Mother's Day message

Good morning.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you out there.

It's a sweet day.

Anytime I can open the Word of God, and I really appreciate the privilege.

It's usually on Mother's Day that I get the opportunity to share with you what God's been speaking to my heart.

And as I think about Mother's Day, I of course think about my mom.

And I am so pleased to tell you thank you for praying for her.

She finished Friday, her fourth week of radiation.

And they had a little graduation, and we came over and we had dinner together and spent a little time just catching up and just doing so well.

And I thank you for that.

I'm really grateful for all the things that mom has taught me.

When I was a little girl, she'd let me make a mess in the kitchen to learn how to cook.

You know, it's easier to do it yourself than to let a child.

But she would let me make a mess so I could learn.

And she taught me how to how to sew when we were in 4-H club.

She was our 4-H leader, and I had to take out the stitches as much as I put in.

I think I took out twice for everything that I sewed, but she taught me how to sew, and I still can't match her heirloom quilts that she makes, but she taught me how to do those things.

She taught me how to be kind, how to be thoughtful.

She taught me how to work.

In our house, we know how to work, that's for sure.

But she taught us how to work without complaining.

I don't know if you know that art, but you know how to work without complaining, enjoying hospitality and serving others, and that's the model that my parents have given me.

They have been married fifty seven years.

57 years, just celebrated in March.

And so they've shown me what a marriage looks like and what it takes to go this the distance.

And I'm so grateful for that.

But of all the things that mom taught me, the best thing she ever taught me was how to read.

And I learned how to read before I went to school.

And uh she's the one who taught me.

And when you teach a child how to read, you really open the world to them.

I don't know how many book lovers there are out there, but I love books.

In fact, when I came home Safriday night, I had a box in the trunk.

I went and put it in the trunk while Danny was asleep, so he wouldn't know that I was bringing home another box from my mother.

He said, Do not take any more stuff.

She's trying to clean out, you know.

And so she brought uh she had a box of books that were as old as I am.

So some of the golden books, and um one was, in fact, I was looking at the the date, and it was exactly my birthday, but I was looking at some of these old books, and she told me that my sister had already stolen one.

I told my Sunday school class she went through them before.

I there's a a little bit of a ring, maybe he's trying to he's got it.

Okay.

So the name of the book was The Little Red Hen.

Does anybody know that story of the little red hen?

Well, we we learned that all of our lives, but she taught us how to read, and I have found with my grandchildren that they love for me to read to them.

They want me to tell them a story.

And that's what we're going to talk about today is the story that we should tell our children.

Because the stories that we tell, from the time they're little until they're grown, the stories we tell become a part of their lives.

And there's stories that we need to tell our children.

There's things that they don't need to miss.

Danny just quoted it in Deuteronomy 6.

I started to get worried.

I thought, is he going to take everything?

But, you know, Deuteronomy 6 says that when we walk in the way, when we lay down and sit up, and when we, you know, so all during the day we're to be teaching our children.

And the Old Testament is full of stories of memorials where they'd pile a bunch of rocks and they'd say, This is so that in that day when you pass these rocks and your children say to you, What's this pile of rocks, Daddy?

You can tell them what God has done for you.

And so we build rocks and we we tell stories so that we pass on this heritage of a godly lineage.

We we pass on how to know God and how to have a relationship with Him.

Mother's Day is about honoring relationships, isn't it?

You know, we honor those that that first cared for us and first nurtured us.

And so Mother's Day is a special time to just say thanks to the most um, I won't say taken advantage of.

What's the word?

Taken for granted, maybe.

You know, you just assume that there's gonna be clean clothes and food on the table.

You know, you just kind of take a lot of things for granted.

It's easy for that to happen.

Everybody that's thinks that's true say, uh-huh.

Yeah, it can be true.

It can be true.

So today we take an opportunity just to say thank you.

But I want to tell you about the story that I think is most important.

And it's the story of the Bible.

Now, if you look at your outline, and I think I've got one over here somewhere, we're gonna talk about the story of the Bible, the story of Jesus, and our story.

And I promise not to be too long-winded.

I do have a clock in front of me, but I just want you to notice that it is 10 till 11.

Okay, I'm starting at 10 till 11.

So if we go till 11:30, I did not speak that long.

Okay?

Just so you know.

I don't know what time we I don't ever pay attention to the clock.

I'm not going anywhere.

Are y'all going anywhere?

If you got to rush off to see the other grandmother or the other mother, I understand.

But we're gonna we're gonna stay here till we finish and then we're gonna eat.

So it's okay.

Somebody's already got lunch taken care of, and we thank y'all for that.

But I want to tell you about the story of the book the Bible because as I as I teach college students in a Christian university, oh by the way, did you know that I get I get paid to read now?

I mean, I love it.

My mother taught me how to read, and that's what I'm getting paid to do every day is to read and to study.

But the story of the Bible, if somebody were to ask you, what's that book about, you know, how what would you say to them?

Because it's a big book, it's a big fat one, but it's the best-selling book that's ever been published.

More people have a Bible than any other book, and yet they sometimes don't know what's inside it because it's a closed book, it's a dusty book, it's a book that people don't read.

