Fulfilled: The Chosen King: Whose Business Are You About with Pastor Tony Albano

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaChurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life.

God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

Yeah.

I'm excited for my people over there in Helotus.

Y'all are still my people.

We're one movement, meets across multiple venues.

If you have never been to our Helotus venue, my name's Tony.

I'm our Helotus pastor out there.

And uh man, there is some real traction going on in our movement.

I want you to know that.

We've been putting chairs out every single weekend.

Like it is evident that God's hand is on this movement and what God is doing through his people.

You are the church, you are the body, and God is using all of us in a unique way.

And we all have unique skills, and we're seeing that play out as we're meeting new people, new families that come in with different jobs and come from different backgrounds.

How God puts it all together is just an amazing thing.

And I'm happy to be a part of it.

I'm happy to be up here today uh helping us finish out the book of Luke.

It's been like 16 weeks.

I have no idea.

Not the book of Luke, you guys would be like, whoa, we are two years in advance.

No, we're finishing out the book of Luke, chapter two.

And uh, man, if you're like me, you've been taking notes.

Pastor Clayton has been giving us context every single week, things I haven't even thought through.

And the cool thing about that is it just shows the more we sit in the text, the more context we get, the more we read scripture, the more we realize that every word has meaning.

Everything is significant.

And today we're gonna be reading a story, it's actually unique to Luke's gospel.

You don't see this in Matthew, Mark, or John's gospel.

It says unique to Luke.

And something that Pastor Clayton brought up a couple weeks ago was that this is evidence, we believe, most scholars believe.

Luke, how he meticulous he was, as he went and you look for the facts as he was trying to figure out who this person of Jesus is, as he was trying to understand it at a level where he can send this off to the Gentiles and other people who are outside the norm and understanding of these Jewish scriptures that came before.

It's evident that these stories we get about Mary, that Luke actually interviewed Mary.

And this is something that we get, like I said, that's unique to his gospel, but it's important to the story.

Because if you're like me and you read these stories, especially like the Christmas story that we're getting out of, and it's easy to read these stories and to just read past them and not really unpack what it is that Luke is actually doing because he's very strategic.

He's very strategic in what he's trying to set up for us.

And the reason I love that Luke included the story is because the other gospels, what you'll read about is the birth narrative, the extraordinary, miraculous miracle that happened out of this woman, out of this family, of Jesus coming into the earth, and then we get right into the crowds.

We get right into the healings, we get right into the extraordinary things that Jesus did when he was here on earth.

And uniquely in this gospel, we get a moment in time where we get a glimpse of what it was like in Jesus' adolescence, as he was a boy, 12 years old.

And I think today, if you would stick with me, if you track with me, those online, again, Helotus, psyched, you're here watching us online.

If we would all take some time, slow down, and just walk through this narrative together, I really believe it can speak volumes to our understanding of who Jesus is, because that's what we're doing here.

This fulfilled series that we're in, the chosen king subseries that we're in right now, the goal is to understand who Jesus is, so that we can then follow this king, this chosen king, here on earth and let his kingdom come out.

But it requires all of us part of what God is doing here.

And I want all of us here to experience what God is doing.

So let's jump into this story uniquely found in Luke.

It says in Luke 2 that when they'd completed everything according to the law, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.

The boy grew up, became strong, and filled with wisdom, and God's grace was on him.

If you were with us a couple weeks ago, we've been walking through this story and what it looked like for Jesus to get circumcised in the temple, for them to present the sin offering in the temple, and we saw Simeon and Anna's response to this craziness that was happened happening.

And then what we see right after that is that Mary and Joseph quietly obey.

They go back to Nazareth.

When we learned about Nazareth, is that it is the backwoods of the backwoods.

No one knows this area, no one's significant comes from this area, and they go obediently back to this place.

And we see as Jesus grows up.

This is his years growing in wisdom, becoming strong as a man, and he grew up under Joseph's dad, his carpentry business.

And you know, it's like we know Jesus for his ministry, but he grew up in the trades.

He grew up with his dad in the back of Sticktown.

And what we're seeing in this narrative is just a glimpse into the ordinary quiet life that Jesus lived up until the point about 30, where we see him get baptized and start his ministry here on earth where the crowds did show up.

The people did crowd around when they heard him teaching with authority, and people did get healed, and people were being under like coming this understanding, like, yo, something big is happening, but before all that, this is where our king was.

