Luke

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. It's good to see you. I missed you last week. People were asking where I was. I was in the mountains of North Georgia taking naps is where I was, and it was a lot of fun. And in my stead, Kyle, our student pastor, gave his first sermon at Grace, and it was a great job. He did phenomenally. But one of the things as I listened back and I heard the story of how the weekend went without me that I was so happy to hear really and truly was that both services, when he got up to give his first sermon ever, you guys cheered for him. Which, first of all, that hurts a little bit. But second, what a cool place. What a great thing that says about us as a church that we're so excited for this guy that we're going to applaud him before he even says anything. There can't be a more supportive place to do ministry than Grace. So it just made me so proud of my church to be a part of this place. I just thought it was really, really great and evident of your heart. The other thing I want to say before I get started, and I never do this, I don't think sermons are times for announcements, but this is such an important announcement to me that I wanted it to go out online on our podcast and on the video and things like that so that people catching up during the week can catch this too. This Friday night, March the 15th, is Grace's big night out, okay? It's two hours at Compass Rose Brewery from 6.30 to 8.30. There's gonna be childcare here for kids five and younger. Everybody else is welcome at Compass Rose. There's games for the kids. There's going to be a food truck. You can bring your own food if you want to. Steve and the band are going to do some live music. It's going to be a super fun time to just hang out, and I really want it to be awesome. So that's up there with my number because we have a graphic that's a square that I can just send to you, and then you can text that out to your friends because we're hoping that you'll invite your friends. This is an easy invite. I think a lot of us have friends that maybe we'd love to see get more involved in church, but maybe they kind of don't want to be involved with church right now. Maybe there's a little stink on it for them or whatever, but maybe if they come hang out with us on Friday and just get to talk and laugh and meet people, they'll realize that we're not a bunch of weirdies, and they'll join us later, okay? So if you want that graphic to use to invite your friends, text me and I'll get it out to you or text one of the elders. They have it too. Okay, but we hope that you'll join us on Friday and that you'll bring some folks. It's going to be a really good time. I hope this is something we get to do repetitively. Okay, this is part five of our series in John. We're going to go through John until the week after Easter. I've been really loving getting to dive into the book of John with you. And if you haven't noticed, we're missing a lot of things. We didn't even do the most famous verse in John, John 3.16. We just skipped right over it because I'm probably a terrible pastor. But there's a reading plan, so hopefully you guys have grabbed that and you're reading along with us again so that you're getting your perspective and your eyes and your mind and your heart on Jesus and not just getting my perspective as we move through the Gospel of John. This week we arrive at what is probably the most famous or one of the most famous miracles in the Bible. It's in all four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and it's one that all of you have heard of. Even if you're here and you're not a believer, this is your first time in church in a long time or ever, I bet you've heard of this miracle, the feeding of the 5,000, right? We know this miracle. And really, that's an erroneous title because Scripture tells us that there was 5,000 men, which means there were women and children in addition to those 5,000. We don't know how many. You can do the math on your own. I'm not going to chance a guest on stage as a pastor and be eternally responsible for that. So I'll let you make irresponsible guesses in your head. But there was more than 5,000 people there. And what's going on when this happens is ancient Israel in the time of Christ was what we would really think of as a third world country. And Jesus is up in northern Israel around the Sea of Galilee. Jerusalem was in southern Israel and northern Israel is really at this point like the countryside. It's rural Israel. So in the sticks of a country that is poor, Jesus is going through his day. He's going through his ministry there. And there are thousands of people following him. Again, we don't know exactly how many, but there are thousands of people following Jesus. In the beginning of John chapter 6, if you have a Bible, you can turn there. The beginning of John chapter 6 tells us that they were following him. The throngs were following Jesus because of the miraculous things that he was doing, because he was casting demons out of people, because he was healing folks, and they wanted to go see. Either they had something that they needed Jesus to take care of, or they just wanted to see this person that many people were beginning to call the Messiah. And so thousands of people had flocked to Jesus. And it says that Jesus looked on the crowds with compassion. He was moved by them and for them. Because here are 5,000 men in the middle of the day with their families, in a culture and in a time where these people woke up and they genuinely did not know where their next meal was coming from. They were very poor, more poor than any of us can imagine. And so Jesus is moved with compassion at the crowds of people and he decides that he's going to feed them. And so there's a young boy walking by who's got five small fish and three loaves of bread and he gets the disciples to ask for the meal from the boy and Jesus starts to break the bread and the fish and he starts to put it in these baskets. And the disciples carry the baskets to the different groups of people and they hand it out to whoever needs. It was an ancient all-you-can-eat buffet. It's like the first version of the Golden Corral. And they're just going around handing things out to people. Until at the end, there was baskets left over. Jesus just kept making fish and bread until everyone had what they needed, right? And then at the end of that, the people did this thing that everybody was trying to do to Jesus his whole life. We don't really think about this or notice this, but it's a drum I'm trying to beat as we go through the gospel of John. They clamored to him to make him king. They wanted to take him down south to Jerusalem and put him on the throne. They wanted to form a revolution around Jesus because the prophecies in ancient Israel, the prophecies in the Old Testament say that when the Messiah arrives, he will be the king of kings and the lord of lords and the prince of peace, and that he will sit on the throne of David and that he will rule forever. And now we know, with the benefit of hindsight, that Jesus did not come to establish a physical earthly kingdom. We know that he came to establish an eternal heavenly kingdom. But they didn't know that. They thought that he came to literally establish a kingdom that he was going to, at the time, overthrow Roman rule, rise Israel up to prominence, that they were going to be the world superpower, and Jesus was going to be the king, and they were going to be his followers. And so they said, this is the guy, look what he's doing. And they clamored to him to go make him king. And Jesus, knowing that wasn't the point, knowing that it wasn't yet time to put the wheels in motion of his crucifixion, fades away and goes into the mountains. And we see Jesus do this a lot in his ministry. There's a big event, a big thing that he does, something that exhausts him, and then he goes and he fades away and he goes to pray and spend some time with the Father to get away from the crowds. It makes me wonder on a human level if Jesus wasn't an introvert who just needed a little bit of a break after he dealt with everybody. But another thing you'll notice about Jesus, if you'll read through the Gospels on your own, is he had this unfailing patience with people. Can you imagine what it would be to be Jesus, to feed 5,000 people and then still have people like, hey, can you do this? Can you do this? Can you do this? And you're like, did you see the miracle I did? Can a dude not take a nap? Like, how tired did he have to be? How stressed did he have to be? How fatigued did he have to be? Yet he continued to unfailingly love people. Over and over again, he offers them grace through the Gospels. And that's one of, to me, that's one of the pieces of Jesus that we see when we pay attention. It's just his unfailing love for others. So he goes up to the mountainside to pray, and he tells the disciples, y'all go ahead and go across the Sea of Galilee to a city called Capernaum and I'll meet you there, okay? I'm gonna come out there too. Y'all go ahead and go across. So the disciples, the 12 of them, get on a boat and they begin to go across the Sea of Galilee, which wasn't really a sea, it's a lake, but you can't see across it, so it's called the Sea of Galilee. I don't know why that's the policy, but that's what it is. And so they're going across. And in the middle of the night, Jesus walks on water where we have this other really famous miracle. And the other gospels record it and give us a little bit more detail about it and the interaction with Peter. And he was like a ghost. And at first they were afraid. But John in his old age, as he's writing his gospel, he doesn't do that. It's just a couple of verses. He's just like, we were going across the water and then we looked and Jesus was walking. And then he got in boat with us, and then we were there. It's like John was like, it was just, you know, just Jesus stuff. It was just classic Jesus, you know, just walking across the water and getting in the boat, and then they're there, right? So the next morning, the people, the crowds, wake up. They had camped out wherever they were going to camp out there on the hillside. They wake up, and they look around, and they don't see Jesus. And then they notice that there's a boat gone and none of his disciples are there. So they put two and two together and it says they go across the water. And I don't think that all the, however many thousands of people there were there, all got in their boats at once and went across the Sea of Galilee like some Greek fleet assaulting Troy. Like I don't think it was all of them. I think it was probably a portion of them. So a portion of them get in the boats and they follow Jesus across the water. And it makes me wonder, for us, who here thinks that if they were in those crowds, that they would have been one of the ones to get in the boat and cross the water? Who here would call yourself a follower of Jesus? My guess is, because you're church people, and you know the right answer is, oh, I'd definitely get in the boat, then that's probably your answer. There might be some, a few, who are here just kind of checking things out with the bravery to be like, I don't know if I'm getting in the boat yet. And I really applaud the intellectual honesty of that answer. But most of us are probably going to say that we're in the boat. I'm going to get in the boat and I'm going to go across. I'm going to follow Jesus. I'm not going to let him get away. And so that's what they do. They get in the boat and they go across and they were Jesus followers. They follow him across the Sea of Galilee. And then they go and they find him and they ask him, what are you doing? Where'd you go? Look, this is what it says in the text. John chapter 6, verse 25, it says, When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, Rabbi, when did you come here? They said, Jesus, what are you doing? Where did you go? Like, we're trying to keep up with you. We're trying to follow you. Where did you go? What's the deal? Why are you disappearing? And Jesus' response to me is searingly convicting. And it stands as a conviction not only to those people then, but to us now and all Jesus followers throughout all time. Anybody who would ever consider themselves a follower of Jesus, his response to me is incredibly convicting. He says this, Jesus answered them when they said, where'd you go? What are you doing? We're trying to follow you and you're hiding from us. Where are you? Jesus says this, truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the son of man will give you. For on morning they wake up. Jesus isn't around. They follow him. They track him down. They go to him and they go, Rabbi, which means teacher, which means we're acknowledging you as an authority. Where'd you go? We're trying to follow you. You're running away from us. We're trying to keep up. We want to follow you, Jesus. Why'd you do that? And Jesus looks at a poor and downtrodden people who, listen to me, they need bread, okay? They need the physical bread that he provided. They're not like us. Any of us in this room can go to any restaurant we want to right after church. You can get the meat sweats within the next two hours. We all have the means to do this, okay? I ate out two times yesterday because I'm fabulously wealthy. We can all do this, right? We don't know what it is to be hungry, none of us. They knew. They knew what hunger was. And Jesus knew that they were hungry. And they are the exact type of people that we would look at our Jesus and expect them to do something about feeding them. Expect him to be moved with compassion and give them more bread because that's what they need. But instead of doing that, instead of giving them what they really do genuinely need, he looks at him and he says, you're only here because I gave you bread. You followed me across the water for the wrong reasons. You shouldn't labor for the things that are temporary. You should labor for the things that are eternal. That's quite the statement by Jesus. You're following me for the wrong reasons. Your motives are impure. And it makes me wonder, if you are somebody who would say that you would get in the boat and you would follow Jesus across the water, yes, I am a Jesus follower. I want to be where he is. When Jesus says this, that you're following me for the wrong reasons, it makes me wonder, what are the reasons that you are following Jesus? Are we following Jesus for the right reasons? Or is it possible that our motives are mixed? As I thought about it for me, and I thought about it for the people that I've known through the years, I think that it's entirely possible that we get some mixed motives for following our Savior. I think it's one thing to come to Him for certain reasons, but our relationship with Him cannot exist motivated by those same things. And I think that as I thought about it, I think a lot of the reasons that we sometimes follow Jesus that maybe are for the wrong reasons can be summed up in this way, that often we follow Jesus for control or for status or for gain. I think it's entirely possible, church people, that we have followed Jesus in our life for some sense of control, for some sense of status, or in hopes of some sort of gain. Here's what I mean. Sometimes we go to Jesus because the world seems just completely out of sorts. These things are happening that we cannot control, that we do not understand, and to be able to see them through a framework of God's sovereignty brings a sense of peace and understanding to us that makes us feel comfortable. And so it's how we process the world because we're trying to bring a sense of control to the uncontrollable in a more pernicious way. I think that we have what I think of as a proverbial faith. In the book of Proverbs, it was a book of wisdom written by Solomon. It basically is summed up by saying, if you do things like this, then you are wise and things will go well for you. And if you do things like this, then you are foolish and things will not go well for you. And so sometimes we approach the Bible as this self-help book that says, if I do these kinds of things, even if I don't fully believe, then life is going to go better for me. And it's a way that we try to exert control over the uncontrollable. Do you see? The problem with this is the book of Job exists as a contrast to Proverbs that tells us even when we're doing all the right things, sometimes it's still going to go bad. But when we follow Jesus for control, it's that kind of proverbial faith where we try to, by following all the rules and doing all the right things, bring about outcomes in our life that are uncontrollable, that are favorable, right? Or sometimes we follow Jesus for status. Listen to me, church people. We are guilty of this. I, this is not hyperbole, more than anyone. Those of you who have been in church for a while, for any number of years, has there ever been a season of your life where you followed Jesus, where you've put on the mask of Christianity, where you've played the game of faith because of the status that it brought you? Just me? Has anyone ever studied harder for a Bible study and done the work in a Bible study because when you got there, you wanted to have the best answers, not because you were really interested in the content? Have any of you ever been guilty when you're asked to pray in front of other people of suddenly using a different voice with a different vocabulary? Because these and nows and saying God over and over again is somehow holy? Oh God, if you would just have mercy on us, God, in your favor, God, I just lift this person up to you, God. Don't talk like that. When we hear ourselves starting to pray like that, that's Christianity for status. That's Christianity because of what it gives us in the community, because it offers us opportunities of respect in the church, because when we act that way and we live out this faith, sometimes people will ask us to do things that are honorable requests. Have you ever walked through a season of life where your faith was more about the status that it brought you than it was about Jesus? Where your main reason for not walking away from the faith is a relational fallout that it would cost you? That's faith for status. Or we follow Jesus for gain. This is what's commonly referred to as a health and wealth gospel. It is a gospel or the prosperity gospel. I hate it. It's a lie from Satan and it's evil. And what it tells us is if we go to Jesus, that Jesus wants to bless us. He wants us to have this incredible life. He wants us to be happy now in the material. And so he will make you healthy and he will make you wealthy. And if you don't have health and if you don't have wealth and you just don't have strong enough faith and you need to have better faith. And there are whole churches built on this model, on the promise that if you really are living Christianity out the right way, then you will be blessed and you will be healthy and you will be wealthy. And I don't know if you ever paid attention to it, but churches that teach this model don't tend to be filled with wealthy people because it preys on the poor and on the unhealthy and promises them things that are not true. And Jesus knows that these reasons, these temporary reasons for following him, whether they be control or gain or status, are not the right reasons and that eventually they will wreck our faith. That's why he gives the warning there. Don't labor for the temporary, labor for the eternal because when we follow Jesus for the wrong reasons, eventually it wrecks our faith. Eventually it shipwrecks the faith that we have. I'll tell you how I know this is true. Several years ago, I had a meeting with a couple at my old church named Alan and Sonny. I love Alan and Sonny. They went on after this meeting that I had with them, not because of me, because of the Holy Spirit work in them. I didn't tell them anything useful, I don't think. But they went on, they became small group leaders. They were wonderful in the church. They launched other small group leaders. They're still there leading people to faith. They're just phenomenal warriors for God. But I got an email one day, and it was from them, and they said, hey, you know, we've been coming to the church for a little bit. We accepted Christ as our Savior about four months ago, and there's just some stuff happening in our life. We just have some questions. We'd like to talk to a pastor. I said, all right, sure. You get to talk to 29-year-old Nate. Congratulations. I'm going to answer all the questions for you. And so I meet with them. And they said, hey, you know, they started telling me about their life. And they had had a hard life. He was a handyman. She helped them out. They were workaday people. They were really, really great and wonderful folks. But it was their second marriage. They both had adult children and grandchildren, and then they had their own children together. And they had all the craziness that that brings about, plus a life that was lived before that without faith and the remnants of that that are going on in their life. And so Alan and Sonny had a really hard life. And what they said was, you know, before we got saved, we came to God to experience peace. And after we got saved, we've been praying about these situations in our life. We've been hoping for them. We've been lifting them up for God. We've been trying to do the right things. But man, I got to tell you, those situations aren't really getting much better. And some of them are getting worse. And we just need to know, did we do it wrong? Like, are we actually saved? Did we not pray the prayer right? Is there something that I need to believe that I don't believe? Is there some sin that I don't know about that I need to figure out? Because this isn't really working the way that we thought it would work. Do you hear the lie there? Somewhere along the way, they became convinced that to follow Jesus meant that there was going to be a relief from the trials in their life, that they were going to be what we would call blessed, and that those things would begin to go away because now I'm following Jesus, and now I'm following the rules, and God is going to do these things for me. He's going to make these situations better. And I had to sit them down and be like, guys, no one promised that to you. You didn't do it right. You did it wrong. You did it exactly right. The problem is your expectations of God because he doesn't promise Christians that we won't experience trials. In fact, in the New Testament, do you know what we're promised? We're promised suffering and persecution. So buckle up, pal. That's what we're promised. It's going to be hard, and you're going to have to endure. But in the midst of that, and I can go through character after character in the Bible, Christian after Christian throughout history, that with loving God with all their heart and suffering mightily. Because God doesn't promise us a relief to our circumstances. He doesn't promise us health or wealth or status or control or any of those things. What he promises us is his presence, that he will be with us, that he will walk through our trials with us, that we never have to experience those alone, that our life is never hopeless, that our life is never lonely, because God is an ever-present force that is there with us, loving us and affirming us. And now, as you go through trials, it's not that you don't have to go through them, it's that you have the peace of Christ as you do, and you have the hope of heaven, so that Paul can say that even though we endure suffering for what he calls a little while on this earth, we look forward to a new day where there is no suffering. That's the promise of faith and of Christianity. But when we let people believe that that promise comes now and that prosperity comes now, then after we get saved, we begin to look around and go, did I do this wrong? And eventually we either feel like we messed it up or our God is letting us down, but either way, I don't want anything to do with this faith. And it shipwrecks our faith. When we follow God for control, for a sense of control and sense of our universe, and then things happen that feel like they are out of our control, we feel like either we've done it wrong or God is weak. When we follow God for status, when we eventually get the status that we want, when we fake it enough so that everyone around us believes that we're this Christian that we try to pretend to be, then what we realize is we're living our life in a prison of expectations and hypocrisy that we can't get out of until we allow our entire identity to crumble because it was never authentic to begin with. When we follow Jesus for the wrong reasons, it wrecks our faith. So that begs the question that hopefully you're asking and that they asked. Okay, what are the right reasons? What's the right reason to follow Jesus? And this is what they ask in verse 28. They said to him, what must we do to be doing the works of God? Okay, what's the right reason? What do we have to do to work for the eternal things, not the temporary? What do we have to do? And Jesus' answer is great. Jesus answered them, this is the work of God that you believe in him who he has sent. Do you remember back, those of you who were here to the first week of the series? And we look at the way that John introduces Jesus. In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God. And we said that the fundamental question in life is, was Jesus real? And do you believe that He is who He says He is? It's a fundamental question in life. That question makes all the difference in the world. Do we believe that Jesus was who he says he was? And then they say, what's the right reason to follow you? What's the right motive? How do we labor for the eternal? And Jesus says, trust me that I am who I say I am. Believe that I actually am the one that God sent. You want to know the right reason to follow Jesus? Jesus. You want to know what should properly motivate you to get in those boats and go across the sea and find him? Him. It should literally be that we get in the boats and we cross the sea and we go to Jesus and we go, Jesus, where'd you go? And he goes, you're only here for my bread. And we go, no, I don't care about the bread. I just want you. You're only here for the status and what I do. No, I don't care about the status. Make me low. Make me do something silly. Make me an usher, the least of all church volunteers. Make me do that. And I will still follow you. You're only here for the control. No, let stuff happen. Let the world spin out of control around me. I'm here for you, Jesus. That should be the motive. Jesus is the only reason to follow Jesus. And this isn't just in this passage. It's all throughout the New Testament. If you continue in the book of John, what you see in John chapter 15 is that there's an instruction from Jesus to abide in him, abide in me and I in you, and you will bear much fruit. And we're going to spend some time on this, but there's a relational aspect to that abiding. There's this idea of knowing Jesus, of pursuing him relationally, of being acquainted intimately with our Savior. In John 17, Jesus prays for you. He prays for all people that would hear of the word through the disciples, which is you. And what he prays for you is that you would be one with him as he and the Father are one, that you would know him, that there is a relational aspect to this. Paul, throughout all of his letters, prays for the church over and over again that they would know God. The author of Hebrews says that if we're going to run the race that we're supposed to run, then we need to do it with our eyes focused on the founder of our faith, which is Jesus. All throughout the New Testament, it tells us that God's desire for us is that we would know him, and that the proper motivation to follow him is simply to know Jesus. That's it. That we would pursue him, that we would love him, that we would want more of Jesus in our life, that when we get across the Sea of Galilee and he says, why'd you come over here? I'm not gonna give you more bread. We go, I don't care, I don't need more bread, I just need you. That's why we follow Jesus. And with that in mind, to help you as you assess, because hopefully if you're paying attention, you're sitting here going, okay, well, am I doing it right? Am I following Jesus for the right reasons? What are my motives? How mixed are they? And all of us have mixed motives. I've got like a two-question diagnostic for you so that you can try to suss out in yourself and in your own heart, how are we doing with keeping pure motives as we follow Jesus? Okay, so two sneaky questions that are gonna make you feel terrible about yourself, but they're really good questions. The first one is this. When you pray for yourself and others, for what do you pray? What do you pray for yourself and others? When you pray for yourself, what do you pray for? If you're a person who prays and you get down on your knees and you say, God, I need this, what is it that you pray for? Do you pray that you would close the sale? Do you pray that you would pass the test? Do you pray that you would get the job? Do you pray that you would execute the thing? Do you pray that you would be given the right words in this situation? Do you pray for temporary things? When you pray for people that you love, your kids, your spouse, for your parents, for your friends? What do you pray for them? Do you pray for temporary things? Help them in this situation, heal them of this, rescue them in this, give them wisdom in this. Do you pray for temporary things? Or when you pray for yourself and you pray for others, do you pray that they would simply know God? God, whatever's happening in their life, and this is how Paul prays, whatever's happening in their life, whatever's happening in the church, I pray that it would all conspire to bring them to a knowledge of you. If you look at the prayers in the New Testament, he doesn't pray for circumstances. He doesn't pray for health. He doesn't pray for church growth. All he prays for is that we would know God. So when you pray for other people, do you pray for their circumstances or do you pray that they would know God? Every night we put Lily to bed and every night we try to pray with her. When the elders don't make me meet, then I can be at home with my child. And when I pray for them, when I pray for Lily, Jen and I pray every night, God, help her to know you soon and to love you well. I don't want her to experience a lot of her life without knowing God. Help her to know you soon and love you well. And when I pray for her on my own, I try not to pray for her circumstances. I try not even so much to pray for her health because I know God cares about that. I pray that all the situations, all the things, all the events, all the scarring that I give her will somehow conspire to bring her to a place where she knows God on a level that's more intimate than I've ever known him. When you pray for other people, do you pray for the things that are temporary or do you pray for the eternal, that all the temporary things would conspire that they would know God? That tells us where our motives are in following Jesus. The other one is this. If you're a Christian, one of the things you think about hopefully regularly is heaven. We anticipate heaven. We look forward to heaven. We should be rightly excited about heaven. But I would ask you what most excites you when you think about getting to heaven. That will tell you a lot about why you're following Jesus. Some people are excited to get to heaven because we're curious. I want to see what the pearly gates are. Is that even a thing? Did we make that up? Are there really pearly gates? What do the streets of gold look like? What's the sea of glass? Is St. Peter there greeting me? Or is that only in far sideide cartoons? Like, we want to see these things, right? We're curious about heaven. For many of us, most of us, there's probably a loved one that we can't wait to see. I can't wait to see my Pawpaw again. He's my favorite human that's ever lived. I haven't seen him since I was 19. Pawpaw's never seen me as a pastor. I can't wait to get to heaven and talk to him about it. If I have any gift for teaching or telling a good story, it's from him. He could captivate a room. He's never met Jen. I wish he would have. He hasn't seen Lily. I can't wait to see Papa again. You have your people too. But we ought to be most excited about finally getting to look our Savior in the eyes. What should excite us most about heaven is that we finally get to meet our Heavenly Father and see what He looks like and hear what He sounds like and feel the power of his presence. That should most excite us about heaven. We finally get to look our savior in the eye and we get to hug him and hopefully we get to hear well done, good and faithful servant. That should be the thing that we are most hopeful about with heaven. The rest of the things are good. That's what gives us hope. That's why death has no sting and that hope is good and we should be excited to see our loved ones in heaven one day. We should be excited to explore this place that God created for us, but the thing we should be most excited about is finally getting to see our Jesus and finally getting to meet our God. What would it look like to live a life so devoted to God, so in love with Jesus, that heaven was like the greatest reunion ever? Because we finally got to meet him. That's how we should live our life. People who are excited about that are people who look at Jesus and go, I don't care about your bread. I'm just here for you, man. I hope that you will have the courage to pray and ask God to suss out your motives, to show them to yourself. And then we cannot go about the work of changing our motives on our own. All we can do is offer them up to God and say, God, I know that my motives for following you are impure. I pray that you would purify them. Give me a heart for you. And if you want to pursue this more, I don't do this a lot, but there's a book I would highly recommend to you. It's called With by a guy named Sky Jethani, who's a pastor somewhere in the United States. I forget where. This is, to me, the best book written in the last 10 years. I love it, and I don't really read new books. I think that a book should be in print for like 25 or 30 years before it's worth reading. So I don't really read a lot of new books, but this is a new one that I read, and I love this book. I've never read a book that caused me to stop and put it down and pray and go, God, I'm really sorry for this, more than that book. So if you're a reader, if you're into that kind of thing, I would highly recommend you get this book, and that will help you follow up with making sure that we're following Jesus for the right reasons. For all of us, if you consider yourself a Jesus follower, I hope that you'll have the courage to ask him to purify your motives. And when you do, what you'll find is it works out that all things work out too. Our relationship with Jesus works a little bit like a marriage. In a marriage, there's a bunch of different aspects of a marriage, right? I'm married to Jen, I lucked out, and there's different aspects to our marriage. And we could say, you know what, the most important thing to us is to just be able to have fun together and laugh together. And so we could prioritize that over everything else. And while we're having fun and laughing about everything, we're probably putting some other things off that need some work. And so eventually our marriage is going to get unhealthy. We could prioritize intimacy between one another and say, if we have this, then we'll be healthy, but that will come at the expense of other things. We can prioritize Lily and maybe future kiddos and who knows, but one day everyone's going to be out of the house and we're going to have to look at each other and be like, do we still like each other? Or we could prioritize one another above and beyond everything else in our relationship. And as we grow together, all of those other things will fall into place. If we will prize Jesus above and beyond everything else, all the accoutrements of Christianity, then what we'll find is all those other things, the status and the control and any gain that we might need, Jesus will take care of if we'll just follow him. So let us be a church of people who follow Jesus with a pure heart. Let us be a church of people who get in the boats and follow him across the lake for the right reasons. And let's see what Jesus does with a group of people like that. Let's pray, and then we'll take communion together. Father, we do love you. We do thank you for your son, for sending him for us. God, we thank you that he unites us with you. Lord, I would ask that you would make us courageous. Help us to see the places in our hearts and in our lives and in our walks with you where we are pursuing you for the wrong reasons, for things that really are temporary and not eternal. God, make yourself the prize of our hearts and of our minds and of our lives. Unite us with you. God, I pray that you would work even now to reveal and to begin to purify our motives as we follow you. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. It's good to see you. I missed you last week. People were asking where I was. I was in the mountains of North Georgia taking naps is where I was, and it was a lot of fun. And in my stead, Kyle, our student pastor, gave his first sermon at Grace, and it was a great job. He did phenomenally. But one of the things as I listened back and I heard the story of how the weekend went without me that I was so happy to hear really and truly was that both services, when he got up to give his first sermon ever, you guys cheered for him. Which, first of all, that hurts a little bit. But second, what a cool place. What a great thing that says about us as a church that we're so excited for this guy that we're going to applaud him before he even says anything. There can't be a more supportive place to do ministry than Grace. So it just made me so proud of my church to be a part of this place. I just thought it was really, really great and evident of your heart. The other thing I want to say before I get started, and I never do this, I don't think sermons are times for announcements, but this is such an important announcement to me that I wanted it to go out online on our podcast and on the video and things like that so that people catching up during the week can catch this too. This Friday night, March the 15th, is Grace's big night out, okay? It's two hours at Compass Rose Brewery from 6.30 to 8.30. There's gonna be childcare here for kids five and younger. Everybody else is welcome at Compass Rose. There's games for the kids. There's going to be a food truck. You can bring your own food if you want to. Steve and the band are going to do some live music. It's going to be a super fun time to just hang out, and I really want it to be awesome. So that's up there with my number because we have a graphic that's a square that I can just send to you, and then you can text that out to your friends because we're hoping that you'll invite your friends. This is an easy invite. I think a lot of us have friends that maybe we'd love to see get more involved in church, but maybe they kind of don't want to be involved with church right now. Maybe there's a little stink on it for them or whatever, but maybe if they come hang out with us on Friday and just get to talk and laugh and meet people, they'll realize that we're not a bunch of weirdies, and they'll join us later, okay? So if you want that graphic to use to invite your friends, text me and I'll get it out to you or text one of the elders. They have it too. Okay, but we hope that you'll join us on Friday and that you'll bring some folks. It's going to be a really good time. I hope this is something we get to do repetitively. Okay, this is part five of our series in John. We're going to go through John until the week after Easter. I've been really loving getting to dive into the book of John with you. And if you haven't noticed, we're missing a lot of things. We didn't even do the most famous verse in John, John 3.16. We just skipped right over it because I'm probably a terrible pastor. But there's a reading plan, so hopefully you guys have grabbed that and you're reading along with us again so that you're getting your perspective and your eyes and your mind and your heart on Jesus and not just getting my perspective as we move through the Gospel of John. This week we arrive at what is probably the most famous or one of the most famous miracles in the Bible. It's in all four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and it's one that all of you have heard of. Even if you're here and you're not a believer, this is your first time in church in a long time or ever, I bet you've heard of this miracle, the feeding of the 5,000, right? We know this miracle. And really, that's an erroneous title because Scripture tells us that there was 5,000 men, which means there were women and children in addition to those 5,000. We don't know how many. You can do the math on your own. I'm not going to chance a guest on stage as a pastor and be eternally responsible for that. So I'll let you make irresponsible guesses in your head. But there was more than 5,000 people there. And what's going on when this happens is ancient Israel in the time of Christ was what we would really think of as a third world country. And Jesus is up in northern Israel around the Sea of Galilee. Jerusalem was in southern Israel and northern Israel is really at this point like the countryside. It's rural Israel. So in the sticks of a country that is poor, Jesus is going through his day. He's going through his ministry there. And there are thousands of people following him. Again, we don't know exactly how many, but there are thousands of people following Jesus. In the beginning of John chapter 6, if you have a Bible, you can turn there. The beginning of John chapter 6 tells us that they were following him. The throngs were following Jesus because of the miraculous things that he was doing, because he was casting demons out of people, because he was healing folks, and they wanted to go see. Either they had something that they needed Jesus to take care of, or they just wanted to see this person that many people were beginning to call the Messiah. And so thousands of people had flocked to Jesus. And it says that Jesus looked on the crowds with compassion. He was moved by them and for them. Because here are 5,000 men in the middle of the day with their families, in a culture and in a time where these people woke up and they genuinely did not know where their next meal was coming from. They were very poor, more poor than any of us can imagine. And so Jesus is moved with compassion at the crowds of people and he decides that he's going to feed them. And so there's a young boy walking by who's got five small fish and three loaves of bread and he gets the disciples to ask for the meal from the boy and Jesus starts to break the bread and the fish and he starts to put it in these baskets. And the disciples carry the baskets to the different groups of people and they hand it out to whoever needs. It was an ancient all-you-can-eat buffet. It's like the first version of the Golden Corral. And they're just going around handing things out to people. Until at the end, there was baskets left over. Jesus just kept making fish and bread until everyone had what they needed, right? And then at the end of that, the people did this thing that everybody was trying to do to Jesus his whole life. We don't really think about this or notice this, but it's a drum I'm trying to beat as we go through the gospel of John. They clamored to him to make him king. They wanted to take him down south to Jerusalem and put him on the throne. They wanted to form a revolution around Jesus because the prophecies in ancient Israel, the prophecies in the Old Testament say that when the Messiah arrives, he will be the king of kings and the lord of lords and the prince of peace, and that he will sit on the throne of David and that he will rule forever. And now we know, with the benefit of hindsight, that Jesus did not come to establish a physical earthly kingdom. We know that he came to establish an eternal heavenly kingdom. But they didn't know that. They thought that he came to literally establish a kingdom that he was going to, at the time, overthrow Roman rule, rise Israel up to prominence, that they were going to be the world superpower, and Jesus was going to be the king, and they were going to be his followers. And so they said, this is the guy, look what he's doing. And they clamored to him to go make him king. And Jesus, knowing that wasn't the point, knowing that it wasn't yet time to put the wheels in motion of his crucifixion, fades away and goes into the mountains. And we see Jesus do this a lot in his ministry. There's a big event, a big thing that he does, something that exhausts him, and then he goes and he fades away and he goes to pray and spend some time with the Father to get away from the crowds. It makes me wonder on a human level if Jesus wasn't an introvert who just needed a little bit of a break after he dealt with everybody. But another thing you'll notice about Jesus, if you'll read through the Gospels on your own, is he had this unfailing patience with people. Can you imagine what it would be to be Jesus, to feed 5,000 people and then still have people like, hey, can you do this? Can you do this? Can you do this? And you're like, did you see the miracle I did? Can a dude not take a nap? Like, how tired did he have to be? How stressed did he have to be? How fatigued did he have to be? Yet he continued to unfailingly love people. Over and over again, he offers them grace through the Gospels. And that's one of, to me, that's one of the pieces of Jesus that we see when we pay attention. It's just his unfailing love for others. So he goes up to the mountainside to pray, and he tells the disciples, y'all go ahead and go across the Sea of Galilee to a city called Capernaum and I'll meet you there, okay? I'm gonna come out there too. Y'all go ahead and go across. So the disciples, the 12 of them, get on a boat and they begin to go across the Sea of Galilee, which wasn't really a sea, it's a lake, but you can't see across it, so it's called the Sea of Galilee. I don't know why that's the policy, but that's what it is. And so they're going across. And in the middle of the night, Jesus walks on water where we have this other really famous miracle. And the other gospels record it and give us a little bit more detail about it and the interaction with Peter. And he was like a ghost. And at first they were afraid. But John in his old age, as he's writing his gospel, he doesn't do that. It's just a couple of verses. He's just like, we were going across the water and then we looked and Jesus was walking. And then he got in boat with us, and then we were there. It's like John was like, it was just, you know, just Jesus stuff. It was just classic Jesus, you know, just walking across the water and getting in the boat, and then they're there, right? So the next morning, the people, the crowds, wake up. They had camped out wherever they were going to camp out there on the hillside. They wake up, and they look around, and they don't see Jesus. And then they notice that there's a boat gone and none of his disciples are there. So they put two and two together and it says they go across the water. And I don't think that all the, however many thousands of people there were there, all got in their boats at once and went across the Sea of Galilee like some Greek fleet assaulting Troy. Like I don't think it was all of them. I think it was probably a portion of them. So a portion of them get in the boats and they follow Jesus across the water. And it makes me wonder, for us, who here thinks that if they were in those crowds, that they would have been one of the ones to get in the boat and cross the water? Who here would call yourself a follower of Jesus? My guess is, because you're church people, and you know the right answer is, oh, I'd definitely get in the boat, then that's probably your answer. There might be some, a few, who are here just kind of checking things out with the bravery to be like, I don't know if I'm getting in the boat yet. And I really applaud the intellectual honesty of that answer. But most of us are probably going to say that we're in the boat. I'm going to get in the boat and I'm going to go across. I'm going to follow Jesus. I'm not going to let him get away. And so that's what they do. They get in the boat and they go across and they were Jesus followers. They follow him across the Sea of Galilee. And then they go and they find him and they ask him, what are you doing? Where'd you go? Look, this is what it says in the text. John chapter 6, verse 25, it says, When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, Rabbi, when did you come here? They said, Jesus, what are you doing? Where did you go? Like, we're trying to keep up with you. We're trying to follow you. Where did you go? What's the deal? Why are you disappearing? And Jesus' response to me is searingly convicting. And it stands as a conviction not only to those people then, but to us now and all Jesus followers throughout all time. Anybody who would ever consider themselves a follower of Jesus, his response to me is incredibly convicting. He says this, Jesus answered them when they said, where'd you go? What are you doing? We're trying to follow you and you're hiding from us. Where are you? Jesus says this, truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the son of man will give you. For on morning they wake up. Jesus isn't around. They follow him. They track him down. They go to him and they go, Rabbi, which means teacher, which means we're acknowledging you as an authority. Where'd you go? We're trying to follow you. You're running away from us. We're trying to keep up. We want to follow you, Jesus. Why'd you do that? And Jesus looks at a poor and downtrodden people who, listen to me, they need bread, okay? They need the physical bread that he provided. They're not like us. Any of us in this room can go to any restaurant we want to right after church. You can get the meat sweats within the next two hours. We all have the means to do this, okay? I ate out two times yesterday because I'm fabulously wealthy. We can all do this, right? We don't know what it is to be hungry, none of us. They knew. They knew what hunger was. And Jesus knew that they were hungry. And they are the exact type of people that we would look at our Jesus and expect them to do something about feeding them. Expect him to be moved with compassion and give them more bread because that's what they need. But instead of doing that, instead of giving them what they really do genuinely need, he looks at him and he says, you're only here because I gave you bread. You followed me across the water for the wrong reasons. You shouldn't labor for the things that are temporary. You should labor for the things that are eternal. That's quite the statement by Jesus. You're following me for the wrong reasons. Your motives are impure. And it makes me wonder, if you are somebody who would say that you would get in the boat and you would follow Jesus across the water, yes, I am a Jesus follower. I want to be where he is. When Jesus says this, that you're following me for the wrong reasons, it makes me wonder, what are the reasons that you are following Jesus? Are we following Jesus for the right reasons? Or is it possible that our motives are mixed? As I thought about it for me, and I thought about it for the people that I've known through the years, I think that it's entirely possible that we get some mixed motives for following our Savior. I think it's one thing to come to Him for certain reasons, but our relationship with Him cannot exist motivated by those same things. And I think that as I thought about it, I think a lot of the reasons that we sometimes follow Jesus that maybe are for the wrong reasons can be summed up in this way, that often we follow Jesus for control or for status or for gain. I think it's entirely possible, church people, that we have followed Jesus in our life for some sense of control, for some sense of status, or in hopes of some sort of gain. Here's what I mean. Sometimes we go to Jesus because the world seems just completely out of sorts. These things are happening that we cannot control, that we do not understand, and to be able to see them through a framework of God's sovereignty brings a sense of peace and understanding to us that makes us feel comfortable. And so it's how we process the world because we're trying to bring a sense of control to the uncontrollable in a more pernicious way. I think that we have what I think of as a proverbial faith. In the book of Proverbs, it was a book of wisdom written by Solomon. It basically is summed up by saying, if you do things like this, then you are wise and things will go well for you. And if you do things like this, then you are foolish and things will not go well for you. And so sometimes we approach the Bible as this self-help book that says, if I do these kinds of things, even if I don't fully believe, then life is going to go better for me. And it's a way that we try to exert control over the uncontrollable. Do you see? The problem with this is the book of Job exists as a contrast to Proverbs that tells us even when we're doing all the right things, sometimes it's still going to go bad. But when we follow Jesus for control, it's that kind of proverbial faith where we try to, by following all the rules and doing all the right things, bring about outcomes in our life that are uncontrollable, that are favorable, right? Or sometimes we follow Jesus for status. Listen to me, church people. We are guilty of this. I, this is not hyperbole, more than anyone. Those of you who have been in church for a while, for any number of years, has there ever been a season of your life where you followed Jesus, where you've put on the mask of Christianity, where you've played the game of faith because of the status that it brought you? Just me? Has anyone ever studied harder for a Bible study and done the work in a Bible study because when you got there, you wanted to have the best answers, not because you were really interested in the content? Have any of you ever been guilty when you're asked to pray in front of other people of suddenly using a different voice with a different vocabulary? Because these and nows and saying God over and over again is somehow holy? Oh God, if you would just have mercy on us, God, in your favor, God, I just lift this person up to you, God. Don't talk like that. When we hear ourselves starting to pray like that, that's Christianity for status. That's Christianity because of what it gives us in the community, because it offers us opportunities of respect in the church, because when we act that way and we live out this faith, sometimes people will ask us to do things that are honorable requests. Have you ever walked through a season of life where your faith was more about the status that it brought you than it was about Jesus? Where your main reason for not walking away from the faith is a relational fallout that it would cost you? That's faith for status. Or we follow Jesus for gain. This is what's commonly referred to as a health and wealth gospel. It is a gospel or the prosperity gospel. I hate it. It's a lie from Satan and it's evil. And what it tells us is if we go to Jesus, that Jesus wants to bless us. He wants us to have this incredible life. He wants us to be happy now in the material. And so he will make you healthy and he will make you wealthy. And if you don't have health and if you don't have wealth and you just don't have strong enough faith and you need to have better faith. And there are whole churches built on this model, on the promise that if you really are living Christianity out the right way, then you will be blessed and you will be healthy and you will be wealthy. And I don't know if you ever paid attention to it, but churches that teach this model don't tend to be filled with wealthy people because it preys on the poor and on the unhealthy and promises them things that are not true. And Jesus knows that these reasons, these temporary reasons for following him, whether they be control or gain or status, are not the right reasons and that eventually they will wreck our faith. That's why he gives the warning there. Don't labor for the temporary, labor for the eternal because when we follow Jesus for the wrong reasons, eventually it wrecks our faith. Eventually it shipwrecks the faith that we have. I'll tell you how I know this is true. Several years ago, I had a meeting with a couple at my old church named Alan and Sonny. I love Alan and Sonny. They went on after this meeting that I had with them, not because of me, because of the Holy Spirit work in them. I didn't tell them anything useful, I don't think. But they went on, they became small group leaders. They were wonderful in the church. They launched other small group leaders. They're still there leading people to faith. They're just phenomenal warriors for God. But I got an email one day, and it was from them, and they said, hey, you know, we've been coming to the church for a little bit. We accepted Christ as our Savior about four months ago, and there's just some stuff happening in our life. We just have some questions. We'd like to talk to a pastor. I said, all right, sure. You get to talk to 29-year-old Nate. Congratulations. I'm going to answer all the questions for you. And so I meet with them. And they said, hey, you know, they started telling me about their life. And they had had a hard life. He was a handyman. She helped them out. They were workaday people. They were really, really great and wonderful folks. But it was their second marriage. They both had adult children and grandchildren, and then they had their own children together. And they had all the craziness that that brings about, plus a life that was lived before that without faith and the remnants of that that are going on in their life. And so Alan and Sonny had a really hard life. And what they said was, you know, before we got saved, we came to God to experience peace. And after we got saved, we've been praying about these situations in our life. We've been hoping for them. We've been lifting them up for God. We've been trying to do the right things. But man, I got to tell you, those situations aren't really getting much better. And some of them are getting worse. And we just need to know, did we do it wrong? Like, are we actually saved? Did we not pray the prayer right? Is there something that I need to believe that I don't believe? Is there some sin that I don't know about that I need to figure out? Because this isn't really working the way that we thought it would work. Do you hear the lie there? Somewhere along the way, they became convinced that to follow Jesus meant that there was going to be a relief from the trials in their life, that they were going to be what we would call blessed, and that those things would begin to go away because now I'm following Jesus, and now I'm following the rules, and God is going to do these things for me. He's going to make these situations better. And I had to sit them down and be like, guys, no one promised that to you. You didn't do it right. You did it wrong. You did it exactly right. The problem is your expectations of God because he doesn't promise Christians that we won't experience trials. In fact, in the New Testament, do you know what we're promised? We're promised suffering and persecution. So buckle up, pal. That's what we're promised. It's going to be hard, and you're going to have to endure. But in the midst of that, and I can go through character after character in the Bible, Christian after Christian throughout history, that with loving God with all their heart and suffering mightily. Because God doesn't promise us a relief to our circumstances. He doesn't promise us health or wealth or status or control or any of those things. What he promises us is his presence, that he will be with us, that he will walk through our trials with us, that we never have to experience those alone, that our life is never hopeless, that our life is never lonely, because God is an ever-present force that is there with us, loving us and affirming us. And now, as you go through trials, it's not that you don't have to go through them, it's that you have the peace of Christ as you do, and you have the hope of heaven, so that Paul can say that even though we endure suffering for what he calls a little while on this earth, we look forward to a new day where there is no suffering. That's the promise of faith and of Christianity. But when we let people believe that that promise comes now and that prosperity comes now, then after we get saved, we begin to look around and go, did I do this wrong? And eventually we either feel like we messed it up or our God is letting us down, but either way, I don't want anything to do with this faith. And it shipwrecks our faith. When we follow God for control, for a sense of control and sense of our universe, and then things happen that feel like they are out of our control, we feel like either we've done it wrong or God is weak. When we follow God for status, when we eventually get the status that we want, when we fake it enough so that everyone around us believes that we're this Christian that we try to pretend to be, then what we realize is we're living our life in a prison of expectations and hypocrisy that we can't get out of until we allow our entire identity to crumble because it was never authentic to begin with. When we follow Jesus for the wrong reasons, it wrecks our faith. So that begs the question that hopefully you're asking and that they asked. Okay, what are the right reasons? What's the right reason to follow Jesus? And this is what they ask in verse 28. They said to him, what must we do to be doing the works of God? Okay, what's the right reason? What do we have to do to work for the eternal things, not the temporary? What do we have to do? And Jesus' answer is great. Jesus answered them, this is the work of God that you believe in him who he has sent. Do you remember back, those of you who were here to the first week of the series? And we look at the way that John introduces Jesus. In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God. And we said that the fundamental question in life is, was Jesus real? And do you believe that He is who He says He is? It's a fundamental question in life. That question makes all the difference in the world. Do we believe that Jesus was who he says he was? And then they say, what's the right reason to follow you? What's the right motive? How do we labor for the eternal? And Jesus says, trust me that I am who I say I am. Believe that I actually am the one that God sent. You want to know the right reason to follow Jesus? Jesus. You want to know what should properly motivate you to get in those boats and go across the sea and find him? Him. It should literally be that we get in the boats and we cross the sea and we go to Jesus and we go, Jesus, where'd you go? And he goes, you're only here for my bread. And we go, no, I don't care about the bread. I just want you. You're only here for the status and what I do. No, I don't care about the status. Make me low. Make me do something silly. Make me an usher, the least of all church volunteers. Make me do that. And I will still follow you. You're only here for the control. No, let stuff happen. Let the world spin out of control around me. I'm here for you, Jesus. That should be the motive. Jesus is the only reason to follow Jesus. And this isn't just in this passage. It's all throughout the New Testament. If you continue in the book of John, what you see in John chapter 15 is that there's an instruction from Jesus to abide in him, abide in me and I in you, and you will bear much fruit. And we're going to spend some time on this, but there's a relational aspect to that abiding. There's this idea of knowing Jesus, of pursuing him relationally, of being acquainted intimately with our Savior. In John 17, Jesus prays for you. He prays for all people that would hear of the word through the disciples, which is you. And what he prays for you is that you would be one with him as he and the Father are one, that you would know him, that there is a relational aspect to this. Paul, throughout all of his letters, prays for the church over and over again that they would know God. The author of Hebrews says that if we're going to run the race that we're supposed to run, then we need to do it with our eyes focused on the founder of our faith, which is Jesus. All throughout the New Testament, it tells us that God's desire for us is that we would know him, and that the proper motivation to follow him is simply to know Jesus. That's it. That we would pursue him, that we would love him, that we would want more of Jesus in our life, that when we get across the Sea of Galilee and he says, why'd you come over here? I'm not gonna give you more bread. We go, I don't care, I don't need more bread, I just need you. That's why we follow Jesus. And with that in mind, to help you as you assess, because hopefully if you're paying attention, you're sitting here going, okay, well, am I doing it right? Am I following Jesus for the right reasons? What are my motives? How mixed are they? And all of us have mixed motives. I've got like a two-question diagnostic for you so that you can try to suss out in yourself and in your own heart, how are we doing with keeping pure motives as we follow Jesus? Okay, so two sneaky questions that are gonna make you feel terrible about yourself, but they're really good questions. The first one is this. When you pray for yourself and others, for what do you pray? What do you pray for yourself and others? When you pray for yourself, what do you pray for? If you're a person who prays and you get down on your knees and you say, God, I need this, what is it that you pray for? Do you pray that you would close the sale? Do you pray that you would pass the test? Do you pray that you would get the job? Do you pray that you would execute the thing? Do you pray that you would be given the right words in this situation? Do you pray for temporary things? When you pray for people that you love, your kids, your spouse, for your parents, for your friends? What do you pray for them? Do you pray for temporary things? Help them in this situation, heal them of this, rescue them in this, give them wisdom in this. Do you pray for temporary things? Or when you pray for yourself and you pray for others, do you pray that they would simply know God? God, whatever's happening in their life, and this is how Paul prays, whatever's happening in their life, whatever's happening in the church, I pray that it would all conspire to bring them to a knowledge of you. If you look at the prayers in the New Testament, he doesn't pray for circumstances. He doesn't pray for health. He doesn't pray for church growth. All he prays for is that we would know God. So when you pray for other people, do you pray for their circumstances or do you pray that they would know God? Every night we put Lily to bed and every night we try to pray with her. When the elders don't make me meet, then I can be at home with my child. And when I pray for them, when I pray for Lily, Jen and I pray every night, God, help her to know you soon and to love you well. I don't want her to experience a lot of her life without knowing God. Help her to know you soon and love you well. And when I pray for her on my own, I try not to pray for her circumstances. I try not even so much to pray for her health because I know God cares about that. I pray that all the situations, all the things, all the events, all the scarring that I give her will somehow conspire to bring her to a place where she knows God on a level that's more intimate than I've ever known him. When you pray for other people, do you pray for the things that are temporary or do you pray for the eternal, that all the temporary things would conspire that they would know God? That tells us where our motives are in following Jesus. The other one is this. If you're a Christian, one of the things you think about hopefully regularly is heaven. We anticipate heaven. We look forward to heaven. We should be rightly excited about heaven. But I would ask you what most excites you when you think about getting to heaven. That will tell you a lot about why you're following Jesus. Some people are excited to get to heaven because we're curious. I want to see what the pearly gates are. Is that even a thing? Did we make that up? Are there really pearly gates? What do the streets of gold look like? What's the sea of glass? Is St. Peter there greeting me? Or is that only in far sideide cartoons? Like, we want to see these things, right? We're curious about heaven. For many of us, most of us, there's probably a loved one that we can't wait to see. I can't wait to see my Pawpaw again. He's my favorite human that's ever lived. I haven't seen him since I was 19. Pawpaw's never seen me as a pastor. I can't wait to get to heaven and talk to him about it. If I have any gift for teaching or telling a good story, it's from him. He could captivate a room. He's never met Jen. I wish he would have. He hasn't seen Lily. I can't wait to see Papa again. You have your people too. But we ought to be most excited about finally getting to look our Savior in the eyes. What should excite us most about heaven is that we finally get to meet our Heavenly Father and see what He looks like and hear what He sounds like and feel the power of his presence. That should most excite us about heaven. We finally get to look our savior in the eye and we get to hug him and hopefully we get to hear well done, good and faithful servant. That should be the thing that we are most hopeful about with heaven. The rest of the things are good. That's what gives us hope. That's why death has no sting and that hope is good and we should be excited to see our loved ones in heaven one day. We should be excited to explore this place that God created for us, but the thing we should be most excited about is finally getting to see our Jesus and finally getting to meet our God. What would it look like to live a life so devoted to God, so in love with Jesus, that heaven was like the greatest reunion ever? Because we finally got to meet him. That's how we should live our life. People who are excited about that are people who look at Jesus and go, I don't care about your bread. I'm just here for you, man. I hope that you will have the courage to pray and ask God to suss out your motives, to show them to yourself. And then we cannot go about the work of changing our motives on our own. All we can do is offer them up to God and say, God, I know that my motives for following you are impure. I pray that you would purify them. Give me a heart for you. And if you want to pursue this more, I don't do this a lot, but there's a book I would highly recommend to you. It's called With by a guy named Sky Jethani, who's a pastor somewhere in the United States. I forget where. This is, to me, the best book written in the last 10 years. I love it, and I don't really read new books. I think that a book should be in print for like 25 or 30 years before it's worth reading. So I don't really read a lot of new books, but this is a new one that I read, and I love this book. I've never read a book that caused me to stop and put it down and pray and go, God, I'm really sorry for this, more than that book. So if you're a reader, if you're into that kind of thing, I would highly recommend you get this book, and that will help you follow up with making sure that we're following Jesus for the right reasons. For all of us, if you consider yourself a Jesus follower, I hope that you'll have the courage to ask him to purify your motives. And when you do, what you'll find is it works out that all things work out too. Our relationship with Jesus works a little bit like a marriage. In a marriage, there's a bunch of different aspects of a marriage, right? I'm married to Jen, I lucked out, and there's different aspects to our marriage. And we could say, you know what, the most important thing to us is to just be able to have fun together and laugh together. And so we could prioritize that over everything else. And while we're having fun and laughing about everything, we're probably putting some other things off that need some work. And so eventually our marriage is going to get unhealthy. We could prioritize intimacy between one another and say, if we have this, then we'll be healthy, but that will come at the expense of other things. We can prioritize Lily and maybe future kiddos and who knows, but one day everyone's going to be out of the house and we're going to have to look at each other and be like, do we still like each other? Or we could prioritize one another above and beyond everything else in our relationship. And as we grow together, all of those other things will fall into place. If we will prize Jesus above and beyond everything else, all the accoutrements of Christianity, then what we'll find is all those other things, the status and the control and any gain that we might need, Jesus will take care of if we'll just follow him. So let us be a church of people who follow Jesus with a pure heart. Let us be a church of people who get in the boats and follow him across the lake for the right reasons. And let's see what Jesus does with a group of people like that. Let's pray, and then we'll take communion together. Father, we do love you. We do thank you for your son, for sending him for us. God, we thank you that he unites us with you. Lord, I would ask that you would make us courageous. Help us to see the places in our hearts and in our lives and in our walks with you where we are pursuing you for the wrong reasons, for things that really are temporary and not eternal. God, make yourself the prize of our hearts and of our minds and of our lives. Unite us with you. God, I pray that you would work even now to reveal and to begin to purify our motives as we follow you. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. It's good to see you. I missed you last week. People were asking where I was. I was in the mountains of North Georgia taking naps is where I was, and it was a lot of fun. And in my stead, Kyle, our student pastor, gave his first sermon at Grace, and it was a great job. He did phenomenally. But one of the things as I listened back and I heard the story of how the weekend went without me that I was so happy to hear really and truly was that both services, when he got up to give his first sermon ever, you guys cheered for him. Which, first of all, that hurts a little bit. But second, what a cool place. What a great thing that says about us as a church that we're so excited for this guy that we're going to applaud him before he even says anything. There can't be a more supportive place to do ministry than Grace. So it just made me so proud of my church to be a part of this place. I just thought it was really, really great and evident of your heart. The other thing I want to say before I get started, and I never do this, I don't think sermons are times for announcements, but this is such an important announcement to me that I wanted it to go out online on our podcast and on the video and things like that so that people catching up during the week can catch this too. This Friday night, March the 15th, is Grace's big night out, okay? It's two hours at Compass Rose Brewery from 6.30 to 8.30. There's gonna be childcare here for kids five and younger. Everybody else is welcome at Compass Rose. There's games for the kids. There's going to be a food truck. You can bring your own food if you want to. Steve and the band are going to do some live music. It's going to be a super fun time to just hang out, and I really want it to be awesome. So that's up there with my number because we have a graphic that's a square that I can just send to you, and then you can text that out to your friends because we're hoping that you'll invite your friends. This is an easy invite. I think a lot of us have friends that maybe we'd love to see get more involved in church, but maybe they kind of don't want to be involved with church right now. Maybe there's a little stink on it for them or whatever, but maybe if they come hang out with us on Friday and just get to talk and laugh and meet people, they'll realize that we're not a bunch of weirdies, and they'll join us later, okay? So if you want that graphic to use to invite your friends, text me and I'll get it out to you or text one of the elders. They have it too. Okay, but we hope that you'll join us on Friday and that you'll bring some folks. It's going to be a really good time. I hope this is something we get to do repetitively. Okay, this is part five of our series in John. We're going to go through John until the week after Easter. I've been really loving getting to dive into the book of John with you. And if you haven't noticed, we're missing a lot of things. We didn't even do the most famous verse in John, John 3.16. We just skipped right over it because I'm probably a terrible pastor. But there's a reading plan, so hopefully you guys have grabbed that and you're reading along with us again so that you're getting your perspective and your eyes and your mind and your heart on Jesus and not just getting my perspective as we move through the Gospel of John. This week we arrive at what is probably the most famous or one of the most famous miracles in the Bible. It's in all four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and it's one that all of you have heard of. Even if you're here and you're not a believer, this is your first time in church in a long time or ever, I bet you've heard of this miracle, the feeding of the 5,000, right? We know this miracle. And really, that's an erroneous title because Scripture tells us that there was 5,000 men, which means there were women and children in addition to those 5,000. We don't know how many. You can do the math on your own. I'm not going to chance a guest on stage as a pastor and be eternally responsible for that. So I'll let you make irresponsible guesses in your head. But there was more than 5,000 people there. And what's going on when this happens is ancient Israel in the time of Christ was what we would really think of as a third world country. And Jesus is up in northern Israel around the Sea of Galilee. Jerusalem was in southern Israel and northern Israel is really at this point like the countryside. It's rural Israel. So in the sticks of a country that is poor, Jesus is going through his day. He's going through his ministry there. And there are thousands of people following him. Again, we don't know exactly how many, but there are thousands of people following Jesus. In the beginning of John chapter 6, if you have a Bible, you can turn there. The beginning of John chapter 6 tells us that they were following him. The throngs were following Jesus because of the miraculous things that he was doing, because he was casting demons out of people, because he was healing folks, and they wanted to go see. Either they had something that they needed Jesus to take care of, or they just wanted to see this person that many people were beginning to call the Messiah. And so thousands of people had flocked to Jesus. And it says that Jesus looked on the crowds with compassion. He was moved by them and for them. Because here are 5,000 men in the middle of the day with their families, in a culture and in a time where these people woke up and they genuinely did not know where their next meal was coming from. They were very poor, more poor than any of us can imagine. And so Jesus is moved with compassion at the crowds of people and he decides that he's going to feed them. And so there's a young boy walking by who's got five small fish and three loaves of bread and he gets the disciples to ask for the meal from the boy and Jesus starts to break the bread and the fish and he starts to put it in these baskets. And the disciples carry the baskets to the different groups of people and they hand it out to whoever needs. It was an ancient all-you-can-eat buffet. It's like the first version of the Golden Corral. And they're just going around handing things out to people. Until at the end, there was baskets left over. Jesus just kept making fish and bread until everyone had what they needed, right? And then at the end of that, the people did this thing that everybody was trying to do to Jesus his whole life. We don't really think about this or notice this, but it's a drum I'm trying to beat as we go through the gospel of John. They clamored to him to make him king. They wanted to take him down south to Jerusalem and put him on the throne. They wanted to form a revolution around Jesus because the prophecies in ancient Israel, the prophecies in the Old Testament say that when the Messiah arrives, he will be the king of kings and the lord of lords and the prince of peace, and that he will sit on the throne of David and that he will rule forever. And now we know, with the benefit of hindsight, that Jesus did not come to establish a physical earthly kingdom. We know that he came to establish an eternal heavenly kingdom. But they didn't know that. They thought that he came to literally establish a kingdom that he was going to, at the time, overthrow Roman rule, rise Israel up to prominence, that they were going to be the world superpower, and Jesus was going to be the king, and they were going to be his followers. And so they said, this is the guy, look what he's doing. And they clamored to him to go make him king. And Jesus, knowing that wasn't the point, knowing that it wasn't yet time to put the wheels in motion of his crucifixion, fades away and goes into the mountains. And we see Jesus do this a lot in his ministry. There's a big event, a big thing that he does, something that exhausts him, and then he goes and he fades away and he goes to pray and spend some time with the Father to get away from the crowds. It makes me wonder on a human level if Jesus wasn't an introvert who just needed a little bit of a break after he dealt with everybody. But another thing you'll notice about Jesus, if you'll read through the Gospels on your own, is he had this unfailing patience with people. Can you imagine what it would be to be Jesus, to feed 5,000 people and then still have people like, hey, can you do this? Can you do this? Can you do this? And you're like, did you see the miracle I did? Can a dude not take a nap? Like, how tired did he have to be? How stressed did he have to be? How fatigued did he have to be? Yet he continued to unfailingly love people. Over and over again, he offers them grace through the Gospels. And that's one of, to me, that's one of the pieces of Jesus that we see when we pay attention. It's just his unfailing love for others. So he goes up to the mountainside to pray, and he tells the disciples, y'all go ahead and go across the Sea of Galilee to a city called Capernaum and I'll meet you there, okay? I'm gonna come out there too. Y'all go ahead and go across. So the disciples, the 12 of them, get on a boat and they begin to go across the Sea of Galilee, which wasn't really a sea, it's a lake, but you can't see across it, so it's called the Sea of Galilee. I don't know why that's the policy, but that's what it is. And so they're going across. And in the middle of the night, Jesus walks on water where we have this other really famous miracle. And the other gospels record it and give us a little bit more detail about it and the interaction with Peter. And he was like a ghost. And at first they were afraid. But John in his old age, as he's writing his gospel, he doesn't do that. It's just a couple of verses. He's just like, we were going across the water and then we looked and Jesus was walking. And then he got in boat with us, and then we were there. It's like John was like, it was just, you know, just Jesus stuff. It was just classic Jesus, you know, just walking across the water and getting in the boat, and then they're there, right? So the next morning, the people, the crowds, wake up. They had camped out wherever they were going to camp out there on the hillside. They wake up, and they look around, and they don't see Jesus. And then they notice that there's a boat gone and none of his disciples are there. So they put two and two together and it says they go across the water. And I don't think that all the, however many thousands of people there were there, all got in their boats at once and went across the Sea of Galilee like some Greek fleet assaulting Troy. Like I don't think it was all of them. I think it was probably a portion of them. So a portion of them get in the boats and they follow Jesus across the water. And it makes me wonder, for us, who here thinks that if they were in those crowds, that they would have been one of the ones to get in the boat and cross the water? Who here would call yourself a follower of Jesus? My guess is, because you're church people, and you know the right answer is, oh, I'd definitely get in the boat, then that's probably your answer. There might be some, a few, who are here just kind of checking things out with the bravery to be like, I don't know if I'm getting in the boat yet. And I really applaud the intellectual honesty of that answer. But most of us are probably going to say that we're in the boat. I'm going to get in the boat and I'm going to go across. I'm going to follow Jesus. I'm not going to let him get away. And so that's what they do. They get in the boat and they go across and they were Jesus followers. They follow him across the Sea of Galilee. And then they go and they find him and they ask him, what are you doing? Where'd you go? Look, this is what it says in the text. John chapter 6, verse 25, it says, When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, Rabbi, when did you come here? They said, Jesus, what are you doing? Where did you go? Like, we're trying to keep up with you. We're trying to follow you. Where did you go? What's the deal? Why are you disappearing? And Jesus' response to me is searingly convicting. And it stands as a conviction not only to those people then, but to us now and all Jesus followers throughout all time. Anybody who would ever consider themselves a follower of Jesus, his response to me is incredibly convicting. He says this, Jesus answered them when they said, where'd you go? What are you doing? We're trying to follow you and you're hiding from us. Where are you? Jesus says this, truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the son of man will give you. For on morning they wake up. Jesus isn't around. They follow him. They track him down. They go to him and they go, Rabbi, which means teacher, which means we're acknowledging you as an authority. Where'd you go? We're trying to follow you. You're running away from us. We're trying to keep up. We want to follow you, Jesus. Why'd you do that? And Jesus looks at a poor and downtrodden people who, listen to me, they need bread, okay? They need the physical bread that he provided. They're not like us. Any of us in this room can go to any restaurant we want to right after church. You can get the meat sweats within the next two hours. We all have the means to do this, okay? I ate out two times yesterday because I'm fabulously wealthy. We can all do this, right? We don't know what it is to be hungry, none of us. They knew. They knew what hunger was. And Jesus knew that they were hungry. And they are the exact type of people that we would look at our Jesus and expect them to do something about feeding them. Expect him to be moved with compassion and give them more bread because that's what they need. But instead of doing that, instead of giving them what they really do genuinely need, he looks at him and he says, you're only here because I gave you bread. You followed me across the water for the wrong reasons. You shouldn't labor for the things that are temporary. You should labor for the things that are eternal. That's quite the statement by Jesus. You're following me for the wrong reasons. Your motives are impure. And it makes me wonder, if you are somebody who would say that you would get in the boat and you would follow Jesus across the water, yes, I am a Jesus follower. I want to be where he is. When Jesus says this, that you're following me for the wrong reasons, it makes me wonder, what are the reasons that you are following Jesus? Are we following Jesus for the right reasons? Or is it possible that our motives are mixed? As I thought about it for me, and I thought about it for the people that I've known through the years, I think that it's entirely possible that we get some mixed motives for following our Savior. I think it's one thing to come to Him for certain reasons, but our relationship with Him cannot exist motivated by those same things. And I think that as I thought about it, I think a lot of the reasons that we sometimes follow Jesus that maybe are for the wrong reasons can be summed up in this way, that often we follow Jesus for control or for status or for gain. I think it's entirely possible, church people, that we have followed Jesus in our life for some sense of control, for some sense of status, or in hopes of some sort of gain. Here's what I mean. Sometimes we go to Jesus because the world seems just completely out of sorts. These things are happening that we cannot control, that we do not understand, and to be able to see them through a framework of God's sovereignty brings a sense of peace and understanding to us that makes us feel comfortable. And so it's how we process the world because we're trying to bring a sense of control to the uncontrollable in a more pernicious way. I think that we have what I think of as a proverbial faith. In the book of Proverbs, it was a book of wisdom written by Solomon. It basically is summed up by saying, if you do things like this, then you are wise and things will go well for you. And if you do things like this, then you are foolish and things will not go well for you. And so sometimes we approach the Bible as this self-help book that says, if I do these kinds of things, even if I don't fully believe, then life is going to go better for me. And it's a way that we try to exert control over the uncontrollable. Do you see? The problem with this is the book of Job exists as a contrast to Proverbs that tells us even when we're doing all the right things, sometimes it's still going to go bad. But when we follow Jesus for control, it's that kind of proverbial faith where we try to, by following all the rules and doing all the right things, bring about outcomes in our life that are uncontrollable, that are favorable, right? Or sometimes we follow Jesus for status. Listen to me, church people. We are guilty of this. I, this is not hyperbole, more than anyone. Those of you who have been in church for a while, for any number of years, has there ever been a season of your life where you followed Jesus, where you've put on the mask of Christianity, where you've played the game of faith because of the status that it brought you? Just me? Has anyone ever studied harder for a Bible study and done the work in a Bible study because when you got there, you wanted to have the best answers, not because you were really interested in the content? Have any of you ever been guilty when you're asked to pray in front of other people of suddenly using a different voice with a different vocabulary? Because these and nows and saying God over and over again is somehow holy? Oh God, if you would just have mercy on us, God, in your favor, God, I just lift this person up to you, God. Don't talk like that. When we hear ourselves starting to pray like that, that's Christianity for status. That's Christianity because of what it gives us in the community, because it offers us opportunities of respect in the church, because when we act that way and we live out this faith, sometimes people will ask us to do things that are honorable requests. Have you ever walked through a season of life where your faith was more about the status that it brought you than it was about Jesus? Where your main reason for not walking away from the faith is a relational fallout that it would cost you? That's faith for status. Or we follow Jesus for gain. This is what's commonly referred to as a health and wealth gospel. It is a gospel or the prosperity gospel. I hate it. It's a lie from Satan and it's evil. And what it tells us is if we go to Jesus, that Jesus wants to bless us. He wants us to have this incredible life. He wants us to be happy now in the material. And so he will make you healthy and he will make you wealthy. And if you don't have health and if you don't have wealth and you just don't have strong enough faith and you need to have better faith. And there are whole churches built on this model, on the promise that if you really are living Christianity out the right way, then you will be blessed and you will be healthy and you will be wealthy. And I don't know if you ever paid attention to it, but churches that teach this model don't tend to be filled with wealthy people because it preys on the poor and on the unhealthy and promises them things that are not true. And Jesus knows that these reasons, these temporary reasons for following him, whether they be control or gain or status, are not the right reasons and that eventually they will wreck our faith. That's why he gives the warning there. Don't labor for the temporary, labor for the eternal because when we follow Jesus for the wrong reasons, eventually it wrecks our faith. Eventually it shipwrecks the faith that we have. I'll tell you how I know this is true. Several years ago, I had a meeting with a couple at my old church named Alan and Sonny. I love Alan and Sonny. They went on after this meeting that I had with them, not because of me, because of the Holy Spirit work in them. I didn't tell them anything useful, I don't think. But they went on, they became small group leaders. They were wonderful in the church. They launched other small group leaders. They're still there leading people to faith. They're just phenomenal warriors for God. But I got an email one day, and it was from them, and they said, hey, you know, we've been coming to the church for a little bit. We accepted Christ as our Savior about four months ago, and there's just some stuff happening in our life. We just have some questions. We'd like to talk to a pastor. I said, all right, sure. You get to talk to 29-year-old Nate. Congratulations. I'm going to answer all the questions for you. And so I meet with them. And they said, hey, you know, they started telling me about their life. And they had had a hard life. He was a handyman. She helped them out. They were workaday people. They were really, really great and wonderful folks. But it was their second marriage. They both had adult children and grandchildren, and then they had their own children together. And they had all the craziness that that brings about, plus a life that was lived before that without faith and the remnants of that that are going on in their life. And so Alan and Sonny had a really hard life. And what they said was, you know, before we got saved, we came to God to experience peace. And after we got saved, we've been praying about these situations in our life. We've been hoping for them. We've been lifting them up for God. We've been trying to do the right things. But man, I got to tell you, those situations aren't really getting much better. And some of them are getting worse. And we just need to know, did we do it wrong? Like, are we actually saved? Did we not pray the prayer right? Is there something that I need to believe that I don't believe? Is there some sin that I don't know about that I need to figure out? Because this isn't really working the way that we thought it would work. Do you hear the lie there? Somewhere along the way, they became convinced that to follow Jesus meant that there was going to be a relief from the trials in their life, that they were going to be what we would call blessed, and that those things would begin to go away because now I'm following Jesus, and now I'm following the rules, and God is going to do these things for me. He's going to make these situations better. And I had to sit them down and be like, guys, no one promised that to you. You didn't do it right. You did it wrong. You did it exactly right. The problem is your expectations of God because he doesn't promise Christians that we won't experience trials. In fact, in the New Testament, do you know what we're promised? We're promised suffering and persecution. So buckle up, pal. That's what we're promised. It's going to be hard, and you're going to have to endure. But in the midst of that, and I can go through character after character in the Bible, Christian after Christian throughout history, that with loving God with all their heart and suffering mightily. Because God doesn't promise us a relief to our circumstances. He doesn't promise us health or wealth or status or control or any of those things. What he promises us is his presence, that he will be with us, that he will walk through our trials with us, that we never have to experience those alone, that our life is never hopeless, that our life is never lonely, because God is an ever-present force that is there with us, loving us and affirming us. And now, as you go through trials, it's not that you don't have to go through them, it's that you have the peace of Christ as you do, and you have the hope of heaven, so that Paul can say that even though we endure suffering for what he calls a little while on this earth, we look forward to a new day where there is no suffering. That's the promise of faith and of Christianity. But when we let people believe that that promise comes now and that prosperity comes now, then after we get saved, we begin to look around and go, did I do this wrong? And eventually we either feel like we messed it up or our God is letting us down, but either way, I don't want anything to do with this faith. And it shipwrecks our faith. When we follow God for control, for a sense of control and sense of our universe, and then things happen that feel like they are out of our control, we feel like either we've done it wrong or God is weak. When we follow God for status, when we eventually get the status that we want, when we fake it enough so that everyone around us believes that we're this Christian that we try to pretend to be, then what we realize is we're living our life in a prison of expectations and hypocrisy that we can't get out of until we allow our entire identity to crumble because it was never authentic to begin with. When we follow Jesus for the wrong reasons, it wrecks our faith. So that begs the question that hopefully you're asking and that they asked. Okay, what are the right reasons? What's the right reason to follow Jesus? And this is what they ask in verse 28. They said to him, what must we do to be doing the works of God? Okay, what's the right reason? What do we have to do to work for the eternal things, not the temporary? What do we have to do? And Jesus' answer is great. Jesus answered them, this is the work of God that you believe in him who he has sent. Do you remember back, those of you who were here to the first week of the series? And we look at the way that John introduces Jesus. In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God. And we said that the fundamental question in life is, was Jesus real? And do you believe that He is who He says He is? It's a fundamental question in life. That question makes all the difference in the world. Do we believe that Jesus was who he says he was? And then they say, what's the right reason to follow you? What's the right motive? How do we labor for the eternal? And Jesus says, trust me that I am who I say I am. Believe that I actually am the one that God sent. You want to know the right reason to follow Jesus? Jesus. You want to know what should properly motivate you to get in those boats and go across the sea and find him? Him. It should literally be that we get in the boats and we cross the sea and we go to Jesus and we go, Jesus, where'd you go? And he goes, you're only here for my bread. And we go, no, I don't care about the bread. I just want you. You're only here for the status and what I do. No, I don't care about the status. Make me low. Make me do something silly. Make me an usher, the least of all church volunteers. Make me do that. And I will still follow you. You're only here for the control. No, let stuff happen. Let the world spin out of control around me. I'm here for you, Jesus. That should be the motive. Jesus is the only reason to follow Jesus. And this isn't just in this passage. It's all throughout the New Testament. If you continue in the book of John, what you see in John chapter 15 is that there's an instruction from Jesus to abide in him, abide in me and I in you, and you will bear much fruit. And we're going to spend some time on this, but there's a relational aspect to that abiding. There's this idea of knowing Jesus, of pursuing him relationally, of being acquainted intimately with our Savior. In John 17, Jesus prays for you. He prays for all people that would hear of the word through the disciples, which is you. And what he prays for you is that you would be one with him as he and the Father are one, that you would know him, that there is a relational aspect to this. Paul, throughout all of his letters, prays for the church over and over again that they would know God. The author of Hebrews says that if we're going to run the race that we're supposed to run, then we need to do it with our eyes focused on the founder of our faith, which is Jesus. All throughout the New Testament, it tells us that God's desire for us is that we would know him, and that the proper motivation to follow him is simply to know Jesus. That's it. That we would pursue him, that we would love him, that we would want more of Jesus in our life, that when we get across the Sea of Galilee and he says, why'd you come over here? I'm not gonna give you more bread. We go, I don't care, I don't need more bread, I just need you. That's why we follow Jesus. And with that in mind, to help you as you assess, because hopefully if you're paying attention, you're sitting here going, okay, well, am I doing it right? Am I following Jesus for the right reasons? What are my motives? How mixed are they? And all of us have mixed motives. I've got like a two-question diagnostic for you so that you can try to suss out in yourself and in your own heart, how are we doing with keeping pure motives as we follow Jesus? Okay, so two sneaky questions that are gonna make you feel terrible about yourself, but they're really good questions. The first one is this. When you pray for yourself and others, for what do you pray? What do you pray for yourself and others? When you pray for yourself, what do you pray for? If you're a person who prays and you get down on your knees and you say, God, I need this, what is it that you pray for? Do you pray that you would close the sale? Do you pray that you would pass the test? Do you pray that you would get the job? Do you pray that you would execute the thing? Do you pray that you would be given the right words in this situation? Do you pray for temporary things? When you pray for people that you love, your kids, your spouse, for your parents, for your friends? What do you pray for them? Do you pray for temporary things? Help them in this situation, heal them of this, rescue them in this, give them wisdom in this. Do you pray for temporary things? Or when you pray for yourself and you pray for others, do you pray that they would simply know God? God, whatever's happening in their life, and this is how Paul prays, whatever's happening in their life, whatever's happening in the church, I pray that it would all conspire to bring them to a knowledge of you. If you look at the prayers in the New Testament, he doesn't pray for circumstances. He doesn't pray for health. He doesn't pray for church growth. All he prays for is that we would know God. So when you pray for other people, do you pray for their circumstances or do you pray that they would know God? Every night we put Lily to bed and every night we try to pray with her. When the elders don't make me meet, then I can be at home with my child. And when I pray for them, when I pray for Lily, Jen and I pray every night, God, help her to know you soon and to love you well. I don't want her to experience a lot of her life without knowing God. Help her to know you soon and love you well. And when I pray for her on my own, I try not to pray for her circumstances. I try not even so much to pray for her health because I know God cares about that. I pray that all the situations, all the things, all the events, all the