Lamps Are For Light

Good morning.

Today's reading is from Mark, chapter four, verses twenty-one through twenty-five.

And he said to them, Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket, or a bed, and not on a stand?

For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest, nor is anything secret except to come to light.

If any one has ears to hear, let him hear.

And he said to them, Pay attention to what you hear.

With the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you.

For to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

I'm excited to gather with you and move through a wonderful text that is uh uh a bit complicated, a bit strange.

Uh got a couple of announcements before we get into our text today.

So next weekend, well, this is kind of like two announcements in one.

One is for Saturday, October 23rd, and one is for next weekend right after the service.

As a church, we're partnering with an organization called Save Our Youth.

Save Our Youth is a mentorship organization where they uh partner uh uh uh youth youths with adults.

Uh oh yeah, there a joke just flew through my mind and I'm gonna avoid it.

We're uh we're uh partnering at youths with adults and uh they're having a fundraiser in the park right next door.

So this organization has been uh going on since um uh 1993 when it was formed in Denver.

And a group of pastors got together with some folks in the city, and they're saying, how can we be of most help to our city?

And what they landed on was just a simple one-on-one uh mentorship program.

And so uh part of what I want you to consider is is that something that you would like to be a part of?

This is an opportunity you meet just a couple of times uh a month with a uh young person in Denver.

And uh this this organization, it it's sort of strangely just keeps walking through our door.

So they're having a fundraiser right up in the park across the street on October 23rd.

So come come to that.

That's part of the announcement.

Flyers are in the lobby.

This is what they look like.

Good.

Um and we are uh and it they wanted to partner with a church locally, and so we were very local to that park next door.

And so uh walked through our door, heard about this organization, it sounds wonderful.

And then uh the carpet that we had put down here, it's bad.

It like keeps coming up, it's a factory defect.

So the the carpet folks keep coming back to like check on it and try and argue the case that needs to be replaced from the factory.

So one of the uh uh folks from the carpet company came in to uh my office this week and he was like, Are you guys partnered with Save Our Youth?

I've been a part of that organization for like 15 years, and we've just seen the most amazing things happen through that organization.

He said, and in fact, uh I was picking up a friend at the airport, and they were describing uh this uh or no, he sorry, I'm messing up the story.

He ran into a friend at the airport and he was like, Who's picking you up?

And it was it was the the child that she mentored when they were in junior high and high school, was picking her up at the airport because they had just stayed friends for like the past 10 years.

And her children, the the one who was mentored, her children ran up to the mentee, menteu, manatee, and uh uh called it called her grandma.

She was like, oh, we're so happy that grandma's here.

That's how close this connection and meaningful this connection had become.

And uh that just like captured my imagination in this amazing way.

He's actually part of forming another organization which connects with children that have moved through the Save Our Youth program and it helps them become educated and get a career in the trades, which they've had incredible success with as well.

So that when they're out of high school, there's this other program that they feed into.

Anyway, uh there's there's a um I'm pretty like cerebral with things.

I'm not very I don't have very mystical faith, as you all know.

Uh, but that's pretty cool, right?

It just kind of keeps walking through our door.

So I I think there's something really possible here for our church and for us as a community to make a real investment.

It's a simple thing.

Uh just time with someone.

So uh you can hear more about this organization next Sunday, right after the service.

So it'll be just like a 15-minute long presentation.

There'll be donuts, you know.

So if you're just like in it for the donuts, uh then you can show up for that, and we won't even be able to tell the difference.

Um and uh that's this sun, that's right after church.

And then on October 23rd, uh RCD is going to have a tent at their fundraiser where we'll we'll be doing crafts for kids.

So if you'd like to volunteer for that, um then you can contact Megan uh at redemptiondenver.com.

So uh anyway, that's Save Our Youth announcement.

Also, on October 17th, we're having a membership class.

So if you would like to be a member at RCD, we're having a class for that.

It'll be right after the service.

That's about an hour long.

And um yeah, membership is really central to the way that we operate as a church.

Membership is the backbone of how our small groups and how those are formed, it's how they're connected to the to the elders and the leaders of the church.

Uh it is it is the mechanism that we really use to create community in our church.

So if you're not a member, you should become a member.

And lastly, uh we are we are uh hosting a class that's very unlike anything we've done before.

So typically our classes are put together by someone like me.

And it's like, let's explore the intricacies of the meta-narrative of scripture.

