Faith Oakville | St. Louis, MO

1st So hey, kids, let me just say first that there's a commandment in the Bible that says honor your father and your mother, that it may go well with you. Yeah, you want it to go well today, honor your mother, right? Honor your mother and also go to kids church right now.

We'll see you guys. All right, we'll see you guys right now. Faith kids.

Awesome. Hey, if you're here and you need a Bible, I'm turned to Philippians chapter 1, quite a few verses. If you need a Bible, I see, I see hospitality in the back there waiting to give you a Bible. So raise your hand and we love to give you 1. And we always say too, if if you don't have a Bible, keep it right and begin to read it as you go home. So you know, you know, I, we still have the, the tomb in back of us. So it's a reminder that every Sunday is like a small Easter. So we can say the Lord has risen.

He has risen indeed. Hallelujah. And we're praying that he gives us that life too. So hey, let me just say too, thank you moms.

I'm blessed. I still have a mother-in-law. She's 93 and she still lives alone, still at home. And I get brownie points when I say things like this, but but she also did a great job with my wife Julie, and we have four daughters. So I say happy Mother's Day to my wife too. And all of you for your commitment, your your love for your family, your kids, your love for Jesus and wanting to see your kids also, as we just sang about be saved, right? Isn't that true? And thank you for that day.

You also brought them to the waters of baptism dads too. But your day comes OK in the future. So thank you. Thank you for that for sure. So let's read Philippians chapter one.

Let me pick up at verse 12, the apostle Paul. By the way, we're in this series, we're called it finding joy. You could say experiencing joy. You could say a lot of things about really what Paul emphasizes here in this letter, just 4 chapters long, he says, I want you to know, brothers, Brothers is a term for Christians. OK, That what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel. So that has become known throughout the whole imperial garden. To all the rest that, well, what's happened? He says that my imprisonment is for Christ.

And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. Some indeed preach Christ from every from envy rather and rivalry, but others from goodwill. So the latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former proclaimed Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. Yes, I rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage. Now, as always, Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. So for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am a live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell.

I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better, but to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. Convinced this I know that I will remain and continue to be with you all for your progress and joy in the faith.

Notice how you rejoice joy. It's it's it's it's repetition with him so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus because of my coming to you again. Let me just stop there and say, Lord, we, we thank you for this word and Lord, as these minutes we have left, just speak into our hearts. Let your Holy Spirit not just convict, but also encourage us as we learn to trust in you all the more. In Jesus, we pray, Amen.

So over the course of a hundreds of messages over the last years in, in my ministry, there is no doubt that certain themes or topics kind of bubble up as your favorites. But also I just think there are topics that make a difference.

OK. And I told Julie, my wife yesterday. I, this is one of them. It's like one of my top five things I love to talk about because be honest, I struggle with it a lot too, OK. And what I'm talking about is the mind and how we think. The Bible uses the word attitude and attitude is synonymous for the word mind, OK? It's just is so attitude. In other words, what is the attitude you have? What do you believe? What's the perception you have as you experience the joys of life? But also the disappointments in life.

Many of you forgive me for saying, again, it's probably my last Mother's Day to speak like this. But my mom, she had that saying, quit your stinking thinking. Quit your stinking thinking What she's saying. She says, quit thinking like that, right? That's just stinking thought, right? So I was just wondering how many of us are guilty of stinking thinking, right? OK, what if we just do that? What did we just learn to quit the stinking thinking that would be enough for today and we could just say, Amen, let's go to brunch or let's just enjoy it, right? I know that's what you want, but I got a little more. OK, let me go on Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankel. OK, You know, I I say Holocaust, and I wonder how many of us actually know what that is. If you're young, maybe you've never heard of that. Holocaust is something that happened between 1941 and 45 during the Second World War. And the Holocaust is referencing 6,000,000 Jews who were either shot point blank, executed or poisoned by gas by the German Nazis.

So that's what Viktor Frankel saw and that's when he survived potentially in a concentration camp as well. But I, I mentioned his name because he said this. He said everything can be taken from a man, but one thing he says, the last of human freedoms, and that is to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances.

Choose your attitude. You can choose what you're thinking about, he says, because if you let all the things that you're seeing, all the things of this world, and there are so many, Amen. I mean, come on social media, we are bombarded with all of these things, He says. If you do that and you allow that to gauge your joy, he says basically your playthings of circumstances.

And I thought about that and I'm thinking, hmm, that's really what I need to repent of. Maybe that's what we need to repent of. That if we were to look at this last year, how many of you have become playthings of your circumstances? Because a lot of stuff have has hit the wall and you're facing it and it's just tossed you and you've lost your peace, right? You've lost your joy. Because we know that joy is not something that, biblically speaking, is not something that's just out there in the experience. It's something within us given by our God.

In chapter 2, you're going to read and Pastor Sam I think is going to be sharing that. He says it says right there in Philippians 2, five and following, have this attitude in yourselves, which is also yours in Christ Jesus. So the attitude we can have is yours in Christ Jesus.

It's a gift from God. He's talking about humility there, but we're talking about joy because you can sense throughout this letter, he's mentioned it so many times to have that joy.

So how are you doing now? If you were to talk to someone, you talk to your husband, your wife, your kids or whatever, how would they say you are doing? I'm not sure I want to ask my kids to be quite honest sometimes about me because they they would probably say, tell me the truth, right? It's a struggle. I mean, do you, do you sense that you got to have something before you can really be joyful, happy? Or do you sense that you have to defend, depend on others to give, give it to you and if they don't, you don't got it or it's just something out there and it's impossible to attain. Or maybe you've discovered that in fact, it's way more than that and virtually there's nothing tangible that you need to have inner joy.

And you've learned that your dependence on God and his gift of his Holy Spirit to give you this fruit called joy, Lovejoy, right? Peace, patience, kind. Now, we're not talking about just having a positive attitude, please, or a positive mindset.

We're you're simply saying that there's a joyful disposition that comes when God by his Holy Spirit renews our minds by his Holy Spirit. And Paul says in Philippians 4, he says now that you can, you can be focusing on things that are true or noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable. He says if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, praiseworthy, do what? Think about those things.

Think about those things. So if you're guilty of the stinking thinking, OK, or someone next to you is right now, just look at them and say it's you don't do that. Don't do don't do that with your kids, OK? But we all fall into it very negative, stinking thinking. How's that working for us? Right? Let me illustrate this, OK? It's a wonderful short story.

It's by a man by the name of GW Target. And the story is called the window. The Window tells of two men. These two men are seriously ill.

OK. They occupy the same small hospital room. And one of the men, he's the man by the window. He's allowed to sit up for about an hour every day to drain the fluid from his lungs.

And then the other guy, he has to spend most of his time flat on his back. So these two guys, man, they've talked for hours, I mean hours on end. They spoke about their wives, their families, their vacations, their, their military service, you know every, I mean, what vacations they love to go. I mean, he just went on and on. It was wonderful. But every afternoon, the man who was closest to the window, when he was sitting up, he would pass the time by describing all the events that were outside of that window, all the events to and he described those to his roommate and the man and the other side of the bed. He began to just live for those moments, right? Kind of made his day. And I mean, he would describe as he looked down on the window, there was a wonderful skyline.

There was there was ducks playing in the little pond as there was a park below. There were couples holding hands, you know, moms and dads with their kids and, and the list just went on. It was a beautiful, beautiful thing. And he's describing, he would just close his eyes and he would picture it even when there was a parade.

He described this phrase that was going by even though the man away from the window couldn't hear the band. He could just imagine what it looked like as he described very specifically what was happening. All was good until one day he had this alien thought. He thought, Huh, Why should he have all the pleasure of seeing everything while I never get to see anything? It's not fair. It's not fair.

And while he's ashamed of that thought at first, it it kind of begin to sour him. His resentment turned, you know, his envy turned into resentment.

And then it just got uglier. He couldn't sleep. He thought about it all the time. He should be by the window.

And that thought began to control his life. So late one night, he's not sleeping.

He's staring at the ceiling and the men next to the window. He began to cough. And as he coughed, he began to choke.

And the other man watched in this dimly lit room while the struggling man begin to try to reach for, for the button to call the nurse. Because if the nurse could come in, could, could help him, to save him to, to set him up right.

But he did nothing. He just listened. 5 minutes of coughing and choking stopped along with the sound of breathing. And there was only silence, deathly silence.

Of course, the next morning the nurse comes in because she came in to give the regular baths to them and she found this man, he was lifeless. Of course, she was very sad.

She called the Co workers in to bring the body out. And of course, just as he's bringing the body out, he waited to an appropriate time where he said, hey, do you think that I could move closer to the window? I would love to be closer to that window. And of course, she said, of course it's not a problem.

But slowly, painfully, he he propped himself up on one elbow to take the first look, and finally he would have the joy of seeming for himself and as he was strained to lookout the window.

What did he see? He saw a blank wall. A blank wall, and the truth were known. As we take on this topic, a lot of us, we're looking at blank walls. We're looking at blank walls because life is hard.

It's hard. I don't know if you heard Pastor Brandon, you should probably go back and listen to his message, but he described all the things happening to his family. Did did I get this right? 18 moves in in six months, right? Five kids.

That's crazy. Two weeks ago I was with 18 other pastors and I was in Orlando and it's called Oasis. And the four old guys, I was one of them.

We gave the four devotions for the morning. So we would share God's word, a devotion, and then they would move into a time of sharing and prayer. So each guy, each pastor, they're all pastors, each pastor would share basically about what's going on in his life, his kids, his family, his church. And then we would pray for them.

And you know, it was hard. None of us is exempt. I mean, whether it be our kids, whether it be marriages, whether it be their finances, all of these things were talked about, whether it be their churches, whether it be the congregation members who are making their life very difficult.

And we prayed for them. Life is hard. And I would say that because, you know, the hardness of life affected the Apostle Paul as well. I don't know if you noticed this, but he says, I want you to know, brothers, what's happened to me? And we know what's happened to him. Well, what's happened to him is he went to Rome. He meant to go there as a preacher, as a church planter, but now he's a prisoner.

That's what's happened to him. If you don't know what's really happened to him, he's he's, he's chained to a Praetorian guard And, and, and history says they're about 18 inches long, these chains. And so he would have a guard tied to him, chained to him, you know, every hour of the day.

Think about it. He can't even go to the bathroom in private. He certainly can't clean himself up. He can't sleep in private. And every time the shift of one guard would end, the next guard would come in. It just went on like this, as even he was in like, what's called house arrest. OK, Two years of this, two years of this.

So you think about this. Even when he went to Rome, he was shipwrecked. He was treated unjustly.

The trial was not fair. He was a Roman citizen. He should have been treated fairly. He's got every reason in the world to live as a victim. And what is he doing? He's telling us things like it only served to advance the gospel. All of this, you're worried about me, All this you're praying for me about. Let me just tell you, it's there's still joy here. So he was joy filled in spite of his circumstances, in spite of the fact that he was really seriously, literally looking at a blank wall, but also joy in spite of the people, pastors, preachers, right? He sucks about that too. Some preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others, others from goodwill.

He says basically they're doing it for themselves. They're doing it for financial gain. You know what? How he says, what he says about all that, I don't care. Christ is still being proclaimed.

We still have reasons for joy. It's like, how could he do that? And yet this is the joy that comes right from the Lord. We would say so, we would ask why would God allow that? I mean, what, why? Why is he allow struggles and suffering and pain and all the things that that I have said so many times in the last month too, man, life is hard.

Not about myself. Just hearing some of your stories and seeing people lose their loved ones and wow, why? Paul actually answers the question.

He says what happened to me has really turned out for the spread of the gospel. So we can talk about the hardness of life, but I think we can talk about the alchemy of life. OK, I stole that word alchemy. OK, it's a, it's a Tim Keller.

He's actually stole it from another commentator called Matthew Henry. I have Matthew Henry commentaries on my digital commentaries. I've had it for years. The guy wrote a commentary in the 1600s. OK, The people are still reading today.

And basically, he makes this point about, like, even these truths found in Philippians.

He says that God is the only true alchemist. Doesn't that just hit you? Like, man. Right, Right, right. Right. Oh, yeah.

That's awesome. Like, what? What? What does that mean? That's what I would think.

Well, you actually have to define what an alchemist is. So in the Middle Ages, alchemists were people who were trying to find the secret for turning lead into gold. So you've got this useless thing called lead. We've got lots of it, and we don't have gold, but we can take something that is pretty useless and turn it into something incredibly beautiful.

And he says, by the way, they didn't succeed. OK, but the only one who has succeeded is God, and that's what he's doing for Paul.

That's what he's done. Scripture. I mean, think about the history. I don't have time to do it, but think about Moses.

The dude was a murderer. He turns into the deliverer of God's people. Think about Joseph. I mean, the list could be long. Joseph Wright, his brother selling him into slavery. And Joseph Wright, he turns into this incredibly powerful leader. He looks to his brothers, they think he he's going to put him to death. And he says no, no, no. You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. God turned something which was just LED into gold or blank wall into something beautiful, right? So Paul's, he's wondering, He's probably wondering. I'm sure he's staying in faith. I wonder how God is going to turn this situation that I'm in into gold.

I hope I can just catch a glimpse. So that kind of helps us too. When you're going through times instead of just just being so depressed and just seeing only the negative. You might ask, I wonder how God can turn something into gold that I'm going through right now.

Be careful. Be careful that you say, oh, there's a reason for everything.

Not necessarily. And not one you can always see. Because I'm still trying to figure out why the Lord allowed my mother to pass away at age 51. I, I, I, I still, I don't know.

But I do know I learned what grief was in a real quick way. And going through it in a heavy way. Yeah, I knew that too.

But it helps us. It helps us to understand. But Paul doesn't stop there. He goes down and in verse 19, he basically says, I, I know your prayers. He says I, I, I in the help of the Holy Spirit of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, this in other words, all the things I'm going through will turn out for my deliverance, that word deliverance. If we just read that, we would think, oh, he's going to be set free from prison.

He's going to go back to regular life because God's going to save him. Well, that that actually happened, OK, in history until he was put in prison again and then eventually put to death. But the reality was that's not exactly what he's saying.

What he's saying is the word deliverance. There is the same word for salvation. This has turned out, it could turn out for my salvation. Salvation just says I'm saved, OK, I'm saved, I'm forgiven. I'm a child of God in spite of what happens to me, I will be saved, right? When, in spite of what happens to me, that which seems like lead in my life, eventually, even though the circumstance may not turn to gold, I know that ultimately I'm going to be turned to gold because I am a child of God and my futures are streets, streets of gold. Think about that, where everything is new.

Does that mean that when these things happen that you're going to always be able to find an experience and know the reason? No, I've always said this, There are no guarantees in this life, but there are guarantees for our future.

But today we live with, no, we don't know what's going to happen, but we trust God in every circumstance, which is why you say, well, what? What was the difference for Paul here? Here's what it was. It was his definition of life. OK, not just the hardness of life, not just the alchemy of life, but the definition you say, well, what was his definition that you pick up at verse 21? He tells us, he says, he says for to me to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I live in the flesh, it means fruitful labor for me. But yet what should I choose? I don't know.

I'm hard pressed. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, but that's far better. Now I'm just going to tell you, I think Paul has a little bit of advantage. I did my study.

He had an experience that's described in Second Corinthians chapter 12. He calls it the 3rd heaven, right? And he saw things he couldn't even explain words couldn't even describe.

That's what he says. He had that, not us. I think he's kind of like the guy next to the bed telling us, Hey, this is what's coming, right? And we can imagine that.

So I, I, I, I, I know that he said, hey, whether I live, whether I die, I'm, I'm going to, I'm going to be with the Lord. That's what he's saying.

It's a good thing. But what's his definition of life? He says for me to live is Christ. So but, but fill in the blank, OK, because this is where we evaluate before we go home.

If I were to fill in that blank, how would you fill it? For me to live is it's a good vacation, for me to live is it's pleasure, or for me to live is finding the right mate. For me to live is financial success or just paying the bills right? For me to live is seeing my children, seeing my children grow in their faith and have faith. For me to live is my health, having my health. You see, you see, you see anyone else you can fill in your blank. How do you fill in your blank? Because the reality is when we fill in the blank with anything but Christ and difficulties and tragedies come, we're wrecked.

And Tim Keller would say this is a point you need to convert. Wow, because what what's your other option except to live in utter sadness and depression, not joy, because the joy of the Lord would be the Bible says our strength.

So what's your bottom line? What's your bottom line? What do you how do you fill in the blank for me to live is Christ? You say so, so that hence the last point. So what's the motivation? What's the motivation to stop living for all those things and actually to trust that Christ understands he has a plan and he's made the plan for you. And the answer is John 17, you find Jesus is there and what's he doing? He's praying, OK, this is the night he's going to be betrayed. This is when he's going to be placed on the cross the next day. And he tells his father in prayer. He says, Father, keep them in your name, that they may be 1. By the way, it's similar if you were to finish out the text right here in chapter 1, that's exactly what Paul desires for the people in Philippi as well. He says that they would be one in spirit in mind, but then he goes on and he says, Father, I have kept them for you. I have guarded them, I have protected them from the evil 1 And just as I am holy, make them holy for for your mission.

In other words, he says, I sanctify myself. I set myself apart just to see them sanctified, just to see them holy. So think about this. If Jesus were to fill in the blank, to live is is you know what he'd say to live is it's you, it's me for me to live is you.

My life, he would say, is to see you joy filled, to see you fulfilled, even experience times of happiness.

My life is to see you sanctified. Everything I do, he could say is subservient to that goal. So think about it.

He's on the cross. You say, well, what does that mean? It means he's telling us I am willing to do anything for you to have that, and you can have that in me.

In me. So you say, well, what's our response? Well, if Jesus, if for you to live is me, it's you, it's us, then I can say with great joy and I can say with great gratefulness for me to live is you, Jesus.

So I give it to you. I trust in you. And maybe that's what you need to do today.

Amen. Let's stand. Come on, let's pray and close. So, so let's, let's do that.

What is it we need to repent of? What if? What if we filled the blank and that isn't Jesus? So, Father, we, we just confess to you that whether it's pleasure, whether it's a habit, whether it's an addiction, whether it's a false love, whether it's selfishness, whether it's us, you know, to live is me all about me, Lord, whether it's it's our, it's a child, a family member, a husband, Lord or wife, Lord, we, we give you that to it and we say we, we're sorry, Lord, because we know that you are the resurrection and the life Jesus. You are the way, the truth and the life, Jesus.

You came to give us the abundant life, Jesus, and thank you for providing the way on a cross.

So forgive us, forgive us. And even as we ask that God says you are forgiven, my child, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, as a servant of Christ, I announce to you, it's true. Your sins, my sins, our sins, they are forgiven, Amen and Amen.

Sing this together, Savior. He can move them.

The. Well, good morning, Please pray with me. Dear Lord, we thank you so much that we could be in this place. God, I pray that as we open up your word, you would allow that word to sink deeply into our hearts. God, that you would allow it to to continually transform us. Lord, and that you would allow it to change our lives as we move out of this place. Lord, may my words be your words.

Not one word more or one word less. In your name we pray, Lord Jesus, Amen. Well, if it's your first time here, we're in a series through Philippians, and you picked the perfect time because we were right at the beginning. Last week, Pastor Brandon did an incredible job of preaching the entire book of Philippians. And so now I'm going to dig into the very first prayer that Paul prays as he opens up this letter. And let me be honest with you.

There are there are certain texts in Scripture that just they feel like they make sense. They feel like the point kind of just like jumps off the page and it's easy to figure out what you want to talk about. And then there are other texts, like the text I had to read this week that you just sit in and you go, what is going on here? And what is the point for us today? Like I get what the point might have been for Paul, but what's the point for us? And those are those texts that you like sit in in scripture and you just kind of wrestle with. But this is what I've learned about those texts, the ones that you really have to sit in, the ones you really have to like wrestle with and and let God just wash over you a few times.

Sometimes those have the deepest and most impactful meaning in your life moving forward. And as I was wrestling through this text, that's the place I ended up. But it took me a while to get there. I, I read through commentaries and then finally I was like, Hey, faith has this right now media account. If you don't know what right now media is, you can actually go on our faith website.

It's like Netflix for Bible study. There are thousands of Bible studies that we offer to you for free. If you haven't seen it, jump on our website, check it out. But I was like, I bet somebody else has also taught on this section of Philippians. So I'm going to look and I found a couple good ones, but there was 1 that I found from Delhi. Yes, Delhi, India. There is not a Delhi, Missouri that I'm aware of, right? Delhi in India. And the pastor, Akshay Rajkumar, who started preaching on Philippians and he had this opening illustration that changed the way not only did I read Paul's prayer, but the heart Paul must have had as he was praying this and as he was opening up his teaching, Akshay said. Have you ever seen the show Friends, Akshay? Have I seen the show Friends? Look, the show Friends launched in the fall of 1994.

I was in middle school. Friends literally spanned the time I was in middle school through the very months I graduated college. I can still remember where I was when I watched the last episode of Friends in my friend Phil and Justin's apartment hanging out going this is the saddest thing ever. Partially because Friends was ending and partially because I was graduating with 0 plan. That's another story for another time.

But I was like, I know what Friends is. I mean Friends is the first DVD series my wife and I own together. We still every single Christmas and Easter, Christmas and Thanksgiving.

Watch through the Thanksgiving and Christmas episodes of Friends. It has become our tradition. It made a huge impact these these six friends who started out in their mid 20s living in New York City, spending what some people would call arguably too much time in a coffee shop to be able to live in New York City.

And it follows their life and their friendship together. Most of the scenarios have nothing to do except for their interactions with one another. And yet it shaped a generation of people. And not only that, I found out it wasn't just my generation in the United States. It was global. And not only is it global, thanks to streaming services like Netflix and Prime, Friends has actually captured the heart of a new generation that weren't even born when Friends ended. And they've seen it, and they've fallen in love with it. So what is it that causes people to watch this show and hold such a special place in their heart for it? Well, it was probably put best by David Schwimmer, who is Ross in the show of Friends.

And he has said this quote about the show. He said one of the reasons for the show's success was it is everyone's fantasy to have friends who feel like family, right? Everybody wants a friendship like that, especially when you look at our society that is dealing with an epidemic of loneliness, which just like the show friends, is something that is spanning the globe.

In fact, we live in one of the most connected and yet disconnected generations in human history. And even Akshay pointed this out. He said this in the opening of his right now media series called Real Life. He said, you know, most global cities are experiencing a surge in loneliness, anxiety and depression.

The UK just appointed their first minister of loneliness. In Tokyo, people pay $12.00 an hour just to have a conversation with someone. In New York, people pay someone to cuddle them for an hour.

We are more lonely than we have ever been. And I say this to you because our longings for real joy and real friendship are not a fantasy. And yet, Paul's letter to the Philippians is a letter that is so old but still so fresh because it shows us how real joy can come from real friendship, real love, and real freedom. See, the thing that changes the way you read this prayer is when you realize that this is a prayer. Paul is praying to his deep and authentic friends that on the surface are the most unlikely friends ever.

Like Paul should have never been friends for these people, with these people. And yet, when he prays, he speaks with language that is so passionate and deep, you can't help but see the depth of love he had for them. Let me show you what I'm talking about.

Open up to Philippians chapter 1. If you want to open up in your Bibles or on your smartphones, or if you need a Bible, our hospitality team would be happy to bring one to you. If you need one.

That's our gift to you. Now listen to what Paul says. Philippians one starting at verse 3, he says, I thank my God in all my remembrance of you always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you all because I hold you in my heart. For you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, for God is my witness.

How I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ. Those are passionate words that Paul is pouring out. That's a prayer that comes from a deep place in his heart. And he's praying for people he should have never been friends with. And I'll tell you why. Paul, before he was Paul, he was known as Saul and he was a Pharisee. Now, Pharisees were an ultra religious group that were incredibly concerned with purity and right practice in the Jewish tradition. So a Pharisee would have never been caught in the home of a Gentile eating a meal with them because of all the impure things they would eat.

Pharisees wouldn't even be caught dead with certain other Jews and Israelites. And yet, when you look at the makeup of the early Church of Philippi, Paul's hanging out with the very people he was told he should disassociate with.

Let me show you what I'm talking about. If you look at acts that Pastor Brandon did such a good job unpacking, you see that the very first member in the church in Philippi is a woman named Lydia. She was a wealthy gentile who followed the Jewish faith. How do we know this? Because look at how Luke describes her.

One who heard us was a woman named Lydia from the city of Thyr Tyre. Sorry, can't pronounce that today. A seller of purple goods who was a worshipper of God. Now why did Luke call her a worshipper of God and not just a Jew or an Israelite? Because she wasn't. See, often times when Gentiles would start following God and they would start practicing the Jewish faith, they would call them God fearers or worshippers of God because they weren't Jewish, but they had fallen in love with the God of Israel. And so here is this woman. She's an Israelite, she's wealthy, and she is so captivated by this message that it says that Paul baptizes her in her whole household. And then she urged us, Luke says, saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay. So now not only has Paul like invited her into the Christian faith, but he is also now staying in her home and the early church literally met and worshipped in her home because she probably would have had a home big enough for the church to come in.

And you may say, yeah, but she did like worship God, so he probably would have hung out with her. OK, but what about the next character that Luke talks about, the Philippian jailer? I mean, if you want to talk about the last person a Pharisee would be connected with, he represented the Roman establishment in a country that in a city that was radically Roman, proud of its Roman heritage. Here is this jailer that's helping to keep the order, and it says that all of a sudden Paul finds himself in that prison.

Not a surprise. Paul spent a lot of time in prison, right? And he's in that prison and all of a sudden the Holy Spirit breaks him free from that prison. So the doors fly open and everyone's bounds were unfastened. And when the jailer woke and saw that the prison doors were open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself. Why was he going to kill himself? Because he's like, shame. At this level, it's not worth living.

Like he knew that's what his bosses would have done to him if that many people escaped prison. So he's like, I might as well do it to myself. And then what happens as he's drawing his sword, as he's getting ready to literally kill himself, it says that.

Paul cried with a loud voice. Do not harm yourself, for we are all here. And the jailer called for the lights, and he rushed in, and trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas. And then he brought them out and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household. And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and all who were in his household. And he took them that same hour of night, and he washed their wounds. And he was baptized at once, he and all his family. So the early church in Philippi is made-up of a Gentile businesswoman and a Philippian jailer and their entire family.

And these are the people that the Pharisee is hanging out with and worshipping with and sending back a prayer from prison from the deepest recesses of his heart.

What would cause him to do that? See, Paul was able to make these unlikely friendships because of the unlikely friendship that Paul experienced through the unlikely grace and mercy of Jesus.

See, when Paul was Saul, he was the persecutor of the church, and he's on the road to Damascus ready to continue to persecute the church. Jesus shows up and instead of bringing punishment, he gives Paul a purpose and he turns the foremost persecutor of the church into an apostle to the most unlikely group of people you would send a Pharisee.

The Gentiles. See, Paul experienced a depth of love from Jesus, an authentic love from God that even with all his study of scripture, he couldn't find without Jesus.

And it changed him to the point that he would begin to love people the way Jesus would love people, because the authentic friendship of Jesus transformed Paul's ability to be a friend.

See, this is what Jesus does for us. Jesus allows us to experience an authentic friendship with him, the most unlikely person we would ever get to experience a friendship with. And then he models for us what true friendship looks like and he allows us to share that with the people around us. I'll show you what I'm talking about, Jesus. I'm not just saying, hey, Jesus is our friend because that fits really well in the message, right? No, if you actually open up the gospel to John chapter 15, it says this, This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone would 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've made known to you see, Jesus is look at the early apostles and he's saying you're not just servants, you are my friends, intimate friendship. And in turn, as John writes this, he's not just saying that to the apostles, he's saying that to us when we follow Jesus, we are not just his followers and we are not just his servants. We are his friends.

Friends that he is literally willing to lay his life down for. That is a powerful form of friendship, a friendship we can't find anywhere else. And yet this is how Jesus loves us.

Now, what kind of people does he become friends with? I love it. When you look in the gospel of Luke, it shares the kind of people that Jesus is willing to become friends with. In fact, it's it's through some of those religious leaders that are accusing him.

They say for John the Baptist has come eating and not drinking wine. And you say he has a demon. The Son of man has come eating and drinking. And you say, look at him, a glutton, A drunkard, and hear this, A friend of tax collectors and sinners. So like the very last people you would expect a religious leader to hang out with.

Tax collectors and sinners are the very people that Jesus gravitates toward and befriends and wants to have a relationship with. Which means when Jesus wants to have a relationship with them, who wants to have a relationship with them? God. And these are the people Jesus gravitates toward. He loves people with the kind of love that gives its life, and he pours that love out.

And then after that, what does it say? It says that Jesus commands us to love one another that way.

Jesus is the kind of friend that's even willing to be betrayed by his friends. I found it really interesting this week as I was looking through the account of Judas betraying Jesus. This is what it says in Matthew chapter 26. Greetings, Rabbi. And he kissed him.

That's Judas. And Jesus said to him, friend, do what you came to do See, Jesus puts on display for us what it looks like to be a friend.

And then he allows us to experience that. And because we experienced that, he allows us to then turn around and share that with others in authentic friendship.

That's why when you jump to John chapter 1517, Jesus says these things. I have commanded you so that you will love one another like Jesus wants you to be able to love people the way he loved you.

And the really powerful thing about that is when Jesus says that, he says that love that you have for other people. That's actually going to be my witness to the world. In fact, he says it in John chapter 1334 to 35.

A new commandment I give to you that you love one another just as I have loved you. You also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. So what's Jesus crazy evangelistic strategy in the world? That we would love each other and that the world would look in on that love and they would say there has to be something more here because people just don't naturally love like that.

In fact, if you go to the end or the beginning of Acts, right after the Pentecost that Pastor Sam said we'll be celebrating here soon, it says that it gives us a picture of the early church in real time. And in Acts chapter 242 to 47, it says this about the early church. And they devoted themselves to the apostles, teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayers, and all came upon every soul and many wonders and signs being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. Not that they had all things in common in the sense that we would think, right? Because today we talk about people having all things in common. And that means you agree with me on every point.

You agree with me politically, ideologically, personally, socially.

We run in the same circles. That's what it means for us to connect with people like us. But what did it mean for the church? It meant it didn't matter what socio economic lines divided you, what political lines divided you, what racial or ethnic lines divided you because the love of Jesus united you. And because of the love of Jesus you had all things in common with people you had nothing in common with because of the love of Jesus.

Can you imagine if the world looked in on that in the church? I mean, we live in a world right now where people feel isolated and alone and desperately in need a friendship and they struggle to find it. Because in our world today, the only way you find friendship is if you find total and complete agreement and you all that just doesn't exist.

It doesn't exist with my closest friends. How could it exist with that random person that needs a friend, and yet Jesus gives us something better and he uses that something better as a witness to the love and the forgiveness he has.

One of the things faith that is so compelling about this place is the way you love each other. The way you love each other is transformative in people's lives, and it's not a cheesy outreach strategy.

It's the love of Jesus authentically loving you and allowing you to authentically love one another.

See, this is the gift we have to give the world. In a world that is isolated and alone, we have a God who gives His life so that He can give you a friend.

A friend that changes everything and offers you the opportunity to change everything for the people around you. So be a friend in this place, love the people next to you in this place and allow Jesus love to transform your heart. Because if you allow it to transform your heart, I promise you it will change the heart of people around you.

Because this was Jesus strategy all along. A new commandment I give you that you will love one another as I have loved you, and by this the world will know you are my disciples by your love for one another.

Let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you so much that you would allow us to be in this place. God, that in a world that is often times desperate and alone, you would allow us to experience a love and a grace that transcends understanding. God, to be given a love with the most unlikely friend of all, you, Lord Jesus, and to allow us to share that love with other unlikely friends. God, I pray that you would guide us and strengthen us in your love and allow your love to transform our hearts and in turn to transform the hearts of people around us.

It's in your name we pray, Lord Jesus, Amen.

The. Good morning church. Who's excited to enter the Book of Philippians today? I'm looking forward to it. Yep, we're excited, excited to enter a a series on this book. And my name's Pastor Brandon. If you don't know me, if you're new here, I'd love to meet you.

Come find me after the service. But if you are new here, there's something you need to know about faith. There are amazing people here at Faith, amazing volunteer servants who come and and weekly.

Some daily give of their time and their talents so that we can worship together on Sundays and carry out so much ministry. But there is also a great staff team here at Faith, including three wonderful pastors, apart from myself, who contribute with their unique talents and gifts into specific areas of ministry, but also share the Sunday morning teaching responsibility. And that is a blessing, but it's also a little bit of a challenge sometimes. It's a little bit of a challenge sometimes. And here's why. Because for this series, we're going and taking chunks of scripture, probably 8 to 12 verses. And usually you get to to take one section and study it and you're in that section for the week and then you get to preach it. But the challenge is that being the only pastor who's still finishing up some seminary, I think the other pastors like to give me challenging messages as growth opportunities. OK, which I very much appreciate.

But why is this message challenging today? Well, I am giving the introduction to Philippians, which means I get the first two and last three verses that kind of bookend the book, but also overview the entire book. So I got to study the entire book of Philippians in preparation for this week and the prequel, which is in Acts 16. And we're going to go there. But let me get off my soapbox and into God's Word because it has actually been a wonderful time to reflect on this entire letter that Paul is writing to the church in Philippians. So that's what we're going to do today is, is like I said, we're going to read the bookends and we're going to overview what is the major theme, what's the foundation of this book. And then we're going to take a look at how this church began in Acts 16. And what I think we'll see is that Paul is reminding a culture that needed joy, that needed peace in their circumstances, that they can have a secure foundation.

And he shows them how to do it. And so today and through this series, I hope that we can start to learn what that means for us as well, and how when we know that Jesus Christ is our foundation, our worship becomes our witness no matter the circumstance. Our worship becomes our witness no matter the circumstance. So let's read. If you want to open up your Bibles with me, If you have a physical Bible, you can do that. Or you'll be flipping around because we're going to read the first 2 verses of chapter 1 and the last three of chapter 4. But you can also look on the screens.

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus to all the Saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons, Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Those are the 1st 2 verses. Now the final three in chapter 4. Greet all God's people in Christ Jesus. The brothers and sisters who are with me send greetings. All God's people send you greetings, especially those who belong to Caesar's household.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen. Let's pray, Lord, we just pray that your grace would be upon us today. Holy Spirit, open up our hearts to hear from you, to hear from Scripture so that we could know what it means that you are our foundation and it would, it would allow us to praise you anywhere. Like that song that we just sang told us to. I pray this all in your name, Jesus, Amen. Amen.

So if these bookends, these 5 verses were all we had from the book of Philippians, what could we pick up about this book? What would we discover? What would we conclude? It's all about Christ Jesus, isn't it? How many times did you hear Christ Jesus or Jesus Christ in those five verses? Five times. Paul is emphasizing that it isn't about him, it isn't about the work he's doing, it's about Christ Jesus.

That if all we had were these two bookends, I believe we would know the foundation that Paul is imploring the Philippian church to cling to Jesus Christ. We read that we are Saints in Jesus Christ. We have grace and peace through Jesus Christ.

We're servants of Jesus Christ. We are a part of God's people because of Jesus Christ. All of it is about him. So what does that mean? What does the name Jesus Christ mean? Jesus is the personal name that was given to our Savior at his birth by the Angel, and it means the Lord saves. It reminds us that God, he came into this world as a human in the flesh, as a baby to rescue us, to save us, Jesus. And then what about Christ? Because he says Christ Jesus and Jesus Christ. So Christ isn't Jesus last name. If you've been around the church for a while, you've probably heard that before. It's not his last name, it's a title. It's a title that means the Anointed One, or the Messiah, the promised King that the Israelite people had been looking for throughout the Old Testament. So when Paul uses the name Jesus Christ, he's reminding the church that this is our Savior.

Our identity is in a foundation of the one who is both our Savior and King Christ Jesus. So if this is our foundation, if all we had from the book is this, ultimately it's all we need, right? But thankfully, Paul also talks about through this book, how we can put our lives on that foundation and how we ought to live.

He reveals what impact it can have in the circumstance that he's in and in their circumstance. So I want us to get a little more context for the book as we start on this journey over the coming weeks. And so I found there's a really good channel, if you don't know about it, it's called the Bible Project. And they come out with great context.

They're they're like 10 minute videos. We're going to watch the first couple minutes about this book of Philippians together as we get started. Let's do that now. Paul's letter to the Philippians, The church in Philippi was the first Jesus community Paul started in Eastern Europe, and that story is told in Acts chapter 16.

Philippi was a Roman colony in ancient Macedonia. It was full of retired soldiers and it was known for its patriotic nationalism. And so there Paul faced resistance when he was announcing Jesus as the true king of the world. And after Paul moved on from there, those who became followers of Jesus continued to suffer resistance and even persecution, but they remained A vibrant community, faithful to the way of Jesus. Paul sent this letter from one of his many imprisonments, and for a very practical reason. The Philippians had sent one of their members of Paphroditus to take a financial gift to Paul to support him in prison, and Paul sent back this letter with Epaphroditus to say thank you and to do a whole lot more. The design of this letter doesn't develop one single idea from beginning to end, like many of Paul's other letters. Rather, Paul has arranged a series of short, reflective essays or vignettes, and they all revolve around the center of gravity. In this letter, which is a poem in chapter 2, it artistically retells the story of the Messiah's incarnation, his life, death and resurrection, and exaltation.

And then in each of these vignettes, Paul will take up keywords or ideas from that poem to show how living as a Christian means seeing your own story as a lived expression of Jesus's story. So Paul opens the letter with the prayer of gratefulness and he thanks God for the Philippians generosity for their faithfulness, and he expresses his confidence that the life transforming work that God has begun in them will continue into greater and more beautiful expressions of faithfulness and love. And Paul then focuses on their obvious concern at the moment, which is his status in prison. Being in a Roman prison was no picnic, but it paradoxically has turned out for good to advance the good news about Jesus. So all of the Roman guards, the administrators, they all know that Paul's in prison for announcing Jesus as the risen Lord and his imprisonment.

It's inspired confidence in other Christians to talk about Jesus more openly. And Paul's optimistic that he will be released from prison, but it's possible that he could be executed. And as he reflects on it, that actually wouldn't be so bad because for me, Paul says life is the Messiah. And so dying would be a gain for Paul, his life in the present and in the future, it's defined by the life and love of Jesus for him. And so if he's executed, that means he'll be present with Jesus, which would be great for him. And if he's released, well, that would mean he could keep working to start more Jesus communities, which would be better for other people. And so that's what he hopes for. And notice how his train of thought works here.

Dying for Jesus is not the true sacrifice for Paul. Rather, it's staying alive to serve others. And so that's Paul's way of participating in the story of Jesus to suffer in order to love others more than himself. So that that's a little bit of helpful context for the book, right? I'd encourage you go back this week, watch the last like 7 minutes or so as we prepare for this time.

It'll get you really integrated with the theme and kind of what Paul is doing. But this helpful context of the book is that Paul is reminding them of where he's at in prison and where his foundation is to live is Christ to die is gain What a mindset. And he is encouraging the Philippian church that they can have that same mindset. And that should really track with what the church knows of Paul because this isn't the first time they've met.

We have the story of when this city discovered the name of Jesus and when the church began. And it's in chapter 16 of the book of Acts. They know that Paul has been in chains in their very city before, and so when he is in prison now, their hearts ache for him. They send a gift through Epaphroditus and Paul writes them this letter, not to complain, not to ask for more, but to remind them where his secure foundation is and where theirs can be too.

So as we gain an appreciation for the context of what's going on in this book, I, I want us to go back into Acts 16. So if you want to start getting there in your Bible, if you want to follow along there, you'll see as you hear this story, how Philippians isn't just a letter full of, of doctrine or a systematic unpacking kind of like Romans was.

We went through that in 30 weeks and he didn't really know that people. So you see how Paul built a different type of argument. No Philippians is a personal and heartfelt letter written to people who he shared a piece of his life with. And so let's dive in to how this story began in Acts 16.

I'm going to tell it just just as a story. But if you want to track a long look down and see where we're at, that's OK too. But in Acts 16, we pick up with Paul on one of his many missionary journeys, and he's trying to head east, but God keeps closing door after door after door. And finally at night he gets a vision from God and there's a man crying out, come help us over here in Macedonia. And so Paul, he receives this vision and he heads on a boat with Silas and Timothy. And they head towards that place and land in Philippi, which is a Roman colony, a military town with no synagogue, no church, no Christians, just a few women praying by the river. And this is where we meet Lydia. Lydia is a businesswoman, a seller of purple cloth, and God opens her heart up to hear the gospel and she and her whole household are saved. And she then opens up her home for them to come in and start to do ministry. And the church begins in this home.

You know, just this morning when I, I was talking to somebody who's been here at faith a long time, reminded me that almost 80 years ago, this church began in a home with a few believers gathering what God can do when a few believers gather together and people open up their home, right. So this is the, this is day one of the Philippian church. But then things get very chaotic. You see Paul, he casts out a demon of a slave girl whose owners are exploiting her for profit. And when he does this, they get very angry because the power of Jesus disrupts their business model. And what they do is they stir up a mob.

They bring Paul and Silas before the mob. And Paul and Silas are beaten, they're stripped, they're imprisoned and thrown in jail.

And at this moment, it's really, if you watch a movie and there's that scene where it's just like, how can it get any worse than this? This is that moment. At midnight, Paul and Silas are bloodied, beaten and locked in an inner cell. But what do they do? What are they doing? The song we sang, it talks about this story.

They prayed and they worshipped God, praising God. And the other prisoners were listening to this.

Then all of a sudden, boom, an earthquake hits. Their chains fly off the doors fling wide. Hallelujah, they're free, right? But what happens next is the part that hit me so powerfully as I read this story this week. I I've read this story, heard this story growing up over and over again, but this part hit me. Because what did they do when the chains flew off? What would I have done? What would you have done when the chains flew off? They had come to this city to preach the gospel and they end up in prison. I would have said Hallelujah, I'm free and ran out of that prison. But what do they do? We see from Scripture that they don't run, they stay.

And because they stay where they are, the jailer who is about to commit suicide, thinking that all of the prisoners were escaped, this jailer is shocked and he asks what must I do to be saved? Their witness in this moment of trusting where God had placed them is a powerful enough witness that the jailer and then his whole household are saved as well. He goes from near death to being baptized into joy.

That very same night. God had given Paul a vision that this people needed to hear the gospel, and he declared it in the most powerful way by being willing to suffer for their Savior in order to witness for the gospel. They didn't view their life as something that was in their control or in their direction, but as being directed by God.

And I wish, I wish I could have been a family on the wall to hear what they were praying, to hear what they were singing in that jail cell. Because from what we see that they do, I would guess that they weren't begging and pleading with God to release them. If I could guess, they seemed like they had a trust that goes beyond human understanding that God always uses willing vessels to make His name known despite the situation. Their foundation was in Jesus Christ and He had given them everything they needed, even in a jail cell. So they worshipped Him, and that worship was a powerful witness.

So as your missions pastor here at Faith, I care deeply about our church's witness in our community, in our world, and about your witness to those around you. And so I want us to reflect on this.

Our worship is the start of how we witness. Our worship, how we worship, when we worship, where we worship is the start of how we witness.

So let's be honest with ourselves today. If people looked at the way that we worshipped, would they think that our God was worthy of their worship? If they looked at our priorities? Do we come to worship just when it fits into our schedule or when the weather's good? Do we prioritize worship not just corporately here, but in our daily lives and in our lives with our families? Are the prayers that we pray more about what God can do to change our circumstances versus how He can change us to be willing vessels to serve Him? Are we more concerned asking God to fulfill our needs or to fulfill our purpose of praising a Creator and Savior who is worthy of all of our praise? If any of the above convicts you a little bit, and I'll be the first to admit it does for me, then the reality is that we have sometimes built on a foundation other than Jesus.

