Are you ready?
Simon says, stand up
Alright.
Simon says, quiet down.
Simon says, actually, pastor Ross says, quiet down.
I have more authority than Simon.
Tonight we're gonna talk about says who, just like the game of Simon
says, what you do, how you respond to a command depends on who the
authority is that issues the command.
If the authority says, do this, then you should do that.
Right?
Simon says, do this and you did it because of who Simon is.
Who the heck is Simon?
No one even knows.
But what matters more is who says to do the things that the Bible tells us to do.
And tonight we're gonna see that what's behind the commands of scripture are
not just some random dude who lived 2000 years ago or talking about Jesus,
who is the son of God and son of man.
So when we talk about the question of says who we're gonna say, Jesus is
the one who tells us what to do in the Bible and why should we should respond.
Furthermore, think about this in the world today, you have a lot of voices that are
competing for you to do what they say.
It.
People want you to wear their clothes.
They want you to wear their cologne.
They want you to go to their school.
They want you to dress like them, get their same haircut.
People want you to think like them.
They want you to vote like them.
People want to control you in a lot of different ways, and you
have a lot of different options, a lot of different choices, and you
have to decide who do I listen to?
Who do I decide to listen to with the decisions that
I have to make with my life?
You're gonna have friends that have opinions about the
person that you should date.
Oh, did you know this girl likes you?
She thinks you're cute.
You should ask her out.
You should slide into her DMS and see what she says.
No.
Okay.
People are gonna have opinions about your parents.
Your parents won't let you do what?
Oh, that's weird.
My parents, let me do this, this, this, and this and this.
Your parents are lame.
You let them influence you.
Why do people have things that they want to tell you?
They want to.
They want you to live in certain ways.
They want you to do certain things, and the question that you
have to ask is, well says Who?
Says who?
Who says that my parents are this way?
Who says that?
That girl likes me?
Who says that this or them?
And those are good questions, but the most important questions
about your life are says who?
When it comes to how should I live?
What should I do with my life?
Well, it depends.
Depends on who's telling you what to do with.
It says, who wouldn't it be so great if God just opened up the clouds and said
to you, put, you put your name in here.
And he says, here's what I want you to do, Lewis.
I want you to marry Shea.
Wouldn't that be awesome if God did that?
Did God do that, Lewis?
Yeah, he did do that for Lewis.
Maybe you ought to pray that God treats you like he treat Lewis.
Wouldn't it be great for God to say, Matt, Daniel, I want you to go
to SMU for your college of choice.
Wouldn't that be great?
Wouldn't it be great when you have the desire and the ability to get married?
God says,
Maggie, I want you to marry.
Okay.
I want you to marry a guy that's not here in the room.
Wouldn't that be so nice for a guy to do that?
And yet.
He doesn't do that.
But here's what he does do.
He does break into the sky and tell us, this is my beloved son.
I want you to listen to him.
That's what God does, and that's why tonight's message is so important.
So turn with me, if you will, to Matthew Chapter 17.
We're gonna look at what Jesus says and how God says he wants us to listen to
him, what he wants us to do with him.
Okay.
Matthew chapter 17, starting at verse one.
Here's what we have.
Here's a scene after six days.
Jesus took with him, Peter, James, and John.
Those are his three best friends.
By the way, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Jesus has best friends.
He's got 12 disciples that he's close to, but these three, Peter,
James, and John are his ride or dies.
They are the men that he always goes to.
They're the men that are with him in his very last hours when he's praying.
They're the ones that are as closest to him, so he calls to him as best
friends, Peter, James, and John.
By the way, how many best friends do you have?
Yeah, if you have one, what a blessing.
If you have two, super blessing.
If you have three, then you are crushing it.
You ought pray for best friends like Jesus did.
Jesus.
That's the example for us.
You oughta listen to that.
We'll come back to that later.
He calls them and he led them up to a high mountain by themselves.
Oh man, that's kind of a bummer here.
And he was, here's the word, transfigured.
The word means to be metamorphos, to be changed in a major way.
Jesus is transformed before them.
And his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light.
What you're seeing here is the glory of Jesus pulled back and
made evident to his disciples.
They're able to see something that you and I will see at some point.
They got to see a glimpse of it, like a trailer to the movie they're getting.
They're getting to see something of who Jesus really is.
Stay shown and get this.
Verse three.