scarring that I give her will somehow conspire to bring her to a place where she knows God on a level that's more intimate than I've ever known him. When you pray for other people, do you pray for the things that are temporary or do you pray for the eternal, that all the temporary things would conspire that they would know God? That tells us where our motives are in following Jesus. The other one is this. If you're a Christian, one of the things you think about hopefully regularly is heaven. We anticipate heaven. We look forward to heaven. We should be rightly excited about heaven. But I would ask you what most excites you when you think about getting to heaven. That will tell you a lot about why you're following Jesus. Some people are excited to get to heaven because we're curious. I want to see what the pearly gates are. Is that even a thing? Did we make that up? Are there really pearly gates? What do the streets of gold look like? What's the sea of glass? Is St. Peter there greeting me? Or is that only in far sideide cartoons? Like, we want to see these things, right? We're curious about heaven. For many of us, most of us, there's probably a loved one that we can't wait to see. I can't wait to see my Pawpaw again. He's my favorite human that's ever lived. I haven't seen him since I was 19. Pawpaw's never seen me as a pastor. I can't wait to get to heaven and talk to him about it. If I have any gift for teaching or telling a good story, it's from him. He could captivate a room. He's never met Jen. I wish he would have. He hasn't seen Lily. I can't wait to see Papa again. You have your people too. But we ought to be most excited about finally getting to look our Savior in the eyes. What should excite us most about heaven is that we finally get to meet our Heavenly Father and see what He looks like and hear what He sounds like and feel the power of his presence. That should most excite us about heaven. We finally get to look our savior in the eye and we get to hug him and hopefully we get to hear well done, good and faithful servant. That should be the thing that we are most hopeful about with heaven. The rest of the things are good. That's what gives us hope. That's why death has no sting and that hope is good and we should be excited to see our loved ones in heaven one day. We should be excited to explore this place that God created for us, but the thing we should be most excited about is finally getting to see our Jesus and finally getting to meet our God. What would it look like to live a life so devoted to God, so in love with Jesus, that heaven was like the greatest reunion ever? Because we finally got to meet him. That's how we should live our life. People who are excited about that are people who look at Jesus and go, I don't care about your bread. I'm just here for you, man. I hope that you will have the courage to pray and ask God to suss out your motives, to show them to yourself. And then we cannot go about the work of changing our motives on our own. All we can do is offer them up to God and say, God, I know that my motives for following you are impure. I pray that you would purify them. Give me a heart for you. And if you want to pursue this more, I don't do this a lot, but there's a book I would highly recommend to you. It's called With by a guy named Sky Jethani, who's a pastor somewhere in the United States. I forget where. This is, to me, the best book written in the last 10 years. I love it, and I don't really read new books. I think that a book should be in print for like 25 or 30 years before it's worth reading. So I don't really read a lot of new books, but this is a new one that I read, and I love this book. I've never read a book that caused me to stop and put it down and pray and go, God, I'm really sorry for this, more than that book. So if you're a reader, if you're into that kind of thing, I would highly recommend you get this book, and that will help you follow up with making sure that we're following Jesus for the right reasons. For all of us, if you consider yourself a Jesus follower, I hope that you'll have the courage to ask him to purify your motives. And when you do, what you'll find is it works out that all things work out too. Our relationship with Jesus works a little bit like a marriage. In a marriage, there's a bunch of different aspects of a marriage, right? I'm married to Jen, I lucked out, and there's different aspects to our marriage. And we could say, you know what, the most important thing to us is to just be able to have fun together and laugh together. And so we could prioritize that over everything else. And while we're having fun and laughing about everything, we're probably putting some other things off that need some work. And so eventually our marriage is going to get unhealthy. We could prioritize intimacy between one another and say, if we have this, then we'll be healthy, but that will come at the expense of other things. We can prioritize Lily and maybe future kiddos and who knows, but one day everyone's going to be out of the house and we're going to have to look at each other and be like, do we still like each other? Or we could prioritize one another above and beyond everything else in our relationship. And as we grow together, all of those other things will fall into place. If we will prize Jesus above and beyond everything else, all the accoutrements of Christianity, then what we'll find is all those other things, the status and the control and any gain that we might need, Jesus will take care of if we'll just follow him. So let us be a church of people who follow Jesus with a pure heart. Let us be a church of people who get in the boats and follow him across the lake for the right reasons. And let's see what Jesus does with a group of people like that. Let's pray, and then we'll take communion together. Father, we do love you. We do thank you for your son, for sending him for us. God, we thank you that he unites us with you. Lord, I would ask that you would make us courageous. Help us to see the places in our hearts and in our lives and in our walks with you where we are pursuing you for the wrong reasons, for things that really are temporary and not eternal. God, make yourself the prize of our hearts and of our minds and of our lives. Unite us with you. God, I pray that you would work even now to reveal and to begin to purify our motives as we follow you. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. It's good to see you. I missed you last week. People were asking where I was. I was in the mountains of North Georgia taking naps is where I was, and it was a lot of fun. And in my stead, Kyle, our student pastor, gave his first sermon at Grace, and it was a great job. He did phenomenally. But one of the things as I listened back and I heard the story of how the weekend went without me that I was so happy to hear really and truly was that both services, when he got up to give his first sermon ever, you guys cheered for him. Which, first of all, that hurts a little bit. But second, what a cool place. What a great thing that says about us as a church that we're so excited for this guy that we're going to applaud him before he even says anything. There can't be a more supportive place to do ministry than Grace. So it just made me so proud of my church to be a part of this place. I just thought it was really, really great and evident of your heart. The other thing I want to say before I get started, and I never do this, I don't think sermons are times for announcements, but this is such an important announcement to me that I wanted it to go out online on our podcast and on the video and things like that so that people catching up during the week can catch this too. This Friday night, March the 15th, is Grace's big night out, okay? It's two hours at Compass Rose Brewery from 6.30 to 8.30. There's gonna be childcare here for kids five and younger. Everybody else is welcome at Compass Rose. There's games for the kids. There's going to be a food truck. You can bring your own food if you want to. Steve and the band are going to do some live music. It's going to be a super fun time to just hang out, and I really want it to be awesome. So that's up there with my number because we have a graphic that's a square that I can just send to you, and then you can text that out to your friends because we're hoping that you'll invite your friends. This is an easy invite. I think a lot of us have friends that maybe we'd love to see get more involved in church, but maybe they kind of don't want to be involved with church right now. Maybe there's a little stink on it for them or whatever, but maybe if they come hang out with us on Friday and just get to talk and laugh and meet people, they'll realize that we're not a bunch of weirdies, and they'll join us later, okay? So if you want that graphic to use to invite your friends, text me and I'll get it out to you or text one of the elders. They have it too. Okay, but we hope that you'll join us on Friday and that you'll bring some folks. It's going to be a really good time. I hope this is something we get to do repetitively. Okay, this is part five of our series in John. We're going to go through John until the week after Easter. I've been really loving getting to dive into the book of John with you. And if you haven't noticed, we're missing a lot of things. We didn't even do the most famous verse in John, John 3.16. We just skipped right over it because I'm probably a terrible pastor. But there's a reading plan, so hopefully you guys have grabbed that and you're reading along with us again so that you're getting your perspective and your eyes and your mind and your heart on Jesus and not just getting my perspective as we move through the Gospel of John. This week we arrive at what is probably the most famous or one of the most famous miracles in the Bible. It's in all four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and it's one that all of you have heard of. Even if you're here and you're not a believer, this is your first time in church in a long time or ever, I bet you've heard of this miracle, the feeding of the 5,000, right? We know this miracle. And really, that's an erroneous title because Scripture tells us that there was 5,000 men, which means there were women and children in addition to those 5,000. We don't know how many. You can do the math on your own. I'm not going to chance a guest on stage as a pastor and be eternally responsible for that. So I'll let you make irresponsible guesses in your head. But there was more than 5,000 people there. And what's going on when this happens is ancient Israel in the time of Christ was what we would really think of as a third world country. And Jesus is up in northern Israel around the Sea of Galilee. Jerusalem was in southern Israel and northern Israel is really at this point like the countryside. It's rural Israel. So in the sticks of a country that is poor, Jesus is going through his day. He's going through his ministry there. And there are thousands of people following him. Again, we don't know exactly how many, but there are thousands of people following Jesus. In the beginning of John chapter 6, if you have a Bible, you can turn there. The beginning of John chapter 6 tells us that they were following him. The throngs were following Jesus because of the miraculous things that he was doing, because he was casting demons out of people, because he was healing folks, and they wanted to go see. Either they had something that they needed Jesus to take care of, or they just wanted to see this person that many people were beginning to call the Messiah. And so thousands of people had flocked to Jesus. And it says that Jesus looked on the crowds with compassion. He was moved by them and for them. Because here are 5,000 men in the middle of the day with their families, in a culture and in a time where these people woke up and they genuinely did not know where their next meal was coming from. They were very poor, more poor than any of us can imagine. And so Jesus is moved with compassion at the crowds of people and he decides that he's going to feed them. And so there's a young boy walking by who's got five small fish and three loaves of bread and he gets the disciples to ask for the meal from the boy and Jesus starts to break the bread and the fish and he starts to put it in these baskets. And the disciples carry the baskets to the different groups of people and they hand it out to whoever needs. It was an ancient all-you-can-eat buffet. It's like the first version of the Golden Corral. And they're just going around handing things out to people. Until at the end, there was baskets left over. Jesus just kept making fish and bread until everyone had what they needed, right? And then at the end of that, the people did this thing that everybody was trying to do to Jesus his whole life. We don't really think about this or notice this, but it's a drum I'm trying to beat as we go through the gospel of John. They clamored to him to make him king. They wanted to take him down south to Jerusalem and put him on the throne. They wanted to form a revolution around Jesus because the prophecies in ancient Israel, the prophecies in the Old Testament say that when the Messiah arrives, he will be the king of kings and the lord of lords and the prince of peace, and that he will sit on the throne of David and that he will rule forever. And now we know, with the benefit of hindsight, that Jesus did not come to establish a physical earthly kingdom. We know that he came to establish an eternal heavenly kingdom. But they didn't know that. They thought that he came to literally establish a kingdom that he was going to, at the time, overthrow Roman rule, rise Israel up to prominence, that they were going to be the world superpower, and Jesus was going to be the king, and they were going to be his followers. And so they said, this is the guy, look what he's doing. And they clamored to him to go make him king. And Jesus, knowing that wasn't the point, knowing that it wasn't yet time to put the wheels in motion of his crucifixion, fades away and goes into the mountains. And we see Jesus do this a lot in his ministry. There's a big event, a big thing that he does, something that exhausts him, and then he goes and he fades away and he goes to pray and spend some time with the Father to get away from the crowds. It makes me wonder on a human level if Jesus wasn't an introvert who just needed a little bit of a break after he dealt with everybody. But another thing you'll notice about Jesus, if you'll read through the Gospels on your own, is he had this unfailing patience with people. Can you imagine what it would be to be Jesus, to feed 5,000 people and then still have people like, hey, can you do this? Can you do this? Can you do this? And you're like, did you see the miracle I did? Can a dude not take a nap? Like, how tired did he have to be? How stressed did he have to be? How fatigued did he have to be? Yet he continued to unfailingly love people. Over and over again, he offers them grace through the Gospels. And that's one of, to me, that's one of the pieces of Jesus that we see when we pay attention. It's just his unfailing love for others. So he goes up to the mountainside to pray, and he tells the disciples, y'all go ahead and go across the Sea of Galilee to a city called Capernaum and I'll meet you there, okay? I'm gonna come out there too. Y'all go ahead and go across. So the disciples, the 12 of them, get on a boat and they begin to go across the Sea of Galilee, which wasn't really a sea, it's a lake, but you can't see across it, so it's called the Sea of Galilee. I don't know why that's the policy, but that's what it is. And so they're going across. And in the middle of the night, Jesus walks on water where we have this other really famous miracle. And the other gospels record it and give us a little bit more detail about it and the interaction with Peter. And he was like a ghost. And at first they were afraid. But John in his old age, as he's writing his gospel, he doesn't do that. It's just a couple of verses. He's just like, we were going across the water and then we looked and Jesus was walking. And then he got in boat with us, and then we were there. It's like John was like, it was just, you know, just Jesus stuff. It was just classic Jesus, you know, just walking across the water and getting in the boat, and then they're there, right? So the next morning, the people, the crowds, wake up. They had camped out wherever they were going to camp out there on the hillside. They wake up, and they look around, and they don't see Jesus. And then they notice that there's a boat gone and none of his disciples are there. So they put two and two together and it says they go across the water. And I don't think that all the, however many thousands of people there were there, all got in their boats at once and went across the Sea of Galilee like some Greek fleet assaulting Troy. Like I don't think it was all of them. I think it was probably a portion of them. So a portion of them get in the boats and they follow Jesus across the water. And it makes me wonder, for us, who here thinks that if they were in those crowds, that they would have been one of the ones to get in the boat and cross the water? Who here would call yourself a follower of Jesus? My guess is, because you're church people, and you know the right answer is, oh, I'd definitely get in the boat, then that's probably your answer. There might be some, a few, who are here just kind of checking things out with the bravery to be like, I don't know if I'm getting in the boat yet. And I really applaud the intellectual honesty of that answer. But most of us are probably going to say that we're in the boat. I'm going to get in the boat and I'm going to go across. I'm going to follow Jesus. I'm not going to let him get away. And so that's what they do. They get in the boat and they go across and they were Jesus followers. They follow him across the Sea of Galilee. And then they go and they find him and they ask him, what are you doing? Where'd you go? Look, this is what it says in the text. John chapter 6, verse 25, it says, When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, Rabbi, when did you come here? They said, Jesus, what are you doing? Where did you go? Like, we're trying to keep up with you. We're trying to follow you. Where did you go? What's the deal? Why are you disappearing? And Jesus' response to me is searingly convicting. And it stands as a conviction not only to those people then, but to us now and all Jesus followers throughout all time. Anybody who would ever consider themselves a follower of Jesus, his response to me is incredibly convicting. He says this, Jesus answered them when they said, where'd you go? What are you doing? We're trying to follow you and you're hiding from us. Where are you? Jesus says this, truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the son of man will give you. For on morning they wake up. Jesus isn't around. They follow him. They track him down. They go to him and they go, Rabbi, which means teacher, which means we're acknowledging you as an authority. Where'd you go? We're trying to follow you. You're running away from us. We're trying to keep up. We want to follow you, Jesus. Why'd you do that? And Jesus looks at a poor and downtrodden people who, listen to me, they need bread, okay? They need the physical bread that he provided. They're not like us. Any of us in this room can go to any restaurant we want to right after church. You can get the meat sweats within the next two hours. We all have the means to do this, okay? I ate out two times yesterday because I'm fabulously wealthy. We can all do this, right? We don't know what it is to be hungry, none of us. They knew. They knew what hunger was. And Jesus knew that they were hungry. And they are the exact type of people that we would look at our Jesus and expect them to do something about feeding them. Expect him to be moved with compassion and give them more bread because that's what they need. But instead of doing that, instead of giving them what they really do genuinely need, he looks at him and he says, you're only here because I gave you bread. You followed me across the water for the wrong reasons. You shouldn't labor for the things that are temporary. You should labor for the things that are eternal. That's quite the statement by Jesus. You're following me for the wrong reasons. Your motives are impure. And it makes me wonder, if you are somebody who would say that you would get in the boat and you would follow Jesus across the water, yes, I am a Jesus follower. I want to be where he is. When Jesus says this, that you're following me for the wrong reasons, it makes me wonder, what are the reasons that you are following Jesus? Are we following Jesus for the right reasons? Or is it possible that our motives are mixed? As I thought about it for me, and I thought about it for the people that I've known through the years, I think that it's entirely possible that we get some mixed motives for following our Savior. I think it's one thing to come to Him for certain reasons, but our relationship with Him cannot exist motivated by those same things. And I think that as I thought about it, I think a lot of the reasons that we sometimes follow Jesus that maybe are for the wrong reasons can be summed up in this way, that often we follow Jesus for control or for status or for gain. I think it's entirely possible, church people, that we have followed Jesus in our life for some sense of control, for some sense of status, or in hopes of some sort of gain. Here's what I mean. Sometimes we go to Jesus because the world seems just completely out of sorts. These things are happening that we cannot control, that we do not understand, and to be able to see them through a framework of God's sovereignty brings a sense of peace and understanding to us that makes us feel comfortable. And so it's how we process the world because we're trying to bring a sense of control to the uncontrollable in a more pernicious way. I think that we have what I think of as a proverbial faith. In the book of Proverbs, it was a book of wisdom written by Solomon. It basically is summed up by saying, if you do things like this, then you are wise and things will go well for you. And if you do things like this, then you are foolish and things will not go well for you. And so sometimes we approach the Bible as this self-help book that says, if I do these kinds of things, even if I don't fully believe, then life is going to go better for me. And it's a way that we try to exert control over the uncontrollable. Do you see? The problem with this is the book of Job exists as a contrast to Proverbs that tells us even when we're doing all the right things, sometimes it's still going to go bad. But when we follow Jesus for control, it's that kind of proverbial faith where we try to, by following all the rules and doing all the right things, bring about outcomes in our life that are uncontrollable, that are favorable, right? Or sometimes we follow Jesus for status. Listen to me, church people. We are guilty of this. I, this is not hyperbole, more than anyone. Those of you who have been in church for a while, for any number of years, has there ever been a season of your life where you followed Jesus, where you've put on the mask of Christianity, where you've played the game of faith because of the status that it brought you? Just me? Has anyone ever studied harder for a Bible study and done the work in a Bible study because when you got there, you wanted to have the best answers, not because you were really interested in the content? Have any of you ever been guilty when you're asked to pray in front of other people of suddenly using a different voice with a different vocabulary? Because these and nows and saying God over and over again is somehow holy? Oh God, if you would just have mercy on us, God, in your favor, God, I just lift this person up to you, God. Don't talk like that. When we hear ourselves starting to pray like that, that's Christianity for status. That's Christianity because of what it gives us in the community, because it offers us opportunities of respect in the church, because when we act that way and we live out this faith, sometimes people will ask us to do things that are honorable requests. Have you ever walked through a season of life where your faith was more about the status that it brought you than it was about Jesus? Where your main reason for not walking away from the faith is a relational fallout that it would cost you? That's faith for status. Or we follow Jesus for gain. This is what's commonly referred to as a health and wealth gospel. It is a gospel or the prosperity gospel. I hate it. It's a lie from Satan and it's evil. And what it tells us is if we go to Jesus, that Jesus wants to bless us. He wants us to have this incredible life. He wants us to be happy now in the material. And so he will make you healthy and he will make you wealthy. And if you don't have health and if you don't have wealth and you just don't have strong enough faith and you need to have better faith. And there are whole churches built on this model, on the promise that if you really are living Christianity out the right way, then you will be blessed and you will be healthy and you will be wealthy. And I don't know if you ever paid attention to it, but churches that teach this model don't tend to be filled with wealthy people because it preys on the poor and on the unhealthy and promises them things that are not true. And Jesus knows that these reasons, these temporary reasons for following him, whether they be control or gain or status, are not the right reasons and that eventually they will wreck our faith. That's why he gives the warning there. Don't labor for the temporary, labor for the eternal because when we follow Jesus for the wrong reasons, eventually it wrecks our faith. Eventually it shipwrecks the faith that we have. I'll tell you how I know this is true. Several years ago, I had a meeting with a couple at my old church named Alan and Sonny. I love Alan and Sonny. They went on after this meeting that I had with them, not because of me, because of the Holy Spirit work in them. I didn't tell them anything useful, I don't think. But they went on, they became small group leaders. They were wonderful in the church. They launched other small group leaders. They're still there leading people to faith. They're just phenomenal warriors for God. But I got an email one day, and it was from them, and they said, hey, you know, we've been coming to the church for a little bit. We accepted Christ as our Savior about four months ago, and there's just some stuff happening in our life. We just have some questions. We'd like to talk to a pastor. I said, all right, sure. You get to talk to 29-year-old Nate. Congratulations. I'm going to answer all the questions for you. And so I meet with them. And they said, hey, you know, they started telling me about their life. And they had had a hard life. He was a handyman. She helped them out. They were workaday people. They were really, really great and wonderful folks. But it was their second marriage. They both had adult children and grandchildren, and then they had their own children together. And they had all the craziness that that brings about, plus a life that was lived before that without faith and the remnants of that that are going on in their life. And so Alan and Sonny had a really hard life. And what they said was, you know, before we got saved, we came to God to experience peace. And after we got saved, we've been praying about these situations in our life. We've been hoping for them. We've been lifting them up for God. We've been trying to do the right things. But man, I got to tell you, those situations aren't really getting much better. And some of them are getting worse. And we just need to know, did we do it wrong? Like, are we actually saved? Did we not pray the prayer right? Is there something that I need to believe that I don't believe? Is there some sin that I don't know about that I need to figure out? Because this isn't really working the way that we thought it would work. Do you hear the lie there? Somewhere along the way, they became convinced that to follow Jesus meant that there was going to be a relief from the trials in their life, that they were going to be what we would call blessed, and that those things would begin to go away because now I'm following Jesus, and now I'm following the rules, and God is going to do these things for me. He's going to make these situations better. And I had to sit them down and be like, guys, no one promised that to you. You didn't do it right. You did it wrong. You did it exactly right. The problem is your expectations of God because he doesn't promise Christians that we won't experience trials. In fact, in the New Testament, do you know what we're promised? We're promised suffering and persecution. So buckle up, pal. That's what we're promised. It's going to be hard, and you're going to have to endure. But in the midst of that, and I can go through character after character in the Bible, Christian after Christian throughout history, that with loving God with all their heart and suffering mightily. Because God doesn't promise us a relief to our circumstances. He doesn't promise us health or wealth or status or control or any of those things. What he promises us is his presence, that he will be with us, that he will walk through our trials with us, that we never have to experience those alone, that our life is never hopeless, that our life is never lonely, because God is an ever-present force that is there with us, loving us and affirming us. And now, as you go through trials, it's not that you don't have to go through them, it's that you have the peace of Christ as you do, and you have the hope of heaven, so that Paul can say that even though we endure suffering for what he calls a little while on this earth, we look forward to a new day where there is no suffering. That's the promise of faith and of Christianity. But when we let people believe that that promise comes now and that prosperity comes now, then after we get saved, we begin to look around and go, did I do this wrong? And eventually we either feel like we messed it up or our God is letting us down, but either way, I don't want anything to do with this faith. And it shipwrecks our faith. When we follow God for control, for a sense of control and sense of our universe, and then things happen that feel like they are out of our control, we feel like either we've done it wrong or God is weak. When we follow God for status, when we eventually get the status that we want, when we fake it enough so that everyone around us believes that we're this Christian that we try to pretend to be, then what we realize is we're living our life in a prison of expectations and hypocrisy that we can't get out of until we allow our entire identity to crumble because it was never authentic to begin with. When we follow Jesus for the wrong reasons, it wrecks our faith. So that begs the question that hopefully you're asking and that they asked. Okay, what are the right reasons? What's the right reason to follow Jesus? And this is what they ask in verse 28. They said to him, what must we do to be doing the works of God? Okay, what's the right reason? What do we have to do to work for the eternal things, not the temporary? What do we have to do? And Jesus' answer is great. Jesus answered them, this is the work of God that you believe in him who he has sent. Do you remember back, those of you who were here to the first week of the series? And we look at the way that John introduces Jesus. In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God. And we said that the fundamental question in life is, was Jesus real? And do you believe that He is who He says He is? It's a fundamental question in life. That question makes all the difference in the world. Do we believe that Jesus was who he says he was? And then they say, what's the right reason to follow you? What's the right motive? How do we labor for the eternal? And Jesus says, trust me that I am who I say I am. Believe that I actually am the one that God sent. You want to know the right reason to follow Jesus? Jesus. You want to know what should properly motivate you to get in those boats and go across the sea and find him? Him. It should literally be that we get in the boats and we cross the sea and we go to Jesus and we go, Jesus, where'd you go? And he goes, you're only here for my bread. And we go, no, I don't care about the bread. I just want you. You're only here for the status and what I do. No, I don't care about the status. Make me low. Make me do something silly. Make me an usher, the least of all church volunteers. Make me do that. And I will still follow you. You're only here for the control. No, let stuff happen. Let the world spin out of control around me. I'm here for you, Jesus. That should be the motive. Jesus is the only reason to follow Jesus. And this isn't just in this passage. It's all throughout the New Testament. If you continue in the book of John, what you see in John chapter 15 is that there's an instruction from Jesus to abide in him, abide in me and I in you, and you will bear much fruit. And we're going to spend some time on this, but there's a relational aspect to that abiding. There's this idea of knowing Jesus, of pursuing him relationally, of being acquainted intimately with our Savior. In John 17, Jesus prays for you. He prays for all people that would hear of the word through the disciples, which is you. And what he prays for you is that you would be one with him as he and the Father are one, that you would know him, that there is a relational aspect to this. Paul, throughout all of his letters, prays for the church over and over again that they would know God. The author of Hebrews says that if we're going to run the race that we're supposed to run, then we need to do it with our eyes focused on the founder of our faith, which is Jesus. All throughout the New Testament, it tells us that God's desire for us is that we would know him, and that the proper motivation to follow him is simply to know Jesus. That's it. That we would pursue him, that we would love him, that we would want more of Jesus in our life, that when we get across the Sea of Galilee and he says, why'd you come over here? I'm not gonna give you more bread. We go, I don't care, I don't need more bread, I just need you. That's why we follow Jesus. And with that in mind, to help you as you assess, because hopefully if you're paying attention, you're sitting here going, okay, well, am I doing it right? Am I following Jesus for the right reasons? What are my motives? How mixed are they? And all of us have mixed motives. I've got like a two-question diagnostic for you so that you can try to suss out in yourself and in your own heart, how are we doing with keeping pure motives as we follow Jesus? Okay, so two sneaky questions that are gonna make you feel terrible about