Leaven of the Pharisees

Good morning.

Um so today's reading is from Mark 8, verses 14 through 21.

Mark 8:14–21

Now they had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat, and he cautioned them, saying, Watch out, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.

And they began discussing with one another the fact that they had no bread.

And Jesus, aware of this, said to them, Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread?

Do you not yet perceive or understand?

Are your hearts hardened?

Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear, and do you not remember?

When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?

They said to him, twelve.

And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?

And they said to him, seven.

And he said to them, Do you not yet understand?

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good morning.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church.

Uh we're continuing our move through Mark this fall.

We've been in Mark for kind of the past three years.

The way that we break down our preaching here is uh we've been moving through Mark in the fall since 2020, and we've been moving through Genesis in kind of the first of the year through the spring.

And then we pick kind of an epistle or a shorter book to move through during the summer.

So we've been in Mark for three years, um, but really just since the fall for this year.

So we're in Mark chapter eight.

A lot has happened.

Um uh a lot of healings, a lot of boat rides with the disciples.

If you were a disciple, it was um uh healings, confrontations, and boat rides.

Imagine how much worse it would be if there were no boat rides, you know.

So today is a story of another boat ride, and it's a conversation that Jesus has with his disciples while they're in a boat after a confrontation with the Pharisees.

So what we'll see is there's a lot to there's a lot to see in a passage like this.

There's conversations about the leaven of the Pharisees and Herod.

There's remembering of Jesus's previous miracles.

There's a lot to unpack in a short uh passage like this, but uh we'll remember that this is a part of Mark's project.

And the whole project of Mark's gospel is is explained in the first sentence of Mark's gospel, which is this is the beginning, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

That is Mark's claim.

His claim is that Jesus Christ, Jesus is the Christ, and he is the Son of God.

And so he should be relayed to us in a gospel, which is the announcement, the good news announcement of a king.

And so we want to keep that constantly in mind when we move through this book, which is how is it that Mark is teaching us to understand that Jesus is the Son of God?

What would it take for you to be convinced that a man is the son of God?

What type of data, what type of evidence, what type of experiences would you need to be convinced of such an outrageous claim?

So let's pray with that in our minds as we move through this passage.

Holy Father, thank you for your gathering this morning.

Thank you for the words of Psalm 103, the comfort that they were to my heart to hear.

Lord, that you separate our sin from us as far as the East is from the West.

Lord, that you do not treat us according to our iniquities.

So that we might come into your presence this morning, a forgiven people, who you speak to as beloved sons, that we might hear your fatherly voice.

Lord, that you might shape our minds so that we might see you more clearly and know you more completely.

Lord, that is what your word accomplishes.

We pray that you would prepare our hearts to receive that this morning.

Lord, we also consider our children in the room behind us.

Lord, we pray that you would keep them warm in the garage and that as they hear this story of confusion about bread and disciples not understanding, Lord, that their faith and their hearts might be encouraged to know you more completely.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So in this narrative, uh it begins, and Jesus had faced this uh conversation immediately prior with the Pharisees, and the Pharisees had demanded that Jesus perform a sign from heaven.

And this is right on the heels of Jesus feeding 4,000 Gentiles on the other side of the lake.

But also in this same region earlier, Jesus had fed 5,000, miracle which is 20% better, and he had healed crowds and hordes of people in this very area.

There are countless signs that Jesus has performed, clear signs from heaven.

And yet the Pharisees here demand that Jesus perform a sign.

So Jesus says, No, I will not give you a sign.

And in this after that immediate confrontation, Jesus gets into the boat with his disciples and they leave that region once again, sailing back to a more predominantly Gentile location once again.

So we see the Pharisees clearly are being willfully blind to who Jesus is.

And that makes sense because their whole identity, their personhood is based on being the experts in the law, being the ones who could most clearly anticipate who the Messiah was.

And they likely had an expectation that was when the Messiah appears, he's going to do nothing but congratulate us and thank us for keeping things together so well.

And yet, when the Messiah appears, he exposes their hypocrisy.

And so they have a willful blindness.

They demand a sign.