And our culture, the American culture today, has changed so much.

It used to be that our forefathers, when they were writing the historical government documents, they knew their Bibles, and so the language of our Constitution, the language of the Declaration of Independence is filled with references to the Bible.

That we have inalienable rights given to us by who?

Our Creator.

So they recognize that we were created and they knew the Bible.

Today we have a whole different mindset and a whole different way of thinking, and it's because our children, and maybe you're in that group, don't know the Bible like our grandparents and our great-grandparents did.

And we can change our nation if we just change the story, if we understand the story.

It's important to know the Bible because God wrote it for us to know about Him.

God chose to communicate in a story.

I guess He could have made a video, and we've certainly made movies about the Bible.

That's great.

But God wrote a book to tell us about Him, and so we need to read it.

I want to just give you 10 quick steps about what the story of the Bible is.

This is your fill-in-the-blanks, and I'm gonna go super fast on this.

I'm gonna slow down when we get to the story of Jesus because that's the best part.

And then we're gonna wrap up with our story.

Okay, so just know I'm going fast on purpose.

If you want to take notes, you need to get ready.

So here we are.

Number one, the first uh theme in the Bible is beginnings.

We learn that we were created by God, that we did not get here by some blast in the universe that fell into the swamp and grew and crawled out.

That is not how we got here.

God spoke, and this world came into existence, and we have six days of creation, and on the sixth day, God made man in his image.

We are like God in soul, spirit, and body.

And so we are like the nature of God is in us.

It doesn't make us good like God.

It did until Adam and Eve got to chapter three and they decided to eat of the fruit that God had said, don't eat.

And we hear the story of the beginnings of man, the beginnings of the world, and the beginning of sin, all in the first 11 chapters of Genesis.

If your children don't know the stories of how we all got here, that's a great place to start.

But we start with the beginnings.

We also hear the story of Noah and the flood.

There really was one.

That's why the oceans are shifted and the mountains are formed and everything was scooped out.

Can you imagine a world that didn't have oceans?

It used to exist.

And then the land separated, and then we had the flood.

There's all kinds of things you can learn from reading your Bible about the beginnings.

The second theme is a nation born.

A nation born.

And here we have, starting in Genesis chapter 12, we have the story of Abraham being called out by God to be a special people.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

And I'm gonna make you a nation.

And Abraham was barren.

He was a hundred years old when Isaac was born.

One hundred years old.

None of us want to be the dad of a newborn when we're a hundred years old, but that was how long he waited.

He was a man of faith.

And yet, after Abraham, the story continues, and we go through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and then the 12 sons, and Joseph being the youngest, and we get to Genesis chapter 50, and they they're left down in Egypt because of a shortage of grain where they were living in the promised land, and so they go down to Egypt, and they find out that as they have multiplied, they start out as one family, Abraham's sons.

Genesis 50 · chapter mention

They start out as one family and they turn into a nation while they're in Egypt.

And there's two million of them.

There's so many of them that the Egyptians become afraid of them and enslave them, make the children of Israel slaves.

And then we get to the third thing, which is a nation freed.

And in here we learn about Moses and how God delivered his people from the slavery and the hardship.

And he gave them the law.

For the first time, we have God's rules written down.

And in Exodus chapter 20, we have the Ten Commandments.

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

And so these are important things for us to learn.

The fourth theme is that of worship.

While Moses was leading the people, he also taught them how to worship God.

And in the book of Leviticus, he lays out all the rules for the priesthood.

How many of you are glad we're in the New Testament?

I'm telling you, that's a thick, heavy book, okay?

But Leviticus tells us how we're to approach God.

And because we're sinners, we have to come to God with a blood sacrifice to atone for our sin.

And yet the whole system that was set up with the priest and the sacrifices, all of that pointed us to God, but it also pointed to the future.

Because that system of worship, that system of bringing a sacrifice, was just temporary.

How do we know it was temporary?

Because you had to do it every year.

Every year you had to come and offer another lamb.

Every year you had to come.

And so your worship, you know, you would come and you'd lay out this sacrifice to cover your sin.

When we get to the New Testament, we find out that Leviticus is a foreshadowing.

It's a picture of the perfect Lamb of God who would come and forever take away our sin.

But in the Old Testament, he lays it out.

So that's the fourth theme.

The fifth theme is a history book.

It's full of prophets, priests, and kings.

And you'd have to read about them.

But you learn about the story of Samuel, how when he was a baby, he was prayed for by his mother Hannah, and then was brought into the temple and raised to be one of the prophets of God.

He was, we learn about Elijah who called down fire from heaven.

We learn about Aaron, the very first high priest.

We learn about the beginning of the kings.

You know, Samuel was the prophet of God, and yet the people decided that they wanted a king like everybody else.

And so he said, Oh, uh, Samuel, don't worry about what the people are clamoring for.

It's not you that they've rejected.

It's not the prophet of God they've rejected.

It's me.

They don't want me to be their king.

I have been their king.

But now they want an earthly king that they can see and touch and say, look, we're just like every other nation.

But it's going to come with a price.

And it did.

And we have Saul, and then we have David, and then we have Solomon.

