Living Unburdened

Alright.

I'm gonna start the message today in a little bit of an odd way.

But I promise you that this will connect later on, sort of.

Okay, I promise.

A little bit.

I hope.

So, any any movie lovers in the room?

Like you're like, yes, I I enjoy movies, films, cinema.

You're good?

Okay.

Any specific favorite genres of movie?

Like, like how many of you, let's just let's see some basics.

How many of you are like, give me like action all day long?

I want to see explosions, I want to see things blow up.

All right, how about sci-fi?

Any sci-fi lovers?

Like, I love sci-fi movies.

Sci-fi is good.

My wife's favorite movies are uh the best way I can describe it is British historical fiction.

Umly it's like wealthy man falls in love with lowly British lady, and you know in the first five minutes that they're gonna end up together, but you spend three hours waiting for that to happen.

Um, nothing blows up, it's just they have meals and there's weird tension at the meals, and that's the I don't know what that genre is, but it's just very British.

We watch that.

Um sometimes they even make whole shows of that.

You get seasons of watching people eat tension-filled meals.

It's great.

Um, so that's not my favorite genre.

So my my I would sci-fi is up there for me.

I love sci-fi movies, but a lot of times even the really good sci-fi movies have plot holes.

And so when you watch it, when you think about it too hard, you're like, wait a minute, that doesn't, and it kind of ruins it.

So I love sci-fi, but my my favorite genre of movies, by far, for me, is westerns.

I don't know if there are any other western lovers in the room.

All right, all right, all right.

Here's why I love westerns.

You don't have to think when you watch a western, they're not complicated.

There's good guys, there's bad guys, the bad guys are gonna lose.

It's like there's a slow burn, just lots of scenery and and also some tension-filled moments, but it's mostly over poker and less over meals.

And like, you I love it because you can, they're not, you're never gonna watch a Western and be like, whoa, that plot twist really threw me.

I didn't see that coming.

Like, they're basic and they're wonderful.

I love them.

Some of the newer ones that are more action-packed, those are fine, but I'd like give me a long, slow burn Western any day of the week.

Sometimes, actually, when I have something to do at home, like fold a bunch of laundry or whatever, I'll just find a good western, turn it on, and here we go.

I love it.

Westerns are funny because there's they're very cliched.

Like the plots, pretty basic.

Even the characters are really basic.

Like, Westerns have this tendency to take people and boil them down into a very specific archetype, and and it's something you can relate to.

And so if you're watching a Western, if you're new to Westerns, if you want to go check some out, come to me later, find me in the hall, I'll give you some recommendations.

But there's always gonna be like a few basic characters in a Western.

I want to introduce you to some of these basic characters.

All right, we're gonna start with there's always the the young hotshot, okay?

In any western, there's gonna be the young hotshot.

And this guy, he is young, he is he's brash, he's cocky, he is untested, right?

But but he's waiting for his chance.

He's waiting for his chance to be the hero.

So he's the young hotshot.

He's in almost every Western.

He either dies early or he's the hero.

It's one of those two.

But that's that's how Westerns work.

All right, so you got that guy.

Then you always have, you always have like a character that I would call the corrupt mayor, okay?

The corrupt mayor, he's he's in charge of things, but he's he's very shady.

He's always wheeling and dealing, and he kind of switches sides, he's he's good sometimes, but it's really just about what it's what he wants, it's what he desires, and he's willing to do anything to get what he wants.

That's the the corrupt mayor.

You're gonna have some version of the corrupt mayor in like every Western.

Then you've got you've got the noble sheriff.

Okay, the noble sheriff, he's like, he's getting older, he's about to retire, he wants to retire, but somehow he's gotten roped into just one epic conflict right before he's ready to ride off into the sunset.

And he should cut and run because it's gonna be dangerous, but he's he's duty bound and he's gonna do the right thing, but he's like not happy about it.

You know what I mean?

He's like, ah, that's the noble sheriff.

You're gonna find that guy in pretty much every Western.

Then you have the reluctant gunslinger.

This is like a major character.

He he he has a past.

He did some things he's not proud of.

He's moved out here just to get away from it all.

Like he's he's over it.

But some guys, they they killed his friend or his dog or his horse or something, and they have no idea who they messed with, but they have just awakened a beast, and now he's it's about to get crazy.

Okay, so that's the reluctant gunslinger.

And then finally, there's always this character, of very often this character is just, I call this the lady from back east, and so she's not from around here.

She's moved and she's brought way too much stuff with her.

Way too much stuff.

Like, she doesn't need that stuff, that stuff does not belong in the simple life of the West, and she's gonna spend the entire movie figuring out that she doesn't need all that, and it's time just to shed it and live a new life.

All right, so so those are some of the major characters.

Now, shout out to my friend Chris Thomas, because he made all that for me in like 30 minutes with AI.

That's not for many movies, that's all done with AI, which is a blend of sci-fi and western.

So we just did that.

