Learning to Listen: Day 1 - John 1 with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the Medicurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at Medicurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

I want to welcome you in.

If you're new with us, my name is Clayton, and I usually don't sit down, so it's uh it's a good day, it's a special day.

Um man, MetaCurch has just been growing.

God's been doing so many incredible things here.

And we started this whole year off with a focus on identity.

We spent six weeks in a series called 23 and Me.

And a lot of times, as we're building out kind of where we feel like God is moving us through these different Sunday series, uh, you know, sometimes they feel really connected and sometimes they just feel like things we need to know.

And the beginning of this year, our first series, now what we're doing here, where we're going headed towards Easter, it feels like it's all a part of the same thing.

In our series on identity, we learned that information puts you in formation, that you have to curate the content that you're allowing into your life.

We learned that to know who you are, you have to learn how you fit, and that what the world is looking for is not another group of people to sit and do a religious practice and check a box and think they've actually accomplished something, but for the body of Christ and every single member of it to get active and moving out in our real world.

And, you know, a lot of times what we do in these Sunday series is we come in and we have pre-packaged a lesson and we work really, really hard on these things, man.

We want to make sure we have like one big idea that you can put in your pocket and take away.

We try to make it where it's engaging and entertaining and funny and all of the right things.

But what we really are feeling in this season is that it is time to do more than a Sunday series and to do it all together.

And so this is not, over the next four weeks, this is not a Sunday series.

This is a 21-day journey that all of us are going to go through as a church.

We're all coming together, and for 21 days, we are going to read the Bible every day.

Every day for 21 days, a chapter out of the Gospel of John, which has 21 chapters.

At the end of this journey, you'll have read the entire book.

Every day we're reading scripture.

Every day we are praying.

We are getting intentional about this.

And every week over those three weeks, we're going to choose something to fast from.

And fasting is the intentional giving up of something in your life in order to grow your dependence on God.

We're doing this and we're all doing it together.

And I believe that God is going to do something in your life as an individual, that God is going to do something in the life of our church because it's one thing to come in and you guys know I like sports.

I grew up playing sports.

And the way I always think about Sunday service is this is like watching film.

You know, high-level athletes, they go in after the game or before the game and they watch film on who they're about to play and they dissect it and they learn.

And it's kind of like going to the whiteboard and drawing out the plays and understanding all of it.

Sunday service is theory.

And when we leave the doors of this building, it goes from theory to application.

The court, the field where the game is actually played, isn't in here.

It happens out in our real life.

And so if we're gonna be ready to play in the most crucial game on earth, if we're gonna be ready to contend for the hearts and minds and souls of people who are lost and dying without hope, then we have to do more than sit and theorize.

We have to be doing individual training and communal training.

We have to get after this.

And so, if you're brand new with us, the next four weeks, I hope you will commit to this.

I hope you'll do it with us.

I think it'll change your life.

Um, and this isn't what we always do.

We normally have a little more of a typical sermon.

We normally have more than two songs.

But here's what we're doing in the 21 days.

We're reading scripture and we're praying and we're fasting.

And so, when it came to how we were gonna use Sunday service, we just felt very strongly that we should read scripture and pray and fast.

And here's what's really cool: because by the time we get done with this today, which is gonna be somewhere between 40 minutes and three and a half hours.

I don't know how long it's gonna take.

By the time we get through today, you'll have already done day one of your 21-day journey.

You'll be almost 5% completed already.

You might as well do the rest of it.

And so here's what I'm gonna encourage you to do.

Maybe something you wouldn't expect to get encouraged to do in the middle of service.

Uh, I want everyone to get out their smartphone, okay?

And if you don't have a smartphone, you have like a flip phone, you're still carrying a Motorola, a razor, extra blessings on you.

But for everybody else, I want you to get out your smartphone, and I want you to go to metachurch.tv slash listen.

metachurch.tv slash listen.

Because here's the thing.

We're not just sending you out to go figure this out on your own.

We're trying to resource you in every single way that we can think of in order to make these 21 days successful.

When you go to metachurch.tv slash listen, if you scroll down, there's two things I want you to do.

Number one, I want you to sign up for the newsletter.

And the newsletter is going to send you a prompting every single day reminding you to actually follow through with this.

The other thing you'll find on that website is uh a button that you can click to take you to our blog.