Behold, by the way, be the word behold.
When you see this word here, the word means to, to look.
Pay attention to this.
Check this out.
So behold, look at this.
Pay attention.
Some guys show up.
They appear.
Moses and Elijah talking with him.
Moses represents the law.
Remember Moses is behind the books.
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, oops, Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus, numbers, Deuteronomy.
There you go.
There's the five books.
And Elijah represents the prophets.
And so you have the law and the prophets coming to Jesus and what you have.
And after that, then.
Peter says, Lord, this is awesome.
This is so good that you're here.
I can see you're, you're in your blazing glory.
Uh, and then we got Moses and Elijah Peter's flipping out.
He's like, let's just build some tents.
This is great, but it doesn't stop there.
He was still speaking when check out verse five, A bright cloud overshadowed them.
This is God.
God in the Old Testament would often show up as a cloud.
He shows up there and he says, with a voice from the cloud.
He says, this is my beloved son.
With him, with whom I am well pleased.
Listen to him.
So you see him.
Jesus is being radiated.
There's a glory that's being shown to them.
Moses and Elijah, the law and the prophets show up to pay.
Uh, to pay Jesus homage.
And then the father speaks up and says, even though Moses and Elijah are here,
they're great and all, but Jesus is better than the law and the prophets.
Jesus is superior to them because he fulfills both of those things.
The father says, this is my beloved son.
What does the word beloved mean?
Think about that.
Have your parents ever introduced you to their friends?
This is my beloved son Jackson.
This is my beloved daughter, Sophia.
Your parents ever do that.
When you introduce me to your friends, do you say, this is my beloved youth pastor?
Nobody?
Not yet.
Okay.
Someday beloved means someone that is special, a chosen loved one, someone
that you say, this is my person.
They are my special, uh, chosen person that I will choose to put my
love upon for better and for worse.
God says about Jesus, this is my beloved son.
Jesus is the son of God.
He's special in God's side.
And then he says, with Jesus, I'm well pleased.
He's telling everybody, and this is not the first time God says,
says this about Jesus, but he says, with Jesus, I'm well pleased.
That is what Jesus is doing.
I'm really excited about, and there's nothing that Jesus can do to make
me love him more or love him less because he is perfect in my sight.
And then he says to all of us, I want you to listen to him.
The disciples heard this.
They fell on their faces and they were terrified.
If God were to speak out of the heavens right now, sometimes we, we think,
oh, it'd be so cool if God showed up.
But in reality, if God showed up right now and spoke to us, this would
be the same thing that you would experience your face, you'd fall on
your face, and you would be terrified.
Have you ever heard those stories of people that encounter angels and like, oh,
the angel told me that I was supposed to go here, or I was taken to heaven, or I
was taken to hell, or something like that?
I, I wonder about those stories because every time someone has an
encounter with God or an angel in scripture, they're usually afraid.
They're usually terrified, and the way that they typically respond is like this.
They fall on their faces and they're shook.
You would be too, if God spoke there was a cloud in this room and there's thunder and
lightning, and then God starts speaking to us through the cloud, you would be shook.
They're shook.
Jesus says, Hey guys, don't worry.
Rise, get up.
You have no, no need to fear.
Lifted up their eyes.
There was no one but Jesus.
And so the law and the prophets disappear.
Moses and Elijah, Elijah are gone.
Jesus is there.
Remember what God says?
He's my beloved son.
I'm well pleased with him.
I want you to listen to him.
Point number one.
You ought to carefully consider the son's words.
Carefully.
Consider the son's word.
Jesus is the son of God.
Therefore, you ought to listen to him.
We said, Simon says, do this or that, and you guys did it, but God
says, Jesus says this and that.
Right?
You ought to listen to him.
Why?
Because God is endorsing Jesus as the son of God.
He's saying, this is my son.
He's got my authority.
Listen to him.
He's the one that matters.
I want you to pay attention to what Jesus says.
If you've gone to our church at Sunday morning, you might not have noticed this,
but the air conditioner, when it's on, it goes, Ooh, like that, super loud.
You can not hear it except when you go inside.
Even though your brain might register it, what will happen
is that you'll stop hearing it.
In fact, do you hear what's happening right now?
Yes.
Do you hear it in the back?
That humming in the back?
I don't know what that is, but it's making a sound back there.
When you walk into this room for the first time, what do you smell?