yourself, but they're really good questions. The first one is this. When you pray for yourself and others, for what do you pray? What do you pray for yourself and others? When you pray for yourself, what do you pray for? If you're a person who prays and you get down on your knees and you say, God, I need this, what is it that you pray for? Do you pray that you would close the sale? Do you pray that you would pass the test? Do you pray that you would get the job? Do you pray that you would execute the thing? Do you pray that you would be given the right words in this situation? Do you pray for temporary things? When you pray for people that you love, your kids, your spouse, for your parents, for your friends? What do you pray for them? Do you pray for temporary things? Help them in this situation, heal them of this, rescue them in this, give them wisdom in this. Do you pray for temporary things? Or when you pray for yourself and you pray for others, do you pray that they would simply know God? God, whatever's happening in their life, and this is how Paul prays, whatever's happening in their life, whatever's happening in the church, I pray that it would all conspire to bring them to a knowledge of you. If you look at the prayers in the New Testament, he doesn't pray for circumstances. He doesn't pray for health. He doesn't pray for church growth. All he prays for is that we would know God. So when you pray for other people, do you pray for their circumstances or do you pray that they would know God? Every night we put Lily to bed and every night we try to pray with her. When the elders don't make me meet, then I can be at home with my child. And when I pray for them, when I pray for Lily, Jen and I pray every night, God, help her to know you soon and to love you well. I don't want her to experience a lot of her life without knowing God. Help her to know you soon and love you well. And when I pray for her on my own, I try not to pray for her circumstances. I try not even so much to pray for her health because I know God cares about that. I pray that all the situations, all the things, all the events, all the scarring that I give her will somehow conspire to bring her to a place where she knows God on a level that's more intimate than I've ever known him. When you pray for other people, do you pray for the things that are temporary or do you pray for the eternal, that all the temporary things would conspire that they would know God? That tells us where our motives are in following Jesus. The other one is this. If you're a Christian, one of the things you think about hopefully regularly is heaven. We anticipate heaven. We look forward to heaven. We should be rightly excited about heaven. But I would ask you what most excites you when you think about getting to heaven. That will tell you a lot about why you're following Jesus. Some people are excited to get to heaven because we're curious. I want to see what the pearly gates are. Is that even a thing? Did we make that up? Are there really pearly gates? What do the streets of gold look like? What's the sea of glass? Is St. Peter there greeting me? Or is that only in far sideide cartoons? Like, we want to see these things, right? We're curious about heaven. For many of us, most of us, there's probably a loved one that we can't wait to see. I can't wait to see my Pawpaw again. He's my favorite human that's ever lived. I haven't seen him since I was 19. Pawpaw's never seen me as a pastor. I can't wait to get to heaven and talk to him about it. If I have any gift for teaching or telling a good story, it's from him. He could captivate a room. He's never met Jen. I wish he would have. He hasn't seen Lily. I can't wait to see Papa again. You have your people too. But we ought to be most excited about finally getting to look our Savior in the eyes. What should excite us most about heaven is that we finally get to meet our Heavenly Father and see what He looks like and hear what He sounds like and feel the power of his presence. That should most excite us about heaven. We finally get to look our savior in the eye and we get to hug him and hopefully we get to hear well done, good and faithful servant. That should be the thing that we are most hopeful about with heaven. The rest of the things are good. That's what gives us hope. That's why death has no sting and that hope is good and we should be excited to see our loved ones in heaven one day. We should be excited to explore this place that God created for us, but the thing we should be most excited about is finally getting to see our Jesus and finally getting to meet our God. What would it look like to live a life so devoted to God, so in love with Jesus, that heaven was like the greatest reunion ever? Because we finally got to meet him. That's how we should live our life. People who are excited about that are people who look at Jesus and go, I don't care about your bread. I'm just here for you, man. I hope that you will have the courage to pray and ask God to suss out your motives, to show them to yourself. And then we cannot go about the work of changing our motives on our own. All we can do is offer them up to God and say, God, I know that my motives for following you are impure. I pray that you would purify them. Give me a heart for you. And if you want to pursue this more, I don't do this a lot, but there's a book I would highly recommend to you. It's called With by a guy named Sky Jethani, who's a pastor somewhere in the United States. I forget where. This is, to me, the best book written in the last 10 years. I love it, and I don't really read new books. I think that a book should be in print for like 25 or 30 years before it's worth reading. So I don't really read a lot of new books, but this is a new one that I read, and I love this book. I've never read a book that caused me to stop and put it down and pray and go, God, I'm really sorry for this, more than that book. So if you're a reader, if you're into that kind of thing, I would highly recommend you get this book, and that will help you follow up with making sure that we're following Jesus for the right reasons. For all of us, if you consider yourself a Jesus follower, I hope that you'll have the courage to ask him to purify your motives. And when you do, what you'll find is it works out that all things work out too. Our relationship with Jesus works a little bit like a marriage. In a marriage, there's a bunch of different aspects of a marriage, right? I'm married to Jen, I lucked out, and there's different aspects to our marriage. And we could say, you know what, the most important thing to us is to just be able to have fun together and laugh together. And so we could prioritize that over everything else. And while we're having fun and laughing about everything, we're probably putting some other things off that need some work. And so eventually our marriage is going to get unhealthy. We could prioritize intimacy between one another and say, if we have this, then we'll be healthy, but that will come at the expense of other things. We can prioritize Lily and maybe future kiddos and who knows, but one day everyone's going to be out of the house and we're going to have to look at each other and be like, do we still like each other? Or we could prioritize one another above and beyond everything else in our relationship. And as we grow together, all of those other things will fall into place. If we will prize Jesus above and beyond everything else, all the accoutrements of Christianity, then what we'll find is all those other things, the status and the control and any gain that we might need, Jesus will take care of if we'll just follow him. So let us be a church of people who follow Jesus with a pure heart. Let us be a church of people who get in the boats and follow him across the lake for the right reasons. And let's see what Jesus does with a group of people like that. Let's pray, and then we'll take communion together. Father, we do love you. We do thank you for your son, for sending him for us. God, we thank you that he unites us with you. Lord, I would ask that you would make us courageous. Help us to see the places in our hearts and in our lives and in our walks with you where we are pursuing you for the wrong reasons, for things that really are temporary and not eternal. God, make yourself the prize of our hearts and of our minds and of our lives. Unite us with you. God, I pray that you would work even now to reveal and to begin to purify our motives as we follow you. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. It's good to see you. I missed you last week. People were asking where I was. I was in the mountains of North Georgia taking naps is where I was, and it was a lot of fun. And in my stead, Kyle, our student pastor, gave his first sermon at Grace, and it was a great job. He did phenomenally. But one of the things as I listened back and I heard the story of how the weekend went without me that I was so happy to hear really and truly was that both services, when he got up to give his first sermon ever, you guys cheered for him. Which, first of all, that hurts a little bit. But second, what a cool place. What a great thing that says about us as a church that we're so excited for this guy that we're going to applaud him before he even says anything. There can't be a more supportive place to do ministry than Grace. So it just made me so proud of my church to be a part of this place. I just thought it was really, really great and evident of your heart. The other thing I want to say before I get started, and I never do this, I don't think sermons are times for announcements, but this is such an important announcement to me that I wanted it to go out online on our podcast and on the video and things like that so that people catching up during the week can catch this too. This Friday night, March the 15th, is Grace's big night out, okay? It's two hours at Compass Rose Brewery from 6.30 to 8.30. There's gonna be childcare here for kids five and younger. Everybody else is welcome at Compass Rose. There's games for the kids. There's going to be a food truck. You can bring your own food if you want to. Steve and the band are going to do some live music. It's going to be a super fun time to just hang out, and I really want it to be awesome. So that's up there with my number because we have a graphic that's a square that I can just send to you, and then you can text that out to your friends because we're hoping that you'll invite your friends. This is an easy invite. I think a lot of us have friends that maybe we'd love to see get more involved in church, but maybe they kind of don't want to be involved with church right now. Maybe there's a little stink on it for them or whatever, but maybe if they come hang out with us on Friday and just get to talk and laugh and meet people, they'll realize that we're not a bunch of weirdies, and they'll join us later, okay? So if you want that graphic to use to invite your friends, text me and I'll get it out to you or text one of the elders. They have it too. Okay, but we hope that you'll join us on Friday and that you'll bring some folks. It's going to be a really good time. I hope this is something we get to do repetitively. Okay, this is part five of our series in John. We're going to go through John until the week after Easter. I've been really loving getting to dive into the book of John with you. And if you haven't noticed, we're missing a lot of things. We didn't even do the most famous verse in John, John 3.16. We just skipped right over it because I'm probably a terrible pastor. But there's a reading plan, so hopefully you guys have grabbed that and you're reading along with us again so that you're getting your perspective and your eyes and your mind and your heart on Jesus and not just getting my perspective as we move through the Gospel of John. This week we arrive at what is probably the most famous or one of the most famous miracles in the Bible. It's in all four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and it's one that all of you have heard of. Even if you're here and you're not a believer, this is your first time in church in a long time or ever, I bet you've heard of this miracle, the feeding of the 5,000, right? We know this miracle. And really, that's an erroneous title because Scripture tells us that there was 5,000 men, which means there were women and children in addition to those 5,000. We don't know how many. You can do the math on your own. I'm not going to chance a guest on stage as a pastor and be eternally responsible for that. So I'll let you make irresponsible guesses in your head. But there was more than 5,000 people there. And what's going on when this happens is ancient Israel in the time of Christ was what we would really think of as a third world country. And Jesus is up in northern Israel around the Sea of Galilee. Jerusalem was in southern Israel and northern Israel is really at this point like the countryside. It's rural Israel. So in the sticks of a country that is poor, Jesus is going through his day. He's going through his ministry there. And there are thousands of people following him. Again, we don't know exactly how many, but there are thousands of people following Jesus. In the beginning of John chapter 6, if you have a Bible, you can turn there. The beginning of John chapter 6 tells us that they were following him. The throngs were following Jesus because of the miraculous things that he was doing, because he was casting demons out of people, because he was healing folks, and they wanted to go see. Either they had something that they needed Jesus to take care of, or they just wanted to see this person that many people were beginning to call the Messiah. And so thousands of people had flocked to Jesus. And it says that Jesus looked on the crowds with compassion. He was moved by them and for them. Because here are 5,000 men in the middle of the day with their families, in a culture and in a time where these people woke up and they genuinely did not know where their next meal was coming from. They were very poor, more poor than any of us can imagine. And so Jesus is moved with compassion at the crowds of people and he decides that he's going to feed them. And so there's a young boy walking by who's got five small fish and three loaves of bread and he gets the disciples to ask for the meal from the boy and Jesus starts to break the bread and the fish and he starts to put it in these baskets. And the disciples carry the baskets to the different groups of people and they hand it out to whoever needs. It was an ancient all-you-can-eat buffet. It's like the first version of the Golden Corral. And they're just going around handing things out to people. Until at the end, there was baskets left over. Jesus just kept making fish and bread until everyone had what they needed, right? And then at the end of that, the people did this thing that everybody was trying to do to Jesus his whole life. We don't really think about this or notice this, but it's a drum I'm trying to beat as we go through the gospel of John. They clamored to him to make him king. They wanted to take him down south to Jerusalem and put him on the throne. They wanted to form a revolution around Jesus because the prophecies in ancient Israel, the prophecies in the Old Testament say that when the Messiah arrives, he will be the king of kings and the lord of lords and the prince of peace, and that he will sit on the throne of David and that he will rule forever. And now we know, with the benefit of hindsight, that Jesus did not come to establish a physical earthly kingdom. We know that he came to establish an eternal heavenly kingdom. But they didn't know that. They thought that he came to literally establish a kingdom that he was going to, at the time, overthrow Roman rule, rise Israel up to prominence, that they were going to be the world superpower, and Jesus was going to be the king, and they were going to be his followers. And so they said, this is the guy, look what he's doing. And they clamored to him to go make him king. And Jesus, knowing that wasn't the point, knowing that it wasn't yet time to put the wheels in motion of his crucifixion, fades away and goes into the mountains. And we see Jesus do this a lot in his ministry. There's a big event, a big thing that he does, something that exhausts him, and then he goes and he fades away and he goes to pray and spend some time with the Father to get away from the crowds. It makes me wonder on a human level if Jesus wasn't an introvert who just needed a little bit of a break after he dealt with everybody. But another thing you'll notice about Jesus, if you'll read through the Gospels on your own, is he had this unfailing patience with people. Can you imagine what it would be to be Jesus, to feed 5,000 people and then still have people like, hey, can you do this? Can you do this? Can you do this? And you're like, did you see the miracle I did? Can a dude not take a nap? Like, how tired did he have to be? How stressed did he have to be? How fatigued did he have to be? Yet he continued to unfailingly love people. Over and over again, he offers them grace through the Gospels. And that's one of, to me, that's one of the pieces of Jesus that we see when we pay attention. It's just his unfailing love for others. So he goes up to the mountainside to pray, and he tells the disciples, y'all go ahead and go across the Sea of Galilee to a city called Capernaum and I'll meet you there, okay? I'm gonna come out there too. Y'all go ahead and go across. So the disciples, the 12 of them, get on a boat and they begin to go across the Sea of Galilee, which wasn't really a sea, it's a lake, but you can't see across it, so it's called the Sea of Galilee. I don't know why that's the policy, but that's what it is. And so they're going across. And in the middle of the night, Jesus walks on water where we have this other really famous miracle. And the other gospels record it and give us a little bit more detail about it and the interaction with Peter. And he was like a ghost. And at first they were afraid. But John in his old age, as he's writing his gospel, he doesn't do that. It's just a couple of verses. He's just like, we were going across the water and then we looked and Jesus was walking. And then he got in boat with us, and then we were there. It's like John was like, it was just, you know, just Jesus stuff. It was just classic Jesus, you know, just walking across the water and getting in the boat, and then they're there, right? So the next morning, the people, the crowds, wake up. They had camped out wherever they were going to camp out there on the hillside. They wake up, and they look around, and they don't see Jesus. And then they notice that there's a boat gone and none of his disciples are there. So they put two and two together and it says they go across the water. And I don't think that all the, however many thousands of people there were there, all got in their boats at once and went across the Sea of Galilee like some Greek fleet assaulting Troy. Like I don't think it was all of them. I think it was probably a portion of them. So a portion of them get in the boats and they follow Jesus across the water. And it makes me wonder, for us, who here thinks that if they were in those crowds, that they would have been one of the ones to get in the boat and cross the water? Who here would call yourself a follower of Jesus? My guess is, because you're church people, and you know the right answer is, oh, I'd definitely get in the boat, then that's probably your answer. There might be some, a few, who are here just kind of checking things out with the bravery to be like, I don't know if I'm getting in the boat yet. And I really applaud the intellectual honesty of that answer. But most of us are probably going to say that we're in the boat. I'm going to get in the boat and I'm going to go across. I'm going to follow Jesus. I'm not going to let him get away. And so that's what they do. They get in the boat and they go across and they were Jesus followers. They follow him across the Sea of Galilee. And then they go and they find him and they ask him, what are you doing? Where'd you go? Look, this is what it says in the text. John chapter 6, verse 25, it says, When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, Rabbi, when did you come here? They said, Jesus, what are you doing? Where did you go? Like, we're trying to keep up with you. We're trying to follow you. Where did you go? What's the deal? Why are you disappearing? And Jesus' response to me is searingly convicting. And it stands as a conviction not only to those people then, but to us now and all Jesus followers throughout all time. Anybody who would ever consider themselves a follower of Jesus, his response to me is incredibly convicting. He says this, Jesus answered them when they said, where'd you go? What are you doing? We're trying to follow you and you're hiding from us. Where are you? Jesus says this, truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the son of man will give you. For on morning they wake up. Jesus isn't around. They follow him. They track him down. They go to him and they go, Rabbi, which means teacher, which means we're acknowledging you as an authority. Where'd you go? We're trying to follow you. You're running away from us. We're trying to keep up. We want to follow you, Jesus. Why'd you do that? And Jesus looks at a poor and downtrodden people who, listen to me, they need bread, okay? They need the physical bread that he provided. They're not like us. Any of us in this room can go to any restaurant we want to right after church. You can get the meat sweats within the next two hours. We all have the means to do this, okay? I ate out two times yesterday because I'm fabulously wealthy. We can all do this, right? We don't know what it is to be hungry, none of us. They knew. They knew what hunger was. And Jesus knew that they were hungry. And they are the exact type of people that we would look at our Jesus and expect them to do something about feeding them. Expect him to be moved with compassion and give them more bread because that's what they need. But instead of doing that, instead of giving them what they really do genuinely need, he looks at him and he says, you're only here because I gave you bread. You followed me across the water for the wrong reasons. You shouldn't labor for the things that are temporary. You should labor for the things that are eternal. That's quite the statement by Jesus. You're following me for the wrong reasons. Your motives are impure. And it makes me wonder, if you are somebody who would say that you would get in the boat and you would follow Jesus across the water, yes, I am a Jesus follower. I want to be where he is. When Jesus says this, that you're following me for the wrong reasons, it makes me wonder, what are the reasons that you are following Jesus? Are we following Jesus for the right reasons? Or is it possible that our motives are mixed? As I thought about it for me, and I thought about it for the people that I've known through the years, I think that it's entirely possible that we get some mixed motives for following our Savior. I think it's one thing to come to Him for certain reasons, but our relationship with Him cannot exist motivated by those same things. And I think that as I thought about it, I think a lot of the reasons that we sometimes follow Jesus that maybe are for the wrong reasons can be summed up in this way, that often we follow Jesus for control or for status or for gain. I think it's entirely possible, church people, that we have followed Jesus in our life for some sense of control, for some sense of status, or in hopes of some sort of gain. Here's what I mean. Sometimes we go to Jesus because the world seems just completely out of sorts. These things are happening that we cannot control, that we do not understand, and to be able to see them through a framework of God's sovereignty brings a sense of peace and understanding to us that makes us feel comfortable. And so it's how we process the world because we're trying to bring a sense of control to the uncontrollable in a more pernicious way. I think that we have what I think of as a proverbial faith. In the book of Proverbs, it was a book of wisdom written by Solomon. It basically is summed up by saying, if you do things like this, then you are wise and things will go well for you. And if you do things like this, then you are foolish and things will not go well for you. And so sometimes we approach the Bible as this self-help book that says, if I do these kinds of things, even if I don't fully believe, then life is going to go better for me. And it's a way that we try to exert control over the uncontrollable. Do you see? The problem with this is the book of Job exists as a contrast to Proverbs that tells us even when we're doing all the right things, sometimes it's still going to go bad. But when we follow Jesus for control, it's that kind of proverbial faith where we try to, by following all the rules and doing all the right things, bring about outcomes in our life that are uncontrollable, that are favorable, right? Or sometimes we follow Jesus for status. Listen to me, church people. We are guilty of this. I, this is not hyperbole, more than anyone. Those of you who have been in church for a while, for any number of years, has there ever been a season of your life where you followed Jesus, where you've put on the mask of Christianity, where you've played the game of faith because of the status that it brought you? Just me? Has anyone ever studied harder for a Bible study and done the work in a Bible study because when you got there, you wanted to have the best answers, not because you were really interested in the content? Have any of you ever been guilty when you're asked to pray in front of other people of suddenly using a different voice with a different vocabulary? Because these and nows and saying God over and over again is somehow holy? Oh God, if you would just have mercy on us, God, in your favor, God, I just lift this person up to you, God. Don't talk like that. When we hear ourselves starting to pray like that, that's Christianity for status. That's Christianity because of what it gives us in the community, because it offers us opportunities of respect in the church, because when we act that way and we live out this faith, sometimes people will ask us to do things that are honorable requests. Have you ever walked through a season of life where your faith was more about the status that it brought you than it was about Jesus? Where your main reason for not walking away from the faith is a relational fallout that it would cost you? That's faith for status. Or we follow Jesus for gain. This is what's commonly referred to as a health and wealth gospel. It is a gospel or the prosperity gospel. I hate it. It's a lie from Satan and it's evil. And what it tells us is if we go to Jesus, that Jesus wants to bless us. He wants us to have this incredible life. He wants us to be happy now in the material. And so he will make you healthy and he will make you wealthy. And if you don't have health and if you don't have wealth and you just don't have strong enough faith and you need to have better faith. And there are whole churches built on this model, on the promise that if you really are living Christianity out the right way, then you will be blessed and you will be healthy and you will be wealthy. And I don't know if you ever paid attention to it, but churches that teach this model don't tend to be filled with wealthy people because it preys on the poor and on the unhealthy and promises them things that are not true. And Jesus knows that these reasons, these temporary reasons for following him, whether they be control or gain or status, are not the right reasons and that eventually they will wreck our faith. That's why he gives the warning there. Don't labor for the temporary, labor for the eternal because when we follow Jesus for the wrong reasons, eventually it wrecks our faith. Eventually it shipwrecks the faith that we have. I'll tell you how I know this is true. Several years ago, I had a meeting with a couple at my old church named Alan and Sonny. I love Alan and Sonny. They went on after this meeting that I had with them, not because of me, because of the Holy Spirit work in them. I didn't tell them anything useful, I don't think. But they went on, they became small group leaders. They were wonderful in the church. They launched other small group leaders. They're still there leading people to faith. They're just phenomenal warriors for God. But I got an email one day, and it was from them, and they said, hey, you know, we've been coming to the church for a little bit. We accepted Christ as our Savior about four months ago, and there's just some stuff happening in our life. We just have some questions. We'd like to talk to a pastor. I said, all right, sure. You get to talk to 29-year-old Nate. Congratulations. I'm going to answer all the questions for you. And so I meet with them. And they said, hey, you know, they started telling me about their life. And they had had a hard life. He was a handyman. She helped them out. They were workaday people. They were really, really great and wonderful folks. But it was their second marriage. They both had adult children and grandchildren, and then they had their own children together. And they had all the craziness that that brings about, plus a life that was lived before that without faith and the remnants of that that are going on in their life. And so Alan and Sonny had a really hard life. And what they said was, you know, before we got saved, we came to God to experience peace. And after we got saved, we've been praying about these situations in our life. We've been hoping for them. We've been lifting them up for God. We've been trying to do the right things. But man, I got to tell you, those situations aren't really getting much better. And some of them are getting worse. And we just need to know, did we do it wrong? Like, are we actually saved? Did we not pray the prayer right? Is there something that I need to believe that I don't believe? Is there some sin that I don't know about that I need to figure out? Because this isn't really working the way that we thought it would work. Do you hear the lie there? Somewhere along the way, they became convinced that to follow Jesus meant that there was going to be a relief from the trials in their life, that they were going to be what we would call blessed, and that those things would begin to go away because now I'm following Jesus, and now I'm following the rules, and God is going to do these things for me. He's going to make these situations better. And I had to sit them down and be like, guys, no one promised that to you. You didn't do it right. You did it wrong. You did it exactly right. The problem is your expectations of God because he doesn't promise Christians that we won't experience trials. In fact, in the New Testament, do you know what we're promised? We're promised suffering and persecution. So buckle up, pal. That's what we're promised. It's going to be hard, and you're going to have to endure. But in the midst of that, and I can go through character after character in the Bible, Christian after Christian throughout history, that with loving God with all their heart and suffering mightily. Because God doesn't promise us a relief to our circumstances. He doesn't promise us health or wealth or status or control or any of those things. What he promises us is his presence, that he will be with us, that he will walk through our trials with us, that we never have to experience those alone, that our life is never hopeless, that our life is never lonely, because God is an ever-present force that is there with us, loving us and affirming us. And now, as you go through trials, it's not that you don't have to go through them, it's that you have the peace of Christ as you do, and you have the hope of heaven, so that Paul can say that even though we endure suffering for what he calls a little while on this earth, we look forward to a new day where there is no suffering. That's the promise of faith and of Christianity. But when we let people believe that that promise comes now and that prosperity comes now, then after we get saved, we begin to look around and go, did I do this wrong? And eventually we either feel like we messed it up or our God is letting us down, but either way, I don't want anything to do with this faith. And it shipwrecks our faith. When we follow God for control, for a sense of control and sense of our universe, and then things happen that feel like they are out of our control, we feel like either we've done it wrong or God is weak. When we follow God for status, when we eventually get the status that we want, when we fake it enough so that everyone around us believes that we're this Christian that we try to pretend to be, then what we realize is we're living our life in a prison of expectations and hypocrisy that we can't get out of until we allow our entire identity to crumble because it was never authentic to begin with. When we follow Jesus for the wrong reasons, it wrecks our faith. So that begs the question that hopefully you're asking and that they asked. Okay, what are the right reasons? What's the right reason to follow Jesus? And this is what they ask in verse 28. They said to him, what must we do to be doing the works of God? Okay, what's the right reason? What do we have to do to work for the eternal things, not the temporary? What do we have to do? And Jesus' answer is great. Jesus answered them, this is the work of God that you believe in him who he has sent. Do you remember back, those of you who were here to the first week of the series? And we look at the way that John introduces Jesus. In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God. And we said that the fundamental question in life is, was Jesus real? And do you believe that He is who He says He is? It's a fundamental question in life. That question makes all the difference in the world. Do we believe that Jesus was who he says he was? And then they say, what's the right reason to follow you? What's the right motive? How do we labor for the eternal? And Jesus says, trust me that I am who I say I am. Believe that I actually am the one that God sent. You want to know the right reason to follow Jesus? Jesus. You want to know what should properly motivate you to get in those boats and go across the sea and find him? Him. It should literally be that we get in the boats and we cross the sea and we go to Jesus and we go, Jesus, where'd you go? And he goes, you're only here for my bread. And we go, no, I don't care about the bread. I just want you. You're only here for the status and what I do. No, I don't care about the status. Make me low. Make me do something silly. Make me an usher, the least of all church volunteers. Make me do that. And I will still follow you. You're only here for the control. No, let stuff happen. Let the world spin out of control