This morning, our seminary intern, Tower Koontz, will be preaching God's Word to us this morning. It's a great privilege for us to have Tower. As we started the seminary intern program recently, Tower is our first intern. As I looked at applications, as I saw things come in, my first thought when I saw Towers was, this guy is way overqualified for us. It is a great honor for us to have Tower come and preach and so I commend him to you as he speaks. He's going to continue in our series and Luke and Tower would you come? Our New Testament reading is from Luke chapter 7 verses 18 through 35 and that will be found beginning on page 863 of your few Bibles. It's a privilege for me to be here too, same time. I am, I don't know if you know what it's like to come to a new church. Probably all of you have had that experience at some point. But especially to come to a church that's small, I know there's some new faces here today. You know, a church that's small could be clicky or it could already have, be set in its ways. And to be able to come in and only be here for the summer, I'm just here for eight weeks, and to be welcomed the way I have has been really, really wonderful. So thank you for that. For those of you that haven't gotten to know yet, I really look forward to meeting you. if you're anything like the people I've already met. This passage is a pretty awesome passage to be doing. I'm really glad that this week, this is the passage I got to do. Just like Pastor Donnie says of the Psalms, I suppose that's true of any passage if you spend a week just steeping in it, that you can find it to be pretty awesome. But this passage, 18 through 35, these verses describe a critically important moment in the life of Jesus, and it concerns who Jesus is. speaks against what a lot of people they think of Jesus Christ. And it's actually closely connected. So it ties very well with the passage we discussed last week and the passage we'll be doing next week. And so just to give you a sense of where we are let me just take you through before I got here what you guys have done so far in the book of Luke. It's a two year series that you're doing through Luke. In January you guys covered the events before Jesus's birth in Chapter 1. In February the birth and youth of Jesus in Chapter 2. In March Chapter three and four his baptism by John the Baptist. And John the Baptist plays a key role in this passage. In chapter four as well the temptation beginning of his ministry and his healings and Jesus begins healing and getting fame for himself. John the Baptist is causing quite a stir and Jesus is causing a stir. And he's just, Jesus is popular but for the first time he's rejected is in chapter four and that's when he reads from that Isaiah scroll. Isaiah Chapter 60 that we just heard in the Old Testament reading. So he's starting to upset people. April and May Chapter 5 the calling of the first disciples and his first run in with the Pharisees when he's performing things on the Sabbath that they don't think he should be doing. Then June Chapter 6 the Sermon on the Mount. All along he's been healing people. His fame has been increasing and then just last week Pastor Donnie took us through the first 17 verses of Chapter 7 where he heals a centurion servant and raises a widow's son. And last week's passage And chapter 17 ended with these words, this response by the people. A great prophet has arisen among us. God is with us. And then it says news spread around the countryside. Now John the Baptist has been in prison and he hears this news and that takes us to our passage today. John chapter 7 verses 18 through 35. The disciples of John reported all these things to him. And John calling two of his disciples to him sent them to the Lord saying, Are you the one who was to come, or shall we look for another?" And when the men had come to him, they said, John the Baptist has sent us to you, saying, Are you the one who was to come, or shall we look for another? In that hour he healed many of diseases and plagues and evil spirits, and on many who were blind he bestowed sight. And he answered them, Go, tell John what you have seen and heard. The blind received their sight. The lame walked. Lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear. The dead are raised up. The poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me." When John's messengers had gone, Jesus began to speak to the crowds concerning John. What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothing? Behold, those who are dressed in splendid clothing and live in luxury are in king's courts. What, then, did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. He is the one about whom it is written, Behold, I am sending my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you. I tell you, among those born of women, none is greater than John, yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he. When all the people heard this, and the tax collectors too, they declared God just having been baptized with the baptism of John. But the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the purpose of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him. To what then shall I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like? They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another, who say, we played a flute for you, and you did not dance. We sang a dirge, and you did