Podcasts about obviously jesus

John 4:9 Therefore the Samaritan woman said to Him, "How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?" (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Obviously Jesus surprised her by His asking her for a drink. It wasn't normal for a Jew to cross the social and religious divide between Jews and Samaritans. It shouldn't surprise us, however, because we know that's what the love of God does—no divide is too great for His love to overcome. First, I remind you of my favorite definition of the God's love. It is the sustained direction of the will toward the highest good of another, no matter what the cost, in the power of the Holy Spirit, for the glory of God. Now, let's think about the power of the love of God revealed in Christ. He chooses to cross whatever barrier is in the way in order to love someone. Love doesn't let race, gender, ethnicity, intellectual, economic, cultural, or religious differences hinder its expression. We might ask a similar question when we think about God reaching out to us. How can You, being infinite God, ask me for help when I am a finite sinner? Or, how can You who is perfect in righteousness have anything to do with me who is so imperfect and unrighteous? We will consider Jesus' answer tomorrow, but today, let's be encouraged to not let anything hinder our expressing the love of God to others. Would you join me in praying with me what I call the Live to Love with Jesus prayer? Father in heaven, thank You for another day of life to know and love You and to live to love with Jesus. Anoint and fill us with the Holy Spirit, the presence and power of Christ, so that we can love and trust You, and love those You put in our paths today, for Your glory. Amen. I invite you to become a partner in our ministry. Would you pray about becoming a regular supporter of Elijah Ministries and the Live to Love with Jesus ministry? I hope you will receive the joy and benefit of “giving it forward,” so others may receive encouragement to turn their hearts to God and to live to love with Jesus. You may give online or send a check to the address listed at www.spiritofelijah.com/donate.

Jesus Is The Way - Humility To Glory (audio) David Eells – 3/2/25 Today, I'd like to focus on our Example of humility, Who, of course, is the Lord Jesus. He said He could do nothing of Himself. (Joh.5:19) … The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father doing: for what things soever he doeth, these the Son also doeth in like manner. Now, obviously, if Jesus could do nothing of Himself, we can do nothing of ourselves. Nothing of any importance in the Kingdom can we do of ourselves because self has no power to do the work of God. Self cannot walk in the Spirit. Self does not have the renewed mind of Christ with the renewed sight and hearing (Ephesians 4:23), having been washed with the water of the Word (Ephesians 5:26). Self has no power to walk in the Spirit or to do the works of God. When men take over Christianity, they bring God and His gifts down on their level and everything about that is just dead religion. It's worthless to God. Look at the huge religious organizations that do not turn out anything that looks like Jesus. There's no reward for it whatsoever, but many people waste their lives in another kingdom rather than the Kingdom of God. Jesus was both a son of man and the Son of God. He was talking about self here. He wasn't talking about the spiritual man that dwelt in that body; He was talking about self. And He said in (Joh.5:30) I can of myself do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is righteous; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me. Jesus sought the Will of the Father. (Jas.4:7) Be subject therefore unto God; but resist the devil, and he will flee from you. He was humble to the Will of the Father. He did not have His Own religious “agenda.” When we're driven by our own desires, our own agendas of ego, pride, and competition, we're not trustworthy, we're not humble, and we can expect problems. We can expect not to have the salvation that we need because we're self-willed and stubborn, and seeking our own kingdom. Jesus said that He could of Himself do nothing. That tells us that we certainly can't expect to do this on our own either. So, let's look to Jesus, Who is our Example of true humility. (Isa.66:1) Thus saith the Lord, Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: what manner of house will ye build unto me? and what place shall be my rest? (2) For all these things hath my hand made, and [so] all these things came to be, saith the Lord: but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at my word. Notice, the Lord is talking about building Himself a house, and He is saying that He doesn't dwell in houses made with men's hands (Acts 7:48,17:24). This is the “house” that God is building, as verse 2 speaks of, but then He says, “to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and that trembleth at my word.” That's the “house” of the Lord. He is speaking about the house that He has chosen, and that house is “a man who is of a contrite spirit, that trembleth at his word.” Oh, praise God! Another verse says, (Psa.138:6) For though the Lord is high, yet hath he respect (That's the Hebrew raah, also translated as “to see, become aware, give attention, regard, consider,” etc.) unto the lowly; But the haughty he knoweth from afar. The bible school graduates of Jesus' day, as in our day, could not do the works of Jesus. Even though God is great and He rules over all and He is to be revered and bowed down to, He respects the lowly. Now we have learned that grace is God's method to give us faith and power. (Jas.4:6) … Wherefore [the scripture] saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble. We also need to understand that the blessings of God are poured out upon the people who will humble themselves. (Jas.4:10) Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall exalt you. So our Lord Jesus Christ is our Example. He not only came to be our Savior, to deliver us from ourselves, from the devil, from the curse, but He's our Example of what is true “humility.” (1Jn.2:6) He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also to walk even as he walked. We are commanded to walk in the Steps of Jesus because what Jesus gave us was an example of life. I agree we haven't all come into that yet, but the more we study Him, the more we see what it is to be walking humbly before our God. (Mic.6:8) He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God? We are to be transformed into that same Image. (2Co.3:8) But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit. Therefore Jesus' walk should be our walk, and we're coming to the time when God is going to fulfill that, when God is going to restore everything that's been taken away from His people (Joel 2:23-29). God is going to bring us back to walking in the Power of the Spirit of God! It will be awesome! So, also, it says in (Php.2:5) Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus (So we are supposed to be thinking the same way He does, with the same ambitions, the same desires, the same humility.): (6) who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, (7) but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; (8) and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross. (And we are also to humble ourselves, becoming a servant, taking-up our cross, and following Jesus.) (9) Wherefore also God highly exalted him, and gave unto him the name which is above every name. In baptism, which represents death, burial, and resurrection, He gave us His Name, and as we enter into the manifestation of that death, burial, and resurrection, the Name of Jesus Christ is manifested in us. As we've studied before, the word “name” means “nature, character, and authority.” As we “have this mind...which was also in Christ,” and we take up our cross to follow Him, and we humble ourselves to become servants in this world, that Name is manifested in us. That's the fruit that Jesus is asking for in the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:3-9,18-23; Mark 4:1-9,13-20; Luke 8:4-15). That's the 30-, 60-, and 100-fold fruit of the manifestation of His Name in us, His Nature, His Character, His Authority. We behold “in the mirror the glory of the Lord,” and are transformed into that same Image, “from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the spirit.” God Himself chose humble circumstances for His Son. Obviously Jesus could have come in all of His Glory and manifested Himself as the King that He is, but God wanted Him to come in humble circumstances. Let's read in (Luk.2:4) And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David; (5) to enrol himself with Mary, who was betrothed to him, being great with child. (6) And it came to pass, while they were there, the days were fulfilled that she should be delivered. (7) And she brought forth her firstborn son; and she wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. God sent His only begotten Son to earth to be the Savior of mankind. He was the most important Person Who has ever been on this earth, and yet God sent Him in these circumstances. Could God have supplied better circumstances to honor the great King? Of course, He could, but it wasn't His plan, because Jesus not only represents the Savior, He represents the body of Christ. He came here to give up His carnal life, His physical, fleshly life, in order to take up His spiritual, heavenly Life, and He came to show us the Way. He was called the Way in (Joh.14:6) Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by me. He said, “I am the way,” and so far what we're seeing is that He came in very humble circumstances, and throughout Jesus' earthly work, He continued in very humble circumstances. He took on no titles or letters behind His name. He took up no collections for himself. He is the way! And it says in (Luk.2:42) And when he was twelve years old, they went up after the custom of the feast; (43) and when they had fulfilled the days, as they were returning, the boy Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and his parents knew it not; (44) but supposing him to be in the company, they went a day's journey; and they sought for him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance: (45) and when they found him not, they returned to Jerusalem, seeking for him. (46) And it came to pass, after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both hearing them, and asking them questions: (47) and all that heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. No doubt, even at twelve years old, He had a lot to teach them, although Jesus was still subject to the moral laws at that time. He was subject to His parents and He was subject to people who were set in authority over Him, just as we are also commanded to be in subjection to those who have been given authority over us. We are in subjection unto the kings and unto the governments. (Rom.13:1) Let every soul be in subjection to the higher powers: for there is no power but of God; and the [powers] that be are ordained of God. (2) Therefore he that resisteth the power, withstandeth the ordinance of God: and they that withstand shall receive to themselves judgment. (3) For rulers are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil. And wouldest thou have no fear of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise from the same: (4) for he is a minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is a minister of God, an avenger for wrath to him that doeth evil. (5) Wherefore ye must needs be in subjection, not only because of the wrath, but also for conscience' sake. (6) For this cause ye pay tribute also; for they are ministers of God's service, attending continually upon this very thing. (7) Render to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute [is due]; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor. And, if we are servants, we are also in subjection to our masters as we are told in (1Pe.2:18) Servants, [be] in subjection to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. (19) For this is acceptable, if for conscience toward God a man endureth griefs, suffering wrongfully. (20) For what glory is it, if, when ye sin, and are buffeted [for it], ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer [for it], ye shall take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. And so was Jesus. Even the mighty Son of God had to humble Himself to be submissive because of the body that He was dwelling in. Many people think we have special privileges because we are sons of God, but it is because of this body that we dwell in, we've been given these rules and regulations. Now let's return to our text in (Luk.2:48) And when they saw him, they were astonished; and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I sought thee sorrowing. (49) And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? knew ye not that I must be in my Father's house? (50) And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them. (51) And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth; and he was subject unto them: and his mother kept all [these] sayings in her heart. (52) And Jesus advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men. “Favor” is the Greek xáris meaning “grace, as a gift or blessing.” You see, because Jesus was humble, He received grace. He showed us how to overcome. Jesus was truly an overcomer. People think, “Of course, Jesus overcame since He's the Son of God.” But Jesus laid aside His omnipotence and omniscience to come down as a Spirit-filled man, the Son of God dwelling in Him just as the Son of God dwells in us. He came down and left that God privilege and ability to be an example unto us and demonstrated to us all that humility is the Way. He was humble, and God blessed Him, and He “grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.” You would expect that Jesus, being the great King that He was, would have had an awesome palace full of luxuries, with many servants and so on. Some preachers do preach that kind of a Jesus, a Jesus Who was rich, but it's very hard for us to see that anywhere in the Scriptures. It's because of their apostate doctrines and their own selfish desires that they preach that kind of a Jesus, because the Bible tells us why Jesus chose to be poor. (Jas.2:5) Hearken, my beloved brethren; did not God choose them that are poor as to the world to be rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he promised to them that love him? Jesus wasn't forced into poverty; He chose it. Poverty is not a curse when everywhere you go, God supplies your need. He had a need for an ass's colt to fulfil scripture so He borrowed one instead of raising one, which would be a burden. It's a contentment. Paul said, (1Ti.6:6) But godliness with contentment is great gain: (7) for we brought nothing into the world, for neither can we carry anything out; (8) but having food and covering we shall be therewith content.  God translated Jesus because He didn't have airplanes. (Mat 6: 33) But seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. God will give you what you need to do His will but we don't need the burden of idols. However, just “food and covering” aren't enough for most people. (Luk.9:57) And as they went on the way, a certain man said unto him, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. (Well, it's easy to say that, but when you find out the conditions, you might not want to go with Him, and so Jesus began to explain the conditions of His lifestyle.) (58) And Jesus said unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the heaven have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. Did this potential disciple know what he was getting into? The Lord wanted to make sure that he did before he went, and do we know what we're getting into when we claim to be disciples of Jesus Christ? That's the important thing because God expects and wants us to follow the Lord no matter what, with no excuses, with no looking back at our former life, as the rest of the text says. And yet these are the people who live by miracles. (Luk.9:59) And he said unto another, Follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. (Notice “me first”.) (60) But he said unto him, Leave the dead to bury their own dead; but go thou and publish abroad the kingdom of God. “Publish” is diaggéllō, which properly means to “thoroughly declare (publicly herald); fully announce {throughout the world}, ‘declaring far and wide,' i.e. widely (profusely) proclaiming.” (Luk.9:61) And another also said, I will follow thee, Lord; but first suffer me to bid farewell to them that are at my house. (62) But Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God. Jesus wanted them to go and spread the Good Tidings, but they had very human excuses, which Jesus was not accepting in the least. He told them, “There's something more important than your family or your houses or anything you can think of.” Of course, most of society, and even religious people, will tell us, “Oh, no, these things are very, very important.” We need to have our mind renewed to deliver us from many such traditions that get in the way of our doing what is truly important, because as the Lord Jesus teaches us in, (Mat.6:33) … seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Jesus wasn't sorry that He chose poverty. He was happy for the joy that He was able to bring others through deliverance, healing, provision, and so on. He chose this lifestyle, and, for those who have in their heart the same mind as was in Christ (Philippians 2:5-8), it's their desire, too. The most important thing to them is not the things of the world, but to humble themselves to the Will of God. The rich are distracted by their toys. We're told in, (2Co.8:9) For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might become rich. Some rather near-sighted people read that and say, “Oh, boy! The Lord became poor so we could become rich!” But, read very carefully, “that, though He was rich.” Now, where was He rich? (Php.2:5) Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: (6) who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, (7) but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; (8) and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself (Jesus had to humble Himself, and we have to humble ourselves.), becoming obedient even unto death (Humility is denying ourselves to take up our cross and follow Jesus.), yea, the death of the cross. (9) Wherefore also God highly exalted him, and gave unto him the name which is above every name. We can see plainly where He was rich. He was rich in the Kingdom of Heaven with His Father before He laid it all aside and came down here to be a Servant, and to humble Himself unto the death of the Cross in order to bear that Name. While He was down here, He wasn't rich. So notice, “though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor.” Jesus became poor in order to meet our needs. He sacrificed His whole Life, not just when going to the Cross, but His whole Life, in order to make sure that the Good News of God's all-encompassing provisions was proclaimed far and wide. “That ye through his poverty might become rich.” The “rich” this is talking about is the same kind of “rich” that Jesus laid aside in order to come down here. He's bringing us to His heavenly Kingdom. (1Jn.4:17) … As he (Jesus) is, even so are we in this world. He's not talking about riches down here and none of His disciples understood this to be riches on earth. There is no promise for the rich of the world who are not rich in the provision of the heavenly Kingdom of God. Jesus pointed that out in the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, where the rich man didn't see to Lazarus' need (Luke 16:19-31). (1Ti.6:6) But godliness with contentment is great gain. In the New Testament, we are called to be rich in spirit, rich in the gifts of the Kingdom, rich in the “gold and silver” of the Nature of Jesus Christ and, yes, have all material provision that we need to build the Kingdom. This was clearly seen in the lives of Jesus and His first disciples. They were unencumbered by the distracting things of this world. (1Jn2:15) Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. The promises are for the poor. He preached the Gospel to the poor. (Jas.2:5) Hearken, my beloved brethren; did not God choose them that are poor as to the world to be rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he promised to them that love him? (2Co.8:10) And herein I give my judgment: for this is expedient for you (So this needs to be fulfilled in us if we are to have the Mind of Christ, Who laid everything aside to become a servant of God and do the work of the Kingdom for our sakes.), who were the first to make a beginning a year ago, not only to do, but also to will. (“God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure,” will put this in our hearts as in Philippians 2:13.) (11) But now complete the doing also; that as there was the readiness to will, so there may be the completion also out of your ability. In other words, “Hey, let's not be just hearers of the Word, but let's be doers of the Word in providing the needs of the brethren.” Then as we read on down, Paul speaks about how the Lord wanted equality in His people regarding material possessions. (2Co.8:12) For if the readiness is there, it is acceptable according as a man hath, not according as he hath not. (13) For I say not this that others may be eased and ye distressed; (14) but by equality: your abundance being a supply at this present time for their want, that their abundance also may become a supply for your want; that there may be equality: (15) as it is written, He that gathered much had nothing over; and he that gathered little had no lack. That's referring to the Israelites gathering manna in the wilderness, and it's the principle Paul was using about there being equality among the people. (Exo.16:18) And when they measured it with an omer, he that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack; they gathered every man according to his eating. When they gathered the manna, they would measure out an omer-full. Then they would put any excess into the container of somebody else who hadn't gathered quite enough, and that way everybody got their needs met. In the Parable of the Rich Young Ruler (Mark 10:17-31; Luke 18:18-30), who couldn't give-up his riches to enter the Kingdom, Jesus said (Mat.19:24) … It is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. (25) And when the disciples heard it, they were astonished exceedingly, saying, Who then can be saved? (Meaning, of course, that they knew this was impossible.) (26) And Jesus looking upon [them] said to them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible. Jesus knew God could put the generosity in the heart of the rich to share their riches, as it should be done. (Ecc.5:11) When goods increase, they are increased that eat them; and what advantage is there to the owner thereof, save the beholding of them with his eyes? … (13) There is a grievous evil which I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept by the owner thereof to his hurt. However, to their shame, the rich then made one of the Temple gates the “eye of the needle” because, of course, they wanted to get all the rich people through the Door of the Kingdom more easily.    Jesus was a humble person. Earthly riches were not something that Jesus preached anywhere in His ministry and He rejected it for His Own Life. He raised His disciples to be humble people with a simple lifestyle in order to focus on building the Kingdom. Everything else physical was just a means to an end, but like the Pharisees of that day, the Pharisees of our day are still trying to make Jesus rich. (Joh.19:23) The soldiers therefore, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also the coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout. I'm sure you've heard some of the prosperity preachers who say Jesus was rich because of this garment that was completely woven without a seam. That's interesting, though I don't know how anybody could say that made Him rich.  