Narrow (Light for your path)

Sermon by Lead Pastor, Nate Levering

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Hello and thank you for joining us on the Sierra Bible Church Sermon of the Week. We hope you enjoy this message by Pastor Nate Levering.

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All right. Got some resources. If you have a bulletin, you might want to jot a few things down. We're gonna uh cruise through a number of things this morning. Uh I want to start with a little game of the prices right. Some of you may not even remember what that is. It was a long time ago. Basically, they would pull out like a GE dryer and they would say, like this costs this much, and then you would have to say over, under. My question for us today is a little bit different. What do you think these two size D batteries are worth? So come up with a number in your head and share it with the person next to you. What are they worth? Some of you are like, I'm not doing it. This is church, and those are batteries. We should come on, do it real quick, or I'm gonna wait here forever. What do you think they're worth? All right. Um it would depend, and that's gonna be our answer. And what hopefully gets us into our teaching this morning, it would depend if you uh were in the context of Kathy and I on our first date. She didn't yet know we were on a date, but we were somewhat disoriented up in the mountains outside of Yosemite Valley in the snow. It got really, really dark. And if we had one of these for Kathy, these two batteries would have been worth what? A lot. She wouldn't have had to hold my hand. Such a beautiful night hanging out in my mom's cabriolet. Do you remember those? Depends. What kind of path you're on. It depends how dark life is. It depends if the fog settles in. It depends on where you're at and what the consequences are to navigating the particular path you're on. If it seems somewhat treacherous, if there are sort of lives at stake, your life at stake, these might be worth a lot. If they meant in some way the difference between life and death. Jesus sets this context in the verses we've been looking at throughout this summer as a part of our discipleship series, and he says it this way. He says, to enter through the narrow gate. Commands us, narrow gate, enter there. Wide is the gate, broad is the road that leads to, help me out, destruction. Many are gonna go through that. Then he says, But small is the gate and narrow the road. Our summer series on discipleship is titled Narrow, narrow the road that leads to life. Only a few, in other words, when sort of looking at the options, only a few are going to see correctly and manage to sort of choose their life onto what Jesus calls the narrow path. And we would know because life sometimes, right, and M said it well, gets dark. You know, if you're this guy, can't really see him, but he's there, might say, what are those batteries worth? And it depends, right? I mean, if he's on a path he knows before, if he's all by himself, he's like, I'll walk out of here okay. Give that guy a couple kids, add some sounds that seem somewhat dame, and the batteries might be worth a little bit more. There might stir in him a bit of a hunger that if by chance there's a way to navigate this picture with light. Kathy and I, uh a couple months ago, had the incredible privilege as a part of us celebrating our 30th anniversary to make our way down to Fiji. Part of what we wanted to do is get our uh dive certificate stuff together and so get certified. And so we did that. And I wanted to show you um, and it becomes an illustration too, but a couple of the pictures. We ended up on this place in the world called the Rainbow Reef. And it's world famous because of this wall, which is called the White Wall, because of the way two times a month it goes like full illuminescence style. We happened to be there at that time. It was amazing. Uh, then there were times, right, where like this next picture, that's just live coral. We would swim past like seemed like hundreds of these things, and our guide would just look at them, and rather than kind of pointing out all these small things, he would just go like this. And we're like, Yeah, you know, it's like you're already underwater, but it's like it's taking your breath. The beauty and the glory and the creativity of God was just amazing. We wanted to have the privilege of doing that, and so part of what we needed to do was to spend time in a swimming pool when we got there, and so we get there, they say, Hey, no breakfast, you're getting in the pool, we got stuff to do. So we jump in the pool and we're learning all the techniques, and it was super fun to do with Kathy, and so we were having a blast. And uh, Kathy, when they did one specific test, which was how are you going to react when your water when your air gets cut off? So your guide is kind of behind you in the pool, and he some of you have done this before, he turns your tank off, and so the breathing starts getting like you know, and you're like that cartoon image of like no air, and then you calmly