Understanding God's True Love

Okay, we're in a series of messages right now called Cover to Cover.

We're looking at the Bible as a whole.

We started the first couple weeks just talking about what is the Bible and how do we read it.

And we started like, you can go back if you weren't here for that, but we talked about like, hey, what's up with these 66 books of the Bible?

Who decided that these are the Bible or these are God's word?

And we actually looked at basically from the moment you know Jesus resurrected to we now have a Bible in our hands, what happened in that period of time to you know what happened there.

So we talked about that.

Then we've talked about the Bible as literature, history, and theology.

Often we look at it as just theology.

Open it up, start reading it, and sometimes that's okay to do, some of it is straightforward, but often you know you have to keep in mind that these are written by people over a 1500-year period thousands of years ago.

And so you're talking about some very old texts that had their own sort of nuanced culture, and the more that we can understand that, uh, the better.

And so it's been trying to kind of give Bible study tips and resources along the way just to set you up for success on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and for the long haul.

A lot of these conversations, even though we're kind of going at a high level and talking about sort of meta-narrative, high-level conversations, um, these are going to set us up to be able to keep deep diving uh over the years.

And so uh today we're going to start getting into the New Testament.

Before we do, I want to just give a little bit of summary and then a piece that I left out of the Old Testament that I think will kind of lead into this talk today.

So, okay, what we talked about when we start in Genesis is the way that God intended for the world to function.

And so we see that in the story of Adam and Eve, you have a relationship, but you have people who are in right relationship with God, right relationship with themselves and each other.

And that's what God intended.

And we see that back in the garden, God created them in this beautiful environment, but he gave them free will, which means you can make decisions, and sometimes those decisions are good and sometimes they aren't.

And so bad decisions aren't necessarily like I knew better.

Sometimes you know better, and then sometimes you don't know better.

There are sometimes in my flesh, in my human limitations, I actually think I'm getting it right, and only later do I find out I got it wrong, or somebody else's decision impacts my life, and I'm part of the collateral damage of what they did.

And so you see that early on, and so there is this brokenness, and God is uh redemptive and he restores them and he gives them a new opportunity.

So throughout the early part of Genesis, the first several chapters, you see sort of this story of humanity and all these people, as the numbers grew in population and all these people with free will, you now have you know all the complexity of human relationships.

And so it had gotten pretty chaotic, and yet God loves people.

That's why he created people, he loves people, and he's always loved people.

And so he says, Look, I still love people, and I'm not giving up on humanity.

I want to set it right.

And so he goes to Abraham, and he says to Abraham, Abraham, I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna make a covenant with you, I'm gonna make a deal with you, I'm gonna make a great nation from your family, and I'm gonna set you apart in some very specific ways.

I'm gonna give you unique law, and that law will be sort of have different facets.

Some of it'll be civil law of just how to how to function in community, some of it'll be moral law, how do you treat the people around you, what's what's just and right and fair and loving.

And then also we'll have ceremonial law, which will help you to stay in right relationship with God.

It'll teach you how to say sorry when you need to, and and and then put you in a state of gratitude.

And so I'm gonna give you law, I'm gonna give you land, promised land, and then I'm gonna set you apart for a season of time, not permanently, for a season of time, so that you can function the way that humanity is supposed to function, and then you'll take that and you'll bless the whole world with it.

Then I'm gonna send you into all the world to take and to demonstrate that because it's just a better way to live.

It's the way that I've created for people to live.

And so we see throughout the storyline of the Old Testament that God sets up like uh prophets, priests, and kings in these authoritative positions, not to exploit their authority, but to help people stay in line, people navigate this.

And it just doesn't quite work out like that.

You're gonna see, we we see throughout the Old Testament, sometimes it goes good, a lot of times it goes bad.

And so we ended uh a couple uh last week we we were looking at uh some of the wisdom literature.

But what I left out that's really important is that the nation in the Old Testament, they go through a split.

So it's like a think of like a civil war, like there's it becomes a northern and southern kingdom, they're not a unified nation.

And uh go ahead and bring up the timeline.

Let me talk you through it real quick, and this is gonna help us understand the context of what Jesus walked into, what he entered into.

Alright, so from about a thousand BC to 862, you have King David, right?

Before that was the first king of Israel, Saul.

Then you have David, and then you have David's son Solomon who rules.

