More Than a Side-Show

Well, um I know it seems like I was just here, but since I was here, I've had uh two birthdays in my family.

My son is now fifteen, my daughter is now thirteen, so we are fully into the teens now and moving into that.

And uh yesterday was the first day, my son got his learner's permit oh here a couple months ago, but I elected to allow him to drive from Fargo to Grand Forks.

And uh, you know, when I was a young lad, getting my learner's permit, you know, 55 was pretty fast.

You know, as a driver now, 55 is terribly slow, isn't it?

It's like, oh my gosh, how do people drive like this?

But then when you're the passenger of a learner permitted son, 75 is ridiculous.

But uh actually he does very well.

Uh he's very attentive and uh good job, Devin.

Um I hope you're having a good summer.

How many of you kids in here are really enjoying your summer?

You you know you're like five weeks into summer.

I saw a parent's hand, and I should ask this question.

How many parents are still at the place that you're enjoying your kids' summer?

Because we're like five weeks into it.

I think there's like eight weeks left.

And this first, the first few weeks, you're kind of excited for this, you know, school year to come to an end and for summer to start too.

But then there's this point where the the cabin fever sets in and you're dying for things to do, trying to find stuff to do.

And uh one of my favorite cartoons that has been a regular piece in our family lately because we have Netflix is Phineas and Ferb.

Any Phineas and Ferb fans here?

Uh Phineas and Ferb, of course, their whole predicament is 104 days of summer vacation and school comes along just to end it.

The annual problem of our generation is finding a good way to spend it.

What's the rest?

Come on, you know it's sing it.

Okay, building a rocket ship.

Okay, so they're looking, their goal in life is to find, fill 104 days of fun for the summer.

And I don't know if 104 days, I've never actually sat down and done the math of 104 days to see if that's what the North Dakota standard is, is 104 days of summer vacation.

I don't know.

But um, you know, I remember as a kid growing up on a farm, it seemed a lot easier, or at least maybe I was just more naive back then, to think that there was a whole lot more things to do.

I mean, we'd go out and uh you build forts in the hay loft.

Uh we had these old fence posts that were probably, you know, eight feet tall.

We'd make um forts out of those.

We'd take my there was an old chicken house that was had been torn down, so there were all these bricks.

So we built a little fireplace and accidentally started a fire.

I don't know.

Sorry, mom.

Sorry, parents, for giving your kids ideas.

Um, so there was always stuff to do.

And you know, there was a time my brother wanted to play catch with the hay bells.

He was on top of the stack and he said, Here, catch to me down below, uh, laid me out on the ground.

I recovered um mostly.

But there was always seemed to be something to do on the farm, right?

We could, you know, and and there's always a, you know, when I was a kid, we walked to town uphill both ways, carrying my sister on the back through the snow, barefoot, you know, all that.

And it's always so much different when you're an adult.

And there were lots of things to do.

I remember there were, because we I lived north of Omaha in a town called Blair, Nebraska, and lived actually north of the town on the farm, a dairy farm.

So we did get out once in a while into civilization, and we saw humanity.

You know, we would go to the mall and see the movies.

I remember, I think it was the Great Muppet Caper, I think might have been the first movie my dad actually took me to at the movie theater.

And so, you know, that was a regular part of life.

We eventually got, I remember when cable was new, uh, so we did have some cable television, so it's not like our lives were without electronic influence, but today it's like a constant barrage of electronics.

And I think there's a certain amount of um creativity that has disappeared because it's like, well, let's do this.

And it's really this desire for amusement, isn't it?

We're kind of filled with amusement.

And that word amusement is an interesting word.

Muse is a word to think or to ponder.

Uh so it's thought to muse, and A is to negate that.

It's a negative, so amuse means without thought.

So we amuse ourselves all the time, and we're just as guilty now as children, of trying to fill our lives with a constant barrage of amusement, aren't we?

Trying to fill that empty space.

The whole idea of dead time is like a foreign concept.

We gotta, if there's a moment, a brief moment of dead space, we pick up our phones and see what's happening on Facebook, see if you know how many likes our posts got, or you know, and all those things.

