SPEAKER_01: Hey, thanks for checking out the podcast.
SPEAKER_01: This following episode is a message that our pastor Neil McClendon gave at our student impact night.
SPEAKER_01: Impact night is for students grades 7 through 12.
SPEAKER_01: This particular one took place on March 3rd, 2021.
SPEAKER_01: Enjoy it.
SPEAKER_00: Not good enough.
SPEAKER_00: Not, hey, that's about all I can expect for all the sin that I've committed in life.
SPEAKER_00: I really can't expect good.
SPEAKER_00: But yet the Bible says, David said it, a man that screwed it up pretty royally and put it in the ditch.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Surely, I mean, absolutely, without a doubt, beyond the shadow of uh of any uh figment of my imagination, surely the goodness of God shall follow me all the days of my life.
SPEAKER_00: That's how committed you are, God, to have letting us have the experience with goodness.
SPEAKER_00: I say that to say this, God.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that for the seventh grader in this room tonight, it would be an experience of goodness.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of intimidating to walk in a room full of people who don't know everybody, and you're like, hey, where's my dude?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, he's not here.
SPEAKER_00: Dang! There's goodness in this room with our name on it.
SPEAKER_00: For the person that struggles with the same habitual sin that has plagued them for the past three years, there's goodness in this room with their name on it.
SPEAKER_00: So, Holy Spirit, lead us into that truth because that's the juicy goodness of God.
SPEAKER_00: We can't call good anything that you call sin.
SPEAKER_00: So wean us off of calling good what you call sin.
SPEAKER_00: Because what we're saying is that we're just qualifying ourselves what we were created for.
SPEAKER_00: That makes no sense whatsoever.
SPEAKER_00: And so, Lord, we you, Jesus, you've qualified us on the cross for everything the Bible says is ours.
SPEAKER_00: We want to think about that tonight.
SPEAKER_00: And we want to be burned and jolted by what we hear, not to be shocked, but to be invited.
SPEAKER_00: This is our prayer, God, make it our experience.
SPEAKER_00: We pray in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: And everyone said, Amen.
SPEAKER_00: You can have a seat.
SPEAKER_00: If you've got a Bible, I invite you to take it open up to Luke chapter 10.
SPEAKER_00: For Luke chapter 10, for those of you who don't go to big church, I'm Pastor Neil.
SPEAKER_00: I'm the guy that talks up there to your mom and dad every Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to talk to you.
SPEAKER_00: I think Cam said to me, Cam and Cheyenne months ago said, Hey, would you talk on a Wednesday night this spring?
SPEAKER_00: I said, Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00: Uh they said, Well, we're doing a series on uh this is uh basically God is not blank.
SPEAKER_00: And so I want you to stick with me because when I tell you what I'm gonna talk about and I read it in the Bible, you're gonna be like, dude, I'm gonna go home and tell my parents, and I think that's great.
SPEAKER_00: I think you should go home and discuss it with your parents.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what I want to talk to you about tonight.
SPEAKER_00: God is not someone that cares about everything you care about.
SPEAKER_00: Some of y'all are like rock and roll, and some of you are like, ooh, what are you talking about, Willis?
SPEAKER_00: Uh let me say it again.
SPEAKER_00: God is not someone that cares about everything you care about.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what I'm not saying, I'm not saying God doesn't care about you, and I would never say, and I don't think anybody should ever look into your life and go, hey, God doesn't care about that.
SPEAKER_00: Why do you care about that?
SPEAKER_00: That's not our role, that's the Holy Spirit's role, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Just keep that in mind.
SPEAKER_00: I think it'll make sense we read the story of Mary and Martha, Luke chapter 10, verse 38.
SPEAKER_00: Now, as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village, and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house, and she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching.
SPEAKER_00: But Martha was distracted with much serving.
SPEAKER_00: And she went up to him and said, Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?
SPEAKER_00: Tell her then to help me.
SPEAKER_00: But the Lord answered her, Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary.
SPEAKER_00: Mary has chosen the good portion which will not be taken away from her.
SPEAKER_00: Very short, sweet, and to the point.
SPEAKER_00: And I would say to you, unless you um can get your head around and your heart around what the gospel is saying to us tonight, that your life will be about managing loss.
SPEAKER_00: And here's why, because things will be taken away from you.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, Hey, you're worried I'm saying about many things, but when one thing is really necessary, Mary's chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, if we don't learn to make the to choose the good portion, our life is about managing loss.