Solomon, when he died, he left the kingdom to his son Rehoboam and eventually it split.

What we know about Solomon, okay, the first thing you think of with Solomon is his wisdom.

He gives us a lot of pithy sound bites and good, great wisdom over time, but when you look at his life, he talked a better game than he lived.

We see his ego got a little bit out of control.

In fact, you're gonna see that Solomon builds this beautiful, extravagant temple to Yahweh, but he builds his own home, his own palace, bigger than the temple and more extravagant than the temple.

And that's about a whole lot more than just square footage.

It has to do with its signaling to the reader what has happened to the mentality of Solomon.

He has started to really think of himself as bigger than he ought, even bigger than you know, God essentially.

And so he did what a lot of the rulers did at that time, which is they would try to prove their greatness through their architecture, through the size and the intricacies of the buildings that they built, and in their ability to take new land.

And so Solomon drove the nation.

I mean, he drove his ambition, it was just outsized.

And so when he dies, he leaves the nation to Rehoboam, his son.

And Rehoboam has the elders in this ear and the young leaders in this ear.

And the elders say to Rehoboam, listen, man, people are exhausted.

Your dad drove them into the ground.

Your dad got his ego a little bit out of control, he pushed too hard.

If you will put the people first, if you'll put the people first and just tone down, they will appreciate that.

They will be loyal to you, they will serve you, they will see that you put them first.

But if you drive them, you're gonna do damage, man.

It's not gonna go well.

So that's the elders in this ear.

The young leaders said, that's old people talk.

Go big or go home.

They don't write history about the guys who went smeadium.

You gotta go big, dude.

And so they said, so here's what Rehab.

He listens to the young leaders and he tells the nation, this is in the text, my pinky, he says, is bigger than my father's waist.

He said, My father beat you with whips, I will beat you with scorpions.

And so he goes into a souped-up version of his father, and the nation revolted.

And so they end up with a fractured kingdom, a northern and southern kingdom.

Just uh a couple years after the fracture of the kingdom.

So again, that happened pretty much right after Solomon dies.

In fact, most historians put it about 931 BC.

Um, the northern kingdom, a couple you know, a hundred years later, falls to the Babylonians.

So basically, they're just the empire of the day.

So you have a fractured nation picked off easily.

The southern kingdom, so by the way, when you're reading in your Bible, the northern kingdom is referred to as Israel, and their capital is Samaria.

The southern kingdom is referred to as Judah, and their capital is Jerusalem.

So when you hear, a lot of times we think Judah and Israel as synonymous at that time, but they were separate.

And so you're gonna see actually in some of the Old Testament books, for example, 1st and 2 Kings is writing about the kings through the point of view of the northern kingdom of Israel.

And then 1 and 2 Chronicles will talk of some of the same stories and some of the same kings, but it's a different perspective.

It's through the perspective of Judah, the southern kingdom.

To which you're asking, how in the world am I supposed to keep this all straight?

Because I'm gonna be reading my Bible, and am I reading about Israel or am I reading about Judah?

Remember this guy?

I told you all about him in January, right?

This guy right here is your best friend.

So the cultural background study Bible, before you even get to Genesis 1, has an amazing three-page timeline.

And on the timeline, it shows you where the nation fractures, and then it shows you which books of the Bible apply to the northern kingdom and which part apply to the southern kingdom.

Get you one.

Alright.

So the nation is is divided.

The northern falls to the Babylonians, the southern kingdom falls to the Assyrians, and pretty quickly after that, they're all gonna fall to the Persians.

So this is where the Babylonians take the nation into exile.

They take them off their land and they go uh take them into Babylon.

And then if you remember the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, where they're able to gain the favor of the Persian king to be able to return back from exile.

And in Ezra, they go to rebuild the temple, and in Nehemiah, they go back to rebuild the walls of the city.

Remember this?

So that's all the Persian Empire.

And so the Persian Empire, they're still, even though they're back in their own land, they're still a province of the Persian Empire.

And if you read into the intertestamental period, which is about 400 years from 400 BC to the birth of Jesus, okay, what you have is the story of Alexander the Great, the rise of the Greek Empire, and of course you know that story, right?

Alexander the Great starts trying to take over the world.

He dies in his 30s, he's very young, doesn't have a succession plan.

