unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Well, some of you have heard about them before, but let me just reintroduce you to my chickens if you haven't met them yet.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Bad news, two of them are already dead.
SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, they're already dead.
SPEAKER_00: Um and part of that might have had to do with my expectations, okay?
SPEAKER_00: So we all do this sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: We listen for the good parts, and even though we hear the bad parts or the less good parts, we don't really hear them because we want to do the thing we want to do.
SPEAKER_00: And so when I when when we were talking about before my wife ever went out and got them without really telling anyone she was gonna do it that day, um before that happened, there was I heard tell, hey, you know, chickens will give you lots of eggs, man.
SPEAKER_00: We need eggs, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you don't want to spend you don't want to buy them at the grocery store.
SPEAKER_00: Why don't we just get free eggs for the rest of our lives?
SPEAKER_00: Like that was part of the sell, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Now it's it's true.
SPEAKER_00: Like you get eggs, and they're they're even, I would say they're better than normal eggs, all right?
SPEAKER_00: But dude, okay.
SPEAKER_00: Eggs aren't that expensive, okay?
SPEAKER_00: You gotta you gotta like buy this coup, all right?
SPEAKER_00: That's several hundred dollars, assuming it's blown down by the wind.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: Um, you gotta tear up your front lawn.
SPEAKER_00: The chickens, they need food, they need this like shaving bed stuff all the time.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta feed them all the time.
SPEAKER_00: Um, plus, they get these little like dead worm treats that you just bag of dead worms.
SPEAKER_00: It's like 20 bucks a bag.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so it's true, dude.
SPEAKER_00: There's good eggs.
SPEAKER_00: You get some good eggs, man.
SPEAKER_00: But I wasn't hearing, if any of that was said, I was not hearing that on the front end, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Because I was like, oh yeah, good.
SPEAKER_00: Eggs.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the deal.
SPEAKER_00: We can all do that from time to time.
SPEAKER_00: We can hear the good and even hear the less good, but because we're so excited about the good, we don't really hear the less good.
SPEAKER_00: Example, you see this in relationships all the time.
SPEAKER_00: Some will come to me, say, oh Carter, I met, I met this girl and she's just awesome.
SPEAKER_00: And they're telling me all about her potential.
SPEAKER_00: They're not telling me anything about her current patterns.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, so so she's beautiful, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Here's all the things that could be and should be, and I just really hope it's gonna be there.
SPEAKER_00: Now, um, you know, old girl ain't got no job, and um, she drinks quite a bit, um, you know, and so they'll they'll mention the stuff that is like, wait a minute, was that just a red flag that you walked right past?
SPEAKER_00: Because they're excited about the girl.
SPEAKER_00: So they're not gonna, even though they know, they don't really know.
SPEAKER_00: Or someone will come and say, Hey, I'm thinking about taking this job, and man, like the salary is just uh, it's gonna bump it up, it's gonna be so good.
SPEAKER_00: They've already heard the fact that, well, you know, like the hours are gonna be like double almost.
SPEAKER_00: Like it's gonna feel like a real pinch on the family.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, the schedule they're gonna ask you to keep is like, whoo, it's very different than the one you're you're doing right now.
SPEAKER_00: And so if this is the life stage where you want to be building into the family a lot up close and personal, this might not be the stage, but all they really heard was the salary part.
SPEAKER_00: I know about that, I don't know about that, but but the salary is is is so good that we don't necessarily hear what maybe might not be so good.
SPEAKER_00: Now, nothing, I'm not saying the girl is bad, I'm not saying that the job is bad.
SPEAKER_00: What I'm saying is we all do this.
SPEAKER_00: We can all hear the good stuff and not hear the bad stuff, even though the bad stuff is there.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was walking, resurrected Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It was resurrection day.
SPEAKER_00: He'd risen from the dead, but he was walking, kind of veiling who he really was with two disciples.
SPEAKER_00: They were walking from Jerusalem back to Emmaus, taking the road to Emmaus.
SPEAKER_00: It's a seven-mile journey, it's gonna take them a long time.
SPEAKER_00: He begins to walk with them, and they're disappointed because their guy that they thought was gonna be the Messiah, dude, he was totally killed.