And like like six people are like, that sounds great.

And then a bunch of other people are like, oh, okay.

This class is called Christianity Explored.

And the purpose of Christianity Explored is to be more of a an entryway into the Christian faith.

And so this class is primarily geared towards people who wouldn't call themselves Christians, you or people who may have called themselves Christians at one point.

Now you're in more of a exploratory place or uh a skeptical place, perhaps.

And it's being uh hosted by uh Jacob Carr, who's right there.

Yep, he's the one waving his hand.

And it's a it takes place over a series of dinners.

And so it's really it's conversations about Christianity over dinner.

So I want you to be thinking of a couple of categories.

One, you may be a person who's like, you know, I would like a space where I could actually ask my legitimate questions about Christianity.

And th those spaces are rare.

And secondly, I have a friend who I think would actually really benefit from having a space like that, where they could just ask the questions that they have about Christianity and be able to, in a sort of low-key environment over dinner, explore those things.

So that's the purpose of this class.

It'll begin on October 27th.

Um and uh yeah, I'd like to invite you to be praying.

Who who might you invite to that?

Uh think it could be a wonderful opportunity.

All right, that's all our announcements for the week.

Let's pray.

Holy Father, we thank you for your word.

Lord, you describe yourself as the light, and you come in and you shine in our lives.

You expose and show us the truth.

Lord, I pray that your word today might expose the truth that we need to see in order to move towards you.

Lord, your word is a lamp unto our feet, and we pray that you would teach us to be a people that walk by it.

Lord, we pray that you would give us the capacity to give you our attention this morning that we might see you more clearly.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So I talked with uh I've talked with several friends in just the past couple of, well, weeks, I guess, um, each with a story of someone that they knew or were close with who would no longer consider themselves a Christian.

So they they did at one point, and now they they wouldn't uh attend church, wouldn't consider themselves a Christian in any way.

And one of those friends, one of those conversations was on Instagram, really cool app.

You can share pictures with friends.

And uh a friend in the church uh just slid into my DMs and I asked if I could share this uh story, and this is this is uh what was shared.

He said, I met up with a friend from my old ministry in college.

He discipled me for like a year and a half.

During our meetup, I asked him if he was going to church, and he immediately crossed his arms and said no.

According to a mutual friend, he is agnostic now.

It was a huge blow to me, and the image I had of him shattered.

Have you ever had an experience like that?

Yeah, I think it can be particularly difficult with someone who has invested in you or mentored you in the faith, someone that you looked up to, and then now you meet with them again, and it's like, well, now what do I do?

You were a big part of my own story.

And I think we're surrounded by stories like that.

Uh there's all sorts of words for it.

You can deconstruct your faith, you can be an ex-vangelical, uh, which is like a real term, you know, people use very seriously, not even comically, like I just did.

And there's a uh there's all there's all these narrative patterns that you can fit this walking away from Christianity into.

So why do you think this story is so common?

Why is it that if you've been a Christian for a while, that you you almost certainly know people that fit into this story?

You know, or or consider perhaps you're in that story right now.

A story of of looking at the faith that you were raised in or grew up in, or something that perhaps was meaningful to you at some point, and now it becomes just like a a narrative that's very counter to what it originally seemed.

It was once something that offered freedom, now it looks to you like a narrative of oppression.

What was the transformation?

When was it?

What were the drivers in that sort of a uh conversion experience?

They're both conversion experiences.

What were the drivers in that?

Well, here was my friend's response uh to this lunch.

He his next direct message was, however, I felt such a validation of my faith that through all the stuff I've gone through since college, I've remained in the faith.

It gave me a sense of needing to recenter myself for Christ and work on my relationship with him.

I've always felt unworthy of praying, but now I'm trying to pray throughout the day.

And I'm going back through the Gospels and trying to relearn how to study the Word.

Okay, so here's what I want us to have in mind.

We've got these two examples.

Uh my my friend who messaged me and his former mentor, who he used to meet with.

They both graduate college and life, you know, graduating college is like one of the most traumatic things that can happen.

It's miserable.

And they uh get thrown out here into the world, and one of their experiences drives them away from their faith, and the other has experiences and even experiences of rejection, a sense of rejection, like watching people he looked up to walk away from their faith, and yet that seems to drive him into his faith more.

What's happening?

Is there some message that one uncovered that the other didn't?