A foundation based on our circumstances. A foundation based on ourselves or our emotions. And when our comfort or control or self fulfillment quietly become our foundation, we lose the security that we can have when Jesus Christ is our foundation.

And Paul confronts this. Paul confronts this head on in the letter to the Philippians in talking about what he used to value. I'm going to show you a little bit. In chapter 3, verses 7 through 9, he talks about what he used to value. But then he says this in verse 7 of chapter 3. But whatever word gains to me, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. But I consider them garbage that I may gain Christ.

We'll stop there for now. When our foundation is anything other than Christ, Paul says it's garbage. Our success, our security based on what we have, our achievements, our religious performance, it's garbage in comparison to Christ. It is not a secure foundation.

But then listen to what Paul says next in that chapter in verse 9. So he says, I consider them garbage that I may gain Christ and we can put this back up well and be found in him not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.

So church, the good news, the gospel is this. We don't have to earn our place with God.

We don't have to manufacture a perfect witness or or angelic worship or an unshakable systematic theological understanding. For those of us who believe that Jesus is Lord, we are baptized into his name. We are already found in him because of the gift of faith. The same faith that God gave to Lydia, the same faith that God gave to the jailer by the Holy Spirit He has given to you.

And if you're hearing this gospel message for the first time, or maybe you've been unsure of what you do to be saved, the answer is simple. It's the same as it was in Acts 16.

Believe and be baptized. If you believe this, it's because God has already opened your heart through His gift of faith. Through faith, we have a secure foundation in Jesus Christ.

We have a secure foundation because it is not based on our performance or our emotions. It's based on Jesus Christ, his work, The Jesus Christ who entered into our brokenness, the Jesus Christ who bore our sin.

The Jesus Christ who showed us how much we are worth to God by dying on a cross, by rising 3 days later. Jesus Christ is our righteousness. He is our unshakable foundation and our unchanging hope. He is enough even when you feel like you're chained by fear or doubt or disappointment and anxiety.

He is a sure foundation. So church, with that reality in mind, we are invited to live every day in light of that, in light of who Jesus is. So the question I want to kind of close in the next 10 minutes or so is how will we live in light of that? How will you allow your worship, your everyday surrender, your praise, become your witness to the world, to those around you, and to yourself? So as we close, I want to make things personal.

As we wrestle with applying Paul's radical foundation of Jesus in a culture whose foundation is everything but Jesus, I want to make it personal to some of the things God has been teaching me and my family and how we do this. You see, this week last year, last April, my family's world was flipped upside down.

Many of you already know this, but but many don't. Several of our children began to have severe allergic reactions and going into anaphylaxis, having to go to the emergency room. And we discovered that our house had a pervasive mold problem, a black mold problem that was causing their sickness.

Their livers had become so toxified that they were going into to anaphylaxis even and having many other symptoms. And before I go on, I want to tell you by the grace of God, now we're getting much healthier.

We're in a stable living situation. So I don't want you to worry or or hear this as pity for my family, but I want to share a piece of what God has revealed to us through this season. I want to share it with you because this is this is how we have discovered some of what Paul is teaching the church.

So I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to experience it again. I wouldn't wish it on anyone because in the months that followed, about six months or so, we had to move over a dozen times. We lived out of practically what we had in our van, and we had to bounce around so much because my kids were reacting to different environments because they were so sensitive to the mold. So we're trying to find solutions. We're trying to start the healing process, but we just weren't getting anywhere.

And if you're a parent, you know that one of the worst feelings is to not be able to help your child when they're sick or when they're hurting. You know that that is painful. And so I'll be honest with you, in those first couple months, I was asking God a lot of why questions. I was trying to do anything that I could to to hold on and make the next steps what I thought they needed to be. But it just wasn't going anywhere.

We weren't finding long term solutions. And it was hard mentally and emotionally. But in that place at that time, in what I would have considered my family's midnight to that point, although it does not compare to what Paul experienced or many of you, but in that time, something started to happen.

Every night, my children would request a song to be played before we went to bed. No matter where we were, they wanted the same song.

It's called God. I look to you. It's a song about worshipping God no matter the season you're in, about a God who protects, a God who provides. And the bridge is simple. It goes like this.

Hallelujah our God reigns. Hallelujah our God reigns and Hallelujah our our God reigns forever. All my days, Hallelujah.

Hearing my kids, seeing that together, every single one of them, even the one year old every night was such a comfort to me.

It was such a comfort to me. And scripture says out of the mouths of children and infants you have ordained praise. And their worship was a witness to me that our foundation was Jesus and we could have his joy, we could have his peace and security despite the situation that we were in.

And so our worship is a witness to who He is. As we did that, it was first to ourselves and then to others around us.

And as we did that through those months, God just continued to provide. He continued to provide and care for us in miraculous ways through people, so many people, even here through situations that were just timed perfectly in God's timing.

He knew exactly what we needed. And he gave us his joy to make a bad situation. Still a time that our family could grow and hold on to Jesus Christ. And as we're here, trust in God more as he directs the next part of our journey.

There's still parts of it. I wish I would have trusted God, moron. And I want him to continue to teach us. But as we reflect on how we can allow Jesus Christ to be our foundation so that our worship can can become our witness, I hope you can see. As we have discovered that He is a secure foundation and life won't always be comfortable or easy or happy, but His foundation is one that we can rely on. So wherever you are in your life, I believe God is asking us a question right now.

Will you worship me here? Will you worship me here in this moment when you don't get the job that you wanted or into the school that you wanted to? Will you worship me here? Will you worship Me when you're sick and discouraged? Will you worship me here? Will you worship Me when the stock market is down and you don't know how you're going to retire when or how you wanted to retire? Will you worship me here? Will you worship me when your kids left the church and you feel hopeless about what to do next? Will you worship me here? Will you allow God to use your life as a witness of His goodness and grace and of who Jesus is? Church. We can worship him because we know that all we experience in this world is not the end of the story, is it? Amen. This brokenness in our world that we experience, it's not the end of the story, but the brokenness is a window in which God wants to point people to the end of the story, which ends, as we celebrated last weekend, with a resurrection.

I want to go to the end of chapter 3 and read from verses 20 through 21. Paul is talking about the brokenness in the world and he says, but our citizenship is in heaven and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who by the power that enabled him to bring everything under His control, will transform our lowly bodies so that we will be like his glorious body.

Our hope is that we have a resurrected Savior, a Savior that didn't stay dead, but rose from the dead in victory and glory, and is coming back again to right all of the brokenness in our world, to right all of the wrongs, and to raise us up in perfected heavenly bodies. So we have nothing to fear, not even death itself, because we have a victorious Savior.

Amen. I want to invite you to stand. We're going to sing one more song as we close. And as we sing, I just want to invite you to let your worship be a witness to whatever situation you're in going through right now. But before we do that, let's pray.

Heavenly Father, Lord, thank you for being with us here in this place. Lord, by your spirit, you've gathered us.

You've given us your word, You've given us yourself. And I pray that this time would just be a a catalyst into our week of whatever situations, whatever, whatever trials, whatever challenges are in our life that we would just frame them in the perspective that Paul is giving the church here in Philippi, that we would remember that you, Jesus Christ, are the foundation. You, Jesus Christ, are our hope and your resurrection is why we can still have joy.

I pray that you would touch us in these moments as we sing to you. Thank you for your word. In Jesus name I pray.

Amen. Christ is risen. Hallelujah, Hallelujah. Let's end with worship.

Dear Lord, we thank you so much that we'd be able to gather here, Lord, that we would be able to celebrate the reality of your resurrection, that the cross was not the end, but just the beginning. God, as we wrap our minds and our hearts around that, I just pray that my words would be your words, not one word more or one word less.

Your name. We pray, Lord Jesus, Amen. Amen. You know, a lot of you don't know who this is.

Maybe you've been here for the first time. This is Pastor Matt People's, he is the new lead pastor elect since you're all here. We are so grateful to have him and Liza. They are with us here at Faith and he's going to be taking over the reins when the handoff is made in July. And my celebration day is November 2nd for my transition. That's not death, it's it's it's retirement. So I didn't say that, but we are blessed and can we just appreciate this man and how God's LED us to him? We're excited to be here.

Sorry, still a little surprised. We did not do that in the first service. So the shock was genuine.

Hey, as we as we kick this off, I've got a question for you. What's your picture of Easter? And when you think about Easter, what's the picture that runs through your mind? As I was looking at Luke chapter 24 and I was thinking about that, I thought it would be fun to have a little fun with ChatGPT. See, I don't know if you know this, but ChatGPT, if you type in a prompt, will actually create a picture for you. So I asked it, hey, what? What is this? Like a traditional Easter look like? And this was the picture it gave me.

And I was like, that's not bad. Your family may look a little bit different, but that's kind of the idea, right? Like, we all get dressed up, we come out to worship, then we give the kids an Easter basket that's just loaded with candy. I mean, you might as well give them a bag of sugar.

They eat that. And then we send them outside hunting Easter eggs because we just gave them all that sugar. And we have to find something to do to get that sugar out of their system. And then we get to sit around, have a great bunch, and if you're really lucky, you get Easter Monday off work like I do.

That's the traditional Easter picture and for me that's kind of been the picture most of the time growing up. But I was having coffee with a friend earlier this month and he gave me a little bit different picture for Easter 2025 that I have not been able to get out of my head. And I thought, I wonder what that picture looks like. So I took what my friend told me and I typed it into ChatGPT so I could get a picture of Easter 2025. And this is the image it came up with.

Yeah, allow me to explain. My friend. When he looks out his window at work, he looks across the street at a wealth management company. And over the last several months, as the markets have been doing their little roller coaster ride, every once in a while he sees the guy that owns the company walking outside, chain smoking on the phone, calming people down, telling them the world is not over. There is still hope, even though he's not quite sure there is still hope and the world might be over.

And as I saw that picture, I was like, huh, You know, that actually is a lot closer to the experience of that first Easter than our first images. So I think a lot of times we read into the Easter story the happy hope that we feel right now in this service. But they didn't feel like that.

I don't I don't know if you open up your Bibles. Luke chapter 24, we're going to look at the Road to Emmaus account. And Pastor Sam just read you the account that happened right before it at the beginning of Luke 24. It says that the women go to the tomb and they find that Jesus is not there.

The angels tell them what has just happened and they run to the disciples to tell them. But it's interesting because it says in verse 11, but these words seem to them an idle tale. And they did not believe them. They they couldn't wrap their minds around this.

They didn't quite understand what was going on. And I never quite understood why until I was studying Luke chapter 24. And I was listening to a message from the late, great doctor Timothy Keller. And he said, you know, there's a verse in Luke 24 that I've never quite keyed in on. And he was right. I always Passover this verse when I read it, but in the Road to Emmaus account, you've got the story of two disciples that have just heard this news but are skeptical.

They're not quite sure what they heard. And so they start taking a trip to Emmaus about 7 miles away, and it says that they were talking to each other about all these things that had happened. They're trying to process this even though they don't quite believe it.

And it says that while they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went on with them. Now here's the crazy part. You would think at that point you would believe that something big has just happened, right? But Scripture tells us that their eyes were kept from recognizing Him.

And all that made sense to me, but I'd never heard this part. It says, and he that's Jesus said to them, what is this conversation that you're holding with each other as you walk? And they stood still looking sad.

I never quite keyed in on that little detail. They stood still looking sad. Why were they looking sad? Why were they so skeptical? They were sad and they were skeptical because they were living in a world without a resurrection.

And so I, I typed that into ChatGPT and this is the picture it gives us of the Road to Emmaus. Yes, I could have done a little bit more work, made Jesus a little more Middle Eastern, but I was running out of time. But if you look, look at their faces, that's probably what they look like. Even though Jesus is standing there right with them, they don't realize he's there and they don't realize there's a resurrection.

And as they're talking and Jesus is asking them what happened, Cleopas, who's one of the two that's actually named, answered him. Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened here in these days? Cleopas is kind of like you would have to be living under a rock to not know what happened in Jerusalem.

Everybody knew. What happened in Jerusalem and Cleopas goes on and he says, are you the only visitor? And he says what things? So Jesus is pretending like he doesn't know which by the wayside note, I love that Jesus is doing this to that. This is amazing what things and they said to him concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet, mighty in deed and word before God and all people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.

See, the problem is Cleopas and his friend are living in a world without the resurrection and in a world without the resurrection. The cross is not the beginning, it's the end.

And they were so hoping that Jesus was the one that could fix everything. They were so hoping that Jesus would be the one that would fix the mess of a life they were living in, where the Roman Empire was in charge and nothing seemed to be going right for their people. And when they saw the things Jesus did and they looked at those promises of the Messiah, they said this is it.

Finally we're going to be saved. We're going to be back on top. And then their own people give Jesus up and he's crucified on the cross. And they say, well, that's it, It's over.

There's no hope because their hope was limited to that time and that place. There was no hope of a resurrection. And because there was no hope of a resurrection, there was no hope beyond this life.

And that's when Jesus turns to them and he says, oh, foolish ones and slow of heart, to believe all the prophets had spoken. Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted them in all of Scripture, the things concerning himself. So what Jesus is doing is he's saying, no, no, no, you missed it the whole time.

You didn't get it. See, you thought the Messiah was about here and now. Your people a time in a place. But Jesus says no, the story is not a Messiah for one people in one time in one place. The story of the Messiah is a story for all people in all times, in all places. See Jesus, what he wanted to do was bigger than their time. It was about all time.

What Jesus wanted to do was bigger than just about them. It was about you and me. And as Jesus begins to unpack this, they're still, like trying to wrap their minds around this, not realizing they're walking with Jesus. And it says they finally hit Emmaus. And Jesus acted as if he was going to go farther. And then they urged him, no, no, no, you need to stay with us for it's getting toward evening. And so he sits down with them, and he has a meal.

And in this meal it says that he was at the table with them. And he took the bread and he blessed it, and he broke it, and he gave it to them. And their eyes were open and they recognized him, and he vanished from their sight.

And they said to each other, did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened up the scriptures to us? See, I had to type this one into ChatGPT 2, And so this is the picture I got. All of a sudden you've got these guys that have gone from sad to like shock and amazement because all of a sudden they've moved from the reality where there is no resurrection to a reality where there is a resurrection and that changes everything. All of a sudden they realized because of the resurrection, Jesus was walking with them when they didn't even realize it. Because of the resurrection, they actually had hope that extended beyond the limits of this life. And because of the resurrection, God was able to to turn their darkest moment into an opportunity for salvation and hope.

See, that's what we're celebrating today. We're not just getting together to dress up a little bit nicer than we normally do and to have an Easter brunch after this and to hopefully have a day off. No, we're here to remember that the resurrection is a reality and that reality changes everything.

Because the Road to Emmaus story, that's not just their story. That's our story.

Because of the resurrection, we have a God. We have a Jesus who walks with us even when we don't realize it.

You may be sitting here and you may be wrestling with what all this means and how this applies to your life. You may even feel like you're sitting there alone in your questions. But whether you realize it or not, Jesus is walking there with you.

Because this is what God does. He goes with his people when they realize it and when they don't, it's always what God's done. In fact, if you look back in the Scriptures, in in the book of Deuteronomy, as Moses is preparing the people to get ready to go into the Promised land, and it's the first, first moment since Moses brought him out of Egypt, as he brought him through the desert, that Moses was no longer going to be leaving, leading them. And the people thought, well, what does this mean for us? And Moses says this and to encourage them, he says, be strong and courageous.

Do not fear or be in dread of them. For it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you. You know that's the very same thing Jesus says to us, the very last words Matthew records in his Gospel. In Matthew chapter 28, verse 20, the very last thing he shows Jesus saying before he ascends into heaven is this. And behold, I'm with you always to the end of the age.

If you are here in this room hearing my voice. Jesus is with you when you realize it and when you don't. He's walking with you, and because he's walking with you, he's able to remind you that the hope you have is not limited to this life. It extends beyond this life. In fact, that's what Jesus said the entire time he was doing his ministry. In John Chapter 11, when he's getting ready to go raise Lazarus from the dead and Martha is talking to him and Martha thinks it's all over because Lazarus has been dead for four days, what does Jesus say? He turns to her and he says, listen, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet he shall live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this? In the early church you hear Paul saying to the Church of Thessalonica, he says, but we do not want you to be uninformed brothers, about those who are asleep, What does he mean those who are asleep? Not people that went to bed, but literally people that died.

He says we don't want you to be uninformed about those who have gone to sleep, that you may not grieve as others 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. See, because of the resurrection, death is not the end, it's only the beginning.

And because Jesus walks with you and his hope extends beyond the limits of this life, you have a God who was able to turn your darkest moments into an opportunity for hope and salvation.

That's why when Paul was writing this letter to the Romans, he encouraged this church. In chapter 8, verse 18, he said, For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

And it got bad in Rome. And yet Paul said it doesn't matter how bad it gets. What's on the other end is so much better. In fact, he said in verse 28, and we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.

That's the power of the resurrection. A God that can look into your life when things are going well, and a God that can look into your life when everything feels like it's falling apart. And He can promise you that it will all be good in the end, That in your darkest moment you could find hope.

And listen, I know that's a lot to wrap our minds around, OK? It takes faith. It was a lot for the men who were walking to Emmaus to try to understand.

So what does Jesus do? Jesus sits down with them for a meal and he breaks bread.

And when he breaks that bread, he opens their eyes. And all the sudden, they realize Jesus was there the entire time.

All of a sudden, they realize that there was a hope that goes far beyond this world. All of a sudden, they realize what they thought was their darkest moment was their opportunity for salvation.

And how great would it be if we could sit there at the table with Jesus like that too? Well, here's the crazy thing we can see.

One of the things Jesus did before he went to the cross was He gave us a gift, and the gift he gave us was communion, ordinary bread and ordinary wine. And Jesus took that ordinary bread and that ordinary wine. And he said, this ordinary bread and this ordinary wine is my body and my blood. The very same body that lived for us, died for us, and rose from the dead for us is available to us right here in communion. And when we break bread here at Communion, God uses this meal to strengthen us in our faith, to center us in the reality of the resurrection, and to literally walk out of this room with us. So that you know, wherever you go, Jesus goes with you because of this bread and this wine that you've taken in.

And that's what we believe here at Faith. We believe that this is real bread and real wine, but it's also the actual body and actual blood of Christ given and shed for you to strengthen you in your faith, to preserve you in your faith.

And here's the best part, coming up here is not about being a perfect person because nobody that comes to this meal is a perfect person, but rather you are people who have been perfectly loved by Jesus, a God who stepped into the darkness to bring you light.

And that's why Scripture tells us in first John, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That's why every time we step into this meal, we begin by simply praying a prayer of confession to God, an opportunity to say, God, you know these things, but you also have forgiven these things, and you've given me a life I don't deserve.

And then we trust that when we pray that prayer, when we take this meal, we end as perfect as Jesus, his righteousness, his grace, his peace.

So let's join together now, and let's take an opportunity to pray a prayer of confession together. Dear Lord, we realize that we often live as if we're living in a world where there is no resurrection, God, that we fail you in thought, word and deed by the things we've done and by the things we have not done, Lord. And we can call it whatever we want, but at the end of the day, Lord, it's simply sin.

And that sin that can separate us from you, God. We lift up to you, trusting that through your Son Jesus, our Lord and Savior who rose from the dead, we too find forgiveness and new life in you.

Give us your forgiveness and new life, Jesus. It's in your name we pray, Amen.

Well, it's now my joy and my command by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as a called an ordained servant to announce to you that your sins are forgiven. You are a new and perfect creation in Christ and you come to this table in that reality. So if it's your first time or you just haven't been to faith in a while and you've taken communion here, we've gotten gluten free wafers here in the centre and regular wafers. We also have regular wine, which is the darker colored liquid and we have non alcoholic wine in the centre.

Take whichever you're the most comfortable with because it's all the body and blood of Christ given and shed for you. And if you're not quite sure what you believe about communion or you're still trying to kind of wrap your mind around this Jesus stuff, still come to the table. Just put your arms across and we'll give you a blessing. And just know whenever you're ready for this meal, this meal is ready for you. So I'm simply going to share those words that Jesus shared with his disciples on the night Jesus was betrayed. He took bread and when he given thanks, he gave it to them saying take, eat.

This is my body which has been given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way also He took the cup, and when he given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, take drink of it. All of you, this is my blood of the New Covenant which has been poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Now as often as you eat this bread and you drink this cup, you proclaim the life, the death and the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ until the day he comes again. So come for all is ready.

All right, that's still as intense as it was the first time, right? Hey, listen, so today I'm going to kind of finish off this series called The Armor of God. And but in two weeks, Brandon, Pastor Brandon, you're kicking off a new series.

Yeah. We're hopping into the book of Philippians. So we're going to spend time in all of the texts of Philippians. And I get to do the intro, which means they gave me two verses to work with the greeting and the conclusion. And so really what we're going to do in two weeks is look at where is Paul when he's writing this book? What, how did the Philippian church come into existence even in the book of Acts and really set the stage for our other pastors team walking through that book kind of chunk by chunk. So I'm looking forward to it.

I'm excited. It's called finding joy because I think a lot of us in the midst of all these circumstances around us need to know what is it to have joy even in the midst of that? So thank you, Sir. Look forward to it. All right, Hey, my Bible is again, another letter that the apostle Paul wrote is Ephesians. And I'm going to go back to those verses, do a little review today and then kick into our final topic, OK, on the armor of God. And let me just real, just pray, ask Holy Spirit, we desperately need your presence here. It is a beautiful day here in Saint Louis.

We're grateful for that. And we just ask now, Lord, as we've seen our kids sing and.

We shout our praises to the King. We pray, Lord, that you as King would speak into our hearts and that your word would be powerful, Lord, because your spirit is here and it's working through it in Jesus, we pray. Amen, Amen. Amen. You know, so I, I was able to start off this series.

It was six weeks ago and remember well, because we had just had a new grandchild and I was able to right before that, I was able to go to Indiana, visit our three-year old grandchild, but also the baby and hold the baby whenever my wife would let me, which was rare. OK, and but I had this image and and I, I, I, I made a statement, but the reason I made the statement, I didn't tell it then, but little Lucy. So my son-in-law, we went to the playground and I, I don't even know if she went on these slides, but she, you know, I climbed up with her because it's high. These slides are dangerous, right? They're like, and she goes up there and she goes down the slide and I'm up there wondering how it went because you hear thump, thump, thump, yump and you know that stuff. And then she gets out. She says, I do it again, I do it again, I do it again. And she was so excited. And then we, she did it again and, and, and again and again and again and again. And I thought, wow, wouldn't life be awesome if it was just a playground as a three-year old and being so satisfied so easily, right? But what we've discovered in this series, that life you discover, I mean, when you move out of childhood into adolescence into young adulthood into adulthood.

And then some of us who are very mature, that was gentle, right? We know that life is not a playground, but often it's a battleground. And that was what I said as we open, because some of you, you know, as we've gone through this series, we know that there is a battle going on. And for some of you, it's a battle.

It's a battle for your kids. It is that they would be saved. It's a it's a battle for your marriage. It might be a battle for your finances. I mean, you're struggling just to pay the bills. It could be that. It could be a battle just for a relationship that you're struggling with even right now. It could be a struggle, a battle for your health.

For some of us, many of us to be honest, there's a struggle because we're grieving and we're wondering how to move through that. And if the truth were known, you're sometimes tempted just to go AWOL, right? You just, you don't even want to be in the battle anymore. You just want to run from it, even though you're kind of on the front lines to some degree right now.

But God, he keeps drawing us back and that's why you're here. And I'm here to say, you know, even when you feel like God has left you and he's not in the building or not in your heart, that he's still there. Even though sometimes you're tempted to give up on God and even to stop trusting in Him, and you realize how important faith is, I'm here to say God loves you.

He is still here. He has not left you. That's the promise of his word. He will neither leave you nor forsake you because Jesus was forsaken on our behalf.

That's why this week is so important for us as we kick in through the Holy Week services. So let me just kind of do a little review going back to Ephesians here and just make some obvious things comments as Paul, he he writes in chapter 6, he says finally, it's like we finally got here the spiritual battle, right? Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. So whose strength is it? It's not ours. It's his right, it's his. So the strength we fight in is not our own strength. And then it's not even our own armor. He says, put on the whole armor of what? It's the armor of God. It's not our armor, it's God's armor, right? And we have this sense sometimes to understand this. If we would just memorize every piece of this armor and we know it, well, then we know how to put it on every day.

But that's not actually the emphasis here. The emphasis here. You're a child of God, You've got it.

It's put on one time. You just need to know your resources, right? It means to recognize who we are in Christ and to strive to live consistently with the identity and the spiritual resources we have to live life. So that's what we've been talking about.

This armor has been the spiritual resources God has given you and me. To fight this battle, to give us greater confidence and hope.

But if you don't have these resources, I have to tell you, you might have a cause for fear.

You say, well, why? Well, it's because of what Paul says next.

He says that we may be able to stand against the schemes of the diabolic one, the the, the devil. We took that apart, right, he says. Because we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers in this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realm. So there it is, lots of evil, lots of evil power, there's demonic, There's so many things that we, we fight.

They're the forces of evil. And then he says We've got this armor to take up. He says, therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day. Having done all, all to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on here it is the belt of truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace and in all circumstances take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish some no, no, no, all the flaming arrows of the evil 1 and take up the helmet of salvation.

Pastor Sam talked about last week and here's our topic today. And he says in the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Now you hear that OK, but you got to read the next verses too, because if I had a whole we could do a whole another message, but we ran out of time. OK, he says also praying at all times in the Spirit with all prayer and supplication to that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication. That's prayers again for all the Saints and also for me, that my words may, that words may be given to me in the open of my mouth to boldly proclaim the mystery of the gospel. Let me just say, so what's prayer? Prayer becomes like the delivery system for all these pieces.

It's where we actually cry out to God. It's where we trust in Him. It's where we verbalize in fact, the faith that He gives us in Christ. And that's good news. But you, as you think about this armor, though, just to, to again, to review and to summarize this, who is the truth? Scripture says it's Jesus, right? Yeah, it's Jesus. Who is our righteousness? Yeah, it's Jesus again, it's true. Everything that's right about us, He is our righteousness who has earned the peace that we have with God and the peace of God. The answer is yeah, it's it's Jesus. It's it's it's still Jesus who is the author and the perfector, the object of our faith.

Yeah, it's it's Jesus. It's Jesus again. It's true. How How about salvation? You know that helmet? Salvation is found in no one else. But there it is again.

It's amazing. And who is the Word who's made flesh? Yeah, it's always Jesus. So he gets the credit here.

He's the strength. He's our warrior, He's our defender, He's our savior, He's our friend. And by the way, all of those images go back to the Old Testament that says our Yahweh God is our warrior.

He's there to protect us, to be our God. But what we discover is, as Brandon kind of hinted here just a couple few minutes ago, Jesus is a different kind of warrior, OK? He doesn't ride into Jerusalem on that Palm Sunday, which was, by the way, the last time he rode into Jerusalem. But that first Palm Sunday, he did not ride in on a white steed, a beautiful horse to proclaim victory to all the political rulers. No, he did not.

He rode a donkey. Scripture says, say, to the daughter of Zion. We see this quote in our account we read earlier Behold your king is Coming, humble and mounted on a donkey on a cult, The fall or the beast of burden. I just read in my devotions yesterday where Solomon he is anointed king and he starts riding in and what is he riding on? A donkey, Solomon means peace.

Jesus was coming to bring a different kind of peace, a peace that passes all human understanding, a peace that that allows him to carry the burdens because the the, the donkey was the burden bearer, right? And he bears our burdens. That's what Jesus was riding into Jerusalem to die for our burdens, for our sins.

And on that first Palm Sunday, sorry if you've heard this before, not really, but on that Sunday before the Passover week, which would happen, what Saturday, this day was the lamb selection day. So every family would be looking for that lamb or that animal who would be perfect without defect, because that would be the animal they would bring to the priest, they would bring to the temple so that their family could experience forgiveness.

And it's like the Father in heaven was saying, this is my son, this is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. That's why this day is so important because we know it's Jesus who is that burden barrier.

Point being, he has a warrior who fights differently, not just for us, but also to show us how to fight the spiritual battle that is waged against so many of us as his children this day. And so Paul uses this image of a soldier.

It's Old Testament, but it's also in his day, Roman soldier. And in fact, they're dressed in uniform. So I want to highlight this last piece of armor that is to be put on. And it's called this. It's called the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. So we asked, well, what kind of sword was this? Now I've got, you know, this isn't real, but it's a kid one, right? And I've been poking plenty of people this week. OK, but but you know, what do you think of a sword? You know, like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is what you think of. You think of Lord of the Rings, you think of a knight. You you think of that opening buffer video we had, right? But that's not actually what it is at all. It's actually a 6 to 1818 inch sword. It's called a Makiara. I think I got a picture of it.

All right there it is. That's an original sword right there. This this was a a double edged sword, OK, It was meant for hand to hand combat, OK, not the big ones. So this was a like a killer instrument, OK, And the soldier would be trained to kill with this sword. So it wasn't just defensive, but actually this is the only weapon that is actually offensive.

And this the, the, the soldier would have been trained to use this. And this is the word throughout all the scripture, this is the most used word for sword.

Makiara. It's the same type of sword there. Peter, remember, they're in the Garden of Gethsemane.

They come to arrest Jesus. There's been betrayal. And Peter, he takes the Roman soldier and what does he do? He wants to lop off the guy's head, but he's never been trained to use it. So he only gets his ear.

It's true, right? And you and I, come on, let's just be how many of you have been trained to use a sword? How many of you are embarrassed to even say that you've been trained to use a sword, Right? Because most of us just say I've not been trained to use a sword.

OK. I just haven't. Maybe some of you have, right? Good news is that's not the kind of sword Paul's talking about. He says this is the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Let's just make a couple simple observations.

I think they're simple. So the sword in this case is something spiritual, something spiritual since the sword is the word of God. So what we learn is for the Word to have its effect as it's proclaimed, the Holy Spirit has to actually be working.

He works through the Word. It's the sword of the Spirit, so you can't disconnect the work of the Holy Spirit from the Word, just as we can't disconnect the Holy Spirit from baptism or even what happens in our Lord's Supper.

That's what empowers it. That's what makes it effective. The Bible would say all scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training and righteousness so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for some every good work. So think about it.

The Bible is not just the book of by history or morality. It's actually the living, breathing voice of God and it is so humbling to be up here and even be proclaiming it.

It's a nervous, awesome task. I never stopped being anxious. Thank you for those who prayed for me before because it is such a responsibility to get it right and proclaim it boldly. You say, well, what then is the word of God that functions as the sword of the Spirit? Well, I go to some good commentators and there's really two options. 11 basically stresses the offensive aspect of warfare by by Paul Speaking of this proclamation of the gospel, because think about it when he's Speaking of this sort of the Spirit, the word of God, They don't have the New Testament put together yet. The Canon is still being formed, right? But they have the Old Testament, which was called the law and the prophets. OK, so he's speaking about that. But ultimately we are speaking about all of God's word.

We know that it's the activity of the Holy Spirit and and it's an offensive maneuver against the Kingdom of evil. So when it's proclaimed, it comes up against lies, the demonic.

It comes with the truth that sets us free. And the second view kind of highlights the defensive position taken by the persistent, varied attacks that you and I experienced, whether they would be tests, maybe they'd be temptations, that if we have this word, we have this truth in us, we can defend ourselves because we know it's not from God and it's not pleasing and it's destructive.

That's how Jesus used it when he was tempted, right? He just proclaimed the word against the devil.

One commentator says The Bible is an Armory of heavenly weapons, a laboratory of infallible medicines, a mine of exhaustless wealth. It's a guide book for every Rd. a chart for every sea, a medicine for every malady, a balm for every womb. Rob us of our Bible, and our sky has lost its sun, Another author says. These are words written by kings, by emperors, by Princess, by poets, by sages, by philosophers, by fishermen, by statesman, by men learned in the wisdom of Egypt, educated in the schools of Babylon, trained at the feet of rabbis in Jerusalem. It was written by men in exile, in the desert, in shepherds tents, in green pastures, and besides, still waters. Among its authors we find tax gatherers, herdsmen, a herdsmen, a gather of Sycamore fruit. We find poor men, rich men, statesman, preachers, captains. Who are you? Still with me? Legislators, judges, exiles. And the Bible is a library filled with history, genealogies, ethnology, law, ethics, prophecy, poetry, eloquence, medicine, sanitary science, political economy, and the perfect rules for personal, personal and social life.

And behind every word is the Divine Offer author himself. So let me just make some observations about this word, OK? I mean, we can just say, First off, it's perfect.

And by the way, when I, when I quote these verses, we have this principle here at Faith that we know that to understand Scripture to one part of Scripture, you go to other parts of Scripture.

You don't take something out of context. You got to look at the whole picture, OK? So here in Psalms it says every word of God is flawless. He is a shield. Oh, back to the shield to those who take refuge in Him. Also, Psalm 19 says the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. It's perfect, you say, well, how can it be perfect? And the answer is, First off, because of its author.

Physically, the book, we could say, yeah, it was written by 40 different authors, people on three different continents, 1500 year.

Three different languages. You have Greek, you have Hebrew, you have Hebrew, Aramaic.

And. And yet Scripture says, for prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, Peter writes. But men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

The image therefore carried along is a sailboat. Some of you know sailboats, I'm looking at them, right. And that when feels kind of fills the sail and the boat moves.

That's what that's the picture here. The Holy Spirit kind of filled their sails and they they, they, they, they recorded it. Carried along by the Holy Spirit. Yeah, 40 different authors, but yet God used them, their their personalities. But it's from his word. So it's perfect because of of the author, but also it's history. I mean, for instance, if you were a Mormon, I think you should be concerned because because there's no archaeological dig substantiating that Joseph Smith actually wrote what he says he wrote and a history that doesn't even exist. I think you should be concerned about that, right? I would question the validity of any of those facts. But when it comes to God's Word, history has only unearthed more and more information to substantiate the fact that the Bible is true. Someone has said that every time a spade goes into the ground, another critic is buried.

I've been to the Holy Land. I've been to Egypt. You go into the Holy Land. It's like, what's that? Oh, those are the remnants of Hazer.

Never forget that Hazer. Yeah. Go in the Old Testament and there's this city of Hazer. Everything they find is actually archaeological.

It's true. It's history. It's history and people are still, I mean, they're still searching for the grave of Jesus. A little hint he's gone.

He's not there. He's risen. OK, this is just practice for next Sunday.

It's true. We've been singing a song. He's gone.

It's gone. So it's also perfect because it's prophecy. It's prophecy. You do not have to kiss your brains goodbye to trust in God's Word. The fact is, the Bible predicted the fall of Jerusalem. It happened.

The Bible predicted the birth of a savior in Bethlehem. It happened. Jesus makes statements about the demise of these towns that he preaches about in Galilee. I've been there. You will not find any of those towns that he put the curse on exist anymore except remnants.

I've been to Egypt. Have any of you been to Cairo, Egypt? I'm sorry boy.

That's a God ugly place. It's just like and and and and and I remember the tour guide who had Barbara Bush just a couple weeks. This is how long ago it was, you know, president's wife a couple weeks before us, same guy. And she's bragging how beautiful and wonderful this city is. And I'm like, are you looking at what I'm looking at? It was like, there's no color.

I I don't see any great prosperity. It's like, wow, I saw pyramids, you know, history because why? Because if you read Isaiah, Jeremiah, these Old Testament, it says Egypt, you're never going to be great again.

And they aren't and they aren't and they never will be because God says they never will be. Even on that first Palm Sunday. Did you catch it? The people who are shouting Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Guess where that's from? That's a Psalm.

I mean, come on, I just read it for you. And he rides in on a donkey.

That's prophetic. That's from the book of Zechariah. And we already went through this Romans, right? And Romans was like, Oh my gosh, the apostle Paul, that guy knew so much of his Old Testament.

He's quoting it left and right. Scripture interprets Scripture. It's historic, it's it's prophetic, right? But let's just say 2 Besides being perfect, it's also perfectly preserved. Again, Scripture says Isaiah 40, the grass Withers, the flowers fall, but the word of God stands forever. Or here's another one, Matthew 24. Jesus would say heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

Never. That's a long time to never pass away and to realize that our Bible, you know, as we even think of the old, it is so reliable.

I was looking at this just again this morning. From about 100 AD, some say a little later to about even 7 to 900 AD, we had this group called the Mazaretes, OK, And they knew all the specifics about the Bible. They were there to transcribe the the old versions from the new versions, right? That's what they did to keep, to keep the consistency about Scripture. They knew the middle letter of every book of the Old Testament, the middle letter of the Pentateuch, the middle letter of the middle word of the entire New Old Testament.

They were very careful. So you might think from 400 BC, right? Think about that. When the Old Testament was completed to 980, there must have been a lot of things that slipped and there must be a lot of things that were incorrect, right? Well, the, the The funny thing is when they discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, they dated those between 1 and 200 BC before, before any New Testament, before any Jesus. And what they discovered was that there was 1 variation in every 15180 words and it wasn't a big deal variation.

Jesus says my words will never pass away. It's incredible. I could go on the New Testament, there's 24,000 different manuscripts. That's a whole nother study in itself, but it's exciting to see how God preserved it. And let's go on to this point. OK, it's perfect. It's perfectly preserved, but it's also powerful. It's powerful.

The Word of God is living inactive. The writer of Hebrews says, who's the writer of Hebrews? It's the Holy Spirit. I'm just testing you OK? Sharper than any 2 edged sword.

Piercing to the division of soul and spirit joints and marrow. Discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. So it's living, it's active. A physical word is made of steel, but the sword of the spirit is made of truth. We can say a physical sword cuts flesh, but the word of God cuts through the heart and soul. We can say the soldiers sword can get dull, but God's word never loses its power.

But it must be welded. You remember going back to Jesus in the desert when he was tempted, How did he respond every time to the devil at his temptations? He started out with these words. It is written, it is written. We would do well to know it and respond the same.

So you would say, well, how do you Weld the word of God? Hey, by the way, have you heard Bible sales in 2024 were up 22%, 22%.

Amen. Yeah, you can look this up. Why? Like, like why? And and a couple things were said.

Some say it's because of the renewed faith in our younger generations. Praise God. Praise God. Some say it's because of the growing anxiety and uncertainty of our times.

If that's it, praise God, right? Praise God. Whatever the reasons, praise God, but him he state the obvious. Owning a Bible doesn't mean you're reading it doesn't mean you're studying it doesn't mean you're taking it in daily, right? And I, I, I've heard the excuses.

I just don't understand it. Pastor John. I guarantee you if you stick with it a daily dose, you'll begin to understand more and more because that's what the Holy Spirit does.

It's true. It's true. And by the way, if you're not a reader, I hear men say I'm just not a good reader, Listen to it.

You can go to a new version. You can go to an app, and I do it when I'm walking a lot. You can listen to scripture right there. There are so many creative ways we have to take it in. And I'm going to say this one more time because it's my last time to probably share this story, but my testimony is about God's word.

It's probably the reason I'm here today because I know that a lot of you were probably where I was in college. And like I, I had a Bible I had sitting right next to my, my dorm room bed, but I wasn't reading it and it wasn't reading me right. I'd go to church. I had this girlfriend, She was really cute. And we go to church on Sundays.

It's my wife anyway, but my third year of college. Oh, I, I, I've reflected on this a lot. I probably know some of the reasons, but I would have night terrors.

I would wake up shaking. I had stomach aches. It was bad. And I'm of 21, I think I was 21 at this point. And I'm a young man and I'm like a little boy, not telling anyone.

I have these things happening in the middle of the night and stand up for hours. And then I finally got this idea. Why don't I pick up that Bible? I mean, John, you're a pastor's kid.

You should know better. No? And I started reading the Gospel of Matthew, and the very night I read that one chapter, and then I read another chapter, another chapter, and then I read sometimes a couple chapters, and I keep reading.

I've never stopped reading it since. But ever since I started, those terrors left me. And I thought, whoa, this is powerful. This is powerful.

It can be powerful for you as well. Abraham Lincoln, a man of great men in the history, right? 16th president of the United States.

He tried to open a business and fail. He tried to open a law office, it failed. He tried 8 times to run for public office and failed. But ultimately we know he became one of the greatest leaders men of our time. If you were able to take his Bible, which would be on the table and it would fall open, it would automatically fall to Psalm 34. And you know what Psalm 34 says? Says I sought the Lord and he answered me. He delivered me from all of my fears. Does anyone else need to hear that from the Lord? So read it, memorize it, memorize it.

The psalmist says I've hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Begin to reflect on it. Memorize it so you can use it. Some of you probably don't know but there's an 18 year old named William Norton. I went back and watched the documentary and it was from a level 5 tornado. I believe it was 2011 and where was it? Joplin, MO 161 lives were taken and 18 year old William Norton.

Turns out he graduated the same night the tornado hit. And I listened to this and struck me because I caught it almost like they went past it. But they were describing what happened, how he was literally sucked out of his SUV.

He was later found passed away in a pond. But as he was, you're thinking about all these others who survived. But the thing about Mr. Norton, he was a YouTube, he was feeling buoyant when he was being sucked out.

They said he kept quoting Bible verse after Bible verse. I say praise God if I'm his parents, praise God because he went into the hands of a waiting father.

One more thing, it's close. The Word of God is purpose filled.

Say, well, what's the purpose? It's to save you and me. It's to lay out God's plan of redemption, the price that Jesus paid for you and me to lead us to that, to not rely on ourselves, to not be strong in ourselves, but to be strong in the Lord and to realize that every piece of armor is Jesus. And I'm just going to say come Friday, come Friday, because I'm telling you there's a powerful testimony about the power of Jesus name.

Bring someone with you who doesn't know about that power because I'm praying it's going to be awesome that people would experience the power of God by his Holy Spirit and be LED again to a cross. Because here we are again.

We've just heard I'm the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Amen. Hey, why don't you stand with me? Let's pray.

So Father, we give you again everything we have, everything we are, everything we need, and we touch that.

Your mercy is here. We know it is. Lord, thank you for this series. Thank you for reminding of us of the spiritual battle, Lord, and we're praying that right now, even today, that your Holy Spirit has brought conviction or comfort or maybe both.

But Lord, we're asking for there to be salvation in this place again today, that we would know in our knower that we have been forgiven because of what Jesus has done for us again on a cross and because of an empty tomb, and because He poured out His Spirit, that we could cry out to you, Lord, in prayer and say again, Lord, come.

In Jesus we pray. Amen. Amen.

Coming to a church near you. Rated G for all God's people. Sorry, just had to goodness, so epic.

Well, good morning everyone. My name is Sam. I'm one of the pastors here. It's a blessing to be with you this morning as we continue our message series on the armor of God, focus on Paul's letter to Ephesians in chapter 6. And today we're focusing on the helmet of salvation. And here we go in Ephesians chapter 6, verse 17, which then says, and take up the helmet of salvation, Amen. Amen. All right, Thus says the word of Lord, will you please pray with me? And now may the words of my mouth and may the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord God, our rock and Redeemer, Amen.

