Message - Jesus Will Never Give Up on You

Luke chapter 14, verse 28.

Luke 14:28

Jesus says, Don't begin until you count the cost for who would begin construction of a building without first calculating the cost to see if there is enough money to finish it.

I love the teachings of Jesus.

Talked a few weeks ago about the need to see Jesus as our teacher.

I'm sure you've had experiences in life where you got really close to making a decision.

Like you were right there on the precipice of making a decision, and then there was a check.

You were doing what Jesus says.

You were kind of counting the cost in your mind and going, is this the right call?

Is this going to be worth the work?

Is this going to be worth the hassle?

And you decided, nah, I'm out.

And maybe to this day you think, man, what if I would have done that?

Or maybe you're going, man, I'm so glad I didn't.

You know that that was the right decision.

I'm sure many of us have other examples that are on the negative side where maybe we went through with something, we made a decision, we made a commitment, and then afterwards we realized, whoa, this is way more than I expected.

If I could go back knowing then what I know now, I would never have said yes to this.

So we've had times that maybe we've regretted not pulling the plug earlier.

For example, for me, um, I used to be a dog person.

I grew up as a dog person.

My family's always had dogs.

And uh, if you would have asked me at age 20, do you consider yourself a dog person?

Do you see yourself having dogs for the rest of your life?

I would have said yes.

There will be dogs in my home.

And then I had a dog named Roxy, and I haven't had a dog since.

And uh I don't have time to no, no, don't.

Roxy's the worst.

Don't.

Um she was one of those dogs where she used to like run out the door every time I would open it, and like literally run away.

This is a dog that didn't even want to live with me.

And I would watch her run down the street, and I would just go, like, sh do I have to get her?

Like, do I have a responsibility?

She doesn't want to be here.

Someone will find her, someone will be a sucker.

Um, and I would have that moment where I would go, like, no, Roxy, come back.

And then Megan would look at me and I would go, and I would get Roxy.

I'm not gonna go into all the details, but Roxy, if I could know then, if I could have known what I know now, I would have, I would have told Megan at that pet store, don't be fooled by those.

She was one of those dogs who was so ugly, she was cute.

You know those kind, like the kind of dogs that we've created, not God, like the ones we were like, let's mash these things together and see what happens.

Um was one of those dogs.

And Megan was like, oh, she's so cute.

And I was like, is she?

It depends on your perspective.

Beauty's in the eye of the beholder, I guess.

And we got her, and I wish I would like, I would literally go back in time, put a mask on, punch myself, take Megan's purse just to create a distraction so that we did not leave with that dog.

Remember, Doug, you remember when you actually told me I should take the dog back?

You remember that?

I didn't do it, man.

They had a return policy.

How do you return an animal?

What do you do?

You go back with the like, I don't want this anymore.

It feels weird, but I should have done it.

I should have listened to you, Doug.

So I'm not a dog person anymore.

I should have counted the cost.

I'm sure we all have stories like that, and I'm I'm certain that most of us have stories a little bit more painful than a dog.

But what Jesus says is accurate.

Count the cost.

And I want you to put a pin in that phrase, count the cost.

We're gonna come back to that.

Because today we're gonna look at a really interesting moment in Jesus' life where he did just that.

Next Sunday, as we've already said, is Easter, and Easter is the Sunday where we officially commemorate Jesus raising from the dead.

We celebrate that all the time, at least we should, but Easter is the day that it's official.

But there's a lot of stuff this week that's pretty important to focus on as well, and this entire week is jam-packed with moments in Jesus' life that we want to look back on and reflect on.

We actually know a lot about the last week of Jesus' life.

It's very well documented.

So, Friday, for example, is Good Friday, and that's the day that we commemorate his death on the cross.

Today is a day called Palm Sunday.

In the week leading up to the resurrection, the Sunday before Easter Sunday, Jesus entered Jerusalem.

And as he entered Jerusalem, knowing what he was about to walk into, you have to wonder what was going through his head.

