Speaker: you want to know something depressing?
That's what you always want to know when you start out a sermon, don't you?
Something depressing.
Yeah, 1983, 41 years ago, it's 41 years ago.
Because in 1983, this movie came out, The Right Stuff.
Some of you know that movie, and if you do, you've dated yourself.
Uh, the rest of you, let me introduce you to the concept of the Mercury 7.
Uh, the Mercury 7 were the original 7 that the United States were
after to send into outer space.
The 7 original astronauts.
And they were trying to find the guys with the right attitude.
Stuff and for the mercury seven that came down to courage.
I mean they were gonna go into outer space No one had ever been there from our
nation before that was that was something overwhelming so courage skill they needed
to have the skill to be able to pilot a spaceship and Everything else all the
survival and everything else necessary out there and then on top of that resilience
They needed to be men with thick skin.
They need to be able to handle the challenges that were gonna come
their way I want us to think this morning and ask ourself the question
when it comes to being a follower of Jesus, what is the right stuff?
What is God looking for in us?
Is it skill?
Is it courage?
Is it resilience?
Sure, we could say that.
In fact, we could say that God's looking for a lot of things.
In us when it comes to the right stuff, uh, but I think in our passage this
morning, which is in John chapter 16 verses 25 through 33, I think
we're going to find three things at least that God is looking for
in his followers, in his disciples.
Those three things include first a humble awareness of just
the position of privilege that you and I get to enjoy today.
The second thing is a hunger to always be learning and knowing
more and more and more about God.
And then the third thing is an ever present awareness of our frail humanity.
Take your Bibles, John chapter 16, verses 25 through 33.
Let's begin in the first three verses there.
Beginning in verse 25, John says this, or Jesus says this, I have said these
things to you in figures of speech.
The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech, but
will tell you plainly about the Father.
In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the
Father on your behalf, for the Father himself loves you, because you've loved
me and have believed that I came from God.
I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving
the world and going to the Father.
Alright, so he begins, he says, I've said these things to you in figures of speech.
It's the same word that we get the understanding or idea of a, of a parable.
Now, the parables were figures of speech that were meant
to conceal or hide a truth.
Here, I think Jesus is simply referring to the fact that He has used
metaphorical language with the disciples.
And more than that, He's used language that until they go to the backside of
the cross in the empty tomb, they're not really fully going to understand
what He's talking about here.
Uh, we can see evidence of this all the way back in John chapter 10 as
Jesus is talking about being the good shepherd and the door of the sheepfold.
Uh, those are realities.
Those are truths that they're going to understand better after
the cross and the empty tomb than they are on this side of it.
Or think about washing the disciples feet in the upper room.
The figure of speech and the language that he was using as he was talking to
Peter, saying, Peter, listen, unless I wash you, you have no part in me.
And Peter's saying, Well, Lord, wash all of me.
And Jesus saying, All I need to do is wash your feet because you're already clean.
Or think about the vine and the branches from John chapter 15.
That metaphor and the disciples trying to understand at this point in time
what he's talking about with that.
Or even last week, we looked at the woman in labor, the labor pain,
the anguish that she feels that's replaced by the joy of the new
life that's brought into the world.
And so Jesus is acknowledging with his disciples here saying, Look, I've been
telling you things that Right now you're just not gonna be able to understand.
I've been using these figures of speech.
But he says the hour is coming when I will tell you plainly
In John's Gospel, a lot of times the word hour, ora, there in the
Greek, it refers to the, the cross.
It refers to the resurrection.
It refers to what's about to happen.
And we're going to see that in just a little bit here in our passage.
But here I think the, the hour that's coming is the hour post
resurrection, post ascension.
This is the hour of the church exploding onto the scene.
This is the hour when the spirit, like we looked at not too long ago in
John 16, is going to take the things of Christ, The teachings of Jesus
and declare them to the disciples.
So that hour is coming when he's going to speak plainly because the disciples
are going to have a frame of reference to understand the truths that right now they
can't fully grasp because Jesus hasn't yet died on the cross and risen again.
And so that hour is coming and Jesus just wants them to know
that that hour is indeed coming.
He says in verse 26, In that day.
That day when I'm speaking plainly to you through the Spirit, in
that day you will ask in my name.
We talked about that last week, didn't we?
Jesus, last week, he said, listen, you're going to ask in my name
and whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give it to you.
Verse 23.
To ask in the name of the Son is to ask for the glory of Christ and for his
sake and in accordance with his will.
And so he says again in verse 26, In that day you will ask in my name.
But notice this, he says, I don't say to you that I will ask the Father on
your behalf, for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me
and have believed that I came from God.
This is amazing.
Jesus is saying you're going to pray for things in my name,
but he's trying to get them to understand how this is going to work.
He's saying it's not like you're going to come to me and say,
Jesus, this is what I need.