Who, by the way, gets really uncomfortable with how good AI is at everything?

Anybody?

Yeah.

Apparently, we haven't watched the sci-fi movies that we grew up watching because it's gonna end really badly.

All right, so I want you to lock in those characters because there's one of those that I relate to very, very, very much.

And maybe you relate to others.

Um, but there's one I relate to very much, and it very much connects to the message today.

And for whatever reason, as I was praying about it this week, as I was thinking about it, and just the whole concept of the message, I was like, oh, it's kind of like that character that's always in Westerns.

That's that's who I am, and that's who I think many of us are.

Okay?

So, context.

We're in a series right now called the Summer of Wisdom.

We are studying some of the wisdom scriptures that we have in the books like Proverbs and Psalms and Ecclesiastes and some other scriptures that we have in the Old Testament.

We're committing our whole summer to just getting wiser and figuring out how to work through life.

Now, a few weeks ago when we kicked this off, we had a phone number that you guys could text to.

And I think we're gonna bring that number up right now again.

Do we have it?

Do we have it?

If not, oh we do, good.

Okay, so uh this is a number you can text to, and you can text any issue you have going on in life right now.

You can say, hey, this is what I'm dealing with.

We did this two weeks ago, got a ton in, and I responded to all but a few of them.

And I said to you guys last Sunday, with my wife being out of town and all me with all the kids, I didn't really time that well, so give me one week off, but now it's back.

So you can text and say, hey, I'm going through this, here's a tough situation, and what you're searching for is what does God's word have to say about it?

What is the wisdom that scripture would offer us?

And I've been blown away by those questions and those situations, and those are actually helping inform what we're gonna teach on.

And so I'm not just picking random topics, I'm looking at what you guys are sending in, and we're kind of basing it off of that.

Last Sunday, I took some questions that I had about balance.

A lot of people had some version of, I'm overwhelmed, life is crazy, I feel like I'm being pulled in a million different directions, what do I do?

And we talked about the fact that scripture doesn't really talk about balance.

This is this idea that we have in our culture of, you know, you want to have a healthy work-life balance, you want to make sure everything's balanced, but if you read the Bible, you don't find a lot about balance in there.

Maybe one or two passages that you can connect to balance, but nothing that direct.

And so it's almost like, well, I guess God doesn't want us to have a balanced life.

But we talked about the fact that ultimately balance is a myth.

It really is a myth.

You can try your hardest to have everything perfectly balanced.

You know the right amount of this, you know, your hours at work, your responsibilities there, your time at home, how you how you hang with your friends, whatever it is.

You can have everything just nice and balanced, then in a moment, something can happen and it throws it all off.

In a moment.

Like, I remember we felt like we were in a balanced place about nine years ago or so, and we had three kids.

I wanted two, Megan wanted four, we compromised at three.

And everything was working out, and I was the pastor here, and that I'd been that in that role for like four or five years, it was starting to settle in.

Felt like everything was like, okay, we got this, we're here.

The house made sense where our kids were, the room situations, all was that.

And then, surprise, fourth child.

That was Eli was a total surprise and a lovely surprise, and I love I love Eli very much, but all the balance that we had worked for, that was gone, and we've never gotten it back.

It's been seven years of no balance.

No, it's it's true.

It's like one, it's that was a blessing, that was a gift from God, and yet it threw off all the balance.

It can be a good thing, it can be a negative thing, it can be a tragedy, it could just be extra work, you name it.

You can work so hard to have balance and in one moment forget about it, it's gone.

So balance is kind of a myth.

But God doesn't want us to have a life that's frantic and hectic, and we're just going here, there, and everywhere, and we feel like we're overwhelmed.

He gives us something better than balance, which is what we talked about last week, and that is rhythm.

Scripture doesn't talk about balance, but it talks a lot about rhythm and learning to live life at the right pace.

Learning to take life as it comes in seasons, but but understand that those seasons change.

Ecclesiastes chapter 3 says that for everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven, a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to harvest, a time to kill and to heal, a time to tear down and to build up, a time to cry, a time to laugh, a time to grieve and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones, and a time to embrace and a time to turn away.

Ecclesiastes 3 · chapter mention

A time to search and a time to quit searching, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend.

There's a time to be quiet and a time to speak, and I get those wrong all the time.

There's a time to love and a time to hate.

There's a time for war and a time for peace.

There's seasons to life, and they change.

There's a rhythm that God creates in life, and what we have to do as followers of Jesus is try our best to discern what the season that we're living in is.

What season am I in?

And I want to live in season.

We get stressed out a lot of times when we try to live out of season, but if we can discern the season that we're in and live in that season, we're blessed.

But we also have to live within the rhythm that God sets for us in those shorter time spans, every single month, every single year, every single week, even day.

I wish I would have said this last week, but the good news is if I ever forget to say something, I can just say it the next week.

