SPEAKER_00: If you have your Bibles, would you turn with me to John chapter 1?
SPEAKER_00: John chapter 1.
SPEAKER_00: Please forgive me today.
SPEAKER_00: I woke up a couple of days ago.
SPEAKER_00: My voice is weak and hoarse.
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna get through this together.
SPEAKER_00: John chapter 1.
SPEAKER_00: We'll read verses 6 through 13 as we continue our introduction to the Son of God.
SPEAKER_00: God's word says in John chapter 1, verse 6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
SPEAKER_00: He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him.
SPEAKER_00: He was not the light, but he came to bear witness about the light.
SPEAKER_00: The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.
SPEAKER_00: He was in the world, and the world was made through him.
SPEAKER_00: Yet the world did not know him.
SPEAKER_00: He came to his own people.
SPEAKER_00: And his own people did not receive him.
SPEAKER_00: But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
SPEAKER_00: Let me pray for us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, this morning we don't need any more of man's wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: We don't need any more of man's eloquence.
SPEAKER_00: No, Lord, what we need this morning is to glimpse the incandescent power of the risen Savior in such a way that transforms us, transforms our affections, transforms our desires, transforms our intentions, draws us by kindness into repentance that makes us new.
SPEAKER_00: I pray, Lord, those who don't know Christ, that today they would meet Christ, that you would open their eyes to see him.
SPEAKER_00: I pray for those, Lord, that love Jesus but have fallen away or cooling off, that today you would inflame their hearts and their affections.
SPEAKER_00: I pray, Lord, for those that are trying to endure and persevere, that you would use these humble means and this humble sermon to help them take one more step for one more day.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we offer all of this to you in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: You may be seated.
SPEAKER_00: You know, life is really filled with surprises, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: It seems like life is one plot twist after another.
SPEAKER_00: On my 10th birthday, I had great, I have, not had, they're still with us.
SPEAKER_00: I have great parents, and for my 10th birthday, they took me to Disney World.
SPEAKER_00: And I can remember actually on the day, the night of my 10th birthday, my mom was spending some one-on-one time with me in the pool at the hotel in Orlando, and we were there and we were having a great time.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember the conversation that we had that night was how perfect the trip had been, how perfect that night was, how perfect that day was.
SPEAKER_00: It was just as high as a 10-year-old boy's little affections can go.
SPEAKER_00: But then the plot twist came.
SPEAKER_00: The next morning we woke up in the hotel to the news that while we were out playing in the pool the night before, our house was burning to the ground.
SPEAKER_00: I remember the way a 10-year-old boy would watch my dad collapse to the floor of the Ramada Inn in Kissimmee, Florida, saying, Oh my God, oh my God, what have I done to deserve this?
SPEAKER_00: But you know, that fire disrupted every single thing in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: We drove home all the way with the dread of recognizing that there would not be a wall left standing and all of our things and everything that we knew about life changed.
SPEAKER_00: But there was a plot twist.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord would use what we saw as the greatest disruptor of our lives to ultimately transform our family.
SPEAKER_00: That through those circumstances, he ultimately led our family to a new church.
SPEAKER_00: And at that church, I would be converted and baptized.
SPEAKER_00: My dad would be converted and baptized, my sisters would be converted and baptized.
SPEAKER_00: And then, plot twist again, the Lord would bring me back there years later to pastor that church for 12 years.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the Lord is writing a story with each one of our lives, isn't He?
SPEAKER_00: And it's a story that is filled with unexpected turns.
SPEAKER_00: One of the things that gives me the greatest joy in walking with the Lord is knowing that he understands that personally.
SPEAKER_00: Because you see, it isn't just my story and it isn't just your story that is filled with unexpected turns and plot twists.
SPEAKER_00: This is how the story of the life of Jesus was written just the same.
SPEAKER_00: Last week we saw where the apostle John introduces us to Jesus by telling us who he is and where he's from and what he's come to do.
SPEAKER_00: But today, what he's going to show us is that the life of Jesus is going to take some unexpected turns.
SPEAKER_00: There are going to be some plot twists that we would have never thought, never seen coming.
SPEAKER_00: And so he's building into our hearts an anticipation that we're meant to have as we read the rest of his gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And so this morning, what I want us to see together is the twisting plot of Jesus' story.
