Three16: Easter with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

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.

All right, well, welcome to Easter at MetaCurch.

How are you guys doing?

Yeah.

I know we have some new people with us.

If you are new, my name's Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at Meta.

And uh no matter how you got here, maybe you're like spiritually curious, and so Easter was an obvious time to come and check somewhere out.

I I'm not like under any illusions here.

I know some of you are here because a wife or husband or mom or abuela dragged you here, and I am so glad that you are here as well.

MetaCurch is a place for all people to come and wrestle with life's hardest questions.

We are in a series called 316, and it's based around probably the most famous verse in the Christian scriptures, which is John 3.16.

It says this for God loved the world in this way, he gave his one and only son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life.

Now, this is a crucial, crucial verse and might be the most important statement that Jesus made.

And even if you didn't grow up around church, you might have heard of John 3.16 because it's really pervaded the culture at large.

In the national championship game, we talked about how Tim Tebow wrote under his helmet, across his IBLAC, John 3.16.

93 million people Googled it that night.

Even if you go back a little further to WWE, Stone Cold, Steve Austin, that is Austin 316.

And we're gonna talk in our next series that Celeste just promoed for us about what the Bible actually is.

But I want to give you a little bit of a hint here.

We call this the Gospel of John.

There's four of these gospels in the Christian scriptures, and what these are are accounts of eyewitness testimony of the life of Jesus.

John was a disciple of Jesus.

He spent three years following him, and then he was an apostle, which means he's one of the people who started this church movement that we are still a part of.

John wrote down his own eyewitness account.

And in John chapter three, we're in a Jewish context in the New Testament, and Jesus is in Jerusalem for Passover.

Now, something you have to know about Jesus, incredibly popular with the everyday people like you and me.

However, with the spiritual elites in Israel, he was seen as very dangerous.

They did not like Jesus at all.

John three is interesting because one of these Pharisees, spiritual elite, came to Jesus at night to kind of try and suss out like who this guy is and how he's gonna use all of this power that he has been displaying.

And we learn so much throughout this.

We spent three weeks just going through the first part of John 3, verses 1 through 15.

John 3:1–15

Today, I want to focus on a very specific element, which is Jesus showing us who God actually is.

And this is really important because so many of us today, and so many people in our culture have their minds made up already about who God is.

They already have him figured out.

So when you start talking about God's heart for you and God's love for you, it's like you go ahead and check out because your experience has shown you and the world around you and the church experiences you've had have taught you that God is an angry, wrathful God, that he cannot wait to do his favorite pastime, which is smiting people for their sin.

You gotta give him a little bit of credit because the way most of us picture him, he's got a great beard, you know.

He's old, but he's kind of jacked, lightning bolts in both hands, just waiting for you to mess up so he can punish you for going against him.

So often, this is how we view God, and this is how I often viewed God growing up.

And really, it helps us understand the context Jesus was in 2,000 years ago.

The Jewish community had decided the same thing that God was a distant God, that he had a lot of wrath.

If anything went wrong in your life, it was because of sin in your life.

If you were poor, sin too much.

If you were sick, it's because you sin too much.

Spurs miss the playoffs again, sin too much, you know, like anything that goes wrong in your life, you could peg on this angry, upset God.

And Jesus came and totally flipped the script.

And, you know, I've been wrestling because as a preacher, it felt almost sacrilegious to not come to Easter and go to the passages about Jesus in the tomb and the stone rolling away, but we're not doing that today.

The reason is because we have a culture who has so discredited who God is and has such a corrupted view of how God loves them that even if you could prove the resurrection is true, even if somehow you had like airtight evidence that a Jewish carpenter named Jesus really died and walked out of that grave, there are many people who would still not believe in him because they don't trust God's heart for them.

To say it simply, before we can dig in and really explore the incredible work of God, we're gonna take time today and explore the heart of God.

And if that's you, and maybe you like went back and forth all week long about whether or not you were gonna actually show up today because all the church has ever done is hurt you and judge you.

I wanna say, first of all, I completely understand.

Because when you go into judgmental church environments and the people who raise a hand to say they represent God act in ways that are angry, resentful, and judgmental.

It's not a huge leap of logic to assume that that's how God is as well.

But Jesus came to show us something significantly different.

And throughout this series, we've learned a lot.

We've learned about new birth, a new covenant, a new kingdom.

