SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, everybody.
SPEAKER_00: Great to be with you.
SPEAKER_00: You may be seated, and of course, it is a tremendous honor and privilege and blessing for me to be here with you.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, like Andrew said, in West Texas, I do have a couple of sons who go to Angelo Estate in West Texas.
SPEAKER_00: And so I often hear played at the baseball games there that West Texas is the best Texas.
SPEAKER_00: I hear that song all the time.
SPEAKER_00: So a little uh great little tune there, and glad to be with you all here.
SPEAKER_00: This church is a blessing across the city.
SPEAKER_00: Your witness is a blessing to your community.
SPEAKER_00: You should know this about yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you're a blessing to the global body of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Your generosity, your love for Jesus is also a blessing to our every nation family.
SPEAKER_00: And I've been a recipient of that.
SPEAKER_00: And so I am thrilled to be here.
SPEAKER_00: Love your pastor, uh, Dan, his family, all the staff here, leaders here.
SPEAKER_00: What an amazing church.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and of course, Dan and I have something in common besides just amazing good looks at a last name, and that is we both have sons named Jude.
SPEAKER_00: How about that?
SPEAKER_00: Both have a Jude Stevens spelled the same way.
SPEAKER_00: And speaking of that, there's a slide, I think, of my family there, uh, my wife Carrie, who's here with me today, and the three giant children, uh, sons and a small, smaller daughter.
SPEAKER_00: I fathered uh uh you know, sons who are giants, uh, because here's why.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a generous guy.
SPEAKER_00: I could have kept my height for myself, but I donated it.
SPEAKER_00: It was extra.
SPEAKER_00: I gave it to my kids.
SPEAKER_00: It's the kind of dad I am.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: Last thing you should know about me before I get going, which is this I'm actually uh a regular on the preaching and teaching team here.
SPEAKER_00: Uh for example, I was here exactly 10 years ago, the last time I was here.
SPEAKER_00: In April of 2016.
SPEAKER_00: And it's April of 2026, which means this.
SPEAKER_00: I got some good news and bad news for you.
SPEAKER_00: Whether you like me or you hate me or you love me, you want to leave me, we're all gonna be back together in 2036.
SPEAKER_00: So I plan on plan on seeing you then.
SPEAKER_00: But hey, uh glad to be with you.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, as you heard, we're in the middle of a series.
SPEAKER_00: We started last week on Easter, looking at the big questions.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm so glad you're doing this.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we're asking questions like, who is God?
SPEAKER_00: What's your view of Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: What's your view of the Bible?
SPEAKER_00: You know, like, for example, when it comes to the Bible, what we call the Bible, why should you trust it?
SPEAKER_00: Do you read it?
SPEAKER_00: Why should you care about the Bible?
SPEAKER_00: In a world of competing truth claims, you see this, you watch movies TV, in a world of competing truth claims, why should we care what the Bible says after all?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, like, wasn't it just written by a bunch of patriarchal, regressive, uneducated, unsophisticated, superstitious men who hated women and homosexuals?
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that what the Bible's about?
SPEAKER_00: Once upon a time, Jesus of Nazareth challenged the view of a whole bunch of experts in his day on what their view of what we call the Bible is.
SPEAKER_00: Although they didn't call it the Bible back then, it didn't come conveniently.
SPEAKER_00: Chaptered and versed and mapped and wrapped with some gold foil on the side and your name and a nice little font on the front of a pink cover or a camo cover or your favorite sports teams cover sitting on grandma's table.
SPEAKER_00: Nah, it came in a bunch of giant scrolls, and Jesus challenged a bunch of experts' view on what those scrolls were all about.
SPEAKER_00: Now these folks were really smart, they were super church, although really they weren't church, they were more templed and synagogued, studied, learned.
SPEAKER_00: They memorized these scrolls, and if Jesus could challenge their view on what they thought the Bible was, what about your view?
SPEAKER_00: What about my view?
SPEAKER_00: I wonder if he could speak to that today.
SPEAKER_00: So I want to take you on a little bit of a journey by trying to ask and answer three questions of a little bit of a unique passage we're gonna look at.
SPEAKER_00: And here are my questions.
SPEAKER_00: First, what was Jesus' view of the Bible?
SPEAKER_00: Second, what does his view mean?