SPEAKER_00: We think, oh, this relationship's gonna work, it doesn't.
SPEAKER_00: We think this friendship's gonna work, it doesn't.
SPEAKER_00: And so you get disillusioned and a little bit anxious and a little bit depressed because like, dang, every time I get my heart set on something, it goes away.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the reasons that happens, students, is because we we we focus on so many things instead of the one necessary thing.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'll ask you a series of questions tonight.
SPEAKER_00: You can jot them down, you can kind of go, hey, I didn't quite get that.
SPEAKER_00: Would you tell me that again?
SPEAKER_00: Uh but I just want to make three points.
SPEAKER_00: And the first point from the text is simply this there are things in your life and in my life that God just does not care about.
SPEAKER_00: And that sounds terrible, but for you to believe that, for you to believe that, oh, God cares about everything I care about, listen to me.
SPEAKER_00: What that what you're really saying is that God is created in light of all of the things that I care about.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, that God's being is just a reflection of all my appetites.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I give you a snapshot from the first colony mall.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think it was first colony mall, may have been Memorial City.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I took my, we had our first daughter, Madison, took her to the mall.
SPEAKER_00: She's about three years old, and she wanted to go to some candy store, which is an overpriced ripoff.
SPEAKER_00: But they had these candy canes that were hollow plastic, and you could fill them up with as much as you wanted, and there was a set price.
SPEAKER_00: And there was a little girl in line in front of Madison, and she filled, and they had like a thousand candies, and it was incredible.
SPEAKER_00: And the little girl filled hers up with the same price for everything.
SPEAKER_00: They had chocolates, they had all kinds of stuff.
SPEAKER_00: The girl filled hers up with marshmallows.
SPEAKER_00: And she was just over there scooping them and putting them in.
SPEAKER_00: Her mom was like, babe, that's enough marshmallows.
SPEAKER_00: I love marshmallows.
SPEAKER_00: And I was just thinking, we ain't paying that price for just a thing full of marshmallows.
SPEAKER_00: And the little girl's like, and the mom kept trying to say, Oh, sweetie, why don't you put in some of these chocolate caramels right here?
SPEAKER_00: I love marshmallows.
SPEAKER_00: And she just kept scooping them in there.
SPEAKER_00: And then she's got strawberry marshmallows, white marshmallows, green marshmallows, little red baby marshmallows.
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, You're getting ripped off.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm looking at my kid the whole time, going, We are not getting any marshmallows, okay?
SPEAKER_00: We're going to the high-end stuff on the top shelf down there, pack that bad boy full.
SPEAKER_00: And she's like, Okay, I said, It's yours.
SPEAKER_00: Get whatever you want.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm just saying, we can get marshmallows at the grocery store.
SPEAKER_00: The little girl got her little tube full of marshmallows, slammed it on the counter.
SPEAKER_00: The mom paid$11.95.
SPEAKER_00: I my kid jacked hers full of chocolate, all kinds of chocolate, slammed it on the counter, and the guy behind the counter went, good choice.
SPEAKER_00: And I said, Yeah, I mean, I'm not into that, but if I'm that parent, I'm a little bit bitter.
SPEAKER_00: I pay 12 bucks for a thing full of marshmallows.
SPEAKER_00: If you're not careful, your concept of God is like this empty tube that you will fill up with all the things you care about in the 10th grade.
SPEAKER_00: Now you're gonna think, man, you we're hating on us.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the here's what I know that you don't quite realize yet.
SPEAKER_00: That in the 12th grade, you will not care about all the things you care about in the 10th grade.
SPEAKER_00: Blake, you're in the 12th grade, right?
SPEAKER_00: Do you care about all the things you cared about in the 10th grade?
SPEAKER_00: Do you look back on 10th grade, Blake, and think, what a knucklehead.
SPEAKER_00: What were you thinking?
SPEAKER_00: Have you did you like a girl in the 10th grade?
SPEAKER_00: You're like, man, she's hot, and now you're kind of like, whoo, whoo, thank you, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: No, no names, please.
SPEAKER_00: Your sister's snickering, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: She's like, oh yeah, I know her name.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, of course.
SPEAKER_00: But in the 10th grade, y'all like, did you just say that?
SPEAKER_00: And you're gonna have that experience too.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are like, oh, he's so fine.
SPEAKER_00: Just give it some time.
SPEAKER_00: Give it some time.
SPEAKER_00: So, Blake, but shh, 10th grade, you were like, oh man, this is the dignity.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is the and your sister's like, maybe not.