Well, why is it that this same message, this same gospel has this effect, where in some people's lives it seems like, man, you it can't be shaken off.

And in others, it seems like it's constantly in a process of being shaken off.

Well, Jesus moves into this very topic today.

And it dovetails with the topic that he was speaking on last week, that Jesus was talking about last week, because last week we saw Jesus move through the parable of the sower, where the sower goes out and sows the seed on four different types of soil, three types of soil, the seed doesn't sprout.

On the fourth, it it uh sprouts and takes root and then multiplies into this incredible yield.

And the disciples ask him, you're talking in these parables to people on the outside.

But to us, when you're talking with us disciples, you're just speaking plainly.

Why is it that you speak in parables?

And we discussed last week how many of us would expect that the answer to why we speak in why Jesus speaks in parables is to take a spiritual truth that's hard to grasp and then put it in a concrete format so that it's easier for us to understand.

And that's like why we just we would say Jesus speaks in parables.

But Jesus is much more unpredictable than that.

Instead, he says, I speak to parables in parables to those on the outside, and then he says, so that they may hear and not understand, so that they may see and not perceive.

Well, that's not what I expected Jesus to say.

And we learned how Jesus speaks in parables to do this double movement.

One is to reveal the truth of God plainly, and the other is to expose the condition of our hearts, so that the same seed falls on one soil and it bears nothing.

And this other seed falls on the good soil and it sprouts up.

And so there's this concealing of the truth.

There's this concealing.

But the mechanism that does the concealing is our hearts.

And at that time, what's revealed is the true condition of our hearts.

So here's the question that we want to be pushed into this week.

This key question.

Why does Jesus speak in such a way to outsiders, to outsiders, as to hide what he truly means?

We have to sit with that question.

It's very strange.

Why does Jesus speak in such a way to outsiders when he's teaching in parables before the masses is to hide what he truly means?

That seems, um if we were to talk to Jesus, we'd be like, it seems a bit unchristlike.

And he would say it isn't when I do it.

Mark 4, 21.

This is right after this bit on the parable.

This is the next phrase.

Mark 4.21.

And he said to them, is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket or under a bed and not on a stand.

So in the Greek it has this construction that's a bit more strange.

It's not, is a lamp brought in, but it's does a lamp come in?

And that's strange, of course, because lamps just sit there.

Unless they're introducing a Pixar movie.

But otherwise, they just sit there.

Uh but we can see the strangeness in the construction of the language is about uh we know, you know, now that like Jesus is talking about himself.

He is the lamp.

He is the one who comes into the world to bring light.

And the answer to the question is an obvious rhetorical question.

Do you bring a lamp in, you know, hide it under a bushel?

No.

Right.

You've all been catechized appropriately.

Hide it under a bushel?

No.

I'm gonna let it shine.

You know, there's uh you don't bring a lamp in, especially like an oil lamp like you all use at home, which costs money to burn.

Uh you you don't bring it in so that you hide it under a bed, so that you snuff out its light immediately from the beginning.

It wouldn't make any sense.

And it what this shows us, remember, this is still in the parable discourse that Jesus is talking about.

So he says, I speak so that when I speak they don't understand.

And the disciples would have asked something like, well, why would you hide?

Like, why wouldn't you speak in a way where they can understand?

And then Jesus is like, Well, would you bring a lamp in and hide it under a bed or hide it, hide it under a basket?

And it so what he's saying in the disciples, of course, it's like, well, no, no, you obviously wouldn't.

And so what Jesus is saying here is that the ultimate purpose of parables isn't to conceal, but to reveal.

That's the ultimate purpose of the parables.

But you see the contradiction, right?

It's this direct contradiction.

Because in the just like uh a couple of verses before, when asked, Jesus, why do you speak in parables?

He says, Well, I'll quote from Isaiah, it's so that hearing they won't understand, and so that seeing they won't perceive.

And they're like, so you're speaking so that people won't understand, so that they won't perceive?

Well, would you bring a light in and hide it under a bushel basket?

That'd be that'd be insane.

And then the disciples are like, okay.

What what what are you communicating here?

What are you what are you trying to tell us?

And here's what here's just something that I want you to see, because this was wonderful to s to see this week.

Aren't you transfixed by Jesus' teaching?

One of my biggest concerns, and one of the key reasons I think people walk away, is that they'll just read through Bible passages and just think like, ah, I mean, we all know what it means.