SPEAKER_00: And finally, how can we love what his view means?
SPEAKER_00: What was Jesus' view of the Bible?
SPEAKER_00: What does his view mean?
SPEAKER_00: And how can we love what his view means?
SPEAKER_00: And before I get going, here's my last thought.
SPEAKER_00: I want to put all my preacher cards out on the table, and here they are.
SPEAKER_00: My goal, before we're done today, is to get you to not only, if you're not already, to read the Bible, my real goal is to get you, despite what our culture may say, to love the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: To love the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And if you give me a chance today, I hope we can do just that.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna look here at Matthew chapter 22.
SPEAKER_00: Let me read quickly our passage, teach through it briefly, and come back to the questions.
SPEAKER_00: Here we go.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew chapter 22, verse 41 says this.
SPEAKER_00: While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, What do you think about the Messiah?
SPEAKER_00: Whose son is he?
SPEAKER_00: The son of David, they replied.
SPEAKER_00: He said to them, How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him Lord?
SPEAKER_00: For he says, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.
SPEAKER_00: If then David calls him Lord, how could he be his son?
SPEAKER_00: And no one could say a word in reply, and from that day on, no one dared to ask him any more questions.
SPEAKER_00: So reading of God's word, everybody here today, and at Neely Campus.
SPEAKER_00: What's up, Neely?
SPEAKER_00: Everybody said, Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: All right, again, here in Matthew 22, these Pharisees, these temples, these synagogue leaders, uh, the context here, they've come to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: They have repeatedly challenged him about his views on like everything as to what those scrolls were all about.
SPEAKER_00: Stuff about his politics, stuff about his views of the afterlife, like marriage, I mean, how all of this stuff works, and over and over, Jesus has repeatedly defeated their questions.
SPEAKER_00: And now that they've asked him all of their questions, Jesus has a question for his opponents, haters, skeptics.
SPEAKER_00: So, what's it gonna be?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you're Jesus and you've been asked over and over about who you are, about what you believe, about what gives you the right to tell us anything, what do you think his question's gonna be?
SPEAKER_00: What would yours be?
SPEAKER_00: Here's his question.
SPEAKER_00: Of all the ones he could ask, he asked him, Whose son is the Messiah?
SPEAKER_00: Now, we stare at that and we're like, big deal.
SPEAKER_00: Big deal.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, whose son is the Messiah?
SPEAKER_00: Now, this was their really big question.
SPEAKER_00: It might not be a big question for you.
SPEAKER_00: It was a big question for them.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, Jesus cares about your big questions.
SPEAKER_00: And he cared about their big question.
SPEAKER_00: And he asked them this question because it was their expectation that their Messiah would be a nationalist political figure who would rescue Israel, rescue the world, and be sort of recycled in the lineage of their OG greatest king, a guy named David.
SPEAKER_00: So they reply on Q.
SPEAKER_00: Again, Jesus is setting them up, putting it on a T forum.
SPEAKER_00: They reply on Q, he's gonna be the son of David.
SPEAKER_00: Like everybody knows that one.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna have to do better than that, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Next question.
SPEAKER_00: Now, because Jesus knows they know this answer, he flips it around and he begins to reference here Psalm 110, which is, by the way, the most oft-quoted verse and chapter in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Pretty important.
SPEAKER_00: And it was written by that same King David.
SPEAKER_00: He says to them, How is it then, because y'all are so smart, that other than that, David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him Lord?
SPEAKER_00: For he says, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.
SPEAKER_00: Now he asked them his real question, his big question about that one verse.
SPEAKER_00: If then David calls him Lord, how can he be his son?
SPEAKER_00: Here's what he's getting at.
SPEAKER_00: He's asking him, all right, y'all, if the Messiah was gonna be the son of David, like downstream great, great, great, great grandson of David, how could that great, great grandson turn around?
SPEAKER_00: How could David call that son, that is, how can David that call that son both his child and his God?
SPEAKER_00: How can he call him son and lord?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, anybody here call their kids their God?
SPEAKER_00: You're like, nah, I change your diapers, but I raise them, I know what they're all about.
SPEAKER_00: How can someone come both after David and before David?
SPEAKER_00: How can someone be his child and his God?
