Joyfull | Week 3

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To learn more about Gateway Franklin Church, including our service times here in Franklin, Tennessee, visit us online at GatewayFranklin.com.

And now, here is this week's message.

Well, to those of you who are new here, I want to say uh hello to you.

My name is Tori, I'm the associate pastor here.

Appreciate you uh being with us.

I got to meet a couple of new faces, not first-timers, but people who are relatively new.

Appreciate you sticking around with us.

To those of you who are watching online, wherever you're watching from, so glad that you could be a part of what God's doing here at Gateway as well.

I want to start off the morning uh with a little game.

Uh it's a game that I know every single person in this room has played at least one point in their life.

You've probably played it when you were driving down the interstate or watching the evening news, and that is, what would I do if I won the lotto?

I think the Powerball is getting out of hand.

All right.

It's like not uncommon for the billboard which has like in the millions to just be at 999 because they've run out of letters, right?

And so like it's not uncommon that you see this thing over a billion dollars, people buying in for their chance to become an overnight success.

And uh it never fails too when you bring that up to somebody.

There's like just this grumpy guy who's just like, well, you know the government's gonna take half of that, aren't you?

And uh, you know, I look, I volunteer.

I'll I'll suffer the 500 million.

They can they can have their 50 percent.

Well, let me ask you the question: what would you do if you won the lotto?

How many of you would show up at work tomorrow?

Not a lot of hands.

How many of you would say, I ain't showing up to work ever again?

How many of you would buy a new house?

New car?

How many of you would buy the app for mission for your family and your friends?

I want to be your friend.

Would you start a foundation?

Would you get involved in politics?

No, no.

Wisdom, wisdom, no.

Here's the real question.

Would you pay your tithes?

Somebody get a camera out, right?

I want to know who's in.

I had a lady one time with this conversation come up about the idea of tithing off auto money, and she's like, Pastor, would you really want somebody to give sin money to the church?

Because you know that's gambling, don't you?

Can I tell you?

Nick Snow, if you win the lotto and you decide that you want to, out of the goodness of your heart, support what God's doing here, that's gonna be the Nick Snow pickleball court as soon as it's built.

Would we take the money?

Of course we take the money.

We're gonna do God's work and make the devil pay for it, amen.

That's a win-win.

So we've all played this game before.

We all have an idea of what we would do if we came into this fortune.

But I would say that a lot of us haven't given a lot of thought to what we would do six months after we won the lotto.

Now, most of us have never won the lottery, most of us never will win the lottery, but there actually is a group of people who study those who do.

And a lot of you have heard the stories of what happens to people who win the lottery.

Kind of the more sensational stories are the people who talk about bankruptcy and their family collapsing.

But when you look at just the macro trends, that that's not the most common response.

But wealth psychologist, which is a field of psychology that that looks at how money impacts people, what they have observed consistently in the lives of just about everybody who wins the lottery is that once they come into this money, about six months down the road, they have this kind of crisis that they're in where they say, What am I supposed to do now?

What is my purpose anymore?

Because they've already like quit their job and they took the trip and they bought the boat and they bought their dream home, and and they said yes to every desire that they had in their heart and pursued and did all the things that they thought would make them happy.

And what we see is that six months in, there's many of them who want to go back to their jobs, not because they need the money, but just because they miss having a purpose.

Now, most of us, we haven't won the lottery and we're not going to win the lottery.

But we still wrestle with the same question.

What on earth am I here for?

And isn't it interesting that when we entertain this question, most of us are envisioning a life where in six months we don't know what to do with ourselves.

Now, some of you, you have one somewhat of a lottery.

You got the promotion you chased your whole life for.

You bought the house.

Some of you moved to Franklin, Tennessee, your dream city.

Amen.

Right?

Some of you have spent the last 25 years with children in your home.

And the last one has finally left.

Right, cue up, Edda James, at last.

Freedom is here.

Some of you got the thing.

Right?

But as you accomplished all of these things, what you realized is whatever that thing was for you, it didn't do the thing that you thought it would do.

And now you're laying in bed on a Tuesday night staring at the ceiling, wondering why it didn't deliver what you thought it would.

At the same time, some of you are coming at this from a totally different place.