Um, when it comes to rhythm, we'll we'll move on, but we've got something we're gonna talk about that's that's connected to it but a little different.

But it's important to make sure you have someone setting the rhythm for you.

Like, how many of you would say, I have really good rhythm?

Like just it's okay, you're not bragging, but how many like, no, I've got rhythm.

Anyone to say, I've got rhythm?

Okay.

How many of us that didn't raise our hands are like, passion, no, I don't have rhythm?

Like, I do not?

Yeah, and and I know that.

Here's what here's how we know this as a church.

Some of you just, you know, you're non-committal, but I'm gonna help you out.

Um let's say it's like a Sunday, if you've been going here for a while, you know, sometimes there'll be a song, like a worship song that we're gonna do, and it's kind of upbeat, and the worship team starts to play, and it's it's like there's a lot of music at the beginning, and the worship team starts to clap their hands, and then they get us clapping, you know, and we're all like, yeah, we're pa, pa, pa.

And then they start singing, and then they stop clapping because they're assuming that we got the rhythm and we'll just keep those claps going.

But those of us who don't have rhythm, as soon as we don't have the visual cue anymore of what our hands should touch, and that goes away when they start singing, we're like, and there's this like slow fade of clap, clap, clap, clap.

You know, we do that.

It's because we don't have rhythm.

We need we need the help.

We need someone to to dictate the rhythm for us.

That's how we have to be in life.

If you want to live with rhythm, and that's what allows us to handle all the chaos, we we know when to stop and rest and take a breath, and we know how to when to lean in and get focused.

We need someone to help us dictate that rhythm, and that's Jesus.

And that's the Holy Spirit.

Jesus says this in Matthew chapter 11.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

This is the message version, and we're gonna look at the another translation in a minute, uh, but this is interesting language.

He says, Are you tired, worn out, burned out on religion?

Come to me, get away with me, and you'll recover your life.

I will show you how to take a real rest.

Walk with me and work with me.

Watch how I do it.

Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.

I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you.

Keep company with me, and you'll learn to live freely and lightly.

So Jesus says, Let me set the rhythm for you.

Walk with me, let me teach you.

And when we live with Jesus, connected to Jesus, we have the Holy Spirit inside of us, and we seek to discern what the right rhythm for our lives is, and when we just follow even the rhythm that he set, simple things like here, being at church.

Every seven days, come together and worship and focus on the Lord and and pause and then rest.

When we do that, life is so much more manageable.

You don't have balance, you really can't, you can try, you might have it for a while, but you can't control that.

But rhythm you can control, and if you let Jesus set the rhythm for you, and you follow that, and you do your best to discern that, the overwhelmness can fade away pretty fast.

So we want to have rhythm.

We talked about that last week, but I had a lot of questions that were very similar to the rhythm question, very similar to the balance questions.

Like, I'm I feel crazy and all this stuff, but slightly different.

It's subtle, and I want to give time to this this morning because I actually had a lot of questions about this.

And then what I do want you to know is after this, we're gonna have several weeks where we're gonna hit some pretty major topics like money, relationships, things like that, a lot of questions about that stuff, and we're just gonna sort of fire hose it and go through a lot of topics like that.

So, really interesting stuff that's that's coming down the pipeline.

But today I want to talk about something that a lot of people text in about, and it's sort of related to the feeling of being overwhelmed and chaotic and hectic, but also different.

They're adjacent, I would say.

And it's the concept of being burdened.

It's not that you're necessarily overwhelmed because there's so much going on, it's just that what you're dealing with feels so heavy to you that you feel like you're buried underneath the weight of it.

It's a little different.

You see the difference?

It's subtle.

It's less crazy and it's it's just heavy.

What do you do when you are burdened?

When you feel like it's just too much.

Like I said, Matthew chapter 11, verses 28 through 30.

Matthew 11:28–30

I'm gonna read this in the New Living Translation.

Jesus says, Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you, let me teach you.

When he says, Take my yoke upon you, he's saying, Let me lead you.

Let me teach you, because I'm humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.

Now, that's an interesting analogy because Jesus is talking about the end there, yokes and burdens.

He's talking about oxen, like work animals, and they're designed to pull heavy things.

That's what they're there for.

And yet he says, My yoke is easy to bear.

A perfect translation of that's kind of hard in terms of how the languages work, but basically what you have to understand is that when they would make yolks for oxen, they would be custom fit.

They'd make them out of wood, but they wouldn't just mass-produce these and put them on an oxen.

They would measure and they would take every oxen and they would make sure that that yoke that went over its neck that that would fit as perfectly as possible, so that even when that oxen was pulling heavy weight, there wasn't unnecessary stress.

Because the yoke was designed to fit them.

And then Jesus says that the burden he gives us is light, and we might ask the question well, if that's the case, God, if if the burden that you give me is light, then why does life feel so heavy?

And that's a little bit of a nuanced answer.

On one hand, there are times that we see in scripture where God does entrust a pretty heavy burden to people.