I guess they think He had something that nobody else had, but I submit to you that there's also another reason God describes Jesus' garment in this way. In Revelation, the Bride is clothed with a lampros garment. (Rev.19:8) And it was given unto her that she should array herself in fine linen, bright (That's lampros and it means “shining, magnificent, bright, splendid.”) and pure: for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. A seamless garment represents not having mans works involved.. A garment also represents covering-up nakedness, which God likened unto sinfulness (Genesis 3:7,10-11). And also the Scripture teaches, (Isa.59:4) None sueth in righteousness, and none pleadeth in truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity. (5) They hatch adders eggs (In other words, that's their fruit.), and weave the spider's web (A spider's web is very porous, and notice it is woven but you can see nakedness or sin.): he that eateth of their eggs dieth; and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper. (6) Their webs shall not become garments, neither shall they cover themselves with their works: their works are works of iniquity, and the act of violence is in their hands. So notice in Revelation that the righteous works or righteous acts of the saints are what the lampros bridal garment represented, but here, these people whose works are wicked, don't have enough works to cover themselves. They are exposed for what they are. We, too, are weaving a garment by our works, and it has to be one that covers our nakedness. The Lord Jesus had this wonderful coat that was woven throughout with no seam of man in it, and it doesn't represent riches at all; it represents righteousness, One Who is walking in truth and righteousness and purity. The wisdom and righteousness Jesus had was not from man, but from God. As a matter of fact, we can see as we read on in our text, that Jesus had no riches. (Joh.19:24) They said therefore one to another, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be: that the scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, They parted my garments among them, And upon my vesture did they cast lots. (25) These things therefore the soldiers did. (They were casting lots for probably the only thing of any value that Jesus had.) But there were standing by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. (26) When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by whom he loved (That suggests this is John the apostle, himself.), he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! (27) Then saith he to the disciple, Behold, thy mother! And from that hour the disciple took her unto his own home. What did Jesus provide for His mother during His ministry? He didn't seem to be making a living, and some people would say He was not really successful. We know He was totally successful because, as He told the Father, (Joh.17:4) I glorified thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which thou hast given me to do. He raised up a worldwide church but He didn't seem to worry about providing for His mother. When He was leaving, He hadn't arranged for her to have a home or any of the things that a successful preacher would obviously give to his mother. Instead, He passed on His responsibility for taking care of her to one of His other disciples, and that disciple didn't seem to be any better off than He was. Of course, Jesus had taught His disciples that God would supply their every need. (Luk.9:2) And he sent them forth to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick. (3) And he said unto them, Take nothing for your journey, neither staff, nor wallet, nor bread, nor money; neither have two coats. … (Luk.22:35) And he said unto them, When I sent you forth without purse, and wallet, and shoes, lacked ye anything? And they said, Nothing. That's because everywhere they went, God supplied their need. They freely gave, and they didn't charge a tithe, as some people say. There's not one place in the Scriptures where they ever did that. Jesus said tithing was of the Law (Matthew 23:23). They went by faith and God supplied. It's good to live by faith. (Mat.6:19) Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break through and steal: (20) but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth consume, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: (21) for where thy treasure is, there will thy heart be also. It's good to walk and to trust in God, but of course, you can't do that if you're materialistic and you want to live on a higher level than God wants you to live. We see plainly in the life of Jesus that the Father did not desire for Him to walk in the way of riches, nor is that healthy for anybody to do. God has called us to walk in the steps of Jesus, in His humility to the Father, and His humility to not try to impress the people around Him. He didn't care anything about being what the world called “successful,” and I think this proves that Jesus wasn't a rich person and wasn't interested in those things, nor was His mother. The physical things, the food, the covering, all these things are necessary but they're just a means to an end, not a love of our life. We're told in (1Jn.2:15) Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Jesus' love was God's saints. He was interested in raising up the saints to be able to walk in obedience to the Will of God and to be sanctified and to be pleasing unto the Lord. And we're told that if we have His wisdom, we won't have the wisdom of man. (1Co.1:30) But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption: (31) that, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. Now let's go to (Mat.13:54) And coming into his own country he taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works? (That's the Greek dýnamis meaning “power, might, strength,” and it's where the word “dynamite” comes from. This is more accurately read, “Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty powers?) (Mat.13:55) Is not this the carpenter's son? In other words, “We know who his father is, so where did He come up with this wisdom and mighty powers? It doesn't make any sense because He's just the son of a carpenter.” Well, it doesn't make any sense only if you were used to nepotism, which they were. All those rich Pharisees and Sadducees and Scribes passed on the “family business” to their sons, just like a lot of the churches do nowadays. When the old man's gone, the son takes over. He's now chosen to be the pastor, but why is it that God always seems to choose the son to be assistant pastor, and then the pastor? Is this not nepotism? Isn't there somebody more qualified who's available? Well, you'd never find it out because of that spirit. Nepotism is the story of the High Priest Eli. (1Sa.2:12) Now the sons of Eli were base men; they knew not the Lord. … (17) And the sin of the young men was very great before the Lord; for the men despised the offering of the Lord. … (22) Now Eli was very old; and he heard all that his sons did unto all Israel, and how that they lay with the women that did service at the door of the tent of meeting. (23) And he said unto them, Why do ye such things? for I hear of your evil dealings from all this people. (24) Nay, my sons; for it is no good report that I hear: ye make the Lord's people to transgress. (25) If one man sin against another, God shall judge him; but if a man sin against the Lord, who shall entreat for him? Notwithstanding, they hearkened not unto the voice of their father, because the Lord was minded to slay them. Obviously, raising up his sons to take his place didn't work, because they didn't walk in the ways of the Lord and they grabbed for the physical as much as they could, and we're seeing the same thing today. We're seeing Eli ministries everywhere that walk in nepotism and in lust for the things of the world. And God destroyed Eli's sons, which are a type of far too many ministries today. And so, people were questioning how Jesus was teaching and healing and working miracles. They were implying, “Hey, this is not a son of a Pharisee. He's not a son of one of our scribes. He's not a son of a Sadducee. How does the son of a carpenter get all this wisdom and power?” Those Pharisees and Sadducees and Scribes had rich parents, so they went to their Bible schools and entered into the family business, because that's what it really was. Yet, here's somebody that didn't have the same “opportunity” their preachers did. Well, to Jesus, and to the Father, that wasn't an opportunity and that wasn't a blessing. Jesus was in a position of weakness because He was raised up in a family that wasn't well-to-do and didn't have connections, but it made no difference because He wasn't after what those people were after. (Mat.13:55) Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joseph, and Simon, and Judas? (56) And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things? (They knew His humble family and wondered, “How did this man get this wisdom?” because the only way they knew you could get it was to go to Bible School.) (57) And they were offended in him. (You have heard that familiarity breeds contempt. In other words, “Poor Jesus! He is just a commoner and has no credentials. He has no ‘pedigree.' And His father has no important connections.”) But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and in his own house. (58) And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief. How foolish that people would question the gift because of the way that it came! Even today, that happens. People want to know if you have any “letters” behind your name. They ask, “Are you important?” and “Where did you get this wisdom?” Cannot God just give it to you by studying the Bible on your own? Cannot God lead you by the hand and make you a disciple? We read in (Heb.13:8) Jesus [is] the same yesterday and to-day, [yea] and for ever. He still takes people by the hand and makes disciples of them when they have a personal relationship with Him through the Word of God. Jesus had a personal relationship with the Father. He didn't need any go-betweens. He didn't need any Nicolaitan preachers that were between Him and the Father. He had a personal relationship with the Father and that's where He got His great wisdom and power. It came from the Father. So because Jesus had no credentials, it offended the Eli ministries of His time. Unlike the common people, they wouldn't just sit and listen and accept the gift of God that was coming through Him; they expected something more. Well, God is justified of His awesome works. Glory to God! If you want God's Will, you don't need to be raised up in a mausoleum. (Joh.7:14) But when it was now the midst of the feast Jesus went up into the temple, and taught. (15) The Jews therefore marvelled, saying, How knoweth this man letters, having never learned? (By that, they meant He didn't go to their seminaries.) (16) Jesus therefore answered them and said, My teaching is not mine, but his that sent me. (17) If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God, or whether I speak from myself. He didn't say they had to go to a seminary of man to get it like the Pharisees did. He said if a person desired God's Will, they would know of the teaching. God will raise you up as a disciple of Jesus Christ. He will take you by the hand. He will lead you. Of course, this is a humbling way, because the world and the worldly church don't recognize you, but the Lord does. He opens doors to the humble people and He will bring it to pass. Amen! Jesus was made known to the righteous because God opened their eyes to see Him, but we know He was rejected of the proud and the religious leaders and the rich people. They just wanted to walk in materialism and so He wasn't recognized of them. (Mar.12:35) And Jesus answered and said, as he taught in the temple, How say the scribes that the Christ is the son of David? (36) David himself said in the Holy Spirit, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, Till I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet. (37) David himself calleth him Lord; and whence is he his son? And the common people heard him gladly. You know, it takes a lot of effort to get a worldly education and you want to believe it's valuable. All those religious leaders had gone through a lot of trouble to get to that place. They didn't want to be humbled; they wanted to be seen as the great people that they thought they were. But the humble people, the common people, they loved to listen to Jesus. Even though He wasn't raised up in their seminary, that made no difference to them. Humility is not an outward show. We read in (Mar.12:38) And in his teaching he said, Beware of the scribes, who desire to walk in long robes, and [to have] salutations in the marketplaces… Oh, they love to dress “snazzy,” don't they? You have to have a nice suit and stand behind a pulpit but Jesus didn't hold to their traditions of men. That's important to some people, but God said, (1Sa.16:7) … Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have rejected him: for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. God's not interested in the riches and the finery that a lot of the religious world is interested in. None of that makes you righteous, or smart, or a good teacher. Again in (Mar.12:38) And in his teaching he said, Beware of the scribes, who desire to walk in long robes, and [to have] salutations in the marketplaces (39) and chief seats in the synagogues, and chief places at feasts. In the Parable of the Guests (Luke 14:7-11), didn't Jesus teach us to be content in a lowly place, and not to go up higher unless you are called? He said to beware of putting yourself in too high a position because somebody more honorable may come to take your seat, but these people chose for themselves the chief places in the feasts. Well, Jesus wanted to share His gift with people. That was the most important thing to Him. Promoting Himself above people was something He considered totally fleshly. Continuing with (Mar.12:40) They that devour widows houses, and for a pretence make long prayers; these shall receive greater condemnation. (41) And he sat down over against the treasury, and beheld how the multitude cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in much. (42) And there came a poor widow, and she cast in two mites (At current valuation, one mite is approximately 1/16th of a penny.), which make a farthing. (43) And he called unto him his disciples, and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, This poor widow cast in more than all they that are casting into the treasury: (44) for they all did cast in of their superfluity (That's perisseúō meaning “overflowing abundance, excess, lavishness, prosperity.”); but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living. Glory to God! We tend to judge in the flesh what humility is, and what submitting to the Will of God is. Jesus complained that all of these people who put in their over-abundance were not sacrificing anything because they still had all of their needs met, but this poor widow gave more than all of them because of what she had left. She knew that God would meet her needs and this is the kind of faith that impressed Jesus. Can you imagine, this poor widow, who humbly gave two mites to the Kingdom, is more famous throughout all of history than any of those unmentioned rich show-offs, who gave to the Kingdom in a display of pride. You know, it is truly what you have left that proves your sacrifice, not how much you give. This lady gave more than all of them according to God's accounting and that was true humility on her part. This impressed Jesus more than the Pharisees and the Sadducees and their ways of dealing with God. You know, Jesus didn't seek the honor that comes from man. He didn't even seek for God to honor Him, but when He didn't seek the honor for Himself, God sought it for Him. (Mat.21:4) Now this is come to pass, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophet, saying, (5) Tell ye the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, Meek (The text that's being quoted here is from Zechariah 9:9 where “meek” is translated as “lowly.”), and riding upon an ass,  (Mat.21:5) Tell ye the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, Meek, And riding upon an ass, And upon a colt the foal of an ass. And notice, He even had to borrow this foal of an ass, so we can't say He was rich in the way of the world. However, when Jesus does come back in Revelation 19, we see that He's on a big white horse. Now, I would say, if somebody was rich, and wanted to impress the multitudes, He'd certainly be riding on a big white horse, not the foal of an ass. What was the point He was making? He was making the point that, even though He was King, to be King does not mean materialism in God's Kingdom, and it doesn't mean pride, boastfulness, or being lifted up above anybody in God's Kingdom on earth. He came “lowly...riding upon an ass,” and if our Lord King would do this, what does God expect of us? Does He expect humility of us? I guarantee it. (Mat.21:6) And the disciples went, and did even as Jesus appointed them, (7) and brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their garments; and he sat thereon. (8) And the most part of the multitude spread their garments in the way; and others cut branches from the trees, and spread them in the way. Jesus said, (Joh.14:6) … I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by me. He is the Way, and He showed us the Way. His method is humility. He expects it of everybody. He doesn't care what the preachers nowadays think. Many are high and lifted up, but in the Kingdom, if they make it, they will be the least because they've disobeyed the principles that Jesus has laid down, the Nature and Character that He's passed on to us, and this humility that He carried throughout His earthly ministry. (Mat.21:9) And the multitudes that went before him, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the son of David… Even though He was King, Jesus wasn't seeking any worldly kingdom, but here the Lord honored Him from the simple people. “Hōsanná is a transliteration of the Hebrew hôsî-âh-nā meaning ‘Oh, save now!' or ‘Please save!' It comes from two words, Yahsha, which means ‘O save, deliver,' and nah, which means ‘I pray.'” In both Aramaic and Hebrew, it was originally a cry for help, but then also became used as a cry of happiness. (Mat.21:9) And the multitudes that went before him, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest. (Mat.21:10) And when he was come into Jerusalem, all the city was stirred, saying, Who is this? (11) And the multitudes said, This is the prophet, Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee. So Jesus continued on to Jerusalem and entered the Temple. (Joh.2:14) And he found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting: (15) and he made a scourge of cords, and cast all out of the temple, both the sheep and the oxen; and he poured out the changers money, and overthrew their tables; (16) and to them that sold the doves he said, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house a house of merchandise. (Jesus complained that the priests and scribes had made the Father's House a “house of merchandise” to profit for themselves.) (17) His disciples remembered that it was written, Zeal for thy house shall eat me up. He defended the Father's House. He wanted it to be a humble place, a place of prayer for all nations, but they had made it a den of thieves. These days, what is loosely called “Father's House” is once again a den of thieves. It's a place for materialism and for worshipping men who don't share the humility that Jesus has and don't see the importance in it. All worship goes to God; all praise goes to God. He is the supplier of every thing. It doesn't do our flesh any good to be lifted up because, as the Bible says, (Mat.23:12) … whosoever shall exalt himself shall be humbled; and whosoever shall humble himself shall be exalted. Also, (1Pe.5:5) … all of you gird yourselves with humility, to serve one another: for God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble. And so we have a whole generation of ministry that knows nothing of these principles that Jesus is laying down for us. He said, (Mat.10:9) Get you no gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses. And, (Mat.10:8) … freely ye received, freely give. But they know nothing of this and they're not following the Master. They're not disciples of Jesus Christ. A true disciple is a “learner and a follower.” He is somebody who studies the Master in order to walk in His Steps and to do what He did. Notice that when we study the Master, we don't see the mansions that the leaders of Christianity have raised up unto themselves. And sometimes one mansion is not enough for them, neither is one jet plane enough for them, or one Rolls Royce enough for them. (Isa.56:11) Yea, the dogs are greedy, they can never have enough; and these are shepherds (He's calling the leadership of the church “greedy dogs.”) that cannot understand: they have all turned to their own way, each one to his gain, from every quarter. What about the equality that Jesus desired to have on this earth? What about the desire for His disciples to share and share alike so that everybody's needs would be met?    Jesus did not want people to profit or to be lifted up in the Father's House. He didn't want people to be esteemed for their physical attributes. Even the Body that God gave unto Jesus was not to be admired. (Isa.53:2) For he grew up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. (Jesus was not good looking because He did not want to be followed for that reason.) (3) He was despised, and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and as one from whom men hide their face he was despised; and we esteemed him not. God didn't want anybody to follow Jesus for the wrong reason. The apostle Paul, one of the greatest writers of the New Testament, wrote things “hard to be understood” (2 Peter 3:16). He wasn't evidently, even a good speaker (2 Corinthians 10:10), but it didn't make any difference. God wanted people to listen to Paul for the value of those words that he got across to them. God wants His ministers to be humbled. It's the reason Jesus sent His disciples forth without all the provision of the world. Jesus was a King; He had authority. He could multiply the fishes, the loaves, the gold. He could have filled churches. He could have made Himself a Name in the earth. The people wanted to make Him a King, but He refused. (Joh.6:14) When therefore the people saw the sign which he did, they said, This is of a truth the prophet that cometh into the world. (15) Jesus therefore perceiving that they were about to come and take him by force, to make him king, withdrew again into the mountain himself alone. It was something that the devil had offered unto Him, and Jesus had refused him, too (Matthew 4:1-11; Mark 1:12-13; Luke 4:1-13). But, you know, there are many people today, even leaders of Christianity or members of the body of Christ, who would take that in a minute. They would be kings and lords over God's heritage. They don't know the principles of God's Word and the principles that Jesus was trying to get across to us in order to humble this old flesh. We have to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus. It doesn't do us any good to let this flesh come down off the cross and have its own will. We deny it. We fast. We refuse it to be fed and to live. Thank You, Father, that You give us the ability, Lord, to deny the old man a right to live, a right to speak, a right to lift himself up, a right to pride. We deny it, in Jesus' Name, Lord. Amen! Now, I'd like to share a few revelations with you.     Jesus Is Again Coming in Humility June Johnson - 07/29/2008 (David's notes in red) In a very vivid dream, I saw a donkey in the middle of a road with a baby on its back. It is Jesus birthed in the end-time corporate man-child, whose beastly flesh is in servitude and humility by God's grace. Mat.21:5 Tell ye the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, Meek, and riding upon an ass, And upon a colt the foal of an ass. Jesus is coming as the latter rain on this morning of the third thousand year day. Hos.6:2 After two days will he revive us: on the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live before him. 6:3 And let us know, let us follow on to know Jehovah: his going forth is sure as the morning; and he will come unto us as the rain, as the latter rain that watereth the earth. He will anoint the first-fruits man-child first, as it was with Jesus. Just as the Jews expected Him to come as a reigning king over their enemies, the Christians do today. “The things that have been are the things that will be”. Instead, He will come once again in the form of humble servants before coming personally. Next, I heard a car coming and thought to myself, “I had to get the baby out of the road before the car came closer.” The dragon will seek to destroy the corporate man-child, as with Jesus and Moses, but he will be anointed with authority to rule from the throne, as they were. Rev.12:4 And his tail draweth the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon standeth before the woman that is about to be delivered, that when she is delivered he may devour her child. 5 And she was delivered of a son, a man child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and unto his throne. 6 And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that there they may nourish her a thousand two hundred and threescore days. The donkey then knelt down and I grabbed the baby and ran. End of dream Jesus will come wherever the beastly flesh is in submission. Others will partake of the Spirit of Christ in them. The fruit of Christ will be served to God's people through a humble body.   Sad State of the Church Michael Boldea I had a dream where I was in a hospital room; it was very clean, and freshly painted. In the room there was a bed with a woman in it. I approached the bed and took a closer look at the woman. She was dressed in a gray robe, and she had a ring on every finger of her hand. From time to time, she would raise her hand, look at her fingers, and smile. For some reason, that smile was the saddest thing I've ever seen. It was crooked, and it exhibited no real joy. As I looked at her the sadness in my heart grew to such intensity that it woke me up. Even awake I could still feel the sadness, and as much as I tried I couldn't get back to sleep. For six days in a row I had the same exact dream; I would see the woman lying in bed, I would be overwhelmed by sadness, then I would wake up. I was so frustrated, not knowing what this meant, that on the seventh day I decided to fast. That night as I went to sleep the dream started again, the same as before. I looked at the woman, she smiled, and the sadness overwhelmed me, but I didn't wake up. The door to the room opened and a man dressed in a white smock walked in holding a clipboard. Before he could say anything, I began asking a barrage of questions. “Who are you? Why am I here? Who is she? Why have I been dreaming this for almost a week?” “Because you waited almost a week to fast”, he said. He must have noticed the stunned expression on my face, because his eyebrows arched upward. “I am a friend”, he continued, “I was sent with a message, be at peace servant, all will be revealed in due time”. “How do I know you're a friend”, I asked. “Because, Jesus is Lord”, he answered. Then he smiled, and I recognized him. I had seen that smile before. Suddenly I was eight years old again, sleeping in the top bunk of the bed I shared with my grandparents, on a cold winter night in Romania. I will remember that night for as long as I live. I had woken up to go to the restroom, but before I could get out of bed, I heard talking below me. My grandfather was talking to someone. I went to peer over the edge to see who it was, and found myself face to face with this same man. He'd smiled at me, and I'd instantly gone back to sleep. “I know you, don't I?” “Yes, we've met once before, but I see you often”, he answered. “Why am I here?” I asked. “Because you murmur, because you have said in your heart that you are on a fool's quest, because you think no one hears, that the message is falling on deaf ears. It is not for you to judge the success the message has in the hearts of others; you were called to be a servant; serve. I was sent to rekindle the fire of compassion in your heart. Compassion for the wayward and the lost, compassion for her”, he said, pointing to the woman in the bed. “Who is she?” I asked. “She is the church”, he answered me. “Content only with the things of this earth, absent of spiritual strength. She is the reason you and others like you were called to forfeit your lives. The sadness you feel when you behold her is nothing compared to the sadness the Father feels for her condition. If she is to stand in the fire, if she is to be victorious, she must be strengthened. She has been in this condition of spiritual paralysis for so long, she believes this is her natural state. If only she knew the power she has access to, if only she knew obedience. The wolves have gathered unhindered, and soon they will strike at her with violence. What will she do if she is unable to defend herself? What will become of the house of God?” “Be faithful, for faithfulness is rewarded. Why do you say in your heart that God should make it easier, that He should ease your trials? Would you rather that pride find its way into your heart when the Father endows you with the gift He has promised? Keep humility as your constant companion, for the humble receive an abundance of grace. Remember if just one soul is spared from the eternal flame, if just one soul is reached and brought to salvation, it is worth a lifetime's labor and sacrifice. One day you will know the number, receive your reward, and be astonished. I must leave now, but whether in the waking hours, or a dream, we will meet again”. The man walked to the bed, looked down at the woman, smiled a sad smile and walked out. As soon as he walked out of the room, and I was alone with her, the sadness began to invade my heart, and I woke up. The reason I share this with you is to ask for your prayers. It is a difficult thing to go to church after church, night after night, and speak a message of repentance that to the hearts of many, has become a foreign concept. The knowledge that if just one heart is reached, if one returns to the narrow path of faith, it is worth it and gives us purpose and new strength. May the light of God shine brightly in your hearts, and may you exhibit Christ wherever you are. Revelation 3:19, “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent”.