And so we've as a church, if you're new here, it's a great time to be in because we love just sharing Jesus with you. But for all those who have been attracted along through this Lenten's season, we've been working our way through the armor of God, which is given to every Christian piece by piece. And we just heard now in verse 17, the helmet of salvation. And, and we talked a little about the historical context and what this soldier might have looked like in Paul's mind. And the helmet, it would have been either made of leather or metal. And it really fits snugly on the head. It wasn't loose. And it was most likely the last piece of armor that was put on the warrior before finally picking up the sword, which we'll talk about Pastor John next Sunday. And probably it would cover the back of the soldiers neck and it would come around the face. It would then cover the face. And in doing that, it would give the soldier a real sense of invincibility, a real sense of being able to charge forward into the opposition, knowing full well with the helmet on covering your face, one could withstand repeated blows from the enemy.

And from this part of Ephesians, it seems like Paul is drawing up this imagery from the prophet Isaiah. And in Isaiah, way back in the Old Testament, the prophets of Old God is pictured as a mighty warrior who comes against his enemies, Satan, idolatry, demons and idols. And so the reason this is perhaps called the armor of God is because God is the very first one who is pictured wearing that armor in Isaiah chapter 59 up in the screens. The Lord Yahweh saw it and it pleased him, displeased him that there was no justice. He saw that there was no man and wondered that there was no one to intercede. And then his own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness upheld him.

He put on righteousness as a breastplate. Sound familiar? And a helmet of salvation on his head. This is the scheme and so it is sure that life is a battle and the more we grow in faith by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit, the more the battle increases.

The more you desire to live on mission that is about Jesus and His purposes in the world and live not just for yourself, The battle increases. And yet we've been given provision by God, the armor of God, so that we can stand firm.

And so here's what's necessary in any battle. We can persevere in any battle as long as there seems to be this one thing. And it's hope that as long as there seems to be hope, we can persevere in any battle. As long as there's this sense of, you know, it will get better, we'll make it, you know, we'll get through the end. As long as there's that sense of hope, we can persevere in any battle.

And the helmet of salvation is all about hope, the hope we have in Christ and the salvation that's been one for us, as Paul writes. By the way, I didn't warn you. We're going to do, we're going to be flipping through Scripture, if that's OK.

We're going to do a little bit of a Bible study. Everyone OK with that? OK, All right, good.

All right. If not, sorry, I have the mic. You can't do anything about it. First Thessalonians, chapter 5. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith. There it is again, some armor, talk and love. And for a 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.

Anytime the Bible talks about hope, it is pointing to some future reality, something that's already been provided to us in the work of Christ that is coming to us in the finished work of Christ. The helmet of salvation is Speaking of the hope of salvation.

That is the future fullness of our salvation and really salvation is given to us in like 3 tenses. The best way I can describe it that in Christ we have been saved from the penalty of sin. In Christ we are being saved from the power of sin and then in Christ we will one day be saved from the presence of sin. We have that, and friends, there is coming a day when we will no longer suffer under the weight of wickedness in the world, evil in the world, and the schemes of the enemy. Christ will return fully and finally Vanquish all and set right everything that's gone wrong in this world.

There is a day coming when the fullness of our salvation, when Christ returns, when all of these things will no longer be an issue and we will exchange the helmet made for battle for a crown of righteousness in the presence of his glory.

And So what is this future fullness promise to us? Sneaky little move. We're just going to turn to the back of the book. We're going to read the end of the book, the Bible, and see how it all ends.

From Revelation chapter 20. And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. You know there's a wonderful saying about this passage, specifically verse 10 here the next time Satan reminds you of your horrible past. Remind Him of his horrible future.

And then here it comes, where everything that's gone wrong is set right. Continuing on verse 11. And then I saw a great white throne, and him who was seated on it.

It's Jesus. And from his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne. And books were opened. But then another book was opened, which is the Book of Life, and the dead were judged by what was written in the books according to what they done.

The sea gave up the dead who were in it. Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one of them, according to what they done. And then Death and Hades were thrown into the Lake of Fire. And this is the second death, the Lake of Fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the Book of Life, he was thrown into Lake of Fire.

Pretty spicy, I know. You might hopefully your question. Well, how then does one's name get written in the book of life? It's the Lamb's book of life. It is Christ's book for those who have been baptized into his death and resurrection and put their faith in Him. Your names are in it, in case you need to know that. And yet it gets even better. Revelation 21 And then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the 1st heaven and the first earth passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice in the thorns, saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death shall be no more. Neither will there be mourning nor crying or pain anymore for the former things that passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new. And also he said, write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. And he said to me, it is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, The beginning and the end.

The helmet of salvation has to do with all of these things. The enemy finally and fully being vanquished. Final judgement over all that is evil and wicked. We want to see judged being judged, that those washed in the blood of the Lamb and claim him as Lord being proved righteous.

Everything that's gone wrong in creation being made brand new. The renewal of all things. And God will be there, fully present in our midst, where there's no more crying, no more pain, no more sorrow, no more death, because Christ has fulfilled all the promises of salvation.

And to think on these things, to dwell on these things, let these future things affect your life now, is what it means to put on the helmet of salvation that protects us from the schemes of the enemy.

You know what's really interesting about this is that by the time the soldier had put all the armor on the belt, the breastplate, the holding the shield, he really probably couldn't put on the helmet himself.

Someone else would have to come and place the helmet on this helmet soldiers head. And then he was ready to go. And so Church, Christ himself is the one who places the hope of the fullness of this final salvation on our heads daily as we think upon these truths. It is to be received. And so when it says take in the Greek, it really means receive this helmet.

You know, and in receiving this helmet, then what does this do for us? It it finally enables us to do what we're called to do that we fight from this place of victory when it comes to spiritual warfare and the schemes of the enemy. I mean, victory is sure church.

We just saw how it all ends. Jesus wins and we who are with him and that we fight and we labor from the place of victory. Just imagine how this changes the game.

I mean, just to use a silly illustration, think for a moment if you're playing in a football game and you somehow travelled into the future and saw that your team wins the game and then you go back in time to the kickoff time.

If you knew you couldn't lose, how would that affect the way you played the game? Much like the Eagles playing the Chiefs.

Sorry, I had to look. Unless you're a total cheese ball, it wouldn't make it so like you're like, ah, well, we can't lose. So I'm just going to like ride the pine.

I'm just going to sit on the bench. I'm just going to hang out, not break a sweat. No way, dude. Like when you realize you can't lose, you fight valiantly.

You would have incredible tenacity. You would be without fear. You would take the hardest hits and you would just get up saying what, There's nothing you can do, I can't lose. You would run faster, go further, try harder because you knew you couldn't lose.

Dear Christian, who's put their faith in Christ, who's risen from the dead, ascended to heaven at the right hand of the Father, is coming again.

We can't lose in Christ. The battle is real, the battle is fierce.

Life has its ups and downs. As long as there is hope, we can persevere. We have the helmet of the hope of salvation, and we know for sure that in the end, the enemy loses, Jesus wins, and we with him.

And that ought to change the way we fight. It ought to change the way we live. Meaning we don't bow down so easily when we're tempted. I mean, wow, Like, how gnarly can temptation be? I mean, sometimes it feels like, oh, I can't, you know, this is too much.

I just got to do it. No, we don't. We know the end of the story. I mean, how radical and overwhelming can despondency and depression and despair hit us? And we just go into this pit and we feel like I can't ever get out of this thing.

It's not true. We know how this ends. How often is life so overwhelming, suffering so real, that we just feel like it's never going to end and I just want to give up.

That's not the truth. We know the end of the story. Jesus wins. There will be an end to this story, Church, and it's really, really good.

And therefore we persevere. We have tenacity in the battle. We don't give in when we stand firm like Ephesians says over and over it says stand firm.

You can't lose in Christ. He wins. Stand firm, resist the evil day, submit to God and resist the enemy and he'll flee from you, James says. And so the next time he draws to tries to draw you back into your sordid past, push Satan towards his very bad future.

You know, there's this book I read a while back, and I'm just going to assume all of us here haven't been living under a rock the past two decades. There's much talk about this word progressivism. And reading this book is like, what is progressivism? Like? Who is progressive? You know, lots of groups and ideologies in our day claim to be progressive liberal groups, conservative groups, left and right, center, whatever. And these certain people groups with different orientations claim to be progressive. And in reading this book, it had this wonderful idea of what progressivism is all about. And the essential point of progressivism is claiming that one owns the future, that the future is progressing towards the position he or she holds. So someone is seen to be progressive or acts progressively when they think they hold the future. Therefore they see like everything is eventually going to go their way. And so they are really bold about it.

I mean, have you noticed that people would just like a crazy agenda, are incredibly bold about it? Why? Because they're progressive.

They see this is the future. Their thought is you can't stop this. You can't hold this back. So no matter how alien the agenda might be to us, the progressive says you can't stop it, you can't hold it back.

This is the way things are going. And so they're always endeavouring to move culture towards what they see to be the future that they hold for themselves. And so here's the question for all of culture in regards to every ideology and every group, here's the question.

Who really holds the future? There is only one who holds the future, and his name is Jesus Christ.

I am the beginning and the end. I'm the alpha and Omega. I hold the keys. Jesus says Christ is the goal.

He's the final fullness. All things were created by him, exist for him. Jesus holds the future. And so therefore, followers of Jesus should be the most progressive humans on earth.

We are held by Christ. We are. We belong to Christ, who owns the future. And therefore we actually know this because Christ already rose from the dead and so validated every single promise he's made.

We know where the future is going, church, and it's heading to the return of Christ who established his Kingdom and glory when the enemy is fully and finally vanquished.

And so we are bold and endeavoring to progress the world toward that final thing. We should be the most progressive people in the world. Therefore we live without fear and the face of opposition.

1st Corinthians 15 Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of a eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable.

We will be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, this mortal body must put on the immortality. And when the perishable puts on the imperishable, the mortal puts on immortality. Then shall come to pass the same that is written.

Death is swallowed up in victory. Death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting? Yes, 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 of bounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

There is so much we will do in this lifetime that is vanity, but your toil in the Lord is never in vain.

Go full bore after Jesus. Don't be caught with like arms dangling at the side. Don't be caught sitting on the bench when we know Christ wins.

Be in the game. Be fully engaged in falling after Jesus, in holiness, in faithfulness, in mission for His glory.

This future truth of Christ's return. It changes the way we Live Today because this future glory promised to us changes the way we fight and battle. It changes the very way we suffer in our trials. It tells us that though life is confusing and difficult, Romans 828 is true.

God works for the good of those who love Him. Amen. Amen. Though life seems out of control and the nonsensical, though this pain just seems like it will never end, this trial never goes away. Christ is actually bringing all these things to consummation in his glory. And therefore we don't lose heart, we don't give up. We're steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing these things are not in vain in the Lord.

And so finally, as Paul says in his second letter to Timothy, as he's writing right before his death, right before the end of his life, he writes this incredible part of the letter and chapter 4. And so I charge you, Timothy, in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his Kingdom.

Preach the Word. Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, will have itching ears they will accumulate for themselves. Teachers to suit their own passions, will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. But As for you, always be sober minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, Fulfill your ministry.

For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I fought that good fight, I finished the race, I've kept the faith. Therefore there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but also to all who have loved his appearing friends. There is coming a glorious day for those who put their faith in Christ, when we'll stand before Him and He'll take off the helmet because we've already fought the good fight. The battle's over.

The day of struggle is gone. No more tears, no more crying, no more pain. Behold, He's made all things new.

He'll take off the helmet and lay it aside forever. And I'll place on your head the crown of righteousness, the righteousness of Christ, in which we stand before God as holy, beloved, accepted sons and daughters.

And then from Jude 24. And now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of His glory with great joy. To the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, authority before all time and now and forever.

Amen. That's the end game, standing in His presence with great joy. Though life has its ups and downs, we don't give up. Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might.

Put on the full armor of God that you may be able to stand. Be Christ, because Christ has won, is still winning, and will win. Amen, Amen. Let us stand.

Oh, that's so intense. Hey, good morning, everyone. Hey, listen, I'm Pastor John and wow, it's not like we don't have a few things going on right now. So First off, we're praying against storms this afternoon.

Right in Jesus name be doing that. Yeah, let's do that. Also 4:00 today. It's kind of a thing that a lot of you probably never experienced.

It's called an installation of a new pastor lead pastor elect and we're going to do that for Pastor Matt. So that's why I'm saying it, not him because that would have been awkward. But so that's part of the succession plan transition. That will be more official in July ish. And then I retire sometime in well, early November 2nd actually. So that's part of the plan. But today's a big day.

4:00 I pray it will only be as long as the pastor's blessing takes almost. Isn't that about true? We have a lot of pastors in the community. Hopefully somewhere going to come and there's a, there's an installment time from our district president, Lee Hagan and a friend.

Joel's going to be preaching and it's going to be a great time. So four o'clock 4:00, join us if you can. It'd be awesome. So hey, listen, my Bible has turned to where we're at in this series called The Armor of God, and it's turned again to Ephesians chapter 6, and we're going to pick up and.

Yeah, I'm going to have a lot of other verses. I'm just going to warn you as well to support this and what we're talking about today. But I always say check it out if you need a Bible. I see a hospitality, folks.

They've got one. Raise your hand and they love to give you 1. And if you, like, don't have one, take it, OK? Because we want you to be in God, in God's Word. You know, the Apostle Paul calls the God's word the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And indeed, we're praying that it cuts even like a knife through our hearts that convicts us, but also encourages us to find healing. So hey, before I get going, let me just say, let me give you a hint about what I'm talking about, OK? And, and kind of like to start this way. It was in 1987 that there was a pop culture singer, his name was George Michael.

He said you got to have it. You got to have it. The apostle Paul would also agree. He said, hey, if you want to be saved, if you want to be forgiven, if you want to, like, not spend an eternity apart from God, you got to have it. Yeah, you, you need it too. It's kind of what motivates me to stand up here, really every weekend and think that if just one of you would receive it for the first time, it would be all worth it, that you would receive it and be saved because you got to have it.

The Bible says it actually justifies us before God. One biblical writer said that you can't even please God unless you have it. Unless you have it, you want it, you want to grow in it. He says, spend more time in his word, cry out to the Spirit in prayer.

Yeah, you'll grow in it turns out when things heat up in life, God actually uses this to.

He grows this in your life to do an even deeper way. It's true. It's actually what allowed this church family to raise lots of funds. There are a number of campaigns to eventually relocate in the year 2000.

Yeah. And we took on a financial actually challenge that was bigger than we could ever imagine. And even even the folks at district levels where we even got our loans said you will not be able to make these payments. How many payments did we miss, folks? Not a one. Yeah, Because so many folks here had it. They received it and they were living it.

It's true. And it's what allowed us to pay our debt off. Like how many years? 4 So many years? Yeah. Like COVID time. Crazy because you believed in it so much that you trusted so much that, in fact, God allowed us to pay off the debt.

It helps you to learn to see that which is unseen, the Bible says. And with this, he says, you have the power to overcome even the world.

Even the world, it actually compels a response or an action. That's what the Bible says about it too. If you have it this fall. By the way, I don't know if you know this, but be 80 years since a small group of people started gathering and eventually they would call themselves faith.

There it is. There's the topic, it's faith, Faith, Evangelical Lutheran Church. So we're celebrating that first gathering this fall, right? Actually, we're going to highlight that on October 25th.

Not that I'm looking ahead or anything. Looking forward to that. Yeah. Here's my, my, you know, my, my son-in-law. I was, I was seeing our baby in in Indiana.

He says his pastor was moving on too and took on a new job. And he said, I'm going to say some spicy things here, you know, and I was thinking I might say some spicy things because I don't care anymore if you don't like me anymore. I just want to share the truth. But the reality is, I mean, this, this is this is how I feel.

When we went through COVID, it just made something evident. There's a major crisis of faith that is happening amongst us and many of you are still in that crisis. And many of you watching online are still in that crisis.

You're not here. There's still fear. But today I want to talk about how this faith protects US right against the forces of evil. And that's our focus today. So I'm going to pick up at verse what 13 here in chapter 6, where the apostle Paul says, 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 there for having fastened on the belt of truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace.

Here it is in all circumstances. Take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. I'll stop right there. So Lord, we pray in Jesus name that you will protect our hearts, our minds, that the Holy Spirit would have free reign here. Lord, in Jesus name and by the authority we have in Jesus Christ, we do pray against any storms that could harm this church, our homes, Lord, this reason we're praying against them, Lord, that you would protect us, your children, and that the power of God would be made manifest even as we see threats of storms again in our region. So we pray this in Jesus name, Lord, open our hearts again in Christ, Amen. Or as they saying, just give us faith, right? Give us faith indeed. So we're in that.

It's not a surprise. We're in chapter 6, right, of Ephesians and we have to kind of we've gotten to this point of shield of faith. But what has happened before? Well, obviously we've talked about some other pieces of armor like the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness in last week was shoes. And Pastor Matt, you know, he talked about shoes and being ready with the gospel, right, with the gospel of peace.

We have that. But you got to actually jump back even further in Ephesians because you got to figure Paul's told us a lot, OK, that we might need to know, OK. For instance, early in the book, he says some incredibly remarkable things about Christians, about those who have this faith.

He says basically God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing. Where? In the heavenly places. Now, Paul's already said that the battle is something that we're wrestling against what the the powers and principalities and authorities basically against the demonic, against the evil one. Maybe, probably not. We're not even wanting him are, you know, personally. But he's controls these things, which he calls the methods which he gets us. It's his strategies, right? But we've been blessed. In other words, that's past tense.

You already have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. In Ephesians 2, we're told that when we were dead in our sins, lost, God, by His grace He makes us alive, makes us alive. And then it says He raised us up with Him and seated us with him. Where? In the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, it doesn't say he will raise us up.

He says positionally. This is a positional truth, that we are positionally raised up with Christ in the heavenly places because that's where that's where the power is. I mean, think about it. Where is Jesus right now after his death, his resurrection and his ascension? Yeah, he's with, he's at the right hand of the Father.

The person of Jesus is there. He's seated at the right hand of the throne of God. And, you know, that just doesn't don't mean much to us today.

I mean, we don't talk in that kind of language, right? But think about it, this, it's the place of the greatest power in the Kingdom.

It's it's like the prime minister's place. It's like the president's cabinet. It's like Elon Musk. I'm just seeing if you're listening because you've got the ear of the leader. You know what I'm saying? It's like a it's like a, it's a special place.

And that's what we have as we are seated in the heavenlies with Christ. Actually in second Peter one verse three, it says therefore we have everything necessary for life and godliness. So you have everything necessary by this faith in ways that you ought to live. The Bible makes these amazing statements like in Romans 6, you have this power over sin. So basically Paul is saying act as if you have this power over sin.

You've actually died with Christ, so act as if you've actually died with Christ and you've been raised with him. So Paul is saying you have all of these things, but what he's saying is now you've got to put them on or literally take them up.

There's those words of both yous. And so when Paul says put on the army, he's literally saying, take the various benefits and privileges and resources and powers you have in the gospel and now use them in this battle against the devil, the world, and even our flesh. For instance, when Brandon talked about this breastplate of righteousness, think about that one.

That's a big word. We don't actually use righteous too much anymore, but it's like this. It's like if you were just speaking religion, it's just like you've got to behave a certain way, like to be righteous, so you behave a certain way and you kind of give them to God and you just hope God will accept you. That's like true religion. But Christianity is not true religion. Christianity says no, the Father sent his Son to live the righteous life. He gives it to us and as a result, he says you're accepted. You're accepted because of Christ.

That's the gospel. Now, Paul, let me just jump into here, the 4th weapon. What is this 4th weapon? Well, it's called faith. It's called the shield of faith. And faith, Oh my gosh, you can we talk about this? A few things around here. We hear this word a lot around here, do we not? Faith.

We know we're saved by grace through faith, through faith. It's a gift from God, not by our works. So salvation is a gift from God. If you were to apply it, it, it kind of it, it looks like trust, but by the way, it's the same word in the original Greek language. So to place your trust is the same as placing your faith in God. It has to do with your identity in Jesus, right? And and and and and. Paul conveys it with this image of a shield, which works actually very well with the metaphor of Satan shooting in these fiery arrows. Which really is a representation of the power of as many in varied forms.

He attacks believers. OK, so we're quick to think that, well, Paul is probably just making this connection with the 1st century Roman soldier because they've got all these pieces of armor and he probably is. OK, but but there's more. Actually, if you if you read the entire Bible, you begin to discover that the shield was actually a piece of armor that was used in all of history when when soldiers went into battle. OK, But throughout the Old Testament, it was always, it was constantly also used as a metaphor to describe God's power and his protection. For instance, in Genesis 15, verse one, when you go there, you see that's where God is blessing Abraham.

He's not Abraham yet. And it's quite incredible what God says to him. He says to Abraham, do not be afraid, Abraham, I am your.

I'm your shield. Wow. I'm your shield. In other words, you and the people of God do not need to be afraid. And this is said over and over in the Old Testament because why? Because the Lord is a shield for all who take refuge in him.

So throughout the armored passage, Paul kind of has, he draws in this imagery, no doubt from the Old Testament, probably from what people would see in a 1st century Roman soldier, right? So we see this in verse 16 where he he comes in, he says now in all things, all circumstances, that word all means all. And that's all. I mean, right, It's all things in all circumstances.

Take up. Now let's take up, not put on, take up, right, The shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming, how many arrows? All the flaming arrows of the evil one. See what is that about? I mean, why comparison with a shield? And what are these arrows? Could you kind of kind of have to ask that? OK, so let's go back to the Roman soldier and ask the question. What is the role of a? I'm like, how many of you have your own shield as home? See what I'm saying? I mean, we've already got a challenge. Like, what is that? Well, let me explain a little bit about it.

OK. So let me go back to the picture I showed on week number one of a Roman soldier. OK, we've got it. There it is. Now notice that shield that is so this, by the way, in Jewish literature is the only time that a shield is ever compared with faith. OK, which is quite interesting.

Now notice this is not a small shield. This shield would actually be about two feet by 4 feet, OK, 2 feet. This is like a door, OK? If you think a door, they're carrying a door, OK. And even in history, there was a quote from a mother who's sending her son out to war, basically telling him take care that you return with your shield or on it. In other words, either that shield is going to be your protection or your stretcher that they're going to carry you off the field may be wounded. Wow, that's quite a picture.

It's that big. So the, the, the, the soldier could literally Crouch behind that shield of his whole body would be protected.

Think about that. It would be made of wood that would be covered with cloth and leather. And sometimes the, the many times the soldiers would dip this shield and soak it in water before they went into battle. Because when the fiery arrows would come, what would happen to the arrows? They'd be extinguished. So this is the picture that Paul presents before us.

It's faith, this show of faith. But what are the arrows right now? You got to get a little more detailed. What are the arrows? These, these flaming darts of the evil 1.

And I'll tell you, I've studied it and studied. Here's what I discovered. Their temptations, their strategies, their deceptions, they're meant to inflamed us to bring our demise.

We lift up the shield of faith and we come against these things. That's what he's saying by God's word. And those arrows are to hit us and just thud because they go out. Face it, we all have these lusts within us that are easy to ignite.

All that is needed is this tiniest flame, and then we're a roaring fire. We're assaulted by the shafts of sensuality, of pleasure, right? Diseased arrows of degrading passions, as one commentator put them.

And here, here's what I know. Each of us has our own areas.

We've often called them signature sin areas where the devil gets us. He comes to us and he doesn't always attack us in our areas of weakness. Sometimes he destroys us by our areas of strength because we've become prideful and we burn so easily as arrows fly toward our, our, our, our way into our lives. We make all kinds of rationalizations like, you know, if God didn't, if God didn't want me to have this, why did he create this desire for, for that, that thing, that person, that pleasure.

And we rationalize, make excuses. Well, my mate, my neighbor has it and he's doing just fine.

He's doing so well. And then God's word comes in and says you should not cover your neighbor's house. You should not cover your neighbor's wife or man servant or maid servant or ox or donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor or, or it's God's will that you should be holy, not that you and that you should avoid sex outside of a marriage commitment. In other words, sexual immorality or that you should learn to control your own body in a way that is holy and honorable or or God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life and therefore he. He who rejects this instruction, the apostle Paul would say, does not reject man, but God who gives us his Holy Spirit. Or finally, brothers, whatever is true or whatever is noble or whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, those are the things you want to be thinking about.

So this is the shield of faith that we take these on. And God says you'll find protection. But there are more arrows, too.

We could call these trials fiery trials. They may come with illness or tragedy or loss or even persecution. Tim Keller says probably the ones who are most intensely attacked are the ones who are out front trying to reach the lost and do mission. Keep that in mind when you're trying to be bold for Christ.

All of this Satan's emissaries will launch arrows of doubt about God's goodness about his even in his existence. That's what he does. Remember the apostle Paul's words he said I'm sorry Peter's words he says be self controlled and alert your enemy. The devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Doesn't in there resist him standing firm in the for the faith firm in the faith because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing all kinds of suffering. He says you can even overcome and I I said that earlier, but here's the verse for everyone who's been born of God overcomes the world and this is the victory that overcomes the world. Our our faith.

Our faith. Faith in what? Here it is.

Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? That's the object. Your faith is only as good as your object.

I'm not sure what George Michael was singing about when he said you got to have faith. I'm not sure what faith he was talking about. It's not just faith. It's faith that has the object of Jesus Christ. Who paid the price for you? And me now there's another biblical scholar that kind of challenged my thinking on this. But he says, he says something like, OK, if you're going to war, if you think if you're a 1st century Roman soldier or, or just think of movies, all right, when you're soldiers and you're coming up and they're putting firing all these darts at you and they're throwing this molten, I mean even molten steel at you. And, and so where's the most dangerous part of the battle? When is it? He says, of course, it's when you're trying to scale the walls.

And because you're down here, they're up there and they're shooting all kinds of arrows. So that's when you need the shield, when it's most intent, when they're they're trying to produce the most harm, the most fear.

They want you to quit. They want you to give up. I mean, you, you might have 10 times more of the soldiers, but when they're up in there on the wall shooting down and you see your comrade on fire, wow.

They're trying to create alarm. They're trying to create alarm. So the shield, he says, was used at a particular time when the battle was at its worst, when the enemy was doing everything possible to completely put you in what retreat? He says.

That's what Paul's mean. Paul means in here in terms of the shield of faith, because think of it when you're going armed, when you're kind of like we talked about arm to arm, you know, you're, you're not going to fight a person with the holding this this door.

OK. In other words, that's not part of the battle where you're holding the door. Now you shield not now you've got the things that you put on and you you've left on right. That's that's Paul Singer. You're not taking up this big shield, not that part in the battle.

So, so if you if you look at the word fiery in the New Testament, it actually has to do with suffering. Has to do with trials and I'm not saying those other darts into things we've already mentioned.

I do believe they are. But the Peter would say, beloved, do not be surprised with the fiery trials as they come upon you. Or in Revelation, it says basically that this use fiery says the church is like gold purified in fire. And it's a reference seeming to the suffering of the Saints. So it's very intense, right In the Old Testament, in Isaiah, we read when you pass through the waters, I will be with you and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned and the flames shall not consume you.

So if I'm just some of you right now are going through the fire, you're going through intense times of of what feels like suffering. You're even wondering and you may be watching online, you're wondering if God is still there for you.

The evil 1 is trying to create alarm and if he possibly could, he wants to create unfaith. He wants you to doubt.

He wants you to be angry, as Jacob talked about last Wednesday and just let it go to bitterness. Then you could be destroyed.

So the shield of faith is something that you could use. Are you already used? In the darkest times, there's a surprising tragedy, a suffering.

You know, I let me just be honest with you. My goodness. I was in Wisconsin and my daughter was in the basement with her her husband on that Friday night. And all I got to see was a video of part of my house. It's like, what? Are you kidding me? Yeah. I mean, lots of disasters.

Some of you. I know you. You got it, too. I didn't know how bad it was because I wasn't there.

I didn't know how much water was in the house. You said, was this just things? Yeah, I know I have weaknesses, too.

But like, wow, I've never seen something like that. That was like, you know, it was a test of faith. John, will you trust me? Even in this.

Some of you are right there. God's saying, will you trust me? Will you place your faith in me even even through this, even through this cancer diagnosis, even though your marriage stinks right now? Will you trust me in this? Your children are rebellious. Will you trust me in this? And they're far from God. Will you give them to me? You take up the shield of faith.

And you know what happens if all of us have been, how many of us say I've been there, I've been there, I've experienced it? No, just a couple of you. OK, Lord, we pray against the liars in our midst.

And as a result, you've been that much more effective to minister to others. You know, you have, you have, you've been used by God. And and we don't like to think of that, but when things get hot and we go through these times and we trust in him, he we're more usable for the things of God. And that's an awesome, awesome thing. So let me close with just two points, OK, The first one, you say, oh, what? Here it is.

We just witnessed it. Remember your baptism. Remember your baptism, huh? I could have said, remember the water.

I could have said, remember your resources, what you have. Even in that baptism, you're clothed with Christ, right? You're seated with him in the heavenlies. Remember your baptism, you say? Why would you say that? Do you remember what I said about the shield before they went into battle? What did they do? They soaked it in water that that's an illusion, potentially to baptism, Martin Luther once wrote. If you could see how many knives, darts and arrows are at every moment aimed at you, you would be glad to the come to to come to the sacrament.

Even as often as possible, I I believe it's not just the Lord's Son. We come to as often as we as we can, as often if it's as it's offered.

Amen. But I believe baptism too is every day. Every day as I remembered in my shower, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit again baptize me. Lord, you know not that I got to be over and over baptized, but in a sense I do Washed, cleanse, forgiven, remind yourself who you are in Christ.

Don't forget the resources you have to fight in this battle. They are powerful. They are powerful. I was with Joan fierce he passed away.

Funeral this Wednesday I think and her friend was there and she was talking about the storm. I love to hear this.

She says. I went outside and I commanded that storm to move on and she said it missed us. It moved on. It just kind of jumped that that tornado.

That's why I'm I'm asking you, man, you have the authority of Christ, not your own Christ. You, you are seated in the heavenlies. You're part of the the, the, the spiritual heavenly battle. Come on, fight in the name of Jesus and may he give you that faith. Remember your baptism, but also this, remember to look with faith. Paul says walk by faith, not by sight. So when you take up the shield of faith, you're seeing the things that you you're looking for the unseen, not the seen, not the things that are seen. For things that are seen, Paul says are temporary, but the unseen things are eternal. He says faith then is this substance, the assurance of things not seen.

Faith is looking at what Jesus has said Jesus is. Faith is looking at who God is. Faith means to see God who is unseen. It's looking at God instead of the trial, trusting that the price has been paid for your sins, for this new identity you have in Christ, your forgiveness.

Look, do you remember the story that took place in Dothan? No, What's wrong with you folks? I'm not talking about Dothan AL Dothan.

It's actually in the Old Testament. I just read over it again last night. Dothan is, is a place where two things happen.

Basically it's the city. And Elijah the prophet is there and his servant is with him. OK. And it was surrounded by Assyrians. It was surrounded by the enemy. And basically his servant comes to Elijah and says, Elijah, we're goners. I mean, we're dead.

We are totally surrounded by so many of this enemy. And basically Elisha says if you only had eyes to see the truth. And he prays that his eyes would be open and his eyes open and he sees on this Chariots of fire, angels of God.

I mean, it's like the army of God. And of course, if you read the story, there's defeat.

God protected them. It's like that's what God's saying to you and me. Will you open your eyes to see? Walk by faith, just not what you're seeing.

Look to the one, Look to the one. So faith is bringing to bear the reality of who God is in your situation. Looking to God, not to yourself. Looking at Him and reminding yourself who He is and who He's called you to be as you carry the shield of faith and May God reveal to you and show you what surrounds you.

So your faith would even grow stronger now. You would be more bold to share it and to live it. Amen. Hey, come on, stand with me.

You know, I'm just going to guess there might be one person. That's all it takes. One person.

We're just praying for one person. You're not sure you have faith, so let's just ask.

So God, we're here, you know, you know what we're going through right now.

Some of us, Lord, we're, we're, we're, we're in the midst of a crisis, We're struggling.

It's hard. Increase our faith. Teach us, Lord, what it means to trust in you to take up this shield of faith today.

Lord, reveal your power, reveal your love. Lord, give us faith.

And if you're here and you said I, I, I don't know that I have this faith. You say, Lord, would you give me it? Holy Spirit, would you come into my heart? Forgive me of all of my sin, my rebellion, my rejection, my doubts, Lord, when I've when I've walked away from you instead of toward you. Thank you, Lord, for walking toward me or even running.

Thank you for saving me, Jesus. Thank you for giving your life for me.

O Lord, come in Jesus name we pray, Amen. Amen.

Well, please pray with me, dear Lord, we just thank you that we could be here in this place, God. And as we look at this spiritual armor and these words from the apostle Paul that you've given us, God, I just pray that you would allow them to sink deeply into our hearts. Help us learn what you're saying, Lord, and how we can live that out in the world around us. God, may my words be your words.

Not one word more or one word less. In your name we pray, Lord Jesus, Amen. Well, good morning if it's your first time here, My name is Pastor Matt. We've been in this series where we have been looking at the armor of God, which is a metaphor that Paul uses in the book of Ephesians to talk about the different gifts that God gives us to live out this life of faith and handle the challenges and temptations that can come. Now, of all the cool pieces of armor that you could talk about during this series, the sword, the helmet, the breastplate, they gave me the shoes.

I feel like it was because my wife works in the shoe industry. And so they're like, Matt knows shoes.

OK. And so as I was thinking about this message throughout the week, it's like, what? What do you talk about when it comes to the shoes? And and why of all the cool pieces of armor would Paul add the shoes? And so as I'm thinking about that this week, I'm at a conference, big missions, conference missions and church planning. Like 5000 church leaders descending on Orlando and a group of us pastors from Missouri went together. I got to go with Pastor Brandon and Cyril, and we're there and I'm getting to sit through a conference.

That's one of my favorite conferences. You know, it's one of those conferences that you actually sit through the sessions. That's how good it is. Some of you know what I'm talking about. Some conferences you're like, yeah, I'm at the conference, but I'm not at the conference, you know, and we knew this would be good. So every morning we set up a time where we would get together, we'd pray together and then we'd talk about, you know, what God was saying to us and, and just kind of pray that God would allow us to hear. Now we'd hit the last day and at this point, like my brain is full and we're sitting down in this prayer time.

We decided to show up to the conference early. We're in this room, We grabbed a a table and there's other people around that aren't just kind of sitting off on their own, but we're here with our group, we're engaging, we're in conversation, right? And this older gentleman comes walking up to our table. And he interrupts us in the middle of our conversation, and he goes, do you know where I can find a bottle of water? Now? Of all the people at this conference, everybody's sitting around in this room, people that aren't doing anything.

He chooses our table. And I look up and then I realize, oh, that's Larry Osbourne.

I know you are thinking what? Let me give you a little background. Larry Osborne is an author and a pastor.

Some of his books incredibly shaped the way I think about ministry today. He wrote this book, Thriving in Babylon. Amazing. Change the way I thought about what it means to be the church in our culture today. And now Larry Osborne is sitting in front of our table asking us for a bottle of water.

Fanboy experience. So of course, I mean, I got Larry Osbourne here.

I got to tell him how with the impact he's made on my life and how incredible his books are and he's so gracious because the man is clearly thirsty and he does not care the impact that he has made on my. But he's like, oh, you know, thank you. And then we're looking, I'm like, man, Larry Osbourne. No, I don't know where you can find any water.

And as he's walking, I'm like, this is Larry Osbourne. I got at least make an effort, right? I like, I think if you go a couple rooms over, you might find some water. And we're sitting there talking. About 5 minutes passes and then I looked down at the table and I realized, huh, we have an unopened bottle of water just sitting right there at our table.

I was like, now it's starting to make more sense why he chose our table to ask for some water. And now I'm starting to see it through his eyes. The man is thirsty.

We've got like the only bottle of water in the room. It's unopened. We could care less that it's there. And he's like, hey, do you know where I can get some water? And I'm like, you're amazing. No, go away.

I didn't realize the very thing he was looking for and needed was sitting right there at my I could have reached over, grabbed it and just handed it to him. But I was completely unaware we had it.

And I think that's really interesting because I think when it comes to our culture today, our culture is thirsting, thirsting for peace.

And it's a piece that Paul tells us we have that moves us around in the world we're in. And yet, how often do we forget that we have the very thing the culture is thirsting for and we end up looking like, I looked probably to Larry Osborne, where clearly we have something they need, but we've forgotten we have it. Why? I don't know.

Maybe because Paul called it the shoes. And how often do we forget about our shoes? But how important they are, right? In fact, let's look at this text really quick and we'll we'll dig into this.

Ephesians chapter 6. If you've got your Bibles, open it up. If you don't have a Bible, you can just raise your hand and we've got some Bibles that we can bring around to you. And if you don't have a Bible, that's our gift to you.

You can take that home with you. It says this in Ephesians chapter 6. I'm going to start at verse 13. It says therefore take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day. And having done all the stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, then as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace, then in all circumstances take up the shield of faith, which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil ones. 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. So verse 15. Of all the things Paul could have used as a metaphor for the gospel of peace, the good news of peace that only God can bring, he chooses the shoes.

So why does he do that? Well, you know, it's really interesting when you kind of like zoom out and you look at the culture of that time. There's probably a pretty good reason that God sent Jesus when he did, and that Paul was able to spread the gospel message around the world.

It's because the Roman Empire was in charge at that time. And in the Roman Empire at that time, there was an unprecedented season of peace. The historians call the Pax Romana. It was the Roman peace. And because there was this unprecedented time of peace, you could easily travel on the road system around the world, and they could use that to share the gospel. But it's interesting how the Romans created that season of peace. It was known as peace by the sword. See, the Romans were able to create this unprecedented time of peace because they were the most powerful in the world. And if you threatened their Roman peace, they would bring the army of Rome in and they would literally crush you. In fact, one historian, Adrian Goldsworth, said it like this. He said Rome was to be feared, which meant that her might was parodied as a as a constant was paraded as a constant reminder of her strength, while attackers were dealt with ruthlessly, ruthlessly, and the communities believed to support them were ravaged by fire and sword.

So if you threaten the peace of Rome, Rome would bring all their power and their might and they would crush you. So it was peaceful because the big guys on the block said you will be peaceful or else.

This was the peace that everybody knew. But you see, the peace of Jesus is different.

In fact, the way that Jesus brought peace was radically different than the way the Roman Empire brought peace. In fact, Jesus used that Roman Empire and the temporary peace they bring to bring an everlasting peace. But he didn't use a sword.

And he didn't threaten people with his great power. No, the book of Colossians said that the way Jesus brought peace was through a cross. In fact, Colossians chapter 1 starting in verse 18 it says this and he that's Jesus.

It's the head of the body of the church. He is the beginning, the first born from the dead, that in everything he might be pre eminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

See, Jesus used the Roman peace by sword, and that tool of terror they used called the cross, a punishment that was so heinous even a Roman wasn't allowed to be crucified. And he used it to sacrifice himself and bring peace into the world.

A peace that literally reconciles us with God. Why is that so important? Because God is peace and where God is his peace is able to dwell. And so Jesus brings us the peace of God by bringing us into right relationship with God. And then literally he says he leaves us this peace.

Fact. John chapter 14, Jesus is talking to his disciples and he says this 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, or neither be afraid. See, because the powerful thing about God's peace is that God's peace is able to exist regardless of the circumstances. See, the kind of peace the world gives exists when all the circumstances line up and everything's right. Then you can be at peace. But you see, the powerful thing about God's peace is that even if the circumstances aren't lining up, and even if you're in the midst of a season where everything on the surface says peace shouldn't be there, the peace of Jesus is actually able to dwell there with you. That's the powerful thing about God's peace, is God's peace cannot be stolen away from God's people.

This is the peace that God gives. And so when Paul says fit your feet with the shoes, that is the readiness of the gospel, meaning the message of God's peace. What Paul is pointing out to you is that where you go, God's peace goes with you.

Why? Because wherever you go, the presence of Jesus goes with you.

And that means that peace that the world is thirsting for, that peace that they're longing for is a peace that you carry with you everywhere you are, because the presence of Jesus is with you.

It's a peace that we can experience. In fact, Paul encourages us to take time to just meditate on God and His Word, because when we meditate on His Word, God's peace becomes even more present to us.

And then we're able to share that peace. In fact, when Jesus sends out his early disciples in Luke chapter 10, he sends out 72 disciples to go out before him. The reason he sends them out is to deliver peace. In fact it says this Luke chapter 10 starting at verse one.

After this the Lord appointed 72 others and sent them on ahead of him two by two into every town and place where he himself was about to go. And he said to them, 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.

Go your way. Behold, I'm sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. Carry no money bag, no knapsack, no sandals, and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say peace to this house.

And if the sun of peace is there, your peace will rest upon Him, but if not, it will return to you. So, so literally.

I love that last line. Jesus is saying there's something about your message that when you offer that peace, people can actually grab a hold of it and experience it. And it's a piece that can literally transform the world around you.

So what does that look like? Well, I was reminded of what that looks like as, once again, I was at this huge conference, and I'm going to fanboy out again.

I got to hang out in a room with Hugh Halter. I can tell by your faces you're like, oh, interesting.

You're a nerd. OK, I know that. I know that. Let me give you a little background. Hugh Halter, famous church planter, wrote a book called Tangible Kingdom where he challenged the church to plant churches in which people in the community actually experienced the mission of God. Churches that weren't simply centered around us gathering together, but churches that were centered around us going out. And he had done some incredible work. Once again, books that shaped and transformed a lot of the ways we think about mission.

And as I was sitting there listening to Hugh Halter, I, I was surprised and I was wanting to follow his story because I found out that Hugh Halter, who used to live in Colorado, you know, that beautiful place with all the mountains, right, had moved about six years ago to Alton, IL, right.

No mountains, not much of anything in Alton, right? I remember that because I remember being in seminary and there was this bar called Fast Eddie's. And yes, in set, we used to drive to Fast Eddie's. Why would a group of seminarians drive to Fast Eddie's? Because they sold dollar burgers and brats and that fits a seminary budget.

But I, I remember when we used to go to Alton, IL, you'd go and you'd go to Fast Eddie's, but there really wasn't much of anything else left in the town. In fact, sometimes when I would go into Alton, I would see this place that you could tell used to be a thriving city and community right there on the river, and now it just kind of looked empty.

And so I asked myself, why in the world would this famous church planter, Hugh Halter move to Alton, IL? You see, a little story with Hugh is that Hugh had three kids and his oldest son.

He had a son and two daughters. And his oldest son had severe, severe epilepsy to the point that they said he probably would not live through being a child. But he had lived like into his 20s. And when he hit his 20s, he really wanted to kind of be independent adult, but he can only do so much. And so they actually found a home that he was able to live in and have some independence in in Alton, IL.

And so Hugh and his family used to fly to Alton to visit their son. And whenever they would fly there, they would kind of walk around the town. And they were just struck by this community.

Something kind of turned in their heart whenever they would walk around there. And they were, they were struck because they'd walk around and there wasn't even like a coffee shop they could walk into and just hang out in his family. And now at this point, they're living on, on like a ranch in Colorado. So things are going well for you, right? And his wife looks at him and says, hey, I think we should move to Alton.

What? Why, Why Alton? But God just kept turning their heart toward that place. And so finally, they said, all right, we have no idea what you want to do with us here, God, but we're going to move to Alton, IL. And so they moved there not knowing what they were going to do.

They bought a couple houses because their kids are adults at this point. And Hugh and his wife would just start walking around, praying, going, OK, God, what do you want to do? What do you want to do in this place? But it's interesting what happens even in a place where it looks like there's no hope when the Christians show up.

Christians who are fitted with shoes of peace. Not a plan, not a strategy.

