Matlock | 31/05/26 | About Faith | Andy Townsend

Matlock 

Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/354059/episodes/19267490-matlock-31-05-26-about-faith-andy-townsend.mp3

Andy spoke about Faith, where it comes from and what it means for us. 

Transcript

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Welcome to the Church in the Peak podcast. We hope you enjoy this message. For more information, visit churchinthepeak.org or come and join us at 10 a.m. every Sunday. After a lovely sunny week, eh? You know, it's I was working it out. It's three years since I preached this. Long while isn't it? So it's good. Good to be back after my ban. No, it wasn't. No, it was alright last time. No, I just thought um I'd asked um when they sent out uh an email saying to anybody who's preached before fancy preaching, I felt God had put a word on my heart, um that word was faith. And I thought I want to do something on faith. So that's what I'm gonna do this morning. So the the topic is faith. So we're going to look at um what is the object of faith? Because faith's got to have you've got to have faith in something. Um where does it come from? Where's faith's origin? Um, is faith important? Is it that important? And the last thing was to look at is are there any obstacles to faith or how can we overcome, if you think of it in a positive way, um, any obstacles to faith. Now, I was thinking about faith, because faith's a funny thing, isn't it? Because it's it's quite an abstract thing. It's not like you could point down and say chair or microphone or a knee. Um you can you can point at physical things, can't you? And even things like like love. Love, most of us can think, if you say love, you go, yeah, I know what love is. I love my wife, I love my children, I love my church, my family, my friends, I love chocolate. Um, everyone knows what love is, don't they? But you say faith, it just feels a little bit more detached, doesn't it? Um and you sort of know what it means. Sort of means to to believe in something, to trust in something, to have confidence in something. And in some ways, we all we all use faith all the time. When you all came in here, you trusted that the chairs you're sitting on would hold your weight. We did. We trusted in the chairs, we trusted in whoever designed it, we've done it before, and we didn't really think about it. Sometimes chairs don't hold your weight and you collapse, and then it's very funny, isn't it? It's very funny. That's some of my happiest memories of seeing people fall off chairs, it's brilliant, isn't it? Um just to show you how my mind works as well. Um, sometimes when I look up at things like this rigging up here, I think to myself, I hope the guys knew what they were doing. I hope whoever's put that up there um were good. I hope they trusted in them. I hope they were proper workmen. Because it shows you how my mind works. I'll tell you why, and Jane will Jane will will can confirm this. Because if I'd put that up there, I wouldn't be sitting there. Because I'm not very good. I'm not very good at that sort of thing. Um and it's just just the way my mind works, but I know I'm trusting the skilled people put that up put that up there. So they're they're fairly small things or sitting on a chair, or trusting that the workmen know what they're doing. We do trust, though, don't we, naturally, in much bigger things. So when we choose to get married or not get married, there's an element, there's a massive element of trust in that, isn't it? You're trusting the person you're marrying, you're trusting the the decisions that you're making. Um we'd be trusting in all sorts of ways. When you go for a new job, um you're you're trusting it's the right thing, that the firm you're going to is the right firm for you to work. There's some quite big things that we trust in. And if you sort of go even bigger, we all trust about those things are of this life, but we we all, and everybody does this, we all make decisions about what we believe and what we trust for the bigger things of life. So sometimes people think, oh, being a person of faith, because that's what we get caught, don't we? Someone will say we're people of faith, that's just for just for religious people. Um, but the the truth is that everybody, whether they some more consciously than others, but everybody makes decisions about how they live their lives based on what they believe. So even you'd say, well, not the atheist, the atheist doesn't believe in anything. They do actually, they're making some assumptions, aren't they? They're assuming that this universe that was created has just happened by chance, that we're here happened by chance, and that they're assuming that therefore life doesn't have any massive purpose to it. And that's that's in short, sort of really what a what you call an atheistic naturalistic belief is. It's a belief, isn't it? It's a belief, and the same way people believe different things. Now, when I was