SPEAKER_00: He was murdered, he was put to death, and they thought, here's a guy with power.
SPEAKER_00: Here's a guy that's finally gonna restore our people, get us out from under the boot of Rome.
SPEAKER_00: We're just so confident.
SPEAKER_00: And then all their hopes were deflated and dashed, and they're walking back to a massive like, man, we we were we really thought certain things were gonna happen and they're not happening.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody felt that?
SPEAKER_00: Thought something was gonna happen by now, so maybe by a certain time.
SPEAKER_00: I thought God was gonna do something.
SPEAKER_00: I thought God would have taken care of this by now.
SPEAKER_00: I thought it would be different, but I just expected it to be different by now.
SPEAKER_00: They expected probably some power.
SPEAKER_00: Like they were probably hoping, I'll bet you at the last minute, he's gonna get down off that cross and he's gonna show them all because they've seen miracles, they've seen him feed thousands and thousands of people, they've seen Lazarus come up from the dead, or at least some of them saw it and many have heard about it.
SPEAKER_00: They're like, maybe this guy is just gonna do a total grand finale and it's gonna be awesome, but he didn't.
SPEAKER_00: And it feels now it's like a loss.
SPEAKER_00: You ever have anything?
SPEAKER_00: Do you have something in your life that you look back on and you're like, I don't know, man, that just looks like a loss.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how to see that as a win.
SPEAKER_00: I feel like I was hoping God would come through, hoping something would be different, and it wasn't different.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus begins to reshape their expectations.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pick it up.
SPEAKER_00: Luke 24, starting verse 25.
SPEAKER_00: Now he's just kind of walked with them.
SPEAKER_00: They've told him all about this, they're depressed, and he says, Oh, foolish ones and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken.
SPEAKER_00: Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and then enter into his glory?
SPEAKER_00: Then, beginning with Moses, with all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things concerning himself in all the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: What I find interesting here is it's really not that they were missing any information at all.
SPEAKER_00: All this information was in the Hebrew scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: It was all there.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, they were disciples, and Jesus had been telling disciples, by the way, there's this whole like death coming, but they couldn't hear it.
SPEAKER_00: They weren't missing information, they just couldn't hear the information that didn't match their expectations.
SPEAKER_00: It was always there, but they weren't thinking about their Messiah in those terms.
SPEAKER_00: They're like, Well, that can't be about the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm just gonna think about all the good stuff, the stuff I expect.
SPEAKER_00: They weren't wrong to expect a redeemer, but they were wrong about how that redeemer would bring it about.
SPEAKER_00: They had their own expectations.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Jesus, it would have been maybe they would have thought it'd be nice, man.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, can you just reverse this and fix all of our expectations?
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we want that.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, would you just fix it?
SPEAKER_00: Can you just fix it, please?
SPEAKER_00: And what Jesus did with them, I think he's gonna do with us today.
SPEAKER_00: He's gonna say, let's try this first.
SPEAKER_00: Let me fix how you understand the scriptures to reshape your expectations about who I am and what I do.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe then you'll see some things don't need to be fixed after all.
SPEAKER_00: Can we do it?
SPEAKER_00: Are you excited on Easter Sunday?
SPEAKER_00: Let's practice the exercise Brandon tried to teach earlier.
SPEAKER_00: He is risen.
SPEAKER_00: All right, this side of the room.
SPEAKER_00: Really godly.
SPEAKER_00: That's a joke.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all are gonna get another chance.
SPEAKER_00: Let's keep going.
SPEAKER_00: Here's some things not to miss about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: If the Bible's trying to tell us about Jesus without saying the word Jesus, this is what it would say.
SPEAKER_00: Here's number one.
SPEAKER_00: There'll be a wounded deliverer.
SPEAKER_00: He will achieve victory through suffering, not around it.
SPEAKER_00: Now, yo, this is at the very front of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: This is right after the problem happens.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so our first parents, they dive headlong into sin.
SPEAKER_00: They don't trust God, they don't trust that what he says is true and right.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord sees, okay, if you guys don't obey me, it's gonna cause all kinds of risks between people, it's gonna cause wars, it's gonna cause earthquakes.