And part of their demanding a sign is saying, you haven't given us one yet.

You haven't lived up to our expectations enough yet.

So they have skin in the game that causes them to be willfully blind.

But in today's story, Jesus is back in the boat with his disciples.

Now, this is just a group of, you know, it's a pack of strays.

It's a group of fishermen and tax collectors and zealots.

They have very little that makes sense for this group to be together, but Jesus has called these people together, and they don't have this reason to be willfully blind to who Jesus is.

In fact, when we read through the story, it seems like they are more so incentivized to understand clearly that Jesus is the Christ, he is the Messiah, that his difference and his that his presence in their lives is the thing that would make all the difference in their self-understanding and in their understanding of the scriptures.

And yet, in this boat ride, we see that the disciples somehow are just as blind as the Pharisees.

Now, this is helpful.

And you can see why it would be helpful for Mark's project.

Because he's helping us understand what it takes to see Jesus.

He's helping give us the eyes to answer the question: how would we know that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God?

Well, he gives us back to back these two limit cases that could cause our blindness.

One limit case is the Pharisaic case.

You know, look, to name Jesus as Lord has incredibly high cost for you.

And so if you are not naming Jesus as Lord, you have to consider in your own heart, is that because I'm negatively incentivized to do so?

Is it not that I'm uh encountering something which I can't claim is true?

It's that when I encounter that truth, it's just too costly to bring into my life.

It would make me abandon this romantic relationship in a way that I would actually like to pursue it.

It would cause me to bring honesty into my workplace in a way which could cause just utter destruction of this world that I've built.

You see, the Pharisees show the reason that you're saying Christ isn't Lord, it may be your own incentives.

But the disciples are this other limit case where they seem to have every reason to believe that their Lord and Master, the rabbi who they follow is the Messiah, is the Lord.

And yet, in their case as well, they are blind to who Jesus is.

And we see that part of their blindness is that they are only able to interpret the world in their immediate needs and circumstances.

In their life, they have brought no verticality to their understanding, no sense that God could be legitimately a part of these experiences and these things that I'm seeing.

And so the flatness of their view of the world causes this sort of blindness.

And so within these two limit cases, you likely find yourself.

Because claiming that Jesus is Lord gives you good reason to not, it gives plenty of reasons to not see Jesus as Lord because the obedience required, the demands that he makes, it can be our entire lives.

And then we also stand 2,000 years after Christ, we have seen the evidence of the gospel playing out.

We see the the what is so complete and wonderful about this offer of a transformed and eternal life, a complete forgiveness of sins by his atonement.

Many of us are so well acquainted with that story that it's almost hard for our hearts to catch fire about it again because we're so familiar with it.

Like a coin that's lost its embossment, we forgot what it means.

Because we've passed it around so much.

And because of that flatness of our view, Christ's presence in our lives actually has no effect.

In today's story, we see this flatness of the way the disciples view the world come into direct contact with Jesus' presence in their lives.

And Jesus teaches the disciples how it is that they can regain this faith, or gain initially, this faith, to be able to see Christ as he is.

Alright, so let's begin moving through our passage.

Mark 8, 14.

Now they had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat.

All right, I've given enough context for this.

Just left the Pharisees.

Before this, he had fed 4,000 people.

It's like when you order, it's like ordering one large pizza for 13 grown men.

It's like this isn't gonna work.

It's the danger of pizza parties, it's getting the ratio wrong.

And it's like, I'm glad that we're having pizza, but there's not going to be enough.

I'm gonna be hungry later.

That's like tappas.

Yeah, let's share.

This will be fun.

Let's spend way more than we would have, and all leave hungry.

Mark 8, 15.

Now, this is where Jesus' head is at.

And he cautioned them, saying, Watch out.

Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.

All right, so Jesus, he's in the boat with his disciples, and what were the immediate experiences?

The Pharisees and the Sadducees together.

Mark only talks about the Pharisees, but we see in Matthew's description that it was the Sadducees as well, were confronting Jesus, demanding a sign, showing, trying to demonstrate that Jesus is violating the traditions of men, trying to delegitimize him as the Messiah, or as one who's even sent from God like a prophet.

