Let's turn in the scriptures to Mark, the gospel according to Mark, and we're actually going to start at the end of chapter 9 today. Today we're actually studying a larger than normal section. Chapters 10 to 12 is our focus, and as you may know if you've been here any length of time, I like to kind of ping pong between two types of teaching. You might call it tree study and forest study. I like to look at small portions of scripture, and I also like to look at big portions, and today we're definitely doing a bigger portion. We're studying a forest, three chapters. So I want to start just way zoomed out before we start coming in on the forest. The gospel according to Mark is one of four accounts in the New Testament of Jesus' life. Of course, the four accounts are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This one is written by Mark, whose family housed one of the first churches in Jerusalem. And a few decades later, this man was actually teaming with Peter, Jesus's lead disciple, in planting churches in Rome. He writes this account of the gospel there about 30 years after the events of Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection. He writes this about 30 years later, probably when he is in Rome planting churches with Peter, and he probably realizes that Peter may not be around for much longer, and he has heard Peter explain the significance of Jesus's life and death and resurrection hundreds of times, and Mark probably thinks to himself, I've heard it verbally, what are people gonna have when Peter's off the scene? I'm gonna try to record in writing what I've heard Peter say hundreds of times. Mark is the shortest of the four accounts of Jesus's life. He's also the fastest paced He moves very quickly from one event to the next. The first seven chapters of his gospel record incidents that prove that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah. He is God's king, God's chosen king to rule on earth forever. And Mark just demonstrates over and over and over again that this man, Jesus of Nazareth, can forgive sin. He can beat death. He can conquer Satan. He can subdue creation. Jesus is God's chosen king who can fix everything that's wrong on this planet. And then beginning in chapter eight, the story takes an unexpected turn. Jesus begins to stress that the Messiah's mission is to go to Jerusalem and be crucified. No one expected that. No one wanted that. Jesus says, I am on a mission, I am God's chosen king who has authority over all creation, I can beat death, and I'm actually going to Jerusalem to be crucified, to suffer and die. They wanted a conqueror, they didn't want a sufferer. Jesus didn't fit their expectations at all. But what we read today is gonna demonstrate exactly why Jesus had to suffer. He had to suffer so that people whose hearts were opposed to God could actually enjoy the kingdom he promised to bring. If Jesus doesn't go to Jerusalem and die, no one enters the kingdom. Because the three chapters we see today is that people and entire societies are broken, are twisted, are deformed. That's what we see in these three chapters. we see the reason Jesus had to die. I've titled today's message, Why the World Hates Jesus and Needs Him. Why the world hates Jesus. and needs him. Like I said, I'm going to be reading three chapters, or I'm going to be reading significant portions of these three chapters. I've kind of ballparked it as Mark 10 to 12, but we're actually going to start in the last few paragraphs of Chapter 9 before we get into Chapter 10. I'm going to urge you to buckle your seatbelts, because we're going to fly over about 20 paragraphs very quickly. Throughout our reading, I'm going to be making comments here and there to help us understand, and I want you to know that the bulk of our message this morning is actually reading and commenting on Scripture. What we're going to see is that in these three chapters, Jesus engages in confrontation. There is a rise of conflict. Jesus is confronting people. He's confronting people individually. He's confronting the city of Jerusalem, and he's confronting the religious leaders. So we're actually going to start with Jesus' confrontation of people in their selfishness. He confronts selfish people. Right after Jesus had, for the second time, said, I'm going to Jerusalem to suffer, verse 34 records that on the journey to Capernaum, his disciples, you see this in the middle of verse 34? They argued with one another about who was the greatest. Wow. So he taught them in verse 35 that in his kingdom the greatest must be the last of all and the servant of all. In verse 36 he took a child and he put him in the midst of them and taking them in his arms he said to them, Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me and whoever receives me receives not me but him who sent me. If I were to try to put this, like boil this down to our language today, I would say it like this. According to Jesus, the greatest person in this building is not any of the people who have been on stage. It's the nursery workers. The ones who are sitting on the floor and playing with children and serving us so that we can listen to the scriptures with less distraction. In Jesus's kingdom, greatness is defined by service. That's greatness. Verse 38, John says to