SPEAKER_00: The whole world is gonna be turned upside down in a bad way.
SPEAKER_00: And yet he still gave them free will and they still did it.
SPEAKER_00: And then the Lord has a little conversation with their chief enemy, who was the serpent.
SPEAKER_00: This is one of the things that's gonna be a result of this is I'm here's verse 15 of Genesis 3.
SPEAKER_00: I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed.
SPEAKER_00: He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.
SPEAKER_00: This was called the Proto-Evangelian.
SPEAKER_00: This is the first gospel.
SPEAKER_00: This is where God says right from the beginning, there is a solution to this.
SPEAKER_00: It's not gonna happen right at this moment, but I'm going to fix the problem that y'all caused.
SPEAKER_00: And there's gonna be someone who's a descendant of the woman, and he is going to bruise this snake or what the snake represents on the head.
SPEAKER_00: But while he does it, he's also going to be bruised on the heel.
SPEAKER_00: Meaning to say, he doesn't get through it unscathed.
SPEAKER_00: Even the savior, even the master, even the hero of the story doesn't get through it unscathed.
SPEAKER_00: We're used to like heroes that just, dude, they just lay the beat down and they just win.
SPEAKER_00: They're just Thor, they're just, you know, they're Captain America, whoever they are, like they're gonna win this unchallenged, nothing even happens.
SPEAKER_00: They get blown through a window and they're like, that's fine.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not real life.
SPEAKER_00: The real way the Lord set it up in the world is even the savior himself.
SPEAKER_00: The way he saves is through suffering, not around it.
SPEAKER_00: That's always how it's been, and we can't go around it either.
SPEAKER_00: So if if you're a disciple of Jesus Christ, just know probably what's true.
SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna make it through this entire thing unscathed.
SPEAKER_00: You're not going to.
SPEAKER_00: If he didn't, that he's our pattern.
SPEAKER_00: We're probably not going to either.
SPEAKER_00: Now, that doesn't mean God doesn't heal it, doesn't mean he doesn't redeem it, doesn't mean he doesn't restore, doesn't mean he doesn't like heal stuff.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that we don't go through trauma and he like makes us better through it and from it and we're totally recovered.
SPEAKER_00: That does happen, but there's also stuff that happens in life that's like, bro, you're following in the footsteps of the slain Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: Like, there's this stuff, you're gonna have to take that hit.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord will work it all out in heaven, but don't let it throw you, and don't let it throw your expectations that you have a fiery trial among you.
SPEAKER_00: Hey.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the second one.
SPEAKER_00: He will achieve victory through suffering, not around it.
SPEAKER_00: He'll also be a prophet like Moses.
SPEAKER_00: He will have a unique authority that must be listened to.
SPEAKER_00: Moses is on the edge of the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: He can't go in with the Israelites, but he's given them a final pep talk.
SPEAKER_00: He says, guys, very important, this is part of the covenant.
SPEAKER_00: He's giving them the covenant, he's reminding them of all God's rules.
SPEAKER_00: He says, one of the rules, you've got to pay attention to this other prophet like me who's going to come.
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers, you shall listen to him.
SPEAKER_00: He says, There's gonna come somebody else that's kind of like me.
SPEAKER_00: They're a teacher and they're a leader, and their authority is instantly recognizable.
SPEAKER_00: Just like Jesus was instantly recognizable in his authority, just like he amplifies the very law of Moses with the Sermon on the Mount.
SPEAKER_00: He tells people, hey, look, you thought it was this, but it's actually this much higher standard.
SPEAKER_00: Says this guy's gonna come, and you gotta make sure that you listen to him.
SPEAKER_00: Now, that listen is not just obey him, though that in it that word includes the obedience part, but it also includes listen to understand.
SPEAKER_00: Listen or come to know your Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: Come to know him personally and relationally.
SPEAKER_00: He'll have a unique authority that must be listened to, but his whole game is not that you just go around doing things for him.
SPEAKER_00: That's not that's not the pattern, that's not what was said about the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: What he's gonna do is he's gonna want to know you, he's gonna want to impart to you.
SPEAKER_00: See, there's a difference between a commander and a confidant.
SPEAKER_00: A commander can direct you, they're like authorized to tell you what to do.