let your buddy know, and he gives you or she gives you the regulator and you can begin to breathe. Well, Kathy would this start to happen, and she would start getting all excited, we'll say. And uh, you know, things would kind of happen faster than, and so we kind of pop up, and he's like, Kathy, you gotta like calm down. And I was like, Hey, if if it's really going that bad, like stand up. We're in like four feet of water, you know. I think we're safe here in the shallow end while we learn. So we're learning, doing all this kind of stuff, and they take us down to 60 feet and then 100 feet, and we got to do some cave dives. It was phenomenal. All of this training, though, I'm paying extra close attention to because something was on my bucket list when I got on a plane and headed for Fiji. And as a part of my bucket list event, we rode a took a boat out to a reef that's called the Shark Reef Marine Reserve. If you look at that left side of that, you're gonna see if you go there bull sharks, nurse sharks, tiger sharks, lemon sharks, gray reef sharks, black tips, sharks. Now, I don't have that great of a memory. A lot of things come in and they're like, You could ask me probably in about six hours what I preached on today, and I'm gonna be like, the Bible, probably something about Jesus. But what I do find interesting is I could describe just about every nook and cranny of that map to you after seeing it for 10 minutes. Why? Because he or she who doesn't follow the map will have a physical life that ends in the mouth of Mr. Bruce, who you're gonna see in just a few seconds. We got to go face to face, not in a cage. But let me just tell you that the instructions were like I was so focused in every word. I was hungry, I was paying attention, I was why because my life depended on it. Jesus is going to invite us to consider that the proverbial batteries of the word of God, the light to your path, are worth your life. They're worth your your hunger, your your focus, they're worth your your every thought, your energy. And this is where we're going this morning. Jesus, in fact, says, you don't have to walk this path without light. Uh, he says in John chapter 8, I am the light. I am the light of the world, not one of the ways you can kind of light the world. He says, I am. And this is for Jesus a bold statement when he uses these I am statements. Then he says, This, whoever what follows me will never walk in darkness. We'll try that again. Whoever what follows me. It's sort of contingent on that little follows me thing. And this is why we're talking about this this summer. What does that look like then for us? And this morning will be specific to that. He will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. And so part of what we do then is we seek to follow Jesus through the gospels, and we say, How did Jesus react when he was tired? He did what some of you are already doing. He took a short nap and he rested. What did he do? He he found places of community, he leaned into mission. Here's a question I want to ask you though. What is it that Jesus did? This sort of struck me as somewhat interesting. What is it that Jesus does when he finds himself? I would argue in all of his humanness, on a place in his path where it feels like the darkness has just closed in. Like maybe like some of us when we drive off the off the side of the hill into the valley in that Thule fog. Just what is it? How does Jesus respond in moments like that? What does he do? Tell me out. What? Pray. In the worst moments of Jesus' life, the darkest moments, answer is not prayer. What does Jesus do? What? Trust? What? Quote scripture. The word of God becomes that which comes out of his mouth. I mean, this to me was fascinating because I was with you. I was like, I mean, and he does pray. But when it gets the darkest, we see it on both ends of Jesus' life. If you have your Bible open, look at uh Matthew chapter 4. Matthew chapter 4 is an amazing text. This is early on in Jesus, what we call his public ministry. So we know very little, we'll hit on a couple things of Jesus' early development. When we get from Christmas to Matthew chapter 4, about 30 years have taken place. Jesus here is baptized in the Jordan River by John. And then we pick up chapter 4. Right after this section, we're going to find Jesus beginning these three years of ministry, which will end, we'll look at the end in just a moment, with him hanging on a Roman cross, proclaimed guilty for my sin. So this is where he's going in three years. How does it begin? He's baptized, God the Father, God the Spirit show up. Big old Trinity party here. Then Jesus was led by the Spirit, verse one of chapter four. Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting for 40 days and forty nights, he was hungry. Probably an understatement. Verse 3 the tempter came to him and said, This if, this is oftentimes how the devil starts a conversation, if you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread. Jesus answered, it is written. This answer, it is written, is three words, of course, in our English translation. It's one word in the Greek. It's a word or phrase that's translated, or that's excuse me, written in the New Testament over 60 times. Over 60 times, Jesus and others will say, It is it is written. If you've ever heard a Supreme Court justice with sort of a trump card, they will quote the what? The who? The Constitution. Right? Well, and part of what they're saying is, hey, it doesn't matter what you and I think now, it doesn't even matter what we feel. Like you could be really excited, I could be really excited. What matters is that there's a governing authority, and it is the Constitution. This is what Jesus is doing in the New Testament authors. When they say it is written, what Jesus is saying to the devil is hey, it doesn't matter what what you think maybe is true. It doesn't matter what I think at this point. Why? And here's what Jesus says it is written. He's in a, I mean, this is in it as intense a moment as you're gonna find. Face to face with the devil. He's exhausted, he's hungry, he's just starting his ministry. I mean, life has closed in. What comes out of Jesus is it is written. There's a higher authority. I don't know about you guys, but when I get hungry, I start thinking all kinds of different things. And Jesus helps us in his humanness come back to not what I think or feel, but what is true. Where is that? It's in the word of God. So Jesus takes us back then here to the New Testament. Let's just read the rest of uh what Jesus has to say. He says, uh, man shall not live on bread alone. But, and remember this phrase for later, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God, Jesus is actually uh quoting Deuteronomy, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy. It's one of Jesus' favorite books. He quotes from it a whole bunch. And so he's taking the devil back to that place to say, this is what is true. Jesus sort of gets the devil to back down after this first temptation, the devil tempts him again. This time, the devil, and again, this is interesting when we think about uh understanding the it is written, because the devil spins the word of God. So if you look at that next, he's like, hey, that this time the devil decided I'm gonna quote the word of God. And Jesus teaches us you can't just kind of throw a verse out there as sort of a gospel bomb. He says, No, you need to read it well, you need to interpret it in light of what scripture is teaching. Jesus already right here saying, Man, you got to understand it, you've got to know it, you've got to ask questions of it, you've got to study it. Third temptation, finally, uh Satan finds Jesus says, Hey, get away from me, I'm done. Another quote from Deuteronomy, and this is ended. When it seems, Jesus has the darkness surround him, the light to his feet is the word of God. And I don't think he's doing this as an example for us to follow, even here. He's doing it because he's human. And this is what human beings do to walk this path that God has for us, to step into those places where, as we sang, trust has no borders. It's fun to sing, isn't it? Until you're on that path and you're going, wait, what do I hang? How do I? And Jesus here is saying, hang on to the word of God. Know what the word says and allow it to be that which lights your path, the other end of Jesus' life. And again, all he's crowded with prayer and all kinds of things. But what's fascinating to me is think about Jesus on the cross. Jesus on the cross, right? We said about three years, maybe three and a half, and he's hanging on the cross. He says seven statements. Four of them are direct references to the Old Testament. Two of them, it's as if, and some of you guys have been there. Man, you know the dark night. You know the kid that got sick, and you held them in your hands. You knew the standing there by the graveside, you know those moments. And for Jesus, in those darkest moments, he doesn't rewrite things, he goes back to and gives voice to what has already been written. The word of God becomes the foundation, it becomes the anchor, it becomes the thing that he holds on to in the midst of those dark times. Here's a couple of the things that Jesus says: two direct quotes uh from Psalms. I think we have them. He right, he cries this out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? We know that, and we might think he's like, he's actually quoting scripture from hundreds and hundreds of years ago, written down in Psalms. Next one reaches again for the Psalms. And um Psalm 31, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. And if you've ever been there and you're like, words aren't gonna make sense of this. God says, But my word can. So know it. Allow it to be in your heart, allow it to be the place you go. Charge up those batteries, they could be worth your life. Now, one of the things that I I've sort of struck me uh as I was kind of getting ready for this week is that I have studied Jesus in a lot of different contexts. I've studied Jesus on prayer, I've studied Jesus on flipping the sort of social structures, I've studied Jesus on race, I've studied Jesus on generosity, I've