But just like Jesus says with that yoke analogy, it's it's heavy, but it's also custom fit for that person.

Jesus trusts the person that he gives it to.

The Lord trusts the person that he asked to do that, and he says, this is a task.

It may be a hard task, but it fits you.

It suits you.

And I'm with you.

But I think a lot of the times where we can struggle when we feel like everything's heavy, and we go, God, what gives is we have to recognize that God is not the one who always gives us the heavy burdens.

That is life.

We live in a fallen, broken world, and sometimes things happen and they are so heavy, and it's so much, and it's not God that gave them to us.

It's not, it's this world that we live in.

Life gave you something heavy.

And now you're trying to carry it, you're trying to handle it, and you feel like you can't, you feel like it's too much.

And sometimes we can confuse that to be like, God, why did you give this to me?

And the reality, he's like, Whoa, I I didn't.

But I'm here to help you with it.

Scripture teaches us that every good and perfect gift comes from above.

Every good thing, every blessing, every thing that I can look at in my life and go, wow, God, that's amazing.

Those were gifts from Him.

And I do believe there have been times where some of the challenges I've had, maybe God was teaching me something, maybe he was disciplining me.

I don't, I don't know.

But a lot of the heavy stuff, I can safely say, oh, God didn't do that.

He wasn't the author of that.

That was just the world we live in, that was life, and now I'm stuck carrying something heavy.

What am I supposed to do?

And that's what we're gonna focus on for the rest of our time today.

Because a lot of us, I'll say this, a lot of us are carrying weight we don't need to carry.

You know, last week I used an analogy of working in a restaurant and trying to have my tray perfectly balanced, and all analogies break down at some point in time.

But but what if you're not even supposed to be carrying the tray that you're carrying?

What if you picked up the wrong tray?

What if you're trying to go through life right now and you're carrying things that you were never meant to carry?

And you're weighed down and you're tired, but the Lord will look at you and say, like, yeah, drop it.

Like I said, I love Westerns.

And I I wish I I wish I was the like, I kind of wish I was the reluctant gunfighter, you know?

Like, I'm a bad man, but I'm under control.

But if you mess with me, that's not who I am.

I'm not the reluctant gunfighter.

I'm definitely not the young hotshot.

Maybe I used to be, but 42, hairline's receding fast, not me anymore.

Not the young hotshot.

I'm not the corrupt mayor.

I can say that with confidence.

You'll have to trust me because there's a lot of pastors who are the corrupt mayor, but I'm not.

Um, just I'm not.

I'm good with that.

Don't if I defend it too hard, you'll be like, whoa, why are you so defensive?

I'm not.

I'm not the corrupt mayor.

I'm not.

I feel good about it, I sleep well at night, it's good.

Um, and I'm not the noble sheriff.

Like maybe one day, maybe when I've been through it for a few more years, I'm the lady from back east.

That's me.

That is the Western character I most identify with.

I'm the lady from Back East.

And ladies, it's not a knock on you.

Sometimes, actually, sometimes in Westerns, it's a dude from Back East.

And he's just like all fancy and used to city life.

He's got all this stuff he doesn't need.

But that's who I relate to.

Because I am carrying things that have no business in the new life that I'm living with Jesus.

And I'm trying to be in this new life, and I've got all this junk with me that I don't need, it's not for me, and I just need to let it go.

It's no use in the new life that I have with the Lord, but I'm trying my best to carry it, and I'm tired, and I'm exhausted, and the Lord will look at me and be like, drop it.

Drop it.

But it's easier said than done.

So, this is for all the ladies from back east this morning.

What are some of the weights that we're not meant to carry?

Let's focus on that for a little bit.

I'll give you four.

And there's a lot more, but for the sake of time, we got seven baptisms.

That's exciting.

So first and foremost, you are not supposed to carry the weight of the future.

You want to be diligent.

We're called in scripture to work hard, to save.

We're gonna talk about some of that when we talk about finances on a lot of questions about finances.

Scripture teaches us to work, to be diligent, to do what's right.

But we are not supposed to carry this giant burden of controlling the future and how everything is gonna work out in our families, in our lives, in our children's lives.

That's a that's a massive weight.

Many of you understand that.

Like you feel the pressure, you feel the pressure of like every decision you make could make or break your future.

It's tough.

I'll share one with you.

Um, maybe two.

Couple of examples.

One is very recent, and I'll just I'm just gonna out myself.

I have a lot of friends that I've been like saying this from time to time in code, and I'll say it.

Um so a few years ago, I was I invested in Bitcoin.

Any any bitcoiners out there?

A couple Bitcoiners, woohoo.

Um, and I had a goal in mind, and I'm not a Investment guy at all, but I had I had a friend, he's like, You should do this.

I think it could be really good.

I was like, You think so?

I had no investments at the time.

Like I just was like, I'm just paying bills.

And so he's like, No, no, no, do this.

