23 & Me: Pilgrims Perspective 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.

If you're new with us, my name's Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at Meta.

I'm so glad that you joined us.

Man, we are a gathering of ordinary people, jacked up people, keeping it real, coming in, getting honest over ordinary people with the opportunity to live extra ordinary lives as a part of the movement of Jesus.

And we're starting this year off with a series 23 and me, where we're focusing in on identity, a topic that is discussed over and over and over again in our culture, and yet people can't really define it broadly.

And when they have to define it personally, your your identity, the root of who you are and what makes you you, people really, really struggle.

And we're dialing into a difficult topic.

We're spending six weeks on it, and every week is building, we're going somewhere in this series.

So if you are new with us and you missed last week and today means anything to you, I'd really encourage you to go on our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash metachurch, to get caught up.

And I want to encourage those of you who are a part of this movement to get here.

And if you cannot be here to stream with us, and for those who are streaming with us, I want to welcome you in and encourage you the same way.

Make sure you hit every week of this series so that you get the full, well-rounded view on how to know who we are.

I've also, I told you, so I'm gonna keep pressing.

All throughout this series, I'm gonna encourage us to become a note-taking church.

I'm praying that every week I see more pens, pencils, notebooks, iPad stylists, you know, uh I don't care, typewriters, whatever you gotta bring in order to get some notes down, to get your retention up.

Because we're not here playing church.

We're here trying to take the truths of God and apply it so it becomes the power of God in our life and for a world that is desperate for hope.

And for us to bring hope, we have to know who we are.

Last week, to kind of review a little bit, we saw that there are many things that we believe are identity, but really we are misclassifying them.

Things like our personality or our temperament, our physical appearance, our attractions, our worst ways or the mistakes that we've made.

Sometimes we think our social role is our identity.

Things like our skill sets, accomplishments, our career, even things as basic as our interests.

All of these things we can confuse for the root and the core of our identity, and all of these do play a role in what makes you unique.

However, they are far too short-sighted, and they are ever-changing, which means if you root your identity in things that change over and over again throughout the course of your life, you will always find yourself, like our culture finds itself, in an identity crisis.

Here's what we saw last week.

When we look back at the creation narrative, we see that in the garden, God created us in his image, and he gave us a divine mandate.

What that means is he created us as divine image bearers.

That's who we are, and he gave us an incredible and significant purpose.

This is where we got our big idea that will carry us all series long.

The series' big idea is your identity is rooted in the garden.

And as we turn the corner today, we're gonna ask how we live this out practically.

How do we break away from the pool of an entire culture that is defining themselves by worldly things and instead cement our life and our identity into the deeper, transcendent truths of God?

In week one, we saw to know who you are, you have to know why you are here.

And this week, we're gonna take the next step.

To know who you are, we have to know where are you going.

To know who you are, you have to know where you are going.

We're in a cultural identity crisis.

We don't know who we are, and we don't know where we're going.

And when you don't know where you're going, you'll often hear people say, I just have no direction in life.

My life just feels kind of aimless.

I'm searching for direction.

And when we say that, you know what we mean.

You don't mean I'm trying to get to the HEB at Petrenko and I don't know the best route.

You mean you have no sense of purpose in your life.

You're not sure where to derive meaning.

You don't know how to map the activities of your life in a way that is meaningful and rewarding.

I have no direction in life.

And maybe some of you are in that space right now.

Maybe you feel quite directionless.

Maybe you feel that way across many aspects of your life.

In your career right now, maybe you just hate your job.

It is a grind for you to get up every day, just show up.

Maybe you don't hate your job, you just can't tell really why it matters.

Like what difference is it making?

What are you adding to the world?

Maybe you are directionless in your relationships.

You're you're single and you're dating, or maybe you're a part of hookup culture and you're trying to find something.

At a minimum, you're sliding into some DMs every once in a while.

Like you're trying to make something happen.

But the harder you try and the more random hookups you have, the emptier it leaves you feeling than before.

And some of you, maybe you feel direct directionless in just the habits of your life and how you're taking care of yourself.

Maybe you feel that way in your friendships.

