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Well, good morning. Like I said, my name is Vernon, and I guess you all know me. But when I first came out here, you know, I bought skis, I bought boots, I bought bindings, I had skins, I had this backpack thing. I was gonna do all the backcountry stuff. I have walkie talkies, which I have no idea why I would use those, but you know, it was in the store, and I'm like, of course I need walkie-talkies in the backcountry, and I've skied exactly zero days until last week. And last week I was like, well, I'm gonna go see if I can do this, right? I haven't stood up on skis in probably 15 years. So I was kind of expecting this to be not a good experience, you know. Like I don't even know how to get on the lift, is kind of what I was thinking. I had a little video though of uh of me playing of me out, you know, and I'm I'm doing the doing the the ledge pretty good, you know. I got my arms out, my knees pushed in, my butt's out, right? I'm looking pretty good. I'm not doing too bad. First day scans, crest debut, right? I was expecting, you know, kind of ruined it a little bit there, but you know, I was expecting to literally bulldoze the five-year-olds. You know, the videos are on Instagram. That was gonna be me. You know, I didn't know how I do this, but the next day went out with Andrew and we went back country skiing, and it was amazing, you know, and I just was feeling good. You know, we were just riding it. I mean, it was like, let's do this. All the muscle memory was still there. I still kind of just had it. No, the first day, you know, first time I ski'd greens, first time, then blues, then blacks, feeling pretty good. Then we went out, first time put skins on. Next week I'm like, or this week, I'm like, let's just keep on going. I'm gonna do the doubles. Might just do the the the root. What's what is the what is the mountain called? Red Lady. Might just do the red lady. And that's kind of how I roll. From from greens to the red lady in one week. That's all I need. Kind of how I roll. And just kind of reflecting on it. You know, and just, you know, the in especially downhill sports, whether it's skiing, mountain biking, there's this theme that they call send it. You gotta send it, right? Does anybody know what send it means? You go for it, right? Sometimes the the riskiest thing you can do is be conservative and hold back. If you want to, if you want to go over the handlebars, try to go real slow and and and figure it out real, and you but you will be riding over the handlebars, right? You gotta send it in a lot of times. And I just felt like that was just a good encouragement of me where I feel like for us as a church. I mean, just kind of reflecting on where we're going. I've had a lot of questions of like, okay, we're doing these groups now, we're gonna do, you know, all we plan for all this food. Do we have the ability to do all this food? We have all these flyers, we're gonna all invite our neighbors and friends, and and you know, we're gonna do this regeneration thing, we want to do this community center thing, and um just kind of a lot of questions of are we in a place to do those things? Do we have the money? Do we have the ability? Do we have the people? You know, is this is this us? Is this for us? But I just felt encouraged in that. You know what? Sometimes you just gotta send it. You just gotta send it. And I was reflecting, there's like all the books of people that I really admire that I'm like, I want to be like these guys. Pretty much they all do the same thing. They all sent it, right? This is two two two guys that basically this they're both of these books are similar in basically sending it. Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade, now crew, Lauren Cunningham, founder of YWAM. Similar books and a different message. Bill Bright's my life is not my own. Six words that will change you forever. Fortunately, it's not in a digital copy now, but you can the gist of it is that he's not all that talented. He's not all that smart. He he really wasn't that the greatest of the speaker, all those things. The whole book is basically like the reason God used me is I sent it, I just did it. I felt like God moving and calling, and I said, Okay. He was like, I was the least qualified and the least most um in terms of speaking. If you saw him speaking, he wasn't necessarily the best speaker, but that was that's the whole book, Lauren Cunningham. He's the book, Daring to Live on the Edge. And it's basically a history of his life, of him going through, kind of wrestling in his own journey of should I step out in faith and believe God to do these things? And he continued after continued just these miracles. Not all, not all of them worked. Some of them in the book, you're like, okay, that definitely did not work. And he ties it particularly to finances, but I just felt like that's just kind of where we're at as a church for me. And I know that it sounds like, oh, that's gonna be expensive. So we're gonna report once a quarter of just where our money's at, where our giving's at, so you can all kind of see and track along with this. But just I was encouraged in that personally this last week. We want to see the city reached. If 95% of people are sitting home right