I'm gonna read from Acts five, verse seventeen to forty two. Then the high priest and all his associates, who were members of the party of the S uh Sadducees, were filled with jealousy. They arrested the apostles and put them in the public jail. But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail and brought them out. Go stand in the temple courts, he said, and tell the people all about his this new life. At daybreak, they entered the temple courts, as they had been told, and began to teach the people. When the high priest and his associates arrived, they called together the Sanhedrin, the full assembly of the elders of Israel, and sent to the jail for the apostles. But on arriving at the jail, the officers did not find them there, so they went back and reported. We found the jail securely locked, with the guards standing at the doors, but when we opened them we found no one inside. On hearing this report, the captain of the temple guard and the chief priests were at a loss, wondering what this might lead to. Then someone came and said, Look, the men you put in jail are standing in the temple courts teaching the people. At that the captain went with his officers and brought the apostles. They did not use force because they feared that the people would stone them. The apostles were brought in and made to appear before the Sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest. We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, he said. Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and are determined to make us guilty of this man's blood. Peter and the other apostles replied, We must obey God rather than human beings. The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from the dead, whom you killed by hanging him on a cross. God exalted him to his own right hand as prince and savior, that he might bring Israel to repentance and forgive their sins. We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him. When they heard this, they were furious and wanted to put them to death. But a Pharisee named Gamelia, a teacher of the law, who was honored by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while. Then he addressed the Sanhedrin, Men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do to these men. Some time ago, Theodus appeared, claiming to be somebody, and about four hundred men rallied to him. He was killed, and all of his followers were dispersed, and it c it all came to nothing. After him, Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt. He too was killed, and all his followers were scattered. Therefore, in the present case, I advise you, leave these men alone, let them go, for if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men. You will only find yourselves fighting against God. His speech pursued them, they called the apostles in, and had them flogged. Then they ordered them not to speak the name of Jesus and let them go. The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the name. Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good name, the good news that Jesus is the Messiah.

Alright. This on? There we go. Yeah? Great.

Cool.

Thanks, Jason. You have a great reading voice, man. You should read scripture every week. Well, cool. I just want to give a big shout out to our tech team, Mike back there and Noelle and Christopher somewhere. Guys, if you've ever done technology technology things, you go, there's trick, there's hiccups that happen. But then thinking about how you have to set it up and tear it down multiple times, plugging in and out, and these guys do a great job. So thank you guys for all that you guys do. Um, real quick important note. Uh so back there's the regular donuts, but also there's some smoked pork back there. I asked some dads this week or like the last couple weeks, like, hey, what do you guys want on Father's Day? And uh, you know, do you want like some kind of gift? Like the women like had uh flowers, and then I heard like smoked pork, and so we have some smoked pork back there. Uh so anybody is welcome to have it, not just dads, not just men, uh, but there's slider buns and all kinds of good stuff. And so um, so that's for all of us to celebrate on Father's Day. Luke, those are some great dad jokes, man. Those are really good. Really good. So uh we are continuing our series in Acts, Acts chapter five. Uh, and so let me start. Um, I don't know about you, but I admire courageous people, like people who have real courage. Um, and thinking about Father's Day, and and maybe when you think about courage on a day like Father's Day, you can think about a lot of different people, but maybe you think about uh your dad or your grandfather or maybe a man who is a mentor, someone in your life who really displayed what courage looked like. And I don't know how maybe you define courage, but C.S. Lewis, uh great author that I love and lots of us love, he said courage is this not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point. In other words, what he's saying is like if you think that you are a