And the reason I love the detail about that is that I think Luke is trying to show us something about our lives too.

Because that's where the majority of our life actually is.

It's in the obedient, quiet, disciplined, maybe undisciplined for some of us, lives.

We all love the online depiction of the mountaintops and these extraordinary moments, or when the deal goes through and all this craziness happens, but that's not reality of what life actually is.

Life is somewhat monotony and mundane, some of it boring, very repetitious.

And just like you and I, Jesus and his obedient, faithful parents, they lived a very similar life.

And that's the hardest play place to like stay obedient, right?

It's like if you're a mom, you're a stay-at-home mom, and you're changing diaper after diaper after diaper.

If you're like my kids, it feels like they change, I don't know, 47 diapers a day.

These kids don't stop going to the bathroom.

And if it's like you got a toddler, it's like maybe you're correcting this kid over a thousand times a day, and you're like, whoa, this is getting monotonous.

This is getting a little bit annoying, right?

Or maybe you have a nine to five, a regular nine to five, and it's like clockwork, you check in, you clock in, you know exactly what you're doing for the day.

It's the same seven things.

If we're honest, it's like in the eight hours, you could probably do the job in two hours.

So you're like busy doing something, like this boring work, you know what I mean, just not being efficient.

And some of us are like that, and some of us are overachievers.

Some of us, maybe we have a nine to five, and then every hour outside of the nine to five, you are on the grind.

You're building something, and it takes discipline, it takes time, it takes the quiet.

And this is where actual, like, this is where you actually grow in your wisdom, in your experience.

But no one likes that part.

No one likes the quiet, no one likes the still moments.

Me and Tori, where I, when I first got an opportunity to uh become a youth pastor when I was younger, um, I remember standing on a stage and there was an audience of one, my wife.

And it was in those quiet moments of repetition on a Saturday night before service, before our youth service, all that, where I started to put in the work and understand what it looks like.

And I believe, I mean, that's why I get a chance up here to speak in front of people.

Like, I'm a nobody from nowhere, I'm a high school dropout.

I was able to go to Bible college and I was older and all that, and like get my hands in ministry, but like I'm a nobody, but it was the quiet times, wrestling through, jacking things up, learning more and more what it looks like to be in relationship with God and follow that.

And I love that Luke includes this because we all can recognize that.

We all know that feeling in our life.

Far too often when we say we want to follow Jesus, it's all about walking on water, raising people up from the grave, casting out demons, like some of y'all have been on the wrong side of the internet, and that's all you see, like street preachers and all this kind of stuff.

And like that's what we think about.

But again, and I'm gonna say it four billion times today maybe it's more about the quiet.

Maybe obedience in the ordinary is actually what leads us to extraordinary.

All of us want the extraordinary, but we're not willing to go through the obedient, quiet seasons of our life.

And we look at the text today, in Luke 2, verse 41, it says that every year his parents traveled to Jerusalem for Passover festival.

Luke 2:41

When he was 12 years old, they went up according to the customs of the festival.

And after these days were over, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents didn't know it.

Assuming he was traveling in the traveling party, they went on a day's journey, and they've been they began looking for him among the relatives and friends.

When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him.

And right here, I want to just pause for a second.

This is what we're doing.

We're pausing, we're gonna look into what was actually custom in the time, we're gonna look at the key word that Luke may have used or may not have used.

Like when they say something, it's important.

I want us to get in the habit of asking questions.

So when he said that they were there every single year, is that normal?

The answer to that is no.

If you were to look at some of these early writers in that time, like, hey, it was part of the law, it was the tradition that the male had to go be part of at least this festival of Passover.

But can we be real?

These people were poor, these people live far away from Jerusalem.

They were from Galilee, they were in the Galilean area, and this was about 65 to 75 miles away.

And when you're in the trade work, that means you're walking away for potentially about a week of work.

You're having to pack up food and eat.

And then it's like if you had enough money to, like, you know, bring your sacrifice with you, probably not, or you're gonna go to the temple and they were gonna sell you an inflated price, this animal for your sacrifice for this festival.

Like, we most people didn't have the means to go every year.

What we learned about Mary and Joseph a couple weeks ago is that they did not have a lot of money, they were poor.

And what does Luke say?

Yet every single year they showed up for Passover.