And into the fourth generation, Solomon's son Jeroboam, decided that he was going to be even more strict and have higher taxes than his dad.

Solomon who built the richest kingdom in the world.

And Jeroboam split the kingdom, and forever there was Judah and Israel, two parts of the same family from Abraham.

And so we have the story of the prophets and the priests and the kings.

And then the next one, what number am I on?

Six, we see the cycle of sin.

And this story goes through all the judges, all the kings.

We see that they were living for God.

They're on the mountain with Joshua, they're conquering the land, and then they start worshiping idols and they sin and they betray the Lord.

And then God brings judgment to them, and their enemies come in and conquer their land.

They repent of their sin.

They cry to God for help.

Please help us, help us.

Deliverance comes.

They're again serving the Lord.

Everything's good for a while.

And then they forget God and they start sinning and they start rebelling and they start doing their own thing.

And then judgment comes again.

And it happens over and over and over, and we see a cycle of sin.

Read the book of Judges, and it'll give you this cycle of sin.

It's sort of human nature.

The problem is that in the Old Testament we learn that man, though he's created in the image of God, is a sinful person and just can't seem to keep it together.

Have any of y'all ever felt like that?

Like you're trying really hard?

Every January that diet starts and you're good.

You get the picture.

Okay.

So there's a cycle where we have success and failure and repentance and rebellion.

But then we have a promise, and this is through the entire Old Testament.

It's scattered throughout.

But we have a promise that someone is coming, a Messiah is promised who's going to deliver us.

And out of that promise, we have the seventh, the eighth theme: the Messiah comes.

And we start in the New Testament, and we see in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John the story of how God sent his son to be born of a virgin, to live a sinless life, to pay for our sins on the cross as the Lamb of God who would permanently take away our sin.

And then the ninth theme, a church is born.

Because out of that cross, out of that gospel, people's lives are changed.

And God takes out that sinful heart, that hard, stony heart, and he gives us a soft heart.

And he comes to live inside us.

He doesn't just live around us and outside us and in the tabernacle.

Now he lives inside us.

Well, now this what this works because this is change that happens on the inside.

This isn't change that I just make up my mind, but this is change that happens because I have been born again.

Amen.

And so we have a church that is born, a church that's the body of Christ.

Today we sit here 2,000 years later because a church was born.

And we hear the story of that in the New Testament in the book of Acts.

And then all the Bible, the New Testament, after the gospel and the story of the church, all of those letters are just correspondence.

It's like we're eavesdropping on Paul's messages to the believers and to Peter's messages and to John's.

They're all letters.

I'm going to share a letter with you today.

And then in the last chapter, we just studied this theme, the book of Revelation.

We see about the future kingdom coming and what the end times are going to be like.

And so this is the Bible.

What's the story of the Bible?

I just told you the story of the Bible in less than 10 minutes.

You can do this, okay?

You need to know the story of the Bible and you need to teach it to your children.

And it needs to, I I love Disney.

I love fairy tales.

I love all that.

I love superheroes.

I love all that.

But all that, all that good stuff is in the Bible, too.

I'm not saying don't do those things, but don't neglect what's important, that that which will feed their soul.

Why is it so important that we know the Bible?

Because the words that Jesus spoke are spirit and life.

They will change your life.

I want to tell you this story.

And uh this this was told to me by uh Jeremy, actually our son-in-law, but uh a man, a a grandfather and his son lived in this little house and it had um a coal burning stove is how they had their heat.

And they had a basket that they kept the coal in, and it was all black and dirty from the coal.

And so they needed to clean the basket, and so um they they tried to wash it out, you know, but it it it they needed to go down to the creek, and for some reason the grandfather uh needed some water, and so he sent his son down to get to the creek, but he sent him with the basket of coal.

And they had had that conversation earlier that morning about how he he he tried to read his Bible, but he forgot, you know, he would read it in the morning, and then by lunchtime he forgot what he'd read.

And he just said, it just doesn't seem to be doing me any good.

It's like I try to read the Bible, but then I forget.

And you know, maybe you remember what Danny preached last Sunday.

Pull out your Bible and look at the notes.

And maybe you don't, okay?

Maybe you don't remember, but somehow it just seems to leak.

You know, it's like we don't we don't remember.

Well, anyway, while they were having this conversation, the grandfather said, Son, I need you to go down to the creek and bring us some water back.

So he ran uh to get the water, he came back, and when he, by the time he got back, that full basket of water was empty.

And the grandson said, I mean, the grandfather said, I thought I thought I told you to go get some water.

He said, Well, I did, but it but it all came out.

He said, You're just not going fast enough.

Quit dragging your feet, go dry it again.

So he went down to the creek, he filled it up with water, he came back, and still empty basket, no water.

He said, I didn't, I didn't dawdle, I promise, I really went fast.

And he said, Look, I'm gonna stand on the porch and I'm gonna watch you.

All right, go, go, go get that water.

So he stands at the porch and he watches this grandson as he goes to fill up with the water in the creek.

He comes back and he runs and he runs and he gets there, and there's no water.

He said, You know, you did run, you didn't waste your time, but all the water leaked out.

And he said, Well, that just didn't work.

There's no point in trying to get water in this creek because it just leaks out of the basket.

