Well, good morning. Good morning, Aaron and the band. Thank you for that. That was a sweet time of worship. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If you're joining us online, thank you for doing that. Thanks for being here in person. Those of you who are able to get up and come and brave about the two and a half minutes of rain that we've had today, if that was your window getting here, God's trying to tell you something. I don't know what it is, but he's communicating to you. You should listen. The purpose of this series, just to highlight it again before we launch into today's sermon, every spring the purpose of the series is to prepare our hearts for Easter, to prepare our hearts for what should be the greatest celebration of the year. And so a lot of our attention and effort and devotion goes into that. To that end, we've planned the Good Friday service that's going to be next Friday. And I really do hope that you'll make it a point to be there and allow God to use that service to prepare your heart for Easter. I was just going back over it with Aaron Gibson, our worship pastor, this week with what we've got planned for you. And I really do think it's going to be a special night. The other thing is, the main reason we put Big Night Out two weeks ahead of the Good Friday service is so that I can mentally make note who shows up to Big Night Out and not the Good Friday service, and then judge you accordingly. So now I know if I saw you last night, you've got to come. That's the deal. But all kidding aside, I really do hope that you'll make it a point to be there. This week, as Mike so expertly said at the beginning of the service, we're going to look at the table for provision. To do that, we're going to look at what I think is probably the second most famous meal of Jesus's life. I'm not sure that there's a ranking out there where we rank all the famous meals in Jesus's life, but certainly the first one has to be the last supper, right? Like that, that takes the cake, but number two, right behind it is the feeding of the 5,000. What's really interesting to me about this story is that it shows up in all four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This story is in all four Gospels. I don't know if you know this, but there's only 11 events in Jesus' life that are recorded in all four of the Gospels. There's only four events that happen in Jesus' life that are recorded in all four of the Gospels outside of crucifixion week. So once we get to crucifixion week and the triumphal entry of Jesus, when he goes to Jerusalem and all the things that are set in motion and all the things we know about the week of crucifixion and, and, and his arrest and all the, and the resurrection and all those things, there are seven events there that are recorded in all four gospels. There's four outside of that in the first 33 years of Jesus's life that are recorded in all four gospels. this, the story of the feeding of the 5,000, is one of them. I think it's Peter's profession of faith, the anointing of Mary, and then there's one other story that I'm forgetting, but this is one of the four that's recorded in all four gospels. So all four gospel writers, for whatever reason, thought it was very important that we mark this moment in Jesus's life and that we learn from it. And I would think, seek to apply it to ourselves and ask, what can we learn from this story? So if you haven't heard the story of the feeding of the 5,000, good news, I'm going to tell it to you today. All right. So you can leave here at least knowing that. But most of us probably know it already. Now, in our series, we're moving through the book of Luke, and it is in the gospel of Luke in chapter 9. So if you have a Bible and you want to turn there, you can, but I'm going to be reading from John chapter 6. I like the account in John chapter 6. It gives us more detail. If you're mad because I'm veering off course, we've agreed to walk through the book of Luke together, and you want to be stubborn, open to Luke 9, and you can parse it together as I read. Or if you'd like to be compliant, just John chapter 6. I'm going to read the story, and then we'll kind of talk about what's going on in the story as is our pattern. John chapter 6, beginning in verse 5. Lifting up his eyes then, seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, where are we to buy bread so that it's dirt? They're hungry. So the men sat down, about 5,000 in number. Jesus took the loaves, and when they had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated, so also the fish as much as they wanted. If you read on, you find out that there was even leftovers. So let's understand what's happening here. I think most important to understand about Israel in this point in history is that it was a depressed country. It was not a wealthy country. The people there had a lot of need. The Bible tells us that there was 5,000 men there. If there's 5,000 men there, unless it was just, maybe Jesus was leading one of those hokey men's wilderness retreats, and they were doing man stuff. They had just finished all chopping wood together. I doubt it. They had their families with them, most likely. So there was women and children there too. And so most scholars would agree that based on 5,000 men, there was 15 to 25,000 people. We really don't know, but there was a small stadium full of people. And those people were there in the middle of the day because they didn't have regular employment. They didn't have jobs. A lot of them I've been taught were day laborers. They just looked for work where they could find it. I remember the thing that I always think about, because we can compare this to the Depression era in the United States in the 1920s and 30s. What I think about is that movie that Russell Crowe was in years ago called Cinderella Man. I don't know if you've seen it. I'm not recommending it. I don't remember if it was any good. I think he was a boxer. No idea. But I remember this one scene. He needed work. He needed to feed his family. And so he wakes up and he leaves the small house that they have and he goes to the docks. And at the gates of the docks, there's hundreds of men clamoring to get inside the gates. And there's one dude up on top of like stacks of wheat or barley or something. And he's picking out the men who look strong and capable. I would have not made any money in these days. He's picking out the men who look strong and capable. He's bringing them in. They get to work for the day. And hundreds of men are returned to their homes, and they have to go home, and they have to tell their families, we're not eating today. When they get home and their kids look at them expectantly, do we get some food today? The answer is no. I'm sorry. I can't imagine what it would be to live in that way, to have to live that kind of life. But what we see in this story and what we know historically is that many of the men and many of the women, many of the families in this story were living that life. Why else would there be thousands of them in the middle of the afternoon following Jesus and hungry? And so Jesus looks up. He had been teaching. He had healed somebody on the Sabbath. Then he was teaching the disciples in private. And then he looks up and the people have learned where he is and they are coming to him in mass. And so he looks, he looks at Philip, one of his disciples, and he says, hey, we're going to need to feed these people. What do you think we should do? Jesus knows what he's going to do. And Philip says 200 denarii, 200 days wages would not feed this stadium of people, Jesus. Like, we're going to need more resources than what we got. I don't know what your plan is, but I don't have a good one for you. We can't just call Chick-fil-A and get them to bring 20,000 box lunches and hope for the best. That's not going to work out. And then somebody says, hey, there's a kid here. He's got five loaves of bread and two fish. And at some point or another, Jesus says, get it. Now, I don't know what this experience was like for the kid, right? I don't know if the disciples walked up to him and they said, hey, give me, buddy. That's ours now. I don't know if Jesus asked for it. I hope, I like to think that the disciples were nice about it. Hey, do you mind if the Messiah, the Savior of the world, has your lunch today? But if you're the kid, I don't really see a lot of options here. Like, you've got your lunch, right? Like, you're good. Those people, hungry. They need some food. Me, I've got it. And I think that we normally ascribe to him that it's lunch because it's midday, but I think it's just as likely that he had been sent to the market somewhere with a couple of coins and was sent back home with dinner for his family that night. It's just as likely that he was running an errand. The text really doesn't tell us, so we don't know, but we can guess it's either lunch or it's dinner for the family. He's got his. And now Jesus is going, can I have that? The boy has no choice. He says, all right. And he gives it over to Jesus. And then he sits there and he watches as Jesus breaks and breaks and breaks and breaks and fills and fills and fills and fills. And then those baskets are carried to the people who need it so desperately. And they don't understand that their Messiah is providing for them. They don't understand that this is a whisper of the manna in the desert that was provided for them, their ancestors thousands of years ago. They don't understand that the bread of life is breaking bread for their sustenance. They don't understand the fullness of the provision that's happening in that moment. They don't know that they're sitting in the midst of history and will be remembered for centuries. All they know is I was hungry and now I'm not because that guy fed me. They had no options for eating that day. If Jesus had not provided that sustenance for them, they would not have eaten that day. That's the story of the feeding of the 5,000, and that's the great miracle that Jesus performed. As I think of that story, as I consider that miracle, and I consider it for us, I think that that story is in ways very difficult for us to relate to. I think we have a, and when I say we, I mean an American audience, particularly a North Raleigh audience. We are in an area of affluence. We are doing okay. People from all over the country are flocking to our neighborhoods because of the opportunities here. If you're in North Raleigh, you're doing okay. And I think it's difficult for us to relate to the need represented in the people and the story of the feeding of the 5,000 and then therefore appreciate the provision that Jesus gave that day. I think it's difficult for us to understand and relate to this story because we are history's spoiled billionaire trust fund babies. That is us. Historically speaking, I'm going to explain this. I know that you didn't expect to be writing trust fund babies down on your notes today, but here we are. Here's why this is us. And here's why it's important to understand this. First of all, I don't know if you guys follow this. I don't know if you guys pay attention to any of this stuff, but there's been research coming out in the last couple of decades, and there's some very, very high wealth individuals, some billionaires like Warren Buffett comes to mind, Bill Gates comes to mind, these men and women who have a ton of money. And what they're saying with their money is, I don't want to leave it to my kids. I want to leave it to other things. Because studies and history has shown that when people just fall into wealth and never have to earn it, that they don't learn some of the very important lessons that come in life from struggling and from trying and from having to be self-sustaining. One of the reasons, and I don't mean to denigrate billionaire trust fund babies. I'm sure some of them are very, very wonderful people and that I would be happy. I was about to say I'd be happy to be friends with them. Of course I would, dummy. I'd be on a yacht somewhere. But that's not the point. The point is I'm not trying to say they're people of bad character. I'm not trying to run any of them down. What I'm saying is when you fall backwards into wealth, you grow up without having to fight some of the battles on your own that teach you some things that are intrinsically necessary for life and adulthood. And so your development is hampered in that way. Incredibly wealthy people are figuring this out and deciding it's more valuable for our children to struggle than it is for them to have wealth. And they want them to learn those lessons. What I want us to see, and I know I'm not trying to step on any toes or hurt anybody's feelings, but I do think that this is helpful or I wouldn't press it. What I want us to see is that historically speaking, if you exist in the United States in the 21st century, compared to all of history, you are the world's spoiled billionaire trust fund babies. You were born into a wealth that you do not perceive. You were born into a wealth that you did not earn. You were born into a wealthy country that you did not build. This is true of all of us. It's so difficult for us to relate to the people and the story of the feeding of the 5,000 because many of us in this room have no perspective for what struggle is at all. And I know that I need to be careful here because there are some in this room, I am sure, who do know what struggle is. Who do know what it is to literally not know where your next meal is coming from, who literally have been reduced to prayer for provision. But for most of us in this room, for a vast majority in this room, for those of you who I know well, what I know is we have never struggled. We have never wondered where our next meal was coming from. Unless we were on a missions trip to help people who do struggle and we just literally didn't know where that food was coming from. We don't know what it is to go home and tell our kids, we're not going to eat today. We're going to have crackers again. We have always, in our lives, had a plan, haven't we? We've had a strategy. Even when times are down, things will get tight. We'll tighten the purse strings a little bit. We'll put our resume together. We'll apply for more jobs. We'll figure it out. We'll sell this. We'll do that. We'll trim down. We'll move in here. We'll get rid of this. We'll cut that expense. We'll cut that membership, whatever it is. We've got a plan to move forward. Well, we really don't have to worry about material gain, material sustenance. We don't have to worry about our plan. Very rarely in our lives has our primary strategy for provision had to be prayer. You see? I bet there are very few people who will ever hear me say these words, whether you listen online or whether you're here today. Now, some of you have, and again, I want to be sensitive to that. But a vast majority of us in this room have never been reduced to prayer for provision. Very few of us have ever had to pray the prayer, God, if you don't provide, I don't know what's going to happen. If you don't bring food today, I don't know how my kids are going to eat. We don't know that life. I've been in the hillsides of Swatopeki, Honduras, and I've seen kids running around with two different shoes on their feet, different sizes, because it's all their family could cobble together. I've seen their dirt homes. I've watched the joy in their faces when we simply bring them a stove. If you're in this room, you probably don't know that life. I've been to Quito, Ecuador, where there's a community of people who live in the Quito city dump. And every day, trash trucks from around the city bring loads of trash and dump them onto the heaps of trash that already exist. And the men and the boys are in there. If you're lucky, you've got some waiters on. They're in the trash, picking through it, trying to find things that their family needs, trying to find food for that day. And they take it back to their shack, literally made of tin and pallets. We've never lived that life. Now listen, I don't want us to feel bad for that. I'm not trying to step on anyone's toes or make us feel guilty for what we were born into. I just want us to see that most of us were born into this. Most of us do have, comparatively speaking, a wealth unknown to a vast majority of humans who have ever existed. Just think for a second. I'm a history nerd. I like history. This may not hit with you, but maybe it will. What would it have been like to have been a Viking? As far as wealth is concerned, just put your family in 1483 Denmark. And the comparative wealth that you have now and the ease that you have now, like how difficult it is to even see what it is like to have to lean on God and to be self-sufficient. This is why I think Jesus says in Matthew 19, 24, that again, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. I think Jesus says this because when we have, when we are wealthy, and you may not feel wealthy compared to the rest of this room and the rest of our neighborhood or our community, but historically speaking and even now presently speaking compared to the rest of the world, you are wealthy. When we have wealth and self-sufficiency, it is so very difficult for us to see our need for Jesus. We've very rarely been reduced to a place where prayer is our primary strategy for provision. Because that's true, because we are history's haves, not the have-nots, it occurs to me as I look at the story of the feeding of the 5,000, we are the boy, not the people. We're the little boy in the story. We've got ours. We've got our lunch. I've got my family's dinner. We're squared away. I'm going to leave here. I'm going to pass the tent community. I don't know how they're going to eat, but I'm good. I've got mine. Historically speaking, we're the boy. We're not the people. If you're born in this century into this country, we're the haves. Right? And so I think it's helpful as we look at this story, instead of fighting really hard, because this was my task this week, right? Is how can I get us to relate to the people in the story and to see God's miraculous provision for us? And the more I thought about it, the more I realized we're not the people. I don't have to do that hard work. We're the boy. We're the haves. We have our lunch. And if that's true, then it's far more helpful, I think, to this room to think through the story from the perspective of the boy, not the people. So what was the experience of the boy? I think one of the first things that occurs to me is the boy saw more clearly Jesus' provision for them than for him. He saw much more clearly Jesus's provision for the people than for himself. He showed up with his lunch or his dinner. Jesus borrowed it and broke it and gave it to them. Look at the miraculous way that Jesus provided for them. And then because Jesus is Jesus and he's exponentially kind and unendingly patient and gracious, I am certain, even though it's not in the text, that that boy was returned his food. I'm pretty confident since they were leftovers, if he wanted more than five loaves and two fish, he had it. I'm pretty certain that he was able, if that was his family's dinner, he took home more than mom and dad were expecting that day. But in that, I wonder if he saw Jesus providing for him, or if he only saw the provision that Jesus was offering to others. He took my lunch, and he made it their lunch, and then he gave my lunch back to me, and he went on. And so in the story, it's very easy to see Jesus's provision for the people. But what about the boy? If you could talk to him, hey, where'd you get that lunch? Where'd you get that food? Well, I bought it at the market. How'd you buy it at the market? Well, I had money. Who gave you the money? My dad. How'd your dad get the money? Well, he's got a job. How'd your dad get a job? Well, it's a family business. His dad had a job. Oh, so your dad was, he was born into that job, pretty much. Well, yeah, you could say that. You see where I'm going? Who allowed him to be born into that family? Why was that boy's dad from the family with a job and money and that boy's dad from a family with no job and no money. Why did that happen? It's God's divine providence. It's the way of the world. But in that boy that day, I don't know, maybe I'll meet him in heaven one day and I can ask him all the questions, but I wonder very much, was there any awareness at all on his behalf that man, those people don't, that the gifts and talents and abilities that his mom and dad had to either have a job or manage finances well, that provided for him to be able to eat that day, was all given to them by God. That was all God's providence. That was all God's goodness. That was all of God's love bestowed on his family. That had nothing whatsoever to do with him. I wonder if any of that occurred to that boy. I think what we find is that wealth often blinds us with the illusion of self-sufficiency. I think what was happening potentially with that boy and what happens with us a lot, and when I say us, I mean me. If it applies to you, fine, but I know this happens with me, is that our wealth blinds us with the illusion of self-sufficiency. Again, our primary strategy for provision is almost never prayer. When's the last time we prayed and we thanked God that he put us in a country where we didn't have to want and where we didn't have to struggle? When's the last time you prayed and you thanked God for your job? You thanked God for the gifts and the talents and abilities that allow you to work in that place. When's the last time we looked at literally everything we have and acknowledged that it is but by God's grace that I have these things. These are his provisions for me and the same way that these meals were a provision for the people 2,000 years ago. When's the last time the goodness of God's provisions occurred to us? Or have you, like me, so often in your life been blinded by the illusion of self-sufficiency? That somehow this American fable is true for you too and you picked yourself up by the bootstraps and you earned it all yourself. Did you now? I'm pretty sure God had something to do with that wiring. If it's true, what I preach all the time that we find in Ephesians 2.10, that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them, and that God created us and imbued us with a purpose and with gifts and abilities and talents to accomplish that purpose. And it just so happens that you've used those gifts and abilities and talents to also make you some money? Did you provide for yourself or did God provide for you? I think having often blinds us with the illusion of self-sufficiency. And I don't say this to make us feel guilty. I don't want anybody here to feel bad for what you have and for what God's given you. But I think it's important to identify with the boy. To identify with history's haves. To identify with the person who has their lunch. So that we can appreciate the fact that the boy's life was profoundly changed because he gave. That boy, and I'm guessing, I would be willing to bet anything that his life was profoundly changed that day because of what he watched. Don't you know when he got home, he had a story to tell? Don't you know when he came home, and I honestly think he was coming back from the market with dinner. It could have been lunch, but I think it was dinner. Don't you think that when he got home and he had a whole basket full of food and his parents were like, who did you steal from? He was like, boy, do I have a story to tell you. I would love to hear him tell that story. And think about this. This to me is a sweet thought. Think about being that boy. And seeing those huddled masses. Hungry. You know they're hungry. And you you have food, and you're keeping it jealously. And Jesus asks for it, and you begrudgingly give it to him. And you watch Jesus break, and break, and break. How long does it take before you realize, oh, there's a miracle happening here? And he fills basket after basket after basket. And you see the joy in the eyes of the fathers as they're relieved that day that their family is going to eat. You see the children light up because they're going to get meat for the first time in two weeks. You see the mamas relieved making sure their families have it first. And you know that this came from your lunch. This was my food, and now I'm watching your family experiencing joy because of this. I don't know what the boy did, but if I were the boy, I would have grabbed a basket. I would have said, can you fill this one up too, please? And I would have taken it to the families and long since forgot that that was my lunch and just look at the joy on their faces. Can you imagine how it changed him to walk in the middle of that blessing, to watch that provision that he thought was his, that he gifted back to Jesus, to watch it multiply and be used in that way? Can you imagine how profoundly it changed that boy's perspective to give and to be invited into what Jesus was doing? He didn't do anything. He didn't ask for it. He didn't look for it. He didn't sign up on a volunteer sheet. He was minding his business, taking dinner back to his family, and Jesus is like, let me have that. Do you understand that he invited that boy into a joy that he might not have matched again in his life? What would it have been like to watch those children running and laughing and playing? To watch the mamas cry when their families are fed? Knowing that because you gave what you had, Jesus did this. And what a blessing did Jesus invite him into that he had nothing to do with. And so all of that makes me wonder, what could God multiply? How could God multiply the gift of our provision? And what is he inviting us into when he asks? How could God multiply the gifts of our provision? And what is he inviting you into when he asks you to give? God has provided for you. If you're in this room, your history's halves. How could he multiply the gift of your provision that you would give back to him? What is he waiting to show you when you give? Who could possibly be impacted thousands of times over when you give your provision back to God? And what sort of blessing might he be inviting you into? You're just trying to get home. I've got my lunch. I'm good. My family squared away. This is mine. I'm just trying to get home and give it to my family. And he grabs you and arrests you and says, hey, you've got this great opportunity. Do you think for a second that Jesus needed that particular bread and those particular fish? He could have changed the rock he was sitting on to bread and started to break that. He could have fabricated it out of thin air. There are myriad ways Jesus could snap his fingers and everyone just has baskets full of food. He did not have to invite the boy in at all. And yet, for some reason, perhaps to bless the boy and to let him see it and to let his disciples see it, he invited the boy into what he was doing. You are the boy. He's inviting you into what he's doing. He doesn't need you. It'll get done. He'll feed them and he will reach them. But man, he's inviting you into something big. Years ago, I was in Honduras with a team of high schoolers. And one was a student named Allison. And Allison was speaking to me one night after devotion. And she was just sharing, and I appreciated her bravery. And I think all people go through this. She was just sharing that she had some doubts about her faith. And she just didn't really know how this lined up and that lined up, and she wasn't sure. We kind of talked about it a little bit. The next day, we were in a village, and I don't use that term derisively. It was a village. And we had a pickup truck full of sacks of rice. And we were handing that out to the women. And the women formed a line. And I got in the back of the truck and we let the students give it to the people because we like for the students to see the look and the eyes of gratitude and for them to get the thank yous. And it is a sweet thing. And so Allison was at the end of the truck and I was handing her the bags rice, and she was turning and handing them to the ladies. And I noticed at one point that she had tears in her eyes from the joy of giving. And so later that day, I just sat down and I scribbled her a note. And I just said, hey, I know you're struggling with your faith, but Jesus has invited you into giving today. And the Bible tells us that what we do for the least of these, we do for him. You did Jesus' work today, and you felt his presence today in those women. Faith won't always make sense. And when it doesn't, cling to moments like that when God shows up in your life. When we give our gift of provision back to God, sometimes it helps us find Him. Sometimes it shores up our faith and it strengthens us. And it gives us these moments to grasp onto that reason can't really touch. Sometimes when we give, we find God there. I would argue, eventually, all the time when we give, we find God there. The other thing that happens when we give God our lunch back is I believe that we find purpose there. I believe that our life is immediately imbued with significance when we give. And I'm not just talking about money, I'm talking about all of us. I was spending some time with somebody this week, and we were talking about this a little bit, and he just made the comment. He said, you know, my whole life, financially, it's been about me. My whole life plan has been about me. In my career, I just wanted to make enough money to retire comfortably, and then in that retirement, I didn't want my children to have to pay for me. I didn't want them to be responsible for me, and I wanted to be able to leave them a little bit as well, which I think is probably a pretty good summary of most of our financial goals. And he said, but it was such a mistake. It was all about me. And it's not supposed to be about me. I've learned now that I make it so that I can give it because of what Jesus is inviting me into. And I thought about here the propriety of enumerating the ways and the places that you could give to if you feel that Jesus is tugging on you to give, if he's asking for your lunch today. But I don't think I need to do that. You guys are smart and you have things you care about and you see places that Jesus is working. Give there. If you'd like more ideas about where to give, you can talk to me. That's not a joke. I'm not making a joke about getting money at Grace. I'm saying I know of other people who are doing amazing things, and we can talk about that too. But I would leave you with that question as we pray. How could God multiply the gift of our provision? And what is He inviting you into as He asks? Let's pray. God, You have given us so much. We thank You first for the relationships that You provide for us. For the friends and the loved ones and the families that we have to lean on. For the supporting people and the safety nets that you place around us. Father, I pray if there's someone here who needs the provision of relationships that you would give that to them, please. For those of us that have those deep friendships, who have families that we're able to lean into, God, we thank you. We thank you that we were born into a time and into a place where we, our histories, have. We pray that we would be good stewards of that. That we would see your provision in that just as we see it anywhere else. God, if our wealth has blinded us with the illusion of self-sufficiency, Lord, would you help us see through that? To see you as the provider? And finally, Lord, where we have opportunities to give, would we do it? And watch what you do with the provision that you gave us? Help us more and more, God, to be a generous people and to find you in that generosity. In Jesus' name, amen.