not weep. For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine and you say he has a demon. The son of man has come eating and drinking and you say look at him a glutton and a drunkard a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Yet wisdom is justified by all her children. This is the word of God. Please pray with me. Our father thank you for your word that goes deeper and deeper the more we spend time with God. We ask that you would open our minds and open our hearts that this word will go through our minds into our hearts, Father, and change our lives today. We pray this in the powerful name of Jesus Christ. Amen. So I owe a lot of my life to spiritual heroes and mentors. And the first one that I ever had was a guy named Gary Stratton, who's a really amazing guy. He was the chaplain at this camp in New Hampshire where I became a Christian. and also the chaplain at the college that I transferred into just north of Boston. He was a high school athlete. He tells the story of his own conversion in that he was a high school athlete expecting a college scholarship. For some reason, it slips my mind. I think it was soccer that he played. It was the summer before his senior year, and he had two things that happened that summer. One, his parents took him to see the Broadway show Jesus Christ Superstar, and two, he broke his femur. He said it was like he was a kid with everything to look forward to, no cares in the world, not a lot of seriousness to his life, and not from a really believing family. And then his world just stopped. And by stopped, he means he had nothing to do. He was totally bored. A femur break, for anybody who doesn't know about it, can actually be life-threatening. It's a really serious problem. So he was actually in bed for quite a while before he was just on crutches. So he was bored and stuck with his thoughts. And this tune kept coming back to him in his mind, these lyrics. The tune is actually Jesus Christ Superstar, do you think you're who they say you are? But he remembered it as Jesus Christ Superstar, are you really who they say you are? And those words, that idea, Jesus Christ Superstar, are you really who they say you are, kept nagging him and nagging him until he had to find out for himself. And so he picked up the Bible and started reading. He didn't really have much to do. who's sitting there and read the Bible cover to cover. And that's how Gary Stratton, one of the most amazing people I know, became a Christian. That Broadway show, if any of you guys have seen it, I'm not recommending it. It's pretty irreverent. That was not the purpose of that show. In fact, it was quite the opposite. But it shows how God can use all kinds of things, even bad things, for good and use it in a beautiful way in Gary's life. Gary got something out of it that was never intended by Andrew Lloyd Webber and the producers of that show because it caused him to ask a question that's a really good question. It's the question that's at the center of our text today. And before we get into the text, I think it's important to just note that we have a temptation to read the Bible as a list of heroes, as a list of really good guys that we should try to be like. So we read about Moses and David and Paul, and we think we're supposed to be like them. But actually, the Bible, if you really dig into it, has all kinds of places that make you ask yourself, how in the world did they let that in there? Because it's so honest, because it deals with the actual world that we really live in. So Moses was actually a murderer. And David was somebody who had someone killed and was an adulterer. And Paul had Christians killed before he was converted. There's actually nobody in the Bible who's a hero except for God, Jesus. Because in the real world, people are broken. They're created for beauty. They're noble creatures who are created, who fall from that nobleness and are also broken vessels. So John the Baptist, just like us, is a broken creature. So as we read about John, try to think of him as a hero. He is a person like us. So he's in prison. He's had this amazing ministry. He's been this guy that's drawn so many people to him. And then he said something about Herod, Herod Antipas, marrying his brother's wife. And Herod Antipas threw him into prison. This is the prison from which he never gets out. He ends up being beheaded. And so he is freaking out a little bit. And John's the Baptist question is a great question because it's our question. The reason why it's a great question is that if Jesus is who he says he is, that changes everything. And if he's not, then he can't help us a bit. That's why the question, are you the coming one, that's the question he asks, is the fundamental question. It's the right question to ask because it's the question that everybody needs the answer to. So many people don't even ask this question. Some people just go along with what they're told or what their parents told them. And others just hold Jesus in arm's length and go through a lifetime never really looking into it themselves. It's amazing how few people actually read the Bible but they think they know who Jesus is. But Jesus is the one we've been waiting for and because Jesus is the one that we've been waiting for we can trust him. And Jesus does not demand blind faith from us. He doesn't ask us to believe in belief or to hope on hope. Instead, he