John 17:1 Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: "Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, 2 "as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. 3 "And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. 4 "I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. 5 "And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.  In this section of Scripture we see Jesus asking the Father to give Him back the Glory which He had before the foundation of the World.  Jesus is God and was never less than God, but He did give up the usage of some of His divine attributes while He was here on earth such as knowing everything that would happen (Omniscience), He gave up the worship He had in Heaven, the infinite riches He had, the Omnipotence – being all powerful, and His ability to be everywhere at the same time as Jesus (Omnipresence). Jesus wanted to and did Glorify the Father by dying on the cross and paying for the sins of all people. He also did this by living a perfect sinless life while here on earth. He also defined eternal life as knowing the true God and Jesus Christ who are one.  Eternal life is not in a place called Heaven, but in a person called Jesus Christ who is God that came in human flesh.  Though labeling this prayer "Jesus' high priestly prayer" is a bit misleading, I know of no better way to describe it. Obviously Jesus had not yet entered into His high priestly ministry, which He began when He ascended into heaven, when He prayed this prayer (cf. Rom. 8:34; Heb. 7:25; 1 John 2:1). This prayer, nevertheless, represents a foretaste of that intercessory ministry. Verses Persons Key Word 1-5 Christ and His Father “Glory” 6-19 Christ and His Disciples “Kept” 20-26 Christ and His Church “One” The prayer is similar in spirit to the Model Prayer for us in Matt. 6:9–13. This means that our salvation is secure, for the Father will not take us from the Son! It was a prayer after a sermon; when he had spoken from God to them, he turned to speak to God for them. Note, Those we preach to we must pray for. He that was to prophesy upon the dry bones was also to pray, Come, O breath, and breathe upon them. And the word preached should be prayed over, for God gives the increase.[i] 1 ¶ Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: "Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, Joh 12:23; 13:32 It is significant of the lifting up of the soul to God in prayer, Ps. 25:1. Psalm 25:1  To you, O Lord, I olift up my soul. Jesus had already used this word [doxazō] for his death (13:31f.). Here it carries us into the very depths of Christ's own consciousness. It is not merely for strength to meet the Cross, but for the power to glorify the Father by his death and resurrection and ascension, “that the Son may glorify thee” The hour in view was the hour of the Son's glorification through death, resurrection, and ascension As so often in Scripture, emphasis on God's sovereignty functions as an incentive to prayer, not a deterrent Christ always looked upon the cross as a means of glorifying God (12:23). Paul also saw glory in the cross Galatians 6:14 But far be it from me to boast nexcept in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which2 the world ohas been crucified to me, and I to the world. Jesus came to fulfil God's design. Jesus asked His Father to glorify Him so He could glorify the Father. To glorify in this context means to clothe in splendor (cf. v. 5). The only way this could happen was for Jesus to endure the Cross. Thus this petition is a testimony to Jesus' commitment to do the Father's will even to the point of dying on the cross. His request for glory, therefore, was unselfish. It amounted to a request for the reversal of the conditions that resulted in the Incarnation (cf. Phil. 2:6-11). Jesus requested God's help (i.e., grace) in His sufferings, His sacrificial death, His resurrection, and His ascension. All of this was ultimately for the glory of the Father. It would magnify His wisdom, power, and love. The Father glorified the Son upon earth, First, Even in his sufferings, by the signs and wonders which attended them. When they that came to take him were thunder-struck with a word,—when Judas confessed him innocent, and sealed that confession with his own guilty blood,—when the judge's wife asleep, and the judge himself awake, pronounced him righteous,—when the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple rent, then the Father not only justified, but glorified the Son. his thorns were a crown, and Pilate in the inscription over his head wrote more than he thought. But, Thirdly, Much more after his sufferings. The Father glorified the Son when he raised him from the dead, showed him openly to chosen witnesses, and poured out the Spirit to support and plead his cause, and to set up his kingdom among men, then he glorified him. It is recorded for example to all, that we may follow his example. 1. We must make it our business to do the work God has appointed us to do, according to our capacity and the sphere of our activity; we must each of us do all the good we can in this world. 2. We must aim at the glory of God in all. We must glorify him on the earth, which he has given unto the children of men, where we are in a state of probation and preparation for eternity. 3. We must persevere herein to the end of our days; we must not sit down till we have finished our work,  2 "as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. Da 7:14; Mt 11:27; 28:18; Joh 3:35; 5:27; 6:37; 17:6,9,24; 1Co 15:25,27; Php 2:10; Heb 2:8 The origin of his power: Thou hast given him power; he has it from God, to whom all power belongs. The extent of his power: He has power over all flesh. 1 Peter 3:22 22 who has gone into heaven and xis at the right hand of God, ywith angels•, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.  The grand intention and design of this power: That he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. Here is the mystery of our salvation laid open. 2 Corinthians 4:15 15 For cit is all for your sake, so that as dgrace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, eto the glory of God.  2 Peter 1:3 His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him fwho called us to3 his own glory and excellence,4 1 John 5:20 20 And we know that the Son of God has come and rhas given us understanding, so that we may know shim who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and teternal life.  The word give is used in one form or another in this prayer at least seventeen times. Seven times Jesus states that believers are the Father's gift to His Son (John 17:2, 6, 9, 11–12, 24). We are accustomed to thinking of Jesus as the Father's love gift to us (John 3:16), but the Lord affirms that believers are the Father's “love gift” to His beloved Son John 6:37 This is a mystery we cannot explain, but we thank God for it! Romans 11:29 For the gifts and pthe calling of God are irrevocable. “Eternal [everlasting] life” is an important theme in John's Gospel; it is mentioned at least seventeen times. What is “eternal life”? It is knowing God personally. Not just knowing about Him, but having a personal relationship with Him through faith in Jesus Christ. We cannot know the Father apart from the Son (John 14:6–11). It is not enough simply to “believe in God”; this will never save a lost soul from eternal hell. [ii] The Father had glorified the Son by giving Him the authority to give eternal life to all individuals whom the Father had given to the Son (cf. Matt. 28:18 Jesus had lived on a “divine timetable” while on earth and He knew He was in the will of the Father. Psalm 31:15 My rtimes are in your hand;  srescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors!  authority over all flesh indicate that Jesus' prayer request was in accordance with the Father's plan. The Father has ordained the rule of the Son over the earth (cf. Ps. 2). So the Son has the authority to judge (John 5:27), to take up His life (10:18), and to give eternal life to all those whom the Father gave Him. phrase “all flesh” is a Hebrew idiom referring to mankind, The verb give is PERFECT ACTIVE INDICATIVE which speaks of an enduring gift! 3 "And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. Isa 53:11; Jer 9:24; Joh 3:34; 5:36-37; 6:29,57; 7:29; 10:36; 11:42; 1Co 8:4; 1Th 1:9 Jer 9:24 But let him who glories glory in this, That he understands and knows Me, That I am the LORD, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight," says the LORD. 1Th 1:9 For they themselves declare concerning us what manner of entry we had to you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, 10 and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come. This verse shows the two major truths of Christianity: (1) monotheism (cf. Deut. 6:4–5 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.) and (2) Jesus as Divine Davidic Messiah (cf. II Sam. 7). Jesus  proceeded  to  define  the  nature  of  eternal  life.  Eternal life is essentially knowing (Gr. ginoskosin, cf. Gen. 4:1 LXX; Matt. 1:25) God experientially through faith in His Son (cf. 3:5; Jer. 31:34; Hab. 2:14; Heb.8:11). Jesus described it in terms of relationship rather than duration. Everyone will live forever somewhere. However the term "eternal life" as Jesus used it means much more than long life. For the complete fulfillment of our being, we must know God. This, said Jesus, constitutes eternal life. Not only is it endless, since the knowledge of God would require an eternity to develop fully It is not primarily quantity, but quality (cf. 10:10). Jesus described the Father here as the only true God. He is knowable only through Jesus Christ whom He sent (cf. 1:18; Matt. 11:27). We sometimes say that it is a blessing and an inspiration to know certain people. This is all the more true when we know God. Knowing Him changes us and introduces us into a different quality of living. Matthew 11:27 All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. The word know (ginōskōsin) here in the present tense, is often used to describe a person who knows God has an intimate personal relationship with Him. And that relationship is eternal, not temporal. Eternal life is not simply endless existence. Everyone will exist somewhere forever (cf. Matt. 25:46), but the question is, In what condition or in what relationship will they spend eternity? Matthew 25:46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”  In fairness it must be said that the OT presentation of God's uniqueness and oneness is set against the backdrop of the ancient near eastern's worldview of many spiritual beings. There is only one God, but other spiritual beings [iii] (cf. Exod. 15:11; Deut. 3:24; Ps. 86:8; 89:6). Exodus 15:11 “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?  Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?  Moses recognized the presence of other spiritual beings. This is not meant to assert that the idols of the nations had reality, but that the demonic was behind the physical idols (cf. I Cor. 10:19–20). What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? 20 No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. [iv] The OT symbolic background would be that which is trustworthy, faithful, loyal. The Greek background would be that which is uncovered, clearly manifested. In some sense truth versus a lie (cf. Titus 1:2 Titus 1:2 2 din hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began The inos ending on a Greek term (alēthinos) denotes that out of which something is made. Possibly the following usages will give a general feel for the terms  SPECIAL TOPIC: “TRUE” IN JOHN  God the Father God is true/trustworthy (cf. John 3:33; 7:18, 28; 8:26; 17:3; Rom. 3:4; I Thess. 1:9; I John 5:20; Rev. 6:10) God's ways are true (cf. Rev. 15:3) God's judgments are true (cf. Rev. 16:7; 19:2) God's sayings are true (cf. Rev. 19:11) 2. God the Son the Son is true/truth 1)         true light (cf. John 1:9; I John 2:8) 2)         true vine (cf. John 15:1) 3)         full of grace and truth (cf. John 1:14, 17) 4)         He is truth (cf. John 14:6; 8:32) 5)         He is true (cf. Rev. 3:7, 14; 19:11) b. the Son's testimony/witness is true (cf. John 18:37) 3. It can have a comparative sense the law of Moses versus Jesus' grace and truth (cf. John 1:17) the tabernacle in the wilderness versus the heavenly tabernacle (cf. Heb. 8:2; 9:1)A 4. As so often in John this word had several connotations (Hebraic and Greek). John uses them all to describe the Father and the Son, as persons, as speakers, and as their message which is to be passed on to their followers (cf. John 4:13; 19:35; Heb. 10:22; Rev. 22:6). 5. For John these two adjectives describe the Father as the one and only trustworthy deity (cf. 5:44; I John 5:20) and Jesus as His true and complete revelation for the purpose of redemptive, not just intellectual, facts!  4 "I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do.The rabbis used the term apostello was to refer to one sent as an official representative. Joh 4:34; 5:36; 9:3; 13:31; 14:13,31; 15:10; 19:30 which assumed His obedience to death He repeated His request for a return to His perfect glory with the Father (cf. John 17:1) based on the certainty of the finished work on the cross. Philippians 2:8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. He glorified the Father in His miracles (John 2:11; 11:40), to be sure; but He brought the greatest glory to the Father through His sufferings and death (see John 12:23–25; 13:31–32). From the human point of view, Calvary was a revolting display of man's sin; but from the divine point of view, the cross revealed and magnified the grace and glory of God.[vi] Satan has tried to obscure the precious truth of the finished work of Jesus Christ, because he knows it is a basis for spiritual victory. “And they overcame him [Satan] by the blood of the Lamb” (Rev. 12:11). Don't let Satan rob you of your overcoming power through Christ's finished work. The Greek root, telos, implies “to complete fully” (cf. 4:34; 5:36; 19:30). The work was threefold: (1) revelation of the Father (cf. 1:14, 18); (2) redemption of fallen mankind (cf. Mark 10:45; II Cor. 5:21); and (3) an example of true humanity (cf. 13:31; I Pet. 2:21). Also, Jesus' work of intercession continues (cf. I John 2:1). This “work” the Father gave Him to do is one of five things in Jesus' prayer which the Father “gave” the Son: (a) work (v. 4), (b) believers (vv. 2, 6, 9, 24), (c) glory (vv. 5, 24), (d) words (v. 8), and (e) a name (vv. 11-12). The Son, in turn, gave believers God's words (vv. 8, 14) and God's glory (vv. 22, 24).[vii]  5 "And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was. John 1:1-2; 10:30; 14:9; Php 2:6; Col 1:15,17; Heb 1:3,10 Now He asked the Father to glorify the Son by all that the Father would do in exalting the Son. Thus Jesus essentially restated the request of verse 1. He wanted to return to the condition in which He existed with His Father before His incarnation. This request assumes Jesus'  preexistence  with  the  Father  and  His  equality  with  the  Father (10:30). Really Jesus requested His own glorification. Because we share His life, we are overcomers; for we also share His victory! “For whatsoever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith” (1 John 5:4). When you were born the first time, you were born “in Adam” and were a loser. When you are born again through faith in Christ, you are born a winner!  John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. Have you trusted Him as your Savior? He can Save you if You ask Him based on His death, burial, and resurrection for your sins. Believe in Him for forgiveness of your sins today. hisloveministries.podbean.com #HLMSocial hisloveministries.net https://www.instagram.com/hisloveministries1/?hl=en https://www.facebook.com/His-Love-Ministries-246606668725869/?tn-str=k*F https://www.paypal.com/fundraiser/110230052184687338/charity/145555 “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”  -John 8:32 The world is trying to solve earthly problems that can only be solved with heavenly solutions. [i] Henry, M. (1994). Matthew Henry's commentary on the whole Bible: Complete and unabridged in one volume (Jn 17:1–5). Peabody: Hendrickson. [ii] Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Jn 17:1). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books. [iii] Utley, R. J. (1999). Vol. Volume 4: The Beloved Disciple's Memoirs and Letters: The Gospel of John, I, II, and III John. Study Guide Commentary Series (153). Marshall, Texas: Bible Lessons International. [iv] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2001 (1 Co 10:19–20). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society. [v] Utley, R. J. (1999). Vol. Volume 4: The Beloved Disciple's Memoirs and Letters: The Gospel of John, I, II, and III John. Study Guide Commentary Series (153). Marshall, Texas: Bible Lessons International. [vi] Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Jn 17:1). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books. [vii] Walvoord, J. F., Zuck, R. B., & Dallas Theological Seminary. (1985). The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures (Jn 17:4–5). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.