It's not that you achieved what you had hoped you would achieve and found out that it didn't satisfy.

You're coming at it from the perspective of, I don't even feel like I have the privilege to think about purpose.

Because I'm just trying to survive.

Right?

I'm talking to you moms who got three little babies at home, and you haven't taken a shower in four days.

And even this morning, you reach for that empty bottle of dry shampoo, praying it had one last puff in it.

No, ma'am.

No, ma'am, it's still empty.

Your covers and boogers and spit up and and you're just looking at your life, wondering, is this it?

Like, is this what my life has become?

Some of you, you went to school and you paid a lot of money for a degree.

And now you sit under fluorescent lights that give you a headache.

Moving numbers from one spreadsheet to another spreadsheet, sending emails that you won't even remember 72 hours from now.

Right?

We all have to make a living, but you're but you're sitting there thinking, how is it that I spent so much time and so much energy and so much of my resourcing to enter a life that makes me feel so small and insignificant.

Is this it?

And so here's what I want you to see this morning.

Whether you got the thing that you wanted, or you feel like you've been chasing something your whole life and still haven't attained it, the ache that's common in every single one of these stories is an ache that we feel when we have a life without purpose.

Purposeless, no matter which door you walk in through, is its own kind of hell.

In 1903, the playwright George Bernard Shaw wrote a scene about hell.

He said, Hell in shore is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself.

Now the irony here is that's the life most of us aspire to.

I don't know about you, that sounds like a great weekend.

Right, of course, we know that the there's a little bit more to hell than that.

Right, but the point is the same.

Rest can be a great thing.

There's a reason God commands rest.

But to take our lives and point it in the direction of rest, to make rest the only thing in life that we're chasing after, guys, that is that is not it.

Right?

Here's what I want you to hold on to this morning.

Life without purpose is a life without joy.

But a life that's full of purpose is a requirement for a life that's going to be full of joy.

You see, from cover to cover, the Bible provides a vision for your life that's purposeful.

From the earliest chapters in Genesis, just like we talked about last week, God made Adam.

And when he saw that he was alone, he said, That's not good, so he made a woman.

And when he looked at them together, he said, This isn't just good, this is very good.

And then he spoke this blessing over their life.

He said, Be fruitful and increase in number.

Fill the earth and subdue it.

Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves in the ground.

Here's what I want you to notice in that.

Before there was sin, there was a job.

Before there was brokenness, God had given them an assignment.

And what that means is that purpose actually precedes the fall.

And work is not a curse, it's a blessing, but aimlessness is.

Now, one thing I love about the Bible is the symmetry that we see in it.

There's so much parallelism and symbolism, and it's so rich with meaning.

And we look how the Bible begins with this garden commission.

And Adam and Eve, they get it wrong, and the world breaks, and we, as the story unfolds, we see this gospel arc where God is intervening in the affairs of humanity to make it right, culminating in the death and resurrection of Jesus, and Jesus, who is speaking to his disciples before he goes back to the Father in heaven, he says this He says, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.

Here's what I want you to notice about both of these commissions.

They share the same core.

Be fruitful.

Multiply.

Fill the earth.

Advance the goodness of God.

Do something.

Make your life count.

Guys, that is good news for us.

But it gets even better because while this is a general commission, we also see that God has given us a personal commission.

In Ephesians chapter 2, verse 10, we see that for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

Ephesians 2:10

Here's what that beforehand means.

It means that when God made you, he didn't look at you and try to figure out what he was going to do with you.

It means that before he made you, he saw a need in the world and carefully fashioned you with all the right stuff so that you could be a solution to the problems that he sees.

When God saw the injustice being committed in Southeast Asia, he said, You know what I need?

I need a Johnny Moore.

I need to create somebody with a beautiful bald head who can go to this place and can invest in these children and can love them well and who would be willing to set the luxuries of this world behind him for the sake of the gospel.

Come on, somebody.

And God has called you the same way.

There is a calling on your life.

There is a purpose that has been put inside of you by a God who carefully knit you together in your mother's womb.

And you're longing to know what that purpose is.

That's not an accident, that's a signature of the divine.

And your life will never make sense until you discover what that purpose is.

The word workmanship.

In the Greek, it's this word poema.

