that all the members see that our annual budget right now is around $500,000 which includes rent for this building, rent for the community space, 10% given towards missions, many other operations fees, financial services, ministry experiences, veggie straws for the kids. That's a very small percentage of the 500. My salary and benefits, and five part time employees.

Currently our church just to let you know where we're at currently, our church is in a really strong financial spot. We have eight months of reserves in the bank, which is in a great place to be in Ok. That's, that's awesome. I'm so thankful for that. But for the year, we're only at 78% of what we had planned to take in for the, at this point in the year, which means we're behind, we're also behind in spending. Our expenses are only at 87%. So we're not doing terribly and we have the cash reserves. It's all ok.

But I share that with you because I want to say you don't give to the church just because they need it. You give because everything you have belongs to the Lord and your generosity is an act of worship. And it's really just a starting point. Our generosity does not end with the church as Christians. It's like the first step. But then after that, we just wanna become more and more generous. We want, we want to give to the poor to support the poor, support other organizations. We have big dreams here at the church. I I just wanna lay this out a little bit that we're in a financial strong place. But with where God might be taking us, we have big dreams that are gonna require resources.

There's 80,000 people in the city of Somerville, four square miles, 80,000 people. There might be 100 and 50 between the adults and the Children in here today. That's a very small percentage, ok? And so it would not be bold of me to say and there and there are other churches in Somerville. There's a few other churches that preach the gospel. Not a lot, the church going people, you know this, you know, other people in Somerville, there's just not a lot of church going people in Somerville and even less who go to like a solid Bible teaching church. And so if I don't think it would be too ambitious for me to say that in five years, we want to be double the size that we are right now. Three hundred, still a drop in the, in the bucket. But hey, we want to make a dent in our city. We want want to people to come to know Jesus. And it's really about us reaching our neighbors and helping them come to know Jesus and having the resources and the ministry infrastructure to support them in their walk because we have to disciple people after they come to know Jesus.

And so we want all of that to happen. And we also want to plant more churches in the area. We want to send out missionaries. We'd also this might be a pipe dream, but we'd love to buy a building one day. We want to own a space that we're in. I pray that this church would live beyond me. And one of the ways to ensure that a church would live beyond me. And the current leadership is that they own a building that they have a sense of permanence in the community, a sense of legitimacy for the community. And so that's part of the vision. We'd love to see that happen. One of these days, just imagine walking in and not requiring 40 volunteers to get everything set up on a Sunday morning. That's what we're doing right now. 40 people early every Sunday morning to make sure it all happens, which you could sign up to serve after the service if you'd like.

The best way to become a generous person is by experiencing the generosity of God. When Jesus becomes your treasure, money, no longer has a grip on your heart. All that money promises, Jesus actually gives security comfort, joy, hope all found in Christ.

One New Testament passage for you today. And then we'll get out of here. Second Corinthians chapter eight for you know, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich yet for your sake, he became poor so that you might by his poverty become rich. What riches of kindness he lavished on us? His blood was a payment. His life was the cost. We stood beneath a debt. We could never afford our sins though they are many. His mercy is more.

On the night that he was betrayed, Jesus pointing forward to that day that he would give his own life for us, instituted a sacred meal that we might remember his generosity toward us. He took the bread and he broke it and he said, this is my body broken for you. And he took the cup and he said this is my blood shed for you, do this in remembrance of me. And so every week we parti participate in a sacred meal.

And so today, when we come to the sacred meal, what I want you to remember is we're all struggling with money. Jesus can satisfy in a way that your money never will. And so as you receive the meal, you're being reminded that you are enough for me. God, you can satisfy for me. So would you stand as we pray.

Father, we thank you for your grace, your truth. God, we thank you for providing for us in every kind of way. And God as we come to your table, we pray that our hearts would be filled by you that we would not be looking to things that can only temporarily satisfy, but we would be looking to the bread that does not run dry. The the cup does that does not run dry that we'd be trusting and depending upon you and worshiping you with all of our hearts, lives and souls. And God, we, we ask all this in Christ's name, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher teaches from Proverbs about Biblical wisdom. Discussion points: Proverbs teaches us generally a better way to live rather than being correct about every situation, the fear of the Lord is more like reverent awe of him, the key to wisdom is to live in a state of continual worship of the Lord.

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Scripture Reader: [Proverbs 1:1-7] The Proverbs of Solomon son of David King of Israel. To know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice and equity, to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth. Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance. To understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and the riddles. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, fools despise wisdom and instruction.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: All right. Well, good morning. My name's Fletcher. It's a joy to have you all this morning. It's a joy to be here and to be able to be able to leave the church and, and to be with my family, which I consider all of you. over the past, I, I've been a pastor for almost 20 years now and over 12 years in the Boston area. And one of the things that I handle most often when people want to have a meeting with me is, is discernment. It happens all the time. with kind of the stage of life that many people are in, in our church and over the history of our church, Boston tends to be kind of a transitory place for a lot of different people. And so it tends to be a place where people come for school or they come for one of their first jobs or they're thinking about getting married. And so they're seeking counsel and discernment and so they might come and talk to their pastor about it. It's a very common task that I might have.

And it's true that we all are faced with difficult decisions all the time. Difficult decisions. What career or job should I pursue? Which school should I go to? Who's going to turn off the car alarm? Oh, ok. It did. What person should I marry or asked to go on a date? What city should I live in? Difficult decisions all the time? Some of them are big. And if you're like me, even the small ones can be difficult. Like, where are we going to go out to eat? like I could spend an hour just like researching it and then, like surveying people and asking them where they've enjoyed going to eat.

Wouldn't it be so much easier if you could just ask God these things and out of what we know is his infinite wisdom, he could just tell us the answers. Wouldn't life be so much easier if prayer worked, like a regular phone that you pick up and you call and you talk to God and he responds with what you should do, like talking to a very wise parent. And then that parent, you trust what they have to say and you do it wouldn't life be so much easier. That's both a yes and a no.

Here's how most people make decisions. They, they don't go to the Lord in prayer, even if they, even if they did have this guarantee that he would give them an answer. I'm not sure that people would go to the Lord in prayer because I'm not sure that we would trust what he has to say. I think that most people make decisions in this way. What option gives me more money, more fame, more success. What is better for me? What helps me to better pursue my dream of the good life. This is what I call the American decision matrix. OK? The American Dream decision matrix, we're going to, we're gonna copyright it right now. Where's my copyright attorney? Well, Emanuel, he's around here somewhere, you know, get my trademark in the American Dream decision matrix.

It's very simple. What gives me more money? What gives me more fame? What gives me more of what I want? And this is the way that most people make decisions. Now, even Christians have their own version of this and it's called the American Dream decision matrix with a little little prayer paprika sprinkled on top. OK. It's, it's I'm doing what makes me happiest. But you know, I'm gonna Sprinkle that in prayer. We're praying about it, but I'm gonna do what makes me happiest anyways.

And then you look at the early church and what is happening in the early church is the farthest thing from the American dream decision matrix that you can find anywhere you see people selling their homes and giving the proceeds to the apostles laying it at their feet saying use it for the kingdom. It's not mine. I want God to have it all. You see people going from city to city and, and risking imprisonment because they have good news to share with people. You see people making drastic decisions with their lives.

That would not make sense from a worldly. If you take a step back from an American Dream decision matrix, standpoint does not make sense to make the decisions that they are making in the early church, but yet something is motivating them to make different decisions than what we normally would make. Now some of you, you know, let's give you a little bit more than the, the, the prayer paprika, ok. Maybe you, you go a step beyond that.

There's different ways to make decisions. How do Christians normally do this? There's the old I'm gonna open my Bible to the random page and point at it and see what I get from that. Has anybody ever tried that one. Ok. We've got a few hands. That's right. Sometimes it's a miracle. I would rather you do that than nothing because sometimes that actually works. And you're like, oh, you don't know what to do with it. It's like it actually worked. God did something. But usually for me, I turn to Ezekiel and read something that I still don't understand and then I don't know what to do with it. I'm just lost. You know, it, it's out of context, it doesn't make sense. It, that's not usually the best way to do it.

And then other, I, I want you to imagine with me this, this is also a view that many of us hold a as Christians. When we make decisions, we imagine ourselves as we're walking through a dark and horrifying forest, we're walking through the forest on a narrow path. And if we take one step off that path or what we perceive to be one step off that path, all of a sudden, we're completely lost. And all we want to know is how do we get back on the path? How do we get back on the path? But this also is a bit outside of the way that the Bible talks about decisions because in the Bible, it seems like people have real choices and it's not just that God has a one singular path for you to go and you, if you get off for a second, you, you don't know where to go.

It's, there's a lot of different things you can do with your life and he gives us real choices and yes, you can step away from God's will. And there's different ways of pursuing sin, obviously off the path. But sometimes there's just multiple paths and it's not like one is ordained specifically for you. You have real decisions that you have to make and how do we make those decisions? That is the question and that is where we are helped by the Proverbs.

I think Proverbs is the book of all the books that teaches us how we find wisdom to make decisions in our lives. We're going through a series on the wisdom literature at the moment and the wisdom literature. When we talk about the wisdom of literature, we always are talking about Job Ecclesiastes and Proverbs. And then we're going to put a few of the Psalms in there, there's Wisdom Psalms and then no one's really sure what to do with Song of Solomon. So we're gonna put that in there also and we'll be covering the Song of Solomon in a couple of weeks. October 13th, you know, mark your calendar, that type of thing. Song of Solomon is about sex, by the way, in case you're wondering why you're marking your calendar for that one. Now, everybody just feels awkward including me.

But as we go through the series on the wisdom literature, what we see is that the wisdom literature gives us this vision for Life with God. We're calling the series Life Reimagined and the wisdom literature teaches us about the good life and how do we get the good life. So let's jump into Proverbs and figure out what Proverbs is all about. We've already covered job and, and Ecclesiastes and as we go, I'm gonna show you how they all work together because really, you gotta look at the wisdom, literature as a whole. How do they work together?

So, Proverbs chapter one, verse one, it's always a good place to start. When you're reading a book of the Bible. It starts with this, the Proverbs of Solomon son of David king of Israel. He here we learn the author of the of Proverbs is King Solomon. And we know from the history book. First Kings chapter three, the Solomon was given more wisdom by God than any man before or after him. So literally the wisest man who ever walked the face of the earth, he made a lot of mistakes, but yet he still was given a gift of wisdom, verse two, to know wisdom and instruction and to understand words of insight.

This is the, this is the preamble to the entire book. So, so listen carefully to this. If you don't catch anything else, we gotta catch this. To know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction. And wise dealing and righteousness, justice and equity, to give prudence to the simple knowledge and discretion to the youth. Let the wise hear an increase in learning and the one who understands obtain guidance, to understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles. So what is he saying? He's saying, hey, this book is here for you to gain wisdom. This book is here for you to figure out how to live life. The best kind of way this book is here for you to learn the good life and how do you live the good life. It's all about this idea of wisdom.

Now, when we think about wisdom, what we normally think about is increasing in knowledge. So in that case, Boston would have a, a cultural idol of wisdom. We are a, a place where the higher institutions reign. Supreme Harvard and MIT Boston College. Boston University Northeastern. I mean, all you know, 300 colleges, what however many there are 300,000 college students in the area. We feel it every September when the traffic resumes. But wisdom is this huge thing that we normally think about as knowledge. But wisdom is more than knowledge when you think about it from a biblical perspective, because he says to know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction and wise dealing it, it, it seems like it's more than just understanding. It's more than just knowledge.

In fact, the author of the, the Bible project, which is this great, like, kind of, they make YouTube videos and podcasts. He, and it's actually like really great scholarship. I would encourage you to watch the Bible project's videos on almost anything but the one on Proverbs, he explains it very well. Tim Mackey from, from Bible project, he tells us that the word for wisdom translated in Hebrew, it's translated from Hebrew. It's chokmah, OK. Chokmah. And if you wanna say it, you can say it with me, but you gotta get a little bit of the guttural with the ch. So chokmah, oh there, I heard a lot of guttural there. Thank you.

Tim Mackey from the Bible project. He calls it chokmah. And he says this, what Proverbs teaches us about wisdom or chokmah is that there is an invisible creative force in the universe that can guide people in the way they should live. It's actually woven into the fabric of how the world works. So anytime someone makes a good decision, they're working with God and anytime someone makes a bad decision, they're working against God's wisdom. And so the way that this idea of chokmah works is that it's like a universal cause effect pattern. We see it all over the world. It's like a, a universal moral order that there is to the world. If you live rightly, if you live justly, you have chokmah and if you live against from that you're living in your own wisdom and you're, you're living foolishly on the other side.

Chokmah has actually a much wider semantic range than that in the Hebrew. It can also just refer to someone who's like, really good at their craft. So you might say Lebron James has chokmah in basketball. All right. Or someone who's very good at wood carving would have chokmah in that skill. Now, there's probably ways that you can do it while you're cheating. If you cheat at your, at your skill, it doesn't mean that you have chokmah, you're living foolishly in that way. But it's, it's this wide word that basically is referring to the union universal cause and effect pattern that happens in the universe, the way that life normally works.

And so what we see in the book of Proverbs, I just wanna give you an overview of it because I'm probably not gonna teach a sermon like this again in a long time where I'm just overview in the entire book. The first nine chapters of Proverbs is wisdom that you see passed from a father to a son. What a special relationship where he says here, my son and then he teaches him about wisdom and oftentimes wisdom is personified and as lady wisdom as it goes through there. And after the first nine chapters, what the author of Proverbs Solomon does is he takes this idea of wisdom that he's been teaching about for nine chapters and he just applies it to different situations with catchy little phrases.

All right. So let me give you a few examples of some proverbs from the scriptures. Proverbs 20 verse five, the purpose in a man's heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out. That's, that's a great proverb, isn't it the purpose in a man's heart? You had these, you can't just like read it. You have to like really kind of think about it. The purpose in a man's heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out which means that we do things and we often don't even realize the purpose for which we do them. But it's deeply embedded in us in the well of who we are. And it takes a man or a person of understanding to draw out the purposes for which we do the things that we do. It's a very wise saying.

Another one that we think about often in Proverbs 21:5, the plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance. But everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty, we know this to be generally true, right? Generally true. We know that those who are diligent lead to abundance and those who are hasty, they end up living in poverty. And that is like just kind of a truism that we know. But the problem with the Proverbs is when we take these things to say that this is how it always works every single time. Well, this might be a general truth. If you're not careful, you're going to start blaming people for their own poverty and that it doesn't work that way because there's always exceptions to the general rules of the way that the world works.

And that's why we studied the wisdom literature altogether because while Proverbs teaches us the general moral order of the universe, what Ecclesiastes does is he says, wait a second, it doesn't always work that way. And in fact, when you look at it, you can do good things and bad things might happen to you or you could live a good life and have good things. But then it all just feels meaningless at the end of it. So you have to read Ecclesiastes as you read Proverbs and also you have to read Job because Job says you can do everything right and lose it all and it be no fault of your own. And what, what do you do in that situation? So what Job and Ecclesiastes do, what we've been doing for the past couple of weeks is looking at the exceptions to the rule. I think it's important for us these days to look at the exceptions because we need to have this nuance of how the world works.

But now we're looking at just the general moral order of the world which is, if you live justly, if you live rightly good will happen for you. If you live selfishly, if you live foolishly, that will happen to you. And that is generally true. Not always but generally true. So what Proverbs does is teaches us to play Moneyball with our lives. Ok. Some of you are not familiar with Moneyball. There was a 2011 movie with Brad Pitt in it, called Moneyball. And it's, it was about a book that was written like in 2004. and Moneyball is this idea that you can take a sports team that is not as good, generally speaking as other sports teams, but you can still win even with a, a less, less money devoted to the team. So, for example, the movie is about the 2002 Oakland athletics, the Oakland A's and on the A's, they didn't have as much money as the Yankees. This is back when the Yankees were dominating baseball. Boo Yankees. Ok. we don't need to talk about them much more.

But the Oakland A's wanted to compete, they were losing all of their best players and so they wanted to put together a team that still works. And so the general manager of the A's had this idea that if you don't look at the conventional, scouting material, normally scouts just look at home runs and hits and that sort of thing. But instead if you look at things like base percentage and slugging percentage and some of this goes over my head because I'm not really a baseball guy. then you can put together a team for far cheaper than what you could if you just went after all the stars. And so what they said is look, if you get these guys that have high slugging percentages, high on base percentages and put them on a team, no one's gonna think you're gonna be very good, but you're gonna win more games than you're not.

And so what, what it's teaching us is this is how you win, you're not gonna win every game, but this is how you win most of the games. And that's kind of how Proverbs is. If you live by Proverbs, you're not gonna win every game, but you're gonna win some games. In fact, at the end of the movie, they say that the owner of the Boss Red Sox John Henry tried to recruit the general manager for the A's and the general manager said, no thanks. I'm not coming, but instead he just stole his method and found another general manager. And so they won the 2004 World Series and no one cares. Wow. Here we are in Somerville. You're supposed to be like World Series. No, no. Yeah. All right. People from everywhere, any Bostonians. Ok. A few, you gotta, you know, you gotta how about this? They mentioned Kevin Youkilis. You, there were a few, ok, when you say Youkilis, you go, you, ok, let's try it again. They, they mentioned Kevin Youkilis. Ok, that was bad. But, but we'll continue anyway, they mentioned him, they call him the Greek god of walks in the movie. So I thought that was good. He's a, he's a Boston legend. Anyway, similar to the Proverbs.

Similarly, if you live by the Proverbs, it's like playing money ball with your life. It's not that everything goes perfectly for you. But in general, it's a better way to live. Not, it doesn't teach you how to win every game, but on average, you're gonna do better. So, the, the secret to living by the Proverbs is this though, I don't want you to miss this. This is when I normally read the Proverbs. This is what I wanna do. I read the Proverbs and I'm like, man, I just wanna memorize like all of these so I can just pull them out in the right situation and one, I'm gonna sound really cool because I'm gonna be able to say this. Proverb my friends can be like, wow, you're really wise. And it's like, no, it's actually the Bible. And then I, I look pretentious and wise, but that's not the secret to living by Proverbs.

The secret to living by Proverbs is to find the thread that goes through all the Proverbs, it's not to memorize everyone, but it's to find the foundation that everyone is built upon. The. Proverbs are built upon a foundation and once you master the foundation, it's like master it all. Because if you get this thread, you get what's behind all the Proverbs and then you can live your life wisely. And what is the thread? What is the secret to it? They tell you right here in the next verse.

Proverbs chapter one verse seven, right here in the beginning, it says this, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, fools, despise wisdom and instruction. So the thread is this idea of the fear of the Lord. Let's look at Proverbs chapter two and see it emphasized again there my son. If you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to wit understanding. Yes. If you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.

So if you want to learn the Proverbs, all you really have to learn is this idea of the fear of the Lord. Now, the fear of the Lord, although it might be the guiding principle of the Proverbs is not necessarily something that I am drawn to because I'm not the type of guy that likes being afraid. I don't, I'm not the scary movie guy. I'm the don't turn on your TV. In the month of October guy. I, one time I saw a pizza commercial that was Halloween themed, didn't sleep for a week. Ok. It just knocked me out. I'm not the type of guy that enjoys being afraid, but yet the scriptures talk about the fear of the Lord as this good thing. Isaiah chapter 11 verse three, it says, and his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not be, he shall not judge by what his eye see or decide disputes by what his ears hear.

So how do you find wisdom? How do you judge what, what by what your eye? How do you find better wisdom than what your eyes can see or decide disputes better than what your ears can hear. But to delight in the Lord, the fear of the Lord to delight in the fear of the Lord fear in the, in the Bible. When it's talking about the fear of the Lord, we it's not like the scary kind of fear. It's more of this respect, ah reverent view of who got it. It's like that sacred ground. You ever walk into a situation? You just, you, you get the goose bumps or you, you just feel like oh what I'm stepping in is, is holy. That's the fear of the Lord and a secret to understanding the Proverbs and living wisely is to live in that always to live in this understanding of who God is and who you are in respect to Him.

Charles Spurgeon, put it this way, the more we fear the Lord, the more we love Him until this becomes to us, the true fear of God, to love Him with all our heart and mind and soul and strength. The fear of the Lord is to have an accurate view of who he is with an understanding of who I am at the same time. And so as we fear, the Lord is to come close to the Lord and to drink deeply of his grace and truth for you. Basically, when we talk about fear of the Lord, what we're talking about is love for the Lord, but in an immense kind of way, not just a stereotypical surface level love, but it's like a, a deep respect and honor and trust in who the Lord is.

The Proverbs teach us that this is the key to wisdom, to fear the Lord, to enjoy God, to follow after the Lord with all your heart. I don't want to move past this too hastily. I I actually send my sermons to Alexis our ministry associate every week to read over and she usually corrects my grammar and helps me not sound like a dad at certain times. But often has really thoughtful feedback. She was like hey, don't move past this too quick because in just a minute, I'm gonna get to like five ways to make better decisions in your life. And she and that everybody wants the five ways, you know, give me the five steps to make better decisions. I'll give that to you in just a minute. But this is really the key that unlocks all of them.

Wisdom is not a temporary gift from the Lord. Wisdom is a lifestyle. Wisdom is not a decision. It is a trajectory that you live in your life. You walk in wisdom, you don't just turn it on. You know, in our modern society, we're used to running water. We walk over to the faucet, we turn on the faucet, there's water, that's not the way wisdom works. It's more like an ancient society where you have to live next to the stream. You have to live next to the well and draw regularly from the well. You can't just go to the faucet and turn it on when you want. You can't live the way you want to live running out in the wilderness and then show up and turn the running water on. That's not the way wisdom works to get wisdom is to walk with the Lord. The key to wisdom is to live in a state of continual worship of the Lord.

Proverbs chapter three says this trust in the Lord with all of your heart and do not lean on your own understanding in all your ways, acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths. So how do you find wisdom? Well, you can't just go to him in your time of need, but you have to trust in the Lord with all of your heart, do not lean on your own understanding ever in all your ways, acknowledge him and then he will make straight your paths. It's like you have to walk in this thing. You can't just turn it on and turn it back off again. When you, when you're tired of it, there's a reason why this is it. It's, it's because to walk in a way that's not in the fear of the Lord is to be wise in your own eyes.

And so that's what the Proverbs tell us over and over again. That the opposite of walking in the fear of the Lord is being wise in your own eyes, which is foolishness. Proverbs chapter three verse seven, be not wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord and turn away from evil. I had a great uncle who was wise in his own eyes. He told us that oil did not go bad. He was convinced that you did not have to change the oil in your car that it was all just a conspiracy from the oil manufacturers and you did not need to change it. After about three or four vehicles, he changed his mind. How many of us have friends who have made decisions that they thought were wise decisions, but they were wise only in their own eyes. We all know people like that, right? We all know people that have made foolish decisions. And the only person that is wise to is themselves, how many people have excused sin in their lives and lived. However they want to live ignoring the biblical commandments simply because they did not want to listen to the wisdom of God. They wanted to live wisely in their own eyes and they did not want to fear the Lord.

All that to say, how do we make the decisions? Ok. Here's the five things, all right, five ways to honor the Lord with your decisions, to honor God with your decisions. And remember the key to all of this is the fear of the Lord. So if you get nothing else, it's like you gotta walk in and like reverent worship of the Lord at all times. That is like the key to making wise decisions is to be a wise person. The key to being a wise person is to like walk near the Lord. That's, that's where it's at. But here are five ways and things that we can do to facilitate that in our lives. The first is search the scripture, search the scripture. Oh, they gave them all to you. OK? Well, yeah, that's fine. Well, you got them. I'm trying slides OK. I've never used slides before. I'm using them. Now, I need to give more instructions when, when.

So search the scripture. Many of our decisions have clear biblical commandments. And if you're trying to decide whether or not to leave your, leave your family and run off to Aruba with a coworker and have an affair that as clearly walking in the wisdom of your own eyes, that is not something that would be honoring to the Lord. Sometimes we have to be reminded that we just need to search the scriptures and find clear biblical prescription for what is right and wrong. That honestly is like 95% of this, the other 5% is where it takes like a little bit more skill to make the decisions with our lives.

The second one, I think this one's great is to consider the kingdom to live wisely means that you're able to see outside of what's best for you alone and you're able to consider what's best for other people. So for example, in chapter one and verse three, it says to receive instruction and wise dealing and righteousness, justice, and equity. Now, is that talking about righteousness, justice, and equity for me or for others? So wisdom is to think about others, what's righteous and just and equitable for others. Think about the effects of the kingdom. Think about how this is going to affect those who are closest to me, not just me and my family. Although that is a good thing to consider also is your own family. Oftentimes we make decisions just for ourselves. But then how's this going to affect my church? How is this going to affect the Kingdom of God? Where can I live to make a pur to live with purpose and meaning where, where is all of that going to matter? So you consider the kingdom.

And third, you seek counsel as, as Christian community. We believe that other people often have better perspective on our issues than we do. And sometimes we like to pick and choose our counselors based upon the advice we'd like to hear. You know, you do that. I do too. Proverbs chapter 11 verse 14, it says where there is no guidance of people falls, but in an abundance of counselors, there is safety. Where can we find an abundance of counselors for that fear. The Lord also, maybe our church family, our community groups, maybe you can just open up about something I'm gonna give you some secret words here. OK? These are things that you probably do need to write down because I've heard them so rarely. But they're like the right thing to say. If you are trying to make a decision with your life, you need to go to a friend and ask, what do you think I should do? Isn't that amazing? She's like, what do you think? Don't just tell them everything, tell them everything and then say, what do you think? Or here's another one. What do you see about my decision making that? I don't see, what do you see that? I don't see now those questions require humility and a lot it requires you to be vulnerable. But those are such good questions for us to truly seek counsel. We don't oftentimes we don't really truly want to seek counsel. We just want to feel affirmed in our decisions. But if you want to truly seek counsel, those are good questions for you.

Four, so simple, pray and listen for the Lord. It should be a given. We're supposed to pray about our decisions. But a again, like I said, how often do we use the prayer paprika? You know, like I'm just gonna throw a little bit on that, say I prayed about it and then live my life as if I didn't, I cannot begin to tell you how many things that I have sat down to pray about and by the and not really having any clue what I should do. And just by the end of the prayer, it's not like I heard an audible voice, but I just feel really sure of a certain direction. Like I just feel very confident that I should do this. And it's usually those things that God gives us a choice on or it's like those things that like I just wouldn't have seen that if I had not taken it to the Lord and this happens all the time. This is like a weekly thing for me. I hope that it is for you also, it, it, it's a regular, a regular prayer, regular seeking of the Lord.

And the last one I want you to consider is to potentially fast. Now, not many of us are experts at the practice of fasting, but fasting does appear to be the spiritual discipline in the scriptures given to people who are at a crossroads moment in their life. We often times think about fasting like a prayer strike like a like a hunger strike. But in prayer to God. So like God, I want this, I'm not going to eat until you give it to me. All right. So it's a hunger strike, but that's not fair at all. I love the way that Dallas Willard talks about fasting. And he says, fasting is an opportunity to let your body catch up with your soul. Fasting is an opportunity to let your body catch up with your soul. And so when your soul is hungry and looking for direction, maybe you turn to fasting and allow your body to catch up.

Now. Fasting has other purposes in the scripture. You see people fasting when they're mourning. But really those are the two primary things is when they're at a crossroads moment or when they're in mourning. There's other reasons to fast. I I applaud fasting. It's a good thing. But this is really a time when you need to consider it when you're trying to find direction. And, you know, if you've never fasted before, I can give you some resources. I would love to do that as your pastor. but, you know, start small, might be a word of wisdom to you. Start with a meal, don't stay there, do that like a couple of times and then maybe do a whole day that that's usually doable by most people. We had an intern here one time who like decided to do a 20 day fast. And he was intense and I, but you know what happened during that time is like he met his wife during his fast. And after like eight days, I was like, bro, you've got to eat and he, he agreed. And, and he did.

So when we're thinking about wisdom and we look at the New Testament, we find that wisdom is personified as Jesus Christ first Corinthians chapter one verse 30 says, and because of him, you are in Christ, Jesus who became to us, wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption. So Jesus is the true wisdom of God incarnate on earth. And when we see Jesus, we learn what it means to live your life, always in the fear of the Lord Jesus was wisdom. And so therefore, he would be the true and better Solomon who truly understood wisdom. But yet did not move into wisdom of his own eyes, but always live for others and justice and equity and righteousness.

And he teaches us that he is the way the truth and the life and look, I know how cliche this is about to sound. Ok. And how trite and I tried to get away from it and I just can't, but it's just this, wherever you're at, whatever decisions you're facing. I do not know, but I do know that the mo - I feel like I'm 20 years older than I am with this. But what I do know this and this is true, there is no bigger decision and more important one than the decision to follow Jesus Christ as your Lord and say that is the decision that we all must make. And if you want to make wise decisions, that is the decision that you first have to do. You have first have to step into. If we follow him, he might take us to some crazy places. We might make some decisions that we don't make. That, that don't make sense to the rest of the world. And I see you doing that church, I see you doing that. I see you making decisions that would not make sense to the rest of the world. And it's inspiring and encouraging to me to live in a community like that.

And I know that some of you are standing at a crossroads right now. And maybe you feel alone or confused but know thus, you don't have to face the law that Jesus wants to be near to you, that he offers you wisdom, hope and guidance. All you have to do is to go to him.

And one of the ways that we go to him every week is we come to a sacred meal and we're reminded of what he has done for us. And so every week, we participate in a communion meal, a Eucharist meal, lords supper, whatever you wanna call it, where we celebrate the night that he was betrayed. When Jesus took a loaf of bread and he tore it. And he said, this is my body broken for you. And he took a cup and he said, this is my blood shed for you. Do this in remembrance of me.

And as we remember that his body was broken and his blood was shed, we're, we're being reminded that we need to go to him, that we need him for every moment of every day and that he desi desires to be near to us. So if you're a Christian with us today, we encourage you over the next song to come and receive the communion meal with us. With that being said, would you stand as we prepare our hearts to receive this meal and to come to the Lord.

Father as we, as we process our lives in light of your word, we pray that you would teach us the fear of the Lord. We pray that you would make yourself very tangibly present to us so that we might walk in wisdom in awe of who you are, that we might live our lives in the stream of wisdom that we don't just try to turn it on when we need something, but that we will diligently seek you with all of our being and know you and be near to you. Father, we pray for those who are at a crossroads moment that you would give them wisdom and discernment, help them to make good choices. But God also we just thank you for those who are living their lives in light of Christ and following him to crazy places. So Jesus, would you continue to guide us and unite us with those crazy decisions to follow you. In Christ's name, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Job, discussing God’s response to Job’s suffering. Discussion points: Our faith can survive even when suffering feels senseless, the retribution principle holds that God gives good people good things and gives bad people bad things in life, our perspective is too limited to understand all suffering in the world, we can hope and trust in Christ despite our suffering knowing that he is always with us.

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Scripture reader: [Job 38:1-11] Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Dress for action like a man, I will question you and you make it known to me. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? Where were its bases sunk or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb, when I made clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors and said, thus far shall you come and no farther? And here shall your proud waves be stayed.

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: All right, we're going through a series on the Wisdom Literature and today we're covering the entire book of Job. So we're doing a survey of the wisdom literature, wisdom literature is best studied when you study them all together. And so what we're doing is trying to give you a holistic picture of what's happening in these books. So they don't feel so creepy or intimidating or difficult, but there's something that you can actually appreciate and enjoy and see is life giving to you as you read them.

With Job, we have this, this wonderful book that explores suffering and we're, we're going to explore it deeply this morning. I'm really looking forward to this. Sociologists tell us that no culture in the history of the world has been less prepared for suffering. The modern western society as modern western people, we are unprepared to deal with pain and suffering. There's basically two different ways that most people deal with pain and suffering in their lives. The first way is a religious way and the second way is an irreligious way, a religious way or an irreligious way, the irreligious way.

Let me explain that one first. It believes that this world is all that there is that the material world, the things that you see in front of yourself that you live with and, and that, you know, and that you can see and touch and savor is all that this world is. And if that's true, then there's no need for God. There's no need for religion and suffering is a mere inconvenience. It is a mere bump on the road toward you accumulating more and more things or more and more people or however you want to say it, suffering plays no meaningful part in life. It is just an interruption to your story. And if this is true about the world, then the way that we see suffering has to be, I will avoid that at all costs, all forms of suffering, I want no part of. And so I'm going to try to find whatever I can find to numb my soul, to numb my mind, to run away from suffering.

Now, on the other side of things, that's kind of the irreligious side. The religious side of things sees all suffering as punishment from God in one way or another. This is a, a way that they believe. They try to explain the religious approach on, on suffering, explains pain and suffering through what we might call the retribution principle. The retribution principle says I do bad things. God gives me bad things. I do good things. God gives me good things. If I'm suffering, it's because I did something bad and God is punishing me. The funny thing is that you don't have to be particularly religious to have a religious standpoint on suffering. I can't tell you how many secular neighbors, people that don't believe in. God will say something to me. Like what have I done for the universe? Quote unquote, they've just replaced God with the universe. The universe is trying to get me, I've done something, the universe is trying to pay me back whatever that means.

And I think that this is for a reason, I think that the human heart is hungry for meaning. And so when people who don't believe in God experience suffering, they go looking for meaning and they have to find meaning somewhere. And so they go to this religious approach to suffering. Now, the Bible and, and particularly the Book of Job, but the Bible as a whole teaches us a robust, a robust theology of suffering and what the Bible says. And you guessed it is that neither of these are correct, that both of them are very, very wrong. They're both overly simplistic. That's the problem is that they're both overly simplistic.

So today we're diving into this Book of Job and let me tell you something, Job is just this wonderful, wonderful piece of literature for us. And as we look at the book of Job, what I want you to realize is that God's people have been going to this book to this piece of literature for over 2000 years to find meaning and their meaningless suffering. They've been coming here to consider God's purposes in suffering for thousands of years. It's an intentionally long book. It's not short, there's a lot of chapters. It's meant you're meant to sit with it. You're not meant to have quick answers from this book. It is a lozenge, not a pill. It is something you're meant to wrestle with just by the nature of how it is written.

And so this is a book that has brought great meaning and purpose for so many millions of people and it can for you as well. Before we start, I want to limit the scope of, of what we're gonna be able to do. As I said, I'm covering the entire book of Job and one sermon. Ok. And it, I'm gonna try for it to not be the longest sermon you've ever heard. The, the book. If I read the book right now, if I started right now, I wouldn't be done before lunch, I'll just put it that way. OK. We're, it would take a little while just to read the whole thing. But I'm going to try to summarize it for you. And I just want to give you a few of a few limitations for what I can do.

First. Let me, let me, let, let me put a limitation on me being able to answer all the questions about Job. I cannot answer all your questions about Job here. I wish I could, I wish I could go into the Satan. I wish I, and not literally but figuratively, I wish I could explain who the Satan is and what's going on in the Heavenly Council and everything that goes with that. I wish I could dive deeply into these characters at the end of the book that are known as Behemoth and Leviathan. And so if you have questions about some of these things. I am not an expert, but I'm willing to hear your questions and to try to help you to think about Job more holistically. So after the service right over here, it's gotta be kind of quick today because another church we can be Yeah. Anyway, there's another church coming in here later on today. That, that's gonna be worshiping. So we're going to do a quick Q and A over here and that will just help us to have more conversations after that is something we walk through with many of our questions, it can take time.

But so first, I'm not gonna be able to answer all your questions about Job. Second Job does not answer all of your questions about suffering. Job does not answer all of your questions about suffering. I wish that Job gave us the answers to some of these really difficult questions that we have. Like, why do bad things happen to good people? I wish the Job told us how a good God could exist when there's so much evil in the world. But this is not why Job was written. Now, I think that the Bible does help us with those things. I think that there are good answers to be found in the Bible on those questions. And I'm so I'm willing to, to dive into them a little bit during the Q and A and we can talk about that and walk through those things, but that's not what this book is about. And so I wanna stick to what Job is about.

What question does Job explain? What does it answer? This is what Job teaches us that your faith can survive when suffering feels senseless, your faith can survive when suffering feels senseless. What do you do as a Christian? When the retribution principle just isn't working when it just doesn't seem to be working the way that it's meant to the way that it feels just and right. What do you do as a Christian in those situations? That's what Job is answering. So let's dive in. OK. Verse one chapter one. If you wanna open your Bibles, you can, we're gonna throw some, some of the, the scriptures up to on the screen for you.

Also, I just want to start with the very first sentence because I, I think it frames where we're at as we study Job and we need to go through the, some of these things. Verse one, there was a man in the land of UZ. Everybody say Uz. Bless you. That wasn't a sneeze. I don't know why I said that. It was just, it's just a funny uh whose name was Job and that man was blameless and upright one who feared God and turned away from evil. All right. So where is us? No one knows seriously. Like no one's actually 100% sure where Uz was what we know about Uz is that it was far away from Israel. In fact, Israel is not mentioned one time in this entire book, no mention of Israel. And what we do know about this, it says to the east of Israel. And so oftentimes if something felt foreign to Israel, what's to the west of Israel is the Mediterranean Sea? Ok. So it's got to be to the east, it's to the east. So all of this stuff is to the east if it feels foreign to them.

And when was this book written? What, what do, what do we, who is the author? These are things, we just don't know, we don't know who wrote Job. We don't know when Job was written. Job quite possibly could be the oldest book in the entire Bible. It could, it could have been written before. Everything else. Scholars just aren't 100% sure when it was written. They aren't sure who it was written by, but it has been accepted as God's Word for millennia. Now. We have a lot of other questions that, that come to this, I mean, Job is certainly set in a time that is similar to the patriarchs. So maybe Job occurs around the same time as Abraham. We're not sure exactly when it's set, but it's way before it's before Noah, it's before Moses, it's before all of that. It's like if it was in, if the Bible is in chronological order, Job would appear somewhere around Genesis, four or five, something like that. It would be like really early. Oh, before Noah, what am I talking about? Abraham was between Noah and, and Moses in case any Bible scholars are out there.

So it, it probably in between those two, is when Job occurred but it could have been in, in a variety of different places. We really don't know. We're not given a lot of the information on, on when and where this is. in fact, it almost sounds like it starts with in a land far away, a long, long time ago. That's almost how Job starts and maybe the ancient ears it did here this way. And so when you start a book and it says in a far away land long, long time ago, what does it make you think of a fairy tale? Right? But Job Job is no fairy tale.

It's intentionally placed here, but we do ask ourselves was Job a real person. OK, was Job if it starts like this was Job a real person. And let me put it this way. I, I don't want to get in trouble with my seminary professors. I'm still intimidated by them. And so I'm going to say, I think so, but I will say I'm less sure that Job was a real person than I am of a lot of different people. Don't get me wrong. I think that James quotes Job, he, he mentions Job as if he was a real person. And so I think the tendency is to believe that Job was a real person. But if he wasn't like, I don't think it would change the way that I receive what's in this book. I think the truths are, are timeless in that way and don't get me wrong. I believe in a literal Adam and Eve that they were real people. I believe in the literal Abraham, definitely a literal Jesus literally risen from the dead, literally sitting on the right hand of God in the throne room to this day. But a literal Job. I'm not sure, you know, that's like the one I'm like, maybe, maybe not. And I'm, and it's OK, I can just say it's OK for me to not to know.

And that's mainly another reason why this is, is because of the genre, the genre of what Job is Job is this highly lyrical epic? It's like this long poem. It's like 42 chapters of poetry, really deep, profound poetry. It is not a simple story. There's so many vocabulary words that are found only here in Job, not in English, but in the, when you read the Hebrew, there's Hebrew words that appear in Job and then do not appear anywhere else in all the scriptures or all of Ancient Hebrew that we still have today. And so as scholars are trying to translate this thing. They're having a really difficult time because they're like, I'm not 100% sure what this word means because I've never seen it before. Nor does it exist anywhere else. The vocabulary is fancy. It's like drinking its coffee with this pinky out. We, we do not know all the words that are in Job. It is very poetic. It's exalted poetry even. It's not, it's not blue collar poetry. OK? This is like this is the the cream of the crop poetry that we have before us.

This first verse says that Job was blameless. Now, I just want to mention before we continue after this first, I just want to cover this also that being blameless does not mean guiltless. OK? When we read this, we're oftentimes thinking, well, we know that no one is without sin and so Job he must have sin. And I think that's probably true, but that's not the point that the author is trying to make what the author is trying to communicate is that Job was blameless. Meaning he did the right thing. He was a good dude. That's basically what it's saying. When you read this, you should say now there was a man a long time ago in a land far away, his name was Job and he was a good dude. He loved God with all of his heart and he turned away from the evil things in life. Good dude.

After this we learned that Job is quite rich that he's been blessed tremendously by God. He has many Children. He has lots of stuff. He's a very wealthy man. And then what happens after we're introduced to who Jove is, is the the scene cuts and we cut to the heavenly throne room of God, the the heavenly council. And so God is meeting with what is described as the Sons of God. Some translations call them angels. But this is like a heavenly council that we have in the throne room of God, maybe the command center of God might be a way to think about it. And I think that this is trying to communicate less about the theology here. OK? I don't get a lot of my theology about the heavenly command center from Job as it is trying to teach us what about the retribution principle and how that works. So don't get overly sunken into exactly what's happening here.

But we're pro we're, we're introduced by this character called Satan or more liter more literally is the Satan in the Hebrew. It's, it starts with the, the definite pronoun is before every time Satan's mentioned, it said the Satan and Satan is just a transliteration for Satan, which is the Hebrew word that means opposer. So every time that Satan shows up in Job, it's basically saying the opposer came to talk to God, the opposer came. So when we talk about Satan we're talking about the opposer here and the Satan poses the question of God or the, the, the opposer poses the question of God. What if Job is just doing all the, what if he's a good guy because you've given him a lot of stuff and he has an easy life. What if he's not really following after you? But what if he just really likes the stuff you've given him, God? Do you think he'd still follow you?

And so basically, it's a challenge to God and God invites Satan to attack Job. And at first he says, don't don't touch him personally, do not touch the person of Job. And so what Satan does is he goes in and he finds through natural means, ok? Through kind of a terrorist act, through a natural storm through lightning through a variety of different natural means. He said this, the opposer wipes out Job's entire family except for his wife, all of his children die. All of his stuff is either stolen or destroyed and the news comes to Job. And what does Job do? Verses 20-21 then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, naked, I came from my mother's womb and naked I shall return. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

You really cannot suffer any better. Than this. This is like master class, how do you do this. Job responds wonderfully. He, he's real about his suffering. He's mourning, but also he gives praise to God and recognizes that the Lord gives the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord. The opposer approaches God again and says, that's not good enough. I mean, we're going to do this more. And so what happens after that? As he says this to God, Job two verse four skin for skin. All that a man has. He will give for his life, but stretch out your hand and touch his bone and flesh and he will curse you to your face. And the Lord said to the Satan behold, he is in your hand only spare his life.

And so after this Job receives these terrible sores all over his body and he is just miserable and he's so so miserable that his own wife looks at him and says, what is wrong with you? Curse God and die, man, curse God and die. It couldn't be much worse. You've lost everything and now your health is gone, curse God and die instead of cursing God and dying. What Job does is kind of awesome. Chapter three. And we're not gonna read through it all. But what he does is he basically exalts into this like two chapter long or one chapter long lament on the day he was born, he's like, let me just lament the day I was born. If I would not have been born, he sees his life is not one that he is able to take away. The Lord gives life. The Lord takes away life. I lament that the Lord brought me into the world, but I will not curse God and kill myself. So, so, so deep, profound, dark, super, dark, a lot in this book is very dark.

And then what happens after that is we get lots of chapters, chapters three through 31 of what scholars call the cycles. And so what happens is Job has three friends show up. His three friends names are Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar and they each take turns comforting, very loosely. The term comforting Job in his affliction. Now, actually, what they do at the beginning is quite good. They show up, they spend seven days and they say nothing and they mourn with him. Great. That that's good. OK? But after that, nothing else is good from, from the, the friends that he has here, each friend is kind of taking turns and the way that the cycles work is this happens three times.

One of the friends says Job, you know what you're really to blame here. You must have done something because the assumption is God is just both Job and his friends assume and know that God is just and then they disagree on some of the other parts of the equation. So the equation goes like this, God is just the retribution principle is true that if you are bad, God gives you bad, if you are good, God gives you good. And then the last one is that Job is innocent. So one of these is wrong in their minds because these three have to be the same or, or cannot equal the one another. And so for the friends, they're like Job. You are not innocent, you've done something because the retribution principle is true and God is just.

Job, on the other hand is saying, I am innocent, I've not done anything. He defends himself to the bitter end. He says the retribution principle must not be true. That must not be how the world operates, how God orders his world. God is just I am innocent. He must not see justice as something that's important for his people. That's the way that's Job's defense. And so they take turns basically, the, the friends come and they say you really did do this, you did something Job, you did something and then Job defends himself and then a different friend comes and then Job defends himself and then a different friend comes and Job defends himself. And so they go through this cycle three times each friend defending Job.

This is, this is like an ancient rap battle, ok? They have, they're like starting to call each other names. They've got more dishes than a Kendrick track. This is like really getting amped up by the end of it and they just keep going back and forth, back and forth. It's just very prolonged and here's the, I, I just explained the crux of what's happening. This goes on for a long time. And there are definitely some highlights I think chapter I can't go through them all if you want to just jot these down or mark them or something. Chapter 19, one of my favorite passages in the Bible, it describes how God created everything. And then, and then it's, and then Job is like, and these are just the out workings. This is just the, the fringes of his glory. It's very powerful.

Chapter 26. Also a wonderful book where he says for, I know that my redeemer lives. I know my redeemer list. I it's just those are two really big highlights things that I'm not gonna go too in depth on at the moment. Let's skip forward to chapter 32. OK. So we have the cycle set up here and like I said, Job is a lozenge. If you're in this place where you resonate with Job, this un unexplained suffering, it can just be helpful to walk through some of these, these passages throughout the cycles.

But in chapter 32 it changes. And what happens is we're introduced to a fifth character. OK. So we've got Job, his three friends and now we've got this fifth dude and hi, his name is Elihu and Elihu is, has been waiting for his chance to enter the rap battle. He's like, I've got my contribution to make here and he's younger than all the other ones and this is an Eastern culture. And so he's waiting until the older guys have had their time to talk and then he's like, ok, I'm gonna spit some knowledge when, whenever it gets to be my turn, whenever they seem to have a, a closing defense because Joe wraps up his closing defense after his three friends have assaulted him for several chapters, he makes his final appeal.

And then we see Elihu show up and Elihu has a little bit of a different, a different thing. I'm confident that Elihu is like a middle child because he walks in. He's like, you know what? You're both right? You're both right. He waited until the end. He's like, I don't want to cause trouble. You're both right? Can't we just get along? That's, that's Elihu's place here and then also Elihu is not responded to at all after that. So definitely a middle child, they, everybody just ignores them Elihu says God is just and God does run the world by justice. But Job also could be innocent. Maybe God has another purpose for suffering other than punishment. Maybe he gives suffering to warn to avoid future sin and to build character. Maybe, maybe he has a different purpose guys, you don't know. And then he ends his, his, he's actually pretty long winded Elihu. It's like four or five chapters who just kind of going on about this. And then no one says anything to Elihu, including the Lord and, and, and God shows up after that. So Elihu, who is just this interesting character, he kind of appears out of nowhere in, in Job and he's not mentioned again. But I think it adds interesting perspective to us as we read through what has to say, but it's not the main crux of the book. So I'm gonna continue. OK. Sorry. Or middle children, you will continue to be forgotten.

Chapter 38. Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and I love how Michael was reading this earlier. He, he got the right tone. I think the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? The the the Lord's dropping his diss track now and it's like he's on fire. OK. He, he's really got some strong words dressed for action like a man. I'll question you and you make it known to me. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me Job. Where were you, where were you? If you have such understanding about how the universe works? Tell me. Where were you?

And God spends the next four chapters just laying down this truth on Job. He questions Job. He says, where were you when I created the world? Where were you when I created the stars? Where were you when formed together? The sea and the creatures and the sea? In fact, Job, you don't even know what's going on in your backyard. Have you ever seen a deer give birth? Do you know how the goats give birth? Do you know how that stuff works? If he was talking to us today, he might be like, where were you dude? Do you even know how your car works? I made the universe. I made all of this.

Basically the way I like to envision this is that God showed up to Job and he's like, hey little Job, come for a ride with me and he puts a VR headset on Job and he's like, you see the universe, there's galaxies that you got no idea about right now. I'm over there in these far away galaxies and there's planets surrounding stars, billions and billions of them. And each planet has a sunrise and a sunset. Where were you? You think? You know how the world works?

It has a very similar effect that maybe like going to a planetarium show might have. I took my kids to a planetarium show. Like one of the old fashioned planetarium shows where it was like a, it wasn't like a show. It was like a dude with a laser pointer and, and he was like, showing us the stars and I afterward my, my son looks at me, both my kids really enjoyed it. The two older ones really enjoyed it. The younger one was off doing something else. But, my son looks at me and he goes, that was so cool. He had, he had never seen anything like that before, but it showed the immensity of the universe. And you know that feeling when you go to a planetarium show and then you just feel so small and insignificant. And this is like that on steroids because this is like God's view of it from like the creation.

It's like almost like he showed Job a documentary of how we all CRE he created, created it all. And he, and basically the whole reason why God is doing this. And he, he basically says, you think, you know, better than me, you're suffering, you think, you know, better about whether you should be suffering or not. You know, God never answers the why question for Job. He never says this is why you're suffering Job. God basically says, look, I don't work on a retribution principle. You're both wrong. The retribution principle is not how I work. I guess that's kind of what Job is saying. But what God is saying is the world's too complicated for that, that if I worked on a retribution principle. It would not work. The world is too complicated, but I promise you Job, you couldn't do any better than me. You might think you could do better than me. But I know better than you.

It's ironic. But this is the exact plot from the great 2003 film Bruce Almighty. Now, I haven't seen that movie in a long time. It's probably horribly blasphemous. I'm still gonna talk about it. because in that movie Jim Carrey and I feel like you don't get without, I, I guess you're finding my childhood. I don't know, I quote a Jim Carey quote or movie like almost every week. but Jim Carrey plays Bruce, who's a reporter, a news reporter and bad things just keep happening to him and he's ready to curse God and then he gets snapped into a warehouse. And who does he meet, Morgan Freeman himself.

And Morgan Freeman basically says Bruce, you think, you know, better than me? And he's like, here's, here's my power. You go and do it, you see what you can do and at first things go really well. For Bruce, his girlfriend likes him more. His Job's going better. Things are going really well. But then he turns around and the effects of what he has done is destroying society. Like at one point he pulls the moon a little bit closer without any idea of like he, how tides work. So the world is just like, really torn apart. He, he gets on, on his little computer in 2003. And it's like you've got prayer and he answers every prayer. Yes. And then, like, everyone in town won the lottery and then they're all mad because they won like 14 cents and when they split it all, and so the town erupts into chaos.

And, and it's just teaching us this thing that, like, hey, the world's too complicated to work on a simple retribution principle. But God is in charge of it all. And if he created it all and he knows it all, we have to trust him. Basically, when we look at Job, we learn that limited humans lack the perspective and wisdom to run the universe. And though we, when we suffer, we feel like we should be running the universe and we would be doing it differently. We are limited and lack of wisdom. So the book ends in epilogue after God teaches all of this to Job and God ends up condemning his three friends as miserable counselors.

He never condemns Job though. He applauds Job's honesty and then he restores Job's wealth, but he doubles it. He gives him Children again. And this is all, not a reward, but just a gift. It's a gift from God. We don't really know why he does it exactly. But it, it's not like Joe passed a test because it wasn't really like he was taking a test. It's like God just saw it fit to, to give him things again. And that's it. That's the book. It never really reveals the secrets behind suffering. It's been used for thousands of years to help people going through suffering. But it teaches us that there are just some things that are beyond our understanding.

And the main point is this, that as humans, we must have humility to admit that we are limited and lack perspective. And we must trust in a God who is unlimited and has all perspective. That's the message of Job that as humans, we must approach our lives with humility and we must trust God that He understands it all. And he's got it all and that's all we can do. That's all we have in modern society. We're all looking for quick fixes to pain. We're all looking for the pill that we can take to heal our hearts. Job offers no magical solution. He offers no magical solution to pain and suffering.

But what he does offer is more like physical therapy for pain and suffering. You know, you, you go see a doctor and some doctors and these are usually scam doctors are like, yeah, I can fix you, just come here, I'll done fixed. No one heals with a touch unless it's like a holy spirit healing moment. And instead, we oftentimes the pains that we have in life, we have to walk through them. We have to learn how to live with them. We have to go through the physical therapy of the soul. We're meant to process this material to ruminate upon it.

And here's just a few things that Job does teach us. Ok. I'll leave you with a few practical things. First, God invites you to be honest in your suffering. God invites you to be honest in your suffering Job. Cries out to God. He expresses frustration and disappointment to God. And God never condemns these things. When you read the psalms, you see the same thing happening. The psalmist express their frustration towards God. Their disappointment with God. God invites you to be honest with where you are at that moment. He just wants you to talk with them. He loves you. He wants to hear your heart. And so you were invited and I think that God meets us in a more profound way when we open the China cabinets of our soul and we let him in. You know, a lot of us want to keep a right face before God say the right things to God. But God really invites us to come and to bear our souls to Him.

The second thing that we learned from Job is that we should not offer overly simplistic explanations to suffering, do not offer overly simplistic explanations to suffering. I know far too many well intentioned good people who have offered overly simplistic solutions or explanations to suffering. This weekend, I was meeting with a couple, their daughter has cancer and at one point, her daughter's cancer was, was being, was being healed. She was, she was in remission and then her cancer came back and the people in her, in their church, it was like a prosperity church. They said, well, what have you done? What have you done wrong? Because obviously you've done something wrong.

It's like the, the counselors. It's like his friends Christopher Ashe, a famous commentator about Job. He says that the that Job's friends, they believe the law of God, but they do not believe the gospel, the the friends, they believe the law. They believe that when you do bad things, you should get bad things and when you do good things, you should get good things, but that's not the gospel. They, they don't believe that you get bad things without deserving it. They also don't believe you do get good things without deserving it.

And the gospel is we get good things that we did not deserve it. So his friends, they just believe the law and not the gospel. And for us, many times, we can offer an overly simplistic explanation to suffering. But instead I pray that you might have the same sort of trust in the Lord, in your suffering that Job had at the beginning. And it's, it's difficult, but he just says the Lord gives and the Lord takes away blessed be the name of the Lord. I will trust because I'm limited in my perspective, I will trust Him who has all.

Third, embrace living without answers. I wish I could just give you all the answers, but you have to kind of embrace living without all the answers. Again, you were limited. We want, we all want to know the greater purpose to which we might experience suffering and pain. Sometimes God shows those things to us. Sometimes we get a window and we're like, oh, I understand why I had to go through that. It's usually, you know what it is like seven years later, you look back and you're like, oh yeah, I guess that makes sense. I didn't sleep for like several weeks because I was miserable. But I understand now I see what God was doing but rare but often times he just doesn't, we don't see it. We, we lack the ability to even see what's going on in our own lives.

And yet God organizes the whole universe. We really have to approach life with humility while we trust God who is sovereign, good and loving. As we read the book of Job, what we find is that Job really points us to Jesus though like Job before him, Satan would assault another blameless man, Jesus without cause Jesus also would question God the father and his questions would go unanswered Jesus as he hung on the cross said, why have you forsaken me? And he was responded with silence. Unlike Job, though Jesus placed his trust in the Father, no matter what though Job was relatively innocent. Jesus was truly innocent. Though Job felt abandoned by God. Jesus was truly abandoned by God. And in that moment, he bore the sins of the whole world. You and I our sins are placed on Christ and he bore the wrath and the punishment that we deserve. The full separation from God, the full wrath of God on the cross.

As Tim Keller so eloquently put it, he says Jesus was patient under great suffering for us so we can be patient under suffering for him. And so now we wait though, we live in a broken world. Still. We wait, we wait for Jesus to return and we know that He will return one day. And when he returns, what will you do? We'll wipe every tear from every eye. He'll heal all the broken places. He'll put your life back together. There will be no more suffering, the curse of sin and death will be destroyed. He'll stomp the serpent's head, the opposer will be gone, all will be made new and right.

And we wait for that day as people who have faith in Christ, we know we know that he is coming to make all things new and our hearts long for that day. And so we don't just look forward to tomorrow. We look forward to eternity knowing that He will make all things new. Also as Christians that we know that there is meaning in our suffering. We know that in our suffering, it produces perseverance and perseverance, character and character. Hope, hope in what hope in this hope in Christ. Trust in Him. Hope does not disappoint Jesus is with us in our suffering.

One of my favorite passages, second Corinthians chapter one verse three. Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of mercies, and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with a comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For we, for as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings. So through Christ, we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. If we are comforted, that it is for your comfort, which are which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. So our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you also share in our comfort.

Our God is the God of all mercies and God of comfort. And as we go to Him, he might not take away our sufferings, but he can shine his face upon us and he can give us trust, but he he can give you trust. Trust is this gift from Him that He knows what he's doing. And so for many of us this morning, I want to invite you, I want to invite you to lay out your heart to the Lord, maybe over the next song or next couple of songs. You just need to pour your heart before him and let your sufferings be known. And I do think that Jesus meets you in those places. If you'd like someone to pray with you to lay a hand on you, let you know that you're not alone. We'll have a, a prayer counselor back there. I'd also love to pray with you. But this is a moment for you to, to turn in humility and to trust the Lord.

Over the next song, we're going to participate a sacred meal called communion. And this is really an invitation to be reminded of the sufferings of Christ and to receive the comforts of Christ. On the night that he was betrayed, Jesus took a loaf of bread and he broke it and he said this is my body broken for you, do this in remembrance of me and he took a cup and he said this is my blood shed for you, do this in remembrance of me. And so each week we participate in the sacred meal. If you are a Christian, we invite you to come and receive it. And you can know that Christ received the ultimate suffering on your behalf so that you would never be abandoned by God. Christ was abandoned so you wouldn't have to be. He suffered so that you wouldn't have to. And you're reminded of that, it's not something you earn. But if you are calling on Christ, as your savior, we invite you to the table. Would you stand as we prepare ourselves to come to the table and to sing to God.

Father, we pray that as we come to your, your table, that you would comfort our hearts and help us, help us to receive the comfort of Christ. We pray for those who are far from you and those who are near. We pray that there will be honesty in our souls as we, as we walk through the next few moments and God as we come to your table, would you, would you bless us with your presence? We may, we see and enjoy the presence of Christ in a, in a supernatural spiritual kind of way knowing that you're with us in our suffering that we are not alone. We ask this in Christ's name, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Psalm 127, read for us in Spanish. Discussion points: Even our secular jobs belong to the Lord, we can more easily rest when we know that we are fully loved by God and can trust him, children are a blessing from God but you can be a complete person without having them.

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Scripture reader: [Psalm 127, read in Spanish, English version provided here] Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep. Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: I was not expecting to hear my name multiple times. During, during that scripture reading Fletcher is a old English word for arrow maker. And so when you get to arrow in other languages, a lot of times you, you have some type of form of fletcher which is funny. And I wasn't expecting it.

Well, we're in the middle of a series called Life Reimagined. This series is an opportunity to evaluate the way that we are living to evaluate the American dream even to evaluate the way that all of us have walked through our lives and in many ways, we've fallen into the stream of the way that our culture has defined life. But as Christians were called to step out of the stream and to re evaluate the way that we're living in light of the way that God intends for our lives to be lived.

And so as a guide for us, as we're walking through this series of life, reimagine, how does God intend for us to live? We're using the wisdom literature from the scripture and the wisdom literature is a collection of 3 to 5 books. You know, scholars differ on which ones. Exactly. Everybody includes Ecclesiastes, Job and Proverbs. But we're also going to be covering Song of Solomon and some of the Psalms as we go through the wisdom literature. And we're going to be examining this wisdom literature and to see what it has to say to us about how we should be living in light of who God is.

So last week we covered the book of Ecclesiastes. What a fantastic book we did the whole thing last week, it was one of my favorite sermons that I've done in a long time because I just haven't spent that much time studying Ecclesiastes before in my life. And it was really fun to dive deeply into that book and to see the message. So it was very timely and we looked at what it, what purpose reimagined looks like. What is our purpose reimagined looks like.

Today we're doing Psalm 127 and it's more priorities reimagined. In this song. The author tackles one of the things that's, most difficult for modern life and that is the dreaded work life balance. How many of us have had conversations about work life balance in the past couple of weeks, many of us have had that conversation about work life balance. My wife is a very impressive person to me at least. Ok, she works a full time job. We have three children. She still finds time to like go to the gym and, and, and to take care of herself and we go on dates and it's just kind of amazing all that she does. So, last week, I think actually, another mom with younger children, our, our kids are older now for our congregation. They're fifth grade, third grade and, and three years old.

But the another mom looked at my wife and was just like, how do you do it? How do you balance it all? How do you, how do you have a full time job and you have a family with three kids, all the responsibilities, guys, we have four soccer activities every week. Some of them are at the same time as each other. Like how do you do that? You're just, you have to become omnipresent as you have multiple children and that's one way that I don't wanna be like God. Ok? And, and, and somehow she does it all. And so this other mom say, how, how do you do it all? And you stay mentally whole. How is it possible? My wife said, who said anything about mentally whole? We're, we're barely hanging on over here.

And, you know, having a job and children is especially hard. Hey, I just want you to know if, if you got a job and kids or if you're trying to balance life and work, I see you, ok? Like it's hard. There's a lot of responsibilities out there. Our world says work hard. Achieve your job is your ultimate, is your ultimate allegiance. We have that Danny Rojas view of work like work is life, the American dream, work hard and you can be whatever you want to be. How many of us have been told that from a very early age, the world says that.

But I say to you dear follower of Jesus that your work does not define you, ok? Just breathe that in for just a second. OK? Let's all. Just sit here. Maybe you need to just like take a deep breath in your work does not define you. You are more than what you do. That's such an important principle for us this morning. You have a God who watches over everything you do and you're not expected to be perfect because he is, you're actually expected to be frail and limited. You are, you are just dust and to dust, you will return. But our God is unlimited, just, just soak in that for a second. Ok, guys, if you've been stressed at work, just know you're limited except the limitations. Our God is unlimited.

Our world says that you need to have it all and you need to juggle it all perfectly. Do you feel that pressure that you need to have it all? You need to have all the best clothes, all the right cars, all the right stuff and you need to juggle it perfectly. And our God looks at you and you're very mid level ability to juggle and he loves you despite it all because of who Christ is. There's so much pressure in our world to be great, great at our jobs and great as parents for those who the Lord blesses to have children. And how does God intend us to balance these two? Well, let's reimagine life.

Let's look at the passage. Ok. Psalm 127. If you have your Bibles, you can turn there and look with me. If you don't, we'll throw the, we'll throw some stuff on the screen for you. Hopefully, and, and you'll be able to follow along from the top. Ok? The very top first. Let's, let's read some of the stuff that you skip over a lot of the times when you're reading the Psalm. Ok. Psalm 127 a song of ascent. Ok. Let's just talk about what that is first. There's 15 songs of, of ascent in the Psalms. And these are the Psalms that were traditionally sung by the people of Israel as they made their way to Jerusalem for the high feasts each year.

And so there were at least three times a year when the people would make their way up to Israel for a high feast. And as they went along their way, they would sing these 15 Psalms that we find included in this section here towards the end of the collection of Psalms that we have in our Bible. Our Lord Jesus Christ probably sang these Psalms as a young child walking his way to Jerusalem from Nazareth or and it's been used throughout the years as, as Christians have gone back to the Psalms of Ascent to find the Lord.

Now, it says of Solomon a song of ascent of Solomon. Now, when you see of Solomon, you might think that Solomon wrote a lot of Psalms. That would be an easy thing to assume that Solomon wrote many of the Psalms. David, his father wrote lots and lots of Psalms. He's like the top of the charts in the Psalm. Writing Solomon is a lot like Jacob Dylan to Bob Dylan here. OK. He only has two hits. Solomon's only got two Psalms. All right. And with these two Psalms, it's just Psalm 127 and Psalm 72 in Psalm 127. Therefore, since it's written by Solomon, we would expect to have some Ecclesiastes vibes going on here. So as we read it, you might be hearing some of the echoes of what we heard last week in Ecclesiastes.

Verse one. Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it build in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. This passage just quiets my soul. Every time I read it, I, I almost don't even feel like I need to explain it. I almost just feel like I should read it about 17 times for us to, to hear. Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. All of my work that I busy myself with that, I run myself anxious thinking through and stress about it is all in vain. Unless the Lord is behind it, unless he is doing it. It is all in vain. Everything that I do in my power can be wiped to nothing in the blink of an eye. But the Lord has sustaining power.

The jobs in this passage. Look at the jobs you have unless the builders build in vain. Ok? Unless the the construction workers construct according to God. And unless the the watchman stays awake in vain. Unless the security guard stays awake in vain. These are very kind of blue collar jobs that's listed here. But I think that it's intentionally like that. He's not saying unless the priests do teach with the power of God, they're teaching in vain. That's true also.

But he's not just talking about my job here. He's talking about your jobs. You might be able to say, ok, I see how Fletcher might need God in his job, but how my you need God in your job. In modern day years, we might be able to say unless the coders have the Lord on their side, they code in vain. Unless the experiments are done with the Lord, the scientist experiment in vain. Unless the Lord is with the Excel spreadsheets the accountants crunch the numbers in vain. Your work belongs to the Lord.

And I think that all of us, even if we have a secular job, need to take a step back every day and say God, this job belongs to you, help me to be fruitful and to keep the right priority and mindset on it, help me to do your work even in my secular job. Verse two, it is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil. If there could be a theme verse for Somerville, it might be this one. OK? Burning the candle at both ends. It is, it is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil, except for Somerville might say, like eating the artisan croissant of anxious toil.

Are you working a little bit too much friends? Do you have a tendency? Ok. Do you have a tendency to push a little bit too hard for the majority of us? That answer is yes. Especially if you didn't grow up here and you moved here. Ok. But even those who grew up here, they grind. OK? Like I've never met a harder worker than someone who grew up in this area because it's just in the water. I don't know what is a cultural value that we have busy. People are, are happy. People work hard, die young. Kind of, it's like work hard.

Are you pushing a little too hard? Are you stressed out about work about time? Do you resonate with eating the bread of anxious toil? What a word picture. Here's a quote that haunts me by Annie Dillard. She says this how you spend your days is how you spend your life. How you spend your days is how you spend your life. It's easy to think. Oh, tomorrow, I'll get it to put together or you know, that's not really how I am. But if you spend your days in anxious toil, burning the candle at both ends, that's how you are spending your life. It haunts me when I die. Do I want the epitaph to read here? Lies Fletcher lang. He worked harder than his coworkers. So he could eat at marginally better restaurants and drive marginally better vehicles. But he never truly lived.

John Ortberg says we just skim our lives instead of living them, we just skim our lives instead of living them. So what does, what does the Lord have to say to this? In contrast to it is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil. What does he say? He says for he gives to his beloved sleep.

I love sleep. Can I get an amen? A hearty amen. All right, I said, can I get an Amen? Thank you. I love sleep. I mean, I'm borderline narcoleptic. If I lay down right here, I would be asleep with you all in here. OK. It is I have three children. Did I mention that I love sleep? I fall asleep faster than a cat and a Sunbeam. I am just out if competitive sleeping were a thing, competitive napping were a thing. First round draft pick. OK. I can do that. I could nap every day. No problem, no problem. I love sleep. What better gift could there be from sleep than sleep if you could just jar up sleep, bottle it up and give it away for Christmas? Imagine how happy I would be. Ok. All of your pastor's gifts sleep.

But there's only one person who can give away sleep. Ok. Maybe two God and a good anesthesiologist. And that's what God does. He gives us sleep. Isn't it weird that we were created carefully crafted to shut down one third of our lives? We just turn off for a third of our lives. Like nothing going on. Computers shut down. We're just asleep. Resting a gift from the Lord. It must be pretty important that we're wired that way. But God never slumbers and he never sleeps. Hard work is a good thing. God made us to work, but he also made us as limited humans.

And so sleep is this daily reminder that we have to trust God. And so there's two truths that will help us to sleep. Well. Now, if you have problems sleeping, my heart goes out to you. My wife also is an insomniac at times. And so like I, she, she reads like 50 books a year and people are like, how do you have time? She's like, oh, yeah, sleep. I don't sleep. Yeah. that's, that's how I do it. She's sleeping better these days. Ok. Thanks. But ii I have pity for you because it's difficult.

But there's two truths that will help most of us to sleep. And it's this, that you can, that you are completely accepted by God and that you can trust God. You are accepted by God and you can trust God when you fail, it can make it hard to sleep. You start worrying about things and running through all the different scenarios. I call it, this is very nerdy. Ok. If you're very theologically driven, maybe you'll get this. I call it mental molinism. Ok. Molinism is a theological position that says that God doesn't know the future. He knows all the possible futures. And so what I try to do is I try to be like God in that I want to know all the possible futures. And so I do this mental molinism thing in my mind.

But if I just understood that God accepts me and that I don't have to be perfect, imagine how much easier it would be to sleep. And then the other one is that I can trust God with the things that are unfinished or done poorly. I can trust Him to complete the work or to help me to finish it in a timely fashion or even you're never more vulnerable than when you're sleeping, never more vulnerable. But yet you can trust God to take care of you even in those moments when you were so terribly vulnerable.

If you work from a place of ultimate acceptance, you won't feel the need to constantly prove yourself to yourself or to others. And if you work from a place of ultimate trust, you will lean on God and your shortcomings and you won't spiral into an anxious panic.

Now, personally, I struggle with workaholism. It's something that I had to face over the summer, I took two months off for a sabbatical this past summer, which was great. Thank you for sending me on sabbatical. But it was kind of hard to chill out. I'm just kind of wound a little tighter than, than most. And I was wanting to find things to do to occupy myself. And one of the things that I did to occupy myself, but also to try to get me to chill out was read a book called Resilient Ministry. And this was a book that was a, a study of pastors and how pastors thrive and survive in local churches. And so they, they studied like 200 pastors and, and got their feedback and, and the evidence for what it takes to survive a ministry.

And one of the things that they noticed over and over again is that pastors don't always have the best spiritual lives. And one of the reasons that we don't have one of the best pet spiritual lives is because we're al almost all workaholics that we just feel the need to prove ourselves constantly in our work. They say it like this, that our workaholism comes from the belief that we never work hard enough or that others work harder than we do. And the assumption that we are responsible for everything that happens in the church.

Now, if you just substitute church for your workplace, many of us might struggle with the same struggles that we have here. Pastors are supposed to be leading churches spiritually. But if workaholism is a struggle even for us, how much mu how much more must it be for all of you? Do you believe this lie? I am. What I do. How about this one? If I do not complete this task, my life will fall apart. How often do we do we get that? Never mind if I do, don't, don't finish this little thing, everything's gonna fall apart. It's a lie.

The truth is you are accepted by Christ and you can trust God in your shortcomings and failures. And so this is the secret sauce of the work life balance. The reality is you. I'm sorry. I feel like it's, I feel like you're not gonna like it. The reality is you don't balance it. You don't, you walk through life with full acceptance and full trust and it helps you to deal with the fact that you can't balance it all. That's the secret. You just don't, you can trust God to make up for your failures. And if that's true at work, how much more true is it with your family?

So let's look at the next verse. Verse three. Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of a womb. A reward, a heritage is like an inheritance. It's a lasting mark that you leave on the world and your work is not your heritage. Very few of you. If any will be remembered for your work, very few of you that even those of you who are writing scientific papers and whatnot. The only people that will see those papers are people that are nerdier than you are right now. OK? The only you will be remembered more for your children. If you do have children than you will be than your work. Simply put if you are a parent and I'm gonna get to those of us who aren't parents. OK? But if you are a parent, your children are more important than your work. Let me say it again, your children are more important than your work.

They are your heritage. Let me put, let me say this, your spouse is more important than your children. I made an unending vow to live my life sacrificially for Megan, I will love my children fully. But Megan is my priority. And so for me, the, the priority list, very simply God, spouse, children work and for me work and church are like the same thing. OK? So you have to figure that one out yourself. OK? There are going to come times when you have to choose between your work and your family and you're going to have to draw boundaries.

This is just really practical stuff. I'm gonna get back to some of the more spiritual stuff that this is spiritual. We commit too much time to our work because we feel like we have to prove ourselves. Right. But w when we're honest with ourselves, we rarely have to work as many hours as we do. I have a friend a few years ago who was working 70 hour weeks and constantly, always 70 hour weeks just, and he would complain a little bit, but not that much. And then, this same friend I've known him for a long time. We're still friends and I talked to him a couple of years ago. I was like, hey, so, so did you have to work 70 hour weeks to get where you were? And he was like, no, that was me. Not my work. In that case, I think a lot of us if we take a step back, our works don't require the hours that we give it a lot of times.

Now, you don't want to be lazy, you want to work your hardest. But you also need to have this idea of boundaries. For me. There came a day when, as I said, I, I can be a workaholic at times. I can just always have church stuff on the mind. And there came a day when, when Megan said, hey, I don't like this. I don't like my spiritual life being what you're obsessing at my church. And now you just obsessing over this all the time. I am not in on this. And if that means that you have to quit ministry, like I think that that would be better. And the I came like this close. I almost like just left being a pastor and had to go find a job somewhere else doing something.

And that's because my spouse is a higher priority and her spiritual flourishing is a higher priority to me than pastoring. That's just the way that it is. And so I was willing to give that up so that Megan could thrive. We ended up working through it, obviously, but I'm more committed to being her husband than I am to your pastor. I'm more committed to being Kennedy and Shepherd and Rowan's father. I am to being your pastor. That's, that's the truth.

And I think that we all need to think about what that means for each of us. So it's easy to see children as more of an inconvenience than a reward. Like it's something you take on, on to like we think about children as like something that whenever we get to a certain place in life, we'll add them as, as like this kind of thing to, to enhance our life instead of, hey, they are a reward and an award from God. Something that's truly a gift from him that they are a joy.

Now, having said that I want to mention those of us who struggle with this, that there are many people in our church who struggle with infertility and with miscarriage. We, we experienced a miscarriage at at one point. And it was, you know, something deeply profound change in me with that. And I don't know if it changed back. It, it was like a sorrow that I hadn't experienced before. And I just want you to know, we see you a couple of years ago, we had a couple in the church who I knew had been struggling to, to get pregnant for several years. And we're exploring like IVF and some other options for having a child.

And I was at a lunch with them with a bunch of other church people. And one of these church people very well intentioned said, so when are you guys gonna have some kids and they handled it so well. They're like, oh, you know, like we're, we're just being patient. We're waiting until the Lord wants to bless us with that. But I could see that it crushed them. And so we have to step into these situations with care. The reality is children are a gift from the Lord, but we live in a broken world and not everything comes the way that we want it to from God. And so we need to pray and we need to come around if that's something you struggle with. We want to walk with you on that.

I know that that means opening up a, a part of the China cabinet of your heart and letting some people hold some of the nicest dishes that you have, the family heirlooms and the stuff that you never want anyone to break. But maybe you need to find just a couple of people to share that with so that they can walk with you through the struggles that come with miscarriage and infertility.

Verse three, the whole children are a heritage from the Lord. The fruit of a wo of the womb of reward like arrows in the hands of a warrior are the children of one's youth. Now, arrows as we continue to walk through this passage, arrows, I want you to think about arrows. OK. That you, that you shoot, who does the arrow belong to? Does it belong to the warrior or does it belong to the king that they, that the let me put it like this, us army shoots bullets who do the bullets belong to? Do they belong to the soldier or do they belong to the US government? What's written on the side of the casings us government? I guess, I don't know, I've never seen like an army bullet but I would assume us government owns the bullets.

Now here as it says that our children are gift from the Lord like arrows in the hands of a warrior or the children of one's youth. It's saying that who do your children belong to? They belong to the Lord. If the Lord blesses you with children, you have to remember this. The bigger have faced this in one way or another. And this will maybe give you some compassion for your kids. But the biggest struggle that you will face as a parent is the desire to control everything about your children's life. Now, some of us got some in-laws. There are like that's true. Amen. It is a struggle.

The goal of parenting isn't to control everything about your kid's life. The temptation is there. You want to control, not just their behavior, you want to control their diet, you want to control the way that they see the world. You want to control their struggles and their sufferings. You want to control their education, their spirituality, their spirit, their psychological adjustment, their health and all of these things are outside of your control as a parent, outside of your control, as a parent.

And so parenting is this process of letting go of our children of shooting them out of the bow and trusting that they belong to the Lord. Proverbs chapter 22 says, train up a child in the way he should go. Even when he is old, he will not depart from it. That's assuming that you let that child go and let them take what you've taught them. The best thing you can do is just try to make the arrow straight, try to shoot it as best you can. But to let go of control. And that is a process.

Parenting is a process of letting go of control. If you have young kids, you're gonna have more control. But as time goes on your authority lessons and your influence grows and you just have to do the best to influence them as you can as you can. Some of us need to let go. And if you even look at the modern psychology, like there's a book by Jonathan, he called the Anxious Generation. And what Jonathan he says is we need to control what kids do on screens more and more. OK. We kids don't need the screens and the social media, but we need to let them loose in the neighborhoods. Basically, he's like less control in general and like less social media.

And we need to let our kids to have this process of independence. That's our goal as parents, which is just so radically different. You see, he, it's like the anti helicopter parent in many ways. It's, it's, it's challenging.

Verse five. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them. He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate. Has anybody ever heard of that Christian subculture? The quiver full movement. All right, there's some like documentaries about this and, and stuff. Basically, there's like a whole group of Christians who read this verse and then they're like, so this says that we need to have as many children as we can possibly have and then we're going to buy a 15 passenger van or larger if we need to, we're gonna name it the quiver and we're gonna fill it with our arrows. Literally.

There are people that have this quiver full mentality that are, you need to have as many kids as possible. Respect all respect if you have that many kids, I'm not judging you. That is fine. I drive a Subaru, it's full, like I'm, my quiver is small, I guess. I don't know. I'm, I'm, I'm kinda happy but, but I think what is trying to communicate is that your children are a blessing. No matter how many you have and when he says that he will not be put to shame when he speaks to his enemies at the gate, the man who has a quiver ful.

What it's talking about is this idea that in ancient Israel, the business deals were done at the gate of the city. And so the uh a father would go and deal with his business and his children, his adult children, older children will be there and they got his dad's back. And so if the, if the dad their dad's back and so if the dad is, they're doing a business deal, then he's got this whole army of children basically, or he's got children that have his back. And that's just a beautiful picture that he has raised his kids in such a way that his kids are, have allegiance towards him and they've got their dad's back at any point and I, I hope that, that I've got that with my kids one day that I just am not over controlling to the point where they want, they don't want anything to do with me but that they want to have my back, as I'm dealing with my enemies at the gate or whatever that might look like for us.

Now, I know that half of the sermon has been about parenting. Ok? We, we car handled work which most of us can resonate with and then parenting a lot of us aren't parents. I just wanna say this before. I don't wanna like neglect you him in here. A lava want to be parents, lavas don't care. You can be a complete person without having children. In fact, the most complete person to ever walk the earth did not have children, did not have a spouse. He did not need another person to complete him. He was complete and who he was with. His fellowship with his father and the Holy Spirit, the fellowship of the Trinity, Jesus Christ. Unmarried, no children, complete person.

Children are a blessing from the Lord, but they do not complete you. And the second you start thinking that my children will complete you. You're falling into a trap that we call idolatry. That's the same way that we think my work will complete me that I will be OK. Once I finish my work, that is idolatry. If you don't have kids, you resonate with Jesus who also loved children. What did Jesus say? When the children start coming to him? His disciples said, no, no, no, Jesus is too busy and Jesus said, get out of here. Let the children come to me. I want the children to come here. I love children.

And so we love children even if we don't have them. If you don't have kids here, the reality is you have fewer responsibilities. And that is a gift from the Lord also. That's what the gift of singleness is in scripture. It's just the fact that you have less responsibilities and you can le well, you know, the singleness is that you don't have a spouse. not, not that you don't have children, but it's that you have less responsibilities. And you can use that to pour into hobbies to pour into volunteer work, to po pour into church relationships, discipleship, whatever that looks like. And if you want to have a family, you still have to be re evaluating your relationship with your desires and with your work, or you'll develop some bad habits, they're going to be hard to break.

So to conclude things here today, if you make your work your whole world, if you think my job will completely will complete me, this will kill you. And if you make your children, your whole world. If you think my children will complete me, this will also kill you. This is what idolatry is about is making good things into ultimate things. And so we lay these at the feet of Jesus. We trust him with these things. Reimagine life, reimagine priorities. You are not defined by your successes. You don't need to prove yourself. The validation and success you are looking for has been given to you freely. Jesus is your righteousness.

I recognize that today is gonna be a day where if you're going to take the words of Psalm 127 and truly apply them, that many of you might need to be laying things down at the feet of Jesus that we need to come to Jesus humbly with open hands and talk to the Lord about the way that we're working. We might need to just first receive his grace, but then we might need to go home and make some some practical next steps of defining stricter boundaries for work, for your work hours, for practicing the Sabbath, for actually taking vacations, whatever it might look like, maybe we need to change some of the ways that we're parenting. We might have to invite others to speak into our parenting.

Some of us might not have as radical changes to make, but we just need to lay our lives and our parenting down at the feet of Jesus in our work and receive the love of God and our failure. So here's the main point just to summarize work life balance, you can't balance at all. But you were still lo you can't balance at all, but you're still loved, you will have shortcomings.

But because of what Christ has done, God actually does and this is what you're feeling at this moment, God actually does expect and demand perfection from you. That's what you're feeling. But then when you try to do it yourself, you are trying to be Jesus. You're not just trying to love Jesus. You're trying to be Him because God sent Jesus to live the perfect life that you could never live and to die, the death that you deserve. So that as He demands perfection, he doesn't have to look on you. But in through your faith, he looks on Christ and sees his completed work on your behalf. And so when you feel those feelings of, oh, I'm just not measuring up, I'm not doing enough. Look to Christ who is perfect on your behalf and trust in Him.

Each week, we have a way of reminding ourselves of what He has done that we are imperfect, that we're shortcomings that we're not doing it well. But yet He's done it all perfectly and he gave us a sacred symbol of communion or the Lord's supper, Eucharist, whatever your tradition might call it. And what the way that we do it here is we, if you are a Christian here with us today. We invite you to come and receive this meal. If you need to just get in a posture of prayer. during this time, you are welcome to like kneel or whatever that looks like for you. If you need to give the Lord your work or give him your parenting, whatever that might look like, we just want to encourage you to talk to the Lord during this time. So if you would stand, let us pray as the band makes their way back up here, and we respond.

Father, as we, as we close things up today and as we come to you, God, we pray that you would help us to process these things and really consider how we can let go of the control that we have that we can accept, be accepted by you because of Christ and that we can trust you because you are never slumbering, never sleeping, always working and you care for us. And so God, as we worship you today, God, I pray that as we prepare our hearts for this, this communion meal that you would help us to hear from you, to worship you and to draw near to you, we ask all of this in Christ's name, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Ecclesiastes 1:1-11 and 2:22-26. Discussion points: Life is fleeting like a mist, the teacher tried everything that could bring pleasure and none of it had enough meaning, the teacher concluded that meaning could come from enjoying the small moments of life, the author concludes that life is about loving and obeying God and trusting in his justice.

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Scripture reader: [Ecclesiastes 1:1-11 and 2:22-26] The words of the preacher, the son of David King in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities says the preacher vanity of vanities. All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun. A generation goes and a generation comes but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun goes down and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north, around and around goes the wind and on its circuits, the wind returns. All streams run to the sea but the sea is not full. To the place where the streams flow where they flow again. All things are full of weariness. A man cannot utter it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be and what has been done is what will be done. And there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there a thing of which it is said, see this is new. It has been already in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of former things nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after. What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow and his work is a vexation. Even in the night, his heart does not rest. This also is vanity. There's nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil.

This also I saw is from the hand of God, for apart from Him who can eat or who can have enjoyment. For to the one who pleases Him, God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy. But to the sinner, he has given the business of gathering and collecting only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

All right, good morning. My name's Fletcher. I'm the the pastor here. It's a joy to have you this morning. I hope to get to know you each better if I haven't had the chance to just afterwards or at the pastor's coffee. If you're able to join us. Then over the past year, I have taken it upon myself to attempt to learn the language of French. I decided that the gold framed glasses weren't making me look pretentious enough. And so I needed to add the, the language of French at this point, my French mainly looks like me saying bonjour and then butchering the rest of the language. But making it a little fancy as I, as I do that, it's mainly just me impressing myself with how many different ways I can mispronounce croissant to all the different people I talked to.

But generally when you're learning French, they encourage you, they, they tell you that you can, you need to learn in all the different ways. So you need to hear it, you need to be able to write it, you need to be able to speak it and listen to it and, and read it. And so there's two books that they generally recommend to newcomers when it comes to learning French. And the first book is called The Petit Pence or for the uncultured, the little Prince and the Little Prince, it's this wonderful story about a prince who goes from planet to planet and he's exploring and it's about love and wonder and it's just this amazing whimsical story.

The other book that they tell you to read is called Les Trans, which is The Stranger by Albert Camus. Camus. As I said, I mispronounced things. Al it's Albert Camus if you're very uncultured. Ok. But it's Al Albert Camus and and the Stranger, I mean, if the petite prince, the little prince, if that is a, a feel good story, the stranger is about the opposite of that. The stranger makes Cormick McCarthy look cheery at times as you read through it and as you go through the stranger, what you see is, it's about this man named Mia, who confronts the meaninglessness of life.

And the book starts with him not crying at his own mother's funeral. He continues to encourage a friend to be ruthless with a woman. He, and then towards the end of the book, he, he actually murders someone and feels absolutely no remorse. It's just a cold murder. And this, this terrible thing, he's, he's sentenced to, to prison. He faces the judge. He feels no remorse over what he has done because he just feels as though life is meaningless.

And so what you see is Camus became this really popular philosopher in this idea of absurdism and to Camus, absurd is a technical term we might use it. I, I would say that's absurd. Like that makes no sense. That's absurd. But Camus has it as a technical term. And what he means when he says absurd is that the events in your life they present as though they may have meaning, but really they have no meaning at all. And he became wildly popular for this philosophy.

He wrote another essay called the, the Myth of Sisyphus and many of us are familiar with Sisyphus is this ancient, this ancient myth, this Greek myth of a man who was sentenced to roll a ball up a hill over and over again. And just as he gets to the top, he drops the ball and it goes all the way down to the bottom and he has to start rolling it again. Or as many of us like to say Monday through Friday of our lives and what he's trying to communicate with that is that our lives are like Sisyphus that we do the same thing every single day.

That we wake up. We all go to bed. Most of us, at least we all wake up, we get our coffee, we have our breakfast, we do the same three meals every day. We go to work, we come home, we might watch an episode of some stupid TV show and then we go to bed and that is our life on repeat, on repeat over and over and over again.

And so what Camus is saying is that it, it, it feels so meaningless and so he really pushes this idea of the absurd. Now, Camus was celebrated as this new and fresh thinker in the 19 hundreds. But if you've been reading your Bible, you will see that none of his ideas are new. These are things that pop up in the Bible, particularly in the book of Ecclesiastes. The one that's for the, the really positive readers in the church. It's a feel good book. Ecclesiastes.

We're currently working our way through a series called Life Reimagined. And in this series called Life Reimagined, we're doing an exploration of the wisdom literature and the reason why we're doing that is because the wisdom literature invites us to reimagine our lives according to the way that God sees them, it invites us to evaluate our life and reimagine the way that we're living and the way that God intends for our lives to be lived. And in order to help us reimagine our lives, this wisdom literature fills us with hope and with direction and, and with, with inspiration.

And so when I talk about the wisdom literature, three books always included in wisdom literature. That's Ecclesiastes, Proverbs and Job. And then Psalms has a few Psalms that are included in the Wisdom of literature. And then we're gonna throw in Song of Solomon because no one's really sure what to do with that book. And that's just if you don't know the Bible very well, that's a book that's just an exploration of sex. And we'll be preaching on that in a couple of weeks. So you're invited to come, maybe check in the kids to go with kids that day.

So with, with that, we're, we're going through this survey. And one of the reasons why you have to do a survey of the Wisdom Literature is because the wisdom literature really functions as a whole and you have to read them all to really kind of understand what is happening in the book. So if you read the Proverbs, you would read the Proverbs and it sounds, there's a lot of truisms in the Proverbs, it's gonna say, hey, if you live rightly and act justly, God is going to bless you. And that's kind of the message all over the Proverbs. And that is usually true with just the way that the world works. You reap what you sow.

But what Ecclesiastes does is it looks at the exceptions and it looks at like how meaningless it all feels and then you get to job and it looks at it from like God's point of view and, and what happens when it doesn't work out that way. So you really need to look at all of the wisdom literature together for it to make sense because if you just read Ecclesiastes, you might be depressed and actually the author of Ecclesiastes doesn't want you to do that. Ok. He's the only author who says at the end like, hey, don't think that much about this. Ok? Like you gotta move on, we're gonna get to that. I'll explain it when we get to the end.

But we need all the wisdom literature together. So we're doing this survey, you could spend a lot more time in each of these books today. We're covering the entire book of Ecclesiastes. So buckle in and we're gonna get there. But I think it would be really helpful Ecclesiastes man. I, I do think that this book is, is wonderful for our day and age though, I can't think of more books or I can't think of many books that are more applicable to everyday life than Ecclesiastes. I can't think of many other passages in the Bible that talk about the things that Ecclesiastes talks about. We really need this message today, we need to hear it and I believe this about all of the Bible.

But I really do believe this about Ecclesiastes that this book and the message of this book can change your life. I really do believe that that the message of this book can and will change your life if you let it, if you let God use it in your life that way. So let's approach God. I, I wanna pray for us one more time. I don't always do this, but I just feel like we need to have an open heart to what God has to say to us this morning. So would you pray with me.

Father as we look at your word this morning, we pray for those who feel as though their life is meaningless or they're having a difficult time finding their purpose. And God, we pray that they would reimagine their purpose, that you would help them to, to seek you God. We pray that our hearts would be open to what you have to say to us today and that we might embrace the message of Jesus, the message of the Ecclesiastes, the, the, the message of wisdom this morning. And we pray this in Christ's name, Amen.

Ok. Let's dive in. We're just gonna start at the very beginning and this really, it's, it's a very quick overview of Ecclesiastes. I am not gonna read every verse. Do not worry. All right. First verse in Ecclesiastes, the words of the preacher, the son of David King in Jerusalem. OK. Before we go any farther, I need to explain this because the structure of Ecclesiastes is weird if you have read the Bible, often this one is very different than almost every other book in the Bible.

Because here, what we have is an author who is introducing a preacher. So he says, here are the words of the preacher, the son of David King in Jerusalem. The preacher is not the author. The preacher is the person being quoted throughout the majority of the book until we from right now until we get to the end of the book, in chapter 12. The preacher is being quoted.

And so what the author is trying to do is trying to summarize the words of this teacher, this preacher and be able to tell it to us. And then the author offers commentary on what the preacher has to say at the very end. So it's interesting because the author comes to a slightly different conclusion than the preacher. Now, this preacher is accepted by many as Solomon, the son of David. Now it's at least someone writing in the voice of Solomon, the son of David or teaching in the voice of Solomon, the son of David. And it's, I guess it's actually anonymous. It never says, hey, this is Solomon. Ok. He never says that. He just says the words of the preacher, the son of David King in Jerusalem.

And then he goes into the, the author goes into writing about the what the preacher has to say. Verse two vanity of vanities says the preacher, vanity of vanities all is vanity. Now, this word vanity, it appears all over the book of Ecclesiastes. And in fact, if you're gonna summarize the book of Ecclesiastes, vanity is probably the best word because it's the word that pops up the most often. But if you look in your Bible, OK, if you have your Bibles open, how many of you, we can, we just lift it just a little bit so I can see those of us who have our Bibles open. OK. Thank you. And then if you have a, a cell phone with, with the Bible open, this is also helpful to have because if you look there is a footnote right there where it says vanity and sometimes you really do have to read the footnotes.

Sometimes the footnotes are just there for scholars and academics to read. Sometimes they're really helpful for us as we read. So if you are even looking on your phone, you can tap that little number there. That is a two on a lot of our phones and it will give you the footnote. I've heard that that's a setting for some people and you actually have to go in and like change it. Ok? Don't worry about that right now. Ok. You can change the setting later to the footnotes. But if you look at the footnote in my Bible, it says when it says Vanity, it has a footnote, it says the term Hebbel. OK, which is actually pronounced Hevel. I know I'm sorry, Hebrew is weird. It's I know it says B like Hebel, but it's Hevel. B and V are very closely related in Hebrew. I'm not gonna get into it all.

Anyways, he translated Vanity or Vain refers concretely to a mist vapor or mere breath and metaphorically to something that is fleeting or elusive with different nuances depending on the context. It appears five times in this verse and in 3rd and 29 other verses in Ecclesiastes. So I think that that footnote is very, very important for us because the word Vanity and I hate doing this, I really do hate doing this. But the, but the, and this is why I hate doing it. I hate telling you that the translation isn't good. OK? You shouldn't have to have access to the original languages to understand it. The translators have done a very good job. The Bible is well translated. And when there's a question on how to translate something, they almost always put a footnote just as they did right here.

So here with this translation, we need to look at the footnote and the footnote says that the word which which is he is actually more referring to like a mist or vapor and not just to vanity when we use the word vanity. I think about like the only thing that I can think of that I've used the word vanity for is like a vanity mirror or a vanity sink in my bathroom. A couple of years ago, I redid the the the sink in my bathroom, put a new sink in there. I never knew it was called the vanity sink until that moment. And that's how I learned what a vanity is.

And but when we use vain, I think about vain as being like self consumed. Well, that's not what the author is going for here. That's not what the preacher is trying to say. He's trying to say that life is like a vapor. It's like a mist. It's like smoke. The best illustration I could come up with and this is only gonna hit with about half of you and I am sorry for that, but the half that it hits with will really hit with you. It's like Spiderman two homecoming. when they have all these drones and sorry, I'm ruining the movie. It's like seven years old now at this point. Sorry. But they have all these drones that are projecting images of monsters. And so it feels like you're fighting the monster, but it's really just the image of a monster. And then if you run through it, it's like nothing, it's just smoke vapor. You thought it was there, but it's not actually there. That is he.

So when we go through this, we had to realize that what the preacher is saying is life is like a, a smoke. It's like a vapor. It's like a mist. It looks like something substantial that we can grab, but it's not, it's here today. Gone, tomorrow. What the preacher is saying is that there's so much in life that's good or beautiful or true. But right, when you get to it, it disappears, that life is fleeting. And so then what he does from this verse on through most of the rest of the book is he goes through basically all of life and deconstruction. He walks through life and deconstructs it. He tears down all the different ways that humans seek to build meaning and purpose apart from God, for example. OK. Verse three, we're just gonna keep going for a second.

Verse three. It says, what does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes and a generation comes. But the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun goes down and hastens to the place where it rises. And so what he's meditating on is just the amazing shortness of human life and how we feel so important. But yet our lives are so short. When you think about the sun that's shining right now outside was the same sun that shined on the dinosaurs. It really starts to make you feel temporary and fleeting.

Think about this hill that we're on right now. OK. If you walked here, you notice we're on the top of a big hill. It's called Winter Hill. This hill has been here for a long time. This hill had a life before we climbed it to go to church on Sundays in the seventies. There was a man in Somerville. If you ask an old timer about this man, he'll tell you all about or she'll tell you all about him. He was named Whitey Bulger. OK. Do we know Whitey? There was a movie called Dark Mass with Johnny Depp in it a couple of years ago about Whitey Bulger. And what was his gang called? He was the leader of the Irish mafia reigning terror throughout the entire Boston region. His gang was called the Winter Hill gang right here on this hill. This is where they had their hang out, their hideout. They existed before us, but this hill existed before them. They didn't last and the hill lasted out, outlasted them. Why they finally caught Whitey and he died in prison.

This church that we're sitting in right now that I'm standing in. You're sitting in. It was built in the late 18 hundreds. That's a long time. Think about all the fashion trends that have walked through this church over the years. Think about all the instruments at one point they had the, the pipe or going in here. I wish we could fire it up. It doesn't work. Ok. I, I do wish we could think about all the, the worship songs that they've sang that have come and gone, the, the fads that have come and gone. This, this building's seen a lot. It's seen bell bottoms even. Ok? And now it's seeing them again. But this hill was here before this church and it will be here after this church.

Before this church was built, a man rode his horse down the street in front of us. The street at that point was not made of asphalt but dirt. Maybe some cobblestones yelling the British are coming, the British are coming. Paul Revere himself rode right over this hill on the street right in front of us. The church was not here but the hill was what do our lives matter in relation to this hill? We're just temporary fleeting a mist here today and gone tomorrow.

Throughout all of chapter two, the preacher goes on a search for significance. Ok. So just one chapter over and he just does this like quick search for significance. This is a powerful man. It said of Solomon that he was one of the wealthiest men to ever live. And and one of the wisest and he, he looks at himself verse one, Ecclesiastes two verse one. It says I said to my heart come now I will test you for pleasure, enjoy yourself. But behold, this also was vanity. And so what you see him do in chapter two is he tries out everything. It's the same stuff that we try out. OK? If you walk through it, it's the same stuff.

Verse verse two. What's he try wine? He's like, I'm gonna try to get drunk. Basically, I'm gonna try drinking vanity. He said it doesn't work. Verse four, he starts building things. He's like, I'm gonna build some stuff. OK? Doesn't work. It's hevel. He builds a house, a vineyard. He tries gardening, hevel OK. Verse six, he builds a pool. He's like, maybe I'll try the vacation life. Maybe I'll just sit by the pool, hevel. Then he buys slaves or personal servants to do his every bidding, hevel. He even turns to concubines and sex and he finds them also to be hevel.

He systematically works through everything that we look to, to find meaning and purpose and he determines them mist or vapor. And then Ecclesiastes 210. He says this and whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did everything, basically whatever I wanted. I did it pure hedonism. I kept my heart from no pleasure from my heart, found pleasure and all of my toil and this was my reward for my toil. Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it and behold all was hevel and is striving after the wind and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.

How many of us live our lives, striving and striving and striving without even thinking about the meaning of this. I don't mean to make light of our work. Many of us have important jobs. But how many of us can say truly that if we died tomorrow, that someone else wouldn't pick it up or that our work is important enough to even be picked up. There's a sense that we have to evaluate our lives and see that everything we do has some significance to it. Sure. I hope that you're doing significant things. I believe my job's significant. At the same time, you could find another pastor and I was gone for two months this summer and you were fine mostly. But then at the same time, there's, it's hevel you know, it's just meaninglessness.

Someone earlier this week, we were at prayer meeting, they were like, you know, thought work is really just like moving information around on a screen. I'm like, oh, man, that's a really depressing way to put it. You know, you're not really accomplishing much what he's saying is what the comedian Jim Carrey captured so well. Jim Carrey, obviously, someone that most of us are familiar with, the, the Lloyd and Dumb and Dumber or the Grinch himself or the evil Doctor Robotnik and Sonic the Hedgehog, depending on your generation. Ok? I hit three generations there. He said this, I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so that they can see that. That's not the answer. Such a great quote, that quote comes up at least quarterly at our church.

And that's the message of Ecclesiastes. It's like he, he's just capturing it. We have this king who could do whatever he wants and he finds it all so pointless, so trivial, so unsatisfying, meaningless, like it should bring purpose, but it doesn't. And that's the whole book. OK. That's what we're doing this whole time. If you want to get into a depressive state and, and do this, we read Ecclesiastes. It's great. It, it's, you know, there's something cathartic about it, but what are we to make of it? OK. What are we to make of the meaninglessness of life?

There's two perspectives. First, we have to look at the perspective of the preacher and then we look at the perspective of the author. I just want us to examine those two perspectives on what he's teaching is about the, the vanity of life. And how do you actually make this worth living? How do you make life, make it? for the preacher, let's look at what he says first because he actually does come up with, there are, there is some meaning in life.

He does this thing over and over again throughout the book at least six different times. And he's going down this really depressing wormhole where he's just examining over and over again, the life, the meaninglessness of life. And then right, when he gets to the edge of the cliff, like it almost seems like he's gonna be like, so it's just not worth living. He like does a, a full 180 he's like, and so you have to enjoy the small things. That's basically what he does. He does it over and over again. He's like, so just enjoy the moment.

My favorite example of this is in Ecclesiastes two verses 22 through 25. He says, what has a man from all the toil and striving after his heart with which he he toils beneath the sun for all his days are full of sorrow. And his work is a vexation. Even in the night, his heart does not rest. It's all vanity as heaven. Next verse. OK. He's like, really at the edge here, the very next verse, what does he say? There's nothing better for a person and that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. For this also I saw is from the hand of God for apart from him who can eat or who, who can have enjoyment.

So what, what he basically says, like, so have a good meal. Your work, your, your job feels meaningless. So have a good meal and enjoy it, like chew a little bit slower. Enjoy the taste of that meal. Have a good drink. Enjoy it. Hang out with some friends. Work hard at your job and just enjoy the, the mere fact that you're working hard. That's what he says. It's like, it's gonna feel like a smoke. But you just have to live in the moment. Look, there is some truth to this. Ok? I think that the author has something more meaningful to, to tell us other than the preacher. I think his commentary is even more helpful, but the preacher's words are true.

Earlier this week, I was walking home from work. Ok. I live over in Powder House Circle, which is on the other side of ball and I, I my office is, is like just five minutes down the hill right here. So I was walking home and like many of us the, the work day was over. It's the middle of the week. I'm walking home. I have to go home at this moment. There's I have commitments at home. I have a lot of stuff. I wanna complete with my job. And so I'm just rehearsing all the things. It's like, oh, how am I gonna finish all this this week? I've got so much going on. I'm just feeling anxious and stressed and I'm just marching all the way home. And then for some reason I, I look up and it dawns on me that the weather is perfect. Like this is the weather this week. I don't know anybody else. Can I get an amen? Ok.

We get like one week of this, every year in New England. Ok. You just gotta enjoy it while you have it. Perfect weather. This is the weather we're gonna have in the new heavens and the new earth. I look up, the sun is shining. There's a light breeze. I look around. People just seem happier. People aren't grumpy right now. It's like they've forgotten winter. It's just like, and I just take pleasure. It's like, you know, life's too short. I'm just gonna enjoy this moment where I'm walking down the street. I get the privilege of walking home in perfect weather today. That's not a given. I'm just gonna enjoy that. There's some truth to what the preacher has to say. It is a moment of pleasure. That was a gift from God.

But what does the author say? All right. So let's go to the very end of the book. Chapter 12 in chapter 12 verse 11. Ok. This is what he says. The words of the wise are like goads and like nails firmly fixed are the collect collected sayings they are given by one shepherd. Beware my son, my son beware of anything beyond these, of making many books. There is no end and much study is a weariness of the flesh. All right. So what does the, the author have to say about the preacher's works?

Well, first, he says they're like a goad or like a pointy stick. Ok? That something that a shepherd would use to poke the sheep to make them go in the right direction. So what he's saying is the author. His words are not easy. It's like he's, it's like he's stabbing us with a pointy stick telling us to move. And he says, but they're, but they're good for us. It's still a good thing to be stabbed in, in that kind of way.

And then what he says, I love, this is like one of my favorite verses in the Bible because then he says, verse 12, my son beware of anything beyond these, of making many books. There is no end and much study is a weirdness of the flu flesh. So what he's basically saying as you can spend your entire life studying these existential questions about life and at the end, you'll have more questions than answers. What he's saying is that being a philosophy major is not for the, the low in heart. OK. For it you can spend your life doing this and, and just be more confused. And so what he's trying to say is like, read Ecclesiastes, but don't make it, the only book that you read is what he's saying. He's like, thank you for reading my book. Now, move on to another one. OK?

I think we should return to Ecclesiastes at like two, maybe three times a year. OK? As Christians and then we just move on. Ok. It's a good reminder, but it's not something that we obsess about over and over all the time.

And then the author draws this conclusion verse 13. OK. So this is the conclusion, the end of the matter. OK? And he's like this is the final word. This is the conclusion. This is what I have to say about this. All has been heard. Two things fear God and keep His commandments for. This is the whole duty of man. Verse 14, for God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil. So what, what's the conclusion?

First, he tells you what to do? He says fear God and obey His commands. He's basically like, hey, you handle your side of the street, let God handle his side of the street. There are questions about the meaningfulness of life and about what you can do and how much it matters. But look all you can do as a human, as a temporary being, as someone who is plagued with hevel in your life is handle your side of the street and your side of the street. What you have to do obey God fear Him, love him.

When it says fear God in the Bible, don't think that that's like be afraid and trembling of God. What it's saying is be in awe of God, respect God, be in awe of who he is. That's the fear. It's a holy fear, not a fear of terror. It's a holy fear of God, love God with all of your heart, obey him. And then he says, here's God's side and he gives us this. He says, God will bring every deed into judgment, whether secret or whether good or evil. That's the secret sauce. That's the secret sauce of the book.

Because the author basically writes the book without thinking about eternity that often every once in a while. He says something like man has eternity written on his heart. But here the author comes back and says, yes, life is meaningless. Unless there's a God who brings everything into judgment. Because if there is a God who brings everything into judgment, then and, and if we are eternal beings that will live on forever, then your life does matter. There is purpose to what you are doing. If you, if you go and, and you heartlessly kill someone like Meursault and the stranger there will be a judgment for that.

That's what he's saying is you can't just go around doing evil. You can't just go around living your most selfish life that there is an afterlife, that there is eternity. And this eternity, it gives meaning and purpose to today because we know that the people that we become today, if we become more like Christ, it goes on into eternity. In that way, we know that one day Jesus is going to return and he's going to bring true justice. He's going to bring purpose to our otherwise meaningless lives. Our God is going to judge every deed and those who are in Christ will be judged righteous.

That's the good news of the gospel. Because if, if every deed were to be judged, I would not be in a good place. I have evil deeds. I've done them. I have evil thoughts. But yet the good news of the gospel is that Jesus lived a perfect sinless life and died, the death that I deserve. So that through his death, he received my judgment and I received his righteousness because of what Jesus has done. I am welcomed into eternity with God to enjoy fellowship with Him forever. It's the simple gospel, not because of what I've done, but because of what He has done. If He is this mist, eternity is the strong wind that blows away the mist and shows you that your life has meaning and significance.

Now, Paul covers this thing too. So in concluding, I wanted to go to the New Testament. First Corinthians chapter 15 because I think that Paul touches on the idea of hevel there and how he thinks about it. So in First Corinthians 15, it's this famous passage. It's an Easter passage. But this is what he has to say verse 14. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain. hevel it doesn't matter. And your faith also in vain, if Christ has not been raised, we are even found to be misrepresenting God because we testify about God that he raised Christ whom he did not raise. If it is true, that the dead are not raised. And for if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. If Christ has been raised, if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile.

This sounds like the author of Ecclesiastes, doesn't it? The preacher, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins than those who have fallen asleep or died. That's a poetic way of saying died in Christ have perished. If in Christ, we have hope in this life only. We are of all people most to be pitied. If there is no resurrection, you of all people who are go spending your Sunday morning at a church are most to be pitied.

But listen, friends. If Jesus has risen from the dead as we know he has, if he continues to reign and rule in the universe that is a guarantee, a down payment of the future resurrection that you will enjoy with them. And if that is true, then your faith is most to be envied, not most to be pitied because you have union with God. You get to live with Him throughout all eternity. Your life can have meaning and purpose but not if you live just for this life. If you live just for this life, you are most to be pitied because you will find at the end of the day vapor here today, gone tomorrow.

But in life, in light of eternity, we can have joy both in this life and the life to come. If you live for this life, you will find it to be a vapor hevel but live for the next life in Christ and you'll find joy and glory and purpose. So friends, I want you to reimagine life. It's not just a rat race on a hamster wheel. It's filled with glorious purpose and meaning because Christ has been raised. Amen. Christ has been raised. You too will one day be raised.

If you place your faith in him, if we had a hope, only in this life, we are people most to be pitied. If we hope in the life to come, we are people most to be envied. Because the reality of eternity changes the way that we think about the realities of today. It brings meaning and purpose to the things that we do and we can enjoy the simple moments as the preacher says. But then at the same time, we know that Jesus is coming and in the new heavens and the new earth, our lives will no longer feel meaningless, but they'll be filled with purpose and joy and of the presence of God, which is really what gives life meaning and purpose is this presence of God. We touch it in this life, but then we will know it in full. It's like we see it in a dim mirror today, but one day we'll see God face to face and that brings life meaning and purpose.

So I'm gonna encourage you. I know this is a heavy sermon for many of us. You know, we've worked a long time to get where we are and then you don't want to evaluate the fact that oh maybe it's all meaningless especially when you have so many degrees after your name and what not as many of us do. But, or even just like how you're living, you don't wanna think about it being meaningless. But it's, it's important for us to look at this and to, to give it to the Lord and say, would you bring meaning to my otherwise meaningless life? And he will. And I think we just go to him with open hands and over this next song, as I said, that the presence of the Lord that being with Him is really what brings life meaning.

We get to celebrate a sacred meal called communion. And with this meal as we do not believe that the elements actually turn into Jesus's body and blood. But we believe that Jesus is here in a real way with us still. OK. I think sometimes we do communion disservice when we say, is basically the only section of the worship service where Jesus is not, We're like, he's in the songs, he's everywhere, but he's not in the communion. He's here with us. And we get to enjoy who he is.

And we have this reminder that is communion. When we take up the, the bread, we're reminded that Christ's body has broken for us. When we take up the juice or the wine, we reminded that his blood was shed for us. And because of what he's done, we get life with God. So would you stand as we respond to, to Christ and song.

Father, we had these, these weighty words from Ecclesiastes this morning. But we pray that as we come to you, that you would embed us with meaning and purpose and joy and life and your presence. God, as we take the sacred meals, we prepare our hearts. Would you help us to evaluate our lives and to come to you again, we need to hear from you fresh. We need your presence again. We need your love. We thank you for the gospel that Jesus has been raised, that we are raised with him and that we get to enjoy him throughout all of eternity. We ask these things in Christ's name, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher begins our new sermon series with Psalm 1. Discussion points: Wisdom literature in the Bible teaches us how to live the “good life”, to be blessed is to have a soul satisfied in God, Jesus is the blessed man who delights in the law of the Lord and is compared to a tree rooted by a stream, we can follow the way of Jesus and be considered righteous because of his sacrifice.

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Scripture reader: [Psalm 1] Blessed is the man who walks not in the council of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners nor sits in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord. And on his law, he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of waters that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does he prospers. The wicked are not so, but like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: Hi, good morning. Good to see everybody this morning. I can see you a little bit better because I'm elevated now. It's yeah, it's great to be back. I'm I'm glad to be able to, to bring God's word for you this morning. This morning, we're starting a new series called Life Reimagined. This is going to be an opportunity for us as a church to re to evaluate our lives and to reimagine them according to God's standards.

Now, one of the things that we rarely do as people in general is actually take a step back and evaluate our lives. Like, am I living the way that I want to be living? How is life going from right now? What changes do I want to be making? We do that on a microcosm all the time as we're influenced on Instagram, you know, we're scrolling like I'd like to be the type of person that travels more. I'd like to be the type of person that, you know, gains more muscle mass or whatever. I'm telling you about my Instagram, I suppose. But we, we all need to take a step back and to reimagine what is possible for us and what our lives could be like if we lived according to God's ideals and God's standards, how do we get the good life?

That is a question that all people are asking and all people are trying to answer. How do I live the good life? So let's just start with this. I want you to take a moment and just imagine where you are right now living the good life. What would tomorrow be like if you could live the good life? What are some things that would change about you and about your circumstances? Now we'll do a little thought experiment. I actually did this thought experiment here at the church about five years ago. But, raise your hand if you've been here for five years. All right. So, there's not that many people who are gonna remember everything. Right. We're a relatively new church.

I want you to imagine this side of the room and this side of the room are gonna have very different, circumstances. All right, this side of the room tomorrow morning you wake up and someone slipped a lottery ticket through your mail slip and it's, it's the big one. All right. So you just won millions and millions and millions of dollars reimagine your life. What's it gonna look like? How's it going to be different? I bet a lot of you with the thing that you were imagining a few moments ago can now live that out. All right. If your, reimagined life was sitting on a beach somewhere, you know, sipping on a drink, you can probably do that if you won the lottery this side. I'm sorry. not as good. Here. You all left and we're in a horrible, I'm sorry to say you were in a horrible, car accident and you're all paraplegic now.

So we're the church of millionaires and paraplegics. that's, that's all we have in our church or one of the two. And I share that. And so I want you to reimagine your life. Well, a lot's going to change. Is it not for me? I'd have to figure out a way to get up my stairs, to get into my house. There's a lot of different things that cannot go on the way that they're currently going. If that were my reality. Now, I'll show this illustration because it's an illustration that I read in a book by a Harvard social psychologist named Dan Gilbert called Stumbling On Happiness. And it was a New York Times best seller like 15 years ago. And he tells this this exact illustration and he says that what's crazy is that the studies show that one year after the fact, those who won the lottery versus those who became paraplegic are exactly the same amount of happy that there is no difference in their happiness quantifiable according to science. They're the same.

In fact, what Doctor Gilbert says is that if it happened over three months ago, it rarely has an influence on someone's happiness here. And today now I know there's exceptions to every rule. Many of us go through mourning. I my, my father left my family when I was five. I spent the next 30 years trying to figure out what that meant for me. And then my father died. And for some reason that destroyed me, even though I barely talked to, talked to him three times in 30 years. And for some reason, the death of someone I barely knew, killed me. And now I'm still trying to develop, still trying to deal with that, right? So it's not saying that nothing matters, but he's saying by and large, if it happened over three months ago, it's not going to affect your day to day happiness.

And so even as we're trying to reimagine our best lives, how do we even do that? If we can think through my circumstances becoming the absolute worst or absolute best, doesn't actually influence how happy I am. What does influence my happiness? What will satisfy my soul, dear soul, what will satisfy you? Each of us has a soul that is hungry, that longs for more, that longs for significance, that longs for happiness and what will satisfy your soul.

Friends, that is a spiritual question if I've ever heard one. When people imagine following Jesus, they often think that it's going to ruin their lives. Now, I know that many of my neighbors would prefer to go to elective dental surgery than to follow Jesus. And the real, the reality is, it's because we often times don't paint Jesus as being the most joyful to follow. We oftentimes don't send our best on TV to represent what Christians are actually like. And we as Christians often times aren't joyful as we are called to be. And as we not only are called to be, but God has given us the resources to be, but following Jesus is truly joyful, there is no better way to live. And that's, that's what I believe.

And that's what we're going to be talking about for the next seven weeks is what it looks like to reimagine our lives following after the way of God and living that out, the way that he's meant it. And the way that we're going to do that is we're going to be going through the wisdom literature. Now, there's not, a lot of there, you know, that's the sermon series that you don't hear very often is wisdom literature. OK? We're gonna be going through, there's generally agreed on three books of wisdom literature and then two that are like, you know, kind of wisdom literature. So we're gonna be doing all five Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, and Song of Solomon, which who's ever heard of a sermon on the Song of Solomon. You can go ahead and mark that one down, ok. That's gonna be high attendance Sunday for us. Here that, that book is just like written about sex, you know, check your kids into CoaH kids that week and, and come and join us.

It's going to be an invitation, as we evaluate this wisdom literature to consider the way that God has given us to live. Maybe you've never done that, maybe you've never reimagined your life according to God's ideals. Maybe this is an opportunity, this is next few months will be an opportunity for you to evaluate your life, for you to think through the way you're living. And the way that you could be living, the way that you could have life in God. The goal of this series is gets you to reimagine your life as a person who follows God with your entire being with the core of your soul.

And many people don't examine Christianity as I was saying that many of our neighbors haven't examined Christianity, not because they have, they don't consider Christianity an option. It's not that they've tried it and they found it lacking. It's that they've left it untried. As GK Chesterton says, "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and left untried." That is the reality of what it, of one of the things that hinders us from reimagining our lives following Christ.

Here's another quote about imagination that I want to share with you, James K Smith says it this way, "Our action emerges from how we imagine the world we live into the stories we've absorbed, we've become characters in the drama that has captivated us. Thus, much of our action is acting out a kind of script that has unconsciously captured our imaginations." You live in the way that you imagine yourself living. Oftentimes you imagine the world around you. Many of the problems in our life are not because of anything other than a disordered and a diseased imagination.

I think that CS Lewis says it really well, when he says, "It would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong but too weak. We are half hearted creatures fooling around with drink and sex and ambition. When infinite joy is offered us like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased." All right.

So to help us reimagine our lives, we're going to turn to these wisdom literature. Now, Tim Mackey, the guy who did the, the Bible project, you've probably seen those videos online. If you haven't, I invite you to check them out Bible project on Google on Google. Yes, but on youtube, which is owned by Google in case you didn't know. But he, he says this, "The wisdom literature teaches us what kind of world we're living in and what does it look like to live well in this world." So, basically what the wisdom literature is teaching us, the wisdom literature is teaching us what is the good life and how do we live it?

Now, sometimes when we look at the wisdom of literature, we have to understand what it is in its genre. OK. So if you pick up the Psalms and then you look at the Proverbs, you're gonna see a lot of things that we call truisms where it says if you do this, then this will happen so much of the message of Proverbs and I'm going to be unpacking this under over the next seven weeks. Ok? But much of the message of Proverbs is, hey, if you live well, if you're just and kind, God is going to do that in turn for you, but then you get to the book of job and it's like job did everything right. Yet his life fell apart. And so you kinda, and then you look at and then you look at the Psalms, you look at Ecclesiastes and Ecclesiastes is like the everything is just meaningless, nothing matters. It doesn't matter how I behave, it's just vapor.

And so you had to look at the, honestly, you have to look at all of the Wisdom literature as a collective whole and see the overall picture that it's giving to us and not just one book or the other. We have to understand the total message of God, which is one reason why it's really fun to do it all together in this way. And we'll be diving more into each of these as we go. So instead of going verse by verse, wisdom literature is difficult to preach, verse by verse. It's difficult, we normally pick books of the Bible go chapter by chapter, verse by verse. That's just a really good and easy way to preach through the Bible. And we think that the Bible is God's word to us. So that's what we wanna emphasize.

But with the little Wisdom literature, we find it to be a little bit more helpful to go thematically. Because does anybody want to sign up for a 42 week study of Job? Not really. All right. How about a six week study of Song of Solomon, maybe? All right, but not Job. Ok. So we're gonna look at them thematically, the themes just so you can be excited. Work, reimagined, family, reimagined, suffering, reimagined, friendship, reimagined, money, reimagined and sex reimagined. So, as we dive into this week, we're going to start where the li wisdom literature starts. And that's with Psalm one.

So if you have your Bibles, leave them open, if you haven't opened them or open them up to Psalm chapter one. Now when you get to Psalm 11, I'll just point out something as you're turning there is if you're opening your Bible like I am, you'll see. It's actually after Job. So Job 42 goes into Psalm one. And so how can I say that this is the beginning of the wisdom literature? Aha. You've caught me, but I've caught you because this is a Hebrew trap. OK. The, the old preacher Hebrew trap, I got you in the Hebrew Bible. Psalms goes before Job. All right. So Job is, is later in the Hebrew. And so Psalms really does open up the, the wisdom literature that we have here.

And Psalm one is something that we call wisdom Psalm. Not, not all the Psalms qualify as wisdom literature, but Psalm, one does qualify as wisdom literature. And in wisdom Psalms, what you find is that the, the Psalmist gives you two ways to live and only two, two ways to live and only two, he says the blessed, behave like this, they do this and the wicked, they live this way. A little simplistic, right? That's lacking a little bit of nuance and honestly, it is and it's a rhetorical device. Jesus used it all the time. He said all the time. He said, you either build your house on the stone or you build your house on the sand. No other choices, you know, no wood pylons to build your house on OK. There is no Venetian kingdom of God. It is either on the stone or it is on the sand. Jesus said it like this. It's a rhetorical device to get us to consider our life.

Now, what it doesn't do is what I think gets many of us in trouble a lot of times because we tend to think of the world. And I think this is a fallacy if we think about it like this, that life is a struggle between good people and bad people. The reality is all of us have a little bit of good in us and a little bit of bad in us. We are all made in the image of God. And so therefore, we reflect some goodness about who he is. But yet at the same time, we are broken by the curse of sin and death. And therefore, we all reflect a little bit of badness at the same time. And so when we get into this common enemy, political ideation that we have, where we basically say if this person doesn't agree with me, that means they're evil. And I'm going to condemn them that is going down a way, that's not really what the Bible is supporting and it's not healthy for our society as a whole. But we have to recognize that all of us are a mixed bag of motives.

Now, I've heard, let me just throw out an illustration to, for that, I've heard that Adolf Hitler was a good dog owner that he really cared for. His dogs, caring for dogs are good is good, but Adolf Hitler, not a good person. Ok? Not at all. And so you can have redeeming qualities even as a overwhelmingly evil person, you can have some redeeming qualities, not anyone is all bad or all good. We're all made in the image of God, yet we're all broken by sin and we have different degrees of what that looks like.

But in this psalm, we're being communicated, this is what it looks like to be someone who is blessed, this is God's ideal. This is how we are to sue life. There are two ways to live you either live for God or you don't, you either live for God or you live for self and for this world. And that's what this Psalm is teaching us. So let's just walk through it.

Verse one. Blessed is the man. Now, if you can't tell, I grew up in the south, we use bless very differently than y'all do up north. OK. We, we say bless almost as a, as a happy insult, bless his heart. He just can't figure out which side of the road to drive on. You know, it's just like it's a way that you say someone's an idiot and you just say bless his heart, bless his heart. He just can't pass first grade. You know what, whatever it is. It's, it's just not one of those things that you want. you want someone to say about you. But when the Bible talks about someone who is blessed, they're talking about a state of being that is thriving, to be blessed is to be thriving, to be blessed is to be flourishing is to have a state of wholeness.

When you think about someone who's blessed versus someone who's, who's not OK. If, if you cut into the person who's just good on the outside, they're like that Easter egg bunny that you get and you are real excited when you're a kid and you take a bite and you're like, oh I thought this thing was solid chocolate but it's like all hollow. You know, there's no chocolate on the inside, that's like their goodness. You know, it's just on the outside, but a blessed person is whole all the way through, like a solid, whole chocolate bunny. That's the good one. OK? You cut through that thing. It's like chocolate all the way through.

And that's, that's what it means to be blessed as someone where your inner person is in agreement with your outer person where you are living, blessed, your soul is at peace. Now, to give you an example, Dallas Willard, somewhat of a spiritual hero for many of my generation is a man who you would describe or was a man who you would describe as blessed. Dallas Willard. Many people recognize his writings as being very influential. If you haven't checked out any of his books, go for it. They're, they're all very good. And many things, many people remark about spending time with Dallas. And afterwards, they would just say man, his pace, his pace of life is just so different. He like lives in a different time zone than the rest of us. He's just unhurried and going through life at peace.

And here what he had to say, he's gonna get a lot of quotes throughout the series. But here he says this, "The most important thing in your life is not what you do, it's who you become. That's what you will take into eternity. You are an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God's great universe." Oh, hold on a second. Let's take that one more, one more time. All right, you are an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God's great universe. Friends to be blessed is to have a soul that is satisfied in God, a soul that is satisfied. So what does it look like to be blessed?

Let's look at what the psalmist has to say. Ok, first one blessed is the man who walks not in the council of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners nor sits in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law, he meditates day and night. OK? So he starts with a description of what a blessed man is not. He says a blessed man is not a man who walks in the council of wicked or stands in the way of sinners nor sits in the seat of scoffers.

And there's a progression there when you think about the way of sin, sin is often slow and progresses. OK? Here you're first, he's saying he's standing, this man is not or or saying he's, he's walking. So he's just walking by. He's like not really noticing he's gonna move on by. But then before you, you know what he's standing in the way of sinners. Now, when it says in the way of sinners in English. A lot of times we think that he's standing in their way like they won't move out of the way. He's, he's standing blocking the sinners from something though. What it's talking about is he's, he's, he's standing in their shoes. He's, he's living out their la their way. So he stands in the way of sinners nor sits, ok, he's gotten comfortable now in the sin and he's sitting in the seat of scoffers.

And that is the way that sin is insidious and, and continual in our life, it starts slow and then it becomes consuming as you excuse, more and more the soul is looking for something to consume. The soul is hungry, looking to be influenced, looking for the good life. That's what's happening. When you constantly scroll on social media, your soul is looking for the good life. Looking for something to be influenced by something to delight in. But that is an all you can eat cotton candy buffet. All right. It, it's not gonna leave you full, it's gonna leave you feeling worse than when you started it and it's got no substance in it. No nutrition.

Friends, I just want to invite you to reimagine life. Nothing can make you happier than the pleasure of God. The pleasures of this world will grow strangely dim and that's what the blessed person doesn't do. He's not influenced by the world. He's not walking in the ways of the world. But what does he do. Now, you would expect a psalmist or she do. Ok. It's just rhetorical. Ok, either one gender neutral.

What does the blessed person do? You would expect the Psalmist to say, well, the blessed person, he stands in the way of the righteous and he walks in the way of the Godly and he sits in the way of the joyful, but that's not what he says. It's not all encompassing enough. Instead, the Psalmist actually says that there's a deeper root to this. The Psalmist says, if you get this, you're gonna get that other stuff because what he says is but the, the blessed man, his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law, he meditates day and night says, if the Psalmist is saying, hey, if you get this, if you get delighting in the word of God, you're gonna get all the other stuff. It's not just that the blessed person has resolved himself or herself to study the word, but this person delights in the word, delights in it. They get the word and they see God himself.

There's no way that there's some of us who are nerdy enough to where we'll open up the Bible and we'll just delight to read words there. Ok. That's, that's called being a Bible academic. And I would love to introduce you to some seminary professors. If that's what, what you are the majority of us, we open up the Bible. And we don't delight just because the words are there, we delight because the words point us to God. And through these words, we see his face, we learn his ways and we interact with who he is. And so when we delight in the law of God, that's saying, I delight in being with God and enjoying his voice, I want to hear him speaking to me. I delight in that. I delight in what God has to say, God is the happiest being in the universe. And then it's in it and it's in His word where we are to be most delighted. It's in the word of God that we find God himself.