It's so easy to feel this sense of lack of direction, and and the answer might be kind of surprising.

What I'm about to share is it's so obvious, it's so fundamental that when you hear it and when you grasp it, it might actually be frustrating.

I remember years ago when I was a really young man reading a book by Andy Stanley, and and when I understood the concept that he was speaking on, similar to today's content, I remember thinking, how have I missed this for so long?

It is so obvious, but so few people really grasp it and actually apply it to their life.

Okay, so are you ready?

This is a church where you talk back.

So are you ready?

Yes.

If you feel lost seeking direction in life and not finding it, the most common reason is because you have forgotten that directions require a destination.

Directions require a destination.

In other words, you don't have a directions problem.

You have a destination problem.

If I came and said, hey bro, can I get some directions?

What's the first question you're gonna ask?

Where are you going?

What if I said, I don't know?

Can you imagine if someone asked you for directions and you're like, sure, boss, we're two?

Don't know.

They don't have a directions problem, they have a destination problem.

And this is so often what happens.

What do we say?

I'm looking for direction in my life.

You're seeking for directions.

Directions are not a goal.

Directions are a tool to get you to the goal of your destination.

Does this happen to anybody else?

You're walking in your house and you walk into a room, and then you think, why did I come in here?

Usually it's the kitchen, I'm not gonna lie.

My directions are irrelevant because I've lost sight of my destination in the first place.

Let's say it a different way.

If you don't know your destination, your directions don't matter.

This is so important because we're not talking about how to navigate 4, 10, and 35.

We're talking about the direction of your life.

And we're out here seeking the wrong thing.

We're out here trying to establish direction for our life when we haven't yet established the destination of our life.

We're confusing the purpose with the process that is meant to get us to it.

Until we have an ultimate aim or an ultimate goal, until we have a destination that our life, everything in our life, everything is filtered through your relationship, your marriage, your parenting, your career, your habits, your friendships, your social circle, all of your thoughts, everything that you are and have, until everything is pointed to the same destination, you will forever be seeking direction.

And some points in your life things will be good and you'll be rejoicing and you'll feel prosperous.

And that will last only so long because even the prosperity in life can't ultimately fill us with the hope and the peace and the purpose that God brings.

And sometimes you'll be suffering in life, and in your suffering, you'll look for a new direction, a new way out.

And you will always be fickle and you will always be changing, always grasping for direction, never realizing you were never meant to look for direction in the first place.

You were meant to look for God for your destination and then set the directions towards it.

To know who you are, you have to know where you are going.

To have a sense of direction, you have to know your destination.

Would you pray with me?

Father, we're here today and we are seeking you, and we're seeking your destination.

And I thank you for a place like Metachurch, a place for all people and all different parts of their faith journey.

People may have different ideas about this, different beliefs, and yet we all know what it feels like to be lost.

We all know what it feels like to have a sense that our life isn't adding up, that things aren't leading us anywhere, that we're not making any progress.

We all know what moments of purposelessness do to our hearts and to our souls.

We want to know where we are going because we want to know who we are.

We're here seeking our identity, and I believe God, it is found in you.

And so you have told us if we seek you with all of our hearts, we will find you.

That's what we're here to do today.

We love you.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

And if you're ready to find your destination, say, Amen.

Amen.

To know who you are, you have to know where you are going.

So, where are we going?

Now let me acknowledge, Metachurch is a place where you can belong here before you believe all of the tenets of the Christian faith, right?

This is a place for all people in all different walks of their faith journey.

But you need to know when we talk about our destination today, we are assuming the Christian worldview.

And here's the problem with an atheistic worldview when it comes to determining a destination.

Your destination is set, it is six feet under the ground, it is curtains, it is the end, it is game over.

That is the end.

And throughout all of human history, when people really come to that conclusion that if we remove God from the equation, what we end up with is nihilism, which means nothing ultimately matters.

At the bottom of all of it, there is no actual meaning, there is no actual purpose, there is no actual significance.

And you can live for utilitarian purposes or you can live to leave a legacy behind for the people that you love, but the people you're leaving your legacy behind will also end up just six feet under as worm food, like everybody else.

