Well, good morning. My name is Nate. Before I jump into the sermon, I wanted to pray for a couple of our Grace partners. Most of us don't know this, but there's a couple that are in their 30s named Matthew and Brianna Brown, and they have been in the process of adoption for probably the better part of a year, I would say, if not longer than that. And they actually flew to Columbia in South America this morning to pick up three teenagers that they're adopting from Columbia, which is amazing. This is our primary way to grow at Grace, is to just go get children and then bring them here. So we're very grateful for that. But really and truly, I want to first of all just celebrate their faithfulness to do that and God's goodness in granting them these children. And then also just pray for them as they're there and as they come back and we surround them as a church family. So stop and pray with me and then I'll jump right into the sermon. Father, we are so grateful for you and the way that you love us. We are grateful that you have adopted us into your family, that you give us this picture. God, thank you so much for what you've placed on the heart of Matthew and Brianna. We pray that you would calm their nerves, that you would give them wisdom as they meet their new children, that you would give those children wisdom and grace as they meet their new parents. God, we can't imagine all the thoughts and feelings and emotions swirling around, but we know that this is a family that you have built and constructed with your will. And so we just ask for your blessing on them. We ask for a safe, good, beneficial trip. We ask for good assimilation as they arrive in the States. And God, we ask for special insight as a church, for ways to love them and show those kids that they are welcome here and they are a part of our family. It's in your son's name we pray these things. Amen. One of my favorite things about the Bible is that it's not just 66 individual books, 39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament. It's not just a string of 66 individual books that exist independently from one another, like a history book or something, but rather the Bible is a tapestry of stories woven to present to us one big overarching story. And one of my favorite parts about that tapestry and learning more about it as a pastor is to look at the things in the Old Testament that are pictures or signposts that point us to the New Testament and more specifically point us to Jesus. If you spent any time in church, you know of some of these signposts and perhaps the most popular one, the one that's the most well-known, that we're most aware of, even if you're here this morning and you wouldn't call yourself a believer, or this is your first time in a church in a long time, or maybe ever, you would probably recognize the term Passover. It's still a holiday that the Jewish faith celebrates. It's still something that we acknowledge on a regular basis as believers. And to me, it's one of the more clear signposts or pictures in the Old Testament that points to an event in the New Testament that points very clearly to Jesus. And Passover is the fourth feast that we're looking at in our series as we go through all the feasts and festivals that were in the Old Testament calendar that God prescribed in the book of Leviticus, chapter 23. This is the fourth one. We've got two more to go. And for this morning, I did want us to kind of catch up on Passover and know what it is, but then I want us to ask a really important question about Passover and what brought it about. So just so we're on the same page and we understand what Passover is, it's actually the tenth plague that God inflicted on the Egyptian people. The situation is God's people, his chosen people, the descendants of Abraham, have existed in the nation of Egypt as slaves for 400 years. It's all that they know. It's generation after generation. They are a people. They are a people of slaves. And so in Exodus chapter 3, God grabs one of the guys that he's chosen to use, a guy named Moses, and he appears to him in a burning bush. And he says, Moses, I want you to go to Egypt and I want you to free my people. Which is a pretty tall order, because he would lead a nation of slaves against the most powerful nation in the world. Egypt was the worldwide superpower at the time, so it felt like a pretty hopeless errand. But he says, I want you to go free my people. To help you do that, I'm going to inflict plagues on the Egyptians. Moses didn't know that at the time, but over time it became apparent that that was God's plan. And so Moses goes to Pharaoh and he says, you need to let God's people go. And Pharaoh says, you're ridiculous. I don't think so. This is a loose paraphrase of a conversation in Exodus. And then God starts to inflict the plagues on the Egyptian people. The waters turn to blood. There's a swarm of locusts. There's gnats. The day has turned to night. The livestock dies. There's boils. There's other plagues that are inflicted on the Egyptian people to soften Pharaoh's heart. And a couple of times he says, you guys got to get out of here. We're tired of these plagues. And then he changes his mind. He says, nope, you got to stay here. Just kidding, you can't go. So they keep them as slaves. The tenth plague becomes known as the Passover. This was the one that finally softened Pharaoh enough to get him to let the people of Israel go. And Passover, what God told Moses to do is to go to Pharaoh and tell Pharaoh, tonight the angel of death is going to pass over all the nation of Egypt. And that angel is going to claim the firstborn of every family, even of the livestock. And God tells Moses that if you want protection from this angel that's going to come as the final plague, that what you need to do is you need to go find a lamb. Sacrifice the lamb and then take the blood of the lamb and paint it on your doorposts, on the top and on the sides. And when the angel passes over Egypt, if that blood is on your doorframe of your house, then he will pass over you and the death that was supposed to happen in your house will not occur because I will accept the death of the lamb that died in their place. And so that's what happens that night. The angel of death passes over the nation of Egypt and the families that didn't have the blood on their doorframe lost their firstborn. And it said that the cry in Egypt that night was great. And the next morning, in his sorrow at losing his own son, Pharaoh tells Moses, get out of here. Go. And Moses gets all the people. They take some gold and some jewelry from their Egyptian slave masters, and they go out into the desert, and they begin to search for the promised land. And that's the story of God's rescue of his people out of slavery. He does it through the series of the ten plagues capped off by what's called now the Passover because the angel of death was passing over Egypt and would pass over your home if you had the blood of the lamb on your doorpost. And it's a very clear picture of Jesus in the New Testament. Very clear picture. When Jesus arrives on the scene, he's introduced by a man named John the Baptist. And John the Baptist, when he sees Jesus of Nazareth walking towards him, says, Behold, the Lamb of God who comes to take away the sins of the world. Jesus was the spotless Lamb. And just like in the Old Testament, the lamb died so that your home didn't have to experience death. In the New Testament, the lamb dies so that we don't have to experience death. In the Old Testament, the lamb dies at Passover so that God says, there's no penalty required here. You guys are right with me. Just like that in the New Testament, Jesus dies, the Lamb of God, and God looks at that death and he says, that's good. There's no penalty required here because the Lamb has died on your behalf. It is a one-to-one picture that points us to the miracle of Jesus in the New Testament. The Lamb makes us right with God in the Old Testament, and then the Lamb makes us right with God in the New Testament. Passover is a picture of salvation. And now most of you here, this was really my challenge this week, you're church people. You know what Passover is. You could have just done this part so far. And so I thought, I wonder, what are the important questions to ask around Passover that can help us now as we reflect on that festival? And the question occurred to me, what was it that brought about the Passover? What was it that the people of Israel did that got God, enacted God, spurred God, was a catalytic event for God to say, now is when I want to enact my grand plan of rescue? Really what I want to ask is, what was their role in their rescue? What part did they have to play? What did they do? If we were to ask the question today, we would say, what's our role in our salvation? What do I have to do to be saved? We've all asked this question before. Before you were a believer, or now if you're not yet a believer, you would wonder, what do I need to do to be saved? What's required of me? What's my role in my rescue? Some of us wonder if we did it right, if we prayed the prayer right, or if we really meant it, or if we really obey enough. We don't really know if we did everything right, and we wonder still, what's my role in my rescue? What's my role in my salvation? What's our role in our rescue? What do I need to do to be saved? What's my role in my salvation? It's all the same question. And I remember when I was 17 years old, I was at a summer camp called Look Up Lodge. I've mentioned it before. And the camp director was a man named Greg Boone. And he asked the same question, but he just asked it this way. He came out and he asked all the students. There's about 300 kids at the camp that year. And he asked us, what do you have to do to be right with God? What do I have to do to be right with God? And it's one of these questions that somebody asks it and you know that you don't know the answer and that to give an answer, you're just going to get made fun of. Like my dad loves these kinds of questions. My dad asked me one time, son, and I was, I mean, I graduated from seminary. I had reason to believe that I could answer this question. He looks at me and he goes, son, what's the Bible about? And I'm like, geez, I don't know. I mean, I feel like it's about God. Like, that feels like a good answer. And he goes, no, it's about missions. Great, great dad, whatever. You're ridiculous. He's going to listen to this. I still, dad, I still think you're ridiculous. So it's one of those questions. He says, what can we do to be right with God? And we all know that we're not going to get it right, but there are those of us for whom the glory of the correct answer is too irresistible, right? If I get this right, if I somehow unlock the code and I'm the one that's correct, then I will get all the esteem of all of my peers and everyone here is going to know I'm the smartest one. So we have to try. A lot of kids had the sense to not try, but some kids did try. And I don't remember how exactly it went, but I do remember it well enough to know that it went something like this. Someone would raise their hand and offer an answer, and they would say, well, you have to pray a prayer. And Greg would say, well, that's fine. Is it possible to pray a prayer that you don't mean? Is it possible to just say words that aren't sincere? A person would sit back down defeated. Yeah, it is. It's not prayer. There's no magic words to make ourselves right. We know that. Somebody else would say, well, you have to be committed. And I remember thinking like, that sounds pretty good. That's convincing. You have to be committed. And Greg says, okay, how committed do you have to be? They're like, like all the way committed? And they go, yeah, and sat back down because they knew they weren't all the way committed. They were a terrible Christian. And then somebody else says, you have to obey. You have to submit yourself to God and be humble and obey. And I remember thinking, oh, shoot. They might have it on this one. And to us, I think that that would make sense. If you were to ask us, what do we have to do to be right with God? What's our role in our rescue? We might say obey, especially in an Old Testament context. Those of us who know our Bible know that in the Old Testament, your spirituality, in some ways, it was very easy for it to drift towards measuring your spirituality on your ability to follow the rules. In the Old Testament, God gives the Ten Commandments. He gives the laws, 600 and something laws. It's like 630. There's 300 and something thou shouts and 200 and something thou shalt nots. And if you follow those and you do it just right, then God will love you and he'll approve of you and he'll bless you and he'll give you all the things that you ever wanted because you were obedient. And that feels right. It kind of makes sense. I obey God, I follow his rules, I honor him, I'll appease him, and then he'll like me and he'll give me all the things that I need. That's probably our role in our salvation, to obey. The problem with that answer, if we look at it for Passover, what was their role in their rescue? It couldn't have been obedience because the law didn't exist. Moses has yet to bring the Ten Commandments down the mountain. They have yet to write the book of Leviticus with all the 600 laws. They don't have any clear laws to follow. They did turn around and paint the blood on the doorframe, but that was just for that one plague. That wasn't what enacted their whole rescue. So the answer in the Old Testament really couldn't have been obedience. And listen, we know in our own lives, experientially, that obedience is not how we bridge the gap between us and God. Come on, church people. We've tried that, haven't we? Haven't you tried? Isn't it exhausting to try to obey your way to God's approval? If I have just the right attitude and I don't lash out at people and I can control my anger and the terrible thoughts that I think I just mutter under my breath and I don't give voice to them, or if I can ever become super, super nice and just never think those thoughts at all, if I'll watch my language, if I'll give to the church like I'm supposed to, if I'll serve where I'm supposed to, if I'll suffer the way that I should suffer and I don't have the fun that they have and I won't laugh at the jokes that they do and I won't watch the shows that they do and I will be very, very disciplined and we'll just white knuckle our lives to God's approval. Isn't that exhausting? Doesn't that wear you out? And haven't you found that at every effort to obey our way into God's favor is futile? And what's more sinister than that is we always fail. We inevitably fail. Do you understand that in the Old Testament, God gave us the rules to show us that we can't follow them so that we would conclude that we have a need for him? And so when we think that we can obey our way towards God's approval, and we try really hard to do all the things, to dot all the I's and cross all the T's and be the person that God wants us to be, and we fail, we assume that we don't have his approval. That our Father's in heaven looking down at us disappointed. And I think that if you get nothing else today, especially if you're someone who's been a believer for a long time, if you don't hear anything else I say, maybe this morning can be the time when you finally, finally, finally let go of the idea of winning God's approval and admiration through obedience. We cannot perform our way into God's favor. And can I confess something to you? I'm 38 years old. I really do believe that I came to know the Lord at the age of four. And that I've been rescued for 34 years. I still cannot figure out how to quit trying to win God's approval through my behavior and through what I do and through how I perform. I still can't figure out how to just know that God loves me and to exist outside of this performance-based economy. Who knows, maybe if I preach hard enough today, I'll finally get it too. So if you haven't figured it out yet, you've got at least me as company. But it's not obedience. That's not the answer. That's not our role in our rescue, obeying our way to God's favor. And so it was at this point in the night that I thought, I think I've got it. I think I'm ready. I'm ready to crack the code. So I speak up and I said, Greg, you've got to love God. You've got to love him. And I felt like I was on good biblical standing for this because Jesus says the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, amen. How about them apples, Greg? So he says that's a good answer. How much do you have to love God? Like what percentage? Like 100? He goes, yeah. Do you love God 100%? No. And I sat back down. And all 300 heads turned to me aghast. How could you not love God 100%? And I just remember thinking, you shut up, you hypocrites. Like, you don't either. You're judging me. That's not loving. So it was a... But that wasn't the answer either. And that night, after everyone finally gave up, Greg offers us the answer, and he says, nothing. There's nothing you can do. But as I reflect on Scripture and what my life has taught me and a passage that I see in Exodus chapter 2, I don't think that's the answer either. I don't think it's nothing. I think that they did something, and I think we see the something that they did in Exodus chapter 2, verses 23 through 25. If you don't have a Bible, there's one in the seat back in front of you. Exodus is the second book of the Bible. And at the end of this chapter, it kind of bridges the gap. Before this, the author of Exodus is setting up what's going on, just what's happening in the culture. And basically what he's told us is there's people, the Hebrew people are slaves. They've been slaves for 400 years, but there's this boy named Moses who was born and he was adopted into Pharaoh's home and he grew up learning to lead. But then God put him in the desert for 40 years because he murdered some people and he needed to be prepared for the leadership. And then God is about to call him in chapter three. But right before God calls Moses to rescue his people for his part in rescuing his people. We see what the people did that I think is because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God, and God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel, and God knew. These people were slaves. They had been for 400 years. Can you imagine what it would have been like to be a civilization of slaves? To look your children in the eye when you have them and know that their life is not going to be any better than your miserable life. To know as fathers and mothers, there's nothing I can do to bring about a change for you. To feel that impotent and powerless. Can you imagine how anonymous the people of Israel must have felt? There's no nations around them that are going to swoop in and overthrow Egypt and free them. That's not on the geopolitical agenda. No one's going to pick a fight with Egypt. Most nations probably don't even know that they're there. They're totally unseen and totally unknown. They're completely impotent and helpless. And I think based on the beginning of this passage, it says, during those many days, the king of Egypt died. I think that they were hoping, this Pharaoh stinks. He treats us really poorly. Maybe if we can hold out long enough, he'll die and the next one will be nicer. But the Bible tells us that the next one was worse. And I happen to believe that this is when they gave up their last strand of hope. And in this hopelessness, in this isolation, in this feeling of impotence, the people of Israel cry out to God. They groaned in their slavery. And I think that there's a quality to this cry. I think there's essential qualities to this cry. I think that this was an earnest, admissive cry. Earnest in the idea that God, this is broken. This is not supposed to work like this. We're your people and life shouldn't feel like this. This is not how it's supposed to go, God. You didn't design it this way. Life feels broken. And I think that we felt that before too. God, this is not how this is supposed to go. This feels broken. This doesn't feel right. God, I'm not happy. God, we are miserable. God, we are hopeless. So there's this earnest, honest cry that this is broken. And then there's this admission, and we can't fix it ourselves. The next Pharaoh isn't going to fix it. Some other country's not going to come in and fix it. We're not going to rise up in rebellion and overtake and overthrow. We don't have any options, God. We cannot fix this. We are totally and completely reliant on your favor and your mercy. God, help us. It's an earnest admission. God, this is broken, and we are impotent to fix it. And when they let out this earnest cry of admission, what does God do? I love these three words. It says he remembers them, he saw them, and he knew. God doesn't forget things. It's not as though when they cried out that God was in heaven preoccupied with dealing with something with the angels and went, oh my goodness, man, 400 years goes by so quick. I am so sorry that I left you guys in Egypt. He doesn't forget. It's a way to say that this is when God acknowledged them. He saw and he knew. He didn't just then see. That's not a present tense. It had always seen and he had always known. And that know there is an intimate know. It's an intimate word. It's a word of empathy. Not only did he know what they were going through, but he had personally felt what they were going through. And it tells me that our God never forgets us. He doesn't forget that we exist and we are never at any point unseen, no matter how isolated we feel, no matter how hopeless we might feel, he sees us and he knows. That's why he's called El Roy, the God who sees. Do you know the power of being seen? Of being known? Have you ever been walking through something in your life that was incredibly difficult and had someone come alongside you and say, hey, I've been through that before. I know it's tough. Let me tell you what I learned from that experience. You know how life-giving that is? Have you felt the power of being seen and known? So when they cry out, this earnest, admissive cry, it says, God remembered them, he saw them, and he knew them. And then, the very next chapter, he calls Moses and enacts his grand plan of rescue. But if you were to ask me, for the people of Israel, what was their role in their rescue? I would tell you it was to come to a place where they let out an earnest, admissive cry to God. God, this is broken, and we can't fix it. So for you, what's your role in your rescue? What's your role in your salvation? If you're here this morning and you don't know Jesus, what do I do to be saved? You let out an earnest and admissive cry to the Father, Father, this is broken and I'm impotent to fix it. Father, life was not supposed to feel this way. I have all the things that I want. I have the job that I want. I have the house that I want. I have the family that I want. I have the toys that I want. And I still feel empty. I still don't like the quiet. I still don't like the silence. I'm still uncomfortable with my own thoughts. I'm still not at peace. Father, I need you because I thought that this was going to make me happy and it hasn't. Father, I have all the kids that I want and I'm still not happy. Father, I have everything in my life that I want and it's still not doing it. God, I had that and I lost it and then I reached for this other thing and I thought that that would be the thing that made me feel okay, that made me feel at peace, that made me feel happy and it's not. It's just another lurch at empty. God, I need you because this is broken and I don't know how to fix it. That's what salvation is. What's our role in our rescue to salvation? It's an earnest cry to the Father. What's our role and our rescue from sin? Many of us here, we're believers. We know we're believers. We don't doubt that, but man, there is just sin in our life that we cannot kick. We have things that are growing in the shadows that we are terrified are going to tear us down. We have attitudes that we can't get over. We don't like the way we act when we're angry, but we still have a temper. What's our role in our rescue for sin? It's the same thing. To make an earnest cry to God, God, I'm broken. I don't know how to fix myself. I've tried everything I know how to try to get better at this, to not sin in this way anymore, to not let you down. I've tried everything that I possibly can, and I don't know what else to do. And I think God says, good, because I love you anyways, whether you do this or not. And I'm ready to rescue you if you'll make space for me. What do we do? What's our role in victory over sin? It's an earnest cry to the Father, God, this is broken and I am impotent to fix it. It's the same for spiritual success. What do we do to raise kids who love the Lord? What do we do to have a healthy, vibrant marriage so that when people look at it, they go, man, that is a picture of how Jesus loves his church, which is what the Bible tells us our marriage is supposed to be. How do we live up to that picture? How do we obey Paul and live a life worthy of the calling that we have received? How do we obey the author of Hebrews and run the race that is set before us by throwing off every sin and weight that so easily entangles? How do we do all of that that feels so impossible? We cry out to the Lord, God, I'm broken and I'm impotent to fix it. I need you. I think that this is the cry for salvation. And I think it is the cry for a believer every day. Every day that you wake up and this isn't what we say to the Lord, Lord, I'm broken today and I need you today and I'm impotent to execute your will today. Every day we wake up and we think that we're going to step into it and do it ourselves, that our role and our rescue is our performance, we're going to hurt that day. So this morning, I want to invite you to the same thing that I believe Passover invites us to, to make an earnest cry to the Father. Maybe for the first time if we don't know him. Father, I'm broken and I'm impotent to fix myself. I need your rescue. I'm going to pray and then the band is going to come. They're going to lead us in one more song. And I want you, as we sing together, make that your cry to the Father. In this song, we'll sing the lyrics, Our Hearts Cry Out. Let's honor Passover today and make a collective cry to the Father. God, we need you. We're broken without you. And it says in Exodus that when his people cried out to him that God saw them. And as we cry out in a few minutes, I want you to know that the God who saw all of his children still sees his child. Let's cry out to him together. Let's pray. God, you are good. You are a good father. Even for those of us who didn't have good dads, you are a good father. God, if there's anything in us that's still holding on to a pride of success or of performance or of being good enough, help us to let that go. Help us be like your children in Israel who cry out to you earnestly and admissively that we are broken and that we need you. God, we feel your rescue rushing into impossible situations even today. In Jesus' name, amen.
