Seeing Jesus: Words, Worship and Seeing the Messiah

Have nothing to do. And that's going to be great. God is so good.

So we are continuing on in our series through the book of Matthew.

It's called Seeing Jesus.

So I would pick up your Bibles. There's one in front of you,

or if you have your own, you can open it up to chapter 12. And we're going to

be picking up in verse 14, which is right where we left off last time.

So really good to follow along.

Kind of the way we've approached this series is we're just going straight through the book.

You know, we're not skipping any verses. We're just taking big sections.

Thinking through them, talking through them, teaching through them,

and trying to get a picture of Jesus.

And the risk of that approach is that, you know, if you choose your own passages,

then you can choose really easy ones all the time.

But if you're going through a book in the next chapter, you just have to teach the next book.

And so sometimes you can have difficult passages.

And I would say today is more of a difficult passage because there's a lot going

on. And Jesus says some things that seem almost harsh to us.

And it's like hard sometimes to piece together what Jesus is up to.

But one thing I've learned about studying scriptures and teaching scriptures,

it's that it's really worth it not to ignore the difficult passages.

It's actually worth it to do

a little bit of work when things don't seem like they make a lot of sense.

Because Jesus, like, he's just the same. He's the same, you know.

It's not like you have a Jesus that's this way and then a Jesus that way.

Jesus is the same person.

He's the same yesterday, today, and forever.

His character and his ministry, it was one whole.

Sometimes when we get to the difficult passages and we say, I don't know what

to do with this, that's a great opportunity for us to realize that we probably

don't quite get Jesus the way we ought to.

So we can lean into difficult passages and not neglect the hard stuff. So,

I'm hoping that today we can all hone our understanding and get a more vivid,

not just accurate picture of Jesus, but like more of a living picture of who

he was and what he taught because he had a lot to say.

So with all that in mind, let's just dive right into the passage. Okay.

So picking up in, I believe it's verse 14, Pharisees went out.

Oh, Caleb is not there.

Oh, you're good. Okay. That's good. That's the plan. All right.

The Pharisees went out and plotted against him how they might kill him.

Jesus was aware of this and withdrew.

Large crowds followed him and he healed them all.

And he warned them not to make him known so that what was spoken through the

prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled.

Here is my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved in whom I delight.

I will put my spirit on him and he will proclaim justice to the nations and

he will not argue or shout, and no one will hear his voice in the street.

He will not break a bruised reed, and he will not put out a smoldering wick

until he has led justice to victory, and the nations will put their hope in his name.

So Jesus has been, in the passage that we looked at last week,

he's been really confronted by the Pharisees, and that confrontation continues.

It seems to be at this point that they're in opposition mode,

right? And I mean, we see right here that they begin at this point to plot to kill him.

So they've decided they don't like Jesus, right? They're pretty much dead set on that.

So Jesus withdraws. He gets away from the Pharisees, or he tries to,

and he just says, but he doesn't go alone. He actually just goes among the people,

among the normal people, the non-Pharisees, and he's healing them.

And as he's doing that, he heals them and he tells them very specifically,

he says, I get that I'm healing you and I get your impulse is to go tell everybody

about it, but I don't want you.

I don't want you to do that at this point. I don't.

Which is a strange thing when you think about what Jesus has been up to for

the last 12 chapters in the book of Matthew.

Because on one level, he is decidedly determined to proclaim a message.

Jesus has something to say. He's proclaiming the kingdom of God among the people

of Israel, among the earth.

That the kingdom of God has come near in him.

And so he has a message to proclaim. He has the gospel to proclaim.

But he is also, at this point, realizing that the Pharisees are organized in

their opposition to him.

And so he, at least according to this passage, he begins to avoid a confrontation with them.

And Matthew explains that strange contradiction.

You want to get the message out, but you also kind of want to retract.

He explains that by saying it's a fulfillment of this prophecy that Isaiah gave.

And it's a quotation here from Isaiah 42, 1 through 4.

And Isaiah describes the Messiah that Israel would be expecting.

This figure that Jesus says that he is.

And he says two things about him, at least, that are significant as we think about this issue.