patient person, but then you're having to wait for uh a job interview because you've been unemployed, or you're waiting for a diagnosis, it really takes courage to be patient in those moments. It doesn't take a lot of patience uh to be patient in small moments, or uh you think you're a forgiving person. You're like, I want to be a forgiving person. It takes courage to forgive when someone's actually deeply hurt you, when someone's actually inflicted pain or slandered your name or whatever it is, it takes courage to do that. You think about all the virtues that there are that at the very moment when it's the hardest to do, it takes courage to live those out. So let me ask this question: How do you define courage? Just shoot it out. Like, how do you define courage? Doing something even when you're scared. Running into a burning building, standing tall. Any others? Courage. Anybody have the courage to give a response? But um usually we at least the kind of courage that we hear a lot about is the kind that makes itself on the news, right? Or maybe Instagram reel. Not I don't know how many people actually watch the evening news nowadays. Uh I can't uh Marianne Purvis does. There's she's like, I didn't even ask for a show of hands. She's just like, Me, I absolutely watch the news. Uh so one. That's great. However, you get your news uh and uh and human interest stories, usually it is things like running into a burning building, right? Or we see in war scenes or things like that, right? That kind of courage. But most courage really isn't that dramatic. Most courage really shows up when you have that hard conversation when you don't actually have to. You could just skip past it or act like nothing happened. Real courage is to stay committed when it seems like things aren't working. When they don't seem like they're working out, you're like, I'm gonna keep going. Courage to keep going when you're tired. Courage when things get difficult. This isn't the kind of courage that will show up on your feed, on your reels, or on your evening news. This kind of courage is the kind that shows up in everyday life. And again, I think we all can admire courage that we see in courageous people. But sometimes when I see it in big and small ways, it can kind of make me wonder like, do I have that kind of courage? Am I that kind of person? Would I do that thing? Would I be able to do that thing? I think a lot of us feel that gap, probably in lots of areas of our life, when it comes to courage or being brave. We wonder, do I have what it takes? Could I do that if I was in that same situation? Right? Maybe for some of us we're like, we have a lot of gusto, and we're like, absolutely I would. But for most of us, we're aware of the gap between who we want to be, who we admire, and maybe who we feel like we are. And oftentimes what's in that gap is fear, right? If we're honest. Fear of what it'll cost us if we actually do the hard thing, do the courageous thing, or fear that we're not enough. Fear that if I try, I'm just gonna fall short. I'm just gonna show that I can't do it. Like, so why should I try and just show like up like a failure? Well, the scenes that Jason just read from the book of Acts, chapter five, it actually gives us a picture of the apostles, the leaders of the early church, the first Christians. And it gives us insight, these verses that were read about actually how do we have courage? And not just any kind of courage, but also the kind of courage it takes to follow Jesus, because it takes courage to follow Jesus, to authentically say yes to him, not just when things are easy, but when things are difficult. Because if you remember what he just read, and even the story uh from when Luke preached as well, too, the apostles have been put into jail because they shared their beliefs. They get out of jail and then they walk right back into the temple, and they stand in front of people, some of them who wanted them dead, and again preach the hope of the gospel, the good news of what Jesus has done through his life, through his death, through his resurrection. And then they're brought into the front of these people, they're flogged, which means beaten, by the way. So, yes, they're not killed, but they're beaten. We don't know exactly how badly, but pretty bad. And they go out somehow rejoicing through it all. And this morning, I want to look at what I see are three elements that gave these followers of Jesus courage, and how we can grow in courage as well, too. Like real lasting courage, not just like a momentary like flash of greatness, but like actually live with that kind of resolve. And so here they are, and I don't always do this, but they are alliterative. Uh, we need a model, we need a mission, and we need a motivation. Christine Wu, this is for you. You're welcome. So, so where does this kind of courage come from? Well, let's first look at a model. Courage needs a model, it comes from who we're looking at. Now, I was thinking about models in life, and like there are big models, right? Of like things