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Love, Rainbow Flags, and the Nature of Jesus and the Holy Spirit A Video of That's a Good Question Video Blog Jon Delger Jon Delger I Didn't Know I Needed the Church Jon Delger Coming Out of Catholicism | Session 2 Creating Meaningful Traditions Jon Delger Christianity and Politics: Q+A Jon Delger I Didn't Know I Needed the Bible Jon Delger Coming Out of Catholicism | Session 1 Jon Delger Withstand: How The Culture War Is A Spiritual Battle Jon Delger Christianity and Politics: Where Do We Go From Here? Jon Delger Coming Out of Catholicism | Q & A Kelly Needham | Women's Christmas Party People Pleasing Jon Delger Christianity and Politics: Are We a Christian Nation?

Got God Questions - October 2, 2024 Jon Delger I Didn't Know I Needed the Church Jon Delger Coming Out of Catholicism | Session 2 Creating Meaningful Traditions Jon Delger Christianity and Politics: Q+A Jon Delger I Didn't Know I Needed the Bible Jon Delger Coming Out of Catholicism | Session 1 Jon Delger Withstand: How The Culture War Is A Spiritual Battle Jon Delger Christianity and Politics: Where Do We Go From Here? Jon Delger Coming Out of Catholicism | Q & A Kelly Needham | Women's Christmas Party People Pleasing Jon Delger Christianity and Politics: Are We a Christian Nation?

Listen Well Sermon Series: Words To Live By Ryan DB Kimmel Lead Pastor Peace Church Main Passage: Proverbs 24:5-9 Transcript Today is the day that the Lord has made, so let us rejoice and be glad in it. And everyone said extremely loudly, Amen and Amen. So if there's one thing that life, marriage and ministry has taught me, it's that it's easier to speak than it is to listen. Everybody got something to say. Not everybody got a listening ear. And for Christians, this should not be the case. I mean, the good book has told us for 2000 years, something pretty clear here. James one nine says, Know this, beloved brothers, meaning know this fellow Christians, let every person and if you can see this, say it with me, be quick to hear slow to speak. Two thousand years of the Bible have been telling us that. You know, as I said, we are continuing the sermon series today. We're calling it Words to Live By, Wisdom the World Has Forgotten. Last week we looked at how we need to be discerning in this world, and today we're gonna look at what I believe to be a very challenging notion of a call to listen well. Listen well. Please turn in your Bibles to Proverbs chapter 24 verses 5 to 9. If you're gonna stick with us for the sermon series, I hope you do. This is again a verse-by-verse walkthrough of Proverbs chapter 24. So go ahead just put your bookmark in your Bible. If you're unfamiliar with the book of Proverbs, while you're turning there, hear this. It's an Old Testament book. It's really a collection of wise sayings that King Solomon, the son of King David, collected and he probably wrote some of these. But it's clear that this is a book that he wrote for his son. All over the book of Proverbs, he's addressing his son, saying, my son, my son, listen to me, listen to these words, listen to this, my son. It's clear he wants his children to be wise and side note, gonna call us all out here for a moment. This is such a contrast to parents today. Parents today, parents today want their kids to be trendy, cool and well-liked. They want them to go viral. They want them to be athletic. They want them to be intelligent. But how many of you parents can say you are seriously instilling wisdom in your children in a proactive way? That you're sitting with your children saying, my children, my daughter, my son, here's how you'd be wise in such a broken world. How many of you are opening up the book of Proverbs and sharing this wisdom? We are called to share wisdom and to teach our children wisdom, and with that comes a key notion of how to listen well. Do we know how to listen well? And so with that question kind of looming over us, would you hear the word of the Lord? Proverbs chapter 24, verses five to nine. A wise man is full of strength and a man of knowledge enhances his might. For by wise guidance, you can wage war and in the abundance of counselors, there's victory. Wisdom is too high for a fool. In the gates, he does not open his mouth. Whoever plans to do evil will be called a schemer. The devising of folly is sin. And the scoffer is an abomination to mankind. This is God's very challenging word. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of the Lord remains forever. Thanks be to God. Let's pray and then let's get at it. Let's pray together Father God in heaven above. How amazing are you? Oh God? You are of infinite wisdom and yet you hear us and yet you listen to us Your word tells us that when we worship you and when we follow you you listen to us So father, I would ask this morning that by the power and presence of your Holy Spirit that you would give us ears to listen well, that we might grow in wisdom, to be more like your son and our savior. And it's in his name we pray, in Jesus' perfect name. And everyone said, amen and amen. So as we look at this very challenging and I would say, inditing passage, let me give you a thought for today. And here's your take home. Those who are wise, listen well. Not those who are wise listen well. See the difference there? Do you know that right off the bat in the book of Proverbs, chapter 1 verse 5, it says this, it says, Proverbs chapter 1 verse 5, let the wise hear and increase in learning because the wise person knows they've always got something more to learn. The wise person listens. Jesus Christ himself tells us this in Luke 8 18. He says consider carefully how you hear, meaning how you listen. Why? Because people who are wise are people who know how to listen. Those who are wise listen well. And as we wade into the waters of our passage, we're going to get one coin from two different sides as we break apart our passage. Here's your two thoughts for this morning, listening well is leading. Listening well is leading. The second part of our passage is gonna remind us that listening well is life giving. It's life giving. All right, first thing, listening well is leading. Hopefully you have your Bibles open. Verse five says this, a wise man is full of strength and a man of knowledge enhances his might. Okay, I want you to stop for a moment and I want you to think who is the wisest person that you personally know? Maybe they've passed on to glory, maybe they're here, but who is the wisest person that you have personally, personally known? Number one, I'm praying someone came to mind, which I'm fairly certain for hopefully most of you, someone did, I'm willing to guess that that person is, how do you say, seasoned in life. Maybe their hair is gray, a little salt and peppery. And you know, side note, I spend 10 minutes every morning picking out the gray hairs of my beard. Maybe if I left those in there, you'd all think I was a lot wiser than I am. But you know, when you think about this, like, yeah, when we think about the wise, we think of those who have, who have some life under their belt, right? But even in that, no offense, physical dominance normally isn't their defining feature. So what does the Bible get in that here when the Bible says a wise man is full of strength and a man of knowledge enhances his might? Now like with all things when we come to the Bible and we're unclear, I think one of the first things that we should be doing is, and this is a bonus for you here this morning, keep reading. Keep reading. Because when you do, you'll find something really interesting. Verse 5 is followed by verse 6. And when you read verse six, you'll see this it starts with this very important word for Now just like in English in Hebrew what this was originally written in the word for in Grammar is known as a conjunction a Conjunction is a word that connects two thoughts verse five is explained by verse six Verse 5, a wise man is full of strength, and a man of knowledge enhances his might. How or why, you might ask? For or because, for by wise guidance you can wage war. A wise man is mighty because he listens to wisdom. Young men in the house, listen to me. Wisdom makes our strength mean something. And this comes by listening, learning to listen. And as the Bible says, to wise guidance and an abundance of counselors. I'm old enough to begin to realize that our strong backs will fail us, but wisdom will stand the test of time. So listen well. Church, I want to say something. I'm going to say it twice because this is how important I want you to hear this, how much I want you to hear this. Your ability to succeed in the long run is connected to your wisdom to listen well. I'll say it again. Your ability to succeed in the long run is connected to your wisdom to listen well. Men in the house, you may be able by your strength to get people to fear you. But it's by wisdom is how people will respect you. People hear these words, hear these words of scripture, this goes for marriage, business, life, and war. Wisdom is listening well, and listening well is leading. Now I want to hang on verse 6 here, because verse 6 is a very popular verse in the Bible. So let's look at it, verse six. Again, please have your Bibles open if you have them with you. For by wise guidance you can wage war, and in abundance of counselors there is victory. All right, especially for guys like me who are in a leadership position, or if you are in a leadership position, maybe in management, here's what I'd say to you. Everyone needs to grasp this, but I'd say especially those in authority or leadership. Authority or leadership. Wise guidance does not mean popular opinion. Wise guidance does not mean a majority vote. Wise guidance does not mean the easy way. Wise guidance means just that. Guidance that is wise, not mandatory or compulsory. An abundance of counselors. Church hear me on this. The abundance of counselors does not mean everyone with an opinion, because we all have one. So let's just flip this for a moment, because I want to address something that as a pastor, I hear, safe to say, at least on a fairly regular basis. And it's this phrase. I wonder if you've ever said this. They just don't listen. They just don't listen. Have you ever said that? They'll say this about the other person or the other side of the argument, they just don't listen to me. Now church, I'm the one making the argument that most people are terrible at listening, but to make sure that you understand what you are saying when you say the words, they don't listen to me, let me just share some wisdom here for a moment. Just because your spouse, your parents, your pastor, or your boss, just because they don't do what you say or take your advice, that doesn't mean they aren't listening to you. See, people think that the marker of being heard is being obeyed. Listen to me, that's only true for dogs and soldiers. So if you want your relationship to feel like the military or like animals, then you need a two-way communication and you need to understand that just because someone doesn't enact what you say doesn't mean they didn't hear you. Again, I would say this to spouses, children, people who are employed, church members. So it's important to listen well And we're going to talk about this. I want to talk about specifically how we listen. Well, I want to talk for a few moments about active listening How to how to be an active listener? Now if you've ever done premarital counseling with me, then you know how I teach this And if you've ever been married to me, you know how terrible I am at this. Most people think that listening is a passive thing, that listening is doing nothing while you let the other person speak. And do you know how many friendships are broken and how many marriages are ruined because people have that mentality? That's not helpful. When we communicate, and when we listen, we have to be active in this. And I would say that our inability to listen well has led to the political and cultural divide of this country, or at least contributed massively towards it. Listening is not doing anything while letting the other person speak. Listening is an active thing. So let's talk about what we do when we listen with a wise ear, how to listen well, and how to be an active listener. So active listening is listening firstly to understand. When someone is speaking and you're listening, one of the first things you're doing is that you're listening to try to understand this person. What are they saying? How are they saying it? Why are they saying it? You're listening to understand. Also, the other reason that we listen well and we have active listening is not. Active listening is not assuming you know what is going to be said. I don't know if you're like me, but if there are times that you know me and my wife and have friction, we'll call it, she may begin to say something and I will immediately cut her off and say something like, I know what you're gonna say. Apparently, me and Kevin are the only ones. That's not active listening. Active listening is not assuming you know what is gonna be said. And here's the second one, gentlemen. Active listening is not just waiting to respond. Active listening is not just waiting for your turn to speak. Again, if you've done premarital counseling with me, then you know this exercise. I have an engaged couple sit on the couch and they face each other and I instruct one person to share their thoughts or feelings and to be assertive in that. Not domineering or not a jerk, but just assertive. Take ownership of what you want. And so they say, I would like this. I want that. I want more of this. I want less of that. One person. So one person's sharing their thoughts, desires, or opinion. And another person who's listening is to be active listening, actively listening. And this person has a job. And this job is, number one, they need to hear correctly what this person is saying. And so when this person is done speaking, their response is not to immediately give their rebuttal. The first response is to establish that communication has happened. The first job of the active listener is to ensure that they heard this person correctly. So they do that by rephrasing what the person said, not repeating, because anyone can just regurgitate what someone said. You have to rephrase what the person said, which shows that you've internalized it and you understood it. This is also a chance to ask questions and to get clarification because what you want to do is ensure that you have understood what they said and you want to make sure that that person feels understood and feels heard. So once that's established then you can continue to build a conversation and listen to me if you think this sounds clunky in the communication you've just exposed that you're not great at communicating because communication is hard, especially in marriage. And so when we communicate, you need to actively listen. What are they saying? Why are they saying that? And when they're done, what you say is, okay, if I heard you correctly, what I think you mean is X, Y, and Z. And then you give that person a chance to confirm and affirm that. Once that's established, then A, you've done active listening well is leading so men. Men hear me if you want to be the leader in your home in your community in your marriage You must master this And I would say you shouldn't be a leader until you've mastered this ability to listen well. A wise man is full of strength and a man of knowledge enhances his might. For by wise guidance, you can wage war and in an abundance of counselors, there is victory. The assumption there is that that leader knows how to listen. This is not just for kings and generals. This is not just for husbands and fathers. This goes for mothers and daughters, pastors, and for politicians. This goes for progressives and conservatives. This goes for anyone who wants to fancy themselves to be a wise person. Wisdom is listening well, and listening well is leading. And when a leader stops listening, they should stop leading. Hold me to that, people. This leads to the second, or I should say the other side of the coin, that listening well is life-giving. It's how we instill life. Now as we turn our attention to verses 7 to 9, we're going to immediately see a contrast here that Solomon props up. It's a constant contrast that he makes throughout the entire book of Proverbs. You may know it. It's the contrast between the wise and the foolish. Those who are wise and those who are fools. Solomon, as he wrote Proverbs for his son, he's constantly warning his son to put into practice these words of wisdom so that he won't be a fool. He doesn't care if his son is good at basketball, he wants his child to be wise. Now this is important, I wanna remind us of something about the Book of Proverbs. The Book of Proverbs is 3,000 years old. Let me put this in context for you the book of Proverbs was written before English was a language The book of Proverbs was written before the Enlightenment It was written before Rome conquered the world the book of Proverbs was written before Confucius Plato or Aristotle The words here have stood the test of time We are still reading it or at least we should be still reading it, and we still should be challenged and learning from it. How foolish it would be to cast aside this book as having nothing to offer you. In fact, we would all do well to spend more time in the book of Proverbs. And honestly, church, as I envision how this year is going to unfold for our church, there's a reason I wanted to start with the book of Proverbs, we're going to need the wisdom to know how to continue to minister to this broken and wicked culture, and to how to respond faithfully to what God's doing in this world. How foolish it would be to cast aside this book, but some will, some will. And the Bible tells us why. Verse seven, because wisdom is too high for a fool, and in the gate, he does not open his mouth. Wisdom is a lofty thing, and not everyone has the humility to receive it. So let me ask you when was the last time someone gave you godly advice and you took it and you did something with it? Do you have those people in your life sharing those words with you? And do you listen so much that it changed your approach to life? Write this proverb down, it's a good one. Proverb 17:10. I love this. It says a rebuke goes deeper into a man of understanding than a hundred blows into a fool. Meaning, the wise person knows he always has more to learn, but you can't even beat wisdom into a fool. Because wisdom is too high for a fool, verse 7 says. And then verse 7 says something interesting here. It says, in the gate, he does not open his mouth. Now what's that all about? Now, anybody who wants to read the Old Testament understands what the Bible talks about when it talks about the gate or in the gate. It's all over. It's so important. Please don't think of it like a white picket fence with this little door swinging. That's not what we're talking about when the Bible talks about the gate. The gate, as described by Baker Bible Dictionary, is this. In the Old Testament, the city gate has a central role in that city's military, economic, judicial, political, and religious aspects of life. It wasn't just a fence with a door. It was a structure. In the Old Testament, when people talked about the gate, this is what they thought of. They thought of a structure, they thought of a building. It was not just used for protection. The city gate was a building, often two structures with a courtyard space in between them. And in this space is where the official business of the city happened, kind of like modern-day township halls. It was at the city gates where the prophets of old would proclaim the word of God. It was at the city gates where military action was planned, where a city's leaders and elders would convene to make determinations. The gate was not just a passageway, it was a critical meeting space for the life of the city. So the gate is where the official business would happen. Today we might call it the boardroom or the leadership table. And we don't let fools at the leadership table. So when Proverbs says in verse 7, wisdom's too high for a fool, in the gate he does not open his mouth, it's like saying there's no place at the leadership table for fools. When leaders meet, the fool has nothing to say. Not because in wisdom he's listening, but because the fool is out of his league and has nothing to contribute, so he keeps quiet. But here's an interesting thought, but follow me on this. Remaining silent is often the wisest thing to do. Proverbs 17:28 says, "'Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise.'" When do we keep quiet? Because Ecclesiastes 3:7 says, "'There's a time to keep silent and a time to speak.'" So this begs the question, people, when is it wise to keep quiet? Let's look at a few reasons why it would be wise to keep quiet. Reasons to remain silent. First thing is to keep yourself in check. Proverbs 29:11 says, "'A fool gives full vent to his spirit, "'but a wise man quietly holds it back.'" It's wise to keep silent to keep yourself in check, meaning silence is a key indicator of self-control. It's the unwise man who loses control and says things that they need to repent of. And if there's anyone on the hot seat right now, it's yours truly. Proverbs 13:3 says, "'Whoever guards his mouth preserves his life.'" This ties into the whole point that wisdom is life-giving. The second reason it would be wise to keep quiet is as we're talking about because you are active listening because you're listening well. Proverbs 18:13 I would never tell someone the need to get a tattoo but men this might be a good one to put backward on your face so that when you look in the mirror you can read this every single day. Proverbs 18:13 13, if anyone gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame. See, the wise person listens so that he knows how to respond. See, if you are speaking before you are finished listening, then chances are you are just emotionally reacting rather than wisely responding. And everyone said, welcome to social media. That is all that happens. Something happens in this world and immediately people start throwing out their thoughts. And I'm thinking, you've had no time to process this. You're just emotionally reacting. You're not wisely responding. So let's not be that people. Ask my wife, she will tell you this is one of my greatest weaknesses. I respond before I listen. I get charged up, I think I know the answer. The alpha comes out in me and I bowl over people because I think that I Know better and here's what God's telling me that I think we all need to learn the lesson meant is this is that you don't know If you know better until you first listen well My mama used to say something