Well, good morning. My name is Nate. Before I jump into the sermon, I wanted to pray for a couple of our Grace partners. Most of us don't know this, but there's a couple that are in their 30s named Matthew and Brianna Brown, and they have been in the process of adoption for probably the better part of a year, I would say, if not longer than that. And they actually flew to Columbia in South America this morning to pick up three teenagers that they're adopting from Columbia, which is amazing. This is our primary way to grow at Grace, is to just go get children and then bring them here. So we're very grateful for that. But really and truly, I want to first of all just celebrate their faithfulness to do that and God's goodness in granting them these children. And then also just pray for them as they're there and as they come back and we surround them as a church family. So stop and pray with me and then I'll jump right into the sermon. Father, we are so grateful for you and the way that you love us. We are grateful that you have adopted us into your family, that you give us this picture. God, thank you so much for what you've placed on the heart of Matthew and Brianna. We pray that you would calm their nerves, that you would give them wisdom as they meet their new children, that you would give those children wisdom and grace as they meet their new parents. God, we can't imagine all the thoughts and feelings and emotions swirling around, but we know that this is a family that you have built and constructed with your will. And so we just ask for your blessing on them. We ask for a safe, good, beneficial trip. We ask for good assimilation as they arrive in the States. And God, we ask for special insight as a church, for ways to love them and show those kids that they are welcome here and they are a part of our family. It's in your son's name we pray these things. Amen. One of my favorite things about the Bible is that it's not just 66 individual books, 39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament. It's not just a string of 66 individual books that exist independently from one another, like a history book or something, but rather the Bible is a tapestry of stories woven to present to us one big overarching story. And one of my favorite parts about that tapestry and learning more about it as a pastor is to look at the things in the Old Testament that are pictures or signposts that point us to the New Testament and more specifically point us to Jesus. If you spent any time in church, you know of some of these signposts and perhaps the most popular one, the one that's the most well-known, that we're most aware of, even if you're here this morning and you wouldn't call yourself a believer, or this is your first time in a church in a long time, or maybe ever, you would probably recognize the term Passover. It's still a holiday that the Jewish faith celebrates. It's still something that we acknowledge on a regular basis as believers. And to me, it's one of the more clear signposts or pictures in the Old Testament that points to an event in the New Testament that points very clearly to Jesus. And Passover is the fourth feast that we're looking at in our series as we go through all the feasts and festivals that were in the Old Testament calendar that God prescribed in the book of Leviticus, chapter 23. This is the fourth one. We've got two more to go. And for this morning, I did want us to kind of catch up on Passover and know what it is, but then I want us to ask a really important question about Passover and what brought it about. So just so we're on the same page and we understand what Passover is, it's actually the tenth plague that God inflicted on the Egyptian people. The situation is God's people, his chosen people, the descendants of Abraham, have existed in the nation of Egypt as slaves for 400 years. It's all that they know. It's generation after generation. They are a people. They are a people of slaves. And so in Exodus chapter 3, God grabs one of the guys that he's chosen to use, a guy named Moses, and he appears to him in a burning bush. And he says, Moses, I want you to go to Egypt and I want you to free my people. Which is a pretty tall order, because he would lead a nation of slaves against the most powerful nation in the world. Egypt was the worldwide superpower at the time, so it felt like a pretty hopeless errand. But he says, I want you to go free my people. To help you do that, I'm going to inflict plagues on the Egyptians. Moses didn't know that at the time, but over time it became apparent that that was God's plan. And so Moses goes to Pharaoh and he says, you need to let God's people go. And Pharaoh says, you're ridiculous. I don't think so. This is a loose paraphrase of a conversation in Exodus. And then God starts to inflict the plagues on the Egyptian people. The waters turn to blood. There's a swarm of locusts. There's gnats. The day has turned to night. The livestock dies. There's boils. There's other plagues that are inflicted on the Egyptian people to soften Pharaoh's heart. And a couple of times he says, you guys got to get out of here. We're tired of these plagues. And then he changes his mind. He says, nope, you got to stay here. Just kidding, you can't go. So they keep them as slaves. The tenth plague becomes known as the Passover. This was the one that finally softened Pharaoh enough to get him to let the people of Israel go. And Passover, what God told Moses to do is to go to Pharaoh and tell Pharaoh, tonight the angel of death is going to pass over all the nation of Egypt. And that angel is going to claim the firstborn of every family, even of the livestock. And God tells Moses that if you want protection from this angel that's going to come as the final plague, that what you need to do is you need to go find a lamb. Sacrifice the lamb and then take the blood of the lamb and paint it on your doorposts, on the top and on the sides. And when the angel passes over Egypt, if that blood is on your doorframe of your house, then he will pass over you and the death that was supposed to happen in your house will not occur because I will accept the death of the lamb that died in their place. And so that's what happens that night. The angel of death passes over the nation of Egypt and the families that didn't have the blood on their doorframe lost their firstborn. And it said that the cry in Egypt that night was great. And the next morning, in his sorrow at losing his own son, Pharaoh tells Moses, get out of here. Go. And Moses gets all the people. They take some gold and some jewelry from their Egyptian slave masters, and they go out into the desert, and they begin to search for the promised land. And that's the story of God's rescue of his people out of slavery. He does it through the series of the ten plagues capped off by what's called now the Passover because the angel of death was passing over Egypt and would pass over your home if you had the blood of the lamb on your doorpost. And it's a very clear picture of Jesus in the New Testament. Very clear picture. When Jesus arrives on the scene, he's introduced by a man named John the Baptist. And John the Baptist, when he sees Jesus of Nazareth walking towards him, says, Behold, the Lamb of God who comes to take away the sins of the world. Jesus was the spotless Lamb. And just like in the Old Testament, the lamb died so that your home didn't have to experience death. In the New Testament, the lamb dies so that we don't have to experience death. In the Old Testament, the lamb dies at Passover so that God says, there's no penalty required here. You guys are right with me. Just like that in the New Testament, Jesus dies, the Lamb of God, and God looks at that death and he says, that's good. There's no penalty required here because the Lamb has died on your behalf. It is a one-to-one picture that points us to the miracle of Jesus in the New Testament. The Lamb makes us right with God in the Old Testament, and then the Lamb makes us right with God in the New Testament. Passover is a picture of salvation. And now most of you here, this was really my challenge this week, you're church people. You know what Passover is. You could have just done this part so far. And so I thought, I wonder, what are the important questions to ask around Passover that can help us now as we reflect on that festival? And the question occurred to me, what was it that brought about the Passover? What was it that the people of Israel did that got God, enacted God, spurred God, was a catalytic event for God to say, now is when I want to enact my grand plan of rescue? Really what I want to ask is, what was their role in their rescue? What part did they have to play? What did they do? If we were to ask the question today, we would say, what's our role in our salvation? What do I have to do to be saved? We've all asked this question before. Before you were a believer, or now if you're not yet a believer, you would wonder, what do I need to do to be saved? What's required of me? What's my role in my rescue? Some of us wonder if we did it right, if we prayed the prayer right, or if we really meant it, or if we really obey enough. We don't really know if we did everything right, and we wonder still, what's my role in my rescue? What's my role in my salvation? What's our role in our rescue? What do I need to do to be saved? What's my role in my salvation? It's all the same question. And I remember when I was 17 years old, I was at a summer camp called Look Up Lodge. I've mentioned it before. And the camp director was a man named Greg Boone. And he asked the same question, but he just asked it this way. He came out and he asked all the students. There's about 300 kids at the camp that year. And he asked us, what do you have to do to be right with God? What do I have to do to be right with God? And it's one of these questions that somebody asks it and you know that you don't know the answer and that to give an answer, you're just going to get made fun of. Like my dad loves these kinds of questions. My dad asked me one time, son, and I was, I mean, I graduated from seminary. I had reason to believe that I could answer this question. He looks at me and he goes, son, what's the Bible about? And I'm like, geez, I don't know. I mean, I feel like it's about God. Like, that feels like a good answer. And he goes, no, it's about missions. Great, great dad, whatever. You're ridiculous. He's going to listen to this. I still, dad, I still think you're ridiculous. So it's one of those questions. He says, what can we do to be right with God? And we all know that we're not going to get it right, but there are those of us for whom the glory of the correct answer is too irresistible, right? If I get this right, if I somehow unlock the code and I'm the one that's correct, then I will get all the esteem of all of my peers and everyone here is going to know I'm the smartest one. So we have to try. A lot of kids had the sense to not try, but some kids did try. And I don't remember how exactly it went, but I do remember it well enough to know that it went something like this. Someone would raise their hand and offer an answer, and they would say, well, you have to pray a prayer. And Greg would say, well, that's fine. Is it possible to pray a prayer that you don't mean? Is it possible to just say words that aren't sincere? A person would sit back down defeated. Yeah, it is. It's not prayer. There's no magic words to make ourselves right. We know that. Somebody else would say, well, you have to be committed. And I remember thinking like, that sounds pretty good. That's convincing. You have to be committed. And Greg says, okay, how committed do you have to be? They're like, like all the way committed? And they go, yeah, and sat back down because they knew they weren't all the way committed. They were a terrible Christian. And then somebody else says, you have to obey. You have to submit yourself to God and be humble and obey. And I remember thinking, oh, shoot. They might have it on this one. And to us, I think that that would make sense. If you were to ask us, what do we have to do to be right with God? What's our role in our rescue? We might say obey, especially in an Old Testament context. Those of us who know our Bible know that in the Old Testament, your spirituality, in some ways, it was very easy for it to drift towards measuring your spirituality on your ability to follow the rules. In the Old Testament, God gives the Ten Commandments. He gives the laws, 600 and something laws. It's like 630. There's 300 and something thou shouts and 200 and something thou shalt nots. And if you follow those and you do it just right, then God will love you and he'll approve of you and he'll bless you and he'll give you all the things that you ever wanted because you were obedient. And that feels right. It kind of makes sense. I obey God, I follow his rules, I honor him, I'll appease him, and then he'll like me and he'll give me all the things that I need. That's probably our role in our salvation, to obey. The problem with that answer, if we look at it for Passover, what was their role in their rescue? It couldn't have been obedience because the law didn't exist. Moses has yet to bring the Ten Commandments down the mountain. They have yet to write the book of Leviticus with all the 600 laws. They don't have any clear laws to follow. They did turn around and paint the blood on the doorframe, but that was just for that one plague. That wasn't what enacted their whole rescue. So the answer in the Old Testament really couldn't have been obedience. And listen, we know in our own lives, experientially, that obedience is not how we bridge the gap between us and God. Come on, church people. We've tried that, haven't we? Haven't you tried? Isn't it exhausting to try to obey your way to God's approval? If I have just the right attitude and I don't lash out at people and I can control my anger and the terrible thoughts that I think I just mutter under my breath and I don't give voice to them, or if I can ever become super, super nice and just never think those thoughts at all, if I'll watch my language, if I'll give to the church like I'm supposed to, if I'll serve where I'm supposed to, if I'll suffer the way that I should suffer and I don't have the fun that they have and I won't laugh at the jokes that they do and I won't watch the shows that they do and I will be very, very disciplined and we'll just white knuckle our lives to God's approval. Isn't that exhausting? Doesn't that wear you out? And haven't you found that at every effort to obey our way into God's favor is futile? And what's more sinister than that is we always fail. We inevitably fail. Do you understand that in the Old Testament, God gave us the rules to show us that we can't follow them so that we would conclude that we have a need for him? And so when we think that we can obey our way towards God's approval, and we try really hard to do all the things, to dot all the I's and cross all the T's and be the person that God wants us to be, and we fail, we assume that we don't have his approval. That our Father's in heaven looking down at us disappointed. And I think that if you get nothing else today, especially if you're someone who's been a believer for a long time, if you don't hear anything else I say, maybe this morning can be the time when you finally, finally, finally let go of the idea of winning God's approval and admiration through obedience. We cannot perform our way into God's favor. And can I confess something to you? I'm 38 years old. I really do believe that I came to know the Lord at the age of four. And that I've been rescued for 34 years. I still cannot figure out how to quit trying to win God's approval through my behavior and through what I do and through how I perform. I still can't figure out how to just know that God loves me and to exist outside of this performance-based economy. Who knows, maybe if I preach hard enough today, I'll finally get it too. So if you haven't figured it out yet, you've got at least me as company. But it's not obedience. That's not the answer. That's not our role in our rescue, obeying our way to God's favor. And so it was at this point in the night that I thought, I think I've got it. I think I'm ready. I'm ready to crack the code. So I speak up and I said, Greg, you've got to love God. You've got to love him. And I felt like I was on good biblical standing for this because Jesus says the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, amen. How about them apples, Greg? So he says that's a good answer. How much do you have to love God? Like what percentage? Like 100? He goes, yeah. Do you love God 100%? No. And I sat back down. And all 300 heads turned to me aghast. How could you not love God 100%? And I just remember thinking, you shut up, you hypocrites. Like, you don't either. You're judging me. That's not loving. So it was a... But that wasn't the answer either. And that night, after everyone finally gave up, Greg offers us the answer, and he says, nothing. There's nothing you can do. But as I reflect on Scripture and what my life has taught me and a passage that I see in Exodus chapter 2, I don't think that's the answer either. I don't think it's nothing. I think that they did something, and I think we see the something that they did in Exodus chapter 2, verses 23 through 25. If you don't have a Bible, there's one in the seat back in front of you. Exodus is the second book of the Bible. And at the end of this chapter, it kind of bridges the gap. Before this, the author of Exodus is setting up what's going on, just what's happening in the culture. And basically what he's told us is there's people, the Hebrew people are slaves. They've been slaves for 400 years, but there's this boy named Moses who was born and he was adopted into Pharaoh's home and he grew up learning to lead. But then God put him in the desert for 40 years because he murdered some people and he needed to be prepared for the leadership. And then God is about to call him in chapter three. But right before God calls Moses to rescue his people for his part in rescuing his people. We see what the people did that I think is because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God, and God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel, and God knew. These people were slaves. They had been for 400 years. Can you imagine what it would have been like to be a civilization of slaves? To look your children in the eye when you have them and know that their life is not going to be any better than your miserable life. To know as fathers and mothers, there's nothing I can do to bring about a change for you. To feel that impotent and powerless. Can you imagine how anonymous the people of Israel must have felt? There's no nations around them that are going to swoop in and overthrow Egypt and free them. That's not on the geopolitical agenda. No one's going to pick a fight with Egypt. Most nations probably don't even know that they're there. They're totally unseen and totally unknown. They're completely impotent and helpless. And I think based on the beginning of this passage, it says, during those many days, the king of Egypt died. I think that they were hoping, this Pharaoh stinks. He treats us really poorly. Maybe if we can hold out long enough, he'll die and the next one will be nicer. But the Bible tells us that the next one was worse. And I happen to believe that this is when they gave up their last strand of hope. And in this hopelessness, in this isolation, in this feeling of impotence, the people of Israel cry out to God. They groaned in their slavery. And I think that there's a quality to this cry. I think there's essential qualities to this cry. I think that this was an earnest, admissive cry. Earnest in the idea that God, this is broken. This is not supposed to work like this. We're your people and life shouldn't feel like this. This is not how it's supposed to go, God. You didn't design it this way. Life feels broken. And I think that we felt that before too. God, this is not how this is supposed to go. This feels broken. This doesn't feel right. God, I'm not happy. God, we are miserable. God, we are hopeless. So there's this earnest, honest cry that this is broken. And then there's this admission, and we can't fix it ourselves. The next Pharaoh isn't going to fix it. Some other country's not going to come in and fix it. We're not going to rise up in rebellion and overtake and overthrow. We don't have any options, God. We cannot fix this. We are totally and completely reliant on your favor and your mercy. God, help us. It's an earnest admission. God, this is broken, and we are impotent to fix it. And when they let out this earnest cry of admission, what does God do? I love these three words. It says he remembers them, he saw them, and he knew. God doesn't forget things. It's not as though when they cried out that God was in heaven preoccupied with dealing with something with the angels and went, oh my goodness, man, 400 years goes by so quick. I am so sorry that I left you guys in Egypt. He doesn't forget. It's a way to say that this is when God acknowledged them. He saw and he knew. He didn't just then see. That's not a present tense. It had always seen and he had always known. And that know there is an intimate know. It's an intimate word. It's a word of empathy. Not only did he know what they were going through, but he had personally felt what they were going through. And it tells me that our God never forgets us. He doesn't forget that we exist and we are never at any point unseen, no matter how isolated we feel, no matter how hopeless we might feel, he sees us and he knows. That's why he's called El Roy, the God who sees. Do you know the power of being seen? Of being known? Have you ever been walking through something in your life that was incredibly difficult and had someone come alongside you and say, hey, I've been through that before. I know it's tough. Let me tell you what I learned from that experience. You know how life-giving that is? Have you felt the power of being seen and known? So when they cry out, this earnest, admissive cry, it says, God remembered them, he saw them, and he knew them. And then, the very next chapter, he calls Moses and enacts his grand plan of rescue. But if you were to ask me, for the people of Israel, what was their role in their rescue? I would tell you it was to come to a place where they let out an earnest, admissive cry to God. God, this is broken, and we can't fix it. So for you, what's your role in your rescue? What's your role in your salvation? If you're here this morning and you don't know Jesus, what do I do to be saved? You let out an earnest and admissive cry to the Father, Father, this is broken and I'm impotent to fix it. Father, life was not supposed to feel this way. I have all the things that I want. I have the job that I want. I have the house that I want. I have the family that I want. I have the toys that I want. And I still feel empty. I still don't like the quiet. I still don't like the silence. I'm still uncomfortable with my own thoughts. I'm still not at peace. Father, I need you because I thought that this was going to make me happy and it hasn't. Father, I have all the kids that I want and I'm still not happy. Father, I have everything in my life that I want and it's still not doing it. God, I had that and I lost it and then I reached for this other thing and I thought that that would be the thing that made me feel okay, that made me feel at peace, that made me feel happy and it's not. It's just another lurch at empty. God, I need you because this is broken and I don't know how to fix it. That's what salvation is. What's our role in our rescue to salvation? It's an earnest cry to the Father. What's our role and our rescue from sin? Many of us here, we're believers. We know we're believers. We don't doubt that, but man, there is just sin in our life that we cannot kick. We have things that are growing in the shadows that we are terrified are going to tear us down. We have attitudes that we can't get over. We don't like the way we act when we're angry, but we still have a temper. What's our role in our rescue for sin? It's the same thing. To make an earnest cry to God, God, I'm broken. I don't know how to fix myself. I've tried everything I know how to try to get better at this, to not sin in this way anymore, to not let you down. I've tried everything that I possibly can, and I don't know what else to do. And I think God says, good, because I love you anyways, whether you do this or not. And I'm ready to rescue you if you'll make space for me. What do we do? What's our role in victory over sin? It's an earnest cry to the Father, God, this is broken and I am impotent to fix it. It's the same for spiritual success. What do we do to raise kids who love the Lord? What do we do to have a healthy, vibrant marriage so that when people look at it, they go, man, that is a picture of how Jesus loves his church, which is what the Bible tells us our marriage is supposed to be. How do we live up to that picture? How do we obey Paul and live a life worthy of the calling that we have received? How do we obey the author of Hebrews and run the race that is set before us by throwing off every sin and weight that so easily entangles? How do we do all of that that feels so impossible? We cry out to the Lord, God, I'm broken and I'm impotent to fix it. I need you. I think that this is the cry for salvation. And I think it is the cry for a believer every day. Every day that you wake up and this isn't what we say to the Lord, Lord, I'm broken today and I need you today and I'm impotent to execute your will today. Every day we wake up and we think that we're going to step into it and do it ourselves, that our role and our rescue is our performance, we're going to hurt that day. So this morning, I want to invite you to the same thing that I believe Passover invites us to, to make an earnest cry to the Father. Maybe for the first time if we don't know him. Father, I'm broken and I'm impotent to fix myself. I need your rescue. I'm going to pray and then the band is going to come. They're going to lead us in one more song. And I want you, as we sing together, make that your cry to the Father. In this song, we'll sing the lyrics, Our Hearts Cry Out. Let's honor Passover today and make a collective cry to the Father. God, we need you. We're broken without you. And it says in Exodus that when his people cried out to him that God saw them. And as we cry out in a few minutes, I want you to know that the God who saw all of his children still sees his child. Let's cry out to him together. Let's pray. God, you are good. You are a good father. Even for those of us who didn't have good dads, you are a good father. God, if there's anything in us that's still holding on to a pride of success or of performance or of being good enough, help us to let that go. Help us be like your children in Israel who cry out to you earnestly and admissively that we are broken and that we need you. God, we feel your rescue rushing into impossible situations even today. In Jesus' name, amen.
Well, good morning. Thanks for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten to meet you yet, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service. This last week on Wednesday, it was Lily's spring break. Lily's my seven-year-old daughter. She's going to play prominently in the following story. It's her spring break, and so Jen said, can you take the day and come with us to the zoo? Which I have a love-hate relationship with the zoo. I love the fact that my kids get to see animals. John, my two-year-old son, he'll be two in a couple of weeks, he loves animals. He says all the animal names. He's probably in that room right there saying animal things right now. Like, he just loves animals. So for him to be able to see animals for the first time, super cool. So I love that part. What I don't love about the zoo is literally everything else about the zoo. It is a cacophony of annoyances, particularly for me. I'm a man that probably has a disproportionate amount of pet peeves. I'm not saying I have a right to them. I just have them. I don't really know what to do with them. The chief among those are people who are walking slowly, just anywhere, just slow walkers. What do you, like saunterers in general, what are you doing? And then like if you're injured or something, I get it, okay? I got patience for that. But if you're just slow, I don't, like, move it along. And then another, like, huge one for me is when somebody seems to have no awareness whatsoever that there's anybody else around them that might need to use the same space that they're using. You know, like the people who just walk around like this, and they'll just stop. Like, it's crowded, okay? It's a beautiful day. It's spring break. I've never seen this many people at the zoo. It's so crowded. We're shoulder to shoulder, and some people are just going, oh, I'm sorry. Like, what do you mean you're sorry? Like, there's every, everybody's walking. You didn't, you thought that you were the one who was just alone and there was no one behind you. So anyways, I was just kind of on edge all day, right? And you go, and then the other thing, just so I can get this off my chest, I've got, I've got my two-year-old son. We got to, first of all, he doesn't want to be in the stroller. So when you put him in the stroller, you better be moving, baby, because he's going to start wiggling out of that thing. And I'm not going to buckle and unbuckle him every time. I can't be opening and shutting all those buckles. So then we're going and we get to the thing and you got to pick him up. My back's been hurting me. If you go to the zoo, it's like an eight mile hike. It's forever. It's the world's biggest land zoo. Big deal. Put the animals closer to me so I don't have to walk so far. I don't care about their habitat. Make them depressed and lifeless. Just I want to see them. So I got to pick up John, and I'm walking over to the display to look. And the thing that galled me is there's adults there. They're grownups, okay? And they're the ones standing in the front looking at the animals. Like, buddy, you're 35. Like, you've been to a zoo before. Can you just move out of the way for the kids? Like, I have no problems with kids standing and gawking, but, I mean, grownups, like, let's go. You got like a 10-second window. There's the giraffe. All right, move on. So anyways, I'm just going through this whole day. We get to the middle, we get to the junction, it's time to eat. I don't have a lot to say about what was there, except the wait was extraordinary. And we got two cheeseburger meals and a kid's meal and two bottles of water, and we paid $57 for it. And it was, this is not an understatement, atrocious. It was terrible. It was frozen brick burger that some guy tossed on the flat iron thing until it was warm enough to put between buns. Cheese wasn't melted. I have never, I have never had a greater discrepancy between the amount of money I paid and the quality I received. Never in my whole life. That's lunch at the zoo that day. Then we still got North America to go. There's Africa. You walk through Africa. I'm just halfway through the day. And I'm trying to hold it together. Jen's like, you know, it's kind of obvious when you get a little bit frustrated. And I'm like, what did I do? I was trying to be nice. Like, cause I'm, I'm trying to not ruin family day, you know, cause I can get over the edge and now everyone's having a bad time. So I'm just trying to mind my P's and Q's and white knuckle it to happiness. And she's like, well, it's, I said, well, how can you tell that I'm frustrated? And she, and this is what she said. I thought it was hilarious. She goes, it's just the way you hold your mouth. What do you want me to do about that? I'll ask for pictures. I don't know. So we go through North America. We start to go through North America. And Lily's seven. We've been hiking for four days. So she starts to just start in with the seven-year-old whining, just normal whining stuff. I'm tired. I'm hungry. I need a snack. And in my head, I'm like, John's two. He's entitled to whining. I can't handle you whining too. So just suck it up, kid. Like, let's go. So that's starting to fray a little bit. And we get done. We're all exhausted. We get in the car. We go home. It's nice and peaceful and quiet. And you're resting because that's a whole thing. So everybody's exhausted. We get home. We rest for a little bit, eat a little bit of dinner. Lily's got soccer practice. So we go to soccer practice. She does great. We're walking back to the car, and we play at the Y. I don't know if you've been over to the Y off of Strickland. There's the lower fields that are a good half mile away from the car. The parking situation there is miserable. So you've got to walk up. I'm just a grumpy old man today. I don't know why I said today. You got to walk up to the car. It's a long walk to the car. So we're walking up to the car and Lily starts in with the whining again. My feet hurt. Daddy, can I have a shoulder ride? No, baby, you can't. Because earlier in the day, I gave John a shoulder ride. That's all she wanted all day is a shoulder ride. I'm like, you weigh 70 pounds and my back hurts. Like not today. I'm sorry. You should have had a younger dad. So I'm like, no, I can't do it. She keeps whining. My feet hurt. I'm like, well, there's nothing we can do about it. We got to get to the car. Daddy, I don't want to walk anymore. And finally I was like, sweetheart, you got to stop with the whining. I don't want to hear any more whining. Not another, not another word of whining, or I'm going to have to start taking away screen time tomorrow. Stop it. So then we're walking, and she's not saying a word of whining, but it's, I'm like, oh my gosh, I just want this day to end. She's exhausted. I'm exhausted. We get to the car, and she was supposed to make her water bottle before she left. Jen told her to do that. She forgot. I noticed that she forgot. I made her water bottle. I threw it in there. Then we get to the car, and she starts complaining that I didn't give her enough water. And I'm like, you wouldn't have any water if I didn't notice it and make you some. So literally any water that I gave you was enough water. And then we start this back and forth. She's tired. I know she's tired. She's fatigued from a very long day. I know she is. Her emotions are spilling out on me. I know they are. But eventually she said that one more thing before we pulled out of the parking lot. And I slammed my hand down on the center console. She immediately starts crying. And in my head, because I'm a jerk, I think, good. And I turned around. I turned around and I let her have it. You have been like this and this and this and this all day and I'm done with it. I'm done. Stop it. Do you hear me? And she looked at me and she started to say something back. I said, stop. She's crying. I drive home. It wasn't good. I'm telling you that story not because I'm proud of it. Far from it. I actually think that the rapidity with which I get annoyed is probably my least favorite thing about myself. I do wish I had a lot more patience. I do wish I didn't get annoyed at people just enjoying the zoo, but I do. And I do wish that I wouldn't blow up at my daughter because she doesn't deserve that. And I don't want her to grow up in a home where that's part of the climate and just a regular thing. So, you know, we went back and made that right. But I share that with you because I think that we've all had those moments. I think that we've all lashed out at people in ways that we regret. Most of us in this room are parents. I'm pretty sure that you all have your stories too. If you don't, please buy me lunch and tell me your secrets. Unless it's medication. I don't want to go that route. I think we all have those times when we get overwhelmed and we're feeling so many different emotions that we don't know what to do. And so we blow up or we have a blowout and we lash out and we slam our hand on the center console and we yell at a seven-year-old until they cry to make us feel better about the situation. I think if we're not parents and we haven't blown up in that way, we're all kids. We all have parents. Maybe we've blown up at them. Maybe we've lashed out at friends, co-workers, up the chain or down the chain. I think we all have those moments that we're not proud of when our emotions get too big and we act in ways that we wish we could change. And so that's what this series is about, big emotions. What do we do when we feel overwhelmed, when we are going to have a blow up or a blow out? And we'll talk about what does God want from us in these moments. We'll talk about what did we do to bring this on ourselves. We'll talk about how it affects other people. We'll talk about what do we do when somebody else lashes out and blows up on us. But because we all have those moments, we thought it would be worth it to take six or seven weeks here in the spring and just kind of ask the question, what are we supposed to do with big emotions and those moments that we feel overwhelmed or the people around us are acting out because they're overwhelmed? So I hope that that's helpful for you. And I will also confess the way that I write sermons is I kind of write half of it during the week. And then on Sunday morning, I come in really early and I make myself say it out loud in the hallway over there and kind of piece together really what I want it to be. And after I finished it this morning, I drove home and I said, man, my sermon has really convicted me and I feel terrible. And I'm really going to work on this. So if you guys don't like this, I do. This has been really helpful for me. But I hope that it's useful for you too. We're going to start the series by looking at the story of Peter cutting off the ear of a guard in the garden when Jesus was arrested. Because I think there's some foundational things in this story that are going to resound and help us for the rest of the series as we move through kind of this question of what do we do with big emotions. For those of you who are not familiar with the story, it's in all four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I think the most helpful detailed version is in John chapter 18. And so if you have a Bible, you can turn there. We're going to be in there a little bit looking at the story. But what's going on is Jesus has just gotten done praying in the garden of Gethsemane. It's after the last supper. Then he goes to the garden to pray. Then he gets the disciples. He says, all right, it's time to go. And they're walking back to the house where they were staying. And the guards from the high priest come to arrest Jesus. And in John's account, there's this amazing scene where I don't know how many guards there were. I've always assumed dozens, but I really don't know. They came to Jesus, and in other tellings of it, you see this is when Judas betrays him with a kiss. And then the guards say, are you Jesus? And he says, yes, I'm Jesus. Except he doesn't say, yes, I'm Jesus. They say, are you Jesus? And he says, I am he. And when he says that, this is amazing. When he says that, everybody who came to arrest him stepped back and fell down to the ground. Do you understand that? I don't know how that happened. I don't know if they were in like really tight formation and the first guy stepped back and it was some sort of domino situation where they just all fell, but I don't think so. I think when Jesus utters those words, I am, that they were an echo of Exodus 3 and 4, Moses at the burning bush, when he asked the burning bush, when he asked God, what's your name? And God says, you can't hold me to a name. I'm bigger than names. I'm not going to let you reduce me to that. I am. So God is the great I am. It's the great unutterable word. And Jesus says that, I am he. And they all step backwards and fall down to the ground. At which point, if I'm one of the people who's sent to arrest Jesus, I'm going to get up and dust myself off and say, there's been a misunderstanding. Mr. Jesus, very sorry about this. I'm going to go back to Caiaphas' house. But when that happens and they go to arrest him, this is what Peter does. Peter has a blowout. Peter lashes out. Peter really has had an emotional day. Peter really has had an emotional week. Five days before this happens, they're riding into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. And the disciples up to this point in Jesus's life still believe that Jesus came to establish a kingdom, but it's a physical earthly kingdom. Their brains, their minds can't wrap around what an eternal kingdom would be with a heavenly king. So they think it's going to be an earthly kingdom. And they really think that Jesus is going to go to Jerusalem, that he's going to overthrow King Herod, that he's going to overthrow Roman rule, that he's going to sit on the throne of David, rise Israel to national prominence, and that they're going to rule the world with him. That's what they think. And so when they're entering into Jerusalem, Peter and James and John are arguing who gets to be the secretary of defense and who gets to be the vice president and who has to be the secretary of the interior. Like that's what they're arguing about. They think they're going to be in these positions of political prominence, right hand to the king. And this whole week has started to move really fast. The whole week has been emotionally charged. The whole week has been expectant. And so then they get to Friday and they have the last supper. They celebrate Passover together. And Jesus says that Judas is going to betray him. And Judas leaves, which is weird. And all the disciples are trying to figure this out. And then he does this weird thing where he takes bread and he breaks it. And he says, this is my body that's broken for you. And they don't know what that means. And then he takes the wine and he pours it. And he says, this is the blood that spilled out for you. And they don't know what that means. Jesus has told them, I'm going to die. And on the third day, I'm going to raise again. And they're going, what does that mean? They have not figured it out yet. He's going to be the king. Then after this weird last supper where Jesus does the weird bread thing, he says, come and pray with me. They go to Gethsemane and they're praying. Jesus is praying. He's praying ardently. He's praying so ardently that sweat is kind of coming out of his pores. And we're going to talk about that in another one of the sermons in this series. And he's trying to get the disciples to stay awake, but it's late at night and they had wine with dinner, so they're sleepy. So they keep falling asleep, but Peter can tell something's up. And then Jesus gets them. They walk back to the house and on the way back to the house, here come the high priest guards to arrest his Jesus. And he freaks out. This is not, what's happening is not what's supposed to happen. This is not the way this is supposed to go. So what does he do? He lashes out, he grabs his sword, and he cuts off Malchus's ear. Now, here's what's important about that. Peter wasn't aiming for the ear. He's not like, I'm going to teach this dude a lesson. Clearly, he was going for the kill shot. Clearly, he was going for the head,chus moved or Peter was bad and it just got his ear. And in the other accounts, we see Jesus stoop down, pick up the ear, reattach it to the head and tell Peter to chill out. Peter lashed out. Peter slapped his hand on the center console and started yelling at people because he wanted to control things. And what I've always wondered about this story is that from when I was a real little kid and I encountered this story for the first time, I have always wondered this. How did Peter think his outburst was going to go? How did he think that was going to go down? What's your plan after that, Peter? Kill the first guy and then heroically sword fight your way out of danger with Jesus in tow? You and James and John, you're going to take down the whole guard of Caiaphas? Those guys are soldiers. They have armor. You're wearing a sheet and you have a sword on your hip and you're a fisherman. This is, what's the plan, buddy? Where do we go from here? It's honestly, and I'll meet him one day, and I don't think I'll apologize for this because I think he would agree. It was stupid. It's just dumb. What's your plan, buddy? And as I reflected on that more, what occurred to me is that in those moments when we feel overwhelmed and we lose our composure, we're admitting something. Losing your composure often admits your intimacy or your impotence. Losing your composure often admits our impotence. Not always. We're going to see an instance with Jesus losing his composure, and it certainly was not impotent. But most of the time in life, if you think about it, when you lose your composure, when you let it go, when you have a blowout or a blowup, really you're just confessing your own impotence and powerlessness to do anything that matters in the situation. What was Peter doing? Something impulsive. It was the only thing he could think of to do. It was completely useless, completely unhelpful, and he did it. And honestly, he made it worse. And Jesus had to cool things down. And when you think about when you blow out or blow up, when you yell at somebody, when you lash out, when you lash out at a colleague, or when you talk poorly behind someone's back, and you lash out at them unreasonably, or you lash out at your kids, or whatever it is, when you do that, when you blow up, when you lose your composure, aren't we often just confessing our impotence? Isn't that what I was doing in the car with Lily? What was going on in her is a combination of fatigue and being a seven-year-old and a heart that needs to develop gratitude and somebody that needs to understand, yeah, I made that water bottle for you so the correct attitude is to just be grateful for anything that's in there. But yelling at her until she cries is not going to teach her the heart lessons that she needs to learn to not do that again. It's completely impotent. It's helpless. It's frankly stupid and unuseful. And now in the same way that Jesus had to clean up Peter's mess by grabbing the ear and putting it back on Malchus's head, so does Jesus have to reach into the heart of my daughter and heal the wound that I put there because I lashed out in impotence. Our prayer as parents, I think, is that there's just not scar tissue because we ask Jesus to do that too many times. But as I think through the times in my life when I've lashed out, it tends to be because I just didn't know what else to do. And I felt things so much that they had to escape. Sometimes this lashing out and this impotence is more easily seen because sometimes it looks like tears. Sometimes we're overwhelmed and we retreat into the bathroom or we retreat to our room or we retreat to the house we retreat to the car, and then we just let it go. And isn't that, those tears, that sort of breaking down, isn't that an admission of our powerlessness as well? So in the story of the arrest in the garden, Peter gives us a great example of what not to do when we are overwhelmed. But it also begs the question, and this is really the guiding question for the series, what should we do when we feel overwhelmed? What's the right thing to do? How should Peter have handled that situation? How should I have handled my frustration on Wednesday? Well, if Peter, this is pretty simple stuff, if Peter is the bad example in the story, then Jesus must be the good example. So we look to Jesus, and we see how he handled the situation. A couple verses that throw, that shed some light on Jesus's handling of it. I'm going to look at verse 8 in chapter 18. Jesus answered very casually. I just love how matter-of-fact he is. I told you that I am he. I told you that I'm the guy that you want. So if you seek me, let these men go. Like, I'm the one you want. It's not them. I'll go with you. And then down in verse 11, just a reminder of what we read earlier, Jesus said to Peter, put your sword into its sheath. Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me? And then we see, I think, an even more useful response in Matthew chapter 26. Then Jesus said to him, put your sword back into its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my father and he will at once send more than 12 legions of angels? But how then should the scriptures be fulfilled that it must be so? So Jesus is calm, he is collected, he is wise, he is gracious, he is peaceful, he is patient. And I would point out, from a very human perspective, Jesus is dealing with all of Peter's emotions tenfold, probably a hundredfold. When they're going into Jerusalem and he's being welcomed as a conquering king and his disciples, those chuckleheads are behind him arguing about stuff that they don't know what it means. He's just walked through three years of ministry. He knows what's coming. He knows what's five days away. He knows where the nails are going to go. He knows where that crown of thorns is going to rest. He knows where the cross is going to hang. Jesus knows that. He knows the grave is waiting for him. He knows that the Romans have scientifically studied the most painful way to kill somebody and that that's going to happen to him. He knows what lays ahead, the cup that he has to drink. And we see his knowledge of that in his prayer in the garden of Gethsemane. He knows Judas is going to betray him. He knows the disciples do not understand. He's frustrated with the disciples because they can't stay awake. Can you imagine being Jesus? I need one thing from you. Can you please pray for me? After three years, I'm about to die for you and go to the grave for you, and you can't stay awake to pray for me? Can you imagine how frustrated he would be? And if anybody had the right to lash out at anyone for being ungrateful, it would be Jesus. And yet, when they came to arrest him, and when Peter does dumb stuff, he's quiet, and he's gracious, and he's peaceful, and he's kind. What Peter should have done in that situation, feeling overwhelmed, is look to the face of Jesus. If Jesus is peaceful, I can be peaceful. If Jesus isn't freaking out, I don't need to freak out. When we feel overwhelmed, we should look to Jesus. That's what I take away from this story. If Peter would have simply, as the guards approached, if he would have simply, like we sang earlier, turned his eyes to Jesus and looked at his face and see that he was nonplussed, that he was not worried, then he could have responded accordingly. But he didn't. He didn't look at Jesus. He looked at everything else and he acted impulsively and he lashed out. If he would have looked to Jesus, he could have responded well in the moment. If I, in my car, had had the wherewithal in my frustration to look to Jesus instead of at my daughter or at myself or inwardly at my own frustration and decided it's time to vent them. If I would have had the wherewithal to go to Jesus in prayer, I said, Jesus, I'm really frustrated. What should I do here? Please help me. Please show me what to do. Jesus, I'm frustrated. Please navigate my response for me. I'm fairly certain that if I had done that, that the nudge I would have felt from the Holy Spirit would not have been, you should really turn around and let her have it. She's got it coming. The nudge from Jesus would have been, calm down. She's wrong. She's also seven. You're an adult. Get her to bed. Talk to her tomorrow when you're both clear and you're not angry. That's what Jesus would have reminded me to do. But I didn't give him a chance. I just cut off that ear anyways. And then he had to clean up my mess. When we feel overwhelmed, overwhelmed with sadness, overwhelmed with grief, overwhelmed with anger, overwhelmed with frustration, overwhelmed with whatever it is that's piling on us and it's just too much, before we blow out and before we blow up, if we can teach ourselves to simply turn our eyes to Jesus and look to him, then in those moments when we feel overwhelmed, we will handle them in ways that we do not regret later. We will cut off far less ears. Here's the other thing about Jesus' response in that moment. I think that the reason, the main reason that Jesus was so calm and placid in this moment is because he knew the plan. Look at his responses. What does he talk about? Peter, what are you trying to do? I have to do this. Stop it. I've got to go. This is part of the plan. Would you have me not obey my father? He says, do you not think I could do something different? Do you not think I could bring down 12 legions of angels right now and handle these guys? Like it wouldn't be a problem. I just knocked them down with my words, Peter. I'm not going anywhere I don't want to go. But Jesus knew there was a plan. He knew the prophecies. He knew that he needed to fulfill them. He's known this plan his whole life. And so he knew that even though everything around me seems chaotic, you guys are just actors. This is all part of the plan. I have to go. And it's what allows him, I think, to fulfill the prophecy that he was going to be like a sheep led to the slaughter. Peter should have looked at Jesus and trusted that even though he didn't know what was going on, seems like he's got a plan. Seems like he knows what's happening. And it seems like I should just trust that. So I would say that when we feel overwhelmed, we should know that Jesus has a plan. And even if I can't see the details of his plan, I can trust it because I can trust him. Jesus has a plan for my Lily. He sees the young woman that she's going to become one day. He's asked me to steward her into that. It's his plan, not my plan. And those of us who are parents would do well to remind ourselves that Jesus loves our children way more than we do, even though we can't really fathom that. And that he has a plan for them. And even when we can't see the details of the plan, we can trust the plan because we can trust him. So we turn our eyes to him and we place our faith in that. I actually love that there's a baby making noise right now. Because it's... I just met her this morning. I'm sorry. Everyone's going to look at you now. I'm very sorry. She's never going to come back. Shannon, I apologize. She's never going to bring any more friends. I get it. I know. I know. This is bad. You don't have a clue who that kid's going to be or where he's going to go. But Jesus sees that whole life. And we can take solace in that. We can take comfort in that. We can't see past our own noses. Jesus sees all of time. So when we feel overwhelmed and it feels like there's not a plan and we don't know what to do and we want to just blow up or we want to just give up or we want to just bow out, we look to Jesus. We trust him. We trust his plan. And we take faith in that. And if we'll do that, if we'll remember when we feel overwhelmed that we can look to Jesus because we can trust him, I think that we can be people that cut off a lot less ears. We can be people that require less healing for those around us. We can be people who are more like Jesus, who as we look to him, we are kind and we are gracious and we are patient and we are peaceful. And that's the kind of person I want to be. That's the kind of dad and husband and pastor and friend I want to be. And I have a feeling that that's the kind of person you want to be too. So let's pray that we would more habitually turn our eyes to Christ and be filled with his wisdom and grace and not give ourselves over to being overwhelmed. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We thank you for who you are. We thank you for sending your son. We thank you that your son died a death that he did not want to die so that we might be with you. Father, we confess we are impatient. We are at times ill-tempered. At times we cut off ears around us because we don't know what else to do. And Lord, we pray that you would bring healing when we lash out. And we pray that you would bring peace to our hearts when we feel like doing that. For my brothers and sisters who can be like me and at times just grow in frustration, would you remind us in those moments to turn to you? That we might be peaceful and that we might be reflections of your wisdom and grace and sovereignty. God, for my brothers and sisters who feel overwhelmed and who do blow up or blow out, but maybe it doesn't look like anger, maybe it looks like frustration, or maybe it looks like giving up, or maybe it looks like just being overwhelmed and sad and grieving. Would you be with them too and remind them to turn their eyes towards you? That they might be comforted. That even though they can't see the plan, they can see the author of it. And God, would you help us to be people of peace? For those of us that need it, would you just help us cut off a few fewer ears this week? In Jesus' name, amen.
Well, good morning. Thanks for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten to meet you yet, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service. This last week on Wednesday, it was Lily's spring break. Lily's my seven-year-old daughter. She's going to play prominently in the following story. It's her spring break, and so Jen said, can you take the day and come with us to the zoo? Which I have a love-hate relationship with the zoo. I love the fact that my kids get to see animals. John, my two-year-old son, he'll be two in a couple of weeks, he loves animals. He says all the animal names. He's probably in that room right there saying animal things right now. Like, he just loves animals. So for him to be able to see animals for the first time, super cool. So I love that part. What I don't love about the zoo is literally everything else about the zoo. It is a cacophony of annoyances, particularly for me. I'm a man that probably has a disproportionate amount of pet peeves. I'm not saying I have a right to them. I just have them. I don't really know what to do with them. The chief among those are people who are walking slowly, just anywhere, just slow walkers. What do you, like saunterers in general, what are you doing? And then like if you're injured or something, I get it, okay? I got patience for that. But if you're just slow, I don't, like, move it along. And then another, like, huge one for me is when somebody seems to have no awareness whatsoever that there's anybody else around them that might need to use the same space that they're using. You know, like the people who just walk around like this, and they'll just stop. Like, it's crowded, okay? It's a beautiful day. It's spring break. I've never seen this many people at the zoo. It's so crowded. We're shoulder to shoulder, and some people are just going, oh, I'm sorry. Like, what do you mean you're sorry? Like, there's every, everybody's walking. You didn't, you thought that you were the one who was just alone and there was no one behind you. So anyways, I was just kind of on edge all day, right? And you go, and then the other thing, just so I can get this off my chest, I've got, I've got my two-year-old son. We got to, first of all, he doesn't want to be in the stroller. So when you put him in the stroller, you better be moving, baby, because he's going to start wiggling out of that thing. And I'm not going to buckle and unbuckle him every time. I can't be opening and shutting all those buckles. So then we're going and we get to the thing and you got to pick him up. My back's been hurting me. If you go to the zoo, it's like an eight mile hike. It's forever. It's the world's biggest land zoo. Big deal. Put the animals closer to me so I don't have to walk so far. I don't care about their habitat. Make them depressed and lifeless. Just I want to see them. So I got to pick up John, and I'm walking over to the display to look. And the thing that galled me is there's adults there. They're grownups, okay? And they're the ones standing in the front looking at the animals. Like, buddy, you're 35. Like, you've been to a zoo before. Can you just move out of the way for the kids? Like, I have no problems with kids standing and gawking, but, I mean, grownups, like, let's go. You got like a 10-second window. There's the giraffe. All right, move on. So anyways, I'm just going through this whole day. We get to the middle, we get to the junction, it's time to eat. I don't have a lot to say about what was there, except the wait was extraordinary. And we got two cheeseburger meals and a kid's meal and two bottles of water, and we paid $57 for it. And it was, this is not an understatement, atrocious. It was terrible. It was frozen brick burger that some guy tossed on the flat iron thing until it was warm enough to put between buns. Cheese wasn't melted. I have never, I have never had a greater discrepancy between the amount of money I paid and the quality I received. Never in my whole life. That's lunch at the zoo that day. Then we still got North America to go. There's Africa. You walk through Africa. I'm just halfway through the day. And I'm trying to hold it together. Jen's like, you know, it's kind of obvious when you get a little bit frustrated. And I'm like, what did I do? I was trying to be nice. Like, cause I'm, I'm trying to not ruin family day, you know, cause I can get over the edge and now everyone's having a bad time. So I'm just trying to mind my P's and Q's and white knuckle it to happiness. And she's like, well, it's, I said, well, how can you tell that I'm frustrated? And she, and this is what she said. I thought it was hilarious. She goes, it's just the way you hold your mouth. What do you want me to do about that? I'll ask for pictures. I don't know. So we go through North America. We start to go through North America. And Lily's seven. We've been hiking for four days. So she starts to just start in with the seven-year-old whining, just normal whining stuff. I'm tired. I'm hungry. I need a snack. And in my head, I'm like, John's two. He's entitled to whining. I can't handle you whining too. So just suck it up, kid. Like, let's go. So that's starting to fray a little bit. And we get done. We're all exhausted. We get in the car. We go home. It's nice and peaceful and quiet. And you're resting because that's a whole thing. So everybody's exhausted. We get home. We rest for a little bit, eat a little bit of dinner. Lily's got soccer practice. So we go to soccer practice. She does great. We're walking back to the car, and we play at the Y. I don't know if you've been over to the Y off of Strickland. There's the lower fields that are a good half mile away from the car. The parking situation there is miserable. So you've got to walk up. I'm just a grumpy old man today. I don't know why I said today. You got to walk up to the car. It's a long walk to the car. So we're walking up to the car and Lily starts in with the whining again. My feet hurt. Daddy, can I have a shoulder ride? No, baby, you can't. Because earlier in the day, I gave John a shoulder ride. That's all she wanted all day is a shoulder ride. I'm like, you weigh 70 pounds and my back hurts. Like not today. I'm sorry. You should have had a younger dad. So I'm like, no, I can't do it. She keeps whining. My feet hurt. I'm like, well, there's nothing we can do about it. We got to get to the car. Daddy, I don't want to walk anymore. And finally I was like, sweetheart, you got to stop with the whining. I don't want to hear any more whining. Not another, not another word of whining, or I'm going to have to start taking away screen time tomorrow. Stop it. So then we're walking, and she's not saying a word of whining, but it's, I'm like, oh my gosh, I just want this day to end. She's exhausted. I'm exhausted. We get to the car, and she was supposed to make her water bottle before she left. Jen told her to do that. She forgot. I noticed that she forgot. I made her water bottle. I threw it in there. Then we get to the car, and she starts complaining that I didn't give her enough water. And I'm like, you wouldn't have any water if I didn't notice it and make you some. So literally any water that I gave you was enough water. And then we start this back and forth. She's tired. I know she's tired. She's fatigued from a very long day. I know she is. Her emotions are spilling out on me. I know they are. But eventually she said that one more thing before we pulled out of the parking lot. And I slammed my hand down on the center console. She immediately starts crying. And in my head, because I'm a jerk, I think, good. And I turned around. I turned around and I let her have it. You have been like this and this and this and this all day and I'm done with it. I'm done. Stop it. Do you hear me? And she looked at me and she started to say something back. I said, stop. She's crying. I drive home. It wasn't good. I'm telling you that story not because I'm proud of it. Far from it. I actually think that the rapidity with which I get annoyed is probably my least favorite thing about myself. I do wish I had a lot more patience. I do wish I didn't get annoyed at people just enjoying the zoo, but I do. And I do wish that I wouldn't blow up at my daughter because she doesn't deserve that. And I don't want her to grow up in a home where that's part of the climate and just a regular thing. So, you know, we went back and made that right. But I share that with you because I think that we've all had those moments. I think that we've all lashed out at people in ways that we regret. Most of us in this room are parents. I'm pretty sure that you all have your stories too. If you don't, please buy me lunch and tell me your secrets. Unless it's medication. I don't want to go that route. I think we all have those times when we get overwhelmed and we're feeling so many different emotions that we don't know what to do. And so we blow up or we have a blowout and we lash out and we slam our hand on the center console and we yell at a seven-year-old until they cry to make us feel better about the situation. I think if we're not parents and we haven't blown up in that way, we're all kids. We all have parents. Maybe we've blown up at them. Maybe we've lashed out at friends, co-workers, up the chain or down the chain. I think we all have those moments that we're not proud of when our emotions get too big and we act in ways that we wish we could change. And so that's what this series is about, big emotions. What do we do when we feel overwhelmed, when we are going to have a blow up or a blow out? And we'll talk about what does God want from us in these moments. We'll talk about what did we do to bring this on ourselves. We'll talk about how it affects other people. We'll talk about what do we do when somebody else lashes out and blows up on us. But because we all have those moments, we thought it would be worth it to take six or seven weeks here in the spring and just kind of ask the question, what are we supposed to do with big emotions and those moments that we feel overwhelmed or the people around us are acting out because they're overwhelmed? So I hope that that's helpful for you. And I will also confess the way that I write sermons is I kind of write half of it during the week. And then on Sunday morning, I come in really early and I make myself say it out loud in the hallway over there and kind of piece together really what I want it to be. And after I finished it this morning, I drove home and I said, man, my sermon has really convicted me and I feel terrible. And I'm really going to work on this. So if you guys don't like this, I do. This has been really helpful for me. But I hope that it's useful for you too. We're going to start the series by looking at the story of Peter cutting off the ear of a guard in the garden when Jesus was arrested. Because I think there's some foundational things in this story that are going to resound and help us for the rest of the series as we move through kind of this question of what do we do with big emotions. For those of you who are not familiar with the story, it's in all four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I think the most helpful detailed version is in John chapter 18. And so if you have a Bible, you can turn there. We're going to be in there a little bit looking at the story. But what's going on is Jesus has just gotten done praying in the garden of Gethsemane. It's after the last supper. Then he goes to the garden to pray. Then he gets the disciples. He says, all right, it's time to go. And they're walking back to the house where they were staying. And the guards from the high priest come to arrest Jesus. And in John's account, there's this amazing scene where I don't know how many guards there were. I've always assumed dozens, but I really don't know. They came to Jesus, and in other tellings of it, you see this is when Judas betrays him with a kiss. And then the guards say, are you Jesus? And he says, yes, I'm Jesus. Except he doesn't say, yes, I'm Jesus. They say, are you Jesus? And he says, I am he. And when he says that, this is amazing. When he says that, everybody who came to arrest him stepped back and fell down to the ground. Do you understand that? I don't know how that happened. I don't know if they were in like really tight formation and the first guy stepped back and it was some sort of domino situation where they just all fell, but I don't think so. I think when Jesus utters those words, I am, that they were an echo of Exodus 3 and 4, Moses at the burning bush, when he asked the burning bush, when he asked God, what's your name? And God says, you can't hold me to a name. I'm bigger than names. I'm not going to let you reduce me to that. I am. So God is the great I am. It's the great unutterable word. And Jesus says that, I am he. And they all step backwards and fall down to the ground. At which point, if I'm one of the people who's sent to arrest Jesus, I'm going to get up and dust myself off and say, there's been a misunderstanding. Mr. Jesus, very sorry about this. I'm going to go back to Caiaphas' house. But when that happens and they go to arrest him, this is what Peter does. Peter has a blowout. Peter lashes out. Peter really has had an emotional day. Peter really has had an emotional week. Five days before this happens, they're riding into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. And the disciples up to this point in Jesus's life still believe that Jesus came to establish a kingdom, but it's a physical earthly kingdom. Their brains, their minds can't wrap around what an eternal kingdom would be with a heavenly king. So they think it's going to be an earthly kingdom. And they really think that Jesus is going to go to Jerusalem, that he's going to overthrow King Herod, that he's going to overthrow Roman rule, that he's going to sit on the throne of David, rise Israel to national prominence, and that they're going to rule the world with him. That's what they think. And so when they're entering into Jerusalem, Peter and James and John are arguing who gets to be the secretary of defense and who gets to be the vice president and who has to be the secretary of the interior. Like that's what they're arguing about. They think they're going to be in these positions of political prominence, right hand to the king. And this whole week has started to move really fast. The whole week has been emotionally charged. The whole week has been expectant. And so then they get to Friday and they have the last supper. They celebrate Passover together. And Jesus says that Judas is going to betray him. And Judas leaves, which is weird. And all the disciples are trying to figure this out. And then he does this weird thing where he takes bread and he breaks it. And he says, this is my body that's broken for you. And they don't know what that means. And then he takes the wine and he pours it. And he says, this is the blood that spilled out for you. And they don't know what that means. Jesus has told them, I'm going to die. And on the third day, I'm going to raise again. And they're going, what does that mean? They have not figured it out yet. He's going to be the king. Then after this weird last supper where Jesus does the weird bread thing, he says, come and pray with me. They go to Gethsemane and they're praying. Jesus is praying. He's praying ardently. He's praying so ardently that sweat is kind of coming out of his pores. And we're going to talk about that in another one of the sermons in this series. And he's trying to get the disciples to stay awake, but it's late at night and they had wine with dinner, so they're sleepy. So they keep falling asleep, but Peter can tell something's up. And then Jesus gets them. They walk back to the house and on the way back to the house, here come the high priest guards to arrest his Jesus. And he freaks out. This is not, what's happening is not what's supposed to happen. This is not the way this is supposed to go. So what does he do? He lashes out, he grabs his sword, and he cuts off Malchus's ear. Now, here's what's important about that. Peter wasn't aiming for the ear. He's not like, I'm going to teach this dude a lesson. Clearly, he was going for the kill shot. Clearly, he was going for the head,chus moved or Peter was bad and it just got his ear. And in the other accounts, we see Jesus stoop down, pick up the ear, reattach it to the head and tell Peter to chill out. Peter lashed out. Peter slapped his hand on the center console and started yelling at people because he wanted to control things. And what I've always wondered about this story is that from when I was a real little kid and I encountered this story for the first time, I have always wondered this. How did Peter think his outburst was going to go? How did he think that was going to go down? What's your plan after that, Peter? Kill the first guy and then heroically sword fight your way out of danger with Jesus in tow? You and James and John, you're going to take down the whole guard of Caiaphas? Those guys are soldiers. They have armor. You're wearing a sheet and you have a sword on your hip and you're a fisherman. This is, what's the plan, buddy? Where do we go from here? It's honestly, and I'll meet him one day, and I don't think I'll apologize for this because I think he would agree. It was stupid. It's just dumb. What's your plan, buddy? And as I reflected on that more, what occurred to me is that in those moments when we feel overwhelmed and we lose our composure, we're admitting something. Losing your composure often admits your intimacy or your impotence. Losing your composure often admits our impotence. Not always. We're going to see an instance with Jesus losing his composure, and it certainly was not impotent. But most of the time in life, if you think about it, when you lose your composure, when you let it go, when you have a blowout or a blowup, really you're just confessing your own impotence and powerlessness to do anything that matters in the situation. What was Peter doing? Something impulsive. It was the only thing he could think of to do. It was completely useless, completely unhelpful, and he did it. And honestly, he made it worse. And Jesus had to cool things down. And when you think about when you blow out or blow up, when you yell at somebody, when you lash out, when you lash out at a colleague, or when you talk poorly behind someone's back, and you lash out at them unreasonably, or you lash out at your kids, or whatever it is, when you do that, when you blow up, when you lose your composure, aren't we often just confessing our impotence? Isn't that what I was doing in the car with Lily? What was going on in her is a combination of fatigue and being a seven-year-old and a heart that needs to develop gratitude and somebody that needs to understand, yeah, I made that water bottle for you so the correct attitude is to just be grateful for anything that's in there. But yelling at her until she cries is not going to teach her the heart lessons that she needs to learn to not do that again. It's completely impotent. It's helpless. It's frankly stupid and unuseful. And now in the same way that Jesus had to clean up Peter's mess by grabbing the ear and putting it back on Malchus's head, so does Jesus have to reach into the heart of my daughter and heal the wound that I put there because I lashed out in impotence. Our prayer as parents, I think, is that there's just not scar tissue because we ask Jesus to do that too many times. But as I think through the times in my life when I've lashed out, it tends to be because I just didn't know what else to do. And I felt things so much that they had to escape. Sometimes this lashing out and this impotence is more easily seen because sometimes it looks like tears. Sometimes we're overwhelmed and we retreat into the bathroom or we retreat to our room or we retreat to the house we retreat to the car, and then we just let it go. And isn't that, those tears, that sort of breaking down, isn't that an admission of our powerlessness as well? So in the story of the arrest in the garden, Peter gives us a great example of what not to do when we are overwhelmed. But it also begs the question, and this is really the guiding question for the series, what should we do when we feel overwhelmed? What's the right thing to do? How should Peter have handled that situation? How should I have handled my frustration on Wednesday? Well, if Peter, this is pretty simple stuff, if Peter is the bad example in the story, then Jesus must be the good example. So we look to Jesus, and we see how he handled the situation. A couple verses that throw, that shed some light on Jesus's handling of it. I'm going to look at verse 8 in chapter 18. Jesus answered very casually. I just love how matter-of-fact he is. I told you that I am he. I told you that I'm the guy that you want. So if you seek me, let these men go. Like, I'm the one you want. It's not them. I'll go with you. And then down in verse 11, just a reminder of what we read earlier, Jesus said to Peter, put your sword into its sheath. Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me? And then we see, I think, an even more useful response in Matthew chapter 26. Then Jesus said to him, put your sword back into its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my father and he will at once send more than 12 legions of angels? But how then should the scriptures be fulfilled that it must be so? So Jesus is calm, he is collected, he is wise, he is gracious, he is peaceful, he is patient. And I would point out, from a very human perspective, Jesus is dealing with all of Peter's emotions tenfold, probably a hundredfold. When they're going into Jerusalem and he's being welcomed as a conquering king and his disciples, those chuckleheads are behind him arguing about stuff that they don't know what it means. He's just walked through three years of ministry. He knows what's coming. He knows what's five days away. He knows where the nails are going to go. He knows where that crown of thorns is going to rest. He knows where the cross is going to hang. Jesus knows that. He knows the grave is waiting for him. He knows that the Romans have scientifically studied the most painful way to kill somebody and that that's going to happen to him. He knows what lays ahead, the cup that he has to drink. And we see his knowledge of that in his prayer in the garden of Gethsemane. He knows Judas is going to betray him. He knows the disciples do not understand. He's frustrated with the disciples because they can't stay awake. Can you imagine being Jesus? I need one thing from you. Can you please pray for me? After three years, I'm about to die for you and go to the grave for you, and you can't stay awake to pray for me? Can you imagine how frustrated he would be? And if anybody had the right to lash out at anyone for being ungrateful, it would be Jesus. And yet, when they came to arrest him, and when Peter does dumb stuff, he's quiet, and he's gracious, and he's peaceful, and he's kind. What Peter should have done in that situation, feeling overwhelmed, is look to the face of Jesus. If Jesus is peaceful, I can be peaceful. If Jesus isn't freaking out, I don't need to freak out. When we feel overwhelmed, we should look to Jesus. That's what I take away from this story. If Peter would have simply, as the guards approached, if he would have simply, like we sang earlier, turned his eyes to Jesus and looked at his face and see that he was nonplussed, that he was not worried, then he could have responded accordingly. But he didn't. He didn't look at Jesus. He looked at everything else and he acted impulsively and he lashed out. If he would have looked to Jesus, he could have responded well in the moment. If I, in my car, had had the wherewithal in my frustration to look to Jesus instead of at my daughter or at myself or inwardly at my own frustration and decided it's time to vent them. If I would have had the wherewithal to go to Jesus in prayer, I said, Jesus, I'm really frustrated. What should I do here? Please help me. Please show me what to do. Jesus, I'm frustrated. Please navigate my response for me. I'm fairly certain that if I had done that, that the nudge I would have felt from the Holy Spirit would not have been, you should really turn around and let her have it. She's got it coming. The nudge from Jesus would have been, calm down. She's wrong. She's also seven. You're an adult. Get her to bed. Talk to her tomorrow when you're both clear and you're not angry. That's what Jesus would have reminded me to do. But I didn't give him a chance. I just cut off that ear anyways. And then he had to clean up my mess. When we feel overwhelmed, overwhelmed with sadness, overwhelmed with grief, overwhelmed with anger, overwhelmed with frustration, overwhelmed with whatever it is that's piling on us and it's just too much, before we blow out and before we blow up, if we can teach ourselves to simply turn our eyes to Jesus and look to him, then in those moments when we feel overwhelmed, we will handle them in ways that we do not regret later. We will cut off far less ears. Here's the other thing about Jesus' response in that moment. I think that the reason, the main reason that Jesus was so calm and placid in this moment is because he knew the plan. Look at his responses. What does he talk about? Peter, what are you trying to do? I have to do this. Stop it. I've got to go. This is part of the plan. Would you have me not obey my father? He says, do you not think I could do something different? Do you not think I could bring down 12 legions of angels right now and handle these guys? Like it wouldn't be a problem. I just knocked them down with my words, Peter. I'm not going anywhere I don't want to go. But Jesus knew there was a plan. He knew the prophecies. He knew that he needed to fulfill them. He's known this plan his whole life. And so he knew that even though everything around me seems chaotic, you guys are just actors. This is all part of the plan. I have to go. And it's what allows him, I think, to fulfill the prophecy that he was going to be like a sheep led to the slaughter. Peter should have looked at Jesus and trusted that even though he didn't know what was going on, seems like he's got a plan. Seems like he knows what's happening. And it seems like I should just trust that. So I would say that when we feel overwhelmed, we should know that Jesus has a plan. And even if I can't see the details of his plan, I can trust it because I can trust him. Jesus has a plan for my Lily. He sees the young woman that she's going to become one day. He's asked me to steward her into that. It's his plan, not my plan. And those of us who are parents would do well to remind ourselves that Jesus loves our children way more than we do, even though we can't really fathom that. And that he has a plan for them. And even when we can't see the details of the plan, we can trust the plan because we can trust him. So we turn our eyes to him and we place our faith in that. I actually love that there's a baby making noise right now. Because it's... I just met her this morning. I'm sorry. Everyone's going to look at you now. I'm very sorry. She's never going to come back. Shannon, I apologize. She's never going to bring any more friends. I get it. I know. I know. This is bad. You don't have a clue who that kid's going to be or where he's going to go. But Jesus sees that whole life. And we can take solace in that. We can take comfort in that. We can't see past our own noses. Jesus sees all of time. So when we feel overwhelmed and it feels like there's not a plan and we don't know what to do and we want to just blow up or we want to just give up or we want to just bow out, we look to Jesus. We trust him. We trust his plan. And we take faith in that. And if we'll do that, if we'll remember when we feel overwhelmed that we can look to Jesus because we can trust him, I think that we can be people that cut off a lot less ears. We can be people that require less healing for those around us. We can be people who are more like Jesus, who as we look to him, we are kind and we are gracious and we are patient and we are peaceful. And that's the kind of person I want to be. That's the kind of dad and husband and pastor and friend I want to be. And I have a feeling that that's the kind of person you want to be too. So let's pray that we would more habitually turn our eyes to Christ and be filled with his wisdom and grace and not give ourselves over to being overwhelmed. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We thank you for who you are. We thank you for sending your son. We thank you that your son died a death that he did not want to die so that we might be with you. Father, we confess we are impatient. We are at times ill-tempered. At times we cut off ears around us because we don't know what else to do. And Lord, we pray that you would bring healing when we lash out. And we pray that you would bring peace to our hearts when we feel like doing that. For my brothers and sisters who can be like me and at times just grow in frustration, would you remind us in those moments to turn to you? That we might be peaceful and that we might be reflections of your wisdom and grace and sovereignty. God, for my brothers and sisters who feel overwhelmed and who do blow up or blow out, but maybe it doesn't look like anger, maybe it looks like frustration, or maybe it looks like giving up, or maybe it looks like just being overwhelmed and sad and grieving. Would you be with them too and remind them to turn their eyes towards you? That they might be comforted. That even though they can't see the plan, they can see the author of it. And God, would you help us to be people of peace? For those of us that need it, would you just help us cut off a few fewer ears this week? In Jesus' name, amen.