It's a reminder of the obedient life that they were living, trusting God in the gap, leaving town.

And what we learn about in this story is that this boy, the king of kings, the chosen king, the lord of lords, he goes missing.

We saw the extra like the crazy moment where the angels came and all the proclamations, the prophetic words spoken over this baby, and then they lose this baby.

Now, my kids are like barely walking right now, so I don't know what it's like for my kids to like venture off like crazy.

I know it's like to go like three seconds, like yo, where's homeboy?

Oh, he's in the hallway.

That's my house.

Whatever.

You might be might be getting into something.

I don't know what it's like to lose your kid.

Maybe some of y'all had that crazy experience where it's like an hour goes by, you don't know your kid.

Most of the time, it's like they're just out of sight.

Can you imagine going down your journey and having to venture back the emotions, the frustration, the fear, you just lost the chosen king.

And now, what I don't want to do is paint the picture of like negligence.

Because remember, Mary and Joseph are faithful, obedient followers of God.

And they would have been obediently going to this festival for years, year after year.

And what people would do is they would travel in caravans.

And the purpose of that was so that people stayed safe.

So it was, it was just ordinary.

Possibly your kid was with relatives or friends, just on the journey of this caravan, staying safe.

So it wouldn't be a question if like Mary assumed that Joseph had Jesus, or if Joseph assumed that Mary knew exactly where Jesus was.

And then they find themselves and Jesus is missing.

And now you gotta add now to this journey, possibly about a week, because they gotta go back and they find him three days later, and they gotta add three days back.

So it's like this whole journey, you can just, you know, it's frustrating.

Put yourself in it.

Don't just repass it.

It's like they found the boy three days later.

It's like, no.

What were they feeling?

What were they walking into?

Because we're gonna look at what was happening when they found Jesus, but like let's sit in some of the emotions that they were actually looking at.

And then before we look at exactly what was happening, I want to look at one thing.

We have to know, we have to know this to understand what happens next.

So we know that Jesus is God.

Fully God, fully human.

He's the only 200% human, 100% human, 100% God.

One of the questions that arises that I ask, that a lot of people ask, did Jesus know who he was?

In his upbringing, in the trades work, as he's learning his dad's trade, as they're trying to meet ends, ends meet, and they're going through the process of the ordinary, the mundane.

Did he know who he was?

I think that's important.

Everyone here, everyone online, God has something for you in your life.

God has a perfect will for your life.

You're made on purpose and with purpose.

And some of us, we know our skills outwardly.

So it's like, hey, I know where I should be.

And I just wrestle and I think through like young Jesus, did he know exactly who he was, his mission on earth?

And I think this text actually helps us understand.

We find ourselves in this unique tension where Mary and Joseph, they're frantically looking for their son.

Three days later, all the emotions, terrified, furious, I'm sure, also relieved the moment they see him.

And says in Luke 2, verse 46, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.

Luke 2:46

And all those who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers.

So we see here right in the text is that Jesus is listening and asking before he even is answering.

He's the Son of God, He's the Word of God.

The word was inspired by him.

And he doesn't come out here giving answers, he's asking questions as a young boy and he's learning.

So can Jesus, who is God, grow in wisdom?

He's all-knowing.

Well, Philippians tells us that he emptied himself of his deity.

He emptied himself.

And here on earth, he went through the process just like you and I go through the process.

He's been tried and tempted in every way.

And what we see is that Jesus is living a life of obedience.

He's positioning himself here in a humble posture, and he's woeing these people.

It's their scriptures.

Some of these people have been, they've dedicated their life to this.

And Jesus picks the obedient, humble posture.

And for the first time in recorded history of Jesus in this in the Gospel of Luke, what we see is Jesus finds himself in the extraordinary for the first time in his life.

Before this, it was the backwoods of backwoods.

It was year after year coming to the same exact city, the same exact place, to the temple of God in the quiet.

Jesus is showing up to the temple.

He is the temple, and this is the first time in recorded history where we see the extraordinary happen.

All those who heard him were astounded.

They didn't understand how this 12-year-old boy could have this understanding of their scriptures.

And at the same time that this is happening, Mary and Joseph are tearing apart the city.

They're looking for their boy, and they're frustrated, rightly frustrated.

And then we get Jesus' answer.

When his parents saw him, they were astonished, and his mother said to him, Son, why have you treated us like this?

Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.