The blog is going to be the central hub for how we actually do this together.

So every single day on that blog, there's gonna be a video of one of our leaders here at MetaCurch helping you understand the context of that passage.

Then there's the actual passage itself, the entire chapter of John.

And at the end, there are prayer prompts to help you, especially if you're new to the faith or you're still just investigating and you haven't spent a lot of time in prayer.

There's gonna be helpful prompts that you can pray through.

And as you pull that up, I don't mind if today, since there's already John chapter one on there for you, if you use that to follow along.

And that's exactly what I'm gonna do today.

We're gonna go through all 50 verses of John chapter 1.

John 1 · chapter mention

And this is very different.

And I'll be honest, I've been nervous about this because getting up and preparing sermons and spending hours and digging in and preaching sermons, I've done for a long time and I'm pretty comfortable with.

We're just gonna go line by line by line.

And my hope is that this is almost a demonstration of what we're asking you to do every day.

To take some time, carve it out, set it in your schedule, slow down, read the word, and allow it to speak to you.

And I believe that the Holy Spirit, who is here, moving and active, and who is in the life of every believer, is going to begin to do some things inside of you.

We're encouraging you guys to journal, to take notes along with this.

And at the end of today, if you don't have a physical Bible and if you don't have a notebook, we've got about 80 of each of them right up here on the stage that you're gonna get to go home with.

We're trying to remove any excuse to keep you from doing this because we're going to learn how to listen to God.

Not how to listen to Clayton when he preaches.

We're gonna learn to listen to God because when you begin to hear God in your own life, it is gonna change your life in ways that you really can't imagine.

Let's pray.

Jesus, we are just seeking you.

Um, we feel like you've called us for the next several weeks to just do something different, to strip it down and just get into your word.

Holy Spirit, I pray that you would be active in our lives in ways that maybe we've never felt before.

Just by giving you time, just by setting aside in our schedule an opportunity to be intentional and to read the inspired divine words of scripture, and to pray and listen, to write down the things that come to mind, the things that you might be saying to us.

And so I'm just expectant.

I'm expectant that you are going to do some absolutely life-changing things in the next 21 days, and we thank you for that.

And we pray it all in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

John chapter 1, verse 1.

John 1:1

Let's start learning to listen.

It says this in the beginning, where we heard those words before.

This is how the very beginning of the Bible starts.

Genesis chapter 1, verse 1.

Genesis 1:1

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Now, there are four gospel accounts in the Christian scriptures.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called synoptic gospels because their primary route of information is a synopsis of the life of Jesus.

We're gonna learn right off the bat that's not exactly what John is doing.

John isn't gonna tell the story of you know Joseph and Mary and the donkey that had to carry the pregnant woman around and no room in the inn.

He goes to the beginning, like all the way to eternity past.

And what he's trying to do is help us understand not just the story of Jesus, but exactly who Jesus is.

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

And so here's my advice when you read is to really block out some time.

Because the things you will learn, just if you will slow down when you read scripture, will really start to blow your mind.

Here's something we learn in just one sentence that the word, which we're gonna see John is using to represent Jesus.

The word was in the beginning, the word was with God, and the word was God.

It's hard for you to imagine something that can be with you and you.

I can be with my son, but my son is not me.

And right in the first verse of the first chapter, we begin to see we can't use ourselves as the comparison and contrast to try to understand God.

He's just not us.

The word was with God, that means stands apart, that means individualization, and was God.

And this begins to build out what we hold to as the Trinity.

One God who acts in three separate persons, individual roles, individual action, and yet still one being, one God in three persons.

The word was with God, but the word was God.

And by the time John wrote his gospel, there were already all kinds of ideas.

And some of those ideas are still floating around today.

Like Jesus was a great man, and Jesus was a prophet, and Jesus represented God.

And John says, no, no, no, no.

He was with God in the beginning, and also he was God in the beginning.

Verse 2, he was with God in the beginning.

Verse 3, all things were created through him, and apart from him, not one thing was created that has been created.

And all the way back in Genesis 1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

And the creation narrative begins, and God speaks, and as he speaks, creation comes into existence.

And John is saying that Jesus, part of his role, was the agent of creation.

Everything was created through him.

And if everything was created through him, it means Jesus was never created.

When John says in the beginning, he means eternity past, that Jesus always was.

And yet the darkness did not overcome it.