It gets his the Greek um uh empire is divided up between his brother and generals and all this stuff, and so now you have Israel that is just being exchanging hands from one empire to another, they end up with the Seleucids and eventually the Romans.

Okay, so the reason this is important is we're trying to get into the head of the people that Jesus showed up and was, you know, born into the world he was born into.

So if you are one of the children of Israel, you are part of the nation of Israel, you are thinking about these promises you have that there's going to be a king that will have a kingdom that will not pass away.

There is a messiah that will show up eventually.

They are very messianic-minded.

They are looking for, longing for a messiah.

And their idea of a messiah is we've seen the Egyptians, we've seen the Canaanites, we've seen the Babylonians, we've seen the Assyrians, we've seen the Persians, we've seen the Greeks, we've seen the Seleucids, now we've seen the Romans.

And someday we will have a king that will give us a national victory.

It will be military, it will be economic, it will be prosperity.

The shalom that's going to come to us is going to be, by the way, of a great king.

In fact, the Davidic covenant, so the covenant God makes with David is through your line, David, there will be a king of all kings, and his kingdom will not pass away.

So that's what they're looking for.

And then Jesus shows up.

In Matthew 4, Jesus shows up, and it says in Matthew 4 that he came talking about the Yuan Gileon or the good news, the gospel of the kingdom of God.

Alright?

Think about that.

To the people listening, Yuan Gileon, okay, is a term, it's a Greek word that was about 400 years old by the time Jesus was using it.

And the term in Greek, Yuan Gileon, was a term that was used in literature and it was used to announce a new king and a new kingdom.

Alright, so this is something like if an emperor would have a child, there would be a Yuan Gileon.

In other words, hear ye, hear ye.

We have some news for you.

It's big news, it's good news.

We have great news for you.

There is a new emperor.

Good news, we won the victory.

Yuan Gileon, new king, new kingdom.

And so when Jesus shows up, he shows up talking about the Yuan Gileon of the kingdom of God.

And so it's no wonder they couldn't really hear anything or see anything other than their history of having been passed around from one empire to another, and now it's going to be our time, and here is our Messiah.

And what they were longing for was someone that would create an empire.

There's four of them: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Just real quick, uh, go ahead and bring up that slide just to give you an idea of their motive.

So their motives were ultimately to present Jesus as the Messiah and to teach what he taught about the kingdom of God.

But what you have is, again, this these are these are written in the second half of the first century when they are under the persecution of the Roman Emperor Nero or Domitian, depending on where you um date it.

But but what we're talking about is people who are at you know scared for their lives.

Okay?

And so Matthew is writing uh to a primarily Jewish audience, Mark, who we're gonna look, our Easter conversation is gonna be around Mark, who's writing to Roman Gentiles.

Luke is writing primarily to Gentile Christians, and John is writing to a broader Christian audience and with an emphasis on Greek mentality.

What you're gonna find when you look at these gospel writers is they are going to take and embed a lot of the things that we've looked at in the Old Testament into the New Testament.

This is why we're in a really cool position right now, you and I, because we spent 11 weeks in the Old Testament.

So we've been looking at a lot of these symbols, and whereas certain things that you might have read over quickly or not fully been able to digest, now, knowing the Old Testament um background, you can understand how what they're the statements they're making about Jesus and how he fulfilled these things.

So I'll give you a few things real quick.

Let's look at Luke 4, 16 through 21.

It says he, being Jesus, went to Nazareth.

All right, Nazareth was his hometown, in fact, it says that where he was brought, where he was brought up.

Okay, so Nazareth, think about a really, really, really small town.

So most historians believe there was 500 people in Nazareth or less.

So a very, very, very small town.

Um, and so he goes on the Sabbath and he went up into the synagogue as was the custom and he stood up to read.

Now, at that time, if you lived in Nazareth, most of the people in Nazareth would have been illiterate.

But what they did was they set up um their religious culture around reading the Torah.

So they had what was called the Para Shah reading, which is this.

Imagine we are Nazareth.

Right?

There's probably about the same amount of people here that were in Nazareth, uh, maybe a few more.

But we're here in Nazareth, and we get up to read, and one of the literate people will read the text, and what we would do is set it up so that we read from the Torah every week on a schedule that we will read through the Torah once a year.

So every year they're reading through the Torah.

Their children are hearing it, the teenagers are hearing it, the grown-ups are hearing it.