calls us to believe in something real, a real person, and he offers us his credentials. He says back to John, look at what I've done. And he says to everyone also, look at what I offer and look at the one thing I demand from you. And based on those three things, he says, you can trust me. So let's unpack these three things together. We met John earlier, as I mentioned, when he baptized Jesus. He was a phenomenon. People came from all over, but now he's in prison. Probably going to be executed. In fact, he was. These reports have come to him from the passage with Pastor Donnick over the last week of what Jesus has been doing. And he asks, Are you the one who is to come or shall we look for another? So what does that phrase mean? Are you the one who was to come? We actually know quite well that what he means is the Messiah here. We know that from earlier in chapter three of Luke. when he's asked a question. John the Baptist is asked a question by his disciples. As the people were in expectation, it says in chapter 15 and 16, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John whether he might be the Christ, that's the same word as Messiah, John answered them all saying, I baptize you with water. But he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I'm not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. What's interesting though is also in that same passage John says even now the axe is laid at the root of the trees. John has been preaching repentance. His baptism is a baptism of repentance and warning saying when the Messiah comes watch out. But Jesus isn't behaving how John expected. Jesus is not doesn't seem like he's judging anybody and John's life isn't really turning out how John expected. So Jesus if you're the Messiah where is the kingdom that you're going to bring. How come I don't see anything happening on the outside? How about overthrowing Rome to start out with? Or what about me? I'm in prison. I don't see the power. So he asks, are you really the one or is there someone else that we should be looking to? It's an earnest question. I think it's an honest question. It's not a question of sin. It's a question of just not knowing and asking. And look how Jesus responds to him. I think he affirms God in the way he responds. He doesn't scorn John the Baptist. Rather it says in verse 21. In that hour he healed many. So John's two disciples saw this with their own eyes. Jesus refers to John the Baptist as the last of the Old Testament prophets and look how he relates to John the Baptist actually here with compassion. He relates to him with language that John can understand. He says the blind receives sight. The crippled walk. The lepers are cleansed. The deaf hear. The dead are raised up, the poor are preached good news. What's he saying in saying that? Well, he's quoting from Isaiah chapter 35, which is what's understood to be a Messianic passage. And when I say it's understood to be a Messianic passage, I'm not just asking you to take that on faith. The last time there was a prophet in Israel was 420 BC, about 450 years earlier in Malachi. And there is all kinds of messianic expectation because the end, the last writings of the Old Testament are looking forward like crazy to the prophet, to the Messiah who's going to come and rescue Israel. So Isaiah 35 is one of those passages that says, behold, this is verses four through six. Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf, deaf unstopped. Then shall the lame men leap like a deer, and the tongue of mute sing for joy." That last line also, he says, the poor are preached good news, comes from the Old Testament reading which we just heard earlier. The spirit of the sovereign Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. That's another Messianic passage. But John wonders, I mean if you pay attention to what I just read there, it says, your God will come with vengeance. So John says the act is supposed to be laid at the foot of the tree and God's supposed to come with vengeance. Yet Jesus is healing people and hanging out with sinners. So what is Jesus doing? Doesn't John have a point? I mean does John care more about justice than God cares about justice? Does God not have the power or the will to bring about his purposes? So here I am in prison says John. Where is the power that was going to come with the Messiah? When are you going to crush the sinners? And God says, but John, if I did that, it would consume everyone, including you. No one would be left. John, your idea of sin is too small. And Jesus says in verse 23, blessed is he who is not offended by me. Meaning blessed is he who can accept that what I have to offer is a little different than you might have expected. Blessed is he who is not offended by the idea that my vengeance is actually stronger than you think. Your problem is worse than you think, and you need more help than you think. God brings the axe, but it's going to happen in a different way than you expected. He says, I'm going to bring the axe down on myself. In my high school English class, we studied all kinds of awesome books, The Grapes of Wrath, The Great Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye. I don't know if your class was like this in high school or not, but we studied them from a distance. We looked at the deconstructivist view of this, or the feminist view of the book, or what another group might