God has revealed himself through his word and we learn to think God's thoughts after him as we study the word. So ultimately, we know John 11 that in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. And this word that he's referring to is Jesus Christ himself. Jesus is the ultimate revelation. Someone reveals themselves to you through their words. And Jesus is the ultimate revelation of who God is. So therefore, as we get to know Jesus, we get to know God himself, the ultimate revelation of the word of God.

The Puritan, John Owen puts it like this. And this is, this is language, it's, it's archaic, it's not easy, but it's rich. Ok. So hang on. All right. Well, we're, we got you got this. OK. You got this. I believe in you Somerville. "If we settle for mere speculations and mental knowledge about Christ's doctrine, we will find no transforming power or efficacy communicated unto us thereby." He could have said that more simply, I'm confident. "But when our affections do cleave to him with full purpose of heart, our minds fill up with thoughts and delights of him. Then virtue-" and what he's referring to as virtue as, as change of character, "then virtue will proceed from Him to increase our holiness and sometimes to fill us with joy, unspeakable and full of glory."

Have you had it? It's not always, but have you experienced it? Joy, unspeakable and full of glory? What's He saying? He's saying that if you want to know God better, if you want to be happy, you have to meditate on the word. You have to meditate on the word. And so as this introduction of wisdom literature, one thing that psalm one is teaching us is that the secret to being happy, the secret to wisdom is delighting in God.

And so as you reimagine your life, as we go through this whole series, it's just going to be like reimagine your life. If you delighted in God and not money or delighted in God through your money. Imagine your life. If you delighted, how would you work differently if delighting in God was just a true thing for you. How would you have family differently as someone who delights in God? That's just the core being to what the wisdom literature is trying to teach us here. Verse three, let's keep walking through this so rich. I love this image. This is such a great image. It has just filled my prayers this week for you all. It is what I pray for myself. It is what it is just such a rich image. Join me.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither and all that he does. He prospers. The wicked are not so but they are like chaff that the wind drives away. So the blessed person is like a tree planted by streams of water. In the ancient near east, there would often times be areas that would have streams, but they would be temporary streams during the rainy seasons and then they would dry up and it would be just a dry river bed there. And so the the vegetation in that area would also dry up. And so it wasn't given that a stream was going to be somewhere all the time. And but what he's saying is this is one, a man, this is a man who has planted himself next to a stream that remains constant, whose leaves do not wither who yields its fruit and its season, yielding fruit and season.

Life is not always full of fruit. Sometimes there's times where maybe it's a little dry, maybe it's just not my season at this moment, I'm just struggling and that's ok. But what he says is that there are seasons when life is difficult and less sweet, but the fruit comes and the leaf does not wither because you were planted by these streams of living water. I just like to imagine the root system of this tree that's gone in under the ground. Even when it's not raining, the roots are touching the stream and is able to gather the water enough to nutri to bring nutrition.

And that's who the blessed person is. That is who we are longing to be and all he does, he prospers is what it says. Now, this is not where I tell you to give to our ministry so I can buy another personal jet. Ok. This is not the Prosperity gospel here, but this is where he's saying that a blessed person is a person who prospers.

When we think about prosperous life, our ears mainly only hear of someone who's benefiting financially prosperously. But what he's saying here is that the blessed man is a tree planted by streams of water or the blessed woman tree planted by streams of water and whatever he or she does, they prosper. That means whether you are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or you're mopping floors for a living you can be prosperous in those different places. Wherever you are, you're able to prosper because where you are is just the situation. That's what's above the ground, under the ground. Your roots are connected to the streams of living water and you can have joy.

Now he says the happy life and he, he compares the righteous tree, the happy life. Those who are pointed by streams of water. What does he compare it to? You would think that maybe he would say the righteous are like a redwood growing tall and together and the, and the unrighteous are like a sycamore. I don't know, some, some tree, some other tree that's not as good as a redwood, right? But the difference between the Godly and the Ungodly is not that the Godly is just a nicer or better version of the Ungodly, but it's a totally different way of being what he says is that the happy life is the one that's rooted like a tree. Godly people are people of substance that can stand strong while he says that the wicked are like chaff.

Now, if you didn't grow up, if you grew up in the city, you might not even know what chaff is. All right. Chaff is that those things that cowboys wear on their legs? No, those are chaps. Ok. Chaff is what is left over after you do a harvest basically. So if you've ever corn on the cob ok. If you peel off the husk of the corn on the cob, the husk is the chaff. Now, if you get smaller things, chaff becomes smaller and can blow around in the wind. So, growing up in rural Mississippi as I did, you would get behind some vehicles that just had harvest and it would just be a dust cloud behind it. That, that dust cloud is not gonna go and plant seeds. Ok. That is useless stuff that's coming off of these seeds. It is the useless part of it.

And that's what he's comparing those who are not following God, the, the not blessed. He says that they're like chaff, there's just blown in the, into the wind, they're without substance, not yielding fruit. They're here today and gone tomorrow. And that's how the, the Bible describes the person who delights in this world as opposed to delighting in God. And so friends, let me give you this reimagine life, reimagine life. You are a plant. You are a tree planted by streams of living water. You are a tree planted by streams of living water. You're rooted. The most important thing about you cannot be shaken or changed. You're not subject to others' opinions for your happiness. You're not dependent upon the sprinklings of praise. You're not movable by life's large storms. You delight in the Lord and he will never fail you.

Let's look and see how the Psalm ends. Verse five. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish notice something, OK? When we read that our brain does a little selective forgetting. When we read it, we read it and we think for the, wait, wait a second, what's it saying? What, what, what is it saying? When we read it, It says that the Lord knows the way of the righteous but the way of the wicked will perish. We read that and we think the Lord knows the righteous and the wicked will perish. We forget this whole way. He's saying that the whole way, the Lord knows the way of the righteous, the way that they live their life and the way of the wicked will lead to perishing.

You will eventually run dry. You will become more and more like the chaff, the things you fill your mind with and your heart with will become, you will become more temporary person as you fill your heart and your mind with more temporary things. That's just the reality. You become less heavy, less weighty, less substantial as you obsess about things of less substance. But if you place your hope in the Lord, the Lord knows the way of the righteous and you will be blessed in the, in the end, the way of the wicked, it will eventually lead to perish. It might look like they're happy. But at the end, those who live for this world will be like chaff in the wind.

Now, I love this Psalm. I love the vision that it lays out. But I hate the way it makes me feel because I read the and I never feel more like the blessed person than I feel like the wicked person. I read the Psalm and every single time I read it, I think, I don't, I don't read the part about delighting in the law of the Lord on his law meditating day and night and think, oh, that's me. I read the part about walking in the council of the wicked and standing in the way of sinners and sitting on the seat of scoffers and think that's me. I resonate more with that wicked person than I do the blessed one.

That's not the way it's supposed to be. I don't think that that hurts. Can I truly say that I delight in the law of the Lord and not in the things of this world? I never feel good enough. Can I truly say that I'm more like a tree planted by streams that I prosper in all that I do.

And that's because I'm reading the Psalm assuming that it's about me when this Psalm is about Jesus. Now re look at it with me with fresh eyes knowing that he's describing the man that he's describing. The only truly blessed man is Jesus Christ himself. Blessed is the man who walks not in the council of the wicked, nor stands in his way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. But he delights in the law of the Lord and on his law, he meditates day and night.

What better description do we have of Jesus? He's like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season and its leaf does not wither and all he does, he prospers. Jesus lived the way of the righteous. He walked according to God's ideals. He delighted in the law of the Lord at all times meditating on it, day and night. He is the true tree planted by the streams of living water and friends. You can be grafted into that tree.

That's the promise of the Gospel, not that He'll make you your own tree, but that you get to go be a part of the Jesus tree, that Jesus took on our humanity so that we might take on his righteousness so that we might be looked at as one who is blessed that the gifts and the prosperity that are true of Jesus is true of us, that we get all of the benefits that He deserves, that we get to the intimacy with the Father that only he accomplished for those who are in Christ. God sees us as he sees Jesus himself.

And Jesus taught us that if we will follow him walk in his ways, trust him and receive his grace. We will be blessed as he is blessed. Not because we deserve that blessing, but because of what he's accomplished, how he paid our penalty, how the wicked penalty has been poured out on Jesus. You see, he is not just the blessed man, but he's the wicked man receiving the penalty here. He took on what it means to be wicked and was laid on the cross and that way perished on him.

And so if you are in Christ today, everything that's true in this psalm is true of you in Christ, he received your punishment, you received his blessing through faith. I've been clothed in his righteousness and I'm seeking to follow his ways and the way of Jesus is life. So I invite you, receive the righteousness of Jesus and then follow in the way of Jesus live the way that he lived and you will be blessed. Follow in the way of Jesus is the way of the righteous. That is what we have here and we have more to go by than they had in the old testaments. We understand it even better.

Now, each week we celebrate a sacred meal and the sacred meal. Some call it Eucharist, some call it communion, some call it the Lord's supper. But we celebrate it every week as a physical reminder of Jesus' body being broken for us and his blood being shed for us. And as we participate in this meal, we're reminded that we are a part of who Christ is, that he is really with us in a real kind of way. And so with this meal, if you are a Christian here today, we would invite you to receive it.

If you're living in sin, that would lead you to think that you are not actually following Jesus. I would encourage you to receive the good news of Jesus and then take communion next week. But friends, you can, you can, there can be a way that we approach the communion table, never feeling worthy, right? Because I, I encourage you to evaluate your life. Are you living in sin? Are you not? But when you come to the communion table, you have to say Christ's righteousness alone, you don't come to the communion table because you are righteous, but you come to the communion table because you're trusting in Him who is righteous on your behalf.

And so if that's true of you, the table is open, come and receive the grace of the Lord. A new He loves you as simple as that. There is grace enough for you always. So would you stand with me as the band makes their way back on the stage and we respond to God.

Jesus, as we study your word this morning, help us to be men and women who delight in you. And Jesus, we, we just praise you that you have delighted in your Father throughout eternity past, that as the second member of the Trinity, that there's just been this ultimate delight in who you are and who the Father is and the Holy Spirit. And Holy Spirit, we pray that you would fill us now and help us to delight in Jesus more. As we receive this meal, help us to be filled with everything that's true of Jesus and to feel truly blessed this morning. God, we, we praise you for the opportunity to respond to your word and we pray that our praises will bring you delight and pleasure. We ask this in Christ's name, Amen.

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Ministry Associate Calvin Chu preaches from Colossians 4:2-6. Discussion points: The apostle Paul was not above needing prayer from others in the church, Paul prays for gospel opportunities rather than a change in circumstances, life is a collection of opportunities to do good for others, the way we live is meant to attract others to Christ.

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Scripture reader: [Colossians 4:2-6] Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak, walking in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: Thank you. I don't know about you guys. But sometimes when like, I'll open up a news page or, you know, social media and I'll look at the caption or what like the headline of the article. And I see it says something about like Christians. There's like a tinge of me that I was like, 00, like what, what, what is happening? What did, what did they do right? There, there's an element for me that says the article says a group of Christians showed up to protest this and I go, oh, what did they protest? Or a group of evangelical leader says, or did? And I go, oh, and, and a part of me gets really, really nervous because, as I click the link, I don't know how the, the folks who say they are following Jesus, they, they're like in the name of Christ. I'm doing this thing or I'm living in this way. I, I get nervous because I, I've seen lots of, you know, I have lots of options to pick from that made me go, oh, that might not have been the best action or the best thing to say in that moment.

I'm sure you could argue that. Well, the mainstream media is just biased towards Christians and therefore they're going to hand select the worst. Yeah, I mean, ok, sure. I, I guess you could make that selection, make that, uh, argument. But part of me thinks that if there are folks who are behaving outwardly like knowing that they're the outside world, the, the, the world outside the walls of the church are looking at those who say yes, Jesus is my savior. I checked that box if they live in this way and they do these things.

I think there's an element that perhaps it's because for those of us who say we follow Jesus and that have opened up our Bibles, maybe sit in pews every single Sunday and have, are choosing to live in a certain way, but are, are, are doing these things and living in a way that seems contradictory to how we might read the Bible. It makes you think that maybe there's an element that we don't know how we're supposed to live in light of the fact that there are people out there who don't know Jesus and are looking at us and seeing us at work and in the marketplace and seeing us in our neighborhoods or at our classes in our schools.

And, you know, I, I think I, I get a sense of that because I, I think that a lot of times all people, certainly not just Christians, we don't have the market corner, but all people go into the world driven by our own sense of right and wrong and not what God calls us to. Right. We're, we're more driven by our politics or our feelings than Jesus. And I think that's the, the thing that creates this equation that comes up with this result of people living in ways that seem contradictory to how God might want us to actually live.

And so what should a Christian's life outside of the church actually look like, you know, who are you? And I, those of us who follow Jesus supposed to be when we leave these pews, when we leave these seats, when we go out this ornate looking building and go out there and live and, and you know, interact with those around us when the worship music stops and the sermons end and the benedictions have been received. What is it that we are called to bring out into the world?

And so as we prepare for uh as we prepare for, for landing on this sermon, what we're gonna hear is that Paul is gonna talk to the Colossians at the Colossians church and what God has in terms for them, in terms of how they are to live. And I think that God is speaking to us today still through it and that we can see how we are to relate to the world around us. So we've already read the passage. So, you know, I think the framework here is in a sermon like this. If you kind of break it down, it's really, really simple to just go. OK, verse two says, this continue steadfastly in prayer, prayer being watchful in it with thanksgiving. So let's do what that thing says. Let's pray. I'm gonna pray one more time and then we're gonna scrape a little bit deeper into this text so we can see really what God is calling us to. So let's pray.

God, as we listen to this verse that tells us to continue steadfastly in prayer. God, we know that prayer is important and so God help us to approach the throne with the right mindset with the right mentality. And God let us have hearts that are ready and willing and able to confess the ways that we have not represented you well. And conf confess even maybe even on, on behalf of other people that maybe we should have spoke up against or we should have spoke in challenge or we should have spoke and been a loving voice in the ear of folks who maybe didn't do things that really brought your name glory. We pray that this word would speak to us as we do. Get ready to go back to work tomorrow. Or for those of us who are in school, go back to school very, very soon. And God, I pray that as those who follow you go into the schools go into our workplaces, that we would indeed bring much light to those places and not for our glory, but for yours alone, we pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.

OK. So you know, like I would like start off when you see verses like that says, hey, pray continuously. It's really easy to fill in the blanks says, OK, like I get if you, this is your first time in a church ever, even if it's like in like in a building, you probably can, can guess that Christians care about prayer. Like you could go to a V BS growing up or a Ks A here and they probably talked about prayer, right? We, we know that there's the Lord's prayer and so it's really easy to go. OK. Well, talking about prayer it's, it's something that's really, really important. And ok, so verse two says, continue steadfastly in prayer and it's really easy to go. Ok. There's another sermon that just says, we need to pray more, right? And then some of us can feel that guilt. You know, we go, ah, you're right, you're right. I do need to pray more. My faith is not big enough. I'm putting too much in my own hands and that, yeah, that could be true, right?

Or some of the like we, we even struggle like for those of us who say grace before meals, we were like like halfway to the food. Oh dear God, thank you for this food. Jesus pray. And then you eat like prayer is this thing that we can, we know a lot about a lot of us. Sometimes we can feel guilt about it that we're not doing enough. And if I just land here at this verse, just go. OK. Yeah, I need to pray more.

Actually, I think what we see here, it calls gives a more nuanced thought in terms of it. And that's why we need the whole passage here. And we'll read verse two again, but really just the first section of verse three, I actually helps set the frame. It says, continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with Thanksgiving at the same time, pray also for us. And so what is he saying? Or Paul the the writer of this saying, he says, we all need prayer. Yes, you need prayer. Yes, you maybe we should all pray more. OK? OK, for sure.

But Paul who is the leader, he's a leader in this the ministry. He's recognized as such. And he's saying, yeah, you need prayer, but I need prayer as the leader. And it sounds familiar. I was like, yeah, everywhere everyone needs to pray. It doesn't matter. You're high in the hierarchy, low in the hierarchy. You, you, we all need prayer. But it's actually really quite countercultural even in our American modern Christian like sensibility and context because I think if you are on Instagram and once you get past, like if you're a parent, the parenting Instagram or you, you know, you're into fitness and you scroll past the fitness ones or whatever and you get to like a Christian Instagram, like the pastor, you get a clip, there's like a 15 2nd clip of a pastor and the clips that we usually get are the pastor that's like slamming on his, on, on, on the the pulpit. You need to do this. How good is God! Like this big, it's a big show. It's a big loud call to action for you to go do something.

But what Paul here who wrote the majority of the New Testament? What is he saying? He's saying if he, if he was on Tik Tok, if you were on Instagram, he would be saying, pray for us. We need your prayers. I don't know if I, I really see that on social media necessarily. I don't feel like I see Christian leaders crying out for their congregations to be praying for them. And so in asking for prayer, he's telling his congregation that I am not better than you. I need you to pray for me. Like I have been praying for you.

It tells them that we are united in Christ. He never stops having that pastoral leader role. He's still the leader, he's still the apostle Paul that doesn't go away. He's not discounting that, that's still there. But in asking prayer for prayer, he exemplifies and expresses a deep need for mutual obligation of prayer partnership. He, he is not only a good reminder and a model for our church, it also amplifies the ultimate truth that no matter what you and I do, God is the one that's in control of all of it. And so whether you stand up here and you're preaching a sermon with an ornate uh pulpit with a giant Bible, or you're quietly working in the lab by yourself or you're studying in the library with a study group, whatever you do. God is the one who controls all of it.

And so pastors, ministers, leaders, we don't have the market cornered in the church with the direct, most direct connection to God. We all need prayer. And I love that Paul in this passage is I need your prayer, pray at the same time, pray also for us, pray so that God would move, so that God would respond, pray that God would do. These are all the things that the leaders are praying for. We can't do anything without God. We may think we are an ultimate, we have ultimate control. But at the end of the day, we don't have the final say in life. And at the end of the day, in all of life, we need God to open up doors for us. We need God to create the opportunities for us in all of life.

So then the question that pops in my mind as I was studying this is, well, what does Paul ask for prayer about? Right? He, this the framework is there. He's like, listen, can keep praying, keep praying, you need to pray more. That's important. But pray also for me so that God pray that God would do something, pray that God would open up these doors, give these opportunities. Well, what are the opportunities that He's talking about here? And so I think that's what you know, the, the, as we read it, we know that it says Paul is in prison, right? Like that's the context of the situation in which Paul is writing.

And in those circumstances were difficult, like being in prison is, is difficult from my understanding. And, and, and if you think of anything. He'd be like pray that God would open the prison doors, give me the opportunity to get out of here. Why? So that I can go and preach the Gospel so that I can go and activate the church. Like that would be like a good prayer, right? That's what seems like be the most important thing in Paul's mind. God crack open the door so that I can go out and bring your name great glory, but he doesn't do that and said, he asked God to open doors for the word. Paul does not pray for circumstantial change. He prays for gospel opportunities.

Let's read again. Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving at the same time. Pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison. I think that we missed this a lot.

I've been in, I've sat in countless small groups over the years in which I was, I was in ministry. lots of student, small groups, lots of adult, small groups. And when it comes to prayer time, I would say the majority of them when we're sharing prayer requests, it's about God, would God change my circumstance? There's a circumstance at work that I want God to change. There's a circumstance at home that I want God to change. There's a circumstance at school that I wanna change. There's a circumstance in my body that I want God to change. There's all these things of these circumstances that we ask God to change or we go God, I don't know what the situation is, but God, would you make the circumstance positive? Would you make the outcome of that a good thing? Would you make that happy? Would you make that joyful? Would you make that good?

And now don't, don't get me wrong like that's important to do. Like don't not do that. Like that's, I'm not saying you're a sinner. If you ask God for like help, for you to, you know, help at work or help at school, that's good. And we should do those things. But after reading this passage, I can't help but feel like how different would our church be? How different would our faith journeys be? If instead of asking for prayer about our circumstances, we prayed for opportunities, opportunities to declare the mystery of Christ to embody and proclaim God's love to a world that desperately needs to hear it again. I'm not, I'm not saying don't pray for your circumstances, do do that. Like that's important. We should. But if our primary pro life centers around changing our circumstances and little else, it makes me wonder about our thought process when it comes to coming to church.

Recently, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Recently, recently I was on a trip in to New Hampshire. And, you know, if you've ever driven to New Hampshire, sometimes you've got, like, long stretches, like, where you're driving for, for a little bit of time and then sometimes when you, like, hit, like, a city center or, or a town center, it's like, oh, like all of a sudden it kind of, you kind of notice things you kind of know. Oh, that's a church building. And for one, a lot of times when I'm, I used to drive to New Hampshire, like, New New Hampshire and Maine, like twice a year, every single winter and every single summer for like, church retreats and stuff. So, I've seen a lot of churches on my way up, to, to the final destination for the retreat center. But there was this one church that stuck out to me recently because of the sign out front and, and church signs are one of those things that are, they're kind of funny. Like, sometimes it could be informational, like church potluck next Tuesday. Don't put apples in your potato salad, Greta. Like, they don't like little things or they, sometimes they try to be cheeky. It's like, you know, follow Jesus and I don't mean Twitter or I guess now, like X or whatever, you know, I'm never gonna call it X.

You know, like some of the church signs will, will have these, like, funny little things. But what was interesting about this church? Was it? Wasn't, it wasn't like the ones that you can swap out the letters. It was a permanent sign affixed over the door like as you walk in and the, the church sign said this, it said enter to worship, exit to serve, enter to worship, exit to serve.

And so I have to ask us my friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, why do we go to church? Yes, it is to worship God. I love coming here. I love worshiping with you guys. It, it is an amazing thing. I love hearing the word that's important. It's good to do we, yes, we should 100% go to church to worship. But I think this passage shows us that we need to look beyond church services and church buildings. Yes. Our faith must have this vertical focus on God like 100%. That's the beginning of it definitely. And, and that's why prayer is necessary, but it also needs to have an outward vision.

And I think we see this in the passage, right at the same time, pray also for us that God may open doors to us a door, sorry, open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak. Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, walk in wisdom toward outsiders. This is a call that God would open doors for us to focus beyond the church, beyond the programs, beyond the services. And there are plenty of passages that talk about building up the church and worshiping God the right way, plenty of them.

And so again, not saying that those are not important, but this passage here is focused beyond the church walls. And this agrees with other parts of scripture. James 2:18 says, but someone will say you have faith and I have work. Show me your faith apart from your works and I will show you my faith by my works. We both need, well, we need both faith and works. We need to worship God. Yes, we need to grow in our faith. Yes. But our faith should lead to action and a key space where we should do that is serving those outside of church, outside of the faith. Those who don't know Jesus, those who do not understand the mystery of Christ as this passage, as outsiders, we must walk in wisdom towards them and the faith produces works and you can't have one without the other.

Then what are we building up every single Sunday? If we don't ask God for opportunities to live out and share the good news, the thing that we're hearing here every time we crack open a Bible and we're listening to a preacher share and call us to live differently to that. There's life change that the, the gospel is good news. If we're not thinking I need to share this with other people out there. Then what exactly are we doing?

Let's recap. We should all be praying check. Right. We shouldn't be praying just for circumstantial change, but we should be praying for opportunities to exemplify God's love and the good news of Christ to outsiders. Sounds good. Right. But Paul, Paul goes one step further and, and I, I really love this. Not only does he ask for opportunities, but he asked that he would utilize the opportunities given to us that they would make the most of them say this here. I'm gonna read the 3 to 6 all the way through at the same time. Pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak, walk in wisdom towards outsiders making the best use of time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

If we break it down to an incredibly simple concept, it's this life is nothing more than a collection of opportunities. So one more time, life is nothing more than a collection of opportunities from one moment to the next. We move from opportunity to opportunity, one chance to do good or bad to the next. And what this passage is telling us is that Paul asks that they would be affected, that He would be effective with the opportunities that He has. And so I love that asking God for opportunities to utilize them. He l he asks that, let me be great, right? He says, when the in the, in the way that I ought to speak, the opportunities that I have to speak with my speech with how I live my life may always be seasoned with salt. Let me know how to answer people's questions. Well, and so with every opportunity, let me be amazing. Let me be spectacular. God with, with every opportunity that I have. Let me be superior. Let me be all the adjectives that they use to describe Spiderman. Like let me just, just those things with the opportunities that I would be so good, so incredible.

I want to note a couple of things here though Paul speaks a lot about speech and given the context, it would seem like he's talking about evangelism, right? Like going and sharing the good news in the like that, that evangelistic way, right? And, and in our direct sharing of the good news that Jesus died for our sins, we should be clear and wise and gracious with and having the right answers and, and yeah, I agree that that's, that's, that's certainly in the Bible, that's certainly here. But at the comment, one of the commentaries that I read it pointed out this also includes all the things we say, not just when we share the gospel. So it's not just when you have like a track in your hand or you're sending your friend a youtube video or, or something like that. It's not just in the evangelistic action, it's in everything that you say.

One commentary put it like this. Paul envisages, envisages a church expected to hold its own in the social setting of marketplace baths and meal table and to win the attention by the attractiveness of its life and speech. God does not want his people to flee from society to be afraid of the world to hate it. God wants his people to live lives that are so attractive and so positive for outsiders and so they they can taste how good that life is. This is a seasoned with salt that it literally you can just and just get the flavor of how good, how savory that life is.

Verse six already said that he he talks about that season salt, but it's not just about an attractive life that's like, oh well, how, how good are my kids at sports? Right? Or how amazing was my Instagram photos from vacation, right? It's not that sort of attractive, right? It's not. Look at my, look at my resume, look at my CV. Look how impressive I am. Oh And I also happen to be a Christian. Now, actually, what it's saying is that God wants his people to live in a way that attracts outsiders. Not to us, not to we, the, the, the lifestyle, not, not to our clothes, not to our outfits, not to our tech. No, but to him.

And it, it, it brings the people who are outside, the outsiders, those who do not follow Jesus. It brings us to the point that goes, listen, I don't understand why you do this. I don't understand how you do this, but I'm grateful you do. I'm thankful that you are my employee. I'm thankful that you're my supervisor. I'm thankful that you're my neighbor. I'm thankful that you're my classmate because I don't, I don't understand who this whole Jesus thing is whatever. But man, I love how you live is different, is different. So yeah. Ok. Yeah. Yeah, you go on you. What are you doing on Sunday? Ok. That's fine. That's cool. But man, I can't wait to work with you again on Monday.

And so do you want to live that type of life? I hope so. I want to live that type of life because I think that's what the type of life that this passage points us to. And so if you're there, if you're there and you say, yeah, I let let let, let's let's live that type of life.

Ok. So now there's one more thing I wanna say before we wrap up. What is this? I did Youth ministry for years. youth ministry is a fun space because a lot of like, weird things happen and not good, weird things like, you learn a lot about how they speak. But one of the things for me that I found over the course of time, which I did youth ministries like a lot. We have these like, weird traditions that just popped up over time just because things are funnier and less serious in, in youth history. One thing for instance was, there was a, there was a week that we were supposed to have a regular scheduled program on a Friday night. but I became hospitalized later, later on, I realized I had a kidney stone. It was painful, it was a horrible.

But basically, I messaged my, my team and say, hey, look guys like I'm in, I don't think I messaged him in the hospital because I was in too much pain. But I think when I, when I got back home and I was like, guys, I'm not gonna be able to make, I'm on like painkillers, I'm gonna be like loopy, like the students would be all confused. So we, we were gonna have to like, I don't know what to do guys, but most of the time I'm, I'm just whatever. So I, I leave it up to you. I said if you guys want, go do like a game night. And so that's what they went with and, and so we did a game night and so as a, as like a joke the following year, I was spending way too much time on this.

The following year. I said, hey guys, it's, it's that same weekend again. Let's, let's commemorate my kidney stone and we're gonna call it kidney stone night. So basically, it's a game night. But, you know, we just put a little dressing on it and it's like, hey guys, so like, oh my gosh, I was sudden side we're like, hey, everyone bring your water bottle because you need to stay hydrated to avoid kidney stones anyway. That's one example of just the silly things that we do, but that, that's totally unrelated and then spend too much time and I apologize.

But one of the things that we do do, one of the things that we do that is relevant to this is over the course of time in my ministry. Whenever I finished anything, whether I finished like sharing a message or whether I did an announcement I would look out into to the seats of where all my students were and they would all be like this and like, oh, and, and guys remember to do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then they would all look at me and they'd have their hands up like this and, and you what, what, what is happening? Are they getting ready to pray? No, no. We, we, I don't know when it started or how it started. But we have this tradition that says when I'm done with anything, I would go and break and we clap and so then everyone would decide it and break and then everyone would clap.

And it's just a weird tradition and I, I thought it was really, really funny but it, it, it's, it was cool because like it united us. and, and it made us like, you know, part of one group, we had traditions, right? It was cool. And as I was thinking about this, I thought, oh, actually, you know what, this is a really apt response because when you do and break, if you've never played like sports before, you've never played like football like that, that, that's usually what you do at the end of the huddle in football. It's usually the quarterback, they get the play from the coach and the, the quarterback gives you the play. Here's the play. We're gonna run this, we're gonna pass, we're gonna do whatever and now that you guys all set, OK, and break clap and then everyone would go line up on the line, get ready to execute the play that they received.

And I thought this is a cool analogy for how every single Sunday should go when someone is up here sharing God's word with us. That's the play when we share about what God is doing, who God is, what he's calling us to do. That's the play. And as we hear it, as you understand. Yep, I understand. And then the line is out there and as we walk up those doors, we need to be ready and break, we're gonna go out, execute the play, have answers, live life. That's drawing people to God.

And so I hope that you guys every single Sunday, every single time you open up your the word, every single time you have a conversation with a fellow brother and sister in Christ that you hear the play that God is calling you to do. So that not that you just keep it inside here, that your best is only in this space, but that some of the best of you is also out there for those who don't know who haven't heard the good news who do not understand the mysteries of Christ. And I hope that when you walk out those doors, you're ready to execute and play. Well, it's because of Jesus that we can even do that cause if you're on our own, you ever see you ever see like pop Warner football? It is adorable, but execution wise is a mess. They got kids run lined up on the wrong side. You know, they, they, they think it's a run play, it's a pass play. It, it is just not great and without Christ, that's what it's like when we're doing that, that's why Paul centers is really on him.

And that's why we, that's why every single Sunday we commemorate the Lord's Supper. And that's why we, we come and we say, yes, we need to be reminded that we are one united in Him, in his death and resurrection. So we like, like I said, we, we, we commune here every single, every single week. And I'm gonna pray for us to invite the worship team and those who are serving communion to come up while I pray.

God, Heavenly Father, it's hard to ask for that level of efficiency that every opportunity, every chance that we get that we would be seasoned with salt, that it would be attractive to the world outside. Yeah, that's, but that's why it's not about us. It's not about how well we prepare. It's not about our, our willpower, our abilities. It's about you, and God would we just be mirrors that are reflecting your love to the world out there. Would we be just be mirrors that reflect your goodness to the world out there.

God, we thank you that you died an unrighteous death and that it was accepted and that you were raised again so that we could be changed, that the Holy Spirit could dwell within us so that when we do step outside of these walls, step into our workplaces and our schools and our neighborhoods that we can do a even a fraction of this. And so God, I pray that this would stay with us as we prepare to take the elements, as we prepare to go outside. And we thank you that you hear our prayers. We pray all this in Jesus's name, Amen.

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Guest preacher Pastor Dan Ko from Seven Mile Road church in Malden preaches from Mark 1:40-45. Discussion points: What the leper truly needed was cleansing from his sin more than from his disease; we may know that Jesus is able to help and heal us, but we struggle to believe that he wants to; Jesus wants to heal us and give us life.

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Scripture reader: [Mark 1:40-45] And the leper came to him, imploring him and kneeling said to him, if you will, you can make me clean. Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, I will, be clean. And immediately the leprosy left him and he was made clean. And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once and said to him, see that you say nothing to any one, but go show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded for a proof to them. But he went out and began to talk freely about it and to spread the news so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a town but was out in desolate places and people were coming to him from every quarter.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: All right, good morning, good morning. It's it's always great to be back here. Yeah, I've enjoyed my time with you guys. So I'm glad you guys return that favor and invite me back. So, thanks for having me. It's, it's just fun to worship with you all. It's a change of pace for me and my family. I love the vibrancy of this community. These lights are very bright. I can't, I can barely see your faces so I'm gonna do this sometimes. Yeah, if you don't know who I am, my name is Dan. I didn't know my resume was gonna come up. So thanks for that.

But yeah, I, I have a beautiful family here father for, I think for about 13 years. Yep, 13, because the oldest one is 13, 4 kids. been married for 15. We just celebrate our 15th anniversary to my one and only Caroline over there. Let's see what else? 10 years planting a church in Malden. And for a lot of those years been doing B to B Sass. If you guys are interested in that, Not so much, I'm sure, but I, I'm really grateful for you all because I know that over the last couple of months, you have been worshiping together, continuing the mission of Jesus Church here in Somerville.

And you've been giving a gift to Fletcher and his family as they go on sabbatical. I didn't know they were in Europe, but that's awesome. I love to hear all the fun things that happened in Europe. And I didn't know that he was gonna open up his email tomorrow. So I actually have a thought for you guys and a challenge maybe I would love for you guys to email him today, and flood his inbox and usually pastors get their, get emails that aren't so fun to read a lot of, issues and things that need to, you know, need to have some care. But what if you all just sent him an email? I don't know what his email is. What's his email? Fletcher at Fletcher at Coach church.org? I think that's right.

Email him and just tell him that you're glad he's back. Maybe tell him something that the Lord has taught you this summer over the last couple of months or whatever, something awesome. Just welcome him back. And wouldn't it be great if he opened up his email? He just saw a bunch of emails from his as members about all the things that God has done and he just rejuvenated to, to come back and, and serve you all. So I would love for you guys to do that.

So I wanna pray for you all. Thank you guys for giving that gift to him and his family. I wanna pray for our time together in God's word. So let's just pause and pray. Father, as we take this moment to, to be still, I pray that you would remind us that you are indeed God that you hold all things in the palm of your hand that you are indeed in control, that you are guiding all things for the good, those that love you. Pray that you would speak to us that in the still quiet room here that your voice would be the loudest that we'd hear you and hear you clearly. I pray all these things in Jesus'ss name. Amen.

So I, I hate to do this, but I'm gonna bring you guys back to a time. So I'm gonna bring you guys back to March of 2020. OK. Get back there. Do you guys remember where you were when you saw news going wherever you were on social media, news channels about the world shutting down. so that we might curb the spread of this disease called Coronavirus. Remember where you were right? Remember the, the confusion that was settling in your soul, the fear that was settling in your soul in those early days.

Remember the the the awkwardness of going to the grocery store that those first couple of weeks and you were masked up and face shield and gloves and I don't know, you probably had like a full on poncho or whatever you had and you had your grocery cart and you were, you were hugging the the walls to stay away from people to your left and to your right. And you, you tried your best not to sneeze or cough or any make any noise. Actually, you just wanted to be super quiet to maintain that safety. And as the months went on, you probably remember the overwhelming sense that nothing was ever going to be the same again that just everything changes.

You remember the isolation you felt after months of being in quarantine, the loneliness, wanting to see your friends and family, this overwhelming sense that this wasn't supposed to be. I want you to hold that thought because as we get into the scriptures, as we hear about the events and the people of the scripture, sometimes they just feel so distant, right? They, they feel so distant from our present reality. It's hard to relate with the people and the events and the stories here because we just can't imagine what life was like back in Jesus's this time.

But this morning in Mark's Gospel, as we come to a story about a leper and his healing, I think we have a bridge to feel what he's felt. I'm guessing none of us has had leprosy or has been around a leper recently. But if you've lived through the COVID pandemic, you actually have a lived experience that's hauntingly close to what it felt like to be a leper in that day. You see, because as a leper, you had to remain socially distant, it wasn't 6 ft, it was actually 50 paces from the next healthy person. You needed to maintain that distance from other people. For fear of you spreading your disease. You were quarantined in leper colonies to, to be with only the people that were affected to keep the rest of society at bay, which obviously meant that you weren't allowed to worship and gather with God's people in the temple. Right?

There was a ban of meeting and worshiping God. Lepers were physically, socially, religiously isolated. It's because of how leprosy is spread. If you go to the CDC website as I did this week and I looked this up, leprosy spreads when a leper coughs or sneezes and a healthy person breathes in those water droplets containing the bacteria. You guys see the similarities, right? So as a leper in that day, you're required to cover your face, you, you were required to wear things that clearly show that you were sick, announcing your disease to the rest of the world so that everyone stayed away and you maintained that distance. You may, you kept in isolation so that you wouldn't contaminate others.

You and I if you've lived through that can relate to the physical and social isolation, the loneliness and fear brought about by this disease of leprosy. But this miracle in Mark's gospel is, isn't actually about the disease of leprosy or even its eventual healing. You and I aren't supposed to read about this story and walk away believing Jesus is the true and greater dermatologist. Yes. Yes. Yes. There's a leper in the story. Yes, there's healing and yes, that fact in and of itself should leave us just astounded jaws dropped on the floor, amazed at what God is able to do.

But that's not the point you see that because every one of Jesus's miracles points us to a far greater reality. All of Jesus's miracles point us to a far greater reality. The miracles of Jesus, in other words, is, are like a telescope, the telescope in and of itself is a marvel of engineering. Maybe some of you guys work with telescopes, but you can bend the light and magnify something that's miles away so that it appears meters in front of you. But if all you did was marvel at the telescope, you'd be missing the point because that's because the telescope is not something you're to look at and admire. The telescope is something you're supposed to look through. So you can see more clearly what it's pointing at.

And so Jesus's miracles like a telescope are pointing to a far greater reality than what we might see on its surface. So I hope to highlight two things that I believe God shows us this morning in in the account of this leper and his healing in Mark's Gospel here. So if you're not there already mark chapter one, meet me there and we'll get into this. I want to show you two things first his heart and second our faith, his heart, and our faith.

So first thing verse 40 and a leper came to him imploring him and kneeling said to him, if you will, you can make me clean. Moved with pity. He stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, I will be clean and immediately the leprosy left him and he was made clean. First of all, I want you to notice what the leper says to Jesus in verse 40. If you will, you can make me clean. Does anyone notice something off about what he's saying? This man is suffering from a debilitating disease and he isn't asking to be healed. He isn't requesting a medical miracle. He isn't asking for a cure. He under he is asking to be made clean clean.

Why, why does he, why does he ask to be made clean? Well, it's because he understands the problem that he has goes far deeper than his skin disease. Jesus's miracles often have this physical element to them. It's, it involves the physical world, the body and such and it's a means to address a much deeper need. For example, if you keep reading in Mark's Gospel. The very next story in chapter two is about four men and their friend who's a paralytic and, and, and they're desperately trying to get their paralytic paralyzed friend to Jesus so that Jesus can make him whole and heal him and restore his his body to full health. But as they approach the house, that the place that Jesus is teaching in, the crowds are far too great and they can't get through. So what do they do? They, they climb the house, get onto the roof, they rip a hole into the roof. They lower down the paralytic in front of Jesus in hopes that he might be healed.

But if you read what Jesus says, it's curious. It says when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic sun, your sins are forgiven. If you were one of the four friends who had climbed the roof or actually carried a friend, got to the house, climbed the roof, ripped a hole in the roof and dropped your friend in front of Jesus. If you went through all that trouble, wouldn't you be like? Whoa, no, no, no, no. Jesus. Jesus. I, I think there's been some misunderstanding and maybe you mistaken him for another guy. The reason why we actually did all of this and put him in front of you is because if you can't see he needs restoration in his body, he's paralyzed. We would like to go on a hike again with him.

Now Jesus does eventually heal the paralytic, but it doesn't change the fact that Jesus is first thing he says to him, his son, your sins are forgiven. He is addressing the far greater need. This man's sin in the same way. This leper has a growing sense that it's not just my leprosy that's holding me back, but it's my sin. We know this because he says you can make me clean. He knows there's something deeply wrong with him because he uses this language of being made clean, right? You and I should be able to relate with this because when somebody curses with every word, every other word, what do we say about their mouth, they've got a dirty or filthy mouth, right? Or, or even more when we've done something wrong or bad or we know we shouldn't have done those things. We have this sense of feeling dirty.

That's why there's this quintessential movie scene when the character, you know, has, has committed some obvious failing or committed a crime or realizes their actions are reprehensible. Where do we see them next in the shower? Right? Just, just letting the water wash over them because they feel dirty. The leper knew his deepest problem wasn't the sores on his skin. His deepest problem was a sin that was killing his soul. See this miracle through this miracle, Jesus wants us to see and realize that what we need isn't a cure. What we need is to be cleansed.

Now, maybe you too realize this. Maybe you, you've already gotten there. You realize that your problems are far deeper than what we might see on the surface. But for some of us, our greatest barrier with God is this presumption that God doesn't really care. Yes, we believe and know intellectually that God loves us. God loves the world. God loves the church us collectively. Yes, of course. But the thing we have a hard time believing is that God loves me individually. And surely if he really knew me, he knew all the things that I hiding or going through you. He wouldn't love me.

So I want you to notice the other thing that the leper says, he says, his question isn't dumb. Can you make me clean? No, the, the leper seems fully convinced that Jesus is able to, he can he, he says it definitively, you can make me clean. But the part that he's not yet sure about is if you will, if you will, you can make me clean. In other words, a leopard believes that Jesus has the ability to make him clean.

But what he isn't sure of yet is if Jesus wants to, if Jesus wants to is Jesus willing to, does he have a desire to? I know he loves us, but I'm not sure he loves me. Can you guys relate with that? Maybe there's some darker dirty thing that you've never shared with anyone. Not even with God, try to hide that from Him, you keep it hidden. And because if, if anyone found out this thing about you or these this circumstance, if God brought it into light, you just know that life would never be the same again, life is over as you know it. So it weighs on you and it occasionally drags you into some dark places because it's so hard to imagine that God would ever forgive you or cleanse you or free you from this bondage. Intellectually, you know, that he could, but you have doubts that he ever will.

Or it doesn't even have to be the deep dark secrets that we keep hidden from God and others. Some of us just have ailments. Some of us have things that are just weighing us down from everyday life. They are relational, uh, issues and friction in our marriages or stress at work or whatever it may be. But you think all of these things, they're just, you know what, they're too insignificant for God to care, you know what God's too busy. He's doing important things like healing the sick or he's saving people, you know, across on the other side of the world, he doesn't have time to deal with me and my little problems, you know, my problems, I'll just handle them, you know, eventually they'll work themselves out. I, I don't want to bother him with my problems because you know what he's dealing with bigger and better things.

And whether you've been hiding things from God or you believe that he's, you know, preoccupied with bigger and better things. Your question is likely the same as the lepers. I know you can make me clean. But do you want to, do you want to? And if there's nothing else, you hear this morning, please. Just whatever you're distracted by right now, hear this with me, open your ears and hear this with me today, Jesus is not only able to heal you, he wants to heal you. Jesus is not only able to heal you. He wants to heal you. He desires to, he longs to, that's what he wants.

Verse 41, moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, I will, be clean. No matter how big or small our problems are. They all matter to Jesus. And if you doubt whether or not he cares, please be reminded of this story about this leper. He was one lowly leper. Jesus was in the middle of Galilee doing ministry among the crowds. This no name Leper who was living in the shadows of society with this irreversible skin disease. He finds Jesus goes to him and Jesus is so moved by this one lowly leper and his, this skin disease that he touches him and cleanses him.

This isn't some huge crowd of lepers. It's just the one. This leper wasn't some important dignitary. He had no name. The Leper had a contagious disease that could have been easily spread and transmitted with this type of proximity. But Jesus reached out and touched him. This is why the gospel is such good news. Jesus is not only able to heal you. He wants to, he wants to God is both mighty to save and full of love and compassion. The gospel isn't just about some cosmic God on the throne over the universe magically waving his hands to save everybody that would would follow him. The gospel is good news because this God comes down to us and touches each and every one of you to heal us for good. That's his heart. That's who he is.

Now, let's look at our faith because I, if all of that sounds like good news to you, then I want you to see this one last thing about this leper. We see it in verse 40 it sounds like just some sort of narrative throwaway sentence. But I think it's important. It says that the leper came to him, imploring him kneeling before him, see the leopard disregarded all the social distancing mandates and that were placed on him and he booked all the social trends that were expected of him in his day because when you see someone that can change your life forever, you don't sit around and wait to see what happens if you see that Jesus is near and here you don't walk, you run.

Lepers were supposed to keep the distance right? 50 paces get this. Leper came within touching distance, knelt before Jesus took every risk for him to do that. Why? Because he knew what James says letter later in his, one of his letters, he says faith without action is dead. And I believe that's what God is wanting us to see through this miracle. He wants us to have an urgency about our faith. He wants us to move to action. If you see Jesus don't walk, run, go to him. Wishful thinking will not heal positive vibes and positive thoughts will not heal. No. Instead we must come to Jesus fall on our feet before him imploring Him to heal us.

So if you're here today and you believe that Jesus is not only able to heal and make you whole. And if you're convinced that he's willing to make you, he a whole. Would you go to him? Go to Jesus. Jesus even invites us in, in Matthew's Gospel. He says, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden. I I will give you rest, take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. If you want to be cleansed, to be forgiven, to be made new, to be made whole, you must come to Jesus City on a Hill, seek the Lord today because the good news of the Gospel is so plainly laid out for us here in the Leper story.

You see before the leper had met Jesus, he lived in isolation, separation, quarantine from the rest of the world, sick and sore with no hope. For a future, right? That was his reality. But then he comes to Jesus who is not only able to heal but willing to. Jesus cleanses him and what's his future? He is restored back to health. He is freed to go back into community, into life, into the cities. And so the great exchange takes place here, Christ gives freedom to the leper in exchange for the leper's isolation and curse, right? Jesus touches the leper. Lepers cleansed and freed to run and spread the good news even though he's told not to, but he does it anyway. He goes and gets into the city and goes among the people and is free to be who he wants to be.

But what do we see about Jesus? But Jesus who once roamed the streets freely and freedom? What, what's the story now? He could no longer enter openly into a town. He had to leave to a desolate place like where the leper once was isolated from the crowds. The good news of the gospel is this, Jesus died, the death that we all should have died so we can have an eternal life that we did not earn nor deserve. Scripture says for our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin. So that in Him, we might become the righteousness of God. Let's believe that together. Let's pray.

Father. We thank you that your word is true. We thank you that your word is a light, it shines into the darkest places of our soul and gives us hope and freedom helps us to see our way out. And I pray today that your word would be that lamp unto our feet, that we would see the path to Jesus, that we wouldn't sit and wait. But we would run as if our lives depend on it because it does help us to come to Jesus and kneel before him so that we might be healed and made whole. In Jesus's name, Amen.

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Elder Mark Schmeissing preaches from Galatians 2:11-21. Discussion points: Peter’s vision showed him that all foods and people were declared clean by Jesus, Peter’s fear of man caused him to take his eyes off of the gospel, we haven’t done anything to earn the grace that God gives us that makes us clean before him.

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Scripture Reader: [Galatians 2:11-21] But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned, for before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles. But when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, "If you though a Jew live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?"

We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners. Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ. So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law, no one will be justified. But if in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor, for through the law, I died to the law so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.

In the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: Good morning. As Jeremy said, my name is Mark Schmeissing and I'm an elder here at City on a Hill. Our lead Pastor Fletcher is out on sabbatical this summer. And he'll be back in just a couple of weeks, but it's always a joy and a privilege to share God's word with all of you on a Sunday morning. And I'm thankful to get the opportunity to do that again.

Along with what I assume many of you have been doing over the last couple of weeks, I've been watching a lot of the Olympics, been watching the, the swimming, the gymnastics, the track and field. I've learned what the steeple chase is. I still don't understand how they do gymnastic scoring after watching it for several Olympic cycles. But one thing that's abundantly clear when you watch the Olympics, you see their performances, you look at their kind of race times and things that these athletes, you know, regardless of whether they're an eighth or first, regardless of which country they're from, or which sport you're watching, that it took a lot of work and dedication and focus for these people to even get to that point, to even get to Paris. These people have spent the last several years really orienting their lives around their training schedules, their diets, what they're wearing, their form in terms of running or swimming, all their family time and free time and all of that's oriented towards this singular goal of fine tuning their performance down to the hundreds of seconds or 10th of points that are really the difference when you get to the Olympics.

As I look at the New Testament and we read our passage this morning. Paul really seems to have this sort of same Olympic athlete mindset when it comes to the gospel. There's a lot of opportunities in his life after his conversion to be distracted. a lot of opportunities where life provides chances for him to take shortcuts. He's shipwrecked, he's put in jail several times. There's things like popularity or people pleasing that come into play, suffering and hardships. He was shipwrecked a couple of times. Anything that could have really slowed him down, but nothing seems to stop him from defending or sharing the truth of the gospel message.

Our passage this morning in Galatians is about this sort of major clash between these two towering figures of the early church. We have the apostle Paul and the Apostle Peter. He's referred to in the passage that Amanda read as Cephas, which is this translation from Aramaic, but it's the same Peter that we've been going through and reading about in the book of John over the last year, these were two men that God used to write over half the books of the New Testament. They were on the same team aligned in their purpose to see God glorified in his message of grace spread. Paul went to great lengths to make this very clear that they're on the same team earlier in his letter to Corinth, he wrote for it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there's quarreling among you. My brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says I follow Paul or I follow Apollos, I follow Cephas or I follow Christ. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius. And later for Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel and not with words of eloquent wisdom. Lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

And all this context makes this conflict that we see in Galatians two here that much more weighty wasn't a conflict of, of sort of opinions or personal preferences. I would even go so far as to say this isn't a conflict about food and, and who Peter was eating with. Rather, it's a conflict about the very heart of the gospel and the role of the gospel in our lives. As I've said, Paul was laser focused on defending the gospel. And that's what this passage is about.

A message that I believe is very relevant for us today as we seek to understand the gospel and take it from our heads. Something that we believe and know and understand to our hearts where the gospel is changing and transforming and shaping every aspect of our lives from now until the day that we die. I pray that like Paul, we won't fear confrontation against anything that compromises the truth of the gospel. Before we dig into this passage, I just wanted to open up with a word of prayer.

Lord, we thank you for bringing us here today. We ask that you open our hearts and our minds to your word. We ask that you soften our hearts towards the ways that you want to work in and through us this morning. May we grow in our understanding of the truth of the gospel? That is your good news for us that we might live it out. With integrity and faithfulness all the days of our lives. In Jesus name we pray, amen.

So the passage begins in verse 11 and I'll, I'll reread a section of it. But when Cephas came to Antioch, I posed him to his face because he stood condemned for before certain men came from James. He was eating with the Gentiles. But when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party and the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. And there's a lot going on here in this passage. So I think some context is helpful before we dig in, in the early church, particularly as this church was, was growing and expanding. We're starting to see Gentile Christians worshiping alongside Jewish believers and the Old Testament Laws.

The mosaic laws were this hot topic and point of contention in the church. Many unbelief, many early believers were just a little unsure or unclear about how these practices of circumcision and the purity laws listed in the Old Testament. These rituals and practices that had played a major part of their lives for literally centuries and not just a part of their lives, but a part of their worship for centuries, including what they ate and what they wore, like the fabrics that they wore, what they touched. All these ceremonial laws around cleanliness and how and whether those laws were now going to be relevant to their lives after Jesus had come and lived and died and been resurrected from the dead was a question in their minds. A lot of the early Jewish Christians, people who truly believe that Jesus was the son of God, lived, died and was resurrected, still continued to follow these old Testament and mosaic laws.

But this was an issue because the Gentiles were not accustomed to these laws and were not practicing them was creating this division in the church, which was both a racial issue where you had the Gentiles who are not practicing and the and the Jews who were, who looked down on them where they were considered unclean as well as a part of the worship and as a part of the body of God. In addition to sort of the specific purity laws around cleanliness, what they were eating and who they were eating with and what they touched.

There is also the second aspect of Old Testament worship, which were the animal sacrifices and animal sacrifices were to atone for their sins. No matter how hard you tried to keep the purity laws of staying clean. It was impossible to follow every law. And so the animal sacrifices must be made to kind of atone for this lack of cleanliness.

When Jesus came along as Lord and Savior, he was both the final sacrifice. No more animal sacrifices were needed as he had lived a sinless life died on our behalf. But also he declared that all these purity laws pointed to himself only in him. Can you be completely and perfectly cleansed? Now, the Apostle Peter, here in our story was a devout Jewish Christian along with the other disciples. And despite having spent several years literally at the side of Jesus walking with him in his ministry, he had this front row seat to everything that Jesus had been saying. But it was really hard for him to kind of break out of that decades old traditions and, and, and and mindset of of the Jewish attachment to these old Testament laws. This this continued even after Jesus had ascended uh into heaven.

But we see in Acts 10, this was prior to where we get to the story in Galatians two that God provided a supernatural, vivid vision for clarity on these topics. For Peter. God broke down these divisions and declared that everyone Jew and Gentile very plainly for him are equal before him equally sinful, equally right before Christ and Peter must eat with the Gentiles.

Peter took that message to heart as we can see in Galatians two verse 12, he was eating with the Gentiles, responding to this vision from the Lord. He's sharing the good news of the gospel as he eats alongside Gentiles, declaring the freedom and the equality found in the cross of Christ, living out what he had learned in acts 10 that God shows no partiality and doesn't declare certain foods or certain people as unclean or unworthy of grace until, until we get to this delegation from James that has arrived.

Now, I'm not gonna go deep into the role of James in this story or who James was, but he was an early church leader who held a lot of influence. And this delegation caused Peter to really waver in his steadfastness. The man that Jesus had referred to as the rock, drew back and separated himself out of fear.

I see parallels here between Galatians two and a story that we're probably familiar with in Matthew 14. It's a popular one amongst CoaH kids groups where during a windy and stormy night at sea, Jesus walked on the water to the boat filled with terrified disciples verse 27. But immediately Jesus spoke to them saying, take heart. It is I do not be afraid. And Peter answered him, Lord, if it is, you command me to come to you on the water. He said, come. So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and beginning to sink, he cried out, Lord, save me, Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him saying, oh, you of little faith. Why did you doubt?

Peter had his eyes on Jesus until he took a brief moment to look around at his circumstances in this situation. And he was struck with fear. Similarly, here in Galatians, we see Peter living with his eyes set on Jesus eating and drinking with Gentiles. But at least for a brief moment, takes his eyes off of Jesus to look at his circumstances and his situation. And he struck with fear, stepping back and rejecting the Gentile believers.

How does Paul the Apostle Paul respond to Peter when he sees this happen? Let's continue in verse 14. But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel. I said to Cephas before them all. If you though a Jew live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews? We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law because by works of the law, no one will be justified.

Paul responds by saying Peter is out of step with the truth of the gospel. Let's not miss how he referred to the situation back in verse 11, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned. There's a gravity here to what seemingly looked like a, a rather simple or, or, or minor error that Peter wasn't understanding. And when we see this term gospel or when we hear the term gospel in, in church, there's probably a variety of reactions or thoughts about that. I would say maybe for, for the average church goer hearing the word gospel, they think that's just sort of the, the basic principles of Christianity. Jesus died for our sins. He was raised from the dead. It's an important message for, for non-christian. It's an important message for New Christians. It's a very important part of Christianity. But we're also kind of looking for more of, more of the meat here. Yet here we see the Apostle Paul telling Peter. Just as a reminder of who Peter is: someone who is there at the last supper. Someone who saw Jesus die with his eyes and walked with him throughout his ministry. That he had forgotten the gospel.

What he means by that is that Peter was not applying the implications of the gospel to the way that he was living. Gospel is not just just the essential principles of Christianity. We move beyond, we kind of graduate from the longer we stay in church. Well, that's kind of the, the early stage, but we're gonna get beyond that eventually. But rather the gospel has a breadth and a depth to it that it should impact every aspect of every day of our lives. If someone like Peter needed a reminder of this, I'm sure I do as well. Who am I to think that I am beyond needing this reminder of, of what the gospel is.

We can see three ways in this passage that Paul talks about how Peter is living out of step with the truth of the gospel. The first one is a fear of man. We don't have to wonder about Peter's reasoning for ceasing to eat with the Gentiles. It's listed plainly here in verse 12. Fear of the circumcision party. Now, it's not clear exactly what this delegation from James, the circumcision party specifically said to Peter. It may have been that he feared his reputation amongst Jewish Christians. It may have been that he feared his reputation amongst Jewish non-Christian people who may have been persecuting those who weren't, weren't keeping the old Testament, purity laws regardless. It was Peter's fear of man that led him astray and out of step with the gospel truth. Peter had justified and rationalized in his mind, something that probably sounded very reasonable on the surface, but it stood in stark contrast to what he had heard directly in his vision from the Lord in Acts 10.

I find this incredibly relatable sitting in a City on a Hill service on a Sunday morning, sitting in your community group on a Thursday night. If I'm by myself with my Bible and quietly reading the word of God can feel alive, can feel relevant, can feel full of life. And then we have to get up out of the chair, walk out the doors to our jobs, to our homes, our other relationships and those are the moments where the gospel goes from something that's in our heads to something that's in our hearts. It's where we get a taste of where the depth that the gospel has penetrated my soul is truly evident.

There are many things that can be rationalized that stand in opposition to what the Gospel truth is. Paul writes in Romans eight to some of these fears, what then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us, he who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him graciously? Give us all things who shall bring any charge against God's elect. It is God who justifies, who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died, more than that, who is raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.

A life in step with the truth of the gospel does not fear man. God is our only judge and he has shown us grace and interceding for us. The second way that Peter is living how to step with the truth of the Gospel is through his hypocrisy as we see in verses 13 and 14, Peter was acting so insincerely that even Barnabas and some of these other teachers were led astray. Peter and Barnabas and these others were two faced when they withdrew from eating with the Gentiles by saying one thing with their actions and believing another thing in their heart.

It's important to note here in kind of this whole exchange that Paul doesn't confront Peter about a change in his theology or wrong beliefs or his head knowledge. It appears that by all accounts, Peter had the right head knowledge and understanding of the gospel. He had had a vision from the Lord in Acts 10, but it wasn't evident in how he was living. It's an interesting contrast here between the ways that we see. Jesus often talking about hypocrisy in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The hypocrisy that Jesus often faced was with religious leaders who acted righteously morally piously, but their hearts were cold and lacked understanding of who he was.

In this situation, we see the opposite. Peter understands who Jesus is and he had the right thinking but wasn't acting in alignment with what he knew internally, even if it was only a momentary lapse in judgment, it was enough of a dangerous hypocrisy that he was leading other church leaders astray and out of step with the gospel. You pass. A Paul seemed to know exactly what Peter was going through as he wrote in Romans seven. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand for I delight in the law of God, in my inner being. But I see in my members that's sort of his his body, his physical actions, another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord. So then I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh, I serve the law of sin. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus, from the law of sin and death.

It can feel like a constant battle when we're feeling insecure or afraid or tempted to avoid standing up for what we know to be true. And that is a battle to believe the Gospel. The Gospel tells us that the death of Christ assures us of God's love. And so it gives a deep root in stability and security to our lives. It centers our lives on Jesus. If we center our lives on Jesus and his gospel, then the roots of hypocrisy can be broken.

Lastly, the way that Peter practiced, obedience was out of step with gospel truth. To, to phrase that a different way. Peter's legalism was out of step with gospel truth. Let's look again at Galatians two verses 17 to 21. But if in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ, then a servant of sin? Certainly not! For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. For through the law, I died to the law so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.

Notice, verse 21 I do not nullify the grace of God for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. Earlier in Galatians, two, Paul pushes back on this group that has come to insist that Titus must be circumcised to be accepted in God's family in that situation. And here again, if these Gentile Christians in Antioch have to keep the Jewish dietary laws to enjoy full fellowship in the body of Christ, then grace is nullified and Christ has died for no purpose to better understand what's happening here.

Let's go back and re-examine this delegation from James. This group that came from James really, I really like the way that Jay Gresham Machin describes this in his notes on Galatians. It's kind of a smaller commentary about how this group views the gospel and understand salvations and the pro understand salvation and some of the problems with it. So, so the error of the delegation is a very modern error indeed, as well as a very ancient error. It's found in the modern church, wherever men seek salvation by their own character, instead of by the imputed righteousness of Christ or by trusting in his redeeming blood. These are just ways of exalting the merit of man over against the cross of Christ. And they are all of them attacks upon the very heart and core of Christianity.

He goes on to talk about how this delegation views salvation and justification in our passage here in Galatians two, this delegation from James had an order that they thought that things worked. Belief in Jesus belief that he was the son of God lived a perfect life, died for our sins, was raised from the dead, obey act morally and uprightly following the letter of the laws and salvation is the desired end result of those first two steps and they had the order wrong.

I believe many of us in the church today believe and live out the same error. It's our natural human tendency in a lot of ways I believe when I think back to the Olympics, and if I was selected to be a part of the relay team. Some of my initial questions would be, what do you need me to do? Where can I help? How can I provide a valuable contribution to this team to make sure that we achieve the goal that we wanna get so that we get the gold? This order though is out of step with Gospel truth.

Let's go back to Galatians two verse 16. Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ. So we also have believed in Christ, Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law because by works of the law, no one will be justified. The truth of the Gospel is that we've been justified by faith alone. Our standing before God is based on faith in Christ, not on works or anything that you or I have done.

The truth of the Gospel takes this delegation's order and flips it around. It's not believe, obey and you'll be saved. It's believe and you are saved. You're justified by faith alone. You've been selected to be on the Olympic team. Here's your Olympic gold medal. And you say, well, I haven't run the race and it's, that's the point. That's the point of grace. You haven't run the race, you haven't done anything. Probably the greatest news I can possibly give you this morning.

But let's get practical for a second. Where does that obedience come into play? Surely I don't want to continue to sin. And Paul responds to that in Romans six. What shall, what, what shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? So the order's believe and be saved and then obey. And this sequence in this order completely changes our approach to obedience no longer is obedient, selfish and anxious, burdensome and joyless. Rather, it's in response to what God has already done for us.

Can you imagine the difference between two racers at the beginning at the starting line ready to, to, to begin their race? We, we're kind of waiting for that starting gun to go off. One of them counting on all of their training and all of the work that they've done hoping that they've shaved off enough of the hundreds of seconds to win the race and get the gold medal. The other one is just handed a gold medal right at the starting line before the gun is even fired. It's gonna dramatically change the way that these two racers run their race.

While we're justified by our faith, our actions should reflect the truth of the gospel. How does the truth of the gospel impact the way we do our work, the way that we manage our finances, the way that we interact with our families and our friendships, not out of this anxious or competitive spirit, striving for the approval of God, but out of a joy and a peace in knowing that we are already justified and accepted by a gracious God. So as we look back on, on, on Peter's errors and Paul's responses, we are to one, believe the truth of the gospel of Christ and not fear what men can do to us. Two, to believe the great gospel of Christ and not succumb to hypocrisy. Holding on to our Biblical principles and willing to suffer the consequences because there's great security and comfort and love and joy in the gospel. And three believe the great gospel of Christ and not nullify the grace of God for by grace, you have been saved through faith. We read that earlier this morning and this is not your own doing is the gift of God, not a result of work so that no one may boast.

If we make it our aim to be laser focused and all we do to magnify the free grace of God rather than our own achievements. We will be in step with the truth of the gospel. A few years ago, I had a really impactful conversation with a friend of mine. It was extremely brief conversation. I'm not even sure that my friend would remember it, but it had kind of an impact on me and it was surely a word of truth from the Lord that I needed at that time. And it started with this simple question of how's your relationship with the Lord? Maybe you all can relate to, to how I answered that question. I said something along the lines of, I haven't been as consistent in my devotions and time with the Lord. I get kind of frustrated at my inability to have this deep and meaningful prayer life and I'm trying and, and things are going ok, but I've got some more work to do. And he responded very simply. Mark, do you know that God does not love you any less because you're struggling with those things?

In all transparency in that moment, I'm sure I scoffed a bit internally because that's gospel 101. That's what I sing to my kids every night at bed that they, that God loves them. Of course, I know that. But is it a truth that's made its way from my head to my heart on reflection. And over time, I was struck by the realization that I was living in the same paradigm as this delegation from James and Peter through my obedience that I was striving to earn this salvation and pursue self righteousness. And it was dictating how I answer that question of how is my relationship with the Lord? I was less focused on what the God of the universe was trying to say to me than I was about how I was holding up my end of the bargain.

There can be two people here this morning in our service, two people sitting next to each other. Both of them daily spending time in the word. Both of them generously tithing both of them serving this church volunteering. But doing it for radically different reasons and motivations and it will lead to radically different and results. Obedience for the approval of men will never leave us satisfied. Obedience for self righteousness will leave us anxious, burdened and joyless, always falling short of the bar. But obedience in response to the love and grace of God will lead to a joy and freedom. And that is the truth of the gospel.

As we walk out of here this morning, I pray that we walk out in the freedom and grace of the good news of the gospel, knowing that there is nothing we have done that can separate us from the love of Christ and nothing we can do that will somehow add to our ledger of righteousness. But rather that we will pursue the Lord with every ounce of our being, whether in work in our family and our friendships and our worship and allow the gospel the truth of the gospel to guide every decision that we make this week as we seek to align everything we do with it.

There's a song I really enjoy called Simple Gospel and in closing, I just kind of wanted to share some of a condensed version of some of the lyrics with you all because it speaks to the reminder that I need that living out. The gospel is about my relationship with the Lord and not about my own efforts to be righteous before him. Some of the lyrics are, I want to know you Lord. Like I know a friend. I want to know you Lord. So I'm laying down all my religion. I'm laying down. I want to know you Lord. Lord. I've been told to be ashamed. Lord, I've been told, I don't measure up. Lord, I've been told, I'm not good enough, but you're here with me and I reach out and you find me in the dust. You say no amount of untruth can separate us. I will rejoice in the simple gospel. I will rejoice in you, Lord. Let's close in prayer together.

Heavenly Father, we come before you with hearts full of gratitude for the truth of the gospel. We thank you that our justification is found in Christ alone, through faith alone. Help us Lord to examine our hearts and our lives, to walk in step with the truth of the gospel. Just as Paul confronted Peter in love, give us courage to confront anything in our lives that nullifies your grace. May our obedience to you not flow from fear, not flow from legalism, but from hearts transformed by your grace, driven by the love of Christ, grounded in the truth of your word. Remind us daily of this freedom and joy that we have in Christ. Empower us to live lives that reflect your glory and to share your love with those around us. We ask this in the precious name of Jesus, Amen.

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Associate Pastor Tyler Speck from CoaH Brookline concludes our sermon series with John 21:15-25. Discussion points: Jesus’s restoration of Peter changed the trajectory of the rest of his life; because everything comes from and belongs to God, our sin is always ultimately against him; Jesus pursues us to seek restoration.

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Scripture reader: [John 21:15-25] When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, Simon son of John, do you love me more than these? He said to him, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. He said to him, feed my lambs. He said to him a second time, Simon son of John, do you love me? He said to him, yes lord, you know that I love you. He said to him tend my sheep. He said to him the third time, Simon son of John, do you love me? Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, do you love me? And he said to him, Lord, you know everything you know that I love you. Jesus said to him, feed my sheep. Truly, truly, I say to you when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted. But when you are old, you will stretch out your hands and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go. This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God. And after saying this, he said to him, follow me.

Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them, the one who also had leaned back against him during the supper and had said, Lord, who is it that is going to betray you? When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, Lord, what about this man? Jesus said to him, if it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me. So the saying spread abroad among the brothers that this disciple was not to die. Yet Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die, but if it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things and who has written these things and we know that his testimony is true. Now, there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: Good morning. I hope everyone's doing well. I am because my five week old slept through the night. So yeah, Emmanuel made a good joke. He was like that dude's got spiritual disciplines down fasting already, man. He's just crushing it. I slightly think a five week old, I don't know if they're supposed to sleep for the night just yet, but we'll kind of take it.

So yeah, good to be back with you guys. Really love being here. Always love connecting with you all. You guys have had me multiple times over the years and see you through that, see you through some network events and things like that. So it's always good to be back. I always enjoy being in this building. It's beautiful, it's wonderful and maybe most of all I enjoy being able to drink coffee while I worship. Because if you've ever been to our our, our church on a Sunday morning in Brookline, we can't bring coffee into the auditorium, not our rule, the school's rule. So I enjoy that here.

But also want to say too if, if you're new as well, The lead pastor here Fletcher, he's on sabbatical. You may or may not know that super grateful that he gets to go and take that break. But I also wanna say pastors, they do church staff in general just do so much more behind the scene. And so when the, the, the one kind of full time person goes and gets a sabbatical, we're grateful for that. But that also means there's a lot of stuff that needs to be done. And so I just want to say, it's really awesome to see that you guys as a church are continuing to thrive continuing to just do good things So that's thanks to the church staff, the, the the leaders here, the volunteers here. And so it's no, no small feat that you have a lead pastor that can go and take a two month sabbatical, which is good and he should be able to do that. And we're glad he can do that, but then the church still functions wonderfully. So that's God's kindness to you all.

So we the CoaH network have been in the book of John now for quite some time. And some of you are probably sad to hear this and some of you are glad to hear this. But we're at the end. we're at the very end of the book of John. This is the last part, the last passage, the last thing we'll be covering. and John's gospel, in my opinion, at least is the most unique out of the four gospels. Matthew Mark Luke and John. And it was likely written much later than the other gospels at a time in which those other gospels have been existence for some time. Even some of the letters in the New Testament that we see have been circulating the churches for some time. So this idea that churches would read these letters, these accounts and talk about them in church already existed and then enters in the gospel of John.

And we've worked through some really incredible things so far just to catch you up. If you've missed the past eight years, we've seen him turn water into wine, Jesus. Right. We've seen him teach about what it means to truly know God. We've seen him break cultural norms and love and give value and, and support people that society at that time kinda didn't. Right. We've seen him heal the sick. We've seen him, raise people up from the dead. We've seen him feed 5000 people with, with bread and fish kinda out of thin air. We've seen him walk on water, right? We've seen him die and then we've seen him raised from the dead and all of this was written John 20 if you remember his little thesis statement, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God and that by believing you may have life in this, in his name.

So how does John the most again, in my opinion here, the most unique gospel, the gospel that shows these incredibly high miracles, the gospel that shows these incredibly deep teachings from this person, this this God in the flesh. Jesus, how does it end? How does it wrap up? Like what, what does John want us to focus on? What's his concluding note? Interestingly, the gospel of Matthew and the Great Commission, right? Go make disciples of all nations. The gospel of Mark ends with Jesus empowering his disciples to go and do that same thing and then he ascends into heaven and sits at the right hand of God himself. The gospel of Luke ends with this little story called the road to Emmaus. If you ever heard of it, it's, it's, it's a beautiful story. Two men walking down a road, the resurrected Jesus appears to them and shares with them, walks them through the scriptures and shows them how every single part of the Bible points to him and then ends with him, blessing his disciples as he's literally carried up into heaven.

In other words, in these three gospels, three fitting ends to what is a crazy, wonderful, magnificent journey. Three, very fitting, somewhat dramatic in a good way, beautiful ends. But John quite honestly, not so much, at least on the surface again, John, more than any of the gospels are are is full of these magnificent kind of reality shifting miracles and acts of Jesus. Yet it ends quite unexpectedly with just a small conversation. It doesn't seem to fit, does it? But we were mistaken. It would be very mistaken if we didn't think that this conversation with the resurrected Jesus is just as grand and just as magnificent and just as reality shifting as the miracles and just as important for our lives. Why? Well, because odds, odds are you, you probably aren't going to see an in person, Jesus doing an in person miracle before you die. It's not impossible like he might return in this lifetime. I kind of hope he does like maybe after the next two Avengers movies, I wanna see Downey as Victor von Doom. Like let's get that of the way first, right?

But you likely won't see in this life an in person, Jesus doing an in-person miracle, but you will sin, you will misstep, you will hurt other people intentionally and unintentionally, you will hurt God. Benjamin Franklin, right? The only thing certain life is what? Death and taxes and sin. He says that you should look it up. But then the question lingers. What will you do about it? Maybe more importantly, what can you do about it in this little conversation that we just read between Jesus and Peter answers the question. How does God deal with it? How does God respond to our sin? It answers the question if we are in Jesus, what is God's heart towards us after we sin? If we are in Jesus, how does he respond to us when we continuously sin?

What does he say to Peter? He says, if you love me despite your sin, do the work I've called you to do and continue to follow me. Many of you probably know Peter's story, right? He goes on to write two books of the New Testament that are included in the Bible you have today. He despite Paul kind of being the more popular one, it's actually Peter, that's kind of the leader of the apostles after Jesus ascends into heaven. And yet it was also Peter who denied Jesus three times. I know the disciple did that based on what we see in scripture. At least, what does that tell us? Well, it tells us what happened in this conversation between Peter and Jesus and put Peter on a different trajectory. It rewrote his wrongs and use them for God's good.

This is something we see crystal clear in scripture and something that if we step back and reflect, we see clearly in our lives as well. And so for you, for me, we've sinned, you've sinned, you've messed up. You think you've done? What's an irreversible wrong to someone beside you or to the God above you? You've broken God's heart. What does he say to you? He doesn't say leave and never come back. He doesn't say you better pony up and right your wrongs. And then, and only then can we be in any sort of relationship together? No, we see that God graciously restores us. We see that restoration rewrites our story. It changes our trajectory, right? Jesus by restoring Peter rewrote his story from one of sadness and betrayal. One that left Peter with a bitter taste in his mouth for the very thing that he had done to one of a great love for God and the expansion of God's kingdom.

So our main point for today is this restoration rewrites your story and two things we'll look at from this passage as we consider that idea first, what does God do in this restoration process? And then what does God want us to do in this restoration process? We see that if we're willing God restores and we see that if we are willing, we will follow Jesus. Again, God restores and we follow.

So first God restores. It's important to note first and foremost, to be crystal clear. God is ultimately the one that does this. Why? Well, partially because only God can right. Romans 6:23 the wages of sin is death, eternal, spiritual, absolute death. What can you do against that? What can, what can I do against that? Absolutely nothing. Yeah, we try, don't we in ways that we don't even realize we're trying to, right? We ignore what we've done and try to course correct. Like maybe this is you kind of in your mind. You've, you've sinned, you've done something wrong, you say, OK, I've messed up once. But if I never do it again, then this first one, OK, we're good, right? We try to balance the scales. Well, I did this last night. So today I should, I should probably go to church or I should go to a small group or I should open my Bible as if they cancel each other out. Brother. I'm gonna serve at church as much as I can to do two things. One, hope that God sees my service and not my sin. And to just kind of keep my mind off of the things that I'm struggling with.

But what happens when you like Peter, inevitably you wrong, not just the person beside you, your spouse, your coworker, your friend, not just yourself, but the God of the universe. And side note, you might think that you like that sounds like something that would take a lot to do to offend God, but it doesn't, and that doesn't speak to the fragility of God that actually speaks to the perfection and holiness of God.

By the way, King David, he grasped this in one of his psalms where he says against you and you alone have a sinned. Now in his proper context, that's not David saying that his sin doesn't affect other people or there's not consequences for his sin. But rather, ultimately, at the end of the day, it harms God.

Chad Bird, he's an author and theologian expanded on this idea. He kind of has this piece of writing where he's like pretending to be David in this scenario and kind of inserts his own mind and his own thoughts with this salmon mind. He says for it is his God's, it is his law. I have broken his office, which I have failed his people against whom I have sinned. All is from him. So all I have taken, I have taken from him, all others against whom I have sinned. I have sinned because they are of Him.

So then back in our passage, this is even more of a reality for Peter. Is it not? He didn't just sin against the God? He couldn't see, he sinned against the God. He could see he sinned against the God that was standing right in front of him. He sinned against the God that just lived a beautiful life with him over the past three years. And while you and I don't see Jesus face to face in the same way, we sin against Him all the same just because we can't look into his eyes, doesn't make our sin any less drastic than Peter's. And yet, and this speaks to the character of Jesus of God.

I find it incredibly beautiful that Jesus continues to break norms and in the middle of sin, he pursues, pursues you and me and he pursued Peter. What do I mean? Well, if I, if I sin against you and I know I sin against you, typically speaking in a perfect world who's responsible for initiating that conversation or that reconciliation so that apologies can happen. Typically it's me right yet in this scenario, it's Jesus who makes the first move towards reconciliation towards restoration. He starts the road to restoration. Jesus takes the first step, not Peter.

In other words, God doesn't wait with his arms crossed across the room watching you waiting for you to drag your butt back to Him. No, he pursues you, Peter wasn't the one that broke the ice. He wasn't like, hey, Jesus, you got a minute, man. I got something I want to talk to you about. I don't know if you remember that thing that happened. You know the thing you said was gonna happen. I said would never happen. And I said, like, I'll go you to, to the death. And then I said, I didn't know you a couple of times like no, what does it say?

Verse 15, Jesus said to Simon Peter such a small little five word line that has so much packed into it that speaks to the initiating, loving pursuit of God towards you in your sin. Jesus sought out this conversation regardless of what Peter had done. Tim Keller says, you need to hear in the center of your being, the voice of God saying, in spite of everything you've done, I love you. Some of us here today think the way to get right with God is to be the one to come back to him first. But we should realize it's not us pursuing God that makes us right with Him. It's him pursuing us. It's not us who need to chase God, but rather it's God who's chasing us. That doesn't mean we have no part to play, but it means that God's initiator, God's the one who ultimately restores.

Why does this matter? Well, when someone's disposition towards you is I will always pursue you and I will always love you. What does that provide you with security, comfort and understanding that nothing and no one can take away this relationship to you because it's God who's holding on, it's God who's pursuing, who can take anything from God that he is holding on to that. He says is his God does these things in this process of restoration. He does. So I'd have a love and compassion for us, but it should be noted should be noted that as God chases us as God restores us.

Sometimes, often times it's not easy. It's often something that involves pain. It involves solemn reflection because He will, he will remind us of what we've done. He will remind us of how we've gone astray, how we've sinned three times. What does Jesus ask Peter? 15, 16, and 17. Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me? What does this mirror? You guys know Peter's words to Jesus. I do not know you. I do not know you. I do not know you. I am not associated with this man. I am not one of his followers. In other words, I don't love you. I don't love you. I don't love you.

Jesus is reminding Peter of what He's done and it's not a bad thing. Why? Because it'll keep Him from doing it again. It's good for us to think and consider and be grateful for the fact that God doesn't just drop it when it comes to our sin, he does legally, he does eternally. Yes, he forgives immediately, but he's so much stronger and so much more powerful than just to forgive and forget in this moment. Why? Because he wants the best for us, he wants us to reflect, to ponder and to learn from our sin and more importantly, not fall into it again. And that can only happen when we acknowledge and he acknowledges it too. Jesus acknowledges the sin that Peter has committed while also acknowledging the restorative power of God.

Psalm 32 David again, when I kept silent, when I did not acknowledge my sin, my bones wasted away through my groaning all the day long for day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. That's again, the pursuit of God. My strength is dried up as by the heat of summer. I acknowledged my sin to you and I did not cover my iniquity. I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. This is what God does in restoration. This is how God rewrites our story.

Now, what do we do? What does Peter do there is if you look closely an act of repentance here as well by repentance is a part of restoration, right? That is a necessary ingredients to restoration, right? Just as God acknowledges what we have done in a loving and tender way for our good. We too have to acknowledge what we have done through repentance. Repentance, depending on your upbringing, depending on kind of how you view religion or kinda what you're walking into the door with. Probably sounds pretty uncomfortable, maybe offensive, maybe terrible. Maybe it brings up some memories of kind of hellfire and brimstone type of preaching, right? That paints a picture of repentance as nothing more than saying, stop it, you disgusting human being.

But Biblical repentance, the repentance God wants from you is not about what you've done, but rather whom you've done it against. In other words, repentance is primarily a relational activity, not a moral activity. Notice what grieves Peter. Verse 17, Jesus said to him the third time, Simon son of John, do you love me? Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time. Do you love me? What grieves Peter here at the end of the day is not the thing He has done, but rather the person he has done it to if you are grieved over your sins, solely because you think is just some wrong you've done. You're missing the mark, not just about repentance, but about sin. Sin is sin because it's something that goes against God, not because it's some arbitrary rule. The end of repentance is entering back into a right relationship with God rather than right activity though that is part of it.

Kelly Needham has a really good article on TGC about this. She says repentance isn't primarily about what you're fleeing from, but whom you're fleeing to. In other words, there's a big difference between biblical repentance and worldly sorrow, biblical sorrow and sadness and worldly sorrow. To be fair. It is kind of difficult to emotionally untangle the two when you're going through those things. Right? But what I mean, well, you can feel genuinely sad for your sin, right? You can regret it. You can see it as destructive to you and hurtful to others, right? But you can still not repent because repentance is not primarily about the thing you have done but whom you have done it to.

Second Corinthians 7, Paul talks about this, right? Worldly grief and Godly grief, worldly grief for sin is primarily about ourselves and the impact it's had on ourselves and our own lives, right? My selfishness hurts my friends and my family and therefore my life, the addiction to porn makes you sad. It hurts your relationships, your anger causes you to lose control and lose your job. Therefore, you experience sorrow, there is sorrow there. But that sorrow is fundamentally about you and what it costs you. And the impact sin has on you.

But Biblical repentance, Biblical sorrow is not sorrow for something that's happened, its sorrow toward God for wronging Him. It's sorrow before God. For me being the type of person who did those sins. It's sorrow before God because of the relational cost of the sin and me continuing to do the very thing that Jesus died for. That's what biblical sorrow is. So, what do we do in this act of restoration? You repent. We don't just say, I'm sorry, I did that. We say I'm sorry, I did that to you at the end of the day. That is what sin is, but what we do doesn't just stop there. It's not just repentance, right? Which is good news.

Repentance is never fun, By the way, just throwing it out there. It's never easy per se, but it's necessary, but it doesn't stop there. Jesus has some specific things in mind for Peter. 15, 16, 17, what does he say? He says, feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my lambs, my sheep, sorry, feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep. In other words, God still has something for Peter to do. And this, these instructions from Jesus to Peter are specific to Peter in the pastoral role. He will play with the kind of developing church. But notice Peter, despite what he's done, he's not disqualified from partaking in God's plan. And some of us need to be reminded that God still has so much to do in and through you despite the sins that have happened in your past, despite the sins you've carried into this room to say or to think otherwise is to downplay the power of God to downplay the power of God's forgiveness.

It's not to say that there aren't consequences to sin. That's not to say that certain sins wouldn't disqualify people from doing and leading and saying certain things, but it does not disqualify you from God's work. We see this in the life of Peter. We see this in the life of Paul who had Christians murdered, right? I'm sure many of you have seen this in your own life, right? We see that restoration rewrites our story, which includes rewriting our sins, which includes in spite of our sins, God using us for his good.

We also see as we start to wrap up restoration and really following Jesus in general requires submission to his plan no matter the cost. This is what the the the last 18 through 25. It's a little odd is talking about. Well, restoration rewrites our story. It rewrites Peter's story. It also puts him on a trajectory of great pain. Verse 18. Truly, truly, I say to you, this is Jesus talking to Peter. When you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted. But when you were, when you are old, you will stretch out your hands and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go. This. He said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God. And after saying this, he said to him, follow me.

Not to spend too much time on this, but extra-Biblical sources point to Peter dying on the cross. Extra-Biblical sources in a way that's a little less convincing but still mostly convincing point to Peter being crucified upside down because he was not willing or thought he wasn't worthy to die in the same way that Jesus did. We must remember what we are restored to is a right relationship with God. Not an easy life. In fact, it's often the opposite. Is it not a right relationship with God more often than not, does not lead to an easy life. In fact, I would say the scriptures promise us, don't just tell us that it's likely to happen, but promise us a life of suffering, a life of bearing one another's burdens in a way that it costs us in a way that we have to endure the hate of the world. We can't just live in this Christian cocoon.

So as we close in some ways, this ending to John, this ending of the gospel of John, this magnum opus that is the gospel of John. It doesn't seem on the surface to match the magnitude of the rest of the story. Yet, if you look closely, it does, it's quite frankly another miracle that this great resurrection leads to restoration of you of me. Like sometimes I look at my life, the sins, I've committed, the things I've done, the things I've said, the things I've left undone. I consider those things I consider the possibility that a perfect God exists and the idea that my wrongs will be right and be rewritten, rewritten by him. Seems crazy. Sometimes. It seems like a more difficult feat than raising from the dead. But they're one of the same, aren't they? Jesus rising from the dead. Jesus' resurrection is what rewrites our story. It's what restores us. This is what he does do the Gospel through the life, the death and resurrection of Jesus. God restores and rewrites our story. Let's pray.

God, we are thankful for you, God, thankful that the last note in the gospel of John is one in which you rewrite a sinner's story, one in which you restore Peter. And we can look at that and know and be confident that you restore and you rewrite our stories. So God, I pray for anyone who comes in here today, carrying guilt, carrying shame, carrying the sins of they did five years ago or last night and realize that what you offer through your son is not condemnation, but rather restoration, salvation, and joy with you Jesus. God help you, help us to see you as beautiful, as good, as kind. Thank you for your word. Thank you for this beautiful gospel. Thank you for this account of your life, Jesus, that we got to go through it and look closely at the things you've said and the things you've done. Remind us that you still speak to us today. You still work today, that the same Jesus we read in the gospel of John is the same Jesus we know and love. In your name, Amen.

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Guest preacher David Duran from King's Cross Church in Plymouth preaches from John 21:1-14 about the disciples meeting Jesus after the resurrection. Discussion points: Jesus knows exactly where we are and what we experience in life, Jesus has things under control even when everything seems to be falling apart, Jesus loves to welcome lost and wandering people back to him.

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Scripture reader: [John 21:1-14] After this, Jesus revealed himself again to the disciples by the sea of Tiberius and he revealed himself in this way. Simon Peter, Thomas called the twin, Nathaniel of Canna in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples were together. Simon Peter said to them, I'm going fishing. They said to him, we will go with you. They went out and got into the boat. But that night they caught nothing. Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, children, do you have any fish? They answered him, No.

He said to them, cast the net on the right side of the boat and you will find some. So they cast it and now they were not able to haul it in because of the quantity of fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved therefore said to Peter, it is the Lord. When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment for he was stripped for work and threw himself into the sea. The other disciples came in, came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land but about 100 yards off.

When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire in place with fish laid out on it and bread. Jesus said to them, bring some of the fish that you have just caught. So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore full of large fish, 153 of them. And although there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, come and have breakfast. Now, none of the disciples dared ask him, who are you? They knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them. And so with the fish. This was now the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: Well, good morning. It's a joy to be here with you all. As Alexis mentioned, my name is David Durand and I'm a church planter with sin Boston and with harbor network planting Kings cross church down in the Plymouth area. I always like to mention that to people because it amazes me. It seems like everywhere I go, there's someone that has some sort of connection to Plymouth or the Plymouth area and love for you all to know that just in case you know, people who are looking for a church down in that area. I would love to connect with them and share with them about what we're doing.

I actually brought some, some prayer cards and a little bit of information. We would be honored me, my wife, our four children, and the folks that are a part of our team. We'd be honored if you would pray for us. We know that nothing significant for God's kingdom happens apart from prayer. So if you would grab one of those prayer cards, put it on your fridge, pray for us as often as we come to mind, we, we truly would be honored.

I also want to say, I'm, I know he's not here this morning. He's somewhere in France, but I'm so grateful for your pastor. Fletcher has been a friend to me. He's been a mentor to me. He's been a friend. He's been a mentor. I'm so grateful for him and the way the Lord has used him in this area, I, I got to meet Fletcher a couple of years ago through our connection with Harbor Network. And I think by extension, What he's, what he's done for me personally and also what your church has done. You guys have you've supported us. I don't know if you know that or not. We, we actually have an event next month in Plymouth where we're going to serve 24 children and their families, they'll receive backpacks, school supplies, hygiene kits, a new pair of shoes, a free meal. All the while they'll be hearing about the hope that we have in Jesus Christ and you all have been a part of that. And, I just want to say, I'm, I'm grateful for Fletcher, but I'm also, very, very grateful for you.

Well, before we look at our passage this morning, I know we've, we've prayed a few times already, but I would like to pray just one more time and then we'll look at God's word. Let's pray. God, we need you this morning. We need to be reminded who you are. We need to be reminded what you've done and what you're doing that we need to be reminded that you're good. I thank you for the way that you've already done that today or we admit that we are so prone to forgetfulness or how quickly we forget all that we have in Christ. We fail to remember that the Holy Spirit is our helper, that he's our guide. We tend to be like Peter when he gets out of the boat in the middle of the storm and, and starts walking towards Jesus and our focus so quickly it shifts to the storm that's raging all around us. And Lord, we take our eyes off of you and we acknowledge that together or this morning, we pray that you would fix our gaze directly on you as we look at your word. Let us come face to face with the risen Jesus. Convict us where conviction is needed, encourage us, where we need to be encouraged. Lord, I, I pray for your help, God that you would help me to say things that are true and honoring to your word. Lord, I pray that we would all leave here with greater love and greater affection for King Jesus. And we ask this in Jesus name, Amen.

Well, being lost is one of the worst feelings in the world. It doesn't matter if you're a two year old child or a 50 year old man. It is terrifying to be lost. We moved here last year from South Carolina. Me and my wife are four children. One of them was a two week old. So that was an adventure. But part of this move was renting a 26 ft U-haul loading everything we have into that truck and driving it 800 miles to get here. Now, I'm sure many of you know, this when you rent a U haul, you don't really need any kind of special documentation. You just need a driver's license and they'll give you this this massive U-haul. It's really, it's kind of scary if you think about it.

But so I'm I'm driving this, this massive thing and the first few hours are pretty easy. We're going through a rural area. I'm kind of getting the hang of everything. not, not too much of a problem but then a few hours in things start to pick up a little bit first we hit Washington DC. Little bit of a test there. A couple of issues navigating some of the roads. we have a GPS which tells you where to go, but it doesn't create space for you and the, the, the lane so that you can move over. So it, it was, it was a bit of a test for me there. But, we, we made it, we got through DC not too bad.

But then a few hours later we hit New York City and here my friends is where the problem begins. The GPS is telling me to go down one particular road. Also, there's three car, there's two cars following behind me. This is just a fun fact. I guess GPS, we're all going to the same location. GPS is telling me to go one direction, the other two are told to go other directions. I don't know how that works but it, it was a very confusing time on a number of, of levels here. But I'm, I'm got the GPS is telling me to go this way. I'm in the lane, everything's good to go. But then I see a sign in front of me and it says low bridge ahead and I know that if I continue in that direction, this is going to be a very bad thing. I am going to end up on the news. But this is, this is all that the GPS is giving me go this way, go this way. I, I can't figure out what to do.

So we pull over on a side road and it just keeps telling me, go, go back the same way, the same way with the low bridge sign. And now I'm officially lost. Whipping this 26 ft U-haul through Yonkers trying to figure out where the heck am I going? We eventually made it obviously, but it was, it was an adventure.

If, if you've ever been lost before, whether that's, hiking through the woods or driving somewhere or maybe you're, you're traveling abroad and you get off on the wrong stop and now you're not sure. Ok, how do I get back to, to where I'm supposed to be? You know, that immediate sense of panic that starts to set in, your heart starts beating fast. You begin to feel a little bit disoriented. You start to, to panic a little bit. It's not, it's not a fun feeling at all. Being physically lost is scary, scary for anyone that I think there's a different kind of lostness that's much more frightening than being physically lost and that is being emotionally lost or you might call it being existentially lost.

So, what do I mean by this, this is that, that feeling of disconnectedness from everything around you. Maybe you feel like your life has no purpose. You feel like you have no direction or no movement in your life. It's, it's that feeling when you finish college and you studied for a degree, you're all excited to sort of begin your career and now you can't find a job in your area of study and you're not sure what you're gonna do. It's how you feel when you experience a tragic loss in your life. And now you don't know where to turn. You're not physically lost in these instances. You, you know exactly where you are, but you feel lost nonetheless. I think we all experience this kind of losses to a degree throughout the pandemic. So much uncertainty, so much sadness, so much fears, confusion about what needs to be done about what's gonna happen. There was, it was a crazy and, and difficult time to be lost physically is bad. It's terrifying, but to be emotionally lost, that is much, much worse.

In the passage that was read for us this morning, John 21:1-14, we find seven of Jesus's disciples experiencing that feeling of being emotionally lost. These guys had been following after Jesus, the five of them that are specifically named in the passage. We know they've been following Jesus for over three years. They did everything with him. You've, you've studied the book of John, you've seen this, they ate with him and drank with him. They traveled with him, they asked him all kinds of questions. They sat under his teaching, they watched him do miracles. And although Jesus, he told his disciples that he would be crucified and he told them that he would rise again, the reality of Jesus's death and resurrection. It's, it's caught the disciples by surprise.

And by the time we come to John 21 Jesus has appeared post resurrection to his disciples two other times. And, and this, of course, it isn't including the time where he appeared to Mary Magdalen right outside of the tomb. So these guys, they know that Jesus is alive, which is incredible news for them and for us. But the problem is they don't know what to do now. They don't have a sense of direction. They don't know where they're supposed to go or what they're supposed to do. And no doubt there is now a sense of confusion among them. So they want to return to what's familiar. They've left Jerusalem, they've made the 70 mile trip back up to the sea of Tiberius and they are going fishing.

And I've heard this and, and maybe you have too, that this return to fishing, this return to what was familiar for these disciples was a sign that they had doubts and maybe that they had even abandoned the faith. And I, I don't think that's what's going on here. I think more likely they're feeling that emotional and existential lostness. They're searching for some kind of grounding in their life. And so they return to what they know the disciples in this passage. They do what many of us have done when we feel the same kind of feeling we go back towards what is familiar.

What I wanna do this morning is I want to make four observations on this passage regarding Jesus and the sense of lostness that his disciples feel. I want you to see how Jesus responds to these men whom he loves deeply. And in seeing this, I want you to see how he responds to us as well. So four things, I'm gonna give them to you now and then we're gonna walk through them one by one.

So first, Jesus knows exactly where his disciples are. Second, Jesus has everything covered. Third, Jesus is still with them, that is his disciples and he's for them. And finally, God is willing and able to use failures.

Let's look at the first one. Jesus knows exactly where his disciples are. Look again at verses four and five. I'm gonna read them for us. John writes just as day was breaking Jesus stood on the shore yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, children, do you have any fish? They answered him, no. So I love the gospel of John for a number of reasons. And the church I was at in South Carolina. Prior to moving, we were actually preaching through the book of John. So I loved studying and preparing for many of those messages, messages. But one of the things I really love about John is the way that he, he writes and the way that he uses imagery to convey theological truth.

And in verse four, we have one of the more common ways that John does this. You've seen this, I'm sure as you've, as you've gone through John, but he loves to compare darkness and light. You caught that as you've as you've gone through darkness and light two of John's favorite pictures even way back in the beginning. In chapter one, John writes in verse five, the light he's talking about Jesus, the light shines in darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. In chapter eight verse 12, Jesus says, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life again. John 12:35 and 36 Jesus says the light is among you for a little while longer, walk while you have the light less darkness overtake you. The one who walks in darkness does not know where he's going while you have the light, believe in the light that you may become sons of light.

You get the picture. There's many more examples that I could show you in John's gospel. But I hope, I hope you see kind of what, what John does, at least on a small scale here. John in verse one here. He's absolutely intentional in saying just as day was breaking, just as the light begins to come, just as the sun is beginning to shine. The Son of God appears to those He loves. Jesus knows exactly where these men have gone to and he seeks after them in their lostness. He seeks after them in their confusion.

Notice too how Jesus addresses his disciples. Did you catch the word that he used? It's, it's a little bit unusual. He addresses them as children says, children, he caught any fish. Now this this word it can be used in, in different ways. I mean it, it could be used to refer to an infant or a child that's a little bit older. And Jesus uses this word quite often. It's all throughout the gospels. Jesus is speaking to children and talking to children. But what's interesting is the way that he uses it here. You see this is the only place in John's Gospel and it's actually the only place in all of the gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, where Jesus uses this specific word to refer to his disciples.

I think Jesus in a very special way in this moment. He wants to comfort his disciples like a tender father speaking to his, his little ones. Jesus wants his disciples to feel reassured and although they don't yet know that it's the lord that's talking to them. Jesus knows exactly where his children are. I wonder if there's anyone here today and you feel like Jesus doesn't see you, he doesn't see what you're going through. He feels distant, uninterested in your life. Seems like he's left you on your own to just sort of figure things out or he's, he's left you on your own to pick up the pieces of whatever kind of mess. Maybe you find yourself in. I want you to know Jesus knows exactly where you are. He knows what you're going through. You're not alone. You don't have to feel, you don't have to face whatever it is that you're going through alone.

There's other people in this room, I'm sure who are, are doing great work is going amazing. Your family is doing well and at this moment you couldn't be happier. Truth is many times, life changes in an instant, sometimes it's for the better, but other times it's for the worst and no matter who you are, there's going to be times throughout our lives where it feels like God is distant, it feels like maybe he's turned his back on us. It feels like he doesn't care. Well, friends, just like Jesus knows exactly where his disciples are. Jesus knows exactly where you are. He sees you, he knows you and he cares now it's, it's nice to think about and reflect on the fact that Jesus knows where we are, that he, he knows what we're experiencing.

He knows what we're feeling, but it's even better to recognize the next point here. And that is that Jesus has everything covered. He knows where we are and Jesus has everything covered. Jesus asked the disciples if they've caught any fish after a entire night out fishing and they respond with a, no. Now, I don't know if any, there's anybody in here who enjoys fishing. I, I like to fish. I find it very relax. I find it very enjoyable even if I'm not catching anything. but if you've ever been fishing for a long time and then someone comes up to you and they ask like, hey, what have you caught? How, how's it, how's it going? Have you, have you caught anything today? And you have to tell them no, it's really, it's kind of demoralizing. There's been times when I've, I've gone out fishing for a few hours and I come home and my wife asked me, like, how'd it go? Do you know, what did you catch? And if I have to, the times are few. Ok, typically I'm, you know, I, I'm able to catch something but, she, she, what did you catch? And when I respond with, no, she gives me this look like, well, what are, what are you doing? Like, you wasted your time for the last three hours? It's, it's a very demoralizing feeling to fish all night and not catch a single fish for these disciples. Very disheartening.

The disciples are, are coming back, they're on their way back to shore. They're tired, they're hungry and they're discouraged. But then look, look at what Jesus says to them. He says, cast the net on the right side of the boat and you will find some. Now, if you've been fishing all night, you haven't caught a thing, you are willing to try anything. So some guy on shore, you don't know who he is. He's calling your children. That's a, that's a little bit different. Tells you to cast your net on the right side of the boat. Why not give it a shot, right? It can't hurt. So they cast it and now they were not able to haul it in because of the quantity of fish. Jesus has everything covered in an instant. The situation has gone from them having zero fish to having 153.

And Jesus, he loves to work this way. He loves to take a situation that seems utterly impossible and make it beautiful. I think about immediately the story of Jesus feeding the 5000 and we, we know that it was really more like 12,000 when you include women and children, hungry people, nowhere to go. Jesus has compassion on them and he takes a little boy's lunch of five loaves and two fish and he feeds everyone with 12 baskets left over.

What about when, when Jesus calms the the storm, John doesn't record that in his gospel, but the other ones do, there's a storm that's raging while Jesus and the disciples are, are out on a boat and they're actually on the same lake that these guys are fishing on now. The sea of Tiberius and the sea of Galilee. That's the same body of water. But the storm is, is raging. The disciples are afraid. And Jesus remember he's in the boat and he is asleep. Not because he doesn't care, but because he's not worried. The disciples are terrified saying master, master, we were perishing. This boat is going down. We don't know what we're gonna do. And Jesus calmly gets up and he tells the wind and the waves to be quiet, he tells them to be still and immediately the storm stops.

More than any other moment though, it was during the crucifixion where it appeared that Jesus in fact did not have everything covered to the disciples. To everyone who was watching. It appeared as if Jesus had failed. He was undergoing the punishment of a criminal. He was mocked, stripped, beaten, he was nailed to a cross by everyone's standard. This was the picture of someone who had failed miserably and in every possible way.

Oh, but the reality is, this was just the beginning of triumph. This was just the beginning of victory as Jesus hung their arms stretched out, breathing his last few breaths. He actually had everything covered in a very amazing and beautiful way because his death serves as a covering for sin in his death. He endures the punishment that each one of us deserve because we have broken God's law. He endures the punishment of God in our place so that we don't have to experience that punishment selves because the reality is every one of us. We have broken God's law. We've gone astray. We have said God, I don't need you whether verbally or internally in our hearts. By the way that we live, we've all done that and Jesus took the penalty that we deserved. And then three days later, as you saw last week in John 20 Jesus rose from the grave. He died in our place and he rose again to new life that we too might experience new life.

And we enter into this new life when we turn from our sin and trust in Jesus's perfect sacrifice on our behalf. Friends, Jesus literally has everything covered at the highest possible level. And because of that, we can trust that He will meet all of our needs in our lostness, in our confusion, in our Brokenness. God provides for us.

Paul wrote, Paul wrote in Romans 8:32, He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him graciously give us all things when things seem impossible in your life, when it seems like there is no way out. Imagine for a second what it must have been like to be those disciples standing there watching their Lord watching Jesus be crucified. They're watching their teacher and their friend undergo an excruciating death. They had, they had to think at least in some sense that their life was over, that they had wasted three plus years following after this Jewish rabbi. And now these, these disciples here in our passage, they're returning from a failed fishing trip and Jesus wants him to know he's got everything taken care of. He's got everything covered. What seemed like failure has actually turned into victory. And Jesus wants us to know he will do the same thing for us as well.

Next, let's look at how Jesus is still with them. That is the disciples, he's with them and he's for them. Remember, this is the third time now that Jesus has appeared to his disciples and he's, he's given him a little bit of instruction. You, you saw that in verse 20 maybe last week when he said as the father has sent me. So I am sending you. But these guys, they still don't know what's going on. This is this is a reoccurring theme for the disciples. They're not sure they're not sure what is going on.

But look, look what Jesus says, look what he does. And he says, when they, when they catch the fish and now they're coming to shore, let's read this. When they got out on land, they saw a charcoal fire in place with fish laid out on it and bread. Jesus said to them bring some of the fish that you've caught. So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore full of large fish. 100 and 53 of them. And although there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them come and have breakfast. Jesus the risen Lord with all power and all authority makes his disciples breakfast. He didn't have to do this. He could have appointed someone else to go. He could have sent an angel to prepare breakfast. But Jesus himself, he shows up and he cooks for his disciples. He's with them. He's for them. He provides for them.

Now this scene for Peter, it had to be a little bit tense as he's approaching shore here. John, the ever perceptive disciple, he realizes that it's Jesus that's talking to them from the shore. And then Peter, the ever impulsive disciple immediately strips down, jumps in the water and swims towards Jesus. Remember Peter? He has seen Jesus twice post resurrection. But they, they haven't really talked about the incident. You know what I'm talking about the incident. Peter was the one who said to Jesus, even if I must die with you, I will never deny you. That's what Peter said. And then that very same night, the night of Jesus's arrest Peter on three separate occasions said, I do not even know that man.

And now, so imagine the same as Peter's walking up on shore. He smells the charcoal fire, even if it's just for a moment. His mind had to go back to that night where he's in the courtyard of the high priest, he's warming himself around the fire and he's telling those who would ask him. I don't even know who Jesus is. Now. The second half of chapter 21. You'll see this next week. It goes into greater detail of the interaction between Jesus and Peter. But just notice how Jesus greets Peter, this man that was so close to him yet would deny him. Look what Jesus does. He doesn't scold him. He doesn't ask him, how could you have done this to me? Doesn't shame him in any kind of way. No, we make some breakfast. He welcomes him. He shares a meal with him and he enjoys fellowship with the person who said, I don't even know you.

Friends, Jesus loves to welcome lost and wandering people back to him, even those who, who've cursed him, even those who mock and make fun of people who love him. Jesus loves to cook breakfast for these kinds of people too and in their confusion and in their lack of direction, Jesus shows up, he makes breakfast for his disciples and in doing that and providing for them in this way and sharing a meal with them. Jesus is showing them, I'm with you and I am for you.

Finally, God is still willing to use failures. God is still willing to use failures by the world standards. Here, these disciples are failures in the world's eyes. They followed a failed teacher and a false claiming Messiah, these guys appear to be unsuccessful, no purpose losers. That's what the world would say about them. They're like, and in this example, I'm not demeaning anyone in this way, but they're like the small town guy who, who moves to the city trying to make it big. And before they know it, they're back working third shift in the small town that they came from by the standards of the world that is not success.

But Jesus loves to use those who appear as failures, even those who have directly failed him. He loves to use those kinds of people. He loves to take broken and insecure people like you and me and use us in a mighty way for the kingdom of God. And it actually seems to me like this is God's preferred way of doing things. There are way too many examples to list but over and over and over again, God takes weak, forgotten and directionless people and transforms them to be used for the glory of God.

There's too many to list like I said, but I wanna just give you a couple to, to hold on to here. Abraham was an idol worshiper from who God called to be the father of many nations. Moses at one point was a baby placed in a basket on the edge of the Nile River because Pharaoh, he wanted all the Israelite boys dead, but God would call him that boy to lead his people out of slavery in Egypt, rehab was a prostitute in Jericho who recognized the power and the goodness of God. And she would go on to be in the lineage of Jesus. David was a poor outcast, sort of shepherd boy overlooked shepherd boy who would go on to become the king of Israel. Do you, do you get the picture here?

God loves to take those who look like they have no purpose and use them in a mighty way for his glory. He loves to take those who look like they have no purpose and no direction and fill them with his power for his purposes. The gospel, the good news about what Jesus has done is good news. Not only because our sin is forgiven, but because of the way that it transforms us and gives us a profound sense of purpose in the world.

The gospel changes the way we view our existence. It's not about our career, it's not about our accolades. It's not about how many accomplishments we can achieve. It's about making much of the one who has changed our destiny. It's about glorifying the one who has given us everything a Christian, regardless of the circumstances they're facing. They can never honestly say I have no purpose in life. I have no direction. I have no sense of direction. The purpose is always and will always be, bring glory and honor to the Savior, bring glory and honor to God. And what's beautiful about this is no circumstance can alter this purpose. That is the purpose we possess now and forever. And when we fulfill this purpose that we're created for, we experience a profound closeness with God, we enjoy deep communion with God when we're living in the purpose that He has given us and that is honor Him, glorify Him in all that we do. And as we do this, a profound sense of purpose is felt and a profound sense of purpose is achieved.

You may be here today and you feel lost. You, you might feel like everywhere you turn, there's like there's no sense of direction, you feel hopeless. Oh If that's, you just know Jesus knows exactly where you are. There is, there's a pattern of Jesus showing up in the darkness and every time he shows up, he brings light even way back in the book of Isaiah, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years before Jesus would appear on the scene here. Isaiah 92 says, the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwell in a land of deep darkness on them has light shone. Jesus is the light in the darkness. John 8:12, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.

If you're lost in the darkness, come into the beauty and the warmth of the light. Like Peter, maybe you need to get out of the boat and just swim towards the Savior. He's with you. He's for you. He loves to use those who don't have it all together, those who don't have the best pedigree, those who don't have the best track record. Jesus loves to use those kind of people. All we have to do is come to him and be forgiven, be transformed, be made new and live with profound purpose and through Jesus Christ. Let's pray.

Father. We thank you for all that we have in Jesus. We thank you that we have been made new. We thank you that we've been forgiven. We thank you that we're able to enjoy a profound sense of closeness with you and then through your son. We thank you that you've given us your Holy Spirit and that we never walk alone in this life. And we pray that you would be with us and help us to honor and glorify you in all that we do. We ask this in Christ's name, Amen.

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Ministry Associate Calvin Chu preaches from John 20 about the disciples and Mary discovering the empty tomb after the resurrection. Discussion points: The disciples and Mary would have believed that their last moments with Jesus were truly the end of their time with him, Jesus’s followers were focused on what they thought would happen instead of what God could do, Jesus’s command to Mary shows that after his resurrection his followers were adopted into the family of God.

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Scripture reader: [John 20:1-18] Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early while it was still dark and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved and said to them, they have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid him. So Peter went out with the other disciple and they were going toward the tomb. Both of them were running together.

But the other disciple Outran Peter and reached the tomb first and stooping to look in, he saw the, he saw the linen clothes lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came following him and went into the tomb. He saw the linen clothes lying there in the face cloth which had been on Jesus's head, not lying with the linen clothes, but folded up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in and he saw and believed, for as yet, they did not understand the scripture that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples went back to their homes.

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. And as she wept, she stooped, she stooped to look into the tomb and she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her woman, why are you weeping? She said to them they have taken away my Lord. And I do not know where they have laid him. Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?

Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him and I will take him away. Jesus said to her Mary. She turned and said to him in Aramaic, Rabbani which means teacher. Jesus said to her, do not cling to me for I have not yet ascended to the father, but go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my father and your father, to my God and your God. Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples. I've seen the Lord and that he had said these things to her.

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: Morning everybody. I don't know about you guys. If this happens to you, you'll be like sitting there or sit maybe, like, waiting in line for something and all of a sudden, like, you get hit with this like intrusive memory. I don't know if you ever have this. Like sometimes there's this spontaneous mummer just pops into your head and just like, basically for no reason. And I'm sure someone here has like a, a degree that's far more relevant than the collection of the, my, my couple of degrees. But my like explain it like I'm five sort of explanation of this is that it seems like there's a lot of reasons that this happens, like for instance, like different stimuli like a sight or a sound or a smell can like trigger like a memory for us.

But the, the intrusive memories that I like or I dislike the most are the ones where I'm reminded of situations that like, I can't change. or take back, some of them are like awkward and kind of cringey. Like the time I pulled over to where all the cool kids in high school were hanging out and I pulled up in my Toyota Corolla DX station wagon, blasting Abba dancing queen and I hopped out and I just decided to dance. And I thought it was so funny and oh young Calvin, if you could just see how unfunny that was, and that lives in my mind so many years later and in prepping it, that is the memory that popped back into my head. So now that will be there for at least another decade. Just reminding myself of that is, is just who I am and who I was.

But some of these intrusive memories are not kind of awkward. They're actually kind of painful. They replay these situations where we maybe said something wrong or we didn't say something when we should have or in these memos remind us, Times when we were like incredibly disappointed, we had had all these hopes of these things that were going to happen, change that was going to come and it didn't. And, and you know, they can be reminded of, of the times that people around us, our community, our loved ones, even ourselves or we, we feel disappointed by our actions and theirs. And these memories represent these things that kind of linger. They are the things that we wish we could have a do over the ones where we wish we could kind of snap our finger and change reality.

And for those of us who follow Christ, it, a lot of times these memories, these regrets, these failures, they can really test us, they can really rock our faith and, and really cause us to doubt. Sometimes we think, oh, if God were, if you were real, then surely this would not be happening. And this feeling of wanting to kind of move past our history and wanting it to be different.

That's at the forefront of our passage this morning. How basically the question that I I want us to think about is how do we navigate these missed opportunities, these painful losses in light of the work of, of Jesus? And, and what does the empty tomb have to do with any of these things?

Right. That's what we're looking at. We read the passage in, in John chapter 20. and, and last week, we saw the crucifixion and basically, we looked at how Jesus was sentenced to death. And the passage that follow that is, you know, Jesus was crucified, he died, he was treated with burial spices and was bound in cloths and then was buried. And we picked up today with Mary Magdalene and Peter and John.

And each of them come to this moment in the, the, the, the count of, of the life of Jesus and the disciples. They all come with history. They all come with a deep sense of regret or longing or hopelessness. And so, maybe you're sitting here today or maybe you're watching this online another point in the future and you are coming with these things, this history, this pain, this regret. And, and so, II I Lord willing, as we study this passage, I do think God will open our eyes to help us see that the empty tomb has a lot to do with these missed opportunities, these mistakes, these failures that we have.

And so let's pray to God for guidance this morning as we look at this passage a little bit more in depth. Let's pray, Father God. surely people watching this or listening to this in, in, in the seats right now. We have this, we have these feelings, we have these regrets. We are reminded of our fails, we're reminding of the failures of the people around us. And God, we have these painful memories that, that define us, who we are. It feels like and, and God, we just pray for clarity. We pray that you would remove the distractions in our heart and in our minds, we, we pray for protection from affliction that would distract us in this moment so that we can hear from you. God, I pray that you help me get out of the way. We pray that the Holy Spirit would come and give us clarity as we study your word this morning praying expectantly because we know that you are a God that does such things. And so lord, we pray that we, you would give us the ears to hear and the hearts to receive your word this morning. And we pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.

And so like a like a you know, I don't know if you guys watch streaming services and like what's really cool. So I'm old enough to remember when streaming first started happening and you had to like sit and watch the opening credits of every single show that you were watching, every single season or every single episode you'd have. But there was like a new innovation that came, like, you could skip the recap and I like skipping the recap personally. This is totally aside, I like skipping the recap because when you watch the recap, it tells you what's gonna happen in the sh like the plot of that episode. You know what I mean? So you gotta thank you. We got a passionate recap skipper in the back. You wanna skip it because then you wanna, you wanna see the the plot as it is. But this for this, this morning, we can't skip the recap because I think it actually really helps us the background of Mary, John, the disciple whom Jesus loved. And Peter, the, the, the background for them. The recap is actually really helpful to see what they're bringing. What's the baggage that they're bringing to this situation here?

And so start with Mary. there's really not a ton that's like confirmed about her. We knew know that she was afflicted with seven evil spirits that Jesus had cast out. and then from that point, she became a very devout follower of Jesus. And the only thing that for sure that we know about her is that she was present at jesus' crucifixion. So she was at the foot of the cross seeing Jesus in his last moments, seeing him suffer and die. OK?

So that's Mary and then there's the disciple whom Jesus loved, which is widely understand stood to be John. it was the right of this gospel account. And for context, if you, if you remember as we've been looking at John, all the other disciples, they scattered because Jesus was caught, right? Jesus was captured, he was arrested and basically anyone that was associated with Jesus was now under threat. And so everyone else has scattered except for John because John was pretty young. Some commentators kind of find him at the age of maybe not even 20 yet, like he hadn't had his full beard. And so they they they saw him almost like a younger, you know, person, not very much a threat. So that's why he probably felt free.

So he was also actually present at Jesus' crucifixion and death. But John was also one of jesus' closest in, in his sort of in his inner circle as far as the disciples were concerned. So he had like the inside track, he knew Jesus really, really well and he spent probably the most time with Jesus with, you know, a couple of the of the disciples, one of them being Peter, which we're gonna talk about in a second. But before Jesus dies in his last moments, he tells John to take care of his mother. Jesus says take care of my mother. It says and so basically, in that last moment or one of the last moments, he gives his command to John to be like a son to Jesus' mother.

And last, I said I was talking about Peter here. And so for Peter who was not there, he's definitely one of the ones that scattered because if you remember Peter, the last time he saw Jesus, he was denying him three times, right? So he went from saying that I will never betray you Jesus to denying him three times where all the gospel accounts say that he left weeping bitterly like he realized that he had, he was not who he thought he was and that he had betrayed Jesus thrice. And so that's the background.

We have to remember that for all of them, Jesus was their leader. Jesus was the Messiah, the anointed one. He was the, the miracle worker and he and so the the the most recent memories that they have, each three of them have of Jesus for all intents and purposes in the moment that they're recalling them. That's the last moment that they have Peter seeing Jesus and as he betrays him three times, that's the last thing on his mind. And for, for John seeing Jesus and saying, take care of my mother, be a son to her is the last thing on his mind. And for Mary, the last thing is seeing the man who changed her life forever removing the the afflictions from her so that she could live free. Seeing this powerful leader, this Messiah in her mind dying e embarrassing and cruel death. That's the last thing that they think that that's the image that I will have in my mind forever of the one I thought who was my leader, my Messiah.

So we see this in verses one and two because all of a sudden, Mary rushes to report that Jesus' body is gone. Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early while it's still dark and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. So she ran away, she ran and went with Simon, went to Simon Peter and the other disciple whom Jesus loved and said to them, they have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we do not know where they have laid him. I can imagine what Peter's thinking. He's probably so heartbroken that he betrayed Jesus. He did the opposite of what he said he was going to do and that he think he would never be able to ask for forgiveness. He would never be able to explain himself. He'd never be able to go to Jesus like, oh, well, the this and that regret was probably living with him.

But then an empty tomb. Ok. Well, maybe something's happening here. Maybe there was a mix up, maybe something happened. And so he runs and you have to understand in the Asian areas and culture men after a certain age did not run anywhere. They walked a lot, you know, there was no Uber, there were no taxis, no driving, they they walked a lot but they did not run anywhere. So the fact that they're running is actually something significant.

Same thing with John who also ends up running for him again. He's the only apostle to have seen Jesus his last moments. And so seeing his leader bloodied and beaten and crucified, he must have thought that's it. There's no coming back after this and he he just assumes that Jesus thinking the same thing because why would a person who's gonna come back later say, hey, look, here's my mom who our society is not going to take care of these widows. Please take care of her that you don't say that unless you think that's the end. So John's thinking this is the end. So he probably felt hopeless after seeing the traumatic image of his leader who he thought was the messiahs bloodied and beaten and dead.

And yet again, an empty tomb, maybe something is happening. So he runs off right as we see this in verses 3 to 7. So Peter went out to with the other disciple and they were going toward the tomb. Both of them were running together but the other disciple Outran Peter and reached the tomb first and the and stooping to look and he saw the linen cloth lying there and he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came following him and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloth lying there and the face cloth which had been on Jesus head not lying with the linen cloth was folded up in a place by itself.

Just as a quick aside, a lot of commentaries like have to comment on like why did John talk about like beating Peter to the tomb? Like I just think that's really funny because like if if you're giving this account, you're just like, well, Calvin went to the store at the same time as Joe and Calvin got there first and Calvin is also better looking like like that would just be like this weird like this weird thing to say. so so some people have kind of guessed that, oh maybe there's like a competition but generally speaking, most people understand that wasn't a competition. It was simply just reporting all the details.

And so if anything, it actually shows that John had this huge hesitancy, he went there first and for all intents and purposes, he could have looked and he could have done the research, but you can see the trauma because he remembers the image of his leader, his his supposed Messiah bloodied and beaten and dead. He sees that image and he's like, I don't know if I wanna go back in because if, what if Mary is wrong, what if he's actually in there and he's still dead and I have to re traumatize myself. So he gets there first but he stops. He looks a little bit ok. There's some class here.

That is weird because the grave robbers were a thing at the time. So it's not out of the question that someone may have like robbed the grave but not to go into the whole like apologetics of why that'd be really hard with a giant stone blocking this tomb with guards being put there. But it's like, ok, that's weird. Like the linen cloth would actually be very valuable. If I were a grave robber linen would be a very precious material. Actually, that would be the thing that they would take. So why would they leave that? Right.

And so he, he gets there, he stops, he doesn't go then in comes old, good old Peter. He's like trenching in, he comes in, move by the way, John and he just runs straight and he's I I got here, I can see, I see what's happening here and he goes and he goes in and sees and so they both see there that the these cloths are there and that Jesus is not there. And so I just wonder, I just think that they all must have wondered like what went wrong, like what happened here and you know, seeing their they all saw Jesus and his power was undeniable. Yet there was this death on a cross. And then now there is this empty tomb.

And so other accounts sort of say that Peter walks away, sort of thinking like he was wondering what was happening. So he didn't fully understand yet. But in the passage here with John and actually says in verse eight, is that then the other disciple who reached the tomb first also went in and he saw and believed, and I think that what this is saying is that when he saw the clause there, he began to put the things together that like what they expected to happen wasn't actually what was going to happen. That Jesus, as we know, as we studied the New Testament, we know that Jesus doesn't operate how we think he's going to operate. He operates, how he's going to operate, not what we think.

And so I think that in the moment that lead up, led up to this, they probably thought salvation is not coming. He's dead, the leader's gone. There's gonna be no, no great revolution, no great resolution, no great restoration, but he's dead. Just they're just the dead leader who they thought was the one and he wasn't. I think, I think the thing is they focused on their will, not God's, they focused on what they thought would happen, not what God was actually going to do and honestly, you can see this with Peter. I'll actually read the, the, the quotes here. Mark 14:29. Peter said to him even though they all fall away, talking with the other disciples, I will not. So Jesus tells them, hey, look, you're all gonna fall away, you're all gonna run. You're all gonna scatter Peter saying I will not. He's focused on what he imagines the result will be. He focus on what he thinks will happen.

And then Luke 22 to 33 said Peter said to him, Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death. Again, Peter's thinking, no, not your will, but my will not your image of what's gonna happen, who you actually know Jesus. But my image of what will happen, Peter is not taking his cues from Jesus. He's filling in with what he thinks will happen. It makes sense that he has his confidence like he's literally for the past three years. See Jesus doing incredible things like things that like truly miraculous. Of course, he's thinking yes, like I'm not going to lose. This is, this is a guaranteed home run. Look, look at, look at Jesus, of course, I'm going to win. So for Peter, Jesus is just a means to his own end. Jesus is just the, the the the middle point to getting Peter to where he wants to go.

And actually you can actually see this with Mary too in the sense of how Jesus questions her when he, he shows up after, right? We see this in John 2011, but Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. And as she wept, she stood to look into the tomb and she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had lain one at the head and one of the feet. And they said to a woman, why are you weeping? She said to them, they have taken away my Lord. And I do not know what they have laid him. Having said that she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. And Jesus said to her woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking supposing him to be the gardener? She said to him, sir, if you carried him away, tell me where you have laid him and I will take him away. Jesus said to her Mary and she turned and said to him in Aramaic Rabbi.

And I, I think Jesus is gently questioning here, Mary saying, why are you weeping? Like why are you sad? Like I told you this would happen? And whom are you seeking? Like what type of leader? What type of Savior? What type of Messiah were you looking for? This is this was always what my plan was going to be. This was always going to be my will. What Savior were you looking for? I don't think he's coming down on her. I think he's gently questioning and encourage you can see that she, he's trying to encourage her because when he, she, he says Mary, she, it snaps it, it clicks into place. She goes. Oh, it's you. Ok. I see now.

And so, before we continue on to see kind of what happens next, I, I think it's really helpful for us to think what does it have to do with us? Right? What does it have to those of us, especially for those of us who follow Jesus? I think very often we expect that I pray a prayer. I, I, you know, raised my hand, I didn't alter call. I, I have, I, I hang across in my home somewhere. I've got a cross around my neck. I follow Jesus and we expect that well, I follow Jesus. Therefore, life will be easy because Jesus is powerful. Jesus is good. Jesus is omni all the omni and, and, and so then therefore, like we must be able to go through life with great ease. They will never face any.

And I, there are, there are people out there, there are ministries out there that push this idea. You follow Jesus, you have great enough faith, you will be rich, you will be powerful, you will have no troubles. And if you do, it's because you don't have enough faith. And I, I would challenge if, if you're in thinking about that, then look at this passage like so much of what jesus' followers go through is actually challenge and difficulty. It's not easy. But that doesn't say that God is not powerful, that Jesus is not good. It just following Jesus does not mean that life will be easy despite all the songs that we sing, despite how good He is, despite how powerful He is the, the goodness of God, how in His power have nothing to do with the amount of ease or comfort that we have in our lives.

Like Mary Peter and John and the rest of the disciples, we're gonna face hardships, we will make mistakes, we will disappoint and we will be disappointed following Jesus does not change that reality. So then I ask you my friends, when these things happen, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking? I'm not saying that we can't be sad or scared or have any of these, you know, negative emotions. Clearly, everyone in this passage today was these things and Jesus does not rebuke them. That's not rebuke here, Jesus is encouraging them like us to remember that there was an empty grave, to take your grief, your pain, your regrets, your hurt. And remember that there is an empty grave, an empty grave, which means that something extraordinary has taken place not only to Jesus, but to the whole world. The way God is the way, the way that we perceive God the way that the disciples are an empty grave shows that everything has changed, that something has altered decisively that something has been achieved. Jesus says, see the empty grave and seek me.

I think most of, you know, that I have two kids. but something that I don't think my kids fully grasp is that there was a time in my life before them, before kids. because I've, you know, I've been around their whole life so that they just assumed that, you know, this is, this is just how I've always been. and I remember the last day of my pre kid life, it was July, it was July 4th, break. And, my wife and I, we had went to Texas, Austin specifically because we wanted to get a little vacation before the kids come and trying to like enjoy life. And so we just thought, hey, we'll go to Austin. it's a pretty cool place. We know we have a friend there that said that they could house us, which was really, really generous.

And we went and, I just remember being like, wow, this is like Texas is very different. I don't know if anyone here is from Texas. The Texas is very, I'm from Massachusetts. So Massachusetts to Texas feel very different. But, one thing that I, I went, I went to a place called Franklin barbecue. I don't know if you've been before and, and so if you've been, it's, it's kind of like, well known for its brisket. And, like kind of people were just like, oh, you're in Austin, Austin, you gotta go to Franklin, you gotta go to Franklin. That's really, really good. It's like you should bring a seat, you should bring a lawn chair because you have to wait a little bit. And that is true. We did wait a little bit because basically it's so, I don't know if it is now. It's like post code. I think you can like order online but like whatever. I'm not mad that I had to wait the whole time.

But basically you have to wait in line for this entire time so that you can get this this brisket and the bar. There's a lot of things at a barbecue, but everyone says the brisket is really good. I had never really had like Southern style Texas barbecue brisket. I've had like other types of brisket. But not this type and when I ate it, I was like, wow, this is, this is really, really good. This was worth the wait. So this is the, the whole illustration is not about thinking about brisket. So you'll, you'll bear with me. II, I remember going back home and just being like obsessed with brisket and just being like, wow, like, what did he do? Like how did he do it?

And so I went and I like, did all the research and I studied of like, how do you make this happen? And then, like, can I achieve this here? That's really became my focus. I started going youtube started teaching myself and, oh, bless you too. Because there is a local PBS station down in Texas that interviewed, Aaron Franklin who was the owner of the restaurant not sponsored at all. But, he went and he actually walked everyone through the process of how do you, how does he make the brisket? And I go, ok, great. I can do it except that I didn't have all the tools I didn't have like the giant smoker and I have all these things, but in my small little world I can do this.