SPEAKER_00: Go here and do this, and they don't really have to care about you at all.
SPEAKER_00: But many of us, you've had a confidant, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like a confidant, you know that they care about you.
SPEAKER_00: You know that you can share your heart and they might share their heart.
SPEAKER_00: Well, Jesus, he is a commander, but he's also the confidant.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to impart knowledge of himself.
SPEAKER_00: That's why he woos us to his word.
SPEAKER_00: That's why his word is the very key to knowing him really and truly at all.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to keep, you must listen to him.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to keep listening.
SPEAKER_00: Are we listening?
SPEAKER_00: Are we listening to our Messiah?
SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing, yo.
SPEAKER_00: We've got to reject any form of religion that primarily is about doing things for God rather than knowing God.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna say it again.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna I'm gonna be a little bit severe about it because I think it's really a severe thing.
SPEAKER_00: We need to be ruthless and relentless about rejecting any religious culture, any religious body of people, any religious anything that smacks of, hey man, you better keep doing a great job for God.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, get your act together, man.
SPEAKER_00: You better do a little bit better.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, he's watching you.
SPEAKER_00: You better do good.
SPEAKER_00: That's nasty.
SPEAKER_00: That'll probably make the Apostle Paul throw up.
SPEAKER_00: It's primarily about knowing him, and we obey out of knowing him.
SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, I'll just ask you today, how's that going?
SPEAKER_00: Is this primarily for you about drawing near, absorbing who he is in his beautiful, wonderful word, and melding of minds with him in some sense?
SPEAKER_00: You're knowing his heart about things.
SPEAKER_00: You must listen to him.
SPEAKER_00: Don't just do stuff for him.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to him.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, next weekend we're starting a series that we do every now and then.
SPEAKER_00: It's called the Connect Class Series.
SPEAKER_00: It's not after church, it's during church.
SPEAKER_00: This is where we're going to highlight all the things.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to reshape the expectations about what does the New Session actually say we're all supposed to be thinking and doing about Jesus for one another and with one another.
SPEAKER_00: It's going to be a really super series, especially if you're on the front end or you haven't been around for one of those things.
SPEAKER_00: Dude, it's going to be very orienting.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to see, hey, here's all the things that this church thinks and feels and what they're trying to do.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I think you're gonna have a really good time.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the third one: an innocent death that protects.
SPEAKER_00: An innocent death that protects.
SPEAKER_00: This was always here, it was always in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: But it's the blood of an innocent, not the people's goodness that saves.
SPEAKER_00: It's the blood of an innocent, not the people's goodness that saves.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people wonder now, the Old Testament people, were they just saved by being really good?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: No, they weren't.
SPEAKER_00: They were saved by this picture of the Messiah that was to come.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the picture.
SPEAKER_00: It sounds really strange a little bit, but God's very into performance art.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna see.
SPEAKER_00: So as as the as the new people of God, the Israelites, they're they're coming out of 400 years of slavery.
SPEAKER_00: And God says, the night before they go, hey, just so you know, before you go, I'm gonna do one last final judgment on the Egyptians, and it's gonna be all their firstborn kids are gonna die.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I want to spare you of that.
SPEAKER_00: So I want you to do this strange thing that is only gonna make sense to New Testament people the most later.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to take a little lamb, and here's what he says Your lamb shall be a male without blemish, a year old.
SPEAKER_00: You may take it from sheep or from goats.
SPEAKER_00: The whole assembly, the congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight.
SPEAKER_00: Moreover, they shall take some of the blood, and watch this, and put it on the doorposts and on the lintel, which is the door frame of the houses which they eat.
SPEAKER_00: And I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and I will strike down the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments.
SPEAKER_00: I am Yahweh, and the sign shall be a or the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and I will see the blood and pass over you, and there shall be no plague among you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what's really it's kind of deep, so so roll with me.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord was judging the Egyptians for not doing him and like doing his ways, for not responding rightly to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: But he's not saving the Israelites because they're good.
SPEAKER_00: Like he doesn't say, but you guys are good because you're good and you obey my commands.