Well, good morning. Good morning, Aaron and the band. Thank you for that. That was a sweet time of worship. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If you're joining us online, thank you for doing that. Thanks for being here in person. Those of you who are able to get up and come and brave about the two and a half minutes of rain that we've had today, if that was your window getting here, God's trying to tell you something. I don't know what it is, but he's communicating to you. You should listen. The purpose of this series, just to highlight it again before we launch into today's sermon, every spring the purpose of the series is to prepare our hearts for Easter, to prepare our hearts for what should be the greatest celebration of the year. And so a lot of our attention and effort and devotion goes into that. To that end, we've planned the Good Friday service that's going to be next Friday. And I really do hope that you'll make it a point to be there and allow God to use that service to prepare your heart for Easter. I was just going back over it with Aaron Gibson, our worship pastor, this week with what we've got planned for you. And I really do think it's going to be a special night. The other thing is, the main reason we put Big Night Out two weeks ahead of the Good Friday service is so that I can mentally make note who shows up to Big Night Out and not the Good Friday service, and then judge you accordingly. So now I know if I saw you last night, you've got to come. That's the deal. But all kidding aside, I really do hope that you'll make it a point to be there. This week, as Mike so expertly said at the beginning of the service, we're going to look at the table for provision. To do that, we're going to look at what I think is probably the second most famous meal of Jesus's life. I'm not sure that there's a ranking out there where we rank all the famous meals in Jesus's life, but certainly the first one has to be the last supper, right? Like that, that takes the cake, but number two, right behind it is the feeding of the 5,000. What's really interesting to me about this story is that it shows up in all four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This story is in all four Gospels. I don't know if you know this, but there's only 11 events in Jesus' life that are recorded in all four of the Gospels. There's only four events that happen in Jesus' life that are recorded in all four of the Gospels outside of crucifixion week. So once we get to crucifixion week and the triumphal entry of Jesus, when he goes to Jerusalem and all the things that are set in motion and all the things we know about the week of crucifixion and, and, and his arrest and all the, and the resurrection and all those things, there are seven events there that are recorded in all four gospels. There's four outside of that in the first 33 years of Jesus's life that are recorded in all four gospels. this, the story of the feeding of the 5,000, is one of them. I think it's Peter's profession of faith, the anointing of Mary, and then there's one other story that I'm forgetting, but this is one of the four that's recorded in all four gospels. So all four gospel writers, for whatever reason, thought it was very important that we mark this moment in Jesus's life and that we learn from it. And I would think, seek to apply it to ourselves and ask, what can we learn from this story? So if you haven't heard the story of the feeding of the 5,000, good news, I'm going to tell it to you today. All right. So you can leave here at least knowing that. But most of us probably know it already. Now, in our series, we're moving through the book of Luke, and it is in the gospel of Luke in chapter 9. So if you have a Bible and you want to turn there, you can, but I'm going to be reading from John chapter 6. I like the account in John chapter 6. It gives us more detail. If you're mad because I'm veering off course, we've agreed to walk through the book of Luke together, and you want to be stubborn, open to Luke 9, and you can parse it together as I read. Or if you'd like to be compliant, just John chapter 6. I'm going to read the story, and then we'll kind of talk about what's going on in the story as is our pattern. John chapter 6, beginning in verse 5. Lifting up his eyes then, seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, where are we to buy bread so that it's dirt? They're hungry. So the men sat down, about 5,000 in number. Jesus took the loaves, and when they had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated, so also the fish as much as they wanted. If you read on, you find out that there was even leftovers. So let's understand what's happening here. I think most important to understand about Israel in this point in history is that it was a depressed country. It was not a wealthy country. The people there had a lot of need. The Bible tells us that there was 5,000 men there. If there's 5,000 men there, unless it was just, maybe Jesus was leading one of those hokey men's wilderness retreats, and they were doing man stuff. They had just finished all chopping wood together. I doubt it. They had their families with them, most likely. So there was women and children there too. And so most scholars would agree that based on 5,000 men, there was 15 to 25,000 people. We really don't know, but there was a small stadium full of people. And those people were there in the middle of the day because they didn't have regular employment. They didn't have jobs. A lot of them I've been taught were day laborers. They just looked for work where they could find it. I remember the thing that I always think about, because we can compare this to the Depression era in the United States in the 1920s and 30s. What I think about is that movie that Russell Crowe was in years ago called Cinderella Man. I don't know if you've seen it. I'm not recommending it. I don't remember if it was any good. I think he was a boxer. No idea. But I remember this one scene. He needed work. He needed to feed his family. And so he wakes up and he leaves the small house that they have and he goes to the docks. And at the gates of the docks, there's hundreds of men clamoring to get inside the gates. And there's one dude up on top of like stacks of wheat or barley or something. And he's picking out the men who look strong and capable. I would have not made any money in these days. He's picking out the men who look strong and capable. He's bringing them in. They get to work for the day. And hundreds of men are returned to their homes, and they have to go home, and they have to tell their families, we're not eating today. When they get home and their kids look at them expectantly, do we get some food today? The answer is no. I'm sorry. I can't imagine what it would be to live in that way, to have to live that kind of life. But what we see in this story and what we know historically is that many of the men and many of the women, many of the families in this story were living that life. Why else would there be thousands of them in the middle of the afternoon following Jesus and hungry? And so Jesus looks up. He had been teaching. He had healed somebody on the Sabbath. Then he was teaching the disciples in private. And then he looks up and the people have learned where he is and they are coming to him in mass. And so he looks, he looks at Philip, one of his disciples, and he says, hey, we're going to need to feed these people. What do you think we should do? Jesus knows what he's going to do. And Philip says 200 denarii, 200 days wages would not feed this stadium of people, Jesus. Like, we're going to need more resources than what we got. I don't know what your plan is, but I don't have a good one for you. We can't just call Chick-fil-A and get them to bring 20,000 box lunches and hope for the best. That's not going to work out. And then somebody says, hey, there's a kid here. He's got five loaves of bread and two fish. And at some point or another, Jesus says, get it. Now, I don't know what this experience was like for the kid, right? I don't know if the disciples walked up to him and they said, hey, give me, buddy. That's ours now. I don't know if Jesus asked for it. I hope, I like to think that the disciples were nice about it. Hey, do you mind if the Messiah, the Savior of the world, has your lunch today? But if you're the kid, I don't really see a lot of options here. Like, you've got your lunch, right? Like, you're good. Those people, hungry. They need some food. Me, I've got it. And I think that we normally ascribe to him that it's lunch because it's midday, but I think it's just as likely that he had been sent to the market somewhere with a couple of coins and was sent back home with dinner for his family that night. It's just as likely that he was running an errand. The text really doesn't tell us, so we don't know, but we can guess it's either lunch or it's dinner for the family. He's got his. And now Jesus is going, can I have that? The boy has no choice. He says, all right. And he gives it over to Jesus. And then he sits there and he watches as Jesus breaks and breaks and breaks and breaks and fills and fills and fills and fills. And then those baskets are carried to the people who need it so desperately. And they don't understand that their Messiah is providing for them. They don't understand that this is a whisper of the manna in the desert that was provided for them, their ancestors thousands of years ago. They don't understand that the bread of life is breaking bread for their sustenance. They don't understand the fullness of the provision that's happening in that moment. They don't know that they're sitting in the midst of history and will be remembered for centuries. All they know is I was hungry and now I'm not because that guy fed me. They had no options for eating that day. If Jesus had not provided that sustenance for them, they would not have eaten that day. That's the story of the feeding of the 5,000, and that's the great miracle that Jesus performed. As I think of that story, as I consider that miracle, and I consider it for us, I think that that story is in ways very difficult for us to relate to. I think we have a, and when I say we, I mean an American audience, particularly a North Raleigh audience. We are in an area of affluence. We are doing okay. People from all over the country are flocking to our neighborhoods because of the opportunities here. If you're in North Raleigh, you're doing okay. And I think it's difficult for us to relate to the need represented in the people and the story of the feeding of the 5,000 and then therefore appreciate the provision that Jesus gave that day. I think it's difficult for us to understand and relate to this story because we are history's spoiled billionaire trust fund babies. That is us. Historically speaking, I'm going to explain this. I know that you didn't expect to be writing trust fund babies down on your notes today, but here we are. Here's why this is us. And here's why it's important to understand this. First of all, I don't know if you guys follow this. I don't know if you guys pay attention to any of this stuff, but there's been research coming out in the last couple of decades, and there's some very, very high wealth individuals, some billionaires like Warren Buffett comes to mind, Bill Gates comes to mind, these men and women who have a ton of money. And what they're saying with their money is, I don't want to leave it to my kids. I want to leave it to other things. Because studies and history has shown that when people just fall into wealth and never have to earn it, that they don't learn some of the very important lessons that come in life from struggling and from trying and from having to be self-sustaining. One of the reasons, and I don't mean to denigrate billionaire trust fund babies. I'm sure some of them are very, very wonderful people and that I would be happy. I was about to say I'd be happy to be friends with them. Of course I would, dummy. I'd be on a yacht somewhere. But that's not the point. The point is I'm not trying to say they're people of bad character. I'm not trying to run any of them down. What I'm saying is when you fall backwards into wealth, you grow up without having to fight some of the battles on your own that teach you some things that are intrinsically necessary for life and adulthood. And so your development is hampered in that way. Incredibly wealthy people are figuring this out and deciding it's more valuable for our children to struggle than it is for them to have wealth. And they want them to learn those lessons. What I want us to see, and I know I'm not trying to step on any toes or hurt anybody's feelings, but I do think that this is helpful or I wouldn't press it. What I want us to see is that historically speaking, if you exist in the United States in the 21st century, compared to all of history, you are the world's spoiled billionaire trust fund babies. You were born into a wealth that you do not perceive. You were born into a wealth that you did not earn. You were born into a wealthy country that you did not build. This is true of all of us. It's so difficult for us to relate to the people and the story of the feeding of the 5,000 because many of us in this room have no perspective for what struggle is at all. And I know that I need to be careful here because there are some in this room, I am sure, who do know what struggle is. Who do know what it is to literally not know where your next meal is coming from, who literally have been reduced to prayer for provision. But for most of us in this room, for a vast majority in this room, for those of you who I know well, what I know is we have never struggled. We have never wondered where our next meal was coming from. Unless we were on a missions trip to help people who do struggle and we just literally didn't know where that food was coming from. We don't know what it is to go home and tell our kids, we're not going to eat today. We're going to have crackers again. We have always, in our lives, had a plan, haven't we? We've had a strategy. Even when times are down, things will get tight. We'll tighten the purse strings a little bit. We'll put our resume together. We'll apply for more jobs. We'll figure it out. We'll sell this. We'll do that. We'll trim down. We'll move in here. We'll get rid of this. We'll cut that expense. We'll cut that membership, whatever it is. We've got a plan to move forward. Well, we really don't have to worry about material gain, material sustenance. We don't have to worry about our plan. Very rarely in our lives has our primary strategy for provision had to be prayer. You see? I bet there are very few people who will ever hear me say these words, whether you listen online or whether you're here today. Now, some of you have, and again, I want to be sensitive to that. But a vast majority of us in this room have never been reduced to prayer for provision. Very few of us have ever had to pray the prayer, God, if you don't provide, I don't know what's going to happen. If you don't bring food today, I don't know how my kids are going to eat. We don't know that life. I've been in the hillsides of Swatopeki, Honduras, and I've seen kids running around with two different shoes on their feet, different sizes, because it's all their family could cobble together. I've seen their dirt homes. I've watched the joy in their faces when we simply bring them a stove. If you're in this room, you probably don't know that life. I've been to Quito, Ecuador, where there's a community of people who live in the Quito city dump. And every day, trash trucks from around the city bring loads of trash and dump them onto the heaps of trash that already exist. And the men and the boys are in there. If you're lucky, you've got some waiters on. They're in the trash, picking through it, trying to find things that their family needs, trying to find food for that day. And they take it back to their shack, literally made of tin and pallets. We've never lived that life. Now listen, I don't want us to feel bad for that. I'm not trying to step on anyone's toes or make us feel guilty for what we were born into. I just want us to see that most of us were born into this. Most of us do have, comparatively speaking, a wealth unknown to a vast majority of humans who have ever existed. Just think for a second. I'm a history nerd. I like history. This may not hit with you, but maybe it will. What would it have been like to have been a Viking? As far as wealth is concerned, just put your family in 1483 Denmark. And the comparative wealth that you have now and the ease that you have now, like how difficult it is to even see what it is like to have to lean on God and to be self-sufficient. This is why I think Jesus says in Matthew 19, 24, that again, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. I think Jesus says this because when we have, when we are wealthy, and you may not feel wealthy compared to the rest of this room and the rest of our neighborhood or our community, but historically speaking and even now presently speaking compared to the rest of the world, you are wealthy. When we have wealth and self-sufficiency, it is so very difficult for us to see our need for Jesus. We've very rarely been reduced to a place where prayer is our primary strategy for provision. Because that's true, because we are history's haves, not the have-nots, it occurs to me as I look at the story of the feeding of the 5,000, we are the boy, not the people. We're the little boy in the story. We've got ours. We've got our lunch. I've got my family's dinner. We're squared away. I'm going to leave here. I'm going to pass the tent community. I don't know how they're going to eat, but I'm good. I've got mine. Historically speaking, we're the boy. We're not the people. If you're born in this century into this country, we're the haves. Right? And so I think it's helpful as we look at this story, instead of fighting really hard, because this was my task this week, right? Is how can I get us to relate to the people in the story and to see God's miraculous provision for us? And the more I thought about it, the more I realized we're not the people. I don't have to do that hard work. We're the boy. We're the haves. We have our lunch. And if that's true, then it's far more helpful, I think, to this room to think through the story from the perspective of the boy, not the people. So what was the experience of the boy? I think one of the first things that occurs to me is the boy saw more clearly Jesus' provision for them than for him. He saw much more clearly Jesus's provision for the people than for himself. He showed up with his lunch or his dinner. Jesus borrowed it and broke it and gave it to them. Look at the miraculous way that Jesus provided for them. And then because Jesus is Jesus and he's exponentially kind and unendingly patient and gracious, I am certain, even though it's not in the text, that that boy was returned his food. I'm pretty confident since they were leftovers, if he wanted more than five loaves and two fish, he had it. I'm pretty certain that he was able, if that was his family's dinner, he took home more than mom and dad were expecting that day. But in that, I wonder if he saw Jesus providing for him, or if he only saw the provision that Jesus was offering to others. He took my lunch, and he made it their lunch, and then he gave my lunch back to me, and he went on. And so in the story, it's very easy to see Jesus's provision for the people. But what about the boy? If you could talk to him, hey, where'd you get that lunch? Where'd you get that food? Well, I bought it at the market. How'd you buy it at the market? Well, I had money. Who gave you the money? My dad. How'd your dad get the money? Well, he's got a job. How'd your dad get a job? Well, it's a family business. His dad had a job. Oh, so your dad was, he was born into that job, pretty much. Well, yeah, you could say that. You see where I'm going? Who allowed him to be born into that family? Why was that boy's dad from the family with a job and money and that boy's dad from a family with no job and no money. Why did that happen? It's God's divine providence. It's the way of the world. But in that boy that day, I don't know, maybe I'll meet him in heaven one day and I can ask him all the questions, but I wonder very much, was there any awareness at all on his behalf that man, those people don't, that the gifts and talents and abilities that his mom and dad had to either have a job or manage finances well, that provided for him to be able to eat that day, was all given to them by God. That was all God's providence. That was all God's goodness. That was all of God's love bestowed on his family. That had nothing whatsoever to do with him. I wonder if any of that occurred to that boy. I think what we find is that wealth often blinds us with the illusion of self-sufficiency. I think what was happening potentially with that boy and what happens with us a lot, and when I say us, I mean me. If it applies to you, fine, but I know this happens with me, is that our wealth blinds us with the illusion of self-sufficiency. Again, our primary strategy for provision is almost never prayer. When's the last time we prayed and we thanked God that he put us in a country where we didn't have to want and where we didn't have to struggle? When's the last time you prayed and you thanked God for your job? You thanked God for the gifts and the talents and abilities that allow you to work in that place. When's the last time we looked at literally everything we have and acknowledged that it is but by God's grace that I have these things. These are his provisions for me and the same way that these meals were a provision for the people 2,000 years ago. When's the last time the goodness of God's provisions occurred to us? Or have you, like me, so often in your life been blinded by the illusion of self-sufficiency? That somehow this American fable is true for you too and you picked yourself up by the bootstraps and you earned it all yourself. Did you now? I'm pretty sure God had something to do with that wiring. If it's true, what I preach all the time that we find in Ephesians 2.10, that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them, and that God created us and imbued us with a purpose and with gifts and abilities and talents to accomplish that purpose. And it just so happens that you've used those gifts and abilities and talents to also make you some money? Did you provide for yourself or did God provide for you? I think having often blinds us with the illusion of self-sufficiency. And I don't say this to make us feel guilty. I don't want anybody here to feel bad for what you have and for what God's given you. But I think it's important to identify with the boy. To identify with history's haves. To identify with the person who has their lunch. So that we can appreciate the fact that the boy's life was profoundly changed because he gave. That boy, and I'm guessing, I would be willing to bet anything that his life was profoundly changed that day because of what he watched. Don't you know when he got home, he had a story to tell? Don't you know when he came home, and I honestly think he was coming back from the market with dinner. It could have been lunch, but I think it was dinner. Don't you think that when he got home and he had a whole basket full of food and his parents were like, who did you steal from? He was like, boy, do I have a story to tell you. I would love to hear him tell that story. And think about this. This to me is a sweet thought. Think about being that boy. And seeing those huddled masses. Hungry. You know they're hungry. And you you have food, and you're keeping it jealously. And Jesus asks for it, and you begrudgingly give it to him. And you watch Jesus break, and break, and break. How long does it take before you realize, oh, there's a miracle happening here? And he fills basket after basket after basket. And you see the joy in the eyes of the fathers as they're relieved that day that their family is going to eat. You see the children light up because they're going to get meat for the first time in two weeks. You see the mamas relieved making sure their families have it first. And you know that this came from your lunch. This was my food, and now I'm watching your family experiencing joy because of this. I don't know what the boy did, but if I were the boy, I would have grabbed a basket. I would have said, can you fill this one up too, please? And I would have taken it to the families and long since forgot that that was my lunch and just look at the joy on their faces. Can you imagine how it changed him to walk in the middle of that blessing, to watch that provision that he thought was his, that he gifted back to Jesus, to watch it multiply and be used in that way? Can you imagine how profoundly it changed that boy's perspective to give and to be invited into what Jesus was doing? He didn't do anything. He didn't ask for it. He didn't look for it. He didn't sign up on a volunteer sheet. He was minding his business, taking dinner back to his family, and Jesus is like, let me have that. Do you understand that he invited that boy into a joy that he might not have matched again in his life? What would it have been like to watch those children running and laughing and playing? To watch the mamas cry when their families are fed? Knowing that because you gave what you had, Jesus did this. And what a blessing did Jesus invite him into that he had nothing to do with. And so all of that makes me wonder, what could God multiply? How could God multiply the gift of our provision? And what is he inviting us into when he asks? How could God multiply the gifts of our provision? And what is he inviting you into when he asks you to give? God has provided for you. If you're in this room, your history's halves. How could he multiply the gift of your provision that you would give back to him? What is he waiting to show you when you give? Who could possibly be impacted thousands of times over when you give your provision back to God? And what sort of blessing might he be inviting you into? You're just trying to get home. I've got my lunch. I'm good. My family squared away. This is mine. I'm just trying to get home and give it to my family. And he grabs you and arrests you and says, hey, you've got this great opportunity. Do you think for a second that Jesus needed that particular bread and those particular fish? He could have changed the rock he was sitting on to bread and started to break that. He could have fabricated it out of thin air. There are myriad ways Jesus could snap his fingers and everyone just has baskets full of food. He did not have to invite the boy in at all. And yet, for some reason, perhaps to bless the boy and to let him see it and to let his disciples see it, he invited the boy into what he was doing. You are the boy. He's inviting you into what he's doing. He doesn't need you. It'll get done. He'll feed them and he will reach them. But man, he's inviting you into something big. Years ago, I was in Honduras with a team of high schoolers. And one was a student named Allison. And Allison was speaking to me one night after devotion. And she was just sharing, and I appreciated her bravery. And I think all people go through this. She was just sharing that she had some doubts about her faith. And she just didn't really know how this lined up and that lined up, and she wasn't sure. We kind of talked about it a little bit. The next day, we were in a village, and I don't use that term derisively. It was a village. And we had a pickup truck full of sacks of rice. And we were handing that out to the women. And the women formed a line. And I got in the back of the truck and we let the students give it to the people because we like for the students to see the look and the eyes of gratitude and for them to get the thank yous. And it is a sweet thing. And so Allison was at the end of the truck and I was handing her the bags rice, and she was turning and handing them to the ladies. And I noticed at one point that she had tears in her eyes from the joy of giving. And so later that day, I just sat down and I scribbled her a note. And I just said, hey, I know you're struggling with your faith, but Jesus has invited you into giving today. And the Bible tells us that what we do for the least of these, we do for him. You did Jesus' work today, and you felt his presence today in those women. Faith won't always make sense. And when it doesn't, cling to moments like that when God shows up in your life. When we give our gift of provision back to God, sometimes it helps us find Him. Sometimes it shores up our faith and it strengthens us. And it gives us these moments to grasp onto that reason can't really touch. Sometimes when we give, we find God there. I would argue, eventually, all the time when we give, we find God there. The other thing that happens when we give God our lunch back is I believe that we find purpose there. I believe that our life is immediately imbued with significance when we give. And I'm not just talking about money, I'm talking about all of us. I was spending some time with somebody this week, and we were talking about this a little bit, and he just made the comment. He said, you know, my whole life, financially, it's been about me. My whole life plan has been about me. In my career, I just wanted to make enough money to retire comfortably, and then in that retirement, I didn't want my children to have to pay for me. I didn't want them to be responsible for me, and I wanted to be able to leave them a little bit as well, which I think is probably a pretty good summary of most of our financial goals. And he said, but it was such a mistake. It was all about me. And it's not supposed to be about me. I've learned now that I make it so that I can give it because of what Jesus is inviting me into. And I thought about here the propriety of enumerating the ways and the places that you could give to if you feel that Jesus is tugging on you to give, if he's asking for your lunch today. But I don't think I need to do that. You guys are smart and you have things you care about and you see places that Jesus is working. Give there. If you'd like more ideas about where to give, you can talk to me. That's not a joke. I'm not making a joke about getting money at Grace. I'm saying I know of other people who are doing amazing things, and we can talk about that too. But I would leave you with that question as we pray. How could God multiply the gift of our provision? And what is He inviting you into as He asks? Let's pray. God, You have given us so much. We thank You first for the relationships that You provide for us. For the friends and the loved ones and the families that we have to lean on. For the supporting people and the safety nets that you place around us. Father, I pray if there's someone here who needs the provision of relationships that you would give that to them, please. For those of us that have those deep friendships, who have families that we're able to lean into, God, we thank you. We thank you that we were born into a time and into a place where we, our histories, have. We pray that we would be good stewards of that. That we would see your provision in that just as we see it anywhere else. God, if our wealth has blinded us with the illusion of self-sufficiency, Lord, would you help us see through that? To see you as the provider? And finally, Lord, where we have opportunities to give, would we do it? And watch what you do with the provision that you gave us? Help us more and more, God, to be a generous people and to find you in that generosity. In Jesus' name, amen.
Good morning, my name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here at the early service. As Kyle said, this is the ninth part of our series moving through the book of John. I've been encouraging you every week to grab a reading plan. They're on the information table on the way out in the lobby. We want you reading along, encountering the Savior along with us. We don't want your only perspective on John to be for me and what I say on Sunday morning, but you encounter him with your heart and your intellect as well. This week we arrive at John chapter 17, which I think is one of the most intimate and poignant and important passages in the Bible. It is the longest recorded prayer of Jesus. And so I think just if that's all I would say about it, that it's the longest recorded prayer that we have of Jesus, we should want to lean into it and hear it, right? We should want to listen because this is our Savior and he prayed for us. And anytime he prays, we should want to lean in and go, how does he pray? What does he say? Like, I want to do it like he does it. And so we get the longest example that we have in John chapter 17. Before we dive into it, I want to give us a little context and background for when he's praying this and at the end of what he said and why he's praying it. So if you have a Bible, you can turn to John 17. If you don't, there's one in the seat back in front of you. And you can turn, it's the fourth book in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, John chapter 17. And we're going to be looking really at the whole chapter, but specifically at verses 20 through 24 this morning. So John 17 comes at the end of what's referred to by scholars as the farewell discourse. So if you've been paying attention in the book of John, we kind of move through the life of Jesus, right? And so the first, he's been ministering now for three years. He's had the disciples for three years, and he's just been moving through ministry and kind of just dropping in at spots and just giving highlights for each year or different things, right? But then time slows down towards the end when Jesus enters into Jerusalem for what we know as Passion Week. And he is in Jerusalem about to be crucified. The wheels have been set in motion for him to be arrested and tried and crucified and then resurrected, which we celebrate on Easter. So all of that stuff has been put in motion and the Gospel of John slows time way down and focuses a big portion of what he writes on just that week, and then a big portion of that week on just the last night that they're together. So they're around eating. They're eating a meal. Jesus looks at Judas, the one who is going to betray him, and he sends him off. He says, what you're about to do, go and do it quickly. And then he's left with just the 11 faithful disciples in this room together, this really intimate moment after three years of laboring together every day. And listen, his relationship with his disciples is the closest thing that we could experience to having a relationship with children or something like that. They spent every day together. When he called them to follow him, it wasn't like, could you follow me Monday through Friday? Actually, we do 410s here, so just Monday through Thursday. It's every day that you wake up and you talk to him. You wake up and you pray with him. You wake up and you do ministry with him, and you encounter the crowds that he encounters, and you watch him walk in faith every day for three years. They're incredibly, they have this incredibly tight and intimate relationship. And when it's just those 11 that are faithful to him because Judas went to betray him, he starts to teach them. And for a long time he teaches them. He starts to teach them in chapter 13. And we looked at this two weeks ago with the new commandment. He says, this new commandment I give you, that you should love one another as I love you. And then from that new commandment, he launches into 14, 15, 16, those three chapters of teaching. It's the most longest teachings that we have from Jesus. If you have a red letter Bible, and most of you do, and you flip through chapters 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, you'll see that they're all read. And this is one night that Jesus is saying all of these things in one room. And so we looked at one of those things last week in John 15, the idea of abiding in him, obeying him, and bearing fruit. And so then he wraps it up with this prayer. And it says at the beginning, when Jesus had spoken these words, so all the previous chapters from 13 until now, when Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted his eyes up to pray, which is just an interesting aside. There's other ways to pray besides bowing our head and closing our eyes. There's just different postures and different types of prayer, just as an aside. Before we look at Jesus' prayer, before we dive into it, I wanted us to kind of think about it a little bit so we can get a sense of what's being revealed here in this prayer. Those of you with children, I want you to imagine that they're adult children. Those of you without kids, just pretend that you have kids. And this is actually great because they've never sassed you and they're exactly what you want them to be. So just live in that moment. But if you have kids, I want you to imagine a situation where you're gonna part ways with them for a long, long time. Several years, probably decades, dozens of years. You're not gonna see them again. And it's gonna be a long time and you know it. And they know it too. And right before you part ways, you say, hey, let me pray for you. Okay? What would you pray? If you're gonna part ways with your kids for decades, not gonna see them again for a long, long time, you knew you were gonna see them again one day, but not for a while, and you said, hey, let me pray for you, what would you pray? It probably wouldn't be frivolous things, right? It probably wouldn't be like the test goes well tomorrow. It probably wouldn't even be that the interview's good. You would pray deep, meaningful things. You would pray long-term things. And whatever you prayed for them in that moment, I would submit to you is indicative of what your heart is for them. Whatever you pray in that moment is really revelatory of what you feel for them and what you want most for them, isn't it? It's going to show you, if I could listen, I would know what's most important to you for them for their life for the next several years, just by listening to your prayer. And so that's what's happening here. Jesus is about to part ways with the disciples. He's told them, I'm going to go prepare a place for you. Where I'm going, you cannot come for a while. We'll meet again, but it's going to be a minute. And Jesus knows that when he moves on from this moment, when he moves on from this week, he's going to see them a little bit. He's going to go to heaven. And then they've got their lives to live. And they've got the church to lead and the church to grow. We don't find out about Jesus. We never hear this story if the disciples don't do what they were trained to do. And he knows what they have ahead of them, that they have decades, that they're all going to die martyrs, deaths, that some of them are going to get married, that some of them are going to have kids. He knows what awaits them. And so he prays for them. And what I want to submit to you is that Jesus' prayer reveals what he most wants for us. Jesus' prayer reveals what he most wants for us. In the same way, if you were praying for your kids and they were leaving for a long time, you weren't going to see them again, what would you pray for them? That would reveal what you most wanted for your children. This prayer reveals what he most wants for the disciples, and you'll see it reveals what he most wants for us. The thing I find really remarkable about this prayer is that Jesus prays for you. In verse 20, he says this. He's just in the prayer. If you read the whole thing, and I would really encourage you to do that in one go. Read chapter 17 all the way through. He opens up praying about himself, and then he prays for the disciples. And then after he prays for the disciples, in verse 20, he says this, I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. Do you know who that is? That's you. If you are a Christian, if you call God your Father and Jesus your Savior, if you would say that you are a believer, then Jesus is praying for you here. He's saying, I'm not just praying for the disciples who are here around me, these 11, Father. I'm praying for anyone that comes to faith because of their word, which is everyone ever who has become a Christian. So he's praying for you. And even if you're here this morning and you're not a believer, which I'm so happy that you're here. Thanks for trusting us with your morning. And I will try to go quickly. If you're here this morning and you're not a believer, he prays for you too. So I want to know what he prays, right? What does he think is most important for us? When Jesus prayed for me 2,000 years ago to the Father, what did he pray? What did he pray for you? Well, here's what he prayed. Let's look at it. He prays, there's five verses that he prays for us, but this is really a good summary verse. This is the nuts and bolts of it us? What does he want for us? What does he pray for us? I think the answer to that is Jesus is praying for a twofold unity. Jesus prays for a twofold unity, two types of unity here. The first is unity with the Father. He says, let them be in us as we are together. Let them be one as we are one. And I love the heart of Jesus in this prayer, praying, God, let them experience what we have experienced. I think it kind of works like this. Like when you go out to eat, right? Let's say you go out to eat when there's five other people at the table and you win the order battle. It's a great feeling. Like all the plates come to the table and they set your plate down in front of you and everybody at the table goes, oh, that looks good. Should have gotten that. And like everybody knows you win. Like everybody now likes their dinner a little bit less because yours looks so good. That's a wonderful feeling, right? And if you're a good friend, now some of us are jerks and we go prison yard and like we cover it. We're like, sorry, you'll know for next time. But most of us, because we're really enjoying what we're eating, what do we do? We cut it and we hand it to people, right? You gotta try this and we put it on their plate or we pester people or like our grandmas when they love something a lot, they just force feed it to us. Like, if you say no to this, I'm just gonna put it directly in your mouth because they want you to try this because we want people to share in good experiences with us. Oh my gosh, this is so good. You have to taste this, right? That's why when we see something funny, when we hear something funny, Kyle lately, our student pastor, there's a comedian on Netflix named Nate Bergazzi. He is like an evangelist for this guy. He loves him and he's hilarious. And so he's telling everybody about him because Kyle likes laughing and he wants you to laugh too, right? He wants you to share in that experience. This is what we do. And this is what Jesus is doing. Jesus is saying, God, let them experience just a taste of what you and I have. Because I don't know if you've ever thought about this. We're gonna deep dive in philosophy a little bit. God exists as a triune God. I don't have time to explain it this morning, which is good because I can't. It's just kind of one of these mysteries of the faith that we believe in a trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And they existed before time in eternity as a perfect unit, in perfect love and a perfect relationship, perfectly affirming, perfectly identifying, perfectly loving, perfectly accepting, never experiencing shame, never experiencing loneliness, never experiencing a lack of self-worth or a lack of identity or any sort of anxiety. They loved one another perfectly and they are perfect. And I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but the most loving thing for a perfect being to do is to make other beings so that they can experience his perfection. Does that make sense? So God created man so that we could get a taste of the relationship that he experiences God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. He created us for the sole purpose of allowing us to experience relationship with him. He didn't do it because they needed it. It's not like God the Father and God the Son were looking at each other in heaven going, man, I am lonely. You know who would fix this? Tom Sartorius. That'd make it great. That's what we need. We need more Tom. This place would be great. That's not what he said. I want some company. I want a different perspective. Let's make people. That's not what they did. They said, this is so perfect that the best possible thing to do is to create people to experience in this relationship with us. The whole point of creation, the whole point of humans existing, is so that one day we can be reunited with God and experience the relationship that he designed us for. It's what our souls yearn for. It's what every bit of clawing for happiness is clawing towards. It's back to that relationship that the Father created just so that we could be intimate and united with him. It's the unity that Jesus is praying for here. And Jesus is saying, this is so good, Father, what we have. This is so good and so right and so affirming. Let them experience it too. Let them be in us as we are in one another. Let them experience a all-affirming love, a love that covers over shame, a love that erases anxiety, a love that imbues us with purpose, a love that assigns