That one, he's going to be proclaiming justice to the nations,

but also that he's not going to be arguing or shouting in the streets.

So he has a definitive message that's going out, that's abroad for all people

to hear. and yet he's not argumentative.

He's not going to be yelling and screaming for attention.

He's full of the power of the Spirit. We see this from Isaiah and certainly

Jesus is absolutely full of the power of the Spirit.

But what we see is that Jesus is also not really interested in his own renown.

He wants Israel to know who he is because they're expecting and anticipating this Messiah.

And he wants it to be very clear that all those hopes are being fulfilled in

him. And yet he's not willing to fight.

He's realizing that opposition will come, but he's not really to go after it.

He doesn't care about his reputation, which is interesting. When you think about

someone who's starting a movement, everything is about managing reputation in our world today.

Jesus just says, they'll say what they're going to say. I'm going to be full of the Spirit.

I'm going to be focused on what I'm doing. He's not going to argue.

He's not going to get into this kind of deadlock with the Pharisees.

If we go to another passage in the book of John, John chapter 10,

John 10 · chapter mention

we see a picture of Jesus similarly.

I mean, it's probably around the same time in John's account of the gospel of

these Pharisees kind of haranguing him. This is what he says to them at this point.

He says, do you say you are blaspheming to the one that the father has set apart

and sent into the world because I said that I'm the son of God?

If I am not doing my father's works, don't believe me.

But if I am doing them and you don't believe me, believe the works.

This way you will know and understand that the father is in me and I in the father.

So Jesus is responding to his critics. He's responding to the Pharisees at this point.

And again, in our passage in Matthew, he's pointing them to just the reality of things.

He's not trying to posture. He's not trying to defend himself.

He's just saying, what do you see right in front of you?

Could you just assess the evidence of your own eyes?

He says, you don't believe that I'm the Messiah?

Okay, you don't think that I measure up to your expectations of the one who's going to come?

He says, fine, fine. He says, but he tells them, you need to ask yourself, is God at work in me?

And if he were not, how could I be doing these things?

Am I not doing the works of the Father? And so Jesus says, look,

I'm just going to let that speak for itself. Again, I'm not going to run a PR campaign.

I'm going to say, I am the Messiah. I am the one that you're waiting for.

Jesus says this about himself.

And he says, and I'm going to do these works, but I'm not going to argue with

you about it. If you can't look at this and understand what's going on, that's fine.

And I just think about Jesus. And I think about, again, the way he approached

his purpose and his mission.

And he's just so remarkably humble about it.

He's doing great things. He's highly ambitious.

And yet he is just leaving his reputation up to the Lord.

I think that's a huge mark of humility. Just something for us to reflect on about his character.

He doesn't fight with those who oppose him. He doesn't need to demand respect.

He doesn't demand a title or a recognition.

He knows who he is. He's secure in who he is.

He moves in this confidence and this fullness of the spirit.

And he just says, God will be my defender.

He knows what he's about and he's willing to wait. I mean, I just,

you think about Jesus, who we worship and who we follow and who we say, man, this is our guy.

And I mean, he's just so sincere and he's just never posturing and he's just full of faithfulness.

I think, I don't have a slide for this, but I was just thinking of James 3.17.

And I feel like Jesus just embodies this. He says, but wisdom from above is

first pure, then peace-loving, then gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good

fruits, unwavering and without pretense.

Jesus was so unpretentious. He did not, he was just saying, I'm just going to be who I am.

I am going to be the manifestation of the character of God. I'm going to be

the kindness and mercy of God. I'm going to be full of the Spirit. And he just let that be.

And just as I think about how I want to be in the world,

like, and how I want to live my life, you know, as somebody who wants to partner

with the Holy Spirit and who wants the Lord to be famous, but we can't go any

other way except this way of Jesus,

this humble and pure and unpretentious and peace-loving and gentle kind of way.

I think that's the invitation of the church, particularly in this era,

to be different than the world and to lean into the proclamation of the gospel,

but in this kind of way, this way of wisdom,

this way of peacemaking, this way of unpretentiousness.