And so this is where Jesus' mind is.

He sees the danger that these 12 disciples are constantly surrounded by.

It's the danger of these two streams, these two cultural streams that have the most impact in their region of the world.

They're the streams of Herod, who was the king, and they're the streams of the Pharisees, who are the religious leaders.

And so it's a political stream and a religious stream, and they're both very dangerous.

And so Jesus has this concern after this confrontation with the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

He has this concern in his heart when he sits down with his disciples, and he wants to guard and protect them so that they won't be taken in by these streams, by either Herod and the Sadducees or the Pharisees.

And instead, they might begin to grasp that it is Christ, it is him, the one who's in the boat, that he is the answer, that he is the one who they need to see and to be able to understand in order to walk this narrow path while they're being pulled apart by these two cultural streams.

Jesus is so concerned that they won't beware of those things.

And so, because of his heart and his love and his care for his disciples, he says, Watch out, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.

Let's um flesh that out a bit.

What is the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod?

The leaven of the Pharisees, we've gotten to explore a bit as we've seen different confrontations that Jesus has with the Pharisees, but the Pharisees were sort of a religious club of laymen who gathered together to interpret the law and then create traditions and enforce traditions that would serve as extra helps in your obedience to the law of God.

So this is the type of thing of saying, hey, the the law tells us to wash before coming into the temple.

And you know, it also tells us to wash in before if we come into contact with the Gentile.

You know, let's just be extra safe.

One way to be extra safe is we'll develop, we'll describe exactly how you wash your hands.

Okay, now you have to wash your hands in this particular way.

Now we will know that we're doing it.

And, you know, if we go to the marketplace, and even if we only interact with fellow Jews in the marketplace, we could be using money that a Gentile touched, and then we'll pass it around and we'll touch it.

So let's add an extra law there.

And in terms of the Sabbath, let's consider the Sabbath regulations.

You know, we're we're called to rest, but how do we know if we're really resting?

Well, okay, let's limit the number of paces that you could walk during the day.

Then if we stay under that, then we'll be able to know that we're resting anyway.

They end up with this world that is that is highly codified, highly structured, and allows you, by adherence to these particular traditions, to self-consciously understand yourself as righteous and to look out at all others who do not adhere to those traditions and see they are not righteous.

They are not righteous like us.

Now, that's a wonderful amount of security, right?

How wonderful to walk out into the world and think, uh, I'm righteous.

Can you imagine?

That's it's incredible.

I'm righteous.

And then to get to look out into the world and see, oh man, look at all this unrighteousness.

I'm so glad that's not me.

I'm so glad that's not me.

Then you wash your hands and tithe your herbs and spices.

Now, a good way to uh see your own pharisaical nature is if you're tithing your herbs and spices instead of uh cooking for your neighbor, you know, or or taking care of the needy.

I see some of you.

No, no one relates to that.

Now the Pharisees would have clearly looked down on Herod.

Now Herod was in party with the Sadducees.

Sadducees, similar to the Pharisees, but they had a much more uh uh honestly a much more Greek, a much more pagan interpretation of Scripture.

They had no conception of the afterlife, they thought there was no afterlife, and uh they likewise rejected anything outside of the first five books of Scripture.

And uh because of their understanding of the world as just what you can get out of this life and what matters in these immediate circumstances, then they had this natural relation to the party of Herod.

Herod was the king of this region.

And Herod comes from a long line of some of the most corrupt people you could possibly imagine.

Herod's life is sh is, it makes itself known in just a politicking and self-aggrandizement and uh licentiousness.

He is the maximum of hedonism and power grabbing.

That is his mode of living, and you can participate in his spoils if you would only just check that petty morality at the door.

Then you can come and play in the real world, in the way things really get done, which is politicking and backstabbing and power grabbing, and allowing your world to be crafted by lies and deceit.

That's the way things really happen.

So you could participate with the party of Herod, and the Sadducees were more than willing to.

So there's these two streams, which you can see they're like perfect like opposites of one another.

