Have You Made Room?-Lance Havens

Sunday's sermon presented by Lance Havens 04/12/26


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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

God is good. Chad, thank you so much. Worshiping with all of you is just one of the highlights of my week. But right now, I want to travel back in time. I want you to imagine the final feast of the Jewish year. It's called Sukkot or the Festival of Boots. And it easily is one of the most joyful of the seven Jewish feasts. In fact, joy is not just permitted at this feast, it is commanded by God. Now, let me tell you a little bit more about this feast because it sets the context for our main text. This feast has a texture to it. It had sights and sounds and smells, and people who love to camp are gonna love this because the people would live outdoors in a shelter for seven days. And there's some Jews who still do this. In fact, you can log on to the web now and you can buy a little kit. And it's it's custom during this feast to eat your meals in this booth for a week. Some people sleep in them. There's there's slats in the roof, and so you look up at night and you can see the stars. And the reason for these boots is so that God's people will connect to the story. To the story of how they lived in shelters and tents for 40 years during the wilderness. And God provided for them. Their clothes didn't wear out. He provided them with food, he provided them with water. And he protected them from foes and wild beasts. God was faithful during those years. During the feast of Boots, you can lie out at night and you can look up at the sky and you can realize that we are but pilgrims upon the earth. You can feel how small we are compared to the bigness of God and to his plans. And when the father of the Jews, Abraham, was at a turning point in life, God said, Look up, look at the sky. I'm building a nation through you. And one day the nation will be more than the stars in the sky. In Jesus' day, people could look up and they could tell their kids that they were an answered prayer, that they were, in fact, more than the stars in the sky. I like to eat. And I like it when meals and holidays line up. If I say turkey, you know the time of year that it is. And you know the cowboys are going to play about three o'clock, and we really hope that they win. During the feast of Jews, there was a fruit, there was a citrus fruit, it was called an etrog, that ripened at that time of year, and the Jews would pick it and eat it during the feast. This is also the time of year that they would get branches from the palm trees, and that they would wave them. And the waving of the branches showed that God's rule was all around everywhere. At this feast, God says, Bring the foreigners, bring the servants, bring the fatherless. This feast has a global feel to it. The hope was that God's rule would cover the entire globe and all people everywhere. This feast was fun. The scene was a spectacle. People juggled, they ate, they camped out, and God's care for the people was at the center of all of it. Before the time of Christ, there are some other customs that developed around this time of year. The temple priest would march down to the pool of Siloem with a golden pitcher. And the water from this pool was considered to be living because it was spring fed. And so the priest would fill the pitcher and then he'd march back up to the temple as they prayed. And they did this for six days of the feast. They would cite the Psalms and they would ask God to bless them for rain, for new life, and they would pour the water out in the temple. On the last day of the feast, this was the finale of the feast. They did this seven times. And that is the moment that Jesus starts to teach. In John 7, 37, on the last day of the feast, with all of this in mind, Jesus says, Let anyone. Again, there's this idea that this is a global feast. This is for everybody. Jesus says, Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them. Jesus is standing in front of all of this and he's saying, I'm the answer. I'm the water, I'm the spring, I'm the pitcher. And some people hear this and they start to believe. Some say he's a prophet, others say he is Messiah. And then in John 8, the very next day, Jesus says, I'm the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. During the feast of Boots in the court of the women in the temple, there's four large poles that they would stand up. And on top of these poles, they put these candelabras that put out such a great amount of light. It was said that every courtyard in the city had light from the temple. The light would get bigger and brighter every night of the feast. The rabbis claimed that you could see the light for miles. And in John 8, Jesus is preaching early in the morning. The previous night was the last night of light. For the rest of the year, the city will go dark as the sun goes down. And you see people that are taking down their lights, and you realize that all the festive, fun life that you've had for a season is giving way to darkness. I picture that there's workers