Today's scripture reading comes from 2 Corinthians 4, verses 4-13. The God of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ is Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, let light shine out of darkness, made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God's glory displayed in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed, perplexed, but not in despair. persecuted, but not abandoned, struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you. It is written, I believed, therefore I have spoken. Since we have that same spirit of faith, we also believe and therefore speak. All people are like grass and all their beauty is like the flowers in the field. The grass withers and the flower fades. but the word of our God stands forever. Well, we have started a new series just a couple of weeks ago about the church, and we're asking some questions about the church. Who is the church? What is the church? Why church? And those are all wonderful questions that we hope to answer. Last week we talked about the fact that the church oftentimes is viewed as simply a building, and obviously we hope that is not the case here at New City. We don't have our own building with our own sign out front. So the church is not a building, it's not a sign, it's a people. It's actually a people that God brings together and he gathers them together as his commemorative building to show forth the great victory that he has accomplished in this world for all eternity. And we're the ones who celebrate that and who realize that victory. So we're a people. And as a young church here at New City, we have to ask the question, what is it that should characterize the church? In New City, we've sought to answer that question through our core values, and so we are studying over these next few weeks those core values, those pillars of our church. Last week, we looked at what it means when we say we want to be a biblically faithful church. that we uphold the centrality and the sufficiency of God's word, that his words are truth found in the scriptures. It's his very word. This morning, we are gonna look at our second core value, which is the fact that we are a gospel-centric church, a gospel-centric church. Now, in a nutshell, what that means, first of all, is gospel refers to news. Literally, it's good news. And so we're talking about some news of something that has happened in real history for us. We're talking about that news. And what we want to say about that news is that it's absolutely central. It's at the nerve center. of the Bible and it's at the nerve center of our lives. And so we wanna talk about what that looks like when that plays out, that this news is at the core of who we are. And so this morning what we're gonna see is that this good news is actually at the nerve center, it's at the center, it's the distinctive, it's the distinctive message of the Bible. And secondly, that it's the distinctive motivation in our lives. It's the distinctive message of all the scriptures and it's the distinctive motivation in every area of our lives if we're Christian. Let me just say this, if you're here this morning, I'm sure that some who are here are not believers in Jesus Christ and we are so glad you're here. In fact, if the day ever comes when everyone in this room is a Christian, I'll be sad. Now that might be strange, but New City exists for one reason, to be a place where people who don't believe simply want to come and explore and engage these things and say, what is it that these fools believe? And we want to graciously explain what it is we believe and why we believe these things and invite you. And so this morning is a chance to look over our shoulder in a sense and to look and to watch and to hear what it is that is most central to the life of the Christian. What is our chief motivation? So that's what we're gonna look at this morning. But first of all, let's look at this. Let's look at the fact that the gospel is the distinctive message of the scriptures, okay? It's what all the scriptures are about. Notice here, in our passage this morning, the Apostle Paul quotes something from the Old Testament. He says, from Genesis chapter 1, from the opening lines of the Bible, that God, who made light, come out of darkness. Now he's quoting Genesis there, okay? Now he's describing something fantastic that happened when he quotes Genesis, when God shined his light out of the darkness, he's referring to creation, he's talking about one of the most dramatic events that has ever taken place, but one of the reasons he's talking about this is because he's about to show us that something even more dramatic, there's been an even more dramatic display of God's power in this world, as if there could be anything more dramatic than when at the beginning of time there was darkness that covered the face of the deep, there was darkness over the surface of the earth, And that refers in the Hebrew to just, there was chaos in those early days. There was darkness. Can you imagine the darkness? Before there was light, before there was sun, before there were stars, before God shone his light into that darkness, and then when he said, let there be light, and that light exploded the darkness. Can you imagine laying your eyes upon that? Paul's saying something more dramatic has happened, and it's happened in your heart. It's happened in your heart. It's the gospel. In fact, in verse five, we saw last week, Paul is talking about the fact that the message he came with was a message of the Scriptures. He sought not to distort the Scriptures, but he says, I came to you preaching Christ. You see what he did there? Paul summed up his entire preaching of the Scriptures by saying, you know, what I really preached to you