And then they would set up where they would schedule to read through the law and the prophets every three years.

So Jesus gets up to read the Parashah reading for the day, and it's in the scandal.

The prophet Isaiah was handed to him, and unrolling it, he found the place where it is written, The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

By the way, the word favor there means acceptable or accepted or approved.

So to proclaim the year of the Lord's acceptance.

And then he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down, which was this was a classic rabbi move.

You would stand up to read the word of God, and then you'd set it down, and then you'd go sit down and explain it.

So the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

So think about this now.

If you keep reading in Luke 4, you're gonna see that nobody's buying it.

They're all going, What are you talking about?

Like, our vision of a Messiah isn't that he would show up to a town of 500 people.

And in fact, they're like, in fact, you're definitely not the Messiah because we know who your dad is.

They're like, that's Joseph's son.

And so they're diminishing him.

They they it doesn't look anything like what they imagine is gonna be the one to you know, get Rome up out of here.

You don't look like the Messiah that we've been hoping for.

You don't look like somebody who would create a kingdom that won't pass away.

And yet, what Jesus does and what the gospel writers do is they continue to reach back into the Old Testament and show how Jesus fulfills it.

You're gonna see it with things like the Passover Lamb.

So, Luke 12, we talked about the Passover when Moses was gonna lead them out of Egypt, lead the children of Israel out of Egyptian bondage.

There, uh the the death angel is passing over the homes, and they said, if it to protect your family, to save your family, you need to take the blood of the lamb and put it over the door, and the blood of the lamb will protect your home.

And so, because of that moment, that became an annual tradition that they didn't want to forget God's protection of the blood of the Lamb.

And so, when you look at the crucifixion of Jesus, which is coming up right in a few weeks when we celebrate Easter, Jesus is crucified during the Passover celebration.

Jesus is referred to as the Lamb of God.

That's what John the Baptist says.

Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

And so Jesus is presented as the ultimate Passover Lamb, and the blood of Jesus is what ultimately saves and protects us.

Um, we see a new Exodus, right?

In the Old Testament, the nation is in bondage to Egypt, and God leads them out.

Well, Jesus leads us out of bondage, but not to Egypt.

To sin, to the penalty of sin, to the bondage of sin.

We've all been in that place where we're like, man, I gotta get out of here, man.

I I gotta quit doing this, I gotta stop.

This this thing has me in bondage.

I can't think about anything else.

I keep trying to quit and I can't.

I keep trying to change my ways.

And so so it's through Jesus that we find forgiveness, and it's where we find the power to leave Egypt.

And so Jesus is uh the ultimately the Moses in the new Exodus.

Uh we see a new covenant, a new covenant.

So Jesus says, you know, when you eat this bread and drink this cup, all right, this is this cup is a sign of my new covenant, and the wine represents his his blood and what he's about to do on the cross.

And so this new covenant, now we we talked about covenants a few weeks ago.

You remember when we talked about Abraham?

God makes a covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15.

They go to seal the covenant and they they do the blood walk.

So they create a trench, there's blood in the trench, and you have to wear a robe and stomp your way through the blood.

The blood gets all over your robe, which is kind of gross.

But the whole point is to say, you're saying, look, if I don't hold up my end of this covenant, that will be my blood.

I swear on my life, I will do what I say I'm gonna do.

And then the other person does the same thing, so now we can trust each other because we both said we're putting our lives on the line, my word is my life.

And that's the covenant.

So God makes the covenant with Abraham.

He sets up the blood walk, and Abraham is scared to death.

Because he's like, if I make a blood walk with you, I might be able to get away with messing it up.

Like, I could probably, I might be able to hold you off, I might be able to run away from you, but how am I gonna get away from God if and when I don't hold up my end of the deal?

And so the the the vultures are starting to circle, and the the dead animals are there, and Abraham gets cold feet, and he's like, I don't think I can do this.

And God, who understands Abraham's fear, because Abraham doesn't know is this God, is this the God who knows when to stop punishing?

Is this the God that will destroy me if I just mess up one?

So God understands where Abraham's coming from, and so it says in Genesis 15 that God passed through the blood covenant all by himself, essentially saying to Abraham, Abraham, I know you're not gonna get it right.

I know you're gonna fail, but even when you fail, I will hold up my end of the deal.

