Becoming a People of Substance | My Job Depends on Ag

In this guest sermon, Dr. Dan Jarrell challenges us to move from an "anemic" life of thin experiences to a "thick" life of substance, centered on God. Using his experiences in the Alaskan wilderness and the philosophical concept of "focal things and practices," he critiques our technological culture that values efficiency over engagement. We often commodify sacred things—like food, community, and even our relationship with God—turning them into products we consume rather than realities we participate in.

Scripture References
1 Samuel 8:1-22: The Israelites demand a king "like other nations" to fight their battles for them, rejecting God as their King. This illustrates the "device paradigm"—wanting a technology (a human king) to do the work of protection and provision, costing them their freedom and intimacy with God.

Matthew 11:28-30: Jesus invites the weary to find rest, contrasting with the striving of a hurried life.

John 10:10: Jesus came to give life "abundantly"—a life of substance, not anemic facsimiles.

1 Corinthians 11:23-26: The Lord's Supper as a focal practice given by Jesus to the church.

Key Points
Focal Things vs. Devices

Focal Things: Entities that provide a center for our lives (e.g., a family meal, the wilderness, God). They are sacred, cannot be commodified, and require our active engagement. They command our attention and participation.

The Device Paradigm: Technology often turns focal things into commodities to be consumed without effort (e.g., a thermostat instead of a hearth). We value things for what they do for us, not what they are.

The Cost of Efficiency We trade the "messy" engagement of real life for efficiency and control. In doing so, we get a "veneer" of life—an anemic facsimile.

Music: We listen to high-quality recordings but lose the ability to play instruments.

Warmth: We have heat (thermostat) but lose the gathering place of the hearth.

Spirituality: We want pastors to study for us or worship bands to usher us into God's presence, rather than engaging in the discipline ourselves.

Israel's Demand for a King (1 Samuel 8) The Israelites wanted a king to fight their battles—a "governing technology" to replace the active trust required to follow God. They gained a false sense of security but lost their freedom, their sons and daughters, and their intimacy with God.

Recovering the Sacred To counter this, we need focal practices—disciplined, communal habits that orient us toward what matters (e.g., family dinner, Sabbath, prayer, playing music). These practices require us to slow down, participate, and embrace the "burden" of engagement.

Conclusion
God sees us as focal things; He is consumed by His love for us. He invites us out of the hurry and striving of a technological world into the "thick" life of walking with Him. He left us a focal practice—Communion—not as a snack to fill us up, but as a discipline to make us hungry for Him, reminding us of His life, death, and promise to return.

Calls to Action
Choose One Focal Thing: Identify one sacred thing in your life (e.g., family, Sabbath, scripture).

Establish a Focal Practice: Choose one regular habit to honor that thing (e.g., daily family dinner with no phones, a weekly Sabbath hike).

Prepare for the Media Fast: As a church, we are moving toward a digital fast in March. Start considering how you will detach from devices to re-engage with reality.

Come to the Table: Engage in Communion not as a religious routine, but as a focal practice connecting you to Jesus and the global church.

Transcript

I'm really excited to introduce a guest speaker this morning. And, my guest speaker. Well, speakers Dan and Kathy Jarrell have been invited to be with us from Fairbanks, Alaska. Would you guys stand? Just wave at everybody.

Dan was one of my profs at Western Seminary, and I really enjoyed connecting with him because there's something very Central Valley about him, and I think he'll pick up on that as he shares. We've been in a sermon series called My Job Depends on Age and we've been talking about our spirituality and how we grow and are transformed as Christians, and how often Jesus used metaphors from agriculture to help us understand how the kingdom of God grows and advances.

And I've been thinking about this series for a long time, and as I thought about it, I started thinking about Dan and some of the things we just discussed in class. And I also I found myself thinking about, how much he would fit into who we are and what we're trying to do here. So he was with us yesterday.