I want us to do our best this morning to try to step into the mindset of Jesus, to understand what may have been going through his mind, what thoughts he may have been having, because I think it'll tell us a lot about who he is and what he says and believes about us, which is really important to know.

So, with that said, we're gonna look at Matthew chapter 21, verses 1 through 11.

Matthew 21:1–11

There's a lot going on here.

There are a lot of details.

We're gonna unpack it together this morning.

We're gonna learn a lot.

It's gonna be great.

So it says, as Jesus and the disciples approached Jerusalem, they came to the town of Bethphage on the Mount of Olives.

And Jesus sent two of them on ahead.

Go into the village over there.

He said, as soon as you enter it, you'll see a donkey tied there with its colt beside it.

Untie them and bring them to me.

If anyone asks what you're doing, just say, the Lord needs them, and he will immediately let you take them.

And I always read that kind of like a Jedi thing.

You know, like these guys go take a donkey, and someone's like, What are you doing with my donkey?

And they just kind of go, The Lord needs them.

And the people are like, All right.

But in reality, what this means is Jesus has made plans.

Jesus has known what he's going to do, and he's set all this up.

Like he's talked to someone ahead of time and said, Hey, I'm going to send some servants to you for that donkey.

And when I send them, here'll be what they'll say, so you'll know it's for me.

This has been something he's planned out.

And so this took place to fulfill the prophecy that said, Tell the people of Jerusalem, look, your king is coming to you.

He's humble, riding on a donkey, riding on a donkey's colt.

And the two disciples did just as Jesus commanded.

They brought the donkey and the colt to him, they threw their garments over the colt, and he sat on it.

Most of the crowd spread their garments on the road ahead of him, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road.

And those would have been palm branches, why we call this Palm Sunday.

Jesus was in the center of the procession, and the people all around him were shouting, Praise God for the Son of David, blessings on the one who comes in the name of the Lord.

Praise God in highest heavens.

The entire city of Jerusalem was in an uproar as he entered.

Who is this?

They asked.

And the crowds replied, It's Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.

This is a big moment.

And it's really interesting.

It's really interesting what's going on here.

Now, uh, it says that Jesus entered Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives.

And believe it or not, that mountain's in the same place today as it was 2,000 years ago.

And so we can we actually can see what Jesus saw.

And this is, I want to show you guys a picture.

This is a view of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives.

That road that's going down there into the city, like it's very likely that's the same path, or at least almost the same path that Jesus would have been riding on that donkey down into.

That's what Jesus saw as he entered Jerusalem.

And as you can tell, we can even zoom in a little bit.

As you can tell, you can see the entire city of Jerusalem from that moment.

So as Jesus enters the city, and guys, go back again to that panned out view.

As Jesus enters the city, he sees the entirety of Jerusalem spread out before him.

And you want to talk about a time to look at the city of Jerusalem.

He was there at this holiday called Passover.

Passover is a really, really big deal.

It was a huge deal back then.

In fact, at the time of Passover, historians from that time period estimate that about 2 to 2.5 million people would have been in the city of Jerusalem.

Now, let me give you a little context for that, because that's not that much to us, but the world's changed a lot in the last 2,000 years.

There's a lot more people.

Estimates are that at the time Jesus walked the earth, the entire earth's population was probably only around 300 million people.

That is less than the population of the United States today.

So what that means is that in Jerusalem at the time of Passover, almost 1% of the entire Earth's population was there.

Now we've got over 7 billion people on the planet right now, and so if you wanted to have a similar experience, you'd have to find a city with over 70 million people in it.

And there aren't those.

Those don't exist.

In fact, there's not even a city on the earth with 40 million people.

For some perspective, that would be eight New York cities worth of people, percentage-wise.

There's all those people there.

Just imagine the buzz, just imagine the excitement.

How alive that city must have felt with 2.5 million people there to celebrate Passover, to make sacrifices, and it says that all anyone was talking about was Jesus.