And it's not that there's anything wrong with that, but you know, it's it's become a certain constant in our lives as amusement.

I do remember one time as a kid that uh the the shrine circus was coming to town.

I guess they're actually coming here in, is it August?

I think I saw the shrine circus is coming to town in August of this year.

And I remember as a kid, that was a big deal that we get to go to the circus.

And it was the three-ring circus, which is of course kind of, I don't think I have ADD, but when you're in a three-ring circus, how do you pay attention to three rings at once?

I I couldn't figure that out.

So you'd see this and that and this, you'd see the tightrope walkers, you'd see the the lions, the sword, you know, all these people.

But before that, you know, what did people do?

Here's where I was disappointed.

Because I had heard stories of sideshows.

How many of you have actually ever seen a sideshow performer?

I'm curious.

A few of you, but not terribly many, because the like the sideshow kind of disappeared.

You know, they were the sword eaters and the fire swallowers and the world's, you know, bearded woman and the world's tallest man and the world's shortest couple, and there were these sideshow performers, and that was kind of the hook that would get you to the main attraction, right?

And so there's this desire to go in and see this.

And when I got to the circus, there were no sideshows.

There was no three-legged man, there was no monkey boy.

Where were these people?

Well, a lot of times what we end up doing in our lives is taking those sideshow attractions, the things that are intended to amuse us, to draw us to the real, the main attraction.

And we make those things the main attraction, don't we?

And this morning, what I'd like to do was help bring our attention back to the main attraction.

And we see in the book of Mark, if you have your Bibles, um, it's Mark chapter 1.

Mark 1 · chapter mention

If you don't have a Bible, there's a Pew Bible there in front of you, black cover.

It's on page 836 in your Pew Bibles.

And last time I was with you a few weeks ago, we walked through the book, uh, through the passage of Mark chapter 1, verses 1 through 13.

Mark 1:1–13

That was kind of the prologue of the book of Mark, just the introduction.

And if you recall, we mentioned that it was this time of uh an introduction that Mark gave us to a new genre, and that genre is called a gospel.

A gospel is a type of writing, and it's really it's it's a a biography, biography with a purpose.

Because as we know, none of the gospels contain every event that occurred in the life of Jesus.

So each author has a purpose in their writing, and so as we look at this, we begin to understand it.

And we begin to think about what is the purpose of Mark's writing.

And it's really a book about hope in troubling times, and that's where we began a few weeks ago.

The promise of hope in the midst of persecution, because if you remember, this is the time of great persecution among the Christians, where they were being lit on fire, where they were being sawn into, where they were being thrown to the lions.

They were in a world with an oppressive government.

In the midst of persecution, they were surrounded by men and women who were pursuing immorality of all sorts.

They were not the majority voice.

They were the minority in a world that disdained them by and large.

And yet, in the midst of this, a great movement began that has led to us being here this morning, this whole Christian movement.

So these people, in the midst of persecution, Mark is writing to them and saying, There's hope.

There's hope.

Even though the government's not on your side, there's hope.

Even though the world is filled with immorality, there's hope.

Even though this world has persecution and Christians are dying for the name of in the name of Christ, there is hope for you.

It's the good news, the gospel.

It's hope in troubling times, it's it's hope in the midst of all these things.

And so now we pick up in verse in verse 14.

And we'll eventually get through uh chapter or verse 45, but here's what it says in verse 14.

Now, after John was arrested, wait, I thought we were going to talk about good news.

And this is how we begin.

After John was arrested, you see, he had been persecuted for his faith.

Actually, he had been persecuted because he took a moral stand.

He was telling Herod that, no, you should not sleep with this woman.

And because of that, he was arrested, eventually lost his head for his commitment to morality.

But the purpose that Mark has here, again, it's written with a purpose.

A purpose for this note in Mark's gospel is to indicate a time of transition.

John's message had been what?

His message had been make ready the way of the Lord.

And now the task is complete, his work is finished.

And that's the purpose, the point that Mark is making here.

But now, after John has been arrested, we begin to see the unfolding of the new, the one, the promised one, who has come, the Lord.

