The following message was given at Grace Community Church in Mendon, Nevada. So saints, I have something that's been bubbling in my heart for a bit. And it's this conviction about the privileges that we have here at this church. If you talked about why do people come to this church, what do we say? it almost always starts with the word preached, right? It's a commitment to the word. It's a fidelity to the word. It's just enjoying those benefits that flow from that. And I will say that this conviction starts personally, and I'm pretty sure then that it spreads beyond just me. I look at how richly I am provided for, and then I ask myself if I am doing justice to my provision. I think about Brian's sermons and I just wonder, am I doing justice to all I'm being given? Not am I mastering it, not am I memorizing, but am I doing justice? Would the Lord look at my heart and say, you have been faithful to the word that's been so richly provided to you. And I confess so many times, I just really can't answer that in the affirmative. I think of an attitude with it comes, which is sort of a laxity, an apathy. Whatever he's going to give me, he'll give me. I'll figure it out Sunday morning. Have you ever had someone ask you after a sermon, what was just preached? And you're not sure. What was just preached? Isn't that weird? And maybe more than weird, is it perhaps totally unfitting for the blessings we've been given. I just find myself totally convicted of this. And so the thing that's been bubbling up on my heart is an attitude saying, how can we do justice to the sermons that we are given? How can we do justice, more importantly than the sermon, how can we do justice to the word of God that is given to us? and talking with some of you and with my own reflections, I'm pretty sure this is just a common sentiment. We want to do justice to the word of God. Lord forbid that we would ever be the type of people that are just wasting what the Lord has given us. So let me build the case here. I've done something unusual, which is I've made a presentation for you because what I'm hoping to do is to walk through these thoughts hand in hand. At times we'll break for prayer, And then we'll come back to these thoughts, and very soon here, I'm going to be asking for your thoughts feeding into this, because I believe this is a corporate exercise. This isn't a, let's hear what's been on Jason's heart kind of thing. This is, let us all together pursue the benefits of the word of God. So you up for that? Because you kind of have no choice, so I really need you. So next, we just start with the word, right? We just start with a word. What qualities does the Word of God possess? The things that jump to mind for me right away, pure, right? Pure like refined silver. That's Psalm 12, 6. When you're talking about the Word of God, you cannot help but get to what? 2nd Timothy 3.16 and 17, isn't that right? All the things that it says about the Word, that it comes from God, it is God-breathed, that is able to teach, reprove, correct, train in righteousness, make complete, equip. It's a lot of things just right there. You could do sermon upon sermon just on 2nd Timothy 3.16 and 17. But here, this is where I want your input. What else? What else? Give me some just this like popcorn thinking like they say. What's that? Inerrant. Good. What else? Living inactive. How can we forget that one? I purposely leave off some famous ones because I want to pull you in here, right? Living inactive. What else? Stands forever. Well said. Well said. What else did I hear? timeless, perfect. It does not matter that we are 2,000 years removed from the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ, because that word stands forever. And so, given those qualities, just those handful of qualities, what does it mean to respond to the word? Well, first, how about just believing it? The Lord clearly wants us to believe what he says, and you will find More than one passage of the condemnation that comes with not believing what the word has given us, what the Lord has given us in his word. How should we respond? We hear it as belonging to God. Remember, God's word actually means something, doesn't it? It's not just a title. It is saying, no, this is God's word. It is God speaking. We respond to it like it is in fact God, not just some book. What else? We delight in it. What else? We long for it. What else? We want to rightly handle it. Am I still on track here? Good. The presentation is still standing. So all I'm trying to do is lay down the pillars. I'm pretty sure this room is going to say, yeah, yeah, yeah, we, we agree. Amen. Right? We're amening? No big disagreements so far, I hope. Okay. So when you have sermons based on the word, what are the implications? Well, the benefits of the word are present, aren't they? See, the important thing you have to do if you are a word-based Christian, if you're a person who values God's speaking, is that when a sermon is preached, it's not that important who is preaching it. Because what matters is the word that is being given to you. So we look past the man. The man's just an instrument. The man's just the mouthpiece. and we realize who it is that's truly speaking. So when you have up here anyone who is faithfully expounding the word of God, even just a little bit, they may be the most boring, they may be the most plain, but if they are giving you God's word, then you have to recognize, I am being given God's word. All those benefits of God's word are still there. It is still able to teach and reprove and correct and equip and complete and all these important things. We often mistake the power, the efficacy of a preacher with just his personality. Wow, I