But just the peace that comes with Christ. All of a sudden, shortly after they move there, a guy comes up to Hugh Halter and he says, I want to give you a building like what? The old post office in Alton, IL, the post Commons, right, sits right across from City Hall. And this guy is literally handing Hugh the keys and, and Hugh is like trying to hand them back to him because he's like, look, you can give me this building, but I don't have any money to, to fix it up or do anything significant with it. He goes, look, you've got the key. If you want it back, just ask for it.

And so Hughes got this key and he goes, I don't, I don't even have money to renovate this place. And then he gets a phone call from a few people that had supported in the past. They go, Hugh, we don't know what you're up to, but if you're up to something, we'd like to support it and we'd like to write you a, a really big check.

He was like, are you kidding me? And then he goes and he talks at this little men's retreat. At the end of the men's retreat, 3 guys come up to him and they all have checks and they go, Hugh, we don't know what you're up to there, but we want to support it.

Here you go. And Hugh is like literally trying to hand the checks back. He goes, I don't know what I would even do with these. And they go, well, if you don't use them, just RIP them up. So now Hugh's got like, I don't know, like 250,000 some dollars and a building and he's sitting in front of that building going, God, what do you want to do with this space? And all of a sudden the guy walks across the street and he looks at Hugh and he goes, are you Hugh Halter? And at this point, I think Hugh's afraid to answer.

He was. Yeah. I'm. I'm Hugh. He goes, well, I'm the mayor of Alton, and this building has been an eyesore. And we hear that you own it now. And we want to support whatever you want to do in this place. We've set aside $75,000 to help you.

And so here's what we're probably thinking at this point. You got a famous church planter, right? He's got keys to a building.

He's got about $300,000. He's going to he's going to plant a church. But he looked around the community and he realized what people needed was not another church.

So what does he do? He renovates out the space and he starts a coffee shop. And all of a sudden, the people of Alton now have a living room that they can gather together in, and people start gathering in that coffee shop, and they start doing work in that coffee shop. And then all of a sudden, he adds a whiskey bar. Because, you know, morning coffee is great, but you need something to do in the evening, right? And then they realize, hey, this is a big space and they can create an event centre. And then they start creating a little company that allows people to help learn how they can start their own companies. And they start creating this thing called the Lantern Network. And literally what the Lantern Network set out to do is a Kingdom ecosystem committed to incubating good works and benevolent businesses get this to bless the city.

See, what they realized was as the people of God, they carried the peace of God. And it didn't matter what they did in that place, whether they were renovating old homes or creating a coffee house, those would become vehicles to share the peace of Christ with that community. Because where the people of God are, the peace of Christ is.

And that means God's presence is in that place. And when God's presence is in a place, it doesn't matter what it looks like on the surface, everything changes when Jesus shows up.

So as I was thinking about those two stories, Hughes and my water bottle, I realized we have an option as the people of God.

We are already wearing the shoes at peace. You woke up with him this morning. Remember, Pastor John said in the first message, we don't take the armor off, we put it on and it's there.

The question is, are we aware of the peace that we have to share? Church, wherever you go this week, you have a peace that can literally transform the world around you. Because where you go, you bring the presence of Jesus with you, and His peace has the power to transform everything.

So don't let it be a little water bottle sitting on the table that you don't even realize is there. Even if you don't feel like you have a plan, you don't need one.

You already have everything you need in Jesus to share the peace that only He can give. So just open your eyes and open your ears and look and listen for where God's leading and just say a simple prayer. God, help me share this peace that you have given, wherever it is you're sending me. Lord Jesus, let's pray.

Dear Lord, we thank you so much that you have blessed us with a peace that we can't find anywhere else, Lord, a peace that surpasses all understanding.

God. And I pray that you would just open our eyes to allow us to see where you're leading us this week, Lord, and help us figure out how we can take this peace and we can share it with the people around us. Lord Jesus, knowing that where your peace is, your presence is God, and your presence changes everything.

It's in your name. Lord Jesus, it's by your strength we pray.

All right, so the armor of God, the armor of God, week two.

I was thankful that Sunita was able to read that text from Ephesians that we're really going to be saturated with over these weeks. But Pastor John kicked us off last week, right, with the first piece of armor. And what was it? Anyone remember? Pop quiz, Belt of truth? All right, 10 points in the back. All right, we're going to see who can get the most.

We're going to have a couple quizzes. So last week he kicked it off and asked two questions that I loved. What are we fighting and how do we fight it? What are we fighting? And he talked about how that we're really fighting against the schemes of the devil. And you saw that if you were reading along, listening to that text, the schemes of the devil, which primarily are lies, deception, why does he fight this way? This has been his strategy since the beginning of time because he knows God is much more powerful than him, right? He has no power over God. And so the only he power he has with us as his children is to the extent that we believe his lies or deception. That's why the message in the foundation of truth is so critical for all of these pieces of armor, right? It, it keeps it all together.

I want to tell you a story about a unit. During World War 2 there was a special unit of 11100 soldiers, so 1100 soldiers known as the Ghost Army. They were led by Colonel Harry Reader and they had a unique mission to make the German forces think that they were facing an army of 30,000 people. This team included artists, engineers, fashion designers, designers, some who would go on to become famous, and they executed 22 large scale deceptions across Europe, France, Germany, tricking the Nazi troops into thinking that the Allied forces were somewhere they weren't so that the real operations could take place. They relied on inflatable tanks, fake radio transmissions, sound effects, creating illusions on the battlefield, Deception. This is smart, right? Creative, ingenuitive. It relies on being able to predict people's responses and what people would be afraid of.

This is the exactly how the devil tries to deceive us. The devil is the master of all of those things. His goal is not merely to deceive you into temptation either. I mean, that's a start, but that's pretty much child's play for him because we're all tempted and we all sin. His greater deception is in trying to convince us to believe that our sin still separates from God despite what Jesus has done. The accusation.

He's called the accuser in Scripture for a reason. He wants you to question if God truly loves you, if He truly forgives you. He wants you to live in fear of His judgement instead of the freedom of Christ. This is why the breastplate of righteousness is so key.

That's where we're going today. Because the only thing that can help you battle and defend against these accusations is not your own righteousness, but the righteousness of Jesus. No soldier would think about going into battle without their breastplate because it protects all of the most important parts, right? Think about it. Your heart, your lungs, your stomach. That's a vital organ, right? Do you? I don't know, but to me it seems like a vital organ, but it protects all the most part of your body. So as we talk about this breastplate of righteousness, I really want to hone in the on that word righteousness. And we're going to use another text from Corinthians to look at this word and and figure out this piece of armor. So open your Bibles up. If you don't have a Bible, now would be a time where you could raise your hand.

Our hospitality team could grab you a Bible. We're going to go to 2nd Corinthians 5, 17 through 21. Second Corinthians 5 S open up with me and follow along.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come, the old is gone, the new is here. All this is from God who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them, and He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us.

We implore you on Christ's behalf be reconciled to God. This is the key verse verse 21. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. Lord, as we come before your word, I just pray that you would allow your truth to speak your Holy Spirit to speak to us, to remind us that we would be able to discern the accusation of the devil, that we would be able to hold on to the truth that you've given us this armor, especially your righteousness. In Jesus name, I pray, Amen. Amen. You can keep your Bibles open because we're going to walk through that a little bit here, but this is an incredible passage.

Let's summarize it. It begins with this idea that that you and I, we're new creations. The old is gone. A new one has come, and it needs to be new. Why? Because we're all sinful, right? We are all separated by nature from God through sin, but in Christ, through Christ we're reconciled to God and we're given the opportunity to share that as his ambassadors. Even in our Ephesians text, Paul uses the same word that he's an ambassador. We are ambassadors of this message of reconciliation and because of Christ's righteousness, we can know that we are able to share that in boldness. So let's take apart the word righteousness for a little bit. If you looked in our Ephesians text and this text, same word in the original language, and it carries both a legal and a relational sense to it. Legally, it means that you have an upright standing. You're standing upright, found acceptable. And in a relational sense, it refers to being reconciled like our text says, or in a right relationship, you're good.

There's nothing that that separates you. Biblical righteousness, it emphasizes that you're declared acceptable before God and reconciled in your relationship. Essentially, you whale it down.

It's that you're presentable in the sight of the one who matters most. His opinion of us matters more than anybody else's, right? So this is so important. So how do we get this righteousness? Can we earn this type of righteousness? I see some heads shaking. No, but the devil would like us to think so, right? That's one of his first deceptions. One of his first deceptions is for us to think, Ah, you know what? I'm actually, I'm OK on my own. Maybe I can earn or, or, or get better and stop doing a couple of things and, and then I'll be righteous enough to, to go to heaven, win God's approval. Or maybe it's well, I know I'm not like totally righteous, but God must be OK with a little bit of stuff because in comparison to other people, I'm I'm pretty good self righteousness.

But this is a lie from Satan. Because if you look at all of scripture, if you look at the truth, it's said most succinctly in Romans chapter 3 verse 10, which is quoting the Old Testament. No one is righteous, not even one.

No one is righteous, so self righteousness isn't actually righteousness at all. It's just another form of sin. The reality is we can't earn this breastplate of righteousness by working really hard at our religious experience, by going to church, by reading our Bible, by singing praise to Jesus. We can't earn it because righteousness means perfection. And I can speak for all of us, myself included, we're not perfect. We fail to do what God has called us to. Even if you look in our text in verse 20, we're called to be ambassadors.

And how many times in my life am I thinking about that on a day-to-day waking up? All right, How do I witness? How does God make his appeal through my life? But it's so easy to become wrapped up in other things.

So we are not righteous. We cannot believe that first deception of the devil that we can earn it. So this is where that final verse 21 is so important. We'll take it apart if you want to look at it.

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us. Pause. So here's Jesus. He's on the cross, and what is God doing? He makes him sin, not like Jesus is committing the acts of sin, but legally he's placing him as sin.

God is transferring your liability for sin mine on to Jesus. This is an incredible, incredible thing that our God does, but it doesn't just stop there. What is the final part of that verse? Look down again.

The verse says so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. So your sin is not only transferred on to Jesus, Jesus righteousness, his perfect life that he lived is transferred onto you.

Now there's a simple story that I saw my dad share on the mission field my whole life. I, I told the young adults who were excited to take to Mexico that I heard this story a lot growing up and I was able to go to Haiti when I was nine years old, which was a eye opening experience. But when you go on the mission field, language is kind of sometimes an issue. Translation, you don't really know. So a simple story, a simple picture about the crux of the gospel, which this verse is, is important.

So I want to share that story with you, but I, I, I need a couple of volunteers and I know I've got Cole right here who I'm going to bring up. And Kyle, you're sitting right there with them. So I'm just going to your friends in real life. So we're going to do this.

We're going to see how it goes. So this is the story. So imagine. So my dad is telling this story. I'm watching him for the first time when I'm nine. Thank you, Cole, come up right here. And then Kyle on the other side of me here and he tells me then when I'm 12 and I go back. All right, Brandon, you tell it, you give the picture, you share the gospel and this is what it is.

Two brothers. They were like brothers. They grew up in a small community. They loved each other, did everything together, went to school, every extracurricular, played football together. But at college, they went off to different, different paths. All right, Kyle went off and he he became a a legal student in some of the best schools. He studied hard and he became ultimately a judge.

Cole's path looked different. He started hanging around the wrong crowd, got wrapped into some illegal activities and ended up with a charge that could have put him in life in prison. Life in prison. This is what his actions have done. And so as as God would only have it he's in, he's in handcuffs.

Let's act this out. You're a theater student, Cole. All right, So you can do this. So he's in handcuffs and he walks up to his friend.

He knows he's guilty, his friend, the judge knows he's guilty.

But he puts his gavel down. He takes off his robe. He walks down and he takes the handcuffs off, puts them on himself, says I'm going to take the action to take the punishment for what you deserve.

I'm going to take the prison sentence. And everything I have, my house, my home, everything I have, it's yours now.

You can take it. Can we? Thank these guys for coming up, doing this picture with me standing there looking great.

Appreciate it. So you can take that story for what it is, right? Just a little picture, a little object lesson, usually with the boys, you know, I'll pick some people who are friends and we'll do a little teasing. But this is what Christ has done on the cross, given us his righteousness, taken away our sin.

This is what it means to have what in theology terms is known as imputed righteousness. Imputed righteousness. It's a just a complicated term for what we just explained. But this is where if you recognize that you need Christ's righteousness, the first deception is is outright. You know you can't, you know you can't earn it.

You know you need something to to wipe the slate clean. You know you need Christ's righteousness, the gift of a new life. But here's where this this devil's next deception gets a little bit more sophisticated, but just as insidious because here's what he wants to do.

When Christ offers us his righteousness, he wants to say that it's depending on what you do or how much you still sin that you risk taking off that breastplate and being under God's judgement. And this is, this is really tricky because so many churches sadly confuse the truth of Scripture on this. And that's where the devil wants to step in. When we think that our primary source of being saved, our primary assurance of being saved is in our actions of righteousness. Once we know Christ, then what happens when we act a certain way in the week? What is this? What does the devil want to do? He wants to come in with that accusing voice.

Have you ever heard that voice that says something like maybe, maybe you're really not forgiven? Maybe you're not actually still saved if you keep thinking that, if you keep doing that, if you keep loving that more than you love God, maybe God's had enough of you.

Or maybe the voice says something like, well, maybe you're you're saved, but just barely. Just barely. And there's no place that you have for entering into a battle, for standing up against me.

You have no place in this battle because of how you act. You should just hide. God doesn't really want to see you. Just hide.

The accuser uses everything he knows church about humanity to try to keep us from entering the battle. As Pastor John was preaching last week and he was talking about how do we fight and what this reality of of what we're up against is because we have a victorious God. I was thinking how many of us are deceived into hiding just like that Ghost Army redirected the Nazi troops because they were afraid of 1100 men.

They shouldn't have been afraid of it, but they were deceived. So instead of standing in confidence, as Ephesians 6 calls us to, knowing that our breastplate of righteousness is protecting us, we fall into the lie that we have to keep earning the right to have this breastplate on.

Christ has earned it for us. Amen. But the devil hates the gospel. He hates this truth.

He hates the reality of imputed righteousness. He wants you to think you have to earn it. He wants to be able to accuse you and have you punishing yourself, beating yourself up over not being able to live up to the standards. He wants to keep you on the hook for your sin.

His voice will always say here's your sin so you need to leave God. He doesn't want to see you, but the Holy Spirit will always point to who you are in Christ and say yes, you've sinned.

But you have a God who's already covered over that and he wants to see you. He wants to see you. This understanding, this really key understanding about Christ's righteousness is a huge part of of in our church, the Lutheran tradition, a huge part of the reformer Martin Luther's transition from the Catholic Church, the Catholicism of his day, into a return to what Scripture teaches about Christ's righteousness. Because the church in his day taught that Jesus death and his resurrection, Yeah, it was it was enough to save you, but but you were never really righteous. In fact, you had to confess every single sin by name in order to be forgiven and then do works of penance on top of that to try to make it up. But you really never made it up because you ended up in purgatory for hundreds of years. All right, That was the theology of his day. And there's still remnants of that to this day.

So you never truly were righteous. And if you died in sin without repenting, there really wasn't any assurance that you could be saved. And in certain cases, they believed you were condemned.

So what does he do when he's a priest in the town and we're about to watch a clip from the movie, and he faces somebody who's taken their own life? And the church's response in his day was separated from God sin that you couldn't have repented of. So I'm going to show you in just a few seconds here, a clip from the 2003 Luther movie. And if you haven't watched it, pastor's giving you homework this week. OK, go and watch it.

It's two hours. It's PG13, so make sure it's appropriate for kids. But it's a great movie. And we're going to see one of the highlights.

Let's take a look. Now I know your handiwork. You and your stinking lies, shame, shaming her mother, telling her to hide her broken child, telling a boy to kill himself on a Marty.

The boy is damned. I'm not allowed to do this. The others won't rest with him in here. This is holy ground.

He's a suicide. Tell also to bring his son. Tell him. Some people say that according to God's justice, this boy is damned because he took his life. I say it was overcrowding by the devil.

Is this child anymore to blame for the despair that overtook him and the innocent man who was murdered by a robber in the woods? God must be mercy.

God is mercy, he is yours safely to absorb our begaters choice invent me backwards and feel that spirit has sank the.

Terrible, unforgiving. That's how I saw God. Punishing us in this life, committing us to purgatory after death, sentencing sinners to burn in hell for all eternity. But I was wrong.

Those who see God is angry do not see him rightly, but look upon a curtain as if a dark storm cloud has been drawn across his face.

If we truly believe that Christ is our Saviour, then we have a God of love, and to see God in faith is to look upon his friendly heart.

So when the devil throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this. I admit that I deserve death and hell. What all for? I know one who suffered and made satisfaction in my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, where he is, there I shall be also.

Wow. If you don't have goosebumps after that, I don't know. You may need to just see the whole movie. But I've watched that scene dozens of times and the impact that those words have for us as believers. This is what it means to have the breastplate of righteousness in place, that when the devil throws your sins in your face, you say I have one who suffered on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, and where I will be, where he is, I shall be also. That's what it means, church, because we did have a God who suffered, took on the cross for you, who was willing to do more than what we saw in this image of somebody taking a life sentence, but he took the death sentence. But he didn't stay dead, did he? He rose to eternal life to remind us that we will have that life. And so now we don't have to work to try to achieve that. We don't have to work for our righteousness, we work from it.

We're ambassadors because we're already righteous. We don't have to obey God to be loved. We obey God because we're loved. Our identity is secured in our baptism, our identity of being a new creation. Yes, the old still comes up every once in a while, but God sees us as his Son, clothed in Christ because of our baptism, where God committed to us that I am always with you, I will never leave you or forsake you.

That's what our baptism means that we can hold on to. Even in our 2nd Corinthians 5 texts, it it talks about baptism right before what we read.

So recognizing this reality church, recognizing the reality of what the breastplate of righteousness means for us is how we fight. What are we fighting against right from last week and how do we fight? We fight by looking at who we are.

Now I want to read the end of that Ephesians text one more time. It says stand firm in verse 14 with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all of this, take up the shield of faith, which with you can extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of the salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

This is the truth of what we've been given. The benefits of the gospel are the armor of God never leaves us. We recognize that. Yes, we live in a confused world, but we know the author of truth and the author of this world. Yes, we live in the reality of an old self that continues to fight with sin, but we are a new creation and we've been given the righteousness of Christ. Yes, we live in a world that there's war. That there's violence nation against nation, people against people, a war for our souls. But we have a God who's brought peace, peace for our hearts and is bringing peace ultimately in this world.

Yes, we have things that we can't answer, doubts, mysteries that we can't explain, but we have a God who's given us faith to trust that we have eternity secured with him.

He's given us salvation and the faith to believe in that. And finally, what do we have? The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, to go out and proclaim as his ambassadors that we have a God who's won the victory and He's given us His armor to serve, to be in a part of this battle, not as defense, but His offense. Church, I think we forget this so much. When Jesus said that He was establishing His church, what did He say? Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not stand against it. Church, we're on offense.

We're going out into the world proclaiming the victory of Christ as His ambassadors. We need the armor, yes, because the devil still can throw his darts, but we're secured in Christ. We have the victory.

And so we have been given tangible reminders we're going to lead into our time of communion, but we've been given tangible reminders of that victory, of the reality that Christ is present with us and that he's coming again.

This is where we we remember he's coming again. But for so long Church, you know, I, I took communion and honestly, I didn't quite understand the importance of it.

I mean, for a while in my life, I, I came to this altar thinking that the sin I had with me that week, I needed to bring it here and be forgiven or else that's sin still stayed with me.

And then I, I was introduced really to the, the doctrine of imputed righteousness that we've talked about. And I thought, well, how does that make sense? If I'm righteous because Christ is on me, then what's, what's going on here? Why do why do we need this meal? And we have a God who has given us so many reminders of what he's done.

This meal is not magic. It's not a a fresh batch of forgiveness because you aren't forgiven church. It's a tangible reminder where Christ says that I'm coming to you in my body and blood through these means of bread and wine. And I'm reminding you of what I did here on the cross where the sins of the whole word world were covered. But this is where we receive it tangibly by faith. We come to this altar together and say we're forgiven, not in a solemn and and and way that it's all I'm I'm way down to this table, but we're standing in confidence like Ephesians calls us to standing saying thank you, Lord, for your gift. Thank you for being with me, Thank you for forgiving me.

This is what we're doing at this meal church. And so why do we confess our sins before this meal? We're going to confess our sins. We confess our sins not because they need to be forgiven over, but because we want to stop living in them.

Amen. We don't want to live in the sin that we chose this week. We've been given the Holy Spirit and we bring that to God, not because he doesn't know it, not because he hasn't forgiven you, but because he wants to see you grow in standing firm.

So bow your heads with me and we're going to confess before our Savior. Heavenly Father, thank you for giving us your armor, the armor of God that reminds us that we are your children. We're covered by your blood, Jesus.

So as we come before this meal, we thank you God, thank you for coming to us. Thank you for the promises of forgiveness.

Lord, I pray that any sin that that we've had in our heart this week, Lord, if if it's fear, if it's worry if it's looking to the next week and just saying I not having hope, Lord, that you would allow us to give that to you put in a new spirit in US.

Help us to live is the new creation that you have made us to be. So we bring our sin before you right now.

Hey, good morning everyone. Come on now. My Bible is open to Ephesians chapter 6. This is really these verses will serve as kind of the scriptures throughout this whole new theme, the theme of armor of God that we're going to. OK, if you need a Bible, we've got Bibles in the back.

This is the sword of the Spirit. This is the word of God that you need. So if you don't have 1:00, grab one. If you have your phone, open it up. And I just want to encourage you. Yeah, it's going to be on the screen, but you might want to make markings in yours too. When you start, just the Spirit of God speaks to you. Kind of, it's kind of our goal that God would speak to you. Because here's the deal.

If you, you say, if you said yes to God, you're confessing him with your mouth as we did in that creed that Jesus is your Lord, that you're a believer just here.

Here's the IT could be good news or bad news. I believe it's good news. You've been enlisted into the army of God. OK, and what we're going to talk about is there's a spiritual battle that we're all fighting, and to win the spiritual battle, you need a spiritual armor.

And we don't want to be ignorant about what that is. So let's read about it. And I'm kind of given the intro, and though I'm Speaking of the belt of truth, the whole message is truth, OK? And there's just some references as we'll get to it towards the end, but let's go there. So this is Paul's letter to the Ephesians.

He's told us who we are. He's told us we're we're in the heavenlies and we're placed there in our position in Christ. We were dead in our sins, but now we're made alive and now we can walk in that love. And that's kind of where he's gone. So we've talked about the wealth, the walk, and now the warfare of a Christian. And he says, 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 that shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace, And in all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil. 1 And take the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit with all prayer and supplication. To this end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the Saints.

I don't know if it stops there, but hey, I'll give you 2 more verses, just, you know, for the price that you paid to get in here today, because it goes like this. Then it says, and also for me, that words may be given to me, opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel. Because now we find out where Paul is at when he's writing, which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare boldly as I ought to speak.

This prayer is specific, but it's for a reason. Let me pray in Jesus name. Lord, we pray right now that Your hedge of protection will be upon all of us, upon our minds, upon our hearts, upon our bodies.

Lord, whether it be mental, physical, emotional, that Your Holy Spirit would be here to protect us. Lord, where there is deception, where there are lies that we believe, we pray that You would breakthrough that and that You would teach us truth.

And Lord, that we would indeed, even as we hear this word, we are fastening on the belt of truth on which we know even hear through your word and through your voice.

So evil 1, you must leave this place, any of your minions, you must leave this place so that we would experience the peace of God even now that he shares truth in US, in Jesus, we pray, Amen.

You know, last Christmas Eve was kind of weird. I'm just going to tell you this, Andy and I, we over all the years I've been here, we've had these kind of experiences. And a lot of you, you didn't know it all, but if you were here on Christmas Eve, we know that there's going to be a lot of people that flow into this place, OK? Probably almost a couple thousand, OK? We know there's going to be a lot of consumer Christians who come maybe at Christmas maybe, or Easter and they haven't learned to make any commitment or they haven't contributed much.

That's just where they're at. We know that, OK, we know there are others who are just they're sleepers. We talked about that last week. They're they don't have faith, but they're going to come into this place because someone invited them or they're a family member.

It's an awesome. So we know there's going to be a spiritual battle that's going to go on. There's going to be many battles that are going to happen that night, because I, I was giving the, the message as brief as it was. We watched part of the shows, the chosen, if you remember that, and we, we decided that we were going to kick off. We had the the, the strings. It was gorgeous. We decide we're going to kick it off with a pre service of Sarajevo by trans-siberian orchestra.

Some of you might remember that. Three of us playing electric guitars, numerous hours of practice and there were a lot of dynamics and specifics in that song. That's all I'll tell you. So we show up two hours.

We've already practiced numerous times and I was playing the lead on that guitar part. If you know anything, those are those are difficult leads and everything was going great until it wasn't right before the service. I mean the first service, I'm not kidding you. All of a sudden, what we discovered that half of the system the speakers blew out there just quit.

Just quit. Like the power supply was no longer supplying. Yeah, like just a few minutes before the iPad that kind of has a click track that keeps us all on the same page and together.

That's kind of like helping us to know. Just went out and had to be reset, which means all the volumes had to be reset, which means my ears were. Oh, my ears.

They went out too. So I had no earbuds. Just right before the service. Right before the service and I and I got one just one side working. So it was incredibly awkward doing all this hearing all this in one side while I'm, you know, trying to play and hear and follow.

And while all this is happening, my Apple Watch, which praise God for these Apple Watches sometimes, but it told me that my heart rate was dangerously high twice.

I have never seen it in all the years I've worn these things. It said twice that your heart rate has been over 120 for for over 10 minutes. It's like, you know, red flag, red flag, you know, you know, warning, warning, right.

Twice it did that because everything's just like what is happening here. And the thought I had right before the service because I've had this experience a number of times. And and Andy and Ben will tell you that we've had these. I just said, whoa, this is going to be a powerful service because there's a lot of interference happening right now for some reason.

And that service was a powerful service. That first service is like, we're standing up here and feeling like God's presence. It's like, whoa, what was that? Because sometimes that's what happens with us, even up here, that God was breaking in and the devil was hating it. The devil was hating it.

So I want to deal with this topic, OK, And just ask the question, what do you know about the spiritual battle? And I realize there are lots of assumptions I'm going into this with. I I know that, OK, most of America still believes in God and percentage wise, they say whatever God that is, they believe even in devil a lot less and less. OK, but what do we know about the spiritual battle that's waged in in the scripture says here in the heavenlies and some translations say in the spirit world? OK, what do you know really about the devil? What do you know about demons? OK, and what do you know about how to defend yourself? So I'm answering two questions today.

And the two questions are kind of simple, like what are you fighting and how do you fight in order to win? OK, so that's where we're going. So let's just go there from this text. I want to ask the question, what are we fighting? What are we fighting? So if you go to verse 12, it says basically this way. It says for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers, over the present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the spirit realm or in the heavenly places. It says, OK, So what are we fighting? The word there is wrestle. By the way, the term wrestle there is the only time it's found in Scripture. It's the only time that the apostle Paul uses it and it's commonly used to describe wrestling and it's not so it's it's you think he might be changing metaphors from this armor of God now to wrestling. But what he's saying that in the battle you're going to have hand to hand, arm to arm, body to body contact.

And that's wrestling within the battle that is going to happen. And and Paul doesn't mean now he said, well, what are we fighting? He doesn't mean that we wrestle with that.

We don't wrestle against any flesh and blood versions of evil. That's not what he's saying. Sometimes you and I both know that evil has skin on it. Right. It just does.

Paul's writing from prison. Think about it. He's been flogged, he's been stoned.

He is certainly opposing flesh and blood. OK, evil. But what he's saying is that we wrestle not only with flesh and blood evil, but when evil takes on flesh and blood form. We know that there's wars, we know that there's horrific violence, there's greed, there's racism, there's crime, there's poverty, there's abuse of all kinds. And what he is saying, though, is that when you see flesh and blood evil, there's something else happening.

There's something else behind the scenes that isn't natural. It's in the spirit realm and it's it's influencing the evil that we see.

You know, if I were in Africa or other global S parts of the world, they would have no problem dealing with this and realizing the spirit world is very real and it affects them. In America, we tend to have an excluded middle where we said, ah, yeah, that's up there.

That's in the movies. But we're down here and we don't have that. Where's the growth in the Christian Church happening today? It's not in America. It's in those worlds where they understand the spiritual battle, OK, where there's no excluded middle. But when someone is hearing voices and they're committing horrific murders, abusing a child or adult in any way, there's a good chance it could be fueled by something which is supernatural that you can't see. And over the years, even when my first call to Fresno, the fireman, I remember he was our organist and he would tell us his experiences of evil going into homes.

And, and I could tell you my experiences too, and maybe you could as well. But you sense it, you know, that it was in 1521 that Martin Luther, he was excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church. And for his own protection, he was put in Warburg Castle in Germany. And we got pictures of this.

OK. And as you see those pictures, you got it right, Sandy. There you go, visitors. Basically, you can go there and, and, and what they will tell you is there's a wall with an ink stain on it, OK. And supposedly that ink stain was spattered there. It was by Martin Luther, who is reputed to throwing that inkwell at the devil because he so vividly experienced, he said, the presence of evil.

And from what I read, he was in the midst of translating the Bible into German so that even the peasants could read it. So he was in this spiritual battle. Of course, of course, the scientists and others have made excuses of what he really saw in his childhood and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, taking away anything spiritual, right? But Martin Luther said, no, no, no, this was the real presence of evil, and he came upon it.

So he asked the question, what does this evil look like? Well, if you read it, it's very clear here he just gives us a description. He says, he says against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers, this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. If there's one thing we can say that the this evil is organized, it's organized and there's there's quite a bit of speculation about what these terms even mean. For instance, some say the rulers are demons who have oversight over nations corresponds to the rank of generals. Authorities could be privates who are demons wanting to influence and demonize human beings. Or powers of this Dark World could refer to the the the the the evil over Satan's business.

OK what he does in the world. This may refer to also high-ranking fallen angels. Again speculation because we have these high-ranking angels mentioned in Daniel chapter 10 as Princess of Persia and Greece or the spiritual forces of evil.

This wickedness in the heavenly places could be basically demon armies of Satan. The whole point is though, that is that Satan, he has a very well organized group manipulating the world right now. He's called the God of this world.

He's called the Prince of the power of the air. And this is after Christ's death and resurrection because he's been tossed out and his time is short. We know this. But notice as you read those designations, here's something maybe you didn't think about.

None of these designations are actually the devil himself. They're actually methods or the ways he gets to us through his minions. OK, so all of us, we would be really wise to know what the devil is, the qualities of him, that he is a real entity, and how the Bible describes him.

Because in this case, ignorance is not bliss. OK, not bliss, because not only is the devil evil, but he uses schemes. The word for methods there means he has tactics, OK, that he uses. So he's wily, he's subtle, he's devious, he's deceiving.

He can. He can make things look attractive and desirable to destroy, distort the truth, camouflage evil. Ordinary demonic work entices us to potentially sexual sin, unforgiveness, bitterness, foolishness, drunkenness, idle gossiping, lying, attacking our identity through false and condemning thoughts, lies, demonic dreams, night terrors, idolatry.

Extraordinary demonic would be things like torment, physical injury, counterfeit miracles, death, interaction with demons.

You're interacting with them. Talking the devil's name though in this text gives us a bit more indication what he is. OK so in verse 11 he says that you may be able to take your stand against the schemes of the what? Yeah.

Anyone looking devil. The word there is diabolos from we get the word diabolic, right, actually. So diabolis is the noun form of of there's also a verb. So he he's diabolically, he he speaks diabolically. Basically what it means is he's a liar.

He slanders, he slanders. So the, the main way that that the devil works is he lies. OK? So it means he's a liar.

He's a slander. There's an author and Christian counselor by the name of John White who who wrote a book years ago. And he kind of described how the devil works. And he said it this way. He says you take a piano and you open up the top and you sing a note into it, and whatever string your voice is attuned to, that particular string will vibrate.

It's the string that's attuned to your voice. He says you haven't even touched it. You haven't touched the key, and yet it's vibrating to your voice.

So he says, that's what the devil does, right? That's what the devil does. The devil cannot make necessarily a good person bad, but the devil can make a flawed person worse. The devil plays on what's already in you, so he can aggravate what's already in you through lies. I've often just said he turns up the volume in those areas you struggle with those areas, which I would call your signature sins. Do you know what areas are your signature sins? Those areas that you struggle with specifically? Because we all have them. OK, we'd be good to know that. That's why, for example, in Ephesians 4, Paul says, don't let the sun go down on your anger. Don't give the devil a foothold, right? So if you're an angry person, you know the devil can use that to build a foothold, a stronghold in your life. So if you're bitter, that gives him the ability to aggravate you, to press you, to push you.

You're giving him a foothold. So there's really 2 methods, though this is like the most important part. So if you're tired and you're sleeping right now, maybe you just need to.

This is the time to wake up because this is probably the most important thing to hear. How does the devil actually work in our lives? The answer is two things. Through temptation. An accusation, temptation and accusation. And both of these methods of attack are aimed at leading believers away from God, but they actually function differently. So temptation, that's when the devil entices or lures people, right? James 118 says that when we are tempted, we are lured or enticed by our own desire. Oh, there, there's the note, right? So that the devil is there to match the desire, weakness, or even pride. So to give into temptation is to play God, to think you know better than God, to doubt God's goodness, his protection, and his promises. So ultimately, when you give into temptation, you're saying I know better.

I know better than God. For instance, in the Garden of Eden, you know the devil didn't possess Adam or Eve, right? Or we would say demonize.

I don't believe the word possess is actually in Scripture. It's demonized To what degree? What did he do? He just lied to them.

He lied to them. He uses the same method. He tried the same thing with Jesus in the wilderness.

He tried to deceive, but Jesus didn't go for it, right? He didn't even have a conversation.

Jesus just quoted Scripture. So let's say though you do give in to temptation, you rebel against God, you rebel, you sin and you, you take the bait.

Now the devil uses this. What he would, I would say is accusation to convince you of how miserable you should be because what you've done, because now you didn't just fail.

Here's the next step. You now or a failure and that becomes your identity because he's attacking who you are. And I would say as believers, he's attacking who we are in Christ and even right here at our baptism, which we have one at the second service.

That we're in Christ. So accusation is when the devil, he begins to condemn to shame, to remind us of our sins, making us feel totally unworthy of any of God's God's, God's grace and forgiveness.

He brings up the sins even though we've already we've asked for God's forgiveness. So temptation leads us into sin. But God's answer for sinning is what Sam spoke about it last Wednesday. It's confession, it's being honest, it's repentance, it's coming to freedom.

And conviction is not meant to last long. You give it to God and you release it because he took it upon himself, Jesus on a cross, and he forgives us. And that's the freedom we have. And we will live better when we live from that freedom and not for it because we've been given to it by Jesus. God gave it to us through Jesus, right? So God's answer is conviction where He is guiding us into all truth.

That's what the Holy Spirit is doing. OK, Accusation is when you've confessed it. And some of right now listen to what I'm saying.

A lot of you are so guilty of this right now. You keep giving into the accusation, you still have the same like I'm this, I'm that, I'm that. That's accusation, that's not conviction, that's not from God. Can I just tell you that? And you just tell the evil and be gone in Jesus name. I'm a child of God, I'm forgiven, I'm loved, Jesus died for me. So Satan's first attempt with people is to get them to sin, and then he accuses them after that sin, hoping to lead them to utter despair.

But God's grace and victory wins over both of those. That's what we learn. So we would do well to know of these schemes. OK, so would you. So the question is now how do we fight? How do we fight? Well in verse 10, we we, we see finally he says, be strong in the Lord in the strength of his might be strong in the Lord in the strength of his might.

And then he says, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devils. Did you see the two things? The first thing is to be strong in the Lord and the strength of his might. And the second thing is to put on the full armor of God.

Down a few verses you'll see it even says even take up the armor of God. OK, so be strong in the Lord. So one implies that you live humbly enough that you admit that you're not God and that your strength is in him. And the second one says that you can be confident enough because of what Jesus has done for you and given you a new identity in Christ.

So be strong in the Lord in the strength of his might, but but be strong what in the in the Lord. So what is that? Well, let me just tell you that is not praise the Father, praise the Son. No, it's not the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit.

This is Jesus. This is Jesus. OK. Did we in our own strength confide our striving would be losing? Luther wrote. We're not the right man on our side, the man of God's own choosing. Just to ask, who may this be the answer? Christ Jesus, It is he.

Yeah. So the contrast here is between really a human power and divine power. The contrast throughout this text is really between satanic power and the power of Christ, which is where your power is. So what he's really saying is, don't fight Satan like fire with fire, OK? Don't you dare try to be as strong as Satan is strong, but be strong in Christ's strength.

But Christ's strength is utterly different than the devil's strength. We know this. Satan's strength is direct. Satan says I want power, I want control, and I want you to be in control.

But Jesus strength is weak. It's a weak strength. He wins by losing.

He triumphs by serving. He broke the power of sin on a cross by forgiving, not by getting revenge. And he's the only God is who is weak, but yet utterly strong. Because in every other religion, basically it says I'm strong.

You be strong like me. God says their God right now, this is what you need to do. This is the moral code you need to follow. And God says, no, you're weak. If I give you the moral code, you're just going to fall flat. It doesn't work and you'll just choke them out.

You'll never be able to do it. So he says be strong in the Lord. And it's like repetitive and then the strength of his might, but that's just part of the victory. Then he says, put on the full armor of God. And that's where we're going in this series, right? And so Paul likes these words put on, put off, put on, put off. For instance, in chapter 4 of Ephesians, he says put off the old self and put on the new self created in likeness, in true righteousness, in holiness, or any when you're baptized, he says you're putting on Christ, putting on Christ.

So then he comes to this armor and he says, now put on the armor, put it on. What is that right? What does it mean to put on the armor of Christ? Here's what we're going to discover, that the armor is really a symbol of the benefits and privileges of the gospel. It's the application of them.

Yeah. So to put on means to take take the privileges of the gospel, the benefits of the gospel, and to begin to use them in your life to create a new disposition, a new habitual way of thinking about yourself and even the people around you, because we're not accustomed to thinking this way. It's different kinds of thinking, just as it is different kinds of serving.

Just that is is. It is different kinds of fighting. As we fighting the weakness that we have, but in the strength of Christ, Paul said even in Romans 6 that when you have this, you're dead to sin and now you're alive to Christ.

Now live with that liveness in Christ. Right. And what he's saying in this armor, he's saying, hey now, do you need hope? Yeah, you do.

That's part of the armor. Do you need. Do you need truth? Yes, you do.

That's part of the armor. Do you need peace? Yeah, you need that too. Do you need something to guide your life like the Word? Yeah, that's part of the armor, too. See, this is he goes on in this list. And then he says, now put on the belt of truth. Stand there for having fastened or put it on the belt of truth. In other words, again, this is a metaphor.

He says you put on your armor as if you're a soldier and you're going into battle. And I got a picture of a soldier, a Roman soldier, right? And they've got the belt. Come on, let's look at it right now. There you go.

That opening buffer was impressive, but not necessarily accurate. OK, this is kind of what looks at and see. So you see this like skirt underneath. You've got that and you've got, you've got this belt. And basically what happens is you put this belt on and it, it brings up I, I, I hate, I don't know the word, but it's, it's like a skirt. In other words, now you can run. Now you have ability to, to, to move, right? But it also, it hooks on the sword.

OK. So it's like things are in place. So when a soldier tightens his belt, he's ready for combat because in the process of tightening, he would drew up his to an extension in so that he, it would not impede or be, you know, as he charged into battle.

It's kind of like a football player putting all, all the garb on, right, with the pads. You know, I used to do that in high school. It's like, man, I'm feeling tough now, right? I go anything that's kind of where it is. So it's held everything in place, this belt. But this is called the Belt of Truth. So truth holds the spiritual armor in place as safeguards against deadly, we would say, entanglements. You say, well, what truth is he referring to? He's ultimately referring to biblical truth. I believe Jesus would proclaim you will know the truth.

The truth will set you free. Jesus would say sanctify them by your truth or make them holy because your word is true. Paul would say in Ephesians 421 that the truth, it's in Jesus, it's in Jesus. So there's this objective spiritual truth in Jesus and scriptures. It's the truth about God, ourselves, history, the future.

So we're going to be better off when we have that truth. And we've we've often said, because most of us have images about how the devil is defeated and a lot of our images about demonic come from where? Hello.

Movies, TV, you know, heads turning. That was another generation. It was even before Sam's time, You know, total nightmares, the whole thing.

I won't go there. There's some Saint Louis connection there. Won't go there. That that's a focus on power, but Jesus focuses on truth. So you say when you come up against what the the evil 1 is doing, it's a truth encounter, not the power encounter is a truth encounter because it's the truth that sets us free and it removes the deception.

It comes up against the lies. So the belt of truth comes up against those lies in temptation. That's why it's so important that you might just simply ask, is that true? When you have these arrows of thoughts that come to your mind, is that true? And you realize, no, This is why I'm reading, this is so important. No, God, no, that's not true.

That's not who I am. So the battle we have is for truth. And that's really the first step.

That's the belt of truth. That's why it's so it's so important that we are in this truth and we are asking what is true because we know Jesus is the way, the truth. And by the way, we can go into any battle. We know you need a leader, Amen. You need a leader. So that'd be a final thing is who's your leader, right? Who's going to lead you into this battle? And, and we know that Trajan, he was a great Roman captain when he was in the field of battle, he would take his armor off and he would put it on his wounded men.

He would take his armor off and put it on his wounded man. Like in other words, he would tear off part of his garment and use it as bandages. But think about that. That's nothing compared to Jesus, who on the cross, the Bible says he's disarmed all the principalities and the powers, overthrowing them, ruling over them.

And he allowed himself to be torn to deal with our wounds. He became wounded, and he took the spear that was meant for us into his own heart so that our debts could be paid so we can put on the full armor of God, which ultimately, I do believe is Jesus. So why don't you stand with me and let's close? Father in heaven, if we in our own strength confide, forgive us, because in the Lord we know that in our striving we've lost.

Lord, we need to write man on our side, the man you sent, the man of your own choosing. We need Christ Jesus. It is he.

Lord Sabiath is his name from age to age the same. He has won the battle and Lord we're praying for that victory even today. Whether it be a lie that we have believed in, given into his slander, or just plate ignorant.

Lord, we we pray that we would not go overboard with any focus on the devil, but boy, we would be balanced to realize that it's you we trust in we love and we ask Lord now just fill us again with the presence of your spirit to leave this place from the victory we have experienced in know from the cross so that we can live in that victory in Jesus we pray, Amen.

All right, Hey, good morning. Hey, if you're watching online, I want to say good morning too.

I am Pastor John. And let me just tell you, my Bible is open to Matthew Chapter 9. Matthew Chapter 9. If you need a Bible, I see folks in the back.

Our hospitality would love to give you one. Just raise your hand, as we always say, if you don't have one at home, where have you been? We, we offer them for free if you don't have one. So grab one, take one, take it home if you need it. And that is a blessing from faith as well. So let me just kind of, you know, I actually did the, the first theme of this series and we've, we've called it, It's really a journey, right? It's been a journey that we're on and five themes. And it's not just a journey, but it's a challenge. So red letter challenges to look at the red letters, that means Jesus is speaking them. And what would it look like if we actually would apply them, actually would believe and by faith that Jesus wants us to actually do this. So we first of all, we talked about being, that's our identity, right? And do you know who you are? Or as I give my girls and my granddaughter a hard time, remember who every time they got, remember who you are, whose you are and who you represent. And then they say, oh, come on, Dad, you know, or come on, Papa, you know.