He had made ready the way of the Lord, and now the Lord is here.

And so he goes on.

Jesus came into Galilee, Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God and saying, The time is, what's it say?

Fulfilled.

Complete.

The time is now.

The time is now.

The kingdom of God is at hand, it is here.

Repent and believe the gospel.

The time is fulfilled.

Ever since the fall in the Garden of Eden, remember, they had been looking for the promised one, the one who would come and crush the head of the serpent, the seed of the woman who would come and crush the head of the enemy.

And there had been this messianic, this hope of the Messiah who would come, the one who would deliver them, who would deliver them from this oppressive government, deliver them from a world of immorality, deliver them from the persecution.

And he says, now the time has come.

Now, does that mean that everything instantly disappeared, the persecution?

No.

And there's great confusion, and you'll see that throughout the rest of the book of Mark, because he had this expectation of what the kingdom should look like.

They imagined a kingdom with authority and power, and indeed it's true of us, but they meant military might, political might, popularity might, so to speak.

But the kingdom of God is not meant to be a popularity contest.

In fact, what's the Bible say the way is narrow to the kingdom of God, right?

So, see, in the midst of all of that, though, the kingdom is at hand.

The kingdom is here.

Sin had entered the world and it had conquered, entered each of our lives, and now the kingdom is here.

The book of Mark begins here, and what is our response?

Repent and believe.

John's message in the wilderness was a message of repentance.

Jesus comes and says, Repent and believe, for the kingdom is at hand.

It's an invitation to be part of this kingdom life.

Now, instead of man trying to get to God, because that's what we see throughout the Old Testament, that's what we see throughout so much of world religions, is this desire on man's part to see what must we do to bridge the gap, to get ourselves to God.

What can we do to get to Him?

So there were sacrifices, there were prayers offered, there were petitions made, all these efforts to see what we can get to God.

And now Jesus comes and says, the kingdom is here.

The kingdom in the person of Christ, who left the presence of the throne of God and entered into our world so that the kingdom is here.

God came to us rather than us having to work our way to get to Him.

And look at all the world religions around you.

What will you see?

You'll see man's efforts to get to God only in the Christian faith is the story that God came near to us.

It's unheard of, it's unspoken in the rest of the world.

That God should come to us.

But that's the story of the gospel.

The good news is the kingdom is here.

Our response is what?

To review our lives, to repent of our sins, to review our plan of how we shall live.

And we base our lives on this new remarkable opportunity that has been given to us.

And we see this response in the following verses.

At verse 16, it says, Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, Jesus saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a net into the sea.

For they were fishermen.

And Jesus said to them, Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.

Immediately they left their nets and followed him.

And going on a little farther, he saw James, the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets, and immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him.

Especially as it's developed a little further in the book, in the book of Luke, in Luke chapter 5.

Luke 5 · chapter mention

There Luke tells us that Jesus had come upon these men who had who were really kind of wallowing in self-pity a little bit because they'd been fishing all day long and had caught nothing.

You ever had one of those days when you went fishing and caught nothing?

That's most days for me when I fish.

I am not an expert fisher, and so it's not a real thrill to me.

My dad never really taught me to fish.

I was a bobber fisher at the end of a pier on Lake Okaboji in northwest Iowa.

That's where we would fish, and that's all I really knew.

And it was bullheads, and who likes bullheads?

You don't catch bullheads, you throw them back.

So it wasn't a lot of fun, but that's how fishing really was.

Now, some of you guys know how to fish and you catch the walleye's.

These men were expert fishermen.

They were used to catching fish, and it's the end of the day, and they caught nothing.

And Jesus comes to them and says, Listen, fellas, what you need to do is we're going to go out and we're going to put back out into the deep.

And Peter says to Jesus, Jesus, we fished all day.

Now is not the time to go out and fish.

We're fishermen.

We're professionals here.

We know when to fish.

But he says, Do it.

Trust me.

And they go out in the catch, a catch of a lifetime.

So much so that their boat begins to overfill.

So they called in the other guys, the sons of Zebedee, and they bring another boat and they fill those boats, and the boats are overflowing so much so that they're barely able to float.