Okay, so let's pick back up in the passage, okay? So the conflict continues.

Pharisees are chasing after him and Jesus continues to heal.

So then a demon-possessed man who was blind and unable to see was brought to him.

He healed him so that the man could both speak and see.

And all the crowds were astounded and said, could this be the son of David?

There he is doing the works. People are just putting it together.

They're saying, huh, something special about this guy.

And when the Pharisees heard this, they said, well, no, this man drives out

demons by Beelzebub, the ruler of demons.

And knowing their thoughts, he told them, every kingdom divided against itself

is headed for destruction, and no city or house divided against itself will stand.

If Satan drives out Satan, he's divided against himself.

How then will his kingdom stand? And if I drive out demons by Beelzebub,

by whom do your sons drive them out?

For this reason, they will be your judges.

If I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come among you.

And here we find the Pharisees again doing the same thing, the same thing they

were doing in John. They're making accusations against him.

They see Jesus, but they are dead set on dismissing him.

And so because they have this bias that they need to maintain,

that he doesn't measure up, they are just doing mental acrobats,

verbal acrobats, in order to just kind of cast Jesus aside.

And they do it so willfully and so arrogantly.

So Jesus casts out this demon from this guy. I mean, it's obviously the Lord

is upon him, that he's working with him.

And the Pharisees say, well, sure, he cast out that demon, but he must have

done it by the power of Beelzebub, the king of demons. So he's casting out demons with demons.

And so Jesus uses reason to confront these Pharisees. He basically just says,

like, think about what you're saying.

He says, a house divided against itself cannot stand. Or in other words,

like, why would a demon cast out a demon?

Why would Satan cast out a Satan? They have the same goal. They have the same objectives.

What do you think is going on here in the spiritual world?

It's funny. I said this is a difficult passage. I don't even think it's difficult

because of all the demons, right?

Which is something that we sort of stand back and we just say,

oh, that's like a head scratcher. We don't think about the demonic very often.

But in the world of the biblical authors, they just take this for granted.

Jesus understood that there's a spiritual battle playing out in the world.

He understands that we have an enemy, embodied evil in Satan and that Satan is, you know...

In the world, working in the world. But we also just see this clear understanding

that Jesus is over and commanding of the demonic.

But Jesus doesn't even, we don't dwell on this question of demons.

Actually, what Jesus does is he's forcing the Pharisees into a logical conclusion.

And he ends it up at the end here. He says, if I drive out demons by the spirit

of God, then the kingdom of God has come among you.

He is forcing the Pharisees to consider, really, what is at stake?

And what are you saying as you dismiss me?

And what are you potentially missing as you just push me off to the side?

Because either things are, as they're trying to argue, Jesus is driving out

demons with demons. He's kind of aligned himself with Satan.

Or, Jesus makes clear, or I am filled with the spirit of God.

I am, again, according to this messianic promise, I am demonstrating all the

attributes of the Messiah.

I am doing all the things that the Messiah said he was going to do.

And I'm bringing the kingdom of God among you.

And in fact, I'm the one who's been sent to drive out evil and judge all things.

And in whom and through whom all things are going to be restored.

Like Jesus makes it clear to the Pharisees that they can't weasel their way out of this.

That in fact, what they're doing is they're making a very high stakes decision

because they are people who have said to themselves, they've committed themselves

to be people who are going to honor God and you're going to seek the Messiah and welcome him.

And here they are making accusations against him.

And so Jesus is basically saying, look, maybe I'm who you say I am.

But if you're wrong, like consider what you're doing.

I'm here bringing the kingdom of God among you. And you are standing in opposition

to that. And the Pharisees would have understood how serious of a thing that is.

So he goes on, he says, how can someone enter a strong man's house and steal

his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man?

Then he can plunder his house. Again, talking about what clearly is going on

here and that it's him having power over the demonic.

He says, anyone who, and this is where it gets hard.

Anyone who is not with me is against me. And anyone who does not gather with me scatters.

Therefore, I tell you, people will be forgiven every sin and blasphemy,

but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.

Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him.

But whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him,

either in this age or in the one to come.

