Who Do You Say I Am? (Matthew 16:15) | Louis Azuma

Speaker: Matthew chapter 16 is where we're starting.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

Um, and I don't know if you've ever thought about this before, but

Maybe you, as a parent, you've probably thought about this.

What do I want most for my kids?

Right?

Maybe if you're a student, maybe you've never thought about that

from a parent's perspective, but what would you want most, right?

What would you want most for your kids?

What would you want most in the whole world if you could have anything, right?

What do you think would be the best thing for someone?

Or maybe you've … You could take that even to God.

What does God most want for me?

What does God, of all the things that God could give me, that God wants

for me, what does he want me to have, to know, to feel, to be, to think?

What does God want for me?

Um, well, I don't wanna speak for, for everyone in the room, but what I want

and what we in True North are, what your leaders want most for you, uh, is not to

have a, a great school career, high school career, middle school career, and, and be

the ASB president and have a lot of fun.

Uh, that would be great, but we don't necessarily want that for you.

We don't necessarily even want you to, to get really smart about the

Bible and learn a ton of things and, and facts, information.

That'd be awesome, but we don't necessarily want that for you as

the, what we most want for you.

Um, actually, uh, I actually don't

What I want most for you is not just for you to go to heaven.

That's not what I want most for you.

What we want most for you in True North is for you to get to know Jesus, right?

'Cause if you have heaven without Jesus, it's not really heaven, is it, right?

And we've talked about that before.

But what makes God, what makes God so good, what makes the Bible

so good, what makes Christianity so good is you get Jesus.

That's the whole point, right?

The whole point isn't to get hell out of the way.

The whole point isn't so you can feel at peace.

The whole point isn't so you can have good friends who help you.

The whole point is that you get Jesus.

And so that's what we're gonna do in this series this, this year.

We're gonna be looking at some of the questions that Jesus asked people.

And more than anything, what I want for you i- is I want you to get to

know Jesus, the, the person, right?

Jesus, um, yes, the man, the, the God man, right?

I want you to … This is the, the closest thing you'll get this side of

heaven to, to look Jesus in the eye and, and have a conversation with him, right?

To, to hear the questions he's asked real people just like me and you.

Maybe even people y- your age, right?

Some of the disciples were probably pretty young.

And the questions he asked them, the way he talked to them, I

want you to get to know Jesus.

Um, and not just facts about Jesus, but I want you to get to know Jesus

like, like, like a real person, right?

To, to know what he's like and to have a relationship with him.

And so we're starting with Jesus' most important question, okay?

We're starting with Jesus' most important question in Matthew chapter 16.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

We're gonna be starting probably in verse 13.

Um- So if you aren't already there, turn there in your Bibles.

Matthew 16, we're gonna start in verse 13.

Jesus is having a conversation with his disciples here, and I'll put it on the

screen for if you don't have your Bible.

So Jesus, he comes to these, this area, Caesarea Philippi.

He asks his disciples, "Hey, who do people say that the Son of Man," that's

him talking about himself, right?

Um, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"

Right?

"What do you think?

What do people think about me?"

Right?

What, what kind of things do people think about Jesus, right?

He's been doing some miracles.

If you were with us two years ago, we went through the whole Gospel

of Matthew, and Jesus is doing some miracles, he's doing some teaching,

and he's like, "What do people think?"

Right?

We're about two-thirds of the way through the Gospel of Matthew.

What do people think?

And the disciples, here's what they said.

They say, "Well, some people think you're John the Baptist, that you're

John the Baptist raised from the dead."

I don't know if you remember.

Um, if you remember Herod, he thought that, um, Jesus was John

the Baptist raised from the dead.

Um, others say Elijah, others say Jeremiah, right?

Two of the more famous prophets from the Old Testament.

And then Jesus asked them, he says, "But who do you say I am?"

And that's really what makes this question so appealing, right?