SPEAKER_00: You get the point here, high hope.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is saying, I am all of that.
SPEAKER_00: I am the divine and human figure.
SPEAKER_00: David's talking about Psalm 110 is all about me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: And as a result of verse 46, the mic dropped.
SPEAKER_00: No one could say a word in reply.
SPEAKER_00: And from that day on, no one dared ask him any more questions.
SPEAKER_00: Cool.
SPEAKER_00: Nice story.
SPEAKER_00: What do we learn?
SPEAKER_00: Here we go.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, back to my questions.
SPEAKER_00: What then is Jesus' view of the Bible?
SPEAKER_00: This passage actually shows us.
SPEAKER_00: Three things we're gonna see here about Jesus' view.
SPEAKER_00: First, it shows us that Jesus believed if you're taking notes.
SPEAKER_00: This is the part where you write stuff down.
SPEAKER_00: It shows us Jesus believed the Bible is authoritative.
SPEAKER_00: Authoritative.
SPEAKER_00: Here's why.
SPEAKER_00: While Jesus and the Pharisees, big face off, big standoff, they're wrestling over what this means, whatever it means, that's what it means.
SPEAKER_00: And it's binding, it's authoritative.
SPEAKER_00: It stands above them, not beneath them.
SPEAKER_00: The meaning of whatever this is, he's showing us stands above your life.
SPEAKER_00: Stands above your life, and therefore, to understand it, you have to stand under it.
SPEAKER_00: I'll say that again.
SPEAKER_00: To understand it, you have to stand under it.
SPEAKER_00: You say, Morgan, I don't like that.
SPEAKER_00: I know you don't.
SPEAKER_00: I don't like it either.
SPEAKER_00: But we do this in ways all the time.
SPEAKER_00: We frequently stand under some sort of teaching before we ever understand it.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you an example.
SPEAKER_00: Movie reference here.
SPEAKER_00: This is a totally, because I'm Gin X to the core.
SPEAKER_00: I know I look like I just, you know, came out of high school.
SPEAKER_00: It's cool.
SPEAKER_00: Uh but Gen X to the core, this is a total 1980s wish fulfillment movie.
SPEAKER_00: But my daughter says dad is still a banger.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the karate kid.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody seen the karate kid?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, thank you.
SPEAKER_00: If you haven't, super popular.
SPEAKER_00: They still love it today.
SPEAKER_00: They keep making sequels about it, dragging Will Smith's kids into making sequels.
SPEAKER_00: They made like eight seasons of Cobra Kai.
SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to prove to you this movie reference is uh important.
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, Daniel, Daniel is the protagonist and the karate kid, and he wants to learn how to defend himself, fit in at school, he's moved cross-country, and yes, to get the girl he likes.
SPEAKER_00: But one day he's beaten up real bad by a bunch of bullies, because this is what happened in the 80s, everybody bullied somebody, half the movies are about that, and he's rescued by Mr.
SPEAKER_00: Miyagi, the department complex maintenance man.
SPEAKER_00: And Mr.
SPEAKER_00: Miyagi does his karate moves.
SPEAKER_00: Daniel is like, yes, you can help me live my best life, and he asks him to teach him karate to defend himself.
SPEAKER_00: Mr.
SPEAKER_00: Miyagi says, sure, but first he makes Daniel take and make a sacred vow, a sacred promise.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I'll teach you karate, but only if you promise to do everything I tell you.
SPEAKER_00: Daniel's like, sure, as long as it helps me get the bullies and get the girl, I'm good.
SPEAKER_00: And so sure enough, he goes out to work, you know the story, and he goes out, what, waxing on, waxing off, cleaning the cars, waxing Mr.
SPEAKER_00: Miyagi's old collection of cars, sanding down the deck, painting the fence.
SPEAKER_00: This goes on for days and days and days, and finally Daniel's had enough.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I says, I'm sick of working for you.
SPEAKER_00: This is pointless.
SPEAKER_00: All I've done is make your life better and cars better and house better.
SPEAKER_00: I'm getting nothing out of it.
SPEAKER_00: I don't understand.
SPEAKER_00: So Mr.
SPEAKER_00: Miyagi begins to attack his student in a way, begins to sort of use karate on him.
SPEAKER_00: To his surprise, Daniel finds he is impeccably prepared.