like that guy. I would, man, I just love listening. He's so interesting. He's so funny. He's so charming. Just let all that go. What we want is the Word. The benefits of the Word are present if the Word is present. The next part is, if the sermon is based on the Word, There are responsibilities that come with that then too, isn't it? So if I get up here one day and I say, I just want to share a story about my childhood and has nothing to do with the word of God, you actually have every right to ignore me. I don't care what happened in your childhood, Jason. I don't need to sit here and listen. You can actually get up and walk out. But if it is God's word, then you owe God. a certain kind of response. And so then we have that responsibility of treating God's word like God's word. So sermons based on the word, they have tremendous potential because God's word is at work. His blessing will be there. But then we also have these tremendous responsibilities because God word, God's word is there. And so we come to this idea of our attitude. What is our attitude when it comes to the word? We want to be people who are embracing our blessings, who are embracing our responsibilities. If God wants to bless us, we want to be blessed. If God wants to hold us, if he's going to hold us responsible to responding to his word, well, we want to be faithful to that, don't we? If he's holding us to that standard, we want to rise to that standard. And so then you just, you come to this last question that I sort of opened with, what is our heart's attitude towards the word? Do we show this eagerness? Do we show this anticipation? Do we show that we recognize the responsibilities that come when God himself gives his word to us? I think the generally pretty common answer is that we all find in ourselves something lacking. And it's lacking in these terribly important ways. We're missing out on blessings he wants for us. Our Heavenly Father wants to bless us beyond measure, and sometimes we say, oh, no, no, no, I'll just have a little bit. And then sometimes our Lord wants to give us conviction. He wants us to feel the weight of that law spurring us to Christ, spurring us to that right attitude, that right behavior, and sometimes we may just miss it. So that brings us to this concept for this teaching and for this approach that I really want to see how it's going to bear out. How do we gain more from sermons? See, what you are right now is you are actually going to be a big help to me in a number of ways. First, we're going to go through some things here and you are actually going to help me craft the next sermon that you will hear if you're here on Sunday morning. But second, what I really want out of this group, because it's a small group, we can do this. I want to know if spending time trying to gain more from the Word of God actually results in you gaining more from the Word of God. What I'm looking to hear is that, you know, next week I want to ask you and say, so did it matter? Did you, did you gain more blessing? Did you embrace your responsibilities more faithfully? I want to see where this one goes. I'm pretty sure it's going to be fruitful for us, but you are the ones who are going to help me prove out this hypothesis. So how do we gain more from sermons? I want to offer you a very simple approach. We look back. Namely, we are just a few days away from a very full Lord's Day, aren't we? We have the word faithfully preached to us. We look back and we reflect on what we've heard. We think about, what were those points that mattered so much to me 72 hours ago? What were those things I said, oh, or amen to, or that really just, oh man, they challenged me. What were those things? We look back and then we also look ahead. We look ahead to what's coming. We prepare for what's to come. Let me flesh this out. So looking back, we can't do everything we did on the Lord's Day because there was just more than we've got time for right now. So did you guys see the email I sent out? Did you read it? Excellent. Anyone else read the Genesis 32 before they came in? I know it was like last minute homework. We got two people. Okay, three people. All right, I'll take it. Genesis 32. Looking back, what is a doable practice that will enable us to go back to those blessings that were present in that sermon so that we can sort of bring them back to heart, bring back their reminders, their conviction, whatever it is? What's something doable? Because I could just say to you, go and listen to the sermon twice each week. That's probably not going to happen. So what would be something doable Here are my first ideas. I'll prime the pump and then I want to hear what you think. One of the big points with Jacob's transformation, isn't it amazing? Jacob, we talk about the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Jacob is a scoundrel. Isn't that something that one of the forefathers of the faith is a scoundrel? But at some point, the Lord does a mighty work on him. And suddenly, what we have in Genesis 32 is we have this man returning in obedience, an obedience that he's really not shown before. We see an obedience that even goes to the point of saying, I will go back to the person who last said, I will kill you when I see you next. Obedience to the point of risking himself. Obedience to the point of something fearful. And what's cool about a guy like Jacob is we realize it's actually a lot like Saul, the apostle Saul, Paul, you know, is there's this hope of transformation. Do any of us have people in our lives who we think, oh, I am practically out of hope for them? Right? And more importantly than Jacob, the Lord who works in Jacob. We have these reminders that the Lord does