And so I was like, okay, and I did it, and it was like really early, and then Bitcoin blew up, and I felt like a genius.

I was like, woo-hoo.

So I sold it.

And it was no, yeah, all right.

Uh that person knows the story.

Uh no, no, it was great.

It it accomplished the goal that I had originally.

So it was like, boom, got to the goal, accomplished the goal.

And then it was like right when I sold it, God was like, off to the races.

Um, and it just blew up.

And had I waited, I had it for like six years, had I waited six more months, I think today it's like a quarter of a million dollars extra.

I know.

But good news is I'm not quitting my job here anytime soon.

So, or maybe that's bad news, I don't know.

I'm not sure, but that's the news.

I gotta, no, I wouldn't have anyway.

Um huge amount of money for for me, a huge amount of money for anyone.

There are maybe there's a few people who are like, it's just a quarter of a million dollars.

That is not me.

That is not my life.

And if that's your life, you probably have Bitcoin.

So um, but you know what's funny is like I felt the weight of that.

It hit me really hard.

And it's not be I have, I have no desire, I don't have, I don't care about things.

Like, I don't need a nice car, I don't care about that stuff.

I don't want, there's really nothing that I I want, but I want to take care of my kids.

And so I got four kids, and we're at that season where my oldest is about to start driving, and all four of them need braces.

I learned that in the last few.

All four need braces, all of them.

Um and I'm trying to find some free braces out there, it's not really a thing.

So trying to figure that out, and it's just, you know, and a friend of mine asked me, he was just he's like, Justin, what would that?

I mean, I know it's a lot of money, but what would that have accomplished?

I was like, just paying for all my kids, you know, braces in school and college and cars, just that, just everything, you know?

And the reality, and I was joking because I'm always joking, but the reality of it is that I felt like a failure.

Even though the investment that I put in, like, it was successful.

It accomplished what we prayed, we prayed about it.

Like, Lord, this is what we would like to do with this, and boom, got it.

But I felt like a failure because I felt like I had missed a chance to take care of my kids' future.

And I carried that like a burden for now, uh, when I'm working through it with the Lord.

But the reality is it's not even though I'm I'm the dad, it's not my job to perfectly provide for the future.

It's not yours either.

That is God's job.

When we try to be God, we always get burdened.

If you if you try to do God's job, get ready to be exhausted.

I mean, honestly, because you're not God.

But very often we're like, no, I've got to control it.

I've got to control the outcome, I've got to make sure that every one of my children, or if you don't have kids yet, or if you've kids are grown, or maybe it's your spouse, it's your family, your loved one, maybe it's you're even your parents, and you know you're gonna take care of them, and you try so hard, I've got to do everything just right because I don't, if I don't, then what if this happens and I won't be able to cover this, or maybe it's even your own life one day.

It doesn't matter.

The reality is you're not God.

And you are not meant to carry the burden of the future and do everything just right and make every perfect decision so that no matter what comes in the future, you've got it.

That's not up to you.

And if you live with that pressure, you'll get crushed.

That's not a weight you're meant to carry.

What you're meant to do is do what is right, do what you know is is best and godly in every season that you're in, and you trust God with everything else.

And then if you have Bitcoin, maybe don't sell it.

I'm just joking.

Scripture actually says in Psalm 55 that we're supposed to give our burdens to the Lord and He will take care of you.

Give your burdens to the Lord and He will take care of you.

Just hear that.

He will not permit the godly to slip and fall.

That word give in Scripture in the Old Testament is a very specific word.

It means to roll away.

It's a Hebrew word galal.

It means to like, like if you are rolling a heavy weight onto a cart for something else to take it away.

It says that's what we're supposed to do with our burdens, all the burden you carry about the future and all what's gonna happen.

No, give it to God.

That's his responsibility.

He's the one that is directing the future.

Don't live with that weight.

I used to feel that here at his hands, uh, especially when I became the pastor early.

I mean, how many of you were here at his hands during the season of the roof?

You know what I'm talking about.

The roof.

Some of you who are newer, you're like, what about the we have a roof?

It's great.

We didn't used to have a roof, it was just open snow machine.

We had a roof, we just had a roof that leaked like crazy.

Like every time it rained, you all remember the buckets, like back in the day, if it was a rainy day, there'd just be buckets everywhere in here.

It was great.

And I remember I became the pastor and I love this church, and it was such an awesome place, but there were some things that needed fixed, and the roof cost$350,000.

Yeah.

Stupid.

And as a church, we had no Bitcoin.

So, um, no, and look, as it we're we're really blessed as a church, and we're blessed we have no debt because we had an amazing couple that started our church that really paid for this.

I mean, really, truly.

They gave$20 million so we could have this church.

Think about that.

But, you know, things break, and as time goes on, it's expensive.

And so we didn't have we didn't have clothes to that.

And I didn't know what to do.

And I felt that weight of the future.

Like, Lord, I mean, I don't I don't want to be the guy that's in charge when there's no roof.