SPEAKER_00: He effortlessly defends himself against his teacher's attack, and finally it hits him.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, to be freed, first I had to be restricted.
SPEAKER_00: To be empowered, first I had to be confined.
SPEAKER_00: To understand the teaching, I had to stand underneath it.
SPEAKER_00: He saw, oh, if he wanted to see the value in the teaching, he couldn't possibly see the value until he obeyed it and stood underneath it.
SPEAKER_00: Here's my point.
SPEAKER_00: If Hollywood gets this about karate lessons, surely we can get this about the spiritual life.
SPEAKER_00: Why wouldn't we trust Jesus, who has surely proven himself far more trustworthy as a real person in history, far more than Mr.
SPEAKER_00: Miyagi, the fictional maintenance man?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is trustworthy.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus didn't only believe the Bible was first authoritative, second, Jesus also believed the Bible was divinely inspired.
SPEAKER_00: He believed the Bible was divinely inspired, as in it's not just the work of humans.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 43.
SPEAKER_00: He says to them, How is it then that David speaking by the Spirit calls him Lord?
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus doesn't just ask, how is it then that David says, nah, it's David speaking by the Spirit says this.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus is saying, yeah, while the Bible may be a work of genius or intellectual artistry, it's far more something than Shakespeare is.
SPEAKER_00: Dante, Homer, Charles Schultz, all the greats, you see.
SPEAKER_00: It is God's Spirit breathing out something through humans.
SPEAKER_00: You say, Morgan, that's a real hard claim, I know, but it does explain how, say, unlike the Quran, which is written, by the way, to one person at one moment, at one culture, in one language, in a cave when no one else is around, does explain how the Bible still has a coherent message, even though it was written across 1,500 years by all kinds of artists from cultural backgrounds, different parts of the world, different languages, different time points in history, yet all of it still has a coherent, transcendent message.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: God's Spirit working through humans.
SPEAKER_00: And if Jesus, by the way, believed even the Old Testament was divinely inspired, we can too.
SPEAKER_00: Third, Jesus believed the Bible defined his personhood.
SPEAKER_00: Defined personhood.
SPEAKER_00: Now you can see this because not only does he use Psalm 110 to define himself here, but over and over, when pressed about who he was, he used this word.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna teach it to you.
SPEAKER_00: It's this Greek word.
SPEAKER_00: Would you say this with me?
SPEAKER_00: Gagroptai.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are gonna get this tattooed after church today, all right?
SPEAKER_00: Out in the lobby.
SPEAKER_00: We got a welcome thing and a tattoo problem.
SPEAKER_00: I'm kidding, I'm kidding, of course.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_00: I'm from Austin.
SPEAKER_00: We make just these bad jokes.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: Gagroptai, it's a Greek word, it means this.
SPEAKER_00: It is written.
SPEAKER_00: Gag means it is written.
SPEAKER_00: Satan said stuff to him in the desert.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, nah.
SPEAKER_00: Gagroptai, it is written.
SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees said stuff to him about who they thought Jesus was.
SPEAKER_00: He says, nah, gagroptai, it is written.
SPEAKER_00: Family, friends, disciples say stuff to him.
SPEAKER_00: He says, nah, gagroptai, it is written.
SPEAKER_00: As he hangs on the cross, what does he say?
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 22, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 31, into your hands, I commit my spirit now.
SPEAKER_00: If you've ever been on an airplane and have experienced some sort of like teeth rattling, bone rattling turbulence, you know what happens to the people around you.
SPEAKER_00: You know what comes out of them in that moment.
SPEAKER_00: It could be their lunch or dinner.
SPEAKER_00: It could be cursing, words they ought not say in public.
SPEAKER_00: It could be shouting, screaming, praying, whatever.
SPEAKER_00: The point is, whatever is deepest inside you comes out when you're squeezed under pressure.
SPEAKER_00: So what defined Jesus when he was squeezed and under pressure?
SPEAKER_00: It was the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if he was caught and he was, and bled scripture, what about you?
SPEAKER_00: What about me?
SPEAKER_00: What defines us?
SPEAKER_00: Is it only an Ennegram test, though I love it?
SPEAKER_00: Is it only strengths fire, my strengths fire, Myers Briggs, disc, a buzzfeed quiz?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what defines you?