But today we've gotten to verse 16, and 316 shows us the heart of God.

Would you pray with me?

God, we love you, and today we are here celebrating the moment that changed everything.

It changed history, it changed culture, it changed our very values of things like justice, equality, inherent worth, and inherent rights.

All of that can be traced back to Jesus walking out of the grave.

And so today we are looking to you, God, and we are seeking to understand your heart and how you feel about us.

And so I thank you for MetaCurch, a place for all people to come and wrestle with difficult, difficult questions.

And I just ask that we'd be humble enough to lay down our pride, lay down our preconceived ideas, and just to let you speak to us.

We love you.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

If you're ready to finally get to 316, say amen.

Amen.

What we're gonna do today is we're gonna go to Luke's gospel, that's Luke's account of Jesus' life.

We're gonna dig into a story that Jesus told that expands this idea of helping us understand the heart of God.

Now, Jesus, when he would show up places, thousands of people would show up to listen to him teach.

And most of those were just the everyday common people like you and like me, and they would hang on every word, but often the Pharisees, the religious leaders, would show up as well to try and discredit him.

That same thing happened in Luke 15.

In verse 1, it says, All the tax collectors and sinners were approaching to listen to him.

And the Pharisees and scribes, the religious leaders, were complaining.

This man welcomes sinners.

And it's not that he just lets them come to the sermon, and he eats with them.

He's doing life with them.

And of course, they feel some way about this because their view of God is that God distances himself from sinners.

The idea that God might actually be pursuing them isn't just not on their mind.

To them, it seems injust.

And so Jesus brings an answer.

He starts telling a series of stories about things that are lost and become found, and it culminates with a story you may be familiar with, the story of the prodigal son.

In verse 11, he also said, A man had two sons.

The younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the share of the estate that I have coming to me.

Now I want us to focus on the story Jesus is telling, but I also want us to keep in mind what the reaction of Jesus' Jewish audience would have been that day.

Baseline of what the younger brother is saying is, I want my inheritance and I want it right now.

There were very clear laws around Jewish inheritance, and law number one is you don't get it till your dad's dead.

That's like the baseline law of inheritance.

And when Jesus said this, this young man came and said, I want my inheritance right now, his audience would have gasped.

He might as well have started the story like this: a man had two sons.

The younger of the sons came and said right to his father's face, I wish you were dead.

I can't wait for you to die.

I need what's coming to me, and I need it right now.

People can't even comprehend a son acting in this manner and wait until we get to the end of the verse.

The younger said, Father, give me the share of the estate I have coming.

And Jesus tells the crowd so the father distributed the assets to them.

What?

The father did what to the audience?

That's a bad dad.

He's the father, he's in control, he doesn't have to do this.

Why is he giving in?

That's the wrong response.

The right response would be a response I heard a few times as a young man, which was you might be grown, but you're not too big to whoop, right?

That's the correct response.

And they can't understand it.

The Pharisees, who actually are in charge of making sure people keep the law, I mean, they're just blown away.

Like Jesus is telling the craziest story ever.

And at this point in the story, most people probably assume this is a story about a bad father.

The son wants what he has coming to him, and he says it in very clear terms.

I can't really wait around for you to die.

I need what I have coming to me, and I need it right now.

Now, this wasn't like he's getting a 401k, you know.

This was land, property, buildings, cattle, goods, and then maybe some wealth.

All of this would be divided amongst the two sons.

And what Jesus is gonna do as the master storyteller is he's gonna take this story and continue to degrade and degrade and degrade.

Not only does he get his inheritance early, he then goes to the credit union and liquidates all of his assets.

All of the land, property, buildings, cattle, all of the goods that this family has built for generation after generation after generation to hand to this son and then help him continue to build, he now has taken, liquidated, sold all the land to the highest bidder, sold the cattle, sold the buildings, not only gotten his inheritance, but now destroyed the family's legacy.

The people in the audience would be beside themselves.

Like, even though they know it's a fake story, it's like, let's go find this kid, you know?

Let's teach him a lesson.

In the young man's mind, he's gotta do this.

This is a necessary step because if he doesn't liquidate the assets, he can't leave home.

All that he wants is to go as far away as possible from his father so he can make a name for himself.

That's exactly what he does.

He takes his newfound fortune and he goes off into the far country, into a foreign land where he is unknown and where there's no one who exists that can tell him that magical two-letter word, no.