SPEAKER_00: First, I want you to see that there is a surprising witness.
SPEAKER_00: There's a surprising witness.
SPEAKER_00: So John the Apostle introduces us to someone we know as John the Baptist.
SPEAKER_00: That's the John.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what's happening here with my system.
SPEAKER_00: Give me just a second.
SPEAKER_00: That's the John that we're being introduced here in verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: So these are two different gods.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's important.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're new to the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: There's John the Apostle, the disciple whom Jesus loved, and then there's John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And really, this is the perfect segue as we're moving from the Old Testament into the new.
SPEAKER_00: In the Old Testament, what God would often do is he would raise up a prophet to be able to speak to his people.
SPEAKER_00: The prophet would speak on behalf of God, and he would explain to that generation what God intended to do among his people at that time.
SPEAKER_00: The prophet would call the people of God to repentance.
SPEAKER_00: He would preach so that the heart of their peop of the people would be softened to the work of God in that generation, that they would be drawn into the Lord and saved from themselves.
SPEAKER_00: Well, John the Baptist is meant to be understood as the last of the Old Testament prophets that were introduced to John, and he is the man that has come as the forerunner of Christ to say what God has come to do in this generation, to call the people to repentance, to ask them to soften their hearts, to be able to witness what God has done in their lives and in their generation, that they might see it and God's kindness draw them into repentance.
SPEAKER_00: You'll notice that the nature of his ministry is one of witnessing.
SPEAKER_00: It's brought up three times.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 7, he came as a witness to do what?
SPEAKER_00: Bear witness.
SPEAKER_00: He was not the light, but he came to bear witness about the light.
SPEAKER_00: And so we see that at the very forefront of the ministry of John the Baptist is to bear witness, to be a witness on behalf of who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_00: Now, just like it is in our day, the idea of a witness in the first century was brought with it legal connotations.
SPEAKER_00: It was something, someone that you brought forward to help make the case that you needed to make.
SPEAKER_00: But John is kind of a unique witness.
SPEAKER_00: Years ago, my dad was actually in a bank robbery.
SPEAKER_00: He witnessed it.
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't the robbers, he witnessed a bank robbery.
SPEAKER_00: That would be a better way for me to put it.
SPEAKER_00: I told you earlier he's a good dude.
SPEAKER_00: All right, he's a good dude.
SPEAKER_00: But he witnessed a bank robbery.
SPEAKER_00: And after the robbery, the investigators wanted to do an interview with him.
SPEAKER_00: Now, when the investigators interviewed my dad, they really couldn't have cared less about what my dad thought was going to happen in the future.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't care about his stock market predictions.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't care about what he thought the economy or the government was going to do.
SPEAKER_00: You know what they wanted to know?
SPEAKER_00: They wanted to know about his past experience only.
SPEAKER_00: They cared about what he had witnessed, what he had seen, what his experience was, because they were trying to build a case and to make a case.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's what's unique about John, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: John is here, and John is given to us as a witness, to bear witness.
SPEAKER_00: But he's at the forefront of Jesus' ministry.
SPEAKER_00: He's in the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus hasn't raised anybody from the dead yet.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus hasn't caused the deaf to hear and the blind to see and the mute to speak yet.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus hasn't resurrected from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus hasn't fulfilled all those prophecies yet.
SPEAKER_00: He's at the beginning of his ministry, and yet it's here and it's calling John a witness.
SPEAKER_00: So in what sense?
SPEAKER_00: Well, a witness is someone that corroborates evidence by their own experience in a way that makes the case.
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's this big picture understanding of what a witness is that helps us understand the ministry of John the Baptist.
SPEAKER_00: That John the Baptist came to bear witness about the evidence that God had already presented.
SPEAKER_00: See, Jesus wasn't just, didn't just poof onto the screen, onto the scene.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus didn't come out of nowhere.
SPEAKER_00: For millennia, for centuries, God had been describing who the Messiah would be and what the Messiah would look like.
SPEAKER_00: He had been sharing with his people what the evidence they could keep in mind might look like.
SPEAKER_00: He had told us that he would come from the root of Jesse.
SPEAKER_00: That is, Jesus, the Messiah, would be born in the line of David.
SPEAKER_00: He had told us that he would be a suffering servant, that he would bear our iniquities in his body, that he would, our chastisement would fall upon him, that the punishment that we were owed and deserved, that it would be ours.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, brother.