But I mean, that's identity. From there, we went on to what? We went on to forgiving.

I really believe that's part of our identity too, that we're forgiving people. From there we went to serving that we're called to serve again, we're servers because if we have Jesus, that's what we do. And from there we went to giving. And that's a fun message, right? Pastor Matt shared that that's a tough one, right? And we even chat. If you want to do the 1010 challenge, we said you could do that.

Faith will just give you the money if God doesn't bless you in a way that you know you since he's with you and that he's real for you. But today is also it's it's a challenge. It's about going what does it mean to go? And it was really tough to know what verses not to use and to use. So what I thought was we need to go to Jesus words in Matthew Chapter 9, where there's so many things involved here and here it says and Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages. Verse 35, Verse 35. Teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the Kingdom, and healing every disease and every affliction. And when he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. And then he said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers, the workers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.

This is God's word. So God, we ask you to come just speak to us in Jesus we pray. Amen.

All right, I've had a little time to think about this one. I'm just going to ask the question. I asked it in a little video we sent out here.

Just what are you excited about these days? I mean, what, what excites you? And by the way, if you're thinking nothing, you're probably depressed. OK, but what are you excited about? What if, what if you're in the sense, by the way, I just was talking to one of the reps out there for one of the ministries and they are excited about what God is doing in Africa. And you can just, I mean, they just come alive talking about it. If you were talking to a Co worker, a family member, a friend, a neighbor, and you started talking about this thing, they would say, wow, I could just see you come to life when you're talking about that.

That's kind of how I like to be when I'm up here because I want to talk about this, about God's word. But let me tell you some things I'm excited about. Can I do that? OK, this is a good week for my family.

Take a look on the screens. We have a new baby, a little granddaughter, right? Oh, is she cute or what? This is, This is little Ruth Rosalie to our daughter Hannah.

I was there for a couple days and they're all sleep depraved there. OK, I'm just telling you, the longer I stayed there, it was just like, I need to go back and get some sleep. And there you go. She is just a cutie, cutie, cutie. So the Lord has been so gracious to give me four daughters and now three granddaughters, right? We, we are so blessed sometimes want to say, Lord, what did I do? But it's good. So let me just tell you this though, Julie and I are excited about the next chapter of our lives as we look to the fall and we looked at some of the transition. Do you know that pastor, I'm excited.

He's on staff now officially as of March 1st yesterday. So I'm excited about the fact that on March 30th, it's a Sunday at 4:00, we're going to have an installation for him and invite other churches and pastors. So that's the first time we've actually probably mentioned that. So that's coming. OK, I'm excited about that. I'm excited though, about dreaming of things that Julie and I can actually do on some weekends on occasion, right, versus work all the time on weekends. And one of the things that we like to do is camp, OK, people say, well, what are you going to do? Well, one thing we're going to do more of is we're going to we're going to take a trailer and we're going to camp and we're to travel and do some of that stuff that by the way, for us, we were like, this will be third generation new camper for us.

OK. And and some of you, I don't judge me. You're already judging me, All right. And like, are you kidding me? You're still camping in your 60s. It's like, yes, we are. Julie and I, we both grew up big families.

We camped in about 15 years ago. We kind of went back. Probably farther, but we actually bought a trailer where we could be inside, not in a tent and we just love it.

And so we're looking forward to the future and and we have found, you know, that that we just we just love to have the freedom to be able to do that and potentially even boondock, which means you don't plug in. And so we picked out a new trailer. So I'm going to tell you the trailer. OK, This is an escape.

I have done my homework. I have studied. Do do you have it? There you go. I have studied and we're going to live the life. And that's right from John 10 verse 10.

We're going to have that on the side. We can design this. It's so cool. I can probably be a salesman for this company. OK. And if you need a trailer, I can tell you how to choose them, what to look for in terms of quality, resale value, all kinds of things. But we went with the escape.

It's made and actually we're going to go across the country to pick this baby up. It's going to be fun and Julie loves it because she was able to do a lot of the design, even inside colors, right? You can put your own logo there on the side and lots of things you can do.

We're just excited about that. OK, We just are. But here's what I'm excited about. It turns out when you shop for this trailer and then you put down your percentage, now you're invited into a community and they want you to connect and you can go on Facebook group, you can go onto a forum and you can start talking to all these folks who have something in common with you.

They have an escaped trailer and so you get support. It's pretty awesome. Like problems, issues, right? It gets better than that. You can also have meet ups and they have places around the country where you can get into a community with people who are like minded, who like to camp right trailer and and and, and so people get excited about that, but it goes beyond that. The awesome they want you to be an ambassador.

They want you to be an ambassador for them. In other words, you actually move away from just being a consumer of the product to a contributor. And it even gets better than that.

There's rewards if you do so. So if you're not thinking of this already, Pastor John, I didn't come here to hear about trailers or babies. I know, I know. But I did ask you, what are you excited about? What are you excited about? Because as I get into this topic, I'm not smiling because everything is telling us we're not very excited about this.

We, we've got this thing called the church. That's where we're at. And we hear this gospel that God the Father said to his Son to give his life as a sacrifice and buy his blood. We could be forgiven.

We could be acceptable to God. He would be our way, our truth in our life. He would be the resurrection for us, right? He went before us and we can rise from the dead. And we've got this incredible message and yet a lot of us issue.

We're just being honest. I'm preaching to myself today, too. We, we just, we don't talk about it.

I love this picture where it says, I hope we got it there. The whole point of the gospel is lost if you keep it a secret.

Why would we keep it a secret? Why are we telling? Why aren't we so excited about that like I am about trailers and babies, right? I've been thinking about that question. It makes me cry because are, are we just apathetic? Have we just become so distracted? We're so busy? Are we, have we, have we just become unfaith, right? We just, we don't have faith to believe that God says what he says and it's true and, and we haven't experienced it.

What is it? Why do we keep it to ourselves? There's an incredible need for a greater anticipation. It is.

There is expectation and excitement about what the Holy Spirit could be doing among us. It's just true. Whereas Pastor Matt has said, why is it that 7 out of 10 Christians still say they don't know how to share their faith? That's convicting for us standing up here. And once you want to teach you and equip you to be disciples of Christ, Saint Francis of Assisi, he once said preach the gospel and if necessary use the use words.

That's a wonderful statement. The problem is we kind of use that right to never say use words and think that if we just live it, we never have to say anything.

Problem is even those who watch us say you're not even living it. That's tough. So let's come back to our topic in our text, the red letter challenge.

We're being challenged to go to another level, right? And, and, and if you know scripture at all, you know, this is like this is, I kind of believe with this language because it's right there in our, in our, our, our platform where we say our mission is just to be people, connecting people to this gospel, this extraordinary life that's found in Jesus. And we often just quote Matthew 28, which I have thousands of times up here, where literally it says as you go, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them, name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all that I've commanded you.

Here's the cool thing. Actually, Jesus, those are red letters by the way, does not actually say you need to add 1 more thing to your schedule.

You don't need one more program. This is who you are. He says wherever you go.

It's just like praying. You know where Paul would say pray constantly, you know this for this is God's will for you. So wherever we go, we're praying. Wherever we go, we're going for Christ.

And today asking the question and seeing what Christ sees, are we doing that? It's going, it's not a y'all come.

The churches pretended this y'all come for so many years. No, we're meant to be going. Meant to be going this is God's heart from the very beginning where Abraham's seed right? We know this that that through Abraham's seed all the nations of the world would be blessed. In Revelation 5, it was it would state that the blood of Christ would ransom people for God from every tribe and language and people that once we are blessed we would be a blessing.

And that we would have this message called by the apostle Paul, the message of reconciliation, where he says all of this is from God who reconciled us to Himself through Christ. And he gave us the ministry of reconciliation who reconciled himself through Christ and that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men sins against them.

He has committed to us this message of reconciliation. Do you, do we hear this again? It's for you, too.

It's not just for me. Standing up here now, some of us, Pastor Matt said we know the author of the Red letter challenge is Pastor Zach.

I'm actually going to be with him in April. And he's a younger dude. OK. Is he about same age as you, Pastor Matt? Yeah, I think he is, which they're all young to me now.

And so Pastor Zack is a character, OK? That's all I got to say. He's actually in the process of writing a 40 day challenge for every one of these themes, OK, 40 days. So each theme, and he's getting there, OK. But for instance, it was years ago, because I remember this, I was at his church in Florida, but he did this challenge and his challenge was to actually beat the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest sermon.

It's true. Here He is right there, OK, And his sermon went 53 hours and 11 minutes.

You know why I'm putting this picture up? You do not have to do this. This is not what God is commanding us to do.

This is not you. OK? He raised over $100,000 for a special need and obviously it brought a lot of tension to the gospel. It was an awesome thing. But you don't have to do that.

So perhaps just a good place for us to begin before I jump into the text, and I will and it's going to move, I want us to kind of look into the mirror and say, where are we at? Where am I at? And maybe maybe just to say, where are my friends at the people around me? And and I just want to say this is not meant to be judgmental, OK? I read a book, it was called the Discipleship Opportunity by a author by the name of Daniel EME. OK, there's the book and it's in this book, there is a grid. Do I have the grid? And in there, there's a grid. And in here's, here's how he kind of broke it down. OK, First off, ask yourself, so there are seekers.

Seekers are in the discovery mode. They're not necessary believers yet, but they're asking questions, they're interested. They want to know more about God, right? We would say they're persons of peace.

They might be a neighbor who will have a conversation with you. They're seeking and then you could also say on the bottom, now they're interested, but then the uninterested you have the sleepers. Sleepers would I would just say it would be lost people.

They they they don't have a faith. They don't have an interest. They're they're not they're the nuns, right? You know, in yes, they're nothing. OK, There doesn't seem to be an interest.

Very tough to reach these folks. Matter of fact, if you're going to reach them, it's going to take a lot of relationship and that that's that's what Daniel Eames says, right. So lots of relations. They're sleepers and they're they don't have faith. But then you go into the consumer and the consumer is the person who may come to church on occasion, probably comes to Easter, may, maybe, maybe Easter, maybe Christmas Eve, right? Or, or, or, or or come weekly, right? But basically they come to church late, often they, they leave early, they throw in a tip, maybe not a tithe, They've never really invested.

They've not really served. They're just consuming what we would say, what the church has to offer. So where, where do you see yourself there or a disciple? And we just say a disciple of someone who gets the life experiences and gives it away.

And none of us do that perfectly. Only Jesus did that. But we're building this relationship with God.

We have a devotional life. We're we're connecting with other people right in a community. That's the church. It's not escape trailer of people.

We're ambassadors, right? So we, we give it away.

So disciple, where do you see yourself in this? And don't ever think that you've done enough because you haven't and I haven't. Jesus has, but this is the move to go. This is what needs to go.

So I, I bring that up just to say, where do we begin in terms of like moving to the next level? And what, where I want to begin is just by saying, what is it we are seeing? Not just what are we experiencing, but what are we willing to see? Are we willing to see what Jesus sees? That is my prayer. I go to a lot of places and I say, God, would you just help me to see what you're showing me? You know, what are you doing so that I can be motivated more and more excited. And here's what Jesus saw in this text.

If you go he's he's proclaiming this gospel message in their synagogues. He's no doubt in in Galilee area and he's he's healing diseases. And it says here when he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them. He had compassion on them. So here's our first challenge, that when we look out, when we look at people, see the pity of the harvest, see the pity of the harvest, that's what Jesus sees.

He feels the pity for them. And it says here, he says, when he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. Other translations say confused and aimless.

Others say distressed and downcast. The word distressed is actually means to filet or skinning, right? In other words, they're severely troubled. It has the idea of being battered, bruised, mangled, ripped apart, worn out and exhausted. When you look at people today, is that what you see? Sometimes that's what I see. Go to the grocery store, go to your kids events. I've been going to a lot of basketball games these days for my granddaughter. People are tired, they're worn out, right? The word for helpless suggests that they're thrown down.

They're kind of without a leader. And Jesus response is to have compassion for them. In other words, he feels for them. Literally. It means his intestines and bowels.

It's Splunk. Nah, it's the innards. This is how the Hebrews would also describe what they feel. It's like when, when when you are stressed out, you feel it in your stomach. Some of us, right? You, you have irritable bowel. I won't go there, but you know what I'm saying? It affects us because of the stress.

That's what Jesus is feeling. Most of us know from personal experience that anxiety, fear, pity, remorse, stress, it can all affect us.

And this, this is common for Jesus, this word for compassion. It's actually in Matthew 14 where Jesus landed. He saw a large crowd, He had compassion on them and he healed her sick. Or when he noticed that thousands were following him and they were hungry, right, because they had nothing to eat. It says I have compassion on the crowd because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat. Or it was the same with a blind man or a leper or a widow of name who was burying her son.

He saw them. He had compassion on them. So compassion, though, is not just a feeling. It actually moves Jesus to do something in every situation.

You hear that it's like I I I just will sit one time I I remember I've said this before I was sitting, darn it, I was sitting in G Nino's and Julie and I were sitting there. Never forget it and I saw this family man stressed out cities. There was a special needs child and God said pay for their meal.

Gene Ninos is not cheap. Can I just tell you that? But I just, I kind of said, well, I said, Oh darn.

I think God just said we got I got to pay for that meal in tears. I I think that was like feeling what God Jesus would feel for that family. So when you walk in, just say, God, you know, what do you want me to see compassion? That's that's going you know that the early church stood as a witness to the 1st century, what it meant to love even one's neighbor. Do you know that Brandon mentioned this, but in Rome 2002, I'm sorry, 260 AD there was a plague and Christians, they, they, they nursed so many people and one day they said 5000 people died from the plague. Dionysus, a historian wrote the Christian showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves or thinking only of one another. Many a nursing and curing others transferred, transferred their death to themselves and died in their stead. The best of ours lost their lives in this manner, he says, though the heathen they totally opposite acted differently, pushing sufferers away and fleeing the scene, throwing their dearest into the roads before they were dead and treated on buried corpses as dirt, hoping to avert the spread into contagion of a fatal disease.

It was the Christians in the early church who opened their homes to slaves. The poor took care of the widows. The orphans there was there was number distinctions among them. They were simply showing what the New Testament calls hospitality.

And the literal mean of hospitality in the Greek actually means to love the stranger. It's love for strangers or love for the outsider. It's putting highly value on those who are otherwise are not valued.

We call it here creating space for others. That's one of our values, that faith writer of Hebrews, who say, let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained even angels unawares. Chertillian, another earlier writer after Christ, described the early church this way. It is our care of the helpless, our practice of loving kindness that brands us wow in the eyes of many of our opponents. Oh look, they say, Look how they love, look how they care. So our prayer would be, Oh God, let me look on the crowd as Jesus did, till my eyes with tears grow dim. Let me view with pity the wandering sheep, the love for them even as you love them.

Just see the pity of the harvest. But also Jesus says, I want you to see the potential of the harvest. He says.

He says the harvest is plentiful. The harvest is plentiful, which should make us ask, what is the harvest, right? What does that mean? There's not actually total agreement on this by commentators. The harvest could represent the lost of the spiritual seekers after God, those elected for salvation. Many times the harvest actually was a reference to, to being under God's judgement, God's judgement. So, so the harvest, if you think about it, it, it, it, it, it could be a lot of people who are lost out there as you look out, it's a large group.

And so we open our eyes and we say, what do we see? The harvest is plentiful. Would you agree the harvest is plentiful today? I would say yes. Talk to some of our ministry partners.

They will tell you it's plentiful. But here's a problem. We need to see the problem of the harvest. You've got the pity, you've got the potential, but you've got the problem. He says the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.

This is exactly what I've been talking about. Who are the workers? Us. But every, you know, here's the studies, what they're showing more and more and more every time they do this survey, they're saying more and more Christians are saying, oh, no, it's up to the church, the pastors, who's the church you are.

The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. So the problem is not the harvest, it's plentiful.

The problem is not the lack of harvest and it's not God because he's still saving. The problem is that the workers, where are they? You know, even in our church body we're like, I think it was mentioned, 700 pastors short. And that's not even talking about the priest in the Catholic Church and the incredible need.

The workers are few. The fields are ripe, which leads us to the last point.

The harvest is plentiful. The workers are few. Do what now? Ask.

Therefore, pray earnestly. It's just really one word. Pray. Ask the Lord of Harvest to send out workers, laborers into the field.

When's the last time you prayed for a worker? By the way, I'm grateful for many of you who pray for us.

We pray for me. You've told me so much, right? You're, you're, you're praying for your sons, your daughters. You're, you're there, you're, you're acting like disciples.

That's awesome. And we have so many of you who are faithful. You're you're, you're what energizes us as a staff and pastors. To see God at work, to see so many folks in ministries, right? We, we, we, I, I, I sometimes just see negative, but there's so much positive too.

God is doing great things. Brandon wasn't lying. There's so many young people have so much hunger right now. That is awesome.

The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Pray for the Lord of the harvest.

Pray and pray with faith. Pray with faith and believe it that God says what God says He does. Even when you have a son or a daughter or granddaughter or grandson and they don't have the faith and there are many of them, you know it. I know it, and it seems impossible right now.

Pray for the impossible in the name of Jesus. Pray for healing. Pray that God would keep save, saving, healing and delivering.

And that's why we're going to the next series, by the way, I'm going to kick that off next week that you see that there's a spiritual battle that's going on and I'm fighting it too. And sometimes I feel like I'm losing. No, many times I feel like I'm losing and so discouraged.

But keep praying and give thanks to the God who has provided this gospel that is so powerful. All right, let me go back to the baby. OK, So it was pretty interesting.

I heard my son-in-law say this because he was part of obviously the birth and they had not discovered whether it was going to be a girl or a boy. And so there was this excitement of wanting to know and they said, who? Who's going to? How do you want me to tell you when the the baby's born and eventually decided it was going to be either Ruth or Judah and the baby was born. Let's welcome Ruth into this world, Right? And But the doctor said it was really strange.

I don't see this. But she said this. This baby's eyes were wide open, he says.

I don't see that a lot. I mean, just like, just like that picture we showed earlier, right? Yeah.

I got to see the eyes too. Looking right at you, if they can see, you know what I mean? But here's my point.

All throughout Scripture, Jesus says there's going to be people who don't see. They don't hear, they don't understand. You have eyes to see, but you don't see. You have ears to hear, but you're not hearing. You have minds to perceive and understand, but they won't understand.

But the Holy Spirit, when He creates faith, He gives you eyes to see, eyes to see what God sees even in the spirit realm, potentially ears to hear what God is saying to you and listen that you're listening. What is He saying to you through His Word by His Spirit? And how are you beginning to perceive this new thing, this thing that we can get excited about? Because we have an excitement in the gospel, because Jesus has died, He has risen and he has risen indeed in Hallelujah. And that's what every Sunday is for us, which gives us a reason to be excited.

Amen. Why don't you stand? Come on. So what are you excited about? Lord, we just pray that even right now, you're, you're just blowing beyond all the distraction and potentially some chaos, the busyness.

And you remind us about the excitement we have and can have and can experience again as you refresh us, as you change us, as you mold us, as you motivate us, as you encourage us, as you protect us, as you heal us and deliver us.

Thank you, Lord, Lord, as we leave, just give us eyes to see, ears to hear, minds that would perceive what you're up to and what you want to do in US, and also what you want to do through us as we go and make disciples of all nations in Jesus we pray, Amen.

All right. Well, good morning. How's everybody doing? Awesome. Hey, real quick, before we get into our message time, this is how I stalled to pull up my notes. This is the first time I've been in front of you since the church called us, and we just feel incredibly honored to be called here. It's rare you get to attend a church and then join a church and actually get called to it. And we just feel like the Holy Spirit's been all throughout this process. So through prayer and discernment, my wife and I have decided to accept the call here at Faith So. Thank you. You might want to wait to see how you feel till after the message because I'm talking about giving today. So if you change your mind, it's cool. But hey, let's let's open up with prayer. Dear Lord, just thank you so much that we get to be here in this place, Lord, worshiping you and allowing you to form our hearts toward you, God, in an area that we often don't think of as forming our hearts. Lord, I pray that you would just speak into our hearts, Lord, into our finances, into our giving. But Lord, that you would show us why it is you teach us these things about giving and what it can do in our own lives. Lord Jesus, may my words be your words. Not one word more or one word less. Your name we pray, Amen. Well, this this Christmas break, I got introduced to the world of Fortnite. Yeah, learn to play. And I was kind of excited at first because free game. Three Boys free always fits into the budget. But once again, I learned that just like in online gaming, nothing is free because in the Fortnite store, there's a little thing they call V bucks, right? Which is Fortnite money. OK? And if your kids play Fortnite they can earn V Bucks which you can use to buy skins which are cool little like digital character things and weapons that you can use to kill your friends while you talk to them on your headsets or your dad depending on who you're playing with. Now this is great, but there's another way that you can earn V bucks. You can just flat out buy them with the credit card attached to the account. Now I saw this coming. OK so I put a password on there that I do not let my kids see. But even with that password I started noticing man they are spending a lot of real dollars on what I would consider digital. Nothing right? Am I the only parent that wrestles with this? No. So I did some research AKA scrolling on Instagram and I found a dad whose two kids on the game Minecraft, also free. Also has a digital store. Spent $800 in a year on Minecraft digital coins that do nothing. Now I know how I might have handled that. Probably wouldn't have been the best, but this dad, it was brilliant. He takes his kids to Target, grabs a shopping cart, and he looks at this little girl, little boy, and he says, listen, I'm going to give you an $800 shopping spree at Target. You would have thought he gave these kids like 10 ice cream cones. They were on top. They ran right to the toy aisle. They started filling up the cart. They're like, can we get this? He's like, yeah, you have $800. They're throwing stuff in the cart. The cart is starting to like pile up with toys and like anything a kid could dream of. And they're looking at their dad thinking, we had to have spent the money. At this point. He goes, no, you still have more money. Hey, let's go get flat screens for your rooms. So on top of this cart of toys, they put flat screen TV's. And these kids are like, we just won the lottery. Be right, you know what I'm saying? And then the dad drops. The hammer, he says. You see this cart full of toys, You're not getting any of this. I just wanted you to see how much money you spent on digital coins in Minecraft. The kids were speechless. They just looked at their dad like what just happened and it was amazing because this dad found a way to help them realize what they were spending their money on and what they were sacrificing to do that. And I love that heart because that's actually the heart of God for us when he talks about giving and our money. See, God is not interested actually in your money. God has everything he needs. What he's interested in is your heart. In fact, if you open up to to Matthew chapter 6, it's the first gospel in the New Testament. Matthew chapter 6. If you don't have a Bible, you could pull up the free Bible on you version Bible app or we've got people that will bring Bibles around to you right now. Matthew chapter 6, we're going to look at 19 to 21 and then verse 24 it says this. Do not lay up 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, there your heart will be also. And then verse 24, no one can serve 2 masters. For he will either hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. Now see, even when we hear Jesus saying this, and it's pretty clear that what Jesus is saying is his concern is for our heart, right? We still struggle to hear it that way sometimes. There's a block when it comes to God and money. And a few of the reasons are one, the cultural context in which we live. See, I've been reading this interesting book as I was preparing for this message called Weird by Craig Rochelle, actually the guy whose church started the Free You Version Bible app that they give out to like millions and millions of people everywhere. And in this book Weird, where he's talking about how the way of Jesus is often weird to what we would call normal in our culture today. He has an entire section on money. And in this section he brings up a really important .1 of the reasons we struggle to hear all these things that Jesus says about money and finances and his advice that he gives to the rich, which Jesus talks more about money and finances than he does heaven or hell. The only thing he talks about more, I believe, is the Kingdom of God. The reason we struggle to hear it is because, as Craig Rochelle says, roughly 90% of Americans consider themselves not rich, but roughly 90%, ninety 8% of the people in developing countries would consider America's poor to be rich. In fact, when Craig wrote this book 2017, he had this stat and I found it really interesting. He said if you earn $37,000 a year, $37,000 a year, you are in the top 4% of all wage earners in the world alive today. Certifiably rich by anyone's definition. If you make $45,000 a year or more, you are the top 1% of wage earners in the world. In order to honor God with your wealth, you first have to admit that you are rich and most won't do it. It's not normal. So like one of our first roadblocks is we have to realize as a culture we're rich, but as individuals, when you compare ourselves to the world around. We're rich. Maybe not compared to your neighbor, but compared to the rest of the world, we're rich. That's our first roadblock. The second roadblock we have, though, is that we feel like everybody only wants our money, right? That's why when I sign my kids up for a free video game, what I find out is the video games not free. They really just want our money. In fact, now the popular thing to do is everything's on a subscription, right? So you don't have to think about it. You just pay that small little amount and then all of a sudden you just get those services, right? And it just pulls out of your credit card or your account monthly, right? This happens so much. And by the way, a little bit of free advice here. If you have a free trial that you actually log your credit card in for, it's not really free because when you forget you signed up for it, it starts pulling the money out, right? And signing up is easy. Cancelling is hard. In fact, there are entire apps dedicated to helping you cancel subscriptions you don't even know you have right now. And so in our culture, it's easy to get jaded and feel like everybody only wants our money. And then we look in the church. And usually when we talk about money in the church, it's usually around a budget cycle. So we think, OK, they're talking about the church budget, or it's around a giving campaign, which means we think they're talking about the giving campaign. And so it can really easily feel like the church is no different than the culture. And then sometimes not in the case of faith, which is one of the things we love, sometimes we see those campaigns and then we see the fruit of those campaigns and where that money went and we get even more jaded. And so all that stuff starts to stack up. And we feel like when we hear Jesus talking about money, Jesus concern is our money. But actually, what Jesus is concerned most with is our heart. And what our money is doing in the formation of our heart and our relationship with God. In fact, when Jesus talks about money, he says giving is about forming your heart in Christ. And there's three ways he does that. One, when he talks about money, he talks about turning away from idols. When he talks about money, he talks about treasures that really last, things that are so intangible you can't buy them with money. And then the third thing he always talks about is realizing that giving is really just returning. So let's dig into that a little bit. First and foremost, probably the most important thing is when Jesus is talking about money, he's talking about you turning away from idols. And, and here's what we have to realize. We get a little 21st century entitlement when we talk about idols because we think about idols as like those little wooden things on somebody's shelf that somebody like bows down and worships. And we think, oh, how foolish, right? They're bowing down to a little statue that's actually not an idol. I mean, it is an idol, but the heart behind an idol is this. It's something you put your faith, your hope and your trust in. That is not God. And because it's not God, it doesn't see you, it can't hear you, and it won't save you. That's what an idol is. You can put all the faith you what? You can put faith in faith like they say in our culture. And you know what? The idol will fail you drastically. Idols always take more from you than what you pour in. That's an idol. And in fact, idolatry is such an important issue for God that all throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament, he talks about it. In fact, the very first commandment that God gives when he pulls his people out of slavery in Egypt is what he says. Exodus 20, verse three. You shall have no other gods before me. You know what he says right before that verse? He gives them a reason for why they should have no other gods. He says this, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the House of slavery. So what's God saying? He's saying the reason you shouldn't have an idol is because I'm literally the God that saved you. So what God is saying is that when you pray to God, he hears you, He sees you, He moves in your life before you're even asking him to move in your life. And God says, why would you trade that for something that can't? In fact, there have been seasons in Israel's history in the Old Testament where they turn to idols and God brings prophets in and in really powerful language, he speaks to them about idolatry. In fact, one of my favorites is actually in Isaiah 44 because Isaiah holds no punches when he talks about idols in Isaiah 44 verses 9 to 18. We're not going to read them all, but if you want to read something fun, go back and read that this week. Isaiah 44, he begins it by saying this all who fashion idols are nothing and the things they delight in do not profit. Their witnesses neither see nor know they may be put to shame. Who fashions a God or casts an idol that is profitable for nothing, right? It can't do anything. And Isaiah goes on because I don't think the people were picking up on the picture. And he starts describing this. And at one point what Isaiah does, I love this is he talks about a guy going into the woods and like chopping down like a cedar tree or an oak. And he says this in verse 16. He says half of it he burns in the fire over the half he eats meat, he roasts and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says, ah, I'm warm. I've seen the fire and the rest of it he makes into a God his idol and he falls down to worship it and he prays to it and says, deliver me for you are my God. Like, let me tell you something, if you have a God that you can't keep too close to the fire without it burning too, it's not a God, right? And this is what Isaiah is saying. He's saying it can't hear you, it can't respond to you, it can't save you, but God can. And what Jesus realizes is that the first and foremost reason we give is so that we don't fall into idolatry because money can easily turn into an idol and expose the idols we have. If you're wondering what idols you have, like, look at your bank statement. That'll tell you what you worship. And so that's why Craig Rochelle in his book Weird, puts it this way. He says the average Christian in the United States gives about 2% of his or her income toward helping people in advancing God's Kingdom on earth. 2% is also roughly the amount that a non Christian gives to charitable things. So what Craig is saying is like, we're not really different in this. And he says that means that the remaining 98% goes to the world, which means 98% of our hearts goes toward the world. And if you catch yourself wondering why you want more of the world and you're not satisfied with God, it's because you have a spiritual problem. We think that more is going to make us happy. And So what Jesus is saying is not give money. So God has money. He's saying give money so that your heart is toward God. And when you give that money, an interesting thing happens. Jesus says you will be investing in a treasure that cannot be stolen, that does not fade away. It's an eternal investment, right? That's why Jesus says it like that, where treasure, where moth and rust destroy, where thieves can't break in and steal, right? Because here's the reality about the treasure that we hold onto here. And now it can easily be stolen away. In fact, we've seen this, right? What's 1 of the big problems we see in our culture right now? It's the people that send an e-mail or make a phone call. They usually do it to kind of some of the most vulnerable among us, right? And they're like, hey, your information was stolen. Call me up and I'll help you. If you get that e-mail, don't answer it, right, Key thought Amazon's not going to text you to tell you they need your bank information. OK, They've already got it. But what happens is we can lose all our money quickly, and that's a normal thing. Stock markets crash, It's happened before recessions happen, cars breakdown, like our stuff is very vulnerable. But Jesus says when you're investing and giving in the Kingdom of God, it creates something that can't be stolen away. It's an eternal investment. You say, what's the return, Pastor Matt? I'm not exactly sure, but I know forever is a lot longer than temporary right? Now, here's the hard part with that. Culturally, we tend to be kind of like just what's right in front of us. Sometimes people struggle to invest over the long term because it's too far away, right? And we kind of want to know what we get here and now. And that's why it's really interesting when you keep reading Matthew chapter 6, because Jesus says that one of the biggest things you get when you give to God is it steals your anxiety from your finances like Jesus says it like this Matthew chapter 6 starting at verse 25. Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body. What you will put on is not life more than food and the body more than clothing. Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not a view of more value than they? And which of you, 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, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is today he alive, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe? You see, when we give, we ultimately remember where everything comes from, and we're reminded that we can trust that God promises He will care for each and every need we have. And any promise that God makes, God keeps. Trust me. In our family, we've had seasons where we've had plenty, and we've had seasons where we had not much. And God showed up every time He provided every time. Like this is God's promise. And what that does when you lean into that promise is it steals your anxiety around money. It keeps you from feeling like this world is so fragile, and it reminds you of how strong and powerful your God is and how he will provide for every need. It's kind of like getting to be a child again, right? I never thought about money when I was a little kid. Like my parents just took care of it. Right now I'm an adult. My kids don't really think about it. Why? Because they're like mom and dad got it. Like giving allows me to look at God like that, Like he's got it, We'll be OK. But then ultimately what I realized in giving is that we're actually not giving anything to God. We're just returning from what He's already given to us. In fact, James says it like this. He says every good and perfect gift comes from the Father above every good and perfect gift. In fact, when you think about it, you can't out give God because God literally gives everything. What does it say in John chapter 316? For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, like God so loved the Word, He gave his only Son. What I love about that is in Philippians Paul actually unpacks for us what that meant, that God gave his Son of the world. It says this in Philippians 2. Let each of you not look only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this in the mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant. Being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. See, God gave so much for you. He was willing to literally give His life everything before He asked anything of you. See, when we think about giving, don't think about giving as something you're giving to God so He can do His thing. Think about something that you're returning back to God that He already owns. Like think about giving the way you think about Christmas with your toddler when they buy you a gift. What's the reality? You give them the money for that gift? Like, I remember this as a kid. My parent, my dad would be like, get your mom a gift. So he'd give us like some money, 20 bucks, which I'm old. That went a lot farther back then than it does now. And so we'd take the 20 bucks and we'd get mom something with the 20 bucks. And there was always a little something leftover, you know, for us, right? And then we wrap the gift, which if you see me rap, is not great, OK? And then we hand the gift to our parents on Christmas morning and they open it up like it's the greatest thing in the world. What's the reality? They bought themselves the gift that they didn't even get to choose, which sometimes I remember the things we gave. Not great, right? But they're like, hey, you gave it that. That's giving back to God. He gives us everything. And he's overjoyed when we take a little bit of that and we return it back to him because he knows that what's happening is he's forming our hearts to look more and more like Jesus, to be more at peace in this world in which we're living, and to be able to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God will always provide, even in our finances. And we struggle with that because, as some pastors say, the last thing to get saved is somebody's wallet. But if we will give our wallets to God, we'll find the return is far more than the investment. And so if you're thinking about a next step in this red letter challenge, because that's the idea, the red letter challenge, it's like, don't just listen to the message, but what are we going to do out of this message? I would encourage you to take a next step and in fact, here at Faith, we've got a really cool next step that you can take if you want to try giving or tithing. We have what's called the 10:10 challenge and here's the 10:10 challenge. The 10:10 challenge leads into this promise that God makes in the book of Malachi and in Malachi once again, the people of Israel are following idols and God says that they're robbing him. They're not returning to God any of the tithe that they were commanded to give. And so God looks at him and he says, look, verse 10, bring the full tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house and thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the window of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need. And So what we do at faith to kind of give you a chance to test that out is we would do what's called the 10:10 challenge. So you can grab one of these cards, they'll be at the welcome center and you can take one of these cards. And if you take the 10 tenth challenge, here's your part, You give 10% of your income for the next 10 weeks to God through faith, right? Here's God's part. God and his faithfulness will show up. He will make sure you have everything you need and he'll bless you in other ways that you might not be expecting. OK, and I'm not talking prosperity gospel. So if you're like that new Lexus would be pretty sweet. Let's give to the church. Please hear me. That's not going to happen, right? But here's face part. You try that over the next 10 weeks. And if you don't have what you need, we will give you everything you gave back because here's the cool thing. It's not just Jesus heart that's concerned about, not just Jesus that's concerned about your money for your heart. We're not really concerned about your money for budgets. We're not concerned about your money for campaigns. We're concerned about your money for your heart and because of what it can do in your life. And I remember we used to do something similar at the point, the church that I started in Knoxville. And when we did this challenge one time, I remember I was in my early 30s, right? And there was a couple that I did their wedding and they were younger than me. They they maybe they just crossed 30. They were like broke, right? Both working full time, barely making ends meet. And we did this tithe challenge just like faith, same promise. And I remember Ben comes up to me one day and he says, you know, I took that tithe challenge and I was a little surprised because I knew they were broke. And he looked at me and said, you know what's so amazing? He says I don't worry about money anymore. He worried about money a lot, he says. I don't even think about it. I just know God's going to provide. And it all began from doing a simple challenge like this. So I want to encourage you, not for a budget, not for a campaign. Take a next step toward giving. If you're giving nothing and 10% would be like climbing a mountain, right? And you've never gotten up to walk. Try just giving something regularly. Maybe you're given the normal 2% that like most Americans give to our charity. Consider going to five or consider trying the tithe challenge. And I promise you, God will show up because He does not care about your money. He cares about your heart and where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Let's pray. Dear Lord, we thank you so much that you would just provide God that You would allow us through a very tangible means, Lord, to be able to just know your love, know Your goodness, and know Your provision evermore. I pray that you would work in our hearts, God, and help us figure out what our next step is when it comes to giving, and that you would bless us through that next step to look more like You and to be more in peace in you. Lord Jesus, it's in Your name. It's by your strength we pray. Amen.

Well, good morning Church. That video was pretty fast and I dropped the paper on the way up, so I almost didn't make it, but it is.

It's good to be with you here this morning. Open your Bible. If you have a Bible, if you need a Bible, you can raise your hand and and somebody from our hospitality team will grab you one. If you have your Bible with you, you've got the Bible app on the faith app.

Maybe open to John chapter 13. John chapter 13. We're going to be looking at Jesus. Read letters this morning from John 13. But again, good morning.

Welcome to faith. My name is Pastor Brandon, and if you don't know me, I'd love to get to know you maybe a little after the service or at first connect. If you're new here, you've heard that we're in this 4th week of our Red Letter series, a message series that Pastor Matt kicked off talking about how God's words, the red letters of Jesus, are meant to be lived out, not just heard.

We started with that picture of the solid foundation. And then Pastor John, he, he kicked into what it means that we be in a relationship with God, first as primary being with God, being in his word, being in prayer. And then Pastor Sam last week, he talked about a most fundamental principle to what Jesus came to do and to bring. And that's forgiving, right? And we all need that forgiveness that we just experienced and to learn to extend that to others as we prayed in the Lord's Prayer. So this week I get the pleasure of talking about serving, Serving from the Jesus example right in the text of John 13.

We're going to dive in and see that as he goes to the cross. He's very close in this text to going to the cross. And we're going to look at his radical example as we try to unpack our understanding, maybe redefine what serving is really about. Because let's be honest, when we hear serving in the context of church, what do we think of maybe volunteering on a team on Sunday morning? Maybe it's going on a mission trip, maybe it's giving some time to a non profit in the community. And those are all great things. I, I, I would challenge and, and ask you to do any of those things, but serving is so much bigger than that. What I think we'll see from scripture and from your reading this week is that serving isn't just an activity, it's part of our God-given identity.

It's not about just a few hours a week. It's about a moment by moment decision to live and love like Jesus, to put others first even when it's inconvenient. So we're going to unpack that today and hopefully also take apart some common confusion that the world and the devil want us to believe about serving.

But before we do that, let's read our text. I have it on the screens here. You can look along, but I just couldn't bring everything up.

I forgot my Bible. Good thing I have it here in my manuscript. I'll read it from Sam's. There we go. Scripture is important here. So this is John 13.

We're going to read from verses 1 all the way down to 17. Now, before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. During supper, when the devil had already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given him all things and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, Lord, do you wash my feet? Jesus answered him. What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterwards you will understand. Peter said to him, You shall never wash my feet, and Jesus answered him, if I do not wash you, you have no share with me.

Simon Peter said to him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my head in my hands. Jesus said to him, the only one who has bathed does not need to wash except for his feet, but he is completely clean, and you are clean, but not everyone of you, for he knew who was about to betray him. That is why he said, not all of you are clean. When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then your Lord and Teacher have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet.

For I've given you an as an example that you should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them, This is God's word. Lord, we thank you for your word. We pray that we would not only know these things, but we would understand the blessing of doing them.

I pray that all of the things that you speak through Your word will just speak to our hearts, the individual places where you have us, Lord, speak to our lives through your Word in Jesus name, Amen. Amen. So what a powerful text, right? Right before Jesus goes to the cross, he's walked with this crazy diverse bunch of 12 disciples for three years.

They've seen so many miracles. They've seen Jesus teach, and now Jesus shows them this. Now this happens after Palm Sunday.

We know this from other gospels and everyone. When Jesus marched in for the Passover, everyone in the city wanted to crown him king. And his disciples, they had often misunderstood Jesus purpose as Messiah and they had tied it into their political reality and dreams.

Some of his disciples had even asked to be a part of Jesus cabinet if you will when he became king. And just before this in the Gospel of Luke we read about how they were arguing amongst themselves who is the greatest? And Jesus says if anyone wants to be the greatest, he must become the least. But if you've had children, if you've been a teacher, if you know anything about teaching, you know there's a difference between saying something and showing something. And so Jesus takes those words one step further. And he shows them this example right before he institute's the meal that we just celebrated, a meal that gives us his forgiveness, that gives us his presence. He shows us the way to treat one another with service and love because service is really, ultimately about love.

That's how this passage starts. He's loved His disciples to the end, and He wants us to emulate his actions. Service isn't just a trick about getting ahead to make people like you. Service isn't just about completing a task in Scripture, because if you don't, God is going to judge you. Service is about love, a love that asks what can I give, not what can I get? And Jesus in this example says, here's what you give. You give something that's so radical that everyone around you is going to say no, you can't give that. No, you, you can't do that. It was that countercultural. What Jesus did you see in those days? Washing someone's feet who had been walking around in the desert sweating in their sandals all day? This was such a low task that the rabbis taught if you had a Jewish slave they could not be given this task. OK, if you had a gentile slave, maybe they could do it. But this was such a menial, low and disgusting task.

Never would you see a teacher, a rabbi, a master washing his disciples feet. That's why Simon Peter says what are you doing? He doesn't want to let him do it.

He says never Lord. But Jesus tells Peter it has to be this way. And in an image rich statement of the spiritual reality that's coming, he says unless I wash you, you have no part, no share in me.

See, Jesus wants us all to be included in him and a part of his forever Kingdom with his Father. Because if you look back at the text, you see that Jesus, it starts with his recognition that he's going back to his Father.

And each and every one of us who have been made a part of Christ's family, we have that reality to look forward to too. Amen. That we are also going to the Father. Jesus has prepared a room for us, prepared a place. So our ability to serve in these radical and countercultural ways comes because we have an urgency that we don't have long on this earth. We don't have long to show Jesus love and extraordinary life to those around us.

We too get to be about our Father's business as servants of a Master who modeled service. So after he shows them this act of service, He He says these words as application will reread verses 14 through 17. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I've set an example for you, an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly, I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

Going back to that parable that Pastor Matt talked about, the blessing is as we start to live out these red letters of Jesus, not just know them, not just say, oh, Jesus, wow, you're you're an awesome teacher.

You served so well. But no church we get to be a part of Jesus way as we serve one another. How is the church at that Today? I can show you back in history. We're going to read a little bit of history from the early church, how they exemplified this type of radical service.

We're going to go all the way back to some of the first centuries right after Jesus. And I'll read this for us this morning. Famine and war had recently afflicted the city of Caesarea. So when the plague hit in the 4th century, the populace was already weakened. Unable to withstand this additional blow, they began fleeing the city, one of the larger ones of the Roman Empire, for safety in the countryside. However, in the midst of the fleeing inhabitants, at least one group was staying behind the Christians.

As Bishop of the city and historian of the early church, Eusebius recorded in church history during the plague all day long, some of them the Christians tended to the dying and to their burial countless numbers with no one to care for them.

Others gathered together from all parts of the city. A multitude of those withered from famine and distributed bread to them all. Eusebius goes on to state that because of their compassion in the midst of the plague, the Christians deeds were on everyone's lips and they glorified the God of the Christians. Such actions convinced them that they were pious and truly reverent to God. A few decades after Eusebius, the last Pagan emperor, Julian the Apostate, recognized that the Christian practice of compassion was one of the causes behind the transformation of faith of this faith from a small movement on the edge of the empire to a cultural ascendancy.

The early church's actions of radical service provided legitimacy to the faith and their witness in Jesus as genuine. You may have had to wrestle with what you thought of this Jesus guy, but his followers, man, they were legit. They were taking care of people when no one else would, sacrificing their own health, their own life for the sake of loving others even as they were dying.

What they believed transformed how they lived, transformed the prior priorities that they had. And so I'll ask us again, is this the type of service that the church is known for today? Now, I won't say it doesn't exist.