studied Jesus on leadership. But I don't think I've ever followed him as he invites us to through the gospels and studied how he, as a human being, used and accessed the light that is the word of God for his path. And it was kind of a fascinating thing to do. You know, we if we we look back, part of it is we never really see Jesus studying scripture. We get one little phrase, I want to show you, one little phrase. But what we do get is we get Jesus in his kind of maturity using what's in him on the path that he's walking out. But we don't necessarily see him like in Sunday school class, although we get one little uh passage in Luke, if Carrie can find them, skipping around a little bit, says this. This says, After three days, they found him, Jesus, in the temple courts. Interesting little phrase. That's a loaded phrase if you know the story. Early on, Jesus is we think about 12 or so here. Uh his family goes from where they're living up to the temple to uh have the Passover, and so they're doing their worship thing. All the families get ready, right? They pack up the family, they start heading back home. Jesus, we're told, decides, bon voyage, I'm gonna hang out here and do my own thing. And so, three days in, we know Joseph's probably not paying that great of attention, but Mary probably is like, Where's yeah, where's Jesus? Again, you don't look for Jesus until three days because he's pretty much perfect at this point. So you figure he's just kind of there. He wasn't there, and so after three days, they go back to the temple and find Jesus. What do they find him doing? This again, this is about all we get from Jesus' early life. Sitting amongst the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. We see a hunger in Jesus to know and to understand and to wrestle with. I don't think here as a 12-year-old, he's you know, speaking to the Pharisees as one with authority. He's learning, he's understanding, he's memorizing, he's taking it in. He's starting to some degree like you and I, adolescent in our faith. And he's growing through this hunger and through the leadership and teaching of others, an understanding of God's word. I do not believe that Jesus just sort of had this encoded in him. So it's like you pull the string and out came Deuteronomy. No, they memorized it, they were discipled in the word of God. And then for Jesus, he watches that come out. If you study or follow Jesus through the gospels, one of the things that you'll realize is one in five of the things that Jesus says is referencing the Old Testament. 20% of what comes out of Jesus. So if you just read the red letters, how many of you guys have a Bible where it's like all of Jesus' language is red letter language, right? We probably know that phrase. I think they're helpful Bibles sometimes. Um, and and some people even say, I really only stick with the red letters. Here's what's somewhat ironic. If all you do is read the red letters, you're gonna get 20% of that Jesus quoting teaching on the Old Testament. He is, if you will, saying, hey, part of what it looks like to walk this path well, the one that leads to life, is to power up this tool God's given us and allow it free reign as a governing authority over and in our Lives. Jesus uses it as the light to his path. 300 plus statements Jesus makes to the Old Testament. The psalmist says it this way, in one of those key phrases which we've alluded to a couple of different times. And you know, we've some of us grew up singing songs with these kinds of words. Can you flip to the next one? Sorry, the psalm. Isn't there one in between? Your word, help me out, is a light for my feet and a light on my path. Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light on my path. And I don't know what the stakes are exactly for you. But for me, let's just say that's true. I got four kids, I have a wife, a bit of leadership. How I navigate the dark nights, the foggy seasons, they seem to matter. And if God's promise is that his word in us, alive in us, could become, if I follow him, a light to help me navigate, I'm gonna go on record and say these are worth a lot. It matters. Lean in. So my question then was like, why don't I always feel, or why do I occasionally, sometimes more often than I'd like, not have that kind of Jesus sitting before the Word of God asking questions, wrestling with it kind of hunger. And in fact, this message in some way comes from a devotional time I had with the Lord a couple weeks ago when I was thinking about this follow me, and I was thinking about the light, and and and I was wrestling with the reality that sometimes I come out in the morning, make my coffee, and almost most mornings it's open the word, it's spend time with him, it's journal, it's process. But sometimes I wake up and I'm like, I'm just gonna go outside and have a drink of coffee. I don't really have a hunger to spend time in God's word. Been there, read that. I'm studying it a lot all day today because I'm gonna teach it, and so I'll be in it. But not for not for my path, although it's both and. So I wrestled with that. And