SPEAKER_00: What a grace, man.
SPEAKER_00: What a grace.
SPEAKER_00: It's grace more for y'all than for me.
SPEAKER_00: Hope that's not too top heavy there.
SPEAKER_00: But he had told us that he would be the suffering servant, that he would be the one that would come and bring our chastisement upon himself.
SPEAKER_00: He had told us that in Isaiah that when the Messiah came, that suddenly the blind would begin to see and the deaf would begin to hear and the mute would begin to speak.
SPEAKER_00: And so what John has come to say is, hey, this is the cat.
SPEAKER_00: Like, this is the dude.
SPEAKER_00: This is the guy y'all have been waiting for.
SPEAKER_00: Let your experience bear witness as you see him that all of the evidence that God has given to us will be corroborated in him.
SPEAKER_00: And when you see that your experience corroborates the evidence of God that Jesus is the Messiah, when you see all of this, then your responsibility will be to join in my ministry to begin bearing witness about him.
SPEAKER_00: That's true about us, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: That we actually join John the Baptist in the business of bearing witness.
SPEAKER_00: You know, after the resurrection and ascension of Christ, we're called witnesses too.
SPEAKER_00: In Acts chapter 1, verse 8, it says, But you will receive power.
SPEAKER_00: I have it there at the bottom of your screen, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses.
SPEAKER_00: We are joining with John the Baptist in Jerusalem, in Judea, Samaria, and to the end of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: That John was here and he was pointing forward, saying, This is the guy, this is the Messiah, he is the corroboration of all of the evidence.
SPEAKER_00: And now our responsibility is to point back and say, This has been my experience.
SPEAKER_00: My experience corroborates all of the evidence that we've heard that Jesus is in fact the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: He is in fact the one that has come to deliver the world from his sins.
SPEAKER_00: He is the light that has stepped into the midst of the darkness.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's the hard part.
SPEAKER_00: The word witness that we get is the same word that we get our word martyr from.
SPEAKER_00: That wherever there is a witness, you can rest assured that there would be intimidation and shaming of that witness.
SPEAKER_00: Because people will want to manipulate that witness to fit their own agenda.
SPEAKER_00: And if someone they believe is a witness is a block to their agenda, they will do whatever they can to remove that block to their agenda.
SPEAKER_00: This was certainly the case for John the Baptist.
SPEAKER_00: John the Baptist would be imprisoned by Herod.
SPEAKER_00: And then he would be beheaded by Herod.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because he was an obstacle to the political intentions and desires of Herod.
SPEAKER_00: He was a political obstacle to the agenda that was being advanced in that day.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that a cool water bottle?
SPEAKER_00: I like to pretend that I'm cool.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not actually cool.
SPEAKER_00: You know what?
SPEAKER_00: The secularists in our day, they want to silence us in the same way, don't they?
SPEAKER_00: They want to silence us in the same way.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in 21st century America, it's very unlikely that you're going to be imprisoned and beheaded.
SPEAKER_00: But you know what'll happen?
SPEAKER_00: You'll be called and labeled with all kinds of labels that bring with them all kinds of shame, and they're bringing with it all kinds of shame in hopes that they can intimidate you into silence.
SPEAKER_00: They'll tell you that if you follow Jesus and you're one of these religious nuts that you're ignorant, you're backwards, you're uneducated, you're weak-minded.
SPEAKER_00: They'll take awful, hateful terms like bigot, and they'll attach them to you because you're holding to transcendent truths that has been passed down from millennia.
SPEAKER_00: Now, why is that?
SPEAKER_00: Why is that?
SPEAKER_00: Because they know that in a mountain of evidence, it is a witness that is most compelling and most persuasive, and they will do everything in their power to try to silence you and to keep you from being able to speak up.
SPEAKER_00: They'll do whatever they can to try to make sure that you don't get in the way of the agenda that they are attempting to advance.
SPEAKER_00: It reminds me of something that's going to happen.
SPEAKER_00: I think John may have had this in his mind.
SPEAKER_00: That in John chapter 9, he's going to tell the story of a man who was born blind.
SPEAKER_00: It's one of Jesus' kind of weirder miracles, to be honest with you.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus goes and he and he kind of hawks some loogies down in the dirt and he picks it up and he forms little spit mud cakes, okay?