us an identity. Let them experience that, God. Bring them to oneness with you is what he's praying for. So it's a good, heartfelt prayer. And then he says, let them be one as you and I are one. So the second type of unity he prays for is unity with one another. He prays for unity with one another, right? He prays that you and I would be one, that all Christians would be one and would be unified. And at first, at first it seems like he's trying to almost pray away like denominations in the church. Like he doesn't want us to be Methodists and Presbyterians and Baptists and Catholics and all that stuff. He doesn't want that. He wants us to be one homogenous, like-minded group that agrees on everything. At first, it seems like the prayer is somewhat ineffectual. If you prayed that 2,000 years ago, let them all be one. And then the church launches from that and becomes incredibly diverse. Like I have to drive, when I drive home, I live really close. I live like five minutes away. I live one song away. That's how far I live with no traffic. That's what I know. I get one song on the way to and from work. I pass three churches at least. I guarantee there are things in each of those churches that I wouldn't agree with. I guarantee they would come here and they would not agree with some things. I mean, they'd be wrong, but they wouldn't agree, right? And so it makes me wonder, like, is God, is that prayer that ineffectual? Are we so far off the mark that we're not unified in that way? But as I thought about the unity that Jesus is praying for, I think that that unity is really exemplified in Kyle and Steve. Kyle's our student pastor and Steve is our worship pastor. And they're buddies. They're genuine buddies. As if we needed proof of this, every Wednesday staff goes out for staff lunch. Don't worry, we pay for that ourselves. We don't charge it to the church. We go out for staff lunch and we rotate who gets to pick. When it's your week, you get to pick the restaurant. And so this week, we ate at Pieology over there in North Hills. It will shock you to know that our student pastor chose a pizza place. And so we go there and Steve and Kyle ordered separately. They didn't talk to each other about what they were gonna order, but they both ordered a buffalo chicken pizza, right? And so they sit down and Kyle leans over and he jokingly says, look at us, we're buffalo bros, which is just a dumb joke, which makes it funny. So now they're buffalo bros, right? Like that's the thing. And they really are buddies. Every now and again on Mondays, they go out to eat together. Then when they don't have any plans, they just go eat together and they talk and they hang out. A lot of times when I'm trying to do actual work, they sit in Kyle's office and they distract me by talking to one another. But they're like friends. And it amazes me that they are because they are very different people. Kyle's 25. He's single. He goes out late. He plays Ultimate Frisbee and is good at Fortnite. That's Kyle, right? Steve's 43. I mean, we just started working on a 401K for him. He's so near the end of his career. He's in a different season of life. He's got a kid. He's building a house. Steve's Jewish and grew up in Boston for a little bit, a single mom, and then a stepdad going to Hebrew school. Kyle grew up in the south in a quaint suburb of Atlanta with a dad who worked at a Southern Baptist church with parents who are still together. It's totally different existences. Steve's gone through the loss of a parent. Kyle has both of his parents. Kyle was an athlete in high school, played a ton of sports. Steve's a musician. They don't have those things in common. I think Steve played basketball a couple of times. I question that. Totally different. Kyle doesn't have musical skills. Their interests are different. Kyle recommended Nate Bergazzi to Steve. Steve didn't like him. Kyle took it personal. There is no reason that they should be friends. But they work on the same staff and they're unified by the same goal. They both live to see people get connected to Jesus. They both live to see people experience the unity with God that they have. They both live for the purpose of the gospel. So whether or not they agree on everything, whether or not they're similar in every way, the unifying power of the gospel and the purpose of that has brought them together because it's what they both care most deeply about is seeing themselves walk with Jesus and seeing you walk with Jesus. And so they've leveraged everything in their life around those goals. And so it unites us. This week, I had a guy from South Africa come up. I met him once for a week, six years ago. He's an African-American guy from South Africa who grew up in Ocean View, in the shantytowns there, in extreme poverty, totally different life experience with me. I've only spent a week with him. When he got here on Thursday, he got out of the car and gave me a hug and called me brother. What else but the gospel unifies people in that way? So I do not think that when Jesus is praying here, he's praying that we would be a homogenous group that agrees on everything all the time. I think that he is praying that we would be unified in our goal and in our heart to reach people with the power of the gospel. I think he is praying that we would be brought together by what means most to us. And on a church level, this means that we're not against other churches. This means that we support other churches. This means it doesn't matter if we agree with them on everything. What we agree with them on, the most important thing is they're trying to bring people into the kingdom and we're trying to bring people into the kingdom. People have asked me a bunch of times, Summit's building a big, huge building right around the corner. They're saying, you know, Summit's building this huge building. Are you worried about that? No, no. He's a better pastor than me anyways. Moving closer isn't going to prove it. He's already a better speaker than me. What's it matter? We're all building the kingdom. Who cares? Who cares where anybody goes to church? Just go where you're getting closer to the Father, where you have community. We're all on the same team. That's the unity that I think that Jesus is praying for. And he prays this, and you can see it in the kind of unity that he's praying for. He's praying this. He says at the end, look, at the end of 21, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, and me, and I in you, that they also may be in us so that, listen, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I don't know if you've been paying attention in this series, but if you have, you will notice that this is why Jesus does everything. This is like, this prayer sums up the whole gospel of John. It sums up all of his teaching. It sums up everything. This idea, he wants us to be experienced unity with the Father, that all-fulfilling love of the Father, unity with one another in purpose, and the purpose is so that other people might believe in Jesus. It's what he says over and over and over again. In the very first week of the series, we said that the fundamental questions in life are, was Jesus real, and do I believe that he was who he says he was? And if we answer yes to those two questions, everything has to change. And Jesus keeps bringing us back himself to that question, do you believe in me? The way the gospel starts, John starts, Jesus is God. In the beginning was the Word, Word was with God, Word was God. Without him, nothing was made through him, all things were made. He sets him up as God, and we have to ask the question, do we believe that? The very first miracle that he does, turning water into wine. His mom says, hey, you should do that thing where you turn the water into wine. And Jesus says, it's not yet my time, woman, which is a really interesting verse to have in the Bible. But then he decides that he's going to do it anyways. Why does he do this miracle? Well, at the end, he tells us it's so that the disciples would believe that he was who he says he was. His motivation for the miracle was so that others would believe. We fast forward to maybe his greatest miracle in John 11 when he resurrects Lazarus from the dead. His best friend. He was told two days before his best friend died, hey, Lazarus is sick. You should come heal him. And he stays put for two days and lets his best friend die. And his two sisters, Lazarus' two sisters, Mary and Martha, he watches them get disappointed in such a deep way that when he meets back up with Mary, he weeps with her. He let them die. He let them hurt so he could resurrect them from the dead. And when he comes out, there's a prayer at the end of John 11, and he lifts his eyes up to God, and he says, God, I know. Father, I knew that you would do this, but I'm saying this now so that they might believe, you're following me for the wrong reasons. And they say, what are the right reasons? He says, you're laboring for temporary things. You should labor for eternal things. And they said, how do we do that? What do you tell them? Believe in the one that the Father has sent. Believe in me. Over and over and over again, believe in me. The new commandment that he gives in John 13, love one another as I have loved you. Why? So that others might believe in me. And then here in this prayer, God, I pray all these things for myself. I pray all these things for the disciples. I pray all these things for the church that will grow from the disciples. And I pray that that church will be unified with you and unified with one another. Why? So that they might believe in me. All through the Bible. All through the book of John. This is what Jesus cares about most. And then he prays this peculiar prayer. It's almost vain when we read it. It really kind of took me a minute to figure out why is Jesus praying this at the end of that. Verse 24, Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me, that's the church, may be through their word would see me in my glory, would see me as I am. Say, Father, they've only seen me as this weak and frail human. I pray that they would see me as God, that they would see me as divine, that they would see Jesus in his heavenly state in Revelation. Two or three different glimpses of him, and it's really magnificent. But why is Jesus praying this here? Let them see me as I really am. And as I thought about that, I realized something. Do you know where we experience perfect unity with the Father, what he prays for us? In heaven. Do you know where we experience perfect unity with one another? In heaven. Do you know what Jesus prays over and over again for the disciples in this passage? That God would preserve them. Preserve them for what? Heaven. Do you know where if other people believe because of our unity, because of our love, and because of his miracles, do you know where they go? Heaven. If we're going to ever see Jesus in his glory, do you know where we see him in his glory? Heaven. And so I really believe that what Jesus is praying here can be summed up like this. Father, let them experience heaven. That's what he's praying. If you read through everything here, if you read through John 17 and you want to know what's the heart of Jesus, what's he praying for us, what matters most to him, what he's praying is, Father, let them experience heaven. Let them experience eternity. What he's saying is if there is a perfect God who chose to create us so that we might share in an eternal relationship with him, what he's praying is, Father, bring about the whole purpose of all of creation. Let's go ahead and finish the job that we started all those years ago. Let's bring about the entire purpose why we're here and what we did to bring them to heaven with us that they might experience eternity and a perfect relationship with us and in a perfect relationship with one another. And if you read back through John through this lens, it amazed me as I looked at it this week, you will see that almost the only thing Jesus ever really cares about, it is guiding everything he says, all the miracles that he does, all the teachings that he offers, all the conversations that he has, all the places that he goes, and all of his timing. His primary and sometimes sole motivation is that you would be in heaven with him for eternity. That's his whole life. What matters most to Jesus? That you would be in heaven with him. What does Jesus care about more than anything else? That you would be in heaven with him. Why did Jesus teach all those people all the time? Why did he do all the miracles? Why did he train the disciples? Why did he pray for them? Why did he die on the cross? Why did he live his entire life? Why did he come here? So that you might be reconciled to him and spend eternity in heaven with him and with the Father and with the Spirit and with one another. It's all Jesus cares about is that you would one day go to heaven. And if that's what Jesus cares about most, just eternity, it makes me wonder, do we care about it as much as him? Or are we caught up in the temporary? If we cared about heaven as much as Jesus cared about heaven, we would have a lot different view of life and death. If we cared about heaven as much as Jesus cared about heaven, we would have a lot different view of our friends. We would have a lot different view of our children and of our loved ones. If we cared about heaven for other people as much as Jesus cared about heaven, we would have a lot different view of people who cut us off in traffic. We would have a lot different view of the person who checks out too many items in the self-checkout aisle in Harris Teeter. Right? If we cared about heaven as much as Jesus cared about heaven, if we were singularly focused on eternity as Jesus was on eternity, it would change our prayers. It would change our relationships. It would change our interaction. It would change our priorities. It would change everything. And what I see as I go through John is that this prayer is a capstone on all the teachings of Jesus throughout the whole book. And do you know what he really wants for you? Do you know what screams to me out of the book of John? Jesus wants to spend eternity with you. It's the whole reason he created you. It's the whole reason he came here. It's the whole reason he died. It's the whole reason he hung around for three years. It's the only reason that he doesn't snatch you to heaven the exact moment that you accept him because he wants you to be about the business of bringing other people with you. The only reason we are here is to go to heaven and bring as many people as we possibly can with us on the way. And when we believe that, and I'll be the first to confess that I don't all the time do, it changes everything. To me, that's the message from John, that Jesus wants to spend eternity with you. He wants it so badly that he's willing to experience the death of crucifixion to do it. And that's what we're gonna talk about next week. Let's pray. Father, we are so grateful for you. We are so grateful for your love. Grateful for your son. The way that he ministered to us and for us. The way that he fights for us. The way that his singular focus is to bring us into a relationship with you and him and the spirit that we might experience heaven, that we might experience eternity with him and with you. God, give us an ounce of the concern that Jesus has for the eternity. Give us a glimpse of what it's like to be eternally focused like he was. Give us an appreciation for the beauty of eternity with you. Give us an understanding that we really were designed to be with you and that we will only find purpose and identity and happiness and contentment when we are walking in the middle of your will and we are walking towards heaven. Give us a heart to bring as many people possible with us as we can. God, thanks for loving us in that way. In Jesus' name, amen.
Good morning, my name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here at the early service. As Kyle said, this is the ninth part of our series moving through the book of John. I've been encouraging you every week to grab a reading plan. They're on the information table on the way out in the lobby. We want you reading along, encountering the Savior along with us. We don't want your only perspective on John to be for me and what I say on Sunday morning, but you encounter him with your heart and your intellect as well. This week we arrive at John chapter 17, which I think is one of the most intimate and poignant and important passages in the Bible. It is the longest recorded prayer of Jesus. And so I think just if that's all I would say about it, that it's the longest recorded prayer that we have of Jesus, we should want to lean into it and hear it, right? We should want to listen because this is our Savior and he prayed for us. And anytime he prays, we should want to lean in and go, how does he pray? What does he say? Like, I want to do it like he does it. And so we get the longest example that we have in John chapter 17. Before we dive into it, I want to give us a little context and background for when he's praying this and at the end of what he said and why he's praying it. So if you have a Bible, you can turn to John 17. If you don't, there's one in the seat back in front of you. And you can turn, it's the fourth book in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, John chapter 17. And we're going to be looking really at the whole chapter, but specifically at verses 20 through 24 this morning. So John 17 comes at the end of what's referred to by scholars as the farewell discourse. So if you've been paying attention in the book of John, we kind of move through the life of Jesus, right? And so the first, he's been ministering now for three years. He's had the disciples for three years, and he's just been moving through ministry and kind of just dropping in at spots and just giving highlights for each year or different things, right? But then time slows down towards the end when Jesus enters into Jerusalem for what we know as Passion Week. And he is in Jerusalem about to be crucified. The wheels have been set in motion for him to be arrested and tried and crucified and then resurrected, which we celebrate on Easter. So all of that stuff has been put in motion and the Gospel of John slows time way down and focuses a big portion of what he writes on just that week, and then a big portion of that week on just the last night that they're together. So they're around eating. They're eating a meal. Jesus looks at Judas, the one who is going to betray him, and he sends him off. He says, what you're about to do, go and do it quickly. And then he's left with just the 11 faithful disciples in this room together, this really intimate moment after three years of laboring together every day. And listen, his relationship with his disciples is the closest thing that we could experience to having a relationship with children or something like that. They spent every day together. When he called them to follow him, it wasn't like, could you follow me Monday through Friday? Actually, we do 410s here, so just Monday through Thursday. It's every day that you wake up and you talk to him. You wake up and you pray with him. You wake up and you do ministry with him, and you encounter the crowds that he encounters, and you watch him walk in faith every day for three years. They're incredibly, they have this incredibly tight and intimate relationship. And when it's just those 11 that are faithful to him because Judas went to betray him, he starts to teach them. And for a long time he teaches them. He starts to teach them in chapter 13. And we looked at this two weeks ago with the new commandment. He says, this new commandment I give you, that you should love one another as I love you. And then from that new commandment, he launches into 14, 15, 16, those three chapters of teaching. It's the most longest teachings that we have from Jesus. If you have a red letter Bible, and most of you do, and you flip through chapters 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, you'll see that they're all read. And this is one night that Jesus is saying all of these things in one room. And so we looked at one of those things last week in John 15, the idea of abiding in him, obeying him, and bearing fruit. And so then he wraps it up with this prayer. And it says at the beginning, when Jesus had spoken these words, so all the previous chapters from 13 until now, when Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted his eyes up to pray, which is just an interesting aside. There's other ways to pray besides bowing our head and closing our eyes. There's just different postures and different types of prayer, just as an aside. Before we look at Jesus' prayer, before we dive into it, I wanted us to kind of think about it a little bit so we can get a sense of what's being revealed here in this prayer. Those of you with children, I want you to imagine that they're adult children. Those of you without kids, just pretend that you have kids. And this is actually great because they've never sassed you and they're exactly what you want them to be. So just live in that moment. But if you have kids, I want you to imagine a situation where you're gonna part ways with them for a long, long time. Several years, probably decades, dozens of years. You're not gonna see them again. And it's gonna be a long time and you know it. And they know it too. And right before you part ways, you say, hey, let me pray for you. Okay? What would you pray? If you're gonna part ways with your kids for decades, not gonna see them again for a long, long time, you knew you were gonna see them again one day, but not for a while, and you said, hey, let me pray for you, what would you pray? It probably wouldn't be frivolous things, right? It probably wouldn't be like the test goes well tomorrow. It probably wouldn't even be that the interview's good. You would pray deep, meaningful things. You would pray long-term things. And whatever you prayed for them in that moment, I would submit to you is indicative of what your heart is for them. Whatever you pray in that moment is really revelatory of what you feel for them and what you want most for them, isn't it? It's going to show you, if I could listen, I would know what's most important to you for them for their life for the next several years, just by listening to your prayer. And so that's what's happening here. Jesus is about to part ways with the disciples. He's told them, I'm going to go prepare a place for you. Where I'm going, you cannot come for a while. We'll meet again, but it's going to be a minute. And Jesus knows that when he moves on from this moment, when he moves on from this week, he's going to see them a little bit. He's going to go to heaven. And then they've got their lives to live. And they've got the church to lead and the church to grow. We don't find out about Jesus. We never hear this story if the disciples don't do what they were trained to do. And he knows what they have ahead of them, that they have decades, that they're all going to die martyrs, deaths, that some of them are going to get married, that some of them are going to have kids. He knows what awaits them. And so he prays for them. And what I want to submit to you is that Jesus' prayer reveals what he most wants for us. Jesus' prayer reveals what he most wants for us. In the same way, if you were praying for your kids and they were leaving for a long time, you weren't going to see them again, what would you pray for them? That would reveal what you most wanted for your children. This prayer reveals what he most wants for the disciples, and you'll see it reveals what he most wants for us. The thing I find really remarkable about this prayer is that Jesus prays for you. In verse 20, he says this. He's just in the prayer. If you read the whole thing, and I would really encourage you to do that in one go. Read chapter 17 all the way through. He opens up praying about himself, and then he prays for the disciples. And then after he prays for the disciples, in verse 20, he says this, I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. Do you know who that is? That's you. If you are a Christian, if you call God your Father and Jesus your Savior, if you would say that you are a believer, then Jesus is praying for you here. He's saying, I'm not just praying for the disciples who are here around me, these 11, Father. I'm praying for anyone that comes to faith because of their word, which is everyone ever who has become a Christian. So he's praying for you. And even if you're here this morning and you're not a believer, which I'm so happy that you're here. Thanks for trusting us with your morning. And I will try to go quickly. If you're here this morning and you're not a believer, he prays for you too. So I want to know what he prays, right? What does he think is most important for us? When Jesus prayed for me 2,000 years ago to the Father, what did he pray? What did he pray for you? Well, here's what he prayed. Let's look at it. He prays, there's five verses that he prays for us, but this is really a good summary verse. This is the nuts and bolts of it us? What does he want for us? What does he pray for us? I think the answer to that is Jesus is praying for a twofold unity. Jesus prays for a twofold unity, two types of unity here. The first is unity with the Father. He says, let them be in us as we are together. Let them be one as we are one. And I love the heart of Jesus in this prayer, praying, God, let them experience what we have experienced. I think it kind of works like this. Like when you go out to eat, right? Let's say you go out to eat when there's five other people at the table and you win the order battle. It's a great feeling. Like all the plates come to the table and they set your plate down in front of you and everybody at the table goes, oh, that looks good. Should have gotten that. And like everybody knows you win. Like everybody now likes their dinner a little bit less because yours looks so good. That's a wonderful feeling, right? And if you're a good friend, now some of us are jerks and we go prison yard and like we cover it. We're like, sorry, you'll know for next time. But most of us, because we're really enjoying what we're eating, what do we do? We cut it and we hand it to people, right? You gotta try this and we put it on their plate or we pester people or like our grandmas when they love something a lot, they just force feed it to us. Like, if you say no to this, I'm just gonna put it directly in your mouth because they want you to try this because we want people to share in good experiences with us. Oh my gosh, this is so good. You have to taste this, right? That's why when we see something funny, when we hear something funny, Kyle lately, our student pastor, there's a comedian on Netflix named Nate Bergazzi. He is like an evangelist for this guy. He loves him and he's hilarious. And so he's telling everybody about him because Kyle likes laughing and he wants you to laugh too, right? He wants you to share in that experience. This is what we do. And this is what Jesus is doing. Jesus is saying, God, let them experience just a taste of what you and I have. Because I don't know if you've ever thought about this. We're gonna deep dive in philosophy a little bit. God exists as a triune God. I don't have time to explain it this morning, which is good because I can't. It's just kind of one of these mysteries of the faith that we believe in a trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And they existed before time in eternity as a perfect unit, in perfect love and a perfect relationship, perfectly affirming, perfectly identifying, perfectly loving, perfectly accepting, never experiencing shame, never experiencing loneliness, never experiencing a lack of self-worth or a lack of identity or any sort of anxiety. They loved one another perfectly and they are perfect. And I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but the most loving thing for a perfect being to do is to make other beings so that they can experience his perfection. Does that make sense? So God created man so that we could get a taste of the relationship that he experiences God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. He created us for the sole purpose of allowing us to experience relationship with him. He didn't do it because they needed it. It's not like God the Father and God the Son were looking at each other in heaven going, man, I am lonely. You know who would fix this? Tom Sartorius. That'd make it great. That's what we need. We need more Tom. This place would be great. That's not what he said. I want some company. I want a different perspective. Let's make people. That's not what they did. They said, this is so perfect that the best possible thing to do is to create people to experience in this relationship with us. The whole point of creation, the whole point of humans existing, is so that one day we can be reunited with God and experience the relationship that he designed us for. It's what our souls yearn for. It's what every bit of clawing for happiness is clawing towards. It's back to that relationship that the Father created just so that we could be intimate and united with him. It's the unity that Jesus is praying for here. And Jesus is saying, this is so good, Father, what we have. This is so good and so right and so affirming. Let them experience it too. Let them be in us as we are in one another. Let them experience a all-affirming love, a love that covers over shame, a love that erases anxiety, a love that imbues us with purpose, a love that assigns us an identity. Let them experience that, God. Bring them to oneness with you is what he's praying for. So it's a good, heartfelt prayer. And then he says, let them be one as you and I are one. So the second type of unity he prays for is unity with one another. He prays for unity with one another, right? He prays that you and I would be one, that all Christians would be one and would be unified. And at first, at first it seems like he's trying to almost pray away like denominations in the church. Like he doesn't want us to be Methodists and Presbyterians and Baptists and Catholics and all that stuff. He doesn't want that. He wants us to be one homogenous, like-minded group that agrees on everything. At first, it seems like the prayer is somewhat ineffectual. If you prayed that 2,000 years ago, let them all be one. And then the church launches from that and becomes incredibly diverse. Like I have to drive, when I drive home, I live really close. I live like five minutes away. I live one song away. That's how far I live with no traffic. That's what I know. I get one song on the way to and from work. I pass three churches at least. I guarantee there are things in each of those churches that I wouldn't agree with. I guarantee they would come here and they would not agree with some things. I mean, they'd be wrong, but they wouldn't agree, right? And so it makes me wonder, like, is God, is that prayer that ineffectual? Are we so far off the mark that we're not unified in that way? But as I thought about the unity that Jesus is praying for, I think that that unity is really exemplified in Kyle and Steve. Kyle's our student pastor and Steve is our worship pastor. And they're buddies. They're genuine buddies. As if we needed proof of this, every Wednesday staff goes out for staff lunch. Don't worry, we pay for that ourselves. We don't charge it to the church. We go out for staff lunch and we rotate who gets to pick. When it's your week, you get to pick the restaurant. And so this week, we ate at Pieology over there in North Hills. It will shock you to know that our student pastor chose a pizza place. And so we go there and Steve and Kyle ordered separately. They didn't talk to each other about what they were gonna order, but they both ordered a buffalo chicken pizza, right? And so they sit down and Kyle leans over and he jokingly says, look at us, we're buffalo bros, which is just a dumb joke, which makes it funny. So now they're buffalo bros, right? Like that's the thing. And they really are buddies. Every now and again on Mondays, they go out to eat together. Then when they don't have any plans, they just go eat together and they talk and they hang out. A lot of times when I'm trying to do actual work, they sit in Kyle's office and they distract me by talking to one another. But they're like friends. And it amazes me that they are because they are very different people. Kyle's 25. He's single. He goes out late. He plays Ultimate Frisbee and is good at Fortnite. That's Kyle, right? Steve's 43. I mean, we just started working on a 401K for him. He's so near the end of his career. He's in a different season of life. He's got a kid. He's building a house. Steve's Jewish and grew up in Boston for a little bit, a single mom, and then a stepdad going to Hebrew school. Kyle grew up in the south in a quaint suburb of Atlanta with a dad who worked at a Southern Baptist church with parents who are still together. It's totally different existences. Steve's gone through the loss of a parent. Kyle has both of his parents. Kyle was an athlete in high school, played a ton of sports. Steve's a musician. They don't have those things in common. I think Steve played basketball a couple of times. I question that. Totally different. Kyle doesn't have musical skills. Their interests are different. Kyle recommended Nate Bergazzi to Steve. Steve didn't like him. Kyle took it personal. There is no reason that they should be friends. But they work on the same staff and they're unified by the same goal. They both live to see people get connected to Jesus. They both live to see people experience the unity with God that they have. They both live for the purpose of the gospel. So whether or not they agree on everything, whether or not they're similar in every way, the unifying power of the gospel and the purpose of that has brought them together because it's what they both care most deeply about is seeing themselves walk with Jesus and seeing you walk with Jesus. And so they've leveraged everything in their life around those goals. And so it unites us. This week, I had a guy from South Africa come up. I met him once for a week, six years ago. He's an African-American guy from South Africa who grew up in Ocean View, in the shantytowns there, in extreme poverty, totally different life experience with me. I've only spent a week with him. When he got here on Thursday, he got out of the car and gave me a hug and called me brother. What else but the gospel unifies people in that way? So I do not think that when Jesus is praying here, he's praying that we would be a homogenous group that agrees on everything all the time. I think that he is praying that we would be unified in our goal and in our heart to reach people with the power of the gospel. I think he is praying that we would be brought together by what means most to us. And on a church level, this means that we're not against other churches. This means that we support other churches. This means it doesn't matter if we agree with them on everything. What we agree with them on, the most important thing is they're trying to bring people into the kingdom and we're trying to bring people into the kingdom. People have asked me a bunch of times, Summit's building a big, huge building right around the corner. They're saying, you know, Summit's building this huge building. Are you worried about that? No, no. He's a better pastor than me anyways. Moving closer isn't going to prove it. He's already a better speaker than me. What's it matter? We're all building the kingdom. Who cares? Who cares where anybody goes to church? Just go where you're getting closer to the Father, where you have community. We're all on the same team. That's the unity that I think that Jesus is praying for. And he prays this, and you can see it in the kind of unity that he's praying for. He's praying this. He says at the end, look, at the end of 21, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, and me, and I in you, that they also may be in us so that, listen, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I don't know if you've been paying attention in this series, but if you have, you will notice that this is why Jesus does everything. This is like, this prayer sums up the whole gospel of John. It sums up all of his teaching. It sums up everything. This idea, he wants us to be experienced unity with the Father, that all-fulfilling love of the Father, unity with one another in purpose, and the purpose is so that other people might believe in Jesus. It's what he says over and over and over again. In the very first week of the series, we said that the fundamental questions in life are, was Jesus real, and do I believe that he was who he says he was? And if we answer yes to those two questions, everything has to change. And Jesus keeps bringing us back himself to that question, do you believe in me? The way the gospel starts, John starts, Jesus is God. In the beginning was the Word, Word was with God, Word was God. Without him, nothing was made through him, all things were made. He sets him up as God, and we have to ask the question, do we believe that? The very first miracle that he does, turning water into wine. His mom says, hey, you should do that thing where you turn the water into wine. And Jesus says, it's not yet my time, woman, which is a really interesting verse to have in the Bible. But then he decides that he's going to do it anyways. Why does he do this miracle? Well, at the end, he tells us it's so that the disciples would believe that he was who he says he was. His motivation for the miracle was so that others would believe. We fast forward to maybe his greatest miracle in John 11 when he resurrects Lazarus from the dead. His best friend. He was told two days before his best friend died, hey, Lazarus is sick. You should come heal him. And he stays put for two days and lets his best friend die. And his two sisters, Lazarus' two sisters, Mary and Martha, he watches them get disappointed in such a deep way that when he meets back up with Mary, he weeps with her. He let them die. He let them hurt so he could resurrect them from the dead. And when he comes out, there's a prayer at the end of John 11, and he lifts his eyes up to God, and he says, God, I know. Father, I knew that you would do this, but I'm saying this now so that they might believe, you're following me for the wrong reasons. And they say, what are the right reasons? He says, you're laboring for temporary things. You should labor for eternal things. And they said, how do we do that? What do you tell them? Believe in the one that the Father has sent. Believe in me. Over and over and over again, believe in me. The new commandment that he gives in John 13, love one another as I have loved you. Why? So that others might believe in me. And then here in this prayer, God, I pray all these things for myself. I pray all these things for the disciples. I pray all these things for the church that will grow from the disciples. And I pray that that church will be unified with you and unified with one another. Why? So that they might believe in me. All through the Bible. All through the book of John. This is what Jesus cares about most. And then he prays this peculiar prayer. It's almost vain when we read it. It really kind of took me a minute to figure out why is Jesus praying this at the end of that. Verse 24, Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me, that's the church, may be through their word would see me in my glory, would see me as I am. Say, Father, they've only seen me as this weak and frail human. I pray that they would see me as God, that they would see me as divine, that they would see Jesus in his heavenly state in Revelation. Two or three different glimpses of him, and it's really magnificent. But why is Jesus praying this here? Let them see me as I really am. And as I thought about that, I realized something. Do you know where we experience perfect unity with the Father, what he prays for us? In heaven. Do you know where we experience perfect unity with one another? In heaven. Do you know what Jesus prays over and over again for the disciples in this passage? That God would preserve them. Preserve them for what? Heaven. Do you know where if other people believe because of our unity, because of our love, and because of his miracles, do you know where they go? Heaven. If we're going to ever see Jesus in his glory, do you know where we see him in his glory? Heaven. And so I really believe that what Jesus is praying here can be summed up like this. Father, let them experience heaven. That's what he's praying. If you read through everything here, if you read through John 17 and you want to know what's the heart of Jesus, what's he praying for us, what matters most to him, what he's praying is, Father, let them experience heaven. Let them experience eternity. What he's saying is if there is a perfect God who chose to create us so that we might share in an eternal relationship with him, what he's praying is, Father, bring about the whole purpose of all of creation. Let's go ahead and finish the job that we started all those years ago. Let's bring about the entire purpose why we're here and what we did to bring them to heaven with us that they might experience eternity and a perfect relationship with us and in a perfect relationship with one another. And if you read back through John through this lens, it amazed me as I looked at it this week, you will see that almost the only thing Jesus ever really cares about, it is guiding everything he says, all the miracles that he does, all the teachings that he offers, all the conversations that he has, all the places that he goes, and all of his timing. His primary and sometimes sole motivation is that you would be in heaven with him for eternity. That's his whole life. What matters most to Jesus? That you would be in heaven with him. What does Jesus care about more than anything else? That you would be in heaven with him. Why did Jesus teach all those people all the time? Why did he do all the miracles? Why did he train the disciples? Why did he pray for them? Why did he die on the cross? Why did he live his entire life? Why did he come here? So that you might be reconciled to him and spend eternity in heaven with him and with the Father and with the Spirit and with one another. It's all Jesus cares about is that you would one day go to heaven. And if that's what Jesus cares about most, just eternity, it makes me wonder, do we care about it as much as him? Or are we caught up in the temporary? If we cared about heaven as much as Jesus cared about heaven, we would have a lot different view of life and death. If we cared about heaven as much as Jesus cared about heaven, we would have a lot different view of our friends. We would have a lot different view of our children and of our loved ones. If we cared about heaven for other people as much as Jesus cared about heaven, we would have a lot different view of people who cut us off in traffic. We would have a lot different view of the person who checks out too many items in the self-checkout aisle in Harris Teeter. Right? If we cared about heaven as much as Jesus cared about heaven, if we were singularly focused on eternity as Jesus was on eternity, it would change our prayers. It would change our relationships. It would change our interaction. It would change our priorities. It would change everything. And what I see as I go through John is that this prayer is a capstone on all the teachings of Jesus throughout the whole book. And do you know what he really wants for you? Do you know what screams to me out of the book of John? Jesus wants to spend eternity with you. It's the whole reason he created you. It's the whole reason he came here. It's the whole reason he died. It's the whole reason he hung around for three years. It's the only reason that he doesn't snatch you to heaven the exact moment that you accept him because he wants you to be about the business of bringing other people with you. The only reason we are here is to go to heaven and bring as many people as we possibly can with us on the way. And when we believe that, and I'll be the first to confess that I don't all the time do, it changes everything. To me, that's the message from John, that Jesus wants to spend eternity with you. He wants it so badly that he's willing to experience the death of crucifixion to do it. And that's what we're gonna talk about next week. Let's pray. Father, we are so grateful for you. We are so grateful for your love. Grateful for your son. The way that he ministered to us and for us. The way that he fights for us. The way that his singular focus is to bring us into a relationship with you and him and the spirit that we might experience heaven, that we might experience eternity with him and with you. God, give us an ounce of the concern that Jesus has for the eternity. Give us a glimpse of what it's like to be eternally focused like he was. Give us an appreciation for the beauty of eternity with you. Give us an understanding that we really were designed to be with you and that we will only find purpose and identity and happiness and contentment when we are walking in the middle of your will and we are walking towards heaven. Give us a heart to bring as many people possible with us as we can. God, thanks for loving us in that way. In Jesus' name, amen.