So we're going to assume from the Christian perspective that we are actual eternal beings, that everything is heading somewhere to seek to understand Scripture's prescription for our destination.

And to do that, I've got to set quite a bit of context.

Like we're gonna move from maybe the 201 class that we normally hold here on Sunday service up to like maybe 301, maybe senior level for just a moment here, as we look at what scripture tells us is coming at the end.

And you guys know this, your boy can draw, right?

Could have been an artist, probably, right?

It was either singer, artist, or preacher, right?

I went preacher route, but I'm pretty good at drawing.

If you're new, I'm lying.

I'm not good at drawing.

Here's what we're gonna do.

I I gotta sketch this out because when I'm able to write it out, it helps me to preach it out sometimes.

And then once I get it all out, I've got a graphic where you'll actually be able to read.

We'll get to that in a minute.

There's like all of human history, you know, however long you think that has lasted.

And as we jump onto the timeline, I want us to start at the moment that changed everything.

And that is when Jesus came down to our world.

He lived the perfect life that you and I could not live.

He had three years of incredible ministry.

Eventually, Jesus died on the cross, then he rose from the grave, and then he ascended back to heaven and promised that one day he would come back for us.

Since that moment, there has been about 2,000 years of human history, and this is where you are.

You are here, right in the messed up, jacked up, uncomfortable, tension-filled middle between Jesus first coming and when Jesus returns to make all things right.

This is where we find ourselves seeking desperately for direction.

And today is such a great follow-up to week one, because in week one we saw that you don't know how to root your identity unless you know how to look back, back at the garden where you were made in the image of God, back at the cross of Jesus Christ, where God loved you enough to come down to our world and give his life for you.

You don't know how to root your identity if you don't know how to look back to the garden.

But today, we are seeing that you don't know how to live out your identity if you don't know how to look forward to your destination.

And so, what does scripture say is coming?

Well, at some point, and we do not know the time, and if anyone says they know the time, they're probably trying to sell you a book.

Nobody knows the time.

At some point, the church, which is the spiritual church, meaning all people who have believed in Jesus, will be taken out of this world in what is often called the rapture.

Now, this is a great gift from God because after the church is taken out, there will be seven years of tribulation.

At the end of the seven years, the world will be worse than it has ever been by orders of magnitude.

There will be famine, there will be disease, there will be pestilence, there will be natural disasters.

About a third of the world's population will not make it out of this time.

And it's a great gift of God that Jesus will rapture his church out before that happens.

Here's what the Apostle Paul says in First Thessalonians: for the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, but the archangel's voice and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

And then we who are still alive, who are left, will be caught up together with him in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.

And so we will always be with the Lord.

This is not the second coming of Jesus.

This is Jesus coming and taking out his bride, taking out his church.

After that, there are seven years of tribulation, and then the second coming of King Jesus.

And Jesus will come and he will rule and reign for one thousand years, bringing complete justice, making all of the wrongs right.

And at the end of that thousand years, that is the end of our timeline, our experience of this world.

At the end of that thousand years, Jesus will do battle with all of evil and all of the spiritual enemies of God and defeat them once and for all, and he will bring about the new heavens and the new earth.

Y'all can clap for that.

That's the good news at the end of the story.

And I brought a graphic because I realize you can't read, like, you know, any of this.

So now that we're all note takers, if you're jotting some stuff down, I'll make it a little bit easier for you.

Now, this is a mapping of what we believe Scripture says about the end of time.

This is a mapping.

But hear me closely.

This is not what I'm calling your destination.

This is what is to come.

But you, on a personal level, you as a believer and follower of Jesus, this is not what we aim our lives at.

This is good to know.

It's good to know the end of the story.

It's good to know the end because it puts all of the messy middle into perspective.

It's good to know that as long as there is God, there is hope.

And that even when things don't work out in this life, that there is hope on the other side of it.

And it's good to know that you can pray for healing for your loved ones that are sick, and you can pray with every fiber of confidence because healing is coming one way or another.

It might be in this life, or it might be in the life to come where we will spend eternity with them.

This is good news, but it's not what I'm calling your destination.

There's a lot to talk about here that we don't have time for today.