And so I became obsessed. I went and I did it. I, got the supplies. I gave my shot and it was pretty good for a New England with a New Englander who has no previous experience. I know some of you maybe from the south. You're like, yeah. Ok. yeah, a Yankee like good. Yeah, I'm sure it was really good. But for me, I was satisfied with it. And, I remember, the day after my wife, she's like, oh, I don't feel so great. It was like, maybe it was like indigestion or something. I was like, ok, well, we we went along our day long story short, we were, she was going into labor, flash forward like a few many hours later and boom, it's kid time like we had a baby.

And basically from that day forth, like my life has been completely changed. And so even when I have the rare moments of like being by myself and like driving in my car, I will look back into my back seat and there will be a kid seat. And this is, it's not just like the little bu bucket seats, which is what they had when they were little. Then there was like the front facing car seat and then it was the booster seat with the high back. And then now my eldest is on his the last booster the just the bottom. And so one day that will be gone and that will be exciting and that would be good. But then I have, you know, his little brother who is also still in a car seat.

What I remember bringing this up other than talking about brisket and car seats. When I look in the back seat of my car, I see a constant reminder that in on that day, on the that that July 4th break weekend, my life was forever changed that car seat, whether there's a kid in it or whether it's empty shows me, it points to me that everything is different now. And so there are moments in our lives that we are never the same again and they all can measure up. We could all have our things. But what I want us to know for this, my friends, the ultimate moment of your life being different is the moment that you understand that there was an empty grave, that there was a savior who lived a perfect life, died, the death of a criminal. And he was raised again three days later. And as he departed that tomb, nothing would be ever the same again.

The empty grave tells us that something extraordinary has happened. And you, my friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, we are or if you're not a follower of Christ, you can be a part of that, that empty grave can have that same effect on you. And then kind of going back to Jesus and Mary here. It's really interesting because Jesus is sort of signaling that this is different now and, but he says something that's really, really interesting. And actually all the commentators I looked at basically agree that this is a kind of a weird thing to say if you think of the, the context which he says this, Jesus said to her, do not cling to me for I have not yet ascended to the Father, but go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples. I have seen the Lord and that he had said these things to her.

The phrase essentially means like, don't cling to me as if I were to like, disappear permanently. Like if I, I'm gonna go away, like, and you'll never be able to like, you know, experience, you know, my presence again. Basically, it's like, don't, don't cling on to this like private dream come true. Like, because I'm imagining that Mary was praying and hoping like God, like would, would something happen, would something change this grief that I have? Would you take it away from me? And then all of a sudden when he says, Mary, the prayer becomes true, she says, wow, teacher. It's you. My prayers have been answered. And basically, he, she wanted to keep Jesus there with her and like her, only because she's been going through this pain and this sorrow and she's like, please just completely turn to joy. Can we go back to how things were, could I sit under your teaching? Can we go around taking care of the needs of our community? Can, can you, can we learn again? Can we perform miracles? Can I see that? Can we go back?

And Jesus is saying, don't cling to that, don't cling to me because I have not, my work is not done yet. Something fundamentally has changed. And now what, what we used to do was great, but now things have changed and now things, different things need to happen. Jesus knew that everything had changed and he tells her not to hold on to him because his mission was not complete. There was a greater purpose at play.

Basically, Jesus knows that this answered prayer is answered prayer for her and she, she wants to focus on that. But Jesus is saying it's not about your will. I know you want me to just hang out here, we can play, you know, cards or, or whatever. But it's like, no, I got other things I need to do but you get to experience this. But I have a, I have, I, I don't want you to, to stay there. And so for us and it's really easy to get focused on our situation and our perspective, wanting the relief that we want, wanting the God. Would you please do this in my life? God please do this and we do the good Christian thing. We pray for these things.

And sometimes I feel like the hardest thing is when God answers our prayers, the way that we want them because it becomes about us and how God, how God is good to us and how our desire is God's desire. But our relief and comfort are not the end of the story. For God. God's main focus is not to answer our prayers as if he's some magic genie. He's got things he wants to accomplish. And so yes, he will answer our prayers and he will answer them in the way that we ask for sometimes specifically. But he doesn't always do that. What he wants is his will not our will.

Something that bothers me still to this day. A few years ago, a former student of mine calls me out of the blue. He tells me he's in California and he got stopped by TSA, because they found a controlled substance on him. And he admitted to me that he had partaken in some, on his trip. But he says, he reassured me. He says, no, look, honestly, it's my buddy. He left, he borrowed my shorts and he left it in like that's the whole sort of thing.

And, I said, OK, like, but basically he says, they won't like, release me. Like I can't come back home. unless like, I have an advocate that someone who can vouch for me and say, like, listen, this guy is a good guy. Like he, he is on the level he cares about his community. Like he, he basically needs someone to come and advocate for him. So he calls me, I was like, you know, his, his his youth pastor. So I guess it's, it's, it's better to ask the youth pastor than like the, the, the congregational pastor, I guess is that was too, too close. And so I tell him, ok, like, if you, if you want, if you do this and that's, that's fine.

Like I'm, I'm, I'm willing to do this but like I, this is not like a get out of jail free card. Like I, I if you are, if you're saying that you're this type of person, like I want to make sure that we actually build this together that, that you are gonna say that you tell me that you're gonna live, that you live this life. And let's actually make sure that you live this life. Let's actually make sure that you are what you say you are. And he's like, oh yeah, yeah, I'm definitely, I'm definitely going to, he's like, you know, I, I'll come find after school breaks, you know, I'll come find you, I'll come find you on spring break, Christmas break, summer break.

And as you can imagine, to my dismay, he never reached out to me again and I should have been smart. I should have set some more boundaries in there and should have been, you know, like couched a little bit more and, and built in some more safeguards to make sure that, you know, we actually got to build that life that he was saying he was going to. But, but he didn't and I, I didn't and, and honestly, that's something that I regret. So it's something I wish I had done better at.

And so I feel like that's how we can treat God sometimes. I think sometimes when we're like so desperate when we, we were like at wits end or, or at the end of our rope, we go, God, would you please do that thing? Would you please change my situation? Would you please make sense of my history? Make sense of my past. Would you redeem that? And we, we, we pray with great fervency in the middle of our need and then he gives it to us. Here we go. Hey God, good job, man. See you later. I'll see you at Christmas. I'll see you at Easter.

And I think that that's not what God wants. God doesn't want us to cling to just the good times, cling to just what we want. In this case, Mary was clinging to what she wanted, which was the past experience with Jesus and Jesus. Don't cling to that. And I think for us, God is telling, don't cling to the thing that is your will, what you want over my will because I have things that I want to do. And I'm not saying that Mary is doing something bad. I think her actions are far more innocent than many of ours and definitely many of mine. But even still I that Jesus' focus is on His will, not ours.

And I think this is a good way to think about the motivation of our prayers. And do we get what we want and forget about Him or do we get what we want? And have this heart of gratitude and a willingness to do what he calls us to next as a sign of appreciation, as a sign of seeing that he is good. He is powerful, which is what I think actually what Jesus brings out in the last part of our text here.

So because Jesus calls Mary to do something and I think if you kind of read it quickly, it can, it can kind of feel like one thing. But I think as we look a little closer, I there's a little bit more here. So let me read it. It is the last couple of firsts, 17 and 18, Jesus said to her, do not cling to me for, I have not yet ascended to the Father but go to my brothers and say to them, I'm ascending to my Father and your Father. Go to my God and your God. Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples. I've seen the Lord and that he said these things to her, I think very quickly we read it and we go, you've had good things happen to you. You should evangelize, you should share the gospel. You should go tell your coworkers call, tell your neighbors, tell your classmates, tell your family, go say how good God is. And that, that's, I mean that you can't go wrong with that. That's kind of like one of those classic sort of like, yeah, that's the right answer. Sort of applications.

But actually, I think Jesus is doing something a little bit deeper here. If you look, he goes to great lengths to explain that again, the the fact that everything is now different. So this is the first time in all of the, the the gospel of John where he uses the phrase my brothers, he says, go to my brothers, which is talking about the disciples because obviously Mary understands that she goes to the disciples and announces.

So he says, go to my brothers, go to those who are now a part of my family who are part of my lineage, go to them. And what does he tell them to tell her to tell them? I am not yet attending to my father and your father and my God and your God. Why does Jesus go to this? He could just said to the father to God. He could have just said those things. But why does he focused on that phrasing? Because what happens because of the empty tomb is that all those who follow Jesus are now part of the family are now co heirs with Christ, as said in other parts of the scriptures, we are now adopted, sons and daughters, sharing that sonship with Christ.

And so I really love that this is what we have here because I think it's so easy to cling to our old ways, to our history, to our mistakes, to the ways we've been hurt to the ways that we've hurt other people. It's really easy to, to cling to those things. But God wants us to know that we are no longer defined by those things. Our history does not define us. Our mistakes do not define us the way that our loved ones, our community have wronged us or failed us. They do not define us. What defines us is that we are one with Christ, that we are part of his family, that we are his brothers, his sisters because of the empty tomb.

I love the illustration. And it's in other parts of scripture, but I love the, the illustration of adoption like Romans 8 talks about adoption being coheirs of Christ. I really love that because like an orphan can't do anything to change their status. Like a child who has either been abandoned or has lost both of their parents. There's nothing that they can do to change their identity as an orphan. It is literally out of their hands. They can grow out of it. I guess they can reach 18 and they can become an adult and they don't necessarily, but that doesn't necessarily change the fact of that reality. It is requires someone outside of them that comes in and says, I see you as my child, I adopt you into my family. I am changing your identity as an orphan and I'm now making you a son or a daughter.

I love that image because it shows us how truly powerless we are. If we are just clinging to our past, we're clinging to our mistakes. We're clinging to our disappointments, then we just live in that identity. We live in that reality. And only when we see that there was an empty tomb and this is that now we are co heirs. We are brothers and sisters with Christ. Does our identity change that we've been adopted by the father? We have a new identity as children of God and we have the assurance of a place in the father's house. This is what Jesus is declaring to us because we've been adopted coheirs of Christ. Our past is our past, but it's not as significant as our present and definitely not as significant as our future. Our shared sonship is what defines us now, not our past, not our mistakes, not how other people see us to my friends.

Are we living the past over and over and over again, hoping that we can change it? Are we praying that God change our past? Ignoring that He has actually changed our future, which is far more significant. Are we still asking God to change our reality when that's exactly what he did with an empty tomb? An empty tomb that says that there is no need for a do over because Jesus said it is done an empty tomb. That means our past no longer holds us an empty tomb. That means that we can move beyond our past towards our beautiful future as a part of God's family with all the joy and restoration that comes with my friends. I hope you see that your identity is now in Christ, not in your past, not in your mistakes, not in the mistakes of others.

So on the night that Jesus was betrayed, we're gonna prepare for communion. He took the bread and he broke it said, this is my body broken for you. And then after supper, he took the cup said, this is my blood shed for you. And every time you take of the cup, the take of the bread, take of the cup do this in remembrance of me. So every single week we take part of the communion meal. So I'm gonna pray for us and pray for communion. As we prepare to take the elements, let's pray.

Father God. I thank you that you have indeed changed our identity, changed who we are through the empty tomb, through the work of Jesus on the cross and his resurrection. We just pray that you help us catch up, catch up the sea. That that's exactly what you did when you rose Christ from the dead, that we are no longer who we were. We, we are who he has made us to be, which is one with him, co heirs with him. And so Lord, as we prepare to take communion and sing the last couple of worship songs. I pray that your spirit would move in us, to prepare us to really take this to heart with all the troubles that we have waiting for us at home or at work. God, I pray that you would help us to know that we are defined not by those things but by your love. We pray all this in Jesus' name, Amen.

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Ministry Associate Calvin Chu preaches from John 19 [read for us in Korean]. Discussion points: The religious leaders saw Jesus as undermining their power and authority and way of life, the chief priests rejected God as king when they accepted Caesar as king, Jesus did not fight to defend himself but accepted his Father’s will for him.

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Scripture reader: [John 19:1-16, read for us in Korean] Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him. And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe. They came up to him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and struck him with their hands. Pilate went out again and said to them, “See, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him.” So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man!” When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.”

The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God.” When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid. He entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, “Where are you from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. So Pilate said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.”

From then on Pilate sought to release him, but the Jews cried out, “If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.” So when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called The Stone Pavement, and in Aramaic[b] Gabbatha. Now it was the day of Preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour.[c] He said to the Jews, “Behold your King!” They cried out, “Away with him, away with him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” So he delivered him over to them to be crucified.

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: Good morning, everybody. My name is Calvin. I also here as giving a great opportunity to share God's Word with you today and we are continuing our series in and John, before we kind of dive into the scripture, I want us to kind of think about this, that something about me that I guess growing up, one thing that I really became introduced to was like film study in my high school class. I had a film class. he's an English teacher, but he also taught film.

And so ever since then, I've kind of like had this like very like amateur, like you know, perspective and interest in, in film. And there's one thing that I think is really interesting that there are a lot of movies that over the years that I've watched that I really like have this thing called the Rashaan Effect. I don't know if you guys are familiar any film buffs out there, but it's, it's named after a 1950 movie by Akira Kasa, which is called Rashi Man. Which is about where the, the name of the effect comes from. And it basically that and all movies that kind of use this effect, tell stories from multiple different perspectives.

And after watching the whole movie, the one thing that's really satisfying about it or maybe not satisfying, depending on how they're using it is you get a fuller picture of the story for using from different perspectives. And so like some famous examples not that this is like the pinnacle of film. but a more recent one was in the last Jedi, which again, I know Star Wars turn is like you're really bringing that one up. The, there's a scene there's actually two scenes, technically one is when Luke is recounting his confrontation of Kylo Ren in, you know, the in when he Kylo is sleeping. and he has like this moment of weakness where he, he's like he senses the dark side in him and he's, you know, pulls out his light saber and think, oh I'm going to like, and the dark side here, but then he like actually in his heart changes his mind. But from Kylo Ren's perspective, he's like he sees his master, you know, with, you know, his weapon been drawn against him. And so like, it kind of tells you different perspectives.

Another famous example is Gone Girl, it's a, that was a book, but it's also a movie in the movie that kind of shows the, like, I guess it was the first half of it's like from the husband's perspective and then like the latter half of it's from like the wife's perspective. I'm not gonna tell you anymore. But that is that's part of it. Memento. I don't know if you guys are Christopher Nolan fans out here. His masterpiece, Memento is like, basically, it's a story that's kind of going both backwards and forwards at the same time. And when it kind of crosses over near to basically at the climax of the movie, you kind of see like the, the whole picture of everything what's happening and you don't know what is kind of true and what is not. So that's one where it's a little bit confusing another one and this is not just the film study. I will get to God's word in just a second.

Another one is Pulp Fiction again, same exact idea, telling story out of time or from different perspectives. So that by the end of it, you get a much fuller picture of the things that are happening in the lives of the characters in the story as a whole.

So why am I bringing this up? As you may recall, Fletcher's last sermon, he was he mentioned that we were going to be talking about the resurrection today which we just read through in, in John chapter 19. and, you know, I really love passages like this because they, set us up for what I, I call passage, sermons that are like, that's like a good reminder sermon. Like, it's like a well worn well known passage that if you, especially if you grew up in the church you go. Oh, yeah. Crucifixion. Like, yeah, we get it like we've seen it. So, like we're ready for, like, just, just give it, just get to Jesus on the cross, get to my sins being paid for by the blood of Christ. And then I can go enjoy my bagel and coffee and then go get lunch or take my after church nap or whatever it is like just don't make this go too long, good reminder sermons.

But I love passages like this because I think if we are able to take a look at it from a different perspective, get our Ramon effect on a little bit here and look at it from different perspectives, I think we actually see something a little bit different. I think we see a, a wider picture of what's happening here. Not adding more than what not trying to correct anything that you may be thinking previously, but just looking at a different angle to see, OK, what can we draw from this if we look at it from a different perspective? And so, for, for me, this is really we were trying to answer. The Fletcher talked a bit about Pilate, the last sermon. So if you haven't, if you've been here, you didn't get a chance to definitely check us out. The sermon is on youtube. So check us out at the CoaH Somerville youtube page when the John chapter 18 sermon.

So I'm not gonna talk too much about Pilate, but I am gonna be looking at the perspective of the chief priests and the religious leaders and then Jesus and as we look at those things, hopefully, Lord willing, he the spirit will open up our eyes and, and hopefully move our hearts to see the res the crucifixion with a little bit of added color and texture to it. So, before we dive into the, the, the text a little bit more, let me pray for us.

Father God, indeed, I pray that we would see your word with a fresh set of eyes. It is easy for especially those who grew up in the church or have been a part of the church for a long time for us to, to hear about, oh, we're talking about the, the crucifixion and, and sort of gloss over and fill in the blank with what we've heard through Sunday schools, kids, summer adventures, VBS, you know, old sermons that we've heard in the past about it. But Lord I don't, I'm not, I pray that, that is not the novelty brought up from my mind, but really God, that this is your spirit, hopefully illuminating the scripture so that we can see the most important event in all of history this morning through your word. And so God, I pray that you definitely get me out of the way that you get our, our distractions out of the way, the things that we're waiting for to happen, the things that are on the front of our mind just clear it away so that we can see you through your word this morning. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.

OK. So yeah, so like I said, Fletcher did talk about Pilate a little bit, but he basically said that he's not like a good guy. It seems like he's a good guy because he's like he's washing his hands from like the sin of, you know, killing Jesus. But you know, at the, at the end of the day, it's, it's actually not so much that again, John eight, John chapter 18, go check that out. But I want to talk about the chief priests.

And so if you may recall the last thing that we read in the, the John chapter 18 passage is where Pilate says to the, the, the the crowd that's before him. He says to him, this is about 1838 Pilate said to him, what is truth after he said this he went back outside to the Jews and told them I find no guilt in him again, Jews, meaning the Jewish leaders. But you have a custom that I should release one man for you at the Passover. So do you want me to release to you? The king of the Jews? They cried again, not this man, but Barabbas now, Barabbas was a robber.

And so we talked a little bit about Barabbas and just how that the idea of Robert, it's not exactly, he was a robber. He was actually actually an insurrectionist. I know, you know, insurrection is a term that's much more in the common vernacular. But until very recently, I didn't really know what it meant, but basically Barabbas, it wasn't just a robber, but he was actually someone who was like causing violence in a direct attempt to overthrow the Roman government. And so basically, they're saying, no, don't release Jesus release this non violent actor. And so from there, we see that the chief priests are so fixated on trying to get Jesus killed.

And so what happens is Pilate says, OK, we're going to order Jesus to be flocked basically to be beaten. And we, we see that, that in verses one through three, that that's what happens. And then in verse four, Pilate went out to them and see and said to them, see, I'm bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him. Now, this is the second time within the verse that I read that pot saying like I have found no guilt. He is innocent multiple times. And they're saying, do you wanna release him or the this known violent man, known violent man? OK. So he brings them in, he beats them Jesus up as a way of like, listen this, he's not really what he says. He is like he behold the man. Look, he's just a guy. And are you sure you really want him to be crucified?

Verse six, when the chief priests and officers saw him, they cried out, crucify him, crucify him. Pilate said to him, take him yourselves and crucify him for I find no guilt in him again declaring that he is innocent and the Jews answered him. We have a law and according to that law, he ought to die because he made himself the Son of God.

And so from the surface level, it seems like these chief priests, these religious leaders are just a collection of people who take their religion very, very seriously. But in our religion, we have this law, this rule that if you equate yourself with God, if you declare yourself a Son of God, then you must die, you have to die. But the thing is they can't actually kill Jesus because they're under Roman occupation. The Roman Empire actually rules the, the, the Israelite people. So they actually can't, they can, they can accuse, they can bring up capital charges, but they can't actually execute a person. And so they go, well, listen, you, we can't do it. But according to our religious law, this has to happen. And so then basically they bring up this charge and they bring up Jesus to Pilate who has to hear the case.

And so after here's the case multiple times, like I don't, I guys, I don't think this is what is happening here and yet they're so insistent. And so it seems like they're just zealous. They, they have this incredible zeal of wanting to see this blasphemer, this heretic killed. But if you don't know, the chief priest, these religious leaders weren't just like religious leaders, they're also civic leaders, they're also political leaders. And so because they are in this position, they actually have quite a bit of power and authority. And if you've been following along, you actually see that over the, the three years that Jesus has been ministering, he's actually been doing quite a bit to poke holes in their power in their authority.

Basically days earlier, as Jesus was going into Jerusalem, the crowds were cheering Hosanna, Hosanna like putting the palmy, that's the palm center. They were basically cheering him saying this is here is our leader, here's our true leader. And essentially these, these religious leaders like took it personally. They're like, oh, like he's the real leader. Like, what about us like, oh no, this guy is going to be getting all this attention, all this adoration, all this authority, all this power and we won't have it anymore because they're gonna follow him and they're not gonna follow us. And he not only did he do that, he performed miracles, many miracles. And not only that, he also flipped the religious system on its head. He went into the temple, flipped over tables, kicked out the money changers.

And so he's going through and he's undoing, seemingly from the perspective of the chief priest, he's undoing their way of life and he's undermining their power and authority. And so it may seem like it's just a group of religious people who are taking their God's commandments very seriously. But if you look a little bit beneath the surface, you can kind of see, oh, actually, maybe there's a little bit more to the story here. There's a little bit more self-interest in, in what they're trying to say, the, the kind of the story behind the story. In other words, the religious leaders seem to have a personal interest in getting rid of Jesus, his teaching and increasing following or a direct threat to their power and influence.

And so what, what, that's, that's a pretty big thing to bring up here, right? And, and, and I think it's important, like, I guess this is like a law movie with the thing, like, so it's sort of like, you know, you're the jury and I'm the prosecution or I, I'm not a lawyer. I don't play one on TV, but I've watched some TV shows and some movies to know a little bit enough. But basically I'm bringing charge that these, they're, they're actually guilty of self interest. So how do we see this here? Actually, remember that he, multiple times Pilate has said that he's, he's guilty, he's not guilty. He's innocent. The things you're saying he's guilty. If he is not, I have not found guilt within him.

Verse 12, verse John 1912 to 15 says from then on, Pilate sought to release him. But the Jews cried out. If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar. And when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat at the place called the Stone Pavement in Aramaic Githa. And now it was the day of preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour and he said to the Jews behold your king and they cried away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate said to them, shall I crucify your king? The chief priest answered, we have no king but Caesar.

Again, if you don't understand the context of what's happening here, it could just be like, oh, they're just, they're just taking the process seriously. But if you actually notice it's actually a very sneaky little way of that. They kind of handle this. Here, there's a couple of things. The first thing is that this phrase, you are not Caesar's friend. Again, Fletcher talked a little bit about this in the chapter 18 sermon, but again, this is Roman Empire. So Caesar was king. Many Caesars a posthumously were, were created to be gods. They were actually seen as like deities, right? So they, they took the leadership of Caesar very seriously. And so anyone that would make himself king to call himself a king, especially if you weren't a Roman citi, Roman citizen, that is high treason, that's almost a guaranteed death penalty.

And so for them to say that to Pilate who was already in a little bit of hot water, you know, with his superiors, he's like, if you release this man, you are not Caesar's friends. It's like a very passive aggressive way of like threatening him. It's like if you release this guy who said he was a king, by the way, If you release this guy who said he was a king, then you must not be a friend of Caesar A K A. You must be disloyal to the throne, disloyal to the Caesar A K A. We're gonna go above your head. We're gonna tell the, the, the emperor wouldn't get word to him that you were disloyal and it's gonna kill you or at least get your job, you get your job taken away because there's no way a governor cannot be loyal to the Caesar, to the king. Right?

So this is veiled threat, that says, listen, if you, oh, you wanna release him? Well, I mean, I guess you could release him and if you release him, then I don't know who knows what happened. Maybe Caesar will find out that you don't really care about his power. I mean, I don't know who knows what might happen. And this is velvet. And then right there is really interesting because originally they start off by saying in our religion, in our religious community, in our religious laws, there's a law that says if you equate yourself with God, you must die. And now all of a sudden they switch super sneaky no longer. It's not about religion anymore. Now it's about fealty and devotion and patriotism. How good are you to the throne of Caesar? If you let this sedition go and you see it in the last part it says, shall I crucify your king? The chief priest answered, we have no king. But Caesar again, if you look beneath the surface, there's a little bit more here.

If you know the history of God's people with kings, then you know that in, in first Samuel as Samuel is beginning to kind of meet reach the end of his life, the twilight years at the end of his ministry, the the the Gods people go to him and say, Samuel anoint us a king like our neighbor so we can be like them. And what he says, a a as, as Samuel is actually be kind of reaching the end of his life. He actually says, oh, where's my quote here? Oh, no. Oh dear. I will give you the gist of it. OK. Basically the gist of it is that he Samuel at the end of his life is saying, you know, you should, I, I will, I will pray for you because of what you did. You devoted yourself to this king. You wanted this king. When at the end when they first call for a king, God responds to Samuel says, they are not rejecting you and asking for a king, they're not saying that you are not doing a good job. God says Samuel, he says they are rejecting me because I am their true king.

And so again, if you think about this, from the perspective of the chief priests, for them to say that we have no king but Caesar, it is yet another rejection of God as king to say, we have no king except for this human installed leader to say that is the only king that is the most important king, that is the top of the hierarchy of the driving force in our lives. It is a flat out rejection of who God is. Oh here it is. Sorry, it's ok. Sorry what the Lord said. The Samuel, obey the voice of the people and all they say to you for, they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.

If the chief priest had really been interested in a religious purity, right? They would never have said that Caesar is the only king that they have. If they were really about maintaining God's commands, they would not have rejected God as king declaring undying devotion to Caesar and Caesar alone. We have no king but Caesar is just again, religiously wrong from that perspective. And so their thought process again, they switch it, they actually rejecting their religion. Now they're choosing the path of least resistance. They go, ok, I guess the religious law isn't going to work. What about political law? And that's what's gonna get us, what we want.

I watched the show, uh TV, show called The Dropout. I'm not sure if anyone is familiar with it. It's about Elizabeth Holmes who was the CEO of a company called Finos. She's was a brilliant person. She got into Stanford and she was studying chemical engineering and while she was there, she got this brilliant idea that she's going to, she's like, what if we could just test blood with just a single finger prick and we could do multiple tests. And it was a great concept. It was a really, really great idea and, and it was just like, and she had, and she actually drops out of Stanford commits her whole life to it and she's able to get all this funding from all these investors, like millions and millions of dollars.

At one point, her company were up $4 billion because she was gonna have this machine that was like this, you know, inspired by her love of Steve Jobs and Apple Computer. She was like this, this pretty box that you're going to put your, your finger in. You would get one drop of blood and run all these tests and everyone that like heard her was drawn in by how magnetic she was and how much, how smart she was. She was on the cover of like ma many magazines. If you go look her up in Elizabeth Holmes, it's really interesting and basically what had happened was that she started with an idea and she convinced people that it was going to happen. But very quickly she went on very quickly over time. It seemed that actually she wasn't actually going to be able to achieve it. And so rather than living up to it rather than admitting defeat rather than being honest and truthful, but that it wasn't going to work again.

The shows a drama, but, you know, it seems relatively based in some sense of truth. She basically had to keep lying and cheating pretending that her machine was going to do this faking results also so that she could maintain that power. All she could maintain that image of who she was and who she told the world that she was so that people could keep investing in her, keep loving her, keep following her.

And this to me feels a lot like what the chief priests were like. They had a sense of who they were. They worked really hard to get there to get to the top of their community, to the top of their religious community, top of their political community. And all of a sudden this new young hotshot, the young age of 33 he's coming. This young whippersnapper is getting all this attention, getting all this authority, getting all this power and they go, I don't like that. Oh, and he's, he's, he's actually doing miracles. He's healing people don't like that. So then all of a sudden they go, how do we get rid of him? Go the religious route? OK. Then work, go the political route. Let's really put the pressure on this guy Pilate because we know he's, he loves, he loves putting people to death, he'll do it.

And so that to me is just, that helps me fill in the background of what was happening in the community there. And, but now we're gonna look at Jesus, right? I think, I think you can see ladies and gentlemen, the jury. I think you can see that there is a quite a bit of self interest that you could draw out from the scriptures here. But then what about Jesus? And so from Jesus perspective, again, it's hard to know exactly what Jesus was thinking and feeling. But I think if we look at scripture and again, outside of this passage specifically, I think actually, we can see a bit quite a bit from, from the scriptures.

And so in John 19 9 is actually, I think this is actually really, really telling. And so this is Pilate entering the headquarters, Pilate, he entered the headquarters, his headquarters again said to Jesus, where are you from? But Jesus gave him no answer. So p told him you will not speak to me. Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you? And Jesus answered him, you would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore, he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin again, Jesus is kind of going back and forth with Pilate a little bit and he's kind of just done. He just kind of sees the writing on the wall. He he can sense this is, this is not going to turn, this is gonna go how I expected it. And so he's just silent, but what makes him speak? He speaks when Pilate makes it about himself, about his authority.

He's like, don't you understand again, similar to the chief priests. Don't you understand that I have this power? I have this authority. I can end you. I can choose to release you. I have the, the ironies. He actually doesn't because he has actually pinched in terms of there's like a riot beginning to happen outside. He actually doesn't have this authority. And Jesus was wants to correct him of the notion. You do not have authority. The only reason that you have any semin any feeling of authority is because the one from above has brought you to this place.

And I wanna correct, I wanna be, be clear here, there's actually two statements, actually, two people being talked about from above is talking about God. And so there's a lot of linguistic reasons why you can kind of see where that's happening. But basically, unless it, the it is actually the situation, not necessarily the authority, you would only have the situation, you only have this feeling of authority because of what's transpired. All the, all the events that have come to this point that make you feel like you have this power that comes from above. And therefore he who delivered me has the greater sin. He's talking about those who, you know, put him in that place. And there's some debate in terms of the, the commentary. So, but that's another sermon for another day, but I do want to clarify that. But here Jesus is, wants to correct Pilate.

Theologian D A Carson says, even the worst evil cannot escape the outer boundaries of God's sovereignty. Yet God's sovereignty never mitigates the responsibility and guilt of moral agents who operate under divine sovereignty. While their voluntary decisions and their evil rebellion never render God utterly contingent. In other words, Jesus through all of this, from this moment, all the way to the cross. He understands that behind all of this is the hand of God. That's not to say that he was whistling on the way that he was like happy. He's like, oh, this is God's plan like this is happy, this is great because we know Jesus was pained, knowing that this moment was coming.

In Mark 14. I'll read it for us. This is Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. They went to the place called Gethsemane. And he said to the disciples sit here while I pray. He took with him, Peter and James and John and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. And he said to them, my soul is very sorrowful. Even to death. Remain here and watch and going a little while further. He fell on the ground and prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. He said, Abba Father, all things are possible with you. Remove this cup from me yet not I what yet, not what I will but what you will. And he came and found them sleeping.

And he said to Peter Simon. Are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit is, is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak. And again, he went away and prayed, saying the same words and he came and found them sleeping for their eyes were heavy and they did not know what to answer him. And it came to the third time said, are you sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough. The hour has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners rise. Let us be going. See. My betrayer is at hand.

So from jesus' perspective, at this moment of the Garner assembly, he, he's incredibly agonized. He knows his fate is coming. He knows the result of all of these events is coming and he even though he knows it is the hand of God, it is the will of the Father. It is still incredibly difficult for him. It's still incredibly painful for him. And so again, we're, we're trying to do the Ramon effect here. So let's really think about from Jesus' perspective, what is happening here? So imagine with me, if you will, the perspective of Jesus, imagine you're 33 for some of you like, oh, that's a long ways away for some of you like, oh, that would be great. 33 would be really nice. Yeah, that would be me. You just spent the last three years doing with a team of 12 colleagues, a missions team, if you will and you've been going around doing great things, performing miracles, teaching people truth, seeing life change, you would have developed incredible relationships with this team of 12 and yet the whole time as you're making these memories, as you're telling these jokes while you're fishing or cooking or whatever, you know, that one of them is going to betray you.

One of your, the 12 closest people in your whole life in the whole world. They're going to at one point turn their back on you and yet you keep going and they're going to betray you for some money because of their own perspective of what they want you to be eventually and on the path to there, you know that one of your best friends, like one of the inner circle of that 12 as you're getting on the worst night of your life when you are in shackles, you are being brought up on false charges of facing the trial of your life. That one of your best friends is not gonna deny you once, is gonna deny you three times as you're breaking bread, as you're joking as you're performing these miracles, you're gonna see this person. You go, you know what in it? In three years, in two years, in one year, in a couple of days, you are going to turn your back on me. You're gonna have this Bravado thinking you were gonna be so loyal. So, you know, tight and close with me and yet you're going to turn your back not once, not twice, three times.

And it so happens that after that happens, you were brought before your community leaders, the people who would be the equivalent to your CoaH kids teachers when you're 12 years old and you're sitting under their leadership and they're teaching God's word to you. They, you're learning from them. They are going to be the ones that are calling for your crucifixion saying that you are a blasphemer saying that you are against God saying that you hate God. The people who use had so much respect for. They're now at the top of that level and they're gonna be the ones that bring up false charges. They're saying that you're trying to overthrow the government, those CoaH kid kids t shirts, you know, they're not going to mean much at that moment and these charges will be clearly false, but they are insistent that you must die.

And the flogging the beating, the the first beating is not enough. And after this, this the, the the government official who they bring you to so that you can have those charges who repeatedly say this man is innocent. He has done nothing wrong. You guys got it incorrect. You, I wanna release him, you gotta release him. You guys need to calm down. He's not who you say he is. And those coa kids teachers who you sat with for years are the ones that are saying nope, crucify him, crucify him. We have no king. He is not our king in the name of religious purity. They're gonna call for you to be crucified on these false charges.

And instead, when faced with a decision, do we release you who is innocent of sedition of this, this fake charge that you're trying to overthrow the Roman emperor. They instead choose the man who has already incited violence against the Roman government. You as the innocent person are going to be sentenced to death. When the person who has done the worst version of your crime is being released all in the name of religious purity and a convenient but false devotion to the Roman Empire.

And then the second beating comes, it's the type of beating that comes because it's considered merciful to expedite your death on the cross because of the death on the cross is going to be slow and painful as it is. So the much kinder thing, much more kind Roman thing to do is to beat someone to nearly death. So that when they die on the cross, it's a little bit faster. So there's, you know, no, it doesn't take as long so we can, they can get back home to their kids before dinner, so to speak.

And while you hang on the cross, you'll see strangers, community members your leaders mo you laugh at you say if you were really God, wouldn't you save yourself? And as you're on the cusp of dying for the first time in all eternity passed, you feel distant from the Father. You experience his wrath for things that you did not do all for the reason. Because your death is the only thing that can save people. The people who are mocking you in that moment, the people who hate you, the people who cheered for you a few days earlier. And the people who now despise you and for people many years later who will say, yeah, I am a sinner. I recognize my need for a savior and for all the bad and horrible things that you and I have done.

Jesus knew that this was the only way. And as you're going through your life, you're playing this out in your mind. Every miracle you perform every lesson that you teach, every meal that you serve. This is something that has been building up, the knowledge that you have that this moment is coming and yet you persist. And the moment of weakness that you have is that you say Father, please let this cup pass if it is your will, but if it is not your will, then your will be done. Not mine. Is this how you would do it?

I know I wouldn't, I would be the type I need to speak to all of your managers, every single one of you. And I need, I need to go to the higher manager. I go all the way to the CEO because I mm mm I reject this. No, thank you. I will kick and scream and I will fight and say nope, nope, nope, nope, no, no, no, no. You're a liar. No, you are, you, you just change it up. You're talking about religion now. You're talking about politics. No, no, no. Yet, Jesus, through all of it, is quiet. Most commentators agree that this is a reference to Isaiah 53 which talk about the sheep who is slain and I'll read it for us here.

Verse 6 to 8. All we like sheep have gone astray have turned every one to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us. All he was oppressed and he was afflicted yet he opened not his mouth like a lamb that has led to the slaughter like the sheep that is before its shearers is silent. So he opened not his mouth by oppression and judgment. He was taken away. And as for his generation who considered that he was cut off from the land of the living stricken for the transgression of my people. This is our savior, the moment that he recognized and he knew which was through all of it. He says, I'm moving forward so I can save my people so I can bring restoration to my beloved, my created so that we could reconcile so we could fix what was broken in the garden.

And he says, I know that the only way to that is an incredibly painful, incredibly, embarrassing, incredibly horrible death. And he says, yet, not my will, but the will of the father. And so my friends, brothers and sisters in Christ. I ask you, will you choose the position of power and authority? Will you choose the path of convenience to get what you want at the cost of rejecting Jesus? Because we face that every single day, every single moment, we have that opportunity to say yes, Jesus or crucify Jesus.

Will we waste the blood of Christ? Not that we could waste the blood of Christ, but functionally in our lives. Are we ignoring that sacrifice? Are we ignoring what he endured? Are we ignoring every single day, every single moment that he was thinking about his people in our restoration? When we say no, I, I just, I like my position in life. I like that. I like this relationship. I like this status. I like my income bracket. Are we choosing ourselves our position like Pilate? Like the chief priests? Are we compromising a little bit, a little bit here, a little bit there for the sake of con convenience? Or will we really recognize what Jesus has done on the cross for us? That it wasn't just a few hours of agony and pain on a cross. It was the entirety of his whole life. Understanding that the end would come for us so that we could be restored so that we could be renewed.

My friends. I hope we don't waste that opportunity. If you are a believer here today, do that, that soul excavation, do that inventory of your life and say, where am I living this out? Does my life reflect an appreciation of love to the savior who lived and died that way? And by God's strength by the power of the Holy Spirit, we pray God remove the things that are getting in the way and my friends, if you were here, this is the first time you've ever been stepped foot in a church. You do, you, maybe you're coming back to the church for the first time or you feel really, really shaky. I want you to know that this is our savior. This is your savior.

So for the darkness, for the pain and the hurt that you feel the broken, that you've experienced, the broken that you've caused has been paid for in this moment and it requires nothing of you. You recognize your sin, you recognize your savior. And then in the great name of Jesus, and he says, come into the fold, welcome to the family. That is what he offers us today and every single day of our lives.

One of the beautiful things that we could do here every single week is that we get to celebrate the Lord's supper on the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took the bread, broke it and said, this is my body broken for you. And after supper, he took the the, the the the cup and he said, this is my blood shed for you. And every time you drink of the cup and take of the bread, do this in remembrance of me. I think what an opportunity for us today. For those of us who are followers of Jesus to be able to remember the sacrifice of Jesus, maybe for the first time, renewing our our vows, so to speak, to God as we take of the elements. Let's pray.

Father God. I thank you for your word because I know I feel challenged. I know that I am not living this out entirely every single moment of my life. Look, I I'm so thankful that your blood, your sacrifice is so great, is so powerful that when I come and confess my sins, Lord, that I know I'm made new God. I, I thank you that you suffered what you suffered for me, for the sins of all your people. And God, I pray for people that are, are hearing this, that their, their spirit is moving, helping people recommit their faith to you, recommit their lives to you or maybe committing their lives to you for the first time. And so Lord, we pray for all this here as we prepare to worship you in our last set that is in Jesus's name, Amen.

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Associate Pastor Tyler Speck from CoaH Brookline preaches from Philippians 4:4. Discussion points: God does care about us being happy, the Bible uses joy and happiness interchangeably, the happiness of God is given to us by God through our salvation, God is the source of his own happiness and ours.

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Scripture Reader: [Philippians 4:4] Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: Thanks, maybe shortest scripture reading ever. I don't know. Yeah. Well, good morning. Good to be with you all. I haven't met you like Jeremy said, my name is Tyler. Good to be back with you guys. Fletcher, he's a good friend of mine. I've said that a number of times a while ago, he shared his location with me, either trust me enough or just simply forgot. But I want you to know he's in the very middle of Paris right now. Just enjoying his life. But no, really, I do wanna say just it's, it's, it's a great thing that you guys are, are willing and able to give your pastor a sabbatical. I think the statistics that kind of surround the pastoral position are a little bit daunting. It's the highest rate of burnout, the highest rate of any number of kind of negative things and one way to kind of counteract that is to give good amounts of rest.

And it's not just a vacation though. When you're in Paris, it's partially a vacation. But it is just a time of refreshment to get away and just kind of be with the Lord for extended periods of time. And so that's not to say that the pastoral position is somehow elevated in some way, but rather that there are unique demands that kind of come along with it and unique tasks and responsibilities and burdens. And so, I, I do commend you all as uh for being a congregation that says, hey Fletcher, we want you. I think it's every seven years, right to, to get some time, be with your family. take a deep breath so that you can come back, refreshed, replenished in a good way. So I commend you guys for that.

So sort of shortest scripture reading I, I think I've ever heard. But it's what I'm thankful for. I'm thankful for that verse. I'm thankful for the idea behind it. And for a number of reasons. I think one of those being because you likely will not hear in kind of Western protestant biblically conservative churches, the idea that God wants you to be happy, you just likely won't hear it or this idea that God cares about your happiness just as much as He cares about your holiness or your sanctification or the way you love your neighbor or the way you're generous with your time or your money. Just a general observation in my life.

And, and maybe you've seen this too in your life and the people around you people tend to separate faith and happiness, at least kind of our, uh, our, biblically conservative. And I don't say that politically, biblically conservative idea of the Christian faith, we tend to separate these two ideas. Right? Maybe we think about how joy in God intersect, but we don't consider happiness with that, right? We almost separate this idea of joy. And this idea of happiness when we talk about how the perceived differences between those two things actually aren't true.

But sometimes in the Christian circles, if you throw out the idea that God wants you to be happy, be taken as heretical or something that's kind of false or goes against what we see in scripture. And sometimes it might be, sometimes it might be right, the that we're kind of at a time and a place and a culture in a context where the Prosperity Gospel is pretty pervasive, right? This idea that the only thing God wants for you is to be happy, healthy and wealthy and that's entirely God's will for your life. And if you are not one of those things, then you are outside of God's will.

And I think Christians who have attempted to kind of hold to the biblical view here to, to counteract that have gone too far the other direction, right? So instead of teaching people how to be happy in the middle of hard times, we instead say, well, maybe God ultimately doesn't care about your happiness. Maybe there are more important things in your life. Maybe God has a greater goals for you. And this isn't even on the forefront of his mind at all, which I hope by the end of our time together, you'll see that that's just not true and more than that, it's not that God just cares about your happiness. He actually wants you to be happy, but he wants you to be happy for the right reasons and in the right things and in the right way.

And so one verse to kind of kick us off today, that was just read one verse. We're gonna pull apart that a little bit and we're gonna go in some other places as well. And if I start to ramble, just know like Jeremy said, I have two kids at home. So this is a bit of a break for me. So I'm gonna milk it as long as I can. Philippians four rejoice in the Lord. Always again, I will say rejoice. So today we're talking about that idea of happiness, rejoice, happiness, just three ways to be happy, three kind of things we'll talk about. First, your happiness, understanding what it is, what it isn't kind of what the Bible has to say about it. Second, God's happiness, happiness, despite what kind of ideas and, and, and preconceived notions you come in with God actually is the happiest being that's ever existed. And that's a, a picture that, the Bible paints Jesus is the most joy filled radiant person to ever walk the earth God's happiness. And third, we'll end with some practical tips and tricks, tricks, tips and tricks, sneak peek, drink good coffee, eat good food. You'll be a little bit happier. Your happiness, God's happiness, tips and tricks.

First, our happiness, what it is, what it isn't and, and what the Bible has to say about it. So most Christians in this room and I would assume many of us in this room myself included would agree with the idea that happiness is not the ultimate goal in life. It is not the ultimate goal in the Christian life. And it might not be the ultimate goal outside of the Christian life either. I agree with that statement. I, I think it is entirely true but one thing I've heard kind of times and time, time and time again. I've even used this at times in counseling and I think I was wrong to do so. Is this idea that God doesn't promise happiness? He promises joy. Anyone heard that before or something like that? Or maybe if you grew up in youth group, God doesn't want us to be happy. He wants us to be holy anyone. No one. Okay. Just me.

But to throw something at you that I've been thinking about for a couple of years now. I don't actually think that statement is true. I don't think it's actually biblical and the rest of the sermon will hopefully kind of qualify that and show you that to be true from the scriptures. But when you think of a joyful person, what, what's the main ingredient, happiness, right? They are just happy people or look up almost any definition of joy. Three I found right off the bat, a feeling of great happiness, a deep feeling or condition of happiness, a state of happiness.

And most importantly, more importantly than how the internet would define joy. The scripture actually doesn't denote a difference between these two words. There are hundreds of verses, in fact, over 300 verses that use these two words in the same verse and they use them interchangeably. There are a lot of places where those words are actually used and it's the same word that means the same thing, Johnny Ericson Tata, who she's a great author, a great speaker has an amazing story, a great story that actually interweaves great sorrow with great happiness says the scripture uses the terms joy and happiness interchangeably along with words like delight and gladness and blessed. There is no scale of relative spiritual values applied to any of these. In other words, joy is not a heightened happiness and happiness is not a side effect of joy.

If that doesn't do it for you, John Piper, it kind of hits this on the head a little bit more sharply. He says, if you have nice little categories for joy is what Christians have and happiness is what the world has. You can scrap those when you go to the Bible because the Bible is indiscriminate in its uses of the language of happiness and joy. And so it's easy for us. II I think it's easy for us, right? In the realm of religion and rules and world views to lose sight of the fact or not even know that the Bible are, is full of these two things and they're intertwined and they're inseparable and quite frankly, they're the same thing.

And more than this, maybe you caught it when we read the, the, the passage this morning, more than this. It doesn't just paint happiness or joy or joy as, as a goal or a privilege, but actually as a command, right? How did Paul word it, rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice, right? That's a command. That's something that God doesn't just want us to do. He's telling us to do it the same way. He tells us to be patient or to be kind or to be generous or to love. And it's kind of flipped some things on, on its head because for me, at least when I think about my walk with God, my, my Christian faith, my walking in the ways of Jesus. I I don't necessarily consider happiness immediately, right?

When you think about the Christian life and you start describing some indicators of the Christian life. How long would it take you to get to happiness? I think we'd get there. But it wouldn't be the first, but it's all over the Bible again. Philippians four rejoice in the Lord. Always. Psalm 32. Be glad, be happy in the Lord and rejoice. Godly righteous people. Psalm 68 will be glad, will be happy. Psalm one and five. Let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice and be happy. There are so many passages in the Bible that command the people of God to be happy and T Wright, he's a scholar theologian. He says that we owe it to our creator to be as happy as we can.

And there's an important distinction to make too, not just with this command to be happy, but with any command from the Lord. We're never supposed to kind of white knuckle our way through. Now, if that's the only way at a certain point in time that you can kind of get through without sinning or by following the Lord's commands. Yes, do it. But that's not the picture that's being painted of happiness, of sort of being begrudgingly happy. It's actually painted as something that we kind of enter into, but we kind of like walk into and walk along, right.

So, so far some of you in the room are tracking with me I hope. Some of you, just to kind of address a subset of the room, are thinking like Tyler, I, I hear you but this is, this is like really tone deaf. Like if you knew, if you knew what was going on in my life, if you knew how I felt every day when I go into work, if you knew how I felt every day when I come home to an empty house, if you knew, if you knew the relational strains I was experiencing right now, the depression like the thought of being happy seems impossible. Does it not?

But here's the beautiful thing about the happiness we see in the Bible. Two things I would say to that two things I would point you to the happiness we see in scripture is first given to us. It's offered to us, it's achieved for us. And second, it still acknowledges reality. It doesn't just lose sight of everything that's going on in your life and make you forget it. Here's why I made those two things. First is given to us. What I mean is not something we endlessly pursue or grasp for, right?

July 4th just happened however many days ago, Thursday at the statehouse, if you didn't know downtown every year, they read the Declaration of Independence, happiness, right? That's not the kind of thing. The scripture actually paints penis always seems to be a stretched out arm away or there are some of you, you've achieved that thing that, that that formula that you thought would make you happy. That that house, that spouse, that degree, that job, you're happy for a moment. And then, oh, this is surprising, I'm not happy anymore.

But the happiness we see in scripture is offered to us is achieved for us, not in the form of material provision, but rather in the form of salvation and relationship with God. And because of that, you Christian have something you can always be happy about. In other words, if the unchanging immovable, never ending, eternal God is where you find your happiness. What does that make your happiness unchanging and immovable? Never ending and eternal. It's not happiness that's achieved. It's happiness that's given. We talk about this kind of thing with the Gospel too, right? This idea that we are saved through what Jesus has done for us. And it is simply a gift that we receive, but that we act like happiness doesn't come with it. We actually water down the beauty of the gospel.

John 15, which we worked through about a month ago. You guys are going through John as well. Jesus says that he gives us His what joy, right? In other words, God offers us, his happiness delivers provides gives Isaiah 52 which prophetically hundreds of years before Jesus walked this earth, talks about the good news, the gospel that's gonna come to the people of God in time. Do you know what it describes it as the good news of happiness? So this happiness is first given to us.

And second, this happiness in God still acknowledges reality. Happiness in God does not mean the absence of hardships or the absence of sorrow or pain or despair or loss or death. You can be happy about one thing in life and then sad about another at the same time, what God is not asking you to do is just blindly ignore everything that's going on in your life. While you try to fake being happy, happiness is not a fake. It until you make it kind of thing. True, genuine happiness is in God. What he's asking you to do is still look at still acknowledge, still process through, still work through all that's going on in your life while knowing, while still knowing that you are eternally loved. And from that you can feel even if just an ounce from that, you can feel happiness.

Look what Jesus tells his disciples in John 16. He says truly, truly, I say to you you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful. But your sorrow will turn into joy. When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come. But when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish for joy that a human being has been born into the world keen on this last part. So you also have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice and no one will take your joy from you.

Did you catch that? The eternity of the joy, the happiness that can't be taken away from you? And so for those of us in this room, we feel a disconnect with that. Probably right immediately we say happy all the time. How no, but this is what the scripture says. This is what Jesus says himself. No one can take your joy, your happiness, and God away from you. And here's the thing. What made their joy, their happiness, so strong, so eternal, so sturdy, that nothing and no one could take it away from them. It's the risen Christ, that's what Jesus said in that passage is you have sorrow because I'm going to die. But then you rejoice again because I will rise from the dead. I will make a way for you to have a right relationship with God through my life, my death and my resurrection. And because of that, if you put your trust, your faith, your hope, your happiness in that, no one can take that from you.

An encounter with and knowing Jesus as Lord and Savior provided them with the only thing in the entire world that could ever make them eternally happy. So Christian, do you find happiness and joy when you look to Jesus and what he's done? For you. Do you actually believe that a never ending miraculous happiness is offered to you in Jesus or do you find happiness in your things? It's not to say that the good things that you have in this life you can't be happy about. But ultimately, it has to be because it points you back to the God that gave them to you.

Where does Paul tell us to rejoice? Doesn't say bear with me here. He doesn't say rejoice in your things. He doesn't say rejoice in your money, doesn't say rejoice in your education, your family, your job, your degree, your pedigree, your followers. He says rejoice in the Lord. This is the happiness that's offered to us. This is the happiness of a Christian to summarize that first point, our happiness, it's a deep state of happiness rooted in God that's commanded yet freely given. And it still acknowledges reality. It's a happiness that is a deep state of happiness rooted in God that is commanded yet freely given and still acknowledges reality.

As Christians, anytime God commands us to do something or desires us to do something, it's often almost always, I would argue, always comes from who He is. What do I mean by that? Well, God is love, so we love God is just so we seek to do justice. God is generous. So we are generous. God is forgiving. So we have to forgive God is happy. So we are to be happy to be clear. He is a happy God. If we believe that the commands and ethics we see in scripture reflect the very nature and being of God, then it ought to be a 1 to 1 assumption that if we're told to be happy, it must follow suit that God is happy.

I think the, the the visual of a happy, joy filled laughing God is one that probably goes against most of our kind of pictures of the God that exists. Like I bet if I asked the average person in the room picture Jesus, actually, let's do that right now. Just picture Jesus in your head. Our Lord and Savior Jesus. I bet not a lot of us had him with a gigantic smile on his face. Write if I ask you to describe the God of the Bible, using just kind of whatever words come to your mind again, like I said earlier, I bet we get to happiness and joy eventually. But it might not be at the top of the list, right?

But he is a happy God in two ways. God is happy, two things. God is happy in first is in himself and second is with his people. First, himself may seem slightly egotistical to say this, that God makes himself infinitely happy from the triune relationship of love. He experiences father, son, holy spirit, continually eternally making each other happy but and hang with me here. But when you are the origin point of all moral goodness, of all perfection, of all happiness in the universe. It makes complete sense like where else would you go? If God is a perfect being and perfect communion and harmony and love within himself, then it makes sense for him to draw happiness from himself because there's nothing better.

In other words, to give you an illustration that's going to break down immediately if I own a place called Pizza Stop, which is our little local neighborhood joint where I live and I make the best cheesesteak in the city which it does. And it's objectively the best cheesesteak, right? Not one of those like subjective like, oh, you got to try it. It's the best. No, it's, it's, it is OK. And one day I'm really craving an objectively amazing cheesesteak. Not just something different. I want the best cheesesteak I can get. Why would I go anywhere else? I own that place. Yeah. But if I objectively want the best cheesecake cheesesteak, maybe cheese.

You see this kind of thing all the time in the life of Christ too, right? Christ is joyful and happy because of God, the Father God, the Father is joyful and happy because of God, the Son God is happy within himself. He delights in himself. The second way we see him being happy is with his people in Christ. You see, we're actually kind of invited into this triune. This, this this triune, Godhead, this relationship that exists within God, right, through the sacrifice of God, the Son. And therefore God's happiness is all over us and with us and in us, we often forget that God's disposition towards us is happy.

If you are here and you are in Jesus, happy with you happy with me because of what Jesus has done. And if you just look at the life of Jesus, you see a life of happiness. This is the important part too, right? He still had hardship, he suffered more than anyone on this earth ever will. And yet his life was marked with a joy and a happiness that quite frankly doesn't make sense outside of God. There's this little book called The Humor of Christ by Elton Trueblood. And it's exactly what it says. It is, it, it just shows us this idea that, you know, and we can't see it with kind of our modern lens when we read it. But he's actually really funny dude, the insane amount of irony and quite frankly, some jokes that he cracks just go way over our head because, you know, it was 2000 years ago and we don't get that context immediately. He was a funny guy. There's happiness and glee and joy just all over this man's life.

God is a happy God. God is happy in himself and God is happy with us if we are in Jesus. And by the way, we do have to be in Jesus. For God to be happy with us. God's happiness to us is not, we already talked about. It's something that is given to us. It's not something we can achieve or do. It is given to us through the person and life of Jesus. God is a happy God.

So as we close some final thoughts to just move kind of beyond this idea of like a theology of happiness into like, ok, well, now it's all in my head. How do I actually live that out again? Like you told me not to white knuckle it. You told me not to just be grudgingly, be happy. Well, how can I be happy?

Let me tell you a few obvious things to be a happier Christian dwell. Think on ponder, fill your mind with joyful things to put it plainly think happy thoughts Phillipians 48, just down the page from our verse today. Paul says this whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable. If there's any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things, focus on happy things that are true, honorable, just pure lovely, commendable, excellent and worthy of praise. Again, that doesn't mean you just ignore everything else going on in life, but give special attention to these things.

And again, the baseline for all of us who are in Jesus is that we can look at a relationship with God and a God who loves us and see these things. Despite everything else that's going on around us, we always have an ability and we always have a thing in our life that we can look at that will make us happy no matter what. Here's three practical examples of what that looks like. Each example kind of increasing in difficulty. Some of you're gonna hear that first one and be like, shut up, get out of here. But three examples of what that looks like.

First this one happened to me not too long ago. Some of you have like, like me time, right? I kinda have me calories. So like I'm on this road trip not too long ago. I was, I was driving, my wife was flying and we had to bring the dog but didn't want to drive with the kid anyways. And so I'm, I'm on the road. It's a long road trip and I'm like, yeah, Dairy Queen is the move. Yeah. Ok. Dairy Queen is the move cheap ice cream, but it's good. Come on, you know, you love it. It's like it's the move. so I go and I get this blizzard and I honestly don't remember what, what kind of blizzard it was, but it was disgusting. Like, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. Like I turned 30 recently and I don't know if it was getting old. And so the, the super sweet things now sound a little less appealing.

But I just tried it and I was like, this is like gross, but I feel like 10 years ago I would have loved it. Anyways told you I'm gonna ramble so I can stay a little longer. anyways, I, I didn't like it. It was disgusting. if you know me, I'm, I get really excited about some of the small things in life. And so again, this is where you might think I'm silly, but that was a really big disappointment to me. Ok, like that, that was a big deal. Like eating ice cream as I'm driving kind of having some time to myself, like is a very enjoyable thing. and honestly, it kind of dampened my mood a little bit. I was like, this is a joke. I just spent like money on this and this is just disgusting. I'm gonna throw it all out. In that moment I could have dwelt on that and it could have kind of derailed the state of my

mind. I know it's not a big deal, but for a few hours, but instead my, my phone which was just playing music on shuffle. and I'm not one of those pastors that only has Christian music on his phone. but a worship song happened to pop up and, and in that moment I was just like, I, I can just focus on this instead on this little song this little moment. And, I can just have greater communion with God in this moment by doing that instead of just weeping about my ice cream.

Second example, another one from my life, the last one is not from my life. I promise. before I moved up here I was a waiter and, it was a bit of a darker time in my life. I actually enjoyed the job. It wasn't because of the job but, I had a couple of plans and some things right after college that just kind of fell through. And, so I was just kind of doing some things that I wasn't planning on doing at that point in time. and it was just a really hard time in life and, the, the particular restaurant that I was working at, I don't know how to say this politely or politically correct. There was a lot of snobby people that, that kind of ate there. and so they didn't treat the wait staff the best.

And so every night it was just kind of a constant struggle. It really was. and so what I tried to do was instead of just focus on how people were treating me as I wrote Psalm 23 on a little sheet of sheet of paper and put it in my, bill fold and any time I just kind of felt pressure or anyone being rude, I would pull that out, read it. Think about that instead, think about how the Lord our shepherd guides me. And now because of that I shall not want and the places he leads me, the places he allows me to lie down the way he restores my soul.

Or maybe for you or you're a doctor or, or a nurse, maybe, and maybe you have some ungrateful patients, right? What we can do in that moment is step back and focus on how God is happy with us. And that is actually something that if, if, if what Jesus said is true, our joy can't be taken from us. That means that person that's being rude to you cannot, can't touch, it, can't touch the joy and happiness you have.

Lastly, I know some of you in the room you're facing things right now that again, make happiness seem elusive and impossible, whether it's your own health or sickness or the death of a loved one or the expected death of a loved one soon or jobs falling through or any number of things that are going on in your life, you need to cling to two things. You need to cling to what awaits you in the future and you need to cling to the way God is caring for you. Now, when you cling to those things, you can kind of see through the darkness to that the happiness that is offered to you in the middle of the darkness, the future that God has for you.

Revelation 21. He will wipe away every tear, death shall be no more. The former things have passed away and you decline the way that God cares for you. Now, Psalm 56, one of my favorite psalms. This is God's heart for you right now. In this very moment, God has kept count of your tossing. He's put your tears in his bottle. Are they not in his book? This I know that God is for me in God, whose word I praise in the Lord, whose word I praise in God, I trust I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me? Can man take your happiness if you're in Jesus? No, if you have delivered my soul from death, yes, my feet from falling that I may walk before God and the light of life.

In some sense, this verse doesn't seem overly happy on the surface, but sometimes in the greatest amount of suffering in a moment in time where happiness seems impossible. All you need to know is that someone cares. All you need to know is that God counts your tears. And this is the kind of thing that points us towards the happiness that we can have in Jesus no matter what. So to be happy in 2024 dwell, think on joyful and happy things.

One last way to be happy. I'm going to read a few verses. For us. Pay close attention to some of the wording. Psalm. One blessed is the man who walks not in the council of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law, he meditates day and night. Psalm 16, you make known to me the path of life in your presence. There is fullness of joy at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Psalm 37 delight, be happy in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.

There's an inescapable reality in these verses. And as we've been talking about it all morning, you cannot experience the happiness that God has for you without God, you just can't, you can't take being with God, spending time with God meditating with God, silence and solitude with God out of the equation and then still get His happiness. If God is where we get our happiness from, then we have to be with God and he refuses to let you use him that way to get his happiness without him, quite frankly because He loves you too much. And so as you think about being happier, this sounds elementary, but it's, it's so hard for us to do, isn't it?

As you think about being happier, realize it first starts and spending time with God. Some of the happiest people I know you know what they're the most diligent at, you know, what they do the most frequently, quite frankly, they read their Bible, they pray, they do the spiritual disciplines. They have moments of silence where they kind of sit and listen to God. They have moments where they're leaning into community and it's not just hanging out with people, it's hanging out with the people that God has called together to live out their Christian life in the city.

Some of the happiest people I know do these things the most frequently. And I think it's because they do those things that they are the happiest people. Like I've seen it, I'm sure you've seen it too. People have walked through death, the death of loved ones through divorce, through betrayal, through all the pain in the world, but have some sort of indescribable, odd, almost weird happiness, right? Because they know God's with them. It's because they're spending time with Him. It's because they know He cares.

And so if we want to be happier people, if we want to be a people that reflect the happiness of God in such a way that people around us who aren't Christians say, what is that? Why are you that way in, in a good way that we must be with God. You cannot experience the happiness. God has to offer you without God. Let's pray.

God, we are thankful for you, God. Thankful that through your son, you have redeemed us through your son, you have made right things that we have made wrong God, that through your son, we can have a relationship with you and that with that relationship, God, you promise us happiness, you promise us joy. You promise us that no one, nothing can take those things away from us. God, I pray that we spend this week just examining our lives. And if we feel as those circumstances or people take away our joy that you redirect our thoughts, our mind, our heart to the source of eternal joy, to where we should be truly finding this happiness back to you. God help us to be a people that is, is happy and joyful because of you. In your name, Jesus, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from John 18:28-40 about Pontius Pilate questioning Jesus. Discussion points: Without absolute truth we are left aimless and purposeless in life, Jesus’s purpose was to reveal the truth of God to us, we can often trade our eternal truth for momentary pleasure or comfort.

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Scripture Reader: [John 18:28-40] Then they led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the governor's headquarters. It was early morning. They themselves did not enter the governor's headquarters so that they would not be defiled but could eat the Passover. So Pilate went outside to them and said, what accusation do you bring against this man? They answered him, if this man were not doing evil, we would not have delivered him over to you. Pilate said to them, take him yourselves and judge him by your own law. The Jews said to him, it is not lawful for us to put anyone to death. This was to fulfill the word that Jesus had spoken to show by what kind of death he was going to die.

So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him. Are you the king of the Jews? Jesus answered, do you say this of your own accord or did others say it to you about me? Pilate answered, am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me. What have you done? Jesus answered, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting that I might not be delivered over to the Jews, but my kingdom is not from the world. Then Pilate said to him, so you are a king. Jesus answered, you say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose, I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice. Pilate said to him, what is truth?

After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them I find no guilt in him. But you have a custom that I should release one man for you at the Passover. So do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews? They cried out again, not this man, but Barabbas. Now, Barabbas was a robber.

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: Well, since today is my final Sunday before I go on a two month sabbatical and we have two very capable elders. I thought I, I might apart from myself, I thought I might start with something very controversial this morning just to stir everyone up, leave it in a better place than what I found. See if there's anybody here when I get back in a couple of months. I don't know if there's anything more controversial. OK. Are you ready? All right. Does pineapple belong on a pizza? Strong opinions on this one. All right. Who says yes, who says no. Whoa We are divided, a church divided on pineapple. The, the US government recognizes that the US is divided on pineapple.

And so in 2019, they released a infographic. It, it wasn't, I'm not even kidding. Seriously. The cybersecurity and infrastructure agency of the United States of America released an infographic called the War on pineapple. And in the infographic, they illustrate how a foreign influencer might try to manipulate the US people about a controversial topic. And so they give us many of the different ways in which foreign influence might look. And they use the example of pineapple belonging on a pizza.

So for example, foreign influencers, they target divisive issues. This is all in the infographic, you can find this infographic, it's a one page document, it's still online. Ok. They're con they are constantly on the lookout for opportunities to inflame hot button issues in the United States. They don't do this to win arguments. They want to see us divided. For example, this is something that they might do, they might write an article or put something on social media that says America opinion is split. Does pineapple belong on a pizza or maybe somehow they, they get an a list celebrity, a deep fake or something? An A list celebrity to announce their dislike of pineapples on pizza, prompting a new survey on buzzfeed, no matter how you slice it. Americans disagree on the fruit topping. Then these foreign actors amplify and distort the conversation.

Foreign influencers try to pollute these, those debates with bad information and make our positions more extreme by picking fights or trolling people online. You guys have never seen any of this, have you? They might say something like being anti pineapple is anti American or millennials are ruining pizza. Keep your pineapple off my pizza. What's wrong with plain old cheese guys? This is a real infographic released by the United States of America. Then they know that they've hit the jackpot when these controversial things that they've been trying to stoke up for months or years finally hit the mainstream. And all of a sudden you, they know they've won when Joe Rogan himself has a pineapple expert on his podcast to discuss the pros and cons of the topping.

I share this with you today. Not because I want to talk to you about foreign influence on our elections. Although that is a major issue and I could talk about it. Probably not right here. I, I say it not to talk about the foreign influence on our elections, but to talk to you about truth. What is truth? I think that that's a question for us and it's a more important question than ever. It's the, the question for us today.

Gary Kasparov, I hope I said that right. Kasparov. Sorry, my, my Russian not great for former world champion. Che Gary chess is what he's known as world chess champion and Russian democracy advocate. He's living in Croatia, Cro Croatia. Currently, he once said the point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It's to exhaust your critical thinking to annihilate truth. The point of foreign manipulation isn't just to influence you. It's to get you to stop caring or to just be so angry at everything that you don't know what to do. It is not to manipulate your opinion as much as it is to make you think that truth is impossible and to give up.

And friends, this wasn't invented by the Russians. It was invented by Satan himself who has been doing this to truth since the Garden of Eden. Just planting little lies along the way to convince you that it's not even worth trying to figure out what the truth is to annihilate the idea of truth, to exhaust your critical thinking. I once knew someone who was absolutely paralyzed by that idea of religion. And I talked to this person often enough and this person, they wanted to believe in God. But when it came to selecting which God, it became completely overwhelming for this person, because they felt as though to be truly objective in the matter, they have to examine every single truth claim about who God is. They need to examine every single religion and friends. I hate to break it to you. But there's a lot of them, no one can live long enough to examine every single religion if, even if you dedicate your entire life to such causes.

And so at the end of the day, this person just became completely paralyzed and they would say I want to believe in God, but it is just too difficult to select which one do you want to play some video games? And that is the way that Satan works by overwhelming us with the options or the ideas of what could be true, we simply give up and we realize what we could do is just play some video games or watch some Netflix.

We live in a postmodern world where genuinely we believe what's true for. You might not be true for me. You have your facts. I have my alternative facts and we've lost this idea of truth and friends when we lose the idea of truth though. That has a disastrous results because when we lose the idea of objective truth for all people at all times, we lose the very thing that makes us tick as humans, we lose purpose. What is the meaning of life? If we cannot know the truth? What is the meaning of all of this? We are left aimless, left to find our own meaning in life, to create our own identity, to figure out who we are by ourselves.

We need truth. We need truth spoken to us from an authoritative figure, we need someone to tell us what is true, not to be left to ourselves to figure out what is truth for ourselves. People need purpose and meaning, they need truth. And today we're continuing our series in the book of John and we get faced with this exact question and we're now at the tail end of John, there's just a few weeks left. I wasn't able to schedule it all to get it all in before I left on sabbatical. But I'm leaving the crucifixion and resurrection, the easy stuff for the guys that come after me.

So with, with today's passage, we see Jesus delivered to Pontius Pilate to stand trial and we see Pontius Pilate at the end instead of examining the, the facts, he just throws up his hands and says, what is truth and walks away, he cannot be bothered, he cannot be inconvenienced, he just doesn't want to deal with it and he walks away. Let's drive through the, the passage. We're just going to walk through this if you have your Bibles, you're welcome to follow along with me.

Verse 28. Let's look at the story in detail. Then they led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the governor's headquarters. It was early morning. They themselves did not enter the governor's headquarters so that they would not be defiled but could eat the passover. Ok. So the religious leaders would not go into the governor's headquarters. And the reason why they would not go into the governor's headquarters is because they were afraid that they might touch something or do something that would cause them to be defiled. And right now the, the feast of unleavened bread is going on. So Jesus and his disciples, they may have celebrated Passover a couple nights ago or just last night in this passage. But the feast of unleavened bread goes on for a whole week. So sometimes it's colloquially called Passover, even though they technically already had Passover the previous night, they're still celebrating that type of feast. It's the feast of unleavened bread.

And so they're afraid that they'll be defiled. So they actually, it's kind of funny, this whole thing goes on. There's like kind of a front stage and a backstage where Pilates walking out, he's talking to the religious leaders and then he walks back and he talks to Jesus and then he walks back and talks to the religious leaders and he's really going in between them and it's hilarious. You might not pick up on this, but it's really funny that the religious leaders will not enter his headquarters because they're afraid of being defiled while they are manipulating him to murder someone. This is like going to your barista and ordering fair trade coffee, which is a good thing. I'm glad that you drink fair trade coffee and then taking it and throwing it in your barista's face because they gave you skim milk instead of oat milk. All right. It just doesn't make sense. They're trying to remain moral while manipulating a case, a trial to murder someone doesn't make sense.

So Pilate went outside to them and said, what accusation do you bring against this man? We're introduced to the character of Pilate. In this passage, we know a good bit about Pilate from the Bible and from extra biblical materials as well. The historian Josephus writes about Pilate Pilate was probably put into place around 29 ad as the governor of this area as the Roman official over the area. They, they did have another king in the area. King Herod who was kind of the king over the Jewish Israel people, but he was really just kind of a puppet king. He, he was there as a figurehead, not as anyone with real rule in this area. Caesar was king and Pontius Pilate is his leader in the area.

So he's kind of the, he's kind of the representative of the rule of Rome for all of this region and Pilate and this, you know, every time I read this passage, I look at Pilate and I'm like, he seems like an all right dude. I don't know, he doesn't seem too bad. You look at, you look at Pilate and he kind of looks like the good guy. Does he not? But that's only because he's compared to these bloodthirsty religious leaders. Pilate, we know from extra biblical materials is himself someone who loves the death penalty. He loves it. He found a lot of joy in it. In fact, he was so brutal with the death penalty that, that's actually why he lost his job eventually. Just a few short years after this. By putting too many people to death. He's not a good guy.

He's actually a very egotistical guy from what we can tell he's really about Pilate. Pilate loves Pilate. OK. And so when you read this, you gotta read it within, within the lens of this is not a man trying to get to the heart of the truth. This is a man who's trying to embarrass the religious leaders. He does not care about their religion. He is a egotistical man. And so verse 30 they answered him. Well, he might even be just kind of miffed that they're asking the question whatsoever because if you remember, Roman officials escorted the Jewish leaders to arrest Jesus. So we would assume that these religious leaders have already made their case before Pilate. So that Pilate would send some Roman officials, some Roman soldiers to go and and arrest Jesus.

But now he's wanting them to try Jesus in front of him once again. OK. So it wasn't enough. He's like what accusations do you make? And the religious leaders they respond with if this man were not doing evil. We wouldn't have delivered him to you. What a prosecution, he wouldn't be arrested if he wasn't guilty. Pilate said to them, well, take them yourselves and judge them by your own law. But the Jews said to him and when it says the Jews, it's talking about the Jewish leaders. The Jews said to him it's not lawful for us to put anyone to death. The Jews are treating Pilate like HR right. They're like, we can't fire them but you can't. So they're gonna, I'm gonna report them and you gotta do the dirty work. OK? There but there but Pilate's not putting up with it. He wants them to lay out their whole case.

Verse 32 this was to fulfill the word that Jesus had spoken to show by what kind of death he was going to die. Now, what that means is earlier in John. Jesus actually predicted that he would die by crucifixion. You see if the Jews were to put Jesus to death, they would have done so by stoning, they would have stoned Jesus which is placing large rocks on top of Jesus slowly and systematically until his body is crushed. Instead, Jesus predicts in John chapter 12 and I, when I'm lifted up from the earth will draw all people to myself. And then John says, he said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die. And so Jesus predicted that he would not be stoned, but that he would be crucified and who crucified people in this region. But Rome and so the Jewish leaders could not be the ones that killed Jesus. Jesus predicted that he would be dying by crucifixion.

So verse 33 Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him, are you the king of the Jews? Now, this question is recorded in all four gospels. And so whenever a question or something is recorded in all four gospels, we usually pay attention to it because it's got some importance to it. They, they rarely all record the same thing. And Pilate asked this question and we would assume that the charge against Jesus therefore would be that he is claiming to be the king of the Jews. Now, what is wrong with being the king of the Jews? Why would he be persecuted or, or prosecuted because he's the king of the Jews.

Well, it's because in this day, only Caesar is king or they can have their puppet kings, the ones that they have under their thumb and under their control. And so if Jesus is indeed claiming to be king of the Jews, maybe he poses a threat to Roman rule because maybe he will lead an insurrection against Rome and lead the, the nation of Israel away from Roman rule, which is exactly what his followers wanted him to do. It's exactly what Peter and Paul and not Paul, but Peter and John and James and all of his apostles, his disciples wanted him to do that. They wanted him to lead a revolt against Rome and to be the king of the Jews in the same way that David was the king. But that's not what Jesus was here for.

So, Pilate is investigating is this Jesus a threat to Roman rule. That's what he wants to know. And Jesus answered him and Jesus says in classic Jesus, Jesus never answers a question straight up. He always answers it with a question, right? He says, do you say this of your own accord or did others say it to you about me? The prisoner becomes the interrogator. And Jesus looks at Pilate and you can almost hear the invitation in, in jesus' words. He he s do you want to know who I am Pilate or are you just repeating what you've heard? Because if you want to know who I am, I'll tell you who I am. But if you're just repeating and trying to get this thing over with, then we're not going to get anywhere. But if you want to know I'll show you who I am.

And so Pilate answered him, am I a Jew? Why do I care? Your own nation and your chief priests have delivered you over to me? What have you done? He just wants to get down to it. What have you done? And Jesus answered my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not of this world. And Jesus responds in this way because he wants to communicate very clearly to Pilate. I am a king, but I'm not a threat to Roman rule. I'm not that kind of king. I'm not here to lead a revolt against you, Pilate. I'm a different kind of king, not of this world but of the heavenly world.

In verse 37 Pilate said to him. So you are a king. And Jesus said, you say that I'm a king for this purpose. I was born and for this purpose, I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice. And so Jesus is basically saying king is your word. That's not my word, but that's your word. But here's the reason why I was born. Here's the purpose for my existence. How many of us can say that? So clearly, Jesus has a very clear idea of why he exists. And he says, I came to bear witness to the truth. I just want to bear witness to the truth.

Why did Jesus live friends? If you ask many people, why did Jesus live? Their response would be a wide assortment of different things. But many people here today would say something like to die for my sins. May I be as bold to say that that's not the sole reason why Jesus left why he was born? But Jesus was born to bear witness to the truth, to reveal the truth about who God is. That God is the creator of the universe that he has sent his one and only son to bear witness to this truth that God loves us and he cares for us and he wants to have a relationship with us.

So yes, Jesus did die for our sins, but that's not the whole story. Jesus came to tell us there is a truth and in fact, he is the truth so that we might know God and understand who he is to understand the mysteries of the world. Verse 38 Pilate said to him, what is truth? And the assumption since Jesus doesn't give a response here is that Pilate poses the question and then he walks away. That is not a heartfelt question from a religious, earnest religious seeker. Instead, this is a, a rhetorical question, a defiant denial that such a thing even exists. What is truth, throwing up his arms, his hands, walking away, he's standing face to face with truth incarnate.

And Pilate cannot be bothered to even consider the fact that there is a truth. If Pilate were to believe the claims that Jesus was making, that would be really inconvenient. You see, Pilate is not really willing to be inconvenient. If he was to be, to believe that Jesus is who he actually says he is. What would that mean for Pilate? Well, it would mean that he has a big problem with these religious leaders over on the other side of his house that he might have an angry mob coming after him. That actually the threat to Roman rule is not standing inside but outside.

You see, if he were to believe who Jesus is, that would probably cost him his job and maybe even his life, they're not gonna be happy with him, but at least he would know the truth. This is very much a red pill, blue pill situation. Ok? And Pilate very much remains plugged into the matrix and ignores the truth. And sometimes when we're talking to friends about our faith or when we're considering faith ourselves, it is simply more convenient to ignore the truth. Is it not? And there's this thing called cognitive dissonance where it's like, I'll believe what I want to believe. Basically.

I studied psychology in college and there was this study that sticks with me where they put people in a room and they said in 10 minutes, you're going to have to eat a worm like that's what it is to it. And then they came back 10 minutes later. And over 50% of the people had decided that eating a worm would be an enjoyable experience. And that's because they had told themselves, I know I'm going to have to do this. So I'm going to change my mind about how I feel about this. And we do that all the time. We do that all the time. There's this cognitive dissonance that says I will believe what's true. Only when it's inconvenient, I will be what's true to me is what's least convenient is what's most convenient to me. That's what's true to me.

And so Pilate, he cannot be bothered and he doesn't. But friends think about more than that what it actually cost Pilate. So it would cost Pilate a lot if he believed Jesus, think about what it cost Pilate to not believe Jesus. So this is not what he was considering. It's not what he knew, but we know from the extra biblical materials that Pilate did not remain in power much longer. In fact, Pilate is shipped out very soon. He loses his position and he actually dies not long after that. And so Pilate traded in eternal truth for just a few more years of power and how many of us are willing to trade our eternal truths for a few moments of comfort. A few moments of pleasure, a few moments of material possession, a few moments of tickling the dopamine in our brain, whatever it might be, many of us are willing to do the same trading our eternal truths for God for just a few moments of temporary satisfaction.

And so as we wrap up things here today, I just want to leave you with two basic ideas, two basic ideas. First, there is truth. This is what we as Christians are here to declare that there is truth de despite what our postmodern society teaches us, there is truth. Walter Truitt Anderson is an observer of postmodern society. And he, he writes this about what postmodern does for truth. He says, postmodern challenges the view that truth is one and undecided that the same for all men, that it's the same for all men everywhere at all times.

The newer view regards any truth is socially constructed, contingent, inseparable from the peculiar needs and preferences of certain people in a certain time and place. This notion has many implications. It leaves no value, custom belief or eternal verity, totally untouched. And as Christians, we reject this and we say there is a such thing as truth, we can know what is right, what is wrong, we can know objectively that there is truth.

On his sermon on the passage, John Piper says this by and large people don't think about absolute truth anymore. They're not looking for the truth that can give meaning and purpose to all of life and history. And I agree with everything that Dr Piper has to say here except for one word and that word is any more. It reminds me of that old Mitch Hedberg joke when he said I used to do drugs. I still do but I used to too. People don't believe in truth anymore. They didn't used to either but they don't anymore because you go back here and what's Pontius Pilate doing? Throwing up his hands. What is truth and walking away?

How many of our friends think about religion like this? How many of us think about the truths of Christianity like this? What is truth? The second thing I want you to see first, there is a truth. Second, I want you to see what is the truth that Jesus is proclaiming. Let's look at it. Well, what is the truth that He's all about? He's saying this, this is what he's come to give testimony to. He's saying there is a God, there is a creator of the universe and this creator of the universe. He is a personal God. He is a king, but yet he is a person and he created humanity to have relationship with himself that he desires to have relationship with us. But because of our sin and rebellion, that relationship has been broken.

But God sent his very own son, Jesus Christ to bear the penalty for our son to die, the death that we deserve to die. And that this is something that actually happened in history that the person of Jesus Christ was a real person who really walked the earth, who really was the son of God who lived a perfect sinless life and who died, the death that we deserve, taken the cosmic penalty for sin so that we might have relationship with God. Jesus was resurrected from the dead. He appeared to over 500 witnesses and ascended into heaven where he is currently reigning and ruling with God the Father.

And if you're not a Christian here today and you came this morning, we're so glad to have you this morning. I, I just want you to appreciate this for just a moment. I'm telling you something that is true. I'm not just here to give you platitudes or give you something to make you feel better about yourself or just to, to like have an enjoyable Sunday. It, I know it's confrontational in some ways because I'm saying that this is true. Other things are not true that there are lies in the world and that you might be believing one of those. But isn't it refreshing for someone to tell you this is the truth and what could be more soul satisfying than the truth, the truth incarnate, Jesus Christ. He's revealed himself. If God really is real, he really is. And he wants to really know you. And that's what Jesus is about.

Today, we, we get to celebrate baptisms. We get to hear three stories of people who found this truth who have owned this truth for themselves and friends. This is far too serious of an issue for you to s simply throw up your hands and say, what is truth. This is too significant for anyone to give up, give up so easily. There is a God, everyone on this earth is accountable to this God and every and one day, every person will stand in judgment before Him like Jesus standing in trial. Here there is a God who you will stand in front of. And for those of us who are united with Christ, the condemnation that's presented by Pilate is also our condemnation. We are crucified with Christ. What's said in this courtroom is our courtroom. When we get to that moment with God, we will point back and be like you remember Pontius, Pilate and Jesus being condemned, that was mine. He took my book, that was me. I'm united with him.

And so today, we have the choice, accept the truth of Jesus or deny him like Pilate verse 38. After he said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them I find no guilt in him. But you have a custom that I should release one man for you at the Passover. So do you want me to release the king of the Jews? And they cried out again, not this man but Barabbas. Now, Barabbas was a robber. Despite the memes that your uncle may have shared on Facebook. Jesus was not convicted falsely. He was found innocent but sentenced to death anyways. Pilate, afraid of the personal costs, he would not allow justice. Instead, he decided to play a game. And that game is let the people decide. And so we went out and the people chose instead of the innocent, peaceful king of the Jews quote unquote, they chose the violent robber insurrectionist, Barabbas and as the people cried, release to us, Barabbas, an innocent man was condemned and a guilty man was let off the hook.

And today we also are in the place of Barabas as the guilty people who are being let off the hook as an innocent man is condemned on our behalf. And as we conclude, let me just say that some of you may have known this truth about Jesus for some time, but it's been far too inconvenient to reorder your life. Jesus demands that you push through the inconvenience that you, that you don't wait until it's too late, but you reorder your life and you trust him to be better than what you have because he is and for others, we must bear witness to the truth.

We have to be people of the truth. We have to be used by him. We we bear witness to the same truth that Jesus bore witness to. We have to be people who reflect Jesus in word and indeed to live and share the same truth that he died for. We are people of the truth. And if we want people to know the truth, how are they going to hear it if we are not his representatives?

On the night that he was betrayed, Jesus took a loaf of bread and he broke it and he said, this is my body broken for you, do this in remembrance of me and he took a cup and he said, this is my blood shed for you. And each week we participate in the sacred meals. We're reminded that jesus' body was broken for us, that his blood was shed for us. And so we, we participate in the sacred meal. If you are a believer here this morning, if you're someone who's calling on Christ as your savior, we would encourage you and invite you to come. I invite you to enjoy this meal and be reminded of what Christ has done for you as people who follow after Christ. So would we stand as we prepare our hearts to sing and to receive this meal? Pray with me.

Father as we come to your table, we pray that you would be delighted by our response to you. Would you help us to take this meal in remembrance of you, God? Thank you for sending your son to die, for us to live for us and to unite us with you and God, we rejoice in the resurrection that we've experienced with him. And so as we take this meal, would you help us to enjoy your presence and your power. In Christ's name we pray, amen.

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Ministry Associate Calvin Chu preaches from Romans 1:19-23. Discussion points: God intentionally put his fingerprint everywhere in creation so that we could know him, God wants to be known by us, we are often too willing to trade the glory of God for the lesser pleasures of this world.

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Preacher: Hello, everybody. It's good seeing you all. Let actually I'm, I'm just gonna read it kind of as I walk through it then. Well, that might be simpler. So I, I want us to go back, way back, back in time to a simpler time. It was a time when the ice bucket challenge had just reached its peak. You remember that ice bucket challenge in about a year from now, Leonardo Dicaprio will have finally won his first Oscar three months after that, a gorilla named Harambe will have been killed in the Cincinnati Zoo. This and this is a way long time before fidget spinners. You guys remember fidget spinners, you'd see like a kid and you just, you see them and like I worked with youth back in the day and so I would just see them all the time. So this was, this was before then when fidgets spinners were sort of like the social currency in the schoolyard the year 2015.

And just like all these memories and memes that I've just listed. We're about to experience an international viral moment. My friends, I present to you I remind you of the dress. The month is February a week before her daughter's wedding. Cecilia Bleasdale sends a picture of a dress, that she's going to be wearing to that wedding to her daughter. And after disagreeing on the perceived color of said dress, she posted on her Facebook, right? She asked her friends settle this debate between me and my mom. What color is this dress? And this debate spreads all over the small island community of Colin say where the bride and the majority of our friends are located. It's really, really small, you know, it's like you would post on social media. Hey, friends, close friends. What do you think about this? Right?

And so, on the day of the wedding, Kaitlyn McNeil, which is one of the bride's friends and a member of the band who played at the wedding. She posted a photo of the dress on her Tumblr. Remember where Tumblr was really a big thing and asking the people a little bit of a wider community to resolve the debate between her and her friends. And still, there's no conclusive result. And so, at this point, so she sends a message to, to Buzzfeed. So like, hey buzzfeed, like, what do you guys think? Do you, can you resolve this for us? What color is this dress? And so at this point, her Tumblr had gotten about 5000 notes, like almost like likes basically, and basically in the notes, in the comments, people are screaming about like how they're right and the other side is wrong, right? I don't if you guys remember this, the dress was white and gold or black and blue, right? That was kind of the debate and, and people all over the world seem to be disagreeing about this, at least of the world that had seen this Tumblr account.

So then Kate Holderness who was a blogger at buzzfeed, she actually asked her coworkers about the picture and, and, and it's about 5050 between her coworkers. Half of them thinks it's white and gold. The other half thinks it's black and blue. So she posted on Buzzfeed and it's like a, it's like a little thing. She was like, whatever because if you know buzzfeed, they're like constantly putting content out anything that's viral from any social media, they're just putting it out there and it's sort of like spray and pray. Hopefully something goes viral. Someone will click it, someone will like it, someone will go to the page and, and, and that, that's what they're trying to do. So she puts it out on buzzfeed and basically now link retweets, linking the photo go into the hundreds of thousands instantly. And ultimately, within the 1st 24 hours, there were 4.4 million tweets about this whole, remember when Twitter was Twitter and not X, that's again, a different time. And so newspapers wrote about it. Academic studies were conducted about it.

Why? Because it blew our minds that all these people were looking at the same exact thing yet coming to completely different conclusions. And if this small insignificant picture of a bride's mom's dress can send the world ablaze and into this huge debate, my friends. Is it surprising that the people from all walks of life can look at the world, look at all of creation and do the same exact thing. Is it not expected that we look at the world and the work of God's hands and see totally different things.

Today's passage is going to discuss exactly this concept where in Romans 1:19-23 where Paul is writing to the Christians in Rome. And he's talking about this divide amongst humans, those who see God in creation and those who do not. So I'm gonna read it for us and then we'll pray Romans 119 to 23. It says this for what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made. So they are without excuse for, although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became feudal in their thinking. And their foolish hearts were darkened, claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds and animals and creeping things.

Let's pray. Father God, I know one of the beautiful things about being in New England is we get to experience all the seasons. We get to see so much change from, from the, the hot days, or rainy days of the summer all the way to the cold, dreary days of the winter and everything else in between. And God. The thing that's amazing about that is if we can see how diverse and how amazing your world is. But God, we know that there are some who yes, they see it, they see you. But there are those who do not. And God, I pray that as we reflect on this reality, that our perception of what you have done in creation will change how we see ourselves. And most importantly change how we see you and your love for us and God. So I pray that your Holy Spirit would move in us as we look at your word further today and pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.

OK. So, Paul is incredibly clear here in verses 19 and 20 that the existence of God can be clearly seen when you look at creation. Paul is essentially writing that when you look out in the world, when you step out here and you look, it's a dreary day. It's rainy, and, and it's, it's, everything is soaking wet and it's, it's, ah, but when you look out at creation, even at its quote unquote worst, you can still see that God is out there. And, so part of every human heart and mind is stitched with the capacity and maybe even the inclination to recognize the existence of God again, verses the 19 twenties for what can be known about God as plain to them because God has shown it to them for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. So theologians call this general revelation revealing to all people at all times and all places that God exists.

And I think most people can sense this feeling like if you've ever been to the Grand Canyon, I've never been to the Grand Canyon. I would love to go. I hear great things, you know, just five star ratings a lot. So definitely wanna go check that out. When you go and you see it and you're like, wow, this is like when you're at the, at the top of it again. So I've been told at the top of it and you look and you go, whoa, this is crazy or Aurora borealis again. I I missed it like we could see it a few, like, like a month or so ago and I missed it on the one day that we could see it. I saw pictures on Facebook and I was like, whoa, I really missed it. But I, when I hear when you see the northern lights, people just are stuck in awe and being in nature that has that much magnificence. It's, it just sort of stops us. Right.

Maybe you've never been there before. Maybe you never felt this. But, maybe you have an experience as you're like going at the top of a hike. It doesn't have to be like mount Everest level hike or climb. But you're at the top of this little dinky hiking hill and you, you're out there and you all of a sudden you go and you say, oh, it's Boston. Whoa. Like you could see all the, look at all the trees. Like there's something about when we're in nature, we just sort of experience this difference in ourselves. You know, maybe it's when we are on the beach and you're, maybe you're not at the beach because they don't want to go to the beach. Maybe you're just going for a walk after you got a lobster, roll on the north shore or something. And there's something about seeing the ocean waves crashing against the rocks and you go, wow, there's so much more to the world than I realize.

And I feel like there's something about the vastness of space or the depths of the ocean that makes us reflect. We think about the decisions that we've made in life. We think about the future we project and we wonder about ourselves, we wonder about our family. We wonder about where we're going. We're wondering what, what, what's going to happen and we have children. We go, well, what's life going to be like for them?

And what Paul tells us is that that's not by accident. God wants us to reflect on him when we look out to the world that he has made. God deliberately leaves his fingerprints and left his fingerprints all over all of creation so that we could know Him right there. There is majesty, there is magnificence out there because that says, wow, that's bigger than anything I could ever do. There must be something more or more more specifically, there must be someone more namely God.

Here, here's an illustration for you guys. Have you ever put a tempered glass screen protector on your phone before I have one? I like them. I will, I love and I hate them at the same time. I love them because I'm, it supposedly protects my phone from like damage. Like if I drop it or whatever, it protects it. But the reason I don't love it is because almost without fail, I will get like a fingerprint on it. You know what I'm saying? Like, so, so if you've never put one on, but it's basically like a sticker that's made of glass in the adhesive side. And, and when you get AAA timber glass protector, it's, they're very particular. It's like, make sure you get the wet wipe and you clean your screen first and then once that's done, you can take the dry wipe and you wipe it away and then when you're done with that, you take the, the there's these little dust stickers. So you make sure you go over your whole screen and you get all the dust off and you make sure you're very careful because once it's on there, it's on there and be whatever imperfections are on, there will be there.

And so for me, just for whatever reason, I'm not great at it. And, and I've had many screen protectors where I've put my fingerprint on it and then I, I not, not realizing I'd done, I put it on and I go and so when I take it out and I see my fingerprint, I go. And so every single time I look at my phone, there's clear evidence of my failure and I can't even deny. It's me because it's literally my fingerprint. It's literally me like police could come like, yeah, no, you, you're, you're responsible, you're guilty. You are the perpetrator here. And I just like, oh, it's, it's like, it's kind of like, like literally there's like spec on my phone, it's not a fingerprint this time. But there's spec and I go, oh jeez. And it's clearly me, it's clearly my failure.

But imagine if I wanted to be forever memorialized on the backside of my screen protector, I would be putting my fingerprints all over that screen protector and I'd put it in a wave, it proudly. Like Calvin, your, your phone is so blurry. Like what's happening. Yeah, those are my fingerprints because I did that. And so I think if, if, if we want, if I wanted everyone who looked at my phone to think that I'm the one who put the screen protector on and then that's what I would do.

And that's what God wants because God's fingerprint all over Christian is not a mistake. It's on purpose, it's deliberate. He does it specifically so that you can know I did that. And so when you look at the Grand Canyon, when you look at the northern lights, when you climb to the top of the mountain, and you see God's majesty, he wants you to feel that way. He says yes, exactly. I want you to see that. I did that and I did that so that you could know me so that your heart and your mind would be drawn to the creator as you look at creation.

And this is exactly what God does in creation. He leaves his fingerprints all over it, not just so that we can know that there is a creator or know Him as creator, but know that He wants us to know Him personally verse 1920 again for what can be known. But God is playing to them because God has shown it to them for his invisible attributes to name his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made. God wants you to know Him, friends, the creator of the cosmos left calling cards all over creation. So you could see that He is there. It's not an accident, it's on purpose.

But in a room of this, many people or people may be watching this online at some point in the future, we might be thinking that's, that's ok. Like I, I don't really believe in God or believe God is out there and I don't know exactly where you are and the questions and doubts that you may have. But I want you to think for a minute that if God is indeed real, I want you to understand this, that He cares enough about you to leave signs to you that He is real and he is there and he wants you to know Him. His fingerprints are left on this world so that we can see Him, that we might all be able to think about Him and think about us going to Him for all those who follow him. He wants us to reflect on the reality that He is good enough to show us that he's real. He loves us enough to, to scatter breadcrumbs so that we could follow it to him. And for that grand reunion.

And so for some of us that's like enough because you're like, maybe you're like struggling in your faith and you're just like, I don't really know if God is there. I don't really know if God loves me. And for some of you, you know, that's it. You can just shut your brain off and just reflect on that reality that God loves you enough that he used creation. He used the majesty that we see in nature to draw us to him. And that's just, that's where we need to go. That that's it more. If you don't believe in Him, you get invited by a friend here today or you're watching online because you, you know, you, you clicked on something and this is a suggested video or something like that. If you don't know Him, then that might be all you need is just to reflect on that. God loves us enough and God is knowable. He loves us enough to make himself knowable and God wants to be known by us. And so, yeah, if that's all you need to mull over, that's great.

But some of you are probably thinking that's, that's good. Ok. Yeah, like I know, I, I know that God is real. I believe in Him. I believe in Jesus. Prayed, the prayer baptized, served before and, and, but do you think if that's true that God wants to be known by us, then how come everyone doesn't know Him? If he leaves fingerprints and bread crumbs and glimpses of himself in all of creation? How come every single person in the world doesn't believe Him? Why don't all people believe in the existence of God?

Actually, the passage talks about this in the verses 21 and 22 would say for although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to him, but they became feudal in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened, claiming to be wise, they became fools again. Paul reminds us further that creation shows that there is a God that there was something built into all of us to see the fingerprints of God all over creation.

Verse 21 tells us that the natural thing to do would be to honor or to praise God or to give thanks to him. And that's what we're supposed to do when we look at creation. But instead of doing that, we become feudal in the, in our thinking. And a better translation is for that verb is directed our thoughts towards worthless or empty or purposeless things. What does this tell us? I love this verb here because it tells us that the choice is between recognizing God and idolatry.

But idolatry doesn't always equate worshiping another God adultery is to give glory and significance and wait to something that doesn't deserve it. It can be using a big chunk of your time to finding the best deal online. It can be putting a lot of our self worth and how we look, it can be spending a large amount of our money on our car or a computer. But to glorify God is to give him due honor, which means to attribute Him proper value in our lives.

So if we're spending the majority of our lives, not on Him, not centered on Him, not focused on Him, whatever we are pursuing more than Him is worthless and thus unworthy of us giving that value to. So we were created to see the fingerprints of God in creation and recognize and honor and glorify the creator. But instead we pursue lesser worthless things with the full weight of ourselves. And the result is that our hearts become darkened and the word heart here. And many of the ancient thinkers, they see it as the organ of spiritual or moral perception in the center of their motivation, the spiritual life's driving force, essentially. What pause is that in pursuing anything above God, pursuing anything other than God with the full weight of ourselves, our heart or spiritual driving force, which is programmed to see and pursue God becomes transformed and deformed, losing that ability. And as a result, we lose the ability to be motivated towards and motivated by him.

I remember when I was in seminary, one of my roommates was engaged to be married that summer of our, my first year there and one of my hallmates, one of our good friends of ours who was talking to that roommate, about wedding preparation. and he said to him, he's like, oh, buddy, you got to get your honeymoon abs, I never heard this phrase before. I, maybe she was like, what are honeymoon abs? And that's literally what my friends like, what are honeymoon abs? He's like, you know, honeymoon abs and he verbatim. He goes, you know, honeymoon abs went. But as in like a basically six pack abs or I guess if you're very ambitious eight pack abs, he's like, you need to look good for your wedding pictures. And for your wedding night that this was the type of guy that he was seminary are just full of funny, funny characters. I liked him. He was a good guy. He was funny, but he was just, he was just like that.

And so basically the, the thoughts that you need to fit in your tailored suit and that, you know, that you look good for your, your, your big day and, and basically he says you need to get ready, you need to get in shape. And so many a groom have set out to achieve this goal of losing a few pounds to, to be able to fit into their suit. We fit into their suit well, on their wedding day, but I will say that I've seen many a groom who have had this ambition and achieve this ambition and then get married. And after the wedding they begin to pursue lesser things. They, they, begin to snack while they game late at night again. they begin to have another drink with dinner because why, why not? Right. They begin to have another sorry, they, they be, they stopped working out, they stop eating light. All of a sudden, salads aren't really on the menu anymore and the weight that they're so motivated to lose before the wedding comes back.

Now, I'm not trying to body shame. Anyone at all as someone that struggled with body image and wait for, for a good chunk of my life. I I, that's not my goal. I have learned that all that we are all loved by God, regardless of, you know, our shape and our size and our weight. What's most important is that we should be of good general health. And if we're living healthy and stewarding our bodies, well then great, that's, that should be the end goal. So my goal is not to say, if you don't look a certain way, you're less valuable, not at all. But what I am trying to say is that many grooms put in work to direct their lives towards a goal. And after they achieve that goal, they begin to shift and slowly pursue other things and lose that motivation altogether.

And this is like the pursuit of God. For a lot of us, I could say that much of the world at large pursues that pursues things that dull our ability to see God. And I'm sure someone somewhere has made this passage of proof text that says the world is evil. This is, this is the, the the world is bad. And thus Christians should avoid the world. But the context of this is actually Paul is writing to the Roman Christians. He's already the church in Rome. And so really, when verse 21 even verse 21 it says, although they knew God. And so really, this is a passage directed at those who say they follow Jesus. And so when that sort of push comes, it says that, hey, look, you might lose the motivation, you may become darkened in your understanding, you become demotivated by God. He's talking to the followers of Jesus.

And so we've been wired to see God in creation and the moments that we have of a, they, we can recognize them for a time for a season. But over time, we begin to pursue lesser things and eventually we release the motivation to pursue him altogether. And it's very often in the name of good things. It's very often in the, you know, I really can't focus on God right now. I I I'm focusing on my, on my relationship with my partner. And once that, that settles, then, then I can focus on God or, you know, I'm really, I'm really focusing on my kids right now. And so I can't really devote my energy to my relationship with God. Once, once that's good, then, then I will go over. I'm really trying to get to VP level. I'm really trying to get this promotion. I'm really trying to, to focus on, on, on, you know, I wanna be salt and light in the company and I can do so much better if I'm in a higher position. So I'll work on my relationship with Jesus once that's going and by putting these lesser things at the center of who we are and our motivation, it begins to now demotivate our pursuit of God.

And in the same way that I've talked about these grooms who were once motivated and I find different motivations. They're not as motivated for the one thing I've also seen a lot of Christian brothers and sisters who they were once so on fire about their relationship with God. And they really wanted to be like, I wanna pursue Jesus with everything that I am. And then all of a sudden it begins to slowly fade. So verse 21 tells us. So verse 21 and 22 tells us that for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became feudal in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened, claiming to be wise, they became fools.

Ultimately, the path from honoring God is not one dramatic decision from pursuing God to pursuing another God. It's a slow creep towards worthless things and the dulling of the motivation to pursue him and then the full pursuit of those lesser things. And one thing I really like about this word, the word that shows up in verse 23 and also 25 which I haven't read. But I will read for you. Here is this word exchanged and, and, and so let me read verse 23 and, and exchange the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals creeping things, verse 25, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen.

This word exchanged in both of those verses has a sense of exchange in terms of a transaction like a trade trading one thing for another. And so in pursuing worthless things, we actually give up the glory of and truth about the immortal creator God for images of the creation. What this tells us is that in our pursuit of lesser things, in our pursuit of idols, there is not a net zero on our lives. It's not me taking something or not taking something. It's actually we are taking something that we have something of worth this ability to see God to be motivated God be driven by God. We're taking that and we're trading it for a lesser thing. And when we pursue these lesser things, we actually lose this trade.

And so it's a little early, but fall is coming and fall means a lot of things to a lot of people in New England people think, oh, the leaves are just so amazing. We're gonna go leaf peeping. We're gonna drive up to Vermont. It's gonna be amazing. I never heard this term. I grew up in New England. So I don't, I've never heard leaf peeping until I had people from outside of the air. They go, you wanna go leaf peeping? I'm like, what is that? I don't know what that is anyway, this is a total aside, not related. So that, that, that's fall for some people for a lot of people who are like in, in school, they're thinking fall is like, OK, I get ready to just ramp up my studies again or, or maybe people are starting school for the first time.

But for a good chunk of America, fall means fantasy football. I feel like I may have struck a chord with some people that fantasy football is a big reason if you're unaware of what fantasy football is. It is this pretend game where individuals choose to start a league where people become owners of a football team where they choose real NFL players to be part of that said team. And every week they face off against another team and their collective performance in real life games are quantified and total by, and the owner with the larger sum wins the game. And they do this for weeks throughout the NFL season. I used to play fantasy football in college and when I started, I kind of got pretty into it.

I didn't grow up knowing a lot about football. Ironically, I, I played football in high school but I didn't know a lot. I certainly didn't know, like, what was a good player or no, who was a good player, like, who should I draft? Who should I not draft? but I decided to play anyway because I thought, you know, it would be a great way to connect with friends. It would be a good time. Like, you know, it'll be fun. It'll be, it'll make watching football a little bit more exciting because I could just think about this player that I don't really care about and all they get me points and then that makes me potentially win. And so, ok, that's really, really exciting, I guess.

Anyway, I had this one friend who was really, really into fantasy football and, like, we're like, probably, like, halfway through the season. Yeah, I think we're about halfway through the season and he, he, like, I'm in college. So he, he, he, we're hanging out in the dorm and he starts, like, cussing me out and he's like, like, you're ruining the game. Like you were not doing this, right? Like you, I can't believe you're blah, blah, blah. He's like, he's, he's, he's kind of, you know, tearing in to me a little bit and I'm just like, oh, ok, dude, like, sorry, like, I don't know why. And so the reason he's so upset is because all season long he's been sending me trades. He's like, you should trade this person for this person or these people for these people.

And because like, I don't really know football players to that degree, like I don't want to make a bad trade. I don't want to be like, oh this is a good trade and then like be on the losing side of it, you know, like I don't, I don't want to be the, like, choose giving my best player for like scrap because I don't, I just don't know it that well. Right. So, so the whole time I'm rejecting every single trade and he's getting so upset, he yells at me. and so, so that was actually the last season that I ever played fantasy football because I said, wow, you guys are doing it way too seriously. It's not that serious for me.

So, and no judgment if you, if you, well, I mean, if you feel judgment that's might be the Holy Spirit but that's not me. so, but so what's funny to me is that we can have this like level of seriousness with pretend football teams. Like I have friends that I gotta read all the articles but no, who's the best? Who I gotta draft? Who I'm gonna gonna reject? Send me a trade. Ok. What, what does this trade analyzer say? What does this trade analyzer say? Hm, let me think about it. And then we, we have this such seriousness about trading, pretend football player or real football players on a printed football team. We're so willing to be careful with that.

But when in the trade between the glory of the creator for small parts of creation, between truth of God, for lies between worship and serving God and serving anything else we for the most part mindlessly take that trade without even thinking about it and we take that loss consistently. Oh yeah, trading us. Yeah, no problem except oh yeah, that trade, yeah accept, make that trade, accept. Oh but it's this quarterback for, for this, these two running backs. I don't know. Let me think about it. Let me show some discernment here. Let me pray to the football gods on ESPN or pro football. Talk to see what they say before I be. Do something too brash.

We trade, honoring God for honoring our status, our wealth, our image, our success and we call it a good trade. It would be dumb to not do that. Right. It would, it would be smart to be doing it that way, putting God in the backseat first because God can handle it. But I this is the one opportunity for me to be successful. This is the one opportunity for me to, to, to find this, this partner. This is the one opportunity for me to be able to gain that status as if God were handcuffed and couldn't find another time or another situation. That's like trading seedy lamb for four kickers. Yes, I was like trading honeymoon ads for heart disease. That's like trading a gem mint slab first edition Shadows Char Zard for chewed up grass energy cart. Ok. That one, I wasn't sure if that was gonna land. I now know that did not. That's fine. That's cool. It's really cold.

And so this is what a darkened heart thinks is a good exchange. And here's the thing, there's nothing we can do to break free from that darkened heart. We can try as hard as we want. We, we can try to muscle it, we can try to pick up ourselves up by our bootstraps, but there's nothing that we can do to be freed from that. And so basically the self driven motivation to pursue God with a darkened heart is so corrupted that we could not reverse course on our own.

But this is why Jesus came. Jesus came so that he could take care of our darkened heart. He could bring light to where there is darkness and a light that could bring the only light that can overcome this darkness to bring life where there was only death. I don't know what you're saying with God today. And I don't know if you know, may, maybe you've never sat in church or watched a church service before. Maybe you grew up in the church. Either way. I think the truth is this, that God loves us enough to leave his fingerprints all over creation. Just tell to scream out to you says that I am here. I am real and I want you to know me and because we still could not see it. He sent his one and only son to die to remove the darkness of sin. So you could see him so you could so we could win back that exchange, that he could win that exchange for us that we lost in the trade at the beginning.

And if you don't know this, then, then I hope you know that, that He is still pursuing you. He still wants you to follow him. Now, if you're hearing this, know that this is a sign that God is out there and He wants you to know this truth that He loves you enough to do these things for you. But if you see yourself as a follower of Jesus, then I, I think we have to check our hearts. Are you pursuing anything worthless? Are you following after anything other than God with the full weight of our being? Are we putting anything over God when we look out of creation? Do we see God crying out and reminding us of His love for us? Because it is and he wants us to be driven and motivated by him.

And so yes, you say you follow Jesus. That is good. That is great. If you check it off on a census, you say you are a Christian. Amazing. I'm happy. That's great. But then what about the rest of your life outside of that survey? Do the other parts of your life show that you are checking that you are a follower of Jesus and the the the best place to say, what is the motivator of my life? Where is my heart driven towards? What's the motivating force going towards in my life?

The dress was blue and black. By the way, I don't know if you knew that I saw, I saw white and gold. and you can't convince me, I mean, I know they've done like the photo editing and all the stuff they show in the real picture in different light. But from that picture, it looks like white and gold. But it doesn't matter, actually, doesn't matter what I see because there is objective truth. The creator of the dress said, no, I made it blue and black using blue and black materials. And so, regardless of what I see, my perception is wrong, right? There is the right way to see it, which is the blue and black dress, that's it.

And so I the same is true with creation. Others may see it differently. But God wants us to see that creation says that there is a loving God, a powerful God who leaves his fingerprints all over creation so that we could know Him, so we could see Him so we could recognize him. And so that is the right way to see creation, regardless of what other people see it as regardless of what your friends, your neighbors, your coworkers, they might not see creation and think of God and be drawn to him. And that's OK that, that we could pray for them. We hope that they see it.

And if you're here, I don't see it, I hope and I pray for you. But the objective truth is that what is out there in nature has been made plain to see for all of us since the beginning of creation that there is a creator who loves us and died for us so that we could follow him. And so let us pray as we reflect on that.

Father God, I just thank you that we have the world that there is beauty out there. And there are experiences in nature that we cannot explain, except that they were made by an incredible, beautiful, loving, powerful God who didn't just do it to, to kind of flex and show how great I am, but to show how great I am and he wanted us to follow him. And so God, you are the hymn and so God, we thank you that you've given us to us, that it is made clear. And so for God, for those of us who are pursuing lesser things, would you help us to turn from them and turn to you? I pray this in Jesus's name, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from John 18:1-27 about Jesus’s first trial and Peter’s denial. Discussion points: Jesus uses the “I am” claim to be God eight times in John’s gospel, Jesus’s love for Peter is dependent on his own faithfulness instead of Peter’s, sometimes God needs up allow us to experience pain and remorse to shape our character to be more like him.

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Scripture reader: [John 18:1-27] When Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the Brook Kidron where there was a garden which he and his disciples entered. Now, Judas who betrayed him also knew the place for Jesus often met there with his disciples. So Judas having procured a band of soldiers and some officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees went there with lanterns and torches and weapons.

Then Jesus knowing all that would happen to him, came forward and said to them, whom do you seek? They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus said to them, I am he Judas who betrayed him was standing with them. When when Jesus said to them, I am he they drew back and fell to the ground. So he asked them again, whom do you seek? And they said Jesus of Nazareth Jesus answered, I told you that I am he. So if you seek me, let these men go. This was to fulfill the word that he had spoken of. Those whom you gave me. I have lost. Not one.

Then Simon Peter having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest servant and cut off his right ear, the servant's name was Malchus. So Jesus said to Peter, put your sword into its sheath, shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me? So the band of soldiers and their captain and the officers of the Jews arrested Jesus and bound him first. They led him to Annas for he was the father in law of Caiaphas who was high priest that year, it was Caiaphas who had advised the Jews that it would be expedient that one man should die for the people.

Simon Peter followed Jesus and so did another disciple. Since that disciple was known to the high priest, he entered with Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest. But Peter stood outside at the door. So the other disciple who was known to the high priest went out and spoke to the servant girl who kept watch at the door and brought Peter in the servant girl at the door, said to Peter, you also are not one of this man's disciples, are you? He said I am not. Now the servants and officers had made a charcoal fire because it was cold and they were standing and warming themselves. Peter also was with them standing and warming himself.

The high priest then questioned Jesus about his disciples and his teaching, Jesus answered him, I have spoken openly to the world. I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple where all Jews come together. I have said nothing in secret. Why do you ask me? Ask those who have heard me? What I had said to them? They know what I said when he had said these things, one of the officers standing by struck Jesus with his hand saying, is that how you answer? The high priest Jesus answered him. If what I said is wrong, bear witness about the wrong. But if what I said is right, why do you strike me? Annas then sent him bound to Caiaphas, the high priest.

Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself. So they said to him, you also are not one of his disciples, are you? He denied it and said, I am not. One of the servants of the high priest, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, asked, did I not see you in the garden with him? Peter again, denied it. And at once, a rooster crowed.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: Good morning. How's everybody doing? I think it's probably the latest I've ever gotten service is like you guys are preparing for me to be on sabbatical for the summer. getting other people up here the whole time. Alexis is giving that announcement about kids summer adventure. I wanna do that key and peele thing where I stand over here like Luther, the anger translator and, and just just loom over her shoulder and then step in every once in a while like what's wrong with y'all? Let's go. Why won't you serve? Why is it a serving, sorry sound guy. I know you're like not normal.

In John today we're, we're continuing through John. The book of John is broken into three acts like good movies are broken into three acts. The first act, you get a lot of the background information. It's about half the book is the first act of, of John. It's doing the entire ministry of Jesus from the earliest days of his baptism until we get to the last week of his life.

And then we have in the second act, what we call a chamber piece. So in a chamber piece, well, the way you've all, we all seen TV, shows like this where you're watching the TV show and then you come to one episode and the entire episode takes place in one room and that's called a chamber piece and it's stuck in this one room. And we have like six chapters, five or six chapters that are in one room, in the upper room, the upper room discourse. And so this whole speech that Jesus gives in the upper room, he's washing his disciples feet and he's serving them and he's teaching them why he came and what he's done.

And now we've moved into the final act which we all know the final where all the action happens, right? And so we're in the final act of what is going to be the passion of Jesus and John Structures this passage today in a really interesting way with this whole action sequence, things really start picking up. We see this this really kind of quick trial that happens. We see the Romans wash their hands of it and say, OK, do what you're gonna do with them and then they crucify him and he's resurrected On the third day. We, we know where the story goes.

But the story is really put together masterfully as John structures that. Today is a very interesting passage. What's happening is just really great writing and really great way to tell the story because what we have is we see the betrayal of Jesus in the garden. But then the story really wants you to see the differences between how Jesus responds to this betrayal and how Peter is responding all the way through. And the author is very intentional because it doesn't just, he doesn't just tell the story of Jesus and then tell, say what Peter did. No, it's interspersed. It's like the scene keeps on cutting and it's like what's happening over here and then look and see how Jesus is responding, look and see how Peter is responding and what you are supposed to be noticing as the scene keeps cutting back and forth is that while Jesus remains faithful, Peter ditches, Peter loses his faith when it really comes down to it.

There's no disciple that we know better than Peter. When we read The New Testament, there's more information on Peter than anyone else and you are supposed to see a little bit of yourself. And Peter Peter is a very interesting guy. He is a character and a half. Ok. If the Bible were told in the style of cars, the movies, Peter would be tow mater. Ok. He's, he's got an accent. He's from Galilee. At one point. They point out, hey, you're speaking with a country accent. He is bold. He's packing heat and he's ready to rumble. All right, Peter is, is a bold interesting guy. We have a lot of different stories about Peter and he is just constantly this audacious man with some serious hubris.

We see at one point, Jesus asked Peter. He's like, who do people say? I am? Peter? And Peter is the first one to say, well, you're the Christ. Sorry, I have to pull out. I only have one accent. You know, I pull it out here. for, for Peter. We, you're, you're the Christ, you're the Messiah. And Jesus says, good Peter, I will build my church on a rock like this. I'm giving you a nickname. You're now called the rock. You're no longer Simon, your rock and I smell what the rock is cooking. I had to do it. I'm sorry. Right after this, like one second after this Jesus predicts his death and his resurrection. And Peter has the audacity to correct Jesus, the Messiah, the one that he just acknowledged as the Messiah Peter is like, no, that will never happen to you. And Jesus goes from giving him the pet name rock to calling him Satan in about two minutes because Jesus looks at him and he says, get behind me, Satan for your eyes are selling the things of this world and not the things of God.

Peter is bold. Always, I've got more stories on Peter. On another occasion, Jesus tells his disciples to go on without him. He's gonna talk to his father a little bit more and then the the disciples are like you sure, we took a boat here and he's like, yeah, I'm sure. So they go get on the boat and they start sailing without him. They get halfway out into the sea and a storm comes and it's going crazy and they're all scared and Jesus comes walking along unbothered completely by the storm and the waves, it actually says that he was planning on just walking right past them. I like to imagine that Jesus is looking at this boat and he's thinking about this boat in the same way that I think about the MBTA OK, where it's like I could get on the boat, but it's probably faster just to walk. So I'm gonna walk, go ahead and go across this lake.

Peter sees them and he says, hey Jesus, if that's you, let me go out there too. That's, that's serious. That's a bold request. He's like, let me walk out there too, Jesus. Who would, who would say that? That's crazy. You see someone walking on the water? My first reaction is not. Oh, I wanna do that. Ok. It's like what is happening. So that's what he does. He walks out there on another occasion just a few chapters ago, Jesus is washing feet and he's teaching this important spiritual lesson about service. And Peter looks at Jesus and he says, you will never wash my feet. What bold, audacious man. There he is. Once I let the Southern out, I can't, I can't put it back in. Sorry. And Peter's like, you'll never wash my feet. Really, Peter? Really? This is how we're gonna treat Jesus, the one that you called the Messiah.

And then not long after that, Jesus is predicting that he's, he's going to die and ascend to the father. And Peter says to him, Lord, why can't we follow you? Now? I will lay, I will lay down my life for you. I will lay down my life for you, Jesus. That's what Peter says. And Jesus answers, will you lay down your life for me in that ironic kind of way that only Jesus can knowing that he's about to lay down his life for Peter. But he says, truly, truly I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times. Peter says, I'll never deny you Jesus, I'll never leave you. I will lay down my life for you. And Jesus knows that he will deny him in less than three times in less than 24 hours. From that moment.

How does a man this bold, this committed to Jesus? I mean, Peter is willing to give it all for Jesus. He is so committed, so bold. He believes that Jesus is who he says he is. How does a man this bold and this committed go to denying him so quickly. Let's look at the passage. Let's dive in here. Starting from the top verse one chapter 18, we're just gonna work our way through this passage. When Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the book, the Brook Kidron where there was a garden which he and his disciples entered. Now, we know what the garden this is, it doesn't say in John, but it's the Garden of Gethsemane and it was somewhere, I guess that Jesus and his disciples went often to pray.

So the last supper is over, Jesus has prayed his high priestly prayer and now they're going to the garden of Yem. Now Judas verse two who betrayed him also knew the place for Jesus often met there with his disciples. So Judas having procured a band of soldiers and some officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees went there with lanterns and torches and weapons. This is an angry mob. I don't know if you can draw a picture better of an angry mob unless maybe they said lanterns and torches and pitchforks and weapons. I mean, that is what's happening here. It is the stereotypical idea of what an angry mob would look like at night coming to find Jesus.

Then Jesus verse four, knowing all that would happen to him. Isn't that amazing? Knowing all that would happen to him. Let's read this next part in light of that came forward and said to them, who do you seek, whom do you seek? He wants them to say it. He needs the words to come out of their mouths and they answered Jesus of Nazareth. And Jesus said to them, I am he and when Jesus said to them, I am he, they drew back and fell to the ground. This is amazing. This is really uncanny what's happening here because the words that Jesus says in the Greek aren't actually I am he. That's the best way that we can translate it. But the words in the Greek just say I am ego, Amy I am.

And Jesus declares this in the same way that when Moses was standing before the burning bush thousands of years earlier, and the burning bush is telling him to go tell Pharaoh to let his people go and Pharaoh and Moses says, who shall I tell? How, who shall I tell? Pharaoh sent me? And the bush says, tell them I am sent you. I am who I am the divine name of God.

Then in John chapter eight, we see Jesus say before Abraham was I am. Jesus didn't say before Abraham was I was, he says before Abraham was I am. He's claiming the equality with God. He's claiming to be the I am. And here he's saying I am in the same way, we've seen a series of seven I am statements from Jesus all throughout the book of John, I am the resurrection. I am the way, the truth and the life. I am the great, the divine, I am the good shepherd. I am the gate over and over again. Jesus says I am I am I am.

And we know from the scripture that seven is the special complete number, but here we have the eighth one and the final one. And Jesus simply says I am. And at that moment, it's like a, just a little bit of the curtain opens and just a little bit of the glory of God comes through and it sends the soldiers on their knees. Jesus discloses his true nature just a little bit, just a little peak of it and they can't help but to bow before him, the one they've come to arrest, this is a, this is a man unlike any other fully man, fully God. They must have been pretty confused though because they just get back to their feet. And Jesus says, who is it that you're seeking? And they say again, Jesus of Nazareth.

And so Jesus gives himself up and Jesus is arrested, taken away without even being issued his rights without being issued his charges in verse 10. This has gotta be one that you love. Then Simon Peter having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest's servant and cut off his right ear. The servant's name was Malchus. Like I said, he's packing heat. He's ready to fight one side note here before I explain what's happening. This passage gives the name of the servant Malchus. Is that something you would do? Now, now Malchus is the servant of the high priest. The high priest is a celebrity. Everybody knows who the high priest is at this time. That's written you. We have that in other documentation. It's not just in the Bible that we learned the name of the high priest at this time.

The the servant of the high priest would be a well known person that's like saying that the secretary of the high priest, like the not the but like the secretary of state, like it's like a very high ranking official here with them. John is giving the name Malchus because not because he's making up a story. If you're making up a story, you wouldn't insert real people's names within that who, who are still alive as you're writing this thing. This is an eyewitness report. The only reason why he would insert that is if it really happened and he's just giving that little extra detail to give his readers confidence that this thing actually happened. When we see people claim that all of this is just legend. It's because they aren't willing to do the work to see that it was written very intentionally as an eyewitness report, not as legend, it does not read as a legend whatsoever.

My friends, let's continue verse 11. So Jesus said to Peter, put away your sword into its sheath, shall I not drink the cup that the father has given me? Peter is ready to fight? But that's not what Jesus has come to do. Even after following Jesus for three full years, Peter still does not understand the reason why Jesus is walking on this earth. He still does not understand the purpose of Jesus. Peter is still thinking that Jesus is going to establish an earthly kingdom that he's the new David, that he's gonna be the biggest king around and he's gonna lead the people into prosperity of Israel.

But he has not come to see that Jesus is not, he, he is not understood that Jesus has not come to establish a kingdom on earth, but a kingdom of heaven on earth. And so Jesus says, put away your sword that's not what I'm here for. I'm not here to fight. I'm here to love my enemies. I'm here to care for them to Peter. Jesus is about to become a martyr. And so he's ready to fight. He doesn't want to see Jesus die for the cause. But Jesus is no martyr, do not mistake. This Jesus is no martyr. Jesus is a voluntary sacrifice. No one takes his life. He lays it down himself. He could have escaped this at any moment, but yet he remains faithful until the end. So Jesus tells him to put away his sword.

I love how Michael Card puts this in his biography on the life of Peter. He says this, Peter's Messiah would have slaves washing his feet, not the other way around. His. Messiah would command the legions of angels to destroy his enemies. Peter's Messiah would have draw drawn his sword as well. Peter understood a king who would take up arms and kill his enemies. Never in his wildest dreams. Could he imagine a king who would die to save his enemies? So they led Jesus away and Jesus has to stand two different trials. Ok. We're gonna be working through this over the next couple of weeks. So we're not gonna get through it all today, but he has to stand two different trials. He has to stand in front of the religious leaders of the day, the high priest and then he has to go in front of the government leaders of the day.

So first he goes to the religious leaders because the religious leaders are the ones that are bringing the charges against him in front of the the governmental. So he goes to the religious leaders house first and Peter and this is when the scenes start moving back and forth. So they carry Jesus away to the the home of the high priest and Peter follows but at a safe distance and he's along with another disciple, it just says another disciple. It doesn't tell us exactly who it is. But we know from reading the book of John that John never in inserts his own name in there. The John, the son of Zebedee never appears in the gospel, which is odd because he's a very major character in all the other gospels. And so we assume that John, the son of Zebedee is probably the author of this book and that he is just not disclosing his own name in, in, in the in the story.

And so we have him going with who we assume to be John and to follow Jesus and they make it to the courtyard of the high priest. But not anyone can go into the courtyard of the high priest that's like going into someone's backyard. You can't just go into someone's backyard unless you know that person or it's porch fest, ok? If it's porch fest game on, go ahead. but if it's, if you otherwise you have to know the name, you have to know that person.

And so they get there and the other disciple, whoever it was probably John knew the servant girl, knew the high priest somehow. And so when they get to the the gate where they have a servant girl working at the door, she says she looks at Peter and she says, aren't you one of his disciples? Maybe she hears his accent. Maybe she just recognizes, aren't you one of his disciples? And Peter immediately and you know, you could maybe give it a good reason. Maybe he's afraid that he won't be able to get in if he tells the truth, maybe he's afraid that he's going to also be standing trial with Jesus if he tells the truth. But Peter denies it. He says I am not little white lie. Potentially, maybe he's saving his own skin, but they let her, they let him through into the courtyard.

After this first denial, the scene turns back to Jesus and Jesus is being questioned about his disciples and his teaching and he's being questioned kinda hard. But Jesus just responds. Look, I've done all this in public. I've been at the, I've been at the temple, I've been teaching the temple. I'm not keeping anything from you. Why aren't you asking me all these questions? You're asking things you already know. You know who I am. I've told you since the beginning. So he's just being open with them. And as he speaks to the high priest like this, one of the officials strikes him and Jesus is like, what did you hit me for? I'm not saying anything. That's not true. And, but he just remains faithful through this whole questioning, even though he's starting to get publicly beaten.

And then the scene cuts back to Peter and Peter standing by a fire. It's still the night and they're warming themselves by this fire. And someone looks at Peter and they say, aren't you one of his disciples? It's like really apparent that he's one of his disciples. And again, Peter, nope, not one of his disciples, maybe he's afraid. And then a third person looks at, at Peter and this third person is actually, this is unfortunate. You gotta watch whose ears you cut off because you never know who they're related to because then you have a relative of the man that Peter had. Vincent Van Gogh earlier in the garden. And he says, didn't I see you in the garden? And Peter is like, nope, it wasn't me. It got a little shaggy and I'm here. Ok. And sorry, I can laugh at my own jokes. So thank you. That what's a dad for? Well, you're not a dad unless you do that a little bit, right? It's Father's Day. Give it to me, you know.

And so at that moment, Peter says no one more time. And at that moment, John records a rooster crowing and so jesus' prediction came true that Peter denied him three times before the rooster crow. And Luke, not in John but in Luke and all four gospels include this story very rarely do all four gospels record the same stories. It has to be a very major event in the life of Jesus for all four gospel writers to include the story, they usually kind of overlap in different places. All four include this story. All four include some form of what happened when, when he denied Jesus three times. And it was just a very important story to the early church.

If you think about why all four gospel writers might have included the story in their, in their writings, the early church persecuted all the time, people losing their lives for Jesus. And so this is probably a very important story for the early church to be reminded of, of who Jesus is and how you can stay faithful until the end in the book of Luke. You see Luke add this additional detail after the rooster crows. Jesus makes eye contact with Peter. Now Jesus can't hear what's happening in the courtyard. But as I said earlier, Jesus knew everything that was going to happen to him. And so Jesus knew that this was the moment that Peter would deny him and Peter and makes eye contact with Jesus and it says that he weeps, that it brings Jesus. It brings Peter to a point of brokenness. He's just crushed.

