Setting The Scene In Mark 6

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If you have your Bibles, Mark chapter six, uh, we're going to be at the end here in the passage that Karen Ann just read, verse 53. Uh, before I dive in, just a little bit of background for those of you who haven't been with us over the past couple of weeks. In Matthew chapter six, or sorry, Mark chapter six, Mark's been telling these series of stories in which Jesus and his disciples are going back and forth along the Sea of Galilee, and they have these miraculous moments. A couple of weeks ago, there was the feeding of the 5,000, this incredible moment where Jesus takes this group of people who is crowded around him and takes, uh, I think it's five loaves and two fishes and multiplies it to feed uh thousands of people, more than five thousand. That was just the amount of men. So some estimates are 10 to 20,000 people. And then last week, Andrew walked us through this passage where the disciples are leaving. Jesus is kind of praying off by himself in a different part of the lake. Disciples are traveling around, the storm kind of comes up, the winds come up, and then they just see Jesus like uh walking on the water. And at the end of this passage that we we started last week, Mark writes this. He says, They were completely amazed, for they had not understood about the loaves, and their hearts were hardened. So here we have the disciples, this group of people who have been following Jesus, been watching him do these incredible miracles. And yet, what Mark wants us to see is they still don't get it. They've seen Jesus feed multiple people with uh food that doesn't make sense. They've seen him walk on water, they've seen him calm storms, cast out demons, heal people from illnesses, all of that stuff. Yet part of the problem is that they still see Jesus as only part of the answer. And what Mark is gonna do is he's gonna shift the disciples out of focus this week in our final story of chapter six and put the focus squarely on Jesus, because he does not want us as the readers to miss it. Jesus is not part of the answer. Jesus is the answer. So Mark chapter six, verse 53, this is what Mark writes.

Jesus Is The Point

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When they had crossed over, they landed at Gennesaret and anchored there. So just really quick background Gennesaret's is part of Israel, a part of Judea. It's in the northwestern part of the Sea of Galilee, and it's a very fertile area, which means it's heavily populated. So what we see is Jesus is again out in the wild. He is hanging out where the people are. He is with the people in their place. He's traveling around, he's gonna go from village to village. So it says in verse 54, as soon as they got out of the boat, people recognized Jesus. So do you see that shift? Here, Mark has this whole story, and the focal point is really disciples. Jesus kind of comes into it, but the focal point is on them and their reaction. But here, Mark makes it all about Jesus. Disciples actually are only mentioned kind of peripherally as being in the boat with him. But as soon as we hit verse 54, the light shines on Jesus. Why is that? Well, I believe part of that is because Mark wants to make sure that we as readers are not mistaking what he is trying to draw us to see. Disciples, not the point. The miracles, not the point. The teachings, even not the point.

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The person, Jesus, is the point.

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I think sometimes if you've been part of the church, been part of Christianity for any amount of time, there's so many things that kind of compete in our hearts and our lives as the point.

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Community, church gatherings, missional communities, mission.

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And I'm not saying any of those things are wrong or anything so bad, but they're not the point. Mark is inviting us to encounter a real person and inviting us to have a relationship with a real person, and so he wants to put the focus on Jesus. Because if you take Christ out of Christianity, here's what's gonna happen you're gonna be left with an empty shell, an empty religious shell, empty morality, tribal politics, exhausted people who are just trying to white knuckle it, to do the best they can to be a good person. Guys, what what we do here matters. I'm not I'm not saying, like, hey, you know, you can divest yourself of all these things. Gathering together to learn from God's word, to pray, to worship through song, through giving, through all the things that we do, it matters. And if you've been part of West Village for any amount of time, you will you will know that I'm passionately for things like missional communities. They matter, they're good things. It is awesome that there is groups of people in our church who gather weekly to share a meal and figure out how we can show Jesus to the people around us. Uh, teaching our kids the truths of scripture matters. I've had many conversations with parents who are like, man, I want to make sure that I disciple my kids, that I am teaching them the truths about Jesus. That matters. Justice and righteousness, morality matters. Good theology matters. Like we literally have an entire group of signs on the top of our screen so that you can walk through a good biblical theology every week. So we start with creation and then we go to fall and promise and we go through the whole thing because we want to make sure that we are actually rooted in the story of God. All those things matter. But here's the thing: none of these things is the point. And if we elevate any of these things to the point, then we are missing it. Because if you don't have Jesus, all of this falls apart. When