He lives exactly how he's always dreamed about living.

He starts spending money like crazy, spending it on drugs, alcohols, parties.

He's got a fortune, he's making it rain.

And yes, I know what that actually means, and that's what he's actually doing.

He's at the strip club, he's buying prostitutes, the story tells us later.

And magically, with all this money, he has all of these friends.

Jesus continues and says, He spends so much that quickly he runs out of money.

And this is kind of how life works sometimes.

When you have fake friends, your money runs out, and your friends run out as well.

And things continue to degrade and degrade.

Pretty soon he's out of money and out of options.

And then Jesus says, a famine hits the country, a severe famine, and we don't actually know what that's like.

We've got some supply chain issues right now.

A real, real famine is not like I can't find my gluten-free pumper nickel bread at HEB right now.

It's like there's no food to eat anywhere at all.

That's a real famine.

The only point of reference that we maybe have to a real famine is trying to find toilet paper in 2020.

Anyone remember that?

Like there was none.

Like I was wandering the house looking for what could be a toilet paper alternative, you know.

The cat was like, I do not like how you're looking at me right now.

It was desperate.

And that's that's a luxury.

A real famine is a necessity.

And so he's out of money, he's out of friends, and he's out of food.

And everyone is, you know, kind of mixed reactions because the everyday people who sometimes have a little bit of an easier time being honest about their actual life and situations, they don't have like that that shell of religion over them that makes them pretend like everything's always alright when things aren't actually alright.

They're like, honestly, I can see a little bit of the prodigal in me, you know.

I mean, if I had his money, I might be living the same way.

If I if I was just like bold enough, I might head out to I mean, I've had these same thoughts.

The religious elite, they feel like this guy's finally got what's coming to him, and things only get worse.

Jesus continues the downhill ascent.

He says, to stay alive, the only job he could find was working with animals, and they put him in the lowest job on the farm, tending the swine.

You may not know this, but in the Jewish culture, pigs are like the unclean of the unclean.

And just when Jesus has this audience understanding the lowest of the low, he turns the knife just a little bit in verse 16.

He says that the prodigal son longed to eat his fill from the pods that the pigs were eating.

Gagger flex.

Immediately across the audience.

But no one would give him anything.

He had such little respect in the community that he once believed he was running that they wouldn't even allow him to eat the pigs.

We have to be really careful here because religion will have you read this story through the lens of judgment.

And it's really, really easy to hear a story like the one of the prodigal and to think instantly of the people that you know in your life who you can see are prodigals as well.

And we do this all the time.

We come to church and we hear a message and we think, man, that was that was a pretty good message for my wife.

Man, that was uh that was a good word.

I hope uh my kids are listening to it.

Uh, that was pretty good.

I'm gonna send that one to my coworker, and we can point at all of the prodigals and yet not see the prodigal inside of us.

And the appropriate way to approach the scriptures is not seeing yourself from a religious standpoint, but seeing yourself inside of the story.

Here's the truth of the prodigal son.

I am the prodigal.

That's the point of the story.

I am the prodigal.

And when you can see yourself in the story, you can begin to understand the heart of your heavenly father.

I am the prodigal.

This is the state of humanity.

All the way at the beginning in the creation narrative, humanity is made and placed in perfection.

They have complete, unrestricted access to God Himself.

And what is the first temptation?

The temptation we give into, the temptation that literally breaks the world.

Don't you know?

You can be just like God.

And God loves you enough, and God loves me enough that He gives us the freedom to take our inheritance, all that we are and all that we have, and to cash it in for the things of this world.

Instead of using our life to build the kingdom of God and lift up the name of God and bring people to an understanding of who he is, we can use all that we are and all that we have to travel into the far country, to go down all of the paths that the world places in front of us that promise to make your name great, to bring worship to yourself, and to build your own platform and your own kingdom right here on this earth.

That is an opportunity that God gives to every single one of us.

The prodigal son had a deep longing of the soul, and it is a longing that all of humanity shares.

At the core of who we are, we want our lives to matter.

We want to be significant, we want to make a difference, we have a deep instinctual understanding that our lives were created on purpose and for purpose.

And when you live, apart from the God who created you and placed that purpose inside of you, eventually you will find yourself if you live long enough and strive hard enough after the things of this world, you will find yourself where the prodigal found himself, and that place is called the rock at the bottom.