so I kind of like three reasons I think that many of us sort of live life without this sort of Jesus-like hunger to allow the word of God uh to be a part of the way that we live our lives. So first one is this sometimes I just think we're living on the wide path. Like, think about a hike you've gone on recently. If it's a hike you know so many times, are you concerned that the sun's going down? Not really. Because you're gonna make it fine, you know how to get out. But if the stakes are raised, if indeed it's gonna get dark and you haven't been there and it's gonna be cold, and you have children with you, all of a sudden the stakes change. So when we realize we're living on the wide path, oftentimes we don't have that sense of hunger for God's word. Some of us, and sometimes yours truly, convince ourselves that sort of the end goal of this Christian life is scuba tank on in the shallow end of the pool. I got Jesus hanging out, but let's be honest, I have a lot of insurance, got some money in the bank, even got some retirement stuff getting worked out. So I'm not all that hungry and in need. We don't feel it that often. Sometimes we're just on the white path. Here's the the journal entry that I just wanted to share a little disclose a little bit from uh a couple of weeks ago that caused me this sort of aha and then started me down the path of looking at following Jesus through the gospels and asking him how he used the word. If I don't need the word of God to light the path I'm on, there's a good chance I'm on the wide path. And then I describe the wide path for me. And you have to describe your own because it's probably different than the wide path that I go on. But it's the wide path of ease, it's the wide path of convenience, it's the wide path of self-preservation, moral justification, sort of spiritual apathy, harsh judgment, PA retaliation. Do you know what that stands for? Oh, come on, some of you do. Passive, aggressive. I don't actually write it out. I have to write PA so often in my journal. It's like, there it is. Just PA. PA retaliation, bitterness, and boredom. That when I'm on that path, let's be honest, I don't really need the word. Because I got me. And that sort of does pretty good on the broad path. Ronald uh Rollheiser says it this way, and this is a little softer, maybe. He says this it is not that we have anything against God, depth, and spirit. We would like these. It's just that we are habitually too preoccupied to have any of these show up on our radar screens. We are more busy than bad, more distracted than non-spiritual, and more interested in the movie theater, the sports stadium, and the shopping mall. Maybe fill in like Amazon, Facebook Marketplace, and the fantasy life that they produce in us than we are in church. He goes on, he reads my lunch. Pathological busyness, distraction, and restlessness are major blocks today within our spiritual lives. And Ronald wrote this before we had cell phones. And I think it's telling that that's oftentimes us walking on the wide path. And Jesus invites us into those places where our trust has no borders. The second reason is this. Um, I think that sometimes we just love the darkness. The scripture says this. Some of us just love it. We've made peace with our secrets. We're like, I mean, it just it feeds us with a little bit of what we think is life, a little hit, a little of, you know, we just hang on to those things and we think, gosh, if if I were given the option of like having that sort of lit up and keeping it secret, I think I'm gonna stay here. And so we don't develop that hunger that God has to just expose all of who we are, and then follow him and the freedom that he offers. And then I think there's you know, there's another part of this too, of course, is sometimes we just don't know how to read it and we don't understand it. And let me just tell you this we've all been there if you've tried to read it. It's it's a challenging book, amen. Some parts crystal clear, other parts like, whoo, I don't know. Where is that? How did they? And then people are quoting at you, like, I'm not sure that seems, but I don't really know what to do. How do we read it? Acts 8 is this beautiful picture, it's a story many of you know. And in the early church is just starting, there's this great sort of early theologian named Philip, and Philip's hanging out, angels shows up in Philip's life, and he's like, Hey, go hang out by that chariot. What does he hear when he walks up next to this chariot being read by this Ethiopian kind of prince? But the word of God, Isaiah. Now, we don't exactly know, but but maybe Philip's read Isaiah. How many of you read Isaiah? If you read Isaiah from chapter one, verse one to the end, whoo! There are times you're like, this is amazing. And then there's other times we're like, how in the world did this get in the Bible? Like, seriously, I should just flip a few pages. This part's tough. Most likely they're on this tough part, right? And so he's reading along. Philip comes up. Do you remember what Philip asks him? Hey, do you have any clue what you're