SPEAKER_00: They don't even know his commands yet.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, he says later on in the Old Testament, he keeps telling he keeps reminding them, by the way, just remember, I didn't save you because you're good.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, I didn't save you because anything you guys were doing.
SPEAKER_00: Why does he save them?
SPEAKER_00: He saves them because the curse that should fall on all humans.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, now we're speaking figuratively, the curse that should fall on all humans is covered and protected by the blood.
SPEAKER_00: The angel sees the blood.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay, these guys are under the blood.
SPEAKER_00: Go to an go to the next house.
SPEAKER_00: These guys should get the penalty, but they're not gonna get the penalty because an innocent was slain to cover them.
SPEAKER_00: They're not going to get the penalty.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what we don't get in our time.
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus talks about this.
SPEAKER_00: He says, None of you are good.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, you're evil.
SPEAKER_00: And we're like, oh, what?
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm kind of a little good, like I'm good compared to some of these other people, right?
SPEAKER_00: And I get that, and and you're right.
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm sure you are.
SPEAKER_00: But here's really how he's talking about it.
SPEAKER_00: Let's say that you and I jump on our DeLorean time machine and we go back to the 1400s in Europe.
SPEAKER_00: We're like, I think I'm gonna stay in a really nice holiday inn.
SPEAKER_00: And we so we go to the nearest inn.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be surprised a little bit, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Because it ain't like the holiday inns here today.
SPEAKER_00: What you're gonna find is, okay, there's there's really no rain no carpet.
SPEAKER_00: You're probably gonna sleep next to a stranger who is also sleeping in the same room.
SPEAKER_00: Um, they're gonna have a very different understanding of what clean is than you do, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Because they don't really bathe very much.
SPEAKER_00: They'll like you know a little pat down the face and a little pat down their arms.
SPEAKER_00: And if they have new clothes, dude, they are clean in their mind.
SPEAKER_00: Now you gotta get used to the fact that they're just gonna, whatever they got, their, you know, their chamber pot, they're just gonna throw that out the window in the street.
SPEAKER_00: So you're gonna get that aroma as you're staying at your inn.
SPEAKER_00: There might be animals, like even on the other side of the wall, so you're gonna get all those aromas as you go.
SPEAKER_00: Um, nobody understands what germs are.
SPEAKER_00: No one understands really the point of cleanliness.
SPEAKER_00: Your teeth are gonna be cleaner than anybody's in the whole world at that point.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: It's not that they're not clean in their mind, they're clean.
SPEAKER_00: Like, like, oh no, I'm pretty good.
SPEAKER_00: That's good.
SPEAKER_00: No, but you have a more advanced understanding.
SPEAKER_00: You're clean for here, but you're not clean for where I come from.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the same way.
SPEAKER_00: He says, you may be clean or good compared to the people around you, but not where I come from.
SPEAKER_00: Where I come from, all humankind was supposed to be like me, Jesus says in every way.
SPEAKER_00: So while you're relatively good or relatively clean compared to one another, you don't understand because you haven't seen it, you're not really clean compared to the Jesus you're supposed to be mimicking.
SPEAKER_00: That's why he says, I've got to get rid of that uncleanness that opposes my holiness, and the only way to do it is through the blood of an innocent.
SPEAKER_00: And that innocent on purpose died for you and for me.
SPEAKER_00: In the movies Avatar 2 and 3, there's these space whales.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have seen this movie, they're space whales.
SPEAKER_00: They don't actually go in space, but they're from another planet, so they're really called like Tolkien or something like that.
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, they're hunted, just like our whales, they're they're very gentle, they're very peaceful, and yet they're hunted for this serum that's in their brain.
SPEAKER_00: If if if these humans come to this planet, they kill these whales, that vial of serum, what it does is it causes aging to stop in humans back on Earth.
SPEAKER_00: And it costs 80 million per vial like that.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's worth a lot.
SPEAKER_00: So they kill the whale, they hunt them down, they go in its head and take that serum and then get rid of all the rest.
SPEAKER_00: So they're murdering innocence in order to get some kind of a serum that helps people stop aging back home.
SPEAKER_00: These whales don't get any say in the matter, they're just gonna be murdered.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is more innocent than those whales, and yet he volunteers and says, You're gonna have to kill me to get to my blood, but I want my blood to stop the death process in my people, and I willingly give it on purpose because I love them.