And that Jesus is going to then go to the Father and say, Ah, Father,
Pastor Rod would really like this.
Could you do this for him?
Jesus is saying that's not how it's going to work.
I'm not going to need to ask the Father.
Because you're going to be able to ask him directly.
And so Jesus is trying to get his disciples to understand the paradigm
shift of their relationship with God.
Something they've never before known.
No Jew at this time was addressing God in a direct and personal
sense in the term of a father.
They knew him as father corporately.
He was the father of the nation of Israel.
He had birthed The nation of Israel.
They knew that concept of God as father, but for a, a Jew, first century Jew to
be thinking about Yahweh and calling him father or addressing him to that extent
or asking him directly for anything, that was as foreign as the day is long.
I mean, think about the Old Testament, what we're reading right now in the
book of Leviticus, and Numbers, and all of the rules and regulations about
approaching God, and how only the high priest could go in before the holy of
holies, and not only one time a year.
And he had to offer a sacrifice first before he could enter into the presence
of God, and now Jesus is saying, you're not going to need me to ask the Father
for you, because the Father loves you.
You see, he's teaching them about the relationship that they're
going to have with God now as a result of what's about to happen.
He's teaching them that because they love God and that they believe that
Christ had come from God, that's why they're not gonna need Jesus to go
to the Father and say, Hey, Father, would you do this on behalf of him?
Because they're gonna be able to go directly to the Father himself.
John 6, just to remind us here, I think this is the foundation of,
of their belief and their love.
John 69, if we can recall all the way back there, this is right around the time
that everybody was leaving Jesus because He was saying some weird things about
eating His body and drinking His blood.
And you remember He looked at the disciples and said,
Do you want to leave too?
And Peter said this, Peter answered Jesus, Lord, to whom shall we go?
But you have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and come to
know that you are the Holy One of God.
Or think about Peter's confession at Caesarea Philippi.
When Jesus was with the disciples and said, Who do people say that I am?
And, well, some say this, some say this, some say this.
Yeah, but who do you say that I am?
And Peter said, We believe that you're the Son of God.
And so they had a knowledge, they had a belief, that was going to be
brought to completion at the cross.
Remember the upper room as Jesus was washing Peter.
That's why he tells Peter, All you need is your feet to be washed.
And then you're going to be fully clean.
All you need is the cross, and then you're going to be fully clean.
You've got the seedbed of faith.
It's going to be brought to completion there.
But at this point in time, they're still trying to wrap their minds
around all of the, the, the privileges that they're going to possess.
And that's just what I want us to start to think about first this
morning, is that we think about these things as just commonplace.
The plain revelation of God, the fullness of direct revelation in
the Bible, you've never known a day where you haven't had access to that.
The idea of being able to pray to the Father and ask the Father for something.
As a Christian, you have never known a minute where you would
even think twice about saying, Father, this is a need that I have.
And yet, for the disciples, this was brand new for them.
This was foreign to them.
They didn't have what you and I have.
They didn't have the privilege that you and I have.
And here's the reality, y'all, we need to be humbly grateful for that because none
of us did anything to cause ourselves to be born at this time in history with these
privileges that we hold in our laps today.
And all I'm saying is let's make sure we're not wasting that point.
Number one, this morning is this don't waste your privileged position.
Don't waste that privileged position that you have.
Theologian B.
B.
Warfield talked about the difference between the Old Testament and the New
Testament and some of the knowledge here, and I think the metaphor is apt for us.
He said this, he said, The Old Testament may be likened to a chamber
richly furnished but dimly lit.
The introduction of light brings into it nothing which was not in it before, but
It brings it out into clearer view, much of what was in it, but was only dimly
or even not at all perceived before.
Thus, he says, the Old Testament revelation of God is not corrected by the
fuller revelation which follows it, but only perfected, extended, and enlarged.
I bring up that quote because that's what the disciples were up against.
They had the Old Testament.
Revelation and Warfield is saying what Christ is going to declare to
them, what Christ is going to bring to them is not going to be new.
It's not going to take what was old and say, you need something radically
different, but it was going to expand it, enlighten it, be able to, to help
us to understand it that much better.
And what I want us to see is we sit as, as the beneficiaries of
having that process completed.
We have the direct, full revelation of God in our possession.
Think about the, just the magnitude of the Bible for just a minute.
It was written across about 1, 600 years.
So if we think that Moses began writing the Pentateuch somewhere in the 1400s,
so the 15th century BC, and it was completed by the Apostle John somewhere
towards the end of the 1st century AD, we're dealing with 1, 600 years
of writing the pages of God's Word.
That was done across three different continents during that time,
40 unique authors making up the authors of the Bible, 66
books, one consistent message.
This is what we have, and we have it in our possession, and it's in our
possession, and we just don't often think about how much of a privilege
it is for us to have what we have
first of the fullness of God's revelation with us.