Jesus, teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he wasn't following us. Jesus said, don't stop him. He senses in the disciples a party spirit, us versus them, a divisiveness. They're on another team. And Jesus says, basically, this person is evidencing respect for me. He's using my name. He's on the right track. Let him be. Then in verses 42 to 50. Jesus confronts adults who make it hard for those who are younger to follow Jesus. In our culture, you might think of high school and college teachers whose goal, they say, my job is to shake the faith of my students. Or parents who profess to be Christians, but they live like the devil, making it so hard for the people in their household to follow Jesus. Or church leaders who gain a big following and then are exposed as immoral frauds. Those are the people in Jesus's targets here. And he basically says, do whatever you must to value the kingdom over your sin. He says, do whatever you can to preserve the faith of others and not destroy the faith of others. In chapter 10, Jesus confronts his culture's easy divorce laws And he reiterated God's design for marriage. Look at verse six. It's a covenant bond. He says, from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. That's why a man shall leave his mother and father and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. So they're no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate. And in the house, the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said to them, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. This sort of teaching was appalling to his generation because Jesus took a more conservative approach about the permanence of marriage than anyone around him. Verse 13 says, they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw what the disciples were doing, he was indignant. And he said, let the children come to me. Don't hinder them. For to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom like a child shall not enter it. And he took the kids in his arms and he blessed them, laying his hands on them. We live in such a similar culture today in which children are devalued. Before they're born, people won't even call them children. They're just a clump of cells. After they're born, The importance of our children competes with the importance of our careers. King Jesus demonstrated that children, the people that his culture devalued, children were worth his time. They were worth living for and loving and praying for, caring for. Verses 17 to 31, Jesus encounters a wealthy young man who wants to follow him but wasn't willing to make Jesus more important than his money. Look at verse 23. Mark 10, 23, Jesus looked around and he said to his disciples, how difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. Now this was shocking to the disciples because in their culture, to have wealth was to have the blessing of God. They're so wrong. The disciples are amazed at his words, verse 24, but Jesus says to them again, how difficult it is, children, to enter the kingdom of God. And here he doesn't put the qualifier on it, if you're rich. He says it's difficult, period, to get in the kingdom. Verse 25, he says, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. Jesus is not by that saying, it's very possible if a camel does it just the right way, that it can squeak through the eye of it. He's saying it's impossible, right? And the disciples get the point, verse 26, they're exceedingly astonished. They say to him, who then can be saved? And Jesus looked at them and said, with man it's impossible, but not with God, for all things are possible with God. What Jesus is saying very clearly is that it is impossible for people to follow Jesus on their own, to just make the decision and follow him. God must change our hearts if we're going to do that so that we value Jesus over anything else, so that we value him over money, over career, over family, over comfort. Jesus is number one. If anyone is going to follow Jesus, God's going to have to change their heart. In verses 32 to 34 then, Jesus explains for the third time that he is on a mission going to Jerusalem to be crucified. He had said it the first time at the end of chapter 8, the second time in the portion just before where we picked up reading in chapter 9. But his disciples are still clueless, and they have no idea what this means. According to verses 35 and following, they're still consumed with who's going to be the greatest in the kingdom. They're craving power. James and John are saying, can we have the first two seats in your kingdom? And in verse 42, Jesus taught another lesson on greatness. It says, he called them to him and said to them, you know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them. and their great ones exercise authority over them. I like the way the New Living puts it, kings are tyrants and they love to lord it over the people beneath them. That's what Jesus is saying. In this world, that's how it is. Kings are tyrants and they love to lord it over the people under them. But verse 33, it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. One of the greatest passages in scripture. It's the theme of the book of Mark. Jesus, the greatest king, became the lowest servant. He gave his life so that we who were slaves of sin and death could be bought for God, freed