and When she would say this to me, she actually had a hand gesture that went with it Tell me if your mama ever did this for you. When I was little, she would say this, zip it. And she's actually like, making a little gesture like my mouth was actually zipping shut. She'd say, zip it. And you know what? I don't want to overstate this, but my mom was saving my life. She was teaching me that sometimes you just need to shut it. You need to zip it. And that leads to kind of the third thing, a reason why it's wise to remain silent. It's to discern whether or not you are dealing with a wise person or a fool. You listen to this person to discern if you're listening to a fool or a wise person. Proverbs 10, 19. When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent. Meaning, if a person is rambling, chances are there's guilt or foolishness, but we can only know that if we are wise enough to remain silent and listen. And the reason that we need to know this is because foolishness and folly do not lead to life. Do you know where it leads? To sin. It leads to sin. Verse 8 says something really important to us. It says, whoever plans to do evil will be called a schemer. Whoever plans to do evil will be called a schemer. Who here in their life either have children or you have grandchildren who are 10 years old and younger. Anyone? In our venues, online, let me know. Okay, who here has ever been 10 years old or younger? Okay. I'll tell you what, this is what I am so trying to instill into my children, especially my boys. I think the way that we can translate this idea of like, don't be a schemer, I think one of the ways we can say this nowadays, and this is how I say it to my sons, is don't be sneaky. Don't be sneaky. Dad can't stand that. Don't do things behind my back. Don't be sneaky. If you don't want people to know about it, then don't do it. Not because we're trying to seek approval, but because that's a key indicator if something is right or wrong. Do we want people to know about it? Gossiping, backstabbing, or here's something in my time I've seen people do, which is just such a scheming thing, it infuriates me, is they build a coalition. They go and scheme and build a coalition rather than confronting the problem. This is what schemers do. I tell my son, that's not befitting of children of God. That's not befitting of godly men. We don't scheme We stand up and confront if you've dealt like people if you dealt with people like this, you know, they are toxic Don't be a schemer. Don't be sneaky because the Bible says something that it does not mince words in verse 9 The devising of folly is sin and the scoffer is an abomination to mankind. The devising of folly is sin. Now don't sit there and think, oh come on preacher, are you saying we can't have any fun? Listen here, don't confuse folly with fun. That's what man-boys do. Godly men and godly women know the difference. You know the difference between folly and fun. It goes back to the principle of wisdom Which is the fear of the Lord folly has no fear of the Lord fun on the other hand Fun is part of how we live life to the fullest in Jesus' name Christians should be the most joyful fun people because we know how to have real true fun that gives life Folly has no fear of the Lord, but fun is living life to the fullest in Jesus name and there are sinful hearts that plan and devise folly. And the Bible tells us that only sinful people plan to do stupid things on purpose, so be cautious about what you laugh at on YouTube. Because you just may be encouraging someone to sin. The devising of folly is sin; the Bible says the scoffer is an abomination to mankind. You know the scoffers. I know you do. Right, these are the critical people of the world who complain but don't care to make anything better. They'll tell you everything that's wrong, but they'll never celebrate what's right. They're the scoffers. In the Bible, not me, the Bible says they are an abomination to mankind. They don't make things better, they only make things worse. So, my friends, discern wisely what you are critical of, but have nothing to contribute to. I'm going to say that again. Be careful of what you are critical of but have nothing to contribute to. There is no wisdom in the words of scoffers. They are not life-giving, they are life-sucking. Listen, as the leader and as one of the leaders here, I want to be humble enough to learn from every godly critique that I need to hear it. But so often scoffers are only critical and they just suck the life out of you. They kill relationships, they kill pastors, they kill ministries. But those who are wise, but those who are wise are those who give life by their words, even in words of rebuke. The wise person knows how to rebuke in a way that still gives life. Jesus was the master at this. His words were only life-giving and yet at times we see Jesus push back. We see Jesus rebuke, but he was always life-giving. Why? Because Jesus was the master at listening. He listened to the conversation. He listened to people. Jesus embodied how listening well is leading. He embodied how listening well is life-giving. Jesus is the one who shows us that those who are wise listen well. Of all the reasons I follow this guy, this is definitely one of them. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, God the Son, who by his own right didn't have to listen to anyone. There's nothing any one of us could say to Jesus that would add value to what he already knows. Jesus didn't need or have to listen to everyone and yet he listened with intention. He listened carefully. He listened compassionately. His response was always wise. Even his rebuke, his words were life-giving because they always came off the heels of listening. If you want life-giving words, turn to Jesus, which is why we all need to ask ourselves right now, who are you listening to and are you listening to the words of the one who has the words of life, Jesus? I wanna end by kind of just looking at a quick story from the Bible real quick. And this is where Jesus has kind of amassed like a following. And he is talking about, he's introducing the concept of communion. And he's talking about how we need to have his life in us. And Jesus goes like real gritty, real vivid imagery here. He says that we need to have his life in us. And the way that we have that is that we actually eat his flesh and drink his blood. Okay, as gritty and vivid imagery as possible. And there's a bunch of people who are following Jesus, who love him, who are like, whoa. I wanna read to you the response. This is from John 6. It says, when many of his disciples heard this, they said, this is a hard saying, who can listen to it? And after this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus turned to the 12 and said to them, do you want to go away as well? And Simon Peter answered him, Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. My friend, my friend's life, true life is found in listening, listening to the words of Jesus, whose words were not just life, but eternal life. This is the gospel that Jesus died on the cross in our place for our sins, but that wasn't the end. In His resurrection, He was raised to new life. This is the promise and the guarantee of our new life, eternal life when we believe in the gospel. And the gospel, you know this, the gospel is the good news. You hear the news, you listen to the news, you receive news. So believing in Jesus is listening and receiving the good news of salvation in His name. And Jesus Himself even said in Matthew 7, 24, Everyone then who hears these words of Mine and does them, will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. Amen. Would you please stand. As we prepare our hearts for worship, I want to preface something here for a moment. We're going to sing one of my favorite songs to Old Hymn called Come Thou Fount. And I want to read to you some of the words from this song. It says, Come thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace. We need to sit in a posture where we are reflecting on what God has done for us, what Jesus has done for us, and what the Spirit's doing through us, and we let Him tune our hearts to His goodness, knowing that our salvation is by grace, the grace of God. So as we sing, we're coming into conformity with God's plan for us, with God's good and loving salvation plan for us. So if you are a saved Christian, then you best be singing out loud. And if you don't know Jesus as your Lord and Savior yet, He's inviting you today, and I'd love to help you with that. Come find me, let's talk. And we can find how you can have life, not just life to the full, but life eternal. So Father God, as we come before you now, Lord, we sing unto your glory in the name of Jesus by the power of the Spirit, we do ask, Lord, that you would tune our hearts to sing thy grace. Fill this place with your Spirit that we may lift up praises to you, our God, who hears and listens because of the blood of Jesus Father you're so good to us and we're so thankful help us now even if we are weak to respond in worship to you God we love you and we thank you we pray this in to respond in worship to you God we love you and we thank you we pray this in Jesus name and everyone say amen and amen

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Faith & Fruit Sermon Series: Final Words Kevin Harney Lead Pastor Shoreline Community Church Main Passage: 2 John Transcript Well, when you say certain names, things come to people's minds and hearts. And there's people in my life that if somebody were to say their name, it brings us this warmth and this joy. A couple of those names for me would be Warren Burgess, John Shaw. Both pastors, both pastors who had a huge influence on my life as a young pastor. Watching them, learning from them, listening to them, asking them questions and just sort of soaking up their wisdom because these are men that were decades and decades older than me. They're both with Jesus now. But I'm so thankful that God put older, wiser people, men in my life for me to learn from. And now today, I continue to have that. It gets, as I get older, it gets more and more challenging to find people older than me to pour into my life. But if I were to say the names Carl Overbeek or Paul Seder, you might not know those names, but Carl for probably a decade and a half and Paul for maybe the last 10 years have poured into my life. And Paul Cedar thinks I'm a young guy because he's 84 and I'm 60 and so he's a quarter century older than I am, right? And so so with Paul every month we spent time together and I asked him questions. And I just listened and I learned because he's older, because he's wise, because he's seasoned. And one of our times together a while back, I was with him and I said, I said, Paul, how do you deal with those people in the church who are just negative and critical and always have something bad to say and kind of come down hard on you all the time. When you see them coming, you kind of go, oh no, here it comes. Now, obviously there's no one like that at Peace Church. But other churches are different than this church. But sometimes there's people like that in the church. So I asked him, how did you handle that through your ministry? He said, let me tell you a story. And that's the people with wisdom in years. Often they'll just say, let me tell you a story. In the story comes the truth, right? So he said, years ago I was a pastor at Lake Avenue Congregational Church in Pasadena, near where Sharon and I went to seminary. And he said, I had a guy in the church who gave a lot of money and thought he kind of had the right to say and do whatever he wanted because he was very generous. But he said, every time I saw him coming, I knew it was going to be something negative. He was always critical of me, of the church, of other people. He was always negative, always critical. So he said, so I just took it to the Lord in prayer one day. I said, God, I don't know what to do with this guy. Could you maybe make him leave the church or do something? Because I'm just so tired of how he always treats me and other people. And he said, and the Holy Spirit just gently put in my heart this. He said, you know, Paul, you haven't suffered that much for me. You're not in a place in the world where people burn down your house or beat you up for being a Christian. So having one guy who's just negative all the time, he said, that's your suffering, that's your burden, that's your persecution, it's not so bad. So he said, can you give me a fresh perspective? He said, then I called the guy. I said, can I take you out to lunch? And I said, sure, he was kind of surprised. He said, sure, I'd love to go out to lunch. So Paul said, I took him out to lunch. We sat down and in the midst of the lunch, he said, I just said to him, listen, I gotta tell you something. I've been thinking about you and praying about you. And as I've been praying about you, it just struck me. You know, I haven't had that much persecution in my life, that much suffering, that much abuse, but then God brought you along. And he said, you become a source of pain and struggle and anxiety in my life, and I just want to thank you because my life's been pretty easy and God's using you to bring me pain and struggle. And if you know this guy, he's very gentle-spirited, but he's very honest. So I said, how did he respond? And he said, I didn't know you saw me that way. I didn't know that's who I was. But I'm going to try not to be like that anymore. Wow. So I said, well, so now did you like maintain a relationship with him? And he said, can I tell you what? I learned more from that five minute story that Paul Cedar told me than I did in some entire seminary classes I had. There's something about going to people who are older, who are wiser, who love Jesus, who followed him and sitting at their feet and listening and learning. And this series you're in right now, that's exactly what you're doing. You're going to John the Apostle, the last living apostle, the oldest at this point, living apostle, and somebody who, you know, when we first meet John with, you know, he's part of Peter, James, and John, this inner circle, and if you want to get some background on who this John was, make sure if you weren't here for the first week, or if you weren't online for the first week, watch the first week in the series that Pastor Ryan preached. He walks through the background of who John was. It's a great background. So if you haven't heard that, go back and listen to that message. But, but this is John who was this young, energetic, you know, we meet him in the Gospels, but now he's older, he's seasoned, and when we listen to him teaching, we really discover that this is a man who's grown in incredible wisdom. And he writes this postcard, he really writes a postcard, we call it a letter, we call it an epistle, but 2 John is really like a postcard written to a woman and her children. And we don't know if her children are spiritual children, because the Bible will sometimes refer to people as, you know, Paul will say, well, Timothy was my true son in the faith. We don't know if it's physical children or spiritual children, doesn't really matter. But this little postcard, as a matter of fact, the entire book of 2 John is on this little paper here, front and back, that's the entire book of the Bible. So if you're gonna read like a whole book of the Bible in one day, you can try to read Psalms, it's 150 chapters, but this is the, if you want to do it, I read a whole book of the Bible today, go with 2 John, because it's a postcard right here. All right, so here's what I want to do. I've been reading this and reflecting on this last week and my average time in reading this is 93 seconds. So I'm going to read an entire book of the Bible to you right now. I still have plenty of time to preach, okay? And you can turn in your Bibles to second John, near the very end of the Bible. If you hit the book of Revelation, just turn left and go back a little bit. But it's very into your Bible. You can open up in your Bible app, but I want you most of all just to listen. It won't be on the screens. Just hear this. This woman in the early church and her spiritual or physical children gets this letter from John and asks herself, why is he writing it? What's he getting at? What's the point of this little postcard? Here we go, alright? Scripture Reading The elder, that's John, the elder to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in the truth. And by the way, if you have your own Bibles and you write notes, circle or underline the words love and truth. It shows up over and over in the first half of this little postcard. The owner of the elect lady and her children whom I love in the truth. And not only I, but also all who know the truth. Because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever. That's three truths in two verses. That's a lot of truth. Verse three. Grace, mercy and peace be with us from God the Father and Jesus Christ the Father's Son in truth and love. I rejoice greatly to find out that some of your children are walking in the truth, just as we were commanded by the Father. And now I ask you, dear lady, not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but one we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments and this is the commandment just as you have heard from the beginning so that you should walk in it now he gets to kinda heart of what he's trying to say John is addressing a specific issue notice what this issue is I continue that this little postcard he says to this woman for many deceivers have gone out into the world those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh the incarnation such a one is a deceiver and the anti Christ watch yourselves so that you may not lose what you've worked for but may win a full reward everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God whoever abides in the teaching has both the father and the son if anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting close the door for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works and then a little wrap-up so I have much to write to you I would rather not use paper and ink instead I hope to come to you and talk face to face so that our joy may be complete the children of your elect sister greet you. Prayer living God speak to us as we walk through this entire book of the Bible this is this little postcard written for a wise seasoned elderly apostle to a person in your church who loved you and wanted to live for you. May we hear your word to us today as your spirit speaks. We pray this in Jesus name and for his glory. Amen. So the call is to know and live in the truth. When you read this little postcard what you hear John saying is know the truth and live in the truth this is important guides everything you do when you know the truth when you live in the truth you're on the right path so again second John verses 1 through 4 there's only one chapter such as verses 1 through 4 listen again follow along and see the words love and truth jump out again the elder to the elect lady and her children whom I love in the truth not only I but also who know the truth all these other believers we love you too because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever now pause there for a minute because the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever it sounds like he's talking about Jesus who is the way the truth of sound doctrine, or the truth of Jesus? Is it A, B, C, or D, all of the above? I think this is D, all of the above. It's this whole body of truth and the person of truth and the life of truth. Then he says, Grace and mercy and peace will be with us from God the Father and Jesus Christ the Father's Son in truth and love. Those things go together. And then he says, I rejoice greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth just as we were commanded by the Father. So John is speaking with wisdom, with years of experience. He's writing to this woman and her children, either her family or spiritual family. And he's writing out of a lifetime of walking with Jesus. This is a real letter to a real person in a real time in history. And so we have to kind of read it within that context. Now the difference between, you know, Warren Burgess and John Shaw early in my life as a pastor and Carl Overbeek and Paul Cedar now in my life as a pastor and their influences, these were godly men who spoke truth to me but they weren't speaking Holy Spirit inspired scripture. When we're listening to John and 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, and I'm hoping you're reading through these three books as you've been going through this series, at least this week, read all three of them a couple times. Get the word of God in your mind, get it in your heart. But just to say, listen, I wanna understand what God's word is saying to me. The word truth is used five times in the first four verses. So this is important. And this truth is Jesus. And this truth is the written Word of God. So the living Word of God, who is the truth. The written Word of God, which is the truth. And what you believe as a body, the doctrine you hold to. If you ask Pastor Ryan, is there somewhere we have written down what we believe as a church? He'd say, yes, it's on the website. You've got to look into that. If you're thinking about joining this church, don't just go, I like their music and the people are friendly and you know the worship service time works in my schedule I'm gonna go to this church. You better find out what a church believes before you jump in and What this church believes is biblical is solid is sound I wouldn't be here preaching if it wasn't. But make sure you know that personally so when the Bible talks about truth here I think it means Jesus the truth the word written word of truth and the truth of our belief our faith is true and given to us by God. And the truth guides love and love leads to the best life. Truth guides love. So if we believe in the truth and we hold to the truth, it actually shows us what love looks like. Why do I do my best to humbly serve my wife and not always demand on my way, but try to think of her first. Because the truth of God's word says that I'm to serve my wife as Jesus served the church and laid his life down as a ransom for the church. The word of God tells me how to love. See, love isn't just this nebulous, squishy, weird, fuzzy feeling. I've talked to people, my relationship didn't work out, our marriage didn't work out because we kind of fell out of love. Then your love is based strictly on emotion. Love is more than that. It's based on the truth. Why do we as Christians, if you're a follower of Jesus, why do we try to share the love of Jesus with others? Because the last thing Jesus said