And I want you to pay attention in John chapter 1 to how many different ways Jesus is described.

John 1 · chapter mention

We're only five verses in.

And he is the agent of creation, he is the word, he is life, and he is light.

All of these things that make up who Jesus is, and our finite minds trying desperately and desperately to understand him.

And it's at this point that I pause five verses in.

And I think about how dark the world can be sometimes.

And you've experienced this in your own life.

And even those of you who are young are teenagers in the room, you've experienced some of the darkness in the world around you.

You've experienced some level of depression.

You've been so angry you don't even know how to organize yourself.

You've been hurt.

And chances are in this world you've been hurt deeply, you've seen what it's like.

And for some of us who are older and who have lived a little while and who have strayed from the light and maybe have lived completely surrounded by darkness, where we didn't even know if there was another option, you know what it means that the light came into the darkness.

And maybe you know what it's like to live in the darkness.

And isn't it incredible that if we just slow down, we can just take five verses and see the glory of our Savior, the light of the world, the one who life is found in, the one who created it all, the word who organizes all things into being, and we can see his mission and his purpose to come into our darkness and show us a way out.

Five verses that can change your life.

Five verses that if this really becomes something for us, and we really wake up every day and we really get into his word and we really slow ourselves down in this busy, busy life.

Man, five verses, it could change your whole day.

If it changes your whole day every day, it could change your whole marriage.

If it changes your marriage, it could change your relationship with your kids.

It could change how you view your work.

We have to do this.

Like there's a sense of urgency inside me about this.

We have to do this.

We can we can't spoon feed anymore.

You've got to get into the word.

If we're gonna be who we're capable of being, meta church, and you already know, because I talk to y'all all the time, and every single one of us feels it.

If there is a church movement that could change our city and change the world, it's right here among us.

We all feel it.

But to move from the theoretical possibility of the impact we could have to experiencing the impact that we were meant for, we have to do this.

We gotta start for 21 days, we gotta build the habit, and we gotta get after it.

Verse six.

We got 50 verses, y'all.

Verse six.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John.

Now, this isn't the John who wrote the gospel, this is who the other gospels call John the Baptist.

There's a man sent from God whose name was John, and he came as a witness to testify about the light, so that all might believe through him.

And I love this verse, verse 8.

John was not the light.

He came to testify about the light.

He was not the light.

He came to testify about the light.

Verse 9, the true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

John was not the light.

I am going to harp on this until you guys are ready to throw me out of the building.

We have to do this.

And here's why.

Because if you're not experiencing the light for yourself, if you don't learn how to feed yourself, if you don't learn how to spiritually clothe yourself, if you don't learn how to connect with the Holy Spirit yourself, you're going to get confused and you're going to think Sunday service is the light.

You're going to think that Celeste's voice is the light.

Clayton's sermons are the light.

We are not the light.

John was not the light.

We're pointing to it.

And it's interesting because later on Jesus will look at a crowd of followers.

And you know what he says?

You are the light of the world.

How does that tension work?

John's like, I'm not the light.

And Jesus is like, you are the light.

You see how it works is we have the opportunity to be light in a world of darkness.

But we have to get this right.

The light does not originate with us.

I think of it like this.

The moon doesn't produce light.

Some of you just learned something.

Someone's gonna win jeopardy just because of that, right now.

Like when you're a kid, you think the moon is a night light.

Like it's producing something.

The moon does not produce its own light, it just reflects the sun.

We don't produce light.

But when we are in contact with the sun, the S-O-N, when we are in relationship, when we are reading the written word to learn about the living word, the word who was there at the beginning, who was with God and is God, then we begin to shine a brighter and brighter and brighter light.

Pastor Noel, almost every time he prays, he ends and says, and help us to be simple reflections of your love.

And that's what we're called to be.

And we get it twisted, and the world will try to convince you, man, you are special just the way you are.

You got everything you need.

You can be whatever you want.

You can make up your own identity, you can make up your own purpose, you can walk away like that.

And here's what happens: as soon as we become convinced that the light is in us, not the Holy Spirit who shines through us, but it's in us, it's just me.

We will begin walking away from the actual source of light.

And like almost all of us have done this at some point, where we decided to find hope in ourselves.

We decided to be our own God.

We decided to build our own kingdom.

We decided to pursue our own purpose.