They finally get to the shore.

The catch of a lifetime that would have set them financially secure for years.

And Jesus says, Come follow me.

And it says, What?

They left everything.

See, what we do a lot of times is we we assume that because we have Jesus in our life and he has blessed us with riches above and beyond what we could hope or imagine, that that is the blessing, and that's what we're supposed to celebrate.

The catch becomes the main attraction.

And we pursue the catch and our success and the wealth and the riches that are certain to come, right, if we follow Jesus?

It did for them, but that's not the main event.

That's nothing more than a sideshow.

Going on in verse 21.

They went into Capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath he entered the synagogue and was teaching, and they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, not as the scribes.

Now, let me explain to you a little bit about why they were astonished.

In that day, what they would do is they would say, Well, you know, Rabbi Hillel would say this.

And Rabbi Gamalael would say this.

Now, I am in the process of wrapping up a Master of Arts degree.

And I don't say this to brag, but I I already have a master's degree.

So I started this other degree and had a certain sense of expertise in my opinion, right?

And so I would write papers and I would say things about what I thought, and then the teacher said, No, you need to quote some sources.

You're not the expert.

But this is kind of the way that teaching occurred here for the rabbis.

They would quote the professionals, they would quote the experts.

And but it says Jesus wasn't like that.

Jesus spoke as one who had authority.

Jesus possessed authority unto himself.

He didn't possess the authority of that which he had learned from others, but because in the very nature of God he was, he had an authority unto himself.

He didn't need an external source.

He had an internal authority of his very nature of who he was.

In verse 23, it says, And immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, What have you to do with this, Jesus of Nazareth?

Have you come to destroy us?

I know who you are.

Isn't that interesting?

I know who you are.

You know, James tells us that the demons know God, and they what?

Tremble.

Now, the knowledge of God is a good thing, but it's not the end thing.

Knowledge of God is again a sideshow to the real thing, the main attraction, a relationship with God, God Himself.

Because we may know a lot about God.

You know, if you were to ask who might be the best scripture quoter in all the earth, it might be Satan himself.

I mean, that's what he used when he tempted Jesus in the wilderness.

He certainly knows God's word.

These demons knew who God was, who Jesus was, but had no relationship with him.

And Jesus in verse 25 says, be silent and come out of him.

And the unclean spirit convulsing him and crying out with a loud voice came out of him.

Now I could just imagine, can you imagine being there, just kind of the scene that is happening there?

Just the convulsions, the screaming.

And it's not something we normally see in our culture here in the United States today.

We usually accredit it to give credit to other things for situations like that.

But the demonic world is a very real thing and a very true thing.

And here we see it, the power of God entering into the world and causing convulsions, causing freedom to come in the life of this individual.

And they were all amazed in verse 27.

And they questioned among themselves, saying, What is this?

A new teaching with authority?

Now you see, Jesus' words had an internal authority, but his actions had another authority.

They were evidence of who he was.

The evidence that he was the promised one who would come and set the captives free.

He commands even the unclean spirits, it says, and they obey him.

His authority is one that is over the principal principalities.

His authority is one that should be over us.

But here's the thing.

Is those demons never follow Christ.

Even more astonishing than Jesus' words were his actions.

He spoke with authority, but he lived his life with authority as well.

And because of that, his fame spread, it says in verse 28, and at once his fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee.

And then in verse 29, immediately he left the synagogue and entered the house of Simon and Andrew with James and John.

And now Simon's mother-in-law lay ill with a fever.

And immediately they told him about her.

See, Jesus is filled with compassion, and Jesus is filled with mercy, and he cares about our physical well-being.

He came and took her by the hand, he lifted her up, and the fever left her, and she began to serve.

Now, um, I can't help but find a little humor in that when I read that, because it's like, all right, you're better now, now go get me something to eat.

You know, it's kind of the impression we get, but but isn't that how our lives are supposed to be?

When Jesus touches our lives and sets us free, when he heals us from our sickness, when he heals us from the power of sin in our lives, we should do what?

Serve.