SPEAKER_00: I am the spotless lamb that lays down my life on purpose for my people because God has always saved through a slain substitute.
SPEAKER_00: Is anybody tripping out on how good your God is right now?
SPEAKER_00: Here's the next one.
SPEAKER_00: He will be a suffering servant, he'll be a suffering, rejected servant.
SPEAKER_00: He will be rejected, put to death by God for sinful people to be made righteous.
SPEAKER_00: Let's read about it.
SPEAKER_00: Now, you might have said, Carter, some of those are a little bit of a stretch.
SPEAKER_00: Are you sure Jesus is in that?
SPEAKER_00: This one is gonna feel much less like a stretch.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is the prophet Isaiah prophesying 700 years before Jesus, and he's pretty specific.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 53, 3.
SPEAKER_00: He was despised and rejected.
SPEAKER_00: You know what it's like to be rejected?
SPEAKER_00: You know what it's like to feel that Jesus does.
SPEAKER_00: A man of sorrows, acquainted with the deepest grief.
SPEAKER_00: We turned our backs on him and looked the other way.
SPEAKER_00: He was despised and we didn't care.
SPEAKER_00: But he was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins.
SPEAKER_00: He was beaten so we could be made whole, he was whipped so we could be healed.
SPEAKER_00: All of us like sheep have gone astray.
SPEAKER_00: We've left God's paths to follow our own.
SPEAKER_00: Yet, who did it?
SPEAKER_00: The Lord laid on him the sins of us all.
SPEAKER_00: He was oppressed and treated harshly, yet he never said a word.
SPEAKER_00: He was like a lamb led to the slaughter, and as a sheep is silent before the shears, he didn't open his mouth.
SPEAKER_00: But it was the Lord's good plan.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody say the Lord's good plan.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord's good plan to crush him and cause him grief.
SPEAKER_00: Yet when his life is made an offering for sin, he will have many descendants, he will enjoy long.
SPEAKER_00: Life and the Lord's good plan will prosper in his hands.
SPEAKER_00: When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he'll be satisfied.
SPEAKER_00: And because of his experience, my righteous servant will make possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins.
SPEAKER_00: He'll be rejected and put to death by God for the sinful so that they can be righteous.
SPEAKER_00: My friends, we've got to resist.
SPEAKER_00: We've got to not tolerate any accusatory thought that pops into our brain, probably from the forces of darkness, that the Lord doesn't understand, or that the Lord doesn't get, or he doesn't know the pain you're going through.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, I I respect whatever pain you're going through.
SPEAKER_00: But can you read that and really take that seriously?
SPEAKER_00: That he doesn't understand your pain?
SPEAKER_00: Dear heart, none of us understand his pain.
SPEAKER_00: He was rejected, he was crushed by the Father for the sake of you and I.
SPEAKER_00: That means forever and forever, you have a savior.
SPEAKER_00: Dude, if nobody understands, Jesus understands.
SPEAKER_00: And he's with you in it, baby.
SPEAKER_00: He's not gonna leave you.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, yeah, I I get it.
SPEAKER_00: I know.
SPEAKER_00: I know what it's like.
SPEAKER_00: There's an old meme.
SPEAKER_00: It's Mel Gibson and Jim Cavizel in Jim Cavizel's dressed up for his role in the Passion of the Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And he's in his bloody outfit.
SPEAKER_00: But the meme says something like, here's me talking to Jesus about my problems.
SPEAKER_00: I guess that's really what it is.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm not saying you don't have problems, you do.
SPEAKER_00: But let's magnify the Savior for a second.
SPEAKER_00: You got problems.
SPEAKER_00: I know that you do have problems, but check it out.
SPEAKER_00: It was God's good plan.
SPEAKER_00: It was God's good plan to crush him.
SPEAKER_00: Is it possible if you're gonna be his disciple, even though you didn't count on the level of suffering that maybe you've had, is it possible that's still part of God's good plan to bring about good?
SPEAKER_00: If he's your model, if he's your example, do you think it's possible?
SPEAKER_00: Here's the problem.