around me. I'm here for you, Jesus. That should be the motive. Jesus is the only reason to follow Jesus. And this isn't just in this passage. It's all throughout the New Testament. If you continue in the book of John, what you see in John chapter 15 is that there's an instruction from Jesus to abide in him, abide in me and I in you, and you will bear much fruit. And we're going to spend some time on this, but there's a relational aspect to that abiding. There's this idea of knowing Jesus, of pursuing him relationally, of being acquainted intimately with our Savior. In John 17, Jesus prays for you. He prays for all people that would hear of the word through the disciples, which is you. And what he prays for you is that you would be one with him as he and the Father are one, that you would know him, that there is a relational aspect to this. Paul, throughout all of his letters, prays for the church over and over again that they would know God. The author of Hebrews says that if we're going to run the race that we're supposed to run, then we need to do it with our eyes focused on the founder of our faith, which is Jesus. All throughout the New Testament, it tells us that God's desire for us is that we would know him, and that the proper motivation to follow him is simply to know Jesus. That's it. That we would pursue him, that we would love him, that we would want more of Jesus in our life, that when we get across the Sea of Galilee and he says, why'd you come over here? I'm not gonna give you more bread. We go, I don't care, I don't need more bread, I just need you. That's why we follow Jesus. And with that in mind, to help you as you assess, because hopefully if you're paying attention, you're sitting here going, okay, well, am I doing it right? Am I following Jesus for the right reasons? What are my motives? How mixed are they? And all of us have mixed motives. I've got like a two-question diagnostic for you so that you can try to suss out in yourself and in your own heart, how are we doing with keeping pure motives as we follow Jesus? Okay, so two sneaky questions that are gonna make you feel terrible about yourself, but they're really good questions. The first one is this. When you pray for yourself and others, for what do you pray? What do you pray for yourself and others? When you pray for yourself, what do you pray for? If you're a person who prays and you get down on your knees and you say, God, I need this, what is it that you pray for? Do you pray that you would close the sale? Do you pray that you would pass the test? Do you pray that you would get the job? Do you pray that you would execute the thing? Do you pray that you would be given the right words in this situation? Do you pray for temporary things? When you pray for people that you love, your kids, your spouse, for your parents, for your friends? What do you pray for them? Do you pray for temporary things? Help them in this situation, heal them of this, rescue them in this, give them wisdom in this. Do you pray for temporary things? Or when you pray for yourself and you pray for others, do you pray that they would simply know God? God, whatever's happening in their life, and this is how Paul prays, whatever's happening in their life, whatever's happening in the church, I pray that it would all conspire to bring them to a knowledge of you. If you look at the prayers in the New Testament, he doesn't pray for circumstances. He doesn't pray for health. He doesn't pray for church growth. All he prays for is that we would know God. So when you pray for other people, do you pray for their circumstances or do you pray that they would know God? Every night we put Lily to bed and every night we try to pray with her. When the elders don't make me meet, then I can be at home with my child. And when I pray for them, when I pray for Lily, Jen and I pray every night, God, help her to know you soon and to love you well. I don't want her to experience a lot of her life without knowing God. Help her to know you soon and love you well. And when I pray for her on my own, I try not to pray for her circumstances. I try not even so much to pray for her health because I know God cares about that. I pray that all the situations, all the things, all the events, all the scarring that I give her will somehow conspire to bring her to a place where she knows God on a level that's more intimate than I've ever known him. When you pray for other people, do you pray for the things that are temporary or do you pray for the eternal, that all the temporary things would conspire that they would know God? That tells us where our motives are in following Jesus. The other one is this. If you're a Christian, one of the things you think about hopefully regularly is heaven. We anticipate heaven. We look forward to heaven. We should be rightly excited about heaven. But I would ask you what most excites you when you think about getting to heaven. That will tell you a lot about why you're following Jesus. Some people are excited to get to heaven because we're curious. I want to see what the pearly gates are. Is that even a thing? Did we make that up? Are there really pearly gates? What do the streets of gold look like? What's the sea of glass? Is St. Peter there greeting me? Or is that only in far sideide cartoons? Like, we want to see these things, right? We're curious about heaven. For many of us, most of us, there's probably a loved one that we can't wait to see. I can't wait to see my Pawpaw again. He's my favorite human that's ever lived. I haven't seen him since I was 19. Pawpaw's never seen me as a pastor. I can't wait to get to heaven and talk to him about it. If I have any gift for teaching or telling a good story, it's from him. He could captivate a room. He's never met Jen. I wish he would have. He hasn't seen Lily. I can't wait to see Papa again. You have your people too. But we ought to be most excited about finally getting to look our Savior in the eyes. What should excite us most about heaven is that we finally get to meet our Heavenly Father and see what He looks like and hear what He sounds like and feel the power of his presence. That should most excite us about heaven. We finally get to look our savior in the eye and we get to hug him and hopefully we get to hear well done, good and faithful servant. That should be the thing that we are most hopeful about with heaven. The rest of the things are good. That's what gives us hope. That's why death has no sting and that hope is good and we should be excited to see our loved ones in heaven one day. We should be excited to explore this place that God created for us, but the thing we should be most excited about is finally getting to see our Jesus and finally getting to meet our God. What would it look like to live a life so devoted to God, so in love with Jesus, that heaven was like the greatest reunion ever? Because we finally got to meet him. That's how we should live our life. People who are excited about that are people who look at Jesus and go, I don't care about your bread. I'm just here for you, man. I hope that you will have the courage to pray and ask God to suss out your motives, to show them to yourself. And then we cannot go about the work of changing our motives on our own. All we can do is offer them up to God and say, God, I know that my motives for following you are impure. I pray that you would purify them. Give me a heart for you. And if you want to pursue this more, I don't do this a lot, but there's a book I would highly recommend to you. It's called With by a guy named Sky Jethani, who's a pastor somewhere in the United States. I forget where. This is, to me, the best book written in the last 10 years. I love it, and I don't really read new books. I think that a book should be in print for like 25 or 30 years before it's worth reading. So I don't really read a lot of new books, but this is a new one that I read, and I love this book. I've never read a book that caused me to stop and put it down and pray and go, God, I'm really sorry for this, more than that book. So if you're a reader, if you're into that kind of thing, I would highly recommend you get this book, and that will help you follow up with making sure that we're following Jesus for the right reasons. For all of us, if you consider yourself a Jesus follower, I hope that you'll have the courage to ask him to purify your motives. And when you do, what you'll find is it works out that all things work out too. Our relationship with Jesus works a little bit like a marriage. In a marriage, there's a bunch of different aspects of a marriage, right? I'm married to Jen, I lucked out, and there's different aspects to our marriage. And we could say, you know what, the most important thing to us is to just be able to have fun together and laugh together. And so we could prioritize that over everything else. And while we're having fun and laughing about everything, we're probably putting some other things off that need some work. And so eventually our marriage is going to get unhealthy. We could prioritize intimacy between one another and say, if we have this, then we'll be healthy, but that will come at the expense of other things. We can prioritize Lily and maybe future kiddos and who knows, but one day everyone's going to be out of the house and we're going to have to look at each other and be like, do we still like each other? Or we could prioritize one another above and beyond everything else in our relationship. And as we grow together, all of those other things will fall into place. If we will prize Jesus above and beyond everything else, all the accoutrements of Christianity, then what we'll find is all those other things, the status and the control and any gain that we might need, Jesus will take care of if we'll just follow him. So let us be a church of people who follow Jesus with a pure heart. Let us be a church of people who get in the boats and follow him across the lake for the right reasons. And let's see what Jesus does with a group of people like that. Let's pray, and then we'll take communion together. Father, we do love you. We do thank you for your son, for sending him for us. God, we thank you that he unites us with you. Lord, I would ask that you would make us courageous. Help us to see the places in our hearts and in our lives and in our walks with you where we are pursuing you for the wrong reasons, for things that really are temporary and not eternal. God, make yourself the prize of our hearts and of our minds and of our lives. Unite us with you. God, I pray that you would work even now to reveal and to begin to purify our motives as we follow you. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Amen. Well, good morning. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here, and I'm one of the pastors here, and I was just, sometimes for me, I know this will not surprise those of you that know me, well, sometimes for me, worship gets so overwhelming that I can't keep singing because I'm going to start crying, and then I'm going to be a mess when I get up here, and I have actual things I need to say. But I just love getting to go to church with y'all so much. And Easter makes me so happy, and rightly so. I mean, I love all the accoutrements around Easter, right? I love all the bright colors. I love the dresses. Mikey's got a seersucker suit on. I knew he would. We've got a bow tie in the room. This is fantastic. I love how joyful and energetic and bright Easter is, but it should be because Easter is the most joyful day of the year because it's the day that Jesus wins. And because we believe in that victory and in that joy, Christians are and ought to be the most joyful of all people. And I remind you every Easter of my favorite, it might be my favorite quote. It's definitely my favorite Easter quote from, I believe, Pope John Paul II, who said, For we do not give way to despair, for we are the Easter people, and hallelujah is our song. I love that truth. And this morning, as we focus on Easter, in my preparation, because I don't know if you realize this, but the Easter message is every pastor's least favorite sermon of the year. Because we have to write a sermon with maximum pressure because you brought your sons and daughters and your grandmas and your grandpas. All right. It's maximum pressure, maximum exposure, and you already know my material, right? So it's, well, I hate it every time. Every time it's out there, I just, it just looms. I'm like, what are you going to do this year, buddy? But as I was preparing, my mind was consistently drawn to this, I think, underappreciated figure in the Gospels, a woman named Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene was with Jesus for his entire ministry. So the disciples, we've probably heard of them. The disciples were with Jesus for his whole ministry, the 12, but there was as many as 120 people in this nomadic caravan around Jesus. And Mary Magdalene was part of that. She's mentioned 12 times by name in the Gospels, which is more than all but three of the disciples. She was very much a part of Jesus's life and Jesus's ministry. And I think to view Easter through her eyes, to experience it as she experienced it, can help us think about Easter in a new and helpful way as well. So Mary Magdalene, she's probably most famous for in this scene during Holy Week where Jesus is eating at the home of a Pharisee. And Mary comes in amidst these religious leaders, these pretentious, pious men, because once you achieve things in life, you start to think you're important. And that's what these men did, like most men do. And she shows up. And she shows up, and she's weeping. And she pulls out some perfume called Oxnard that had this incredibly strong smell. And she empties the bottle on Jesus's feet. And then she cleanses, she washes his feet with her tears and her hair and this perfume. And the Pharisees are appalled because Mary Magdalene had a reputation that prior to knowing Jesus, prior to her conversion, she was a woman of ill repute, we'll say, on Easter. She did not have a good reputation. And the religious leaders are appalled that Jesus would allow this woman to touch him, let alone wash his feet and cry on him. And Jesus, this is not the point of this morning's message, but it's such a great line. He looks at the Pharisees when they express disappointment and judgment in this, and he looks at the Pharisees and he says, when I came over here, this is a loose paraphrase, but when I walked in, you didn't shake my hand. You didn't hug me. You didn't greet me with a kiss. You didn't act excited to see me. You didn't even give me a good seat. You made me sit in the folding chair, and you're in the recliner. You didn't even care. She comes in, she sees me, she weeps, and she washes my feet, and she welcomes me with a kiss. He who has forgiven little loves little. He who has forgiven much loves much. And what Jesus is saying is that our appreciation of him operates in direct correlation with our realization of our need for him. And you Pharisees don't realize you need me, but Mary Magdalene does. And here's what's really interesting about that moment to me is I would argue, and I'm open to be wrong, but I would argue that in Jesus's life, there was two people who existed who knew what Jesus actually came to do. There was two people who knew what Jesus actually meant to do. Everybody in his life assumed that he came to sit, he was to be a physical king on a physical throne over a physical kingdom. But Jesus knew that he came to sit on an eternal throne in an eternal kingdom. And nobody realized that except for Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist. John the Baptist had died. There was no one around him who knew what he came to do anymore. There was no one around him who understood him. But I believe that Mary Magdalene alone understood who Jesus was and what he came to do. He was so misunderstood that his own disciples, the week on Palm Sunday, the week before he's crucified, is going into Jerusalem. And his own disciples are following him, debating about who gets to be what in his kingdom. I get to be the secretary of defense. I get to be the vice president. And then when that conversation doesn't go well, their mom goes to Jesus and says, will you let my sons have an honorable place in your kingdom? And he says, woman, you don't know what you're asking for. no one did because no one understood Jesus and what he came to do. Jesus knew that when he walked through those gates of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, that he was setting in motion a series of events that was going to lead to his crucifixion and death. He knew it. He knew he was stirring up a hornet's nest. His disciples did not know that. In fact, Peter tried to talk Jesus out of it when he says, you can't go. If you go, they could arrest you. They could crucify you. This is going to be bad news, Jesus. You can't do this. And Jesus utters that famous line, get behind me, Satan. Your will is not in the Father's will. Not even Peter understood what Jesus came to do. But when Mary Magdalene went into that room with those Pharisees and with her Jesus, and she knelt and she wept and she poured that perfume, she was preparing him for burial. She knew what he was about to do. And I can't imagine what it is to sit with a friend that you love and know that he is about to die. To know that she is about to die. And it's not illness. He's going to be murdered. And she knows it. And she weeps. And I think she weeps because she probably had a sense that she was the only one who knew. And she had a sense of what was to come. But she was the only one who knew that he was going to die. And she believed in the Savior and believed that he was going to be a king, but she did not know how it was going to work out. And here she is preparing her friend for burial, knowing the road that he is about to walk. And so a few days later, he is crucified. And he is buried. And who goes in there to treat his body with spices according to the custom? Mary Magdalene. Who is at the crucifixion? Mary Magdalene. You'll remember the only disciple who had the guts to go to the crucifixion was John. The rest of them skedaddled when the water got hot. They got out of there. John went and stood next to Mary and Mary Magdalene went. She was at the crucifixion. And then she was at the grave. And then on Sunday morning she gathered the spices again and she went to the tomb. And this is what happened when she got there. On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the woman took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright, the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, this is the best line in the whole Bible. Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here. He is risen. Mary goes to the tomb. She goes to serve her Savior. Her Savior has died. She does not know what's going to happen. She walked for three years with him. This is the man that restored her dignity, that gave her peace, that loved her when she felt very unlovable, that restored her to purpose, that gave her meaning. It was probably the first man to love her well. And she's going to serve him, no doubt at the height of grief. Hoping beyond hope that he had a plan when he hung on that cross. But she does not know what the plan is. And she goes to serve him. And she gets there. The tomb is empty. And there's two angels inside. And they said, what are you doing here? Why are you looking for Jesus? This is the place for dead people. He's not dead. Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is risen, just as he said. And she runs back to the disciples. There's another gospel that gives us this part of the story, that she's in the garden leaving the tomb, and she sees what she thinks is a gardener. And she cries out, Rabbani, which means my rabbi, my Jesus. And I don't know this to be true. This is reckless speculation. Okay, you think what you want to think. I think that the reason that God let Mary Magdalene be the one to discover the empty tomb is because she was the only one who knew he was going to be in it. And that we don't appreciate her faith enough. Maybe the most faithful figure in the Bible. She rushes back to the disciples. She tells them the tomb is empty. Jesus isn't there. He's alive. The disciples think the women are crazy, which feels on brand. And then the disciples run to the tomb. In John's gospel, he makes sure to let you know that he was the first one there. He won the race. Good job, John. And then they know that he's alive and that he has risen. And then soon he appears to them in the upper room where they've been gathered and huddled, not knowing what to do. And then Thomas gets the disrespectful and overly simplistic moniker of doubtful because he was the only one with the guts to touch the scars on Jesus' hand and feet to make sure it was actually him. But I want us to look at that Sunday morning for Mary. Mary was going to serve her Savior. She was trusting on him to show up and do something, but she didn't know what. She went to serve her Savior even when she was unsure. She went to love her Savior even when she didn't understand, even when he didn't make any sense, even when everybody around her is sitting in a room on silent Saturday wondering what to do with ourselves now because this man that we love has died, our Savior has died, the place where we put all of our faith has let us down, and I don't know how to pick up my life here anymore. I don't know how to move on from this place. Complete disillusionment, complete confusion, just complete destitution. And in the middle of that, Mary gathers spices and she goes to treat the carcass of her Savior, not knowing what was going to happen, just hoping that somehow Jesus would show up. And then she's in the garden and she says, because Jesus showed up. And Easter exists to remind us every year that Jesus always shows up. In tragedy, he's there. In triumph, he is there. In terrible times and in good times, he is there. Jesus always shows up. And when I see the azaleas bloom in the spring, I'm reminded that Easter is near. And Easter reminds me that Jesus always shows up when we need him most. When we don't even know we need him. When we don't even necessarily believe in him, Jesus still shows up and patiently waits for our faith. So if you're here and you're a believer, be reminded by Easter that Jesus always shows up. He's the only hope we have that will never fail us. He always shows up. If you're here today and you don't believe, you've been begrudgingly brought by family. Thank you for sitting quietly for a minute. But I want you to know that Jesus shows up for you too. And he will not stop. And he will keep showing up in your life and offering you his love and the dignity and the purpose and the forgiveness and the redemption and the restoration that he gave Mary. And when we receive it, we will love him as Mary did. But let Easter remind us this year that Jesus always shows up. He did then, he does now, and he will then too. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for Easter and the joy that it brings and all that it is. Thank you for the opportunity to celebrate, to love you, to reflect on you, and to celebrate the victory that you won for us against sin and shame and death and pain. Thank you that one day we will be with you and you will be with us and there will be no more weeping or crying or pain anymore for the former things have passed away. Thank you that Easter reminds us that you show up and that we can look forward to you showing up again when you come crashing through the clouds to claim us. Thank you for all that Easter is and all that it represents. I pray that we would hold it and celebrate it well. In Jesus' name, amen.

Amen. Well, good morning. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here, and I'm one of the pastors here, and I was just, sometimes for me, I know this will not surprise those of you that know me, well, sometimes for me, worship gets so overwhelming that I can't keep singing because I'm going to start crying, and then I'm going to be a mess when I get up here, and I have actual things I need to say. But I just love getting to go to church with y'all so much. And Easter makes me so happy, and rightly so. I mean, I love all the accoutrements around Easter, right? I love all the bright colors. I love the dresses. Mikey's got a seersucker suit on. I knew he would. We've got a bow tie in the room. This is fantastic. I love how joyful and energetic and bright Easter is, but it should be because Easter is the most joyful day of the year because it's the day that Jesus wins. And because we believe in that victory and in that joy, Christians are and ought to be the most joyful of all people. And I remind you every Easter of my favorite, it might be my favorite quote. It's definitely my favorite Easter quote from, I believe, Pope John Paul II, who said, For we do not give way to despair, for we are the Easter people, and hallelujah is our song. I love that truth. And this morning, as we focus on Easter, in my preparation, because I don't know if you realize this, but the Easter message is every pastor's least favorite sermon of the year. Because we have to write a sermon with maximum pressure because you brought your sons and daughters and your grandmas and your grandpas. All right. It's maximum pressure, maximum exposure, and you already know my material, right? So it's, well, I hate it every time. Every time it's out there, I just, it just looms. I'm like, what are you going to do this year, buddy? But as I was preparing, my mind was consistently drawn to this, I think, underappreciated figure in the Gospels, a woman named Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene was with Jesus for his entire ministry. So the disciples, we've probably heard of them. The disciples were with Jesus for his whole ministry, the 12, but there was as many as 120 people in this nomadic caravan around Jesus. And Mary Magdalene was part of that. She's mentioned 12 times by name in the Gospels, which is more than all but three of the disciples. She was very much a part of Jesus's life and Jesus's ministry. And I think to view Easter through her eyes, to experience it as she experienced it, can help us think about Easter in a new and helpful way as well. So Mary Magdalene, she's probably most famous for in this scene during Holy Week where Jesus is eating at the home of a Pharisee. And Mary comes in amidst these religious leaders, these pretentious, pious men, because once you achieve things in life, you start to think you're important. And that's what these men did, like most men do. And she shows up. And she shows up, and she's weeping. And she pulls out some perfume called Oxnard that had this incredibly strong smell. And she empties the bottle on Jesus's feet. And then she cleanses, she washes his feet with her tears and her hair and this perfume. And the Pharisees are appalled because Mary Magdalene had a reputation that prior to knowing Jesus, prior to her conversion, she was a woman of ill repute, we'll say, on Easter. She did not have a good reputation. And the religious leaders are appalled that Jesus would allow this woman to touch him, let alone wash his feet and cry on him. And Jesus, this is not the point of this morning's message, but it's such a great line. He looks at the Pharisees when they express disappointment and judgment in this, and he looks at the Pharisees and he says, when I came over here, this is a loose paraphrase, but when I walked in, you didn't shake my hand. You didn't hug me. You didn't greet me with a kiss. You didn't act excited to see me. You didn't even give me a good seat. You made me sit in the folding chair, and you're in the recliner. You didn't even care. She comes in, she sees me, she weeps, and she washes my feet, and she welcomes me with a kiss. He who has forgiven little loves little. He who has forgiven much loves much. And what Jesus is saying is that our appreciation of him operates in direct correlation with our realization of our need for him. And you Pharisees don't realize you need me, but Mary Magdalene does. And here's what's really interesting about that moment to me is I would argue, and I'm open to be wrong, but I would argue that in Jesus's life, there was two people who existed who knew what Jesus actually came to do. There was two people who knew what Jesus actually meant to do. Everybody in his life assumed that he came to sit, he was to be a physical king on a physical throne over a physical kingdom. But Jesus knew that he came to sit on an eternal throne in an eternal kingdom. And nobody realized that except for Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist. John the Baptist had died. There was no one around him who knew what he came to do anymore. There was no one around him who understood him. But I believe that Mary Magdalene alone understood who Jesus was and what he came to do. He was so misunderstood that his own disciples, the week on Palm Sunday, the week before he's crucified, is going into Jerusalem. And his own disciples are following him, debating about who gets to be what in his kingdom. I get to be the secretary of defense. I get to be the vice president. And then when that conversation doesn't go well, their mom goes to Jesus and says, will you let my sons have an honorable place in your kingdom? And he says, woman, you don't know what you're asking for. no one did because no one understood Jesus and what he came to do. Jesus knew that when he walked through those gates of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, that he was setting in motion a series of events that was going to lead to his crucifixion and death. He knew it. He knew he was stirring up a hornet's nest. His disciples did not know that. In fact, Peter tried to talk Jesus out of it when he says, you can't go. If you go, they could arrest you. They could crucify you. This is going to be bad news, Jesus. You can't do this. And Jesus utters that famous line, get behind me, Satan. Your will is not in the Father's will. Not even Peter understood what Jesus came to do. But when Mary Magdalene went into that room with those Pharisees and with her Jesus, and she knelt and she wept and she poured that perfume, she was preparing him for burial. She knew what he was about to do. And I can't imagine what it is to sit with a friend that you love and know that he is about to die. To know that she is about to die. And it's not illness. He's going to be murdered. And she knows it. And she weeps. And I think she weeps because she probably had a sense that she was the only one who knew. And she had a sense of what was to come. But she was the only one who knew that he was going to die. And she believed in the Savior and believed that he was going to be a king, but she did not know how it was going to work out. And here she is preparing her friend for burial, knowing the road that he is about to walk. And so a few days later, he is crucified. And he is buried. And who goes in there to treat his body with spices according to the custom? Mary Magdalene. Who is at the crucifixion? Mary Magdalene. You'll remember the only disciple who had the guts to go to the crucifixion was John. The rest of them skedaddled when the water got hot. They got out of there. John went and stood next to Mary and Mary Magdalene went. She was at the crucifixion. And then she was at the grave. And then on Sunday morning she gathered the spices again and she went to the tomb. And this is what happened when she got there. On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the woman took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright, the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, this is the best line in the whole Bible. Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here. He is risen. Mary goes to the tomb. She goes to serve her Savior. Her Savior has died. She does not know what's going to happen. She walked for three years with him. This is the man that restored her dignity, that gave her peace, that loved her when she felt very unlovable, that restored her to purpose, that gave her meaning. It was probably the first man to love her well. And she's going to serve him, no doubt at the height of grief. Hoping beyond hope that he had a plan when he hung on that cross. But she does not know what the plan is. And she goes to serve him. And she gets there. The tomb is empty. And there's two angels inside. And they said, what are you doing here? Why are you looking for Jesus? This is the place for dead people. He's not dead. Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is risen, just as he said. And she runs back to the disciples. There's another gospel that gives us this part of the story, that she's in the garden leaving the tomb, and she sees what she thinks is a gardener. And she cries out, Rabbani, which means my rabbi, my Jesus. And I don't know this to be true. This is reckless speculation. Okay, you think what you want to think. I think that the reason that God let Mary Magdalene be the one to discover the empty tomb is because she was the only one who knew he was going to be in it. And that we don't appreciate her faith enough. Maybe the most faithful figure in the Bible. She rushes back to the disciples. She tells them the tomb is empty. Jesus isn't there. He's alive. The disciples think the women are crazy, which feels on brand. And then the disciples run to the tomb. In John's gospel, he makes sure to let you know that he was the first one there. He won the race. Good job, John. And then they know that he's alive and that he has risen. And then soon he appears to them in the upper room where they've been gathered and huddled, not knowing what to do. And then Thomas gets the disrespectful and overly simplistic moniker of doubtful because he was the only one with the guts to touch the scars on Jesus' hand and feet to make sure it was actually him. But I want us to look at that Sunday morning for Mary. Mary was going to serve her Savior. She was trusting on him to show up and do something, but she didn't know what. She went to serve her Savior even when she was unsure. She went to love her Savior even when she didn't understand, even when he didn't make any sense, even when everybody around her is sitting in a room on silent Saturday wondering what to do with ourselves now because this man that we love has died, our Savior has died, the place where we put all of our faith has let us down, and I don't know how to pick up my life here anymore. I don't know how to move on from this place. Complete disillusionment, complete confusion, just complete destitution. And in the middle of that, Mary gathers spices and she goes to treat the carcass of her Savior, not knowing what was going to happen, just hoping that somehow Jesus would show up. And then she's in the garden and she says, because Jesus showed up. And Easter exists to remind us every year that Jesus always shows up. In tragedy, he's there. In triumph, he is there. In terrible times and in good times, he is there. Jesus always shows up. And when I see the azaleas bloom in the spring, I'm reminded that Easter is near. And Easter reminds me that Jesus always shows up when we need him most. When we don't even know we need him. When we don't even necessarily believe in him, Jesus still shows up and patiently waits for our faith. So if you're here and you're a believer, be reminded by Easter that Jesus always shows up. He's the only hope we have that will never fail us. He always shows up. If you're here today and you don't believe, you've been begrudgingly brought by family. Thank you for sitting quietly for a minute. But I want you to know that Jesus shows up for you too. And he will not stop. And he will keep showing up in your life and offering you his love and the dignity and the purpose and the forgiveness and the redemption and the restoration that he gave Mary. And when we receive it, we will love him as Mary did. But let Easter remind us this year that Jesus always shows up. He did then, he does now, and he will then too. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for Easter and the joy that it brings and all that it is. Thank you for the opportunity to celebrate, to love you, to reflect on you, and to celebrate the victory that you won for us against sin and shame and death and pain. Thank you that one day we will be with you and you will be with us and there will be no more weeping or crying or pain anymore for the former things have passed away. Thank you that Easter reminds us that you show up and that we can look forward to you showing up again when you come crashing through the clouds to claim us. Thank you for all that Easter is and all that it represents. I pray that we would hold it and celebrate it well. In Jesus' name, amen.