Romans 8:34 who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. In vs. 34, Paul raised a second question designed to increase their faith, hope, and love for Christ. Who is the one who condemns? Remember verse 1 of Rom. 8. “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” There is no condemnation because Jesus, who died for us to condemn sin, was raised because of our justification, who sits at the right hand of God in the place of judgment, intercedes for us with God. All of these things Jesus did for us, He was sent by God to do them because God loves us. Obviously Jesus loves us or He wouldn't serve us in these ways. Since Jesus does these things for us, and we have His life in us, then we should expect His love to still move in this direction as it flows through us. Because we love with Jesus, when we are abiding in Him, we will not condemn our brothers and sisters and we will intercede for them with the Father. We want to participate with Jesus as He loves His brothers and sisters. What a privilege it is to give God glory and joy by loving with Jesus. We do so out of the fullness of His love revealed in Jesus Christ for us and through us. Father, we thank You for giving us Your Son, giving us the Spirit of life in Christ. Fill us today with the Holy Spirit so we can love and trust You and love everyone You put in our paths, for Your glory. Acknowledgment: Music from “Carried by the Father” by Eric Terlizzi. www.ericterlizzi.com

 September 10, 2023We know the cycle:  Something happens.  Someone is enraged.  Internet explodes.  Other people shout in opposition.  Fragmentation and Exhaustion Result.  Repeat.Jesus today offers a very different path (Matthew 18), one that is based on people listening, restoring relationships, and then coming to an agreement.A reflection on the role of listening to each other and to God in pursuing reconciliation.Reconciliation also involves Jesus listening to us; so I offer this piece of art (from the website of “Good Shepherd Church” in Elgin, IL.) that shows Jesus listening.  Obviously Jesus imparts wisdom.  But he also listens.

Long-time friend Zayden Kirby joins Haider from Oklahoma to discuss matters of the soul, dating and things he's seen living in in the forest. This marks the debut of our new intro and more frequent update schedule, though we still couldn't get Zoom to record in HD. Maybe next time. Oh and remember...be yourself, that's what you're here for. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/idiotmystic/message

I wonder if Luke purposely put together the story of the apostles not being able to drive out the demon with the story of their jealousy of someone else doing it? Obviously Jesus didn't give them exclusive rights to do so, and he acknowledged that there were others outside their circle who were also living Kingdom lives. Hopefully we won't make the same mistake, and think our tribe is the only group getting things right.

Abandoning the idea of one God leads to the invention of other gods, because the invention of meaning must happen. And if you can invent gods and meaning, then you can invent anything. This slope becomes slippery fast, like a Minnesota sidewalk on the first autumn sleet when the temperature hovers around 30 degrees: you may be falling down soon. Once you reject a singular God and make a golden statue or animal or mascot into a god, then it's no longer something to be taken seriously. Why? Because a statue or animal is ridiculous as an object of power. Yes, an eagle or cougar or lion is cool because they are strong and wild, but that doesn't give them divine powers. It just means they are good hunters for fish and rabbits and wildebeasts and it's fascinating for us to watch them. They cannot ponder ideas like justice or mercy or the best way to organize an economy. The idea of God as something contained in this world is too small and not worthy of worship. It's a completely different concept of God from the idea of “being itself” or the creator of the universe. This is why when Moses asks what is God's name, he gets the answer, "I AM WHO I AM." God is. He is existence itself. I guess the Bible translators like to put that in all capital letters, because without him nothing else exists. There is nothing before God. We are only because he said so, and he can unsay so whenever he wants, too. We don't believe that Zeus really exists. We just wink and repeat the tale because it's a fun story. But Zeus is more like a mascot, because he doesn't demand anything from his “followers.” In fact, Artemis in Ephesus is basically like the modern day worship of the Bulls in Chicago or the Giants in New York. It's funny that many of the modern team mascots can be mapped to old world idols or myths. These small gods are much like the sports teams of the ancient world, or you could say our sports teams are much like the idolatry of the ancient world. Sports fans today give as much time and energy to their animals and icons as the old world did to lower case gods. I'll probably do a future episode on this because sports teams and mascots match up too well to old city-state idolatry. We even have statues and clothing and rituals for our worship of these sports franchises and teams that represent our cities and schools. The problem with these small gods is this: if you can make a statue into a god, then a trophy or a diploma or a team or a house or a woman or a drug can just as easily become the object of worship, the giver of meaning. Many say that Catholics worship statues, so I should point to a correction here. We don't worship statues, we have sacred art and pray for intercession, but rather than get derailed, here's a good article about statues in Catholic churches. The point of all sacred art is to elevate the one true God, the Trinity. The object has no power or force or spirit, but aids in worship.What about spirits? What about the attacks and spiritual combat and all that jazz? Isn't this just about monotheism versus polytheism? If there is only one God, then what's with the spirits and demons and angels? It's not just a word game if the one true God is real. Both the Apostle's Creed and Nicene Creed begin with words about believing in God, which means it is the most important statement of faith, as it leads the charge for the remainder of the creeds. Since the cultures surrounding Israel tell the tales of other gods, its like there are warring propaganda campaigns happening. Just as the the Bible argues for the one god, the Egyptians and Greeks and others argue for the many. It is critical that the Israelites protect and worship the correct God, otherwise they will fall into the trap of those cultures around them. And that's exactly what happens whenever they fall for idols; once in the trap, they tumble into disorder. The story of Noah is about falling into mayhem, sin, and disorder. The Golden Calf incident happens when the people abandon the one God. The book of Judges is full of these cycles of order, disorder, and re-order as the people believe, then rebel, and then return to the one God. It's the story of the Prodigal Son on repeat, but instead of one man it's a nation.The whole story of the Bible is a re-assertion of the proper order where the Most High God, the one God, rules over the people and all creation. The story of Jesus is the story of the one true God, the one power of the universe, coming back to reclaim his creation from the lesser gods, to steer the whole thing back to the start, to the simple beginning. The "turning away" from God reached all nations. The city-states and tribes believed that this was the proper state of affairs. For example, the Greeks had statues of Athena in Athens, as she was the patron goddess of the city. As should come as no surprise, Athens saw itself as wise and strong, like Athena. The city modeled itself after its selected gods. Athens and Athena do a spiritual mirroring, just as the 115th Psalm explains to us how idols work. The creator of the idol becomes like the idol. “Their makers will be like them, and anyone who trusts in them.” (Ps 115:4-8) Corinth, a sea-port city, venerated Poseidon. Not exactly a shock, since a port city hugs the sea. Rhodes had it's famous giant named Colossus and worshiped Helios, the sun god. A more interesting story around the old world of patron gods is Ephesus, a city that is in modern Turkey. Ephesus held Artemis as the goddess. St. Paul shows up and causes a riot when he starts converting people to Christ, away from Artemis. Interestingly, the local silversmith is upset because he will no longer be able to sell trinkets and worship material if everyone becomes a Christian, so the riot is more about money than devotion. (The silversmiths probably didn't realize they could start selling all kinds of new souvenirs, as people today like to buy and sell Christian souvenirs, and I'm not going to dive into that question right now, but I will say I am all-in on sacred art.) The riot upsets the balance of the city, as there is a perceived order around the goddess Artemis. Introducing a new centerpiece of faith and culture scares the people because they are already settled into their existing structure. Where there is order, any hint of disorder will cause worry, and when the riots begin the disorder has arrived. When the anchors for our life are in place and the wind is calm, we don't want to pull up anchor and move. In the case of Ephesus, the city was comfortable in its undemanding idolatry. You can see this happening today. A power struggle between those who believe in one God is underway. There is a third column in the battle with those of no god, but they were certainly present in the past as well. The gods of modernity are not as obvious to us, but they are there. This is the story of human history. You can read about it in the mythology of peoples, just like you can read an allegorical unfolding of it in the novel, Lord of the Flies. The first humans, when we first stood up in the Africa savanna, in that first garden, we became aware of our difference from the other animals. We had to discover how to live, how to act, and how to rule. Eventually, we had to figure out what to worship. We had to spend a lot of time mulling over the idea of origins. Most importantly, we had to decide if there were no gods, many gods, or one God, because only one of those things could be true. We have tried all three options. In thirty thousand years of human drama, the experiments surely happened more than once and maybe several hundred times. The story of the Bible is the story of a nation that has cast their vote for the one God, while the story of the Greeks, Romans, and Babylonians is the story of nations that followed many gods. Surely the claim sounds dramatic. To say that every nation but one has fallen prey to the devil or spirits makes the claim extreme. But that is exactly the claim. That is what the story of the Tower of Babel describes, as the scattering of the peoples of the world led to the invention of strange gods. The reason the Tower of Babel is the last story before Abraham's entrance in the next scene is because the scattering explains the world that Abraham is born into, which is the pagan world of many gods. In the Tower of Babel story, God withdrew from people when they attempted to pull him down to earth, which is just a way of saying that they tried to become God. They wanted to become god or make a deal with God. When neither of those plans worked, they turned from god and the nations were born. With the nations came the lesser gods. That is how the first half of Genesis concludes, which leads to Abraham. This is where things start to get interesting, if the ancient language and lists of names don't make your eyes glaze over. I can quickly lose focus when I dive into the begat, begat, begat paragraphs and miss the gold in them “begats.” I'll do a brief and possibly bad retelling of Abraham's life, hitting only the important points that may help me tie this together with Uranus. Abraham lived in a place called Haran, named after one of his own relatives. Haran is believed to have been a place of a moon-cult, meaning Abraham's family likely worshiped a god of the Mesopotamian or Sumerian pantheon. In other words, Abraham is born in a world that is fully pagan and worships many gods. His people are not believers in the one true God. No, his people are like everyone else. They have rejected the one true God. That is why Abraham's story is so important in the Bible. When Abraham is born, Uranus and Osiris and all of the other primary pantheon gods have been overthrown by child gods. There are god and goddesses and idols all over the place. The rebellion has already occurred and the one true God is not in the ballgame. Abraham is living in the age where mythology is everywhere. These events occur somewhere around 1800 or 1600 B.C. The story of Abraham begins when he is called by God to venture out from his home, leaving his relatives, his country, and his father's house, which includes leaving the old familiar moon-god behind, too. When called, he goes without questioning the call, in a kind of “drop the nets” move like that of Peter and Andrew when the call from Jesus happens, or like Mary's Fiat when the angel Gabriel visits her. This break from Abraham's family starts a new life for him, one of total trust in the one God that he hears speaking to him. This is a radical change from the human pride that happened just one chapter earlier in the Tower of Babel story. Without a doubt, this marks a turning point of Act I of the Bible. Since the word repent means to “turn” you might say that this the point of repentance, the return to the one God. There is much to go into on that, but I only want to go into one more thing here about Abraham. The reason why Abraham is the Patriarch, the big P, is because he represents the return of worship to the one true God. No one else is doing this. It's not cool or trendy at all. So God promises Abraham land, descendants, and fame. Abraham sojourns in Canaan, Egypt, and Bethel. After various adventures and material success, he gets caught up in a local war. We learn that he has some money and a small army by now, as he takes his soldiers into battle to save his nephew. With only 318 men, he defeats four local kings. Victorious, Abraham returns from the war with all kinds of loot, not to mention glory. Local kings come to meet him. A mysterious king arrives, the king of Salem. Now wait a minute, I've heard of Salem before. Where have I heard this? There is Salem, the setting for Days of Our Lives, the soap opera, where Bo and Hope live. Then there is Salem, Massachusetts where the famous witch trials happened and the setting of Henry Miller's play, the Crucible. But wait, no, I've heard of Salem in another place before, but part of a larger word: Jerusalem.Not only do we have the one God coming back into the game of human life, but we have the city of Jerusalem being introduced. Oh, and what's this? He's brought food and something to drink. But he hasn't brought the usual barbecue pot-luck goat or bull, he's brought something different to this celebration. He has brought bread and wine. Yes, bread and wine. Now we have Abraham in Jerusalem with a king that brought bread and wine and it's starting to feel eery and weird because we know all of these elements from the life of Christ, but that happens nearly 2,000 years after this event. Then it gets weirder and more eery. This king lived in the time when a king was also a priest. Those job titles were one and the same, so even more interesting, he comes to meet with Abraham and offer this bread and wine as a sacrifice. (This might begin to raise the hairs on your neck at this point if you haven't heard this before.) But that's not all that's interesting about this dude with the long name of Melchizedek. He is not just a priestly king, he is a priestly-king of the “God Most High.” This is important. He is not a priest of a moon-god, no, he is said to be a priest of the one God, the true God, the only God, which is referred to in the passage as the '“Most High God” or “God Most High.” And if that were not enough, there is more to this little verse, something that my blind eyes passed right over every time I saw this passage, is that this God Most High is directly referred to as the “creator of heaven and earth.” In other words, this ain't Uranus. This isn't Osiris. This isn't Odin, or the moon-cult, or Hawaiian Pele, or the Spirit Horse, or the Great Pumpkin. This isn't any of the primary gods of any pantheon. This is clearly a reference to the God of Genesis, Chapter 1, Verse 1. This guy came to Salem with bread and wine and he wants to praise the one God. This priest-king of Salem just shows up out of the blue, and he is either one of the last people on planet earth along with Abraham that speaks of the “Most High God,” or, perhaps he is God himself visiting Abraham. I don't know what to make of it, but that is one option for interpretation. Some people believe this is a theophany, an event where God reveals himself, like in the burning bush or in the Transfiguration. I'm not sure about that so I'll leave it to the experts and many centuries of more well-versed thinkers. Either way, whether Melchizedek is an ordinary man or a manifestation of the God Most High, this is the moment where Abraham is blessed and where Jerusalem becomes the sacred site of the chosen people. (Note: he's still called Abram at this point, not yet Abraham)Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine. He was a priest of God Most High. He blessed Abram with these words:“Blessed be Abram by God Most High,the creator of heaven and earth;And blessed be God Most High,who delivered your foes into your hand.” (Gen 14:18)This is huge. I know it probably doesn't seem like it, but this is huge. This is the moment where Jerusalem becomes tied into everything to follow, where bread and wine become important for future references regarding sacrifice, and where we hear this interesting term, God Most High. There's more here too. There's always more. Briefly, I need to point out this last line where Melchizedek blesses Abraham and praises God, saying he “delivered your foes into your hand.” This battle that took place is the compelling event that brings Melchizedek to make this blessing. Interestingly, the battle was a rescue mission. Abraham's nephew is Lot, who lives near the infamous cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, which have not yet been destroyed. Earlier on in chapter 13, Lot and Abraham went separate ways. The buddy movie ended when Lot moved to the fertile Jordan Valley, which is the best land, and Abraham takes Canaan. But later, the local tribes invade Lot's land and he is captured. This is the first of three times that Lot finds himself in deep water. Abraham's entry into the war is for the purpose of saving Lot and his people, which he does. After saving the people and goods of Lot and Sodom, Abraham refuses to receive a reward, having sworn to the “Lord God Most High, maker of heaven and earth” that he will not profit from this war, and instead Abraham gives ten percent of his property to God. This means that Abraham went to war, won the war, received nothing, and ended up giving away his own property. Immediately after Melchizedek brings out the bread and wine and makes the blessing, Abraham becomes generous and magnanimous. When Melchizedek states that it was God that delivered the foes, Abraham seems to be changed because generosity flows from him. I'm just going to leave this episode with this thought: Lot chooses the easier path and ends up suffering for it. The land he chose was fertile and lush, but it leads him to a hard life and eventually his own kidnapping. All that glistens is not gold, it seems. Abraham must save him, but only wins the battle with God's help. The cities that Lot occupies return to corruption and lawlessness, as does he. Abraham pleads with God for another rescue, for mercy, but this time God obliterates the people and the cities. This is the angry God, the hellfire God. The rescue mission for the sinners of Lot's world happens only once. Mercy has already been shown with the rescue mission, and in the second round comes judgement. That is food for thought. The hard thing about reading the Bible is that you can so easily pass over something like a phrase, “God Most High” because we're thinking in the 21st century instead of 1600 B.C. That little phrase refers to the God that was first and foremost and came before anything that existed, including Uranus. This is the one God, before Uranus or anyone or anything else. Nothing exists without this God speaking up and saying so. (Literally, God spoke and made all things.) Reading mythology can get confusing real fast. Each ancient storyteller has a slightly different take on the tale, along with different motives. The mythologies of the ancient past can lead into endless caves of exploration because it becomes complicated, as the family trees and interactions cross into one another. Then there is war and culture clash, which leads to re-writing and re-purposing conquered gods and neighboring heroes into the dominant myth, and of course the dominant myths of the ancient world were Greek and Roman and Egyptian, but even those mythologies are extremely complicated. There is a overarching theme of might makes right, of the powerless overthrowing the powerful, like a food chain or pecking order that keeps changing and squirming around. This leads me to a point that I've taken far to long to arrive at, but it's a quote by a famous physicist named Richard Feynman, which goes like this: You can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity. When you get it right, it is obvious that it is right—at least if you have any experience—because usually what happens is that more comes out than goes in.... The inexperienced, the crackpots, and people like that, make guesses that are simple, but you can immediately see that they are wrong, so that does not count. Others, the inexperienced students, make guesses that are very complicated, and it sort of looks as if it is all right, but I know it is not true because the truth always turns out to be simpler than you thought.This is exactly how it feels to discover, or re-discover, the “one God” theory. The one God makes sense, while the mess and tangle and overcomplicated tales of mythological systems lead to confusion and endless searching. There is a restlessness, like that of Odysseus, a constant searching and changing and shape-shifting. If you go down the rabbit-hole of mythology, you can spend a lifetime digging for the truth and be as confused in the end as when you started. I'm not saying myths are bad, because they exist as stories because we like stories. We are all people defined by stories. There is a story and a myth for everyone. We each have one that fits us. However, the myth that suits us will change over the five act play that makes up our life. The myth that describes you in your childhood will not be the same myth that describes your teens, and the myth that fits will shift again in your twenties. This happens with every decade of life, as the view changes when you change roles. But these stories we use to explain ourselves are still only stories. They are explanations but they are not the truth. The truth is always simple and pure and beautiful. That is what the one God provides. The creator of heaven and earth is simple and beautiful and gives you rest. Why? Because the one God is the only explanation that can cut through all the decades and give focus. What we lack is focus, which is a central point, a point of concentration where all rays of light meet. We need something simple and beautiful to look through, something clear of cobwebs and dust and grime. The myths are confusing and changing. The one God cleans up and gives meaning to all of creation and all of time, because only the one God is the God that can make sense no matter what part of the five act play you are in. A child, a teenager, a twenty-something, a worker, a father or mother, a grandparent, a retiree, and especially someone on their deathbed: all of these stages of life can understand what the idea of one God means. You cannot do that with Uranus. Simplicity and beauty: Einstein and Feynman knew that the truth had those qualities, and these were scientists, some of the finest ever. The Big Bang Theory is oddly simple. More odd still is that the Big Bang Theory was discovered by an astronomer who was also a priest (of all people). Oddest of all, what really takes the cake here, is that this same theory supports the universe being “created,” and by that, I mean it points to the universe having a beginning which fits with the cosmology of Genesis. When you consider the Big Bang Theory versus the complicated instructions that come along with string theory or the multiverse, it's clear that the Big Bang is far more simple and beautiful. After awhile those other explanations begin to look like Uranus' family tree.Yes, we are small and finite and cannot know the mind of God, nor fully understand, I get that. But we can recognize beauty and truth and goodness. We can see those things in a baby, in a tree, in a bird nest, in Einstein's equations, in Shakespeare sonnets, or in the simple and humble carpenter who showed up two thousand years ago and offered us some bread and wine. (Kind of like Melchizedek, huh? Right? Right? Who's with me?!)The thing about our minds is that we fall. We fall. We hide. We lie. We cheat. We do all of the things that go against what is simple, true, and beautiful when we serve our selves. Our default setting is to sin, to turn away from the one God and the truth. What the simple stories of the Garden of Eden and the Tower of Babel are trying to convey is how we find ourselves always returning to a state of sin. That's it. What the rest of the Bible is attempting to tell us is how to get out of the muck. The good news is that the devil always overplays his hand, because he has to bluff. He has no real power over God, so the spirits try to destroy God's creation, which means us. The humbling reality is that we are children taken hostage in a larger battle, or like pawns in a cosmic game of chess. We are attacked by temptations and face spiritual combat all the time. Spirits seek our attention in many ways, with strategies and tactics. They can steer us at any time toward the wrong choice, as free will gives us ample opportunity to stray.You can see this happen in the chosen people, where the nation declares its position of fidelity to God, but individuals stray and often the whole nation wanders. Even leaders cannot uphold the belief when tested, such as Solomon who builds temples for his pagan wives. Yes, Solomon, the wisest king, even makes the classic blunder. But there is always the remnant who remain, who believe, and who follow the Commandments. To declare belief in one true God is easy, but to live out that statement of faith is difficult. This is exactly why people leave the one God, because sticking with the demands of God is difficult. Why did Adam and Eve turn away? Because the fun things drew them away, tempted them. They wanted to be like gods, as advertised by the shiny one. Most of the “fun” things are not allowed, but the problem is not the rules but what you consider to be “fun.” The problem is in the heart. Jesus could not be more clear about this, but everyone skips over these parts where he forbids something to get to the “fun” part of “judge not” where he appears to affirm the exact sins he denies. We really want the hippy Jesus because that version is more like Zeus and Dionysus and Eros. Obviously Jesus teaches forgiveness, but he most certainly does not say, “Boys will be boys!” or “Here's some money for beer, have fun” or “A little pornography never hurt anyone” or “Ignore those Puritans, sex is no big deal.” We want the undemanding version of Christianity, we don't want the actual Christianity that has difficult requirements. The reality is that we all turn from God because we have favorite sins. It's going to happen, it will happen, and anyone who pretends it hasn't happened or that they have risen above it are spewing pride like the Bellagio dancing fountains in Vegas. We all decide somewhere in life, often daily, that it is easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission, because Jesus does not grant permission. He knows this, knowing that we would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven. He knows our hearts have a problem and he even lists the problems out for us. “From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from within and they defile.” (Mk 7:18-23)Perhaps it has always been this way, but America in the 21st century chooses to ignore these difficult sayings of Jesus. It's pretty safe in most groups to bring up the cool version of Jesus. But mention quotes like this and you may get the stink-eye. People don't want the hard sayings, because that's where the going gets tough. If you stick to the forgiveness parts, you make more friends. Yes, Jesus forgives sins. Yes, we will sin because we are fallen. Yes, we must turn back to him to receive the forgiveness. But nowhere does it suggest, in any terms, that the laundry list of sins that he mentions are to be blessed or affirmed. What he is trying to tell us, in metaphor, in teachings, in literal words, and in his life itself is that you must recognize that you are a sinner, that your interior self has a fatal flaw, which is why you sin. Somehow we twist this around and say there is no such thing as sin, which is the opposite of what Jesus is trying to say. We're just so good at finding arguments to eat of the fruit of the garden and inventing reasons to build the Tower of Babel. This is the point. It's the point of Israel preserving the faith in one God and the point of Jesus as the one God coming here to straighten us out. He has to chase out the bad spirits, because they are everywhere and reigning supreme. These spirits harass and bother us in order for them to have power over God's creation. Since they can never defeat God, they try to destroy us, God's most beloved creatures. For a long time, as the mythologies openly tell us, the powers of the world had turned away from the "Most High God," and only by the path of the chosen nation did we return to worship of the one true God. Without Israel we would be engaging only in tree worship and building golden calves.The story of Israel is literally the story of a people setting their faces like flint and stepping into a storm of slings and arrows to return the true God to glory in this world. His glory was never lost in reality, but the nations, the "powers and principalities," had distracted us from the truth. The salvation history of Israel is a noble story of suffering and hope, a fight for truth, against an onslaught of falsehoods and cruelty. Yes, the Israelites committed many war crimes themselves in this journey, which is why all of it is recorded. They slaughtered and were slaughtered, but all of this history was for the greater glory of the God that the world wanted to kill once and for all.What God accomplished through the people of Israel is so powerful that I have yet to fully appreciate it, because it is a long and forbidding act of faith, hope, and love for the one true God that allowed for the savior to come to us, and while I know the will of God obviously guided it to completion, much heartache and suffering traveled with them in those many years of swimming upstream. The real ending to the story, as I see it, is this:The cultures surrounding had already moved on from the one God. He was considered dead, something from the past, an artifact of history. Only one group of people knew that he was real, that he was still present, that he was alive, and that he was tending to his sheep. The world wanted to kill God, just as many do today, and the declaration of Nietzsche that "God is dead" is as false when he wrote those words, as it was in the desert of the Exodus, as it is today with the New Atheists claim. The truth is that people who have rejected God want the comfort of believing that God is dead. Those in rebellion desire certainty that God is dead. Oddly enough, the Pharisees who were trying to protect the one true God, also wanted God dead, and in the twist of all twists, the chosen people and the pagan polytheist Romans banded together to do just that. They literally killed God.Or they tried. They tried so hard. They nailed the incarnated one true God to a cross and then to be certain he was dead, they ran a spear into his side. They got what they wanted.But that's the funny thing about getting what you want. In the end it's what you want the most that will purify you, will burn you, will leave you empty, will destroy you, and finally will set you free. Because just when the Romans and Pharisees got what they wanted, in killing God, they wiped their hands and considered the task taken care of once and for all. Three days later, they discovered that they could not kill God.Getting what they want did not play out as expected, because it never does. Instead, like it always does, it purified them. The Romans, hoping to avoid religious disputes and stick with the easy, non-demanding false gods, were complicit in God's murder and soon after were converted away from their polytheism, back to the one true God. The death of Jesus unwound thousands of years of false idols. The Pharisees, thinking they would gain power, saw the temple destroyed 40 years after the crucifixion, and with it their power and influence faded away. Those who converted, like Saul who became Paul, found new life. The rule always holds. What you desire most, if you get it, will take you somewhere very unexpected. This is a public episode. 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They Have Their RewardReader: Miriam MontgomeryDate: 19th July 2022Passage: Matthew 6:2-------------------The Lord Jesus really disliked hypocrites, very especially those who tried hard to give people the impression they were very good and holy people.Obviously Jesus had often seen people like that. Indeed that was what such people wanted — they were keen for people to see how they prayed, how they fasted and how they gave alms to the poor — they were very public 'holy' people. But Jesus called them hypocrites. And, said Jesus, if it is public praise they are looking for they will receive it - "they have received their reward", but they will receive no reward from God.Of course the day of religious hypocrites is not past. We too can fall into the trap of being outwardly 'holy' people, putting on a good show in church or among Christian people while our hearts may be cold and indifferent towards God. But that cuts no ice with God. When Jesus says such people have their reward he is using quite serious language. It means the reward is full payment but for what? - an outward show which is of no value to God. God is interested in the serious business of what is going on in our hearts, the secret life of the true believer in Jesus. PrayerDear Lord Jesus, forgive me when I try to appear before people as a much deeper Christian than I am in secret before you. Amen.