was Christ. You probably got this from some things Jesus said. Jesus spoke of this often. In fact, there's one occasion where he was speaking to the Pharisees who were great studiers of the Bible. And Jesus said, you know, you guys study the scriptures. You search them and you search them and you study them looking for life. But you're not finding that life because you failed to see that all of these scriptures are about me. That's the message. The message, even from the beginning, was a message about what I was going to come and do. About the darkness that I was going to come and destroy. Now, I didn't read this from anyone. This is just from me, so take it or leave it with a grain of salt. But I couldn't help but to wonder this week. If Paul quotes Genesis 1 to go back to the very beginning of the Bible to say there's nothing before and there's nothing after this great message of the gospel. It is from the beginning to the end. This is what it's about and you have to know it. This is what it's about. From the very beginning, that's what everything pointed forward to. It's about this message. What message? Well, the gospel message. And it must be an important message because we see here in our passage that Satan, in the short time that he has, has deemed it worthy to spend his time blinding people and deceiving people away from this gospel. Now, he's pretty smart. He knows what to focus on. He has his top five list, okay? This is number one. It must be essential that what he seeks to blind us from is to see the message of the gospel. Now, what is that message? Well, in verses four and six, I think we have a wonderful explanation. In verse four, it talks about the fact that the gospel is the light that has shown into the darkness. We're gonna talk about that, but let's unpack a little bit in verse six where it says, that this light that has been shown is the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Now I thought about that this week. Why didn't he just say the gospel is the light of God's glory? That would make sense. No, he says the gospel is the light of the knowledge. Catch that. It's the light of the knowledge of God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ. So what he's saying is in the gospel there's some grand truth that is revealed. There's something revealed. There's something that we have to know about God's glory and we see it in the face of Christ. And so I'd like to unpack that for you as we talk about what is this message that is the distinctive message of the Bible. And so we're going to talk about this darkness and this light that Paul brings up here. He says the gospel is the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. Now what is God's glory? That's an important thing to cover. Well, If I had to sum it up, which it's a hard thing to sum up, but if I had to sum it up, I'd say God's glory, it's how much He weighs. It's how much He weighs. Now, not on a scale, but it's the sum total of the weight. That's what that word refers to. In the Hebrew and in the Greek, it's His weight. of the sum total of His personality, of His character, of His attributes, His goodness, His justice, His mercy, His righteousness, the sum total of all those things together is who He is, and that is His glory. And you know what? His glory was displayed in the beginning when he said, let light shine out of the darkness. Who else could do something like that? Only God. What an amazing thing. His glory was shown, but he continued to show his glory in his creation and at the height of his creation. At the height of His creation, you know what He made? Us. Human beings in His image, in His likeness. We are the ones who get that privilege. And what that means is we are made with a special capacity to live in this place that He was building, which was intended to be a dwelling place where He would gift us with Himself, that we would have such a capacity as those who are made in His image, that we would have such a desire and a thirst for Him. And guess what? He was going to give Himself to us so that in the presence of His glory we would be satisfied. Have you ever had an urge for something and wanted it so badly And then the very thing you had an urge for and wanted so badly, it was there. And you just had that little palpitation in your heart, just that excitement, to an immeasurably greater degree. That's what God created us for, to live in this world, to be satisfied in His glory. It's quite the dark thing. We're gonna go dark now. It's quite the dark thing to realize that what God intended to be a gift, what God intended to satisfy us, actually ended up being something utterly terrifying. His glory has actually turned into something that we dread. It turns into something that in the presence of God's glory left to ourselves, apart from this gospel message, we'll get to that, it will destroy us. His glory actually, the weight of who he is crushes us. Now how did that happen? How did that darkness come about? That God's glory became unbearable? Well, you see, this is the curse. You know, the Bible in the Old Testament and the New Testament talks about a curse. This is the curse that God in his glory speaks about. This is the spiritual darkness that we read about in the Bible. The spiritual darkness that came about because we, his image bearers from Adam and Eve onward, rebelled against our great king. There was a coup in the kingdom against the king. And that brought about enmity. Rather than being objects of his delight, We've become objects of his wrath. Now that's just scriptural language I'm using. There is separation. Which is as close to hell, or I should say, that is hell. Separation. Us, the image bearers, created in his likeness, in his image, to be with