Such that the disciples were sitting there trying to wrap their minds around
things that have been commonplace for us from the time that we came to Christ.
I wonder if you're familiar with a man by the name of William Tyndale.
William Tyndale.
He was one of the earliest pioneers in taking the Bible
and translating it into English.
Taking the Bible, taking God's Word and putting it into
the language of common man.
And for his efforts and for his labors in that, he was ultimately arrested,
strangled, and then burned to death.
Tyndale wasn't alone in his efforts here.
One of his followers, one of his contemporaries, a man named Thomas Hitton.
Thomas Hitton was caught in possession of two Tyndale New Testaments,
and he was burned at the stake for that in February of 1530.
Thomas Bilney was another.
Thomas Bilney was one who gave out Tyndale New Testament and preached
against the corruption of the church.
And he was taken, arrested, and burned at the stake in 1531.
By the way, this is him while in prison.
He would hold his finger above the candle flame because he
knew what was coming for him.
And he was rehearsing, practicing, so that he would not recant his
faith when the fires were lit.
Thomas Bilney.
Richard Bayfield, caught smuggling Tyndale New Testaments and tortured and then
burned at the stake in November of 1531.
John Tewksbury, arrested, burned at the stake in February of 1531 for
having the Bible and trying to get the Bible into the hands of the people.
James Bainham, another one.
Here he's depicted holding a bundle of sticks with a flame in the other hand.
You can guess at what the symbolism was there.
Bainham initially recanted, and this was part of his punishment.
He recanted preaching against the, the Catholic Church and he was arrested and
he was made to stand in front of this sermon holding the bundle of sticks and
the candle as a symbol of what would happen to anyone who dared challenge
the authority of the Catholic Church.
Well, Bainham repented from his recantation and held up a Tyndale
New Testament aloft in the church and confessed that he was wrong to recant.
Well, he was arrested and burned at the stake in April of 1532.
A man named John Frith was one of Tyndale's closest friends.
Tyndale wrote to Frith as Frith was arrested and waiting his own execution
and Tyndale said this a light Must be fed with the blood of faith.
John Frith was burned at the stake in July of 1533.
It's heavy I get it.
I get that that's heavy for us and yet I bring up those names Because
all of them gave their life to get this into the hands of people
And how often do we say, I'm sorry, I just didn't have enough
time to read God's Word today.
We are privileged.
And it has nothing to do with your race or ethnicity.
You're privileged because of this.
These men dying horrible deaths so that somebody can have the
Bible, the New Testament, and read it in their own language.
And we have it at our disposal.
And it's something that we say, I'll get around to it, hopefully.
The privilege that we have, just think about, we sing a
song called, Oh Church, Arise.
One of the lines in that song is as saints of old still line the way
retelling triumphs of his grace.
Or think about Hebrews chapter 11 in the hall of faith.
By faith Moses, by faith Abraham, by faith on and on and on and on.
And yet at the same time, as we think of so many of those saints
of old still lining the way or the hall of faith, all of those voices.
Y'all, we sit having a much greater privilege where we are
today than any of them ever knew
because you hold in your hands the word of God because you have the access to the
throne of God to pray to him at any time and you've never known anything but that.
Even think about Paul, Peter, James, John, you're more privileged than
even they were because you have God's word at your disposal at
such a readily accessible means.
And my question is, are we wasting our privilege?
Are we wasting our privilege?
Some of the resources, the ways, think about different ways that we
can take in the Bible or lean into the privilege that we have today.
Just the Bible itself, you have that.
If you don't have one, we have Bibles.
We'd love to give you one this morning.
You can also download it in electronic form for free an audio Bible would
be a great investment for you dwell is a great app It's an audio
Bible app for 30 for the year.
You can subscribe to dwell.
It's got great readers on there They do a wonderful job with it.
You can read in in different translations our ESV translation that we preach
from is on there It's a great app great resource there, but all of the
different resources that we have just for the Bible alone Let's add to that.
Okay podcast the different sermons, the different theological podcasts,
doctrinal podcasts that exist out there that you can listen to.
YouTube channels that you can find where you've got people that
are, are feeding you truth there.
American Gospel TV, AGTV, that's an app that you can get on your,
your Apple TV, on your iPad, your phone, your Android, whatever.
And you can subscribe for, I think, six bucks a month, and they've
got wonderful resources there.
Movies, doctrine, theology that's conveyed and taught through AGTV.
That's a resource that you and I have today in our privileged position.
We've got prayer apps.
Maybe you're saying, okay, my intake of God's Word is good, but I could,
yeah, I could do better at praying, at taking advantage of that privilege.
PrayerMate.
is a great app for you to curate your prayer list, for you to be
intentional about building a prayer list, and it will send you reminders.
And you can have a prayer list for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
And you can mark when a prayer has been answered.
You can archive things.
Prayer Mate Echo is another one that's super helpful with that.
Or think about the Bible software, Logos or Accordance Bible software.