that are taking down the poles, and Jesus is standing in front of them, and he's saying, I'm the light of the world. Follow me, and you'll never walk in darkness again. This is some of the best stuff that Jesus says. It's awesome. Living water, light of the world. These are promises that call back to prophecy. All the ceremony, all the pomp over the last week, everything in the temple points to Jesus. And Jesus is standing there saying, Do you see those things? Do you see the temple? The light, the care? They're me. I'm the light. I'm the water. I'm the promise. And here's the thing: for some it hits. For some, it doesn't. John 7, 43 says, the people are divided. And if you continue to read, the Pharisees and the chief priests are dead set against Jesus. We find out that they sent the temple guards to seize him. And the guards come back to the Pharisees and they basically say, Man, we heard him preach. No one speaks like that. We didn't touch him. And the leaders are furious. It's been a week of spectacle and lights and water and fruit and celebrating God. And the vibe should should all be love and peace and joy. And yet, in chapter 8, from about verse 21 and down, that's when the real fight starts. And if you think politics or even some parts of church life can get nasty today, go back and read the end of John 8. It gets gnarly. Jesus is not afraid to speak the truth. He knows they plan to kill him. So he tells the truth. And he teaches this Satan is a murderer and a liar. And when the leaders lie and plan his death, they are doing the will of Satan. And when you do the will of Satan, you are his child. And Jesus says it out loud. He says, Your father is Satan. Tough words. Harsh words. True words. And so at this point, the leaders are tired of using words. And these masters of the law of Moses are no longer thinking about tablets of stone, but they start picking up stones. And then one of the all-time great mysteries of the Bible, it says, Jesus hid himself slipping away from the temple grounds. His time had not yet come. Jesus will die, but not today, and not by stones. And here's what I really want to get to. Why? Why do some hear and believe? Why do some see the spring and the picture and say, I get it? That's what Jesus is like. He's water that never runs dry. Why do some bask in the light at night for a week, watch it get brighter and brighter, and then the next day, as darkness starts closing back in, think, that's what this rabbi is like. He's light. In him there's no darkness. He is the light of the world. Why do some hear and believe and choose to follow while others pick up rocks and want to kill? Nothing's changed. We've been doing this for 2,000 years. Some are still hostile towards God. Others say Jesus is good, but so is Muhammad and so is Buddha, and all paths lead to God, and the most important thing is just to be kind. Others think Jesus is good and can help their lives, but they'll get serious about him later. They're just too busy right now to follow. And yet, there's some that believe. Some are all in. And church, that better be us because we claim he's the one. We trust him with our life in the present. We trust him in the here and now. We seek to follow him, and we have faith that because of him, we won't ever truly die. In life and in death, we say yes to him. So why? Why are some all in, ride or die? Jesus is my Lord, he's my best friend, and I love him, and if called upon, I would die for him. And some are like, hard pass? Nope, not for me, not like that. So to bring it back to John 8, why do some believe and say yes to this water and light while others pick up rocks? I want to hone in on a phrase that Jesus uses in John 8, 37. Jesus says, I know you are descendants of Abraham. Like he's pointing out, you guys know the story, you know the prophets, you know the law. Out of anybody, you're the ones that should get this. And these men, instead of accepting and celebrating Jesus, is the promised Son of God, is what Jesus is going to say about these men. Yet you are looking for ways to kill me because you have no room for my word. They had room in their life for the pitcher and the boots and the festival and the branches. Yet they had no room for his word. Here are people from the right group. They're children of Zion, they have the law, they live morally pure lives, they have the temple, they're in covenant with God, yet, yet, they want to kill Jesus. The fulfillment of all of those things. And Christ is clearly going to tell us why. He says they want to kill me because they have no room for my word. And I want to circle around that for the rest of our time here, having room for the word. What does it look like to make room for the Logos, for the word of Jesus? Luckily, Jesus tells one of his most famous parables about this very topic. It's the parable of the sower. And I and I hate to leave John 8, but I promise that we're going to come back. So we're going to jump back to Mark 4. And it's a parable that probably everybody here knows. It's one that we get kids to act out. At camp, I've sent groups of kids with four pans and a