mighty things in the least likely of people. Praise God. Praise God. Another major, another major point that came out of Brian's sermon was Jacob's prayer. And his prayer reflects how much he has changed. You see this, this heart of humility. Do you remember him praying to God? I am not worthy of any of the things that you've done for me, but here I am. I left with a staff. I'm coming back and I'm two camps. He has a tremendous sense of humility, but then he also has this faith that Brian pointed out. Do you remember that? The faith to pray God's promises. You said you would prosper me. You said you would prosper me and he talked about Pastor Blaze, right? Remember how he would pray and he would say, have you not said in your word? And he would pray it back to God. And actually it was a wonderful quote Carolyn picked out for us that day, which was the quote that said, pray God's word back to him. He is tender of his handwriting or something like that. Do you remember that quote before the sermon? Some of you do, that's okay. But there's still just this idea of praying God's promises. Praying what he said he would do. He is faithful to his promises. And that's something I can take home. That is something I can act on. You say, what has God promised? He's promised to make me wise. He's promised he'll never leave me or forsake me. What else? What are some promises? Promises, promises. He will always do us good. I mean, these are, that's actually a way bigger promise than Jacob had, right? And it's, wow, you always do good to me through all circumstances, because I am one of your beloved, because you have called me. These are prayers we can pray. This is, this is application that is obvious. Pray to the Lord what he's promised he will do. He will be faithful to it. So you see these things, these are major points, right? I'm not asking, hey, what was the detail at 32 minutes into the sermon? What was that point you made about that passage? Just take with you the major points of the sermon. So this is what I want to ask of you, your reflections. This is the place where we can stir each other up to love and good deeds by going back to the rich meal that we were served in the AM service. What were the points that you thought I should remember that? What were those truths from the word of God that really left that impression on you that you said, I want that to stick with me? And you can, if you, if I already took your ideas, feel free to say so, but what stuck with you? God was God is faithful. God is faithful. Is that something that we can be blessed to be reminded of? Does not our life every single week tempt us to think God's not faithful? Does not the world tempt us to think God will not be faithful? You're living your life for a lie. And then the word says, no, God will be faithful. Sure. Yeah, there's that predicament. If he blesses us too much, we're such fickle creatures that we set our eyes on the blessings and we lose sight of the blesser. Yes. God's faithfulness is not dependent on our faithfulness. That, I mean, that's a blessing to our souls, isn't it? Yeah, you just imagine what if God said, okay, just live 24 hours faithfully, and then you're good for eternity. Oh man, we'd be lost. Did I see your hand, Mary? Yes. Yes. In spite of his fear, he put his trust in God over that. And I mean, absolutely, isn't that just what we're called to do? Aren't there so many occasions when we I just feel that fear creeping in. I think of that fear of man. You know, there's that opportunity to speak the word or something like that in that moment. What do you call it to do? Is it to look to man? It's to trust your Lord. It's to trust your Lord. That's what he calls you to. I'm actually very happy here because what I'm seeing is that the word is not flushing out of your brains. It's still there. It's still in your hearts. And so, we obviously can't just have everyone say every reflection they have, but this is the exhortation to you. There's probably something from the sermon that you wanted to hold on to. There's something that you said, God would want me to believe this. God would want me to remember this. And I trust that you can all get something, even if it's just a repeat of what we've already said. God's faithfulness, God's prayer, God's transformation, whatever it is, that's all good, but take something with you. Take something of that blessing with you. The Lord's blessings. He gives us these overflowing blessings in his word. Let's take a little bit more home with us. Let's take a little bit more to work with us tomorrow. Let's take a little bit more to our families tonight, wherever it is. Let's take that blessing with us. And so before we go to this next stage, let's just take a moment and let's pray. Would you join me in prayer? Father, you've given us so much in your word. And there's such hope in the way you transformed the scoundrel Jacob to the forefather Jacob. There's such hope for us faithless people that you are so faithful. Lord, we want to trust you. We want to trust in your promises. Today, tonight, tomorrow, we want to be those who are living as people who are trusting their God, and we pray that you would give us that kind of faith. We pray that you would help us. We pray that you would prosper us. And Lord, you have said that you will work all things for good, for those you love, those who have been called according to your purpose. Lord, work good for us. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen. And so we ask now, what's coming up? See, this is what I really want to see out of you. This is the big test. I'm wondering how a sermon will treat you if you have spent extra time looking ahead to what that sermon might be. Like I said, I think this is sure money. I think this is sure fruitfulness that when the children of God commit themselves to the word of God, they will find blessing. I am certain of it. So what is coming up next? Now this Lord's Day, I will be preaching in the AM, okay, in the morning, in the morning service. Here's my challenge for you. What's coming up next? What, what passage do you think is coming? This is simple. Luke 17. Well, fair enough. I just finished Luke 16. Now what verses? What verses? I hear 1 through 4. What else I hear? 1 through 10. We have a competing one. What else? Any other competing ones? Are you guys just reading the titles, the subtitles in your Bibles? No, that's okay. That's okay. They're there for a reason. So what we start with is actually a passage that's not that easy to break up. It's much easier on some of these other passages, especially parables, because they have a way of saying, oh, obviously you're going to preach this verse through this verse, right? But actually chapter 17 turns out to not be that easy. Just asking the question of what's coming up next is not as simple in this chapter. So we start with some Bible study thoughts. Here's a couple quotes for you. In the study of the Bible, we need to begin with the assumption that the Bible writers were attempting to communicate to their audience by writing in organized units. Who's been in Sunday school? Adult Sunday School. This sounds familiar, doesn't this? This is, remember, Brian's been going through how to study the Bible. This is applied how to study the Bible. There's this beginning idea that the biblical authors are trying to communicate something. And so, as we put this hands-on into the real world, we come to this next idea. So, to take less Then this is to, so he's trying to get the idea of the thoughts of the text. To take less than this is to chop up the ideas of the author and perhaps misunderstand them as a result of studying them out of context. To take a larger bite is to include too much for a properly focused study. So what he means is if we focus on too few verses, we might actually be chopping up, dissecting something that wasn't meant to be split. In that case, you end up with an out of context couple passages because you don't have the whole thought. Now, in contrast, if I take way too much, I can't possibly talk about it very clearly, very accurately, very comprehensively, because we've just done too much. So if I just said, hey, let's just do all of chapter 17, you probably have a suspicion that I can't do all of one chapter of Luke in a single sermon. And so, asking what's next, what we're going to do, and we won't do this every time, but we have to do it at least this time, is we're going to say, what's coming up next? And we're looking for a literary unit. You remember Brian talking about this, talking about that the biblical authors, you're generally looking at paragraphs, because paragraphs are a way of sort of having a whole thought. Do you remember this? Am I jogging memories here? I know not everyone was in Sunday school. But that was what we were talking about. So when we are looking for a literary unit, a thought that stands together, and the word you're going to hear me switch to pretty quickly here is pericope. Everyone say pericope. It's just, it's way more fun than saying passage, right? All pericope means is a selection, right? A selection of the text, but that's what you talk about when you're talking about sermons. Now, a pericope, it might be a paragraph. It might be a series of paragraphs. It might be just a single sentence, right? And you're going to have examples of this all over the place. You may remember when I preached the Unfortunately, you have to refer to it as the prodigal son, but I preached about why you shouldn't call the prodigal son. Remember the parable of the two lost sons? One of the things you had to remember in that part was that about 15 verses before the very start of chapter 15 was a verse that said that the Pharisees were grumbling as the sinners were being brought in here. What we found there was that there was a much broader context, a pericope that had to be remembered once we got to the parable of the two lost sons. Now, in contrast, you can have Brian who, does Brian rush through his sermons? Does he rush through books of the Bible? No, he's an exegete, like his license will say, right? He will go into every little bit of detail that needs to be gone into. So it's unusual to see Brian saying, we're going to do a whole chapter today, isn't it? Why did he do it? because there was a contained story. There was a contained thought. He felt he had to do it all or else he'd be chopping it up into a way that was unnatural for study, unnatural for a sermon. Now, in contrast, I wasn't here for this, but do you remember Ephesians chapter two? Do you remember but now? Anyone who was in this church at that time, I mean, these are like epic sermons. How many sermons did Brian preach on but now? A bunch. A bunch. We'll go with a bunch, right? And the reason was because there was so much to go into, even though it was just two words. We find that there are different ways that we can break these things down. And so now, here's your real world. This is what's coming up. Luke 17. I took out your titles. I took out all the little cheater things that our Bibles do for us. And suddenly, you're just looking at a bunch of text. I don't expect you to read that. That's all tiny. That was just for illustration's sake. You can look at your own Bibles here, right? But we get to chapter 17, and you can actually go through what I'm going through on a week and say, what's our pericope here? Is