brought up, I was brought up in a with a very loving mum and dad in a lovely home. We were I wasn't brought up as a as a Christian, so I wouldn't say I had a faith in Christ when I was younger. But we we had we definitely we definitely had lots of Christian um principles that we lived by, but I wouldn't say I had as the object of my faith Jesus Christ. I wouldn't say that. I know a lot of you here probably weren't brought up um following Jesus. Now, I'll tell you what happened to me just in short, because something happened because we didn't really, for my monest, I didn't really have much of a focus um in my early years, certainly like my teenagers. And then when I was about 18 or 19 at my running club, because I do a lot of running, two guys who are a little bit older than me, who'd also been pretty aimless, like me, like most people are at that age, they suddenly changed. They suddenly had a focus in life, and that focus, it seemed to me, amazingly, was in this person called Jesus. And I thought, wow. My first thought was, wow, I thought they were normal. And I thought, I thought, Lee and Adrian, they're not they're not normal now. But what grabbed my attention was they were very, very happy, and that definitely got my attention because I wasn't happy, and I thought, if someone else is happy, I want to find out what's going on just there. And they told me about Jesus. They they would they had just come to faith themselves, so they're very, very excited, and they were dying to tell me. And they took me along to um an Assembly of God Pentecostal church, and it blew my mind. I felt like I'd I'd landed on Mars. I thought, what is going on here? And uh, you know, and I had to sing, I thought I've got to sing, I can't believe I've got to sing. And um, I went for four weeks, and every week I came up, it was it was shell shock, and they would take me home. I remember in the in the van, one of them had a work van, and they would say, What do you think of that? And I said, Oh, very, very interesting. And they would pray for me. I never prayed, they prayed for me. Um, and I was amazed. I remember what one week, what really really grabbed my attention, one of my friends. Now bear in mind this was 1990, so um the money was worth a bit more. One of my friends put in, I saw him out of the corner of my eye, he did it a bit sort of secretly in the offering that went around, 60 pounds. And I thought, that's that's a lot of money, 60 pounds. I couldn't believe it. And I thought, he must really believe this. He's putting money in there, and I'd put nothing in. And for me, for me, that was um that that was the that's that's not the clincher, but that was something that made me that's not why. I've never said that. I've never said I became a Christian because my friend, but but it definitely what it what it did do, it made me convince that he really did this was this was real. I thought it was real. I think he thought it was real anyway, but to me that was wow, amazing. Um, it's what people do with their money tells you a lot, doesn't it? What they believe in. And and afterwards, I remember the fourth time I went and I heard it was great. They gave, I thought every when I first went to church, I thought every message was a gospel message with an appeal. I just thought that was standard. Um, but what they were doing, of course, they were taking me along to their evening guest services, which were brilliant. Um, and after the fourth time, I there was something in me, there was a seismic shift, and I said, I'm going to put my faith, I'm gonna refocus my life on this man Jesus. And I realized what I had to do. I had to turn from what I was previously doing, I had to what the Bible calls repent and say, I'm going to follow this man who we've been singing about this morning, took my sins upon the cross. And it was amazing. I remember, I remember it just, I don't know if you probably had the same experience, I remember just like a wave came over me, and I woke up the next day and I went into, I was doing some part-time work at the time, and it was it was the same place to work, place of work, same people there. I remember it was a very, it wasn't it wasn't particularly nice place, it was down in a cellar, there was it's when people could smoke indoors and there was smoke all over the place, and all I was doing was writing out. It's before before computers, I was just writing out forms all day. But I just thought my life is different. And I remember sitting there thinking, everything has changed, nothing's changed in one sense, but everything has changed. And it was I had made Jesus, I'd not put this into words at the time, but I'd made Jesus the object of my life, the the object of my faith. And it all changed really from that moment on for me. Now, what I would say is that if I I like the church when I went, the people were nice, um, and you might have come here for the first time today, or you've been coming along for a while and you like the