He said, But look at the basket.

What about it?

Well, when you started, it was black and dirty with coal.

What does it look like now?

Jesus said, now you are clean through the words that I speak to you.

You know, you take a shower and it and you have to keep doing it over and over again.

You read the Bible, you have to keep doing it over and over again.

And maybe you don't remember everything you read.

But what does it do to you when you read it?

It changes you and it cleans you.

And how can you have, and wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way by taking heed to the word of God.

So it's important to know the Bible, to let those be our heroes, to let those be our stories.

Isaiah 55, 8 and 9.

Jason's been wondering if I'm ever going to get to the scriptures that he has.

I have to blow my nose.

Can y'all turn the sound off for a second?

Sorry, I asked.

Okay.

All right.

I know.

That's okay.

At least you won't be sleeping.

What do you remember?

She blew her nose in the microphone.

Isaiah 55, 8 and 9.

Says, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts.

Thoughts higher than your thoughts.

We don't think like God.

We have our own ways of doing things.

And the only way to become holy, to become like God, is for his thoughts to enter our mind and to change us.

Because on our own, we will never be like God.

I want to tell you, I've told you briefly the story of the Bible, but I want to tell you the best story in the Bible.

The whole Bible is really about Jesus.

He's the point of the Bible.

All of the Bible is the context.

Okay?

Knowing all of it is useful, all of it is beneficial.

But the point of the Bible is the story of Jesus.

And this week I have been reading through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

I've been, they're just four little short books.

They're really not that long.

But I have been reading through those and just letting them wash over me.

And they they they they have intersections.

A lot of them tell some of the same stories.

But I want to just tell you the story of Jesus.

And I want to tell you what he has shown me.

The first thing I noticed is the identity of Jesus.

He is the God man.

God slash man.

Nobody has ever been like him.

He's fully God and fully man.

Now I'm not telling you anything you don't already know.

You know this.

The first thing is he's God.

He was pre-existent God.

That means that he existed before the world did.

He existed before we did.

He was pre-existent God.

And he was the creator of the world.

You know, in Genesis it doesn't say Jesus created the world, but he talks about we, let us create man in our image.

And in Colossians it says, He, talking about Jesus, is the image of the invisible God.

Jesus is God with skin on.

He's the picture.

If you ever do Google images trying to look for something, okay, he is the, if you googled God, you should get a picture of Jesus.

Because that's what it is.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible.

That's important in a minute.

Visible and invisible.

He created invisible things.

Not everything can be seen, heard, touched, felt.

There are invisible things that God invented.

Whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.

Read John 1, 1 through 5.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He's referring to Jesus.

He was in the beginning with God.

All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.

In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

And so Jesus is the Son of God.

He is God Himself.

In your notes, I put that He was feared by evil spirits.

You know, it's really strange.

We're gonna, I'm skipping around a little bit, but it's really strange that people were always confused about who Jesus was.

Except one group of people, one group of persons.

The devils.

They were never confused about who Jesus was.

Every time he would approach somebody who was possessed by a demon or tormented by a demon, they would say, Oh, son of God, are you here to torture us?

They knew exactly who he was.

The invisible things that he created, they knew who he was.

It was very clear.

We were all confused in our human minds, our ability to think, but the spirit world has never been confused about the identity of Jesus.

They know who he is.

He was not only God, he was man.

He was a virgin-born human.

Only one.

Now, Adam, just so you know, did not have a belly button.

Because he was not born as a baby.

He was created as a full-grown man in the garden.

We know that because he got married the same afternoon.

You don't marry a baby off, okay?

So Adam was created in the morning.

All the animals were created through the day.

Eve was made in the afternoon.

Go read it.

It's in there, the story, okay?

And then Eve is created from a rib, so she didn't have a belly button either.

All the rest of us, Jesus has a belly button.

Never thought about that, have you?

He was human born.

He was born just like you and I.

I don't understand that.

I mean, I don't know how God fits inside a baby, but I don't know how he fits inside a mother's womb.

I I don't I don't know what it is like to carry God inside.

I guess Mary was the first one who knew, you know, before the Spirit of God came to indwell us.

I guess she knew what it was like to be filled with God.

I mean, she had Jesus inside her as God.

But he was born a human.

He was he was often called the Son of God.

He was called the Son of Man because he related to us, but he was also called the Son of David.

Now David wasn't directly his father, but he was from the lineage of David.

And that gave him a right to the throne of God because God had promised David that his son would sit on the throne.

That was Jesus.

It was important that he came through the right set of parents, and he did.

But not from Joseph.

Joseph was also from the line of David, but Joseph was only his supposed father.

People thought he was the father.

He wasn't.

He was tempted like we are, but without sin.

You know, the area of temptation was a little different for him.

When the devil came to him at the beginning of his ministry, you find this both in Luke chapter 4 and in Matthew chapter 4.

Luke 4 · chapter mention Matthew 4 · chapter mention

And you hear the story of the devil tempting Jesus.

And he said, If you are the Son of God, the devil doesn't really start temptation for me that way.

If you are, you know, because I'm not.

That's not much of a temptation.