Amen. Well, good morning. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here, and I'm one of the pastors here, and I was just, sometimes for me, I know this will not surprise those of you that know me, well, sometimes for me, worship gets so overwhelming that I can't keep singing because I'm going to start crying, and then I'm going to be a mess when I get up here, and I have actual things I need to say. But I just love getting to go to church with y'all so much. And Easter makes me so happy, and rightly so. I mean, I love all the accoutrements around Easter, right? I love all the bright colors. I love the dresses. Mikey's got a seersucker suit on. I knew he would. We've got a bow tie in the room. This is fantastic. I love how joyful and energetic and bright Easter is, but it should be because Easter is the most joyful day of the year because it's the day that Jesus wins. And because we believe in that victory and in that joy, Christians are and ought to be the most joyful of all people. And I remind you every Easter of my favorite, it might be my favorite quote. It's definitely my favorite Easter quote from, I believe, Pope John Paul II, who said, For we do not give way to despair, for we are the Easter people, and hallelujah is our song. I love that truth. And this morning, as we focus on Easter, in my preparation, because I don't know if you realize this, but the Easter message is every pastor's least favorite sermon of the year. Because we have to write a sermon with maximum pressure because you brought your sons and daughters and your grandmas and your grandpas. All right. It's maximum pressure, maximum exposure, and you already know my material, right? So it's, well, I hate it every time. Every time it's out there, I just, it just looms. I'm like, what are you going to do this year, buddy? But as I was preparing, my mind was consistently drawn to this, I think, underappreciated figure in the Gospels, a woman named Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene was with Jesus for his entire ministry. So the disciples, we've probably heard of them. The disciples were with Jesus for his whole ministry, the 12, but there was as many as 120 people in this nomadic caravan around Jesus. And Mary Magdalene was part of that. She's mentioned 12 times by name in the Gospels, which is more than all but three of the disciples. She was very much a part of Jesus's life and Jesus's ministry. And I think to view Easter through her eyes, to experience it as she experienced it, can help us think about Easter in a new and helpful way as well. So Mary Magdalene, she's probably most famous for in this scene during Holy Week where Jesus is eating at the home of a Pharisee. And Mary comes in amidst these religious leaders, these pretentious, pious men, because once you achieve things in life, you start to think you're important. And that's what these men did, like most men do. And she shows up. And she shows up, and she's weeping. And she pulls out some perfume called Oxnard that had this incredibly strong smell. And she empties the bottle on Jesus's feet. And then she cleanses, she washes his feet with her tears and her hair and this perfume. And the Pharisees are appalled because Mary Magdalene had a reputation that prior to knowing Jesus, prior to her conversion, she was a woman of ill repute, we'll say, on Easter. She did not have a good reputation. And the religious leaders are appalled that Jesus would allow this woman to touch him, let alone wash his feet and cry on him. And Jesus, this is not the point of this morning's message, but it's such a great line. He looks at the Pharisees when they express disappointment and judgment in this, and he looks at the Pharisees and he says, when I came over here, this is a loose paraphrase, but when I walked in, you didn't shake my hand. You didn't hug me. You didn't greet me with a kiss. You didn't act excited to see me. You didn't even give me a good seat. You made me sit in the folding chair, and you're in the recliner. You didn't even care. She comes in, she sees me, she weeps, and she washes my feet, and she welcomes me with a kiss. He who has forgiven little loves little. He who has forgiven much loves much. And what Jesus is saying is that our appreciation of him operates in direct correlation with our realization of our need for him. And you Pharisees don't realize you need me, but Mary Magdalene does. And here's what's really interesting about that moment to me is I would argue, and I'm open to be wrong, but I would argue that in Jesus's life, there was two people who existed who knew what Jesus actually came to do. There was two people who knew what Jesus actually meant to do. Everybody in his life assumed that he came to sit, he was to be a physical king on a physical throne over a physical kingdom. But Jesus knew that he came to sit on an eternal throne in an eternal kingdom. And nobody realized that except for Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist. John the Baptist had died. There was no one around him who knew what he came to do anymore. There was no one around him who understood him. But I believe that Mary Magdalene alone understood who Jesus was and what he came to do. He was so misunderstood that his own disciples, the week on Palm Sunday, the week before he's crucified, is going into Jerusalem. And his own disciples are following him, debating about who gets to be what in his kingdom. I get to be the secretary of defense. I get to be the vice president. And then when that conversation doesn't go well, their mom goes to Jesus and says, will you let my sons have an honorable place in your kingdom? And he says, woman, you don't know what you're asking for. no one did because no one understood Jesus and what he came to do. Jesus knew that when he walked through those gates of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, that he was setting in motion a series of events that was going to lead to his crucifixion and death. He knew it. He knew he was stirring up a hornet's nest. His disciples did not know that. In fact, Peter tried to talk Jesus out of it when he says, you can't go. If you go, they could arrest you. They could crucify you. This is going to be bad news, Jesus. You can't do this. And Jesus utters that famous line, get behind me, Satan. Your will is not in the Father's will. Not even Peter understood what Jesus came to do. But when Mary Magdalene went into that room with those Pharisees and with her Jesus, and she knelt and she wept and she poured that perfume, she was preparing him for burial. She knew what he was about to do. And I can't imagine what it is to sit with a friend that you love and know that he is about to die. To know that she is about to die. And it's not illness. He's going to be murdered. And she knows it. And she weeps. And I think she weeps because she probably had a sense that she was the only one who knew. And she had a sense of what was to come. But she was the only one who knew that he was going to die. And she believed in the Savior and believed that he was going to be a king, but she did not know how it was going to work out. And here she is preparing her friend for burial, knowing the road that he is about to walk. And so a few days later, he is crucified. And he is buried. And who goes in there to treat his body with spices according to the custom? Mary Magdalene. Who is at the crucifixion? Mary Magdalene. You'll remember the only disciple who had the guts to go to the crucifixion was John. The rest of them skedaddled when the water got hot. They got out of there. John went and stood next to Mary and Mary Magdalene went. She was at the crucifixion. And then she was at the grave. And then on Sunday morning she gathered the spices again and she went to the tomb. And this is what happened when she got there. On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the woman took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright, the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, this is the best line in the whole Bible. Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here. He is risen. Mary goes to the tomb. She goes to serve her Savior. Her Savior has died. She does not know what's going to happen. She walked for three years with him. This is the man that restored her dignity, that gave her peace, that loved her when she felt very unlovable, that restored her to purpose, that gave her meaning. It was probably the first man to love her well. And she's going to serve him, no doubt at the height of grief. Hoping beyond hope that he had a plan when he hung on that cross. But she does not know what the plan is. And she goes to serve him. And she gets there. The tomb is empty. And there's two angels inside. And they said, what are you doing here? Why are you looking for Jesus? This is the place for dead people. He's not dead. Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is risen, just as he said. And she runs back to the disciples. There's another gospel that gives us this part of the story, that she's in the garden leaving the tomb, and she sees what she thinks is a gardener. And she cries out, Rabbani, which means my rabbi, my Jesus. And I don't know this to be true. This is reckless speculation. Okay, you think what you want to think. I think that the reason that God let Mary Magdalene be the one to discover the empty tomb is because she was the only one who knew he was going to be in it. And that we don't appreciate her faith enough. Maybe the most faithful figure in the Bible. She rushes back to the disciples. She tells them the tomb is empty. Jesus isn't there. He's alive. The disciples think the women are crazy, which feels on brand. And then the disciples run to the tomb. In John's gospel, he makes sure to let you know that he was the first one there. He won the race. Good job, John. And then they know that he's alive and that he has risen. And then soon he appears to them in the upper room where they've been gathered and huddled, not knowing what to do. And then Thomas gets the disrespectful and overly simplistic moniker of doubtful because he was the only one with the guts to touch the scars on Jesus' hand and feet to make sure it was actually him. But I want us to look at that Sunday morning for Mary. Mary was going to serve her Savior. She was trusting on him to show up and do something, but she didn't know what. She went to serve her Savior even when she was unsure. She went to love her Savior even when she didn't understand, even when he didn't make any sense, even when everybody around her is sitting in a room on silent Saturday wondering what to do with ourselves now because this man that we love has died, our Savior has died, the place where we put all of our faith has let us down, and I don't know how to pick up my life here anymore. I don't know how to move on from this place. Complete disillusionment, complete confusion, just complete destitution. And in the middle of that, Mary gathers spices and she goes to treat the carcass of her Savior, not knowing what was going to happen, just hoping that somehow Jesus would show up. And then she's in the garden and she says, because Jesus showed up. And Easter exists to remind us every year that Jesus always shows up. In tragedy, he's there. In triumph, he is there. In terrible times and in good times, he is there. Jesus always shows up. And when I see the azaleas bloom in the spring, I'm reminded that Easter is near. And Easter reminds me that Jesus always shows up when we need him most. When we don't even know we need him. When we don't even necessarily believe in him, Jesus still shows up and patiently waits for our faith. So if you're here and you're a believer, be reminded by Easter that Jesus always shows up. He's the only hope we have that will never fail us. He always shows up. If you're here today and you don't believe, you've been begrudgingly brought by family. Thank you for sitting quietly for a minute. But I want you to know that Jesus shows up for you too. And he will not stop. And he will keep showing up in your life and offering you his love and the dignity and the purpose and the forgiveness and the redemption and the restoration that he gave Mary. And when we receive it, we will love him as Mary did. But let Easter remind us this year that Jesus always shows up. He did then, he does now, and he will then too. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for Easter and the joy that it brings and all that it is. Thank you for the opportunity to celebrate, to love you, to reflect on you, and to celebrate the victory that you won for us against sin and shame and death and pain. Thank you that one day we will be with you and you will be with us and there will be no more weeping or crying or pain anymore for the former things have passed away. Thank you that Easter reminds us that you show up and that we can look forward to you showing up again when you come crashing through the clouds to claim us. Thank you for all that Easter is and all that it represents. I pray that we would hold it and celebrate it well. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. Good to see everybody. Thank you for being here on Palm Sunday as we catapult into Easter. Easter is just about here. It feels like this year is going by so very quickly. And I love Easter. This Palm Sunday is part five of our series, The Table, and we're going to be looking at the Last Supper, the most famous of Jesus's meals at the table. And then next week we get to Easter. For me, Easter is my favorite holiday. Easter is victory holiday. Easter is when Jesus wins and death loses its sting. Easter, to me, for a Christian, is the best. It's the greatest holiday. I know Thanksgiving is great, and I know that Christmas is fantastic, but for me, from a spiritual perspective, Easter is the one that I most enjoy celebrating. Although Christmas is tough because Christmas is pretty good, and one of the things I really like about Christmas and the celebration of Christmas is how understated it is, how understated the arrival of Christ is. I know that's funny, but when it's understated in the Bible, not understated in our culture. Okay, sorry about that. That's less than clear. That also should have been read as a joke. But no, no, no. The arrival of Jesus is incredibly understated. And as a people, I think we are drawn to humble, understated things. When you consider it, the entire Old Testament points to this coming Messiah. God sends his son to earth to reconcile us to him. We're going to talk about that more in a little bit. And Jesus shows up. And when he shows up, when this great Messiah shows up from heaven, we would expect him, I think, to show up like he does in Revelation 19 with just armies of angels behind him and trumpets sounding. And in he thunders to the world. And that's not how he arrives. He arrives as a helpless baby to a nondescript mom in a nondescript town in a nondescript country. And it's just like, ta-da, he's here. And I think that's a really neat part of the Christmas story, and it's a really neat part of how our God works. Our God is remarkably understated, leaving us often to find the impact and the largesse of the things that he does. Similarly, I believe that the Last Supper is every bit as understated and significant as the arrival of Jesus himself. This is Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday launches us into Holy Week. Palm Sunday signifies the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem. If you've read your Gospels carefully or closely or paid attention over the course of your life as you've interacted with the stories of Jesus, you'll find this peculiar thing that Jesus does whenever he performs a miracle. It feels like he's always like, okay, I'm going to heal your leprosy, but don't tell anybody. Okay, I'm going to heal your mom, but don't tell anybody I did it. And you're like, why is he doing this? This is weird. Isn't the point to tell other people about Jesus? Because Jesus knows that if too much fanfare gets out, that certain things are going to be set in motion that cannot be undone that will lead to his crucifixion. So when he goes into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, he is knowingly setting in motion the wheels of events that will lead to his crucifixion. That's what Holy Week is. On Friday is the crucifixion of Jesus. It's called Good Friday. We're going to have a service here, and we're going to reflect on that. But I wanted to take some time this morning to reflect on what the Last Supper was and why it is so very significant. Because I think the Last Supper, this last Passover meal, the institution of communion together, again, is every bit as understated and significant as the arrival of Jesus himself. And I want to tell you why I think this, and I want that to allow us to kind of reflect on the significance of what the Last Supper represents. So before I continue, let me just read you the account of the Last Supper from the Gospel of Luke. It's in all four Gospels, but we've been going through the book of Luke, so I'm going to read from the Gospel of Luke in chapter 22, verses 15 through 20. He said, And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant of my blood. We'll stop right there. It's easy to just be reading this story, to read the Gospels, get to chapter 22, read this part. They're having dinner. They break bread. He says, this is a symbol of my crucifixion. If you continue to read the story, by the way, one of you is going to betray me, and then move on. But I want us to understand what's happening here. Because, again, the Passover, the Last Supper, immortalized by Da Vinci, is one of the most significant, impactful nights in all of the Bible, what he's talking about here. Do you understand that the whole Bible points to this night, to this weekend, to this death, and to this resurrection? Do you understand that the whole Bible points to the illustration of bread and wine that Jesus is using here? Even the night on which he chose to do it, they're celebrating Passover. Passover is a Hebrew celebration that is a celebration and reminder of the grace that God gave them when they were in Egypt to set them free from slavery. If you turn to the very beginning of your Bible in the book of Exodus, what you find is that God's chosen people are slaves to the Egyptians. And that God raises up a man named Moses, and he gives him the instruction, go to Pharaoh and set my people free. Pharaoh does not like this idea. God sends 10 plagues to change Pharaoh's mind. And the last one that he sends to break his will and to change his mind once and for all is the death of the firstborn son by the angel of death passing over Egypt. And the plague is this one night, the angel of death is going to pass over the nation of Egypt. And if you do not have the blood of a spotless lamb painted on your doorpost, on your doorframe, then that angel of death claims your firstborn son. If you do have the blood of a spotless lamb painted on the frame of your door of your house, then that blood is sufficient for the death and your firstborn son is not claimed. That is a very clear picture of the death of Jesus on the cross. I'm not going to go through the whole thing and make you work with me, but if you were to be a Hebrew person at that time and you heard that you needed to sacrifice a lamb and put its blood on your doorpost, you would paint it in the top center and you would paint it at about the height of your shoulder on the two frames. And that would form the shape of a cross on your door, the blood of a spotless lamb. What was Jesus called years later? Behold, the lamb of God who comes to take away the sins of the world. We just sang about the lamb of God. Jesus is the lamb of God who was sacrificed, who died a death so that we don't have to. And even though they didn't realize what they were doing when they were painting the blood on the doorframe, they were painting a picture of the crucifixion of Jesus. They, without knowing it, were pointing you to this and pointing all of history to the cross. They were painting a picture of what Jesus is depicting in the Last Supper, and then they go into the desert. And in the desert, some scholars say they could have been about 500,000 strong. However many it was, it was too many to feed off of what they could find to eat in the desert. So what did God do? You know. He sent manna. He sent the daily bread. He sent the daily sustenance for what they needed. He sent them enough for that day. We hear echoes of this in the Lord's Prayer. When the disciples look at Jesus and they're like, you pray different than anybody we've ever heard. Will you teach us how to pray? Jesus prays in part. Give us this day our daily bread. Give us our manna. Give us what we need for today. Give us the Jesus that we need to get through today. Give us the grace and the peace and the mercy and the love and the kindness and the persistence to get through today. What happened in the desert, in between Egypt and Israel, every day is God providing enough for that day. It is a picture of his provision of Jesus later. Manna is most closely associated with bread. It is the picture of the bread that Jesus would break at the Passover meal. It's a picture of who Jesus was. In the book of John, Jesus says, I am the bread of life. When you eat of me, you will hunger no more. He says, on the living water, when you drink of me, you will thirst no more. Jesus says, I am the bread of life. I am all that you need. And then as I was thinking about this and just, and there's more to do, I just don't have time to tie together all the symbolism in scripture that points us to the Passover meal and what that symbolizes. But even as I was thinking about last week's sermon on the feeding of the 5,000, there was five loaves of bread. And Jesus took them and he began to break them. And he began to feed everyone who was there, maybe about 20,000 people. And I wonder if there is a point, like bread number one. This one's good for about 3,500 folks. Oh, that one's done. And then he goes to the next one. I doubt that. This is just a guess. Okay, this is just a hunch. This is not in the Bible. This is just Nate talking to you. I wonder if he didn't take the first bread and break it, put it in the basket and the second one and break it and put it in the basket and the third and then the fourth and then he got to the fifth. And I wonder if that was the one that just kept breaking. I wonder if that was the one that had enough. And I wonder if the first four loaves weren't a picture of the Old Testament sacrificial system and the temporary sacrifices that we make. They only work for a little bit and then they run out. And then if that last piece of bread wasn't a picture of Christ being broken over and over and over and over and over again for all the people there so that they had more than what they needed. Even if it didn't go that way. And he dispersed the breaking equally over the five. It's bread being broken over and over and over and over again for all who were there so that all could have their fill. It is a picture of the crucifixion. Of Jesus. The bread of life being broken for us to give to all who have need. So much so that there is plenty of Jesus left over to go around for everyone. All of the Bible points to this night that is a picture of what happens in the hours to come. What I want us to understand is that what's symbolized here at the Passover meal, at the Last Supper, our entire history points to this singular act. Our entire history, the entire history of the world culminates and points to this singular act. What happens, what Jesus is depicting there in Luke 22 when he says, this is my body that's broken for you. Speaking of his body hanging on the cross. This is my blood that's poured out for you. Speaking of his blood that is spilt from the cross. All of history points to that singular act. It is the denouement of human history, what we see happen on Good Friday and then subsequently on Easter Sunday. And this Passover meal is a picture of it. Not only that, but all of our human history and all of our present traditions point back to what happened on the cross. So all of human history points to the singular act. And then everything that happens from then continually points us back to what happens on the cross. We're going to celebrate baptisms next week. Those are made possible by the cross. We're going to celebrate communion this week. That's made possible by the cross. Everything, everything, everything in history points to the crucifixion of Christ. Which begs the question, and it's really what this morning needs to be about, why is the crucifixion worth all of history's focus? Why is this one singular act worth all of the organization and the pointing and the pictures and the imagery that we find in the Old Testament pointing us to the crucifixion? Why does all of history reflect back on and reliant upon the crucifixion? Now, I know that we're in a Bible-believing church, so this seems like an obvious question. Why is the crucifixion such a big deal? And many of you know the answers. But I did think it was worth taking a Sunday as we barrel into Easter to reflect and to consider what is won for us at the death of Christ? What exactly happened on the cross? I think for many of us, if not all of us, we go to this place in our mind, well, that's how we're saved. And that's fine. That's a good start. But I would encourage us to reflect much more deeply on what is actually happening in the death of the Son of God on the cross. I'm not sure that you can make an exhaustive list of all the things that the crucifixion does, of all the things that it wins, of all the things that it stands for, of all the things that it symbolizes. I'm not sure that you can exhaust that list, so I'm not going to attempt to do that. But I do have for you this morning three things that I think that the crucifixion does for us. The first is the crucifixion exhausts God's wrath for his children. The crucifixion exhausts God's wrath for his children. Now, this is not something we talk about a lot. It's not polite dinner conversation, God's wrath. How have you experienced God's wrath in your life lately? That's not something that we do. And we don't really like to reflect upon it. Matter of fact, I have some people in different Bible studies and just in different conversations that I'm in, in and around church, who almost have a problem with God's wrath. Where we'll see passages in Scripture that indicate that God's angry with sinners, that God does have wrath for us, and they'll kind of ask a question, which is it? Do we serve a God of love or do we serve a God of wrath? And you just kind of have to go, yeah. No, you take 40 years and figure it out. But let's talk just a little bit about the wrath of God so that we can see that it is an earned wrath. I happen to believe that the Bible is true and that we can trust what it says. And if we will accept that the Bible is true, then what it tells us is that there is a perfect creator God. And that that perfect creator God, out of His goodness, created us so that we might experience Him. He literally said, what we've got going on here, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is so good that I'm going to create a whole race of people so that they can share in this. And so he created the earth. And at the very, very beginning of the Bible, we see that he created the Garden of Eden, and he put Adam and Eve there. And when he was done with creation, he looked at it and he says, it is good. It is very good. It is perfect. This is exactly what I wanted. And we learn later that in that perfect utopian world that God walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening. That in this perfect place, all that God wanted was to be with us and all we wanted was to be with him. And it was everything that God had intended. And God was perfectly happy to live, to exist in this way with us for all of eternity. The only rule was from God, I get to be God and you don't. That's it. I get to be God, you don't get to be God. As long as you're good with that, we can exist like this. And Adam and Eve said, yeah, it's not going to work. We need to be equal partners here. And when we sin, that's what we say. You realize that's what all sin is? Any sin you've ever committed, all you're doing is saying, for now, you're a wise, trusted advisor, or you're a father figure I resent, whatever you want to pick. But you are not God. I am. I'm going to make my own choices. That's all sin is. So we collectively, at different times in our life, look at the creator of the universe who placed us here to experience a relationship with him, and we said, nah, I'm like you. I'm as good as you are. I'm going to follow my own rules. I don't trust your rules for my life. And when that happened in the garden, everything broke. They corrupted God's perfect creation. When sin entered the world, creation broke down. Things entered into creation that God did not intend for his creation. Things like cancer and abuse and hurt people who hurt other people and on and on and on the list goes. That was not in the Garden of Eden. That was not what God intended. When we sinned, when we declared that we were God too, we broke it. And we broke that relationship with him. The one thing that God wanted for us to be with him, we broke that. And God looked at us in love and he knew that we cannot fix this. We are powerless to repair that relationship. So what does he do to repair that relationship? Genesis chapter 12. He enacts this grand plan through the line of Abraham to bring us a Messiah who will die a perfect death on the cross so that we don't have to. He will be the blood of the Lamb on our doorframe so that we do not have to die. So that we might be reconciled back to Him. He says, I created a perfect world. I made it just for you. I made it so that you could experience relationship with me. You messed it up. You can't fix it. I'm going to fix it at great cost to myself. And then we do one of two things. Either we never at all accept that gift. I heard a quote from Ted Turner years ago. This is a very loose paraphrase because I don't remember it wholly and it wasn't worth looking up because I can get the point across to you. He basically said, why did Jesus die for me? I never asked him to do that. I don't need it. When we in our life do not become Christians, do not at any point express a faith in Christ and a gratitude for his death on the cross for us and a repentance of the sins that necessitated that death. We are essentially saying what Ted Turner said. Who's this Jesus guy? Why did he die on the cross for me? I didn't need that anyways. Now tell me that an all-powerful, perfect God who created us to exist in relationship with Him, who built a bridge back to Him at great cost to Himself, you explain to me why He shouldn't be rightly offended at that disgusting attitude. And then for the Christians who have accepted the love of Christ, who have accepted His sacrifice, understanding that it covers over our sins, what do we do to inflame and deserve the wrath of our God? We cheapen Christ's blood by presuming upon God's grace. With every willful act of reclaiming the God role in our life, with every willful act of reclaiming the God role in our life, with every determined break from God's will and choosing our will, with every knowing sin that we commit, we cheapen the blood of Christ by presuming upon the grace of God. I know I shouldn't do this, but I'm a sinful person. God has forgiven me. I'm good. I've prayed the prayer. I've repented. I go to church. I believe in Jesus. I know I shouldn't do this thing, but also I know that I'm good. God's got it. As if we're at some corporate dinner and we opt for another glass of cheap wine because we know that God is footing the bill. Every time we willfully sin and act discordantly with God's will in our life, we cheapen the blood of Christ that he spilled on the cross because we presume upon the grace that it signifies. And you tell me, if you're in heaven watching us trample the blood of your son with our willful sin, would you not be just a little ticked? Would you not be just a little annoyed? So yes, we serve a wrathful God. But yes, that wrath is earned. But, this is the beautiful part. When Jesus is hanging on the cross and he utters, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It is in that moment that our earned wrath is poured out on his son on our behalf so that we don't have to experience that. God's wrath is exhausted in that moment on his own son so that we live life exempt from God's wrath, only experiencing God's love. This is why it's so puzzling, I think, for Christians when we encounter the wrath of God in scripture to be told that it exists because we don't experience that God. We experience a loving God without acknowledging that the wrath that he has for us was already poured out on his son so that we don't have to experience it. So what does the crucifixion do? It saves you. Sure, fine, use that language. But what it really does is it exhausts the wrath of God for you so that all that's left for you from the God of heaven is love. So we can sing our songs and so we can live in peace and so that we can be reconciled back to him. That's what's won on the cross is we don't experience God's wrath. People who never come to faith do and it's terrible. But lest we make