is, go therefore and make disciples of all nations. Tell others about me. Our love, the truth speaks to us. It grows love in our heart, and it guides our lives. All these things fit together. And so we've got to let God's truth guide our lives. We need to know the truth. Do you walk in the truth? Let me ask you a question. How often do you open this book up? Or how often do you, on your Bible app, listen to the Word of God? Is it once a week for Sundays? And the way you hear the word is because the pastor preaches it Is it every day is it first thing in the morning and maybe another passage in the evening? We live in a time where there's so many forces pushing against the truth And so many Christians get pushed over because they don't know the truth So then they don't know how to love the way God calls them to love and live the lives God calls them to live and so know this book and spend time sitting at the feet of Jesus. Pray, talk to him, talk with other believers, pray with them. Kind of marinate your soul and your life in the truth. The truth lives in us and will be eternally with us. Verse 2 of 2 John says this, because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever. I think that's more specifically there looking at the person of Jesus, but his truth, he Jesus, the truth, lives in us. He abides with us. He'll be with us forever. So we've got to know the truth, and we've got to live in the truth. Then we've got to understand that truth and love are connected in the heart of God, and should be connected in our lives. That truth and love are bound together in the heart of God. And so we've got to say, I know the truth, I know the scriptures, I know correct doctrine and belief, I know Jesus, who's the truth. I don't just know about Jesus, I don't just hear about Jesus, I know Jesus. He abides in me and I abide in him, and I walk with him. When the truth is in you, in your mind through scripture, in your heart through believing what is right, and in your life through connecting with Jesus, then you walk in that truth and you also walk in the love of Jesus. And God commands us to walk in the truth. And He delights. Do you know that God delights when we walk in the truth? John says, I hear that some of your children are walking in the truth. He's just so excited that whether it's your spiritual children or your physical children, He's so glad that they're walking in the truth. Prayer And so Jesus, we pause right now, as we just begin this journey of walking through 2 John, and we pray, living Jesus Christ, You who are the way, the truth, and the life, help us understand Your truth. Immerse us in Your Scriptures. Connect us in spiritual community where we're growing in Your Word together. Help us experience Your presence every moment of every day. Let us not just be religious people, let us have a relationship with you. Let us not just know what we believe, but let us believe in you and walk with you. We pray that your truth, that you Jesus the truth, would dominate our hearts, our minds, and our souls. All we think and all we do. Jesus, the truth of heaven, teach us to walk in the truth to know the truth to love the truth we pray this in your name amen Well, the next thing John moves on to is the call to live and walk in love so first he's saying know the truth believe the truth walk in the truth that'll impact your eyes and then he says now you need to live and walk in love so I'm going to continue reading from 2nd John verses 5 and 6 and notice how love is right in the center of the passage, all right? So John continues on. And now I ask you, dear lady, not as though we are writing you a new commandment, but one that you have had from the very beginning, that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments. And this is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in love. This is love. Now watch this. This is love that you walk in the commandments. You follow the truth. See, the truth tells us how to love one another and how to love our world. But when we walk in love, what is love? It's obeying His commandments. It's our love for God. When Jesus was asked, what is the most important of all the commandments, of all the law, of all the prophets, of all the commandments, of all that came before. When Jesus asked, what's most important? You know what Jesus said. He said, love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, your strength. This is the first and the greatest commandment. Love God. Then he says, the second is like it. What? Love your neighbor as yourself. So what is love? To obey the commandments. What are the commandments? They call us to love. This is all bound together. Alright? right and so John is saying walk in according to commandments this is the commandment just as you have heard from the beginning so that you should walk in it walk in his commandments and that's walking in love and love has been the standard from the beginning and it is still our starting point it's our default love is if you are a Christian if you're listening online if you're here in their worship center if you're in the chapel or downstairs if you're a Christian, your default button is love. If you're not yet a Christian, you become a Christian, it'll become your default button. If I go on my computer, I have a default. If I'm going to use a word program, my word program is set up where I start using it. It's 12-point font, New Times Roman, justified left. That's my default. And unless I change something, that's what I'm going to always get when I start writing a letter or doing anything, because that's the default. If you're a Christian, here's your default. Every morning when you wake up, you wake up and you love God, you love the church, and you love people that are far from Jesus. That's your default button. That's who you are. So here's how a Christian lives. If you're looking down, look at me for a second here. Here's Open heart. Open home. Open church. That's your default button when you meet Jesus. Why? Because he who knew no sin, Jesus, became sin and gave his life that you might become the righteousness of God. This is love, not that we love God. This is 1 John chapter 4. This is love, not that we love God, but that God loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. God came to us with arms open, heart open, heaven open, and He invited you in. How can we live any different than that? That's who we are. That's our default button. Just as sure as every time I open up my Word program, I know it's going to be 12 point, it's going to be New Times Roman, I know it's going to be Justified Love. If it's different, I've got to select it and change it. That's the default button. Your default button if you're a Christian is love. Open arms, open heart, open home, open church, open life. That's who we are. Now some of you noticed the title of the sermon as I started. The title of the sermon is, When to Open the Door and When to Slam it Shut. Here's how we live. We're going to get to slam it shut in just a minute. But I want to start with the default. I want to start with how life is supposed to be. When things get weird and messy, sometimes we have to slam the door shut. And when we do it, we do it with confidence, we do it with boldness. But we're going to start with where John starts, where Jesus started, and where every Christian should start. It's love that moves us toward obedience. Love moves us toward obedience. that love has a power in it to obey God's commandments. And so I want to look at it this way. And there's a dilemma for some people. Some people, they're like, I'm a truth person. I'm about the truth. I'm about doctrine and belief. I'm a truth person. There's other people like, oh no, no, no. I'm a love person. I'm tender and caring and sensitive. I want to just, I want to love everybody. Now let me show you a dilemma. If you hold to the truth, which John talks about here clearly, right? If you hold to the truth, I know what the Bible says, I know what it teaches, and you have no love. You're all about truth. And your doctrine is strong, and you know what you believe, but you have no love, and no grace, and no tenderness. You become a hard-hearted, doctrinally sound, dogmatic pain in the rear end. And you will drive people away from Jesus, and you will break the heart of God. All truth with no love does not honor Jesus. And if you're all about love, warm, fuzzy, squishy, everyone, doesn't matter what someone believes, just invite them all in, everything's just fine. Then you become this sort of open-armed, easy target for the enemy to sneak in and deceive because you don't have any discernment, you don't have any truth guiding you. So as Christians, as mature Christians, we cannot be all about truth with no love. We cannot be all about love with no truth because that breaks the heart of God too and pushes people away. Here's how we live as Christians. We hold to the truth and we hold to love. And we walk in that dynamic tension of both of them. So we know what we believe and it changes how we live. And so what ends up happening is then we start to recognize that love opens the door, love welcomes people in, but truth gives boundaries and parameters. And it shows us how we should live. And so Jesus, again, we pause and we pray, we pray, Lord, that we be people of the truth, people of your word, people who walk with you and who live in the truth and know the truth. But now, Jesus, we pray that we will be people of love, people who have grace and understand that Jesus, you so loved us that you gave your life on the cross, that, Father, you so loved the world that you sent your one and only Son. We pray that we will be people of truth and people of love. And give us the power to not let either of those go, but to hold on tight and strong. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. So here's the deal. The call of love and truth that leads us to slam the door closed sometimes. Here's our default button. Arms open, heart open, life open, home open, church open. Everyone's welcome. But, there's times you slam the door shut. And that's what John is getting to in this little postcard. The first half is establishing the base, our foundation, love and truth, and how it guides our lives. But now watch what he gets to in verse 7. 2 John verse 7. He says, for many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh, the incarnation. Jesus was bodily born because he wasn't bodily born. He couldn't die on the cross in our place for our sins. This is all about the gospel. wrong belief is a deceiver and the Antichrist watch yourselves so you may not lose what you have worked for but may gain may win a full reward everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ as a hold of the truth does not have God who abides in the teaching as both the father and the son if anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house, slam the door shut. Don't give him any greeting, slam the door shut. For whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works, slam the door shut because if you let them in and let them have their way, you're part of the problem." Kind of a shift here in the middle of this little short postcard, isn't it? But he's writing, he gives the foundation of how we function. Open hearts, open arms. Holding the truth, we walk in love and we live in that dynamic tension every day of our lives. But there's a situation going on here. In the ancient world, when people were preaching and teaching and traveling with the gospel, anytime they came to the home of a Christian, it was just standard. You open the home, you let them stay there, you provide food. But there were some people who were traveling around in the name of Jesus, so to speak, but they were working against Jesus. They were teaching false belief. You know what John says? Here's our usual posture, but now it's this. Doors open? Not now. Boom, it's closed. There's times where we have to recognize that what someone is teaching, how they're living, what they're doing is so damaging, we can't let them in because it will affect our children our grandchildren our own faith the church our community some people are like I just want to slam the door to everybody know our we're like this we're open we're Christians that's how Jesus came his arms wide open to the all the way to the cross right so Jesus can that's how we live but and this is why you have to know the truth sometimes the truth says the loving thing is actually to slam the door. Do you know when that is and how that works? Deceivers and people who are against Jesus are out there and sometimes they're in here. We have to recognize that. If you have someone teaching kids classes at your church and they don't believe the truth of the gospel and they're misleading children, that's a problem. Boy, we can't let them teach anymore, but that would hurt their feelings. Okay, that's the love part. The truth is they're teaching something that's false. For years, my wife Sherry grew up going to Camp Geneva, a wonderful Christian camp in Holland, Michigan here, not far away. Some of you may have connections with that camp. When our boys were growing up, they went to Camp Geneva. And when our boys were still young, they asked me if I'd be a chaplain there for one week each summer. So for a number of years, I was a chaplain. And our boys were young boys still. This is three decades ago. But in the midst of one of the weeks I was chaplain there, I had a couple of counselors come to me and they said, hey, we got a problem. I said, what's that? And they said, well, the person coming next week to lead the camp, the chaplain next week, doesn't believe in Jesus. Doesn't believe Jesus is Savior. And also has really weird views about male and female and sexuality and all kinds of stuff. And I said, now that can't be right. And they said, no, it's his name. Everybody calls him Doc, but he's gonna be here next week. He's been coming for like 12 years in a row. I said, Doc who? And they told me the guy's name and I was like, oh, I've read some of this guy's articles. The technical term is he's a heretic. He doesn't believe the gospel. But every summer for 12 years, he was coming to this Christian camp and leading a week of... and it was a special needs week. So I talked to him and I said, why are you letting this person who doesn't believe in Jesus lead? And this one person said to me, well, it's just a special needs group. I thought, you better be, you know, if you got young children or special needs people, you better make sure you're absolutely clear you're not giving them false teaching. And so I heard a couple people say, well yeah, we kind of know that, but it's really complicated because he's been doing it for a long time and there's a lot of people who really like him and he's really a nice guy. Love, love, love, love, but guess what they missed? Truth. Right? And so I said, I think I'd like to write a letter to the board and raise the concern. So I wrote a letter to the board and I basically said, here's what this person believes, and here's examples from the Kalamazoo Gazette, from the Grand Rapids Press, of things he's written, things he's said. It's clearly not... And then I gave them a copy of their own belief statement. And I said, these don't fit together. Do something about it. And they did, and they told him he wasn't able to come be chaplain anymore. But they also told me I also wasn't welcome to come as chaplain anymore. Why do people laugh at that? That's not funny. It was a sad moment, but I realized because that's how they kind of made peace. We'll ask him not to come, but we'll also ask you not to come. For like four years I was blackballed and I couldn't come. Now, I'm glad I did that because the truth demanded, it's exactly what 2 John's talking about. These people who are working against Jesus and you're letting them in. So in that case, they closed the door. And I got to tell you, Camp Geneva has a solid mission statement, they have a biblical mission statement, but at that moment, they had just gotten so squishy-lovey, not wanting to hurt someone's feelings, they didn't do the right thing. Some of you are sitting here thinking right now, well, I think that's mean that you did that. And if you think that, go to the Word. Read through 2 John. Hear what God is saying, because we need to hear the truth that overcomes our own emotions and feelings. We have to be on guard and discerning. Be on your guard, be discerning. Do you know the word of God? Do you know what you believe? If there's false teaching, do you recognize it? Or will it go right over your head? You need to know what the truth so that you can then walk in love with appropriate boundaries. And we have to hold into the teaching of Jesus. This is the key. Hold the teaching of Jesus. Open this book every day, or listen to the scriptures every day. Get your kids in boys group and girls group here at Peace Church. They're gonna learn about Jesus, they're gonna learn the word of God. Get them at Sunday morning programs, get them at Bible study, get them in men's group, a woman's group, a small group. Open the word of God and read it every single day. And immerse yourself in the scriptures so you know the truth and you recognize when something is errant, when something is wrong, when something is off the rails. And understand that there are times, as hard as it is, where we slam the door. Now one more time. Everyone, eyes up here for a minute. You've got to see this. Our default button, who we are as Christians, we are loving, open arms, open heart, open church. But if somebody comes into your home, into your church, into your life, and they're teaching what is false and they're trying to mislead special needs kids or children or your kids or grandkids or you there's a point where you go wait a minute the truth demands that at this moment the love the most loving thing I can do is slam the door shut the loving thing for those special needs kids was to not hear this guy teach anymore and the council the counselors came and said last year he this when this guy was here he gave me a really bad counsel for my own life unbiblical counsel for their personal lives so that's the act of love it's a hard act of love you slam the door shut you make sure you know you're on the right footing doctrinally and then when you have to let you slam the door and so if there's a somebody teaching something false in your church you deal with it you don't look the other way well but they've been working with kids for ten years well then they've been misleading for 10 if they're if they're in the wrong you have to address you have to deal with it if you immerse yourself in your family and watching shows, streaming video shows that work against the gospel of Jesus, and there's many of them now that do, and you wonder why your kids start wandering, slam the door. Well, I can't tell my kids what they can and can't watch. I mean, they're six and seven years old. I can't tell them. Hello? Right? There's times where you close the door, where you discontinue the cable service, whatever it is to make sure that you don't have a flow of stuff coming in, there's times you close the door. If there's an institution that you support that used to be neutral or Christian but isn't any more, I talk to more people who give more money to colleges. Well I went there 40 years ago and I'm still, and I cheer on their sports team, but that college has an express intention of destroying the faith of young people. Please don't give money anymore to that school. Call the provost, call the president and say, listen, I can't give there anymore because I know in the classes you're teaching this, this and this about sexuality, you're teaching this and this, you're fighting against Christianity. So I'm going to take that money, I'm going to be really crazy, I'm going to give it to my church. I have friends, I wish that they would do that. To slam the door and close the door on their flow of finances and support of certain organizations because they know a lot. And even sometimes even if a school says they're a Christian school, you better make sure they're a Christian school. You better make sure that their doctrine is sound. If you haven't read the doctrinal statement and make sure that they follow that, you should know. If there's people in your life who are misleading, sometimes in family, you may have somebody in your family who's actively working against Jesus, trying to influence your kids or grandkids away from Jesus. You gotta love them, you gotta care for them, you gotta navigate carefully, but there might be times where you have to limit their access, because they are becoming a negative force. Now everybody, one more thing, look at me. What's our default button? What's our starting point? Open arms, open heart, open home, open church. That's where we want to live all the time. But just like John says to this woman and to her children, there's some people coming in who are misleading and deceiving. And then don't even let them into your house. Don't even greet them. You know what he says? And if you do, you're part of their work. If I would have ignored that, this guy, this chaplain, if I would have ignored that, and for the next two, three, four, five years, that person was still coming and deceiving counselors and children, especially these children. I answer for that, because I saw it, I knew. And out of tender love, I'm not gonna say anything, no. When we know the truth and we hold onto the truth, love demands sometimes that we slam the door shut, tight and hard, and don't let that in. So may God open your arms and your heart and your home and your church to anyone He wants to bring. But when somebody is working against the gospel, may you have the knowledge of Scripture, the love of Jesus and the courage to close the door tight. Jesus, this is our prayer, that we can navigate this challenge, this little letter, this little postcard opens our eyes to the need to know the truth, to walk in love, to bring those together and sometimes Jesus it means that we close the door. Maybe with tears when we block someone out of our life because they're having an ungodly influence. With tears we have to stand against things but Lord we want to do it with courage, with boldness, and with confidence. And so Jesus says, we sing right now, I pray in this moment of reflection, this moment of worship, you'll speak to each of our hearts. So if there's a place where we're not paying attention or where we've noticed something utterly wrong, but we haven't had the courage to address it, even as we worship together, speak to our hearts. Give us courage to walk in the truth and to walk in love, to keep the door open and when we have to, to close it tight. tight. Speak to our hearts as we worship together.