we people want to be like, but also there's this idea of modeling where someone actually is like showing us how to do something. But have you ever been in a place where you were invited to do something hard, not even invited, I'm gonna say that differently. You were told to do something that was difficult that you've never done before, but you were given no assistance to do it. Maybe it was at work and you're like, this project just dropped in here, like, best of luck, you know, or maybe it was a parent or another authority figure, and you're just left and you're just struggling and floundering, right? And then they come back and they're they see that it's not done or not done the way they wanted it, and they're just frustrated. Like they don't go like, hey, oh man, I see that you you've worked hard on this. Like, hey, where you feel stuck anywhere, or when they leave to give the instructions, you know, they say, Hey, if you have any questions, hit me up. No, none of that. They just come back frustrated that you don't already know this. They didn't take time to model it to you, they didn't take time to show you how to do it. They just say, best of luck. Well, here's the cool thing. The incredible thing about Jesus is that's not ever what he does. That's not what he did, and that's not what he does. Jesus actually came to be human, God who became flesh, to show us what it was like to live fully human. He came to model for us what our lives were supposed to look like. He came to show us what it would look like to follow God wholeheartedly. And so the apostle Peter he gives this speech that Jason just read from Acts 5. And it's this really bold speech, and it's really easy to miss it because the NIV translation, a lot of our translations, have a weird translation for one of these words that's really actually important. Um, and let me let me show you what it is. In verses 29 through 31, uh, Peter says this: He says, We must obey God rather than human beings. The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from the dead, whom you killed by hanging him on a cross. God exalted him to his own right hand as prince and savior. I don't know if you've ever seen Jesus called prince, I guess in the Prince of Peace in the Old Testament, but it's not an often way that he's described prince and savior, that he might bring Israel to repentance and forgive their sins. Now, again, savior is a word that we hear associated a lot with Jesus. If you've been around church at all, even if you haven't been in church, if someone says, hey, who is Jesus? I'd be like, I don't know, he came to save people, savior, something like that. But this word prince, again, is probably something new uh for us hearing Jesus called a prince. But maybe you know this, maybe you don't, but the New Testament is written in the language of Greek. It's late in the language of Greek, and so it means that every time there's a word they have to choose, how are we going to translate that word into English? Right? And so this word uh that Peter uses for prince, um, it's this word archegos. Um, looks like arch e archego, but uh it's used four times in the New Testament Acts 3.15, Acts 5.31, Hebrews 2.10, and Hebrews 12.2. And it's always used for Jesus. And here are some ways that it can be translated, kind of the meaning that we see in the text from that. In Acts 3.15, uh, the way that word is used is he's the source and author of life. So life comes from him. He's the one who who started it. In Acts 5.31, we're looking at now, prince and leader. Uh in Hebrews 2.3, pioneer of salvation. So, what do the pioneer do? They go first, right? The pioneers who went out west, uh, they were the first Europeans to go out west, pioneers, like blazing a trail of salvation. And then Hebrews 12. It's one word that has four different kinds of understandings of meaning. But Jesus, here's what we get is that Jesus is always first. Jesus is at the beginning. Jesus goes first, he leads the way so that others can follow him. Jesus is a trailblazer, he's a model, but he's not just any model, because this word in Greco-Roman culture, it means hero. It means hero, literally. Uh so when you hear Peter using this word or them using in the book of Hebrews, this is a word that everyone that in their culture would have known. The Greco-Roman culture would have known, and when they would have heard the word, they would have known they're talking about the heroes, Greco-Roman gods, these heroes, like we think about uh Hercules. He would have been an Archagos, a hero. And so when he does this, in that culture, not just theirs, but ours as well, too, this longing for heroes, someone who's going to rescue and save the day. So when they hear this, this is their version of us thinking of a Marvel movie or something, like a superhero. This is someone, this is saying, This is Jesus. This is who we say Jesus is. Jesus is the one who comes and defeats the person who has the power of death. Hercules fighting Hades and others. Hercules was also in his writings, we're called