They Have Their Reward Reader: Miriam Montgomery Date: 19th July 2021 Time: Passage: Matthew 6:2 ------------------- The Lord Jesus really disliked hypocrites, very especially those who tried hard to give people the impression they were very good and holy people. Obviously Jesus had often seen people like that. Indeed that was what such people wanted — they were keen for people to see how they prayed, how they fasted and how they gave alms to the poor — they were very public 'holy' people. But Jesus called them hypocrites. And, said Jesus, if it is public praise they are looking for they will receive it - "they have received their reward", but they will receive no reward from God. Of course the day of religious hypocrites is not past. We too can fall into the trap of being outwardly 'holy' people, putting on a good show in church or among Christian people while our hearts may be cold and indifferent towards God. But that cuts no ice with God. When Jesus says such people have their reward he is using quite serious language. It means the reward is full payment but for what? - an outward show which is of no value to God. God is interested in the serious business of what is going on in our hearts, the secret life of the true believer in Jesus. ## Prayer Dear Lord Jesus, forgive me when I try to appear before people as a much deeper Christian than I am in secret before you. Amen.

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston in our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.Good morning, welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, I'm one of the pastors here at Mosaic along with Pastor Shane, and Pastor Andy, and if you're new, or visiting, we'd love to connect with you. We do that either through a connection card in the worship guide that you received on the way in, or the virtual connection card in the app, or on our website. If you fill it out, we'll get in touch with you over the course of the week.Would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's Word. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a good God, and a good Father. And we thank you, Lord that you, before the foundation of the world, you imagined us into existence. That we are a product of your imagination, that in your heart, you foresaw who we would be and you made us so.And we thank you that you created us in your image with an imagination, and you have given us this imagination so that we use it for good to imagine realities of how we can serve people, and do good, and further the common good instead, Lord we've sinned. And so often our imaginations are used as a weapon for evil and sin.And Lord, we thank you that you did not leave us in our sin, but you sent Jesus Christ, the perfect image of the invisible God. We thank you Jesus, that you lived the perfect life, that you never sinned against anyone, and not God, not people. You love God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and your imagination. And you love neighbor as self. You never treated anyone as an object, and you never dehumanized anyone with sin.And you went to the cross and Lord, you bore the weight that we deserve, the punishment that we deserve. You experienced hell being forsaken by God, so that we would not have to be. And we thank you. Holy Spirit, that you give us access to the gospel by grace, through faith. And I pray today Lord, give us a deep faith for your Word, that when you say something is sin and that something leads to pain and depravity, and shame, let us believe it.And when you say that we can be free of sin because where the Spirit is, here freedom is. Let us believe it and act upon that faith. Bless our time in the Holy Scriptures, we love you, and we pray all this in Christ's name, amen. Happy Valentine's Day, everybody. Perfect, perfect day for a nice sermon on lust. And that's what we're talking about today. The title of the sermon is Lust and Imagination.As we're going through a Sermon on the Mount, the context is that Jesus Christ is King, and he says, "The kingdom of God is at hand. The way that you enter into the kingdom of God is by repentance through faith." And once he gathers his disciples who have repented of sin, he explains to them this new order of life. It's a manifesto he's given us of the christian life of how we as Christians are to live. And he's given us the same standard that God gave in the very beginning.And just a word here on theology to set a meta narrative of what we're talking about, the theology of creations that God created everything by the power of his word. And he created us humans in his image, and he created us to enjoy him primarily, him first and foremost, secondarily creation. He gives us good gifts in creation to be used according to his guidelines, according to his laws.And he created us in such a way that the more we live according to his will, the more we glorify him, the more satisfaction we experience. Augustine said, "Our hearts are restless until they find the rest in you." It's like there's a missing piece in our hearts, and that missing pieces is Jesus, it's worshiping God, is being in trance with him. It's adoring him, loving him, being captivated by him with all of our heart, soul, strength, and mind.It's like those security websites. When you get on some of these financial websites, and they show you the puzzle, and there's a puzzle piece that you need to move into the empty spot. And on a daily basis, God is saying, "Jesus is that piece that we need to be filled with satisfaction." So God created us with a need for him. And the other thing I want to connect that with as he created us in his image and were a product of his imagination.So he imagined us, and created us in his image. So the fact that we're in his image is we have an imagination. It's an incredible gift from God to have an imagination, and that imagination... And if you just think about how much of life you live in your imagination, two thirds, more? As you're sitting, especially if you get good at your job, you could be all day without even thinking about your job. You're just doing your job, and you were imagining realities. Every time you think about the past, and memories, that's imagination at work. Anytime you think about a better reality here, anytime you think about future realities, it's imagination at work.And one of the things that scripture teaches is that every single part of our person has been marred. The image of God in us has been marred by sin, and therefore imagination has been marred by sin. So that imagination which was created to do good and think of better reality, that imagination is sinful. So this is what Jesus Christ is talking about today, and he talks about lust, and he talks about this deep desire, he's talking about the capacity to imagine good things and act upon them, or imagine bad things and act upon.And this is a very relevant sermon for everybody. The latest statistics say that 95% of people struggle with lust. The other 5% struggle with lying. It's everybody, every single one of us. As my wife says, "Everybody have dirty mind, everybody." We all need Jesus. We all need cleansing. We're all on level playing field there. So that's the context with it. And we'll look at this text from the perspective of, is your imagination captivated by God? And that's the only place you'll find satisfaction. If not, there's things we have to do by grace through faith, with repentance, fighting those areas in order to be faithful to the Lord.With that said, would you look at the text with me? We're in Matthew 5:27-32, "You have heard that it was said, 'you shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away for it is better that you lose one of your members then that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away for it's better that you lose one of your members then that your whole body go into hell. It was also said, 'Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.' But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife except on the ground of sexual morality, makes her commit adultery. And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery."This is the reading of God's Holy and fallible authoritative Word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Four points to frame up our time. First, what's the big deal with lust? Second, lust is never satisfied just physically. Third, fighting lust with faith, and forth, we'll talk about marriage and divorce. So first of all, what's the big deal with lust? And I asked this because from our cultural perspective where you, and this is a secular humanist worldview, where humanity, humans, people are at the center of the universe and there is nothing above them. So, whatever you do, as long as you're not harming anybody that's good.So, why the radical language that Jesus is using. First in verse 27, I'll point out that Jesus emphasizes the heart. Verse 28. "But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in heart." It's the heart. We see in the 10th commandment "Thou shall not envy. Thou shall not desire your neighbor's spouse." We see the desire there in commandment number 10.Jesus here goes into commandment number seven and says, that's the same thing. "Thou shall not commit adultery." It begins in the heart. The other thing I want to point out here is that from the perspective of Jesus. Jesus, primarily talking to his disciples, primarily talking to men. Men, you need to listen. You need to heed this commandment. And obviously it doesn't apply just to men, but he's talking to his disciples, so it applies to everybody.The assumption here is behind this commandment, behind this call to purity command to purity of the heart is the assumption is that sex is a lot more powerful than you know. It's mysterious, it's an untamable power. That's the assumption here from God's perspective. That's why Jesus uses such strong language and giving a prescription of how to deal with it. How to deal with it. This is verse 29. "If your right eye causes you sin, tear it out, throw it away for it's better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell."And he uses the same language with the hand. "If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off, throw it away for it's better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell." Jesus, why are you bringing hell into this? We're talking about lust, we're talking about adultery and Jesus says the consequence for this is hell. It's being forsaken by God forever. Why such strong language? Why this importance, this gravitas of lust. And partially other times I've preached this sermon and I'm like, look at the wisdom behind God's commandment. God cares about the individual. And God also cares about other individuals. And God cares about the family and God cares about society. So there is divine wisdom and fighting lust then leads to more blessing.That's not how I'm dealing with it today. Basically what Jesus is saying is, "I'm God, and I'm telling you how to live. And if you do not obey my Word, there are consequences, you are liable to judgment." That's how Jesus talks about. Back when I started my ministry, when people come to me, and say, "I'm struggling with lust and Pastor Jan, can you help me?" And I would give them like practical things to do. "Hey, put some filter on your computer. And if it's your phone, that's causing you to sin, get a flip phone, and get an accountability partner, and all that." Now, whenever anyone comes to me and says, "I'm struggling with sin." I say, "Pluck out your eye. Cut off your hand," because it is that serious. Obviously Jesus isn't talking about doing this physically literally, it's a hyperbole.But it's hyperbole, in a very arresting language, in a very extreme language. Hyperbole to say this radical measure is an index of how radical, and dangerous this sin is. In order for you to overcome this sin, you need to first understand that God hates it, and that there are dire consequences over it. And God is a God not just over your actions, but over your desires. God is a God over your imagination. That God has jurisdiction over the realities that you imagine, over your fantasies. And here he brings in the word hell, and it's Gehenna.And Gehenna was the garbage dump outside of Jerusalem where the fire would just keep burning. And he says, "That's a metaphor for what hell is." He's not saying that's exactly what hell, it's a metaphor. And whenever God uses a metaphor to describe hell, sometimes it's darkness, sometimes it's this fire that can't be quenched. The reality is always worse than the metaphor.So what are you saying is the reality is of this lust. If it keeps burning, and if you don't deal with this now, and then you die, and we are eternal beings. Well, if you have been forsaken by God in this world, then you will be forsaken in the next world and this fire just keeps on growing. And the assumption is that sex isn't just an appetite, that it is powerful, it's like a fire. And the right context in marriage to one man, one woman in covenant for a lifetime. It can lead to goodness, and a blessing from God. In the wrong context, can lead to devastation, just like a fire in a fireplace leads to light an ambiance, warmth, wrong contest, devastation.And that's the problem with our culture. We have mishandled this. We have absolutely mishandled this because we assume it's just an appetite, and we don't take God at his Word because we think it's just an appetite. Well God says, "No, it's not just physical, it has all kinds of spiritual manifestations, and consequences." And Satan's temptation here is the same temptation that he brought in the very beginning. The temptation is even as you're listening right now, even as I read the text the temptation is, is it really that bad? Is this sin really that bad? Did God really say? Did God really say that if you eat of it, you will die. Did God really say that?And what Satan did with Eve the very beginning, by tempting her to eat the forbidden fruit, he does today in terms of lust, and sex. Did God really say, and does God really have jurisdiction of this area of your life? And basically what Satan is doing is it's a power play. You don't have to submit to God. You can be your own god, and you decide what's good, and evil. You decide what's blessing, and what's cursing.He comes in and he attacks the imagination. Just imagine a world without God. Imagine a reality without God, with no consequences for your actions. This is John Lennon's signature song. Imagine a world without God. Imagine a world without God, without religion. Imagine that above is only sky. If we imagine such a world, one lacking country's, possessions, when we imagine all the people living in peace, unity, happiness. I think what John Lennon did was trying to create this flower power paradise that has no basis in reality.Nietzsche was more right. "If there is no God, and people do whatever they want, it leads to absolute chaos, and nihilism, and just abyss." But this is what seeing does is imagine. Imagine a world without God. Well, okay. Let's imagine that world without God. Most people live as if there is no God, and how's that going? Look at the consequences of sexual sin in our culture. I want to flip that around, and say, imagine a world where people obey this. Imagine a world where people will obey the sexual ethic of Christianity, of the gospel, of Scripture.Imagine a world where people understood the power of sexuality. Imagine a world of people would fight lust, and not have sex unless it's in a committed relationship of a husband and a wife. The greatest pandemic in the world today is not COVID. The greatest pandemic is fatherlessness where men do not submit to God, do whatever they want, and now everyone bears the consequences of that. You know this cliche, when a man has a daughter, and he's like, "Oh, now I understand. Now I understand that I've been objectifying women my whole life. Now I'm going to protect my daughter. And I will protect my daughters. I got four of them. If anyone ever tries to objectify my daughters, I've got guns my left, and my right. And I have a permit to carry those. I will absolutely obliterate everyone in Jesus name."No, but imagine viewing every single person, the way God intended you to view each other, as image bearers of God, not just an object of gratification. And that's what Satan comes in and he perverts our eyes where now we view people as objects instead of image bearers of God. The other objection is to the sexual ethic and lust is, if I don't express myself sexually, then I'm not being true to myself, and understand that if self is all there is, that's a fair objection, but self is not all there is. There is a God and you are not central, he is. And if there is a God and his Word is true, then being true to yourself is actually a terrible idea because what does it mean to be true to yourself, to act on every single impulse from the inside that's false.Jeremiah 17:9, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately seek who can understand it." Their sin inside, and we can't act upon single inclination that we have. Genesis 6:5. This is the text right before the flood. God says this, "The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of the heart was only evil continually." Intention of the thoughts is an imagination of the thoughts. That sin starts in the heart, and it captivates the imagination. And if it's not dealt with here, it leads to all kinds of brokenness.The other objection I hear from young people when it comes to lust and sexuality is, "I just need to get this out of my system. While I'm young, I need to get this out of my system." That's false, that's like pouring gasoline on fire. You're just jacking up your system, and that you're creating memories that can never be removed and heartache that you're going to deal with for years to come. The other objection is, "I'm not harming anyone." Well, that's false, there is a God. And when you break his commandments, you're not just harming yourself, you're harming others, and you're breaking the heart of God.Lust adulterates you, it adulterates the people around us. So that's what's the big deal because God says it's a big deal. So second, lust is never satisfied just physically. Let's define our terms. What is lust? It's the Greek word, (speaking in foreign language). It's used 62 times in the New Testament, only twice it's used for sex. What does it mean? It means not just desire, but inordinate desire. It's desire out of control. It's when you take a physical thing and try to get from it, transcendence or spiritual satisfaction. You take a good thing, and you try to get from it only what you can get from God.So in this sense lust is more than just in the context of sexuality. If sex is your ultimate desire, you'll never have sex enough. If money is the ultimate desire or fame, or acceptance, or things, or attention, or food, or cars, or drink, or success, security, beauty, you will never have enough if this is the ultimate thing. And how do you know you're making something the ultimate thing? It's when you look at the commandments of God, and say. "No, getting this is more important than obedience to God."Now it becomes an idol, and it begins to control us. The more you try to satisfy lust, the more this desire grows. And if you try to quench lust with sex only, it'll just continue being unsatisfied, and grow. And this is why there's rehab centers for sexual addiction. And you go to these rehab centers, and ask people, how did this start? You don't wake up addicted to illicit sex. It starts little, by little, by little, and the fire keeps growing, and growing, and growing and all.The other thing I want to point out is, on the one hand our culture says, "Sex is no big deal, have a good time." On the other hand, we know that the consequences are grave. We know that there's shame and a regret. We know that people do things that should not be done. We know this. We know when people get caught on Zoom for doing things that they should not be doing. Our culture condemns that. Why do we do that? Because we understand it's written on our heart that this is wrong. There's a lot wrong with it.Lust is a black hole that's never filled with just sex, or things. And this is why we need the gospel of Jesus Christ. What we're desperately longing for isn't just a physical experience. We're longing for intimacy, we're longing for a true love, we're longing to be filled deep inside, and only God can do that. That's why the gospel of Jesus Christ is so powerful. When you look at Jesus Christ who never committed a sin with his eye, or his hand, and never lusted in his heart. And then he goes to the cross, and on the cross, he dies for our sin.He bears the penalty as if he had lusted. As if he had committed adultery, and he's dying on the cross. And he says, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" What's he talking about? He's going through hell. He's experiencing God forsakingness. And which is hell, why does he do that if he was perfect, he's not dying for his sin. He's dying for our sin, and when you realize that this is how much you're loved, that despite all of your sin, despite lust, despite everything, you are still loved, and God died on the cross for your sins, you accept forgiveness. Now you have access to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit fills us, and now we have the power to overcome the sin. And now we have the power to take every single one of our imaginations and take them captive.Okay, real quick imagination audit. We're going to do a little imagination audit. How's your imagination? How are you doing with... And am looking at less from the perspective of imagination to show you that it's a lot wider. The scope is a lot wider than just looking at porn. Porn's included, but it's a lot wider. It's when we fantasize realities, and create these realities that are forbidden by God.So imagination audit, what are you feeding your imagination on a daily basis? And are those things leading to satisfaction of the soul, or are they creating a dissatisfaction, and a fire that's pulling you away from God? What are you looking at? What are you listening to? What are you reading? And the visual input is really important. Jesus connects lust here, it starts with the heart. And then he says that it leads to adultery in the heart. Lust in the heart, adultery in the heart. And then you look.The looking is a third part. What he is connecting is less than the imagination with images. And there is this deep connection. So as Christian, we need to be very careful at what are you looking at? What do you spend your time looking at in TV shows? This is movies. This is social media accounts, and content. What are you feeding? And I will tell you, the smarter you are, the more careful you got to be with that stuff. The better memory you have, the more you gotta be careful with that. So what are you listening to in terms of podcasts, in terms of music, how much of pop culture and pop music is built around inflaming people's lust?And then it goes deeper than that. It goes deeper than the stuff we consume on a daily basis. What about memories? What memories, dreams, or mental pictures have been particularly vivid in your mind that you keep going back to, and you know you shouldn't be. How have they been impacting you? How did they make you feel? And which of these mental pictures have been encouraging, and life-giving, and how do these mental pictures stack up against God's Word?When you're daydreaming about the future, are you daydreaming in a way where your God is in those daydreams? God is in those fantasies. Is God in those realities? Or are you doing this in order to escape God, escape obedience, escape God's Word. And it has to do with people, not just realities. It has to be dreaming about doing things with other people. Do you find yourself daydreaming about a person, or interactions you wish to have with that person that you shouldn't? Do you reach out with hopes of getting specific response? Would you be embarrassed if that person knew about your fantasies, or imaginations about them? Would you be embarrassed if the people closest to you knew the things that you were imagining?Are you building up expectations about how things are going to turn out? Are you spending a lot of time analyzing past interactions, and to the point where it's idolatrous. And the big idea here is that once you become a Christian, you come to the cross of Christ, you repent of sin, you got to make it a practice of putting off old imaginations, and putting on the new. We need to practice fighting back against evil imaginations. And just real quick, the easiest way to do that is the very second you have a fantasy, or imagination that you know you shouldn't, an image pops up, you need to repent of that, and ask for the Lord's forgiveness, and ask for the Lord to purify the heart.And Scripture says that those who are pure in heart, they see God. How do we see God? With our minds eye, with our imagination. Third point is, how do we do this practically fighting lust with faith? When you believe in Jesus Christ, you believe in way that captivates your whole being, that's true faith. It's not cerebral in the mind. We are called to believe with all of our being. And when we come to the Lord, we repent of all of our sin. The Lord justifies us and the Lord justifies us and says, "You're acquitted and you're not guilty, you are forgiven of all sin." And if you are a true Christian, you have a desire to fight sin.So justifying faith is lust fighting faith, where you want God above all else. And this is how the gospel redeems our imagination. Romans 6:14, "For sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law, but under grace." So when you come to God, you realize that he loves you so much, that he gave his son. He fills your heart with a great love. Once you experience the Holy Spirit, once you experience the cleansing power of the blood of Christ, once you experience all of that, you want to do everything you can to stay as close to him as possible.This why lust is so dangerous because it pulls us away from God. But once you've experienced that, he's re-calibrated the taste buds of your soul, and you want to do everything you can to be as close to him as possible. It's like when you know real food, when you know delicious food and you know exactly where I'm going with this, when you have a steak, a delicious ribeye with asparagus, if you'd like. When you have like this is real food you have that, it's not that easy to go back to junk. Yesterday we took our girl, Tanya, took our girls to just walk around Beacon Hill, and we walk them by Upper Crust. And my daughter Milan, my youngest one, she stops and she goes.She's got my nose, which I'm really sorry about. And the flaps go and it's just so cute. And then we're like, "No, we're not having pizza. We're going to be good." My wife made Borscht at home, because that's what we do she's Ukrainian. So my daughter's like, "Oh, no." So then we keep walking, and we go to the Boston Common, and then we're walking by the McDonald's. And then my third daughter stops, and she goes, and I knew at that moment we're going to McDonald's.And when you go to McDonald's, you know what you're doing. You know like you are sinning, you are breaking all kinds of commandments. And as you eat, it is so good. Then you're like, "Ah, yeah." And then you know you're going to hate yourself as you doing it. You're going to hate yourself five minutes later. And then five minutes later goes by, and you're like, "I just consume like 4,000 calories. I still feel a little hungry, and I hate myself." That, that right there.So something like that happens on the spiritual level. When you taste God, taste, and see that he is good. That's love for God, that fills your heart, and that gives you power to fight lust. You know where this is going to lead, plus it's going to pull you away from God. You know it's not going to satisfy. So your heart is filled with love for God. And that gives you power to fight lust, and not love that lust. That's why Jesus in verse 28, he emphasis on the heart. "But I say that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart." Then progression is heart then adultery. Then the look, then the action.You're loving something more than God. So how do you fight that? You fight that desire with a greater desire, you fight that fire with a greater fire. You fight the lust with the love. One of my favorite quotes on this topic is, Thomas Chalmers, the 1840s, and the famous sermon called the Expulsive Power of a New Affection. He says, "The only way to break the hold of a beautiful object on the soul is to show an object even more beautiful."So true change for lust doesn't come from the outside. That's not where it starts. It doesn't start with self-discipline. It starts from the inside, repentance, and faith and God fills your heart with love, and then on the outside. So, it's a clean heart that leads to clean eyes, and clean hands. The other thing that you got to believe God's Word, you got to believe that his Word is true about the importance of fighting it.The other thing you have to believe is that you can be free. I mean, so many Christians, when I counsel them on this topic, they're like, "It's impossible to be free of lust. It's possible to have victory over the sin." And that right there, that faithlessness always leads to defeat. Do you even believe that you can be victorious over this lust? Do you have this vision for your life? In the imagination, can you right now imagine being free of lust today? Let's string the wings together. Can you imagine having freedom from lust tomorrow? Do you have that? Can you imagine that? And as you imagine that, ask for the Lord's help, and fight the good fight, and be free of lust tomorrow. Can you imagine being free for a week?Can you imagine being free for 21 days? And that's what they say. It takes 21 days to break any addiction in 30 days, whatever it is. Can you imagine this new reality for yourself? Do we do it perfectly? Of course not. But it's got to be like we look at the charts of the stock market, stocks always keep going up. You go up, up, up, up, down, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, and you keep going. A year goes by five years, ten. It just keeps going up. That's what growth, and righteousness must look like for every true Christian.One of my favorite illustrations of this topic is Augustine of Hippo, struggled with one of the greatest minds that ever existed, struggled with lust as a young man. And then one time after his conversion walks by, he's walking through town, walks by a former sexual partner, and he doesn't acknowledge her. And then she turns, and calls out, "Augustine it is I." And he turns and responds. "Yes, I know, but it is no longer I. The transformation at the core, that changes your identity. Once you're baptized into the faith, by the Holy Spirit, and baptized with water, there is a baptism of the imagination that needs to happen.Scripture says, "Be transformed by the renewal of your mind." And Augustine writes about his conversion so poetically, he says this, "Late have I loved you, O Beauty..." He's talking about God. "so ancient, and so new, late have I loved you! You were within me and I was outside and I sought you outside and in my loneliness fell upon those things that you have made. But you called to me, and cried to me and broke my deafness. And you sent forth your beams and shone upon me and chased away my blindness, you breathe your fragrance upon me, and I drew in my breath and now I pant for you. I tasted you. And now I hunger, and thirst for you."Like that true relationship with God. That true spiritual connection with God through prayer, through meditation, upon Scripture, through silence, through solitude, through fasting, that's where the victory begins. Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." So that's where you start love for God. I believe in you, I love you. He fills your heart with that love. And you want to honor him and delight him as you delight in him. But you can't, that's not just where it stops.There are things you got to do in terms of mortifying the flesh. Love for God, and mortification of flesh are the one-two combination of knocking out lust in your life. And the mortification of the flesh means, you have to take physical actions. As Jesus says, like it was a hyperbolic, "Pluck out your eye and cut off your..."But you have to take radical actions where you know that the things are causing you to sin, and stoking up lust in your life, igniting that. You need to cut that out of your life. And you see the one-two combination, Colossians 3:1-5, verse five, "Put to death therefore, what is earthly in you." But it starts with filling your imagination with God, Colossians 3:1, "If then you've been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds."And this is what he's saying, imagine, "Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory." That's the imagination. That's your heart filled with, you're in trance with God, and then "Put to death therefore." So you will stop there. "Therefore." Based on all of that, "put to death therefore, what is earthly in you, sexual morality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry." Put it to death.He's not saying incrementally choke the life out of it. He's using this language of crucify the sin in your life. Galatians 5:16, "But I say walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh." To feed the Spirit weakens the flesh. The other really just practical point is make no provision for the flesh. Make no provision. Don't put yourself in places that stoke the flesh, and lust and put yourself in places that draw you near to God, and give you a desire for purity. This is Romans 13:13-14.And by the way, I've said it before, oh 2020, 2021, our present day. This is the hardest time to ever be sexually pure, and fighting lust and et cetera, et cetera. I don't think that's true in the Roman Empire, Saint Paul is writing things like this, "Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness." It's not talking about 2020, he's talking about the year like '70. So this has always been an issue, "Not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual morality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires."So simply he's saying, don't put yourself in a place where you will be tempted, simply stay away. The father in Proverbs 5 tells the son to not go near the door of temptress, because she can't tempt you, if you can't see her. She can't tempt you if you're not in a place where you can be tempted. You know yourself, and you know the situations that cause you to lust, stay away from those situations, and pursue righteousness. Job says in 31:1, he says, "I've made a covenant." Meaning I made a decision. Ironclad decision. "I made a covenant with my eyes. How could I gaze at a Virgin?" Another translation says, "I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a girl." And later in the same chapter, Job admits that God would judge him if he had given in to the temptation, Job 31:7-9."If my step has turned aside from the way, and my heart has gone after my eyes." So sometimes your eyes go after your heart, and sometimes your heart goes after your eyes "If any spot has stuck to my hands then let me sow, and another eat and let what grows for me be rooted out. If my heart has been enticed toward a woman and I have lain in wait at my neighbor's door." So he's saying the sexual sin has to be cut out, stamped out before the temptation can take a foothold in the mind.The other way that Scripture talks about dealing with lust is this language of putting it to sleep, and awakening it. Meaning we have control over this, Song of Solomon. "I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases." That you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases. So there things that we do with our imagination that awakens things that should not be awakened. Speaking of imagination, Satan attacks our imagination by showing us the worm of whatever the action is. And the way that we can fight that is by imagining the consequences. So Satan definitely wraps the stain of sin, with a tasty worm. The wiser prudent Christian can see through the worm. And this takes a little practice. You can see through the worm to see the hook where you know...Think about the consequences, think about how this is going to hurt you. Think about how this is going to potentially become a new rhythm. Think about how it might impact the people in your life. Either people who are close around you now, or people who will be in your life in the future. James 1:13-15, "Let no one say when he's tempted, 'I'm being tempted by God,' for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it's conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown, brings forth death."The emphasis there of responsibility is not on someone else. O someone else caused me to sin, or someone else tempted me. No, it's from the heart. Therefore, we bear responsibility, and when God tells us to not sin, and put to death, he's telling us we have power to do it by the power of the Spirit. The famous illustration in Holy Scripture of this is King David. King David doesn't go to war with... When he was supposed to go to war, he's on his roof of his palace. And he sees Bathsheba bathing. And the issue there wasn't that he saw that. Scripture says that he gazed on her. "She was beautiful to behold." He saw and he continued to see, and that led to all kinds of brokenness.So, the question isn't like, "Are we going to see content that's going to create lust in us?" The question is, are you going to gaze? Or are you going to fight it? We have control of our eyes. We have control of our ears, what we hear, what are you going to focus on? And finally here in this just practically, Christians are good at repenting of sin. We run to Jesus after we sin. We also got to learn to run to Jesus before we sin.When you're tempted, as soon as you're tempted run to God, and ask for forgiveness, and ask for cleansing of the Spirit, and the power of the Spirit. Finally, marriage and divorce. The reason why Jesus talks about lust and adultery in this text, and then he connects to the marriage is because it's all intertwined. That's important to note. And then Matthew 5:31-32, "It was also said, 'Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.' But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual morality, makes her commit adultery. Whoever marries a divorced woman, commits adultery."What's Jesus talking about? He said that you have heard it that it was said, he's not talking about Scripture, which is what he would have said. "You have read what is written." And he's talking about the interpretation of the rabbis, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the lacks interpretation of the law when it comes to faithfulness, and loyalty in marriage. According to the rabbis, a man could divorce his wife for basically anything. If you look at the Mishnah, if you liked another woman better, if his wife spoiled the dinner or if she was barren, and if he consider her lazy, if he didn't like her looks, basically at any point, he just divorced her if he choose to. Now, that was the interpretation of the rabbis.And what happened was... And basically that's how marriage, and divorce works in our day. We fell out of love, and that's it. And the rabbis took the biblical understanding of marriage and flipped it on its head. The Bible understanding of marriage is a covenant. It is a covenant between one man and one woman for life. And they turned into a contract and in a contract, here's your terms, you're going to meet your terms. Here's my terms, if you don't meet your side of the bargain, where out, there's no more contract. And within covenant, you do what God does with us. God made a new covenant with us, and he says, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." And that's the intention of marriage to be a picture of God's love for us.And this is exactly what the rabbis did. They flipped it into a contract. Whenever I officiate a wedding, I say the same thing every time, "Dearly beloved we're gathered here today in the sight of God on this face of this company, et cetera, et cetera." And then I say, "What we are witnessing here today is a miracle. We're gathered to witness a miracle. And the miracle isn't a confession of past love, and it's not a profession of current love. It's a promise of future love, no matter what, until death do us part." That's the miracle of marriage and that's God's intention for marriage.And the rabbis came in and they realized that that's impossible. God's standard of marriage is impossible. So we need to lessen the law. And the clarification of this text happens in Matthew 19:3-9. "The Pharisees came to him and tested him by asking, 'Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?' And he answered, 'Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning, made them male and female and said, 'Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife. And the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.'And they said to him, 'Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce to send her away?' And he said, 'Because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning, it was not so, and I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual morality and marries another commits adultery.'" So it was the rabbis looked at the law and like to become one for life? Ah, we can't do that. They lessen the law, and Jesus comes in and says, "No, this is the standard. Divorce isn't allowed." And the reason why people divorced because of hardness of heart, and this is as real as it gets. And if you're married, you know exactly this hardness that comes. You got to deal with it.And the way that we deal with it is through the gospel. You audit your heart. Is there bitterness or hardness of heart toward my spouse? Go to the gospel, receive grace and mercy and that softens the heart. In terms of divorce, the reasons for divorce that are permissible in Scriptures, death, then you're separated from the spouse and so you can remarry. Adultery or sexual morality and desertion, that's 1 Corinthians 7. So in these cases, divorce from a biblical perspective is permitted though it's not desired. Reconciliation is to be saw instead, but it's permitted.Why such a high standard of marriage? Because it's sacred from God's perspective. If anyone remarries for any reason, other than sexual morality or desertion or death, that sin, however, our God is gracious and forgiving and whoever repents and confess his sin is forgiven immediately. So if someone remarries, or divorces and remarries for any other reason other than these three, the new marriage is initially adulterous, but not perpetually if there is repentance and if people seek repentance. And then if someone does remarry and seeks repentance, and you're like, "Oh, I shouldn't have remarried. I'm going to go back to my former spouse." No, once you're married, that's God's will for you.Finally, I'll close with this. In terms of imagination, in terms of what we're imagining about our past and present and future, one of my favorite texts is Philippians 4:8-9. It says this, "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things and the God of peace will be with you."Don't just think about and imagine whatever, instead think and imagine about whatever's good and true and beautiful so that we can live lives that are good and true and beautiful and image forth the glory of God, amen. Let's pray, Lord, we thank you for this Word that you've given us. Lord and Jesus, we thank you for you are King and that you are King over every single square inch of our lives that you call us to faithfulness and fidelity in the same way that you are faithful to us. Lord, we pause right now to ask for forgiveness, if there's any hardness of heart in us, and if there's any place in our life where our imaginations have been captivated by things that they should not be captivated by, and we pray, forgive us and cleanse us. And by the power of the Spirit, ignite our imagination to think about you and love you and think about how we can do good work and how we can further the common good for your glory and our joy. And we pray this in Christ's Holy name, amen.