One is saying I can have righteousness of my own by adding more rules and regulations to what Scripture demands.

And the other says, I can have the life that I truly desire, have the power and acclaim that I truly desire if I throw away any of the rules and regulations that morality would impose upon me.

And these two are in this constant cultural dialogue.

One only speaking in terms of power, and the other only speaking in terms of their own righteousness, their own self-made righteousness.

Jesus sees these.

And he knows, disciples, you are so susceptible to the power of either of these, especially when you see them entering into this dialogue that they are in.

And that's why he describes it, he says, beware of the leaven.

A leaven is the perfect metaphor.

Because leaven is something my my wife's making sourdough bread now, like a sourdough starter, which is basically like adopting this horrible creature.

And you feed it.

I don't like calling it that.

Uh, and it smells.

So far, it's been a fruitless activity.

We have no bread from this.

But I'm sure it'll be great.

But you it's just this pinch of leaven that you can take and put into dough.

And then it spreads slowly, invisibly over time throughout the whole dough until it impacts every aspect of the dough.

So, look, when I describe the Pharisees and when I describe the party of Herod, you're not sitting back thinking, like, yeah, I'm gonna pick which one of those, and I'm gonna opt in to one of those, hopefully.

Because the descriptions of both of them, when they're just laid out in the fullness of their loaves, see, called a poetic conceit, then they Are shown to be horrific and terrible.

But it's just a pinch of leaven.

Right?

Because one of the disciples, maybe it's, you know, Levi, he's a tax collector.

He'd spent his time being just sympathetic with the Roman government, with Herod, and that's where his life was formed.

That's where his wealth was built.

And then he's going through just interaction after interaction with Jesus, where he's confirming over and over again the Pharisees are as bad as we always thought they were.

The Pharisees are as hypocritical, they are just as power-hungry as we are.

But you know what?

At least when we lie to people, we lie to their faces.

The Pharisees just lie behind your back.

And so Matthew gets out of, after all of these experiences, and he gets out of the boat, you know, and he he has this opportunity to all of a sudden see it's not Christ that I'm holding to.

It's actually this other morality, which is the party of Herod.

And it starts to grow where he says, you know, perhaps I could offer a little deceit, even in my attempts to win someone to Christ.

Perhaps I could use the same power manipulative games in order to win somebody to this particular party.

In fact, maybe my allegiance with Christ is formed more so, it's more so about my rejection of the Pharisees than it is about my allegiance to Christ.

And all of a sudden, this leaven takes over.

You see, that's the way it happens.

And so Jesus sees this with his disciples, and he says, We're going to get off the boat soon.

And I see these worlds and these patterns, and I know that they aren't seeing clearly who I am yet.

And so they're so vulnerable.

Look at how vulnerable they are.

Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod.

Beware of this.

So Jesus says this sentence, you know, watch out, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod.

And you can see, as we've talked about it, this is a packed uh idea, you know, that Jesus is saying it should raise a lot of questions, provoke a lot of thought and discussion, especially with that group, when you've got a zealot who wants to overthrow the Roman occupation and a tax collector.

Like these are the it we should just be talking about what Jesus just said.

Here's the response that it provoked among the disciples.

And they began discussing with one another the fact that they had no bread.

I'm gonna take a sip of coffee.

Um it is funny.

It's meant to be funny.

Like it we're meant to see the disciples here and think that's ridiculous.

That is ridiculous.

You see, they have no verticality to their thought.

They're only able to experience their immediate what seems to be their most pressing need.

Jesus notice, they just begin discussing amongst themselves.

So it's not like they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, great, great Jesus, great point, another great point.

Somebody write that down.

Uh in Jesus, what about the bread situation?

They don't bring it up to Jesus.

They just, you know, one of them turns to the other, and um, yeah, John's like, Thomas, where's the other loaves?

And then they just start mumbling, oh, come on, we only got one loaf of bread.

I'm starving.

Pharisees always wear me out, make me so hungry.

You gotta eat my feelings after being around those guys, says Matthew, and then you know, the zealots get frustrated.

Jesus, it says this in Mark 8, 17, and Jesus, aware of this, so he knows what they're talking about, becomes incredibly disappointed.