A Faith Built On A Person

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I was in college, I went to a place called Briarcrest. It's a small Christian liberal arts college in Saskatchewan. Just like total tangent right now. If you were a parent, I would just encourage you to think really carefully about setting your kids up in a way that they can actually dive into their faith more deeply. Um, you know, whether it's a gap year, whether they do a YWAM or a Cape and Ray or something like that, or a Briercrest, because I do think sometimes we just under uh undervalue the ways in which we can set our kids up to go into the rest of their life with having had a year of just spending time growing in their faith. Um so I went to this college Briercrest, and it was a great experience for me. But I noticed this pattern. There were a lot of kids who came to Briarcrest and they had very strict backgrounds, like homeschooling or Christian schooling. They knew all the theological facts, but they had a very narrow picture of what their theology was. And Briercrest was a non-denominational school. And so you had people from lots of different parts of Christianity. And what ended up happening, everyone was confessional, everyone believed the core things that we as Christians would say, you know, makes you a Bible-believer in Christianity, all that kind of stuff. But there was a diversity of how lots of things got worked out. And what I noticed is that there were kids in my in my uh years of being there who what they had grown up hearing got challenged in various ways. And they started looking around and, like, oh, well, the things that my parents taught me, uh, there's some doubts I have about that now. Not doubts about like the core things of theology, but the secondary issues. And I felt that challenge too, because I grew up in a narrow space where my parents had a particular way of working out their faith that they shared with me. But here's the difference between a kid who went through that and walked away and a kid who didn't. It was Jesus. There were so many kids, and their faith was built on theology, their faith was built on facts that they had received, but their faith was not built on a person. I remember sitting in my dorm room reading a book that was by a scholar that I was like, I don't, I, I don't know about this. I don't know what this person is saying. This feels off to me. It was challenging my faith in a lot of different ways. But you know what happened in that moment? I got down on my bed, I knelt, and I started praying to Jesus. And I said, Jesus, I don't understand all this. I don't really know what's going on.

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But I know you. I know you.

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My anchor wasn't the theological picture that I got from my parents. My anchor was my relationship with Jesus.

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Because he's the point.

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So, church, as we think about how we are called to join Jesus' mission. Like I said, we're called to go and bring Jesus where we live, where we can play. Let's not forget the point. We're not called to give the world a better political vision, a nicer moral framework, a religious self-improvement program. We are called to give them Jesus.

Looking Past Church Weirdness

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Now, I recognize that there are probably some people in this room, some people who might watch this online or who are watching this online right now. And maybe you're on the fence about all of this. There's probably something that's going on in your life, like the crowds. They had needs, they were searching for an answer. And so you're willing to be here to check things out. But you got some hangups.

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Because let's be honest, church, Christians can kind of be weird, right? We can. And we can kind of be messy.

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I mean, there are lots of people who rightly connect, uh rightly criticize the church for being filled with hypocrites. We can totally be hippoc um, we can totally be hypocritical, if that's a word. And yes, there's these weird things that happen in North American culture where we merge faith and politics in some odd ways. And then we have all these examples of people who put themselves in positions of Christian leadership and then go through these ridiculous, terrible moral failures. And some of us are just here because you've been in churches where you've been deeply hurt because it has not treated you well.

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And honestly, you're here and you're kind of like the crowd on the outside. You're kind of looking in and you're saying, I don't know about this.

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But if that's you, if that's you, I think what Mark wants to invite you to see is that you can't stop on the peripheral things. So don't stop at people. I'm a full-time paid professional Christian. You guys literally give me money to do this, okay? Joke's on you, okay? But you talk to anyone who's been part of West Village for like five minutes and they'll be like, Andrew's not always the awesomest. It's true. I I love our church family deeply. I love you, our church family deeply. I love the people who make up our church, but I am a human being. And if you've been friends with me for the last 10 years that I've been part of West Village, you probably got some stories.

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Okay?

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People will let you down, people will fail you, people are messy, people are a work in progress. Don't stop. If you have a bad experience with a person in the church, if you have a bad experience with a Christian, don't stop there because they are not the point. And some of us, it's not just a person, it's the institution itself. We've been part of a church community or part of a church, the fabric of a church community, and it's messy and it hasn't worked out. I have a dear person in my life, and they were part of a church for a season, and uh, they got put into some leadership roles that, you know, they they might not have been, might not have been wise to put them there, but they got put in there and it was just a really rough experience.

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And that person doesn't want to come to church anymore. Maybe that's you.

