The Curse

Welcome to Gateway Churches Podcast.

Wherever you're tuning in from, we hope you're encouraged by today's message.

So we're starting a new series.

It's gonna go for the next four weeks here.

Uh and I'm calling it Promised Land, and we're talking about Moses' journey, the journey of the Israelites to the Promised Land, and in which ways it mirrors our uh journey, our journey through our walk with Christ.

From the beginning of the conviction, the curse that is on our lives, and then salvation, and moving through how we actually walk out our relationship with God.

And so uh this week, uh I'm calling it the curse.

We're gonna talk about the curse that is on us because of the fall, and we're gonna talk about how it impacts us, how it affects us, and in all of those ways.

And so, um, first let me just give you a quick update on our lives.

As I said, we're living in Amarillo, have been for about eight or nine months now.

Uh we're doing really well.

We love being there.

Pastor Jimmy and Pastor Kim Witcher have been amazing to us.

They uh are amazing leaders to work under, and we love being there.

Um, and uh so I now have a teenager, and so life has changed quite a bit.

Uh my son is 13, and then my daughter turned 11 yesterday, and uh so happy birthday, Willow.

And uh so we're we're entering into a weird time.

Even today we were at lunch with my parents, and uh we were talking about how what our plan is for Grady to start driving, and then we all kind of paused and we're like, wait a second, we we're having that conversation?

It's like, yeah, it's two years away.

So uh if you uh have parented or are parenting teenagers, you know how that shift happens and how quickly it happens.

Um but another thing that's happening is that it's uh uh uh you probably know this if you've had teenagers, but uh the way I compare it is like for my friends that have kids that are younger than our teenagers, uh they they say it's so nice that you have this uh this freedom to be able to leave.

They can stay at the house alone and you can go out for a date night or whatever.

And uh I always tell them, yes, it is true that having uh older kids uh physically is a lot less demanding, but emotionally and spiritually, it's so much more demanding.

It's uh a whole new set of problems that we're trying to figure out.

Uh and they're also kind of discovering who they are, they're getting like quick.

Like uh uh the other day, Hannah and I were in another room and we could hear that one of the dogs was messing with Willow, and she just kept saying, Stop, stop, stop, and it was getting on Grady's nerves.

So he said, Willow, if you say stop one more time, I'm gonna bury you in the backyard.

So we laughed for a long time, and then I was like, Grady, be nice to your sister.

He's like, What?

You laughed.

It was funny, it was funny.

So we're we're going through all of that stuff, trying to figure it all out.

We're trying to learn how to parent teenagers, and and so that's our update of where we are right now.

And uh, and so uh as I was uh thinking and and praying about this series, I want to do something a little bit different, a little bit interesting.

We're talking about the curse today, and uh what we're gonna do throughout the entire series is we're gonna focus in on an earthly element and talk about all of the imagery or associations that go along with that element.

And in the story of Moses, it's so rich.

I love Old Testament stories because they're so rich with all of this imagery, all of these things that that draw us into some kind of picture of who God is.

And so uh I I'm I'm gonna preach today entirely about snakes.

Um, and you might be thinking, like, he's kidding, he's not going to.

When you're driving home today, you're gonna be like, it really was.

The whole thing, it was all about snakes.

Yep, every bit of it.

That's what I'm gonna do.

So uh the reason is because I uh uh as you look at this story, um, what you see is that it's rich with this imagery.

These things, they mean something, they they they speak to something.

And so uh a couple years ago, I was reading um how uh in in the early church, how uh the the the theologians of the day uh in which ways they would read scripture.

And and there's multiple ways that you can do it.

There's multiple ways that you can study scripture, there's multiple messages that it can speak to you, but uh they kind of defined these two different areas and distinguished them.

You had the historia, is the way that they would say it.

The historia of scripture teaches us the history, the actual events, the literal events.

And these are literal events.

The story of Moses is the telling of the history of our faith and and and what took place in those things.

And then they had this other side, which was called the theoria.

Now, and it's not to mean theory, it's not to mean in theory, it could mean this.

That's not what they were talking about.

What they meant is learning things that can only be understood through deep contemplation.

Another way to say it is that things that can only be understood by the revealing of the Spirit, that the Spirit will reveal things to us.

It's like uh prophecy in some way.

When you when you get a prophetic word, it's not always clear, it's not always uh uh straight out from the beginning, easy to understand.

And and sometimes only time reveals what was true about that prophecy and and and this story of Moses, it is the prophecy of Jesus Christ coming to the earth and redeeming and saving all of us.

