August 16th, 2026

Amen.

Amen.

Let's hear it for the Reverend Dr.

Pastor Young.

Thank you, Pastor Young.

I love every time he brings us a musical rendition.

And it's if you've never heard him before, you see this little guy get up here.

And then you're like, uh, this is gonna be cute.

Um and then he goes all big um and awesome.

Thank you.

He is a reverend doctor, in case you're wondering, Pastor Young, uh, way more educated than me.

Um but we are excited to uh to have you here today.

I have a question for you.

Why does St.

Andrews exist?

Right?

You ever thought about that?

You ever talked about it?

You ever looked at somebody and go, you know what, why does this place even exist?

We've been here for almost 75 years.

It will be 75 when we move into our new building, which is kind of fun and cool.

Here's a better question for you.

Why are you here?

And I don't mean in like the perverse, like the whole existential conversation, like, why are you here on this world?

Not like, why are you here?

Why do you come to St.

Andrews?

Why do you come to church at all?

Why do you show up on a weekly basis?

I was visiting with some plumbers yesterday, and and they're like, um, and it was at our river place at the farm in Sagin, and we're having some plumbing issues, which is why they were there.

You should have done the math there.

That was an easy get.

Um, and they're like, so you spend the night out here.

I was like, well, no, I gotta go back.

Like, I I work in the morning.

Um, oh yeah, it's Sunday, yeah.

Sunday.

And the one of the plumbers looks at me, he goes, Sundays always come, don't they?

Yeah.

They always come, like on a real regular basis.

They're here.

And so are many of you.

But why?

You know, why why is it that is it because you grew up in the South and the by and the and you you this is you check off the box?

Like this is what you do.

This is what you do when you live in this kind of community.

You show up on a Sunday, and it could be anywhere.

It could be St.

Andrews, it could be one of the other wonderful churches in our community, but is it a check off the box transactional type of thing?

Or is it transformational?

See, the Pharisees wanted transactional, and that's how they built their existence with God was on a transactional element.

If I do this, then this will happen.

If I show up in this way, then God is going to do these things for me.

But Jesus said, that's not what I want.

I want a transformational relationship with you.

Because when you just go through the motions and check off the box, you're getting the bare minimum of what God has.

God wants so much more for us than we really realize.

He wants to transform our lives.

He wants to allow us to step into the fullness of what he created us for.

When we find that purpose, that thing, I say it all the time.

You were created on purpose for a purpose.

And when you find that, wherever it is, maybe it's in our youth program for a season, God bless you.

Because you get to step into the fullness of the life that Jesus offers us.

So why are we here?

Can I get you to an answer and can I ask you to go all in with me on this?

Like, can if you're if you're a check the box off person, I get it.

I grew up in the Episcopal Church.

It's the epitome of checking the box off.

Right?

Sorry, we're covering Episcopalians in here.

We can commiserate later.

But you know, you go through and you just go through the motions and you do and you sit up and you know when to stand and you know when to kneel, and you know when to like lean back on the pew because you've been kneeling so long, and then you lean back forward because now here comes the big part.

You say that, and all the different liturgy is wrote to me.

I can go into an episcopal service blindfolded and do the entire thing that the priest does, even though that's not how I was trained, because I grew up in it.

Checking that box off.

But that's not what God wants.

God wants to be full in us.

He wants to go all in with us, and then he wants us to go all in with him.

A term all in, some of you may know.

I have a lot of vices.

I'm not gonna pretend that I'm a perfect person.

Pretty, pretty close.

But I miss it in some ways.

That's that's gonna change when my wife's here at the next service.

But um it it there's I don't gamble.

Gambling is not one of my things.

I just I don't understand it.

Maybe it's because I like the I I work hard for the money that I earn, and I'm like, I'm not giving it to some idiot.

Like I tell Corbin all the time, they didn't build Vegas because they lose all the time out there, right?

Thank you, Grace.

I thought that was funny too.

It's my daughter laugh track.

Um and it's so it all in is a poker term, right?

How many of you are poker players in here?

It's you can raise, thank you for raising your hand proudly, those of you who are like, yes, because God knows you play poker, right?

Um and all in is this term when you have a hand and you're like, I'm going to win this hand.

You take all of your chips and you put everything in on this bet.

Like, I'm going all in on this.

Everything I have is going in on this because I feel like I'm going to win this.

Here's the thing.

I want us to go all in with God for this season.

I want you to take everything you have, put all of your chips into your relationship with Jesus and say, I am all in.

Give me a year.

Run the playbook that I'm going to lay out for you over the next four Sundays and see what happens.

I'm asking you to go all in.

Go to the next slide there.

There you go.

Bam.

Go all in.

With your heart, with your soul, with your mind, with your strength.

Right?

This is what Jesus asked us.

When Jesus was asked the question, and this is a question that was debated by the rabbis all the time, what's the most important commandment?

What's the thing I have to, what's the box that I have to check off the most?

And Jesus said this: you love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind, and with all of your strength.