Either make a tree good and its fruit will be good or make a tree bad and its

fruit will be bad for a tree is known by its fruits.

You brood of vipers, how can you speak good things when you're evil?

For the mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart and a good person produces

good things from his storeroom of good and an evil person produces evil things

from his storeroom of evil,

I tell you that on the day of judgment, people will have to account for every

careless word they speak.

For by your words, you will be acquitted, and by your words, you will be condemned.

Jesus is confronting the hardness of heart and the oppositional stance that

the Pharisees have taken.

And he makes it clear. It's not high stakes because you're insulting me.

Again, Jesus is this humble guy. He does not care about his own reputation.

He says, you can say whatever you want about the Son of Man. It'll be forgiven.

But it's high stakes because...

Because you are looking at the power of the Holy Spirit. You are looking at

God doing what he has intended to do from the beginning of creation,

since the fall, the restoration of all things, the reconciliation of all things,

the power of God at work to redeem and save and restore those who are hurt and they're broken.

And you're looking at that, you're looking at me setting people free and healing

people and forgiving them.

And you're calling that evil, the very purpose for which God has sent the Son of Man into the world.

And Jesus is trying to make them understand that is a real problem to blaspheme

the Holy Spirit, which is to blaspheme the work of God in the world.

I mean, it's a huge problem.

To say such things, Jesus argues, is to just demonstrate your own corruption,

the corruption of your own souls, the corruption of your heart.

He says it's bad fruit that is indicative of a bad root. But it is something that is difficult.

There's an overflowing from your heart in the way that you speak about the things of God.

And it's, he makes very clear, it's something that will be accounted for on the day of judgment.

These are serious things. If we think about Jesus, oh, geez,

if we have this idea that Jesus is just always nice and always,

always like, he's always saying nice, nice, really kind things.

He's never rude. He's never confrontational.

I mean, in this sense, he's very confrontational. He gets very serious when

people are coming to this point of entering into judgment because there will be judgment.

Jesus fully understands this. He gets very serious when people are going to

enter into judgment and be on the wrong side of things.

And I think this is a particularly hard passage because, I mean,

there's a lot of context going on. There's the Pharisees.

But as we consider these words of Jesus, where he says, I'll tell you that on

the day of judgment, people will have to account for every careless word they speak.

I mean, it's a serious thing for us to read because, of course, this is a general truth.

It wasn't just uniquely something that the Pharisees had to deal with.

This is something that we have to deal with.

I mean, who among us hasn't spoken many careless words? Maybe even today.

I mean, who is able to have such great control of their words that they can

just be like, read these passages and just say, hey, no problem.

How is it? And how is it that Jesus makes such a claim? How can there be hope

for me as a person who speaks carelessly?

And how can there be hope for the Pharisees at this point? We'll get to the

reason for hope in a second.

I do think there's lots of reason to hope. if we understand what the gospel really is all about.

But before that, I just want to pause and I just want to think about words because

we're a very verbal culture.

We're surrounded with words all the time. We're always listening to things.

We're listening to music. We're listening to podcasts. Maybe that's just me.

Watching TV, you know, like words are everywhere, probably more than almost

any culture up to this point.

But Jesus is making super clear that words really matter And I think it's indicative

from this passage It's because words really are worship Words are our worship,

What comes out of your mouth matters. And the biblical authors,

I mean, not only here as Jesus speaks,

but in other passages as well, the biblical authors are super clear and consistent

in their understanding that words are a direct expression of what comes in your heart.

Words are a window into and indicative of what's really going on on the inside.

And so the way we speak is indicative of the health of our souls,

of our heart, of our inward life.

And so we need to pay attention to words because it's with our words that we

are either expressing worship to God or we're expressing opposition to him.

I get it. I'm not always talking about God. Sometimes I talk about McDonald's, right?

Sometimes I just talk about very normal things. But I'll tell you,

even things that don't seem to be related to God, There is a way in which my

words can deny and ignore and not really keep him in view.

And I think in all the words that we speak, we are either considering what it

is to be created by him, loved by him, saved by him, or we are consumed with our own selves.