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Maybe you've seen the backwards weirdness of church politics, and you're like, oh, that that doesn't seem very good. You're right, it's not very good. But that's not Jesus. And don't stop at politics. Again, you could come from any political side of the spectrum and see weirdness in the way that faith gets lived out in politics. And don't even get me started about the weird Christian subculture. I get it. We have weird movies that suck and bad music. And don't even like talk about the books, okay? There is so much weirdness in Christianity. It's a good stuff too. I'm not gonna say it's all blanket statement, but there's lots of weird stuff. But none of it is Jesus. Some of it flows from him, some of it's just our weird mixture of sin mixing with him, but none of it's the point. And if you are sitting here on the fence and you're like, I'm looking for the answer, don't look to those things. Look beyond them. Look to Jesus.

Needy Crowds And A Better Faith

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And that's exactly what we see the crowds doing. In verse 55, Mark tells us they ran throughout that whole region and they carried the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was, and wherever he went, into villages, towns, or the countryside, they picked up the sick in or they placed the sick in the marketplaces. So here's Jesus, and he starts walking through Genneseret, and wherever he goes, people hear about him. And anyone who has needs, or anyone who knows someone has needs, they say, I have something that I need fixed, I have something that I need repaired. And so they run to wherever they hear Jesus is because they just hope. They just hope he can do something. I don't know if you guys pick this up, but the crowd's faith is it's a little bit wonky. Like they're they're touching his coat because they sort of believe that if they touch his coat, they will get healed. It's like they they see Jesus as this like magician. And Mark doesn't Mark doesn't celebrate their faith as this like thing that ought to be modeled or this piece of sophistication. Their faith is rough. It's it's not fully fleshed out. They don't fully understand who Jesus is. They don't know all the right theology. They're messy, but what do they know? They know they have need, and they bring that need to him. And I think what Mark wants us to see is that it's not our faith that makes the difference. It's what we place our faith in. Many of you maybe heard an illustration similar to this before. But imagine you go out to Thetis Lake in the middle of the winter in Victoria and you notice that there's some ice on it. Guess what? Don't matter how much faith you have that that ice is gonna hold you up, it is Victoria in the middle of winter. It ain't holding you up. You step out onto that ice, you are going for a swim. But you could be like a 500-pound suma wrestler, and if you are in Alberta in the middle of a freeze in the winter time, you could be like, I don't think it's gonna hold me up. I don't think it's gonna do it. But that ice is like four feet thick, it will hold you up. It can hold up a truck, it will hold you up. Your faith is not the point. The point is what you put your faith in. And if you put your faith in something with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength that cannot hold you up, you will still fall. But if you have what the Bible calls the faith as big as a mustard seed, then you have put it in the right place. Your faith will stand. Mark wants us to see not only is Jesus the point, but Jesus is the one in which our faith must be put.

Stop Offering Jesus Adjacent Fixes

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I want to talk to those of us who are, yeah, I'm I'm Team Jesus, I'm following Jesus right now. Again, as we look at this, we're being called not only to enter into this ourselves, but then to share this with other people. We're called to call other people to Jesus, to share our faith with people. But I think again, some of the things that happen when we're in this process is that we start to share Christian adjacent or Jesus-adjacent things with people as if that is what they should put their faith in. Let me give you some examples. Uh, Shannon and I, we have a podcast, which is kind of fun. Yeah, whoop-woop. Uh, it's called The Intentional Family. It's a great podcast. You should all listen to it. Um, but here's the thing: we talk about steps to being an intentional family. And again, I think, I mean, I'm biased obviously, but I think it's great stuff. But here's the thing: anyone can do a lot of that stuff, but it can't change and transform them. It can make your family a little bit better, it can make you maybe a slightly better parent, but it can't change your heart. And so often we get into these places where we like, hey, I just want to make you a slightly better person. So, you know, your moral life is a bit of a mess. So I'm gonna give you a moral structure. I mean, Jordan Peterson can do that. I'm gonna give you family values. Or, hey, you're really lonely right now. Wouldn't it be so great for you to come into community? So I'm gonna invite you into community so you're not gonna be lonely. That's good. Or we're like, hey, you know what, you just need better personal discipline. And so I'm gonna help you structure your life in such a way that it's gonna make you a more fruitful person. Or maybe your politics is all wonky and weird. And if you just had a better political vision, you would do better. Or maybe it's, you know, your particular theological tribe is a little bit off. Come to mind. And so we give people all these Jesus-adjacent things, but again, here's the problem: they're not Jesus. None of these things can, in and of themselves, save someone.

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They're not something worthy of our faith.