Junior hires, cafeteria.
Junior hire.
What'd you say?
People you smell.
People you might smell stale.
Chicken nuggets.
You might smell cleaning supplies.
But all it takes is about 15 minutes.
And then what?
What do you smell?
Nothing.
You get used to it.
Your brain does something really cool.
It acclimate to the environment after it realizes there's no
threat to your bodily harm.
Your brain says, okay, I can shut this out.
And it stops listening and it stops smelling.
You become nose blind to what's happening.
You become sound deaf to what's happening around you.
The problem is that a lot of us do this with Jesus.
You come to Wednesday nights and you hear everything that, oh, I
feel like I've heard this before.
You go to Sunday mornings, you're pastor PJ preach, oh, I've heard that before.
And then you start becoming deaf to what Jesus is saying.
And this is really dangerous because Jesus is speaking on
behalf of the authority of God.
You ought to carefully consider the son's words or otherwise.
What you're gonna end up doing is ignoring the only one who really matters.
You end up ignoring the words that Jesus is saying to you, and
I can prove it to you right now.
Lemme ask you this question.
What has Jesus said to you through his word that you're still not obeying?
All of us have something I can promise you, all of us have something.
What has Jesus said in his word that you're still not obeying at the,
the first time you felt conviction about that you might have said,
oh man, I really should do that.
Jesus wants me to witness to my un, un unsafe friends, or Jesus wants me to
give up listening to certain kinds of this or playing certain kinds of that.
Jesus wants me to give these up.
And then the first time you felt that, you might say, oh man, I feel conviction.
At some point though, you can so ignore Jesus, that you just stop hearing him.
You stop feeling conviction over the things that you
should feel conviction about.
This is why I'm saying you need to carefully consider his worth
because this is not just some random dude talking to you.
It's one thing for someone on the street to say, Hey, I want you to
vote for this particular candidate.
I want you to, you know, vote for me for a SB, and they want you to put
them on the a SB Student Council.
Well, fine.
Not a big deal.
Doesn't matter if you listen to them.
Doesn't matter if you do or don't, not a big deal.
But when someone says, Hey, I'm the son of God, you might say, okay, well prove it.
Okay.
How about this?
God breaks open the clouds and says, this is my son.
Listen to him.
I mean, what else do you want?
Carefully consider the son's words.
Carefully consider his words, because if you don't, you end up losing
all the benefits and privileges that come with listening to him.
Says who?
Well says God,
Jesus is superior to the law and the prophets.
Here's what that means for you.
If I'm gonna carefully consider what he says, if he's superior to the law
and the prophets, that means Jesus can be all of my righteousness.
He is my rightness with God.
He is the voice that speaks to me for all of my life.
He's my prophet.
Jesus is the only son of God.
Remember, God's God the father says, this is my beloved son.
This is my beloved son.
He doesn't say that about any other religious figure.
He doesn't say that about Muhammad.
He doesn't say that about any of the gods of Hinduism.
He doesn't say that about, uh, about any other religious figure.
No, no one else.
This is my beloved son Jesus and Jesus alone, which means he's
my only offer for salvation.
You have no other options.
If you want to be right with God, then Jesus, you ought to listen to his words.
Jesus is beloved by the Father.
Remember, he's the one who is special in God's sight.
Let me ask you this question.
Let's pretend for a second.
My daughter Phoebe's here.
All right?
My beloved daughter, Phoebe.
Let's say little Phoebe here is goofing off, and you see here and
you're like, oh, Phoebe, that kid.
And then you run up and you boo
Poor Phoebe's flying.
Don't do that to my daughter.
What do you think any reasonable father would do in that situation?
He'd pull out his Glock.
A
okay.
I wouldn't do that, but you would expect that a, a father that loves
his beloved daughter would step up, like, what are you doing?
I might lose my job for what I have to do in response to what
you do to my daughter, right?
If I put my hands around your neck, you would understand.
If you're kicking my daughter and you know, you're drop kicking
her across the the hallway.
How do you think God feels when we disregard his beloved son's
words when he says, this is my son.
Listen to him.
And you say, well, I'll think about it if I, if I like what he says.
God, maybe he'll listen.
But if he in crowds and crouch is on my life and he tells me to change the
way I live, or change the way I talk or change what I think about the Bible,
then I don't know that's asking too much.