Can you imagine what Luther would have been able to do with Logos
Bible software in his possession?
I don't know, he did plenty already.
But Uh, we just, we have resources, we have an embarrassment of riches when
it comes to our privileged position.
CBI, you might be wondering what is that, Compass Bible Institute.
That's a, a, a thing that is, is put on, it's a, it's an institute
that our sending church has that we hope to teach some classes even here
where, uh, you can take college level classes even, Bible classes, theology
classes, doctrine classes, and learn more about who God is and about Christ.
These are all ways for us to take advantage of our privileged position.
You may say, okay, how do I begin with this?
What does that look like?
I want to suggest some strategies to us this morning.
Number one, schedule your time with God.
Any appointment that you have in your day that, that's any important
appointment, you put it on your calendar.
You block it out.
And if somebody comes to you and says, hey, can you meet at this time?
And you've got an appointment on that time, you say, no, I'm sorry,
I can't meet with you on that time.
I'm already meeting with somebody else.
And yet, what do we do with God?
We squeeze Him in.
We give Him our leftovers on our calendar, not our first.
So church, schedule your time with God.
And don't let anything else take that spot.
Make sure it's there.
Second, plan mental breaks.
I get it.
Mental breaks are good.
I'm getting old.
So I do a crossword puzzle and I play the wordle.
That's what I do.
I love doing that.
Or I'll, I'll jump on X.
I love to jump on X and scroll X or I'll jump on, you know, my trade rumors
app and see what's going on in there.
But I have to schedule that.
Otherwise, if I let that happen to me, then I'm just going to waste my time.
And at the end of the day, I'm going to be like, man, I, I guess I just didn't
have time to get in more prayer today.
I didn't have time to get in more time in the word today.
No, I did.
I just wasn't intentional with my time.
So plan your mental breaks.
Put those on your calendar and say, okay, I'm going to give myself
10 minutes here to check and see what's going on in the world.
I'm going to do this at this time.
So plan your mental breaks.
Third, put the phone away.
Put the phone away.
Don't feel like you always have to have it in your possession.
I'm preaching myself here, right?
My wife sits front row, so I have to be accountable.
She knows my life, right?
When I get home, I need to do a better job of saying, I'm going to put the phone away
so I can be present with my family, but also so that I can use time that otherwise
I would pick up the phone to do something mindless, to say, let me instead pray.
Let me instead pick up my Bible.
Let me instead pick up a book over here and read more.
Take advantage of that privileged position that we have.
Fourth, redeem your commute or your dead air.
That time that you're doing something that you can't be
productive doing something else.
You're driving somewhere.
You're in the shower.
You're getting ready in the day.
Use that time.
Fill that time with praying.
Fill that time with meditation on God's Word.
Fill that time with listening to a sermon.
Fill that time with listening to the Bible on Audible.
Do something.
Use that dead air.
I'm mindful of what Jesus said in Luke chapter 12, verse 48, when he said
this, Everyone to whom much has been given, of him much will be required.
Church, can I just say to all of us in this room, if you're sitting here
in earshot, you have been given much.
Much will be required.
The day that we stand before Christ at the Bema seat, we will
answer for our privileged position.
And I just want to challenge us, to encourage us, to say don't
waste your privileged position.
His disciples respond to him though.
They say, ah, verse 29, now, now you're speaking plainly and
not using figurative speech.
Now you're doing it, Jesus.
Now you're doing what you said you would do back in verse 25.
They're beginning to assume wrongly that, that this is already in fulfillment.
But again, we give them the benefit of the doubt.
They didn't have the, the rest of the story.
Verse 30, now we know, now we know, we get it now, that you know all things and
you don't need anyone to question you.
This is why we believe that you came from God.
So we're watching them struggle in real time to understand
what Jesus is talking about.
They're like, okay, now, now we get it.
Okay, you're talking plainly now, Jesus.
And, and, and yes, we know no one has to ask you anything when Jesus
said, you won't ask me anything.
They're, they're not, we're watching them in real time, try to understand
what's really only going to be understandable after they get the
spirit, after the ascension of Christ.
And so now they're, they're, they're wrestling through these things.
They're presuming to understand what he meant in John 16, 23 about asking him
and, and, and the father will respond.
And yet they, they don't fully get it.
And we can't blame them.
Because again, we're sitting in the privileged position, understanding
this through our privileged position, knowing the rest of the story.
But right now, they're, they're trying to get it.
They're trying to understand.
Do you, are you familiar with this meme, this guy?
I understand it now, that guy.
He's phenomenal.
He's a, a, a coach, a shooting coach for some NBA players.
And this whole thing, you'll see, there's a bunch of nails on that basketball goal.
This was his first thing.
This is kind of when he hit the scene.
And he set up all these nails and he shot the ball and it, it
punctured on one of those nails.
And he made this statement.
He goes, okay, I understand it now.