Now for my entire life, I've read this and thought that the look that Peter, that Peter must have received from Jesus must be a look that's so condemning. So judging, so harsh that it could only be compared to the look that a wife might have for her husband when he refuses to get directions to a location. And then he finally gives up and gets directions and then you just have the I I told you so look, OK, that's, that's what I've always seen that look as, but as I've read this story, I don't think that's the look that would send Peter weeping to his niece. I think instead the look that would send Peter to that place of brokenness is one of compassion looking at Peter and saying, I love you still, Jesus would not give Peter a look of condemnation and then go and pay the penalty for his betrayal for his denial. It's way more consistent with Jesus not to have a look of how could you, I'm done with you. No, it's a look of love that Jesus has for Peter because the love that Jesus has for Peter is not dependent upon Peter's faithfulness, but it's dependent upon his own faithfulness.

Jesus remains faithful to the end. And so when he looks at Peter, it's a look of compassion and of care and saying I knew you would fail, but I'm going to go to the cross anyways. It's not about your success, Peter. And I hope you see that now that no matter how bold you are for me, it does not matter. It's about my faithfulness, not yours. Jesus loves us in an unconditional way better than that. He loves us in a contra conditional way. I mean, despite the fact that we fail him time and again, he loves us in spite of that, it's not just unconditional like I'll love you no matter what, it's, I'll love you. Even though I know you will rebel against me.

That is who Jesus is. He sees your failures, church. He sees the things that you're ashamed of and we all have them. He sees the moments of your weakness no matter how good of a face you put on to come to church to impress everyone else. He and some of you are very impressive. Should I say? He sees the true you? He sees the ways that you stumble. He sees your hurts and your hesitancies. He sees your doubts and he responds with a look of compassion. He loves all the same. The whole story is meant to show us that even the most vocal committed and crazy follower of Jesus will have moments where he will or she will stumble and fall no matter how committed to Jesus, you are, you will have moments where you will be an utter screw up, me included.

And I'm praying that those moments become less and less frequent as I grow in grace and grow in my understanding of the love of Christ for me. But it's still going to happen and seeing Peter at his absolute worst, Jesus was still willing to go to the cross for him. Have you ever messed up so badly that you know that Jesus would just look at you with a face of shame. You know that if he looked at you, it would be a look of anger. Maybe you've done something that you're so ashamed of that. You know, if anyone found out that it would just wreck your life, friends are failures are not a surprise to Jesus any more than Peter and Jesus looks upon us with compassion when we fail to be faithful to Jesus. Jesus is faithful to the end.

Now, the same Peter who denies Jesus three times in his hour of need. History tells us that this man actually ends up being crucified for his faith. Yet Jesus Peter as he's crucified for his faith many years from here. Peter goes on to be a great missionary. I'll tell you more about that in a second. But instead of just being crucified, Peter actually requests and this is history. This isn't I we find this in other locations, not necessarily in the Bible, but Peter requests to be crucified upside down because he does not see himself worthy as dying in the same fashion that his savior would die. So he requests an even worse death than Jesus received in a physical way.

And so what makes the difference? How does he go from denying Jesus three times to save his own skin to being crucified upside down at the end of his life? Well, there's one big shift in, in Peter's life and it's the resurrection because in just a couple of days, Peter is going to see the empty tomb and he's going to finally understand the purpose of Jesus. He followed Jesus for three years but did not understand the gospel. You can be at church every week for three years and not understand the gospel and still think that the gospel is, hey, be a good person. So God will love you more.

That is not the gospel. The gospel is that Jesus live the life that we should have lived, died, the death that we deserve. And it's only because of that, that we get to have life with God. We now get to ascend with Him and be seated at the right hand of God and live as if Christ obedience is our obedience. It wasn't until the resurrection that Peter got it where the, where the penny finally dropped. When Peter sees the empty tomb, something in Him changes. He understands that Jesus didn't come to set up an earthly kingdom, but a kingdom of heaven. He finally understood that Jesus had to die, that he couldn't not die, that the death of Jesus took on the sins of the world and that he died in the place of Peter after the re after Jesus is resurrected.

We actually get the story of Jesus restoring Peter and I'm going on sabbatical so I won't get to preach that passage. So, whatever, I'm just gonna tell you about it today. Someone else will tell you about it in a few weeks, just act like you haven't heard it before. Ok? Just be like, oh, so good, thank you, appreciate it. But you know, I'm gonna share it with you today. Later in the book of John, it's actually like the last passage in John. Jesus looks at Peter and this has always been a confusing passage for me and I've heard people preach it very poorly and try to make too much out of the Greek and out of what's happening because there's some interesting things that happen. But, but just look at, look at the, look at what happened.

Jesus looks at Peter and three times says Peter, do you love me? And Peter responds each time, Lord, you know, I love you. Now, why would Jesus ask him three times is to make the threefold denial, match the threefold restoration. He wants Jesus to, he wants Peter to feel completely restored and he's giving him an opportunity to have this symmetry in his life where he's restored to right relationship with Jesus and Jesus didn't just restore him though. Jesus exalted that brother, Jesus lifted him up. He didn't just say you're back to where you were. He says you're going higher. Peter. Peter ends up being one of the two pillars for the early church. Paul and Peter, the two greatest missionaries to ever live. They, they travel around the whole area, spreading the good news of what Jesus came to do.

Jesus changes Peter's life drastically. Now Peter goes from being this arrogant brash audacious man to writing these words. Check this out. First Peter chapter five. I'm just gonna read a little portion here and just remember the character of the man who wrote these things, who we know him to be pre resurrection and how much his life changed post resurrection. Because if there's anything, Peter's an arrogant dude, ok, he's a little full of himself. But here we go.

First Peter five start in verse five, clothe yourselves, all of you with humility toward one another. The same one who said you'll never wash my feet clothe yourselves with humility toward one another. For God opposes the proud that grabs grace to the humble, humble yourselves. Therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that the proper time He may exalt. You sounds like something Peter's familiar with casting all your anxieties on you, on Him because He cares for you. Be sober. Minded, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil prowls around like a roaring line. Looking for someone to devour, resist him firm in your faith. You still got a little bit of that aggressiveness here. Knowing that the same kinds of sufferings are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace who has called you and to his eternal glory in Christ will himself restore, confirm, strengthen and establish you to him be the Dominion forever.

And ever some of us want to make a real big difference in the world, do we not? We don't want to leave this world the same as what we came into it. And Peter teaches us, if he teaches us anything, he teaches us this, that sometimes to be that big difference in the world is going to require for you to be broken all the way to your core just as he was. Sometimes it's in the moments of our deepest hurts and wounds when we're actually restored. And better than that, we're exalted. And we're reminded of where we are in the heavenly places, seeded with Christ. Sometimes the Lord has to allow us to experience the pain of sin or remorse in order to shape our character to be used by him.

So today, as an opportunity as every Sunday, as every day is an opportunity to look to the faithfulness of Jesus and boldly confess our own faithlessness. Let's confess our sins, knowing that Jesus, he doesn't look at us with Jud judgment and combination Jesus looks at us with compassion and care, wishing that we would cast our anxieties on him, wishing that we would bring to him our sins and struggles so that he might bear them on the cross for us and exalt us to the heavenly places. He desires for you to be near, he desires for you to be brought in restored and exalted. Not kept at arm's length, not kept in shameful place in the corner. He desires for you to be brought into the family brought close to him.

So church, I'm gonna encourage you this opportunity to do that over the next song, we're gonna be participating in a communion meal. We'll also have prayer counselors in the back ready to receive and to pray for you and to, to be able to help you to confess these sins. If you need that sort of thing, able to just pray a word of you over you to ask the Lord to speak to you in that time. If you'd like to pray, we encourage you to, to meet with one of them in the back. If you are a believer here, we encourage you to receive this communion meal. It's a reminder that Christ's body was broken for us and his blood was shed for us. And so if you are calling on Christ as your savior, we invite you to this meal. So if you would join me in standing as we prepare to receive this meal, be reminded of who Christ is and what he's done for us. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for this day. We thank you for, for this sacred meal. We pray that you would restore us to right relationship with you. God, I pray for anyone here who feels your, your glance is, is just combination or feels your glance is just shame. Would they feel your warm embrace today and know that your death is sufficient for them and that they can be brought into the kingdom based upon what you have done for them. God, we pray that you would be shaping our lives and helping us to live faithfully. But knowing that only you are faithful all the way until the end, so God help us to enjoy our place in the heavenly places to be reminded of Christ's sacrifice for us and help us to draw near to you. In Christ's name we pray, amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from John 17 about Jesus’s prayer for his followers at the Last Supper. Discussion points: The true glory of God is revealed in the Scriptures and in seeking fellowship with Jesus, God embodies unity in diversity, Christian unity demands that we deny our own preferences because our priority is Jesus.

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Scripture reader: [John 17] When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour has come glorify your son that the Son may glorify you since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life that they know you. The only true God and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent, I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.

And now Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. I have manifested your name to the people whom you have given me out of the world. Yours they were and you gave them to me and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you for, I have given them the words that you gave me and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you. And they have believed that you sent me.

I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those whom you have given me for they are yours. All mine are yours and yours are mine. And I am glorified in them and I'm no longer in the world but they are in the world and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me that they may be one even as we are one while I was with them. I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction that the scripture might be fulfilled.

But now I am coming to you and these things I speak in the world that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word and the word has hated and the world has hated them because they are not of the world just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth as you sent me into the world. So I have sent them into the world and for their sake, I consecrate myself that they also may be sanctified in truth.

I do not ask for these only but also for those who will believe in me. Through their word, that they may all be one just as you Father are in me and I in you that they also may be in us. So that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me, I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you and me, that they may become perfectly one. So that the world may know that you sent me and loved them. Even as you loved me, Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

Oh righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name and I will continue to make it known that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: Yeah, in case you have ever wondered what kind of people would name their child, Ernest Fletcher, which is my name. I have the answer for you. Hippies. My, my parents were hippies. and my dad was a vagabond, drove all over the country kind of like lived in different national parks before. That was cool. you know, before COVID, before we all start doing that and he drove a AVW bus through my teenage years with a bed in the back. So this is less HGTV and more Matt Foley living in a van down by the river. Ok. This not, not super cool at the time, I mean, I thought it was kind of cool but it's more cool now than what it was back then.

And so because my parents were of the hippie persuasion. The Beatles have been the background music for my entire life. I can tell you many songs that give me specific memories. And when you know my first dance with my mom at my wedding was a Beatles song and there was just background music for the life, just The Beatles, right? And so a couple of years ago Disney Plus released, I, I don't know, some of you guys are like, what's up with this guy on Disney Plus? I just gave an illustration a couple of weeks ago of a Disney Plus documentary. I guess it's all I watch. There, there was a Disney Plus documentary that came out called Get Back and anybody seen Get Back. You have to be a pretty super fan of the Beatles. Honestly, it's three hours of just watching the Beatles. No narration. OK? It's just recording the Get Back sessions which the Get Back sessions are the sessions that they recorded to make both Abbey Road and let it be two of the greatest albums that have ever been made in the history of the world.

And so because they were making those two albums, they, they wanted to make a special documentary. They knew they were gonna be doing something special, but they never released a documentary. They had thousands of hours of footage and they never released the documentary. And why did they never release the documentary? Well, if you watch it, you'll see why it's because they fought all the time. They were just bickering like siblings that didn't want to be with each other anymore. It was obvious that the band was on the very edge of collapse. At one point, you thought the band did break up. George just went home, they didn't know if he was ever going to come back.

And so as you're watching this documentary, you get a real inside peek into the way that The Beatles made this music that has gone on to inspire millions and millions of people and not only to inspire but to influence much of the popular music that we listen to today was influenced by these two albums that were made. And the most pivotal scene of the entire thing is they have just this one camera, I think it's just like one that they had running all the time.

And Paul the bass player, but he's also like one of the big geniuses in the Beatles. Not that any of them aren't. he's just kinda like jamming away on his guitar and then he just finds a groove and he just settles into the groove and then he just starts singing the words to it and then he just, it, it just keeps on, he's just tinkering away and tinkering away. And then the other guys come and sit down and you watch him live, create one of the biggest hits of the Beatles. The song. Get back and it's just this amazing thing. And as a Beatles fan, I felt like I was getting up to peer into the soul of the genius that had influenced so much of my life. I really felt as though I was standing on sacred ground as I was watching this amazing display of musical creativity.

And that is very similar, but just a small picture of what we get to enjoy today because today's passage is sacred ground in today's passage. What we see is the very Son of God praying to his father. This is what we call. Why is it escaping me? Right? As I say it, this is what we call the high priestly prayer of Jesus. And it's the very end of the upper room discourse. And we've been going through this series in John for, for several months now. And this is definitely a crescendo in the whole book and what we see in this prayer is not Jesus teaching us how to pray. That's the Lord's supper. No, Lord's supper. That's the Lord's prayer. Excuse me. This is right after Lord supper. That's the Lord's prayer.

Jesus teaches us how to pray and it's really shocking how many things that he teaches us in the Lord's prayer are echoed in his own prayer here. It's almost as though he's using the Lord's prayer to shape his own prayer. Nor is this a theological treatise, own prayer? Ok. That's like what we have in a lot of Paul's writings and in Romans eight and many other places here, we have a window into the soul of the Son of God and how he relates with his father. We get to see his priorities as he's heading to the cross. Jesus knows that his time has come that he's going to the cross.

And so we get to peer into this sacred ground of what does the Son of God's prayer life look like? What does he care about? What are the things that he's praying for and friends? It's you, it's you. He's praying for you. He cares for you.

Verse 20 I do not ask these for these only, but I also ask for those who will believe in me through their word. He wants believers to be experiencing his glory and being unified. What we see in this passage is kind of a, a big circle. Ok. So this is the, the way that it happens. A lot of John is not super focused, it's not like the type of sermons that you can give breakdowns that are very mathematical. OK? It's, it's artistry. And what we see here is just a, a kind of a, a circle that Jesus is praying. This is what he prays.

He prays that we might all experience the glory of God that we might share in his joy, that we might be one with Him, experiencing the glory of God. And next, he prays that through, by experiencing the glory of God, that we might be unified with one another, experiencing unity in the life of the church. And that through the unity of the church that we might multiply and other people might see the way that we live together and might decide to start following Christ and experience His glory.

And so we have this divine circle where we go glory, unity, multiplication, glorify, unify multiply, and we see Him praying through these things and it just goes over and over again for his own glory, which is at the top of the circle. So let's walk through each of these things that Jesus prayed first that we might be glorified. He prays that we as his followers might be glorified.

How do you experience the glory of God? I've talked to many different people and heard many different answers to this. And one of the most popular things I hear is that I really experience the glory of God in nature. And I think that that is so true. There is something so real about that. I love being in nature and I love going and, and standing on mountains. I love hiking, those types of things. I've been to several of the national parks. I've hiked half dome in Yosemite twice because once was not enough pain to do it again. And it's just a really, this was before you needed permits and everything. But you get to the cables, you actually, it's like a really severe slope. You have to pull yourself up on the cables and you get to the top and it's just amazing.

I mean, the entire Yosemite Valley in, in California just amazing. There's nothing like driving into that valley for the first time and seeing, you know, 6000 ft sheer cliffs on either side of you. It's just your jaw drops at the glory and the majesty of our God who created it all.

And many of us have experienced those things and it is true that creation shouts the glory of God, maybe, maybe you're not a Christian here today, but you can resonate with what I'm talking about here because you've seen a sunset and you say, wow, there's something. Why do people keep on taking pictures and posting pictures of sunsets on Instagram? A picture? Never does it justice.

But we just can't help ourselves. We can't help ourselves because it's glory. We're getting to experience glory when we see something so beautiful and magnificent. And so maybe you're not a Christian here today and you resonate with that, that I'm sharing that. There's a sense of God in creation.

I want to let you into the secret though, that this is just a dim, dim reflection of His glory compared to what Jesus offers. Because what you are just getting to see a piece of which is true. There's something really true about it and it's really refreshing, but Jesus opens the door and lets you in the God that you get to glimpse at the glory of just from the external Jesus opens the door and he lets you into the inner life of who God is that we get to experience full glory with Him that we get to actually know the God who crafted the cosmos that we get to talk with Him. That's what Jesus came to do to take what we get an inkling of in our observation of nature and to just allow us completely into it, just welcome us into the heart of God. That is the whole purpose of what Jesus has come to do.

Verse six of John chapter 17, Jesus says, I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world, yours, they were and you gave them to me and they have kept your word. And when Jesus says, I have manifested manifest means revealed, I've revealed my name, your name. So when he says, I've revealed your name, what he's talking about, when he says name, often times we see this happen throughout the Old Testament. To see someone's name being revealed is to reveal their entire character for who that person is.

So Jesus is saying, I have revealed your true nature to all those who have you have given me. I have opened up the doors and let them in to the glories of who you are God. What is the glory of God though? What are we experiencing when we talk about this? The glory of God is what is revealed when we finally see God as he really is.

And many of us have images of who God is in our minds and that must be put aside and replaced with the true name that Jesus has revealed of who God is. And the only way that we can get that is through what He's revealed in His scriptures and then connecting with Jesus and seeking him and allowing him to reveal that to us plainly.

I love that the way that Ray Orland describes this, he says, triviality is the opposite of glory. Triviality is the opposite of glory. There's nothing about God that is cheap. That is second rate, that is disappointing. The ultimate display of God's glory is Jesus. And the ultimate display of glory in Jesus is the crucifixion showing the length of what he is willing to do to redeem the unworthy. And one day all those who are in Christ will appear with Him in glory. This is what Jesus came to do. He wants to bring us into the glory of God.

Many of you are hearing that and you might think it's true, but you dare not believe it. It just sounds too good to be true that you actually might be invited into the glory of God. But that is what Jesus has come to do to open the door between God and man and allow us to experience that glory. Jesus gives us the true intimacy with God that we are all longing for. Let's look at his prayer. Let's look at a few of the passages. I don't want you to take it from me. I want you to take it from Him.

Jesus says, verse four, I glorified you on earth having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. He's talking to the Father, right? And now Father glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. And so Jesus is saying that he's been enjoying this glory with God throughout eternity past and now he's asking that he might experience it even more now as he's headed to the cross.

Verse 10, all mine are yours and yours are mine and I am glorified in them. So what's he saying? He's saying? He wants to share His glory that He is glorified in those in which God has given him us verse 13. But now I'm coming to you and these things I speak in the world that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves, the joy that Jesus shares because He is fully content in who God is. He wants to share with us that we might have in ourselves. That is why He is returning to the father and going through the crucifixion that we might share in the joy that he has shared throughout eternity past and sharing in the glory of God.

What's the first question? I don't know how many of you were catechized as kids. OK. We're doing a little bit of catechism with my kids, catechism questions. Some traditions of Christianity have like a list of questions that you ask Children. You teach them the answers to these questions is a way to teach theology to Children. And the first question on in almost all of these catechisms is what is the chief aim of man? For what purpose was humanity created is another way to say that and almost all of them answer it in the same way and they answer it to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Now, that sounds really rote. But think about that glorify to glo. Our purpose is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever to enjoy His glory.

And I love the way John Piper swaps it up. He says to glorify God by enjoying him forever. And that is what we're here for is why we exist that we might share in the glory that Jesus has shared in throughout eternity, past, by being united with one another in the way that He's united with the God, the Father and the God, the Holy Spirit.

And so what Jesus knows is that if we're going to share in His glory, what that will actually do because we're, when we share in His glory, we see Him as he is. And who God is, is unity among diversity. God is Trinity. There's God, the Father God, the Son and God, the Holy Spirit. Each one are distinct, unique, but also one, just one God. You have unity and diversity in the person of who God is, the persons of who God is the essence of who God is. It's a confusing topic, but it's one you have to dive into.

If you wanna be a Christian, if you wanna follow Jesus, yes, I will share this with you. Let me read this verse and this, this graphic will explain this verse verse 21 through 23 that they may all be one just as you father are in me and I in you that they also may be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me the glory that I, that you have given me. I have given to them that they may be one even as we are one i in them and you and me that they may be perfect, become part perfectly one so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you love me.

So a lot of this is kind of divine mystery. It's hard to understand and you might not be able to see that exceedingly well, especially if you're sitting in the back. But what it says is the first one is that the father, the little circle says father and the big circle is son. So in verse 21 and 23 it says the father is in the sun. And the second one on the top, right, it says that the son is in the father. So it goes the other way around. The little circle is the son and on the bottom left, you have believers are in the father and the son. So the the we are believers are, are in the father and the son and then the bottom right that the Son is in believers.

And so we have this really kind of holistic idea of being unified with God is what he's trying to say. I and you, you and me, me and God, perfect harmony, right? This is what he's saying is that just as I've enjoyed fellowship with God in this mysterious Trinitarian way throughout eternity, past I'm inviting you into that experience. That is what Jesus has come to do and, you know, this is a lot to wrap my head around at the same time. It is. but Jesus understands it and this is what he's praying and that's kind of good enough for me.

It's like when I talk to some of you about your PhD dissertations, it's like, I'm good for like the first sentence. You tell me the thesis. I'm like, OK, tell me a little bit more about that. And then I'm gone. Like I just glaze over, I'm like, looking for a bagel. I don't know, it's just I'm done sometimes it's OK for me to be like, I'm glad you get that. Jesus, if anything, he has a PhD in the glory of God and the unity that he, he shares with Christ, but it seems as though the church, you can take that off now. It seems as though the church has completely forgotten this part of jesus' teaching, does it not?

Almost every day, you hear of another church that's divided almost every day, but Jesus is teaching is that real unity in the church is possible. That's what he wants for us. And this is the vision that he has for Christian community that we have unity in our diversity, that Christian unity requires, that we deny our own preferences. Hear this Christian unity requires that we deny our own preferences because our priority is Jesus. We deny our own preferences because our priority is Jesus. That means that we become absolutely committed to one another, not just committed to those who think like us and look like us and have the same preferences as us.

Let me give you a few examples of what this looks like po politics. OK. To have unity in our diversity in politics, it means that we have to deny our preferences, sometimes our comfort because Jesus is our priority. Now, most churches in this country have gone through over the past, you know, four or five years have gone through what we call the great resorting of churches. And what that means is that many of the churches that were kind of purple that had people that were from both conservative and liberal backgrounds have become increasingly red or increasingly blue. And in fact, it's easy to grow a church in many areas of the country. You just become more politically polarized than the next church down the road and you will have people that gravitate toward that.

But that is to the detriment of both politics and the church. It's to the detriment of politics because we need to have diverse sets of opinions, to talk about political topics. You need to hear from a real life human, not just someone you see on the computer, a real life human, what they think about things and then be able to talk about such things and have a real conversation and not just lob insults at each other like our politicians do in their debates.

That's not what we're here for. We need to have actual relationships to have a holistic political mind, but it's also terrible for the church. Terrible for the church. How are we going to have unity in our diversity when we all look the same and believe the same, you need to have churches that are diverse place where we actually have to deny our own preferences. Because Jesus is the priority where we have to love people who think differently than we do. And this means practically for me, I don't give a lot of teaching on specific politics in the church. And the reason for that is I wanna teach you the biblical principles and let you draw the conclusions there and call me crazy. I don't think the Bible endorses one economic system over another. I think that there's a lot of freedom in many of these things.

And so I want to give you the principles and let you draw the best conclusions that you can. Many of you are smarter than me anyways. And so I'm going to try my best to do that, but we have to be able to deny ourselves and love those who are different than us, which is very difficult with politics. And here's why it's difficult with politics because politics have become the modern day religion that if you follow the, the, the politics that I follow, that means you are a righteous, good person and we see it as almost moralism but friends, we need to take a step back there and be reminded of who Jesus is and what he has come to do.

Let me give you another example of unity in our diversity. Let's talk about ethnicity. Our church is intentionally seeking to be a multi ethnic place and that means that many of us have to deny our preferences at different times so that we can make Jesus the priority. Now, different ethnicities have different cultural backgrounds that they come from and we want to honor and celebrate all the different cultural backgrounds. There's things to honor in every cultural background and there's also many things in every cultural background that are not things that we want to see happen in the church. And so we're all equal in that.

But one thing that we have to do is be willing to sacrifice some of our preferences so that we can have unity. For example, in our church, we'll do sometimes music that might not appeal to you and your ethnic background and your church background. And the reason why we do that is because that might be the only song that your brother or sister on the other end of the aisle connects with on that day, the only one. And so you might not enjoy one of the songs that we do that day. That's OK. You just know that unless it's bad, which is never bad. Right. Yeah. And never bad. That, that, that might be the only one that they connected with. So you're denying your own preferences so that you can serve your brothers and sisters.

I've had to learn this many different ways and I'm still learning it as someone who lives in a majority culture as a, as a white person. I have to go the extra mile because I often times think that my way is normal and everybody else's way is weird. That is so just not right though. OK. That is not right. My way is not normal. My way is white and everybody else's way is different. And that's OK. We can recognize those things and I can deny my preferences to make Jesus the priority.

Another example, financially, when you look at the early church, you read this, the disciples had all things in common. There was no one who had need and that means that some of the disciples were going and selling possessions to provide for the needs of those who didn't have what they needed. That meant that the vision that Jesus had painted was so radical that people said I'm gonna deny my preference to have more, which is always the preference. Is it not? I very rarely is someone I just prefer to have less. I'm going to deny my preference to have more so that my brothers and sisters can be taken care of. Jesus is the priority.

This is gonna look crazy in, in the world today. We like to be very independent with our finances. There's almost no that it's so hard to have an honest conversation with someone these days about finances. Is it not where someone's actually gonna let you in there? It just feels so private, but in Christianity we're, we're to have an openness about that type of thing. I love the old Tim Keller quote that the world tells you to be open with your sexuality and very closed with your money. When the scripture tells you to be very open with your money and very closed in your sexuality, sexuality being reserved for, for marriage. In that case, it's really kind of amazing thing that we can live counter culturally like this, denying our own preferences for the priority of Jesus.

And lastly, just one more example before we move on to the last point, here is this commitment to gather regularly, commitment to gathering one of the ways that we pursue unity and our diversity is just getting together regularly. You cannot replace face time with real people when we gather to worship God. He's really in our midst and we enjoy his presence through our relationships with one another also. And so he uses other Christians to speak truth into our lives. And we get to have this beautiful face time with one another and be our hearts are just slowly shaped to be willing to love our neighbor as ourself and be able to sacrifice our good for their good.

So, because of that, you cannot skip church for like, three months and show up and be like, oh, where is God? I mean, I just don't even know if I, I don't know where God is in my life. I, I feel so distant from him. Well, of course you do. You've been skipping the family meal for the past three months. Like, of course, you're starting to feel distant. You haven't been around. And so I'm not singling anyone out here whatsoever. I don't mean to do that, but I just need to tell you that that going to service isn't just something we do, but it's something that we enjoy together and it actually shapes our hearts. And so thank you, there's many of you who make this such a huge priority. And I think that that is just so good for your spiritual life.

But Christian unity is an amazing thing to experience and it has these fringe benefits and, and the French benefit that that comes out of this. So we, we start with glory, we move to unity or the glory of God leads us to the unity that we experience with one another by denying our preferences and living for the priority of Jesus, which as we live out, the priority of Jesus and denying our preferences. And as we really live out joyful community with one another. We see ourselves multiply. We see other people see the way that we live and we love one another and give God glory and eventually come and join us. There's no better apologetic than this.

I've watched many different debates about the existence of God. I've talked with that and with many people about this and I will tell you that it has been so much more fruitful in my life as I've observed, as I've just lived in community with other Christians and invited people into it right now. We have several people that live on my street that go to our church and our neighbors know we all go to church together and that has an impact and they've, they've shared the impact. It's really been kind of an amazing thing to watch our, our neighbors say like, hey, I don't know, but like you guys are definitely here for the good of our street. And I, I appreciate that. I don't know about God, but I'm, I'm more interested now than what I was before.

I've seen that happen in community groups, bring someone to community group, they get to meet Christians that I've had someone join our group and be like, this is the only time in my life where I sit down with people and talk about real stuff where I talk about what I'm really thinking and feeling. And I can tell you guys care about each other. It's just an amazing thing that we get to invite people to. But we are oftentimes think so private to l like we, we aren't going to let anybody into that part of our life. We have to, we have to let people into it because we want them to share in the glory of God as we've shared in the glory of God. So the unity that we experience becomes our evangelistic tool.

Verse 23 Jesus says I and them and you and me that they may become perfectly 01 so that the world may know that you have sent me and love them even as you loved me and loved them, even as you love me. He wants the world to know John 13. This is back a couple chapters. He says, by this, all people will know that you are my disciples. If you have love for one another, our unity. It's what brings us to Christ.

This is what brought me to faith. As a young teenager, I started going to church just because well, honestly, there was like a girl that I was interested in at the church and I she, she she didn't care that I was interested in her. That was not something that continued. But I, they asked me to go to camp that summer and I went to like a, a Christian camp. And I just remember I driving down to the camp being, I don't know about this whole God thing. And then there was one night at the camp, I looked around and I see people hugging and crying. It was one of those emotional youth camps, you know, you laugh, I guess you've experienced it.

And, and just being like, man, people really seem to love each other, you know, and youth group isn't perfect for sure. There's lots of backbiting and bad stuff that happens and, you know, we're humans. But I was just amazed at the love that people had for one another. And it brought me in. I said, you know, I think I do believe in God. I think that this is an amazing thing that I get to experience today. And basically, what I'm saying is this, that your gospel culture proves your gospel doctrine, your gospel culture proves your gospel doctrine, that the way that you live out, your faith proves that your faith is real and that we want this culture of love and safety and time in our church and commitment that communicates what we believe about the gospel.

I wanna, I wanna end with this encouragement as Jesus, just pray for us. OK? As we go and live these things out. I want you to dive into each one. If you've been around the city on a hill network for a little while, you'll know that the three things that we emphasize as a network we don't, our, our core values here just to be really clear, are sound doctrine, multi ethnicity and gospel culture, which I think you're getting in all in the sermon through and through.

But for the, the network, the things that we always talk about our gospel community and mission and you can just say glorify, unify, multiply is what Jesus is all about. That's what we're all about and that's what he's praying and that's what He seeks. And we need to take steps into experiencing the glory of God. Take steps into experiencing the unity that we can share and take steps into a multiplying and sharing that love with others. That's, that's very practical. Those are the three things that we're doing.

But I just wanna end with this encouragement that Jesus prays because look at what he says in verse 24. So amazing father, I desire that they also whom you've given me may be with me where I am to see my, my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Friends in jesus'. Last hours. He is praying for you Christian brothers and sisters. And what is he praying for you that you might be drawn near Jesus doesn't look at you with disgust. We often times think of Jesus as almost like a, a young child reaching out to touch a slug. But think about him teach touching us in that way.

But that is not the way that Jesus looks at us. He looks at us with open arms and he desires for us to be near. He wants you to come closer to him. He loves you very simple. Not because you've done anything. In fact, that's why he came because you can't do it yourself. He had to do it for you, but he wants you to be near. If you hear nothing else. Hear this today, Jesus is not trying to get rid of you. Don't we live our lives so often? Feeling that and we're just inconvenience Jesus. I'm sorry to bother you with this one. No, he wants you to draw near. In fact, it's the deepest desire of his heart. That's what he prays as he's on his way to the cross. That's why he's doing these things. I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am. I want to be with them. God, I want to be with them. Father, bring them with me where I am, where you are to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

He wants to share these things with us. This is our savior, not stingy but deeply filled with compassion, not feeling revulsion from us, but feeling a godly draw towards us and wanting to draw us near. Would you draw near to him this morning? Would you seek him in wherever you are and see that he doesn't want to push you away. Some of you that might mean turning from some of the things that you've been doing that's been pursuing selfishness and turning to him for others. It might mean, I don't know what it means, but I would love to pray with you. I would love to see you turn to him, draw near to him today and after the service today, we'll have some, some prayer counselors in the back during the communion meal that you can pray with, they'll come up here after the service and pray with you. If you want to pray with someone, how do I draw near to Jesus today?

We're going to turn now. And one way that we do that is through a communion meal. Jesus instituted this meal as one of the ways that we sacredly draw near to him. And each week we participate in a communion meal where we take of the bo the, the bread which is the represents the body of Christ that was broken for us. And we take of the, the juice or the wine which represents the blood of Christ, which was shed for us.

And Jesus instituted this on this sacred evening before he was betrayed and we do this in remembrance of him and he's really with us in a powerful way as we do this. And so if you are a believer here today, we'd invite you to come and receive this meal and allow it to be something that connects you to God even in this moment, as we prepare our hearts to respond to Jesus, would you stand with me as we pray? And we seek the Lord in this.

Father, we, we pray that you would draw near to us that we would experience your grace an new time and time again, day in and day out, that we would be drawn up with you, that we might experience unity with you that might bring us to unity with one another. God, we pray that you enlighten our affections and help us to really show love to one another. God just, we pray that our church might be a place where love is, is captured.

We pray for those who might not feel loved here this morning. God, would you just captivate them in your love? And God would you have someone greet them with a warm smile? And uh how are you doing after church today? That they might not feel alone, that they might feel loved by you. And God, we pray that as we take this meal, that you would be delighted in us and that we would do whatever it takes to enjoy fellowship with you. In Christ's name we pray, amen.

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Ministry Associate Calvin Chu preaches from John 16:5-33 about Jesus’s teaching about joy and sorrow. Discussion points: Jesus acknowledges that the disciples are going to experience pain and sorrow when he leaves them; good theology isn’t always what people need to hear while they are in a hard time, know the promise that Jesus will return to make our joy complete and lasting.

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Scripture reader: [John 16:5-33] But now I am going to him who sent me and none of you asked me, where are you going? But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away for. If I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment, concerning sin because they do not believe in me concerning righteousness because I go to the father and you will see me no longer concerning judgment because the ruler of this world is judged.

I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them. Now, when the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth for he will not speak on his own authority. Whatever he hears, he will speak and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me for, he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the father has is mine. And therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you a little while and you will see me no longer and again, a little while and you will see me.

So some of the disciples said to one another, what is this that he says to us a little while and you will not see me and again a little while and you will see me and because I am going to the father. So they were saying, what does he mean by a little while? We do not know what he is talking about. Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him. So he said to them, is this what you are asking yourselves? What I meant by saying a little while and you will not see me and again a little while and you will see me. Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful. But your sorrow will turn into joy.

When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come. But when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish for joy that a human being has been born, born into the world. So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice and no one will take your joy from you. In that day, you will ask nothing of me.

Truly, truly. I say to you whatever you ask of the father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now. You have asked nothing in my name, ask and you will receive that. Your joy may be full. I have said these things to you in figures of speech, the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech, but will tell you plainly about the father. And that day you will ask in my name. And I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf for the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.

I came from the father and have come into the world. And now I am leaving the world and going to the Father. His disciples said, ah now you are speaking plainly and not using figurative speech. Now, we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you. This is why we believe that you came from God. Jesus answered them. Do you now believe behold, the hour is coming. Indeed, it has come when you will be scattered each to his own home and will leave me alone yet I am not alone for the father is with me. I have said these things to you that in me, you may have peace in the world. You will have tribulation but take heart, I have overcome the world.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: Good morning, everyone. It's good to be here this morning to share God's word with you. So a little bit about me, I didn't grow up in a Christian home. So, you know, when I was teenagers, when I came to, to know Jesus and know the Lord and began to just be introduced to like the world of Christianity. You know, I grew up in like a traditional Chinese home where there was a lot of sort of like ancestor worship. And so like, religion really wasn't like a part of, of like what we did.

But the thing that's really interesting is that even though I didn't grow up in a Christian home, my mo I did hear the name Jesus very often in my life one, you know, stubbing my toe, you hear, oh the Lord's name. But also the only thing that's really interesting is my mom. So I was the type of kid that always be negotiating with my parents. Like I wanted this thing and then I would try to talk to them. And then my mom, she would always go in, in Cantonese. She was like, don't talk to Jesus to me.

Like, basically, it's this idea of like, don't evangelize to me, don't, don't argue with me. And those, what was really interesting is that in like years and years and years later in thinking about that, I realized that there was a like logical aspect that was tied to the idea of Christianity, right? So my mom is like, don't argue with me, don't give me these logical arguments. Don't, don't, don't, don't use your words to try to convince me. And, and I think that that stuck with me because my experience in Christianity has very much been wrapped up in like logic and like, understanding what I know and what I think.

And I always felt like a bit of an impostor, you know, when I started going to church because I didn't grow up in church. So I didn't have all like the Sunday schools and the V Bs s and I didn't have like a children's Bible that like, I learned all the stories where, you know, so when I was in Sunday school and as a teen there, someone would ask the question and I was like, II, I don't know, I don't know what's the answer. But then like a room full of other kids been like, oh, I know, I know, I know answers Jesus, you know, that, that sort of thing. And, and, and and in, in hindsight now I realize that like, oh, that they probably were just guessing.

But, but, you know, I think there is a difference though, you know, there's a difference but we live in this especially like in the kind of evangelical circles that I think we may, maybe a lot of us sort of go through is we definitely rely on this logic part of it. But he also felt like an impostor because, in my, my faith upbringing, it was, especially because it leans so much into the aca academia or, or like the thought process when I would go into spaces that were like a little bit more emotional, maybe more like charismatic. I, I didn't have that either. You know what I mean? Like, I, I wasn't, I didn't have that sort of like expression that became very natural to a lot of my friends who grew up in that sort of environment.

And so here I am in the middle, I have not enough like theology to be able to express like ideas and then neither do I have enough like emotional understanding. And here I am so this, this middle child trying to navigate my, my faith. And what I think is interesting is that when you're in this middle place, when hard things happen, when struggles come, when, when you reach this point of sorrow, you are sort of stuck, you don't know which to lean into. You don't have enough theology to be able to logic your way out of that. But neither do you have enough emotional understanding to be able to, to pull yourself up, to lean into joy, to lean into you know, feeling, just appreciation for, for who God is and the, the, the heart, the happiness that you've experienced previously.

And I find that I find that I'm not alone in that. I find that a lot of folks that I've, I've interacted with, they also feel it. So I don't think it's exclusive to those who came to Christ later in life. in the teenage years is not later in life. So II, I forget that I'm I'm old now. But but thankfully, I think what we see in our passage today is really a deeper understanding of the work of Christ that bridges that gap, that really helps us understand the importance of both of those things. And I think in particular, in the moments where we feel despair in the moments that we feel a deep sense of sorrow.

And so I'm gonna pray for us and then we're gonna dive into the passage a little bit here. So let's pray, Father God. I just indeed, I thank you for your word because in your word, we can find these truths, we can find these truths that do require a bit of thinking, do require logic, but also require an emotional understanding, require a sensitivity to your leading through the spirit. And so God, we just pray that your spirit would lead us. Now as we look at your word. Indeed, God, please get me out of the way and let your spirit speak, your words, speak to us this morning. As we continue to look at this passage, I pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.

So our this morning, our passage picks up that Jesus is continuing. And what we've sort of discussed is the upper discourse where we left off and, and basically, Jesus is now telling his disciples again that he is going to get ready to be leaving and on the surface when we read it, it sort of feels like, wait, what's, what's the big deal like you're gonna leave and then you're gonna come back if you kind of read it outside of the context of the entirety of the gospel of John. So and, and I think actually the the disciples sort of feel similar. They don't exactly understand we've already said, but I'll look at it again.

Verse 16 says a little while and you will see me no longer and again, a little while you'll see me. So some of the disciples said to him, what is this that he says to us a little while and you will not see me and again, a little while you will see me because I'm going to the father. So they were saying, what does he mean by a little while? We do not know what he is talking about. So there's a bit of confusion here, right? But Jesus knowing that he, they're gonna have this question says this in 19, Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him.

So he said to them, is this what you're asking yourselves? What I meant by saying a little while, you will not see me and again, a little while you will see me so verbose. But you know, verse verse 20 says, truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice, you'll be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. And so I think what's interesting here is that what Jesus does is he sort of says, I, I understand the logic part of you is not, is not connecting here.

And what's interesting is that this is not the first time he's talked about this. He's actually mentioned this a bunch of times, like if you look through the, even, even within the upper discourse, he, he said it a couple of times. But if you look up through different passages, Jesus has sort of foretold this change that he, he will die and he will come back again. He's sort of speaking in, in like in like metaphor because they don't understand it. He talks about that in a little bit.

But here, what's really interesting is that he goes to this analogy of labor like giving birth. And so, you know, I know not everyone here has, has given birth, but I think we all generally understand that like pushing a baby out of our body is like a painful experience, like, generally, like, you know, I think we can all sort of agree to that. I don't, I don't think that's gonna be something that most people will, will debate online. And so it's really interesting that he uses this as an analogy because what he's saying is the world, this new reality is going to be coming about, like, what's going to happen, the pain that you will feel as the disciples because of what's happening is going to give birth to a new reality, right?

And so he says here when a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because of her hours come. But when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish for joy that a human being has been born into the world. Verse 22. So also you will have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice and no one will take your joy from you. And in that verse 22 is really interesting because if you kind of break it down, he does both appeal to the disciples emotional state, but also their they're sort of like their theology, their thinking, alright.

He says you will have sorrow now, but I will see you again. So you'll have so you'll feel when this pain comes, when I leave you. When I'm gone in a little while, you will feel the sorrow, the sadness, but I will see you again, know in your mind that when you're here in the sorrow, I will see you again. It's important for you to know that because what you know can affect how you feel. And when you see me again, it goes to the emotion again, your hearts will rejoice, right? And no one will take your joy from you, right? You have the sorrow, the sorrow is temporary because when I come back, that will go away. No, I'm coming back, that will go away. You will be here and then know that this joy will be here. You can rejoice and then know it's not going anywhere, it's gonna remain with you because of how this new reality that's being born through the pain of him leaving and coming back. And so I think it's so important for us to really understand that we need both of those things.

The the I was thinking about this and on November 1st a few years ago, I got a call from my friend. He was distraught and he was telling me he just got off the phone with the authorities in a foreign country. And what happened was that they told him that his brother had been in a car accident. His brother was traveling for his birthday with a friend and his friend, his friend who was with him in the car, he di he died, he died instantly. and, but he, his, his my friend's brother was, is, is in the hospital in critical condition.

Obviously, my friend is like a mix of emotions. He, he's upset, he's worried, he's hopeful, right? Like he, he's like, maybe, maybe my brother will, will make it out because, you know, when you're sort of in this life support stage, he's like, may, maybe he'll make it out. And so he's, he's a mix of all his emotions. And we, we talk through the logistics of like, he's like, I, I gotta get over to the other side of the world because I, I wanna be there with him. And then sort of talking through the logistics of like, what is, what is life support? What does that mean? I'm not a doctor. So we, we went and we talked to some friends who could kind of feed us some information about what that all means, what the, what the doctors were saying over there.

And then on November 3rd, my brother's friend passed away. his 24th birthday was November 8th, so he didn't even make it to his 24th birthday. And over the next few months, I walked with him through his pain and emotions, all the if only I had or all the if what if this had happened? And I remember on one occasion, I, I remember talking to him through his deep feeling of sorrow. And I remember responding to him saying Jesus will provide the strength to get through this season and you will be stronger from it.

And at the time, it felt like, oh, this is like, this is like theologically true. This is like a good bit of like theology, right? This, this will, will speak to him. And I remember years later, he, he had told me and not like an angry, we're still good friends because it was not like an angry sort of piece. But he's remember, he remember me sharing with me, he's like, you know, when you shared that with me, it actually didn't really comfort me because he said that he, he appreciated me trying. But he, he said that what pained him was that he would have traded all the learning and strength and growing that he had if he could have his little brother back.

And to me that taught me a lesson in that day that theologically what I said was true. Absolutely. And that's not saying that that's a bad thing, but there was an element that he just wanted to me to speak to or address the emotional state and where he was. And so I think that what we need in these situations are more than just Jesus loves me. This I know for the Bible tells me. So that's good, that's good theology. And for some of that, that is the right thing to hear at the right time.

But sometimes we need a deeper than surface level understanding of the gospel to speak through these moments where we have this deep dread and sorrow. When our family members are sick, when our relationships with our, our, our, our, our siblings, our Children, our spouses, our partners are just falling apart around us. When the it seems like nothing is going right in our lives.

We do need good theology. We definitely do. But I think we also need to understand that there is an emotional part of us that needs to be addressed. And here's the beautiful thing. We have a savior who is aware of that in his preparation of the disciples. He does not just say this is what you need to know. I'm going away for a while, I will return and then he and then he goes, he says to him, I am going away. I will die. You will feel sad, you will feel sorrow, but I will return and you will rejoice that to me is an incredible reality that our savior is not unaware that we need to be whole holistic people having right theology, but also needing to be fed and nurtured emotionally.

And so if you've been a part of a church community or Christian community long enough, then you've probably heard or said these words to someone who's struggling. God is in control. God works in mysterious ways. We cannot know the mind of God again, those are all true. Theologically solid statements, but they're also very one sided, they're also incomplete. And I, I love the fact that Jesus says to his disciples, he basically preemptively validates their feelings. It's ok to feel that sorrow. It's ok.

But know what you need to know, know the promises that I've given to you and in the moment that you are there, be there, I'm ok with you being there, but don't stay there, know that I've made promises to, you know that I'm, I've, I've made theological statements that will help nudge you along. And so I think at the end of the day, what Jesus does on the cross, which he's, he's sort of foretelling to his disciples once again, is that his death and resurrection, which he is, is pointing when he says I'm going away and I'm coming back, he points to his death and resurrection to, to his disciples.

He's like my death and resurrection will do more than just get us a ticket to heaven, which I think the sort of beginning level of understanding of the gospel is that so that's not untrue, but what it does for us is what he's been trying to get the disciples to understand for at least three chapters. So I want to read some just so you understand that there's a line of logic that continues John 1418 and 20 says, I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you yet. A little while and the world will see me no more. But you will see me because I live, you will also live in that day. You will know that I am in my father and you and me and I and you 1425 to 27. These things I've spoken to you while I'm still with you. But the helper, the Holy spirit whom the father will send in my name will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance. All that I said to you. Peace. I leave with you my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives. Do I give it to you? Let not your hearts be troubled. Neither let them be afraid.

16, 4 to 7. But I have said these things to you that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told them to you. I did not say these things to you from the beginning because I was with you. But now I'm going to him who sent me and none of you asked me, where are you going? But because I've said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away for. If I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.

My last chunk that I want to read for you guys. Here is 1612 to 15, I still have many things to say to you, but I cannot bear them. Now, when the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth for. He will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak and he will declare to you the things that are to come, he will glorify me for. He will take what is mine and declare it to you all that the Father has his mind. Therefore, I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

What we see here. And even in, in the, the passage that we we've already read for for this morning is that jesus' death and resurrection does not just give us this ticket to heaven that we get to get go into the amusement park of, of, of eternal life and they get to all the sadness goes away. But that is true. But it, it, it makes a difference for us today. And what jesus' death and resurrection wins us is access and proximity to God that the world had not pre had previously had access to. It was previously impossible.

When you look at all the passages that I just read, we see that he says that he mentions the father. And every time he mentions the Father, he basically says, you can make these requests when I go away. And when I come back, when I die, and when I come back from the, the the dead. You will have access to ask directly to the father through me. In my name, you can pray directly to the father and ask him for anything. It says this in the passage that we said this morning, in that day, you will ask in my name. And I do not say to you that I will ask the father on your behalf for the father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God, I came from the Father and have come into the world. And now I'm leaving the world and going to the Father.

It was what Jesus did. We now have access to the father. And this is something in like the post resurrection period that we just sort of, yeah, of course, we can pray to the father and we trust that the father will hear us. But that was necessary. jesus' death was necessary for us to be able to do that if that doesn't happen. If Jesus doesn't go away and then come back. We don't have access. We still have to go through an intermediary. We still have to probably do the, the sacrificial system and hope and pray that the father will hear us.

But because of the death and resurrection of Christ, we can now in the seat we're sitting in, we could be wearing pajama pajama pants, we could be half asleep. It could be 6 a.m. It could be 4 p.m. It does not matter. We have direct access to the father because of, of the work of Christ and my friends that should cause us to rejoice, that theology should cause us to rejoice that rejoicing should feed our theology. But wait, there's more as if I was an infomercial person because he also mentions the helper, the Holy Spirit because of the work of Jesus, of him, going away, dying and coming back from the grave was showing as a sign that his sacrifice was worthy and acceptable. We have the helper and every single time he mentions the helper, the Holy Spirit, he says that we, we have access to the Father.

If he mentions the Holy Spirit, he talks about how the Holy Spirit will help us understand. I'm just gonna read a bunch of passages or two passages in particular. So that did you see that this is coming from the text? 1425 to 27, These things I've spoken to you while I'm still with you. But the helper, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send mine in will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance, all that I have said to you. I was 1612. I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them. Now, when the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth and he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak and he will declare it to you the things that are to come see.

I think it's easy to sort of like dunk on the, the disciples. You're like, how could you not, how could you not three chapters? Like you still don't get it. Like what is wrong with you guys? And I think sometimes we think about this and we, I, I, when I was younger, I was like, oh, well, if I was with Jesus, if I was walking around Jesus, these are these miracles, I would never doubt, I would never ever doubt if I saw like the like how many extra loaves, how many extra fish? But that what like my, like my faith would be rock solid. I would never doubt. And he, he, he's saying it very plainly. He says he's gonna go away, he's gonna come back duh, the death and resurrection, obviously.

But the thing is we have the benefit of this post resurrection life that the spirit has descended on us, the spirit who gives us all understanding. And so that's why we can understand. That's why we can look back and go. Oh I see. Because of jesus' death and resurrection. We have this access. We can now connect with the father. We can be counseled and taught and reminded and prompted and nudged by the spirit. And so if you are in a place like the Jesus was talking about the disciples. We're going to be in this deep sense of sorrow and dread and helplessness and hopelessness. Know that you are not alone.

See the reason that we can have access to the Father and to the Holy Spirit is because Jesus has been connected, he has been one with them forever, in eternity, past into eternity, future. And so when he does that, and he says in my name, you will have access, you will have access, you, you, your, your, your name is on the list. You can go into the, the VIP section. But it's so hard because sometimes we feel like we're in the middle. And in fact, a lot of times when we read verse the la the last two verses, it can actually cause like a sense of like guilt or pain and says this 32 behold, the hour is coming. Indeed, it has come when you will be scattered each to his own home and will leave me alone yet I am not alone for the father is with me. I've said these things to you that in me, you may have peace in the world. You will have tribulation but take heart. I have overcome the world.

This, this verse, the last verse can bring a lot of comfort and, and hopefully it does. But the truth is especially when we're in moments of pain. We go, what is happening? Why am I wh wh why is this happening to me? And even that question, why it tells me that it's using my logic. I'm, I'm thinking, what is it that I know? What am I missing in my understanding? And a lot of times when we think about this, we, we feel like this verse means that life will be trouble free. If I'm, if I'm truly a Christian, then my life would be easy. I wouldn't be struggling. And so maybe I don't have the faith, maybe it's me, maybe I'm the problem or sometimes people think, well, I if, if I truly was one with God, if, if I truly was a believer in Jesus, then whatever troubles I had, it would go quickly. I mean, it, it says that Jesus has overcome the world. So like, shouldn't these things be over quickly? Why is it still, why am I still in that place or the other thing that we could feel from this passage?

This is the last verses. Well, if I were truly a believer, then I would be unaffected. Like why am I complaining about the there is a small thing in my life when Jesus conquered sin, like, shouldn't I have a better perspective on life? Shouldn't I be, shouldn't this alone encourage me? But what it means that Jesus has overcome the world is that difficulties are part of life. And he literally says it in this verse, in the world, you will have tribulation.

And for some of us, I think we need to like just not even read the second part yet in this world, in the world, you will have tribulation. You sitting in the seats will have tribulation. That is part of the normal, broken already, but not yet. Jesus has come once, but we're waiting for him to come back again. It's reality, you will have tribulation. There's nothing wrong with you necessarily if you are in a bad place, but take heart, I have overcome the world.

Jesus is saying that his peace can sustain us through these hard times. Jesus himself experienced sorrow and anguish. His promise of peace is not that we will not have struggles or that it won't affect us. It just means that he will be with us through them and that he has equipped us with proximity to the father, the one whom we can ask for anything and we know that he will hear us. He may not give it to us in the way that we want or the way that we're specifically asking, but we have access, which is previously impossible and we not only that we have access to the Holy Spirit who dwells within us to come for us, to encourage us, to bring to remembrance truth that can speak to our emotions, speak to our heart.

And so hopefully, my friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, I hope encourages you to indeed take heart knowing that his victory is our source of peace. And so as we prepare for communion, I really want us to reflect on that. You know, maybe before you take the elements, you just, you read the first part in the world, there will be tribulation, there will be troubles, there will be sorrow, search your heart. Is that where you are? And what is that doing for your, your, your relationship with him? What is that doing for your relationship with others? Is your denial of that getting in the way of understanding what Jesus has told you and maybe you are there you go. No, I know like some of you are like, I know I'm in a hard place. And so maybe for, for those of you who are there, then you read the other part, take heart and overcome the world.

On the night that Jesus was betrayed. Jesus took the bread and broke it, saying this is my body broken for you and they took the cup and said this is my blood shed for you, do this in remembrance of me. So each week we participate in the sacred meal reminded by Jesus sacrifice, reminding us of jesus' sacrifice. and his his presence with us. Let me pray for communion and let me pray for us as we prepare for that.

Father God, I know that for me, I need encouragement. I know that there are times this week, there are times this month, there are times this year that I have felt, the weightiness of despair, the weightiness of sorrow and God, I, I admit that I've leaned too much on one over the other. I've leaned too much in terms of my emotion. I've leaned too much in terms of what I know. And God, I just, I just thank you. It brings you so much comfort to know that we have a savior who tells us to be aware of both. And so, as we're prepared to take the, the communion meal this morning, I pray that you would move us, prompt us. Your Holy Spirit would do what he does and to point us to you and point us to where you want us to go and we thank you that you hear our prayers and pray all in Jesus name, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from John 15:18-16:4 about Jesus's warnings to the disciples about persecution. Discussion points: Persecution helps us to trust Christ more; if we are living like Christ we will receive a mixture of responses from the world, where some will hate us and some will love us; if we live for the approval of others we can die by the opinion of others.

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Scripture reader: [John 15:18-16:4] If the world hates, you know that it has hated me before, it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world. Therefore, the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, a servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name because they do not know him who sent me.

If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin. But now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my father also, if I had not done among them, the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. But now they have seen and hated both me and my father. But the word that is written in their law must be fulfilled. They hated me without a cause. But when the helper comes whom I will send to you from the Father, the spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father. He will bear witness about me and you also will bear witness because you have been with me from the beginning.

I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think He is offering service to God And they will do these things because they have not known the father nor me. But I have said these things to you that when their hour comes, you may remember that I told them to you.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: It seems like the year 2015 was a much simpler time or at least people were less angry. But if you could jump in a time machine, you would find that 2015 people weren't less angry. They were just angry at far stupider things than we are today. I don't know who remembers. I don't know if you're old enough to remember, but I don't know who remembers the great persecution of the Red Starbucks cups of 2015. This was, this was a massive movement for Christians. We were just really hurt about Starbucks changing their branding to the cups being colored all red without any decoration on it. It was all over all of the news sources that Starbucks hates Christians. Starbucks hates Jesus.

A real life tweet. Hear this a real life tweet. "Starbucks removed Christmas from their cups because they hate Jesus." This was all the rage in 2015. The simpler times we used to live in. Never mind the fact that they still had a Christmas blend coffee. They still sold Merry Christmas gift cards, France. This was not persecution. This was people who were experiencing a secularizing America looking for persecution everywhere. And I think that we have to be careful because much of what Americans call persecution does not compare with what the world historically and what the world modernly experiences as persecution.

What followers of Jesus are experiencing as persecution even to this day, Jesus says in his passage, John 16 verse one, he says, I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away. Jesus wants us to know and to be warned that persecution awaits all Christians. This is something that happens all the time. Throughout the the Bible. We see the Bible talking about persecution. Jesus doesn't want his disciples to be caught off guard. He knows that if they're caught off guard, it might cause them to lose faith. And so he's preparing them.

So Americans, we might have some made up controversies such as the Starbucks Cup. I've also seen some Americans be a jerk and then receive criticism for being a jerk and then call it persecution because of their faith. I don't know if you've ever experienced this before, but it's like, hey, that's not because you're a Christian. That's because you're a jerk or it's because you, you don't have any social intelligence whatsoever. And you are just being kind of dumb in that moment. And that's not persecution though. What is persecution is being experienced all throughout the world and some in America too. We'll get to that in just a moment.

But let me just explain what persecution has looked like historically, for Christians, the early church was ruthlessly persecuted by Rome until the conversion of Constantine and 312 ad until then, early Christians were afraid to let people into their churches until they were sure that they were following Christ. Because what would happen is people would come into the churches, they would look around, take note of everyone there and then they would go slaughter them or put them in prison. And so what the early church had to do before they would let someone come to the worship gathering, they would make them sit through two years or three years of catechismal classes to make sure that they were serious about this following Jesus, serious about their faith before they were able to come into the church. They wanted to make sure that people understood who Jesus was because it was going to risk everything if they didn't.

Many of the men who are sharing this meal with Jesus in the upper room that we're reading the story from, they were martyred for their faith. They would lose their lives for following Jesus. Even today. There are plenty of nations where persecution is still occurring. We've heard stories about these things but they are true and they're still happening in Somalia. You can be, you can be killed by your own family for converting from Islam to Christianity. In Iran. Believers risk everything to even own a Bible. Yet the stories, the whispers from the mission field is that the message of Jesus is moving forward in Iran more quickly than in most places of the world.

In China, Unregistered Christians are subject to severe punishment. Our church supports missionaries in a country that we can't even name because it would be putting them at too much risk if we were to name the country that these, that these missionaries are in. I've heard stories of Christians in China who would pray for persecution to come to America. Now. That sounds a bit crazy. I'm like, hey, please stop those prayers. I'm good. But why would they pray that? Is it because they hate us? No, it's because they know something that we don't know that comfort never leads to greater satisfaction in Christ. That as we have more and more comfort in the things of this world, we're less and less pushed to find our comfort and joy in Christ. And so they know that persecution actually Stokes faith, it helps us to trust in Christ more.

So let me ask you a question this morning as we listen to jesus' words on persecution. And we think about the persecuted church throughout the world and what they're experiencing. If going to church were risking your life, would you make it a priority? That's a, that's a tough question for us. It's like some of you are like, well, I barely made it here this morning. So it was risking me sleeping another hour. I'm not sure. I appreciate that. I appreciate that you were you, you, you gave up the extra hour. But if it meant giving up your, your life, because that's the reality for many believers throughout the world and throughout history that that is the risk that they were willing to run as Christians. Jesus tells us to expect persecution and while we have it pretty good in this country, ok? All things considered America, very safe place to worship. Jesus built on the foundation of, of religious freedom. This is my Memorial day, America's awesome speech here. OK?

It's a great place to be a Christian in many, many ways. We have the freedom to, to worship as we choose here. It doesn't negate the fact that Christians even in America should expect some form of persecution because when Jesus talks about persecution, well, you have to think about what persecution, isn't it? It, it's somewhere between these two extremes. OK? not, it's definitely losing your life for the gospel and it's definitely not Starbucks Cups. Ok. So it's somewhere in between. There, we have a line that goes from not persecution or persecution.

But where I'm going to draw that line is to say that persecution is this resistance that we experience to our faith. Any resistance to your faith, resistance to your beliefs, whether those be pretty subtle, because that is often the case in America that it's a resi a subtle resistance to our faith. But resistance to our faith from the outside world is what we're talking about today. Persecution.

There's often a social cost to being a Christian. You all understand this cost better than I, I'm not sure about that but, you know, I never get past the first conversation with someone without them knowing. I'm a Christian because it's like, hi, my name is Fletcher. Oh, what do you do? I'm a pastor. Would you like to talk about Jesus? No. Ok. Socially awkward moment. You know, and then they either, you know, I've, I've experienced this very subtly. It's like I used to be in a running club and we would get past that first conversation and then all of a sudden they'd be running a little bit faster than me. And it's like, ok, whatever, you know, I'll try to find someone that wants to talk to me. We don't have to talk about Jesus.

There are a lot of things that we believe as Christians that are out of step with society on the left, what we believe about gender and sexuality puts us out of step with society on the right. What we believe about caring for immigrants and refugees and all of that sort of thing puts us out of step with society and we can just go on with list after list. There's not a political party that fits Christianity. We're out of step with the current environment of the United States. It is true. And so you should experience a little bit of pushback if you do not receive any resistance to your faith. It's probably because you're still in the faith closet, so to speak because you should expect a little bit.

Jesus tells us, you know, some of us like to think of ourselves as undercover agents for God. It's like we're gonna get in there, we're gonna infiltrate the ranks, we're gonna let them know how cool we are and that Christians can have fun. And then before you know it, you're not an undercover agent for God anymore, but rather you've just assimilated to the world. And so you either live in this Christian bubble where you don't know anyone in the world is like church is my life. I only hang out with church people or you've assimilated into it or you're experiencing some subtle resistance or some outright resistance at times to your faith.

Jesus tells us to expect all this. Second Timothy chapter three, indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Jesus Christ will be persecuted. And so church look, we live in Somerville, highly secularized area. I know that many of you have experienced resistance for your faith. And I just want you to hear jesus' message to the disciples today. He wants you to hear this. If you've experienced this, keep going, you got it, You got this. All right. He wants you to expect it. And to know that he is with you, persist, persist church. Keep going. Don't let it get you down. But know that he is delighted, know that it is an honor to suffer in the same way that he suffered.

Jesus himself, most loving man who's ever walked the earth. Very few people would debate that was hated, despised and who is he despised by the religious leaders. He was despised by those who should have recognized who he was. But yet he was still hated. And when we are hated, on account of him, we are sharing in his sufferings. And so church keep going. The world hated Jesus. You better believe it's going to hate his followers.

Verse 20 Jesus says this, remember the word I said to you, remember this church, a servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. And so I have two questions for us as we consider Jesus as teaching on persecution for us today in a modern age. And it's this who's doing this persecuting and how do we deal with it? Who's doing it today? How does it work? And, and, and how do we persist through persecution? All right. So let's dive in who's persecuting Christians verse 18. If the world hates you, Jesus says know that it has hated me before, it hated you.

So when Jesus is talking about this, he's, he's using the term the world. Now, when we hear the term the world, we tend to think differently about that word than they did in an ancient society. Ancient Hebrew literature often would use extremes to describe things that they don't actually mean as extremes. So when Jesus says the world, he's not talking about every single person in the world. Ok? We have to get that out of our mind here. He's, he's talking about a mindset, a generality of the way that the world lives and thinks to Jesus, this word world is a Greek word for cosmos.

And to Jesus, he has two ideas of the world. He has this idea of the world is something that all people live for. They live for the pursuit of the things of this world. It's a materialism in this world. And on the other side, Jesus is coming to declare a gospel of his kingdom. And so you have these two kingdoms, you have the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of heaven. And Jesus wants us to live for the kingdom of heaven. D A Carson defines the world as Jesus uses it as the created moral order, an act of rebellion against God.

This is described in second Corinthians chapter two. OK. So let's look at second Corinthians chapter two before we move on. What I want to point out here is when he says the world, he's not talking about every single person in the world, but instead he's talking about people in the world. people that follow the world's mindset are going to be persecuting. Second Corinthians chapter two describes who is actually those people because Jesus says in chapter two verse 15, for we are the aroma of Christ to among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing to one, a fragrance from death to death to the other, a fragrance from life to life who is sufficient for these things for. We are not like so many peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God in the sight of God, we speak Christ.

So what he's saying is that as Christians, we are the fragrance of Christ everywhere we go, some people are gonna think that fragrance is really stinky, repugnant death. Other people are gonna hear and smell that fragrance of Christ and they're gonna say that sounds awesome. And so if you are living your faith in such a way to where everyone you talk with thinks it smells like death. You are living it wrong because the fragrance of Christ is beautiful to, to those that God is giving the eyes to see and ears to hear.

But if you're living out the fragrance of, of Christ, you all should, should expect that some are gonna find that quite disgusting to be around. That's what Jesus prepares us for. That's what the word says. Why do some people hate the message of Jesus? Why do they find his message to smell like death? I think he tells us, he tells us in verse 25 but the word that is written in their law must be fulfilled. They hated me without cause it's, it's without cause I mean, what is there to hate about Jesus? You know, you look at the guy, he's like friend of sinners, loving people, touching the lepers. I mean, there's nothing to hate about this guy, but he goes on a little bit more and he kind of explains why they actually hate and and John chapter seven.

So back a few chapters, he says the world hates me because I testify that its works are evil. I testify that its works are evil. Jesus is confrontational. Ok, Jesus, we like to, we like to think about Jesus in different ways. But oftentimes we describe Jesus almost like a big teddy bear as someone that we love and we receive love from. But Jesus oftentimes is confronting people, he is never afraid to let people walk away from the faith. He'll come to, someone will come to be. How do I follow you? How do I, how can I inherit the kingdom of heaven? How can I be a disciple of Jesus? And he gives them the radical directions and he is not running chasing after them saying like, oh no, sorry, I'll weaken it for you a little bit. No, Jesus is not afraid to be a little controversial. He's not afraid to challenge people to really put it out there.

Jesus has this wonderful way of being offensive and confrontational while at the same time being gentle and lovely, he is both strong and gentle. And so when we move from the from living for the kingdom of this world to living for the kingdom of Heaven, there are some people who are gonna look at us and say you've switched teams, the world hates us because we've left their tribe. We no longer live for the same things that they live for. We live for a new and different purpose. We've joined the kingdom of Heaven and now we testify that the way that we used to live is evil that we don't live for that anymore. We live for God now and so we testified that their works are evil and, and we also have this humility that it's not like we're better than them. It's because Jesus has saved us and we, we want the, we want Jesus to save them also.

So Christians, they shouldn't, we shouldn't be walking into this saying I'm better than you. I found a new way to live. We should say, hey, here's good news for you too. In this message. Unfortunately, those who hate true Christians the most are often those who hated Jesus the most. It's usually not the secularizing pagans in our society that hate Christians the most. But it is the religious leaders, Jesus is known as the friend of sinners, not the friend of religious people. In fact, he is not a friend of religious people throughout the scriptures.

Very often at all, the great majority of persecution in the world has been committed by religious people, whether that be in the name of Islam or in the name of Yahweh. You see, you see Paul receive the, the 39 lashings, the 40 lashings minus 15 different times. And the reason why he's receiving this, these are a common consequence that's, that's put out by the synagogue to punish someone. And so these are probably consequences of religious leaders being doled out to Paul. Paul is receiving persecution in the name of the God, in which he follows and that he represents.

And these days you can also experience a great deal of persecution in the name of Jesus, that other people who claim to follow Jesus will dole out on those who they see as a breaking step with the way that they're living, the way that they're thinking, we see Christians insulting other Christians and, and ostracizing other Christians.

I, I have a, my, my primary seminary professor was a guy named Russell Moore. And is anybody familiar with Russell Moore? Maybe a few folks. Russell Moore was my primary seminary professor. Then he moved on to being the President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention. Now he's moved on again. And that's what the story is about to the editor in chief of Christianity Today Magazine.

So when he was at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, his job was to inform the people in his denomination about political issues and to inform the US government about what his people believed about political issues. So he took firm stances on issues such as life such as sexuality and marriage, firm stances that would be more conservative in approach. But then when it came 2016, you know, the, the glory days of 2015 being angry about stupider things no more. Once 2016 comes because Donald Trump was running for president and I'm even kind of nervous talking about this. I feel like but I just don't talk about politics like at all. Ok. So this is your first Sunday? I never like bring up politics, but this is just a great example.

Donald Trump was running for president and, and Russell Moore said, what is plain to, to most of us that Donald Trump is not qualified for public service for holding office morally that he is morally unqualified. That's all he said. He didn't say anything about his policies or anything like that. He said this man is morally unqualified for public office. He was quite condemned not by, you know, you would think that it would be the secularized people, the the non-religious people that would say who cares about morals. Let's just elect whoever we want in there. No, it was the same people that used the same argument against Bill Clinton a generation prior saying that this man is morally not qualified for public office that condemned Russell Moore for saying that Donald Trump is morally not qualified for public office, but this is not what lost him his job. Ok.

So this got people angry. He was in hot water, but what lost him? His job is he had become privy to the fact that there were hundreds of sexual abuse cases in his denomination that went unreported and that were covered up and swept under the rug. And so as he started speaking about those things, that's what made the leaders really angry. You see, they will hate you because you testify that their deeds are evil. And as he speaks out, these things men in power saw to it that he would not keep his job at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. So he had to leave.

They hated me because I testified that their deeds are evil. They will put you out of the synagogues. Jesus says, indeed the hour is coming. When whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. Is the religious people often who are persecuting the followers of Christ the most. They mean, well, oftentimes this means that those who persecute Christians think they're actually offering a service to God.

And when you're persecuted from a secular religion, ok? Because really politics has become a religion and there's a secular religion that says this is the way that you live so that people will accept you. And when you're persecuted from that secular religion, they think that they are serving their God in essence, whatever they might call it. They think that they're doing a good thing. They will put you out of the synagogue, they'll kick you out of the club, they'll cancel you, they won't invite you anymore. They'll try to hurt your career or your personal life. And to live a life of faith in Jesus means that this is the risk and Jesus wants us to withstand it and to persist, to persist. All right.

So, so point two, how to deal with persecution. How do we deal with being criticized or ostracized or slightly snubbed for our faith there are a lot of things I could talk about here. I could, I could talk about how you should be encouraged that you face the same persecution that Jesus face. And it means that you're, you're treated the same as they treated Jesus. And that would be a great way to apply this. I could talk about the benefits of suffering and how the Bible tells us that suffering produces good character and a, and a hope in God.

But here's the, the main way I want to apply, apply it to us today because I think it's universally applicable to other things too. Maybe you're not facing much resistance for your faith. But this is something that you need to hear anyways, it's this, if you live for the approval of people, you will die by the approval of people. If you live in what the Bible calls the fear of man, the fear of man can lift you up high and it can bury you in the ground. And if you live in fear of people, when you are criticized for your faith, it will hurt drastically. But this is true in all other areas of life as well.

When I was in college and seminary, I spent my summers working at camps. OK? I loved it. I had a lot of energy back in my twenties and it was a great time. Ok? The, the first camps I worked at were were for a group called Royal Ambassadors. It was like church boy scouts. Ok. anybody familiar with Royal Ambassadors? No. Ok. but we, it was like church boy scouts and you went and you stayed in the, I, I was a counselor and, it was like all my best friends were doing this too. So much fun. We were in each other's weddings and everything but it was fun because it was terrible at the same time. the kids would come, they're all like elementary school age kids, like second grade through sixth grade. And you would be, you would be given a, a cabin with like 20 boys and then you would be responsible for those boys for the entire week. And looking back, I'm like, how did I do that? That sounds insane.

But somehow we made it through and it was joyous and eventually I moved my way up to working at a youth camp that brought their own chaperones and I didn't have to sleep in the same cabin as the kids anymore. Way better, way, way, way better. I did that for a couple of years and then I moved my way into being a camp pastor. so I was preaching at these camps and there would be four or 500 kids, youth age kids at the camps.

And let me tell you when you are a camp pastor, you are a celebrity in that room. It is like, you are just like walking on air, walking on the clouds. You, you sit down at someone's table for lunch, they think Brad Pitt just sat at their table. It is they just have, they glow. It's just, they're nervous about what to say. They're stumbling over their words. It can really lift you up pretty high. So I'm living the dream. Ok.

I, I do this for a couple of years. I'm thinking my career is just going somewhere. I'm gonna be like the next big speaker or something and then thank you for the laugh. So I appreciate that. Bye. Oh, you know, that doesn't bother me at all. and, I get a phone call, you're gonna feel bad about that laugh in just a second. I get a phone call, after two summers of doing this, I'm signed up for the third summer and it's the camp director informing me that they've decided to go a different direction and that I'm not invited anymore to come speak for that summer.

And, I think that I had three stages of grief on the phone with them, you know, like denial at first. Like, no, I'm already signed up. You can't, you can't do that. Like I've, I've got it. Yeah. And then bargaining like, are you sure? Like, what can I do for you? I'll change. I'll do whatever anger start screaming at him. Not really, but II, I felt anger in my heart and then we hung up and the depression hit, you would have thought that I had lost a close family member because something that I loved I cherished had died and it wasn't just getting to preach God's word, but it was the approval and the accolades and the attention that came from it as well. My dream was over. I felt like my career was over.

It took me years to get to that fifth step of acceptance. The next time I preached a sermon, I was just a blubbering mess. I didn't know how to, I was stumbling over all of my words. I lived for the approval of others and I died by the approval of others. When it was taken from me, it died.

So we have to watch, not just how people's opinions are making us feel low, but how are they making us feel high? Because if you're living for the opinion of others, it can eventually backfire on you and take you out. The Bible says that this is a trap that we shouldn't fear what others think of us because we should just live for the audience of one which is God.

Now, it doesn't mean that we can't say encouraging things and it doesn't mean that we shouldn't accept these things as encouragement. When someone encourages you, you can allow it to encourage you but give all glory to God and live for His approval only. And you see how this is applicable to persecution. Because if you are criticized for your faith and you live for the approval of others, it's going to bury you.

But if you live knowing the deep approval that you have in Christ Jesus, that He loves you dearly, that He cares for you. If you are delighting yourself more in God than in the opinion of others, when you lose the approval of others, you will remain steadfast in the approval of God, knowing that He cares for you and that you are good that you have fellowship with Him, that you don't need the approval of man.

The only way to address you can't just say stop caring what other people think that won't work. That never works. OK. Try telling that to a kid that's being bullied, you know, in, in school. Well, I just don't care what they think. Yeah, that doesn't work. You have to, you have to have something to replace that with and it's delight in Christ, delight in the approval that you have received in God. And every time you're criticized or every time you're complimented, you have to go back to that approval that we have in God. Those truths have to become more real to you so that you can delight in them.

If you live by the approval of God of man, you when you are maligned and hated, you will fall away. So here are your choices as a Christian. You either isolate yourself from the world which doesn't sound like following Jesus much. OK. That's the Christian bubble mentality. Many people have done this or you conform to the ways of the world, which is the undercover Christian that really just assimilates into being a part of the gang. Or you are willing to learn and live for the pleasure of God because you'll be crushed.

If you don't do one of the other two things learn and live for the pleasure of God, I encourage you to live in and for the pleasure of God, it will free you from the tyranny of others' opinions and allow you to experience the pleasure of God.

Friends, we can live with that threat and reality of persecution because we know that the worst thing that could ever happen to us has already happened. We can be cast out, we can be canceled, we can even have our bodies killed for our faith. But the worst thing that could happen to us is abandonment from God to receive what we actually deserve, which is the wrath of God for our sins. And that's already happened at, at, at Calvary where Jesus bore the sins of the whole world, the world that hated him. He bore the sins of the world. Same word for he so loved the world that he gave his own life to save us. Because through his crucifixion and resurrection, we have life.

We don't have to fear the worst thing happening to us. It's already happened. Oddly enough, Jesus was condemned by a religious mob. He's canceled, he's crucified. But when we look at his persecution, we recognize that it is the apex, not only of his life. What we always talk about the jewelry we wear, representing that is the cross. It's not only the apex of his life, it's the apex of human history and the people who were persecuting him and killing him, they thought they were offering service to God.

And the funny thing is, ironically, they were quite accurate, but it was not the service that they thought they were serving because they condemned him. He bore the penalty even for their sins because he loved so much. You see, Christianity should eliminate this tribalism thing in us because it says no longer do I condemn you if you're in the other group, but I love my enemies. I let them in just as Jesus loved his enemies and let them in.

So friends, the mobs are still out there for sure. They're not going to disappear. But we have to be a loving, peaceful presence in the face of hatred and well meaning expulsion. And these things are difficult and I'll be praying for you in your days ahead. And Jesus wants us though church to persist. You feel the pressures you live in the world. You know what's ahead of you persist, persist through.

We're going to take a, a time now to respond to God by receiving a sacred meal during the, the communion meal. We will have prayer counselors in the back and then after the service also, the prayer counselors will come up front. And if you'd like to pray with someone, maybe you are experiencing condemnation for your faith, maybe you have family that is in a different part of the world that experiences condemnation for their faith. Maybe you would just like to understand what it means to trust in Christ and receive the delight of God so that you can stop living for the the approval of others. We invite you to receive prayer today on any of those things.

On the night that he was betrayed, Jesus took a loaf of bread and he broke it and he said, this is my body broken for you and he took a cup of, of wine and he said this is my blood shed for you, do this in remembrance of me. And so when we participate in this meal, we were reminded that jesus' body was broken for us. His blood was shed for us and that we are united with Him in the heavenly places. So would you stand as we prepare our hearts to respond to God through song and communion and prayer.

God, we thank you for because your, your mercies never end. They're new every morning. We thank you for this message to, to withstand persecution. God, would you prepare our hearts for those who have never experienced this or who aren't actively experiencing it? God, would you prepare them? Because we know that your scripture says that we will be criticized for our faith, that we will be ostracized at times.

And God would you prepare us all to, to live vocally for you. Would you give us the message? And God, we pray for persecuted Christians, we pray that our hearts would be drawn to pray for them more often, God, we pray for the Christians in other parts of the world who are experiencing life-threatening repercussions to following you. But God, we know that it is worth it and we, we worship a God and that makes that worth it. And God would you help us to see the surpassing worth of knowing you, that we'd be willing to undergo anything to follow you with our whole lives. We ask this in Christ's name, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher continues preaching through the Upper Room Discourse from John 15:1-17 (read for us in Mandarin). Discussion points: We may think of God like a distant CEO who we need to please, God truly enjoys us as friends instead of just tolerating us as servants, enjoying friendship with God means we can be better friends to one another.

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Scripture reader: [John 15:1-17, read in Mandarin. English translation provided in transcript] I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: They applaud her first language. I appreciate it. But it is great. I love having the scripture read in a language such as that, that is like, I don't speak any Mandarin whatsoever. And so it, it feels like if it's French or Spanish or something, it's like similar enough to English to where I can like figure out what's going on. But like, I, I have no idea, but it's just so amazing that the Lord has created the message of Jesus to be for all people, peoples of the world, right? All languages, all tribes, all tongues, something so different to where I have no idea of what's happening.

But yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm actually glad we didn't have this last couple of verses because I was like, I'm just gonna sit under this and I don't know what's happening. I, I do know what's happening because I'm preaching this word in just a moment. So I have an idea of what she's reading and it's really powerful and I'm just gonna let it wash over me even though it's not in a language that I understand and see what happens.

Hey, I'm gonna start today with a, with a quote. This is the, the first Anglican bishop of Liverpool. His name is JC Ryle. He was around in the 18 hundreds. He said this and it's, it's quite a bold quote. I wanna see if you agree with it. He said the world is so the world is, is full of sorrow because it is full of sin. It's a dark place. It's a lonely place. It's a disappointing place. The brightest Sunbeam in it is a friend. Friendship halves our troubles and doubles our joys. Does that feel like an exaggeration to anyone else? That friendship halves our sorrows but doubles our joy.

CS Lewis said to the ancients friendship seemed the happiest and most full human of all loves the crown of life and the school of virtue, the modern world in comparison ignores it. That feels more accurate to where if, if someone could think so highly of friendship that it would have our sorrows and double our joys, man. I don't know if I understand that completely in my modern mindset. But then you look at the ancients in the way that they understood friendship.

Augustin, the, the, the church father, he says two things are essential in this world life and friendship. Wow. Life and friendship. Both must be prized highly and not undervalued is what Augustine says. Now two quotes about the friendship of God to continue. The first is from Charles Spurgeon and Spurgeon says, he who would be happy here must have friends and who and he who would be happy there, hereafter must above all things, find a friend in the world to come in the person of God.

And Martin Luther, the reformer said God's friendship is more precious than that of the whole world. Seems like people of previous generations had a deeper appreciation of friendship than what I often have. And what many other modern people have. I found each of these in this little book, called Made For Friendship by Drew Hunter. The relationship that have our sorrows and doubles our joys. He took the JC Ryle quote and turned it into a subtitle. It's a great little book very short and, I, I just thought that this was great.

And when I read these, I, I do oftentimes feel like they're overs selling the idea of friendship. just it, it just feels, it, it feels like an oversell, it seems like previous generations seem to enjoy and prioritize friendship more than our current one. But is it possible that previous generations might have been on to something or is alternative true that, you know, us modern people of the 20 twenties here have finally figured it out and friendship just isn't that important after all. You know, give me Netflix and the internet and I'm good. Ok. Don't need friends over here. I can just entertain myself or maybe it's us who has the wrong perspective on friendship.

The surgeon general, Vivek Murphy. He was the surgeon general for Obama and now for Biden and he says this in the last few decades, this is just recent, came out in 2024 I believe in the last few decades. We've just lived through a dramatic pace of change. We move more, we change jobs more often. We're living with technology that has profoundly changed the how we interact with each other and how we talk with each other. And you can feel lonely even if you have a lot of people around you because loneliness is about the quality of your connections, not the quantity with rising technology.

We have more quantity of relationships than we've ever had before. But yet the quality of our relationships has dipped down to disastrous levels and I'm not using that word. exaggerating. I'm not exaggerating with that word. It actually is disastrous. What's happening, Vivek Murthy. He also says that loneliness comes with the same health risks as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It's pretty drastic that comes with such South Thrusts a compound, the the isolation that we feel because of technology and the way that we just can live our lives. Without seeing people work from home, live at home. Not, not even go to the grocery store.

I'm not, I'm not bashing these things. I'm thankful for Instacart. Ok. But it does do something to us in con, in connection with that. We have the transients and, and if you've lived in Boston for any amount of time, you've felt it already. If you've lived in the Somerville area, you've had close friends, move away and it's difficult. It is difficult. I, I always joke that, you know, Megan and I have lived here for 12 years more on like our sixth set of friends at this point. Praise the Lord. We have some friends that have stuck around and have been here for a little while and we've gotten to, to know and who seem to be continuing to, to stick around and we're, we're grateful for that.

But the reality is transience makes life joyful in some ways because you have more opportunity. But, and I love, I love Boston in, in many ways, the Somerville area because I meet interesting people from all over the world that is such a benefit to it and it comes with the consequence of such interesting people to move all over the world. And so I have friends everywhere. And so I'm trying to see the bright side of it these days.

You know, the first several years I would just cry when people moved. And now I'm like, hey, I got a friend to visit maybe one day. I'll, I'll go see them but I do also think that there's some people who move, looking for that thing in which they can only get if they were to stay in one place. You know, I think our generation will move 10 times over 20 years looking for relationships that take a lifetime to build.

And so it's very difficult. It makes us more lonely. The transients you in previous generations, you would be born in a city and then that would basically be your last name, right? It's like your, your last name is, I'm of that city. That's not the way it is anymore. But back in the day you would do that, you would marry someone in that city, your friends would be in that city, you would come up, you would have these deep friendships and it just doesn't work that way in a world like ours.

We need to hear what Jesus has to say on friendship maybe more than we've ever needed it before. He speaks particularly about friendship with God. But through our friendship with God, we learn much about friendship with one another.

We're continuing our series on the book of John at the moment. And in this series, we're, we're in the middle of what we call the upper room discourse. And this is the night before Jesus is betrayed, he's up in the upper room celebrating the Passover meal with his closest disciples. With those, he calls his Children with his closest friends and he's sharing with them kind of a farewell speech before he goes to be with the father. And here's words in verse 15, this is something that we, we didn't get to see on the screen, although we did read it.

Verse 15, he says no longer do I call you servants for the servant does not know what his master is doing. But I have called you friends for all that I have heard from my father. I have made known to you one more time. Jesus says, hear this my friends no longer. Do I call you servants for the servant does not know what his master is doing. But I've called you friends for all that I have heard from my father. I have made known to you friends. We were created to have intimate friendship with God, our father. But oftentimes we treat him as though he is a distant CEO where he's the boss. We don't really have a relationship with him. We just have to follow his rules so that he'll be happy with us and maybe we'll get a few promotions in life as disciples of Jesus.

He calls us friends and the nature of our relationship with Jesus today this morning, many of us. And this is a process for many of us. But the nature of our friendship with Jesus needs to change it needs to go from distant CEO to intimate friend. We need to make that shift in our hearts and our lives from distant CEO to intimate friend.

Now, you might be objecting at the moment. Doesn't Paul call himself a servant of Christ? Isn't it ok to be a servant? Even though Jesus says I no longer call you servants, but I call you friends, but Paul calls himself a servant. So what are we to make of that? And when Paul calls himself a servant that is less Dobby the house elf and more Samwise Gamgee in Lord of the Rings. Ok. So Sam, Lord of the Rings, closest best friend with Frodo. Frodo couldn't have completed the trip without him. But also he calls him Mr Frodo for the entire and master Frodo. He's his gardener. Ok? He just like tagged along for the thing, but he's his best friend and his servant. And Frodo couldn't have made the trip without him. And that's more the, the flavor of servant that we're thinking of here.

What comes to your mind when you think about friendship with Jesus? Do you enjoy intimate fellowship and friendship with God or do you still relate to him as a distant CEO? Here's four shifts that we have to make four shifts that we have to make to change our hearts from seeing God as a distant CEO to an intimate friend.

The first shift that we have to make is this idea. A friend is someone you enjoy. A servant is someone you tolerate a friend, is someone you enjoy. That is the most basic necessity to a friend. OK? If I don't enjoy you, we're not friends. All right. That's just kinda how, what it comes down to a friend is someone you enjoy. You enjoy being around that person. I get the privilege of standing in front of you all and telling you about my friends, often, some of whom are in this room, many of whom you're all my friends. But I also tell you about my friends from college sometimes with tears in my eyes because I just love these guys. I enjoy. I tell you about my friend, Megan, my wife, my best friend, I enjoy her.

A friend is someone you enjoy and Jesus call us friends get that. He's not saying I'll be your friend. He's saying I call you friend. How much of a change is that from the way that we think about the way that Jesus thinks about us. He's saying I enjoy you, I enjoy you. Oh, not me. I understand how I might enjoy Jesus, but how would he ever enjoy me? But that's what he's saying. He's saying I call you friend, you keep your servant around. As long as the relationship is beneficial. A servant is someone you tolerate. OK? As long as you're bringing me my coffee and it's still warm and it, you know, you poured it correctly in the V 60 pour over here, I'll keep you around.

I don't have to have a relationship with a servant. I don't have to enjoy a servant. They're just here to bring me things, but a friend is someone you enjoy. Jesus doesn't merely tolerate us. He enjoys us. I know it's hard to get your head around, but this is the character of God. He calls me friend. He enjoys me and let me, let me back this up with a few of the, the verses in this passage, the first eight verses of the passage that we read, we're doing this vine and branches thing. So he gives us this extended this extended illustration of what he's going to talk about.

So the first eight verses are, I am the vine, you are the branches and it talks about pruning and fruitful branches and all of that. And we're gonna get to that. And then the second half of it is the explanation of what that means and more of AAA did language. So, the second half he's teaching on friendship. So the first half is this illustration about friendship about him being the vine and us being the branches. And the second half is the teaching on that.

So the first half, the first verse he starts, I am the vine. You are the branches. I am the vine. My father is the vine dresser and then he tells us abide in me and I will abide in you when he says I am the true vine. This is the final. And when I say the final, I actually mean at this time on Easter, I got in front of everyone and I said that I am the resurrection is the final "I am" statement and I was so wrong. Mark, an elder here, he was like, hey Fletcher. I think there's more very, very, very gently and he was like, oh, I think it's OK. You know, I'm glad that we have elders at this church who know their Bible well enough to, to bring it up. But I just wanna admit I was wrong. And this is the final one, I think, I hope I could be wrong again.

And as he goes through here, he says, abide in me and I in you. So this idea of the vine and the branches, OK? It means that we need to stick close to Jesus. We don't use the word abide very often anymore. Do we? When do we say abide like abide with me? What it means is stick with me, stay with me, stick with me as a friend, stay with me. Verse nine as the father has loved me. So have I loved you abide in my love. Stay in my love. Stick with me. He wants you near.

He doesn't merely tolerate you. He enjoys, you stay near me. Jesus loves us and enjoys us with the same kind of love that the father loves him. Hear this verse nine as the father has loved me. So I have loved you, abide in my love. This isn't the kind of love where you say I love you. I just don't like you very much. Can you go do something over here? This is like someone who actually enjoys us. Verse 11. These things I've spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. He wants us to enjoy him. He wants us to experience the joy of friendship with God. He wants us to have joy because he's our friend.

Second shift that we have to make. The second thing about friendship, shift that we have to make from servant to friend here because Jesus says he no longer calls us servants, but he calls us friends. The second point is a friend is someone you can call upon any time. I love this point. A servant is not someone you can call upon any time. A servant keeps strict hours. All right. When I'm, when I'm home, not me. My job's weird. Ok. Everybody else's job. All right. When you're off, you're off. All right.

But a friend is someone you can call any time. Isn't that good whenever you're going through a hard time or say, you know, my wife and I, we, we have three Children. And when you, when you have a newborn child, a common thing for people to say to you is let us know if you need anything. If you say that to me, I'm not letting you know if I need anything. Ok? You have to say that to me at least three times in a row for me to know that you actually mean it.

I have a friend who's, who's Korean and he says that that's like normal in Korean culture that someone might offer to help. And then you're like, oh, no, it's OK. And they're like, and if they say, OK, sounds good, then they don't actually want to help you. They, but if they offer three times and if you had to de you are like kind of bound to deny them the first two times and then the third time you can accept the help. And that's the way he's explained it to me. And I appreciate that.

And that's kind of how this works. If someone says, hey, let us know if you need anything. OK, thanks. No, really let us know if you need anything. Got it. No. Listen to me. Let me know if you need anything that might be a person, I would call if they say it that many times.

Now, when we look at this passage, Jesus has something to say to us and he doesn't say it once he doesn't say it twice. He doesn't say it three times. He says it at least five times and it's let me know if you need anything. He wants us to come to him. He gives us a blank check. Imagine what type of trust you have to have in someone because it's not just let me know if you need something specific. It's let me know if you need anything.

Listen to what Jesus says, blank check five times. John 14:13, these are all in the upper room discourse. Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do that. The father may be glorified in the Son. John chapter 14 verse 14. Next verse if you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. He's emphatic, he's calling us friends. You can call upon me any time. I'm not keeping strict hours is what Jesus is saying. I call you friends, not servants. John 15 verse seven. In this passage today, if you abide in me and my words abide in you ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you.

John 15 verse 16, you did not choose me the kness in here, getting real excited, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide so that whatever you ask the father in my name, he may give to you John chapter 16 verse 24. Now until you have asked not now until now. You have asked nothing in my name, ask and you will receive that. Your joy may be full.

Jesus gives us a blank check five times to call upon him any time and to ask him for anything. Jesus is like, really, really, really let me know if you need anything, I'll be there, I'll be there. But we treat him as if we're his servant. I'm not asking my boss for very much. Maybe once a year. I might ask him for a little promotion. We race. That's how we treat them often times. But Jesus is like no, come to me as a friend. I call you friend.

Thomas Goodwin says it like this. Christ gets more joy and comfort than we do when we come to him for help and mercy isn't that great that he actually enjoys it when we go to him for help and mercy. Some of you have things that you're ashamed to talk to Jesus about. But he, he wants to hear it all the third shift. The third thing here, a friend does not earn your love, but a servant earns his pay. A friend does not earn love. Only a servant earns pay. Jesus says, if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love.

Now, that might sound the opposite of what I just said because he says, if you keep my commandments you will abide in my love just as I've kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. But what He's communicating is that by keeping the commandments of God, this does not earn God's approval or God's friendship. What he's saying is if you abide in my love, you will keep my commandments. It's very different, it's very different.

It's not saying you will earn my love by keeping my commandments. It's saying if you will enjoy the love that I have for you, you will keep the commandments because you'll trust me and my commandments are you for your good. You will trust me and live in those. Everybody understands this with a friend. You know, the things that a friend has off limits. You know, the things, everybody kind of has a policy in the background with like this is what my friendship with this person looks like. And if I go and do something that's just rude and obnoxious to this person, it's going to wreck our friendship. And Jesus is like, listen, I've given you these commandments for your own good, for your own flourishing. If you love me, stay in them, stay in them.

Tim Keller puts it like this: religion says I obey, therefore, God loves me. The gospel on the other hand says, God loves me, therefore I obey you. See the difference. That's what Jesus is communicating here. We obey God's loss because we trust him as our friend and we know that his ways are the best ways to live His commands are meant to lead to my flourishing. God is not some sadistic heavenly dictator just giving you laws to suck all the fun out of your life. But he knows the best way to live because he made, he gets to write the instruction manual and he says that here are my laws live by these and it will help you to flourish in my love.

As a trusted friend, God gets the ability to speak into our lives in a way that no one else does in a way that only a trusted friend might. He gets to speak into our lives and tell us when he thinks that we're living a way that's not for us. And this is what he talks about when he says every branch in me that does not bear fruit. He takes away and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit. And so God, the God, the father of the great vinedresser gets to prune our lives.

Have you ever seen a professional plant person? A plant professional? They go through pruning looks like plant murder. Ok? You look at that thing. They, it looks like they've cut off more branches than they left on the plant. I used to work at a place where they had these plant professionals come in and they would just, I'm like, why are you murdering the plants. And then within a couple of weeks they would look so much more healthy.

My, my wife and I used to have this jade that we left outside. One summer, a jade is a plant. And, we left it outside one summer and it grew huge just like everywhere. And we brought it inside and we looked at it for a year and it just wasn't healthy, it was big, but it wasn't healthy. And so one day I came home and 4/5 of the jade is gone. I'm like, what did you do to our plant? And she's like, it just wasn't healthy. We need to help it and it's way more healthy and it will continue to be, it's gonna be this, this beautiful awesome plant and this is what God does in our lives.

He comes into our lives with his gentle touch and he looks at the things that we might like but are slowly killing us and are leading to unhealth and we give him the permission to prune and it's not always comfortable, but we trust him in those moments. I don't always love it, but it's always for my good.

Verse or the fourth point that I'm gonna make today. And, and the last one with, with this friendship, a friend as someone, you know, a servant is someone who puts on a nice face, a servant. If you have someone who's a servant, you're paying them to be there. You're paying them to smile a friend, you don't pay this file. They just know you, they just know you as a friend is someone you can be yourself around. A servant might act like a friend. They might pretend to be kind.

But a friend is someone who knows the real you sometimes better than, you know yourself. I'm convinced that there might be no better feeling and a friendship and no better indicator if someone can be a lasting friend than to feel understood. Because if you feel misunderstood, it's going to bring a, a dividing wedge with God friends, you are known, you are understood better than you might even understand yourself. He knows you all the way down. He's someone you can cry with, you can let him in because he already knows you and you don't have to put on your nice face with God. You understand you're understood and known you can be your true self.

Is that scary? In some ways that feels wonderful that God might know me, that someone might know me so well. But in other ways that feels terrifying because God knows me and I'm a riddled mess. I just like emotionally everywhere at times, temptation going wild at times. I, I know me and it's not someone I really want to let anyone know fully, but God knows me fully and it's a little terrifying and he loves me still and he still calls me friend. This is the essence of why Jesus came.

Verse 13. This is kind of the crux of this whole passage. Get this OK. Greater love has no one than this that someone lay down his life for his friends. A friend is someone who absorbs debt. So when he says to lay down his life for a friend, he's not just saying like, hey, if you see a friend walking across the street and there's a truck coming, you'll go run and push your friend out of the way and take, take the fall. Yes, maybe that's part of it. Ok?

But what he's saying, lay down your life for a friend. He's saying a friend is someone who absorbs debts who's willing to be wronged and to take that wrong and to not pay the punishment and not to, to deal them the punishment in return, not to seek revenge to them. A friend is someone who will pay the debt for you who will take on the suffering for themselves and what a friend we have in Jesus.

I deserve so much worse than what I have from him. But yet he took on my debt on the cross, laying his life down and paying the cosmic penalty for sin, separation from the father on my behalf. He took it all. He laid down his life for me through our faith in Christ. We might have a reestablished friendship with God that sin separates it always as we were created for friendship with God. God walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day. Just what a great image that is just walking with God hanging out with Him in the garden.

But sin separates and all of us have sinned against God. And only because of what Jesus has done and absorbing our debt, forgiving us of our sins. Do we have reestablished relationship with God? He has taken it on. We haven't paid penance to earn his love, but he paid our sin for us because he loves us. J I Packer and his and his great knowing. God says, we have great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that for some unfathomable reason, he wants me as his friend and desires to be my friend and has given his son to die for me in order to realize this purpose.

So let me just end with a couple of application points here. First, the distant CEO isn't so distant and he's taking calls and he's inviting, he's giving away stock, he's inviting in new partners. He's actually calling them friends now and he's waiting to hear from you and he's waiting to hear from you. We can talk to God as if he actually cares for us. We can hear from God having a relationship with him.

Dallas Willard puts it this way. We start in alienation, but we are invited to experience the shining face of God. We start as distant CEO, but we're invited to be intimate friend in his book, Drew Hunter, the one that I shared with you, he says, one of the most pressing questions of our lives and often buried deep in the sub conscience. Is this? What does God think of me and all of my feelings and all of my weaknesses? How does he feel about me? And if you trust Christ, you can answer that question. He loves you as a dear friend.

And so I encourage you if you have never experienced friendship with God in this kind of way, I invite you to experience it today. And if it's been a long time, I, I invite you to rekindle that friendship with God, we're gonna have people to pray with you after the service in the back and or during the next couple of songs in the back, people up here to pray with you, engage with Him as a friend and it will give you a couple of by-products. These things, and then I'm, I'm done here. Ok?

The by-product of friendship with God. This is the only applic this is like application. Every everything I'm saying is like be a friend of God. He's a friend of you. He likes you. He loves you here practically. It means that we can be better friends with one another when we experience the friendship of God because we understand what it really means to be a friend. And what it means to have a true friend. We can be better friends. We can be more vulnerable because we have less fear of others' opinions because our sin has been paid for.

But at the same time, we can be less needy. We can be more vulnerable and less needy because we're not dependent upon our friends to meet all of our needs. We have God to meet our needs. Doesn't that sound wonderful? I would like more friends that are more vulnerable but yet less dependent upon, on me to fix their problems. They know that Jesus does Tim Keller. I love this quote. He says, God loves friends. And so the less you want friends, the less you are like God, the less you want friends, the less you are, the less like God, you are.

Churches often have this huge emphasis on community. And I think that's right. But I think that we might, I think that we might not think about it completely accurately. Sometimes a lot of times we think about community as acquaintances that are around us. When a church talks about community, this is what they're talking about collective friendship that we call each other friends that we depend upon one another, that our relationships horizontally reflect our relationship vertically and that we love one another. We're vulnerable. We are needy, but we are ultimately dependent upon God.

So I encourage you if you're in a community group or if you are thinking about it to not just treat that community group as a group of people that you come to once a week, but to, to be friends, collective friendship. And lastly, we offer friendship with those in the world that they might not have the same kind of friends.

I am convinced that Christian friendship, like true Christian friendship is amazing and that we need more of it and that there's lots of people in my neighborhood and in our world who wish that they could experience the kind of friends that I do. I just feel so friendship rich. I just feel like social capital is like, I've got, I've got the bank. OK? I'm happy for it. But we have so much to offer. Let's just not keep it all in the bank. Let's extend that offer to the world around us, offering friendship with them. And Jesus is known as the friend of sinners. May that be our reputation as well? I hope that we can love others in the same way that we way that we've been loved by God.

On the night that he was betrayed. On this very night, Jesus shares a meal with his disciples and he takes a loaf of bread and he tears it and he says, this is my body broken for you and he takes a cup and he says this is my blood shed for you, do this in remembrance of me. And so each week we participate in this meal, remind ourselves that we are friends of God. And so, if you are a friend of God, we invite you to come and receive this. If you are a Christian, if you have trusted in Him as your life and salvation, we invite you to come and receive this meal to be reminded that his body was broken for you. His blood was shed for you. Let's stand as we prepare our hearts to receive this meal.

Jesus, you are such a friend to us. And we pray that our mind shifts would be cha changing and shifting that we might understand you more and more as a friend and not simply as a distant CEO that we might relate with you. And God would you help us to understand what that means, what it means to receive your love and your affection, What it means that you enjoy being with us. God, would you, would you shift our minds and hearts in that way? We ask these things in Christ's name, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from John 14:15-31, where Jesus talks about sending the Holy Spirit to the disciples. Discussion points: The Holy Spirit is the tangible presence of the Lord with us, all Christians have the Holy Spirit with them but we may sometimes leave him on the front step instead of inviting him in, the Holy Spirit can speak to us in many ways and will never leave us alone.

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Scripture reader: [John 14:15-31] If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the father and he will give you another helper to be with you forever. Even the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor hears, nor knows him. You know him for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you yet a little while and the world will see me no more but you will see me because I live, you also will live in that day. You will know that I am in my father, in you and me and I in you, whoever has my commandments and keeps them. He it is who loves me and he who loves me will be loved by my father and I will love him and manifest myself to him. Judas, not Iscariot, said to him, Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us and not to the world.

Jesus answered him. If anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me, does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine. But the fathers who sent me these things, I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the helper, the Holy Spirit whom the father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance, all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you.

Let not your hearts be troubled. Neither let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, I am going away and I will come to you. If you loved me, you would have rejoiced because I am going to the Father for the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you because before it took takes place so that when it does take place, you may believe I will no longer talk much with you for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me, but I do as the Father has commanded me so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise, let us go from here.

This is the word of the Lord.

A couple of years ago, my family went on a camping trip with the Konz family actually, Jeremy is an elder here. And so we were all camping and adjacent campsites and the Konz kept on saying this thing, we didn't understand what they were talking about. They kept on going, hey Bear. And I was like, what are they talking about here? And they were copying this this TV show and they were telling us about it. And it's something that people would do to scare away the bears. Basically, you just shout very loudly like, hey bear. So we all start doing it and we still do it. today sometimes when we want to say hello to one another. but, they were telling us about this TV show and it's like a reality TV show. I haven't watched a reality TV show since the first season of Survivor. So it's been like a long time and, and I can still tell you about that first season of Survivor Richard was a scoundrel. He should not have won. He cheated everybody and thus started the reality TV movement.

But they were telling us about this reality TV show called Alone. And it comes on the history channel and I'm like, who's making time for like, a reality TV show on the History channel. It's not me. but I went home, they were like, telling me so much about it. Have you seen it? I mean, this thing is captivating. It is a, I went home and watched multiple seasons of alone. Like it captivated me basically, the entire premise of the show is that they find 10 survivalists, like people that are trained in, surviving in the elements just on the land by themselves. Like these people, most of them, their full time job is to be like a survival training person. So these are the best people that you can find to do this type of thing. And they're a little crazy all of them. Ok? Because that's just what it is.

And, they take 10 of them and they drop them via helicopter, you know, lightly, they, they bring the helicopter down. but they drop them via helicopter into many different locations in the same region. Ok. So they're all, each survivalist is completely alone and they drop them off, maybe, you know, 10 miles from the next person and they tell them, you know, don't walk to them. I don't know. and you get to bring 10 items with you of your own choosing. So it, it, most people bring like a rope, a tarp, an ax. sometimes I saw if you're really smart, you're gonna bring like some fishing line and maybe, a hook of some sort or a net. So they, they bring different items that they might want to use in their, in their alone, adventure.

And the whole goal of the reality show is who can last the longest. Now, what's interesting is these people who have trained most of them for like, their entire lives is that they don't make it very long. They're out there and after 20 days they're like, I'm hungry, I'm using this satellite phone to call and tell them to come pick me up. So most people do not make, I think, like, half the crowd is whittled down after, like, 20 days and, and of the seasons that I've watched, only one person has made it 100 days. Only one dude, it is hard to live all on your own. The most fascinating part about how these people are so alone. They're setting up their cameras so you can watch them and they understand how to do that is just the psychological breaks that many people have. I mean, people start going nuts, they start losing it and they're out there.

And one guy, he was one of the guys that was lucky enough and smart enough to figure out how to catch fish. He caught so many fish and he had built this little shack and he had the, the fish all smoked and, they were like, he had just like fish jerky hanging from the ceilings everywhere, but he wouldn't eat it because he was a, he was, he was hoarding it and then they send doctors every like month or so to come and check on the people and they got to him and they said, dude, you're medically technically starving and you have all this fish around and he's just psychologically, he wasn't there to think that he could eat the fish. He, he was just psychologically gone.

It's really crazy what being alone will do to people. We were not made to be alone. There's an epidemic in the world and before the pandemic, the surgeon general at that time, who's now the surgeon general again, Biden just brought back Obama's surgeon general. He said, hey, there's an epidemic of loneliness and the health risks of loneliness are huge, huge. The things that loneliness does to us, the correlating factors that go there. My wife is an epidemiologist and so she would be correcting my causation and correlation charts here a little bit, but you get the point. Loneliness does not correlate well with good health outcomes.

As we continue our series in the book of John, we find ourselves today in the middle of what we call the upper room discourse. And this is a farewell speech that Jesus delivers to his disciples on the night before he's betrayed and crucified and he's just told his disciples that he's going to leave them and they're all afraid of being alone after he leaves them, they're afraid of what might happen to them. And they're just so confused. They've spent the past three years of their lives following after Jesus. And now he's saying that they're gonna leave him that, that he's going to leave them and they're like, well, why can't we go with you? Why, why can't we go? And he's like, you don't know the way or you do know the way but you can't come with me. I'm going to come back.

And so last week, we talked about all of this and it's really amazing that Jesus in his moment of personal anguish on the night before he's to be betrayed and crucified is spending his final moments comforting his disciples when he should be the one being comforted for, for certain. But he's spending all of his time caring for those that he loves. That is who Jesus is. Last week, we learned that when Jesus sees troubled hearts, he gives them a promise of a heavenly home.

And this week we're going to build on that idea because he doesn't just promise them of a heavenly home. But when Jesus sees troubled hearts, he promises to make his home in them. He promises to make his home in them. Jesus not only has secured our heavenly home, but he's given us a gift known as the Holy Spirit who lives each and every day with each and every Christian. And this is the main emphasis of what we're looking at today. Jesus promises them the Holy Spirit. That's what the English standard version calls a helper. Now, more on that in just a minute, we'll talk about what that, what that means.

This is the most extended teaching in the entire by Jesus on the Holy Spirit. And so we're just going to take some time to focus on the Holy Spirit. Who is he? And what is his, his goal? What is he doing? And how does he work in the world today? And how did he work then? And how is it different? And there's probably gonna be a lot of questions once I'm done and I'm happy to field those. But we're just really in this place where we need to hear who the Holy Spirit is as a church. And I'm going to take this as an opportunity.

There's what we call, there's five of these Holy Spirit passages throughout the upper room discourse. And we're just gonna kinda cover them today because Jesus kind of weaves the Holy Spirit in and out of his entire teaching here. It covers like four or five chapters and it kinda comes in and, and, and goes away and he just kind of weaves the whole thing through it. It's one of the central themes and we're just going to be covering the verses that talk about the Holy Spirit today. The Holy Spirit is one of them is easily the most confused aspect of the Trinity. We believe in Trinity here, God, the Father God, the Son God, the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost, if you speak the old King James English. And when I think about God, the Father, I have an image of what a father looks like. I am a father. I can understand what a father is.

And when I think about God, the son, I have an idea of how a son might relate to a father. And I have an idea of what a son is. But when I think about God, the Holy Spirit, well, that just feels abstract. I've never met a spirit. So as such, it feels fuzzy, it feels like a oblong blur. I don't know, I don't know how to describe the Holy Spirit. It's easily one of the most confused aspects of all of Christianity and certainly the most confused aspect of the Trinity. Who is this Holy Spirit or even worse, even if you're just you can be confused with the Holy Spirit.

But then there's a whole another step where you can be skeptical of the Holy Spirit. And there's many in our church and in our, in our Christian community who have been skeptical or even maybe even creeped out by the idea of the Holy Spirit. Maybe even as I talk about the Holy Spirit, you're bracing yourself and saying, oh, here we go into the weird stuff. I knew I should have slept in this morning, but here we are and the Lord has something to tell us about the Holy Spirit this morning.

So here's my prayer for you and it's what I've been praying for the past several days. May our church enjoy a tangible presence of the Lord. May you enjoy the tangible presence of the Lord? That is who the Holy Spirit is. He is the tangible presence of the Lord with us today dwelling in each Christian. May you enjoy the tangible presence of the Lord? Verse 16, Jesus says, I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper to be with you forever. The Holy Spirit is a gift directly from Jesus. He is God with us. We're meant to enjoy his presence, not to approach him with skepticism and trepidation. Yeah, that is how many of us approach the Holy Spirit.

I want you to just imagine with me for a moment that you're living overseas, that work or something has taken you overseas, the schools taking overseas and it's Christmas morning and you did not have the financial resources to be able to fly home to visit your family. And instead you're stuck in this overseas nation with a Christmas tree that would make Charlie Brown's Christmas tree look glamorous. OK? And you're just sitting there alone when you hear a ring at the doorbell and you walk to the door and you open the door and it is all of your loved ones standing there saying a rich benefactor has sent us to be with you today on Christmas morning.

How would you respond? Would you leave them on the porch and say, hold on, I need to go research this a little bit more. I need to see. Can I see your identification? I need to match that with the identification of my family that I have written down in here. Would you leave them on the porch or would you just immediately invite them in and say, come in and enjoy their presence friends too often. We leave the Holy Spirit on the porch. He has been sent as a gift to us to enjoy the tangible presence of God. Yet we have said, we're glad you're here. I'm glad you're in the vicinity. Why don't you stay on the porch? I'm gonna do my thing on the inside here. Jesus wants us to enjoy the presence of God.

Let's look at our text today. Verse 15. This is this the first verse chapter 14 verse 15. Jesus says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. Again. The upper room discourse is this long teaching. that Jesus gives is the longest extended teaching in the book of John. It covers several chapters and what he's doing is he's giving a farewell speech to his children in the faith. And one of the main emphasis that we have here is this new commandment that He has given us to love one another as he has loved us. And with this new commandment, he's reminding us again, if you love me, you will love one another. If you love me, you will follow my commandments. And what is the commandment that you love one another?

And so that's just what Jesus is doing. He's saying if you love me, you will love one another. Verse 16. And I will ask the father and he will give you another helper to be with you forever. Now, the ESV, the, the translation that we use in this church is, is the ESV. And you can use other translations. You're certainly not gonna be cast out unless you're using one of those bad ones. I don't, no, I'm just kidding. Not really. We're happy to have the Bible here. OK. We use the ESV generally when we're reading, it's what I use. And there's a lot of different reasons but all, all the Bible versions have pluses and minuses with them. But the one that we read ESV, it translates this word into Helper with a capital H and it's the idea of the Holy Spirit.

Now, that's not what it says in Greek. And there's actually not an English word that well translates the word in Greek. The word in Greek is Periclete. Everybody say Periclete, it's periclete. And the word for Periclete has had many different translations over the years. We've seen many different things here. We've seen the word helper. Counselor advocate Comforter. It depends on your Bible translation. There's a lot of different words that can go here and they each have their pluses and minuses.

Comforter was actually a fantastic translation for Periclete back when it was originally translated in that, in the King James version because when we think, it just doesn't work anymore. When we think comforter, there's a lot of terms for comforter. You could be thinking about a blanket on your, on your bed or you could be thinking about a shoulder to cry on. And that's usually what you think about. When you think about a comforter, it's either a blanket or a shoulder, it's something comfortable, right? We've put those two together. But in the original English, that's not what it meant. When you look at the Latin breakdown of the word come meaning with and then forte the forte think music, that's the strong part. So it's with strength, that's what you have. You have someone with strength with you that is the periclete and that term of comforter makes sense.

Now, the word counselor is actually perfect. But again, we have different definitions of counselor with counselor. We can, we usually think about with counselor as someone who gives advice or someone who listens to us complain. It's one of those two or they're, they're helping us work through our issues. Sorry, I don't mean to make light of counseling counselors in here there, but there's someone that helps us make, make sense of our life and we can think about the Holy Spirit like that and he certainly does help us to make sense of our life.

But that's not what Periclete means because the word counselor is perfect. But only when it's understood as a legal counselor, you see, when the Bible was written, originally written, the word Periclete was in the normal usage and the way that it was used was as your defense attorney and it was almost someone that you would keep on retainer at all times. So if your family got in trouble or if you got in trouble and you were called to court, you would call your legal counsel, your Paraclete to come and stand beside you to, to advocate for you with strength. Someone who knows the law and someone who is your advocate, that is the periclete. When you look at the, the breakdown of the word, this gets you in trouble all the time in Greek, but we're going to do it right now just to look at it. The breakdown of the word pera which is with cleat, which comes from Kaleo is called. So it's someone Pera is like alongside. So someone that's called alongside that is the periclete.

The Periclete is the person who comes alongside you with strength. It's not just the person that's there to comfort you, although he is there to comfort you. It's not just the person there to guide you, although he is there to guide you. He is the person that you call on in your day of trouble when you need a defense attorney. He is there with you when you need a defense attorney against the power of sin and death. He is there with you. That is who the Holy Spirit is and that is who Jesus is telling us. He is. So Jesus is, is sending the Holy Spirit to serve as an advocate, a defense attorney. So his disciples would not feel alone.

Jesus knows difficult times await for these disciples. They will be persecuted, but they will not be alone. They have a Periclete. That sounds a lot better than a helper, doesn't it? And Jesus says, verse 17, next verse actually might just be the same. No. Yes. The next one. So verse 16, and I will ask the father and he will give you another helper to be with you forever. Even the spirit of truth whom the world cannot see because it does not see him nor knows him. You know him for he dwells with you and will be and you this word for dwells this word, he dwells in you. This is the same word that we saw last week when Jesus was promising that we'll have a room in the Father's house, that dwelling place, that room, that's the verbal form of that word is being used right here as minnow.

So it's a remaining place. The spirit will remain with us. He will abide with us. We see it used in that way. And so not only do we have a heavenly home that Jesus has prepared, but he has prepared a dwelling place in each of us. Isn't that good news church that God has not left us alone, even though Jesus is not here. He is present with us through the person of the Holy Spirit, the spirit of Christ dwelling with us.

This is the primary thing about the Holy Spirit. The main thing you gotta know is that the Holy Spirit is God with us, God with us. That is who He is. Primarily. When you think Holy Spirit, you might be thinking about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, you might be thinking about amazing things that God has done in the world and he does those things. And the scripture says that we should seek the gifts of the Holy Spirit. But primarily the Holy Spirit is God with us sent to us as a Periclete, as a helper, as a comforter, as a counselor, as an advocate. Jesus is really careful not to describe the Holy Spirit as an it, the Holy Spirit is not the force, ok. The Holy Spirit is not surrounding us and something that we can all tap into to do magical things.

That is not the Holy Spirit, Jesus when he talks about the spirit and Greek it, Puma, sorry. I'm really showing my Greek today. I apologize. There's like no other way to preach this passage. I had a seminary professor that told me that your Greek should be like your underwear. Like your congregation should know you have it but you shouldn't talk about it very much. But like today, sorry, I'm, I'm talking about my Greek. So Puma, you could use a, a neuter prog a neuter pronoun OK. In Greek they have like he, she and it right, you could use it there, but Jesus doesn't use it when he describes the Holy Spirit. He uses the male masculine pronoun and he says, he, he, it the Holy Spirit is not an, it an impersonal force. The Holy Spirit is a person to know and to live with us. It's mysterious, but that's how God describes him. Third member of the Trinity.

And this really gets down to the point of Christianity. If you're not a Christian here and you're not sure what the point of Christianity is. Maybe if you ask 10 different people, you might get 10 different responses to what is the point of Christianity. And maybe even 10 different people in here, you ask 10 different people on the street. You certainly will get 10 different answers. Some people say, what is the point of Christianity? Some people might say it gives my family and I a good moral foundation. Other people might say, which is not the point of Christianity. There are some morals, but that is not the point. The other people might say that it, the point of Christianity is the forgiveness of sins also a good part of Christianity, but not the overall point. There's a point behind that point, some people might say that the point of Christianity is to get out of hell also beneficial. Don't want to go to hell. But that's not the point of Christianity.

The point of Christianity is this is the point behind all those points, fellowship with God. You were created to have fellowship with the one who made you in his own image. You were created to have fellowship with God, the forgiveness of sins, the getting out of hell, the moral foundation, all of that is to support fellowship with God. And that is the primary consequence of sin that we lose access to our fellowship with God. I love the way that Leanne Payne puts this. She says, separation from the presence of God is quite literally what the fall is as a result of the fall. Mankind slipped from God consciousness into the hell of self and self consciousness. So this is why Jesus tells us that if we love Him, we'll follow His commandments because sin is actually something that separates us from God. And unless and if you sin, that means that you're being separated from Him, which means that you don't get to enjoy this fellowship with Him. So if you want to enjoy His love, you'll follow His commandments and love one another and delight in who He is.

You see, sin is not just a moral list of do's and don't, but it's actually living your life the way that God has intended you to live your life so that you might flourish so that you might enjoy fellowship with God. Sometimes we get really upset that God has given us these commandments. God has given these commandments to us for our good, that we might enjoy fellowship with Him. They're not here to be oppressive against us. The Holy Spirit helps us to keep his commandments by doing two things simultaneously. The Holy Spirit helps us to keep his commandments by doing two things simultaneously.

First, he helps us to keep his commandments by convicting us of our sin. So that we know when we are welcoming, separation from God in our own lives, the Holy Spirit is helping us to keep the commandments of God by convicting of s of sin. John 16 verse seven, a couple chapters from now. Jesus says, nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away for. If I do not go away, the helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. So Jesus has sent the Holy Spirit so that he might convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. And second, the Holy Spirit helps us to keep the commandments of God by reordering our desires to want the things that, that God wants.

So obedience is not, is about living in fellowship with God, not about obeying the rules more so that He'll love you more as we get to delight in being with Him, which will make us want to follow His commandments. Because we recognize that that's the way of flourishing. William Tel the, the Great British He translated the Bible. He said, where the, where the spirit is? There's always summer and doesn't summer feel good. When you live in New England, you're like summer. Let's let's go. I love that week. It's my favorite week of the year. Where the spirit is, there's always summer. There are always good fruits. That is to say good works.

The spirit of God is what allows us to enjoy fellowship with God. Jesus forgives us of our sins so that we might enjoy God today. And throughout eternity, a couple of quotes from one of my favorite books, Delighting In Eternity by Michael Reeves. He says this, the spirit gives us his very self that we might know and enjoy him and so enjoy his fellowship with the father and the son. Hear that again and just, just meditate on this. This is a huge reality. This is huge. I mean, what, what better thing can you spend 10 more seconds thinking about than this idea? Hear it one more time.

The spirit gives us his very self that we might know and enjoy him and so enjoy his fellowship. The Spirit's fellowship with the father and the son. He continues hear this. The spirit is about drawing us into divine life. The father has eternally delighted in the son through the spirit and the son and the father and the spirit's work in giving us new life then is nothing less than bringing us into their mutual delight. The point of Christianity is enjoying fellowship with God. That is what we have. That's what we get. That's why Jesus came now. It's true that the Holy Spirit dwells with every believer. That's what Jesus said. He'll dwell with you forever. But you can be more or less filled with the Holy Spirit at different times.

Have you experienced this? I hope you have, but you can be more or less filled with the Holy Spirit at different times. Ephesians five verse 18, just to give you some, I'm gonna give you some scripture and then I'm gonna give you some explanation. OK? Because there's some people that don't that want to hear the, the Bible verse to prove what I just said. And then there's some of you who are like, yeah, just explain what it means a little bit more. Let me give you the Bible verse first. OK. Two of them first. Ephesians chapter five and do not get drunk with wine for that's debauchery. He's writing two Christians here, but be filled with the Holy Spirit and if he can write to Christians and tell them to be filled with the Holy Spirit that insinuates that there's a way that they can live as a Christian that's not filled with the Holy Spirit where the Holy Spirit is just barely hanging on. Maybe he's hanging out on the porch, he's with them, but he's not filling them.

Acts chapter three verse 19 and 20 Peter's preaching a sermon and he says, repent and turn back that your son, that your sins may be blotted out. That times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord and that he might send the Christ appointed for you Jesus. So these times of refreshing, this is equivalent with being filled with the spirit, being filled with the spirit though every Christian has the Holy Spirit dwelling in them and with them, not every Christian is filled with the Holy Spirit all the time. As Christians, we are invited to be filled with the Holy Spirit. We're invited to be filled with the Holy Spirit. It's a joyful reality that God's manifest presence is available to each and every one of us and that we are invited to enjoy that fellowship.

The Anglican priest, Nicky Gumball, who is uh a English pastor and he started the Alpha courses if you've ever heard of Alpha course, really amazing ministry that like over 20 million people worldwide have gone through an Alpha course and many of them have met Jesus through the alpha course. Nicky Gumball describes it this way. He says inside my home, there's a furnace and in that furnace there's a pilot light and the pilot light is always on in the furnace. But then when the heat comes on the way, he describes it is it is the furnace goes from a pilot life to from a pilot light to the heat comes on, the furnace turns on and it is filled with heat. And he says that all Christians have this pilot light of the Holy Spirit. But to be filled with the Holy Spirit is when your spirit goes with the Holy Spirit, when the heat, when the heat fills you.

Martin Lloyd Jones, another one of my heroes, I wish more people would read Martin Lloyd Jones. If you just wanna read a book that would make me happy, not that, you know, you should not that that should be your primary, like factor in choosing your books. But I love Martin Lloyd Jones. He says this to be filled with the spirit is to get a deeper sense and experience and filling of the father's love like a child walking with their dad and then the father scoops him up and holds him and says, I love you. And that's what it means to be filled with the spirit, to enjoy the Father's love in that kind of way. Jesus has sent us the Periclete, the helper, the advocate the strong counselor so that we might enjoy the tangible presence of God.

Now, there's lots of ways that you can enjoy the tangible presence of God. I love the story of, of Brother Lawrence. Do you guys know Brother Lawrence? He wrote he wrote, pursuing the presence of the Lord or, or practicing the presence of God, practicing the presence of God. He was a French monk in like the 1600s, 1500s, something like that who without formal training, spent his days cooking in the monastery and just endeavored to live every day practicing the presence of God is really amazing book that has been collected from his teachings over the years. And he thought that by continual recollection of God's immediate presence with us, he can actually live in that presence simply through being mindful of God, through the Holy Spirit because of Jesus, we can live with God is what he taught.

So we can enjoy God's presence at all times. But I will say that God's presence is primarily and most clearly revealed in his work. That's where God is most clearly revealed. And now this is described differently. But have you ever been reading your bible? And then all of a sudden it's like, wow, I never saw that before. It clicks. I, I listened to a sermon not too long ago by a pastor in New York named John Tyson. And he describes it like this. He's he says, have you ever been reading the scripture? And all of a sudden you're like, I've never seen that before and it's challenging you and it's convicting you and helping you and motivating you.

Well, different people are gonna describe that differently. If you're a Presbyterian, you might say I had a moment of illumination. That's why I was reading the scripture. If you're a Baptist, this is called, it stood out to me. If you're nondenominational, you might say that verse jumped off the page at me. If you're a Pentecostal, you would say God spoke to me. And they're all describing the same reality of the Holy Spirit, using his word to bring fellowship and joy into our lives. And depending on your tradition, you almost certainly are describing the same thing differently.

Let me give you a couple of examples of when this has happened in my life. I'm gonna pull one way back. OK. 2007, I know some of you were in diapers. OK? So 2007, I was in college and was working at throughout college and seminary. I worked at Christian camps through the summer. And this summer, I had the, the miserable opportunity to be assigned to work at a Christian camp on the beach in Panama City Beach, Florida, the Redneck Riviera of the South. And it was, it was actually great, you know, they, they had a beach house for the staff to stay in and there were 11 dudes in a three bedroom beach house and it was the best. We all loved it, you know, college students. So that's where it's at. And I can remember distinctively one morning in Panama City Beach, I'm, I'm reading my Bible reading Colossians chapter one. And I get to this verse and I, I read it and it just becomes alive.

It says this, the mystery hidden for ages and generations, but now revealed to his saints to them. God chose to make known how great among the gentiles are the riches of the glory of this majesty, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Now, I don't know if that's hitting you, but it's hitting me again. I lived off of that verse for the rest of the summer. Every week the kids would come in be like, hey, forget the Bible today. I'm just gonna tell you about this verse today. It lives and the reason why it lives so much is because throughout the Old Testament, it seems like God's saying, go away. It seems like God's saying I'm too busy for you or like, hey, I'm too holy for you. You can't come near. And now the riches of His manifest glory have been revealed to us. Just gent tiles, just regular people. It's been revealed to us. We get to know Him in full. That's what it's saying that the same God that was so holy and magnificent throughout the Old Testament. We get to know Him fully. He's revealed the mystery to us. Ah, it jumped off the page to me.

Here's another example. Ok. I'm gonna give you one example when, God didn't use his word, when I just felt the presence of God in a, in a weird, and the voice of God in a weird kind of way. This was just a couple of years ago. Ok. We're gonna move more toward present time. A couple of years ago. I'm walking down the street in Somerville. I'm walking down Wallace street. Ok. I'll tell you exactly where I was. I, I remember the tree I was underneath. Ok. That's, there's a reason why the Bible talks about like, and he was under this tree. It's like, well, yeah, you kinda remember exactly where you are whenever, whenever God speaks to you like this. And I've never heard a voice from God, but I remember walking down the street and I just felt deeply, like, like a, like a, just a deep conviction and just a heaviness, a weight that said delete the game. Now, I had had this game, I'll just tell you what it was. Ok? Don't go download it. It was Clash of Clans. Ok. It's a very, it's like a, a very innocent game. A lot of us have played this. I had this game on my phone for years. Like, I don't want to tell you how many hours I'd probably poured into this game. Like my, my hut was like level 10 or something. It was, it was amazing. I had taken this game on vacation. I had hidden from my family at times to play this game.