Many of you were a part of the marriage workshop. He'll be with our elder track on Monday night. He'll be with our staff on Tuesday, and he'll be with our elders this weekend. So we put him to work and promised him son. And it's coming. It's coming. Anybody coming from Alaska is just like. I'll come as long as the sun's out.

I'll be there. You can count on me. So he's been a real gift, and I've gleaned so much from his wisdom. And I think you guys will as well. The other thing I just want to warn you about and send a flare up is we're calling a media fast in the month of March. So we're marching towards a digital fast during the season of lent.

And so we're going to ask you, we're not going to make you, but we're going to ask you to make your smartphone dumb, because we think smart phones are making people dumb. And so we're hoping dumb phones are going to produce smart people. So we're going to do that together because it's much easier to do, together.

But we believe it's going to be a way of working out everything we've talked about for the last six weeks, our way of keeping our hearts and a way of paying attention to what we're paying attention to. Makes sense. Would you welcome Dan with me?

Jesus. I thank you for, this man. And I thank you that in seminary, he didn't just give me a talk, but he's given me his life and spent time with me, and, I'm just really grateful, for him. I thank you for his love for you and his love for the local church, and the way that they continue to pour their lives out for people and, pray as he speaks today that we would have ears to hear what he's saying to us.

Amen. I love you, pastor. You guys are blessed. But let me let you off the hook and give you a little bit of advice from an old man. Buy a bigger suit.

You know, and I have really enjoyed Kathy and I both have really enjoyed our time with your church family. I love this family. Great pastors don't make great churches. Great churches make great pastors. That's the way that is. His God does his work in you. And by the way, you're pastors. They're just people just like you. The church is a bunch of sinners that aren't okay to gather together and they choose 2 or 3 sinners who weren't okay to lead them.

And that's what you got. And they're growing in Christ and you're growing in Christ. It's really cool. That's what it's all about. As I got to know Travis, I heard many, many great things about this church family and and we got to noodling around some of the things that make our lives anemic. And how can we avoid that?

So that as a community, as a group of people, as family members, as dads, as moms, we enjoyed the glory of things, the substance of things, rather than an anemic facsimile. You know, in a technical, logical world, often things are just anemic. They're just not really substantive. So people wind up going to church and think, that's the same as walking with God.

The church is an anemic experience compared to daily getting up and walking with Jesus. People go to a worship event and they think, well, that's the same as being in the presence of God. I raised my hand and man, it was great and all that. But that's anemic compared to God. Being present in every experience of your life, day in and day out, in your marriage and with your children.

There is a sense in which God has called us to live lives of glory. Glory is an interesting word in Hebrew. The Hebrew word is pronounced cobbled. Doesn't it sound glorious? It's, an amount of poetic. I see the word with me cobbled. Don't. Don't you feel the gravity in it? There's substance in it. That's the concept of the word.

And did you know you don't give glory to God? We say that I'm going to give God glory. No, you don't. He's got all the glory already. You don't give him squat except yourself. And he finds glory in what he does in you. We celebrate his glory. We enjoy the abode of life. So we talked about these things.

And Travis said, I'd love for you to share some of that with our church. And so I'm going to do that. Hopefully it's a little different, a little nonconventional message. I'm used to just teaching verse by verse, kind of like you're used to here, but this is a little different. I want to stretch your brain about the world we live in.

What the scripture in the spirit has to say about that. I start by giving you a glimpse of the cupboard in my world where I live. This is a picture of the Prince William sound. I caught my first halibut right here. It was 100 pounds. Couple. But you know the magnificent things about Alaska you got to take with the fact that it's uncomfortable living there as well.

This was a great fishing trip, but, you know, this water is brutally cold. If you fell in this water, you'd last about five minutes. That's how cold it is. And the weather changes and it rains and all those kinds of things. You work hard to get that halibut and just to enjoy being out in this beauty. This is a picture of Glacier Bay, particularly of the Margerie Glacier in Glacier Bay, with the ice calving off the top of this glacier.