And he says the second is just as important, love your neighbor as yourself.

But I contend that the second one doesn't come without the first.

You can't love your neighbor as yourself in the way that God truly asks us to do until we do this.

We love God with our whole heart, with our whole soul, with our whole mind, and our whole strength.

This is Luke's version, by the way.

Matthew says it a little differently, but Luke lays it out like this: your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength.

Oh in.

But it starts with the heart.

When Corbin was little, we used to ask him all the time.

We have these little Grace loves to watch family videos, and we watch them pretty much the same ones all the time.

And there's a little, there's one of the ones when Corbin, I don't know how old he is, two, maybe three or something.

And and Jenna likes to ask the question, where does Jesus live?

Where does Jesus live?

In my heart, is what he said.

In my heart, right?

Jesus is in our heart.

We accept him into our life.

We say, Jesus, come be inside of me, live inside of me.

I accept this thing.

And so I want Jesus to be in your heart.

Now many of you are here at 9:30, you're like, I get it.

I've been there.

Good.

Stay with me on this.

Not everybody that is in this room or watching online maybe is there.

And maybe you're there once and Jesus was full in your heart, but then things happened.

And I love that song, Always on Time.

Such a great thank you for sharing that with us.

It's such a great song because sometimes we go through the fire, and when we go through the fire, we feel like we got burned more than we should.

We're under the water and we don't realize God's presence is there.

And little by little we walk away from that relationship with Jesus because the life that we expected him to bring us isn't the life that he brings us.

And so little by little we start to see him maybe differently.

Here's a question: why do we even talk about Jesus today?

Like, I mean, what is it about him that continues to bring people to love and anger with this relationship with them?

Why is it that we talk about someone who lived and died 2,000 years ago?

I think Mark gives us the answer in chapter 16.

I'm going to start a little bit before this, but Saturday evening when the Sabbath ended, Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, Siloam, went out and purchased burial spiases so they could anoint Jesus' body.

Very early on Sunday morning, just as sunrise, just at sunrise, they went to the tomb.

On the way there, they were asking each other, Who will roll away the stone for us?

From the entrance to the tomb.

Verse 4, here we are.

But as they arrived, they looked up and saw that the stone which was very large had already been rolled aside.

When they entered the tomb, they saw a young man clothed in a white robe sitting on the right side.

The women were shocked, but the angel said, Don't be alarmed.

You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who is crucified.

He isn't here.

He's risen from the dead.

Look, this is where they laid his body.

Now go and tell his disciples, including Peter, that Jesus is going ahead of you to Galilee.

You will see him there, just as he told you before he died.

The women fled from the tomb, trembling and bewildered, and they said nothing to anyone because they were too frightened.

Now, why are we still talking about Jesus?

Because he walked out of the tomb.

If he didn't conquer death, he would have just been another notch on the crosses of the Roman Empire.

He would have been somebody that lived a good life and was a great teacher and really was Tony Robbins on steroids.

Like, live your best life now, and I'm sure he had a great smile and all those different things, but he would have been a guru and a teacher, not a messiah.

It was the fact that he died and then goes, you know what?

I'm not dead yet.

And he walked out of that tomb.

That's why we still talk about him.

In fact, Paul says it this way in 1 Corinthians.

He goes, look, if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, our preaching would be useless.

And so would your faith.

And then he goes on to say this in chapter 15, verse 21.

So you see, just as death came into the world through a man, Adam, now the resurrection from the dead has begun through another man.

Verse 22 Just as everyone dies because we all belong to Adam, everyone who belongs to Christ will be given new life.

But there's another, in order.

But there is an order to this resurrection.

Christ will be raised as the first of the harvest.

Then all who belong to Christ will be raised when he comes back.

It's this first fruits thing.

What Paul is pointing to.

Paul just said right before this that without Christ walking out of the tomb, my preaching would be useless.

So would your faith.

But he did.

He did walk out.

He was the first fruits.

And the first fruits for an agrarian society, like we don't, we're not farmers around here, most of us, and so we don't think of it in the same way that they would have.

But what he's talking about is the representation of what the rest of the harvest was going to be.

And he's like, Jesus is representing what the rest of the resurrection will be.

He's representing those of us who, when we believe in him, we walk out of that tomb as well.

When Jesus walked out of the tomb, he ended death.

Death had the final power and authority until then.

There was the curse of sin that separated us from a relationship with the Father until the resurrection.

And Paul is saying, hey, here's the cure to all of those things that you may be afraid of.

If you had really bad cancer and you go into the doctor and the doctor said there's only one cure, would you debate him about that?

Well, that seems really exclusive, just one cure.

I'd like to pursue other options.

This will cure you.

Yeah, I don't know.

I'd like to try other things and look around.

A lot of times when we say Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, that he is the cure, he is the one who will bring the resurrection and end this power of sin and death, we say, well, that's really exclusive.

It's just one way.

Don't you want to know that way?

And by the way, it's not exclusive.