God has every right to say, son, you better watch out.
Daughter, you better step back 'cause I'm about to come down on you.
Jesus is God's beloved son.
He's not just a regular guy.
You ought to carefully listen to know what he says.
Jesus is pleasing to the Father.
This is my beloved son, with whom I'm well pleased.
One of your greatest areas of weakness is that you know, and
I know you're not good enough.
We all know that.
In fact, this is why we all do what we do.
We wanna, we wanna aspire for a lot of money or status.
We wear certain clothes to signal to people.
I'm cool.
I'm good enough.
I'm worthy enough in Jesus, though we can be joined with Jesus, and God can look at
you and say with you, I am well pleased.
Because of your association with Jesus.
You don't have to rely on your good looks.
You don't have to rely on your intellect.
You don't have to rely on your money making ability.
You can say, with Jesus, I, I can be associated, uh, with him and
become well pleasing in God's sight.
You gotta carefully consider Jesus' words 'cause he tells you how to do that.
Jesus says, turn from your sin.
Put your trust in me, and you can be well pleasing in my
father's side, just like me.
Super important that we start there.
Gotta pay careful attention to Jesus' words.
Why?
Because he's got God's endorsement.
He is the son of God.
You ought to listen to him.
It's one thing to hear Jesus.
It's another one to listen to what he says.
I can hear him without doing what he says.
I gotta hear and I gotta listen.
So the disciples here.
When the test comes, they kind of mess it up.
Take a look here, Matthew 17, verses 14 through 20, when the crowds, uh, sorry.
And when they came to the crowd, a man came up to him, kneeling before
him, said, Lord, have mercy on my son.
Here's another father talking about his son.
There's lots of fathers and sons in this text here, uh, comes
and says, have mercy on my son.
He has seizures and suffers terribly.
Think about this.
Have you ever seen someone have a seizure?
Their body gets rigid.
They might start foaming from the mouth.
They just start, you know, one of.
Terrifying.
It's a strange experience to see someone have an actual seizure in front of you.
Well notice here his seizures and his suffering is not only physical.
When we see it, we typically think, oh, he needs a certain medication.
He needs to see a doctor to get diagnosed, and that doctor's gonna
give him an anti-seizure medication.
That's usually what we do, pay attention to.
What happens though, he often falls into the fire and into the water.
Uh, in and of itself, you might say, okay, I guess he's seizing, and as
he's walking next to the fire in the water, he seizes up and then he
falls into the water in the fire.
Wow, that's, that's kind of scary.
He says in verse 16, I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him.
This is a big deal because his disciples were given a special authority to heal,
and so if they're unable to do the thing that God says that they should
do, something's amiss, something's broken, and Jesus answered them.
No problem.
Be patient.
I got your back.
No.
Look at what Jesus says.
To his disciples and to this father.
Here's what Jesus says.
He's flaming.
He's spiting fire here.
Look at what he says.
He says, oh, faithless and twisted generation, faithless and
twisted Jesus is not full punches.
He says, part of the reason here that we're having this issue, the reason the
disciples couldn't do is because they were faithless and they were twisted.
They were seeing this the wrong way.
How long am I to be with you?
And in other words, Jesus saying, I'm not gonna be here forever.
I can't, I, I'm, I've gotta go to the father soon.
How long am I to bear with you?
Bring him here to me.
Jesus rebuked the what?
You see it?
Jesus rebuked the, the demon.
Well hold on a second here.
He had seizures.
Jesus is saying here, not that, not that every seizure is a demon,
but he's saying in this case.
This physical effect that this young man was experiencing was the result of
a demon inhabiting him and that demon tried to destroy him, tried to put
him in the fire, tried to drown him.
The demon was doing something to him to destroy his physical body.
By the way, that's what demon possession looks like.
If you wanna have any sense of, is my friend possess or is something happening?
Typically a demon's goal is to destroy the human inhabitant or the
human person that they're inhabiting.
That's what I'm trying to say.
The the demon's goal is to mar the image of God.
This is part of their fun.
They enjoy hurting mankind.
And so one of the signs that there's a demon behind something is if
there's deliberate bodily harm that's happening because of the demon.
Does this still happen today?
I believe it does.
We just don't.
We don't see it the same way anymore because when we see a seizure or a
headache, we just think, oh, it's automatically a physical thing.