Like, we these are simple things.

We all know what he's getting at.

And and we miss, like, isn't this strange?

It what if there's something happening here in the word that we can discover just in the reading where it's like, this is a weird dynamic here.

Is Jesus actually pushing on me to discover something new by the way that he's teaching?

What if I'm actually, let's just like read with this, you know, dramatic conceit in the back of our minds that when Jesus speaks, he is the one who created the whole world.

And perhaps when he speaks, it's something strange that needs to be leaned into to be able to grasp.

And so how does Jesus talk?

He he often talks in these just like he'll just put these contradictions before you and then say, now deal with it.

And what do you do?

It's like, well, I can't hold both of these together unless I uh feel like an insane person.

Uh I there must be something here that I'm missing.

And then you you have to sit with Jesus' words and wrestle with them and and deal with them.

You know, he brings you to this point where he's like, look, the way that I speak, you just won't be able to understand without me.

He's constantly speaking in these terms where he makes himself the only solution to these contradictions.

And that's precisely what he does here.

He he he forces us and his disciples into this place where it's like, okay, so he speaks in parables so that he conceals, and then he says, like, well, isn't it insane?

Why would you ever conceal the light?

And if you don't have the imagination or the it's something like humility, but also something like wonder before scripture.

It's something like a willingness to let yourself.

Be frustrated by things that you can't make sense of when you come to the word.

I want us to have that as a church.

Because then we sit below the word and we say, I'm actually seeing something that's beyond me here.

And praise the Lord.

He gives us Christ and the Holy Spirit to hold our hands and to walk through it so that it might be shown to us.

But I want us to have that spirit.

Okay, so we see the contradiction that he points us to.

Now, how does Jesus resolve it?

This is the next verse.

He says, For, so see the connection.

For, so because in light of this, consider, you know, what I said just might seem crazy, but consider nothing is hidden except to be made manifest, nor is anything secret except to come to light.

So he gives us this principle that allows us to interpret what he's saying.

And what's the question that he brings us to?

The question that he brings us to is like, look, Jesus, the parables.

We're just talking about the parables.

Is it to conceal or to reveal?

And that's the way we come to him with this question.

Jesus, parables, speaking to people.

Are you trying to conceal the truth or are you trying to reveal the truth?

But what's beneath that question when we ask that?

Jesus, are you here to condemn the world?

Or are you here to save?

That's what we want to know.

Like if you're speaking in this way, are you just coming to bind us up in something that we can never get out of?

Or are you the one who's here to save us?

That's what's beneath that question.

And Jesus, he like takes that binary that we set up for him, and he's like, you're gonna have to step out to this whole new level of interpreting me and the situation that you're in.

Because you're actually a part of a story that is unfolding mysteriously before you.

And this story will unfold in counterintuitive ways that you never would have guessed before, but it will amount to your salvation.

And so he says nothing is hidden except to be made manifest, nor is anything secret except to come to light.

Do you see what Jesus introduces here?

He introduces a process.

How do you reconcile these two things?

Well, you lay them out into a story.

Why are things hidden?

Why are the parables hidden?

It's so that they will be revealed.

That's why I'm speaking in this way.

Why is this a secret of Jesus' identity?

It's so that it will be made known.

Because here is the strangeness of the revelation of Jesus Christ.

He is speaking plainly about who he is throughout his whole ministry.

But because of the hardness of our hearts, it is consistently denied and rejected, so that the more explicitly he talks about himself, the more vengeful our response towards him becomes, because that is the condition of the human heart towards Jesus.

But that rejection of him becomes the highest revelation of him.

Do you see how that dynamic unfolds?

And this is the very shape of the gospel of Mark.

This is precisely the project that Mark is trying to accomplish with his gospel.

He's showing, and you can tell that this is the case because of the way that Mark uses the phrase the Son of God throughout his gospel.

The Son of God for Mark, this is the highest declaration of who Jesus is in his book, and he uses it twice.

In the introduction, the very first verse of the Gospel of Mark, he says, this is the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

So you know what you're reading.

And then at the climactic verse of the Gospel of Mark, he says it again.

Listen to this moment when Jesus, who is hidden, becomes revealed.

It happens in Mark 1539.

It says, and when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, Truly this man was the Son of God.

When is Jesus most revealed?

Don't you see it's when he's most hidden?

When is the revelation of Jesus most exposed?

It's when he's when is it that was God that was here?