Well, good morning. Thanks for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten to meet you yet, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service. This last week on Wednesday, it was Lily's spring break. Lily's my seven-year-old daughter. She's going to play prominently in the following story. It's her spring break, and so Jen said, can you take the day and come with us to the zoo? Which I have a love-hate relationship with the zoo. I love the fact that my kids get to see animals. John, my two-year-old son, he'll be two in a couple of weeks, he loves animals. He says all the animal names. He's probably in that room right there saying animal things right now. Like, he just loves animals. So for him to be able to see animals for the first time, super cool. So I love that part. What I don't love about the zoo is literally everything else about the zoo. It is a cacophony of annoyances, particularly for me. I'm a man that probably has a disproportionate amount of pet peeves. I'm not saying I have a right to them. I just have them. I don't really know what to do with them. The chief among those are people who are walking slowly, just anywhere, just slow walkers. What do you, like saunterers in general, what are you doing? And then like if you're injured or something, I get it, okay? I got patience for that. But if you're just slow, I don't, like, move it along. And then another, like, huge one for me is when somebody seems to have no awareness whatsoever that there's anybody else around them that might need to use the same space that they're using. You know, like the people who just walk around like this, and they'll just stop. Like, it's crowded, okay? It's a beautiful day. It's spring break. I've never seen this many people at the zoo. It's so crowded. We're shoulder to shoulder, and some people are just going, oh, I'm sorry. Like, what do you mean you're sorry? Like, there's every, everybody's walking. You didn't, you thought that you were the one who was just alone and there was no one behind you. So anyways, I was just kind of on edge all day, right? And you go, and then the other thing, just so I can get this off my chest, I've got, I've got my two-year-old son. We got to, first of all, he doesn't want to be in the stroller. So when you put him in the stroller, you better be moving, baby, because he's going to start wiggling out of that thing. And I'm not going to buckle and unbuckle him every time. I can't be opening and shutting all those buckles. So then we're going and we get to the thing and you got to pick him up. My back's been hurting me. If you go to the zoo, it's like an eight mile hike. It's forever. It's the world's biggest land zoo. Big deal. Put the animals closer to me so I don't have to walk so far. I don't care about their habitat. Make them depressed and lifeless. Just I want to see them. So I got to pick up John, and I'm walking over to the display to look. And the thing that galled me is there's adults there. They're grownups, okay? And they're the ones standing in the front looking at the animals. Like, buddy, you're 35. Like, you've been to a zoo before. Can you just move out of the way for the kids? Like, I have no problems with kids standing and gawking, but, I mean, grownups, like, let's go. You got like a 10-second window. There's the giraffe. All right, move on. So anyways, I'm just going through this whole day. We get to the middle, we get to the junction, it's time to eat. I don't have a lot to say about what was there, except the wait was extraordinary. And we got two cheeseburger meals and a kid's meal and two bottles of water, and we paid $57 for it. And it was, this is not an understatement, atrocious. It was terrible. It was frozen brick burger that some guy tossed on the flat iron thing until it was warm enough to put between buns. Cheese wasn't melted. I have never, I have never had a greater discrepancy between the amount of money I paid and the quality I received. Never in my whole life. That's lunch at the zoo that day. Then we still got North America to go. There's Africa. You walk through Africa. I'm just halfway through the day. And I'm trying to hold it together. Jen's like, you know, it's kind of obvious when you get a little bit frustrated. And I'm like, what did I do? I was trying to be nice. Like, cause I'm, I'm trying to not ruin family day, you know, cause I can get over the edge and now everyone's having a bad time. So I'm just trying to mind my P's and Q's and white knuckle it to happiness. And she's like, well, it's, I said, well, how can you tell that I'm frustrated? And she, and this is what she said. I thought it was hilarious. She goes, it's just the way you hold your mouth. What do you want me to do about that? I'll ask for pictures. I don't know. So we go through North America. We start to go through North America. And Lily's seven. We've been hiking for four days. So she starts to just start in with the seven-year-old whining, just normal whining stuff. I'm tired. I'm hungry. I need a snack. And in my head, I'm like, John's two. He's entitled to whining. I can't handle you whining too. So just suck it up, kid. Like, let's go. So that's starting to fray a little bit. And we get done. We're all exhausted. We get in the car. We go home. It's nice and peaceful and quiet. And you're resting because that's a whole thing. So everybody's exhausted. We get home. We rest for a little bit, eat a little bit of dinner. Lily's got soccer practice. So we go to soccer practice. She does great. We're walking back to the car, and we play at the Y. I don't know if you've been over to the Y off of Strickland. There's the lower fields that are a good half mile away from the car. The parking situation there is miserable. So you've got to walk up. I'm just a grumpy old man today. I don't know why I said today. You got to walk up to the car. It's a long walk to the car. So we're walking up to the car and Lily starts in with the whining again. My feet hurt. Daddy, can I have a shoulder ride? No, baby, you can't. Because earlier in the day, I gave John a shoulder ride. That's all she wanted all day is a shoulder ride. I'm like, you weigh 70 pounds and my back hurts. Like not today. I'm sorry. You should have had a younger dad. So I'm like, no, I can't do it. She keeps whining. My feet hurt. I'm like, well, there's nothing we can do about it. We got to get to the car. Daddy, I don't want to walk anymore. And finally I was like, sweetheart, you got to stop with the whining. I don't want to hear any more whining. Not another, not another word of whining, or I'm going to have to start taking away screen time tomorrow. Stop it. So then we're walking, and she's not saying a word of whining, but it's, I'm like, oh my gosh, I just want this day to end. She's exhausted. I'm exhausted. We get to the car, and she was supposed to make her water bottle before she left. Jen told her to do that. She forgot. I noticed that she forgot. I made her water bottle. I threw it in there. Then we get to the car, and she starts complaining that I didn't give her enough water. And I'm like, you wouldn't have any water if I didn't notice it and make you some. So literally any water that I gave you was enough water. And then we start this back and forth. She's tired. I know she's tired. She's fatigued from a very long day. I know she is. Her emotions are spilling out on me. I know they are. But eventually she said that one more thing before we pulled out of the parking lot. And I slammed my hand down on the center console. She immediately starts crying. And in my head, because I'm a jerk, I think, good. And I turned around. I turned around and I let her have it. You have been like this and this and this and this all day and I'm done with it. I'm done. Stop it. Do you hear me? And she looked at me and she started to say something back. I said, stop. She's crying. I drive home. It wasn't good. I'm telling you that story not because I'm proud of it. Far from it. I actually think that the rapidity with which I get annoyed is probably my least favorite thing about myself. I do wish I had a lot more patience. I do wish I didn't get annoyed at people just enjoying the zoo, but I do. And I do wish that I wouldn't blow up at my daughter because she doesn't deserve that. And I don't want her to grow up in a home where that's part of the climate and just a regular thing. So, you know, we went back and made that right. But I share that with you because I think that we've all had those moments. I think that we've all lashed out at people in ways that we regret. Most of us in this room are parents. I'm pretty sure that you all have your stories too. If you don't, please buy me lunch and tell me your secrets. Unless it's medication. I don't want to go that route. I think we all have those times when we get overwhelmed and we're feeling so many different emotions that we don't know what to do. And so we blow up or we have a blowout and we lash out and we slam our hand on the center console and we yell at a seven-year-old until they cry to make us feel better about the situation. I think if we're not parents and we haven't blown up in that way, we're all kids. We all have parents. Maybe we've blown up at them. Maybe we've lashed out at friends, co-workers, up the chain or down the chain. I think we all have those moments that we're not proud of when our emotions get too big and we act in ways that we wish we could change. And so that's what this series is about, big emotions. What do we do when we feel overwhelmed, when we are going to have a blow up or a blow out? And we'll talk about what does God want from us in these moments. We'll talk about what did we do to bring this on ourselves. We'll talk about how it affects other people. We'll talk about what do we do when somebody else lashes out and blows up on us. But because we all have those moments, we thought it would be worth it to take six or seven weeks here in the spring and just kind of ask the question, what are we supposed to do with big emotions and those moments that we feel overwhelmed or the people around us are acting out because they're overwhelmed? So I hope that that's helpful for you. And I will also confess the way that I write sermons is I kind of write half of it during the week. And then on Sunday morning, I come in really early and I make myself say it out loud in the hallway over there and kind of piece together really what I want it to be. And after I finished it this morning, I drove home and I said, man, my sermon has really convicted me and I feel terrible. And I'm really going to work on this. So if you guys don't like this, I do. This has been really helpful for me. But I hope that it's useful for you too. We're going to start the series by looking at the story of Peter cutting off the ear of a guard in the garden when Jesus was arrested. Because I think there's some foundational things in this story that are going to resound and help us for the rest of the series as we move through kind of this question of what do we do with big emotions. For those of you who are not familiar with the story, it's in all four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I think the most helpful detailed version is in John chapter 18. And so if you have a Bible, you can turn there. We're going to be in there a little bit looking at the story. But what's going on is Jesus has just gotten done praying in the garden of Gethsemane. It's after the last supper. Then he goes to the garden to pray. Then he gets the disciples. He says, all right, it's time to go. And they're walking back to the house where they were staying. And the guards from the high priest come to arrest Jesus. And in John's account, there's this amazing scene where I don't know how many guards there were. I've always assumed dozens, but I really don't know. They came to Jesus, and in other tellings of it, you see this is when Judas betrays him with a kiss. And then the guards say, are you Jesus? And he says, yes, I'm Jesus. Except he doesn't say, yes, I'm Jesus. They say, are you Jesus? And he says, I am he. And when he says that, this is amazing. When he says that, everybody who came to arrest him stepped back and fell down to the ground. Do you understand that? I don't know how that happened. I don't know if they were in like really tight formation and the first guy stepped back and it was some sort of domino situation where they just all fell, but I don't think so. I think when Jesus utters those words, I am, that they were an echo of Exodus 3 and 4, Moses at the burning bush, when he asked the burning bush, when he asked God, what's your name? And God says, you can't hold me to a name. I'm bigger than names. I'm not going to let you reduce me to that. I am. So God is the great I am. It's the great unutterable word. And Jesus says that, I am he. And they all step backwards and fall down to the ground. At which point, if I'm one of the people who's sent to arrest Jesus, I'm going to get up and dust myself off and say, there's been a misunderstanding. Mr. Jesus, very sorry about this. I'm going to go back to Caiaphas' house. But when that happens and they go to arrest him, this is what Peter does. Peter has a blowout. Peter lashes out. Peter really has had an emotional day. Peter really has had an emotional week. Five days before this happens, they're riding into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. And the disciples up to this point in Jesus's life still believe that Jesus came to establish a kingdom, but it's a physical earthly kingdom. Their brains, their minds can't wrap around what an eternal kingdom would be with a heavenly king. So they think it's going to be an earthly kingdom. And they really think that Jesus is going to go to Jerusalem, that he's going to overthrow King Herod, that he's going to overthrow Roman rule, that he's going to sit on the throne of David, rise Israel to national prominence, and that they're going to rule the world with him. That's what they think. And so when they're entering into Jerusalem, Peter and James and John are arguing who gets to be the secretary of defense and who gets to be the vice president and who has to be the secretary of the interior. Like that's what they're arguing about. They think they're going to be in these positions of political prominence, right hand to the king. And this whole week has started to move really fast. The whole week has been emotionally charged. The whole week has been expectant. And so then they get to Friday and they have the last supper. They celebrate Passover together. And Jesus says that Judas is going to betray him. And Judas leaves, which is weird. And all the disciples are trying to figure this out. And then he does this weird thing where he takes bread and he breaks it. And he says, this is my body that's broken for you. And they don't know what that means. And then he takes the wine and he pours it. And he says, this is the blood that spilled out for you. And they don't know what that means. Jesus has told them, I'm going to die. And on the third day, I'm going to raise again. And they're going, what does that mean? They have not figured it out yet. He's going to be the king. Then after this weird last supper where Jesus does the weird bread thing, he says, come and pray with me. They go to Gethsemane and they're praying. Jesus is praying. He's praying ardently. He's praying so ardently that sweat is kind of coming out of his pores. And we're going to talk about that in another one of the sermons in this series. And he's trying to get the disciples to stay awake, but it's late at night and they had wine with dinner, so they're sleepy. So they keep falling asleep, but Peter can tell something's up. And then Jesus gets them. They walk back to the house and on the way back to the house, here come the high priest guards to arrest his Jesus. And he freaks out. This is not, what's happening is not what's supposed to happen. This is not the way this is supposed to go. So what does he do? He lashes out, he grabs his sword, and he cuts off Malchus's ear. Now, here's what's important about that. Peter wasn't aiming for the ear. He's not like, I'm going to teach this dude a lesson. Clearly, he was going for the kill shot. Clearly, he was going for the head,chus moved or Peter was bad and it just got his ear. And in the other accounts, we see Jesus stoop down, pick up the ear, reattach it to the head and tell Peter to chill out. Peter lashed out. Peter slapped his hand on the center console and started yelling at people because he wanted to control things. And what I've always wondered about this story is that from when I was a real little kid and I encountered this story for the first time, I have always wondered this. How did Peter think his outburst was going to go? How did he think that was going to go down? What's your plan after that, Peter? Kill the first guy and then heroically sword fight your way out of danger with Jesus in tow? You and James and John, you're going to take down the whole guard of Caiaphas? Those guys are soldiers. They have armor. You're wearing a sheet and you have a sword on your hip and you're a fisherman. This is, what's the plan, buddy? Where do we go from here? It's honestly, and I'll meet him one day, and I don't think I'll apologize for this because I think he would agree. It was stupid. It's just dumb. What's your plan, buddy? And as I reflected on that more, what occurred to me is that in those moments when we feel overwhelmed and we lose our composure, we're admitting something. Losing your composure often admits your intimacy or your impotence. Losing your composure often admits our impotence. Not always. We're going to see an instance with Jesus losing his composure, and it certainly was not impotent. But most of the time in life, if you think about it, when you lose your composure, when you let it go, when you have a blowout or a blowup, really you're just confessing your own impotence and powerlessness to do anything that matters in the situation. What was Peter doing? Something impulsive. It was the only thing he could think of to do. It was completely useless, completely unhelpful, and he did it. And honestly, he made it worse. And Jesus had to cool things down. And when you think about when you blow out or blow up, when you yell at somebody, when you lash out, when you lash out at a colleague, or when you talk poorly behind someone's back, and you lash out at them unreasonably, or you lash out at your kids, or whatever it is, when you do that, when you blow up, when you lose your composure, aren't we often just confessing our impotence? Isn't that what I was doing in the car with Lily? What was going on in her is a combination of fatigue and being a seven-year-old and a heart that needs to develop gratitude and somebody that needs to understand, yeah, I made that water bottle for you so the correct attitude is to just be grateful for anything that's in there. But yelling at her until she cries is not going to teach her the heart lessons that she needs to learn to not do that again. It's completely impotent. It's helpless. It's frankly stupid and unuseful. And now in the same way that Jesus had to clean up Peter's mess by grabbing the ear and putting it back on Malchus's head, so does Jesus have to reach into the heart of my daughter and heal the wound that I put there because I lashed out in impotence. Our prayer as parents, I think, is that there's just not scar tissue because we ask Jesus to do that too many times. But as I think through the times in my life when I've lashed out, it tends to be because I just didn't know what else to do. And I felt things so much that they had to escape. Sometimes this lashing out and this impotence is more easily seen because sometimes it looks like tears. Sometimes we're overwhelmed and we retreat into the bathroom or we retreat to our room or we retreat to the house we retreat to the car, and then we just let it go. And isn't that, those tears, that sort of breaking down, isn't that an admission of our powerlessness as well? So in the story of the arrest in the garden, Peter gives us a great example of what not to do when we are overwhelmed. But it also begs the question, and this is really the guiding question for the series, what should we do when we feel overwhelmed? What's the right thing to do? How should Peter have handled that situation? How should I have handled my frustration on Wednesday? Well, if Peter, this is pretty simple stuff, if Peter is the bad example in the story, then Jesus must be the good example. So we look to Jesus, and we see how he handled the situation. A couple verses that throw, that shed some light on Jesus's handling of it. I'm going to look at verse 8 in chapter 18. Jesus answered very casually. I just love how matter-of-fact he is. I told you that I am he. I told you that I'm the guy that you want. So if you seek me, let these men go. Like, I'm the one you want. It's not them. I'll go with you. And then down in verse 11, just a reminder of what we read earlier, Jesus said to Peter, put your sword into its sheath. Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me? And then we see, I think, an even more useful response in Matthew chapter 26. Then Jesus said to him, put your sword back into its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my father and he will at once send more than 12 legions of angels? But how then should the scriptures be fulfilled that it must be so? So Jesus is calm, he is collected, he is wise, he is gracious, he is peaceful, he is patient. And I would point out, from a very human perspective, Jesus is dealing with all of Peter's emotions tenfold, probably a hundredfold. When they're going into Jerusalem and he's being welcomed as a conquering king and his disciples, those chuckleheads are behind him arguing about stuff that they don't know what it means. He's just walked through three years of ministry. He knows what's coming. He knows what's five days away. He knows where the nails are going to go. He knows where that crown of thorns is going to rest. He knows where the cross is going to hang. Jesus knows that. He knows the grave is waiting for him. He knows that the Romans have scientifically studied the most painful way to kill somebody and that that's going to happen to him. He knows what lays ahead, the cup that he has to drink. And we see his knowledge of that in his prayer in the garden of Gethsemane. He knows Judas is going to betray him. He knows the disciples do not understand. He's frustrated with the disciples because they can't stay awake. Can you imagine being Jesus? I need one thing from you. Can you please pray for me? After three years, I'm about to die for you and go to the grave for you, and you can't stay awake to pray for me? Can you imagine how frustrated he would be? And if anybody had the right to lash out at anyone for being ungrateful, it would be Jesus. And yet, when they came to arrest him, and when Peter does dumb stuff, he's quiet, and he's gracious, and he's peaceful, and he's kind. What Peter should have done in that situation, feeling overwhelmed, is look to the face of Jesus. If Jesus is peaceful, I can be peaceful. If Jesus isn't freaking out, I don't need to freak out. When we feel overwhelmed, we should look to Jesus. That's what I take away from this story. If Peter would have simply, as the guards approached, if he would have simply, like we sang earlier, turned his eyes to Jesus and looked at his face and see that he was nonplussed, that he was not worried, then he could have responded accordingly. But he didn't. He didn't look at Jesus. He looked at everything else and he acted impulsively and he lashed out. If he would have looked to Jesus, he could have responded well in the moment. If I, in my car, had had the wherewithal in my frustration to look to Jesus instead of at my daughter or at myself or inwardly at my own frustration and decided it's time to vent them. If I would have had the wherewithal to go to Jesus in prayer, I said, Jesus, I'm really frustrated. What should I do here? Please help me. Please show me what to do. Jesus, I'm frustrated. Please navigate my response for me. I'm fairly certain that if I had done that, that the nudge I would have felt from the Holy Spirit would not have been, you should really turn around and let her have it. She's got it coming. The nudge from Jesus would have been, calm down. She's wrong. She's also seven. You're an adult. Get her to bed. Talk to her tomorrow when you're both clear and you're not angry. That's what Jesus would have reminded me to do. But I didn't give him a chance. I just cut off that ear anyways. And then he had to clean up my mess. When we feel overwhelmed, overwhelmed with sadness, overwhelmed with grief, overwhelmed with anger, overwhelmed with frustration, overwhelmed with whatever it is that's piling on us and it's just too much, before we blow out and before we blow up, if we can teach ourselves to simply turn our eyes to Jesus and look to him, then in those moments when we feel overwhelmed, we will handle them in ways that we do not regret later. We will cut off far less ears. Here's the other thing about Jesus' response in that moment. I think that the reason, the main reason that Jesus was so calm and placid in this moment is because he knew the plan. Look at his responses. What does he talk about? Peter, what are you trying to do? I have to do this. Stop it. I've got to go. This is part of the plan. Would you have me not obey my father? He says, do you not think I could do something different? Do you not think I could bring down 12 legions of angels right now and handle these guys? Like it wouldn't be a problem. I just knocked them down with my words, Peter. I'm not going anywhere I don't want to go. But Jesus knew there was a plan. He knew the prophecies. He knew that he needed to fulfill them. He's known this plan his whole life. And so he knew that even though everything around me seems chaotic, you guys are just actors. This is all part of the plan. I have to go. And it's what allows him, I think, to fulfill the prophecy that he was going to be like a sheep led to the slaughter. Peter should have looked at Jesus and trusted that even though he didn't know what was going on, seems like he's got a plan. Seems like he knows what's happening. And it seems like I should just trust that. So I would say that when we feel overwhelmed, we should know that Jesus has a plan. And even if I can't see the details of his plan, I can trust it because I can trust him. Jesus has a plan for my Lily. He sees the young woman that she's going to become one day. He's asked me to steward her into that. It's his plan, not my plan. And those of us who are parents would do well to remind ourselves that Jesus loves our children way more than we do, even though we can't really fathom that. And that he has a plan for them. And even when we can't see the details of the plan, we can trust the plan because we can trust him. So we turn our eyes to him and we place our faith in that. I actually love that there's a baby making noise right now. Because it's... I just met her this morning. I'm sorry. Everyone's going to look at you now. I'm very sorry. She's never going to come back. Shannon, I apologize. She's never going to bring any more friends. I get it. I know. I know. This is bad. You don't have a clue who that kid's going to be or where he's going to go. But Jesus sees that whole life. And we can take solace in that. We can take comfort in that. We can't see past our own noses. Jesus sees all of time. So when we feel overwhelmed and it feels like there's not a plan and we don't know what to do and we want to just blow up or we want to just give up or we want to just bow out, we look to Jesus. We trust him. We trust his plan. And we take faith in that. And if we'll do that, if we'll remember when we feel overwhelmed that we can look to Jesus because we can trust him, I think that we can be people that cut off a lot less ears. We can be people that require less healing for those around us. We can be people who are more like Jesus, who as we look to him, we are kind and we are gracious and we are patient and we are peaceful. And that's the kind of person I want to be. That's the kind of dad and husband and pastor and friend I want to be. And I have a feeling that that's the kind of person you want to be too. So let's pray that we would more habitually turn our eyes to Christ and be filled with his wisdom and grace and not give ourselves over to being overwhelmed. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We thank you for who you are. We thank you for sending your son. We thank you that your son died a death that he did not want to die so that we might be with you. Father, we confess we are impatient. We are at times ill-tempered. At times we cut off ears around us because we don't know what else to do. And Lord, we pray that you would bring healing when we lash out. And we pray that you would bring peace to our hearts when we feel like doing that. For my brothers and sisters who can be like me and at times just grow in frustration, would you remind us in those moments to turn to you? That we might be peaceful and that we might be reflections of your wisdom and grace and sovereignty. God, for my brothers and sisters who feel overwhelmed and who do blow up or blow out, but maybe it doesn't look like anger, maybe it looks like frustration, or maybe it looks like giving up, or maybe it looks like just being overwhelmed and sad and grieving. Would you be with them too and remind them to turn their eyes towards you? That they might be comforted. That even though they can't see the plan, they can see the author of it. And God, would you help us to be people of peace? For those of us that need it, would you just help us cut off a few fewer ears this week? In Jesus' name, amen.