And so now we can look back on this story and we can see some of those prophetic elements that are there.

We can see what was being said without being said uh uh uh uh blatantly or obtusely.

And so we can understand a little bit more about how how all of these things that were happening were leading us and guiding us and pointing us to Christ.

The entire Old Testament leads to and points to Christ.

And so as we go back and we look closer, we we spend a little bit of time of prayer and contemplation and uh and the revealing of the Spirit, we can see things that maybe we didn't see before.

And so uh we we will understand these things in a in a new way.

It will reveal things to us.

And so this week, since we're talking about the curse, and since I've already told you that uh we'll be talking about snakes, um I I should tell you this that my my wife uh is uh she does not like snakes.

She doesn't like snakes and she doesn't like spiders.

And uh and so uh when I kind of told her what I would be talking about, she was like, This will be great, because one of the things that happens to her is that she will wake up in the middle of the night, absolutely convinced that she's seeing something that's not there.

So uh one night she woke up and she was telling me that we had to get out of the house because there were snakes and they were crawling on the ceiling.

And try convincing her that there were no snakes there.

It's like impossible.

And she wakes up just convinced of what she's seeing.

And so uh, because this message has to be on snakes, and I know some people have a fear of snakes, they say that more exposure to whatever you're afraid of sometimes helps you with fear.

So, throughout different intervals of the message, I'm gonna tell you a snake story from my life.

Not for the purposes of illustration in the message, just to expose you to snakes a little bit more so you'll be less fearful, okay?

For the here's the first one.

Uh, I was uh in East Texas where my grandparents lived, and we used to spend a lot of time there.

And we were playing this game, there was a stack of uh firewood, and it was stacked up, and they had been using firewood more from this side of the pile than from this side of the pile.

So it had kind of this stair step approach.

And so we said, what we'll do is we'll run and we'll jump.

And if you can jump on the lower part, then you you you made it, and then we'll jump to a little bit higher and a little bit higher, and whoever can make it to the very top, that that's who wins.

And so we were doing this game and finally got to the highest place on the firewood pile, and my cousin ran and he jumped.

And as soon as his feet hit the top of the firewood pile, he jumped again, laid out flat in the air, and then just landed, smack, on his stomach, right on the ground.

And we were like, dude, that was not very coordinated.

What are you doing?

And he kept yelling, he was like, There's uh in there, in there, there's a snake.

And so, sure enough, we went by and uh and one of the adults pulled one of the logs of the firewood off, and when he had landed, it had moved a little bit and revealed a snake coiled in there.

And so, this is every time you go to get firewood for your house, I want you to remember there could be a snake.

All right?

Watch out.

The if if we were gonna apply it to the message, it would be be always on the lookout, always.

So the first point that we're gonna talk about is the snake.

What does the snake actually mean?

What does it stand for?

What does it represent?

Remember that we're gonna be talking about the imagery of these things.

We'll talk about the actual events, but we're gonna press in on the imagery of these things.

And so uh the the imagery teaches us something, it tells us something.

Um, so the the image of this snake is found all throughout the story of Moses.

We see it in several different places.

And uh we will also uh go back a little bit in time.

So let's go back then to the story of Adam and Eve.

Uh we know that there was a snake there, the snake that tempted Adam and Eve whenever they ate of the the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And so this image of the snake goes all the way back to that time.

It represents this the accuser.

The snake is there.

Uh let me give you one more snake story.

I don't feel like you're fully comfortable with snakes yet, okay?

Um so uh also at my grandparents' house, that's where we had all of our snake encounters.

We were helping my grandfather build a pond, literally, like he was digging it out, and so we were working and we were helping him move things around and stuff like that.

And uh, and and we called my grandfather Papa, and so my brother uh he goes, Papa, and uh he was working on something.

So he goes, Hold on, James.

And uh, so I kept working and and I had a slingshot in case any wild animals tried to attack us.

And uh we were just working and we were walking around and he said, Papa, and again my my grandfather said, James, I'm working.

Uh just wait, just a minute.

Third time, Papa.

And so finally my grandfather turns around, a little bit maybe frustrated.

Yes, James, what?

And he goes, Well, I was just gonna tell you that there's a snake on my shoe.

And we looked over, and there was literally a snake on top of his shoe, and he was too afraid to move, so he was just standing just like this.

Snakes can sneak up on you, okay?

Just like they did in the garden.