it one and two? Is it one through 3a? And by 3a, I mean just the very beginning of three. Is it one through four? Is it one through six? Is it one through 10? Say, Jason, this is really, really boring. Seriously, why does this matter? Come on, give me a little bit here. Why should we even be bothering with this? I'm going to tell you, just engaging with the text at this level, what is the preacher going to do next? See, with me and Brian, it's pretty easy, because we're just going to do what's next, but you're wondering, how much of what's next are they going to do? And you ask yourself that question, and you're going to find, just by trying to chunk the scriptures together into organized thoughts, that you will run into the issues. You will run into some of them, at least. So, here's your first one. Does verse 3a connect to what comes before or comes after? Let's look at chapter 17. So verse 3a, what I mean by that is, pay attention to yourselves, is how the ESV reads. Does that go to verses 1 and 2, where he says, and he said to his disciples, temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come. It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea. than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin. Does it go with that? Pay attention to yourselves. Or, does it go with the rest of verse three? Pay attention to yourselves. And what I mean by that is, if your brother sins, rebuke him. And if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and turns to you seven times, saying, I repent, you must forgive him. Will that matter? It does. You can't have things that are bridge comments. You definitely can't. And that's actually one answer that you might come up with. If we're saying, what is the connection of verse 3a to before and after, you may say it goes before, it goes after, or maybe it functions as something in between. Right there, though, you're making choices. You're making choices. Here's another one for you. How does verse 5 connect to verse 4? Verse 4 ends with this. And if he turns to you seven times saying, I repent, you must forgive him. The apostle said to the Lord, increase our faith. Now, a lot of your Bibles have a little title in between those two verses, don't they? Maybe not all of your Bibles. I didn't check all the different kinds of subtitles that are in there. Why does this matter? Why does it matter if verse five or how verse five is connected to verse four? Flesh is out with me. Thinking caps, as Brian likes to say. Yes, so Gene is pointing out that verse five might flow very naturally from verse four. I just, so imagine I'm Jesus and I say to you all, you guys have to just forgive and forgive and forgive and forgive, and the disciples might then be, how can we do this, Lord? Give us the faith to do this. That's a very natural connection. I think that's a good connection. Now, are there ever parts in the Bible where one section doesn't actually connect that tightly to the section before, or maybe not at all? That matters, doesn't it? Now, imagine I come to the conclusion that verse five is just a separate teaching altogether, and it doesn't connect to verse four. Will that change how we apply this? It will. Because on the one hand, what Gene was saying is, I need the faith to be able to obey and forgive. Now, pretend we chop off one through four and all it is, is the apostle said to the Lord, increase our faith. It's a different teaching then. I'm definitely going to preach it differently. What we have is a general principle. Clearly, we need faith, and Jesus is going to talk about the qualities of faith, that it's not about more faith, it's about just having faith, right? But if we're intended to see this as the application of, I can't handle forgiving my brother, I need more faith, we will preach that, we will understand that very differently. You feeling me? Okay, good. There's one more. You ready? Just by these basic questions of what is our pericope, we get one more. How does verse seven connect to the preceding verse. So verse 7 through 10 is this whole thing about if you're the master and you have a servant, you guys come in from the field, the servant is just supposed to serve you. He's not supposed to recline with you. He's supposed to make dinner, just do what he's supposed to do. And at the end, it's not like, hey, you get extra credit of it, servant. It's supposed to say, you just did what a servant's supposed to do. So that's an interesting passage just on its own. Now, here's the question. Does it connect to verses 5 and 6? It's getting a little harder there, isn't it? Increase our faith, and then the Lord wants to make sure you know that you are just servants doing what servants are supposed to do. The connection's not as obvious anymore, is it? It could be connected. It could be the kind of thing, one commentator suggested, that you have sort of one through four, this idea of you're dealing with sin, five through six, help us, give us the faith to obey these things, to deal with sin like this, seven through 10, what if I've done it successfully, then I might be tempted to pride, in which case I need the humility of a servant who just says, I'm just doing what I was commanded to do anyways. Could be, might not be. Might not be just asking these basic questions of what's coming next. You are already running into these interpretive questions. How does any of this go together and that will affect what we believe the Lord is telling us. And so we start out with just that question and I'm not going to tell you what verses I'm doing yet because I'm not positive what I'm doing yet. So I've been wrestling with this a lot. Then we prepare by asking questions. We prepare by asking