Podcasts about storrow drive

Since Sue is nervous about driving over the Tobin Bridge, we thought going straight to the source would be best. We talked with Mass DOT Highway Administrator Jonathan Gulliver about the Tobin, and even Storrow Drive!

First she drove over debris in her car and sliced her tire wide open on the Tobin Bridge... and today, while driving the MAGIC VAN, had low tire pressure and somehow knocked it into manual transmission mode and broke down on Storrow Drive!!! 

Sue called Kendra during their drive in this morning to tell her about the Moon... and for almost the entire ride down Storrow Drive, she couldn't get over how big the Moon was....

Once again, another truck (not knowing their height) got Storrowed on Storrow Drive this morning, just in time for Kendra to be lodged in the back up at 530am. One of our listeners, who is a truck driver called in with his thoughts on why it keeps happening!

It's the most wonderful time of the year: Sept. 1, the busiest move-in day in Boston, when U-Hauls roam the roads (just not under the low bridges on Storrow Drive, please) and the streets are paved with more nightstands and kitchen tables than you can imagine. How do you celebrate?

New signs are up on Storrow Drive warning trucks to stay off the road. BU researchers link a brain disease to young athlete deaths. State Transportation Secretary Gina Fiandaca says she's stepping down. Five minutes of news to keep you in “The Loop.”

BPR Full Show 8/25: In the Arms of Storrow Drive

Storrow Drive will be closed for several nights starting Sunday evening for repaving, a house explodes overnight on Cape Cod, and Salem's Horror Fest returns just in time for spring. Six minutes of news that will keep you in "The Loop".

Much like a truck heading through a Storrow Drive underpass, President Joe Biden is crashing the British royal visit to Boston later this week — Biden for a political fundraiser, William and Kate to announce who will receive their Earthshot Prizes. Paris and Jeremy talk about the guest list and the certain traffic and transit snarls the events will bring.

Boston saw its first "storrowing" of the month on Thursday after a U-Haul truck had its roof peeled off from a low-bearing overpass on Storrow Drive. WBZ's Kim Tunnicliffe reports:

Wrapping up the week with the end of Allston Christmas and the continuing saga of Storrow Drive, where the annual tradition of destroying rental trucks on our roadways continued yesterday.  And as the morning weather starts to change, which ‘cold' word would you use to describe it?

Hour 4 - Gresh and Keefe talked about rental trucks vs. Storrow Drive overpasses and the latest on sports betting in Massachusetts.  Before You Got Somethin'?, the guys recapped last night's fantasy football draft for the Gresh and Keefe fantasy league.

The Federal Transit Administration's report about safety issues at the MBTA is out today. Paris and Jeremy also talk to listeners about their best-ever Allston Christmas finds, and get advice they have for people looking for discarded treasures on the street. The No. 1 Allston Christmas tip? Don't take your moving truck to Storrow Drive.

A Lynn man is accused of hitting a pedestrian on Storrow Drive and driving off. Abbott Nutrition resumes production at its Michigan plant. Today is day four of the Platinum Jubilee, marking 70 years on the throne for Britain's Queen. Five minutes of news that will keep you in "The Loop."

African Man Born Addressing The White People Display In Boston February 12, 2022 @ Storrow Drive. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/african-man-born/support

Series: Revelation: The Best is Yet to ComeTitle: “Reverse the Curse: What is the New Eden?”Scripture: Revelation 22:1-9(Commentary helps listed at the end)Need: Believe that God's word is “trustworthy and true” enough to follow fully and faithfully.Bottom line: We reverse the curse in our own lives when we believe the word of God in word and action.INTRODUCTIONOpening story: Curse of the BambinoThe Curse of the Bambino was a superstitious sports curse in Major League Baseball(MLB) derived from the 86-year championship drought of the Boston Red Sox from 1918 to 2004. The superstition was named after Babe Ruth, colloquially known as "The Bambino", who played for the Red Sox until he was sold to the New York Yankees in 1920.[1] While some fans took the curse seriously, most used the expression in a tongue-in-cheekmanner.[2]Babe Ruth as a member of the 1918 Boston Red Sox, the final season before the drought.External imagesPicture of the graffitied "reverse curve" road signRemoval of the sign (then re-graffitied to read "reversed the curse") by a crew including Governor Mitt Romney, following Boston's 2004 World Series victory.Prior to the drought, the Red Sox had been one of the most successful professional baseball franchises. They won five of the first fifteen World Series titles, including the first in 1903, more than any other MLB team at the time.[3]During this period, Ruth was a core contributor to the Red Sox's three championships in 1915, 1916, and 1918. Following the sale of Ruth, however, the once lackluster Yankees became one of the most dominant professional sports franchises in North America and set the record for World Series titles by more than twice the amount of any other MLB team.[4] The curse became a focal point of the Yankees–Red Sox rivalry over the years.Talk of the curse as an ongoing phenomenon ended when the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series.[5] The Red Sox's championship was prefaced by them overcoming a 0–3 deficit against the Yankees in the American League Championship Series (ALCS), the first and, to date, only time an MLB team won a best-of-seven playoff series after losing the first three games.The curse had been such a part of Boston culture that when a "reverse curve" road sign on Longfellow Bridgeover the city's busy Storrow Drive was graffitied to read "Reverse The Curse,"[6] officials left it in place until the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series. After the World Series that year, the road sign was edited to read "Reversed Curse" in celebration.[6]Read Genesis 3:1-19; Revelation 22:1-9CONTEXTWe have seen:Jesus and his churches (1-3)The throne and judgments of God (6-16)The whore, the King, and his bride (17-22)It's also noteworthy that these last 2 chapters of Revelation and of the Bible occur when sin has been abolished from the universe. No more sin, shame, guilt, death—it's all history.Bottom line: We reverse the curse in our own lives when we believe the word of God in word and action.OUTLINEI. Description of the New EdenA. We will be nourished by God. (1-2)Water of lifeTree of lifeLeaves of healingB. We will worship our God. (3)Curse is reversedThrone of GodAppropriate response is worship/service (Latreuo) Ex. Romans 12:1Worship God as Father and LambC. We will see our God. (4)We will see his face.His name will be on our forehead.D. We will reign with our God. (5)In the meantime, accept these invitations (2 of 7):II. Two invitations from God to us as we anticipate the New Eden and the reverse of the curse: (6-9)A. Obey God. (6-7)His words are trustworthy and trueThe Lord sent his angel to show his servants what's comingHe's coming soon!Blessed are the obedientB. Worship God! (8-9)John's signatureJohn's overwhelmed response is and isn't appropriate (faith vs feelings—-> discipline)We're servants who worship and we're worshippers who serveWhen we take a good thing and turn it into a god-thing, we sin and commit idolatryIII. Five more invitations (NEXT WEEK)CONCLUSIONPoem from pg. 409-410-Jim HamiltonBottom line: We reverse the curse in our own lives when we believe the word of God in word and action.PrayLord's Supper, 1 Corinthians 11:17-32OTHER NOTES:OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS:We make Superman out to be a god.God makes Superman out to be a cartoon.A little girl once defined repentance as “Being sorry enough to stop doing it.”Fort Knox holds 173 billion dollars in gold.It has held the nation's gold deposit since 1937.It could create a 20x20x20 ft cube of gold.Now imagine how much gold it would take to create a 12,000x12,000x12,000 foot cube. Now 12,000 stadia! (1,500 miles)!What's the real treasure in the new heaven, earth, body and city?God himself.MAIN COMMENTARY HELP:Exalting Jesus in Revelation by Daniel AkinRevelation by Jim HamiltonRevelation by Paige Patterson, New American Commentary seriesBreaking the Code by Bruce Metzger2020 Sermons by Matt ChandlerESV Global Study BibleBible in One Year by Nicky GumbelBible Knowledge CommentaryThe Outline Bible, WilmingtonDiscipleship on the Edge, Darrell W. JohnsonReplyForward

Tornados, torrential rain, and flash floods are just part of the wild weather unleashed by the remnants of former Hurricane Ida across New England. NightSide producer Nancy Shack joins Dan to relay her experience being trapped in rising water on Storrow Drive in Boston this morning. How was your commute?