And you, you have no idea unless you're there, the thunderous sound of that ice coming off that glacier. And it creates waves. If you're in a small boat, you don't want to get too close or it'll swamp you. And again, you won't live long in that water. One of my favorite places to fish is out near Bristol Bay.

It's called Marine Creek or Marine Creek. I'm sorry, not marine. I read it wrong. Marine Creek and, it's a great place. It's teeming with wildlife. In fact, if you look closely, you can see moose in the middle of the river. Kitchen. You see that which you don't see is the population of bears in this country flying in on a Super Cub.

I counted 100 brown bears before I stopped. My wife cringes even to hear that. You got to be singing all the time or making noise so you don't surprise one, because they don't really care about you. If you don't surprise them, they're going to leave you alone because the only thing they care about is this next picture the millions of salmon that come back each and every year.

You can almost walk across the water on these salmon. The ecosystem is totally supported by the salmon. Closer to home for Kathy and I. This is a picture of the Northern Lights taken in Fairbanks. They're spectacular. People come from all over the world to see them, but to see them, you have to be out on the ice field at 40 below zero.

So the wider Kathy and I stay in Alaska, well, there are more focal things or special things there for us. We have a reason to be there. More about five kids and ten grandkids.

Also, the 98 days of summer of great. They're very beautiful, but you have to share them with the Alaskan state bird that looks like this. Now, what am I trying to say to you? Alaska keeps me centered. I cannot be in the wilderness of Alaska without remembering how small I am and how big God is. I can't be in the wilderness of Alaska without thinking.

I don't have any control in this world, and my life is up. It's a vapor. It's here and it's gone. It's sinners and corrects the way you think. There's tremendous beauty here. And yet harsh conditions. Alaska is a focal thing, a focal thing. Definition is it's an entity that provides a center for our lives. Focal things identify us.

They gather in the context of their existence, their existence, and they radiate it into our experience, their sacred things. They cannot be commodified or consumed. They're bigger than you are. They consume you. Community is a sacred thing. It's bigger than you or consumes you. You cannot enjoy it via zoom. You can't. We have phones and we friend people.

Hey, friendship on Facebook or Snapchat or whatever you do. That's okay. But don't kid yourself. That's not friendship. That's a connection you consume. Real friendship consumes you. You're bigger than it is, or it's bigger than you are. That's the way Alaska is and reminds me of that. Unless you take the good with the bad or the bad with the good, you don't get the whole experience.

And you take less. And when you take less, you don't get cardboard. You get covered. Covid, that's what you get. I just hit me. That's what you get. Is this anemic facsimile of life. I'll give you this for free. I didn't see it for so. Why did Jesus come?

What did he say? Why he come is bear witness to the truth? He said I came to give you life and life. What? Now I'm just an old country boy. I think abundantly means better than I came to give you. A life that is better than the life that you've got. So in Alaska, it's interesting to me, you know, you have to be in it to experience it.

However, any of you who want to come and visit, let me tell you what you could do. If you don't like mosquitoes and you don't like the cold, and you don't like rugged weather, and you don't like bears, and you don't like all those kinds of things that are a negative deal. If you want for $17.50, you can buy a ticket to the Imax theater and go watch something called Experience Alaska.

And on a 3D, you know, technology with, with, surround Dolby surround sound, sitting in a nice little soft chair you can enjoy like you were in Disneyland pictures taking taken from small planes flown by expert pilots that run you into and through glacier crevasses and stuff like that. And when you're done, you can walk out saying, boy, in Alaska, something, but you haven't experienced Alaska.

You've experienced the wilderness without the wild. You've experienced the meadow with no mosquitoes. You've controlled. You've experienced a controlled experience, a contrived experience in any experience of water, down to experience the majestic without His Majesty. And that's what we want to attack in our lives. So we want the real thing. That's right. Now focal things are enjoyed by focal practices.

Focal practices are the way we embrace them. Their routines that provide orientation for our lives. Focal practices are decided regular, normally communal disciplines of devotion to a sacred thing. They are sacred practices. Okay. And you cannot delegate them. You cannot mechanize them. They require your consistent involvement. No matter how much, no matter how much. Travis studies the Bible and teaches you that's not the same as eating the word for yourself.