SPEAKER_00: And he takes it and he packs it on the eyes of this man that has been born blind.
SPEAKER_00: This is a strange story if you've ever thought about it, right?
SPEAKER_00: And again, I think this is in John's mind as he's writing about the light.
SPEAKER_00: As the man begins to wipe away the spit cakes from his eyes, for the first time in his life, what happens?
SPEAKER_00: The light breaks through.
SPEAKER_00: He begins to be able to see what he could never see before.
SPEAKER_00: He begins to be able to experience what he could never experience before.
SPEAKER_00: He begins to be able to behold what he could never behold before.
SPEAKER_00: And word about this spreads quickly around town.
SPEAKER_00: You can imagine this man was born blind.
SPEAKER_00: He had a reputation of being blind.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the Pharisees didn't like it.
SPEAKER_00: It got in the way of their agenda.
SPEAKER_00: The religious leaders didn't like it.
SPEAKER_00: It got in the way of their agenda.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what's happening here.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, guys.
SPEAKER_00: All kinds of things happening here.
SPEAKER_00: Must mean we have a good word this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00: They didn't like it.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, what they said is that if you began to in any way agree that Jesus was the way, or that Jesus could be the Messiah, or that Jesus was sent from God, you would actually be cast out.
SPEAKER_00: You can read this for yourself in John chapter 1, you'd be cast out of the synagogue.
SPEAKER_00: That was akin to being exiled from your home community.
SPEAKER_00: That you were no longer seen as fit for worship.
SPEAKER_00: You were seen as someone who was unclean.
SPEAKER_00: You were seen as someone who shouldn't be associated with.
SPEAKER_00: So the Pharisees go and they begin to interrogate the man's parents and say, hey, was your son actually born blind?
SPEAKER_00: You tell us what happened, you let us know.
SPEAKER_00: And they're very political, they're very diplomatic.
SPEAKER_00: They don't want to be cast out of the synagogue.
SPEAKER_00: And so they say, I don't know, we don't know.
SPEAKER_00: And they kind of hem haw around, they find it, look, look, look, look.
SPEAKER_00: We all we know is the man was born blind, he's our son, he was raised in our house, but you're gonna have to go ask him for himself for yourself.
SPEAKER_00: And so the Pharisees go, do they go and they find the man that was born blind, but now can see, and they begin to interrogate him, and he tries to answer him, and then eventually the guy just gets fed up with him.
SPEAKER_00: I love this.
SPEAKER_00: He just gets annoyed.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Look, guys, I don't know the answers to all of your questions.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what I know I used to be blind, but now I can see.
SPEAKER_00: Before I was walking in darkness, but today I am walking in the light, and that's the man that did it.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all, that's what Shelby County needs from us.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Germantown needs from us, that's what Collierville needs from us.
SPEAKER_00: We don't need cold theologians, we don't need dry, rational arguments.
SPEAKER_00: All of those things are important a hundred percent.
SPEAKER_00: But what your classmates need and what your what your grandchildren need and what your children need to hear, and what your coworkers need to hear, is they need to hear your experience that corroborates all of the evidence about Jesus that says, I used to be blind, but now I can see.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we see in the twisting plot of Jesus' story, that there was a surprising witness.
SPEAKER_00: And next I want you to see that there's a stunning rejection.
SPEAKER_00: There's a stunning rejection.
SPEAKER_00: Here's where the plot twist really comes in.
SPEAKER_00: You'll notice there that he's called the true light.
SPEAKER_00: Now, he's called the true light.
SPEAKER_00: It's not so much, I don't think, that what John is trying to say is that he's like the real Messiah in the midst of a whole bunch of false start messiahs.
SPEAKER_00: That's probably part of it, but I don't even think that's the majority of what John is trying to say.
SPEAKER_00: That the idea of this word true is it's really an idea of fulfillment, of ultimate, right?
SPEAKER_00: That in other words, what he's wanting you to say is that the fulfillment of the light has come.
SPEAKER_00: The ultimate light has come, the true light has come.
SPEAKER_00: You see, you think back in the Exodus, and so much of the gospels are written against the context of the Exodus.
SPEAKER_00: This is gonna be something that's gonna come up repeatedly in our studies together.
SPEAKER_00: But you think back to the Exodus, and how was it that God guided his people at night through the wilderness?