Like, come on.

And I remember walking through this building and looking up at the ceiling very often and praying and being frustrated.

One day I was walking and it was like the Lord just said, It's my roof.

It's not yours, it's mine.

And I had tremendous peace because instead of me being like, Oh, the roof, like what I gotta get the roof.

I was like, God, you're gonna have to figure out this roof.

You know, it's like you go to a friend's house and their roof is leaking, you're like, You got a roof problem.

All right, well, I'm going back to my house.

You know, that's how it was.

And that was a huge thing for me because I was carrying the weight of the roof, and this is not my roof, it's God's.

And I had to trust that.

And it was like a weight lifted off my shoulder.

So you are not supposed to carry the weight of the future.

I'm not saying be irresponsible and live in the now and just do whatever makes you feel good.

That's that's foolishness.

No, do what you're meant to do now.

Plan for the future the best you can.

Save, do those things, yes.

But to a reasonable degree.

But if you get on the wrong side of it where you're like, every decision you're you're making is about fear of well, what if this happens in the future and what if that and this drop that.

That is your future belongs to God.

Trust Him with it.

Number two, you're not meant to carry the weight of your past.

You're not supposed to carry the weight of the future.

You're also not meant to carry the weight of your past.

Some of us are holding on to mistakes and failures and poor decisions and trauma from the past, and it's still affecting us, it's still dragging us down.

We can't let it go, and God is saying, like, you gotta let it go.

You are not meant to carry the weight of your past.

And sometimes the consequences of our past decisions are still in our lives, yeah.

But you're not meant to carry that as a weight to drag you down at all.

Because there's this funny thing that happens when you follow Jesus, you become someone that you didn't used to be.

Like, that's a different person that made those decisions.

That wasn't you.

That that's that's them.

Like, think about it this way um the followers of Jesus.

You had Matthew, Matthew was a tax collector before he started following Jesus.

Tax collectors were were oh, they were corrupt.

They were the corrupt mayor in a western, for sure.

Definitely.

Uh they they embezzled money from people, they enriched themselves by taking advantage of people, they betrayed their own people and partnered with Rome.

They were they were the worst of the worst.

So Matthew was a tax collector.

Simon, who would be nicknamed Peter, renamed Peter by Jesus, he was just a fisherman.

He was a lowly fisherman, like lowest rung of society, just a day laborer, basically.

And then you had the other Simon that didn't get his name changed to Peter, he was a zealot.

Zealots were uh religious fanatics and violent extremists.

In fact, the zealots were this group that ended up provoking Rome in about AD 60s and 70s.

They provoked Rome, and Rome started a war with Jerusalem, and that ended up leading to Jerusalem being completely destroyed.

Over one million people were died, and the zealots were the ones that did that.

Simon was one of those.

Mary Magdalene, she was a prostitute.

So you got a tax collector and a fisherman and a zealot and a prostitute, but that's not who they they were anymore.

That's not their identities.

No, you had a child of God, a child of God, a child of God, a child of God.

You had a follower of Jesus, a follower of Jesus, a follower of Jesus, a follower of Jesus, a friend of Jesus, a friend of Jesus, a friend of Jesus, and a friend of Jesus.

That's that's who they are.

That's who you are.

Don't carry the weight of who you were.

Let that be in the past.

Maybe you made mistakes, maybe you've done things that you're not proud of.

Own that.

Great, own it.

Fine.

But own the forgiveness for it, too.

Don't drag that stuff into right now.

That's a weight that'll just, it'll pull you down, it'll crush you.

That's who you used to be.

That's not you anymore.

That's why scripture actually tells us in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 that we've stopped evaluating others from a human point of view.

2 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

We don't look at each other in a human point of view anymore.

We're not supposed to anyway.

At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view, and that's what the people around Jesus would say, sometimes, like, oh, he's just the carpenter's son.

They were looking at him through the wrong lens.

But Paul says, how differently we know him now.

This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person.

The old life is gone, and a new life has begun.

And that phrase has begun, it's so powerful because it indicates something that started but it's continuing.

So as you follow Jesus and you get closer to Jesus, you are daily becoming a new person.

Sometimes it's slower than we'd like it to be, and sometimes, man, it happens in waves, but you are not who you used to be.

So stop letting who you used to be have so much control and effect of who you are today.

Let the past be the past.

Drop the nets, drop that weight.

That phrase, drop the nets, Jesus told the fishermen when they started following him to drop their nets.

Don't try to drag your old life into your new life.

Let it go.

And look, if you have to apologize to someone to let it go, if you have to confess something, fine.

Just do whatever you need to do, but let it be gone.

You are not supposed to carry the weight of the future, you're not supposed to carry the weight of your past.

Now, this is very closely related to this.

What we just said about the past, but you're also not meant to carry the weight of your sin.

You are not meant to carry the weight or the guilt or maybe the shame of your sin.