Audio Transcript:This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.All right. Well, I guess that's a sign from God that there's no time limit on this sermon. Praise God. If you're new, welcome, and we're so glad that you came early today. The 15 minutes early to the service, it felt like a sacrificed, didn't it? A little bit? Good. Good. That's the whole point. We should just keep doing that every single week, just incrementally change the time. We have coffee in the back. We brought coffee back in. So enjoy. I don't think we have any announcements other than God is good all the time.So let's pray. Heavenly father, we thank you so much that you are a God who loves us. And we do understand that we live in a fallen, sinful world. We have a fallen flesh that seeks satisfaction in sin. We rebel against you. We have that nature. And then we also live in a fallen world. The world is against the church. And on top of that, we have an enemy, Satan and his army of demons, vying for our souls and opposing the work of God. Therefore, we shouldn't be surprised that we lose vision of you, Jesus.Our vision gets cluttered. I pray today, remove that clutter. Jesus, in the same way that you entered the temple with a whip and zeal for the house, we pray, make us a people who are zealous with a holy zeal to cleanse our temple of sin, our personal bodies and souls to ruthlessly fight sin and to also oppose sin in the church when it creeps in or anything that gets added onto the pure gospel of Jesus Christ. Holy spirit, we welcome you into this place. We pray that you lead us, that you equip us.I pray that you today comfort the afflicted and also afflict the comfortable and continue to build your church here in the city. And Lord, we thank you for the privilege of getting to work with you. You don't need us, but we need the invitation. We need the work because that's what shapes us into the image of God and that's what keeps us close to you. And I pray, Lord, make us a church that is as zealous as you are about the church. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.The title of the sermon today is Cleansing the Clutter. This is our Love Jesus Simple series. This is our DNA. It's to refocus us on who we are, our identity, and given our identity, what we do, our activity. And then with our activity, what's the vision? Where are we going? And we talk about love. That we are given the great commandment to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. We're given the great commission that we are to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father, son, the holy spirit, and teaching them to do everything that Jesus taught us.And we have the great compassion where Jesus says that we are to care for the least of these of the world so love. By Jesus, we talked about the living word of God as attested to in the written word of God, the second person of the Trinity that reveals God to us and that reconciles us to God. So we focused on Jesus. And today we're talking about simplicity, to simplify, to get rid of anything that gets in the way of the most important, of the most essential. So we can be a church that majors in the majors.I drive a 2007 Highlander, and I do that on purpose because I can park. It's got three row seating. I've got four kids. I can park it in tight spots. But also, it's old and I don't care if it gets dinged up. It's tremendous. I am not attached to my car at all. Therefore, we have never had it detailed, ever. Ever not once. And then we started looking around, there's crayons from 1980. It's just nasty. I look around and I'm like, "You know what? This is one of the reasons probably why we hate driving this thing."So I took it to a detailing place. My wife took it to a detailing place in Allston. I don't even know the name of it, but I love their little motto: it's a spa for your car. So I went there and they got it detailed and I couldn't recognize the car. It was pristine. And for some reason, I think it started driving better. I don't know if there's a connection, but you know that connection when it's clean and you want to be in that car. So there's something that happens when our houses get cluttered.People are fascinated with hoarders, people that just keep getting... And we watch shows about it. There's a whole movement about deep cluttering and simplifying, focusing on the essentials, living in little homes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So this is why we do this on an annual basis because in the church, there is a tendency for things to get cluttered. Question. If you're new to Mosaic, I have multiple introductions in the introduction. This is my second introduction.Question. How much of your waking hours are spent looking at man-made things? Of your waking hours, how much percentage of that are you looking at man-made things? I'm talking about your apartment. I'm talking about the brick and mortar around us, the asphalt around us. I'm talking about the mediocre transportation. I'm talking about Storrow Drive. My brother and I and my dad were stuck in Storrow Drive traffic yesterday. And my dad looks around and he's like, "This is why I hate cities."He lives in Jamestown, Rhode Island, on the ocean. He's like, "I hate this." I was like, "Imagine living here 12 years." And then, you know what he says? "But there's also a lot of benefits to the city." He does this thing to encourage me, like keep living here. This as important. But just think about how much of your waking hours is man-made things. And on top of that, you're at work. You're staring at a screen all day. And then when you come home, you got your phone. You don't even go to the bathroom without your phone. You're just staring at man-made things all the time. Plus, we're surrounded by unbelievers.Most of us, the only time that we relate with Christians, fellowship with Christians is when we go to church or a community group. So there is so much to be discouraged about because everything manmade is sinful. And on top of that, we're surrounded by people who don't know God. Yes, cities are tremendous because there's so much more of the image of God per square foot and there's also more of the human flesh depravity, the reprobate nature per square foot. Not to mention the demonic oppression when there are so many concentrated souls and Satan is vying for these.So during the week, we lose focus. We lose sight of what's most important. And this is why Sunday morning is so important. This is why community group is so important. This is how I feel about Sunday mornings: I feel like I'm your tour guide. And I pull up and I've got this massive, massive van. I'm like, "Hey, get in. Get in." And I drive you to the mountains. I take my machete and I'm like, "You know what? Grab a machete too because this sermon is going to be hard work."And we're just climbing the mountain with machetes, climbing, climbing. And then you're tired. I'm like, "Have some more coffee, have some more water, caffeine, holy spirit hydration. Let's go." And we're slugging away, machete after machete after machete. And then finally you begin to see a little clear and then finally you get to the top. And I just point you, look to the cross, look to calvary, look to the glory of God. And that fills your soul and you're encouraged. And then we go back down the mountain and we drive you back into the mission that is the mission of God here in the city.And you're like, "Ah, I got to do it all again." Yes. And that's why church is so important. So everything we do at Mosaic is very calculated. It's like a good coach managing the energy of the team, the momentum of the team. It's like a good CEO, who knows the data, who knows the resources at hand and how to strategically invest for the maximum benefit of the organization and everybody. And it's like a good general who knows the soldiers and knows the mission and cares for the soldiers and actually gets off his high horse and says, "I am on the mission here with you. We are on the front lines."I shared the gospel with I think it was a random guy on the street just by saying hi. I said hi to him. He said, "What?" I was like, "I just wanted to say hi." And he's like, "Everything is messed up," and that's not the word he used. He says, "Everything's messed up." I was like, "I know. I know. Politics is messed up and the economy's messed up, everything." And he's like, "Everyone asleep." I was like, "I know. I know. I'm trying to wake them up. I'm trying to wake them up." He said, "To what?" I said, "The true reality." He said, "You know the secret?" I said, "Oh yeah." So he told me he's going to come to church today. So I'm extra pumped. So hopefully he does show up.But this is why we're here. We have zeal for God. We have zeal for God's people and we have zeal for God's house. And we have zeal for the mission of God. This is why the sermon is so important. And I pray that we never lose sight of that. Today, we're in John 2:13-25. Jesus Christ the context is. And the beginning of chapter two, he begins his ministry because mom asked him to. He's at a wedding and they ran out of wine. And that was a major full pot.And Jesus is like, "I know it's a major full pot. You got any water?" They had 180 gallons of water. And he made the most delicious wine that they had ever tasted, not boxed wine, not wine with an animal on it. That's when you know that's not good wine. He made the best wine that they had ever tasted. That was awesome. People know his glory. And the very next thing he does is he enters the temple and he starts cleansing it. So that's our text today in John 2:13.The Passover of the Jews was at hand and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple, he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and the money changer sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, "Take these things away. Do not make my father's house a house of trade." His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me."So the Jews said to him, "What sign do you show us for doing these things?" And Jesus answered them, "Destroy the temple and in three days, I will raise it up." The Jews then said, "It has taken 46 years to build this temple and will you raise it up in three days?" But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When, therefore, he was raised from the dead. His disciples remembered that he had said this. They believed the scripture, the word that Jesus had spoken.Now, when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them because he knew all people. He needed one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man. This is the reading of God, totally and authoritative word. May you write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Two points to frame up our time. First, Jesus is consumed with zeal for God's house. And second, are you consumed with zeal for God's house?Point one begins with Jesus Christ going to Jerusalem at the Passover feast. Now, you got to remember the importance of the Passover feast. What was the Passover feast celebrating? It was celebrating the fact that God led through Moses the people of Israel out of Egypt, after captivity, bondage, oppression for four centuries. And how did God lead them out? Sign after sign, after sign, after sign. And Pharaoh kept hardening his heart, hardening his heart. And then finally God said, "The only way to get you out is through death. The only way to give you life and freedom is through death."God sent the angel of death. The angel of death was going to pass through. And every firstborn in every single household will die, the first son will die, unless the doorframe is painted with the blood of the lamb. Now, whoever believed... This is cookie. This is crazy. They didn't even have the sacrificial system yet. But God was saying your sin, Israel, your sin, Egyptians, your sin deserves death. And the only way to save you is a substitute, a sinless substitute. Someone must die in your place if you are to live.So the Passover feast was for them to remember God's grace. God, you saved me because someone died for me. God, I'm celebrating your love and remembering your wrath for my sin. And all the Passover feast was, it was a big, thank you. God, thank you, thank you, thank you for saving me, for saving us. So we gather annually to do that. And we see in Jerusalem, in the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and he could see the money changer the sitting there. The animals were sacrifice.Deuteronomy, the people of God were told you need to raise the animal yourself. The animal has to grow up with you, grow up with your family. It has to basically be a pet. And then you got to take this animal and you got to take it with you to the temple, however far it takes, however much work it takes. And you need to feel the emotional pain of this animal, the one you knew dying in your place. We have emotional attachments to animals. We do. That's what God was doing. I want you to take your beloved.It's hard to even say, like you're beloved, your dog, your cat. That's what God was doing. But then the religious people realized, okay, that doesn't make practical sense for people to bring the animals. Let's make it a little easier. And you know what? This might solve our funding issue. People aren't tithing as they should be. We've got buildings to build. We've got capital campaigns. We've got staff salaries to pay.So you know what? Let's sell the sacrificial animals at the temple. Let's tell them there. Let's just offer it as a service, just to make it a little more convenient for those whom it's hard to go to worship. And then the people would come and they're like, "Oh, I can buy an animal. Tremendous." And the people that couldn't buy the animal because of price gouging, it's like when you go into the Red Sox, a hotdog is like $80.They got you in there. You're in. You're in. That's it. It's supply and demand. Now, you're in. Okay. Here's the price. So the poor people couldn't do that. So the poor people are bringing their own animals. They're bringing the pigeon. And then the people are like, okay, that adds another layer of difficulty. We've got to solve that problem to continue our streams of income.So they said, we're going to have inspectors. We're going to inspect the animal. Oh, your lamb, it's got a blemish on it. What blemish? There's no blemish. There's a blemish. It's a lemon. You brought a lemon. Well, we have another vehicle that we can sell you. Well, we'll buy this one. You can trade it in for that one. We'll give you 20 bucks for your little lemon lamb. And then we're going to sell you one for a hundred. And the person doesn't have a choice because it's the religious inspectors.It's the first used car dealership right there at the temple. And then on top of that, they would take the little lemon lamb, they would take that lamb and then sell it to the next person. Tremendous income stream. And they're like, you know what? This is great. Let's keep doing this. And then they're like, why are we using Roman currency? Whoever controls the currency, controls everything. So let's create our own currency.They create their own temple currency. They're like we're done with the fiat dollar. We're going to use Bitcoin. That's what we're going to do in the temple. We got our own temple coin. That's what we're going to do. And obviously, when you get there with the money, I'm sorry, your money's not accepted here. So you can trade it in. Obviously, there's a little fee on top, the Coinbase fee of whatever percentage it is. That's what's going on.So they're making money left and right off of whom? Off of people that want to show up to the temple and say thank you to God, to know more about God. So you got extortion and you got corruption. And it's all run by the people who are tasked with the job of telling people that God wants to forgive their sins. So John 2:15, what does Jesus do? Making a whip of cords. And I want to pause here for a second to show how premeditated this was. This wasn't Jesus hot headed, seeing something he doesn't like and going and tossing tables and causing chaos.He deliberately, methodically sits there, prayerfully making a whip, a whip of cords. And he drove them all out with a temple them, the people with the sheep and the oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. Does this Jesus have a place in your theology of God? Because if this Jesus isn't in your theology of God, you don't know God. I understand that some people naturally are not wired to loving this Jesus I am.I love this Jesus. This is my favorite Jesus. This Jesus, when he comes back in Revelation with a sword coming out of his mouth, with a huge tattoo down his leg that said, "Lord of lord and king of kings." I love that Jesus, because that Jesus Christ kill me. And if you can kill me, I'm going to follow you. That's that's how I'm wired. But you need the savage Jesus in your theology. This is the start of his ministry.What did he do for the first three decades of his life? He was a builder. He worked with his dad and he was builder. He built things. So I see, like, he swung a hammer. There were no power tools back then. So if you build stuff, you're yoked. This is yoked Jesus showing up at the temple. Well, how do I know he's yoked? Because he doesn't need two hands to turn over tables. He's got a whip in one hand and he's tossing tables with the other hand. And what is he doing? Jesus Christ, yoked carpenter, cage fighting Jesus. This Jesus is declaring war against the establishment.He's declaring war against the priest and against the temple religious system. He's declaring war against every single person who's getting in the way of people meeting God, people in authority who are getting in the way of people meeting God. That's what sparks his zeal and he makes a whip. And what does he say in verse 16? He told those who sold the pigeons, "Take these things away. Do not make my father's house the house of trade." Jesus, what is motivating you emotionally to do this thing that might bring you to the brink of death.The priesthood has the Roman soldiers at their disposal. They can whack you in a second. Jesus, you're risking everything to do what? What are you motivated by? He's motivated by a love for his father's house. This is my father's house. This is where God, the father, is worshiped, where the children of God gather. This is my house. When I go to my dad's house, I take off my shoes. But the only thing I do diff... Well, I take off my shoes in my house because my wife does the same thing.But at my dad's house, I walk in and I open the fridge. What do we got? What are we eating? It's my too. Is it my house? No, but it is my house. My mom never said, :Make yourself at home." She already knows. Jesus walks into his house. He doesn't take the whip and go to someone else's house. This is my house. This is my house. So we need to clean it out, clean and declutter this house. The main issue is he says, "Why did you make my father's house, a house of trade?" If you want to do the business side and selling the animals, do it outside. Don't do it in the court of Gentiles. That's where they were doing.So in the temple, there's the holy of holies. And there was a place where the men of Israel could enter. And then there was a court of the Gentiles. The court of the Gentiles couldn't go into where they were doing the sacrifices. This is as close to God as they could come. They didn't see how graphic the sacrificial system is. They didn't see it. That wasn't emblazed on their hearts so they understand the gravity of what's going on, that this animal was dying for you.These people want to go to pray. They want to go connect with God. And they find themselves in the midst of bizarre, animals bellowing and bleeding, selling. It's like the New York Stock Exchange on a Friday after noon. You're trying to pray and all that people see is business. And what does that communicate to people that do not know God? What that communicates is these people don't care about God. The people in charge don't care about God. Why should I care about God?If the people in charge have a transactional relationship with God. I give God money, he forgives me of sins. That's what we're doing here. You want your sins atoned for, forgiven? We'll take your money. That's it. Your sins are forgiven. Kind of what the Catholic church did before the reformation. It was the same thing, transaction, business. We're going to build buildings and we're going to fill up the coffers. And then we're going to fill up our own bank accounts. It was the same, same thing, people getting in the way of people worshiping God.So Jesus, in verse 17, his disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me." Zeal for your house will consume me. And probably they remembered these words after the resurrection, from the deeper vantage point of everything they had seen. And what this is, is a quote from Psalm 69:9, "For zeal for your house has consumed me. And the reproaches of those who reproach, you have fallen on me."Now, initially, this was written by David. David is saying he felt a reproach. He suffered reproach because of his zeal for the house of God. Now, it's fascinating, it's both from the Hebrew, Psalm 69, and the sub teigen, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. This is where you got to get your machete ready just for a little bit. We're still swinging. What's important there in the grammar is that tense is in the past tense. For zeal for your house has consumed me. That's a past tense.John turns the past tense into a future. He says, zeal for your house will consume you. It will consume you. Why is that important? Because John is treating the Psalm as a messianic prophecy of the ministry of Jesus. This is the Messiah. This is the prophet who was promised that will come and he will speak God's word to God's people. He's the priest that will come and atone for the sins of God's people. He is the king. He's the anointed one who will force people to submit to his rule.Psalm 69 is one of the six Psalms most often referred to in the New Testament, and Jesus quotes this multiple times, twice in the book of John. John 15:23-25, Jesus starts talking about the fact that people hate him. Whoever hates me hates my father also. And if I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my father. But the word that is written in the law must be fulfilled. They hated me without cause."This isn't they disliked me. This is they despised me. And then John 19:28, Jesus on the cross, "After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said, to fulfill the scripture, 'I thirst." And the jar full of sour wine stood there. So they put a sponge full of the sour wine on the hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. When Jesus received the sour wine, he said, "It is finished," and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit of prophecy, again, written in Psalm 69, fulfilled in Christ.What happened to king David happened much more to an infinite degree more to David's great descendant, the Messiah, Jesus Christ. David wanted to build the temple. He loved the place of God, the worship of God. He loved it. He suffered a reproach for it. Jesus Christ loved it and suffered reproach for it. But ultimately, it wasn't the temple that he really cared about. It was the presence of God that people were thwarted of entering.And then Jesus Christ ultimately to destroy that temple allows the temple of his body to be destroyed as fulfillment of the temple and replacement of rights and sacrifice. And what's so resoundingly clear from this text is that Jesus Christ was opposed. There was outright hostility from the religious people. And then at the end of the text, we see people, "Oh, we like Jesus. He's awesome."And Jesus, it says, did not entrust himself to them because he knew what was in them. He knew how fickle people were. So you've got hostility from the representatives of God and superficial loyalty from everyone else, which is just a sugar coated hostility. And yes, in our culture, that hostility crowd is growing. You tip people's holy cows and see how zealous they become. The holy cows of gender, sexual identity. How things should be set up in the church. You tip holy cows, you tell people that what they do in their house...I'm not coming into your house to clean it. I'm not doing that. I'm making a whip, but I am proclaiming God's word. And when you hear God's word and are offended by it, that's the point to awaken you. That's the point. I don't go into your house with a whip and I pray, dear friend, return the favor. Do not come to our house with your own whip, trying to change Jesus, change God, change God's word. You know why?Because if we allow you or someone to do that, hypothetically, it's not anyone sitting here. Hypothetically, if we allow you to come in and change God, change God's word, change how God told us to do things, then Jesus is going to come with a whip. And who is he going to start with? Me. Me. So I don't want to do that. I don't want to mess with Jesus. I want to snuggle with Jesus like the apostle John. I want that. Don't kill me, please. Thanks. That's the Jesus that I want.So I want to stay in his good graces. That's what's going on. So on the one side, people are growing in hostility to God. So to those people who are like, "Yeah, Jesus got a whip." So that's what we preach. And then to the other people, there's just a superficial loyalty, "I love Jesus." And I see this with a lot of young people. You show up to church and I already know why you're here. You're here because you want to marry someone. Tremendous.So don't fake it. Don't fake being a Christian. Don't fake it. Don't ruin someone else's life. And if you're faking it, you're not going to discern if the other person is actually solid Christian. So that's what I'm saying. Like the superficial loyalty, Jesus rejected that as well. And you know what happens? As soon as Christianity gets difficult, the profession of faith just disappears. It's just gone.And you need to be ready right now. You need to say in your heart, "Okay. If the Taliban knocks on my door and says right now, 'Bring out your daughters to me just because you're a Christian." What are you going to do? Are you ready to suffer for the faith. That's a decision you've got to make now. And Jesus Christ said, "Take up your cross and follow me daily." Meaning there will be a price to pay.Jesus comes and he starts with his own. John 1:11, "He came to his own and his own did not receive him. They were convinced they were loving God by hating the son of God." And that's an important word. The religious elites crucified Jesus thinking they were loving God. The things humans can get away with when they think they are doing God's will. Stalin went to