A snake will just uh show up and appear to you.

That is exactly what happened.

The snake shows up and tempts the the people and uh of Adam and Eve.

And so here they are, and and and the snake, if you remember, in in Genesis chapter 3, verse 4, it this is his temptation.

Genesis 3:4

You will not uh certainly die, the serpent said to the woman.

For God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God in knowing good and evil.

All right, so let's talk about what the real temptation in here in here is, what the real fall of man is.

We can think of it as that God told them, Don't eat of this tree.

Don't do that.

You're not supposed to do that.

And you could think of that as then God told them not to, and they did it, and that was the sin that they committed.

But what we often don't think about when we think about the consequences of the fall, is we often think about the pain and childbirth, the toil with the land, the physical death that we will die because of the fall of man.

Often, though, what we lose sight of is that the consequence of eating from that tree is that they would know good and evil.

That they would that they would decide that they wanted to live on their own, that they would decide that even though they had been in this perfect garden and that everything that they had ever needed was provided by God, that he gave them all the things that they ever needed for life.

And even though he was giving them all of those things, they decided that they wanted their independence.

That is what sin is.

That is the definition of sin is choosing to unplug from God and to plug into your own self, your own knowledge.

It's not just a knowledge where we know things, it's a knowledge of good and evil where we say, I'll live on my own.

It's the child who says, I do it myself, but they want to decide for themselves what is right and wrong.

They don't want to listen to the voice of God.

What did Adam and Eve do before that they ate from this tree?

The only thing they had to know what was right and wrong, the only way that they could live would be to listen to what God said and obey him.

But as soon as they decided they wanted their own independence, when they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they unplugged from the tree of life.

And that is what causes death is that unplugging from the tree of life, they were bitten by the lie of the snake of the serpent, and they believed that they needed to be self-sufficient.

They needed to be able to make the decisions for themselves.

And so uh now sometimes we may be fooled into thinking that right behavior equals uh right standing with God, that right behavior or doing the right things, and and we'll get that impression of what that is, maybe from scripture, maybe from knowing more scripture, or maybe from just uh sensing on our own exactly what is uh right or wrong, and and we'll make these decisions for ourselves.

And we might even look at it uh when we think of the unbeliever as look at all the wrong things that they're doing, and if they would just come to the church and act right, then they would be saved.

So much of the evangelism message for years has been be convicted of your sin and then change your ways and do the right thing, and then you'll be saved.

It's still eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

You see, found in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is still the knowledge of good.

It's still the knowledge of good.

Doing the right thing is still eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil unless God has specifically called you to do it.

We need a dependence, a dependence on the Spirit to lead us and to guide us.

And when we when we are bitten by the snake, when the curse is on us, we start believing that we can decide all those things for ourselves.

We start feeling a wave of independence and wanting to choose things for ourselves.

We might uh think that if we can just study enough scripture, if we can just know enough of the Bible, then then that's good enough for us.

That if we can just get more of this into us, then then that will be enough.

And and and to say that, to act as if like studying scripture actually gives us life, is to continue to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

I have a a piece of software on my computer uh that that is a Bible study software, and in it is a library.

And I I often imagine if I had a real library in real life with all of these books, there are over 5,000 books in this library that I can instantly search through.

And and I and so all of that is available at my fingertips.

If through this software, you can get even more and more books.

You can build up your library, and you can build up all of these things.

And and if for a moment I start thinking that just because I have all of that knowledge in front of me, that that will give me life, then I'm eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The knowledge of good and evil might produce drunkenness, fornication, pride, lust, anger, all kinds of debauchery.

But the knowledge of good and evil might also produce doing acts of ministry, volunteering at your church, doing the right thing, being a good citizen, being a good churchgoer, it might still produce those things where we say, I'm doing the right thing and thinking that I'm connected to life, but when in fact we have to remove ourselves from that tree completely and go to the tree of life.

When they ate of the knowledge of good and evil from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they gained the knowledge of good without the ability to do it.

And they gained the knowledge of evil without the strength to avoid it.

And now we're trapped in this life where we want to know what is right and wrong and live by that standard, and all we do is weigh everybody's actions by all of these things, and everybody's missing the point.

If you remember the woman at the well who kept saying, Well, your people are not supposed to mingle with my people, she kept telling the rules to Jesus, and what did he say?

If you knew who you were talking to, you would ask for life giving water.

And I will give it to you.

And so while we weigh and debate all of the rules, Jesus is standing by at the well of living water, saying, Why don't you just come to me?