the same thing that Peter called Jesus, prince and savior. So when he's saying this, everyone listening is going, oh, this you're saying something unique about this guy. He's not just like came back from the dead. He's not, he is the hero that we say we long for, that we're looking for. So everybody knows what Peter is talking about. And let's be real, we still like long for heroes, right? Like we still long for. We wouldn't use that language because we're too old and mature for that, unless we're like people who are still really into comic books or Marvel movies, like I am. Uh, not comic books, but um, but who do we make heroes now? Heroes now are our tech billionaires, politicians, uh, people in the media who like stand up for the things that we believe. Maybe they're athletes, maybe they're musicians or singers. These are the people that we want, or YouTubers, whatever it is. Like, these are our heroes. These are the people that we're like, if we could be like this person, this would be incredible. Or not even maybe that we want to be like them, but they speak for us. And so they're like, they're our hero doing the thing that we wish we could do, doing the thing loud and clear. But what makes someone actually a hero? Because Jesus, in a lot of ways, does represent heroes in their culture and in our culture, right? For example, Jesus faces danger, not because he doesn't have any fear, but he does it in the face of fear. Jesus in the garden says, Is there another way I could do this? He obviously didn't want to die that way if he had his choice. But he said, Father, I'm surrendered to you. That's that's that there wasn't any worry about what was going to happen, but he does it anyways. Heroes fight for what is true and what is right for what they most deeply believe in, and they're not deterred. They just keep going because there's something they deeply hold true. Whether it, depending on what movie or comic book or whatever reading, maybe it's like uh, you know, their view of how the world should be, maybe it's the country they represent, whatever it is. Jesus, like other heroes of our day, they do it willingly. If you're forced to do something, that's not courage. It's not heroism if you're forced to do it. If you have to do it, you have to choose in order to have courage or to be a hero. It has to be something you willingly do. These are things that Jesus and other heroes represent, but there's a shift from what Jesus and heroes of our culture and their culture would have been like. Because usually the story goes with a hero, right? Is that they somehow gain power or they gain privilege or something, and then they use that power, that wealth, if it's Bruce Wayne, they have all this wealth, right? And so they use it all to become Batman, right? Or whoever your favorite hero is, like Iron Man has all this wealth, builds a suit, right? They have they gain power and then they become the hero. But think about the story of Jesus. Jesus has all the power, and then he comes to earth and gives up the power to rescue us. That's different. He's becoming more vulnerable, he's giving up power and authority. He doesn't use the power that he has. Jesus was heroic by giving up power and serving, which is oftentimes the opposite of our heroes. In fact, he gave up power so much the Apostle Paul, one of the earliest writers about Christian faith in this letter to the Philippians, he said that Jesus took the form of a servant. In the prophet Isaiah, who was hundreds of years before Jesus came, he said that when Jesus comes, people are gonna think he's so despised they won't even look at him. They're gonna go, man, whatever is happening in your life, it must be because God is judging you. Because your life looks tough. It said, like there's no reason for anybody to even look at him. That's Jesus. Jesus, that's not a model of heroism or heroic or heroes that we think about today. Jesus doesn't show a model of courage or heroism that is untouchable. It's a picture of courage that's vulnerable. The willingness to appear weak. Think about this. The Bible talks about Jesus as the true judge, and yet he came vulnerable enough to be judged by other people. This is courage. This is him being a hero. Jesus was the Archagos because with all of his power, he could have rescued himself, but instead he chose to lay down his life. That made him the hero. That's courage, to not cling to power, but to let it go and still choose what's difficult. Jesus actually says in John 10, he says this, he says, No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my father. Again, I think it's important. We think about courage. We look at the model of Jesus. He reiterates again and again. He's making a choice to do this. It's a decision he's making. I'm choosing to lay down my life. I'm choosing to serve. Courage is wrapped up in choice. It's wrapped up in looking at what choices Jesus made and saying, This is the model that I follow. And at the very end of verse 18, where it says, This command I received from my Father. Jesus