And all of a sudden, we wonder six weeks later, six months later, six years later, six addictions later, six broken relationships later, and we wonder why we are stuck right in the pitch black darkness.

It's because we forgot.

John was not the light, but Clayton's not the light.

You're not the light.

And you are the light.

And you are the light exactly when you put yourself in proximity, when you have the spiritual disciplines in your life, when you live with a sense of clarity that one day our ultimate destination is standing in front of Jesus, and so we better connect ourselves to his spirit and walk in him every single day.

And you can shine a light brighter than you can imagine.

Shine brightly like a dynamic, I watched half time.

You can do that.

But not by yourself.

And if you're doing it by yourself, and it seems like you're winning, and it seems like you're shining, all you've done is set yourself up for a fall.

And some people have the right wiring and they have the right temperament, and they have the right skill sets, and they've built enough gifting inside of themselves.

I mean, they can do some pretty spectacular things.

But I just guarantee you, man, you live long enough as your own God, and you're gonna find out just how terrible of a God you actually are.

I love it.

It's so simple.

John was not the light.

You can put your name in there.

Was not the light.

But we're here to testify about the one true light who came in to give light to everyone.

And by the end of this gospel, John's gospel, Jesus is gonna look at his followers and say, Y'all can do what I did.

And even greater things.

You can be the light of the world and touch more people than Jesus touched during his time on earth.

If all of us together will shine forth not our own light, but shine forth the light of Jesus.

Verse 10, he was in the world.

Jesus was in the world, and the world was created through him, and yet the world did not recognize him.

But to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be children of God to those who believe in his name.

In this one little section, there's gonna be some really helpful hints because we're all reading John every day, right?

Shake your head with me so I feel some confidence here.

We're all reading John every day.

There's a few really helpful hints in here.

Number one is the word believe, John uses over and over and over and over again.

At the end of this book, he's going to say, I have written these things.

He tells us, here's his purpose statement at the end.

I've written these things so you might believe.

And over and over again, what we see, and you need to know this.

If you're new or you're outside of the church, or you come, you're kind of hit or miss with your attendance, and you haven't heard us preach on this, you need to know this.

We are separated from God.

Our sin separates us from a holy God.

And God, by his very nature, cannot dwell in the presence of sin, and we are covered in it.

And that means that we are in real trouble.

And we cannot work our way to God because the standard is perfection and none of us can pull it off.

And when we cannot make our way to God, God came down to us, the word who Was with God, he is unique, Jesus the Son, but who is God?

God came down to our world and he lived the perfect life we could not live, which made him the perfect sacrifice when he gave his life and paid the price of our sin debt.

That's how the gospel works.

And the question that has plagued Christianity for all these years is how do you actually do it?

How do you get into relationship with God?

How do you ensure eternal life?

And man, people have added and added and added.

You gotta go to these five classes and you gotta clean your life up, and you gotta quit living, you gotta dress the right way, you gotta sound the right way.

Man, you've got to change every single sin.

And if you go back to that sin, you were never saved in the first place.

I'll tell you what John says, you have to believe.

There's a place for repentance.

Repentance means to change your mind.

In the Greek, it's the word meta, like meta church, means change, meta noia, to change your mind.

There's a place for repentance.

But some people will say if you do not repent, you cannot have eternal life.

And John says at the end of the book, I wrote this book so you could believe and have eternal life.

And I'll give you one guess: what word never shows up in John's gospel?

Repentance.

This is clearing out any and every obstacle to being in a relationship with Jesus.

To all who believed, they became children of God.

While you're reading, look out for it.

Believe, believe, believe, believe.

He goes on.

Who were born not of natural descent or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God.

Helpful hint number one, the word believe is going to show up a lot.

And you should let that saturate all of the way to your soul until you are fully convinced that you do not have to work to be in God's family.

Helpful hint number two is all of the scriptures are written in a Jewish context.

All of them are written in a Jewish context.

Those who believe in his name, who were born of God, not of natural descent, you don't get in just because you have the right lineage, or of the will of the flesh, you don't get in just because you tried your hardest, or of the will of man, you don't get in just because your abwela has been praying for you to get in.

You get in when you believe and are born again of God.

Verse 14: the Word.

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

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

And we observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and full of truth.

And if you're a skeptic, uh, welcome to Meta.

Uh, I'm a bit of a skeptic myself.