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PODCAST That's a Good Question When the Church Hurts Instead of Heals: A Conversation with Steve Midgley February 25, 2025 Jon Delger & Listen to this Episode Hey, welcome to That's a Good Question, the podcast where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language. We are a podcast of Resound Media, a place you can trust to find great resources for the Christian life and church leadership. You can always submit questions that we answer on this show to resoundmedia.cc. If you find this resource helpful, please rate and review the podcast so more people can encounter the life-changing truth of God's Word. Also, if you know somebody who can benefit from today's topic or has questions like the ones that we're answering, please share this episode with them. My name is Jon, and today we're talking about a very important topic to understand from a biblical worldview, the topic of mental health and trauma. And to do that, we've got a special guest with us, Steve Midgley. Steve is the executive director of Biblical Counseling UK. He's a pastor at Christ Church Cambridge in the UK. He's a board member at CCEF, and he's also a board member at the Biblical Counseling Coalition. He's an author. One of his latest books is Understanding Trauma, a Biblical Introduction for Church Care. So welcome to the show, Steve. Great to have you with us. Thank you for having me on the show. I'm delighted to be with you. So just to help us get to know you a little bit more, Steve, can you tell us a little bit about, so you're the Executive Director at Biblical Counselling UK. Can you tell us a little bit about that organisation, what you guys do, what's your mission? Sure. In all sorts of ways, many of your listeners may be familiar with the biblical counselling work that's gone on for 50, 60 years over in the States. It's been a much more recent thing here in the UK. One of the ways that we describe what we're doing is seeking to help churches as they try to bring the riches of scripture to bear on the realities of life. All of us struggle in different ways and sometimes we're not as quick or as clear as we could be on seeing how the riches of scripture do speak into our struggles and difficulties. So we try and help churches both in ordinary conversations as well as in experienced counseling conversations as well. Yeah, beautiful. That's awesome. What a great resource for the church and to help believers get to help each other through the hard situations that we face. So, Steve, I'd love to just start here talking about the whole topic of mental health. So one of the things that's been said in our world today is that we are in the midst of a mental health crisis or some have even called it an epidemic. So tell us a bit about that. What does that mean? Do you agree that we're in the midst of a mental health crisis or epidemic? And if so, why? Why are we there? There's a big question, John, which we could spend the whole rest of our time talking about really, that for sure the statistics show that the number of people who are kind of reporting struggles with their well-being from a mental health point of view, the number of people seeking out help from mental health professionals, all of those things have in recent years. And there are different ways of thinking about that. One perspective would say there is something going on in our society, there's something going on in the pressures in our culture that really are making things objectively worse. Another perspective would say that we have begun to describe some of our ordinary life struggles with mental health diagnostic labels, and that we're medicalizing life and thinking of our difficulties in medical terms and in psychiatric terms in a way that we didn't. I suspect it's probably a bit of a mixture of the two. I think probably both of those things are going on to explain what we're seeing in our culture at the moment. Yeah. So, one of the buzzwords that we hear today around this whole thing is the word trauma. And one of the reasons I call it a buzzword is because I hear it used in such interesting ways. On the one hand, I hear it used in a very real way, in a very even clinical kind of way. On the other hand, I've even had somebody said, not too long ago, I had somebody say to me that they experienced trauma because McDonald's got their order wrong in the drive-thru. So I hear it used in such a spectrum of ways. Can you tell us a little bit about what really is trauma? In your book, you actually use three E's to talk about trauma and how to identify it. Just tell us a little bit more about that. Sure, yeah, I mean, I appreciate that introduction really, because I think there are real concerns about the way in which the label is being used and, you know, your point about somebody saying they're traumatized because McDonald's got their order wrong, that the idea that we're ending up trivializing the category of trauma by speaking casually in that kind of way is causing some people to say, how then does somebody who has faced appalling things on the battlefield, which have, which is so deeply and profoundly disturbed them, how, what words will they use that adequately when the language of trauma is being used so trivially. So it's a real issue. To answer your question, though, you mentioned those three Es, and I do find them helpful. They're not original to me, but people say that there is an event, or it could be a sequence of events, something happens in a person's life, which they experience, that's the second E, they experience as in some way overwhelming to them. It overwhelms their defences, their ability to cope. And I've heard somebody describe it as it therefore gets under their psychological skin in a way that is really disturbing. And as a result, it has, third E, it has effects going forwards in their life. Hence, particularly the idea of post-traumatic stress disorder, that PTSD kind of diagnosis, which is one of the effects going forwards. So, as we try to think about trauma then from a biblical worldview, we hear so much from secular or from non-Christian science, you know, about the effects of trauma on the brain. So can you help us think about what is helpful from that non-Christian perspective and what is not helpful? What are some of the positive and negatives from that perspective on how does it affect the brain? One thing to say would be that the Bible understands trauma. I mean, there's plenty of really deeply traumatic things that happen to characters in scripture. So it's not an alien topic that we've only just thought of. The Bible knows it and understands it, even if it would use different words to describe it. As we think about the research that has become very much prominent in our culture, connecting trauma with effects in brain functioning, two quick things, because again, there's a lot that could be said. I suppose one thing is to always remember a sort of a chicken and egg sort of issue when it comes to understanding the brain. Everything that we do, everything that we feel has a sort of representation in our brains. So one would anticipate that when something as awful as trauma has happened, and when it goes on causing difficulties going forward, there will be a brain representation of that. And do we understand, you know, this is therefore a brain problem? Or is this, you know, this is a person's problem, which obviously has a kind of a brain representation? I think that I would say is, and Van der Kock's sort of book that has been a phenomenon, The Body Keeps the Score, just has a description of the experience of trauma that I think people read and they think, oh, that's it, you know, he gets me. That is, you know, that's what's happened to me, or that's what's happened to my, you know, my son, my husband, my wife, you know, that describes it. And so he's captured the experience very vividly and connected it with models of brain functioning. And that's, I think, you know, one of the things that have made the book such a phenomenal success. Yeah. So as we, you know, as we think about trauma, as we think about mental health, as we think about then as Christian brothers and sisters trying to help each other through this situation, trying to be there for each other, trying to show Christian love to one another. How can we help somebody through this? One of the things that you mention in the book is identity, acceptance, and involvement as three ways that we can help somebody or a way that somebody needs to experience in the body of Christ to go through the experience of trauma. Can you talk more about each of those? I think in our churches, I sometimes think we fall into one of two areas. Either we can find trauma so complicated, so confusing, that we just pull back and say, I can't understand this, is too much. This needs an expert. And then we do nothing. On the other hand, we can overestimate our capacity and try and imagine that we can sort people out. You know, we've got Jesus, so we can make things better. So we sort of, you know, we dive in with very clumsy and very ill-thought-through kind of responses, which, you know, often end up being pretty hurtful and pretty distressing for people. So what can we do? I mean, I think to listen, first up, you know, to seek to be receptive and not to be frightened of, and to be willing to hear the kind of struggles that people have experienced, not pressing them for information, because one of the things that we can, one of the ways that we can misstep is by kind of pressing people for information of things that have happened to them in a context where they don't feel safe to talk about it. So being willing to listen to what it is that people want to tell us and to get away from a from a kind of us and themness that leads, you know, kind of, and this would apply to mental health problems more broadly, you know, that there are, there's a chunk of us in the church who are kind of nice and neat and tidy and sorted. And then there is other people who, you know, have got problems, as if we are two different groups. And I just think that's just not a biblical way of thinking. All of us, you know, struggle in different ways. And so helping somebody who has been through some severe suffering, for whom that like they belong. They are welcome in our community. We want them to make a contribution, to be a part of our church family, because they'll bring gifts that God has given them to do so. Yeah. Well, and so to go back to one thing that you said in there, I jumped quickly to talking about how can we as brothers and sisters help each other because I know that's a part of the mission of the CCEF is you guys talk about how that actually as Christian brothers and sisters we can help each other. But also there's a really important role for professionals. There's only so much help that we can provide to each other. There is help that we need to go to somebody who has much more study, much more training, is equipped to help. So could we talk about that for a minute, Steve? Can you help us? Where is the line when somebody should be – I know the best answer is probably that you've got both a professional and a friend involved, but help us – where is a line when somebody should be asking themselves the question, maybe my friends can't help me through this. Maybe I do need the help of a professional, whether that's a counselor, whether that's a psychiatrist, maybe even medication. Is there any advice that you could give to somebody considering that question of when they should reach out for professional help? Yeah, it's hard to be, I mean, as you would appreciate, it's hard to be absolute about that judgment call. I suppose, I mean, the first thing would be to say if somebody finds themself in a place where they don't feel safe, when their level of distress has risen to the point that they are in any way beginning to have suicidal thoughts, then obviously at that point there's an urgent need to involve somebody with the necessary skills and experience to help them in a situation like that. And, you know, that's the first thing that is important to say. Beyond that, I think when somebody finds that the struggles they're having are getting in the way of the living of normal life, it's interfering with their relationships, it's interfering with their work, it's interfering with family life, and it means they're not able to function in some of the sort of necessities of life, then again, that would be an indication of how, gosh, this is clearly getting in the way to the extent that seeking out somebody with more expertise would be wise. Yeah. But I think your point, John, I'd reinforce. At that stage, you know, you've got to go and see somebody expert. I need to get out of the way and just disappear. It should be both end. You say, well, you know, let me if you want me to let me go with you. Or after you've seen somebody, if you want to talk it through what you've heard from, you know, a counsellor that you've been to see or a mental health professional you've been to see and you want to talk it through, you know, I'd be only too glad to think with you. So it can be sort of both end. And again, it's overhoming the sense of isolation that both mental health struggles and trauma can bring. Yeah, I love that. That's good. That's good. So thinking then about some of our maybe Christian might have the question, all right, they might have the thought that maybe, is mental health actually just a spiritual issue? Is this something of, you know, unfortunately I've heard people say things as simple as, well, you just need to trust God more, you know, to sort of really reduce it and simplify it to a point that, of course, is hurtful to the person hearing that news. What would you say to a Christian brother who's maybe said that, who's maybe said, well, you just need to trust God more. Because of course, in some sense, all of us need to have more faith, all of us need to trust the Lord more. So in some sense, there's truth in that. But also, maybe that's just too simple. Can you speak to that a little bit? Yes, gladly. When I try and think this issue through with people, I usually kind of end up drawing them a diagram. And I'm kind of wanting to say that there are kind of three things that we want to be thinking about. That the Bible describes the sort of the real me, that you know, the heart, the soul, you know, the spiritual core of a person, you know, with which they relate to the Lord. We also have bodies, a physical frame, you know, we are in that sense embodied souls, is a phrase that people sometimes use which I think is helpful. And then there's stuff going on around us, you know, there are the circumstances of life, which can at times be incredibly demanding and challenging. Which of those contributes to the development of mental health struggles? Well, all of them do, because all of them affect the person. You know, what we're doing with God affects us. What's happening in our bodies affects us. What happens in the world around us affects us. And in thinking with somebody about their struggles, I'm interested in all three of those. And I think trying to work out what the relative contribution of body and soul and circumstances is, is never going to be possible. You know, we're never going to know that, you know, this is a 20% heart problem and a 60% body problem and a 20% circumstances problem. We're never going to have that information. And unfortunately, we don't need it because we can be concerned about all three of those things simultaneously. And that's the right thing to do. Because the other thing, I mean, just thinking about, because your phrase, somebody says, you know, if you just had more faith, everything would be all right. I kind of think one of the things that I want to be alert to is that those people who know that they're struggling are often the people who are making most progress in their relationship with the Lord. And the people who think they're fine and you're the person, you know, with the problem, are often the people in most spiritual danger. And I just think that's worth being alert to. You know, Jesus doesn't tell the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector for nothing. I know, thank God that I'm not like those people over there with all of those problems, you know, and I sort myself out and I come to church every week and I never miss anything anything and blah, blah, blah. Jesus has pretty strong words for that kind of attitude. No, that's such a good point. I mean, that's such an important biblical worldview understanding, right, is to just to know that we are all broken. We believe in total depravity, right? We are broken from the inside out, that all of us are struggling. We believe in, you know, that God has designed for us a life of what we call sanctification, growing in holiness. So if we're sitting here thinking that we've got it all figured out and that the other people across the table are the ones who have the problem, then yeah, we've missed something really important. So yeah, just to be able to self-identify and say, hey, I do have a problem and I'm trying to work through it. What an important and good starting place, yeah. So are there some specific passages in the Bible as we think about that? Are there some specific stories or passages that you've gone to before just to talk about the experience of suffering and how we can face that in Scripture? You know, there are many places in Scripture which seem to make very clear that in distinctive ways, God takes and uses suffering to mature us. I mean, they are hard verses, but you think about the beginning of James 1, and I count it, I count it pure joy in the midst of my sufferings, because I know that God is at work in those to mature me. Similar, you know, sort of the way that suffering brings character and character, hope and so on. And then you think about 2 Corinthians 1, where Paul is saying, in the midst of his affliction, he's known comfort. And it is that comfort that he's experienced in his sufferings that he is now able to give to others. We comfort others with the comfort that we ourselves have received from the Lord. And we know this, don't we? Because Jesus suffered on the cross to win us our salvation. It shouldn't surprise us that God has this extraordinary capacity to take and use hardship in our lives just as he took and used the suffering of Christ for our salvation. Right. James 1 has been one of those passages that's so comforting to me because, you know, not only does it call us to consider it joy, but he gives kind of an explanation. He talks about some things that are being produced in us as a result of suffering. I'm often taken comfort in that. He says, here I've got it in front of me, he says, let steadfast, he says, the testing of your faith produces steadfastness and let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. So God's doing something in the suffering. It's not an accident, it is painful, but God is doing something. He's producing something in us that is important, that we do need as believers. So, Steve, as somebody's struggling through a mental health issue, you know, they might ask the question, the Bible calls me to have a life of joy, but I don't feel joy. What might joy look like for somebody who's struggling, for example, with depression? How can they pursue, how can they have a proper vision of God's design for them, for joy, in the midst of dealing with that? I'd expect that probably many of us, possibly all of us, are often guilty of conflating joy and happiness as if those are the same, and I don't think they are. I think that the joy is something deeper and fuller than just being happy. And it is, I to a sense of contentment, to a sense of rejoicing in Christ. I find joy in knowing what he has for me, the future he has for me. And so that even in the midst of hardship, we find reason to rejoice. I mean, you think about, I'm just thinking about Philippians now and I'm thinking of the way that Paul describes that where he is, you know, he's describing in the midst of hardship that he still, he knows what is content in any and every situation, whether well-fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want, I can do this, all this through him, it gives me strength. And I think that is a deeper, richer joy that is found in Christ that is able to be experienced even in the midst of hardship. Yeah, that's awesome. And I know you guys at the various organizations that you're a part of, yourself and other writers have produced some great stuff on those topics. Another book that I found really helpful, and I don't remember if he specifically addresses this as a mental health issue, but John Piper wrote a book called When I Don't Desire God, How to Fight for Joy. I remember reading that a number of years ago and being really helped by it, because he addresses exactly that, of we have times in our lives when we don't experience what we would call happiness, and yet God calls us to joy. And so how do you bridge that gap of, I don't feel happy, but God calls me to joy? And what does that look like? Yeah, God's Word gives us great instruction to lead us in that direction. Is there anything coming up on the horizon that you're writing right now or a project you're working on that you could tell us about? There's no current writing project at the moment. I'm taking a little bit of breather after finishing the book on trauma. We're just about to have our national conference. So the very immediate prospect is in it, and it is a conference on trauma where we're launching the book. So it's a few days of bringing together people in the UK to think on this topic. So that's in my sights. So, Steve, brother, it's been so fantastic getting to talk with you about this important topic, mental health and trauma, something that we hear about a ton in the news and in our day-to-day conversations, something that unfortunately people even use the language lightly and yet to be able to think about and to have tools to be able to think about it from a biblical perspective, so helpful. So, Steve, brother, thank you so much for having this conversation with us. Again, the book that you just wrote and that just came out not too long ago here, Understanding Trauma, a Biblical Introduction for Church Care, published with The Good Book Company, one of our favorite publishers. So audience, feel free to check that out. But Steve, brother, thanks for the conversation. Everybody who's listening, thank you so much for your time. We hope you have an awesome week. Rezalmedia.cc . 