say about the book. And we became experts in analyzing the book from these different perspectives. But in doing so, we held them at a distance, and we stood over the books that we were reading. And I realized, having read some of the books since then, that these are really great books that can really affect your life if you read them in a great way. But it was new to me to read them later because in high school when we read them, dissecting them like they were a frog on the table in biology class, we were over them, judging them rather than letting them judge us. They had no impact on us because we didn't dive in. This amazing insight that we have in this passage comes when John asks the right question. And the question John asks is the right question the question we all need to ask. We can't just consider it or argue about it. Contemplate it. We also have to look right at it and see who Jesus is without standing at a distance. That's Jesus's first point. Look at what I've done. Secondly he says look at what I promised. So starting in verse 24 Jesus after the John's messengers have gone, begins to speak to the crowd concerning John, and he says, What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind. Does anybody have any clue what Jesus is talking about there? It actually makes sense in context if you continue to read. This is an idiom from the culture that cannot translate, it's difficult to translate in our culture. So it says, What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind. What then did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothing? Behold, those who are dressed in splendid clothing and live in luxury are in king's courts. Jesus is being a little bit funny here. He's saying, did you go out to see... Why are you guys excited about John the Baptist? Did you guys go out into the wilderness to see a guy who will tell you what you want to hear, will take a public opinion poll, and then just regurgitate what he thinks will make people happy? No. Did you guys go out to see somebody who looked good? No, you can go see that in the king's court if you want to, but it's ludicrous to say, did you guys go out to see John the Baptist because he looked good? John the Baptist was known for not wearing much and being a little crunchy granola, maybe. So why did you go out there? Why is there this phenomenon about John the Baptist? And he answers it in verse 26. He says, what then did you go out to see? If it wasn't somebody who was going to make you feel good about yourself already, and it wasn't somebody who was going to look good, you went out to see a prophet. Once again, there's been no profit in Israel for 450 years. That's like Shakespeare before Shakespeare for us. That's way back. They've been looking forward to the Messiah coming. And here's what Jesus says. Yes, you've been able you're attracted to him and do his baptism of repentance because he's the one about whom it's written. Behold, I am sending my messenger before your face who will prepare the way your way before you. That comes, as you might see from notes in your Bible, from the book of Malachi. And he says, there has been a longing for a prophet in Israel for hundreds of years. You've been longing for it, and you're attracted to John because he's meeting your longing. Jesus says elsewhere that John is Elijah, and that passage Malachi actually speaks about Elijah. It says, Behold, I will send Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes, and he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers. So he's saying the day is here. The book of Malachi actually has three parts to it. It's pretty simple. One, Israel is preferred to Edom. So basically Israel is chosen by God. Two, the covenant is profaned by Judah. Those are the Israelites. Those are the Jews. So the Jews don't live up to their side of the bargain. And three, there's a messenger who's going to come, that's what the whole third chapter of Malachi is about. So in quoting this, when Jesus says, John is the one about whom it's written in Malachi 450 years ago, this is the guy who's coming, the point he's making there is that people should listen because the age of the Messiah is here. And what does John say about himself? He says, I'm here to tell you about the Messiah who's going to come, it's not me, it's Jesus. Then he goes on to say, among those born of women, none is greater than John, yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he. So what is Jesus talking about here? You know, what is so bad about Moses and Elijah and all these incredible guys? Why is John the Baptist greater than these people? The reason why, Pastor Donnie shared with me this week, is not because John is great, greater than Moses. And Moses is pretty great, but Elijah is pretty great. And John's actually a greater guy than them. No, it all has to do with proximity to the Great One, to Jesus. And all those Old Testament prophets from different vantage points have been speaking about the sun that was going to rise someday. And John is the last one who gets to actually see the sun rising. So the greatness of a prophet is their proximity to Jesus, to God. And that's why Jesus can actually say that the weakest, most wretched person on earth, the person in the kingdom of God, who stands in my righteousness is even better than the greatest person who stands in his own righteousness. That's