SPEAKER_00: I love all that, but if Jesus said God's word, grop tie, defines me more than any other resource, what about you?
SPEAKER_00: What about me?
SPEAKER_00: What defines you?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, I am.
SPEAKER_00: What these scriptures say about me.
SPEAKER_00: Not my culture, not my friends or family.
SPEAKER_00: God's word defines me most and deepest of all.
SPEAKER_00: Great.
SPEAKER_00: Question number two What does any of that even mean?
SPEAKER_00: Cool, it's authoritative, it's inspired, it's defined, definitional.
SPEAKER_00: What does it even mean?
SPEAKER_00: It means this.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you a statement, try to unpack it.
SPEAKER_00: It means this.
SPEAKER_00: We are supposed to adjust to the Bible, not the other way around.
SPEAKER_00: We're supposed to adjust to the Bible, not the other way around.
SPEAKER_00: We it doesn't adjust to us, we adjust to it.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're like, Morgan, that sounds kind of rigid, a little inflexible, and by the way, culture doesn't really tell me to do that.
SPEAKER_00: I know.
SPEAKER_00: Like, for example, a guy named Joseph Campbell uh wrote a famous book years ago called The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
SPEAKER_00: The book, famously, Star Wars fans may know, was what George Lucas used as a basis for the Star Wars saga and legacy.
SPEAKER_00: And Campbell famously said, Listen, listen, okay, cool.
SPEAKER_00: Bible, yes, whatever.
SPEAKER_00: He said, I don't need any one truth because I've got my own experiences and feelings.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, my own basically chemical reactions are what tell me what's true.
SPEAKER_00: Now, someone who critiqued this, and I appreciate him, here's a name you may not know.
SPEAKER_00: Now you do.
SPEAKER_00: Diagnos Allen, Princeton professor of philosophy, Christian professor, critiqued Campbell's claim.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what he said quote, as long as we experience feelings of exhilaration, consolation, or comfort, if all we do is look to those things, then the question of what reality is and the task of living in accordance with it need not arise.
SPEAKER_00: One of the attractions, he said, of new age spirituality is its vagueness about what is true outside oneself.
SPEAKER_00: Today, you feel this, I feel this.
SPEAKER_00: We like vague and fuzzy when it comes to truth, right?
SPEAKER_00: But notice Jesus never says, if you read about him, he never says this.
SPEAKER_00: Hey y'all.
SPEAKER_00: I am the vagueness and the cosmic uncertainty.
SPEAKER_00: Come to keep you in perpetual confusion.
SPEAKER_00: That's why I came.
SPEAKER_00: No, he says, what?
SPEAKER_00: Come on, John 14.
SPEAKER_00: I am the way, the truth, the life.
SPEAKER_00: No one comes to God except through me.
SPEAKER_00: You adjust to me, not the other way around.
SPEAKER_00: So my question is, why would anyone do that though?
SPEAKER_00: Why would anyone do that?
SPEAKER_00: Why would anyone adjust just because someone else said so?
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is I think we do it all the time.
SPEAKER_00: We just don't think about it like that.
SPEAKER_00: For example, when I'm married, Carrie, married 25 years ago last month.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_00: Again, once again, yeah, we were like eight to ten years old, apparently, just looking at us.
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, I had no idea what awaited me in terms of my future at the drive-thru Chick-fil-A's of the world.
SPEAKER_00: Because Carrie is the sauce queen.
SPEAKER_00: She only wants sauces as she just says, quote, I'm just here for the dips.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just here for the dips.
SPEAKER_00: All she wants is sauce.
SPEAKER_00: Like coffee only exists for the creamers.
SPEAKER_00: Some of y'all are lacking her better already.
SPEAKER_00: The coffee's only for the creamer.
SPEAKER_00: The fries in the sandwich are only little vehicles to carry the sauce to her mouth.
SPEAKER_00: If she's got sauces, she is a happy, happy girl.
SPEAKER_00: Now, we cannot be the more opposite.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care about your fancy sauce.
SPEAKER_00: Far as I'm concerned, here's my real quick hot take.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_00: If you need a sauce to make your chicken fish or whatever taste good, you have you have done a poor job, sir.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're trying to pull a fast one on me about your cheap meat.