spade and said, come back with four different types of soil that we read about in the parable. And it's a great story. And when we tell it, it makes so much sense. Here's my problem with how we generally teach it. We don't act like it is literal life and death. This parable is just so good. We get caught up in all the symbols and lining everything up and explaining it, and we moralize and we wag our finger. And what it sounds like that we're saying is be a good little farmer. Keep your field clean, make your rows nice and straight. And we sound like we're doing the equivalent of telling our kids to tuck in their shirt and to make their bed. But hear me. I'm not just preaching here. I'm trying to sound like a voice shouting in the wilderness. Repent, change. This is literally the difference between living and dying. It's the difference between heaven and hell. It's the difference between being the one who picks up the rocks to kill Christ and one who is forgiven by him. Because in this parable, you aren't just picking weeds and rocks out of fields. You're farming your heart like it is life or death. Making room for the Word of Christ is not self-improvement, it is oxygen. On Apollo 13, an oxygen tank actually blows up. And the astronauts had to move into the lunar module as a lifeboat. And the problem was that the module was built to support two men for two days, but now it had to house three men for four days. And obviously, as the men breathe out, the carbon dioxide starts to rise. And this eventually would lead to their death. Luckily, NASA had a canister to clean the air of the rising CO2. Here's the problem the canisters are square, and the opening in the module is round. They had to make room for a square tool and a round hole. That was the difference between living and dying, between flying home and floating away in space. This was not about quality of life. This was about survival. What would you be willing to do to make room for the canister to save your life? Because what saves your life has to get inside the system. A square canister unused does not save a single man. It must literally become the air that you breathe in order to save you. The parable of the sower is going to give us three things to think about. The first thing that we need to think about is Satan. Jesus says that some seed falls on soil that is hard. The ground is packed. The seed can't get in the earth. And then Satan, like a bird, comes and takes the word away. Have you known people that they eat like this? They kind of guard their food. I think Doug has admitted that he actually did this and didn't know he did it until he was in his 20s. Maybe it was on a date that you found that. I'm not sure. Anyway, um, this is maybe how you grew up if you had a lot of siblings. Um, I have to confess, okay, I was the sibling that did that. I have a brother, I would walk up to him, I would punch him or thump him or something, and then when he was reeling from that, I would reach over and take food and say, big brother tax. Okay? I used to dad tax my kids' food. Please forgive me, it keeps getting bigger than me at one point. That's gonna come back to haunt me. When you come to your Bible, when you come to a sermon, when the word is served, put your arms around it. Act like you're in prison. Guard it. Guard it like it's the only food you're gonna get that day. Satan is fine with you hearing the word in passing, so long as he can come and snatch it up. Don't be fooled. Sitting in church, reading the verse of the day, cool. If your heart is hard and the seed just sits there, Satan is like that bird. He can wait one day, he can wait two days, maybe three, and boom, he swoops down. When you get the word, treat it like it is life or death to actually hold on to it. Make room in your heart for the word. Let it move in. Jesus says that the second seed falls on rocky soil. It springs up very quickly, but it has no root. And when trouble comes, the heat kills the plant. The heat is times of testing, it is pressure. The plant dies because the rocks blocked the roots. Rootedness implies death. It requires us to go deep. What rocks might we hold deep in our hearts that cause spiritual death in hard times? On June the 7th, 1976, the Teton Dam in um Idaho failed the very first time they filled it with water. The failure of the dam was not from anything that you could see. The previous day you would have not you would not have noticed cracks in the walls of the dam. On the outside, it looked strong and stable. The problem with with the dam was underground and unseen. The rock they built the dam upon was porous. And when the pressure of the water hit, the foundation gave way. The water carved a path through the dam's core. It failed underground, invisible to the naked eye, long before the water burst through and foot and flooded the valley below and did a billion dollars of damage, and people died. Our lives are like that. We can look like we have it together. The seed can be growing above the soil. We can come sit in these pews, we can teach the classes, yet there can be problems that people do not see. And