He says, Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread?

Do you not yet perceive or understand?

Are your hearts hardened?

This is the center of our text today.

In their turn to just discuss their lack of bread, Jesus is seeing plainly that his presence makes no difference to the disciples in their assessment of their situation.

We have no bread.

You know what the second thought should have been?

But Jesus is in the boat.

Oh, we we only have one loaf of bread.

Huh, man, that's a bummer.

Hey, you know who's with us?

Jesus is in the boat.

But that has no effect on them.

The fact of Jesus' presence does not impact their assessment of the situation that they are in at all.

And that is what makes them vulnerable to the leaven of the Pharisees and to the leaven of Herod.

Because if they understood, you know what the most important fact about our situation is?

It's not the number of loaves we've brought.

That's not the most important fact about our situation.

It's not that we're alone in the middle of a large sea where there's typically not much bread.

The most important fact about our situation is that Jesus is in the boat with us.

That's the most important fact about our situation.

So Jesus sees this dynamic that's taking place in their hearts, and this is of the deepest concern to him.

Because here's how you watch out, here's how you're able to survive in a world of Pharisees and Herodians.

You're able to survive in this world by understanding that Jesus' presence is the most important interpretive fact that you bring to the world.

That you're able to bring into your situation.

So Jesus teaches them how to perceive his presence, how to call to mind this most important fact.

He begins teaching them right away in this verse, in verse 17.

Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread?

Okay, so that's that's helpful.

There, you know, we get trapped in these internal dialogues or in dialogues with certain people, and we're just discussing some lack, some stressor, some need.

It could be there are some conversations, you know, in the public square, it's like a some event happens, and I'm pretty sure someone somewhere who runs the algorithm, maybe it's the algorithm itself and it's become sentient, just goes to a file and pushes play, and then everybody takes their positions, and we all say the same things back and forth to one another until algorithm gets bored.

And I no longer use articles for algorithm because it's sentient.

And we uh or articles.

Did I say pronouns?

Doesn't matter.

This is all happening in my head, I can tell.

How many conversations have you had with people, or do you have with with people where it's like, oh wow, we're just rehearsing.

How many we've had this conversation, this very conversation, so many times.

We're just locked in.

How many times had the disciples been like, you know, we don't have enough bread?

You know, this is this is the driving need, this is the thing that commands us, and not into that circumstance or into that conversation, it's hermetically sealed off from this fact, which could change our whole view.

It could be a paradigm shift on our view of the situation, which is Christ is with us.

Christ is with me.

We'll put this in a religious frame so it's even simpler.

Like when we think about how will the church adapt to this changing culture so that we might impact the culture and see people saved and see our culture redeemed.

Now let's all gather into small groups and we'll have that conversation.

Now I want to pause and let's replay that same conversation with this as the central fact.

Christ is with us.

What if Christ is with us when we impact the culture?

How would that change our posture?

How would that would we be perhaps more courageous?

Would we be more hopeful for people that we had previously written off?

What if the most central fact of the church's success was Christ is with us?

But typically it's we don't have enough bread.

Ah man, we lost all that cultural capital.

We're culturally poor because of culture capital inflation.

Christ is with us.

If that were the central fact of our assessment.

Jesus continues, having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear, and do you not remember?

So many of you, I know, because I've heard, have stories of Christ's work in your life, your own life.

Like she could just call to memory and think something like, you know, if he if he was like that to me then, he'll probably be like that to me in the future.

And yet we don't remember Christ's own faithfulness.

I think probably one of the most horrific things that could happen to me is if Jesus were like, hey James, here's your own journal.

Oh, I notice that you're very stressed about this decision or this conversation or this financial constraint.

Oh, all these times that I was faithful to you in similar situations, do those not mean anything to you?

Were those?

Do you do you do you think that those actually just said nothing about me?

They said nothing about my character and my heart towards you.

Did you not hear?

Did you not see?

Look, I'm not asking you to do anything, to do any mystical, metaphysical searching.

This requires no Sam Harris meditative discipline.

Just look.