But don't you know that in his humanity, in his in his self-imposed limitations, that he had moments when he just wondered, am I crazy or am I God?

I mean, I mean, do you just do you wonder how it would be to be God confined into a human body?

So difficult to understand.

And yet what he did is what God intended for Adam to do.

He intended Adam to be our model, to be the perfect man who would teach us how to walk with God and to live with him.

God created mankind so he could have a family.

Because he only had, it was God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit.

He wanted a human family and he wanted us to have a relationship with him.

But it got messed up when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden.

It got messed up.

And so Jesus did for us what the first Adam was supposed to do, and he gave us an example of how to walk and live with God perfectly.

He never sinned.

That's important.

Sometimes people try to depict Jesus as somebody that, oh yeah, he had all these women around him.

Listen, Jesus was not with women in that way because he wasn't married.

And it would have been sinful to be that way without being married.

So Jesus was also a virgin.

He was a pure, perfect, holy man.

He was our example of what we're supposed to be.

But we couldn't because our flesh was weak and because of the draw of sin.

But he gave us a model.

He gave us an example of what we were supposed to be.

The third thing under this identity is that it was a secret.

You know, everybody was so confused.

I want to run through a few scriptures.

Everybody was confused about who Jesus was.

Luke 4, 22 says, All spoke well of him.

This is after his first sermon in Nazareth.

Okay, he's preaching in his hometown.

And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth.

And they said, Is not this Joseph's son?

Isn't this the carpenter's guy?

What's this?

Matthew 11.

John, his cousin, who knew who he was, who had baptized him, who had heard God's voice out of heaven say, This is my beloved son, John began to have doubts in prison and he heard about the deeds of Christ and he sent word by his disciples and said, Are you the one?

Or should we look for another?

You know, if Jesus were speaking today, I mean, he gave an answer and he said, Go back and tell him these things.

But John was going to go, Really?

Are you kidding me?

John?

John's confused about who I am?

In Matthew 11, 27, all things, Jesus said this, all things have been handed over to me by my Father.

And no one knows the Son except the Father.

Think about what a lonely life Jesus lived on this earth.

He nobody understood who he was.

Part of that was a good thing.

He, you know, he kind of wanted the time to be right, but nobody understood him.

If you've felt misunderstood, I just want you to know Jesus can relate.

Okay?

He's the chief, nobody gets me.

And it's true because the Bible says that all things are common to us, that there's no temptation but what is common to man.

So the experience that you're having, you think you're all alone, you're the only one that's ever had this happen to you.

Oh, pitiful me.

That's not true.

There are other people who've had the same problems, the same difficulties, and Jesus understands.

But he knows what it's like to not be understood.

In Matthew John 6, 42, it says, Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?

How does he now say, I have come down from heaven?

This guy's crazy.

We know he's what is he saying?

And then in John 7, uh verse 40, it says, And when they heard these words, some of these people said, This is really the prophet.

And others said, This is the Christ.

And then some said, Is Christ to come from Galilee?

They're arguing in John 7.

The Christ was supposed to be born in Bethlehem.

He can't come from Galilee.

You want to go, fact checker, uh, I was born in Bethlehem, just so you know.

But they're arguing about that, they didn't know who he was.

There was so much confusion.

And then at his trial, do you know what the big question was?

Jesus had several trials.

He had the first trial with the uh the council of the Jews, and then he had the other uh trial with Pilate, but with the Jews, they said, Are you the Son of God?

They couldn't figure it out.

He'd been preaching and ministering among them for three years, and the it came down to the fact, are you the son of God?

And if you say yes, we're not going to bow and say, Oh, thank you, you've come.

What are we gonna do?

We're gonna put you on a cross because that's a lie.

So they didn't believe who he said he was.

Jesus constantly said, If you believe, you'll have life.

Believe what?

I always wanted him to fill in the blank.

Believe what?

What am I supposed to believe?

If you believe in me, what does that mean?

I believe you exist.

Believe.

They did not believe he was the Son of God.

And yet those who believed he was the Son of God, that salvation could come to them.

They were so confused.

Colossians 2 says the same thing.

Jesus, uh, Paul is speaking and he says, I'm praying that God would knit your hearts together in love and open your mind of understanding so that you would know God's mystery, namely Christ.

Jesus was a mystery.

And in his day, he was so confused.

But here's the other thing.

Besides his identity as a God man, which was mostly a secret, his position as a son, and this is where I want to park for just a little bit, he was the only begotten son of God.

Say it with me, John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Only begotten.

Only begotten means only born.

I actually looked it up.

Okay, I'm not a Greek scholar, but I know how to use concordance.

Only begotten.

He was the only born son of God.

He had a son, a created son of God in Adam.

He, you know, he's made us sons and daughters, but that's been through redemption.

The only born son of God is Jesus.

The only human-born son of God.

He was the only one.

Jesus talked about his relationship with his father.

And I know that Jesus is the son of God, I know he's God, but think with me just a little bit.

Jesus was in a family.

Jesus was a son to his father.

They had a father-son relationship.

They had a parent-child relationship.

God was Jesus was equal with God, but they were family and they had a special relationship.

Think about the relationship you have with your mom.

Think about the relationship you have with your dad.