questions. So, a general framework as we approach a passage. So say you're like, I'm convinced that Jason's gonna do one through 10. It doesn't matter if you're right or wrong, but let's just say one through 10. So you start asking yourself some basic questions as you go through the passage. What do you need to understand in order to understand each verse, in order to understand a given passage? Then, how is this passage meant to be applied? Basic questions, right? Do I understand what it's saying and how does it apply? Do I understand what it's saying? How does it apply? So let's work through this. One through two. Let's look at one through two together. You got your Bibles open, chapter 17, one through two. What we're going to see, and actually you've obviously got a bunch of my answers already there, so Well, I'd say don't cheat, but it just doesn't work. Okay, here we go. And he said to his disciples, and I'm reading the ESV, temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come. It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin. So we ask ourselves these questions. What would I need to understand to understand this passage? Now you can see where I started up here, right? What is a woe? Do you remember what a woe is? We've actually talked about woes, but it was chapters and chapters ago. A warning, that's a good start. Yeah, because how could you understand woe? And maybe in a cultural sense, that's not how Jesus means it. Woe is you. Condemnation, hard-heartedness, mean, right? We ask ourselves, do we know what a woe is? And by the way, we, I won't have time to go to answer all my questions here. Tune in Sunday, but you see how that's an important thing. Could you imagine trying to explain this past and like, whoa, what's that mean? Do you understand it? Do you understand it well enough to explain it, right? What is a stumbling block? So this is an important part right here. I made a point to say I was reading the ESV, not because I was doing like a rivalry thing. You know, me and Brian would do the NAS versus ESV stuff. It wasn't that at all. I wanted to make clear that there's a reason why what I'm reading sounds like what it does compared to you NASers here. What does your NAS say here? Does it say temptations to sin? It says stumbling blocks, doesn't it? It says stumbling blocks. And that is, in the ESV, that's one of those superscript numbers. That's over in the margin. And so you ask yourself, what is a stumbling block? I'm just going to give you a hint. The ESV did not do anything helpful here, in my opinion. The ESV actually blurs what Jesus is talking about by making it a temptation to sin. I think stumbling block is a much better translation here. But you ask yourself, do I know what a stumbling block is? Again, picture that you're talking to someone who doesn't know the faith. They read the passage, stumbling blocks, what are you talking about? Suddenly you're the only person in the room and you're expected to answer. And then, let's say you say stumbling block is, it's when you sin. And then they say, so if you sin, it would be better if you were drowned in the sea than sinning? That doesn't sound real Christian. Could you imagine this conversation? Could you imagine getting yourself in that situation where you're thinking, huh, maybe I don't know what a stumbling block is. Is that what Jesus is saying? Is Jesus saying that it would be better for us all to just drown rather than ever be involved in someone else's sin? Does that sound different than it's by grace you've been saved through faith? Does it sound different than his mercies are new every day? Does sound a little bit different, doesn't it? Do we know what he's talking about there? Why would it be better? Why would it be better? I mean, think about what he just said. It'll be better for you to get a heavy stone tied around your neck and thrown into the sea than for you to be involved in one of these little ones stumbling. What's the quick answer? Why would it possibly be better to suffer a terrible death like that? It's because we're talking about there's something more. There's judgment. Again, these things people wouldn't necessarily understand and we don't necessarily understand. And what you're going to ask when you do that application question is you're going to say, so how do I guard against this? How do I guard against this? You start priming your heart, you start priming your thoughts, and what you're going to find is... So, I've mentioned enough stuff that it's probably kind of confusing what this verse means right now. Am I right? Is this a little bit confusing? Well, if you know that the Lord expects this to be applied to you in some way, or that you're meant to apply it in whatever the judicious, faithful way is, suddenly doesn't it concern you that you don't understand what the passage means? in a pretty important passage, right? Like this is clearly not one you get to ignore. The one where he says, it'd be better for you to be thrown in the sea and drowned. You prime your heart because when, if you've done this, if you prayed through this, if you thought through this, Sunday is going to be a lot more relevant when we get to the part for, so what does assembling block mean? Next passage. So as we look at three and four, There are a gazillion things to actually talk about here. Pay attention to yourselves. If your brother sins, rebuke him. And if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times saying, I repent, you must forgive him. So, what's a rebuke? Do you guys do a lot of rebuking? Repenting, good. We'll get to that too. Let's just say we, I mean, had to, you know, do like one of those game show things. What does rebuke