So we need to understand that this wasn't some like little moment.

Jesus didn't sort of sneak in unnoticed.

The entire city was talking about him.

They were celebrating him.

They were treating him like a king.

It says they were laying their garments down in front of him.

They were laying palm branches down in front of him, which was a cultural significant thing to do.

It was something to signify that that person was a redeemer, was someone who was coming to rescue you.

In fact, in Luke's account of this story, it says that the people were shouting Hosanna, Hosanna, and that was a word that meant save us, but it was a word that meant save us with the recognition that the one you were saying that to had the power to do it.

So you could translate Hosanna as Redeemer, my Redeemer, save me.

Jesus is being celebrated.

It's like borderline worship.

And so just for a moment, try to put yourself in the mind of Jesus.

You're coming into Jerusalem.

You see what we just looked at.

You see the entirety of the city laid out in front of you.

The people on the road are crying out and celebrating you.

They're treating you like royalty, like a king.

How would you respond?

This is what it says in Luke chapter 19, verse 41.

Luke 19:41

As he came closer to Jerusalem and saw the city ahead, he began to weep.

Now that's an odd reaction, right?

I mean, here Jesus is, thousands of people lined up to see him, people celebrating, singing out, calling him the son of David, which was signifying that he was the Messiah, the one that they had been waiting for to rescue them.

And rather than smile, and rather than celebrate with them, he weeps.

Why?

It's really simple.

It's because Jesus knew exactly what he was walking into.

He was not ignorant of the fact that just a few days after they were shouting Hosanna, son of David, they would be shouting Crucify him.

He was not ignorant of the fact that despite his best efforts, despite all of the miracles that he performed, all the teachings that he gave that were so revolutionary and so, even to this day, mind-blowing in terms of the perspective they give us on God and ourselves.

Despite all of that, he knew that by and large, the city of Jerusalem would reject him almost completely.

And the consequences of that would be, would be severe.

Jesus goes on in the next few verses to say, How I wish today that you of all people would understand the way to peace.

But now it's too late, and peace is hidden from your eyes.

Before long, your enemies will build ramparts against your walls and encircle you and close in on you from every side.

They will crush you into the ground and your children with you.

Your enemies will not leave a single stone in place because you did not recognize it when God visited you.

See, what Jesus is talking about here is the inevitable fate of the city of Jerusalem at the time.

This was a time of major political unrest.

Jesus' people were very prone to try to overthrow the Roman government that was above them, which was a hard thing to pull off.

And you could say they were even hell-bent on it.

It was their focus, it was their obsession, so much so that they could not, in their minds, grasp the idea of a Messiah coming to save them from anything other than Rome.

They were waiting for a conquering hero to come in to make war with Rome, but Jesus was a servant hero who came to make peace with God.

You know, they should have seen it because in their culture, if you were riding into a city to overtake it, to take it by force, you would ride in on a horse.

If you came in on a donkey, that was a symbol of peace.

When the people were saying, save us, save us, they were saying, make us powerful.

Make us into an empire.

Free us from Rome, and in fact, make us Rome.

That's what they were saying.

And Jesus was coming with very different intentions, and he knew that.

And it was so unfortunate because one of the things Jesus talked about very often, many times in his ministry, was that Jerusalem would be destroyed.

That the temple in Jerusalem would be completely and totally demolished.

And in the year 70 AD, that happened.

Just a generation after Jesus, this small group of Jewish insurgents known as the Zealots led an uprising against Rome.

And it forced Rome to respond with the full measure of their army.

And for two years the city of Jerusalem was sieged.

And it ended with Jerusalem being completely and totally destroyed.

Over one million people were killed.

Now, if if they had accepted Jesus and submitted to peace, they would have let go of this obsession with what was happening around them.

And their focus would have been on what God wanted to do within them.

And it's very likely, almost certain, that that war with Rome would have never happened because they would have changed their focus.