had all authority, came to earth, laid down his authority, and while he's a human on earth, he's under this authority of God the Father. He submitted himself to the Father the same way that we're invited to. I couldn't get past this week. This idea that Jesus had more power than he used for himself. He had all this power, but he didn't use it for himself. When he's on the cross dying, he could have called angels to rescue him, he could have done lots of things. Why didn't he? Because Jesus died for us. Like because he stood where we needed to be. We he was judged guilty when we were guilty. He was innocent, but we're judged innocent because of him. So today, on Father's Day, let me ask this question, and it's rhetorical. How do you use the power that you have? How do you use the power that you have, the influence that you have? How do you use it? We might think I don't have any power, but how do you use your power? Sometimes your power is in your voice at your house. It's like the tone that you use towards kids or grandkids, or maybe your manager at work. Maybe the power is your ability to make decisions. Maybe your power is financial, maybe emotional. You know that people care so much about like how you're feeling, how you're doing. If you express your stress or you express frustration or anger, you know other people are going to pick up on it. How do you use your power? How do you use your physical strength? How do you use your intellect? How do we use our power? Because we all have power in our work, in our homes, with our kids, with our spouse, with our friends, with people who can't do anything in return. And so we can use our power two ways, right? We can use our power to serve others, or we can use it the way Jesus did. Or we can use it to serve ourselves, not like Jesus, or we can use it to serve others like Jesus did. Jesus shows us that the most courageous thing we can do is lay down our power for others, lay down our life for others. That's the model. This is the model. This is what it is to be a hero. But courage, it needs a model, but it also needs a mission. Look at verse 20 with me. Verse 20, the apostles are in jail during the night, an angel breaks them out. And the angel says to them, Go stand in the temple courts and tell the people all about this new life. And so that's what they did. They actually did what the angel told them, what God told them through the angel, said, Hey, share what you've experienced essentially. Share what you've seen, share what you've experienced, share what you've witnessed. This is the invitation of the apostles, the call, the charge, and that's the charge to us as well, too. And they obeyed willingly with real courage. When they could have lost their lives, they did it. And so when they're questioned by the Sanhedrin and saying, We threatened you and you still do it anyways, Peter says this great line. God exalted him to his right hand as prince and savior, that he might bring Israel to repentance and forgive their sins. We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him. Simple obedience. God says through an angel, do this. And they do it. And then they're asked, Why did you do it? And they said, Because we must obey God. So they did it. And then at the end, Peter reiterates again. This is about obeying God. But obedience to what? What is the mission? Here's what Jesus, Peter says Jesus came to do, because this is where we see what the mission that we're called to is. It wasn't condemnation, it wasn't hatred, and it wasn't them giving final judgment, what Jesus came. Jesus came to bring repentance and forgiveness. That was the mission they were to preach. That's what Jesus came to do. But here's what's interesting is the religious leaders thought the apostles had come to condemn them. Do you notice what they said in verse 28 up there? If you go back to verse 28, if you can, they say, You've determined to make us guilty of this man's blood. In other words, the religious leaders are saying, like, hey, you're saying to everybody, it's our fault that he's dead. Which is ironic because literally they say, as he's on court, in court, they say, His blood is on us and our children. So literally, like chapters like in the Gospels, they say, Hey, we are guilty of this. And then Peter simply comes back and reports to them, hey, you guys are guilty of this. And they're like, Why would you possibly say this? Like, why would you accuse this of us? But here's the thing: Peter and Jesus didn't come to condemn the religious leaders. That's not why he came. He came to bring repentance and forgiveness. Peter's call wasn't to condemn and wasn't to be the final judge with those who had him killed. Jesus came to bring a gift of repentance and forgiveness. Now, those are pretty churchy words, right? Repentance and forgiveness. They maybe don't sound like a gift. But think about someone who's trapped in a destructive cycle. Someone who in their life is stuck in an addictive behavior, something that's bringing them down, tearing them down, maybe