When in the scriptures do we finally get the revelation that this guy walking around was God?

It's when he's dead on a cross.

Why are things hidden?

It's so that they can be revealed.

Why does he speak in these parables?

It's because he's headed towards this ultimate revelation, which is God dead on a cross.

Then you can see who he really is.

Only then can Mark say, This was the Son of God.

And who says it in Mark's gospel?

It's the one who killed him, you know, physically.

It's the centurion, you know, a Gentile Roman murderer is the one who looks up and says, That was the Son of God.

How could he tell it was it was in his death?

So do you see how in the story of Jesus the hiddenness and the revelation become married to one another?

You can't see him, the God who sacrifices himself for his people.

It's the hiddenness that reveals.

Do you see this?

Do you see this dynamic?

I can't tell.

Nobody's nodding.

But don't just nod, like, you know, nod only if you mean it.

This is the type of wondrous thing that I that I want us to behold in the Word.

Where we're driven into these contradictions that Jesus takes us into, and then we see Christ is the answer to that.

There, and then you start to see a wonder of Jesus.

So there's a next question that this would drive us into, this type of revelation, which is how do I make sure I don't miss it when it's right in front of me?

How do I make sure that I'm the type of person who doesn't uh just see hiddenness, but instead sees the hiddenness as it's connected to this ultimate revelation of who Jesus is?

How do I make sure that I don't, my heart isn't hardened before a Jesus who's explaining himself to me, and instead I just stop at the layer of the contradiction and say, this is just absurdity.

Or I don't even see the glory that's available to me because I just assume, ah, it's the Bible.

Like, don't we all already know what that says and means?

Well, Jesus answers that question.

He answers the question of how do I know that I don't miss it, that I become someone who doesn't miss it.

And he says in Mark 4.23, if anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.

And then in my notes I said, thanks, Jesus.

Would you mind elaborating on that?

And thankfully he does.

So we have Mark 4.24.

And he said to them, pay attention to what you hear.

Okay, so we're, he who has ears to hear, let him hear.

This is how you don't become someone who misses it.

And then he's gonna talk about hearing.

So here's some instruction.

Okay, how do I do this?

Pay attention to what you hear.

With the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you.

Okay, so step one pay attention to what you hear.

Now, this isn't hearing generally.

Hearing throughout this whole thing has always referred to the word of God.

This is hearing scripture.

So Jesus is saying, pay attention to the scriptures.

Give His word your attention.

Attend to it.

Think of what attention is.

It's this very strange superpower that you all have.

Where you get to look into the world and then choose this is what my focus will behold.

And you can behold things, and then at the same time, you can kind of tune all sorts of things out at the same time.

It's like you're uh it's almost like a like a tiny little act of creation that you get to do and discovery that you're doing when you give your attention to something.

And Jesus is saying, pay attention to the word.

Pay attention to it, give it yourself.

One of the commentators that I read has this great little phrase, so uh I'm gonna read it to you.

He says, For you are like a prisoner whose one chance of escape depends on hearing and solving a riddle.

So when the riddle is being explained, listen up, right?

Think of how attuned to it you would be.

It's like you're sitting in there and the riddle is coming, and uh you're like, okay, I'm gonna listen really closely to this.

Because I can't miss a detail.

Because if I miss a detail, then that could result in me just being trapped in this prison.

And so I'm going to give it the fullness of my attention.

That's the type of attention that's required of looking at the Word of God.

Now, your attention is a commodity.

Amen.

I love using amen in strange places.

But there's uh your attention is uh is a commodity.

It's literally being fought over, you know, and being traded and bought and sold.

And people are figuring out ways to gain and keep and hold your attention.

Think of all that fights for your attention, how hard it is, what a what a task it is to give something your attention.

If you're a parent, think of just sitting with your kids and not also like listening to something or scrolling through something.

You know, do you know like my four-year-old Hills sometimes tell stories and stuff, they're so incredibly boring.

Amen.

And there's a in what does what does he need?

He needs my attention to those stories.

Because there's there's also there's also a wonder in them, and a magic in those stories that's unfolding before me, and they need my attention.

The parable of the sower that we're just coming out of, this is this is in a sense, we could read it as though it's like all about attention.

There's the hard path.

What is that?

The hard path when the seed falls on it.

You know, there's already a purpose there.

And the purpose there isn't to grow seed.

That's not what that path does.