But Jesus knows, again, he's coming down that that mountain and he sees all of Jerusalem in front of him, and he knows what's going to happen.

He sees it as it is and as it will be.

He sees the devastation.

He sees the rejection.

He sees the crucifixion and the cross ahead of him.

And I don't know about you, but if I was in Jesus' shoes, coming down that mountain, looking at Jerusalem, knowing all of that, at some point down the path, I would have counted the cost and said, you know what?

I'm out.

You know what?

Let's let's turn around.

Hey guys, pack up the palm branches.

I appreciate it.

But you don't know what you're asking for, and you really don't understand what I'm here to do.

And knowing that it's not just gonna work out, it's not gonna be like a rosy and and sunshiny kind of story.

It's gonna have a lot of ugly parts.

I just, I don't know.

I I'm gonna go back this way.

We have to understand that when Jesus went to the cross, he wasn't naive.

He wasn't filled with blind optimism, telling him that, yeah, hey, maybe, maybe they're all gonna accept you.

Maybe they're all gonna realize who you are and finally it's gonna click, and maybe they're gonna they're gonna forget about all this stuff that fills their minds and keeps them constantly at war with themselves and with the world around them.

And by the way, if you want to describe the status of our culture today, talk about being at war with yourself and with the world around you.

Jesus is saying, he's not saying in his mind like this is gonna happen, they're gonna receive me, they're gonna celebrate me, and it's all gonna be okay.

He knows that it's gonna be really, really hard.

There's gonna be a lot of ugly stuff, there's gonna be a lot of hurt, a lot of turmoil, and yet, knowing all of that, Jesus doesn't turn around.

He counts the cost and he continues on.

Because that is who Jesus is.

He counts the cost and he continues on.

As he looked at Jerusalem, he would have seen a lot of things.

He would have seen victims.

A million people that were destined for destruction, at least in terms of their earthly life, because he knew what was coming.

He knew what the inevitable result of all the things going on would be.

He saw that.

He would have seen villains, these people that were stirring up trouble, sparking violence.

Their actions would be what would result in everything that was going to happen.

He would have seen that.

But Jesus is not a victim, though he suffered.

He certainly isn't a villain, though he was treated as such.

Jesus is the victor.

He is the victor.

He counted the cost, and knowing all that he knew, he deemed it worthy.

He deemed those people worthy to die for, worthy to save.

And he continued on.

And it is vital that we understand who Jesus is.

Because let's let's get personal for a second.

All of us have a lot of ugly parts.

Right?

There's just stuff in all of our hearts and minds that, if we're honest with ourselves, is not the best.

Sometimes I surprise myself at how how cynical I can be, how petty I can be in my mind.

And it's important we understand that oftentimes in in this world we love people out of ignorance.

Right?

Like a lot of times you you fall in love with someone because you just don't know that much about them.

Right?

I remember Megan and I really early on in our relationship.

We were both in high school.

I looked at her in the school parking lot, we held hands, and I looked at her next to her red Volkswagen Beetle, and I said, You're perfect.

And she looked at me and said, You're perfect.

Neither of us are perfect.

She's more perfect.

Uh, I have to say that.

I don't actually believe it.

Uh she'd say that she'd say the exact same thing.

All right, Trey, my point is we know each other now.

We have flaws.

And the truth is, I would trade the love I have for my wife today over the love that I had back then as a 17-year-old any day of the week, because that was a love out of ignorance, and I love her today, knowing her so much better, good and bad.

Because that's a mature love.

That's a real love.

What we have to understand is that when Jesus loves us, when he loves you, he does not love you out of ignorance.

It's not that he looks at you and isn't aware of the stuff.

It's not that he looks at you and for some reason he can't see the mess.

No, no, no.

It's it's just like when he came down that road into Jerusalem, he sees it all.

And he counts the cost, which is his life, and he continues on because he deems you worthy.

He deems you worthy.

Oftentimes we're the victims.

We experience hardship, people hurt us, they betray us, they break trust, we suffer the consequences.