It is not the saying you can come to church and you get, not that you're anemic, but you. What you get from Travis, the best he can give you is anemic compared to what God wants to give you every day, as you are in His word. Does that make sense? So in Alaska, it's a hike with your family or an annual raft trip with your staff, or a bonfire with your small group at 30 degrees below zero, sitting out on the ice field.

Those are bonding experiences.

Otherwise, you just can't do it. Other people can't do it for you. You can't experience God on video. Can't experience community via zoom. It may be better than nothing. Yeah, but it's not good enough. So. Let me give you a little more language. Those who love focal things and focal practices. I think they enjoy living thick lives. I love this term.

Thick versus thin. Right. Anemic versus full. And a thick life is lived by people who have a passion for substance of sacred things and sacred practices. They don't want less. Their their lives are lived beneath and beyond the surface. They deeply appreciate the true glory of things, and they're always entering into that glory as a matter of discipline.

They're entering into prayer because prayer is bigger than I am, and I can begin. And it's not going to happen unless I, in a disciplined way, decide to pray. But as I enter into prayer, which is a focal practice, I encounter the Spirit of God, which is a focal person. And the next thing you know, it's an experience of richness and wonder.

It's how that works. Behind me is a picture of what I would call a sacred thing.

This whole burger depends on egg, doesn't it? Yes. And if I look at this, you'd say, oh, well, that's no focal thing. That's nothing sacred about that. You can consume it. No, you can't, because what this burger represents is not just a bunch of meat that can be there to fill your appetite, right? Or make you feel good.

This represents a rancher and his life. Or her life work represents pig farmers. There's bacon on this baby. Represents dairy farmers. See the cheese melting out of that thing? Represents a baker. The whole industry of baking. And of course, behind baking are wheat farmers and all kinds of tons of things have gone into this sacred thing called a burger and maybe one of the best burgers around.

They're hand picked garden vegetables here you've got home pickled cucumbers. You've got sesame seeds. Do you not only get in Africa or Asia picked by hand from the plant, the CSA come in to come. Now, you probably never knew that, And not to mention the chef who put all of this together. Now, how do you eat it?

First of all, it makes a mess. Eat it then it can't get your hands around this thing. You're your cousin, the baker. Because the bun doesn't hold up through the whole experience. You get it all over your mouth and all over your clothes. Imagine that experience. Now why do not why do we not do burgers in this way today?

What keeps us from making every burger we eat sacred? Time. Time cost. Maybe nobody knows how to cook a burger or make a burger like this. Maybe we're afraid. Maybe we don't like it messy. We want it quick and easy and available. I don't want to sleep. I don't want to go home and cut tomatoes and wash lettuce and cut onions and fried bacon and make.

Right. Maybe we don't have time for excellence. We want efficiency. Let's just get something in our gut that takes off the onion, feeds the kids. So we settle for a veneer burger and anemic burger. It looks like this.

This burger doesn't depend on an egg. You know, you're not even sure. You're not even sure that whatever's called beef beef here is ever gotten anywhere near the farm. You just don't really know. In a fast paced, technology driven culture, everything is about efficiency. Now, this takes the sickness out of life and makes life thin. And I want to ask the question, how does that happen?

Well, first, focal things are fragmented into commodities, allowing their desirable aspects to be consumed. Apart from the things you don't like. So what I do is I take the idea of a hamburger and I say, well, what I really want about a hamburger is I want a fast, easy to eat. I want it to taste halfway decent, fill my stomach, be cheap and readily available anytime I want it.

And so I wound up settling for the idea. I mean, I mechanize the system then. So I take the commodity. I really don't want the sacred burger. I just want something to fill my stomach nice and quick. And I mechanized the delivery system so that I don't have to touch any of it until I eat it. I just drive through a drive through.