I just felt I and my wife had gently, kindly never told me that I needed to lead it, but it had kind of gently poked and prodded and she could tell that I was like gollum with his precious, ok? You are not gonna touch my game. I just felt it. I, I had not even considered it and I was like, I got to delete this game and I just pulled out my, I didn't even say bye to the people in my clan. I just I just deleted it. I just said goodbye and never downloaded it again. And that opened a place in my heart for the presence of God to dwell. There was something there that, that he had to deal with before I could before I could give him that type of attention.

Let me just give you one from last week. Ok. This happened, this can happen at different times in different ways. Last week, we're sitting in our prayer meeting. I go in, I'm kinda in a bad mood. Femi and I one of the leaders of the church, Femi, we get there every, every morning we get there 30 minutes early to pray over the service to pray over the prayer meeting. We wanna anoint that thing, we wanna consecrate it to the Lord. And really God is moving in that room and, and we know that he is and we talk about what the Lord's doing, what he's doing in our lives before we meet and we, before we meet, it's my turn to lead it. We take turns leading it and we get to like two minutes before the prayer meeting is supposed to start. So he's like, hey, you got a scripture for us today.

I'm like, no, I don't I don't know what we should be praying. He's like, I think it's Ephesians three this morning mate. And isn't it? And and I, I was like, all right, well, we'll, we'll see what happens. And so we, we in the prayer meeting, one of the things that we do is we use God's word to pray because we wanna pray from the riches of God's word, not the poverty of our own hearts. And so we open the word and we have a different passage and what we spend some time meditating on it, personally worshiping the Lord meditating on it personally. And then we come back and we pray it together for like the last 15 minutes. OK. So the whole time I didn't really feel like the Lord was saying anything to me with this verse.

This is a verse like, look, if Ephesians three is like a, a chicken bone. Ok. I have eaten every piece of meat off of that chicken bone. I have licked it clean. I've broken it in half. I've sucked the marrow out of it. Ok. It is. It is. It has nothing else in it. Ok. I've used that verse a lot in my life. we start praying together and I just kind of feel this weightiness And I recognize that I need to like pray in front of people, some deep hurt from my own life. And I offer it up to the Lord. And I just say God, I don't know what to do with this. And I just start weeping and I don't know. And afterwards, it was really awkward, you know, everybody was like, but I felt the presence of the Lord comforting me because what I needed most was to be filled with the fullness of God, which is what that scripture talked about. I needed to have the fullness of God. And he needed to bring me to that point to where I can confess these things. And as I confess these hurts and these hesitations in my own heart. He used that to fill me with a kind of fellowship and joy that I hadn't enjoyed in a long time.

This is how the Lord does it. This is how the Holy Spirit works church. We go to him in his word. He endeavors to fill us with a tangible presence of God. A sacred moment. I hope that you've had some sacred moments in your life. Can you think of any to moments when you can say the Holy Spirit? He was my Periclete. He was with me friends. If you're trusting in Christ this morning, the Holy Spirit is dwelling in you. But I want to give you an opportunity to invite him off the porch and into your heart. A lot of us have kept that door locked and closed. And we said, I think I'm gonna do it myself in here when you have a helper waiting eagerly anticipating to come and be with you.

I'm gonna give you an opportunity to be filled with the Holy Spirit to, to ask the Holy Spirit to fill you and let me just give you a couple of steps. OK? Couple of steps this morning. First, you have to look at what Jesus has done for you, for everyone. Look inside, you have to take 10, looks up at Christ. Jesus lived a holy life, always submitted completely to the God, the Father and he paid the penalty for your sin. That is why you get the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit wants to fill a clean vessel. He is holy after all. And so when we look to Christ, we are made clean and then as we look to Christ, we confess our sins.

If you want to be filled with the Holy Spirit. It almost always comes with confessing with repentance. Look at how Peter said it right? Peter. Back at the beginning of the sermon, I, I was talking about Peter and he said, repent therefore, and turn back that your sins might be blotted out. That times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. We have to, as we look to Christ, then with the confidence that Christ gives us because we are made right with God. There's nothing our sin doesn't drive us away from God. We're made right with God. So we can confidently confess our sin to God knowing that He will never abandon us or leave us. We can go to him and confess these things. And then if you want to be ho if you want to be filled with the Holy Spirit, you just submit yourself completely to God confessing and renouncing sin in your life. And you ask the spirit to fill you and you're going to have an opportunity to do this.

I encourage you in the next few moments. We'll pray in just a moment and you're going to have an opportunity and I'm going to encourage you to hold out your hands and ask the Lord to fill you with the spirit. And if you don't feel, feel anything, ok. This happens a lot of times where we go through this and it's like you're supposed to have these feelings and not all of all of us are emotional, feely, feely. OK? Some of you will, others of you will be like, man, I didn't feel anything but I trust the Lord and I will give him my trust or you might read the scripture. We had a, a member of our church a couple of years ago. He actually preached once Jonathan, I'll just tell you it was Jonathan McLatchie and he was like, when you talk about being filled with the spirit, it's not the way that I receive it. But sometimes when I'm reading the word, I get kind of excited about what God is saying in there. I'm like, that's it. That's it. Jonathan. You get, yes, we're talking about the same thing. OK?

You can experience this in different ways, you can experience it in different ways. So don't, don't be upset or beat yourself up. The thing is you just wanna keep seeking his presence, you just wanna keep seeking his presence, church. And so as we prepare our hearts to take this communion meal, I want to invite you to stand as we pray. And if you would like to hold out your hands like this, asking the Holy Spirit to move in your heart and life, I would invite you to.

Father, we know that there's no better place to be than in your home. And we know Jesus that you've promised a heavenly home for each of us that you've prepared a place for us. But God, we pray that your divine presence would come and fill us today, that you would fill this church, that we might be people that enjoy the tangible presence of God. God, I pray for those who have weighty things that they need to confess to you today, that they see those things and that they will not run from them. They will not just lock the, they will not push them into the closet and then invite you in. There's no pushing in the closet guys. You gotta get rid of it.

And I pray that repentance would fill our church and that the spirit of Christ would fill our hearts and that we would enjoy your presence and your presence in full and that we would do it again each and every day confessing our sins boldly because of what Christ has done. And so spirit, we invite you, we invite you to move in each of us. We invite you to transform our hearts in our lives and to help us in spirit. We invite you as our legal prosecution here as our defense attorney, God. We, we thank you for your help and we pray that you would help us through life's troubles as we, we are not alone, we have you. And so we hold on to those promises today. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from John 13:36-14:14, continuing Jesus’s teachings at the Last Supper. Discussion points: When Jesus encounters troubled hearts he reminds them of eternal realities, the character of God in heaven is shown through Jesus on earth, we must be able to respect others without always agreeing with them, Jesus makes an exclusive claim to be the only way to God.

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Scripture reader: [John 13:36-14:14] Simon Peter said to him, Lord, where are you going? Jesus answered him where I am going? You cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward. Peter said to him, Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you. Jesus answered, will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times. Let not your hearts be troubled.

Believe in God, believe also in me, in my father's house are many rooms if it were not. So would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself that where I am, you may be also and you know the way to where I am going. Thomas said to him, Lord, we do not know where you're going. How can we know the way Jesus said to him? I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my father also from now on. You do know him and have seen him.

Philip said to him, Lord show us the father and it is enough for us. Jesus said to him, have I been with you so long? And you still do not know me, Philip, whoever has seen me has seen the father. How can you say show us the father? Do you not believe that I am in the father? And the father is in me. The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the father who dwells in me does his works, believe me that I am in the father and the father is in me. Or else believe on account of the works themselves.

Truly, truly, I say to you whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do in greater works than these will he do? Because I am going to the father, whatever you ask in my name, this I will do that. The father may be glorified in the son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: Do you guys remember the boys soccer team that got stuck in a cave in 2018 in Thailand? What a story who's seen the documentary on Disney? Plus a few, not many, I watched the documentary just because I had heard it was a great documentary. I had heard the story, thought I knew the story and then I watched the documentary and I'm enthralled by this thing. I mean, it is just captivating the story of these boys that got stuck in this cave in case you haven't heard the story or you or you don't know it very well. There were 11 boys or 12 boys who were exploring, yeah, 12 boys in their coach and they were, exploring a cave system in Thailand and they were all, soccer players.

It was a soccer team and they, we're exploring this, exploring this cave system, they wandered deep into a cave like really deep, like, like over a mile, two miles, three miles. I think it was, it was a good amount of distance, but then they didn't know that it was going to rain and then monsoon season was coming. And when it starts raining in Thailand, these caves fill up with water. And so the chambers that they had walked through now were full of water. There was no way to get through these chambers. And so as they were going through these chambers, they, they got in there and they just got stuck in the cave. as they're in the cave, the, the waters come down, they have no way to get out.

And so at first the parents are just like, why are these children stuck in this cave? Where, where are the children. We don't know where they are. And the way that they found the, the children is that they found their bicycles lined up outside of the cave and they said, well, they must be inside of that cave. And so they start to do some exploration. But the problem is there's only a select few people that are crazy enough to go scuba diving through a cave system over miles and miles. I mean, in portions of this cave, it is a small tunnel about this big where they have to crawl through there and the people that do this are crazy.

I mean, it is a high dollar hobby for people who are adrenaline junkies and have too much money on their hands. It's like an anesthesiologist from Australia or a professional rock climber from Austria or it's just people that are just a little bit crazy and have a lot of money and they all know each other and literally there's only a couple dozen of them in the world that is the type of hobby that this is what an elite club. And these are the guys, there just happens to be one of these guys in Thailand. And so he's like, well, I'm gonna start exploring the cave and looking for the kids and once they figure out that the kids are in the cave, all the national media starts paying attention. They're like, we don't know where the kids are. They might be dead. Who knows?

They know that if they do find the kids, there's only gonna be a few options. Once they realize that the kids aren't in the immediate portions of the cave, they wrote that there's only going to be a few options for the children to be able to get out of this cave as they get deeper and deeper into it. The first option would be that they teach the children how to do cave scuba diving. That was not a good option. Ok. These kids at this point have been in the cave for like 10 days without food. They're going to be hungry and weak and they are not going to be able to learn how to do cave scuba diving a hobby that only the craziest of crazy try because it's deadly and dangerous and extremely difficult, very, very difficult on the body to, to be able to do this.

Another possible solution that they could do if they can't teach them how to scuba dive their way out of there is maybe they could drill a hole down into the cave. But this also proved to be very difficult because you remember those Chile Chilean miners that got stuck in the hole in the cave. Different story. Ok. I got these confused in my head for a little while. Different story that took like months to drill that hole to get the Chilean miners out of the hole in the ground. Ok. So, drilling a hole down to these children who are starving in a cave cavern, not going to work. Plus the air is running out in there. Oh, boy.

So I guess the third option, the next one isn't going to be possible either because the next option is just shuttle food to the children and let them wait in the cave for months until the rainy season is gone. And then let the children walk out of the cave the same way that they came in. Also not a possibility. Elon Musk had an idea. He said I will build a submarine that you can load the children onto and then you can take them out, which has to be the most Elon Musky idea I've ever heard in my entire life. But that also wouldn't work because a submarine would not be able to make it through all the the cavernous crooks in the cave and everything they knew that if they were to find the children, there would only be one solution to getting them out. And it's a crazy one.

The divers would make their way in there. That one guy who's the anesthesiologist who also is a cave diver would also go in there. One person in the world, he would tranquilize the children so that they could not move. So they were completely asleep. They would affix a scuba mask to each of their faces and then tie them up to a rope and, and attach them to the deep cavern divers and let them pull the children out of cave. And then as they get to the sections of the cave where you have to walk, they would put the children on the stretchers and carry the children through the stretchers.

And about halfway through the anesthesiologist would have to readminister the drugs because they weren't strong enough to get them all the way out. This is a several hour scuba diving mission and then by the time and then they have to do this one after another, after another. It's the only way out. Could you imagine the children? It's actually there's a video and it's, it's powerful. You can look it up on youtube later and, and with the, with the in the video, you see the, the moment the divers discover the children. It's a powerful, powerful moment because the children are far deeper in this cave system than anyone imagined. And they finally, they feel like they've just gone too far. Like why are we even doing this? They're about ready to give up.

They finally get to a section. They see one little light as they pop their head open in this cavern and they swim over and it's all 13 of them just huddled together on a small little platform like this little bitty bit of the stage here. They're just all huddled there together, slowly starving, but they are so happy to see the diver. Can you just imagine? It's a very short interaction that the diver comes up and he's like, hey, how many of you are there? And they're like all 13 of us, we're all here and he's like, hold on a minute. I have to go, but I'm coming back and there will be many more who come with me and we're going to get you out of here. That was his promise of rescue to these children. There's only one way out of your kids. Don't worry about it, don't worry about how we're gonna do it. We're gonna come back and we're going to get you out of here.

And this is a modern day parable, a true one for what Jesus is communicating to his disciples right here in the upper room. Last week, we continuing our series in the book of John, we covered the first teaching of the upper room discourse, which is this kind of extended meditation that Jesus gives to his disciples. just before he, he is led to the cross to die. This is the night before he was betrayed. And last week he gave his disciples. It's kind of his farewell discourse. It's like him laying down what he wants his, his children in the faith to understand and to know. And as he gives his farewell discourse to them, the the main thing that he wants them to know is to love one another that this is the new commandment that he has given to his disciples to love one another as he has loved them.

And as he gives that he, he says, I'm about to go away from you. But here's what I want you to know, love one another. And so the disciples are not listening at all to what he's teaching them. And it's like, excuse me, question, where are you going? That's, that's what the disciples are doing. He just has to field a series of questions as if his disciples are a second grade classroom question. How do I get there? Question? Why can't I follow you? They each have their own questions and we see that Jesus is communicating that, hey, I'm about to leave. But don't worry, I'm gonna come back and when I come back, I'm going to bring you with me one day and when you come back with me, I'm going to, I'm going to have the place ready for you.

There's a way out of this situation. I'm gonna prepare the way for you to get out of here. I'm gonna prepare all that goes into it. I'm gonna bring you with me. You commit, you have contributed nothing to this. You have contributed simply the mess that you have found yourself in. I'm going to contribute the path out of the mess just as the scuba diverse communicated to the children. Let's dive into these questions and consider what Jesus is teaching us. This morning. Peter interrupts Jesus first. He says, question, where are you going? That's what Peter wants to know. He, he's like, yeah, love good. Ok. Next, where are you going? That's, that's what he wants to know.

And Jesus answers Peter where I'm going, you cannot follow but you will follow afterward. Peter said to him, question, why can't I follow you? I'm willing to lay down my life for you and Jesus answered. Will you lay down your life for me? It's just dripping in irony. In this moment, Jesus says, he's preparing to lay down his life for his disciples. Peter offers to lay down his life for Jesus. But Jesus knows that in the reality that Peter is going to deny him three times in the coming hours and that one day Peter would lay down his life for Jesus, but only after Jesus lays down his life first.

Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times. Now, this is probably a bit concerning for the other disciples in the room because they know that Peter is the most bold of them all. And if Peter is going to deny Jesus, what does that mean for me? What's going on here? And so Jesus restarts his speech. OK? He's restarting his, his farewell discourse here. And he says, let not your heart be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me. Jesus is the best. I just want you to see that, that if there's ever a night when Jesus should just be attending to his own emotional needs. It's this one he's about to head to his execution.

And what he does is he sees hearts that are troubled and he offers comfort. He always has time for the emotional needs of his followers. He comforts guides and instructs them even in the moment of his personal anguish. He says, let not your hearts be troubled. What is a troubled heart? A troubled heart is a heart that lives in fear, troubled heart is a heart that lacks peace. I know that the situations are different for us and here this morning, but many of us may be coming to Jesus with troubled hearts.

Today, we might feel like we are in an underground cavern of our own emotional neediness trapped with nowhere to escape, whether it's a health issue, whether it's a family drama, whether it's financial problems, whatever it is that for many of us this morning, we have troubled hearts. When Jesus sees troubled hearts, he reminds them of eternal realities. When Jesus sees troubled hearts, he reminds them of eternal realities. Church is your heart troubled this morning. You need to be reminded of the eternal realities that Jesus has provided for us. Jesus knows that heaven is actually the longing behind all of our longings. It's where our hearts are yearning for. So when he sees that his children, when Jesus sees that his children need comfort. He reminds them heaven is real. I'm going there to prepare a place for you.

Listen to how he describes it. Jesus says in my father's house are many rooms if it were not. So would I have not told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself that where I am. You may also be. Now, if you're like me and you're a child of the late 19 hundreds, then you might be thinking of that audio adrenaline song. Come and go with me to Yeah, come and go with me too. There we go. Oh You guys. It's a Yeah. Yeah. we sang that. It's a big, big house with lots and lots of room. It's a big, big table with lots and lots of food. It's a big, big yard where we can play football. It's a big, big house. It's my father's house.

Now as a kid, I grew up poor. So this sounded really good to me to have a big, big house like that. I had this vision of Jesus going to the suburb in the sky and fluffing the pillows and vacuuming the couch and making sure it's nice and ready for me. I didn't like football, so I kind of left that part alone. Ok? I was like, maybe he's got a Nintendo, but I can also play, but it sounded pretty good. The reality is a lot better than that though. A lot better than that. What's he actually saying? He's not saying that he's going to fluff the pillows. He's saying that, hey, I'm about to prepare the way and I'm about to go to heaven and when I'm there, it is ready for you, it's ready for you because I'm gonna make the way ready for you through my death and resurrection. It is ready for you and I'm waiting on you and I'm going to bring you back there.

What he's saying is actually so much more significant than just that God's place is rich. Ok? It's so much beyond that. We, I think that the song is fun but it, it, it kind of emphasize, emphasizes more on the stuff in the father's house than the fact that the father is there. Heaven is a place. But more than that heaven is a home. I actually really like it when families are, are going house shopping and they say we're shopping for a home, we're going to look at some homes because they know that what they want isn't actually a house, but they want a place where they feel like they can belong, what is home. When I say the word home to you, what comes to mind different things for different people? I am very sure by the Lord's grace, many of us grew up in homes with loving parents where we could come home and be ourselves. Just be the goofy that we all are ok where we are safe and secure a home is where you belong.

Maybe you think of your childhood home warm and inviting any psychologist will tell you that a, a home is absolutely required for you to be psychologically healthy. A home is absolutely required. Man. This ties in great with foster care, doesn't it? That was unintentional. But by the Holy Spirit intentionally, hm, a home is absolutely required for you to be psychologically healthy. No child should grow up without a place where they feel like they belong after a long day of work or difficulty in school. What do you say? I just wanna go home where I can rest where I can be myself where I don't have to worry or stress.

And that's what Jesus has promised, but it's so much better than our little homes. Each of our homes just points to this reality that we're going to my father's house, my father's home, not only will I belong, but I'll be completely approved by the one whose approval matters the most. And that's how Jesus describes heaven. He, he knows the disciples are about to have a very difficult day. He's about to be crucified and Jesus says, don't worry, I have a place for you, a place where you'll be accepted, a place prepared for you. Heaven is actually the longing of our hearts that's behind all of our other longings. As Augustine says, our heart is restless until it finds its rest in you. And to be with God is the longing of every human heart, our desires, whatever they may be for, for power or approval, for success or security, they find their satisfaction in our God in heaven.

And Philip knows this. Philip's question is my favorite of all the questions they get posed by the disciples. Philip show us the father and that is enough. So he's still not getting it. He still doesn't understand it, but he at least knows the right questions to be asking. He knows what he should understand. And he says, show us the father. And that is enough. That is the point, that's the point of heaven that God is there and that He approves of us and delights in us. And then we get to share in His glory forever. And that is enough.

If you're not a Christian here this morning, I would assume that the idea of spending eternity with God in heaven does not sound like a very appealing reality to you. And that's because that if you don't have an accurate idea of who God is, there's no way that's going to sound like a good thing. When our secular world tries to describe God oftentimes the idea that comes into our mind from the secular world is that God is a selfish, greedy trigger happy, terrible being. And so if you imagine God to be cold stodgy, greedy, this menacing figure, of course, you do not want to spend eternity with him.

But we have good news that, that is not the way that God is described by Jesus or by the Bible because what Jesus responds when he says this to Philip is, he says I have been with you so long and you still don't know me, Philip. What you know to be true about me is true of my father. The character of Jesus perfectly represents the character of God. And who do we think of Jesus as being but kind, patient, loving, sharing, selfless in heaven? That is the God that we get to be with. And he shares his character with us. First John, the same author of John wrote the letters and first John and in verse in chapter three, verse two, it says, beloved, we are God's children now and what we will be has not yet appeared. But we know that when he appears, we shall be made like him because we shall see Him as He is.

Heaven is a place. And more than that, it's a place where God dwells. And it's where God shares is divine love with us is the answer of every longing heart. It's a place of acceptance and delight. And the obvious question that the disciples asked is if such a place is real. If Jesus, if you are going somewhere and you're preparing this for us. Which sounds delightful. How do I get there? What's the way you see? The, the disciples? They're so, thick, dull. It's just like they don't understand what Jesus has done. They're still caught off guard by, by what he's teaching them because they don't expect Jesus to be talking about an eternal reality of the kingdom of Heaven. He, they expect Jesus to establish a real political kingdom on earth.

But the reality is so much better than that, so much better than that, so much more inclusive and, and, and wonderful for each of us because it is a eternal kingdom, kingdom of heaven. And so the, the disciples say, hey, if this is real, how do I get there? I wanna know how to get there. And Jesus describes where he's going. The disciples are very confused. They don't even realize that Jesus is talking about heaven. Jesus says this and you know the way that I'm going, you know, you know the way to, to the place where I'm going. And Thomas being Thomas being who he is, which is very analytical and oftentimes bold and courageous, but also will speak his mind. He's question. Lord, we do not know the way you are wrong, Jesus. We do not know the way and how can you say that we know the way and Jesus responds to him. I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the father except through me.

Now, what I just said is quite possibly one of the least politically correct statements that I could make this Sunday morning. But don't get mad at me. It's Jesus. Ok. Jesus is saying it. I'm just quoting Jesus at the moment. He says I am the way, you know the way Thomas because you know me and I am the way out of here. Now. You might think, especially if you're not a Christian here this morning or if you're still kind of exploring faith, you might be thinking, how dare Jesus or, or you, Fletcher, say that there's only one way to God. Isn't that mean? And you might even say, look, I have friends who practice other religions and they are so sincere and so devout and honestly, are just like better people than many of the Christians that I know and that is true. Ok. I'm not going to argue with that, that many Christians do not represent the teachings of Jesus as well as many non Christians. There are plenty of non Christians that are very kind people sincere and devout.

But here's the thing, I'm not saying that you have to say that these people are just quantitatively worse people than we are. That is not what Jesus is communicating, nor am I saying that you have to disrespect them because that's not what Jesus is saying. Either. You can respect a person, honor them, love them and disagree with them at the same time, that feels very, culturally, not the way that we like to think about things, but it's true, you can respect someone and disagree with them. At the same time, you can even say that there's things in their belief, belief system that you don't think are accurate. And sometimes for us who are Christians, we can look at someone who's not a Christian and look at their belief system and say, I respect aspects of what you believe.

And I think that they reflect what Jesus teaches because you're made in the image of God and all religions in some way have an echo of the reality of who God is in them. But I don't believe you have the whole truth to this because I believe that God has revealed his whole truth through the person of Jesus. We see Paul using that strategy. OK. So don't come at me later on this one, we see Paul using that strategy. He walks around in the book of Acts. And sometimes he says, look, I can see that these things you're doing, you're trying to find God. But let me give you a name to who you have worshiped without a name. Let me tell you more about who this person is because I have the full revelation of who God is.

Every religion is making competitive truth claims about the way that the world works. I want you to see that, that all religions teach very different things. Some things overlap and we can respect those things. But it is very intellectually lazy for you to say that all religions basically teach the same thing that is for you to say, I am too challenged to do the research to find out what these religions are, are actually teaching. And instead it's easier for me to say, oh, they're all teaching the same thing and then to just not worry about it. But when you look at what the scriptures are actually teaching and what these other documents are teaching, what these other religions are teaching. They are not all teaching the same thing.

It's actually very disrespectful. What if you walked into like a walk to a Imam today and said, you know what? I think your teachings are basically the same as Buddhism. Well, that's not gonna go well for you because they're not, they're not. What if you walk to the, the Buddhist temple? The the and said, I think you're teaching the same thing as Hinduism. They're like, no, I ha I'm not for you to say that they're basically teaching all the same things. It's just intellectually lazy. Islam, Hindu Christianity, Buddhism, even Mormonism all teaching very different things. They're teaching competing systems of belief. Now you might be thinking about it like this and this is a common way for people to think about it.

Secular pluralism thinks about it this way. This is the way that most of our scientific brothers and sisters will often think about things you might think about it. Like the elephant illustration. You've heard this illustration before where religion it's told from the viewpoint of a narrator who says now religion is like five blind men trying to describe an elephant. And so they're put into a room with the elephant, each of the blind man or a woman or they're each touching a different part that all the peoples of the earth, all just representing different you know, whatever. They're all touching a different part of the elephant and they're all trying to describe what an elephant is like. And so you have one of the blind men touching the trunk of the elephant as an elephant is long and slender and movable like a snake. You might have another member of the the, the blind men consortium who is touching the, the ear and says that an elephant isn't like that at all. An elephant's flat and flimsy and kind of like a fan that you would fan yourself off with.

Another one of them might be touching the leg and say no, an elephant is round and sturdy like a tree trunk. And the other one might be touching the side and said you guys are crazy. This elephant is immovable like a wall and the last one might be touching the tail and say an elephant's like a, like a rope just long and, and thin. And the story is told to say that they were all right and all wrong at the same time that all the religions are this way that they all have a piece of the truth, but none of them has the whole truth.

But the thing with the story is that there is someone in the story who has the whole truth and as the narrator who assumes that he can see the whole elephant. And so there is someone in this who has the whole truth and who has an exclusive truth. And as the narrator saying, I can see it all and I can see that each of you are wrong and that I am actually right. And that all are just pointing to what an elephant is actually like because I know what an elephant is actually like in our world. The secular pluralists think as though they see the whole elephant and all of us religious people are just dumb and only see a piece of the truth.

The pluralists like to fashion themselves as the humble position saying, oh, I don't really want to say that anyone's right. But in reality, it's an arrogant position who says that everyone is wrong except for me who is right above them all, they might be against the exclusivity of one religion over any other. But this is actually an exclusivism from the cultural elites of our society. In a New York Times op ed Nicholas Christoph said this, we liberals champion tolerance except for conservatives and evangelical Christians. We want to be inclusive of people who don't look like us as long as they think like us friends.

Everyone, everyone, even if you're trying not to make a truth claim, everyone is making a truth claim about the nature of the universe and reality. Everyone, there's no way around this. I love the way that Neil Neil Degrasse Tyson says it to Colbert because he says the good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe it. And Rebecca mclaughlin clipped back. I, I love this. She said that's not unique to science. That's the good thing about truth is that it's true, whether you believe it or not, it's not science, it's truth and everyone is making a truth claim. And so Jesus here is making the truth claim. He's saying I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. It is an exclusive claim.

He's saying, look, there's only one way out of this cave of your own doing that you find yourself in the sin problem that you find yourself in. And it's with me, you can try the other methods to get out of here, but they will, they will fail. I have to carry you out of here. You can't even contribute to the carrying, you're going to be like the unconscious soccer boy as I carry you out of this mess that you have found yourself in. I am your only way out of this cave and you have to trust me. That's all I ask is that you trust me. And if you trust me, I'll do all the work, I'll get you out of here and I will take you to the place where your heart is longing.

And that is the message of Jesus. If Jesus really is the Son of God, if he came to pay for the sin of the world, he teaches that faith in what he has done is our method of rescue. This is an exclusive claim. But at the same time, it's radically inclusive because it's not limited to any ethnicity or people group as the disciples thought it would be. They thought he was setting up Israel. No, Jesus has a much bigger inclusive claim than that, which says all those who will trust in me and find their faith in me, repent of their sins. Follow after me with their lives. I will deliver all you have to do is believe if Jesus is the way the truth in life.

How does that change the way that you are living? That's just the last question that I want you to ponder for just a moment. You've probably heard similar sermons to this before. If you've been in the church for a while and if you're new we're really glad to have you and we hope that it's, persuasive. Although I, I doubt that, you know, me talking about Jesus being the exclusive way to God for 10 minutes is really gonna convince many people that are far from that. But I hope it does and I hope that it starts many of the conversations that you might need to have over the coming days and weeks because it is an important topic.

In fact, if we're saying it's the truth, it might be the most important topic for you to consider. But some of you, there's different ways that you can think about this. Some of you have been approaching Jesus as a way, a truth and a life. But you realize that he's the way the truth and the life you come face to face with reality that He is God. He's not just some moral system, he's not just some system of morality that you might follow to get yourself out of the trouble that you are to have a better life, but he is actually God and that he desires to have a relationship with each of us.

And then some of us have been trying to find our own way, our own truth and our own life personal to ourselves. You've been looking for happiness and joy and life in ways that Jesus isn't connected with. You've been finding your own way through life on the you have on the one hand religion that says Jesus is a way, a truth, a life, a way that I'm going to live my life to hopefully get to God. On the other hand, you have your religion saying I'm gonna live my way, my truth, my life. And Jesus again is calling you dear brothers and sisters to see him as he is because as you see who Jesus is, you know, the father and he has gone to prepare a place for us and that place is good and that place is a big, big house where you have a spot to belong. He's prepared a room for you. He loves you dearly and wants you near to him and he wants to share his character, his goodness, his compassion, his kindness. He wants to shine all of that on you as a personal God for whom he has come to save it.

Leaving the sermon. If you, if you go from here and you and you just try to argue these things, I, I would encourage you not to do that. Actually, I would encourage you to go from here. Sometimes you need to have these conversations, but I would encourage you to go from here and listen to where Jesus is putting the emphasis. OK? What he's trying, what he wants to talk about as he's talking about these things is love. He's saying love one another. And the disciples are like question, question question. and he explains himself as you do. So when you go from here, go in love and as you have questions sometimes about your faith and you need to bring up issues of the faith, especially if we're saying is the truth.

Let the questions come and answer the questions, but always doing it in love. Not just because you have the truth and other people are wrong. And so that they're worse than you don't think about it like that. Think about it like I love people. I want them to know Jesus because it's a joyful thing. But the way I'm going to do that is always in love for many of us this morning, you might be, you might have that heart, that trouble, rest assured rescue is coming. He's coming. Our rescuer has told us that he's preparing a place for us and he's coming back to bring us with Him where you find yourself is temporary. We have an eternal hope.

So we're going to have an opportunity to respond to Jesus and that eternal hope that he's given to us this morning. I wanna encourage you if you've been treating Jesus as a way, a truth and a life or if you've been looking for your own way, your own truth, your own life, I encourage you to respond to Jesus and ask him to fill you with the fullness of God this morning. Then you might see Him as he is we're going to have some counselors, some prayer counselors in the back who would love to pray with you. And even if you just take this next song as we're preparing ourselves communion to consider that. How do I need to treat Jesus as the way the truth in life? How can I respond to him? And maybe today is just a step in that direction and that's OK. Hey, you don't get anywhere without taking one step at a time, right? It's just one step.

On the night that he was betrayed on the night before he was betrayed - it this night on this night that we're studying right now - Jesus took a loaf of bread with his disciples at the table and he broke it and he said, this is my body broken for you. And he took a cup and he said, this is my blood shed for you, do this in remembrance of me.

And so each week we have an opportunity to receive this reminder of what Jesus has done for us, that these eternal realities have been accomplished by Jesus, that his body was broken for us, that his blood was shed for us. Let us now stand and prepare our hearts to take this meal.

Jesus, as we come to the table where you've initiated this. And as God, we, we come to receive a new, the, the good news that you have done it all that you've paved the way out of the cave of our own mess and that we get to follow you through no work of our own Jesus. We pray that you would be very real to us in this time and that we would trust in you as our way of truth and life. Jesus. You have done such a wonderful cosmic thing. We thank you for living the life that we should have lived for dying, the death that we should have died and for being available to us even now and for preparing the way for us and for delivering us from our own mess, our own sin, Jesus, would we place a greater trust in you today and for those whose hearts are troubled, we pray that you would give them the comfort of the eternal hope that we have in you. In Christ name we pray, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from John 13:21-35 about Jesus’s exhortation to his disciples to love one another at the Last Supper. Discussion points: Jesus could have stopped Judas but chose to lay down his own life; the cross is the moment when the glory of God shines brightest; the more you understand God’s love for you, the more you understand your own sin.

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Scripture reader: [John 13:21-35] After saying these things, Jesus was troubled in his spirit and testified "Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me." The disciples looked at one another uncertain of whom he spoke. One of Jesus, one of his disciples whom Jesus loved was reclining at table at Jesus side. So Simon Peter motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. So that disciple leaning back against Jesus said to him, "Lord, who is it?" Jesus answered, "It is he to whom I will give this morsel of bread when I have dipped it." So when he had dipped the morsel, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. Then after he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, "What you are going to do, do quickly."

Now, no one at the table knew why he said this to him. Some thought that because Judas had the money bag, Jesus was telling him, buy what we need for the feast or that he should give something to the poor. So after receiving the morsel of bread, he immediately went out and it was night. When he had gone out Jesus said, "Now is the son of man glorified and God is glorified in Him. If God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in himself and glorify Him at once. Little children, yet a little while I am with you, you will seek me and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you. Where I am going, you cannot come. A new commandment I give to you that you love one another just as I have loved you. You are also to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: Several years ago, we had we had someone visit our church for the first time. His name was Sam. I think many of you might actually know Sam. he was a phd student at MIT studying math. really smart guy, needless to say, and he started visiting a church in 2012. This is back when we were just getting started in Brookline. There were and actually at that time, oddly enough, we had an evening service. It's kind of like forgotten from the history of city on a hill in many ways. We had an evening service once upon a time in Brookline back when there were less people than there are here this morning, at the morning service, we had an evening service that had even less people. It was like 15 or 20 people.

I, and, we, we did that every week for a long time and Sam came to one of these evening services for the first time as a first year phd student. And, he was, he was sociable. He hung out the entire time but after the service, that first week and maybe for the second week also, I noticed Sam do something a little peculiar after he got done, hanging out with people and chatting for a little while, he would go find a quiet corner and type on his computer.

And I did not have any idea what he was doing over there just feverishly taking notes until actually several years later, when Sam actually wrote a blog article about his search for a church. He has a, a blog. It's, it's really a fascinating blog, but he has a, a he wrote a blog article about his search for a church in Boston and how he decided upon a church in Boston and like a good phd student would, he had basically designed a study to scientifically decide which was the best church for him. So when, as he visited churches, he had to go and take a bunch of notes afterwards so that he could compare and contrast and he made charts and graphs and all of this stuff about which church would be the best church for Sam to be a part of. And as you read all of that, you just think, how did we win this competition? There are so many churches in Boston and all of them are so good, not all of them, but there are a lot of good churches. There are a lot of good churches in the city. And, and, and how did he decide that?

Surely sometimes when I first read through it, I was like, started making me feel a little, you know, a little better about, about ourselves. Like, maybe we've done something that's we found the secret, whatever it is and, and we're scientifically better than the other churches. And, but no, actually you read his article and by the end of the blog, what he attributes the reason why he, he chose to come to our church wasn't actually anything to do with his scientific study, but it was just because he felt loved. That's all there was to it. He just felt loved. People offered him a ride home after church, they asked him to, to spend time with them. He just felt love and I love it how even for the most strictly academic people that we might encounter who think very logically, there's no greater apologetic for the Christian faith than love. There is no greater apologetic for the Christian faith than love.

Verse 35 Jesus says this, he says by this all people will know that you are my disciples. If you have love for one another, the defining mark of the Christian is love, it feels so simple, doesn't it? I mean, this is why we come to church, right? Just to have the the the preacher say now we need to love each other. He says all people, this is how all people, this is people outside of the church, everyone, this is how they will know that you those who are inside of the church, the disciples of Jesus will know that you are disciples by the way that you love one another. The ones of you who are inside the church, the love that we share with one another is the defining mark of the way that outsiders should recognize that we are Christians.

And so let me ask you this question in our society today. What are Christians known for? I know that I, I'm a Christian leader. This is my full time job and I have a lot of relationships with people in the community, my, my children's friends, parents, our neighbors. And I'm always a little, just a little hesitant to tell them that I'm a pastor. I tell them I'm I'm proud of it. But there's a part of me that thinks in the back of my head. I hope that you don't think I'm a judgmental hypocrite. The second I tell you this because that is the way that most of the world views Christians as judgmental hypocrites.

Surely part of that reasoning is due to selective reporting. I mean, if you hear a story about Christians on the radio or if you read a story about Christians somewhere rarely are they going to talk about the millions of people that we have supported through disaster relief. The hospitals that we've started the, the many Christian parents who a adopt and foster Children into their home, so many good things that they do not cut, cut talk about. But what you will hear about are the controversies and there are quite a few. Are there not? It's like every week you hear a new controversy being communicated in the news stories and it is true as Christians, we have failed to be known for what Jesus told us that we are to be known for.

But look, no one becomes a Christian because they're so awesome. That's why you become a Christian. We know we're terrible people. That's why we need Jesus. And so we have this message from him telling us what we are to be known for. And, and really, as I've pondered this for this week and ask the Lord how we should be considering this. What I want to do is kind of limit the scope a little bit because it's so easy to look at Christians at large and, and talk about all that we need to do to make a better reputation for the church. And for Jesus. But really what I wanna focus on is right here in this room and throughout the week and homes all around the area. How do people know us? CoaH Somerville City on a hill church which is, you know, sometimes we call it CoaH, city on a hill church, Somerville. How are we to be known by our neighbors? That is the focus of today and I pray that it is people who follow Jesus whose desires are shaped into the desires of Jesus and who love one another.

Today, we're continuing the series on the book of John. We've entered into a new section of the book. We've been going through the book of John for about eight months now. And we've entered into the second section of the book. The whole first section of the book. The 1st 12 chapters of John are a series of miracles and, and claims that Jesus makes to show that he is the Messiah when you and then the last section of the book starting in, in chapter 18 through the end of the book is really the story of jesus' crucifixion and his resurrection.

And so now we've entered this middle part of the book and what we have here is it just really slows down and we get about five chapters of extended meditation on who Jesus is and what he's come to do. We get five chapters of Jesus teaching his closest disciples who he is we get five chapters of Jesus just talking to them in an upper room. We call this the upper room discourse. And he is probably the, I think it's the longest extended teaching of Jesus in all the scriptures and what's happening at the upper room discourse.

Last week, Calvin started us very well by discussing how it begins. They, they go into this room and Jesus, you know, it's gonna be a different night when Jesus takes the towel and bends down and starts to wash the feet of his own disciples. He's setting the tone right away. It's the Passover feast. It's a, it's a time to enjoy unhurried time with those who are closest to you. And so, today we, we start the discussion at the Passover feast. They've all got their feet clean. They're sitting around the table, reclining around the table in a ancient, near eastern home. The tables would not be high like the ones that we think of get, get Leonardo da Vinci out of your head. OK? They did not sit on one side of the last supper. This is the last supper. The upper room discourse is last supper. Same thing. They're not on the same side of the table and the table's low, they're reclining around the table and Jesus starts the conversation.

Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me what an icebreaker, Jesus. You know, a way to start the discussion around the dinner table. This is that kind of sounds like a Thanksgiving in my family. The disciples are, are all looking at one another like it's not me, is it you who is it? Who is it gonna be? Who is it? And one of the, and one of the and one of the gospels they like each take turns going. Is it me Jesus? Is it me Jesus? And and, and he's like no Peter, it's not you.

But in, in this one, we see one of the disciples whom Jesus loved was reclining at the table at jesus' side. Now, this phrase, the the disciple who Jesus loved. this is who we know is the author of John. But this disciple is never given a name in John. And we only know who he is based upon inference. And so traditionally, the church is understood this disciple that Jesus loved quote unquote sounds rather like a prideful name for yourself if I say so myself. But it is John son of Zebedee. There's a lot of reasons why we think that I guess we don't have a lockstep case for it, but there's a lot of reasons why we think this is John, the son of Zebedee. And hence we call the book John, right? Because otherwise we would just call it the gospel according to the disciple Jesus loved.

So here we have John and he's sitting at Jesus side when it says he was reclining at the table at Jesus' side. The Greek more literally says that he was reclining in his bosom. Now, I know that's not something that men usually do these days where they recline in each other's bosoms. OK. But in an ancient world and this culture, it was fine. All right. There's, there's nothing weird about this whatsoever. Men were just a little bit more affectionate toward one another than in modern day society. And so we have John reclining literally leaning upon the chest of Jesus and as he's reclining there, what Peter does actually one thing about this rec reclining on his bosom that I want to bring out is John chapter one.

It actually says that no one has ever seen God, the only God who is at the Father's side, he has made him known. So he is at the Father's side. That actually means that he is also reclining at the Father's bosom. So Jesus, no one has ever seen God, the only God but Jesus, the only God who is at the Father's side reclining on his bosom, this this position of intimacy that Jesus enjoys with his father. And now that Jesus is sharing with his follower, this beloved disciple that we have here. And as they're at the dinner table, Jesus says, one of you will betray me. And it's like Peter looks over at John. He's like ask him, who is it? Ask him, John. And so John, it says that he reclined his head. So John goes Jesus, who is it? And Jesus says it is he to whom I will give this morsel of bread when I have dipped it.

Now, I think that Jesus must have said this quietly because after Judas takes the bread and leaves, everybody's like, well, where is he going? And so I don't think Jesus said it loud, but I think he did disclose it to John in that moment because he takes a morsel of bread and he dips it and he hands it to Judas. And at that moment, the spirit of Satan enters into Judas and Jesus says to him, whatever you're going to do do it quickly, which reminds us that no one takes the life of Jesus, but he lays it down himself. He could have stopped Judas in that moment, but he's, he invited Judas, whatever you're going to do, do it quickly.

And so Judas left at that moment full of selfishness and willing to sell out Jesus of Nazareth for a few, a few silver coins. As Judas leaves Jesus begins his speech. Now, this is a farewell speech. This is actually a pretty common form of literature in the ancient Hebrew world. We actually see several farewell speeches throughout the Bible that occur occur. The first one, we just preached a sermon on it less than a year ago. Genesis 49. You do not have to turn there right now. But it is the Jacob father Jacob giving a blessing to his 12 sons. We also see one of these speeches with Joshua giving a speech a as he's nearing the end of his death. It is, it spans three chapters in the book of Joshua. It's a long speech to his sons. We also see a speech like this from David to his son Solomon who who carry on the throne for David.

And so here we have Jesus beginning a farewell speech, but Jesus has no children and instead he addresses his disciples as my little children, Jesus, the most complete human to ever live to ever live whose life has impacted more people on this planet than any other person in the history of the world was never married and never had Children that should hearten a few of us in here that you don't have to be married or have Children for your life to be full of meaning and purpose. Look at Jesus most complete man that's ever lived. You can be complete. You don't have to find a spouse to complete you. You can be a complete person and look at what he's doing.

He's leaving a spiritual legacy to his disciples. He's poured into these men so much. He's able to look at them and address them as children. These are men who are not that much younger than he is Jesus at this point is 33 years old. I am Jesus his senior today. I'm 38. These men probably around the same age as Jesus. Now he is Jesus. Ok. So I, I understand that there's a little bit of gravitas that goes with that. But he's able to look at these men who are his peers and he say my little children, look at the legacy of faith that he's left. May we be intentional in our lives in the same kind of way those of us who have children, may we have words for our children? Those of us who don't have children and those of us who do, may we leave a spiritual legacy such as this in our church.

Jesus begins his speech now is the son of man glorified and God is glorified in Him. If God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him, him in himself and glorify him at once. Now, that's a lot of talking about glory, right? And it's a little confusing as to what Jesus is talking about. But what Jesus sees is this wonderful dance that he's been living throughout eternity past with the Father and the Holy Spirit. And he knows that he wants to bring glory to the father and that the father is going to bring glory to Jesus. And the moment of His glorification is coming because what we actually see is that the cross is the moment where the glory of God shines brightest.

Now, what is the glory of God? But it is the outward shining of his inward being. The glory of God is the outward shining of the inward being of who God is. And so as you see the character of God, you are receiving the glory of God. And what Jesus is saying is my moment of glorification is at hand. The hour has come. Jesus has done plenty of things to show the character and glory of God. Up until this point in the story, he has healed the blind. He is fed 5000 with just a few bread, loaves and fish. He has risen Lazarus from the dead even.

But Jesus says all those pale in comparison to what to the glory you are about to see on the cross. What most people thought was his moment of defeat, nailed to a bloody wooden cross, wearing a crown of thorns. Ari having been flogged, condemned between two thieves, sentence to execution, betrayed by his own disciple and abandoned by almost all of his followers would be the moment of glory where their inward being of who God is would be on full display on the cross. We see the one who is at the bosom of the Father throughout eternity. Past enjoying perfect intimacy with the Father, sacrifice himself willingly laying his life down to pay for sins.

He did not commit to bring sinners like you and I into that same intimacy with the father that we do not deserve on the cross. The true nature of who God is is on radical display. Because the true nature of who God is, is simply love and what is love. But it is not just a feeling that we feel, it is not the butterflies, it is not this infatuation. It's a fun part of love many times. But love. You can just put an equal sign if you're taking notes. OK? Equals sacrifice.

When you get in front of a co a a group of your peers and you commit to the cognitive marriage. What do you commit to for better or for worse, richer or poorer through good times and bad through health or sickness. I belong to you. I'm committed to your good no matter what that means. I will lay my life down because I love you and nothing's gonna get in the way of that when you see acts of love, what are those acts? It is one person sacrificing their own good for the good of another.

And that is what Jesus does on the cross. He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God bearing the weight of the wrath of God for sinners. This is love laying himself down. This is the picture of the glory of God who he most is, is selfless. You look at Judas, Satan has entered Judas. What does He do selfishness. What does Jesus do? Selflessness? Hatred is not the opposite of love, selfishness is. And so you have Jesus communicating on the cross, the very heartbeat and passion of who God is. We see what's most core to who God is on the cross. And so we see his love, we see His glory, the inward being of God on full outward display, glory of God.

There's a hymn that we sing sometimes and when we sing it, I find myself rolling my eyes sometimes because it just seems so ridiculous. It's so hyperbolic to me, it, it's so over the top. Until I look at the cross, we sing it. It says the love of God is greater than, as far, is greater, far than tongue or 10 or pen can tell it goes beyond the highest star and reaches to the lowest hell. The wandering child is reconciled by God's beloved son. The aching soul again, made whole and priceless. Pardon one? Oh Love of God. How rich and pure, how measureless and strong it shall forevermore endure. The angels and saints song. Could we with ink, the ocean fill? And were the skies of parchment made where every stalk on earth a quill and every one ascribe by trade to write. The love of God would drain the ocean dry. Nor could the scroll contain the hole though stretched from sky to sky?

That feels so hyperbolic until you really look at the weight of what he has done that. Every sin for every person who would call upon his name was placed on Jesus in that moment and he bore it all so that we would get to share in his eternal inheritance forever with God. So with all that in mind, listen to what Jesus says. A new commandment. I give you that. You love one another just as I have loved you. Oh, that is hard. That is hard. You also are to love one another.

This phrase new commandment in Latin, it's called the Monet Tum Novum. Sorry, I don't speak Latin. which is actually where we get the word Monday, Tuesday, Monday, Thursday, sorry, Monday, Thursday. as a kid, I always thought they were saying Monday, Thursday and I was like, that makes no sense. But Mon Monday, Thursday is the day before Good Friday that there's traditionally in many churches, a foot washing ceremony and a teaching on this new commandment. The new commandment isn't anything new at all though. Is it like if anything we should get from the Bible? It's love one another. I mean, that's not new, that's in the Old Testament, isn't it? Yes, of course. It's in the New Old Testament. Of course, Jesus or, or God has always told us that to love one another.

But what's new about this new commandment is this added point to love one another as I have loved you that is what's new verse 35. By this, all people will know that you are my disciples. If you have love for one another, the defining mark of the Christian life is not the regurgitation of theological facts. The defining mark of the Christian life is not how often and how feverishly you pray. The defining mark of the Christian life is not the exercise of of spiritual gifts. The defining mark of the Christian life is simply love. It's love, it's love for one another. The aroma vibe culture of our gatherings should and must be that of self sacrificial love for one another.

And here's the thing with the new commandment. As I've looked at it this week, the more you understand it, the less you feel like you're doing it because it works like this, the more we understand our own sin, the more we understand the love of Christ and just what it cost Him, the more you understand your own sin, the more you understand the love of Christ and the more you appreciate the love of Christ, the higher the standard to love one another feels and the more you understand the higher the standard to love one another feels, the more you feel like a sinner, it's a spiral, ok? Or maybe up spiral of love and, and of appreciation for the glory of who God is.

It's a commandment that you can never satisfy. In fact, if you feel as though you have satisfied it. You have some steps of maturation in your Christian life to go because it is just not one of those things that you can ever actually fully achieve to understand, appreciate. And most importantly, to experience the love of Christ is what empowers inspires and enables our love for one another. The more we look I can stand here, I I'm tempted in fact to stand here in front of you and be like, so get out there and love each other, love each other. People go love it, love love. Maybe that would help a little bit, but it's gonna be so much more effective for you to look at the love that you have received in Christ as you see what Christ has done for you, it will turn your hearts to love one another.

When I was a, a kid. I had kind of a for those of you who haven't been around for a while. I had like a weird childhood. Ok. my, my wife and I joke about this. It's probably not as funny as we used to think it was, but like, statistically speaking, I should be selling drugs in Mississippi somewhere. that's like where my childhood, should be. I grew up, my father left when I was five and I'm an only child, single mom and a, we grew up impoverished in, in a rural area and it, I, I don't want to exaggerate things. I had a very loving home. My mom is great and, my, my mom's family is great. Hi. They, they watch, but there, there was just part of me that just never felt at home. there I, to be very blunt, I, I was just kind of a nerdy kid.

I probably would have fit in a little bit better in Somerville. But where I grew up, I was just like a nerdy kid who wasn't interested in sports. I wanted to play with lego and watch Star Wars. And I, I just didn't make friends very easily. and never really felt like I had a place and when I was in like eighth or ninth grade, I decided to start attending the church that my family many members of my family attended. we, we had not been regular in my entire life until then and I went to church and really, for the first time in my life, I received love from people that weren't my blood family and I saw how they loved each other and I made friends and I had a youth pastor where I didn't have a father.

The Lord gave me a spiritual father who literally and figuratively put his arm around me and just spent far more time than what would be enjoyable with a 14 year old and not in a creepy way at all. And the love of Christ through the people of Jesus, change me. Have you experienced it? Have you been in that setting? There's no greater apology, apologetic for the cro for the cause of Christ than the new commandment to love one another.

If you have experienced the love of Jesus, let me just let me just bring it down to a couple application points for us here. If you have experienced the love of Jesus, if you haven't, I invite you to experience it today, we're gonna have some prayer counselors afterwards that would love to pray with you and help you to understand that better. But if you have experienced it, I just wanna point out a few things first. If you wanna follow jesus' teaching with the new commandment, you have to be in a church. I mean, how are you going to love one another when there is no one another to be committed to and to love? It's not that we're just when he says love one another. It's not that he's actually talking about within the, the, the the disciples, loving one another.

Now, it's not like Jesus doesn't tell us to love our neighbors. In fact, Jesus tells us to love our enemies. So it, it goes far, we're, we're to have love for everybody. But we're particularly to be known for how we love one another, for the aroma and culture and vibes and feelings of love that we have acts of self sacrifice with one another. That is how we are to be most known and tell me how you do this apart from a church fellowship where people know one another and are committed to one another. It's why we practice meaningful church membership here so that, you know who is committed to the local church so that you can, we can be connected to one another and committed to one another and look, churches are messy, but it wouldn't be self sacrificial love unless relationships required a little bit of sacrifice.

Sometimes when we think about church, we think about church as being a place of inspiration and information where you learn new things about the, about the Bible and you're inspired to live a better life. But if that's all that church is, you are wasting your time coming to this building. There are better teachers than me on youtube. Ok. You can pull out your phone and find them. I'll give you a few names afterwards if you want. But we come together so that we can love one another so that we can be so we can see a few faces so that we can be reminded. These are the people I'm committed to and these are the people that I'm laying down my life. And these are the people that are laying down their lives.

For me, it's opportunity for relationship that shared experience. The mark of the Christian is to love one another. And if that's the mark of the Christian. That is the mark of the church. We have to pursue a gospel culture in our church of love. This means that our relationships, the, the feeling you get when you come in to a gathering of the people of God is a feeling of love. That should be what we are known for.

And let me tell you, I love being a part of this church because I have experienced that. Amen anybody else I really have. And if you're new, I hope that you've experienced it and I hope that you will experience it. And I just wanna say, thank you. It's really easy. It would be really easy. And it is really easy for a lot of pastors to not feel that in their church. And you guys just have blessed me so much. I there's no part of me that's not proud of you in this, but let's just continue to move forward with it. There are a few things that do damage our ability to have this gospel culture and, and one of it would be a lack of experience and understanding of the gospel. Again, we have to go back to what Jesus has taught us.

But the other one that I just wanna bring out for a moment, it, it is something that I do think is preventing this from becoming a, a really rich gospel culture that we have here. And it's a de it actually comes from a positive desire and it's, it's this that we don't want to be a burden that no one wants to be a burden to anyone else. And so they, they don't really make their needs known or they don't really allow their needs to be known. And so they are just kind of superficial surface level and, and get out of here or, or, or try to try not to share as much as they can.

Galatians. 6:2. Ok. This was a verse that I've studied a lot in seminary Galatians 6:2 says this bear one another's burdens. Catch the second part. Ok. This might be something you miss. You've probably heard that first part bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. Well, what's Paul talking about? He's talking about the new commandment to love one another. What does it look like to love one another to fulfill the new commandment? But to bear one another's burdens. And that means that you have to be willing to be a burden. Now, is that hard for many of us? I think it's hard for almost all of us in order to bear one another's burdens and fulfill the law of Christ. It must mean that you are both needed. That's easy for most of us and needy. Oh, not fun, not fun to be needy. It means that you're vulnerable. Oh, not fun either. And intentional with others.

It means that your community groups aren't just Bible studies, but there are times where you can really share your needs with one another and where one another don't just say, oh, I'll pray for you, but actually lovingly come around you and support you. When you are a burden, you are giving your church community an opportunity to fulfill the law of Christ. Do you see that, that if you were never a burden, if none of us are ever a burden on anyone else, we have no opportunity to fulfill the law of Jesus. You are needy, let yourself be needy, but you are also needed.

So church leaving this place, let me just encourage you. Don't wait, send those text messages of encouragement, make those meals and drop them off. Pick up the phone call, someone, invite someone over, drop off a gift, show love, whatever it is, show love. Let's just let that be what we're known for the way that we show love to one another. Let me just end with this, making it really personal. How are you known by those outside the church? Yes. I'm not always really excited when I think about this for myself.

Do people know that you're a disciple of Jesus? Do they see you with the people from your church family or do you have a very private faith? How can you this week, this week display the love you have for Jesus in the way that you love one another. Let's take steps of obedience.

In just a moment, you're going to have an opportunity to participate in a sacred meal. And what we do with this meal every week is we're reminded of the love of Christ that his body was broken for us. His blood was shed for us that we might live in response to him, that we might experience his love. And so if you're a Christian here this morning, if you are calling Christ and, and following after him with all of your heart, I invite you to come and receive it. You might need to consider what's going on in your own heart and commit your life more to Jesus this morning. And if you've never experienced that love of Christ, we're gonna have some prayer counselors in the back that would be more than willing to pray with you and to help you to trust in him and experience that love for the first time.

But with that said, I'm gonna invite you to the table at this moment. I love it when we're in the upper room discourse because Jesus initiated this meal meal during the upper room discourse. And it's like we're being invited to the table with Jesus and his and his disciples. It's like we're right there and we're enjoying it ourselves. Take it in a worthy manner, consider what's going on in your heart and live a life of self sacrificial life. Would you stand as we pray.

God, would you make us a people known for how we love and care for one another? Would you help us to fulfill the new commandment? Not out of a strict sense of moralism and guilt, but out of an overflow of the love that you have poured into our hearts. May we receive that love to a new degree this week that our eyes might be open to just the depth of the glory of God and the love of Christ for us. And may we have open hearts to receive that love? Would you open each of our hearts to receive the love that you've given? May this communion meal be a sacred time where we are reminded of the divine sacrifice that you have made on our behalf. And we ask these things in Christ's name, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from John 12:27-50 about Jesus predicting his death. Discussion points: The Pharisees were living in spiritual darkness and could not recognize who Jesus was, we need God to give us ears to hear and hearts to understand, spiritual blindness is also caused by love for the things of this world over Christ.

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Scripture reader: [John 12:27-50] Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? Father save me from this hour before this purpose? I have come to this hour. Father glorify your name. Then a voice came from heaven. I have glorified it. I will glorify it again. The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said an angel has spoken to him. Jesus answered, this voice has come for your sake, not mine. Now is the judgment of this world. Now will the ruler of this world be cast out? And I when I am lifted up from the earth will draw all people to myself. He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die.

So the crowd answered him. We have heard from the law that the Christ remains forever. How can you say that the son of man must be lifted up? Who is the son of man? So Jesus said to them, the light is among you for a little while longer walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in darkness does not know where he is going while you have the light, believe in the light that you may become sons of light. When Jesus had said these things, he departed and hid himself from them though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him so that the words spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled. Lord, who has believed what he heard from us and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed. Therefore, they could not believe for again, Isaiah said he has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes and understand with their heart and turn and I would heal them.

Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him. Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him. But for fear of the Pharisees, they did not confess it so that they would not be put out of the synagogue for they love the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God. And Jesus cried out and said, whoever believes in me believes not in me, but in Him who sent me and whoever sees him sees me sees him who sent me, I have come into the world as light so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him for, I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge, the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. But I have not spoken on my own authority. But the father who sent me has himself given me a commandment, what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the father has told me.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: All right. This is gonna be a little bit of a different way to start a sermon today. I want to invite us all to have a moment to have a bit of a soul check. OK? What is going on in your soul? So I'll just invite you, you can close your eyes. however you wanna do that wherever you can can consider with me, how is your soul doing? Mm When was the last time you really considered the state of your soul? Usually when I ask someone about their soul, they tell me how many days they've read their Bible recently. I want you to put that aside for just a minute and look at your soul with the eyes of your heart. Biblically speaking, all people are made up of body and soul, physical and spiritual. Your mind is your soul, your brain, is your body, your desires or your soul or your heart. So how are your desires this morning? Where is your heart? If you were to give a, a weather report on the internal state of your being. How's the weather? Is it foggy? Is it cloudy rainy? Maybe the sun shining? I hope it is. What is your soul craving this morning?

I want to invite you to consider the truth that all of our longings are truly longings for God himself. And that when we find Him, we will truly be satisfied. Hear this church receive this word from Isaiah chapter 55. The Lord speaks, come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters and he who has no money, come buy and eat, come buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend money for that? Which is not bread and labor for that which does not satisfy, listen diligently to me and eat what is good and delight yourselves in rich food and climb your ear and come to me here that your soul may live. All right. You can, you can look up if you're not already.

I wanted to start with the soul check this morning because this passage is is somewhat heavy. We've been walking with Jesus for months now. So we've been going through the book of John and Jesus has pretty like clearly made himself known as the Messiah through a series of declarations of teachings and of miracles. It is clear to Jesus and to everyone around him that he is the messiah. But yet people still don't understand the people that are following him even do not understand and why do they not understand? But because the status of their souls is darkness that they are spiritually blind, that they don't have ears to hear.

And so I know even this morning as I declare God's word to you that unless the Lord gives you eyes to see and ears to hear and a heart that is soft, it falls on the hard ground and you won't see a thing. And so I just pray that as we examine the status of our souls, we'll see that our true hunger is for Christ. And as we walk through this passage that the Lord would give us spiritual sight that he would wake us from our slumber that many of us are stuck in. That spiritual blindness is a global pandemic of proportions that we've not experienced. We're all born into it and we live in it unless we're given the gift of sight. But the cure is here throughout his life. Jesus showed that he was a messiah. The people weren't getting it. Now, Jesus knows as we come to this passage, we just passed the passage where his heart where he saw that. We've been going a little out of order. So let me catch you up with what happened because we did the triumphal entry several weeks ago on Palm Sunday and, and that's the passage where Jesus says, my hour has now come. And so we ski, we then went back and did a couple of passages before the triumphal entry. I just didn't want to do triumphal entry like a week after Easter. That didn't make sense. So I just did it the week before Easter.

And now we're back to the passage right after Jesus says, my hour has come. So Jesus knows that. Now he's making a, a death march, a march to the cross and he knows that his hour has come. And so he sits down and, and you can see him praying and he starts verse 27. Now, my soul is troubled. Jesus is familiar with the status of his own soul. This word troubled. That is a strong word. It is a strong word. When you look at the word troubled in the original language, it has these implications of revulsion, horror. Anxiety is a very strong word. His soul is troubled and he knows what's going on in his inner life. And he asked himself the question, Father, what shall I say? Am I going to say, father save me from this hour? But as soon as the words get out of his lips, he, he knows he's like, no, that's not right. And he corrects himself. Isn't that an amazing thing that he has a thought? And he doesn't say I'm beholden to that thought, but he's able to correct himself with the next breath.

How often do we need to do that? Where we think this thing? These people are judging me. These people think this or I'm afraid of this. But then the next thought Jesus has, he's correcting himself and saying no, I'm not going to pray that because it's for this purpose that I've come to this hour, father glorify your name. And so Jesus is able to see the condition of his own soul. But then he also is then able to in turn, be able to trust his father with his soul completely.

Are you in the place where you can do that where you see the condition of your soul and then trust your father in heaven with the condition of your soul. He doesn't wallow in self despair. He looks heavenward, then a voice from heaven came and it, and it said I have glorified it and I will glorify it again. The Father affirms verbally a voice from heaven speaks to Jesus and declares I will glorify it and I will glorify it again. He affirms everything that Jesus is doing and saying where he's going three times in the New Testament. We see the voice of the Father speak to Jesus, but this is the only time that we see it in the book of John.

There are two other occasions though that we know that a voice from heaven comes and speaks. All right, a little crowd participation here who's got one baptism. Thank you. And the other one transfiguration. Good job, well done my friends. So, but then we have this one where Jesus is preparing to die and the voice comes to affirm him in his moment of spiritual need.

The crowd doesn't recognize the voice. They say, what was that? Was that thunder? Maybe it was the voice of an angel. They don't recognize the voice of God. They haven't grown accustomed to, to hearing his voice. And so they give it other other descriptions. Maybe that was just thunder. It was the other day there was a an earthquake. Anybody, anybody feel the earthquake, who else thought it was just a truck driving down the road? That's what I thought Megan came in. I was just like getting dressed or something and she came in and she was like, did you feel that people were talking about it everywhere? There's an earthquake? And I was like, oh yeah, like I think so. California is laughing at us. I don't know.

Verse 31. Now, now is the judgment of this world. Now, will the ruler of this world be cast out? And I, when I'm lifted up from this world will draw all people to myself. All. Look at what he's saying. OK, this is really clear. Jesus is explaining exactly what's about to happen. He's like, look, here's what's gonna happen. Judgment of the world ruler of this world, it's gonna be cast out and I, when I'm lifted up from the earth, he's talking about being risen up onto a cross will draw all people to myself. Verse 33 he said this to show them by what kind of death he was going to die. It's a poetic way of talking about being lifted to the cross, but the people still don't get it. He's telling them exactly what's about to happen and look at how they respond.

Verse 34. So spiritually blind, they said the crowd answers him. We've heard from the law that the Christ remains forever. How can you say that the son of man must be lifted up? Who is the son of man? It's as if they haven't had this conversation before Jesus is predicting his death once again. And the people are just so confused because they understand the Messiah in very different terms than Jesus understands the messiah. They understood the Messiah to be a political representative of the kingdom of God, a political king that will reign forever. They were ready to usher him into the throne of David. But Jesus had a different way that he was going to reign forever.

Verse 35. So Jesus said to them, the light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light less darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going while you have the light believe in the light that you may become sons of light. Jesus is like, look, time's running up. It's your last chance. Believe in the light. I'm here. I am the light of the world. Trust in me. Listen to what I'm saying, step out of the darkness and you will see you will become people who shine with the light of the world.

Also, when Jesus said these things, verse 36 2nd half of it, when Jesus said these things, he departed and hid himself from them, which makes sense. I mean, it's gotta be really frustrating to just constantly be misunderstood by people. And he's like, I'm gonna go hide. OK, see you guys later. That's, that's what I usually do after like a whole morning of my Children misunderstanding everything that I tell them to do.

Verse 37 though he had done so many signs before him, they still did not believe in him. I've heard it said you can lead a horse to water, you can even make it drink, but you cannot change his point of view. And this is what Jesus is experiencing. He's made it very clear, he's shown miracles, he's had his life and his teachings and yet the people will not follow him and why it's because they live in the darkness, they live in a spiritual blindness that has infected the inner parts of their soul, causing it to be impossible and unreceptive to the words that he is teaching them to receive the truth of who Jesus is. You must be given spiritual eyes, to see ears, to hear and heart to understand.

Now what John does is and he doesn't do this a lot when you read through the the New Testament account, John's obviously very conscious of the Old Testament. He's writing and looping in themes from the Old Testament all the time, but he doesn't quote The Old Testament very often. And so when he quotes the Old Testament, it's actually a really good practice to stop and be like, OK, why is he doing that? And here we get two quotes from Isaiah. So the author of this story wants us to connect what Isaiah was saying to what Jesus is doing. And when you look at those two quotes, it makes a lot of sense. What he's trying to teach us is that spiritual blindness is nothing new. Spiritual blindness has been going on since the beginning that almost every single major prophet was rejected in their time that the word of God is not a popular word to preach.

And so it goes with Jesus as well. The people have always struggled with spiritual blindness. Isaiah. OK. So this first quote that we have here is from Isaiah 53. It's probably the greatest prediction of Jesus in the Old Testament. And it says this verse 38 so that the words spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled. Lord, who has believed what he heard from us and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed. It's basically just emphasizing you don't believe unless God draws you verse 39. Therefore, they could not believe for again, Isaiah said, and this is from Isaiah six. Ok. This is a very, very well known verse. He has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts lest they see with their eyes and understand with their heart and turn and I would heal them.

So Isaiah six, if you're familiar with that, it is this grand depiction of the throne room of God, Isaiah is drawn into the throne room of God and he sees God in all of his glory and there's angels flying around him. It's one of the most magnificent passages in the entire Bible. I've preached it several times. If you've been here for a while, you've heard a sermon on Isaiah six, the angels are flying around. They're saying holy, holy, holy with two hands, they're covering their face with two hands, they're flying and with two hands, they're covering their feet because it's holy ground. And Isaiah stands there and he looks at them and he says, woe is me! I am a man of unclean lips living among a people of unclean lips.

Basically, what he says is when I see now what I have never seen before, I see your full glory. I recognize my spiritual blindness and my Brokenness and I am not a sinless person yet I stand before you and he sent, and he says, God says, who will go for me and who will, who will, who will speak for us? This Trinitarian idea of who God is in that throne room. And Isaiah says, I will go send me, I will be your messenger. And this is how God responds. Isaiah signs up to be a prophet for the word of God. And God says, people aren't gonna listen to you. They're blind spiritually, they're deaf spiritually. They're not going to listen to you. But because you've seen who I am, you still have to go.

One of the things that I've never seen in that passage is what the next verse reveals to us. Verse 41. John chapter 12, Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him. I'm just gonna keep reading for just a second. So you see this nevertheless, many of the authorities believed in Him, who is the hymn here? This is Jesus. So many of the authorities believed in Jesus which reveals what's going on in verse 41 Isaiah said these things because he saw the glory of Jesus and spoke of Jesus. What does that mean? I had never seen, like I said, I've preached this passage probably a dozen times in my life. So many times, I've never seen this verse and it's never dawned on me quite like this. That when Isaiah is drawn into the throne room of God, whose glory does he experience? But Jesus' glory himself, Jesus is present in that throne room and he is experiencing the glory of Christ.

Verse 42. Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him. But for fear of the Pharisees, they did not confess it so that they would not be put out of the synagogue. This reminds me so much of I'm reading a book right now. Jonathan Heights, written a lot of great books he wrote. He, he's one of the book I'm reading right now is called The Coddling of the American Mind. And it's, it's really well written research. He's a social psychologist, but he talks about the university professors that would get canceled or disinvited from things for having were having, opinions that might not be in the majority. And sometimes many of the other professors would say, oh, they really, it's really like we can listen to ideas here. It's OK. Like we, we maybe they're being treated unfairly but the other professors would not speak up for the professors that were being so ostracized and protested against and why for fear that they themselves would have the mob come after them also.

Sometimes we know the right thing to say, but yet we will not say it out of fear of what the mob might do to us. And I'm not just talking about these Facebook crusades. OK. No one's looking for your opinion on Facebook. All right. That's just, it'd be better if we all deleted it. That's my personal opinion. OK. This say the fletcher, not the Lord. Ok. But I think that there are times when we need to speak up, when we know the right thing to say. And here the, the, the passage is telling us that there are people in authority, leaders, well trained, leaders, educated people who want to believe who Jesus is. But they're afraid that they'd get cast out of the synagogue if they do like the blind man earlier in this passage in, in this book to be cast out of the synagogue.

That's a big deal. The synagogue is like where a lot of your business deals went on. It basically said, hey, you're not a good person whatsoever. And a lot of people won't even deal with you anymore. And so that's, it's not a small thing to get cast out of the synagogue. It's a big deal. And so their, their fear is understandable. But the next verse really cuts like a knife and it explains why. Verse 43 for they love the glory that comes from man. More than the glory that comes from God. How many of us love the glory that comes from man? More than the glory that comes from God. How many of us would trade in the joys of the Gospel for just a few minutes of praise from our fellow man.

And it's because we're spiritually blind because we don't see what's truly available to us with the good news of Jesus. Because if you see the glory that comes from God, you're gonna choose the glory that comes from God every single time, every single time. There's no doubt about it. If you see the glory that comes from God, you will choose it. It's interesting. There's another passage in scripture that quotes this exact same passage from Isaiah six. There's another pa passage in the, in the gospels. And it also is talking about spiritual blindness. And I think that it gives us more of a description of the ways the spiritual blindness has infected us.

And so I think that we should look at it also with our time here this morning, Matthew 13, Jesus teaches the disciples. You don't have to turn there. I'll, I'll explain it and, and you're familiar with the passage, most of you, Jesus teaches the disciples the parable of the sower. And it essentially tells the story of a farmer who goes out to spread seed on different soils and some soil falls on the, on the path, some on thorny ground, some on rocky ground and some on good ground. And after he tells the story, his disciples pull him aside and they're like, hey Jesus, why are you so confusing? They, they like, we don't get your stories man. Like, can you please explain what this means to, to us.

And Jesus responds to them by saying, the people's heart has grown dull and with their ears, they can barely hear and with their eyes, they have closed lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn. And I would heal them the same passage from Isaiah X that he's quoting from. And so he goes on to explain the causes, the underlying causes of the spiritual blindness that we live in. If spiritual blindness is a disease, here's what's causing the disease. And you're gonna see some similarities to what he's describing in John, the first form of spiritual blindness is a misunderstanding of who Jesus is and a biblical illiteracy because the seed that fell on the path is described as those who hear the word, but they don't understand it.

How many people do we know that have walked away from Christianity? Because all they've heard are the false teachings of Christianity. Most people do not walk away from the message of Christ because they've truly examined it and found it lacking. But because they found a cheap imitation and it did not fit the longings of their soul. And so our spiritual blindness often times is just because we don't know the Bible, we haven't actually learned what Jesus has to teach and we sit under teachers who give us whatever our itching ears want to hear. And mistake Christianity for the cheap imitations.

The second form of spiritual blindness and it's caused by suffering, the seed fell on the rocky ground and at first it sprung up, but then the sun came and scorched it and it withered and died. This represents those who receive the word of Christ. But when hardship comes, when suffering, when real death to self or mortification, the killing of sin happens in their life, it is hard or they fear being canceled by their friends or family or culture. Those authorities who initially wanted to believe Jesus but wouldn't due to fear of what would happen to them by the other leaders were like the seed that fell on the rocky soil. They wanted to believe it. But due to fear, there's spiritual blindness won over, they were spiritually blind, unable to see due to fear and hurt.

And look, Jesus is compassionate. He sees you in your heart. Many people have been hurt by the church and the the church needs to own up to that as a whole. And like on behalf of church leaders everywhere like I'm sorry, but you can't blame your lack of belief on the hurt that you've experienced. You have to go back to Christ just because you've experienced hurt. It doesn't mean that you run away from Jesus. That is the seed that fell on the rocky path that you, that you feel the hurt and so you run away and it's a it's a tool used by Satan to blind you. And so just go back to Jesus. You know, I think that Jesus is in his church, but I think go back to Jesus. He's the one who loves you and cares for you.

Third form of spiritual blindness is caused by a love for this world is the seed that falls in the thorns and it grows up at first, but then the thorns come and choke out the seed and kill it. And that represents the love for the things of this world. Choking out a love for Christ, a love for material possessions. And the praise that comes from men, choking out a love for Jesus himself. The the riches of the world. How many have been deceived by this lie and live in this spiritual blindness that today is the only day they get to live. And so they have to enjoy it, deceived by the riches of the world, distracted away from true riches that are offered to them in Christ. And so these are the three great tools for spiritual blindness.

There might be more but I think most of them all fit in these three categories. Why are the people rejecting the message of Jesus? It's either because they misunderstood what was being taught, they were hurt or they love the things of the world more all three of these signs of this illness live within our hearts. These are things that creep up and cause spiritual blindness in each of us. And we have to be on guard. We had to be on guard against these things. The the fourth type of soil, soil. Sorry, I hate that soul and soil are so similar and my accent is so southern and like it just doesn't work for me. I'm sorry. The sermon's hard. It's a tongue twister.

The good soil is the one who hears and understands the word. He's like a plant that yields 160 or 30 fold filled with the fruit and light and glory. And I think that a lot of us would like to say, hey, I'm that good soil and I believe you are, I've seen the fruit in your life. I think you are. But I also know that spiritual blindness is a universal condition and that we revert back to these areas of spiritual blindness. We have to be on guard against spiritual blindness and going back to who Christ is to be receptive to it. The message of the gospel over and over again, yielding more and more fruit.

So here is my challenge for you. Look at your soul or look at your soil. Where do you see blindness in there? Is there a misunderstanding? Is there a hurt that you need to give to Jesus? Is there a love for the things of this world that you need to hand over to him? We have to be constantly evaluating this because God wants us to see and enjoy His glory. He has glory for us. But the question is, are you receptive to it?

Personally, I've been working through this and couple of weeks ago, if I was to give you the weather report of my soul, it would be mostly cloudy with a, a few glimmers of light. And I would like to say that that's because you know, I have three Children. I don't sleep as much as I would like and everything that goes with it. But, but I looked at my soul and I was just kind of frustrated with where I was. And I for the first time in like months, at least I listened to a sermon just, just to listen to one for me not to get ready for a sermon that I was going to present. OK? Because it's hard for pastors to do that. And so I found one that was a little bit outside of my normal stream and ju just enough to where I didn't feel like I was gonna copy everything that the guy was doing. And that type of thing that is the temptation. And the sermon was used by the Lord to wake me up from a slumber that I had not been in and not realize that I was in. because I was convinced after listening to it that this thing that I had been fighting, it felt like a spiritual slumber in my heart where every time I had not that I was just being lazy, but every time I had an opportunity to do something important, like really feel like I could encourage someone with a word from the Lord or really like dig into prayer. I get to, I get to my seat that I have prepared to open my Bible. And I just feel tired and distracted and I felt this every single time I would feel the need to go and go to prayer meeting or go to, to speak to someone and encourage them. And every time I would feel like, oh, I just don't got it today. It's just not there and it gave a word for it and the word for it was sloth.

And I'd never seen myself as a lazy person. OK, I've, I've lived in Boston for 12 years. We're not lazy people. I, but that's, that's the spirit that I was struggling with was a spirit of sloth, that my soul was in a slumber and that God was inviting me to receive the light, but I wasn't ready to do that. And once I realized it though, once I gave a name to it, I said, I'm gonna fight this and I started fighting it with everything that I have and friends. I, I'll tell you it's been rich and good. It's like I'm awake again. for example, the prayer meeting, I was really, a couple weeks ago, I was really in a lull, you know, we announce this prayer meeting every week and the same, you know, six or seven people come every week and it's great. I love seeing you six or seven and you two or three who oscillate in every once in a while, you know, who you are. and, it, it's really great. I was, but I showed up one morning, I was ready to kill the thing. Like I was just like, you know, I know how to read the, the dashboard. If it's not working, let's just kill it. I, I'm not against that type of thing. I'm not one of these that like wants to keep it going just for, to keep it going. And I kinda brought up the idea. I was like, what, what do you guys think? How's this going? And everybody was like, yeah, I mean, I think it's OK, it's good.

And then I just felt this like strong urge from the Lord, like, no, this is divine resistance to a spiritual slumber that we're all in. That. What we're doing in the prayer meeting is actually super important that we're pushing back against the spiritual slumber that most of us live in this darkness that we live in, that our world is in. And we, it's intentionally early and that's symbolic to help us to, to push back. So I know that not all of you can be there. And I don't want you to feel guilty, but I do want you to feel thankful to those who are able to be there because it's a, it's a wonderful opportunity that we're getting to, to pray to seek God. And really, I, I feel like we're all benefiting from it. And my prayer is that God would wake us up from our spiritual slumber, that He would give us eyes to see and ears to hear that we may be people who would abound in love and light and the glory of God church turned to the light.

Look at your life, look at the things in your life, look at the spiritual blindness, look at your soul name, the blindness, name the ground that is there. What are you struggling with and give that over to Jesus so that you might step out of the darkness and into the light. My prayer is that your heart would be the same as what Paul prays in Philippians chapter one. And this is, and it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more. Does your love abound more and more. My prayer is that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and all discernment that you won't be behooven to false doctrines or false teachings and everything that this that is taught wrongly or your misunderstandings about who God is because you haven't sought him fully in his scriptures.

But that your knowledge might abound and more and more your love with knowledge so that you might approve what is excellent that you might not live in the fear of the glory of people. But see that the glory of God is better and be so pure and blameless for the day of Jesus Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. Is that your prayer also?

So just to, to end with a little bit of application here just to, to hammer home what I've been saying? Just a couple of things. One take a, a soil test. All right. This time, I mean, soil and I mean that because during the pandemic, I went full dad mode and got really into yard care. Ok? Not garden care that I don't touch that stuff. I just care about the grass. Just the, just the green stuff. All right. And I have a yard in Somerville that is huge for Somerville standards, but it is a postage stamp compared to the rest of the country. It is not very large. But, you know, I can mow the whole thing in less than 10 minutes. We'll just put it that way.

But the first step that everyone tells you when you're gonna start getting into lawn care. So I found out if anybody needs tips, you know, I got the dad tips for you. Is you need to take a sample of the soil to see what type of nutrients your soil needs because you take a sample and you send it in, they, they mail it back to you or something and, and tell you, yeah, you need nitrogen or you know one of those other things to spray in your yard. What is the condition of your soil? Let's let's look at it and acknowledge what's happening there. Be honest with yourself. How are you doing the old business school phrase? Your system is perfectly designed for the results that you're getting.

If your soul is withering, maybe it's time that you change things up. And then how do you create good soil in you? So for me, with my yard, we had to go out there, me and Michael, my, my neighbor went out there and ripped up all of the grass by hand. We just ripped it all up because like I said, it's small and we had a couple of rakes and then we threw 4000 pounds of cow manure on the ground. And then we were able to see grass start to grow only after we had done all of that work. And so this morning, maybe you need to think through what you need to hand over that old those old growth weeds that are in your heart and you can hand those over to the Lord and then you can be receptive to the seed that He has for you, which is the glory of God.

Matthew 13. The parable of the sower, Jesus says, but blessed are your eyes for they see and your ears for they hear. For truly, I say to you many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see and did not and to hear what you hear and did not hear it. Friends. You have a privilege that is far more than what Isaiah had or Moses had these prophets of old. They longed to see what you see.

First Peter tells us that the angels are on tippy toes, wishing that they could see the glories that we have in Christ yet we take it so for granted. So let us return to him. Time in and time out.

Jesus cried out verse 44. Whoever believes in me believes not in me, but in him who sent me and whoever sees him, who sent me, I have come into the world as light so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. And so that's your invitation this morning to step into your step into the light, to leave behind the weeds and the and the bad soil and to follow after Christ in spiritual sight, to take joy in what has been given to you as a child of light. And we really have an opportunity for you to do that.

We're gonna invite you to pray. There's one form of spiritual blindness that just has your soul, confess it, name it, whatever it is, name it, speak it, confess it to the Lord. He will hear and give you life. And so as we take communion, what we're doing is we're saying my life is hidden with Christ is no longer I li who live but Christ who lives within me. And so his body on the night that he was betrayed, he took a loaf of bread and he, and he broke it and he said, this is my body broken for you. And then he took a cup and he said, this is my blood shed for you. And so whenever we receive the elements of the bread and of the, the wine or the juice, we're being reminded in a physical way of what Christ has done for us, of his sacrifice for us. And we're saying you are enough for me, Jesus. May I be good ground that you might plant the seed of Christ in my heart that I might shine as old son of light here. So that being said, church, let me invite you to stand as we respond to God.

Father. We pray that your word would very deep in our hearts and that we might be fruitful, 30 60 100 fold. And we pray for more a hundredfold than anything God. We want to experience your glories, the glories that even Isaiah long to experience that he was writing about in Christ, may we have those in our life. Would you wake us from our spiritual slumber and shine light upon us and help us to fight the battles that you have for us to fight against sin and spiritual darkness and, and the spiritual blindness that we walk in. Would you give us eyes to see ears, to hear, and a heart to love and to comprehend the height, depth, width and length of the love of Christ. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from John 12:1-11 about Mary anointing Jesus with perfume. Discussion points: Mary knew who Jesus was and knew that he was worth her best, we don’t have to pit extravagant worship against helping the poor, spending time with Jesus and knowing who he is helps us learn to be generous people.

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Scripture reader: [John 12:1-11] Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. So they gave a dinner for him there, Martha served and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table. Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, he who was about to betray him said, why was this ointment not sold for 300 denari and given to the poor.

He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief and having charged with the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it. Jesus said, leave her alone so that she may keep it for the day of my burial. For the poor. You always have with you, but you do not always have me. When the large crowd of the Jews learned that Jesus was there, they came not only on account of him but also to see Lazarus whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priest made plans to put Lazarus to death as well. Because on account of him, many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus.

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: A church in Brookhaven, Mississippi just made the news this week. It was kind of everywhere. I saw it in multiple different places. They erected a new giant cross and when I say giant, I mean, giant now they didn't want the attention of, of constructing the largest cross of all time. So they constructed the second largest cross of all time because obviously what they're looking for is not attention as you have a glaringly white cross that can be seen. They made it this large because they wanted it to be seen from the interstate. And, the interstate was a, a little ways away from there. The cross, it, it is 100 and 50 ft tall. It's hard to really get a grasp on that, but that's half a football field. Ok. So 50 yards tall, it's really, really tall.

It weighs 52,000 pounds, 52,000 pounds. It's also hard to have a grasp on that, but that's like 26 cars. Ok. If not more than that, it's a lot, it's a very, very large cross and I don't know about you guys, but I mean, this feels pretty excessive to me. I mean, when I read this, I thought it was an April fool's day joke. Ok. because it, that's when I read about it, I thought it was an April fool's day joke and it's really hard, to justify something like this in a state that's in Mississippi, in a state that leads the country in poverty.

I grew up in poverty in Mississippi. And, you know, I see things like this. I'm like, oh, what are we doing guys now? I'm here. I'm not here just to throw shade at that church. But I do think that that after they received some online push back, I thought that the pastor had something really funny to say and he said, we're excited about it. I know that in the Bible, we shouldn't be surprised that people push back because first Corinthians says, the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved is the power of God. Now, you might wanna call me a fool. But I'm not sure that when the Apostle Paul wrote that verse, he had in mind 100 and 50 ft statue of the cross as the power of God. So I just thought it was humorous the way he said that.

Now when we see that and it made its rounds around the internet and the critique was all the same. And again, I'm not here to throw shade really. That's not my church. Those aren't my people. I don't know what's best for them. I'm, I'm not here to judge, but the question that's always posed with us is shouldn't the church be focusing prioritizing, you know, more helpful things than giant crosses that can be seen from the interstate. Churches spend money on crazy stuff. Sometimes we've seen it and I think that that's actually one of the reasons why many people are leaving the church, why younger people are leaving the church because they see the way that the church uses its finances and it leaves them feeling disgusted, right? We oftentimes feel that way and we think about the, the self consumption that they see in the churches and the leaders.

And we just think what, what could this church do? What could we, what could we have done if, if this church had directed that money toward something beneficial, like the alleviation of the poor, like the help of the poor? And I hate to say it, but that is the first thing that comes across my mind. And when you look at this passage, all of a sudden, you find yourself really resonating with someone in this passage and it's not the person you want to resonate with. Ok, so we're gonna get there as we go. It's true that many churches could spend their money better. But it's also true that each of us here could do a little bit more to, to care for the poor. Is that true? Is that not true?

Earlier this week, it was my birthday. Thank you for all the birthday wishes. April 3rd. So that was Wednesday and I, I turned a young 38. Ok, so you guys can all just call me dad. I know that I'm, you know, that much older than you all. but uh, so I convinced my wife, I, I asked her and did convince her to take a little bit of time off of work this week. even though she just got a new job and I was like, hey, come on, let's, let's, let's, let's take a little bit of time and go celebrate. And we went and did something we had never done before. We went to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. It's really beautiful, very cool story. I got home. I was like, how many documentaries can I watch on this thing? It was really interesting to me. But why didn't we go help at the soup kitchen instead? I mean, we could have, we had the time, wouldn't that have been a better use of our time to go help at the soup kitchen and actually help someone instead of doing something pretty purely for me. Right? Just walking around looking at art or just take another step forward.

Why are any of us here this morning? We could all be out there doing something, we could all be out there serving somewhere, helping people finding people if you think this way, I understand it. It is a rational way to think. But I will also say that where do you ever draw the line? Where do you draw? There's tension there, we feel that that like there's a, there's a line somewhere where I have to be able to rest, I have to be able to worship. But also I want to do good and I want to help people and I understand why you would get there. Where is the balance? Where is the balance? Let's look at today's passage. I think it is insightful and informative for us.

Today, we're going through a series on the book of John. Last week, we looked at Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. It was a really powerful passage this week, we're kind of moving forward just a little bit into. He's still hanging out with Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha. But today Mary anoints Jesus feet. So let's look at this passage in more depth. starting in verse one, we just are gonna walk through it verse 16 days before the Passover. Jesus therefore came to be Bethany where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. So Jesus, I guess left Bethany for a little while and then he came right back and it says six days before the Passover. And so if you wanna do the math, this is probably the Saturday before Good Friday. So this is about a week and one day before the resurrection, that this is occurring right here.

So Jesus knows that he's about to enter Jerusalem. And when he enters Jerusalem, he knows that the end is nigh. And so he has that in mind as he's coming to Bethany verse two. So they gave a dinner for him there, Martha served and Lazarus was one of those reclining at the table and when they say reclining, they mean reclining. So back in ancient times, there weren't high tables like we would use. But instead the tables were very low and you would recline at the table. You wouldn't sit in an upright chair, that was not a part of the culture whatsoever. Instead you would recline and your legs would be extended to the side. Oftentimes you wouldn't even put your legs underneath the table. You would be reclining to the side of the table. Think if you were in your living room and maybe everybody surrounds the coffee table table on the floor, to, to eat lunch or dinner. And that's kind of how they're hosting Jesus here.

And verse three, Mary took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. Now, a pound of this expensive ointment is about 11 ounces. So think, think of like a soda can Ok. And she anoints his feet with this stuff and it is smelly. The fragrance is all throughout the air. And can we all agree on something this morning? And that is that no one should call a perfume? Nard? Ok. That is just a word. If my wife came home, said I got some New Nard, I would be like, you need to take that home or take that back. Ok. That is not a name for a perfume. It's a terrible name.

But it is, it is an oil extracted from the root of the Nard plant which is grown in India and it was very, very, very expensive. Now, when I say it's very expensive, I mean, on a scale that you are not thinking at the moment it is very expensive. I know that Judas in a few moments calls says that it's worth 300 denari. It's hard for us to get our minds wrapped around that idea of a denari, but 300 denari is a whole year's worth of wages. Ok. So you would generally make a day laborer would make one denari per day, but they would not work on the Sabbath and they would, they would take high holy days off. And so you got about 300 other days left in the year and that's about their salary for the whole year.

So this, this ointment, what he's trying to say is that that's a whole year's worth of pay that is worth in that one little soda can worth of pure nard that we have over there. It's extremely expensive. The most expensive wine that I could find at Total wine online was called Petris Pomeroy 2006. It's from Bordeaux France and is described as full bodied and full wallet. It is $4999.97. Thank you very much. Now, if you had me over and you pulled out the Petris Palmer roll, I would say you think I am someone that I am not, I am not that important. That would be wasted on me. I'm like a two buck chuck kind of guy. Like that's not, that's not for me. Ok. Don't pull out the Petris Palmer roll. Ok. I wouldn't be able to appreciate it. Now, the perfume that Mary is using is at least worth 10 times a Petris Palmerro.

So imagine just the most like it's just the most expensive liquid that I can think of here and she's dumping it on his feet. We can either assume by this that Mary is either very wealthy or that this is a family heirloom that they've had for quite a while that they've been holding on to for a very special occasion.

And so Mary makes her way over to Jesus and she anoints Jesus with the oil and as she anoints him with the oil, it says that she anointed his feet and she wipes his feet with her hair. Now, this would have been a bit scandalous as well. Women don't normally let their hair down in public in this culture. One commentator said that for a woman, for a woman to let down her hair and this culture would be on par with appearing topless in public. And so this is very scandalous. She's very much kind of putting herself out there and the fragrance is filling the air.

One interesting thing that I found as I was studying this passage is that the word Christ is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Messiah idea and both Christ and Messiah mean the same thing, the anointed one. And so here Jesus is leaning into his title of Christ, his title of Messiah. He is the anointed one. Now, why did Mary do this? There's only one reason and it's very obvious from what we can see is she knew who he was. She might be the only one in that room who really knew who was before her. Because if I have an important person over you, better bet I'm gonna get the good wine. Ok? I'm not gonna be grabbing the two buck Chuck, I'm gonna be getting the good stuff and it's gonna become a better wine depending on how much better that person is. Ok, no matter how, how important that person is.

And Mary knows that Jesus is the son of God himself and because she knows who is standing before her, who is reclining at her table, she says he is worthy. He is worthy of all my worship of all of my praise. He is worthy. I'm going to use this on him now.

Judas Iscariot, verse 41 of his disciples, he had been walking with him for three years and I love how, how the, the gospel writers talk about Judas. We don't even know like the story hasn't gotten to the point of Judas betraying Jesus yet. But it's like the gospel writers can't stop men. It's like, like you're not gonna believe this. He's the one that betrays Jesus, that guy, that traitor. So they say he who was about to betray him.

So Judas Iscariot. One of his disciples, he who was about to betray him said, why was this ointment not sold for 300 denari and given to the poor. I hate to say it, but Judas makes sense here. This is what many of us would be thinking. I don't think he's the only one in the room when this story is told in other gospels, the other, the other gospel, the other uh disciples are looking around indignant as well. Like, yeah, why wasn't it sold? That would have made a lot more sense. And you're probably, you probably know you're getting off base though when you start agreeing with Judas. OK. That's, that's like an indicator like, oh, I might not be right on this one. Judas is a pragmatist. He's a utilitarian. He's pitting compassion for the poor, against extravagant devotion and worship.

D A Carson, the commentator said, if self righteous piety sometimes snuffs out genuine compassion, it must also be admitted with shame that social activism even that which meets real needs sometimes makes us masks a spirit that knows nothing of worship and adoration. Verse six, he said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief and having charge of the money back, he used to help himself to what was put in it. So now we get a little bit of the motivation for Judas. So they did a full audit after Judas was dead and said, hey, there's some money missing over here. So they figured out what was going on with Judas and his personal greed was masquerading as altruism.

I think we all have that family member or that friend who always insists on being the banker in monopoly. And Judas is that guy. He's like, I'll serve you guys, I'll be the banker and he's just helping himself to a few of the ones twenties over there. Michael told me, Michael Villalopez told me that that was him as a child. Ok? So you guys can give him grief on that later. He's like the Lord has sanctified me. I've repented. Judas saw the money. So the money bag that was, that was kept by Judas was kind of seen as that. It, it was surely used to cover the needs of the disciples and Jesus. So people would make contributions to the money bag. It was like the budget for the disciples and they would use it, they, they would use eat also, they would use it to support the poor. So it was kind of like our church budget, We use it for things in the church. We also use it to support the poor. It's, it's both.

But Judas saw the money back as his personal slush fund and he didn't want to take all the money. He just wanted to help himself to the money when he wanted it or needed it. So in a few chapters, we discovered that Judas actually betrays Jesus and what does he betray Jesus for? But 30 silver coins. And this story reminds us that sin sometimes drastic, big sin usually start small. Judas had a disoriented relationship with money far before he sold Jesus for 30 silver coins. And that reminds us to be always evaluating our lives and making sure that we don't have the seeds of evil that could grow into trees of evil in our hearts.

Verse seven, Jesus says, leave her alone so that she may keep it for the day of my burial. I love how Jesus is defending Mary. He's saying, leave this woman alone. It's hard to know exactly what Jesus is saying here. Understand exactly what he's saying. He's probably saying this metaphorically because he says so that she may keep it for the day of my burial. But obviously, she's already used it. And so how is she going to keep it? He's probably saying something like she's kept the bottle for such a time as this. Jesus knows that his burial is coming soon and he's predicting such a thing. Mary may have had no idea that in less than a week, Jesus would be dead. But her active devotion had symbolic importance.

In verse eight, Jesus said something really provocative. He says, for the poor you will always have with you, but you do not always have me and I love how Jesus walks that line. He, he walks that line so well. He doesn't say the poor aren't important. He says the poor you're always going to have, but you're not always going to have me. What Jesus is saying is that there's something even more important than taking care of the poor, taking care of the poor is very important. We all wanna get behind that, but there's something even more important than taking care of human needs. And it's Jesus himself, it's Jesus himself.

Now, a lot of churches focus on worship to the exclusion of caring for the poor. They just focus completely insular and a lot of churches do the exact opposite. They focus completely on caring for the poor to the exclusion of true worship. If we're following, if we're faithfully following Jesus, we're doing both. We're doing both. We don't have to pit extravagant worship against helping the poor. And in fact, I would declare, and I would argue that extravagant worship fuels the care for the poor, that it actually empowers the most radical way to care for the poor that your worship fuels the way that you're able to care.

Because one reason, there's one reason why I don't throw shade on our friends in Mississippi. If you look at the most generous States in the United States. Number one is the most impoverished state. The most religious state is Mississippi. They're the most generous state also. It's, it's pretty amazing when you think about it. The most religious state also, the most generous state. Christians have historically radically cared for the poor. We've been there for the poor. It's been something that's been important for us far before it was important to local governments. Christians have been caring for the poor starting hospitals. The first public hospitals started by the Christians, the first we, we were caring for orphans far before that was the interest of the state.

Christians have been doing this sort of thing and there are plenty of non-christian people out there. I'm not trying to say that there aren't plenty of non-Christian people out there who really genuinely care for the poor. But what I have noticed over the years of seeing people really lay down their lives to care for the poor is that they will become burnt out. That burn out comes because taking care of the poor is not easy. It means that you have to sacrifice yourself to care for someone else. I have to give up my time, my resources, my personal comfort to care for someone else. It is a difficult thing. You are constantly sacrificing.

But Christianity I believe gives you the N word resources to care for the external needs around you. It allows you to be able to be cared for yourself and Christ through your extravagant worship and that fuels and motivates your radical generosity. May we be a people that are fueled and motivated for radical generosity? Not because of guilt, but because we've received the generosity of God. Amen. We have received this gift, which is the Holy Spirit. We have received this gift, which is the Son of God, living the life that we should have lived, dying, the death that we deserve to die and then being risen from the dead and through our faith in Him, we are given the gift of life of resurrected life. And because of that eternal spring of joy and that eternal spring of life, we're able to care for others.

Self consumption and following Jesus are like oil and water. Those two things don't go together because Jesus is constantly laying down his life for others. And So as we follow Jesus, we're constantly laying down our life for others. This woman sacrifices an expensive bottle of perfume at the feet of Jesus. But in another story, I don't want you to see that Jesus doesn't care about caring for the poor because in another story, he tells a man to do exactly what Judas wants Mary to do. He tells a rich young ruler to go sell everything he owns and to give it to whom not to the money bag, but to the poor, go sell everything you own and give it to the poor. He tells him to go sell everything he owns and not to build an altar for worship, go sell everything you own and give it to the poor.

You know, sometimes God calls us to worship with an alabaster jar to give our best to Him, to lay down our lives as an act of praise and worship to him. And sometimes God calls us to sacrifice everything for the sake of the poor. And for most of us, it, we're somewhere in between those two extremes, ok? Somewhere in between those two extremes where we have to figure out how to care for ourselves because look, you had to be able to care for your own family. The scripture says that the man who doesn't care for his family doesn't provide for his family in time of need is worse than a non-christian is what the scripture says, which is pretty bad if you think about it in that terms and the way that Paul is saying it. And so we have to be able to provide for our own basic needs, but also live this exceedingly generous life.

May we be known as people that live this generous life. We're called to live a life of worship and worship means sacrifice, worship means sacrifice, whatever you worship, you will sacrifice for. If you worship your body, you'll sacrifice calories and time in the gym, you'll sacrifice money to have doctors. Make it look the way that you want you. If you worship your job, you'll sacrifice your family and your personal time. If you sacrifice, if you worship your money, you'll pinch pennies and become a cheap person.

But when you worship Jesus, you actually are given the freedom to live life the way that it is intended to live by denying yourself and living for his glory. Because you're given this internal resources. You see these gods, the, the money, the, the body, the, the job they don't care for you in return. But when you lay down your life for Jesus, he's already laid down his life for you. He sacrificed himself to care for you. So personally, I'm still working through what this looks like for me.

So when Megan and I got married super young, we were, we were younger than most. I don't know if I would recommend it for all, but you know, we lived in Kentucky at the time and that's, that's the way you do it there, I guess. and, we got married really young. We were very, very poor for the first several years, of our marriage. I remember when we got married, I went to my boss. who some of you guys might actually anyways. I, I won't go into all that, but I was working at a church and I went to my boss and said, hey, I'm not gonna be able to provide for my family. And he's like, ok, how much do you make? And I was like 10,000 a year and he was like, yeah, yeah, that's called abuse. And I don't know why we're doing that to you right now. And he was like, how much do you need? And I was like maybe 18, which is a bit comical now and it was 14 years ago, you know, it was in the 2000 tens. and he was like, ok, we can certainly do that. So I got a big raise when we got married to $18,000. And our rent was only 450 a month though. So for a little two bedroom house, I know you're jealous. It's kind of crazy here. We had a little yard. It was, it was, it was not far from downtown, it was great. nice, nice little spot.

But then God called us to move to Boston and I made a little bit more money. But let's just say we were so poor. And why were we poor? Because rent is too high. It is too high. Amen, too high. But from those very early days, we were, we were still poor in Boston for, for a long time. We, we had to go find a place to live. And I'm telling you guys, we, we, we liked where we were living, but some of our friends did not like where we were living so much so to where I think some people were a little afraid to go to our house. At times, our house had four different colors on the outside. OK. It was nice on the inside. Jesus gave it to us. Literally, my landlord's name was Jesus. So Jesus gave it to us. I saw the listing in Craigslist. It was like one of the only apartments we could afford no pictures. It was just like two bedroom apartment with a study in this neighborhood and it said, and it just had a few details and it had the the price and I was like, that's a pretty good price. So I picked up the phone and called it said call Jesus and I said, and then I called him and, and it, it turned out to not be a scam somehow. So we, we had this little little house. It was, it was not in the greatest neighborhood. We heard gunshots regularly and whatnot.

But we, we made it work, we made it work and our, our, our commitment from the very early. So in those days, I remember our budget for clothing was $20 a month, Megan. And I really strung it together there for a while. We would say for four months just to be able to buy like a pair of pants. Ok? We were really trying to make it. In fact, we got so we got so annoyed sometimes because we would have friends who would be having money problems, they would go find the richest people in our church to talk to about their money problems and how to make their budget. And we're like, they should be talking to us. We're poor, we know how to be poor. Let us teach you how to be poor. Ok? They're just gonna say make more money. Of course, duh, like that's so easy.

From those very early days, we made it a huge importance in our life to continue to be generous to God. And we said that we need to worship God with our money even though we're poor. And so even from the very early days when we were making almost nothing, we were still giving 100 $200 a month or something like that. And it's just because it was a huge priority for us. We wanted to make it a priority. Now, I was making my money from the church, but that doesn't mean I'm exempt from giving to Jesus. I need to be radically examining my own life and considering how I need to worship Jesus through my resources, whether that to be selling things I own, to give to the poor or laying down alms at the feet of Jesus, whatever it looks like for me and look, we're in a much different situation now. Ok.

And this is why I'm still trying to figure this out. My pay has increased as the years have gone by as the church has grown as I've changed in education and position in the church and role and everything. And my family has grown so much exponentially, not quite, but, you know, linearly. and my, I, I make more than what I did then, you know, we're, we're fairly comfortable with that and my wife works in biotech. So we're definitely fairly comfortable with that as well. And it opens up a whole new idea of what we should be doing and we're trying to figure that out still and we're working through it. Megan's gone from stay at home mom to, to this new job and, and we have more resources now than we've ever had.

And there's a part of my soul that wants to hold on to more and more as I have more and more available to me. You know, when you're poor. It's easy to say I don't have much anyway. So take all that I have. But when you start making more my my soul, it wants to hold on to more and more and I want to come up with excuses like student loans are expensive. Amen. Child care is expensive. Can't I get an amen. The US medical system is expensive and my guess is that many of you are in a similar place of life as to me. And I'll just tell you this in my life. I feel a temptation to selfishly overconsume for myself in every corner of my soul. I fight that. I'm having to fight that regularly. I want to eat in better restaurants. I want to take fancier vacations. I want better furniture. I want a nicer car, I want more stylish clothes, but I don't want to pick those stylish clothes. So I want a stylist as well. Her name is Megan. So thankful for that.

The life of comfort and ease is very spiritually dangerous, very spiritually dangerous. And Jesus warns us over and over again of that in the scripture. This is especially true for those of us who live in Camber. This is a spiritually dangerous place to be. I'm looking at my life and I'm thinking with so much opportunity for selfish overconsumption. How do I live for Jesus? What do I do? What's God calling me to? How do I give my all to Jesus? What does it look like for us? What do I need to lay at the feet of Jesus?

And I think each one of us has to answer that question for ourselves. I don't think I've actually solved that problem for me. I'm still working it out for myself. But here's what I do know that I want to be known as a man who is radically generous. I want to be known to God, at least as a man who lays down his life for others and who pours out as much as he's been poured into. I wanna push back on this overconsumption in my life. And I want to live a radically generous and worshipful life. When you think of the seven deadly sins, each one is a sin of overconsumption, selfish, overconsumption, greed, gluttony, lust, wrath, swath pride, envy. And we need to push back on the overconsumption in our life so that we can live radically generous worship, full hearts.

Now, you can't do that unless you're first looking at Jesus. Let me apply this just a little bit to you. Give you a few practices, things that you can do from here to, to figure out what this looks like for you first, the first step here and if you don't get this, you don't get it. You, you have to understand who Jesus actually is.

That was Judas's problem. Judas was following Jesus for a few years, but he actually didn't understand who Jesus was Mary De and where did she learn who Jesus was? She observed? And she got down at the feet of Jesus. And so a practical application for us is to get down. If you wanna be a generous person, you need to get down at the feet of Jesus and see who he actually is. What does that look like? You finding a little bit of time for a little bit of solitude? A little bit of silence and praying, actually talking to him. He is available to you. And if you speak to him expecting that your words would make it to him. You know, sometimes it feels like our words don't make it past the ceiling, but God comes down underneath that.

So if we speak to him and we seek him in his word, we will hear from him. And so first up, get down at the feet of Jesus and seek this rhythm of praying, of reading. Second, whatever you're doing, do it completely for Christ, the anointed one. Bach is known as one of the greatest composers of all time. If not the greatest composer of all time, he might gonna argue that, I don't know, I, you know, Mozart, I don't know. I'm not a music guy. But Tom York is my greatest composer of all time. But Bach was that joke fell really flat. Everybody's like who I'll tell you later. It said that Bach wrote SDG at the top of each of his compositions, Sola Soli, Deo Gloria to God alone, be the glory.

And we can't pit activism against worship, worship propels and informs social activism. It gives us the resources to do social activism and we do everything as an offering to Jesus, it will propel us to make the world a better place. And thirdly, if we do everything for Jesus, we have to practice generosity. One of the ways you can't be a generous person without practicing generosity. It's actually something you have to practice. You have to see an opportunity and step into the opportunity. I'm just gonna let you figure out what that looks like for you. I don't know what it looks like for you.

Maybe, maybe you need to take steps of caring for people around you. If you call this your church home, I would encourage you to, to give something to Jesus through your local church. Whether that be $2 maybe you sacrificed a coffee this month. That's something, you know. And I, I do wanna be very careful about that though because that's falling in very close to the same thing that you just said. Is it not because Judas said she could have sold this and given it to the money back and we that and then he could have helped himself. And I am a man who makes his living off the money back. I, I I draw my salary from the church and you guys provide abundantly for us. I'm very thankful for that. But we do have policies and procedures in place to defend against misuse of those funds. I can't just go out there and spend money. I can't just go out there and do whatever I want for myself. We have lots of policies and multiple eyes looking at those things. We have a budget people. I don't set my own salary. I never have set my own salary and that it, it's just something that I have to guard against. And that's one reason why we have to have a plurality of leaders in the church people that can look at that type of thing and, and be careful with it because I need to be careful with that.

But more importantly, I want our church to just be known as people with generous hearts at all times. I want us to walk through life and worship to Christ Randy Alcorn said five minutes after I die, I wanna ask myself this question. What will I wish I had given away five minutes after I had died because you can't take it with you, right? What is Jesus calling you to lay down at the feet of Jesus today? Maybe it's money, maybe it's something else. Maybe it's a relationship that you just need to lay down at the feet of Jesus. Maybe it's an unhealthy obsession with something that you just need to lay down at the feet of Jesus. So you just need to give this thing up.

Maybe it's some distraction in your life that you just need to lay down. One time. I was walking down the street and I had been praying about this and I heard not audible but as close to it as I've ever heard it, say you need to delete the game on your phone that I've been playing. I pulled out my phone as I walked down the street and I deleted the game. I never regretted it. My life was better from there forward because I was just wasting a lot of time on that. Maybe it's some sort of prejudice that you need to lay at the feet of Jesus. Maybe it's some type of grudge, whatever it is. Let's hand it over and let's, let's find ourselves in the place of Mary worshiping Christ, preparing to receive what he's given to us. Let's hand it over.

We're gonna have an opportunity for you to evaluate that and to respond to Christ this morning to this next song. One of the invitations is through a communion meal that if you are a Christian, a believer here with us this morning, we'd invite you to come and participate. with that being said, let me invite you to stay in church as we prepare our hearts to, to respond to Jesus this morning.

Father, we we pray that you would bring spiritual life and vitality to each one of us and that the grips of greed would be loosened today and that the rhythms of generosity would flow. And God, we pray that you would lead each and every one of us, guide us to how we can live at your feet. And what it means to know the God of the universe. What it means to know who you actually are. May we praise you for who you actually are? May we be filled with your Holy Spirit anointed by Him that we receive these promises, we worship you as the anointed one. And we ask that you would pour into us a special anointing of the Holy Spirit that we might enjoy who you are and live in accordance with that make us radically generous people. We ask this in Christ's name, Amen.

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We celebrate Easter together and Pastor Fletcher preaches from John 11:1-44 about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. Discussion points: Without any life after death, love and truth lose their value; Jesus is promising eternal life for those who love and follow him; Jesus teaches us to embrace death to ourselves and life for him.

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Scripture reader: [John 11:1-44] Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and his sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent to him saying, Lord, he whom you love is ill. But when Jesus heard it, he said this illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.

Now, Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. Then after this, he said to the disciples, let us go to Ju to Judea. Again, the disciples said to him, rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you. And are you going there again, Jesus answered, are there not 12 hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble because he sees the light of this world. But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles because the light is not in him. After saying these things, he said to them, our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I will go to awaken him.

The disciples said to him, Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover. Now, Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought he meant taking rest in sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, Lazarus has died. And for your sake, I am glad that I was not there so that you may believe. But let us go to him. So Thomas called the twin said to his fellow disciples, let us also go that we may die with him. Now, when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days, Bethany was near Jerusalem about two miles off and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother.

So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him. But Mary remained seated in the house. Martha said to Jesus "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you." Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again." Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day." Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me though he die yet shall he live and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?" She said to him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the son of God who is coming into the world."

When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary saying in private, "The teacher is here and is calling for you." And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him. Now, Jesus had not yet come into the village but was still in the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her saw Mary rise quickly and go out. They followed her supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. Now, when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet saying to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."

When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her also weeping. He was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, where have you laid him? They said to him, Lord, come and see Jesus wept. So the Jews said, see how he loved him. But some of them said, could not. He who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying. Then Jesus deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave and a stone lay against it. Jesus said, "Take away the stone." Martha, the sister of the dead man said to him, "Lord, by this time, there will be an odor for he has been dead four days."

Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?" So they took away the stone and Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me. But I said this on account of the people standing around that they may believe that you sent me." When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, "Lazarus come out." The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them "Unbind him and let him go."

This is the word of the Lord, thanks be to God.

Preacher: Finally, after all of these years, Hollywood has finally made a depiction of what my Easter Sunday morning always feels like that depiction is not in the chosen. It's not in that old the passion movie. The best depiction of what Sunday Easter Sunday looks like for me is in the Barbie movie because in the Barbie movie, there's this scene pretty early on where everyone's happy. They're all dancing. They're having a dance party like maybe a roller skate dance party at the dream house. Barbie's Dream House before it's the Mojo dojo casa house. And they're all skating all the Barbies are so happy and they're looking at each other saying today is the best, isn't it? And Barbie Margot Robbie Barbie, you know, they're all Barbie but Margot Robbie, Barbie main, main character, Barbie says it is the best day ever and so is yesterday and so is tomorrow and so will be the day after tomorrow and every day from now until forever. Do you guys ever feel like dying? Do you guys ever think about dying is what she says?

And then it's like a, you know, like everybody looks around and that is what every Easter morning feels like to me because we get together. The music's great. Everyone's happy. They're like, hey, nice bow tie. Yeah, your bow tie looks good too. Like we're just like, yeah, nice, nice. And then I get up, do you guys ever think about dying? That is Easter Morning summarized for me. So do you, what happens when you die? I'm not sure there's a more asked question in the history of the world. What happens when someone dies?

Most of us handle death kind of like I handle car problems. Megan will tell me, hey, the car's making a weird noise and I'm like, oh, is it? And she's like, yeah, so, you wanna do something about that? I was like, oh, no, not really. My, my children think I'm funny. I usually just wait until the car stops working before I do something with the car and most of us handle death in the same kind of way. We don't want to think about it until it's staring us right in the face. And then even sometimes when it's staring us right in the face, we still hope that we don't have to think about it, but the scriptures tell us.

And in fact, we live in a very privileged time because this is not the way that the world was before the 21st century, before the 20th century, at least for me, modern medicine has done a wonder to cause us to be isolated from death in many ways. But this is not the way that the Bible handles death. Life after death is a big question for the modern Somerville. If you really press them on what happens when you die, the answer you would get from most of our neighbors and friends would be nothing. What do you believe happens after you die?

Nothing. That's what Richard Dawkins believes. When he's asked what happens when we die. Dawkins quotes Bertrand Russell and he says, I believe that when we die, I believe that when we shall die, I shall rot and nothing else. How could it be otherwise, this is the majority opinion of those around us, but it is the minority opinion globally. It is not what the majority of people think around the globe. It is also the minority opinion.

Historically, it is not what people have thought throughout the ages. I think sometimes we can be in our little Somerville bubble and forget that it's a bubble that people outside of here think very differently than we do. Oftentimes if nothing happens after death, let me just ask you this, what's the point? Because it's not a belief in atheism that's being pushed forward. It's really a belief in Nihilism that's being pushed forward. And nihilism is the belief in nothing. And I don't know about you, but I've met a few Nihilists and I've never met a happy one. OK. Nihilism does not lead to happy thoughts. You can look at the founder or really the kind of the father of Nihilism Nietzsche. And it's like n I just press the rest of the keys on your keyboard. OK. It's you, you don't know what's gonna happen there.

He understood that a Godless world is ultimately a meaningless one. The implications of embracing nihilism are really depressing. We might value things like love, beauty, truth, virtue. But why, why would we value those things? If everything is nothing? If we believe that nothing happens after we die, why would we value something like beauty? We value these things because we're created in the image of God who values these things. And our so and our society continues to value these things because our secular world operates on the borrowed capital of Christendom. What used to be accepted in our society continues to be. But it's not because of what we believe that has caused us to continue to value those things.

How do you build a life of meaning and purpose when it all amounts to nothing? This is the primary question posed by irrepressible thoughts of death, Barbie, and it's the primary question for you today. And I think that the answer that actually is given in the movie is very much the same answer that we have to have today. You need to have an encounter with your creator who can tell you your creative purpose. Because when you have an encounter with your creator and he can tell you your created purpose, it makes life worth living you.

And I have a creative purpose. Life is not just you live, you die. And that's it. It's not as you know, I haven't actually preached unless I've quoted CS Lewis at least once. So CS Lewis says, if I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world, we all have to face the reality of death. What do you do with that? What do you do with that today?

We're continuing a series that we've been going through for many months now in the book of John. And so we just planned it to where the raising of Lazarus happened on Easter Sunday. And this is the crescendo of the entire book of John. This is the peak of the book. It kind of everything climbs to that and then everything descends from here. This is the center point of the book of John. It's the seventh and final I am statement of Jesus. When Moses met God in the burning bush, he asked God who he was and God said I am and that was his simple answer. I am who I am.

And today Jesus has continued to be able to fill in that answer, explaining more of who he is by answering in seven different ways. I am the bread of life. I am. I am the, the shepherd. I am the gate, all these different ways. And today we get to the final one. I am the life and resurrection. It is also the final miraculous sign before Jesus goes to Jerusalem to face his death. But in this passage, Jesus teaches us our only hope in life and death.

So let's dive into it. We're just going to walk through the passage and I'll give you some application at the end. Now, a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. And now Mary and Martha, they pop up pretty often throughout the scriptures, at least in two of the gospels. They have several different stories that we've learned about Mary and Martha. And here we learn of their brother, a man named Lazarus and they're all friends of Jesus and this man Lazarus, he's very sick and he's in the town of Bethany right now. Jesus is on the other side of the Jordan river. It's an entire day's journey away from Bethany.

And so somebody has been sent a messenger, go find Jesus and they went and they found Jesus and they have told Jesus that Lazarus is sick almost to the point of death. Verse five. Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. How sad it is to be Mary there. Ok. She gets her sister, Martha and her sister and Lazarus is like typical middle child syndrome here. Ok. So when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

Now, that's a bit confusing. Is it not that the man who has the power to heal would hear that his friend is dying and decide to stay for two more days instead of running to his aid immediately, Jesus is loving him though in a special way that this is how he wants to show his love through his slowness. Has God ever showed you his love through his slowness? His slowness sometimes leads us to repentance and it leads us to a greater praise of who he is many times if we would get what we want immediately when we want it, we would think that it was just us that got it. We would not give him all of the credit as one author says it's not deliverance if it's not the 11th hour. And so sometimes we have to wait until the 11th hour. And then we see that God comes through amen for some of us. It's more like the 13th hour, but he comes through Jesus loved Lazarus and Martha and Mary.

And so we waited, he wanted them to experience something greater than a healing. Sometimes God, God's slowness is his way to love us verse seven. Then after this, he said to the disciples, let us go to Judea again. And the disciples said to him, rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you. And are you going there again? So let's recap what's happening here, Jesus has been ruffling the feathers of the religious leaders for chapters now, ok. He's constantly saying things that's getting him in trouble and he's constantly having to make ninja moves to evade the religious leaders because they're trying to lay large stones on top of him and kill him. They're trying to kill him.

And now they're on the other side of the Jordan where they're pretty safe from the religious leaders. But yet now Jesus wants to go back into the belly of the beast here. He wants to go back to where the religious leaders are prevalent. Bethany where Lazarus is living is only two miles from Jerusalem. And the disciples are like Jesus. Are you, are you sure about that? Are you sure you want to go back there right now. They were just trying to stone you because you healed that blind man. You remember that they were very upset about that Jesus has a choice. He could stay and save his own life or you can go to his friend Lazarus knowing that it will cost him his own life in the process.

And for Jesus, this isn't any choice at all. Jesus tells us this later in a couple of chapters when he see it says that true love is laying down your life for your friends. For Jesus, there's no choice. He loves Lazarus. He's going to go lay down his life for Lazarus. Even if it's through a cascading series of events that happened after that. What happens after that? There's one verse that I don't want to skip. OK, because it'd be easy just to go to Bethany now and see what happens with the sisters and Lazarus and everything.

One verse I don't want to skip because there's a character in the Bible that gets such a bad rap and I am very defensive of him. And it's Thomas because look at Thomas verse 16 and Thomas called the twin were never told anything about the other twin of Thomas. It's like that friend. We all have that friend where like you learn like three years into knowing them like, oh, I'm, you're a twin. What? Really? And then you like, you meet their twin. It's all kind of crazy. Thomas is a twin and he says to his fellow disciples, well, let's go too. I guess that we may die with him. You know, the doubting Thomas is a pretty bold person if you look at the character and the scripture and I, I always, you know, you get such a bad rap for saying I won't believe until I've stuck my fingers in, in Jesus' hands after the resurrection. But now we see that there's reason to believe even here that he that Thomas believed who Jesus was so much that he was willing to follow him to his death.

Now, Jesus arrives at the home of Lazarus and he's been dead for four days now. Ok. It's a one day journey for the messenger to get there two days. Jesus waited a whole day journey for Jesus to get to Bethany and he's immediately approached by Martha. Now, Martha is the typical first child in every way. She is strung tightly. Ok? She is. She sees Jesus down at the end of the driveway. She's going to talk to him. I have something to say to this man. What are you doing? Just now? Getting here, she chases Jesus down. Verse 21. Martha says to Jesus Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

Now, before we look at Jesus' response, I just want to point out a few things Mary, when Jesus finally does get to Mary says the exact same thing to Jesus. Exact same words, Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died. And though she says the same thing to Jesus, she gets a totally different response. When Martha goes to Jesus and says, Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died. How does Jesus respond? He gives her a lot of information. He teaches her, he gives her a bit of a lecture honestly. But when Mary says the same thing, what does he do? It just gives her tears. He just cries.

I think it teaches us something really important about living in community in a church is that some of us are going to engage with God more intellectually. Some of us are going to engage with God more from the heart. But Jesus, he does not condemn one or the other. He accepts both and loves them both and they're each unique individual ways. I've heard a lot of people moralize Mar Martha. A lot of people have moralized Martha and said, Martha, she should just be like Mary, get that out of here. Do you see? That's not the point.

The point that we see over and over again is that Jesus loves Martha and I'm glad he does because I'm a lot more like Martha than I am Mary. I'm a tightly wound human and I need him to love me too. He does. I don't have to become someone. I'm not for him to love me. But he does. Jesus says to Martha, your brother will rise again. Martha said to him, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection. On the last day, Martha is answering correctly here. She, she knows, she knows the book, she knows her Bible. She knows the scriptures. The Jewish leaders of the day taught that one day a Messiah would come and he would and the dead would rise. But for Martha, this isn't much of a reality. It's more like platitudes. It's, it's more like saying when you're at a funeral and someone's saying, well, he's in a better place. Well, he's in a better place and it's not really without any theological backing to it really. So this is more platitudes.

She doesn't really understand how the resurrection works. It's just an idea to Martha. Verse 25 Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. Jesus doesn't say I am the one who gives resurrection in life. He says I am the resurrection in life. Martha, what you know, in theory, I am Jesus is saying, I am this thing that you're alluding to that you don't really understand.

And then Jesus explains it more. He says, whoever believes in me though he dies yet shall he live and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this? Jesus is saying that if you trust in him and follow him with your entire life, you will receive eternal life that after you die, your body may die, but your soul will continue forever. And one day you will receive a new glorified body in the new heavens and the new earth.

That is what Jesus is teaching that through faith in him, eternal life is ours, that we were created for something more than what this world can provide. And one day we will receive it. Amen. D A Carson puts it this way, ordinary mortal life ebbs away. It will for all of us friends, the life that Jesus gives never ends. It is in that sense that whoever lives and believes in Jesus will never die. Do you believe this? Jesus invites the question and it's the question for us today also, do you believe this? Can you answer as Martha did as she said to him? Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Messiah, the son of God who is coming into the world.

He is our only hope in life and death that we are not our own, but we belong to Him. He is my resurrection. He is my life. Do you believe this? After speaking with Martha? And he goes to speak with Mary and Mary approaches Jesus totally differently. Martha, I imagine she has a little bit of a wagging finger in his face. Ma Mary on her knees at his feet crying the second he sees her, Jesus is overcome with emotions and he asks to go see the tomb. And when Jesus saw Mary weeping and the Jews who had come with her also weeping. He was moved deeply in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, where have you laid him? And they said to him, Lord, come and see.

Verse 35, Jesus wept. The shortest verse in all of the Bible. All kids, you've been learning verses and ka kids, you've got like a list of verses that you have memorized. Let's add one more right now. OK. We can just add one. Jesus wept. You got it all Jesus wept. You can add that to your list of memory verses. You now know another verse in the Bible. The shortest one, it says that Jesus was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.

Now, this phrasing is really interesting. It doesn't translate awesome into English, deeply moved. It, it means more like angry, that's like everywhere else. You find it. It's more like an angry word, not just sad, it's not just that Jesus is feeling sorrow and grief, but he's feeling anger. Why would Jesus be feeling anger in this situation? Maybe he's angry because everyone is weeping as if there is no resurrection. Maybe he's angry at their unbelief, maybe he's just angry at death in general. The idea of death. And the fact that death's reign continues and his friends are suffering.

The Bible teaches in First Corinthians 15, that the final enemy to be defeated is death and that Jesus will defeat death. And Jesus sees the side effects of death on those who he loves his friends. So verse 38 Jesus deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave and a stone lay against it. And Jesus said, take away the stone, Martha, the sister of the dead man said to him, Lord. By this time, there will be an odor for he has been dead for four days. All right. So even if Jesus had left the second, the messenger had gotten there, he would not have made it in time. Jesus knew that whenever it happened, but he wanted to be sure that you give them a miracle in this 13th hour.

And Jesus said to her, did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God? So at that moment, Jesus prays and he, he says, Father, I know that you hear me. Would you make it clear that you hear me? And that these here might see my glory might understand who I am.

Verse 43. When he said these things, he cried out with a loud voice. Lazarus come out and the man who had died came out and his hands were bound with linen strips and his face wrapped with a cloth looking like a mummy coming out of there on, on Halloween day. And Jesus said to him un bind him and let him go. Has often been said that the authority of Jesus was so great at that moment that if he had not specified Lazarus, that all of the graves in the area would have given up their dead and climbed out at that moment to resurrected life. This raising of Lazarus, this is a sign of what Jesus was to do.

Jesus has been going through the book of John recounts many signs of what Jesus has come to accomplish. Lazarus would die again. But in a few short weeks, Jesus would be risen to new life and would never die again. Ascend to the father on high. After many days, Lazarus was raised with a physical body, but Jesus, he was raised with a spiritual body. The resurrection of Lazarus really accomplished nothing. Lazarus woke up that day and continued to be a sinner. Jesus never was a sinner but his spiritual life, the life that this pointed us forward to Jesus is saying, I'm gonna do something even better than this. The raising of Lazarus is really just a sign pointing us forward to the resurrection of Jesus when he would conquer sin and death.

And we likewise will one day participate in that resurrection. For a Christian death is not the end. Everyone who lives and believes in Jesus shall never die. This means that our lives have purpose because he lives I can face tomorrow. We have purpose beyond just avoiding death or trying to suck as much life as we can out of each, every day before death. Think about it. What do you live for? To avoid death and to suck as much life out of life before I get to death. But with resurrection, with Jesus, we have more to live for than that.

On Easter, four years ago, I had a bit of an existential crisis myself, maybe a little bit like irrepressible thoughts of death, Barbie. And if you remember, we had this thing called a global pandemic. We were all at home. It was just depressing. I mean, we had, we had this, this church, this is our six year birthday at city on a hill. We have a, a long, long history before that, but we launched the city on a hill six years ago. So four years ago, it was really, we were only two years into this thing and all the churches were shut down and we didn't know what was going to happen. We didn't know how bad the virus was. We didn't know what was going to happen and we did Easter on Zoom and let me tell you, it was so joyful to see you all on Zoom, so joyful to see you all on Zoom.

But the second I turned that off, I was depressed as I can be because for a pastor, it's like my life is to worship Jesus and to lead others to worship Jesus and we just did Easter on Zoom. Like that's not the way it should be. If you're logged on right now, we're so glad you are. If you're able to be here next week, come next week, you know, or just leave. Now, we've got cupcakes after the service. Get over here. I was just left asking. Just does anything matter? You know, like I was, I, I promise I wasn't the only one having these thoughts during the pandemic. OK? Does anything matter? Is my life matter? What is this all in vain? What is happening here? Death is not the end. Everyone who lives and believes in Jesus shall never die. And that truth helps us with our each and every day life.