him for all eternity, to enjoy him, separated. Now there's guilt and there's shame. And not only that, but part of the curse also extended beyond us into the physical creation. And so now we live in a realm, we live in a world where there's continual separation. We see it in our bodies where things come apart. Things come apart and we get sick. Things come apart and we need surgery. Our minds come apart and they don't work the way that they used to. Our possessions, they come apart. Our relationships, they come apart. Those of you who are empty nesters, how far are your children? Maybe some say not far enough, but they're far for the most part. They're far. We're separated in time. It does that to our friends and our children and our relationships. It pulls us apart and it separates us and things happen. And then we end up traveling places to watch the funeral of loved ones because we live in a world where things separate and things come apart until the point where we come apart. And the Bible says when we come apart, when we die, we stand before God and there's judgment. We stand before this all glorious one. We stand before him and he's going to give us what we deserve. And let's just say, let's just pretend for a moment, let's just pretend that we stand before God and God were to say, you know what? I actually am kind. For this judgment, I want you to pick the best day of your life. I want you to pick the best day of your life. I mean the day when you really felt like you had it all together. I mean the day when you really thought you loved me well and you really loved other people well. I mean you had it together. Go ahead and pick that day. I'll rewind back through and you just pick. And if we were to pick our best day when we had it all together, in the light under the weight of God's holy presence and his righteousness shining through what's underneath the surface of our actions into our hearts and into our motives and into our ambitions. At the bottom of all that would be a selfishness and a pride that is worthy of the wrath of God. In fact, the prophet Isaiah speaks of these things when God spoke through Isaiah And he said, when you bring before me even your most righteous deeds, your most righteous deeds, they're like filthy rags. It's an amazingly sobering verse in Isaiah 64. Our most righteous acts are like filthy deeds under the weight of God's glory. Remember his shining glory. That's the comparison here. That's the darkness, that's the curse that we're talking about. And so we read a verse like that and we say the exact same thing that is in the following verse in Isaiah 64. And here's the question, how then can anyone be saved? How then can we be saved is the cry. How can anyone be accepted into the presence of God? How can anyone do what we were made to do, and that is to enjoy God? How can anyone have relationship with God? I feel it, I want it. God, I want you. If you're out there, I want you. How can we get it? How can we be saved? How can we have this is the question. Is there any good news? Because what we just talked about is pretty dark. Is there any good news? Well, let's talk about the light, okay? The light that shines in the darkness. You know, this was the question, is there any good news? Among the people who are walking the road, we saw last week in Luke chapter 24, after Jesus was raised from the dead, there's this great story where Jesus is walking, and there's a couple people who are sad, and they're distressed, and they're depressed, and they're asking the question, What's our hope now? We thought that guy who died on the cross was going to be the Messiah. He's clearly not because he's in the ground. They hadn't yet known of Jesus' resurrection. And then Jesus himself, resurrected, meets them in that place. It's amazing. Now, he doesn't say immediately. It's me, Jesus. No, he asked them, what's wrong? Why are you downcast? And they explained to him why they were downcast and were told that Jesus walked them through the scriptures, verbally of course, walked them through the scriptures from Moses through the prophets. And here's what it says. He walked them through the scriptures to show them that the Messiah, the King, Savior, he had to die first before he passed into, what? Glory. He had to die first before he passed in to glory. Now this is wonderful for us to look at here. Because now we're beginning to see the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. Now we're beginning to see what we're getting at here, okay? Now when Jesus walked back through the scriptures to explain that he must die first before he entered his glory, Surely he went to Isaiah, and surely, surely he walked them through Isaiah 53 to show how 700 years before Jesus, God spoke to the prophet Isaiah about the Savior to come, and surely he walked through where we read, but he was pierced for our transgressions, talking about this coming Savior who would bring good news. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. By his wounds we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter for he was cut off from the land of the living. And yet it was the Lord's will to crush him and to cause him to suffer. After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and will be satisfied. By his knowledge, my righteous servant will justify many." Did you notice that? Here's someone who's going to come and he's going to be pierced in the place of the transgressors. Here's someone who's going to come and he's going to suffer in his soul, but then he will see the light of life, the light of life, the light of God's glory, and he will be satisfied. Well, that's what we just talked about. That's what we were made for, to see the light of God's glory and to be satisfied, but that's what we've been separated from. And surely Jesus walked back through Isaiah 53, to explain to them the gospel. And here's the message of the gospel. The message of the gospel is this, that the good news, the good news is the news of Jesus Christ doing this in our place. The gospel is the news of Jesus Christ passing through the darkness of God's curse and passing through the darkness of death and coming out, having paid for that curse in our place, having come out the other side to the light of the glory of God, to dwell with Him, to be satisfied in Him. This is the gospel message that Jesus did this for us, and that to receive Him is to receive the treasure that He earned in our place, and the treasure is the treasure that God's glory would be satisfying to us again. that it would no longer be dreadful, that it would no longer be something we run from and hate, but that God's glory would be our thirst, that it would be what we hunger for. This is the knowledge of God's glory that we see here in 2 Corinthians 4 when he says the gospel is the light of the knowledge of God's glory. What's the knowledge? The knowledge of this. His glory used to be dreadful and it's what crushed you, but in and through Jesus Christ, you can be accepted. You can be received by God and the object of his delight where he dances over you and your glory, his glory, is what fills you and that's what satisfies you. You see, in the gospel, is revealed the grandest of truths and the greatest of gifts. We begin to see what God did. We begin to have knowledge now of why we can not only enjoy His presence and His glory now, but why this is our hope for all eternity. Do you know why? Because He's removed from us the guilt of our sin. He removes the guilt of our sin, and not only that, but He wraps us. He wraps us in the perfect obedience of the perfectly earned linens that Jesus Christ accomplished for us. He clothes us. He wraps us in those. He removes the guilt of our sin. He wraps us in the righteousness of Christ. Do you know what he does? He actually releases us from the dominion of the power of sin. So he removes from us the guilt of sin. He wraps us in the righteousness of Christ and he relieves us and he releases us from the dominion of the power of sin so that we no longer answer to sin and we no longer answer to death. And he renews our minds and he reorients our lives. He reorients our ambitions when we see what Christ has done for us. And then not only that, we realize that it transcends us, and God is going to restore creation. Heaven and earth are going to be one. His great kingdom is coming to earth where that new city will dwell, and we're a part of that. Our citizenship is rooted in that. Do you know why he does all this? Because in Jesus Christ, he has reversed the curse. And from first to last, this is the distinctive message of the Bible, the reversal of this curse, and it's yours. And here's what's amazing about this. He says, this is what God has revealed. This is the light that is shown, but where has it shown? Is it just out there somewhere, sort of theoretical? No, he says this light has shown in your heart. This light has shown in our hearts. When the Bible talks about heart, it's not just talking about our emotions. Sort of the view of the heart changes with different cultures over time. Perhaps now heart is mainly viewed with just the way we emotionally feel, but when the Bible talks about the heart, it's talking about our intellect, our mind, our emotions, our will. It's talking about the seat of our personality, the seat of our very selves. It's the thing that drives us. It incorporates our mind and our emotions and our will. All those things he says, this light of what Christ has done and the knowledge of God's glory, has shown in your heart. This is the very thing that's exploded in our hearts. It's taken the darkness out. And so this light now drives us. And if this light, more dramatic than God's light that's shown out of darkness in Genesis 1 at creation, if this light of Jesus Christ, if it's in us, could it possibly leave us the same? And the answer's no. And so not only is the gospel, when we talk here in New City about being a gospel-centric church, not only is it the distinctive message of the Bible, but it's the distinctive motivation of our lives. And so I'd like to work that out. What does it look like to take that message and then see it play out in the things of our lives? And I think, actually, Paul gives us a window to see very clearly some of the ways this plays out by what he says next. And he gives us a couple of pictures, and the first is, the picture of a treasure in a jar of clay. Now what's the treasure? The treasure is the gospel. It's the message, this amazing thing that Christ has done for us. But it's in a jar of clay. Now that was a common household item in Paul's day, easily discarded. You throw anything in a jar of clay, they get broken, they're cracked. That's just part of being a jar of clay. There's nothing especially significant about the identity of a jar of clay unless it's the place where you keep your most precious treasure. Now let me tell you why I think Paul brings up this imagery. One of the reasons he's writing to the Corinthian church is because Paul's identity has been severely under attack Not necessarily by the Corinthian church, though some in the Corinthian church might have bought into some of the things being said about Paul, but there were outsiders who were coming in who were attacking Paul's identity. We saw this last week, where they were actually distorting God's word, and one of the ways they were providing a basis for that is they were attacking the messenger who had been Paul. And do you know how they were attacking