But there's an essential piece, and really the reason we put all of this up is to get to this.

If you're familiar at all with the Christian faith, then you're probably familiar with the idea of judgment.

That at the end there will be judgment, and that all people will have to stand before their maker, and all people will have to give an account for their life.

And a lot of people don't talk about this, and there's a lot of confusion around it, and a lot of really bad theology has come out of this lack of understanding and lack of decision to talk about this, and a lot of fear has been used to leverage in the lives of people, even though scripture says that God is love and perfect love casts out fear.

So if we know Jesus, we should be the one people on earth who have no fear in our lives.

And so let's talk about it.

What many people think about as the ultimate judgment at the end of time for all people is what scripture calls the great white throne judgment.

And the great white throne judgment comes at the very end.

The great white throne comes at the very, very end, and all people stand before God, and it's a judgment of your works, and this is where people get confused because they think this is the one once and for all judgment, and it is a judgment of works, which means if you are not adding works to your faith, you might not make it into eternity, and that's a misunderstanding.

This is just one of the judgments.

And I realize that the prophecy in scripture and the revelation in scripture, it can be hard to read, but when read in whole and when taken holistically, what you learn is the great white throne, which happens at the very end, like the last second.

This is a judgment for unbelievers.

Not for all people, but for unbelievers, for people who had the decision and did not put their faith in Jesus.

In Revelation 20, it says this Then I saw a great white throne and one seated on it.

Earth and heaven fled from his presence, and no place was found for them.

I also saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and the books were open.

Another book was open, which is the book of life, and the dead were judged according to their works by what was written in the books.

And anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

And boy, does it get quiet when you start talking about hell.

It's uncomfortable, and it's why a lot of people don't do it, they don't spend a lot of time.

And here's what's ironic is we don't want to talk about hell because talking about hell feels unloving.

And yet, if this is what we believe, if this is what scripture reveals, that someday unbelievers will be judged by their works, they will be found sinful, and their sin will separate them from God forever.

A God who is perfect and holy, and because of his perfection and his holiness, cannot be in the presence of sinners.

And so two things can be true at the same time.

At a meturch, we do whatever it takes.

A meturch is a place for all people.

Medichurch is a place where you can belong before you believe.

Metachurch is a place where you can come and wrestle with the hardest issues of life and faith and spirituality and be loved without condition.

But I will stand my ground that it is only loving to speak truth.

This is what we believe is coming.

And please do not mistake our motivation and our intensity to create an environment for all people as a lack of urgency for what lies ahead of us.

The great white throne is a judgment, it's a judgment for unbelievers.

And yet, there is a different fate that awaits believers.

For believers, there's a little bit of an issue here because at the great white throne, the spiritual church has been taken out for over a thousand years.

When it comes to being in God's presence, we've already been there.

We've been there over a thousand years at this point.

The judgment for believers comes at the moment that we enter eternity, and it is what is called the judgment seat of Christ.

The judgment seat of Christ is the moment of transition between this life and the next.

It's the moment when believers in Jesus actually stand before Jesus, and scripture says our lives will be made manifest.

The best we can understand that is that the judgment seat of Christ, the tape on your life will be ran back.

You will actually review.

Who you were and how you lived during your time on earth.

And if you're anything like me, and if you have even half as many skeletons in your closet as I do, and if you've hurt even a tenth of the number of people I've hurt throughout my life, that scares the crap out of you.

You're gonna watch all of it back.

And so, what exactly is going on here at the judgment seat?

And maybe you're thinking, I've never heard of this man, and I'm not sure that I really hold on to this a judgment of believers.

You might not believe in it, but the writers of scripture and the men and women of the early church who changed the world and spread the gospel, they did.

The Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, writing to believers in Corinth, he says to the believers, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may be repaid for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

Many people are hesitant to preach or teach on the judgment seat of Christ because they are uncomfortable talking about a judgment for believers.

However, their lack of comfort comes from a lack of context.

Let's start with the words themselves.

The word that is used for judgment throughout most all of Scripture is the Greek word criterion.

Criterion is where we get our English word criteria.

It's an actual test.

And when this word is used, it is used about the nature of judgment.