And this is the tension.

Jesus is both Son of Man and the Son of God.

So to Mary and Joseph, it's common sense that Jesus needs to be with them.

There is guardians, there is protector.

It's common sense.

But to Jesus, it's common sense that he should be in the temple doing the work of his father in heaven.

So we have this tension.

And then Jesus says, Why were you searching for me?

Didn't you know that it was necessary for me to be in my father's house?

And they didn't understand what he was saying to them.

The first words of Jesus, the earliest words of Jesus in Scripture, they're worth paying attention to.

This shows us that Jesus knew exactly who he was.

And maybe that's not plain in just like a quick reading of it.

Even if you read this a couple times, maybe that's not plain to you.

But this right here proves that Jesus understood his assignment.

Because what Joseph is saying here is obviously you should not stay behind, you should be with your family.

What's going on?

And Jesus is saying, obviously, I should be pushing forward the work of God.

That's the will for my life.

And this sentence, I think it's better translated.

Didn't you know that it's necessary for me to be about my father's business?

Not necessarily, didn't you know that I should be in the place, the temple.

The understanding at that time was that was where God's presence was.

We now know that the Holy Spirit lives and dwells within us, but it's better translated that Jesus knew he needed to be about his father's affairs, about his business.

And when you read into the text, like I said, this is evidence and proof that Jesus knew he was.

Here's one thing we can look at.

Luke is very meticulous.

He doesn't just throw around words.

And one word that he loved to use over and over again, we see in the book of Luke, and we see in the second work, the book of Acts, it's the word dei.

It's the Greek word for necessary.

Why is that important?

Because this word necessary, this unique word that he used, Jesus, it says it's about Jesus four times, and then in the gospel, I mean the book of Acts, it shows how it's pushing forward the gospel.

So it was necessary for me to be about my father's business.

That's the first one.

The next one is it's the necessary, this is Jesus, for me to preach.

It's necessary for me to be torn down, and then it's necessary for me to be risen back up.

This was the first statement.

It's a glimpse into the life of Jesus that it was necessary that he be about the Father's will because this was the decree, this was the actual plan, the mission for Jesus' life.

This is the start.

Jesus knew what business he was about.

And let me be honest with you, this is Tony, this is my skin, this is their culture, this is the flesh, this is my wife.

Blame my wife.

Give me a second to explain.

I can't read this text anymore without hearing a viral clip in my head.

And I am not a JB fan.

Justin Bieber, his new album's kind of good.

It's okay.

It's okay.

His child stuff was whacked, but this is kind of cool.

Like, let JB off the leash and he shows up.

It's cool.

But I didn't know about any of this.

This is a viral clip that went out.

Justin Bieber grew up in fame.

You've probably heard the name.

There's some 40, 50 year old dude here in Helotus who just loves the song Baby.

I know it.

I just know it.

It's fine.

We're not judging you, bro.

But he grew up just paparazzi all the time.

The time in his face.

And there's a video that came out where JB's just trying to go to the beach.

He's trying to hang out with his wife.

He's trying to hang out with his baby.

And these people are flashing cameras, asking him questions, and he gets pretty mad, rightfully so, I think.

And when he says this, don't you know that I'm a human, a husband?

Don't you know that I'm I'm a father?

He's like, is this not clocking to you?

I'm standing on business.

And it's like, what the heck does that even mean, bro?

I'm standing on business and I can't read this text anymore without thinking that Jesus is standing on business.

But the business difference is, Jesus is standing on the truth.

Jesus is standing on business.

I'm gonna stop.

My wife's gonna pull me off the stage.

Just not gonna, I'm not gonna make the point anymore.

Clayton, he likes JB, just so y'all know.

He might appreciate this point.

I have no idea.

Jesus knew who he was.

He knew his mission.

Even as a young boy.

So how do we resolve this tension?

Mary and Joseph, they don't understand what this means.

It's obvious to Jesus, it's not obvious to them.

Caught between his earthly father and his heavenly father.

One father here saying, hey, we gotta go back to Sticktown.

And his other father calling him into the extraordinary.

He knew the will for his life.

Caught between being a carpenter and his ministry here that would save us all.

And Jesus's response to this to me is insane.

You probably won't like it.

I don't like it.

Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was obedient to him.

His mother kept all these things in her heart, and Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and with people.

Jesus goes home.