the cross, as we often do, about our personal salvation project, which is not its intent, let us also acknowledge what else the crucifixion does. Because the crucifixion reconciles all of creation. It reconciles all of creation back to God. I love Romans 8, and I quote it often when it says that all of creation groans together for the reconciliation of us back to our God, for our adoption as sons, for the forgiveness of sins. All of creation groans to be reconciled back to the perfect utopia that God intended. When we get the call that someone is very sick, that someone found a lump or a mass somewhere, and the results of the scan come back and it is not good. That is creation groaning for a return back to Eden, for the return of the King. That is creation groaning for Jesus to come make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. When a marriage breaks down and children are left being shuttled back and forth, that is creation groaning for the way things are supposed to be. When a husband is abusive and a wife feels that shame, creation is groaning. When the leaves fall off the trees and die, and winter is barren, and the days are short, creation is groaning. When COVID sweeps through and shuts us down, creation is groaning. It is telling us, this is not right. This does not feel right. When tragedy strikes and we're sitting in the middle of it, creation is groaning with you for the reconciliation of God's children to himself, for the forgiveness of sins and the restoration of Eden. Creation is groaning for the promises in Revelation. And those groanings are only fulfilled through the cross. Through Jesus reconciling not just us back to our God, but creation back to its creator. On the cross, we are promised that those things will not always be true, which begs us to discuss the last thing I want to say about what the crucifixion does, which is the crucifixion gives us hope for the future. We're told in Romans 5 that we have a hope that will not be put to shame. And if you have lived life for any amount of time, you know that everything you hope in eventually puts you to shame. Everything that you've ever placed your hope in has hurt you. Everything that you have ever placed your hope in has let you down. Except God. There are times, I will admit, when He feels like He has let you down. But what we have in the crucifixion is the promise that ultimately he did not. Do you understand that if we don't have the crucifixion of Jesus and the subsequent resurrection, that all there is is careening through life from tragedy to tragedy? Do you understand that if there's no crucifixion, then all we have is Ecclesiastes, where the wisest man in the world at the time wrote, with much wisdom comes much vexation. The smarter I get, the sadder things are. Do you understand that if we don't have the crucifixion, that all there is, it's just eat, sleep, and be merry for tomorrow we die. If today happens to be a good day, well then bucko, buddy. Good job, because tomorrow's going to stink. If there's no crucifixion, then when we lose a loved one, it's just goodbye. That's it. Death is final. It wins. It will claim us all. And we live with that cloud over our head for our whole lives. And the best we can do is stave it off. But because of the crucifixion, when we lose a loved one who knows Jesus, it's simply goodbye for now. And frankly, I don't know how a hurt world, how a lost world makes sense of tragedy without the crucifixion and the hope that one day these sad things will be made right and untrue. How do you cope with what happened in Nashville without the crucifixion? How do you watch your dreams crumble around you in the marriage that you thought that was going to work and hasn't without the crucifixion? How do you deal with miscarriage and loss and illness without the crucifixion? How do you find any hope that anything gets any better without the crucifixion? Without the promise that one day our God will be with his people and his people will be with our God and there will be no more sin and no more crying and no more death anymore for the former things have passed away. How do you have hope for that without the crucifixion? That's what's won there. That's what the crucifixion means. It's not just our personal salvation project. It exhausts the wrath of God. It reconciles all of creation back to Him. And it gives us a hope that this world can't touch. We asked earlier why our entire history looks to this moment and it's simply this. Our entire history points to this singular act because our entire future relies upon it. Everything in human history is marshaled to focus us on the cross because all of the hope of the future of humanity rests on the cross. So when we celebrate communion, that's what we celebrate. In just a little bit, I'm going to pray, and then the elders will come forward, and we'll move into a time of communion together. And when we do that, remember these things. Remember that as you break that bread, that it symbolizes Christ's body breaking for you on the cross. As you dip it in the wine, that symbolizes his blood poured out for you on the cross. And that on that cross that day, the wrath of God, the earned wrath of God was exhausted on your Savior so that you might experience the love of a good God. And that on that day, there is a promise made that one day He will reconcile all of creation back to Himself exactly the way He intended. And that on that day, the pain that you feel right now, the hard things that you are walking through right now will be anathema. They will be no more. It is done. There is a hope that you can cling to. So I'm going to pray, and as I do, I would like for you to pray too. Pray with me or pray on your own. But allow God to prepare your heart to take communion. Carry to that communion table whatever it is you need to carry. Carry to that communion table whatever brokenness it was that you walked in here with this morning. If you walked in here in a good space, if life is good, if you're in a sweet season, then praise God for that sweet season as you break the bread that earned you that season. If you're in a time that makes you need hope, then break that bread for hope. That God sees you, that God knows you, that God loves you, and that God has made promises to you and that you can hope in those promises and that they will not be put to shame. As I pray, spend time preparing your heart for communion, and then I'll give you some instructions as the band comes up. and over again in my life. I know that the chances are high that I will presume upon your grace this week. And the week after that. Thank you for loving me anyways. For pursuing me anyways. Thank you for loving us despite our willful disobedience. Thank you for exhausting your wrath on your son on our behalf so that we might experience your love. I pray that we would walk faithfully and gratefully in that love. And God, to those who need it most, for those who are hurting, I pray that communion this morning can be a symbol and a reminder of hope. That not all days will be like today. It's simply creation groaning for you. And that in your perfect time, in your perfect way, you'll send your son back to get us and make all these wrong things right and make all these sad things untrue. Thank you for everything that was won on the cross. Give us a fresh gratitude for it that we might walk in that. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. Good to see everybody. Thank you for being here on Palm Sunday as we catapult into Easter. Easter is just about here. It feels like this year is going by so very quickly. And I love Easter. This Palm Sunday is part five of our series, The Table, and we're going to be looking at the Last Supper, the most famous of Jesus's meals at the table. And then next week we get to Easter. For me, Easter is my favorite holiday. Easter is victory holiday. Easter is when Jesus wins and death loses its sting. Easter, to me, for a Christian, is the best. It's the greatest holiday. I know Thanksgiving is great, and I know that Christmas is fantastic, but for me, from a spiritual perspective, Easter is the one that I most enjoy celebrating. Although Christmas is tough because Christmas is pretty good, and one of the things I really like about Christmas and the celebration of Christmas is how understated it is, how understated the arrival of Christ is. I know that's funny, but when it's understated in the Bible, not understated in our culture. Okay, sorry about that. That's less than clear. That also should have been read as a joke. But no, no, no. The arrival of Jesus is incredibly understated. And as a people, I think we are drawn to humble, understated things. When you consider it, the entire Old Testament points to this coming Messiah. God sends his son to earth to reconcile us to him. We're going to talk about that more in a little bit. And Jesus shows up. And when he shows up, when this great Messiah shows up from heaven, we would expect him, I think, to show up like he does in Revelation 19 with just armies of angels behind him and trumpets sounding. And in he thunders to the world. And that's not how he arrives. He arrives as a helpless baby to a nondescript mom in a nondescript town in a nondescript country. And it's just like, ta-da, he's here. And I think that's a really neat part of the Christmas story, and it's a really neat part of how our God works. Our God is remarkably understated, leaving us often to find the impact and the largesse of the things that he does. Similarly, I believe that the Last Supper is every bit as understated and significant as the arrival of Jesus himself. This is Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday launches us into Holy Week. Palm Sunday signifies the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem. If you've read your Gospels carefully or closely or paid attention over the course of your life as you've interacted with the stories of Jesus, you'll find this peculiar thing that Jesus does whenever he performs a miracle. It feels like he's always like, okay, I'm going to heal your leprosy, but don't tell anybody. Okay, I'm going to heal your mom, but don't tell anybody I did it. And you're like, why is he doing this? This is weird. Isn't the point to tell other people about Jesus? Because Jesus knows that if too much fanfare gets out, that certain things are going to be set in motion that cannot be undone that will lead to his crucifixion. So when he goes into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, he is knowingly setting in motion the wheels of events that will lead to his crucifixion. That's what Holy Week is. On Friday is the crucifixion of Jesus. It's called Good Friday. We're going to have a service here, and we're going to reflect on that. But I wanted to take some time this morning to reflect on what the Last Supper was and why it is so very significant. Because I think the Last Supper, this last Passover meal, the institution of communion together, again, is every bit as understated and significant as the arrival of Jesus himself. And I want to tell you why I think this, and I want that to allow us to kind of reflect on the significance of what the Last Supper represents. So before I continue, let me just read you the account of the Last Supper from the Gospel of Luke. It's in all four Gospels, but we've been going through the book of Luke, so I'm going to read from the Gospel of Luke in chapter 22, verses 15 through 20. He said, And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant of my blood. We'll stop right there. It's easy to just be reading this story, to read the Gospels, get to chapter 22, read this part. They're having dinner. They break bread. He says, this is a symbol of my crucifixion. If you continue to read the story, by the way, one of you is going to betray me, and then move on. But I want us to understand what's happening here. Because, again, the Passover, the Last Supper, immortalized by Da Vinci, is one of the most significant, impactful nights in all of the Bible, what he's talking about here. Do you understand that the whole Bible points to this night, to this weekend, to this death, and to this resurrection? Do you understand that the whole Bible points to the illustration of bread and wine that Jesus is using here? Even the night on which he chose to do it, they're celebrating Passover. Passover is a Hebrew celebration that is a celebration and reminder of the grace that God gave them when they were in Egypt to set them free from slavery. If you turn to the very beginning of your Bible in the book of Exodus, what you find is that God's chosen people are slaves to the Egyptians. And that God raises up a man named Moses, and he gives him the instruction, go to Pharaoh and set my people free. Pharaoh does not like this idea. God sends 10 plagues to change Pharaoh's mind. And the last one that he sends to break his will and to change his mind once and for all is the death of the firstborn son by the angel of death passing over Egypt. And the plague is this one night, the angel of death is going to pass over the nation of Egypt. And if you do not have the blood of a spotless lamb painted on your doorpost, on your doorframe, then that angel of death claims your firstborn son. If you do have the blood of a spotless lamb painted on the frame of your door of your house, then that blood is sufficient for the death and your firstborn son is not claimed. That is a very clear picture of the death of Jesus on the cross. I'm not going to go through the whole thing and make you work with me, but if you were to be a Hebrew person at that time and you heard that you needed to sacrifice a lamb and put its blood on your doorpost, you would paint it in the top center and you would paint it at about the height of your shoulder on the two frames. And that would form the shape of a cross on your door, the blood of a spotless lamb. What was Jesus called years later? Behold, the lamb of God who comes to take away the sins of the world. We just sang about the lamb of God. Jesus is the lamb of God who was sacrificed, who died a death so that we don't have to. And even though they didn't realize what they were doing when they were painting the blood on the doorframe, they were painting a picture of the crucifixion of Jesus. They, without knowing it, were pointing you to this and pointing all of history to the cross. They were painting a picture of what Jesus is depicting in the Last Supper, and then they go into the desert. And in the desert, some scholars say they could have been about 500,000 strong. However many it was, it was too many to feed off of what they could find to eat in the desert. So what did God do? You know. He sent manna. He sent the daily bread. He sent the daily sustenance for what they needed. He sent them enough for that day. We hear echoes of this in the Lord's Prayer. When the disciples look at Jesus and they're like, you pray different than anybody we've ever heard. Will you teach us how to pray? Jesus prays in part. Give us this day our daily bread. Give us our manna. Give us what we need for today. Give us the Jesus that we need to get through today. Give us the grace and the peace and the mercy and the love and the kindness and the persistence to get through today. What happened in the desert, in between Egypt and Israel, every day is God providing enough for that day. It is a picture of his provision of Jesus later. Manna is most closely associated with bread. It is the picture of the bread that Jesus would break at the Passover meal. It's a picture of who Jesus was. In the book of John, Jesus says, I am the bread of life. When you eat of me, you will hunger no more. He says, on the living water, when you drink of me, you will thirst no more. Jesus says, I am the bread of life. I am all that you need. And then as I was thinking about this and just, and there's more to do, I just don't have time to tie together all the symbolism in scripture that points us to the Passover meal and what that symbolizes. But even as I was thinking about last week's sermon on the feeding of the 5,000, there was five loaves of bread. And Jesus took them and he began to break them. And he began to feed everyone who was there, maybe about 20,000 people. And I wonder if there is a point, like bread number one. This one's good for about 3,500 folks. Oh, that one's done. And then he goes to the next one. I doubt that. This is just a guess. Okay, this is just a hunch. This is not in the Bible. This is just Nate talking to you. I wonder if he didn't take the first bread and break it, put it in the basket and the second one and break it and put it in the basket and the third and then the fourth and then he got to the fifth. And I wonder if that was the one that just kept breaking. I wonder if that was the one that had enough. And I wonder if the first four loaves weren't a picture of the Old Testament sacrificial system and the temporary sacrifices that we make. They only work for a little bit and then they run out. And then if that last piece of bread wasn't a picture of Christ being broken over and over and over and over and over again for all the people there so that they had more than what they needed. Even if it didn't go that way. And he dispersed the breaking equally over the five. It's bread being broken over and over and over and over again for all who were there so that all could have their fill. It is a picture of the crucifixion. Of Jesus. The bread of life being broken for us to give to all who have need. So much so that there is plenty of Jesus left over to go around for everyone. All of the Bible points to this night that is a picture of what happens in the hours to come. What I want us to understand is that what's symbolized here at the Passover meal, at the Last Supper, our entire history points to this singular act. Our entire history, the entire history of the world culminates and points to this singular act. What happens, what Jesus is depicting there in Luke 22 when he says, this is my body that's broken for you. Speaking of his body hanging on the cross. This is my blood that's poured out for you. Speaking of his blood that is spilt from the cross. All of history points to that singular act. It is the denouement of human history, what we see happen on Good Friday and then subsequently on Easter Sunday. And this Passover meal is a picture of it. Not only that, but all of our human history and all of our present traditions point back to what happened on the cross. So all of human history points to the singular act. And then everything that happens from then continually points us back to what happens on the cross. We're going to celebrate baptisms next week. Those are made possible by the cross. We're going to celebrate communion this week. That's made possible by the cross. Everything, everything, everything in history points to the crucifixion of Christ. Which begs the question, and it's really what this morning needs to be about, why is the crucifixion worth all of history's focus? Why is this one singular act worth all of the organization and the pointing and the pictures and the imagery that we find in the Old Testament pointing us to the crucifixion? Why does all of history reflect back on and reliant upon the crucifixion? Now, I know that we're in a Bible-believing church, so this seems like an obvious question. Why is the crucifixion such a big deal? And many of you know the answers. But I did think it was worth taking a Sunday as we barrel into Easter to reflect and to consider what is won for us at the death of Christ? What exactly happened on the cross? I think for many of us, if not all of us, we go to this place in our mind, well, that's how we're saved. And that's fine. That's a good start. But I would encourage us to reflect much more deeply on what is actually happening in the death of the Son of God on the cross. I'm not sure that you can make an exhaustive list of all the things that the crucifixion does, of all the things that it wins, of all the things that it stands for, of all the things that it symbolizes. I'm not sure that you can exhaust that list, so I'm not going to attempt to do that. But I do have for you this morning three things that I think that the crucifixion does for us. The first is the crucifixion exhausts God's wrath for his children. The crucifixion exhausts God's wrath for his children. Now, this is not something we talk about a lot. It's not polite dinner conversation, God's wrath. How have you experienced God's wrath in your life lately? That's not something that we do. And we don't really like to reflect upon it. Matter of fact, I have some people in different Bible studies and just in different conversations that I'm in, in and around church, who almost have a problem with God's wrath. Where we'll see passages in Scripture that indicate that God's angry with sinners, that God does have wrath for us, and they'll kind of ask a question, which is it? Do we serve a God of love or do we serve a God of wrath? And you just kind of have to go, yeah. No, you take 40 years and figure it out. But let's talk just a little bit about the wrath of God so that we can see that it is an earned wrath. I happen to believe that the Bible is true and that we can trust what it says. And if we will accept that the Bible is true, then what it tells us is that there is a perfect creator God. And that that perfect creator God, out of His goodness, created us so that we might experience Him. He literally said, what we've got going on here, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is so good that I'm going to create a whole race of people so that they can share in this. And so he created the earth. And at the very, very beginning of the Bible, we see that he created the Garden of Eden, and he put Adam and Eve there. And when he was done with creation, he looked at it and he says, it is good. It is very good. It is perfect. This is exactly what I wanted. And we learn later that in that perfect utopian world that God walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening. That in this perfect place, all that God wanted was to be with us and all we wanted was to be with him. And it was everything that God had intended. And God was perfectly happy to live, to exist in this way with us for all of eternity. The only rule was from God, I get to be God and you don't. That's it. I get to be God, you don't get to be God. As long as you're good with that, we can exist like this. And Adam and Eve said, yeah, it's not going to work. We need to be equal partners here. And when we sin, that's what we say. You realize that's what all sin is? Any sin you've ever committed, all you're doing is saying, for now, you're a wise, trusted advisor, or you're a father figure I resent, whatever you want to pick. But you are not God. I am. I'm going to make my own choices. That's all sin is. So we collectively, at different times in our life, look at the creator of the universe who placed us here to experience a relationship with him, and we said, nah, I'm like you. I'm as good as you are. I'm going to follow my own rules. I don't trust your rules for my life. And when that happened in the garden, everything broke. They corrupted God's perfect creation. When sin entered the world, creation broke down. Things entered into creation that God did not intend for his creation. Things like cancer and abuse and hurt people who hurt other people and on and on and on the list goes. That was not in the Garden of Eden. That was not what God intended. When we sinned, when we declared that we were God too, we broke it. And we broke that relationship with him. The one thing that God wanted for us to be with him, we broke that. And God looked at us in love and he knew that we cannot fix this. We are powerless to repair that relationship. So what does he do to repair that relationship? Genesis chapter 12. He enacts this grand plan through the line of Abraham to bring us a Messiah who will die a perfect death on the cross so that we don't have to. He will be the blood of the Lamb on our doorframe so that we do not have to die. So that we might be reconciled back to Him. He says, I created a perfect world. I made it just for you. I made it so that you could experience relationship with me. You messed it up. You can't fix it. I'm going to fix it at great cost to myself. And then we do one of two things. Either we never at all accept that gift. I heard a quote from Ted Turner years ago. This is a very loose paraphrase because I don't remember it wholly and it wasn't worth looking up because I can get the point across to you. He basically said, why did Jesus die for me? I never asked him to do that. I don't need it. When we in our life do not become Christians, do not at any point express a faith in Christ and a gratitude for his death on the cross for us and a repentance of the sins that necessitated that death. We are essentially saying what Ted Turner said. Who's this Jesus guy? Why did he die on the cross for me? I didn't need that anyways. Now tell me that an all-powerful, perfect God who created us to exist in relationship with Him, who built a bridge back to Him at great cost to Himself, you explain to me why He shouldn't be rightly offended at that disgusting attitude. And then for the Christians who have accepted the love of Christ, who have accepted His sacrifice, understanding that it covers over our sins, what do we do to inflame and deserve the wrath of our God? We cheapen Christ's blood by presuming upon God's grace. With every willful act of reclaiming the God role in our life, with every willful act of reclaiming the God role in our life, with every determined break from God's will and choosing our will, with every knowing sin that we commit, we cheapen the blood of Christ by presuming upon the grace of God. I know I shouldn't do this, but I'm a sinful person. God has forgiven me. I'm good. I've prayed the prayer. I've repented. I go to church. I believe in Jesus. I know I shouldn't do this thing, but also I know that I'm good. God's got it. As if we're at some corporate dinner and we opt for another glass of cheap wine because we know that God is footing the bill. Every time we willfully sin and act discordantly with God's will in our life, we cheapen the blood of Christ that he spilled on the cross because we presume upon the grace that it signifies. And you tell me, if you're in heaven watching us trample the blood of your son with our willful sin, would you not be just a little ticked? Would you not be just a little annoyed? So yes, we serve a wrathful God. But yes, that wrath is earned. But, this is the beautiful part. When Jesus is hanging on the cross and he utters, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It is in that moment that our earned wrath is poured out on his son on our behalf so that we don't have to experience that. God's wrath is exhausted in that moment on his own son so that we live life exempt from God's wrath, only experiencing God's love. This is why it's so puzzling, I think, for Christians when we encounter the wrath of God in scripture to be told that it exists because we don't experience that God. We experience a loving God without acknowledging that the wrath that he has for us was already poured out on his son so that we don't have to experience it. So what does the crucifixion do? It saves you. Sure, fine, use that language. But what it really does is it exhausts the wrath of God for you so that all that's left for you from the God of heaven is love. So we can sing our songs and so we can live in peace and so that we can be reconciled back to him. That's what's won on the cross is we don't experience God's wrath. People who never come to faith do and it's terrible. But lest we make the cross, as we often do, about our personal salvation project, which is not its intent, let us also acknowledge what else the crucifixion does. Because the crucifixion reconciles all of creation. It reconciles all of creation back to God. I love Romans 8, and I quote it often when it says that all of creation groans together for the reconciliation of us back to our God, for our adoption as sons, for the forgiveness of sins. All of creation groans to be reconciled back to the perfect utopia that God intended. When we get the call that someone is very sick, that someone found a lump or a mass somewhere, and the results of the scan come back and it is not good. That is creation groaning for a return back to Eden, for the return of the King. That is creation groaning for Jesus to come make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. When a marriage breaks down and children are left being shuttled back and forth, that is creation groaning for the way things are supposed to be. When a husband is abusive and a wife feels that shame, creation is groaning. When the leaves fall off the trees and die, and winter is barren, and the days are short, creation is groaning. When COVID sweeps through and shuts us down, creation is groaning. It is telling us, this is not right. This does not feel right. When tragedy strikes and we're sitting in the middle of it, creation is groaning with you for the reconciliation of God's children to himself, for the forgiveness of sins and the restoration of Eden. Creation is groaning for the promises in Revelation. And those groanings are only fulfilled through the cross. Through Jesus reconciling not just us back to our God, but creation back to its creator. On the cross, we are promised that those things will not always be true, which begs us to discuss the last thing I want to say about what the crucifixion does, which is the crucifixion gives us hope for the future. We're told in Romans 5 that we have a hope that will not be put to shame. And if you have lived life for any amount of time, you know that everything you hope in eventually puts you to shame. Everything that you've ever placed your hope in has hurt you. Everything that you have ever placed your hope in has let you down. Except God. There are times, I will admit, when He feels like He has let you down. But what we have in the crucifixion is the promise that ultimately he did not. Do you understand that if we don't have the crucifixion of Jesus and the subsequent resurrection, that all there is is careening through life from tragedy to tragedy? Do you understand that if there's no crucifixion, then all we have is Ecclesiastes, where the wisest man in the world at the time wrote, with much wisdom comes much vexation. The smarter I get, the sadder things are. Do you understand that if we don't have the crucifixion, that all there is, it's just eat, sleep, and be merry for tomorrow we die. If today happens to be a good day, well then bucko, buddy. Good job, because tomorrow's going to stink. If there's no crucifixion, then when we lose a loved one, it's just goodbye. That's it. Death is final. It wins. It will claim us all. And we live with that cloud over our head for our whole lives. And the best we can do is stave it off. But because of the crucifixion, when we lose a loved one who knows Jesus, it's simply goodbye for now. And frankly, I don't know how a hurt world, how a lost world makes sense of tragedy without the crucifixion and the hope that one day these sad things will be made right and untrue. How do you cope with what happened in Nashville without the crucifixion? How do you watch your dreams crumble around you in the marriage that you thought that was going to work and hasn't without the crucifixion? How do you deal with miscarriage and loss and illness without the crucifixion? How do you find any hope that anything gets any better without the crucifixion? Without the promise that one day our God will be with his people and his people will be with our God and there will be no more sin and no more crying and no more death anymore for the former things have passed away. How do you have hope for that without the crucifixion? That's what's won there. That's what the crucifixion means. It's not just our personal salvation project. It exhausts the wrath of God. It reconciles all of creation back to Him. And it gives us a hope that this world can't touch. We asked earlier why our entire history looks to this moment and it's simply this. Our entire history points to this singular act because our entire future relies upon it. Everything in human history is marshaled to focus us on the cross because all of the hope of the future of humanity rests on the cross. So when we celebrate communion, that's what we celebrate. In just a little bit, I'm going to pray, and then the elders will come forward, and we'll move into a time of communion together. And when we do that, remember these things. Remember that as you break that bread, that it symbolizes Christ's body breaking for you on the cross. As you dip it in the wine, that symbolizes his blood poured out for you on the cross. And that on that cross that day, the wrath of God, the earned wrath of God was exhausted on your Savior so that you might experience the love of a good God. And that on that day, there is a promise made that one day He will reconcile all of creation back to Himself exactly the way He intended. And that on that day, the pain that you feel right now, the hard things that you are walking through right now will be anathema. They will be no more. It is done. There is a hope that you can cling to. So I'm going to pray, and as I do, I would like for you to pray too. Pray with me or pray on your own. But allow God to prepare your heart to take communion. Carry to that communion table whatever it is you need to carry. Carry to that communion table whatever brokenness it was that you walked in here with this morning. If you walked in here in a good space, if life is good, if you're in a sweet season, then praise God for that sweet season as you break the bread that earned you that season. If you're in a time that makes you need hope, then break that bread for hope. That God sees you, that God knows you, that God loves you, and that God has made promises to you and that you can hope in those promises and that they will not be put to shame. As I pray, spend time preparing your heart for communion, and then I'll give you some instructions as the band comes up. and over again in my life. I know that the chances are high that I will presume upon your grace this week. And the week after that. Thank you for loving me anyways. For pursuing me anyways. Thank you for loving us despite our willful disobedience. Thank you for exhausting your wrath on your son on our behalf so that we might experience your love. I pray that we would walk faithfully and gratefully in that love. And God, to those who need it most, for those who are hurting, I pray that communion this morning can be a symbol and a reminder of hope. That not all days will be like today. It's simply creation groaning for you. And that in your perfect time, in your perfect way, you'll send your son back to get us and make all these wrong things right and make all these sad things untrue. Thank you for everything that was won on the cross. Give us a fresh gratitude for it that we might walk in that. In Jesus' name, amen.