SPEAKER_00: I don't need your sauce.
SPEAKER_00: Make the meat taste good.
SPEAKER_00: But all of my opinions flew out the window when we got married because she sent me to the drive-thru, and I find out we don't just need ketchup.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't just need sauce.
SPEAKER_00: We need sauce as.
SPEAKER_00: Plural.
SPEAKER_00: And then I'm going to count here.
SPEAKER_00: Two barbecue, two Chick-fil-A, two Polynesian, and a honey mustard to be on the safe side for one sandwich and one fry.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't know at any point if they start charging for these things.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe some of you work at Chick-fil-A, you could tell me, but I feel like we have gone way past that point of like getting free sauces.
SPEAKER_00: And I go to the drive-thru and I'm feeling humiliated about this.
SPEAKER_00: Like, am I violating some unspoken social norm here?
SPEAKER_00: Like, are you gonna come to the church on Sunday and be like, yo, that was a guy who ordered way too many sauces, taking advantage of the Christian grace that is Chick-fil-A in our culture, right?
SPEAKER_00: Don't come back, sir.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm embarrassed by this, but no matter I have been sent to get the sauces, so I do it with a happy heart.
SPEAKER_00: I forego ego and reputation.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because I love her.
SPEAKER_00: Because I love her, right?
SPEAKER_00: I love her.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what you might say is obedience, I call love.
SPEAKER_00: I call love.
SPEAKER_00: I adjust to her will, not my own.
SPEAKER_00: That, sir, madam, is a real relationship.
SPEAKER_00: Relationship.
SPEAKER_00: If you've seen the movie The Stepford Wives, not the original, not the Will Farrell, uh, not the Will Farrell and Nicole Kidman remake, sort of a comedy twist.
SPEAKER_00: But if you have seen the original, you know it was like a 1970s lowbrow, bad concept, science fiction horror thing?
SPEAKER_00: All about the men, the husbands, of Stepford, Connecticut.
SPEAKER_00: And they have decided that apparently being super rich and having tennis courts in their backyards is not enough.
SPEAKER_00: What they need to be really happy are women who never ever contradict them.
SPEAKER_00: So they hatched this plan, which is to replace all of their wives with beautiful, flawless robots who never ever contradict them and who only want to please them day and night.
SPEAKER_00: And again, because this is highbrow, you know, high concept science fiction, apparently this is paradise back in the 70s.
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, Joanna, the main character in the movie, she begins to suspect, as my daughter says, that this is super sus, super sus, when all of her friends, her lady friends, they stop having any other intellectual pursuits or vocational pursuits.
SPEAKER_00: All they do is show up to lunch and say, we'd love to take care of our husbands night and day.
SPEAKER_00: It's super weird, right?
SPEAKER_00: But by the end of the movie, you're recalling in horror, not just because the men are doing away murdering their wives, which is terrible enough, but you're horrified when you realize they think they're gonna be happier with a robot in their life versus a real person.
SPEAKER_00: The movie pushes you to ask, what is a real relationship?
SPEAKER_00: What's a real relationship?
SPEAKER_00: I tell you, a one-sided relationship where one party only twists and demands and takes is not a relationship.
SPEAKER_00: That's either abusive or in the end, it's something that will kill the relationship.
SPEAKER_00: Now, let me get real direct and blunt with you because I'm uh gonna leave town today, alright.
SPEAKER_00: In a room this size, I think it's fair to say some of us who call ourselves Christians abuse the Bible like that.
SPEAKER_00: We come to it, we just want it to ever and only please us.
SPEAKER_00: We love it when we get comfort from it.
SPEAKER_00: We love the parts where it says that God loves us, He's there for us, He'll never leave us nor forsake us.
SPEAKER_00: He's promised to provide for all of our needs, but we recoil in horror when it demands we do something called repent.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, we want it to tell us we are unique, but we don't like it when it tells us how to use our bodies, how to use our money.
SPEAKER_00: We resist it when it tells us to dress, yeah, modestly, men and women.
SPEAKER_00: It talks about that.
SPEAKER_00: We ignore it when it tells us to lift our voices for the poor, to lift our voices for justice.