And so the hard path, the seed falls on it, but there's no attention to give to it.

So it just bounces off and it becomes nothing.

So we can so often consider, you know, my the structures that I think in, the morality that I have received and agree with, or the purpose that I've set for my life, it can't be interrupted by the word.

So it doesn't even get a chance to break in.

We give it no attention.

The rocky soil.

Uh the best analogy that I've heard about the rocky soil is it's uh it's fashion is the perfect example.

Because you know what fashion does?

It springs up.

And you see it, you see this year's, you know, you know what we like to say in Colorado?

Or like, you know, that's like trendy.

Like if you walk down Tennyson, it's like, oh, I'm gonna buy this jacket.

It's like so adorable, I'll have this jacket for like 15 years.

No, you won't.

Because you know what they're gonna come out with next fall?

Another jacket that has some cue in it that that that shows like this is this year's jacket.

And so it springs up like the seed under the rocky soil, it springs up with this joy and energy, but then it just it just withers away.

It has no real root in it.

I think many of us have had faiths like that, where, like I've talked to some friends who have walked away from the faith, and it's like, did you I I don't know.

Look, I I I'm in so many ways, I'm the wrong guy to say this.

Okay, look at the rewards that I get for my faith.

You're all looking at me right now.

But I I think of some folks that uh that walk away from their faith, and it's like, I don't think you ever really liked Jesus.

I think you liked extroverted communities.

You know, I think that's what you liked.

And then when that went away, or you found another sort of community like that that had different signals that you were required to show in order to be a part of it, then you just walked away from Jesus.

I want you to be awestruck at Jesus' teachings.

At the way that he shows himself, at the God who is on a cross.

Like, there's there's not i i I want you to be so enraptured by that as a church that you'll walk out in all of these different stories that you'll hear, all the fashions of the day, things that say, like, you need to be focused on this right now.

You know, this issue is the most important issue that you could be focused on right now.

I want you to be so inoculated to that because you've got such a heavy dose of Jesus that you're just like, this story is just, it just swallows up these other things.

And then those things that spring up with such energy, like on rocky soil, they just find their proper proportion.

Yeah, this is something that matters, but it matters on probably like a two-week basis.

And some things are like that.

So I'll give it about a two-week amount of emphasis.

Instead, most of us are just like bouncing around our attention here, our attention here, our attention here.

And we aren't paying attention to the word.

Or the ones that are choked out.

You know, that's the final soil that doesn't bear any fruit.

It springs up, but then the cares of the world just encroach in.

And it becomes just one.

At first, it's just like, you know, the the seed of the word sprung out and it was the tallest one.

But then the other seeds begin to grow, and then and and then they're they're of equal proportion.

You know, it's like uh we've gotta uh, yeah, I'm really focused on Jesus, but like the most important thing is is that I buy a house in Denver.

You know, the most important thing is that I'm able to receive this uh promotion.

The most the real thing that matters here is how our children are doing in these particular ways.

And these these proportions, the the proportion eventually becomes choking out to where uh Jesus, you know, the Son of God, hanging on a cross, revealed for the salvation of the world, uh, just becomes one story among many.

And it's choked out and dies.

Pay attention to what you hear.

And following your attention, if we stay in the same verse, it says, with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you.

What is he talking about?

Measure.

What is a measure?

You know what that is?

It's a judgment.

It's where you weigh something up and then you make a judgment of it.

Does this pass or fail?

Is this enough or not enough?

And when Jesus is quoted as using this phrase elsewhere, he couples it with judgment.

So I'm not just like riffing on this.

Jesus said it elsewhere.

And he he's saying, with the with the measure that you use, with the scale that you are judging the word of God, that judgment will then come back on you.

So with the scale that you measure the word of God, that judgment will come back on you.

There's this great um Christian apologist, and his name he's dead now.

His name is Cornelius Van Till.

And he would constantly ask this question, by what standard?

By what standard?

By what standard are you judging the truths of scripture?

Because here's something that we have to consider.

We don't just walk away from scripture, we walk to something else.

And we are always, we're constantly being asked to judge scripture in the light of some other presupposition.

So we'll say, and here's the phrase that it comes out in.

It sounds something like, I just can't believe in a God that blank.

And it's something like, I just can't believe in a God that sends people to hell.

Okay, so what's what's beneath that?

What's driving that?

If we there's this there's a sense of justice, perhaps driving that.