Right now, it's there for me. I get DoorDash and they bring whatever. I'm not against all these things. I'm just telling you you don't get the Sacred Burger from DoorDash. But then we lie to ourselves and we say that the experience is good enough for all practical purposes. In fact, it goes so mad so far that you in California, you argue about which lousy burger is the best.

Is it what, a burger? Or is it in and out? Burger? I don't want to offend anybody. They both stink compared to the sacred thing. God, you know, buddy, maybe you do, I don't know. I never have taken a bite of an in and out burger and gone. Thank you. Jesus. But you know, when you got somebody who's really prepared things well, have you ever eaten in a meal where every bite is an act of worship?

I think that's what God's called us to. Every bite of life, even those that taste a little bitter, is an act of worship. When you take a focal thing and you commodify and you take a focal practice and you mechanize it, you wind up with what Albert Borgman, the philosopher, calls the device paradigm and the device paradigm views and values people and things as a means to an end, rather than the thing in itself or the person and itself.

We value it for what it can do for us. See? And so we use people and things to accomplish our goal of living more efficiently or more fulfilled. But the irony is the life may get more efficient. It becomes less efficient.

And we lose some things. We simply exist, remaining satisfied with an anemic linear of the cupboard that God created us to live in. Let me give you an example. I'll give you a couple. I think we got time. Give you a couple examples. Let's say we wanted to talk about playing music. Enjoying. I want you all to enjoy music, to enjoy playing music.

What typically would that mean for someone in a technological culture? Playing music? What does that mean? Come on. Are you awake out there? What does it mean on your phone? Maybe. Yeah, that's interesting on your phone, but it's an electronic device. Maybe it's a stereo. I mean, when I was 17, I had two big old SS rock monitors.

They drove them with 200W of power, and the blue. Yeah. And you know what? You listen to things called LPs. Anybody here know what an LP is? Yeah, there are a few here. It's a long playing record. You get them in a little cardboard sleeve. You play them on a turntable that uses a needle, and it's a scratchy kind of sound.

And we loved it. Man, that was a righteous sound, right? But the interesting thing is that if you were to graph enjoyment against time, when is playing music through a stereo the most enjoyable?

First time you use a stereo, then what happens goes down because you just the same keeps being the same. Technology changes. So they no longer have turntables. They now have, discs or tapes or what? Cassettes. I mean, you go through everything. You know, cars used to have cassette decks in them, you know, eight tracks, all that kind of stuff.

So technology changes, and with every change, the music gets better and so you have to upgrade in order to get the same level of enjoyment that you had the very first time you heard. Creedence Clearwater Revival on your SS rock monitors. Okay.

Contrast that to playing the violin. When you have a kid who starts to play the violin, how much you enjoying it? Is there any. It's negative on the the graph. But over time, with enough participation and vocal practice, that child begins to learn to play this unbelievable instrument that has generations of craftsmen making it better and better and better.

And as they learn to play it, at some point, their enjoyment in that thing goes parabolic and the next thing you know, you got it. Perlman.

See what's lost in the technology is the ability to play. Right. Take another example. You know, a hundred years ago, you know, at the center of the house would have been anybody. Kitchen. But the kitchen probably would be built around a hearth. In fact, the word hearth, the Latin word for hearth, means focus. So the focus of an early home would have been around the hearth.

That's true in Bush, Alaska. Now, today, everything's done around that fireplace, that wood stove. You cook there, you worship. There you meet. There is a family. The hearth was in the center of the home. But maintaining the hearth took some work. You had to block logs, split logs, make kindling, all that kind of stuff. How can just dirt in your house, junk like that?

So we came along and said, we don't like the cutting of logs in the dragging of dirt through our house. So let's invent a way to get what we like about the fireplace. That is the ambiance and the warmth, and avoid all of that other stuff. In fact, if we could just have the heat in the house, that would be fantastic.

So we mechanize the process so that I met you in your home instead of a hearth. I mean, you may have a fireplace, a gas one, maybe, but on your wall you've got a thing called a thermostat. You don't have a clue how that makes your house hot. You say, well, yeah, attaches to the furnace, but how does the gas get to your furnace?