It's actually from where we get the English word poem.

And what it means is that it means masterpiece or work of art, something that was carefully crafted.

You know, the word poem only shows up twice in the entire New Testament.

One is right here describing you.

And the second is in Romans 1.20, where God is describing, or Paul is describing, creation itself.

The sunsets, the mountains, the galaxies, the valleys, the oceans, the things that people take time off of work to travel to go see and take pictures of because it's so awe-inspiring.

So can I speak to somebody who's having a little bit of a low self-confidence day and say, you're not just a somebody, you are a work of art created by a God who loves you more than you could possibly fathom.

You are his masterpiece, right?

You're not target art.

I ain't no problem with target art, but you are the work of an artist, okay?

You got a unique signature.

You're a one-of-one copy.

And that's good news.

And you weren't created just to be put on a shelf.

You were created to live a life of consequence and impact.

I'm going to show you one more verse this morning.

This is 1 Peter 2, verse 9.

1 Peter 2:9

This really brings the whole series together as we've been working through it.

He says, But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light.

All through the series we've been talking about joy and how to live a joyful life.

In each of these three weeks, we've been talking about a different facet of it, and in this verse, it really takes all of those elements and it puts them together.

The first thing we talked about was sin.

Now, sin creates this barrier between you and God.

But he calls us out of the darkness and into his marvelous light that we might have relationship with him.

But he didn't call us to this new place that we could be alone, but instead he's made us a part of a people.

And not just a people, but a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a family that we could belong to, that we might be a people with purpose, and that purpose is to go out into the world to those who are still in darkness and proclaim the glories of the one who called us out.

Our lives were made to matter.

We were created to live and walk in purpose.

But if you want to know what God's vision for your life is, it's this it's to be connected to God, connected to others, and living on mission for God's kingdom.

That is the recipe for living filled with joy.

Each of these weeks, we've taken these issues kind of one at a time and tried to unpack what are the barriers that are there, what are the blocks in our heart that are keeping us from experiencing the fullness of these things.

Like what do we got to get out of the way to make room for more of God?

And so as we talk about this idea of purpose this morning, I want to give you three things that uh some of these are things that we have to get over, some of these are things that we got to get through, some of these are things we've got to get past, right?

These are these are things that that have just kind of distorted our view of why we're here or prevented us from picking up what God's trying to give us.

And we're gonna unpack those together this morning with the remainder of the time that we have.

Here's the first barrier: this is the barrier of substitutes.

As we walk through these barriers, I want to introduce you to three characters.

These are characters that have one-on-one encounters with Jesus.

And in this encounter, Jesus identifies the barrier that they're experiencing, and he gives them instruction as what to do.

And the first guy that we're going to meet is a person we call the rich young ruler.

And that's all we know about this guy.

We don't know his name.

We don't know how much money he has.

We know he's young.

We don't know what he rules.

He's a ruler, but we don't know where his authority derives from.

We don't know what he does after this.

All we have is this encounter.

And this rich young ruler comes to Jesus and he kneels down in front of him and he asks the right question.

He says, Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

And so Jesus, in front of the crowd, looks at him and says, Well, don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't back talk mama and daddy, love your neighbor as yourself, kind of walks them down the list, and the rich young ruler says, This is good.

I've done all of those things.

I've done them all since I was young, actually.

I've done my best to be the best steward of all of this privilege that I have.

And uh what I I love this because what we see is that the rich young ruler is not a bad guy.

He did the best to manage what he'd been given.

But then look at what Jesus says next.

He says, That's great.

Then go sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and then come and follow me.

And this is what the text says next.

It says, When the young man heard this, he went away sorrowful, for he had many great possessions.

So interesting to me that we never know what happens to this man.

It doesn't say that he didn't do it.

It doesn't say that he did.

The only thing we have to go on is that he left sad.

Now, the point of this story isn't to give us a mandate on what we're supposed to do with our money.

Jesus is not giving a treatise on whether or not money is a good thing or a bad thing.

Right?

The point of this story is to show us that there is a cost to following Jesus.

There's a cost for every single one of us.

For this man, his cost happened to be money.

But for you, it might be something else.

It might be comfort, it might be achievement, it might be approval or the acknowledgement of other people, it might be title.