why we are greater than John the Baptist. We get to stand in Jesus's righteousness. We have the Holy Spirit who doesn't come and go but stays with us. We're privileged. Jesus says only the blind see, only the deaf hear, and only those who know that they're blind and deaf know that they need God. He promises that we'll be greater than all the Old Testament prophets because we get to be closer to God than they do in our lifetime. Francis Schaeffer, another one of my heroes, describes a threefold curse that happened to us when we fell in the garden. We were alienated from God. We were alienated from other people in our world, and we were alienated from ourselves. And that's the cause of our sin and our discontent in the world now. We deeply long to have that unity restored. And what we long for, Jesus is saying, at the deepest level is granted. We get the Holy Spirit who never leaves us, who prays for us to God when we don't know what to say. And God, who used to live in a temple, now lives in our bodies. God who can't dwell with sin dwells with us because of the righteousness of Jesus. So it will be consummated in the future but we already have this relationship and we have it on the basis of Jesus' righteousness and what he secured for us by the cross. The third point Jesus makes is what he demands and that might sound harsh but Jesus' yoke is easy and his burden is really light. Jesus starts this out by saying, when all the people heard this in the tax collectors too, they declared God just, having been baptized with the baptism of John. But the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the purpose of God for themselves, not having been baptized by him. To what then shall I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like? They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another who say, we played a flute for you and you did not dance. We sang a dirge and you did not weep. So what is Jesus talking about here? Jesus is obviously not against children. Children love Jesus. They come to Jesus. Jesus has even said that unless we are like children in our relationship with God we can't enter the kingdom of God. So children are good. He's using them though just as a parable here. Imagine children in the square playing at doing a wedding or playing at doing a funeral and they play the flute to do like a wedding song. And they see some people aren't responding and they're like, dance, we're playing a flute. And then they play a dirge for a funeral and people aren't crying. And they're being kind of melodramatic about it, the people playing the flute. So Jesus actually tells us what this means. So we don't have to have to analyze it too much because he tells us he gives us his own commentary on it in verses thirty three thirty four. He says for John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine. And you say he has a demon. The son of man has come eating and drinking and you say look at him a glutton and a drunkard a friend of tax collectors and sinners. So for John they complain they won't dance to their he won't dance to their flute. And for Jesus they complain that he won't weep to their dirge. They have the opposite complaint about each one of them. What Jesus is doing here, what it boils down to, is that he's exposing the fact that these are idle complaints. These are not the real problem. These complaints that people say about John or about Jesus are not the real problem. But they do serve a purpose. What they do is give the complainer an excuse to dismiss John and dismiss Jesus and not have to deal with them. Why would we reject somebody for not dancing? Why do we care? or someone else for not crying. Why can't we just let them do their thing? Because if I can't hold that thing at a distance and keep it at arm's length to contemplate it and consider it and dismiss it if I want to, if I allow it to exist on its own terms, then I lose control over it. So the real problem is this. The problem is that you're not dancing to my tune, Jesus. I want to be in charge. It's not a problem of taste. It's a problem of power. This is not the Messiah they were looking for. They were looking for a Messiah that would fit into their box. Someone who could come along with them to make them a better Pharisee, improve their career, get rid of Rome finally, but not someone who would call them a sinner. They've already got things pretty much together. And note what prompts us actually in verses 29 and 30. He makes a point of saying in 29, when all the people heard this and the tax collectors too, so he wants us to know it's the tax collectors who are part of the people who heard this. They're the ones who were baptized by John and they're the ones who declare God just, who respond positively to it. What was John's baptism all about again? Repentance. So what did it mean for the Pharisees to reject the baptism? It meant that they could not accept their need for repentance and forgiveness. If my religion is try my best and then God might come through for me that means God owes me actually. I've done my part and God owes me now. I have my rights. This is not where the power to transform our lives comes from. Bill Gates has a quote that applies to this, I think. He says, just in terms of allocation of time and resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more that I could be doing on a Sunday morning. Tim Keller