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I remember a story from my friend Jeff Van Der Stel. He was sharing at a conference one time about what he calls like mission and gospel fluency. And afterwards, a lady who had been in his session came up to him and he'd been talking about how you reach your neighbors, how you share your faith. And she wanted to share a story of her own experience. And so she told him that she'd been starting to do good deeds around her neighborhood. She'd been doing really good things. And one day, one of her neighbors came to her and said, Wait, why are you doing this? She said, Well, I'm just being neighborly. And Jeff was like, What? You just told her, like your neighbor that the thing that saved you was you. The thing that was impacting the neighborhood was you. You actually pointed your neighbor in the opposite direction of Jesus. You said, if you just do what I do, you can be saved. And so often, church, we do that. If you're just a nice person, if you're just a moral person, if you're just a good person, we're just saying, be like me, be like me, be like me. We're actually diverting someone's attention from the only thing that can save and transform them. Jeff talks about this often. We call it gospel fluence. He says, actually, what you need to do is say, man, I'm a pretty selfish person, because it's true. I mean, I don't know if it's true for her, it's true for me. I don't naturally want to open up my house and give out my resources, but there is a God who did that for me, who loved me, who's changed and transformed me and empowered me to do that for others. And then I give them Jesus. You see, if our kindness, our generosity, our hospitality, our justice, our community never actually points someone to Jesus, then we are offering them an idol, not a savior.

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Now I want to I want to speak to again those of you who are like, uh, I'm still trying to figure this stuff out. I'm still trying to figure this stuff out.

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The clo the crowds, just look at them. They did not have the right theology, they did not know who Jesus was, they did not have all the right facts, and that's good news because if you are here this morning and you're like, man, I don't, I don't even know if I should be here because my life's a mess. My marriage is falling apart. I don't really know what's supposed to be true. I don't feel like I have my life figured out. I don't feel like I have all the facts in place. My theology is probably really wonky. I don't even really know what theology is. If that's you, there is good news because look at how Jesus responds. He doesn't take person, he doesn't go to each person and be like, hey, you know, tell me the exact right theological vision for your Christoph, your Christological uh theology. He says, You have need, and I have come to heal. And if that is you this morning, then Jesus is not saying, come and get your right life right, come and have perfect theology. He's saying, come and bring me your need, because I am the only one who can meet it. So you're in good company.

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That is the one that you need to put your faith in.

Healing That Means Salvation

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Jesus did not merely come to inspire faith. But he also came to save people.

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And this is what we see as we finish off the passage. Says at the end of verse 56, they, meaning the crowds, begged him to let them touch even the edge of his cloak. And all who touched it were, the NIV says healed. The word at the end of that sentence that gets translated healed is the Greek word so-zo. Now, the typical word that you use to talk about healing in Greek is the word therapio. It's where we get the word therapy from. That's really talking about physical healing. But sozo is this bigger word that often gets translated as saved. So why does Mark choose that word? Because Mark wants us not to miss out on the reality that Jesus didn't just come as the point. He didn't just come as the object of our faith. But ultimately, Jesus came as the fullness of our salvation. So Mark intentionally is using this language so that we as the readers can understand the significance of this encounter with Jesus. He didn't just come to heal people. It wasn't just like your leg is bummed and I'm making it so that you can walk again. But he was inviting people to encounter him so that their lives could be completely and utterly transformed.

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Yes, their ailments were healed temporarily. But what they needed was something eternal.

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And the healings, the miracles, all the things that had happened to this point, the walking on water, the calming of the storm, the feeding of the 5,000, the casting out of demons, all of those have been signs pointing forward to what Jesus is actually on the move to do, to bring about a whole human restoration. And that's the movement. We've called this sermon series and the movement of God and his people, because Mark is just on this tremendous pace to show Jesus on this journey. But what is he journeying to? Well, spoiler alert, if you continue on in Mark's gospel, what you see is he's journeying to the cross. And at the cross, he takes on our brokenness so that we can be made whole. And this is what Mark does not want us to miss. Jesus didn't just come to merely heal our external, temporal illnesses. Jesus came to heal our eternal need, to save us.

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And we as the reader get to see what the crowds do not. The crowds know Jesus can heal.

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But Mark wants us to see that Jesus can do infinitely more than that. The crowds came for physical restoration, but Jesus came for eternal salvation.

Beyond Behavior Change

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And so again, I want to speak to you who is a follower of Jesus, who understands this, who has said yes to this, who is living in light of this. I want to just challenge us. And I'm challenging myself in this because I can I can do this myself. Do not settle for superficial transformation.