SPEAKER_00: By a pillar of fire, right?
SPEAKER_00: See, that was a light.
SPEAKER_00: That was a light that God used to get his people to the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: But who is Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus isn't a light, Jesus is the light, the true light that ushers them into an eternal promised land.
SPEAKER_00: Think back to the wilderness again.
SPEAKER_00: How was it that God provided for his people the sustenance that he needed?
SPEAKER_00: They needed.
SPEAKER_00: But here's John, and he's saying, the manna in the wilderness was just some bread.
SPEAKER_00: It was just some provision, it was just temporary sustenance.
SPEAKER_00: But what we have in Christ is now the bread of life.
SPEAKER_00: We have true provision of God for the ongoing eternal well-being for his people.
SPEAKER_00: And David.
SPEAKER_00: We have a savior, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: A savior.
SPEAKER_00: A savior who would deliver God's people from their opponents, a savior who would go and slay the giant with a sling because of his faith in God.
SPEAKER_00: A savior who was who had a heart after God's own heart, right?
SPEAKER_00: But who is Christ?
SPEAKER_00: Christ is the true and greater David.
SPEAKER_00: He is the true Savior that has come to slay the final enemy, death, sin, and the grave.
SPEAKER_00: That now, now we might rejoice and walk, not with a savior who is after God's heart, but a savior who actually has God's heart.
SPEAKER_00: That what we've seen in the past, John is showing us, is that we've seen flickers, but now the light has been turned on.
SPEAKER_00: The true light has come in the person of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So, what would you expect people to do with the news that the Savior has come, that the true life has arrived?
SPEAKER_00: What would you expect to do with the one when the light has come, as we saw last week, has come, pushed back the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
SPEAKER_00: Well, you don't have to teach people who have been liberated to celebrate their deliverer, do you?
SPEAKER_00: The expectation here is, man, you're gonna party, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like the scriptures, by the way, are replete with parties.
SPEAKER_00: I think we ought to be partying people, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like, there's a lot of partying happening in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And you're expecting right here that you're about to read a preeminent, like all-time throwdown of a party.
SPEAKER_00: But instead, what do we read?
SPEAKER_00: It's stunning, and it's meant to be read against this context that he was in the world and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.
SPEAKER_00: He came not just to the world, he came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.
SPEAKER_00: It's a stunning rejection, it's a plot twist that you could never see coming.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 11 may be the height of human foolishness summarized in a single verse.
SPEAKER_00: That you have the very people of God that have had the word of God and the revelation of God and have been away.
SPEAKER_00: The Messiah of God.
SPEAKER_00: And here, the people that have the word and the revelation and the promises, here they have the Son of God walking in their midst.
SPEAKER_00: And he, even though they are his own people, they reject him.
SPEAKER_00: They deny him.
SPEAKER_00: They don't love him.
SPEAKER_00: They don't celebrate him.
SPEAKER_00: It's the height of human foolishness.
SPEAKER_00: It's even amplified when you begin to recognize that, very different from our culture, this was a hospitality culture.
SPEAKER_00: It was part of what we would consider the core values of the ancient Near East.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we live kind of in a back porch society, right?
SPEAKER_00: I've heard it described that we've kind of changed from a front porch society.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody sits there and waves at the traffic as it goes by to the back porch.
SPEAKER_00: We come in, close the garage door behind us, and hope nobody even knows that we're home, right?
SPEAKER_00: Very different in the ancient Near East.
SPEAKER_00: In the ancient Near East, your quality and character as a human being was often measured by how well you received people into your home.
SPEAKER_00: That people were welcomed into your home, and you didn't just give them what you could afford to give them.
SPEAKER_00: You didn't just give them, and as a matter of fact, if you travel to some of our third world countries, this is still very present.
SPEAKER_00: You didn't just give them what you could afford to give them, or kind of what your leftovers were.
SPEAKER_00: You brought to them sacrificially your best.
SPEAKER_00: You welcomed them into your home.
SPEAKER_00: You made the bed for them.
SPEAKER_00: You prepared meals for them.
SPEAKER_00: You celebrated them.
SPEAKER_00: You would go and kill the fatted calf.
SPEAKER_00: You may be eating rice all week, but they're gonna eat steak in your house, right?