seminary. Stalin was a trained pastor. He thought he was doing what's best for humanity.Be careful that in the name of something you call good, that you don't create barriers for people to meet God. And that's a word to us, to Christians. I've seen this. I grew up in a church like this. I grew up in a church I didn't want to go to. There were barriers there. Do you think boy bands were cool? Then, they were never cool. But before boy bands took off here, they took off in my Russian church.We had four dudes show up that can't sing, but they got slicked back here. I was one of the boys. We did that one time. Dennis, remember that? We did that one time. And then I looked back and I cringe. No wonder my friends didn't want to go to that church. They didn't preach the word. They didn't explain that this is real, that Christianity impacts every single day. How real this truly is.Because we were paying attention to the color of the carpet. That's what we talked about at member's meeting, not saving people, not bringing people to church and seeing people meet Jesus. Not once did I see someone who's an unbeliever show up and say, "You know what? I have no Christian background and I want to become a Christian." I didn't see that once. And I couldn't take my friends to church because they didn't speak Russian.So that's what I'm saying. Christians have this tendency to add stuff to church that keeps people away from seeing the point. And the point is that you are a sinner, that God's wrath is upon you, you deserve Jesus whip and ultimately his sword. But Jesus Christ came and he was consumed with zeal so much so that the one that came with the whip allowed himself to be whipped, allowed himself to be scorched, tied to a pole, shirt taken off. Roman brutal machines of death whipped him with a cat o' nine tails and at the end of every single one of those strands was a rock or a piece of bone to get his back and flesh, to get pulled.So he allows it so that you don't have to, so you don't have to bear his wrath, so you don't have to bear his sword of judgment. That's the point. And Jesus came and he said, that's it. That's what I'm trying to say. I am your only hope to salvation. And that's why the people who are closest to him and heard the message closest to him, most of them hated him.A lot of us think, people, if they just knew how great Jesus was, they'd love him. This is a lie. This is a lie. And that's why people are like, "Oh, don't read that text. Don't read that text." When people really understood who Jesus was, the few, the select, the chosen, they became Christians. Everybody else despised him. They wanted to kill him outright. Why? Why would people hate Jesus?Because the same Jesus who tenderly says, "Come onto me all of you are burdened and heavy laden and I will give you rest." The same Jesus made a whip of cords, drove people out of the temple, scattered and upset, their animals, overturned their tables, scattered all their money. And how does that make you feel? That's an important question. If you really understand, how does that make you? Did Jesus hurt their feelings? Yeah.Wasn't there another way, Jesus? Could you not have like sat down with them and had a conversation, give them a little therapy, brokered a little deal. And like, hey, you guys are doing this wrong. Let me point you to God's word. Do a little Bible study. No, it's not what he does. Because that's not enough to awaken them. What they needed was someone to come in and to hit them where it hurts most, in the pocket book and the ego.And to know that they don't care about the thing that he cares about most. And if they don't care about the thing that he cares about most, they will suffer consequence. So what did he care about most? In John 2:17, his disciples remembered that it was written zeal for your house will consume me. The word zeal comes from the word deboil, like boiling water. That's inside. It's boiling. His blood is boiling.And obviously, there's lots of examples in scripture of unholy zeal. Like when Peter who just woke up from sleep and watching Jesus get arrested, he's like, "Ah, I'm zealous. I'm going to chop off this guy's head," and only gets the ear. And then Jesus is like, "What are you doing?" That's unholy zeal. And St. Paul says there's people that have zeal not according to knowledge, but Jesus' zeal was holy.There was nothing wicked about it. His zeal is as holy as his love and his gentleness and his grace. His zeal was his love. He was zealous because he was so loving. Zeal is love made angry because the thing you love, the one you love is being hurt. That's what's going on here. Jesus loves God. He loves the house of God. And he sees that what these people are doing is pulling people away from God.And one of the ways that they were trying to pull people away from God was trying to make it easier, trying to make the church more palatable, God more palatable. Okay. You don't have to raise the animal. We'll do it for you. We'll make it more efficient. We'll make it more timely, more convenient. What better convenience than to sell the sacrificial animals there? A one-stop-shop worship.They took the pain out of worship. They took the pain out of worship. They began to encourage lazy worship, loveless worship, sacrificeless worship, and they catered to their consumer mentality. You come in, you pay, you receive, and creating a customer mentality. And then customers. Well, the customer is always right. If it's a business, if church is primarily a business, the customer is always right.A lot of churches do that. The customer is always right. So that's what we're going to preach. You know how many people you can attract with a message like that? Joel Osteen fills a football stadium primarily because he has nice hair and a beautiful smile and a wonderful jawline and he serves ice cream. He just gives people ice cream. That's all he does. Pay me I give you ice cream. Pay me I gave you...He looked at the church and he's like, "I can offer you ice cream for your soul." You go there, you're uplifted, you're encouraged. Everything is awesome. Wonderful. He doesn't call me to do any of this. This is tremendous. You show up here and I say, "Grab your machete. We're going to war. This is what we do." We pull you to work. You show up, you have a pulse, we tell you about Jesus and we'll give you a job.That's what we do. Because that's the best thing for you. I grew up painting with my dad, who likes painting if your house looks bad. Don't get mad. Tremendous. I was six years old. He's like, "You want to work with me tomorrow?" I said, "Tremendous." I show up to work and I'm working. Was I good? No, I was terrible. He didn't need me there. I needed to be there more than he needed me to be there.I needed the service. I needed to learn how to work hard. I needed to learn how to sacrifice. And that's why God gave us sacrificial systems. That's why, when God says, "I want to forgive your sins. And also, take up a cross and follow me." And that's why God does talk about wrath. He talks about for every instance of God's love and mercy and grace in holy scripture, there's three instances of his wrath and damnation and hell.Why does he do that? So when he saves people, they understand what they're saved from. So they're motivated to give all of their life, all of their zeal to save those who are not yet Christians. And here, these people didn't care about it. John 2:18, the Jews said to him, "What sign do you give us for showing these things?" And what's fascinating is their demand betrays them. It betrays the fact that they know that he's not a kook, that he's not just a revolutionary.They feel his authority and they saw it in his eyes. And what they're saying is not, "Oh, teach us how to change the worship. Teach us what we're doing wrong." No, they didn't care about that. They cared that he was tipping their holy cow of authority. And that's why he's like, "You want to sign? Here's the sign, destroy this temple. And in three days, I'll raise it up." Obviously, he's not talking about destroying the temple. that's what they used in order to arrest him after and those are the insults that were hurled at him as he's hanging on the cross. And he's not talking about this temple, he's talking about destroy this temple. That's the sign that...A lot of people are like, "I believe in God. If there was a sign from God." There is a sign from God. A guy lived, a guy died, and a guy came back from the dead. That's the sign. And that's the sign that everybody gets. God is an all equal opportunity sign giver. Everybody gets the same sign. Tremendous. But you've got to believe in it. You got to understand why he's on the cross. You got to understand what he did for us.What's fascinating is the same zeal with which he started his ministry, that was the same zeal with which he did his ministry. Him cleansing the temple was just a sign of everything else that's coming. Everything he taught. The Jews had 618 laws. This is what you got to obey in order to be made right with God. And Jesus is like you can't be made right with God unless you believe in me. And then the 618, let's just condense it. Let's put it in a shot glass, distill, two commands. Love God and love people. Tremendous. Go do it.They want to sit around and have Bible studies instead of doing the stuff that is in the Bible. So Jesus starts his ministry by cleansing the temple, cleanses the people of God, and ends his ministry doing the same thing. And this is what a lot of Christians owner of Stan. This action, what Jesus did is so important to our theology. He does it twice. He does it at the beginning of his ministry, in John 2, and then he does it at the end of the ministry. And Matthew, Mark, and Luke all have that second one.And the context says in Matthew 21, Jesus enters Jerusalem on the holy week, enters in the holy week as the king. Everyone's screaming out, "Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna." And then as a king, he enters the temple again to do the same thing. And that's Matthew 21:12-17. Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple. And he overturned the tables of the money changers and seats of those who sold pigeons.And he said to them, "It is written, my house shall be called the house of prayer, but you make it a den of robbers. And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple and he healed them. And when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, 'Hosanna to the son of God,' they were indignant. And they said to him, 'Do you hear what these are saying?' And Jesus said to them, 'Yes. Have you never read, out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise.' And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there." He did the same thing. This time, he adds, you've made my house a house of prayer.You've made a den of robbers. He calls it my house, and this is my house. I'm in my house. And you made it a den of robbers. And here he quotes Jeremiah 7, where God tells Jeremiah, go into the temple and preach the sermon. And in that sermon, Jeremiah accuses his contemporary as bringing into the temple all of their sins. So it's not even just about the sacrificial system. It's about the fact that you don't use it.The sacrificial system, the whole point of it was raise a little lamb, care for it, love it, walk it all the way down to the temple and watch it's throat slit for your sins so that you go home and you remember the bleeding of that sheep that you loved and that's to motivate you to live a sinless life, a holy life, a life of zeal toward God. So Jeremiah says to these people in verse eight, "Behold, you trusted deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear false, make offerings to Baal and go after other gods that you have not known. And then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name and say, 'We are delivered,' only to go on doing all these abominations.""Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it," declares the Lord. What they were doing, but this is what's happening in so many American churches today, so so many. You go in and you're like, "Oh, Jesus is the new sacrificial system? Tremendous. I'm going to sin all week. I'm going to live a godless life." Zeal for sin instead of a zeal for the savior. And then you come in on a Sunday, oh yeah, I committed adultery. Okay. Let's repent of that. I stole. Let's repent of that. I worshiped other idols. Okay. I swore falsely, let's repent.I murdered someone. Jesus said, if you hate someone in your heart, that's tantamount to murder, meaning they didn't care about Gods will at all. They just used God. So Jesus quotes these words to these people, den of robbers. And he inflamed their zeal. And that's what got him killed. Ultimately, his zeal did consume him. Ultimately, he did die for us. Jesus was zealous for God. And they were zealous for self power, money, status, positions. And the same battle raging in their hearts is raging in every single heart today.Jesus wants to cleanse your heart of sin. He wants to enter your life with not a whip. Right now, in this life, while you're alive, he wants to enter your heart with mercy and love and grace and forgive you, cleanse you with his blood. This is the beauty. Jesus wants to cleanse you with his blood, not his whip. The whip comes later. But if you bow your knees to Jesus Christ, if you repent of sin in this life, while you're alive, everything is forgiven.You talk about great business models. You could talk about great deals, you could talk about streams of income, all that. This is the greatest deal in the history of the universe. All of your sins are forgiven. So repent. But once you do, you need to know, he expects something from you. He expects you to live zealously for him. And this is point two, Jesus is consumed with zeal. Oh, wow. Point two is going to be really fast. That's why I needed the timer. Dangerous.Okay. Are you consumed with zeal for God's house? When you see this Jesus with a whip, how does that make you feel? It should make you feel that, hey, I don't know if I'm as zealous as he is for God's house, for God. And we're all zealous for something. And you just follow your time, talent, treasure, where your skills are used, where your time is used, where your treasure is used, where it goes naturally, that's what you're most zealous about.And we need to ask ourselves, are we zealous for God? Are we zealous for God's temple? And God's temple obviously is in Jerusalem. Now, God's temple is the church universal, lived out in the church local. And again, I have this conversation all the time. People are like, "I'm a Christian, I'm part of the universal church." That's like me going to you and saying, "Are you a human being?" And they say, "Yeah, I'm part of the human race."Do you have a body? If not, you're Casper the Friendly Ghost. Same thing. Are you a Christian? Are you part of the universal church? Are you part of the local church? If you're not a part of a local church, you're probably not alive. That was the love sermon or the Jesus sermon. I don't know. I preach the same thing every week. Are you zealous for God's work. Are you zealous to please God?Are you zealous to declutter your own soul and life of sin? And your answer, I want you to look at the data. I want you to look at the evidence. If you say I'm zealous for God, look at the data. Where does your time naturally go? Where does your money naturally go? Where do you thoughts naturally go? Look at the data. Study yourself. Show me the receipts that you are zealous. And also, is there anything better to consume your life than zeal for God's house? Is there anything better?If you know me personally, when I get zealous about something, I get zealous. So when I talk about God's word, I am... If I'm not sweating profusely, like I'm at a workout, I'm a CrossFit right now, then I'm not even trying. No. When I get zealous about something, I go all in. I went vegan one time. I dropped like 40 pounds. I was yellow by the end of that. And after that, I started powerlifting. Go completely. I get zealous.I became an amateur boxer just for fun. I get zealous. And the whole time with all of my different whatever, I'm zealous for the church of God. I love the church. I love this church. I love it. I love the scriptures. I love the church. I want to give all of myself to it. And I remember reading J.I. Packer, Knowing God. And he has this section about the zeal of God. If you know God, you have to be zealous for God.And this little section, it's chapter 17 of Knowing God, it changed my life. He says zeal and religion of Christianity is a burning desire to please God, to do his will, to advance his glory in the world in every possible way. It is the desire which no man feels by nature, which the spirit puts in the heart of every believer when he is converted, by which some believers feel so much more strongly than others that they alone deserve to be called zealous men.In religion, Christianity is preeminently a man of one thing. It is not enough to say that he's earnest, hearty, uncompromising, thorough going, whole-hearted, fervent in spirit. He only sees one thing, cares for one thing. He lives for one thing. He's swallowed up by one thing, and that one thing is to please God, whether he lives or whether he dies, whether he has health or whether he has sickness, whether he is rich, whether he is poor, whether he pleases man or whether he gives offense, whether he's thought wise or whether he is thought foolish, whether he gets blame or whether he gets praise, whether he gets honor, whether he gets shamed.For all this, the zealous man cares nothing at all. He burns for one thing, and that one thing is to please God, to advance God's glory. If he is consumed in the very burning, he cares not for it. He's content. He feels like that, like a lamp. He is made to burn. And if consumed in burning, he has done the work for which God appointed him. Such a one will always find a sphere for his zeal. If he cannot preach, work, give money, he will cry inside and pray.If he can not fight in the valley with Joshua, he will do the work with Moses and Aaron on the hill. And if he is cutoff from working himself, he will give the Lord no rest till help is raised up from another quarter. And the work is done. This is what I mean when I speak of zeal and religion. May God make us men and women of zeal. And that's going to absolutely ever change the world.Revelation 3:15, 16, 19. "I know your works. You're neither cold nor hot. I would that you were either cold or hot. So because you were lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth." Those are the words of Jesus. "Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline. So be zealous and repent." Titus 2:11-14, "For the grace of God," that's our salvation, "Has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and live self-controlled upright and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope.""The appearing of the glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for God's work." And then practically, how does this work? As a church, we focus all of our attention on three things. And those three things are meant to fire up your zeal to the Lord.It's not the only things that we do, but this is where we focus our energy: on our worship services, on our community groups, and our service teams. Acts 2, that's what the early church did. At my house, I live with five females. They're wonderful. They're my favorite roommates. We do three things in my house. We worship God. We talk about God all the time. We read scripture. We pray. We talk about God all the time. My daughter, Milan, is four. She was visiting her aunt and her aunt said, "Do you love God?" She said, "Yeah." And her aunt said, "Why?"And we're expecting, "Oh, he made me. He gives me good stuff. He feeds me." She's like, "Because he told me to." Oh man, that's good. That's good. Love because he's God. That's tremendous. That's great theology. So we love each other. We love each other. We worship God. We love each other. We fellowship and we serve each other. That's every good family. Worship. God, tell each other that you love each other, spend time together, and then serve each other.That's what we do. We worship God. We fellowship in community groups. And if you aren't in one, join one. And then we serve on a weekly basis. And why do we do this? We do this to fire up our faith. And at the center of all of that is the holy scriptures. Jesus Christ, after his resurrection, with the disciples walking the road to Emmaus, he just gave him a Bible study and their hearts burned that they were fired up for the mission of God.So everything we do in our worship service, community groups, and service teams, we do with scripture at the center. So if you're like, "I am so zealous for God right now. I am so pumped." Now we're descending down the mountain and we're about to get back in the van and drive back into the city. I am so pumped. What can you do? Well, I've got a job for you. I've got jobs. And I've got a slide with jobs.Oh, this is what we need. We need help. In operations, we need 10 greeting team members, 12 tear down team members, which is tear down in setup is tremendous if you like working out and you pay money for that. You can just get rid of your membership and come to church. Six security team members, six special events team members. So all of this. Production is a little harder because for production, portfolios are required.So if you've got a photography, video, you need skills. Sorry. We believe God's perfect. So everything we try to do here, we try to do with excellence. So if you stink, don't sign up there. And then mini Mosaic, we need to nursery assistants, prayer. Crucial. We need three prayer team members and two intercessory prayer team members, in particular, men. This is requested. Why? And you're like, is that misogynistic that we want particularly men for the team? We want everybody. But right now the team is carried by women.Gentlemen, sign up. Tremendous. You're welcome. So that's that. So if you'd like to sign up, tremendous, brookline.mosaicboston.com/serve, or you can go to the app. Conclusion. I had conversation this week with a girl from the church that got a job and she's working at this job. It's a brand new job in a city. One of the things that they do and one of the benefits that they include is they want to motivate their people.One of the services that they had included, they invited this guy in, who was a guy who's like he created a business for himself, like gathering people in his living room, like people are working, company execs, and he would all force them to cook together. They cook a meal together. So everyone's on the same plane. The guards go down. They all eat the meal together. They sit around on a circle and the guy asked one question.And the reason why they do this and the reason why it's so effective is because apparently they found out that companies where people are thankful to be there are so much more successful. And this is the one question that they ask and they talk about, who is the person in your life that you have never thought to say thank you to? I heard that and I was like aaah. I'm getting goosebumps now.That's so powerful. Who's the one person in your life that you never thought to say thank you? And I knew right away. I knew exactly, second grade Mrs. Wodziak, little Polish lady. And I was still in ESL at that time. And I will never forget, it's Christmas time and we had to bring gifts. We had to do the Santa swamp thing. You had to bring a gift and then one of the other kids gets your gift and you get one of their gifts. It was tremendous. And I brought the gift. I don't remember what I brought. And I saw the biggest box under the tree.Because all the kids got to sit there for like weeks looking at all these presents. And they scoped out the biggest one and it came up and I held it up. It was weighty. I was like, this is the one. And I stole it. Second grade. So obviously, on the day of getting the gifts, some kid is not going to have a gift. The day comes and finally they're like, it's the last person. The last person has no gift. There's no present for the little kid. I'm sitting there with my two gifts. Peace to Jenna at second grade.And then Mrs. Wodziak pulls out a present from under her desk, same size. And the kid opens up. It was the same thing that I stole, 64 crayons. You remember those boxes? Same thing to this kid. I'm like, obviously she knew I stole it. She knew. And she gave me mercy. And then in secondary, we took a field trip to Sturbridge village and all the kids had money. I didn't know we were supposed to bring money. Also, my immigrant parents were like, "Money for what? You're lucky we feed you." So then we get to Sturbridge and all the kids are buying stuff and they bought yo-yosAnd I was like, oh, man, I wish I got a yo-yo. I was scoping out one to steal. And then Mrs. Wodziak comes up to me with a green yo-yo. And I never said thank you. I think she was a believer. She's the one that taught me in one fell swoop about mercy. You don't get what you deserve. And grace. You got what you didn't deserve. That's a powerful question. And I want you to ask that question. What's the one person that you've never thought to say thank you? I want you to say thank you to them if they were alive.I want to pause right now and say thank you to the members of this church and everyone who serves, gives time, talent, treasure for zeal. You're zealous for God. So thank you. Praise God for you. And I'll just end with this. The reason why that question is so powerful, because I've been thinking about that all week. I'm like, why is that so powerful? I know. I know. Because there's one that most people who are alive have never said thank you to. You've never even said thank you. God, thank you.Thank you for giving me life and God, thank you for dying on the cross for my sins, not giving me the wrath that I deserve, and then giving me love and mercy and grace that I don't deserve. God, thank you. So in terms of love, Jesus, simple, and simplicity, that's what we're going to focus on, worshiping God. So let's worship him together. Heavenly father, we do come to you and we just say thank you.We thank you that you're a great God and a holy God. And we thank you, Jesus, that though we deserve the whip, you took it for us. We deserve the cross, you took it for us. We deserve the wrath of God, you took it for us in order to forgive us and give us mercy and then also give us grace. And make us the people who are motivated with gratitude, with thanksgiving, and zealous for you, zealous for your house, zealous for your people, and zealous for the mission of God. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