So you take all this symbolism, you take it into the New Testament.

Jesus taking the blood walk of Golgotha, demonstrating his love toward us, and that while we were sinners, Christ died for us.

Even though knowing full well that there was gonna be times I'm unfaithful, there's times my flesh is gonna get in the way.

Sometimes I'll mess it up on accident.

A few times I've messed it up on purpose.

And so I've been unfaithful, but even though I am not always faithful, he is always faithful.

So Jesus says, This is my blood covenant.

In my blood, I'll take the walk by myself.

Um, this Old Testament symbolism is all in the New Testament.

The gospel writers, it's no accident.

They're making sure you can't miss it.

Um, okay, here's one.

Have you noticed how many times Jesus calls himself the son of man?

The son of man, the son of man.

It appears over 80 times in the gospel.

The gospel writers make sure you can't miss it.

So that's son of man.

You're like, what is a son of man?

Well, the son of man had really two connotations.

One was it was a human connotation, it was a way of just referring to a human being.

It would have been common language.

You say so-and-so is son of man.

Essentially, you're saying that's a human, born of a human.

Um, but to the Jewish people, it also had a messianic and a spiritual significance from the book of Daniel.

So in the book of Daniel, uh, there is a prophecy about the Messiah that will come to establish a new kingdom that won't pass away.

And it says in Daniel 7, 13, he says, In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man.

In other words, I could see in my vision there was somebody in front of me, and it wasn't an angel, it wasn't celestial, it was a guy, it was a person.

And it says in verse 14, he was given authority, glory, and sovereign power.

All nations and peoples of every language worshipped him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

Okay, so this is when they're longing for a Messiah, they're holding to passages like Daniel chapter 7, and going, they're God's going to send a person, a son of man, who will come, but will be given the authority of a king and will establish an eternal kingdom.

Daniel 7 · chapter mention

Okay, so when Jesus is referring to himself as the Son of Man, that's an allusion back to Daniel 7.

He's saying, I am the fulfillment of this 80 times, 80 plus times it shows up in the Gospels.

Okay, so the Old Testament is embedded in the New Testament.

We've only begun to scratch the surface.

The more you dig into the Old Testament, you see these symbols, the more you're gonna see it in the New Testament and how Jesus fulfills it.

Speaking of Jesus, let's talk about him a little bit more.

Um Jesus says in John 14, 9, anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.

So in Jesus' humanity, in his ministry, he's doing a few things.

One is he wants to answer the question, what is Yahweh like?

What is God like?

And this is why we say Jesus is a perfect theology.

If you want to know what God is like, you look at Jesus.

Uh I saw this quote from Dallas Willard.

I've mentioned it before, but I'll mention it again.

He says, if your image of God is unhealthy, the more you worship, the less healthy you will be.

This is what we talked about a few weeks ago with idols.

Why would God care so much about Baal, who doesn't even exist?

Getting credit for the harvest?

No, God's not that petty.

The issue is Baal represents an unhealthy, warped view of God.

But friend, we don't need Baal to warp our view of God.

Some of us do just fine on our own.

And some of it happens even within our own churches if we don't have an understanding of who God is through the person of Jesus.

If you want to know what God's like, look at Jesus.

If we're not careful and we don't have the right accurate view of God, then all of this praise and worship is only making us more sick.

If we're worshiping a God, if we have a psychological idol or an unhealthy view of God, then it's actually making matters worse.

And so part of what Jesus came to do was present Yahweh in human form.

I want you to see what God is really like.

And then he goes about his teaching, right?

And so he teaches in parables.

Look at this.

Mark 4, 34.

It says, in fact, in his public ministry, he never taught without using parables.

So when he got in front of a crowd, he always used parables.

It said, but afterwards, when he was alone with his disciples, he explained everything to them.

So you're going to see in the books of the Gospels 30 to 40 parables that Jesus uses, and it's everything from how God thinks and things that we should do, things that God wants us to do.

So it's things like the parable of the sower, where he talks about, hey, God's word, the seed of God's word is fertile.

And there's a lot of fruit in that seed.

But if your heart is not fertile, it's going to produce nothing.

And so you and I are responsible for the condition of our heart, the receptivity of the seed of God's word that may fly in the face of everything we ever thought we knew.

It might challenge us tremendously, it might be really uncomfortable, but the fertility of my heart is my responsibility.