I've made so many mistakes in my life, and there's a lot of people in my past that I am not like a hero in their story.

Especially the teenage version of me, very ashamed of who I was.

But like I said, that's who I was, that's not who I am.

We all have sin.

But that sin has been dealt with.

Do you really believe that?

It's hard to believe that, right?

Like, yeah, Jesus dealt with my no, no, it's been dealt with.

It's done.

It's finalized.

It's over with.

Like it's a debt that has been paid.

It would be like if you had your mortgage paid off and then you occasionally just sent a check to the mortgage company.

They'd probably cash it.

But no, seriously, like if you had your debt completely, if someone came and paid off your house and said, hey, it's paid off, you would never keep writing checks to the mortgage company.

I promise you would not do that.

But we do that so much in our hearts and our minds when it comes to our past sin.

We're still trying to like pay off or shake off the shame and the guilt.

When the Israelites escaped Egypt, they messed up a lot.

They were slaves in Egypt, but a lot of Egypt rubbed off on them.

So it didn't take very long for them in the desert to make some pretty major mistakes.

They made a false God out of gold, a golden calf, and they worshiped it, which is so silly and stupid.

But they had come from Egypt, and that's the kind of stuff the Egyptians did.

They had all kinds of statues that they worshiped.

They were just doing what they had been raised to do.

And they disobeyed God at every turn.

But then there's this moment, and Moses has passed away, and Joshua is the new leader of Israel, and he leads the people into the promised land.

And they start to have victories over their enemies, and they start to take the promised land as their own.

And in Joshua chapter 5, the Lord says this to Joshua.

Joshua 5 · chapter mention

He says, Today I have rolled away, that's that same word, to cast, to give, I have rolled away the shame of Egypt from you.

And they name that place Gilgal, which means to roll away.

It gets to a point where God says, Listen, the shame of Egypt, and it wasn't just the shame of being slaves in Egypt, it was the shame of the things they had done and the sin they had participated in.

He said, I'm rolling that off of you.

That's gone.

When Jesus died on the cross for your sin, it was paid for completely and totally.

He said, It's finished.

Is it finished for you?

Is it finished for you?

Or do you still replay that in your mind?

I'm gonna let the worship team make their way out so we can wrap up here in just a minute.

I've got one more to talk about, it's a quick one.

But sometimes we have a hard time with that.

I've told this story before, I have to apologize because sometimes, you know, you repeat stories, but this is one of my favorites ever, and I just gotta tell it.

When uh when I was in college, I got married, and Megan and I were visiting my little brother and my family, and we're hanging out with my little brother.

My parents had gone to bed.

He was in like ninth grade, and he had rented a movie, and it was not an appropriate movie.

It was not a movie my mom would have approved of.

And so he did what any smart ninth grader did.

He waited for mom to go to bed, and then he put the movie in.

And we were watching it, and it was a movie I'd seen.

You know, it was college, it was a very, very uh popular movie.

I think it was the movie Anchorman.

And uh, and so I was aware of the movie, and there was a scene that was about to happen.

It's just not a good scene.

And my mom walks in the room, and he looked at me, I'll never forget this moment.

Like he was on one couch, I was on a couch across the way, and he looked at me like, Justin, help me, you know?

And I just remember going, like, well, Megan and I are gonna go to bed.

So we got up, and we just left him with mom.

And he comes up about three minutes later, just like, what the heck?

Mom is so mad.

I can't believe you left me.

And he was panicked, because and my mom was very, very upset.

She had you know high standards of what we would watch, and that's a good thing.

But then my wife did something amazing.

I I already loved her because we were married, but I loved her even more after this.

She's like, Aaron, my little brother's name is Aaron, she goes, Aaron, don't worry, I'll go downstairs and I'll see how she's doing.

He goes, All right, cool, because he didn't want to go down.

And so she goes down, she waits a few minutes, comes back up, and he's like, Is she okay?

And she goes, No.

She's just rewinding and watching that same part over and over and over again.

And he was like, Are you serious?

Turns out she was not.

She had way moved on.

And so my wife just pranking my little brother, and he's just like, What do I do?

And uh, and then we let him just sweat it out for a while and told him the next morning it was fine.

It was great, like my respect level for my wife went up so much.

She was great.

But, you know, I think about that a lot because that's what we do with our sins so much, right?

Like we, God has moved on.

He's dealt with it, he forgave it.

The cross took care of it.

You you think your sin outweighs the blood of Jesus?

Like that doesn't cancel out?

Your sin isn't a match, Jesus is not a match for your sin.

Come on.

But God's moved on, He's past it.

We're the ones that are replaying it in our minds.

Just over and over and feeling that shame and guilt.

No, no, the the shame, the guilt of your sin has been rolled away from you.

It is gone.

It is a weight you are not meant to carry.

So let it go.

And like I said, if you've got some things you got to do, like you have to apologize to someone or ever to kind of complete that for you, do it.

But be done with it.