For some of you, maybe who are retired, this might be the freedom that you've grown accustomed to having.

It might be hobbies that you enjoy, it might even be a number of good things.

But what I know about us just because of our human instinct, because of our hunger to have purpose in our life, as we go through life, we often find ourselves picking up things along the way that we can focus our energy and efforts on.

These are things that we hold on, things that we cherish and love.

And every now and then we pick up things that may not necessarily be bad by themselves, but because this thing is in our arms, it's coming into conflict with something Jesus is calling us to do.

And it creates this ultimatum moment where we have to decide are we going to keep holding on to this thing, or are we going to open our arms and receive what God has for us?

And so for this guy, this was his wealth, this was his means, this was the authority that he he had.

And when he was being called to release this, really it was an ask of faith.

Do you trust me more than you trust those other things?

And all of us have something that we're holding on to.

And when Jesus calls you to let go of something that you love, can I just tell you from personal experience?

It it's only natural to feel a little sad about that.

Like that doesn't make you an evil person.

But I think there's a reason it hit this man especially hard.

I think there's a reason it hits us hard sometimes.

And the hint is in the greeting.

When he comes to Jesus, he says, good teacher.

The relationship that he had with Christ was one of a student and somebody who was supposed to give him information to give him a better life.

There is a limit on what we can receive from Christ when that's all he is to us.

If he's just a rabbi, if he's just a teacher, if he's just a guru, or a TED talk speaker, or somebody who's got the right answer to the struggles in our life, and if we can just apply the information that he's giving, then our life is going to be better.

But if Jesus is something more than that, like if he really is the way, the truth, and the life, if he's the Son of God, right?

The treasure buried in the field, the the pearl of great price, if he is what he proclaims to be, then can I just tell you that makes it a whole lot easier to walk away from lesser things for greater things?

Because we know and trust who it is that's calling us.

So if you find yourself white knuckled to something that you're not sure you can let go of, rather than focusing on what it is that Christ is asking you to surrender, can I just maybe suggest that you focus on Focus your eyes on Christ instead, and you'll find that he's better.

Here's the second barrier.

This is the barrier of failure.

The second character we meet is Peter.

Peter's one of my favorite characters in the Bible because I see a lot of my own personality in Peter, and so I'm very sympathetic to his failures, of which there are many.

Peter's a guy who always talked big.

First to respond, first to have the answer, first to say, pick me.

But sometimes Peter would get ahead of himself and get out over his skis.

You know, he's the first disciple to confess Jesus as the Messiah.

And not even ten verses later, he's reprimanded because he misunderstood what that meant.

Peter's the guy who walks on water, but is famous for taking his eyes off of Jesus and then almost drowning in that water.

He's the one who comes to his Lord's honor in the Garden of Gethsemane and picks up a sword and cuts off a man's ear.

For which Jesus has to say, Peter does not what we're about.

And of course, he's maybe most famous on the night before Jesus was crucified with assuring his Lord that he would never deny him under any circumstance.

Does many of you know the story?

He does.

Three times before the rooster crowed.

And the Bible says that when the rooster crowed and Peter realized what he'd done, he wept bitterly.

And you start reaching back to all of these negative experiences to validate the current shame that you're living in.

And Peter is wrecked.

Now, even after the resurrection, and Jesus has returned to the disciples.

And Peter was relieved at the fact that Jesus didn't actually die and stay dead on his account.

And in John chapter 21, he tells the disciples who are with him, he says, I'm going fishing.

John 21 · chapter mention

Not seem that significant.

Something he could have done to kill time.

But the problem is this is Peter's old life, not his new life.

What Peter was doing was going back to the thing that he knew he could do.

He was going back to a life that Jesus had called him out of.

Because if you remember, Jesus said, You're not going to be a fisherman anymore, you're going to be a fisher of men.

I've given you a new purpose, I've given you a new title.

And isn't that the temptation we all feel when we fail big?

To let go of the thing that we failed at and run back to the thing that's comfortable.

Let me tell you, I can I can preach this.

One of the first times I ever preached on a stage.

It was so bad.

It was the worst thing that had ever happened in a church.

It is what Daniel foresaw when he said there would be an abomination that causes desolation.

The thing that God just says, we're done.