destroying their work, their family, their relationships, but they don't see it. They're not aware of it. It's something that's slowly destroying them inside, outside. And people around them that love them see it. But they're convinced they're fine. But then the wake-up calls come. Maybe they hit rock bottom and they suddenly see what's happening. They suddenly see, like, oh my gosh, this addiction, it's literally destroying me. The way I'm spending money is putting me in so much debt, I don't know if I'll ever be able to crawl out of it. This is destroying my marriage. I don't know if they'll be able to graduate school because of this thing that's happening. I'm gonna lose all my friends if I keep being this way. Or maybe their family or friends have an intervention and sit them down and say, hey, everyone who loves them in a room and just say, hey, this is what we see. This is what's going on. This has to stop. And that wake-up call comes, and it's hard. They can feel humiliated, you can feel shame, you can feel like all these emotions that come can feel brutal to see what other people had been seeing. But it's not meant to shame, and it's not meant to humiliate, and it's not meant to destroy. Those interventions, those hitting rock bottoms, they're actually grace. It's actually meant to be a gift. This is what repentance is meant to be. Repentance is when we all of a sudden become aware of the way that we're living, and we become aware of the destructive nature of it, and we say, I'm gonna go a different direction. Repentance is a gift that Jesus came to give. Repentance is what we preach because it's meant to be a gift of grace to say the direction you're going is gonna ruin your life. It's gonna break up the relationship you were made to have with God and with others. Not a condemnation, but a gift of seeing your whole self clearly and having the opportunity to change your life and go in a different way. And then this forgiveness comes. And Peter, he's preaching that. He's preaching about repentance and forgiveness, and that's offered to the very people that had Jesus crucified, who currently in that moment are denying that they really had any responsibility for it. Peter's preaching that message. And this was the mission. This was the mission that they needed courage for to preach this message. But it's also the mission that gave them the courage in the first place, because it was Jesus' mission first, right? Jesus' mission was to preach this to them. They had received this grace, they'd been forgiven, they tasted new life. The apostle Paul will say that it's Jesus' love that compels us to go and live with mission and purpose and courage. Because he first loved us, the Apostle John talks about. We love because he first loved us. So courage, it needs a model, Jesus. It needs a mission of offering hope, of offering a message of what who Jesus is, what he's done, an invitation to walk in a different direction for a new life. But a model and a mission, again, alone aren't enough. At some point, obeying Jesus, following Jesus will cost us something real. For Jesus, it cost him everything. His life to follow God. The apostles, following Jesus cost them everything. And this is again when our courage is tested, right? What C.S. Lewis said, we need courage because in the moment of wanting to live out our deepest beliefs and virtues, we need courage. Every other virtue, we need courage. So courage needs motivation. It needs motivation, it needs meaning behind it. And obviously, the apostles, they had something that was deeply driving them and motivating them for them to leave, rejoicing after they'd been flogged, after they'd suffered. And it says they had been counted worthy of suffering, they rejoiced because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the name. That's the name of Jesus. Day after day in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah. So what motivated them? Again, it wasn't a what, it was a who. It was Jesus. But Jesus is more than just a model. There's there's this a set of beliefs that we talk about. It's like, what did it do when Jesus died on the cross for us? What did it actually do for us? And one of the models talks about um, it's called a moral influence theory, saying, like, what it really did was we saw the most exemplary person in Jesus come, and he lived such a life of sacrificial love that it's enough to motivate us to love like that and to change us. Now, that's not the core theory of what Jesus did when he died for us, but this idea that it's such a model that it changes us. And that's good and it's important, but it's not the deepest thing that Jesus did. Because we needed more than just a model, more than just a hero, more than just an exemplary person that we could follow. Because when things get really difficult, like really difficult, like what motivates us often isn't like, oh, it's because I want to be like this person that I'm gonna do this really, really hard thing. When it's gonna cost me something, I want to be like, fill in the