They Have Their Reward Reader: Miriam Montgomery Date: 19th July 2020 Time: ------------------- The Lord Jesus really disliked hypocrites, very especially those who tried hard to give people the impression they were very good and holy people. Obviously Jesus had often seen people like that. Indeed that was what such people wanted — they were keen for people to see how they prayed, how they fasted and how they gave alms to the poor — they were very public 'holy' people. But Jesus called them hypocrites. And, said Jesus, if it is public praise they are looking for they will receive it - "they have received their reward", but they will receive no reward from God. Of course the day of religious hypocrites is not past. We too can fall into the trap of being outwardly 'holy' people, putting on a good show in church or among Christian people while our hearts may be cold and indifferent towards God. But that cuts no ice with God. When Jesus says such people have their reward he is using quite serious language. It means the reward is full payment but for what? - an outward show which is of no value to God. God is interested in the serious business of what is going on in our hearts, the secret life of the true believer in Jesus. ## Prayer Dear Lord Jesus, forgive me when I try to appear before people as a much deeper Christian than I am in secret before you. Amen.

Show Notes Are Dead. Long Live the Full Transcript. What do you think?----------Jeff Medders: All right, everybody. We'll come back to a another episode of home row. And I'm your host, Jeff Medders. And on today's show, I have author Wesley Hill on the program. He's written all kinds of books and it's just a joy to have him on, especially we're going to talk about, talk about his new book and the Christian essential series, the Lord's prayer, a guide to praying to our Father.[00:00:36] So Wes, how are you, man?[00:00:38] Wesley Hill: I'm doing really well. Thanks for having me on the show.[00:00:40] Jeff Medders: Awesome man. Now, what part of the United States are you in? Are you in the United States? I know you got your PhD from outside of the United States, but I think you're in Pennsylvania, right?[00:00:47] Wesley Hill: That's right. Yup. I'm just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.[00:00:50] Jeff Medders: Okay. I've been to Pennsylvania. Well, I guess a couple. No, at once, for sure.[00:00:55]I went to red lion, Pennsylvania.[00:00:58] Wesley Hill: I'm not even sure where that is, to be honest. I don't, I don't know my own state [00:01:02] Jeff Medders: It's, it's up in the Amish country. And I remember going there with, some friends of ours that were missionaries in Thailand and they were in town. And we went to go visit them and we went to the Amish market and all this stuff, and I bought kangaroo jerky.[00:01:19]I dunno where the Amish are getting kangaroo jerky from, but it's there and fun fact that if you go to the Amish markets and stuff, you can't use your debit card or credit card[00:01:32]Wesley Hill: Hmm.[00:01:32] Jeff Medders: cash only.[00:01:34] Wesley Hill: I would believe that.[00:01:36] Jeff Medders: That's something you want to, you want to prepare for that ahead of time, which I did not.[00:01:38] Wesley Hill: That's right. [00:01:39] Jeff Medders: not, but thankfully they had an ATM nearby,[00:01:41] Wesley Hill: So probably really beautiful country to drive through too, I imagine.[00:01:45] Jeff Medders: Yeah. Very cool. the horse buggies and all that good stuff. And then there was a few guys on rollerblades, which was interesting.[00:01:51] Wesley Hill: Oh, right. Okay.[00:01:53] Jeff Medders: so we had to talk about the, you know, it's not a motor, it was a wheels. They were okay with that and OS different stuff. It was interesting.[00:01:59] Wesley Hill: Interesting. We'll come to Pittsburgh sometime, but we're, we're pretty fun city too.[00:02:03] Jeff Medders: Okay. I'll put it on the list now before this turns into an Amish podcast. so Wes, why don't you tell the listeners out there who you are, what you do for work and all that good stuff.[00:02:14] Wesley Hill: Yeah. Great. well the reason you're having me on your podcast is I am a writer. I've just written a new little book, for Lexam Press on the Lord's prayer. And, I really enjoy writing. I've written a handful of books, as you mentioned. so I view that as part of my calling, part of what I do. but for my day job, so to speak, I am a seminary professor.[00:02:34]I teach at a small, Anglican Episcopal seminary here in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, which is just Northwest of Pittsburgh. And, I've been here, I'm in my eighth year now. and I teach in the Bible department. I teach New Testament.  I'm also ordained, I do some preaching and, lead Sunday school at my church. so I'm, I'm pretty involved in different kinds of ministries, but that's, that's me in a nutshell.[00:02:57] Jeff Medders: Yeah. So when, when you're not lecturing, Oh, let me ask just for fun for me. What, what textbook are you using for your new Testament survey?[00:03:04] Wesley Hill: You know, I'm test driving the new N.T. Wright? One, that he coauthored with Mike Bird. That's come out from Zondervan. It's huge. It's huge. When it arrived on my doorstep, I was like, Oh my gosh, this is like a brick. so we'll see it. It looks really beautifully illustrated. And, I assigned.[00:03:21] Emails [00:03:21] Jeff Medders: from the Edge is a cool feature.[00:03:23] Wesley Hill: Yeah, exactly.[00:03:24] Exactly. So, you know, right. It's so engaging in the way he writes. I imagine it will be something that will grip a lot of the students, but, yeah, I'll let you know how it goes.[00:03:32] Jeff Medders: I bet. Are you having them read the whole thing?[00:03:34] Wesley Hill: They're not going to read every single page, but they're going to, they're going to read all the chapters devoted to different new Testament books for sure.[00:03:42] Jeff Medders: that's right. So I'm planning this year, I'm just, I want to read all of the condensed version of Wright's works and then, you know, maybe a couple of the New Testament, you know, summary parts, but then save those for when I'm about to preach through a book or goes or go study a book.[00:03:57] Wesley Hill: Yeah. Yeah. Great. I mean, I think that that series of books, you know, the, for everyone, commentaries are such a gift to the church. I've heard of so many Bible study groups using those and finding them really beneficials. Yeah. Plenty. A lot of good things to dig into there.[00:04:11] Jeff Medders: Okay, cool. So, so when you're not lecturing and you're not writing and you're not, you're not preaching, what, what are you doing for fun?[00:04:18] Wesley Hill: You know? So I have a unique living situation. I live about five blocks from the seminary campus where I work, a Trinity school for ministry. It's called . And, I share a home with a married couple and their two children and a lot of evenings you'll find me playing with their kids. They're, they're my godchildren.[00:04:36] I've gotten to really enjoy kind of a domestic life. I love cooking now. And, I've, I've loved cooking for a long time. It's been a way to kind of unwind after a day at the writing desk or something like that. but it's, it's a joy to be doing it, you know, with people I love.[00:04:49]now and, and sharing daily life with them. So yeah, lots of, their, their kids are now, three years old and six months old. So a lot of, playing, playing house and playing with dolls with the, with a three year old girl with Felicity, and, changes in diapers with Solomon. So, yeah, it's, it's been really life giving for me.[00:05:07] I'm single, and it's just been great to kind of be integrated into the life of a family in that way.[00:05:12] Jeff Medders: Yeah. That's very cool. Very cool. So how did you know that you wanted to become a writer or that you were a writer? Did I come to you in a, in a vision, like maybe a, a sheet. It's not full of lizards and reptiles, but of keyboards and, you know, journals --take up and take up and, right.[00:05:32] Wesley Hill: Yeah, well, you know, I, I mean, I, I'm not sure I ever like set out to become a writer, quote, unquote. But I, I do vividly remember, you know, at age, gosh, I was probably 11 or 12 when I just started writing short stories on my family's computer. and I actually wrote a novel, a detective novel, mystery, novel, whatever.[00:05:51] Over 13. I was so proud of it. I, I still do. I'm, I'm scared to go back and read it, although it'd probably be funny. Yeah. so I, you know, and I remember, I remember submitting a short story to, did you ever read clubhouse magazine put out by focusing on the family? I submitted a short story to them one time.[00:06:09] And so I think I always kind of had the itch to like, you know, it's a strange thing. I think so many of us, right? But fewer of us have that urge to like, share it with other people and put it out there. And I think I have always kind of had that urge to, to share my writing with others. So, so maybe there's a part of me that has always wanted to be, you know, a writer as, as a, as a job.[00:06:29]But yeah, so it, it, it sort of emerged out of, I developed a real love for theology and, and just good writing, when I was in high school and then I went to college at Wheaton. And, so I, I kind of developed a sense of calling that I'm, I want to be a teacher in the church. I want to be a theologian.[00:06:47] And I think the writing piece of it kind of grew out of that for me. But I've always just enjoyed, I was actually talking to a writer friend yesterday about how it seems like a lot of Christians care about getting good ideas out there, but maybe fewer Christians kind of enjoy crafting sentences and playing with words.[00:07:06] And I've always enjoyed both aspects. You know, the, the big ideas of theology, but also just trying to find exactly the right way to express them in a way that's going to be engaging and interesting. And, So, yeah, I think that's kind of how it started for me[00:07:20] Jeff Medders: What's some of  your writing process like, cause obviously like a lot of writers that, you know, were not full time, you know, none of us, none of the people I've interviewed I think, or none of my listeners, you know, weren't evangelical writing.[00:07:33] And so this is not the kind of writing where you can live off of this stuff. the royalty checks are maybe, you know, we can go out to eat. Like, let's, I'll treat some guys to, you know, some coffee this weekend or wouldn't, you know, sometimes they're very, very puny. Sometimes they're, sometimes they're nice, sometimes they're not.[00:07:49] But you know, you've, you're teaching, you're, you're pastoring. you've got your church community. I mean, even just got all kinds of stuff. So with all of that, in the, in the balance, how do you find time to, to write.[00:08:03] Wesley Hill: Yeah. You know, I started, I started my academic career thinking that, Oh my gosh, I've now landed like one of those coveted jobs where I get a couple of months off in the summer and that's going to be like my writing time. I'll, I'll get so much done. And I also get, you know, a big chunk of time off around Christmas.[00:08:20] That'll be another. Big productive time. And I've realized for me, like that's if I pin all of my writing hopes on those kind of big blocks of time. It just never, it never happens. You know, something will come in to kind of crowd it out. So it has to be more of a weekly or even daily discipline. and I, I sort of learned that.[00:08:38]you know, early on, I remember Tim Larson who teaches church history at Wheaton, telling me, I asked him, you know, how have you managed to write so much while being a full time teacher at Wheaton? And he said, the key for him is just not, not counting on the holidays, not counting on the sabbaticals, but just kind of chipping away at it in small chunks week by week.[00:08:57] And I think that's been true for me, you know, so I, I, I'll get up early and right before I have to go to class or I'll come home and, and you know, so, so typically at my seminary, we teach in three hour blocks. So like this morning I was in the classroom from nine to noon, and you know, now I'm here at my home office talking to you, this afternoon, but, but you know, I have a couple of hours after this and I can, I can get some writing done there.[00:09:20] So I think it's. I think it's just finding those blocks of time, and, and then guarding them. So I'll actually put into my calendar, you know, this two hour chunk this afternoon is blocked off as writing. And then when I, when I see that, I know I can't schedule something else during that time. And, yeah, just kind of, kind of safeguarding those, those moments that you're able to block off, during the week.[00:09:41] But, but it is, you know, I think, I think there's no way around the fact that it is a sacrifice. I mean, you're giving up. Time to do this, you know, if you care about it, so you're waking up earlier than maybe you would be comfortable for you normally to, to, to try to write something. so yeah, I don't, I don't know that that's anything profound, but that's, that's kinda how it's worked for me.[00:10:01] Jeff Medders: No, that's great. I think just that little bit of advice just to even put in your own calendar, like writing, and to actually do it and now take appointments, not, you know, not fill it up and to do it. That's[00:10:10] Wesley Hill: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. To to, to sort of give yourself permission to say, this is worth doing. Therefore, I'm going to like say no to, to other appointments that might arise in order to safeguard that time. I think that's important. Okay.[00:10:23] Jeff Medders: Do you always write at your home office there, your home study or do you like you go to a coffee shop or seminary library or what's, what's[00:10:30] Wesley Hill: You know, I, I find that I, I find that I really can't go to the seminary because there's just so many interruptions, like, you know, I mean, colleagues and students will come by and I, and I love that, you know, but I basically ended up just talking the whole time rather than getting work done. So I will. I will go to Starbucks and write.[00:10:46]a lot of my best writing that I think just happens here at my home office. You know, I've got a, I've got a little space on the third floor of our house where I have all my books and you know, a desk where I can kind of spread out. So that seems to work best for me.[00:10:58] Jeff Medders: What's your, what's your go to order at Starbucks?[00:11:02] Wesley Hill: You know, I'm very boring. It's just a tall, dark roast. [00:11:05] Jeff Medders: pretty boring.[00:11:08] Wesley Hill: But the price is right compared to their other[00:11:10] Jeff Medders: yeah. No kidding. If you want to, if you want to get adventurous, and you haven't tried it yet, the nitro cold brew is [00:11:19] Wesley Hill: amazing.[00:11:19] I do. Yeah. So in the summers I do like the cold brews, and you're right. The nitro is pretty great.[00:11:24] Jeff Medders: I guess it is cold up there right now. Here I'm in. I'm in Houston, and it's actually cold right now. And so I'll tell you what it is for us. It's 53 degrees right now,[00:11:33] Wesley Hill: Oh, wow.[00:11:34] Jeff Medders: is, this is like freezing, you know,[00:11:37] Wesley Hill: Yeah, yeah, exactly.[00:11:38] Jeff Medders: big, I took my son to school this morning.[00:11:39] Everybody's in big puffy jackets and, and hoodies and all this stuff. So this is blistering cold.[00:11:45] Wesley Hill: I grew up in Arkansas, so I get[00:11:47] Jeff Medders: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You got it. Yeah. So I love the nitro cold brew with the salted foam. Oh man, that's amazing. And I got Matt Smethurst at the gospel coalition. I think he's full on addicted to it now as well.[00:11:59] Wesley Hill: Oh, great. Great.[00:12:01] Jeff Medders: So, so when you're riding there at your home office, are you using music? are you, you know, I like to pop a vinyl record on if, you know, if I feel like I'm going to be in the, in the groove there, what are you doing?[00:12:10] Wesley Hill: Yes, sometimes. it has to be instrumental music for me. so I, I, I have been on a big Max Richter kick lately, listening to his sleep album, which is just a masterpiece, I think. so yeah, sometimes I'll have music on in the background. Other times I'll just be so much in the zone that I kind of just, I need no distractions at all, including instrumental music.[00:12:30] But yeah, maybe I'm unusual in that way. I'm not[00:12:33] Jeff Medders: No, I don't think so. I've heard from all kinds of, you know, people the way they do, like, yeah, I have no music.[00:12:39]or they use the, there's a website called the coffeeivity where it has like the background, the ambient noise of like a coffee shop.[00:12:47] Wesley Hill: Yeah, yeah.[00:12:48]Jeff Medders: Don Whitney was actually the one that showed me, showed me that I think, there's people using, yeah, I like jazz music. So I like to, I like to write to jazz. right now I have the, the hub of Hubbard over there on my, on my record player on my turntable.[00:13:01] Then I've got, usually Miles Davis, Thelonious monk. Some somethings are the stranger things soundtrack, like something's going to go up there.[00:13:08] Wesley Hill: Oh, yeah, yeah,[00:13:09] Jeff Medders: that'd be fun to listen to. Now. Now let's say you're going to sit down to write. cause now I, I know you, you write books, but I feel like I've seen you write articles at websites every now and then.[00:13:19] Am I mistaken?[00:13:21] Wesley Hill: No, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. I, I've, I've written for Christianity today and first things and the now sadly defunct books and culture, my favorite place to write for no, no more. But yeah, so I try to, I try to write it for some periodicals as well.[00:13:35] Jeff Medders: Okay, so let's, let's think about the periodical step before we get into book writing. And you're going to sit down to write an article for a magazine for a website. What is the, how does it begin for you? Do you, do you outline just on a piece of paper? Are you crafting in Evernote? What's the, are you writing in Microsoft word are like, what are you doing?[00:13:53] Wesley Hill: Yeah. You know? so it often begins with me, noticing a hook for an article. Like I'll, I'll, I'll see a news piece that triggers some line of thought and, and, you know, I carry around a mole skin notebook and I'll, I'll sometimes just jot down a quick. Outline for a piece, and then I'll, I'll come back and open up Microsoft word and, and, and just start writing.[00:14:17] You know, I'll have the outline in my head and sometimes it really changes, you know, as I go on, I kind of try to, follow what the piece seems to want. if that doesn't sound too esoteric, but just kind of kind of seeing what. How it goes from that point. And, you know, I think, I think I've had to learn, you know, so I got a PhD in, in academic biblical studies, and there's a certain kind of style that's expected for that genre, but it's a very different thing to write for a website or, or a periodical where you're, you're really, Trying to hold the reader's attention. you know, you can't count on the reader's attention in the way that maybe you can, if you've written a monograph that you know, someone who's researching this topic is going to want to read you, you actually have to earn, the reader's trust and convince them that this is, this is worth.[00:15:02] You know, worth their time. so yeah, for me, it often begins with, with a kind of hook, whether from, from pop culture or something. I'm reading something I've heard, in the news and, and I'll often try to kind of reflect on it theologically or bring some kind of, historical or biblical depth to it, in that sense.[00:15:22] But, but yeah, so I think it, and I, and I wouldn't claim to be an expert here, but, but it's a very different. Kind of thing to be writing for a popular audience versus an academic audience. And I'm, I'm still, I'm still trying to hone my craft in that regard.[00:15:36] Jeff Medders: Yeah. Yeah. I can't, I can't imagine the challenges, for all that. I, I mean, I, I can't a little a tad bit, cause[00:15:43] Wesley Hill: Hmm. Hmm.[00:15:44] Jeff Medders: written two books, solo, coauthored one, and then, Writing for a popular level, like my most recent book is humble Calvinism.[00:15:52] That came out with a good book company. And so, you know, writing with with some snap and crackle and pop and some wit and punches is a lot of fun. And then. I'm getting ready for PhD stuff. And so I had to do some, some work before that. And yeah, getting, trying to get more, cause I've never done heavy academic writing or having to, and some of the pre work for that that I've had to do is like, Oh my goodness, this[00:16:18] Wesley Hill: Yeah, yeah.[00:16:19] Jeff Medders: way different.[00:16:21] Wesley Hill: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, having said that, I suppose the flip side is, you know, you read a really well crafted piece of academic writing. it's a reminder that not all academic writing has to be cold and boring and clinical. You know, they're, they're writers. I'm thinking of people like Richard Hayes who write beautiful prose, in a, in a very academic way, or, or NT Wright would be another good example. You know, someone who, who, who writes really well in that mode, so, so, yeah.  I'm always . Just kind of trying to beat the drum for, you know, more of more of us who are trained professionally in the Guild of biblical studies or theology should care about good sentences.[00:16:55] And like you say, the, the, the snap and the, and the crackle and the whipped and those things.[00:16:59] Jeff Medders: Yeah, like Kevin Vanhoozer, he's gotta be one of my favorites.[00:17:02] Wesley Hill: Yeah. Yeah. Our Robert Jensen, the late Robert Jensen, just,[00:17:06] Jeff Medders: John Webster. I'm like, man, they're just a joy to read. and they just offer so much. And Michael Bird too. Michael Bird is hilarious. And so, yeah. Bird and Writght together. I mean, that's like peanut butter and jelly. This is great. Now. And writing your, your latest book, the Lord's prayer, a guide to praying to our father.[00:17:26] So. When this, when this project was you, you signed on, okay, we're going to, I'm going to do this book. Was there ever a moment of regret and, and, and this way. I may, I got to try to say something new and fresh on the Lord's prayer. Like, you know, there's tons and tons of books, like, so man, that, that challenge, to, to tackle the Lord's prayer is as a, as a daunting one for such a small, such a small section in the new Testament, you know, nestled there in the sermon on the Mount.[00:17:56]yeah. So, so tell us about, you know, kind of the process for writing this book and, Then I then I'll, I'll follow up, but just also kind of what your, what your, what your, what you're hoping that disciples of Christ learn as they read this book.[00:18:08] Wesley Hill: Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. Well, I guess maybe the first thing to say is I didn't set out to ride on the Lord's prayer. I didn't imagine I would ever do that. I mean, I've, I've certainly taught it and continued to teach it at the seminary where I, where I work. but I didn't never imagine writing a book on it.[00:18:22] Like you say, there's been so much that's been written. but Lexam Press, as you mentioned at the beginning of our conversation today, has a new series they've launched called Christian essentials. And, they're, they're short little books that are designed to be used in churches, you know, in Sunday school classes and kind of catechetical settings.[00:18:42]so the first one came out, a couple of years ago, I think now the Apostle's creed by the Osprey. The Australian and the alerts and Ben Myers. and, so I, I got an email from, from an editor there, and he said, Hey, would you be interested in contributing to this series? And we talked about what I might do and kind of settled on the Lord's prayer.[00:19:00]so it felt a little bit like, you know, in my, in my tradition, each Sunday we're, we're given the text to preach from, we don't, we don't choose them. You know, the lectionary chooses them for us. And it sort of felt a bit like that, you know, here I am being handed this text that I didn't necessarily imagine I would be writing on that.[00:19:15] And now, you know, do I have something to say about it? And, yeah, I mean, you ask about regret there. There was a moment early on in the process where I went to the library and, I was, I was kinda had my breath taken away by just how many individual volumes. Have already been written, all the words, prayer, you know, stretching back to the very earliest days of the church.[00:19:35] I mean, you know, we have, we have discourses on the Lord's prayer from origin and Augustan and, you know, it's just such a, it's such well-trodden ground. So, you know, I think, I think there was that, that initial kind of shock. And then I thought, you know, every generation needs to ponder this again. So it's, it's not a problem that there would be more, more reflection on the Lord's prayer.[00:19:57]you know, it's, it's one of those texts that's so foundational for the faith that w we will never not need more meditation on it. so, so yeah, that, that kinda took away some of the pressure and, you know, I was kind of. Praying about what, what, what direction do I need to go here? What angle do I have?[00:20:14] And, and, you know, I remembered, several years ago, George Hunsinger the, the reformed theologian at Princeton, published a little book on the beatitudes and he, he, in the preface, he says he was kind of in a similar place. He had been asked to give these lectures on the beatitudes and he didn't know kind of which way to go.[00:20:32] And then he said, you know, what would happen if I, if I approached them Christocentricly and said, you know. Each of these beatitudes is a, is a window into the character in the work of Jesus himself. And and so he does that. He just kind of goes through a beatitude after beatitude and says, how does this point to Christ?[00:20:48] And I thought, you know what, what, what if I approached the Lord's prayer that way? Obviously Jesus is giving us this prayer for us to pray, but. You know, before that or, or above that or beyond that at all of the, all of the clauses, all of the petitions point to him and tell us something about him. And he, he embodies the prayer.[00:21:06] I mean, he even even literally praise, praise portions of the prayer, you know, throughout his ministry. like in the garden of Gethsemane, he says, thy will be done, you know, which is straight out of the Lord's prayer. So he himself is embodying this prayer and, and once I kind of. Once I kind of realized that was going to be my theme, it became much easier to kind of get into the prayer from there.[00:21:25]Jeff Medders: Yeah, man, that's, yeah, that's so beautiful. It reminds me of when, you know, I had Jen Wilkin on the show and you know, she's written written books on the attributes of God, and asked her that is similar.[00:21:35] Like, Hey, you know, AWP, you got AEW tells you, I mean, you've got a holiness of God, RC Sproul, you know, all kinds. So like, why, again. yeah.  the next generation, [00:21:45] Wesley Hill: right.[00:21:45] Jeff Medders: this era of, of disciples who they're not going to go pick up Origen. They're not going to go pick up Augustine. I guess then are[00:21:51] Wesley Hill: Although they should.[00:21:52] Jeff Medders: they should.[00:21:52] Yeah. They'd be so blessed to it, but yeah, to be ends, maybe some people will be introduced to, to the Lord's[00:21:58] Wesley Hill: that's right. That's[00:21:59]Jeff Medders: through this[00:22:00] Wesley Hill: And that's. No, I should say that's the only thing that made me excited about this series is when, when Todd Haynes at Lexan, was pitching it to me, he said, you know, we, we want these books to be, people's introductions to some of the tradition of the church, you know, so he said, feel free to draw on the church fathers and the Protestant reformers, and, you know, the, the, the, the really great Christian writers of the past.[00:22:20] And I said, yeah, I mean, that's really exciting to think about a contemporary book being used. As a, as a gateway into some of these treasures of, of centuries past.[00:22:30] Jeff Medders: Yeah. I love it. I think it's great. Was there, were there any parts of the book that you found maybe one, one chapter to be more, more challenging than other others that you can remember?[00:22:42] Wesley Hill: You know, I found the, the, the petition lead us not into temptation or save us from the time of trial. You know, it gets, it gets translated in different ways. I found that really challenging. you know, partly because it's been in the headlines, it's actually been in the news because Pope Francis, you know, is supposedly advocating this, this change in the petition.[00:22:59] Because, you know, we don't want to imply that God is the one who leads us into temptation. And so I just, I, I struggled with how to, how to kind of address that in a way that wouldn't be too technical. but that would kind of lead people into the heart of it. And, and, and again, you know, Jesus himself, he, he says to his followers, you know, they're right before he's arrested in the garden of Gethsemane.[00:23:20] He says, pray that you will be spared from the time of trial. So he's, he's teaching them exactly how to pray this and what it means to pray this. And, and, so I, I, I wrestled with how to go about that, and I think I'm kind of happy with the result, but it was, it was a really challenging chapter to write.[00:23:38] Jeff Medders: I love, I love the Lord's prayer, obviously, for, for all kinds of reasons, but there's one element of it that I just have really come to appreciate, recently as I've been preaching through the gospel, according to Matthew[00:23:48]You know? And Jesus tells them to pray like this.[00:23:52] Wesley Hill: Hmm.[00:23:53] Jeff Medders: so what he gives them doesn't even take 30 seconds to say.[00:23:59] Wesley Hill: Yeah.[00:23:59] Jeff Medders: And I think sometimes, and we're know trying to follow Christ and everyone laments, you know, their their prayer "life".  Everyone wishes we had more robust and longer prayer times and longer seasons and prayer, which opposite.[00:24:14] We see awesome modeled by the Lord Jesus. But I just find a. A peculiar comfort that he says, pray like this, and he gives us a 32nd short[00:24:24] Wesley Hill: yeah, yeah,[00:24:25] Jeff Medders: to really just validate all those times where we just say, I don't even know what the brother, than just Lord help me, or, God just bless me today. I need direction. I need guidance. And we feel like, ah, the shortchanged prayers, like I'm so unspiritual, but Jesus gives us a good model here.[00:24:41] Wesley Hill: That's right. Well, and what a contrast to, you know, we, we have these examples in the gospels of the religious leaders of Jesus' day that he's disputing with, that seemed to love these very long theatrical kinds of prayer. And, and, you know, Jesus is offering something really simple as a contrast to that.[00:25:00] And like you say, there's something comforting in that.[00:25:02] Jeff Medders: Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Now, you've written, a lot, lots of theological works and, and, and magazines and articles, periodicals and, and all that kind of good stuff.[00:25:12] And you've also written on the Trinity, Paul and the Trinity. Was that your dissertation or was it just another academic venture?[00:25:19] Wesley Hill: Yeah, no, that, that book was a revised version of my doctoral dissertation, which I completed at Durham university in the UK, so yeah.[00:25:27] Jeff Medders: great. Now, so what are, so how come, let's, let's go Trinitarian. How come the, the Trinity isn't like an Apple, and are like an egg or like H 2 O I mean, I just don't understand. [00:25:40] Wesley Hill: Yeah, yeah. Gosh. I mean, you know, I, I'm not, I'm not going to say I would never use one of those analogies, but they're, they're so, they're so fraught with potential for misunderstanding. Exactly.[00:25:52] Jeff Medders: Yeah. I tell people at our church, you know, we didn't know theology class and stuff. I just said, the reason why we can't find and apt analogy for the Trinity is because there is literally nothing else like it. in the universe. and heaven on earth and above the earth and places invisible, and visible.[00:26:08] There's nothing else like the Trinity. So, so outside of the, just destined to crumble apple analogy and egg analogy and all that stuff. What are you would say some of the major, I guess short-sightedness of Trinitarianism, today and maybe you see it with students or, or maybe just the way we think about the Trinity, that you wish, pastors and writers, and church leaders, small group leaders, Bible, women's Bible study leaders,  maybe, you know, could grow and shore up in.[00:26:40] Wesley Hill: Yeah. Boy, that's a really good[00:26:42] Jeff Medders: Yeah. Not, not to be too broad or[00:26:45] Wesley Hill: Yeah. No, I think, so, so I'm, I'm, I'm currently reading through for the second time, a really beautiful book volume, one of systematic theology by Catherine Zonda rager, who's kind of working in the reformed, tradition, kind of, kind of working with Carl Bart and how he modified the tradition.[00:27:04] And. she's clearly, you know, Trinitarian in this volume, but she, she talks about, how she kind of gets worried sometimes that the way modern theologians treat the Trinity as if it's like the only Christian doctrine. Like everything is Trinity. And she's, she's kinda calling us back to recognize the, the fundamental.[00:27:25] Oneness and unity of God. You know, so we, we confess God existing eternally in three persons, but we, we confess one God, there aren't three gods. you know, we, we use this analogy of three persons in a dance or facing one another to try to, you know, get some PR. Just on the Trinity. But ultimately we're talking, like you say, about the transcendent reality of God, which even into all eternity, we will never plumb the depths of, you know, I, I love, I love Jonathan Edwards, vision of heaven that will never get to the end of exploring new, new beauties in God.[00:27:59] You know, we'll, we'll never comprehend God fully. so I think, I, I think I would, I would want to say to pastors and Bible study leaders who feel like. Wow. The tr, everybody's talking about the Trinity now. The Trinity is so important. I have to really know all the ins and outs of all the doctrinal controversies, and I have to, I have to always be speaking in like a, a communal idiom.[00:28:21] Like God is a community of persons. You know, I have to, I have to always be thinking that way. I think there are some dangers there. And you know, I think we need to remember that. we're, we're, we're using the language that God has revealed to us in his word of Father, Son, and Holy spirit. But that does not mean that we're talking about something that we would know of as a, as a community of, of three separate individuals.[00:28:43] You know, we're talking about one God. we're talking about the one God of Israel who's now been known to us, been revealed to us as, as Father, Son, and Spirit. And I think, I think the other thing I would say, honestly, when I teach the doctrine of the Trinity, you know, in, in, in, in church settings and Sunday school settings and things like that, I try to remind people that you may not know all the technical terminology that the logins use for it, but you are already a Trinitarian if you pray as a Christian, I mean to, to bring this back to the Lord's prayer. You know, if you pray the Lord's prayer, you are already participating in the, the mystery of the triune God. Because what you're doing is you're calling out to God the Father in the name of, God, the Son whose words you're using.[00:29:27] You know, he's the one who gave you the words of this prayer to pray, and you're being born along and carried along by the energy and power and prompting of the Holy spirit. so. It really, you know, the, the doctrine of the Trinity is an effort to say theologically what has to be true, if, if that lived experience of prayer is, is real and true.[00:29:48] So, so the doctrine in a sense is there to clarify, it's there to kind of safeguard and to ward off error. But actually the, the getting the doctrinal formulations, right, is not the main event. The main event is actually this. This, this relation we get to enjoy with God through, through price and the Holy spirit.[00:30:06] You know, this relation of intimacy and prayer. yeah. So I don't know if that's helpful,[00:30:10] Jeff Medders: Oh, that's good. Yeah. Amen.[00:30:12] Wesley Hill: that,[00:30:13] Jeff Medders: Amen. Amen. When, let's say maybe a student, I'm sure you read and you get to grade all kinds of papers and, and you've seen good papers, you've seen good essays, you've seen really bad ones. what, what are some things that you would tell to a student you would tell to a, a blossoming writer?[00:30:29]Hey, do these two to three things. and I think you're really grow as a writer.[00:30:34]Wesley Hill: Hmm. Yeah. So I think, I think the first thing I would say, and this, this comes straight out of my own autobiography. I mean, I, I, this is how I feel like I learned to write is, is find the best writers, you can and read them. just, just immerse yourself in, in good writing. and ask yourself, you know, what, what, what makes it tick?[00:30:55] I mean, I've, I've literally like grabbed, an Alan Jacobs essay some sometimes, or a James Wood essay, and said, man, the prose is so good. Let me actually just. Pay attention to this paragraph, like how did they structure it? Here's one long sentence with a couple of dependent clauses. Here's a shorter sentence.[00:31:09] You know, like, how did they do it? How did it work? So I think just, you know, reading a lot, is key. And, you know, I, I think none of us should be so arrogant to think that we have. Something to say, unless we're filling ourselves up with, with good, good writing, you know, good, good thinking. I think that good writing often begins with, with receptivity, you know, with us, with us, receiving, with us, taking in, before we have something to offer in writing.[00:31:36] So, yeah. And it, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't have to be, I think sometimes students feel intimidated. Oh, there's so much good writing in the world. Like, you know, where do I even start? But I would say just, just, you know, to borrow a line from Alan Jacobs, read at whim, you know, read, read what strikes you, read what grips you.[00:31:52]and, and, and the more you read, I think it will, it will help your own writing. So, so be a reader. I think it would be the first thing. And, now the flip side of that, the second thing I would say is, I have a lot of students who. Frankly, kind of clutter their essays with quotations from other writers.[00:32:10]Jeff Medders: takes up space for the page count[00:32:12] Wesley Hill: Yeah. Well, exactly, exactly. And, Hey, I'm, I'm an offender myself. I, I, my editors regularly have to trim out quotations from others for me. But, but I would say, you know, don't plagiarize, but also just don't, don't rely on other words to fill out your argument. You know, you try to figure out how to say it in your idiom.[00:32:32] with your voice and you know, certainly pay your, pay your intellectual debts by footnoting the people that you know have influenced you and shaped the argument that you're, that you're writing, but, but try to find your own voice and, and that, that only emerges through practice. You know, you have to write and rewrite and rewrite.[00:32:48] And, so yeah, those are, those are a couple of things that I say to my students that maybe it would be helpful for your listeners too.[00:32:56] Jeff Medders: totally. What are some, some, some of the people that you just love to read? And you mentioned like good reading, good writing. you know, a couple that you can like, man, I love their, I love their writing.[00:33:05] Wesley Hill: Yeah. Yeah. You know, someone I have just admired more and more in recent years is the way that the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, writes for popular audiences. I mean, he's, he's long been known as a, as a very serious academic theologian, but he's published, you know, volume. Sermons recently and just these little books.[00:33:26] He has a little book with urbans called being Christian and a follow up volume called being disciples, and they're so winsome to me because they're, they're obviously built on a lot of research and a lot of deep learning and study and prayer, but he writes so accessibly, like he throws out the academic jargon.[00:33:45] And he just, he just writes like he's sitting across from you at a coffee shop talking with you. And I, I just am kind of in awe of that, you know, as someone who. you know, one of the things that getting a PhD does is it, it, it kind of invites you to write in a very jargony style. and, and for someone who's, who has gone through that kind of training to then be able to say, no, I'm not going to do that.[00:34:05] I'm going to, I'm going to write in a way that's more accessible. It's, it's, it's both like really instructive for me. And it's also really inspiring. another writer who I just hugely, hugely admired just for the, the sheer. A beauty and zest of his sentences is Francis buffer. he's written a great little kind of apologetic for Christianity called, ironically, unapologetic. And he's recently published his first novel, called golden Hill. and he's just an absolute delight to read. So he's, he's a, he's a Christian and the church of England. He, he was an atheist for many years and kind of came back to faith. and he's told me that he's working on some, some more Christian writing, more explicitly Christian writing.[00:34:44] So I'm, I'm really looking forward to seeing what that will be in the years to come.[00:34:48] Jeff Medders: Yeah. Very cool. Well, yeah, listeners, be sure to go to the show notes there and you'll see links to Amazon and you'll find, all of, of, of Wesley Hills books there, the Lord's prayer, Paul and the Trinity, spiritual friendship and more, you'll, you'll find everything there. and Wesley, if  people wanted to keep up with you on social media, where would you tell them to go? If[00:35:10] Wesley Hill: Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, I'm still hanging out on Twitter. I can't seem to quit it. So, I'm just Wesley[00:35:17] Jeff Medders: Twitter to break up with me first. I need you. I need Twitter to quit me[00:35:20] Wesley Hill: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. But I try to, you know, if I write something online, I try to post it there so you can find my, my writing and things there. and I also have a little, my own little blog is Wesleyhill.tumblr.com.[00:35:33] Jeff Medders: Thanks so much for coming on the show, man, and just giving your wisdom on writing. It's a really beneficial and I'm really grateful.[00:35:42] Wesley Hill: Well, thanks for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation.[00:35:45] Jeff Medders: Great, and as always, listeners remember, let's just keep writing. 

Why is it that some people are able to shift some things that others can’t seem to? Obviously Jesus was able to shift things that others couldn’t, but He never pointed to His divinity as the reason. In this message, Tim looks at the practice of fasting by looking at two different situations, and the breakthrough that came through fasting.

Matthew 1:18-25 Introduction One of the things that I have enjoyed about Christmas are the nativity scenes. I like how we can bring together all the characters and participants in one place. And if you think about it, they all have their own special role. Obviously Jesus has to be there. And of course Mary… Read more