I'm here for you.

I'm the tree of life.

I'm here and present and ready to receive you.

But we'll first have to stop eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

That is the ultimate curse.

The Pharisees knew scripture really well.

In fact, it's been said if you had the first five books of the Bible, it's called the Pentateuch, if you had it in book form and you nailed it to uh a post that a Pharisee could look simply at where the where the nail is placed and could tell you every passage of scripture that the nail touched as it passed through the book.

Have you read the first five books of the Bible?

I mean, that's that's a feat right there.

This is this is the most exciting part of scripture, but they could tell that's how well they knew the Bible.

And Jesus was so proud of them, he was so thrilled by that.

He he was like a proud dad that just kept gushing over them.

In fact, he says it right here in Matthew 23, verse 27.

Matthew 23:27

He says, Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites.

That's not what I thought he was gonna say.

You are like whitewashed tombs which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of bones of the dead and everything unclean.

In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.

What he was saying is, you've been eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

But on the inside, you're dead.

You don't have life.

We must learn to connect with God, to truly go and eat from the tree of life.

Pastors like to say this thing.

I've heard it many times over and over.

It says, if sin is not the problem, then Jesus is not the answer.

And I used to used to agree with it and say it too, but now I've started to think, uh, after doing so much evangelism and trying to witness to people, try convincing someone that their behavior these days is wrong.

See, sin is not really the problem.

The the real the real phrase should be if death is not the problem, then Jesus is not the answer.

Because he didn't come just to solve the problem of sin, he came to give you life.

Jesus is our life-giving tree that we must go to every day.

In the renewing of your mind, you should be saying, I go to the tree of life and I eat from the tree of life.

I will not move forward without eating from the tree of life.

All right, let's go to the second thing that we're gonna talk about, which is the bite.

The bite from the snake.

Um, me and my brother, it's snake story, all right.

All right, so me and my brother, uh, we loved uh going fishing and so, and still do.

And so uh we knew every pond backwards and forwards.

We even helped my grandfather, like I said, build ponds so we knew where the obstacles were under the water, and we knew all this stuff.

And there was one spot that we could never get to, but we knew a lot of fish were in there.

And the reason we couldn't get to it is because cattails had grown up way over our head.

And so one day we just decided we're gonna brave it and we're gonna walk through all those cattails.

And we never we were never able to leave the house without uh snake boots, and so we had our snake boots on, and we went wading through all these cattails, and all of a sudden I heard something stirring underneath me, and then I felt pressure on my foot.

And when I looked down, there was a water moccasin attached to my foot.

And I just shook the brushes and said, get out of here, run, and we ran back out of there.

And luckily they did their job, they that nothing came through.

But I I showed my brother and my grandfather I had a bruise on the top of my foot.

That's how hard it bit down.

So if there's a lesson in this story, which there's not, you need protection from the enemy.

You gotta wear something that keeps you, you gotta be prepared when you go out in the day.

Even the Israelites, whenever they ate that Passover meal, it said, keep your belt on and your and and your sandals, be prepared for whatever God has for you, okay?

So we're gonna talk about the actual bite, all right?

What happens here?

And this comes from the story of Moses as the people of the Israelites were already uh free from the Egyptians, but they were traveling in the wilderness, and it starts in Numbers uh chapter 21, starting in verse 4.

It says they traveled from Mount Horror along the route to the sea, to the Red Sea, to go around Edom.

But the people grew impatient on the way.

They spoke against God and against Moses and said, Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?

They wanted to go back to slavery.

They wanted to go back to Egypt, even though they were starting to, again, find their independence, to say, God doesn't know what's best for us, so we'll just choose our own way.

That's being bitten by the curse of the snake.

And they said, There is no bread, there is no water, and we detest this miserable food.

Then the Lord sent venomous snakes among them.

They bit the people, and many Israelites died.

The people came to Moses and said, We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you.

Pray that the Lord will take the snakes away from us.

So Moses prayed for the people, and the Lord said to Moses, Make a snake and put it up on a pole, and anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.

So Moses made a bronze snake and put it on a pole, and then anyone who is bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.

Alright.

So in this story, then we see that the people are being bitten by poisonous snakes.

Moses creates this bronze pole with a snake wrapped around it.

Even today, on most ambulances, you still see that symbol of a pole with the snake wrapped around it.

This story.

And so he erected this uh bronze pole, and and all the people had to do was simply look at it.

And that's not really what they had to do.