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PODCAST That's a Good Question Does the Jewish Bible Reveal Jesus?: A Conversation with David Brickner November 26, 2024 Jon Delger & Mitchell Leach Listen to this Episode Hey, welcome to That's a Good Question, the place where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language. We are a podcast of Resound Media, a place you can trust to find great resources for the Christian life and church leadership. You can also submit questions that we answer on the show to resoundmedia.cc/questions . My name is Jon, I'm here with Mitch and our special guest today, David Brickner. A little bit more information about David. David, until recently, served as the executive director and CEO of Jews for Jesus for 28 years, and just recently stepped into the position of executive chairman of the board of directors for Jews for Jesus. He's the author of several books, including his most recent book, Does the Jewish Bible Point to Jesus? Welcome, David, and could you tell us a little bit more about yourself? Well, thanks Mitch and Jon. Shalom and shalom to everybody listening. I've been serving with the ministry for a long time, but you know, we have a saying in Jews for Jesus, being born into a Christian home doesn't make you a Christian any more than being born in a bakery makes you a bagel. So I actually had to have my own encounter I come from the longest and oldest lineage of Jewish believers in Jesus that we know of today. My great-great-grandfather was the chief Hasidic rabbi of Zhytomyr in the Ukraine back in the 19th century, and his wife was the first in our family to become a follower of Jesus. So you think Jews for Jesus raises eyebrows today. Just imagine the wife of this chief rabbi becoming a follower of Jesus. There was a book written about her life, but she had the courage and strength to really follow the Lord despite her husband's refusal. She led all of her children to the Lord. And so on my mother's side, we've been Jews for Jesus for five generations. I have children and grandchildren who are also Jewish believers in Jesus. So we're seven generations and counting. So cool. Praise God. My dad was raised in an Orthodox Jewish home in Mobile, Alabama, where they say, Shalom y'all. And he was brought one to the Lord by my mom's dad, my grandpa, when he was just 18 years old. So I had the privilege of being raised in a Jewish home. We celebrated all the Jewish holidays and had a Bar Mitzvah at the age of 13. But I was also taught that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. And yet, that didn't really change my life. It was actually encountering the person of Jesus through the ministry of Judas for Jesus while a freshman at Boston University in 1976. And now you can figure out how old I must be. And they were handing out tracts in front of the Student Union of Boston University. And I was at a point in my life where I was really desperate for God and didn't know how to find him in the midst of all of my pursuits of the worldliness that was around me. And there they were, and they invited me to a Bible study. And I walked into that Bible study, and there was a group of about a dozen young college students sitting on the floor with Bibles open. And you know, Jeremiah says, I've loved you with an everlasting love, with loving kindness I've drawn you. Well, that's my story. God, through the love of those Jews for Jesus students way back in 1976, just really used that to draw me to himself. And I've been serving first as a volunteer and then they sent me to Bible college. And I've been full time with Jews for Jesus since 1981. So it's been a privilege. Yeah, that's awesome. That's really cool. Well, David, we're excited for the conversation today. I know our listeners are going to be excited just to learn more about Jews for Jesus and what it's like to be able to share the gospel, to reach people who have grown up in a Jewish background and tell them, like you just shared, that the Messiah, the Jewish Messiah, is Jesus. So David, you might just start by telling us what is Jews for Jesus and what does it mean to be a Jewish Christian? Well, I mentioned this before the show, we have a little plaque on the cornerstone of our headquarters here in San Francisco that says, Jews for Jesus established 32 AD give or take a year. So if you think about it, Jesus was Jewish and the first Jews for Jesus were guys with the name Peter, James, and John. And so in the beginning it was the most natural thing for Jewish people to believe in Jesus and the question was if Non-jews were allowed to join us and thankfully of course that was God's plan all along But being a Jew who believes in Jesus Creates some unique challenges because as you know Most Jews don't believe in Jesus as Messiah And in fact, we've been told in the Jewish community by the rabbis that you can't be Jewish and believe in Jesus. So when Jews for Jesus first began in the 70s, it created a controversy that still is with us. I mean Jesus and Paul created plenty of controversy in their lifetimes certainly, but you know it seemed to be in the rabbinic Jewish community like going against your people people to embrace Jesus because he's so often identified historically with those who've opposed the Jewish people. Christian so-called anti-Semitism. And so, Jews for Jesus sounds like an oxymoron, you know, like vegetarians for meat or something to many Jewish people. But of course, if Jesus is the Messiah? And so our ministry is engaging with Jewish people and showing them how the most natural outcome of following the teachings of the Jewish Bible lead to the person of Jesus. He is the Jewish Messiah and so by putting our faith and trust in him, we become completed or fulfilled in our Jewish identity, but most importantly we become born again through the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Man, that's awesome. David, I'm thinking about our Gentile Christian listeners. Help our Gentile Christian listeners. As a Jewish Christian, what would you want our Gentile Christian listeners to know about their brothers and sisters in Christ, in Jewish communities? What would you want them to know? Well, there's a lot, but I mean, Jewish people need Jesus just like everybody else. And so the most important thing for Christians to know is that their Jewish friends, neighbors, business associates need Jesus just like they do. A lot of people have the mistaken idea that since the Jews are God's chosen people, they're just fine on their own. And that's not the case. When Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father but by me, the only people listening at the time were Jews. So if he didn't have it applying to them, then it doesn't apply to anyone. So we need to recognize first and foremost that Jewish people need Jesus just like everybody else. But the other thing I would encourage Christians to understand is the Jewishness of their faith, the Jewish roots of the Christian faith, because I think that the church sometimes doesn't apply the scriptures, especially when it comes to Jewish evangelism in a way that a Jewish person can embrace and understand. I mean, you know, these days there's a lot of anti-Semitism in the world. And we're aware of what's going on, and Jewish people are feeling alienated and fearful about, you know, it's just unbelievable. We thought that these were things of the past, but beginning with October 7th of 2023, we realized that the Holocaust is not that far from our present existence. And Jewish, to be Jewish today is to be in a place of threat and fear. So how important is it then for Christians who love the God of Israel to be able to say, I love God and therefore I love what God loves. And the Bible tells us that God loves the Jewish people, that they're the apple of his eye and that the Messiah himself is born of a Jewish woman. And so we want to be a loving community of witness to the Jewish people in our neighborhoods, around us, in Israel. You know, our staff go out on the streets in Israel and there's a lot of feeling of insecurity and trauma from what happened, what is happening. You know, every day there are rockets being fired from Hezbollah into Israel. There's a whole section of the country that people can't live in. Their homes are empty because of this threat. And now the rockets are going all the way down to Haifa and Tel Aviv. It's just a constant, you know, whenever that happens, and it happens every day, millions of people have to go into bomb shelters. So the whole country is in upheaval. We go out on the streets and share the gospel with people and we let them know, you know what, you may feel alone, you may feel isolated, you may feel threatened, but there are millions of Christians, true followers of Jesus around the world that love you and that are praying for you. And we'll take little words from our, you know, supporters and, you know, words of encouragement. We'll read it to them. They start weeping on the streets. The love of God as expressed by believers in Jesus who love what God loves and therefore want Jewish people to know the Messiah. This is the most impactful and powerful evangelistic tool in the world today. So we want to encourage Christians to love what God loves, to love the people of Israel, to love the Jewish people, to share this gospel with the Jewish people. And we want to help our brothers and sisters in Christ understand the Jewish roots of their faith not only so that they can be a better witness, but so they can appreciate and embrace their own Jewish identity. One of the things I love to do, and I'd love to come to Peace Church and share the message of Christ and the Passover. You know, we set up a table where we talk about the whole Passover and how Jesus celebrated it in the upper room and instituted, you know, communion. And, you know, I love to do it because you see the light bulbs going on as Christians go, wow, that's my heritage too in Jesus. It's awesome. Yeah. That's beautiful. David, thanks for sharing that. I just want to underline, underscore, for some of our listeners, yeah, two really key points that you just made. One is that, yeah, it would be wrong for us as Gentile Christians to say, yeah, the Jews are over there and they're good. They're all set. No, like you've said, they need the message of Jesus. They need to hear that Jesus is their Messiah. So we've got to take the gospel there as well. And also, like you said, the Jewish roots of our faith, that the Old Testament, as we call it, the bigger portion of the Bible, you know, the bigger chunk of our scriptures, that is the Jewish story. And that's our story. That's the story of our Savior. Yeah. Amen. You talked about how the church maybe needs to grow in its evangelism and maybe its methods of evangelism for the Jewish community. Could you elaborate on that some more? I think that's something that a lot of Christians would love to understand a little bit better, how maybe our typical way of evangelism isn't as effective maybe towards a Jewish audience. Well, I think that it's important to get to know this person that we're talking about. Yeah. You know, not every, a lot of Christians think that Jewish people are, you know, Bible scholars, you know, that they know the Bible well. They're the people of the book, right? Yeah. The fact of the matter is most Jewish people don't know their Bible at all. And they're unfamiliar with the Jewish Bible, let alone the New Testament. They've never read it. They're told that they shouldn't read the New Testament. In fact, you go into a bookstore in Israel today, you will not be able to find a Hebrew New Testament. It's not there. But we, sir, make them available. And since the war began, the interest and requests for Hebrew New Testaments that come to us have more than tripled. There's a tremendous spiritual openness. So if you have a Jewish friend or neighbor, a business associate, a fellow student in college, you know, one of the first things to do is to establish a friendship, you know, make that personal connection. Jews are just like everybody else. And so they want to know. And you know, you can ask them if the rise in anti-Semitism that's going on in the world, how they feel about that. Yeah. And, you know, people like to be asked their opinions, right? So, choose something that's, you know, a relevant topic, you know. Have you experienced anti-Semitism in your own life? And then if they begin to talk to you, you know, you can find a way to affirm and say, you know, it really bothers me that you have to endure that because my Bible tells me that God loves you. And my Bible tells me that he chose Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and your ancestors to be a light to all the nations. I couldn't even be a Christian today if it weren't for the Jewish people. And so I'm grateful to you. I love and I oppose antisemitism in all of its forms. And I follow a Jewish Messiah. You know, see where that heads. But don't be afraid to talk about those things. Don't be afraid to first of all establish a relationship and then look for ways to bridge that chasm that seems to exist sometimes between topics secular and topics sacred. You know, we can talk about the Detroit Lions, but we can't talk about Jesus. This is a season we're going into where people are celebrating Christmas. The founder of our ministry was led to the Lord by his wife, Moish Rosen. Amazing story and testimony, a great man of God, his wife, Seal, was going to high school in Denver, Colorado, and at Christmas time the high school choir sang, Oh little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie, you know? The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight. Well, she didn't know she was singing from Micah chapter 5 and verse 2 about the prophecy of where Messiah would be born, but she found out about it in a letter to come to know Jesus. So Christians need to know that even if Jewish people don't celebrate Christmas, many of them will want to celebrate a secularized form of it, but they'll celebrate Hanukkah if anything, but they are curious about Christmas. They do want to know what's this all about. And to say that what we believe, Handel wrote a very famous orchestral piece called, the Messiah, and it's all from the Jewish Bible. These prophecies that ultimately were fulfilled in Jesus. So it's very relevant to Jewish people if we look to connect with them at certain key points that allow for conversation about spiritual things. Yeah. Wow. David, thanks so much for sharing that. Especially thank you for sharing about the anti-Semitism. I can only imagine the pain and the difficulty of that. If you don't mind sharing just a little bit more. We've talked about October 7, 2023. We did a couple episodes on that back during that month and we've talked about it on and off a few times even since then. David, do you mind just sharing a little bit as we think about that problem of anti-Semitism? This is a huge question. I'm sure you have tons of thoughts on it. But just give us a snapshot of where do you think that comes from? Yeah, I mean, it's a whole topic in and of itself You know, it's an ancient hatred that goes to the very Plan and purpose of God, you know God told Abraham, you know, I will bless those who bless you. I will curse those who curse you. And in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed. Genesis 12, verse 3. This is the beginning of God's call of Abram and the Jewish people, the vessel that he chose through which to bless and bring salvation to the whole world. And from that point, there has been an adversary in Hebrew, Ha-Satan is the adversary and we get that name Satan. We know that this is a cosmic conflict, a battle between God and his purposes and Satan and the purposes of evil. And so anti-Semitism goes all the way back that far. So what we're seeing today is just a modern kind of manifestation of this ancient cosmic conflict. And Christians should stand on the side of God and His purposes. You know, I was reading the other day from Psalm 83. It's so amazing. Listen to this. Do not keep silent, O God. Do not hold your peace and do not be still, O God. For behold, your enemies make a tumult, and those who hate you have lifted up their head. They have taken crafty counsel against your people and consulted together against your sheltered ones. They have said, come and let us cut them off from being a nation that the name of Israel may be remembered no more. Does that sound like from the river to the sea? I mean, this is Psalm 83, and yet we hear these words being said in different ways every day on college campuses and on the news media. And you know, so we have to realize that we're fighting a spiritual war, first and foremost. This is a spiritual battle. Unfortunately, you know, Mitch, you mentioned that it has had unfortunate connections to history of the church. You know, that history between the church and the Jewish people could be written in blood and punctuated with violence. Unfortunately, because of this, people who call themselves Christians have been at the forefront of some of the worst anti-Semitic actions in history. And some of the great reformers, like Martin Luther, at the end of his life wrote a sermon concerning the Jews and their lies in which he suggested that Jews should be, you know, kicked out of their homes, their synagogues burned to the ground, and they should be an open display of what happens to people when they reject the Messiah. So I'm sure Luther regrets that sermon. Maybe he was going a little bit crazy in the end of his life, but it's a horrible legacy that thankfully many Lutherans have rejected and have repented of. But yeah, Eastern Europe, the pogroms led by priests from the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. It's a sorry history that has led many Jewish people to say, how can I believe in Jesus? You know, my people have been persecuted by these so-called Christians, you know, for thousands of years. And I hesitate to identify with people who hate my ancestors. So there's a lot of barriers that have come to Jewish people believing in Jesus as a result of anti-Semitism. And so then how much more important is it for, at this point in our human history, for Christian leaders, people like you guys, you