Just hear.

And then just remember.

Jesus knows he's a wonderful disciple maker.

So he knows how to work into our hearts.

And he does this because he probably looked around, like when I was talking about algorithm and was like, I think nobody's understanding me.

And the it and he looks around at his disciples and he's like, okay, I'm gonna have to become a bit more particular, aren't I?

Because you guys aren't piecing this together.

Let me let me become a bit more particular.

Mark 8, 19 through 20.

When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, he I love there's so many things he could have said.

When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, he could have said, that worked, didn't it?

And that would have been enough.

It would have been like, yeah, yeah, that worked.

But he doesn't.

He he doubles, he go, he pushes way further.

He says, How many baskets did you have left over?

They said to him, I want to hear it.

Twelve.

And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?

Seven.

Oh, this is so hilarious.

So you do remember.

That's wild, because I thought, oh, they must have, you probably just didn't remember.

But I can see that you do.

Here's the last verse, Mark 8, 21.

And he said to them, Do you not yet understand?

Right now, you have one loaf of bread, 13 people to feed, in some area of your life.

Some consistent stressor, something that you know I'm in a situation I can't handle, I can't fix.

And you talk amongst yourselves about it.

You participate in the frameworks of the Pharisees, you know, I'm probably being punished by the Lord in some way.

You participate in the frameworks of the Herodians, you know, I can probably just, you know, if I bend this a little bit, I can probably find my way out by myself from this situation.

And you don't remember go, therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.

And behold, I am with you always until the end of the age.

Do you not yet understand?

Do you not remember?

Have you not seen?

Have you not heard?

Do you not know that he marches towards the cross after this?

He pays for your sin.

He's resurrected, gives you his spirit, makes you righteous in his sight, does not count your sin against you, but in fact overflows his grace onto you, that you cannot comprehend the height and breadth and depth of his love towards you, that it surpasses knowledge.

He has made you pure in his sight, he has washed you by his spirit, and he is with you.

I want you to, in your mind right now, visit, you know, picture it like a that problem, that that thing, that, that lack of bread that's in your life right now.

I want it to come to your to your doorstep and knock on the door.

And it's say, hey, I'm I'm walking in to come and hang out for a while.

You know, I visit every now and then, and we talk, and I make you anxious, and then I leave.

And I want you to say, ah, that's great.

Come on in.

Uh, you know, a friend is a friend is also going to be joining us.

I don't know if you guys have met, but he'll also be stopping by.

His name's Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

He loves me and cares for me.

He has my best interests in mind.

He's he's already died for me and been resurrected.

I have faith in him, and he promises me eternal life.

And his constant presence and help for situations just like this.

He'll be joining us as well for this conversation.

Now, does it change things?

Yeah, the whole temperature of the room has changed.

And that problem, about halfway through the conversation, says, eh, I'm not getting anywhere.

And just leaves, you know, and goes down the street.

He's a true he's a traveling salesman, he's a door-to-door salesman.

Consider the presence of Jesus.

It is the most important fact about any situation that you're facing.

It is what builds your resiliency to be able to move through a divided world which is constantly pulling you, to make the the center of your identity something other than Christ.

And consider Christ is in the boat.

He is with me.

That is the most important fact of whatever we are facing.

I want to say something practical.

You have to practice the presence of Jesus.

And the way that we do this is by prayer.

This is why Jesus is constantly compelling us to pray in his name.

Because that's the way of it's part of it, this isn't all of it, but part of prayer is it's a way of bringing Jesus into.

This is a better way to say it.

It's a way of bringing our circumstances into the presence of Jesus.

So by prayer, when we're praying about something, now they're just out here in the world, and we're just thinking of them in the pattern, we know, one of the three or four patterns that the world gives us.

And so we're thinking of them in the patterns of the Herodians, which is, okay, I'm out here on my own.

Power is the only thing that wins the day.

I've got to do whatever it takes to keep myself safe and protected and hopefully uh squeeze some uh joy and forgetfulness out of this life.

And you think you assess the situation in that frame, and then you pray, Lord, your kingdom come, your will be done in this difficult relationship.