people, you like the cakes, you love Ian's cakes. Um, and that that could be a good reason to be telling people, can't it? But I don't think it would have grabbed my attention. If that would have been my sole focus, it wouldn't have grabbed my attention for many weeks. I'd have got bored, I'd have gone off and done something else. But something had happened. So I appreciate, I really appreciated the church and always have done since, and everything that goes with it, but it was because I'd made Jesus my focus that grabbed me, and it grabbed me forevermore. Um, just to say, if if if it's anybody here who's been coming along to church for a while, and you thought to yourself, I like it, I like the singing, I like the people, they're very friendly, but you think to yourself, I've not really put my faith in Jesus yet. If that is you, and you think, I've got questions though, I want to ask a few questions about this, then I would say this is a really good place to do that. So there's there's people you can chat to, there's even things like alpha. So if you're if you're not a Christian yet and you think actually, I want to just find out a bit more to see if if what Andy's talking about, this person who he's put his faith in, I want to see if that's true, then this is a great place to do it. So please ask, come along at the end, or you could sign up for an alpha course, but please do ask because I know for me, once my friends had told me um there was an itch inside of me that wouldn't go away, and I know I've got to do something about this. So is it possible to put up the first slide? That one, um, Hebrews 12. Is that okay? Thank you. So, yeah, just read the scripture. So, this is one you'll probably know very well. So, the this is Hebrews 12. The chapter before Hebrews Hebrews 11, you'll probably know it, is the one about the heroes of the faith. And it talks about all the great characters from the Bible who put their faith in God and seen great things happen. Near the end of that chapter, it also mentions that people tend to overlook those who gave their lives for their faiths as well. Um, you know, this it starts off all sort of uh positive, it is all positive, but all right near the end of that chapter. It talks about people who gave their lives for the Lord. And then the very next um chapter starts like this. It says, Letters, therefore, read letters run with perseverance, the race marked out for us. Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. This is it's a very, very um instructional verse, isn't it? Because the amount of times, and I still find myself 36 years later, after becoming a Christian, taking my eyes off Jesus and often fixing them on myself, my problems, what's going on, my head goes down, and I know it's the wrong thing to do because the scriptures say we take our eyes off ourselves. What we were doing earlier on in worship, wasn't it? We've all got a variety of things going on in our lives. Some good things, some bad things, some very painful things going on. But what we were doing earlier on, we were fixing our hearts and our attention on Jesus, weren't we? And that's the way it should be. That's the what God wants us to do because there's something that happens, it is the right thing to do, it's the way that God's designed it. And in doing so, of course, what we do, we we we get to know Jesus. It's not that we're standing back here. It's like we were saying about the words this morning. We we draw near to God, and drawing near to God doesn't just mean on a Sunday morning where we we come into God's presence, but as we do this, what happens is our relationship with God develops, doesn't it? We get to know Jesus better, yeah? Now it's it's a obviously because we we can't physically see Jesus, obviously, because this is this is uh by faith, but he's very real, isn't it? And he's and his relationship with us, his friendship with us is very real, and we can get to know him. Now I want to talk about where does faith originate from? Where does it where's what's the source of faith? So it's pretty easy, isn't it? If it's look at a look at a chair, this is obviously a different sort of faith to sit on a chair than it is to believe in Jesus. Because we can make some with our eyes, we can make some I could look at that and think, yep, looks pretty stable, I'll sit down on that, and we don't even think about it. So it's a bit of a bit of a silly comparison, really, isn't it? But when we put our faith in Jesus, we don't have something concrete like that. So where does our faith come from? Because I'm sure you're the same. You must have a number of family and family members and friends who, when they they when you talk about your faith, they go, hmm, I'm not too sure about this. Or they say time again, show me the proof, show me the proof that God is there, show me the proof, and they want proof. And I always say to them, I cannot prove it, I cannot prove it like say go up to a chair and touch it. I said, But