We're done.

This will be the end.

The jokes didn't land.

My face is hot.

I'm embarrassed.

I'm like telling myself in my inner monologue, you have to stop talking, you have to stop talking, you have to stop talking.

And I did not listen to my own advice and kept going and going and going.

And when this message was over, I crawled to the back of the green room and I did not come out until I thought that everybody had left the church because I was so embarrassed at the thought of having to look these people in the eye.

When I finally got the courage to come out, there was a little old lady in the church who I thought she was coming to uh maybe say something nice because that's what little old ladies in the church do most of the time.

And can I tell you she did not lie to me?

She said, uh she grabbed my hand real sweetly, real gently, and gave it that grip, and you don't talk about the claw grip.

And she said, young man, one day you're gonna do that every week for the rest of your life.

And I said, Thank you.

That's so sweet.

And in my head, I'm thinking, oh God, no, send me anywhere, but back up there.

I don't want to do it again.

Send me in the banking, send me into tires, I'll do whatever you want me to do, Lord, but don't make me talk to people about you anymore.

Because I was so afraid because of my failure.

What I perceived to be my failure.

Some of you have been called by God to do something, and you took one step and the water got a little hot and you pulled back.

And you know deep down in your heart what it is you've been called to do.

Some of you have been sitting on no for decades.

It has never been a question or a matter of confusion as to what it is the Lord had planned for you.

But fear has kept you prisoner for so long.

And what I love about this encounter with Jesus or with Peter is that as Peter goes fishing, he looks to the shore and finds Jesus making breakfast, cooking up fish.

Peter jumps out of the boat and goes to his savior.

As he's sitting there, Jesus looks at Peter and says, Peter, do you love me?

Peter says, What do you know I love you?

And Jesus asked him again, Peter.

Do you love me?

Jesus, you know that I love you.

Feed my sheep.

For every failure, Jesus' response was not to correct, but to remind him of what he had already been commissioned to do.

So many times when we fail, we disqualify ourselves from the work that God wants to do in us and through us when he has never disqualified us.

His response is only to reach out his hand and say, get up, be strong and courageous, you man of valor, you man of God, and walk forward in church.

That is the call he has given to each and every one of us.

And if we would just find the courage within us to stand up and trust him, man, like a mighty army, would we move forward and conquer all that God has in front of us.

Our failure is not the thing that disqualifies us from our purpose.

Often failure is the doorway we have to walk through to discover what that purpose is.

So many times I've pursued something that I thought God was calling me to only to fail, and it's in my failure that it makes sense, and I kind of stumble into where it was that he would have me.

So we have to trust that he's just bigger than our failures.

And that in our weakness his power is made perfect.

That's good news for us, guys.

Here's the last barrier.

This is the barrier of confusion.

The third character we meet is John the Baptist.

John the Baptist is one of the most interesting characters we meet in the New Testament.

He has a unique role.

He's the forerunner of Christ, he's the voice crying out in the wilderness.

Whereas Peter, who is the first disciple to recognize Jesus as the Messiah, John was the first to do it.

We see it in John chapter 1, verse 29, as Jesus is heading to the waters to be baptized.

John 1:29

It's John who calls out amongst the crowd, behold the Lamb of God, the one who takes away the sin of the world.

Right?

Jesus, or John knew who Jesus was.

He declared it in front of crowds.

He staked his ministry and his identity on declaring who Christ was and what he was about to do.

Famously, John was the one who said that now that Jesus is here, my role is to decrease and his role is to increase.

But can I tell you that's easier said than done?

And we fast forward a couple years and we're seeing John again.

In Matthew chapter 11, John is imprisoned.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

He's been arrested by Herod.

He knows that his ministry is coming to an end.

His days are likely numbered.

And from that lonely prison cell, he sends his disciples to Jesus, the same Jesus that he once declared to be the Lamb of God.

And he asked the mask this question.

Are you the one who is to come?

Or shall we look for another?

The guy who was once the most confident is now questioning whether or not he is who he claims to be.

So what happened?

Well, I believe that his circumstances didn't match what he believed about his purpose.

He had a hard time reconciling how my role is to prepare the coming of the kingdom of God, and here I am in a prison cell.