And the sad reality is God's word is amazing, but if my heart's not right, it won't do what it's supposed to do.

So this is a parable Jesus uses.

He talks about the parable of the Good Samaritan, which is one of my favorites.

Because he makes the anti-hero the hero.

He makes the person the hero who you really don't want to be the hero.

You're just like, you wouldn't even watch a movie about that person.

You don't want to hear a story about that person.

You don't want anything to do with that person.

And he makes that person the good neighbor.

He makes that person the one with virtue and the one with the heart of gold.

It's the bigotry is so thick in it that when it gets to the end and he goes, Who was the neighbor to the man?

Uh the they wouldn't even say the Samaritan, because they wouldn't let that come out of their mouth.

They say the one who showed mercy.

The other guy.

And yet what is Jesus doing?

But he is going right at them.

He's challenging their way they think, he's challenging their belief about God.

He's saying this is how God thinks.

He does the parable of the rich fool in Luke 12, where you have a guy who basically tried to consume his way to fulfillment.

And so he just kept building bigger and bigger barns to store more and more of his crop.

And he goes, Man, what is wrong with you, man?

You've missed the opportunity to be generous.

You thought you could consume your way to fulfillment?

You could die today.

And what?

You got all these barns full of stuff?

Man, you you can't believe the joy you would have to be able to share with other people to help use for something besides yourself.

And so again, what is he doing?

He's helping us think like God.

He's helping us find true shalom and true fulfillment.

Um I think so many of these things, like what Jesus is doing, especially like if you look in uh Luke 15, where he's uh it starts out and he says Jesus often would have this very diverse crowd.

It said he would have tax collectors and notorious sinners, people had bad reputations.

And then you would have Pharisees and teachers of the law, pious people, all this.

And he said you'd have this group together, and the Pharisees didn't like that these other people were here.

In fact, they're like, what's wrong with Jesus?

He's got all these bad people around him, and and so it's like, what do you do with that crowd?

Because they're not on the same page and they don't want to be on the same page.

It said, so so once he noticed that dynamic, then he told stories, narratives, parables.

And it's actually there that's the backdrop for the trilogy of the lost sheep and the lost engagement ring and the lost son.

But I, you know, I was thinking about this, and I'm like, you know, Jesus doesn't like you know, he does a little bit of breaking down the Torah, like in the Sermon on the Mount, but he doesn't try to argue people into theology.

What he does is it says in Mark 4, every time he did it, he used a parable.

Something that can, it's logical, but it can go around your argument into something we all know to be true.

Like I get that.

And I was thinking about this, you know, I'll I'll I'll be like watching these reels on my phone, you know, some will come up, some of them are just like they don't add any value to the world.

Some of them subtract value from the world, some of them make you dumber, and then some of them give you a good chuckle, but then every once in a while I'll come across one, I'm like, that's the gospel.

And I'll legit, I'll text people, I'll be like, watch, this is the gospel right here.

I'll text my my wife's got a whole bunch of.

I just every time I get on, I'm like, Shaylin, this is the gospel.

And I found three of them, because I think when we think parables, it's words, it's good.

Jesus does a beautiful job, or you know, they do a good job telling the stories Jesus told.

But but I think reels, I think if Jesus was here now, I think he'd be putting out reels.

And I found three reels that I think are amazing.

I think they belong in Luke 15.

I'm not even playing with you.

I think they belong, I think if Luke 15 was being written right now, you these three reels would be in it, and I'm gonna show them to you.

Here's the first one.

Some of you all, I mean, I know reels are petty or whatever, but they're about to not be petty for a minute.

No, this is right, this is gospel right in front of your face, and you just scrolled right past it.

It's sitting there, God speaking to you.

How many of how many of you, don't show your hand, but let it touch your mind.

How many of you have felt like you were fighting with a blindfold on?

Life feels like I am throwing as much, all these haymakers, I don't even know what I'm swinging at.

I'm I'm out here, I'm I feel like I'm fighting with a blindfold on.

This boy's dad had gone to war, he comes back, he's standing in front of him.

They told the boy, hey, you know, it's this taekwondo class, you have to learn how to fight because you never know you could be in a fight and trying to defend yourself, and something happens to your eyes, you gotta learn how to fight with nothing.