Not saying that it's not, but I'm also saying there could be
a spiritual component to it.
So he says, uh, rebukes a demon.
He goes out, everything's fine.
The Dece, the disciples are like, okay, Jesus, what happened?
We understand that you said we're a faithless and twisted
generation, but what happened?
Jesus says, because of your little faith there baby, baby faith, undeveloped
faith, which is by the way, in contrast to the woman who had great faith.
Remember that woman from tire.
She's coming for her daughter and he says, oh, woman, great is your faith.
And she was like, oh lord.
Even the ma, even the dogs get the crumbs that fall on the floor.
And Jesus says, wow, your faith is so great.
He says, your faith is mega faith, but of the disciples.
He says, you guys have small faith.
So interesting because these are the ones that are, he's
training to, to be his leaders.
And then he goes on to say, look, if you have, if you have faith, if you had a
robust, healthy, mega faith, you could say to this mountain, move and go there.
Nothing will be impossible for you.
Jesus says.
In Mark chapter nine, Jesus says it like this same, same story.
Mark provides a slightly different account.
He says, this kind of demon cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.
And I think that's the key for us.
Point number two, you ought to prayerfully pursue mega faith in the sun.
Probably what went wrong for the disciples is that they were just trusting in their
previous activity, their prior success.
And so when this father brought his son, they're like, Hey, demon
be gone, or whatever they said.
They didn't take time to pray.
They didn't take time to seek God's will.
They didn't take time to pursue God, God's will in this situation.
But if you wanna see someone who has genuine faith in the sun, if you wanna
know, if you have real faith in the sun, I would ask you, how's your prayer life?
That's really where you get to see things like this.
Things that we tell my kids to do, we tell my kids all the time
like, Hey, eat your vegetables.
We want them to eat their vegetables.
We tell them and we mostly mean it.
Like, if you eat your vegetables, you're gonna be strong.
We tell 'em that, but they only kind of believe us.
They only kind of believe us because they don't actually always eat it.
They just sit there, they'll, you know, push it around the plate.
Particularly the girls and Jacob, they'll just push it around the plates.
They don't typically eat the veggies,
but we do the same thing with God.
We believe prayer is powerful until it costs us.
Yeah, I believe vegetables make me healthy, but I'll, I'll.
I'll eat them at some point when I get older.
Prayer is faith in action.
Prayer is how you show that you really do have faith in God.
If you don't pray, it's because you don't believe that God does anything.
You don't believe that God has your best interest at heart.
Prayer is one way that we say, God, I trust that what you tell
me is true and that when I pray to you, you want to hear from me and
that this is good for me to do.
Jesus wants us to pray.
This is where our faith grows.
This is what's what makes our faith good.
In fact, one of the reasons that you may pray and not find your answer, James
says in James four, he says, you desire and you do not have, so you murder.
You have desires inside of you where they're unmet, so you
just kill people to get it.
Not literally in this case, murder the heart.
You covet and you cannot obtain.
So you fight and quarrel.
You do not have James says, because you do not ask one of the reasons.
Your life is not what you want it to be, it's because you're not praying about it.
You do not have because you do not ask.
If you want to grow in your faith, you should pray about it.
If you wanna see progress in your relationship with God,
you should pray about it.
If you want better and deeper friendships, you should pray about it.
If you wanna see changes that are significant in your life,
you should be praying about it.
You do not have because you do not ask.
That's the first problem.
If you want mega faith in the sun, genuine, robust faith
in the sun, you have to pray.
There's no shortcut.
If Christianity doesn't make sense to you, you should pray.
God, if you're real, if the Bible's legit, show me.
I want to know.
And if you have a sincere heart before God, I doubt he will turn you away.
Say no, I'm not gonna tell you.
I don't want you to know.
Gotta pray.
You do not have because you do not ask.
James says, you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly
to spend it on your passions.
This is another hiccup when you're praying for mega faith in the sun.
Sometimes you're praying for the wrong thing.
You're praying for things that are shortsighted.
One of the things that my girls like to do is they play with everything.
Everything and anything.
If it's in their space, if they look at things, they're just gonna play with it.
One of my daughters was helping cut, uh, vegetables recently, and so she
picked up a knife and she was like, oh, Phoebe took, come over here.
Phoebe.
Phoebe, come play with me.
Phoebe.
She's got a knife on him the whole time.