Jesus doesn't tell us that avoiding death is our ultimate goal. In fact, Jesus tells us something quite the opposite. Jesus tells us to embrace death, a death to yourself, not in a kind of self hatred kind of way, but to embrace a death, to your ambition, a death to your own desires, a death to the life that you want to live and then embracing of what he has given to you in the life of Christ, to live for him, not in a, not in a self hatred kind of way, but in a death to self. I have been crucified with Christ kind of way. I just wanna close with with this application first Corinthians 15. If you've been in the church for a while. You know that First Corinthians 15 is the most famous passage on the resurrection outside of the gospels. Paul waxes on eloquently about the resurrection for 58 verses. I will spare you. I will not read all 58 Lisa read 44 for us a few minutes ago. I will not read all 58 of these verses for us today.

But this is some fine tuned theological teaching on the resurrection. If you have never read first Corinthians 15, I, you go home read first Corinthians 15. He summarizes it all in one application point. That's my type of preacher. OK. 57 verses of theology, one application point at the end. OK? And when he gets to the application for First Corinthians 15, he ends it with just this one verse. Hear this verse. It's one of the most important verses you'll ever hear.

Therefore, my beloved brothers because of the resurrection, therefore, be steadfast immovable always abounding in the work of the Lord. Knowing that in the Lord, your labor is not in vain. That's what he tells us. He says that your life has meaning and purpose because of what Jesus has done. And therefore, if you believe what Jesus has done, stand firm. If you believe what Jesus has done, that makes you immovable. If you believe in what Jesus has done, your life is not in vain with capital letters. What, what does your life what takes up your life? Are you working? A 9 to 5? Are you raising kids? Maybe you're a stay at home mom and they're just driving you nuts. I understand. Maybe you have a pointless job or maybe you finally get to the point where your job makes sense. But you know, when you get to the bottom of it, when you keep asking questions, maybe it doesn't, maybe you're taking care of people who don't care. Maybe you're trying to pour into a community that is difficulty receiving that.

We often think about the resurrection as a lullaby that we tell Children so that they might sleep better at night. But then it would be quite embarrassing if they continued to believe it into adulthood. But the resurrection is not a lullaby. The resurrection is power. The resurrection of Christ makes you immovable church. Hear me, whatever you're going through, whatever you're walking through in life. The resurrection as a result of it says, stand firm, your life matters, stand firm, your life matters. It is not in vain. That is what Jesus has to say to us that we will receive resurrected life with him. The resurrection makes you immovable, abounding a good work. It allows you to stand firm because life is not in vain.

Ten years ago, I got an email from one of my closest friends at the time that was really pretty random and it was probably the seventh email in a chain of emails that we have been sending back and forth about a, a really random like theories of, of, of apologetics. OK. It was a very random kind of email chain that we had going. but this friend is not a normal human. He's he, he has a phd in the classics at Harvard and is now a now is a college professor in Kentucky. And after 10 years I think about this email almost every week. And I've, I haven't ever told him that I texted him this week and was like, hey, I think about this random email every week. He's like what?

But hear what he said at the end of his email, he said new life is the theme of Easter Tomb. Busting earth, shaking heart, cracking, resurrection power is the theme of Easter Lazarus is the theme of Easter resurrection is the answer to every aching moment of human loss. Every dead father and sister, every lost hour or day, every tear and moment of heartbreak resurrection is what tells us that the ultimate end of the story of the universe is victory in capital letters. Amen. Jesus gives our life purpose, not only in this one but in the one to come. And that is what we're looking forward to because that's guaranteed this life has purpose and meaning death is not the end for us. Everyone who lives and believes in Jesus shall never die.

Do you believe in what I say, we're gonna give you some time to consider and to respond to what God is speaking to us this morning, we always practice a sacred meal called a communion meal. If you are a believer and you're receiving this truth, and you're saying, yes, this is true for me. We invite you to the table. Let me encourage you to come and receive the meal that we're about to take on the night that Jesus was betrayed. He took a loaf of bread and he tore it into. And he said, this is my body broken for you. And then he took a cup of wine and he said, this is my blood shed for you, do this in remembrance of me. And so each week we participate in the sacred meal as a reminder of jesus' death and resurrection on our part. And we will continue to do this as Christians until he returns victoriously in the clouds to call us home. Let's stand and prepare our hearts to respond to Jesus.

God, you give us purpose and meaning, you take this life and you make it your own and I give you my life right now. God, I pray for anyone here who's discerning what they believe, discerning. If this is all true God, we pray that your Holy Spirit right now would come and fill them with the truth of Christ and the life of Christ. And that they might experience the resurrection of life. Themselves, that the conviction of sin would come. But the forgiveness would come a moment later. And God, as we prepare our hearts to receive this meal, we pray that you would be magnified, glorified. We just want you to be big and for us to be small, for you to be greater and for us to be less. Father, we pray that you would use our worship to magnify yourself and that you would connect with us in this time. And God, we pray that there might be more belief in this room that our belief would be reassured. Reaffirmed that our life is not meaningless, but that we are immovable. In Christ's name we pray, amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches on Palm Sunday about Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem in John 12:12-26. Discussion points: The crowd is welcoming Jesus to Jerusalem as their new political and military king, our mental image of Jesus may be built on an imaginary Jesus which does not match up to the real Savior, Jesus isn’t satisfied with just being a consultant for our lives.

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Scripture reader: [John 12:12-26] The next day, the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out. Hosanna blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord? Even the king of Israel and Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it just as it is written, fear, not daughter of Zion. Behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's colt. His disciples did not understand these things at first. But when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him. The crowd that had been with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb and raised him from the dead continued to bear witness. The reason why the crowd went to meet him was that they heard he had done this sign.

So the Pharisees said to one another, you see that you are gaining nothing. Look, the world has gone after him. Now, among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. So these came to Philip who was from Bea in Galilee and asked him, sir, we wish to see Jesus. Philip went and told Andrew, Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus and Jesus answered them. The hour has come for the son of man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me and where I am, there will be my servant. Also. If anyone serves me, the father will honor him.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: Only 10% of evangelicals who grew up in churches as millennials. 10% of millennials who grew up in evangelical churches are still practicing Christianity in any significant kind of way. I say that statistic, it should sound shocking. But for any of us who know millennials or maybe you grew up as I did as a millennial in a church. It's not shocking because when I think about my youth group as a kid, yeah, about 10% were there for the right reasons or 10% are still practicing from what I can tell. Why is it that all the demographic studies tell us that the number one growing religious demographic year over year in the United States is the nuns those who have no religious affiliation, deconstruction has hit the mainstream. You can't really avoid it.

If you're in Christian circles, you hear about Christians who are, have deconstructed or are in the process somewhere along the way of deconstructing the other day. I was cruising along Instagram and I came across a post by an acquaintance of mine, someone who was a pastor in Memphis. He planted a, a church and my best friend served with him there and he was talking about his own journey with deconstruction. Since then, there was a lot of controversy. He's no longer the pastor of that church. I don't think he's serving in ministry anymore. But he was articulating with, you know, the last bit of influence that he has, I suppose the reasons why he thinks that many people are deconstructing these days.

And as he gave more and more reasons, I couldn't help but think in my opinion that he's replacing the Jesus that we know in the Bible with the Jesus of his own imagination, who he would like Jesus to be instead of who Jesus tells us. He actually is. Now today is Palm Sunday. And we're covering the triumphal entry. The reason why we're covering triumphal entry, we're going through the book of John. It makes sense to cover the triumphal entry on Palm Sunday. But if you notice we skipped like an entire chapter of John, but I didn't want to continue the series in John and then be covering the triumphal entry like two weeks after Palm Sunday. That didn't really make sense. So I was like, let's just skip, do the Palm Sunday pass on Palm Sunday. Then we'll go back and we got Lazarus being risen from the grave on Easter Day. And all right, it works for us. OK?

So next week we're gonna go back and keep going through our book of John. And we're gonna be talking about Lazarus being risen from the grave, which is a great passage for Easter Sunday because I, you know who else might be risen from the grave, Jesus. Yeah. that, that, that goes with Easter really well. So we skipped forward to cover Palm Sunday on the Palm Sunday, Sunday. And with the triumphal entry, we see Jesus entering Jerusalem. I don't know what that word was. Jerusalem with a king's welcome. He's being welcomed in with the palm branches. Everyone's crying, Hosanna and they're ready to crown him as king. But a mere five days later, the same people, many in this crowd are shouting, crucify.

It was a rapid deconstruction where they went from shouting praises to Jesus. You are the new king. We're ready to crown you to saying crucify him. When your expectations for Jesus don't meet up with the realities of Jesus. You're often left discouraged and disillusioned. And when you have enough of those discouragements, compile on top of one another. Deconstruction is Eminem. Let's look at this passage and see what took these people from Hosanna to crucify in a mere five days. If there's any hints of what might be the reason for their turning on who Jesus is for them. They're changing their minds about who Jesus is and see what we can learn from that.

Verse 12. The next day, the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. All right, the the next day, what's it talking about here? Because you know, we skipped the previous chapter. So we didn't cover this yet. We're going kind of verse by verse through the book of John right now. The next day is the day after Mary had anointed Jesus's feet. So that was about a week after Jesus had risen Lazarus from the grave.

So Jesus has this group of people that are following him. He's got a crowd that's gathered. They saw him raise Lazarus from the grave and they're following him in wherever he's going because they see that he did a miracle. So the next day, Jesus is going into, along with the large crowd, he has a crowd coming with him that saw him raise Lazarus. There's also people in Jerusalem that have heard about what Jesus has done. And so they're all kind of coming together and they're ready to crown him king. There's a crowd following him that he has, he has got his posse there. So verse 13, they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him crying out. Hosanna blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord? Even the king of Israel. Now, this is how you would welcome a, a king into a city. This is the way that they would do it.

It's very evident that they're trying to recognize Jesus as king. The people are coming out, they're lining the streets ready to have like a parade for his entry in. They're waving the palm branches and they're shouting the word Hosanna. Now, Hosanna is an interesting word. It's not one that we use often in English and the translators oftentimes this is what would happen. when an English translator doesn't quite know how to translate a word from Greek. The New Testament is written in Greek. They do what we call transliterating it. So instead of giving it a translation, they just try to take the Greek word and they, and they put it in English. So in Greek, the original word for Hosanna was or is Hosanna? Now, the Greek authors, similarly, when they would come to a Hebrew word that wouldn't translate very well into Greek, they would do the same thing. And so Hosanna is just a transliteration of the Greek word Hosanna, which is just a transliteration of the Hebrew word, which is like Hosanna.

So it's very similar and it only appears one time in the entire Old Testament. It's not a common word in the Old Testament only appears one time. And that is in Psalm 118, we read it earlier where and it meant this idea of save me, please save me, please. But over time, it kind of changed the meaning. Instead of being a, a cry for, for help, it became a cry of deliverance. And so instead of saying, save me, please, it would be like the hero has appeared. And now you're saying salvation is here. It's a cry of salvation, it's here. And so that is what they're crying as Jesus walks in. They're saying Hosanna blessed is he, they're shouting his praises, they're calling him the king of Israel in the book of Matthew, they recognize him as the son of David.

Make no bones about it. The people of Israel are welcoming Jesus in as king and they fully expect Jesus to go in there to take the throne and to kick the Romans out. They expect him to take a political reign to be the new president, the new king of Israel and to reign and rule to re-establish what they saw with David. You know when David was king, it says that he had peace from all of his enemies, all around him. Do you know what that means that he had peace from all of his enemies? It means everybody was scared of him no one's messing with him. He's the biggest man around. All right. That's what I'm saying is that the people of Israel at that time were the, the most dominant, politically, the most dominant, dominant military around. And so we had peace from his enemies because no one wanted to pick a fight with him.

And that's what they expected Jesus to be like him to come in and to be a dominant political and may maybe even military leader who would lead them to the promised land of reestablished themselves as the dominant force on earth. But there's clues that that's not what Jesus has in mind.

Verse 14 and Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it just as just as it is written, fear, not daughter of Zion. Behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey's colt. Now, this quote is from Zechariah chapter nine verse nine. And Jesus is very intentionally fulfilling this prophecy that was spoken by the prophet nearly five or about 500 years earlier. It's a direct quote from that, but it also tells us something about who Jesus is as king because if you see a king coming in, you're welcoming in him in with, with palm branches and shouting Hosanna that king you would normally think would be riding in on a war horse ready to fight. But Jesus doesn't ride in on a war horse. He rides in on a young donkey, humble and meek is he the king of Israel.

Verse 16, his disciples did not understand these things at first. But when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written about him and had been done to him. So the disciples might not have understood what was happening. But here's something that I never really got until I was studying this week is that the disciples might not have known what was happening, but Jesus absolutely knew what was happening. Like, I've always seen the triumphal entry as Jesus coming in and, and just kind of like being like a little rosy cheeked like, oh guys, you shouldn't have shucks. You know, why are you? I don't know about this king because that's what you see Jesus doing all the time. Jesus is always like ninja moving his way out of the spotlight. They're like, who healed you. And they're like, I don't know, it was Jesus and then it's like, where is he? No one has any idea where he went, he went oh up to a mountain to be by himself somewhere or something like that. That's what we see Jesus doing over and over and over again throughout the gospel.

But here Jesus very strategically and intentionally is being recognized as king. He's not trying to hide anymore. He sent his disciples ahead to go find the donkey to bring it back so that he could ride in and fulfill the prophecy so that he can be recognized as king. And here's one of the things that we can miss out very quickly on that up until this point, Jesus has been saying, my hour has not come. My hour has not come. My hour has not come.

But all of a sudden now Jesus says, my hour has come, the time has come. My hour has come verse 23 and Jesus answered them, the hour has come for the son of man to be glorified. When his mother asked him or told his disciples to, to ask him and to turn the water into wine. He says, my hour has not come. You see it appear over a couple of other times throughout the gospel where Jesus say, my hour has not come. But now there's a significant shift for Jesus where he's saying, the hour has come. When you look at the book of John that we've been going through since like September or August. The 1st 11 chapters are on the first three years of jesus' ministry and the last 10 chapters, there's only 21 chapters.

The last 10 chapters are on the last week of his life. And so the hour has come, we're going to zoom in and slow down greatly. Now as we study God's word on these last days of his life. And Jesus says now is the time for my glorification. Verse 23 the hours come for the son of man to be glorified the crowd. When they think about the glorification of Jesus, they might think about the ascent to the throne that he's coming in to be glorified in that way. But Jesus had a different type of glorification in mind. It was the ascent to the cross instead of to the throne. Verse 24 Jesus kind of explains more about his glorification.

And in verse 24 he says, truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. Now, this always confused me. I remember in a philosophy of religion class in college, my undergrad, so I, I did not study religion in undergrad. I studied math and psychology and I just took a religion, philosophy of religion class as an elective for fun there. OK, just for funsies. And then I went on to, to do other degrees for in theology and whatnot. But the, I remember reading a passage about this and even Paul using a similar analogy in first Corinthians about the seed dying and just being kind of stuck on it and saying, well, seeds don't really die when they're being planted into the ground. But to in, in Jesus hear minds this made more sense because the seed ceases to exist as a seed, it dies as a seed and it comes up as a plant and what he's saying is if you take a seed, it, unless it goes into the ground and dies as a seed, it can't come and bear this good fruit.

Jesus knows that he's heading to the cross and that he's going to die. But through the cross, all nations will be blessed. Verse 25 Jesus explains this and even more depth. He says, whoever loves his life loses it and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Now, these love hate semantics, these are really confusing. Are they not we, we come across these a few times in the New Testament where Jesus says, whoever love, whoever follows me will hate his family. You see something like that. If you, if you wanna love me, you'll hate your family. But what was helpful for me is that I read a commentator talk about this love hate semantics and he explained it like this, that the love hate semantics were a common Semitic idiom of the time which articulated a fundamental preference, not hate on an absolute scale. So while we might think about hate being this absolute thing, instead, he's saying in relation to how much you love this other thing, you hate this thing in relation to not on this grand scale f this this absolute scale.

And so it's not that we're to hate our life and to force ourselves to be miserable and say, oh, I just hate living instead of saying I live and long for the kingdom of Heaven more. And what this verse really gets at is the difference between being a fan of Jesus or a follower of Jesus. You see the crowd is celebrating the arrival of Jesus, but you can celebrate the arrival of Jesus and even call him your king without actually being a follower of Jesus. It can change rather quickly. The crowd, their, their agenda for Jesus is very different than jesus' own agenda. They want Jesus to establish a political rule where he can, where they can follow him to prosperity.

But Jesus is not concerned about that. He says that his followers must hate their lives in this world so that they can keep it into eternity. I am convinced friends that many of the people who have deconstructed have done so because their expectations of Jesus did not line up with the realities of Jesus because the image of who Jesus should be in their own mind is built off really an imaginary Jesus instead of the Jesus that we have in scripture. It's not completely their fault though it's not completely their fault.

The modern day church has distilled Christianity and to the serum that is meant to be easily taken. And so the modern day church has said that the gospel is this, that you need to accept these truth, claims for yourself that you are a sinner that you need a Savior. God loves you. And he sent Jesus to die for you all true facts. But the modern church has said now take those facts. And if you want to go to heaven and not go to hell, raise your hand and pray a prayer with me and now you're going to heaven and it's distilled following Jesus into raising a hand or praying a prayer.

Look, the word Christian only appears three times in the entire New Testament. It's not a common way that the followers of Jesus are described instead, people who follow Jesus are described as followers of Jesus. Now you can raise your hand and accept those facts without actually becoming a follower of Jesus. What does it mean to follow Jesus? But to live your life in the way that he lived it in the way that he told us to live our lives. Jesus says, if anyone serves me, he must follow me verse 26 and where I am there, my servant be also, if anyone serves me, the father will honor him. Christianity is, is you do have to accept those things, but it's more than that, it's following. It's serving.

I love the way that Dallas Willard puts this. He says, the greatest issue facing the world today with all of its heartbreaking needs is whether those who are identified as Christians will become disciples, students, apprentices, practitioners of Jesus Christ steadily learning from him how to live the life of the Kingdom of the heavens into every corner of human existence. Jesus invites his followers to give up on their lives here now and to live for eternity. That is what it means to be a follower that you die to self and live for eternity. Paul describes it well, in Galatians, he says, he describes his own life as a Christian. This is what it means to be a follower of Christ to be a Christian. He says, I have been crucified with Christ. It's not just raising your hand. It's not just simple assent into belief that Jesus is who he says he is.

It is saying that when he went to the cross, my my faith in him, put me on the cross with him. I have been crucified with Christ is no longer I who lived but Christ who lives in me. And now the life that I live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. That is what it means to follow Christ. It means the old you has been crucified, your sin and your shame have been placed on Jesus. And now the life that you live in Him, you follow after Him. You live by faith. I can't think of any better description of this than CS Lewis and Mere Christianity. When he says this, he says, give up yourself and you will find your real self, give up yourself and you will find your real self, lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, the death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day.

Let me just read that one again for us. So OK, it's an ambitious crowd here with us, submit to death, the death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and the death of your whole body in the end, submit with every fiber of your being and you will find eternal life. Keep nothing back. Nothing that you will that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will be raised from the dead. Look for yourself and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But look for Christ and you will find him and with him. Everything else thrown in.

Friends, are we dying to self? Is that what our image of Christ looks like? Is that what our image of what it means to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus looks like that every day. We're dying to self and living to him that we're giving up in giving to him following Jesus is hard, but there's nothing better. Amen. In five days, the Jerusalem crowd goes from shouting Hosanna to crying, crucify why their expectations of who Jesus was did. Ma did not match up with the reality of who Jesus actually is. I've been dealing with this in my own life. I think that many of us can talk about different ways that we need to search our own heart and find how Jesus is different than the reality of Jesus, how my Jesus is different than the real Jesus.

And for me, what I've been looking for is, is where is their discouragement? It's easy to feel discouraged, in life and my Christian faith and this is just a small one. I'll, I'll share with you that is a place that I've experienced discouragement. But as a, as a kid growing up in the early two thousands, and come to faith in the early two thousands, I believe I became a Christian like in the year 2000. And I was taught very early in my Christian faith about what we used to call. I'm not sure if the kids still call it this but a quiet time. Is that something that, that anybody's been been taught? Or, you know, your quiet time is a time where you take your bible and you go and you read a chapter or more and you pray and you talk with God and the quiet time was sold to me as a time where you are actually talking with God like prayer.

I talk to God, it assumes God talks back. I hear from Him. I spend time with Him. It's your devotional time. And that's how I've started almost every single day for the past 20 years is with this quiet time. This devotional time, I'm not bashing on it. I think it's great, but it was sold to me at the time when God would really come in power, when I would get to experience them. I wish I could tell you all the amazing times that I've heard from God during these quiet times. But what I can actually tell you is that my spiritual life, even as a spiritual guide for you all, ok. My spiritual life can be stubbornly slow and dry.

Can I read my Bible? It's like I've spent so much time doing this. I'm disciplined. I, I read, I've probably read the Bible, you know, over 10 times at this point. But I rarely get that powerful sense of the presence of God. Don't get me wrong. There is a real sweetness in my personal spiritual life. There's times where he's constantly answering prayers and he's quietly transforming my heart during those moments alone in prayer and in his word, it's not something I would trade, but it's just not what I necessarily expect. And so sometimes, sometimes I get frustrated, maybe a little disillusioned.

It's like God, I thought if I did this thing, it'd be like acts two, you know, holy spirit coming down my heart, beating the spirit of God filling me. I can just fill your presence all the time. But instead, it's been very different. I've had a few of those times, I, I'll tell you the truth. I have had a few of those times where I've really, since God's presence while reading his word and in my quiet time, but it's the exception and not the rule. My expectations for Jesus have not been the same as the reality with Jesus. And I think it would be easy for us. Those of you who maybe you've been, you've learned the same thing to become discouraged with our spiritual life.

But the reality is that maybe it's in the dry patient persistence, that God is actually achieving what he wants in your heart. You see my expectations of Jesus need to shift not to what I imagine him to be, but who he actually is. Because when I was thinking about this, I've realized that even if you look at my, my life over the past couple of years change and spiritual growth often stubbornly slow.

But I believe I'm a more patient person than I was three years ago. I believe I have more love. That's not just love for myself. It turns out that Jesus doesn't zap character traits, he doesn't zap character into you. But it's only done through frustratingly slow shaping, through chiseling away at the rocks of our own hearts, the virtues of patience, trust, gentleness, love, self control. They rarely come through the moments of power, but through the years of persistence.

And that's how Jesus changes us. Isn't that frustrating? But also glorious to know when our expectations of Jesus don't match the realities of Jesus. We're left disillusioned and discouraged. And my goal is to change my expectations to match the real Jesus and not the one of my imagination. And so let me ask you this church this morning. Do you have the right Jesus? Do you have the right Jesus? When you approach Jesus, how do you approach him? Many of us approach Jesus as if he might be a consultant for us? Ok. This is why you hire a consultant. If you're working in a company and you, you want a consultant, you want someone that's fairly easily expendable that you don't necessarily need to keep around forever. So you're not gonna offer them a salary. You're an hourly employee, you come in, but you're an expert in your field. So you're gonna push me along a little bit and you're gonna help me get to where I need to be and then you know, goodbye consultant. I'll call you if I ever need you again.

And so we look at Jesus and we want Jesus to be a consultant in our life. So we go to him only when things feel rather difficult for us and say, hey, Jesus, you're the expert, come and consult in my life, push me forward and that's when we pursue him. But Jesus will not be a consultant. Look at him as he's coming in. He's like, look, no, I'm not your consultant. I'm not here to push along your agenda. I have my own agenda and so you can hire me but its CEO or nothing. I'll come in but I'm the boss now and you're gonna do what I tell you. You see, Jesus will not be a consultant. It's CEO or nothing. It's crown him or crucify him. No, in between crown and you know what Jesus would wear a crown but would not be the one that they would expect because Jesus would find himself a mere five days later as they're crying crucify, crowned with a crown of thorns in the place of his glorification, risen to power but not the kind of power that they were thinking a power of self sacrifice and service to his people.

It means we have to sac we have to surrender our lives to Jesus the king. That's a word for us this morning. Surrender, surrender our lives to Jesus, the king. Instead of deconstructing our faith. We need to deconstruct our own lives. Many of us need to deconstruct the culture that we live in, especially a Christian culture that we were brought up in. But where are expectations for Jesus failing to match the realities of Jesus.

Now, deconstruction, deconstruction is a complicated issue. OK? I I am talking about it a lot this morning. So I just want to say a few things. I don't wanna oversimplify the church at large has caused an immense amount of hurt and pain for people. The church at large has perpetrated abuse and just so much. And as followers of Jesus, we have to lament these failures that we've been complicit in oftentimes and many people who deconstruct have difficult questions about God that church leaders fail to address and friends. We need to walk alongside these friends who are deconstructing, who are questioning what they grew up in, to persevere with them relationally and in prayer to work to answer their questions far too often.

And this is something that maybe I've been guilty of, but hopefully not, not much but far too often pastors and church leaders underestimate the intelligence of their congregations and they won't actually give real answers to real questions. And that's something that we want to do here. If you have questions, bring those questions, we're here to walk through those with you. Hard questions deserve nuanced answers. And if you have people who have deconstructed in your life, here's your word. Ok? I think that many times we, we, we end up leaving them to be shunned essentially. But the word of Jesus is to love them. That's the way of Jesus is to love those who have walked away. They are not your enemy. And even if they were, Jesus tells us to love our enemy, we love them because Jesus loves the deconstructions.

Just look at him on the cross as they cry, crucify those who once cried, who's even now crying crucify, he's on his cross. And what does Jesus say? But father forgive them for, they know not what they're doing. Jesus has a heart for those who are lost. He has a heart for those who's got it wrong all the way to the point where they're ready to kill him and he still is praying for their forgiveness. Let's realign our expectations of Jesus this Easter season to match the real Jesus. And let's realign our understanding of being a follower of Jesus to what he described.

In just a moment, we're going to have an opportunity to respond to God's word. And we, we're going to open a communion meal. We do this every week. We take the communion meal to remind ourselves of what Christ has done for us, that his body was broken, for us, that his blood was shed for us on the cross. And as we participate in this meal, we're saying that I am with Jesus, I am following him. That his death is my death. I am crucified with him on the cross and it's no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me, we're declaring the death of Christ is where our faith is.

And so, the invitation is to evaluate your own life. Jesus tells us to, to evaluate our lives and repent of any areas that need repentance in our life to come back to him over and over again. So church would you stand as we prepare our hearts to receive this meal and to really evaluate what Jesus wants for us.

Father, as we come to the sacred meal, we pray that you would give us a truly divine sense of who you are that we might know you better. The real, you, not the one of our imagination, but the real Jesus humble and mounted on a donkey that we might understand your kingdom and w and its work in our own heart. Father, we pray that our expectations of you would be higher than what we have currently, but that they would not be our own. God, would you give us expectations that you would do a great work? You say that you've done that you will do even greater things through us. And God, we pray that you will, but we pray that they won't be our things. We pray for your things.

God, we pray through this whole week as we consider your death and resurrection, that you would do a great work in us, but not the one we expect. The one that you want Jesus. We give you our lives, we surrender to your way and your will today. And God, we pray for anyone here trying to figure out what you would want for them, how they can follow you. Father, would you give them that direction and guidance. In Christ's name we pray, amen.

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Ministry Associate Calvin Chu preaches from John 10:22-42, read for us in Portuguese. Discussion points: We often operate from a mindset of fear like sheep, we should be measuring the messages we receive from the world against the word of our good shepherd, we can trust that following Jesus will give us a better and richer life than anything the world can offer.

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Scripture reader: [John 10:22-42, read in Portuguese] Celebra-se. A festa de dedicação em Jerusalém era inverno e Jesus estava no templo caminhando pelo pórtico de Salomão. Os judeus reuniram-se ao redor dele e perguntaram até quando nos deixará em suspense. Se é você o Cristo, diga-nos abertamente, Jesus respondeu Eu já disse mas vocês não creem as obras que eu realizo em nome do meu pai. Falam por mim, mas vocês não crêem porque não são minhas ovelhas. As minhas ovelhas ouvem a minha voz e eu as conheço e elas me seguem. Eu lhes dou a vida eterna e elas jamais perecerá. Ninguém as pode arrancar da minha mão. Meu pai que as deu pra mim, é maior do que todos. Ninguém as pode arrancar da mão do meu pai. Eu e o pai somos um. Novamente os judeus pegaram pedras para apedreja lo, mas Jesus lhes disse. Eu mostrei muitas boas obras da parte do pai por qual delas. Vocês querem me apedrejar? Responderam os judeus. Não vamos apedreja lo por nenhuma boa obra, mas pela blasfêmia, porque você é um simples homem e se apresenta como Deus. Jesus Leis respondeu, Não está escrito na lei de vocês, eu disse Vocês são deuses. Se ele chamou deuses, aqueles a quem veio a palavra de Deus e a escritura não pode ser anulada, quer dizer a respeito daquele a quem o pai santificou e enviou ao mundo? Então, por que vocês me acusam de blasfêmia? Porque eu disse Sou filho de Deus. Se eu não realizo as obras do meu pai, não creiam em mim, mas se as realizo mesmo que não creia em mim, creiam nas obras para que possam saber e entender que o pai está em mim e eu, no pai. Outra vez tentaram prendê-lo, mas ele se livrou das mãos deles. Então Jesus atravessou novamente o Jordão e foi para o lugar onde João batizava nos primeiros dias do seu ministério. Ali ficou e muita gente ficou. Foi até onde ele estava dizendo, Embora João nunca tenha realizado um sinal milagroso, tudo o que ele disse a respeito deste homem era verdade, e ali muitos creram em Jesus.

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: Good morning church. It's good to be able to share God's word with you this morning. I have a, a thought exercise to get us started to think about this passage. Imagine what your life would look like if you had nothing. no, you, you had, sorry, if you knew nothing bad could ever happen to you, right? Just, just start to think about what your life. What would you invest in if you knew that? No matter what only returns of profit will come back? Right? How, how would you, how much would you invest? What work would you do if you knew you never had to worry about providing for yourself and your family? Right? What people would you surround yourself with if you had a total sense of security in all the relationships around you, knowing that you would be socially and emotionally and, and, and, and, spiritually fed by the people around you. Who would you live with? Who would you commune with? Who would you fellowship with? Who would you play with? Who would you hang out with? What would you do? What activities would you do if you knew that you could never die.

And the reason I think about this and, and bring this up is because if we knew that no matter what we would win, no matter what we would be successful, I think our lives would be incredibly different because after pastoring for over a decade, with, you know, students, students from like middle schoolers all the way up to like married with kids and beyond, I will tell you that I feel like we as a people, we operate much more from a, a, a position of fear, right? Rather than fearlessness. We struggle with the things that we have because we have a, a lack of a true sense of security.

The reason that we do dumb things, the reason we fall back into old habits and old sins, the reason that we lose our patience, The, the reason that we, we, we, we just get so frustrated, the reason that we gossip, the reason that we just feel like we can't even move forward in life is because of fear. And so without trying to overwhelm us with this sense of guilt, I think what's beautiful about the passage that we just read and we're gonna dive into this morning is it's going to show us how we get over, at least the beginnings of it, the beginnings of the sense of fear. We're gonna see what God has to say through his word. And through a deeper letter, obviously, as we read it, we see that the Pharisees have confronted Jesus again and, but they, they ask very, very plainly Jesus, who are you? What are you about? Tell us plainly. And before we answer, how, how look at how Jesus answered.

Let's pray, Father God, I know it can feel like an odd thing for us to think about this passage and how it relates to how we operate and how we live through fear. But God help us to understand that there is and there are answers here and that you have provided the answer. You are the answer for the fear that we have. The anxiety that we have as we operate through life. And God as we look around, there's a lot of things to be fearful about. Even right now, we might be, we might be holding off the, the wave of fear that's coming because we know that Monday is coming and we wouldn't know how our job is gonna be or we're going back home and all the the frustrations that are happening there. God, God help us to be affirmed and understanding that there are things to be concerned about because as we look into your word, would you begin to give us the sense of security? This sense of peace that comes from knowing you, let me pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.

So in very typical Jesus fashion, when asked a question, Jesus is a little bit more round about and, and in his very roundabout way of responding. again, also in very classic Jesus fashion with the Pharisees. They want to kill him, right? And so verse 33 it said the Jews answered him. It is not good for a work that you are going to that we're going to stone you, but for blasphemy because you being a man make yourself God. Jesus makes it very, very plain. He's like, I've already told you guys, you know what I, well, you know that you, you know what I've done this, this I am the, I am the messiah, I am God. And so they say that, oh, we're going to stone you because you are making yourself God. But the truth is if you remember the, the phrase the Jews that refers to a group of, of people called the Pharisees who were the religious and actually like the, the political leaders of the community.

And so they were because they were so focused on the, the, the scriptures and they were looking for a Messiah so that they were looking for someone who would deliver them from the oppression that they were, were seeing politically primarily. And so they were looking for this savior. And so it's not that they weren't looking for a person who could deliver them, right? Actually, III I it's not 100% clear because I'm no, I I can't pull a pharisee aside like, hey, what are you thinking? But because I, if you look what you think, but it's not that they were frustrated and mad that he was claiming himself to be the God. I really think it's because he's claimed to be God. And then he says, you are not my people. It's actually the combination of both in verse 24.

So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, how long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly, Jesus answered them. I told you and you do not believe the works that I do in my father's name, bear witness about me and you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. It's the combination of the two, I imagine that they've said I am the Messiah and come to me, my sheep, come to me and my people the back. Ok. Let's go. Let's let's get some stuff done. Like finally, the Messiah, finally, God has brought us to the Messiah. Now we can move forward all the work that we as the political and religious leaders have been doing. Now. It's now we're activated now. Good things are gonna happen. I think if Jesus said that to him, they would be like, oh cool. He's the Messiah. He's listen, have you seen the, did you see what he did the other day? That was amazing. He's a miracle worker. Do you see all the people who are following He's, he's got even Messiah.

I think that the, that the conflict comes because they, he calls himself God claims to be God. And he says, no, you're not my people. The religious leaders were devo devoted their life to the scriptures, to their religion. They go, yeah, you're not mine, you're not my people, you're not my sheep. And so when he calls him out, calls them out, they can't stop him that they would not be the Messiah's people. Therefore, he must not be the Messiah. He must not be God's chosen. He must not be the savior, right? Instead what Jesus gives us, what, what he tells us that it doesn't matter if you have committed to the religious practices, right? It doesn't matter that, you know, the most knowledge like you could win Bible trivia night every single, you know, week. That's, that's not what makes a person, one of Jesus' people, one of Jesus' sheep.

What we see here in verse 27 he says my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me, I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand. I and the father are one verse 31. The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. And so why does Jesus use this phrase sheep? This is like the second time we, we've heard sheep and shepherds last week we read earlier in chapter 10. You know, the, the same sort of analogy, Jesus is the good shepherd and his people are his sheep. Why does Jesus equate his people to sheep? I think it's complicated because again, we don't have a full understanding of sheep unless you have sheep at your home. Which would be really, really cool. I don't know, like Somerville's like ordinances if you can have sheep on your property. But I don't know, chickens maybe. But sheep may probably not but, but most of us don't know what it's like to have sheep, right?

The, the only thing in our context that we really have for sheep is they're sheep and that there's like a sense of condescension like, oh, they're just being a sheep, you know, they're, they're being mindless, they're not thinking they're just following the crowd blindly. And while I don't think that's entirely wrong in terms of a description of what sheep are, I think people in jesus' time were have a little bit more nuance in understanding how she behaved. And I listen, I this is mostly like research through like commentaries and like the internet. So like, I'm not by no means in my actual, you know, I don't have a, a, you know, the, the, the the hook, the rod, whatever that thing is called. I don't have that, I don't know what people like, but I, what I, what I have I have looked at and what I can see is that the reason that sheep behave the way they do, it's not that they're inherently dumb. Right. I think very often people say, oh, well, sheep are just dumb. They're just sort of mindless.

But the reason that sheep behave this way is because they are trying to survive. Right. And so because they're prey air and animals, they can't stay and fight like no sheep is gonna be like, hey wolf, come on, what's up? Like no sheep? They can't do that. Right? And so the best way for them to stay alive is for them to stay together it from the flock together. And because that gives them that sense of security. And so that's why you have it. I mean, literally, I looked up in 2005 in Turkey, 450 sheep jumped off of a cliff because they said, well, one did it. And it's like, ok, let that must be the way the security to jump off the cliff and literally 450 sheep that were great. Just, just all, all perished. I mean, really, really sad for that community because I think that was a big part of their livelihood, right?

But because that sense of security in the collective in the flock. It's because they, oh, this is the way that we survive. If we do what other people do, that's how we get out of here. That's how we don't die. They think they think if I don't follow the crowd, I will die. And their behavior is driven by fear because they feel so overwhelmed by the prospect of being on their own. The crowd feels like the best option to keep them safe and maybe even feels like the only option they have. But a group of sheep on their own is not safety. If predators come lurking around, it's not. If sheep will die, it's how many at first and then how long until the whole flock is consumed. But they have this feeling that there is safety because there's the group.

And if we're being honest, we're kind of like this. I could see why Jesus is my people are my sheep, right? Because our a our our actions, our behaviors are often inspired by fear and we go along with the crowd because it feels safer, right? We figure if we do what everyone else is doing, it must be the right thing to do. We should be fighting for the promotion. We should be looking for a greater social media presence. We should be, we keep saying, oh, I, I need to get into this sort of shape. I need to get into this sort of mentality because that's what Instagram tells me and all the people on Instagram are doing it. Therefore, that must be the right way, right? And it gives us this false sense of security, but just like a pack of wolves when sin comes lurking, it's not long until the whole community is affected. And so theologically, the reason that we sin is because we have inherited a sin nature at the fall of that theological. That is, that is absolutely true.

But practically speaking in our day to day life, we sin because we have a sense of security based on others who are just as defensive as us who are just like sheep following something else. And we go, that must be the right way because a lot of people are doing it. A lot of other sheep are going there. So let's flock together. That must be right. Our sense of security relies on a mentality that says what is the next person doing? And I need to do that immediately. And that's why social media is so effective. That's why the algorithm, if you talking about the algorithm, the algorithm is so powerful because all of a sudden you go, oh I guess I do need to buy that thing. So I'm gonna swipe up and I'm gonna click buy, I'm gonna follow that. That's really, really good. I'm gonna send that to my friend and now that has been affected to your friends DM. Then all the people that they follow and all people who follow them that's gonna spread that and this idea that we have whatever it is, it now spreads and it feels like we have all these people affirming this idea. That is good. That is good. That is good. And you go, oh, that is good.

And now people who are 2, 3, 4, 5 degrees removed from us go, Yeah, that's good. That must be a great thing because look at how many people liked it, how many people shared to the story and that sense of security that just purely comes from being a part of the flock is not a true sense of security. When our perceptions of what is truly safe are wrong following the crowd does feel like the best option. But we as sheep are not safe unless we have a shut. In fact, as we read earlier, Jesus identifies himself as the good shepherd and he identifies the his sheep as those who recognize their need for him to be their shepherd. Verse 27 my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me.

And if I'm being honest with myself, as I look through my life and my history and all the stupid things that I've done, I have been a sheep lost in the world following everyone else because it feels right. It feels good, feels comfortable, so safe. But the beautiful thing is that Jesus, our good shepherd knows about us and he came to our world to save us from that lie. He came to bring us into his fold so that we can have a true sense of security. And if you grow up in the church or, or been following Jesus for a while you go, this is the good reminder part of the message. Oh, that's a good reminder. Yes. Oh, good, good. Yes. huh.

But I have a question for, for all of us, it's, whether you're trying to figure out who Jesus is for the first time or whether you've been hearing sermons since you were little itty bitty kid. Have you ever stopped to think why Jesus is the good shepherd? What makes him so good? Why is he alone worthy of holding the title of being the good shepherd?

Let's read verse 25. Jesus answered them. I told you and you do not believe the works that I do in my father's name, bear witness about me. But you do not believe because you are not among my sheep, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of my father's hand. I and the father are one. The reason that Jesus is the good shepherd is because he's good in every sense of the word. Right? Thankfully, we have parallels in our, in English.

The word good has a lot of different meanings, right? But I in the original context of the way that the the dictionary is defined it, it says in any respect, object, unobjectionable, blameless and excellent. So what makes Jesus the good shepherd is because it embodies the fullness of the goodness, right? So basically he's morally, right? As in they are a good person, right? They're virtuous, they are good in the sense that they are skilled or competent as in someone who is good at their job. Good being beneficial or advantageous as in eating vegetables is good for your health. Good as in meet standards as in the book was good. It is widely recognized as a standard bearer for good literature, good meaning pleasant or enjoyable as in the action movie was good, not widely recognized as a standard bearer, but it was satisfying.

And in all these ways, Jesus is the shepherd, that is all of these things. He's good in all of these ways, he better bodies, all of these good things. He's entirely all encompassing good shepherd. And how do we know this? The father says he's good. My father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of my father's hand. I and the father are one, the father who is above all greater than all gives him the approval, gives him the stamp of goodness, the stamp of approval. He's good. He's the good shepherd and the flock. I'm giving them to him because he is good. He's the shepherd that is fully good. We're all good, if you're from a certain generation. Or he's good good if you're from a different generation and shouldn't we wanna follow someone like that?

Shouldn't want, we want to be protected by someone like that? Like, I don't know where you guys are at. But like if we're being honest, a lot of us struggle to follow Jesus. We read this in theologically and academically and intellectually, we understand. Wow. Yeah, that's, that's, that's good. Amen. But it's hard for us to live that way. And I think it's because, and honestly, this is, this is where I think we take a moment to reflect on our lives and, and ask ourselves, who are we following in our lives?

Who do we turn to when we're looking for a sense of security or direction? Is it our friends? The ones that we lean on for support? Not that those are bad. Maybe it's your coworkers or your boss. Not that that's bad. They provide a sense of stability in our professional life, right? Maybe it's our significant other, the person that we trust to be by our side, thick and thin. Not that that's bad. Or do we follow celebrities and influencers? The, the they they have these larger than life personalities. They, they, they live the life that we feel like we want to live and that, that, that's bad. But who are we ultimately following? Who is the one that we measure all of that to the advice that we get from a friend? The counsel that our, our boss gives us thinking about the, the the trend that we see online. Who, who do we measure that against?

Because we feel like if we buy that, if we are that if we do that, we will be secure, we will be safe. But we have to compare it with the one, the good shepherd, the one that we should be ultimately following. And so I'm not saying, throw away your phone, I'm not saying don't have any more friends and just like, well, no, the Bible says no, but as we do that because we have to engage with the world around us, we have to go to work, we have to have community. We, you know, social media is a part of our, is a part of our life. It's not to say, throw them all out. It's just measure against the one who we ultimately follow. And so I know that it's so much easier to follow the crowd around us because it feels more secure and we feel like we can see the result of where they're going.

But I think what Jesus calls us to trust in him because he is good and he is leading us to a good place. It's hard to live that way. A lot of times I feel like we treat Jesus. I'm a, I'm an eighties baby. And so, like, fear around Children was like a really big thing. It's like, it's 10 o'clock. Do you know where your Children are? Like, that was the thing that was regularly and maybe they still played on it over the air TV. I have no idea. it would be, it would be like that and then like, we would have the, this sort of like a stranger danger courses and they'd be like, listen, make sure that you, you know, I mean, this is like, still good advice. I'm not saying this is bad advice.

You know, it's like you should know if someone's saying, hey, I'm coming to pick you up from, from your mom and dad that you really know that they're telling you. And so we treat Jesus like he's pulling up in like a dirty, broken up w white van and be like, hey, your mom and dad told me you us to go this way. You go. No, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go here and you're gonna run the opposite direction. I said, we treat Jesus like this. No, like you want me to go there. Hm. I don't know why. Like, I can't go here. This feels right. That feels wrong. I think when we see this or read this. I think it's. Jesus is like pulling up in our dad's station wagon and it's, it's got the keys. He's, he's got everything. He's got a, he's got a note, he's a recorded message. Hey, just, you know, go with, you know, Uncle Jesus, you know, like go, go with him. He's gonna bring me, I got caught at work. He's gonna, he's gonna drop you off with me. He's gonna bring you to me. You can trust him wherever he's leading you, you can go, you can trust him.

I think it's so hard because we are, our lives are so consumed by the need to maintain a certain level of living a certain standard, a certain level of control, whether it's our wall, our calendar, our reputation and so that we can keep up with these appearances that we can stay with the flock. If the flock is going here, we have to go with the flock is going. It's scary to go out there. It's scary to step out what feels like on our own. Even in Christian circles. We do this, we, we, we treat morality like it's, it's AAA video game where we're trying to gain an achievement with willpower, with brute force. We're trying to get that platinum achievement in, in terms of earning the sinless life. But if we've ever really lived with trying to keep up with social expectations or trying to live a holy life by brute forcing it.

We know how exhausting and unfulfilling that is because we're always falling short of that standard. We can't keep up with the Joneses in this life. This isn't a life that we live that's surrounded by trust in the good shepherd. That's when we live a life that's surrounded by him. We know we're being led by him. Yes, there are fellow sheep around us who should be pointing us to him. So that because we naturally flock together, we should be going. But we should also know that there's a shepherd who is there who will fend off any attack from any predator.

When in earlier in the chapter John 10:14 says I'm the good shepherd. I know my own and my own, my own know me just as the Father knows me and I know the Father, I lay down my life for the sheep. The sheep won't do that. She was like, oh guys, I got it. I I'm gonna, I'm gonna stuff the belly of this wolf so that you guys don't get eaten. She won't do that. They're all gonna scramble like, hey, look, who's the slowest, good luck, right? We need to shift our perspective to understand that Jesus is good, good, good. He's not just holy, he's capable, he's not just capable. He's good for us. He's not just good for us. The Father approves of him because he's on our side and the Father is with him. We can trust we can have a true sense of security to live the life that God wants for us.

If we shift our mentality and say no, Jesus is the one to follow Jesus is the one that protects us, then we can do the hard things. And I'm not saying the hard things like getting rich. Right? That's not what Jesus died to do. He didn't die to make you rich. He's, he's doing the hard things like not like you becoming your own boss or you becoming the team leader. That that's, that's hard, that's not what Jesus died so that you could do. Jesus died for something much more difficult. He died, you to free you. He died, excuse me, he died to free you from needing those things. Because what is harder getting rich or loving your enemies? And if you go, no getting rich is harder, then you haven't had enemies. What is harder becoming the boss or dying to yourself, denying yourself? What is harder having a million followers or having hope in a truly hopeless situation?

That's what Jesus died to. He freed you from sin. So you wouldn't have to worry about those things. So you could get in the station where you can go where he's taking you, bring you to the father because he comes in his name, approved dealers and Ti Right said this about hope and confidence. Christian confidence about the future. Beyond death is not a matter of wishful thinking, a vague general hope or temperamental inclination to assume things will turn out. All right, it is built firmly on nothing less than the Union of Jesus with the father, one of the main themes of the whole gospel.

It is interesting to observe that where in Christian thinking people have become unclear on jesus' close relation to the father, they have often become unclear also on the uncertainty of Christian hope and vice versa. Friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, he has died so that we can have this hope. He has died so that we can be made new. He can be died so that we can be restored. And so that all the worldly passions and desires and goals, we don't need them because we know that no matter what at the end of the day, we can live knowing that no matter what we win because Jesus wins, we live because Jesus lives, we could be poor, we could be ugly. We could have, we could be incredibly unpopular and we still win. We still have the promises that Jesus won for us through his death on the cross.

And so friends don't you want to live like that? Don't you want to live knowing that you will not die? You may face death in this life. But in the end because you follow Jesus, you will experience a greater life in the life to come than you have ever, ever, ever, ever thought you could live. It won't matter about your bank account. Ma won't matter about your follower account, but you will live because you will be with the father. So friends like I'm, I felt guilty of this too. I get it. It's hard. I get it. But it begins today. If you shift your mentality and you go OK, I'm not gonna get rid of all my friends. I'm not gonna quit my job. That's not, that's not what this is about, but I'm gonna shift my perspective and go, who do I ultimately follow?

And I hope that you guys answer is Jesus. And as we pray as reflect, as we ask for prayer from people around us, maybe even people here in this space right now as we pray, we go, God just help me. I know I can't do this. Maybe I, I've even tried this before God help me. I want to follow you ultimately because I wanna live that life. I wanna be released to obey you to do the right things because that's the hard, that's way harder than anything in the world tells us that we need, let me say, let me pray for us.

Father God. Thank you for your word. Thank you that you sent Jesus to be our good shepherd so that we could be free from a painful life that comes from following other sheep who are just like us and are driven by fear and will basically do anything to make sure that they just don't get eaten first yet. We have a savior who did exactly that and was effective at it who laid down his life so that all predators, all pain, all suffering would be taken care of and that we could roam free grazing in the greenest pastures, drink from the clearest waters and experience life so glorious. But the best of this that this life has to offer is nothing in comparison. And God help us experience that help us experience step one of that. This week, God, I pray that He would speak to us in our quiet times, in our commutes, in our reflections. Or even if we're trying to directly resist this guy, we, we hear from you today. We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher continues our sermon series with John 10:1-21. Discussion points: Jesus often critiqued the religious leaders who were corrupted by their power, Jesus is the good leader that cares about our flourishing instead of his own power, Jesus wants to lead us if we make space in our lives to listen to his voice.

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Scripture reader: [John 10:1-21] Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheep fold by the door, but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him. The gatekeeper opens the sheep, hear his voice and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he is brought out all his own. He goes before them and the sheep follow him for, they know his voice, a stranger, they will not follow, but they flee from him for they do not know the voice of strangers. This figure of speech, Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. So Jesus again said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd who does not own the sheep sees a wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees. The wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me just as the father knows me. And I know the father and I lay down my life for the sheep and I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them in also and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd for this reason.

The Father loves me because I laid out my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me. I laid it down of my own accord and I have authority to lay it down and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father there again was division among the Jews because of these words, many of them said he has a demon. He's insane. Why listen to him? Others said these are not the words of one who is oppressed by a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: Have you ever had a bad boss? Yeah, that's just one of those things that almost everybody can resonate with. isn't it? I've been doing ministry in the Boston area for about a dozen years and I'm convinced that there's one type of bad boss that kind of rises above most of the rest. And that is the bad boss of academia. Academics often have very bad supervisors and I've heard some real horror stories out there. Now, if you happen to be a teacher today and your student invited you, I have no knowledge of this and this is not a co ordinated attack upon you. We're glad to have you. And I'm sure that you're the exception to the rule, but I have heard many stories of academic supervisors treating students like dirt.

The expectation for many of us in academia is that we would work long, long hours, 6070 sometimes 80 hours a week that we're part of the academic paper writing mill that we're just pushing out the papers. And why are we pushing out the papers? Why are we working all night every night? Why are we putting so much effort so that my advisor can put their name on it and claim all of their work as my own. This is a regular pattern that I've heard of many, many times, I've heard stories of supervisors refusing to allow their students to graduate because then they'll lose their cheap or free labor. It's like an indentured servant that they have here. They don't care to know you, you're just another minion in their academic paper writing factory.

Now, I don't know if I've ever listed a, a, group PTSD situation. But some of you look like you just got back from Vietnam and you heard a gunfire? Ok. It's like, oh, I remember those days when I was in academia and I felt that way today, Jesus says that he is the good shepherd. And when we think about Jesus being the good shepherd, one of the things that we can think about is that, that means that he's the good boss. That means that he's the good leader that he actually cares for his sheep and that he leads them well, throughout the Old Testament, the kings and leaders of the regions that the Bible was written in were often times referred to as shepherds. They were the shepherds of those nations. And then you have the prototypical shepherd that we have in King David who was literally a shepherd and ascended to the throne of Israel.

And we see the Psalms, we sang one of the Psalms this morning with that shall not want song. The Lord is my shepherd and I shall not want. And that's a palm by David that we, he sees that the ultimate shepherd is God. But then we also see in the Old Testament that many of the evil leaders of the surrounding nations were considered bad shepherds. That's how they're described in the Bible. We have this wonderful passage in Ezekiel where was described of all of the evil shepherds of Israel. And then here Jesus, he brings it all to a crescendo and he says, I am the good shepherd.

This is one of the I am statements of Jesus. Jesus has seven, I am statements, they're going to culminate in a few weeks. This is like our third or fourth. In fact, we have two I am statements in this passage so that Jesus is I, he says I am the good shepherd. The reality is though most of us wouldn't like to consider ourselves as sheep. Sheep have become kind of like something that is derogatory to call people. And you know, you combine the words and it's almost like it almost sounds like a profanity word, but you call people sheeple and it's like, oh, I don't know why, but that's really offensive to me. But Jesus does not see that as offensive at all because Jesus is a good leader. Most of us, even though we might not want to be considered sheep, most of us do want a good leader.

Most people want a mentor or a supervisor that cares for them. In fact, if you look at statistics, millennials and Gen Z want mentors far more than proceeding generations. We want people to pour into our lives and to care for us. You can see the industry reflecting this life coaching, which is like an industry that didn't even exist a few years ago is now a $1.5 billion industry. But let me just end on this with the introduction. You didn't think you were getting out of the sermon that quickly that Jesus is the best leader that any of us could ask for. And I know that feels distant many times, but he really is the best leader that you could ever want. And he is available to you. Jesus is the good shepherd and those who trust in Jesus as their leader will have abundant life. When Jesus is your leader, you will have abundant life. That's a promise from him.

That's what he promises in John chapter 10 verse 10, the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. And so I just wanna dissect this verse and looking at the surrounding verses for the rest of our time. And there's three main points that we're going to be looking at. And here's some of the questions that we're going to explore. Who is this thief who comes to steal, kill and destroy? What is the abundant life that Jesus offers and how do we get the abundant life?

So who is the thief who comes to steal, kill and destroy? Now, I've read this verse for, for many years. I have very familiar with this verse. It's a very popular verse in Christianity and my entire life until this week I've preached on this verse before and I think I've preached on it wrong. So I'm sorry if you were here in 2019. I I, that's one of the benefits of preaching through books of the Bible is that you have to read the entire book in context. And then when you read it in context, all of a sudden you start seeing things and meanings that you didn't previously see before my entire life.

I've always understood this thief who steals and kills and destroy to be Satan to be the evil one. But that is not what Jesus is saying. I do not think that he's talking about Satan here last week. OK. We gotta read this in, in context. Last week we did John chapter nine today we're in John chapter 10 and in John chapter nine, we see the story of a man being healed from blindness. Jesus heals him from blindness by spitting on the ground, making some mud, rubbing it on his eyes and telling him to go and wash and after he goes and washes, he is brought, the, his neighbors don't believe that it's actually him. So they take him to the Pharisees and the Pharisees are so troubled by what Jesus has done because he's actually done the miracle of healing someone. But it was on the Sabbath. And so they have, they have two minds. They have one mind to say this man really is the Messiah. He really can heal. And then on the other hand, they're saying, but he can't be the Messiah because he's breaking our oral tradition and laws.

And so you have this dichotomy of what they think about Jesus. And Jesus says that you Pharisees are actually the ones who are blind. You cannot see your own laws have blinded you to the truth of who I am. And that is the context that we come here. And actually, when you read chapter nine, you get, I I said this last week, but sometimes the chapters get in the way of us understanding the Bible because the chapters were added many hundreds of years after the Bible was written, they were not John didn't say OK, chapter 10, that's not how it works. Someone came back later and said we need a easier way to find things in the Bible. Let's make chapters and verses. And so they added big numbers and little numbers so that we can find things in the Bible. And so sometimes these chapters they get in the way.

But if you look at the end of chapter nine, verse 41 Jesus said to them, if you were blind, you would have no guilt. But now that you say we see your guilt remains truly, truly, I say to you now, who's he saying it to the same people he was talking to just a moment ago just because we've changed chapters, doesn't mean we've changed audiences. So now he's speaking still to the Pharisees. And he says, truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheep fold by the door, but climbs in through another way that man is a thief and a robber.

And so this lack of transition leads us to believe that Jesus is still talking to the Pharisees about their own blindness. And so when he says that, that this person that comes in through the, the the does not come in through the door, but climbs in another way is a thief and a robber, he's talking to the Pharisees and the religious leaders.

Now, when we think about Jesus being the good shepherd, I don't know what mental image comes to your mind. I googled it. Ok. If you google it and go to images, you see the same image 100 different times, which is like usually white Jesus with a white sheep holding it and cuddling it. You know, it's just a very cuddly and it's like, there's a lot wrong with that picture. Ok. First of all, Jesus, middle eastern man from, from ancient, near east Israel area. And secondly, that's not generally how shepherds treated their sheep. They're not like, oh, come here little sheepy and giving it a pet. Ok. It's not a small breed dog. It is a sheep shepherds in the ancient world were mainly men who had to protect their sheep from predators and thieves. It was not an easy job and it was a really important job.

And here's one reason why it was important is because wealth in the ancient world was not measured by dollar signs, but by sheep. If you go to Forbes list of, the 100 most rich people from the ancient, near east, it's not gonna have dollars. It's gonna have number of sheep. This guy had 4000 sheep and it's like, whoa. All right. I'm doing pretty well for himself. That's why when you read the Old Testament and it's like, and he had 7000 sheep and that seems so boring to us. But to, to them that's like, and this man was very wealthy, obviously, he had a lot of sheep. And so they were very, it was like you had to protect your sheep, like a bank, protects your money.

And that was a shepherd's job. He was like a, a bank teller in some ways. He was a guard in front of the, in front of the, the safe at the bank. And what they would do is they would keep sheep in a pen and the pen would have high, walls so that you couldn't get in. And then there was just one gate and the reason why you would do it like that is so that one person could watch over an entire flock of sheep. So if you have 100 sheep or more and you wanna watch them with one person. Well, that's gonna be hard to do unless you have just one door. And so now this person like the, like the gates of Helms deep, they can watch over the, that's a reference that works uniquely in Somerville.

They can watch over, all of the sheep in, in the, in the fold with just one person. And how would a thief or a robber get in? Well, they can't go through the door because the shepherd would hit him in the head with that stick. Ok. That stick is not just a cute, you know, bo peep staff. It's like for hitting people and, and wolves and whatnot, but they would have to climb in. Those who are authorized to enter the fold would of course do so through the gate. Only those who want to harm or steal the sheep would climb in. So the thieves and the robbers that Jesus is referring to are the religious leaders of the day. And how are they seeking to hurt the sheep? Why are they climbing in? They were more interested.

And Jesus says this many times, he is often a regular critic of religious leaders of the false religious leaders and he, he calls them whitewashed tombs. You look nice on the outside, but inside you're dead. And so the religious leaders of the day, they were more interested in financial gain and societal standing than caring for the sheep. They were abusing their power to serve themselves. And I wish I could say that that was only a problem in Ancient Israel and it was not a problem continuing into today. Those who seek Christian leadership in a church must be careful because power is a heck of a drug and people become abusive of that power. I need a plurality of leaders in our church and of congregants to hold me accountable that I do not abuse the power that the Lord has given to me. I'm not immune from that. I need you all to pray for me and I need.

And that's one reason why we practice a plurality of leadership at our church where we have multiple elders and we're trying to develop and raise up more elders in the church because absolute power corrupts. Absolutely. And so that's what we see in this day. And Jesus is so critical of the religious leaders. These religious leaders were evil. They were selfish, they were abusive shepherds. They did not care for the sheep and they taught a fake abundant life. They said that if you will just obey all of our oral rules, that is how you receive abundant life. Keep the Sabbath go to temple, give generously. Of course, none of these things are evil in and of themselves. They're all things that we would encourage Christians to do our version of them.

But this is nothing like the teachings of Jesus and Jesus taught that God loves us, despite the fact that we've broken all the rules that that's kind of the unnecessary part of it that we see that deliverance comes before obedience. It always has and always will. When you see the Israelites wandering around in the desert and Jesus and, and God gives them the 10 Commandments. That's only after they've been delivered from slavery in Egypt. It's not before that. He doesn't say obey these 10 Commandments and then I'll deliver you. He says, I am the Lord, your God who's delivered you from slavery. Now, here are the 10 Commandments which are a path for flourishing in this life. Obedience is only expected to come after deliverance. You cannot prove yourself to God.

And this is why Jesus came to fulfill the law on our behalf to deliver us from the power of sin and evil so that we might be obedient to God to this day. We don't have Pharisees of the same kind that we are respected in our society quite as often, but we're surrounded by people who promise us abundant life. If we'll just follow their rules and support their costs surrounded by people, they promise life that we've always dreamed of. Ok, a couple of examples. First, let's just take the low hanging for the easiest one. OK. Televangelists and abusive religious leaders. Look at the people that Jesus criticized about the New Testament. Jesus does not spend, ok. There would be a lot of reason to critique Rome and Caesar. OK. He's under Roman rule, Caesar, not always the nicest guy. OK. And the time, there's a lot of reason to critique political leaders, but when you and a lot of churches spend a lot of time critiquing political leaders and I will in just a minute.

But who does Jesus spend most of his time critiquing? But the religious leaders and it's because it's so important you can do. There's little that you can do more damage with than being a religious leader who's corrupt and our world is still full of them. You have to be careful who you're listening to and who you're allowing to influence you and whose books you're reading and what you're paying attention to most people. A lot of people have ulterior motives and just like the Pharisees who wanted to get rich, many televangelists want to get rich. And I think that most of us have enough common sense to know, to see, to see a lot of this. I wish that I wish I could say that in general. But the very fact that these televangelists are so wealthy and that there's so many of them. It leads me to believe that people are deceptive or deceived often. All right.

Another example are political leaders and I do wanna give this example because politics has become a secular religion of our day where we have politicians who get up in front of us and they promise us utopia, abundant life. Life will be better when I'm in office. Or if I continue to be in office. And here's three reasons why and here's why you need to give your money to me and why I am your messiah. Each branch of politics has its own set of rules. And if you say or do the wrong thing, you will be excommunicated from your tribe, you'll be kicked out very quickly. Politicians have their own version of, of utopia. And these are promises that they make of abundant life. But at the end of the day, most politicians and I think we know this to be true but we forget it. Ok? Most politicians, they're not concerned about your actual flourishing. Most politicians. Yeah. And the crowd gasps. Most politicians are not concerned about you.

Who are they concerned about? Themselves. They just want to stay in office so they'll say whatever they need to say so that they can continue to have the power. I'm sure there's some good eggs out there. But I'm saying most of them are bad eggs. All right. That is the way that humans work. When people get in power, they want to stay in power and they're almost always willing to say whatever it takes.

Another example, advertisers all the time. We're inundated with advertisement. After advertisement. It has gotten so much worse since TV, has gotten out of our life. And we've all gotten on social media now. We don't know when we're being advertised to because we see influencers just with, you know, this product that they're just kind of using in the background and you see their life and it looks so awesome. And you say I want to live like them. Oh look, they've got, they've got this big Stanley cup over there. I think I'll take one of those. They're trying to influence you to tell you if you want to be like me. If you want to have my body, my finances, my experience that will make you happy. That is the path to abundant life. And if you just buy the products that I have or buy my workout plan or whatever it is, you can have it.

But these are false promises of abundance. These are not the things that will give you the good life that we all deserve. Only Jesus gives the good life to his sheep. He is the good shepherd and he gives us the good life. Amen. Church. Everyone is following someone, everyone has some idea of the good life and everyone other than Jesus is a thief trying to steal life from you. They all over promise and under deliver only Jesus offers the abundant life you're looking for and that's what it means. When he says, I am the gate. He's saying I am the gate. It's one of the I am statements. We have two in this passage. I am the shepherd, the good shepherd. I am the gate. He is the way to abundant life.

So what is this abundant life that Jesus offers? Verse 10, 1 more time. I'm gonna read it. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. So when you think of abundant life, what do you think of if it's not all the things that I just mentioned, if politicians can't give it to you and Instagram influencers can't give it to you. What is the abundant life? Well, we might get this image of what it is for a sheep.

What is the abundant life for a sheep? When I think about what the good life looks like to a sheep? I think about not having to worry about anything knowing that I'm protected, understanding that my shepherd cares for me and I don't have anything to worry about. I might be a fat sheep that has nothing to worry about the the grass that's in front of me, grazing and spending time with my fellow sheep. And this is kind of the vision that you get. Maybe you dream of being on a beach somewhere or maybe you just dream of life where every day doesn't feel like a battle to get out of bed.

But Jesus has this vision for abundant life when he says abundant life here. Well, we can, he says I've come to give them that they may have life. And a theme throughout all of John's gospel is this idea of eternal life. Now, when I say eternal life, usually, what we, what our minds go to is an extent of time. The quantity of life, eternal means forever. So we're thinking of quantity of life. But the word that's used here isn't the, the bio word in Greek, which would be physical, like your literal life, but is the Zoe word in Greek. And so what we're getting here is that it's more of like the, the quality of life and not the quantity of life. So eternal life doesn't begin when you die, eternal life begins when you trust in Christ, when he becomes your good savior and your good shepherd, the Synoptic gospels, Matthew Mark and Luke call it life in the Kingdom of God.

Verse 14, Jesus says I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me just as the Father knows me. And I know the Father and I lay down my life for the sheep. Don't miss this because this is kind of the key to understanding what abundant life is to Jesus. He's saying that he knows his sheep and his sheep know him as closely and intimately as he knows his Father. And his Father knows him who he's dwelled with in perfect harmony within the Godhead, the Triune, godhead, Father, Son and Holy Spirit throughout all eternity past. And he's saying that's the way, the way that my Father loves me and the way that I love my Father, that's the way that I love you, sheep and sheep. You get to enjoy it with me.

Now, that is the abundance of love and life that He gives to us. This means that we share in fellowship with God as richly and deeply as Jesus shares fellowship with God. The Father Michael Reeves, my favorite author on the Trinity puts it this way. He says the father so delights in his eternal love for the son that he desires to share it with all who believe the Father so delights in his eternal love for the son that he delights to share it with all who believe many of us might relate to God as a distant boss. He's in charge. I know he's in charge, but I think he's really the way that he functions as a boss is. He's really very distant, not really giving me guidance day to day. He's just trying to watch me. He just has a hawk eye, he's just trying to catch me messing up. And that's how we relate to God like he is just trying to catch us. He doesn't really give me feedback unless I mess up big. He demands perfection and only offers disappointment. Is that the way that you feel about God, that He demands perfection and only offers disappointment.

Our perceptions of God need to be realigned continually because that's a natural place that my heart goes. That God demands perfection of me and only offers disappointment. But he says that I love my sheep as my father has loved me, that I lay down my life for my sheep. It's not that I just offer disappointment. I offer the, the riches of love toward them. In his book Made For, it's called Made For Friendship. The relationship that halves our sorrows and doubles our joys. What a great title. Yeah. Made for Friendship. The relationship that halves our sorrows and doubles our joys. Drew Hunter. He describes friendship with Jesus like this. What if you could have a friend who knew you better than anyone better than you even knew yourself? And what if knowing everything he still loved you? And more than that he even liked you?

That's a type of love that many of us scarcely can imagine. And what if you could have a friend who by his very relationship with you would transform you to become a better friend to others. You can. His name is Jesus, the friend of sinners. This is what we call intimacy. OK. Very basic definition of intimacy is to be fully known and fully loved at the same time. And even the greatest marriage in the history of the world would be a measly travel brochure compared to the type of intimacy that we will enjoy with God throughout eternity. That, that, that the greatest marriage in the world points to it. It looks a little bit like it. It gives us a picture of it.

But look, you can take all the pictures you want of the Caribbean Islands and I've still never been to a Caribbean Island. I want to go. that picture looks nice, but it just points me towards the Caribbean Island. The greatest marriage in the world reflects that type of intimacy that God gives us through our trust in Christ. We, we enjoy this intimacy with Jesus because we recognize his voice.

Verse three, the sheep hear his voice and he calls his own sheep by name and he leads them out when he's brought out all the sheep, he goes before them and the sheep follow him for, they know his voice. Now modern western shepherds don't lead their sheep with their voice, but instead they lead their sheep with like a sheep dog. They have a dog going and barking at all the sheep and trying to corral them. They might have a horse or something that it's a forceful leading. But shepherds in the ancient world and the in the Middle East and even up till to today lead their sheep differently. They lead their sheep using their voice. They say, hey, sheep come follow me and the sheep know the voice and they follow their master, they follow their good shepherd.

As Christians, we listen to the voice of Jesus. Primarily this is through reading the word and through being in our scriptures and hearing from Him. But it also we pray and it's not just a one way list of my wants and needs, but it's actually enjoying fellowship with God when you pray and He speaks and leads you and cares for you. And sometimes He lays impressions upon you. Some people have visions and dreams from God that give them direction. You test those according to the scripture, but those are often times very helpful for us and sometimes they have words for each other. God uses community to speak to his people. I have heard the voice of Jesus come through a friend of mine that leads me and guides me and God uses community.

And that's why we have to be diving into our friendships and relationships in the church is why we make community groups such an important thing in our church. And so the question is, are you listening or have you tuned him out? Is the noise in your life? Too loud to hear, to hear your shepherd's voice because He has a word for you. And he wants to lead you.

Verse 16, very briefly. I just want to touch on this quick and I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock and one shepherd. Ok. So what he's talking about here is he's speaking to the Pharisees and he's saying I have other sheep that aren't of this fold, meaning I have sheep that aren't Jewish. I have sheep from the gentile world and they're going to hear my voice voice also and they're, we're all gonna become one fold, one flock. This is Jesus's grand vision of multi ethnicity. He says this is not just for one people group in one place at one time. This is for all peoples of all tribes, tongues and ethnicities coming together.

And it's why we have a value at our church that we value multi ethnicity because you can only know a piece of who Jesus is from your own ethnicity. You need to be learning from others and living in community with others because he has a vision of heaven where every tribe and tongue is singing praises to him. And so we're brought together, we're made with one vision that we're one flock with one shepherd. All right.

Third point, final point. How do we get abundant life? How do we get abundant life? First, Jesus says that I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will not, he will be saved and we go in and find out and, and go in and out and find pasture. And so he's saying that I am the way to abundant life. It reminds us that our ideas of abundance are fool's gold. Allow that to just sink into your heart for just a moment that whatever you have in your mind of what this is, what would be really nice. This is abundant life for me, it's fool's gold. And it just is again, a travel brochure pointing toward the greater desires of your heart that are to be with God. So how does Jesus do this by laying down his life for his sheep?

Verse 11, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. Verse 17, for this reason, the father loves me because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay down, lay it down on my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and I have authority to take it up again, this charge I have received from my father. So why does Jesus lay down his life for his sheep? Often times we imagine Jesus laying down his life for his sheep as just a demonstration of his love as if he were to say, this is how much I love you. I will jump off of this cliff. I love you so much and which is just completely irrational and it's just like a, a crazy display of love and that's not what it is at all. Jesus did not go to the cross, kicking and screaming. He was not surprised by the path that laid before him, but he willingly gave himself for us because he loved us. He saw that sin was out to kill us and that death needed to be dealt with.

And so he took on the final enemy, death himself and bore the death that we deserve that we might be with him through the cross. We see a God who delights to give himself. Isaiah 53 is one of the most famous passages that describe the Bible. It's written hundreds of years before Jesus is born and it describes Jesus and what he did like this Isaiah 53 6. All we like sheep have gone astray. We've turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all he was oppressed and he was afflicted yet he opened not his mouth like a lamb that has led to slaughter like a sheep that's before his shearers. So he opened not his mouth.

So how do you receive abundant life? It's all right there in Isaiah. It's all right there in Isaiah. We all like sheep have gone astray. We've gone our own way. The essence of sin. When you boil sin down, it's really selfishness living for myself and not for God. We've lived selfishly. But the Lord laid on Jesus, the iniquity of us all he laid down his life for us so that we might, so that he might take it back up again and was risen from the dead triumphant over sin. Jesus friends. Jesus is not like the boss who takes his name and puts it on your work instead, Jesus is the boss who takes his name, who takes your name and puts it on his work. It's opposite.

He lived the life that we deserved yet we get the credit. He was the righteous one yet he gave us the credit. Wouldn't that be an awesome boss who writes the papers and then puts our name on it. He does the work. We get the credit. That's one reason. That's why he's a good shepherd. That's why we can trust in Him. He's that kind of generous God. We listen to him, we follow him. Let's trust Jesus as our good shepherd because when Jesus is your leader, you will have abundant life might not be financially abundant. It might not be health abundant, but it will be true intimacy with God.

Come today. Church. Let's seek intimacy with him above all things and let that guide our life. Would you trust him to be your leader? Would you trust him to guide each step in each decision? Not just in the big decisions where you take a moment to ceremoniously pray and then stamp jesus' name on the decision that you've already made. But would you live each day giving him authority in your life to guide you, to direct you because he wants your best because he cares for you. He really does. He really does. Would you pray with me this morning? Just pray this in your heart with me. Give it over to the Lord.

God, I'm giving you leadership of my life. I resign as the good shepherd of my own life and I'm hiring you. You're in charge of my decisions. You're in charge of my work, you're in charge of my money, you're in charge of my time. It all belongs to you. God. I trust you. You're not like those evil leaders who just want to use me, but you lay down your life for me. And when I see your love, it inspires me and it leads me and help me to love as you have loved me. God would my life be marked by looking more and more like you and less and less like the religious leaders who just want to steal and kill and destroy, who just want to take life and to use it selfishly. May I give up my life as you've given up your life. Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about another miracle on the Sabbath from John 9. Discussion points: We go too far to attribute specific suffering to a specific person’s sin, spiritual sight is to see your suffering the way God sees your suffering, spiritual sight gives you the humility to know that you are often wrong.

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Scripture reader: [John 9] As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, rabbi who sinned this man or his parents that he was born blind. Jesus answered, it was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in Him. We must work the works of Him who sent me while it is day, night is coming. When no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud and said to him, go wash in the pool of Saloum which means which means scent. So he went and washed and came back, seeing the neighbors and those who had seen him before. As a beggar were saying, is this not the man who used to sit and beg? Some said it is he others said no, but he is like him. He kept saying, I am the man.

So they said to him then how are where your eyes opened? He answered the man called Jesus me mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, go to Saloum and wash. So he so I went and washed and received my sight. I said to him, where is he? He said, I do not know they brought to the Pharisees, the man who had formerly been blind, blind. Now was the Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. The Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight. And he said to them, he put mud on my eyes and I washed and I see some of the Pharisees said, this man is not from God for he does not keep the Sabbath. But others said, how can a man who is a sinner do such signs? And there was a division among them. So they said again to the blind man, what do you say about him since he has opened your eyes? He said he is a prophet.

The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them. Is this your son who you say was born blind? How then does he now see his parents answered, we know that this is our son and that he was born blind. But how he now sees, we do not know nor do we know who opened his eyes? Ask him he is of age. He will speak for himself. His parents said these things because they feared the Jews for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue. Therefore, his parents said he is of age, ask him. So for the second time, they called the man who had been blind and said to him, give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner. He answered whether he is a sinner. I do not know one thing. I do know that though I was blind. Now, I see.

They said to Him, what did he do to you? How did he open your eyes? He answered them. I have told you already and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples? And they revolved Him saying you are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses. But as for this man, we did not know where he comes from. The man answered why? This is an amazing thing. You do not know where he comes from and yet he opened my eyes, we know that God does not listen to sinners. But if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to Him? Never since the world began, began. Has it been heard that anyone open the eyes of a man born blind? If this man were not from God. He could do nothing.

They answered him. You were born in utter sin and would you and would you teach us and they cast him out? Jesus heard that they had cast him out and having found him. He said, do you believe in the son of man? He answered? And who is he sir? That I may believe in him? Jesus said to him, you have seen him and it is he who is speaking to you? He said, Lord, I believe and he worshiped him. Jesus said for judgment, I came into this world that those who do not see may see and those who may see who, who and those who see may become blind. Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things and said to him, are we also blind? Jesus said to them, if you were blind, you would have no guilt. But now that you say we see your guilt remains.

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: Last Christmas time, my family and I were watching a movie on a Friday night. I don't remember what the movie was. It was a Christmas movie. Maybe it was even a Christmas story, the famous story where the father receives the famous leg lamp in the mail. And they, they, you know that that whole story. And when, as we were watching the movie, a package arrived and I walked down and it was huge, a huge box had arrived in the mail. And so I brought it upstairs and, I stopped the movie, I made everyone stop watching the movie and I insisted on opening the box, but there was no doubt what was actually in the box because it was a TV box. and I had received, my Christmas gift early, even though I wasn't really intended to receive it early. Megan, it just arrived and I was the first one that got to it. and Megan had bought me a TV, that was 10 inches larger than the one we had. We had a 40 inch TV. And she had bought a 50 inch TV.

And I did not allow us to finish that movie on the 40 inch TV. We had to turn, turn off the movie. We had to swap out the TV. Even if it required me going to get my tool set to move the mount on the wall and everything that's required with it. We were going to finish the movie on the new TV. Throughout our marriage, we've only had three different TV. S and TV. S have decreased. the size of each TV has increased. The price of each TV has decreased as we've moved along. And I just want you to imagine for a moment that maybe you skipped all of these different iterations of televisions that we've, you know, many of us have undoubtedly gone through and maybe you just went straight from that huge box that we had in the nineties that, you know, the one that was not clear, it was very fuzzy.

My kids are going back and watching TV, shows from when I was a kid and all those TV shows, none of them are clear on the TV, because they didn't have to be, no one had a TV. That was HD. So they just made it the, you know, the size that the TV. S would, would show it at, imagine that you went from the, the nineties box to the modern day four K TV experience. It would be quite an experience. You'd be seeing something very clearly for the first time.

It reminds me of the first time that I, I got glasses. I've been telling my family for quite a few years that I couldn't see properly. And, you know, a common theme throughout my childhood. I grew up in rural Mississippi. We did not have good doctors. So no one ever would give me glasses, because they said I didn't need them. And then eventually in sixth grade, I got glasses for the first time. And I remember very specifically riding home and just saying, wow, you can see the leaves in the trees. I had never known that you could see leaves and trees before that day. It is, it's an amazing experience to go from what feels like blind. I can't see any of your faces to being able to see.

I'm also a sucker for these youtube videos that are around of the dads. It's always a dad. He's always in his fifties. He's always a big burly man who receives these color blind glasses. Have you seen these videos? you know, it's a video, color blindness is far more prevalent in males anyways. But, almost always it's a family that's given grandpa or dad these color blind glasses for a birthday or, or a Christmas gift or something like that. I, I pulled up one the other day. It was really, really funny. It was a, a guy in Florida. He was wearing a U I knew he was in Florida. Well, because, you know, when a man's in Florida, but also because he was wearing a University of Central Florida football hat and a University of Central Florida football shirt, matching and khaki shorts, cell phone on a clip on his belt. OK. That's the type of guy we're talking about here. OK, football shirt, football hat, cell phone on belt. That's the man.

He said I'm 65 years old. I've seen these, sorry, this is my native tongue. It's very easy. I've seen these videos where people get emotional and I'm not gonna get emotional. I've been a professional wrestler. I have be been beaten by the biggest men in the world. I am not gonna get emotional. He puts on those glasses and guys within 10 seconds, he's weeping with his hands over his mouth. He's never seen the color green before and it's just blowing his mind and that's how all of these video, all of these men in their fifties, they have the same response. It's all just like they cannot believe what they are seeing.

The gift of sight to a blind man has to be one of the greatest gifts in the entire world in the day of Jesus. It was completely unprecedented. If you think about it in the day of Jesus, this is a more than 1000 years before eyeglasses. So if you had poor eyesight, you were just out of luck, you know, you could see a little bit. That's great. And if you were blind, you certainly didn't have any luck throughout all Jewish tradition. There's only one or two reports of blindness being healed, but there were no reports of a man being born blind, being healed. And so when Jesus heals a man born blind in this passage, he does them possible, which is why it's so controversial. It is the impossible that he's doing.

Last week, we studied Jesus being the light of the world. Thank you, Calvin. Fantastic job with that. I'm very thankful that we have, we have you to rightly handle the word here. And along with me, I'm very appreciative of that. And with that passage, we were studying this idea that Jesus being the light of the world. And this happens often times in scriptures where we get a description of a truth. Jesus is the light of the world. And then we get a story pretty much illustrating what that truth means. You see it happen all the time in the scripture. In, in Matthew 11, Jesus says, come to me all you who are weary and have you laden and I will give you rest for my yoke is easy. My burden is light. And then what happens right after that? But he goes through and there's a, a real life illustration of Jesus being the Lord of the Sabbath, the Lord of rest. He says, come to me and I will give you rest. And then we have a story of how he is the one who gives rest.

And so here in this passage, it is very similar. You know, we miss these things all the time and here's just a, a free Bible reading tip. And here's one of the reasons why we miss it is because we get obsessed about the chapters in the Bible. But the chapters, you know, we started chapter nine today. Last week was chapter eight. The chapters were added many years later and they were not an original part of the book. John didn't say OK, finish with chapter eight. Now I'm gonna write chapter nine. No, it's all just one story. And so Bible reading tip, ignore the chapters when you can. OK, chapters are helpful. They help us find things in the Bible and they are generally pretty good about the where you divide it, but it's not a hard division.

So here we have this story where we observe that Jesus is healing a man born blind as the light of the world. And so what we're going to do is just walk through the passage pretty slowly And I'll pull out what spiritual lessons I think that the Lord is showing us here today. Church. All right, you guys ready? We're just gonna dive in and start walking our way through it. First, before we do that, a quick outline of what's happening in this passage so that it might be a little bit easier for you to follow around. First, Jesus heals a man born blind. What happens after that is that the man goes and his neighbors see him and his neighbors don't believe that it's actually him. They, they, he has this encounter with his neighbors, his neighbors take him to the Pharisees to see what's going on. The Pharisees, question the man, the Pharisees, then question the man's parents. Then the Pharisees question the man again. And then finally, we, we come all the way around. Jesus comes back to the man who has been healed. And so that's kind of the outline that we're going to go through with the story. But there's a lot that we can see through it.

So let's look at it together. If you have your Bibles, you can follow along with me as we go. John chapter nine verse one and he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. I want to just stop right there before we go farther. Because this is a passage, the main theme of this passage is sight and blindness. And so let's not miss what Jesus sees. what does Jesus see? He sees a man born blind from birth, blind people. In this time, they didn't have much if you think about it, they didn't have the resources that we have today for people with disabilities. Instead, blind people of this day and age were left to be beggars and they had to sit outside of the temple and hope that a devout well meaning person would come by and support their life. And so this is a man who's an outcast who's often gone unseen.

But yet Jesus sees those who go unseen. Jesus has spiritual sight to see those who are outcast, who are on the fringes of society. He has a heart from the marginalized. He sees those who are overlooked. May we have eyes like him? Church verse two and his disciples asked him rabbi who sent this man or his parents that he was born blind.

Now this man that was born blind, his disciples see him as a theological problem as opposed to how Jesus sees him as a man to be cared for. But the theological problem is still relevant to us today, they, they bring to him a common teaching that if you suffer any type of malady, if you suffer an infirmity, that it must be the result of sin. And so in this day, if someone was born blind, what they taught is that there were two possibilities for this one, either the person who was born blind, sinned in utero before they were born, or their parents committed some heinous act of sin while they were pregnant. And therefore the person was born blonde, which I think is also helpful for us to think about a man who's born blind because not only does he not have the social services that we would have for him, but he's actually seen as a dirty center. There's, it's not just that he's blind, but there's something wrong with him is the way that he was viewed.

And while we wouldn't think the same way, why is it that we don't think the same way? I think it is a good question for us to, to think we rarely blame disabilities on specific sins. But the essence of the question gets at this huge question, which is why do people suffer? Is it because that they've done something bad? And I think any of us who have experienced significant suffering in our life would know that that is one of the natural questions that you come to when you start suffering. What did I do to deserve this? It is a natural connection in our mind to draw a 1 to 1 connect the dots between specific sins and specific sufferings. But the Bible doesn't teach us that we can do that. Sometimes is an opportunity for us to examine ourselves. When we are sick, James teaches us that if we're sick, we're to examine ourselves. Are we living in sin? And there is an opportunity to repent of sin? But he still doesn't say that is directly because of that.

The Bible does teach us that all sin is a result. All suffering is a result of sin. Genesis chapter three. When sin came into the world, suffering was introduced into the world. Suffering in general is a result of sin in general. But when you start connecting suffering in specific to sin, in specific, you are going too far.

I remember when I was in college, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, I went down and helped with no with Hurricane Katrina clean up multiple times because I was living closer to the area. And there would just be street preachers condemning the people of New Orleans and saying that they deserved the suffering that they were having because of their sins. They were going too far, connecting specific sins to specific sufferings suffering is an opportunity for you to evaluate. Am I walking in line line with God? But you cannot connect the specific sin with the specific suffering. The Bible teaches that over and over. For example, the book of Job just very clearly.

Jesus answers them and he says it was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in classic Jesus. He just doesn't answer the question, you know, it's an either or question Jesus. And he says neither. That's just classic Jesus. Jesus says, why does this man suffer? It's not because of any particular sin. It's so that I can demonstrate the power of God before you all today. And he does, he heals the man. It's an opportunity for Him to display the power of God in front of them all. But it's difficult for us to apply this to our life. Is it not with our sufferings? Because not many of us have been healed by Jesus in the same kind of way as this blind man was healed. And so we don't see God's purpose in our suffering in the same kind of way.

Now, look, I could spend the entire sermon talking about suffering. There's a lot more to this passage and I have spent entire sermons talking about suffering. If you would like one, I can send it to you, we can talk about suffering more. That's not the entire, that's not the point of this whole passage. But I just want to point out what Jesus is saying about suffering here. What is He saying about it here? He's saying that this man is suffering from blindness so that the works of God might be displayed in Him. And doesn't that point to something true for each and every one of us that we might not receive healing in this life to the sufferings that we experience.

But we know that the day is coming when we will be reunited with God in heaven And that all of our sufferings, all of our infirmity will be healed by his loving touch and that we will be made new and the glory of God will be on display. Is it not that you suffer so that the glory of God might be on display so that we might see that He is glorious and so that He might heal us in that way, the glory of God's displayed when we are with Him in heaven, as He wipes every tear from our eyes, and it heals every wound from our bodies and our hearts. To have spiritual sight, don't miss this, to have spiritual sight is to see your suffering, the way that God sees your suffering. It is to see your suffering, the way that God sees your suffering.

Let's continue. Verse four, we must work the works of Him who sent me while it is day, night is coming when no one can work. Now, Jesus here just to explain what's happening when he says day, he's talking about the time in which he's alive. He is the light of the world. And so the day is the time in which he is alive, the night is coming and that night is the day of his death. And that's when the light of the world is removed from the world. And so the night is coming. So I have to work now before I am crucified is what he is saying, verse five, as long as I am the world, as long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. This is a throwback to the last week's passage. Jesus reminding us again that he's the light of the world connecting the two passages.

Verse six. Have you ha having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva and then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud. Jesus takes the very essence of what Genesis two describes God making humans out of the dust of the earth and he remakes the man's eyes out of the very substance that he created the man and created all of humanity at the beginning. Now, why does Jesus heal him like this? It's a weird way to heal someone to spit on the ground and to turn it in the mud and to then rub it on his eyes. Very odd and it's not the way that you see Jesus. It's not like he had to do it. This way, you see Jesus heal people in different ways all the time. Throughout the scripture, many times, he just speaks it into being. Sometimes he does use spit without mud. Sometimes he uses mud. Sometimes he just takes someone by the hand and says, sweetie, it's time to get up and then they wake up from their death and then they start walking again. Jesus has many different ways that he heals and I have no idea why he, he spit on the ground and, and rubbed the mud on the guy's eyes other than it happened because that's an odd detail to include. And so it would be one of those things where it's like if it really happened that way, we're gonna put it that way.

And maybe this is a speculation. Fletcher speculation. I think that maybe he's just trying to upset the Pharisees more. The Pharisees are always upset at him. It is the Sabbath day. It's already wrong to heal someone. It's extra wrong to make mud out of the off the ground. And so maybe he's just, you know, poking a little bit more hoping that the bear will come at him so he can, you know, dodge all their attacks and make them look dumb as usual. Maybe that's what's happening. I don't know, verse seven. And he said to him, Jesus said to the blind man or the formerly blind man, go wash in the pool of Siloam, which means scent. So he went and he washed and he came back seeing three simple things. He went, he washed, he came back seeing.

But when he came back, Jesus was not there because Jesus is the king of the Irish. Goodbye. He always leaves without saying goodbye. He just disappears all the time. You see it happen over and over. Also this pool of Saloum. a real place that they have discovered in Israel. The Bible is not just a collection of made up stories. The Bible has archaeological evidence for many of the stories that as much as you would expect to find, you can find the archaeological evidence is there. It's really amazing that we can go back and see these things. Now, the man after he's healed, he goes back to look for Jesus, he's not there. But the man encounters his neighbors.

Now these neighbors are people that have walked by the man who's who was born blind day in and day out. They recognize him, they know who he is and when they see him, they're quite surprised that he can finally see what has happened. And so the neighbors for eight, the neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar were saying, is this not the man who used to sit and beg? Some said it is he others said no, but it's just someone that looks like him all the while he kept saying I am him just sitting there saying no, it's me. I am the man.

You see, it was easier for his neighbors to believe that a look alike has entered their town and found the beggar and said you get out of here, I'm gonna pretend to be you. But I'm gonna be able to see than it was to believe that he had actually been healed. That's how much of a miracle this was that it was easier to believe that preposterous scenario of a look alike coming and taking his place. They, they couldn't believe it. And the guy, the healed man, this is actually one of my favorite characters in the entire Bible because, and, and there's no better. He's snarky. I think that the best word to describe him is one that we don't use in America very often, but he's cheeky. Ok. He's just a cheeky guy. My kid's been watching a lot of bluey, you know, they say they say cheeky all the time.

He's over there saying I'm him, I'm, I'm him. That's not the last example. There's a lot of examples of this guy. He's being humorous. So verse 10. So they said to him, then how were your eyes opened? How do you see? And he answered them, the man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, go to Siloam and wash. So I went and I watched and I received my sight and they said, to him, where is Jesus? And he said, I don't know, I've never actually seen the guy.

So they take the men to the Pharisees. And verse 14, it was a Sabbath day per you. And Jesus made the mud when the Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. So the Pharisees asked again how he had received his sight. And they said to him and he said to them, he made mud, put it on my eyes and I washed and I see. And some of the Pharisees said, this is not from God for he does not keep the Sabbath. But others said, but how can a man who's a sinner do such signs? And there was division among them.

Now, the Pharisees are real pickle. OK? They have two different situations in front of them. On the one hand, if they say that this is the guy who was formerly blind and he's now been healed of his blindness, they have to say that that's a miracle and that Jesus is committing a miracle. But they don't wanna say that Jesus is doing a miracle because Jesus is doing that said miracle on the Sabbath day. And he's breaking their oral tradition and laws about the Sabbath. And so they want to say Jesus is a sinner, he cannot do miracles. Therefore, dude, you are a look alike. We don't believe your story. And so that's, that's their story. They are divided on this but the, the Pharisees want to say this is a look alike because they don't want to believe that Jesus actually did the miracle.

And so they continue to question the guy. And so they said again to the blind man, what do you say about him since you opened your eyes? Who do you think this guy, is he a sinner or is he real? And the guy says he's a prophet now, this is, this is not quite right, right. It's, it's a step short of what of who we know Jesus to be. But it's a quite a compliment. This is the biggest compliment you can give to someone. aside from saying that they're the Messiah themselves. This is a man who's within the line of Moses, within the line of Elijah and within the line of Jeremiah, this man is a great man who speaks for God. And so he's, he's giving him this, this great compliment when he says that he's yet to learn jesus' full identity though.

Verse 18, the Jews did not believe that he had been blind and received a sight until they called the parents of the man who had received a sight. Oh, how embarrassing. They called his parents. Ok. They didn't call him on the phone. They made his parents come. It's like, hey, can you come get your guy, get your, get your son? They called his parents and they asked them, is this your son who was born blonde. How do, how then does he see it? Now, if anyone would be able to know if this is the real guy or look alike, it's the guy's parents. And so that's why they call the guy's parents and the parents. This is what they say. They say we know that this is our son and that he was born blind. This, we know we do not know how he sees nor do we know who did it? We don't know those things. Ask him, he's of age.

They're just throwing him under the bus. Ok? They're like, we don't know, you know, they're pleading the fifth a lot here. And why are they pleading the fifth? They're afraid that if they affirm the identity of Jesus, that the Pharisees are going to cast them out of the temple as well. And so they have to just say here are the facts that we know here are the facts that we don't know, don't cast us out of the temple, please. And so the therefore his parents said, ask him he is of age.

So the Pharisees go back to the guy and for a second time, they called the man verse 24 and who had been blind and said to them, give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner. We know you're wrong. We know you're a look alike. Tell us the truth. And the man answered whether he is a sinner. I do not know. One thing I do know is that I was blind and now I see I was blind and now I see glorious. It's the childlike faith that we see here. He doesn't know much about Christ. He's never actually seen him, but yet he knows that Jesus does miracles.

And while many of us, I would highly doubt any of us have had the same experience as this man. On a physical level, I would be willing to stake that many of us have had this on a spiritual level that we were once blind. But now we see, maybe we resonate with the words of the hymn. All I have is Christ where it says I once was lost in darkest night. Yet thought I knew the way. That's the thing about spiritual blindness different than physical blindness is that spiritual blindness, you don't know you're blind. And Jesus gets to that as he goes, he says that those who think they see actually can't see the Pharisees you think you can see, but you actually can't see.

And that's the thing about spiritual blindness, you think you see, but God has to wake you up, has to open your eyes to see truly. And so it says I once was lost yet and darkest night. Yet thought I knew the way I thought I could see the sin that promised life had led me to the grave. I had no hope that you would own a rebel to your will. And if you had not loved me first, I would refuse you. Steal still. Or maybe you resonate more with the words of the famous hymn, Amazing Grace where it says Amazing Grace. I wish I was one of those preachers that could sing for you, but no one wants that Amazing Grace. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found was blind. But now I see.

This is the life of a Christian that we admit we were once blind, that we were wrong. And if we were wrong, then we can be wrong. Now that we still are in a place of humility, knowing that our nature takes us away from God and we have to return back to him over and over. John Newton. The author of Amazing Grace has an amazing story that goes with it. John Newton lived in the 17 hundreds in England. He and his father were both slave traders. So this whole time you were singing this song written by a guy who was slave traders. And it was even worse than that. They would actually be the people that would travel to Africa to capture people to sell them for the slave trade. One day, John Newton was captain, his ship in the sea and a storm came and the storm was terrible. It was so bad that many of his crew were being thrown overboard and he prayed as he held onto the steering wheel. God rescue us God have mercy on us.

And after 11 hours, Newton eventually made it through. And when he arrived back in England, his life was different. He had had an encounter with the Lord and his faith was made pure. He thought he was a Christian before. And now he sees for the first time he got back to England, he started studying Greek and Hebrew to become a pastor. He became a pastor and then worked diligently writing and teaching to be an abolitionist, teaching that slavery is wrong. And in fact, the writings of John Newton inspired William Wilberforce who would be the person later the the a fellow Christian who would later lead the cause to eliminate the slave trade from the English Empire. And so it was because of his Christian faith that he killed the slave trade in that way. And John Newton had an effect on that. Newton was once blind though he thought he was doing nothing wrong. But an encounter with God caused him to do a complete 180.

Verse 26. They said to him, what did he do to you? How did he open your eyes? And he answered them. Look, I told you already and you wouldn't listen. Why do you want me? Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples? Just cheeky. You know, there's no better word for it. He's just so snarky. He's my favorite.

Verse 28. and they revive him, reviled him saying you are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses. But as for this man, we don't know where he comes from. The man answered why. This is an amazing thing. You don't know where he comes from and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God doesn't listen to sinners. But if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him never since the world began. Has it been heard that anyone open the eyes of a man born blind? If this man were not from God, he could do nothing. What 10 minutes ago, this guy was a beggar and now he's lecturing the Pharisees on the biblical teaching of miracles. It teaches you that you can have academic degrees in theology and know less about who Jesus really is than someone who's actually encountered him personally.

This guy seems to be seeing more and more clearly as the day goes on. He is certainly speaking clearly as the day goes on. Verse 34 they answered him. You were born in utter sin and you would teach us and they cast him out. Ok. This is funny. The Pharisees have gotten so angry that they forget what they're arguing about and they just give up the argument because the whole argument is you are not, you were not blind, you are a look alike. And now they're saying you were born in utter sin. You were so blind admitting that Jesus actually did heal him. That Jesus actually is from God. They're losing the entire argument, but they're so mad and they say, get out of here anyways and they cast him out.

And so the man who's lived his entire life as a outcast, but now he's received sight. He finally has hope to not be an outcast. He's immediately cast out from the temple, condemned by the religious leaders of this day and age. And this is when Jesus reconnects with him. Verse 35 Jesus heard that they had cast him out and found him and he said, do you believe in the son of man? Now this term son of man, that doesn't sound like a, a claim to divinity to many of us. But in that day and age, it was very obvious that it was equivalent and it's used interchangeably synonymously with the term Son of God. And so this blind man would have understood that.

And here Jesus is inviting the man to put his trust in the Son of God. And the Messiah and the man answers verse 36 he answered, who is he sir? That I might believe in him? And Jesus said to him, you've seen him. He's one of the few people you've seen and he is speaking to you right now. And the man formerly blind said, Lord, I believe and he worshiped him. The term for worship here means he fell prostrate on the ground, worshiping Jesus. He truly understands who Jesus is. As Messiah and as king, he was once blind, but now he sees and Jesus says, verse 39 for judgment, I came into the world that those who do not see may see and those who see may become blind.

Now, Jesus is not saying that the Pharisees who think that they can see are going to actually become blind. He's not, he's using metaphorical language here. He's inviting us to apply the lessons of this message metaphorically to our lives that He is calm for those who think they can see, but yet are blind that they might see. But if you think you can see the thing is if you think that you apart from Him are a moral person and that you have life figured out. The fact is you're blind and the more confident you are in your own morality, the blinder, you actually are, look at the Pharisees very moral people. Yet they could not see what God was doing right in front of them.

They had spent their entire lives searching the scriptures, knowing the Bible and yet they could not recognize the Messiah right in front of them. They had this thing memorized, you can have this thing memorized and yet not recognize Jesus himself. He was standing in front of you. But yet you can be a blind beggar by the side of the road and your eyes can be open and you can be made to see those who are the most confident that they are morally and spiritually superior are often the most blind of us. All we know this. We've seen the documentaries of the morally self righteous who are actually blind and working to blind others. If you think you can see the whole picture without any distortion, you're probably blind.

But if you know that you don't see completely straight, you probably have a spiritual site of some form. Spiritual sight does not mean that you are always right. I think that we, this is what we get wrong. When we're trying to share our faith, we make our faith an argument about who's right and who's wrong to have spiritual sight. It doesn't mean that you are always right to have spiritual sight means that you have the humility to know that you are often wrong that you are often living apart from God. And when we share our faith, it's not about arguing, who's right and who's wrong. It's about telling someone about the marvelous good news of who Jesus is, what he's done for you that you were once blind. But now that you see, we can talk about who's right and who's wrong. I think that there's good arguments for the resurrection of Christ.

But friends, you know who's ever been argued into the kingdom. How many of us have had that conversation with our friends and left discouraged. Our testimony is often our most powerful tool. Have you been given spiritual sight? Spiritual sight allows you to see the truth about yourself that you don't have it all figured out. Isn't that kind of good news that you can stop putting on the rules that you've got this life all figured out that you don't have to act like you have it all figured out. But spiritual site says by myself, I am blind. But with Jesus, I can see with Jesus, I have life and meaning and purpose. I was once in rebellion against God, but Jesus, he paid my penalty that I might have peace with God. Apart from God, everyone does what's right in their own eyes, which is what it means to be blind. It's not that you are purposely trying to be immoral. You're just making up your immorality for yourself.

But when you're given spiritual sight from God, you see differently. Spiritual sight begins when you first see your need for Jesus and trust in Him and it grows throughout your life. Your spiritual life grows throughout your life. Spiritual sight means you can start seeing the world the way that God sees the world. It means you're able to see what's important and what's not spiritual sight means that you're growing in humility because that's what it took when you first received the spiritual site admittance that you were once living in rebellion against God, that you were once blind. And so to have spiritual sight means that you're growing in humility.

Let me just ask you that. Are you growing in humility? Are you willing to admit more today? When you're wrong? Then you were three years ago. Are you growing in that? That's what it means to have spiritual sight. Also, what it means to have spiritual sight is to be aware of what God's doing around you, to be able to see what He's at work and friends, God is at work around you. He has many people in this city that he wants to call to know Him. He is already at work around you. There's a spiritual realm that we are unable to see apart from spiritual sight. But the scripture talks about the powers and the Principalities of the air talks about these supernatural forces. You're not able to see those.

Unless you were given spiritual sight from God, you're not able to see what God is doing around you. Unless you're given spiritual sight from God, it's easier to walk in blindness. Is it not to act like you have your life put together, the spiritual spiritual sight means that you don't and that Jesus is all you have. The book of Acts ends with Paul quoting from Isaiah 6. Now, here's what he says for this. People's heart has grown dull and their ears, they can barely hear and their eyes, they have closed lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand what their hearts and turn and I would heal them.

That's the invitation for us today. And whether it's your first time hearing and seeing from God or it's your 1000th time hearing from seeing from God, you were invited. Maybe you've been watching TV on that low res screen for all these years. And you're finally starting to see in more detail what Jesus has done. Praise God. But you know what the thing about life, it both illuminates and it exposes, right? You, you look at one of those, those makeup mirrors that women have often times. And there's a reason that I don't look in those because I see many blemishes and, and things that I don't want to see, that's what light does it exposes. But now that you see it, you have to do something about it.

And so whether this is your first time or your 1000th time, go to the light, let it expose, but also let it purify and let it guide you and illuminate your days. Church. Let us be messengers of the light. People who walk in the light who can see and who can serve as spiritual guides for those around us, help you to take. I, I pray that you'll take the opportunity. This week to take advantage of your spiritual sight. What does it mean for you to live in that spiritual seeing.

In just a moment, we're going to participate in a communion meal. And this communion meal represents what God has done for us by sending his son to die on the cross on our behalf, that his body is represented by the bread and that is broken for us and his blood is represented by the cup and it is, it was shed for us. And as we participate in this meal, what you were saying is I see though once I was blind, now I see that your death was required for me to know you required for me to be welcomed as a child. And so with this communion meal, we invite you to participate if you are calling Christ, your savior with all of your heart, if you're following after him. So church would you stand as I pray for us and we prepare to respond through the communion meal.

God, I asked this morning that you would give us spiritual sight to see our life. From your perspective, God, I pray that those who are here no matter what they're going through, where they're at, that you would give them a vision of you that they would see you more clearly and that the loves of their heart would be reordered so that they could keep their priorities as your priorities. God, we pray that you would wake us up to what you're doing around us and that we might participate and we might become co laborers in the work that you are already starting. And God, we pray that you would give great spiritual sight to our neighbors and to our friends. We live in a city of darkness. We live in a city where you were denied, where you were known, but you were denied. And God, we pray that you would heal our blindness and give us the energy and the power to reach others with the light, with who Jesus is. As the light of God. As we take this meal, help us to with a clear conscience. And God, we pray that you would be move and our church body this week helping us each to see you a bit more clearer. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

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CoaH Somerville member Calvin Chu preaches from John 8:12-59 about Jesus’s discussion with the Pharisees. Discussion points: Jesus used the words “I am” to declare himself to be God, Jesus can illuminate our path when we trust his perfect understanding, apart from Christ we are bound to spiritual slavery.

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Scripture reader: [John 8:12-59] Again, Jesus spoke to them saying I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life. So the Pharisees said to him, you are bearing witness about yourself. Your testimony is not true. Jesus answered. Even if I do bear witness about myself, my testimony is true for I know where I came from and where I am going. But you do not know where I come from or where I am going. You judge according to the flesh, I judge no one yet. Even if I do judge my judgment is true for it is not I alone who judge but I and the father who sent me in your law. It is written that the testimony of two people is true. I am the one who bears witness about myself. And the father who sent me bears witness about me. They said to him.

Therefore, where is your father? Jesus answered? You know neither me nor my father. If you knew me, you would know my father. Also these words, he spoke in the treasury as he taught in the temple, but no one arrested him. Because his hour had not yet come. So he said to them again, I am going away and you will seek me and you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come. So the Jews said, will he kill himself? Since he says where I am going, you cannot come. He said to them, you are from below. I am from above. You are of this world. I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins for unless you believe that I am. He, you will die in your sins. So they said to him, who are you? Jesus said to them just what I have been telling you from the beginning, I have much to say about you and much to judge but he who sent me is true and I declare to the world what I have heard from him. They did not understand that he had been speaking to them about the father. So Jesus said to them when you have lifted up the son of man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own authority but speak just as the father taught me and he who sent me is with me.

He has not left me alone for. I always do the things that are pleasing to him as he was saying these things, many believed in him. So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him. If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. They answered him. We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say you will become free? Jesus answered them.

Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever, the sun remains forever. So if the sun sets you free, you will be free. Indeed. I know that you are offspring of Abraham. Yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. I speak of what I have seen with my father and you do what you have heard from your father. They answered him. Abraham is our father. Jesus said to them, if you were Abraham's Children, you would be doing the works Abraham did. But now you seek to kill me. A man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did. They said to him, we were not born of sexual immorality. We have one father, even God. Jesus said to them. If God were your father, you would love me for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me.

Why do you not understand what I say it is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father, the devil and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and has nothing to do with the truth. Because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you convicts me of sin. If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.

The Jews answered him. Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon. Jesus answered, I do not have a demon but I honor my father and you dishonor me yet I do not seek my own glory. There is one who seeks it and he is the judge. Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death. The Jews said to him. Now we know that you have a demon. Abraham died as did the prophets yet you say if one keeps my word, he will never taste death. Are you greater than our father Abraham who died? And the prophets died. Who do you make yourself out to be Jesus answered. If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my father who glorifies me, of whom you say He is our God. But you have not known Him. I know Him. If I were to say that I do not know Him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know Him and I keep his word. Your father, Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.

So the Jews said to him, you are not yet 50 years old. And have you seen Abraham Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you before Abraham was I am. So they picked up stones to throw at him. But Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

The word of the Lord.

Preacher: I know that some of you may not know me. I know that pastor Fletcher gave me a little bit of intro at the Christmas member meeting. But I'm Calvin, I'm one of the Alice Mark said one of the newest staff folks here. And my family and I, we start coming to coa in September. So we're relatively new. We, I was a pastor at our previous church for about 10 years. And after, you know, serving there for, for about a decade, you know, we sense God's call to, for us to go and move out to find a new home church, a new place for us to, to plant family church roots and, and we found CO O A and happy to talk about all of the reasons that we, we the Lord brought us to CO A. But that's not the point of our message today. But I, I am really excited to share God's word with you. Because I think this passage really gives us something to, to really wrap our minds around.

And, and I think the thing that, that it made me think about is video games. Wait, what are you talking about? Listen for me, like, again, you don't, you guys are all kind of le learning more about me. I really like video games. I grew up playing video games. My family now plays video games. It's like a very, like a big thing for us and, and one thing I really, the types of video games I like playing growing up were RPG games and I, I don't know if you guys play video games but they're role playing games. And one, what's really great about role playing games is that there's these things called save points. Like if you don't play video games, you're just like, oh my gosh, like what is he talking about? But if you play video games, you're like, OK, tell me more. And what's really good about it is that you get to save along the way and So like for instance, if you know that there's gonna be like a big boss fight that's gonna happen soon. You get to save or if you, there's like a decision that you have to make between two options, you're gonna, ok, I'm gonna save here and then I'm gonna, I'm gonna go down one direction and I'm gonna go there and I'll save another save file or if I don't like that one, I'm gonna go back to the original save file, I'm gonna go make that other decision and see where that leads me.

And so for me, like, what's really great about that is, wouldn't life be amazing if we had safe points? Like if we know like a big decisions coming up, like where am I going to go to university? It's like, hm, I can go here, I go here and I say like a little save file here and then go down there and then, oh, I don't like that one. Let's go back here and go there. That would be amazing. But unfortunately, that's not how life works. Actually, life is much more like old school games. Like I'm, I'm a little bit older. So II I don't know if you guys know what like a game boy is.

My family recently started playing game boy, it's like a hand, we got some Game Boy fans. I love it. Um, and we start playing and, and what that's like is like there is no safe points. You go and you try to beat the level, you try to beat the boss and if you don't, you die and that is like, kind of how it feels like in life. You go, oh, I can't undo that. I can't go back to the safe file. That's, that's kind of brutal and, and, and like small things. It doesn't matter if you decided to eat. You know, you chose a blueberry bagel today or sit and raisin bagel that's not gonna affect your life. You don't want to save points for that one, right?

But like, oh, do I take this job or do I take that job? Do I marry this person? Do I marry that person? Do I move to this city? Do we move that all of these things? Those are the ones that feel like, oh, that feels incredibly weighty. And, and the, the reason that we have this feeling is because we want a life that feels meaningful. We want, we want a life that feels satisfying and so much of the things that we've experienced in our lives, especially if you kind of have experienced a good amount of life is, it's not all satisfying.

There's a lot of life that's actually quite dissatisfying. And if we could activate that safe point, we would, but we can't. So then how do we navigate life? Knowing that much of life will be dissatisfying? How do we navigate our world knowing that there are going to be moments that we don't love the outcome. Thankfully, our passage in and John, which are we're continuing with the series and John actually speaks into that. I say there's so much stuff thank you for like I, you know, I appreciate the reader reading it. It's, it's a really great passage. There's so much here. I'm not gonna get to all of it. But honestly, if you reflect on this, you know, in your own personal quiet times, I think you're gonna get a lot from it. But we won't be able to get to it all. And I, I do need to set up a decent amount of context and I'll get to that. But before I do pray for us, because I definitely need the Lord to guide me and for, for us to be prepared to hear his word this morning. So let's pray.

Father, I just thank you for the opportunity to share your word this morning. I thank you for all the people who are listening, who are also participating in this process by listening. I pray for the Holy Spirit to be moving in us, preparing our hearts to receive your word. Not so that it would fall on deaf ears, but that it would create a life change in how we live day to day. That when Monday morning comes, that God, we are starting a new process in how we live for the better for how you want us to live in God. We pray that what we read in John today, we read in John today, what we'll look at today, we create a, a heart change, a life change and God that we can look back and think back to the moment where we heard from your spirit this morning. And thank you because you are a God who was with us and pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.

So this whole passage hinges upon our understanding of verse 12, which is again, Jesus spoke to them saying I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life. And our modern understanding, it's actually kind of hard to understand what Jesus means when he talks about himself as the light of life. This happens. Actually, all the time, words remain the same, but the connotations will change. So imagine, I'm I go back in time. You're coming with me. We'll go back in time 100 years and I'm walking in a crowd and I shout to everyone, I'm the go they'd be like excuse me, sir, you look like a man to me. Like what do you, what, what does that mean? But, but in, in 2024 when I say I'm the goat, but OK, he's the greatest of all time. I don't know what he's feeling he's claiming to be the greatest of all time about, but he's not saying that he is a horned animal like for like an animal, you know, and say, we, we are still back in time.

We're gonna go watch a baseball game. We're rooting for, you know, I'm rooting for my team and they get, they get a home run and I go, let's go. People are looking at me like, why, who is this man? And why is he so eager to leave? Like what is happening here? But now in 2024 we understand like I'm just, that's my declaration of excitement that something good has happened, right? So, so the words have that. And so here when Jesus says he's the light of the world, it's kind of like that. So, so for us, we just think, oh, he's gonna do good things. He's gonna like be bright and like, you know, like, like it's gonna be happy around him. That's kind of what we'll think. But actually when he's saying this, he's actually declaring himself to be the Messiah to be the anointed one, to be the savior. He, he's saying he and eventually he, he'll, he'll clarify even more. He's actually gonna say he's God.

And we see this in, in passage, in, in the scripture that would have been available to people in jesus' time. So what we say is Psalm 27 the Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? The Lord is a stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? Right? The Lord is my light, my salvation. So when Jesus says, I am the light of the world, he's declaring that Psalm one ti 1 19 105, your word is the lamp to my feet and a light to my path again, he's, he's equating himself with these things. And after he declares himself as the light of the world as if that's not enough. In verses 24 and 28 of the passage we read this morning, he amplifies it. He, he really doubles down on this and he says, I told you that you would die in your sins for unless you believe that I am. He, you will die in your sins.

And then in verse 28 so Jesus said to them, when you have lifted the son of man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own authority but speak just as a father taught me. And so when he says that I am, he, that phrase is like, OK, like I'm, I'm, I'm the guy, I'm him. Like again, that's another modern thing. But when they heard it, when they would have heard that they would go, oh, he's referring to himself as God Moses. Famously, that phrase I am comes from Exodus 314 where God said to Moses, I am who I am and he said, say to this, this to the people of Israel, I am has sent me to you. But actually what this that I am, he is probably from Isaiah 43:10 where it says you are my witnesses declares the Lord and my servant whom I have chosen that you may know and believe me and understand that I am. He before me. No, God was formed nor shall there be any after me. So he is clearly declaring that He is God. He is the messiah. He is the anointed one. He is the savior. He is God himself.

And Jesus basically confirms this at the end of the passage. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He s saw it and was glad. So the Jews said to him, you are not yet 50 years old. And have you seen Abraham? Jesus said to them? Truly, truly, I say to you before Abraham was I am. So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple. So again, some context, you know, when it says the Jews, it's again, it's not all Jews, it's, it's, it's the specifically the Jewish leaders, the Pharisees in this instance. So just so that, that's, that's 100% clear Jesus himself was Jewish. So it's not like he's saying all Jews was saying the Jewish leaders, they got upset.

They were prepared to kill Him because to declare yourself to be God, to be equal with God was a crime that deserved capital punishment in their society. So for a man, a a non God entity to claim to be God, they said, wow, you were blasphemy against God, you deserve desire, which is why they wanted to kill him. So it was very, very clear that he Jesus himself says I am the messiah, I'm the savior, I am God. And the Pharisees understand that they get that message. So why am I going through all of this context other than like maybe you're gonna win in bible trivia this week or whatever. it, it what matters is because when we say when Jesus is declaring himself as God, we have to understand that he's saying those things, whatever He's about to say what he was saying in this passage, he's doing it with authority, the authority of someone who is God. So he's not just saying he's not just a guy saying things, he's God declaring things to his people to his creation.

And so what's he doing here? He does two things. Actually, he does. The first thing he does is he sets up a problem for, for the, the, the Pharisees who are listening to him and the people who are hearing this interaction. But since God gives us his word too, he's also setting a problem for us. And then he also goes and he gives a solution for everyone that's hearing too. And so that's also again, a solution for us. And so what's the problem here? Right? The problem is sin and you go, OK, here we go. It's the church mode. I, I can now turn my brain off because I know I know this part of the story. But actually, I think it's really important for us to understand some, some how we can feel what is happening here.

In verse 24 he says that I told you that you will die. I'm sorry, let me jump back to verse 12 1st where it says I, he says, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life. And then in verse 24 he says, I told you that you will die in your sins for unless you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins. And so what he's saying is that if you continue to walk in this darkness, you will die in that darkness is like sin. And if you continue to be there, you will die. And so for us, like in our, in our modern context, like I don't think we really understand what darkness is like.

If you live in Somerville, like you probably haven't seen a lot of stars in a while. You know what I'm saying? Because there's so much light pollution you, we like, and we're never really far away from a light source. Like we all have a flashlight, like right here. And so we don't know what total darkness. But you have to remember in, in jesus' time, there was none of that. They might have had torches, they might have had lamps, but that had a limited resource. They only had so much oil to burn so that they could see. And so going out away from like society, away from like a, a city away from an established community into like the wilderness, they would not have done that at night. Right. Because out there we don't know what's out there. We don't know what animals are out there. We don't know what, what, there's a pit that I can walk into. We don't know what that feels like.

The closest that I've ever come is uh, so this last weekend for the past 10 years, like I told you that I was a pastor. I ran a conference every single year. Um, and this is the close I've done is I, I, I, I would drive up to, to like pretty far up New Hampshire Alton, New Hampshire. If you know Alton and every single year without fail, I'm driving up, it takes about an hour and a half, two hours depending on the traffic. And I'm driving up and without fail, I, I drive right past the turn for, for the campsite like, every year I live the same. I've like multiple streets of this campsite for, for like a decade and ask my wife ask anyone who's ever driven. I always miss it. Like, oh, and so, and it's because it's on a rural road, there's no street lights. It's incredibly dark. It's so dark that there were some years in my younger days when I didn't have Children. Maybe I did do it once with my kids. I would turn off the headlights just to see what it feels like. And it's like utter darkness.

And like when you, when you like engage utter darkness, especially when you're in like a one ton like block of metal and glass, you slow down like instinctively, you slow down like you don't want to go faster, you don't want to go further and you, you just stop or very quickly. I don't feel comfortable. I turn my lights back on and that's the type of darkness that jesus' people felt by all the time and what we don't really understand because we don't, we're not, we don't have that type of darkness a lot. And so if that's the context of, that's kind of how we feel and we can understand that then that it's, it's, we, we have to understand, then we can better understand that when Jesus tells us that he is the light of the world that if you follow him, you will not be in that darkness, but you have the light of life, then you understand, it's like being out in the wilderness, being with no vision of anything, you can hear coyotes howling, you can see animal rustling.

And then Jesus saying he comes and he lights the area so that you can see clearly. And so Jesus is pointing this out to the Pharisees. He's saying that their world view is wrong. He's saying you are walking in darkness and for I can read all the verses. But if you, we heard it already, he goes through all of those verses, basically calling them out saying, hey, look, you are wrong. You say you're this, but I am this verse, I'll read some of them. 14. Jesus said, I know where I came from and where I am going. You do not know where, where you you do know where I know where I come from, where I am going. You judge according to verse 15, you judge according to the flesh. I judge no one. verse 19 J, Jesus answered, you know, neither me nor my father. If you knew me, you would know my father also.

Verse 21. He said uh uh to them again, I am going away and you will seek me and you will die in your sins where I am going, you cannot come. Verse 23. He said, you are from below. I am from above. You are of this world, I am not of this world. So they said to him, who are you? Jesus said to them just what I've been telling you from the beginning. I have much to say about you and much to judge Jesus is telling them I am the savior. I am God. And I'm telling you, you're on the wrong path. You are still living in darkness. You do not see me because you are stuck in that darkness.

He was telling that you need to recognize that you are walking in the darkness and if you continue to walk in that they will die in their sins. And Jesus is telling us the same is true. Frost. Imagine you see me driving to that same retreat center. I feel confident right in my navigation because I got my Apple Vision Pro on and I'm driving which you should not do, don't do that. This is, this is a sermon illustration. So this is kids, do not try this at home sort of thing. And I go, it's good. It's called the Vision Pro. So I must have, I have, I have my regular vision, but now I have provision on. So it's better than my regular vision. I'm good. Like I don't need to worry. Google Maps tells me to turn left here like I, I'm, I'm fine. You're, you're seeing me and you're like, Calvin like you stop you, you, you are dangerous. And I, I have this confidence thinking that I'm driving safely. But the truth is that I'm in utter darkness, my headlights are off is dangerous. You would call me, you say, hey, look, you need to stop right now. You think you can see the road but you can't, that, that, that, that 3d image that your headset is telling you is, is the way, is not actually the way.

And similarly, Jesus tells us this the same thing for us. We go about our lives unaware of the pervasive darkness of sin that surrounds us. We all enter this world engulfed by the same darkness of sin. That's a fundamental problem that we all face. Jesus emphasizes that we need to recognize the spiritual darkness to understand that we are driving in the dark even though we think we have vision and he tells us to stop, stop moving forward, stop being driven by what you think is the way take off the headset. See the darkness that you are in and call out for the light, find the light, seek the light.

And so when in verse 12, Jesus says that I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life. It is an invitation for him to illuminate our path so that we can move forward to know where the pitfalls are, to know where the animals are, to know where the dangers are. To know what are the things that are going to kill us out there. And so this might feel like a message for like people who don't know Jesus. And remember this many people or people watching online, I'm sure someone here is wondering about who Jesus is. And absolutely, this is a message that is telling us to believe in Jesus, understand, believe in Him, that he is who he says he is, that he is the savior, he is the messiah. He is God. He is the Lord. Absolutely.

But this is also for those who do not who do believe, who haven't gone to church for a long time, who have maybe grew up in the church. I've been following Jesus for a long time because believing in Jesus as the one who died for our sins isn't just about securing a future in heaven, which very often we can have a overly simplistic view of what the gospel is, but it's about experiencing true freedom and fulfillment here. And now in this life, Jesus says this himself verses 31 to 36. So Jesus said to the Jews who believed Him, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.

They answered him. We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is that? You say you will become free? Jesus answered them truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever, the sun remains forever. So if the sun sets you free, you will be free. Indeed. And freedom is like one of those other things that are like kind of confusing for us in our modern context. Like for a lot of us, we think freedom means we can do whatever we want. Like, oh, if I'm free, I, I can, I'm totally unrestricted. But no, actually what what it means free here is that it's not that we have free will, right? Free. We, the fact that we can choose to send shows that we have free will.

So it's not that we can, we already have that whether we follow Jesus or not. But what this is is saying that slavery to sin means that no matter what choices we make apart from Christ, we will be bound to a state of dissatisfaction will be bound to spiritual bondage. And so no matter what we do, the end result is broken people all over the world. Many of us in this right here in this room, even even me, we chase after material possessions, success relationships, hoping to find fulfillment in these things. Only to discover that these pursuits leave us feeling hollow and unfulfilled.

One commentary I read said, true, freedom is not the liberty to do anything we please, but the liberty to do what we ought. And that is genuine liberty because doing what we ought now pleases us. So when Jesus speaks of us being set free, he isn't advocating for unrestrained autonomy. Rather. He's saying that we can be free from equating, having comfort and power and social standing with sinless, with a good life. You see, we can disconnect those things. It means that we can be free from looking at our jobs, our bank accounts, our homes, our kids, our education, our social media presence and wondering if I'm living a good life. He's saying that those are not measures of whether we're living rightly or not anymore. We are free from that. We are free from worrying if we have enough.

This passage shows us that our standing in this world means very little as far as it stands before our standing before God to know the freedom that Jesus offers us as a pathway to live a life that satisfies because we are doing what God wants because He designed and because he designed the world, the end result for us is true satisfaction. True freedom isn't found in the pursuit of self gratification, but is aligning our lives with God's will. So how does this change our lives? It changed our lives because it's, it's a reminder for us to stay close to the light. The darkness is the absence of light, right? And so darkness is something that's still here, something that we still experience. And so the only way to get rid of darkness is to flood it with light.

And Jesus says, I've come, I died for you, for your sins so that I could shine light on your world. And so we stay close to them until he comes back again and just shines light on everything and all darkness is lifted away, all pain is lifted away, all mourning, all, all all hurt is gone. We stay close to the light and, and, and when our present circumstances seem murky and uncertain, we stay close for a light when we feel lost or stuck and don't know what to do in life. We stay close to the light.

When you feel the weight of your failure, I don't want to feel the weight of my failure or we feel the failure of other people. We stay close to the light and when we're reminded of the weight of what's waiting for us back home or back at work or in the recesses of our mind, you stay close to the line and then that sounds great. Stay close to the light. Sounds like super like Christian me sort of thing. Like what does that actually mean?

It kind of means a lot of different things and I don't want to kind of like try to hit every single one of them. But I'd say for you this week, as you reflect on your situation, the darkness that you're in how close you are to the light. I would say, ask God God, what do you want me to do? For some of us? It's gonna be, yeah, it's gonna be I'm gonna, I'm gonna get back to reading his word because that's how I learned about what he's telling me about my life. But for some of us it's a oh I need to, I need to surround myself with people who will remind me to stay close to the life. So for some of us, it's to say I need to step away from the darkness that I've been in, that I've been choosing to put myself into.

But we know that when we stay close to the light and when we know who the light is and what it says about us and what it says about our world, then we're in a good place. We stay close to the light when we ask Jesus to shine into the darkness that surrounds us. And I hope that you guys will reflect in this passage. There's so much here. I, you know, honestly, I, when I was talking with Fletcher, he was like, he's like, there's a lot here. You don't go through all of it. I'm like, but it's so good. There's so much here because there's so much life here. And it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a small chunk of the whole Bible, but so much of it is so poignant that reminds us of how we can live a satisfying hopeful, joy filled life. So ultimately, I want to remember that our future is bound to his.

Even when we face difficulties right now, we can take comfort in knowing that in the life to come. For those who follow him, they will not walk in darkness, they will not walk in eternal darkness. They will not walk in internal separation. But as we follow him, as we follow the light, we will be with Him forever and ever. And we can anchor our hope to that. Even if that's the last thing that we have, if it feels like the whole world around us is falling apart, we can always know that He is the light. He is our hope and He will guide us safely through the darkness and any darkness that we encounter. I'm gonna pray and then Mark's gonna lead to me.

Father God. I just thank you for giving us the chance to reflect on your word. There is a lot here and God, I, I praise you for all the people who are not feeling that darkness who will feel very, can feel the, the warm glow of being close to you. God II, I thank you for all those who are there. And God, I pray that they will continue persisting there. But God, I pray for those who don't feel that who feel the coldness of being distant from that source from you. And God, I pray for those who aren't they they didn't even choose to be there. But life circumstances, the people around them, maybe whether intentionally or unintentionally are going to put them in a space.

And God, I pray that you would remind them this moment, this week, this month that you are the light, you are the savior, you come and you bring us, you call us to draw close to you. And God, I pray for those who are, are not sure about who you are. They're wondering who you are or maybe they felt like they were hurt by you or by the church and they're only stumbling this online by action or they're here because someone made them come that I pray that they would try to find the warmth, the light that can help them navigate this, that they would recognize that you died to give us navigation through the darkness and that they would see you as their Lord and their savior and God. I just pray that as we leave here, that you will protect us in the darkness and pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from John 7:53-8:11 about the story of Jesus’s response to the woman caught in adultery. Discussion points: The golden plates theory and the dictation theory are some common but unlikely explanations for where the Bible came from, the plenary theory asserts that the origin of the Bible is both human and divine, Jesus does not choose to reject the law or to condemn the woman, gentleness requires us to use the right amount of force with others to bring them closer to Christ.