Now you've ushered it into the presence of the Lord so that he can reign over it as king.

And that's part of the way we participate in the proclamation of his kingdom coming.

It's part of the way we usher the world into his kingdom.

It's an imperialist effort.

We're taking ground by prayer.

So that takes practice to gain this intuition.

Now it's a practice that's grounded in this hope of the promises of Jesus, which are, I am with you.

Do not fear, for I am with you.

Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God.

Surely I'll help you.

Surely I'll uphold you.

Wait, surely I'll strengthen you.

Surely I will help you.

Surely I'll uphold you with my righteous right hand.

I wish there was some way to know that those promises were mine.

Oh, Jesus made all of those promises to the patriarchs ours.

So that all of the answers to those promises in him are yes.

And amen.

Okay.

So we're going to need to read the Bible to understand these things, so that we can grasp these promises.

Then we're going to need to learn how to pray and make that our intuition so that we can bring these events into the presence of Christ.

And then we're living in line with reality.

Because the reality is He died, He was resurrected, He ascended, and He is King of the universe now.

That's the truth of whatever situation you're in.

So we need to train our hearts to live within that reality.

Jesus teaches us how here.

All right.

Are there any questions, Matthew?

What are the most prevalent, we don't have enough bred issues you see in our church or in the church at large today?

I'm gonna go through a list of names.

Oh they're uh uh they're relational.

Which are this person or uh my spouse is not uh can conformed to me in this particular way that I I just know if they were, I would finally feel fulfilled.

You know, that's like I just don't have enough from this.

They're financial since the interest rates.

Not just since then, I'm kidding.

But as you could obviously guess, the it's funny because um our church on a relative scale at least is affluent, but financial stressor stressors uh have very little to do with that.

Because the this the stress is the is a perception thing, a relative perception.

Yeah, those are probably it.

Those are the ones.

And then the and then um some of you will find yourselves in situations, and some of I would never do this, um would find yourselves in situations where you're at a decision point, and you'll fix, you'll fixate on uh like non-moral decisions, you'll fixate on in terms of rightness and wrongness, and you'll think, okay, the Lord will tell me what to do.

I need to I need to be relieved of this by the Lord telling me what to do in this situation.

Um And that's not typically the way that the Lord works.

Oh instead, he equips us to make decisions that seem good to us, and then he promises to be with us in the midst of those.

Oh, but those are the those are the main things.

Um you know what relational circumstances that we render hopeless.

Oh man.

We call it boundaries.

Uh this is a tough one.

Because so many Christians are so permeable that they don't even have a self to give.

And so those you do need some boundaries.

But oftentimes, our developing of boundaries is a way of saying it hurts too much to hope for this situation.

What if Jesus were present?

And Jesus allows us to hope in situations like that because our hope is not particularly fixed in the resolution of the situation.

Our hope is fixed in Him and in His kingdom coming, and those who hope in Christ are not put to shame.

So understanding Jesus' presence is the only way that you can hope in these situations that seem otherwise hopeless, so that you aren't hardening your heart in a protective measure without becoming this just permeable thing that has no boundaries, that doesn't even have a self to give.

We have to have another in the room so that we can put our hope in his effectiveness.

Does that make sense?

Okay.

Sometimes I wander around a little bit in these questions and get to something that's helpful.

All right.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11 23, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Our Lord went to the cross, poured out his blood, promises that he will be with us.

We know that he will return, so that all of our hopes in him will be realized.

We will not be put to shame or called foolish for hoping in him.

Let this time of communion be a bringing yourself into the very presence of Christ, so that we receive him and his presence as our sustenance.

And let that reframe the world that you go out into, that Christ has called you to.

And let you pray confidently, Lord, in this place would your kingdom come, would your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, and perhaps even hope for that very outcome.

Holy Father, we praise you.

We thank you for your presence with us, your love towards us, the sacrifice that you have made, and the protection that you give to us by calling us to consider your presence as the most essential fact of any situation we are trying to understand.

You are Lord, you are the Son of God, you are the Christ.

Lord, let us see you as such in our own lives.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.