Come over here, Phoebe.
And she, oh, she just, literally, she's gonna kill somebody.
Doesn't even think twice about it though.
If she were to say, dad for my next birthday.
I want a machete.
Machete.
Gimme machete.
Dad, that's all I want.
Would you, if you were me, would you buy my daughter tabby a machete?
That's a good answer.
I'm glad.
No, no.
You're not allowed to come over Carson.
Her a good, yeah, maybe that that'd work.
No, 'cause I don't want it to play with the real one.
I think it's okay.
Yes, a good father, a good mother, a good brother and sister is not gonna buy
their siblings something that they're probably gonna kill themselves with.
God does the same thing you, you do not have, because you do not ask.
And when you ask, you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions.
That is, God is not in the business of making you selfish, and so if your goal
is to please Jesus, those are prayers that he'll be interested in answering.
If your goal is to please yourself, not so much.
He continues you adulterous people.
Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?
Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world
makes himself an enemy of God.
One of God's cares is that your prayers reflect friendship with God
and not friendship with the world.
So maybe your prayer is, Hey look, I wanna be famous.
I wanna be an pro eSports athlete.
God, I wanna be the next That guy.
You guys know who I'm talking about.
I don't even have to say his name.
You know who I'm talking about.
Maybe God doesn't wanna do that for you because that would make you more worldly.
That would make you more unlike Jesus.
So that's on the per of God's interested in answering.
Some of you guys wanna make a ton of money, man.
I see some of the houses down Frontier.
I'm like, oh, I want that house.
And some of the houses in Prosper.
Oh, I want that house.
Some of the houses in Frisco.
Oh, a huge house.
Do you guys know Dion Sanders house in Prosper just went on the market.
I'm looking at buying it.
I'm telling, telling the truth.
I'm just thinking about it, thinking about it.
I, I might put a down payment today, it's on sale, but God probably doesn't want to
gimme that, doesn't wanna give you that.
Not because he doesn't like giving us good gifts, but because
he knows what our hearts need.
You should pray for mega faith in the Son because of who the son is.
He's the son of God.
He's the son of man.
He's the one that matters.
And ultimately, your life and my life matters insofar as we're
supporting what Jesus is doing.
So let's say you get it.
You're praying, well, what happens when it seems like God
isn't answering our prayers?
We see some things here in what James says, but there's more.
Take a look with me at Matthew 17 verses 22 and 23.
Here's another thing that might happen when we pray to God and God doesn't
answer the way that we think he should.
In fact, Lewis talked a little bit about this last week and a and a great sermon.
If you weren't here for that, you should go back and listen to that.
Here's what Jesus says in Matthew 17, verses 22 and 23.
He says, as they were gathering in Galilee, Jesus said to them, the son of
man is about to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him.
They'll kill him, and he will be raised on the third day.
They're gonna kill the Son of man and they're gonna raise him on the third day.
The son of man is a term that Jesus is using to refer to Daniel chapter
seven, which is the special name for the person who would be the ruler.
He'd be the ruler, the ultimate ruler.
This is the God man.
That's why Jesus calls himself the son of man.
So he says, I'm gonna be betrayed into the hands of men.
I'm gonna be killed, but I'm gonna rise in the third day.
Now, notice how the apostles, uh, the disciples respond.
They were greatly distressed.
They were sad, they were way down.
They're, they're, they're tripping on this like, what are you talking about?
Jesus, we have every expectation that you're gonna be the man.
How are you gonna die?
What's this about?
They don't get it.
What they don't get though is that Jesus is always going to do the father's will,
so you ought to trust the Son to do.
The father's will trust the son to do the father's will.
Now, here's the problem with that.
The problem is that the father's will is often not our will.
Your will and God's will are often not the same.
Maybe a little bit, but in large ways, your will and God's will are at odds.
So when we say the son, the one who's well pleasing to the father, the one
that we should have mega faith in, we're trusting him to do the father's will.
The father's will, is gonna be against our will most of the time.
I could probably say that with safety, unless your heart is fully united
with Jesus, you're gonna have a hard time because he's gonna tell you to
do things that you don't want to do.
Son's gonna do the father's will.
When I went to a summer camp years ago, we played this game called the trust fall.
It's a terrible game.
I hated it.
But probably the scariest part of the trust fall A after you step up on the
log or whatever tall thing that you're standing on, you cross your arms like
this, and then you hope that all of your friends are still behind you.