the evidence points that way, and then I try and talk a bit more about the evidence for it. Um, and if I can pray for them, if they'll let me. So um, could we put up slide two, please? That's what Lisa. So there's a couple of verses here. So we're thinking about where does faith come from? So faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ. I'm gonna talk about that a little bit later on. So faith comes through hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ. Okay, and then just thought I'd put this one on. It says, right at the start of 2 Peter, Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who through the righteousness of our God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, have received a faith as precious as ours. So faith is something that it originates with God, and we receive it as a gift from God. It's not something we can conjure up ourselves, and we've all tried to do things where we get our white knuckles, I'm gonna try hard, I'm gonna try hard to believe. And that's not the way it works. Faith is is a gift from God, it actually starts from him, it all starts from him, and it is this word grace, another very important word. We receive it by grace, it's not through works, it's not we can't earn our way to faith. I can't be I can't do so many good things that I've suddenly got faith. It is a gift from God. So is it possible to put up the other one? Hebrews 11. So this is one again you will know. This is from the chapter before Hebrews 12, obviously. Um now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. So where faith comes from, it comes from God, it's a gift from Him. How do we receive it? We receive faith. Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. So, how do we know what to hope for? It's far as having confidence in what we hope for, because I could think of a number of hopes in my head now, I could just make up some hopes. I think, right, I hope for that, I hope for that, I hope for that. So, and think, right, I'm gonna have confidence in that. But my hopes that I'm making up in my head, if I'm just making them up, they're just my ideas, aren't they? So, where do we go? Where do where do we know these hopes, if you like, that we're confident in? Because we have to have some basis, don't we? Yeah, we know the object of our faith is Jesus, but but how do we know how do we know about him? How do we how do we have confidence in what we hope for? And of course, what we need to do is to go to the word of God, because that's where we'll find the that's where we find the promises of God, and that's where Jesus is revealed. So if we don't, we've got nothing to base it upon. So we all do this. I think we do it all the time, don't we? Where if you've been a Christian for a while, and I'm you've probably read many, many hundreds, thousands of hours. You've read the Bible, you've been in meetings like this, where you've heard the word of God um from the front, you've meditated on it, you've thought about it, you've prayed about it, and in thousands of ways, probably sometimes without thinking, you're making faith decisions based on what you believe, aren't you? All the time, all the time. And um sometimes other people would do different things, and you think, I wouldn't do that, I wouldn't do it that way. And why do you why do you think that? It's because you're thinking, that's not what the Bible says, that's not what I'm hoping for for the future. That's not what the kingdom of heaven is like. I wouldn't do that. Sometimes we do things ourselves and we look at ourselves and we say, I shouldn't have done that. Um, we know he shouldn't have done it because the Bible tells me so. And the Bible says I shouldn't do that. That's not what I'm hoping for in the future. That's not gonna be in heaven. I don't want that. So and I do find, I don't know about you, but I've been a say Christian 30, 36 years now, and I go back to the scriptures, and I sometimes I can read the same scripture over and over again, and I'll read it, and I'll think, I've got to make a change because my life's not matching up with that. I've let maybe a bit of bitterness creep in there, a bit of unforgiveness. Have you ever had that? You read the Bible and you've read that chapter hundreds of times, and you think, oh, that is me. And what happens is the promises in the word, the things that you're really hoping for, your heart starts to align with that again. And hopefully, if I'm right, I repent and I turn back to what God says. So okay, so here's a good here's an interesting question for you. Can you know the Bible really well, but not have faith in God? Is that possible? It is possible. I mean, I I listen to quite a lot, it's again, it's just what I like doing. I listen to quite a lot of YouTube conversations between atheists and Christians. I just find it very interesting. People, and these atheists, these are not, these are not just bad people who want to do down Christianity. These are people who