blank. I want to be like them, and so I'm gonna suffer. That's usually not enough motivation. What does it say was their motivator? Tim Keller says it like this that after they were beaten, they didn't go out saying, What wonderful pain. They came out and said, What a wonderful name. Jesus. They said there's something about who Jesus is that this is motivating us. This is enough. They never stopped talking about Jesus, the true King who had come, bringing a new kingdom, new life, and new forgiveness. And here's the thing they had really met and experienced Jesus. Like not in a theory, not in a religious class, not just a system of beliefs, but they had really met Jesus. Some of them firsthand, some of them not, but they had encountered Jesus in such a way that it changed them. That the forgiveness that they experienced was so deep. Think about Peter. Peter, maybe you know his story, but Peter is this brash apostle who said, I'll never fail you, Jesus. And then not long after, he denies even knowing Jesus. He experienced Jesus coming back after he was resurrected from the dead, coming back and forgiving him and inviting him to follow him again. This is the same thing for you and for me, is that Jesus hasn't called us to go out and be spokespeople as though we're some like political operative, just saying, hey, whoever's paying me the most money, I'm gonna say this person is great, you should vote for them. This is people who are thoroughly convinced because they've experienced someone, they've met someone, they've found hope in someone, and they're saying, I can't do anything else but share this hope. That's the motivation. Friends, if we struggle at times, feeling like I don't, I just don't feel motivated to like talk to people about who Jesus is to me, about my life with God. It's not a guilt or shame thing. It's saying, man, we need to get in touch again with what he's done for us. We have to get in touch again with who he is, to fall in love again with who Jesus is. And how we see that in a way that for me is an often way that we start is by looking at Jesus on the cross. By looking at Jesus on the cross. Because on the cross, we see how far we were from God, how far we are from God left to our own devices. That, like, man, we just, we honestly, it's hard for us to get in touch with how much we need Him, how much we need forgiveness. Because we just have all these defenses we put up. We're afraid of being honest about what actually goes on in our hearts, what actually drives us sometimes. But at the cross, we see, Jesus says it, he says, This is what you needed me to do, to give my life for you. But also at the cross, we see how incredible his love is, that he was willing to do it, seeing it all. This is what motivated these men and women to preach and to share and to have courage. They had a model of Jesus, and they said, This is how Jesus lived. We want to live like him. And they had a mission, they were compelled to go out. And for some of us, we're really motivated by a task. Give us a task and we're gonna go after it, right? We're gonna get it done until we burn out or until we exhaust and fall down on the floor, right? But we're just gonna go. But for longevity, for the long haul, for something that doesn't just connect with uh will and obedience or your mind, but your whole self. So you have to know and experience Jesus and know the God who loves you. This is how we're changed, and we experience his love, and it moves us to courage. Because oftentimes what can weigh us down is that we become aware of where we fall short. We talked about the beginning, right? Where the gap between who we want to be and who we are, oftentimes we look at courage like, what's the space in there? And that can weigh us down. We're afraid of failing, we're afraid of what it's gonna cost us. And sometimes the thing that keeps us from courage is that because we're afraid of failing, we're afraid of failing because we think if we fail, then everything falls apart. We carry a lot of weight of expectation, the belief that everything rests on us, and we can feel like we're failing God, like he's constantly disappointed in us, and so what we often do is we pull back, we hold back, we don't step out and take risks. But the apostles knew something powerful again that we aren't the hero, that they aren't the hero, that Jesus is. Not in a trite way, not in a like, he's our hero. Like, he actually fought evil, he fought death, he defeated it for us. They were free to live out faithfully because they knew they knew that it didn't all depend on them, it didn't all sit on them, it wasn't just theory. But this kind of courage, it's not just looking at what Jesus did for you, but it also comes from looking at what our future hope is as well, too. Our future hope is as well, too. How did they walk out beaten but rejoicing? How do they walk out beaten and rejoicing? How did these early Christians actually walk out following Jesus, knowing they could be killed at any point? Where does that kind of courage come from? It's