Summary: We're created in the image of the Trinity, One God, Three Persons, bound by love in perfect harmony. Thus, we're created to bond, to God and to people. The cross of Christ binds us vertically with God, Who fills our hearts with love for real people, creating the meaningful horizontal binds we all need.Transcript:This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you would like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church, my name in Jan. I am one of the pastors here at Mosaic. I've got the pleasure to serve, and if you're new, welcome. We're so glad you're here. We'd love to connect with you if you would like to connect. We do that initially personally. We'd love to meet you personally, and officially we do it through the connection card in the worship guide. If you fill it out legibly, then you can either redeem it at the welcome center for a gift, and it's a great gift. Or you can toss in the offering baskets when they around after, or option three, you can download the app from the app store, just Mosaic Boston, and there's a connection card in there as well. With that said would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word.Father we thank you that you are a god of love. You're not just a god who loves, but you are love. Holy Trinity, there's a perfect community in the God head. We thank you for that. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. We thank you God that you proved your love to us through your son Jesus Christ. That Jesus you were the gift of the Father. The Father gave the Son, so that whoever believes might have eternal life. We thank you Christ that you came, lived the life of perfect love toward God, and toward neighbor, toward the people around you. You served. You sacrificed. You made yourself accessible. You are the embodiment of God, and you are also the embodiment of what it means to be truly human, so Lord Jesus we thank you for the gospel that on the cross you poured out your life. You poured out your blood, in order to save us from self, from egos, from selfishness, from all the things that keep us from bonding to you, bonding to the people in our lives.We thank you that Jesus you rose from the dead and we thank you that you send us the Holy Spirit through whom we can experience God, and we can be empowered by God, and our hearts can be filled with love. I pray you make us a force of love here in the city, so that we love in a way that draws attention to the ultimate act of love in the universe, which is the gospel. Bless our time in the holy word, and we pray all this Christ's holy name. Amen.So in the 1970s the American psychologist, Dr. Bruce Alexander, he ran a study called Rat Park. And studies had already been run where it was proven that if you put a rat in a cage by itself and you offer it two water bottles, one with just water, and one laced with a cocktail of a drug, heroin or cocaine, that as soon as the rat gets a taste of the cocaine, gets a high, that rat now chases that same high over and over, and keeps drinking from that water bottle until it dies of overdose.Well Dr. Alexander wondered, as he said, "Was it just the drug that caused the addiction, or might the isolation have something to do with it as well?" So to test that hypothesis, he built a rat park. He built rat paradise. There was all kinds of things for the rats to do. All kinds of ways for the rats to play, and frolic, there was little community center. Public space if you will. Many food trucks for the rats. No, no, not really, but that would have been epic. He created a Boston for rats. He created a true community. And also, he provided the same two types of bottles, and surprisingly, they preferred the plain water. And even when they did imbibe from a drug filed bottle, they did so without abuse, without obsession, and not one rat overdosed. And the conclusion was there's power in community.And the power of community is stronger than the power of drugs. But the power of community satisfies what the person was looking for. The person wasn't just looking for the drug or the high, there's a deeper problem, a problem of alienation that comes with isolation. Now that's important, and that's profound, because we live in a world where we are more connected than ever virtually. And more disconnected than ever physically, relationally. And that's one of the reasons it so... There is an opiod crisis.Now I knew about the rat race, and I know the theology behind why that works, because we're created by a Trinitarian god, a god of community. We're created in his image, therefore, we are created to bond with God and with people, and if we don't bond with God and people we will bond with things, sex, money, drug, etc. I was reminded of the rat study this week on Friday when I got in an Uber from Brighton down to Dewey Square, and in the Uber, so the Uber driver he extended his hand. I've never had an Uber drive do this, and he said, nice to meet you. And he said forewarning, "I am chatty, because I used to work as a psychiatrist." Oh wow. Okay. And I said, "Well I am chatty too, because I am a professional talker." And he said, "What do you do?" And I said, "I am a pastor." He says, "What?" And I said, "What?"Now you've got a psychiatrist and a pastor driving in Uber. It's like the beginning of a joke. Psychiatrist and a pastor walk into a bar. So just riveting conversation. I wish I had this on video. It's like I'm in a movie. What is the... And we got to talking about psychiatry and his job, and he said, "One of the reasons that I don't do that anymore is I"... it was important work. He said, "But I realized that people's greatest problem wasn't me writing a script and giving them a prescription. The greatest problem actually was they don't have friends. They don't have community. They don't have a support structure. And what I wanted to was I wanted to love them. I wanted to befriend them. I wanted to give them that, but because of the system of the job I couldn't do that. And he said what he was doing was important. What you are doing is so much more important. You're trying to create a true community, where people truly love one another, like one another. Where people are friends and family.Then he asked, "Can I come to your church?" And I said, "Yeah." I said, "It's not my church first of all." But his first joke when I got into the Uber and he found out I was a pastor, he's like, "Where's your jet plane parked?" No bro. I got a Toyota Highlander. I've only ever owned a Toyota, except for my first car an Audi 80, big mistake. So back to the sermon. Back to the sermon. So he gave me his number. We're going to connect, and now we're friends, and the first thing I texted him was let's be friends. But I want more than that. And you know what Jesus, he brings disciples and he says, "Follow me." And what he told his disciples at one point, "I no longer call you servants, now I call you," what? Friends. That's in the Bible. You can Google that.But he doesn't just call us friends either. He calls us family. That he's our older brother. We're brothers and sisters. He combines, like you have relationships in your life. Your family you have to love them. So I can't not love you, but we separate. We bifurcate between love and like. So we have people we like. We have people we love. Jesus says I want that to be one and the same. I love you and I like you. That changes everything. So that's what we're going to talk about. That's God's heart for the church. That's God's heart for the city, that the church exists in the city for the common good of the city.The problem is the ideal, usually it doesn't happen in reality. This is why Saint Paul writes this letter to the church in Corinth, and we have the same problem so he's writing to the church in Boston as well. The church in Corinth there were divisions in leadership, division in economics with lawsuits and secondary issue, and gifting, and this is what we're talking about today. We started last week, where God when he creates us he infuses us with talents, and then when he recreates us, when we're children of God he infuses us with gifts. What the gifts do is sometimes he repurposes our talents for his glory, but often the gifts just enhance the talents. Then God brings people together. Each person in the body, in the church has different gifts, and they're brought to the church as gifts. To use their gifts for other people to be other gifts that use their gifts. So that's what we're talking about today.We're in First Corinthians, chapter 12, verses 12 through 31. First Corinthians 12, 12 through 31. You can follow along in your Bible, on the screen, or on your screen. For just as a body is one and has many members and all the members of the body though many are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell, but as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he choose.If all were a single member where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those part of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God ha appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you still a more excellent way. This is the reading of God's holy inherent and infallible authoritative word, may he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. The I will show you a more excellent way wasn't on the screen, but it is in the text. And that's what we're talking about today. That love is the force behind the building of the church. The relationship in the church. That this is how we are bound. We are bound by love.Three points to the sermon. We are one. Two, are we one? And three, let's be one. First of all, we are one. Saint Paul begins with a we. Who's the we? He's talking about the church. He's talking about people who have been transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of his light. People who are Christians they now are part of the Body of Christ, the church, and also the church locally. So who's the us? It's the church. It's the Body of Christ. He starts with that as he talks about being members he talks about it in the context of a body, like a physical body, therefore when we talk about church membership, we're not talking about being a member of a club, or of an activist organization, or political organization. Membership isn't a card, it's a belonging. That you are connected. Vitally connected to other people who are believers.So this is verse 12. Just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is with... What does he say? So it is with... What's the last word? Christ. Unexpected. Unexpected. What are we expecting. He's talking about being members of a church. Being members of one body, the church body. Instead, he uses a different word. He brings in the word Christ. Why do that? Why would he use these words interchangeably, church and Christ? He does so because for him they are so united. They are inextricably intertwined. This is important for us because if we live in a world where people say, "I love Jesus. I want your Jesus, but not your church, not your Christians." For Saint Paul and the early church it was one and the same. This is Christ. The other Christians in my life are Jesus to me. I am Jesus to other Christians in my life.Where does Saint Paul get this idea? This idea was seared into his heart at his conversion. This is Acts 9: 3-5. Saul, that was his former name, birth name. He was a persecutor for Christians. And Jesus Christ meets him on the road to Damascus and converts him. That's why Saint Paul became a Christian. Verse 3 of Acts 9. Now as he went on his way he approached Damascus suddenly a light from heaven shone around him and falling to the ground he heard a voice saying to him. "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?" Not Christians, not the church, "why are you persecuting me," Jesus said. And Saul said, "Who are you Lord?" And he said, "I am Jesus whom you are persecuting."When a person becomes a Christian they become a Christian by the power of the Holy Spirit. God the spirit saves the person. Transforms, regenerates the heart, and it doesn't stop there. God just doesn't just forgive us our sins, and says, "Now you can live you life anyway you want, just until you go to heaven." If that were the case God would just teleport us into heaven. But no, there's a purpose for us here on earth. God has a mission for every single one of us. God has a purpose. God has gifts for us to fulfill that purpose. And we do that by the power of the Holy Spirit. So when we become a Christian we're united with Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. We become part of Christ. That's a spiritual reality. When you become a Christian you become a part of Christ. A part of God. This is how strong God's love is. It's like he swallows you whole. He internalizes you. We become part of him.It's kind of hard to communicate unless you've had a baby. I remember when my oldest daughter, she is almost 11. I remember when she was born and I brought us home I learned the swaddling technique. I became a master of the swaddling technique. I was like, "This is going to be my thing." The baby burrito thing, that's my thing. In like three seconds, done. And then I was like, "What's this called burrito?" I love burritos. I'm a big fan of burritos and I'm a big fan of babies, and now it's two in one. That's awesome. And there something when you hold the baby, especially a baby burrito. And you put your nose, like as you're kissing you smell the neck. Like this right here with the saliva and all this. The little lint. Something there about that smell. And honestly, the only way I can communicate it is I love you and I want to eat you. I won't eat you, but I want to. I don't know how to... And you see this with kids.My youngest Milana she's almost... She is two. She's what, she's two. And she loves my wife so much she tackles her climbs on top and she starts licking her. Not kissing, licking like... Like that. Like a puppy. With me it's a little different. We've got a different relationship. She starts biting me. That's what she... There something about God internalizes us. We become part of God. That's the fundamental spiritual reality. We are part of Christ, and what Saint Paul is saying is, let's make that a physical reality. But there's so much unity in the church. There's as much unity in the physical body of Christ as there is in the spiritual body of Christ, therefore disharmony is a contradiction.Verse 13. For in one's spirit we are all baptized into one body. So by the spirit we are baptized. Baptism is a visible sign of a spiritual reality. We were baptized into one body. Jews and Greeks, counter opposites. Diametrically opposed. Slaves or free. And all were made to drink of one spirit. Hear it. He's talking about the reality. We drink God in. He drinks us in. He inhales us. He ingests us. We do the same ting with him spiritually speaking. God become part of me. That's how close our union is. And the reminder for this, the outward reality, is that bread and the cup. The Lord's Supper. The sacrament. Every time we take part and we're doing that next week, bread is the Body of Christ. We internalize it. The cup is we internalizing Christ sacrificed his blood, so we are one.When God looks at Christians he see one. There's distinction. There's difference. There's diversity. But no division. Different but one. Not a melting pot. Not a melting... I know the U.S. is supposed to be a melting pot. That idea that got me into college. That was my essay for college. I'm an immigrant. I'm from the Soviet Union. Please let me into your school. I want to embody the American dream. Church is more than that. Church is more than the melting pot. Church is like a stew. A good church is like a good stew. You've got the steak tips of course. With the little potatoes. You've got some carrots. You've got a little onion, a little celery. And spices we need all the spices. We need all the flavors. That's what a good church is, it's like a good stew.Now the question is, are we one? From God's perspective we are one. From our perspective, are we one? Verse 14. For the body does not consist of one member, but of many. It the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," that would not make it any less part of the body. If the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body." And so you get it. What's he's saying is it's ridiculous for people who are part of the spiritual Body of Christ to show up and see the physical body of Christ, and say, "I do not belong here." We have a personal relationship with Jesus, person to person, but it's not an individualistic relationship. And Paul here, he's first ministering to those who had suffered at the hands of the ultra gifted who have weaponized their gifts, the people with public gifts, of prophecy, of teaching, of healing, of tongues. They've created a hierarchy of gifts. And Saint Paul says, "no." What he's doing is he's leveling the ground that we all need grace. That we are all brothers and sisters as Christians. That we all have gifts that others need.There's two forms of exclusion, I don't belong. The first one is where the person excludes themselves. The second is when the person is excluded. Saint Paul starts with the person who feels excluded. The person who shows up to church and feels like, I don't belong here. I am not needed here. And sometimes it's because of a sense of inferiority. I'm not a hand, I'm just a foot. I'm not needed here. Well the hand's not getting anywhere without the foot. All right I'm not a mouth. I'm just an internal organ. I don't belong here. And Saint Paul starts here and says, "No, false theology. False ecclesiology. You do belong." God, if God has called you to a particular church, Mosaic or not, if God has called you, he's called you there for a reason. Perhaps you don't see that reason yet, but don't use the excuse of gift cop out to not use your gift. If God gave you gifts, he wants you to use those gifts as you love one another.Sometimes you walk into a church and you just feel like everyone here is just better than me. They know the Bible more than I do. They're smarter than I am, or what have you. They're more godly than I am. Look we've all got to start somewhere. Every saint has a past. Every sinner has a future. Every single one. We're all a mess. We're all a mess. And God works through our mess by bringing other people into our lives that loving say, "Hey, that's a mess. Can I help? I want to help. Can I serve?" We're all a mess. So if you're a foot, and you're a dirty foot, I know someone who's really good at washing feet. If you're an ear and you're here and you're like, "I don't like the sound here. This isn't my type of music." We still need you. We still need you. We need to hear what you hear. If you're an eye we need to see what you see. If you're a heart we need to sense. We need to love the way that you love. This is what he's saying. That we all need each other. We need you here.If you walk in and you're like, "Oh, this is a bigger church self-sustainable. It's all good you're self-sufficient. I'm not needed here." How many people in the city don't know Jesus? I can connect with a particular type of person. I can connect with people who are like me, and there's a lot of people in the city like me. There's also a lot of people in the city like you. So when you join and then they walk in they're like, "Yeah. I belong here." Well you didn't feel like you belonged, but you belong, because if Jesus called you and now that allows other people to feel like they belong. Some of you walk in, you're like, "Everyone's so friendly. Way too many people smiling. Way too many people saying hi to me." Leave me... A meet and great, that's not for me. That's not my kind of church. Look I understand. I understand. I'm an introvert. I'm an introvert that fakes the extro... By the power of the Holy Spirit, I'm growing in the whole extrovert thing.80% of the people at this church are introverts. Did you know that? 80%, and we do the meet and great, uncomfortably and awkwardly, and you do it uncomfortably and awkwardly, and then we get to know each other. And the next time it's not as uncomfortable, and it's not as awkward, because now you're friends, and hopefully become family. If you feel like you don't belong that's usually a good sign that you definitely belong. That you definitely belong. That we definitely need you.For example, I will give you an example of Fred and Nancy Gayle. Are they here? Fred and Nancy. They're so sweet. Back in the movie theater they showed up and this was when we used to meet in the Regal Movie Theater right down the street. Theater seven because that was a biblical number. And the average age of the church was like 23. And pastor Shane and I were the elders. We were the oldest people in the church. And Fred and Nancy came in. Fred and Nancy are retired, and they moved to the city, because they were like, "We love the city. We want to retire in the city." And they walked in and there was no one in their... No one they could connect with because they were their age. And in... I do think thing sometimes where I just point people out in the sermon, and I can because I have the excuse of, I'm up here. And I said, "We need you." And ended up on them. And they stayed. You know why they stayed? I said, "We need your wisdom, because we're all a bunch of 20 somethings trying to disciple 20 somethings." And we need someone who's lived a life of faithfulness to the Lord. We need you to teach us. We need you.So if you walk in, and you're like, "I don't see anyone that I can naturally connect to." It may be because you need to be the first one. And then when people walk in they're like, "This is the church for me." That's what it means to be a body of... This is what it means to be a Mosaic. This is the whole thing where we're broken pieces and we're brought together. We're different colors, different shapes, different brokens, different everything, but what unites us is the cross. And with the glue between the pieces is the love that we get from the cross. So we need you. If you feel like you don't belong, we definitely need you.Let me challenge. I don't do this often, but I want to challenge you with something. Who are the people you naturally connect with? People who are like you. You like people who are like you, because you like yourself. Hopefully. I challenge you to find, not your doppelganger, I challenge you to find at this church your anti-doppelganger. The person who is different than you in absolutely every category. Find that person. And I guarantee you that person is going to bless you and teach you more than anyone like you. You need more than you. That's what Saint Paul is saying.Verse 17. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the smell. So he's saying we don't want to just be a church of eyes, because eyes see eye to eye usually only with eyes. He's saying if you're an eye, you've got to pay attention to people who are other than an eye. We don't want to be a church of just ears. We truly want to be a church that reflects the city. And the city reflects the world. So we want to be a church that actually reflects the world. And usually, this is rare by the way. If you just look around. This whole thing that's... It's already happening. And this is rare. It's rare. Because usually this is how churches are planted. One ultra gifted person who's gifted in one category for example a person who has the gift of evangelism. So we now become the evangelistic church. All we want to do is evangelize. All we want to do is see people come to faith. That's awesome, and we need people with those gifts. But then people become Christians and then what?And the you have to disciple them, and then you've got to teach them. Then you've got to organize. Now church, it's an organism, but it needs to become an organized organism the best organisms are. So you need someone with the gift of administration. Then the church grows and you need someone with the gift of leading children's ministry, and youth ministry. And usually what happens is a person with a great gift in one area, projects that gift on everyone else, and doesn't build a team around themselves. Doesn't accept the people that God sends. And then those people go, and they start their own church. So now, there's the strictly evangelistic church, or the justice church, or the cultural center church, or the intense discipleship church. And the same thing happens to parrot church organizations.A person said, "Okay, I did the evangelistic church, no other churches aren't doing the evangelistic, I'm going to start my own parrot church organization. All we're going to do is evangelize people." Now what happens when you have a group of people who are baby Christians? We need churches that's what he says. You can't have a church only with one gift. And the only way this works is when you realize that we are nothing without each other. And we need each other. We are nothing without each other, and we need each other. Do you really believe that. In your heart do you really believe? Can you say to the people closest to you in your life? Husbands can you say to your wife, "I'm nothing without you." I dare you. I dare you to say that today. Wives, I need you. That's what repentance is. This is how the Christian walk starts. God I need you. God help me. God I'm nothing without you. And then that humbles you and you bond with God, and now you can bond with other people. Diffidence makes all the difference.The gospel gets rid of my pride on a dial basis. It keeps rearing it's ugly head. The gospel continually... God save me. God save me. God I need you. And now with humility. Humility allows the love to flow freely. It doesn't mean that you have to count everyone as so much more important than you, but it does mean that we're required to thing of people at least as equally in importance as us. And then Philippians 2 says, "Count others more significant than yourself." So the point is we do need you. If you walked into this church today, and you're like, "I'm just looking for a church." We need you. We need you. We need to lock arms together. We need to become members one of another.And we are gifts to one another. That's what we talked about last week. How do I know my gifts? Do I take a personality test? Do I take a talent and a gift test online? All of those things are cool. I'm not knocking any of that. Scripture doesn't offer any of those, but you know what scripture says? Love people. Serve people. Pay attention to people. The meat, a really close knit group of people join, and minister to those people, and they'll help you discern your gifts. Like hey, you're really good at this. You're really good at that. It's kind of hard to do that on a Sunday. It begins here, but we intentionally do that during community groups during the week. Different homes, different nights of the week. And I know if you're new to the city, that's so intimidating. You're going to someone's house. No. Meet someone here. Meet your anti-doppelganger at church, and say, "Which community group do you go to? Can I come?" Like, "Yeah, of course." And now you've become friends, and the friends become family, and that's the vision of the church.Then you see where your gifts are. You want to use your gifts more. The other thing I'll say here is when thinking of gifts don't just think about titles or offices. We're all called to teach. We're all called to serve. We're all called to love. We're all called to be generous. You don't need a title to do that. You don't need permission to be a Christian. So be a Christian. Love people. 1 Corinthians 12:18. But as it is God arranged the members in the body each one of them as he chose. If you are at Mosaic, you need to be sure God led you here, and if you're not sure pray Lord. Perhaps you're needed somewhere else, but if you're here, and you're like, "Mosaic is my church." God's brought you here, and if he's brought you here, he's brought you here for a reason. He's trying to arrange the parts. This is what he's talking about. And when you know that God is the one that gifts, and that God is the one that arranges. And when you understand that the gift you have is actually a gift. And the Greek, the word gift is charismata. Grace in the Greek is charis, charismata, meaning the gifts that we have, it's all grace.God chooses which gifts he gives to whom, therefore we don't have to play the comparison game with don't have to be envious of someone else's game because envy kills the free flow of love. So if you're ahead, don't be jealous of the hearts or the hands, but learn from them. If you're a heart don't be... You see? You see. 1 Corinthians 12:19. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is there are many parts, yet one body. And they're all interdependent. So don't become co-dependent on one person. And this is just real talk. A lot of people have become co-dependent on whoever the mouth is. My job here is to equip you. My job isn't just to feed you. My job is also to teach you how to cook. So this is why I go verse by verse, and I try to show you what I do. Look this word is... I don't give you lessons in hermeneutics.You come here for a month you'll understand hermeneutics. You'll understand exegesis. You'll understand how to interpret scripture. Therefore, you go home and you start reading scripture. And what you're doing is now you're cooking. And then you're like, "I've cooked more than I can eat." Then invite someone over to your house, and feed them. Let me feed you, I've cooked this bomb meal. Please come over, and the person who was invited, please don't be squeamish, "Oh I don't like eating other people's food." No eat their food. That takes love to. That take humility. Are we talking about food, or are we talking about the gospel? Yes, both. It's both. Other people cooking. This is in community group. Let other Christian teach you, "Hey what is God revealing to you through the scriptures through his Holy Spirit? Teach me." That's what I do. We're called to equip the saints for the work of the ministry as pastors.I know we live in a city where no one trusts each other. That's part of the reason no one even wants to say hello. Hello. Are you trying to sell something to me, or steal something from me? It's one or the other. And there's just this especially in a city, there's risk and it takes trust to bond with people. It takes trust to bond, and it takes risk to trust. What does through the gospel is he takes the risk that's impeding the trust, and he replaces it with love, because perfect love casts out fear, so now we can trust. We can love.So some Christians exclude themselves from the body. And sometimes Christian do the excluding. I don't belong here. I don't need you. That's verse 21. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." Some of the most heart wrenching words that you can hear. When someone that you want to be in a relationship with says, "I don't need you." And we might not say that out loud explicitly, we might act in ways that communicates this implicitly. I don't need you. My calendar, too busy. I don't need you in my phone. I have enough friends. I don't need you in my home, you're too different. I don't like how you look. I don't like how you dress. I don't like what you do for life. I don't like your education. I don't like how you smell. No. Don't communicate this verbally. Don't communicate it implicitly.And if you felt neglected, we're sorry. And we ask that you tell us that, and we'll try to work on fixing that. Mosaic is not self-sufficient. We're not self-sustainable. God gives gifts for mutual up building. We build each one up. When God gives you a gift it's not just for you. It's for you to share. And here's the other thing I'll say. The reasons why those Christians say to other Christians is because they think they're ultra gifted. And this is what happens with gifts. Who's the most gifted person who ever lived? Obviously Jesus. Who is number two? Who is second after Jesus when it came to all the gifts? It was Satan.And what happened with Satan was he twisted the gifts. The gifts instead of using the gifts to bless, he twisted the gifts to serve himself. And this is what Satan does. He tries to twist the gifts that God has given us. What takes someone down? What makes someone weaponize the gifts? It's just a little twisting when sin gloms onto the gifts that God has given us. Instead of using the gifts to serve, we start using the gifts to serve ourself. So be careful. And the greater your gift the greater the responsibility to use that gift. And the greater the temptation there will be to use it for self.1 Corinthians 12:22. On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. What he's talking about here is there's presentable parts. That's the visible gifts. Then there's the unpresentable parts, the ones that you aren't presenting because they are invisible. They're behind the scene. There's visible gifts, and there's behind the curtains. Behind the scenes gifts. So for example, visible gifts, presentable parts. The face, the mouth, the ears, the eyes. But then there's something inside. The heart. The organs, which are actually indispensable. They're actually more important than everything else. And he's saying the visible parts they already get the honor. Instead when you get the honor, I want you to bestow honor. Transfer honor to the ones who are behind the scenes. Bestow honor where honor is due. Out do one another in showing honor. And what this honor does is it... This bestowing of honor is very Christ like. It's very Godly.In the Trinity, the Father bestows honor to the Son the Son to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit to both. So we in the world. We're to show honor. We're to show attention the children. To those the world dishonors. I saw a guy walking the street today. He had a t-shirt that said I hate kids. I was kind of in a rush to Kids Summer Nights, or else I would have stopped and had a conversation with him. The world dishonors as a whole, children. Single moms, the elderly, the sick, the immigrant, the orphan, the widow, the homeless, the mentally ill, and we as the church are called to honor them. Are called to pay attention to them. Are called to serve them just like Jesus did. When the stronger pay attention to the weaker, they get stronger, so does the weaker get stronger. And they get stronger, because they realize, "Oh wow, you're weak in the thing I'm strong in, but you're also strong in the thing that I am weak in. We need each other." And the serving the weaker make everyone stronger, and what the stronger needs to know is that this person who seems weak is actually clothed in humility, and you need to be clothed in humility. And when we're clothed in humility. When we decrease together, Christ increases and that's how the church grows.Speaking of church growth. Three years ago we made... God sent this unique person into the church, Kara Bettis. This is the Kara Bettis part of the sermon. Kara Bettis came on staff three years ago, and when she came on staff as the Mini-Mo director/administrator/communications director/everything that needs to get done, she said, "I'm going to be here for a year. I'm going to give you guys a year." And it's been three years. Since she go there the church has doubled. And all the numbers, just everything has gotten a lot better. She's made all our lives better. She's very much behind the scenes. We don't really see her. So with a heavy heart I'm making the announcement that Kara Bettis is leaving the Mosaic Boston staff, but she's remaining in the church. She loves it this much. She was offered a job to do her dream job in journalism for Christianity Today. And she was offered a job as an editor. So she will be working from Boston, because she loves this church too much. She loves you guys so much. And we love her.So we want to honor you Kara Bettis. Big round of applause for Kara as she makes her way down. And we have a little gift for you. And we want to pray for you. So Kara though leaving staff she's remaining as a faithful member of the church, however I do ask you no longer email her with church questions. Because that's why she's leaving. No just kidding. Just kidding it's not true. The Lord is calling her to go elsewhere. We're going to pray over here. We're going to pray a prayer of thanksgiving, and also a prayer for the Lord to continue and empower her ministry. Would you pray with me.Lord we thank you for our dear sister Kara. Lord we thank you for her tireless work here for your kingdom. She's been a blessing to so many. She's a blessing to us and to me. And we just see in her... We see Christ in her. We've seen her sacrifice. And we've seen how the Holy Spirit has used her so powerfully. And Lord I pray that you do bless her in her new ministry. And the calling that you've placed on her, use her powerfully. Give her words. Write through her to touch many people. Bless many people with your gospel. And we also pray for you to send many more Kara Bettises to this church who behind the scenes do so much, and serve so selflessly. And I pray all this in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.Thank you Kara. Thank you. Thank you. Prayer emoji. We don't do that usually in sermons. What were we doing? Just honoring a person who was behind the scenes. So we are called to do that.Now verse 24. But God has so composed the body giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. This is how we use the gifts. This is how we grow in the gifts. Just care for people. If one member suffers, all suffer. If one member is honored, all rejoice together. If you stub your toe your whole body is aching in pain. If you get a great haircut, and someone compliments you on that haircut, your hair rejoices, so does the whole body. Thank you. It takes empathy. It takes noticing. It takes stepping into a person's life. Romans 12:15. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. And love is what unlocks the capacity to empathize this deeply.So we are one. Are we one? Let's be one. let's be who we are. It takes work. It takes commitment. It takes effort. It takes margin in life. It takes sacrifice. And where do we get the power to sacrifice like this? Where do we get the power to truly be so connected with other Christians in our life that we are individually members of one another? The whole world knows this is good. The whole world has studied that we need friends, and we need family, and we need deep relationships. Everyone talks about peace. Everyone talks about unity. But they're missing something. It's almost as if it's impossible to live like that, because people hurt us, and then hurt people who hurt people. So we want love, then we act in ways that where relationship are broken. Where do we get the power to love like this? Where do we get the power to forgive when people hurt us? Where do we get the power to be gracious? You know where we get that power, it's at the cross of Jesus Christ. Jesus came, God incarnate, made himself accessible. Made himself vulnerable. Made himself pierce-able.He came into the world, he said, "Let's be friends, let's be family." And we killed him and that's our sin. And he took our sin upon himself. Poured out his blood to cleanse us of our sin, our shame, our ego, our pride, everything that actually is what makes the world, the world. Christ now through his love knits us together. He makes us friends. He makes us family.So this is... We have a membership class today from 1:00 to 3:00. And I'm not selling anything, I'm just giving you. I'm offering you. I'm offering you something. And I'm offering... We have room in our hearts for you at this church. We have space for you here. And we have space for you here. So get connected to this church and once you're connected, once you have friends, once this church is family, then we talk about membership. You can become a member. So if you believe this is your home church, you're welcome to come to the membership class. Or you can just come. It's free lunch. It's 1:00 to 3:00 pm today downstairs. But we don't just do membership, like fake membership, like pretend membership, like if you belong, we just confirm that belonging through the process. So we welcome you to belong, because we need each other.In Boston, I have met some of the strongest people I have ever met. Strong in mind. Strong in will. Strong in body. But strong. Strong Christians. And if I were Satan this is how I would temp you, and I know, because this is how he temps me. He say's you are so strong. You are so strong, you don't need anybody. And now we become the rat in the cage. And now addictions. And we need the humility to say, "I might be strong in one thing, but there's people who are strong in the things where I'm weak, and I need them in my life." And when you go to someone else, and you say, "I need you." What's their response? "Oh awesome, I need you too." I need you. We need each other. We need each other. That's the point.And we see this all throughout scripture. This is how the Lord taught us to pray. I won't do the whole thing, but here's the Lord's Prayer. My Father in heaven? No, our father. And when we pray, every time we pray the Lord's Prayer, we're thinking about, oh my brothers and sisters. My community. Our father in heaven. And then when we ask for bread. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors. That's the love with forgiveness. Lead us not into temptation. Meaning sometimes I'm led into temptation, sometimes because I don't think I need anyone, God does allow me to be led into temptation to show me, no you're not strong, you're weak. So I need brothers and sisters that I go to and say, "Please hold me accountable when I'm led into temptation. Here's my temptations. I need you to call me out and bring me back from the zigzag path to the straight and the narrow." So my point in conclusion. Let's be friends. Let's be family. Jesus allows that to be reality.I'm going to close with this illustration to give us just a glimpse. A glimpse of what this looks like. And we're going to go to the pyrosome. Have you ever seen this? Do you know what a pyrosome is? Oh. Oh. You're welcome for this next part of the sermon. And you should go on YouTube and watch pyrosomes. Read up on this. This thing is awesome. Tyler Burns sent this to me. Our youth ministry director. Thanks Tyler. Qz.com November 16, 2018, pyrosomes and they're called the unicorns of the sea. What is this thing. It's one body, but it's made up of hundreds, and actually thousands of individual organisms called zooids. And they're physically linked. They're shared tissue, but they're distinct. And yet they are one. And they have a purpose. They join together and they have a purpose to travel together. They need one another. By themselves they're unimpressive. They're negligible. Together, intimidating force. I actually read that they swallow up penguins, which that's not the church. We don't do that. But still that's pretty intimidating. And this is the crazy part. They are clones one of another. They clone, they reproduce. So we don't want to do the clone thing, but we do the reproduction thing in that we become Christians and others become Christians, and they're all clones of the first founding zooid, named... I don't know the zooids name, but you know where I'm going.And here's the other thing. This is what they eat. They join together, and they way that they travel is they suck water in and they suck it out, and what they're doing is they suck the bacteria in, and they let clean water out. They're actually cleansing the area around them. And the word pyro, pyrosome comes from the Greek words pyro, fire, some, body. They're a body on fire. I affectionately named this pyrosome Mosaic Boston. That's us. A body on fire. What's that fire? God's love for others. And that's what binds us. We're bound by love.Let's pray. Lord thank you for this time. Thank you for your scriptures, and thank you for the gospel, and thank you for your love. Jesus let us love in the same way that you have loved us. We pray this in your name. Amen.