All of us know what it's like to be victimized in life to some degree.

And sometimes in our victimhood, we actually respond in ways that make us villains.

And we're the ones that are doing something that brings hurt to someone else's life.

We're the ones that are letting other people down.

But through faith in Jesus, he lifts us up to a place we could never be on our own, and he says, No, you're victors now.

Scripture actually says that through faith in Jesus, we become more than conquerors.

We go from being victims and villains to victors because we have a God who loves us so much that he sees everything, he's naive to nothing, and he counts the cost and he continues on.

Jesus will never, ever, ever give up on you.

He will never do it.

It's not in his nature.

It's not who he is.

He doesn't give up on people.

Even if logically he should.

We see scriptures like Hebrews chapter 12, verses 1 and 2 that say, 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 12:1

And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.

How do we do that?

It says this.

Now that word perfect in the Greek language, it's a word that means completes.

It means brings to maturity.

So Jesus is the one who starts our faith.

He's the one who initiates the relationship that we have with God, the Father.

He does.

He came for us.

Like he started it.

I hear that a lot in my house.

He started it.

Jesus started it.

And guess what?

He finishes it.

Because he doesn't give up on us.

He never, ever gives up on us.

He not only initiates our faith, he finishes it.

He will not quit loving you, teaching you, walking with you, transforming you from the inside out.

He will not quit.

So I would just surrender to it because he's not going to stop.

Philippians chapter 1, verse 6 says that I'm certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.

Philippians 1:6

Now, that's probably a while from now.

We don't really know.

And sometimes we get frustrated with God because he will not jump onto our timetable.

Have you ever noticed that?

You ever notice how God's never early?

Ever.

Like the blessings that he gives you when he rescues you, it's never like way in advance.

It doesn't come to you and say, hey, a few years from now you're really going to need me, so I'm going to give you all this now so that you've got it when that happens.

It's like all of scripture is people like, it's the last possible second.

I'm on the verge of destruction.

And then God's like, boom, I'm here.

And we might look at God and go, You're late?

And he would look at us and say, I'm right on time.

He's always on time.

He's just never early.

From our perspective.

It says that that work that he began in us will be finished on the day that Jesus returns.

What that essentially means is that even if there's unfinished work in our lives, even if we die unfinished, which we will, he's not done with us.

Maybe that's why heaven's going to last forever.

Maybe it takes that long to complete the whole transformation process.

The point is that he never, ever gives up on us.

If any rational person had been Jesus coming down that mountain, looking at Jerusalem and understanding completely exactly what was going to happen.

The rejection, the hatred, the devastation.

Any rational person would have said, you know what?

I'm out.

I've counted the cost, and it's just not worth the hassle.

Not Jesus.

A worship team, you guys can can make your way up.

We'll wrap up.

Not Jesus.

He looks at us, he sees it all, which is cool because you don't have to hide anything.

There's great peace there, by the way, not having to hide from Jesus.

Like my kids are at an age where they hide stuff from me.

And it's almost like this weird, uh this weird reaction.

Have you ever hid something from someone that you didn't even need to hide?

Like one day in the office, it was my my lunch break, and I was uh I was I was typing on the computer and I like basketball shoes.

And so uh I always that's all I ever wear are basketball shoes.

And I'm not one of those people that wears like the hyper expensive ones.

I just like basketball shoes.

I'm on my feet all day, might as well be cushioned, okay?

And so uh Madison, who's our youth pastor, awesome, he walked into my office.

And for some reason, I I like shut my laptop.

And he was like, What are you doing?

And I was like, I pulled it up, it was shoes.

And I was like, uh, made this look worse than it was.

He's like, Justin, are you ashamed that you buy too many shoes?

And I was like, maybe, I don't know.

Sometimes we hide silly things because somewhere inside of us there's this need to hide.

That, by the way, goes back all the way to the very beginning.

If you know the story of Adam and Eve in the garden, when they first mess up, the first thing they do is they hide from God.