And we're expressing either of those things at any given moment.

James 3, 10 through 12. James makes this kind of conundrum that we face in our

words really clear. He says, blessing and cursing come out of the same mouth.

My brothers and sisters, these things should not be this way.

Does a spring pour out sweet and bitter water from the same opening?

Can a fig tree produce olives, my brothers and sisters, or a grapevine produce figs?

Neither can a saltwater spring yield fresh water.

James is indicating, speaking about our words, how there's such an indication

of what's going on in our spirit.

And either we're going to be people who are worshiping the Lord,

we're using our words for blessing, or we're using our words for cursing, right?

We're participating in the things of God.

We're partnering with Him. We are seeing His work in the world,

and our words are going to be worshipful, and we're going to be aware of His

goodness and His grace. Maybe not in overt ways, but in subtle ways.

Or our words are going to be like participating in bitterness and anger and

all this stuff that comes along in life.

And James just says, it shouldn't be this way. It shouldn't be this way.

Like our calling, if we're going to be Christians, if we're going to be people

who have seen the goodness of God and the grace of God and we welcome him in,

like we're to be devoted to speaking in such a way that we're aware of God.

And I'm not talking about putting on Christian language over everything or a

Christian veneer over everything, but I am saying that there are some things

that are just inconsistent with the love and grace and kindness of God,

and we don't think about that much.

Now, again, I said there'd be reason for hope.

I really want this clear, is that even James, right, who's very,

very stark in his condemnation of the way we speak, he says this before he begins

that passage in James 3. He says, we all stumble in many ways.

James is acknowledging that every single person has this contradictory thing

going on in them, particularly as he goes on to say in James 3,

2, he says, it's really a measure of your maturity.

So maybe you're sitting here and you're feeling condemned about your words.

At least what James says is that, well, that's just immaturity.

The thing that we do as Christians with immaturity is we get over it.

We go on to maturity. We seek the power of the Spirit.

We seek His work in our lives. We ask for God's conviction. We repent of our sin and we move on.

And I think that's frustrating for some people because we want to say, well, I'll do it today.

Or by tomorrow, I'll have worked out this thing with my words.

The truth is, it's going to take you probably years if you're going to start

down this road with Jesus and

you're saying, okay, Lord, I wanted to do something about my words, okay?

So here's the thing is we all stumble in many ways.

We're not to be, our words are not to be a vehicle of cursing.

We're supposed to be about blessing.

And it's not just because it's the nice thing to do.

And here's getting back to the passage. It's because faith and words and what's

in our hearts and our worship of God, they're all tied up together. This is how faith works.

See, the careless words of the Pharisees mattered because by this blasphemy,

the word that Jesus uses here, by insulting the power of the Spirit,

by saying that what God is doing in the world,

his good and his graciousness, by saying that stuff is bad,

these people, and Jesus is warning them, you're cutting yourself off from your very hope.

The hope that you say you've been waiting for if you people are waiting for

the Messiah and the Messiah is here and you're talking bad about him like this is it,

this is the thing see the Pharisees had

a very different idea of what salvation was

going to look like for them they thought if Israel and if they were just more

serious and more intentional and they did a better job of enforcing the rules

then God would save them But as Jesus comes and as he brings the kingdom of God,

he presents a very different vision of what it looks like for people to worship

God and to seek the Lord and to pursue maturity and to welcome the Messiah in.

And the Pharisees just don't like it.

Paul really leans into this in Romans 10, and he says this, and this is very,

Paul is being deliberately punchy here.

He says, this is the message of faith that we proclaim.

So again, Paul is a Jew. He was a Pharisee. He was a Pharisee among Pharisees.

He knew all the rules, and he knew the way that the Pharisees thought and expected

holiness and salvation and God's moved to be.

And he understood that the message of faith for a Pharisee was,

we obey the laws, we do better, we get all these people who aren't obeying the

laws to obey, and that's going to be how God is going to be finally pleased.

And as Paul meets the risen Jesus, he has this total life transformation to

the point where he realizes that that way of faith was actually false,

and now he has this new way of faith, this message of faith that he proclaims.