The people who studied the scriptures their whole life, the religious leaders of the day, they were astounded of this young boy's understandings of the scriptures.

Jesus knew what his mission was here on earth.

Can you imagine if you knew the plan for your life?

If you knew where you'd end up, but you're in a one-one downtown or something like that, not in a nice area, like in the rough area.

You're like, bro, if they only knew the mission for my life, I wouldn't be here right now.

I shouldn't be eating ramen.

If they knew, but Jesus went home.

And he was obedient to them.

Why is this text so important?

Maybe you don't know this, but the book of John, the Gospel of John starts out.

It says, In the beginning was the word, and the word was God, and the word was with God.

We're talking about Jesus, never created.

He was with him before the foundations of the earth, and it says that nothing was created without him or outside of him.

Jesus.

That means that Mary and Joseph were created by Jesus.

And they're calling him back to the silent, back to the backwoods, back to the just continued repetition of living as a carpenter, not willingly knowing, like, hey, you should know I should be about my father's business.

Why is this confusing?

And what did Jesus do as a young man, a young boy?

He went back to Nazareth for 18 years.

18 years before we get the story of his baptism and his start of his public ministry.

18 years.

And no one knew about it.

His first glimpse of the extraordinary.

And he goes back home.

Jesus, the word.

Sure, he knows the fifth commandment.

Honor your mother and father, right?

Anything outside of that would have been contradictory.

Anything outside of that would have been living and venturing into sin.

And we see here that this story is so important because it is a glimpse of Jesus' life.

One, he understood the mission, he knows why he's here, but it is a glimpse of obedience leading him to the point of death on a cross and allowing his creation to put him there.

This text right here is proof that obedience in the ordinary is what actually leads to the extraordinary.

So maybe you're caught up right now, working hour after hour, no promotion, not even a pat on the back by your boss, wrestling through this idea, and it's like, hey, Jesus was in the quiet.

Maybe you know of a unique skill that God has given you, that He's gifted you.

And you're like, if I this gift is for the platforms.

Jesus Himself, who inspired, who is the Word.

18 years in the quiet.

After the first glimpse of what this mission was.

So I just want to ask you and I the question: Are we willing to sit for 30 years?

Are we willing to wait to allow God to be the one who brings you into the extraordinary?

So much of life is mundane, repetitive.

When I was in um Bible college when I was in my early 20s, I took a class called uh Spiritual Formation.

And um, you know, it was a cool class, I enjoyed it.

One of the books we get, they always give you a bunch of books.

Um, some of these books I read, some of these books I didn't read, not gonna lie to you.

And one of these books was Daily Devotions.

And uh the cool thing was it it tried to talk it, tackle it from like different denominations, different beliefs, and all that.

And I don't necessarily remember who this person was.

I I know it's like I know this person is, I think, and I know we don't line up with them theologically.

But that doesn't discount a thought or an idea that he had that's impacted me for really a lot of my adulthood.

Like looking into like God and repetition and like allowing yourself, because you and I, we have to go into the quiet, we have to go into the obedience, we have to allow ourselves into those repetitive, mundane moments.

And what this writer was talking about was children are possibly much more like God than we are.

You and I, it's like, hey, if something's mundane or repetitive, it gets boring, we're done with it, we move on.

If my son found something fun and it's in it had to do with me doing something or throwing it, like, all what do you hear?

Again, again, again, again, again, again, until I'm the fun stuff here and I'm like, bro, sit down, we're done.

We're done, bro.

But what if God is more childlike than you and I are?

What if there's he actually finds delight in the mundane?

What if it is that every single morning when the sun rises, that God almost says again, again, again, because he's involved in it.

He's part of creation, he's everywhere at all times.

What if every spring when the flowers boom, that God is involved and he's saying again, again, and he's part of every single lily, every single sunflower?

I don't know any Texas flowers, if you don't know.

I even know if those are Texas flowers from Miami.

But what if he's involved in every single one of these little mundane things, and children understand and find joy in that.

And we as adults, as we've gotten older, the mundane, the monotonous, we don't like it.

But that's not Jesus' story.

That's not the life of Jesus.

Jesus lived 33 years.

30 of those years were in the dark, we're in the backwoods of backwoods of Nazareth.

And we gotta look at our own life and say, are we cool with that?

Is that how I posture myself?

Am I willing to be obedient in the small things now so that one day I can experience?