are really thinking about it, and some of them know the Bible really, really well, very well versed in the Bible. They can quote scriptures, they can argue from a Christian perspective, and it's very interesting listening to them debate it, but they don't yet have faith in God. And I was thinking it's fascinating how they can know so much scripture. So, what we are hoping for, going back to that verse, what we're hoping for, they know those scriptures, but they don't have faith, they don't believe it. I was thinking, why can that be? There's a very interesting thing. I just want to drill down, it's possible to put that Roman scripture back up. I think it was the Romans 10. Yeah. Romans 10, 17, I think it was. That's the one, yeah, the top one just there. So just to drill down a little bit into the grammar of this, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ, or the word the word, word of Christ. Now that last bit there, so there's two in the Bible, there's two ways of putting the word of God. There's the the logos, which is the entire word of God. So in John 1, when it talks about um Jesus being the word and the word dwelling among us, that means the logos in its entirety. So Jesus was the fullness of God. That's what it that's what it says in John 1. And that word gets used in the Bible. But there's also when it says the word about Christ, that word is what we call the Rema word. I think Neil mentioned it a bit earlier on. Did you mention it, I think, earlier on? The the the Rhema word is the a good way of putting it would be the freshly spoken word of God. So if the Bible, if the Logos is the whole thing, the Rhema would be a verse out of the Bible that's specific to you for that occasion. Yeah, it's all the word of God. But when God breathes a word of life, that is what imparts the faith in somebody. Yeah? So to go back to when I was saved, so I heard the word of God at the start and something was working on me. But in there was one time when I heard it, but with it came the breath of God. And my I had I had a choice. It's not to take the choice from me, but I was able to respond, I responded to that. God gave me the ability to respond. But that that God breathed word, I remember the first time it happened to me after I was saved where I was because I'd read the Bible, and sometimes it was a bit dry. I don't know if you've ever had this. Then I opened it once, one day, and I can't remember, I remember the chapter, it was 1 Corinthians 2. Um, and I remember reading it, and it was about how God gives us God gives us the spirit, no eye is seen, no ear is heard, no mouth is um can no mind is conceived what God has prepared for those who love him. And I read it, but God has revealed it by the Spirit. And if I was an American, I would say it was like the 4th of July, but it was uh I would say it's like bonfi night, a good bonfi night. Fireworks went off, and I felt like my spirit exploded. And I remember telling a friend, and my friend went, Yeah, yeah, yeah. They didn't get why I was so passionate, but I'll just say, look at this, just look at this, and it was because God had opened my eyes, it was the Rima word for me, and it changed everything for me. Just thought, wow, God really does speak, and it changed everything. But that freshly spoken word of God, that is um, so we read the Bible, but it's always a it's a I always think it's a great idea to ask God to speak to you as you read the Bible. Don't just read it through is there's a benefit in it doing that, just reading the word of God, but ask God to speak to you because He He He is alive and He wants to see He loves you and He wants to speak to you. So is faith that important? I was thinking about this because I do watch the news quite a lot, and I never you never hear as a headline um something about faith, do you? Not at all. There's a lot about politics, there's a lot about other stuff, but there's not a lot about faith. It never seems to hit the headlines, and you think, is it that important? How it how important is it? Um and I'm gonna read just something, if it's okay, just from this book. It's something I read about 25 years ago, and it really made an impact on me. And uh I've read it two or three times since, and I was I'd looked the other day when I knew I was doing the preach, I looked on the bookshelf and thought I hope Jane's not throwing it away. And I found it, I found it on the shelf. Now, I hope this is alright. It's gonna take about four minutes to read this, but uh, Jane said I've got to read it all, didn't you, Jane? So I did it because I I think I think this explains how important faith is. So, this is by a guy called Ronald Dunn. He says, Salvation is like a house built beside a broad and busy highway. Like everyone else, I was born on that highway and was spending my life following it to its destination. At first the trip had been exciting and almost effortless, the constant flow of the crowd carrying me along. But the further down the