SPEAKER_00: 12th grade, you're walking around like Garth Brooks.
SPEAKER_00: I thank God for unanswered prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: Because you gotta here's the part of spiritual maturity.
SPEAKER_00: We don't talk to you about enough in the church.
SPEAKER_00: You got to learn to figure out what God cares about and build and bank your life on that.
SPEAKER_00: Because we, it's really in student ministry, we do you an injustice, we make it sound like God's this empty tube and you fill him up with all the things you care about, and then you worship that.
SPEAKER_00: And then about 10th grade, 11th grade, you get a driver's license and you don't want to worship that God.
SPEAKER_00: Matter of fact, you have deep-seated contempt for him because he has failed you repeatedly.
SPEAKER_00: And your parents can't figure out why you don't want to come to church, it's because you have contempt for a God that's really not God at all.
SPEAKER_00: It's not the God of the Bible, it's the God that you were told in vacation Bible school, oh, Jesus cares about everything you care about.
SPEAKER_00: Who wouldn't want to hear that?
SPEAKER_00: But when you're a 12th grader and you're getting ready to go off to AM, you need a durable, rugged Jesus that's full of holiness and glory, not your affections.
SPEAKER_00: Left over and lukewarm from the 10th grade.
SPEAKER_00: And so Martha makes the mistake that so many people make, and it's the mistake of assuming that God cares about everything you care about.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the text again.
SPEAKER_00: She says, I mean, she's got a sister Mary who's just sitting at the Lord's feet, listening to him teach.
SPEAKER_00: I just picture Mary Blake, don't tell anybody, I don't want to get in trouble.
SPEAKER_00: I just picture Mary sitting at Jesus' feet, just kind of slow smoking a cigarette and go, Do you mind if I French inhale, Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Because I think what you're saying is awesome right now.
SPEAKER_00: Go ahead.
SPEAKER_00: Don't pay no attention to my crazy sister.
SPEAKER_00: She likes to get a lot of suck-up brownie points by impressing all the adults in the room.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just down with that, whatever you're talking about.
SPEAKER_00: So you just keep talking.
SPEAKER_00: And we we we we we hear things like that.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, ugh.
SPEAKER_00: But look what the Bible says.
SPEAKER_00: Look what Martha says.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?
SPEAKER_00: Tell her then to help me.
SPEAKER_00: You're not in a good way, Blake, when you do not need Jesus to answer your questions.
SPEAKER_00: So one of the first questions I want to give you today is simply this do you really need God to answer your questions?
SPEAKER_00: Or you can just answer them all by yourself.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Martha does.
SPEAKER_00: When you assume you don't need God, Lord, don't you care my sister's left me to serve alone?
SPEAKER_00: Tell her then to help me.
SPEAKER_00: What she didn't give Jesus a chance to answer the question.
SPEAKER_00: She doesn't need him to answer.
SPEAKER_00: She knows the answer.
SPEAKER_00: She needs Jesus to jump up and do what she's telling him to do.
SPEAKER_00: And basically, Lord, do you not care?
SPEAKER_00: The answer is no, I don't.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care that your sister's left you to serve alone.
SPEAKER_00: Matter of fact, if I was with if I was your sister, I'd leave you to serve alone too, because your life doesn't look that interesting.
SPEAKER_00: You look covered with sweat and guilt and determination.
SPEAKER_00: But we don't talk about that, Jesus, in church.
SPEAKER_00: It just says, nah, thank you for asking, but no, I don't.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus never answers a question because he doesn't have to, because Martha knows the answer, and the answer is I need you just to get up and do what I want.
SPEAKER_00: That's her problem.
SPEAKER_00: It's our problem.
SPEAKER_00: You don't need God to answer your questions.
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to get to that point because if you don't need God to answer your questions, then the next step is you don't need God.
SPEAKER_00: And by the time you're a senior, you're just going through the motions because your parents make you come, and it's kind of like, I'm really not connected to this.
SPEAKER_00: I don't even believe this.
SPEAKER_00: I have contempt for all of this.
SPEAKER_00: No, you don't.
SPEAKER_00: No one's ever seen and understood the God of the Bible and had contempt for him.
SPEAKER_00: People will see in Daniel the Sunday, they just fall at his feet and become like a dead bear.
SPEAKER_00: They just freak out and pee their pants.
SPEAKER_00: They're like, oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_00: No one goes, eh, no, thanks.
SPEAKER_00: I'm good.