SPEAKER_00: And as a matter of fact, if you didn't do this, you would be seen as a person of low character, of low moral fiber.
SPEAKER_00: You would be seen as a stingy person, you would be disciplined in the community for such.
SPEAKER_00: Unless, unless the person that you're welcoming is a person of ill repute, then you best not welcome that person into your house.
SPEAKER_00: If you welcome that person into your house, now your reputation is connected with them.
SPEAKER_00: Now you're viewed as a person of low character, you're viewed as a person of low moral value.
SPEAKER_00: You didn't want prostitutes leaving your house, you didn't want tax collectors hanging out at your house, you didn't want those that were thieves and stealing hanging out at your place.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see the picture here?
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus comes to his own people, and the expectation is that they're gonna roll out the red carpet, but they look at Jesus and instead they treat him like a common criminal.
SPEAKER_00: They treat him as though he is a prostitute, they treat him as though he is a tax collector, as though he is a person of ill repute, and being associated with him will tarnish their own reputations.
SPEAKER_00: I would say the greatest agony that I've ever witnessed in my ministry is the agony of a parent, a loving parent who has been rejected by their adult child.
SPEAKER_00: Years ago, I was I was counseling with a couple that were empty nesters, their children had grown up, and they they were not perfect people.
SPEAKER_00: I know them well.
SPEAKER_00: They would be honest, they would say that they made a lot of mistakes, raising their kids, all those kinds of things.
SPEAKER_00: But they had a committed marriage, they loved their kids, they taught their kids to love the Lord, they provided their kids all the opportunities that they could, they took them, gave them all these kinds of experiences, and then when their adult son got into his 30s, he decided that everything that they had ever done and everything that they had ever believed contradicted what he wanted.
SPEAKER_00: And so he completely abandoned them.
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking, shut them off, wouldn't respond to text messages, wouldn't respond to calls, they couldn't even get a rational explanation as to why.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm sitting with them in my living room, and I'm trying everything I can to try to counsel them.
SPEAKER_00: And so I say something to the effect of, you know, you're gonna have to grieve this like a death.
SPEAKER_00: That what you've experienced is essentially you've experienced the death of someone that you love more than your own life.
SPEAKER_00: And the mother stopped me.
SPEAKER_00: She says, No, Cody, this is far worse than a death.
SPEAKER_00: She said, if my son would have died five years ago, he would have died, and I would have believed, I would have been devastated, I would have been heartbroken, but I would have believed he died loving me.
SPEAKER_00: But instead, I live every single day with the belief that he is intentionally choosing to hate me.
SPEAKER_00: She said, This is far worse than a death.
SPEAKER_00: I've been rejected by my own kid.
SPEAKER_00: That's the picture of Jesus walking into his own creation among his own people and being abandoned by them, being forsaken by them.
SPEAKER_00: Being imagine the anguish in his soul.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine the the heartache and the pain and the agony.
SPEAKER_00: No wonder he weeps for Jerusalem when he sees it.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the Jews form for us a warning.
SPEAKER_00: They show us exactly how close you can be with to Jesus and still not be able to see him.
SPEAKER_00: Think about it.
SPEAKER_00: They had the promises of God, they had the word of God, they had the prophets of God, they had the promise of the Messiah, they had all of the evidence.
SPEAKER_00: They even had a new prophet, John the Baptist, pointing at the guy and saying, Hey, God sent me, this is him.
SPEAKER_00: Here is the Son of God, his heart thumping, his lungs inflating in their presence, and they can't see him.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't think we should begrudge the fact that we live in the Bible belt.
SPEAKER_00: I love that we live in the Bible belt.
SPEAKER_00: I like living in a place that has been influenced by Christian values.
SPEAKER_00: I like that.
SPEAKER_00: But there's a danger in it too, brothers and sisters.
SPEAKER_00: There's a danger.
SPEAKER_00: I can't imagine there is a greater saturation of Bibles in any place on the entire world more than the southeastern United States.
SPEAKER_00: Most of us grew up in homes where our grandparents told us the stories of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: We've said grace over the meals before we ate them.
SPEAKER_00: We prayed the Lord's Prayer before we ran out of the tunnel into football games.
SPEAKER_00: We've been in church since nine weeks, nine months before we were born.
SPEAKER_00: But brothers and sisters, don't you see that you can have all of the access to the Bibles?