Because that's what actually following Jesus looks like.

It's going through the spiritual formation, it's allowing the fruits of the spirit to work and come out of you.

It's like that's the point of this for us to image Jesus.

Jesus said at one point that if you love me, you'll obey my commands.

Now, being obedient does not save you.

Actually, obedience doesn't establish a relationship with God.

Obedience flows from a relationship with God.

My son, that dude is turning two in a couple weeks.

Guess what?

He's disobedient quite often.

It's fun.

I love that being a father.

It is so fun.

But y'all know they know what buttons, how to push it, but his obedience to me, to his mom, that doesn't establish the relationship.

It is unconditional love, no matter what he does.

Same thing with the Father, your heavenly father who created you, who knows everything you're gonna do, everything you're gonna say, every mistake you're ever gonna make, every right, wrong decision you've ever made and will make.

And he loves you unconditionally.

And the story is a glimpse of what obedience looks like to the point of death because Jesus was the only one who could fulfill what needed to be fulfilled so that you and I could actually be saved.

He lived a life of perfect obedience.

Adam failed, David failed, Israel failed, you and I, we fail continuously and forever, really, until eternity comes, until Jesus comes back, we will continue to fail over and over and over again.

And Jesus as a young boy was obedient, understanding his heavenly father's will and starting to grow.

And what we see is that he went through the process the same way that we need to go through the process.

And as you and I come to an understanding of the love of Jesus for you and for I, we will obey his commands.

It will flow out of that.

It doesn't establish the relationship, but it flows from the relationship.

Jesus' love is what helps us turn away from sin, our earthly desires.

The more you and I fall in love with the person of Jesus, the rest of the world gets silent, gets dim.

That's the point of all this.

Being made more and more like Jesus.

But if we're not willing to go through the ordinary, obedient moments, the same way that Jesus was obedient to his earthly parents, we are going to miss a ton in our life.

And the things that Jesus said that were necessary, they will happen.

What God said, what God decrees will happen.

What he promises will happen.

But you and I, we can miss and we can live in wrath here on earth if we don't follow him.

Nothing to do with your salvation.

Do you put your faith in Jesus?

You are forever secured.

You were adopted as a son, as a daughter.

He knows you'd mess up.

Everyone's messed up.

That's the point.

That's why he came.

If we're willing to obey in the ordinary, I promise you, you and I will experience what God has for our life.

The extraordinary things that God wants to do in your life.

But you gotta be willing to sit.

You gotta be willing to submit to what He's calling.

His business.

His truth.

As we come to a close today, would you just bow your heads and close your eyes?

Nothing weird, just want to create some space for reflection.

Obedience to God requires relationship to God.

That's the first thing.

Jesus obeyed because he knew his father.

And if we remember the first words of Jesus, they were, didn't you know that I must be about my father's business?

It had to do with his father, his father's will.

Remember, this was a glimpse.

Jesus's last words on the cross, into your hands I commit my spirit.

Jesus' first and last words that were recorded.

First words are very important.

Last words are very important.

We're all about the Father's will, being about his business.

So I just ask you today, us in the room, us at Helotus, if we're honest, whose business are we really about?

Our kingdom or his kingdom?

Are you king?

Or is he king?

If Jesus is king, then our lives look a little bit different than the world.

And the first step to any of this is to have a relationship with him.

If you're in the room today and you've never had a moment in time to put your faith in Jesus, I want to give you that opportunity today.

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

He was with him.

Nothing was created outside of him.

Jesus is God.

And he came down and he emptied himself, and he lived a life of perfect obedience to the point of death for you and for me.

Hang on that cross inches from death.

He was thinking of you and he was thinking of me.

It was the joy of salvation that actually got him to that cross, the joy of you being in relationship to him.

And today he's calling you, if you've never had a moment in time, to put your relationship in him, to acknowledge that he is God, that he died on the cross and that he rose from the grave.

Would you just raise your hand so I could acknowledge you?

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Praise God.

If we all would, everyone here online and those are our venue and Holotus, would you just pray along with me as we acknowledge our faith out loud together?

Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God, that you came to earth, you died for my sins.

I believe that you rose again.

Thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

If this was helpful to you and you want to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast.

You can rate and review or share it with your friends.

If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take next steps.

You can learn where our different venues are at if you ever wanted to visit, and you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

And I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.