SPEAKER_00: But this little plastic Jesus that's hollow that you fill up with all your middle school affections and ideologies about 10th grade, you can't stand him.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus comes along, Lord, don't you care that my sister's left me to serve alone?
SPEAKER_00: No, the answer is not at all.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus responds, I don't care.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm not gonna tell her to help you.
SPEAKER_00: You say, How do you know that?
SPEAKER_00: Because Mary is famous for intimacy with Jesus, not making biscuits.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you care?
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for asking.
SPEAKER_00: No, not really.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta ask yourself as you sit in this room tonight, what do I really care about?
SPEAKER_00: What do I really care about?
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus look at his response.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Martha, Martha, you're anxious and troubled.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, if I if somebody said you got two words to explain this, to describe this generation, I'd pick those two words.
SPEAKER_00: Anxious and troubled.
SPEAKER_00: If you're not careful students, you are on a head-on collision course to be Mara, to be Martha and never Mary.
SPEAKER_00: Just running around, just doing everything, volunteering, helping out, getting extra points at school and this, that, and the other, doing all the right things and feeling wrong when you get in bed at night.
SPEAKER_00: Like, what's wrong with me?
SPEAKER_00: Nothing.
SPEAKER_00: You just live in a world that sold you on many things instead of one thing.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the second thing I want to say.
SPEAKER_00: You can discover what they are.
SPEAKER_00: There are things in your life that God just does not care about.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, you can discover what they are.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 41, the Lord answered, Martha, Martha, you're anxious and troubled.
SPEAKER_00: Two words for your generation, anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary.
SPEAKER_00: Mary has chosen the good portion which will not be taken away from her.
SPEAKER_00: Let me just start with verse 41.
SPEAKER_00: You can discover what they are.
SPEAKER_00: Notice how Jesus describes Martha anxious and troubled because she's worried about many things when her soul was created for one thing.
SPEAKER_00: Only one thing is necessary.
SPEAKER_00: Here's another question I want you to think about tonight.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe not in this room.
SPEAKER_00: You could talk with your friends afterwards.
SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, that man's scary.
SPEAKER_00: He needs to stay up there with the belly adults.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing I want you to think about.
SPEAKER_00: As you stay in this room, what's your one necessary thing?
SPEAKER_00: He says, You're worried.
SPEAKER_00: You're jacked up about many things.
SPEAKER_00: But one thing is necessary.
SPEAKER_00: What's your one necessary thing?
SPEAKER_00: Right now on this Wednesday night.
SPEAKER_00: What is your one necessary thing?
SPEAKER_00: You're in a tizzy about many things.
SPEAKER_00: You get on TikTok and you just check it out and it just gets you jacked up.
SPEAKER_00: You get on any social media, and it's just kind of like more stuff to process, and it's just a platform for comparison.
SPEAKER_00: You feel good 20 minutes later, you want to offer yourself in the shower because you don't look like them, you're not as funny as them, you don't have any followers as them.
SPEAKER_00: And I would just say to you very lovingly, you're worried about many things.
SPEAKER_00: There's only one thing it's necessary in a world full of many things.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying, oh, there's not many things.
SPEAKER_00: Are you kidding me?
SPEAKER_00: There's many things going on.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but there's only one thing that just because something's going on, it's not necessary.
SPEAKER_00: Just because something's happening.
SPEAKER_00: Oh man, there's a big get-the-go, there's a party.
SPEAKER_00: There's a guy in our church, I won't tell you who, because many of you know him, sat on my back porch for me one night.
SPEAKER_00: We're just hanging out like dudes, and I said, So this is back around New Year last year.
SPEAKER_00: Uh like coming up to the New Year.
SPEAKER_00: I said, What are you guys doing for the New Year?
SPEAKER_00: Because oh, we're going to a party at so-and-so's house, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
SPEAKER_00: And then he realized that he's naming off all these people from our church that are going to the party.
SPEAKER_00: And he's talking to me who's not invited to the party.
SPEAKER_00: And he's like, Oh, and I said, Oh, no, no, don't feel bad.
SPEAKER_00: Less people to go talk to, that's a present for me, okay?
SPEAKER_00: I'm not thinking, oh, why am I not invited to that party?
SPEAKER_00: And I said, I think parties are great.
SPEAKER_00: But when I go to parties, I go sit in the corner and talk to one person.
SPEAKER_00: I don't get up on the fireplace and go, hey, look, look, it's a barking dog, everybody.