Okay, so he thinks he's fighting his instructor, and he's in front, he has no idea what he's fighting.

And dude, I'm telling you, I've been there.

I've been there throwing the biggest punches, putting out tons of energy, and I don't even know what I'm swinging at.

And he's there, and all of a sudden, in this moment, his dad says, Keep your guard up.

He's like, What?

The voice is familiar, but he's not quite sure what's going on.

People are kind of laughing, and so he goes right back to throwing amakers, and his dad starts, he's encouraging him.

Keep going, keep going.

And all of a sudden it's like John 10.

My sheep know my voice.

And in John 10, in John 10, it's a contrast between bad leaders, which by the way, is buried back in the Old Testament of the good shepherd, Psalm 23, but Ezekiel 34, in Ezekiel 34, God says, these bad shepherds cause fear and drive with fear.

And he says, Someday I'll be the shepherd to my people, and my sheep will know my voice.

And so Jesus is identifying himself as the good shepherd.

A bad shepherd has to drive the sheep with fear, because that's the only way you can get them to move.

They don't trust you.

So you have to spook them.

You gotta scare them to make them run.

But the good shepherd, the one who's laid down his life for the sheep, the one who's protected the sheep, the one who leads you beside still waters, the one who restores your soul, the one that if he puts up walls, it's to keep you safe, not not to not to just contain you, but to keep the bad out.

And then when you say, Come follow me, they hear your voice and they follow because they know they can trust you.

That's he said, that that's the good shepherd.

My sheep know my voice.

And so you've got this boy, he's throwing, he doesn't even know what he's swinging at, he didn't know if he's gonna land, and he hears his father's voice, and it's in that moment, he's had a revelation of his father.

He takes off, he looks at him, and he just instinctively, instinctively, dives in his chest.

Nobody had to tell that kid what to do.

Nobody had to say, you know, you ought to go give your dad a hug right now.

He had a revelation of his father, and let me tell you something.

I don't know that dad, but I feel like I can trust him.

I feel like I know everything I need to know based on that right there.

Here's what I do know the son knows he's loved.

And often, you know, we start everything with somehow we're the ones holding this relationship together.

The whole origin and the whole strength of this is how much I can honor God.

And the whole thing is that he loved you first.

His love is holding this relationship together.

And so when I have a revelation, and when you have a revelation of his love, nobody has to tell you what to do.

You know what to do.

You go right into his arms.

I I think guys like myself and even me, I apologize.

I have done a disservice to people because I've sat here and put guilt on people over the years for all the things you're not doing to honor God.

And what I should be doing is spend all my time helping you to have a revelation of his love.

And when you have a revelation of his love, again, we talk about the empire mentality.

We took weeks to talk about it last year.

The empire mentality is built on the love of power and the power of fear.

The kingdom of God is built on the power of love.

And when you understand God's love, nobody has to give you three or four steps.

You instinctively go right to his arms.

And there are some of you today, you're not gonna remember this sermon, but you're gonna remember a kid with a blindfold on, swinging at the air, and that's what you felt.

And that's what you feel like right now.

And today it's it's about taking the mask off, having a vision, a clear understanding of your heavenly father, of Abba, and going right to his arms, and no one's gonna have to tell you what to do.

You'll know what to do.

The second real go ahead and play it.

You know how much I love you, right?

Yeah, how I always like treasure the time I have with you.

Yeah.

Now you're my world.

I got my last name changed.

Now, George German muster, look at my jersey.

So I I I saw that I I went and watched the backstory.

So number seventy-six is six eight three hundred and fifty pounds.

That's a lot of groceries.

That's like trying to feed three full-grown Rottweilers.

Had no dad, no father figure, nothing until fifth grade.

Fifth grade, mom marries this guy.

And they just hit it off day one.

And all of a sudden, the kid who had been longing for a father has a guy show up in his life who doesn't care one bit that this is some other man's son.

What'd he say?

You're my son.

I couldn't love you anymore if you had come out of my own body and loved him.

And so he gets to, you know, playing football, whatever, and he goes, I'm changing my name.

Nobody had to tell him to do that.

Nobody had to say, you know, you ought to change your name to honor that.

The stepfather certainly didn't go, you know, I'm the one that cooked you all those hamburgers.

Where's my name here?

He wasn't offended.

Because when you have a revelation of love, you start like changing your name.