The moments that is the scariest is probably not like when you're
just about to do it, right.
It's not that it's, it's the second you actually commit to doing it.
That is the scariest part.
The actual falling is kind of thrilling, but it's the part before the falling.
It's where you lose control.
It's like I'm giving up control and I'm gonna let myself fall back.
It's terrifying.
Have you ever done this before?
Yeah.
We should do this as one of our illustrations.
We might do this after we're done with this.
Nope.
Trust fall.
Scariest part.
Letting go.
And losing control.
But that's what faith looks like.
I'm letting go and I'm letting God control what happens next.
'cause I can't.
I can't be trusted, but I know he can be trusted.
Here's some things about the father's will that we can just read from, from
what Jesus said in these few verses.
The father's will, first of all, is often painful when Jesus says,
the son of man's gonna be killed.
That's not a joyful experience.
He's not saying Things are gonna be great for me.
I'm gonna go into Jerusalem.
They're gonna love me.
They're gonna lift me high.
They're gonna put me on a on a throne.
They're gonna crowd me.
It's gonna be wonderful.
No, Jesus' death was painful.
In fact, it was one of the most painful and excruciating
experiences you could ever imagine.
I.
The father's will for your life is gonna be painful because here's the thing, the
father's will, is that you be conformed to the image of the son, which is gonna push
you out of your comfort zone so often for your good so that you become like Jesus.
It's gonna be painful.
The father's will is often painful.
It is also often perplexing.
Pop quiz.
What does the word perplexing mean?
Call it out.
Confusing.
I'm confused about this.
I chose perplexing 'cause it was what the, you'll see perplexing.
It's perplexing.
I don't, God, what are you doing?
Have you ever asked that of God, God, what are you doing?
God, why are you, why is this situation happening?
Why does my mom not understand this?
Why does my math teacher hate my guts?
Why does my youth pastor talk for so long?
God, why do you do that?
I'm, I'm perplexed.
I don't understand.
Here's the thing, guys.
God's will is like level 500 billion and we operate on like level three most days.
God is doing 10 billion things at one time and you and I
can see five of those things.
God is playing 3D chess with a infinite board of billions of people making
billions of decisions all the time.
And we can see like three of those things at once.
God sees everything at once, past, present, and future.
He knows exactly what he's doing, so you might be confused, but he's not.
That's his will.
You just have to be comfortable to say, I'm gonna need to trust the son because
he's gonna do things that are gonna be way outside of my realm of understanding.
The father's will is always purposeful though.
You might be confused, but God's not saying, oh, what did I do that for?
Where did I, where did I leave Carson?
I forgot.
Did I get Carson married yet?
No, no.
He's, he's 45 and still single.
I forgot about him.
My bad.
Well, hold on.
Maggie, are you gonna be 45 and single?
How about if you're 46 and you're still single?
No.
Let's commit right now.
No.
Okay.
No pressure.
Think about it.
Let me know.
Talk about it later.
God's will is painful, perplexing, but it's always purposeful.
God has a plan, and here's the thing, that plan is good.
God's plan is good.
In fact, lemme just give you the last one.
It is good because it is always perfect.
God's will is always perfectly good.
He will accomplish his greatest glory and your ultimate good
if you're on God's side.
If you're mega faith is in the sun, listening to his words, carefully,
considering them, putting them into practice and trusting the Son to do the
father's will, you have nothing to fear.
It's just gonna be hard.
Just like the son says, I'm gonna be delivered by the way, the son will be
delivered is a passive word delivered.
Jesus isn't going there by himself.
The father is leading him.
He's recognizing that God's behind it.
They're gonna kill him, and he's gonna rise on the third day.
What did Jesus accomplish with this resurrection?
Only the salvation of those who were to repent and believe in him.
That's it.
Just the salvation of all.
Who would ever trust and believe in Jesus?
That's all the best plan ever.
Jesus had to suffer the the most.
Devastating and painful experience ever.
Father's will is often painful, perplexing, but it is always
purposeful, and it is perfect.
You ought to trust that.
Finally, as we close out this sermon here, I need to show you this last
section, which is kind of unusual, but let me show you the point behind it.
They came to Capernaum.
This is Peter's hometown.
This is likely Jesus hometown as well.
He was staying with Peter.