For the second time this summer, Matt McCarthy has had enough with box trucks getting stuck of Storrow Drive.

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston and our neighborhood churches, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com.Usually about this time of the year, we do this every year, where we focus on the DNA of Mosaic. The reason why we do this is because every single organization has mission leak or mission creep, where they forget why we exist. So we remind ourselves of why we exist and we communicate that with the three words, love Jesus simple. This is our DNA. Why do we use the word DNA? DNA is the information within every single organism that gives identity, that dictates function, how we are going to function, and it dictates the activity of this organism. I use the word organism because church is an organism. It's not just an organization. Church is alive. Jesus Christ says that the church is His body. It's alive. It's an organism. And the church is His bride. It's alive. It's an organism. And that's why we use the word DNA. The DNA is the blueprint, it's the recipe, the code for who we are.Last week we talked about love is the motive for everything that we do, because love was the motive for everything Jesus did. Jesus Christ loved God and loved people by primarily loving the church. So we do the same. And today we're talking about Christ as Christ is the center of everything that we are. He is our identity, and He as we proclaim Him, His word, that we proclaim Christ crucified, that is the power of God onto salvation. St. Paul said, "The power of God is in the gospel for anyone who believes." The reason why we do this series is to remind ourselves of the mission of God. CS Lewis says, "There exists in every church something that sooner or later works against the very purpose for which it came into existence." So we must strive very hard, by the grace of the church focused on the mission that Christ originally gave to it.At the center is Jesus Christ. He's the center of everything we do. He's the main point of everything we do. He's the main point of the Christian life, of the Christian faith. And this is our message that your happiness, your eternal happiness, the eternal happiness of every single person wholly depends on Jesus Christ, what you do with His life, death, burial, and resurrection. If you believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins, you are saved by grace through faith, saved meaning you need to be saved. By grace is a gift from God, and it happens when you believe that Jesus Christ didn't just die, He died for your sins. When you believe that Jesus didn't just come to show us the way to God, that He is the only way to God. It sounds outrageous, I know, and it always has. But when the message is proclaimed, people do get saved. So that's why we do this on a weekly basis.Our text for today is 1 Corinthians 1:18-25, 1 Corinthians 1:18-25. I didn't bookmark it, so let's see if Pastor Jan knows his Bible. Oh yeah, right there, 1 Corinthians 1:18, "For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. For it is written: 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.' Where's the one who is wise? Where's the scribe? Where's the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God."For the foolishness of God is wiser than men and weakness of God is stronger than men. Consider your calling, brothers. Not many of you are wise according to worldly standards; not many were powerful; not many were of noble birth. But God shows what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of Him, you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption. So that as it is written, 'Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.'"And I, when I come to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and fear and much trembling. And my speech, my message were not implausible words of wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God." This is the reading of God's holy and infallible, authoritative Word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts.Why do we preach Jesus Christ crucified? That's why. I can just say amen and pray. That's why. The scripture says, "For each Christ crucified, that's all we do." Did St. Paul write to the church in Corinth? Did he tell them any other things other than Christ crucified? Yeah, of course, he did. But the central message that impacts everything else is that Jesus Christ died on a cross for our sins. Three points to frame up of our time. First, the cross is folly. The cross is power. And the cross is wisdom. St. Paul starts with where everyone knows the first time you hear the message. The secret to the universe, the secret to reality, the secret to understand yourself, the people around you, the secret to understand all the world history is the fact that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sin. The fact that when you hear that, the first time you ever hear, the natural reaction is: "It's folly. It's foolish to believe. You believe this? You gather on a Sunday to proclaim it? You believe this?"Yes, it sounds folly. That's the point. In verse 18, "For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing. But to those who are being saved, it is the power of God." On the one hand, yes, it's folly, but it's also power. Let's start with it's folly. St. Paul in this text, he talks about two groups of people, the Jews, and he talks about the Greeks. The Jews he's talking about, religious Jews, that grew up with the mosaic law, the 10 commandments that God gave through Moses. They believed that they were religious. They believed that they could save themselves through their own efforts. And then the group, the Greeks on the other hand were too sophisticated. The Jews are too religious for Jesus. The Greeks are too sophisticated.So we start with the Jews. For the Jews, the cross was a scandal, scandalous to say that God became man. It was scandalous to say that God's Messiah was crucified. That's like saying God sends a king who then loses, He's crucified. It was an impediment to them, first of all, because in law of Moses, there's a Bible verse in Deuteronomy that says, "Cursed is anybody who hangs on the tree." So when St. Paul comes in, when the disciples come in, they say, "Our Messiah died on a cross." They looked at text, and like, "You're saying our Messiah was cursed? That's blasphemous." On top of that, they hated even the idea of crucifixion because so many of their countrymen died through persecution. The Romans would come in, and anytime there was an insurrection, they would take all of the people, hundreds and thousands of them, and on the way into the city put up cross after cross after cross and execute people. So for Jews to hear that your Messiah was executed through crucifixion, they had the same visceral, emotional antagonism to it as telling a 20th-century that your Messiah died in a concentration camp. The same visceral reaction.Besides the cross, telling Jews that the Son of God died was ludicrous. They had a high view of the divine transcendent God. They had a very inflexible commitment to monotheism, that God is one. It was in their Shema. It was blasphemous to say that there's a second person, there's trinity, there's God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, but it's one God, three persons. That was blasphemous to them. So they had theological, intellectual, emotional opposition to it. And we see it all culminating in St. Paul. Paul before he became Paul, he was Saul. He studied under Gamaliel. He's the greatest theologian, probably theological mind to have existed probably second to Jesus Christ.What did Paul do in his early ministry? Well, he thought that he was doing God's work by persecuting Christians. When he heard about Christian, when he heard about Jesus Christ dying on the cross, that this is the Messiah, he had such a visceral reaction that he wasn't just motivated to speak out against it. It wasn't just about him not liking the message. He would actually physically hunt down Christians, persecuting them to the point of terrorizing them and then killing them. And that ministry started with him watching the death, the stoning, physical stones were thrown at the first martyr, Stephen, and Paul was there. He hated that message. And what changed his mind was when he met Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus.So for the Jews, the religious people, they had a visceral reaction against this truth. And for the Greeks, they just felt too sophisticated to believe that their hope, their eternal happiness, eternal life hinges on what they do to a carpenter who then became an itinerant rabbi who died in Judea on a Roman cross and that crucifixion had anything to do with God. Because there was a stigma attached to crucifixion. The elite Greeks and the Romans were embarrassed that this was even a part of their society. The scholars who study the writings of the Greco-Roman literature at that time, they point out the fact it's rarely ever mentioned. It's like the French never talking about the guillotine.This is in us. They would rewrite their own history. They didn't want it to be part of what they did as a society. Crucifixion was regarded as the worst form of death. It was worse than dying in an arena where animals, beasts were released from trap doors. They weren't fed for days and released to tear Christians limb from limb. Dying in an arena eaten by animals was considered more noble and honorable than being crucified. Being crucified was worse than even being burned to death. Crucifixion was that brutal, and any person that was crucified left a legacy as being the worst kind of criminal scum. That's why the early churches was ridiculed, mocked for worshiping. And they said, "An evil man. Your God is a criminal. Your God was crucified. How can you believe this?"Archeologists excavated the quarters of the Imperial pages in the Palatine Hill in Rome. It dates back to the third century, so the 200s. In it, they found this carving on a wall, and it's a picture of a little boy who's got his hand raised as if he's worshiping someone on a cross. It was a body on a cross. And instead of a head, they put a head of a donkey. And underneath it said, "Alexamenos worships his God." Little boys were mocking a Christian little boy who worshiped Jesus Christ dying on the cross. It was blasphemous for them to believe this is true. And you can Google it, Alexamenos worships his God, to see the depiction.Not many people worship someone who's been executed with an electric chair. No one puts little electric chairs around their necklace or a needle for lethal injection. No one hangs a noose around their neck as a little symbol of something great. No one does it with a guillotine. Yet we do as Christians. We wear little crosses to remind ourselves that our savior died on a cross, experienced excruciating pain. We had to come up with a word to describe just how bad crucifixion was. We worship a Savior who died the death of the most heinous, monstrous criminal. And on top of all of this, for the Greeks and the Romans to tell them, "It wasn't some political statesman like Cesar who died for your sins. And it wasn't some philosopher like Socrates who died for your sins. It was just some obscure carpenter, amateur rabbi." And here come the Christians proclaiming what? Proclaiming the secret to human life is found in some rabble-rousing rabbi from a distant Judea, telling people that the meaning of life is found in the life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension of Jesus Christ.And as we do so, that was crazy then, it's just as crazy now. It's always been crazy to get up and to tell someone, "Hey, unless you believe in Jesus Christ that He died on the cross for your sins, you're going to spend eternity in hell, apart from God." that's always nuts. It's always crazy to say that. But that's what the early church did in the beginning. And that's what we continue to do. And by the way, here's the other challenge of doing that. The moment you say that, that very moment, what else are you saying? What else am I saying when I say Jesus Christ is the only way to go? What am I saying? I'm saying there's no other way. I'm saying there's no other way. So what I'm saying is every other way is wrong, every other way is a lie. Jesus Christ is the only way. Right, that doesn't feel good. That sounds so intolerant.If there was another way, then Jesus Christ would not have had to die on a cross. It was the only way. That's what it took. There's no other way. So yes, I'm standing up here, and I am saying that everything else is wrong. Islam is wrong. Buddhism is wrong. Atheism is wrong. Secular is wrong. It's all wrong. And you saying Jesus Christ is one of them, that's wrong too. When our world hears that, they say, "That's folly. That's folly." But for us, we love this message. Yes, it's naturally repugnant. Yes, it's naturally faintly ridiculous. But it's also wonderful to us. What makes us think it's so wonderful? How could anyone think this is wonderful? How could anyone give their life to this message? Give their life for this message? Give their time, talent, treasure to invest resources in the propagation of this message? It's so improbable, so unsophisticated. It's so offensive to our culture or taste. It's foolish.But it's got power. And that's why we do what we do. This is the only thing that can really save us. And this is the second point, that the cross is power. 1 Corinthians 1:22-25, "For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men." So the Jews would say, "Hey, we want more evidence. We want more signs. We want signs like Moses. Moses did the signs as he led the people of God out of Egypt, out of captivity. We're looking for the same political Messiah, and we want signs to go along with it.For the Greeks, they want sophia or wisdom. Their civilization astounded the world with its progress. Their advances caused many to abandon belief in traditional God. We want something that polished. The Jews said, "We want something religious." These guys said, "We want something really, really polished." St. Paul comes in and he says, "The greatest sign that God could give is that God the Son, Son of God, Son of man died on the cross for our sins, and He came back from the dead." For the Jews, a crucified Messiah was an oxymoron, like a married bachelor. For the Greek, it wasn't so much more irreverent, it was just ridiculous. But St. Paul says, "There's another piece, there's another element. It's not just this message. It's not just information. This information, when God the Holy Spirit takes it and applies it to your heart, when the God of grace gives a man, a woman by the Spirit of God a brand new heart, summons that heart to Himself, what was first thought as foolish is recognized as the deepest wisdom. Initially thought as weak and silly, it's nothing less than the actual power of God.This is where the power is. The power source is the proclamation that Jesus Christ died for your sins. Karl Barth in the 20th century was probably one of the most influential theologians. At the end of his life, he was giving a lecture in the '70s in Princeton, theological lecture. At the end, he was doing a Q&A, and one person asked him, "Hey, Dr. Barth, you have read tens of thousands of theological tomes. You've written hundreds of theological tomes. If you could synthesize the greatest, the greatest truth that you discovered, the greatest nugget of gold to share with us from your vast experience, what would it be? And he said, "That's easy. Jesus loves me, this I know for the Bible tells me so." That's it. That's our message.Jesus loves us so much that He was willing to die on the cross for our sins. And when you realize, when it goes from, oh, Jesus did that thing to He died for my sins, my particular sin, when God reveals the darkness of your sin to you, the cross becomes life and life when you realize that nothing short of the death of the Son of God would be adequate to atone for our sins. And this is what we do every single week that I stand up here and I just remind you how evil you are, that you don't understand yourself, you don't understand the world, you don't understand anything. You don't understand parenting. You don't understand that they are born as little evil, cute little baby. They're evil. You're evil. You don't understand marriage unless you understand it's two evil people getting married. You don't understand the economy unless you understand it's evil people. Politics, it's all evil people. It's all evil. You don't understand any of them unless you understand that we're all evil. And it took Jesus Christ dying on the cross for our sin.Every single person, there's two realities to you, to every single person. The first one is who you are on paper. The first one is whom you project yourself to be to the world. It's what you have achieved. It's what you look like. It's your LinkedIn, it's your social media. That's one part of you. And then there's the real part of you, the daily life part of you, the no one's in your car when you're on Storrow Drive part of you. My wife tells me, "Don't forget that our back windows are tinted, but the front ones are not. So when you drive, Pastor Jan, you just need to remember that people are going to see you." I'm like, "I know, I want them to see me. I want them to hear my horn when I'm discipling them to be a better driver. I want to do that."So there's two parts of it. There's the you part when you interview for a job and they're asking you, "Hey, what's your greatest weakness." "Is I work too hard. I work too hard. I care too much. I can't stop working. That's me. That's my greatest weakness. I'm going to put in 100 hours a week on this job. Tremendous." And the real part of you is one month into your job. That's The real part of you when you work 10, maybe 15 hours a week. Maybe. So your company knows that you're online, you get the little Mouse Jiggler so when you stop working it just says, "You're online. You're online." That's the real part of you. The real part of you is... Your roommates, ask them the real part of you. Your spouse. Yeah, I know the real part. That's every single one of us. And deep inside we know that for all of our moral goodness showboating, for all of our virtue signaling on our bumper stickers and our yard signs, deep inside, when no one's looking, there is so much evil right in there. We just don't have the power, most of us, to sin in the way that we really would want to sin.If you were a trillionaire, and you can do whatever you want, would you live a holy life for God? There's sin in our hearts, every single one of us. We're all moral failures, inveterate sinners, no more able to rid ourselves of our pride, selfish impurity, sexual sin, hypocrisy, dishonesty, envy and different-stored God. And that's really what it boils down to. God created you. He has power over you. And if you are indifferent toward Him as if God doesn't exist, you are living your life as a huge middle finger to God. I don't care. That's the greatest level of sin that there is. You created me. You have total claim over me. You have a moral code for me that I don't even know what it is.And then we also have standards for ourselves that we break. We have standards for other people that we ourselves break. And as soon as we realize the true weight of our sin, that we sin against the holy God, we deserved what Jesus Christ went through. He went through hell. We deserved that, but He was willing to take it. We see the holiness of God, the justice of God, and the love of God all coinciding at the cross. When you hear, and when you understand that this terrible death, it was horrifying, and it was horrifying for Jesus. It was terrible because it had to be terrible. Only such suffering, such a sinless victim that God, man, He alone could pay the terrible debt that we owe God. And when you realize that Jesus did that for me, He died on the cross for my sin and my sins, that Jesus Christ is the only one that stands between me and the judgment of God that I deserve, when you see that, now the terrible cross becomes the most precious message that you've ever heard. It's wonderful. It's powerful.Scripture says, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written: 'Cursed is everyone who is hung upon a tree.' Jesus Christ was cursed. Deserved blessing, was cursed because we deserved that curse. He was doing it for us so that He could extend blessing to us. We're like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. For the son of man came not to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. Why did Jesus do this? Because He loves us. He loves us. That's the only reason why He did it. 1 John, 3:16, "By this we know love, that He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers."He died for us when we were His enemies, when we were His sinners. He did that because He loves us, so that He can forgive us. Jesus Christ loves you. We are not to take that for granted. Jesus Christ the God of the universe whom we've rebelled against, turned our back on Him, He loves us. 1 John 4:9-10, "In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. And this is love not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." On the one hand, God loves you, but that doesn't make sense unless you understand that God hates you. It's true. A lot of us, we've just taken the message of Christianity, "Jesus loves you," put that as a bumper sticker. Your buddy, Jesus? Yeah, yeah, you're cool. Look up the word propitiation. It means He absorbed the wrath of God. Meaning God has a wrath against you. God hates you. In your sin, apart from Christ, God hates you.When people say things like, "Every single one of us, we're a child of God." No, we're