Good morning, my name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here at the early service. As Kyle said, this is the ninth part of our series moving through the book of John. I've been encouraging you every week to grab a reading plan. They're on the information table on the way out in the lobby. We want you reading along, encountering the Savior along with us. We don't want your only perspective on John to be for me and what I say on Sunday morning, but you encounter him with your heart and your intellect as well. This week we arrive at John chapter 17, which I think is one of the most intimate and poignant and important passages in the Bible. It is the longest recorded prayer of Jesus. And so I think just if that's all I would say about it, that it's the longest recorded prayer that we have of Jesus, we should want to lean into it and hear it, right? We should want to listen because this is our Savior and he prayed for us. And anytime he prays, we should want to lean in and go, how does he pray? What does he say? Like, I want to do it like he does it. And so we get the longest example that we have in John chapter 17. Before we dive into it, I want to give us a little context and background for when he's praying this and at the end of what he said and why he's praying it. So if you have a Bible, you can turn to John 17. If you don't, there's one in the seat back in front of you. And you can turn, it's the fourth book in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, John chapter 17. And we're going to be looking really at the whole chapter, but specifically at verses 20 through 24 this morning. So John 17 comes at the end of what's referred to by scholars as the farewell discourse. So if you've been paying attention in the book of John, we kind of move through the life of Jesus, right? And so the first, he's been ministering now for three years. He's had the disciples for three years, and he's just been moving through ministry and kind of just dropping in at spots and just giving highlights for each year or different things, right? But then time slows down towards the end when Jesus enters into Jerusalem for what we know as Passion Week. And he is in Jerusalem about to be crucified. The wheels have been set in motion for him to be arrested and tried and crucified and then resurrected, which we celebrate on Easter. So all of that stuff has been put in motion and the Gospel of John slows time way down and focuses a big portion of what he writes on just that week, and then a big portion of that week on just the last night that they're together. So they're around eating. They're eating a meal. Jesus looks at Judas, the one who is going to betray him, and he sends him off. He says, what you're about to do, go and do it quickly. And then he's left with just the 11 faithful disciples in this room together, this really intimate moment after three years of laboring together every day. And listen, his relationship with his disciples is the closest thing that we could experience to having a relationship with children or something like that. They spent every day together. When he called them to follow him, it wasn't like, could you follow me Monday through Friday? Actually, we do 410s here, so just Monday through Thursday. It's every day that you wake up and you talk to him. You wake up and you pray with him. You wake up and you do ministry with him, and you encounter the crowds that he encounters, and you watch him walk in faith every day for three years. They're incredibly, they have this incredibly tight and intimate relationship. And when it's just those 11 that are faithful to him because Judas went to betray him, he starts to teach them. And for a long time he teaches them. He starts to teach them in chapter 13. And we looked at this two weeks ago with the new commandment. He says, this new commandment I give you, that you should love one another as I love you. And then from that new commandment, he launches into 14, 15, 16, those three chapters of teaching. It's the most longest teachings that we have from Jesus. If you have a red letter Bible, and most of you do, and you flip through chapters 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, you'll see that they're all read. And this is one night that Jesus is saying all of these things in one room. And so we looked at one of those things last week in John 15, the idea of abiding in him, obeying him, and bearing fruit. And so then he wraps it up with this prayer. And it says at the beginning, when Jesus had spoken these words, so all the previous chapters from 13 until now, when Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted his eyes up to pray, which is just an interesting aside. There's other ways to pray besides bowing our head and closing our eyes. There's just different postures and different types of prayer, just as an aside. Before we look at Jesus' prayer, before we dive into it, I wanted us to kind of think about it a little bit so we can get a sense of what's being revealed here in this prayer. Those of you with children, I want you to imagine that they're adult children. Those of you without kids, just pretend that you have kids. And this is actually great because they've never sassed you and they're exactly what you want them to be. So just live in that moment. But if you have kids, I want you to imagine a situation where you're gonna part ways with them for a long, long time. Several years, probably decades, dozens of years. You're not gonna see them again. And it's gonna be a long time and you know it. And they know it too. And right before you part ways, you say, hey, let me pray for you. Okay? What would you pray? If you're gonna part ways with your kids for decades, not gonna see them again for a long, long time, you knew you were gonna see them again one day, but not for a while, and you said, hey, let me pray for you, what would you pray? It probably wouldn't be frivolous things, right? It probably wouldn't be like the test goes well tomorrow. It probably wouldn't even be that the interview's good. You would pray deep, meaningful things. You would pray long-term things. And whatever you prayed for them in that moment, I would submit to you is indicative of what your heart is for them. Whatever you pray in that moment is really revelatory of what you feel for them and what you want most for them, isn't it? It's going to show you, if I could listen, I would know what's most important to you for them for their life for the next several years, just by listening to your prayer. And so that's what's happening here. Jesus is about to part ways with the disciples. He's told them, I'm going to go prepare a place for you. Where I'm going, you cannot come for a while. We'll meet again, but it's going to be a minute. And Jesus knows that when he moves on from this moment, when he moves on from this week, he's going to see them a little bit. He's going to go to heaven. And then they've got their lives to live. And they've got the church to lead and the church to grow. We don't find out about Jesus. We never hear this story if the disciples don't do what they were trained to do. And he knows what they have ahead of them, that they have decades, that they're all going to die martyrs, deaths, that some of them are going to get married, that some of them are going to have kids. He knows what awaits them. And so he prays for them. And what I want to submit to you is that Jesus' prayer reveals what he most wants for us. Jesus' prayer reveals what he most wants for us. In the same way, if you were praying for your kids and they were leaving for a long time, you weren't going to see them again, what would you pray for them? That would reveal what you most wanted for your children. This prayer reveals what he most wants for the disciples, and you'll see it reveals what he most wants for us. The thing I find really remarkable about this prayer is that Jesus prays for you. In verse 20, he says this. He's just in the prayer. If you read the whole thing, and I would really encourage you to do that in one go. Read chapter 17 all the way through. He opens up praying about himself, and then he prays for the disciples. And then after he prays for the disciples, in verse 20, he says this, I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. Do you know who that is? That's you. If you are a Christian, if you call God your Father and Jesus your Savior, if you would say that you are a believer, then Jesus is praying for you here. He's saying, I'm not just praying for the disciples who are here around me, these 11, Father. I'm praying for anyone that comes to faith because of their word, which is everyone ever who has become a Christian. So he's praying for you. And even if you're here this morning and you're not a believer, which I'm so happy that you're here. Thanks for trusting us with your morning. And I will try to go quickly. If you're here this morning and you're not a believer, he prays for you too. So I want to know what he prays, right? What does he think is most important for us? When Jesus prayed for me 2,000 years ago to the Father, what did he pray? What did he pray for you? Well, here's what he prayed. Let's look at it. He prays, there's five verses that he prays for us, but this is really a good summary verse. This is the nuts and bolts of it us? What does he want for us? What does he pray for us? I think the answer to that is Jesus is praying for a twofold unity. Jesus prays for a twofold unity, two types of unity here. The first is unity with the Father. He says, let them be in us as we are together. Let them be one as we are one. And I love the heart of Jesus in this prayer, praying, God, let them experience what we have experienced. I think it kind of works like this. Like when you go out to eat, right? Let's say you go out to eat when there's five other people at the table and you win the order battle. It's a great feeling. Like all the plates come to the table and they set your plate down in front of you and everybody at the table goes, oh, that looks good. Should have gotten that. And like everybody knows you win. Like everybody now likes their dinner a little bit less because yours looks so good. That's a wonderful feeling, right? And if you're a good friend, now some of us are jerks and we go prison yard and like we cover it. We're like, sorry, you'll know for next time. But most of us, because we're really enjoying what we're eating, what do we do? We cut it and we hand it to people, right? You gotta try this and we put it on their plate or we pester people or like our grandmas when they love something a lot, they just force feed it to us. Like, if you say no to this, I'm just gonna put it directly in your mouth because they want you to try this because we want people to share in good experiences with us. Oh my gosh, this is so good. You have to taste this, right? That's why when we see something funny, when we hear something funny, Kyle lately, our student pastor, there's a comedian on Netflix named Nate Bergazzi. He is like an evangelist for this guy. He loves him and he's hilarious. And so he's telling everybody about him because Kyle likes laughing and he wants you to laugh too, right? He wants you to share in that experience. This is what we do. And this is what Jesus is doing. Jesus is saying, God, let them experience just a taste of what you and I have. Because I don't know if you've ever thought about this. We're gonna deep dive in philosophy a little bit. God exists as a triune God. I don't have time to explain it this morning, which is good because I can't. It's just kind of one of these mysteries of the faith that we believe in a trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And they existed before time in eternity as a perfect unit, in perfect love and a perfect relationship, perfectly affirming, perfectly identifying, perfectly loving, perfectly accepting, never experiencing shame, never experiencing loneliness, never experiencing a lack of self-worth or a lack of identity or any sort of anxiety. They loved one another perfectly and they are perfect. And I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but the most loving thing for a perfect being to do is to make other beings so that they can experience his perfection. Does that make sense? So God created man so that we could get a taste of the relationship that he experiences God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. He created us for the sole purpose of allowing us to experience relationship with him. He didn't do it because they needed it. It's not like God the Father and God the Son were looking at each other in heaven going, man, I am lonely. You know who would fix this? Tom Sartorius. That'd make it great. That's what we need. We need more Tom. This place would be great. That's not what he said. I want some company. I want a different perspective. Let's make people. That's not what they did. They said, this is so perfect that the best possible thing to do is to create people to experience in this relationship with us. The whole point of creation, the whole point of humans existing, is so that one day we can be reunited with God and experience the relationship that he designed us for. It's what our souls yearn for. It's what every bit of clawing for happiness is clawing towards. It's back to that relationship that the Father created just so that we could be intimate and united with him. It's the unity that Jesus is praying for here. And Jesus is saying, this is so good, Father, what we have. This is so good and so right and so affirming. Let them experience it too. Let them be in us as we are in one another. Let them experience a all-affirming love, a love that covers over shame, a love that erases anxiety, a love that imbues us with purpose, a love that assigns us an identity. Let them experience that, God. Bring them to oneness with you is what he's praying for. So it's a good, heartfelt prayer. And then he says, let them be one as you and I are one. So the second type of unity he prays for is unity with one another. He prays for unity with one another, right? He prays that you and I would be one, that all Christians would be one and would be unified. And at first, at first it seems like he's trying to almost pray away like denominations in the church. Like he doesn't want us to be Methodists and Presbyterians and Baptists and Catholics and all that stuff. He doesn't want that. He wants us to be one homogenous, like-minded group that agrees on everything. At first, it seems like the prayer is somewhat ineffectual. If you prayed that 2,000 years ago, let them all be one. And then the church launches from that and becomes incredibly diverse. Like I have to drive, when I drive home, I live really close. I live like five minutes away. I live one song away. That's how far I live with no traffic. That's what I know. I get one song on the way to and from work. I pass three churches at least. I guarantee there are things in each of those churches that I wouldn't agree with. I guarantee they would come here and they would not agree with some things. I mean, they'd be wrong, but they wouldn't agree, right? And so it makes me wonder, like, is God, is that prayer that ineffectual? Are we so far off the mark that we're not unified in that way? But as I thought about the unity that Jesus is praying for, I think that that unity is really exemplified in Kyle and Steve. Kyle's our student pastor and Steve is our worship pastor. And they're buddies. They're genuine buddies. As if we needed proof of this, every Wednesday staff goes out for staff lunch. Don't worry, we pay for that ourselves. We don't charge it to the church. We go out for staff lunch and we rotate who gets to pick. When it's your week, you get to pick the restaurant. And so this week, we ate at Pieology over there in North Hills. It will shock you to know that our student pastor chose a pizza place. And so we go there and Steve and Kyle ordered separately. They didn't talk to each other about what they were gonna order, but they both ordered a buffalo chicken pizza, right? And so they sit down and Kyle leans over and he jokingly says, look at us, we're buffalo bros, which is just a dumb joke, which makes it funny. So now they're buffalo bros, right? Like that's the thing. And they really are buddies. Every now and again on Mondays, they go out to eat together. Then when they don't have any plans, they just go eat together and they talk and they hang out. A lot of times when I'm trying to do actual work, they sit in Kyle's office and they distract me by talking to one another. But they're like friends. And it amazes me that they are because they are very different people. Kyle's 25. He's single. He goes out late. He plays Ultimate Frisbee and is good at Fortnite. That's Kyle, right? Steve's 43. I mean, we just started working on a 401K for him. He's so near the end of his career. He's in a different season of life. He's got a kid. He's building a house. Steve's Jewish and grew up in Boston for a little bit, a single mom, and then a stepdad going to Hebrew school. Kyle grew up in the south in a quaint suburb of Atlanta with a dad who worked at a Southern Baptist church with parents who are still together. It's totally different existences. Steve's gone through the loss of a parent. Kyle has both of his parents. Kyle was an athlete in high school, played a ton of sports. Steve's a musician. They don't have those things in common. I think Steve played basketball a couple of times. I question that. Totally different. Kyle doesn't have musical skills. Their interests are different. Kyle recommended Nate Bergazzi to Steve. Steve didn't like him. Kyle took it personal. There is no reason that they should be friends. But they work on the same staff and they're unified by the same goal. They both live to see people get connected to Jesus. They both live to see people experience the unity with God that they have. They both live for the purpose of the gospel. So whether or not they agree on everything, whether or not they're similar in every way, the unifying power of the gospel and the purpose of that has brought them together because it's what they both care most deeply about is seeing themselves walk with Jesus and seeing you walk with Jesus. And so they've leveraged everything in their life around those goals. And so it unites us. This week, I had a guy from South Africa come up. I met him once for a week, six years ago. He's an African-American guy from South Africa who grew up in Ocean View, in the shantytowns there, in extreme poverty, totally different life experience with me. I've only spent a week with him. When he got here on Thursday, he got out of the car and gave me a hug and called me brother. What else but the gospel unifies people in that way? So I do not think that when Jesus is praying here, he's praying that we would be a homogenous group that agrees on everything all the time. I think that he is praying that we would be unified in our goal and in our heart to reach people with the power of the gospel. I think he is praying that we would be brought together by what means most to us. And on a church level, this means that we're not against other churches. This means that we support other churches. This means it doesn't matter if we agree with them on everything. What we agree with them on, the most important thing is they're trying to bring people into the kingdom and we're trying to bring people into the kingdom. People have asked me a bunch of times, Summit's building a big, huge building right around the corner. They're saying, you know, Summit's building this huge building. Are you worried about that? No, no. He's a better pastor than me anyways. Moving closer isn't going to prove it. He's already a better speaker than me. What's it matter? We're all building the kingdom. Who cares? Who cares where anybody goes to church? Just go where you're getting closer to the Father, where you have community. We're all on the same team. That's the unity that I think that Jesus is praying for. And he prays this, and you can see it in the kind of unity that he's praying for. He's praying this. He says at the end, look, at the end of 21, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, and me, and I in you, that they also may be in us so that, listen, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I don't know if you've been paying attention in this series, but if you have, you will notice that this is why Jesus does everything. This is like, this prayer sums up the whole gospel of John. It sums up all of his teaching. It sums up everything. This idea, he wants us to be experienced unity with the Father, that all-fulfilling love of the Father, unity with one another in purpose, and the purpose is so that other people might believe in Jesus. It's what he says over and over and over again. In the very first week of the series, we said that the fundamental questions in life are, was Jesus real, and do I believe that he was who he says he was? And if we answer yes to those two questions, everything has to change. And Jesus keeps bringing us back himself to that question, do you believe in me? The way the gospel starts, John starts, Jesus is God. In the beginning was the Word, Word was with God, Word was God. Without him, nothing was made through him, all things were made. He sets him up as God, and we have to ask the question, do we believe that? The very first miracle that he does, turning water into wine. His mom says, hey, you should do that thing where you turn the water into wine. And Jesus says, it's not yet my time, woman, which is a really interesting verse to have in the Bible. But then he decides that he's going to do it anyways. Why does he do this miracle? Well, at the end, he tells us it's so that the disciples would believe that he was who he says he was. His motivation for the miracle was so that others would believe. We fast forward to maybe his greatest miracle in John 11 when he resurrects Lazarus from the dead. His best friend. He was told two days before his best friend died, hey, Lazarus is sick. You should come heal him. And he stays put for two days and lets his best friend die. And his two sisters, Lazarus' two sisters, Mary and Martha, he watches them get disappointed in such a deep way that when he meets back up with Mary, he weeps with her. He let them die. He let them hurt so he could resurrect them from the dead. And when he comes out, there's a prayer at the end of John 11, and he lifts his eyes up to God, and he says, God, I know. Father, I knew that you would do this, but I'm saying this now so that they might believe, you're following me for the wrong reasons. And they say, what are the right reasons? He says, you're laboring for temporary things. You should labor for eternal things. And they said, how do we do that? What do you tell them? Believe in the one that the Father has sent. Believe in me. Over and over and over again, believe in me. The new commandment that he gives in John 13, love one another as I have loved you. Why? So that others might believe in me. And then here in this prayer, God, I pray all these things for myself. I pray all these things for the disciples. I pray all these things for the church that will grow from the disciples. And I pray that that church will be unified with you and unified with one another. Why? So that they might believe in me. All through the Bible. All through the book of John. This is what Jesus cares about most. And then he prays this peculiar prayer. It's almost vain when we read it. It really kind of took me a minute to figure out why is Jesus praying this at the end of that. Verse 24, Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me, that's the church, may be through their word would see me in my glory, would see me as I am. Say, Father, they've only seen me as this weak and frail human. I pray that they would see me as God, that they would see me as divine, that they would see Jesus in his heavenly state in Revelation. Two or three different glimpses of him, and it's really magnificent. But why is Jesus praying this here? Let them see me as I really am. And as I thought about that, I realized something. Do you know where we experience perfect unity with the Father, what he prays for us? In heaven. Do you know where we experience perfect unity with one another? In heaven. Do you know what Jesus prays over and over again for the disciples in this passage? That God would preserve them. Preserve them for what? Heaven. Do you know where if other people believe because of our unity, because of our love, and because of his miracles, do you know where they go? Heaven. If we're going to ever see Jesus in his glory, do you know where we see him in his glory? Heaven. And so I really believe that what Jesus is praying here can be summed up like this. Father, let them experience heaven. That's what he's praying. If you read through everything here, if you read through John 17 and you want to know what's the heart of Jesus, what's he praying for us, what matters most to him, what he's praying is, Father, let them experience heaven. Let them experience eternity. What he's saying is if there is a perfect God who chose to create us so that we might share in an eternal relationship with him, what he's praying is, Father, bring about the whole purpose of all of creation. Let's go ahead and finish the job that we started all those years ago. Let's bring about the entire purpose why we're here and what we did to bring them to heaven with us that they might experience eternity and a perfect relationship with us and in a perfect relationship with one another. And if you read back through John through this lens, it amazed me as I looked at it this week, you will see that almost the only thing Jesus ever really cares about, it is guiding everything he says, all the miracles that he does, all the teachings that he offers, all the conversations that he has, all the places that he goes, and all of his timing. His primary and sometimes sole motivation is that you would be in heaven with him for eternity. That's his whole life. What matters most to Jesus? That you would be in heaven with him. What does Jesus care about more than anything else? That you would be in heaven with him. Why did Jesus teach all those people all the time? Why did he do all the miracles? Why did he train the disciples? Why did he pray for them? Why did he die on the cross? Why did he live his entire life? Why did he come here? So that you might be reconciled to him and spend eternity in heaven with him and with the Father and with the Spirit and with one another. It's all Jesus cares about is that you would one day go to heaven. And if that's what Jesus cares about most, just eternity, it makes me wonder, do we care about it as much as him? Or are we caught up in the temporary? If we cared about heaven as much as Jesus cared about heaven, we would have a lot different view of life and death. If we cared about heaven as much as Jesus cared about heaven, we would have a lot different view of our friends. We would have a lot different view of our children and of our loved ones. If we cared about heaven for other people as much as Jesus cared about heaven, we would have a lot different view of people who cut us off in traffic. We would have a lot different view of the person who checks out too many items in the self-checkout aisle in Harris Teeter. Right? If we cared about heaven as much as Jesus cared about heaven, if we were singularly focused on eternity as Jesus was on eternity, it would change our prayers. It would change our relationships. It would change our interaction. It would change our priorities. It would change everything. And what I see as I go through John is that this prayer is a capstone on all the teachings of Jesus throughout the whole book. And do you know what he really wants for you? Do you know what screams to me out of the book of John? Jesus wants to spend eternity with you. It's the whole reason he created you. It's the whole reason he came here. It's the whole reason he died. It's the whole reason he hung around for three years. It's the only reason that he doesn't snatch you to heaven the exact moment that you accept him because he wants you to be about the business of bringing other people with you. The only reason we are here is to go to heaven and bring as many people as we possibly can with us on the way. And when we believe that, and I'll be the first to confess that I don't all the time do, it changes everything. To me, that's the message from John, that Jesus wants to spend eternity with you. He wants it so badly that he's willing to experience the death of crucifixion to do it. And that's what we're gonna talk about next week. Let's pray. Father, we are so grateful for you. We are so grateful for your love. Grateful for your son. The way that he ministered to us and for us. The way that he fights for us. The way that his singular focus is to bring us into a relationship with you and him and the spirit that we might experience heaven, that we might experience eternity with him and with you. God, give us an ounce of the concern that Jesus has for the eternity. Give us a glimpse of what it's like to be eternally focused like he was. Give us an appreciation for the beauty of eternity with you. Give us an understanding that we really were designed to be with you and that we will only find purpose and identity and happiness and contentment when we are walking in the middle of your will and we are walking towards heaven. Give us a heart to bring as many people possible with us as we can. God, thanks for loving us in that way. In Jesus' name, amen.