The Yo, good to see everybody. Thank you again for being here. This is the sixth part in our series going through the book of Revelation. I have really very much enjoyed going through Revelation with you all. And honestly, you guys have been more enthusiastic about it than I expected because Revelation can be a slog. It can be tough. We just took three weeks working through the tribulation, talking about the wrath of God and all the mechanics of the tribulation best we can. And to me, that feels tedious, but you guys have been incredibly supportive and incredibly kind. And it seemed like y'all have enjoyed going through this with me. As folks have asked me, how is Revelation being received? I say, it seems universally good. However, no one's going to tell me it's bad. No one's going to email me and be like, just so you know, really are looking forward to when this series is over and we can talk about something else. So that might be out there. And if that's you, I'm so sorry. Thank you for hanging with us. But for those of you who have enjoyed this, thanks so much for the encouragement because it's been really, really neat to get to go through it with you guys as a church. This morning, we arrive at Christ's return, the return of Christ. And I said last week that this needs to be the best sermon that I've ever preached in my life, to do adequate justice to the grandiosity of what's happening in Revelation 19. This will not be the best sermon of my life. I just wish that it could be, okay? So let's temper our expectations now. This is a B minus, all right? But in this sermon, we arrive at Jesus' return, at kind of the culmination of God's wrath, the final nail in the coffin. I said we've been walking through the tribulation. We've kind of looked at it through three different lenses. We looked at it in the first week to understand the wrath of God that's poured out in the tribulation, and we defined it. We defined it that week when we looked at Revelation 4 and 5, and Jesus steps forward as the Lamb of God, qualified to open up the seals and begin to open up God's wrath on his creation. We said he's beginning the seven-year process of tribulation. Now, what is tribulation? Well, we define that as the seven-year process of God pouring out his earned wrath on his creation and reclaiming what is rightfully his. And this week, he reclaims it. This week, he does the last part of the tribulation. Then we looked at kind of the flow of it, the seals and the trumpets and the bowls, and then we looked at the figures of it, and we'll talk a little bit more about the beast, the Antichrist, today. But where we're at in the narrative of Revelation is we're at the end of the Tribulation. God has poured out his wrath. We've had this great battle. There's been a great earthquake. God has sent darkness onto the kingdom of the Antichrist. And then he sends his son to finish up the work. He sends his son to answer the voice of the martyrs that cries out in Revelation chapter 6, the fifth seal. The voice of the martyrs below the throne of God that say, how much longer, God, before you avenge our death? You know who killed us. You see us suffering as your children. How much longer will you let this keep going? And we talked about in that week how we cry out with the martyrs, that every time something in our life happens that seems difficult or hard to understand or seems unfair, every time there's a school shooting, God, how much longer are you going to let this go on? Every time we lose someone too soon, God, how much longer will you let this world be broken? Every time we see something that we can't understand, we cry out with the martyrs and we say, God, how much longer, oh Lord, will you put up with this? And when he begins to open up the seals and begin the process of tribulation, he says, no more. And when he sends his son Christ, when we see Jesus in Revelation 19, that is God putting the final nail in the coffin of evil and saying, now I will make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. Now I will rectify things. Now I will restore creation. Now I will answer the groanings that Paul talks about in Romans chapter 8 when we are told that all of creation groans for the return of the king. When we're told that we yearn inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons and daughters to experience eternity in the marriage supper of the lamb, we wait for this. We long for this. This is the hope that persists in our faith and keeps us anchored to our savior because we believe that revelation 19 is going to happen one day, that he's going to come get us, and that when he comes back, you guys have heard me say this before, he's not coming back as the Lamb of God. He comes back as the Lion of Judah. And we see this description in Revelation 19, beginning in verse 11. So if you have a Bible, you can read along with me. I love this description of my Jesus. Every time I read it, whether it's out loud or just in private, I get chills. I love this picture of him. And I don't know, I don't know if everybody can relate to this. This may just be silly. This may just be me being a dummy, and that's fine. I'm familiar with this territory. It's not unfamiliar. But when I read this passage about my Jesus, that part of me as a little kid that loved to see the hero win in movies, that teenage boy that loved to watch Braveheart win, that loved Gladiator and seeing Russell Crowe's character stick it to him, that little boy that loves Star Wars, that loves to see the hero win against evil, against all odds, that part of us, and I'm sharing that with you because I think that God lays that in us intentionally. I think we love the hero because the hero is a shadow of this reality that Jesus becomes. We grow up learning to love when the day is saved and when the hero makes an appearance because God wove that, I think, into our hearts to appreciate the appearance of his son when that hero returns and appears once and for all. So it's with that preamble that we'll read the description as Jesus comes back to reclaim his creation. This is the description of him that John records. Chapter 19, verse 11. And behold, a white horse. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty on his robe and on his thigh. His name is written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Gosh. That's Jesus, man. That's Jesus. That's our Savior. When we think of Jesus, when we pray to him, when we sing to him, when we think about him, when we think about being reunited with him in heaven, I believe that it's our tendency to think about the gospel of Jesus, to think about the crucified Christ. And I don't think that's anybody's fault. We have four gospels. We spend time there all the time. I revisit a gospel every spring with you guys. We focus on Jesus at Easter. We focus on Jesus at Christmas. And we see the teachings from Jesus come out of the gospel. And so it's right and good to think about our Jesus as the crucified Christ. It's right and good to think about our Jesus as gentle and lowly. We're actually reading a book, as the staff right now, called Gentle and Lowly, and what it tells us, and I did not know this, but that the only time that Jesus is ever asked to describe himself in scripture, or rather the only time that he actually does it, he describes himself as gentle and lowly. And I think that when we think about Jesus, we think about a humble Nazarene from the country. And that's fine and that's well and good. But that's Jesus in human form. Revelation 19, that's Jesus. You understand? That's who's waiting on us. That's who's coming to get us. That warrior king written on his robe and on his thigh, king of kings and Lord of lords as a callback to Isaiah so that we know exactly who it is. And when you read through this passage, it's unbelievable to me how rich it is with allusions to other parts of scripture so that there is no doubt about it that this is Jesus coming from the very beginning. It says that he was called faithful and true, capitalized. This is a deity. This is Jesus coming. And then it says that only he knows his name, which is, that's Exodus chapter three and four, when God refuses to share his name. That's a throwback to that. And then he says that he was called the word of God, which John is referencing his own writings at beginning of John, the gospel, when he says that the word was with God in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was God through him, all things were made without him, nothing was made. And then at the end, king of kings and Lord of lords. John, in this description of Jesus is weaving together all of the scripture to point us to our savior. This is the Jesus, the one who has fire coming out of his eyes and a sword coming out of his mouth with which to strike down the nations. The one who rules with the rod of iron, who has the armies of heaven arrayed in linen, following down as he thunders down to conquer the beast and the dragon and the antichrist. That's the one that sits at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for you. That's the one that rules for all of eternity. That's the one that we pray to. And that's the one who's coming to get you. So I want to at least take some time this morning to encourage you. When you sing to Jesus, when you pray to him, when you think of him, when you anticipate meeting him, anticipate the conquering Christ. Anticipate this Jesus. Anticipate the warrior king coming down to settle the score. Anticipate the lion of Judah coming down to wreck shop. To once and for all sweep evil off the face of the planet. And when you do that, when you focus on the conquering Christ, to me, it really caused me to think about this a lot this week, that the conquering Christ renders the crucified Christ all the more miraculous. The conquering Christ, Christ conquering renders Christ crucified all the more miraculous. Because this description in Revelation 19 with a robe dipped in blood and a sword coming out of his mouth and a rod of iron that he rules a nation with, he's gonna tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God with all of heaven's armies arrayed behind him, thundering down to wreck shop. That Jesus hung on the cross for you. That Jesus walked away from all of that, condescended to take on our form, walked with us for 33 years, nurtured disciples to birth a church that would become his true kingdom that he's coming back to rescue so that you and I can sit in here 2,000 years later. He did all that, meek and mild. And when he describes himself as gentle and lowly, yeah, you're not kidding, man. Because look who he is in earth and look who he could be this whole time. This description, this guy, this God, this warrior king, he hung on the cross for you. Not just some sage from the hills of Israel. God condescended for you. He chose to hang on the cross. So I love that moment with Pilate. He's like, are you really a king? And he's like, don't worry about it, Pilate. If I wanted to, this whole place would be smashed. At any moment in Jesus' life, he could have called down these armies and just crushed anybody who opposed him. Caiaphas, the high priest, is sitting there thinking he's got Jesus right where he wants him, and Jesus is just thinking, you have no idea who I am. He dies, he's separated from God. Satan thinks he's got Jesus right where he wants him. Jesus says, you have no idea who I am. Christ conquering, to me, renders Christ crucified as all the more miraculous. And when I think about my Jesus, this is who I think about. He comes to get us and to take us back up to heaven and to start off eternity. And when he comes to get us, he takes us back, we're told, to what's called the marriage supper of the Lamb. He's defeated the beast. He's defeated the Antichrist. He locks them up. It begins the thousand-year reign. We're going to talk about that next week. There's an encore of evil, and then Jesus once and for all throws them in the lake of fire, and that's it. But he comes down. He captures the beast. The armies conquer. He takes his children, he wipes evil off the face of the earth, he purifies his bride, and then we have the marriage supper of the Lamb. And I feel bad for how I'm covering the marriage supper of the Lamb in this series. Because I'm not gonna do it justice. I'm not gonna adequately cover it. And I'm not saying that in this series. Because I'm not going to do it justice. I'm not going to adequately cover it. And I'm not saying that in this way of false humility, like, oh yeah, I'm really not doing that good of a job with it. Like, no, I'm not. We just don't have enough time to sink in to everything that's here and even all the symbolism in the marriage supper of the Lamb. But a simple way of thinking about it is the marriage supper of the lamb is the greatest celebration feast of all time. It is the greatest celebration feast that ever was and ever will be. And this should hit home with us. Because what do we do? What do we do when we want to celebrate? I got a little bit of good news last week. Such good news that I went straight to the butcher's market. I bought myself a big old ribeye and I had that for dinner when the kids went to bed. I had myself my own personal private celebration feast. When your team wins, what do you do? You have a feast. When something good in life happens, when you graduate, you have a feast. When people come into town, what do you do? You have a feast. What are we going to do this week? We're going to get together with friends and family. We're going to reflect on the blessings that God has given us, and we're going to have a feast. This is what we do to celebrate. When your kid gets married, and you celebrate kind of transitioning into that season of life. This one has passed. We've formed a new family. What do you do? You get all your friends together and you have a feast. This is what God is doing. It's the greatest celebration feast of all time. In the days of old when kings would conquer and they would come back from conquering another king, what did they do? They feasted. And Jesus is bringing us back to the marriage supper of the Lamb. Why is it called the marriage supper of the Lamb? Because Jesus is getting married. Who's he marrying? Us. The church. His bride. We see throughout Scripture that the church is referred to as the bride of Christ. We see in Ephesians that God purifies his bride. He prepares us. We are made pure for Jesus so that we might marry him in eternity. I don't know how all that works out. It's a word play, but we are made pure by our savior. How are we made pure? By the crucified Christ hanging on the cross. He died for us. He covered over you in righteousness, made you good, purified you, prepared you for this very moment, for the marriage supper of the Lamb, where the church and Christ are united for all of eternity and perfect bliss. And so it's right and good to have a feast to celebrate the marriage. And this feast, man, it's going to be a good feast. The ones that you've lost, they're going to be there. I don't know for certain. I can't find it in Scripture. But I'm pretty sure they're going to serve catfish at this feast. Because my papa is going to be there. He loves catfish. And I know he's got some waiting on me. Your loved ones are going to be there too. Your dads are going to be there. And your moms. And the children that you never got to meet because you lost them too early, they're going to be there. All the saints who have come before us, all the saints that you've loved, they're going to be there. And listen to this. They're going to be the best versions of themselves. They're not going to be sick. They're not going to be unhealthy. They're not going to be unwell. They're going to be the perfect versions of themselves. They're not going to have all the brokenness that hurts us sometimes. Do you understand what I'm saying? Your dad, who you loved, but man, that guy had a temper. In heaven, he doesn't have a temper anymore. He's just love. He's just all the best parts of him. The people who we love, who made it sometimes hard to love them. Jesus has prepared those brides too. Their brokenness is wiped away. And they love you with purity. And you're made perfect too. All the crap in your life, all the stuff that you wish wasn't true of you, all the things that you hope nobody finds out, all the brokenness that spills out of you and hurts the people around you when you don't want to hurt them and you hate that side of yourself, that side's gone at the marriage supper of the Lamb. You're made perfect there. You're made your ideal self there. You're made your eternal self there. And you can love other people finally with the purity that God loves you with. We see the best versions of the folks we love. I am convinced of this. We finally walk in the best versions of ourself and don't have to wonder what it would be like to not have to walk through life as a selfish, egotistical jerk. That one's just for me. I don't know what your thing is. That feast is going to be remarkable. And everybody's going to be there. And Jesus is coming to take you to that. And I think that's pretty great. And as I thought about these things this week, the triumphant return of Christ and the marriage supper of the Lamb and all that it represents and what Jesus really won with that victory. What does it mean for us? Yes, evil is smited. Evil is gone and all the wrong things are made right and all the sad things are made untrue. All that is very true and God wins once and for all and that part of us that loves a hero gets to see the actual hero come storming out of the clouds. He wins those things for us. We see our God claim victory and that's great. But there's something else that occurred to me too. I was prepared. I knew this was going to happen. We're not even to the hard part yet. Jeez, old Pete. Something else occurred to me as I kind of asked the question, what has Jesus won? And what are we celebrating at the marriage supper? And I was reminded of this idea that I have long carried with me, but I've not heard too many other people talking about it. I've actually never heard a pastor talk about this. It doesn't make it a unique idea. It's just one that I've not heard other people mention. And maybe it's because pastors aren't supposed to say things like this and the other ones know better and yours doesn't. But I've long carried with me this idea that faith and hope are burdens. Faith and hope are hard. We celebrate faith and hope in our belief system. We're told that the greatest of all these things is faith, hope, and love. We celebrate faith and hope. We want those. We name our children faith and hope. They are good things. But I, in my life, in my most honest moments, experience them often as a burden, as something to be carried, as something to be chosen. Because faith is a belief in things that you can't see. Faith is what we choose when facts fall short of certainty. Do you understand? There's things that we can know about the universe and about our God and about scripture and about the claims and about life. There's things that can be scientifically proven and broken down and rendered as factual. And then there's what we choose to put our faith in. Then there's certainty. And when facts fall short of certainty, we fill that gap with faith. Whether you're a Christian or whether you're an atheist, there's no way to be totally certain of what you think's going on in the universe. So when we reach the end of facts and we have to arrive at certainty, we fill that gap with faith. So faith is a choice. We choose it. We exercise it. We learn it. We let God speak into it. We let him strengthen it over the course of our life. The longer you walk with God, hopefully the stronger your faith gets, but it gets stronger because it's been tried and it's been tested and it's been a burden that you've chosen to continue to carry. Hope is a burden. Hope is a belief that one day something can be true that I want to be true. Hope, to even have hope, is an admission that right now things are not the way that I want them to be. Right now things are less than ideal. Right now things are not what I want, but I hope, I believe that one day the things that I want can be brought about. Hope is an admission of a shortfall. People who are not yet parents and desperately want to be hope that one day this can be true of us. We, as believers, we read scripture, we hear the stories of Jesus coming down out of heaven, and we hope in that day. We place our faith in that day. We believe that there's going to be a marriage supper. We place our hope in that. We place our hope and our faith in the idea that our prayers are working, that they get to God, that they are powerful and effective and they're not just bouncing off the ceiling. But sometimes, life makes hope heavy. Sometimes life makes hope heavy. When you lose someone too early and your Bible teaches you that your God could have done something about it and you have to be confronted with the fact that he just simply didn't. In that season, you choose hope. And in that season, it's heavy. And sometimes, when life gets hard, and when faith and hope become burdens, and they become heavy, we see people put them down and walk away from them and say, I can't carry this faith anymore. I don't know how to believe in a God that would let that happen, so I'm gonna set down this faith. I don't know how I can still cling to hope when I've been disappointed in these ways, so I'm going to set down this hope. Sometimes faith and hope get heavy, and they get hard to carry. When you grow up in church, being taught a simple faith, and then you become an adult adult and there are things that happen in your world that just don't align with what you were taught when you were a kid and you have to learn how to find this new faith. You have to cling to it and you have to hope and you have to choose hope and you have to find ways to make what you were taught and what you're experiencing mesh and you have to find a whole new way to understand scripture and understand God and to understand how he speaks to you. In those moments, faith can get hard and hope can get heavy and we have to choose them. And I am convinced that the Christian life is simply a series of the decision to choose faith and to choose hope in Christ over and over and over again until we make it to the finish line. My prayer as I prayed before I preached this morning was that if there is anybody in here that's carrying heavy hope that it would get lightened just a little bit today. That we would have the strength and the faith to continue to carry it for a little bit longer. Just get down the road just a little bit further. Because sometimes faith and hope get heavy. And I hate that we don't talk about that as much because we should. And if that's true, if I'm right that they can be burdens, then one of the best things that Jesus wins when he comes sweeping out of the sky is on this day, he lays to rest faith and hope forever. And he says, here, you don't need these anymore. You don't need faith and hope anymore. Maybe that's why Paul writes in Romans 8, he says, for in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. When Jesus shows up, we don't need hope anymore. When he shows up, we don't need faith anymore. There's no more gap between facts and certainty. There's just Jesus. There's no more hoping for one day. There's just Jesus. One day has arrived. Do you understand that when Jesus sweeps down out of the sky, that he lays to rest for us for all eternity, faith and hope. And he says, you can set them down, weary traveler. You're here now. Let's feast. And I think that's a remarkable blessing. Because to be a Christian is to believe that one day these things will be true. To be a Christian is to believe that one day God will set all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. One of my favorite songs in the world is this song called Farther Along. Farther Along, I like the version from a guy named Josh Gerrels, and it opens up. And he says, I wonder why the good man dies and the bad man thrives and Jesus cries because he loves them both. And the chorus is, farther along, we'll know all about it. Farther along, we'll understand why. And it's just this acknowledgement, I think, that faith and hope are hard. Faith and hope are hard, but one day, I won't need those anymore. I can lay that and everything else down at the feet of my Savior. And on that day, when Jesus comes back, there are no more one days. On this day, Revelation 19, marriage supper of the Lamb, on that day, there are no more one days. It is one day for all eternity. There's no more wondering, there's no more hoping, there's no more struggling, there's no more pain. Because on that day, he puts an end to waiting on one day. And I kind of wonder now if that's why Paul didn't say what he said in Corinthians. When he gets to the end of talking about all the spiritual gifts and he says, but now these three remain, faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these, Paul says, is love. And I've always read and accepted that teaching, and it's made sense to me. Love binds. Love is the very nature of God. Love is what unites us together. It makes sense to me that love would be greater than faith and hope. But now I wonder, in light of what I've thought through this week, if maybe love isn't the greatest because when Jesus comes back and lays faith and hope to rest, that love is the only thing that exists for all of eternity. Maybe love is the greatest because it's the only thing left after Revelation 19. And we live in an eternity of perfect love that God designed us for, finally. As I was thinking through this sermon this week, I was pacing in the lobby. And as I was out there, just kind of walking back and forth, thinking through these things, asking myself the question, what has Christ won for us? I noticed on the information table, a bracelet, like a little ringlet. And I picked it up and I saw an inscription there. And I thought, oh, what is this? God, are you talking to me? Let? Speak, Lord, your servant hears. I'm working on the sermon. There's a bracelet here. You've got to be working in this. So I reach over, and on the bracelet, it just says, it is well with my soul. Also, if that's your bracelet, it's right out there. It just said, it is well with my soul. And I thought, oh, I love that song. But that's not really helpful. Okay, God's not speaking. And I just kept pacing. And I got done and I kind of had a fully formed idea. And sometimes on Tuesdays when I get a fully formed idea, I get a little bit excited about the sermon and I'll go and I'll tell Kyle because Kyle's always up for a conversation. I said, Kyle, I got it. Listen, I told him about this idea of faith and hope being burdens and that Jesus is going to put those to rest for us. And Kyle started to get a little teary eyed. And he said, he said, that just reminds me of my favorite song, my favorite line from my favorite song. And he quoted me these lines from it as well. And I was like, oh my gosh, God is speaking. I'm just dumb. I always say God speaks in stereo. And Kyle quoted these lines. And he started crying. And I got misty, and I knew that this is what we were supposed to share, and I knew that we were supposed to end the service today with it as well. Because in these lines, we see the author of this song admitting what we've just talked about today. The faith and hope are burdens, and so it is well with my soul. We often sing this song in a response to grief as an admission that I am going to choose faith and hope even though it's heavy today. Now let's sing it looking forward to the day we can lay those things to rest and Jesus has won the final victory and forever we will say it is well with my soul. Stand and let's sing together.