now, that's a lot of people waiting to encounter God. And so we we want to be a people that is going after them in bold ways and taking risks. And you know, if we're gonna tinker around and make sure our wheels are perfectly aligned, we may never get off the ramp. But so sending it is kind of just I wanted to say that as an intro, just because I have had a lot of questions, comments, emails. Kind of like, what are we doing? Are we big enough for these things? And I just want to encourage us that God is big enough and we can believe Him and trust Him. With that, I will pray and then we'll get started. I know every week I say I'm not supposed to give a sermon before the sermon, but I'm just not breaking, I'm not following that rule. I'm not following that rule, but I'll pray for us and then we'll get started. Uh Lord Jesus, we just thank you, God, for yes, God, just just men of faith, Lord, through history and women of faith, Lord, that have just demonstrated boldness and just obedience, Lord. And Lord, just build bright simple message, Lord, that he wasn't the most talented or the smartest or the most charismatic or any of those things. He just was the one willing to go and seek and save and to be obedient. And when things were stirred in his heart, Lord, whether they worked or not, Lord, he just walked forward faithfully. And Lord, I just pray you would stir that within us today, God, that we as a community, as a church, Lord, would would have faith, would have um just hope, Lord, that you have the power to save, Lord, that no one is too far from too far gone, Lord, and that um we just believe in prodigals returning and just people that have never never even walked into church, Lord just would would meet you for the first time. We thank you, God. Amen. Well, today we're starting a new series in the book of John. I'm calling Behold the Lamb of God, gazing at the beauty of Jesus through the gospel of John. It's gonna be 11 weeks, and every single week the message will essentially focus on who is Jesus. For Easter, I printed out and cut little cards that just have the 11 weeks of what the what the different topics will be. And and mainly, I mean, you can preach through John a lot of ways. For this 11 weeks, I just want to focus on who is Jesus? Who is Jesus Spurgeon, I think, said this. If Christ is not everything to you, he is in fact nothing to you. And that's just kind of what I want us to reflect on. That for the next 11 weeks, Jesus will be everything that we're going after, that we're looking at, that we're beholding, that we're pursuing, that we're wanting, that we're desiring. Jesus will be our everything that we behold. And today, just kind of as an intro, I just want to introduce beauty, this whole concept of beauty. I mean, it's saying gazing at the beauty of Jesus through the Gospel of John. I was talking to someone last week, went to seminary, Denver seminary, and he loves this concept of beauty, and he was reflecting in his you know 35 years in church, never has he heard a sermon on beauty. So I'm like, well, great, we're gonna do an intro on this whole concept of beauty, and I'm gonna start with kind of identifying three questions. What is beauty? Number two, how do we know his beauty? And number three, why do we care? So, what is beauty? Thomas Aquinas, who I mentioned a couple weeks ago about the Summa Theology, his definition is that beauty is that which gives us joy or satisfaction or pleasure when it's seen. Beauty is what gives us joy when we see it, it gets it stirs satisfaction when we see it, and there's two parts to that: both the seeing of beauty, we see beauty, and the response within us. It stirs joy, satisfaction, and pleasure. Another way to say it is that beautiful things don't beg for our attention. They're not out there saying, Hey, look at me, right? No, they don't beg for our attention. Beauty naturally draws us in and it captivates us, it moves us emotionally to a sense of joy and wonder and gratitude, celebration and longing and love. When we see the beauty of love or sacrifice or kindness or tenderness, creativity, we are filled with a pleasure and satisfaction. Beauty makes us happy. And the question is, why is that? Why does beauty stir in us joy or satisfaction? I believe it's because we are created to worship. We are created to worship. I believe you have a remarkable capacity to know beauty because we are uniquely created to worship. Another way to say it is that you are created with an amazing capacity to be moved by the beauty of God, and that way you are a vessel of glory. If you remember from a few weeks ago, um we talked about that we worship Jesus not merely because of his position, right? He's currently king of the universe, the creator of the Lord. He can he can smoosh us all. We all can be smooshed, he's all powerful, he's all-knowing, he's vast in his position. He is worthy of worship. But we don't worship him merely in his position, that he is this great God, and we're these very little people. No, we worship him also based in his person. We worship who he is in his character, he is worthy of worship because he embodies all that is good. He is worthy of worship because he demonstrates goodness. We worship who he is in his character, he is chiefly beautiful, altogether lovely, our