Is Jesus says, "Well, yeah, sure, other people might think those things about

me, but what really matters most about you is not how tall you are, or what

friends you have, or what school you go to, or who your parents are, or where

you're from, or what your SAT score is, or, or what, anything else, right?

What matters most about you is how you answer this question:

Who do you say Jesus is?

Who do you say in your heart, not just to your parents when you're trying to get

them to stop asking you questions about church, not just to your leaders when

you're trying to fit in in small groups, not just on a, on a test when you're

trying to answer questions about, oh, you know, what, what do I think I should say?

But who do you really say Jesus is?

That's the question that we're gonna ask ourselves tonight, and I think

Jesus is asking all of us this question.

And again, I, I want you to see the difference, right?

He starts with, "Oh, what do, what do people think about me?"

Right?

Just what do people think?

And then he turns on them and says, "Well, what do you think?"

'Cause it d- really, it doesn't matter what other people think.

It matters what you think.

So our first point tonight is get to know Jesus for yourself.

Get to know Jesus for yourself

Is anyone here one of those people that, uh, you watch the video of the

rollercoaster before you go on it?

I remember when we went to Six Flags, there were some people in

the car, like, watching videos.

"Oh, should we go on this one?

What do you think?"

Right?

You know those people.

I just would rather not watch the video or go on the rollercoaster.

That's my preference.

But, um, I just…

The, the thing, what my problem, right, 'cause I, I'm not a

huge fan of rollercoasters.

What, what…

the, the problem with some of the videos, right, is you

just, it's not the same, right?

Like, it doesn't look that bad, and your friend's trying

to convince you to go on it.

"Oh, it's okay.

It's okay.

It's fine.

You know, it's not that big of a drop.

See, watch the video," right?

And it's like, well, you don't, you don't really know, right?

'Cause you, you gotta feel it in your stomach, right?

You gotta, you gotta hear the, you know, it sounds like it's gonna

fall apart on the way up, right?

You gotta, you gotta feel it and be there and feel the air and hear the people

screaming, and it kinda sounds like, you know, like a, like a, some kinda

crisis or a war, right, that's happening.

But, um, you have to experience it, right?

If you just watch the video of the rollercoaster, you can't…

One, first of all, you can't say, "Oh yeah, I've been on

the rollercoaster," right?

Imagine if, if someone was like…

Did you know that big…

What's the name of that big one at Six Flags that just opened?

Does anyone know what this thing's called?

There's that giant one.

Isn't it, like, a world record?

Oh, yeah.

Um.

Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: Does no one know what this thing's called?

Tormenta.

Tormenta.

There we go.

Yeah.

Tormenta.

Yeah.

Um, like, if someone told you, "Oh yeah, I've, I've been on the Tormenta.

I know what it's like."

And you're like, "Oh yeah?

What was it like?"

And they say, "Well, here's the video."

Right?

You would say, "Well, you, you don't really know what it's like."

Right?

You have to experience it for yourself.

Maybe even with the rollercoaster, you have a friend that you, you're like,

"Okay, we're about similar rollercoaster level," and so I send them on the

rollercoaster first, and if they tell me it's okay, then I'll do it.

Right?

That's, that's kind of me with, with some movies, 'cause I don't

like a lot of different movies, 'cause I get scared easily.

And so I'll be like, "Well, how does it compare to like this movie?"

Or like, "Oh, if this person saw it, then I could do it," right?

The thing with, with Jesus is you can't have someone else get

to know Jesus for you, right?

You can't just watch the YouTube video of Jesus and say, "Oh yeah, I know him."

And it's easy when you grow up in church to be surrounded by people who

know Jesus, or maybe you're talking with people who know Jesus, you're

talking about Jesus a lot, but you've never actually gotten in the seat

and, and gone for the ride, right?

You don't actually know Jesus for yourself maybe.

You're just around people that do

You can't get to know Jesus just because your parents know Jesus, right?