not. We're creatures of God. But if you reject Jesus Christ, you're not a child of God. You're still in your sins. So for love of God to make sense, you need to understand what it took for God to not hate you anymore. And it took Him pouring out His hatred, His wrath,... on Christ for your sins. We receive the love of God when we believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins.Here's what the early Christian father, Tertullian, described this. This is how he described the place of the cross, the heart of the early Christians. He says, "Every forward step and movement, every going in and out, when we put on our clothes and shoes, when we bathe, when we sit at table, when we light the lamps, on couch, on seat, and all the ordinary actions of daily life, we trace upon the forehead sign of a cross just as a reminder that the cross is the center of everything we do. The cross is power. And also, the cross is wisdom." St. Paul uses this word 17 times in the 1 Corinthians, wisdom. In the first three chapters, 16 times. In all of his other letters, he uses the word wisdom only 11 times. So this is crucial to him. It's the Greek word, sophia. I remember I loved that word so much in seminary. I named my first daughter after wisdom, Sophia, Lord give us wisdom. If anyone lacks wisdom, God gives us sophia. So anytime I say Sophia, just a reminder that I need more wisdom from God.I went on a roll in seminary, and then we had our second kid. I was still in seminary, cage stage, where everything's about seminary. And then I had my second kid, my second daughter. I liked the ESV's Bible version so much I named my second daughter ESV, Elizabeth Seraphin Vezikov. I was going to keep doing that with all my other kids. My wife was like, "That's enough. That's enough. We're not going to play that game." But he talks about wisdom here as this is how you understand the world, that you do not truly understand reality unless you understand that Jesus Christ was crucified for our sins. And that's why he does this analysis of it doesn't matter how wise you are in the world. It doesn't matter if you have a PhD from Harvard. It doesn't matter if you're a president of Harvard. Doesn't matter how much money you have. It doesn't matter you're noble birth. None of that matters when it comes to knowing the greatest truth at the center of the universe is that Jesus Christ is Lord, Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior.If you don't know that, if you don't believe the greatest truth at the heart of the universe, you're wrong. If you don't know that this is true, you're wrong about the most important fact. Therefore, no matter how wise you are from an earthly perspective, you're a fool. If you don't believe that Jesus is Lord, if you don't submit to Him, you're going to die. You're going to stand before Him, and all of your eternity you're going to be saying, "I was a fool. I was wrong about the greatest truth." That's why he talks about wisdom. And that's why in 1 Corinthians 1:25-2:5, he goes on and he's like, "Consider your calling, bros. Not many of you were wise, not many by worldly standards, not many powerful, not many of noble birth, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera." And what he says, "What makes the difference, what made you a Christian, it's not your education. It's not your bank account. What made you a Christian, what made you a Christian is that God chose to save you so that no one boasts.And that's why he goes on, "God chose... " That's verse 28. He starts at 27, "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not to bring to nothing things that are so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of Him, you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness, and sanctification, redemption. So that as it is written, 'Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.'" So if you are a Christian and I ask you, "Why are you a Christian? Why are you a Christian?" and if you say anything along the lines that begins with I, if you say anything where it's like, "I believed. I studied. I read. I chose Jesus," then I don't know if you're a Christian. Because it wasn't you at all. The answer is, "Jesus saved me. Jesus chose to save me."Christians need a robust understanding of election and predestination. But what makes the difference between an unbeliever and a believer? What makes the difference between someone who's dead in their sins and someone who is alive to God? What makes the difference? What role did you play to decide that you are going to be born? Nothing. No one asked you. No one gave you a vote. You weren't interviewed. Nothing. Same goes with becoming a Christian. You become a Christian, the only reason you're a Christian: God saved you. The only reason I'm a Christian. God saved me. And I can't believe God saved me. If you know me, I have a hard time following Jesus as it is. But if I wasn't a Christian, if I know the Holy Spirit, I would be one bad guy. I'd be a terrible dude. I'd be a gangster or a legal gangster. That's working for the IRS and stealing money from people legally because taxation is theft. I'd do one or the other.But God saved me. That's it. This is what he's saying, he's like, "You heard the message that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins. Jesus was crucified for you. You Heard it, but what makes the difference between one person hearing another person hearing is God chose you. God by the power of the Holy Spirit saved you. You need to understand, you played zero role in that. If you're like, "Well, how do I know if I'm elect?" Choose yourself. That's how I say. Choose Jesus, and then you're elect. But you only chose Jesus because Jesus chose you. That's how it works. So that there's 0% of your work in being saved because Jesus saves.You know who we are? We're the degenerate, reprobate sinners. We should have been left in our sins. I got one Bible verse, one very special Bible verse the Lord laid on my heart today. At the next Mosaic members meeting, this is the next... 2020, my t-shirt idea was, "2020, skubula happened." If you don't know what skubula is, look it up. My idea for 2021 is from 1 Corinthians 4:11-13. Let me read the text. "To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless. We labor working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted; we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become and are still like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things." I want a t-shirt that says, "Mosaic Boston, scum of the earth." That's what I want. Or if we ever rebranded the church, I want to be scumoftheearthchurch.com. That's what I want. This is tremendous. What's your message to the world? You're all scum. We're the worst scum of the earth.Jesus Christ died for us. The Son of God died for us? What? To make us children of God. I can't believe it. And by the way, this message is what transformed the world. St. Paul was writing to Christians who lived under tyranny. Not only was it illegal to be a Christian, but they were persecuted for their faith, made a show in arenas where tens and hundreds of thousands would gather to watch Christians getting eaten by lions and crucified upside down, et cetera, et cetera. And by the way, if you're not a Christian, you have to answer the question of how did Christianity, despite the odds, how did it grow from one Jewish guy, kind of a rabbi, kind of a carpenter? He had 11 guys and then St. Paul gets saved. And then with them in 100 years is 25,000 Christians in the Roman Empire. And then when that generation of eyewitnesses died, it became even more powerful so that by the time Constantine comes to power in 310, we go from 25,000 Christians in the year 100 to 20 million Christians by 310 A.D. In 200 years, it grew by 40% per decade, the greatest movement in the history of the world. How did that happen?It happened with people proclaiming the message: Christ crucified. Just to give you a perspective, it was illegal to be a Christian. They didn't have church buildings. They didn't have any institutional resources. So how in the world did that happen? They proclaimed the one message that Jesus Christ is Lord, and we are to submit to Him. We haven't submitted to Him. We deserve damnation, but Jesus Christ is also savior. And then once you're saved, you've got to bring everything, every part of your life in submission to Jesus Christ. And startled the message, Jesus is Lord. And they got that from Deuteronomy 6:14 where it says, "Hear all Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord you got with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength."The Lord is one. Yahweh is Lord. Jesus shows up and says, "I'm Yahweh. I am Lord. I'm king over everything." God is one, and the task of our lives is to bring every aspect of our lives under the reign of Jesus Christ, every aspect of our life, from our finances to our work, to our domestic life, to sexuality. Everything we bring under the reign of Jesus Christ. And the reason why we focus on Jesus in particular is because that's how the New Testament explains how we are to do ministry. God the Father puts Jesus in a position of preeminence, and the Holy Spirit blesses the church when the church focuses on Jesus Christ. Why? Because of the role he played in redemption, but also the role that God the Father gives Jesus as sitting at the right hand of God the Father.Psalm 110:1 says, "The Lord says to my Lord," so God the Father speaks to God the Son, "'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.'" And Paul even suggested the actual function of the Lordship was given by the Father to the Son, it's passed to Jesus. Ephesians 1:20-23, "He," God the Father, "raised Him," Jesus, "from the dead and seated Him at the right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named not only in His age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under His feet and gave Him as a head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all."So Jesus is in the position of preeminence, and that's why we focus on Jesus. That's why we talk about Jesus all the time. If you ever move away, and you're looking for a church, this is the secret sauce of finding if it's a good biblical church. When the pastor gets up there and preaches a sermon, he's got to say the name of Jesus at least 50 times. That's just from my professional experience. It's got to be at least 50 times. You just talk about Jesus. If you don't talk about Jesus, huge red flag, huge red flag. And if you change the name of Jesus, if it's like Jesus Christ and Latter-day Saints, no, don't change the name, it's just Jesus Christ. You talk about Jesus Christ because the Bible tells us to talk about Jesus Christ. And when we talk about Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit takes that message. It is power, and it is wisdom. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Him. Our identity, our destiny as a church must be inextricably linked to Jesus Christ. He's the only way into a relationship with God.A lot of churches talk about God in general, some nebulous idea, so that you can think God is whomever you want, that God demands whatever you think he demands. But when we say Jesus Christ, this is a historical figure who lived in a particular time, particular place, human body. He really lived. He really taught. He really died. Historical fact. We're not talking about spiritually or this is metaphor for something. He literally died for our sin, and He literally rose from the dead. So when we talk about Jesus, we're talking about what's at the heart of scripture. Jesus Christ is the door. He's the connection to God the Father.George Adam Smith, 19th-century biblical scholar, but wanted to see the holy land. He meets a shepherd in the holy land, and the shepherd was very hospitable. They spent the day together. And at the end of the day, the shepherd said, "Hey, do you want to see the fold where I keep the sheep?" And he goes into an enclosure with four walls, and there's an opening in one of the walls. The sheep all came in, and the shepherds said, "This is where they go at night." And then George Adam Smith asked, "Hey, where's the door? Where's the gate." And the shepherd says this: "When the light has gone and all the sheep are inside, I lie at that open space and no sheep ever goes out but across my body, and no wolf comes in unless he crosses my body. I am the door."Jesus Christ is the only way into a relationship with God, and He's the door because He laid down His life for His own sheep. Apart from Jesus Christ, we are nothing. Apart from Jesus Christ, we have no message as a church. Apart from Jesus Christ, we have no mission as a church. We take all of our talking points from Jesus Christ. I pray that we never become like the Church of Laodicea, which a lot of the churches in Boston, historically, they became the church in Laodicea. Church of Laodicea, Jesus Christ is standing outside the door knocking. A lot of people use that verse in Revelation 3 to say, "Oh, Jesus is standing at the door of your heart, and He's knocking." No, Jesus doesn't stand at doors, and He doesn't knock. He breaks the door down and regenerates people. That's how Jesus saves people.But he's talking about Jesus not in terms of one particular soul. He's talking about Jesus Christ is standing outside of a church. It's the Church of Laodicea. How did Jesus get outside the church? They forgot to let Him in. Jesus is standing outside the door knocking. They forgot to let Jesus in. So the question we're going to ask is, for myself, is Jesus Christ the Lord of my life? For my family, is Jesus Christ the Lord of my family? Is Jesus Christ the Lord of my community group? Do you talk about Jesus in your community group? Is Jesus Christ at the center of my conversations with other Christians, or do we talk about the Red Sox finally going to turn things around, or the Pyths, they really got a squad this year? Or are we're going to talk about politics?What really brings things into perspective is when someone dies, someone close to you dies. I had a family member that passed away this week. And we had a gathering with my family yesterday, completely different. Just the reminder of how close we are to death. You know what we talked about? We talked about Jesus. We hugged each other. We cried. We told each other how much we love each other. We focused on what matters. Every single one of us needs to live every day like that, that this day could be my last. Because there will come a day that will be I last, and we have no idea when that day comes. Imagine if we lived like that, that every time you saw an unbelieving friend, you want to tell them about Jesus. This is the only hope you have. This is the only way to God. This is the only way for your sins to be forgiven.And with Christians, why aren't we talking about Christ all the time? It could be our last day. The greatest example I see this is in Elijah. I'll do this, and I'll close with a quote from John Stott. Elijah in 2 Kings, the day before he gets taken up to heaven, it's his last day on earth, you know what he does? He wakes what's up, and he preaches the gospel in Bethel, preaches about God, preaches in Jericho, preaches in Jordan. What you realize is he's just living a normal life. It's just what he did every day. He just shared with people about God over and over and over. He followed the normal schedule. He so followed God as shepherd. Didn't have to do anything out of the ordinary on his last day alive, and he goes to heaven in glory. He's lived his day every day like it was his last.Imagine if we did. Imagine if we as a church had that kind of urgency. There's people around us who are dying, who are going to die and spend eternity either with God in heaven or apart from God in hell. It all depends on what they do with this message. I can't save them with the message, but I can proclaim the message and then let the Holy Spirit do what the Holy Spirit will do. Jesus Christ is our touchstone. He's our defining center. He's our founder. And therefore, he has preeminence in our life as a people, our life as a church.Oh, here's the last thing I wanted to say before John Stott. The gospel is something so simple that every child can understand it. And the gospel is the wisdom of God, that once you start to plumb the depth... It's like the message, "Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior or Christ crucified," and you read it and like, "Oh, tremendous." But then it's like you take the message and you pull it out. It's like an accordion. And you see it's like level after level after level after level. And then you see it's dimensions. You're not just talking about one dimension or secondary, you're talking about multiple dimensions of the gospel as it applies to every aspect of your life. That's why we focus on the gospel.Okay, John Stott, end of his life. If you want more theology on the cross, the greatest work written on this and the most accessible is written by John Stott. It's called The Cross of Christ. It's probably one of the greatest books of the 20th century. It's a modern classic. In the preface to the masterpiece, this is what he writes: "I try to show that the cross transforms everything. It gives us a new worshiping relationship to God, a new and balanced understanding of ourselves, a new incentive to give ourselves a mission, a new love of our enemies, and a new courage to face the perplexities of suffering. In daring to write a book about the cross, there is, of course, a great danger of presumption. This is partly because what actually happened when God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ is a mystery whose depths we will spend eternity plumbing. And partly because it would be most unseemly to feign a cool detachment. For willy-nilly, we are involved. Our sins put Him there."So, far from offering us flattery, the cross undermines our self-righteousness. We can stand before only with a bowed head and a broken spirit. And there we remain until the Lord Jesus speaks to our hearts His word of pardon and acceptance, and we, gripped by His love and brimful of thanksgiving, go out into the world to live our lives in His service." Let's pray.Lord Jesus, we thank you that you are the head of the church. Jesus, we thank you that you died on the cross for our sins. Jesus, we thank you for this message, and we thank you for the power that you bring by the power of the Spirit when this message is proclaimed, when this message is understood and when this message is believed. I pray for every single one of us. Make us a people who love the message of the cross and love the way of the cross and live in a manner worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And Lord, I pray that you continue to save many people in this city, in this region. And use us in the process as we proclaim your gospel and pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Audio Transcript: This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd 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. We're 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 through the connection card in the worship guide. The physical one or you can also get the digital version in our app or on our website. And if you fill it out we'll be sure to get in touch with you over the course of the week. Happy summer. And happy bring an iced beverage to church day. If you see my last station back there I've got 18 water bottles back there. Stay hydrated my friends. Stay hydrated. Oh, that said would you please pray with me with the preaching of God's Holy Word. Heavenly Father we thank you that you are good God and you are a great God. Although our sins, our rebellion, our transgressions deserve punishment. Instead, you poured out that punishment upon your Son Jesus Christ. The Lamb of God, the Son of God. Jesus on the cross, you got what we deserved so that you could offer to us what you earned.We thank you for the gift of salvation. We thank you for the gift of grace that just doesn't make any sense. Why would you do that? You did that because you are God who is love. We thank you for the Holy Scriptures. We thank you for the story and the example of Abraham that often he was not a hero, he was actually an anti hero. And yet you came in and you worked with him and he poured out your love upon him and you kept sculpting him, kept molding him, kept shaping and sanctifying him and I pray that you do the same with us.If there are habitual sins in our lives. If there is recidivism in our lives where we fall back into patterns of sin I pray today pull us out by your grace and give us a vision for our lives to be people who are a blessing to many. Bless our time the holy word. Holy Spirit we welcome you into the space. We love you and we love your presence. We pray that you today convict us and encourage us where we need to be encouraged. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.We are in a sermon series. Going through parts of the book of Genesis. We're calling it Jesus in Genesis. And we're in particular looking at the story of Abraham and how our story relates to his story and more importantly how his story and our story points to the story of Jesus Christ and our need for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The title of the sermon today is Déjà vu All Over Again. And we see Abraham committing his greatest sin that he's ever committed. And he does it again. In chapter 19 we saw the story of God's punishment coming down on Sodom and Gomorrah. God pulls through the angels Lot out and ends the story in a very hopeless situation. So now we're done with Lot and we'll hear nothing more of him. And after the promise that God made in chapter 18, where Jesus Christ as a Kristoff and he shows up.He's flanked with angels. And he comes to Abraham and Sarah and promises that in a year you will have the promised son. You've been waiting for over two decades. Probably 25 years but next year he's coming. And what we're expecting after chapter 19, is that in chapter 20 Isaac is born. Why do we expect that? We expect that because Abraham has been winning. He's been growing in his faith. God called him in chapter 12. He said I'm going to bless you, I'm going to make your name great, I'm going to bless those who bless you. And I'm going to bless the nation's through you Abraham. He follows God and we see him early on his walk with the Lord was serpentine. It was wandering. Kind of like Storrow Drive. Just wavering back and forth. And what we see with Abraham is now he's beginning to string wins together.We see that beginning with Lot and goes to his nephew Lot and he gives him a pic of the land generously. And then after Lot is taken into captivity by a coalition of kings, Abraham the great warrior gets his 318 trained men and they together go to war to save Lot and he comes out victorious. He's recognized by Melchizedek as a man of God. He resists temptation. When the king of Sodom offers him financial profit, the Lord appeared to him twice to reaffirm and elaborate the covenant. And God said here's a sign of the covenant. You need to circumcise yourself. And Abraham in his '90s probably his greatest act of faith promptly obeys, circumcised himself with a flint knife and does the same to 318 trained men. You see just his faith guides everything that he does. Win after win after win after win and apparently he got tired of all that winning. So after Abraham wins, now Abraham sins.And in chapter 20, Abraham takes his 90-year old wife. He's 100. He takes his 90-year old wife and passes her off to King Abimelech. And she's taken into his harem. He pimps off his 90-year old wife. Apparent grandma was really good looking. I don't know what it was. A different oxygen, different food levels, no GMO, Pilates. I have no idea. But apparently at 90 she was still smoking hot and King Abimelech takes her into his hands. So we'll get into that.The worst part is. The worst part that as I sat down and I'm like chapter 20. I'm writing this sermon. I'm crestfallen. I'm like, "Oh, no. Not again." The worst part of this whole situation is he's done this before. He pimped off his wife who was a little younger to the king of Egypt back in chapter 12. And God intervened and God saved him. And now he does the same thing again. Big lesson for us is dear Christian sin clings so closely. And time with the Lord does not make you impervious to sin. It doesn't make you impervious to falling back into old patterns of sin. Into tragic recidivism where you relapse. The point of the whole text is Abraham's a sinner saved by grace. Still remains a sinner. He's a saint, he was a sinner and a sinner who's a saint. So never lose sight dear Christian. That we have to be aware of sin and that we are to fight the good fight of faith.We'll do the same thing we've done in the past weeks. We're going to walk through the text verse by verse. But three big sections. Three points to frame up our time. Point one is Abimelech restrained. Second is Abraham rebuked and third is Abimelech restored. First Abimelech restrained. Genesis 20:1. And from there Abraham journeyed toward the territory of the Negeb and lived between Kadesh and Shur. And he sojourned into Gerar. So Abraham was called by God to go to the land of Canaan. That's the promised land. The first time he sinned against his wife and against God, he went from the promised land to Egypt. Now he goes from the promised land to Kadesh and Shur into Gerar. He's traveling from the extremely southern point of Palestine. Shur was on the border of Egypt. And he visits the royal city of Gerar which is just above the Gulf of Suez on the way to Egypt. Suez we've heard recently in the news. The Suez Canal. That's where the container ship got stuck in the Suez Canal. This is the general vicinity where Abraham goes. It's hostile territory.We're not told why he goes. Perhaps he went because there was famine in the land or perhaps he went because he was afraid of God who judged Sodom and Gomorrah and Abraham watched him judge Sodom and Gomorrah. Perhaps he was afraid of retaliation from the neighbors of Sodom and Gomorrah, that they will retaliate against Abraham in order to retaliate against God or perhaps he was bitter. Later on the text he says God made me go from my hometown to land of Canaan. There's a bitterness. Perhaps it's because he expected that when he interceded for Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah that God would answer him.And he didn't get what he wanted from God. Perhaps he's... But we're not sure. So now we see him going into hostile territory with his flocks, with his herds, with the people he has with him. He's a chieftain. There's over 300 people with him. So it's a huge caravan. And he's going into hostile territory as a believer. These are different people, they worship different gods. It's kind of moving to Boston from somewhere where it's acceptable to be a Christian. You move up to Boston and you keep your bumper stickers on your car.You keep the little fish on your car. Why do you keep the fish on your car? Because you're a Christian. That's why. Why'd you put the fish in your car in the first place? Because back in Mississippi when Christian police officers pull you over, they're going to let you go. You're a Christian. Up here no one cares. I remember when Pastor Shane moved up here, he had a little Toyota Camry. And he had a little Jesus fish on the back of his car. And after an evening service, we show up this car and the back windshield was just mis shattered. Someone threw a brick through the back of his car. Why? I don't know. Jesus fish maybe. So if you've got Jesus fish on your car, man congratulations. You are a very bold Christian. And now you have to drive like a hostile territory. He goes there. He knows that he is not like these people. That he believes unlike these people. These are enemies of Israel.We'll learn later on. The Philistines come from this general land. So what happens? Well, Genesis 20:2. Abraham said of Sarah his wife. So now people are asking, "Hey Abraham. Who's that woman next to you? She's apparently very good looking." And the tradition of that land was the king could take any unmarried woman into his harem or the king could kill any husband of the married woman to take her into his harem. So that's why Abraham said of his wife Sarah. She is my sister. And Abimelech King of Gerar sent and took Sarah. He takes Sarah the wife of Abraham.First thing Abraham does is exactly the same thing he did 30 years ago. Why? What's he motivated by? Motivated by fear. Fear for his life. And he gives up his dear wife Sarah. Decades they've been married. Gives her up to a King Abimelech into his harem. Now I've been married by God's grace and my wife Tanya. It's going to be 15 years this week. Someone came up to me. Praise... Yea, clap for her. Good job. Thanks, Edgar. And I've made some faux pas. Some mea culpa. Some my bads in my life in my marriage. I have some bad ones. The first one I think is first year married. I forgot it was her birthday. I just forgot her birthday. Show up at home, she's dressed up, makeup on. It's dinner on the table. Beautiful. And I'm like, "What's the occasion? Of course I know. Well, I forgot your present in the car."So I run down. And I go to the nearest store that was next our apartment building. It was TJ Maxx or Marshalls. And I went to the first thing I could find. And it was a little wooden bucket with soap stuff. And some country CDs. So that's what I grabbed for. I was like, "You're from Ukraine. You like country music." No, she did not. That was a... So still to this day I'm recovering. I've made some bad mistakes in my marriage. But I've never pimped off my wife. Praise God. And the lesson here gentlemen is don't pimp off your wife. That's number one. Number two, is Abraham the great father of the faith does this. And he does it twice. And what's the lesson here? The lesson here is under pressure, under stress, under anxiety. When motivated by fear, it's so easy to relapse the former sins. It's so easy to go back to old patterns of life. So the question for us today is what sins from your past are you prone to return to? Especially when under stress. And when are you prone to return to them?And you need to know that. You need to reverse engineer your walk with the Lord and you need to know yourself and when you're tempted so that you do not make provision for the flesh. Don't put yourself in positions where your flesh takes over. And instead of walking by the spear you walk by flesh. Speaking of harems. The custom of the land. You have power, you have money, you can make yourself a harem. A harem is just a group of women that you sleep with. Your concubines. Perhaps you don't have the money and the power and the opportunity to build yourself a harem. But we live in a day and age when people are building not physical harems but definitely digital ones. And Jesus spoke right into that. And he said whoever looks upon a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Abimelech committed the sin of adultery when he just looked at another man's wife. And so we see Abraham sinned and we see Abimelech sins and there's a lesson for us that we are to fight our sin and protect in particular sexual sin. So the question is what's going to happen? Who will protect Sarah from being defiled? Because God promised that Sarah is going to have a child with Abraham.God promised a unilateral covenant that he's not going to break his word. That's exactly what we see God coming to the rescue. This is verse three. But God. I love that phrase because that's the same phrase that's used in Ephesians when it says that you are dead in your sins and your trespasses. All of us are on our way to hell but God intervenes but God sent his Son. But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you've taken for she is a man's wife. Now Abimelech had not approached her. So he said Lord, will you kill an innocent people? Did he not himself say to me she is my sister and she herself said he is my brother. In the integrity of my heart. And the innocence of my hands I have done this.God speaks, God intervenes. Speaks to him in a dream. Does God still speak in dreams? Yeah, he does. And sometimes to you, sometimes to your loved ones. This week I was sitting at home in my basement. It was 11:00 PM and I smell something burning. And I run around. I ran upstairs and make sure it's nothing upstairs. And then I ran back downstairs and one of my outlets was on fire. I had to pull out a plug and sparks were flying. I was like, "Whoa, that was weird." The next day my daughter Elizabeth wakes up and says to my wife, "Hey, Mom. I had a dream that our basement set on fire." Sounds trippy. She had no idea.And I was like, "Did we make it on alive?" She said yeah. I was like, "All right. Praise God." It's just once a month. So sometimes God speaks in prophetic dreams. Sometimes it's just to reaffirm yes, I'm with you. Yes, I'm here to protect you. Sometimes it encourage, sometimes is to sanctify. So God speaks to an unbeliever through a dream. Can God speak to unbelievers? Yeah. God can do whatever he want with whomever he wants. He sovereign speaks to this guy in a dream and says you're a dead man. The same God who set Sodom and Gomorrah on fire, judgment, fire, brimstone comes to King Abimelech who's definitely heard about what went on Sodom and Gomorrah. And he says you are a dead man. I'm going to kill you. Does God have the authority to take our life? Yeah. The God of the universe who gives us life can take it at any single moment. And God says that you're dead. Maybe you've taken another man's wife. Why? Because God cares about marriage. He cares about marriage a lot. Abimelech says I haven't approached her yet. And Abimelech says Lord, that's a great start. Lord, he knows that this is God and he speaks of innocence. He's like, "God, I'm innocent." Actually a relative term. He's sinful in other ways. But from this perspective, he's innocent. He did what he did without knowing the full story.And Abimelech makes the same argument to God that Abraham made to God as He was interceding for Sodom and Gomorrah. He says will not the just God of the universe do what is right. And he's got a case. What he's really saying is, God I didn't deserve this. If anyone does deserve it, who is it? If anyone does deserve to get whacked for the situation that they're in, who deserves to get whacked? Abraham. God why aren't you coming after Abraham? Why are you coming after Sarah? Who also isn't a total victim. Apparently they played this con whenever they've when because that's what Abraham says later on the text.I asked my wife. I was still talking about this text. And she's like, "You know what? I bet Sarah wanted to leave." I was like, "Why did you say that?" She's like, "Just imagine you have the option of being a princess. You were living in a tent. Now you get to live in a mansion. She's not completely innocent either. You get a black American Express Card. You get your hair's done and your nails done, your hair done and all that done like everyone's pampering. Who knows. But she went along with this plan." And what's fascinating about this text is Abimelech the pagan king is more righteous. Presented as more righteous in this text than the man of God.In chapter 18, God said about Abraham. I've called him. He's mine. I've chosen him to be righteous, teach righteousness to his children. And we see the unbeliever behaving more moral than the believer. And that's often the case. Unbelievers are sometimes some of the most moral people just really, really good people. Generous people, caring people, loving people. And then on the flip side, it's the believers that are sometimes the most mischievous and the most sinful. You ever do business with a Christian? With an unbeliever, you got to sign one contract. With believers, two. At least two. Because of the Christian, when they became a Christian, they understand how wicked they are. That's what makes them a Christian. What makes you a Christian is I have sinned against God, I need to repent. It's really bad. Every Christian that you see is a really bad person. But the difference is they know they're a bad person.Sometimes the moral people are very moral people to get away from God. Abimelech is the moral person in this text. At the end of the text, he's very generous but he never becomes a Christian. He never loves God. You can do a lot of good things. And you can be a very moral person and not be a believer not go to heaven because you are doing all the great things not for God but for self. Back to Abraham. What was motivating him? What motivated him to sin again? It might have been bitterness against God. It might have been just time has elapsed. It's been 30 years since chapter 12 and chapter 20. It might have been that he knows just how lavish God's grace is. Did Abraham deserve to be called by God? No. Did Abraham deserve to get a word from God? No. Did Abraham deserve for God to speak to him and show him the covenant? No, no, no, no. Did Abraham deserve for God to tell him I'm making a unilateral covenant with you even if you break your end of the bargain, I'm still going to hold up mine? He didn't deserve that.Abraham also knew that God saved him once. I sinned you save me again. You also promised me that within a year I'm going to have a son. So clearly, you are going to work out your plan. And you might not need me in the process. This whole idea of I can sin because God will come to the rescue. This idea is called cheap grace. Where you say Jesus died on the cross for all my sins past, present and future. So why not continue to sin? God will forgive me. It's his job. I think part of that is going on in this idea of cheap grace. And yet God will forgive. Dear Christian, if you are in your sins. If you sin, God will forgive you if you repent of that sin. But it doesn't mean you won't bear the consequences of that sin. And it definitely doesn't mean that God won't discipline you like a loving father. Does God discipline Abraham in this text for this sin? Oh, yeah.He publicly shames Abraham through Abimelech. And he publicly shames Abraham for 1,000s of years by including this text in the Bible. So we look at this guy like, "You're a loser. You're a loser twice." God does discipline. Look at Hebrews 12:5-11. Have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? My son do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline. If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the father of spirits and live.For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them. But he disciplines us for our good. That we may share his holiness. For he disciplines us for our good that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant. But later, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Shows us that we're saved not by a morality. This is what the text shows us. But just by sheer grace. We're saved by sheer grace not because we're better. We're not Christians because we're better. We're Christians because we're saved, forgiven. And we're not saved because we're good. We're not forgiven because we're good. We're saved because God is good. That's really what this chapter is highlighting. That despite Abraham's sin, how great God's grace is to intervene and help him. God intervenes just like in chapter 12 showing you that God is the only hero of the story and of the book of Genesis of the whole Bible.And God intervenes his work in the marriage of Abraham and Sarah, right? And that's what God is doing. He's exposing sin in their marriage. He's exposing deception in their marriage. A lack of faith prior to the child coming. And this is important lesson that before you have a child, you need to know that whatever sin there is, you got to work through and repent of it and do the hard work because when children come, everything just gets magnified. It's just exponentially harder. Not only does your wife see your sin but the kids see your sin and oh, your sin then impacts your kids. And imagine Isaac wakes up and he says, "Abraham. Dad. Daddy, where's mommy?" And then Abraham's like, "Oh, long story. Hear I pimped her out to King Abimelech. You want cereal for breakfast." That would scar the kid for life.So God is working on their marriage exposing the sin. So there's repentance prior to when the child comes. Verse six. God speaking to Abimelech. Then God said to him in the dream. Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart. And it was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore, I did not let you touch her. Now then return the man's wife for he is a prophet so that he will pray for you. And you shall live but if you do not return her, know that you shall surely die. You and all who are hers. So I didn't touch her. You wanted to obviously. That's why you married her.I don't let you consummate the marriage. So God here is sovereign even over sin. He's the one that keeps Abimelech from sinning and the part of the Lord's Prayer is Lord, lead us not into temptation. God I beg you please keep me from sin. Prevent me from sin. And God does that with Abimelech. And then God gives Abimelech a choice. You can either return her and live or if you don't, you'll die. And that's the same choice that God gives every single human being. Either repent and that's turning from sin and you will live. Repent and believe in Jesus Christ. You will live if not, you shall surely die. The decision is yours. If Sarah had stayed even one night with Abimelech, there would have always been a question of is Abraham Isaac's dad? And the other thing I want to point out is this is the first use of the word prophet in scripture. And which is very ironical though.We're prophets messenger for God. And the first time the word prophet is used is in the context of the Prophet's sin. Showing that every single human prophet is fallible and sinful and it points to our need for a greater profit who's never sinned. And Abraham will pray for you. And at this point, Abimelech is got to be thinking what in the world? The guy sinned against me, lied to me. And now it turns out he's a prophet. And it turns out he needs to pray for me so that I can get saved. It doesn't make any sense. Just from a human perspective from a societal justice perspective. It doesn't make any sense. We'll leave that hanging until point three. Point two. Abraham rebuked. We see this in verse eight. So Abimelech rose early in the morning which is contrast to Lot when God warned him through the angels. Hey, get out of Sodom and Gomorrah because fire and brimstone coming. Lot slept on it woke up had breakfast. Finally, the angels had to drag him out.Here Abimelech wakes up first thing in the morning. This what he does. Called all his servants and told them all these things. And the men were very much afraid. Abimelech fears God. His servants fear God. And yet they don't become believers at the end. They fear God like children fear a stranger. Please I don't know what you're going to do with me. I'm afraid of you. Abraham fears God as a child. There's a difference. There's a loving relationship. Here Abimelech never becomes a Christian. His father's never become Christian. They're just afraid of punishment. Whereas a real child of God fears disappointing God which obviously Abraham did in this situation. So he too needs to grow in fear of God. Verse nine. Then Abimelech called Abraham and said to him, "What have you done to us? How have I sinned against you?" That's interesting. Because the very first time that the word sin is used in this chapter is from God talking to Abimelech. I kept you from sinning. So now Abimelech has an understanding of sin. That sin is transgressing God's law.How have I sinned against you that you brought on me and my kingdom of great sin? You have done to me things that ought not to be done. And here what's fascinating is Abimelech preaches a sermon to Abraham. Abimelech gets everyone to get the whole court together. Puts Abraham in front. It just lights them up with the words that God gave them. So this is God speaking through Abimelech that you Abraham are a hypocrite. Your witness is terrible. Your witness to God. If God didn't intervene, all of us would have perished. You would have brought great sin on me and the kingdom. You did what ought not to have been done. And that's a fascinating term.Abimelech how did you know what ought to be done? How do you know? God told him. Abraham, did you know what ought to be done? Yeah. So you sinned against me. And this is a fascinating idea. And every single person you ask that's alive and a christian or non Christian. You ask them is the world as it ought to be? And every single person says no, the world is not as ought to be. There's a lot of crime and there's a lot of evil and there's a lot of terrible things in the world. Corruption in the world. The world is not as it ought to be. Are you as you ought to be? No, I'm not. Well, how do you know? Because there's a moral law written on your heart. A moral compass. Is it calibrated perfectly? No, it takes God's word brought in to recalibrate Abimelech's moral compass here. Abimelech's concern isn't just for himself but for his kingdom. Which shows that he's a good ruler and again shows that he's a good person despite the norms of the day. Verse 10, Abimelech said to Abraham. What did you see that you did this thing? Abraham said I did it because I thought there is no fear of God at all in this place and they will kill me because of my wife. So Abimelech is like, "Why do you do this?" And Abraham says I did this because you guys don't fear God.And here Abraham is the hypocrite of Matthew seven where Jesus says before you pull out the speck in your brother's eye, make sure there's not a log in your own eye. So Abraham to Abimelech. He's like, "I did this because you don't love God. You don't fear God. I did this because you have a toothpick in your eye." As Abraham has a two by four in one eye and a telephone pole in the other. He's just the biggest hypocrite of this whole text. You guys don't fear God. I just knew all of you guys are perverts and sickos and weirdos. You kill me to take my wife. So I decided to pimp her out before you did that. Just the logic is so warped. I knew you were so sinful. So I'm going to sin to prevent you sinning against me. And this just shows a lack of faith. He didn't go into the place on mission to share the gospel. He went to the place selfishly to preserve his wealth, kind of like Lot did when he went to Sodom. And apparently there was more fear of God in Abimelech than there was in Abraham. That's the contrast.Verse 12. Besides. So now Abraham is... He knows he's caught. But he lawyers up and he just... Oh, what a text. Besides, he pathetically tries to make excuses. He's caught in sin and he's like, "Besides." He's like, "I knew you don't fear God. And besides she is indeed my sister. Cue the country music. She is indeed my sister." Like a pro. Why are you even...? Don't even bring that up. Why did you marry your sister? Oh, because it was easier. We didn't have to change last names. You're a pervert. Don't do that. This is pathetic. It's like you get caught in a sin and then you try to excuse it and the excuse is even worse than the sin. You get pulled over by a cop and the cop is like, "Why are you speeding? Why are you speeding?" And you say, "I swear to drunk. I'm not God. I'm not God." The first service nobody got it. Here, a couple...The excuses are worse than the sin itself. Kids do this all the time. Where you get caught in a sin and then you just try to excuse it. That's what Abraham is doing. He knows he's caught. He's caught by daddy, he's caught by Abimelech. And then he starts saying this is my sister that I married her. My father though not the daughter of my mother and she became that way. And when God caused me to wander from my father's place that's it. That's the verse. God caused me to wander. When God forced me to wander. Remember last week I was talking about Lot. He got saved but he wasn't happy about it. It's like a high schooler getting saved before they start freshman year in college. And like, "Don't save me yet I want frat parties." That was Lot. That's Abraham. He wants to sin right now. And he's just caught in the sin. And then who does he blame for this whole situation? Oh, God caused it. Same thing Adam did. Adam sins, eats of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.God comes looking for him. Adam where are you? And what does Adam say? The wife whom you gave me. She forced me. You see the past 70. You see he's trying to shirk his responsibility. Pass it off. There's bitterness toward God. And I said to her this is the kindness you must do to me at every place to which we come. Say of me he is my brother. And he's saying this is the kindness you got to do me. This is how you need to love me. That's what we're doing. Instead of saying how can I love my wife and sacrifice myself to protect her, he goes to his wife and says this is how you must love me and sacrifice yourself to protect me. He's just got everything back. And remember last week I was talking about Abraham was a great patriarch and Lot was a soytriarch. Where here Abraham, he's back to soytriarch land. He loses his spine. His faith spine and he goes to his wife and he says I want you to sacrifice yourself for me anti gospel.What is the gospel? The gospel is Jesus Christ sacrificing himself for his bride. And then Jesus says to husbands. Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Abraham is doing the opposite here and technically was Sarah his sister. Yes, technically yes. But it's not the full truth. She was also his wife. His sister wife. A half truth masquerading as the full truth is a full lie. And we need to know this. If you are going to grow in discernment and understanding of reality, you need to understand that this is the thing. People lie with facts. Just like Abraham lies with facts. People lie with statistics all the time. Your head could be in the oven and your feet in the freezer and on average, very comfortable temperature. You're not comfortable. Statistic lie all the time.If you want to understand politics and you understand the news. You need to understand that people all the time spin one fact and present one fact which is half truth as the full truth. And they do it for click bait and they do it for eyeballs and they do it to persuade us with a narrative et cetera. So we as believers need to grow in discernment knowing that people lie all the time with facts. And this is what Abraham was doing. Abraham's behavior is pathetic, it's an excusable, it's deeply disappointing. He's here no different than Lot was in last chapter. Last chapter Lot takes the angels into his house, shows them hospitality and then an order protect himself and the angels, he passes off his daughters to the gang rapers. And he says, "Hey, take my virgin daughters instead of the angels." He's sacrificing his beloved ones for himself. Abraham's doing the same exact thing here. The worst part he's in the middle of his Christian life. It should be expected that he would do better but he suffers from what something that all of us suffer from is thing called spiritual amnesia.And once again he falls on his face, fails in his faith. We see cowardice, selfishness, indifference. He stumbles badly. So will his son Isaac. Who will do the same thing. And then his great, great grandsons will sin as well Judah in particular. Abraham stumbled, so have I. And so have you. And this just shows the fallibility of the saints. And when you become a Christian, you're still a sinner. You're a sinner saint and a saint sinner. And the privileged position doesn't preclude him from failure. It doesn't preclude him from floundering. Genesis 20:14. Then Abimelech took sheep and oxen and male servants and female servants and gave them to Abraham and returned Sarah his wife to him. And Abimelech said, behold my land is before you, dwell where it pleases you. To Sarah he said, behold I've given your brother... Tremendous Abimelech. Tremendous little jab. Behold I've given your brother 1,000 pieces of silver. It's a sign of your innocence in the eyes of all who are with you before everyone you were vindicated.What in the world just happened? Abraham sins against Abimelech. Abimelech is the one giving gifts to Abraham. This makes no sense. It should have been Abraham saying here Abimelech. I'm sorry. My bad man. Here's some animals. Here's some silver. Instead, Abimelech is the guy. He's like, "Take the animals, take any real estate you want. Here's 1,000 pieces of silver. Half a piece of silver was a monthly wage of an average worker. Half. So that means 1,000 pieces is working 167 years. That's like if our average salary is 40 grand. He's given him $7 million. Just incredible wealth. On top of that, this is what Abimelech is doing. This why I think he's a funny guy.When you get married, the price of a bride was 50 shekels and he's like Abraham I'm not just going to give you 50 shekels. I'm going to give you the price of 20 brides. 1,000 shekels. It's boss right here. And part of what he's doing is, he's vindicating the honor of Sarah. He cares more about her reputation than Abraham did himself. So Abraham was a complete anti hero here. Abimelech takes God's warning seriously. Abraham doesn't. Story continues. These are point three. Abimelech restore. Genesis 20:17. Then Abraham prayed to God and God healed Abimelech and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children. Apparently part of what happened with Abimelech was there was a curse put on all the people for Abraham's sin. And the wombs of the people were closed. And what's ironic is... Oh, and this is verse 18. For the Lord had closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham's wife.The irony is that in order to open Sarah's womb for the promised son, God closed the wombs of many other women. Here the Lord is Lord of Abraham's sin. He's the Lord of Abimelech's non sin and he's the lord of childbirth. And he's the Lord over everything. A question here that I want to wrestle with at the end in closing is why is this text here? Why is this here? It teaches the lesson that we all stumble, that we all fall. We have a proclivity to relapse into sin. But is that all it's teaching us? I think it is teaching us more. Because by the end of the chapter, despite Abraham's sin. Abraham is a better man for it. He's learned from this sin. In a sense he's been sanctified by his sin and he's been blessed through the process of the sin. So there's a deeper lesson going on here. And I think there's a doctrine here. A doctrine that's taught by theologians in their books not often taught out loud. Because of the danger of this doctrine being twisted to justify sin.The doctrine's called O felix culpa in the Latin. O happy fault. And the phrase goes back to Gregory the Great in the end of the sixth century. And he got it from Augustine. And who got it from St. Paul in Romans seven. That yes, we wrestle with sin undeniably. But at the end, it brings glory to God because our sin... It turns our attention to Christ like nothing else does. Sin is undeniably ugly is disreputable, inexcusable, it's harmful. It's an abomination before God. But sin is also an occasion often to learn the absolute deepest lessons of our lives. Life changing discoveries. Now sometimes you know what true. You know a truth. I'm a sinner saved by grace. You know a truth. And then you sin.You commit a sin that scares you. Why I did that. And you walk out of that sin by God's grace pulls you out. And you have such a deep awareness of sin like you never have a deeper fear of God. A deeper love for God and more zeal to fight the good fight of faith without the fall, without the sin of Adam and Eve, we would have never had the incarnation. We would have never had the death of Christ on the cross. The resurrection. We wouldn't have had some of the most incredible victories in the spiritual warfare. One theologian says there would certainly have been no display of some of the divine attributes of God had sin not been. They would have been conserved forever and the depth of the Godhead. So in a sense, we get to know more of God, the depth of God, the greatness of God because sin entered the world. And obviously, we can't use that as an excuse to excuse our sin, to justify our sin. God hates sin. Sin is wickedness.But there is this undeniable reality. As John Owen says the greatest evil in the world is sin. And the greatest sin was the first. And yet Gregory feared not to cry O happy fault which found such a redeemer. And I think we can't deny that. Some of the greatest lesson we've ever learned in our lives about God, about the truth, the reality of good and of evil, of God and of Satan, we've done through the sin. Romans 7:14-25. This is the text that Augustine points to. For we know that the law is spiritual but I am of the flesh sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me that is in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right but not the ability to carry it out.For I do not do the good I want but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies closer and for I delight in the law of God in my inner being. But I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am. Who will deliver me from the body of death. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I myself serve the law of God with my mind but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.The logic is irresistible. I'm wrestling with sin. St. Paul says he struggled with sin. If he was always finding himself flat on his face even near the end of his life mourning his great moral weakness then there's hope for me and there's hope for you. His sin pointed him to the glory of the Savior Christ. And Christ gets glory from saving us from sin. And then God uses our sin in the process of sanctification because we realize what it took for Jesus to turn my sin into sanctification. What did it take? It took the cross of Jesus Christ. There on the cross of Jesus Christ, Jesus got what we deserved. Punishment for our sin to extend to us where he earned. Kind of like Abraham and Abimelech.Abraham sins, God goes to Abimelech and says you're a dead man. Abraham gets what he didn't deserve. And then Abimelech gives to Abraham... So Abimelech gets what he didn't deserve. Abimelech gives to Abraham what Abraham didn't deserve. It's a double imputation. This is what happens when we believe in Jesus Christ. That our sins get counted to him. His righteousness gets counted to us. He who knew no sin became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God. Obviously the danger here is that we can sin as a way to get more grace and Romans six deals with that. And obviously that's false. In Romans two, St. Paul sternly condemns that idea that doing evil may bring about good.Does God want us to be complacent with sin? Does God want us to sin? Of course not. But this chapter's showing that God is greater than our sin. Whatever the things in your path, God is greater than our sins and God can use those sins as a sculptor. We're all block of marble and Jesus is sitting here with a hammer and chisel and just chiseling away the sinful parts of who we are so that we can be more faithful to him. And the final analysis Abraham is a better man. He's prepared for the rest of his life to live a life of faithfulness. 2 Timothy 2:13. If we are faithless he remains faithful for he cannot deny himself. Did Abraham betray the covenant? Yes, he did. But God did not. Abraham gave God reason to withdraw the promise but God would not. Abraham dishonored the Lord's name, dishonored his word but the Lord not only forgave him not only rescued him but blessed him abundantly with land, with animals, restored his marriage and gave him $7 million. God used Abraham's misbehavior then to create peace and harmony with the people in the land. Now back to the question. Is this fair? Was this text fair?Was it fair that Abimelech almost gets whacked for doing something that he didn't know he was doing? Oh, it's not fair. Is it fair that Abraham who commits the sin is called a prophet and has to intercede for the guy that didn't do anything wrong? Is that fair? No. Is it fair that Abimelech then gives the sinner Abraham $7 million, land and vehicles? Is that fair? No, it's not fair. Is it fair that Jesus Christ dies on the cross for my sin? That's not fair. It's not fair. God is greater than fair. That's not fair. But that's grace. And that's why grace makes us so... Makes God so great. Look, you might be a great person. Good person. You might be much better person than I am. You might recycle much better than I do. Sometimes a plastic bottle goes in the garbage in my house. It's terrible. You might drive an electric vehicle. You're much better than I am. You might waive the right flags and you might go the right parades and be an activist for the right things. You might be a great moral person.Being a good person doesn't get you into heaven. It doesn't. That's the point with Abimelech. It's not about being a good person. It's about being a perfect person. And there's only one perfect person and that's Jesus Christ. And the only way we can be reconciled with God and have our sins forgiven is to believe in Jesus Christ and ask for his righteousness to be counted on to us. And that's the beauty of the gospel. That through faith in Jesus Christ, God sees Christ's righteousness in you. It's as if Jesus Christ is interceding for us. Abimelech needed Abraham to intercede for him but Abraham died. So who can intercede for us? There's one who can intercede for us who is not dead. He's sitting at the right hand of God interceding for us. Isaiah 53:12. Therefore, I will divide him a portion with the many and he shall divide the spoil with a strong because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors yet he bore the sin of many. It makes intercession for whom transgressors.This one means to be a Christian you say God I am a transgressor. I have sinned. God I need you to intercede for me. Jesus intercede for me. And Hebrews 7:25. Consequently, he is able to save the uttermost those who draw near to God through him since he always lives to make intercession for them. If you are not a Christian we welcome you to become a Christian today by repenting of sin and believing in Jesus Christ. If you do that you are welcome and partake in communion. Today for homeless communion it's for repentant Christians. How do you become a Christian? You repent of sin and turn to Jesus Christ is for repenting Christian. So if you're Christian, if you have repented of sin but are currently living in habitual sin, you know that our sins in your life that you have not repented of them you have not turned from then right now is the opportunity to repent of those sins and partake in Holy Communion. If you don't repent today, if you don't become a Christian today, we ask that you refrain from this part of the service per 1 Corinthians 11.Right now we're going to pray for Holy Communion. If you haven't received a cup and you'd like to partake in communion, raise your hand and the ushers will pass them out as I'm praying. Let's pray. Heavenly Father we thank you for the gift of grace. What a gift it is. We thank you that you are more than fair. That you are also a loving God, a gracious God, a merciful God, a God that's long suffering. A God that longs to bless us not just in our lives but to the third, the fourth, the 10th, the 10,000s generation that comes from us. Lord we thank you for the story of Abraham. We thank you that you didn't give up on him when he was faithless but you remained faithful. In our own lives Lord, we repent of sin and we ask you to forgive us for all those times we've been faithless. And fill us with the spirit to fight the good fight of faith. Continue to sanctify us Lord and make us people who not only wage war against sin but our daily victories over.Lord Jesus we thank you for pouring out your blood and we thank you for your broken body. And I pray that you cleanse us through your blood and that you heal us through the brokenness of your body. I pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Take off the first piece of plastic, take the bread and then peel off the second piece of plastic which opens up the cup. And the night Jesus Christ was betrayed he took the bread and after breaking he said this is my body broken for you. Take eat and do this remembrance of me. Then proceeded to take the cup. And he said this cup is the cup of new covenant of my blood was poured out for the sins of many. Take drink and do this in remembrance of me. Lord Jesus we thank you for your intercession on our behalf as you sit the right hand of the throne of God the Father. We thank you not just for forgiveness of sin but that you use even our past sins to shape us and sanctify us and to sculpt us into the people that you have created us to be.I pray Lord Jesus that you send us the Holy Spirit and fill us and empower us. Give us the wisdom and the power and the strength to live in a manner worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ and use us here in the city to share the gospel with many so that many are saved. Draw the elect into your kingdom. And please use us in the process. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