Nothing in this world can sustain the weight of your expectation.

Nothing in this world can actually provide you the purpose that God placed inside of you.

There's nothing in this world that can hold the weight of your hope for this life and the life that is beyond.

You end up not as a cocky prodigal living your best life out in the far country, you end up as a lost child, not knowing exactly how to get home.

It took rock bottom, it took the pig pin for the prodigal to finally come to his senses.

In verse 17, he thought to himself, how many of my father's hired workers have more than enough food?

And here I am dying of hunger.

So I'll get up.

Go to my father and say to him, Father, I've sinned against heaven and in your sight, I'm no longer worthy to be called your son.

Make me like one of your hired workers.

And in verse 20, it says, So he got up and he went to his father.

He headed back home.

Covered in the filth of rock bottom.

He started the long journey, and every step that he got closer, his chest grew tighter and tighter.

This was life or death.

If his father disowned him and sent him back to the far country, he would literally physically die.

He rehearsed his speech the whole way home.

Dad, I am so sorry.

I know I told you I wish you were dead.

I didn't really mean that.

I was just trying to do life on my own.

I've sinned, man, I've sinned against God.

You have no idea the things I've done out there, you have no idea the ways I've been living.

None of it worked.

You were right the whole time.

I should have never left home.

I don't deserve to be your son anymore.

I'm not even asking for that.

If you would just let me work, I'll live on the back of the property.

You'll never hear from me again.

I'll never bother you.

I promise if you'll just let me in.

Finally, he made it to his hometown.

He turned the corner down the long, long, winding road to his family's property.

A property that he had a hand in slightly degrading and destroying.

As he began down the road, he had to imagine the consequences that were coming.

Now, Jesus is telling this story, and he has two audiences.

One is like the everyday people who have no idea what is going to happen, and one are the religious elite.

And boy, they can't wait.

They cannot wait for that son to get to his dad.

They can't wait for justice.

Ooh, I hope he disowns him right to his face.

Man, I hope it is ancient UFC.

I hope he smacks him down and sends him on his way.

That's what you get when you sin.

The everyday people realize they've got a little bit of prodigal in them.

And so they know what this guy's done is beyond bad, but at some level, they're hoping for a path forward.

They know he doesn't deserve to be a son again.

But maybe at least he'll let him be a servant.

And Jesus says something that shocks everyone, and he says something that changes the world forever.

And so he got up and he went to his father.

But while the son was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion.

He ran, threw his arms around his neck, and kissed him.

And the son, like, broke into his whole spiel.

He practiced it for days heading home.

I've sinned against you and against heaven.

I no longer deserve to be called your son.

And the father silences him.

Quick.

Someone bring the best robe and put him on, put it on him.

Put a ring on his finger, sandals on his feet.

Bring the fattened calf, the best one, the one we've been saving.

Slaughter it.

Let's celebrate with a feast because this son of mine was dead and is alive again.

He was lost and is found.

Jesus was revealing the heart of God to a world who had a view of God that was broken.

A love like this, the love that Jesus was describing, was a kind of love the world had never heard of.

A love without condition, a love that not only accepts back the prodigal, but celebrates with the best of all he has.

The son's return.

If you have never realized the prodigal in you, then you might miss the significance of the story.

But it is the most significant story.

It's the story of you and I who have been given a life to live and yet so often live it for ourselves.

Live it running in opposition to God.

If you don't see the prodigal in yourself, you might miss the significance of it because what religion has tried to convince you is that for you to have a relationship with God, you gotta get cleaned up, dressed up, you gotta go make that money back and purchase that land.

You gotta right all of your wrongs, you gotta make your way all to God, and maybe by the end of your life you'll have worked off your debt of sin that you have given against God.

And Jesus says, You have it backwards.

That if you are far from God, if you have hit your rock bottom, as soon as you turn back towards your Father, he will come running to you, filled with the filth of this world, just draped in your sin, all of the damage you've done and people you have hurt, God will see past it all, throw his arms around you and celebrate a child who was lost and has come home.

That is the gospel.

I heard earlier this year one of my favorite pastors, Andy Stanley, he pointed something out in this passage I'd never seen before.

I want to share it with you.

When he says, My son was lost and is now found, the New Testament was written in Greek, it's the Greek word apolemai, to be lost, a lost child who has come home.