SPEAKER_00: I said, I just I get people down.
SPEAKER_00: I just have to fast from people.
SPEAKER_00: He goes, thanks for saying that.
SPEAKER_00: Because when I started naming all the people that were coming, I was like, I feel kind of awkward.
SPEAKER_00: And I said, No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: I said to him what I'm saying to you, I said, that's in the category of many things for me, and it's good.
SPEAKER_00: I think parties are good.
SPEAKER_00: You should have parties.
SPEAKER_00: Have people over your house, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Get your mom to rap.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but many things, one thing necessary.
SPEAKER_00: There will always be many things.
SPEAKER_00: See, the illusion that you live under as a student is you just think, hey, when I graduate and I go to college, I'm gonna get it all figured out.
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna slow down.
SPEAKER_00: I saw the adults in the back kind of going, stop smoking crack, kids.
SPEAKER_00: You get out of college, I get the first job, it's gonna be better.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: You get some crazy roommates that steal from you.
SPEAKER_00: And you're like, why do I have a pistol in your ear, man?
SPEAKER_00: Get up.
SPEAKER_00: Move your car.
SPEAKER_00: Stop parking behind me.
SPEAKER_00: And then you think, oh man, I get married, it's gonna be better.
SPEAKER_00: That's a married person from the dark back there.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, it's great.
SPEAKER_00: I highly recommend marriage, okay?
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm I'm into marriage.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's incredible.
SPEAKER_00: Uh but not if you think it's gonna fix you.
SPEAKER_00: There are things in your life God just doesn't care about.
SPEAKER_00: You can figure out what they are.
SPEAKER_00: How do you do that?
SPEAKER_00: You do that by not focusing on many things, but focusing on the one necessary thing.
SPEAKER_00: The way you move from being anxious and troubled is to figure out the one thing that is necessary.
SPEAKER_00: Because unless you learn to focus on the one necessary thing that's presenting in your life right now, your life will be a life of loss management.
SPEAKER_00: Really, not loss management.
SPEAKER_00: If you believe the Bible, things will be taken away from you because you can't be trusted with eternal things because you're so focused on the temporal.
SPEAKER_00: Look at what Jesus says.
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean taken away?
SPEAKER_00: That's not very cool.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Martha, Martha, you're anxious and jacked up, worried about many things.
SPEAKER_00: One thing is necessary.
SPEAKER_00: More Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.
SPEAKER_00: Translation: you've chosen the bad portion and it will be taken away from you because you can't be trusted with it.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what we don't tell you about God that we should tell you.
SPEAKER_00: God reveals to you as much as he knows he can trust you with.
SPEAKER_00: He reveals to you.
SPEAKER_00: It's my he doesn't reveal now.
SPEAKER_00: I love my father-in-law, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Ask Sophie, he's a great man.
SPEAKER_00: I love him.
SPEAKER_00: But he has this one phrase he says all the time, and every time he says it around my kids, I'm just like, my wife's like squeezing my leg under the table.
SPEAKER_00: Stop.
SPEAKER_00: Like, that ain't true.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what he says: like, it's great, probably probably on a bumper sticker somewhere, or the ground's level at the foot of the cross.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, basically, it means that God feels the same way about everybody.
SPEAKER_00: That's not true, Blake.
SPEAKER_00: There's people in life that God's looking for people that he trusts.
SPEAKER_00: And when he finds somebody he trusts because he knows them, he entrusts more to them.
SPEAKER_00: That's why the Bible says in Luke 12, 48, unwhome much is given, much is required.
SPEAKER_00: And from him whom they've entrusted much, that person will ask all the more.
SPEAKER_00: Or I would get to the here's the last point.
SPEAKER_00: Is that there are things in your life that God just doesn't care about?
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, you can you can know what they are.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, knowing makes all the difference.
SPEAKER_00: Now I know it sounds crazy because we we live in a country where people complain about socialism.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not for socialism.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's a it's a theology for the lazy people.
SPEAKER_00: Uh uh, but we practice spiritual socialism.
SPEAKER_00: We act like, oh, everybody, God loves everybody, and and everybody gets treated the same way.
SPEAKER_00: Then if you're in Luke, turn to the right to John chapter 12 and help me understand this, and we'll be done.
SPEAKER_00: You still with me?
SPEAKER_00: John chapter 12, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: Now this happens best we can tell, Blake, Mary and Martha, early on, just just shy of the midpoint of Jesus' earthly ministry.