I know it exists. I get to see it in so many different pockets with people who've been transformed in our church, in the mission field, in our city, in our world as people are sacrificially giving up what they would want for the service of others.

But overall, as a church, I think we can be honest and say we have failed to live up to Jesus. Example here we have failed to live up to a counter cultural service where the world looks at us and says wow, I want whatever they have.

Now here's the challenge. Jesus is calling us to live in this urgency, this age of service, but we live in an age of self.

Our individualistic society says, how can I make life best for me and myself now because this is all I have. Our society doesn't recognize that there's an ultimate eternal reality going to the Father. And so they're living for the here and the now.

And a lot of Christians, we fall into this mindset too. Now, I'm not saying that we don't also care for our families and people care about their friends and their coworkers, but the rising tide around us is an all about me movement.

Let's just look at it from from the outside for a little bit. Look at what advertising is telling us. What is advertising telling us? You need this, you deserve this, It's all about you. Look at the rise in the narcissistic tendencies in our culture and in our young generations especially look at the social media trends of an overindulgent self-care. Our culture preaches self love, self-care, self promotion as the highest values. But scripture teaches self denial, self restraint, self sacrifice, service.

Now please know that I'm not saying there isn't a place for making sure that we take care of what we need, but there's a difference in taking care of what we need and making sure we have everything we want. So the world around us only gets scraps.

Now, the really interesting thing when we look at this culture around us, this culture of self, is that the end result of seeking that out as the highest priority, it doesn't end well, does it? When we put our self as the primary place that we're looking to fulfill, to get meaning, it doesn't end well.

Just look at a couple of the options that we see so prevalent in our society. It can lead to unending anxiety, always searching for something. It can lead to crushing nihilism or hopelessness.

There's no purpose. It can also lead to an empty hedonism, and that's just pleasure seeking when this is not what we were created for.

We were not created just for ourself. We were created to be in relationship. That's where this whole series started. We were created to look out to love God and to love others as we love ourself. Now God created us in His image and that image shows us a looking out because God think about it, if anyone had the right to just sit and bask in their own glory, it was God right just with the angels and the heavenly hosts and and just sitting there. But that's not the character or nature of God that he revealed to us.

He looked out. He created man, He created you and me because He loves you and He wanted a relationship with you, even he though He knew mankind would betray him, would betray him by sinning.

Everyone making choices to reject what God's way and design is by betraying Him. Even in this text, in this moment, as we see Jesus knows that Judas is about to betray him, but he washes his feet anyways.

I thought that was so powerful as I looked at that text. Every single one of us have betrayed Jesus and his design and his calling for us. But he shows us He loves us. He wipes away the dirt metaphorically in this text, He wipes it away, showing that he's going to wipe away the stain of sin because Pastor Sam, he put it very well before communion.

This is the biggest problem that we all have is the depth of our own sin. And sometimes we don't want to recognize it. We don't want to recognize how deep it goes.

I've had the, the privilege of walking alongside several young men as they either came to faith for the first time or really had a, a revitalization of their faith and, and they threw the things of the world like worldly patterns off. And, and we like to think that the process of becoming like Jesus theology word for that is sanctification. It just happens immediately when we're saved that, oh, now we become like Jesus.

We put away all that old stuff of the world and we're living in a sinless life. But anyone who's walked in the faith longer than a minute knows that sanctification is a long, painful and complex process. And So what I've tried to do with the, with these younger guys and, and now I've, I've had a couple experiences. So I try to tell them early on that growing in your faith is not about sinning less. Some wise people who mentored me early in my life, said Brandon. Growing in your faith is not about sinning less, it's about recognizing that you have a whole lot more than you thought.

Our sin goes deep, deep into our hearts. Even in the good actions we do, there's so many wrong motivations.

This theme of serving is one that that uncovers a lot of those wrong motivations. So let's look deep into our own hearts this morning. Let's look at at the state of what the church is doing when it comes to what Jesus calls his disciples to. Why aren't we living this type of radical service out church? Why aren't we the ones creating a picture of heaven on earth as we love our neighbors, love the world in radical ways? Why is it not happening to the extent that Jesus is calling us to? Have we tied too much of our faith with this culture of self? Have we made it too much about us believing the lies of individualism? Has our faith become a pragmatic tool of self growth? About How can God do something for me in my life? How can the Bible speak to me in my life to make it better? How can the church serve me in my life? Instead of We have a God who calls us into his life, we have a God who calls us into his church to serve out of gratitude.

We have a God who's given us a revelation where we get to learn about Him. Not first and foremost, what does it say about me, but what does it say about Him? But you'd be surprised how often our perspective is just the opposite. Or maybe it's not surprising because it's it's not surprising in my own heart, because we have a whole lot of selfishness, don't we? How many people leave the church when they can't serve where they want to serve? Right.

You see the devil, in order to make the church's witness in the world ineffective, the devil doesn't have to make us hate God. He has to make us obsessed with ourselves.

And I think he's doing a whole lot better job on that second one, Are we so obsessed with our self that serving even gets tied into selfishness? We serve out of a motivation of doing for God, of proving things to those around us of responsibility or burden, but not out of abiding in Him and gratitude and joy.

Our serving. Maybe we get that we believe the lie that serving takes away from our joy or our fulfillment. When the truth is, with the right mindset, serving should lead us to joy because it's when we're focused on others, focused on those that He loves.

This is where we see the most meaning and fulfillment when we're focused on others, because that's our design. Ephesians 210 is quoted in our week's reading, and it's a great verse. For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, serving, which God prepared in advance for us to do. We're not just saved from something, our sin. We're saved into something for others, for service.

God didn't design us just to live for ourself. He designed us to live for others. And when we live outside of that design, we miss out on the fullness of the extraordinary life that He wants to offer us. Church, Do you want to teach your kids a way about God that's more than just words? We need to model radical service.

Do you want to show your friends and family that they have value and meaning? Model a life of service. Do you want to show this world, this nation, that there is a God whose love is greater than anything else, and his truth sets us free from searching out meaning in all the other areas We can live as Jesus calls us this radical service.

And we can do it because He did it first. That's what it said in our text. That's what it says all throughout the Gospels. One of those places is in Matthew 20, verse 28, the Son of Man, that's Jesus came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

He gave His life for us knowing that we would fail at living out our design, knowing we would fail to live out His calling. So He lived out the calling perfectly, so that all of our selfishness, all of our pride, all of our fear, all of the lies we hold on to even though we know they're lies because they keep us comfortable. He took it on himself in humility and He washed away our stain of sin on the cross.

Philippians 2 paints this picture perfectly. In verses 5 through 8. It says in your relationship with one another have the same mindset as Jesus Christ, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but rather made Himself nothing. Taking the nature of a servant being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man, He humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.

Jesus humbled himself in this story of washing away the dirt off his disciples feet and on the cross. He washed away all of our stain of sin by His blood so that we could be in a relationship with the Creator who loves us so that we could live in His design because we have the power of the Holy Spirit. Because He didn't just stay dead, did he? He rose from the tomb and now empowers us to go out and live in light of this resurrection, loving those around us because we know He's coming back again and it could be tomorrow.

I was talking to my sons about this. When is Jesus coming back? I said, I don't know, but it could be tomorrow. And that's how Christians we should live, loving those around us with a radical urgency.

So as we close with a few points of application today, I want us to think about that. And I want us to start with maybe one point of application that that's different because there's a group of us here in the room today who have been willing to serve but unwilling to be served.

Now, this is just a flipped problem in a culture that focus on self because you don't feel like maybe you're worthy of being served. Well, Christ's death for you. His example says you are worthy of me coming down and loving you this much. And you are worthy of those around you serving when you need it in a season of of need. And we all hit those seasons. And so maybe for you, it's being willing to ask for help to be asked. Ask for others to serve you, even if it's even if our culture says you should be self-sufficient, you should be able to handle things on your own. But the church reminds us that we all need each other. We all need each other.

It's OK to ask for help. And as a church recently we've recognized that there are some things that we can do to improve our systems where we can care for each other, where, when, when, when someone asks for help, we can actually have an answer to say we're going to ask a group who's willing to, to step in. And so I want to show you we have something called the Faith Family assistance request. Now, and this is, is months old, but this is a process where if you need help, if you need something like a meal, emotional support, transportation, helping, filling out some, some paperwork. If there's something challenging, minor home repairs, yard work, if you're going through a season where someone in your family is sick, if you're if you have a a mental ailment, if you know somebody who needs help. This is a place where you can ask and say, is somebody, can somebody help? And we have a group of people who've said, I'm willing to receive those requests. And if I'm available, I'm going to help.

This is just a simple way that we can live this out as a church. But I'm, I'm asking you to ask to be OK asking. And if you know someone who needs something, show them this platform.

You go to our care page. I think they showed that slide. You fill out the request. Here it is. You Scroll down, pass the marriage retreat, pass funeral and baptism planning and right there you fill out that request. And this is just one way that we can live out serving each other, loving each other. If you want to be on that list of people who is is willing to help, you can sign up to be a part of that too. But this is this is one of the areas that we need to remove the culture's expectation of individualism and say we need each other.

Amen. We need each other, but maybe this is the other way that the the challenge for the week in the red letter is this ask God to show you one way that you can put someone else first. Maybe it's at home, maybe it's at work, maybe it's a relationship, but the challenge is to serve someone with no expectation of anything in return.

So if you're in a season where it's not the time to ask, and that's not everybody, where is God calling you to take a next step to serve sacrificially? Maybe it's serving your kids, being willing to to serve your kids, to be present with your kids to clean up the masses that they're absolutely no help cleaning up. I, I'm in that face, right? This is where I'm called to serve. Maybe it's a Co worker or a neighbor who you've been avoiding because they're too high needs right? Maybe it's an aging parent that isn't the most enjoyable to be around right now, but you're the one that's in their life and they're lonely. And that's where you're called to serve because serving is a moment by moment decision where God has placed you.

It's not about just going out and doing something new. It's being faithful in the places that you're called. Serving is changing a diaper with love. It's having a conversation and being present. It's offering a meal to someone who needs a meal. Serving is showing up when nobody else will, like Jesus. His example of faithfulness, of humility, of service is how we can take this next step as a church. And that's what I'm praying we'll do in this red letter challenge. Let's pray, Lord, I pray that you would continue to teach us what it means to serve like you've served us, to love like you've loved us.

God, we have nothing to give you. We had no merit that you came and you sacrificed your life for us and and now we just offer back everything that we are to you for you.

Lord, Your word tells us that whatever we did for the least of these, we did it unto you. I pray that you would reveal to us who is it around us? Who is it around us that we're being called to? Who is it around us that we've been overlooking? What is it that we've been doing? And we've been doing it with the wrong attitude.

We've been doing it as a burden when we should see it as a joy. Lord, are there areas in our life where we've been focused so much on our self that we've been forgetting the purpose of why we're here? We have eternity with you, but we're here now for a season to serve and to be a witness of Your love in this world that so desperately needs you. God, I pray that you would just continue to reveal to us the depth. Of our sin, not so that we could just check it off the list and say, oh, I'm I'm free from that now, but so that we could live in light of knowing we need you every day, every moment.

Lord, be with us this week as we're a part of a challenge of of asking what can we do to follow your example of service? I pray all this in Jesus name, Amen.

Good morning, umm, I'm Allie. I'm a face student here and I'll be reading scripture today. So in Matthew 69 through 15 it says pray then like this, our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy be your name, your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day Our Daily Bread and forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses.

This is a word of God. And thank you, Ally. Oh, you can take the mic back with you.

You're good. Thanks, Ally. Well, good morning, everyone.

Good morning. My name is Sam. I'm one of the pastors here and one of our students. Read Ally. She looked familiar.

She was one of our students serving last night and our night and night and NOLA dinner dance and just thinking on that wonderful evening we shared. We are going through our red Letter challenge message series and if you've been tracking along day by day week one, this past week leading into today has all been about the week of being enjoying being God's child and day 11. Wouldn't you know it that being a follower of Jesus also means you get to have fun and showing fun and joy and wow, thank you so much for all those who lived out that fun last night at the night in NOLA dinner dance. If Yeah, thank you, Amen.

Thank you for that support. You know, it's not a gift of the Spirit in the Bible, but if dancing was included in First Corinthians, a lot of you showed that gift on the dance floor last night. So that was truly special to see. But today we're now coming into Week 2 and it's focusing on the week of forgiveness. And as Ali just read for us, our focus text has been on Matthew chapter 6, where Jesus gives us this incredible prayer. And so I invite us now if you would just pray along with me to invite God to to focus our hearts and our minds. And so Lord, may the words of my mouth and may the meditation of our hearts be acceptable. And I sight, O Lord God, our rock and Redeemer, Amen.

And so, focusing on forgiveness, I was reminded of a story about this English playwright who was relatively well known in London in the early 20th century. His name was Sir Noël Coward, and he once pulled a pretty fascinating sociological experiment, or prank, really. And what he did was he selected twenty of the most famous people in London in that time, and he wrote the same identical anonymous letter to each of them. And he put it in their mailboxes, and he kind of just waited in the background to see what their reaction would be. And you might ask that, well, what does the note say? Well, the note simply said, everyone knows what you're doing. If I were you, I would get out of town now.

Well, it worked. The next day he saw that all 20 of them fled London the next day. It was amazing. You think, well, how did this prank work so well? And the answer is really quite simple. To some greater or lesser degree, there was some kind of hidden guilty conscience that they were bearing. And it makes me wonder this morning, how would you and I respond if we received an anonymous letter? And if you look under your chairs, taped under your chairs, there's a no, just just kidding. Just kidding, maybe. But you know, if we received the same letter from an anonymous person saying I know what you did and if I were you, I'd leave Oakville now.

And reading that, or maybe receiving a letter of that sorts, it may bring up areas where you have hidden guilt going on in your life. And whether we admit it or not, friends, every one of us to 1° or another, have a desperate need to deal with our guilt.

And it's been thought by so many people that you know to be a follower of Jesus, to take Jesus seriously, to be a Christian. Really, it's all about walking around every day feeling guilty about yourself all the time. But that is simply not true, and even our modern culture today certainly hasn't provided the answer to guilt either.

Far from it. An author. Her name is Deborah Bame. She's not a Christian, by the way she wrote this. If religion often gets the blame for framing man as a Sinner, the secular effort to release man from his guilt hasn't offered much relief. Can I get an Amen? Amen on that one, because we're quick to say as so definitely the opposite of what we see today. And in fact, I, I believe if we really look beneath the surface, underneath all that anger, all there's anxiety, insecurities, frustrations, we'll more often find that guilt is that driving force behind those feelings. And so really that that begs the question for us today, when where do I find relief from guilt? The answer is in forgiveness, and here in Matthew 6 we heard Jesus teach us the Lord's Prayer, and as you have hopefully have just pray it every day. You'll see that the first half, it focuses on God's glory and his Kingdom and His authority, but the second-half it then turns to our needs.

And notice that when Jesus tells us, commands us to ask for daily bread, our practical provision, he then immediately lands on forgiveness. And I think that's not a coincidence. They, I think those two are linked, that there is a connection between food and forgiveness. John Stott, a wonderful pastor, theologian, he said this, this forgiveness that Jesus talks about is as indispensable to the life and health of the soul as food for the body.

And so in light of these things, then we're talking about forgiveness. Really it, it, it comes in, in three things. First, forgiveness. It must be something we receive in order then to offer all surrounded by it being secured.

So the first thing that if this forgiveness it must be received. Just as we need daily bread to live and not die, in a much deeper and more profound way, we need forgiveness so that we might live and not die. And why is that? The answer simply is that every single one of us owe a debt to God. We can never pay Forgive us our debts.

We have all crossed the line. We have all fought and done things we should not have fought and done, and we have left undone things we should have done according to God's perfect standard.

In every case, we are debtors before God. I mean, even all the wrongs and sins that we have enacted on each other and people in our lives, they all flow from trespassing against God's law, which means that we are in debt to God first before we are in debt to anyone else.

Because as it's been said, you, you never break any of the 10 commandments without first breaking the first commandment. You never steal, you never lie, you never cheat on your spouse unless you have first worshipped something other than God in his place.

It's because we break the first commandment, don't have any other gods before me, that we then break all the other ones that trickle down from that. And if you think about it, if we if we truly put God first, he tells the truth. So we should tell the truth. God is always faithful, so we should be faithful.

God would never steal from us. So shoot, we should not steal from others, but because we trespass that first commandment, it leads us to trespass the other ones that follow.

Now to be clear, all, not all sins we commit towards one another and other people are all the same and their effects and their impact. But all sin, in whatever manner, an attitude and an action, is a sin against God, and therefore we are all guilty and in debt to Him.

And also notice the word is plural. By the way, forgive us our debts, Lord, 'cause they're countless.

Every single sin deserves God's righteous displeasure and His judgment, because after all, He is a just. He is a holy God. If God only cared or or judged one sin and not any others, He would be an unjust God. He wouldn't be worthy of worship. And I say this because how many of us emphasize or highlight one particular sin over and above other ones? It seems like with each and every passing month there's like this is the sin of month we're going to talk about.

And yes, though there may be different impacts socially, all of us have sinned against God.

And because he is just and perfect, he can't ignore sin. God cannot and He will not ignore sin.

And due to that you are guilty. I am guilty.

What do we do about that guilt? Because let me tell you right now, everyone everywhere is trying to do something about their guilt.

And it doesn't matter if it's yourself or if it's friends or family you're thinking about. It doesn't matter if they're religious or not or have ever been to church or have never, ever read a sentence in scripture. Everyone, everywhere is trying to do something about their guilt and their shame and this overwhelming sense of debt.

And really, you see it play out in two primary ways in which we try to deal with that over looming, arching sense of debt and guilt. We either try to bury it, deny it, or we try to carry it.

And chances of us, chances are many of us here today are trying to do one or or both of those things with our own sin and guilt. Some of you here today, you might be trying to bury it. That is you, you try to distract yourselves from that guilty feeling where you have that conviction of wrong. And so because of that, we we self medicate, we binge watch to entertain ourselves so we don't have to think about it. So we can use that as an escape.

We distract ourselves with substances or experiences that hopefully will remove that pain of guilt. We don't like it. And so we just want to move on, not deal with it, not think about it. And we might even say, well, you know, other people, I think they're a little worse off than me. I mean, have you ever seen Oakville? It's a cesspool of sin right now.

But why are you even talking about my sin? How many of us this morning are dealing with guilt by trying to bury it? Now, others of you may say, well, you know, I don't do that. You know, I'm a good person.

OK, well, maybe you're the one that's trying to carry your guilt. Some of us bury, deny our guilt, but others of us try to carry guilt. And for you, it's not so much. You know, I don't want to talk about it, but more so I know it's wrong. But I can fix this.

I'll do better. I'll do better this week. I'll do better starting tomorrow morning. You know what? I'll just fasten the Super Bowl.

That'll prove how good I'm doing. Dare you try. No, not kidding, you know, I'm going to show everyone on Instagram, on social media about how good I'm doing, even through this Red Letter Challenge series and how good I'm feeling about myself so I can get a little notice.

I can feel a little bit better about myself and my moral efforts. Many people try to carry their guilt. Self transformation, Moral effort. No, I got this.

I'll pay it for myself. But whether you're trying to bury, deny your guilt or carry it, it will never work.

So what do we do? We ask for forgiveness, forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors.

Jesus commands us to pray this and when we pray that it it is both convicting and it's encouraging. Convicting on the one hand, because it means you and I, we have to acknowledge that we are are guilty, but on the other hand, it's encouraging because it means you and I can be forgiven of our sins.

The weight is removed, friends. No more burying or carrying our debt. The weight is removed. And this is good news of the gospel, that in and because of Jesus Christ you can be forgiven of sin. I can be forgiven of sin, all of it.

This is amazing news. Forgive us our debts, Lord. In other words, Jesus is commanding and saying to us, I want you to be forgiven. I want you to be changed. I want you to be transformed.

I don't want you to live in patterns of sin. I want you to be delivered from that weight of sin and guilt. This is what I came for. That Jesus through his life, his death, his resurrection, that when we pray this part of the Lord's Prayer, through those things in him, we receive God's forgiveness. We receive it, but then secondly, as we receive this forgiveness, it also must be offered through US.

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. So notice, friends, it is so for this forgiveness. It is so important to Christ that after giving this prayer, He carries on with this issue, verses 14 through 15. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.

But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. It's pretty spicy.

Does this mean Jesus is saying if you forgive you go to heaven and if you don't you go to hell? Here's the thing. Forgiveness is the fruit of your faith.

Forgiving others does not earn you life. Forgiving other people who have wronged you is showing the fruit you have in that life. Jesus here, he's not saying you must earn forgiveness by forgiving others first.

That's not what he's saying at all. Rather, he's saying the fruit, the evidence that you are have been forgiven is that you in turn show and pour out that same forgiveness to others. So to really maybe put it simply, forgiven people forgive people.

You know what Jesus is saying is that if you refuse to show and give forgiveness to another person, then you and the in turn are cutting your own self off from that same source of forgiveness that is given to you. Why? Because there is only one source of forgiveness by which we are forgiven. There's only one source by which others are forgiven, and that is the finished work of Christ crucified and risen from the dead.

Amen. Amen. That's not a rhetorical question. Jesus makes it clear the forgiveness is the fruit of our faith, and it's something he really highlights and illustrates later on in Matthew chapter 18, which is worth reading in its entirety. And it starts in verse 21. In Matthew 18.

It's the parable of the unforgiving servant. Then Peter came up and said to Jesus, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me? And I forgive him as many as seven times. But Jesus said to Peter, I do not say to you 7 times, but 77 times. And so therefore the Kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle his accounts with his servants. And when he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, along with his wife and children in everything he had, and payment to be made. And so the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything. And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him of the dead.

But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 denarii. And seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, Pay what you owe.

And so his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, Have patience with me, and I will pay you. He refused, and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. But when his other fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. And his master summoned him and said to him, You wicked servant, I forgave you all that, that because you pleaded with me, should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you? And in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers until he should pay all his debt.

Jesus says so also. My heavenly Father will do to everyone of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. Commentators say in about this parable that this servant owed the master what would be an equivalent of today's money, over $6 billion.

Crazy amount of money you're you're owing there. And it's why it says his wife, his family, everything he had would now become under servitude. Because back then, folks, there was no Chapter 11. If you had a debt you couldn't pay, you became an indentured servant.

There was no file for bankruptcy. There was no Michael Scott moment. I'd declare bankruptcy. You know, could see you get that one. But you know, that's just how it worked. You know, but what does the king do? The king absorbs all the debt, all of it.

And here's the interesting thing about forgiveness and debt. Debt just doesn't magically go away, doesn't magically disappear.

Shocker. I know. I mean, like, imagine, for instance, today you get in the mail, not an anonymous prank letter, but rather you get a letter from your credit card company and Visa, out of their kindness of their hearts, writes to that letter. And you read it and it says today is a jubilee day and we have decided out of the kindness of our hearts to cancel all your debt.

And you read that and you're like, yes, I was waiting for this, but you need to know that money just doesn't disappear. It's not like they just wave their wand and poof, it's gone like magic. No, it meant means that that company chose to absorb the cost that you owed them.

Someone had to pay. And that is what forgiving a debt means. And it's shown by this master and the servant, he should have been so melted and reshaped that the enormity of his debt being cancelled, but the servant wasn't.

He wasn't transformed out of faith by the mercy. And he showed this in the way he responded to others around him that what is should have turned him into a humble servant. He used instead rather as license to become a hard hearted tyrant. Because we see him going out and finding someone who owes him basically a few 100 bucks and he throttles the guy. Pay what you owe me, dude.

He treats his equal as though he were superior. And notice it says there his fellow servant. And so the wicked servant, after it's talked about, is then called back to the master and the king, and he is made to pay for his debt. So in short, the servant, he wasn't changed by the forgiveness offered to him. As a result, he didn't offer it to others. And isn't it interesting to note that at the beginning of the story? When this wicked servant is brought first before the king and has to face his debt, notice how he doesn't even ask for forgiveness.

What does he ask for? He asked for more time. He asked for more time to pay it off himself, which only shows he was unaware of the sheer magnitude of his debt or his complete inability to pay it off.

And it then showed in the way he treated other people. So what does that mean for us? Because Jesus says to pray like this.

Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And let's be honest, this is hard. It is hard to forgive other people who have wronged you.

You know, I, I just love the moment. It's just so humbling. You know, I'm working with the student life groups who are going through this challenge and we talked about forgiveness and I asked the students, you know, why is forgiveness forgiving others so hard? And one student just said right off the bat, because I'm petty.

Just love the brutal honesty and self-awareness. You know, when it comes to the sins of other people against us, it's simple. We're like straight to jail, Make them pay when it comes to us, when it comes to our own sin and unrighteousness. Yeah, it's a little bit more complicated there. I maybe, maybe you need to see the whole picture.

Life is just so hard for me right now. I know I sinned against you, but it's a little bit more complicated with me. You straight to sin, jail, you're done.

Nope. No time for you when it comes to me. You know, there's a little bit more layers involved that need to be factored into this whole forgiveness thing.

When it comes to other people's sins and debts against us, it's like almost we put them on this payment plan, you know, with a relative or a friend. It's usually over the course of days, sometimes weeks.

Sometimes there's some of you and it's it's over years. And you have those little comments you leave along the way and you remind them of the sin constantly. And we replay the sin over and over again in our minds, which that only fuels our anger, fuels our bitterness. And instead of offering forgiveness, we demand payment.

Wicked servant, he didn't ask for mercy, and that wicked servant was only concerned with payment, and in the end, payment is what he will get.

To refuse to show God's forgiveness, to turn away from the mercy that God extends to us, is to go in the direction of an eternal prison where our cell mates are nothing but anger and bitterness and unforgiveness.

That is hell, church. To live in unforgiveness is to be enslaved, which is why we can only receive forgiveness and offer forgiveness if there's a reason for it and that leads to that last thing, forgiveness. Then it must be secured. There needs to be a reason for forgiving, and the reason we can receive forgiveness for our debt and forgive others for their debts is because Jesus paid for all of our debts.

Church, this is the gospel that ultimately Jesus is the king. We are the servants who owe a debt that you and I could never repay. But the gospel comes in and says the King, the Master, he actually became the servant 2000 years ago, the Son of God, Jesus, he, he came into our world and he lived perfectly on our behalf. And when he went to the cross, he died in our place to pay the debt of sin we owed so that we would be given the life he was owed. Jesus is that perfect King, and yet he had compassion on US. Jesus, he had no reason to forgive us.

There was nothing innate about us or nothing we did to garner his attention or get his favor. It wasn't like he looked down and like, oh look, you know Sam, he's really trying.

I'm going to give it a go for him. No, it's not because of what was in us that Jesus heart went out. It's because of what was in Him.

Jesus, His heart went out to us. He absorbed the debt on the cross, and he set us free through his resurrection. And it was on that day that Jesus put himself in the place we belong so that we could then be placed where He belongs.

Friends, Christian forgiveness is not offered based on how we feel about it or whether or not we think others have earned it.

Forgiveness is freely offered because Jesus secured it. And so when Paul later on when he talks about showing and offering forgiveness, here is his reason in Ephesians chapter 4. Be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.

Church. The secret to forgiveness is grace. It really is. Forgiveness is not a reward.

Forgiveness is a gift. And yet, how often do we treat forgiveness as though it were a reward? This is all about the forgiveness secured for us in Christ.

And for those who think that Christianity, being a follower of Jesus, is about walking around with guilt all the time, or putting a bunch of guilt on everyone else, we need to remember the truth of the gospel. And really, there's three things about the gospel. The first thing is, God Forgives immediately.

Ever thought about that? God doesn't say, ah, you know, eventually I'll come around. I'll forgive you of your sins, but you know, not why you're talking about it. I'm kind of thinking about now, OK, I guess maybe in a week or so. No, no.

Nor is God. Like, you know, I'm going to put you on a forgiveness payment plan. I'll forgive five of your sins this week, 15 of them next week and 42 before the end of this month. And you're like, great, thank you, God.

Sounds like a fair deal. Just like my credit card. Thank you very much. No, God Forgives immediately when you ask him in Christ. Not only that, but God Forgives completely. He does not say, you know, I'll forgive some of your sins 70% today and you'll say I'll take it, Lord, I'll deal with the other 30%.

Just give me more time to pay it off. No, God Forgives completely. Friends, the work of Christ on the cross is so finished that God Forgives you immediately.

God Forgives you completely in Christ. And the third thing, he forgives you graciously. And it's on the basis of Jesus and not on the basis of our efforts.

And I'll invite our our worship team to come up as I can conclude this. So great is the gospel church that first John one verse 9:00. We, we, we see it and we read it and we hear it so often in church that if we just only confess our sins, God is so faithful.

He is so just to forgive all of our sins and wash us of all unrighteousness. That is the beauty of the gospel. Christ sets us free and we look at the cross. It shows us the enormity of our debt. Yes, it was so bad that Jesus had to die, but the cross also shows us the greatness of Jesus love. Christ was glad to die because it meant setting you, each and everyone of you, free from sin, forgiven.

Jesus said whoever has been forgiven much loves much. And when we see Peter, then ask Jesus, you know, how many times should I forgive someone who, you know, trespasses against me? Up to seven times. Hey, it's been, I'm pretty good, right? She says no 70 times.

Because when I look at the cross and I behold the empty tomb, and I see how my infinite debt of sin was paid by Christ, it's then and there I stopped counting other people's sins.

Forgiving other people will cost you your pride, church. And yet by that same forgiving you will be freed from all your guilt, your anger, your bitterness and shame and pain.

That as your heart is healed by God's forgiveness, he gives you that same power to be a forgiving person. So this morning, as you do each and every day, let us receive this forgiveness in Christ so that we may offer it to others, because in the end, Jesus has secured forgiveness.

Amen. Amen.

Hey, good morning, good morning, good morning, everyone. Online, too. You know, I was just kind of giving Matt a hard time. There's going to be a vote for a new lead pastor next week because it is a big day, right? It is Super Bowl Sunday, just like today's Groundhog Day, whatever, it's a day we're going to go to God's word. So yeah, let me just reiterate. So there's like no confusion. So there's a vote for a new lead pastor elect, but I'm still lead pastor. Then eventually next July, potentially, they'll be the changeover over the title and then a baton pass. Then I'm here for a couple months. I want to be a part of Major Treats, SOA Walk and Faith Fest. And then because the staff is pretty busy and then after that, we'll kind of begin to make that transition and see what happens after that.

Right. So looking forward to that. You'll find out who that is next week if you come. Otherwise, you're not going to find out. OK, let's just my Bible is to, is it? It's a familiar verse verses to some, but it's, it's where I felt like God was leading us today in our theme. So I'm going to, if you need a Bible, I, I, I see right here, we have ready Bibles ready. If you need one, grab one.

They'll bring it to you. I'm in John chapter 15. This is this the 7th and the last designation that Jesus gives of himself. When Jesus speaks, what is it? It's red letters, right? And hence the red letter series with Jesus words. And I'm going to pick up with verse 1. He says I am the true vine and my father is the vine dresser. Every branch of 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 and you. And 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 and 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 proved to be my disciples. And as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love, abide in my. I'm just going to stop right there and say, Lord, this is your word.

May my message and my preaching and not be words of wisdom, but may may they be power. So Holy Spirit, we pray that you would break into our hearts that we could hear it in Jesus we pray.

Amen. It was in his book, Hidden Wholeness that Parker Palmer relates a story about farmers in the Midwest and how they would prepare for blizzards by tying a rope from the back of their their door on their house to the barn as a guide to ensure them that somehow during that Blizzard, they can make it safely back to their house.

Because these blizzards, they would come quickly and they, they would be fierce and, and they're highly dangerous, highly dangerous. And when their full force was blowing, a farmer couldn't even see the end of his or her hand.

Many froze to death in those blizzards, so disoriented by their inability to see, they, they, they, they could wander around in circles, lost sometimes in their own backyards.

And if they lost their grip on the rope, it became impossible for them find their way home. Some froze even within feet of their front door, never realizing they were just so close. So close to safety and even to this day in parts of Canada, but also the Great Plains meteorologist, they still counsel people that to avoid getting lost in the blinding snow.

And some of you were looking because there was a picture, right? Yeah. You can look this up.

It's real. They they would venture outside. He says. They basically told them tie one end of a long rope to your house and grasp the other end firmly.

Now it's still winter. Praise God, we have a little break today. Amen. Yeah, this whole last week, to be honest, to see the sunshine, the melting snow. But but let's just face it, blizzards are still a probability in in, in many parts of the it's still winter. It could still happen, right? But it doesn't have to be winter to experience what we could call out call the the white out of cultural and societal Blizzard that is happening all around us.

Blizzards are experienced personally when we say yes to too many things, many between the demands from work and family, our lives fall somewhere between full and and overflowing right.

We and we multitask so much that we are even we're not even aware that we're doing three things at the same time. And yet we're impressed by those who can do that right at the same time. Many of us were over scheduled, tense, addicting to hurry, frantic, preoccupied by the bombardment of so many forms of media, so many forms that many of us are just fatigued and we're starved for time.

It's a mantra. It's a truth I've heard way too many times. And quite honestly, it just depresses me as a pastor when I hear something like, yes, commitment levels are down.

Bible reading, prayer, taking time to be in God's presence, it's down, along with worshipping in God's house on the weekend, which is also very down in this country, right? It's declining. But we know this. Worry, anxiety, loneliness, depression, friendlessness, those are all way up.

Some of you are feeling that our overproductivity becomes counterproductive. Or, as Pastor John might be remembered for saying, there's so much, There's no much.

Just as there can be so many. We missed the one. There's no many, right? Yeah.

And then we have free time on the weekends and, and praise God, you're here. You've taken the time to say this is this is a priority for me.

Praise God. But many of you, maybe it's even you, maybe someone close to you, you know, they've kind of lost their way.

The Blizzard has gotten to them and they need to find their way home. Perhaps we could just, we could have a whole message on the gift of limits, peace. Cazero, he writes about this in his books.

The Gift of you know what that is. Do you know what that is? In other words, God created us with limits, with limits, right? You remember back to the account of creation, The only being in that account that is without limits is the Creator, and he rests, right? We have limits of time, of energy, of gifts, our wisdom.

You're never going to get 30 hours in a day. You're never going to be given 10 days in a week. You're never going to experience a 40 day month, right? You're never going to have a 450 day year. No, no, no.

God has established boundaries for each of us. Limits. And there's nothing beyond those boundaries. There's no more time to be had.

So on this side of eternity, we all live with these boundaries that God has set. That's why it's important to remember that we are human beings, not just human doings. So God tells us the importance of being. You could, you could just say this so many ways, but you could say it's like Sabbath thing. Sabbath is 7th, which means rest, right? Rest where we rest. And it's deeper and more profound than just physical rest. When the Bible describes it, it's a call to spiritual rest.

And the Sabbath or rest, reminds us that we're not created to be independent of God, but to be dependent on Him.

I like what Paul Tripp and now I've got 2 devotions because I've got Riddler plus I'm doing Paul Tripp everyday gospel through the Bible and just this last week right as I'm moving through Exodus, he says this about the Sabbath. He says the Sabbath was given by God not just so that we could rest, but so that we could rest in him.

Human independence and self-sufficiency is a delusion. It's never a pathway to life, it's rather a road to destruction and death. Admitting your need, owning your limits and running to the one who is the endless fountain of new life and renewed strength is where life is to be found.

So. So you see, there is something to hold on to. Or or we could say someone to hold on to, right? Someone to be tied to, even when sometimes it feels like there's relentless blizzards.

So going back to that only opening illustration, let me just ask, what what is that rope which you're hanging on to? What do you hold on to during the times of Blizzard for protection, for assurance? What is it that's that's going to bring you safely home? What are you placing your trust in? We could say it that way or even more so. Is there someone or something that you're connected to that provides the security, significance and peace you so need as a human being? So that that's the first theme right of of our letter series. It's being, it's being and Pastor Matt last week really focused on this foundational and this is kind of foundational too today. What it means to be because being could it could actually refer to a lot of themes. Hence the most difficult decision is what to preach on today, because there's so much a lot of times you could just go right to identity.

In other words, who you are in Christ. What it means to be in Christ is his child and and being is more something on the inside.

You don't see it. It's more invisible, right, more contemplative.

We often find this in contrast to doing and doing is is what we see. It describes our actions. It's what's on the outside. So the concepts of being and doing both are very biblical, by the way, and very much a part of our walk in daily life with God.

For instance, in Ephesians 210. Many of us, we've heard this for so many times for we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus.

You could stop right there. That's being we're created in Christ Jesus, created to connect with him, to be in him. We're created by God, not for our own purposes, but for his. And this isn't meant to be a static thing, This identity in Christ, it's living, it's breathing, it's a reality shaped by God's grace and it reflexive. I have said in the last couple of messages, God's image even in US or is that imprint. Therefore, if anyone's in Christ, he's a new creation. The old is gone, right? The new has come, so it's not just a better version of yourself, it's actually something completely new.

When you come to that faith. It's a transformation. And then Paul would say we are created in Christ Jesus to do good works. What's that? That's the that's the being. That's the being which God prepared in advance for us to do so in this Red Letter series today is being. But the kind of the rest, when we get into forgiving, we get into giving and serving and going. Those are part of the doing and I hope you can just hang in there.

With your readings, because God has a plan for you as you discover this, and the doing isn't meant to be doing something so that we can earn God's favor and grace. No, it flows from our being.

So let's just state the obvious. I'll confess it's really difficult to have a good balance of being and doing right, because some of you are probably really good at being, but you're not so good at doing this. Some of us are good at doing, but we're not so good at being and just resting in God's presence, because it's easy to enter into the Blizzard and then forget what you're hanging on to. So let me just ask that how much time are you spend just being a human being? Sabbath thing, right? Resting in God's presence, reflecting on what's happening to you on the inside. People have told me, Pastor John, I'm kind of, I kind of feel, I kind of feel convicted when you say you go on those long walks and you just listen.

Maybe that's what you need. Take the headphones out. Hello.

Be where you are. Amen. That wasn't written down. It just came out.

I'm sorry. It just, it just came out. So how often does we just need to be reminded of what we are connected to, who we are connected to? So what does this being look like? OK, I'm taking a long time to get to the text.

I get it. But we have this, this picture that Jesus gives us. And you know, the red letters, right, are his words. So here we are. He gives us this metaphor, what it means to be connected to him. So let me go there. And it really has to do with growing in our growth as beings. So how does Jesus describe this, this connection? Here it is, he says. I am the true vine and my father is the vine dresser.

I am the true vine. My father is the is the vine dresser. So what Jesus is actually saying is I am the vine, the true one.

That's actually in the Greek what it's saying and he's emphasizing in comparison to others. For instance, if you go to the book of Hosea, I had I'm not going to go there because I don't have time. Hosea 10. It's a wonderful picture how Israel, God's people, are often called the vine.

But every time they're spoken of, it's in the context of sinfulness and, and, and not fruitfulness. OK, so they were the unfaithful Israel, the sinful sons of God. But Jesus is the true Israel.

He is the faithful Son of God. I am the true vine. Jesus says I'm the one you were waiting for. Because Israel was mostly concerned about their own fruit. But Jesus, his whole life is of service in ministry, which culminates in his death and his resurrection.

And this passage begins to tell us what it means to grow and, and and it's connected with our intimacy, our union with Jesus. As you look in verse five, he he says, I am the vine.

You are the branches. Who are you? You are the, you're the branches.

I hope, I pray, whoever abides in me and I am Him, it is He that bears much fruit.

Apart from me you can do nothing. Nothing. You got to just hear that. Nothing. Without Him, nothing.

So Jesus is clearly saying that He's the vine, He's the stem and we're branches and to be effective we've got to be connected to Him. That's where the life is, that's where the juices are, the chemicals, the moisture, right? That's how they get to the branches. If the branch isn't connected, it just dies.

It just dies. So this is our image of our relationship with God. And this is tremendously important because Jesus, this is an illustration of him being connected to someone has who has come to faith, someone who has been converted, someone who has been brought to life from death, spiritually speaking. And, and this is interesting because it's more intimate than a relationship between an employer and employee or even the relationship between a parent and a student, or even the relationship between a parent and a child and or even a husband and a wife. Because Jesus isn't just saying I'm here to influence you. He says, no, I'm not going to just influence your nature. I'm going to enter your nature.

Woo, he comes in to us. He describes it as being spiritually united. In Romans 6 we are told that in our baptism, if faith with faith would come, he says you're united with Christ in his death and his resurrection.

You're born again from the heart means he comes in to you. It means your heart has been uprooted and replanted and it's connected to the stem, right where there's new soil and the very life of heaven comes into your life. And that's the basis for our growth.

So let's just say how, how does the growth happen then, right? And in verse four, he says 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.

What word did you just hear over and over and over and over? Abide, abide. It simply means to remain, right? It actually though, in life it means to depend. OK, So just as the branch depends on the vine, so we're we're we're here to depend on God.

What does that mean? I just keep asking, So what? What does that look like? Actually, he gives us answers. OK, First off he says in verse seven, he says if my word remains in you, He says abide in you, then you will bear fruit.

So it looks like his word, His word coming into us. It's the dependence on God's word. You say, well, what is his word? Well, it's red letters, but it's the whole Scripture because all of God's word is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking and training, correcting and righteousness.

I can go on and on. It's word, it's the word of God. So let me just simply ask, are you going through a, is anyone going through a Blizzard right now? I, I mean, I'm not talking about a snowstorm.

You know what I'm talking about. I mean, it's just crazy. Is anyone experiencing that, right? Are you connected to the rope? I, I, I mean the vine, right? Are you connected regularly to God's promises or are are you doing what Martin Luther said that we are to read Mark and innerly digest it? Is it in you? Is it in you? Can I tell you something that just makes me cry? I you can look this up, you can Google it.

1111% of Christians active Christians are reading the Bible daily. Only 11% 26,000,000 stopped reading the Bible during COVID. Look it up 26,000,000. Now if I would just say 11%, how much of that is us? Right? It's like it's about right here.

It's not even a whole section. So if that were true of us right here, the rest of you, you're not reading God's word on any daily basis.

That's why I cried, because I'm selling this with all of my heart. And yet we're still not reading it. And some of us, when we look at you, we can tell it.

I'm sorry. We can tell it because you're missing the life and you're not hungry for it. So all I can do is encourage you.

Come on, open up that Bible, let it get into you, fight with it, let it challenge you, let the Word of God do its work in you daily. And when you fail and you fall, you go back to it. Because every day you need the new morning mercies, just like I do, just like I do.

So when you go through the Blizzard, are you hanging on to God's promises? I mean, when you look at your life, can you look at your life and say, wow, I'm growing, there's progress.

Are you looking at your life? And you say, I'm still struggling with bitterness. I'm still dealing with unforgiveness, with worry.

I've got this character flaw. Did I cover it all? Because the answer is we're all struggling, which means going back to God and say, Lord, I need to depend on you. And so many people are just scared today, so scared. What do you do when you have fear in your heart? How you go to God's word and it just reminds you, don't be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition offered to God, don't be anxious about anything.

Look at the birds of the year. Cast all your anxiety upon the Lord, for he cares for you. This is all God's word to speak into you His promises when you're going to these times. But because it's in you, you're meditating on it, you're memorizing it.

So let it argue with you. Let it let it let it confront your thinking, right? But he says abide in my word. But there's a second thing he says which is quite intriguing. He says abide in my love.

Abide in my love. In other words, this is a dependence on God's love. And maybe this is the most important thing.

It just means God. Thank you, thank you for grace.