Okay?

There's a relationship there.

He was a son.

And Jesus talked about this.

And think about what he's saying.

I speak of what I have seen with my father.

I've been hanging out with dad.

And you do what you've heard from your father.

He was talking to some Jews who were trying to catch him in a trap.

And they answered him, Abraham is our father.

And Jesus said, If you were Abraham's children, you'd be doing what Abraham did.

Abraham believed in God and it was counted righteousness.

You're not Abraham's children.

You may have Adam's, Abraham's genes in you, but you're not following after his example.

He said, But now you seek to kill me.

A man who's told you the truth that I heard from God.

This is not what Abraham did.

You're doing what your father did, saying that they have a different father than Abraham.

And then they said, We're not born from immorality.

We have one father, even God.

And Jesus said very clearly to him, this is why I kind of aggravated people a little bit.

He told the truth in black and white, and he said, If God were your father, you would love me because I came from God and I'm here.

I didn't come of my own accord.

He sent me.

Jesus said, Look, I know Dad.

He and I have a relationship.

The fact that you hate me is very clear evidence that you do not know God.

If you knew God, you would rejoice to see my day.

Do you remember when he was a baby and was brought to the temple and Simeon was there and Anna was there and they rejoiced?

Why?

Because they knew God the Father and they rejoiced to see his Messiah.

But the Messiah comes and the people were rejecting him.

Jesus talks more about his relationship with his dad in John 8, verse 54, and he says, if I glorify myself, if I lift myself up and tell you all about me, my glory is nothing.

John 8:54

It's my father who glorifies me, of whom you say he's your God.

But you have not known him.

I know him.

I know what dad's like.

You ever have somebody come and try to tell you what your mom and dad are like?

And it's like, I know what they're like.

I know them.

I grew up in their house.

I know him.

If I were to say that I don't know him, I would be a liar.

But I do know him and I keep his word.

In John 17, Jesus was praying for his disciples, and he says, I've given them the words that you gave me.

They've received them, and I've come to know in truth that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me.

The disciples were starting to get it.

They understood that God the Father had sent his son and they believed that Jesus was the one.

And as he continues to pray, he says, Oh, righteous father, even though the world does not know you, I know you.

I want to stop there for just a minute.

Do you know God?

I don't mean do you know about him.

I know a lot about people.

I know about President Obama.

I know about President Trump, but I don't know them.

They don't eat at my table.

They didn't grow up in my house.

We didn't play catch in the backyard.

I don't know them.

But we can know God like you know your parents.

You can know what they're like.

You can know their corny jokes and you know their you just know their walk and their voice.

I could hear my dad my dad a mile away do this.

Did you hear that?

I'm gonna do it again.

All right, listen real carefully.

This is my dad.

He's mad.

He's real mad.

That's mad.

That's furious mad.

You better get out of the way.

You did something.

That was dad mad.

And I knew what that meant because that was dad.

I know him because he's my dad.

Do you know God in the same way that you know your parents?

Do you understand that God came so that you could know him?

So that you would know them.

All right.

Jesus, I've lost my outline.

Did it fly away?

I don't even know where it went.

There it is.

Okay.

So he was the only begotten son of God.

He was also proclaimed the son of God because when he was baptized, God couldn't stand it.

It's like watching your grandchild hit a home run, which Braden just did this week.

So it's like watching, of course, I had to watch it on a video, but still I watched him hit a home run.

And what happens to you as a parent?

Don't you just get so proud?

You're just so, look at that.

Did you see him?

He's only eight years old, and he just hit a home run.

Woohoo! God was standing in heaven and he was watching Jesus being baptized, and he couldn't contain himself.

He couldn't handle it.

So he shouted out over the balcony of heaven, that's my son! I'm proud of him.

I love him.

Woo! Go, Jesus! I hope I didn't hurt the microphone.

He spoke and declared.

This is, and it happened more than once.

It happened at the Transfiguration.

It happened in all the gospels.

Read, you need to read your Bibles.

I'm telling you, it's full of good stuff.

But Jesus was declared the Son of God by God's own voice.

And then in John 17, he said, in uh the very first part of the prayer, verse 1, he says, Father, the hour has come.

It's the end of his ministry.

He's getting ready to go to the cross.

Glorify your son, that the son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh.

See, this is what happens in families.

The father delegates authority to the son.

Why?

Because the son's grown up.

It's time for him to start running the family business.

Okay?

So the Father has sent the Son on an errand.

He's given him authority over all flesh to give eternal life.

That's his job.

That's the family business, is rescuing humans.

And this is eternal life.

Hear this, verse 3.

This is life eternal, that they may know you, the only true God.

You see, that's why Jesus came, so that you could know God.

You could know it by watching him, and you could know him by receiving salvation from him.

That's why Jesus came, so that you could know him.

It's all about relationship.

He didn't come to make you a Baptist.

He didn't come to make you a member of the church at Chelsea Westover.

He didn't come to make you a part of this wonderful family and to get good food every Sunday afternoon.

That's not why Jesus came.

He did not come for all those things.

He came so you could know God.

So you could know him, so you could have a relationship with him.

This is eternal life, that they might know you, the only true God in Jesus Christ whom you've sent.