SPEAKER_00: We jump into John 12, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: Six days before Passover, Jesus is a week from dying.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: He's entering the last two weeks of his life.
SPEAKER_00: Look what happens.
SPEAKER_00: John 12, 1.
SPEAKER_00: Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: So they gave a dinner for him there.
SPEAKER_00: Martha served.
SPEAKER_00: Look at me.
SPEAKER_00: Some things never change.
SPEAKER_00: That's all Martha knows to do, Blake.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, don't you care, my sister?
SPEAKER_00: Let me do all the work.
SPEAKER_00: Serve alone.
SPEAKER_00: Tell her to help me.
SPEAKER_00: No, I don't care.
SPEAKER_00: And you should stop caring.
SPEAKER_00: You'd be a more interesting person if you stopped being such a nervous Nelly all the time.
SPEAKER_00: Martha served.
SPEAKER_00: And Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at the table.
SPEAKER_00: Lazarus is just laid back with his mind on his money and his money on his mind.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't care.
SPEAKER_00: He's just like, Jesus saw me dead.
SPEAKER_00: What am I gonna do to impress him?
SPEAKER_00: Matter of fact, he'd been here so long the Bible says that he stunk.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, all the acts, body spray in the world ain't gonna fix that, middle school guys.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is like, dude, you dead.
SPEAKER_00: Because his sister said, Lord, he's been dead four days, he stinketh.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is like, back out of the way.
SPEAKER_00: But look what the Bible says.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Hey, so they gave a dinner there for him there.
SPEAKER_00: Martha served, Lazarus, and one of those reclining at the table.
SPEAKER_00: See, if you think that God treats everyone the same, explain this to me.
SPEAKER_00: Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair.
SPEAKER_00: The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
SPEAKER_00: But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, who was about to betray him, said, Why was this ointment not sold for uh for the poor?
SPEAKER_00: Sold for 300 denarii and given to the poor.
SPEAKER_00: He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief.
SPEAKER_00: And having charge of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, Leave her alone so that they leave her alone so that she may keep it for the day of my burial.
SPEAKER_00: For the poor you will always have with you, but you do not always have me.
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean?
SPEAKER_00: No one makes all the difference.
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's not that that you weren't doing the right things.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that going to church, reading your Bible, all those things are good things.
SPEAKER_00: It's just that you're you, if you're not careful, we live in a world that ingrains you and teaches you to teach to care about temporary things, many things at the expense of the one necessary thing.
SPEAKER_00: What that does is it sets you up to live with this foam, the sense of FOMO, the sense that I'm I'm missing out.
SPEAKER_00: My friends are all at party, they're going here, they went to the beach, they went shopping, da da da da da da da da da.
SPEAKER_00: And what you fail to realize is that you are actually missing out on the life that God created you to live.
SPEAKER_00: It's Mary shows up six days before Passover.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I I read from the ESV, the English Standard Version.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have it in here.
SPEAKER_00: It just says it's a it's a pint of expensive perfume.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I think the NIV includes this phrase, worth about a year's wage.
SPEAKER_00: And so Mary shows up.
SPEAKER_00: Martha's doing the same thing she knows to do all the time.
SPEAKER_00: Now, by the way, I see a lot of people counseling at your age, believe it or not.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and and I see so many middle school, I mean so many high school, like juniors and seniors, they're like, I feel bad because I do blank.
SPEAKER_00: How long have you been doing blank?
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, oh, you're just like Martha.
SPEAKER_00: You're just doing the one thing you know to do.
SPEAKER_00: Girls don't get up and go, I want to be immoral, I want to be that girl that every guy talks about.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody wants to be with in high school, but not marry in college.
SPEAKER_00: No one says that, but it's just like, hey, this is the way I get accepted.
SPEAKER_00: So I take my clothes off.
SPEAKER_00: You accept me, right?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, until I graduate, then I won't speak to you.
SPEAKER_00: It's Martha, it's all she knows to do.
SPEAKER_00: She's like, here I am serving.
SPEAKER_00: Lazarus is like, I'm just glad to be here, dude.
SPEAKER_00: I was dead.
SPEAKER_00: Mary comes in kind of googly-eyed, like I got some crazy ideas.
SPEAKER_00: Remember this, okay?
SPEAKER_00: If you remember anything I say, remember this.
SPEAKER_00: Intimate people, people that are intimate with God, do extravagant things.
SPEAKER_00: Selfish people do predictable things.
SPEAKER_00: That's why Judas Iscariot's like, wasn't this money?