says, if you think Jesus was a nice guy who loves you the way you are, People that say that are doing an injustice to history, because why in the world would anyone want to execute Mr. Rogers? For those of you guys who are really young, Mr. Rogers is a really nice guy on public television. He said he loves us just the way we are. A love that doesn't cost very much is a love that's not powerful and not transformative. But if you're saved by grace, by nothing you can do on your own, then you actually lose power, and that's the issue. Even more, If I'm a sinner and I need to throw myself on the grace of God, then it means there's no limit to what God might ask of me. He might want all of me. So am I saying this just to give you guys a harangue? No, I'm not just trying to say shame on you. Don't you see that what you're missing if you treat Jesus like this is everything? C.S. Lewis, a quote some of you may have read already in Mere Christianity, but it's such an amazing quote, says, Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first perhaps you can understand what he's doing. He's getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on. You knew that those jobs needed doing and so you're not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is he up to? The explanation is that he's building quite a different house than the one you thought of. Throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage, but he's building a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself. So yes, John's message is repentance, and Jesus' message is grace, and they go together. What is the offense of the cross? The offense of the cross is that it's salvation by grace alone. That means there's nothing we can do to achieve our salvation. That means we're more messed up than we think. That's why Jesus can't just be a good moral teacher and give us advice because that advice won't help us. We judge Jesus as small because we judge our sin as small. And it's the sinners and task collectors who know that they're messed up and know that they need Jesus. You know the first grumbling of the Pharisees that I mentioned earlier when he eats at the tax collector's house back in Chapter 5. Jesus answered the Pharisees and their grumblings about him. He says those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." So what is the difference between the tax collectors and the Pharisees in these verses 20, 29, and 30, in the way that they respond? It's the way that they see their sin. I view it on a continuum like this. If you think you've got a little bit of a problem, say right here, a little bit of a problem, then you need a little bit of help, and the cross is that big. But if you stand that up and be really big like this, you think that you're really messed up, you've got a big problem, then you need a huge cross. What that means is actually that you're loved more than you can possibly imagine, because it takes a lot of love to make up for that. The bigger our sin, the bigger the cross, the bigger the sacrifice required, the bigger the love that's required, because the bigger the degree of the work that's to be done. This is all summed up by Jesus in the last verse, verse 35. Wisdom is justified by all her children, he says. Justified is the same idea as declared just. It's the same word as actually used back in verse 29 of the tax collectors and the bad people who accepted Jesus. What it means basically is wisdom is recognized by the children of wisdom. Those who are wise recognize what is wise. Those are the tax collectors and the sinners actually. They're wise because they know their sin and they know that they need a savior. If there's anybody here among us who's not a Christian, I'd ask you, do you think a God who thinks you're just great the way you are has the power that can really do anything to help you? Tim Keller, again, says, Christianity is bad news before it's good news. You are more messed up than you think, but you're more loved than you can possibly imagine. Only Christianity can say you have no power to do anything to help yourself and also that you're infinitely valuable, absolutely special, that your God delights in you and loves you, finds you beautiful and lovely, and wants nothing more than to be close to you. No religion anywhere is as pessimistic as Christianity. There's no way you can find God by trying hard and applying the right techniques, as you might in Buddhism or Islam or modern philosophy. But all the deepest longings of your heart, Christianity says, you can have them. And why do we want these things? It's because we were made for them. Why do we long for the forgotten country? Because it's a forgotten country that we once knew. Only Jesus keeps together the fact that we are totally sinful, but that we're also valuable and have dignity. We were created in God's image. Therefore, every person, whether they have mental disabilities, whether they have physical disabilities, whether they're old, whether they're young, whether they're pretty, whether they're not good looking, whatever, their color of the skin, anything, is just because they're a person, they're infinitely valuable and God deeply loves them. But also every single person is really messed up and much more messed up than they believe. But God also loves them deeply and has brought the axe down upon himself in order to have a relationship with