I had the same kinds of questions, like, you know, there's six other like major world religions.

There's like thousands of religions in practice today, and thousands more that disappeared long ago.

Like, how do we really know we have the right one?

Christianity is not a retelling of the same religious story.

Every religious story goes like this.

Um, you guys are far from God, and you're messy and jacked up, and you can't get to God, and so you're just kind of in trouble.

And so here's five things or ten things or three laws, and here's the amount of money you have to give, and you can try to work your way back up to that God, and you'll never know if you made it until you die, and maybe you got there and maybe you didn't.

That's every religious story.

And Christianity is not another religious story.

It all changes when the one who was there in the beginning, who created it all, who was with God and was God, when the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Our God did not sit distantly, passively, uninterested in us, hoping that maybe some of us would make the cut as we try to climb the ladder.

Our God got low.

Our God humbled himself.

Our God came down to the midst of our brokenness and dwelt in it with us.

Our God knows us because he's walked in our world.

He's been tempted in every way that we have been tempted.

John 1:14 is the differentiating factor that makes this something brand new.

John 1:14

The word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Verse 15 is uh parenthetical.

You'll see it as you're following along.

It's actually in parentheses.

John testified concerning him and exclaimed, This was the one of whom I said, the one coming after me ranks ahead of me because he existed before me.

Indeed, we have all received grace upon grace from his fullness.

For the law, it was given through Moses, grace and truth through Jesus Christ.

The whole system for the Israelite people, it hinged on the law.

It was kind of similar to all of the other religious stories.

Here's 613 rules, regulations, laws, commandments to guide and govern every single part of your life.

And it sounds a lot like the other religious stories.

It was aimed at a completely different purpose.

And the promise from the very beginning was: I'm setting you apart, Israel, for a specific purpose that the Savior of the world would one day come through you.

The law had its place and it had its time and it was so critical.

But now Jesus has come, and in place of the law, we are guided and we are governed by grace and by truth.

You should say amen to that.

Because some of you, I know, man, y'all are gonna shuck some crawfish later as you watch the game.

You couldn't do that.

Some of you got, you know, beards and tattoos, you couldn't do that.

Jesus came and he revolutionized what it means to actually pursue God.

Verse 18: no one has ever seen God.

The one and only Son, who is himself God, is at the Father's side.

And he has revealed him.

Let me tell you why we're reading John.

Because John tells the life of Jesus.

And John organizes how he tells it in a very specific way.

We have the seven miracles of Jesus, and you better believe Jesus did a lot more than seven miracles, but John curated the ones that point to the heart of who Jesus is.

John has seven I am statements.

John curated those moments from Jesus' life to help us understand his purpose.

And it matters that we understand Jesus because Jesus reveals to us who God is.

And we're not gonna front.

It can be difficult to try to really wrap our minds around God.

And there are parts of the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, where we're reading about God and his actions, and we're reading written through the lens of the people who were experiencing it at the time.

And some of it's a little bit uncomfortable.

And a lot of people try to paint God as He's just full of justice and wrath and anger and victory all.

And it's like if you want to know who God is exactly and precisely, you need to know who Jesus is.

John says, none of us have seen God.

If you want to know him, if you want to know his character, if you want to know how he thinks about you, if you want to know the links that he would go to prove to you that you actually matter to him, look at the life of Jesus.

Jesus reveals the Father.

You want to know his heart and his intention and his goodness and how he balances grace and truth and justice.

We see it in the life of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Let's keep going.

Verse 19.

This was John's testimony when the Jews from Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him, Who are you?

They're talking to John the Baptist.

He didn't deny it, but confessed, I'm not the Messiah.

What then?

They asked him, Are you Elijah?

Who is a great prophet from the Old Testament?

I'm not, John the Baptist said.

Are you the prophet?

They asked.

No, he answered.

Then who are you?

They asked.

We need you to give us an answer so we can give an answer to those who sent us.

What can you tell us about yourself?

Now this sets up the major tension throughout the Gospel of John.

All throughout the Gospel, you see the religious leaders, the priests, the Pharisees, the Levites, the scribes, the scholars, everyone who sat at the top of the religious and social hierarchy.

They all had tension with Jesus all of the time.

They all have tension with John the Baptist.

They even end up killing him.

They need to know.

Because anything new and anything effective is a threat to their power.