That's a weight you're not meant to carry.

And one final before we we take Lord's Supper and then we celebrate some baptisms.

You're not meant to carry the weight of your sin, the guilt of your sin, but you're also not meant to carry sin at all anymore.

Like that's the view, we're we're no longer under the weight of the guilt of our sin, but guess what?

As followers of Jesus, we don't even have to sin anymore.

Like, we will.

We're not perfect, but we don't have to.

Hebrews chapter 12 says, Therefore, since we're surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up.

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

Let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us.

We are called just to let it go.

There are behaviors, there are things that we do, and we do them because we grew up, we learn these things, we live in a broken, fallen world, we get tempted, we fall short, we have flesh, you know, all kinds of whatever.

That's all fine and good.

But we're followers of Jesus.

We have the Holy Spirit inside of us, and we are not slaves to sin.

You are not bound to sin.

Scripture actually teaches that apart from Christ, we as human beings are bound to sin.

We we cannot help it.

We are slaves to sin.

That's what scripture says.

Romans talks about this.

But through Christ, through Jesus, we're not slaves to sin anymore.

So some of us, we're just carrying the weight of behaviors that don't belong in our new life.

Like we're still doing things that just don't have a place in our lives as believers.

And it's stealing joy from us.

We feel convicted by it all the time, and that conviction is a thing that God gives us, so we can oh, stop it.

But if we just keep doing it and we feel convicted all the time, it just weighs us down.

And and the Lord would just look at us just like you'd look in a western, you'd look at the lady from back east and be like, you don't need that bad.

Drop it.

There's no place for that in this life.

Just let it go.

So you're not under the weight of the guilt of your sin, but don't participate in things that are wrong.

Don't keep sinning and just keep yourself under the weight of that feeling of just guilt and shame.

Don't don't do that, don't do that cycle.

And if you need help getting out of that, you need some support, you need someone to talk to, we'll help you with that.

There's accountability.

I'll tell you this join a group.

Like jump in a Bible study and get to know people and share.

Like, hey, I'm struggling with this, and someone can pray for you and say, Yeah, I've been there.

I can help you with that.

But don't let yourself keep doing the thing that makes you feel so heavy.

You're free.

You have power over sin.

You can actually look at sin and be like, nah.

Because you have the Holy Spirit inside of you.

Alright, so we're gonna finish.

Madison, by the way, I'm just gonna say this, youth pastor.

He's like, please don't start baptisms until 11:15.

It's 1116.

So, nailed it.

Alright, here we go.

To recap, as we we close, we're gonna take Lord's Supper.

And so if you uh if you guys didn't grab this in the tables in the back of the room, we got cups of bread and juice.

Grab one now.

You're fine to do that if you want to.

Like I said at the beginning, um I'm the lady from back east.

How many of us are that that person?

Any other ladies from Back East in the room?

Oh, guys, come on.

Lunch of liars.

We have a tendency to carry weight that we don't need to carry.

You feel heavy, you feel burdened.

Or maybe someone you love feels that way.

Very often, it's because they're carrying things they're just not supposed to carry, because Jesus says when we come to him, he gives us rest.

We don't go to Jesus and get a heavy burden put on him, put on us.

That's not what happens.

That's why, by the way, when you come to church, maybe you've been in churches like this before, but at his hands, you're not going to come here and every Sunday be like, and he just gave us another heavy burden to carry.

No.

You should you should leave feeling lighter than when you came because that's what it's like to come to Jesus.

He takes our burdens off of us.

You are not meant to live under the weight of the pressure of the future or the weight of your past or the weight of the guilt of your sin or the weight of behaviors, sins that are are still affecting you today.

Let it go.

Drop the baggage.

It doesn't belong in your new life.

Like leave it on the train.

I'm gonna stop with the Western analogy.

But you get the point.

Drop it, let it go.

Let God carry the weight and learn to live freely and lightly as you follow Jesus.

Let's take Lord's supper.

Let's start with the bread.

Lord, this piece of bread it represents your body.

You died on the cross to free us from the weight of our sin.

We no longer live under the guilt and shame of our mistakes, of our previous selves, or even the sins that we commit now.

We don't live under the weight of that because you have taken care of it.

It's been dealt with, it's been paid for.

And the price you paid was extreme, the price you paid was everything.

And Lord, your goodness is so much more than our sin.

Help us have faith today that that weight is gone through what you've done for us, Lord.

Let's take the bread.

Now the juice.

Lord, we thank you for this cup.

This is your blood.

This is an offering.

You gave your life every last drop to purchase freedom for us, to give us a life where we can live lighter.

And Lord, this is a burden that you carried yourself.

And you promise to help us with the burdens that we carry.

So, Lord, help us rely on you, help us trust you, help us continually trust in your sacrifice for us, that it perpetually cleanses us.

Help us let go of whatever weight we're carrying today.

And only carry what you've asked us to.

Nothing more.

Let's take the juice.