You can't get to know Jesus just because you go to church, or you

serve at church, or you hear sermons, or you know facts about Him, or you

have your 400-day Bible app streak.

That doesn't mean you, you've gotten to know Jesus necessarily, right?

You have to do it for yourself.

You can't know Jesus by association with people that know Jesus

You also can't get to know Jesus with just kind of vague ideas about Jesus.

You notice Jesus asked them, um, in this passage, he says, "Who do you say I am?"

Right?

All the people, they have kind of ideas about Jesus, right?

They're like, well, he, we, we know he's religious.

We know he's from God.

We know he's doing all these really important and, and cool things, right?

Because they, they associate him with the right types of people, right?

John the Baptist, Jeremiah, Elijah, right?

These are some of the, the holy people that they would think of, right?

So they had the right idea, the right direction, right?

I, I had a soccer coach, when you tried to do something, he would

say, "Oh, good idea," right?

Which meant you didn't actually do it, but you tried, right?

Good ideas about Jesus aren- isn't the same as knowing Jesus.

Right?

You can have some good ideas.

Oh, yeah, I, I, I think Jesus really existed.

That's a, that's an important idea about Jesus.

Doesn't mean you know Jesus.

Or, yeah, I think Jesus really was God.

It's an important idea about Jesus, but it doesn't mean you know Jesus.

Right?

So if you just have some ideas about who Jesus is, it doesn't mean you know him

Real Christianity is not just talking about Jesus or having

some church involvement.

I heard one person call it churchianity, right?

Um, it's, it's following Jesus, right?

It's having a relationship with him.

It's talking to him.

It's hearing from him through his word.

It's wanting to be with him.

And that's what it's like to get to know Jesus.

And maybe you, maybe you hear sermons, and you go to small group, you talk

about it, and you, and you, you sit back and you think about it.

Well, yeah, you know, I, I, I do think Jesus probably existed.

Well, that's not knowing Jesus, right?

Or I, I do think, you know, I do think Jesus had some

really important things to say.

That's not knowing Jesus.

So I, I don't want you to stop short of knowing Jesus by just knowing

some stuff about Jesus, right?

Or spending some time around people who know Jesus, right?

You need to know Jesus for yourself.

Your parents can't do it for you, right?

If they could, if, if they could, they would.

If, if they could, they, they, they would with all their heart.

But they can't.

You have to do it yourself

Real saving Christianity, real saving faith is it's personally grasped

and experienced and lived out and believed, and it's yours, right?

It's, it's you own it.

It's your thing, right?

There, there's a point where your sports, for some of you, they stop

becoming your parents' thing and they start becoming your thing, right?

Your parents don't have to force you to go to practice.

You wanna go to practice, right?

It's your sport now.

It's not, "Oh, my parents just, in, just threw me out on the softball field and

said, 'All right, you're doing this.'"

Right?

It's like, "No, I actually woke my parents up to get here on time," right?

You need to own it.

So ask yourself, you know, "Do I really own my relationship with Jesus?

Is it mine?

Do I take initiative to spend time with Jesus?

Do I take initiative to talk to Jesus?

Do I make the, the time to talk with other Christians and, and

grow in my relationship with God?

Or is it just people pushing me into it?"

Because you need to do that for yourself, right?

You have to know Jesus for yourself

Something else about this question, though, uh, that we wanna look

at is the, the answer, right?

So Jesus asked them, he says, "Who do you say I am?"

And then Simon Peter, always the spokesperson for the disciples,

says, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."

And then Jesus says, "Good answer."

Right?

Thumbs up.

He says, "Blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah," that just means son

of Jonah, "for flesh and blood have not revealed this to you."

You didn't figure this out 'cause you were really smart, um, or 'cause you

tried really hard, but God, my Father in Heaven, revealed this to you.

He told you who I was.

He showed you who I was.

So Jesus' response, I th- to Peter's answer, I think shows us

something about knowing what, what it means to get to know Jesus.

Uh, there's a couple things I want you to see here.