Anything new and anything effective is a threat to their power.

And we don't live in a theocracy where religion governs our government, our culture, our society.

But the enemies of God who have a grip around our culture and society and the things governing us, I don't think they're too worried about the Western church.

I don't think like Satan just lives in fear of people gathering in a building, doing nothing about what they heard, judging each other, and only making Jesus look worse and worse.

But if we do something new and we do something effective, we're gonna get some attention.

When we really start experiencing the full impact, and you know, when I say that, I want you to understand, meta church is having an impact.

You know that because it's having an impact on your life.

For some of you, it's radically changed your life.

But we also all seem to have a sense we're just getting started, that there's no telling what God could do through this movement.

We don't look like a normal church, we don't function like a normal church.

We are doing something new.

And I'm telling you, if we start investigating his word and spending time in prayer and giving our lives to God, taking up our cross, denying ourselves and following Jesus, not just meeting together, but actually moving together, we will be unimaginably effective out in the world.

And you need to know when you do something new and you do something effective, there will be traditional religious institutions who do not like it.

Hopefully, y'all are shielded from some of this.

I already get a lot of this, okay?

There will be social and cultural institutions that are not happy about the way we are moving.

Because when you have the actual answer and when you can actually provide hope, people don't need to dive deep into their phone for hope.

People don't need to dive deep into drugs for their hope.

People, if we get this right, we should start bankrupting the drug dealers in our city.

We don't need them anymore.

We should start bankrupting the pornography industry in our world.

We don't need it anymore.

The movement of Jesus, when we get it right, is dangerous.

And this passive, worthless, impotent version of religion that we're currently seeing and observing, that most of you left long ago and you're here because you want to do something new and you want to do something effective.

I don't think anyone's really worried about that.

What we're capable of when we start feeding ourselves and clothing ourselves and learning to walk and learning to run and discovering purpose.

You're gonna discover your purpose when you actually start hearing from God.

And when you discover your purpose that God created you with and actually pursue it, we say it every week, you were created on purpose and with purpose.

I will build my ecclesia, my church, Jesus said.

And the gates of hell will not stand a chance.

John the Baptist said in verse 23, I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord, just as Isaiah the prophet said.

I'm not the light.

I am the one just pointing to him and hopefully reflecting off of him.

In verse 24, they had been sent from the Pharisees, and so they asked him, Why do you baptize if you aren't the Messiah or Elijah or the prophet?

And John answered, I baptize with water, but someone stands among you.

You don't know him.

He's the one coming after me, whose sandal strap I'm not worthy to untie.

And all this happened in Bethany, across from the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

And the next day, John saw Jesus coming towards him.

And he said, Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

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

Can I give you a new perspective on that?

No?

Okay.

Can I give you a new perspective on that?

Oh, we're gonna learn to pray, we're gonna learn to read, and we're gonna learn to talk to Pastor Clayton while he's preaching.

This sounds like the ultimate glow-up.

The lamb of God, you know.

Do you know how lambs were used in Israel?

Do you know their purpose?

Do you know in Genesis chapter 4, the first time we hear about sacrifice, Abel's sacrifice was accepted by God because he gave the firstborn spotless male lamb?

Genesis 4 · chapter mention

Did you know that when the Israelites were trapped in Egypt, 400 years of slavery and God was going to rescue them, he brought judgment upon Egypt and he told the Israelites, if you want me to pass over you and not send judgment, you must spill the blood of a perfect, spotless male, firstborn lamb?

Did you know that when Jesus was on earth, the way that you covered your sins was going to the temple and spilling the blood of a lamb?

That's how you covered sins.

So here's a new perspective.

It's like your company has to cut money or they go bankrupt and you make the highest salary.

And you walk in on Monday and they go, Behold Nancy, who gets fired and takes away the debt of the company.

It's like, hold up.

He's pointing at Jesus and saying, Here's the guy who, if we spill his blood, can do once and for all what all of the rest of the lambs can only do temporarily.

I mean, we're in John chapter 1, and it's already a foreshadowing of his death.

John 1 · chapter mention

We sing the Lamb of God.

We praise the Lamb of God.

Do we know what we're saying?

The Lamb of God, whose brutal death and crucifixion will take away the sin of the world.

John said, This is the one I told you about.

After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he existed before me.