SPEAKER_00: You and I've got to be honest that the kind of Jesus that we see there is not our preferred version.
SPEAKER_00: We prefer one that is a little bit quicker.
SPEAKER_00: Come on, Jesus, let's go.
SPEAKER_00: Come on, man.
SPEAKER_00: Let's he's a little bit, he doesn't let us experience quite as much difficulty.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, this is the real Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: This is the real Jesus that the scripture is pointing to.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the final one: a healing gaze.
SPEAKER_00: He will rescue all those who look to him in trust.
SPEAKER_00: Here's a really strange story, man, and it makes the most sense in the New Testament after Jesus explains it.
SPEAKER_00: The Israelites are not really trying to honor God at all.
SPEAKER_00: They've come out of Egypt and they're complaining against him.
SPEAKER_00: And so he allows these fiery serpents, they just start biting everybody and poisoning everybody, and a whole bunch of people are dying.
SPEAKER_00: And Moses cries out to God, like, hey, help us.
SPEAKER_00: And Yahweh says, here's verse 8, Numbers 21.
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh said to Moses, make a fiery serpent and set it on a standard, which means a pole.
SPEAKER_00: And I will it will be that everyone who is bitten and looks at it will live.
SPEAKER_00: And Moses made a bronze serpent, set it on the standard, and it happened that if a serpent servant serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived.
SPEAKER_00: When he looked at it, now Jesus says something really trippy here.
SPEAKER_00: He says, That moment was about me.
SPEAKER_00: It was really happening, but it was also a trailer.
SPEAKER_00: It was a message to say, this is really how it works with me.
SPEAKER_00: See, sin leads to curse.
SPEAKER_00: Sin is curse.
SPEAKER_00: When we sin, we embrace death.
SPEAKER_00: We embrace all the curse that comes with sin, including death.
SPEAKER_00: This curse was lifted up on a pole, elevated so that everybody can see it.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says that he that knew no sin, Jesus, became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it weird?
SPEAKER_00: The very thing that caused the curse is the thing that God has Moses make an image of.
SPEAKER_00: He lifts up, here's the curse, here's what it is.
SPEAKER_00: Look at it, and you'll be healed.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is lifted up, and this is what he says.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 14.
SPEAKER_00: And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: And it works the same way.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the Son, look at the cursed one.
SPEAKER_00: He was the one who was cursed.
SPEAKER_00: He took all the curse in his body, he was put on the cross, and it's not like, hey man, avoid that.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, no, look at it.
SPEAKER_00: Look at him.
SPEAKER_00: Look at who he is, and then trust him.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the cursed one, and the curse comes off of you.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the cursed one, and you are healed from the hell disease.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the cursed one and exchange your expectations and your very life for his.
SPEAKER_00: We got a big thing with identity in these times.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody's got an identity.
SPEAKER_00: I gotta work on my identity, I gotta work on my image, I gotta make sure that I feel like my identity is the right thing, and that shifts over time, over the years, and we all do it.
SPEAKER_00: That's fine.
SPEAKER_00: But is it possible that one of the things that Jesus really came to do was to give you a new identity.
SPEAKER_00: To say, not cursed, not lost, not abandoned, not forgotten, mine, blessed, forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: And so here's what I think that we should do today.
SPEAKER_00: All it takes, it's just just like it was there.
SPEAKER_00: Look with the eyes of faith on your Savior, the very one who's betraying him got you into the sinful world that you're in right now.
SPEAKER_00: Look on him and trust and believe.
SPEAKER_00: Gaze at him with your soul and say, Jesus, I trust you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm blown away that you did this for me, but I trust you.
SPEAKER_00: And now I don't just give you my sin like I give a cashier a$10 bill.
SPEAKER_00: It's not what we're talking about.
SPEAKER_00: The only thing worthy of you, Jesus, is my very life.
SPEAKER_00: I give you me.
SPEAKER_00: And you get to decide what my identity is.
SPEAKER_00: You get to train me over the years, you get to reshape my expectations according to your word.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give you the rest of my life, Jesus, to rework my expectations according to what you say, rather than what the culture says, rather than what I just happen to think.
SPEAKER_00: And it might take many, many, many years for him to get some out and put some in.