them. Christians, do you wonder why you don't have any power in your life? Could it be because you trusted God for your salvation, but in the time since then you think that you're doing pretty well or at least you need to look like you're doing well? It was okay maybe for you to be messed up before, but then you got saved. And now you better not let anybody know about your real struggles because you're a Christian and you're supposed to have your life together. We can't sit with arms folded and inspect God forever or ask him to fit into our system. We must ask the question and be ready for whatever answer comes. We must step in, and that takes reminding throughout our lives. Jesus, though, invites us to his feast. We must admit that we're a sinner, see our value, and see that we need him. Where can we find wisdom? In Proverbs it tells us that fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. That's where our wisdom starts. It's our proper place before God. This is the kind of love that we can be vulnerable with and real with. Everyone in this room has at some point extended ourselves to someone or something and had our hand bitten. And if you get close to anyone or anything in this life, they will hurt you. That's guaranteed. Only God, though, will never hurt us in this life. Only God has the perfect desire and the perfect ability to be perfectly trustworthy. What's amazing is that God's love, because it's so overflowing, allows us to extend ourselves to other people, even though they hurt us. I became a Christian at a summer camp in New Hampshire and worked near the end of my time there with older campers who we did a ropes course with as part of their curriculum. So we did a high ropes, actually up 80 feet up in the air, but we built up to it. So we started with some team building activities, like how many people can you get on a block of concrete, and then worked up our way to like a truss fall where someone would be six feet up in the air on a platform and fall back into people. And then we worked our way up to 80 feet up in the air people on belay on ropes. Do you know what the most dangerous element that we did was of those things? Somebody say something? The most dangerous element of all those things was the truss ball, actually, because they weren't roped in. What they had to do was the whole group of people had to stand below the platform like this on either side and really be there and catch the person. So the person's six feet up in the air and falls backwards with their arms up like this. They fall backwards like a straight board back into the people. And if they drop them, they're going to hit their head on the ground. It's the most dangerous because you really can't control it. Everybody has to trust each other. But it's actually because of that, it turns out, it's actually the most dramatic and efficient way to get a group to really, really know they can trust each other. Everyone's involved, and as they did it, At the beginning, people were kind of freaked out and nobody wanted to volunteer. But as we did this more and more, people saw that people were actually catching people. And they saw their confidence gain pretty quickly because of that. And as the group did it over and over and over again, people were okay with it. There was a reason because of that. There's a track record with that, a reason to trust the group. And based on their experience, actually a real bonding and real trust developed. These weren't just fun activities we did to spend time. We did these activities to bond the group, and it was really, really powerful in doing so. Much more even than the 80 foot high ropes. In the same way, we must trust Jesus, not because someone else tells us to, but because of what he's done. He is the Messiah, and he suffered and died to take our sin on himself. We can trust him because he promises that we are closer to him than any of the Old Testament prophets, which is unbelievable, even John the Baptist, and he demands that we trust him alone. He's not what we expected. This is not what we signed up for. No, it's not. What he has in store for us is much, much better than we could have ever imagined. Please pray with me. Our Father, we are grateful for your word. We're grateful for your love. And we're grateful, God, for the value that you put on every human life. The sinners who we look down on and judge, Father, we do because our eyes are jaundiced and because we can't see that we're just like they are. We're sinners as well in need of your love. And through Jesus Christ, you have paid for our sin, God. We thank you, God, for your deep love, which reaches all the way down to the depths. that we fall down to in our sin, God, and rescues us, and that that's not just a one-time thing. It is a one-time justification that we have with you, God, but it's a lifelong sanctification, a lifelong developing of our relationship with you as we learn more and more about our sin, about our tendencies. We learn more and more, God, that we can trust you. We look to other idols, we look to other other other gods other ideas that we think can help us. We think we can get a shortcut here or there God. But you prove yourself over and over to us. We thank you for that God. We ask that this truth would sink its way into our hearts over the course of this week. We ask this in the awesome powerful name of our Messiah Jesus Christ. Amen.