know, pastors, to stand up and say, hey, we don't believe that. We don't support that. We stand with Israel. We stand with the Jewish people. This isn't a political issue. This is a spiritual issue. And so let's remember where God placed his love and let's be a witness of the love of God to Jewish people today. Yeah, I think maybe turning the corner and I remember going through college, hearing hearing some of the critical scholars of the Bible, specifically the New Testament Gospels, and I think really specifically, John, there were some critics saying that that book and the New Testament in general is anti-Semitic, probably more theologically liberal leaning theologians. What would you say to that or do you ever encounter that as a barrier in reaching Jewish people? Well, sure. That is an accusation that's been falsely made for many, many years. And I love the New Testament. It's a very Jewish book. Most people don't realize that, but come on, open up the first page of the first chapter of the first gospel and it says the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of Abraham the son of David. I mean how much more Jewish can you get than Abraham and David? And that really sets the scene for the unfolding of an amazingly Jewish story. And you know as much as this book that I've written, Does the Jewish Bible Point to Jesus?, is a great tool for Jewish people to read and come to know the Messiah, the best book is the New Testament. And most Jewish people who come to the Lord have not necessarily come by reading the Old Testament prophecies and becoming believer that way. It's because they've encountered Jesus in the pages of the New Testament and said, wow, this could be true, this is the Messiah. And then you go back and you look at the Old Testament and say, wow, look at this. It is true. You know, but the one issue, the one area, the one argument that I think most people go to is where John uses the term, the Jews. And that's the way that it's translated. The Jews did this, the Jews did that. And of course, when we dig into that, everybody was Jewish. So, he's not talking in the story, they were all Jews. So what does the Jews mean? And most likely, as I've understood it, it's talking about the religious leaders and particularly those from the Judean area, from Jerusalem. They were the ones who particularly were plotting against them. Jesus was from the North, remember, from Galilee. So this is a reference John had himself being from that region, talking about those who opposed Jesus who were not that they were Jews, they were Judeans from, you know, the establishment in Jerusalem. And so we have to take that into consideration. There are a couple of passages where Paul, you know, you rejected the message, so now I'm going to the Gentiles. And people say, well, see, that was it. That was the break. Paul said, okay, now I'm going to the Gentiles. Don't stop. Keep reading because the next city he went to, the first place, it's a synagogue. So you know, these misinterpretations lead to all kinds of foolishness. This is a Jewish book written to Jews and Christians, Gentile Christians, get to overhear that conversation and then realize it was all part of God's plan to make us one new man as Paul talks about in Ephesians chapter 2. That we, you know, the church, you're grafted into the rich root of the olive tree. So you get to be a part of something that goes all the way back to Abraham and you become a child of Abraham by faith in Abraham's greater son, Jesus, the Messiah. So don't despise the Jewish people. You've been grafted in, brother. You're part of a choice to identify with the people of Israel and all that that means past, present, and future. Yeah, yeah. No, that's wonderful. Stephen, sorry. So you mentioned in your book, David, does the Jewish Bible point to Jesus. Do you mind sharing with us what passages do you go to when you're trying to share the gospel with a Jewish person? Okay, well, one of my favorite stories in the New Testament is found in Luke chapter 24. And you'll remember in this scene, Jesus had been crucified by Romans that the disciples had expected he would be delivering them from. And they heard he had been resurrected, but they didn't have the proof of it. And they're hiding out in this, you know, dark room, probably the doors were locked for fear of the leadership, and all of a sudden there's Jesus in the midst of them, and he says, you got anything to eat? Which is a good way to start a Jewish conversation, you know, what are we eating here? And they give him a piece of fish, and I have to believe that, you know, he eats the fish and there's bones left on the plate, and then he says this to them, these are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms concerning me. And he opened their understanding that they might comprehend the scriptures. So Jesus was very intentional about wanting the disciples not just to believe because he was standing in their midst and eating a piece of fish, but because they needed to understand that everything was a fulfillment of the promise of Tanakh. And that's the interesting thing that Jesus talks about Moses, that's Torah. Yeah. The prophets, that's Nevi'im. And the Psalms or writings, that's Ketuvim. And that's how Jewish people use that those three sections of the Bible that Jesus is talking about as an acrostic. Torah, Nevi'im, Ketuvim, Tanakh. And that's how what we mean when we talk about the Jewish Bible and Jesus uses Tanakh to help his disciples understand all these things were predicted beforehand. And so this book that I wrote, Does the Jewish Bible Point to Jesus, goes in that order. We look at five prophecies from the Torah, five prophecies from the Nevi'im, and five prophecies from Ketuvim in order to paint the picture, the portrait, if you will, that the Scriptures paint concerning the Messiah, which Jesus fulfilled with incredible, incredible accuracy to the point where you have a hard time denying if you're really willing to take the time. This book was written for seekers. This book is an opportunity to overhear a conversation with a Jewish person to another Jewish person about Jesus. So it takes into account all the Jewish backgrounds, but it's very accessible. It's written for people who, you don't have to be a Bible scholar to understand it. Most of my Jewish people are not. And so we go through these prophecies. And I kind of, when I was writing this book, thought to myself, I wonder which ones Jesus, you know, he didn't have all day to sit there at night and teach. So you know, he took those three sections and he talked about how these things were fulfilled and I'm going to pick these ones. And you know, he probably talked about others, but he certainly talked about these ones. Wouldn't you have looked, been a fly on the wall in that one? Definitely. But so that's the attempt of the book and it's written for seekers, but I think Christians are going to really be encouraged by it, not only to read it for themselves, especially at the Christmas season. You know, it's really wonderful to have that, but also, you know, hand it off to a Jewish friend, say, hey, I read this book, I wonder what you think about it. Does the Jewish Bible point to Jesus? Come back with an answer, would you? Yeah. I think a lot of Christians fail to see the full picture too, and seeing how the Old Testament, how these prophecies, how these passages in Scripture connect all together in Christ too. So I think it's such a great book that's pointing people towards the gospel. So thank you for putting this work together. Highly recommend this book, too. Yeah, it's so good. So David, you mentioned that passage, other passages that you share. What do, when you're talking with it with a Jewish person about those passages what kind of pushback do they give what's the obstacles the challenges they face to trying to believe that you that Jesus is the Messiah well I mean one of the most difficult things that a Jewish person has to confront is often an unspoken objection which is if this is true. If Jesus really is in the one promise by our own scriptures, if I believe in this, what's going to happen to me? Am I going to experience rejection? Am I going to be excommunicated, if you will, cut off from my own family? What are the consequences of my believing and following this teaching. And you know, the actual scriptures themselves, sure, the rabbis have had 2,000 years to develop their own polemic against these passages, but read on their own, they are, you know, they are convincing. One of the things that we love to do in Israel is we'll take our phones and we'll put a little passage, you know, like, for example, one of the chapters of the book is, you know, the dilemma of the missing prophecy, you know. We're talking about Isaiah chapter 53, which is perhaps the most famous Messianic prophecy, but it's never read in the synagogues, and most Jewish people never read it at all. And so you take Isaiah 53 verses 5 and 6 where it says, but he was wounded for our transgressions, he was pierced for our iniquities, the punishment for our peace was upon him and by his stripes we are healed. You take this whether in Hebrew or in English and you put it on your phone and say, hey read this and tell me, do you think it comes from the Old Testament or from the New Testament? And we actually have this on video if you want to watch the Jews for Jesus Israel YouTube channel it's called so be it and we have these man on the street kind of interviews constantly and it's actually really fun to watch because you know nine times out of ten you're going to show this passage to an Israeli and they're going to say oh it's the New Testament at the British shot so you know it's not no actually look it's from Isaiah. Isaiah, yeah. He wrote 700 years before Jesus was ever born. No, really? Oh, wow. You know, it's just so fun to be able to show my people one by one that this is actually our book and this is what it says about the Messiah. And it's really hard for them to deny. Why didn't the rabbis ever show me this, you know, is basically what we get. Now, of course, you know, the rabbis will tell you there are, you know, arguments against it. So, for example, one of the prophecies that we're going to be talking about a lot in the Christmas story is Isaiah 714. You know, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and you will call his name Emmanuel. Well, this is an amazing prediction that had an application immediately for Ahaz and for the situation in Israel, but was pointing to the future of the coming of the seed of the woman. The first prophecy of Genesis 3.15 promised that there would be a miraculous birth. Instead of the seed coming from the man, it would be the seed of the woman. Really strange phrase that jumps out at the very beginning of Torah. And now Isaiah tells us how this is gonna happen, because it's a virgin. So here's what the rabbis say, ah, but you're wrong. It doesn't say virgin. The Hebrew word is Alma, which means a woman, a young woman of marriageable age. And if it was virgin that Isaiah wanted to use, he would use the Hebrew word Betula. Problem, Betula doesn't just mean virgin in Hebrew. It also means widow. In Joel 1.8, a woman is mourning the loss of her husband and the Hebrew word is betula. So what is Isaiah doing? Well, back in the day, a young woman of marriageable age was a virgin. She better be, you know. And so this was not a contradiction. And so, you know, the fact that it was a virgin was just a demonstration of what Isaiah was saying. This is a miraculous birth. You've got a woman of marriageable age who has a baby. She's not married. She has a baby. How does this happen? Well, you know, the rabbis interpreted it that it was a virgin. The rabbis, according to the tradition, it was 70 that translated the Hebrew scriptures into Greek in Alexandria, what we call the Septuagint. When they got to Isaiah 7, 14, and they translated it into Greek, they used the word Parthenos to translate Alma, the Hebrew. Parthenos in Greek is virgin. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. So there's no question here, and the rabbis will dispute it. They'll push back on that one word and say, oh, it's not a virgin. They're wrong. Yeah. And we can prove it, but you got to take the time to listen. And you know, if there's a Jewish person who has out of curiosity tried to say, okay, well, are the Christians right about this? That's one of the arguments. We'll say, well, it's not really a virgin. Okay, let's sit down and look at it, you know, and if you understand the passage, you have to conclude that that's exactly what Isaiah is saying. But, you know, so these are the kinds of objections, you know, Isaiah chapter 53. Oh, well, you know, the suffering servant is Israel. Oh, you know, well, the fact of the matter is that the servant songs of Isaiah do often refer to the nation of Israel, but not always. And in Isaiah 53, we see that the servant dies for the sins of my people, Isaiah says, to whom the stroke was due. Well, wait a minute. How can, you know, Israel die on behalf of or for the sake of, you know? It just, the language is clear. If you read it, if you take time to study it, that's why we call it the rabbi's dilemma, because they can throw up an objection like that, but it doesn't stick. Yeah. Not if you read the passage. Yeah. That's really good. Oh, man. I love that, David. That's great. Awesome. Well, brother, thank you so much for this great conversation. I think it's been a great, great education, great chance for us to learn about how we can share the gospel with our Jewish friends, neighbors, great chance to get to consider how the roots of our faith is Jewish and hear about Jesus, the Jewish Messiah. So, Brother David, is there any ways that people can connect with you after this episode, learn more about Jews for Jesus? Yeah, well, come to our website, jewsforjesus.org , and we'll be very happy to, I mean, there's a tremendous amount of resources there to understand the Jewish roots of your faith, to answer questions about the Bible from a Jewish Christian perspective. And if you're interested to meet up with a Jewish believer in Jesus, or like maybe, as I was saying, you guys want to have me come and share about one of the holidays, you know, right now I'm talking about this very subject, does the Jewish Bible point to Jesus? And we tap into these prophecies and help people to understand the backgrounds of the Christmas story. But Christmas is a Jewish holiday, it's a celebration of the birth of the greatest Jew that ever lived. And without Hanukkah, there wouldn't be a Christmas. So how do we understand these things. So yeah, invite us to come to your churches, read our stuff on the website, but most importantly, pray. You know, the Psalms said, Sha'alu Shalom Yerushalayim, pray for the peace of Jerusalem. And the best way to pray for the peace of Jerusalem was to pray that Arabs and Jews will come to know Jesus. Because when Arabs and Jews can say to one another, I love you in Jesus name, the world will really see the reconciling power of the gospel. That's the hope of the gospel. That's the hope that I, you know, that fuels my passion each and every day to share this good news, because it is the only hope for peace. Yeah. Yeah. Amen. Amen. Well, thanks, David. Thanks for the conversation. Thanks everybody for listening. You can always follow us on Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok. Like and subscribe, and have an awesome week, everybody.

Who Is The Greatest? Sermon Series: It Had To Be Said Jon Delger Multiplication Pastor Peace Church Main Passage: Matthew 18:1-6 Transcript Great to see you all this morning. If you got a Bible, would you grab that and open with me to Matthew chapter 18? You don't have a Bible with you this morning and find one on a shelf or a table somewhere near you whichever worship venue You're in and we are on page 1046 and one of those Bibles. My name is Jon I get to serve as executive pastor of teaching here at Peace. Great to get to worship with you gather with God's people get to hear the word whether you're here in the family venue, or joining us online, great to be with you this morning. We are continuing our series called It Had to be Said, the quotes of Christ that changed the world. This morning we're tackling a verse that I would say is sweet and sour. At the beginning we're gonna find that it is sweet, maybe even cute, make you wanna say, aw, but the second half we're gonna find a little bit more sour, a little bit harder to swallow. But all of it is God's truth and we need to hear it. So let's open our Bibles, let's read, then we'll pray and then we'll get to work. Matthew 18, we're going to start in verse one. Matthew 18:1-6 18 At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” 2 And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them 3 and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, 6 but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin,[ a ] it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. This is God's word, let's pray. We'll get to work. Father in heaven, we love you, we thank you for your truth, your word. God, I pray that you would open up our hearts to hear it, receive all that it has to say to us this morning. God, I pray that you would fill me with your Holy Spirit to bring your perfect word through a broken instrument to your people. God pray that you'd be glorified. God, I pray that we would trust you, obey you, follow you closer. We pray this all in the precious and powerful name of Jesus this morning. Amen. Amen. Well, a few weeks ago, I remember going with my family over to my parents' cottage on the lake, getting to spend some time, hang out. It was sunny, the water felt good, we were on the lake, we went out on the boat and pulled some tubes behind the boat and my four kids each got to take their turn and I'd go out there with them and I'd be on one tube and they'd be on the other tube, we'd have a great time going around. And I remember getting towards the end of the cycle of the four kids, I remember just thinking, man, it's beautiful out, this feels great, this is so much fun. Remember back in the day when I used to do some crazy fun things on tubes like jumping the waves and barrel rolls and stuff like that? I bet I could still do that. And we went around a curve and my tube starts to swing out and I drop my shoulder to do one of those rolls and I did not come all the way back around. Opened my eyes to find that I was by myself floating in the water as the boat drove away. And later that night, as I said to my wife, man, I feel kind of sore. She said those three words that many husbands have heard from their wives. You ever thought about acting your age? Maybe you've been told that before. Act your age, act your shoe size, grow up, something like that. Well, in this passage, Jesus seems to say to us just the opposite of that. He tells grown adults to become more like children. So this morning, our main idea is this. Jesus calls his disciples to be like children, to receive children, and to protect children. As he answers the question, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? So we're going to look at that main idea in those three parts as we go through this morning. So let's take a look at the first of those ideas that Jesus calls you and I to be like children. Let's take a look at the first couple of verses of Matthew 18. At that time, the disciples came to Jesus saying, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom. So the disciples come to Jesus with a pretty audacious question. They dare ask Jesus, who is the greatest? And if we look at other gospels, we look at like Mark chapter 9 and we see what's going on leading up to this conversation, we find out that actually the disciples have already been arguing on the road up to this point about which one of them is the greatest. Unfortunately, we also find out a few chapters later that this is an ongoing problem for the disciples. They not only fight over their place in the group here in this instance, but even after hearing this speech from Jesus, a few chapters later, the mom of James and John goes to Jesus and says, Jesus, would you let my sons sit at your right and your left hand? Can you imagine your mom going to the king and saying, would you let my boys sit at the highest places in the kingdom? I mean, what a moment. I think one