Good morning, my name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here at the early service. As Kyle said, this is the ninth part of our series moving through the book of John. I've been encouraging you every week to grab a reading plan. They're on the information table on the way out in the lobby. We want you reading along, encountering the Savior along with us. We don't want your only perspective on John to be for me and what I say on Sunday morning, but you encounter him with your heart and your intellect as well. This week we arrive at John chapter 17, which I think is one of the most intimate and poignant and important passages in the Bible. It is the longest recorded prayer of Jesus. And so I think just if that's all I would say about it, that it's the longest recorded prayer that we have of Jesus, we should want to lean into it and hear it, right? We should want to listen because this is our Savior and he prayed for us. And anytime he prays, we should want to lean in and go, how does he pray? What does he say? Like, I want to do it like he does it. And so we get the longest example that we have in John chapter 17. Before we dive into it, I want to give us a little context and background for when he's praying this and at the end of what he said and why he's praying it. So if you have a Bible, you can turn to John 17. If you don't, there's one in the seat back in front of you. And you can turn, it's the fourth book in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, John chapter 17. And we're going to be looking really at the whole chapter, but specifically at verses 20 through 24 this morning. So John 17 comes at the end of what's referred to by scholars as the farewell discourse. So if you've been paying attention in the book of John, we kind of move through the life of Jesus, right? And so the first, he's been ministering now for three years. He's had the disciples for three years, and he's just been moving through ministry and kind of just dropping in at spots and just giving highlights for each year or different things, right? But then time slows down towards the end when Jesus enters into Jerusalem for what we know as Passion Week. And he is in Jerusalem about to be crucified. The wheels have been set in motion for him to be arrested and tried and crucified and then resurrected, which we celebrate on Easter. So all of that stuff has been put in motion and the Gospel of John slows time way down and focuses a big portion of what he writes on just that week, and then a big portion of that week on just the last night that they're together. So they're around eating. They're eating a meal. Jesus looks at Judas, the one who is going to betray him, and he sends him off. He says, what you're about to do, go and do it quickly. And then he's left with just the 11 faithful disciples in this room together, this really intimate moment after three years of laboring together every day. And listen, his relationship with his disciples is the closest thing that we could experience to having a relationship with children or something like that. They spent every day together. When he called them to follow him, it wasn't like, could you follow me Monday through Friday? Actually, we do 410s here, so just Monday through Thursday. It's every day that you wake up and you talk to him. You wake up and you pray with him. You wake up and you do ministry with him, and you encounter the crowds that he encounters, and you watch him walk in faith every day for three years. They're incredibly, they have this incredibly tight and intimate relationship. And when it's just those 11 that are faithful to him because Judas went to betray him, he starts to teach them. And for a long time he teaches them. He starts to teach them in chapter 13. And we looked at this two weeks ago with the new commandment. He says, this new commandment I give you, that you should love one another as I love you. And then from that new commandment, he launches into 14, 15, 16, those three chapters of teaching. It's the most longest teachings that we have from Jesus. If you have a red letter Bible, and most of you do, and you flip through chapters 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, you'll see that they're all read. And this is one night that Jesus is saying all of these things in one room. And so we looked at one of those things last week in John 15, the idea of abiding in him, obeying him, and bearing fruit. And so then he wraps it up with this prayer. And it says at the beginning, when Jesus had spoken these words, so all the previous chapters from 13 until now, when Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted his eyes up to pray, which is just an interesting aside. There's other ways to pray besides bowing our head and closing our eyes. There's just different postures and different types of prayer, just as an aside. Before we look at Jesus' prayer, before we dive into it, I wanted us to kind of think about it a little bit so we can get a sense of what's being revealed here in this prayer. Those of you with children, I want you to imagine that they're adult children. Those of you without kids, just pretend that you have kids. And this is actually great because they've never sassed you and they're exactly what you want them to be. So just live in that moment. But if you have kids, I want you to imagine a situation where you're gonna part ways with them for a long, long time. Several years, probably decades, dozens of years. You're not gonna see them again. And it's gonna be a long time and you know it. And they know it too. And right before you part ways, you say, hey, let me pray for you. Okay? What would you pray? If you're gonna part ways with your kids for decades, not gonna see them again for a long, long time, you knew you were gonna see them again one day, but not for a while, and you said, hey, let me pray for you, what would you pray? It probably wouldn't be frivolous things, right? It probably wouldn't be like the test goes well tomorrow. It probably wouldn't even be that the interview's good. You would pray deep, meaningful things. You would pray long-term things. And whatever you prayed for them in that moment, I would submit to you is indicative of what your heart is for them. Whatever you pray in that moment is really revelatory of what you feel for them and what you want most for them, isn't it? It's going to show you, if I could listen, I would know what's most important to you for them for their life for the next several years, just by listening to your prayer. And so that's what's happening here. Jesus is about to part ways with the disciples. He's told them, I'm going to go prepare a place for you. Where I'm going, you cannot come for a while. We'll meet again, but it's going to be a minute. And Jesus knows that when he moves on from this moment, when he moves on from this week, he's going to see them a little bit. He's going to go to heaven. And then they've got their lives to live. And they've got the church to lead and the church to grow. We don't find out about Jesus. We never hear this story if the disciples don't do what they were trained to do. And he knows what they have ahead of them, that they have decades, that they're all going to die martyrs, deaths, that some of them are going to get married, that some of them are going to have kids. He knows what awaits them. And so he prays for them. And what I want to submit to you is that Jesus' prayer reveals what he most wants for us. Jesus' prayer reveals what he most wants for us. In the same way, if you were praying for your kids and they were leaving for a long time, you weren't going to see them again, what would you pray for them? That would reveal what you most wanted for your children. This prayer reveals what he most wants for the disciples, and you'll see it reveals what he most wants for us. The thing I find really remarkable about this prayer is that Jesus prays for you. In verse 20, he says this. He's just in the prayer. If you read the whole thing, and I would really encourage you to do that in one go. Read chapter 17 all the way through. He opens up praying about himself, and then he prays for the disciples. And then after he prays for the disciples, in verse 20, he says this, I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. Do you know who that is? That's you. If you are a Christian, if you call God your Father and Jesus your Savior, if you would say that you are a believer, then Jesus is praying for you here. He's saying, I'm not just praying for the disciples who are here around me, these 11, Father. I'm praying for anyone that comes to faith because of their word, which is everyone ever who has become a Christian. So he's praying for you. And even if you're here this morning and you're not a believer, which I'm so happy that you're here. Thanks for trusting us with your morning. And I will try to go quickly. If you're here this morning and you're not a believer, he prays for you too. So I want to know what he prays, right? What does he think is most important for us? When Jesus prayed for me 2,000 years ago to the Father, what did he pray? What did he pray for you? Well, here's what he prayed. Let's look at it. He prays, there's five verses that he prays for us, but this is really a good summary verse. This is the nuts and bolts of it us? What does he want for us? What does he pray for us? I think the answer to that is Jesus is praying for a twofold unity. Jesus prays for a twofold unity, two types of unity here. The first is unity with the Father. He says, let them be in us as we are together. Let them be one as we are one. And I love the heart of Jesus in this prayer, praying, God, let them experience what we have experienced. I think it kind of works like this. Like when you go out to eat, right? Let's say you go out to eat when there's five other people at the table and you win the order battle. It's a great feeling. Like all the plates come to the table and they set your plate down in front of you and everybody at the table goes, oh, that looks good. Should have gotten that. And like everybody knows you win. Like everybody now likes their dinner a little bit less because yours looks so good. That's a wonderful feeling, right? And if you're a good friend, now some of us are jerks and we go prison yard and like we cover it. We're like, sorry, you'll know for next time. But most of us, because we're really enjoying what we're eating, what do we do? We cut it and we hand it to people, right? You gotta try this and we put it on their plate or we pester people or like our grandmas when they love something a lot, they just force feed it to us. Like, if you say no to this, I'm just gonna put it directly in your mouth because they want you to try this because we want people to share in good experiences with us. Oh my gosh, this is so good. You have to taste this, right? That's why when we see something funny, when we hear something funny, Kyle lately, our student pastor, there's a comedian on Netflix named Nate Bergazzi. He is like an evangelist for this guy. He loves him and he's hilarious. And so he's telling everybody about him because Kyle likes laughing and he wants you to laugh too, right? He wants you to share in that experience. This is what we do. And this is what Jesus is doing. Jesus is saying, God, let them experience just a taste of what you and I have. Because I don't know if you've ever thought about this. We're gonna deep dive in philosophy a little bit. God exists as a triune God. I don't have time to explain it this morning, which is good because I can't. It's just kind of one of these mysteries of the faith that we believe in a trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And they existed before time in eternity as a perfect unit, in perfect love and a perfect relationship, perfectly affirming, perfectly identifying, perfectly loving, perfectly accepting, never experiencing shame, never experiencing loneliness, never experiencing a lack of self-worth or a lack of identity or any sort of anxiety. They loved one another perfectly and they are perfect. And I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but the most loving thing for a perfect being to do is to make other beings so that they can experience his perfection. Does that make sense? So God created man so that we could get a taste of the relationship that he experiences God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. He created us for the sole purpose of allowing us to experience relationship with him. He didn't do it because they needed it. It's not like God the Father and God the Son were looking at each other in heaven going, man, I am lonely. You know who would fix this? Tom Sartorius. That'd make it great. That's what we need. We need more Tom. This place would be great. That's not what he said. I want some company. I want a different perspective. Let's make people. That's not what they did. They said, this is so perfect that the best possible thing to do is to create people to experience in this relationship with us. The whole point of creation, the whole point of humans existing, is so that one day we can be reunited with God and experience the relationship that he designed us for. It's what our souls yearn for. It's what every bit of clawing for happiness is clawing towards. It's back to that relationship that the Father created just so that we could be intimate and united with him. It's the unity that Jesus is praying for here. And Jesus is saying, this is so good, Father, what we have. This is so good and so right and so affirming. Let them experience it too. Let them be in us as we are in one another. Let them experience a all-affirming love, a love that covers over shame, a love that erases anxiety, a love that imbues us with purpose, a love that assigns us an identity. Let them experience that, God. Bring them to oneness with you is what he's praying for. So it's a good, heartfelt prayer. And then he says, let them be one as you and I are one. So the second type of unity he prays for is unity with one another. He prays for unity with one another, right? He prays that you and I would be one, that all Christians would be one and would be unified. And at first, at first it seems like he's trying to almost pray away like denominations in the church. Like he doesn't want us to be Methodists and Presbyterians and Baptists and Catholics and all that stuff. He doesn't want that. He wants us to be one homogenous, like-minded group that agrees on everything. At first, it seems like the prayer is somewhat ineffectual. If you prayed that 2,000 years ago, let them all be one. And then the church launches from that and becomes incredibly diverse. Like I have to drive, when I drive home, I live really close. I live like five minutes away. I live one song away. That's how far I live with no traffic. That's what I know. I get one song on the way to and from work. I pass three churches at least. I guarantee there are things in each of those churches that I wouldn't agree with. I guarantee they would come here and they would not agree with some things. I mean, they'd be wrong, but they wouldn't agree, right? And so it makes me wonder, like, is God, is that prayer that ineffectual? Are we so far off the mark that we're not unified in that way? But as I thought about the unity that Jesus is praying for, I think that that unity is really exemplified in Kyle and Steve. Kyle's our student pastor and Steve is our worship pastor. And they're buddies. They're genuine buddies. As if we needed proof of this, every Wednesday staff goes out for staff lunch. Don't worry, we pay for that ourselves. We don't charge it to the church. We go out for staff lunch and we rotate who gets to pick. When it's your week, you get to pick the restaurant. And so this week, we ate at Pieology over there in North Hills. It will shock you to know that our student pastor chose a pizza place. And so we go there and Steve and Kyle ordered separately. They didn't talk to each other about what they were gonna order, but they both ordered a buffalo chicken pizza, right? And so they sit down and Kyle leans over and he jokingly says, look at us, we're buffalo bros, which is just a dumb joke, which makes it funny. So now they're buffalo bros, right? Like that's the thing. And they really are buddies. Every now and again on Mondays, they go out to eat together. Then when they don't have any plans, they just go eat together and they talk and they hang out. A lot of times when I'm trying to do actual work, they sit in Kyle's office and they distract me by talking to one another. But they're like friends. And it amazes me that they are because they are very different people. Kyle's 25. He's single. He goes out late. He plays Ultimate Frisbee and is good at Fortnite. That's Kyle, right? Steve's 43. I mean, we just started working on a 401K for him. He's so near the end of his career. He's in a different season of life. He's got a kid. He's building a house. Steve's Jewish and grew up in Boston for a little bit, a single mom, and then a stepdad going to Hebrew school. Kyle grew up in the south in a quaint suburb of Atlanta with a dad who worked at a Southern Baptist church with parents who are still together. It's totally different existences. Steve's gone through the loss of a parent. Kyle has both of his parents. Kyle was an athlete in high school, played a ton of sports. Steve's a musician. They don't have those things in common. I think Steve played basketball a couple of times. I question that. Totally different. Kyle doesn't have musical skills. Their interests are different. Kyle recommended Nate Bergazzi to Steve. Steve didn't like him. Kyle took it personal. There is no reason that they should be friends. But they work on the same staff and they're unified by the same goal. They both live to see people get connected to Jesus. They both live to see people experience the unity with God that they have. They both live for the purpose of the gospel. So whether or not they agree on everything, whether or not they're similar in every way, the unifying power of the gospel and the purpose of that has brought them together because it's what they both care most deeply about is seeing themselves walk with Jesus and seeing you walk with Jesus. And so they've leveraged everything in their life around those goals. And so it unites us. This week, I had a guy from South Africa come up. I met him once for a week, six years ago. He's an African-American guy from South Africa who grew up in Ocean View, in the shantytowns there, in extreme poverty, totally different life experience with me. I've only spent a week with him. When he got here on Thursday, he got out of the car and gave me a hug and called me brother. What else but the gospel unifies people in that way? So I do not think that when Jesus is praying here, he's praying that we would be a homogenous group that agrees on everything all the time. I think that he is praying that we would be unified in our goal and in our heart to reach people with the power of the gospel. I think he is praying that we would be brought together by what means most to us. And on a church level, this means that we're not against other churches. This means that we support other churches. This means it doesn't matter if we agree with them on everything. What we agree with them on, the most important thing is they're trying to bring people into the kingdom and we're trying to bring people into the kingdom. People have asked me a bunch of times, Summit's building a big, huge building right around the corner. They're saying, you know, Summit's building this huge building. Are you worried about that? No, no. He's a better pastor than me anyways. Moving closer isn't going to prove it. He's already a better speaker than me. What's it matter? We're all building the kingdom. Who cares? Who cares where anybody goes to church? Just go where you're getting closer to the Father, where you have community. We're all on the same team. That's the unity that I think that Jesus is praying for. And he prays this, and you can see it in the kind of unity that he's praying for. He's praying this. He says at the end, look, at the end of 21, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, and me, and I in you, that they also may be in us so that, listen, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I don't know if you've been paying attention in this series, but if you have, you will notice that this is why Jesus does everything. This is like, this prayer sums up the whole gospel of John. It sums up all of his teaching. It sums up everything. This idea, he wants us to be experienced unity with the Father, that all-fulfilling love of the Father, unity with one another in purpose, and the purpose is so that other people might believe in Jesus. It's what he says over and over and over again. In the very first week of the series, we said that the fundamental questions in life are, was Jesus real, and do I believe that he was who he says he was? And if we answer yes to those two questions, everything has to change. And Jesus keeps bringing us back himself to that question, do you believe in me? The way the gospel starts, John starts, Jesus is God. In the beginning was the Word, Word was with God, Word was God. Without him, nothing was made through him, all things were made. He sets him up as God, and we have to ask the question, do we believe that? The very first miracle that he does, turning water into wine. His mom says, hey, you should do that thing where you turn the water into wine. And Jesus says, it's not yet my time, woman, which is a really interesting verse to have in the Bible. But then he decides that he's going to do it anyways. Why does he do this miracle? Well, at the end, he tells us it's so that the disciples would believe that he was who he says he was. His motivation for the miracle was so that others would believe. We fast forward to maybe his greatest miracle in John 11 when he resurrects Lazarus from the dead. His best friend. He was told two days before his best friend died, hey, Lazarus is sick. You should come heal him. And he stays put for two days and lets his best friend die. And his two sisters, Lazarus' two sisters, Mary and Martha, he watches them get disappointed in such a deep way that when he meets back up with Mary, he weeps with her. He let them die. He let them hurt so he could resurrect them from the dead. And when he comes out, there's a prayer at the end of John 11, and he lifts his eyes up to God, and he says, God, I know. Father, I knew that you would do this, but I'm saying this now so that they might believe, you're following me for the wrong reasons. And they say, what are the right reasons? He says, you're laboring for temporary things. You should labor for eternal things. And they said, how do we do that? What do you tell them? Believe in the one that the Father has sent. Believe in me. Over and over and over again, believe in me. The new commandment that he gives in John 13, love one another as I have loved you. Why? So that others might believe in me. And then here in this prayer, God, I pray all these things for myself. I pray all these things for the disciples. I pray all these things for the church that will grow from the disciples. And I pray that that church will be unified with you and unified with one another. Why? So that they might believe in me. All through the Bible. All through the book of John. This is what Jesus cares about most. And then he prays this peculiar prayer. It's almost vain when we read it. It really kind of took me a minute to figure out why is Jesus praying this at the end of that. Verse 24, Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me, that's the church, may be through their word would see me in my glory, would see me as I am. Say, Father, they've only seen me as this weak and frail human. I pray that they would see me as God, that they would see me as divine, that they would see Jesus in his heavenly state in Revelation. Two or three different glimpses of him, and it's really magnificent. But why is Jesus praying this here? Let them see me as I really am. And as I thought about that, I realized something. Do you know where we experience perfect unity with the Father, what he prays for us? In heaven. Do you know where we experience perfect unity with one another? In heaven. Do you know what Jesus prays over and over again for the disciples in this passage? That God would preserve them. Preserve them for what? Heaven. Do you know where if other people believe because of our unity, because of our love, and because of his miracles, do you know where they go? Heaven. If we're going to ever see Jesus in his glory, do you know where we see him in his glory? Heaven. And so I really believe that what Jesus is praying here can be summed up like this. Father, let them experience heaven. That's what he's praying. If you read through everything here, if you read through John 17 and you want to know what's the heart of Jesus, what's he praying for us, what matters most to him, what he's praying is, Father, let them experience heaven. Let them experience eternity. What he's saying is if there is a perfect God who chose to create us so that we might share in an eternal relationship with him, what he's praying is, Father, bring about the whole purpose of all of creation. Let's go ahead and finish the job that we started all those years ago. Let's bring about the entire purpose why we're here and what we did to bring them to heaven with us that they might experience eternity and a perfect relationship with us and in a perfect relationship with one another. And if you read back through John through this lens, it amazed me as I looked at it this week, you will see that almost the only thing Jesus ever really cares about, it is guiding everything he says, all the miracles that he does, all the teachings that he offers, all the conversations that he has, all the places that he goes, and all of his timing. His primary and sometimes sole motivation is that you would be in heaven with him for eternity. That's his whole life. What matters most to Jesus? That you would be in heaven with him. What does Jesus care about more than anything else? That you would be in heaven with him. Why did Jesus teach all those people all the time? Why did he do all the miracles? Why did he train the disciples? Why did he pray for them? Why did he die on the cross? Why did he live his entire life? Why did he come here? So that you might be reconciled to him and spend eternity in heaven with him and with the Father and with the Spirit and with one another. It's all Jesus cares about is that you would one day go to heaven. And if that's what Jesus cares about most, just eternity, it makes me wonder, do we care about it as much as him? Or are we caught up in the temporary? If we cared about heaven as much as Jesus cared about heaven, we would have a lot different view of life and death. If we cared about heaven as much as Jesus cared about heaven, we would have a lot different view of our friends. We would have a lot different view of our children and of our loved ones. If we cared about heaven for other people as much as Jesus cared about heaven, we would have a lot different view of people who cut us off in traffic. We would have a lot different view of the person who checks out too many items in the self-checkout aisle in Harris Teeter. Right? If we cared about heaven as much as Jesus cared about heaven, if we were singularly focused on eternity as Jesus was on eternity, it would change our prayers. It would change our relationships. It would change our interaction. It would change our priorities. It would change everything. And what I see as I go through John is that this prayer is a capstone on all the teachings of Jesus throughout the whole book. And do you know what he really wants for you? Do you know what screams to me out of the book of John? Jesus wants to spend eternity with you. It's the whole reason he created you. It's the whole reason he came here. It's the whole reason he died. It's the whole reason he hung around for three years. It's the only reason that he doesn't snatch you to heaven the exact moment that you accept him because he wants you to be about the business of bringing other people with you. The only reason we are here is to go to heaven and bring as many people as we possibly can with us on the way. And when we believe that, and I'll be the first to confess that I don't all the time do, it changes everything. To me, that's the message from John, that Jesus wants to spend eternity with you. He wants it so badly that he's willing to experience the death of crucifixion to do it. And that's what we're gonna talk about next week. Let's pray. Father, we are so grateful for you. We are so grateful for your love. Grateful for your son. The way that he ministered to us and for us. The way that he fights for us. The way that his singular focus is to bring us into a relationship with you and him and the spirit that we might experience heaven, that we might experience eternity with him and with you. God, give us an ounce of the concern that Jesus has for the eternity. Give us a glimpse of what it's like to be eternally focused like he was. Give us an appreciation for the beauty of eternity with you. Give us an understanding that we really were designed to be with you and that we will only find purpose and identity and happiness and contentment when we are walking in the middle of your will and we are walking towards heaven. Give us a heart to bring as many people possible with us as we can. God, thanks for loving us in that way. In Jesus' name, amen.