Collectors of the two drop attacks.
Came to Peter and said, does your teacher not pay the tax?
Peter's like, yes, of course he does.
It goes to Jesus and says, Hey, Jesus, uh, about that tax, you didn't pay it yet.
Uh, I didn't pay it yet.
Are we gonna, are we gonna get to that some point soon?
Jesus says to him, Simon, what do you think about this?
From whom do the kings of earth take toll or tax from their sons or from others?
So, of course, Peter says, well, from others, not from the sons, the sons of the
kings don't pay the, the, the royal taxes.
He says, you're absolutely right.
Then the sons are free.
The sons are free.
Who's the son that's in mind here?
Here's fathers and sons again.
The son of God is free.
He doesn't have to pay the temple tax.
It's his temple.
It's like Jesus saying, let me give $2 from my right hand and my
left hand, like this is my money.
Nothing's happening here.
However, he says not to give offense to them.
Go and catch a fish in the fish's mouth is gonna be enough money for
both of us and go give it to them.
That's what happens here.
Jesus tells Peter something remarkable.
If you are alive with Jesus, if you are part of Jesus' family, you
got special Jesus level privileges.
Point number four, you ought to enjoy the privileges of sonship.
Sonship.
Sonship is another way to say being a child, being a son in the family.
Of course, you could say, enjoy the privileges of daughtership.
That just doesn't sound as nice.
Sonship being a son or daughter in a family.
When I came to FCA, um, I forgot my id.
Um, and if you know anything about FCA, they don't let you in unless
you have an ID during school hours.
And so I came like, no, but I, but I'm here all the time.
I'm a pastor.
Uh, I like, I'm, I've got a degree.
Like I, I'm okay.
I'm not gonna hurt anybody.
Uh, but they weren't listening until I had the headmaster with me and the
headmaster's like, oh, he's chill.
Let him pass.
Headmaster just had to give a wave of the hand, and she's like, all
right, you go, sir, I strolled on in and dreaded after them.
You can't touch this.
Now stopping me.
I was able to get in because of the access that the headmaster had, not
because I didn't have my my id, so I couldn't get in, so I trusted her.
She got me in.
You get access to God, not because you earn it, but because of who you're with.
Who you're with in this case is the son.
The son gives you full and free access to the father.
In fact, family privileges, two major ones.
Okay, here you go.
Number one.
Riches in Christ.
Actually, I have three here.
Riches in Christ.
Number two, freedom from the Old Testament law.
Number three, full Never ending Acceptance by the Father.
These are three family privileges that you get when you are allied with Christ.
When you repent of your sin, put your trust in Jesus.
You are given the full riches of Christ.
The sons are free.
Jesus says, the sons are free in Christ, they're rich.
You have all of the heavenly blessings that Heaven can offer.
They're yours in Christ.
Secondly, you are free from the Old Testament law.
You no longer are obligated to sacrifice goats and sheep and things like that.
Praise God for that.
If you've ever read the book of Leviticus, you'll feel how important that is.
Lastly, I, again, I had to come back to this 'cause it's so important.
Being allied with Jesus, turning from your sin, putting your trust in him means
that you will never, ever find yourself on the business end of God's wrath.
You'll always enjoy full never ending acceptance by the father, and this is
what you and I most desperately want.
There's a thousand voices telling you who to follow, who
to listen to, what to trust.
Wouldn't it be great if God just opened the heavens and told us
who to listen to and who to trust?
Of course, this is what Jesus did.
This is what He did for you and for me.
Our job is to ask the question.
Are we listening?
Says who Well says God.
He's the one who says, listen to Jesus, follow him.
Are you listening?
Are you willing to submit yourself to the beloved son?
If so, two major takeaways.
One, if you're not a Christian, listen to the beloved son.
Repent of your sin and put your trust in him.
Two, if you are a Christian, what area of your life has Jesus spoken?
And you're still just dragging your heels saying, well, I'll get to
it eventually, or when I grow up.
This is my beloved son.
The father says, listen to him.
Let's pray about that and we'll go talk about it in our small groups.
Now, God help us to pay attention to the Son.
He is the Son of God.
The Son of man.
You've proven it, Lord, you've given us every reason to believe.
We pray that you help us now to do that, to believe in Him, and to
show our belief in him by actions.
Let those actions be solidified tonight in our small groups.
In Jesus name, amen.