Jesus teaches that we should ask the Father to give us daily bread. Obviously Jesus wasn't telling His disciples to pray only for bread. God actually wants us to ask Him daily for natural and supernatural provision while trusting Him to supply.

What do you expect when you turn to Jesus? Do you always get what you expect? Or even want? This morning we are looking at an account out of the gospel of Mark where four friends bring their other friend who happens to be a paralytic to Jesus for healing. And what they get is certainly not what they could ever have been expecting. What do we learn about Jesus and about life in His kingdom from this passage? First, we learn about the surprise of spiritual dynamics. The friends bring their friend to Jesus for healing and instead He forgives the man his sins. Yes, He does heal eventually heal him, showing that He cares about this man completely, physically as well as spiritually. But what a surprise for this man. Obviously Jesus knows something the man doesn’t. And that is our primary need for forgiveness and the power of forgiveness. Second, we learn of the vulnerability of spiritual dynamics. There is a vulnerability with both giving and receiving love. Think of the vulnerability of the four friends and what they had to do to bring their friend to Jesus. When was the last time we cut a hole in somebody’s roof in order to bring one of our friends to Jesus? And what about the paralytic man? He had to lay out on the mat and be completely vulnerable in order to allow his friends into his life and receive their love for him. The final piece of vulnerability is Jesus. One of the things we see in this passage is the beginning of conflict between Jesus and the spiritual leaders of the day. This will only intensify as the gospel progresses. When Jesus asks the scribes which is easier for him to say, your sins are forgiven or get up and walk, this is not as easy a question as it might appear. For while at first glance it might look like it is easier to simply say your sins are forgiven Jesus knows what it will take in order to effect forgiveness and be our Savior. It will take His death. He will die in order to be our Savior.

Is being "meek" a sign of weakness, or is there something more to it? What does this attitude look like lived out in today's world? Obviously Jesus thought it important enough to command us to do it - so let's take a closer look!

Theme: Seeking the Lowly Main Points: Invite the poor, crippled, lame, and blind. Obviously Jesus had never been to a church growth seminar These are the people Jesus told us to target The Church is the one institution that does not exist for the benefit of its own members. Reaching out is not easy.

Its very true that we cant control a lot of times the cards that we have. What we can control is how we respond to them, what we do with the cards that weve been dealt. Were going to talk this morning about our will. Were going to talk about consequences. Were going to talk about decisions. If youve been following the news, you were probably as taken back as I was by the atrocities that happened at Fort Hood in Texas. A military psychiatrist went ballistic, killed 13 people-13 soldiers, and then was shot and is apparently going to recover. [Hes in] critical but stable condition. The irony is that his job was that of a military psychiatrist, trained to help his fellow soldiers cope with the stress of war. He was trained to help them through their problems, psychologically or emotionally, that they were struggling with. From all accounts, he seemed to be doing a reasonably good job, and yet he was conflicted inside. He felt like the war in Afghanistan and Iraq was a war against Islam; and he, being a Muslim, began to be vexed inside and troubled and then finally snapped and took innocent lives. You read the account of his activities the day he perpetrated that act. The words of kindness he spoke to his neighbors, the acts of generosity, the words that were spoken in love to the people in his life; and you wonder how a man like that could commit such atrocities. The truth of the matter is that all of us are capable of deeds of good and kindness; and all of us are capable of evil and darkness. God has given you and me a free will, and He has set before us life and death, blessings and curses. The Word of God encourages us to put on Christ, to put on the new self, which is made in His likeness; and thats what were going to talk about today. Were going to talk about the power of our choices, how we respond to cards that we have been given-whether we choose bitterness, resentment, forgiveness-whether we choose life or death. Lets turn in our Bibles to the Book of Ephesians 4:17(page 1158 of pew Bibles). Our series is called Meet the Ephesians, and were going through this Book, verse by verse, chapter by chapter. We last left off in Verse 17, and Paul is going to begin a new theme called living as children of the light. Verse 17 reads this way; Paul writes and says, So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in very kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more. He describes a very bleak picture. He describes a culture that had become desensitized to sin. If you recall, we were talking about historical background. The focal point of this community was the worship of the fertility goddess, Artemis. Shes represented in a statue in the top column there. She was the goddess who gave you healthy children and a healthy hunt, and she would help with your crops and so forth; so really she represented life. This temple was one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It was the center of their economy. It was the center of their religion, and in this temple, being a fertility goddess, there were many priests and priestesses of the goddess. Part of the ritual was you would come and engage in sexual acts with these temple priests and priestesses, so this religion became a veiled expression of promiscuity and immorality. Because they grew up with it, they became desensitized to it. They no longer saw it as something wrong. It was just simply their religion that they were practicing. Their hearts became hardened towards sin. When I was a boy, I had a cat named Cuddles. It was kind of an oxymoron name for Cuddles because Cuddles was not cuddly at all. We did not have our cat declawed, and I would engage in boxing with my cat. This was my right and this was my left-my thumb and my middle finger. This was kind of a head. He really didnt do anything, but I would just go up like this; and then Cuddles and I would box. As soon as the cat would see that, her ears would go back; and shed jump on the hand, and Id flip her over and wed start to fight. I would just play with my cat, and it would just be a lot of fun. She would kick me with her claws down here and just kind of rip the skin. Then back here those claws would just rip across my hand both ways, just leaving these red marks-red scratches, deep red scratches-all the way. In fact, I still have scars on the back of my hands from that cat. I would go, Oh, man! It hurts! Cuddles! Id look down and say, Boy, that one hurt. Itd be bleeding and Id be like, Ow! and Id stop. My mom would say, You have to stop doing that! You know, youre hurting yourself. And it really looked the sight; it really looked ugly. After a few days, it would heal up, and Id come back for more. Wed have round two, All right. Lets go! And Id flip, box, box, box, scratch, Ow, man! That one hurt! This process repeated itself for weeks, months and years. By the time years had gone by, my skin was like leather back here. I mean my cat could just do her darndest, and it wouldnt do a thing because the skin had become so hard because it became scarred, torn and healed back so many times that it became desensitized-the pain. It didnt hurt anymore, and Id be like, Ha ha! That does not hurt anymore! Now put this hand in there, and you have a whole other story. This hand had become desensitized. That's what sin does. At first when we sin, it causes grief. It causes pain. Our soul bleeds; we feel remorse; we feel sorry, and we say, Im not going to do that again; but over time we forget, and over time things kind of heal up, and we end up repeating the same offense. We still feel guilty; we still feel bad but maybe not as bad as we did at first. If that cycle repeats long enough and often enough, pretty soon in that area, our hearts become calloused, desensitized, unable to feel the remorse of sin. Thats what Paul is talking about. He says, As Christians, I have a higher expectation of you. As people who name the name of Christ, there is a responsibility that you carry. Paul is going to remind them of that in Verse 20. He says, You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. Surely you heard of Him and were taught in Him in accordance with the Truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires… Notice its still there. It hasnt gone anywhere. Youve come to Christ. Youve received the Spirit of God, but the sin nature is still very much present, isnt it? Its something that must be put off. …to be made new in the attitude of your minds… And thats key. …and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. This new self is a new card. It is introduced to your hand, the Holy Spirit of God who is present in your life all the time, all the time. So what does it mean to put on Christ? Obviously Jesus is not a garment that we [put on]. We dont put on our Jesus garment. How do you put on someone whos always present with you? What does Paul mean with this, you know, you put on Christ? Well, Christ is always with me. How can I put on Him who is always with me? I dont put on my hair. I dont put on my teeth. Some of you might put in your teeth; I dont know. Some of you might even put on your hair; I dont know. Im not even going to ask. That's your business but normally things that you put on and have with you all the time-okay, well use our ears. That's safe. Nobodys putting on their ears. You dont put on ears. You dont put on your nose. Its there. Well, why do you put on Christ if Christ is always there? Number one, though Christ is always there, He does not overwhelm us with His presence, does He? He does not overwhelm us and prevent us from saying wrong things, doing wrong things. He does not violate our free will, and He will speak to us in our wrong choices. He will convict us of sin, but He does not overwhelm us to the presence to the point where we are not free any longer. Paul is talking about being aware of the presence of Christ. Hes talking about decisions based on Whose likeness we have been made. He reminds us that this new self is in the likeness of Christ, that you are called to be like Christ, so there are certain responsibilities. Sometimes being reminded of that can be very painful. Some of you know that while Im able to, I like to play basketball. That's how I get my cardio in, and now Im playing ball most of the time against guys that are much younger than me. Sometimes on the basketball court-if youre a basketball player, youll understand this-it gets competitive. Tempers can fly even amongst friends, and such was the case in my life this week. We were engaged in a pretty heated competition. I was guarding a very good player. Hes the kind of player that can shoot from the outside and drive inside and score as well. [He has] a big body, is strong, and I knew I had my hands full as I was guarding him. In basketball, when theres a good shooter, a lot of times the other team will set picks. What the offense does then is theyll stand in the way of the defender and try to get you to run into them. When they do that, then it frees up their man to get the ball or to take a shot. So I was getting picked all the time. Whats supposed to happen is when somebody is going to pick you, the other teammate, Youre playing defense, youre playing defense. Youre looking at your guy, so your defenders are to say pick, pick left, pick right, so that you are aware of the pick coming, so you can get ready to go around the pick, through the pick, whatever. If they dont do that and if they miss the pick, then theyre supposed to help you out. If you lose your guy, theyre supposed to go off their guy and try to stop the shot. You kind of switch guys. Well, that was happening. The picks werent being called. The guys werent switching, and before I could get around the pick, he was hitting a shot. Everything was okay after that first shot, but once he hit a second shot, one of the guys on our team started getting mad. He said, Let me cover him then! Im going, Yeah, like you could do any better. How about calling picks? How about switching? Words are going back and forth. He hits another shot. Im upset because I dont like to be scored on like this, and hes even madder; so words are going back and forth. I can feel myself just getting angrier and angrier. I dont remember what he said to me, but he pushed a button. I am embarrassed to tell you this, but I lost my cool. As soon as he said whatever he said, I shoved him as hard as I could. I just went bam! I pushed him. As soon as I did that, I went, Oh, no. Oh, no. This is a friend of mine, so I feel bad on that level because I pushed a friend. It would be one thing if it was a schnook. You know you wouldnt care so badly, but this is a friend. I was like, Oh, man! And I knew I was wrong. I immediately thought about a young man on the other side of the gym who goes to our church, a teenager whos watching this game. What does he think seeing his pastor shove another guy? So this guy is mad, and he shoves me back. I said, Yup, I deserve that. We run down the court, and hes still jawing. Then he kind of comes up to me, and he goes bam! He kind of lowered his shoulder into me. I was like, Yup, deserve that too. Thats probably all I deserve. That's probably sufficient payback. You know Ill take the two shots, but you know you got a third; and that might be a problem. But, yeah, I deserve that. So I dont remember all the things hes saying, but one of the things he said to me really stood out. He said, Youre a pastor! Act like it! I couldnt argue with him. He had me dead to rights. I was like, Hes right. At this time, anger was gone. I was just embarrassed and ashamed. I wanted to apologize to him, but he was just so mad that you couldnt. So we played the game out, and we lost. My guy didnt score anymore, thankfully, but we lost the game. I go walking over to him, and I just have to tell you hes a real stand-up guy. Im the one thats at fault, and before I could even get a word out of my mouth, his hand is out; and hes saying, Im sorry about my mouth and making you mad. Im really sorry. I said, Man, its my fault. I shouldnt have done what I did. I love you, man, and Im really sorry. I shook his hand and we are friends. We were talking. We were talking about his job and his life. We played ball yesterday, and everythings fine. You know, thats kind of how guys are. You leave it on the court, and were fine. We can go on and play. But I was just ashamed because who was watching me? Whos been thinking about coming to our church that might reconsider now since theyve seen me lose my cool? We have a responsibility in how we act. He says, Remember who you belong to. You have been made in the image of Christ. Paul says, I expect better things from you. You dont control where youre born. You dont control when youre born, the family youre born into, the city youre born into, the culture youre born into; you dont control those cards, but you control how you respond. All of these temptations are going to be around these Ephesians. The temple of Diana or Artemis is still going to be there. All these temptations are still going to be there. This way of life is still acceptable, but you need to be different. You need to put on Christ. There are opportunities for blessings and curses every day. There are rewards for right decisions; there are consequences for wrong decisions. Paul says, Be aware of whom you are. Be aware of Whom you belong to. Be aware of the Spirit which youve received in righteousness and holiness. That's very similar to what God says in the Book of Deuteronomy 30, if youd please turn to the Old Testament. In Deuteronomy 30, God is going to give commands to his people. God could have revealed Himself to us in many ways, but the way he chose to reveal Himself to man is through whats called a Covenant Treaty. God speaks to us in the language of a covenant. When a king made a treaty with his people, in agreement with his people, the first thing it would be would be the preamble; and hed talk about who he was. Hed talk about how great he was, his majesty, his authority and his rule, his sovereignty. God talks in the preamble; if you read the law, He talks about who He is. He talks about His greatness, His glory, His grandeur. Then theres an historic prologue, and thats where the king talks about what he has done for his people, how hes protected for them, how hes provided for them; and thats what God does in His Word as well. He talks about what He has done for His people, how He has guided them, how He has led them, how He has taught them, how He has been patient with them. Then there are stipulations. The king talks about what is expected of his subjects. Here are the rules; heres how you should conduct yourself; heres what I expect from you. Then there are blessings and curses. The king says, If you follow my decrees, here are the good things that will happen in your life. If you choose to disobey what I have said, here are the bad things that are going to happen. Its like a parent says to a child, You do this. You do this. You do that, and youre going to get privileges. Youll get allowances. Youll get freedoms. Youll have fun. But if you disobey me… Not that your children would ever disobey you. I bet in the 11 oclock service, some of those kids get a little out of control-not you guys kids, but… Here are the bad things that are going to happen. Youre going to lose some privileges. Youre going to lose some freedoms. Things are not going to go well for you. So God gives these blessings and curses to the people of Israel. We find that in Verse 11 of Chapter 30 (page 201 of pew Bibles). He says, Now what I am commanding you today is too difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is not up in Heaven, so that you have to ask, Who will ascend into Heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it? Nor is it beyond the sea, so that you have to ask, Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it? No, My Word isnt in Heaven. My Word isnt in the sea. My Word, My expectations are right here. No, the Word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so that you may obey it. If this is true for the people of the Old Covenant who did not have the Spirit of God, how much truer is it for us of the New Covenant who have the Holy Spirit residing in our hearts? He says, See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. But if you turn your hearts away and are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them… Can we do that today? Absolutely. Weve talked about idols not long ago, and we definitely do bow down and worship other gods in our society. I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. This day I call Heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life… In other words, God says, Im on your side. I want you to win. I want you to succeed. Choose life so that you and your children may live. The choices that we make every day, the cards that weve been dealt-how do we respond? What do we do with the opportunities that God has given to us? I want to present to you a microcosm thats going on in your life right now. I want to use an illustration of the here and now-this very moment in time-to illustrate this point. A lot of you made a decision-well, all of you, not a lot of you-all of you made the decision to come to church today. Number one, that is a correct choice. Hopefully, you agree with that choice now, and youre glad you came. Its a choice of obedience because God says in His Word, Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together. Its a command. Dont do it. Yet, there are many who arent here this morning who have chosen not to obey that command. They chose not to come to church. Now we know coming to church is beneficial. We know its a commandment of God. We know that we come not just for our benefit, but for what we can give to the body as well. I was talking with somebody recently, and I said, So are you going to church? She said, No, Im not going to church, but theres this program on TV I like to watch. Thats my church. I said, Well, thats just a small part of church. Hearing the sermons, thats one thing, but you come not just for what you can receive, but you come because of what you want to give. The Bible says that when we come together, were to encourage one another and share with one another. Youve got spiritual gifts that you can give to the body and so forth. She was having none of that. She didnt want to listen. Thats what Gods Word says, so you made the right decision to come today. You had a choice to choose to attend church or to clean your garage, rake your leaves, garden, plant your tulips-whatever youre going to do. You chose to come here today, and Im grateful for that; but thats just the beginning of the choices that you have made or are going to make while youre here. First of all, when you come through this door and as you leave when we are done, you have a choice to enter into community or into isolation. Some of you will come late and leave early. Some of you come in without hardly talking to anybody except those you have to-take your bulletin or whatever. You sit down; you dont talk to a soul. We say amen, and you leave without talking. You dont make eye contact. You dont initiate contact, just bee-line for the car. Now youve come to church, but you havent entered into community, have you? Theres potentially a new friend for you to meet. You could welcome a visitor. You could renew a friendship. You could spend time with somebody whos already your friend; and you know the benefits of community, right? You know the benefits of friendship. We have friends in our lives. It helps us to bare the load. We have people to help carry the load. It divides our sorrows; it multiples our joys. We have someone to share our joys with as well. Its reciprocal. I give to my friend. My friend gives to me; and there are benefits from community, but some of us choose-even though community is available-we choose isolation even though we know there are harmful consequences for being isolated, for being a loner. We know there are consequences for that; yet many times well choose that anyway, so then you sit down. Now its time to sing. Youve got a choice to make. When you sing are you going to express worship to the Lord, or are you just going to kind of stand there and not participate and say, Lets wait for this part to get over with, so that we can get to the good stuff. Some of you think the singing is the good stuff. Lets make that last forever, right? I understand that, but when it comes to worship, is that the time when your mind is wandering? Are you engaged? You say, Aw! I dont sing. Its not about the quality of your voice. There is no microphone on you if youre out in the congregation. Its about expressing your love for God. Are you going to be passive, or are you going to be active? Are there benefits to worship? Absolutely. This is our time to say, God, I love you, to focus on Him, meditate upon Him, and really enjoy His fellowship. You can choose to do that and enter in and express, or you can choose that song time to be a time when you just tune out. You are just kind of standing up, listening, but youre not participating. Then we pray. Its usually what we do. What are you going to do when we pray? Is that a time when you say, Boy, I hope the prayer is long because my eyes are really tired. I could use a little rest; or are you going to enter into that prayer. Are you going to engage in that prayer and say, Lord, yes, we agree with that, and kind of pray to the Lord on your own too and be in agreement with the prayer thats being shared; but you are engaging mentally with that prayer, and you are participating in that prayer. Sometime we should pray like the Haitian church does. In the Haitian church when its time to pray, everybody prays out loud-everybody, and its just whoa! It is wild, but they are participating. In our culture, we simply agree; but are you agreeing? Are you engaged? Are you using that time to talk with God? How many of you think prayer is beneficial? We think prayer is beneficial, yet there are times when prayer comes, and were using that time to just space out, think about the ball game, think about what were going to have for lunch, think about this or that. Its an opportunity that's wasted. Then the message starts. You have a choice to make. I could be Billy Graham up here preaching, but unless your heart is open and receptive to receive the Word of God, it wouldnt matter. Sometimes you can sit and be present, but youre really not listening to a thing. You have a choice to make. Are you going to engage in whats being said? Are you going to study the Scripture as we read it? Are you going to ponder and think about it, be challenged by it, and commit to change as Gods Truth is spoken? We know the benefits of the Word of God, yet sometimes during the message time, we can drift. Everybody drifts. Everybodys mind can drift on occasion during the message. The chances of you being 100 percent tuned into the sermon, 100 percent of the time, are pretty slim. Im not even tuned into the sermon 100 percent of the time (congregation laughing), and Im the one giving it. I thought about the Bears game 25 times since the 8 oclock service-just kidding, 24. But we try to engage. Its having that mindset that today, I want to hear from God. Im going to engage. Then we take the offering, and the offering bag passes by. We have an opportunity. We have an opportunity to respond. Do we know the benefits of giving? We do. God loves a cheerful giver. God blesses the person who gives. We have a chance to honor the Lord with our tithe or maybe you choose to tip God, Heres five bucks. What are you going to do? How are you going to respond when its time to give? This is an opportunity for blessing. Are you going to ignore that opportunity, or are you going to participate in giving? We have announcement time. We talk about ways you can get involved. We talk about opportunities to serve. You walk by flyers on the table. You walk by the angel tree. You walk by the ministry display board, and you see these opportunities for outreach; and you have a decision to make. GPS is coming today. Will I go to that or not? Will I use my gifts for God or not? Will I serve the church or not? You have a choice to make. Are there benefits for serving God? Absolutely. Were going to grow and mature as a Christian if we use our gifts. Were going to build up the Body of Christ. Were going to glorify God if we use our gifts and talents for Him. At the same token, you have a chance to not become involved at all. There are people whove come to our church-and Im not thinking of any specific person right now, so dont get offended-but there are people whove come-because there are many-to our church for years and years and never got involved, never served. They have no intention of serving. I could preach a year-long series on service, and they will not change or budge. A friend of mine-hes a good teacher of the Word of God-used to say the smallest package in the world is a person all wrapped up in themselves. You have an opportunity to give of yourself, serve the body, and reap the benefits and blessings of that, or you can choose to simply serve yourself. Its your choice. That leads to self-centeredness. It leads to stinginess. Youre not going to grow, but thats a choice. God gives you the opportunity to make that choice. You walk out in the patio, and theres a person that maybe you had a bad experience with. I promise you in a church like ours, there are hundreds of people. There are all kinds of ministry going on throughout the week. There will be people who rub you the wrong way, who say something they shouldnt say, who do something they shouldnt have done, dont do something they should have done, of look at you funny. Whatever it is, you have an opportunity to make amends. You have an opportunity to say, Listen, did I hear that right? Listen, I apologize for what I said. Can we talk? You have that opportunity to engage that person and mend. See, heres the choice. Are you going to choose forgiveness or bitterness? You have a choice to make. Are there benefits for forgiveness? Absolutely. The benefit of forgiveness is that it removes bitterness from your life. If you have unforgiveness, you have bitterness. If you have unforgiveness, it hinders your walk spiritually. Unforgiveness binds you to the past, but if you have forgiveness, you have freedom and joy. So you have a choice because I promise you… Some people have a bad experience with somebody or somebody hurts their feelings; and believe it or not, they will even leave the church rather than work it out. Well, Im mad at so and so, so Im leaving and going to church XYZ. Oh, thats good because nobody will ever hurt your feelings over there. Everybodys perfect over there, so everything will always go wonderfully for you. Thats a good decision. Dont work it out; just leave. You have a choice. How are you going to respond to this opportunity? Then you get in your car, and its still not done. You drive home and now guess what? You are responsible for what youve just heard from Gods Word. Are you going to seek to apply this message? Is it going to bring about life change in you? Are you determined to change things and say, You know; thats true. Im not giving; thats true. Im not serving; its true. Im not experiencing community; its true. Im not engaged in worship; its true. Im not attentive to the Word; its true. All of these things-are you going to change them or is it status quo for you? Are you just going to pretend like you didnt hear? Thats a choice that you make. God sets these choices before us every day, blessings and curses, life and death. There are consequences and there are rewards. Gods Word says put on Christ. Put on that new self. Remember who you are. Be aware of His presence in our life. Allow Him to use you. Make right decisions, and as you make those decisions, the Word of God says in Romans 12:2, Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the Will of God is, that which is good, acceptable, and perfect. As you do the Will of God, you prove the Will of God; and there is a reward, and that reward is a reinforcement. It reinforces that behavior, reinforces that attitude. That person begins to engage in service, and he/she reaps the benefits of that. That person begins to give; and he/she reaps the benefits, so they want to give more. The person enters into community, reaps the benefits, and begins to get more involved with community. Brenda, Ill use this illustration. She is an exercise fanatic now. She will get up at 5 in the morning to exercise. She exercises at least four days a week, sometimes five days a week. That was not always the case. There was a time when she didnt exercise at all, and we had memberships at the YMCA. She didnt like exercise. It just was painful for her, and it was drudgery. She wasnt reaping the benefits when she did. I said, Thats because its too sporadic. It needs to be something thats regular in your life. I said, Listen, you either have to go, or were going to cancel your membership because Im not going to keep paying for something youre not going to use. Fine, she said, so she goes there, and she starts to work out. I remember seeing her on the Stairmaster. I said, How you doing? She was not happy, not happy with me; but over time as she continued to do it for weeks, pretty soon she went from walking to jogging to running. She began to feel better about herself. She began to fit into clothes that she hadnt fit into for a while. She would say, I like this, and she began to reap the rewards of putting on this new self. That became a lifestyle. It became a habit, and now its like you cant keep her away from the gym. We put on Christ. As we do that, there are rewards-inner rewards-that will cause us to continue to come back, continue to put on Christ as we reap the benefits of those decisions, of those blessings. Lets pray together, Father, we thank You for challenging us this morning in Your Word through the writings of the Apostle Paul. He challenged us to put on the new self. He challenges us to exercise our will; to practice an awareness of your presence; to think about the consequences for our decisions and our actions; to think about the responsibility that we have as a child of God, as someone who bears your name; that our lives are being examined and judged by others. We are called to a higher responsibility. We are called to take the cards we have been dealt and play them in a way that honors You and gives glory to You. Lord Jesus, help us to apply this message today. Help us to make the changes we need to make, to put on the new self, made in your likeness-in true righteousness and holiness. In Jesus name, I pray. Amen.