Good morning, my name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here at the early service. As Kyle said, this is the ninth part of our series moving through the book of John. I've been encouraging you every week to grab a reading plan. They're on the information table on the way out in the lobby. We want you reading along, encountering the Savior along with us. We don't want your only perspective on John to be for me and what I say on Sunday morning, but you encounter him with your heart and your intellect as well. This week we arrive at John chapter 17, which I think is one of the most intimate and poignant and important passages in the Bible. It is the longest recorded prayer of Jesus. And so I think just if that's all I would say about it, that it's the longest recorded prayer that we have of Jesus, we should want to lean into it and hear it, right? We should want to listen because this is our Savior and he prayed for us. And anytime he prays, we should want to lean in and go, how does he pray? What does he say? Like, I want to do it like he does it. And so we get the longest example that we have in John chapter 17. Before we dive into it, I want to give us a little context and background for when he's praying this and at the end of what he said and why he's praying it. So if you have a Bible, you can turn to John 17. If you don't, there's one in the seat back in front of you. And you can turn, it's the fourth book in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, John chapter 17. And we're going to be looking really at the whole chapter, but specifically at verses 20 through 24 this morning. So John 17 comes at the end of what's referred to by scholars as the farewell discourse. So if you've been paying attention in the book of John, we kind of move through the life of Jesus, right? And so the first, he's been ministering now for three years. He's had the disciples for three years, and he's just been moving through ministry and kind of just dropping in at spots and just giving highlights for each year or different things, right? But then time slows down towards the end when Jesus enters into Jerusalem for what we know as Passion Week. And he is in Jerusalem about to be crucified. The wheels have been set in motion for him to be arrested and tried and crucified and then resurrected, which we celebrate on Easter. So all of that stuff has been put in motion and the Gospel of John slows time way down and focuses a big portion of what he writes on just that week, and then a big portion of that week on just the last night that they're together. So they're around eating. They're eating a meal. Jesus looks at Judas, the one who is going to betray him, and he sends him off. He says, what you're about to do, go and do it quickly. And then he's left with just the 11 faithful disciples in this room together, this really intimate moment after three years of laboring together every day. And listen, his relationship with his disciples is the closest thing that we could experience to having a relationship with children or something like that. They spent every day together. When he called them to follow him, it wasn't like, could you follow me Monday through Friday? Actually, we do 410s here, so just Monday through Thursday. It's every day that you wake up and you talk to him. You wake up and you pray with him. You wake up and you do ministry with him, and you encounter the crowds that he encounters, and you watch him walk in faith every day for three years. They're incredibly, they have this incredibly tight and intimate relationship. And when it's just those 11 that are faithful to him because Judas went to betray him, he starts to teach them. And for a long time he teaches them. He starts to teach them in chapter 13. And we looked at this two weeks ago with the new commandment. He says, this new commandment I give you, that you should love one another as I love you. And then from that new commandment, he launches into 14, 15, 16, those three chapters of teaching. It's the most longest teachings that we have from Jesus. If you have a red letter Bible, and most of you do, and you flip through chapters 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, you'll see that they're all read. And this is one night that Jesus is saying all of these things in one room. And so we looked at one of those things last week in John 15, the idea of abiding in him, obeying him, and bearing fruit. And so then he wraps it up with this prayer. And it says at the beginning, when Jesus had spoken these words, so all the previous chapters from 13 until now, when Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted his eyes up to pray, which is just an interesting aside. There's other ways to pray besides bowing our head and closing our eyes. There's just different postures and different types of prayer, just as an aside. Before we look at Jesus' prayer, before we dive into it, I wanted us to kind of think about it a little bit so we can get a sense of what's being revealed here in this prayer. Those of you with children, I want you to imagine that they're adult children. Those of you without kids, just pretend that you have kids. And this is actually great because they've never sassed you and they're exactly what you want them to be. So just live in that moment. But if you have kids, I want you to imagine a situation where you're gonna part ways with them for a long, long time. Several years, probably decades, dozens of years. You're not gonna see them again. And it's gonna be a long time and you know it. And they know it too. And right before you part ways, you say, hey, let me pray for you. Okay? What would you pray? If you're gonna part ways with your kids for decades, not gonna see them again for a long, long time, you knew you were gonna see them again one day, but not for a while, and you said, hey, let me pray for you, what would you pray? It probably wouldn't be frivolous things, right? It probably wouldn't be like the test goes well tomorrow. It probably wouldn't even be that the interview's good. You would pray deep, meaningful things. You would pray long-term things. And whatever you prayed for them in that moment, I would submit to you is indicative of what your heart is for them. Whatever you pray in that moment is really revelatory of what you feel for them and what you want most for them, isn't it? It's going to show you, if I could listen, I would know what's most important to you for them for their life for the next several years, just by listening to your prayer. And so that's what's happening here. Jesus is about to part ways with the disciples. He's told them, I'm going to go prepare a place for you. Where I'm going, you cannot come for a while. We'll meet again, but it's going to be a minute. And Jesus knows that when he moves on from this moment, when he moves on from this week, he's going to see them a little bit. He's going to go to heaven. And then they've got their lives to live. And they've got the church to lead and the church to grow. We don't find out about Jesus. We never hear this story if the disciples don't do what they were trained to do. And he knows what they have ahead of them, that they have decades, that they're all going to die martyrs, deaths, that some of them are going to get married, that some of them are going to have kids. He knows what awaits them. And so he prays for them. And what I want to submit to you is that Jesus' prayer reveals what he most wants for us. Jesus' prayer reveals what he most wants for us. In the same way, if you were praying for your kids and they were leaving for a long time, you weren't going to see them again, what would you pray for them? That would reveal what you most wanted for your children. This prayer reveals what he most wants for the disciples, and you'll see it reveals what he most wants for us. The thing I find really remarkable about this prayer is that Jesus prays for you. In verse 20, he says this. He's just in the prayer. If you read the whole thing, and I would really encourage you to do that in one go. Read chapter 17 all the way through. He opens up praying about himself, and then he prays for the disciples. And then after he prays for the disciples, in verse 20, he says this, I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. Do you know who that is? That's you. If you are a Christian, if you call God your Father and Jesus your Savior, if you would say that you are a believer, then Jesus is praying for you here. He's saying, I'm not just praying for the disciples who are here around me, these 11, Father. I'm praying for anyone that comes to faith because of their word, which is everyone ever who has become a Christian. So he's praying for you. And even if you're here this morning and you're not a believer, which I'm so happy that you're here. Thanks for trusting us with your morning. And I will try to go quickly. If you're here this morning and you're not a believer, he prays for you too. So I want to know what he prays, right? What does he think is most important for us? When Jesus prayed for me 2,000 years ago to the Father, what did he pray? What did he pray for you? Well, here's what he prayed. Let's look at it. He prays, there's five verses that he prays for us, but this is really a good summary verse. This is the nuts and bolts of it us? What does he want for us? What does he pray for us? I think the answer to that is Jesus is praying for a twofold unity. Jesus prays for a twofold unity, two types of unity here. The first is unity with the Father. He says, let them be in us as we are together. Let them be one as we are one. And I love the heart of Jesus in this prayer, praying, God, let them experience what we have experienced. I think it kind of works like this. Like when you go out to eat, right? Let's say you go out to eat when there's five other people at the table and you win the order battle. It's a great feeling. Like all the plates come to the table and they set your plate down in front of you and everybody at the table goes, oh, that looks good. Should have gotten that. And like everybody knows you win. Like everybody now likes their dinner a little bit less because yours looks so good. That's a wonderful feeling, right? And if you're a good friend, now some of us are jerks and we go prison yard and like we cover it. We're like, sorry, you'll know for next time. But most of us, because we're really enjoying what we're eating, what do we do? We cut it and we hand it to people, right? You gotta try this and we put it on their plate or we pester people or like our grandmas when they love something a lot, they just force feed it to us. Like, if you say no to this, I'm just gonna put it directly in your mouth because they want you to try this because we want people to share in good experiences with us. Oh my gosh, this is so good. You have to taste this, right? That's why when we see something funny, when we hear something funny, Kyle lately, our student pastor, there's a comedian on Netflix named Nate Bergazzi. He is like an evangelist for this guy. He loves him and he's hilarious. And so he's telling everybody about him because Kyle likes laughing and he wants you to laugh too, right? He wants you to share in that experience. This is what we do. And this is what Jesus is doing. Jesus is saying, God, let them experience just a taste of what you and I have. Because I don't know if you've ever thought about this. We're gonna deep dive in philosophy a little bit. God exists as a triune God. I don't have time to explain it this morning, which is good because I can't. It's just kind of one of these mysteries of the faith that we believe in a trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And they existed before time in eternity as a perfect unit, in perfect love and a perfect relationship, perfectly affirming, perfectly identifying, perfectly loving, perfectly accepting, never experiencing shame, never experiencing loneliness, never experiencing a lack of self-worth or a lack of identity or any sort of anxiety. They loved one another perfectly and they are perfect. And I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but the most loving thing for a perfect being to do is to make other beings so that they can experience his perfection. Does that make sense? So God created man so that we could get a taste of the relationship that he experiences God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. He created us for the sole purpose of allowing us to experience relationship with him. He didn't do it because they needed it. It's not like God the Father and God the Son were looking at each other in heaven going, man, I am lonely. You know who would fix this? Tom Sartorius. That'd make it great. That's what we need. We need more Tom. This place would be great. That's not what he said. I want some company. I want a different perspective. Let's make people. That's not what they did. They said, this is so perfect that the best possible thing to do is to create people to experience in this relationship with us. The whole point of creation, the whole point of humans existing, is so that one day we can be reunited with God and experience the relationship that he designed us for. It's what our souls yearn for. It's what every bit of clawing for happiness is clawing towards. It's back to that relationship that the Father created just so that we could be intimate and united with him. It's the unity that Jesus is praying for here. And Jesus is saying, this is so good, Father, what we have. This is so good and so right and so affirming. Let them experience it too. Let them be in us as we are in one another. Let them experience a all-affirming love, a love that covers over shame, a love that erases anxiety, a love that imbues us with purpose, a love that assigns us an identity. Let them experience that, God. Bring them to oneness with you is what he's praying for. So it's a good, heartfelt prayer. And then he says, let them be one as you and I are one. So the second type of unity he prays for is unity with one another. He prays for unity with one another, right? He prays that you and I would be one, that all Christians would be one and would be unified. And at first, at first it seems like he's trying to almost pray away like denominations in the church. Like he doesn't want us to be Methodists and Presbyterians and Baptists and Catholics and all that stuff. He doesn't want that. He wants us to be one homogenous, like-minded group that agrees on everything. At first, it seems like the prayer is somewhat ineffectual. If you prayed that 2,000 years ago, let them all be one. And then the church launches from that and becomes incredibly diverse. Like I have to drive, when I drive home, I live really close. I live like five minutes away. I live one song away. That's how far I live with no traffic. That's what I know. I get one song on the way to and from work. I pass three churches at least. I guarantee there are things in each of those churches that I wouldn't agree with. I guarantee they would come here and they would not agree with some things. I mean, they'd be wrong, but they wouldn't agree, right? And so it makes me wonder, like, is God, is that prayer that ineffectual? Are we so far off the mark that we're not unified in that way? But as I thought about the unity that Jesus is praying for, I think that that unity is really exemplified in Kyle and Steve. Kyle's our student pastor and Steve is our worship pastor. And they're buddies. They're genuine buddies. As if we needed proof of this, every Wednesday staff goes out for staff lunch. Don't worry, we pay for that ourselves. We don't charge it to the church. We go out for staff lunch and we rotate who gets to pick. When it's your week, you get to pick the restaurant. And so this week, we ate at Pieology over there in North Hills. It will shock you to know that our student pastor chose a pizza place. And so we go there and Steve and Kyle ordered separately. They didn't talk to each other about what they were gonna order, but they both ordered a buffalo chicken pizza, right? And so they sit down and Kyle leans over and he jokingly says, look at us, we're buffalo bros, which is just a dumb joke, which makes it funny. So now they're buffalo bros, right? Like that's the thing. And they really are buddies. Every now and again on Mondays, they go out to eat together. Then when they don't have any plans, they just go eat together and they talk and they hang out. A lot of times when I'm trying to do actual work, they sit in Kyle's office and they distract me by talking to one another. But they're like friends. And it amazes me that they are because they are very different people. Kyle's 25. He's single. He goes out late. He plays Ultimate Frisbee and is good at Fortnite. That's Kyle, right? Steve's 43. I mean, we just started working on a 401K for him. He's so near the end of his career. He's in a different season of life. He's got a kid. He's building a house. Steve's Jewish and grew up in Boston for a little bit, a single mom, and then a stepdad going to Hebrew school. Kyle grew up in the south in a quaint suburb of Atlanta with a dad who worked at a Southern Baptist church with parents who are still together. It's totally different existences. Steve's gone through the loss of a parent. Kyle has both of his parents. Kyle was an athlete in high school, played a ton of sports. Steve's a musician. They don't have those things in common. I think Steve played basketball a couple of times. I question that. Totally different. Kyle doesn't have musical skills. Their interests are different. Kyle recommended Nate Bergazzi to Steve. Steve didn't like him. Kyle took it personal. There is no reason that they should be friends. But they work on the same staff and they're unified by the same goal. They both live to see people get connected to Jesus. They both live to see people experience the unity with God that they have. They both live for the purpose of the gospel. So whether or not they agree on everything, whether or not they're similar in every way, the unifying power of the gospel and the purpose of that has brought them together because it's what they both care most deeply about is seeing themselves walk with Jesus and seeing you walk with Jesus. And so they've leveraged everything in their life around those goals. And so it unites us. This week, I had a guy from South Africa come up. I met him once for a week, six years ago. He's an African-American guy from South Africa who grew up in Ocean View, in the shantytowns there, in extreme poverty, totally different life experience with me. I've only spent a week with him. When he got here on Thursday, he got out of the car and gave me a hug and called me brother. What else but the gospel unifies people in that way? So I do not think that when Jesus is praying here, he's praying that we would be a homogenous group that agrees on everything all the time. I think that he is praying that we would be unified in our goal and in our heart to reach people with the power of the gospel. I think he is praying that we would be brought together by what means most to us. And on a church level, this means that we're not against other churches. This means that we support other churches. This means it doesn't matter if we agree with them on everything. What we agree with them on, the most important thing is they're trying to bring people into the kingdom and we're trying to bring people into the kingdom. People have asked me a bunch of times, Summit's building a big, huge building right around the corner. They're saying, you know, Summit's building this huge building. Are you worried about that? No, no. He's a better pastor than me anyways. Moving closer isn't going to prove it. He's already a better speaker than me. What's it matter? We're all building the kingdom. Who cares? Who cares where anybody goes to church? Just go where you're getting closer to the Father, where you have community. We're all on the same team. That's the unity that I think that Jesus is praying for. And he prays this, and you can see it in the kind of unity that he's praying for. He's praying this. He says at the end, look, at the end of 21, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, and me, and I in you, that they also may be in us so that, listen, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I don't know if you've been paying attention in this series, but if you have, you will notice that this is why Jesus does everything. This is like, this prayer sums up the whole gospel of John. It sums up all of his teaching. It sums up everything. This idea, he wants us to be experienced unity with the Father, that all-fulfilling love of the Father, unity with one another in purpose, and the purpose is so that other people might believe in Jesus. It's what he says over and over and over again. In the very first week of the series, we said that the fundamental questions in life are, was Jesus real, and do I believe that he was who he says he was? And if we answer yes to those two questions, everything has to change. And Jesus keeps bringing us back himself to that question, do you believe in me? The way the gospel starts, John starts, Jesus is God. In the beginning was the Word, Word was with God, Word was God. Without him, nothing was made through him, all things were made. He sets him up as God, and we have to ask the question, do we believe that? The very first miracle that he does, turning water into wine. His mom says, hey, you should do that thing where you turn the water into wine. And Jesus says, it's not yet my time, woman, which is a really interesting verse to have in the Bible. But then he decides that he's going to do it anyways. Why does he do this miracle? Well, at the end, he tells us it's so that the disciples would believe that he was who he says he was. His motivation for the miracle was so that others would believe. We fast forward to maybe his greatest miracle in John 11 when he resurrects Lazarus from the dead. His best friend. He was told two days before his best friend died, hey, Lazarus is sick. You should come heal him. And he stays put for two days and lets his best friend die. And his two sisters, Lazarus' two sisters, Mary and Martha, he watches them get disappointed in such a deep way that when he meets back up with Mary, he weeps with her. He let them die. He let them hurt so he could resurrect them from the dead. And when he comes out, there's a prayer at the end of John 11, and he lifts his eyes up to God, and he says, God, I know. Father, I knew that you would do this, but I'm saying this now so that they might believe, you're following me for the wrong reasons. And they say, what are the right reasons? He says, you're laboring for temporary things. You should labor for eternal things. And they said, how do we do that? What do you tell them? Believe in the one that the Father has sent. Believe in me. Over and over and over again, believe in me. The new commandment that he gives in John 13, love one another as I have loved you. Why? So that others might believe in me. And then here in this prayer, God, I pray all these things for myself. I pray all these things for the disciples. I pray all these things for the church that will grow from the disciples. And I pray that that church will be unified with you and unified with one another. Why? So that they might believe in me. All through the Bible. All through the book of John. This is what Jesus cares about most. And then he prays this peculiar prayer. It's almost vain when we read it. It really kind of took me a minute to figure out why is Jesus praying this at the end of that. Verse 24, Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me, that's the church, may be through their word would see me in my glory, would see me as I am. Say, Father, they've only seen me as this weak and frail human. I pray that they would see me as God, that they would see me as divine, that they would see Jesus in his heavenly state in Revelation. Two or three different glimpses of him, and it's really magnificent. But why is Jesus praying this here? Let them see me as I really am. And as I thought about that, I realized something. Do you know where we experience perfect unity with the Father, what he prays for us? In heaven. Do you know where we experience perfect unity with one another? In heaven. Do you know what Jesus prays over and over again for the disciples in this passage? That God would preserve them. Preserve them for what? Heaven. Do you know where if other people believe because of our unity, because of our love, and because of his miracles, do you know where they go? Heaven. If we're going to ever see Jesus in his glory, do you know where we see him in his glory? Heaven. And so I really believe that what Jesus is praying here can be summed up like this. Father, let them experience heaven. That's what he's praying. If you read through everything here, if you read through John 17 and you want to know what's the heart of Jesus, what's he praying for us, what matters most to him, what he's praying is, Father, let them experience heaven. Let them experience eternity. What he's saying is if there is a perfect God who chose to create us so that we might share in an eternal relationship with him, what he's praying is, Father, bring about the whole purpose of all of creation. Let's go ahead and finish the job that we started all those years ago. Let's bring about the entire purpose why we're here and what we did to bring them to heaven with us that they might experience eternity and a perfect relationship with us and in a perfect relationship with one another. And if you read back through John through this lens, it amazed me as I looked at it this week, you will see that almost the only thing Jesus ever really cares about, it is guiding everything he says, all the miracles that he does, all the teachings that he offers, all the conversations that he has, all the places that he goes, and all of his timing. His primary and sometimes sole motivation is that you would be in heaven with him for eternity. That's his whole life. What matters most to Jesus? That you would be in heaven with him. What does Jesus care about more than anything else? That you would be in heaven with him. Why did Jesus teach all those people all the time? Why did he do all the miracles? Why did he train the disciples? Why did he pray for them? Why did he die on the cross? Why did he live his entire life? Why did he come here? So that you might be reconciled to him and spend eternity in heaven with him and with the Father and with the Spirit and with one another. It's all Jesus cares about is that you would one day go to heaven. And if that's what Jesus cares about most, just eternity, it makes me wonder, do we care about it as much as him? Or are we caught up in the temporary? If we cared about heaven as much as Jesus cared about heaven, we would have a lot different view of life and death. If we cared about heaven as much as Jesus cared about heaven, we would have a lot different view of our friends. We would have a lot different view of our children and of our loved ones. If we cared about heaven for other people as much as Jesus cared about heaven, we would have a lot different view of people who cut us off in traffic. We would have a lot different view of the person who checks out too many items in the self-checkout aisle in Harris Teeter. Right? If we cared about heaven as much as Jesus cared about heaven, if we were singularly focused on eternity as Jesus was on eternity, it would change our prayers. It would change our relationships. It would change our interaction. It would change our priorities. It would change everything. And what I see as I go through John is that this prayer is a capstone on all the teachings of Jesus throughout the whole book. And do you know what he really wants for you? Do you know what screams to me out of the book of John? Jesus wants to spend eternity with you. It's the whole reason he created you. It's the whole reason he came here. It's the whole reason he died. It's the whole reason he hung around for three years. It's the only reason that he doesn't snatch you to heaven the exact moment that you accept him because he wants you to be about the business of bringing other people with you. The only reason we are here is to go to heaven and bring as many people as we possibly can with us on the way. And when we believe that, and I'll be the first to confess that I don't all the time do, it changes everything. To me, that's the message from John, that Jesus wants to spend eternity with you. He wants it so badly that he's willing to experience the death of crucifixion to do it. And that's what we're gonna talk about next week. Let's pray. Father, we are so grateful for you. We are so grateful for your love. Grateful for your son. The way that he ministered to us and for us. The way that he fights for us. The way that his singular focus is to bring us into a relationship with you and him and the spirit that we might experience heaven, that we might experience eternity with him and with you. God, give us an ounce of the concern that Jesus has for the eternity. Give us a glimpse of what it's like to be eternally focused like he was. Give us an appreciation for the beauty of eternity with you. Give us an understanding that we really were designed to be with you and that we will only find purpose and identity and happiness and contentment when we are walking in the middle of your will and we are walking towards heaven. Give us a heart to bring as many people possible with us as we can. God, thanks for loving us in that way. In Jesus' name, amen.
Good morning, my name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here at the early service. As Kyle said, this is the ninth part of our series moving through the book of John. I've been encouraging you every week to grab a reading plan. They're on the information table on the way out in the lobby. We want you reading along, encountering the Savior along with us. We don't want your only perspective on John to be for me and what I say on Sunday morning, but you encounter him with your heart and your intellect as well. This week we arrive at John chapter 17, which I think is one of the most intimate and poignant and important passages in the Bible. It is the longest recorded prayer of Jesus. And so I think just if that's all I would say about it, that it's the longest recorded prayer that we have of Jesus, we should want to lean into it and hear it, right? We should want to listen because this is our Savior and he prayed for us. And anytime he prays, we should want to lean in and go, how does he pray? What does he say? Like, I want to do it like he does it. And so we get the longest example that we have in John chapter 17. Before we dive into it, I want to give us a little context and background for when he's praying this and at the end of what he said and why he's praying it. So if you have a Bible, you can turn to John 17. If you don't, there's one in the seat back in front of you. And you can turn, it's the fourth book in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, John chapter 17. And we're going to be looking really at the whole chapter, but specifically at verses 20 through 24 this morning. So John 17 comes at the end of what's referred to by scholars as the farewell discourse. So if you've been paying attention in the book of John, we kind of move through the life of Jesus, right? And so the first, he's been ministering now for three years. He's had the disciples for three years, and he's just been moving through ministry and kind of just dropping in at spots and just giving highlights for each year or different things, right? But then time slows down towards the end when Jesus enters into Jerusalem for what we know as Passion Week. And he is in Jerusalem about to be crucified. The wheels have been set in motion for him to be arrested and tried and crucified and then resurrected, which we celebrate on Easter. So all of that stuff has been put in motion and the Gospel of John slows time way down and focuses a big portion of what he writes on just that week, and then a big portion of that week on just the last night that they're together. So they're around eating. They're eating a meal. Jesus looks at Judas, the one who is going to betray him, and he sends him off. He says, what you're about to do, go and do it quickly. And then he's left with just the 11 faithful disciples in this room together, this really intimate moment after three years of laboring together every day. And listen, his relationship with his disciples is the closest thing that we could experience to having a relationship with children or something like that. They spent every day together. When he called them to follow him, it wasn't like, could you follow me Monday through Friday? Actually, we do 410s here, so just Monday through Thursday. It's every day that you wake up and you talk to him. You wake up and you pray with him. You wake up and you do ministry with him, and you encounter the crowds that he encounters, and you watch him walk in faith every day for three years. They're incredibly, they have this incredibly tight and intimate relationship. And when it's just those 11 that are faithful to him because Judas went to betray him, he starts to teach them. And for a long time he teaches them. He starts to teach them in chapter 13. And we looked at this two weeks ago with the new commandment. He says, this new commandment I give you, that you should love one another as I love you. And then from that new commandment, he launches into 14, 15, 16, those three chapters of teaching. It's the most longest teachings that we have from Jesus. If you have a red letter Bible, and most of you do, and you flip through chapters 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, you'll see that they're all read. And this is one night that Jesus is saying all of these things in one room. And so we looked at one of those things last week in John 15, the idea of abiding in him, obeying him, and bearing fruit. And so then he wraps it up with this prayer. And it says at the beginning, when Jesus had spoken these words, so all the previous chapters from 13 until now, when Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted his eyes up to pray, which is just an interesting aside. There's other ways to pray besides bowing our head and closing our eyes. There's just different postures and different types of prayer, just as an aside. Before we look at Jesus' prayer, before we dive into it, I wanted us to kind of think about it a little bit so we can get a sense of what's being revealed here in this prayer. Those of you with children, I want you to imagine that they're adult children. Those of you without kids, just pretend that you have kids. And this is actually great because they've never sassed you and they're exactly what you want them to be. So just live in that moment. But if you have kids, I want you to imagine a situation where you're gonna part ways with them for a long, long time. Several years, probably decades, dozens of years. You're not gonna see them again. And it's gonna be a long time and you know it. And they know it too. And right before you part ways, you say, hey, let me pray for you. Okay? What would you pray? If you're gonna part ways with your kids for decades, not gonna see them again for a long, long time, you knew you were gonna see them again one day, but not for a while, and you said, hey, let me pray for you, what would you pray? It probably wouldn't be frivolous things, right? It probably wouldn't be like the test goes well tomorrow. It probably wouldn't even be that the interview's good. You would pray deep, meaningful things. You would pray long-term things. And whatever you prayed for them in that moment, I would submit to you is indicative of what your heart is for them. Whatever you pray in that moment is really revelatory of what you feel for them and what you want most for them, isn't it? It's going to show you, if I could listen, I would know what's most important to you for them for their life for the next several years, just by listening to your prayer. And so that's what's happening here. Jesus is about to part ways with the disciples. He's told them, I'm going to go prepare a place for you. Where I'm going, you cannot come for a while. We'll meet again, but it's going to be a minute. And Jesus knows that when he moves on from this moment, when he moves on from this week, he's going to see them a little bit. He's going to go to heaven. And then they've got their lives to live. And they've got the church to lead and the church to grow. We don't find out about Jesus. We never hear this story if the disciples don't do what they were trained to do. And he knows what they have ahead of them, that they have decades, that they're all going to die martyrs, deaths, that some of them are going to get married, that some of them are going to have kids. He knows what awaits them. And so he prays for them. And what I want to submit to you is that Jesus' prayer reveals what he most wants for us. Jesus' prayer reveals what he most wants for us. In the same way, if you were praying for your kids and they were leaving for a long time, you weren't going to see them again, what would you pray for them? That would reveal what you most wanted for your children. This prayer reveals what he most wants for the disciples, and you'll see it reveals what he most wants for us. The thing I find really remarkable about this prayer is that Jesus prays for you. In verse 20, he says this. He's just in the prayer. If you read the whole thing, and I would really encourage you to do that in one go. Read chapter 17 all the way through. He opens up praying about himself, and then he prays for the disciples. And then after he prays for the disciples, in verse 20, he says this, I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. Do you know who that is? That's you. If you are a Christian, if you call God your Father and Jesus your Savior, if you would say that you are a believer, then Jesus is praying for you here. He's saying, I'm not just praying for the disciples who are here around me, these 11, Father. I'm praying for anyone that comes to faith because of their word, which is everyone ever who has become a Christian. So he's praying for you. And even if you're here this morning and you're not a believer, which I'm so happy that you're here. Thanks for trusting us with your morning. And I will try to go quickly. If you're here this morning and you're not a believer, he prays for you too. So I want to know what he prays, right? What does he think is most important for us? When Jesus prayed for me 2,000 years ago to the Father, what did he pray? What did he pray for you? Well, here's what he prayed. Let's look at it. He prays, there's five verses that he prays for us, but this is really a good summary verse. This is the nuts and bolts of it us? What does he want for us? What does he pray for us? I think the answer to that is Jesus is praying for a twofold unity. Jesus prays for a twofold unity, two types of unity here. The first is unity with the Father. He says, let them be in us as we are together. Let them be one as we are one. And I love the heart of Jesus in this prayer, praying, God, let them experience what we have experienced. I think it kind of works like this. Like when you go out to eat, right? Let's say you go out to eat when there's five other people at the table and you win the order battle. It's a great feeling. Like all the plates come to the table and they set your plate down in front of you and everybody at the table goes, oh, that looks good. Should have gotten that. And like everybody knows you win. Like everybody now likes their dinner a little bit less because yours looks so good. That's a wonderful feeling, right? And if you're a good friend, now some of us are jerks and we go prison yard and like we cover it. We're like, sorry, you'll know for next time. But most of us, because we're really enjoying what we're eating, what do we do? We cut it and we hand it to people, right? You gotta try this and we put it on their plate or we pester people or like our grandmas when they love something a lot, they just force feed it to us. Like, if you say no to this, I'm just gonna put it directly in your mouth because they want you to try this because we want people to share in good experiences with us. Oh my gosh, this is so good. You have to taste this, right? That's why when we see something funny, when we hear something funny, Kyle lately, our student pastor, there's a comedian on Netflix named Nate Bergazzi. He is like an evangelist for this guy. He loves him and he's hilarious. And so he's telling everybody about him because Kyle likes laughing and he wants you to laugh too, right? He wants you to share in that experience. This is what we do. And this is what Jesus is doing. Jesus is saying, God, let them experience just a taste of what you and I have. Because I don't know if you've ever thought about this. We're gonna deep dive in philosophy a little bit. God exists as a triune God. I don't have time to explain it this morning, which is good because I can't. It's just kind of one of these mysteries of the faith that we believe in a trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And they existed before time in eternity as a perfect unit, in perfect love and a perfect relationship, perfectly affirming, perfectly identifying, perfectly loving, perfectly accepting, never experiencing shame, never experiencing loneliness, never experiencing a lack of self-worth or a lack of identity or any sort of anxiety. They loved one another perfectly and they are perfect. And I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but the most loving thing for a perfect being to do is to make other beings so that they can experience his perfection. Does that make sense? So God created man so that we could get a taste of the relationship that he experiences God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. He created us for the sole purpose of allowing us to experience relationship with him. He didn't do it because they needed it. It's not like God the Father and God the Son were looking at each other in heaven going, man, I am lonely. You know who would fix this? Tom Sartorius. That'd make it great. That's what we need. We need more Tom. This place would be great. That's not what he said. I want some company. I want a different perspective. Let's make people. That's not what they did. They said, this is so perfect that the best possible thing to do is to create people to experience in this relationship with us. The whole point of creation, the whole point of humans existing, is so that one day we can be reunited with God and experience the relationship that he designed us for. It's what our souls yearn for. It's what every bit of clawing for happiness is clawing towards. It's back to that relationship that the Father created just so that we could be intimate and united with him. It's the unity that Jesus is praying for here. And Jesus is saying, this is so good, Father, what we have. This is so good and so right and so affirming. Let them experience it too. Let them be in us as we are in one another. Let them experience a all-affirming love, a love that covers over shame, a love that erases anxiety, a love that imbues us with purpose, a love that assigns us an identity. Let them experience that, God. Bring them to oneness with you is what he's praying for. So it's a good, heartfelt prayer. And then he says, let them be one as you and I are one. So the second type of unity he prays for is unity with one another. He prays for unity with one another, right? He prays that you and I would be one, that all Christians would be one and would be unified. And at first, at first it seems like he's trying to almost pray away like denominations in the church. Like he doesn't want us to be Methodists and Presbyterians and Baptists and Catholics and all that stuff. He doesn't want that. He wants us to be one homogenous, like-minded group that agrees on everything. At first, it seems like the prayer is somewhat ineffectual. If you prayed that 2,000 years ago, let them all be one. And then the church launches from that and becomes incredibly diverse. Like I have to drive, when I drive home, I live really close. I live like five minutes away. I live one song away. That's how far I live with no traffic. That's what I know. I get one song on the way to and from work. I pass three churches at least. I guarantee there are things in each of those churches that I wouldn't agree with. I guarantee they would come here and they would not agree with some things. I mean, they'd be wrong, but they wouldn't agree, right? And so it makes me wonder, like, is God, is that prayer that ineffectual? Are we so far off the mark that we're not unified in that way? But as I thought about the unity that Jesus is praying for, I think that that unity is really exemplified in Kyle and Steve. Kyle's our student pastor and Steve is our worship pastor. And they're buddies. They're genuine buddies. As if we needed proof of this, every Wednesday staff goes out for staff lunch. Don't worry, we pay for that ourselves. We don't charge it to the church. We go out for staff lunch and we rotate who gets to pick. When it's your week, you get to pick the restaurant. And so this week, we ate at Pieology over there in North Hills. It will shock you to know that our student pastor chose a pizza place. And so we go there and Steve and Kyle ordered separately. They didn't talk to each other about what they were gonna order, but they both ordered a buffalo chicken pizza, right? And so they sit down and Kyle leans over and he jokingly says, look at us, we're buffalo bros, which is just a dumb joke, which makes it funny. So now they're buffalo bros, right? Like that's the thing. And they really are buddies. Every now and again on Mondays, they go out to eat together. Then when they don't have any plans, they just go eat together and they talk and they hang out. A lot of times when I'm trying to do actual work, they sit in Kyle's office and they distract me by talking to one another. But they're like friends. And it amazes me that they are because they are very different people. Kyle's 25. He's single. He goes out late. He plays Ultimate Frisbee and is good at Fortnite. That's Kyle, right? Steve's 43. I mean, we just started working on a 401K for him. He's so near the end of his career. He's in a different season of life. He's got a kid. He's building a house. Steve's Jewish and grew up in Boston for a little bit, a single mom, and then a stepdad going to Hebrew school. Kyle grew up in the south in a quaint suburb of Atlanta with a dad who worked at a Southern Baptist church with parents who are still together. It's totally different existences. Steve's gone through the loss of a parent. Kyle has both of his parents. Kyle was an athlete in high school, played a ton of sports. Steve's a musician. They don't have those things in common. I think Steve played basketball a couple of times. I question that. Totally different. Kyle doesn't have musical skills. Their interests are different. Kyle recommended Nate Bergazzi to Steve. Steve didn't like him. Kyle took it personal. There is no reason that they should be friends. But they work on the same staff and they're unified by the same goal. They both live to see people get connected to Jesus. They both live to see people experience the unity with God that they have. They both live for the purpose of the gospel. So whether or not they agree on everything, whether or not they're similar in every way, the unifying power of the gospel and the purpose of that has brought them together because it's what they both care most deeply about is seeing themselves walk with Jesus and seeing you walk with Jesus. And so they've leveraged everything in their life around those goals. And so it unites us. This week, I had a guy from South Africa come up. I met him once for a week, six years ago. He's an African-American guy from South Africa who grew up in Ocean View, in the shantytowns there, in extreme poverty, totally different life experience with me. I've only spent a week with him. When he got here on Thursday, he got out of the car and gave me a hug and called me brother. What else but the gospel unifies people in that way? So I do not think that when Jesus is praying here, he's praying that we would be a homogenous group that agrees on everything all the time. I think that he is praying that we would be unified in our goal and in our heart to reach people with the power of the gospel. I think he is praying that we would be brought together by what means most to us. And on a church level, this means that we're not against other churches. This means that we support other churches. This means it doesn't matter if we agree with them on everything. What we agree with them on, the most important thing is they're trying to bring people into the kingdom and we're trying to bring people into the kingdom. People have asked me a bunch of times, Summit's building a big, huge building right around the corner. They're saying, you know, Summit's building this huge building. Are you worried about that? No, no. He's a better pastor than me anyways. Moving closer isn't going to prove it. He's already a better speaker than me. What's it matter? We're all building the kingdom. Who cares? Who cares where anybody goes to church? Just go where you're getting closer to the Father, where you have community. We're all on the same team. That's the unity that I think that Jesus is praying for. And he prays this, and you can see it in the kind of unity that he's praying for. He's praying this. He says at the end, look, at the end of 21, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, and me, and I in you, that they also may be in us so that, listen, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I don't know if you've been paying attention in this series, but if you have, you will notice that this is why Jesus does everything. This is like, this prayer sums up the whole gospel of John. It sums up all of his teaching. It sums up everything. This idea, he wants us to be experienced unity with the Father, that all-fulfilling love of the Father, unity with one another in purpose, and the purpose is so that other people might believe in Jesus. It's what he says over and over and over again. In the very first week of the series, we said that the fundamental questions in life are, was Jesus real, and do I believe that he was who he says he was? And if we answer yes to those two questions, everything has to change. And Jesus keeps bringing us back himself to that question, do you believe in me? The way the gospel starts, John starts, Jesus is God. In the beginning was the Word, Word was with God, Word was God. Without him, nothing was made through him, all things were made. He sets him up as God, and we have to ask the question, do we believe that? The very first miracle that he does, turning water into wine. His mom says, hey, you should do that thing where you turn the water into wine. And Jesus says, it's not yet my time, woman, which is a really interesting verse to have in the Bible. But then he decides that he's going to do it anyways. Why does he do this miracle? Well, at the end, he tells us it's so that the disciples would believe that he was who he says he was. His motivation for the miracle was so that others would believe. We fast forward to maybe his greatest miracle in John 11 when he resurrects Lazarus from the dead. His best friend. He was told two days before his best friend died, hey, Lazarus is sick. You should come heal him. And he stays put for two days and lets his best friend die. And his two sisters, Lazarus' two sisters, Mary and Martha, he watches them get disappointed in such a deep way that when he meets back up with Mary, he weeps with her. He let them die. He let them hurt so he could resurrect them from the dead. And when he comes out, there's a prayer at the end of John 11, and he lifts his eyes up to God, and he says, God, I know. Father, I knew that you would do this, but I'm saying this now so that they might believe, you're following me for the wrong reasons. And they say, what are the right reasons? He says, you're laboring for temporary things. You should labor for eternal things. And they said, how do we do that? What do you tell them? Believe in the one that the Father has sent. Believe in me. Over and over and over again, believe in me. The new commandment that he gives in John 13, love one another as I have loved you. Why? So that others might believe in me. And then here in this prayer, God, I pray all these things for myself. I pray all these things for the disciples. I pray all these things for the church that will grow from the disciples. And I pray that that church will be unified with you and unified with one another. Why? So that they might believe in me. All through the Bible. All through the book of John. This is what Jesus cares about most. And then he prays this peculiar prayer. It's almost vain when we read it. It really kind of took me a minute to figure out why is Jesus praying this at the end of that. Verse 24, Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me, that's the church, may be through their word would see me in my glory, would see me as I am. Say, Father, they've only seen me as this weak and frail human. I pray that they would see me as God, that they would see me as divine, that they would see Jesus in his heavenly state in Revelation. Two or three different glimpses of him, and it's really magnificent. But why is Jesus praying this here? Let them see me as I really am. And as I thought about that, I realized something. Do you know where we experience perfect unity with the Father, what he prays for us? In heaven. Do you know where we experience perfect unity with one another? In heaven. Do you know what Jesus prays over and over again for the disciples in this passage? That God would preserve them. Preserve them for what? Heaven. Do you know where if other people believe because of our unity, because of our love, and because of his miracles, do you know where they go? Heaven. If we're going to ever see Jesus in his glory, do you know where we see him in his glory? Heaven. And so I really believe that what Jesus is praying here can be summed up like this. Father, let them experience heaven. That's what he's praying. If you read through everything here, if you read through John 17 and you want to know what's the heart of Jesus, what's he praying for us, what matters most to him, what he's praying is, Father, let them experience heaven. Let them experience eternity. What he's saying is if there is a perfect God who chose to create us so that we might share in an eternal relationship with him, what he's praying is, Father, bring about the whole purpose of all of creation. Let's go ahead and finish the job that we started all those years ago. Let's bring about the entire purpose why we're here and what we did to bring them to heaven with us that they might experience eternity and a perfect relationship with us and in a perfect relationship with one another. And if you read back through John through this lens, it amazed me as I looked at it this week, you will see that almost the only thing Jesus ever really cares about, it is guiding everything he says, all the miracles that he does, all the teachings that he offers, all the conversations that he has, all the places that he goes, and all of his timing. His primary and sometimes sole motivation is that you would be in heaven with him for eternity. That's his whole life. What matters most to Jesus? That you would be in heaven with him. What does Jesus care about more than anything else? That you would be in heaven with him. Why did Jesus teach all those people all the time? Why did he do all the miracles? Why did he train the disciples? Why did he pray for them? Why did he die on the cross? Why did he live his entire life? Why did he come here? So that you might be reconciled to him and spend eternity in heaven with him and with the Father and with the Spirit and with one another. It's all Jesus cares about is that you would one day go to heaven. And if that's what Jesus cares about most, just eternity, it makes me wonder, do we care about it as much as him? Or are we caught up in the temporary? If we cared about heaven as much as Jesus cared about heaven, we would have a lot different view of life and death. If we cared about heaven as much as Jesus cared about heaven, we would have a lot different view of our friends. We would have a lot different view of our children and of our loved ones. If we cared about heaven for other people as much as Jesus cared about heaven, we would have a lot different view of people who cut us off in traffic. We would have a lot different view of the person who checks out too many items in the self-checkout aisle in Harris Teeter. Right? If we cared about heaven as much as Jesus cared about heaven, if we were singularly focused on eternity as Jesus was on eternity, it would change our prayers. It would change our relationships. It would change our interaction. It would change our priorities. It would change everything. And what I see as I go through John is that this prayer is a capstone on all the teachings of Jesus throughout the whole book. And do you know what he really wants for you? Do you know what screams to me out of the book of John? Jesus wants to spend eternity with you. It's the whole reason he created you. It's the whole reason he came here. It's the whole reason he died. It's the whole reason he hung around for three years. It's the only reason that he doesn't snatch you to heaven the exact moment that you accept him because he wants you to be about the business of bringing other people with you. The only reason we are here is to go to heaven and bring as many people as we possibly can with us on the way. And when we believe that, and I'll be the first to confess that I don't all the time do, it changes everything. To me, that's the message from John, that Jesus wants to spend eternity with you. He wants it so badly that he's willing to experience the death of crucifixion to do it. And that's what we're gonna talk about next week. Let's pray. Father, we are so grateful for you. We are so grateful for your love. Grateful for your son. The way that he ministered to us and for us. The way that he fights for us. The way that his singular focus is to bring us into a relationship with you and him and the spirit that we might experience heaven, that we might experience eternity with him and with you. God, give us an ounce of the concern that Jesus has for the eternity. Give us a glimpse of what it's like to be eternally focused like he was. Give us an appreciation for the beauty of eternity with you. Give us an understanding that we really were designed to be with you and that we will only find purpose and identity and happiness and contentment when we are walking in the middle of your will and we are walking towards heaven. Give us a heart to bring as many people possible with us as we can. God, thanks for loving us in that way. In Jesus' name, amen.