of those face palm moments, right? Can you believe that these guys with the humblest person in the universe in front of them, the son of God who came from his throne on high to be born as a baby in a manger, to grow up as a carpenter's son, to suffer and to die, that guy, they're gonna argue about who is the best of his sidekicks. What a moment, right? Great moment for the disciples. Perhaps at some level we might want to admire a little bit the fact that they at least were going for being the greatest in the kingdom of heaven instead of the kingdoms of this world. Maybe that's admirable a little bit. But at some point we've got to ask ourselves, what took these disciples from being nobodies to thinking that they were somebody's. Right? These are guys who were fishermen, tax collectors, and Jesus goes to them and says, follow me, and all of a sudden everything changes. Pride is so deceptive that way, isn't it? We can go from one minute feeling so sorry for ourselves, feeling ashamed of ourselves, thinking I'm nobody, to thinking, actually, maybe I'm the greatest person who's ever lived. Pride is deceptive. So the disciples asked Jesus the question, who is the greatest? And we can imagine the different types of answers that they might have expected. You can think from the way of the world, somebody might answer, well, the greatest is the person with the most money or fame, power, muscle, intelligence, influence. In our world today, you might think of names like Elon Musk or Bill Gates, the President of the United States, people with money and power and influence. In contrast to that, you might think of what the Jewish rabbis of Jesus' day might have said. You might think of what would the religious leaders say is the greatest? And you think of the Jewish rabbis saying, well, it's the person who dots all the I's and crosses all the T's, who gets all the religious rules just right and shows up for all the religious traditions and practices and appears to be the most godly person that anybody could imagine You imagine that's the answer the pharisees would give guys who were the strictest of the religious leaders were known For their adherence to the law and even their legalism. But then you got Jesus Who comes and offers a third way that nobody expected. He doesn't answer like the kings of the world. He doesn't answer like the other Jewish rabbis. He said, Jesus gives an object lesson. He grabs a child and pulls a child into the middle of a circle of grown men and says, this is what it looks like to be the greatest. In the ancient world, you gotta understand that children were of very low regard, right? They didn't have a whole lot of muscle. They weren't maybe the smartest people in the room. They couldn't serve in the army. They didn't make a ton of money. They didn't have a whole list of achievements. And yet Jesus says, this is our example of what it looks like to be the greatest. It seems upside down as Jesus' way often does. And this isn't the only thing that Jesus says that is shocking. If you take a look at verse 3, you notice that Jesus doesn't just answer the question of who is the greatest, he actually takes it to another level. Take a look at verse 3. Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. All right, so they asked, who's the greatest in the kingdom? Jesus says, no, no, no, you're not even going to get in unless you turn and change your ways. It's not about who's the greatest. You don't even get in unless you change the way that you're approaching this whole thing. So let's talk about what it means for disciples of Jesus to become like children. I wanna point you to a few passages, a few other things that Jesus says. This comes from Matthew chapter 20. Jesus says, you know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them. Their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant. Think of Matthew chapter 23, where Jesus says, whoever exalts himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. It's the opposite of what you're going for in a job interview, right? In a job interview, you're trying to bring yourself to the top of the list of candidates, trying to make the most of yourself. And yet Jesus says, if you try to make much of yourself, God will bring you low. If you approach from a lowly place, God will raise you up. Perhaps the greatest passage in the Bible on humility, Philippians chapter two, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not to his own interest, but to the interest of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form. human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of his Father. So what does it look like to be the greatest? I can summarize it this way. Not to exalt yourself or lord it over others, but to serve others, to be humble, and to be like Jesus. We can't imitate children in every way. If you go to work tomorrow and tell your employer that your pastor said that you should be more like a child and so at work today you're gonna act more like a child, probably not gonna work real well for you. So there's not every way in which we're supposed to imitate children, but there are some ways in which we can imitate children. I read one author this week who used a great word, I thought, to describe it. I think he made up this word, I don't think it's a real word. Unselfregarding. Unselfregarding. Somebody who's not all about themselves. Somebody who's not walking into every room wondering what other people are thinking of them, how they can be the greatest, what their status is. Friends, what if you and I had no fear to take on the lowliest task in front of us? What if we didn't care about status? What if we didn't care whether the idea came from me or from you, as long as it was the right idea. What if you and I could take on that lowly place and be willing to help others, to lift others up, highlight the accomplishments of others instead of ourselves? One of the things that I've noticed about kids is that they are not afraid to ask mom and dad for help. It kind of drives us nuts sometimes. All right, I think you could get your own glass of water. You could tuck yourself back into bed for the 10th time because you've gotten out of bed 10 times. You could make your own peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But kids are marked by trust and dependence. They ask mom and dad for everything. What if we as Christians were not afraid to always run to our Father with everything. To have the same trust and dependence that our children have and just say, Father, whatever it is, I'm going to the Father because I know that he will provide for me, I know that he will hear me, I know that he will take care of me. I'm just gonna run to him in prayer every time. What if you and I were willing to admit when we were wrong? I think that's one of the greatest marks of humility, admitting when we are wrong. Unfortunately, children don't always get that one right. I recently had an argument with one of my daughters. She likes to watch the Spider-Man cartoon TV show, and in it there's a character called Black Panther, and I like superhero things, so I know some stuff about this, and she was explaining to me how Black Panther is from this country called Orkanda, and I said, well, actually, sweetheart, it's Wakanda. And she said, no, dad, it's not. I said, yes it is. And we went back and forth for probably like five minutes. And I finally said, it's one of those moments I should have just walked away from, but I didn't because I knew I was right. And so we sat down and I said, sweetheart, we're gonna watch this thing right now. I got out the remote, I put on the TV, said we're gonna watch an episode right now. We watched a whole episode, get to the end. Of course, it is pronounced Wakanda. And then we get to the end of the episode, and she says, well, in every other episode, dad, they say it the other way. At that point, you just give up and walk away. Humility, even if not always practiced by a child, something all of us are called to, including admitting when we're wrong. So Jesus in this passage calls us in one specific way to become more like children, being willing to take on a lowly estate, a lowly place. At this point, Jesus pivots from talking about how we should become like children to talking about how we should treat children. He gives us two ways in verses five and six. Let's take a look at the first one, how we're supposed to receive children. This is verse five. Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me. So two questions about this passage. The first question is, who are these children that Jesus is talking about? What does it mean to receive a child? What child? Well, you got to imagine Jesus is probably still kneeling next to a child in the circle of his disciples. So I think we can say literal children, kids are one thing that Jesus has in mind. We can also say, looking at verse six, the next verse it says, these little ones who believe in me. So I think more generally we could say he's talking about believers. Any believer is a child of God. And so I think generally we could just say, Jesus is talking about believers in the Lord, followers of Jesus, and maybe specifically children or those who are weak or vulnerable is who Jesus is talking about that we're called to receive. So the second question, what does it mean for us to receive them? I think there's one of those familiar religious phrases that we can easily just walk by and not even think about what does this really mean to receive one such child. One of the things that makes me think of is a receiving blanket. If you've had kids, you remember maybe that moment in the hospital receiving that little baby in that little blanket that I never quite figured out how to do the whole folding swaddling thing, they always had to fix it for me, but you receive that little baby and how do you receive them? With gentleness, with care, nurture, love. You want to just hold them, protect them, care for them, provide for them, serve them. I think that's a picture of what it means to receive someone as a child. Another picture is that of adoption. God the Father gives us this beautiful picture of adoption. It's what he does for us. None of us are biological children of God the Father. The Bible says that all of us were born into sin. All of us were enemies of God. Until Jesus came and he lived a life of righteousness that we couldn't live. He died the death for sin that we should have died and he conquered the grave. And he says, if you put your faith in me, you become one of my beloved children. That is the image of receiving a child that God the Father gives us. The perfect example of adoption that God offers to us and he calls us to offer to others. A couple of passages that this also makes me think of. I think of Matthew chapter 10, when Jesus is sending out the 12 disciples, he sends them out two by two to go and do ministry and cast out demons and heal and preach. And so the disciples go and he says, when you go into a town, find somebody's house and you go and you stay in that house. And as they receive you, they receive me. So the picture Jesus paints of this receiving is of being welcomed into somebody's home to be cared for, to be provided for. I think in Matthew chapter 25 where Jesus says, as you care for the least of these, you care for me. So again, Jesus gives the image of us caring for, taking care of, serving the weak and the vulnerable. So how are we doing? How are children. Do you welcome the needy into your home? I'm not saying you have to have a big home. I'm not saying you have to have a huge dining room table. I'm not saying the cupboards have to be enormously full. You don't have to have a lot of money or a lot of stuff to be hospitable. But when you meet somebody who needs some love, do you have an open door? Are you willing to bring them in, whether the house is messy or clean, bring them in, sit them down, listen, talk, pray, serve them, care for them? Do you have a home like that? Do you have a lifestyle like that where you can stop and make some time for the inconvenience of coming across somebody in tears, somebody who just needs somebody to talk to, a brother or a sister in Christ who needs some encouragement, some prayer? Are you able to receive someone, one of God's children, with love, with nurture, with care? I think another way that we give this attitude of receiving children is how we talk about children. Do you say, oh man, praying for you, good luck? I've heard that too many times. I've maybe said it a time or two. Or do you say, oh man, praise God. What a blessing from the Lord. Children are a blessing from the Lord. Now I know they're challenging. I mean, I've got four of them, I know, they're challenging. But the Bible tells us that we have a different perspective on children than the rest of the world does. We see them as a gift, a blessing, as arrows in our quiver, the Bible tells us. And so when you meet somebody who's got lots of kids, do you say to them, oh man, good luck over there, you must be busy. I remember when we got to number four, which by the way, at Peace Church, four is not that many. I mean, you all outrank me, many of you do. But I've got four. I remember getting to number four, I remember people saying, are you sure you wanna have four? I remember being like, we're pregnant or I don't know what to tell you. Like, it's not going back. I mean, this thing's coming. I remember going to a pastor's conference recently, and some of the guys thought I was crazy that I had four, and I said, no, no, no, you should come home with me, meet some of these folks. We're talking lots of kids. When you meet somebody with lots of kids, do you think, oh boy, they're crazy, or do you think, man, praise God, that's awesome. The Lord calls each of us to a different number of kids. It's not about how many you have, but all of them is a blessing. Brothers and sisters, we are called to receive little children. Last one. Let's take a look at verse 6. You and I are called to protect children. But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea." So earlier I said this passage was sweet and sour. We've had some sweet parts. Becoming more like children, receiving little children, now we have a bit of a sour part. We talk about the wrath of God against those who hurt children. The logic of this passage works like this. Children are vulnerable, adults have a high responsibility. Children are easily influenced, deceived, manipulated, abused. Adults have a high responsibility to protect such children, not to cause them to stumble. Jesus says, whoever causes one of my children to stumble or to fall has another thing coming. The word literally used in the Greek for cause to sin is the word scandalizo, which you can imagine, we get our English word, scandalize. Whoever scandalizes one of God's children, leads them astray, leads them to places they shouldn't be, things they shouldn't be involved in. Whoever scandalizes one of my children, Jesus says, it would be better for them to have a millstone tied around their neck and cast into the sea. There's a picture of a millstone, first century. It's a stone that usually a donkey would pull in a circle and it would grind out the grain. Big, heavy stone designed to grind things out. And Jesus paints the picture of what I think for many of us would be our worst nightmare. I know it makes my top couple of worst nightmares, the idea of drowning. Takes it to a different level. Not only are you in the water drowning? You've got a big honking stone tied around your neck drag You're looking up at the surface maybe clawing towards the surface and yet this thing is dragging you down. What a terrible brutal painful image and Yet Jesus doesn't say this is what will happen to you if you hurt my children. He says it would be better for you if this happened to you then what will happen if you hurt my children? Jesus ups the ante a whole bunch. I Think it's one of the signs of human depravity That some people get pleasure out of defiling Making dirty some of the purest and most innocent people in the world children I I think that is true for literal physical children, as well as for Christians more generally. People like to see something great fall. They like to see something pure get dirty. So what might Jesus be referring to in today's world? Who might be causing his little ones to stumble? I think there's lots we could talk about in the world around us, but let's first look at ourselves. Where is the Bible convicting you and I first and foremost? Parents, how are we causing our children to stumble? How are we protecting them from sin and temptation in the world? No, we can't take them out of the world, we can't protect them from everything. No, no parent is perfect, but how is it that we are doing our best? What kind of example, what kind of model do we set for them? The things that we say, the things that we do. How often do we have to say to our kids, do as I say, not as I do. What kind of things do we expose them to? From our own mouth, from the television. Teens in the house are not going to want to hear this, but parents, do you limit the amount of phone time that your kids get? Do you limit their access to social media or things like that? Things that we know can be very bad, yes they can be used for good, but they also can be extremely bad. Are we letting our kids fall prey, be scandalized by terrible things, or are we guarding them from it? How do you talk in front of your kids about marriage, about family, about the church? So much more at home is caught than taught. You can tell them a million times that church is important, that marriage is beautiful, that family is important, but what do you show them week in and week out? None of us is a perfect parent. All of us have room to grow, but how are we doing our best to protect our kids? We move beyond us. We think about what's going on in our world. There's so much we could talk about, from human trafficking to domestic abuse. Pick one instance for today, think of just two nights ago, Friday night. I remember in the evening, playing out in the yard with my kids and thinking, oh man, today's the opening day of the Olympics. This only comes around every few years. This would be really great for my kids to watch and just what an experience. I happened to forget about it. And after they were in bed, I pulled out my phone and I looked up some clips I thought I better check this out and see what this is like and I was appalled. I was really glad that my kids didn't get to see that. If you don't know what I'm talking about I'm sure you'll hear about in the near future. It was not something for kids to get to watch, much less be participants in, even though they were. Now some of you might be rolling your eyes and saying, well Pastor John this kind of stuff happens all the time. We've got a pride parade right here in our own town. You might be rolling your eyes and saying, well, Pastor Jon, this kind of stuff happens all the time. We've got a pride parade right here in our own town. Why do we even bother in talking about this anymore? Let me tell you something, brothers and sisters, if we let this become normalized in our own minds, in our own homes, then we have already lost the fight. It can't become normal. The Bible very clearly tells us that there is judgment for those who scandalize God's children. Now, I don't relish the fact that they're going to face eternal judgment, but it's true. Our real prayer is that they would hear the gospel of Jesus, that they would repent of their sin, that they would receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and have salvation. That's what we want for those people We need to realize that there is so much more to this world than material There are spiritual eternal realities. There is spiritual eternal Judgment that all human beings will face one day And either Jesus will take our place or we will receive that punishment ourselves and in the meantime that punishment ourselves. And in the meantime, you and I have a calling to protect our children, to protect God's children from anything that would scandalize them. You and I have a calling to preach the gospel, to make disciples of Jesus, because changed hearts is what will lead to a changed world, amen? world. Amen? God has called us to become more like children, to receive children, world. Amen? Will you please stand with me and let's pray as we close?