SPEAKER_00: But what we're saying yes to is you get to do that.
SPEAKER_00: You're worthy of that.
SPEAKER_00: Is there anybody who could be worthy of that other than Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: So let's bow our heads and we're gonna pray.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to invite you to do just that an exchange.
SPEAKER_00: An exchange of your life, an exchange of your identity, whatever, whatever you've got your identity in, I'm not saying you're not even some of that.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying your highest, your deepest, your most profound, your most important identity is you belong to the Savior that bought you.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to commit this to him right now.
SPEAKER_00: Now, after we commit to him, I'm gonna ask you if you've never done that before, while no one's looking, I'm gonna ask you to raise your hand and I'm gonna ask you to be bold about it because he was rather bold about it to suffer for you and for me.
SPEAKER_00: It'll create a marker in your head.
SPEAKER_00: This was the day that I exchanged my identity and expectations to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna do that together.
SPEAKER_00: But let's humble ourselves right now.
SPEAKER_00: You've been you the whole time, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You've been telling us your plan, and then you fulfilled your plan.
SPEAKER_00: And you did it for us.
SPEAKER_00: You gladly, willingly stepped into the fight.
SPEAKER_00: You gladly, willingly were bruised on the heel.
SPEAKER_00: You gladly and willingly allowed yourself to be raised up and murdered so that all of us who look to you could be healed.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we do right now, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We look to you.
SPEAKER_00: Would you come, rewire us any place that we need to be rewired, especially in our expectations, anything that we're believing, even if off just by 1%.
SPEAKER_00: That's okay.
SPEAKER_00: But we're asking for you to make us agree with you.
SPEAKER_00: We exchange all of our identity adjectives, everything we think about ourselves, we give it to you and say, we are what you say we are.
SPEAKER_00: We belong to you, and you get to recreate us in your image however you want.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we trust you.
SPEAKER_00: We believe that you died on the cross for our sins.
SPEAKER_00: And we believe as we ask for forgiveness, we're asking right now, would you forgive us of all of our sin?
SPEAKER_00: Forgive us for the sin that caused you to need to be killed.
SPEAKER_00: And now fill us with the Holy Spirit, the Jesus shaper.
SPEAKER_00: Shape us in the image of Jesus through an indwelling person that is going to talk to us and speak to our conscience and lead our lives.
SPEAKER_00: We're asking you to do it.
SPEAKER_00: And all we can say is we have nothing to offer you except for us.
SPEAKER_00: We're just your thing.
SPEAKER_00: Come live in your home, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Let's keep your heads bowed for a second.
SPEAKER_00: For everybody who prayed that prayer for the first time, I want you to go ahead and be real bold and raise your hand on the count of three.
SPEAKER_00: One, two, three.
SPEAKER_00: Hands up.
SPEAKER_00: I see those hands.
SPEAKER_00: Good job.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody over there on the other side, too.
SPEAKER_00: Great job.
SPEAKER_00: I see all those hands.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
SPEAKER_00: Your life belongs to Jesus now.
SPEAKER_00: Well done.
SPEAKER_00: You can raise your heads back up again.
SPEAKER_00: Let's give a round of applause for everybody who is.
SPEAKER_00: Took that bold, bold step.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, um, there's a little QR code that you can follow if you want.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, this just lets us know here's how we can continue to be helpful.
SPEAKER_00: If you made that decision today, you can snap that QR code right there and just fill out a little something that helps us stay in touch with you and keep helping you take steps to grow toward Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But um, great job, guys.
SPEAKER_00: Let's go for some worship.
SPEAKER_00: All right, folks, that's all the time we have, but thank you so much for listening to this sermon.
SPEAKER_00: If you got a lot out of this, feel free to share this with somebody who might need it.
SPEAKER_00: Also, there's a ton more content on our website, on our YouTube channel, on our Instagram channel, on our TikTok channel.
SPEAKER_00: Feel free to check all that kind of a thing out.
SPEAKER_00: Also, if you're interested in leadership type stuff, go ahead and check out another podcast or any other blogs or videos or anything over at BibleLeadership.com.
SPEAKER_00: And whatever else you do, make sure that you believe God for something big today.