SPEAKER_00: You can hear all of the stories about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You can hear all of the truth about Jesus, and you can still not see Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That we need to stop this morning and ask ourselves for just a moment, do we actually know him?
SPEAKER_00: Do we actually know, not just know stories about him, not just know the truth about him, not just know the promises about him, not just know what's the alleged good news about him, not just know facts about him.
SPEAKER_00: Do we know him in such a way that it inflames our hearts and sets our affection and determines the direction of our lives?
SPEAKER_00: Because I can think of no greater indictment on the day of judgment than to stand before the judgment seat of Christ with unprecedented access to the gospel, only to have your entire life been utterly indifferent about him.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know him?
SPEAKER_00: Do you actually know him?
SPEAKER_00: Or will yours, like his own people in John 1, be classified as a stunning rejection?
SPEAKER_00: Finally, I want you to see this morning that there's a supernatural birth.
SPEAKER_00: There's a supernatural birth.
SPEAKER_00: I told you last week that Luke and Matthew start their gospel different than the way that John does.
SPEAKER_00: Luke and Matthew start their gospel with this tell of a miraculous virgin birth.
SPEAKER_00: It's one that causes our imaginations and creativity and thoughts to just spiral in all kinds of directions, right?
SPEAKER_00: Well, just because John doesn't start with the virgin birth doesn't mean that he doesn't start with a miraculous and supernatural birth.
SPEAKER_00: He just doesn't start with the miraculous birth of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He starts with my miraculous birth and your miraculous birth.
SPEAKER_00: But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
SPEAKER_00: We are, we are who were born, who were born, our miraculous birth comes into view.
SPEAKER_00: A.W.
SPEAKER_00: Pink was a theologian a few generations ago, and he was meditating on the thought of how is it that the true light, the light of the world, could break into the darkness that's in this world?
SPEAKER_00: How is it that the true light is here and we can't see him?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, light is not hard for us to see, right?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe shapes are hard for us to see, details are hard for us to see, but when we're in the dark and there's a light, no matter how flickering it is, we can see the light.
SPEAKER_00: And so he comes to this conclusion.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I have it there at the bottom of the screen.
SPEAKER_00: Who needs to be told of his shining?
SPEAKER_00: The blind.
SPEAKER_00: That Paul tells us in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 1, that we are born dead in our trespasses.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what dead people can see?
SPEAKER_00: Nothing.
SPEAKER_00: That the reason that all of these people have been unable to see Jesus and to recognize their creator is he steps into their creation to recognize their Messiah when he comes and he dwells among his own people.
SPEAKER_00: The reason is because they're blind.
SPEAKER_00: The reason is because in their sin they're dead.
SPEAKER_00: The only hope that they have to be able to see Jesus and know Jesus and love Jesus and treasure Jesus, and the only hope that you have to know Jesus and see Jesus and love Jesus and treasure Jesus is if God brings you to life.
SPEAKER_00: If God turns on the lights, if God opens up your eyes and unstops your ears and gives you the words to say that Jesus is Lord, that here he is, and John says that we are not born of blood.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what he's saying.
SPEAKER_00: There were a lot of people among the Jewish people who thought that they were going to inherit the kingdom of God just because they were born on the line of Abraham, just because they had the right blood that was coursing through their veins.
SPEAKER_00: And there may be a lot of us who grew up in church and our grandmama was saved and our dad, our granddaddy was a preacher, and all the things, and we think that just because the southern blood is going through our veins, that we're gonna be right with God and we're gonna inherit the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us think it's because we're smart or because we're simple, some of us think it's because we're white or we're black or we're Hispanic.
SPEAKER_00: None of that is true.
SPEAKER_00: Not one of us are brought into the kingdom of God because of our genetic code.
SPEAKER_00: That's what John is saying.
SPEAKER_00: We're not born of blood, nor are we born of the will of the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: That is, it is not a result of religious passion and religious sincerity.
SPEAKER_00: The idea here of being the will of the flesh, this is the picture of two of a husband and a wife coming together in great passion to conceive a child.
SPEAKER_00: It's sincere, it's it's it's it's inflamed, it's zealous.
SPEAKER_00: The people that Jesus confronts most zealously in the gospels are those who most zealously say they're living for God.
SPEAKER_00: The Pharisees, right?