Paul's identity? They knew, as well as everyone else knew, that Paul's life was filled with trouble. Paul had all kinds of troublesome circumstances. In fact, later in 2 Corinthians, he goes through the list of his shipwrecks and his beatings and his imprisonment, his times of being alone and abandoned. It was well known that Paul had some physical frailties. And there's a few places this week, I'd actually never looked at it too closely until this week, but it was clear that Paul was criticized as not being actually a great speaker, not being much of an orator compared to others of his day. And you know what these people said is they looked at Paul's trouble, they looked at his shipwrecks, they looked at his sufferings, they looked at these things, they looked at his cracks, they looked at his brokenness. Paul was even honest about the fact that he struggled with sin and temptation. Didn't he remember Romans 7? And so here's Paul, he has all these, all these cracks and this brokenness, like a jar of clay. And you know what they were saying? Can you really trust a guy that has that much trouble? How could God really be with someone that's suffering like that? I mean, are you sure God loves him? Are you really sure he's God's chosen instrument? I mean, look at his life. Don't you think if God really loved him, things would go better for Paul? That was their line of reasoning. And Paul says, it's true. I'm a jar of clay, but my identity is defined not by my jar of clayness, cracked as I am, but my identity is defined by the fact that I possess the greatest treasure. There is the greatest treasure in me. That's what defines me, and that's what drives me, and this treasure in me has shaped my ambitions and my motivations, and it's what drives me to do what I do. And Paul gives another picture here to help us to better understand. He sort of invites us into this. He wants us too to understand how the gospel is the distinctive motivation for our life as well. It changes us, and it reorients us, and we have to know this. And he gives this picture here of a person who realizes that from every angle, From all sides, he's being pressed in upon. I'm hard pressed on every side, Paul says. He's painting a picture here of a person who's starting to realize, uh-oh, it's coming from every angle. And then he says, that person is perplexed. Now when that word is used in different places, it has the sense of, I don't know what to say, and I don't know what to do. It's that sense of paralysis. It's coming from every angle, and I'm perplexed. And then it gets worse, because he realizes the intent is to harm him. So here's this stuff coming from every angle, from every direction. I'm perplexed, and now I realize the intent is to harm me. And then it gets me in its grip. It actually pushes me down, it throws me down. strikes me down, it has me in its death grip, it should all be over, now I should be crushed, everything's over, devastated. But you see what he says? Yeah, that does, that pretty much marks my life except for this, I'm not crushed, I'm not devastated, I'm not in despair, why? He says, well, because of the treasure. Because of the insurpassable power of the Savior who has pledged himself to me. That's why. And Paul's inviting us in. He doesn't just say these things to say them. He wants us to think about this. He wants us to imagine ourselves in this place. And he wants us, I think, to look around. And if we're brave enough to look up, we can see over this direction, we see from this angle, wow, there's really pressures caving in from work. I am hard pressed at work with these pressures or these people. I read an article this morning actually over breakfast in the Wall Street Journal. and it was about the difficulty in the workplace of working with hyper-competitive people, and every office has it, this article. It was a very interesting article. I did read my Bible after that, but that was what I read over breakfast, and it talked about how it either causes people to fight or it causes people to shut down. Perhaps you've experienced that. You're perplexed because every day you go into work with a difficult person, or perhaps a little bit more deeply, you begin to look this direction at your workplace, And then you start to hear the attacks at your identity. How old are you? And that's all the further you've climbed up the career ladder. What's wrong with you? You start to hear the music. That's the first time I've ever played piano in church. You start to feel that A little bit of crush in your identity. That's all the farther you've climbed up the ladder. What's wrong with you? Why haven't you moved along further? And then you look at your 401k and you realize, you know, I always thought I'd be further along than this. That's a little bit scary. Maybe there is something wrong with me. Maybe I haven't been as hard of a worker or as good of a worker. Maybe I haven't been as talented. Maybe I've made some huge blunders. And now you start to feel embarrassed about the fact that you're not gonna have much to pass on to your kids. And that reminds you, actually, of some family issues. And you look this direction, you feel pressed in on, you feel pressed in on by your family struggles. And you start to think about the regrets that you have of the way in which you've mothered your children. And you start to wonder, what's wrong with me? Why was I so hard? Or why was I so easy? Or why was I so distant? and you start to realize all the things you said as a father that you shouldn't have had, and you start to feel the weight and the pressure, and your identity is attacked because of the way in which you've failed. And that's what you hear, you have failed. And you start to feel this pressure from