You know, finite sins, eternal punishment, it just seems unjust to me.

And so what's driving that then?

Well, this sense of justice, okay?

A sense of justice from where?

Where are we getting this sort of sense of justice?

Is it is it from a worldview that says we are just sort of like cosmic uh particles or something that uh accidentally formed up into human intelligences?

Well, that doesn't have enough to provide a sense of justice.

Is it is it just a an intuition of of proportionality?

Well, where does that where does an intuition like that come from?

Does it come from something like just like a uh a social contract that we all make with each other to be able to get along?

Well, we prod at something like that for a while, it doesn't seem to hold up.

Like I wasn't there when we signed it.

You know, we're we're we're exposing that we must be able to have some other standard by which we are disapproving or judging scripture.

And then we must have some sort of validation for that standard.

Now here's the here's a trick, okay?

So that you can you can know when this is happening and you can start to listen for it, for when this is happening.

In scripture, the problem is sin.

That's the problem.

The problem is human sin.

And we can always trace our problems to that origin.

You know, I'm going like this, but it should be like we can always trace our problems to that origin.

Because where does human sin reside?

Resides in our hearts.

That is the problem.

It is sin in our hearts.

But other standards, other judgments are always taking one aspect of creation and saying, that's the problem.

And then they're taking another aspect of creation and saying, this is the solution.

And so we're idolizing one aspect of creation and we're demonizing another aspect of creation.

And the problem isn't located in our hearts to be changed transcendently by a God who identifies with us.

But rather, it is located in some part of creation that is changed by just attacking that part of creation.

So Paul teaches in this way all the time.

To the Greeks, they idolize knowledge.

And so what does Paul preach to the Greeks?

The foolishness of Christ.

To the Jews, they idolized power.

And so what does Paul preach to the Jews?

The weakness of Christ.

See, we idolize one aspect of creation and demonize another aspect of creation.

We can hear this in our conversation right now, like in our current political climate, you know, there's always the opportunity to create a sort of playground reading of the world where like all of the world is boys versus girls.

And so we idolize masculinity as the solution, and we demonize femininity and its encroachment into masculinity.

Or we demonize masculinity and say it's just all a drive for power, and then we idolize femininity as the solution.

Well, these are both good things in creation.

But neither one is ultimate, and neither one is the problem, and neither one is the solution.

Both are corrupted by sin and then need to find their redemption in the gospel.

So listen for it.

Because what happens is people are blessing too highly things that are good but not ultimate, and cursing too lowly things that are also good and shouldn't be cursed because of a refusal to recognize sin as the problem.

And so Scripture gives you the right measure.

Now what happens is the measure that you use will then be measured to you, and you'll be given even more of it.

So what does that, what does that look like?

Where the measure that you use will be given to you, then you're given even more of it.

I was sit uh sitting with a uh a friend the other day, and they were explaining, you know, uh what I really stand for now is just inclusiveness.

That's the value.

And Christianity is wrong because it's so exclusive, right?

One way to God?

Come on.

What about like two or three?

And so here's here's how that happens.

That's the measure, right?

Inclusiveness is the measure.

Well, that comes around to devour you.

Because what does that mean?

We need to include everything and everyone.

And so that means that none of the definitions that we provide to anything anymore are meaningful because they can't be shown in any way.

So, me, myself, when we include everyone and we're all flattened to the same category, we're all flattened out into the same position, then none of us carry any meaning that can be communicated to each other.

You know what a world like that looks like?

It looks like in the book of Judges, where constantly it's this downward spiral and it ends with there was no king in Israel, and everyone did exactly as they pleased.

Or the flood.

That's also what came before the flood.

Okay, so that comes back around, and this quest to have a con to have an inclusion where everyone's identity gets to be expressed ends up stamping out the hope of having any identity whatsoever.

The measure that you use will be measured to you.

Do you see that?

You can you can play this game with the other side too, because it's like, okay, then we need we need absolutely strict, perfect categories that we're able to put everyone into.

And what does that become?

We all speak the same language and we all uh aim towards these same exact goals, and what is that?

That's tyranny.

That's the Tower of Babel.

And what does that dissolve into?

Well, that dissolves into an incommunicability in the same way.

It comes back around to devour you.

Because we're making gods out of things that can't save us.

And we've adopted a measure which will which I mean to put it this way, Jesus is the ultimate measure.