I don't deserve this. I thank you that I don't have to thank you. I don't have to work for it every day just to be pleasing to you, just to be acceptable to you.

That God, because of Jesus, because of the cross, I can go there and know that I'm saved.

I'm saved. You know, I heard I have this image, this, this guy's going on college campuses. And a young lady asked him, Sir, can you tell me? How good do I need to be to get into heaven? And I loved his answer because I say it often. He said, well, you, you need to be perfect.

You need to be perfect. And that's true. How many measure up to that? The answer is none of us, but Jesus does abide in me and I am you.

When he's abiding in US. What does that make us? We're sons of God, children of God. When the Father sees us, he sees his Son, not you.

That's our hope. That's our hope to remain in his love. By the way, you notice if you keep reading, it says that you obey him. You obey him from faith. That's the fruit to to to remain in his love means to say the great debt has been paid, the great disease has been healed, sin has been forgiven.

So do you abide in his word? Do you abide in his love? And you say, well, why does this even matter? I hope you heard it. I hope you saw it. I hope I hope for some of you you're like he jumped off the page when we read it, where first of all, he gives us a hint and verse to every branch of me that does not bear fruit.

He takes away. Not everyone is sure what that means, but I know, I know what the next verse means.

It's verse 6. Rather go to that verse and he says if anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and Withers and the branches are gathered and thrown into the fire and burned. What? What is that folks? That's a picture of judgment.

That's why it matters. OK? Eternal separation from God.

So the fruit on the branch does not give the branch life, but the fruit tells you whether you are alive. So if you look at your life and you look over time, are you looking just right now even you're saying, I don't seem to have much fruit. I'm still unforgiving, I'm still bitter, I'm still struggling with fear, you know, and let's just, let's just it's not the fruit that saves you.

Just keep that in mind. Because there are times of winter and you know, things don't grow so well in the winter. They look rather dead, right? And that may be you right now, but if you look way back and you see what God's been doing in your life, you know He's there.

So don't give up. He hasn't left you. Faith is there indeed. It's not good deeds that save us, but it's the best deed.

The cross. That's where you go back to get. And if you're at the point where you're saying, wow, Pastor John, he's been saying all this and I'm not even sure where I'm at right now.

I don't know if I have faith. There is no better chance than right now to say, Lord, Lord, I need you. God, I need you.

Forgive me, wash me, cleanse me. By your word, I got to have it.

I need to be new. I don't need you to just influence me. I need you to be in me.

Because that song, I can only imagine. I mean, we don't usually hear that with a band.

OK. That's why we played it. It's at funerals. Hello. And there is nothing more than we no more greater victory or celebration than there would be if if I would go and meet Jesus and he would say, you know those people that you served, they came to me or any of us serve or someone you talked to a neighbor that you you had a conversation with about Christ or a Co worker.

And God says well done. You were faithful to share it. So B maybe you just need to be in God's presence. Let it sit, let it soak in and respond and say, Lord, I need your word.

Remind me of your love. Amen. Amen. Hey, why don't we stand? Come on.

So gracious Father, in Jesus name we pray that you come. Come into this House of worship.

Come into this House of praise. We know you're here. But more importantly, right now, come into our hearts or give us hope.

Remind us what we need to be hanging on to so that we can get home safely when that day comes. We've asked for your forgiveness.

We've asked for your grace. Now, Lord, we ask that you produce much fruit in us so that others would know of this great grace.

Thank you, Jesus, Amen. Amen.

[Music]

good morning church good morning hey great to be with you welcome to worship this morning great job being here way to go you made it hey we have an exciting day ahead of us today we're kicking off a new message series the red letter challenge we're really excited uh just to get going with this lots of exciting things underway pastor Matt is bringing the message today and also today we got a total of three baptisms happening today isn't that just awesome that we've got some children entering the kingdom of God today looking forward to that as well so hey before we do anything else I want to invite you to stand up we make the sign of the cross would you make that with me as we begin in the name of the father Son and Holy Spirit and why don't you just fold your hands and pray with me as we say God thank you for a New Day scripture says that today is the day that you made Lord we will rejoice and be glad in it we give thanks for your abundant Mercy for your forgiveness God we need it on a daily basis and you meet us you give us what we need on a daily basis and we pray that even this morning we would we would meet with you in a new way and in a fresh way that we would receive you in your word and we pray that this morning would be all about you Jesus in your name we pray amen awesome find someone around you share the peace of God with the people around you maybe introduce yourself to someone new get after it hey if you're watching online great to be with you welcome to worship really glad that you're uh hanging out with us today if you have the capability to get into the chat we would actually we would love to hear from you and just to hear where you watching from and if you're watching with any family members uh so let us know uh how we can uh connect in that way

[Music]

[Music] 1 all right church sing this with my you I put my

trust oh Lord my God in you I put my home let's sing that again oh Lord my God in you I put my

trust oh Lord my God in you I put

my in you in you my

in you in you I my

Str in you I live and move

and let everything I say do Fai in yout up hands sing Let the Praises Ring

oh Lord my God to you I give my

hands oh Lord my God to you I give

my oh Lord my God to you I give my everything oh yes I do oh Lord my God to you I give my

life in you in you I find my peace in you I find my peace in you in you I my Str living moving free in you I live move and everything I say and do let everything I say and do be founded by my faith in you lift up holy hands and sing Let the Praises Ring Let the Praises

Ring all right put your hands together of church

[Music] [Applause] [Music]

you

are in you in you I find my Str living moving in you I'm living moving everything I say do let everything I say do in you lift up holy hands and sing Let the Praises Ring Let the Praises Ring Let the Praises Ring Let the Praises

[Music] oh come come to the W all the me come and

oh come come to Heaven brothers and sisters come and be healed we sing that again together oh come come to the water all who are thirsty come and be

F oh come come to to the river brothers and sisters come and be heal come and come on church we believe it we believe in the kingdom come we believe in the Risen Sun you bring our hearts to

light but we come with our hands up high We Believe satisfying bring our hearts to life yes you bring our hearts to life we are

alive we are alive in you Jesus Oh see oh see people return the love of the father dra the no see come on we see salvation coming Jesus our savior light of the world Light of the World We believe We Believe in the kingdom come we believe in the Risen son we bring our hearts to

life will we come with our hands up high we believe you will satisfy you bring our hearts to life yes you bring our hearts to life we are alive [Music] we are alive in you [Music] Jesus so the Revival come let the people see the glory of your

name the Revival come let the people seeing the glory of you come on church we lift our voices the Revival come let the people sing the glory of your name let Revival come Lord May Revival come let the people sing the glory of your name the glory of your name

We believe We Believe in the kingdom come we believe in the rision sun you bring our hearts to

light Lord we come with our hands of High We believe you will satisfy you bring our

heart yes you bring all heart alive we are [Music] alive we are in you Jesus thereal

col so every B come let the people sing the glory of your de

every B come let the people sing the glory of your name it's just your

voices Revival come let the people sing the glory of your name let Revival come Lord let Revival come let the people sing the glory of your the glory of your

name hey Church let's take a minute now and declare our faith in the words of the Apostles Creed would you read these words with me we

say I believe in God the Father Almighty maker of heaven and Earth and in Jesus Christ his only son our Lord who was conceived by the Holy Spirit born of the Virgin Mary suffered under pontious pilate was crucified died and was buried he descended into hell the third day he rose again from the dead he ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty from then he will come to judge the living living in the dead I believe in the Holy Spirit the holy Christian Church the communion of saints the Forgiveness of sins the resurrection of the body and the life Everlasting amen let's continue our worshiping song

[Music]

Christ is my firm [Music] foundation The Rock on which I stay when everything around me is

Shen I'm never been more glad that I put my faith in

Jesus he's never let me down faithful through [Music] Generations so why would he fail now he [Music] won't he

won I've still got joy in [Music] chaos I've got peace that makes no sense so I won't be going

I'm not held by My Own Strength cuz I build my life on Jesus he's never let me down faithful in every

season so why

would you

[Music] won't he won't

F he W [Music] there he [Music] won't he [Music] won't he won't fail

[Music] he see in Christ Christ is my

Foundation The Rock on which I stand when everything around me is

Shen I've never been for I put my faith in

Jesus hee never let me down fa for the [Music] generation so why would he fail down

he he [Music] won't he won't [Music] fail he won't fail

he [Music] won Christ you're the only one who won't fail we build our foundations on so many things and they crumble but you are the solid rock on which we can build our life in which we can have hope and which we can know is always with us we pray this in Jesus name amen church you can have a seat I'm going to invite forward our baptismal family uh the eager family and we have a privilege today of uh welcoming two of God's children into the family of God into this church and we're excited to do that um so girls you have done a great job at just worshiping with us this morning we have music we have God's word that Pastor's going to read but this is something called baptism and I know your mom and dad have probably talked to you about that but we like to start this by asking that question for all of us what is baptism what is baptism why do we do this baptism is not simply water it's water connected with the power in God's word this is not about something that I do something that parents do it's a reminder and it's a real tangible way that God Comes To Us by the power of His word by the Holy Spirit and places his identity on us and we all need that don't we we all need that we all need God's forgiveness so when this water touches your head girls remember that God has forgiven your sins the ones you've committed the very few ones right this young in life but every sin that you ever will commit because of Jesus blood and so God tells us Jesus tells us as his followers to go and make disciples baptizing them in the name of the fathers the Son and Holy Spirit that's in the the gospel of Matthew and then in Acts 2 Peter when he's talking to the crowds they ask him what must I do to be saved and this is what he says in Acts 238 repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the Forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the holy spirit for This Promise is for you and your children for all who are far off so this is something that we as the church believe that God is active here in a way that goes beyond our understanding just like we celebrate the sacrament of communion this is the sacrament of baptism and it's a mystery but it's a gift and so by faith these uh parents are bringing their children to the waters and we're going to celebrate this uh right now so Stella you're first right you're first so come on over with Dad and I'm going to ask you dad and mom before we do this can you uh you know what it's like to raise raise two girls at this point but now you're going to get the reminder of your church family that they are a part of the family of God we want to support you we want to encourage you but will you raise these children in the faith will you support them bring them uh I know you said we're going to take them right down to Faith kids after this so continue to bring them into God's house to learn if so say yes with the help of God yes all right and church we're a part of this too remember we're a part of this we've got a bunch of people down there about to continue loving on it and training but will support the families and every family uh in this church if so say yes with the help of God thank you thank you we don't want to forget that all right so how is this uh child to be named her full name Stella Robbie ACR Stella Robbie Acres all right Stella would you come over this way and I uh Mark you with the sign of the cross on your forehead and upon your heart marking you as one Redeemed by God I baptize you in the name of the father in the name of the son and in the name of the Holy Spirit here you go dad here's a a wipe for Stella all right na anuka come on over with Mom how's this child to be named what's her full name anuka Lee AER all right anuka I bapt I I Mark you with the sign of the cross on your forehead and on your heart and you come on over this water's nice and warm it's going to be all right I baptize you in the name of the father in the name of the son and in the name of the Holy SP Spirit you can grab that wipe from Dad let's pray over this family extend a hand will you Lord we just thank you so much for these two little girls uh children of yours your daughters Lord thank you for the reminder even in this moment that each and every one of us need this washing that you've given us the holy spirit that you have placed on us and an inheritance of eternal life with you God not because of anything we've done but because of your son Jesus thank you for this family thank you for for these girls we pray over their future and all of the things that you're going to do through them in Jesus name all God's people said amen let's welcome them into God's family this

morning you can go ahead and have a seat there well that is just a wonderful and we'll make sure we get you these candles too uh after but what a great way to start uh just a time of of remembrance of what God is doing in this place with worshiping him with remembering who he is and then with seeing his activity just uh plain as day in the gift of baptism I want to welcome you if you're new with us I'm Pastor Brandon and it's a joy to that you've chosen to take an hour uh an hour and a half maybe if you stay and get coffee and donuts after to be with us this morning um we have all kinds of things going on here at our faith family but a great first step if you're new here is to go in the middle of the worship folder you have on the left hand side and scan that that QR code that's a way that you can uh get connected with our uh our connections director but also with people who who may want to just learn more about uh who you are what you're interested in in terms of our Ministries here that's right out the doors after the service you can connect with someone there or go to that QR code and uh ask us just ask for information a lot of people who who've been here we'd love to answer any questions or point you to someone who may know the answer to that question uh and it is certainly a blessing to be a part of this faith family we have something special coming up next week for those of you uh who've been with us a long time you know that we have had a a long tenur and blessing of Pastor John with us for over 30 years but we have a transition coming up that we've been telling you about communicating and a special voters meeting is on February 9th at 11:30 so right after the late service to really uh extend uh and talk about what is the next steps in this transition process to get your involvement and we're excited to share that excited uh to follow God's leading in this process because it certainly has been Reliance on him so come to that February 9th mark your calendars and um also mark your calendars the night before is when Nola night in Nola was rescheduled so if you are a part of that signed up at a table you can still come and you can still bring people to that and I know I hope we have more people than would have come during that snowy day in January so we're excited to do that I know they said they've got more menu options there's 's going to be uh dancing dinner and a lot of fun as we support our youth who are going to that uh National Youth Gathering later in the year and so thank you for your support thank you for being a part of all of these events a part of our families volunteering we couldn't do this on Sunday morning without your activity uh I I would just brought Pastor SEL in and he's going down to teach the kids and I know there's so many Volunteers in this place but also downstairs so not only do you see financial support and pray make a difference but your presence in all of these different ways is a way that we can Steward the gifts that God has given us so thank you for doing that and I think I'm forgetting one thing I know it's on the screen so thanks for reminding me it kicks off today red letter we're starting a new series the red letter Challenge and we've got uh hundreds of people in groups to go through this day-by-day uh really reflection on the words of Jesus and pastor Matt is going to be kicking off our intro message but if you still want to be involved there are a couple more books I'm talking single digits now uh but you can sign up for groups on Sunday and get those books and if you just want to go through on your own at home uh I know Amazon will ship this to you very quickly so I invite you if you don't have a book you can still grab that uh just go out and grab it on Amazon or or the website well with that Pastor Matt am I missing anything there's a lot there but I think I covered it he gave me the thumbs up so we we'll keep going and he is uh going to be bringing the word today in this intro um let's go to the Lord and prayer before we continue our

worship heavenly father thank you for the gift of baptism Lord there's another uh child of yours Lucas who's going to be baptized at the 10:30 service and we just thank you for being a God who gives us these gifts these tangible these tangible things to hold on to Lord I Thank you for the gift of Life you've brought multiple babies into the world uh through the gift of of birth for uh Angela for Landon um Lord you've given us the life that we we are living and so we celebrate with these families these first time parents first time grandparents um the gift of life but Lord in the same way we know that this physical life in this broken world is one that until until you return we Face the reality of death an enemy that is the final enemy to be destroyed but one that brings grief and mourning and pain into our families when we lose someone that we love and so we lift up the families who've lost loved ones for the SES family the Mau family and Lord for those who have loved ones who are close to meeting you Jesus would you give them Comfort would you give them peace Lord allow us to be instruments of your peace in those relationships and Lord for those who are struggling with uh physical challenges but you are bringing healing in your timing would you be in the life of Betty Ralph Kathy Bella Bill who are all crying out for healing in different ways Lord emotional healing spiritual healing physical healing Lord we trust in your power and your love to heal so we lift up all of these individuals to you we also lift up just the situations that are on our heart maybe it's a person who's really struggling right now Lord maybe we've told someone that we'll pray over that and this week we just we forgot we haven't gone to you in prayer for our own needs the own concerns that we have so Lord we allow just a few silent moments now to bring our prayers before [Music]

you got all these things you hear we thank you for listening we thank you for giving us a prayer that encompasses all of these things in the words that Jesus taught his disciples and us to pray as we say together Our Father who art in heaven Hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but Deliver Us from Evil for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever amen am amen well let's continue our worship with a song before our message

[Music]

time looking my window feeling the CR a quiet SC Sting with the ones that I forever love with with no flash of green even when the nights got cold you've always held me close you're the only rock that I could ever stand on you're the only one for me the sun goes up sun goes down this whole world keeps spinning around I'm here traveling down the small and winding the seasons come Seasons go take me high and leave me I'm just standing all the only rock I know you're my corner

St no matter where I go my [Music] cornerstone through wrestling the of Shame trying to turn the hands back on the tring past every move makes but even in the shy WS you are who you've always been you're the only rock I could on through all you sun goes up sun goes down this whole world keeps spinning around I'm here traveling down SM and Ro Seasons come Seasons go take me high and leave me know I'm still standing on the only rock I know you're my

cornerstone no matter where I go my

corner no matter where I go oh Christ Sol Rock I'm standing all of the ground is sinking sand on Christ the all come standing yeah all of the ground is sinking sing on Christ the solid rock comes and you're the only one that I will build my life on through with all you remains sun goes up goes down this over keeps spinning around i' been traveling down this long and wind Road

go SE go high and leave meow I'm still standing on the only I know you're my [Music] corner no matter where

I no matter where

I where I my going to fall

no matter where I go you are the only AR stand on [Music]

[Music]

all right well please pray with me dear Lord we thank you so much that we're able to gather here Lord and as we dig into your word I pray that it is the rock that we put our life on God and that you would help us understand why you use that image and how that image could radically change our lives Lord I pray that my words would be your words not one word more or one word Less in your name we pray Lord Jesus amen well uh when I preach I love to take time to really kind of dig into the text and I found in my life the best time to do that is bright and early in the morning at a coffee shop right because I'm I'm a bit of what you would call an extrovert so for me to just like sit in a quiet room and try to read and focus just it does not work I need a little bit of that like morning commotion going on around me so I can really like dig in and this week I was doing that but I wasn't at one of my like usual coffee shops and as I'm sitting there studying focusing getting just some good work done you know what I'm saying this young college age couple walks in and they sit down at the table diagonal from me now I know it's a young college age couple because this girl starts talking about just her life and graduation and what she's going to be doing after graduation she's got the biggest smile on her face and she's just like staring lovingly into his eyes and it's like the cutest thing ever right like you kind of like have to pause and just take it in for a second and as I'm doing that I'm just like oh young love it's a beautiful thing right and then I look over because this guy's kind of sitting with like his back toward me and he's got his phone up like this and she's talking bearing his soul and he's just scrolling on Instagram I'm not even kidding you and I'm watching ing the feed and all of a sudden studying aside I can't focus because my studying is about to turn into the Jerry Springer Show CU I've been married for 14 years and I know what happens when your wife is sitting across from you burying your soul and you're just sitting there scrolling on Instagram but to be honest with you you don't have to be in a relationship longer than 14 minutes to know this is a bad idea and I I'm sitting here just waiting for this to go down going what is she doing with him she could do so much better right and then I look and I notice something on the table it's it's her phone and her phone is like sitting up and I can kind of see the screen of it because at this point I've quit

studying and she's got her phone on and even though she's looking at him and staring lovingly into his eyes and all she's not talking to him she's talking to somebody else else on the other end of the phone and now all of a sudden my allegiances have flipped what is this girl doing this guy has just taken his morning to bring her out to a coffee shop buying her coffee just waiting to to talk to her about life he even reaches out at one point and like holds her hand and she's on the phone with somebody else I'm like bro you can do much much better and as I'm sitting here trying to study I realize oh this is what Jesus is talking about in our text see because I think a lot of times in our lives today this this is what our relationship with Jesus looks like is Jesus is in the room and he's ready to engage and he's ready to be fully and completely present and yet we are so distracted with everything else in fact in Matthew chapter 7 at the end of The Sermon on the Mount this is something that Jesus talks about he warns us that this can happen that moment where we realize we're in the room with Jesus but we're focused on anything and everything else and even though we know he's saying things we're not really tuned in to what it is he's saying and that's why I love as we step into this red letter Challenge Series that Zach opened up with this Bible verse because this Bible verse is a promise and a warning all wrapped up into one thing for us and what I found is if it's a promise and a warning that we will hold on to that we will take seriously it could radically change our lives and what happens especially when the storms in our life come together so I don't want you take my word for it I want to look at this together with you so if you open up to Matthew chapter 7 Matthew's the First Gospel in the New Testament if you need a Bible uh we've got some people that have some Bibles and and that's a gift to you if you don't have one feel free to take that or you know feel free to open up your Bible app on the phone but don't scroll on Instagram because previous story right in Matthew chapter 7 Jesus says this he says everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a man who built his house on the rock and the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house but it did not fall because it had been founded on the Rock and everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand and the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell and great was the fall of it and when Jesus finished saying these things the crowds were astonished at his teaching for he was teaching them as one who had Authority and not as their scribes you know on the surface this is a really simple Bible story right in fact I remember the first time I really kind of studied it and dug into it it was at a middle school youth retreat an all night lock in right and if you're doing an all night lock in you got to pick a simple text because there's a lot going on and I just remember thinking like how silly is that who who would build their house on Sand when there's a perfectly good rock sitting over here right and that's kind of I think when we approach this text our our really simple understanding of it but as I started digging into that this week and trying to get past just that really surface reading what I realized was there's so much more going on here just starting with when Jesus actually shared this story Jesus shares this story after he's just done a long extended sermon called The Sermon on the Mount The Sermon on the Mount is so long and extended it runs from chapter five of the Gospel of Matthew all the way up to this point in chapter 7 and after Jesus has started teaching people about what it looked like to be a disciple and a follower of Jesus and somebody that lives in this countercultural way that Jesus Calls the kingdom of God uh something that we oftentimes call like an upside down way of living Jesus ends it all with the crowd saying not just did you hear what I'm saying because he realized everybody around him heard what he was saying but rather Jesus looks at that crowd and he goes what will you do with what I'm saying because hearing what Jesus is saying is not the important thing the important thing is what we do about it and so that's why he paints this picture of these two houses the houses he's talking about are our lives and he paints a picture that everybody in that crowd would have got and I think sometimes we miss a little bit today and the reason we miss it a little bit today is because most of us never built the house we live in right for most of us we kind of like got a real estate agent we went around looking at houses we're like this one looks pretty good and the real estate agent goes yeah it's got good right and so you're like I guess that means we should move into this one but most of us didn't actually like build the house we're in a few of us here probably have Built Homes before but even building a home today is a radically different thing I mean when you're building a home today you've got all kinds of big machinery that you can bring into it and you've got you know the power tools and you've got experts that are looking at every little thing but back then building a home wasn't just a difficult thing it was a dangerous thing but what's interesting is when you were building a home back then the most important thing about building a home is still the most important thing today you have to start with a solid foundation because if you don't start with a solid foundation in that home it doesn't matter how much money you pour into it it doesn't matter what kind of materials you use to build it if you do not have a solid foundation that home will not stand and in Israel this was really important because everybody had the opportunity in Israel to build their home on a solid foundation the question was were they willing to do the work to make sure it was solid because you see when you talk about building in Israel it's really important to understand that the only time they would build was in the summer because in the summer the weather was consistent it was dry it was warm and if you waited till the winter to try to build all of the sudden all the rains and the storms would come and you wouldn't be able to build your home but the danger of building in the summer is that all of that sand Jesus is talking about is actually like a hard clay and so when you're trying to build in the summer in Israel what you realize is the foundation you think is firm is actually just a really hard sunbaked clay and while it looks firm firm and solid and like a good foundation that you could put a house on when the rains come and when the storms come in the winter all of a sudden all that clay turns into mud and it begins to melt away under the foundation of your home and when you're building a home with a bunch of stones none of which seem very uniform it's really important that the foundation is solid and so what they do is a wise builder in Israel will take the time the work the effort and the energy to dig past the hard clay down to the stone underneath which could be anywhere from 1 to 10 feet deep into the ground how do you know how far you need to go you know when you hit the stone and what Jesus is saying is that putting my words into practice is like doing the work of a wise Builder who knows that if he takes the time to dig plast the things that look and feel solid he will be able to dig down to the very Rock The Challenge is knowing what is really solid and that was a challenge for them back then because they had a lot of teachers that would come around and teach different ways and say that God was saying different things but what Jesus was saying was you need to trust my words because Jesus life itself was also founded on the Rock and when Jesus was using that image of The Rock he was kind of talking in on kind of two planes right he wasn't just talking about like pure construction wisdom of digging down past the clay and putting your found foundation on The Rock when Jesus was saying The Rock he was evoking in the minds of the people back then an image and the image he was evoking in their minds was the image of the temple because the temple in Jerusalem was the highest point in the city and everybody knew that the temple itself was literally built on the Rock in fact when you went into the holy of holies there was actually a smaller rock that stood up higher than the rest that the actual altar of God sat on and so when Jesus said build your life on the Rock he was evoking in them the image of the one space they knew was where Heaven literally met Earth and the presence of God dwelt this is really important to understand because I think a lot of times when we read this text in fact when I was reading this text earlier this week I had that same image that was running through my mind the image of the checklist you know what I'm talking do you guys ever get that image when it comes to Jesus and he says put my words into practice and all of the sudden we immediately go to the checklist the list of things we're supposed to do and the list of things we're supposed to avoid doing right and we think that's what Jesus means when he says build your life on the foundation of the rock but when Jesus is saying this he's not just talking about a checklist and that's why he evokes this image of the temple because he's talking about literally building your life into the presence and the relationship with God to build your life on the foundation of a relationship with Jesus to allow that to be the primary foundation on which everything else in your life sits and if you will build your life on the foundation of that relationship then out of that relationship everything else from your life will flow so you will begin to do the things that God is calling you to do because it's coming from a place of relationship with God so Jesus isn't just saying here's your new checklist figure it out what Jesus is saying is here is my life put your life in my life and you will have a firm foundation that can't be shaken now the danger is is are we willing to put our life in Jesus life this has always been the challenge in fact the Apostle Paul he was writing this letter to Timothy his Protegé who was beginning to lead a church and he said to Timothy in second Timothy chapter 4 starting at verse two he said to Timothy preach the word be ready in season and out of season reprove rebuke exhort with complete patience and teaching for the time is coming when people will not endure or sound teaching but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths you know I read this section I was like Paul are you reading our mail literally like we live in a culture where to become an expert all you need is a microphone we live in a culture where people are literally famous for being famous we live in a culture where if you feel something in your heart you can find somebody that will affirm that for you you can find the expert that will tell you what you already want to hear and affirm you in living into that the problem is if you build your life like that finding the expert that you want to hear from the person that's already going to say what you want to hear it's like building your life on that seemingly solid clay and then the rains and the storms of life come and all of the sudden that clay starts to melt away and you realize the foundation you were building on that you thought was firm it's not as firm as you thought and all of the sudden your life begins to to shift and move and fall apart and the reason is because we missed the opportunity to build our lives on the Rock the one that isn't moved by rain or wind or storm in fact I like the way that Tim Keller talked about it Tim Keller he wrote this book called making sense of God and he was talking about this guy that had written an article about about the Pains of building your life on external success and how that falls apart and in the midst of this Tim Keller makes this point and I thought it was so powerful he said we were built to know serve and love God and if we try to live for anything else it leads to slavery but when we begin to live for God and follow his will we find that we are actually becoming who we were meant to be and we were realizing our original design you see when Jesus says build your life on the rock what Jesus is realizing is that he is the one that's created all things and he wants those things to go well for you he wants life to be lived for you to the full and as the Creator he knows exactly how that works best so when we build our life in his foundation what he's doing is he's saying I'm going to make sure that even when the storms come your life can Thrive because you're built on my life and Jesus life is the life that not even death can steal away more than that Jesus life is a life that pours more love into your life than anything else could I think that's why Keller also said in this section there is one Lord and when we fail him will not punish us but forgive us if you serve your career your career will never die for your s if you live for your career and you fail it will crucify you inside with self-loathing but Jesus was crucified for you see the reason Jesus says to build your life on the Rock is because Jesus knows that God is the one thing that will pour everything into your life before he even asks one thing of you the problem is anything else you try to build your life on success career Fame accolades all of those things will ask everything from you before they give anything to you and often times once they ask everything of you they'll ask even more and so that's why Jesus says build your life on the Rock The Rock of his love the rock of his forgiveness the rock of his wisdom and so church that's why we're kicking off this year with the red letter challenge we're kicking it off because we want to take some time to help you and honestly to help ourselves because the reality is we all live in this world where we are bombarded with all different kinds of messages to take an opportunity to really and intentionally just dig past the clay the stuff in this world that looks solid but it isn't and to literally dig into the very words of Jesus and to spend 40 days doing that and the reason we're using the red letter challenge for it is the red letter challenge is just a really good way to really focus in on those red letters or sometimes in your Bibles right when Jesus says something it's in red to really focus in on the things Jesus said in fact I love this book my friend Zach actually wrote this book we were classmates at the Seminary and I remember when this first came out and Zach asked if he could jump onto a podcast we had at the time I was like absolutely and so we were talking about this and he was sharing more of the story of where this came about and one of the things he said you'll hear him talk about it in the intro of the book is that as he was leading his church PL he realized that it was so easy for us to be cultural Christians kind of Christian in name only and the problem with that is that the world around us doesn't get to see Jesus when we live our life like that they think that we have something no different than anybody else but Zach said man what would it look like if we actually centered our lives on the promises and the words of Jesus and actually took them so seriously that we would move Beyond simply hearing them and literally trying to live them out in the world around us to live out the red letters and so what he did was he put together this little 40 day challenge and he went through the gospels and when he was going through the gospels he found out that Jesus talked about five different themes these aren't the only five things that Jesus talked about but these are the things that no matter what gospel you're reading Jesus will continue to repeat the First theme is being then forgiving serving giving and going and those were kind of the broad categories and I love those broad categories because right from the beginning Zach says we're going to start everything out by realizing this is not a checklist we're talking about but we're going to start everything out by talking about how we just Center our lives on the rock of Jesus just being in his presence and so this week as you're digging into this challenge if you decide to grab the book and you decide to read through or join a life group and walk through it with a group of people you're going to find that Zach gives you an overview of all those things being forgiving serving going I think praying's in there right almost forgot that one that's pretty important one Jesus talks about that a lot as he talks about those themes and then after he talks in this week about those themes he'll let you spend an entire week in those themes and in the different ways that Jesus talks about that and what I think is so powerful about that is not that we're just going to spend 40 days thinking about what Jesus said and trying to put it into practice but it's a way that we can learn how we can live our lives centering ourselves on Jesus the one person who gives everything before he asks

Music. Our text for the sermon today comes from Psalm 139, starting with verses 1 and 2 and continuing the verses 13 through 16.

Oh, Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up, you discern my thoughts from afar.

For you informed. For you formed my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works. My soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw. All my unformed substance in your book were written, every one of them. The days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them.

This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Most merciful God, you are so good. You are the one who was and is and is to come.

And yet, you, Lord, being that wonderful uncreated Creator, you love each of us intimately and deeply, and you formed us before all the world's. And so I pray now that you would speak through your servant, Pastor John, and that you would inform and tell everyone here just how much they matter to you and how deeply and wonderfully made that they are. We pray all these things in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ.

Hey, Tristan, thank you. Hey, my Bible is open to Psalm 139, but you know I also want to share something with you.

Just a little bit of update. Some of you have asked where are we going with lead pastor selection. And let me just tell you that on the call committee has done its work. And on February 9th, there's a special meeting right after the late service to call what we're calling the lead pastor elect. OK, lead pastor elect who's going to be eventually replacing me, but that it won't be official to our July meeting.

OK. So don't kick me out yet, OK. So and then after a couple months, actually I want to be a part of, I saw slides for the marriage retreat and we're going to have some other things that that transition would happen. That handoff would happen right after that meeting, but I would still probably be called Pastor emeritus. Can you imagine that? So it'll be after 35 years. So I just want to let you know that that is happening and we're progressing. And your prayers for that are wonderful. Hey, I also want you to know that this church, we've always been about life. You know that, right? All you got to do is look to your right. Look at our mission statement that we are people connecting people to what? Yeah, but you said that was such enthusiasm.

Maybe you online said it with more enthusiasm. We want to welcome you to. Yeah. So we're about life, extraordinary life. Did you know this, that in 1984, that was the year President Ronald Reagan, he actually proclaimed that January 22nd would be what the national, right, the sanctity of human life Sunday or sanctity of human life. So that would be the date. So we kind of choose a Sunday around then that we want to focus on issues of life, that life is valuable, that life is important. And today, just to remind us that at every stage for everyone, whether it be a woman, a man, a boy, a girl, babies, babies in the womb, right? And those who are in their last stages of life, they're all valuable in the sight of God, but it also gives us a chance to focus on these things called life and what life is. And, and to highlight again, one of our ministry partners, as we talked about someone who's actually helping people where they're going through times, it's often called a crisis, right? Maybe a crisis pregnancy.

It's, it's a crisis of life and living for them at the very moment. And so people who care and walk through them and with them. And we have a lot of our folks involved in that ministry as well. So we're going to hear from them just in a few minutes.

That's why I've got these these chairs. That's why my time is limited. So we got to get going. OK, so here we are.

My Bible is open to Psalm 139. And just to say, this is really kind of the basics of life, if I were to say it. And here's the first thing, that life is a gift. Life is a gift. The psalmist says, God, you created me.

You knit me together in my my mother's womb. I am fearfully I am wonderfully made like great job God, and then if you the text says something really interesting. I just caught it this morning.

I know this in full well in my soul since I know it in my soul. So let me just ask you, do you know it in your soul that let your life as a gift? That you woke up and you're like, I'm breathing.

It's another day of life. It's a great gift of life. And, you know, you don't have to be a believer in God. You don't have to be religious to actually say it is a gift, Right. And even the atheist would say, I was talking to Laura. Yeah, it's a gift. And gifts are meant to be what they're meant to be opened and used. How many of you received gift cards this last Christmas? Yeah. So this is an interesting statistic. What person, what number, What's the dollar number of gift cards that is not used? Basically in a given year in these United States, it's over $20 billion. So companies know what they're doing by handing out gift cards that a lot of times are never used. So use your gift cards just like use your life to make an impact, right? To give. Well, to give God thanks, but that's another step. I'm not there yet, right? Frederick Buchner, sorry, theologian, author.

He he he said something very interesting. He asked questions, he says, For instance, have you wepted anything during this past year? Has your heartbeat faster at the sight of young beauty? Or have you thought seriously about the fact that someday you're going to die? And another question, he says, is there anybody you know in whose place, if one of you had to suffer great pain, you would volunteer yourself? In other words, is there something you so believe and something you so love that you would give your life for? And he basically says that if your answer to all or most of these questions is no, you're probably dead.

You're probably dead. Life. It's a gift. It's a gift. It's a gift to enjoy.

It's a gift to be grateful for. But let's take the next step and say life is a gift. But as our text says, it's a gift from God. From God it says, for you, God created my inmost being for you knitted me together in my mother's womb. God, I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made by you. It's by God I realized that simply making that statement is already a massive statement of faith.

But it's foundational. It's foundational because if you remove God from the equation, it's actually difficult to even continue any discussion about the importance and value of life. You say why because when you remove the foundation of what gives us infinite value, worth, meaning, purpose, there's no answer to the why, why, why, why, Why do I have? Why would I have meaning? Why would I have value? Right.

But to profess the truth of Psalm 139 is to admit that I am not self-made, that I have God's imprint tainted as it is.

Yes. And I would say this way that the image has been defaced because of sin and rebellion and evil, but it has not been destroyed. It has not been destroyed. Having the image or likeness of God means in simplest term, that basically that each of us was made to resemble God, not to be God, but to resemble God.

It's what sets us apart right from the animal world. It it also fits us to actually have dominion over everything God intended us to have over the earth and enables us to commune with our maker. It's a likeness mentally, morally, socially, mentally because we have rationale, we have the ability to make choices, decisions, we have reason and and indeed, this is a reflection of God's intellect and freedom. Think about this. Anytime, anytime someone invents a machine, writes a book, paints a landscape, enjoys a Symphony, calculates a sum, or names a pet, he or she is proclaiming that we were made with that imprint.

In God's image, some would say, no, no, no, you lost it after Genesis 1 and it's right there. He made them in the image of God, man and woman. He created them, right? But actually you can go to Genesis 9 where it's talking about the flood and death, and it says basically the same thing.

You're made in the image of God. Or you can go to James 3 verse 19 where it says with the tongue we bless our Lord and Father and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. So in other words, James is using being in the likeness or image of God in this present condition as an argument why we should not be cursing one another or place a curse on someone made in God's image.

And the reason we would say that the image has been defaced but not destroyed is because the image is need in need of repair. It's in need of redemption, it's in need of being saved, which is exactly what Colossians 3 references. Yet maybe it's on the screen here where it says Paul says we have put on the new self which is being renewed in the knowledge and the what and the image is anyone with me of the what of the creator.

In other words, Paul's mindset is if we're in the image of God, how corrupt and fallen and sinful, how it's been defaced. Now we being saved, redeemed, purchased by Christ, we're made new, and that's what we live from, not what we live for. Because of what Christ has done for us on a cross, He's paid the price.

Now let's put this on. And we do that in baptism where we're washed, we're cleansed. It's not our action, it's God's action over us as he's called us and he's named us.

And yet isn't it true, this simple truth, this kind of this foundation of this being gift from, it's kind of, it's been distorted, it's been removed. I, I mean, I mean, we, we pretty much now have a day where a lot of people think I can just start with a blank slate when it comes to like, I can just define my own moral code. I can, I can just decide what's right or wrong in my life. And then I would just say, how's that working for you? Because we can't even keep up to our own moral code, let alone gods.

So many are just taught now we're just an accident. We've evolved over time. In other words, This is why it's so difficult for us to have conversations. And I would say why we have to be so sensitive to not come off as condemning because that foundation is not there. So we have to sometimes start from different points of view.

Maybe we can talk about that. So, but if you have that point of view, if you have that foundation now, we can go on and say some other things. And the first thing I'd say is that life is sacred.

It's sacred In the 10 commandments, God speaks directly about this sanctity of life, where indeed God says you shall not murder. That's one of the commandments.

You should not murder. So this commandment underscores that human life is precious. It needs to be protected because God created it, and he reserves the right to take it or to give it. And he calls us in to honor it, to protect it, to value it even when it's inconvenient or even difficult.

It also caused us to respect the lives of others. We could also say that life is purposeful. None of us is by accident.

None of us. None of us is created simply just to exist, but to do good works, to give glory to God. For we are God's handiwork, our workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

So there's a purpose, there's direction. This is what gives us hope and meaning in every circumstance. We could also state the obvious though. I'm sorry.

I love that song. Life is beautiful. But I'm thinking, is your life always beautiful? It's meant to be beautiful, but it's not always beautiful.

It's difficult. It's difficult. It was years ago my one of my daughter's. I know this because I record things for messages years past and I saw this story. It's like, wow, reminded my wife.

She says I don't remember that. One of our daughters heard mom say, you know, my Thursday's really not very busy. I'm pretty much open and free. And one of her daughters, she said, wow, that's really great.

Let's let's go to the arch. Six Flags in Disney World, all in one day. Wouldn't it be awesome if life were that simple to think that way? But it's not, James said. Considerate, pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of all kinds because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance, Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. There's going to be times that are tough, and yet this is the reminder that God has not left us, that He's paved the way for us and given us actually an eternal future.

That's why we could say that all life is then meant to be cherished. It's meant to be cherished. That means we can live with gratitude, reverence, and joy. It means protecting the lives of others when we are called, as we would say, to care for the vulnerable, to stand up for the oppressed, and to love those actually who are marginalized. Jesus would teach in Matthew 25 that when you do it for one of these, you're actually doing it for me.

That's Psalm, the last verses that we read, it said this. Did you even hear them where it said your eyes, God, you saw my unformed body.

All the days were ordained for me. A date for me were written in your book. Because before even one of them came to be.

Can you imagine that? I mean, you thought about that even before you came into this earth, God already knew you.

Every day that you were to be on this earth was already ordained. He already knows the day you will crossover from this life to the next life, a life that has no end to a life that is endless. And that's why we have a mission here to share this life, to speak about the value of life and and to encourage us to to be about life pro-life in every stage of life. Amen, Amen, Amen. Hey, you guys, come on up. We want to hear some more from our our partner. How many years have we been with the crisis Pregnancy Help Center? 15. So we've been around a long time. So let's just get going. These folks never have met you, Laura. So tell us who you are and tell us what what, what the center does. OK? Hi, my name is Laura Brandt and I am the Executive Director at the Pregnancy Help Center in South County over by the mall.

A little bit about me, I am a mother of officially four children as of Monday because our adoption happened Monday morning for our congratulations. Yeah, very exciting. So, yeah, mother of four, I live actually like 3 minutes from here and my three big kids all went through Faith Lutheran preschool here, so I'm always happy to be here.

Awesome. So Laura, tell us a little bit about because what we want to do is hear about the ministry that we're partnered with, but then also have you really help us, help us as a church navigate this challenging issue when it comes to how do we help be the the message that you just preached on from Scripture. How do we live that out? How do we embody that? So tell us a little bit more about how you got connected and what the center does.

Sure. So our mission is to offer life affirming practical help, hope in the gospel of Jesus Christ to women and men experiencing pregnancy. So our mission states exactly what we do. So we offer all of our services are free of charge and we offer practical things like pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, options, counseling. And then we will walk with women and men throughout pregnancy and beyond up until their kids are toddlers and older, just with parenting classes and spiritual guidance and mentorship and practical items.

A lot of times are women who qualify financially. We can help them with rent and car payments and all that good stuff. So we're really was trying to. Like Pastor John said earlier, there's a lot of people who are in a crisis right in this moment, maybe represents the biggest crisis of their lives. And we're trying to just stand with them and say you are not alone. God loves you and he loves your baby and we're here to help, just serve you and walk alongside you. So I was going to say this, it's in my manuscript, but it didn't say it. But, you know, I, I first thought it's, it's just unfortunate that this topic of life has been become so politicized, right? What side you're on? And then I smiled because when Ronald Reagan made that proclamation, it was political too, because he was the president of the United States. But so I, my, my statement was, let's not do that. So, but this is a very sensitive topic. So how have, how has your message changed, especially how how you try it? We talked about this to not be condemning, but to be loving and to be Jesus.

How's that changed over the years? You think too? So I think that there is a stereotype behind the pro-life movement and a lot of times around pregnancy centers. And like you said, it has been politicized for many, many years, decades. And I think we can also admit we should be able to be humble and admit when we're wrong. And I do think that very well-intentioned people for a very long time maybe didn't always go about this ministry with the grace that they should have. And so I would say our I have always said since I've been the executive director for only 2 1/2 years, I've worked there for five years. I've always said my goal and mission is first of all just personally and at the center is to just serve and love God by serving loving people, but that no one is condemned when they walk through our doors and.

Just as much as that baby is made in the image of God, so is their mom. And we're going to love them, and we are going to serve them, and we are going to treat them with kindness and gentleness and dignity. And even for women who don't choose life, we're still going to love them and treat them with the kindness and the dignity that they deserve in Christ. And I just think the movement as a whole, I can't speak for everybody, but I would say just this movement as a whole, but specifically Pregnancy Help Center.

Our goal is to just love and serve these women. They are our first clients, and to just treat them with the dignity that Christ gives them. Thanks for sharing that. I know that that really is what what the Scripture calls us to.

Ephesians 4 speaking the truth in love. How do we give a message of the foundation of Scripture, but in a way that that translates in a culture where you have so many different perspectives? I do want to get to kind of how you walk alongside with those women even after because I know you have some awesome educational and support programs. I know you do some really unique things in terms of supporting the dads and, and I just saw Mike Zaretsky walk in. So that reminded me of that. But specifically for anyone in the room who's dealing or has dealt with somebody asking them questions, maybe it's personal, maybe it's what do you think about this? And they really just are struggling. How do I answer? How do I give that message of truth and love? What's something that those of you who are working in this could give? It is in terms of device.