Each year when I read about another incident featuring trucks getting “STORROWED” in Boston (ie. they're transporting heavy goods on Storrow Drive, oblivious to the BIG SIGNS on the overpasses reading, “CLEARANCE 10” 4', ultimately wrecking their vehicles, cargo, etc. by getting crunchola'd underneath, aka “STORROWED”), I have the same reoccurring thought : Wouldn't it be MAGICAL if the original lineup of Bush (Gavin Rossdale, whoever the other schmucks are, possibly including whoever had a cup of coffee in Transvision Vamp,) reunited to record a new and improved version of their 1996 Grammy nominated classic, “Swallowed”, but with new lyrics to reflect the phenomena described above? Wouldn't “Storrowed” be the ultimate career reboot for these guys (and there's so much footage of trucks getting storrowed, you've got your social media assets already lined up, YOU'RE WELCOME, GAV) 

Today's host(s): Scot Landry and Fr. Chris O'Connor. Today's guest(s): Dom Bettinelli and George Martell of Pilot New Media, reporting live from Madrid. Today's topics: World Youth Day - Madrid 2011 Summary of today's show: Scot and Fr. Chris discuss the events pilgrims for the Archdiocese of Boston have attended so far at World Youth Day with Dom Bettinelli and George Martell. 1st segment: Scot welcomed Fr. Chris back to the show, as it has been a few weeks since they have been on the air together. Fr. Chris described his travels with family to Rome - even that he did the same tour of Rome twice with two groups. He said it was great to return to the tomb of Blessed John Paul II at the Vatican and celebrate Mass at the tomb. Fr. Chris also said he climbed the cupola of the Basilica twice, distributing the blisters evenly across both sides of his feet. He continued and described his further trip to Holland. Fr. Chris asked Scot about his vacation. Scot detailed that he and his family visited relatives in Seattle, and that he enjoyed the outdoors and the greeness of the Pacific Northwest. The family visited two great waterfalls and climbed part of Mt. Rainier, and the temperatures were in the low 70s and comfortable. Scot said visiting the Space Needle and attending a Mariners game were highlights of the trip as well. Scot said another highlight was taking his family to a different church for three Sundays in a row. He said it was a great teaching experience for his children about the universality of the Catholic church, even when small details like songs or holding hands during the Our Father are different. 2nd segment: Scot welcomed Dom Bettinelli and George Martell live from Madrid via Skype. Dom explained that although it was 35 degrees (which sounds like parka weather), it was in Celsius - temperatures have been between 95 and 100 degrees in Madrid so far. Dom and George said there were almost 500 total pilgrims from the Archdiocese. About 350 pilgrims are traveling with the official Office of New Evangelization team, and the rest are from various parishes throughout the Archdiocese and from Boston University. George said it was a lot of fun to experience World Youth Day firsthand and show the incredible experience that the youth are having through his pictures. Scot and Dom discussed that the vast majority of the pilgrims from the Boston area have probably not been outside the country before except possibly to Canada or the Caribbean - he said at some times it can be overwhelming for the pilgrims but group leaders help the youth overcome that. Scot remarked how much older European landmarks are - Dom replied that some of the everyday parish churches in Madrid are older than the United States itself! Fr. Chris observed that it must take a lot of planning to keep such a large group together and under control. Dom said the planning and management from the ONE team has been great and spot on. Scot then asked about the trip the pilgrims took to Avila. Dom explained that most of the groups came on Sunday and went to the medieval walled town of Avila and went to Mass in the Monastery of San Jose, the first Monastery formed after St. Theresa of Avila worked to re-form the Carmelite order. Fr. Chris highlighted that the World Youth Day this year is "Rooted and Built Up in Jesus Christ, Firm in the Faith," from Colossians 2:7: So, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in him, rooted in him and built upon him and established in the faith as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. Dom said that the overwhelming experiences of World Youth Day are the universality of the Church and also the youthfulness of the Church. He said none of the pilgrims in Madrid have any embarrassment about literally proclaiming their faith at the top of their lungs - a great example to many youth who are used to our culture here where that public enthusiasm about faith is discouraged. Scot asked George to describe what it was like to take photos in places with such rich history. George said it was hard to fathom and put into words the respect with which everything is cared for and what an awesome experience it was to have the opportunity to take pictures in the churches. Scot, George, and Dom discussed Cardinal Seán's short lecture on the history of Toledo before a Mass there. Dom said Cardinal Seán told the pilgrims that Toledo was historically a place where Muslims, Christians, and Jews always got along - a city of unity. Dom said the town still has that peaceful feeling even today. 3rd segment: Scot asked George and Dom to describe the interactions that the Boston youth are having with the youth from all around the world. George reiterated that there is no shyness about faith in public - and that it was exciting to see the youth from Boston become more comfortable expressing themselves. He said he hopes this comfort will help them grow closer to God by the end of the week. Dom said that youth are encouraged to bring trinkets with them to trade, and that there is a very interesting bargaining going on between youth all over the world. He also said gear with American flags is very popular among the crowds. Both Dom and George remarked how easily the youth got along. Dom said in Toledo a group from Boston University started playing music outside the Cathedral, and were very quickly joined by a group from South Africa with tribal drums and singers from Sicily and New York - showing the true universality of the crowd. Scot asked Dom about the Boston group being able to pray with people from other countries. Dom said the prayer so far with other groups has been much more spontaneous so far, but there will be much more opportunity now that the official events of World Youth Day have begun. Dom said it was an amazing experience to see the people from Madrid gravitate towards the energy of the youth. Fr. Chris asked Dom to speak about the opening Mass for World Youth Day, which featured the Archbishop of Madrid, 800 other Archbishops and Cardinals, 8,000 priests, and 500,000 attendees. Dom explained that people who have been to a Papal Mass before would be familiar with the tight quarters but prayerful atmosphere of the opening Mass. He continued that even though you may not speak the same language as the person on your right or left, you still have the language of faith and the universal form of the Mass. He said the crowds would be like combining a Patriots victory parade and the Boston Pops 4th of July Concert at the Hatshell and closing Commonwealth Ave and Storrow Drive in Boston. Dom said a highlight of the Mass was the blessing of a reliquary of Blessed Pope John Paul II that contained some of his blood. Fr. Chris also noted the youth all got a religious medal with and many other items in a welcome backpack kit. 4th segment: Scot started the segment by noting that many of the priests of his generation point to a World Youth Day as a spark to their vocational call. Fr. Chris agreed, saying that World Youth Day can help people to see the need for the priesthood and to see that they are not alone - they have the support of many brothers and sisters across the world. Scot added that Spain, a previously very Catholic country, now has a population that is 25% atheist. Fr. Chris said Pope Benedict has said that Europe is afloat without roots, and must get back to Judeo-Christian principals if it is to survive. Scot asked Dom if the growing secularization was noticeable in Madrid. Dom said there have been some low-visibility small protests against government support of World Youth Day, as well as graffiti here and there. He said he thinks the secularization in that area seemed to be much like it is in the USA - less hostile and more apathetic. Scot emphasized that we often infantilize the youth of the Church, and that World Youth Days show that youth are the present of the Church as well as the future. Dom said that as the group walks around, he thinks to himself "who might be getting that vocational spark in the next few days and influence the Church in the future?" Scot explained the main reason Dom and George are in Madrid is to capture video, audio, and other media that can help people in Boston experience some of the pilgrimage to Madrid. Dom said their primary goal is to bring the people of the Archdiocese along with the pilgrimage virtually through the website, blog posts, pictures, Facebook posts and tweets. Dom went on to say that while there have been a few hiccups, the computer equipment they use is unique for a small group and has performed flawlessly to let them share experiences over the internet. Fr. Chris said he can't wait for Pope Benedict to get to World Youth Day to see what messages he has for the youth gathered there. Dom said the differences between Blessed Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict have been small but important - Pope Benedict emphasizes more silence and meditation and time for silent prayer, while Blessed Pope John Paul II seemed to emphasize the joyous (and sometimes loud) expressions of faith. Scot said that, in philosophical terms, Blessed Pope John Paul II was a phenomenologist and valued the event and experience nature of World Youth Day; whereas Pope Benedict sees his role as more like John the Baptist's, pointing and leading towards Christ. Scot asked George to compare the experience of being a photojournalist in the United States with the experience he is having now taking photos at World Youth Day. George answered that the thing striking him the most is the overtly visual universality of the Church. George said one of his favorite photos so far was a young boy with his head back, yelling about his love for his faith. Fr. Chris agreed that the joy experienced is incredible on these types of pilgrimages. George said he looks forward to showing with pictures how the faith of the pilgrims will grow over the week. Scot said that up until the opening Mass a few hours ago, it's been a "pregame" for World Youth Day. Dom said that over the new few days the youth from the Boston will attend several catachetical sessions, a "Theology on Tap" event, Stations of the Cross with Pope Benedict in the streets of Madrid, a Mass at the Basilica of St Francis, Eucharistic Adoration, and the closing Mass with the Pope on Sunday morning.