And then he began to shoot and was just draining him over these, this nail basket.
Well, that's kind of his bit now.
So he does that over and over again.
He's like, I understand it now.
I get it now.
In other words, I'm good, I can move forward now, I get it.
I think that's kind of the disciples right now.
They're trying to put that front out with Jesus.
They're trying to be like, okay, Jesus, we get it now, we're good, we understand it.
In fact, maybe there's even a little bit of going, hey, can we just enjoy the
nice night while we're out for a walk?
Can we stop talking all this about you leaving?
We know now you're speaking plainly, you're going back
to the Father, we get it.
And then Jesus, with just that simple statement, kind of
undermines their confidence.
He says, do you, verse 31, do you believe?
Do you really?
Do you get it?
Listen, church, I'm going to flank this a little bit for our second point here,
but I want us to think about it this way.
I think the disciples were kind of thinking, okay, we get it enough.
We know enough to get it.
We know enough to understand Jesus.
So, can we, can we move on now?
Listen, church, for us as disciples, we never get there.
We never get to that place.
I talked about our humility and point number one of just
understanding our privileged position.
As we move into this point number two, I want to talk to us about our hunger.
That we should always have a hunger and an awareness because of our
human frailty, because of who we are.
I mean, we're never going to get to that place of going, Man, I got it.
I know it.
I'm good.
Doesn't matter how many initials you have after your name, how
much school you've gone to, who taught you, what they taught you.
You will always have an opportunity to deepen your understanding
and knowledge of Jesus.
In fact, that's another part of what the right stuff of
being a follower of Jesus is.
Point number two is this.
Accept your position as a perpetual learner.
Discipleship requires a humble hunger that's ever aware, yet
always looking to overcome the limits of our human understanding.
We're going to bump into that glass ceiling.
Where, where it's like, okay, God, you're God and I'm not.
And, and we're going to have those moments where we say, I don't understand this.
And yet the hunger needs to be there for us to always understand more.
Heaven forbid that we should ever get to the place that the writer
of Hebrews had to address with the, the church that he was writing to.
When he said to them in Hebrews 5, 11, he said, About this, we have much more to
say, but it's hard to explain since you have become, here it is, dull of hearing.
For though by this time you ought to be teachers, You need someone
to teach you, again, the basic principles of the oracles of God.
You need milk, not solid food.
For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of
righteousness since he is a child.
But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers
of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
Church, I want us to be a church that is never prone to the
charge of being dull of hearing.
I want us to be a church that's always hungry to know,
to learn, to understand more.
That when we encounter something that might be confusing, like these
disciples listening to Jesus, that we're not going to tap out and
be like, okay, yeah, we get it.
We get it now.
But to be able to say, we don't get it, but I want to get it.
I want to know.
I want to understand what you're talking about.
And I don't get it.
Help me to know.
Help me to grow.
Help me to understand more.
We're going to have to go counter cultural to embrace that mentality.
I talked about.
You know, using our phones earlier, you know what the word of the year
was in 2024 for the Oxford Dictionary?
It's actually two words.
They cheated, but I guess they're allowed to because they're a dictionary.
Who's gonna correct them?
Not me.
It's this brain rot.
That was the word of the year for 2024 for the Oxford Dictionary.
You say, Well, what is brain rot?
That's a great question.
They define it for us here.
Here it is.
It's this.
It's the supposed deterioration of a person's mental or intellectual
state, especially viewed as a result of overconsumption of material.
Now, particularly online content, considered to be trivial or unchallenging.
That's really convicting, isn't it?
Convicts me, and that's why I say we're gonna have to go countercultural because
what's being fed to us is just disengage.
What's being fed to us is the scrolling culture.
What's being fed to us is doom.
Scrolling.
It's disengaging.
It's unplugging, it's not.
But it's let me just unplug and let things happen to me.
If we're going to accept our position as a perpetual learner,
we've got to overcome that.
And listen, this is a battle, parents, for the minds of our young
ones, for our students, for our kids that are over on our kids ministry.
In 1976, 40 percent of high school seniors had read six or more books for fun, okay?
In 1976, 40 percent of high school seniors had read six or more books just for fun.
By 2021, that number dropped to 13%.
13 percent of all high school seniors had read six or more books for fun as of 2021.
The number of high school seniors who didn't read even one book for
fun in that same year was 41%.
That means 41 percent of the high school seniors that were graduating
and churning out to be the next leaders, the next doctors, the
next lawyers, the next engineers.
Are saying outside of what's absolutely required of me to pass a class.
I'm not picking up a book.
That's a problem.
That's a problem
Combine that with this bit of information here the average American
the average American scrolls 305 feet on Facebook alone every single day.
You say well 305 feet.
Okay.
What does that mean?
That's 30 and a half basketball hoops.
What what else is three and a hundred three hundred five feet Statue of Liberty?