beloved, our love and longing, our friend. So beauty is that which gives us joy. We are created with the capacity to know beauty, and and Jesus is chiefly beautiful. This is the main kind of theme of the whole series, that Jesus is the source and summation of all beauty. Jesus is the source and summation in all be all beauty, and I'll try to say it every week. Beauty is not merely in the eye of the beholder, it is objective and absolute. Plato argued that good is the source of all that is beautiful. When God created, he saw that it was good, and that good, when we see it, gives us joy and pleasure, that is beauty. But we know from Scripture that Jesus is actually the source and summation of all beauty, he is the summation of all that is good, the fountain and fullness of everything beautiful, the origin and outcome, revelation and completion of all beauty. Jesus is the source and summation of all beauty, and we were created uniquely with this capacity to know beauty, to know goodness. We are created for worship. So, in that regard, sin could be described as a misidentifying or misappropriating of beauty, misidentifying or misappropriating of beauty. Sin is a distorted vision of the true beautiful, or sin is a loving the creative beauty more than its source of the creator, or sin is trading eternal beauty for temporary attraction, it is the misalignment of our love away from ultimate beauty, and I'll explain this in two passages. One, this is a description from Ezekiel of Satan. You were the seal of perfection. This was what Satan was. You were full of wisdom, you were perfect in beauty. Every precious stone adorned you. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you. What was that wickedness found in Satan? Your heart became proud on account of your beauty. You corrupted your wisdom because of splendor. The wickedness of Satan was pride and a corruption, or really, in Hebrew, it's a destruction or death of wisdom. His wisdom died. And looking at himself, he lost sight of the beauty of God and the source of all beauty. He lost wisdom and the fear of God. So I threw you to the earth. I made a spectacle of you before kings. All the nations who knew you are appalled at you. You have come to a horrible end and will be no more. And we know from Revelation that he is ultimately cast in the lake of fire, tormented day and night for all eternity. Satan misidentified and misappropriated beauty that was his great downfall. Similarly, we read in Romans, for since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature are clearly seeing, being understood from what from what has been made, so that people without excuse, they exchange the glory of the immortal God. The beauty. What is glory? Glory is the revelation of beauty, the glory of God. They exchange the the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being of birds, animals, and reptiles. They're misidentifying or exchanging true beauty for what is empty. Again, it is the death of wisdom, the beginning of sin. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served created things rather than the creator, who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lust. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones, and the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were flamed with lust for one another. Sin is rooted in a loss or a destruction of wisdom. We're losing sight of true beauty. John Piper says it like this sin is what you do when your heart is not satisfied or your heart is not joyful in God. That's what sin is. Sin is losing sight of the beauty of God that produces the joy within us. Since beauty is that which gives us satisfaction when seeing, sin happens when we lose sight of the beauty of God. I really like this quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was German theologian during World War II. And he, in it in one of his books, that's not all that read, but in moments of temptation, God is quite unreal to us. He loses all reality. Satan is not sitting filling us with hatred of God, no, but with forgetfulness of God. It's forgetfulness of God, is the beginning of sin. Losing sight of the beauty of God. If you remember back, beauty is that which gives us joy and pleasure and satisfaction when we see it. But sin happens not when we disobey God, but when we lose sight of God. So just to recap, beauty is that which gives us joy and pleasure when seen. Beauty is that which gives us satisfaction when seen. Jesus is the source and summation of all beauty. The source and summation of all beauty. And sin is misidentifying or misappropriating beauty. So what do we do? We want to know back the beauty of God, the beauty in Jesus. The question can often come up: well, how do we know his beauty? He's not sitting here, you know, for us to gaze upon in a physical form at this point. How do we know his beauty? If he is the source and summation of all that is beautiful, and we were created with a capacity where we can see and know beauty, and our hearts respond with joy and satisfaction, and that joy and satisfaction keeps us in righteousness and walking with what is right. How do we know his beauty? There's two things I think that scripture tells us. One, we contemplate it, and two, we experience it. One we contemplate it and