I didn't know him, but I came baptizing with water, so he might be revealed to Israel.

And John testified, I saw the spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and the spirit rested on him.

I didn't know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water told me, the one you see the spirit descending and resting on, he is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.

I have seen him testify that this is the Son of God.

And in our first chapter, we have the Trinity.

We have God the Father speaking.

This is my son with whom I am well pleased.

We have the Spirit descending on him, and we have Jesus, the Word, in the beginning, who was with God, individual, but also is God.

The Trinity is something that maybe we're not even supposed to be able to fully wrap our minds around.

Who are we to think that our finite, limited minds can actually grasp the greatness of who our God actually is?

But we can believe it.

We can see it in his word and believe it.

One God in three persons, all playing specific roles for the rescue and redemption of all of humanity.

The next day, John was standing with two of his disciples, and when he saw Jesus passing by, he said, Look, the Lamb of God.

And Jesus was like, Can we calm down with that?

I got three years left before all that.

Look, the Lamb of God.

And the two disciples heard him say this and follow Jesus.

And when Jesus turned and noticed them following him, he asked, What are you looking for?

John the Baptist was doing something new, and he was doing something effective.

Everyone was coming out.

And John was wild.

We read in the other gospels.

He like was hairy and just wore animal skins and he ate bugs, you know.

He was a wild guy.

He was effective and new.

Now Jesus is here.

And John was standing with two of his disciples, and the two disciples heard who Jesus was and they followed Jesus.

Which also means they left John.

And control is comforting.

We like grasping tight.

Grasping tight to things, grasping tight to people.

What are you willing to let go in order to really experience Jesus?

Let me ask it like this.

As metachurch, what are we willing to let go of to let people really pursue who Jesus might be calling them to be?

John says later, I must decrease so that Jesus might increase.

John was the man.

And all of a sudden, Jesus is the man.

John's not the man anymore.

He's not getting the attention.

He's not the new effective thing.

I mean, we gotta hold on to this.

I said it in the beginning.

If we get this confused, you're gonna think meta church is the light.

You're gonna think our service is the light.

You're gonna think our life team is the light.

Jesus is the light.

And all we're called to do is point people to him with everything we have, with everything we are, with every bit of gifting that we have, to be open-handed, to not seek control, to just give it away and trust Jesus with it.

When Jesus noticed them, he asked, What are you looking for?

And they said to him, Rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying?

And Jesus said, Come and see.

So they went and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day.

And it was about four in the afternoon.

And now, to end this out, we're gonna hear Jesus call his disciples.

Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two who heard John and followed him.

And he first found his own brother Simon and said to him, We have found the Messiah, which is translated the Christ.

And he brought Simon to Jesus.

This is Peter.

And Jesus saw him and he said, You are Simon, son of Jonah, but you will be called Cephas, which is translated Peter.

And the next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee, and he found Philip and told him, Follow me.

And Philip was from Bethseda, the hometown of Andrew, and Peter, and Philip found Nathaniel and told him, We found the one that Moses wrote about in the law.

Jesus, the son of Joseph, from Nazareth.

And Nathaniel asked, Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

There's like a few sayings, you know, like, New York, the city that never sleeps, and uh Las Vegas, what happens here stays here.

And can anything good come from Nazareth?

It was just the backwater, it was nowhere, nobody came out of there.

It was where dreams went to die, and it's where Jesus was from.

The most unlikely of places.

And Jesus saw Nathaniel coming toward him, and he said about him, Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.

How do you know me?

Nathaniel asked.

And before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you, Jesus answered.

He's like, When we were like geographically nowhere near each other, I saw you.

Rabbi Nathaniel replied, You are the Son of God.

You are the King of Israel.

And Jesus responded, Do you believe?

Just because I told you I saw you under the fig tree, bro, you are gonna see much greater things than this.

And then he said, Truly I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.

John chapter 1.

John 1 · chapter mention

And I often think about the disciples because I want to be a disciple.

I want to follow Jesus, I want to have impact.

And the disciples were regular people who heard about Jesus, dropped everything.

And followed him.

He didn't check resumes.

They didn't go through a screening process.

They didn't have a multiple choice test.

Jesus is looking for people who are willing to open their hands and let go of the things in the world where they find their hope and their security and their purpose and go on the adventure of a lifetime finding real hope and actual security and discovering the purpose that God placed inside of them from the moment that He created them.