mean? Do we have to yell at someone to rebuke them? Evil! Sinner! Did I just rebuke you successfully? No, why not though? Right? What is a rebuke? What does it mean to repent? I feel really bad. Did I just repent? Again, why not? Who says? These are important issues. It turns out there's actually, for this verse, a lot of word study. Forgiveness. What's forgiveness? It's where you say, where you, you know, quote, repent. I'm sorry about that. And I say, I don't worry about it. That wasn't much repenting. That wasn't much forgiving, was it? One of the big things that will come up, I've found in these just short years that I've now been counseling is forgiveness is an issue. Who's ever had forgiveness be a major issue in their life? Who's ever had trouble forgiving people? Who's ever had people have trouble forgiving them? Right? And who's ever just, I mean, you've just been there like, wait, what does this mean? Right? And like, are we just supposed to pick up right where we left off? Because they said, oh, please forgive me. It's actually a really important subject and it's not easy. And here we have this passage of all these words and you're thinking, okay, I'm supposed to rebuke, what's that mean? I'm supposed to repent, what's that mean? I'm supposed to forgive, what's that mean? And suddenly you realize, what's this passage mean? What does this passage mean when like so many of the core terms we struggle with? And let's even say you perfectly know what these mean. There's then going to be the question of, do you actually apply these? So, rebuke. I'm not sure I'm all that good at rebuking. This is me personally now. Forgiving. I know what forgiveness is. Sometimes better, sometimes worse. Repenting. Sometimes better, sometimes worse, right? And so I can't plead ignorance on these things. I just look at these things like, okay, I could grow in my knowledge here, but some of this is just, I need to apply this more, don't I? Some of you don't need me to define a single term here. What you need is to go home and do it. To go repent to your family, to go repent to your friends, to go forgive the person who you've just been given the cold shoulder to for all this time. To rebuke your brother or sister who's actually walking in sin carelessly. One of the things, the applications that could come from these things is how do I need to grow here? This passage says to do all these things. Do I do these? I don't. How do I grow then? How do I grow? Next passage. Yeah, it's not a good church name, Grace Community Rebuking, yeah. So, five and six, increase our faith. And the Lord said, if you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, be uprooted and planted in the sea, and it would obey you. So, again, we go back to that question, I won't dwell on it now, but does this connect to the past verse? That's just one of those things that's gonna stir up your thinking. Does this connect to the verses that come before? But more importantly, What is Jesus's point about faith? So people would say, so you say you're a Christian? Yes. So you say, you think you're saved? You think you have saving faith? Yes. Okay. That tree, just send it up to Lake Tahoe. No, I just want you to pray, pray and magically make that tree go up to Lake Tahoe. And you say, that's not the point. Well, what's the point? What's Jesus's point? Does Jesus want us going around casting mountains and trees into the sea? You say, why or why not? You engage these questions. You say, do I understand this? And sometimes you'll say, oh yeah, I totally understand this. I've studied this before. Sometimes you'll say, I've got no clue. In which case, if you have time, you might read about it. But even that is a success for the sermon. To go into the sermon and say, I know we're getting this verse eventually. I have no clue what it means. I'm really looking forward to, if nothing else, when the pastor explains verses 5 and 6. That sermon is going to be richer for you, isn't it? That sermon is going to speak to you. One more, 7 through 10. Again, we ask ourselves this question, what is the connection of this to the past verses? But even then, let's just say we have to get into it. Is Jesus' point that he just wants to reinforce how servants are supposed to treat masters? Well, that doesn't seem like it's big enough, does it? Jesus doesn't normally weigh in on an employer-employee practices, right? So, he must mean something more about it. You might ask yourself questions like, is this how people treated servants, or is he saying something different? Jesus will often do things where he will contradict what the culture says or does, and that makes a very big point. So you ask yourself, Is this how people treated servants? I don't have a servant. I don't know how you're supposed to treat servants. Is this a historical thing? And then there's these questions of humility, right? If you're trying to apply a passage like this, you say, how am I at humility? Who's really good at humility here? That's one of the strict questions, isn't it? You can't possibly raise your hand there except for, yeah, you're in trouble. No, humility is something we often struggle with. Who struggles with pride, right? I mean, pride is just so natural to us. And so you find you already know some of the ways that the Lord intends to apply these things to you. And here's where I'll leave you. Summary points, preparing the soil. Got it? We actually, I was going to say gardeners, but we have more than that. We have some farmers, don't we? Who's done farming? Has anyone in this room done outright farming? Okay, okay, okay. I guess not. Gardening. We've done some gardening. Someone, right? Someone? I garden. We garden. We