two experience it. In 2 Corinthians, Paul tells us, and we all, we all who are redeemed, made new by the Spirit of Christ, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory. We're contemplating the Lord's glory. What is glory again? Glory is the manifestation or the revelation of the beauty of God. That is glory. It's a big word that we use a lot of times. What is it really? We're just seeing the beauty of God. And what do we do? We contemplate, we reflect on, we stare at intensely the Lord's glory. His beauty is that which gives us joy and pleasure with seeing. So first thing is we contemplate the Lord's glory. When we gather to sing, when we gather to pray, when we're gathering at home, taking communion, when we're taking communion here, we are contemplating the Lord's beauty. We're wanting the beauty of God to be revealed to us. We are staring intensely at the beauty of Jesus. Secondly, we experience it just from the passage in Philippians a couple weeks ago. Paul says, I want to know Christ. Yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow attaining to the resurrection of the dead. Paul's saying, I want to know, I want to understand, I want to see or perceive Christ. And it's experiential with the Spirit of Christ within us. He's experiencing it. Throughout Paul's writing, it's a common theme that we're experiencing the life of Christ within us through the spirit of Christ that was gifted to us. Our knowledge of Jesus is experienced, experiential in and through our everyday life. So, how do we know the beauty of Jesus? We contemplate it, we set our minds on it, we set our gaze on it, we focus on it, we pursue it, we want to know the beauty of Jesus. That is our ambition, our hope, our drive, and we experience it. The Spirit of Christ within us. So why do we care? Why do we care? We're staring at, focusing on the Lord's glory. And what is the reaction to that? We are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. As we are knowing the glory or the the beauty of Jesus, we are being transformed increasingly into his likeness. You know, we talked about in Philippians that we we're becoming like minded to Christ. The coming like-minded to Christ. And there can be like, okay, well, how do I do that? Do I need to just memorize all these things better? One way Paul is saying that we do that, we're contemplating the beauty of Jesus. And in as we are increasingly amazed at the beauty of Jesus, we are increasingly transformed into his likeness. John says it this way. We know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. So in the ult our ultimate transformation, our ultimate like-mindedness with Christ is when we will see him face to face, we shall be like him in his character, in his beauty, because we will see him. But in the in-between of this life, we can contemplate, we can know, we can experience the beauty of Jesus. And as we increasingly know and are amazed at and behold the beauty of Jesus, we increasingly become like him, like-minded to him. People call this this is beholding to become. Beholding to become. So just to kind of recap again, beauty is that which gives us joy and pleasure when seen. Beauty is that which gives us joy and pleasure when seen. When we see Jesus, our reaction is joy and pleasure, satisfaction. You are beautiful. Sin is miss, or Jesus is the source and summation of all beauty. Jesus is the source and summation of all beauty. Sin is the misidentifying or misappropriating of beauty. So as we see and know the beauty of Jesus, we are increasingly transformed into the character of Jesus. So what do we do? Two things. We contemplate, fix our eyes on the beauty of Jesus. Day in, day out. We're contemplating, believing, wrestling with, reflecting on the beauty of Jesus. And as we are increasingly amazed in response of joy and wonder and awe and worship, we personally experience the beauty of Jesus through the Spirit of Christ living within us. Spurgeon says it like this all the beauties of the world are but a dim reflection. Not even a reflection, just a dim reflection of the beauty of Jesus. The more you know Christ, the more you will see that there is no beauty to be compared with him. So that is the hope of this series. We want to focus our attention, our gaze on the beauty of Jesus. We want to know him, we want to seek him, we want to see him, we want to pursue him. He is the ambition. Nothing else. Not any kind of you know life advice or other things. We are focusing on who Jesus is. And there's 11 weeks of just kind of the character of Jesus through John. This one is a little shorter simply because I just felt it important to introduce this whole idea of beauty. Um, but we'll be in John chapter 1, talking about how he is transcendent and imminent. Transcendent and imminent. Jesus is transcendent. It's it's kind of a bigger word, I'll go through it, but we'll start in verse one of John chapter one. In the beginning was the word. In the beginning was the word. And the word was with God, and the word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him, all things were made. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. Right, the source again. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. Sometimes I think it's easy to think of Jesus merely as just a righteous man, a beautiful, kind, generous, gentle man, right? That's sacrificed, and we can see him almost exclusively in that light, but he is so much more than that. Theologians give it this term transcendent. What does that mean? They're saying he is infinite, whereas everything else is finite. We are all finite. He is independent, perfectly independent, willingly independent to the Father, to himself. Everything else is dependent on him. He cannot change, whereas everything else can. He is eternal, whereas everything else is temporal. God is not only infinitely above us in degree. Jesus is not only infinitely above us in degree of righteousness and goodness and kindness. No, he is different, a different kind of being. He is wholly other. He is holy. So as we reflect on Jesus, it's not that he's just this great righteous man. No, he is this descent transcendent creator of the universe that all things were created by him, for him, and through him. He is the source of all beauty. He is he is infinite, where we are finite, he is holy, other, he is holy. Secondly, Jesus is imminent. Jesus is imminent, another kind of theological word. But by that we mean kind of the opposite of transcendent. He is imminent in that he is deeply intimate, he is personal, he is relational. Most shockingly, this transcendent God. When you sit back and really process this, the transcendent God is knowable. You can know him, I can know him. That's what it means that he's imminent. We can know the beauty of this marvelous, holy other holy God in Jesus. Jesus is imminent. Chapter or verse 14. The word Jesus became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory. We've seen his glory. We see his beauty, the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. So the encouragement for us is that we contemplate the beauty of Jesus. We celebrate, we pursue, we seek to know the beauty of Jesus over the next 10 weeks. We want to celebrate Jesus, contemplating who He is. I know that sometimes for me, you know, I sit down and read my Bible or books or theology, and you know, it can I can get wrapped up of like missing the point. I miss the point, right? I want to learn more facts about God instead of compliment contemplating or seeking or chasing after the beauty of God. So that's my encouragement. In this last week, I was kind of in this place. I even told the men's group that I think I was just I almost got in a circle where I lost sight of like the beauty of Jesus is the goal. That's the hope, that's the ambition, that's the dream, that's the desire. That's where my heart is satisfied. That's where I find joy and pleasure and peace. And in that satisfaction, I am transformed more into his likeness because I see his beauty. I'm beholding to become, right? And I almost got in a circle where I'm doing things around God and missing the beauty of God. And I just confessed it to the group of guys. And then sometimes I feel like God circles old songs for me, you know, and so I'm just listening to playlists. I don't know how you, I mean, YouTube of all these things is picking these songs, right? But somehow God can use YouTube. But I was just I was reflecting on that very thing of like, you know, I want to come back to beholding the beauty of God because that is my joy, satisfaction, that's my aim, that's our ambition, that's that's everything. And and I don't want to be forgetful of the goal. And in this song by United Pursuit, Will Reagan, he sings, he's called about running in circles. It starts with, it's so easy for me to forget. So easy for me to forget. And I run in circles, run in circles, forget what the goal is, I forget what the aim is, I forget the beauty of Jesus. I'm I'm doing I mean for him, he's doing worship circles, right? He's do, he's he's so close around God, but he's missing the point of his ambition, his hope in knowing the beauty of Jesus. And it just it just wrecked me. I was like, Lord God, I don't want to run in circles. I'm sorry, as it goes through the song. I'm sorry, God. I know back to where peace is, I know where joy is, I know where love is, coming back to contemplate the beauty of Jesus. So that's my hope and my prayer. That we we Jesus, we celebrate, we seek, we know you. Lord, you are the source and summation of all beauty, no no other man, no other program, no other building, no other anything else. Lord, you're the you truly are the source and summation, and we believe it. And Lord, our heart is after you in it. So, Jesus, just stir that as a desire within us as a congregation that we're hungry for you. Lord, not just life advice of or anything else, where we're hungry for you, we're hungry for the beauty of God, Lord, where our soul is satisfied, where we are full of happiness, Lord, through any season. Why? Because we see and know true beauty. So with that, we will close in communion and you can switch the screens. And communion, you know, is people describe it in several different ways, think of it in different ways. I really like what Barry said a couple weeks ago that it is remembering Jesus. It's remembering Jesus. I mean, it says that, but remembrance feels more formal, right? Remembering Jesus. And so it is a sense of worship where we are reflecting on the beauty of Jesus, the beauty of what he has done for us.