The Yo, good to see everybody. Thank you again for being here. This is the sixth part in our series going through the book of Revelation. I have really very much enjoyed going through Revelation with you all. And honestly, you guys have been more enthusiastic about it than I expected because Revelation can be a slog. It can be tough. We just took three weeks working through the tribulation, talking about the wrath of God and all the mechanics of the tribulation best we can. And to me, that feels tedious, but you guys have been incredibly supportive and incredibly kind. And it seemed like y'all have enjoyed going through this with me. As folks have asked me, how is Revelation being received? I say, it seems universally good. However, no one's going to tell me it's bad. No one's going to email me and be like, just so you know, really are looking forward to when this series is over and we can talk about something else. So that might be out there. And if that's you, I'm so sorry. Thank you for hanging with us. But for those of you who have enjoyed this, thanks so much for the encouragement because it's been really, really neat to get to go through it with you guys as a church. This morning, we arrive at Christ's return, the return of Christ. And I said last week that this needs to be the best sermon that I've ever preached in my life, to do adequate justice to the grandiosity of what's happening in Revelation 19. This will not be the best sermon of my life. I just wish that it could be, okay? So let's temper our expectations now. This is a B minus, all right? But in this sermon, we arrive at Jesus' return, at kind of the culmination of God's wrath, the final nail in the coffin. I said we've been walking through the tribulation. We've kind of looked at it through three different lenses. We looked at it in the first week to understand the wrath of God that's poured out in the tribulation, and we defined it. We defined it that week when we looked at Revelation 4 and 5, and Jesus steps forward as the Lamb of God, qualified to open up the seals and begin to open up God's wrath on his creation. We said he's beginning the seven-year process of tribulation. Now, what is tribulation? Well, we define that as the seven-year process of God pouring out his earned wrath on his creation and reclaiming what is rightfully his. And this week, he reclaims it. This week, he does the last part of the tribulation. Then we looked at kind of the flow of it, the seals and the trumpets and the bowls, and then we looked at the figures of it, and we'll talk a little bit more about the beast, the Antichrist, today. But where we're at in the narrative of Revelation is we're at the end of the Tribulation. God has poured out his wrath. We've had this great battle. There's been a great earthquake. God has sent darkness onto the kingdom of the Antichrist. And then he sends his son to finish up the work. He sends his son to answer the voice of the martyrs that cries out in Revelation chapter 6, the fifth seal. The voice of the martyrs below the throne of God that say, how much longer, God, before you avenge our death? You know who killed us. You see us suffering as your children. How much longer will you let this keep going? And we talked about in that week how we cry out with the martyrs, that every time something in our life happens that seems difficult or hard to understand or seems unfair, every time there's a school shooting, God, how much longer are you going to let this go on? Every time we lose someone too soon, God, how much longer will you let this world be broken? Every time we see something that we can't understand, we cry out with the martyrs and we say, God, how much longer, oh Lord, will you put up with this? And when he begins to open up the seals and begin the process of tribulation, he says, no more. And when he sends his son Christ, when we see Jesus in Revelation 19, that is God putting the final nail in the coffin of evil and saying, now I will make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. Now I will rectify things. Now I will restore creation. Now I will answer the groanings that Paul talks about in Romans chapter 8 when we are told that all of creation groans for the return of the king. When we're told that we yearn inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons and daughters to experience eternity in the marriage supper of the lamb, we wait for this. We long for this. This is the hope that persists in our faith and keeps us anchored to our savior because we believe that revelation 19 is going to happen one day, that he's going to come get us, and that when he comes back, you guys have heard me say this before, he's not coming back as the Lamb of God. He comes back as the Lion of Judah. And we see this description in Revelation 19, beginning in verse 11. So if you have a Bible, you can read along with me. I love this description of my Jesus. Every time I read it, whether it's out loud or just in private, I get chills. I love this picture of him. And I don't know, I don't know if everybody can relate to this. This may just be silly. This may just be me being a dummy, and that's fine. I'm familiar with this territory. It's not unfamiliar. But when I read this passage about my Jesus, that part of me as a little kid that loved to see the hero win in movies, that teenage boy that loved to watch Braveheart win, that loved Gladiator and seeing Russell Crowe's character stick it to him, that little boy that loves Star Wars, that loves to see the hero win against evil, against all odds, that part of us, and I'm sharing that with you because I think that God lays that in us intentionally. I think we love the hero because the hero is a shadow of this reality that Jesus becomes. We grow up learning to love when the day is saved and when the hero makes an appearance because God wove that, I think, into our hearts to appreciate the appearance of his son when that hero returns and appears once and for all. So it's with that preamble that we'll read the description as Jesus comes back to reclaim his creation. This is the description of him that John records. Chapter 19, verse 11. And behold, a white horse. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty on his robe and on his thigh. His name is written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Gosh. That's Jesus, man. That's Jesus. That's our Savior. When we think of Jesus, when we pray to him, when we sing to him, when we think about him, when we think about being reunited with him in heaven, I believe that it's our tendency to think about the gospel of Jesus, to think about the crucified Christ. And I don't think that's anybody's fault. We have four gospels. We spend time there all the time. I revisit a gospel every spring with you guys. We focus on Jesus at Easter. We focus on Jesus at Christmas. And we see the teachings from Jesus come out of the gospel. And so it's right and good to think about our Jesus as the crucified Christ. It's right and good to think about our Jesus as gentle and lowly. We're actually reading a book, as the staff right now, called Gentle and Lowly, and what it tells us, and I did not know this, but that the only time that Jesus is ever asked to describe himself in scripture, or rather the only time that he actually does it, he describes himself as gentle and lowly. And I think that when we think about Jesus, we think about a humble Nazarene from the country. And that's fine and that's well and good. But that's Jesus in human form. Revelation 19, that's Jesus. You understand? That's who's waiting on us. That's who's coming to get us. That warrior king written on his robe and on his thigh, king of kings and Lord of lords as a callback to Isaiah so that we know exactly who it is. And when you read through this passage, it's unbelievable to me how rich it is with allusions to other parts of scripture so that there is no doubt about it that this is Jesus coming from the very beginning. It says that he was called faithful and true, capitalized. This is a deity. This is Jesus coming. And then it says that only he knows his name, which is, that's Exodus chapter three and four, when God refuses to share his name. That's a throwback to that. And then he says that he was called the word of God, which John is referencing his own writings at beginning of John, the gospel, when he says that the word was with God in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was God through him, all things were made without him, nothing was made. And then at the end, king of kings and Lord of lords. John, in this description of Jesus is weaving together all of the scripture to point us to our savior. This is the Jesus, the one who has fire coming out of his eyes and a sword coming out of his mouth with which to strike down the nations. The one who rules with the rod of iron, who has the armies of heaven arrayed in linen, following down as he thunders down to conquer the beast and the dragon and the antichrist. That's the one that sits at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for you. That's the one that rules for all of eternity. That's the one that we pray to. And that's the one who's coming to get you. So I want to at least take some time this morning to encourage you. When you sing to Jesus, when you pray to him, when you think of him, when you anticipate meeting him, anticipate the conquering Christ. Anticipate this Jesus. Anticipate the warrior king coming down to settle the score. Anticipate the lion of Judah coming down to wreck shop. To once and for all sweep evil off the face of the planet. And when you do that, when you focus on the conquering Christ, to me, it really caused me to think about this a lot this week, that the conquering Christ renders the crucified Christ all the more miraculous. The conquering Christ, Christ conquering renders Christ crucified all the more miraculous. Because this description in Revelation 19 with a robe dipped in blood and a sword coming out of his mouth and a rod of iron that he rules a nation with, he's gonna tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God with all of heaven's armies arrayed behind him, thundering down to wreck shop. That Jesus hung on the cross for you. That Jesus walked away from all of that, condescended to take on our form, walked with us for 33 years, nurtured disciples to birth a church that would become his true kingdom that he's coming back to rescue so that you and I can sit in here 2,000 years later. He did all that, meek and mild. And when he describes himself as gentle and lowly, yeah, you're not kidding, man. Because look who he is in earth and look who he could be this whole time. This description, this guy, this God, this warrior king, he hung on the cross for you. Not just some sage from the hills of Israel. God condescended for you. He chose to hang on the cross. So I love that moment with Pilate. He's like, are you really a king? And he's like, don't worry about it, Pilate. If I wanted to, this whole place would be smashed. At any moment in Jesus' life, he could have called down these armies and just crushed anybody who opposed him. Caiaphas, the high priest, is sitting there thinking he's got Jesus right where he wants him, and Jesus is just thinking, you have no idea who I am. He dies, he's separated from God. Satan thinks he's got Jesus right where he wants him. Jesus says, you have no idea who I am. Christ conquering, to me, renders Christ crucified as all the more miraculous. And when I think about my Jesus, this is who I think about. He comes to get us and to take us back up to heaven and to start off eternity. And when he comes to get us, he takes us back, we're told, to what's called the marriage supper of the Lamb. He's defeated the beast. He's defeated the Antichrist. He locks them up. It begins the thousand-year reign. We're going to talk about that next week. There's an encore of evil, and then Jesus once and for all throws them in the lake of fire, and that's it. But he comes down. He captures the beast. The armies conquer. He takes his children, he wipes evil off the face of the earth, he purifies his bride, and then we have the marriage supper of the Lamb. And I feel bad for how I'm covering the marriage supper of the Lamb in this series. Because I'm not gonna do it justice. I'm not gonna adequately cover it. And I'm not saying that in this series. Because I'm not going to do it justice. I'm not going to adequately cover it. And I'm not saying that in this way of false humility, like, oh yeah, I'm really not doing that good of a job with it. Like, no, I'm not. We just don't have enough time to sink in to everything that's here and even all the symbolism in the marriage supper of the Lamb. But a simple way of thinking about it is the marriage supper of the lamb is the greatest celebration feast of all time. It is the greatest celebration feast that ever was and ever will be. And this should hit home with us. Because what do we do? What do we do when we want to celebrate? I got a little bit of good news last week. Such good news that I went straight to the butcher's market. I bought myself a big old ribeye and I had that for dinner when the kids went to bed. I had myself my own personal private celebration feast. When your team wins, what do you do? You have a feast. When something good in life happens, when you graduate, you have a feast. When people come into town, what do you do? You have a feast. What are we going to do this week? We're going to get together with friends and family. We're going to reflect on the blessings that God has given us, and we're going to have a feast. This is what we do to celebrate. When your kid gets married, and you celebrate kind of transitioning into that season of life. This one has passed. We've formed a new family. What do you do? You get all your friends together and you have a feast. This is what God is doing. It's the greatest celebration feast of all time. In the days of old when kings would conquer and they would come back from conquering another king, what did they do? They feasted. And Jesus is bringing us back to the marriage supper of the Lamb. Why is it called the marriage supper of the Lamb? Because Jesus is getting married. Who's he marrying? Us. The church. His bride. We see throughout Scripture that the church is referred to as the bride of Christ. We see in Ephesians that God purifies his bride. He prepares us. We are made pure for Jesus so that we might marry him in eternity. I don't know how all that works out. It's a word play, but we are made pure by our savior. How are we made pure? By the crucified Christ hanging on the cross. He died for us. He covered over you in righteousness, made you good, purified you, prepared you for this very moment, for the marriage supper of the Lamb, where the church and Christ are united for all of eternity and perfect bliss. And so it's right and good to have a feast to celebrate the marriage. And this feast, man, it's going to be a good feast. The ones that you've lost, they're going to be there. I don't know for certain. I can't find it in Scripture. But I'm pretty sure they're going to serve catfish at this feast. Because my papa is going to be there. He loves catfish. And I know he's got some waiting on me. Your loved ones are going to be there too. Your dads are going to be there. And your moms. And the children that you never got to meet because you lost them too early, they're going to be there. All the saints who have come before us, all the saints that you've loved, they're going to be there. And listen to this. They're going to be the best versions of themselves. They're not going to be sick. They're not going to be unhealthy. They're not going to be unwell. They're going to be the perfect versions of themselves. They're not going to have all the brokenness that hurts us sometimes. Do you understand what I'm saying? Your dad, who you loved, but man, that guy had a temper. In heaven, he doesn't have a temper anymore. He's just love. He's just all the best parts of him. The people who we love, who made it sometimes hard to love them. Jesus has prepared those brides too. Their brokenness is wiped away. And they love you with purity. And you're made perfect too. All the crap in your life, all the stuff that you wish wasn't true of you, all the things that you hope nobody finds out, all the brokenness that spills out of you and hurts the people around you when you don't want to hurt them and you hate that side of yourself, that side's gone at the marriage supper of the Lamb. You're made perfect there. You're made your ideal self there. You're made your eternal self there. And you can love other people finally with the purity that God loves you with. We see the best versions of the folks we love. I am convinced of this. We finally walk in the best versions of ourself and don't have to wonder what it would be like to not have to walk through life as a selfish, egotistical jerk. That one's just for me. I don't know what your thing is. That feast is going to be remarkable. And everybody's going to be there. And Jesus is coming to take you to that. And I think that's pretty great. And as I thought about these things this week, the triumphant return of Christ and the marriage supper of the Lamb and all that it represents and what Jesus really won with that victory. What does it mean for us? Yes, evil is smited. Evil is gone and all the wrong things are made right and all the sad things are made untrue. All that is very true and God wins once and for all and that part of us that loves a hero gets to see the actual hero come storming out of the clouds. He wins those things for us. We see our God claim victory and that's great. But there's something else that occurred to me too. I was prepared. I knew this was going to happen. We're not even to the hard part yet. Jeez, old Pete. Something else occurred to me as I kind of asked the question, what has Jesus won? And what are we celebrating at the marriage supper? And I was reminded of this idea that I have long carried with me, but I've not heard too many other people talking about it. I've actually never heard a pastor talk about this. It doesn't make it a unique idea. It's just one that I've not heard other people mention. And maybe it's because pastors aren't supposed to say things like this and the other ones know better and yours doesn't. But I've long carried with me this idea that faith and hope are burdens. Faith and hope are hard. We celebrate faith and hope in our belief system. We're told that the greatest of all these things is faith, hope, and love. We celebrate faith and hope. We want those. We name our children faith and hope. They are good things. But I, in my life, in my most honest moments, experience them often as a burden, as something to be carried, as something to be chosen. Because faith is a belief in things that you can't see. Faith is what we choose when facts fall short of certainty. Do you understand? There's things that we can know about the universe and about our God and about scripture and about the claims and about life. There's things that can be scientifically proven and broken down and rendered as factual. And then there's what we choose to put our faith in. Then there's certainty. And when facts fall short of certainty, we fill that gap with faith. Whether you're a Christian or whether you're an atheist, there's no way to be totally certain of what you think's going on in the universe. So when we reach the end of facts and we have to arrive at certainty, we fill that gap with faith. So faith is a choice. We choose it. We exercise it. We learn it. We let God speak into it. We let him strengthen it over the course of our life. The longer you walk with God, hopefully the stronger your faith gets, but it gets stronger because it's been tried and it's been tested and it's been a burden that you've chosen to continue to carry. Hope is a burden. Hope is a belief that one day something can be true that I want to be true. Hope, to even have hope, is an admission that right now things are not the way that I want them to be. Right now things are less than ideal. Right now things are not what I want, but I hope, I believe that one day the things that I want can be brought about. Hope is an admission of a shortfall. People who are not yet parents and desperately want to be hope that one day this can be true of us. We, as believers, we read scripture, we hear the stories of Jesus coming down out of heaven, and we hope in that day. We place our faith in that day. We believe that there's going to be a marriage supper. We place our hope in that. We place our hope and our faith in the idea that our prayers are working, that they get to God, that they are powerful and effective and they're not just bouncing off the ceiling. But sometimes, life makes hope heavy. Sometimes life makes hope heavy. When you lose someone too early and your Bible teaches you that your God could have done something about it and you have to be confronted with the fact that he just simply didn't. In that season, you choose hope. And in that season, it's heavy. And sometimes, when life gets hard, and when faith and hope become burdens, and they become heavy, we see people put them down and walk away from them and say, I can't carry this faith anymore. I don't know how to believe in a God that would let that happen, so I'm gonna set down this faith. I don't know how I can still cling to hope when I've been disappointed in these ways, so I'm going to set down this hope. Sometimes faith and hope get heavy, and they get hard to carry. When you grow up in church, being taught a simple faith, and then you become an adult adult and there are things that happen in your world that just don't align with what you were taught when you were a kid and you have to learn how to find this new faith. You have to cling to it and you have to hope and you have to choose hope and you have to find ways to make what you were taught and what you're experiencing mesh and you have to find a whole new way to understand scripture and understand God and to understand how he speaks to you. In those moments, faith can get hard and hope can get heavy and we have to choose them. And I am convinced that the Christian life is simply a series of the decision to choose faith and to choose hope in Christ over and over and over again until we make it to the finish line. My prayer as I prayed before I preached this morning was that if there is anybody in here that's carrying heavy hope that it would get lightened just a little bit today. That we would have the strength and the faith to continue to carry it for a little bit longer. Just get down the road just a little bit further. Because sometimes faith and hope get heavy. And I hate that we don't talk about that as much because we should. And if that's true, if I'm right that they can be burdens, then one of the best things that Jesus wins when he comes sweeping out of the sky is on this day, he lays to rest faith and hope forever. And he says, here, you don't need these anymore. You don't need faith and hope anymore. Maybe that's why Paul writes in Romans 8, he says, for in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. When Jesus shows up, we don't need hope anymore. When he shows up, we don't need faith anymore. There's no more gap between facts and certainty. There's just Jesus. There's no more hoping for one day. There's just Jesus. One day has arrived. Do you understand that when Jesus sweeps down out of the sky, that he lays to rest for us for all eternity, faith and hope. And he says, you can set them down, weary traveler. You're here now. Let's feast. And I think that's a remarkable blessing. Because to be a Christian is to believe that one day these things will be true. To be a Christian is to believe that one day God will set all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. One of my favorite songs in the world is this song called Farther Along. Farther Along, I like the version from a guy named Josh Gerrels, and it opens up. And he says, I wonder why the good man dies and the bad man thrives and Jesus cries because he loves them both. And the chorus is, farther along, we'll know all about it. Farther along, we'll understand why. And it's just this acknowledgement, I think, that faith and hope are hard. Faith and hope are hard, but one day, I won't need those anymore. I can lay that and everything else down at the feet of my Savior. And on that day, when Jesus comes back, there are no more one days. On this day, Revelation 19, marriage supper of the Lamb, on that day, there are no more one days. It is one day for all eternity. There's no more wondering, there's no more hoping, there's no more struggling, there's no more pain. Because on that day, he puts an end to waiting on one day. And I kind of wonder now if that's why Paul didn't say what he said in Corinthians. When he gets to the end of talking about all the spiritual gifts and he says, but now these three remain, faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these, Paul says, is love. And I've always read and accepted that teaching, and it's made sense to me. Love binds. Love is the very nature of God. Love is what unites us together. It makes sense to me that love would be greater than faith and hope. But now I wonder, in light of what I've thought through this week, if maybe love isn't the greatest because when Jesus comes back and lays faith and hope to rest, that love is the only thing that exists for all of eternity. Maybe love is the greatest because it's the only thing left after Revelation 19. And we live in an eternity of perfect love that God designed us for, finally. As I was thinking through this sermon this week, I was pacing in the lobby. And as I was out there, just kind of walking back and forth, thinking through these things, asking myself the question, what has Christ won for us? I noticed on the information table, a bracelet, like a little ringlet. And I picked it up and I saw an inscription there. And I thought, oh, what is this? God, are you talking to me? Let? Speak, Lord, your servant hears. I'm working on the sermon. There's a bracelet here. You've got to be working in this. So I reach over, and on the bracelet, it just says, it is well with my soul. Also, if that's your bracelet, it's right out there. It just said, it is well with my soul. And I thought, oh, I love that song. But that's not really helpful. Okay, God's not speaking. And I just kept pacing. And I got done and I kind of had a fully formed idea. And sometimes on Tuesdays when I get a fully formed idea, I get a little bit excited about the sermon and I'll go and I'll tell Kyle because Kyle's always up for a conversation. I said, Kyle, I got it. Listen, I told him about this idea of faith and hope being burdens and that Jesus is going to put those to rest for us. And Kyle started to get a little teary eyed. And he said, he said, that just reminds me of my favorite song, my favorite line from my favorite song. And he quoted me these lines from it as well. And I was like, oh my gosh, God is speaking. I'm just dumb. I always say God speaks in stereo. And Kyle quoted these lines. And he started crying. And I got misty, and I knew that this is what we were supposed to share, and I knew that we were supposed to end the service today with it as well. Because in these lines, we see the author of this song admitting what we've just talked about today. The faith and hope are burdens, and so it is well with my soul. We often sing this song in a response to grief as an admission that I am going to choose faith and hope even though it's heavy today. Now let's sing it looking forward to the day we can lay those things to rest and Jesus has won the final victory and forever we will say it is well with my soul. Stand and let's sing together.
The Yo, good to see everybody. Thank you again for being here. This is the sixth part in our series going through the book of Revelation. I have really very much enjoyed going through Revelation with you all. And honestly, you guys have been more enthusiastic about it than I expected because Revelation can be a slog. It can be tough. We just took three weeks working through the tribulation, talking about the wrath of God and all the mechanics of the tribulation best we can. And to me, that feels tedious, but you guys have been incredibly supportive and incredibly kind. And it seemed like y'all have enjoyed going through this with me. As folks have asked me, how is Revelation being received? I say, it seems universally good. However, no one's going to tell me it's bad. No one's going to email me and be like, just so you know, really are looking forward to when this series is over and we can talk about something else. So that might be out there. And if that's you, I'm so sorry. Thank you for hanging with us. But for those of you who have enjoyed this, thanks so much for the encouragement because it's been really, really neat to get to go through it with you guys as a church. This morning, we arrive at Christ's return, the return of Christ. And I said last week that this needs to be the best sermon that I've ever preached in my life, to do adequate justice to the grandiosity of what's happening in Revelation 19. This will not be the best sermon of my life. I just wish that it could be, okay? So let's temper our expectations now. This is a B minus, all right? But in this sermon, we arrive at Jesus' return, at kind of the culmination of God's wrath, the final nail in the coffin. I said we've been walking through the tribulation. We've kind of looked at it through three different lenses. We looked at it in the first week to understand the wrath of God that's poured out in the tribulation, and we defined it. We defined it that week when we looked at Revelation 4 and 5, and Jesus steps forward as the Lamb of God, qualified to open up the seals and begin to open up God's wrath on his creation. We said he's beginning the seven-year process of tribulation. Now, what is tribulation? Well, we define that as the seven-year process of God pouring out his earned wrath on his creation and reclaiming what is rightfully his. And this week, he reclaims it. This week, he does the last part of the tribulation. Then we looked at kind of the flow of it, the seals and the trumpets and the bowls, and then we looked at the figures of it, and we'll talk a little bit more about the beast, the Antichrist, today. But where we're at in the narrative of Revelation is we're at the end of the Tribulation. God has poured out his wrath. We've had this great battle. There's been a great earthquake. God has sent darkness onto the kingdom of the Antichrist. And then he sends his son to finish up the work. He sends his son to answer the voice of the martyrs that cries out in Revelation chapter 6, the fifth seal. The voice of the martyrs below the throne of God that say, how much longer, God, before you avenge our death? You know who killed us. You see us suffering as your children. How much longer will you let this keep going? And we talked about in that week how we cry out with the martyrs, that every time something in our life happens that seems difficult or hard to understand or seems unfair, every time there's a school shooting, God, how much longer are you going to let this go on? Every time we lose someone too soon, God, how much longer will you let this world be broken? Every time we see something that we can't understand, we cry out with the martyrs and we say, God, how much longer, oh Lord, will you put up with this? And when he begins to open up the seals and begin the process of tribulation, he says, no more. And when he sends his son Christ, when we see Jesus in Revelation 19, that is God putting the final nail in the coffin of evil and saying, now I will make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. Now I will rectify things. Now I will restore creation. Now I will answer the groanings that Paul talks about in Romans chapter 8 when we are told that all of creation groans for the return of the king. When we're told that we yearn inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons and daughters to experience eternity in the marriage supper of the lamb, we wait for this. We long for this. This is the hope that persists in our faith and keeps us anchored to our savior because we believe that revelation 19 is going to happen one day, that he's going to come get us, and that when he comes back, you guys have heard me say this before, he's not coming back as the Lamb of God. He comes back as the Lion of Judah. And we see this description in Revelation 19, beginning in verse 11. So if you have a Bible, you can read along with me. I love this description of my Jesus. Every time I read it, whether it's out loud or just in private, I get chills. I love this picture of him. And I don't know, I don't know if everybody can relate to this. This may just be silly. This may just be me being a dummy, and that's fine. I'm familiar with this territory. It's not unfamiliar. But when I read this passage about my Jesus, that part of me as a little kid that loved to see the hero win in movies, that teenage boy that loved to watch Braveheart win, that loved Gladiator and seeing Russell Crowe's character stick it to him, that little boy that loves Star Wars, that loves to see the hero win against evil, against all odds, that part of us, and I'm sharing that with you because I think that God lays that in us intentionally. I think we love the hero because the hero is a shadow of this reality that Jesus becomes. We grow up learning to love when the day is saved and when the hero makes an appearance because God wove that, I think, into our hearts to appreciate the appearance of his son when that hero returns and appears once and for all. So it's with that preamble that we'll read the description as Jesus comes back to reclaim his creation. This is the description of him that John records. Chapter 19, verse 11. And behold, a white horse. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty on his robe and on his thigh. His name is written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Gosh. That's Jesus, man. That's Jesus. That's our Savior. When we think of Jesus, when we pray to him, when we sing to him, when we think about him, when we think about being reunited with him in heaven, I believe that it's our tendency to think about the gospel of Jesus, to think about the crucified Christ. And I don't think that's anybody's fault. We have four gospels. We spend time there all the time. I revisit a gospel every spring with you guys. We focus on Jesus at Easter. We focus on Jesus at Christmas. And we see the teachings from Jesus come out of the gospel. And so it's right and good to think about our Jesus as the crucified Christ. It's right and good to think about our Jesus as gentle and lowly. We're actually reading a book, as the staff right now, called Gentle and Lowly, and what it tells us, and I did not know this, but that the only time that Jesus is ever asked to describe himself in scripture, or rather the only time that he actually does it, he describes himself as gentle and lowly. And I think that when we think about Jesus, we think about a humble Nazarene from the country. And that's fine and that's well and good. But that's Jesus in human form. Revelation 19, that's Jesus. You understand? That's who's waiting on us. That's who's coming to get us. That warrior king written on his robe and on his thigh, king of kings and Lord of lords as a callback to Isaiah so that we know exactly who it is. And when you read through this passage, it's unbelievable to me how rich it is with allusions to other parts of scripture so that there is no doubt about it that this is Jesus coming from the very beginning. It says that he was called faithful and true, capitalized. This is a deity. This is Jesus coming. And then it says that only he knows his name, which is, that's Exodus chapter three and four, when God refuses to share his name. That's a throwback to that. And then he says that he was called the word of God, which John is referencing his own writings at beginning of John, the gospel, when he says that the word was with God in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was God through him, all things were made without him, nothing was made. And then at the end, king of kings and Lord of lords. John, in this description of Jesus is weaving together all of the scripture to point us to our savior. This is the Jesus, the one who has fire coming out of his eyes and a sword coming out of his mouth with which to strike down the nations. The one who rules with the rod of iron, who has the armies of heaven arrayed in linen, following down as he thunders down to conquer the beast and the dragon and the antichrist. That's the one that sits at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for you. That's the one that rules for all of eternity. That's the one that we pray to. And that's the one who's coming to get you. So I want to at least take some time this morning to encourage you. When you sing to Jesus, when you pray to him, when you think of him, when you anticipate meeting him, anticipate the conquering Christ. Anticipate this Jesus. Anticipate the warrior king coming down to settle the score. Anticipate the lion of Judah coming down to wreck shop. To once and for all sweep evil off the face of the planet. And when you do that, when you focus on the conquering Christ, to me, it really caused me to think about this a lot this week, that the conquering Christ renders the crucified Christ all the more miraculous. The conquering Christ, Christ conquering renders Christ crucified all the more miraculous. Because this description in Revelation 19 with a robe dipped in blood and a sword coming out of his mouth and a rod of iron that he rules a nation with, he's gonna tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God with all of heaven's armies arrayed behind him, thundering down to wreck shop. That Jesus hung on the cross for you. That Jesus walked away from all of that, condescended to take on our form, walked with us for 33 years, nurtured disciples to birth a church that would become his true kingdom that he's coming back to rescue so that you and I can sit in here 2,000 years later. He did all that, meek and mild. And when he describes himself as gentle and lowly, yeah, you're not kidding, man. Because look who he is in earth and look who he could be this whole time. This description, this guy, this God, this warrior king, he hung on the cross for you. Not just some sage from the hills of Israel. God condescended for you. He chose to hang on the cross. So I love that moment with Pilate. He's like, are you really a king? And he's like, don't worry about it, Pilate. If I wanted to, this whole place would be smashed. At any moment in Jesus' life, he could have called down these armies and just crushed anybody who opposed him. Caiaphas, the high priest, is sitting there thinking he's got Jesus right where he wants him, and Jesus is just thinking, you have no idea who I am. He dies, he's separated from God. Satan thinks he's got Jesus right where he wants him. Jesus says, you have no idea who I am. Christ conquering, to me, renders Christ crucified as all the more miraculous. And when I think about my Jesus, this is who I think about. He comes to get us and to take us back up to heaven and to start off eternity. And when he comes to get us, he takes us back, we're told, to what's called the marriage supper of the Lamb. He's defeated the beast. He's defeated the Antichrist. He locks them up. It begins the thousand-year reign. We're going to talk about that next week. There's an encore of evil, and then Jesus once and for all throws them in the lake of fire, and that's it. But he comes down. He captures the beast. The armies conquer. He takes his children, he wipes evil off the face of the earth, he purifies his bride, and then we have the marriage supper of the Lamb. And I feel bad for how I'm covering the marriage supper of the Lamb in this series. Because I'm not gonna do it justice. I'm not gonna adequately cover it. And I'm not saying that in this series. Because I'm not going to do it justice. I'm not going to adequately cover it. And I'm not saying that in this way of false humility, like, oh yeah, I'm really not doing that good of a job with it. Like, no, I'm not. We just don't have enough time to sink in to everything that's here and even all the symbolism in the marriage supper of the Lamb. But a simple way of thinking about it is the marriage supper of the lamb is the greatest celebration feast of all time. It is the greatest celebration feast that ever was and ever will be. And this should hit home with us. Because what do we do? What do we do when we want to celebrate? I got a little bit of good news last week. Such good news that I went straight to the butcher's market. I bought myself a big old ribeye and I had that for dinner when the kids went to bed. I had myself my own personal private celebration feast. When your team wins, what do you do? You have a feast. When something good in life happens, when you graduate, you have a feast. When people come into town, what do you do? You have a feast. What are we going to do this week? We're going to get together with friends and family. We're going to reflect on the blessings that God has given us, and we're going to have a feast. This is what we do to celebrate. When your kid gets married, and you celebrate kind of transitioning into that season of life. This one has passed. We've formed a new family. What do you do? You get all your friends together and you have a feast. This is what God is doing. It's the greatest celebration