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But we do so often because it's so much easier to measure.

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You know, I have some good conversations with my neighbors, they make some small changes. I'm like, yes. You know, you know, the place where I do this the most, and maybe some of you can relate to this, I do this the most with my kids. It's so easy for me to simply just be like, man, I just want my kids to be better behaved. Some of you get that, right? So I settle for behavior modification rather than gospel transformation. And there's lots of different ways I can get my kids to behave. I have become an expert. I know the carrot and the stick. I know them real well. I know sometimes he got a bribe, sometimes he got a threaten.

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That's my wife.

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And yes, in the right and pressured environments, I can pretty much get my kids to do whatever I want them to do within reason. Except for Emmy. She is way too stubborn. But we can do that, right? We can enter into parenting and we can think to ourselves, man, I just want my kids to be good, well-behave, well-adjusted people, and we can settle for that. But that's actually not what we're called to do as faithful followers of Jesus' parents. We're actually called to bring them into a space where they encounter Him. And so, yes, I'm not saying don't discipline your kids. You need to discipline your kids. You need to teach them in the way that it should go. But it's not about making them do what you want them to do. It's actually about teaching them to encounter Jesus. And in my best moments, in my most sanctified moments, what I do is I talk to my kids about the why behind the what. You know, I sit down with Ben or I sit down with Isla. We get down on the floor, I have them sit on my lap, and I start asking really important questions. Is this what God is like? Is this what He would want you to live like? Why? Because I'm actually inviting them to encounter a person.

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Thank you, Donald.

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So, church, the same is true in how we respond to other people. I mean, it might be a little bit different, a little bit more simple in the parent-child relationship, but we can do this in all of our relationships with one another. We can easily point people to behavior modification rather than heart transformation. And we can sometimes point other people who are not part of the church to simply, like I said, just be a better person, just do what I do. But we're not actually inviting them to encounter Jesus. And here's the problem: you can actually help people become very Jesus-like in their out exterior without becoming Jesus-like in their interior. And here's what Jesus says about that type of person. Matthew chapter uh seven, verses 21, he says, Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, we did pro did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons, and in your name perform many miracles? So people are gonna come to Jesus at a certain day and they're gonna say, Jesus, look at all the stuff I did for you. Look at all the Jesusy stuff, look at how my life looked. But here's what Jesus is gonna say to them. Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you. I never knew you. Jesus says it's not about the things that you do for me. It's about knowing me, it's about the relationship that you have with me. You can be a good, well-adjusted person and never know Jesus. And this is what Jesus says: away from me, you evildoers.

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So, church, give them Jesus. If you're here this morning and like I said, you've you you're like the crowds. You're you're here on the fence, you don't know all of this, you're trying to figure it out.

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Maybe you are here because, like the crowds, you have need. Maybe you're here because your life blew up in a way that you didn't expect. A marriage that you thought was rock solid suddenly crumbled. You got hit with a health diagnosis that you were not expecting, and you have no idea how you're gonna make it through. Maybe you're just simply struggling with the same thing that a vast majority of Canadians are, which is loneliness. And you're just like, I just don't know where I belong. Maybe you're battling addiction, mental health, whatever it is, you are here, and you're if you're sitting on the fence, you came to the right place, not because we have something, but because Jesus has something.

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And the the world has all of these remedies for you.

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I mean, go watch Oprah. I don't even know. Is Oprah relevant anymore? Is she still you watch Oprah, right? She's gonna give you a ton of self-help. You can go to the bookstore and you can find uh great things to help you learn how to have more mindfulness, to have better meditation, how to how to develop better self-discipline.

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We have an entire culture that is obsessed with therapy. We have a drug for everything. But if you were here, it's probably because you've tried some of those things and you realize that they can't actually heal what's broken. That's right, they can't. And truthfully, I can't. No one in this room can. But I know the one who does have the ability and who can. And the best thing I can say is let me introduce you to him. Because Jesus did not come to make bad people better. Jesus came to make dead people alive. I'm gonna invite the band to come up as I finish off here.

When You Have Need Where Run

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I think one of the lingering questions that Mark poses to us in this passage is this. When you have need, where do you run?

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And that question is true for you if you're a follower of Jesus, if you're like a card-carrying, Bible-believing, professional Christian like me, just as much as it is if you are the person who is sitting here on the fence and you don't even know why you walked in this morning.

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When you have need, where will you run?