You're not in control. You don't have any control. And. And you. But here's what you miss. You don't have to buck logs. You don't have to cut down wood. You don't have to split wood. You don't have to drag it in. You don't have to make the kids learn how to build a fire and all that. And here's the end result a generation that doesn't know how to cut wood, split wood, build a fire, make kindling, or cook on the open fire right?

That's what technology does. It makes you stupid. Now I, for one, am happy to have a thermometer or I mean a thermostat, right? Not against technology. You cannot hang your Christmas stockings on a thermostat. You cannot gather around the thermostat with your family and have a time of worship and prayer. You imagine that? Oh, let's just huddle around the thermostat and get warm.

That's the world we live in. I'm kind of going far afield here, brother. When I was doing research on this issue, I ran across an Amish community in Pennsylvania that has outlawed the technology of lightning rods on their barns. This is not in my notes. I'm given to you for free. Now, they don't have a problem with technology.

The Amish, they use water wheels and they use plows. And these horses, all those things are technologies. But there are certain kinds of technology they won't use. Now, why wouldn't they use lightning rods? Because lightning rods decrease the occurrences or the need of barn raisings and barn raisings are so critical to their community culture. They're unwilling to do anything that would keep the Lord from burning the barn down if he wanted them to have a reason.

Now, I'm not saying I agree with that, but there is something right about that thinking what will this technology cost us? Not just what it allows us to do? What does it cost us? See, and I would say the technology of playing music on and on a device has probably cost us musicians.

Well, let me show you a biblical example. This is in first Samuel eight, and I'm just going to read the whole thing to you, and we'll talk about how this thing plays out here. When Samuel became old, he made his sons judges over Israel. The name of his firstborn son was Joel, the name of the second of Asia.

And they were judges in Beersheba. Yet his sons did not walk in his ways, but turned aside after game. And they took bribes and perverted justice. And you, all the elders of Israel, gathered together, and came to Samuel. Ramah, and said to him, behold, your old and your sons, do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like the nations.

Now what you need to know what's going on here is that the people are unwilling to hold the judges accountable. That's a lot of work. You've got to go in there and take that seriously. So they need they want a new governing technology. So they want. But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, give us a king to judge us.

And he said to the Lord, pray to the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, obey the voice of the people and all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. You don't need a new technology. You already got a king. You just have to participate in this whole process.

So, you know, according to all the deeds that they have done from the day I brought them. So you move on down the pasture or the path, the passage pasture, everything is about at getting it. And you move on down the passage and the Lord says, okay, I want you to go ahead and give him a king, but I want you to tell him what it's going to cost him.

So verse ten. So Samuel told the words of the Lord to the people who they were asking for a king from him. And he said, these will be the ways of the new technology. You will reign, who will reign over you? He will take your sons and appoint them to be his chariots, to his chariots, and be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots.

He will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of 50s, some to plow his ground, as to reap his harvest, to make his implements of war, and the equipment of his chariots. He'll take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks, and bakers. He'll take the best of your fields and vineyards, olive orchards, and give them to his servants.

He will take the 10th of your grain and all of your vineyards, and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants, and the best of your young men, your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take a 10th of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves.

And in that day you will cry out, because your king, of whom you've chosen for yourselves with the Lord, will not answer you. In that day. But the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel. And they said, no, there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may judge us and go out before us and fight our battles.

We wanted technology that will fight our battles and do it for us. In some ways. In modern American politics, we vote for politicians. With that in mind. We want somebody who will do it for us, right? And you know, you're in California. You know what it's like when they start taking all your vineyards and on your 10th and listen, your sons and your daughters to a government does.

I mean, if you look at this, what did the people of Israel commodify? They commodified the presence and the provision and the protection of God himself tried to turn those things into something they could consume rather than allowed to consume them. What did they mechanize? Well, they separated God's promise from promised security, from their responsibility to actively trust him.