In fact, they had to believe that if they looked at it, it would heal them.

Because it was a large city.

So if you were across the town and you were bitten by a poisonous snake, you had to make your way over there.

Instead of saying goodbye to your family or doing whatever else you wanted to do, you had to believe that if you actually just looked at this bronze snake, that you would be healed.

Now we jump to the New Testament in John chapter 3, verse 14, it says, Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.

John 3:14

Again, it is saying that if you were bitten by the snake, if the venom is coursing through your veins, and you are bitten by the snake of dependence, uh, of independence, and and you are living for yourself, all you need to do is to go to Jesus, to look at the cross.

Now you shouldn't be concerned that here in the New Testament uh Jesus is compared to a snake.

It's actually pretty easy to explain because, again, if you're looking at the historia of this, the literal version of it, you would go, well, why?

Why would Jesus be compared to a snake?

If you're looking at the theoria of it, the imagery teaches us something in this moment.

And here's what it teaches us: the snake represented the curse.

And Jesus, dying on the cross, became the curse for us.

In fact, it says it in Galatians chapter 3, verse 13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

Galatians 3:13

So Jesus becomes the curse.

And what the message is for us today is that no matter what is happening in our lives, whether we're a believer or an unbeliever, if we begin to go back into the curse, if we begin to find our own independence, all we need to do is to look to the cross for healing.

If the venom is coursing through your veins, you need to believe that Christ is the healer and that he will heal you if you just look to the cross.

That's our call is to remember that Christ is our healer, that he did all of this for us.

And so now all we must do is look to Jesus on the cross.

So we shouldn't be then uncomfortable by uh the comparison of Jesus to a snake because he is taking on the curse.

All right, so the third point then is what is the antidote?

The antidote.

Jesus is the antidote to all of this, but what is it, what how does this work?

What has Jesus done?

And we're gonna look at a story again from Moses in just a moment.

I'll give you one more snake story, just a quick one.

All right, so um uh again, back in East Texas at my grandparents' place, me and my brother and my dad were all down by this little creek, and uh and we were we were digging around looking for stuff, and we saw this water moxin swimming across the water.

And so, because we're dumb and curious, we were like, let's get closer, let's look at it, you know?

And so we're walking on mud and we're getting closer, and out of nowhere, the snake just turned and made a beeline right towards us, and we were way too close.

And as I went to step back away, my foot slipped, and to catch myself, I reached for my brother, and instead of grabbing him, I pushed him right into the snake.

I will swear to this day that it was accidental, but uh he doesn't think so, so I don't know.

I don't know about that.

If there's a message in that, which there's not, don't don't push somebody into the serpent.

That's not a good thing.

Don't don't do that.

All right, Exodus chapter 4, starting in verse 1, it says, Moses answered, What if they do not believe me?

Exodus 4 · chapter mention

Let me get let me give you a little bit of context.

This is before Moses goes to Pharaoh and confronts him on letting the the Israelites free.

And he says, What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, The Lord did not appear to you?

Then the Lord said to him, What is in your hand?

A staff, he replied.

And the Lord said, Throw it on the ground.

Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it.

Then the Lord said to him, Reach out your hand and take it by the tail.

So Moses reached out and took hold of the snake, and it turned back into a staff in his hand.

This, said the Lord, is so that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has appeared to you.

Then the Lord said, Put your hand inside your cloak.

So Moses put his hand inside of his cloak, and when he took it out, the skin was leprous, it had become white as snow.

Now put it back into your cloak, he said.

So Moses put his hand back into his cloak, and when he took it out, it was restored like the rest of his flesh.

Then the Lord said, If they do not believe you or pay attention to the first sign, they may believe the second, but if they do not believe these two signs or listen to you, take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground.

The water you take from the river will become blood on the ground.

All right.

Um I used to read this story and think it was the weirdest thing that I ever I'd ever read.

Uh God's like, let me just prove how awesome I am.

Um, you have a stick?

Make it a snake.

Okay, yeah.

And you have a hand?

Oh, it's leprous now.

Okay, and and then take some water and then we'll turn it to blood.

But the answer to why this seems so weird is that it is it is full.

It's in it's so rich with imagery that teaches us so much.

Let's just take the hand for just a moment.

I'm gonna talk about this briefly, but um, everyone who's a believer is right-handed, that's obvious.

And uh so uh Moses would have taken his right hand, he would have stuck it into his cloak at his bosom, and the Bible says in uh John 1.18 that Jesus is in the bosom of God, and then he would have taken it out of his bosom and it was diseased.