Actually, having someone in a court of law and finding them guilty.

That's what happens at the great white throne when you stand before God in the high heavenly courts and are found guilty for the sin that was not covered by the blood of Jesus.

When it comes to the judgment seat of Christ, the judgment for believers, a different word is used every time.

The word judgment is not criterion, it is the word Bema, B-E-M-A.

And Bama has a completely different context.

The word isn't about the nature of the judgment, rather, it points to an actual physical type of seat or pedestal.

It is the Bama seat of Christ.

And that doesn't mean a whole lot to you and I, but to Paul's original audience, to James' original audience, to the original readers of scripture, they knew exactly what the Bama seat was in their cultural context.

The Bama seat was the raised platform that the judge would sit on to evaluate the athletes at what in Christ's time was called the Athens Games.

In our time is called the Olympics.

The Bama seat is where the judge would take in every minute detail of every action of every athlete, and at the end, they would stand before the Bama seat of the Athens Games, which means the judgment seat of Christ, the Bama seat of Christ is not a judgment to punish us, is a judgment seat to reward us.

And this was kept at the forefront of every person's mind.

And so I need you to hear this clearly.

For believers in Jesus, this is our destination.

Our entrance into the life we believe comes after this life starts at the Bhima seat, the judgment seat of Christ.

This is where everything is headed towards, the moment.

And I need you to do your best to turn your imagination on, to try and picture it the moment when this life concludes.

And all you're promised is the breath in your lungs right now.

No more.

Tomorrow is not promise.

This afternoon is not promise.

None of us know when our time will come.

And at the entrance, the transition to our eternal life, we will first stand before Jesus.

And as we stand before Jesus, we will review our life.

Our life will be made manifest.

And what you will see is you will see your Savior in front of you.

And we've heard the stories and we've watched the passion of the Christ, and we have some idea, and every Easter we we get into the gory details of all that Jesus has done for us.

But from an eternal perspective, you will look down the corridors of time.

You will see and you will fully understand for the very first time exactly what Jesus actually did for you.

At the same time.

I can tell you why your sin is really bad.

But the same sin in my life I can rationalize away pretty easily.

There will be no rationalization.

We'll watch it all back.

And so at the same time that you look into the eyes of actual perfect love, not a love you've ever experienced, the best love that we have to offer is just a glimpse of the fullness of love that is Jesus.

And as you look back on what he actually did for you, the price that his perfect life actually paid for you, the cross that you should have died on, but he took your place.

As you look back on your life and all of the ways day by day and moment by moment that you went astray from the life that God called you to live when you finally realize the actual debt that you owed, and when you finally realize the price that it took to pay it, you will stand before Jesus.

And I'm telling you, it's tough to do because we don't think this way.

We're looking for direction, not destination.

But if you will set your eyes on that destination, and if you can really live there even just for a moment, I promise you, in that moment, there will be nothing that you will want more than to have taken advantage of every single opportunity to give your life back to Jesus.

And we lose sight of that, and it gets so difficult to try to live this life and manage this life.

But we've already learned in this series your identity, it's rooted in the garden.

You were made in the image of God, proving he has a vested interest in your life, so much so that he sent Jesus to exchange his life for your own.

The cross of Jesus, it paid the price of your sin.

A price that you have no ability to calculate.

And when we believe in Jesus, scripture says it changes us.

Not a little bit, it changes us completely.

2 Corinthians 5 says, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old is passed away.

And see, the new has come, a new creation.

Our identity is no longer rooted in our personality or our accomplishments, our mistakes or attractions, our skill sets or our social roles.

Our identity is rooted in Jesus himself.

The Bama seat, the judgment seat of Christ is where we stand before Him and evaluate how we live out our life as a new creation.

Did we continue to find our identity in the things of this world?

Did we struggle to look for our direction from celebrities and influencers and the people around us who don't even care about us?

Did we imitate Jesus with our life?

Did we assimilate into this world, not to be like the world, but to cultivate the gospel amongst a world who is lost and living in darkness?

Did we uplift the downtrodden?

Did we befriend the friendless?

Did we stand up for the marginalized?