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Scripture reader: [John 7:53-8:11] They went each to his own house. But Jesus went to the mount of Olives early in the morning, he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and taught them the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and placing her in the midst. They said to him, teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say this? They said to test him that they might have some charge to bring against him? Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her. And once more, he bent down and rode on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one beginning with the older ones and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus stood up and said to her woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you. She said, no one, Lord and Jesus said, neither do I condemn you go and from now on sin no more.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: We're going through a series on the book of John. At the moment. We've been walking through the gospel of John, which is one of the four biographies of Jesus. We've been walking through this, this gospel for several months now and we come to this passage in John chapter seven slash eight, mainly in eight that is probably one of the most heavily debated passages in the entire scripture. And it's not because what happens in it is necessarily very controversial. What happens in it actually isn't very controversial. What happens in it is it can be supported by many other stories about The New Testament. We don't learn anything new about Jesus, we don't learn anything new about salvation. We have no new doctrine found in this passage. But the only problem is that we have this little header at the beginning of the passage that says the earliest manuscripts do not include this passage. And so what do we make of that when it says the earliest manuscripts do not include this passage.

The Bible has a lot of different ways of notating when there might be a section of the the Bible that is controversial that scholars aren't sure about. They usually just put a little, a little superscription or a footnote. And they say, hey, there's a little bit of debate about this word and, and exactly where we, we do what we do right here, but this passage gets an entire break in the action. OK? It doesn't just get a superscription. It gets a break that says this passage is probably not original and it's just a shining red light for us as we read it. And it should be, I can only think of one other place in the entire scripture that has this type of break in it. And it's at the end of Mark 16, which is more questionable than this one even.

But this is probably the, the second most debatable passage, whether this belongs in the Bible or is it or does it not belong in the Bible? And it leaves a lot of questions in our mind? Does it not when we read that type of thing? What are we to make of that? What are we to think about this story? Why is this here? If the earliest manuscripts didn't have it? How did it get here? What is going on? Where did it come from? Is it original or is it not? How can we know, how can I trust the Bible anyways? Where do we get, where do we get this thing? If this wasn't in the original? Where did the original come from? What is going on here? And if these aren't the questions that are going through your mind. You can believe that they're going through others minds and it just leaves us with the question of where did we get this Bible? How did we get this thing? Can I trust the Bible and look friends? We are a church that believes the Bible. I'll be very clear. We are a church that believes the Bible. That's what we're all about. We believe the Bible.

But why, why do we believe this book? We need to think about that carefully. We need to think about it because it's not gonna work to go to your friends and say, you know what if it's in the Bible? I believe it. And then they say why? And you're like, well, it's God's word to me. How do you know? It just is right. That's usually where the conversation ends. It just is, we have to have a better reasoning for believing the Bible than that. And if you grew up with the idea that the Bible is the word of God, I'm so glad that you did. I'm so glad that you're here and that you're a part of our church, but you might not spend a lot of time questioning the origins of the Bible. And that's OK. You don't have to, you know, if you believe that it's the word of God, that's the right answer. And sometimes that's all you need. But you better believe that your friends spend time questioning because what if you, what if you could actually defend this? What if you could go to a friend and say the Bible is the word of God? And they say why? And you actually could give them a good reason for why the Bible is the word of God. Would that change the conversation that is to follow about who Jesus is?

Well, sure. Yeah, if they could actually believe that the Bible is what we say it is, they would, they would change their mind. So we have to think about the Bible when we think about this because the earliest manuscripts didn't include this section. It just leads us to wonder where all this is coming from. So I have two points for us today. First, we're gonna spend like half of our time talking about the Bible because I just think it's such an important thing for us to talk about. And this is such a great opportunity for us to just take a step back and think about where the Bible came from.

So the first point is the complicated history of this passage. And then the second point, we're going to actually look at the passage and talk about the complicated history of this woman. So we, we have two things with the complicated history. One is this book in front of us that has a complicated history. And the second is the woman that we find in the passage who has a complicated history. So first, the complicated history of this passage, passages like this one, invite us to consider the origins of our Bible. Now, what I'm about to say might sound rather sacrilegious to some of you, but the Bible did not descend from a cloud one day and appear before us in a completed format. The Bible is not the fourth member of the Trinity, although we treat it like it often times we have to think about where we got the Bible.

I wanted to present there's many different theories for where we got the Bible. But I want to present at least three different theories for where we got the Bible. The first theory that I'll point out is the Golden Plates theory. Now, I don't know any scholars who actually believe this theory. but it's this idea that the Bible was this thing that we discovered and where did it come from? I don't know, but it's from God. And so we discovered this thing, I don't know where this material came from. It just fell from heaven. And this is a, a theory that Tim Mackey talks about the guy who does the, the Bible project if you've ever seen that youtube channel. And it's it's, it's kind of the default position of most Christians even though no one seriously thinks this is, this is what it is. This is the way that we treat the Bible often times it's just like, because we don't know where it came from. We just treat it like it's a golden plate. Like, I don't know where it came from, but it's the word of God. So I believe it.

Now, the second theory for where we got the Bible that I want to present to you is, is from a book. There's actually a book that I appreciate a lot called 40 Questions About the Bible and Interpretation. It's written by one of my seminary professors and a friend. He was the second reader on my, my dissertation when I finished my doctorate a few years ago named Rob Plummer. And he wrote that book and, and he puts forward this theory of the dictation theory. And so if we don't believe that the Bible just descended down from heaven or like some golden plates that we found in the ground. Many people would believe this dictation theory, which this is a theory that says the authors of the Bible were actually writing exactly what God. God was whispering in their ear or God was actually like controlling the pen himself as they were writing it. So it was humans writing the Bible. But, but the Holy Spirit like a Ouija board was taking over the pen at that moment, like who's moving the pen? It's not me moving the pen. Are you moving the pen? I don't know. It's the Holy Spirit. It has to be. And so God took over the pen and dictated exactly what the human authors were to write.

This is just absolutely ridiculous though, is it? Huh? It's not like John fell into a trance and wrote his, wrote his book and then he woke up and he's like, oh, what's been happening? Oh, look at this book. I, I guess I should see what the Holy Spirit just wrote. You know, what, what, what's happening or actually a better illustration might be. Luke who's a doctor. He's a historian, he's going around doing all these eyewitness interviews and trying to get the most accurate depiction of what happened in the early days of the church. And throughout jesus' life, he didn't, he didn't just begin his studies by saying, you know, I prayed and I just wrote exactly what the Holy Spirit brought to mind. No, he endeavored to put together the most accurate depiction of who Jesus was and is and what he the spirit continued to do through the apostles in the early days of the church in the Book of Acts. So I don't think that's the dictation theory either.

I think that the best theory for us that I'm going to present is called the verbal plenary theory. And the verbal plenary theory says that the Bible, much like Jesus has two origins. The Bible is both a human book and a divine book. Much like Jesus. The Bible is both human and divine in that the quote from the book says this, that the that there is a dual authorship to the scriptures. While the authors of the Bible wrote as thinking, feeling human beings, God so mysteriously superintended the process that every word written was exactly the word he wanted written. That is where we got the Bible from normal humans under the inspiration of the spirit writing. But God superintended his purposes so that what they would write would be the exact words that he would want written at that time. Now, this is a better way to view the Bible because it just causes us to think about what the Bible is and where we got it and why, why we care about it so much.

The Bible is authoritative to us. Not because in and of itself it is authoritative. The Bible is authoritative to us because in the Bible, it tells us who Jesus is and Jesus is authoritative to us. The Bible has no authority apart from Jesus, apart from God giving it authority and Jesus is my king. I want to know everything that Jesus said. But you know what Jesus except for what he wrote in the sand. In, in today's story, we have no recording of him writing anything. All we have are the recordings of what his disciples of what his followers would write about him in the gospels. And then we have what happened in the early days of the church that were seen and recognized the scripture very early on.

So we have like Peter, an apostle of Jesus writing a book, a letter and he references some of the writings of Paul and he calls them scripture. And so they're referencing each other and they're calling them scripture. And so it's very easy to see that early in the church. There's a recognized number of books that are that are recognized as what's authoritative and what is, what is inspired by God. So when we, when we look at the Bible, what it is is it's, if you think about the Bible is like the Golden Plates theory, or you think about the Bible from the dictation theory, what we normally end up doing when we do that is we end up treating the Bible as is as if it is a sacred rule book, a sacred guidebook. OK. It's like this is the book that has all the rules and I'm gonna live my life by these rules and that's gonna make me a better person, but that's not what the Bible is and it's not what it was meant to be.

The Bible is a collection of books. It's 66 books that are meant to tell one story and the story is both God's creative purposes for the world, but also his redemptive purposes for the world. So the Bible answers the biggest questions that we have about our life. Who am I? Why was I created. What is this for? What are these desires in me leading toward and what's wrong with me? And, and it answers that and it actually shows us the resolution to these things by showing us the story of the world being broken and then the world being put back together by Jesus. And so the Bible is meant to tell us the story of Jesus Christ. Every passage, every scripture points us toward who Jesus is. And that's why we believe the thing because we love Jesus. And this is what tells us who Jesus is.

So when we go to the Bible, we're not just going to learn the etymology of the words. We're not just going because it's the sacred text that teaches us how to be moral. We go to the Bible looking for our savior, looking for Jesus himself. That is why we're going to the Bible. So what do we do with a section like this that very clearly tells us that the earliest manuscripts did not include it? Well, I think that that's a good indication that it probably isn't original, that it probably wasn't what John originally wrote it. The earliest manuscripts because what you see over the course of the Bible is that the Bible was copied thousands and thousands of times over because in the early days of the church, church was persecuted. They didn't they current, they couldn't all get together and, and have these conversations that what they would do is they would kind of go in hiding from city to city and then scribes would copy down the, the letters and the books that were passed around and they would take it to a new city.

And so you had like one Bible for each church and in many of these places. And and then over years and years, the scribes would continue to copy it. And so often times when we see things added to the Bible, we assume that it's not original because it was inserted by a scribe at some point. But the the occasions are so rare and it tells, it just tells you, it tells you when we find that type of thing. It's the Bible is not trying to hide anything. It's not trying to dupe you. The Bible tells you when there's a problem with the, with the with, with the translation or, or with what we understand it to be. when you look at New Testament scholars, none of them.

Well, for the most part believe that this story was originally a part of God, a part of the gospel of John when it was written, but it was added centuries later. So John Piper summarizes this in, in six points as he so often does with so many points. But John Piper summarizes the evidences that like so OK. Yeah, he says first, the story is missing from all the Greek manuscripts of John before the fifth century. Second, all the earliest church fathers omit this passage and commenting on John and pass it directly from John 752 to John 812. In fact, number three, the text flows very nicely from 52 to 8 to 812 from John chapter seven verse 52 to John chapter eight verse 12. If you leave the story out and just read the passages that the story were not there. Number four, no eastern church father cites the passage before the 10th century when dealing with this gospel. Number five, when the story starts to appear in manuscript copies of the gospel of John, it shows up in different places other than here.

So sometimes when you find the early manuscript here, this story will pop up in different places. So it will be after John 736 after John 744 after John 2125. And in one manuscript, it pops up in Luke totally different book. Same story. It shows up in Luke chapter 21 verse 38 its style and vocabulary is more unlike the rest of John's gospel than any other paragraph in the gospel. And so we have really good reason to believe that this is not original to what John wrote, but it was inserted later. And why was it inserted later? Well, it's almost, it's also almost guaranteed that it actually happened based upon the way that it is written and the way that the scribes were insistent that it's included. And so from the very early days, it, it, it was a story that people told about Jesus and that we assume was an actual aspect of what Jesus did. And as we go through the passage, I'll show you more reasons why we think that it actually happened.

But most scholars as I've read and, you know, I think that they're smarter than I am. Most scholars believe it actually is something that happened, but that they didn't know exactly where to put it. So they just had to insert it somewhere and that's why it ends up here. All that to say, what should this complicated history of the Bible do to your faith in the Bible? And I'll tell you what it does for me when I learn about where the Bible came from, the more I learn about the Bible where the Bible came from. It's not that I question it more, but I trust it more because who am I going to trust more? The person who says I'm always 100% accurate no matter what or am I gonna, am I gonna trust the guy that's like, you know, this one thing, I'm not sure on this one, but I'm very sure on all of these things. Well, it's gonna make me want to believe the things that they say they are sure on more because they're willing to admit when they're not sure.

And that's what the, what the translators of the Bible are doing. They're saying, hey, we're not sure about this one little section. We're gonna tell you, we're not sure. We're gonna be honest. We're not being disingenuous, but these are things we are sure. And so it makes me so much more confident in what the Bible is teaching me as I look at the history of the Bible. And so all that being said, well, I would, I would actually hesitate to call this the word of the Lord, the inspired word of God. I love the story. And there's nothing new in this story that we can't learn from other passages about God's character who he is. And so as we go through this story, we can reflect on who Jesus is and appreciate it and appreciate who Jesus is from it. So let's do that.

Number two, the complicated history of this woman. Let's look at the passage. This story displays the perfect combination of jesus' gentleness, his compassion and his justice. Isn't that what we most want as a God to both be compassionate and just at the same time. And this passage does a great job of explaining that. For Jesus, look at, look with me, verse two early in the morning, he came again to the temple and all the people came to him and he sat down and taught them and, and the scrip that might tell us one reason why they put it here because Jesus is in Jerusalem and it's not leading up to his death just yet. So they had to find some time when Jesus was in Jerusalem, which he's in Jerusalem for the feast of the booths. And so this might be one reason why John seven is a favorite place to put it. All the people came to him and he sat down and taught them the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and placing her in the midst. They said to him, teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. All right.

So the religious leaders, the Pharisees and scribes of the day, they are dead set on catching Jesus, they want to trap him, they want to kill him. They're not big Jesus fans. And so they, they kind of set a trap here. They're, they're looking to find a way to, to get Jesus discredited or something like that. And so they have this woman who's caught in adultery. Now, here's the thing with adultery. Adultery is a hard thing to prove, right? How many movies do we know of people that are trying to prove adultery before you know, DN DNA test and Maury and all that type of thing? It's, it's a very difficult thing to prove, but from this passage, it doesn't sound like there's any doubt that this woman is an adulterer.

There's no doubt. It says that she is caught in adultery. It doesn't say that she was seen leaving a house with a man. It doesn't say that we have suspicion to believe that the w that the child that she's impregnated with which we're not sure that she is, um, is not her husband's or anything like that. It says she was caught in adultery. That means someone walked in, ok. Uh, someone walked, they saw everything that happened that for some of this, for some of us, this is nightmare fuel. Like think of the most shameful moment of your entire life. And then imagine religious leaders walking in and catching you in it. Oh, it should jar us a little bit. She got caught in the act here. Now, there's one thing, there's one thing missing here. If you think about it. And that's the other person that was participating in the act. And where is he? Where is the man that was here?

I love the way that scholar D A Carson puts this. Now, this is a very proper scholar. He, he is very dry. If you know D A Carson, he's, he's Quebecois. He's, he's very like just very sincere Canadian man. And, and he said adultery is not a sin one commits in splendid isolation. It's just a great line. It's just fantastic. Yeah, I love it. Verse five. Now, in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. This is this is what the, uh, Pharisees were saying to Jesus. So, what do you say? They, they've lobbed the softball up? They're like, all right, Jesus, what you gonna do with this? All right. We got another one for you. Here you go. They said this to test him that they might have some charge to bring against him. Now, they're really just trying to bring, make a trap. Ok.

They're not concerned about a justice. The scribes are not concerned about justice here. If they were concerned about justice, there would be two people standing in front of Jesus right now. Not one. Ok. This guy was caught in the act as well as she was because it's not something you can do by yourself. And these Pharisees are just trying to catch Jesus and this time and still in today's society, in many ways, women are far more likely to face the consequences of sexual sin than men are. And so as you read this passage, you are suppo your heart is supposed to go out to this woman to say, oh, what do you do in that situation? It's unfair, right? That she's being brought forward like this and the guy is not and what adultery is not.

There are consequences written for adultery in the Old Testament. They were rarely executed throughout the biblical times, rarely because it's just such a hard thing to prove. But the law of Deuteronomy is clear if you're caught in adultery by more than one witness, you are to be condemned to be stoned. And so they're asking Jesus his opinion. He has a choice. Jesus either has to do one of two things. He has to reject the law of Moses and say, you know what, not a big deal. The law of Moses isn't a big deal. Just let her off or he has to reject this woman and, and say, you know what stone her and that is the choices. Those are the choices that are laid before Jesus.

If he picks to reject the law of Moses, he's condemned as a heretic. If he picks to condemn the woman, he is heartless and he loses his credibility with his followers. The Pharisees, oh, they have to be excited. They've got a good one. OK? This is a good puzzle for, for them. They're just, you know, maniacal over there laughing got Jesus between a rock and a hard place. Now, Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. I love this detail. I have no idea what he wrote. No one does. OK. Many people have theorized what he wrote in the ground. I'm not even going to give you any of the theories because I don't know, I have no clue. He could have just been drawing a stick man for all. I know. I don't know what he was doing. He was writing something on the ground.

It actually does contribute to the case of authenticity of the story. CS Lewis who often gets quoted by us, but here he's speaking as a literary uh historian, a literary, literary, literary historian. Um, obviously I'm not one and he is, um, he was a Harvard, it was an Oxford professor in in literary history. And I'm saying that wrong. I it's just not coming to me at the moment. I'm sorry. And this is what he says. I'm, I'm perfectly convinced that whatever the gospels are, they are not legends, they're not artistic enough, they don't work up to things. Look at the story about, about him scribbling in the dust with a woman caught in adultery. Nothing comes of the scribbling. It adds nothing to the story and the art of inventing little irrelevant details to make an imaginary scene more convincing is purely a modern art. Surely, the only explanation of this passage is the thing really happened. The author put it in simply because he'd seen it. So there's no reason for the author to record this. It makes no contribution to the story. He just saw it. And so he's like, I'm gonna tell you how, how I saw it. Jesus wrote in the ground. What did he write? It doesn't matter. He did it. And that's, that's what's going on here.

Verse seven. As they continue to ask him, he stood up and said to them, let him who is without sin among you. Be the first to throw a stone at her. That's brilliant. He doesn't choose one or the other. It's brilliant. He doesn't reject the woman, he doesn't reject the law instead. What Jesus does is he shows the gross hypocrisy of the religious leaders, the gross hypocrisy. Now, when he does this what he's, he's quoting also from Deuteronomy, they come to him with a Deuteronomy challenge. He quotes from Deuteronomy And this is what he says, let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her. And he's saying basically what he's saying is in order for you all Pharisees to be witnesses to the crime, you have to also not be perpetrators of the crime.

You see you can't be a witness if you were participating in the crime yourselves. And so he's saying he's certainly saying, hey, if you think you're better than her, watch out, you're not, you are just as sinful as her and you're wanting me to judge her. But it's very likely that he's insinuating more than that because if you had to be sinless in order to judge someone, then no one would ever be judged right? There would never be any judgment of guilt because no one is sinless. No one can stand before you sinless. Instead what I think that he's saying is you Pharisees and religious leaders, you are perpetrators of the very sin that you are accusing her of how can you accuse a woman of adultery when you yourself are participants in it? This is the more likely solution. That's probably what he's insinuating.

And so Jesus is saying I'm not rejecting the law of Moses, but you're not qualified to be witnesses. Boom, he dropped the mic, he, he got her off on a technicality. OK? This is a totally, this is the type of lawyer that I would want if I ever did something bad. Ok, I this is some saul Goodman stuff. Ok? He's, he is getting her off, not because she's innocent and he's also not rejecting the law. He's just saying your witnesses are not good witnesses and therefore you have no case against her. He finds a way to hold both moral conviction and radical compassion.

This is the beauty of Jesus. Is it not that he holds moral conviction and radical compassion at the same time, verse nine, when they heard it, they went away one by one beginning with the older ones and Jesus was left alone with a woman standing before him. The Pharisees knew that they had been defeated. And you know, this is a different sermon for certain, but it does say that they left the one by one beginning with the older ones and I don't know exactly why. But maybe it's that as you get older, you're more willing to admit when you're wrong. Maybe not. We all know some older people that aren't that way. But maybe, maybe it is one of those things you're willing to count your losses as you grow in maturity. And that, that is something that we can learn.

Verse 10, Jesus stood up and said to her woman, who are they or excuse me, woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you and she said no one lord and Jesus said, neither do I condemn you go and from now on sin no more. So look, Jesus isn't saying look, I knew you were innocent from the beginning. I knew you didn't do that thing. Now, what he says is go and sin no more. Jesus knows that she actually did do the thing but that doesn't cause him to condemn her instead what he demands is conversion. He said he doesn't just let her off the hook and say, OK, go live your life. He says, I don't condemn you now go and live your life in accordance with that, go and sin no more. He doesn't deny her sin or say anything about her guilt. He just says that she's not condemned. He lets her off, but he tells her to change the way that she's living.

You see, it's not that Jesus is light on sexual sin. We know that when we read the scriptures, he says that for us to look lustfully upon someone is the same thing as to commit adultery with them in our hearts. Jesus talks about sexual sin often throughout the scripture. He is not easy on sexual sin. He's not light on sexual sin. Jesus is heavy on mercy. That's the thing. He's heavy on Grace Matthew 12 verse verse 20. It says a bruised reed, he will not break and a smoldering wick, he will not snuff out. Just think about that for a second. A bruised reed, a very gentle, a very a thing that can be easily broken, a bruised reed, he will not break in a smoldering wick. He won't snuff out if you feel like you're at your very end, like there's not much left that you can do like you're struggling just barely making it.

Jesus will not just break you or snuff you out. He is gentle with the broken and the suffering. That's what this is saying that he is gentle with the broken and suffering. Matthew 11. He says come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden for. I am gentle and lowly of heart and I will give you rest. Do you know what it means to be gentle? Do you know what it means to be gentle? Have you received gentle love and care? Hopefully you have, but many of us have not to be gentle, is to use the exact amount of force necessary and not 1% less or 1% more to be gentle is use the exact amount of force necessary to accomplish the purposes in which you're seeking to accomplish.

If you have a broken arm and you go to the doctor and the doctor is like, hey, I'm gonna have to set your arm and you say, ok, please be gentle. What you're saying is not, hey, don't, you know, just pull on it softer because if they pull on it softer, they're not gonna set the bone, right. What you're saying is, don't pull on it any harder than what you actually have to pull on it with the exact amount of force necessary to set my bone. Please. And that is what it means to be gentle. Jesus knows how to be gentle with each and every one of us.

I have a friend who's Jesus's gentleness would feel like a dump truck running me over. He just has a harder head than I do, but it's the exact amount of force necessary for him. And every time I talk to him about it, he delights in the Lord's gentleness with him, even though I'm like, you just had a tractor run over you. And he's like, oh, it was great. The Lord's gentleness better than I deserve and it is it, I mean, for some of us, we have really sensitive consciences and Jesus knows how to deal with us in those. He knows how to get down in, in the dirt and care with care for us and our brokenness and our hurting and friends. I think that we can learn from his disposition.

How can we be gentle to one another? You have friends who have varying degrees of this and this is something that as a pastor, I'm, I'm learning and for some of you as, as your shepherd here, I'm learning that gentleness means that means roping you up and carrying you back to the other sheep. And for some of you that even to speak a word is hard and it's not always easy to tell if you're being too strong or too soft. It takes discernment. We have to pray to the Holy Spirit to help us to understand what does this person require for me to speak truth into their lives. May we be more sensitive to the spirit's leading on gentleness with our friends as we seek to follow Jesus' leading of being gentle with us.

It's not that Jesus looks at this woman and he says, you know, don't worry about it. Wink wink, not no, your sins. Good. Jesus never winks and nods at sin. This isn't how he handles it. All sin deserves consequences. But that is what Jesus came to do. Is it not? Jesus knows that the day is coming when he would bear the shame, the abundant shame of this woman by bearing her consequence for her. He'd be condemned on her behalf. So it's not that he winks and nods at the sin. He just knows that the sins consequences are coming through a different means that he himself would bear it on her behalf.

Eric Raymond, a pastor over in Watertown. Actually, he is a friend of mine, but he wrote a book called He's Not Ashamed. And in the book, Jesus is, he says this Jesus comes for messy people and he comes from messy people. If you look at the lineage of Jesus, many messy people in the lineage of Jesus. Jesus isn't ashamed of you or your story. Of course not. Of course not. Everything we've done is OK. This is why we need a savior in the first place. But our shameful stories don't repel Jesus. He knows our shame and he still loves us. Look, some of you are here today and you just feel dirty, you feel like if someone had walked in on what you had, you had been participating in, in the past 24 hours or, or in the past seven days or in the past year or at some point in your life that, that if someone had really knew you that you, you are just sitting here feeling like you don't belong, right? Like I'm just faking it, I don't belong here. And if people, you know, I put on the face and, and people, you know, they seem happy to see me. But if they knew who I really would was they, they wouldn't even open the doors, they wouldn't even let me in.

Jesus welcomes you with open arms because that is all of us, we are a collection of the messed up people that is where we come from, that is who we are. And the, the quicker we start admitting that we are a collection of the messed up people. The more welcoming we will be to the type of people that Jesus most has a heart for Amen and friends. It's not that you don't deserve the judgment of God. You do and I do too. But you get off on the same technicality of this woman, which is double jeopardy. You know the term double jeopardy. There was a nineties movie called double jeopardy. That's how I learned this. Ok? Double jeopardy is, you can't be sentenced to the same crime twice. So if, if you are convicted of murder and then somehow you get off on it, you get off of the, the, the conviction, you can't be convicted of it again. You can't be convicted of the same murder twice. And what it's basically saying is Jesus has already received your punishment. The the condemnation has come down. He's been declared guilty on our behalf. That's why he had to die on the cross.

And therefore we get off because of what he has accomplished for us. We get off on the same technicality that he let this woman off on even those sins that you are most ashamed of. He is not ashamed of you. He already knows them, you can confess them and and God help us. Wouldn't it be great if we could confess them to one another? Wouldn't it be great if we had that type of confidence in Christ? That because He welcomes us with such open arms, we can welcome one another and we can be bold in our confession with one another. And as we're bold, we're encouraging one another to be bold in the same kind of way. It's gonna take time for many of us. But the scriptures tell us to confess our sins to one another that brings Jesus glory and let me end with this. What if you don't feel very messy? OK. This is an area of the country where a lot of people have their lives together. OK?

What if you resonate more, maybe with the Pharisees here and you look at you, look at this woman, you're like she got off scot free. I mean, she does deserve a little bit of punishment, should she not? Maybe you think Jesus was a little soft on this woman that was caught in adultery. And let me ask you this question to, to finish things up here. I think that the greatest miracle and the entire New Testament, apart from the resurrection would have been if the Pharisees had looked at Jesus and said, oh, you're right. They're prideful people and they walk away disappointed. They don't wanna hear what Jesus has to say. But what if they had heard what Jesus said? And then they said, we're sorry. Would you forgive us as well? Would you bear our shame as well? You see that would be a great miracle, would it not? And maybe God can show you that same sort of miracle today.

Maybe you feel like you have your life together. You look down on other people who are me messier than you are. But maybe today he can show you that even your self righteousness is but filthy rags before him and that you need his grace. As much as this woman in the story today needed his grace. So as we prepare ourselves for this communion meal, this is an opportunity for us to repent. It's an opportunity for us to go and sin no more as Christ told this woman, it doesn't mean you will actually never sin again. Jesus, open it welcomes us with open arms over and over again. But what it means is that you are living your life in accordance with what he has commanded us and you're trusting in Him as the one who's delivered you from your sins. So let's stand as we prepare our hearts for worship to respond to Christ this morning.

God, we pray that as we bring you our shame, that we would understand the depth of your love, the way that you are willing to bear our shame, that you were stripped of your clothes, that you were made. Nothing that you took the form of a lowly servant to serve us, that you're willing to wash our feet, that you're willing to care for us. Even though we have oftentimes rebelled against you and Jesus, we pray that you'd be gentle with us right now. We pray for anyone that needs a little bit more force to get to that general action that you would bring that force in their life. And we pray for anyone who just feels just beat up that they will know that a bruised reed, you will not break and a, a smoldering wick, you will not put out. So God, we, we trust you in this and we pray that your Holy Spirit would be moving in our hearts and helping us to sense who Jesus is and to love him more and more. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

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Guest preacher Reid Monaghan preaches from Colossians 4:2-6. Reid Monaghan is the founder and President of The Gospel Underground. He has over 25 years of ministry experience working with university students and athletes as well as a dozen years in pastoral ministry, church planting and entrepreneurial leadership. Discussion points: Wisdom is living all of life in light of who God is and who we are in him, being gentle and respectful to those outside the faith means we see the image of God in other people, we should be prepared to answer anyone who asks us about our hope in the gospel.

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Scripture reader: [Colossians 4:2-6] Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with Thanksgiving at the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak. Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: Well, Fletcher, thanks for such a kind introduction. It has been a couple of years, I guess since we've been dialing in and then many, many years since that time in New Jersey. we were actually closer to New York City. We don't claim Philadelphia. We don't like the Eagles, sorry if you do. Yeah, come on, I gotta start trouble, right? And so we were, we were, I, this is a picture of my family. my wife grew up on a farm in North Carolina, moved her to New Jersey, we moved to New Jersey on purpose lived there almost a decade. And she's like, I'm still recovering from that. I love Jersey though, man. So, if there's any Jersey people here represent, don't be ashamed of your state. We just have bad pr, right. It's a great place. You should go maybe on a vacation, you know, may, maybe I'm stretching it a little bit. Uh, there so.

Well, I'm glad to be in New England. I've been coming to New England in the winter for a, a long time. Almost 20 years. I have a friend who's in campus ministry at Brown University and I've been speaking at Brown for many, many years, but this year they, he, he and Fletcher and everybody decided to overload me. I've been here since February 1st. I think I've spoken seven times, led three Bible studies and like four consulting meetings and I'm with you all, all day today and I need the Lord's energy. Right. But, hey, here's what's weird. I, my expectations for New England have been let down this year. The reason why is that? I don't, I, I don't get cold ever. And so I like New England because it challenges me a little bit. It's like, maybe it'll be 10 degrees and I'll be a little cold. I have to be tough about it. No, I'm walking around with no, no jacket. It's nice. Right. It's like 50 degrees. What is going on here? I'm sure we could have a political fight about that. Why it's warm because as folks are apt to do.

My background in ministry, I, I came to faith in Jesus as a 20 year old college wrestler at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I was studying physics at the time and I was not looking for God. But by God's grace, there was someone on the campus that was sharing good news with people like me. And when I was 20 years old, my life turned radically. My atheist dad was very upset, but I didn't care because God had saved me, rescued me and my wife. And I spent about eight years of our lives.

After we graduated, graduated, got married. we spent eight years in direct campus ministry, a world that I'm still very connected to today. And I had this idea that like para church groups were kind of like, hey, we're like the Marines, we take the beach. The church is just kind of like the, I don't know what they're doing over there, you know, throwing grass to sheep. I mean, they're not doing much. I could not have been more wrong because God's people as the local church and communities have this wonderful, wonderful reality. There's a devoted life of worship together as God's people.

But at the same time, there's a bold witness in the world. And today we have the privilege of looking at a passage of scripture that has both of these, this devotion to God and then being his sent people in the world in our reading from Colossians. This is actually at the end of that little book in The New Testament. And so it's, it's wild how Colossians develops to the ideas we're going to look at today. This was a new church community being established in an ancient city and, and they were in a world of the Roman Empire where there was a common phrase that Caesar was lord, that they were to bow down almost in a godlike way to an emperor. And with all these things and powers that be flying around. They in the book of Colossians said, no, Christ is Lord their ideologies flying around them at the day, many religions but yet walking by faith in Christ in a life characterized by love, transformed people, transformed whole household and communities in the book of Colossians is about that.

And then we arrive to this question in chapter four, how should God's people relate to the world around them outside of the church? This is an important question. I mean, you might be here today and somebody's invited you 477 times and you finally came today and we're literally talking about how we should relate to people like you or people like I was, I remember being a young guy, never been to church. I mean, I didn't know what this like this this freaked me out. I went to a church. I had these, I mean, what are these, like? Right. If you're not a church person, like these little things are like, what is it? How do I deal with that? And I remember wondering as a young man, how would the church engage with me? You know, I didn't, I didn't know the books of the Bible. I actually went to a Bible study with some college athletes at UN C where I said, you know what's the Book of Job about? And they, then they had jokes, right? They had jokes like, I don't know job that says job to me. I don't know what you're talking about. Joe, you're putting the E on me and ain't there, right? Well, the Bible cares a lot about people inside the church and outside the church with love and compassion.

So the question is, how do we walk in wisdom in relationship to others? Now, wisdom is one of those big words, very important words in scripture, very important to our lives. And there's some very important questions, especially if you're young, right? You need to ask what wisdom is, what is wisdom and then how do we get some of it? So I'm gonna do a little precursor to our text with this little mini message on wisdom because we don't know what we're talking about. We're talking about wisdom. We won't know how to have it in relationship to others.

And so wisdom, John Calvin said this. He said our wisdom in so far as it's deemed true and solid wisdom consists almost entirely in two parts, the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves. Now, I think that gets to some very important aspects of wisdom. I had an old Testament professor who defined wisdom this way, living all of life in light of who God is living all of life in light of who God is now. I've made a baby out of these two. Calvin and my professor. So I said this, here's a definition. Wisdom is living all of life in light of who God is and who we are in him.

And to become wise requires a lot from human beings, right? Because we all know there are some fools out there and you might look in the mirror and see one sometimes because there's a fool in here. Wisdom requires something it requires us to consider and contemplate life. It, it, it, it requires us to examine our own lives to actually look in that proverbial mirror. It requires us to change when we're being foolish and wisdom grows with experience. I've told my kids this for years. Some of this work I still do is with young people. I'm the chaplain for Virginia Tech wrestling teams. I work with 18 to 23 year old knuckleheads and, and I tell them all the time. Wisdom is a paradox for young people. It's because it's what you need the most and you don't have and to get it, you have to live.

There's two ways to gain wisdom. The, the one that I call, the easy, easy way you can listen and heed the words of the wise young people don't always like doing that. But this is Proverbs 12 through seven to know wisdom and instruction to understand words of insight, to receive instruction and wise, dealings and righteousness and justice and equity to give prudence to the simple knowledge and discretion to the youth. So you can listen and accumulate wisdom by heeding the words of the wise. The second way you can gain wisdom is what you can learn. Somebody messing up. Yeah, you can learn the hard way. Both ways are valid. I tell my kids that, but you can learn the hard way. It's ok. We all make our mistakes. Sometimes you don't want to smack your head into the wall 100 times to learn a lesson. Maybe you could listen for once. I don't know, but maybe not.

This is Proverbs 3, 11 and 12. My son do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of correction for the Lord repr the one he loves as a father, the son in whom he delights today. We're going to look at this wise witness towards those who are outside the church. How do we grow in this thing? Called wisdom with experience, engaging with others.

Father, open your word to us now, thank you. Let us see what you want us to see in this small bit from the book of Colossians. Just pray you would encourage us, motivate us, convict us. Give us hope and move us into love and service towards others and sharing good news with others because we don't know father, how you're going to work in the lives of people. You've put us in. Lord. I know I'm forever grateful for a man who took the time to talk to me when I wasn't looking for you. I wasn't, I wasn't a religious guy, but you had a purpose and plan to save me. And so father give us wisdom as we work our jobs and engage in recreational activities and serve our cities that you might use us wherever we might be found and sent in Jesus name. Amen.

Three words that will outline our text today are devoted, clear and wise, devoted, clear and wise. Look with me at Colossians chapter four, verse two. Colossians is in the New Testament. Second part of the Bible, right after the book of Philippians be devoted, continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. This word steadfast man. I like it. It means solid, strong, committed, devoted to something. The word of God here calls us to be devoted to prayer with that we don't tap out in prayer, prayer is hard for us as human beings. Prayer can be discouraging if we're desiring ABC and we're getting 123 in life. But prayer is our connection, a spiritual communion with God that we need to be steadfast in, in this verse says, being in watchful in it, being watchful with Thanksgiving.

These are two wonderful wor words, watchfulness means kind of to be alert about one's surroundings, right? That, that God puts Christian communities right in places all over planet earth, in those contexts matter to what's going on in our mission. There should be an alertness to the block we live on and the places we hang out so that we might be aware to what God is doing. New Testament scholar Richard Melick, I put a quote for you on the screen says this, the colossians were to pray with mental alertness. Presumably this meant that they were to know the circumstances of life, particularly those with affected the spread of the gospel.

Informed prayer is likely to be more purposeful, personal and powerful. They were to be watchful as they prayed and they should pray with thanksgiving gratitude. I spoke with some college athletes last week about gratitude and its power in our lives. Gratitude is one of the more transformative things for human experience. In fact, neuroscientists have noticed that the merely act of being thankful, the mental attitude of gratitude rewires the brain changes our physiology and changes everything about life. Of course, when I, when I see facts like that, I asked, well, why is that, why would gratitude be so important for human beings unless we were made for thankfulness? And that just implies that we're not in a inert universe of space time energy that's flying nowhere to nothing but a personal universe because gratitude is given to someone's not merely things.

The Bible says, rejoice, always pray without ceasing in everything. Give thanks. This is a practice we've done as a family since my kids could understand language is like, look, I know giving thanks in all circumstances is easy for you. It's, it's not easy for me. I'm I'm good at giving thanks for the good stuff of life, God gives me a blessing like, oh thank God, right. God allows difficulty. It's a little harder to thank God. But as we pray, watch what we're to pray with Thanksgiving, Philippians 413, the patron verse of scoring touchdowns. You might, you might see this tonight in the stands or on I black in a Super Bowl. You might, I've learned the secret of being content in any and every circumstance I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. This is much more than just, hey, success. If I pray this, I can do all things, I can fly score touchdowns. No, it means that we can be content whether we have little or a lot, whether we have blessing or difficulty, we can do all things through Him. We trust Jesus is what it means to be steadfast and prayer watchful in it with Thanksgiving.

Now, verse three, we, we're to be clear, not only do are we to be aware of our surrounding circumstances? The mission of the gospel community should, should have prayers that are specific. Verse three says this at the same time, pray also for us that God may open up to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison, that I might make it clear, which is how I ought to speak. So, the Apostle Paul here is in jail because for the defense and confirmation and proclamation of the gospel, that's why he was in jail and he's in jail, praying for praying for open doors for the message that, that he might declare it in a certain way. The mystery of the gospel, the beautiful mystery of the gospel that God is bringing people from all the peoples of the world together as a new people, his church. And that, that he should proclaim this mystery that through the good news of Jesus' death, burial and resurrection and new people is being formed. He, he's in jail, he's prayed for open doors, not just so he can run out of prison, but he might declare the good news of Jesus clearly to others. He says he ought to speak clearly.

The opposite of clarity is obscurity, confusing the issue. And there are many ways about the good news of Jesus that we can be unclear. I'll give you four ways to be unclear. We cannot know the gospel. So he said, hey, what do you believe? I bla bla bla bla bla something, right? We're not prepared to give an answer for our hope, the foundation of our hope because we need to learn the good news. We might need to become a Christian ourselves. Secondly, we can be unclear by being ashamed of the gospel. Be afraid or troubled by others. We can be dominated by the opinions of people such that we stay silent when there's an opportunity to share good news. The Bible says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel is the power of God for salvation to all who believe I was not voted the one the most likely to be a preacher in my graduating class from high school. Not not at all, but God in his purposes had someone who was not ashamed of the good news and chose to share it with me.

We can be unclear by neglecting the gospel man, man. People, people love to talk about everything man and we're the, we're the followers of Jesus, right? And then we should be open to share about what we love man. We'll share about how much I love chicken wings with people. But like we're afraid to share the God who saves us. We don't need neglect talking about him, but there's skill and wisdom in learning how to do that well. And then for a way that we can be unclear in our speaking is by changing the gospel or adding to it, making it something that it is not in order to either make it more palatable to people of our age or something more to our own liking. This is second Corinthians four says, therefore, we have this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. We have renounced, disgraceful and underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or tamper with the word of God. But by the open statement of the truth, we commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God were to be devoted in our prayer. We want to be clear about the gospel with others.

And then finally, we get to our phrase, walk in wisdom, verse five, walk in wisdom towards outsiders making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt so that you may know how you ought to answer each person. Th this to me is exciting and mind blowing that the God who created space and time and all that is created the DNA that encodes all of life. The God who made everything chooses to use you and me right here right now in our city to have other people come to know Him. That's, that's incredible. What, what a what a privilege we have to walk with God in this way. He says, walk in wisdom towards outsiders.

Now, I wanna say something about the in and out language of religion because we're not saying here that like that these kind of people are in, these kind of people are out based on weird sets of rules that created by human beings. That's not what we're saying. Outsider here means outside of currently outside of the promises of God, outside of covenant with God, someone's not yet a follower of Jesus. That's what he's talking about here. He says, when we're walking with people outside of the faith, we need to make the best use of the time. And here you, here, you gotta say this means to snatch up the time and use it well, right? It means when there's an opportunity you take it now, I'm old and there's this old store called Kmart. Anybody familiar with Kmart? When I was a kid, they literally had these things called blue light specials. You guys familiar with this, they literally have a blue light in the store and they would all of a sudden it would light up and then everybody was supposed to run and get this cheap deal of something. You did not come to the store to buy. You did not, you probably don't need but you had to take that opportunity, right? Snatch it up.

It's like the algorithm on Instagram, putting these opportunities before me all the time. And my wife's like, why did you buy that? Oh, you know Instagram knows me and the opportunity was there, right? This is the idea to seize these opportunities. It's before us. You may be with a coworker at lunch or you were talking to someone at your kid's soccer match and there's an opportunity and he says to take it, make the best use of the time.

Now there's a passage that I love in First Peter, it says, but if you should suffer for righteousness sake, you will be blessed, have no fear of them nor be troubled. But in your own hearts honor Christ. The Lord as holy. Always be prepared to make a defense for anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience. So that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may put, be put to shame.

There's a strange phenomenon in the world that sometimes Christians don't act gentle and respectful to those outside the faith. I've been going and speaking at Brown University for, as I mentioned for almost 20 years. And I remember years ago, a student at Brown said this, it's frustrating on this campus because the gospel gets cloaked and obscured by people's perceptions of Christianity or their perceptions of Christians being arrogant, power hungry or self interested. Now, look some of that some of that is deserved. Some of that's undeserved, right? Some of that's earned by the jerkiness of Christians. Some of it's just maybe somebody mapping that on them for their own purposes because they want to slander Christianity. But there is a bit of a negative feeling at times right towards Christianity.

So as we interact with the world around us, we want to be gentle and respectful. What does that mean? Weak does it mean cowardly? It means we see the image of God and people and we're called to love, love God and love our neighbors and love our enemies. In fact, I found the evangelistic environment with my non-christian friends is better when I'm not arguing with them about everything. But God, there's this gracious way to wisely respectfully overlap our lives with those outside of the faith, with our friends, our neighbors and coworkers and we can intentionally do this. But as we do stuff, we get counsel here on being wise in the way we speak to others.

The verse continues always be gracious. This is welcoming speech, graciousness speech that live in a state of grace that you've been forgiven, that you act forgiving like to other people. There were kind and compassion because God has shown us compassion. Our speech should be gracious, seasoned with salt. Now, there's all kind of discussion about salt in the ancient world because it had a preserving aspect that they would use to preserve food, anti antiseptic aspect. Right. Also gives flavor. Right. That's good. Just needs a little salt, right? Our speech should have this effect on others. Hey, that's, that's something I want to hear.

Now, there is the case where people don't like us just because of who we worship. I've seen that over and over again in my people won't like what I stand for because they don't like God. My father's that way. right? He he thinks he's God. And so because I'm a worshiper of Jesus, he just, he despises it. I can't control that, but I can control how I speak with him. And then finally, our speech would be grace's season assault so that we know how to answer each person. Did you guys realize that human beings are not all the same? We, we love, this is our culture. We wanna lump large groups of people together in big buckets based on what they look like based on their history, based on their, on their, on their gender. We do, we do this all the time. These people are this like this. These people are like that.

The Bible sees us as made in the image of God. Unique. Now, there's commonalities, right? Between us, there's a universality to being human that we share with every human being. There are cultural narratives that we've lived. Each person has a unique story, a unique soul before God. Unique set of questions that they might have about faith in him, be wise. So we know how to answer each person.

I've seen this in the last several years in 2020 when the pandemic hit, I had like 10 speaking engagements all over the country that were wiped off the board and we're all sitting in our houses and I'm like, wow, what am gonna do God with my life? Do I, like, become a youtuber? And my, my kids all vetoed becoming a youtuber. Uh, no, dad don't do all embarrassed. I was like, I embarrass myself. We do have a podcast that was dope. It's 2017. And I, I remember doing a pod, a podcast series on things. I felt like need to reemerge in our society. And one of them was resiliency and mental toughness. And so I was thinking, who could I interview about resiliency and mental toughness? And so I invited on a division one wrestling coach, right? Like, come over, he, he, he got was, he's not a Christian. And I was just asking like, how do you develop mental toughness and resiliency and not just crumble when life hits us. It was a great conversation. But after the conversation, he's like, hey, I, I, I'm looking for a guy to work with our team. Maybe you can help me because I know you're connected in the religious stuff and everything. I, I need like a chap. I think it's called a chaplain. And then he goes Hey, f maybe you want to do it. I'm like, maybe, and I prayed about it and I was like, yeah, why not? That was my background. You know.

So now I'm in my fourth season as the chaplain for the Virgin Tech wrestling team. And this is a community of people that are very weird. Like today I was in the bathroom. I was like, wow, it's really hot in here. I bet I could cut weight good in this, in this room. I went off £5. This is the room I find in this building. It's weird. Um, but even in a world that has this kind of commonality of a dedicated a most of these guys have been wrestling since they were a five year old. They're all very different. And I remember one of our assistant coaches who's actually just got hired this year at Brown for which is God's Providence. But man named Ty Walls. I spent five hours with he and his wife on Thursday night. And when I met Ty, he's like, hey, man, I'm an agnostic. I don't believe any of this stuff. I'm probably gonna come to the coach's Bible study because we're all coming. I probably gonna, you know, I won't make fun of things. I won't ask you questions that make you feel bad in Bible study. And I'm like, oh, bri, bri, bring it right. Bring it. And, long story short, Ty had a lot of intellectual questions and we met for breakfast for six months and Ty gave his life to Jesus Christ. Yeah. Yeah.

And, and we had other people on the team that were like, hey, I just need to quit smoking weed. Can God help me quit smoking weed? So much different, right? Your friends are all different. Listen. Well to other, we'll talk about this, this afternoon in our seminar of how we listening is such a great, great aspect of sharing the gospel with others. In summary, be devoted, be clear, be wise, Doctor Bill Bright who founded one of the longest running largest campus ministries in the world once said this, we first talked to God about others and then we're ready to talk to others about God, the devoted life and relationship with God with Christ as Lord can lead to wise engagement, answering each person in our lives.

I'm gonna close with a short story about another friend named John Jenkins. Now I made a promise to John, which he mocked that. I was gonna share his story for the rest of my life. And he's like, why? Who cares about my boring pathetic life? OK. I'm gonna show you a picture of John. If you got that slide for me guys, this is my friend John Jenkins. John and I met in a philosophy class. I was applied computer science and physics as an undergrad and you know, mass science mainly. And then so I got very philosophically interested. So years ago when I was in campus, I went back to undergraduate history classes in philosophy. So I took the philosophy series like philosophy, medieval, early modern, modern philosophy.

And I met this guy named John. We were both a little older in the class and this was in 2001 when I met him. And so quite literally, we like endured our professor talking about 911. Our professor was an atheist and he was not friendly to any kind of belief in God. John was there on a G I Bill. He's in his mid twenties, he was an atheist objectivist, meaning he believed in objective right and wrong in truth and he could define it with you. So, but he was an atheist. He was into ayn rand and stuff like that. So me might have read some of that too. And our professor was just this relativistic atheist guy. And we, and so John and I would argue with the professor trying to shut the professor down and then we would like war each other both on the public email with the old thing called a Lister. And he would have to the professors like, hey boys calm down, you know, because we would go, we go at it hard and every day after class, I'd usually spend an hour arguing with John him telling me I'm stupid for believing in the spaghetti Monster Sky Fairy and all this kind of stuff. Right.

And, and I would tell him, ok, and then I, you know, became friends, you know, he was into M MA, I kind of like M MA because I was a wrestler. He was into like liquid cooled and gaming computers, which I wasn't into, but I like technology. So I go look at his liquid cool, you know, gaming computer and you geek out about it. And John and I left kind of bitterly like, yeah, whatever John, you know, you're, you're just kind of a jerk and you're always gonna be a jerk until you change. And he was like, yeah, I know but I like it. And so he went off the law, he literally, he went off to law school and John when I and I would continue our dialogues on Facebook, you know, the beautiful Facebook dialogues that you can have with others and, and, and John would sometimes confess with me. Yeah, I'm really lonely. I'm really sad and nobody's ever gonna love me because I'm a jerk. I'm like, yeah, I told you that, you know, you kind of a jerk and you know that his face is like, yeah, I'm smarter than you and I'm a jerk.

And John John in law school, I said, hey, you know what? It's not true that no one loves you because God loves you. Jesus loves you, man. And, and then he was like, shut up with that stuff and then I lost complete contact with him. He like unfriended me on Facebook at this point in time. Fast forward, probably about 10 years John. Hey, I, I'd like to connect again. Can, can you can you refried me off? Can we be friends on Facebook? And so II I was wanting to punk John back. So I said, oh, I, well, you unfriended me. I I thought, you know, he goes, oh I know I did you, you know, can you refried me back? I was like, ok, so John and I became friends on Facebook and he's like, how are you doing? I heard you up in New Jersey playing the church. I've been following your stuff online or whatever. And I was like, yeah, we're doing ok. And I was like, how are you? He goes, I'm not doing so well. I'm sick and I said, hey man, I'll be praying for you and John wrote back. Ok? I I'm gonna be praying for you too.

Now. I thought John was messing with me. This is what he would do. He would mess with me. So I he's trying to get me and then I showed it to my wife who has the gift, spiritual gift of discernment. She goes, no, no, no. I think he's trying to tell you something. I, I think John's become a Christian and I was like my dad and John Jenkins were the two most unlikely people to become Christians in my whole mind, right? Like, no, he I'm gonna say, oh John, are you interested in spiritual things? And he's like, no, you don't, he's gonna just destroy me. That's what we're gonna do. So I just wrote back at the council with my wife. Hey, John, did you become a Christian? And he wrote back, he said yes.

And so I was like, wow, this is why I was like, what happened? He said, well, I got cancer and then I had to get surgery for my cancer and I'm I've now got a wound in between his front bottom and back bottom that won't heal just open. He's, I'm doing oxygen chambers. I think it just won't heal. And I was like, and that and you became a Christian. He goes, no, I I'm in contract law right now. I'm very good at my my job and I have these, he called them these weird Christians at my work who came over to my house. They built me a stand up desk next to my couch where I can work and do my contract law. They got me a little mini fridge and filled it with Dr peppers. Me and John both love Dr peppers and I was like, yes John. And then he said, yeah. And then I remembered every conversation we ever had and I knew it was intellectually respectable to be a follower of Jesus and I gave my life to Christ. Now I asked John, did you go to their church? He goes, no, they go to this place called Lifechurch dot TV. It's really weird. I can't do it. They, I don't think anyone thinks that this church, I, I can't do it. And he became a Presbyterian. Right.

And he got hyper into reading like RC Sproul books and I'm like, calm down, John don't become Mr Reform guy. And John bought me a laptop because he thought he asked me the specs of my laptop at the time, I was in New Jersey as a pastor and he thought it was deficient to run like bible software that I was running. And so he bought me a brand new laptop and his shipped it to me, man. This is crazy. And he was my brother in Christ and we, we had all these theological discussions and friendship. And then in 2014, I, I flew on a plane to where he was in Oklahoma City practicing law and I preached at his funeral.

Now before he died, I told John, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna share your story for the rest of my life. I was like, why I was like, that's because it's beautiful and, and John, he would write this stuff and I was like, hey, you need to write something before you die. He's like, no, who wants to hear my stupid ideas? Nobody, I'm I'm a jerk. I'm like, ok, John, you're a sanctified jerk now. But so I'm gonna close just with this short thing that John wrote to me on Facebook messenger that I captured and said it's very dear to me. I'll share with you.

He said, occasionally people ask me how I'm able to endure my illness and treatment or remark on how well they think I'm handling it all the flip it response which I sometimes give when I'm in a joking mood is that I really don't have any other choice while that is notionally true. If someone were to generally ask how I am handling the response would go something like this. This man had been a Christian maybe two years. If one accepts that God is sovereign, then one must accept by both. What we do and what we endure are superintended by His will accordingly. The challenges one endures are ordained by him and affects one's own sanctification. Life change and for His glory, we are promised that God is working through our sanctification and are given to understand that the process will not always necessarily be pleasant. We must take his promise seriously and trust that in his wisdom, he has ordained works only to our ultimate good as a result.

While my illness is quite physically debilitating and mentally draining, I am confident that I will be a better man for it. And that confidence is what helps me through the rough patches I have such wonderful friends now who love me so much that they say that they know I'm at peace with my condition, but they would really rather I stick around a while. The short response I have for that, the longer may be found somewhere else on my timeline. He wrote this long dissertation thing is that when I think that my name was called before the foundation of the world, the only available response to my life is awe that he who called me has ordained a plan in which my role is obedience to and working through in the acceptance of his will. Such sovereign power admits of no other options, of course. And this is John: Accordingly, I am behaving in the only rational way under these circumstances. Let's pray. Father can't wait to hang out with in the king of heaven.

Lord, there are such people all around us. We never know John could have remained hardened to you for the rest of his life. But you saw fit to engage him with mini fridge, dr peppers, the love of Christians, intellectual banter and arguments, friendship, and ultimately the power of Christ, the risen Christ, grasping hold of his soul and father wood. It is a privilege to be used of you in these ways. And I just pray that whatever the gifts you've given us, we'd use them to serve others. Whether it's showing kindness or cooking food or answering deep questions or sharing good news directly. Lord, your church has been placed here for this purpose to love and serve others in this world as you use us to seek and to save that, which is lost. Lord, what a what an honor make us available heart, mind and time that we might speak clearly graciously and answer each person and ultimately lift Jesus high. We pray in his name. Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from John 7:11-52 about Jesus’s declaration during the festival of booths. Discussion points: Christianity is not a “check your brain at the door” religion; Jesus declares that he is the living water that the water pouring ceremony symbolized; we receive abundant life from Jesus alone, not the things of this world.

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Scripture reader: [John 7:11-52] The Jews were looking for him at the feast and saying, where is he? And there was much muttering about him among the people. While some said, he is a good man. Others said, no, he is leading the people astray. Yet for fear of the Jews, no one spoke openly of him about the middle of the feast. Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching the Jews. Therefore marveled saying, how is it that this man has learning when he has never studied? So Jesus answered them, my teaching is not mine but his who sent me if anyone's will is to do God's will. He will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory, but the one who seeks the glory of Him, who sent him is true. And in Him, there is no falsehood.

On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out. If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Now this he said about the spirit whom those who believed in him were to receive. For as yet, the spirit had not been given because Jesus was not yet glorified when they heard these words, some of the people said this really is the prophet. Others said this is the Christ, but some said is the Christ to come from Galilee has not. The scripture said that the Christ comes from the offspring of David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was. So there was a division among the people over him. Some of them wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Preacher: Belief. The Christian life following Jesus. These are all things that not only require a head knowledge and understanding of who Jesus is and a belief in him, but also require a heart knowledge, a knowing him intimately as a friend, as a lover, as a savior, as a father. There's many illustrations that we can use to have head knowledge without heart knowledge would leave someone cold and lacking the emotional furnace necessary to get through the dark nights of the soul. But to have heart knowledge, without head knowledge would leave someone with maybe some bright flames of passionate love. But without the theological foundation necessary to properly handle life's toughest questions and needless to say our friend's toughest questions.

In today's passage, we see both senses of following Jesus. We see people following Jesus with both their heads and with their hearts. And I think that it explains to us what's necessary for us to follow Jesus, what it means for us to know him. And in today's passage, we're going to continue in the book of John, we've been working our way through the book of John, since August September, something like that. And we're in the chapter seven, there's 21 chapters. So we'll be here for a little while. And it's our second message in chapter seven.

Last week, we were introduced to the festival of booths. And so we gave the whole background with the festival of booths. How this is a festival that's celebrated the time when the Israelite people were walking through the wilderness. And so they would build these booths and they would sleep in them outside. It was a time to remember that they once lived in tents such as that. And it was coordinate with the time of year during which the the grape harvest was and the olive harvest. So it was a big party. In fact, it was the biggest party ever year in Jerusalem. It's like Mardi Gras for Jerusalem. OK. This is a, a big time. Everybody's coming in town and they've got fresh grapes and those are delicious and they're celebrating together. And so this is a big festival.

His brothers last week were trying to get Jesus to go down to the festival of boots, but Jesus refused to go on in their timing. He went in his own timing. And so today we pick up the story with Jesus making his way down to the festival of booths. And what happens while he's there now, next week and probably a week after that, we're going to continue through the festival of booths. This is not all, this is a big portion of John. We're gonna be walking through the festival of the booths for a little while. But today I want us to study this idea that following Jesus requires both your head and your heart. So let's handle them one at a time. OK.

Following Jesus requires your head. How do we see that in today's passage here today? What does it mean to follow Jesus with your head? Christianity is a religion of thinking. It always has been modern science was invented by Christians. So many different Christians people who are theistic who believed in God invented. What we know is modern empiricism. Contrary to what many stand up comics might say, Christianity is not the sort of thing where you're asked to check your brain in at the door. You know, no one, no one checked you as you were coming in this morning and asked you to put your brain in the locker as you're coming in, in fact, in our church, we are in this unique Camber area where there's just a ton of phd s around. There's a lot of smart brain power in this room. IQ we're, we're, we're going up high around here. Ok? And that's because Christianity is a religion that invites you to consider it, to consider it with your heads. And not just to feel it, in fact, to be a Christian actually requires that you use your head. That's what we see the people in this passage doing.

In, in John chapter seven, we see them using their head if you'll look with me. Chapter seven, verse 11. The first one that we wrote, the Jews were looking for Jesus looking for him at the feast and saying, where is he? And there was much muttering about him among the people while some said he's a good man. Others said, no, he's leading people astray yet for fear of the Jews, no one spoke openly of him. Now, when it says for fear of the Jews, we said this last week, but I'm just gonna recap real quick when it says for fear of the Jews, it's not talking about all the Jews. Everyone there is Jewish, ok. The, the Jews are talking amongst themselves about Jesus. It's talking about the Saint Hedron, the Jewish leaders that have it out for Jesus. They've been wanting to, to arrest Jesus and, and probably kill him for quite a while now. And so they don't really want to talk about Jesus openly.

But you see these people, they're trying to put the pieces together. Who is this Jesus character? Is he going to show up? Who is he? Is he a good teacher? Is he leading people astray? What are we to make of him? Maybe you yourself come today with similar kinds of questions. You're trying to figure out who is this Jesus character? I know that many people worship him but who is he really? What was he like? You're trying to put together the pieces and discern who this man is now when it comes to Jesus. Actually, these people, this this is really great. They're kind of narrowing down the choices because there aren't a lot of choices when it comes to Jesus, you really only have three choices and they're kind of all outlined here.

One, he was a good man. He was a good man. He walked around, he taught good things too. He's leading people astray. He was a liar. He wasn't who he said he was three. He is the Christ. We'll see some of them arrive at this idea that he is the Christ or the word I actually prefer, but it's the Greek version of the word Messiah is Christ. So Christ is not Jesus' last name. OK? I know that many of us might be thinking that OK, Christ is not Jesus last name, it's Jesus is Messiah and Christ is the Greek version of the word Messia.h So Jesus is the promised one of God sent from heaven. And then more popular today is the fourth option that I will give you, which is Jesus is just a legend that he never actually existed. But the ideas they portrayed are might be good for humanity.

So let's walk through each of these briefly and I'll explain just a little bit. First, I'm gonna start on the Jesus is a legend thing. This happens. Actually, it pops up pretty often like in my reels or something, I guess, like Instagram has me figured out that I'm a Christian. It's like basketball, basketball. Jesus was a legend, basketball that's like my, my reels on my Instagram feed. But with this idea that Jesus is a legend and what are we to make of this? People assert that all the time they say, you know, I don't believe that Jesus was even a real person, which is a difficult thing to argue with. I mean, how am I gonna change your mind about that? And I guess it's a lot easier to think that, but it's just intellectually lazy.

Honestly, you can kind of say I don't believe anything exists and anything in history, it's kind of hard to prove. Oftentimes, how do we know anything in history exists? There's a group of people out there that deny that the holocaust existed just because it would be easier. And look, I don't wanna believe the holocaust cost happened. That's terrible. It's a terrible thing. I don't wanna believe it happened, but just because I don't want to believe it doesn't mean it didn't happen. Of course it happened. There's people alive today who saw it. I was officiating a web, a wedding this summer. I talked to someone, one of, one of your grandmothers who lived through Nazi occupation in Europe who saw the Nazis walking through her street and could tell me the story about it. People are still alive who witnessed such terrible things and we can talk to them more than that. There's been books written, there's documentation, we know that these things happened.

Any historian would tell you that there is more historical proof for the existence of Jesus Christ as a man than there is for the existence of the current emperor of Rome during the time of Jesus' life. A man named Tiberius. Jesus has plenty of historical reliable data. Not only do we have the gospels, I mean, the gospels super reliable. They were written in order to give an eyewitness testimony of who Jesus is a, a scholar named Richard Baum wrote a book that I was forced to read in seminary. I hated it at the time and I'm thankful for it now. You know, it's that, that medicine that you have to take sometimes called Jesus and eyewitnesses. And with it, he combed through the New Testament and especially the Gospels and he documented every time that the gospel would use someone's name. And then he had an entirely other chart, another chart that how often these names are found in other Greek historical literature. And what he found is that what the gospel writers were trying to do when they would use a name is, they were actually giving their sources, they were citing who they're getting this information from. So, because many of these names are not very common and when they do use a name that's common, they usually tell them where, say where this person's from or who this person's parent is so that you could go and talk to the person because these gospel accounts were written while people who witnessed the accounts, we're still alive, they were written to be eyewitness accounts of what actually happened.

Not only do we have the four gospels written in the New Testament, we have extra biblical evidence. We have Josephus talking about Jesus. We have all of this evidence, Jesus ever. Like I it, you'd be hard pressed to find many historians who would say that Jesus was not a real person. Most historians do believe that Jesus was a real person. And if you want more on that, I'd be glad I have plenty of information. We could do the whole sermon on this, but I'm not gonna do that. So I'd lose some of you, but it's important. All right.

So with that one out of the way who is Jesus? Maybe this Jesus, he's just a good man as they were saying, Jesus was a good man. He certainly was a good man. He taught us to love our neighbors and to forgive our enemies and that's, that, those are great things. But then there's a big problem if he was just a good teacher. Let's imagine that there's a seminar this afternoon over at Harvard University and we're all invited. We all go and we hear the speaker talk and he is just brilliant. A good, a good man speaking, just very worldwide acclaimed speaking at Harvard. And at the very end of his talk, he says, and if you liked everything I have to say today, I'm also the Messiah and the son of God and it followed me and you could have eternal life. Well, all of a sudden, many of us will start second guessing all the things we heard during the talk. We'd stop thinking he's such a brilliant speaker. Maybe this guy is a lunatic would be what we have to draw the conclusion to you.

See, you cannot just be a good teacher and make the claims that Jesus made Jesus claimed to be God. He claimed to be the son of God, the light of the world sent down from heaven to save the world of their sins. You cannot claim to be a good teacher while claiming to be God. You just can't hold those two together. So maybe he was a liar, maybe he was leading people astray as some people were saying, this would be fair if Jesus didn't back up everything he said. If there wasn't historical reliable data to show that he actually was res raised from the dead after he told them that he's going to be crucified and raised from the dead. Jesus backed up everything that he did. He predicted the crucifixion, the resurrection and he was.

And so that leaves us with only one option. And it's this idea that Jesus is Messiah as the people in this passage. They get to this, this point. They, they say in verse 40 when they heard these words that Jesus had taught, we're gonna go back and look at these words. Some of the people said this really is the prophet. Others said, this is the Christ, the Messiah and prophet. You guys are crazy. This is the Messiah, but some said is the Christ to come from Galilee. That's not the scripture said that Christ comes from the offspring of David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was. And so there was division among the people over him. Wow, that seems like a simple one to fix. We just have to teach them the song, right? This little town of Bethlehem. We unfortunately, it wasn't written back then. They just didn't know that Jesus' parents were called by the census when he was delivered when he was, when he was born in a manger and laid in a manger.

And so, what does it mean to believe that Jesus is the Messiah? It means that Jesus is first the son of God, that he is the son of God come down from heaven, having spent eternity past with God, the father and the Holy Spirit in blessed unity in heaven. He's come and made himself fully human, taking on full human form. And he has incarnated here on earth. He lived as a human about 2000 years ago. It also means that he lived a sinless life and he died the death of a sinner for our substitution, atonement as a substitution sacrifice. He took on the sins of the world and paid the penalty for those sins on the cross. And one day he will return to restore the world to proper working order, to eliminate sin and to destroy the evil one. This is what it means to trust that Jesus is the Messiah that he did these three things that he was incarnated, that he wa was our substitution sacrifice. And that one day he will restore the world following Jesus requires that you use your head.

Now, if, if I were to just leave this point right here, which I'm about ready to move on and I get really excited about the next point even more than this one. But I need to say that following Jesus isn't a one time head decision. OK? It's not like you decide that Jesus is the Messiah and then you move on from using your head and you graduate to using your heart. Now, we have to continue to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. We have to continue to, to hold on to who Jesus is. This is why it's helpful for me to share with you about the, the liar lunatic or Lord choices before you and Jesus. It's also why it's helpful when we go to the scriptures and we read them and we say, oh man, this is hard. Well, Christianity requires that you use your head, it requires that you think about it. It requires that you think about literary genres and that you continue to study the scripture and you continue to look for Christ in the scripture.

It's, it's like a gold mine. Oftentimes when you go to a gold mine, it's not like all the gold is just sitting on top. OK? You have to go in there and you have to dig and sometimes it takes a little bit of work with your head to get there, but it is so worth it. And Christianity requires that you work with your head and use your head. Unfortunately, I think that too many of us stop right there. And that is our Christianity. That is not how Jesus presents it in this passage. But for too many of us. We say, OK, I'm convinced that Jesus is the Messiah. I trusted him to forgive me of my sins. Maybe I walked down front to an aisle one time when I was a young child, maybe I had an experience where I trusted him and I made him the Messiah of my life. But that is where our Christianity ends. We have this head knowledge that we don't know what to do with. But Jesus tells us that there's so much more to what he came to do. And this is where I'm gonna talk about what it means to follow Jesus with your heart.

Point number two, following Jesus with your heart. As John is describing the what happened at the festival of booths. Actually, it's, it's kind of a good history. John has written as a history book. He doesn't write it as just a literary device. He's not giving us all the details. He expects that his readers will actually kind of know what the festival of booths is, but I don't know about you. I've never, I've never celebrated the festival of booths. So therefore I had to go and do a bunch of research on what is the festival of booths and what was it like? And how did they practice it? And so what happened with the Festival of the Boots is it was a typically seven day festival where they were celebrating and on the eighth day they would kind of have a huge culmination feast that was like the to sum everything up. And it happened on the Sabbath day, which was the eighth day of the festival.

And on this last day, Jesus got up and he said something quite shocking. I mean, if you were there, you would have been flabbergasted by what Jesus says because we have to kind of understand the traditions of, of the festival. One of the traditions of the festival is that they would have a water pouring festival, a water pouring tradition. And what they would do is they would take this pitcher of water, a pitcher of a golden pitcher and they would fill it up with water and they would walk it to the altar. And as they did this, the priest would be carrying the pitcher and they would be trumpets all around him and people blowing on horns, the shofars and all the stuff. Everybody's wearing their, their ceremonial robes and all the people of Israel have gathered around the temple to watch this water pouring ceremony as the priest takes the water picture and pours it on the altar. And he's saying this is to do two things. One is to point back to the way that God provided water in the wilderness when there was no water to be found, God provided it. But it also pointed forward to the ethological rivers that we will enjoy that the books of Ezekiel.

Tell the, the book of Ezekiel tells us about how heaven will be a place with a river and the waters of God will be flowing. And so the, the priest would pour the picture of water and the people would celebrate. And it's within this context. And maybe within this moment, even when Jesus stands up and he declares to everyone, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink, whoever believes in me as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Now that's powerful. What is Jesus doing? He's saying you have this great festival, you have this great feast. You do this water pouring ceremony. I am the fulfillment of the water pouring ceremony. If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.

And those words have been captured and pass down to Christian generation after generation and the invitation is open to you today. Jesus is still saying if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Jesus is the true water given by God that can satisfy the desires of humanity because Jesus knows that the natural state of our hearts is of spiritual drought. Does anybody feel that you feel like your heart is in an arid place? Spiritual drought is what our hearts are used to. We're like the, the the plants around your house that you forget about and when you give them water, you're like, oh, there was a plant here and the water suddenly sparks perks up. That's kind of how our hearts are just these arid places. And we have these deep longings that we hope that the world can satisfy. But that we don't, I actually believe can we are spiritually thirsty people in this regard?

And I love the way that Pastor Tony Evans puts it. He says this, the thirst in the soul is manifested by a life of dissatisfaction, discontentment, unforgiveness, or sin domination. If you find yourself in one of those categories, you are not alone. We are all there one more time. The thirst in the soul is manifested by a life of dissatisfaction, discontentment, unforgiveness or sin domination. This is the natural start the natural spot of the arid heart that we all find ourselves. And Jesus says, if anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink. If you have desires, this world do doesn't satisfy Jesus is inviting you to come. Every night, my wife and I, well, usually one of us and it's usually my wife prepares the coffee for the next morning. It's just part of our routine because we don't want to wake up and in a caffeine like stupor like not be able to make coffee. I, I think that we're afraid that we won't remember how it works or something in, in that regard. And so we prepare the coffee for the night before Megan's better at it than I am. Um, and, but in the morning we wake up, we have the coffee pot already set coffee brews. We just get our coffee. Life is good.

Um, couple weeks ago I prepared the coffee. I was serving my wife and said, you know what, I'll do it tonight and the morning came and the coffee was brewed and I went and, and, and she woke up before me and she had her coffee, she was drinking. So I went and got my coffee and I poured it in my mug and I looked, and it is not coffee at all. It is just murky nasty water that had been run through our machine. I forgot to put the grounds in the hopper. The hopper. Yeah. I forgot to put the coffee grounds in the hopper. So the water just went through the machine and filled up my my, my pitcher. What is that thing? I don't carafe. Yeah. Sorry, I'm not good at the anatomy of a coffee maker. But I poured it in my cup and I was disgusted because that tells me I don't wash my carafe well enough, first of all, and I just looked at the water. I took one look at the water and I was like, that's gross. I could smell it the second I poured it out. I was like, mm That's not coffee. That's nasty water. That's like murky tainted, muddy nasty water. And I went and was like, Megan the coffee. I forgot to put the grounds in it and she's like, oh, you did? She, like, didn't even notice she was just like, oh, yeah, I was just drinking it. Like I could put motor oil in the craft and you wouldn't even notice a thing. She's like, nope. And, you know, my wife, she's got her career. She's a mom. I don't blame her. Ok? She's got a lot going on and she's like you know, a little bit of caffeine. I might get like 1 mg out of this or something.

So I went and made more coffee. How many of us are settling for the murky tainted water that this world can provide when Jesus says, come to me, all you who are thirsty and I will give you streams of living water. We turn to the things of the world thinking that they're gonna make us happy thinking that we're gonna be satisfied. But we know, you know, I know we all know that they leave us with a caffeine induced headache. They leave us longing for the real thing that Jesus says. If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink, he's inviting you church. Whoever believes in me as the scripture has said out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Whoever believes in me, whoever trusts and me, you see first you have to use your head. You do. You have to believe in Christ.

But when you do out of your heart will come, will flow rivers of living water. But you also have to go to him with your heart. You can't just acknowledge him as savior. You have to go to him and let him satisfy the deepest longings of your heart through the rivers of living water. When he talks about the rivers of living water, what's he talking about? Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit. It says it in the next verse that he was talking about the Holy Spirit. I'm not just making that up.

Who is the Holy Spirit, but the presence of Christ given to every believer that they might have Christ living with them each and every day. You can say the Holy Spirit is the spirit of Christ totally fine. The Bible describes, it describes him that way. The Holy Spirit is not a force, it is not a force that lives around us. That is the force from Star Wars. The Holy Spirit is a person who lives among you and who has power of God, the power of God because he is God. And Jesus says that when we come to Christ, that he fills us with the Holy Spirit, which is like rivers of living satisfaction, rivers of living water, that is who he is the spirit of Christ with us. Each and every day Jesus is sending into heaven, but he gave us the gift of the spirit that we might live each and every day in abundance with him. These rivers of living water are so much better than what the world has to offer.

When you, when you think of a river, what do you think of? I grew up on the Mississippi river. That's a slow moving huge muddy river. But I think that the rivers that most of us might think of are the ones that are like streams of clean and refreshing water coming from fresh mountain mountain snow. that's melted snow, melt. A river has abundant clean water as opposed to a reservoir. A river isn't supposed to run dry. A river continues to have more and more water. The water continues to flow. You can return to him over and over and over again. You don't just go once and collect your water, you return to Christ and get your water. He delights to receive you again. He does not grow weary of our coming. When our souls are thirsty. Have you felt like maybe you've worn God's patience a little thin like you've gone to him a few too many times like you're a needy child, asking for loans from your parents. It's like I got two of them in me. But you know, I don't know about this third one here.

That is not Jesus' perspective whatsoever. It's rivers of abundant living water. He is like a chef that's moved into a neighborhood whose dream was always to give good gourmet food to anyone who would come. But instead of going to the chef, we decide to live in our self sufficiency and we just make boxed mac and cheese every night. That stuff is disgusting. Ok, I'm just gonna name it. That is my kids love it and I don't understand. It's bad. Would the chef be annoyed at you coming? No, he would delight in you coming and receiving his food is what he most wants. He wants to see the look on your face when you delight in the food that he is provided because it's so much better than what you can provide yourself. Would he be frustrated if you came every day? No, he would not. That is why he is there. He wants to give away the good food and that is Christ. He wants to satisfy us with rivers of living water.

We have to become return customers of Jesus. I need to be a return customer of Jesus. When I woke up this morning, my heart was grumpy. I was fixing my eyes on the things of this world and I needed to return back to the loving arms of Christ. We had to go over and over. Jesus is giving us living water. He's giving us abundant life. We have to receive it. We have to receive abundant life from Jesus. Let me just make this really clear. You can't provide abundant life for yourself earlier. This week. I I guess I have more things that pop up my reels. This is a very Instagram reel influence sermon here. But my barber was actually on there and I have a really good relationship with my barber. Maybe he'll watch this. We'll see. Hey, Larry.

But he was talking about manifesting and, and what manifesting is and I was like, what is manifesting? Do you guys know manifesting? Many of us do? And so I had to Google it and find out that it turns out I'm just really behind. OK. So like most people know what this is. And then later on, I actually noticed other people talking about it within like that week. And so I, I realized it was popular. But Manifesting is the idea that was popularized in the book, The Secret. Early two thousands. Oprah loved it. The Secret. The Secret has sold 35 million copies. That's the same number as The Great Gatsby. OK. This is a popular, popular book that many people have read. And this idea of Manifesting, I looked it up and this is how one website defined it. Manifesting is cultivating the experience of what it is that you want to feel and then living and believing in that experience so that you can allow it to come into form. You can practice manifesting to attract whatever you want, whether that's a successful business, better health, a relationship or even a material object.

So basically, what manifesting is is if you set your mind on it, if you think positive thoughts, those things will be attracted to you. If you set your mind on success and think positive success thoughts, a success, be attracted to you. A business venture would be attracted to you. A spouse can be attracted to you. The only problem is that manifesting is not the way that Jesus tells us that we can have abundant life is basically the exact opposite of what Jesus tells us is the way to have abundant life. Jesus says that you have to receive abundant life from Him that you can't create abundant life by having positive thoughts. When you receive abundant life from Him, where do your thoughts go? They don't go to the things of this world. Your thoughts go to the things above, set your mind on things above not on earthly things. Seek the kingdom of God above all this and God will bless you here. Sure. But it might not be in the way that you think. Manifesting in this sense is just the Prosperity Gospel in a Halloween costume. It's just a secular Halloween costume saying if you believe it, name it and claim it, let's go baby. That's, that's manifesting. That's not the Gospel.

The Gospel says, seek the things above, seek God above all things. Jesus says that we have to receive abundant life from Him. Friends. We have to follow Jesus with both our head and our heart is never enough to simply believe true things about God. You must also draw near and allow Him to satisfy your innermost desires. The more you draw near, the more you learn about Him and the more you learn about Him, the more you wanna draw near to his mor embrace, you see head and heart, they're not opposed to each other. The more you learn about Christ as, as you learn, the real Christ, the more you're drawn to his warm embrace, embrace and the more you're drawn to his warm embrace, the more you want to know about him. And it's the cycle of delightful love that you get to live in for the rest of your life.

That is Christianity, a deepening cycle, beautiful dance of joy and love. And what happens when you get a group of people together who have had knowledge of Jesus and heart, knowledge of Jesus stick with me here. OK? But it creates a smell, a smell stronger than the YMCA locker room, the aroma of Christ when we come to Christ each individually and then we come together the same Christ that I delight in you delight in. Isn't that amazing? Like, have you ever seen a good movie? But no one else has seen it. And then you're like, I gotta find that person that's seen the movie. There were people doing this a, a few years ago with the Korean movie Parasite. They're like, I gotta find someone that has seen Parasite and then they talk about it and I'm like, I don't understand what you're talking about. I don't do that stuff. I don't do horror. Ok. It's just not my thing. The same God that I interact with you interact with. Isn't it a joy to talk about? The deepest loves of your heart with someone that understands those deepest loves, which is your church family, which is the aroma of Christ.

You see the gospel is not just something that you should hear, taught here and preached here at this church. The gospel is something that you should be experiencing here at this church through the relationships, the common love, the vibes that we have with one another as we experience this joy of Christ, let us share it with one another and be the aroma of Christ, the culture, the feel this is what we're going for. That's gonna look different for each and every one of us. So if, if you are one of these people that has really exuberant joy, just know that that's not everyone. OK? I don't like showing that much joy usually. I, I'm more like mild mannered. You know, keep it even, I'm very happy. I'm just keeping it even. Ok. So don't judge me based upon that. All right, but we can still delight and have this grace of God together friends. Let us go to him again, together the streams of living water. The one who says, come to me all you who thirst and I will give you a drink, a stream of living water, flowing out of your heart into a joy and satisfaction. That is what Jesus has to offer today.

And as we go to him in these final songs at this communion meal, let's take our, the loves of this world and let's lay them aside and let's say it won't satisfy just tainted mu murky nasty water out of Fletcher's dirty carafe. I need the real thing. I need Jesus. So would you go to him today and say, I need you Jesus. I need you to satisfy the desires of my heart.

Each week we practice a sacred meal called communion. And this is just a, a reminder that we're called to relationship with God and relationship with one another. We celebrate it together. We're all invited to the wedding feast. If you think about your relationship with Christ, it's just you and Christ, you're wrong. The, your relationship with Christ is meant to be had in the church body. And this is one of the times where we come to the table of Christ together and we enjoy the meal that he has to offer. With that being said, let me invite you to stand as we pray and prepare our hearts to receive the sacred meal.

God, you, you satisfy us. We, we come to you as people who have been satisfied. Only in part, we long for the day when you come to satisfy the desires that we have, we long for the day that we get to be with you and to live with you. And so today, you, we know that you satisfy us about as much as this communion meal satisfies our hunger. But God, we, we also have tasted of it and it is good. Your satisfaction is good and we will return over and over and the, the, the invitations open. So Jesus, we pray for anyone here who needs to go to you that they might drink deeply of the love and affirmation that you offer them and that they might delight in who you are that they might encounter the real Christ, the risen Lord. Today we ask this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher continues our sermon series with a discussion of John 7:1-10. Discussion points: Christian belief in Jesus requires more than just knowing he exists, living only for the things of this world is the root of all evil in the world, a heavenly perspective helps bring the power of Jesus into your daily struggles.

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Scripture reader: [John 7:1-10] Our scripture reading today is taken from John chapter seven verses one through 10. I will be reading the Spanish version and you can all follow along in English. When I finish reading, I will say this is the word of the Lord. And if you could please respond with me by saying, thanks be to God. Algun Timpo despues Jesus and Daba Galilea not nuns en aa Porque A loss. Pabon la porta brama Palta. Poco Tiempo para la fiesta. Jua de Los Aarna Coos ai los Hermanos de Jesus Le Theon de Baria Salir de aqui a year a paraiso bean las sores quere Lias porque Nadia que darce Acona Atua and Sere Ya Asas ESAs Cosas de mundo Teos lo certo era Su Hermanos Crean and El Pores. So Jesus Leo. But I said this qual queer tempo is Bueno Perol tempo mio A un no A yeo el mundo. Not Tere Motis Pravo. Rolos ami sin embargo. Mere porque de cicco queso sobra son Malas Sueno Cedes Ala Fiesta. Yo Voit da Via Esta fiesta porque. Mi Tiempo A no ae diho Esto Sedo and Galilea Sine embargo des Pasque Sumano, Seon la. Fiesta fuer Tambien. El No public ae Sinon CTO.

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: Have any of you ever been hated by someone? This is a question that I asked to start a sermon like two years ago. And someone sitting over here very confidently raised their hand a little too quickly. In response. I had some friends that were at the service and afterwards they were like, hey, do you think that guy's? Ok? Like, is there a hit out on him? Should we be concerned about what's going on with him? Um, hate is a strong word, right? I can think of very few people in my life who have outwardly expressed hate, dislike. Sure, maybe a good bit. Uh, but hatred is a word that we don't even say in my home. You know, there's, except for, you know, the classic kid thing. Like you can't, we can't say I hate you. What about the devil? Ok. You can say you hate the devil. That's fine.

Today we come to a passage where Jesus says that he is hated and even in today's modern society where church is not popular and Christians aren't necessarily popular. You still, like, if someone says I hate Jesus, you do think just in the back of your head, that person might be a psychopath, like it's just kind of in there a little bit, right? Often times like who hates a religious figure, such as Jesus who preaches peace and kindness. But yet Jesus comes today and he says that the world hates him. What are we to make of this? Especially given the fact that just a few chapters ago, Jesus said that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son so that the world might know Him.

We're going through a series on the book of John. We're picking up at the very beginning of chapter seven, we've been, we just worked our way through chapter six, the feeding of the 5000, Jesus walking on water. And then he explains the the meaning of the feeding of the five thou 1000 by saying that I am the bread of life. And Jesus in doing so he's like one of these Instagram influencers who gains 5000 followers and then immediately says something dumb and loses them all immediately. That's kind of what happens. He has a ton of followers. He and then he explains what he meant by the bread of life. And he says, if you want to follow me, you have to eat my flesh and drink my blood. And they're like, that's a little weird. And then they stop following Jesus and we talked about that last week, meaning that I'm all that means that you're all in on following Christ. So you're absolutely committed to following him.

And so today we pick up chapter seven and we're just going to start start in chapter seven at this passage. What's happening here is Jesus brothers are trying to convince him to go ahead and position himself as a famous religious teacher in Israel. And Jesus refuses. So let's look at the passage, verse one after this, Jesus went about in Galilee. Ok. After what I just explained after what, after he taught about the feeding of the 5000, he taught about the being the bread of life. And it says that Jesus went about in Galilee. So Jesus, this has the idea that he's going around and he's teaching. So we can assume here with this little phrase that there's a time jump going on here. This isn't immediately after that, but Jesus has been making his way around Galilee doing some teaching. He would not go in Judea because the Jews were seeking to kill him. That's what it says. Verse one.

Now Galilee, it is basically the northern part of Israel and he didn't want to go down to Judea, the southern part of Israel where Jerusalem is because it says the Jews were seeking to kill him. Now, obviously, it doesn't mean every Jew was seeking to kill Jesus. But the members of the Jewish religious council, probably the members of the Sanh Hera and several of the Pharisees were seeking to kill Jew were seeking to kill Jesus. It's not that every Jew was seeking to kill Jesus. Jesus himself was a Jew. So that wouldn't make sense. But the Jewish leaders were seeking to kill Jesus at this point. And all, all that goes all the way back to chapter five. And we, if you've been with us, you would see that Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath and the religious leaders caught wind of it. And he, they have been like in their scopes ever since. Jesus has been in the religious leader scopes. They, they have not been a fan of Jesus since he did that verse two.

Now, the feast of booths was at hand all of John chapter seven and chapter eight occurs during the feast of booths. So this is a large portion that we're going to be handling over a number of weeks. And this week, we're really only handling the these 1st 10 verses before what happens at the feast of booths. But I'll still explain what the feast of boots is so that you might understand a little bit better why? And his brothers are so eager to get Jesus to go down to the feast of booth. When you go to the Old Testament, Leviticus, Leviticus 23. You see a description of seven feasts that are given to the people of God. Isn't it awesome that God wrote into his rule book that you are to have seven feasts per year? That's a really awesome religion where you just get to feast pretty regularly. Not only that, but the very first feast.

This is a side note. This isn't even connected to this. The very first feast is the Sabbath. I think that's awesome because God wrote in to the plan of flourishing for his people that they are to have a day of rest and feasting once a week, weekly feasting. It's just, that sounds great. I don't know, like if I would what I would do if I actually practiced that it would be a joyous occasion. And I think that most of us here can look at that and say that sounds nice. I wish I did that and we could probably take steps more towards this rhythm of rest and feasting that God gives us. The feast of booths is a yearly feast to remind God's people of when they spent time wandering around in the wilderness between Egypt and Israel. And so what would happen is with the feast of booth?

It was it occurred late September, early October every year and that coincided with the time that the grape harvest was happening and the olive harvest was happening. So, you know, it's gonna be a good party when the grapes are being harvested. Ok. That's what's happening here. All the grapes are coming in from all the vineyards around Israel and they just have a, a week long party. It's a week long festival in Jerusalem. And what they would do is they would build these little we, we call them suit coats. Um, you can even see them around today, Jewish people to this day, still practice the feast of boots. If you're driving around in October and you see kind of this block square tent thing in someone's yard and, in Massachusetts and in the Boston area, a lot of times people don't have very big backyards and they don't have very big front yards either. So you just kind of have to put them wherever you can in.

And if you're driving around some areas of Somerville, I've definitely seen some Sioux coats in Somerville. I've seen a lot of Sioux coats. I used to live in Brookline for three years and they were everywhere in Brookline. It's a higher Jewish population there. And so people are still practicing this where they would sleep outside in a tent, during that time or at least spend time in the tent outside in this little hut that they would have. And this was to commemorate the time that they spent walking through the wilderness. The, the ancient historian Josephus said that the feast of Booths was the most popular feast during the time during this time to bring people to Jerusalem. It's a big deal. A lot of people are making their way to Jerusalem for this feast. It's the most popular feast of the time. Maybe we might think about the feast of booths is to Jerusalem at this time. What Oktoberfest would be to Munich in our time, it's just people are coming out, they're ready to party and have a feast and it's a good time. It brings a lot of people from all over Israel there.

So verse three, his brother said to him, said to Jesus, leave here and go to Judea that your disciples also may see the works you're doing for. No one works in secret. If he seeks to be openly known, if you do these things, show yourself to the world. Now, who are these brothers? These brothers are Children that Mary and Joseph had after Jesus was born. James being one of them, at least this is how we understand it. That's who they probably are. There's not a lot of details about jesus' stepbrothers or half brothers, should we say? Not really stepbrothers, half brothers, should we say? But they want Jesus to go down to Jerusalem and to reveal himself. And Jerusalem is the center of religious life for if you want to be a great religious leader, you have to make your way to Jerusalem. Jerusalem is to religious leaders and rabbis. What L A might be to an aspiring actor today, what Nashville might be to an aspiring country artist today. If you're going to make it in those fields, you have to move to those cities.

And so they're saying, hey, go make a name for yourself. It is time to openly reveal who you are. Jesus. Everybody's down there already. This is the prime time. Go down there, show them what you're all about Jesus verse five. This is crazy. It says for not even his brothers believed in him. Isn't that wild that they're saying Jesus, we want you to become more famous, Jesus. We want you to be known as religious leader in Jerusalem. But yet it says that even they don't believe in him, you can want Jesus to be famous and think that you're doing his will and think that you're trying to do the right thing all while not even believing in him now to talk about what they mean by belief. And a Christian understanding of belief isn't that you simply believe someone exists, they obviously believe Jesus exists. Ok? He's, they're talking to him, they're telling him to do something.

But what the scriptures mean when it talks about belief, it means trust in and believe that Jesus is the messiah. So they don't understand why Jesus has come and why he is doing the things he is doing. They don't understand who he really is. They do not believe in his message. So we speak verse six, Jesus said to them, my time has not yet come but your time is always here. Jesus is saying to them, look, I'm gonna make my way down to Jerusalem but not yet. You can go anytime you want. But if I go, I know what's gonna happen, I know what happens to me down the road in Jerusalem. It is not time for me to do the things that you want me to do. His brothers want him to pursue fame, but that's not what Jesus is into. He's not about the fame life instead, he knows that he needs to stay in obscurity.

It's a little funny the way that it's written in verse nine. It says after saying this, he remained in Galilee verse 10. but after his brothers had gone up to the feast, he also went not publicly but in private. And so what Jesus is saying isn't that he's not going to go to the feast at all. What Jesus is saying is I'm not going to go in the way that you want me to go. I'm not going to go and make a big fuss of myself. I'm going to go in private. I think we all have those friends who leave the party without saying goodbye and show up without anybody noticing. Jesus is that guy. He shows up to the party without anybody noticing. A couple days later, aside from the fact that Jesus is not concerned at all with fame, he knows that in actuality, he would not be loved in Jerusalem but hated. And that's why he says verse seven, he's not or verse six, my time has not yet come. But your time is always here.

Verse seven, the world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil. What Jesus is saying is look, brothers, you might want me to be a religious celeb celebrity, but I am on a collision course with the world and if anyone who follows after me is also on a collision course with the world and that's how I wanna spend the rest of our time thinking about this. What is Jesus talking about when he says that the world hates him and that he's on this collision course with the world and that his deeds are evil.

We're going to look at this in three basic ideas. The first one is what does Jesus mean when he says the world? The second one, what are the results of following the world? And third, what is the alternative, the meaning the results and the alternative? All right, let's dive in point number one. What does Jesus mean by the world? He says that the world hates him, but he also says that he loves the world, John 316 for God. So loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have you there. All right. Thank you. And then first John chapter two. OK. First John written by the same guy who wrote John, the book that we're reading right now. First John says, do not love the world or the things in the world. Wait, wait a second, John, you just said that God so loved the world that he was willing to give up everything. And now you're telling us not to love the world, aren't we supposed to love the things that God loves? And then he says, if anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in Him. So which is it, are we to love the world or are we to hate the world? Which one is it to be?

It seems as though Jesus is both for the world and against the world. At the same time, when we look at the word, the world and the scriptures, it can have different nuances of meaning as we go through. But in general, what the scriptures mean is the material universe of the world, the things that are here. And you might think about it as every person in the world. In fact, in many languages, you say that like in, in French, you would say to le Monde is everybody, everyone. two meaning all le monde, meaning world, all the world. And so we can think about the world as just being all the people in the world. We also know that God created the world and he said it's good. He created humans in his own image. And there's so much beauty and goodness in the world. And so he's not denying any of those things.

In fact, the entire New Testament. In fact, the entire Bible is the story of God's great love for the world and how he sent his own son to die for us and to redeem the world from our sins. Just because Jesus says that the deeds of the world are evil. It does not mean that everything in the world is evil. There are many lovely things in the world. When I was growing up, it was common to label anything that wasn't Christian as evil. I don't know if any of you grew up in a similar type of household or a similar type of church. I can remember I beca I became a Christian at 14. I had not really gone to church a lot before that my family was, was Christian but they didn't, you know, I, I didn't make my way to church very often and becoming a Christian when I was 14. 1 of the rites of passage for a teenager coming to know Jesus is what in the early two thousands was to take your binder of C DS. Those are like little discs that have music on them. And to purge your binder of C DS of all the secular music. Did anybody experience this? Did you have the, the secular music purge as I did. I can remember it like yesterday. My friend Rob Hilb, he said, you gotta stop, you gotta stop listening to that stuff is polluting your mind. You need to throw it all away and I said, I like Matchbox 20 and I kept those CDs, I think my mom still has them. Probably she has most of my stuff.

It's not that everything in the world is evil and that we just need to create a Christian version of it. That's not what Jesus is saying. Jesus is for the world, but it says that the world hates Jesus. He says because I testify about it that its works are evil though Jesus loves the world. He says that the works of the world are evil. Going back to John 316, we read it in full context for God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoso whosoever shall believe in Him shall not pierce by have eternal life. Just a couple of verses later, John 319, it says this and this is the judgment. The light has come into the world and the people loved darkness rather than the light because their works were evil for everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his works be exposed. So Jesus loves the world but yet the world hates Jesus. Why? Because they love darkness rather than the light because their works are evil. This is what it means.

And John and first John two when he says, do not love the world or the things of the world, what he's saying is you're loving earthly things more than Jesus more than God himself. You're loving the things that this world has to acknowledge. So, in that sense, it's worldview, it's, it's the world as a worldview saying that all that matters are the things that are right in front of me. I'm going to ignore the fact that eternity exists and I'm just going to live for what's right in front of me. And Jesus says that is the root of all evil in that sense that our evil desires have led us away from righteousness, living solely for the things of this world is the seed bed for evil in the world. Because it at the heart of evil, all evil, at the heart of all evil is selfishness.

This is why CS Lewis in his book, The Great Divorce depicts hell as a place where people are merely self consumed and they continue to move farther and farther out away from one another because they're just more and more self consumed and they don't want to live close to anybody else. They just want to have all of their things and be alone because at the heart of evil is selfishness, which is this a denial of eternity and an obsession with doing what's best for me at that particular moment, for a worldly person, so to speak. Now is everything and it's so easy for us to live in this temporary life to revert back to this worldly perspective where we ignore the reality of eternity and we live for today. This is the natural condition that each of us find ourselves in with a love for the things of this world and what they have to offer.

Friends. You don't have to be a really openly evil person that you read about on the news to have a swastika tattooed onto your forehead or something to have to be evil. You just have to live a self consumed life And that is the seed of all evil in the world. The kernels of evil and, and selfishness. They live within each of us to live your life consumed with worldly success, worldly power, money, achievement, physical beauty, affirmation, fame or anything else to set your eyes on those things is to live with worldly desires. Now, none of those things are bad in and of themselves. You can be a powerful person who glorifies the Lord.

But to set your heart on consuming more and more of what the world has to offer is the natural state that we find ourselves in sin is not just doing the wrong thing. It is loving the wrong thing. First John two, for all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life is not from the father but is from the world. Now get that he's describing evil. He's describing like all the evil in the world. And he said, and how does he describe it, the, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes and the pride of life. It's not from the Father, but it's from the world and the world is passing away along with all of his desires. But who does the will of God abides forever? This is why doing the right things is never good enough to get you into heaven because it's not simply that we have done wrong things, but it's that we've loved wrong things. We've lived for the world, we've lived for temporary things, we've loved and lived for the wrong things, often times with good intentions.

And this is why Jesus tells his brother, the world cannot hate you because they're a part of the world. He tells his brothers, the world can't hate you because they are the world. They're not believers at this time. They're not following after Jesus. Jesus gives us a very kind of simple way to think about this. He's like, either you're following me and you're putting to death, the desires of the world or you're following the world. It's, it's very binary. In that sense. You have one of these choices, you're following the ways of the world or you're following after Christ.

Point 2. What are the results of following the world? I just wanna point this out because the scripture is just so rich on what happens when we follow the ways of the world. When we put the desires of the flesh and the pride of life first in this life. What happens? There's a lot of side effects to this. And I don't mean to oversimplify any of these issues because these are often multifaceted issues that we could sit and have lots of cups of coffee. Not at the same time because then I'd be too wired. But, you know, over a period of time we could sit and talk through. But many of us are familiar with the side effects of seeking the things of the world. Because the number one and number two, side effect of seeking the things of the world and living for the things of the world are anxiety and depression. If you live for the things of the world, when the things of the world do not satisfy and you see the the banality just like the banal existence of seeking after the things of the world that can never satisfy. Yeah, it's gonna leave you anxious and depressed anxiety and depression super complex.

And I'm not saying that all you need to do is trust in Jesus to deal with your anxiety. That would be really over simplifying it. But I'm also not saying that you don't need Jesus to help you with your anxiety. You absolutely need to think about this as not just a physical issue, as not just a mental health issue but as a spiritual issue. It is one of the things that is indicating when our love for the world has grown too much. Often times, not always, often times maybe I should put it like this. If I had, if all I had to live for were the things of this world, I would be an anxious mess because I see threats to the things that I love most in this world all the time.

But as a Christian, I know that there's more to life than this. I have the reality of eternity to look forward to. I know that there's more to life than what I have today. And I live for his glory. And I know that I have a father who cares for me in the midst of my anxiety, in the midst of my depression. He cares for me. He loves me. He's never gonna leave me alone through those things. You see a worldly perspective leaves you feeling alone. But a godly perspective brings the power of Christ into all of your desires and struggles.

I'm going to read a teaching from Jesus and you know, I debated whether or not I was gonna do this this morning because it's gonna take a minute. But who could say it better than Jesus, right? And I just need this to wash over. I think that we all just need to hear it this morning and I'm going to read it slowly and I just wanted to wash over you this morning because it's just such good news for us today. It's challenging in part but just beautiful and good. If you want to follow along with me, you can turn in your Bible to Matthew six, but you can also just sit and, and let it wash over you.

Starting in verse 25 Matthew six. Hear what Jesus says. Therefore, I tell you do not be anxious about your life. What you will eat, what you drink, know about your body. What you put on is life not more than food and the body more than clothing. Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap, nor gather in barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not more of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his lifespan? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow? They neither toil nor spin yet? I tell you this even Solomon and all of his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you? Oh, you have little faith. Therefore, do not be anxious saying what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear for the gentiles? Seek after all these things and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all but seek first, the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you one more time. Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow for tomorrow will be anxious about itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

As we are people, Christians or if you're considering to become a Christian. But as Christians, we are actively trying to say, I don't live for the world or the things of the world. What do we say? Instead? We, we do what Jesus says and he says, seek first the Kingdom of God in your work, in your style and your ambitions and your marriage and your parenting and your friendships seek first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you. I used it last week too. I'm gonna use this week. It's the CS Lewis quote where he says, aim for heaven and you'll get earth thrown in aim for earth. You'll get neither aim for heaven, you get earth thrown in seek first the Kingdom of God and all these things we added to you. Aim for earth, you get neither.

Are you seeking first the Kingdom of God church? Let's have a renewed heart to seek first the things of God in every aspect of our life. Jesus. He did not live for the praise of the world. That's why he's not going down to Jerusalem with his brothers. He knows that if you live for the praise of the world, you'll die by the praise of the world. But instead, Jesus lived for the praise of one and his heavenly father.

Point 3 the alternative. So we've explored the meaning of the world. What Jesus means by this and the effects of following the world. Now. What is the alternative to following the world? It's like the red pill, blue pill. Jesus offers us here. We can remain in the world in a self consumed prison of our own making, which really is a prison. I think this prison of irreligion. I don't care what the God, what God thinks. I'm gonna live for me or we can follow after Jesus. Each of us are naturally in the world. That's why Ephesians two says, and you were dead in the, in your, in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the course of this world, following the course of this world. We all were once dead spiritually following the course of this world, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind living in the passions of our flesh.

This is what it means to be worldly and everybody is in the same condition to follow after Jesus though means that you jump to verse four and it says that God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us. Even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ by grace, you have been saved. It's not what we have done, but it's what he has done. And now we follow after him verse six and he raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ. Jesus. Isn't that a beautiful reality that we've been lifted up? It's not merely that we've been saved from our sins, but that we've been lifted up with him.

We have this eternal reality so that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. To follow after Jesus means that you receive this grace, you spend time with him, you seek after him, you become like him, you learn from him. Now, next week, we're going to continue in our study of the Feast of Booths. And we're going to continue to look at a lot of things that happen. It's a really kind of dramatic. Jesus does make his way down there and it's kind of dramatic what happens. It, you might not be able to pick up from your first reading. But as you study about the Feast of Booth, I mean, if you wanna get ahead a little bit, read chapter seven, read chapter eight the next couple of weeks, it's gonna be great as we look at what Jesus does after he goes down to the feast of Booth.

But for today, let's consider, let's consider what he's saying to us today. Let's consider what his brothers want him to do. They want Jesus to go to Jerusalem and become this celebrity and Jesus would eventually do this. What do you not? But he does have a path to Jerusalem that he would have a parade reception as he comes in. That people would be so excited about what he's doing that they would take palm branches and wave them in front of him and lay them in front of his donkey. And his glory would be on full display in Jerusalem, but not in the way that his brothers think because his glory is on full display when he is hated when he is spat upon as he is stripped of his clothing, as he is carrying his own wooden cross up a hill to be nailed to it. As he says, father, forgive them for they know not what they're doing.

And on the cross, he bears the weight of the evil and selfishness of the world for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whosoever should believe in Him shall not perish but have eternal life on the cross. He bore the weight of our sin because of the great love with which he loved us. He took on the sin and selfishness of the world for us, the cosmic penalty that we deserve So consider with me today. Are you living for the things of the world? How's that going for you? We think if I could just get it figured out if I could just get this next step, guys, you've been there before. That's what you thought about the step you're on. If I could just do this a little more, get a little bit more from the world never satisfying but seek first, the things of the seek first, the Kingdom of God and these things will be added to you.

Seek Jesus above all, not security, not power, not affirmation, approval, not money, not fame, not even fame for Jesus, not even Jesus as fame as his brothers were seeking. Seek Christ, seek to know Him the power of his resurrection so that you might experience the immeasurable riches of his kindness and his grace church. It is far more satisfying.

Let's let's take some time as we consider this communion meal that we're preparing our hearts for, to think of all the places in our hearts that we haven't given Jesus total control where we've continued to live for the world and the things of the world as opposed to living, seeking the Kingdom of God. And let's give him control of those things. Let's repent of seeking the things of the world and follow after Christ just take a moment and consider Jesus. What are you calling me to today? The life of a Christian is continuing to put to death, the desires of the love of the world. You don't arrive, not this side of heaven. All of us. No, you might be sitting in a lot of shame wherever you are. So is everybody else? OK? All of us are doing the same thing. We're all seeing this magnetic draw to love the things of the world.

And Jesus just lovingly calling us back, lovingly, calling us back. There is no shame because He is gracious and abundant in kindness. And we can go to him and be who we really are and be exposed for who we are. He already knows what's going on in your heart. And he says that I will never cast you out. All those who come to me, I will never cast out.

Each week, we participate in a sacred meal and this meal is meant to remind us that Jesus body is broken for us and his blood is shed for us. What we're remembering and committing ourselves to is that Jesus died for our sins and that we are fully committed to following the way of Christ that we're going to seek first the kingdom of God. And let this be a reminder and an opportunity for you to reset your life and your desire to follow His way and not the way of the world. Let us prepare our hearts to respond to the word of God and, and worship Him and praise Him for all that He's done. So would you stand with me as I pray?

Father, I pray that you'll help us to seek first you in your kingdom, that you would give us the resources necessary to feast on what you have for us to trust and who you are. And to believe that you are who you said you are. God. Give us an eternal perspective that we might understand that this life is not all that there is and help us to aim for you. God, I pray that you would lead our hearts to a renewed vigor for who Jesus is that you would fill us with the warmth of the spirit so that we might in turn comfort one another. God. The the gospel is so sweet and we pray that you would reveal yourself to us. Now we pray for anyone who is considering these things, God. There, there might be some, some people clutching on to things that they don't want to let you have. And God, I pray that you would help them to loosen that you would woo them to loosen their grip on their own life and the things of this world and help them to trust that your grip is stronger on them. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher teaches from John 6:22-71. Discussion points: People may walk away from church because they are not getting the earthly things they came for; real Christianity is coming to Jesus because you want more of him, not because of what you want him to give you; Jesus will never cast out those who come to him.

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Scripture reader: [John 6:22-71] On the next day, the crowd that remained on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone. Other boats from Tiberius came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum seeking Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, rabbi, when did you come here, Jesus answered them. Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves, do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life which the son of man will give to you for on Him. God, the father has set his seal. Then they said to Him, what must we do to be doing? The works of God.

Jesus answered them. This is the work of God that you believe in him, whom he has sent? Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe all that the father gives me will come to me. And whoever comes to me, I will never cast out for. I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my father that everyone who looks on the sun and believes in Him should have eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day after this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the 12, do you want to go away as well? Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. And we have believed and come to know you that you are the holy one of God. Jesus answered them. Did I not choose you the 12? And yet one of you is a devil. He spoke of Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot for he one of the 12 was going to betray him.

The word of the Lord.

Preacher: We're currently in the middle of the largest and fastest change in the history of religion in many ways, es especially in our country, maybe the fastest and, and largest religious shift in the history of the United States would be more accurate way to say it over the past 25 years, which is like since 2000. Ok. So if you're a geriatric millennial like me, I think of 25 years as being like way back in the nineties sometimes or farther. But no, like since 2000, 40 million Americans have stopped going to church. It's not merely that there's 40 million less Americans going to church or that the percentages say that there were 40 million Americans who were going to church who are no longer going to church. It, it's called The Great Durch. There's a few people that have written a book about it. Jim Davis and Michael Graham, and in their book, they partner with sociologists.

What they actually found is Jim Davis was trying to study this for a class and he went to his professor and said, I want to write on the, the Great durch how everybody's leaving the churches. And he said, well, good luck. There's not been anything researched. We have no research on the Great de Church. And so what he did is he partnered with sociologists and they went and researched this and through like thousands of interviews and surveys. They were able to find really great statistics on who these people were, why they left and what would take to bring them back. Found all kinds of interesting things in that. For example, of the 40 million, 10 million of those left beca left intentionally, they left because they experienced some sort of hurt or their beliefs changed. 30 million left unintentionally meaning that they casually left the churches.

So do you know the number one reason why people left churches in the United States over the past 25 years? It's really very simple and it, this is a good plug for our membership class because we talk about this. It's simple. It is, I moved, I, I moved to a new place and I never got back in the habit of it. COVID also was a big reason for a lot of people, but that was all. It was just punctuating a, a trend that was happening already in the United States of people treating their faith very casually and then moving away from church. And so once they had an opportunity to leave the church, it was not easy to get them back.

But what they also found was somewhat encouraging because they found that of those 30 million people that left the church casually, many of them would be willing to come back by a simple invitation from a friend, which is a good plug. I'm just plugging all of our announcements through my introduction. It's a good plug for the sharing your faith workshop that we're doing in a few weeks, the, the mission of God workshop. But still we see and we all know we've experienced this. I would dare to say that each person in this room has a friend who has left the church in the past several years. We all know people who have left Jesus or who have left the church, or maybe even Jesus himself have walked away from their faith and are now walking a different way and possibly away all by themselves. And what are we to make of this? And how are we to think about it? Why do people walk away from their faith? Well, I don't know if I'll answer all of the questions today. Ok. That's kind of a big selling point. But I would love to talk about it more.

And what we find today are many of the answers to that question. Many of the reasons why people do walk away from their faith and what it takes for people to stay in the faith. You see more of that in this passage than anything, what it takes to, for people to stay walking with Jesus. We're in the middle of a series in the book of John. If you haven't been with us, we've been going through the book of John the past several months. We'll continue to go through the book of John until we're done with it, which will probably be sometime around this summer. And right now we're in John six and this is what we call the bread of life discourse. We have been going through it. just kind of verse by verse. Last week, we did Jesus feeding the 5000, which is just a great passage where Jesus feeds 5000 men. It's probably more like 10 to 15,000 people there at the at, at this desolate location. And then Jesus has to retreat. He's like, I'm gonna go up on this mountain and pray for a little while. You guys disciples, you handle yourselves. So he sends his disciples back across the sea of Galilee. They get in their boat and they walk over there, it's storming. Jesus catches up with them just cruise and walking on the, the stormy sea and he hops back in the boat and they go to the other side and this week we're going to pick up where we left off last week. With what? With, what happens after this?

The next day, the crowd looks around and they notice, hey, where's Jesus? Where's the bread guy? I, I need some more of that. All right. Where's Jesus? And so they look around, he's not there. And so they decide that Jesus has gone back to the other side of the sea of the Galilee where they know he came from for the first part. So they all get in their boats and go chase after Jesus. And when they eventually find Jesus is just such a different passage, Jesus goes from Hero to zero so quickly in the in chapter six of John earlier, like yesterday, Jesus passing out bread and fish, everybody loves him. They're seeking him out. Now they find him, they start asking him questions. They don't like what he says in return because he's starting to say some weird things in this passage. All right, Jesus comes with some things that are difficult for us to understand at times and many of those people that were seeking him out, walk away from him. And so today, as we go through this, this is the first of seven, I am passages today, Jesus says, I am the bread of life. And as we go through these, these I am statements of Jesus, we're going to be learning more and more about who Jesus is as we go through this. All right.

So let's dive in to the point today. And this is it. why do some people abandon Jesus and others remain faithful? Why do some people abandon Jesus and others remain faithful? Two points? Why do some people abandon Jesus? And do why do some remain faithful? Why do people abandon Jesus? Number one? Why do people abandon Jesus? I have three reasons why. But first of all, let me just mention I am always so shocked at how chill Jesus is when people abandon him. Like when my friends abandon Jesus, I tend to kind of freak out. I want to beg them back into the kingdom. I feel like I need to argue with them and just like emphasize everything which may be a good, I think it is a good a good indication of of my desire for people to know Jesus. But Jesus is like never scared of casual followers walking away from him. He expects it. He never begs them to stay. He doesn't change his message. He feels no need to change his message to, to get them to stay. He's just kind of OK with letting people walk away.

It's instructive to us. We don't have to beg people into the kingdom of God. God will call people to himself. And Jesus knows that everyone, this is in this passage, everyone who is called by the father will come to him. And so he rests in that reality that everyone who is called by the father will come to him. And so he doesn't feel the need to bag anybody into the kingdom. He doesn't feel the need to chase after everybody. He knows he rests easy in that reality. All three reasons why people walk away from their faith according to this passage, it is not all of the reasons.

And, and before I dive into those again, I wanna recognize that a lot of people leave the faith and leave churches, especially for good reasons. Over the past several years, we've seen just a, a tremendous amount of abuse come to light. We've seen physical abuse, abuse of power, sexual abuse. All these different kinds of abuse come to light that are happening within the churches. Real abuse. And these things have no place in the family of God and these are serious topics and ones that deserve thoughtful consideration, things that I have preached on before. Here. Today's sermon is not about that though. Ok. Today's sermon, you often times when these people do walk away, even if they've experienced bad things in the church, it's compounded by many of the things that we learn in today's message about why people walk away.

And so we're going to be looking at this passage and see some of these common reasons for people to walk away from their faith. We're jumping around the passage a bit today. Jesus does not teach very linearly. It's, it's sometimes you have to hop around to, to pick up the major themes that we're that we're getting here. So first people leave Jesus because they're because they're just interested in what Jesus has to offer and not Jesus himself. People leave Jesus because they're interested only in what Jesus has to offer and not Jesus himself.

Verse 26. If you have your Bibles open, you can look with me. Jesus answered them truly. Truly, I say to you, you were seeking me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. And so what Jesus is saying is that these followers are like a bad hinge date. They're not really into the person that's on the other side of that table. They're just looking for that free dinner. All right, I'm not gonna ask for a show of hands. But some of us have either been that person or we've been with that person. All right. I, I know that that happens. Sometimes these people, if you wanna understand, they, they ate their, they ate their fill of the loaves yesterday. Now they're looking for that bread. They want the bread, they want a little bit more of what Jesus has to offer. If you wanna understand why people leave Jesus, you need to understand why people originally went to Jesus.

There's this saying that goes around churches. What you win them with is what you win them to. And it's a very real phrase. If people see Jesus as the giver of health, wealth and prosperity, well, when they don't experience those things, then they're gonna say the problem is with Jesus and they're gonna walk away from him. But Jesus never promises to give us those things. Why do we come to church? Why do many people come to church? There's a varying degrees of reason and sometimes God can take these things and he can turn them and he can use them for his own glory and he can turn people's hearts to him. And so I'm not bashing these things, but I'm just saying, sometimes people are just after what Jesus has to offer. Not Jesus himself. Many times people go to church because they need friends. Church is a great place to make friends. It's a great place to make friends, but it is a by-product of what Jesus has to offer. It is not the product of what Jesus has to offer. Sometimes people go to church looking for a future spouse. Sometimes people go to church, that's a great place to meet a future spouse. Also, I met my spouse at our church. and I'm thankful for that again, a by product that sometimes people go to church looking for entertainment. Sometimes people go to church looking for a political home, looking for a place where people think like they do and they're looking for a tribe to join in that way.

And I'm so thankful that Jesus sometimes draws people to himself that are looking for these things. But it is not always the case unless they start looking to Jesus himself, people who go to church or look like they're following Jesus just because they're looking for one of these by products of Jesus will eventually walk away from Jesus. I've seen it happen many times over. Unless you're looking for Jesus, you're not going to stay following Jesus. Are you pursuing Christ? What brings you here this morning? We're all mixed bag of motives. What are you, Jesus? Plus? Ok. I think most of us would say, yeah, I want Jesus, but then we have that plus sign and you're like, I want this too and that's ok. Here's what I want to see happen in your life. I wanna see those things become less important and Jesus become more important. Just let Christ fill your heart more and more seek him more. These things will come too.

It's like that CS Lewis quote. It's not a, it's not a city on a hill sermon unless I have a CS Lewis quote. He says, aim for, he aim for earth and you're not getting earth, aim for heaven and you get earth thrown in. Ok. He's saying if you aim for the things of Christ, you'll see that it changes your desires and you actually get the things you most want. That's what that quote is basically saying. Second people leave Jesus because they find his teaching to be difficult. And Jesus taught a lot of difficult things in his life. Jesus said that it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go into heaven. He told a rich young ruler, a very important influential person that he needed to go and sell all of his items and give the proceeds to the poor and then come back and follow him. He told his disciples that they must be willing to leave their father and mother and the rest of their family. If they want to follow after him, Jesus said that there is, he told a parable of a sower who throws out seeds and some of the seed fell in soil, that's thorny and the cares of the world come up and they choke out the good seed and they kill the good seed.

So basically, what he's teaching with that is that a relationship with Jesus is monogamous, a relationship with Jesus is monogamous. Meaning that Jesus has to be your number one love in life, your priority for your life. And that if you love the things of the world, the things of the world will continue to grow and will choke out your love for Christ. He teaches many difficult things. And today I love this passage. This is, this is one of my favorite verses. because I his disciples just call him out verse 60. They say this is a hard saying, who can listen to it? They're like Jesus. This is tough. I don't, I don't know about this. And what is it that Jesus is teaching? That's so tough. Verse 53. Not a weirder verse that Jesus speaks OK. Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Not only is that a difficult saying? It's a creepy one. All right. I don't wanna be reading my bible thinking about cannibalism. OK.

This is like when my wife sees a baby, I don't know why she does this. When my wife sees a baby, she says, oh, I could just eat those little cheeks. And every time she says that I say stop saying that it's weird like moms don't wanna hear you talking about cannibalism with their child. It's just a weird thing. I don't want to take the mental picture of what's happening there. And then, and then she says, but I could, I could, I told her I was gonna tell this story and I told her how weird it is and she was like, oh, but I could, what does it mean to drink his blood and eat his flesh? We use the same kind of metaphor all the time. Actually, we devour books, right? We drink in lectures, we chew over a matter. It's a way of saying that you're completely engrossed. It's a way of saying that you're all in that you're completely engrossed in this topic. It's a metaphorical way of saying you're absolutely committed to Jesus.

When we think about eating the flesh of Christ and drinking his blood, it means that we are absolutely committed to him and his wives as, as Augustine puts it, believe and you will have eaten, believe and you have eaten. Now. I do want to take a moment. This is one of those verses that many different religious groups split over because, it sounds a lot like communion. Does it not in this passage? This is very similar language that Jesus uses to introduce the communion meal. And I just want to take a moment to address that. And I think that that's significant. I don't actually think that Jesus is talking about communion in this passage. I don't think that Jesus is talking about communion in this passage. I think that communion is talking about what Jesus is talking about in this passage. So I think it goes the other way around this passage is not about communion. Communion is about this passage. And so when you take communion, you're saying I'm all in on Jesus. I'm absolutely committed to who he is. This is a symbolic way of me remembering that Jesus is the bread of life. Communion is meant to point us back to the person of Jesus.

Third reason why people might leave Jesus and walk a different way is that they have been slowly won over to a secular worldview following Jesus in Somerville can be quite challenging because many of our neighbors and friends do not hold the same worldview. They do not see religion as something to be revered or respected. And instead they kind of scoff at religion, you know, it's kind of a huh whatever. You know, it's stupid people, stupid, religious people. It's kind of the way the, the attitude of the day and many of the people in this passage were experiencing something similar, verse 42 they said, is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph whose father and mother, we know, how does he say I've come down from heaven? We know his parents. How did he come down from heaven? How is this possible?

You see the people that were doubting Jesus of that day were thinking with just a secular mindset and they weren't thinking about the reality that unseen forces could be at play here. A modern secular world view is what philosopher Charles Taylor might say has an eminent frame, which means that we only believe the things that we can observe and quantify that makes for very good science. If you're a scientist, I am so thankful that that's what you believe in your science. But it does not make for a very good world view because there's plenty of things that we cannot quantify and that we cannot measure in life that are valuable and important. And we believe that God is active and that he's moving and that there's a whole spiritual realm that we cannot see and that we cannot quantify. But yet it is real.

In Somerville, there is a gravity to the secular world view. There's a gravity pulling us in slowly making us think the way that the world thinks. And over time, if we just surround ourselves with that, we tend to shift our thinking to match that of our neighbors friends. I, I just wanna give you a little bit of courage this morning and patience. When you start sharing your faith with people in this area, often times it takes a little while because you need to work through many of the secular world view issues. You need to just get to the point to where they see religion as a possibility as something that they could embrace. I've often said that planting a church in Somerville is like building and planting a garden in the middle of a parking lot. The first thing you have to do is get out the jackhammer and like dig up all of the concrete and move it out of the way and then there is soil there. And I'm telling you that in Somerville, there is soil there, this, you have to move a little bit of concrete first and it's gonna take a little bit of time, but the Lord is gracious and patient and he gave us this mission. And so I will say he believes in you that you can do that and that's why he sent us on the mission to do it. Ok.

So that's just a few reasons why people walk away, there are more. But from this passage here are some of the reasons why people walk away. They walk away from Jesus because they're interested only in what Jesus has to offer and not Jesus himself. They walk away from Jesus because they find his teachings to be difficult. I've seen that happen. I was trying, I met this guy after church back in, in Louisville when I was a, a pastor before moving to, to Boston. I've been to Boston for about 12 years. So this was a long time ago. But he came to church. He met with me after church one Sunday, he was teary. He wanted to give his life to Jesus and he joined my community and group, we were working with him toward baptism. And then one day he disappeared. And I, and like after calling him and calling him, he eventually answered again. And he said, yeah, I want to keep living and sleeping with my girlfriend. So I can tell you guys aren't cool with that and I can tell that's like not really what Christianity is about. So, yeah, no, the teaching of Jesus sometimes turns people away from Jesus because his teaching is hard. His teaching is hard to follow him.

And the third reason why people leave Jesus is because they embrace a secular world view. And so let's look at some of these reasons why people might stay with Jesus. Some of these reasons why people might stay with Jesus first. People stay with the who are the type of people or what does it take to actually stay with Jesus. That is a great question. And that's actually what this passage is more about. What does it take to actually stay with Jesus first? Those who stay with Jesus are people that understand that Christianity is not just another religion that Christianity is not just another religion. It's easy to think of. Christianity is just one of a long list of religions, but Christianity is really unique in the way that it operates. It is not just like every other religion. It's not just another set of religious teachings to live your life by so that you can live the best, best life possible or a set of religious principles that you live so that you can satisfy God or some spiritual foundation or some principles of reincarnation. That is not what Christianity is about.

Christianity is different. Christianity is not about changing your behavior. Although some behavior does change with Christianity, but Christianity is the only religion where the God actually sins himself. He actually comes himself to satisfy the requirements of the religion. Jesus, fully God, a member of the Trinity came and lived all of those principles on our behalf. And so therefore, Christianity is unlike any other religion because the other other religion says it's up to you, you live up to the principles you do that thing. But in Christianity, Jesus has already done it for us. This is why in verse 28 they said to him what must we do to be doing the works of God. How can we do this thing? And Jesus responds to them, this is the work of God that you believe in Him, whom he has sent? The people who are seeking Jesus. They just want some things to do. Tell me what to do Jesus.

But Jesus frustratingly tells them there's nothing that they can do. They just need to believe in Him whom God has sent in Christ. What does it mean to believe? I think that oftentimes when we think of belief, it, it's easy to think about it like this because this is a definition of belief. We think about belief in Jesus much like we think about belief in Santa Claus. Like if we believe in His mere existence, we will Him into being. And that means he is real for us. But the word in Greek that we use that we translate into belief. Puo it's translated a variety of different ways and it has a wider meaning than just what we might say is belief. We translate this word to also mean faith. We translate this word to also mean trust. Now a belief that trusts, that's like me saying to my wife, I believe in you when she's, when she's having a difficult time at work, I believe in you. I trust you. I know that you can do this for us. Belief is to look to God and say, I trust you, I depend upon you, not merely I believe in your mere existence that you are up there somewhere, but I trust you. I'm depending upon you that is belief.

And so when Jesus says the work of God is that you believe in Him, whom he has sent, meaning that he has accomplished the thing. And that all we have to do is to believe in Him. Second, people stay with Jesus because with Jesus, they experience true satisfaction. People stay with Jesus when they experience true satisfaction in him. Amen. I love that Jim Carey quote. I've used it before. But yeah, Jim Carrey, the, the guy from Dumb and Dumber. I'm quoting him at church right now. The Grinch himself. He said, I think everyone should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dream so that they can see that it's not the answer. I love that. And that's what you see every time someone gets all the things that you want, find the person that gets all the things that you want. And unless they're trying to convince you that they have the best life ever, if they're truly honest about it, they would tell you that it's still not satisfying to have all the things that you want. Today. We're all looking for things. We have this hunger for life, we want to accomplish things, but all of these things are empty calories. Ok? These are just empty carbs. It's, it's gonna, it's gonna fill you up for the moment, make you feel satisfied, but then you're gonna be hungry again very soon.

But Jesus says, thus, listen in church, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in me shall not thirst. Jesus is saying that he is the satisfaction behind all satisfactions that all of your longings in this life actually point to this greater longing that says that you desire to be approved, to have a greater approval from Jesus. You desire to be secure, to have a secure relationship with Christ. You desire these things that only Jesus can provide. He is the bread of life. Whoever goes to him, well, not hunger. That is what he's teaching us. And I have one final reason why people stay with Jesus. And really, it's the main point of the whole passage. So if you don't hear anything else, just tune in for this, this last part. OK.

People stay with Jesus because Jesus will never cast you out. People stay with Jesus because Jesus will never cast you out. Verse 37. Look at it with me. All that the father gives me will come to me and whoever comes to me, I will never cast out one more time. All that the father gives me will come to me and whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. There's a book that I've given out to many of you. I have a million copies of it at the, at the community space down the, down the street. So sign up for the membership class, you'll, you'll get a copy of this book, no doubt. It's called Gentle and Lowly. And this book spends an entire chapter talking about this one verse. And I just, I'm gonna borrow liberally from it. For this last part in the book, he highlights, he breaks down this verse so much. He says all that the Father gives me. Not most, not some, all that the father gives me will come to me. Once the father sets his loving gaze upon a center, that person is coming to Christ. The rescue is certain. I also love that. It says the father, he's the one giving to the son. It's not that the son is rescuing people from the wrathful. The gracious son is rescuing people from the wrathful father. No, the father is giving to the son. They are working in concordance with one another. The Father himself ordains our deliverance. He takes the loving initiative.

Now there is some tension here. Look at this, all that the father gives me will come to me. It's sure God ordains the salvation of every person who comes to Him. It happens. That is true. Now look in the next part it says, and whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. It's both God ordains it and we have to come. God's purposes are never thwarted. If he wants to save us, he'll do it. But also we're not robots. No one is dragged, kicking, kicking and screaming to Jesus. That's just not the way that Christianity works. God calls us. And when he does, he shows us the most beautiful thing. He shows us the bread of life. And when we truly see that we go to Him, we desire that He changes our desires in that it is both he calls us and we go to him. Whoever comes to me, I will never cast out, consider this, consider this portion of the verse. Whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. There is nothing you can do for Jesus to cast you out of his home.

Many of us had terrible parents. Many of us may have been cast out of our homes as Children, as adolescents. Whoever comes to me, I will never cast out Jesus remains committed. He will never disown his Children. If you are a child of God, he'll never cast you out. Yes, there are some professing Christians who walk away from their faith. And I would say that that proves the nature and quality of their faith to begin with that. They never truly knew Jesus. Although my prayer for them is that they would return and that we never really know if someone was of a child of God or not. But we do know that Jesus says whoever comes to me, I will never cast out and we, we rest on that truth. Maybe you are here today and you struggle with sin like all of us. OK? All of us are struggling with that. But maybe you struggle with this idea of maybe I'm not, maybe Jesus will give up on me. Maybe he's gonna get tired of me. Maybe I've just screwed up one too many times. Whoever comes to me. I will never cast out. Oh, but I just can't stop obsessing. I can't stop failing whoever comes to me. I will not cast out. But you don't understand. I'm really weak. I, I, I don't have anything to offer whoever comes to me. I would not cast out.