What did they gain? What do you think they gained in this passage? What's attractive about this key? Come on.

Like the other nations. That's attractive to a little control. Somebody else, Fight your battles for them. It was pretty attractive. There's a false sense of safety and security here. We don't have to worry about it. I don't have to protect myself. I got a king to protect me. What did they lose? Everything. They lost intimacy with God.

They lost the promised blessings. They lost their possessions. They lost their children. They lost their liberty.

Other biblical examples of this device paradigm taking place. I've given you some. But the Lord. You know, the Scripture, the law, the the Pharisees. They used the law as a device to make them holy. And it was never intended to be that the law was a way of obeying the Lord and walking in his blessing. The word Torah means to point the finger, and it doesn't mean it.

It means here's the way. Here's the way. And if I was Lord, I'd have given you more than ten commandments. Wouldn't you? The Lord is very gracious. You're going through a mid-life crisis. He says you can do anything you want. You can buy a new Ferrari. Go ahead and get a Harley. Change jobs. Move across the country. But don't commit adultery.

That will kill you. Here's the road to life. Harleys on it. Ferrari's on it, but not adultery. Get it? The law was never meant to make us holy. Is to allow us to see our neediness. Prayer is the same way. People come and say, Pastor Dan, will you pray for my grandma? And I say, no. I'll pray with you.

For you, grandma. I'm not going to put you on some list because you know what? My prayers are no more significant than your prayers are. And I if I'm honest, I'm not going to remember to pray for your grandma until I see you or the Lord puts her on her heart. So right now, let's pray. I'll pray with you.

I'll teach you to pray. Those are the things I'll do. But I'm not going to be a device. So you don't have to pray for your grandma. Does that make sense? So we need to think. Rethink the way we live in light of things that are technological. And it gets right down to it. Take, for example, if you get married and you're buying into a device paradigm, then you're likely looking at your future spouse in terms of what they can do for you.

They're a means to an end. I want oneness, I want companionship, I want sex anytime I can have it. I want someone to care for me. I want someone to grow old with. Nobody said I want suffering together. I want to clean dirty diapers. I want to make sure that the house is paid for. I want it right.

Yeah. And so when I get married. But I still have to do all those other things. And my spouse doesn't come through for me. What do you do when a device doesn't serve your needs?

You upgrade.

Spouse 2.2.

And that's what we see in our culture through of parenting and training our children. I think our schools are in the shape they're in in a lot of ways, because we drop our kids off and ask somebody else to be the device that educates them. Recreation or leisure? Man, you can enjoy a good tennis game without getting out of your chair these days.

Just put on the the the glasses and. Right when I was a kid, you had to go out and play. Yeah. The things we had to play with were dirt and sticks. Spiritual growth and worship. The pastor doing the work for you. That kind of thing. All those things are device paradigms. And so what do we do about it?

Here's my challenge. You and your family, each and every one of you, evaluate and choose one thing that's focal for you. For my family. The one thing that was focal all through raising our kids was the family dinner table. It was focal. We gathered every night together. Everybody had a chair. When somebody was missing, we missed them. Kathy or I, we worked hard at preparing something for people to eat.

All of the children had a job to do when it came to cleaning up. These were focal practices gathering around the table. No phones, just conversation. So maybe for you, it's the table. Maybe it's the Sabbath. You know, okay, I think the Sabbath rest is what I think is focal. And I want to I want to concentrate and choose one practice centered around that focal thing.

Just one. Just try one thing. Make it a habit. Something that requires personal participation. Then celebrate. Take note of the benefits you get. I can't believe it. And we've been demanding that the kids leave their phone and sit at the table. They griped about it for six months. But you know what happened today? Andrew told us about what happened at school.

Well, we just celebrate. We celebrate and we celebrate openly. Look what happens when we take time at the table. See, and then expand it. Repeat it with another focal thing. You got to slow down. Got to stop working on getting somewhere. Got to put margin in. Your life is full of things. Require margin. Yeah. It's true. You know, I was thinking as I was doing this message, I, you know, I love music.