I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work you gave me to do.

Let's move on.

Number uh, the the last thing I wanted you to see in C, and I really don't know what I did with that piece of paper.

There it is.

His work with the Father.

His work with the Father.

Just like you might teach your son how to cut the grass or work with the tools or whatever you do, okay?

Whatever you're teaching him, whether it's to throw a ball, the father and the son planned things and then executed those plans together.

In creation, God the Father and God the Son created this world together.

That was kind of a fun project.

Okay?

Took them six days.

But they also planned for the redemption of the world through Christ's coming on the world on the on the cross.

I want you to look at this for just a minute.

In um John 15, he said, I'm the vine, and my father's the vine dresser.

He's the gardener.

They're working together.

In John 11, when he raised Lazarus from the dead, he they took away the stone, and Jesus lifted up his eyes and he says, Father, I thank you that you've heard me.

I know that you always hear me.

I thank you, Father, that you hear me.

I know that you always hear me.

But I said this.

On account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.

I know you, you know me, we have a relationship, we work together, we plan together, we have goals, we have strategy meetings, but all these people don't seem to have a clue.

So I'm gonna talk out loud so they can hear our conversation, see a little bit of our relationship, and maybe they'll get in on it.

And so he says it out loud just as he speaks, and Lazarus comes forth.

And Benji, that worship song was great.

We did come out of the grave, just like Lazarus did.

But in Matthew 26, I want to prove this to you one more time.

I want to give you just a little passage.

It's in the Garden of Gethsemane, and Jesus is praying, and he's praying this prayer that says, Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.

Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.

What does that mean?

Was Jesus trying to get out of the cross?

He was struggling going to the cross and bearing the weight of the world.

It wasn't just about dying, it was about bearing the weight of sin.

And it was hard.

And he was just he was he was feeling the pressure and he was feeling the hardship, and he had to talk to Dad.

And so he goes to him in prayer and he says, Father, is there any other way?

Did we miss something?

I know we've talked about this for eternity, but uh is there any other way to do this?

Did we miss something somewhere?

And then a few verses down, they get into the garden where Jesus is arrested and surrounded by soldiers, and his disciples, Peter, especially, gets all happy and pulls out the sword and swipes off the ear of one of the soldiers, and Jesus said, Put up your swords.

If I wanted out of this mess, all I'd have to do is ask Dad.

And he would send 20 legions of angels.

I do not need your protection.

I'm doing this on purpose.

This is the plan.

Dad and I have it all worked out.

Jesus wasn't trying to get out of the cross.

He was just pouring out his heart to his dad because they had a relationship.

They planned and worked to build a road, to build a bridge so that we could get from sin to salvation.

And Jesus was the bridge.

He laid down his life, he laid on that cross to build a bridge for us.

But he didn't do it.

He wasn't trying to get out of it.

They were in it together.

Don't you want to be in it with God?

Don't you want that kind of relationship?

That kind of unity?

That kind of same heart, same mind, same purpose.

That's what Jesus offers us.

This can become our story.

I had planned, I'm not going to have time.

I had planned to read Scott's letter to you.

I'm going to give you one more warning.

If you could just please turn the mic off or just hit mute for just when my ears leak, so does everything else.

My eyes leak.

Scott Reuter.

I want I want you to see the picture of Pat if you guys have a picture of her, but we all miss Pat Ebbett.

She passed away in March.

And her son Scott is in prison.

And um he wrote a seven-page single-spaced handwritten letter to the church at Chelsea Westover.

And I really want to share it with you.

Danny's going to have to figure out how to do that at some point.

But um he read it.

It's long.

I abbreviated it.

I marked through what I all right, all right, okay.

All right.

All right, all right.

I'm writing to the congregation of the church who made up my mother's Pat Evet, the happiest woman I've ever knew since the passing of my father.

First off, I want to tell Judy thank you for the beautiful cards and words that touched my heart.

Dale and Linda, your card was beautiful.

I can see why you became friends.

The McKays, who were there in Bible study.

Wanda, who my mother talked about, loved so dearly.

My heart goes out to you for your loss.

Thank all of you for coming into her life and giving her the keys to glory, the right paths to follow, and a permanent reservation in God's kingdom.

And then he says, he goes on to describe that his mom was just his only person that he could ever she could he could ever count on.

He says, I've always been a mama's boy.

Never in my life did I think I'd have life without her.

I've been through a lot in my life, and I want to share a small part of that with you.

I've been incarcerated for most of my life, over two-thirds of my life.

He's in his 50s and he's been in jail for two-thirds of his life.

He says, I'm not proud of that fact.

And I wish I wish this life that I'm in on no man.

It's not fit for a human being.

He said, There's nothing here but hate, death, and destruction.

The cries and the screams you hear at night are real.

The gangs are real and the danger is real.

And then he goes on to say that he's been stabbed, he's been beaten, he's been left for dead, all these things.

I never once thought that I had God on my side.

And it just, it looked, if you were to be a Christian or to have faith, it was looked on as being weak or soft.

He says, My faith in God has wavered most of my life, and I never could get over being over in prison.

But I finally grew up and took responsibility for my actions.