feast of all time. In the days of old when kings would conquer and they would come back from conquering another king, what did they do? They feasted. And Jesus is bringing us back to the marriage supper of the Lamb. Why is it called the marriage supper of the Lamb? Because Jesus is getting married. Who's he marrying? Us. The church. His bride. We see throughout Scripture that the church is referred to as the bride of Christ. We see in Ephesians that God purifies his bride. He prepares us. We are made pure for Jesus so that we might marry him in eternity. I don't know how all that works out. It's a word play, but we are made pure by our savior. How are we made pure? By the crucified Christ hanging on the cross. He died for us. He covered over you in righteousness, made you good, purified you, prepared you for this very moment, for the marriage supper of the Lamb, where the church and Christ are united for all of eternity and perfect bliss. And so it's right and good to have a feast to celebrate the marriage. And this feast, man, it's going to be a good feast. The ones that you've lost, they're going to be there. I don't know for certain. I can't find it in Scripture. But I'm pretty sure they're going to serve catfish at this feast. Because my papa is going to be there. He loves catfish. And I know he's got some waiting on me. Your loved ones are going to be there too. Your dads are going to be there. And your moms. And the children that you never got to meet because you lost them too early, they're going to be there. All the saints who have come before us, all the saints that you've loved, they're going to be there. And listen to this. They're going to be the best versions of themselves. They're not going to be sick. They're not going to be unhealthy. They're not going to be unwell. They're going to be the perfect versions of themselves. They're not going to have all the brokenness that hurts us sometimes. Do you understand what I'm saying? Your dad, who you loved, but man, that guy had a temper. In heaven, he doesn't have a temper anymore. He's just love. He's just all the best parts of him. The people who we love, who made it sometimes hard to love them. Jesus has prepared those brides too. Their brokenness is wiped away. And they love you with purity. And you're made perfect too. All the crap in your life, all the stuff that you wish wasn't true of you, all the things that you hope nobody finds out, all the brokenness that spills out of you and hurts the people around you when you don't want to hurt them and you hate that side of yourself, that side's gone at the marriage supper of the Lamb. You're made perfect there. You're made your ideal self there. You're made your eternal self there. And you can love other people finally with the purity that God loves you with. We see the best versions of the folks we love. I am convinced of this. We finally walk in the best versions of ourself and don't have to wonder what it would be like to not have to walk through life as a selfish, egotistical jerk. That one's just for me. I don't know what your thing is. That feast is going to be remarkable. And everybody's going to be there. And Jesus is coming to take you to that. And I think that's pretty great. And as I thought about these things this week, the triumphant return of Christ and the marriage supper of the Lamb and all that it represents and what Jesus really won with that victory. What does it mean for us? Yes, evil is smited. Evil is gone and all the wrong things are made right and all the sad things are made untrue. All that is very true and God wins once and for all and that part of us that loves a hero gets to see the actual hero come storming out of the clouds. He wins those things for us. We see our God claim victory and that's great. But there's something else that occurred to me too. I was prepared. I knew this was going to happen. We're not even to the hard part yet. Jeez, old Pete. Something else occurred to me as I kind of asked the question, what has Jesus won? And what are we celebrating at the marriage supper? And I was reminded of this idea that I have long carried with me, but I've not heard too many other people talking about it. I've actually never heard a pastor talk about this. It doesn't make it a unique idea. It's just one that I've not heard other people mention. And maybe it's because pastors aren't supposed to say things like this and the other ones know better and yours doesn't. But I've long carried with me this idea that faith and hope are burdens. Faith and hope are hard. We celebrate faith and hope in our belief system. We're told that the greatest of all these things is faith, hope, and love. We celebrate faith and hope. We want those. We name our children faith and hope. They are good things. But I, in my life, in my most honest moments, experience them often as a burden, as something to be carried, as something to be chosen. Because faith is a belief in things that you can't see. Faith is what we choose when facts fall short of certainty. Do you understand? There's things that we can know about the universe and about our God and about scripture and about the claims and about life. There's things that can be scientifically proven and broken down and rendered as factual. And then there's what we choose to put our faith in. Then there's certainty. And when facts fall short of certainty, we fill that gap with faith. Whether you're a Christian or whether you're an atheist, there's no way to be totally certain of what you think's going on in the universe. So when we reach the end of facts and we have to arrive at certainty, we fill that gap with faith. So faith is a choice. We choose it. We exercise it. We learn it. We let God speak into it. We let him strengthen it over the course of our life. The longer you walk with God, hopefully the stronger your faith gets, but it gets stronger because it's been tried and it's been tested and it's been a burden that you've chosen to continue to carry. Hope is a burden. Hope is a belief that one day something can be true that I want to be true. Hope, to even have hope, is an admission that right now things are not the way that I want them to be. Right now things are less than ideal. Right now things are not what I want, but I hope, I believe that one day the things that I want can be brought about. Hope is an admission of a shortfall. People who are not yet parents and desperately want to be hope that one day this can be true of us. We, as believers, we read scripture, we hear the stories of Jesus coming down out of heaven, and we hope in that day. We place our faith in that day. We believe that there's going to be a marriage supper. We place our hope in that. We place our hope and our faith in the idea that our prayers are working, that they get to God, that they are powerful and effective and they're not just bouncing off the ceiling. But sometimes, life makes hope heavy. Sometimes life makes hope heavy. When you lose someone too early and your Bible teaches you that your God could have done something about it and you have to be confronted with the fact that he just simply didn't. In that season, you choose hope. And in that season, it's heavy. And sometimes, when life gets hard, and when faith and hope become burdens, and they become heavy, we see people put them down and walk away from them and say, I can't carry this faith anymore. I don't know how to believe in a God that would let that happen, so I'm gonna set down this faith. I don't know how I can still cling to hope when I've been disappointed in these ways, so I'm going to set down this hope. Sometimes faith and hope get heavy, and they get hard to carry. When you grow up in church, being taught a simple faith, and then you become an adult adult and there are things that happen in your world that just don't align with what you were taught when you were a kid and you have to learn how to find this new faith. You have to cling to it and you have to hope and you have to choose hope and you have to find ways to make what you were taught and what you're experiencing mesh and you have to find a whole new way to understand scripture and understand God and to understand how he speaks to you. In those moments, faith can get hard and hope can get heavy and we have to choose them. And I am convinced that the Christian life is simply a series of the decision to choose faith and to choose hope in Christ over and over and over again until we make it to the finish line. My prayer as I prayed before I preached this morning was that if there is anybody in here that's carrying heavy hope that it would get lightened just a little bit today. That we would have the strength and the faith to continue to carry it for a little bit longer. Just get down the road just a little bit further. Because sometimes faith and hope get heavy. And I hate that we don't talk about that as much because we should. And if that's true, if I'm right that they can be burdens, then one of the best things that Jesus wins when he comes sweeping out of the sky is on this day, he lays to rest faith and hope forever. And he says, here, you don't need these anymore. You don't need faith and hope anymore. Maybe that's why Paul writes in Romans 8, he says, for in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. When Jesus shows up, we don't need hope anymore. When he shows up, we don't need faith anymore. There's no more gap between facts and certainty. There's just Jesus. There's no more hoping for one day. There's just Jesus. One day has arrived. Do you understand that when Jesus sweeps down out of the sky, that he lays to rest for us for all eternity, faith and hope. And he says, you can set them down, weary traveler. You're here now. Let's feast. And I think that's a remarkable blessing. Because to be a Christian is to believe that one day these things will be true. To be a Christian is to believe that one day God will set all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. One of my favorite songs in the world is this song called Farther Along. Farther Along, I like the version from a guy named Josh Gerrels, and it opens up. And he says, I wonder why the good man dies and the bad man thrives and Jesus cries because he loves them both. And the chorus is, farther along, we'll know all about it. Farther along, we'll understand why. And it's just this acknowledgement, I think, that faith and hope are hard. Faith and hope are hard, but one day, I won't need those anymore. I can lay that and everything else down at the feet of my Savior. And on that day, when Jesus comes back, there are no more one days. On this day, Revelation 19, marriage supper of the Lamb, on that day, there are no more one days. It is one day for all eternity. There's no more wondering, there's no more hoping, there's no more struggling, there's no more pain. Because on that day, he puts an end to waiting on one day. And I kind of wonder now if that's why Paul didn't say what he said in Corinthians. When he gets to the end of talking about all the spiritual gifts and he says, but now these three remain, faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these, Paul says, is love. And I've always read and accepted that teaching, and it's made sense to me. Love binds. Love is the very nature of God. Love is what unites us together. It makes sense to me that love would be greater than faith and hope. But now I wonder, in light of what I've thought through this week, if maybe love isn't the greatest because when Jesus comes back and lays faith and hope to rest, that love is the only thing that exists for all of eternity. Maybe love is the greatest because it's the only thing left after Revelation 19. And we live in an eternity of perfect love that God designed us for, finally. As I was thinking through this sermon this week, I was pacing in the lobby. And as I was out there, just kind of walking back and forth, thinking through these things, asking myself the question, what has Christ won for us? I noticed on the information table, a bracelet, like a little ringlet. And I picked it up and I saw an inscription there. And I thought, oh, what is this? God, are you talking to me? Let? Speak, Lord, your servant hears. I'm working on the sermon. There's a bracelet here. You've got to be working in this. So I reach over, and on the bracelet, it just says, it is well with my soul. Also, if that's your bracelet, it's right out there. It just said, it is well with my soul. And I thought, oh, I love that song. But that's not really helpful. Okay, God's not speaking. And I just kept pacing. And I got done and I kind of had a fully formed idea. And sometimes on Tuesdays when I get a fully formed idea, I get a little bit excited about the sermon and I'll go and I'll tell Kyle because Kyle's always up for a conversation. I said, Kyle, I got it. Listen, I told him about this idea of faith and hope being burdens and that Jesus is going to put those to rest for us. And Kyle started to get a little teary eyed. And he said, he said, that just reminds me of my favorite song, my favorite line from my favorite song. And he quoted me these lines from it as well. And I was like, oh my gosh, God is speaking. I'm just dumb. I always say God speaks in stereo. And Kyle quoted these lines. And he started crying. And I got misty, and I knew that this is what we were supposed to share, and I knew that we were supposed to end the service today with it as well. Because in these lines, we see the author of this song admitting what we've just talked about today. The faith and hope are burdens, and so it is well with my soul. We often sing this song in a response to grief as an admission that I am going to choose faith and hope even though it's heavy today. Now let's sing it looking forward to the day we can lay those things to rest and Jesus has won the final victory and forever we will say it is well with my soul. Stand and let's sing together.
The Yo, good to see everybody. Thank you again for being here. This is the sixth part in our series going through the book of Revelation. I have really very much enjoyed going through Revelation with you all. And honestly, you guys have been more enthusiastic about it than I expected because Revelation can be a slog. It can be tough. We just took three weeks working through the tribulation, talking about the wrath of God and all the mechanics of the tribulation best we can. And to me, that feels tedious, but you guys have been incredibly supportive and incredibly kind. And it seemed like y'all have enjoyed going through this with me. As folks have asked me, how is Revelation being received? I say, it seems universally good. However, no one's going to tell me it's bad. No one's going to email me and be like, just so you know, really are looking forward to when this series is over and we can talk about something else. So that might be out there. And if that's you, I'm so sorry. Thank you for hanging with us. But for those of you who have enjoyed this, thanks so much for the encouragement because it's been really, really neat to get to go through it with you guys as a church. This morning, we arrive at Christ's return, the return of Christ. And I said last week that this needs to be the best sermon that I've ever preached in my life, to do adequate justice to the grandiosity of what's happening in Revelation 19. This will not be the best sermon of my life. I just wish that it could be, okay? So let's temper our expectations now. This is a B minus, all right? But in this sermon, we arrive at Jesus' return, at kind of the culmination of God's wrath, the final nail in the coffin. I said we've been walking through the tribulation. We've kind of looked at it through three different lenses. We looked at it in the first week to understand the wrath of God that's poured out in the tribulation, and we defined it. We defined it that week when we looked at Revelation 4 and 5, and Jesus steps forward as the Lamb of God, qualified to open up the seals and begin to open up God's wrath on his creation. We said he's beginning the seven-year process of tribulation. Now, what is tribulation? Well, we define that as the seven-year process of God pouring out his earned wrath on his creation and reclaiming what is rightfully his. And this week, he reclaims it. This week, he does the last part of the tribulation. Then we looked at kind of the flow of it, the seals and the trumpets and the bowls, and then we looked at the figures of it, and we'll talk a little bit more about the beast, the Antichrist, today. But where we're at in the narrative of Revelation is we're at the end of the Tribulation. God has poured out his wrath. We've had this great battle. There's been a great earthquake. God has sent darkness onto the kingdom of the Antichrist. And then he sends his son to finish up the work. He sends his son to answer the voice of the martyrs that cries out in Revelation chapter 6, the fifth seal. The voice of the martyrs below the throne of God that say, how much longer, God, before you avenge our death? You know who killed us. You see us suffering as your children. How much longer will you let this keep going? And we talked about in that week how we cry out with the martyrs, that every time something in our life happens that seems difficult or hard to understand or seems unfair, every time there's a school shooting, God, how much longer are you going to let this go on? Every time we lose someone too soon, God, how much longer will you let this world be broken? Every time we see something that we can't understand, we cry out with the martyrs and we say, God, how much longer, oh Lord, will you put up with this? And when he begins to open up the seals and begin the process of tribulation, he says, no more. And when he sends his son Christ, when we see Jesus in Revelation 19, that is God putting the final nail in the coffin of evil and saying, now I will make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. Now I will rectify things. Now I will restore creation. Now I will answer the groanings that Paul talks about in Romans chapter 8 when we are told that all of creation groans for the return of the king. When we're told that we yearn inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons and daughters to experience eternity in the marriage supper of the lamb, we wait for this. We long for this. This is the hope that persists in our faith and keeps us anchored to our savior because we believe that revelation 19 is going to happen one day, that he's going to come get us, and that when he comes back, you guys have heard me say this before, he's not coming back as the Lamb of God. He comes back as the Lion of Judah. And we see this description in Revelation 19, beginning in verse 11. So if you have a Bible, you can read along with me. I love this description of my Jesus. Every time I read it, whether it's out loud or just in private, I get chills. I love this picture of him. And I don't know, I don't know if everybody can relate to this. This may just be silly. This may just be me being a dummy, and that's fine. I'm familiar with this territory. It's not unfamiliar. But when I read this passage about my Jesus, that part of me as a little kid that loved to see the hero win in movies, that teenage boy that loved to watch Braveheart win, that loved Gladiator and seeing Russell Crowe's character stick it to him, that little boy that loves Star Wars, that loves to see the hero win against evil, against all odds, that part of us, and I'm sharing that with you because I think that God lays that in us intentionally. I think we love the hero because the hero is a shadow of this reality that Jesus becomes. We grow up learning to love when the day is saved and when the hero makes an appearance because God wove that, I think, into our hearts to appreciate the appearance of his son when that hero returns and appears once and for all. So it's with that preamble that we'll read the description as Jesus comes back to reclaim his creation. This is the description of him that John records. Chapter 19, verse 11. And behold, a white horse. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty on his robe and on his thigh. His name is written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Gosh. That's Jesus, man. That's Jesus. That's our Savior. When we think of Jesus, when we pray to him, when we sing to him, when we think about him, when we think about being reunited with him in heaven, I believe that it's our tendency to think about the gospel of Jesus, to think about the crucified Christ. And I don't think that's anybody's fault. We have four gospels. We spend time there all the time. I revisit a gospel every spring with you guys. We focus on Jesus at Easter. We focus on Jesus at Christmas. And we see the teachings from Jesus come out of the gospel. And so it's right and good to think about our Jesus as the crucified Christ. It's right and good to think about our Jesus as gentle and lowly. We're actually reading a book, as the staff right now, called Gentle and Lowly, and what it tells us, and I did not know this, but that the only time that Jesus is ever asked to describe himself in scripture, or rather the only time that he actually does it, he describes himself as gentle and lowly. And I think that when we think about Jesus, we think about a humble Nazarene from the country. And that's fine and that's well and good. But that's Jesus in human form. Revelation 19, that's Jesus. You understand? That's who's waiting on us. That's who's coming to get us. That warrior king written on his robe and on his thigh, king of kings and Lord of lords as a callback to Isaiah so that we know exactly who it is. And when you read through this passage, it's unbelievable to me how rich it is with allusions to other parts of scripture so that there is no doubt about it that this is Jesus coming from the very beginning. It says that he was called faithful and true, capitalized. This is a deity. This is Jesus coming. And then it says that only he knows his name, which is, that's Exodus chapter three and four, when God refuses to share his name. That's a throwback to that. And then he says that he was called the word of God, which John is referencing his own writings at beginning of John, the gospel, when he says that the word was with God in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was God through him, all things were made without him, nothing was made. And then at the end, king of kings and Lord of lords. John, in this description of Jesus is weaving together all of the scripture to point us to our savior. This is the Jesus, the one who has fire coming out of his eyes and a sword coming out of his mouth with which to strike down the nations. The one who rules with the rod of iron, who has the armies of heaven arrayed in linen, following down as he thunders down to conquer the beast and the dragon and the antichrist. That's the one that sits at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for you. That's the one that rules for all of eternity. That's the one that we pray to. And that's the one who's coming to get you. So I want to at least take some time this morning to encourage you. When you sing to Jesus, when you pray to him, when you think of him, when you anticipate meeting him, anticipate the conquering Christ. Anticipate this Jesus. Anticipate the warrior king coming down to settle the score. Anticipate the lion of Judah coming down to wreck shop. To once and for all sweep evil off the face of the planet. And when you do that, when you focus on the conquering Christ, to me, it really caused me to think about this a lot this week, that the conquering Christ renders the crucified Christ all the more miraculous. The conquering Christ, Christ conquering renders Christ crucified all the more miraculous. Because this description in Revelation 19 with a robe dipped in blood and a sword coming out of his mouth and a rod of iron that he rules a nation with, he's gonna tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God with all of heaven's armies arrayed behind him, thundering down to wreck shop. That Jesus hung on the cross for you. That Jesus walked away from all of that, condescended to take on our form, walked with us for 33 years, nurtured disciples to birth a church that would become his true kingdom that he's coming back to rescue so that you and I can sit in here 2,000 years later. He did all that, meek and mild. And when he describes himself as gentle and lowly, yeah, you're not kidding, man. Because look who he is in earth and look who he could be this whole time. This description, this guy, this God, this warrior king, he hung on the cross for you. Not just some sage from the hills of Israel. God condescended for you. He chose to hang on the cross. So I love that moment with Pilate. He's like, are you really a king? And he's like, don't worry about it, Pilate. If I wanted to, this whole place would be smashed. At any moment in Jesus' life, he could have called down these armies and just crushed anybody who opposed him. Caiaphas, the high priest, is sitting there thinking he's got Jesus right where he wants him, and Jesus is just thinking, you have no idea who I am. He dies, he's separated from God. Satan thinks he's got Jesus right where he wants him. Jesus says, you have no idea who I am. Christ conquering, to me, renders Christ crucified as all the more miraculous. And when I think about my Jesus, this is who I think about. He comes to get us and to take us back up to heaven and to start off eternity. And when he comes to get us, he takes us back, we're told, to what's called the marriage supper of the Lamb. He's defeated the beast. He's defeated the Antichrist. He locks them up. It begins the thousand-year reign. We're going to talk about that next week. There's an encore of evil, and then Jesus once and for all throws them in the lake of fire, and that's it. But he comes down. He captures the beast. The armies conquer. He takes his children, he wipes evil off the face of the earth, he purifies his bride, and then we have the marriage supper of the Lamb. And I feel bad for how I'm covering the marriage supper of the Lamb in this series. Because I'm not gonna do it justice. I'm not gonna adequately cover it. And I'm not saying that in this series. Because I'm not going to do it justice. I'm not going to adequately cover it. And I'm not saying that in this way of false humility, like, oh yeah, I'm really not doing that good of a job with it. Like, no, I'm not. We just don't have enough time to sink in to everything that's here and even all the symbolism in the marriage supper of the Lamb. But a simple way of thinking about it is the marriage supper of the lamb is the greatest celebration feast of all time. It is the greatest celebration feast that ever was and ever will be. And this should hit home with us. Because what do we do? What do we do when we want to celebrate? I got a little bit of good news last week. Such good news that I went straight to the butcher's market. I bought myself a big old ribeye and I had that for dinner when the kids went to bed. I had myself my own personal private celebration feast. When your team wins, what do you do? You have a feast. When something good in life happens, when you graduate, you have a feast. When people come into town, what do you do? You have a feast. What are we going to do this week? We're going to get together with friends and family. We're going to reflect on the blessings that God has given us, and we're going to have a feast. This is what we do to celebrate. When your kid gets married, and you celebrate kind of transitioning into that season of life. This one has passed. We've formed a new family. What do you do? You get all your friends together and you have a feast. This is what God is doing. It's the greatest celebration feast of all time. In the days of old when kings would conquer and they would come back from conquering another king, what did they do? They feasted. And Jesus is bringing us back to the marriage supper of the Lamb. Why is it called the marriage supper of the Lamb? Because Jesus is getting married. Who's he marrying? Us. The church. His bride. We see throughout Scripture that the church is referred to as the bride of Christ. We see in Ephesians that God purifies his bride. He prepares us. We are made pure for Jesus so that we might marry him in eternity. I don't know how all that works out. It's a word play, but we are made pure by our savior. How are we made pure? By the crucified Christ hanging on the cross. He died for us. He covered over you in righteousness, made you good, purified you, prepared you for this very moment, for the marriage supper of the Lamb, where the church and Christ are united for all of eternity and perfect bliss. And so it's right and good to have a feast to celebrate the marriage. And this feast, man, it's going to be a good feast. The ones that you've lost, they're going to be there. I don't know for certain. I can't find it in Scripture. But I'm pretty sure they're going to serve catfish at this feast. Because my papa is going to be there. He loves catfish. And I know he's got some waiting on me. Your loved ones are going to be there too. Your dads are going to be there. And your moms. And the children that you never got to meet because you lost them too early, they're going to be there. All the saints who have come before us, all the saints that you've loved, they're going to be there. And listen to this. They're going to be the best versions of themselves. They're not going to be sick. They're not going to be unhealthy. They're not going to be unwell. They're going to be the perfect versions of themselves. They're not going to have all the brokenness that hurts us sometimes. Do you understand what I'm saying? Your dad, who you loved, but man, that guy had a temper. In heaven, he doesn't have a temper anymore. He's just love. He's just all the best parts of him. The people who we love, who made it sometimes hard to love them. Jesus has prepared those brides too. Their brokenness is wiped away. And they love you with purity. And you're made perfect too. All the crap in your life, all the stuff that you wish wasn't true of you, all the things that you hope nobody finds out, all the brokenness that spills out of you and hurts the people around you when you don't want to hurt them and you hate that side of yourself, that side's gone at the marriage supper of the Lamb. You're made perfect there. You're made your ideal self there. You're made your eternal self there. And you can love other people finally with the purity that God loves you with. We see the best versions of the folks we love. I am convinced of this. We finally walk in the best versions of ourself and don't have to wonder what it would be like to not have to walk through life as a selfish, egotistical jerk. That one's just for me. I don't know what your thing is. That feast is going to be remarkable. And everybody's going to be there. And Jesus is coming to take you to that. And I think that's pretty great. And as I thought about these things this week, the triumphant return of Christ and the marriage supper of the Lamb and all that it represents and what Jesus really won with that victory. What does it mean for us? Yes, evil is smited. Evil is gone and all the wrong things are made right and all the sad things are made untrue. All that is very true and God wins once and for all and that part of us that loves a hero gets to see the actual hero come storming out of the clouds. He wins those things for us. We see our God claim victory and that's great. But there's something else that occurred to me too. I was prepared. I knew this was going to happen. We're not even to the hard part yet. Jeez, old Pete. Something else occurred to me as I kind of asked the question, what has Jesus won? And what are we celebrating at the marriage supper? And I was reminded of this idea that I have long carried with me, but I've not heard too many other people talking about it. I've actually never heard a pastor talk about this. It doesn't make it a unique idea. It's just one that I've not heard other people mention. And maybe it's because pastors aren't supposed to say things like this and the other ones know better and yours doesn't. But I've long carried with me this idea that faith and hope are burdens. Faith and hope are hard. We celebrate faith and hope in our belief system. We're told that the greatest of all these things is faith, hope, and love. We celebrate faith and hope. We want those. We name our children faith and hope. They are good things. But I, in my life, in my most honest moments, experience them often as a burden, as something to be carried, as something to be chosen. Because faith is a belief in things that you can't see. Faith is what we choose when facts fall short of certainty. Do you understand? There's things that we can know about the universe and about our God and about scripture and about the claims and about life. There's things that can be scientifically proven and broken down and rendered as factual. And then there's what we choose to put our faith in. Then there's certainty. And when facts fall short of certainty, we fill that gap with faith. Whether you're a Christian or whether you're an atheist, there's no way to be totally certain of what you think's going on in the universe. So when we reach the end of facts and we have to arrive at certainty, we fill that gap with faith. So faith is a choice. We choose it. We exercise it. We learn it. We let God speak into it. We let him strengthen it over the course of our life. The longer you walk with God, hopefully the stronger your faith gets, but it gets stronger because it's been tried and it's been tested and it's been a burden that you've chosen to continue to carry. Hope is a burden. Hope is a belief that one day something can be true that I want to be true. Hope, to even have hope, is an admission that right now things are not the way that I want them to be. Right now things are less than ideal. Right now things are not what I want, but I hope, I believe that one day the things that I want can be brought about. Hope is an admission of a shortfall. People who are not yet parents and desperately want to be hope that one day this can be true of us. We, as believers, we read scripture, we hear the stories of Jesus coming down out of heaven, and we hope in that day. We place our faith in that day. We believe that there's going to be a marriage supper. We place our hope in that. We place our hope and our faith in the idea that our prayers are working, that they get to God, that they are powerful and effective and they're not just bouncing off the ceiling. But sometimes, life makes hope heavy. Sometimes life makes hope heavy. When you lose someone too early and your Bible teaches you that your God could have done something about it and you have to be confronted with the fact that he just simply didn't. In that season, you choose hope. And in that season, it's heavy. And sometimes, when life gets hard, and when faith and hope become burdens, and they become heavy, we see people put them down and walk away from them and say, I can't carry this faith anymore. I don't know how to believe in a God that would let that happen, so I'm gonna set down this faith. I don't know how I can still cling to hope when I've been disappointed in these ways, so I'm going to set down this hope. Sometimes faith and hope get heavy, and they get hard to carry. When you grow up in church, being taught a simple faith, and then you become an adult adult and there are things that happen in your world that just don't align with what you were taught when you were a kid and you have to learn how to find this new faith. You have to cling to it and you have to hope and you have to choose hope and you have to find ways to make what you were taught and what you're experiencing mesh and you have to find a whole new way to understand scripture and understand God and to understand how he speaks to you. In those moments, faith can get hard and hope can get heavy and we have to choose them. And I am convinced that the Christian life is simply a series of the decision to choose faith and to choose hope in Christ over and over and over again until we make it to the finish line. My prayer as I prayed before I preached this morning was that if there is anybody in here that's carrying heavy hope that it would get lightened just a little bit today. That we would have the strength and the faith to continue to carry it for a little bit longer. Just get down the road just a little bit further. Because sometimes faith and hope get heavy. And I hate that we don't talk about that as much because we should. And if that's true, if I'm right that they can be burdens, then one of the best things that Jesus wins when he comes sweeping out of the sky is on this day, he lays to rest faith and hope forever. And he says, here, you don't need these anymore. You don't need faith and hope anymore. Maybe that's why Paul writes in Romans 8, he says, for in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. When Jesus shows up, we don't need hope anymore. When he shows up, we don't need faith anymore. There's no more gap between facts and certainty. There's just Jesus. There's no more hoping for one day. There's just Jesus. One day has arrived. Do you understand that when Jesus sweeps down out of the sky, that he lays to rest for us for all eternity, faith and hope. And he says, you can set them down, weary traveler. You're here now. Let's feast. And I think that's a remarkable blessing. Because to be a Christian is to believe that one day these things will be true. To be a Christian is to believe that one day God will set all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. One of my favorite songs in the world is this song called Farther Along. Farther Along, I like the version from a guy named Josh Gerrels, and it opens up. And he says, I wonder why the good man dies and the bad man thrives and Jesus cries because he loves them both. And the chorus is, farther along, we'll know all about it. Farther along, we'll understand why. And it's just this acknowledgement, I think, that faith and hope are hard. Faith and hope are hard, but one day, I won't need those anymore. I can lay that and everything else down at the feet of my Savior. And on that day, when Jesus comes back, there are no more one days. On this day, Revelation 19, marriage supper of the Lamb, on that day, there are no more one days. It is one day for all eternity. There's no more wondering, there's no more hoping, there's no more struggling, there's no more pain. Because on that day, he puts an end to waiting on one day. And I kind of wonder now if that's why Paul didn't say what he said in Corinthians. When he gets to the end of talking about all the spiritual gifts and he says, but now these three remain, faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these, Paul says, is love. And I've always read and accepted that teaching, and it's made sense to me. Love binds. Love is the very nature of God. Love is what unites us together. It makes sense to me that love would be greater than faith and hope. But now I wonder, in light of what I've thought through this week, if maybe love isn't the greatest because when Jesus comes back and lays faith and hope to rest, that love is the only thing that exists for all of eternity. Maybe love is the greatest because it's the only thing left after Revelation 19. And we live in an eternity of perfect love that God designed us for, finally. As I was thinking through this sermon this week, I was pacing in the lobby. And as I was out there, just kind of walking back and forth, thinking through these things, asking myself the question, what has Christ won for us? I noticed on the information table, a bracelet, like a little ringlet. And I picked it up and I saw an inscription there. And I thought, oh, what is this? God, are you talking to me? Let? Speak, Lord, your servant hears. I'm working on the sermon. There's a bracelet here. You've got to be working in this. So I reach over, and on the bracelet, it just says, it is well with my soul. Also, if that's your bracelet, it's right out there. It just said, it is well with my soul. And I thought, oh, I love that song. But that's not really helpful. Okay, God's not speaking. And I just kept pacing. And I got done and I kind of had a fully formed idea. And sometimes on Tuesdays when I get a fully formed idea, I get a little bit excited about the sermon and I'll go and I'll tell Kyle because Kyle's always up for a conversation. I said, Kyle, I got it. Listen, I told him about this idea of faith and hope being burdens and that Jesus is going to put those to rest for us. And Kyle started to get a little teary eyed. And he said, he said, that just reminds me of my favorite song, my favorite line from my favorite song. And he quoted me these lines from it as well. And I was like, oh my gosh, God is speaking. I'm just dumb. I always say God speaks in stereo. And Kyle quoted these lines. And he started crying. And I got misty, and I knew that this is what we were supposed to share, and I knew that we were supposed to end the service today with it as well. Because in these lines, we see the author of this song admitting what we've just talked about today. The faith and hope are burdens, and so it is well with my soul. We often sing this song in a response to grief as an admission that I am going to choose faith and hope even though it's heavy today. Now let's sing it looking forward to the day we can lay those things to rest and Jesus has won the final victory and forever we will say it is well with my soul. Stand and let's sing together.