You start just like coming up with this stuff on your own.

Nobody's got to tell you to do it.

You had a revelation of love.

If you see God as he really is, and this is what Jesus was trying to do.

If you've seen me, you've seen the Father.

Hey guys, I know y'all are fighting about theology.

I know you think they're pagans, and you think that you know the Torah better than they do, and all this, and you don't even like that I'm friends with them and all this, and I know that Samaritan thing turned you off so bad.

Let me tell you a story about a father.

Let's just get around all that.

Because not everybody can understand the 613 laws in detail.

Not everybody can understand the 66 books in detail, but we all understand that.

And Jesus said, I'm coming to show you Abba.

Here's the third one.

The gospel was right there.

It was right in front of you.

That feels like Luke 15, doesn't it?

Son comes home.

Six years he was gone.

We don't know why he was gone.

He might have been doing something good, might have been doing something bad.

They might have known exactly where he was.

They might have had no idea where he was.

All we know is he's home.

Dad turns around.

He doesn't walk up and say, you know, I'm gonna need you answer a few questions before we embrace.

I'm gonna need the I'm gonna need you, we're gonna need to talk a few things out.

You're gonna have to get a few things right before I.

No, dude.

Why were you gone six years?

Doesn't matter.

You're home.

You're home now.

Went right to the embrace.

Friend, why do you have, why do I have a higher view of these guys than we do of Abba, Father?

Jesus came to bring the good news, Yuan Gilean.

Good news, great news.

The good news is that God loves you.

And Jesus proved it on the cross.

He proved it through his teaching, he proved it through his life, his death, and his resurrection.

He proved his love.

I don't know much.

But I know this if you have a revelation of his love, you won't need anyone to coerce you.

You won't need anyone to scare you.

You won't need anyone to manipulate you.

You'll know what to do.

You'll take the blindfold off and go to his arms.

No questions asked.

He said, I came to set the captive free.

I came to restore sight to the blind.

I came to provide for the poor.

I came to those who don't have a clear view of God to understand who he really is.

So the good news is God loves you.

And my prayer is that you'll see that.

He'll reveal it to you so clearly, unmistakably.

And then you'll know what to do.

Let's pray.

Thank you, Jesus.

Some of the most powerful choice.

Simple but deep.

Often they're sitting right in front of our face.

Just like the parable of the soil, sometimes the busyness of life or the distractions cause us to miss this picture of you.

And Lord, I pray today for the one who doesn't understand all the 66 books and the 613 laws and all the genres and the literature and the history and even feels discouraged to try to figure it all out.

Lord, I thank you, God, that you can cut right through that to the heart of a father who we can trust.

Truly trustworthy.

Lord, we caught a glimpse of it through three earthly fathers who loved unconditionally.

And if we being flawed people are capable of that sort of love, how much the omniscient, omnipotent, all-loving creator of the universe.

For it's at the name of Jesus that every knee will bow.

Every tongue will confess he's Lord.

Not out of fear.

For perfect love casts out fear.

But at a revelation of love, it brings us to our knees.

Brings us to your arms.

Lord, I thank you that you're the one who hears the cry and you bridge the gap.

If you're here today and you say, Greg, I got a lot of things I don't understand.

I don't understand myself.

I don't understand all the people in my life.

I don't understand the backstory.

Some of it I'll never understand.

I don't know that I have my brain fully wrapped around theology.

I don't know that I could win a debate.

I don't know that I got the answers right.

I don't get all that, but I get this.

And today I believe that the God who created humanity, who made covenants, ultimately a new covenant, and sent his son Jesus as a demonstration of love, not so that we would be forever ashamed of ourselves, but so that we would have the ultimate expression of love that would create an instinct to dive into his arms.

If that's you today, you say, I see it and I receive it.

Would you lift your hand today?

Just reach back.

Reach back.

Thank you, Jesus.

Oh God.

Thank you.

You're such a good father.

Lord, thank you for this glimpse into your character.

Lord, help us to be so full of clarity and trusting who you are that even when we fail and we fall and our flesh gets the best of us, Lord, that we just go right back to your arms.

We know when to come home.

We know when to come home.

We know when to take the mask off.

We know when it's time to change our name.

We come to you.

And we keep coming back to you.

You're a good father.

In Jesus' name.

In Jesus' name.

Everybody said amen.