First, when Peter says something, he's using these … Like, he says Peter's the,

or he says Jesus is, is the Christ, right?

The Messiah.

That's like a, that's an Old Testament thing.

M- it's a, it's a, it has to do with how God has shaped history to

show what Jesus is gonna be like.

So it's not just, "Oh, well, I, I just think Jesus is whoever I think he is."

It's, "I think Jesus is who God says he is."

Right?

'Cause the whole Old Testament is saying there's gonna be this

person who's gonna come, and he's gonna fix everything, essentially.

Right?

There's gonna be someone who's gonna come, and they're gonna, they're gonna

get rid of all the problems in the world.

They're gonna, um, save people from their sins.

They're, they're gonna make everything right.

They're gonna fix the, the messed up world.

And that's the Messiah, and he says that Jesus is that guy.

He's the guy God says he is.

And then Jesus also says that you can't figure this out on your own, right?

God has to help you.

So the only way you get to know Jesus is through God, with God's help.

Right?

You don't get to, you don't come to Jesus and say, "Well, here's

who I think you are, Jesus."

I don't know if you ever heard anyone say something like that,

but my God would never do that.

Right?

Or my God would never say that.

Well, is your God real, or did you just make him up?

Right?

You have to, to get to know who God is on his terms.

God decides who he is, and y- we learn from him.

Right?

We don't say, "Oh, well, here's who I think.

I think God's like this."

Or, "Yeah, you know, my, my parents are like this, so that

means God must be like this."

Right?

That's not how we learn about God.

We take what God says, and we says, "Okay.

Now, that's who I believe Jesus is."

So point two, get to know Jesus on God's terms.

Right?

You, you can't make up who Jesus is for yourself.

Right?

You can't just take your favorite things about Jesus and then get

rid of the other things that you don't like so much about Jesus.

Jesus might not always be who you expect him to be, and that's a good thing.

All right?

If, if God always met your expectations about God, um, God always did

what you wanted, who's really God?

Right?

If God always did the things that you thought God should do, well then

it sounds like God's serving you.

You're not serving God, right?

Um, I heard about this one couple.

They were, they were dating, and, um, they had a, a big, a big argument, and

the girlfriend, she asks the boyfriend, she says, "Are you really in love with me,

or are you in love with the idea of me?

Do you just love having a girlfriend and, and you really just like the idea

of what it's like to be dating someone and, and, and in a relationship with

someone, or do you actually love me?

Do you actually know me?

Or do you just want the idea of, oh yeah, this type of girl?

Or do you actually care about me, who I am?"

And, and the, the point of that, right, is, is there's sometimes what happens,

right, is we, we build up our own image of, of what people should be like.

And maybe you've done that with Jesus.

Maybe you've taken your expectations of what you think Jesus should be like.

Well, Jesus shouldn't send people to hell 'cause He's loving.

Or Jesus shouldn't let bad things happen to me, because if He

loved me, He, He, He wouldn't let anything hard happen in my life.

Or maybe you've, you've taken ideas about yourself and, and put them onto Jesus.

Right?

Oh, well, Jesus just accepts everyone 'cause He cares about them

Right?

And, and we, what we've done is we've said, "Well, I think love means affirming

everyone for everything they do and supporting everything they do, rather

than wanting what's best for someone."

Right?

And we've taken that and put that onto Jesus and said,

"Well, Jesus must be like that."

So there's different ways we do this, but, but basically what, what's

happening is we're projecting onto Jesus instead of learning from Jesus, right?

You see this thing, this projector, right, is taking an image from my computer and

putting it on the whiteboard, right?

The difference between a projector and a TV, right, is a TV is, is

showing you what's happening.

A projector is, is putting something on here.

Right?

We, when we come to God, right, we say, "God, show me who you are."

We don't say, "God, I think you're this way."

And so that kind of, maybe, maybe you've caught this already, that, that

kind of gives us a, a problem, right?