road I got, the more difficult things became. This rings a bell. My original joy had dissipated, and I noticed that my fellow travellers rarely laughed anymore, and their occasional smiles seemed forced. The backpack I'd been issued at the beginning of the journey had grown heavier each day, and I was now permanently stooped by its weight. Worst of all, I'd been overtaken lately by an unexplainable fear of the end of the highway. One day my attention was drawn suddenly to the side of the highway to a magnificently constructed house. Over its narrow doors, a sign silently announced in bold letters, whoever enters will find rest. I don't know how I knew it, but I realized that if I could reach the inside of that beautiful house, I would be saved from the highway and its destination. Pushing my way through the mass of indifferent travellers, I broke clear of the crowd, ran up to the steps to the front door, tried it, it was locked. Perhaps it's just stuck, so I tried it again, it refused to open. I was confused. Why would someone put a sign up inviting people and then lock them out? So not knowing what to do, I pounded on the door, shouted for someone to open it, but it was useless. Suddenly a voice spoke my name and I spun around. It was the builder of the house. He placed a key in my hand on which was carved one word, faith. Turning back to the door, I inserted the key in the lock, twisted, and I heard the reassuring click. The door swung open. I stepped across the threshold. Immediately the backpack fell from my shoulders, my back began to straighten like a wilting flower, reaching for sunlight, and from deep within me my soul breathed a sigh of relief as an extraordinary sense of peace and well-being wrapped itself around me. The builder of the house welcomed me to my new home, explaining that everything in the house was now mine to enjoy. This was the house that Grace had built, and faith was the key. Surveying my surroundings, I saw that the house of salvation was a house with many rooms, and I was only in the foyer. Across the way was a door marked Answered Prayer. Next to it was daily victory, and next to it every need supplied. The row of doors each promised some spiritual blessing stretched endlessly throughout the house. The discovery of these other rooms puzzled me, for I failed to mention that in the foyer in which I stood, it was just jammed with people. Nobody was moving. It seemed that everyone who entered the house stopped in the foyer, never advancing beyond it, as though the foyer was the building. This was little better than the highway. Couldn't they see there was more to the house of salvation than the foyer? Surely the builder intended every room to be occupied. Hadn't he said that everything in the house was ours to enjoy? I for one had no desire to spend my life standing in the foyer. This was my father's house. I was his child, and all he possessed was mine. I went to the door, Mart answered prayer, grabbed the knob and twisted. It was locked. I went to the next door and the next. They were all locked. By this time I didn't I didn't try to pick the lock or knock the door down. I remembered my encounter with the front door and I knew you had to have a key. Although I'd only been in the house for a short time, I somehow managed to accumulate a large number of keys in my back pocket. Rummaging through my collection, I selected one, doing my best. I tried it in the door, didn't fit. Hmm, so I tried another one, religious activity. I'll get busy. Tried that, didn't work. Hmm, I know what, I'll be sincere. So I tried the key of sincerity, but it didn't open. Next, hmm, I tried the key of tithing. Tried tithing, I didn't get me in. But it was as powerless as everything else. It was beginning I was beginning to understand why everyone was in the foyer. And then I heard a familiar voice. It was the builder of the house. Child, he said, do you remember the key I gave you when you came into the house? Yes, I remember. What was it called? Why it was the key of faith? I answered. The key of faith, he said, is a master key that unlocks every door in the house. And he goes on to say, This was the greatest discovery of my life. It's a good picture, isn't it? It's a really, really good picture. So um so I read that and I thought, yeah, of course it is. And how many of us fall into that trap? We know that you come to Jesus through faith. And I've done it so many times where you think, right now, I'm gonna try really hard. Um, but it's all by faith and it's all by God's grace that we get there. So I just want to to finish off just by talking about um uh some of the obstacles that can can prevent us from growing in faith. So one thing I don't want to spend too long on it, but like I said, we can just look to ourselves, it's such a foolish thing to do, isn't it? We can think we can make things happen, we can do it. Um, and the amount of times I'm one of the worst for it. So if you if you're like that, I'm probably