The Yo, good to see everybody. Thank you again for being here. This is the sixth part in our series going through the book of Revelation. I have really very much enjoyed going through Revelation with you all. And honestly, you guys have been more enthusiastic about it than I expected because Revelation can be a slog. It can be tough. We just took three weeks working through the tribulation, talking about the wrath of God and all the mechanics of the tribulation best we can. And to me, that feels tedious, but you guys have been incredibly supportive and incredibly kind. And it seemed like y'all have enjoyed going through this with me. As folks have asked me, how is Revelation being received? I say, it seems universally good. However, no one's going to tell me it's bad. No one's going to email me and be like, just so you know, really are looking forward to when this series is over and we can talk about something else. So that might be out there. And if that's you, I'm so sorry. Thank you for hanging with us. But for those of you who have enjoyed this, thanks so much for the encouragement because it's been really, really neat to get to go through it with you guys as a church. This morning, we arrive at Christ's return, the return of Christ. And I said last week that this needs to be the best sermon that I've ever preached in my life, to do adequate justice to the grandiosity of what's happening in Revelation 19. This will not be the best sermon of my life. I just wish that it could be, okay? So let's temper our expectations now. This is a B minus, all right? But in this sermon, we arrive at Jesus' return, at kind of the culmination of God's wrath, the final nail in the coffin. I said we've been walking through the tribulation. We've kind of looked at it through three different lenses. We looked at it in the first week to understand the wrath of God that's poured out in the tribulation, and we defined it. We defined it that week when we looked at Revelation 4 and 5, and Jesus steps forward as the Lamb of God, qualified to open up the seals and begin to open up God's wrath on his creation. We said he's beginning the seven-year process of tribulation. Now, what is tribulation? Well, we define that as the seven-year process of God pouring out his earned wrath on his creation and reclaiming what is rightfully his. And this week, he reclaims it. This week, he does the last part of the tribulation. Then we looked at kind of the flow of it, the seals and the trumpets and the bowls, and then we looked at the figures of it, and we'll talk a little bit more about the beast, the Antichrist, today. But where we're at in the narrative of Revelation is we're at the end of the Tribulation. God has poured out his wrath. We've had this great battle. There's been a great earthquake. God has sent darkness onto the kingdom of the Antichrist. And then he sends his son to finish up the work. He sends his son to answer the voice of the martyrs that cries out in Revelation chapter 6, the fifth seal. The voice of the martyrs below the throne of God that say, how much longer, God, before you avenge our death? You know who killed us. You see us suffering as your children. How much longer will you let this keep going? And we talked about in that week how we cry out with the martyrs, that every time something in our life happens that seems difficult or hard to understand or seems unfair, every time there's a school shooting, God, how much longer are you going to let this go on? Every time we lose someone too soon, God, how much longer will you let this world be broken? Every time we see something that we can't understand, we cry out with the martyrs and we say, God, how much longer, oh Lord, will you put up with this? And when he begins to open up the seals and begin the process of tribulation, he says, no more. And when he sends his son Christ, when we see Jesus in Revelation 19, that is God putting the final nail in the coffin of evil and saying, now I will make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. Now I will rectify things. Now I will restore creation. Now I will answer the groanings that Paul talks about in Romans chapter 8 when we are told that all of creation groans for the return of the king. When we're told that we yearn inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons and daughters to experience eternity in the marriage supper of the lamb, we wait for this. We long for this. This is the hope that persists in our faith and keeps us anchored to our savior because we believe that revelation 19 is going to happen one day, that he's going to come get us, and that when he comes back, you guys have heard me say this before, he's not coming back as the Lamb of God. He comes back as the Lion of Judah. And we see this description in Revelation 19, beginning in verse 11. So if you have a Bible, you can read along with me. I love this description of my Jesus. Every time I read it, whether it's out loud or just in private, I get chills. I love this picture of him. And I don't know, I don't know if everybody can relate to this. This may just be silly. This may just be me being a dummy, and that's fine. I'm familiar with this territory. It's not unfamiliar. But when I read this passage about my Jesus, that part of me as a little kid that loved to see the hero win in movies, that teenage boy that loved to watch Braveheart win, that loved Gladiator and seeing Russell Crowe's character stick it to him, that little boy that loves Star Wars, that loves to see the hero win against evil, against all odds, that part of us, and I'm sharing that with you because I think that God lays that in us intentionally. I think we love the hero because the hero is a shadow of this reality that Jesus becomes. We grow up learning to love when the day is saved and when the hero makes an appearance because God wove that, I think, into our hearts to appreciate the appearance of his son when that hero returns and appears once and for all. So it's with that preamble that we'll read the description as Jesus comes back to reclaim his creation. This is the description of him that John records. Chapter 19, verse 11. And behold, a white horse. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty on his robe and on his thigh. His name is written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Gosh. That's Jesus, man. That's Jesus. That's our Savior. When we think of Jesus, when we pray to him, when we sing to him, when we think about him, when we think about being reunited with him in heaven, I believe that it's our tendency to think about the gospel of Jesus, to think about the crucified Christ. And I don't think that's anybody's fault. We have four gospels. We spend time there all the time. I revisit a gospel every spring with you guys. We focus on Jesus at Easter. We focus on Jesus at Christmas. And we see the teachings from Jesus come out of the gospel. And so it's right and good to think about our Jesus as the crucified Christ. It's right and good to think about our Jesus as gentle and lowly. We're actually reading a book, as the staff right now, called Gentle and Lowly, and what it tells us, and I did not know this, but that the only time that Jesus is ever asked to describe himself in scripture, or rather the only time that he actually does it, he describes himself as gentle and lowly. And I think that when we think about Jesus, we think about a humble Nazarene from the country. And that's fine and that's well and good. But that's Jesus in human form. Revelation 19, that's Jesus. You understand? That's who's waiting on us. That's who's coming to get us. That warrior king written on his robe and on his thigh, king of kings and Lord of lords as a callback to Isaiah so that we know exactly who it is. And when you read through this passage, it's unbelievable to me how rich it is with allusions to other parts of scripture so that there is no doubt about it that this is Jesus coming from the very beginning. It says that he was called faithful and true, capitalized. This is a deity. This is Jesus coming. And then it says that only he knows his name, which is, that's Exodus chapter three and four, when God refuses to share his name. That's a throwback to that. And then he says that he was called the word of God, which John is referencing his own writings at beginning of John, the gospel, when he says that the word was with God in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was God through him, all things were made without him, nothing was made. And then at the end, king of kings and Lord of lords. John, in this description of Jesus is weaving together all of the scripture to point us to our savior. This is the Jesus, the one who has fire coming out of his eyes and a sword coming out of his mouth with which to strike down the nations. The one who rules with the rod of iron, who has the armies of heaven arrayed in linen, following down as he thunders down to conquer the beast and the dragon and the antichrist. That's the one that sits at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for you. That's the one that rules for all of eternity. That's the one that we pray to. And that's the one who's coming to get you. So I want to at least take some time this morning to encourage you. When you sing to Jesus, when you pray to him, when you think of him, when you anticipate meeting him, anticipate the conquering Christ. Anticipate this Jesus. Anticipate the warrior king coming down to settle the score. Anticipate the lion of Judah coming down to wreck shop. To once and for all sweep evil off the face of the planet. And when you do that, when you focus on the conquering Christ, to me, it really caused me to think about this a lot this week, that the conquering Christ renders the crucified Christ all the more miraculous. The conquering Christ, Christ conquering renders Christ crucified all the more miraculous. Because this description in Revelation 19 with a robe dipped in blood and a sword coming out of his mouth and a rod of iron that he rules a nation with, he's gonna tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God with all of heaven's armies arrayed behind him, thundering down to wreck shop. That Jesus hung on the cross for you. That Jesus walked away from all of that, condescended to take on our form, walked with us for 33 years, nurtured disciples to birth a church that would become his true kingdom that he's coming back to rescue so that you and I can sit in here 2,000 years later. He did all that, meek and mild. And when he describes himself as gentle and lowly, yeah, you're not kidding, man. Because look who he is in earth and look who he could be this whole time. This description, this guy, this God, this warrior king, he hung on the cross for you. Not just some sage from the hills of Israel. God condescended for you. He chose to hang on the cross. So I love that moment with Pilate. He's like, are you really a king? And he's like, don't worry about it, Pilate. If I wanted to, this whole place would be smashed. At any moment in Jesus' life, he could have called down these armies and just crushed anybody who opposed him. Caiaphas, the high priest, is sitting there thinking he's got Jesus right where he wants him, and Jesus is just thinking, you have no idea who I am. He dies, he's separated from God. Satan thinks he's got Jesus right where he wants him. Jesus says, you have no idea who I am. Christ conquering, to me, renders Christ crucified as all the more miraculous. And when I think about my Jesus, this is who I think about. He comes to get us and to take us back up to heaven and to start off eternity. And when he comes to get us, he takes us back, we're told, to what's called the marriage supper of the Lamb. He's defeated the beast. He's defeated the Antichrist. He locks them up. It begins the thousand-year reign. We're going to talk about that next week. There's an encore of evil, and then Jesus once and for all throws them in the lake of fire, and that's it. But he comes down. He captures the beast. The armies conquer. He takes his children, he wipes evil off the face of the earth, he purifies his bride, and then we have the marriage supper of the Lamb. And I feel bad for how I'm covering the marriage supper of the Lamb in this series. Because I'm not gonna do it justice. I'm not gonna adequately cover it. And I'm not saying that in this series. Because I'm not going to do it justice. I'm not going to adequately cover it. And I'm not saying that in this way of false humility, like, oh yeah, I'm really not doing that good of a job with it. Like, no, I'm not. We just don't have enough time to sink in to everything that's here and even all the symbolism in the marriage supper of the Lamb. But a simple way of thinking about it is the marriage supper of the lamb is the greatest celebration feast of all time. It is the greatest celebration feast that ever was and ever will be. And this should hit home with us. Because what do we do? What do we do when we want to celebrate? I got a little bit of good news last week. Such good news that I went straight to the butcher's market. I bought myself a big old ribeye and I had that for dinner when the kids went to bed. I had myself my own personal private celebration feast. When your team wins, what do you do? You have a feast. When something good in life happens, when you graduate, you have a feast. When people come into town, what do you do? You have a feast. What are we going to do this week? We're going to get together with friends and family. We're going to reflect on the blessings that God has given us, and we're going to have a feast. This is what we do to celebrate. When your kid gets married, and you celebrate kind of transitioning into that season of life. This one has passed. We've formed a new family. What do you do? You get all your friends together and you have a feast. This is what God is doing. It's the greatest celebration feast of all time. In the days of old when kings would conquer and they would come back from conquering another king, what did they do? They feasted. And Jesus is bringing us back to the marriage supper of the Lamb. Why is it called the marriage supper of the Lamb? Because Jesus is getting married. Who's he marrying? Us. The church. His bride. We see throughout Scripture that the church is referred to as the bride of Christ. We see in Ephesians that God purifies his bride. He prepares us. We are made pure for Jesus so that we might marry him in eternity. I don't know how all that works out. It's a word play, but we are made pure by our savior. How are we made pure? By the crucified Christ hanging on the cross. He died for us. He covered over you in righteousness, made you good, purified you, prepared you for this very moment, for the marriage supper of the Lamb, where the church and Christ are united for all of eternity and perfect bliss. And so it's right and good to have a feast to celebrate the marriage. And this feast, man, it's going to be a good feast. The ones that you've lost, they're going to be there. I don't know for certain. I can't find it in Scripture. But I'm pretty sure they're going to serve catfish at this feast. Because my papa is going to be there. He loves catfish. And I know he's got some waiting on me. Your loved ones are going to be there too. Your dads are going to be there. And your moms. And the children that you never got to meet because you lost them too early, they're going to be there. All the saints who have come before us, all the saints that you've loved, they're going to be there. And listen to this. They're going to be the best versions of themselves. They're not going to be sick. They're not going to be unhealthy. They're not going to be unwell. They're going to be the perfect versions of themselves. They're not going to have all the brokenness that hurts us sometimes. Do you understand what I'm saying? Your dad, who you loved, but man, that guy had a temper. In heaven, he doesn't have a temper anymore. He's just love. He's just all the best parts of him. The people who we love, who made it sometimes hard to love them. Jesus has prepared those brides too. Their brokenness is wiped away. And they love you with purity. And you're made perfect too. All the crap in your life, all the stuff that you wish wasn't true of you, all the things that you hope nobody finds out, all the brokenness that spills out of you and hurts the people around you when you don't want to hurt them and you hate that side of yourself, that side's gone at the marriage supper of the Lamb. You're made perfect there. You're made your ideal self there. You're made your eternal self there. And you can love other people finally with the purity that God loves you with. We see the best versions of the folks we love. I am convinced of this. We finally walk in the best versions of ourself and don't have to wonder what it would be like to not have to walk through life as a selfish, egotistical jerk. That one's just for me. I don't know what your thing is. That feast is going to be remarkable. And everybody's going to be there. And Jesus is coming to take you to that. And I think that's pretty great. And as I thought about these things this week, the triumphant return of Christ and the marriage supper of the Lamb and all that it represents and what Jesus really won with that victory. What does it mean for us? Yes, evil is smited. Evil is gone and all the wrong things are made right and all the sad things are made untrue. All that is very true and God wins once and for all and that part of us that loves a hero gets to see the actual hero come storming out of the clouds. He wins those things for us. We see our God claim victory and that's great. But there's something else that occurred to me too. I was prepared. I knew this was going to happen. We're not even to the hard part yet. Jeez, old Pete. Something else occurred to me as I kind of asked the question, what has Jesus won? And what are we celebrating at the marriage supper? And I was reminded of this idea that I have long carried with me, but I've not heard too many other people talking about it. I've actually never heard a pastor talk about this. It doesn't make it a unique idea. It's just one that I've not heard other people mention. And maybe it's because pastors aren't supposed to say things like this and the other ones know better and yours doesn't. But I've long carried with me this idea that faith and hope are burdens. Faith and hope are hard. We celebrate faith and hope in our belief system. We're told that the greatest of all these things is faith, hope, and love. We celebrate faith and hope. We want those. We name our children faith and hope. They are good things. But I, in my life, in my most honest moments, experience them often as a burden, as something to be carried, as something to be chosen. Because faith is a belief in things that you can't see. Faith is what we choose when facts fall short of certainty. Do you understand? There's things that we can know about the universe and about our God and about scripture and about the claims and about life. There's things that can be scientifically proven and broken down and rendered as factual. And then there's what we choose to put our faith in. Then there's certainty. And when facts fall short of certainty, we fill that gap with faith. Whether you're a Christian or whether you're an atheist, there's no way to be totally certain of what you think's going on in the universe. So when we reach the end of facts and we have to arrive at certainty, we fill that gap with faith. So faith is a choice. We choose it. We exercise it. We learn it. We let God speak into it. We let him strengthen it over the course of our life. The longer you walk with God, hopefully the stronger your faith gets, but it gets stronger because it's been tried and it's been tested and it's been a burden that you've chosen to continue to carry. Hope is a burden. Hope is a belief that one day something can be true that I want to be true. Hope, to even have hope, is an admission that right now things are not the way that I want them to be. Right now things are less than ideal. Right now things are not what I want, but I hope, I believe that one day the things that I want can be brought about. Hope is an admission of a shortfall. People who are not yet parents and desperately want to be hope that one day this can be true of us. We, as believers, we read scripture, we hear the stories of Jesus coming down out of heaven, and we hope in that day. We place our faith in that day. We believe that there's going to be a marriage supper. We place our hope in that. We place our hope and our faith in the idea that our prayers are working, that they get to God, that they are powerful and effective and they're not just bouncing off the ceiling. But sometimes, life makes hope heavy. Sometimes life makes hope heavy. When you lose someone too early and your Bible teaches you that your God could have done something about it and you have to be confronted with the fact that he just simply didn't. In that season, you choose hope. And in that season, it's heavy. And sometimes, when life gets hard, and when faith and hope become burdens, and they become heavy, we see people put them down and walk away from them and say, I can't carry this faith anymore. I don't know how to believe in a God that would let that happen, so I'm gonna set down this faith. I don't know how I can still cling to hope when I've been disappointed in these ways, so I'm going to set down this hope. Sometimes faith and hope get heavy, and they get hard to carry. When you grow up in church, being taught a simple faith, and then you become an adult adult and there are things that happen in your world that just don't align with what you were taught when you were a kid and you have to learn how to find this new faith. You have to cling to it and you have to hope and you have to choose hope and you have to find ways to make what you were taught and what you're experiencing mesh and you have to find a whole new way to understand scripture and understand God and to understand how he speaks to you. In those moments, faith can get hard and hope can get heavy and we have to choose them. And I am convinced that the Christian life is simply a series of the decision to choose faith and to choose hope in Christ over and over and over again until we make it to the finish line. My prayer as I prayed before I preached this morning was that if there is anybody in here that's carrying heavy hope that it would get lightened just a little bit today. That we would have the strength and the faith to continue to carry it for a little bit longer. Just get down the road just a little bit further. Because sometimes faith and hope get heavy. And I hate that we don't talk about that as much because we should. And if that's true, if I'm right that they can be burdens, then one of the best things that Jesus wins when he comes sweeping out of the sky is on this day, he lays to rest faith and hope forever. And he says, here, you don't need these anymore. You don't need faith and hope anymore. Maybe that's why Paul writes in Romans 8, he says, for in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. When Jesus shows up, we don't need hope anymore. When he shows up, we don't need faith anymore. There's no more gap between facts and certainty. There's just Jesus. There's no more hoping for one day. There's just Jesus. One day has arrived. Do you understand that when Jesus sweeps down out of the sky, that he lays to rest for us for all eternity, faith and hope. And he says, you can set them down, weary traveler. You're here now. Let's feast. And I think that's a remarkable blessing. Because to be a Christian is to believe that one day these things will be true. To be a Christian is to believe that one day God will set all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. One of my favorite songs in the world is this song called Farther Along. Farther Along, I like the version from a guy named Josh Gerrels, and it opens up. And he says, I wonder why the good man dies and the bad man thrives and Jesus cries because he loves them both. And the chorus is, farther along, we'll know all about it. Farther along, we'll understand why. And it's just this acknowledgement, I think, that faith and hope are hard. Faith and hope are hard, but one day, I won't need those anymore. I can lay that and everything else down at the feet of my Savior. And on that day, when Jesus comes back, there are no more one days. On this day, Revelation 19, marriage supper of the Lamb, on that day, there are no more one days. It is one day for all eternity. There's no more wondering, there's no more hoping, there's no more struggling, there's no more pain. Because on that day, he puts an end to waiting on one day. And I kind of wonder now if that's why Paul didn't say what he said in Corinthians. When he gets to the end of talking about all the spiritual gifts and he says, but now these three remain, faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these, Paul says, is love. And I've always read and accepted that teaching, and it's made sense to me. Love binds. Love is the very nature of God. Love is what unites us together. It makes sense to me that love would be greater than faith and hope. But now I wonder, in light of what I've thought through this week, if maybe love isn't the greatest because when Jesus comes back and lays faith and hope to rest, that love is the only thing that exists for all of eternity. Maybe love is the greatest because it's the only thing left after Revelation 19. And we live in an eternity of perfect love that God designed us for, finally. As I was thinking through this sermon this week, I was pacing in the lobby. And as I was out there, just kind of walking back and forth, thinking through these things, asking myself the question, what has Christ won for us? I noticed on the information table, a bracelet, like a little ringlet. And I picked it up and I saw an inscription there. And I thought, oh, what is this? God, are you talking to me? Let? Speak, Lord, your servant hears. I'm working on the sermon. There's a bracelet here. You've got to be working in this. So I reach over, and on the bracelet, it just says, it is well with my soul. Also, if that's your bracelet, it's right out there. It just said, it is well with my soul. And I thought, oh, I love that song. But that's not really helpful. Okay, God's not speaking. And I just kept pacing. And I got done and I kind of had a fully formed idea. And sometimes on Tuesdays when I get a fully formed idea, I get a little bit excited about the sermon and I'll go and I'll tell Kyle because Kyle's always up for a conversation. I said, Kyle, I got it. Listen, I told him about this idea of faith and hope being burdens and that Jesus is going to put those to rest for us. And Kyle started to get a little teary eyed. And he said, he said, that just reminds me of my favorite song, my favorite line from my favorite song. And he quoted me these lines from it as well. And I was like, oh my gosh, God is speaking. I'm just dumb. I always say God speaks in stereo. And Kyle quoted these lines. And he started crying. And I got misty, and I knew that this is what we were supposed to share, and I knew that we were supposed to end the service today with it as well. Because in these lines, we see the author of this song admitting what we've just talked about today. The faith and hope are burdens, and so it is well with my soul. We often sing this song in a response to grief as an admission that I am going to choose faith and hope even though it's heavy today. Now let's sing it looking forward to the day we can lay those things to rest and Jesus has won the final victory and forever we will say it is well with my soul. Stand and let's sing together.