SPEAKER_00: We don't like it when it reminds us we can't just watch anything we want to, that what we put, what we sow on the inside is gonna have an effect on us on the outside.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us abused, and even I do, I've done this.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll put to death God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, man, I just want a Stepford Bible with the parts I make, I construct that only pleases me day and night.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: A living, breathing, divinely inspired word that can actually contradict me and tell me what to do.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the rub.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't trust the Bible, if you can't trust the Bible when it tells you to change, why would you ever trust the Bible when it tells you God loves you?
SPEAKER_00: If it lies to you about how you should live, why would you believe it when it tells you God loves you?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's lying to you about that too.
SPEAKER_00: So how do you come to your Bible?
SPEAKER_00: Like a Stepford husband comes to his wife just wanting pleasure and comfort only, or do you come not only to be loved by God, but to love him back?
SPEAKER_00: How can we do that?
SPEAKER_00: You say, Morgan, that's really, really tough to do because what about this part?
SPEAKER_00: What about that part?
SPEAKER_00: What about all the stuff in there?
SPEAKER_00: I don't understand, I don't get.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what about it?
SPEAKER_00: What about those parts?
SPEAKER_00: What about that stuff?
SPEAKER_00: Let me show you how now, even with all that you understand or don't understand, how you can, number three, come to love Jesus' view in the end.
SPEAKER_00: How can we come to do that?
SPEAKER_00: Here it is.
SPEAKER_00: Notice this is the key.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus insists here in Matthew 22 that Psalm 110 is really all about him.
SPEAKER_00: That's either super egocentrical or he's telling you the truth.
SPEAKER_00: Let's assume he's telling us the truth.
SPEAKER_00: I think he is.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus does this over and over.
SPEAKER_00: He says the whole thing's about him.
SPEAKER_00: He rises from the dead, all right.
SPEAKER_00: We looked at that, I think, last Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: Rises from the dead, goes on a walk with his disciples, and says, Hey, y'all, Bible study time.
SPEAKER_00: They're like cool.
SPEAKER_00: The law and the prophets, they're all about me.
unknown: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: Moses about me.
SPEAKER_00: Elijah, yep, Elijah, yep, Noah, yep, mm-hmm, David, yep, Ezekiel, all about me.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what if you read the Bible like that?
SPEAKER_00: That it doesn't just point to those people, but it's really pointing to and about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I think if you'll see that and you'll understand that, and you'll begin to open up and read your Bible like that, now I think the Bible becomes liberating.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, it becomes empowering, and your heart and your mind can soar and grow in response.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you two examples, two ways, two names.
SPEAKER_00: Name number one, someone named Hosea.
SPEAKER_00: I like that guy.
SPEAKER_00: I just finished a series of my own church on Hosea.
SPEAKER_00: Hosea was a Hebrew prophet, and God told him to go do stuff.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things God told him to go do was to go get back his wife, who had been serially adulterous, unfaithful, and even some scholars believe become a prostitute.
SPEAKER_00: And God says, go take her back.
SPEAKER_00: And so Hosea does it.
SPEAKER_00: He goes out into the marketplace and with his own money buys back his own wife.
SPEAKER_00: She has humiliated him, debased herself.
SPEAKER_00: Her own choices have borderline ruined both their lives, and God says, go take her back.
SPEAKER_00: So I want to tell you today, go be like Hosea.
SPEAKER_00: No matter how unfaithful your spouse has been, how abusive they've been to you, that's what it's telling you.
SPEAKER_00: Go be like Hosea, take him back.
SPEAKER_00: Is that it?
SPEAKER_00: No, it's not.
SPEAKER_00: Just for the record.
SPEAKER_00: That's not it.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: What if you saw the Bible was really about a greater Hosea, whose name means salvation, by the way, in a Hebrew form of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: What if you saw Hosea's story was really all about Jesus, who now has come into our world, into our marketplace of a planet, and at the not just the risk of his life, but the cost of his life, paid out of heaven's cost to redeem our lives.
SPEAKER_00: We who have debased ourselves, we who have been spiritually unfaithful to God, and now Jesus becomes vulnerable and naked himself and buys us, exchanges places with us.
SPEAKER_00: What if you saw Hosea was really about Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what does that make you do?
SPEAKER_00: I don't here's what it makes me do.
SPEAKER_00: It makes me want to love God so much more.