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And let's be honest, all of us will come to a point where we recognize our need and all of us will try running somewhere. Some of us run to politics. Find that person who has that better political vision, those values that align with yours, someone who's going to come and repair things. I have not been around for that long, but I've been around long enough to know that politicians make a lot of promises. And they also have a lot of failures. Some of us run to success. Man, if I can just be the best version of me, if I can just perform to the best possible place that I want to perform, find the most amount of success, the most amount of accolades, then I will truly feel whole. But time and time and time again, you hear people who have reached the peak of their careers, people who have found everything they wanted and are some of the most unhappy people in the world. Why? Because success cannot hold up. And some of us find it in religion. The sad and ironic thing is that people can come to a place like this and go through all the emotions and still miss Jesus. And there are lots of positive things that happen in your life when you're part of a religious community. But the only thing that can actually transform you and change you from the inside, how does Jesus? Some of us run to distraction. We're gonna go play video games, we're gonna go watch TV, we're gonna go read a book, we're gonna lose ourselves in a world that doesn't actually exist. But eventually we have to come up for error into the world that does, and we are still dealing with the same problems. And some of us run to pleasure. If we just give ourselves everything that our hearts desire, if we never say no, then maybe we will feel alive and whole. But all of us know how that ends. We see it on Pandora every single week.

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So if none of those things is the answer, what is? And Mark says it's plainly. The answer is Jesus. And if that's true, what does that mean for our lives?

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Um, this week has been a tough week in our family. There's been a lot going on. I won't I won't go into the details for sake of time. But as I was processing this passage of scripture, I read it to Shannon and I just asked her, you know, what what what stands out to you? And as I was reading it, she looked at the response of the crowds and she said, That's that's that feels like where I'm at right now. Like there are just things that I cannot fix in my life that are going on in our life right now. I'm not in control of. And all I feel like I can do is just reach out to Jesus. Shannon is showing us what good Jesus is calling all of us to. We may not have it all figured out, we may not have arrived, but Jesus is inviting us to reach out our hands and get just a touch of him. So let's be a people who does that this week.

Responding With Communion And Prayer

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As we close off, we're gonna get a chance to respond. And we're gonna respond in a couple of different ways. We're gonna respond through taking communion together. Communion, again, is one of those things that, you know, it's it's bigger than its the sum total of its parts. You come up and you take that little rice cracker and you dip it into that old wine or that grape juice. And on the surface, it just feels kind of like this thing that we do every week, but it's not. It's an invitation, it's a reminder that Jesus has what we need. It's an invitation for us as a community to come together and say, we want you to reach our hands and admit our need and admit that He is the only one who can save us and change us and transform us. We're gonna get to respond through giving. And I'll just say this on the front end like I often go to money as a false thing to run to. I can look at money as the solution to my problems, as the thing that provides me security. And time and time again, it fails me. And so one of the things that we do as an act of worship is we say, Jesus, I know this thing can grab my heart. And so I actually am going to willfully submit it to you as an act of trust to know that you are the one that I ought to trust. And so if that is you this morning, I just invite you to give as an act of worship. And not only give as an act of worship to discipline your heart, but give as an act of worship to say, Jesus, I want to be part of your work to bring others to you so that they can encounter you. And we are going to get to respond in song. If Jesus is the point, guess what? It doesn't mean the people around you are the point. So don't worry about what's going on around you. If Jesus is the point, respond in how you feel. You need to respond. Lift your hands in prayer, sing your heart out. I don't care if you have one of those weird opera voices that, you know, everyone around you is like, uh oh. No, because it's not about them, it's about him. So sing your heart out for him because he is the point. You're not the point. They're not the point. He's the point. And we are gonna get to respond through prayer this morning. And there's gonna be someone on either side of the theater. And if you are sitting on the fence this morning, you have need. Come up. We would love to walk with you and help you put your hands up to Jesus and say, Jesus, heal me.

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Because we know he can do infinitely more.

SPEAKER_00 39:01

And church, if you've been a Christian for your whole life, it never ends. You never move on from that. And so if you are here today and you have need, come on up. Lift your hands up to Jesus because he is still the same person who can heal and save you. Let me close in a word of

Sending And Closing Prayer

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prayer.

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Father, we would be a people who are about you.

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There are a lot of good things in church culture, but there's nothing. There's nothing without you. Father, you are the point. Help us never forget it. As we go out from here and go into the places where we live, learn, work, and play. Help us give to our neighbors, to our friends, to our coworkers, to our family, to our classmates nothing less than you. I pray this in your name. Amen.