Sure. So obviously what we're counseling with women in and men in counseling rooms is going to look a little different than what you're doing in regular life, right? But I would just say a few key things to remember in a way that you can speak to somebody in love and not anger, which I think sometimes this is a very emotional topic. And so people can tend to get very angry and defensive about it from both sides.

Just a few key things that I think you can remember as to just share with people is that one, the circumstances of our conception do not determine the sanctity or the value of our lives.

Any person. So often, you know, children are conceived in ways that are not ideal or in situations that are not ideal, that does not determine the value of their life. So I just think that's a very easy way to lovingly say that that everybody has value.

And also I would just. Adding trauma to trauma does not erase trauma. And so that's what I think a lot of times we think there's these traumatic situations and that's why we have this call to these different actions and adding trauma to somebody's trauma doesn't make it better. So I think just thinking from the viewpoint of a hurting person and where they're coming from, and maybe rather than trying to tell them how important all of these other things are or how they're going to be condemned, but just kind of walking with them in the situation that they are in and just giving them grace and truth and hope And yeah, just letting them know how loved they are, I guess.

That's awesome. Did you have any thoughts too about how you've seen this conversation change over the years that you've been speaking on it? How we can really talk to people? But it, it's, it's, I think you all know this, it's everything's become so much more polarized, right. So how do you have a conversation and even speak truth without offending? And we've talked about some of our politicians have done it well with and yet some not right, as we hear in a public in the public square, but as as churches. The easy thing to do would be to not talk about it, right? And just to say, you know, this is what we believe that we, we, we do support life and pro-life. But you know, we just don't want to offend anyone. And anytime we talk about this, we probably offend someone and, and all I would say is it's kind of like talking about money. You know, when we talk about money, how you, all you got to say is the word and they're already offended. I, I would say, wow, something's going on in your heart that you're immediately offended when we're talking about this subject.

If that's true with this subject, you might also just be asking, God, what's on my heart? Why am I getting so angry and emotional about this topic? You know, even though some would say I believe in the foundation that I've just talked about if creation, you know, what is the Holy Spirit telling me? And by the way, if you don't have that foundation, we need the Holy Spirit to produce faith in any individual. And with that, it, it, it, it's, it's not us, right? But it's, it's being, it's, it's talking with with respect and, and to honor that person and to show that Jesus, you know, Jesus did not come to condemn, right? But he come to see came to save. And so we're the body of Christ.

We don't go to condemn. We come because we want salvation, we want deliverance and ultimately we want life. By the way, this this got very personal. Obviously some of you, you know this and, and we had a daughter and you know it, it happened. Those things you, you, we don't always want to think about, but we, I knew there was a choice is, is, is she going to keep this baby? And great graciously you, some of you know the story, but she's 11 years old and I'm thinking, what would life be without her? My granddaughter, right? It's like, Oh my goodness, but praise God that my daughter immediately she chose life and we just give God thanks for that. But you know, she didn't have to right? So life is just, it's filled with difficult things, right? It's not always just the best and most beautiful.

Yeah. And it is, it's it's personal for so many people. But I think Our Calling as Christians is to love those around us so that there is support, so that it doesn't feel like this is the only option. Because you look at the data, I'm sure you look at your experience. And so many times it feels like this is the only option. How can we be people who love our neighbors in such a way that we can be that support system? We could be that adoptive mom or dad. We could be in their life. And yeah, so that's a great question. So I think that's the question we need to talk about just before we go and and talk about more specifics for need. How, how does someone we have, I don't know how many folks actually are already involved, right, But how, how does the person who said, I want to be a part of this ministry, I want to be that that good news message. How can I connect with you to be able to be a part of what the crisis the help centers doing? Sure. So first of all, there are a tremendous number of you in this congregation who are already volunteering and serving at our center. So thank you so much for that.

Truly, we could not do in everything we do and serve the women and the men that we serve without you. So first, thank you so very much. 2nd, if you are interested and you're not already serving, I would love to speak with you.

I have a little booth out there. Michael Zaretsky is actually our fatherhood's programming manager, so you could always talk to him. But there are many different ways that you can love and serve, whether it's something big like a commitment where you're coming in to be a mentor and to just walk alongside mothers and fathers as they're going through pregnancy and beyond. Or if it's something, you know, on the back end where you're helping clean or organize or do stuff like that. You know, it's all, we're all part of the same body. So some of us are maybe upfront, but the people in the back are just as important. So there's a ton of different ways that you can serve and walk along with us and just really put that faith into action. What would be, as you've done this in the ministry for a couple years as the executive director, just that story or that theme where you see hope, where you see this extraordinary life being lived out. What is it that keeps you excited about being a part of it? So obviously when our moms choose life and stick with us and we get to watch them through pregnancy and then the joy that their babies bring.

But really even before that, it's just we always joke that we have better customer service than Chick-fil-A and that we we have these exit questionnaires, right, That we have women fill out during that first appointment. And some of those women we never see again. But consistently, it is just that they are saying, you were so gracious, you were so kind.

I never felt judged. I felt so loved here. This was such a safe place. I mean, just over and over and over, just women, even those who do not choose life are still when we, you know, because we keep reaching back out to them. They're telling us, thank you for loving me. Thank you for not judging me. So I just think it is so important because like I said before, of course we love these babies, but we really love their moms and their dads. And to just be able to love and serve them and let them know that they have value and worth is just such an important thing and just such a blessing to be part of that. Is there anything specific that you're seeing in in 2025? This is a surprise question, but what is the financial need? We actually have a great financial need right now for two different reasons. One, as many of you know, we have been in the search for a new building for. So to me it feels like an eternity. I know to God it is such a short time and he has a great plan, but it looks like hopefully in the beginning parts of this year we're going to be able to move and expand and all that great stuff.

So that is obviously always a need, but a bigger need. The largest pregnancy center in Saint Louis City and County and Saint Charles County closed in December, which means that we have taken an extraordinary number of clients on in the month of December. We had our highest number of clients ever seen by the centre in our history and we were closed for a week of December. So if that, how many clients is that on average? So it was, I mean, other than the people that continue coming back, we had 53 new women and I think Michael could tell me like 30 new men in a three-week time period, which maybe sounds like you're like, oh, that doesn't seem like that many. It's so many those that is 165% more than the year before in December, so. We just have this, you know, we have just been absolutely slammed, which is great that we're here to serve them, but the needs are. You want to make it be specific. So obviously we, we, we're as a staff, we're sensitive of the fact that we have made a number of asks outside of our regular ties and offerings.

And not all of you have the same passion for maybe this subject and this issue as others. But maybe if God is tugging your heart and you want to contribute instead of giving directly to faith, which I think we're still going to do, I don't know we're going to do that at all.

I think we're going to use QR code if you want to give and that's your a tax deduction too. The reason for that, we're giving straight to the to Pregnancy Help Center because in the state of Missouri, there's a 70% tax credit, right? Tax credit.

It's a credit. It's a credit at the end of the year. So if you give $100 at the end of the year, they're giving you $70.00 back.

There's the QR code right there on the screen. So yeah, you can take time to do that now. We'll leave that up for the last few minutes as we close. But then also you can go to the back where Laura's at the booth and and just say thank you and if you want to serve, you can talk to her about that. And if you want to use the code there, you can do that at the back. But how do you want to close? We want to pray. So yeah, let me pray. And you know, I was thinking as I kind of move pretty quickly and things I wanted to say, let me just pray and just pray. Some of us, Lord, we know, we we just need maybe need to to begin with the foundation and say, Lord, we need life.

Lord, we need Jesus. Jesus, we know that you have sold us you, you are the way, you are the truth. You are the life You said I am the resurrection, and the life He who believes in me will live even though he dies.

Whoever lives and believes me will never die. Lord, we know that you came so that we might have life and life to the full. So what? We invite you to just be the life in our lives.

Lord, forgive us for the distraction, the deception, the darkness that often equates to death and darkness and not life.

So Lord, forgive us for that. I do pray for Laura, Lord, I pray for the Sinner. I pray, Lord, that you would prosper them and bless them and or give them just today the daily needs and this month and this year just what they need, Lord, to continue to serve you and to serve the people as you they love and follow your way and to be life, Lord, to those who are otherwise feel like they've entered into a time of death.

So, Father, we give you thanks for your word today. And we give you thanks, Lord, for the the wonderful gift, Father of your son Jesus, as he gave his life so that we might have life in his name we pray, Amen, Amen. Can we thank Laura for being with us today?

The. The. Good morning everybody. I'm going to read today for our sermon text from Luke chapter 10. If you would hear the word of God today, Luke chapter 10 verses 25 to 28, the word of God reads and behold, a lawyer stood up to him, Jesus to put him to the test, saying, teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? And he said to him, what is written in the law? How do you read it? And he answered, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.

And Jesus said to him, You have answered correctly, Do this and you will live. This is the word of the Lord, Amen.

It says love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind.

These are most definitely words to live by. Faith, Oakville and Bethlehem, I am so glad that we are united together. And hey, I can't let this sermon go by without saying we have been loving the Lord together for a long, long time, Amen. It has been 30 years plus of loving the Lord together and we thank you for who you are to us and how you labor in the gospel with us. Isn't it good to be in the House of the Lord? Go ahead and turn to your neighbor and say neighbor, say it out loud.

I love you on purpose. Turn to your other neighbor.

Say neighbor y'all not screaming how I'm screaming. Say neighbor, say it out loud. I love you on purpose.

You see, it was just a little bit ago, just a little while ago. Maybe my my Gray haired Saints might remember a little bit more than the other Saints. But there was a little known movie that came out in 1939 summer of called The Wizard of Oz Amen. Everybody know the movie The Wizard of Oz, the Wizard of Oz that came out and it took over movie and television screens all over the world. And and that little known movie had a little trope into it of just four people searching for something that they could not find from their place of origin.

You remember the story. You remember the story of the tin man who who was looking just for a heart. You remember the story of of of the the lion who was looking for a little bit of courage. You remember the straw man that was looking for a brain and you remember the girl that just wanted to go home. Such a compelling story, one of the best selling stories of all time. And why is it that that story has been the story that's been inside of the hearts and the minds of the people even resurrected into today in what we would call wicked right in the movie theater that so many people have seen that they're compelled by this story of these four people coming together, making their way down a road to look for something else. It's because when people gather together and they're in search of the one thing, it is a powerful thing that happens.

Amen. Oh, Oh yeah, I didn't hear y'all. Amen. You see, when people gather together, people like us who come from many different places, come from many different backgrounds. I don't care how you're born, if you were born rich or poor, if you were born in any other particular skin color, if you were born in a place where we don't even know about, I don't care what you went through. I don't care what you're going through right now.

All I know is that everybody here is looking for the one thing we are looking for love. And here's the thing, here's the thing, when we look for love, sometimes we look in all the wrong places, Amen.

You see, some of us are looking for love, satisfaction from what the world can give you. Baby, let me tell you this, what you're looking for, the world didn't give you, and the world can't take it away.

Amen. You see, some of us are looking for it in a relationship. Maybe if I found a spouse or a partner, they'll love me like I want to be loved and I'll feel the way I need to feel.

You're not going to find the type of love you're looking for in a partner. You're not going to find it in a dark alley of a dance club. You're not going to find it in the corners as addiction takes hold of you and nobody else knows, and for a few minutes you feel like you can drop into something else or somebody else's space. You are not going to find love there.

That is the trick of the enemy. There is only one that is going to give us the love we need, and it's going to be love out loud. In that one is Jesus Christ Himself. Amen, who was and is and is to come. And here's the thing, he loves us not in secret, not via a text sent to somebody else. I'm talking to the young people now, Amen.

When they text you and they'll text you back and forth and say I love you via text. And then you meet up and you'll be like, what's good? Do you love me now? Oh, no, I, I never said that before. Well, why don't you stand 10 toes down and say that you love me? Or how the world will give you a promotion or some satisfaction back then and tell you that you're somebody. And then all of a sudden the next day at work, you get the cold shoulder. Well, here's the thing, you can't find love there.

You can only find it. And Jesus. And he loves you not in secret, He loves you right out loud, but to love someone the way He loves us.

He is having us travel on our particular Rd. giving us those four different things. And the first thing that He does when He loves us out loud is that loving people out loud the way God loves us. It takes guts. Amen.

It takes guts. You see, Jesus wants to be the center of your life in your heart.

We would call that. The scriptures kind of even describe it as in your guts. Amen. He wants to be the center of your heart and it takes guts to love somebody. And when you love somebody the way that he does, room has to be made for a God.

That's so big. I remember it was a few years ago, I went with a couple of friends to a, a cabin of theirs. They had a cabin, their family cabin. It was in Wisconsin, off the lake of Wisconsin. And in the family cabin, they said, oh, we got all this space in the family cabin to do this, to do that, do this, this, do that, right? It was a set of siblings and we get to the family cabin and my my then girlfriend, now wife. Right when we're there, we realized that this cabin is a great big house.

We think we're all going to have our separate rooms. We're all going to be able to do this and that. It looks like a mansion on the outside. But then we get in on the inside and my friend said, well, you know, this is an extended family sort of cabin. So people have stored just a few things here from all over the country.

Baby. I walked into that house. There was one path to the kitchen and one path to the living room.

You can sit on the couch. That's just about it, right? Well, we, we got a lot of space here. And, and you know, I remember looking at Lauren to say, oh, you, you got a lot of space, but you got a lot of stuff everywhere, right? There were little boats and canoes and, and paddles and this and, and all this other. And, and he said, yeah, but there's a whole bunch of space here, about 7000 square feet in the house. I am walking through 1 1/2 square feet right now.

So what do you mean? And he said, well, the potential for the space is here.

I just haven't cleared it out yet. Am I preaching to somebody today? The potential for the Lord to be the love of my life is there, but I just haven't cleared enough room for Him yet. Uh oh, did I strike a chord with you? Amen.

The potential for me to love God is that I do love God. I'll come to church on Sunday morning. I'll give him 60 minutes. But here's the thing, throughout the rest of the week when the Bible study happens, I was supposed to be at the bar that night and I don't think I can study the word.

Somebody say Amen if it's them. I do love God. I want to put him first with my family. But The thing is we had this pre planned vacation and really, you know, worshipping the Lord God Almighty on vacation.

It's not on our list of what to do. So I just can't make it happen. I do love God. I want to put him first in everything that I do. But the thing about it is that new car looks really good. So I'm going to go ahead and get you have the potential for the Lord Jesus to take your life over and do what he needs to do, but you got to clear out space for God to live there.

You got to clear it out and push everything away. That is not Him. It was described as in the scriptures. Lord, may you increase and may I what decrease? And guess what, Church, it takes guts to do that because when I put God first, when I show God that you are #1 it means that I have to be what, number two? And nobody likes being #2 and this is what happens to us over and over again. What I love about our churches, what I love about Bethlehem, is that we always say we have to make room for the next person to come in.

I might have to be uncomfortable because God's heart that has the guts to reach other people is making somebody else comfortable. Oh, come on, somebody. I need a witness on that.

I got to be uncomfortable. Hey, how about this? You ever had it that you're in church and you're all dressed up and you guys are all sitting in the front and then out through the back comes a visitor that smells bad. I'm going to keep it real.

Faith Oakville. Y'all invited me. We've had it before. They come through the back. They smell like weed.

Amen. Hello. I had to say it. Oh, oh, we, we, we want to make sure that our whole community is invited to this. We can't say just the people who are not homeless, do you hear me? We can't say just the people who have their life all together. Do you hear me? Just the people who aren't on drugs.

The God says I want everybody into my house. And that takes guts to do that. But what we've learned at Bethlehem is if you got the guts to do it, the Lord Almighty is going to do the rest of the work.

I got Leira Hamilton sitting there. You know, a a few weeks ago, we put up on Facebook, you might have seen it. We said, hey, we had a basketball tournament here.

We had our camera set up just like you have your camera set up. Somebody stole our camera during the basketball tournament. You know what we did? By we, I mean me, because I just be doing whatever I want and they be like, I don't want to do it. But I guess I got to right. I said, let's make a video saying you, whoever you are, stole something from us, but we're not going to charge it to your heart. We're not going to press charges with the police, right? We're not going to look at the cameras.

Just bring it back. And if you need help, let us know that you need help, man. I we made that video rememberly error.

We thought nobody was going to respond. All of a sudden in the bucket in the back closet appeared our camera. As a church, you can respond a few ways. I don't want to do this anymore.

This type of ministry. I don't want to be stolen from. I don't want to be taken advantage of. Or you keep doing what God asked you to do. Have the guts to be who God called you to be and watch the Lord Almighty work.

And that's the heart that God will give you in that tin thing. Amen. He'll give you a heart like Him if you make room. And through that He'll give you the courage to do something that other people just don't do it. It says you're going to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your strength and that strength He's going to give you some great and amazing courage.

Remember the Spirit that God says he gives us in Second Timothy. It says he does not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of courage. And Joshua one, it says, have I not commanded you? Be strong and what courageous? Don't be terrified.

I'm going to be with you. I got to have permission to be real with you. Again, it takes courage to let somebody in, to be loved and to love them. Let me tell you something, hurt people hurt people.

Amen. In our communities, sometimes it's more out loud that you see the hurt, but you know, hurt too. If I grew up somewhere where somebody told me I was never going to be anything, I'm stupid, I'm ugly, nobody loves me.

I'm going to have that in my heart and I'm going to show it out loud. I'm going to do the things that people have invested into me. I'm going to be ugly on the outside. If they called me ugly on the inside, I'm going to to to make stupid decisions If somebody calls me stupid.

This is what we see at Bethlehem over and over again. Hurt people, hurt people. And guess what? Sometimes we're the hurt people that are hurting other people. Do you know how much we hurt ourselves and, and, and what we do is we hurt each other because we're scared of the vulnerability that comes with love.

We don't have the courage to be that type of vulnerable with other people. But remember what Jesus says. Jesus doesn't just stand back.

Jesus walks into the thick of it. He has the courage to get right up into it. You know, I, I think about it all the time when they eat the apple in the Old Testament, when they eat that fruit, right? They're not supposed to eat that. The, the choice could have been made that says, you know what, Well, one day we're going to go ahead and send you a postcard in order to save you. One day we're going to go ahead and, and make a video and e-mail it to you and that'll save you that the God could have done that God can do anything. God could have said, I'm just going to speak the words I save you and it will be done. But what is said is that Jesus comes, that one will come that will crush the head of the enemy and his heel will be struck. The strike is the cross, but the crushed head is the cross.

Amen. Because he comes and he comes in a vulnerable position to be just like us. Jesus wants to get all up in our face out loud. And Jesus doesn't say, I see your addiction and you know, from over here I'm going to try to say I forget. Jesus says, come here to me and lay your head on my chest.

Jesus doesn't say I see your loss and I'm so sorry. Jesus says, where is my friend so that I can beckon him to get out the tomb? Jesus gets all up in it. He has the courage to be right there. See, Jesus asked us to reflect on the same thing today. Do you have the courage to do the ministry that needs to be done? I was reminded of this this week. I was reminded of this this week because in ministry, I don't know if you know this. I mean, I'm sure you do.

You take a lot of risks in ministry. Anything can happen at any given time, right? And, and as a leader, as a pastor, I have to say to myself, sometimes, man, there's a lot of risks that we have ahead of us. What stuff can we mitigate in between? And, and the reason why, the reason why I was reminded of that this week is I made a particular call that we wouldn't move our vans to go out to a game this week because we didn't want the kids. You know, what if something happens to them? What if they get hurt? What if they get killed right on the road in the vans? And I got a phone call from Dan Schmidke. Y'all don't know who Dan Schmicky is, but you know, Dan is the type of member that will call you 24 hours a day until you answer the phone.

Amen. And I'd already made-up my mind. This is not a good idea for us. This is risky.

Risky for us to do this. And Dan Schmicky called me and he changed my mind. You know what he told me? He said, well, pastor, in everything we do at Bethlehem, there's a risk we go out on the street to taking Jesus to the streets.

We risk being shot if we go out on the streets. If you didn't know it's happened before the shots go out. We, we, we go feed somebody with open arms. Sheila, you feed lots of different people every, You never know what's going to happen when you give somebody an open arm.

They may just stab right in the middle of it. Amen. You're reaching kids in different places of life and and you're trying to affect change in their life and speaking in, you can have an irate parent come in at any minute and act crazy.

We are taking a risk in everything that we do. So if we want to talk about risk, we might as well just close the whole church up. And I said, you know what, this man changed my mind, right? A little bit of snow on the ground.

It's not the greatest risk that it's faced in our community. And we have to have the courage to look those risks in the face and say, Jesus, you're right behind me. As long as you're with me, we'll do the work.

Amen. And you know the risks in your own life. I mean, Jesus, you're right behind us. You can say whatever the risk is, as long as you're with me, I can do it. You see, I even get into a mode where I say, Holy Spirit, it's no longer me speaking, it's you speaking.

Give me the courage to do what you've asked me to do. And God gives us courage, just like that lion God in The Wizard of Oz. And he gives us that courage. And with that courage, God does something where he changes our mind. See, loving other people is a transformative mind. You remember the guy in The Wizard of Oz? If I only had a brain, right? Well, some people it's not if you had a brain, but it's also if you know how to use the brain.

Because if you have the brain, that's one thing, but how do you think is another thing? Lord, how do I change my mind? And here's the thing, when you're talking about spiritual battles, and Jesus knew this, This is why he said this so much. He says it'll start with your mind, that if the mind can be transformed and changed, then the rest of the the the body will follow that, right? Your mind is the battlefield that needs to be fought against. And God has to change our logic.

We got to Start Stop using regular logic and we got to use God logic. Turn to your neighbors, say neighbor. You turn to your neighbors, say neighbors. It's time to stop using your math.

It's time to start using God math. You see, here's God math.

This is not our math. How does a church that 30 plus years ago had a group of 15 people in it that were way past their 70s That said, we have enough money to be open for six months. Let's get a guy in here and then let's shut out the lights. How does a church like that 35 years later feed 1600 people a day in the summertime? It ain't regular math.

It's God math. How does a church that has no promise of what's going to happen next, how does it just so happen that John Schmickke and John Burnett are classmates, same age, same year, and that they get to talking and say, well, what if there was a sister church relationship between US and God turned that one relationship, that one church into 26 relationships? It's bonkers.

God math. How is it that John Burnett is still not graying? I know and I'm doing. Instead of throw that in there a little bit, you know God math, right? How is it that God has allowed for us to to start a school in our campus, A Lutheran school where kids in the 3rd to 5th grade through CCLS Academy were able to educate kids every day and change their reading level.

They want to build a jail cell for kids in 3rd grade. We are building computer stations for them. That's God Math. How is it that in an early childhood crisis in the United States and in the state of Missouri, a small church decides last January, maybe we ought to think about an early childhood center? And this January, not only do we have an early childhood center from 2 years old to five years old, but we're starting three other ones this year? That's God Math.

How is it that God can continue to be so faithful? That God could keep blessing our families, that God could keep blessing our relationships, that God could keep sending people to be transformed and changed and baptized and turned around and put their feet on some? How can it keep happening? Because his thoughts and my thoughts, his ways and my ways are different.

God math is everything and it changes your mind. You see, the thing about it is when you have God math, when you have God math, it transforms the mind and takes hold of where the Spirit was always supposed to go. Remember I said those four people, that story that everybody pays attention to the the Wizard of Oz that people still watch to this day. The if I only had a brain, if I only had some heart, some courage.

That fourth thing is Dorothy saying, I just want to go home. And sometimes when I look at that, I get emotional even until right now, because I find myself you, you, you be lying. If you didn't say, you found yourself wanting to say the same thing.

Amen. Sometimes I'm standing up at work, right? You're standing up at work and something happens between people.

I just want to go home. I'm sick of this. Sometimes you're at the dinner table with your family. There's schisms, there's splits. It looks good on the outside, but on the inside it's just this.

I'm sick of it. Sometimes you just want to throw your hands up right where you stand and say, God, I just can't take it.

Is anybody with me on that Amen. God, I'm I'm sick and tired. I I can't do it anyway. I'm I'm tired of it. You said to love all these these people are hard to love God and God says this. He says every single time you get into a situation like that, you say my neighbor is just so hard to love.

You answer correctly when you love people out loud with all that you have because God only challenges us to do something that he has done himself. Amen. See when when Dorothy wants to go home, she thinks going home is just that end of the yellow brick road that she'll be able to get as long as she gets there, then she'll be able to to get home by the power of the Wizard, right? But but what she learns is the journey home was every step of the way.

See here. Here's the thing about God our Father. The journey home to Him is not something you have to buy or earn. It ain't even something you deserve.

The journey home to Him comes because Jesus came here 1st and loved you so much that He died for you right when you were at your worst. And he said because of this, you're going home with me one day. Remember what Dorothy had to do.

She had to click her heels three times. Remember that. I want you to close your eyes with me.

close your eyes, close your eyes and I want you to do the same thing. I want you to just put your feet together and say, Lord, these are your feet.

Put your hands together, your two hands that like you're in prayer and say, Lord, these are your hands.

I want you to even grab the hands of the neighbor next to you. You might even have a Bethlehem person next to you grab their hand and just pray with me. Lord, we are so grateful that you are who you are and we love each other. The people right next to us out loud, not in secret, not in quiet.

We love them with all that we are. And it's because of you, God, It's because of you that we get to say to ourselves, we just want to go home. And, and, and and home is in heaven with you one day. Yeah, but home is, is here too.

It's the church reflecting your heart. It's the church with the courage to do the work. It's the church with the abilities that you've given us in our mind, our transformed minds, to change the world, not by our own power and virtues, but what you've already given us.

Lord, you, you, you speak your word to us so clearly. You say that you're a shepherd to us in Psalm 23. You say that we're going to lack nothing, that we're going to lie down in green pastures, that you refresh us. And even when we walk through the darkness, God, when we just want to go home, we don't have to fear any evil.

You're going to be with us. Your rod and your staff are with us. You prepareth a table in front of our enemies and you anoint our heads with oil. And it says, surely your goodness, the goodness of God will endure forever and ever and ever. Click your heels again, click them together and say, I wish I was home.

Did he say it out loud? I just, I wish I was home. Say it again, I wish I was home and open your eyes. And I want you to now just say I am home. Say it again like you mean it. I am home, we are home with the Lord Jesus and he loves us out loud on purpose. One more time, say neighbour, say neighbour, I love you out loud on purpose and this is our house together in Jesus name. In Jesus name, Amen.

Yeah, some kids are already excited. I almost heard a clap. I almost heard a clap.

Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. How was your Christmas? I hope it went well with your family and your friends. For me, you know, put on about 20 more pounds, got a little greyer.

I'm Pastor Brandon's dad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he made me great.

Let me tell you what. No, that's when he was a kid. For many of you, though, the holiday season, right, it may have been great. Some of you might like who's average, maybe others, maybe it wasn't so great at all. I know in a room this size, right, with all kinds of experiences and all kinds of relationships, all the range of emotions kind of happen at Christmas time. But here's the one thing we have in common.

We get together every Sunday and it is Sunday. I mean, isn't it confusing? Like when Christmas falls in the middle of the week, on what day is it? I don't know, but you're here and I'm here, so it's Sunday. And so when we gather together, the one thing that we have in common.

Is to point to Jesus, who is the author and perfector of our faith, and to remember why he was born. To remember what he has done in each and every one of our lives. And we get to worship because that truth that never changes. Christmas times always change, good, bad, whatever. But the truth that when we gather that Jesus is savior of the world never changes. And then when we come together, sometimes we don't point this out often enough in church when we have it up. It's that Advent wreath that you see, right? You see those words around there like every candle represents something, joy and peace and hope.

What one that I love is the other one. But the middle one, the Christ candle, The Christ candle. I don't know if this is true or not because I don't remember from seminary, but I'm calling it the faith candle today. It's the faith candle. It's, it's believing. It's, it's God giving the gift of belief to us. And then when we come together, we ask God, God, we need more of this, don't we? We need more joy and hope and love and peace and and faith. And so we've been this past month going over seeing Christ in these familiar Christmas movies. To recap this past month, you remember Pastor Sam, he laid out for us joy in The Muppets. And you remember Pastor John who went through the wonder.

It's a Wonderful life. And you know, I thought I had more pull around this place with my son being a pastor here like I wanted to do. It's a wonderful life. But no, the senior guy gets it. OK, that's fine. He, he, he took us through how we could have hope in Jesus. And then Pastor Matt took us through the Grinch. Do you remember that? And he reminded us how God's love continues to pursue us. And then my, my son Brandon, good old Charlie Brown, right? He went through that movie to see how we would have the peace of Christ. And so today I get to talk to you about faith. And another word for that is belief. And we're going to explore that with one more movie during this Christmas season. And it's called I know Him. I know him, You know him. I know him. Look, it's Buddy the elf.

I know him. You know me, Buddy. No, I know Jesus.

Buddy the elf knows Jesus. Isn't that amazing? During this Christmas time, didn't we just celebrate his birthday? Yes, we did, Buddy.

His birthday came almost 2000 years ago. You know his. Yes, I know. He's God. Well, nobody can confess Jesus as Lord without the Holy Spirit. So, Buddy, you have the Holy Spirit.

Thank you. Right. Yeah. That is amazing. That's amazing. You know, he's so excited.

I am. I am. Everybody. Say bye to Buddy. Do you know him? Do you know him? You know him. I hope you find your dad.

I think he's going to go. I actually make a elf too. Wouldn't that be awesome? And Buddy, could you put a little more cowbell in that one, please? That would be great for some of you, my generation. You would know what what that means, right? Buddy the Elf. That's what we're talking about this morning, the elf movie. Now maybe some of you love this movie, maybe some of you've never seen it. Now for my family, we've loved the classics, It's a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, The Nativity. And then in 2003, this came out and it became one of our favourites too, a human child and Buddy who was raised in the North Pole by elves, right? And he went on this journey outside of the North Pole, down South to bring back belief, really faith, a spirit of Christmas time and what that's about. And we can certainly see the connection already, can't you, with with Jesus. Buddy goes South of the North Pole, right? Very different place than where Santa and the elves live, a place that's maybe less friendly, maybe more dangerous, maybe more cynical.

And he sent there on a mission, right? Jesus from perfect holy heaven, right? Sent into a imperfect world for a special mission, just like Buddy. There's a lot of parallels in this movie, and we're going to get started by watching this first clip about Buddy's upbringing. So why don't you take a look at this? Little Buddy Diapers.

His name is Buddy. He must have snuck into your sack at the orphanage. What do we do? So Santa had a decision to make. Fortunately, when it comes to baby, Santa's a pushover. So Buddy stayed with an older elf who had always wanted a child but had been so committed to building toys he he well had forgotten to to settle down. Santa yes, yes, I I raised buddy. I was his adopted father. Though a buddy grew twice as fast, he he wasn't any different from the other children.

Too fast, Buddy. I mean, not not really. Now, before we learn how to build the latest in extreme graphic chipset processors, let's recite the code of the L, shall we #1 Treat every day like Christmas #2 There's room for everyone. On the nice list #3 Best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear.

OK, we're getting into it right now. The first thing that resonates with me personally and I appreciate is this unsung hero of this movie. And that's Papa Elf, right, played by Bob Newhart, the adoptive elf father to Buddy. And think about it. You see, Buddy becomes the person that he is and he's able to do the heroic things that that he does, right? And a spoiler alert, he saves Christmas in part because of this role that Papa Elf played in his life. Now, if it's true that Buddy the Elf had this adoptive father that was was pretty awesome, right? And steady and consistent.

Imagine how important of a role the adoptive father of Jesus was. Have you ever wondered about that? That God the Father chose Joseph to be the adoptive father of Jesus. That Jesus grew into the person that he did partially because of Joseph, his love, his example, his righteousness, his discipline. And Jesus, well, he's definitely uniquely God. I mean, the Bible says that he's the exact representation of his being. But on the other hand, he has this earthly adoptive father, Joseph. And that God would know, right? He would be the best man exactly for Jesus and what he needed to fulfil the mission that he was sent to do to live a perfect life in our place and to die sacrificially on a cross for our sins. The incarnation, it's a big theological word, right? But the incarnation that Jesus, who is God, who, who always lived in heaven with the Father, that would he would put on an earthly body that as he emerged from the womb of Mary, right, he didn't all of a sudden immediately use all the supernatural power and knowledge that he had.

No, the Bible says in Luke chapter 2 that Jesus increase in wisdom in favor with God and with with men. Is he Jesus who is God? The Bible says learn to obey. Learn to obey his obedience to his earthly father and to his Heavenly Father. That he would grow physically and emotionally and spiritually in this role as an adoptive father means a lot to me, as you see in this picture here.

This is my adopted dad. 1971 as I stepped foot on US soil, but I was born in the Philippines, He adopted me. I may not look like him. I might not have the same personality traits as he does, but he taught me how to be a hard worker, to be financially sound, to love my family and my friends, to be punctual.

And I follow in his footsteps. And I'm grateful for this Navy guy. And I'm doubly specially proud because my son, Pastor Brandon and his wife Shelby adopted Xander and Jordan into their family. And I was privileged to to be a part of of their baptism right there.

I don't know how many years ago it was. You want to show that picture on the screen of them? Do we have that? By the way? Did we get that on? All right? It was a great picture, by the way. It was me and and, and, and, and my kids.

We're going to put that on for next time. You just watch it online. Do you do record this online? This this one too? Sorry, guys, online. But by the way, welcome everybody online.

But but 5 grandsons, Wow. And then two of them are adopted by my son and my my daughter-in-law Shelby. So it means a lot to me. Watching Buddy the Elf and thinking about adoption really makes me think about my role as a father and now as a grandfather. Many of you in your roles as parents or grandparents, and even all of us, we, we have a, we're role models, we're mentors to someone.

We have this awesome honour and responsibility that God would choose us to do. And when God chooses us to do a task, guess what? He's going to make sure that we're equipped to do it. So I want you to take this verse into the new year with you from Philippians chapter one, verse 6 into 2025. God who began this good work of faith, of giving you life eternally, of being adopted into his family, God who began this good work in you, He's going to carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Amen. So Buddy and Jesus both having wonderful adoptive fathers. That's our first clip. We're going to take a look at another one as Buddy decides to leave the North Pole to find his biological father.

Take a look. So I hear going on a little journey to the big city. Yep, kind of nervous.

Leon says. New York is pretty different. I don't pay attention to Leon. He's never been anywhere.

You didn't have any feet. I've been to New York thousands of times. Really. What's it like? Well, there are some things you should know. First off, you see gum on the street? Leave it there.

It's not free candy. Second, there are like 30 raised pizzas. They all claim to be the original, but the real ones on 11th. And if you see a sign that says Peep Show, that doesn't mean that they're letting you look at presents before Christmas.

Can't wait to see my dad. We're we're going to go ice skating and and eat sugar plums. Yeah, that's the other thing I wanted to talk to you about. You know, buddy, you're fine.

He's on the mother places. You're taking the books back. See, I, I see what you're trying to do here. You're trying to make me feel bad when in actuality, you're the one that missed the payments. But the children love the books. I know that you know I'm the one that ran the focus groups, but I like hearing that. Listen, some people, they just lose sight of what's important in life. That doesn't mean they can't find their way again, huh? Maybe all they need is just a little Christmas spirit.

I'm good at that. I know you are. I'll, I'll always, I'll always be here for you.

Now go get. He goes on this journey to bring belief for the Christmas spirit back, you know, to folks South of the the North Pole. But he's father. He's on the what list, the naughty list that there's a book in the North Pole with his name written on a naughty list. I don't know if you hear, you know, these Christmas songs that start even before Thanksgiving, right? Santa Claus is coming to town.

He's making a what list? He's checking it. He's going to find out who's.

So we compare Jesus in this movie and really Jesus, who is God, God and Santa, There's a big difference. I mean, according to that song, Santa isn't the giver of gifts, is he? He's in the business of doling out rewards and punishments. I mean, you get rewarded in that nice list if you behave well, but if you're on that naughty list, you're not going to get the gifts. You're going to get a sack of what? Coal as a gift. Santa's got this list, this Ledger, this book.

What's the Bible say about a book, some type of divine Ledger? It's, it's written in several places in Scripture, in the Old Testament and the New Testament. Here's one from the book of Psalms as David writes, and he's kind of shaking his first and praying to God in Psalm 69. Charge them with crime upon crime, he's saying against his enemies.

Don't let them share in your salvation. May they be blotted out of the book of what life of living not be listed with the righteous and the New Testament Book of Revelation, it says. And books were opened, books were opened.

One of them was the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their deeds as recorded in the books. If anyone who's found whose name was not written in the Book of Life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

So at first glance, it looks like God has a book similar to Sansa's, right? Like, like we're judge based according to our deeds. If we do bad ones, then we're on the the naughty list.

And if if we do do good ones, then of course we're in that good list book of life. But we can't take all of scripture right based on these two passages and make this kind of theology as good and bad. That's not it. Because we're missing really, the good news, the story about why Jesus came into the world, why he was born, right.

One of my old pastors who just passed away this year would say from the softwood of Manger to the hardwood of the cross why he was born. The good news that as babies, maybe many of you were baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, given the gift of faith, given the Holy Spirit to believe in this.

Jesus took away our sins. Our names are put on that good list because of our baptism and faith that we've been given. That is good news. That's what Christmas is all about. You see, you and I, we deserve to be on that naughty list. Pastor Brandon LED us through prayer, right? That we deserve to be on that, not that naughty list because by what we do that God says not to do and by what we don't do that God says to do, we fail.

We all fall short of the glory of God. There's not one the Bible says who does what is right and never sins. Our actions, our inactions, they put us on that naughty list. We can't obey His commands fully, but because Jesus came into the world, He lived a perfect life for us.

He took the punishment for our sins right. God puts our name in that book of life and we're guaranteed inheritance. It's not like Santa who gives out rewards and punishments. God is in the business of doling out grace and mercy. One of my favorite scripture verses, Ephesians chapter 28948, is by grace.

You've been saved. God's grace, not your own doing. It's a what gift? Merry Christmas. It's a gift of God, not by work, so that we would do any kind of boasting. This gift of salvation, this gift of forgiveness of sins, this gift of being adopted into God's family, it's not conditioned to buy what we do or what we don't do.

It's completely free. And that's grace. That's the good news of Jesus. So in the the this movie elf right, We can see Jesus kind of this way.

Body Buddies My Body Buddies biological father was on this naughty list. But Buddy leaves his home in the North Pole. He goes to save his biological father and the unbelieving world, and he makes this sacrificial journey and it is successful.

There's many similarities. But this next clip, we're going to talk about how excited Buddy is. He can't contain his excitement. Take a look. Do you want to go? Hey, have you seen these toilets? They're ginormous. Are you mad at me? No, I'm sure. Yes, I'm sure.

Just do the job. OK? Wow. What's this? This is the North Pole. No, it's not. Yes, it is. No, it's not. Yes, it is. No, it isn't. Yes, it is. No, it isn't. Yes, it is. No, it's not. Where's the snow? Why are you smiling like that? I just like to smile.

Smiling's my favorite. Make work your favorite. That's your favorite. OK.

Work is your new favorite. Fine. It's time for the announcement. OK, people. Tomorrow morning, 10:00 AM.

Santa's coming to town. Santa here. I know him. I know him.

He'll be here to take pictures with all the children. Just keep your receipts. 10:00 AM tomorrow. 10:00 AM tomorrow.

Santa's coming to town. Yes. Wow. That excitement, right? That he knows Santa.

He grew up with Santa. He has a relationship with Santa. He's looking forward to seeing Santa face to face. Are you getting the connections? How about us? Can we say I know him? I know him too because we've spent time in His word, because we've spent time in prayer with our Lord and our Savior. And Buddy knows when he says he knows Santa, right? It's kind of crazy because people will say, well, no, I mean, Santa isn't knowable. Nobody knows Santa, just the one that everybody sees. And the right is an employee at the department store who wears the fake beard in the costume. But Buddy knew Santa.

And as I think about that, I think in the minds of many people around the world, Jesus is no more real right than Santa. He shows up around Thanksgiving.

He brings a message of something about hope and generosity and love. He makes an appearance in about half of the the Christmas songs that you hear on the radio if you listen to the radio. And then on December 26th, he's gone again until the same time next year.

But that's not the real Jesus we believe in. And how desperately the world needs to know the real Jesus.

And so my question to you is, can you, can people see your life and mine that we really do know Jesus, that we're different, that we're excited to spend time with him? I'm preaching to the choir.

You're excited. You're here on a Sunday. I hope it's not by obligation. It can't be. I mean, you just was there a Christmas Eve, right? You're here on Sunday, ready to receive joy and love and pace and peace, to be excited, right? Here's our last clip. It shows how well that buddy really knows Santa.

Take a look. Santa, it's me. Buddy, it's me. Hey, buddy, it's me.

Who the heck are you? What are you talking about? I'm Santa Claus. No, you're not.

Why, Of course I am. You're Santa. What song did I sing for you on your birthday this year? Happy birthday.

Of course. So how old are you? Son? You're a big boy. What's your name? And what can I get you for Christmas? Don't tell him what you want.

He's a liar. Let the kid talk. You disgust me. How can you live with yourself? Just cool it, Zippy.

You sit on a throne of lies. Look, I'm not kidding. You're a fake. I'm a fake? Yes. How'd you like to be dead, huh? Sorry.

Kidding. You stink. I think you're going to have a good Christmas, all right? You smell like beef and cheese.

You don't smell like Santa. OK. Oh, I mean, his range of emotions, right? Isn't that crazy? And it's so fun. I mean, you just look at Will Ferrell and you just can't help but smile. But here's Buddy. His relationship with Santa is so solid, so strong.

He knows a lot about him. He recognizes him immediately, and he recognizes a fake. You don't smell like Santa. Anybody's love for Santa was so great. He's upset, right? Even so much he gets upset when somebody pretends to be him.

So as you leave this place and as you go into 2025, am I on all right? I know the speakers are resting.

I got it. Here's some questions for you to think about, right? How well do you know Jesus? How well do you know his characteristics? This red letter challenge is coming up for you and for me. It's my church home now, right? That we could see the words of Jesus and know them, know his goals. What are his goals for you? What are what's his will and those red letters? As I'm thinking about this, what this question, what's his will that anyone who looks to the Son and believes in him in the book of John, it says we'll have eternal life. What's his will? That everyone would come to know the truth, right? And everybody would come to repentance. Do you know his abilities, what he can do, His power? Do you recognize his work in your life, in the lives of others? And does that belief in him translate into all parts of your life? Does that belief cause you to live and think and act accordingly? There's some good things to think about as we could into the new year.

Isn't aren't they Buddy who's this great example to us knowing Jesus well, loving him, his belief, his faith exudes so much so that he's got a half brother. This is part I didn't have time to see you, you for you to see, but he's got this half brother that actually gets the book right. Santa's book and he helps Buddy and the rest of the world to believe that Jesus is real. No, that Santa is true, right? Lot going on in that movie to connect. But as we close today, I'm going to invite Buddy back. Buddy, would you come on back? Would you welcome Buddy back? It's not Will Ferrell, right? But he's our faith buddy and he's awesome.

I'm grateful for Buddy. Buddy, could you please read our final Bible verse, the one that that tells us how important belief is.

It's it's right there for you from John chapter 20. But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

Amen. Amen. We have that life, we have that opportunity, as our mission statement says, right to connect that life of Jesus to people, that extraordinary life of Jesus to one person, one family, one community. Wherever God calls us in our going, we believe in Jesus Messiah, the Anointed, the one who is crucified and arisen from the Dad.

Merry Christmas. Happy New Year.

The. The. Yeah, some kids are already excited. I almost heard a clap. I almost heard a clap.