worse where I've just tried and tried and tried, and uh and then just know it's foolish, I'm looking in the wrong direction. And for me, it's only when I go for a quiet walk with God on my own in the woods, and I start talking to him, I think, yeah, yeah, I know it, I know, I know. And I come back and I feel God wash over me again, and he says, It's by grace through faith that this is gonna happen. Um, one obstacle that can so we can an obstacle can just be ourselves. Um, another obstacle can be when we we don't actually want, if going to be brutally honest, don't want to obey and don't want to listen to God. So you think surely not. Um you probably know that the stories from the Old Testament, but the Israelites, um, and again Paul talks about this in the New Testament, they many of them didn't enter the promised land because it said, what did it say they were? It said they were disobedient and obstinate. That's not you, but I can be like that, and so an unwillingness to to listen and obey. So one thing if if um if faith is through and just just I suppose I can only put it like just check your obedience, just think, is there something that you know that's going on that shouldn't be going on, or something that should be going on that's not going on. So just check your obedience, just check, because that can be a real blocker, can't it, if that's the case. And we we know we can come to God and we can we can repent. We can we can turn and say yeah. And now this this last one though, I really want to that I felt God put on. This was the for me, this was I suppose like the suppose the rema verse for what I want to share because I just felt like this uh applies to a lot of us. Um I want to talk to you a little bit about how well, first of all, about John the Baptist. John the Baptist is one of my heroes of the Bible. So we don't know loads about him in the Bible, but I just loved what I read about John the Baptist. I loved his fearlessness, I loved his fire, and I loved the way he just went for it and sort of almost literally went out on his sword to the end. But he he was he was just a great character. And he, I don't know if you know, just give you a little potted history of him. So he was he was uh he was born around the same time as Jesus. So he was born to um one of Mary's Jesus' mother's relatives, called Elizabeth. Um there's a great scene, I think it's in Luke 1, where Mary goes to visit, she's pregnant with Jesus, she goes to visit Elizabeth, Elizabeth's pregnant with John, and it says the the babe in Elizabeth's womb leapt with joy. It's a lovely verse, isn't it? I just it's it it's it's quite it's it's quite touching, really, isn't it? That when he just meeting Jesus, so we talk about knowing Jesus and making him the origin of your faith. John the Baptist knew him before he was even born, he leapt for joy. And we don't know, we don't know for sure, but he probably played with Jesus as a child. He probably saw him, there were relatives, he probably knew him pretty well. Yeah. Um, we next really get to hear about him when he's out in the wilderness, he's eating, it says he's eating locusts and wild honey, he's having a bit of a wild life. You imagine his hair's a bit long, he's walking around probably with a stick, and he's he's fiery. He's telling people to repent, he's telling people they need to get baptized, they need to turn to God, and and he tells everybody, he doesn't care who they are. He tells the Pharisees, he tells the Roman soldiers, he tells them they need to change their lives, and and he's baptizing people, and Jesus, his childhood friend, his relative, comes along, and Jesus says, I need to uh get baptized. And John says, Oh, what I get I need to get baptized by you, and Jesus says, No, this is the right thing to do. And so, of course, John baptizes him and is the start of Jesus' what we call public ministry. Um the voice comes from heaven and says, This is my my beloved son, and who I'm well pleased. And John's there and he he he hears this. Um and John says, This is this is the prophet, John the Baptist, the prophet, this is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So Jesus John was a very key figure. Okay, he's he's um, you know, in fact, Jesus goes on to say later on in the Bible, just he is, just how great John is, says there's no one been born of a woman who's greater than John. Um so John was a great figure. Um, and the next thing we hear about him, it's very interesting because he obviously carries on being bold and telling the truth and telling people things because we we learn that he's been put in prison. Um he's he's told Herod, he's told a king off for an adulterous relationship. And the Bible says for that, and from some other things that he's said, so he's probably been carrying on telling the truth, they threw him in prison. And this is it alright to put the next scripture up, the one from where's it from uh Matthew 11, if that's alright? It's alright. Did I miss one