that angle. Or perhaps, or perhaps the voice comes and says, you don't even have a family? What's wrong with you? You're not married yet? What's wrong with you? And then you look over here in this direction. You look this direction and there's, there's cancer. Or you're not as pretty as you used to be. Or maybe you think you've never been pretty, or you've never been handsome, or you've never liked your body, and you start to hear, you start to hear that voice. What's wrong with you? And then you start to think about it. What is wrong with me? Why don't I hire up the ladder? Why don't I have a better family life and better kids? And why isn't my marriage better? It really actually, it's pretty bad. And why is this stuff happening in my body? I mean, why does everything seem to be falling apart? And then you think, well, okay, let me look over in this direction at my relationship with God. Let me look over here. And then you start to see, wow, I've really failed God too. From this direction, I can see even God's angry at me because He knows my heart and no one else knows my heart. But if anyone did, they would know I struggle with things that no one else in the world struggles with. I have sin and I have temptations. I would be so embarrassed if anyone knew. I'm sure I'm the only person that struggles with that. And you know what? I failed again yesterday in that area I had promised I wasn't gonna fail in. And then you realize why everything else is wrong over here. It's because God's just mad at you. You have failed him, right? That's what you hear. That's the attacks. Those are the arrows that pierce your heart. I failed God. He's not happy with me. If he were happy with me, surely all this stuff over here would be better. And so with Paul, you can feel everything from every direction. It's pressing in. that has you by the death grip. And we have to ask the question, what's our response? What's our response? We all have to ask that question because we're all on that stage from every direction, if we're honest. We're pressed in on, we have to ask, what are we gonna do? This is precisely, folks, this is precisely where we need the gospel and gospel motivation. But before I explain what a gospel motivation looks like, let me tell you what our instincts are. I know what our instincts are. I know what my instincts are and what yours are because it was the instincts of our first parents, Adam and Eve, and ever since their response to these things, we know exactly what we've inherited. You see, Adam and Eve also realized that they were jars of clay after they sinned, The way that it's put in Genesis is they realized they were naked. And that not only refers to their physical nakedness, but you know what they realized? They're vulnerable. They're fragile. They're a jar of clay. They're being pressed in on from every side. They were naked and they realized they were ashamed and they were afraid. And we see some of their responses. And it's important for us to see them because it's what we've inherited. when we see all of the stuff from every angle pressing on us. Their first response, you know what it was? They sewed fig leaves together and they covered themselves. Now you say, well, what did that help? Well, it was irrational, but that was their instinct. I'm vulnerable, I'm not safe, I need to cover myself. And we might call that a self-justification. And we can do that religiously or irreligiously. Maybe we do that through religion. Maybe we cover ourselves by saying, you know what? I did fail God. And he is angry at me. But man, this time I'm going to get it right. I mean. Man, this time I am going to be a prayer warrior. Man, this time I am not going to fail my Bible reading plan again. I am not going to miss church. I'm going to get it right. And then all this other stuff is going to go well. And we might cover ourselves religiously or perhaps irreligiously. We find some scientific discovery or some philosophy we cover ourselves with to make us feel safe. That doesn't work under the weight of God's glory. You know, next we see with Adam and Eve, you know what they did? They just ran. They just ran. And we've inherited that instinct as well, haven't we? Sometimes we just don't, we just don't want to deal with it. And so we run. We just don't want to deal with God. And so we run and we, we duck our head under and we just hide. We don't want to deal with it. We don't want to deal with our marriage. We don't want to deal with our regrets. It's there. We feel it. We just, we can't get into it. We run. Or perhaps we do what Adam and Eve did next. where God asked them, Adam, Eve, did you do what I told you not to do? Did you really? And rather than answering the question, you know what Adam did? He played games. He made excuses and he blame shifted. He says, you know God, You know this woman that you gave me? This woman that you gave me? I mean, she basically dangled that fruit in front of my face and basically forced it down my throat. Yeah, so God, are you asking me if I did what you didn't want me to do in this impossible situation that you put me in that I had no chance of success? Is that what you're asking? Okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I did. So you see what happens very subtly? What happens is there's these games that are played and we tinker around with what God actually said and so we carve away We carve away at God's word and his expectations, and we say, you know, I don't really like this part of it, and I don't really like that part of it, and surely you didn't mean that, God. Surely you didn't mean that. I mean, we know that's not real. So that we can get into this place where we can feel like, yeah, now I've shifted the blame. I'm okay. God will be