reading? He's reading Isaiah, he's reading the word of God. The word is a light to my feet, lamp to my path. He's reading, he's reading, he leads it down to Philip. He's like, I got no clue what this means. And Philip looks up and he's like, Well, good luck with that. No, he doesn't do that. Philip looks up and he says, Well, let me pray for you that God will reveal to you what's in his word and make sense of it for you. No, Philip doesn't do that. Philip climbs up into the chariot and it says, starting with where the Ethiopian is, takes him through the scriptures to the good news of Jesus. And this is what it looks like to walk in the scriptures, to know them, to walk with each other in the scriptures. You know, for some of us, we have studied this for a while, and it's time to start asking the question: who is it that God wants me to climb up into their chariot and help get them from wherever they are to the good news of Jesus? This is one of the reasons we we like to fight and wrestle and pray over our counselors, over our student ministry leaders, over those that are with our kids and kids, because this is what they're doing. They're opening up the word of God, trying to say, however, you came in, how can we get you from that place to who? Jesus. This is what Philip does. Some of us need a Philip. Some of us need to be a Philip and help walk others. God has given you experience, knowledge, and it's your responsibility to be that Philip, not just like good good luck with that. I know it's confusing, hang in there, but to walk with someone. One of the things that you'll see is one of our plans as we roll out this summer of trying to connect those kinds of dots. Okay, we need those people. Here we go. We are going to, man, we didn't have enough time today. Um, I'm just gonna give you a couple lists of things real quick, and then we'll kind of land with a little bit of application. Um, but a couple things that I can expect from reading God's word. Here's what the Bible says about itself. Um, this is what the word of God says about itself. It says this, that the word of God, when reading it, you can experience honey. Now, for them, it was like the sweetest of flavors, right? And some of us know passages that say the Bible is like sweet as honey. What there's a cool uh there's a cool practice that families would do in medieval Judaism, and they would actually have their kids dip their finger in honey and they would write the scriptures and then get to lick their fingers. And the idea, of course, was that you had that sensory impact of the word of God is sweet to know it and to allow it to be part of our story. The word of God, as we've been talking about, is light in the darkness, it's bread from heaven. This is what Jesus says when he says that, you know, man can't survive alone on food bread, but on every word that comes, he's quoting Deuteronomy chapter 8. The word of God is treasure for those that have it. The word of God is the key to our freedom. Remember what Jesus says. He says, you know, if you know the truth, if you live the truth is what he's saying. The truth will set you free. That truth is the word. The word of God is a sword for spiritual battle. What is it that the word of God promises for us? Just three things, which again become motivators for me to develop that kind of Jesus-like hunger to sit under its authority and to study. Uh, what does the word God of God promise? It promises to ground you in a storm, promises to be the thing that anchors your life in any storm, in any darkness. It is the promise of hope that light is possible. We watch Jesus practice this. This particular story is that place where he says, Hey, for every life, the fog's gonna close in. For every life, the water's gonna rise, the wind's gonna start to blow. The question is, what's your house gonna look like? And he says, if you build your house on my words, it's gonna be like someone that has a house. It's actually like anchored to a rock. But if you, living on this sort of broad path, anchor your life to your thoughts, to their thoughts, to the thoughts, your life in those moments is gonna look a bit like a house anchored on sand. The word of God will ground you in a storm. The word of God promises to guard you in a drought. And Psalm 1 would be a great passage to read today if you have some time. Uh, the word of God promises to ground you in a drought. This psalm paints this beautiful picture of this tree that is able to produce fruit even in a drought in any season. Some of you know the Barret Juniper, have any of you guys visited that up in Eagle Meadows? It's a tree in our neighborhood that they think is somewhere between three and four thousand years old. Now, you might think that tree has lived a long time through a lot of droughts and a whole lot of storms because it's planted in super good soil. But what's fascinating about the juniper tree is it's planted in granite. But it's developed a root system, God let us all, that is down inside the fissures of that rock and it can draw out moisture in any season. And this is what the word of God can