My mother said, quit crying and blaming everyone else.

Believe me, I was mad at the world.

He says, through all these years, the only one who left never left my side was my mother.

And so on Mother's Day we honored Pat.

I um I learned from her unconditional love and she never gave up on me.

He says, in 2012, my father died, and I went on the biggest guilt trip because I wasn't there to help my mom.

But we began a new relationship at that time, and she became my rock, my confidant, my true everything.

She was the only person in my life that I trusted.

But most of all, we were all we had in life.

No brother, no sisters, no children, just us.

Well, things started changing for about both of us.

A year after my father died, my mother drove up to a church, and that was the day her life started changing.

Your mother gave my mother get your church gave my mother a new life, a feeling of being wanted, needed, and real love.

Something the both of us had been missing for so long.

When we talked, I knew she was changed.

She talked to the friends she made, the Bible studies she started mailing me, and I wanted a part of what she made.

Seems so great.

My mother was witnessing to me, and I didn't even know it.

She said I would do well with her church, that I'd find what I was looking for all my life too, just to be loved and wanted and needed.

My emptiness was leaving me, and the love I have for my mother was and still is so pure.

But the truth be told, I was scared to be out of prison in a world I didn't know.

I admitted to her I was institutionalized and didn't know how to make it out there, but she assured me that she would be there to guide me in my new quest.

I'm gonna skip ahead.

She said that when she when he found out that his mother had passed, he said the last words I ever said to my mother were, I love you, mom, and the last words she ever said to me were, I love you more, son.

I never thought in my worst nightmare that I'd never talk to my mother again.

I woke up the next morning and tried to call her and hear her voice before I went to school.

He's now studying for his associate's degree in business.

And he was calling her before he had to take a test.

He said, But something felt wrong because one thing about mom, she always answered the phone, and he eventually found out that the reason she wasn't answering is because she had died.

And so he says that when he heard that news, he he um I screamed and fell to my knees crying.

And all these inmates were staring at me.

He said, Imagine a room with five phones on the wall, and I just break out in hysteria.

He said, The guards were worried about me, and this one guard uh who just lost his wife called the chaplain over to talk with me.

And he tells about talking with the chaplain and the chaplain showing compassion and praying with him, and he uh he went to bed that night, crying himself to sleep, but the next morning he got up and he was reading the daily bread devotional that his mother had gotten for him, and he opened it up to March 6th, the day that she died, and it read like a little child, let the children come to me and don't hinder them.

I didn't understand it at first, but then I turned the page and March 7th said, Goodbye for now.

At death, God's people don't say goodbye, but we'll see you later.

I knew right then I could never say goodbye, but I would see her later.

I knew she was the child bringing me to God.

And um, the miracle is that my mom was being really sneaky.

She was leading me down the same path she was on.

I got on my knees and I asked God to come into my life, my heart, and guide me to salvation.

So I've been going over the chaplains almost every other day since my mother died.

And he goes on to say how he's reading the Bible every day, how he hopes to come and meet us when he's released.

It won't be too much longer.

But he realized that God had been carrying him through all these years.

But Pat, and and you know what a little fireball Miss Pat was.

Miss Pat uh had been witnessing and just telling her son her story.

Let me tell you what Jesus has done for me.

What do you tell your children?

You tell them the story of the Bible.

What do you tell your children?

You tell them the story of Jesus.

And what do you tell your children?

You tell them your testimony, you tell them your story, how God changed your life, and how you can have not just have fire insurance and avoid hell, not just how you can go to heaven when you're old and gray and this life is over.

No.

How can you have a relationship with God right now?

This is eternal life, that they might know God and Jesus who now is sent.

If you believe that Jesus is the Son of God and you want in on that kind of family, everything has been arranged.

But you have to RSVP.

I want to tell you a story that I heard from um Anne Graham Loss.

And she said that she had been invited to the White House, and she got this letter and she was all excited.

So she called and said, What do I have to do?

And they gave her the instructions, you had to be vetted, and you had to turn an ID, and they had all this process because you're going to the president's house, it has to be a secure thing.

And so she did all that and she got to the gate on the day, and she said, I've I've got my letter and I've got my ID.

And they said, Well, just a minute, Miss Lots, and they checked the list.

They said, Yes, you're in.

Come on in.

The president's waiting for you.

She said, But what if I had not made those phone calls and shown that ID?

And what if I had an RSVP?

What if I had, you know, I could show up with my invitation.

You see, God so loves the world.

Everyone's invited.

But who gets to come in?

Only those who respond.

Jesus is the bridge that brings us to God, but if you don't walk across it, you're not gonna be there.

You can believe there is a bridge.

The demons believe that Jesus was the Son of God, but the demons are not safe.

You can know the facts, but you have to walk across the bridge.

You have to give your life to Christ.

You have to say, I want in the family, I want to repent of my sin, and I want that free gift of salvation.

And if you'll receive Jesus, if you'll believe that he is the Son of God, and then live your life according to that, and who knows what that means.

It's a great adventure.

But you can know God, you can begin a relationship.

Nobody ever got married by accident, and you're not going to get to heaven by accident.

It's gonna be on purpose because you made a choice to follow Jesus.