out? That's alright. So this is it. So I I think this is a very to me it's a really touching, moving scripture. So John's in prison. When John, who was in prison, heard about the deeds of the Messiah, he sent his disciples to ask him, to ask Jesus, are you the one to come, or should we expect someone else? He's asking this question. He's known him since he was in the womb. He's known him as a child, he's brought up with him. He's baptized Jesus. He heard a voice from heaven saying, This is my son, who I'm well pleased. John knows him. John said, This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Look at that question. Why is he asking that? Why is he asking that question? He's in jail. You know, you know what's happening. He's he's he's wondering what's going on. Why am I in prison? I've done the right thing, I've been bold, I've stepped out, I've done what God's the job gave me to do. I've I've I I I prophesied I've I've uh made the way for Jesus to come. Why am I in prison? He's only 32, 33. What's going on? Why is he imprisoned? Jesus replies, Go back and report to John what you hear and see. The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me. Jesus knew that John might be stumbling. And he's just saying to him, Don't worry. Um he's not saying to him, You're gonna get out of prison, because he doesn't get out of prison, he dies shortly after, doesn't he? He doesn't get out of prison. So he's not saying, but he's saying, Don't worry, you're right. Of course I am. He says, and the evidence is there's the evidence, the good news, isn't it? And I'd hope you don't know what John's reaction was, but I hope he went back and he was encouraged. He wasn't, you know the story. He does, he doesn't end in this life, it doesn't, it doesn't end well for John. He's getting beheaded shortly after he dies. But he has a glorious future, of course, doesn't he? In heaven, and he's done his job, which is all we can all do, isn't it? So I and I just felt that um I'll tell you what the word was that God gave me because I because there's other accounts in the Bible, and then I know you'd probably be aware of this, where other people are in prison and they get set free. So not long after in Acts, Peter's in prison. Um he's been speaking out, doing what they normally do, they get in trouble, they get put in prison, and he gets set free. And and out of people's prayers, you're thinking, wow, why didn't John? What didn't happen to John? Because I'm sure John was praying than his disciples. You know, you got Joseph in the Old Testament eventually gets out of prison. Some people do, but some people get killed, don't they? That's like I said, the heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11, some of them get killed, and John the Baptist was one of them. And I just felt this is the word really um for for for us, I felt. I felt some of us can feel like we're in prison. Not obviously physically in prison, like John the Baptist, and it hopefully won't end like it did for John the Baptist, but we can feel like we're trapped, maybe through hurts, disappointments, prayers that you you didn't think are being answered, bereavements, things can happen that can make us feel faith-wise like we're in prison, like we're trapped. And I just felt God wanting to encourage us and say, as Jesus said to John the Baptist, keep on going, keep on going, don't stumble, keep on going, keep on praying, keep on coming to church, keep on don't put on an act with your friends. Tell the trusted people, people that you trust, what's going on. Get them to pray for you. Don't put on a facade. Because if inside you feel like you're in prison, you don't want to stay, you don't want to stay in that state, yeah, on your own. So keep keep on going. And just the last thing to finish with I thought this was really interesting. So in Acts, just read this out quickly, in Acts 16, 25, there's a great story of Paul in prison with his friends. Again, they've been speaking out in prison, back in prison. And the Bible tells us that they were praying and singing praises to God in prison, they really didn't care, they were just there singing away. And what it said, it said, the other prisoners were listening to them. It's really interesting. So just remember, when you if you feel if you're in prison, just remember other people, your family and friends who aren't yet Christians, they're listening to you. They know that you're going through a difficult time, they're watching you, and you know your response. I know for me, when I've seen somebody in a difficult situation as a believer, respond with faith. They keep on praising God, they keep on doing the right thing, looking after people, they keep on doing it. My faith grows, and I think it has an impact on people. They see you, the other prisoners, the other people in there who don't know Jesus yet are watching you and how you respond, and it can bring them to faith. I think we'll leave you there if that's right. Thank you.