And so much of our lives is consumed with, all right, well, give me a little bit more.

Oh, that's great.

I was sick, now I'm well, but give me a little bit more, and we tend to be more self-serving than serving.

But here is the picture of Peter's mom saying, um, she got up and she served him.

That evening at sundown in verse 32, they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons, and the whole city was gathered at the door.

You see, Jesus' fame continued to grow, his popularity continued to go through the roof.

And it's clear that Jesus knew how to draw a crowd.

It's interesting, isn't it?

So often we have this challenge in the church world about megachurches.

And a lot of times what happens is you see these huge crowds coming.

And Jesus certainly knew how to attract a crowd.

When he cleanses the leper in verses 40 through 45, a little bit later, we see more crowds and the crowds come and the crowds come.

So many so that Jesus was no longer able to openly enter a town because the people would crowd in around him.

The people were coming to him from everywhere.

Still, he showed them compassion.

But the crowd came and the crowd pressed in.

And then we jump back here in verse 34.

It says, He healed many who were sick with various diseases.

He cast out many demons.

He would not permit the demons to speak because they knew him.

Jesus knew what kind of marketers they might be.

They were not a very, they were not a source that perhaps you would trust.

And so if someone said, a demon said, This is Jesus the Son of God, certainly their credit, their credibility would be questioned, right?

And so Jesus tells them, shh, be quiet, keep silent.

These demons chose never to find him.

And it's amazing that they knew him, but they never followed him.

And these crowds who had little knowledge of who Jesus truly was came in droves to follow him.

How much knowledge does it take to follow Christ?

It's not about a knowledge thing.

And so much of our world today is about information.

If I just know a little bit more, maybe you can shed a little bit more light on the situation.

But the crowds really had very little knowledge, just to hope that Jesus was the promised Messiah.

The demons, on the other hand, knew exactly who Jesus was, and they refused to follow him.

It wasn't for lack of information.

The same is true for you and I.

It's not for lack of information.

We're all educated well beyond our obedience.

We know Christ.

But are you following Christ?

And that's where it begins with the disciples.

It's not an issue of knowing, but of following.

Come, follow me, he says.

And they come and they're like, hey, where are we going?

All he says is, you fished for fish.

Now you will fish for men.

You know, Jesus invites us into the kingdom.

We often think of the kingdom as an unrealized place, like heaven beyond, right?

Someday we'll experience the kingdom of God.

Someday we'll be in the presence of God.

There will be no more death, no more dying, no more sickness, no more crying, none of those things.

And then things will be good.

It's an unrealized expectation that we have sometimes about the kingdom, but Jesus says the kingdom is at hand.

The kingdom is here now.

It's really kind of a both and situation.

Yes, there is a day that Jesus will come back, establish his earthly rule, and he will rule from the throne.

There will be a new heaven, there will be a new earth.

That day is yet to come.

There is the truth that to be absent from our bodies is to be presence present with the Lord.

That is true.

And yet the kingdom is here now.

Here in Mark, the kingdom is at hand.

The life of Christ is the demonstration.

It is the realization of the kingdom of God at work in our lives today.

And the kingdom of God is at work in your lives today, too.

Have you submitted yourselves to the authority of the King of kings and the Lord of Lords who sits upon his throne?

There are three truths about this kingdom that we learn from what we've read today.

First of all, that kingdom is meant to happen in the context of community.

Jesus says, Come, follow me, but he doesn't say alone to one disciple.

He says it to brothers and friends sharing that life together.

The kingdom life is not meant to be alone, but us living together for the sake of God's purposes to see the kingdom advanced in our world today.

The kingdom is a call to change.

At the call of the disciples, they had to make a change of vocation.

They had to make a change of location.

They no longer fished for fish, but fished for men.

They no longer stayed with their father, but they ventured out and followed Christ.

They left what they knew behind to pursue the kingdom.

And the lame walked, and the deaf heard, and the blind could see.

We so often speak of accepting others.

And accepting is important, but there must be change in the kingdom too.

We do want to create a culture, don't we, in the church that says, come as you are.