SPEAKER_00: Why wasn't this sold?
SPEAKER_00: This is crazy talk.
SPEAKER_00: Where's the budget committee?
SPEAKER_00: Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given to the poor?
SPEAKER_00: Because he wanted to look like he really cared about the poor.
SPEAKER_00: He's just a thief.
SPEAKER_00: He's the guy that steals from you in PE.
SPEAKER_00: Like that happened one time when I was in the ninth grade.
SPEAKER_00: I went to school back when they let you fight.
SPEAKER_00: A guy stole from us in basketball practice, and the coach put him in a circle.
SPEAKER_00: We all that stole from him got to hit him.
SPEAKER_00: There were seven of No one stumbled ever again.
SPEAKER_00: That second eye was swollen shut.
SPEAKER_00: It was the first period.
SPEAKER_00: Second period, his eye was swollen shut.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody's like, what happened?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, they put him in the bull in the ring.
SPEAKER_00: They put him in a circle and they beat the snot out of him.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you steal my money, that's what you're gonna get.
SPEAKER_00: I was like, it's a different day back then.
SPEAKER_00: Now y'all can go to in school suspension.
SPEAKER_00: That strikes fear in my heart.
SPEAKER_00: What am I saying?
SPEAKER_00: Mary walks in.
SPEAKER_00: Judas is just a thief who should have been got the bull in the ring treatment.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus says to her, Leave her alone.
SPEAKER_00: She saved this for the day of my burial.
SPEAKER_00: The poor you always have with you.
SPEAKER_00: See, if you focus on many things, not the one necessary thing, you don't understand what's happening all around you.
SPEAKER_00: You come to church, it's like coming to a 3D movie, but you don't have the glasses on.
SPEAKER_00: These old people seem excited about something you don't quite understand.
SPEAKER_00: But if you look from John 12 to John 13, chapter 13, verse 1, it says something like this, you know, and Jesus having loved his disciples now came to show the full extent of his love for them.
SPEAKER_00: It's Passover.
SPEAKER_00: He's entering the last week of his life.
SPEAKER_00: Mary gets that Jesus is fixing to die, so she's anointing him for his burial.
SPEAKER_00: Now, let me say this and we'll be done.
SPEAKER_00: You still with me?
SPEAKER_00: Say yes.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's what the Bible says.
SPEAKER_00: Again, I'm not, don't go home and go, oh, Pastor Neil's day, God doesn't care about us.
SPEAKER_00: Because then I got to come to your house and slap your mom and choke your dad and eat your cake, okay?
SPEAKER_00: And I'm fat enough.
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, focus.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what he says.
SPEAKER_00: He says that Mary's serving Lizar is just, I'm glad to be here.
SPEAKER_00: Mary shows up.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because intimate people are capable of extravagant things.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you haven't done anything spiritually extravagant in so long.
SPEAKER_00: It's not because you don't want to, it's just that you don't see it coming.
SPEAKER_00: You're like the deaf kid at the dance.
SPEAKER_00: You look around, somebody else is doing it.
SPEAKER_00: You're doing that move.
SPEAKER_00: Because you don't hear the music.
SPEAKER_00: Mary hears the music.
SPEAKER_00: And she comes in with this expensive perfume, and she's just kind of like, you know what I'm here for.
SPEAKER_00: And she just starts slathering on Jesus, and it's awkward and uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_00: And people are like, dang, girl, you wasted a year's worth of wage.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's what I want you to think about.
SPEAKER_00: This is what I mean when I say uh intimate people are capable, extravagant things.
SPEAKER_00: A year's wage.
SPEAKER_00: Go home and ask your mom or dad, either one, say, hey, just ballpark it for me.
SPEAKER_00: Or just don't ask if it's none of your business, but just think for a second.
SPEAKER_00: If you took your mom or dad's annual salary and you bought, you took that number, say it's$75,000 just for the sake of, I don't know,$50,000, and you bought that much of your favorite Kelowna perfume or axe body spray.
SPEAKER_00: And then you just doused yourself with it.
SPEAKER_00: You just smeared yourself in it.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's like youth camp when you don't eat shower.
SPEAKER_00: And you come out smelling like squirrels.
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, this is what this is what the Bible says.
SPEAKER_00: She takes this stuff, it's worth a year's way.
SPEAKER_00: It's very expensive and it's very, very, very, very concentrated.
SPEAKER_00: It's like Tutie Fruity Vaseline, and she smears it all over Jesus, and he's not bothered at all.