SPEAKER_00: It makes me want to read my Bible.
SPEAKER_00: How can I find me more of that?
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you a second name.
SPEAKER_00: The one who wrote Psalm 110.
SPEAKER_00: We've talked about him, David.
SPEAKER_00: David, the little teenage kid who you know famously goes out and takes on the bulked up, swolled out, roided up Iron Man of the desert, Goliath.
SPEAKER_00: Goliath's high tech.
SPEAKER_00: David is low tech.
SPEAKER_00: David goes out with a slingshot and some stones when no one else will go out.
SPEAKER_00: And he confronts and he takes down the giant Goliath.
SPEAKER_00: So go be like David.
SPEAKER_00: A, sign up for the military.
SPEAKER_00: B, when you do and they send you out, don't take any weapons with you.
SPEAKER_00: No military gear, just some rocks you find in the desert.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
SPEAKER_00: The bigger they come, the harder they fall.
SPEAKER_00: Go take on the giant.
SPEAKER_00: What are you, a coward?
SPEAKER_00: Like, are you scared?
SPEAKER_00: Come on now.
SPEAKER_00: Who uh no, listen, David's story crushes me.
SPEAKER_00: If it's only about be like David, but what if you saw that David's story, come on, was about a greater shepherd of our souls, a greater would-be king who would restore the land, a greater son of Jesse.
SPEAKER_00: David was the eighth son, and eight and numbers, the Bible is the number of new beginnings.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the ultimate new beginning for humanity, that he stood between heaven and hell, our enemy and us, when no one else could or would, and overcame by becoming defenseless, our redeemer and savior.
SPEAKER_00: And now we, like those soldiers in the tents of Israel who were cowardly and hiding, can arise and go out into the world to overcome.
SPEAKER_00: What if you saw David was really about Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, what would that make you want to do?
SPEAKER_00: Come on, it makes me want to read the Bible, love the Bible, love Jesus even, even far more than I did before.
SPEAKER_00: It makes me now see, really, the Bible is about what God has done for me, not what I've done for God, which is, by the way, what we call the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And that thought right there, I think brings us full circle today because love, after all, is what?
SPEAKER_00: Two ways.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just one party always adjusting to the other, but it's both parties in a real relationship adjusting to the other for the sake of love.
SPEAKER_00: And now when you see and realize it's actually Jesus who has gone first, he has adjusted to us from heaven to earth, become human, become confined to the unbearable bottom of human existence, all the way to being confined, restricted on a Roman cross for our sake, for the sake of love.
SPEAKER_00: He has gone first, adjusted to us because he loved us now.
SPEAKER_00: You realize he never asked us to do anything he hasn't already done first.
SPEAKER_00: He adjusted to us, he made the first move for love's sake.
SPEAKER_00: So now we can adjust to him, follow him, obey him for love's sake.
SPEAKER_00: And I think if you'll see that and embrace that, you two can come to love Jesus' view of the Bible, which in the end can and will change your life.
SPEAKER_00: And cities, let me take a moment here to pray for us as we begin to close.
SPEAKER_00: Father, we come in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for today, our Nealie Campus, online, wherever we are in the room.
SPEAKER_00: We trust God, you are with us.
SPEAKER_00: And we know because we're human and we are imperfect.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we have a Savior, that you came and sometimes you call us to adjust to you.
SPEAKER_00: Out of love.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm praying.
SPEAKER_00: If you're here in the room online and kneely, wherever you are, and you're saying, I know today there's something in my life I need to adjust to God's word for the sake of love.
SPEAKER_00: Would you just raise your hand right here?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just go ahead and be on God knows it anyway.
SPEAKER_00: Be honest and transparent.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I thank you for these.
SPEAKER_00: We're acknowledging.
SPEAKER_00: Just like perhaps with our finances or our bodies, our backs, sometimes we need an adjustment to be free, to flourish.
SPEAKER_00: Or for those who are acknowledging this before you, I pray that you meet them with an overwhelming sense of your presence and your grace that can change them, that they would turn away from that thing and turn towards not a rule, but a person who loves them and gave himself for them.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for that today.
SPEAKER_00: We pray all these things in Christ's name.
SPEAKER_00: All God's people today said, Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Miss Tiddies.
SPEAKER_00: God bless you.