just started to garden. Now, at the very start. Well, that's probably true. That's probably true. It actually depends on Naomi and the kids, not me. What happens if you just use ordinary desert dirt for your garden? It's not that impressive, is it? You start out at the very beginning knowing I have to prepare this soil. And if I prepare this soil, if I make sure it's got the nutrients that are required, if I get this ready, I know that those seeds will spring up in a way much more fruitful, much more successful than just if I just threw it on the hard desert ground out there. It's no different with us. It is no different with us. Sunday is coming. The Word of God will be proclaimed. Whatever the preacher accomplishes, the Word of God will be there. The seeds are going to be scattered. And then you ask yourself, the question is, how's the soil? Not of your neighbor, of you. How's your soil? How's your heart? Is it prepared? And we find that just like a garden or a farm takes work to prepare that soil, we have to put in the work to prepare our hearts. And that's what the week before a sermon allows you the chance to do. You prepare by diving in saying, do I understand this passage? Okay, I understand that. I don't understand that. I don't understand that. That right there, that right there, that wrestling for understanding is preparing the soil. You prepare the soil by applying it to yourself. Don't wait for me to look at you and say, hey, are you repenting of your sin and forgiving those who sin against you? Don't wait for me because the word's right there. You don't need to wait for me. The word of God with all its benefits and all its responsibilities is right there with you, for you, ready for you. You ask yourself the question, am I repenting of my sin? I remember I did that one thing. What did I do afterward? Did I just pretend it never happened? Did I go talk to all the people I offended when I sinned against them? Did I ever make it right? Did I ever truly repent of that or that? You ask yourself the forgiveness things. Am I still holding that against my spouse? Am I still bearing that grudge against that friend? Do I still have that problem? Like, do my thoughts go back to that so naturally? Apply it to yourself and then go to the Lord in prayer. This is something I know we do, but we prepare the soil in a number of ways. You pray for yourself. What kinds of prayers do we need to pray for ourself to prepare for this Sunday? Help me to turn from evil. Amen. Amen. What else? Prayers that we should be praying this week so that Luke 17 reaches prepared soil. Increase faith. Lord, help me with my unbelief. Give me faith. Help me with faith. Forgive me for my unbelief. Amen. What else, Mindy? Yes. Yes, please pray for me. Please pray for me. I know you pray for us and it's just that right there. Well, I mean, what what are you praying? Then you're praying for what faithfulness, right? You're praying for clarity, accuracy, whatever it is, right strength sickness, all these all these things. And one of the things you're doing when you pray for us to is you're also preparing the way for us to speak to you. You're saying I want to hear from this man. I am opening the doors to this person. They're not going to arrive on Sunday and find me in defensive posture, you know, just like, yeah, try and get your word in here, right? They're going to find in me a person who is looking forward to hearing from them. Pray for us. And once you've prayed for yourself, once you've prayed for your pastor, you can also pray for others because you know people, don't you? That person has never gotten over that thing. They are so bitter. Lord, please speak to them this Sunday. That person always struggles to trust you. Lord, increase their faith. Help them. And it may be just for all of us. Lord, this is hard. I don't know if we understand this. Lord, help us understand. We have the word of God richly provided to us. And as disciples of the Lord, let us be faithful to the privileges we have. Let's receive the blessings. The Lord would bless our socks off if we would have it. He would produce a harvest in us that would just be glorious if we would prepare the soil. He would do that work. And also, I just know I want to get there and I want to hear that well done, good and faithful servant. I don't want to realize you were listening to about 3% of what I told you. I don't want to have that instant replay of life and realize, man, I squandered my blessings. The Lord is gracious. I don't think this is a workspace thing. But as a faithful servant, I want to rise to these responsibilities. And I know you do too. So let's prepare our hearts for the Lord's day to come. The word is coming, the Lord will bless, and let's make sure each one of us is ready. Let's pray. Our Father, we look forward to the Lord's day. We look forward to the word that you will give us. We look forward to your Holy Spirit working in us. And Father, there is so much we need you for. Lord, give us eyes to see and ears to hear. Break down barriers in our hearts. Help us, Lord, to give the focus and the energy and the time to just considering your word, asking ourselves if we understand it, asking ourselves if we've applied it. Lord, we want the full benefit of your word. We want the full benefit of these sermons. We don't want to waste a single blessing you would give us. So we pray that you would help us. Help us this Sunday to do justice to your word. We pray this in Jesus's name. Amen. We hope that you were edified by this message. For additional sermons as well as information on giving to the ministry of Grace Community Church, please visit us online at gracenevada.com. That's gracenevada.com.