Because if you, if you look back at our verse, he says, "You couldn't

figure this out on your own.

God had to show you."

So then how do I get to know Jesus if God has to show me, right?

Do I just sit around and wait?

Like, do I, you know, just start meditating and hope I get a vision?

Or, or what do I do, right?

There's just people that that's how they try to find God, right?

They, they sit and wait around for God to show them something, right?

Or maybe you just open your Bible to a random spot and say, "All right.

Well, God, show me who you are," right?

There, there's things that we do maybe to try to figure out who God

is, and we expect Him to show us.

But I … What I think is part of this is how does God reveal Jesus to us?

How do we get to know Jesus?

How do you get to know Jesus?

Well, you get to know Him God's way.

And Peter got to know Jesus by hanging out with Jesus, right?

He got to, you know, go fishing with Jesus.

He got to walk around with Jesus.

He got to see Jesus feed people and teach people and serve people.

So Peter got to live with Jesus, but you and I, we don't get

to do that right now, right?

We don't get to go on walks with Jesus, right?

We don't get to, to sit and hear Jesus talk.

We don't get to have conversations and ask Jesus questions.

The way that God has given us Jesus is through a book, right?

He's given us the Bible.

And if God wanted us to all meet Jesus and have Jesus walk

around i- in here, He would.

But, but God, in His wisdom, God's way smarter than us, He thinks that

we should have a book instead of the man Jesus walking around for

thousands of years talking to people

And one reason is because you get to know Jesus for yourself at any time, right?

You don't have to, to say, "Well, oh, I heard Peter say this about Jesus," right?

You, you get to see Jesus

Live whenever you want, right?

Um, but God has given us a, a book to get to know Jesus.

And maybe you're thinking, "I don't like reading," right?

"The Bible's hard to understand.

It's hard to read."

Well, this is how God has given himself to us.

He said, "Here I am.

You look in this book, you'll find me."

This is how God has shown himself to us, right, with words and pages and sentences.

And so if we really wanna get to know him, that's where we find him, right?

You don't find God in, as regularly at least, in dreams or feelings

or … 'Cause, and also those are hard to figure out, right?

It's hard to figure out, well, how do you know a dream's from God?

How do you know a feeling is from God?

Well, you need something you can trust, which is why it's helpful

that God wrote a book, right?

And so if, if you say, "I love God," and you wanna get to know him, you're

going to spend time in his book, 'cause that's how God said, "Here I am."

I mean, I was, uh, I was in a long-distance relationship for a while.

Um, it worked.

We celebrate our anniversary on Monday.

But, um, and I spent a lot of time on the phone, right?

Um, and all the parents are like, "Well, you, you know, we had to pay for,

you know, 20 minutes of, of calling."

Um, um, and, but I spent a lot of time looking at my phone, right?

I spent a lot of time doing this, right, when I was in a

long-distance relationship.

Is it 'cause I was in love with my phone?

No.

No.

It's because the phone was how I saw Shay.

The phone was how I heard from Shay.

The phone was how I related to Shay, right?

So if you love Jesus, if you wanna get to know Jesus, this

is how you get to know him.

This is, this is the, the way you see Jesus, and you hear from Jesus,

and you, you get to know your savior, your friend, your king.

And so it, the, when we talk about reading the Bible, right, it's easy

to, to say, "Oh, well, it's, you know, it's just this book and it's old.

It's hard to understand."

But again, it's, well, I, I wanna get to know Jesus, right?

That's what, really what it's about.

We're not … Your parents, when they tell you to read the Bible or

when we tell you to read the Bible in True North, it's not just because we

want you to be smarter or 'cause we wanna make you miserable or because

we're trying to get you to do things.

It's because we want you to know Jesus, and this is where

you see Jesus, in his word.

So if you say, "I love Jesus," you're, you're going to say, "I'm

gonna spend time in his word.

Even if it's hard, even if I don't understand it all the time, even

if I have a ton of questions."