Of course, today we are rooting ourselves in John 3.16, for God loved the world in this way.

He gave his one and only son so that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but will have eternal life.

Here's the problem when we see God as a distant, angry God, anxious and excited to punish our sin, we can read this and say, God's ultimate goal is for me to perish.

And we read perish and we read retaliation.

And it's like maybe if I do enough, I can squeak through.

That's who our heavenly father is.

Perfectly loving, perfectly gracious, with mercy that you cannot imagine.

I know I've lived at rock bottom.

I've ran from God as hard as I knew how to run.

And when everything in me wanted to come back, I had bought the lie that first I had to get right, that I had to make the long journey, that I had to prove myself.

Maybe I wouldn't be counted a son, but maybe I could be a servant of heaven.

And what changed my life forever is when I turned to God.

God came running to me, and he wrapped me up in all of my shame.

He wrapped his arms around all of my hurt.

He lifted me up in all of my insecurity, all of my running, all of my striving, all of my attempts to make something out of myself.

And the truth is who I actually am, and the life I actually have to live can only be found in the arms of my father.

I don't know what baggage you've carried in today, but God loved you in this way.

He gave his one and only son, not just to live for you, but to die for you.

The disciples sat with Jesus, they heard the parable of the prodigal son, and a year later they watched as that same Jesus was tortured, whipped, disfigured.

They watched as a crown of thorns was placed into his head, mocked and ridiculed by the crowd.

They watched as the nails went in his arms and his feet as he was lifted up, humiliated.

They watched.

As he said, It is finished, and breathed his last, and they didn't understand it yet, but that wasn't just the vengeance of God on sin, that was the love of God for you.

Three days later, the stone did roll away.

And when Jesus, who called his own death, burial, and resurrection and then pulled it off, when Jesus walked out of the grave, he cemented his legitimacy to tell you and me exactly who our God is.

And I know so many of us have been hurt by the church, and we've been hurt by religion, and we have projected that onto God.

But a normal, ordinary man or woman, just because they're given a platform, they don't have the right to supersede in telling you who God is.

Jesus shows us who God is, and he's a God who loves you and seeks you and will run after you.

I don't know how many people you've hurt, I don't know how many mistakes you've made, but God does.

We're all the prodigal.

He's on the hill, he's waiting, and he's watching.

And if you make the slightest move towards home, he will come.

Just create some space for yourself.

Maybe you've brought in a lot of preconceived notions and ideas about who God is.

Maybe today for the first time you're considering what it would mean to have a heavenly father who actually loved you perfectly.

I recognize that there are so, so many people who have a hard time understanding a good heavenly father because you have not had a good earthly father.

Your dad, right here and right now, wasn't able to show up to be there, to love you appropriately.

You haven't had that father modeled for you.

And yet, what God wants to show you is even when you felt the most alone, you had a father who loves you, who seeks you, who loves you enough to give you the freedom to go out into the far country and spend your inheritance, and yet loves you enough for whenever you're ready, whenever you're ready, he's waiting, he's watching.

God loved you in this way, he sent his one and only son, that whoever believes in Jesus will not be lost any longer.

If you've never put your faith in Jesus, a moment in your life where you believe that Jesus is who he says he is, and that he's done what he says he has done.

If you've never had that moment, that is your one step towards home.

That is what God in all of eternity is waiting on.

And today, you can make that step by simply believing.

If you're ready to make today the day that you are lost no longer, I want to ask you to do something that will take courage and vulnerability.

I want to ask you to just look up here at the stage.

Thank you.

I see you.

By your acknowledgement and your faith in Jesus, your eternity is changed forever.

You are no longer lost, you are a child of God.

You have just made the most important decision you'll ever make in this life.

I want to help you affirm it through a simple prayer.

You can pray something like this Dear God, today I choose to believe in Jesus.

I believe He came to earth, lived a perfect life, died for my sins, and I believe he rose again.

I thank you for a new eternal life.

Let me pray for you.

God, I thank you for children right now in this moment coming home.

People in this room coming home, people watching online coming home.

Even now, you are racing across space and time to wrap your arms around them.

I pray that they would not stop at just believing in Jesus.

But today would be the day, Easter 2022, that they start following you with their life.

We love you.

We love you.

We thank you.

We pray it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Let's worship.

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.

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