And it doesn't work.

You can't hide from God.

He's really good at hide and seek, he's the best at it.

Can't beat him.

And you don't have to.

Because the fear is that if he sees it all, he'll reject.

If he recognizes the failure, he'll pull away.

If he actually sees just what a mess I am inside, he'll turn the other way.

Jesus doesn't do that.

Home Sunday proves that to us.

Jesus knows the mess, he sees the flaws, he knows the shortcomings, he sees all of it, and he counts the cost and says, I will continue on because I love you.

And his love is not some soft love.

His love is a passionate, it's a it's a conquering kind of love.

There's nothing like it.

He counts the cost and he will continue on because he never, ever, ever gives up on people.

He will never give up on you.

And we've got to respond to that in a really simple way.

A few things as we as we wrap up today.

Number one, never give up on Jesus.

Never give up on Jesus.

Sometimes we put our faith in him and we have these expectations of what it's gonna look like once we we follow Jesus.

And it's just all gonna work out, it's all gonna be great, and the problems are gonna go away, and everything that we struggle with is just gonna vanish.

Sometimes you follow Jesus, and what you actually find is resistance because you have an enemy, and he doesn't throw in the towel.

And so we feel sometimes like, man, I don't know if this Jesus thing is working out.

Because it's hard.

Anything that's worthwhile is hard.

Don't give up on Jesus.

Don't stop moving toward him.

Don't stop saying yes to him, whatever he calls you to do.

And so I'll ask on that note, what's the next step you need to take in your relationship with him today?

What's the next step?

For some of us, that next step might be belief.

Maybe you've never come to the place where you've said, I believe in Jesus, like you just say it.

You're not dancing around it.

You you've never gone to the point where you've said, I am a follower of Jesus.

And I don't care what the world thinks about Jesus, I don't care what the world's opinion of Jesus is, I stand with Jesus, I love Jesus, I'm with him.

If you haven't made that decision, that would be the next step.

Because he's already there with you, he already believes in you, loves you, is proud to stand with you.

You ever think about the fact that Jesus is like, he's proud of you?

This last week, one of the people in our office just said, Hey, you know, I'm starting to realize that not only does God love me, but I think he actually likes me too.

Jesus, he's proud of you.

He's proud to call you his son or his daughter.

So don't give up on him.

Take the next step.

For some of us, that next step is baptism.

And by the way, if even if you're watching from home and you haven't been baptized, we'll baptize you like anytime.

We're ready.

Two tanks.

We're ready for anything.

You get baptized next Sunday.

It's Easter.

We will we will absolutely baptize you on Easter Sunday.

That would actually be a really cool Sunday to get baptized.

And so you can email us, you can go to the connect desk in the main lobby, and it's time for you to make it public.

Where you let the world know I belong to Jesus.

That's the next step.

But all of us, all of us have a next step.

Sometimes that next step is taking him seriously in some area of life that he's calling us to respond in.

Maybe there's a relationship that's broken, and you've got to be the one that takes that first step toward forgiveness.

Maybe there's a step of faith that he's been calling you to take, and it requires you to really stretch yourself in terms of your belief that God's got you and you need to take it because he's calling you and you know it.

That's the next step.

Don't give up on Jesus.

Keep walking toward him, keep doing whatever he asks you to do because he'll never give up on you.

Number two, don't give up on yourself.

Like, don't give up on yourself.

Don't be hard on yourself.

So important.

There are plenty of people in life who will be hard on you.

Plenty.

You don't need to add to that.

You've got to believe that God loves you, sees you as you are, and likes you.

And when you have those moments where you mess up and you fall short of your own expectations and you feel like a failure, you've got to understand that's that's you, that's not God.

I was talking to a young man last week, he was worshiping, and I just saw him and just could just could tell God's really pleased with him.

And so I just told him that, and it was like he just it's really hard for me to believe.

That was his response.

It's hard, it's hard.