be in our life, even in those hard seasons, those dry ones. The psalmist says, these are the times when my roots have to go down deep and pull up because life gets challenging and it can be hard. And then lastly, uh Jesus promises that his word, his life, will be rest to our souls, that the word of God will give us rest. Okay, so a bit of application, and I'm just gonna hit on these uh and then we will close. If I if I decide, okay, I'm gonna start reading it. I just want to give us a couple of examples, and there's great ways to do this. Uh, if if you're on like the UVersion app, and then there's gonna be some resources that are both in your bulletin as well as they'll be on the screen. There's some great tools, and we, of course, this isn't gonna be tool time, but I want to hit on a couple of things. The first priority in studying, reading, consuming God's word is the goal, the why is to encounter Jesus. The Bible is not primarily a textbook that we're learning information from, it is the word of the living God that we are meant to encounter Jesus in. Now, where do we get that? We get that from a number of different places. I think the the one that's maybe for me most highlighted is in an encounter that Jesus has with a couple of guys after his death and resurrection. After his death and resurrection, Jesus comes alongside these two men on the road to Emmaus, and they're wrestling over the scriptures, they're wrestling over the word of God and how things went. And Jesus coming alongside them, we're told, and then here's the passage, beginning with Moses, so it'd be like Exodus, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he, Jesus, explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself. For Jesus, the first thing we're looking for when we begin to read the Word of God is Jesus. We are to encounter him. Tim Keller says it this way: He says, Jesus is the point of every part of the Bible, he's the climax of every theme in the Bible, he's the true and better figure of every figure in the Bible. Every nook and cranny of the Bible will tell you about Jesus if you really learn to read it with the spectacles of the gospel. It's all about him. This is the right way. This is the right way to read the scriptures through the spectacles of the gospel, to look for and expect an encounter with our risen Savior. So we look for Jesus in the text. He is the hero. How do we do this? I just want to give you one quick example uh because this was super helpful for me, and it's become a practice that you know Jesus invites us into, and and I'll do it all the time. And I just think it's a great way to look for and encounter Jesus as we read the scriptures. So the question is where's Jesus in the middle of this? And it's not always how we naturally read scripture. Let me give you an example. Most of us know the story of David and Goliath, right? I mean, I think there's probably very few of us that don't know that story where David shows up as this kind of young kid. He's on the battlefield. All the Israelites, including King Saul, are hunkered down on one side of the battlefield, on the other side of the battlefield, behind their giant Goliath are the Philistines, right? And so every day they send out Goliath and he taunts God's people, and God's people are over here like, we don't know what to do. He's so big and tall, we're gonna die. Here's how we generally teach, I'll say, think about a story like that. You all have Goliaths in your life. There's even songs you can listen to about this. And I'm not saying it isn't somewhat small t true, but we all have Goliaths, and we all cowered in fear. And if you could just muster enough faith, if you could just get the right stones in your sling, and if you can just be courageous enough, feel the guilt and shame, and I gotta do something, and man, if I can just figure out why can't I kill Goliath now? You can get on the battlefield, sling Goliath, your giant, take him down and be victorious. Okay, some of us have done A, B, and C, and D didn't happen, didn't feel very victorious. It was tough. They passed away. Where was the victory? Let me invite you to not make yourself or myself the center of the David and Goliath story, but what if I reread the scripture and David and Goliath is actually about Jesus? And I'm looking for him. What if rather than me becoming David, rather than me fighting Goliath to win the day, God sent a savior to do what you were never meant to do. If you haven't realized it yet, you're the messed up version of yourself without the true and right. What if Jesus is the loved one who comes onto the battlefield to fight the proverbial giant, sin, death in your flesh? And what if Jesus on the cross is actually the playing out of David on the battlefield as he cuts Goliath's head off? And then do you know what the scared Israelites do? Me and you? We jump up and we're like, we won! Let's go fight our little giants, not as the one, but in light of the one that God sent. The true and right David. His name is Jesus.

SPEAKER_00 42:03

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