And, how many of you were alive in 1992?

Oh, a lot of you. One thing I love about this church is how young it is. But in 1992, there's a song written by Roger Murray and Randy van, Van Wormer, released by Alabama on their album American Pride. The lyrics of the song went this way. I'm in a hurry to get things done. So I wrote Russian.

Russian til that's no fun. All I really gotta do is live and die. But I'm in a hurry and don't know why. Oh, I hear a voice that says I'm running behind. I better pick up my pace. It's a race and there ain't no room for someone in second place. I'm in a hurry to get things done. And I rush and rush.

Until life's no fun. And all I really gotta do is live and die. But I'm in a hurry and I don't I don't know why. That's the result of the technological culture. Now let me go back to 1977. How many of you were here in 77? Fewer but still group. You remember the name Keith Green? Keith Green, on his debut album, had a different song to sing.

His album was for anyone who has or him who has ears to to hear. Here's the lyrics to his song My Son, My Son. Why are you striving? You can't add one thing to what's been done for you. I did it all when I was dying. Rest in your faith. My peace will come to you. And when I hear the praises start.

My child, I want to rain upon you. Blessings that will fill your heart I see no stain upon you. Because you are my child. In you know me and to me your only holy. Did you know that you are a focal thing to your creator. He is consumed by his love for you.

And he wants to consume you in his love.

God sees us as folk. A life of substance is a life where every single moment of our life is lived. In gratitude for the unbelievable privilege it is to be as child. And one of the things that the Lord did before he left ascended is, you know, he left us a vocal practice. It's called the table. And sometimes you think what I mean, when I was younger, I didn't understand communion.

I thought, why do you call it the Lord's Supper? It's more like the Lord's snack. I mean, he got a cracker and a little bit of juice. What a world is that? The Lord's apple teeth. But as I get older, I realize it's not supposed to fill you up. Supposed to make you hungry. Though you're at this table.

But do you think, oh, this table is just a religious routine, and I do it? No it's not. Hundreds of millions of followers of Christ around the world right now are dining at the same, some at great risk that their own personal lives, people in suffering people, healthy people, sick people, dying people all at the table, every race, every perspective.

All of us giving glory to Jesus for the life that he's given us. The promise in the bread that the life he lived was for us. The death he died was for us a memory of this incarnation. That's what the bread does. It reminds us that God became flesh and we beheld his glory, glory as the only begotten son, full of grace and truth.

And then a promise. Jesus says, this is the new covenant and the new promise in my blood, and that promises that I'll never leave you or forsake you, that if I go to the father, I'm coming back to get you. That's the promise that this is all about. At that table is the remembrance of his life, and a reaffirmation of his promise, and a statement to everybody in the room that you trust and love Jesus Christ.

Now, for those of you who can't say that, that you you say, I don't have a relationship with Jesus. I mean, in here, anybody in everybody's free to come. But if you don't know Jesus, this is just a cracker to you. It's anemic, you know? So don't feel obligation to come. In fact, a better thing would be to come down to those who will be here to pray with you and say, you know, I don't know where I stand with God.

I'd like to pray with somebody that kind of help me on that journey. Or maybe there's something that gets you so preoccupied, it's hard for you to be grateful in this moment. Maybe you want to pray with somebody about that. There will be people down here to share in that prayer. Okay, so I'm going to pray for you, and with you.

The table has been set for all of us. And I invite you to come. Lord Jesus, thank you for the table that's before us. Thank you for setting it. Even the reminder that Peter gave us today that you set for us a table in the presence of our enemies. And in your goodness is great to us, and we can count on your goodness and mercy.

We can count on those things to be true all of our lives. So as we come forward and and enjoy this focal practice, when you make it more than just a trot to the front of the church and a grab and a cracker and a little bit of juice. Bring us into the centuries of men and women who've feasted at this table.

Yeah. Thank you. Jesus, we pray in Jesus name. Amen.