courage that comes from knowing how the story ends. How the story ends. Because here's the thing all of us are gonna have prayers that we die that we don't see answered. We're gonna have things that we wish we could have done that weren't done. We're gonna have hopes that we didn't see fully realized. We won't complete everything. None of us will. But here's the thing that we know is that Jesus one day is coming back. He'll return. He'll return. It's not empty promises, it's not empty hope. Jesus returned after he died, after he was crucified. He's gonna return again. And in that day, he's gonna make all things new. He's gonna heal sickness, he's gonna heal our hearts, he's gonna heal relationships, he's gonna restore and reconcile. If it all rested on us completing everything in our lifetime, that would be too much. That would be too crushing. To go like, I've got to work this all out. I gotta fix all of this now. The injustice would be too much. The hurts would be too much. But these longings that we have, they're not meant to put weights on us. They're meant to tell us that there's a longing for a world and a life that we were created for that one day we'll have, and it's a signpost looking towards it. These apostles were willing to suffer and able to suffer because they knew their hope didn't rest in that moment. Their hope didn't rest in that life. Their hope didn't rest in that this was all gonna work out the way they wanted it to. Friends, I know for some of you today, the courage that you need is just to keep going. Because you don't know when the pain is gonna stop. And you're praying for it, or you don't know when that relationship is gonna heal. You don't know when that anxiety is when you when it's gonna rise up, when it's gonna calm down. And you go, I prayed these prayers and I don't know the answers. The courage you need is it is to know that there is hope beyond this life. We have hope in this life, and we want to pray for it, we want to ask for God to move and to heal and restore, but there is hope beyond this life. There is hope beyond what we see right now. We experience right now that one day Jesus is gonna make all things new. And we put our hope and trust in Him, we experience that. We have courage for today because of our hope for tomorrow. The apostles had the courage because their hope would outlast them. This is the promise of Jesus. This is how we have courage. We look at the model of Jesus, we have the mission to call, to love people towards Jesus. We have the motivation because he's done it for us, and because we have hope that's more than just the momentary comfort or displeasure that we have. So I want to invite our worship team up, and they're gonna close us in some music and worship, but also our prayer team is gonna be available to pray as well, too. And I'm gonna just invite us all to stand actually. As I was thinking and praying this morning, um a couple groups of people came to my mind, and I feel like the Lord was highlighting some folks. But maybe this morning you're someone who you don't view yourself as courageous. You're like, I don't have courage, I'm not brave. I like am just living life. But I feel like what God wants to do today is encourage you. Because courage is showing up when it's hard. Courage is showing up when it's hard. When there's something that you know is right to do, and you're gonna do it even when it's not the easy thing. And I feel like for some of us this morning, we need to hear that word from the Lord. That God sees you and says, you are courageous. You are courageous. And for another people, I had this sense that um maybe for you you see that gap between who you want to be, who you admire, and then who you see yourself as. And that image that we've talked about before, but you know how sculptors will take a rough piece of stone and they'll keep chipping away at it until the sculpture that they have in their mind emerges out. And the impression that came to mind is that for some of us, we feel like there's some big chunks getting hit out, right? Like when you have a sculpture, like there's moments where you're doing like the little precise work, you're carving out maybe like an ear or an eye, but there's other times you're just like it's just a strong whack. Like a big chunk comes off. Because not everything's a precision hit. For some of us, maybe we've been in a season where it feels like, man, if God is a sculptor, he has been He's been He's been going hard. But it's not because he's angry, it's not because he's condemning you, it's not because he's shaming you, but he's inviting you to repentance to go a different way, and forgiveness because he wants to make you inform you into who he's called you to be. So maybe this morning, you need prayer or encouragement to see yourself with the courage that God sees you with. Or maybe it's responding and saying, God, I need courage to keep going because what you're doing, this refining work in me, it doesn't feel very good. It's kind of hard. It's kind of difficult. It hurts.