from our slavery, and flourish with life forever in God's presence. Lord willing, the week before Christmas, we'll return to this monumental passage in the Gospel according to Mark. This first major section ends with Jesus' healing of a blind man, and this is no, oh, we're just telling another story about blindness. Mark, I think, is taking this whole subsection of Jesus' confrontation of selfish people, and he uses this blind man named Bartimaeus to say, this is how everyone in the world should be. Verse 46, and they came to Jericho. about 15 miles east of Jerusalem, so they're moving toward the city. And as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples in a great crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, he was sitting by the roadside, and when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me! And many rebuked him. They told him to be silent. The wailing of this beggar was grating on people's nerves. But he cried out all the more, son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stopped and said, call him. They called the blind man. They said to him, take heart, get up, he's calling for you. He threw off his cloak, sprang up, he came to Jesus and Jesus said, what would you like me to do for you? And the blind man said, Rabbi, let me recover my sight. And Jesus said, go your way. Your faith has made you well. And immediately he received his sight and followed him on the way. This blind beggar is the example. Everyone with whom Jesus is interacting is blind. And they're just as pathetic as he is. Only they don't realize it. It's the deformity of their selfishness. Just look at the list. They want power. They want comfort. They want ease. They want their money. They're careless about the kids. It's all about them. But they don't realize that they're as deformed as the blind man. His deformity is external and it's obvious. Their deformity is internal and they're trying to hide it. Jesus is trying to confront it, they're trying to hide it. And with this little story that happens as Jesus leaves Jericho headed for Jerusalem just a few miles away, with this little story, Mark is highlighting this is how every spiritually blind person should respond to Jesus. I'm selfish, I'm greedy, I care about me more than I care about others. I dream about power. Help, have mercy on me, king of the world. Have mercy on a sinner like me. This man's the example for how selfish people should respond to Jesus. Second section is Jesus confronts dead Jerusalem. Chapter 11, when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, they're now just a few miles away. Jesus sent two of his disciples and he said to them, go into the village in front of you and immediately as you enter it, you'll find a colt tied on which no one's ever sat. Untie it and bring it. And if anyone says to you, why are you doing this? Say, the Lord needs it, and he'll send it back here immediately. They went away and found a colt tied at a door outside in the street, and they untied it. And some of those standing there said, what are you doing untying the colt? They said exactly what Jesus had said, and they let him go. And they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he sat on it. And many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields. And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David. Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna means something like, please, God, save us now. This crowd really has no idea what they're calling for. Truly, Jesus is going to show his saving power by dying, by being crucified in Jerusalem. He is going to make it possible for any sinner who will turn to him to be saved now. They have no clue what they're calling for. They're calling for a political salvation. They don't want Jesus to die in Jerusalem and save them in that way. They want him to come in and immediately overthrow the Roman government. Save us now! Get rid of Rome! That's what they're calling for. They want him to topple the present government. But he's come to be crucified. They should have known. that he was a different kind of a king than the one they were looking for. He was riding a young, inexperienced donkey. He wasn't riding a huge, fierce, experienced war horse like generals of Rome did. Verse 12 records, on the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. And when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it wasn't yet the season for figs. And he said to it, may no one ever eat fruit from you again. And his disciples heard it. And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. And verse 16, he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. And he was teaching them, saying, isn't it written, my house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations? But you've made it a den of robbers. Jesus here is claiming to have authority over the temple. He's claiming to have the authority of God. He is confronting how Jerusalem has turned the temple to which nations should be coming to and learning about God. They've turned it into a tourism cash cow. Verse 18, and the chief priests and scribes heard it. They were seeking a way to destroy him because they feared him, because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching. In other words, they're seeking for a way to destroy him, and they're not destroying him on the spot because they're scared of his influence among the people. Verse 19 says, and when evening came, they went out of the city. And verse 20, as they passed by in the morning, they saw that fig tree. withered away to its roots. And Peter remembered and said, Rabbi, look, the fig tree that you cursed, it's withered. And Jesus answered them, have faith in God. Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, be taken up and thrown into the sea and doesn't doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. The disciples think that Jesus basically did a really cool magic trick. He caused a plant to wither by just speaking to it. Whoa. And truly, this event does show Jesus's power over creation. But Jesus explains the significance of what he just did. The reason that Israel is fruitless And curse, the fig tree represents the entire nation. The reason the nation is fruitless and cursed is because over the centuries they have refused to believe God. They have refused to exercise faith in God, to trust God, and to submit to God. And Jesus has his disciples look at the fig tree and he says, you guys believe. Do not be guilty of unbelief. You need to believe. And he challenges them to have a conviction in him as the Messiah that leads to a total life commitment. We talked about this faith last week. Faith in the scripture is not merely optimism. I think things are going to turn out better. It is conviction that Jesus is the crucified, risen and returning king. And it is a conviction that leads to an entire life commitment to him. This is what faith is according to the Bible. And look at what Jesus promises. This has profound symbolism. He says, if you believe and you tell this mountain to be thrown into the sea, it'll happen. What is Jesus saying? Have you ever like stood in front of a mountain and said, if I just believe, okay. That's not what Jesus is talking about. Jesus is about a mile away from Jerusalem. And he's saying, if you say to this mountain, all of God's purposes for this spot of real estate, I want that to influence the whole world. You're getting it. What happens at Jerusalem, centering on Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, that gospel is going to be taken to the ocean, to the sea, to the chaos of the nations. Jesus says, you want the message of what's going to happen in Jerusalem to go to the world? I tell you it's going to happen. By Mark's day, by the time he's recording it, it's already in Rome, 1,500 miles away. You have faith? God's purposes are going to be worked out on this planet. You can see that the conflict is escalating. Jesus is confronting the world that needs confronting. He's confronted selfish people. He's confronted a dead city. And finally, he confronts hypocritical religious leaders. These leaders are at the heart of the city. Verse 27 says, as he was walking in the temple, the chief priests and the scribes and the elders came to him and they said, by what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you this authority to do them? And Jesus answers by actually asking them a question, saying, okay, let me ask you, whose authority did John the Baptist have? And it was a rock and a hard place. For these people, either they were going to answer what they believed, which is John the Baptist wasn't from God, and then the people were gonna be against them, so they didn't wanna say that, what they actually believed, or if they said what the people believed, then Jesus would say, well, if his authority was from God, then my authority is from God, too, because it's from the same place. Jesus put them in this rock and hard place, and they chose not to answer. Chapter 12 opens with Jesus comparing the religious leaders to the previous generations of religious leaders who persecuted and killed the prophets. Then from verses 13 to 34, there are three public debates. You can think about the public debates that are going on right now all through this country. Questions being lobbed at politicians to see how they're going to answer, to see whether their answers are going to please the crowd. Well, Jesus is asked a question about taxes. He's asked a question, a theological question about bodily resurrection, and then a longstanding theological debate about the law. And in each question, he answers with the Bible, with scriptural logic. He first says, humans are made in the image of God, and you owe everything to him. And the second point, he says, those who belong to God belong to him forever. And this implies the resurrection. And in the third case, he says, you're not designed by God to live selfishly, but to love God supremely and to love others as you naturally love yourself. Look down at verse 33. Jesus says, God is actually more pleased with this sort of devotion, supreme devotion to God and love for others, than all the sacrifices in the world. And then Jesus asked them a question about the Messiah, and he again revealed how little they knew about the Bible or cared to know about the Bible. They should have known from Psalm 110 that the coming Davidic king was also David's Lord. I want to pick up reading in verse 38, and we'll read right to the end of the chapter. Jesus summarized all of this controversy with verse 38, beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces and they have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at the feasts, but they devour widows' houses and for a pretense they make long prayers. They'll receive the greater condemnation. I can only imagine what Jesus would say in our world today. We live in a day that is very similar. Most people today throughout the world who call themselves Christians don't like the Jesus of the Bible. They're embarrassed by the Jesus of the Bible. They don't believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Most people who claim to be Christians today are more concerned with politics, what's going on right now in this next election, than with evangelism. It's disgusting. He says, these sort of religious people, they'll receive the greater condemnation. Verse 41 says, and he sat down opposite the treasury, and he watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums. And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny. And he called his disciples to him, and he said to them, truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she, out of her poverty, has put in everything she had, all she had to live on. You remember at the end of chapter 10, Mark used the incident with blind Bartimaeus to show how everyone in this selfish world should respond to Jesus? Here at the end of chapter 12, Mark recounts this widow's offering to show the sort of devotion that every one of the religious leaders should have had. Jesus, in the last line of the chapter, explains that this poor widow gave to the temple everything she had, all she had to live on. She is the example of total life devotion. He's not saying, that people must give everything they have to live on to the church. If you hear me insisting that if you're going to be spiritual, you better walk right back out here and sign out everything that you need to live on later this week and trust Jesus, you better kick me out of the pulpit. Because that's not what Jesus is saying. He's stressing that every single person was made to be fully devoted to God. Everyone should live fully devoted to God, and yet so many people try to use religion, including giving toward religious purposes, to make themselves look good. And most people give a relatively small percentage of their money toward religious causes to make themselves feel religious, while actually not devoting themselves to God. That's his point. We can give almost to get God off our back. God wants us. He wants our lives. He wants everything. We're made to love him supremely with all we are. That's what we're made for. And this woman ends up becoming a powerful illustration of what all the religious leaders should have been. So Jesus confronts selfish people, he confronts a dead city, and he confronts hypocritical religion. What do you do with all this material? What do you do with all this confrontation? I think Mark's point is pretty obvious. Again, we're looking at forests today, not trees. When you step back from the forest, don't miss the big picture. Mark records all of this material, all of this confrontation, basically so that every person who reads it would call out to Jesus for healing and would commit themselves totally to Jesus like that poor widow. Everything I am, everything I have, Jesus, it's yours. I'd summarize the main point like this. Jesus confronts our selfishness, our deadness, and our hypocrisy so that we'd trust him and beg him for healing, then live the way life was meant to be lived, humbly, not ambitiously, fully devoted to him, not with like 3% devoted to him, the entirety. I conclude with three brief reflections. The first is this. Jesus has a very different value system than we have. Jesus has a very different value system than we have. We're impressed by rich people. You look at the typical newspaper or the typical news feed, there's rich people all over it. Why are there rich people all over it? It's not primarily because the news media thinks that rich people are worth considering or worth giving our attention to. It's because those are the articles that get clicked on. People care about rich people and what they do with their money. Jesus isn't impressed by rich people and big gifts. We're ambitious. We hate slaving for other people, not Jesus. We're often bothered by children. We often consider children, even our own children, to be unimportant, not Jesus. We reshape marriage. to fit our desires, not Jesus. He's interested in defining marriage according to the creator's design. We're consumed with a desire for immediate political change. He's not. We think that impressive religion is marked by remarkably big buildings impressive robes and big degrees, academic degrees that, no, no, not Jesus. That's religion, that's tradition. It's not what Jesus is interested in. I pray that each one of us, as we see this big forest, we realize that Jesus has a very different value system than we have. And I pray that each one of us, whether we're committed to Jesus or not, I pray that we experience this morning a confrontation with a value system that provokes our repentance. Maybe repentance for the first time because you say, I have so long resisted Jesus because I care about what my family thinks about me or because I don't want Jesus having rights in my finances or in my sex life. I pray that it will