Is that prayer that so many of us have prayed when it gets really hard to say, God, is this it?

Are you telling me that the culmination of my life, of everything that I've given you and done for you, and believed about your calling that you've placed on my life, that this is what I have to show for it?

Is this it?

And Jesus could have been offended by that response.

On both a personal and a professional level.

You have a unique prophetic role to maybe be the most confident about who I am.

But on a personal level, John, you're my cousin.

I've known you since infancy.

I can only imagine that conversations that they've had through the years, recognizing the unique role that each of them played to one another.

The times they probably sat and talked about what it's gonna be like when God's kingdom is ushered into the earth.

What it's gonna be like when this ministry finally starts, and the lame are walking, and and and the blind are seeing, and he's doing miracles, and people are believing, and he's birthing a church that's gonna come out of 12 people that are gonna change the world forever.

And John, you what do you mean?

Am I the one?

You've known me.

But this is what Jesus says to John's disciples.

He says this in Matthew chapter 11, verse 4.

Matthew 11:4

He says, Go and tell John what you hear and see.

The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk.

Lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear.

And the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.

I want you to see what Jesus is doing here.

While John is stuck in a cell, and his whole world is being defined by these four iron walls and a dirt floor.

Jesus is saying, John, you gotta get your eyes off your cell and look up, brother.

You gotta take note of what's happening around you.

The blind are seeing, the lame are walking, the sick are being healed, the dead are being raised.

Tell John that the kingdom that he gave his entire life to see arrive, tell him that that kingdom is here.

Tell him, brother, your life was not lived in vain.

That your life mattered.

And I know it doesn't feel like much, but you've been a part of something that's bigger than you.

This is one of the hardest lessons that we have to learn as followers of Jesus is that if we're going to live with kingdom purpose, we have to have a hope that's anchored in something bigger than ourselves.

Because if John measured his purpose by a prison cell, that individual experience was going to feel a lot like failure.

But in the context of the kingdom, John's purpose was to point to Jesus, and now Jesus can look back at John and say, Well done, brother.

Well done.

You have run your race well.

And the kingdom of God is marching on.

Some of you need to hear this this morning.

And I know it may sound like a rebuke, but I promise it's not corrective, it's not a rebuke for it's an encouraging word.

In the context of the kingdom, this is the best news that we can receive.

That is, it's not about you.

None of this is about you.

The work of Christ on the cross and and his work through the church, it's it's not about you specifically.

Yes, you are a part of that.

And what a grace it is to be counted worthy in that way.

But if we're gonna have a purpose that's unshakable, it can't be defined by our own present.

Or else our understanding of God's goodness is gonna be tied to how much money's in the bank account, or how stable our health is or how happy our marriage is.

But when we understand that it's not about us and that his purpose is bigger than us, we can have a joy that's unshakable.

Because even when things get really hard, and even when our hopes and the things that we thought and our vision for our life and our future seem to be crumbling around us, we can anchor our life in the fact that the kingdom of God will march on.

And though my life may come to an end, his kingdom never will.

And that the gates of hell will never prevail against it.

And while it feels like the gates of hell may be closing in around me, I know that I am not the kingdom.

And though Satan may be laughing now, he will not have the last laugh because my God will win.

And my role may not be what I had hoped it may be, and it may be smaller than I anticipated it would, or it may not look like what I thought it would.

It may come with struggles along the way, it may look bigger than I thought it would.

But all that matters is I run my part well.

Because that's where my hope is.

In the faithfulness of God isn't exclusively measured by what happens to me.

Although, can I say I believe God is faithful to us?

But we understand He is faithful to prevail.

So Jesus gives this reminder to John.

And he tries to redirect his hope.

But then Jesus does something that's a bit of a head scratcher.

The second John's disciples are out of earshot, Jesus turns to the crowd and he starts talking about John.

And he says, What did you go into the wilderness to see?

A reed shaken by the wind?

A man dressed in soft clothing?

No, a prophet.

More than a prophet.

Let me translate that for you.

You didn't just go to see some anybody.

You went to see a man of significance.

You didn't go see someone who was flaky, who was doubtful, someone who was unsure about the things they were proclaiming.

You went to see the real deal.

And then Jesus says to the crowd, truly I say to you, among those born of women, there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist.