Jesus welcomes you just as you are, broken, sinful in the very nature that you are.

But there's also a culture of transformation.

You can't come into the presence of God without experience some sort of transformation in your life.

You can't just simply say, Yeah, that's cool, I went to church.

My hope, my desire every time that we open up the Word of God is that somehow Monday will be different than it is today, on Sunday.

What do we do with what we've heard today that will make us different tomorrow?

You can't enter God's presence without having some sort of transformation.

And the reality is God's presence, God's kingdom is all around us.

And when you experience God, how do you change?

And I need Jesus as much today as the first day I met him.

And I need to change as much today as I did the first day that I met him, and so do you.

Our lives need to be in constant transformation, becoming a little bit more like Jesus, a little bit more like him in all that we say, think, and do.

We want to create a culture of acceptance that says, come as you are, but a culture of transformation that says, don't stay that way.

We must create this culture.

And I mean that for every one of us because we all need Jesus as much today.

And third, the kingdom is a call to something bigger.

It's a call to something bigger.

They had fished for fish and they had caught the catch of a lifetime, and that was huge, but following Jesus is bigger.

You may have great vocations, but following Jesus is bigger.

You may be the smartest kid in your school, but following Jesus is bigger.

You may be the star quarterback of your team, but following Jesus is bigger.

We're quick to pursue the blessings of Jesus instead of Jesus himself.

There's a part of this passage that I skipped over before in verses 35 through 39.

Here's what it says there.

And rising very early in the morning when it was still dark, Jesus departed and went out to a desolate place.

And there he prayed.

Simon and those who were with him searched for him and they found him and said to him, Everyone's looking for you.

Do you understand what's happening?

Where's Jesus?

I need to get healed.

I need to get well.

I need to get walk.

I need to hear.

I need to see.

And people were pressing in because of their needs.

And Jesus had been out praying to his father, communing with him.

And what does Jesus say?

Let's go on to the next town.

But wait, Jesus.

There's people here that need you now.

They're sick, they're deaf.

What do you mean, go on?

The work's not finished here.

But Jesus says, the purpose for which I came was not to provide the well, physical well-being.

The reality is that our physical well-being being is a very short time in our lives.

It's the eternal that matters.

And as he says, we must go on and we must preach the gospel.

Let us go on.

Why?

That I may preach there also, for that is why I came out in verse 38.

In verse 39, he went through all Galilee preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.

Jesus came to share the good news.

The good news of what?

What?

The hope that is found in him.

The promise of a life that is more than this earthly world in which we live.

The promise of a kingdom life, a realized kingdom life in our world today, where we submit ourselves to the authority of Christ in our lives.

It's so much bigger than our physical needs.

It's so much bigger than our financial security.

It's so much bigger than just feeling good about who we are.

Sociologist Christian Smith has talked about how often as Christians we have made our faith a moralistic therapeutic deism.

And what that means is really three things.

Moralistic means we just want someone to tell us how to live our lives.

We, you know, generally speaking, Christian or non-Christians, there's a certain standard of morals in which we live.

You know, you don't kill people, you don't slap people.

You know, even in this world of uh cultural relevance, you know, you can believe whatever you want to believe.

You slap them in the face when they say that, they're offended by it.

I don't know why, because that could be my moral truth, right?

But every one of us has some moral absolutes in which we live our lives.

And that's how we tend to approach Christ is well, Christ just tells me how to live my life.

Moralistic.

Therapeutic.

You know, we just want Jesus to make us feel good about ourselves.

We're smart enough, we're good enough, and darn it, people like me.

And that's all we want from Jesus.

I just want, you know, Jesus is the chicken noodle soup for my soul.

And if I feel good about myself, that's all that really matters.

And so what's moralistic, it tells us how to live.

Therapeutic tells us that we're okay.

And deistic, which is, you know, the concept that God wound up the earth like a cock and left it to unwind and run its own course.

Really, he's not involved in our world at all.

He's he's far off.

He's not near.

But what we tend to do is treat God like he's a genie in the bottle.

He's on the shelf until we need something, then we rub the lamp and poof, what do you want?