You can be a disciple of Jesus.

You can follow after Jesus and you can live a life during your time on earth that makes a real impact on the world around you.

But I believe to do that, we can't just have a spiritual moment from Sunday to Sunday.

We have to become spiritual people who are spending time with the Word who is with God and is God by reading the written word inspired by God, by talking to Him, praying, which is a two-way conversation, speaking and listening, and at times by proving our dependence on God with spiritual disciplines like fasting.

And so we're going to close out today exactly how I expect you guys to close out the next 21 days by spending time in prayer.

And I want to walk you guys through a few prayer prompts that we put together.

And these prayer prompts are right out of the chapter that we read.

And you can pray for anything and everything that you want to pray for.

Pray for your family, pray for your kids, man, pray for help in areas that you're struggling, pray for our world, for our city, for our leaders, pray for Metachurch.

Please pray for this movement.

But we're also providing some prompts.

And so here's kind of how we break this down at Metachurch.

This is a place for everyone.

There are some of you who don't believe, but you belong here.

And there are some of you who have been walking with Jesus a long time.

And so in this moment, kind of like always, you can do whatever you want.

I am going to ask that you kind of bow your head, you know, you just create room for the people around you.

You can sit in your seat, you can stand and pray, you can go stand in a corner, you can get on your knees, you can do whatever you want.

For those who aren't so sure about this whole thing, here's what we're gonna ask.

We're gonna ask that you do what you want.

You don't feel ready to pray?

Nobody in this building will be casting judgment on you.

We're glad you're here.

We're glad you're wrestling with these things.

I would encourage you to pray.

Scripture promises if you seek God with all your heart, you'll find him.

Whatever you want to do, however it makes sense to you.

We've got some music playing, I'm gonna walk you through these prompts, and after every prompt, we're just gonna give you a minute or so to really pray through these things.

The first one says, Acknowledge that Jesus is God.

Admit the awe and wonder that comes from even trying to think about eternity.

Thank Jesus that the word became flesh and lived among us.

Just take a moment, acknowledge who Jesus is, and acknowledge the difference it makes that our God came down to us.

Let's thank him for that.

This is your time to pray.

Next prompt is to reflect on the life of John the Baptist.

John was famous, but he humbled himself to make Jesus known.

In this time of prayer, ask the Holy Spirit to put Jesus ahead of you in every single area of your life.

I want to challenge you to admit the areas where pride can get in your way and try to put you in first place.

Confess that to him.

He already knows.

Confess it.

And ask for help.

Humble yourself.

Think about what it would mean to really put Jesus first.

Let's pray.

What does it mean to follow you, Jesus?

Come and see.

Ask God to give you a picture of what your life would look like for people to see Jesus in you.

What would it look like for you to be fully reflecting who Jesus is?

Ask him.

Ask God for a picture of your life.

Who you can be with Jesus truly at the center of your life.

This first week, we'll start our first fast.

This is intentionally giving up something in your life.

And in week one, we've decided as a church to fast from a food item or a food category.

I would suggest that this is something that you do almost every day.

If you drink coffee or lots of caffeine every day, if you eat fast food every day, if you drink Starbucks every day, think of something that is actually going to affect the rhythm of your week.

And here's why.

Because number one, we're growing our dependence on God.

And number two, when you crave that thing that you've given up and set aside, when you're in that normal rhythm, we use that as a catalyst to remind us to pray, to saturate our lives in prayer.

That is the purpose of fasting.

And so our last moment together, I want you to pray.

And I want you to meditate, to just think deeply about what you are gonna give up, and then very simply, commit that to God.

Jesus, over the next week, I am giving you blank.

Just say it out loud.

Say it to Him.

Make that commitment.

Scripture and prayer and fasting, I do believe it's gonna do something significant in your life.

So in this last moment, let's think and let's make our commitment to what we're fasting from this week.

Jesus, I don't know that I've ever had this level of expectation.

I just know the promises in your word of what will happen when your people actually look at the God-breathed words of Scripture.

When we allow new information to begin to form us more into the person you've created us to be.

When your people pray, you listen and you answer.

We're showing how serious we are by giving something up.

Every week, giving something up, we want to hear from you, God.

We want you to move in us.

Make us ready to do whatever you ask of us.

We love you.

And we pray all these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

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.

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