And by the way, I'm not, I get it, I feel the same way very often.

We are almost always our own worst critic.

And if we could actually hear the things that God speaks over us, that he calls you his friend, his child.

I mean, come on, the church is called the bride of Christ.

So that means in Jesus' perspective, like we're married, it's it's a commitment.

And he's proud to stand to stand beside you and to call you his own.

So when you struggle, don't pile on, don't give up on yourself, don't throw in the talent any sphere of life, because Jesus will never give up on you.

No matter the cost, continue on.

And finally, don't give up on others.

In fact, we could take it a step further.

Don't give up on anyone.

I think one of the biggest challenges we face in this day and age is just cynicism.

It's so, you know, it's not hard to look at the world and see the things that are wrong with it.

It's not.

It's not a talent, it's not a skill.

It's not a skill to see something that's on fire and be like, fire.

Two-year-olds can do that.

It's a challenge to look at something that is apparently broken and see the beauty in it.

It's a challenge to look at something that seems hopeless and find hope.

That takes faith.

That takes the Holy Spirit working within you.

And that's the way Jesus saw everyone and everything.

As he came down that hill, as he came down that path, and he looked at Jerusalem and he saw how broken, as he saw how how in some ways doomed it even was, he didn't quit.

He kept going.

He saved it.

He rescued it.

You know, if you turn to the last pages of the Bible, you read about a new Jerusalem that he establishes.

And maybe he saw that as well when he came down the mountain.

The point is, we can't look at anyone around us and say, you know what, you're done.

We can't look at our country and do that.

Like, I'm just gonna be honest, I'm so tired of hearing people, especially people of faith, talk about America or the world as if it's hopeless.

I mean, come on.

Jesus doesn't do that.

If he did, we'd all be in a lot of trouble.

It'd be like he's like, actually, no, I have given up on everything.

Sorry, I forgot to tell you guys, I'm done.

Like, he doesn't do that ever.

There's nothing in his character that does that.

We have to be people.

Even if it takes like us forcing ourselves to have faith, like, no, don't think those thoughts.

God is not finished yet.

He's not done.

When you look at someone and they're struggling, I've got news for you.

God's not done with them.

You might be seeing them at a low point, but you have no idea how high God might be about to take them.

So don't give up on them.

And when you look at the world, our country, our state, you name it, don't give up on anything because God's not done.

God's not finished.

Today's Palm Sunday.

It's the day that we commemorate Jesus walking into a mess.

And the first step for Jesus wasn't cleaning the mess up, it was allowing the mess to affect him in a deeply personal way.

He let the brokenness of the world break him for a moment.

But then he got back up.

And for the last 2,000 years, we have had the very Spirit of God active and at work with us, changing people, changing cultures.

There's nothing he can't do.

And today is a day to remember that no matter how messy it looks, no matter how hard it is, God will never, ever, ever give up.

Let's pray.

Father God, thank you for this day.

Thank you for Palm Sunday.

Thank you for the reminder that you don't quit.

Even when maybe you should, by our measure.

There's no person that you wouldn't die for.

Because there's no person that you haven't died for.

There's no situation that you can't redeem.

There's nothing so broken that you can't bring it back together.

There's nothing too hard for you.

There's nothing too challenging.

Because even when you see everything as it is and will be, and even when that is messy, even when it brings you to tears, you don't turn around and walk the other way.

You keep coming toward.

Lord, help us all understand that you're never gonna stop walking toward us.

That you're never gonna stop walking beside us, that you're never gonna stop speaking to us.

Even right now, Scripture says, Lord, that you are interceding on our behalf.

You are literally interpreting our prayers to God the Father.

So when we don't even have the words, we don't even know what to pray for.

You take that over.

Jesus, you're amazing.

You're amazing.

Help us be like you.

Help us be people who count the cost and continue on.

Because like you, we just believe that everyone around us, that this world, even us, that it's all worth it.

Because you say it is.

We love you.

We pray all this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.