The average American is scrolling the length, the height, of the
Statue of Liberty every single day.
Just on Facebook!
You're like, well, I'm not on Facebook.
Whatever, whatever your app of choice is, right?
You're scrolling on that one.
And, and, and that, the majority of that is just mindless, isn't it?
You're not thinking it.
This is brain rot.
And that's why I'm saying we have to work counter cultural as disciples of Christ.
Because to be a follower of Jesus implies us applying our
minds, applies us accepting our position as a perpetual learner.
Jesus told the parable of the talents, right?
And he gives talents to different people and he gives them in different measure.
But what did he expect when he came back?
He expected a what?
An ROI on those talents.
And the ones that came back and said, teacher, I took your talent and
here's what I brought back to you.
He said, well done, good and faithful servant.
But the one that said, hey, I took what you had and I didn't
want anything to happen to it.
So I just buried it over here and I didn't do anything with it.
He calls that servant what?
Wicked and slothful.
Y'all, if we can think of the the the privileged position that I
talked about in point number one as the talent that you've been given,
we got to do something with it.
We got to take that and deepen it.
And you might be thinking, okay, is this all just about the intellectual?
No, it's it's about the experiential.
It's about growing in our knowledge.
It's being a perpetual learner in deepening our knowledge and our
experience of our relationship with Jesus.
Paul talks about this in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verses 15 through 18.
2 Corinthians 3, 15 through 18, Paul says this, he says, Yes,
to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts.
When one turns to the Lord, this veil is removed.
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord,
are Notice the progression here.
We are being presently.
We are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.
For this comes from the Lord, whose spirit,
this progression is what we're after here.
This deepening of our understanding of Jesus that's going to be experienced, yes,
intellectually, but also experientially.
It's knowledge that transforms.
It's knowledge that shows up.
It's knowledge that lives.
This is, I think, what Paul meant in Ephesians chapter 3, verse 29, 19, not 29.
I don't know what Ephesians 3, 29 says.
Something good, I'm sure.
But that's not the point right now.
Ephesians 3 19, when Paul says this, he says, we're praying that you would
come to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge and that you might
be filled with all the fullness of God.
He talks about doing the breadth and the height and the depth.
It's this ever deepening, ever growing pursuit of knowing Christ.
If less of me means more of you take everything that that's what we prayed.
That's what we sang earlier.
This deepening of our relationship with him.
That's not interested in saying, okay, I think we get it.
Can we move on now?
And again, I don't mean to beat up the disciples.
They weren't playing with the full hand.
They didn't know the rest of what we know.
But we have to guard against that ourselves as we sit where we are.
A key component to the heart of any disciple has to be this
hunger to know more about God.
And I get it.
Maybe you're out there saying, well, you know what?
That's fine, Pastor PJ, but I'm not really a reader.
Okay, there's ways around that.
You can become a reader.
My guess is if something happened to your wife, your spouse, And all of a
sudden they couldn't speak audibly to you and they couldn't sign to you and you
don't know sign language anyway so you wouldn't understand it even if they did.
And the only way they could communicate with you is by writing to you.
And at the end of every day, you came home and your, your spouse had a four or
five page letter that they had written to you about their day and about their
feelings and about everything else.
My guess is you who would say, well, I'm just not a reader would
still read that, wouldn't you?
Why?
Because you love the one who wrote it.
So, can I challenge that excuse a little bit on our time in the Word and our time
learning about Jesus and learning more about God and to say, man, if we love
the one who wrote it, let's get into it.
Let's spend the time there.
I want us to be a church, again, that isn't prone to the charge
you become dull of hearing.
There's two types of people in the world when it comes to air travel.
There's those of you that like to just cut it to the last second.
You know who you are and traveling with you for the rest of us is the
worst experience on the face of the planet because all y'all have TSA
precheck and then the rest of us do.
So you're waltzing in there 10 minutes before the flight and we're
in the back of the line going.
I'm not gonna make it.
They're gonna make it.
I'm not gonna make it.
I'm the guy that's there two hours early because why?
Because that's what they tell me to do.
That's what they say.
They say, be there two hours early and I don't want the plane to leave without me.
I want to be on the plane.
My wife.
Yeah, she loves me in spite of my, my, my quirks.
But I'm the one that's there.
And here's the thing.
If you've ever flown out of John Wayne on American Airlines to go back to Dallas,
typically that flight is waiting for you.
That gate is waiting for you as soon as you go through security.
I don't know why it is.
Every time I fly back to Dallas from John Wayne in Orange County, the American
Airlines Dallas flight is right there, right on the other side of the gate.
I still get there two hours early as though I'm going to need to
walk a long way to get to my gate.
I don't.
So what am I left to do?
Get McDonald's and then sit down at my gate and wait for my plane.
Y'all, Christianity is not sitting at our gate waiting for our plane to heaven.
I want you to think about it differently.