This is what Jesus says to us. Jesus has no problem letting spiritual seekers walk away. But for those who have truly placed their faith in Jesus, he'll never let them fall. He will never abandon us. It's how is it that people stay with Jesus? It's not dependent upon our resolve or dedication to him but only the obedience of Jesus. There are times where I'm resistant to the love of Christ often where I, where I'm resistant to the love of time. There's been times in my life where I felt like my faith has been hanging on by a thread, but my salvation is not based upon the strength of my faith, but the object of my faith, I have a three year old and I still wipe his butt. So, therefore I still have full rights and responsibilities and ability to tell stories about this three year old without his permission. Uh, that is my line. You know, if I'm wiping your butt, I get to tell stories, uh, about you at church.

My youngest child, my three year old, he's, he's a cute dude. And, uh, right now many of you have experienced the skating rink known as Somerville sidewalks, right? It is terrible. It's treacherous out there. And I often have to stop rowing and say you have to hold my hand, but I, he never wants to but you have to hold my hand. Ok? So he does and sometimes we're walking along and he starts to slip and his grip isn't very strong, but mine is all right. I got a, I got a dad grip, ok? though he tries to fall, I hold on to him and that is our faith with Christ. It is not the strength of our grip as the child, but it's the strength of his grip holding on to us. Even when our faith is feeble. Jesus holds on to us and why? It sounds so trite because he loves us. I mean, that's all there is to it. He has his heart set on his Children. He loves us as a father loves his Children. He's been united to us as a husband loves his wife, this is the love of Christ and those are actually pale comparisons. Those are actually the communion compared to the real thing. Those are just light momentary things that point to the eternal realities that we have in the love of Christ. He loves his Children.

If he loved us enough, get this. If he loved us enough to bear the weight of our sin and to die on the cross, won't he love us enough to hold on to us? Won't he love us enough to remain faithful in our moments of weakness? Won't he stay persistent to us in our folly yesterday, Jesus spoke to a crowd of thousands of people and then he, he, he traveled to a desolate place. They all traveled to a desolate place to hear him speak. It's like Woodstock. Ok? Jesus Woodstock here. And he miraculously fed them five loaves from five loaves of bread and two fish. Then he left them. He walked on water and to the other side of the sea. And that didn't stop their fandom. They went chasing after Jesus even though he had walked away. And when they found him, he taught them again. And this time, many of them turn their backs on Jesus because Jesus is not concerned about drawing a crowd, but he wants disciples to follow after him. After many of the people that were looking for Jesus, leave him, turn their back on him.

He turns and asks his 12 disciples, his closest disciples, the ones that he has called and he said to the 12 verse 67 do you want to go away as well? And Simon Peter, the one who's always speaking up, he answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? You know, some, you know Peter says some dumb stuff. Sometimes he just knocks it out of the park though, right? Like this is a good one. OK, Peter Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. And we have believed and have come to know that you are the holy one of God. Amen, amen church. You have the words of eternal life to whom shall we go. You have the words of eternal life. And we have believed and have come to know that you are the holy one of God. May that be the answer of our hearts as well? Where shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.

Have you tasted of those words? I plead with you to receive it. Now that Jesus has the words of eternal life and we have believed and come to know that you are the holy one of God. Let's go to Him, the living bread, the one whose words give us satisfaction and eternal life, the holy one of God. May we eat and be satisfied. If you've never received this living bread, I invite you today to be satisfied by it. And if you are coming to him again for the 100th 1000th time. I will never cast you out. That's what he says that we come to him as feeble sinners and yet he receives us over and over again.

So I encourage you to receive him again, to go to him again. We're going to be participating in a sacred meal. We do this every week and this meal is meant to represent what Jesus is talking about today that as we take of the bread on the night that he was betrayed, he took a loaf of bread and he tore it. And he said, this is my body broken for you. And he took a bl he took a cup of wine and he said, this is my blood shed for you. Who if you take these, do it in remembrance of me. And so these things point us to this eternal truth that we will be satisfied with Christ. And today, we are partially satisfied. It's like the appetizers of Jesus Christ in today's day and age. But one day, if our faith is in him, we will be fully satisfied by him. That being said, let me invite you to stand as we prepare our hearts, to receive this meal and to respond to Christ through song.

Father, as we come to you this morning, we pray that you would fill our hearts with this truth that you will never cast us out. That though we go to you, we will never be cast out. And God, we pray that this communion meal would be a meaningful opportunity for us to be reminded that you are sustaining and you are satisfying. And that as we go to you, our hunger for life will be satiated. And God, we pray that anyone in here who doesn't know Christ or who needs to rededicate their life to Him. We pray that they would return. We pray for those who are walking away. Would you give us faith to know that you are in charge? But also would you give us courage to reach out to them and to bring them back into your church? Father? We trust you and we pray that you would be working. Even now that we would be meditating that we'd be going to use the living bread. In Christ's name, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from John 6:1-21 about two of Jesus’s miracles. Discussion points: Jesus’s compassion for the people resulted in him preaching the word of God to them, Jesus loves to take our inadequate offerings and multiply and bless them, ask Jesus what you can offer him and what he wants you to give over to him.

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Scripture Reader: [John 6:1-21] After this, Jesus went away to the other side of the sea of Galilee, which is the sea of, of Tiberius. And crowd was following him because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick. Jesus went up on the mountain and there he sat with his disciples. Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews was at hand lifting up his eyes then and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him. Jesus said to Philip, where are we to buy bread that so that these people may eat? He said this to test him for, he himself knew what he would do. Philip answered him. 200 dinari worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to get a little one of his disciples. Andrew Sigh. And Peter's brother said to him, there is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they for so many Jesus said, have the people sit down now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down about 5000 in number Jesus then took the loaves and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated. So also the fish as much as they wanted. And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples gather up the leftover fragments that nothing may be lost. So they gathered them up and filled 12 baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said this is indeed the prophet who was coming to the world perceiving then that they were about to come to and take him by force and make him King Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself. When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat and they were frightened. But he said to them, it is, I do not be afraid. Then they were glad to take him into the boat and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going.

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: All right, first sermon of 2024. Here we go. I love doing it on the 14th of January though here's why, who, who made a resolution? And we got any resolutions. Come on. Come on, come on. Uh, who's kept their resolution so far? Uh, it's like the most realistic New Year's sermon of all time. Two weeks in you already. We've already dropped it dry January. Anybody. Um, yeah. Yeah. Try, uh, you know, my family always, you know, we, we, we do dry January and then we get it like a couple of weeks in. It's like, uh, how about dry January? Except the weekends or like special occasion. I don't know. that's, that's New Year's sermon on January 14th. It's like still hopeful, but realistic. OK, we're gonna be realistic at this point. We're jumping back into our series on the book of John Today. And it's been a few weeks since we've been in John, but we're back in it. And today we're looking at this really famous passage where Jesus is feeding the 5000. And this is one that many of you are familiar with. But I think it's a really powerful passage for us this morning.

What we're going to be looking at today is the priority. The what are the priorities of Jesus? What are the things that are most important to Jesus? If we are people that want to follow Jesus, we are also people who want to make the priorities of Jesus, the priorities of our life, right? That's what it means to follow him is that his priorities are my priorities one of the things that I pray when I don't have any idea what to pray. I, have you ever been in that situation where it's just like I'm supposed to pray. I just don't know what I'm supposed to pray is I pray, Jesus. Would you make us love the things that you love? That's what I most want. I want to love the things that Jesus loves because as my heart is drawn to Jesus, I am drawn to love the things that he loves. And so today, we're going to be looking at some of the things that Jesus loves. We're going to be looking at the priorities that Jesus has in this story.

So let's dive right into it. There's no more delay. Verse one after, after this, Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberius. All right. So this miracle of Jesus feeding the 5000. This is the only miracle of jesus' entire ministry up until like the resurrection and everything. But it's the only one that is recorded in all four gospels. It is the only one. All the different gospel writers have a different take on the life of Jesus. And this is the only one that makes it across all four. And why is that? You might ask? Well, it's probably because this is the most public miracle that Jesus does in his entire ministry. Thousands of people saw Jesus do this miracle, you know, after Jesus was resurrected, the scripture says that he appeared to over 500 people. That's a lot of people. That's a lot of eyewitnesses and primarily what the gospels are, are eyewitness, testimonies of the life of Jesus. And so this one being the most public eye eyewitness testimony of the life of Jesus made it into all five, all four or five. And did I just add one, all four gospel accounts? And because of that, we have a lot of extra details. I have a lot of material to work with here. OK. So I've got the director's cut that I'm going to be pulling from as we walk through this passage.

In the Mark version of the story, it doesn't talk about this in John. But in the Mark version of the story, this happens right after Jesus sends his disciples out to heal preach and cast out demons. And so the disciples go out to do the ministry of Jesus and then they come back and they come back to Jesus and they are full of stories. They're like, hey Jesus, you're never gonna believe what happened. He's like, oh no, I'll believe it. I know exactly what happened. But there amazing things happen, Jesus and we are tired, we've been doing all this work and we're wiped. It is time. I don't know what you want us to do Jesus. And what Jesus says is, he's like, hey guys, you you seem tired. Why don't we go on a leadership retreat? That's basically what he says. Like, let's go take a break. I know this place. It's out in the middle of nowhere. The airbnb listing looks awesome. It's really rustic. There's no wi fi. Let's just go. Let's go. It's on the other side of the lake, the side of the lake that no one goes to. So let's go over there and check it out. It's, it's abandoned. And so here they are, that's what's happening here is this is leadership retreat with Jesus. I have a feeling that a leadership retreat with Jesus is gonna be a little bit different than a leadership retreat that we might go on though. Like I'm not sure if they're gonna have any marker board sessions while on their leadership retreat with Jesus.

So they get in the boat, they go to the other side of the story or the other side of the Sea of Galilee. And they get to this desolate place when it says desolate. The word for desolate. Here is the same word that we see translated in other parts of the Bible as wilderness. So when we say desolate, we mean like no one's around. This is the wilderness. This is where the people of Israel were wandering for 40 years during that time. This is where Jesus was, went into the wilderness. Maybe not the exact same wilderness, but he went into a desolate place to be tempted for 40 not to be to fast for 40 days and then to be tempted by Satan at the end of that. And so we have this place where that's really out in the middle of nowhere. But when they get there, what happens they get there and there is a huge crowd waiting on them. Wow. What a wonderful retreat. Jesus. We're tired, we're done with the people. Everywhere we go, there's people here. You're like Princess Diana or something. Like they're just following you, the paparazzi, you can't get them away and Jesus, he makes time for them. Now, if I'm a disciple, I'm a little annoyed. OK? This is supposed to be my rest time. I'm so supposed to be taking a break, but I can't get a break. There's people everywhere I go.

It's like parenting. OK? There you just can't get, when you're a parent you don't go on vacation, you take a trip because it's not really a vacation. Wherever you go, there's hungry people to feed. Wherever you go, there's work to do. OK. It's, you're, you're actually just doing your normal stuff, maybe even harder than your job in a different location. That's OK. All right. That's OK. It is what it is. That's what we signed up for. But that is what the disciples are experiencing here and much like parenting, they get over there and everyone is already hungry. That's just how it goes. So what does Jesus do? Does he look out at the crowd and say, hey guys, look, I'm flattered, glad you're here. Go on home. We need a little personal time. All right. Little little leadership retreat. No, he doesn't. He has compassion on the crowd and he preaches to them. He starts teaching them the word. I, I love that. It says that he had compassion. So he taught them the word of God, meaning that that is what they most needed. I want to give them what they need, what they want, which is to hear the word of the Lord being presented to them. It's a very practical point.

Sometimes we're ready for a little me time, little personal time and then life happens, right? You're, you're finally have chiseled out that time to read your Bible. You finally chiseled out that time to pray and then an emergency at work happens or you have a friend call you and say, hey, life emergency. I need some advice or someone throws a lego in the toilet and you had to figure out what happens with that again. Parenting not that that would have happened this morning or anything like that. We're in a desolate area. We have thousands of people who have followed us and Jesus looks up at the disciples and he says, now, where are we going to buy enough bread for all of these people? We're in the middle of nowhere. There's no bakers out here. What are we gonna do now? Of course, Jesus, he knew what was gonna happen. They even, you know, John puts it in there. Like of course, he knew what was gonna happen. He wanted to see how his disciples would respond though. All right.

So two of his disciples respond, one of them gives a reasonable answer and the other one gives a completely idiotic answer. All right, let's see if you can pick which one is reasonable and which one is idiotic. OK. First Philip answers Jesus and says 200 denari wouldn't be enough bread for each of these people to just have a single bite. Now, a denari is about a one day's wage. So he's saying over half a year salary would not be enough to even give everyone a simple appetizer to give him a taste. There's no way we're getting this much bread, Jesus. That's what he's saying. Is this not happening? We don't have that kind of money even if we did, it wouldn't be enough. We would need a lot more than that to fill all of these people up. But then Andrew Peter's brother speaks up next and I'm gonna, I'm just gonna tell you this is the dumb one. OK? You know that after he says this Peter who's obviously the big brother, I mean, it doesn't actually say that, but we know it because he sticks his foot in his mouth all the time. He's just like, so aggressive. That's like obvious Big Brother energy going on right there. Um, Peter, you know, he's just like, Andrew. Would you shut up? Would you not say these things to Jesus? Uh, you're embarrassing me.

But Andrew looks at Jesus and he says, hey, there's a little boy here. He's got five loaves of bread and two fish, do anything with that. Now, to us, one of these is completely reasonable and the other one is completely irrelevant. But to Jesus, it's completely flipped. The irrelevant one is the one that's reasonable and the one that is reasonable is irrelevant to Jesus and Jesus. He just says, have people sit down, I love that. He, he doesn't tell him what he's doing. He's just like have him sit down. I've got work to do. I got work to do. Now there was a lot of grass in this place. So the men sat down about 5000 in number. We call this the feeding of the 5000. And many of you have heard this before that there may have been actually more people at the feeding of the 5000. And I think that that's true. because we know ancient civilization would often times only count the men when they were giving a, a number for things. And that's something that we know. But also the text kind of leads us to believe that when he says, have the people sit down, it uses a more generic term that could be translated into men. Anthros, it's like where we get the word anthropology. So he says, have the people sit down and then it says when, when it's counting the number of people, it says it uses the more specific term for men, which is Andros. And so, when it says how the people sit down, that's a generic term. And then when it says, so the men sat down about 5000 in number. That's the more specific term. So we can gather from that, that maybe there's just as many women there and they're bringing their Children. So 10 to 15,000 people at this feeding, it's a lot of people just think TD garden completely maxed out. That might be what it feels like to be seeing this.

So Jesus takes the loaves and the fish and he gives thanks and they start passing it out. Now, I'm not sure exactly what this look like. It's not a picture Bible, obviously. But it says that everyone had as much as they want. In fact, there's leftovers, they fill up 12 baskets full of the leftovers. The story is very reminiscent of God providing for the Israelites manna while in the wilderness. You know, there's this story where the people of God are drawn into a desolate place and God provides for them when they're hungry. He provides bread from heaven. But the bread that Jesus provides from heaven is different than the bread from the Old Testament. The bread that Jesus gives is not just enough for the day, but it's super abounding. It goes far beyond what they need or what they expect, far beyond it. It's a feast. Jesus isn't just handing out a ration ticket for that day, but he's handing out a feast which tells us what type of God He is. He is that kind of God. He is generous. We rarely have this mindset.

When we come to Jesus, we often think of God as being stingy withholding like he's not gonna give us the best like he's only gonna give us our basic necessities and He wouldn't give us anything more than that. But the scriptures over and over again, describe God as generous as kind as someone who cares. It is a priority for Jesus. Not only to provide these things for those who don't adequately plan for themselves because I don't know about you. But if I'm going out to hear a long sermon in a desolate place, I'm packing a lunch. Ok. These people, they, they weren't providing thinking well for themselves, but Jesus, he makes it a priority to abundantly and generously provide for them. Jesus took five loaves and two fish from a little boy and he did amazing things.

We oftentimes feel inadequate to do the things of God. We often times feel inadequate to serve the Lord, to be faithful to him, to serve in the church. We feel like we don't have much to offer Jesus. But Jesus loves to take what might feel inadequate and to use it for his glory. Jesus loves to take what we have to offer and to bless it and to use it and to multiply it, whatever it is, he loves to do that. He loves to take what little we have to offer and to make it count for his kingdom. I'll tell you a little story when I went to seminary. I was 22 years old. I was just a young buck. All right. Uh, seminary is grad school. So I just graduated from college. Went, moved to Louisville, Kentucky where I was pursuing my master's degree, in Divinity, masters of Divinity. And, um, I joined this large church. Uh, it was a church that was really well well suited. They had everything already taken care of, you know, they, they weren't getting up in front of everybody asking for volunteers for the greeting team. OK. We'll put it like that. They, they had, they had a lot of stuff going on there and I, you know, as most seminary students, you were a big fish previously respected by your, your old church and then you move here and it's like we've got four dozen seminary students get in line. Ok? They, they're not looking for me to preach or anything like that as I joined this church. And so I'm just like, what do I have to offer here? They've kind of got everything taken care of.

So I look around and the only place that I can find to serve that kind of fits me is with the children's ministry. There's a lot of kids around the church. I genuinely do like Children. At that point in my life, I had more energy to like Children and I am kind of capable of teaching. So I signed up to serve in the kids ministry and I served in the kids ministry for many years there. But it just felt like such a small thing. Like I was just in this class, there were like seven or eight other. At, at first I taught a 1st and 2nd grade class and then I taught a four and five year old class and in the four and five year old class, I actually met my wife. Well, we got to know each other better because she get was assigned to the same class as me. So if you've heard our story, that's how we got to know each other was hanging out at the playground at during church with the kids. So, but so the Lord used it in that way, but he used it in other ways too.

I remember many years after that I got hired at the church many years later to kind of run the kids ministry as things went on. And I was talking with the youth pastor. Now, this youth pastor, he's a larger than life personality. I mean, the dude is like the most barrel chested dude. He's just like, uh, he looks like a, like a 60 year old bodybuilder. You know, like he's an older guy. He's got wisdom, but at the same time he's jacked and he is just a very influential, big personality. He's had a big impact on the church. He's impacted dozens and dozens of lives, maybe hundreds of lives. He's preaching regularly and he's just pouring his life into these students. So he's someone that has a lot to offer. And we're having this conversation one day and I asked him how they decided to come to our church and he starts to tell me the story. He has, I think five or six girls, like, um, he, he had a lot of Children, a lot of daughters and when they, they were visiting different churches and they visited our church and he told me that his girls, you know, a couple of them went to the children's ministry and they just loved it.

And then he waxed on eloquently about how gifted this children's worker is that was pouring into the lives of his daughters. And they really weren't that impressed with the church at first. But this children's worker man, this guy was great. He was just teaching them and they just loved it. They want, they demanded that we came back and I just let him keep going. But I remembered that it was me. I am that children's worker. I never, I don't even think I told him. but I'm telling you guys, ok, it was me, Jesus took the little bit that I had to offer and he multiplied it. I just gave him what I had to offer. I may not have ever heard that story. I was lucky that I got to hear how the Lord had used a, a piece of my ministry which is a good reminder for us to, to tell people if someone makes an impact on your life, tell them because that's encouraging. That's what we're called to do as a church is to encourage to build one another up. Let us be a church that encourages one another. Please. We need the encouragement. Everyone here needs the encouragement. Don't worry about blowing up their head, let the heads balloon. It's ok. Encourage one another. I beg you so that we continue to do the work that God has for us. So we feel motivated to do it.

Friends take your small offerings to Jesus, let him multiply these things, whatever you have, give it to Christ and let him turn it into something powerful. God is more concerned with your willingness to give to him than He is what it is. You actually have to give verse 14 when the people saw the sign that they had, that they had, had, had done that he had done. They said this is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world, right? They're getting it. Look at them good job guys perceiving then that they were about to come and take by force to make him king. Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself. Couple things here, they're ready to make Jesus king. They're ready to crown him king and to take him straight down to Jerusalem and say, hey, the king is here, move over everyone. We found the king. And what does Jesus do? He does the typical Jesus Irish goodbye, sneaks away and goes straight up the mountain to pray by himself.

It is a good reminder in 2024 that Jesus is far less interested in politics than his followers. Jesus is far less interested in politics than his followers. Jesus is not interested in becoming their idea of king. He's got bigger things on his mind. There is a kingdom where he is already king, where he is reigning and ruling. He has this different kind of kingdom a a reign that transcends political boundaries and is good news for all people is the kingdom of God on earth, God's will and God's way with God's people on God's planet. This is the kingdom of God and this is jesus' priority and it needs to be our priority as well. Kingdom of God above all things. May we be known even politically for our kindness, our gentleness, our humility and our love as opposed to the dumpster fire that we call political action today? May Christians not be known as people who care more about the politics of today than the Kingdom of God. What does Jesus do? Instead of being crowned as king? He retreats to a mountain by himself. He sends his disciples on without him. Leadership retreat is over. And what's he doing on the mountain? He's praying and he's talking with his fa father. It's a priority. He finds time, even if it means he misses his boat, he finds time even if it means he's staying up late into the night, he finds time.

The author of Luke mentions that Jesus went to a quiet place to be alone with God nine times. He mentions it nine times. That's a lot of times for a short account on the life of Jesus. He mentions that Jesus goes to spend time alone that many times. It is a huge priority for Jesus who has spent his entire eternity past in deep fellowship with his father. He doesn't run off the fumes of that. He continues to commune with his father throughout his life. He continues to go to him in prayer. It is a huge priority for Jesus. And if it's a priority for Jesus, it has to be a priority for us too. Does it not when Arthur put it like this, the busier and more in demand and famous that Jesus became the more he withdrew to the quiet places.

Why is it such a priority for Jesus? Well, I think one reason and we can't miss this is that he genuinely enjoyed it. It was just something he enjoyed. He enjoyed spending time with his father. You make time for the things that you enjoy. It's easy for Jesus to make time to be with his father because Jesus obviously delights in his father. And as this is the priority for him, it is for us as well. I'd love this quote from Henri Newham. It says without solitude, it's virtually impossible to have a spiritual life. We do not take the spiritual life seriously if we do not set aside some time to be with God and to listen to him. So with that being said, let me ask you this morning, do you have a spiritual life? I mean, you're here. So it's obviously something that you want to make a priority. There aren't a lot of cultural Christians around, around Boston area, some. But do you have a spiritual life? Do you set aside time to be alone with your father who loves you? Who wants to spend time with you? If Jesus needed that time? We do too.

What you most need in life is to look at Christ because by looking at him, we become like him. It's not that you simply look at him and look at how he lived and then you go home and you say, you know what I'm gonna try to, to be more like him. I'm gonna do some of the things that I saw him do. No, it's by the very act of looking at him that you behold his glory and it changes who you are from the inside out. You become what you behold. And friends, many of us have beholden to find dreams and we've become greedy people who would never admit it. And many of us have become beholden to dreams of being beautiful and young for the rest of our lives and that has become our priority. But friends when you look to Christ, what you look to becomes your priority.

And as you look to Christ, what happens to your heart. It's not that you become more greedy. It's that you become more kind and you become more humble and you desire to lay your life down for other people. It's not that you look at him and you do and you do those things just because you saw him doing it. But it's because you've seen it and you've beheld it and it changes you. That is what we need. As we look at Christ, the spirit makes us like Jesus. Let's look at someone who looked at Christ. The disciples leave Jesus. I don't know why. It's so funny. Jesus sends him on. He's like, yeah, I'll catch the next boat. Go ahead. Um, he's, they, they get on the boat, they go back over to the non desolate uh, side of the, the sea of Galilee and, uh, the, a storm picks up, it says they're three or four miles into the sea. So this is beyond swimming regions. And who do they see as the storm is, is raging and they're out in the middle of the sea and they're fighting it. But Jesus, he's walking on the water. I love these details. It's not like Jesus is walking on the frozen pond. Jesus is walking on a stormy sea and in the gospel of Matthew, I believe or maybe it's Mark, I think it's Mark. It says that he fully intends on just walking by them. That's what a funny detail just like out there walking. What's up guys? All right, I'm gonna keep going. You just leave you out here and they call to Jesus and they're obviously frightened.

They're like what is happening and, and he says to them, it is I, which is the same words for I am. Jesus is speaking, do not be a friend. It's not mentioned in John's account again, but in Matthew's account, Jesus actually invites Peter out into the water and Peter has to keep his eyes on Jesus. And as long as he keeps his eyes on Jesus, he can walk on the water. But when he starts to look at the water, he starts to sink. He lacks trust. He's looking at the wind and the waves. He's like, how am I gonna, how is this possible? And he loses his sight on Jesus and he starts to sink friends. If you look to the things of this world, you will always feel like you want to sink. But if you look to Jesus, you will always feel the hope that has been given to you in Him. You will always feel that amazement.

Let's take a moment right now to look her up. I'm gonna invite you if you would like to close your eyes as we think about this, as we look to Christ, what are you anxious about? What has your heart just in knots? Where are those things? What that, that's one thing I do when I'm talking to Jesus is I just start with my anxieties because those are the cares in my heart and He cares about those. My anxieties are often a window into my priorities. Give those things to God, give your anxieties to Him, say I give you this and instead look to the spiritual realities that you have in Christ friends. If you could ask God to do anything in 2024 and you would know that He would do it no matter what, what would it be? What would you ask Him for? Ask Him? Why not? He invites you to also ask him this, Jesus, what can I offer you? What do you want to multiply in my life? What can I offer? What can I give you've given me so much? What do I have to offer? What do you want me to give over to you?

Friends? Take those questions and contemplate them this week as we move into 2024 let's evaluate our priorities. Where are your eyes set? Are they still on the things of the world or are they set on Christ? What do you have to offer Jesus this year? What are you beholding? What would you want to behold if we wrap this up? Let's think about this. What was jesus' highest priority? But to do the will of his father, that was his highest priority in all of life. And what is the will of God for Jesus? We know that it was the will of the father to crush him for our iniquities, to pierce him for our transgressions.

But yet Jesus delights in doing the will of the father is his highest priority and he walks to the hill of GHA carrying his cross as far as he can because it is his priority to do the will of the father and to take on the sin that we commit that, to take the punishment that we deserve. Jesus with joy, took on our sin so that we might take on his righteousness. That's what happens. When we look to Christ, when you look to Christ, your sins are transferred to him on the cross where the punishment is paid no longer, do you bear the punishment? But then it's not just that you are made that you are removed of sin, but it is that his righteousness is extended to you. And so by looking at him, he takes on your sin, you take on his righteousness. Now we progressively become more like him, the more we look to him. And so this year, let me invite you that this be the year that you look to Christ in all of life. When you feel anxious, when you feel guilty, look to Christ, when you feel joy, when you feel sadness, look to Christ, let this be the year that we behold him, my friends where we make his priorities, our priorities.

On the night that he was betrayed. Jesus took a loaf of bread and he tore it and he said this is my body broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me and he took a cup and he said this is the cup of the new covenant, my blood shed for you do take this in remembrance of me. And so each week we participate in a sacred meal and a communion meal. And the way that we do that here is we invite all those who are calling on Christ who are looking to Christ to come and participate in this meal. So as we approach the table church, I would love to, to invite us to stand and pray as we prepare our hearts to sing and respond to jesus' Word this morning. Let's stand.

Father. We thank you for your word. We pray that you would bless it in our life, that you would multiply it in our lives. May this word become something that helps us throughout the day and throughout the, the year and God may we behold you each and every day and delight in you. In Christ's name we pray, amen.

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Elder Mark Schmeissing teaches about Jesus’s call to the mission field in Matthew 9:35-38. Discussion points: Every person is made in the image of God and is worth our time to give them the gospel, God does not need us to be qualified before we commit to the work of the Lord, ask the Lord to help you be obedient to go where and to whoemever He sends you to bring the gospel.

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Scripture Reader: [Matthew 9:35-38] And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the Kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: Good morning. I too. I am getting a little over a cold. So please bear with me. And before you get concerned, Fletcher was planning to take the week off. So I'm still plan a for this week for preaching. It's exciting to see all the kids here with us this morning. And it's a privilege to share God's word with you all as we reach the end of 2023. And we start off 2024. I'm sure like many of you. I'm kind of thinking through the year ahead and all the things we're looking forward to all the planning and preparation that goes into whether we have big life events happening or just things we wanna see happen in the New Year. Maybe there's a big, a wedding or a graduation, big family event, a big vacation you're looking forward to. Um, but over the past couple of years we've seen that some of this planning around New Year's time can be kind of difficult just a couple of weeks into the year as 2020 showed us all your planning for the year can kind of go out the window rather quickly.

2020 the global pandemic that that hit us, you know, we saw our favorite restaurants closed and we spent our birthdays on group zoom calls. 2020 also was very eventful in kind of my personal life and my family's life because our son Liam was born in April of that year and his arrival was also a bit shocking like the COVID pandemic. My wife woke me up at 315 in the morning in that April day. And as anyone who in this room that I shook awake at 315 in the morning, I was a little confused and disoriented sense of dread, maybe. And that quickly shifted to a sense of urgency in the moment because the context here is that my older son was born in the hospital after a very short labor. So we knew we had to be prepared and ready to go as soon as things started moving with Liam. So my wife woke me up. We felt the urgency and we started to get moving. I called my friend Megan to, to come to our house to, to be with our older son, Luke and by around 4 a.m. So just after about 40 45 minutes, we were ready to go out the door.

We didn't make it out the door that war though. At 4 a.m. my wi my wife looked at me and said, we're not going to make it to the hospital. We need to call 911. And that's when things sort of shifted, mentally and probably physically for me. Um, as this feeling of urgency transition to this feeling of the sense of the gravity of the situation. That was before me, this great need for a baby to come into the world. And I was gonna have to deliver this baby in our small Somerville apartment bathroom. Thankfully, we lived in Union Square and the emergency teams came within less than 10 minutes or so. And soon there were two emts and several firemen in our living room. Now, you would think that would be the time in the story where Mark's comfort starts to settle in. But these two emts had never delivered a baby like this before. And the five firemen were looking at me asking what they should be doing to help in the situation.

Thankfully, my son was born happy and healthy at around 430. That is just over an hour after I had woken up for those of you keeping count in the morning in our tiny apartment bathroom with one EMT in the bathtub and another one in the doorway of our small bathroom. And I share this story with you all because I think some of these feelings of urgency and this great need staring in the face are similar to what Jesus is conveying as he went about his ministry and he looked at these crowds of people before him. A sense of the gravity of their eternal situation is eager to address their needs.

We're taking a detour this morning. We've been going through the book of John for the past several weeks and we're looking at Matthew this morning and in the preceding chapters in Matthew throughout Jesus's ministry, he's been actively healing the sick and restoring the broken proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and demonstrating his power and authority over sickness over demons and over death itself. And here in this few couple of verses that we read this morning, Jesus shares some of his perspective on the world around him and invites us to join in with him and his labor, I think as opposed to the urgency and the tension there with the birth of a baby. I often find myself approaching the mission that Jesus puts us on similar to waiting for an Amazon package. Usually I forget what I ordered. I have no idea when it's arriving and I don't really care. I, some can't really remember the last time that a lost package elicited in any sort of emotional response for me. And that's not to say that I go around disinterested in the salvation of the people around me. But I think a lot of us can relate when I say we just have a lot on our plates right now.

When it comes to the mission, I think in addition to sharing his motivation and his perspective on the world, Jesus puts out a specific call here for laborers, a specific call for you and I to see the need in the world around us and to respond in obedience. Jesus wants to use you on his mission to share the gospel, to share the good news. He wants us to be ready and obedient to step into the work that he's already begun in the lives of those around us.

So first, let's take a look at our passage and understanding Jesus's perspective as he looked at the crowds for Matthew nine verses 35 and 36. And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them. And this weird compassion, I think we often would think of it as, as sort of a pity or maybe even at times a disgust for the crowds. But it's not that is that he feels in agony for their pain. He wasn't just emotionally moved, but he was physically affected with compassion for the people before him. It literally translates to the bowels or guts referring to the innermost core of the heart of Christ and his ministry.

And this can be found throughout scripture, this compassionate heart of Jesus. I think back to a few weeks ago when Fletcher was speaking from John two, where Jesus's mother comes to him with a request that seems sort of trivial in our eyes, at least about addressing the lack of wine at a wedding. And yet Jesus's compassionate heart responds in turning the ceremonial waters into wine and performing a miracle. Later on, he'll be preaching in a a house or some kind of structure and it's so crowded that people create a hole in the roof and drop their paralytic friend through the roof to get him access to Jesus. And Jesus doesn't chastise them, but he sees their faith and immediately heals the man and changes his life forever all the way through to the end of Jesus's life where he had been beaten and tortured, he hung on a cross to die. He had every right to be a little less compassionate and yet the words out of his mouth, the words that he prayed were father forgive them for. They know not what they do.

Many other times we see in between that Jesus was weeping in sadness and physically overcome with compassion, with those around them. This heart of God hasn't changed today. He looks at us and he sees our struggles and our pain and our challenges. He sees when we've been laid off, he sees when we've made mistakes and he has that same heart of compassion. The idea of God as this disappointed boss or this overbearing father is incompatible with the compassionate Jesus that we find in scripture. And in 2023 I think compassion has been in pretty short supply. You're not gonna find it online. Social media is probably one of the most toxic places on earth. Academia and the business world, they're not really known for being compassionate places. I think our compassion and love as followers of Jesus will stand out as unusual in a world that's very focused on what's best for me and my family in this moment.

What drives Jesus's compassion? It's here in verse 36 because they were, he saw the crowds and he said that they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd, harassed and helpless, could also be interpreted as bullied and oppressed or wearied and worn out. He saw people who were helpless and in need of a savior. He saw people whose lives were consumed as we relate each week. By this chase of religion, this pursuit of a set of rules that justify their worthiness. And another set of people who are consumed by irreligion, believing that all that they could find in sex or success or money or power at their job, whatever pleasures this world offers, they could find satisfaction in. But both of these paths leaving people exhausted, unsatisfied and empty all in need of the good news that Jesus had come to take his sins on himself, take our sins on himself and died, the death that we deserved so that we might live with him for eternity. So Jesus has this heart of compassion for the crowds as he sees the people around him and it's driven by his view into their need for a savior. What does this look like for us? Are we moved with compassion? When we hear the stories of people's lives around us? Are we focused on their spiritual needs? And do we have an eternal perspective on people's lives?

CS Lewis talked about this sense that the people around us are, are not ordinary people but people that will live on for eternity. He has this quote. You have never talked to me to a mere mortal nations, cultures, arts, civilizations, these are mortal and their life is to ours. It's the life of a nat but it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry Snub and exploit immortal whores or everlasting splendors. We should take each other seriously. No flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. Fletcher, I think mentioned this a couple of weeks ago about how every Sunday morning, Siri on his iphone or, and all of us who have iphones can give you that screen time report of how you've used your phone and what apps you've been in over the last week. Not sure if Android does the same thing, but it does. Great, great. Fantastic.

What if instead of a screen time report, it was giving you a sense of how you used your life over the last week, who you had conversations with and what those conversations were about. What would it say about you? What would it say about how much time is spent talking about the football games on Saturday and Sunday afternoon and a discussions about the weather. What Taylor Swift was up to this week. What would our conversation report say about our perspective on the eternal nature of the people around us? Are we moved by their need for a savior? And does that even cross our mind if that did cross my mind in every interaction I had? How might that change my relationship with my coworkers and how I treat the man who cuts me off in traffic or the person bagging my groceries?

The need for a good shepherd drove Jesus's ministry and after sharing this perspective and the motivation for his work. Jesus turns to his disciples, those closest followers around him in verse 37 he says to them, the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few now as he kind of does throughout scripture and especially in a lot of his parables, the stories he tells, he uses kind of an agricultural reference here, talking about the spiritual condition of people and the work of his ministry. The image of the harvest here is that the Lord is already working in the fields. He's already tilling the ground. He's already planting the seeds, he's already watering the fields, helping things grow. And now he's calling for laborers to come join him in the work that he's already begun. More than simply asking disciples to come join him in this work in the harvest.

He makes two specific observations though and I wanna pack both of those. The first is that the harvest is plentiful. I'm a finance guy. So of course, I was gonna bring some numbers into things this morning. Here's some startling statistics and that there not startling. It may say something about your heart. There's approximately 5 billion billion with A B people across the globe that do not claim to be followers of Christ of those 5 billion, over 3 billion people and over 7000 different people, groups are considered unreached. For those of you maybe not familiar with that term, unreached, unreached people is what I'm using to describe places in the world where the church doesn't have a significant presence where Christ is largely unknown. And it's maybe there's language barriers or geographic barriers. 3 billion people and over 7000 people, groups are unreached with the gospel.

If those numbers are, are difficult to comprehend, difficult to sink in, it's hard to think of what a billion is. Let's bring this closer to home. It's difficult to find statistics locally. But my best estimate and research says that there's probably over 60,000 people in the city of Somerville alone who do not claim to follow Christ. It's not Cambridge in Arlington, in Medford, in Boston. It's just our neighbors here in Somerville. 60,000 people, the harvest is plentiful and the needs are great. What are we to do with this information? There was a missionary in the 19 fifties named Jim Elliott who spent his life working with an unreached people group in Ecuador. He ultimately lost his life working with these people. But I love how concisely he put his understanding of the role of God and the role of himself in this mission. He said, rest in this. It is his business to lead command, impel, send and call it is your business to obey, follow, move and respond. Our need for God is urgent and of internal importance.

And there's billions of people outside these doors who've never heard the name of Jesus. I need a savior. Sometimes we think that we can let those numbers sink in and we can just let it wait just a little bit longer. There's probably going to be a more convenient time to think about these things. We're not promised tomorrow. We're not even promised this afternoon. I think back to the EMT who arrived at my house that April morning, who could probably make me a list of a lot more convenient locations to deliver a baby as opposed to crouching in my bathtub. But thankfully, he just responded to the need in the moment, the harvest is plentiful and the harvest is ready.

Let's move beyond these statistics, these numbers put faces and names to each of these people. Each one of them is made in the image of God and worthy of our time to bring them the good news of the gospel. Jesus's second observation should be heartbreaking in light of those statistics I just gave out. He says the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. You see the reason the gospel has not penetrated every single corner of the globe is not due to the Lord's lack of compassion or his lack of work. It's due to the Lord wanting to use human beings like you and I as his agents and his messengers to spread the good news of the gospel. And the reason the gospel has not penetrated every corner of the globe is due to too few laborers willing to go and join in the labor of the harvest. And the Lord's not calling you because you're skilled because you have this natural talent because of your experience because you are very articulate with those difficult questions. He's calling for your obedience. He's calling for people willing to do whatever he asks, willing to go wherever he sends them to make his name known around the world.

A friend told me a few weeks ago about a church that he visited. We're on the floor of the entryway as you leave, the church building was written on the ground. You're now entering the mission field. Do we have that perspective as we leave this building today? Are we prepared to be obedient to whatever God asks of us a challenge for you. Whether tonight as you're saying prayers before you go to sleep or maybe in the morning when you're spending time with the Lord is to pray and commit yourself fully to the work of the Lord and be obedient to wherever he sends you to whomever he sends you to bring the gospel to people who do not know Him, to commit yourself fully to the work of the Lord, wherever it sends you and to whomever he sends you to bring the gospel to people that do not know Him and don't take this request lightly. You may not be ready for a prayer like this because following this path might be very difficult personally and professionally. But the end result is the ultimate joy for the sake of the gospel. We may have to give up our jobs or our friends or comfortable houses or like Jim Elliott, we may have to give up our lives for the sake of the kingdom.

Jim Elliott is well known for this quote, this man who lost his life trying to reach people with the good news of the gospel for saying he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. What a challenging and convicting prayer for us that we would give over our entire lives in obedience to where the Lord is leading. As we set a vision for missions in our church here in city on a hill, Somerville. We hope that as a church, we see people sent out to all corners of the globe to reach the unreached people with the good news of the gospel. At the same time, we hope people will stay here in Somerville, planting roots and doing the hard labor here in Somerville to reach those 60,000 plus people with the good in the news of the gospel here in the Somerville and the greater Somerville area.

Whether you're here, whether you're far away, whether you're in an academic setting or professional setting, or stay at home mom, whether you're in full time missions, you're called to join in the work of the harvest and there's too few willing to dedicate themselves to this difficult labor as a church, we've recently connected with a family, a missionary family in Central Asia. This family is living in a country that I'm not gonna name or describe in too many details because of the danger. It is to be a Christian, spreading the gospel in that country. The government frequently is is skeptical about the spread of Christianity shutting down or, or harassing church gatherings, small kind of house church gatherings. This family has to be careful to kind of protect their visa status and our ability to stay in the country in the city where they are of more than 15 million residents. There's less than 0.001% of people who would claim to follow Jesus. The missionary's name is Michael and he owns and operates a business in the country where he's working and their vision is to see movements of grace, restoring and renewing the city through this business. kind of transforming the local community where they are and at the same time, they supporting the local church planting efforts. They're not full time on staff at the local church. but they're using their time to build relationships and through discipleship and training, supporting the local church there.

I hope that over the next couple of years, they'll actually be able to come visit us here in Somerville. A couple of times, we'll be able to put a face to the name, learn a little bit more about the work that's going on and we can further build that relationship with them. We look forward to seeing God's word spread and people come to know Him through their ministry and I bring this family and this relationship up to open up our eyes to the myriad of ways that God might want to use us as laborers in this harvest. Work too often. I think we have a narrow perspective of what it might look like to be sent out on mission, specially on mission to reach people for the gospel in a foreign place. But perhaps God is using your experience right now in finance or project management or biotech research, whatever it is you're doing to prepare you for his work going on in the harvest fields.

So Tuesday is gonna come around and for many of us, we gotta go back to work again on Tuesday to return to our routines. We have our 40 plus hour a week jobs or school, which maybe doesn't start Tuesday. Maybe that's next week. We probably have our calendars for January already filled up with all of our different commitments. And what are we to do with this information? What can I do? Mark just said, there's 5 billion with a B people who do not know Christ. What can I do? Thankfully, Jesus didn't stop there. Verse 38. He says, therefore, pray earnestly to the lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Pray earnestly. It's the Lord of the harvest that calls people to himself. The most effective thing that we can do in the face of these overwhelming, almost like incomprehensible statistics is to pray.

Jesus full well knows that in 2023 that number is 5 billion and he still calls us to pray. Please join me in praying for Michael and his family for more laborers, willing to join them in difficult places in the world. Pray for believers all over the world to have boldness and their witness and a willingness to join in the difficult harvest work. Pray for the gospel to grow in places where few have known Christ, where there are seemingly so many barriers and pray for God to comfort those who are persecuted. There are many places around the world where jail and torture or threats of jail and loss of life are realities for Christians who wanna share their faith.

But the compassionate heart of Christ doesn't stop there. We should also pray for the salvation of the persecutors. How many of us have spent time this week praying for the salvation of the leaders of Hamas? Do we even believe something like that to be possible? The existence of this should tell us that it's not impossible. Half of the New Testament was written by a man who personally oversaw the murder of many people simply because they followed Christ. Paul was a persecutor of Christians and had his life transformed by Christ.

I was challenged recently, reading a couple of interviews with Christians in Israel and Palestine. And it's reshaped how I pray for the conflict there. An Israeli believer said, if either side takes land from the Mediterranean all the way to the Pacific for those of us geographically challenged, that's all of Asia. If either side takes land from the Mediterranean all the way to the Pacific but does not have Jesus. It is nothing. He said they still need Jesus. And another Palestinian believer said, please pray for us that we choose wisely how to shine his light in a very dark place right now. Lord take all the evil, smash it as glass and grind it to nothing in this. We hold our hope that one day soon your ways will prevail. Let our prayer life be shaped by Jesus's compassionate perspective and our eyes on eternity. Let's also spend time and energy learning and better understanding the harvest, work around the world to understand their needs and how we can pray for them.

The comedian John Oliver has a weekly talk show last week tonight where he often does an extended segment on international social or political issues and he has a bit where he often starts with a map of the continent behind him and the country highlighted and I'll say something along the lines of tonight's story is about the country of Bolivia. This is a country that you think so little about that. You don't even realize I haven't highlighted Bolivia up here. I've highlighted Uruguay and it's funny and it's also convicting considering my own lack of knowledge of the world geography, people that God has made and loves people made in the image of Him. I'm struggling to pick out this country on a map.

I certainly haven't been praying earnestly for the harvest work that's going on there. What about here? What about in Somerville or Cambridge or Medford or Arlington where we live? What about this week? What about my coworker classmate? If you have a sibling or a spouse who doesn't know the Lord? The answer is the same. Let us pray. Let's commit to praying in 2024 for those that don't know the Lord. Let's pray that the Lord of the harvest would send laborers, send people along their path to help guide and point them to him and that they would come to know him this year as you set out this week. I hope that you'll join me and I wanna challenge you all to join me and just writing down. Maybe you do it on a piece of paper you can put by your fridge or your computer monitor. Maybe you do it in the notes app of your phone. Just write down five names of people that you can be praying for in 2024. Pray for the Lord of the harvest to send people along their paths, to bring them the good news of the gospel and pray for wisdom and how the Lord might be using you in their lives, be ready and be prepared to share the hope that you have.

This is also a brief advertisement to join us on Tuesday mornings down the street at our community space for prayer meetings. When they start up again, you can join alongside others who are seeking to be obedient and dedicate some time to pray for God's work in their lives and the lives of those around them. We're to pray and respond in obedience and it's God who will draw people to himself. And as you pray, be prepared, be prepared that God might have plans for you and use you in ways that you don't even expect. What happens in Matthew nine. Jesus tells the disciples to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers at the end of chapter nine. And then if we carry on into chapter 10, how does it begin? The Lord sends those disciples out, proclaiming the Kingdom of God is at hand. The very disciples that were praying for more laborers were the laborers that God chose to send out in the same way.

Our prayers for more people to go out spreading the gospel, for more people in the paths of those five names that we put out to spread the gospel may result in the Lord calling us and using us as his messengers. God wants to use you on his mission to share the gospel that might look like you going out on short or long term missions trips that might look like you dedicating your life to prayer for those who do not know Christ. Or it may look like you using your financial resources as tools to expand the kingdom of God throughout the world. As we go forth this week out into the mission field, I pray that we go out with the eyes of Jesus and see the needs of those around us. I hope that we're reminded of the eternal nature of the people that we interact with and share Jesus's heart of compassion for them, recognizing the great opportunity, the great harvest that's before us.

And I pray that we respond in obedience, not out of guilt, not out of shame or fear and certainly not relying on our own strength, but respond to the call of the Lord who's already working. He's already moving and asking us to join in on his mission. May 2024 be a year where we don't just sit on the bench, sit on the sidelines. The Lord is in need of laborers and the invitation is here for you today to join in his labor. Let's pray earnestly and be ready for how we might want to use us to make his name known throughout the world.

On the night that he was betrayed, Jesus took a loaf of bread and he broke it saying this is my body broken for you. And then he took a cup and he said this is my blood shed for you. Do this in remembrance of me. Each week we celebrate the sacred meal of communion, reminded of Christ's sacrifice for us and his continual presence with us. Please pray with me.

Lord were humbled and we're in awe that you wanna use us. You want us to join us in your labor in the harvest fields. I pray that 2024 will be a year where we grow deeper in our knowledge of you. We make it our life's mission to make your name known. I pray that we respond to your call and are obedient to you that we're willing to give up all that's trivial and temporary for the greater joy that is expanding your kingdom and knowing you, Lord, I pray that our hearts would be softened and compassionate to others around us. Quick to give an answer to those who ask us for a reason for the hope that's in us. Lord, give us boldness, grant us courage. May we join in the labor of your mission to spread your kingdom to the ends of the earth in your name? In your name we pray, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from John 5:18-47 about Jesus’s discussion with the Jewish leaders about who he is. Discussion points: Our misperceptions of who God is obscures the beauty of his love, God is a good father who loves and wants us, the point of reading our Bibles is to know God himself rather than just knowing more facts about him.

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Scripture Reader: [John 5:18-47] This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him. Because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own father making himself equal with God. So Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, the son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the father doing for whatever the Father does, that the son does likewise for the father loves the son and shows him all that he himself is doing in greater works than these will he show him so that you may marvel for as the Father raises the dead and gives them life. So also the son gives life to whom he will for the father judges no one but has given all judgment to the son that all may honor the son just as they honor the father. Whoever does not honor the son does not honor the father who sent him.

Truly, truly, I say to you whoever hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life. He did not come into judgment but has passed from death to life. Truly, truly, I say to you an hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live for as the Father has life in himself. So he is granted the son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to execute judgment because he is the son of man. Do not marvel at this for an hour is coming. When all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out. Those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. I can do nothing on my own as I hear I judge and my judgment is just because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.

If I alone bear witness about myself, my testimony is not true. There is another who bears witness about me. And I know that the testimony that he bears about me is true. You sent to John and he is born witness to the truth, not that the testimony that I receive is from man, but I say these things that you may be saved. He was a burning and shining lamp and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John for the works that the father has given me to accomplish the very works that I'm doing, bear witness about me that the father has sent me and the father who sent me has himself born witness about me, his voice.

You have never heard his form, you have never seen and you do not have his word abiding in you for you do not believe the one whom he has sent you search the scriptures because you think that in them, you have eternal life and is in it is that they bear witness about me. Yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. I do not receive glory from people. But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. I have come in my father's name and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive Him. How can you believe when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you Moses on whom you've set your hope for. If you believe Moses, you will believe me for He wrote of me, but you do not believe his writings. How will you believe my words?

This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: Throughout the advent season. Uh Churches typically go through four different themes and they do this together uh throughout the season and, and the themes are uh hope, peace. Joy and finally love. And this is the week that we're emphasizing joy, the joy of the Lord, uh the joy of the Lord is our strength, uh joy to the world all about joy. And I want to just pose this question for us as we consider joy. What are the things that made Jesus most joyful? What made Jesus most joyful? And as you read the scriptures, you see one topic far and beyond all the other topics that brings Jesus joy that he talks about all the time that he's absolutely obsessed about. And it's the love of the father. He's just always talking about his dad. All, I don't know if you have that friend that's always talking about his dad. And maybe you haven't had that friend since second grade. Ok. But Jesus is just obsessed about talking about his dad when you read it. That's what he's absolutely delighting in the love of the Father. And in fact, he says that he wants to share the joy of the love of the father with us that he wants to share the joy of the love of the father with us friends.

The father's heart is for us. He desires to be near to us. He desires for us to delight in him and to take joy in him yet. That is not the way that we generally think about God. That is not the way that we generally think about God. When we think about God, the Father, especially God, the Father. We might think about Jesus in such a way, Jesus might be the nice one. God, the Father might be the kind of stern one, right? Uh Jesus is kind to us and he says, wait until I tell your father about this and then we know what's coming for us. We think about God, the father like this. We find the reality that His desire is to flood us with forgiveness, mercy and kindness. We find this reality difficult to believe. We find it very difficult to believe. And it's because the Father's love has been obscured. We're more likely to think of God, the Father as a morally demanding tyrant than we are to think of Him as a loving and kind, compassionate father back on the fourth of July.

You know, not that long ago, six months ago, we had a um we had a big, a big party over at our not, it wasn't actually that big. I think there were like 20 of us. You know, anybody, anybody come to the the city on a hill party over at the community space on the fourth of July. There were a few of us over there and uh but it was welcome to All. Ok. But we had a little party over there at the community space. There's a nice view of downtown from our community space. It's kind of nicely situated on a hill with a, a very nice, uh, view. You can see most of the buildings down there and we knew that we'd be able to see the fireworks from there without having to go into the city and deal with all the traffic and everything. So, we had a fire, uh, a firework party over at the community space and, um, the weather wasn't great. It was pretty me, but we decided to go anyways and the time came for the fireworks and we were all looking for the fireworks. We kinda knew generally where they would be in the sky and we were looking, the kids were starting to get upset because it was late and they weren't finding the fireworks and we just couldn't find them anywhere.

And then suddenly we looked and you could kind of see what looked like a child playing with a flashlight underneath a sheet. That's what it looked like. The fireworks looked like just a child playing with a flashlight underneath the sheet. It, you couldn't see anything. They, the fireworks were completely obscured by this thick fog that had hung over the city. And what I actually found out is this wasn't just our view, this was the view that everyone had. Did anybody see the fireworks in Boston this year? It was just terrible. It was like fireworks straight into a cloud. And if you want to see a cloud lit up, that's what this was and what broke my heart about it.

The most is I got home and I was uh surfing online and someone had written a story or commented on something saying, hey, I'm actually friends with the guy that designed the fireworks show and he was heartbroken because he said that this was the best work of his entire career that got shot up into the clouds and no one got to enjoy completely obscured by this thick fog that had fallen over the city and friends. I think that that's what's happened to our hearts many times that the father's love is bright and joyous that he wants to share it with us. But it has been obscured by our misperceptions of who he is that we have these misperceptions of who he is. And so it obscures our ability to appreciate and to enjoy the love that he has for us.

Today, Jesus is teaching in response to what he did. Last week, we were going through a series in the book of John. And last week, uh Jesus healed two different uh people. He healed a child, an official's son was, was hurt and uh dying ill and he healed that child from far away. And then he found a paralyzed man uh by the pool of Beth Bethesda and he healed that man. And he told him to stand up, pick up his mountain to walk. The only tricky part was is that it was the Sabbath. And so the Jewish leaders didn't like that Jesus told this guy to walk with his bed on the Sabbath. And so they started to get upset. And so when they finally found Jesus and were upset at Jesus for healing someone on the Sabbath, which is just crazy to me. They're talking to God himself and they're like, you broke the rules. God, how could you ever know God if you break the rules? And he's like, I am God, you do.

But they find Jesus and they're like, why did you break the rules? Why did you break the Sabbath? And he's like, well, my father's always working and so am I and friends, Jesus is good at many things, but he's not always good at de escalation. Uh This did not calm down the, the situation. Uh He made an even stronger claim about being equal with God about being God himself. And so the Jewish people from there were really upset. They said, how dare you claim, not just you see to us, it, it sounds like he's claiming to be a child of God, but Jesus is not claiming to be a child of God. He's claiming to be the child of God. And so they were quite upset with Jesus claiming to be the child of God. And so this, that Jesus teaches today is in response to them being upset about what he just said. And what he does is he actually clears up several misperceptions that the Jewish leaders had about who he was and about who God is.

There's a lot going on in this text. I'm not going to be able to explain every verse. Although I would love to explain every verse. Do you want to set up a time? Talk over coffee? We'll just say, well, I'll explain every verse that I can, I'll also give you a book or something uh to help you with that. But um we're gonna look at three different misperceptions that the Jewish people had, the Jewish leaders had of who Jesus was, that was obscuring their idea of who the father was and who Jesus is. And I think that these are the same misperceptions. You know, Satan doesn't get very many new tricks. He's using many of the same tricks that he has been for thousands of years. And I think these are many of the same misperceptions that we have about God that mi that obscure our ability to enjoy and to appreciate his love.

So let's dive in here. OK. Uh Three different uh misperceptions. The, the three misperceptions are this that obscure the love that God has for us. First, the misperception about the nature of who God is. Second, the misperception of how to relate to that God. And third, the misperception about scripture that obscures our ability to, to enjoy Him. Uh First, our misperceptions about the nature of God obscure our experience of his love as I was mentioning earlier, we have this misperception that the father is mean and the son is nice. You might be one of those people that are like, I like Jesus. I like the New Testament. But, you know, I don't jive with that old Testament. God, that's not something I'm down for. I don't like him. He seems mean and spiteful miserly stingy. Maybe you have a better per uh perception of that God. And you, you know, God, the Father is actually good, but you still see Him as distant and holy while Jesus is kind and near, you might think of that God as someone who might tolerate us merely. I, I like how one author puts it in uh gentle and lowly, which is a book that we've given away a lot and I have many more copies of that. I'd love to give away. But he says that we think about God reaching out to touch us like a young boy might reach out to touch a slug for the first time with a crinkled up face and not really feeling like he can actually uh not, not too sure about this. And that's how we think about God reaching out to us. But yet that is not the picture that we have in scripture. These misperceptions are natural, these are the misperceptions that will happen because Satan's ploys have always been to lie to us about who God is.

Look back at the garden when Adam and Eve are in the garden. How does Satan convince Eve to eat of the fruit? He doesn't just say do it like the emperor in Star Wars or something, do it. Um He, he says, he says, God, God doesn't love you. He doesn't want what's good for you. You should do that. You should, you should do it yourself. You have to take care of yourself. You're the only one that's gonna take care of yourself. He's been using these same lines about the nature of who God is to trick us to live for ourselves. And so these are misperceptions that will cloud our ability to enjoy his love.

In contrast. Look at how Jesus describes, the Father. Look at how Jesus describes the father verse 19. So Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, the son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what He sees the Father doing for whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. You cannot have an old testament, mean God and a new testament. Nice God. When Jesus is saying, I'm just doing what I saw my father doing. He's saying if you've seen me, you've seen the father, we are one and of the same. It's not that Jesus is a chip off the old block. He is the old block in the f in the form of human flesh. Jesus is fully God relates with God. The Father completely reflects what he's observed. The father doing just as you reflect your own parents in many ways. And I see this with my kids, they observe my best and usually my worst uh at attributes and uh and reflect those things.

And so Jesus is saying, if you've seen me, I'm not all that different than the father. In fact, I only do what I've seen the father do when Paul is writing about God, the father, he gushes with love and kindness and joy because he understands the nature of who He is. If you look at second Corinthians, OK. The, it is a letter that Paul is writing to the Corinthian Church. The Corinthian Church is a mess. OK? Co Corinth in general made Vegas look like a monastery. Uh It's just not a very like warm and family friendly type of place. Um And so he's writing to the Corinth Church and he, in the very first verses, he starts talking about who God is. He wants to communicate the nature of who God is. And by verse three, you can just hear what comes out most naturally when he describes God, you know, A W Tozer has this famous quote. What comes in your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you. What comes into your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you? That's what A W Tozer says.

And I think he's right and listen to what Paul says He says, blessed be the God of all mercies and all comfort. The father of mercies and the God of all comfort, blessed be to Him. He doesn't say blessed be to the God who is holy and above all who is just and righteous and will smite those who deserve it. He says blessed be to the God of all comfort and the father of mercies, that is who He is. The God of all comfort and the father of mercies. What a joyful reality. If that is let this reorient your misperception about who He is. He does want the best for you. He is a good father.

And secondly, I wanna talk about another misperception about the nature of who God is. And it's the nature that we're not real Children of His, that he might be the father. But I am like the stepchild. OK, that he keeps me around a lot like Cinderella's mom kept Cinderella around. You know, he'll let me scrub the floors and he might provide for my basic needs, but I'm not getting the best. All right, he's, he's just merely keeping me around, not actually loved friends. This is not Christianity and I know that it's natural for us to think this way, but it's not the message of Christianity. Jesus emphasizes that He is the son of God and the only way that we might be called Children of God is to be united with him. And so what I want you to see here. I'm gonna share a few verses with you, which I, what I want you to see here is that everything that Jesus says about his relationship to the father is true for you Christian, that you are now a son of God. And I'm putting that very specifically a Son of God that is not some form of first century sexism. OK. That is an important thing that is caught in these verses.

Let me share with you just a little bit. Galatians chapter three for in Christ, you are all sons of God through faith. Romans eight chapter four, verse 14, for all who are led by the spirit of God are sons of God quite opposite from sexism. This is actually very, very inclusive language because he's saying everyone who believes in Christ is a son of God. What he's trying to communicate is that every right and authority that Jesus had as the Son of God belongs to you Christian, that you get to call on God, not just as a mere child of God, not as a stepchild of God, you get to call on God as the Son of God. You are united with Christ and everything. That's true of Him in the heavenly places is true for you that He loves you. Actually, not just kind of like, but actually like you are in Christ, like you are his son. It's not just that we do a great disservice.

When we call all people, the Children of God, we are all made in God's image. We're all loved by God in, in a way. But those who are in Christ are specially uniquely loved by God as the Father loves the son. And that is where we are church to be a Christian means that the Son of God shares his sonship with us. Verse 20. For the father loves the son. Let every time you hear the Son, thank me. If I'm in Christ for the father loves the son and shows him all that he himself is doing and greater works than these will he show him so that you all may marvel one author put it like this. And I think that this summarizes the incarnation, the idea of Jesus being born uh a as a human. I think that this summarizes it better than any quote I've ever heard the Son of God became human so that humans may become the Son of God, the Son of God became human so that humans may become the Son of God. And we gotta let that reality sink in and change our misperception about how we relate to God, the Father.

And let's talk about that more. How do we know Him? Our misperceptions about how we become that Son of God obscure our view also because the natural misperception that we have is that I am more loved by God when I'm an obedient child. Of his, that if when I do the right things but friends, I don't know if there have been two more powerful lies in the history of the world given by Satan than these two. That God is not actually kind. He's not actually loving. He's actually a mean and, and stingy God that the lies about his nature.

And this the second lie is that he loves me less when I do bad and he loves me more. When I do good, very natural misperception, we fall into this all the time, but it's just not true. John chapter five verse 24 Jesus says this truly, truly, I say to you whoever hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life, whoever hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life, simple hearing the word of God, believing the word of God eternal life. There's nothing about responding. There are in other places and, and the response and the repentance is necessary. But he makes it really simple here, whoever hears my word and believes Him who sent me or trusts in Him, who sent me receives eternal life. He does not come into judgment but has passed from death to life. I love that has already passed from death to life, meaning you receive that eternal life now that you, it starts in this life and it goes on throughout eternity. But you have already passed from death to life. You've been given new life in Christ and this eternal life.

What is this? It's nothing other than the love of God. Heaven is not primarily a place that you go to heaven is not primarily just something that happens after you die. Heaven is primarily God sharing himself and his own love with us. Now, uh Jesus says a lot of things in this passage and I just want to point out one that doesn't sound like this. There's like an apparent contradiction in this passage. Just a few verses after this one, Je Jesus is continuing to teach and this is what he says, verse 28 and 29 he says, do not marvel at this for an hour is coming when all who are in their tombs will hear his voice and come out. Those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.

Well, that sounds very different than what he just said with whoever hears my voice and believes in me and believes in the father gets eternal life here. He's saying if you've done good, you go to you, you have eternal life, resurrection life. If you've done bad, you re receive the resurrection of the evil of judgment. How do you work these two? In fact, this sounds opposite to what I preach every week when I just explained the vision of our church, which is like it, it's not what you do that makes God love you more. I say that every week, I hope that you guys, I hope you get it. Ok. I hope you really get it.

That is Christianity is that it's not what you do that makes God love you more. But this sounds like it is what you do because he says if you've done righteous, you go to the resurrection of life. If you've done evil, you go to the resurrection of judgment. And so what's he talking about? Well, one, I think that you could easily say that, you know, a tree bites fruit and that when you know Christ, you will yield good fruit and you will do good. And that is true. But even more than that, you just go, what about one chapter later to John chapter six verse 29? And this is what Jesus says, this is the work of God that you believe in Him whom he has sent. And so if you're to do good, what is the work of God, what is the good that you're to do? But to believe in Him, whom He has sent? That is what Jesus defines as the work of God. And so if we do that, we receive the eternal life that God has for us. Frans.

All this is to say, God loves to draw near to centers that He does it through Christ and that He would love to draw near to you today. And that it's not that you have to get your act cleaned up before you come to him. But it's that He has already done all the work for you and that He wants to be near to you. He cares in that kind of way. He is not ashamed of you. He is not grossed out by you. He would not be ashamed of you coming to him for the 15th time this week, struggling with the same old son. We feel like we just can't, we can't do that. But God is delighted to welcome sinners. He is delighted to forgive us of our sin because we are already declared clean, we're already righteous, we're already alive in Him. We have already been made united with Christ.

And so we are the sons of God in that way. He is not ashamed of us. And the last misperception about uh about God that clouds us from truly enjoying his love is, is an important one. The last misperception is about scripture. And Jesus addresses this really clearly with the Jews at the time. He ends his response to the religious leaders by asserting that they've misunderstood the scriptures. If they had properly understood the Old Testament, they would receive him as Messiah and King. That's what he tells them. Verse 20 verse 39 he says this, you search the scriptures because you think that in them, you have eternal life and it is and it is they that bear witness about me yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life verse 46. For if you believe Moses, you would believe me for. He wrote of me. Now, what's going on is that the religious leaders thought that the scriptures themselves themselves brought eternal life that by following the rules of the scriptures, that you would receive eternal life.

And what Jesus is saying is that the scriptures aren't meant to bring you life in and of themselves. The scriptures are meant to point to Jesus point to the Sun. Francis is all too often. How we read the scriptures as well. Uh I bet you've had the same type of conversation. I have this conversation regularly. It is my job. Uh Hey, how's your relationship with God going? How's your relationship with Jesus? Nine times out of 10? The response I get to that is, is good or bad. Well, 10 times out of 10, good or bad. Um But then after that, the description is this is how much I've read my Bible almost always. It's like, how's your relationship with Jesus? Good. I've been reading my Bible every day this week. Bad. I've only, you know, it could be, actually, it's never bad. It's like, could be better. That's could be better. That's almost, that's nine times out of 10. Right. There could be better. Um I've only been able to read my Bible a little bit lately.

Is that not very similar to the way that the religious leaders thought about the scriptures, that the scriptures themselves bring eternal life. That if we read it more, that He loves us more and if we read it less, then maybe he's kind of disappointed in us. But what Jesus is trying to say is this, that the scriptures don't function that way. Instead what the scriptures are meant to do are to point us to Jesus himself and through the scriptures, you get to know God himself. You get to hear the words of God that God wrote a book and that his very words are in the Bible. The Bible is not just a book telling you about God or telling you the things that you have to do so that God will love you more.

The Bible is a book of the words of God Himself to you, the words of God, he has spoken and we get to know Him through the Bible. What Jesus is saying is that there's a way to read your Bibles and to carefully read your Bibles and to diligently read your Bibles, that's actually worthless. And that will actually drive you away from God himself completely miss the point. If you read the Bible just to prove your own righteousness, or you read it, just looking for ways that you can alter your own behavior, you're gonna miss the point. The Bible is meant to lead us to a sincere affection for Christ and allow us to experience his embracing love. Now, a simple question. Um Do people in our church read the Bible? I think. Thank you for the response. Yes, I appreciate that. Uh my dear, my, my dear. OK. I'm not sure if this is true. I, I think that most statistics are wrong on this because I, some statistician can tell me what type of bias this is. I probably should have asked my wife, uh, she could have told me this. But, uh, when people take surveys in church and the question is, do you read your Bible? You know, they're gonna fudge that up a little bit. All right there. It's just like, uh, I'm gonna tell you how much I want to read my Bible. Not how much I actually do read my Bible. I think that the statistics have to be wrong on this. I don't think that people actually read it as often as they say they do, but I do hope that there are people in our church, my guess is that like, 30% of the church reads the Bible, which is better than most churches. I think that that's higher than, than most churches. But I, I hope that it's higher than that.

I hope that I could be pleasantly surprised but a survey wouldn't tell me one way or the other. I wouldn't believe you all. Um, and here's the reality, I think that the reason why we have a hard time reading our Bibles is because we have this misperception about what the scriptures are. We think about the Bible reading in our life, almost like a child might think about a sticker chart. Right. Like, oh, I get to check another day off or I get another sticker on my chart. And if I get enough stickers, I get a prize and you think about it like that. But we know that we, if we know that God really wants us to read our Bibles and we should read our Bible. We know that as Christians, that if, especially if you grew up in youth group at all. Ok. If you're in youth group, you learn this thing called a quiet time and I'm a big fan. All right. I like those.

Here's the problem with reading your Bible. I'm just gonna speak openly. Ok. Um, it's really boring. Right. Uh, everybody's like, uh, what do I do? Do I shake my head? Yes. Do I shake my head? No. Uh, gotcha. Uh, that, it's really boring. It, for the most part. It is, uh, it's an ancient piece of literature. The newest part is 2000 years old. Ok. It's, it's an old, what, what else do you read? That's 2000 years old. You know. And if you did, how exciting do you think it would be very few of us do? There are parts that are more exciting than others. The gospels can be very exciting. The epistles can be great, so much. Good theology. There are stories in the Old Testament that if you can get into them can be really exciting and, and encouraging. But it also has things like pages and pages and pages of genealogies. Yeah. Exciting. It has pages and pages of laws that we don't keep anymore because they've been obsolete by Jesus. It has so much in it that is hard to understand. I have a hard time. I've read the Bible probably, I don't know. Uh, how old am I? Uh, maybe, uh, maybe 16 or 17 times. Don't be impressed. It's my job. All right. Um, and, um, I try to read it every year. I don't always make it through all the way through the Bible every year. But there are certain books in the Bible. I've read many, many, many more times than that. Um, I still have a really hard time getting anything out of Ezekiel because I read that and it's just weird, like there's just weird things in it. I don't know what's happening half the time. Uh, if I, if I did the work I could be encouraged by it and all the work is, it's like I, I have books on my shelf called a study Bible. It wouldn't actually be that much work or I have an app on my phone called youtube. Um, and you gotta be careful with youtube. Ok. There's lots of bad stuff on there too.

But, uh Bible project, it's great. All I would have to do is open up the Bible project. Watch their little video on Ezekiel, probably watch it several more times and then I would get it and it would suddenly point me to Jesus and I would kind of understand because the Bible is not meant to be self help. We go to the Bible and we think about the Bible is like, what can I get out of this today? That's applicable to my life. Well, friends, the Bible wasn't written about you. The f the Bible is a story, but it's the story of God. It's the story of the world. It's the whole thing is cohesive. There's all kinds of different literature in this thing that they all are this, this story. And if you read it, you see the redemptive art and it is beautiful and it can become exciting as you dig into it and you see it, but it does take work.

You guys are smart, stop complaining about the amount of work that it takes, it takes a little bit of work. You're in Somerville because you're smart probably. And you can do this. Even if you weren't that smart, you can still do it. There's lots of smart people that have done it for you and you can read, you can see it, but I understand why it's easy to tell yourself that you don't have time to read your Bible because it is really hard. Sometimes. Sometimes it's easy if you want an easy one, just keep reading John. If you want an easy one, go to Matthew, you'll find something fun. Easy one. Ephesians super easy, really great. Read it over and over again. I don't care. It's great, but the Bible is there for you to enjoy. I know a lot of us are getting ready for our yearly plans. We're getting ready for the disappointment of only making it to February once again, uh as we get our yearly bible reading going.

But friends, you can do it. And as you do, you actually get to know God himself, as you're reading the Bible, it is not just a chore that good Christians do. If you see it as a chore, it'll never stick. You'll never do it unless you see the point behind the scriptures. Unless you read the scriptures and say, what is God trying to get me to know about Jesus? How do I find Jesus? How do I trace those lines to find who Jesus is? You'll never have the motivation to stick with it. And if you do, you'll be getting the wrong things out of it. But Jesus says that the point of reading our Bible is not that we would just know more about God, but that we might actually get to know God Himself who sent his son to live the life that we should have lived to die, the death that we deserve to die so that we through faith in him might receive eternal life.

Look friends. The Bible. You have to think about it like this. It is a gold mine. Now, if you find a gold mine, it's not like you walk up to a hole in the ground and there's just gold lying there, ok? It requires work. You have to chisel, you have to get your hammer, you have to work on it. But seriously, the Bible says that it's worth more than gold. And so as we work on this thing, then you pull out this nugget and after you've worked, there's nothing like working hard and then getting the thing that your work is delivered for me. This is so hard because I'm a pastor and I rarely get to see the results of the work.

Those of you who tell me that you know God's work through me, so encouraging, so helpful. But one thing I love to do is just mow my grass so that when I'm done, I can look at it and be like I did that, you know, less grass. Yeah, let's go. Michael, don't mow the grass. I'm mowing the grass. That's like what I've been doing all the time. I need to see the the results. But friends when you work hard and you study the scriptures and then Jesus reveals himself to you and he will, it is like finding a nugget of gold. It is a gold mine. There's so much to be found. It's endless. Like I said, I've read the Bible a lot every time I find new things and it gets better because this is what I do. I sit down and I open the Bible and I don't just say, OK, I'm uh I don't just sit down to read about God. I sit down to listen for God and I say my ears are open. Would you help me to hear from you this morning? I want your word to live in my heart. I want to hear from you, father. I need you. Would you speak to me? And as we go to Him and we say, would you speak to me? Would you help me to cherish Christ? There's nothing more applicable in your life than a greater love for Jesus.

That's why we preach the Bible, the way that we do where we go verse by verse and not topic by hot topic. I'm not here just to give you seven tips to make your marriage more spicy. Ok. I'm here to, to give you the word of God. And the word of God is pointed to the Son of God who is Christ, who shines in every scripture. And as your eyes see Him, your heart is filled with awe and it reorients your life appropriately and it changes you. There's no better self-help than Jesus. Jesus is all we've got and we need him. And so we go toward his scriptures to get him not to just get eternal life from the scriptures themselves. We go to his scriptures to get him. And that is the way that we have to read these so that we might receive the very words of God.

Friends. Jesus has revealed himself and we can find him in the scriptures and he wants to reveal himself to you. I want to give you courage that you are a son of God and he wants to reveal himself to you. And as you read His word and study it diligently that He will move in your life in a powerful way. And that is, that is a promise that if you read it looking for Christ and you say God reveal yourself to me, you will find gold. There are, there is gold in those hills. There's no doubt about it. I'm 100% confident and I can't wait to hear what you find. Can't wait to hear how much you enjoy it. And I am here to help you that that's my job. I'm here to help you if you need help um that you're not gonna like this though. Ok? Um Just come to the prayer meeting. Uh This is what we're doing in the prayer meeting is we're opening the word and we're praying the words from the scriptures and that's the first way to do it. But I I'll meet with you at another time. A more godly hour than seven am I understand.

But, um, someone, someone said I was like, why don't, why don't you think that people read their Bible? And they said, I think that people don't think that they have time to and I'm like, what, they have time to be on their phones for seven hours a day and they're like, yeah, but, you know, they don't think they have time to in the morning. And I'm like, you realize that the morning starts whenever you want the morning to start, like you just set your alarm and the morning starts. It's like, ok, morning started. You can make the morning longer. It's this thing that's like infinitely longer that you can make it sorry. Sometimes I, I just am snarky. OK. Um Friends, I, I want us to go and to delight in God in the same kind of ways that Jesus delighted in God. And I see these misperceptions that religious leaders of the day had and that we still carry. And I want to encourage you to allow the, the fog to lift and to enjoy who he is. All right.

We're gonna now turn our attention to a time of communion. We celebrate a communion meal every week in our church. And with this meal, we Jesus inaugurated it on the night that he was betrayed and he took the bread and he said this is my body broken for you, do this in remembrance of me and he took the cup and he said this is my bloodshed for you, do this in remembrance of me. And so um as believers, he invites us to come to the table and to receive this meal that represents his, his body, broken his bloodshed. And so if you're a Christian here this morning, if you know where you are with Christ, I would encourage you that you are welcome to come to the table, evaluate your own self. Are you living in a way that brings God glory or are you living in a way that's selfish and repent of those self seeking ways and go back to Jesus and you can receive this meal. With that being said, I invite you my friends to receive uh this meal from the Lord and that you might enjoy who He is. Would you stand with me as we prepare to respond to him?

Now, father, as we come to your table, we pray that you would come alive for us, that we would receive this meal uh with thankful and joyful hands and that you would give us the joy of the Lord that you would speak to us and that you would open our hearts to hear from you. God would we put forward the work to hear from you? But God, we want to hear from you. We want your word and we want you to be true in our hearts. Uh So God, we pray that we pray that anyone here who doesn't know you, that you would be moving in their life. Now that they would say I really have had a misperception of who Jesus is. But I'm seeing who he is for the first time and I want to love him with all of my heart. So would you give them that gift of eternal life today? Uh God prepare us to receive this meal. And we ask this in Christ's name. Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about Jesus’s healing of the official’s son and the man at the pool of Bethesda from John 4:46-5:17, read for us in Mandarin. Discussion points: Jesus continually subverts and exceeds our expectations of him, Jesus healed each person in an unexpected way with his word, the forgiveness of our sins is even better than whatever earthly blessing we could ask of God.

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Scripture Reader: [Read Bible passage in Mandarin] This is the word of the Lord.

Preacher: Thank you so much. That was beautiful. It's just great to hear the scriptures read in in different languages and be able to celebrate what God is doing in our church in that way. Well, a as we reflect on this and if you didn't catch everything, I'm sure we're gonna walk through it for the next, you know, 40 minutes or so. So it's gonna be ok.

Here's something that you guys probably don't know about me is that I am the absolute worst person on the entire planet to buy a gift for absolute worse. I am just just terrible. I'm a terrible person. I'm not good at receiving gifts. My wife is a great gift giver and I'm not just talking like kind of good. Ok? When I mean great, I mean she is a great gift giver she's generous. She's kind, she's thoughtful, but I cannot tell you how many Christmases I have ruined the moment I received the gift that my mom, that my mom, that my wife, that mom and our family had for me. Because this is what happens. You know, everyone's excited. You know, we're opening the gifts under the Christmas tree. Kennedy wants to sort them all first. So she's organizing them. The kids are all taking turns. We all take turns and we're opening our gifts and then, uh, you know, everybody's so excited, just so much joy and happiness, everybody screaming and excitement. And then we get to me and I open my gift and I'm excited, I'm excited and then I open it and every single time, every year, it doesn't matter how much I psych myself up for. I know I respond like this. I know it. I don't want to be this way. I just am every time I open it and I go, oh, it's kind of expensive. I think I'm taking that back like immediately. That's my immediate thought every single time I'm like, I don't, I don't need this, you know, II I it's ok and it takes roughly, I know exactly how long it takes. It takes roughly one hour for every $50 spent on me, for me to adjust my, my expectations to accept and, and enjoy the gift. So usually by about noon or or so I am like, which, I don't know how much that month, but usually it's about by noon. I'm like, you know what I think I really like it. I, it's nice. Yeah, I think I'm gonna keep it. It's, it's pretty good. Yeah. So that means that my family is walking around for a couple of hours, just like, well, dad hates Christmas.

The best gifts all have some of the same things in common. And one of the things that some of the best gifts that we receive for Christmas have in common is that they subvert and that they exceed our expectations. If you have a gift, that is both a surprise and so much better than what you expected it to be. You will be delighted. And that is the best kind of gift. I'm a real sucker this time of the season for those videos of the, the military people coming home to surprise their spouse on Christmas Day. Oh, man, you can get me crying with one of those. It's just like, oh, the joy, uh, just expectations completely subverted and exceeded on that day. Let me ask you this. When, when you first met Christ, what were you expecting? What did you come into the relationship expecting for many of us? You know, maybe we met Christ as a, as a young child. And so all we were expecting was maybe a get out of free, a get out out of hell, free car for others of us when we met Christ, maybe we were just seeking the truth, we wanted to know what was true. And so we started to investigate the evidences for the resurrection and we actually found them to be quite satisfying. And so maybe that's all we were expecting was the, the truth for others. Maybe we expected him to do something in our life because we had seen the way that he had done things in other people's lives. And for maybe others of us, we were expecting maybe just a little bit more meaning and significance than what our careers or our families were capable of offering.

But friends, this is the thing about Jesus, even if you find all of those things, he continues to subvert and to exceed your expectations. Jesus has never failed to continue to subvert and to exceed my expectations. When I first became a Christian, I was 14 years old and I don't think I really knew what I wanted. I think I just didn't know if I believed in God or not. And then I remember a night it was at a emotional, you know, like church camp thing. And I just remember a night that I stopped doubting that Jesus was real. I stopped doubting that God was real and I trusted him and my life has continued from there. I really didn't have any expectations for God and many of us are coming here and we have no expectations for God. And let me tell you this, it's very difficult for Jesus to subvert and to exceed your expectations. When you have no expectations, we must come to God expect it that he will do something. Now, he's not always going to do what we want him to do, but he always finds a way to subvert and to exceed our expectations.

Today, we're covering two different stories in the gospel of John. They're back to back and they're actually quite similar. When you look at them, they're, they're pretty different and they're pretty similar, but they're two different healings and we're going to walk through the healings one by one and then we will compare and contrast them. So in, in your mind, you can be making some mental notes of different things that you see that might be similar and might be different. Ok. It's kind of like that Sesame Street Game. What, what's the same and what's different? All right. So let's walk through a ch together church, the first healing and, and John chapter four. This is right after Jesus promises the woman at the well, the, the, the water of eternal life, the, the springs of living water. And this is this is actually a great story. My Children have a book called The One O'clock Miracle and this is one of their favorite books, one of my favorite books of theirs. It's actually a great little children's book. If you have kids and you're thinking about something that you could get to read together verse 46 it says this.

So we came again to Canaan in Galilee where he had made the water wine. So Jesus, he's moving around often in the book of John, as we continue through this whole series. And what we find in this area is that he has left where he was previously through Samaria and he's, I made it back to Ka, which is where he committed the first miracle that he, that he did, which is when he turned the water into wine. And so he's back in that same area. And now at Caperna, there was an official whose son was ill. Now this is an official. the word that's being used here would make us think that this is one of Herod's officials. This is one of the king's right hand people. This is somebody that's probably in, in Harrod's cabinet and he is an important man. He's a well off man and his son is you better believe is getting the best medical attention that he can receive in that time and day. And so for this man, his son was very ill still, despite all the attention that he was getting and this man himself, he had servants, but he didn't know what to do at this point. And so verse 47 when this man heard that Jesus had come from Galilee or, excuse me, from Judea to Galilee. He went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son for, he was at the point of death.

Now, you're gonna miss a few things unless you're just an expert in bib biblical archaeology. , but one of the things that you might miss here is that Caponi and Ka are like 25 miles apart. And so it's not like the man just strolled over to Jesus. It wasn't like Jesus was next door. The guy heard that Jesus had gone back to Canaan and he said, that's not very far from here and he proceeded to make his way out to find Jesus. And you better believe that there were times that he was running, this guy ran a marathon, essentially walk, run a marathon, which is the best that I would be able to do. It's still a multi hour journey that he's making and this has to be his last ditch effort. This man, this important man has run out of options for his son. And so he goes to Jesus and he begs him and he says, Jesus, come with me now or my son is going to die. It is important that you come and Jesus says to him, unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe.

Now the U here in Greek, there's two U's OK. Many languages have this sort of thing. English has it, but only the Southerners know how to use it. Ok? Jesus said, unless y'all see signs and signals and wonders you will not believe. Now, he's not just talking to the official. He's making a general statement about the people in the area. He's saying you guys, you guys won't trust me. I didn't do anything for the Samaritan woman and she trusted me with everything I gave her the, the waters of living water. I gave her the rivers of living water in her heart, the springs of living water. But you guys, you want all the tricks, you want the magic, you want the signs and the wonders the official says to him, sir, come down before my child dies. He's like Jesus, save your speech. I've got a dying kid down here, come with me now. And Jesus said to him, go, your son will live. Well, that's a bit surprising. That's not what he expected at all. He thought that Jesus was going to have to come down to see his son really roll up his sleeves and do his crazy messiah magic on him. And all Jesus has to say is go, your son will live the same God who created the universe with his words, is able to heal with his words. He does not even have to see the official son. He is able to just say go.

And so the man believes Jesus and he heads on his way on his way back home, he sees some people in the distance. He's like, oh, it kind of looks like my servants as he gets closer. They are his servants and they come to him and they say, sir, you're not going to believe that your son is healed. And he said, what time? Tell me what time he, he started getting better and they said it was about the seventh hour, which is about one pm in, in the way that we tell time. And he said, you're never gonna guess it. That's the exact time I was talking to Jesus. And Jesus said, go, your son will be healed. And it says that he believed again, even though he believed previously, it says he believed again, his belief is growing and it's growing.

I can't tell you how many times in my life things like this have happened just this past week. I was praying. I walked over, I felt like the Lord was, was asking me to pray for someone else. And so, and that person was in the room and I went over there and I told him, I was like, I feel like the Lord's asked me to pray for you. And they said, well, you're not gonna believe it. I've been fasting over this thing that, that the Lord's asking you to pray. This type of thing happens all the time when you're close to Jesus, when you have expectations, but he constantly subverts and exceeds our expectations just as he did this man, it says in verse 54.

Now this was the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee in the book of John and just explain a little bit about how John works. John is a, a gospel that he wrote and it has a structure to it. The, the author has a plan and what he's going to do in the first half of the book is there's seven signs or wonders of John. John is writing selectively. He's not writing about, he's not writing exhaustively of everything that Jesus did. He wrote that at the end that there is so much more that he could have put into this book. So he's writing selectively and he's chosen seven signs or wonders that Jesus did throughout his ministry. They all point to the coming kingdom of Jesus and they culminate in the resurrection of Lazarus from the the grave. And hopefully, Lord willing will get to that on Easter this year, well planned out this time. And as Jesus went through each one of these signs and the number seven is very symbolic. And in biblical literature, we see that this is representing that he is calm and he is the perfect He has got that that's come to do all these signs and wonders bring in the kingdom. And so I just think it's kind of cool that, that we can track through.

So that's the second sign. The third sign comes right after and it's the next healing that he commits the second healing, which is the third sign of Jesus. Let's continue to look at this. After this, there was a feast of the Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now Jerusalem is actually south of where he was, but he wasn't thinking up and down Jerusalem's on a hill. So he climbs up to Jerusalem. And so Jesus is back in Jerusalem now. And verse two, now there is, there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate, a pool in Arama called Beth Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades in these lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for 38 years. Now, how many of you are reading your Bibles right now? We, we have Bibles open. A few of us have, have Bibles open.

Before I explain, there's a lot going on in this passage before I explain exactly what's happening. I just want to do another Sesame Street thing with us. OK. Verse two, verse three, verse five, the word forgo. Where'd the four go? It's not there. Is it a conspiracy? Did they remove it? What's going on here? Rest easy. There's no conspiracy. But in order for me to explain to you where the four went, I basically have to explain the entire way that the Bible was created so buckle up, it's a bit of a detour but one that I, in my five years, I can't remember a pastor in this church. I can't remember ever explaining. And so, you know, this is a very rough and simple version of what academics call textual criticism. OK. And, or how you got your Bible, I think that through going this, you actually trust your Bible more by looking at this. But I know that there's a tendency when you come to things like this to think it's a conspiracy. And so let me explain to you why it is not the Bible. Every book of the Bible was written by a person under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. That person then sent the book of the Bible to the intended person that they were writing it to. So if it was a letter, they would write it to to churches that got sent to the church when it arrived, whether it's a gospel or a letter, it was copied many, many times so that it could be shared. They wanted many people to be able to see this. So there were a lot of scribes that would take the the words and they would copy them very carefully. Now, we do not have any of the original manuscripts of what was written. We do not, we do not have the handwriting of John as he is writing the Gospel of John but we wouldn't expect her. That does not bother me whatsoever because we wouldn't expect to. We also, you know, what else we don't have? We don't have any of the original manuscripts of Shakespeare. He was way more recent. We have many copies. I think that there might be like one small section of Shakespeare's writing actual writing that we have, but you wouldn't expect it. That's just not the way that they did it. They made many copies and you can depend upon those copies.

If that bothers you, I'll just give you a short illustration. Somewhere in the world once existed the 1st 12 inch ruler and there was a standard made of a 12 inch ruler and maybe somewhere they took it and they had it in, in some Washington DC office with a 12 inch ruler and said this is the ruler that all rulers are to be made on and then we copied it billions of times. There are so many 12 inch rulers in the world. Now, I want you to imagine that there's a great heist one day and someone goes in and they steal the 12 inch ruler that all the rulers are made off of. Well, what are we gonna do? Are we going to forget what 12 inches looks like? No, we have millions of copies that are exact replicas of the one that we have in there. And so that's kind of like what it is when we have this. And actually, as I explain more of this, you're gonna feel like we have a better copy than what you even imagine because what ended up happening over time is that as scribes would, would copy it. Sometimes they would add a little detail here or there. If they knew more of what was going on, sometimes it would be in the, in the in the margins, they would add a little detail and maybe a scribe would get confused or maybe a scribe would like add a letter where they're not supposed to simple mistake, that type of thing.

Anyways, verse four is this verse that talks about what would happen in the pool that there was a, at that time that there was a legend that an angel would come down and stir the water in the pool. And then if the, if an invalid got into the water during that time that they would be healed, it's very reasonable that a scribe might insert this so that you might understand and why a man would lay by a pool for so long for 38 years. And so at some point that got included now in the Sorry, I'm gonna keep on going in the 15 hundreds. There was a man named Erasmus and he took two different Hebrew two different Greek texts from the 12 hundreds. OK. And he turned that into a Greek text that came to be that became the basis for the King James version. And that's where we got the King James version from. And, but that was like in the 15 hundreds, 16 hundreds now, about 100 and 50 years ago, modern archaeology got cranked up. And what do you know? We started finding older versions of the Greek text than what Erasmus had. We found stuff that was hundreds of years older than that. So we've been finding more and more texts and as we find text, we find that they have different streams and that they have different kind of schools that they fall into as we found more text. What text, what we found is that 95% of everything in the New Testament is confirmed accurate by the other text. And the there's only about 5% where there might be a dispute on different things. No major doctrine is ever in the dispute and your Bible almost always includes what the dispute is about in the footnotes. And if you read your footnotes, you will see that it almost never matters. You would be like, oh, well, I don't really care about that and then you would continue reading. That's why you skip the footnotes. Normally, if you get really into this, you can start reading your footnotes and seeing the different versions have different. So the majority of the Bibles that you have today, if you have the ESP the niv the NLT whatever you know, whatever alphabet soup that you might have today. , unless it's the KJV, which stays like, hey, we're only gonna use that, that one. But almost all the other ones use as many as they can. And then there's this whole field of study called textual criticism where you're trying to figure out what's the closest thing to what the original author had to say. There you go. All right, you didn't ask, but I gave it to you anyway. So, OK, back to the passage.

So there's a paralyzed man laying amongst a group of paralyzed and blind people next to a pool. And I just explain what the pool is. The waters were thought to be occasionally medicinal. And so this man had been invalid. He had been paralyzed for 38 years, 38 years of suffering. The royal official was in a moment of crisis, but this man's been suffering for his for the majority of his life. This is not someone who's seeking Jesus out. Instead, he's been chronically suffering. He's probably lost all hope that he could ever be healed. Verse six, when Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time. He said to him, do you want to be healed? What a question? What a question for a man who's been hurt, invalid, unable to walk for 38 years? Do you want to be healed? Well, of course, I want to be healed, but I don't know if that's in the cards for me. What the man might be thinking, how many of us would approach Jesus with this sort of despondency? We don't believe that Jesus can do anything for us. And so why do we even try? Do I even want to be healed? Do I even want Jesus to move in my life? The sick man answered him, sir. I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up and why I'm going and, and while I am going another steps down before me and Jesus said to him, get up, take your bed and walk and at once the man was healed and he took up his bed and he walked, talk about having your expectations subverted and exceeded this man thought that Jesus might be offering to carry him down to the pool. But instead Jesus powerfully heals him with the power of his words.

Now, after that, some of the Jewish leaders see the man walking around with his bed and your bed is, is, is kind of like the size of a mat. Ok? Don't be thinking about like a queen size Casper mattress in here, ok. This is, this is like a, a mat that you a yoga mat that you might do. Ok? I don't know if they practice yoga at that time, but it's, it's just a little mat. So he's carrying his mat and some of the Jewish leaders see him. They say, hey, you're not supposed to be doing that, put that mat down, put that bed down. It's the Sabbath. Don't, you know, we don't carry beds on the Sabbath. And it's like, sorry, I forgot to read first opinions. Uh, 17 today. Uh, that's not a book of the Bible. , they had made all these extra laws about keeping the Sabbath and, and they said, who told you to walk? And he said, look, a man told me to walk, he told me to pick up my mat and to walk. And they said, who was it that healed you? And the guy didn't even know jesus' name. He was like, yes, this guy, he had a beard. He was right here. Where did he go? Jesus king of the world? Also king of the Irish. Goodbye. He said, he leaves without saying goodbye all the time. He's just out of there. My wife would have been good friends with him.

But then sometime later, Jesus runs into the guy at the temple and he says, see you are well, sin no more that nothing worse may happen to you. And Jesus is I now, this can be a little confusing for us. OK? I wanna make sure that this is clear. Jesus is not saying that every occasion of suffering is a result of sin. He says sin no more so that nothing worse may happen to you. But what he is saying is that sometimes suffering is a result of sin, not every occasion, but sometimes when you sin, you do suffer a consequence and sometimes God gives you suffering to wake you up to your sin. So that you would turn to Him in repentance because it is better to turn to God in repentance. It is worse to be sinful than to be continuing in your sin than to be sick. And that's what Jesus is saying. S no more that nothing worse may happen to you. All right.

So let's recap the differences between these two that we have here today. One is a child. The other one is a grown man being healed. One comes to Jesus with an acute illness that he's about to die. The other one has been sick for 38 years. He's not about to die. He's got this chronic thing going on. Uh, the royal official. He sought out Jesus help. He came to Jesus. He said, please, would you help me? The invalid man did not seek Jesus help. He was just lying there minding his own business. The royal official when he came to Jesus, he knew jesus' name. Jesus was a celebrity to him. The man laying by the pool didn't, I didn't even know who Jesus was after he healed him. He was like, well, some guy came by and he healed me. He told me to get up Jesus never sees the child but heals him from 25 miles away. The invalid Jesus walks straight up to him and talks to him, speaks to him, the royal official. He's a poor, important, he's well off. He has servants, the man laying by the pool. He can't even get anyone to serve him by carrying him to the pool in many ways. These two could not be any more different. But at the same time, there are some similarities. For example, Jesus heals both of them in the same kind of way using his words. He merely speaks and he achieves what he came there to do and with both of them, he subverts and exceeds their expectations. The royal official expected Jesus to come and lay hands on his son, but Jesus merely spoke it into being and his son was alive. The man by the pool thought that Jesus was going to help him into the pool so that he might get a piece of healing. But Jesus spoke it and it happened and he was healed. Both of them had expectations that were subverted and exceeded. Jesus is surprising.

I can't tell you how many times that Jesus has subverted and exceeded my expectations. I'll tell you a couple of examples though, I could, I could go on for a long time, but I can give you a couple one when Megan and I first moved to Boston before we had kids. We lived in Brookline's little building. Brook City on a hill. Brookline has this building called the 133. , a few of you have seen it. , it's fine. , but 10 years ago it was less fine and, uh, not a very nice place, uh, to live in many ways. Ok. So we lived there for like two months and then we, you, you guys know how hard it is to find a place to live in Boston. This is not easy. At that point. At this point, we were poor, really poor, like just did not have much money. And we found this one bedroom apartment in Brighton. It was wonderful. It had, it had a pool, like a, like a community pool. We found it for like less than 1500 a month, like amazing. It was 10 years ago. Ok. So we moved in September 1st with all the other crazy people on September 1st. We moved in, our dog amazingly was still alive 10 years ago. Today she barks at someone and like springs her elbow, you know, but she was, she was quite vibrant back then. And so we move into this place and it's great. We love it. We paint every surface in the entire building. Oh, gosh, terrible. And after a couple of weeks of living there, our dog had made so many friends that the owners association, the condo association had joined together to say that we have to move. Yeah, delightful dog. They said that renters that owners can have dogs, but if you're renting a unit, that of an owner that you cannot have a dog. And so our landlord, he was like, look, we could do a few things you could get. you know, you could sign the dog over to me be technically my dog, you get to keep it, it was creative. But, but he said, or I'll let you out of your lease because they're fining me $100 a week right now. Uh, and I can't, I can't, you have a lease, you're good, but I will have to sell the place for something. This is just not, not good for me. So, , how terrible is that you finally find a place that you can afford and then you have to move or get rid of your dog or give your dog away to a random guy. And so we're just searching for a place over and over again. We don't think that we're gonna be able to find anything. We're so stressed out. We get on Craigslist and, uh, that's how you used to find things. I don't know how you do it anymore. I was on Craigslist just surfing through there one day and I came to this listing. No pictures. It just, it said two bedroom and JP in our price range under $1500. I I click on it and it says two bedroom, one office, open layout, delead it, washer and dryer in unit Jacuzzi tub. recently renovated Call Jesus Seriously. It said call Jesus at the end of it. So I was like, and then I called, I was like, hi, may I speak to Jesus? And it was him and I went and met Jesus and we, we checked out the house and it looked like the house from the outside looked like the type of house where you would be murdered. A few of you have seen this There were like four different colors that the house was painted on the outside and not even painted. It was like vinyl siding on top. The middle layer was unpainted. The bottom layer was painted blue. It was just kind of a crazy looking house, but you went in and it was really nice. And as people do in Boston, we gave him, you know, just a sack of cash and and we moved in how much over the next four years we lived in that place and the rent only went up like $25 a year. And it was a place where we saw several people come to know the Lord where we live, a community group. We, we saw we got a chance to baptize at least six or seven people that were in our community group. Some of you were in that community group with us. At that time, we had our, our first two kids while we were living in that home. It was just a gift from the Lord and it would not have worked for us to be in Brighton. Our dog was rolling in vomit anywhere anyways there because the BC students would puke in our front yard. It was just a gift from the Lord. The Lord subverted and exceeded our expectations with that.

Another quick example is how I came here when we first moved to Boston, we expected, well, I really wanted to plan a church, but I was only 26 years old and I didn't think that the Lord had it and, and I just didn't think it was time yet. So I started working at city on a hill in Brooklyn. We are living in JP. We have this vision to start a church in JP. We're praying about starting a church in JP. Constantly praying about what it looks like for us to plant a church. And then what do you know? But another gospel believing Bible believing church whose pastor I like moves into the area, moves into JP. I was crushed. God. What are you doing? I've been dreaming of this for four years. And so I'm praying all the time and we decided to double down in Brookline. So we moved to Brookline. We leave the apartment we love so that we can be in our church community in Brookline. And then like, I kid you not like a few weeks later, Claude, the guy that was pastoring redeemer before we became city on a hill. Two churches merged here together in 2018. He gets lunch with me. He's like, hey, I want you to consider coming over to our church. I'm not sure how long I'll be here. Maybe I'll be here long term. Maybe I won't. But I want us to become a city on a hill and I want you to be pastoring with me.

Well, that totally subverted and exceeded my expectations. And it continued to because I can't imagine a better church to be a part of like this is like, this is the dream. I wouldn't have been living the dream otherwise, but God continues to subvert and exceed those expectations. Jesus really does answer our prayers. He really does hear us. It means that he doesn't always answer our prayers the way that we want him to notice. Neither of those prayers were answered the way that we wanted him to answer them, but he did answer them and we might go to Jesus even if we're sick, seeking healing from the illness and it might not be his will to heal us from the illness. But rest assured Jesus will one day heal all illnesses. Jesus. Each one of his miracles are pointing forward to life in the kingdom to come. He's walking around healing people because He wants you to know that in the Kingdom of God, there are no sick people. The kingdom of God is the fulfillment of every han dream where the sick are healed, the dead are raised where the demons are defeated. There will be wine and bread and living water. The broken are made, new sins are forgiven. We will be with God and it will be good. In the meantime, we know that Jesus has inaugurated the kingdom. We get little tastes of it today. He can answer our prayers a little bit today and we see just a glimpse of the coming kingdom today. But we long for the day when all illnesses, sicknesses will be healed. Well, we'll receive a new body with him in heaven. And in fact, Jesus today can give us something better than the healings.

There's another story in the gospels where Jesus does a healing very similar to these Matthew chapter nine. He finds a, a paralytic laying on a bed and he says to the paralytic, take heart, my son, your s your sins are forgiven and behold. The scribe said to themselves, this man is blaspheming. But Jesus knowing their thoughts said, why do you think evil in your hearts for which is easier to say your sins are forgiven or rise and walk? But that you may know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins. He then said to the paralytic rise, pick up your bed and go home and he rose and went home. And when the crowd saw it, they were afraid and they glorified God who had given such authority to men. And so Jesus says that, hey, I could heal the guy or I can say your sins are forgiven, which is a bigger deal. Your sins are forgiven. But here's the thing in our life is we take that for granted. Of course, my sins are forgiven. I want you to do something else for me, Jesus. I need this bigger thing but friends, your sins are forgiven and that means that you get eternal life with God that starts today, you get the joy of knowing Him and experiencing his presence. It's better than the miracle that you were wanting. He constantly subverts and exceeds our expectations. It is that if he heals you in this life, you just have a few more years really. But if he forgives your sin, you have eternal life forever to look forward to.

In fact, isn't, isn't the Christmas story all about subverting and exceeding expectations? I mean, you see a child born in a barn, you don't think that that child is going places. Ok? That's, that's not what you would think. But Jesus born and laid in a manger of hble beginnings is the king of the world and on the cross, we see our expectations exceeded and, and subverted even more. Would you ever look at a man dying on a cross and think that is the definition of eternal love. Would you ever look at a man tried the way that Jesus was tried with the injustice that occurred to him at his trial and justice sent him to the cross. But in that moment is how the justice of God was satisfied. Would you ever think that the omnipotent powerful God, the one above all would show his power most clearly by a man dying on a wooden apparatus between two criminals. The cross subverts, but it exceeds our expectations. You know, the disciples did not expect Jesus to be crucified. They expected him to be a political king that they could make into a king that they could, that he would have political army and he would take over the, the land again. They'd be with him forever. They, that's what they expected of Jesus. And so the last thing they expected was that he would be crucified and that they would be huddled in hiding a couple of days after his crucifixion trying to figure out what to do next.

And at that moment, Jesus exceeds their expectations. He subst subverts their expectations and he walks in and he says, what's up through the locked door? Jesus appears and he's like, why are you mourning? I told you I'd be resurrected. Did I not Jesus continually subverts and exceeds our expectations. Satan thought he'd won. The religious leaders thought they'd won but Jesus denied everyone in his moment of supposed defeat was actually the moment of victory on the cross. Jesus bore the sin of the world so that he might offer us forgiveness of sins. And so my question for you today is how is Jesus going to subvert and exceed your expectations? You don't know because that's not how it works to be at your expectations, subverted. What do you expect Jesus to do? What are you asking him to do? I encourage you, go to Jesus with bold prayers and let him surprise you. And when he surprises you, bring him the glory, bring him the honor and say, you know what I see what you've done here is magnificent and allow him to bring joy and light and power into your heart and that relationship that we have with him. Let let's trust him in our lives. Let's go to him and prayer and see what he's able to do each week. We, we practice and we celebrate, we practice a, a sacred meal that celebrates the death of Christ on our behalf. And as we take this meal, we're reminded that his body was broken for us and his blood was shed for us. And we do this in remembrance of him. And so if you are a believer here today, we expect we encourage you to come and receive this meal to repent of any sin that is in your heart. Because Jesus tells us not to be taking this in an unworthy fashion. And so any place of your life that you're not willing to give to Jesus, give it to Jesus and then come, receive this meal and say Jesus, you are enough for me. So church let's stand as we prepare to, to sing, praises to, to Jesus and to respond to his word.

Father. Would you move in our hearts and in our lives and help us to see what you are doing and how you are active in our life and help us to, to give you glory when you do things that are not what we expect, but better. And God, we, we see you guiding and leading each of us and we pray that you would be moving in our church that this Christmas season would be a time where our expectations can be exceeded. Jesus. Would you meet us here? Would you exceed our expectations? We don't just want you to move. We don't wanna just see a little bit of you. We want our expectations to be exceeded. Would you move in our lives in Christ's name? We pray. Thank you, Amen.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from John 4:1-45 about Jesus’s conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well. Discussion points: All of our earthly longings are a pale reflection of our longing to be satisfied in Christ, Jesus offers the only thing that can really satisfy us, the Samaritan woman was not afraid of her repentance but wanted to share it with others.

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Guest preacher Dan Ko from Seven Mile Road Church teaches from Ruth 1. Discussion points: Only the providential hand of God can provide the abundant life we’re always chasing, Naomi didn’t believe that God was looking out for her, God’s promise of abundant life is for everyone who believes.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from John 3:22-36 about what eternal life with God will be like. Discussion points: If we had a right view of God we would have no problem submitting to Him, eternal life with God will not be boring because God created our sense of enjoyment, the wrath of God is rooted in love and justice.

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Pastor Fletcher teaches from John 3:1-21 about Jesus’s discussion with Nicodemus. Discussion points: Everyone must be born again to see the kingdom of God, no matter what kind of social, physical, or spiritual head starts we are given; Jesus references a history of the Israelites where God saves his people without them having to do anything; we cannot earn our way into salvation but must be born again.

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Pastor Fletcher continues our John sermon series, preaching from John 2:13-21. [The first few minutes of the sermon were not recorded, apologies!] Discussion points: Jesus gets more upset about what’s going on inside the covenant community of God than with those outside, what tables does Jesus need to flip over in your life to turn your attention back to him, we are meant to be a people of prayer.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from John 1:35-51 about Jesus’ interaction with the disciple Nathaniel. Discussion points: Don’t despise your conversion story because it wasn’t dramatic enough, Jesus invites us to come and experience what our hearts are looking for, when we follow Jesus we get more than what we could imagine.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from John 1:19-34 about John the Baptist. Discussion points: A healthy view of ourselves requires a healthy view of Jesus, we oscillate between pride and self-hatred if we don’t know who we are in Jesus, we are unworthy of God but so valued and loved by him.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from John 1:9-18. Discussion points: The gospels provide eye witness accounts of who Jesus was, we know that God has revealed himself through Jesus, we must become like children and allow and trust God to be our Father.

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Pastor Fletcher begins our year-long sermon series on John, starting with John 1:1-8. Discussion points: John wrote his gospel to try to convince us that Jesus is Lord, Jesus was not a created being but was always with and part of God, God created us out of an overflow of love.

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Pastor Fletcher finishes our Core Values sermon series discussing Romans 12:9-21. Discussion points: Gospel culture starts with honesty with our church family, we build each other up through honor and hospitality, and we can rejoice in the Lord despite pain and suffering because of our hope in Christ.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about multi-ethnicity in the church from Revelation 7:9-12.

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Pastor Fletcher teaches from 1 Timothy 4:6-16 about one of our core values, sound doctrine. Discussion points: Bad doctrine can destroy churches so we have to keep a close eye on it, false doctrine starts with right doctrine and twists it, there are tiers of Christian beliefs from matters of doctrine to matters of conscience, we need to be immersed in gospel culture rather than just dabbling in it to be able to grow.

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Pastor Fletcher begins our new sermon series, Vision & Values.

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Guest pastor Tyler Speck teaches from Philippians 2:1-11.

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Pastor Fletcher concludes our Genesis sermon series with Jacob’s final words to his children.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Genesis 45 & 50 about Joseph’s reconciliation with his brothers.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Genesis 42-45:3.

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Guest preacher Dan Ko teaches from Isaiah 40:12-18 about trusting in God’s greatness.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Genesis 40 and 41 about Joseph in Egypt.

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Pastor Fletcher returns to Joseph’s story with a message from Genesis 39.

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Elder Mark Schmeissing teaches from Ephesians 4:17-32 about the transformation of living for Christ.

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We take a detour from Joseph’s story to discuss Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38.

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The Genesis story continues with Joseph in Genesis 37.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Genesis 35-36.

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We continue our Genesis series with a message from Genesis 34. Discussion points: Neither Jacob’s passivity or his sons’ violence were appropriate responses to the abuse of Dinah, Jesus sees and cares for victims of oppression and abuse, God will bring justice for all wrongs and Jesus gave his life to redeem even our worst sins.

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Guest speaker Pastor Tyler Speck joins us from CoaH Brookline to preach from Genesis 32-33. Discussion points: We encounter God every day, but the real question is whether we have been changed by God; Jacob didn’t understand that his wrestling and striving was against God; when we try to wrestle with God, God always wins.

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Guest speaker Richard Neikirk, a member of CoaH Somerville, preaches from 2 Corinthians 5:18-21. Discussion points: We are chosen as ambassadors for God to the world, we are never alone in the places to which God sends us, we are called to speak with boldness and God’s authority about the gospel to our neighbors.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about envy from Genesis 30-31. Discussion points: Rachel’s discontentment was fueled by jealousy of what Leah had, jealousy prevents us from enjoying the blessings God has given us, only God can satisfy us and take away our jealousy and shame.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about Rachel and Leah from Genesis 29. Discussion points: Jacob was led by the hand of God through hundreds of miles to the time and place he needed to be, the sanctification process is tailor-made by God for each of us, God has a plan for our good even in the midst of suffering.

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Pastor Fletcher teaches from Genesis 28 about Jacob being visited by God at Bethel. Discussion points: Jesus claimed to be the ladder that appeared to Jacob connecting heaven and earth, God was watching over Jacob even when he was poor and had broken apart his family, Jacob’s experience with God caused him to commit himself and his possessions to God forever.

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Pastor Fletcher teaches from Genesis 27 about approval and blessing. Discussion points: The power of words to bless or curse is long lasting and significant, all of us are looking for approval from some source in our lives, God is glorified in choosing the weak and foolish things of the earth to carry out his will, we have approval from God because we are covered by Christ.

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Pastor Fletcher picks up where we left off in the story of Isaac from Genesis 26. Discussion points: We are naturally predisposed to mimic the sins and habits of our parents, God gave mercy and blessing to Isaac even after his deceit, Christ’s grace can help us break the cycle of brokenness between our parents and our children.

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Pastor Fletcher delivers our Easter message from 1 Corinthians 15:12-26. Discussion points: Much of Christian life would not make sense without our hope in the resurrection, Jesus’s death covers over our sin, the promise of future reward shapes the way we think about the present.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Genesis 25 about Isaac, Jacob, and Esau. Discussion points: We can pick up habitual sins and mentalities from our parents, God is faithful to give us the things that are good for us, the grace of God is training us to resist instant gratification and strive towards righteousness.

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Pastor Tyler Speck from CoaH Brookline preaches from Genesis 24 about Abraham’s servant on a journey. Discussion points: Big, complicated acts of God involve many small steps of faith; the first small step of faith is just to ask God for help; when we watch and listen for God’s work we will find it everywhere in our lives.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Genesis 22 about God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. Discussion points: Abraham believed God’s promise and had hope that he would receive his son back from death, we are never called to obedience apart from God’s provision, the ram that God provided to be sacrificed instead of Isaac points forward to Jesus being sacrificed for our sins.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Genesis 21 about the fulfillment of God’s promise through the birth of Isaac. Discussion points: Some promises in the Bible were meant for specific people in specific circumstances; God gives and fulfills many promises to us; God comes through for us in all kinds of ways, even if we don’t recognize his hand in our lives.

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Dr. Jonathan McLatchie takes us on a deep dive through the prophecies about the Messiah in Isaiah 53. Check out Dr. McLatchie’s essay on this passage here. Discussion points: Isaiah describes a suffering servant who is shown to be Israel’s Messiah, Jesus is the only person who has fulfilled the prophecies of Isaiah and other prophets, Jesus bore the curse of God on our behalf.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about Lot and his daughters from Genesis 19:30-20:18. Discussion points: Sin is an abuse of God’s good gifts, the culture around us can creep into our perception of sin and lifestyle, we can grow numb to sin as we continue to practice it, God’s mercy and blessing for us is never-ending.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about Sodom and Gomorrah from Genesis 18:16-19:29. Discussion points: Our God is absolutely opposed to all injustice, God is not quick to smite sinners but is eager to forgive, Jesus accepted God’s just wrath on our behalf.

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Pastor Fletcher continues the story of the promise with a message from Genesis 18. Discussion points: Abraham and Sarah were disillusioned after their long wait for the promise to be fulfilled, God is moving in our lives even when we don’t recognize it, we must persist in prayer for the things that only God could accomplish.

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Pastor Fletcher continues our sermon series with a message from Genesis 17. Discussion points: Following God requires us to assume a new identity, Christianity is not just a hobby but a renewed identity, baptism is the new sign of the covenant between God and his people.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Genesis 16 about Hagar and the angel of the Lord. Discussion points: God cares about the means as well as the ends we are working towards, the angel of the Lord who appeared to Hagar was pre-incarnation Jesus, God is our source and well of life.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about God’s promise to Abram in Genesis 15. Discussion points: God can handle our doubts; Abram’s righteousness came from his trust in God, not his good works; God relates to us through a covenant, not a contract.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Genesis 13-14, teaching about Abram, Lot, and Melchizedek. Discussion points: When we follow Christ our decisions may not make sense to the rest of the world, we look forward to the promised land instead of overvaluing this world, Jesus is the new priest who can be with God and with us.

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Pastor Fletcher brings us back to Genesis, introducing us to Abram in Genesis 12. Discussion points: Our God speaks to us and keeps his promises; faith is intended to be informed and active; Abram’s story is about God’s faithfulness, not Abram’s.

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Guest preacher Dan Ko from Seven Mile Road Church preaches from Daniel 6. Discussion points: Daniel’s integrity and faithfulness influenced everyone around him, Daniel’s faith was not performative but consistent, we can give thanks in all circumstances because we know that God is always with us.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Luke 1:57-80 about Zechariah’s song and prophecy over his son John. Discussion points: It is always a miracle for someone to come to belief in Christ, the Old Testament points clearly to Jesus as the suffering servant who will save Israel, God’s love is self-giving and other-exalting.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Luke 1:38-56 about Mary’s song of joy. Discussion points: God can give us words to speak to our friends and family to convict and comfort them, we can learn to pray like Mary by becoming fluent in the scripture, the more we magnify the Lord the more joy we receive from him, God rejoices in showing us mercy.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Luke 2:22-35 about Simeon’s encounter with Jesus at the temple. Discussion points: The deliverance we desire is not what we actually require, what would you need to do or have to feel at peace and ready to go?, only Jesus can give us soul-satisfying peace.

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Guest preacher Dr. Jonathan McLatchie teaches from Hebrews 1:1-4.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Genesis 11:1-9 about the tower of Babel.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Genesis 6-10 about Noah and the ark.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Genesis 4:17-6:8 about genealogies and Nephilim.

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Guest preacher Tyler Speck from CoaH Brookline teaches from Romans 12:1-2.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Genesis 4:1-16 about Cain and Abel.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Genesis 3 about the fall of man.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Genesis 2:4-25 about the creation of humans.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Genesis 2:1-3 about the Sabbath.

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Pastor Fletcher begins our year-long sermon series on Genesis, starting with Genesis 1:1-25.

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Pastor Fletcher wraps up our series preaching from James 5:12-20.

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Pastor Fletcher continues our summer sermon series with a message from James 5:7-11 about patience.

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Guest preacher Edgardo Rosa teaches from Matthew 18:7-9.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about wealth from James 5:1-6.

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Guest preacher Dr. Douglas Duncan gives us a message from Ephesians 1:1-6.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from James 4:13-17.

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Guest preacher Reid Monaghan from the Harbor Network speaks from 1 Peter 1:10-12.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from James 4:3-10 about wisdom.

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Pastor Fletcher continues our book study with a message from James 3:13-4:3.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about the importance of our words from James 3:1-12.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about faith and works from James 2:14-26.

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CoaH Brookline Pastor Mike Hong preaches from James 1:26-27.

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Guest preacher Tyler Speck preaches from James 2:1-13.

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Pastor Fletcher continues our summer sermon series with a message from James 1:19-25.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from James 1:13-18 about temptation and desires.

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Pastor Fletcher begins our new sermon series with James’ letter opening in James 1:1-12.

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Guest preacher Kyle Tucker from CoaH Brighton preaches from John 13:1-17.

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Pastor Fletcher finishes Esther’s story with a message from Esther 5-10.

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We begin our new sermon series with Esther 1-4.

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Guest preacher Tyler Speck teaches from Luke 18:9-14 about how we are justified before God.

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Happy Easter! Pastor Fletcher preaches the resurrection from Luke 24:36-53.

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The Easter sermon series continues with Luke 24:13-35.

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Pastor Fletcher begins our Easter sermon series with the story of the resurrection from Luke 24:1-12.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Ephesians 6:18-24 about how to be strong in the Lord.

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Pastor Fletcher continues our series with a message from Ephesians 6:10-17.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Ephesians 6:5-9 about slavery and work.

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Pastor Fletcher begins the season of Lent with a message about Psalm 23.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about parents and children from Ephesians 6:1-4.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about marriage from Ephesians 5:28-33.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Ephesians 5:21-27 about what the Bible says about marriage and roles.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Ephesians 5:15-21 about what it means to be filled with the Spirit.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Ephesians 4:25-32 about putting on the “new man”.

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Jeff Monk returns us to our Ephesians sermon series, preaching from Ephesians 4:17-24.

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Pastor Aaron Peters from CoaH Brighton preaches from John 10:1-11.

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Pastor Fletcher continues our sermon series with a message from Ephesians 4:15-16.

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Pastor Fletcher teaches about spiritual gifts and maturity from Ephesians 4:7-14.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Ephesians 3:14-21 about prayer.

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CoaH Pastor Tyler Speck preaches from Ephesians 3:1-13 about the mystery of God.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Ephesians 2:17-22.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Ephesians 2:11-16 about reconciliation within the church.

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Guest Pastor Byron Cogdell preaches from Mark 1:35-38.

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Pastor Fletcher follows up on last week’s message, preaching about moralism versus the gospel (Ephesians 2:8-10).

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about the gospel (Ephesians 2:1-7).

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Worship leader Ben continues our sermon series with a message from Ephesians 1:15-23.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Ephesians 1:11-14 about the inheritance we have received as children of God.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches on Ephesians 1:7-10 about redemption.

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Pastor Fletcher begins our new sermon series on Ephesians (1:1-6).

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Pastor Fletcher concludes the Sabbath Way of Life sermon series with a message from Matthew 11:25-30.

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Pastor Fletcher continues our new sermon series with a message about “the good portion” from Luke 10:38-42.

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We finish the Apostles’ Creed series with a message about resurrection from 2 Corinthians 1:8-11

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Pastor Fletcher preaches the forgiveness we can receive from God, preaching from Luke 7:36-50.

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Worship leader Ben preaches from Romans 12:3-13 about the fellowship of the Church in Christ.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about the Holy Spirit from Ephesians 5:15-21.

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Pastor Fletcher proclaims Jesus as King, preaching from Romans 8:31-39.

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CoaH Pastor Bland Mason preaches from 2 Corinthians about Jesus’ resurrection.

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CoaH elder Matt Harris preaches from Philippians 2:5–11 about Jesus’ conception and birth as God and man.

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CoaH Brookline Pastor Bland Mason preaches about Jesus’ three titles given in the Apostles’ Creed, speaking from Matthew 16:13-20.

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Worship leader Ben preaches from Acts 17, continuing our series on the Apostles’ Creed.

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Pastor Fletcher begins a 10-week series on the Apostles’ Creed, starting with Romans 10:5-17.

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Pastor Fletcher wraps up our Gospel Intentionality series with a message from Colossians 3:23-25.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Micah 6:8 about how Christians pursue justice and mercy.

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Pastor Fletcher continues the Gospel Intentionality sermon series with Psalm 67.

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Worship Director Ben preaches on evangelism from Colossians 4:2-6.

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Pastor Fletcher begins our new sermon series with the Great Commission in Matthew 28:16-20.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from 2 Samuel 12:15-25 & 18:33 about what we can learn from David’s parenting and children.

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Pastor Fletcher continues the Life of David series with a message from 2 Samuel 12:1-7 and Psalm 51.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about the story of David and Bathsheba from 2 Samuel 11:1-15.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from 2 Samuel 7:1-17 about David’s desire to build the temple of the Lord.

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Pastor Fletcher continues the Life of David series with a message about the holiness of God and the Ark of the Covenant (2 Samuel 6).

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about mercy from 1 Samuel 26:7-12.

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Pastor Ben preaches from 1 Samuel 18:1-4, 20 about the friendship between David and Jonathan.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about how jealousy corrupts the heart (1 Samuel 18:5-16).

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Pastor Fletcher continues the Life of David series with 1 Samuel 17.

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Pastor Fletcher begins our new sermon series about the life of King David, preaching from 1 Samuel 16.

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Pastor Ben preaches from Isaiah 55:1-7 about the power of the elements of our worship services.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Exodus 33:12-23 about longing for the presence of God.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Colossians 3:16-17 about how and why we worship.

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Pastor Fletcher starts off our Worship Reorientation series speaking from 1 John 5:21 about how everyone worships something.

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Pastor Fletcher finishes our Sermon on the Mount series speaking from Matthew 7:24-29 about building our lives on the foundation of the gospel.

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Pastor Fletcher continues the Sermon on the Mount series with Matthew 7:13-23.

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Pastor Ben preaches from Matthew 7:12 about Jesus’ Golden Rule.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches on child-like prayer from Matthew 7:7-11.

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Pastor Fletcher continues the Sermon on the Mount series, preaching from Matthew 7:1-6, 12.

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Pastor Fletcher describes God’s response to anxiety, preaching from Matthew 6:25-34.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew 6:7-15.

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Pastor Ben preaches from Matthew 6:5-6 & 16-18 about heart motivation.

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We continue our Sermon on the Mount series with Matthew 6:1-4 & 19-24.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from Matthew 5:38-48 about compassion.

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We continue our Sermon on the Mount series with Matthew 5:33-37.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about God’s plan for sex and human flourishing (Matthew 5:27-32).

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Worship Pastor Ben Nevius continues our Sermon on the Mount series with a message from Matthew 5:21-26 about anger.

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The Sermon on the Mount series continues with a message from Matthew 5:17-20.

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Pastor Fletcher continues our Sermon on the Mount series with Matthew 5:13-16.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches on the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:1-12.

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We begin our new sermon series on the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about how to resist Satan from 1 Peter 5:6–11.

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We continue our summer series with a message on church leadership from 1 Peter 5:1-5.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches on suffering from 1 Peter 4:12-19.

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Pastor Fletcher continues our summer series through 1 Peter with a discussion of how Christians should treat others.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches on the description of Christian marriage in 1 Peter 3:1-7.

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Brookline Pastor Bland Mason teaches on Philippians 4:1-5 and the characteristics of godly peacemakers.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches on what the Bible says about slavery.

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We continue our summer sermon series with a discussion of politics and citizenship.

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Guest preacher Claude Atcho teaches from Luke 4:16-21.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches from 1 Peter 2:4-10 about hope for racial justice in the church.

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We continue our Flourishing in Exile series with 1 Peter 1:22-2:3.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about our Christian conduct in Earthly exile from 1 Peter 1:13-21.

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Pastor Fletcher continues our 1 Peter summer study with 1 Peter 1:8-12.

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We continue our study of 1 Peter, Flourishing in Exile, with 1 Peter 1:3-7.

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Pastor Fletcher begins our summer book study of 1 Peter with the opening greeting of the letter.

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Pastor Steven Castello preaches on anxiety and the gospel from Matthew 6:23-34.

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We finish The Story of Everything series with a passage from Revelation 21:1-7.

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We continue the Story of Everything series with a discussion of how we strengthen our church community during this time of isolation (Ephesians 2 & 4).

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Pastor Fletcher continues the Story of Everything series with the wrath and love in Romans 3:21-26.

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The Story of Everything series continues with the resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday.

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On Palm Sunday, we discuss the love of God and John 3:16-21.

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We continue the Story of Everything series with Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus about being born again (John 3:1-15).

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In our first foray into the virtual church service, Pastor Fletcher discusses Psalm 46 and how we can trust our Father in times of fear and uncertainty. Discussion points: God is with us when the world feels out of control, be still and remember His promises. Find the order of worship here.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches on God’s promises to David in 2 Samuel 7:1-17 in the fifth week of The Story of Everything series. Discussion points: Without God everyone does what is right in their own eyes, without God everything is temporary, Jesus is David’s heir whose kingdom will never end.

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The Story of Everything series continues with the 10 Commandments spelled out in Exodus 20:1-17. Discussion points: The 10 Commandments teach us how to love God and others, Jesus’ sacrifice frees us from the ceremonial cleanness and repercussion laws, and all humans are lawbreakers.

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We continue the Genesis narrative in our The Story of Everything series with God’s establishment of a covenant with Abram in Genesis 15:1-6. Discussion points: Abram’s belief (not works) made him righteous before God, God’s faithfulness does not depend on us, God’s covenant with Abram foreshadows his redemption of the world through Jesus.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches about Genesis 2-3, including the creation of Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, and the Fall. Discussion points: Satan twists the good words of God into lies, the root of sin is selfishness, and God offers compassion and hope after the Fall.

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In the introductory message from our new sermon series The Story of Everything, Pastor Fletcher discusses the creation of the universe laid out in Genesis 1-2:3. Discussion points: Poetry versus narrative in the Genesis creation story, author’s intent, and the intrinsic dignity and worth of all humans created in God’s image.

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Pastor Fletcher preaches the final sermon from the Devoted series from Acts 2:42-47, discussing Commitment. Discussion points: Community comes with the cost of sacrificing one’s own autonomy, commitment to the Church requires showing up and stepping up.

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Christians are called to both fast and feast as spiritual disciplines. This week Pastor Fletcher discusses why and when to do both, preaching from Matthew 9:14-17. Discussion points: Fast in time of searching, mourning, and repentance; feast in times of celebration with your brothers and sisters in the Church; fasting doesn’t have to be just abstinence from food, but should be used as a tool to seek God.

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We continue our series on spiritual practices with Solitude (Mark 1:35-39). Discussion points: Solitude is important because Jesus practiced it, internal and external quiet, and various strategies to practice solitude.

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Pastor Fletcher continues the Devoted series with a sermon about the rest that Jesus offers in Matthew 11:25-30. Discussion points: Jesus calls us to rest; rest is unhurried, un-busy, worshipful, and playful; Jesus did the work so that we don’t have to prove ourselves to God.

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Pastor Fletcher introduces our new sermon series for the new year on spiritual disciplines by speaking about training for godliness. Download the Personal Discipleship Plan template here [PDF] and the sample plan here [PDF]. Discussion points: Distraction and disenchantment drain our spiritual lives, spiritual maturity never comes by drifting, training for godliness requires work and a plan.

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In the last message of the Advent season, Pastor Fletcher speaks of the Messianic prophecy in Isaiah 53:4-6 and the promised peace and completeness that comes from the gospel. Discussion points: The shalom of God, Isaiah’s foretelling of Jesus’ life and death.

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Pastor Fletcher explores the Christian’s calling to be joyful by diving into Zephaniah 3:14-20. Discussion points: Hollowness in our modern world, joy in spite of sorrow, and God’s happiness.