provoke you to repentance. And I'm telling you, I can't study three chapters like this without saying there are so many areas of my life that I need to better commit to the Lord Jesus. We should be confronted with a different value system. The second facet I want to share in conclusion is that Jesus actually does have the authority to confront us. I wonder, when you get personally confronted, And you end up thinking and thinking and thinking on the confrontation that just took place. What is the question that ends up bothering you the most? We've dealt with a lot of unnerving confrontation over the past two years with all sorts of new regulations. Maybe end of 2020, you're in Walmart, and someone passes you and says, pull your mask up so that it covers your nose properly. What do you think? What do you go away thinking? Or you're in Target, in that line, and there are those dots on the floor, and someone says, you're supposed to be six feet away. How do you handle confrontation? I could pretty much guarantee you that in reaction to those sorts of confrontations, the dominant question that ends up bothering every one of us as we're on our way home is, who did that person think they are? They think they're the COVID police? Who does that person think he or she is? Does he or she think that they have the right to confront me? It's a question of authority. In these confrontations that Mark records, that's the question. Does Jesus have the authority to confront people? He is the son of man. He's the son of David. It means he's God's chosen king from David's bloodline. He's going to rule forever on earth as the way chapter 12 verse 36 puts it. He's going to put all enemies under his feet. In other words, he has the authority to confront us like this. Jesus demonstrates in these passages that he has power over creation, that he's the source of life, that he knows the future, that he accurately interprets scripture, that he is wisdom himself, and that he controls who enters the kingdom. So if you say, who does he think he is to confront me and my heart issues? What right, what authority does he have to confront me? The simple answer is, this is the one man who has all authority on earth forever. If anyone has the right to confront you, it's Jesus. A third concluding reflection, Jesus confronts us because he loves us. Today, our culture defines love as basically unconditional affirmation. If you love someone, it means you're going to never tell them they're wrong. But Jesus follows the Bible and common sense, right? The Bible teaches that true friendships involves faithful wounds. Your friends tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. That's how you know they're a true friend. Or common sense tells us that generally the third draft is better than the first draft. After your first attempt has been edited and edited, you crank out a second draft, and then that gets edited and edited, and you crank out a third draft. And generally, the third and fourth drafts are better than the first. Corrections are helpful. Throughout my life, those who love me the most have confronted me the most, and God has used them to shape my life the most. In this passage, Jesus capitalizes on that true definition of love. He confronts because he loves. He cares about the people he's talking with. Throughout these chapters, he is announcing that he's headed to Jerusalem to be crucified so that everyone he's confronting can be forgiven and reconciled to God and enter the kingdom forever. Jesus is confronting the people he's about to die for. He confronts us. He confronts the deformities of our selfishness. He confronts our deadness and our hypocrisy because he loves us. And he proved his love for us by becoming our servant and dying so that we could be ransomed for God. The one who's confronting us this morning is the one who loves us. He's the one who wants us to flourish forever. I think if you're in here this morning and you have any sensibility, whether you're a Christian or not, you have any sensibility, you look at everything that Jesus confronted. Hypocrisy, deadness, ambition, A devaluing of children. I think anyone with any sensitivity looks at that and says, that is humanity. Like what Jesus is trying to lead people toward, that's what it means to be human. It's lovely when we're not self-centered. It's lovely when we care about others more than we care about ourselves. It's lovely when we are genuine. Oh, if only there would be no humans who are ambitious. I think everyone looks at that and they say, oh, if only everyone was like that. What Jesus is confronting needs to be confronted. The struggle that's facing us is the problem's not all out there. It's not just the people you read about in the news. The problem is in here. Jesus is confronting the people who don't want to admit that they need it. And I ask you this morning, if you have never admitted your desperate need for cleansing and for heart change, I pray that you will admit it today. And I am fully aware that it's not within your power to do. With any one of us, it's not possible. But with God, it's possible. God can actually change your heart. Come to Jesus. Lord, I ask that you would shape our lives with this confrontational passage this morning, all on the authority of Jesus and for his glory. Amen. Amen.