I want you to picture that time that you've been landing in a massive airport,
like DFW, or another airport like that.
And you're connecting, and your plane that's landing, it's running a little
bit behind, and you don't know exactly when they're going to start boarding the
next plane, but you know it's imminent.
It's imminent.
And, and you're over here on this side of the airport and you've got to get
to this side of the airport to get, to catch your flight, that's Christianity.
We need to be moving all the way to get there until Christ comes back and
we board the flight to get to heaven.
By the way, I don't know what airline is going to get us to heaven.
Not Delta, apparently, because they like to flip planes upside down, so,
but you get the point, right?
And, and along the way, sometimes what do we find?
We find those people movers and you jump on the people mover and it
gets you there a little bit faster.
Y'all, Christianity is being on the people mover, not at the gate, not at the gate.
And so keep going.
Keep pressing on.
Verse 32, Jesus continues.
He said, Behold, the hour is coming.
Indeed it is come.
And now he's talking about the hour of his crucifixion and his resurrection.
And when you will be scattered, each one to his own home,
and he will leave me alone.
Yet I'm not alone for the Father is with me.
And so Jesus deals this blow now to the disciples who are going to
be reeling and listening to this.
Because they've just been professing, we get it, we understand, we know now.
And Jesus is going, do you really believe?
Here's what I'm about to tell you.
I'm about to tell you like Zechariah, the shepherd's about to be struck
and the sheep are going to scatter.
Zechariah 13, 7.
And you are the sheep.
You're going to scatter.
That word scatter means to run in every direction.
It's not an organized run.
It's, you're scattering because you're afraid.
You're running for your life.
And Jesus says, that's about to happen right now.
It's imminent.
It's coming.
And, and so you can imagine that this would have been a blow to the disciples.
And what Jesus is doing here, like I've, I've said, a
disciple is one that's humble.
It, they're, they're hungry like we just talked about.
But third, they're aware of their, aware of their frail humanity.
And Jesus is really bringing that to the light here.
He's saying, don't bow up too much, y'all, because you're about to run.
You're about to flee.
You're about to scatter.
For your life, and so he's lovingly rebuking here their their overconfidence.
He says the hour is coming indeed.
It has come The reason he's saying it has come is is we're about to find out
in verse in Chapter 18 that they're getting ready to cross over the Kidron
Valley brook So they're walking through Jerusalem as Jesus is teaching them
these things the hour is upon them It's it's imminent and he says that's why
it's it's here and you're about to run I mean, if 16 ended there, that'd be
pretty disheartening, but it doesn't.
Look at verse 33.
He says, and I've said these things to you.
And I think in these things, he's talking about everything in the,
the upper room discourse here.
He said, I've said these things to you that in me, you may have peace.
Hey, listen, you're about to scatter.
You're about to run.
Things are going to be tough.
Things, things are going to terrify you in just a minute here, but I've
said everything that I've said to you that you might have peace in the world.
You're going to have tribulations.
You're about to know that in a real way here.
You're gonna have opposition.
You're gonna have tribulation.
But he says this, but take heart.
I love that phrase.
Take heart.
It's, it's to stand firm in the face of opposition.
That's what the word means.
Take heart.
I have overcome the world.
Jesus moves from the loving rebuke to this more encouraging thought.
Again, these things.
And he says there's two spheres that you're gonna exist in here.
The sphere of the world in which you're gonna find opposition and tribulation.
But then the other sphere is the sphere of Christ in which you're
going to experience peace and victory.
And so he's encouraging them, saying regardless of the world's
opposition, despite our failures, we can confidently have peace because
Christ has already defeated the enemy.
And this third point here, I love the patient mercy of
God that we see on display.
Because again, he's just told the disciples, y'all
are about to fail big time.
You've been talking a big game.
You've been talking about being willing to die for me.
But you're about to run for your life, but then he follows that up by
saying, but in me you'll have peace.
Because why?
Not because of what you can do, but because what I'm about to do.
I have overcome the world.
Point number three this week, our final point is this, take heart
because of God's merciful patience.
Take heart, just like it says in our text.
Stand firm, be resolved to Be encouraged.
Strengthen your faith because of God's merciful patience.
Listen, as a church, one of our distinctives is that we seek
to maintain a high view of God.
And part of what that means is, yes, His holiness.
And we're going to treat Him with the reverence and the respect
and the dignity that He is due.
And that also means that because He is holy, we desire to be holy.
But we also have to remember that part of maintaining a high view
of God also means we have a high view of His mercy and His grace.
And we are so thankful for those two attributes.
How many times, let me ask you, how many times Christian has your faith faltered?
We look at the disciples and they're about to run from the cross.
How many times have we metaphorically run when we faced opposition in this world?
How many times has your faith faltered in the last week?
How many times has your faith faltered in the last 24 hours?
And can you imagine trying to live as a follower of Jesus in a world
without the merciful patience of God?