Did we give our life away?

Or did we hoard our life for our own selfish interest?

Did we believe in Jesus?

Did we have that moment of putting our trust in him and then live the rest of our time like we barely knew him?

Or did we believe in Jesus and then take up our cross and deny ourselves daily and actually follow after him?

So all of that is easy to preach on.

And let's get real, it's a lot more difficult to actually live out.

And we are bombarded by a world that is not seeking to set their direction in the destination of the throne of Jesus Christ.

And we are living in a world of suffering, and we're living in a world of the unknown, and we're living in a world of division, and we're living in a world of temptation, and we're living in a culture in an identity crisis that's trying to tell us to root who we are and where we're going in the things of this world that are ever fading and ever changing and never fully established.

It's very difficult.

And yet, the status quo of just going from one identity crisis to another, the status quo of changing the direction of our life every couple of years, shifting it, molding it, trying to figure it out, feeling lost, feeling purposeless, we're not okay with that either.

And we see there are men and women throughout history who have done it.

They've understood their destination.

They've actually been able to line their life up to it.

And in doing so, whether they lived in affluence or poverty, whether they were famous or infamous, they made a difference in the world.

And so, how do we do it?

How do we practically live it out?

When you look at the heroes of scripture, they knew who they were.

But to know who you are, you have to know where you are going.

And they understood what the Bima seat meant.

It's the judge's seat at the games, it's the evaluation of the life that we lived, and it's no wonder that many times in Scripture, the picture they paint of living a life with the clear destination in mind, is the picture of running a race.

The Apostle Paul said this Don't you know that the runners in a stadium, they all race, but only one receives the prize.

Run in such a way to win the prize.

Now, everyone who competes exercises self-control in everything.

They do it to receive a perishable crown, but we an imperishable crown.

Now he's he's elevating the metaphor.

There's not just one winner, there's not just one prize, and it isn't just a trophy that is going to fade and tarnish over time.

This is eternal, this is all-encompassing, this is the call to all believers.

So I do not run like the one who runs aimlessly.

Are you running the race of life aimlessly?

I do not run like someone who has no direction.

I do not box like one simply beating the air.

Instead, I discipline my body and I bring it under strict control so that after preaching to others, I myself will not be disqualified.

The author who wrote to Hebrews uses a similar metaphor in Hebrews 12.

He says, Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, in Hebrews 12, they just went through Hebrews 11, just naming off one after one men and women who kept the destination in mind, set their direction in the absolute pursuit of it and changed the world.

This large cloud of witnesses, you can do this because people have come before you, jacked up, normal people like you have actually pulled this off.

We have a large cloud of witnesses, so let us lay aside every hindrance and every sin that so easily ensnares us.

And let us run with endurance the race that lies before us.

Paul says, I'm not out here training aimlessly.

I'm not out here with no direction.

It's like, what do you need to add to your life?

What do you need to get right?

What do you need to start doing?

And man, some of these answers are so elementary and they are so Sunday school and they are they are so they seem so far beneath us.

It's like here we go again, another sermon about praying and reading your Bible.

I will quit preaching that when we all start praying and reading our Bibles.

Like, what do you need to add in?

Hebrews has the opposite.

What do you need to throw off?

Lay aside.

What has this world sat on top of you, saddled you with, burdened you with?

For some of you, it's a habit.

For some of you, it's a worldview.

And for almost all of us, at some point in our life, it is a narrative that lives inside of our mind.

That every time you get up to do something significant reminds you that you don't have what it takes anyway.

That every time you start to actually pursue Jesus reminds you that you're not worth loving anyway.

That every time you go to start getting things right reminds you you will always be broke anyway.

You don't have the education anyway.

They left you anyway, your parents split up anyway.

There is a narrative inside of you that was not placed there by God.

It's time to lay it aside.

Anything hindering you, anything keeping you back, anything that is keeping you from pressing forward towards the finish line, setting your direction towards your destination.

The heroes of scripture and the men and women throughout time who have given their life wholly to the gospel, who have moved mountains with their lives, they all had one thing in common.

They knew their destination.

A couple times a year I preach a sermon about this.