It's the most inclusive offer that has ever existed.

Because anyone and everyone who call on the name of Jesus and believe and receive this gift are saved.

Eternal life is theirs.

The cure is available.

And if it's offered, and if we're still talking about the fact that Jesus conquered death, don't we want to walk into that relationship?

And once we walk into that relationship, here's the thing is, and Miss Natalie talked about it.

The way you know someone more is to spend time with them.

Once we get that gift of life that comes with accepting Jesus and saying, you are now a daughter of the Most High God, you are a son of the Most High God, you are heirs to the kingdom of heaven, that is great.

And Jesus says, okay, let's go.

Because I have more and want more for you.

The more you get to know, let me tell you, the more you get to know Jesus Christ, the more the world opens up to you.

The more life you experience, the more you dive into these words and learn about who God is, who Jesus is, and who you are because of him, the more everything starts to click.

It doesn't mean that the more everything goes easy.

What it does mean is how you handle that and walk through those times changes.

How you experience life in this world knowing that there is life to come.

How you walk into those moments that seemingly could sink your ship knowing that there is one sleeping beside you who can wake up and go, shh, be still.

But how do you get to know God more?

If you want to go all in, we one, we have to accept this gift, and we have to say, yes, Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.

I accept that gift.

He calls me his.

But if we want to experience the fullness of it, we need to grow that relationship.

We need to read scripture, dive into his words.

Read through these.

How many of you, this is a uh Ray Vanderlyn.

How many of you know who Ray Vanderlyn is?

Yeah.

RVL, as some people call him.

He's a great uh high school teacher uh up in Michigan.

Um, and he does these trips to Israel.

And I've been fortunate enough.

I went to Turkey with Ray, uh, Jenna and I and her parents and sister to study the seven churches in in Revelation.

Jenna got to go with him to Israel.

I went to Israel with one of his guys, but um, it just really brings to life uh the scripture and everything.

When Jenna was in Israel with him, she was the youth director, uh the youth pastor at another church here in town, uh, which is where I wooed her away and made her the happiest woman on the face of the earth.

Um but what when she was there, she goes over to Israel and she was talking to Ray because Ray deals with high school kids and she was dealing with high school kids and she was trying to get some advice from him.

Um and he said, How many times have you read the Gospels?

And she goes, Oh, I've read them.

He goes, No, how many times have you read the Gospels?

She goes, um, I and y'all know that Jenna is a Bible junkie.

Like she is.

She knows scripture verse way better than I do.

I'm not a scripture verse kind of guy.

I know the stories, I know, I can tell you who wrote it, all those things.

I'm more about the history side.

I we see scripture differently.

She and I do, but she knows it.

She likes to hang out in the New Testament, in the epistles.

Um, she actually just finished studying the book of Revelation, which I'm, she's like, You want to study it with me?

I was like, No, that scares me.

Um and she's just doing that.

She leads a Bible study here on our campus for teachers, and like she knows the Bible.

But when he asked her that question, she's like, Yeah, I've read them.

He goes, How many times?

She's like, I don't know.

He goes, how many times have you read them this year?

She goes, I I don't know.

She starts, you know, just getting a little, and he gets, if you know RVL, he gets a little aggressive at times.

It's his personality.

He goes, how many times have you read him this month?

And she's like, I he goes, if you're basing your life on this and you're not immersing yourself in your relationship and knowledge of this, you don't really take it seriously.

Now the reason he was saying that is because a Jewish rabbi confronted him the same way when he was at a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem.

He was the only Christian in this seminary.

And he was studying the historical roots of Christianity through the eyes of a Jew.

And this rabbi gets up to him, well, how often are you reading this?

You're telling me that Jesus is the Messiah?

I don't know if you used air quotes or not, but I always picture it that way.

And you're not totally immersing yourself in a story as often as you can.

The more we get to know who God is, who Jesus is through these stories, the more we know who we are and our place in his kingdom.

I encourage you to read the scripture.

Get into it, get into those stories, get into those things that you have questions about.

God wants to question with you.

God wants to throw dishes.

Stay in the kitchen and throw those dishes.

Stay in those moments to learn more about who he is.

Because when we know that, we know more about who we are.

The first step on all of this is to know God.

Because the more we know him, the more our life explodes into what he desires it to be.

One of the ways that we get to know him more is by regularly coming to his table.

It's by coming to this moment and experiencing the grace and the offer of salvation and sacrifice that Jesus made for us on the cross.

If you would, you can open up your bulletins or look to the screen.

Join me in an attitude of prayer.

Christ our Lord invites to his table all who love him, who earnestly repent of their sin and seek to live in peace with one another.

Therefore, let us confess our sin before God and one another.

Merciful God, we confess that we have not loved you with our whole heart.

We have failed to be an obedient church.

We have not done your will.

We have broken your law.

We have rebelled against your love.

We have not loved our neighbors, and we have not heard the cry of the needy.

Forgive us, we pray.

Free us for joyful obedience through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.