Because if I was John, I probably could have used the encouragement.

I'm serious.

Like in my struggle, if I could just get a heavenly like attaboy, right?

That like would give me the motivation to run through a brick wall.

But he doesn't give that to John.

And so I can only trust that in the wisdom of God, he gave to John's disciples what it was that John needed to hear.

Which means what are we supposed to do with this commentary?

Well, I think these statements were less about John and more about the crowd and what they needed to hear.

There are a lot of people there who would have measured and evaluated John's life and ministry off his weakest moment.

Had John's disciples had the last word for his life, that's how he would have been remembered.

And Jesus is not going to let that happen.

He said, No, no, no, no, no, that's not a doubter.

That's the best there ever was to do it.

That was the one who was confident in me from day one.

Aren't you grateful we have a God who doesn't define us by our weakest moments?

But when we hitch our wagon to him and spend our life giving ourselves for his glory, for his kingdom, for his word.

That just as we spend our life trying to make a defense for him, that he's the type of God who's gonna make a defense for us.

So that even when we get it wrong, we know that we're not measured by that.

We're measured by our identity in him.

And this is a small glimpse in kind of a social communal setting, but I do believe it's a glimpse as to what it's gonna be like one day when we stand before God and receive judgment.

Because when we get there, there's gonna be an accuser.

Revelation 12 says that the role of the devil is to point and to shame and to accuse and make the best case he can against you.

But thank God we've got a defender.

Someone in our corner who will stand before God and say, no, no, no.

He ain't a somebody, she ain't a somebody.

They were the best to ever do it.

God, there were a lot of people out there.

They didn't defend me, they didn't stand for me, but they did.

They're with me, they're covered by me.

And I say they're good.

What a promise we have.

And if our purpose simply, what can we get in this life?

And what a small purpose that is.

Someone once said, a man wrapped up in himself makes for a small package indeed.

You were made for more than you.

And God gave you that as a gift.

And this morning you have the opportunity to walk out of here with fresh purpose.

That says, God, I'm just gonna say yes to whatever you put in front of me.

And over a lifetime of saying yes to the doors that God's opened, you'll be able to look back and see the story, the poem that God was writing, and you'll see that the The role that you played was something that you couldn't have done on your own.

But people will look at your life and say, the good hand of God was on them, guiding them every step of the way.

What greater hope can we have than that?

So this morning as we close, we're going to have an open altar for you to respond.

This side of the altar is going to be open for those of you who'd like to pray with somebody about whatever's going on in your life.

This side of the altar is going to be for those of you that would like to pray by yourself or have some alone time with God to my left and to my right at the front of the sanctuary.

We have communion for those of you who'd like to partake.

But can I give you this invitation this morning?

If you've got something in your hands that's getting in the way, if you've been paralyzed by fear, haven't said yes to the things that God has called you to say yes to because of that fear.

Or if you're sitting here this morning and you're just confused and can't make sense of your life as it currently looks because you're having a hard time reconciling the things that God said to you and where you're at right now.

It'd be an honor and a privilege to pray for you.

And I know it's more comfortable to sit in our seats, but can I tell you it's more effective when we link arms and join together?

That this is why the body exists.

That we're not just strangers in a room, but scripturally we're family, brothers and sisters, supporting and caring for one another.

Hey, don't rob me of my purpose because you want to sit in your seat.

Guys, I love you.

I want to pray for you.

Heavenly Father, what a gift it is to be a part of your people.

Lord, what a gift it is to know that on my worst days, on the days when I swing for the mints for the fences and completely strike out.

On the days that I doubt, on the days that I'm afraid, God, that you don't give up on me.

But in that loving tone that's unique to you, you call me out of the place that I'm at into something better.

And Lord, I pray that every person in this room today or watching online, sitting under the sound of my voice, Lord, I just pray that that tone would penetrate their heart.

That the voice of the enemy would be silenced.

And that you would call out of all of us a life of greatness and eternal significance.

Lord, today we say yes to whatever it is that you have for us.

We thank you for these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

We hope you were encouraged and challenged by today's message.

Again, to learn more about Gateway Franklin Church, find us online at gatewayfranklin.com.

Thanks for joining us today.