And it's so much simpler, and I would say something that we need to wrestle

with. He says, this is the message of faith that we proclaim.

If you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that

God raised him from the dead, he'll be saved.

One believes with the heart, resulting in righteousness, and one confesses with

the mouth, resulting in salvation.

For scripture says, everyone who believes on him will not be put to shame.

I think if we've believed the gospel long enough or we're familiar enough with

kind of these words of Paul, and we understand that what he's saying is that

we lose a sense of how simple this is, how simple this formula,

this approach to faith is, particularly when we consider what was common in the day.

See, this is scandalous. These are scandalous words to the Pharisees and to

the religious leaders of the time because Paul doesn't say, we just need new

and better rules. We need to be more intense.

We need to be more obedient. He just says, we're going to make it so much more

simpler than that. He says, we're not going to whip the people in the shape.

We're not going to do all the things that the Pharisees wants to do.

He tells that all that people need to do is just come to their king,

come to their savior, confessing, using worshipful words, saying with sincerity,

not just like as a formula,

Jesus is Lord, recognizing who he is, what he's called to, how good and kind

he is and how worthy he is of worship and believing in their hearts.

And Paul says, if and when anyone does that, they will not be put to shame.

This is the way of salvation.

This viewing Jesus, worshiping him, turning to him.

If you do that, you'll be saved. And Jesus goes around.

I mean, he's demonstrating this in a way that bothers the Pharisees.

Because he's healing people and doing it on the Sabbath and breaking all the

rules and doing all these things that we don't expect him to do.

And he's healing people who just don't deserve it, which for the Pharisees was a big problem.

He's welcoming in and eating with tax collectors and sinners.

They don't deserve the power of God.

They really see Jesus' ministry and his grace and his kindness and his simple

showing up to the poor and the broken as a problem. The Pharisees see this as

a problem because they think, well, he's just letting people off the hook.

It should be harder.

But Jesus has this message, and we've talked about it the last couple of weeks.

He says, you know, just come to me.

Anyone who's weary, heavy laden, broken, I'll give you rest.

The Pharisees hated this because they don't deserve the rest.

They haven't earned the rest.

They need to work harder and then they can rest. But Jesus just says, no, it's simple.

Come to me. You need healing, I'll heal you. You need teaching,

you need wisdom, I will teach you.

You need salvation, I will give it to you. I will bring the kingdom of God among

you. In my presence, there is all of this stuff.

And the Pharisees hate this.

They think it must be more complicated than simply coming to Jesus.

Surely it can't be that simple. But what Christians for millennia have seen

is that, yes, I mean, it really is that simple.

And I say that as somebody who doesn't love sometimes like the lax attitudes

that we have in church and it's like, oh, well, you know, like,

oh yeah, it doesn't worry. God doesn't care about sin.

So don't worry about it. God totally cares about sin. God totally cares about where your life goes.

But the thing is, you aren't going to be transformed by working harder.

You're going to be transformed by coming to Jesus, by surrendering your life to him,

and then slowly entering into this process where he will teach you and he will

disciple you and he will show you and convict you of the sin and he will empower you.

And the great news about it is in the interim,

as we're growing and as we're maturing and as we're still doing this thing,

like James talks about this kind of contradictory life, Jesus says,

I'm going to continue to be faithful to you. I'm not going to put you to shame.

I'm not going to abandon you. Even as you still struggle, and even as you're

still in difficult places, and even as you're not seeing the faithfulness that

you hope for, I'm going to hang in there with you.

Because as Gospels tell us over and over again, he's going to complete the work

he begins, 1 Thessalonians 5.

He's going to complete what he's begun in us.

At the end of Peter's speech in the book of Acts, this is after Jesus has come

back, and as the Holy Spirit comes upon the disciples and they're speaking in

tongues and there's this massive crowd that's gathered around and they're all amazed.

His final thing, his final word, he tells them the story of Jesus and how they crucified him.

His final word to them is this, therefore, let all the house of Israel know

with certainty that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified, Lord and Messiah.

And at that point, the people say, how can we be saved?

And Paul just says, well, just repent of your sins and follow Jesus.