Good news is you have a lot of people that wanna answer your

questions right now, right?

You've got your leaders.

You got your parents.

You got people that, that care about you and wanna help you.

But

You're going to spend time in God's word to get to know Jesus.

You're gonna spend time praying to get to know Jesus.

Which by the way, that's really what, what the point of all these things are, right?

Even prayer.

The, the best part about prayer is not to get things from

God, it's you get God, right?

Um, maybe a lot of the conversations you have with your parents are to

get things from your parents, right?

But I'm sure your parents would feel much more loved if you just talked

to them because you wanted to, right?

Not just because you were trying to get stuff from them.

And that's how it is with God, right?

The, the best part about prayer is I get to talk to God.

I get to, to talk to him 'cause I love him, right?

And really that's the point of, of praying

So we wanna get to know Jesus the way God has revealed Jesus

to us, has, has shown Jesus to us

And that involves, which it's funny 'cause Jesus says, right, um,

flesh and blood didn't reveal this to you, but Peter practically did

have to get to know Jesus, right?

Peter didn't just wake up one day and, and know everything about Jesus and

have three years of a relationship built with Jesus just because, right?

The- practically, there were, there were things that happened.

It's kinda hard to understand maybe.

Um, the best way I could think of explaining it was, um, because

God has to work, but you have to work alongside that, right?

So maybe you, you think about, um, when you turn on your sink, right?

Who…

Or when you flip on a light switch, who turns on the light?

Well, you turn the switch, right?

You flip the switch, but if there's no electricity, is the light gonna turn on?

No.

Right?

Reading the Bible is kinda like flipping the, the light switch.

Right?

You can read the Bible all you want, but if God is not showing himself to you, or

there's a-- the, the Pharisees read the Bible a lot, and they didn't know Jesus.

Right?

There's, there's a lot of people that read, that read a lot of the

Bible and don't know Jesus at all.

Right?

They're gonna hear, "Depart from me, I never knew you," from Jesus.

So you can flip the switch, right, you can, you know, memorize the verses

and read the Bible and, and take lots of notes in the sermon and, and

know all this stuff, but you need the electricity from God to help you, right?

And that's where God shows himself to you through his word.

Um, and so when we get to know Jesus, w- we put in effort, right?

We still have to flip the switch, but God is the one who provides the power.

So this last point is gonna be kind of about our switch flipping, so to speak.

Okay?

So we need to get to know Jesus with our head and our heart.

Okay?

Well, you can think about this maybe.

We need to get to know Jesus with our head.

We need to know stuff about Jesus.

We need to know the right things about Jesus, but we also need

to know Jesus personally, right?

That's, that's the simple way of putting this.

I need to know the right things about Jesus, but I also need to have a

personal relationship with Jesus, right?

Peter said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."

That's how we answer Jesus' question.

Now, in the Gospel of Matthew, we've heard demons call Jesus the Son of God too.

So what makes that different?

Well, the demons know Jesus with their head, but Peters know Jes- Peter

knows Jesus with his heart, right?

That's the difference there.

So we don't just have right information about Jesus.

We need to have that personal relationship with Jesus as well.

But you can't have the personal relationship if you don't have

the right information, right?

Um, in Spanish, are y- uh, have you taking Spanish?

I, uh, somehow I, I, so I took Spanish three without taking Spanish two.

Um, but one of the things I learned in Spanish is that there's two

different words for to know something.

And you can correct me if I'm wrong.

Uh, from my understanding, there's two different words for to know.

There's, um, the t- one that means to know facts, right?

Um, which is ser.

And then there's conocer, right?

Which is to be familiar with something, right?

Um, our Spanish speakers are nodding, so we're good.

Um, but there's two different words 'cause there's just two

different types of knowing, right?

You can know facts about something, but not know it that well, right?

You can know a lot of facts about a city, but you've never been there.

You can know a lot of facts about a person, but never talk to them, right?