It's one of our how we live at Meta Church.

We call it a pilgrim's perspective.

You know what a pilgrim knows?

A pilgrim knows wherever they're at, it's not home.

They're just a pilgrim passing through.

A pilgrim's perspective is day by day, moment by moment, the acknowledgement that this world and this life is not the end game.

This world and this life is not our home.

Jesus believed this about you.

In John chapter 17, Jesus is praying for his disciples.

John 17 · chapter mention

And he says, This I've given them your word, and the world hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

I'm not praying that you take them out of the world, they've got work to do, or that you protect them from the evil one.

They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

And look, if you're if you're kind of new to the Bible and all that, and you're like, man, he's talking about the disciples.

He's talking about the big twelve.

Go read about the disciples.

Ordinary, jacked up, finite, fallible people, just like you, and just like me.

And what does Jesus say?

Even this is the night before Jesus dies.

As they are all getting ready to abandon him, one's getting ready to betray him, one's getting ready to deny him.

And what does he believe about them?

They are not of this world.

He goes on to say, Sanctify them by the truth.

Your word is truth.

As you sent me into the world, this is what Jesus says.

I have sent them into the world.

Sanctify means to be set apart, to be different.

And that's really the question for us.

Is the direction of our life actually have any separation from the direction of the lives around us who don't know Jesus?

And I said it last week, but you know, our job, we learned our mission last week, it's to imitate Jesus and assimilate into your world and to cultivate the gospel, the good news of Jesus among everyone, everywhere, to do whatever it takes to get people to Jesus.

And we know this that we don't win people to Jesus by what we say, we win people to Jesus by what they see in our lives.

Does our life look different?

Are we constantly setting and resetting and resetting and resetting direction based on the whims of the world or the circumstance that we find ourselves in?

Or is our destination secure in something that is eternal and unchanging?

The call to believe in Jesus couldn't be simpler.

He did all of the work.

All that he asks for is your faith.

But the call to follow Jesus is a call that costs.

Nothing great in your life, nothing great, nothing significant will ever be built without cost.

And the call takes intention, and it requires knowing who you are, and to know who you are.

You have to know why you're here.

You have to know there's a purpose.

You're not of this world, but you are in it because you have work to do to know who you are.

You have to know where you are going.

And across our three services, there's hundreds of you guys here at MetaCurch.

And I don't know every part of what makes you you and all your personality and what career you're in and the social roles you play in your temperament and personality, what your interests are.

I don't know all of that.

I I can't diagnose from this stage, in this moment, exactly how to reset the direction of your life towards the destination of Jesus' throne.

But here's what I know.

If you will take on a pilgrim's perspective, if you will wake up in the morning and remind yourself moment by moment throughout the day, that your destination lies on the other side of this light, that your destination is at the feet of Jesus Himself.

If you will have a pilgrim's perspective, then your life and your direction will begin to line up to that end.

I told you before, one of my favorite songs, an older song, a hymn.

It says, turn your eyes upon Jesus.

Look full in his wonderful face.

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim.

The things that are keeping you held back, stuck, lost.

The things that you keep seeking for direction and they keep leading you down the wrong paths.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus.

Look full in his wonderful face.

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim.

In the light of his glory and his grace.

Quit searching for direction.

Set your eyes on the destination and orient your life towards it.

The direction will follow.

And once you know where you're going, you'll be one step closer to knowing who you are.

Would you pray with me?

Father, we are we're looking to you.

Jesus, we are doing our best to just acknowledge and believe.

And I I want to pray like the man in scripture, we believe.

Help us with our unbelief.

God, I pray that the Bema seat would not be something that we dread.

That we would look forward to the opportunity to stand before Jesus, to stand before the fullness of love.

That we would look forward to the opportunity to see the ways we've taken advantage of the life we've been given to live.

And God, we thank you that all of the ways that we have fallen short, you have forgiven us.

And today, we quit seeking direction.

Instead, we set our eyes on our ultimate destination.

Holy Spirit, we're asking that you would remind us that we are just pilgrims passing through, and you would help us to take every aspect of our life and filter it through the lens of where we now know we are going.

We love you.

And we pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

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