Like the message of the gospel is this.

God has made Jesus both Lord and Messiah. It's in and through and focused upon Jesus.

Jesus is like the point of us following after Jesus.

He's the direction of Lord. He's the Messiah.

He's Lord of all creation. It's all about him.

And I just think we just have to, I just want us to pause and just understand

this, that saved people are Jesus' people.

There's no other qualification that people have to come into the kingdom of

God except to come to Jesus.

And it almost sounds dumb to say that, doesn't it? Because you think it should

be harder. It should be difficult. We should demand more and ask more of people.

But Jesus just says, come to me. Just come to me.

And we want to, I think, impose more mechanisms and we want to impose more standards.

But the only qualification of faith is to look to Jesus, understand that he's

Lord, Messiah, that he's good, and he's gracious.

Worship team can come up here right now. You know, like, I wish,

even talking about this, I'm like, I want to, like, make what I feel like is

a more compelling point.

But it's just because it's so simple.

It's so simple what Jesus has done. And Paul says later in Romans 1,

16, he says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel because it's the power of God for

salvation to everyone who believes,

first to the Jew and also to the Greek, for in it, the righteousness of God

is revealed from faith to faith.

Just as it is written, the righteous will live by faith.

I spend a lot of my time getting distracted. I have ADHD, so that's like a layer.

But I mean, I think we all do, especially when I think about my relationship with God.

I end up substituting things that I think God will be pleased with, certain behaviors.

Certain things which are important and valuable and things that probably God

has called me to in many instances, right?

But I think the danger that we have as Christians sometimes is that we can start

to hope to we begin with Jesus, we begin receiving his grace,

we come in this relationship thing, but then we begin to substitute our behaviors,

like our church attendance and our giving and our service with the thing that

we had originally, is that we started to do all those things.

Because we understood the gospel.

And the gospel is this, that Jesus just says, there's salvation for anyone who

would believe in me, and that there's righteousness revealed by faith.

That as we come to Jesus and as we hang in there with him, we receive all the things we need.

We receive the justification, the sanctification, the calling,

and the purpose, and all that stuff is in Jesus.

But it's easy for me to go onto those things and get my attention on those things

and on the performance of those behaviors and to forget to come back in worship

and love and devotion to Jesus,

who is like the doorway to all those things and who is the initiator of all those things.

But I think the life we're called to is a life where we are just constantly

coming back to Jesus over and over again.

And we look for novelty instead of the.

I like how Leslie Newbigin is the theologian I really like.

He says this, and I've given you guys this quote before, but I just want to

say it because I think it really drives home the point I'm trying to make.

He says, this is his definition of the gospel.

At a certain point in history, the history of this world, God, who is the author,

the sustainer, and the goal of all that exists,

of all being and all meaning and all truth has become present in our human history

as the man Jesus whom we can know and whom we can love and serve.

And that by his incarnation, his ministry, his death, his resurrection,

he's finally broken the powers that oppress us and has created a space and a

time in which we who are unholy can nevertheless have fellowship with God who is holy.

The refrain that we see all over the New Testament is all of our hope and all

of our life and everything that we have and everything we can expect as Christians,

it's all in him and him is Jesus.

And yet so often we pursue other things.

And so all I'm asking you to do today is if you're a Christian is to remember

that your life and your hope and your peace and your joy, it's all in him and

you can just pursue Him and love Him and serve Him.

And that is a good and honest and joyful work that we're called to.

Yes, we should be concerned about our words and our actions and how we're honoring Him.

But in the end, the Christian life is driven by devotion to Him.

And so we're doing this series, Seeing Jesus, not because we need to learn more

about Jesus, but we want to see Him.

We want to know Him. We want to have this relationship with Him.

We want to find within ourselves that same hope that we had when we first turned

to Jesus, that passion and that expectation.

And so that's my hope, is we just take some time to worship here right now.

And in a second, I'm going to put my guitar on because this always takes me a little bit.

That we would just ask Jesus to restore that love, that love,

that passion, that hope, that expectation, that desire for him,

that seeking after him. I'm going to need these.