Jesus: Lion, Lamb, and Temple Sermon Series: It Had To Be Said Jon Delger Multiplication Pastor Peace Church Main Passage: John 2:13-22 Transcript Well, hey everyone great to see you all this morning if you got a Bible Would you grab that and turn with me to John chapter 2 John chapter 2 starting in verse 13? If you're using one of the Bibles in the room here at its page 1129 great to see you all. My name is John. I get to serve as executive pastor of teaching here at peace Welcome, whether you're in the worship center over in the chapel downstairs in the family venue or joining us online Great to be together. We are only one week away. Next Sunday, our lead pastor has been on sabbatical for eight weeks. He's back, Pastor Ryan is back next week. Excited to see him? Oh man, it's okay, you can be more excited than that. Next week when he's here, okay, maybe show him a little love when he gets back. We're excited to have him back. He's had a good time to get to rest, to get to steady, to get to spend time in prayer. Getting ready for the next season, the next year, and many years of teaching and preaching here at PEACE. Well, hey, we're continuing our series called It Had to be Said, Quotes of Christ that Changed the World, and we're excited this morning to look at this passage in John chapter 2. I'm going to read it, then we'll pray, and then we'll dig in. So here we go, John chapter 2, I'm going to start. John 2:13-22 13 The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. 15 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. 16 And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father's house a house of trade.” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18 So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple,[a] and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking about the temple of his body. 22 When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. This is God's word. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we are so thankful for your word. God, we're thankful for its truth. We're thankful for the story that gives us a picture of Jesus. Jesus, pray that you would help us to hear it, to be amazed by him, to grow in our likeness to him. Father, I pray that you would be with me, fill me with your spirit. Use me a broken instrument, bring your perfect word to your people, and God, I pray that all of us would have changed hearts as a result. Thank you, Father, I pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Well, I can't say that I've ever flipped over tables to fight injustice the way that Jesus did in the temple, but I thought this week of a time that I came close to flipping over a table to fight injustice. I remember one time sitting at a table with my younger brother and a few other people playing the card game Euchar. And I almost flipped over the table to fight injustice. Actually, my younger brother and I don't remember exactly how we started fighting, but somehow we ended up actually on the floor wrestling, punching each other, things like that. I think we were teenagers, high school, something like that. And before the fight started, my girlfriend, who's now my wife, but at the time my girlfriend, she was there. And then when I came up from this little spat, she was not there. So I had to call her and ask what happened. And she said she was pretty embarrassed by what I was doing. She ended up marrying me anyway, so that's good. But she didn't see what I was doing as a fight against injustice like Jesus had in this passage. That's what we're gonna look at this morning is this demonstration. That Jesus gives of his power of his authority of his zeal for the honor of his father And so we're gonna just ask a couple of basic questions of the Texas farm. We're gonna ask who is Jesus What does this tell us about who he is? And then what does this tell us about how we can be more like him and we're gonna see is that Jesus is the lion, he's the lamb, and he's the temple. So we're going to walk through all three of those this morning. As we look, let's take a jump into that first one and find that Jesus is the lion. 1. Jesus is the Lion Take a look with me at the beginning of the passage, verses 13 and 14. It says 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 pigeon and the money changers. All right, so the text sets the setting for us. It's Passover time, a religious holiday, a huge time for the Jewish people. We're in Jerusalem, the very center city, the holy city of the people of Israel, and we're in the temple, the very center of that city. This is a sacred and special time when Jerusalem would grow four or five times in population size as people made their way to get to come and to worship and to pray and to come to the temple and to be with God. From our knowledge of the Old Testament, we can imagine what the scene should have looked like. The temple should have been a place of prayer, of worship, of earnestly people coming to be with God. I think of what the passage says in 1 Kings chapter 8 when Solomon builds the temple and they first open it. Here's a picture of what it was like. 1 Kings chapter 8, it says, When the priests came out of the holy place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud. For the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord. Isn't that an amazing picture of the temple? That God's presence comes down, it's tangible, it's thick, it's a cloud so thick that people can't even stand there in the midst of it. Solomon goes on and he gives a prayer kind of a dedication as they open the temple. He says, will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, how much less this house that I have built. He says, this is amazing. The God of the universe who created everything is going to come and dwell in a structure and he's going to dwell with people. It's amazing. He goes on, yet have regard for the prayer of your servant and to his plea and listen to the plea of your servant and your People when they pray toward this place listen in heaven and hear and forgive So the temple is supposed to be a place where people could come and experience the presence of the Lord Where they could pray where they could worship where they can make sacrifices where they could ask for forgiveness and receive forgiveness for sins. But when Jesus walks in, verse 14 tells us what he finds. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeon and the money changers. So instead of finding a place of prayer and worship, Jesus walks in and he essentially finds Wall Street with livestock. Right, if you've ever seen on the news the pictures of like the closing bell on Wall Street, all these guys with slips of paper in their hand yelling numbers at each other and just all that frantic buying and selling going on. If you can imagine that happening, but with cattle, I can only imagine the chaos that would have ensued. The Jewish historian Josephus tells us that during his lifetime, in one week, the week of Passover, 255,000 lambs were bought, sold, and sacrificed. And that's just the lambs, right? There was other animals that were bought and sold too. 255,000 lambs in one week. We're talking about something enormous. I mean, if you can imagine even just the Barry County Fair coming and hanging out in our worship center, right? Probably not a whole lot of prayer and worship and time with the Lord is going to happen in the midst of that, right? So this is unfortunately what Jesus finds when he comes in. How does he respond? Verses 15 and 16 tell us, making a whip of cords, he drove all out of the temple with the sheep and oxen, and he poured out the coins to the money changers and overturned their tables. He told them, take these things away, do not make my father's house a house of trade. Jesus flips over the table, he finds some rope or something, he cords it together, he starts cracking a whip. He goes around, he slaps some animals on the rear and gets them running, he gets a little stampede going on. Jesus turns this into a scene of chaos. He makes some noise. And the text tells us that what we see is Jesus full of zeal. The disciples remember what Psalm 69 says, zeal for your house will consume me. It's a passage about King David and about King David's heirs, those who would come in his line afterwards, and they recognize that Jesus is King David's heir who has zeal for the house of the Lord, passion for the house of the Lord. It makes me think of that line in the Chronicles of Narnia. If you remember, the kids ask the beavers about Aslan, the king, the lion, and they say, is he safe? And the response is, no, he isn't safe, but he is good. I think that's what we see of Jesus at this moment, isn't it? Jesus is good, he's righteous, but he's also dangerous. He's also very serious, he's got passion, he's got zeal, especially when the honor of his father comes under threat. I think it leads us to ask the question, in our Christ-likeness as Christians, yes, we are supposed to be humble, lowly, meek like Jesus, but do we also reflect the passion, the zeal, the ferocity, the lion that Jesus is in this passage. Do we reflect that? We see of Jesus that he is called meek, but at the same time we also hear passages like Revelation chapter 19 Describing Jesus listen to this then I saw heaven open and behold a white horse The one sitting on it is called faithful and true and in righteousness He judges and makes war his eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems. And he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and by the name he is called the Word of God. The armies of heaven arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. He will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords." Our Jesus on the one hand is gone humble and born in a manger, on the other hand he's the ultimate warrior that Revelation 19 paints him as, with King of Kings tattooed on his thigh, with a sword coming out of his mouth, with fire in his eyes, riding a white horse, leading the armies of God. So Christians in our Christ likeness, do we mirror both sides of Jesus? Now I know some of you are thinking, all right, some of you are like, all right, let's go. I want some zeal. I want to flip over some tables. Let's do it. So there you go. There it is. See, so some of you are already pumped. And I think some of us need to hear, all right, what's the definition of zeal? All right, what do we do with all that passion? What does that exactly look like? And some of us need to hear that we do, we need to have some of that heart burning passion. So I want to talk to both of those groups this morning. Let me talk to the first one first. If you have zeal this morning, I want to make sure to consider a definition of what Christian zeal might look like. This is from J.C. Ryle, a great preacher from the 1800s. J.C. Ryle says, zeal in Christianity is a burning desire to please God, to do his will, and to advance his glory in the world in every possible way. I think that's a great summary definition of zeal. He goes on to say, this desire is so strong when it really reigns in a person that it impels them to make any sacrifice, to go through any trouble, to deny themselves anything, to suffer, to work, to labor, to toil, to spend themselves and be spent, and even to die, if only they can please God and honor Christ. There's what it means to be a zealous, a radical follower of Jesus. That's what it looks like. One of the things I think we have to notice about the story is the location of Jesus zeal Where is Jesus Jesus is in the temple all forms of sin make Jesus angry. But the story isn't of Jesus going into Caesars household and flipping over the tables the story isn't of Jesus going into a Roman tavern and flipping over the tables It's not of Jesus going into a Macedonian red light district and flipping over the tables. It's of Jesus coming to the Jewish temple. He comes to the people who call themselves God's people. He comes to the place that is known as God's house. Christians, we ought to reject sin wherever we find it. God is not soft on sin, but Christians should be most appalled at sin among ourselves, within the church, within our own hearts. Brothers and sisters, if you have zeal for God, what does it do? Does it make you hate your own sin? Does it make you zealous for the faithfulness and the holiness of your local church, of your brothers and sisters, of your family, of your friends? Christians, when you engage in public discourse, when you post on social media, are you blasting the world? Or are you sharing winsomely the wisdom of God's Word God's beautiful design for this universe that he has for us. Are you most appalled? At when we the people who call ourselves God's people are running astray We can't focus all of our zeal outwards. We got to focus first and foremost on our selves. Some of you this morning need to instead hear not just about what direction your zeal goes. You need to hear that we need to have some zeal. We need to have some passion. One of the things that I have heard said is that one of the biggest problems that we have in the world is religious extremism. Let me tell you something. I do not think that one of the biggest problems in the world is that too many Christians take their faith too seriously. Unfortunately, I don't think that is one of the problems that we face in the world. Religious people should be radical. It's a measure of the religion itself what that radicalism leads you to do. I remember when I was in high school youth group we used to sing a very simple song that has always stuck with me. I won't sing it because I'm a terrible singer but I'll tell you the lyrics. It went, I don't want to be, I don't want to be a casual Christian. I don't want to live, I don't want to live a lukewarm life. I want to light up the night with an everlasting light. I remember as a high schooler that that caused my heart to burn. That arose in me a zeal, a passion, that I didn't want to live a life that was seen as wasteful for eternity. I wanted to live a life for the honor and the glory of God. When we talk about sharing our faith, one of the things that we talk about is that if we care about our friends, if we care about our family, we want to share Jesus with them so they don't go to hell, so they can have eternal life. And that is all true. We love our neighbor. We love our friends. We want them to meet Jesus so they can have eternal life. But we also need to talk about another motivation for sharing about Jesus. And that motivation is simply that we love Him. Before we talk about just sharing Him because we love our neighbor, let's talk about sharing Him simply because we love God. You get so excited about God that you just gotta tell people. I recently took up an interesting fun habit that's kind of a trend. I usually take up like fad trends, but this is one I jumped into. I thought it sounded fun. So I do every single morning an ice bath. It's a good time. I don't know if any of you guys partake and enjoy that activity, but you fill a tub with 80 gallons of water and you jump in and you set that timer and you go as long as you can grit your teeth and bear it. I love it. I think it's awesome. The weather hasn't gotten cold yet, so we'll see what it's like when I, I'll let you know what it's like when I get there, but when it's really hot out, it feels awesome. I come into work in the morning. I still got goose bumps on my arm from the cold. I'm like, yes Why I got goose bumps. I took an ice bath. It was awesome. I love it I'm not going around telling people about the ice bath because I think it's got all these health benefit You know, it probably does they tell us it does but I don't go around telling people you should do an ice bath because it'll Save your soul. I go around telling people about the ice bath because I love it. I just think it's a blast I think it feels so good. So I just want to talk about it? That you just want to tell people? You've been spending time reading your Bible, you've been spending time praying, and you're like, man, I just got to talk to somebody about how good God is, about how great He is, about what he's done. Does your heart burn with a passionate zeal for the Lord? Jesus is a lion, the lion of the tribe of Judah. And brothers and sisters, we are called to imitate some of those lion-like qualities. 2. Jesus is the Temple Number two, text tells us that Jesus is also the temple. The temple. Take a look with me at verse 18. So after the episode here of what Jesus does, the Jews ask for an explanation. Here we go. The Jews said to him, what sign do you show us for doing these things? All right, so religious leaders ask Jesus, prove your authority. What right do you have to do these crazy things in the temple? What right do you have to tell us what to do or not do in the temple? All right, and this is this happens throughout the the history of Israel with the prophets when a prophet comes and proclaims the word of The Lord they usually do a sign also to prove this isn't just my word I didn't just make this up as a word from the Lord You think of like Moses right when Moses shows up and says let my people go. He's got that staff that turns into a snake You think of Elijah? He's up on the mountain Mount Carmel and he's standing there and he's before this rain-soaked altar, right? You got next to him 400 false prophets of the false God Bale and they're all dancing around and asking for their God to rain down fire and of course what happens. Is the God rains down fire on Elijah's altar? God sends fire from the sky to prove. This is my prophet. He is my messenger You think of Ezekiel the prophet who had to lay on his side for a year and cook his food over feces. He got the raw deal out of the three of those people. But God sends a sign to prove and sometimes even to demonstrate the word that he gives through the prophet. I think one of the ironies of the Gospel of John is that despite the number of miracles that Jesus does, people still don't believe him and they continue to ask for more signs. But this is what the Jews are asking for. They're asking for this sign. And so Jesus says, well, I'll give you a sign. And here comes our favorite, our famous quote of the morning, verse 19, destroy this temple. And in three days I will raise it up. Of course, the Jewish leaders think this is pretty crazy, right? The temple is massive. There's a model of the second temple. The first one was destroyed. The second one was rebuilt. It had taken 46 years to get to the point that it was at the moment that we're talking about here in Jesus' time. 46 years of construction, and it's not actually done. In Jesus' time, the temple was not complete. It was another 30 plus years before the temple got completed, and then 7 years later, it was destroyed. The Jews rebelled against the Romans, the Romans came back in and they burned all of Jerusalem, including the whole temple. But 46 years of construction, still 30 years away from being done, and Jesus says, destroy this temple and in three days, just three days, I will rebuild it. They must have thought he was crazy. And yet, for the God of the universe, piece of cake, right? Rebuild that temple, piece of cake. But in fact, the text tells us that Jesus is actually talking about something more difficult. He's not talking about a temple of brick and stone, he's talking about a temple of flesh and blood. He's talking about raising from the dead. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about how is it that Jesus' body is the temple. Well, we heard a minute ago that the purpose of the temple is for God to dwell with people, right? We heard about the cloud coming down and being in the temple, that God's presence was there. That was the point of the temple. In the very beginning of all things, God walked with Adam and Eve in the garden in the cool of the day, the Bible tells us. Then sin came into the world and God and human beings got separated. But then God in his grace, he comes back in the tabernacle, a big tent, then he comes back in the temple, and then finally in Jesus we have the perfect temple we have God's Son the God of the universe takes on a human body comes to earth and dwells among people. Jesus is the perfect temple the Bible tells us this in a couple of different places I think of John chapter 1 verse 14 it says the word became flesh and dwelt among us that word dwelt is actually the same word as tabernacle tabernacle among us He dwelt among us. I think Colossians 2 9 that says in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily God the God of the universe came and dwelt among people. This is what Jesus does Another thing that the Bible tells us is that not only is Jesus God's temple, also we, we are God's temple. I think of passages like 2nd Corinthians 6 verse 16, what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As individuals and as a church we are God's temple. So here's the question I have for you. If Jesus came to our temple, if Jesus came to the temple of your mind, if Jesus came to the temple of your mind this week, what would he find? Would he find a place of worship, a place of prayer, a place that is consumed by the greatness of God, or would he find something else? If he came to the temple of your heart this week? What do you find? Desires for the Lord. Or what do you find? Desires for something else. If Jesus came to Peace Church, what would He find? You would find lots of stuff religious type stuff but the heart was wrong if Jesus came to Peace Church would he find he would find lots of activity lots of people doing stuff but what he find you and I would he find us with hearts full of worship would he find us wanting to grow deeper as disciples of Jesus Would he find us reaching our community with the gospel? I Certainly hope that's what he would find Friends. 3. Jesus is the Lamb Jesus is the temple and Jesus finally is also the lamb Let me take you back to our main quote for this morning from verse 19 destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up." Contrary to what you might first think when you read it, he doesn't say, he will destroy the temple. He actually says, destroy the temple, like you destroy the temple. At the end of Jesus' life before he's crucified, people falsely accused him of trying to destroy the temple. They said, well, Jesus said he was going to tear down the temple and that's blasphemy, but he didn't say that. He actually said, you destroy the temple and I will raise it up. Jesus' words are way more prophetic than we would think. He's talking about something that really is going to happen. On the one hand it seems strange that Jesus would make a prophecy, a sign about something that's not going to take place until the end of his life, but on the other hand it seems like the greatest sign he could possibly give, right? How would Jesus prove that he is sent from God, that he is God's son, that everything that he said was true, he would prove it by doing what he said he was going to do, dying and raising again. Friends, Jesus is not just the temple, he's also the sacrifice. 255,000 lambs sacrificed in a single week. But the Jewish leaders, the Jewish people, they missed the point. Because the whole point was to point them to just one lamb. John the Baptist, when he saw Jesus passing by, he said, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The whole book of Leviticus is an account of how do you do sacrifices, and when do you do sacrifices, and which animals, and which ones do you donate, and what tools do you use. It was blood in the morning. It was blood in the evening. If you sinned, you've got to shed more blood. If you sinned again, you've got to shed more blood. The whole Old Testament is a story of shedding blood for sin. But the whole point is that one would come and there would be no more need for the shedding of blood. That one lamb, the lamb who is also a lion. I think of passages like Revelation chapter 5 that paints the picture of both. The Apostle John sees a vision and he hears the words, behold the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David is conquered. But when he looks up, what does he see? He says, Between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a lamb standing as though it had been slain. He's the Lion of the tribe of Judah, but how does he appear? As a lamb who had died. And everybody in heaven is singing a song. Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain and by your blood you ransomed people for God. From every tribe and language and people and nation and you have made them a kingdom and priests. They will reign on the earth. Jesus is the lamb who takes away our sin. When he came and said, destroy this temple and I'll raise it again in three days, the people who heard them, heard those words, they missed the sign they didn't get it they didn't receive them friends you're hearing about this sign will you receive it will you believe it will you believe that Jesus is the Lamb of God the temple of God the line of the tribe of Judah who died for your sin, who paid the price that you and I should have paid and conquered the grave so that you could have life again. If you don't yet believe that this morning, I would love to talk with you after the service. We've got lots more people who would love to talk to you after the service as well, but I'd love to talk with you. If you do believe this, friends, we're about to take the Lord's Supper. We're about to see. We're about to touch. We're about to taste in our mouths. Jesus' body broken. Jesus' blood poured out for us. I want to encourage you to take this sign, to receive it, to know just as surely as you hold it in your hands that Jesus died to take away your sins. Praise God. Let me pray for us. take away your sins. Praise God. Let me pray for us.

Sermon Discussion Questions 1 Title Sunday, March 3, 2024 Withstand Ephesians 6:15 Polarizing Division Vs. Gospel Peace   2 Overview Main Idea: The Gospel makes us ready to bring peace in a polarized world. Sermon Outline: 1. Gives us what we stand in and on. (v15a) 2. Makes us ready to face the world. (v15b) 3. Brings us back home. (v15c) 3 Pre-Questions 1. What about this sermon challenged your worldview? 2. Have you been praying for Peace Church and its leaders during this series? 4 Questions Reflect on the list of divisive issues mentioned in the sermon (gun laws, climate change, abortion, etc.). Which of these topics do you find most challenging to discuss with others who hold opposite views, and why? How can the Gospel guide us in these conversations? The sermon highlights the growing polarization in American politics and its correlation with people's views on social and policy issues. How does identifying primarily as an ambassador of the Kingdom of Heaven, rather than by political affiliation, change the way we engage with the world and its issues? The main idea of the sermon is that the Gospel makes us ready to bring peace in a polarized world. Discuss how the Gospel equips us to be peacemakers. What are practical ways we can embody the gospel of peace in our interactions with others, especially those with whom we disagree? Ephesians 6:15 discusses the "readiness given by the gospel of peace" as part of the spiritual armor. In the context of the sermon, how does this piece of armor help Christians withstand the spiritual battles behind cultural and political wars? Share examples from your own life or observations. Considering the sermon's emphasis on the Gospel's role in bringing peace to a polarized world, what are some specific actions or commitments we can make as individuals and as a group to bring the message of peace into divisive environments? How can we support each other in these efforts? PDF Download