And rub the lamp and poof, what do you need?

Oh, Jesus, I need a new car.

Make it a Lamborghini.

No, I don't want a Lamborghini, that'd be worthless.

But you know, Lord, give me this.

Lord, give me that.

And that's what these people were doing.

Lord, take care of my physical needs.

And you know what happened?

It's Jesus.

The blessings of Jesus became the main attraction.

And those blessings of Jesus are meant to be the sideshow.

Those aren't the things that we should focus on.

Those may be things that draw us to the main attraction, but the main attraction is Jesus.

Let me ask you a question.

If you knew that heaven was a place where there'd be no more sickness, no more death, no more dying, no more tears, but Jesus wasn't there, would you still want to go?

Or on the opposite, what if heaven wasn't a place where there where there was no more death or dying or tears or crying, but Jesus was there?

What are you drawn to?

The blessings or the person?

Jesus says, Come, follow me.

He doesn't say, come, follow what you'll get.

Come, follow me.

So how will these things make us different, right?

How will Monday be different from today?

Here are some things that I thought of that might be some good suggestions.

Perhaps the Holy Spirit's doing something different in your heart.

But here are a few.

Jesus says, Come follow me.

Have you chosen to follow Christ?

You may have all the intellectual knowledge to know who Christ is, but you've never made a personal decision to make him the Lord of your life.

It was when I was 18 years old and I was driving home from a friend's house that the Holy Spirit convicted me of my sin.

And at that moment, I said, Jesus, take the wheel.

Actually, I said, Jesus, here's the steering wheel of my life, but they made a song out of the other one.

So, Jesus, here's the steering wheel of my life.

And really, what that meant is God's not my co-pilot.

God is my pilot.

He's the one who called the shots in my life.

Have you done that in your life where you've made Jesus the Lord of your life?

Second, Jesus says, I will make you fishers of men.

What are you doing to fish for men?

What are you doing to point people to Jesus?

Are you helping to draw others into the kingdom kind of life?

And finally, when we make Christ the main thing instead of the sideshow, what's going to change the way we pray?

And here's what I mean.

So often, don't we pray this?

Lord, pray for Aunt Tilly's hangnail.

That uh you'd heal that, or that ingrown toe.

You know, those can be very painful, and uh she needs some deliverance.

And I don't want to belittle any prayers for healing.

In fact, the Bible tells us that we should pray for healing.

Lord, help me with my job, help me with this person, help me with this.

And so much of our prayer begins with what we need.

And the crowds gathered around Jesus so that he could barely find space.

Here's how Jesus taught us to pray, right?

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come.

It begins with worship, right?

Adoration.

Our Father in heaven, your name is holy.

God, your name is holy.

You are holy, God.

And I come to you for no other reason than the fact that you are holy.

And I pray, God, that your kingdom would come right now, right here in this space.

I know there's a day when we will realize the kingdom in its fullness, when Jesus will establish his throne upon this earth.

But in this place now, we pray that we could experience the kingdom first hand, the presence of Christ living in us and through us in the world.

Only after that does he get to the place of forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

Give us this day our daily bread, you know.

Those things come after we recognize who God is and pray for his kingdom.

So often we want to make Jesus the sideshow and pursue the wrong main attraction.

Matthew 6.33 says, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

And then all of these things, our needs, will be added unto you.

In your relationship with Jesus, what's the main attraction?

Have you come for what you might get?

Or for who you might get?

Christ must be much more than a sideshow.

Christ must be the center of our attention, the main attraction.

Can you pray with me?

Lord, for these Christians to whom Mark was writing, they found themselves in a world of immorality, persecution, and an oppressive government.

Yet there was hope.

But not in what Jesus offered, but in Jesus himself.

Hope was found in a person.

I pray, Lord, that our hope would be found in Christ.

I pray, Lord, for those in this room who do have needs, whether it's financial needs or health needs, your word does tell us that we come to you with our needs and we lay our burdens at your feet.

So Lord, I do pray that these people can enter into the hope that is found in your power and your goodness.

And in that, that they might find healing and security.

But before that, may they find you.

We ask for these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.