SPEAKER_00: He's just like, go ahead.
SPEAKER_00: Why not?
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to stink like Lazarus did when he died.
SPEAKER_00: She's prepared this, she's saved this for my burial.
SPEAKER_00: Go ahead, Mary.
SPEAKER_00: You get it, they don't, because they've obsessed over many things and it all got taken away.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you in this room, if you don't learn to figure out what God cares about, you're gonna be the most lonely 25-year-old you know.
SPEAKER_00: And you're gonna think, why did anybody want to be around me?
SPEAKER_00: It's not because you're not popular, hippocol.
SPEAKER_00: It's just that your life is just about loss management.
SPEAKER_00: Stuff just keeps getting taken away.
SPEAKER_00: Can you just imagine?
SPEAKER_00: Just venture with me and we'll be done.
SPEAKER_00: It's a week later, Blake.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus dies.
SPEAKER_00: John 13 starts the last week of his life, Passover, the Lord's Supper.
SPEAKER_00: We turn Passover into what we call communion.
SPEAKER_00: And then a week later, he's being nailed to the cross.
SPEAKER_00: If you got douse with a year's worth of salary of your dad's clone, a week later you'd still smell like that, wouldn't you?
SPEAKER_00: He used to envision the Roman soldiers nailing Jesus to the cross, going, My God, dude, what does that smell?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is like, it's understanding.
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, What?
SPEAKER_00: Mary got it.
SPEAKER_00: Martha kept making me cookies.
SPEAKER_00: I don't even like cookies.
SPEAKER_00: Mary got it.
SPEAKER_00: It's understanding.
SPEAKER_00: So y'all go do what you gotta do, fellas.
SPEAKER_00: Lift me up so everyone can get a whiff of me.
SPEAKER_00: It's why the Bible says this.
SPEAKER_00: We are the fragrant aroma of Christ to those who are perishing.
SPEAKER_00: And when you understand what's worth caring about, and what's just like, you know what, I'm obsessing over something that's just temporary and it's gonna be taken away.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm not gonna hold on to that.
SPEAKER_00: Your life takes on a fragrance that other people find it interesting.
SPEAKER_00: Just pray to God.
SPEAKER_00: I want you just to sit and listen.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want you to sing.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what Clyde's gonna do.
SPEAKER_00: He can do whatever he wants to do, but I want you just to be still.
SPEAKER_00: And just think about what's what's the one necessary thing as I sit here in this chair.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to have an interesting conversation with your parents, and I think you should, you should go home tonight and say, hey, what are some things that you think I care about too much?
SPEAKER_00: When you see the way I live life, what's something you think I care about too much?
SPEAKER_00: You say, well, my dad's probably in his room watching TV.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care.
SPEAKER_00: Go in the knock on the door.
SPEAKER_00: Crawl up on the bed and say, hey, when you watch the way I live, is there anything I you think I care about too much I shouldn't care about?
SPEAKER_00: They say, Why?
SPEAKER_00: You say, because I don't want to, I don't want my life to be about lost management.
SPEAKER_00: Does God still need to answer your questions, or do you know the answers?
SPEAKER_00: You just need God to get busy.
SPEAKER_00: Are you like Martha?
SPEAKER_00: You relate to God like Martha out of assumption, not intimacy.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, don't you care?
SPEAKER_00: Let me just plead my case to you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm yet, I'm victim number seven billion in America.
SPEAKER_00: Here's how hard it is, God.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is what you've got to do for me to worship you.
SPEAKER_00: You're the little kid with a plastic tube stuffing it full of marshmallows.
SPEAKER_00: You don't even know what's valuable.
SPEAKER_00: Do you what if do you first of all do you need God to really answer your questions?
SPEAKER_00: And if so, what is the biggest question you need God to answer these days?
SPEAKER_00: And lastly, what does your life smell like?
SPEAKER_00: I mean Mary slathers Jesus with a year's worth of axe body spray because that's what understanding causes you to do.
SPEAKER_00: Being intimate with Jesus makes you capable of extravagant things.
SPEAKER_00: And not for the sake of being extravagant, you just can't help yourself.
SPEAKER_00: You're just compulsed.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_00: Of course I did that.
SPEAKER_00: Are you kidding me?
SPEAKER_00: Let's just think about these things as Clyde just kind of plays.
SPEAKER_00: He may sing over you.
SPEAKER_00: Just take a moment to think about these things, and then Cam will come and dismiss us.