Well, good morning, everybody. So good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. I've got to tell you, I'm really touched by your attendance this morning. Really and truly. Normally I make a joke on holiday weekends about people coming. And this morning I woke up and I got my email. I had a Duke alert that there's going to be some power outages. Shane, you work for Duke. Fix that. Make sure 9-2-2-1 Kirk Hill is not affected. And I was like, man, it's a holiday weekend, and we have a tropical storm bearing down on us. No one is coming. And look, here you are. This is really, really touching and great, and that was really good worship. If you saw Gibby and I talking as I was setting up, I was laughing at him for messing up in the last song and just crying out Jesus in the middle of a line. Thank you, Kristen. You saw it too. And he said, no, no, I didn't mess up. I was just excited about Jesus. And I don't believe him. But I also do know that he is excited about Jesus. I'm also excited to have the princes here with us this morning. They're here with us for a few weeks. Sarah, you're hosting for us when? Next week? Perfect. And she's going to give us an update and tell us everything. So come back then. Well, I'm so happy to have you guys in town. And we are so happy to be the church that you are part of. We talk a lot about building God's kingdom. And you guys are in South Africa building God's kingdom, and it's a part of our heart that's out there, and so we're glad that you guys are with us this morning. So thanks for joining us. If you don't know them, who cares? It's not a big deal, but we're glad to have them, and you should say hey to them after the service and get to know them a little bit, but they're going to be here with us for the next three weeks. Yes. Perfect. So it's a, it's a big morning and I'm happy to have you here as we continue in our series. And if you're watching online or you're catching up later, thanks so much for doing that. That means a lot to us as you enjoy this weekend, doing whatever it is you're doing. We're in our series in Moses and this series, if I'm just being honest, has been a little bit different for me as a pastor and as someone who has to write sermons every week. You guys make me do this. Typically, when I choose a series, I kind of choose a series, and if you're in the meetings with us with staff, we'll have a series idea, and I'll go, that's a great idea, but then I immediately go, what are the sermons? How do we make this compelling? And the way I think about it is, will that preach? Can I make a sermon out of that? But for this series, it's been a little bit different of an experience, because in this series, I'm telling the story, we are telling the story and going through the story of the life of Moses. And we're telling the story really of the Genesis of the nation of Israel. And so it's really less about will that preach? And it's more about what are the essential elements of the story? I heard somebody say one time, this just comes to mind, the radio sports talk guy, that people should go in the Hall of Fame if you can't tell the story of that sport without their name. Then no matter what they did, they should go into the Hall of Fame. Thank you, Zach, for affirming that. And so this kind of works like that. What are the things, if we're going to walk through the life of Moses together and tell the story of the origin of the Hebrew people together and their exodus from Egypt and their intro into the promised land, what are the elements of that story that we just absolutely cannot pass over? That was Freudian there, the Passover. Look at me. What are the elements that we cannot skip that we must include? And one of those elements is the provision by God in the desert of manna. And a little subtext in that story is the provision of quail. You cannot tell the story of Moses. You cannot tell the story of the birth of the nation of Israel without talking about the provision of manna in the desert by God. You have to tell that part of the story. And so this really isn't about does that preacher, does it not? This is about, we have to tell this part of the story. And then what I'm encumbered with rather than does this preach, is this inspiring? What I'm encumbered with is why does this matter to us now? That's wonderful. It's good to learn about our God. And at a baseline, if all we do is look at the stories and learn about our God and his character and who he is, that's enough. And that's a good exercise and it's time well spent on a Sunday morning. But I think we should press further and say, but what do we learn from it that matters to us now? How does that impact me today? So we're going to look at this story of God's provision, but we're going to be asking the question, how does this impact me today? And we're going to do that by looking at two big questions that really, for me, as I read the story, jump off the page and make me go, why is that the case? And I think if we answer those questions and we can find a way that this really impacts us and should matter to us today and our daily lives as we interact with and hopefully pursue God. So I'm going to point to some scripture in a minute. And actually, this morning is the first time this has happened. I bought this Bible. This is called the pastor's Bible. It's got three tassels that hang out of it, which is an obnoxious amount of tassels. And who would ever need three tassels? But now I have exactly three passages from three different books, and I'm using all three tassels, and I'm so excited. So I've used the first one. That one's out of the way. We're in the book of John. That's where we're going to turn first. If you have a Bible, you can turn there. But before I start jumping around to the passages, I just want to make sure that we know what's happening. Moses is moving the Hebrew people through the desert. They've escaped Pharaoh. Pharaoh's army has been destroyed in the Red Sea with the Sea of Reeds. And now they're wandering through the desert being've escaped Pharaoh Pharaoh's armies been destroyed in the Red Sea with the Sea of Reeds and now they're wandering through the desert being led by God a pillar of cloud by day a pillar of fire by night they're following the pillar they're walking towards God if you look at the way that they're supposed to be arranged this tribe next to this tribe in this direction and yada yada yada they were actually marching through the as one enormous cross, which is pretty cool with Jesus in the center of it as the bronze serpent. So, and we'll get to that story. But there comes up the question of numbers and I think it's relevant this morning. There are different scholars say different things. No one's sure. There's a figure in the Bible where it said there were 600,000 men. And so then you extrapolate that out to women and children. And so some scholars say that there was as little as 300,000 people moving through the desert. Other scholars say there was as much as 2.5 million people walking through the desert. So that's a large delta of difference. But regardless of where you would land on that, and I don't expect anyone to go home and really drill down on the number of Hebrew people in the desert, but if you were to, what you would arrive at is there was a lot. There's a lot. And those are mouths to feed. And some of you know that I like history. I like to study empires. I like to read biographies. Last year, I read a biography on Napoleon Bonaparte, who was, by the way, my least favorite general I've ever studied in my entire life. I can't stand that guy. But he's famous for saying, an army marches on its stomach, meaning the secret to war is supplying your army with what they need. And if you've studied history and you've studied war and you've studied people moving across continents, what you know is they are only as good as their supply chain. They can only fight as hard as they have fresh shoes and fresh socks and fresh food coming to them. And if you disrupt that supply chain, you disrupt the army. By the way, this is what made the Mongols so incredible is they didn't need a supply chain. They just ate everything that they saw, and they were the most fascinating force in the history of history, just for the record. Sorry, I couldn't help myself. But an army marches on its stomach, meaning throughout history. One of the biggest challenges of moving a large group of people transcontinentally is sustaining them. And this is the challenge that Moses was facing. He's got between 500 and 2.5 million people that he's responsible for, and they have to be fed. And they grumble. This is hard to do. It's hard to sustain ourselves in the desert. I would assume that each family left Egypt with some amount of sheep or cattle or something to sustain them. But eventually those resources start to dwindle. And so they grumble that they're not being supplied for, they're not being cared for. And this is a sufficient gripe, right? Moms and dads, you're in the desert, wandering, following a pillar. Moses says we just go that way. In your head, you're thinking, we should be there there by now and you're not. What's going on? You're worried about your kids because you can't feed them every day. You're worried about your mother-in-law because you can't feed her every day and frankly she's cranky when she's hungry. So it'd be really nice if we could take care of her. Some of you are sitting next to your mother-in-laws. Don't laugh at that joke. I just saw somebody turn their head. Sorry. This is a reasonable gripe. We're hungry. We can't feed each other. And so God says, okay, I'm going to provide you with something. In the morning, you're going to wake up and there there's going to be this white, flaky substance on the ground. Gather it up, and that will be all that you need. But only gather what you need for that day, which we're going to come back to that idea, because I think that's interesting. Only gather what you need for that day, and every day I will provide for you. And they called that substance, it was like a doughy bread, but it was flaky. And they called that substance manna, which to my knowledge means, literally, what is it? It's like the terrible mascot for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Izzy. I've never been more disappointed in my life. As a kid growing up in Atlanta, I was so excited that the Olympics were coming to my city. It was such a big deal. And by the way, Andre Agassi and Brooke Shield stayed at my friend's house in their basement because they were a host home for the Olympics, which was really cool. I'll tell you about that sometime. But the mascot, when they revealed it, sorry, I know it's stupid. The mascot was named Izzy, which means what is it? And it's like, the mascot's Manna? This is dumb. What a stupid mascot. But that's what they named the bread because they didn't know what it was. So they called it what is it? And that became the name Manna. That was God's provision. And then at one point or another, after God was providing the Manna, they would go out and they would gather it. And we'll see in a little bit that some of them gathered more than they should. And they incurred the anger of Moses and God. And then at some point or another, they said the reasonable thing, the thing that we would say, God, it's so nice that you're providing this for us. I'd like some steak. Like, I'd like some meat, some protein. I'd settle for fish. I'll go to Long John Silver's if you'll just make it available, like anything, God, besides just this bread, just this daily bread, right? And so they said they wanted some protein. And so God responded and he sent them some quail. But it turned out that that was kind of a bad ask. And we're going to see that part in the narrative. I'm going to pull that out. But for a portion, God provided some quail. And then they decided they didn't want quail anymore. God got his way, and then they were back on manna, and that's what sustained them through the desert. And the import of this gesture and this provision echoes throughout Scripture, which is why we cannot tell the story of Moses without talking about the manna that was provided. The biggest reason is this. The manna was a picture of Jesus. The manna was a picture of Jesus. Many of you know this. And so I'd like to remind you of this and pull your mind back to it. Some of you may not. But the manna was a very intentional picture of Jesus. And this is one of the things that marvels me about our God and his sovereignty. We know that God sees into the future. We know that God knows all things. We know that God is sovereign, that God plans. And I say often, sometimes things happen in our life, we can't see what's down the road, but God can and he knows and he's guiding us down this path. And I think even as we acknowledge that truth, that sometimes in our limited brains and in our limited ways of thinking, we think to ourselves, yeah, God sees six weeks down the road or six months down the road, or maybe six years down the road. But in this one, he's seeing 6,000 years down the road. And we don't think about God thinking like that, but he was because he knew that this manna was an intentional picture that he was painting of his son. It's an illustration of what Jesus is. And just so you know, that idea isn't something that scholars came up with. There wasn't theologians reading the Old Testament and then reading the New Testament and going, goodness, this seems really similar. I think those two things are connected. No, these are the words of Jesus himself. And we find them in John chapter six. Sir, they said, always give us this bread. Then Jesus declared, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. Direct correlation. Jesus is talking to a Hebrew people who are entrenched in their culture and know it well. And so when he says, my father sent you bread from heaven to sustain life because of their natural culture, national culture and institutions, they immediately go back to the time of Moses. We as Americans just got done celebrating the 4th of July. In my house, in my kitchen, we had some friends over and I insisted. I put Lee Greenwood, I'm proud to be an American, on the Alexa as loud as it would go and I made everyone hold their hand over their heart and sing every word that they knew to the song. And it was super fun. And when we think about America, we have some things on the 4th of July that we all celebrate, whatever it means to us. The reality of it is this is the great experiment. This is the great democratic experiment. It's the greatest country to ever exist on the planet. It's the most powerful military to ever exist on the planet. And it's the most wonderful and the most free place to ever exist on the planet. And we ought to be grateful for it no matter what we think about our current state, yes or no. This is a great place to be. And so when we celebrate the 4th of July, we draw upon the history of where we are. In the same way, when Jesus says, you remember God providing in the desert, they draw upon where they had been and where they were. And they immediately understand and go back to God's provision in the desert of manna. It's a direct correlation. And Jesus says, my father gave you bread daily to sustain your life, to give you life. And now he gives you me. I am the bread of life. And the picture is very clear. We are told that when we do not know God, when we are separated from him, that we will surely die. This is the penalty in the Garden of Eden. And so Jesus comes that we might have life and have it to the full. He comes that life might be restored. And so he says, my father sent me to restore our life. Right? He sent me to restore your life and to give you life. He is acquainting himself with the manna and he is saying, I am the bread of life. This is all throughout scripture. So we know that the manna is a picture of Christ. And it's well and good and appropriate that at the end of this sermon today, towards the end of the service, we're going to take communion together. And when we take communion together, we're going to break the bread. And Jesus at the Passover, before he's arrested, takes the bread and he breaks it and he says, this is my body that's broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. That is not just a quaint illustration of what's about to happen to him. It is an intentional connection to what the Hebrew person understands as the sustenance of God in the desert providing life for them. It is a picture of God's provision. So the first thing we see and know about the manna that matters to us very much is that it's a picture of Jesus and God's provision and how he cares for us. We must lock that in. With that being true, there are two questions for me that jump out of the narrative that I think if we can examine them and maybe wrestle them to the ground, at least that's what I tried to do this week as I prepared, that it can illustrate and illuminate for us how this story matters to us today. The first to me is the question of stockpiling. God put a very specific provision in there. You are not allowed to stockpile the goods. You cannot keep more than one day's provision. As a matter of fact, this is what it says in Exodus 16, 19. So I, so I can orient us towards this thought. In Exodus chapter 16, verse 19, after God has said only take enough for the day, then Moses said to them, no one is to keep any of it until morning. However, some of them paid no attention to Moses. They kept part of me or not, but my largest pet peeve in life is any form of inefficiency. My second largest pet peeve in life, just for the record, is when you impose your noise on me. I don't want to hear your phone in a public place. But I loathe any form of inefficiency. And so this directive to only gather what you need for today goes against what I believe wholeheartedly about efficiency. Doesn't it make more sense? Carter, I know you agree with me on thinking. I know you agree with us. Doesn't it make more sense on Monday for you and the able-bodied people in your family to go gather as much as you can for the rest of the week so you don't have to do it every day and you know that it's there and you have the sense of security that it's there. And it's not like there wasn't enough. We're not talking about being selfish because we're told there in scripture that whatever was left over fades away, that when the sun comes out, it melts it away. So there's more than enough every day, which means if your family wants to go out and get enough on Monday to last until Wednesday, or maybe even Friday, you can do that. And isn't this how we handle our daily sustenance anyways? When you go grocery shopping, do you shop for one day like a lunatic? Or do you shop for the whole week? You shop for the whole week. Of course you do. And if you're really crazy, you shop for the month at Costco, which we went to Costco the other night and it was closed because the power was out. And I've never been so disappointed in my life because we were at Costco without kids and I was so excited to go. We ended up wandering around the mall aimlessly. But this makes sense to us. This is how we think. We don't think about daily, I'm just going to go to Sprouts and get what I need for one day. That's what crazy people do. You shop for the week so you don't have to do it anymore. So it makes the most sense to stockpile it for the week, right? But God said don't do that. And I don't understand why. Because besides the practicality of it, it would also give you the sense of, okay, food has been sparse. It's been difficult to feed my children as a father, as a wife, as a patriarch of the family. I'd like to know my family's provided for it. It makes me feel good to know that we have five days rations. And there's even a provision, if you read the text, of an amount that you can gather for each eating person in your home. So there's a provision for that that God lays out. And when I read this story, I kind of wonder, like, what's the big deal? Why can't you stockpile manna? And the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that it's because of this. Because you cannot stockpile Jesus. You cannot store up enough Jesus. If manna is a picture of who Jesus is, and it was always to be intended not just to feed this small group of people relatively for 40 years, but to echo throughout the centuries as to God's provision and what it is, then it's important to know and understand that you cannot stockpile Christ. You cannot gather enough of him on a Monday to sustain you on a Wednesday. You can't go to Christmas and Easter services only and expect that amount of Jesus to sustain you throughout the year. Which right now I'm talking to a group of people who have come to church on a holiday weekend with a tropical storm looming. So you get this. So if you're listening online, this is for you, pal. But in Christianity, I think we do this a little bit. We come to church on Sunday. I get my fill of Jesus. My kids get their fill of Jesus, and we're good. And then I'm going to go throughout the rest of my week and do whatever it is I need to do. And the next Sunday I'll get my fill of Jesus. But that's not how Jesus works. That's not how manna worked. And if you think about it practically, that's not how diets work. If you say you're going on a diet and on Monday you manage against all odds to eat salads with some sort of vinaigrette dressing that's not even good. And then the rest of the week you eat Reuben's and fried foods, which I'm not speaking from experience there, I'm just saying hypothetically. That's not a diet. You can't eat healthy enough on Monday to be healthy on Friday if you don't do it again. And I think the picture that God is painting here with the daily provision and sustenance of Christ is we cannot get enough Jesus on Monday to make us healthy on Wednesday. We should still wake up craving him. This is why at Grace we say one of our five traits is we are people of devotion. And I say often, and I have not said it often enough lately, but this is why I say it, that the single greatest habit that anyone can develop in their life, and I'm completely convinced of this, is to wake up every day and spend time in God's presence through his word and through prayer. There is not a single greater habit that anyone can develop than to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and spend time in prayer. It's the most important thing. Every day when I get into my office, most days I fail sometimes, but most days the very first thing I do when I get into my office is I get in my office and I shut the door and I read my Bible and I spend time praying over that day. I try to do that every day. We have to do that. We need to get, we need to think of it. Think of a daily devotion in this context of this story as gathering our Jesus every day. Every day we spend time in prayer. Every day we spend time in God's word. Every day we spend time worshiping. And that looks different at different seasons. Sometimes that means you go on a hike, you just walk, or you go on a run and you take your earbuds out and you don't listen to any noise and you just talk to God and you allow God to talk to you and you experience him that day. I'm not saying it has to be formulated every day, but every day we need to be in the habit like the Israelites. This is what the picture is for. It's not to sustain them. It's to remind us for generations of what we should do. We should wake up and gather Jesus. And it's not lost on me that this happened in the morning. Because when the sun gets hot, it melted away. I've always told you, you have your quiet time and your devotional time whenever it works for you. Morning, afternoon, evening, just do it. But that's a little bit insincere because I can't back this up with paperwork, but I kind of think you should do it in the morning anyways. I don't care if you're a night person. Just saying. We should wake up every day and gather Jesus. And we should understand we can't gather enough Jesus on Monday to make that enough on Wednesday. It has to be a daily practice. And so what God's provision reminds us of and what his prohibition reminds us of is we cannot gather enough Jesus to stockpile him for the week. As believers, we must pursue him every day. We must wake up daily and gather Jesus. It's vitally important. The other question that comes up to me in this story, this one's a little bit trickier. It's the provision of the quail. At one point, though God is providing daily, the Hebrew people say, hey, we'd like some variety. Can we get a little bit of a buffet situation going on? Maybe I'd like some Chinese. Like they just want something else besides this manna, this nutrition brick that they get every day. And so God gives into them and he says, okay. And in Exodus, we're told that God provided quail for a little while, but in numbers, we actually get an insight into this portion of the story that provides a lot more color and it becomes very interesting. And it makes me ask some questions. Numbers chapter 11 verses 18 through 20. This is after they've requested the quail. Tell the people, consecrate yourselves in preparation for tomorrow when you will eat meat. The Lord heard when you wailed. If only we had meat to eat, we were better off in Egypt. Now the Lord will give you meat and you will eat it. You will not eat it. This is the funny part. This is crazy. You will not eat it for just one day or two days or five, 10 or 20 days, but for a whole month until it comes out of your nostrils and you loathe it. Gracious God, because you have rejected the Lord who is among you and have willed before him, saying, Why did we ever leave Egypt? I got to be honest. When you read that, it really reads like a vindictive elementary school kid, right? Who's just mad. You want quail? I'll give you quail until it comes out of your stinking nose, you son of a gun. You whiny little cuss. It's just funny, man. And so when I read it, I'm like, what gives, God? Why are you doing that? It seems like a pretty reasonable request. Maybe nutrition bricks get old. And they'd like to eat some meat. That seems fine to me. But it angered God. And he said, I'll give it to you until you're so sick of it that it comes out of your nose and you loathe it. Why did he do this? Well, the answer is right there in the text. If you have implicit rejection of his provision already. It was an implicit rejection of his miraculous provision. They had become used to it. They had grown to expect it. When Jesus first arrived in their life, when they first experienced God's provision, it was a miracle and they were blown away by it. Look at this. Look at all that we have every day. Oh my gosh, look, I don't have to struggle for my family anymore. I don't have to worry about my kids anymore. It just shows up every day. And I don't even have to worry about gathering enough for tomorrow because I know that it's going to be there tomorrow because God's blessings renew daily. I know that this is going to be great. Look at this, look at this, look at this. And then eventually they get tired of it and they're like, yeah, we need some more of God. And they fall into the terrible habit that we do. We have a terrible habit of asking for Jesus and. Don't we? We have a terrible habit of making Jesus not enough. God has miraculously provided for our salvation and for our peace. And his mercies are new every morning. He gives us our daily bread that we can eat of and hunger no more. He makes us a path to righteousness for his name's sake. He makes it so that this life can be viewed as a wisp or a vapor. And that the tragedies that we endure are called by Paul momentary difficulties. God renders those things true by giving us his son, the bread of life. He gives us a hope for a future where all the wrong things will be made right and all the sad things will be untrue. He's provided us everything that we need. He gives us his peace in all situations so that his servant Paul wrote, I have learned what it is to live in little and I have learned what it is to live in much. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. He has given us peace in every situation. He has defeated sin and shame and death so that we do not need to fear those things anymore. He has given us all that we need, and yet we get Jesus. And we say, but can I also have some quail? Can I have you, Jesus, and can I also be comfortable? Can I have you, Jesus, and also go on nice vacations? Can I have you, Jesus, and also drive a car that I'm proud of that signals success to the people who see me? Can I have you, Jesus, and also can you make sure that no one in my family ever gets sick? Can I have you, Jesus, and also can you make sure that I never get sick? Can I have you, Jesus, and can you make sure that my marriage is perfect and that it never struggles and that I never have any problems? Can I have you, Jesus, and can I also have a spouse? Can I have you, Jesus, and can I also have a child? Can I have you, Jesus, and also these other things that I want? Don't we have a terrible habit of craving Jesus and? There have been times in my life when I've been worried about how things were going to go. Where I've been worried that I wasn't going to be the servant that this church needed. And I've thought, maybe I'll lose my job. Maybe I'll need to quit. Maybe they need someone else. Maybe I'm not serving it well. There's been times over the years, for good reasons or bad, that I feared that I would lose everything. And do you know what brings me back to peace in those thoughts? To think, well, I could lose my job. I could lose my house. I'll still have my family. I'll still see my kids every day. Nothing can take their love away from me. Nothing can take my family away from me. My wife and my children. I'll have that. And at the bedrock, no matter what happens, I'll have them. And I'll have their love. And I have some friendships in my life that I know that no matter what happens, that can't be taken from me. And I'm sure that some of you have been there too. If you haven't been there yet, it's just because you're young. You will. But the provision of the quail and the anger of God, I think, reminds us that this is how we ought to think about the provision of Christ. No matter what happens in my life, I have Jesus. No matter what sickness befalls me, what tragedy befalls me, no matter what situations happen in life, no matter what I have or I don't have, whether I live in affluence or I live in poverty, no matter what happens at the end of the day, I have Jesus, and he is enough. And I don't think in our Christian lives we readily enough default to that foundation of love and provision. This is why God gets angry at the request for quail, because it's an implicit rejection and entitlement to what he's already provided us. And so here's what I want to press on us this morning. That when we see this in the Bible, when we encounter manna through Bible lessons or podcasts or sermons or whatever it is we listen to, when we encounter this idea, what I would love to press upon you is this, that the manna in the desert and the provision of the quail should remind us of this. Let's daily gather Jesus and let him be enough. Like the Hebrew people, let's daily go out and gather Jesus in the morning. I need him today. I'm going to spend time with him today. I'm going to appreciate God's provision today. I'm going to reflect on what that means for me today, both today and in eternity. And then let's let that be enough. Come what may, no matter what else happens, I've learned to be at peace with plenty, and I've learned to be at peace with little, but I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Let's let God's provision each day of Jesus be enough. Let me pray for you, and then we're going to take communion and celebrate that provision. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for how you've provided for us. Thank you for your son Jesus. For who he is and for what he means and how he's our daily bread. Thank you that we can eat of him and not be hungry again. God, I pray that we would be people who are people of devotion who daily pursue you and who daily pursue him. Let us diligently, as your children in the desert did, go out and gather him every morning and be nourished by his love and by his peace and by his forgiveness and by his mercy and by his grace and by his humility. Let us be people who pursue him. And God, I pray that he would be enough. There's so many other things that we want, God, and sometimes they're good and sometimes they're not, but they're nothing compared to him. We consider all things rubbish compared to the surpassing goodness of knowing Jesus. I pray that that would be true of us as we gather him and as we pursue you. I pray that you would also help us to remember that he is enough, that your miraculous provision is enough. Please let us never grow entitled to what that is, but to always marvel at your goodness and at the miracle of your provision. In Jesus' name, in the name of the daily bread, we pray. Amen.