He is the judge.

That's the way that we see him in the climax of scripture.

Jesus is the judge, the perfect one who judges all of us.

But that same judge, when is he pronounced the Son of God?

When he's bearing your sin on the cross, there is no other judge that you can come to and live.

Because there is no other judge who died in your place when you didn't measure up to his standards.

Don't you see?

I want you so look, I get like 45 minutes and I preach too long every week.

But you you get you get like unlimited commute time of whatever podcast you're listening to, and it scares me.

Because there's so many narratives that you can opt into, and I want you to see the narrative of Christ and to see that nothing comes close.

And if you choose one of those, if you choose another one that's just idolizing some aspect of creation and demonizing another aspect of creation, you will be devoured by it.

By what standard?

There's only one standard, which, although we don't measure up to it, he died so that we might.

There's only one standard that gave himself for you.

Because of when it when is the heights of his glory exposed?

When he's laying down his life in love towards you.

There's no other story like this.

Nothing is like this.

So what happens then when we start to see when when that seed falls on the right soil, it becomes a trajectory of understanding.

When we choose the right measure and we see that Jesus is the only true measure, then there's this trajectory that takes place.

And Jesus describes it like this in Mark 4.25, for to the one who has, more will be given.

And from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

Now that we have this understanding of the way that things bear out with the measures, doesn't that seem obvious?

Look, if you don't have the measure of Christ, then that measure will come around and devour you.

So even what you have will just be taken away.

You idolized identity, now you don't even get to have one.

You're incommunicable.

There's so in the same way, the one who has, more will be given.

Because you come to Christ and you you see this growth.

And what does that look like?

It looks really simply.

It looks like where we started with my friend's direct message, where he sits down with somebody that he looked up to and uh now feels like almost foolish before them because he's still like the Christian who didn't realize how backwards this all was in front of his friend who gained this new enlightenment.

They have this teacher relationship, you know, this power dynamic there.

And what happens to my friend?

That moment, that experience happens, and what does it result in?

I want to know Jesus more.

How do you explain that?

This is how you explain that.

It's from more to more.

Where you know, you know what it's like, you know, life after college.

It's just like shoveling, you know, onto you.

And then it becomes fertilizer to the Christian somehow.

From more to more.

From more to more.

Okay, I'll finish there.

Let's take a question, and then we'll do communion.

Do we have a question, Matt?

How does the centurion's confession at the moment of Jesus' death square with the account of certain disciples not recognizing Jesus when he walks with them on the road to Emmaus after the resurrection?

Um, I I think this is gonna sound like such a trite answer, but there it's really they're just different people, you know, and and different different sorts of revelation.

I mean, these are God is God is granting eyes to this centurion to, I mean, how God is God is so like this.

When he's writing his story, he's like, I'm going to give the confession of Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the first real one.

Uh, I'm going to give it to uh an unnamed Roman Gentile soldier who just killed him.

Because how does that fit the story?

Well, he died to bring the nations in.

So what are we seeing?

The nations are being brought in right away.

And then to his own disciples, the ones that he was hidden to, even though he was most exposed, he when they see him in his glorified body, and we all pretend we get what resurrection is.

I don't we don't really get it.

It's a very strange thing.

They uh don't recognize him right away because he's hidden, and then he's more gloriously revealed by the scriptures, which he's able to show these are the things that point to him on the road to Emmaus.

And so there's they're squared in the story of Jesus himself.

That's why I want that story to be the one where where that's like better to you.

Pay attention.

Give Jesus your attention.

You want a definition of prayer?

Giving your attention to Jesus.

Give him your attention.

He is good.

He is the one who, when you give him your ultimate attention, you will receive from him life.

There's nothing else that can promise that.

So uh so uh I'm I'm calling you to that.

Today we'll take communion.

His broken body is the bread, his poured out blood is the wine, and he calls us to feast at his table.

The one who stands above all things, the one who could rightly condemn us as the judge who we don't measure up to, instead broke himself so that we might be brought in.

This is the glorious nature of the gospel.

Come feast at his table.

Holy Father, we praise you for this time.

We praise you for your word.

I ask for my wife's forgiveness and kids for preaching so long.

Lord, we just pray that you would uh attend our time of communion, that you would be celebrated in it.

Lord, would you rapture our hearts by your word?

We might see your glory, and as your light shines in, might we see that all the other lights that were offered pale in comparison?

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.