happy. All will go well. Well, there's more instincts we've inherited, but I think those are some significant ones. And it's our instinct. I see it. Listen, I see it in my life. I see it in the lives of my children. I can talk about Anna because she's in the nursery and she'll never listen to this recording. She's five years old. But you know, last week we were eating dinner at the dinner table. There were some Legos on the dinner table. Now why were there Legos on the dinner table? I don't know. Why are there Legos in my socks and in my shoes and in my toothpaste? I don't know. They're all over the place. But there were Legos on the table. I noticed Anna was picking up these little Legos and she was like, you know, putting them up near her face. And I said, Anna, I'm sure this won't happen, but Anna, don't put that Lego in your mouth and don't put that Lego in your nose. Don't put it anywhere. Okay, daddy. And so then just a couple of minutes later, I look over and Anna is just going to town on her nose. And I said, Anna, what's wrong? And she was kind of covering herself, turned away. I said, Anna, what's wrong? She said, no, just, just a booger. And I said, well, Anna, let me help you. She said, no, no, no, no, no. She covered up, no. And I said, Anna, let me help you get that out of yours. No, daddy, no, daddy. And you could see she was like a deer in headlights in her eyes. And then I say, Anna, put down your hands. No, put down your hands. And then she put down her hands and there was a nice white shining Lego stuck up in her nostril, just hanging there. I said, Anna, did you put a Lego up your nose? No. No, daddy. I said, Anna, I see the Lego in your nose. Why did you do what Daddy told you not to do? Daddy, you didn't tell me not to put a Lego up my nose. Now, what she was thinking was, Daddy, you didn't tell me not to put this little white Lego. I mean, you spoke in generalities, but you didn't say this one. That's what she was thinking. Daddy, you didn't tell me. Yes, Anna, I did tell you that. Oh, I kid you not, here's what she said. It fell in there. It fell in there. It fell in your nose, okay? So as we begin to talk, okay, you get the point. You see what's happening here? She was covering. She was blame shifting. She was doing everything she could. She was doing everything she could to make herself feel more accepted. She didn't want that. She didn't want that threat. Whatever that meant to her as a little five-year-old. And you know who she reminds me of? She reminds me of me. And you know, most people go on the rest of their life doing that, what Anna did with her Legos. And we do that with God. Most people go on living the rest of their lives that way, with those motivations, and what happens? What happens when we do that? We become increasingly shallow. We become increasingly fake. and angry, and territorial, and defensive, and fearful, because our identity hinges on how well we're able to cover and to hide and to blame, whether it's covering with financial security or the lack thereof. It's our cover, man, and our identity hinges on our ability to do that. And increasingly, we become conformed to the image of either a Pharisee who says, yeah, I'm gonna get all this right so that I can look better. And that's why Jesus looked at the Pharisees and said, you're whitewashed tombs. Because on the outside, boy, it looks fine. But on the inside, you're dead and you're empty and you're angry and you're shallow and you're fake. And so over time, we increasingly become conformed to the image of a Pharisee, or we become conformed to the image of the prodigal son, only one who never returns home, out in the mud with the pigs saying, I hate all of that. Forget all of that. And God, I just, I'm walking away. I'm done with it. We become conformed to one of those images. And I'd like to ask the question, is there any alternative? Is there any alternative? And I would say here's the answer. Yes, there's good news. The alternative is this, that the message of the gospel would get in the nerve center of your soul. That the message of the gospel, the reality of what Christ has done, would get into the nerve center of your heart and you would realize it's not just some future thing, but it's a present reality. And when the gospel gets in the nerve center of your heart, we're conformed not to the likeness of a Pharisee or to the prodigal, though I can out-prodigal and I can out-Pharisee any of you, any day of the week, I can do both really well. But increasingly, we're not conformed to that, but we're conformed to the image and the likeness of Jesus Christ. And I was gonna spend the rest of our time on my last point here, explaining to you and working out very practically the ways in which the gospel in the nerve center of our heart actually begins to give us a whole new perspective on all of that stuff that's pressing in on us. But, I'm gonna stop. And next week will be part two of The Gospel-Centric Life, and we're gonna work out in some very practical ways, in some very practical ways, the way that the gospel getting into the nerve center of our heart and realizing what that means for us now and our identity, how it radically changes the motivations underneath the way we respond to all the things pressing in on us, okay? So that was not intended, but that feels right. Next week, part two, okay? Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, We're not done yet, even though this sermon is over. You've invited us to a feast, and this feast is about the gospel too. And so as we come to this table, help us to better understand, help us to better understand the treasure we have. And we ask this as we ask you to set apart this bread and wine for your holy purposes, in Jesus' name, amen.