Well, good morning, everybody. So good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. I've got to tell you, I'm really touched by your attendance this morning. Really and truly. Normally I make a joke on holiday weekends about people coming. And this morning I woke up and I got my email. I had a Duke alert that there's going to be some power outages. Shane, you work for Duke. Fix that. Make sure 9-2-2-1 Kirk Hill is not affected. And I was like, man, it's a holiday weekend, and we have a tropical storm bearing down on us. No one is coming. And look, here you are. This is really, really touching and great, and that was really good worship. If you saw Gibby and I talking as I was setting up, I was laughing at him for messing up in the last song and just crying out Jesus in the middle of a line. Thank you, Kristen. You saw it too. And he said, no, no, I didn't mess up. I was just excited about Jesus. And I don't believe him. But I also do know that he is excited about Jesus. I'm also excited to have the princes here with us this morning. They're here with us for a few weeks. Sarah, you're hosting for us when? Next week? Perfect. And she's going to give us an update and tell us everything. So come back then. Well, I'm so happy to have you guys in town. And we are so happy to be the church that you are part of. We talk a lot about building God's kingdom. And you guys are in South Africa building God's kingdom, and it's a part of our heart that's out there, and so we're glad that you guys are with us this morning. So thanks for joining us. If you don't know them, who cares? It's not a big deal, but we're glad to have them, and you should say hey to them after the service and get to know them a little bit, but they're going to be here with us for the next three weeks. Yes. Perfect. So it's a, it's a big morning and I'm happy to have you here as we continue in our series. And if you're watching online or you're catching up later, thanks so much for doing that. That means a lot to us as you enjoy this weekend, doing whatever it is you're doing. We're in our series in Moses and this series, if I'm just being honest, has been a little bit different for me as a pastor and as someone who has to write sermons every week. You guys make me do this. Typically, when I choose a series, I kind of choose a series, and if you're in the meetings with us with staff, we'll have a series idea, and I'll go, that's a great idea, but then I immediately go, what are the sermons? How do we make this compelling? And the way I think about it is, will that preach? Can I make a sermon out of that? But for this series, it's been a little bit different of an experience, because in this series, I'm telling the story, we are telling the story and going through the story of the life of Moses. And we're telling the story really of the Genesis of the nation of Israel. And so it's really less about will that preach? And it's more about what are the essential elements of the story? I heard somebody say one time, this just comes to mind, the radio sports talk guy, that people should go in the Hall of Fame if you can't tell the story of that sport without their name. Then no matter what they did, they should go into the Hall of Fame. Thank you, Zach, for affirming that. And so this kind of works like that. What are the things, if we're going to walk through the life of Moses together and tell the story of the origin of the Hebrew people together and their exodus from Egypt and their intro into the promised land, what are the elements of that story that we just absolutely cannot pass over? That was Freudian there, the Passover. Look at me. What are the elements that we cannot skip that we must include? And one of those elements is the provision by God in the desert of manna. And a little subtext in that story is the provision of quail. You cannot tell the story of Moses. You cannot tell the story of the birth of the nation of Israel without talking about the provision of manna in the desert by God. You have to tell that part of the story. And so this really isn't about does that preacher, does it not? This is about, we have to tell this part of the story. And then what I'm encumbered with rather than does this preach, is this inspiring? What I'm encumbered with is why does this matter to us now? That's wonderful. It's good to learn about our God. And at a baseline, if all we do is look at the stories and learn about our God and his character and who he is, that's enough. And that's a good exercise and it's time well spent on a Sunday morning. But I think we should press further and say, but what do we learn from it that matters to us now? How does that impact me today? So we're going to look at this story of God's provision, but we're going to be asking the question, how does this impact me today? And we're going to do that by looking at two big questions that really, for me, as I read the story, jump off the page and make me go, why is that the case? And I think if we answer those questions and we can find a way that this really impacts us and should matter to us today and our daily lives as we interact with and hopefully pursue God. So I'm going to point to some scripture in a minute. And actually, this morning is the first time this has happened. I bought this Bible. This is called the pastor's Bible. It's got three tassels that hang out of it, which is an obnoxious amount of tassels. And who would ever need three tassels? But now I have exactly three passages from three different books, and I'm using all three tassels, and I'm so excited. So I've used the first one. That one's out of the way. We're in the book of John. That's where we're going to turn first. If you have a Bible, you can turn there. But before I start jumping around to the passages, I just want to make sure that we know what's happening. Moses is moving the Hebrew people through the desert. They've escaped Pharaoh. Pharaoh's army has been destroyed in the Red Sea with the Sea of Reeds. And now they're wandering through the desert being've escaped Pharaoh Pharaoh's armies been destroyed in the Red Sea with the Sea of Reeds and now they're wandering through the desert being led by God a pillar of cloud by day a pillar of fire by night they're following the pillar they're walking towards God if you look at the way that they're supposed to be arranged this tribe next to this tribe in this direction and yada yada yada they were actually marching through the as one enormous cross, which is pretty cool with Jesus in the center of it as the bronze serpent. So, and we'll get to that story. But there comes up the question of numbers and I think it's relevant this morning. There are different scholars say different things. No one's sure. There's a figure in the Bible where it said there were 600,000 men. And so then you extrapolate that out to women and children. And so some scholars say that there was as little as 300,000 people moving through the desert. Other scholars say there was as much as 2.5 million people walking through the desert. So that's a large delta of difference. But regardless of where you would land on that, and I don't expect anyone to go home and really drill down on the number of Hebrew people in the desert, but if you were to, what you would arrive at is there was a lot. There's a lot. And those are mouths to feed. And some of you know that I like history. I like to study empires. I like to read biographies. Last year, I read a biography on Napoleon Bonaparte, who was, by the way, my least favorite general I've ever studied in my entire life. I can't stand that guy. But he's famous for saying, an army marches on its stomach, meaning the secret to war is supplying your army with what they need. And if you've studied history and you've studied war and you've studied people moving across continents, what you know is they are only as good as their supply chain. They can only fight as hard as they have fresh shoes and fresh socks and fresh food coming to them. And if you disrupt that supply chain, you disrupt the army. By the way, this is what made the Mongols so incredible is they didn't need a supply chain. They just ate everything that they saw, and they were the most fascinating force in the history of history, just for the record. Sorry, I couldn't help myself. But an army marches on its stomach, meaning throughout history. One of the biggest challenges of moving a large group of people transcontinentally is sustaining them. And this is the challenge that Moses was facing. He's got between 500 and 2.5 million people that he's responsible for, and they have to be fed. And they grumble. This is hard to do. It's hard to sustain ourselves in the desert. I would assume that each family left Egypt with some amount of sheep or cattle or something to sustain them. But eventually those resources start to dwindle. And so they grumble that they're not being supplied for, they're not being cared for. And this is a sufficient gripe, right? Moms and dads, you're in the desert, wandering, following a pillar. Moses says we just go that way. In your head, you're thinking, we should be there there by now and you're not. What's going on? You're worried about your kids because you can't feed them every day. You're worried about your mother-in-law because you can't feed her every day and frankly she's cranky when she's hungry. So it'd be really nice if we could take care of her. Some of you are sitting next to your mother-in-laws. Don't laugh at that joke. I just saw somebody turn their head. Sorry. This is a reasonable gripe. We're hungry. We can't feed each other. And so God says, okay, I'm going to provide you with something. In the morning, you're going to wake up and there there's going to be this white, flaky substance on the ground. Gather it up, and that will be all that you need. But only gather what you need for that day, which we're going to come back to that idea, because I think that's interesting. Only gather what you need for that day, and every day I will provide for you. And they called that substance, it was like a doughy bread, but it was flaky. And they called that substance manna, which to my knowledge means, literally, what is it? It's like the terrible mascot for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Izzy. I've never been more disappointed in my life. As a kid growing up in Atlanta, I was so excited that the Olympics were coming to my city. It was such a big deal. And by the way, Andre Agassi and Brooke Shield stayed at my friend's house in their basement because they were a host home for the Olympics, which was really cool. I'll tell you about that sometime. But the mascot, when they revealed it, sorry, I know it's stupid. The mascot was named Izzy, which means what is it? And it's like, the mascot's Manna? This is dumb. What a stupid mascot. But that's what they named the bread because they didn't know what it was. So they called it what is it? And that became the name Manna. That was God's provision. And then at one point or another, after God was providing the Manna, they would go out and they would gather it. And we'll see in a little bit that some of them gathered more than they should. And they incurred the anger of Moses and God. And then at some point or another, they said the reasonable thing, the thing that we would say, God, it's so nice that you're providing this for us. I'd like some steak. Like, I'd like some meat, some protein. I'd settle for fish. I'll go to Long John Silver's if you'll just make it available, like anything, God, besides just this bread, just this daily bread, right? And so they said they wanted some protein. And so God responded and he sent them some quail. But it turned out that that was kind of a bad ask. And we're going to see that part in the narrative. I'm going to pull that out. But for a portion, God provided some quail. And then they decided they didn't want quail anymore. God got his way, and then they were back on manna, and that's what sustained them through the desert. And the import of this gesture and this provision echoes throughout Scripture, which is why we cannot tell the story of Moses without talking about the manna that was provided. The biggest reason is this. The manna was a picture of Jesus. The manna was a picture of Jesus. Many of you know this. And so I'd like to remind you of this and pull your mind back to it. Some of you may not. But the manna was a very intentional picture of Jesus. And this is one of the things that marvels me about our God and his sovereignty. We know that God sees into the future. We know that God knows all things. We know that God is sovereign, that God plans. And I say often, sometimes things happen in our life, we can't see what's down the road, but God can and he knows and he's guiding us down this path. And I think even as we acknowledge that truth, that sometimes in our limited brains and in our limited ways of thinking, we think to ourselves, yeah, God sees six weeks down the road or six months down the road, or maybe six years down the road. But in this one, he's seeing 6,000 years down the road. And we don't think about God thinking like that, but he was because he knew that this manna was an intentional picture that he was painting of his son. It's an illustration of what Jesus is. And just so you know, that idea isn't something that scholars came up with. There wasn't theologians reading the Old Testament and then reading the New Testament and going, goodness, this seems really similar. I think those two things are connected. No, these are the words of Jesus himself. And we find them in John chapter six. Sir, they said, always give us this bread. Then Jesus declared, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. Direct correlation. Jesus is talking to a Hebrew people who are entrenched in their culture and know it well. And so when he says, my father sent you bread from heaven to sustain life because of their natural culture, national culture and institutions, they immediately go back to the time of Moses. We as Americans just got done celebrating the 4th of July. In my house, in my kitchen, we had some friends over and I insisted. I put Lee Greenwood, I'm proud to be an American, on the Alexa as loud as it would go and I made everyone hold their hand over their heart and sing every word that they knew to the song. And it was super fun. And when we think about America, we have some things on the 4th of July that we all celebrate, whatever it means to us. The reality of it is this is the great experiment. This is the great democratic experiment. It's the greatest country to ever exist on the planet. It's the most powerful military to ever exist on the planet. And it's the most wonderful and the most free place to ever exist on the planet. And we ought to be grateful for it no matter what we think about our current state, yes or no. This is a great place to be. And so when we celebrate the 4th of July, we draw upon the history of where we are. In the same way, when Jesus says, you remember God providing in the desert, they draw upon where they had been and where they were. And they immediately understand and go back to God's provision in the desert of manna. It's a direct correlation. And Jesus says, my father gave you bread daily to sustain your life, to give you life. And now he gives you me. I am the bread of life. And the picture is very clear. We are told that when we do not know God, when we are separated from him, that we will surely die. This is the penalty in the Garden of Eden. And so Jesus comes that we might have life and have it to the full. He comes that life might be restored. And so he says, my father sent me to restore our life. Right? He sent me to restore your life and to give you life. He is acquainting himself with the manna and he is saying, I am the bread of life. This is all throughout scripture. So we know that the manna is a picture of Christ. And it's well and good and appropriate that at the end of this sermon today, towards the end of the service, we're going to take communion together. And when we take communion together, we're going to break the bread. And Jesus at the Passover, before he's arrested, takes the bread and he breaks it and he says, this is my body that's broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. That is not just a quaint illustration of what's about to happen to him. It is an intentional connection to what the Hebrew person understands as the sustenance of God in the desert providing life for them. It is a picture of God's provision. So the first thing we see and know about the manna that matters to us very much is that it's a picture of Jesus and God's provision and how he cares for us. We must lock that in. With that being true, there are two questions for me that jump out of the narrative that I think if we can examine them and maybe wrestle them to the ground, at least that's what I tried to do this week as I prepared, that it can illustrate and illuminate for us how this story matters to us today. The first to me is the question of stockpiling. God put a very specific provision in there. You are not allowed to stockpile the goods. You cannot keep more than one day's provision. As a matter of fact, this is what it says in Exodus 16, 19. So I, so I can orient us towards this thought. In Exodus chapter 16, verse 19, after God has said only take enough for the day, then Moses said to them, no one is to keep any of it until morning. However, some of them paid no attention to Moses. They kept part of me or not, but my largest pet peeve in life is any form of inefficiency. My second largest pet peeve in life, just for the record, is when you impose your noise on me. I don't want to hear your phone in a public place. But I loathe any form of inefficiency. And so this directive to only gather what you need for today goes against what I believe wholeheartedly about efficiency. Doesn't it make more sense? Carter, I know you agree with me on thinking. I know you agree with us. Doesn't it make more sense on Monday for you and the able-bodied people in your family to go gather as much as you can for the rest of the week so you don't have to do it every day and you know that it's there and you have the sense of security that it's there. And it's not like there wasn't enough. We're not talking about being selfish because we're told there in scripture that whatever was left over fades away, that when the sun comes out, it melts it away. So there's more than enough every day, which means if your family wants to go out and get enough on Monday to last until Wednesday, or maybe even Friday, you can do that. And isn't this how we handle our daily sustenance anyways? When you go grocery shopping, do you shop for one day like a lunatic? Or do you shop for the whole week? You shop for the whole week. Of course you do. And if you're really crazy, you shop for the month at Costco, which we went to Costco the other night and it was closed because the power was out. And I've never been so disappointed in my life because we were at Costco without kids and I was so excited to go. We ended up wandering around the mall aimlessly. But this makes sense to us. This is how we think. We don't think about daily, I'm just going to go to Sprouts and get what I need for one day. That's what crazy people do. You shop for the week so you don't have to do it anymore. So it makes the most sense to stockpile it for the week, right? But God said don't do that. And I don't understand why. Because besides the practicality of it, it would also give you the sense of, okay, food has been sparse. It's been difficult to feed my children as a father, as a wife, as a patriarch of the family. I'd like to know my family's provided for it. It makes me feel good to know that we have five days rations. And there's even a provision, if you read the text, of an amount that you can gather for each eating person in your home. So there's a provision for that that God lays out. And when I read this story, I kind of wonder, like, what's the big deal? Why can't you stockpile manna? And the more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that it's because of this. Because you cannot stockpile Jesus. You cannot store up enough Jesus. If manna is a picture of who Jesus is, and it was always to be intended not just to feed this small group of people relatively for 40 years, but to echo throughout the centuries as to God's provision and what it is, then it's important to know and understand that you cannot stockpile Christ. You cannot gather enough of him on a Monday to sustain you on a Wednesday. You can't go to Christmas and Easter services only and expect that amount of Jesus to sustain you throughout the year. Which right now I'm talking to a group of people who have come to church on a holiday weekend with a tropical storm looming. So you get this. So if you're listening online, this is for you, pal. But in Christianity, I think we do this a little bit. We come to church on Sunday. I get my fill of Jesus. My kids get their fill of Jesus, and we're good. And then I'm going to go throughout the rest of my week and do whatever it is I need to do. And the next Sunday I'll get my fill of Jesus. But that's not how Jesus works. That's not how manna worked. And if you think about it practically, that's not how diets work. If you say you're going on a diet and on Monday you manage against all odds to eat salads with some sort of vinaigrette dressing that's not even good. And then the rest of the week you eat Reuben's and fried foods, which I'm not speaking from experience there, I'm just saying hypothetically. That's not a diet. You can't eat healthy enough on Monday to be healthy on Friday if you don't do it again. And I think the picture that God is painting here with the daily provision and sustenance of Christ is we cannot get enough Jesus on Monday to make us healthy on Wednesday. We should still wake up craving him. This is why at Grace we say one of our five traits is we are people of devotion. And I say often, and I have not said it often enough lately, but this is why I say it, that the single greatest habit that anyone can develop in their life, and I'm completely convinced of this, is to wake up every day and spend time in God's presence through his word and through prayer. There is not a single greater habit that anyone can develop than to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and spend time in prayer. It's the most important thing. Every day when I get into my office, most days I fail sometimes, but most days the very first thing I do when I get into my office is I get in my office and I shut the door and I read my Bible and I spend time praying over that day. I try to do that every day. We have to do that. We need to get, we need to think of it. Think of a daily devotion in this context of this story as gathering our Jesus every day. Every day we spend time in prayer. Every day we spend time in God's word. Every day we spend time worshiping. And that looks different at different seasons. Sometimes that means you go on a hike, you just walk, or you go on a run and you take your earbuds out and you don't listen to any noise and you just talk to God and you allow God to talk to you and you experience him that day. I'm not saying it has to be formulated every day, but every day we need to be in the habit like the Israelites. This is what the picture is for. It's not to sustain them. It's to remind us for generations of what we should do. We should wake up and gather Jesus. And it's not lost on me that this happened in the morning. Because when the sun gets hot, it melted away. I've always told you, you have your quiet time and your devotional time whenever it works for you. Morning, afternoon, evening, just do it. But that's a little bit insincere because I can't back this up with paperwork, but I kind of think you should do it in the morning anyways. I don't care if you're a night person. Just saying. We should wake up every day and gather Jesus. And we should understand we can't gather enough Jesus on Monday to make that enough on Wednesday. It has to be a daily practice. And so what God's provision reminds us of and what his prohibition reminds us of is we cannot gather enough Jesus to stockpile him for the week. As believers, we must pursue him every day. We must wake up daily and gather Jesus. It's vitally important. The other question that comes up to me in this story, this one's a little bit trickier. It's the provision of the quail. At one point, though God is providing daily, the Hebrew people say, hey, we'd like some variety. Can we get a little bit of a buffet situation going on? Maybe I'd like some Chinese. Like they just want something else besides this manna, this nutrition brick that they get every day. And so God gives into them and he says, okay. And in Exodus, we're told that God provided quail for a little while, but in numbers, we actually get an insight into this portion of the story that provides a lot more color and it becomes very interesting. And it makes me ask some questions. Numbers chapter 11 verses 18 through 20. This is after they've requested the quail. Tell the people, consecrate yourselves in preparation for tomorrow when you will eat meat. The Lord heard when you wailed. If only we had meat to eat, we were better off in Egypt. Now the Lord will give you meat and you will eat it. You will not eat it. This is the funny part. This is crazy. You will not eat it for just one day or two days or five, 10 or 20 days, but for a whole month until it comes out of your nostrils and you loathe it. Gracious God, because you have rejected the Lord who is among you and have willed before him, saying, Why did we ever leave Egypt? I got to be honest. When you read that, it really reads like a vindictive elementary school kid, right? Who's just mad. You want quail? I'll give you quail until it comes out of your stinking nose, you son of a gun. You whiny little cuss. It's just funny, man. And so when I read it, I'm like, what gives, God? Why are you doing that? It seems like a pretty reasonable request. Maybe nutrition bricks get old. And they'd like to eat some meat. That seems fine to me. But it angered God. And he said, I'll give it to you until you're so sick of it that it comes out of your nose and you loathe it. Why did he do this? Well, the answer is right there in the text. If you have implicit rejection of his provision already. It was an implicit rejection of his miraculous provision. They had become used to it. They had grown to expect it. When Jesus first arrived in their life, when they first experienced God's provision, it was a miracle and they were blown away by it. Look at this. Look at all that we have every day. Oh my gosh, look, I don't have to struggle for my family anymore. I don't have to worry about my kids anymore. It just shows up every day. And I don't even have to worry about gathering enough for tomorrow because I know that it's going to be there tomorrow because God's blessings renew daily. I know that this is going to be great. Look at this, look at this, look at this. And then eventually they get tired of it and they're like, yeah, we need some more of God. And they fall into the terrible habit that we do. We have a terrible habit of asking for Jesus and. Don't we? We have a terrible habit of making Jesus not enough. God has miraculously provided for our salvation and for our peace. And his mercies are new every morning. He gives us our daily bread that we can eat of and hunger no more. He makes us a path to righteousness for his name's sake. He makes it so that this life can be viewed as a wisp or a vapor. And that the tragedies that we endure are called by Paul momentary difficulties. God renders those things true by giving us his son, the bread of life. He gives us a hope for a future where all the wrong things will be made right and all the sad things will be untrue. He's provided us everything that we need. He gives us his peace in all situations so that his servant Paul wrote, I have learned what it is to live in little and I have learned what it is to live in much. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. He has given us peace in every situation. He has defeated sin and shame and death so that we do not need to fear those things anymore. He has given us all that we need, and yet we get Jesus. And we say, but can I also have some quail? Can I have you, Jesus, and can I also be comfortable? Can I have you, Jesus, and also go on nice vacations? Can I have you, Jesus, and also drive a car that I'm proud of that signals success to the people who see me? Can I have you, Jesus, and also can you make sure that no one in my family ever gets sick? Can I have you, Jesus, and also can you make sure that I never get sick? Can I have you, Jesus, and can you make sure that my marriage is perfect and that it never struggles and that I never have any problems? Can I have you, Jesus, and can I also have a spouse? Can I have you, Jesus, and can I also have a child? Can I have you, Jesus, and also these other things that I want? Don't we have a terrible habit of craving Jesus and? There have been times in my life when I've been worried about how things were going to go. Where I've been worried that I wasn't going to be the servant that this church needed. And I've thought, maybe I'll lose my job. Maybe I'll need to quit. Maybe they need someone else. Maybe I'm not serving it well. There's been times over the years, for good reasons or bad, that I feared that I would lose everything. And do you know what brings me back to peace in those thoughts? To think, well, I could lose my job. I could lose my house. I'll still have my family. I'll still see my kids every day. Nothing can take their love away from me. Nothing can take my family away from me. My wife and my children. I'll have that. And at the bedrock, no matter what happens, I'll have them. And I'll have their love. And I have some friendships in my life that I know that no matter what happens, that can't be taken from me. And I'm sure that some of you have been there too. If you haven't been there yet, it's just because you're young. You will. But the provision of the quail and the anger of God, I think, reminds us that this is how we ought to think about the provision of Christ. No matter what happens in my life, I have Jesus. No matter what sickness befalls me, what tragedy befalls me, no matter what situations happen in life, no matter what I have or I don't have, whether I live in affluence or I live in poverty, no matter what happens at the end of the day, I have Jesus, and he is enough. And I don't think in our Christian lives we readily enough default to that foundation of love and provision. This is why God gets angry at the request for quail, because it's an implicit rejection and entitlement to what he's already provided us. And so here's what I want to press on us this morning. That when we see this in the Bible, when we encounter manna through Bible lessons or podcasts or sermons or whatever it is we listen to, when we encounter this idea, what I would love to press upon you is this, that the manna in the desert and the provision of the quail should remind us of this. Let's daily gather Jesus and let him be enough. Like the Hebrew people, let's daily go out and gather Jesus in the morning. I need him today. I'm going to spend time with him today. I'm going to appreciate God's provision today. I'm going to reflect on what that means for me today, both today and in eternity. And then let's let that be enough. Come what may, no matter what else happens, I've learned to be at peace with plenty, and I've learned to be at peace with little, but I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Let's let God's provision each day of Jesus be enough. Let me pray for you, and then we're going to take communion and celebrate that provision. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for how you've provided for us. Thank you for your son Jesus. For who he is and for what he means and how he's our daily bread. Thank you that we can eat of him and not be hungry again. God, I pray that we would be people who are people of devotion who daily pursue you and who daily pursue him. Let us diligently, as your children in the desert did, go out and gather him every morning and be nourished by his love and by his peace and by his forgiveness and by his mercy and by his grace and by his humility. Let us be people who pursue him. And God, I pray that he would be enough. There's so many other things that we want, God, and sometimes they're good and sometimes they're not, but they're nothing compared to him. We consider all things rubbish compared to the surpassing goodness of knowing Jesus. I pray that that would be true of us as we gather him and as we pursue you. I pray that you would also help us to remember that he is enough, that your miraculous provision is enough. Please let us never grow entitled to what that is, but to always marvel at your goodness and at the miracle of your provision. In Jesus' name, in the name of the daily bread, we pray. Amen.