SPEAKER_00: That the world is bespeckled with people who say that they are living with red-hot affections for their gods, and y'all, that's not enough to inherit the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: Reading your Bible every day is not enough.
SPEAKER_00: Singing with a loud voice and lifting your hands is not enough.
SPEAKER_00: Even sharing the gospel is not enough.
SPEAKER_00: Nor is it the will of man.
SPEAKER_00: This is the picture of a husband initiating with his wife in hopes of conceiving of a child.
SPEAKER_00: And so the picture is that we are not born of God because of the blood that courses in our veins, because of our genetic code.
SPEAKER_00: We are not born of God because of our religious fervor and our religious sincerity, and we are not born of God because of the great effort with which we demonstrate, with our careful law keeping and making sure that we don't cuss or drink or hang with girls who do, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like those kinds of things, right?
SPEAKER_00: No, the picture is that the only way that you are born of God is if God does all of the bearing.
SPEAKER_00: If God opens up the eyes, if God inflames the heart, if God takes that heart of stone out of your chest, as Ezekiel says, and puts in your chest a heart of flesh, if if if God makes you see what you otherwise couldn't see, as the Spirit convicts you of your sins and draws you to Himself, so that now your heart used to beat for yourself, even if it was a religious beat, now it beats for the things of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Another way for us to say it, in a way that I hope you'll remember it, is that essentially what he's saying is that we are Willa.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I know that sounds strange.
SPEAKER_00: Let me explain to you what I mean.
SPEAKER_00: Years ago in seminary, I had a professor, Dr.
SPEAKER_00: Randy Stinson.
SPEAKER_00: And Dr.
SPEAKER_00: Stenson had nine children.
SPEAKER_00: I think seven of them were adopted.
SPEAKER_00: And he gets a call one day, he this was at this point, he was on child number eight.
SPEAKER_00: He gets a call one day from a friend that was kind of a part of an adoption agency, and the friend begins to tell him the story of a little four-year-old girl.
SPEAKER_00: He said, This four-year-old little girl was born to a mother that suffered so severely from postpartum that she said that she hated the child and detested the child and never bonded with the child.
SPEAKER_00: And so this little girl, for the first four years of her life, had been placed in a chair, and as far as they know, had never been hugged, had never been kissed, and she'd been sat in that chair for so long that she couldn't even stand up on her own because her muscles and her legs had never been developed.
unknown: Dr.
SPEAKER_00: Sinson said, as the man's describing the little girl, he said, I just interrupted him and said, We'll take him.
SPEAKER_00: Or we'll take her, we'll take her.
SPEAKER_00: She can live with us.
SPEAKER_00: She'll be our daughter.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, the guy's like, Don't you need to go and talk to your wife first?
SPEAKER_00: He says, I know my wife, we'll take her.
SPEAKER_00: So they're getting, he goes, he goes home and he begins to unpack the news to his wife that there's about to be a ninth child living in their house.
SPEAKER_00: And they get a name book before they go to pick her up from the agency and trying to pick out her name.
SPEAKER_00: They want to give her her name as soon as they meet her.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, they're going through all the names, and he said, all of a sudden, his wife spoke up and said authoritatively, her name is Willa.
unknown: Dr.
SPEAKER_00: Cinsen said, I was like, I don't really like that name.
SPEAKER_00: I don't really, why are we gonna name her Willa?
SPEAKER_00: I don't even know what that means.
SPEAKER_00: She said, the name Willa means desired one.
SPEAKER_00: And she said, I'm gonna tell her that story for the rest of her life that she's desired, loved, and wanted.
SPEAKER_00: So here's how John is starting his gospel.
SPEAKER_00: He's starting off by saying, if you have eyes to see, if you have ears to hear, if your heart beats for Jesus, if he has revealed himself to you, you are Willa.
SPEAKER_00: You are the desired one of God.
SPEAKER_00: And so your life, like mine, may be filled with burned down houses and crashing walls, it may be filled with divorces and hard situations, it may be filled with circumstances that are beyond your wildest imagination that you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy.
SPEAKER_00: But the hope that we have, the hope that is given here at the outset of the gospel of John, is that the resurrection lingers in the forefront.
SPEAKER_00: And one day, all of us, because we are the desired ones of God, will look back over the chronicles of history and we will see it woven together in such a way that we will call it good.