It was leprous.

Now, in the Bible, over 25 times Jesus is referred to as the right hand of God.

Jesus would come from the bosom of God, he would be uh diseased, able to die, able to take on the curse for us.

The curse would be placed on him, the disease would be placed on him, and then he would return to the Father and he would come back out clean.

The water and the blood, there is amazing imagery that we don't have time to go into.

But just think for just a moment.

You remember that then Moses took his rod, his staff, and he went to the the to Pharaoh and he went there and he said, Uh, this is the sign, and he threw his uh the rod down onto the ground and it turned into a snake.

But then, if you remember, the sorcerers were like, That's cool, we can do that too.

And they threw their their staffs down on the ground and those became snakes.

What did Moses' staff do then?

This the snake that that turned to uh uh from from Moses' staff, it ate all the other snakes.

And that's cool, that's like an awesome party trick.

If I could do that, I would do it all the time.

That that's awesome.

But I started thinking, like, well, what does the imagery mean?

If Jesus became the curse, if if through the rod, which we should absolutely think of as the wood pole that we should absolutely think of as the cross, if through the cross Jesus becomes the curse, becomes the snake, and he eats every single sin in the world, every single evildoer, eats every single thing that you've ever done.

And then returns to himself.

It's the most powerful image you could possibly imagine.

They're not foolish kids' stories.

The imagery in these stories teaches us the most powerful lessons we could ever learn.

There was a time in my life, about 10 years ago, where I started to study the history of church and I wanted to know what it what's the perfect church?

I I wasn't unsatisfied being here.

The presence of God is here in a powerful way, but I was wondering what's the right way?

What did God actually intend for the church to look like?

We've divided into all these denominations, and what what did God really want out of all of this?

And so I began a journey to look for the perfect church, and not uh not a church, but an organization, the right, the right, uh, the right path of church.

And so I was looking and reading about the ancient church and the all these things, and I was constantly like, God, where are you?

What what's the right place?

People, some of the people that I know in my generation have become distrustful because with the age of media, we've seen that everyone fails us, every person fails us.

The failings of people are more on display for us.

And so there's been a distrust in the organization of church in my generation, and I was wondering, God, what's the right thing?

What's what's the best thing?

And I'm doing this search, and and we got the chance to go to um uh uh Israel with Pastor Olin Griffin, and all all of his grandkids and my favorite people are right over here, and we just do life together, and uh but going with Pastor Olin Griffin was amazing.

And uh we were there at Capernaum, and he was telling us all the things that Christ did there in Capernaum.

And I remember pulling up my iPad and I was searching through all the scriptures of Jesus in Capernaum, and the the base of the temple floor is still there.

I remember being so moved by just touching the ground and being like, Jesus, you were actually here.

You were here.

And from there we were leaving and we saw this Eastern Orthodox church, and it was a church that I had studied, not that particular location, but the general Eastern Orthodox uh denomination.

And so we said, I said, Can I run in there real quick?

And I went in there and I remember praying, and I was like, God, I just felt the ground that you had stepped on.

And I'm in this phase, God, I'm searching for you.

Where are you?

I'll never forget.

Jesus said, I'm everywhere all the time.

Start singing.

And I realized that if I just stopped and looked around, all the signs are pointing to God.

The birds are singing his praises, if I stop trying to be intellectually right on everything, if I just pause for a moment and say, God, where are you?

He is here, he is in the midst of us, he is in this place, his presence is on you all the time.

At any time, if I feel myself going back into my own independence, I can simply look at the cross and he is there.

From that moment forward, my favorite verse by far became uh the verse in Acts chapter 17 that says we are we're destined to blindly grope for God, even though he is not far from each of us.

Acts 17 · chapter mention

We have to start looking.

He is everywhere all the time.

Today you can see him.

For some of you, you may say, I know I'm under the curse.

I can feel the poison coursing through my veins.

I need a savior.

Today you can simply look to the cross.

You may be a believer, but say I can feel that I'm going back into my stage of independence.

Look to the cross.

Every single day, you can wake up and you can say, Holy Spirit, I'm listening to your voice today.

I will not operate out of my own knowledge, but I will listen to your voice.

So, Lord, right now, we ask and we pray that you would speak to us.

And Lord, today, we look to the cross for our salvation.

We pray all these things in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you'd like to connect with us, text Connect to 71010 or visit gatewaypeople.com.

We hope you have a great week.