then trouble comes and our dam breaks. And everyone is stunned. We say things like, they look like they were solid, like the seed was growing in their life. Yet, when pressure comes, when the water hits, when there's extreme heat, the seed dies and the dam fails and carnage is left. We've seen it. We've seen people fail that we did not think could fall. Jesus is warning us. Check your heart. Do you have rocks in there? Because you can hide them on good days, but when hard times hit, we get found out, get sick, have problems with your kids, lose a job, get hit with a big medical bill. Have all four of those at once. That's pressure. That's when you find out. Don't wait. Get your hands dirty. Dig in. Pry those things out. Take care of those things buried deep in your heart before the testing. The third seed falls in thorny soil. It represents the worries of life and the desire and the deceitfulness of wealth. And frankly, this sounds like the disease of our age. Busyness blended with pride, blended with greed. And most of you know that I like to read about the history of the church, that I love to read about the courage of those early followers, the ones who stood up to Rome, the ones who were beaten, burned, threatened, fed to lions, the ones who took down an empire with love, the ones who celebrated at funerals. I love those people. I want to be like them. But there's a part of me that thinks Satan knows that coming at us with these kinds of tests could just sharpen the church. Because it seems like when the blood of martyrs is built, that the church actually blossoms. And for most of us, at least in the West, Satan has changed his tactic. He distracts us, he makes us busy, he inflames worry in us. And Jesus says some of us do not make room for the word of God because our soil has just so many other things in it. The seed can't grow because it gets choked out. We just have too much going on. We're just too busy. And the word of God gets choked out by all these other things. And so this is where I could moralize and I could bring up stats about scream time and gaming and Snapchat and Doom scrolling and online news sites. But letting go of some of this stuff is not just a good idea. It can be life or death. There's a parable about how to trap a monkey. A hunter takes a jar and he fills it with food and rice and all sorts of goodies that a monkey would want to eat. And then he actually chains the jar down. And he makes the lip of the jar just big enough for a monkey's paw to To fit in. But when he makes it into a fist, he can't get his paw back out. The monkey is trapped not by the jar, but by his own unwillingness to release what is inside the jar. Our world is full of jars that trap us, they keep us busy, they steal our time, they steal our peace. They promise food, they promise to nourish us, but it never quite pays off. And when we have our hands stuck in so many jars, we're trapped. It's like thorns choking out our faith. So how do we live? How do we make room for the word of Jesus? How does this teaching end? What's the takeaway? It's right there in the key text, John 8, 37. And the word is kill. Jesus tells the Pharisees, you are looking for a way to kill me. Here's the deal: something has to die. Either we get put out with Jesus and we gather stones and we try to kill him, or we die to self and we start slaying anything in our lives that doesn't leave room for the words of Jesus. And when I tell you that my big takeaway is to start killing things, it sounds extreme. It's not my words, it's the language of the Bible. Galatians 5, 24 says this. Romans 8.13 says, For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. Colossians 3.5 says, put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed. I could go on and on. There's so many more verses that read just like this. Jesus says things like, gouge out your eyes and chop off your hands if they cause you to sin. Here's the thing. I've taken a dark turn. But John 8 is dark. People are picking up stones, they're ready to murder a man. And Jesus says they want to kill him because they have no room for his word. And therefore the issue is not whether something dies, the issue is what dies. Either I resist Jesus or I crucify the flesh. Either I make war on Christ or I make war on whatever in me won't make room for his word. Something will die. That is guaranteed. The question is this: what dies in your life today? You have a rock in your hand. Do you stone Christ or do you crucify the flesh? Do you cling to pride and sin? Do you hold dear the things that are spiritually killing you? Or do you surrender to the rule and the reign of Christ? Make room or pick up stones. Choice is yours. At Booth, they live for a week in a fragile shelter under an open sky so they would remember they were dependent on God. And maybe that image is the right one to leave with. A thin roof, open eyes, open hands, open heart, a pilgrim people living by grace, making room for their God. If you have things in your life that you need to crucify, if you need to make room for Christ, we want to help. Come as we stand and sing.