That's kind of what we're talking about here.

You need both facts and familiarity, closeness, to get to know Jesus.

Right, so getting to know Jesus, your brain is not optional.

Right?

Using your brain to get to know Jesus is not optional.

You have to understand words, and you have to understand what they mean, and you

have to understand things like what does it mean that Jesus is the Christ, or what

does it mean that He's the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, or what

does it mean that He's a good shepherd?

You have to understand facts and words and sentences and how they

work, and you have to read the Bible and, and put effort into it.

Right?

God just doesn't just put the thoughts in your head, right?

But at the same time, if all you do is know facts, you,

you don't actually know Jesus.

You just know facts about Jesus, right?

And so, um, the facts about Jesus, right, the theology, the Bible verses, that's

kinda like, if you think about it, it's kinda like wood for a campfire, right?

You can have all the, the best fuel, but if there's no sparks, you got…

You don't have a fire, right?

But your fire will be healthier and bigger and cooler and last longer

if you have better fuel, right?

If you have, you know, gasoline and all the cool stuff that

makes a big fire, right?

Um, you can tell I wasn't a Boy Scout.

But, um, good theology, right, good knowledge about God, good Bible

study, it's like getting a lot of really good fuel for your campfire.

But if you don't use it with your heart, there's no sparks.

There's no heat.

There's no fire.

All you've got is just a big stack of wood and some gasoline.

But lighting it on fire is when you get to know Jesus, right?

Psalm 34:8 says, "Taste and see that the Lord is good."

Psalms 34:8

Right, when you taste something, you don't just stare at it and look at it, right?

I had, um, a really great slice of cheesecake from Starbucks the other day.

Um, and I could know all the ingredients that were in the cheesecake.

I could know how they baked it.

I could know, um, how long it had been on the counter for.

I could know everything about the cheesecake, right?

But if I just stand there and look at it, I'm not experiencing it, right?

I'm not enjoying it.

You have to taste it, right?

You have to, you have to bite into it.

And so knowing Jesus with your head is like staring at the cheesecake and telling

you, oh, there's this many grams of sugar, and they used this many eggs in it, and

they used this much food coloring to make the thing look good and whatever, right?

You can know all the facts about it, but if you don't taste it, and you

don't enjoy it, you don't know it.

And so that's really what True North is all about, is we

want you to get to know Jesus.

We want you to experience Jesus in a personal way, but not apart from really

knowing the right things about Jesus.

And so those things work together for you to have a relationship with Jesus,

and that's really what it's all about.

John 17:3, it's our, our last thing here.

John 17:3

It says, "This is eternal life," right?

So what's eternal life?

Going to heaven?

Getting my sins forgiven?

No.

"This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and

Jesus Christ, whom you have sent."

Right?

What makes heaven heaven is knowing God, is knowing…

Having a relationship with Jesus.

And that's what we want for you in True North.

So what I wanna ask you tonight is think about who do I say Jesus is, not

just with my head, but with my heart.

Okay, let's pray, and we'll go to small groups.

Father, thank you that you have made yourself available to us through Jesus.

We get to know you, um, because of Jesus.

Jesus reveals you to us.

He shows us what you're like, and we get to see your love and your patience

and your kindness and your anger and your faithfulness through a person who

has flesh and, and bone much like us.

And so I pray for our students here and their parents that you would help all

of us to get to know Jesus even better.

I pray for those of us who do know Jesus, who have a relationship with him, that you

would help us to keep getting to know him and to enjoy him and grow closer with him.

I pray that for students here who aren't sure if they know Jesus, that they

would, uh, keep pursuing him, that they would keep meeting him where he is in

your Word, and that they would get to know him and ask you to, to help them.

And I pray for students here who don't wanna know Jesus, that you would

convince them that knowing Jesus is better than whatever they want most,

that knowing Jesus is better than, than anything this world has to offer them.

So thank you for this time together.

We pray this all in Jesus' name.

Amen.