The answer is no.
You know why?
Because none of us would be in this room.
Starting with the fact that this pulpit would be empty right now.
If it weren't for God's merciful patience,
none of us could stand and offer our worship.
None of us could pray to him.
None of us could stand in his presence.
We would all be completely destroyed.
If his standard was, if you're not perfect, then I'm done with you,
then he'd be done with every single one of us in the room.
Think about those that were in the midst here.
Peter, James, they're gonna run.
Peter's gonna deny him three times.
And yet, what is God gonna do through Peter, through James?
Is he gonna still use them in the future?
Little bit?
Tiny bit?
Yeah, book of Acts?
Peter's standing up saying, hey, listen, this Jesus who you guys crucified,
God has made him both Lord and Savior.
Repent and believe in him.
James, the leader of the Jerusalem church?
Yeah, it's so encouraging because when our faith falters, and it does, it
doesn't mean that God is done with us.
It doesn't mean that discipleship's over.
But his merciful patience is gonna enable you to keep going.
His merciful patience means that God is still gonna use
you to do great things for him.
You may be wondering what is my faith faltering look like?
Here's just a few examples of the ways that our faith can falter.
Sometimes our faith falters when we give into our fears and anxieties
when we face the world's opposition.
Sometimes our faith falters when we doubt God's goodness, when we
encounter the world's opposition.
Sometimes our faith falters when we trust in ourselves, when we
encounter the world's opposition.
Sometimes our faith falters when we fall into a spiritual apathy or just a lethargy
because of the opposition of the world.
Sometimes our faith falters when we yield to temptation or yield to compromise
when we face the world's opposition.
And sometimes our faith falters when we retreat from a gospel opportunity
because of the world's opposition.
Church, I just want you to take heart this morning that because of God's
merciful patience, because He has overcome the world, When your faith falters, it
doesn't mean that he's done with you.
His merciful patience means that when we repent, when we seek
forgiveness, then we are going to be brought back in and restored to
that right relationship, and he will continue to work in and through us.
A few things that it means for us today to think about Him having overcome the world.
How do we experience that tangibly?
What does that mean for us?
Well, He tells us, one at least, right off the bat, is the peace
that we have because of that.
God's merciful patience in our lives and His victory over sin and victory
over death means that we can have peace.
John 16, 33, take heart, I've come that you might have peace in this world.
Second, we can have hope because of this.
We can have hope, first, in the face of death.
1 Corinthians 15, 20 22.
That He has risen from the dead as the firstfruits, and we will also
to one day rise from the grave.
So we have hope because of this, because He's overcome the world in the face of
death, but also in the face of suffering.
2 Corinthians 4, 17 18.
This light momentary affliction, what's it doing?
It's preparing for us an eternal weight of glory.
We can also experience His victory over the world through
our own victory over sin.
His merciful patience with us means that, man, you fall yesterday, you get to
fight tomorrow, you get to fight today.
Amen.
You get to battle that sin.
You get to, with Paul in Romans chapter 6, I am not going to present myself to
sin as an instrument of unrighteousness, but to God as a slave of righteousness.
It also means that we can have confidence and hope in true justice
being done, Revelation 19 and 20.
When Christ comes back, man, justice is going to follow.
And so, when we face the world's opposition, when we look at something
and say, that's not just, because Christ has overcome the world, we can have
confidence that justice will be done.
I, I love this point because I need this point.
I need to be reminded of God's merciful patience in my life.
When I fall, when I falter, when I doubt God's goodness in my
life, and God is patient with me.
John 16, 32 33, these last two verses are such a great source of
encouragement to us because God understands our frail humanity.
And yet, in His patience, He still wants to use us to accomplish His purpose.
Now the only caveat I want to add to this is that this last point is
not a golden ticket to sin, right?
This last, last point is not like, okay, God's mercifully
patient, so what does it matter?
Paul answers that in Romans 6.
He says, what then?
Should we sin that grace may abound?
And what does he say in response?
He says, no way, except he says it way stronger than that.
May it never be the most emphatic statement, negative
statement he can make in Greek.
And so his merciful patience is not licensed for licentiousness.
His merciful patience rather is that encouragement for us to go, okay, I'm
going to get back on the horse tomorrow, today, right now, and keep serving.
Humility, hunger, and that awareness of our frail humanity.
It's not everything that goes into the right stuff of his disciple, but it's at
least some important stuff that goes into the right stuff of what makes a disciple.
And so I hope and I pray that maybe this week is going to see a little bit
more grateful pursuit of, of utilizing that privileged position that we have.
Maybe it's going to spark the increased desire to keep growing in
our knowledge of God, and I also hope this week that we will be mindful of
God's merciful patience with us, and not live defeated, but say, okay.
I can keep going.
I can keep serving.
I can repent.
I can keep going and keep pursuing Christ's likeness right now.
Will you stay with me as I pray for us?