[SERMON] The Right People Change Everything | HOTLWOOD 2026: Mandalorian & Grogu

What does a Mandalorian, Baby Yoda, and Jabba the Hutt's son have to do with your faith? More than you might think. In this message from our HOTLwood series, Pastor Matt Plott uses The Mandalorian & Grogu to unpack one of the most universal human needs — the need to belong. Whether your family has been a source of strength or a source of pain, this message is for you. We'll explore what it really means to find your people, why choosing the wrong circle can lead you further into bondage, and how a real friend — and a real church — will love you too much to leave you where you are.

Scriptures referenced: Proverbs 18:24, Hebrews 12:14-15, Ruth 1:16-18

Heart o' the Lakes Church

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

My name is Matt Plot, and I just want to say welcome. Thank you so much for being here today. I am one of the campus pastors up at the Jackson campus. I am not down here all that often, but it seems like when Kyle needs to pull off like a super geek Sunday, that usually I'm the one who gets pulled up for it because uh that was May the 4th last year. No joke, it really was. So I'm glad that you guys are here. This morning we are continuing with our Hotelwood series, and we are looking at Mandalorian and Grogu. So, first question: who has seen Mandalorian and Grogu? Okay, all right, go ahead and put your hands down. Kids, I have some stuff for you to be aware of, whether you are young or young at heart, either way, we've got something here for you to do. You are gonna see Grogu on the screen multiple times throughout the service. Now, there's a couple of times where he kind of false starts, but whenever he actually makes the big jump, you're gonna want to count those. Because at the end, we're gonna ask you how many times you saw Grogu jump. Everyone got it? Say got it. I meant the kids. Come on now. No. So I want to ask you guys some questions and audience participation. I can't make it mandatory, but it's gonna be super cool if you participate. So, first question is this How many of you liked the original Star Wars movie, show of hands? Okay, very cool. Go ahead and put those down. How many of you are like, no, the prequels? Those are the ones that I was really into. I liked the prequels. Okay. How many liked the sequels? Okay, that's about right. I agree with that. Yeah, yeah, that's about right. How many of you are like Star Wars? That's the one with this guy, right? Okay, all right. We actually have a couple of you for that one. All right. So this morning, as we're looking at Mandalorian and Grogu, we're not gonna be talking about lightsabers and Yoda and the force. What we're gonna be talking about instead is the idea of family. Because for each and every one of us in here, whenever you see that word family, there's likely a connotation or a different meaning from person to person, depending on what your situation in life has been like. Because for some of you, you're like, well, Matt, my family, man, they've been great. They've been awesome, they're still there for me, they support me, they lift me up, they carry me through dark times, they do whatever I need them to do. They're the reason that I have the faith that I have. But for others of you, you might say, Matt, that definition, what you just said about family, that has never been my experience. I've never known what that felt like, I've never known what that looked like. And to even hear it brought up like that just kind of feels foreign. And whichever one of those groups you're in, there's space for you here. Because we want to be talking about that. Here at Heart of the Lakes, we don't shy away from the tough topics. We don't shy away from the things where people kind of feel a little bit uncomfortable about stuff. We kind of lean into that a little bit and say, if this is something that you're experiencing, let's discuss it and see what we can do to maybe help you move beyond what your current thoughts are about something. So if I were to give a definition for family, I would say something like this: your family is the people who help you and the people you help. I don't want to tie any biologic, anything to it, because for some of us that doesn't exist, and that's okay. I don't want to tie it to be just the people that are your family by choice compared to your family by blood, because for some of you, your family is absolutely amazing, and we want to be able to lean into that and say, that's amazing that you've got that kind of a connection. So as we're looking at Mandalorian and Grogu, we're gonna be able to learn a little bit about how this plays out. You're gonna be able to see the movie poster up here where you're gonna have a bunch of different characters and things like that. And I want to take just a moment to introduce you to three of the characters. Just three. We're gonna start off with the Mandalorian himself, Dinjaran. That's this guy. He's in all of the shiny armor and everything like that. He grew up on the planet Mandalore. He grew up with Mandalorian people. He was not one originally, he was rescued by their people, taken back to their planet, and he was raised there as one of their own because he was orphaned. His parents were killed, and he ended up being in a position where he was in a moment where he was able to look at stuff and say, because of this culture that I was brought up in, I'm going to continue to follow that as well, because that mattered to him and it was important. The next character is Grogu, basically commonly known as Baby Yoda, isn't he adorable? Just take a look at him there. Baby Yoda to the majority of the population, whenever this show before the movie first came out. Now, Grogu was rescued at one point by the Mandalorian, and he is being raised and cared for and all of those things by Mando. He's doing that because he found him and he looked at him and he's like, he shouldn't be left on his own. I'm going to take care of him. So the two of them, in some ways, have become a family. They're able to be there for each other. They can depend on one another. They've pulled both of themselves out of sticky situations many times over. And then the third person is Rod of the Hutt. This is Jabba's son. He looks like Jabba, but he's got a Planet Fitness membership because this dude is yoked. Like he is straight up stacked. I mean, look at that. So, what these three have in common, by and large, is very little. There's not much that's similar about them. One of them can use the force, one of them has shiny armor, and the other one is just this great big huge slug guy. You look at them and you're like, what do they have that really connects them? Well, the answer to that question is this. They have all been looking for family or acceptance in one location or another. And that's important to recognize. Because if you look at this movie and you just kind of watch it at face value, you might look at it and say, okay, well, yeah, that was a great popcorn movie. You know, you could kind of eat popcorn, there's a lot of action sequences and so forth. But if you hear that, you can relate to it. Because every single person in here at one time or another has been looking for acceptance. You just have. Whether it was in high school and you were trying to figure out who your friend group was going to be, or maybe it was when you got off to college and you started looking through life and saying, who is the person that I'm going to eventually become? Or even today, where you look at your life and you're like, there are people that are in kind of my sphere of influence that are good, and there are people that are in that sphere that I recognize are not a positive influence on my life, where they have impact on me potentially in negative ways. Well, in Scripture, whenever we kind of go through the book of Proverbs, which is a book of wisdom, we're able to take a peek at what it says there and get something that is super important out of it. Remember the parts in yellow we read together. There are friends who destroy each other, but a real friend sticks closer than a brother. When you hear that, I want you to start thinking through the people that are in your life. Because there are some that you could probably look at and start listing off as a group of names right now of the people that are very close to you. The ones where you give them that call at three o'clock in the morning and you're like, hey, I'm in trouble, I gotta get some help here because my car broke down. You don't even get past, hey, I'm in trouble. They've got their shoes on and their keys in their hand. That is a person that I would say kind of goes from that point of being friend into being family because they're there to help you, you're there to help them. And like I said, there are families by blood and there are families by choice. Some of us look at our past and we look at the people that have been in our lives before, and we're like, our family by blood has let us down, time and time and time again. When that happens, we start turning around and looking to the other people around us, saying, I still want that acceptance, I still want that connection, I still want that sense of belonging, which would be great. But what happens when you're looking for that in the wrong places? Because sometimes the family that we choose isn't the right group of people for us. That's the situation that Rada finds himself in. So he's Jobba the Hutt's son, and he's got a very messed-up family situation. And in the midst of all of that, he ends up kind of running away from all of the stuff that would have been his legacy, that would have been his heritage, that would have been anything associated to who he was as Job of the Hutt's son. And he gets himself into a bit of a bind. Take a look at the clip.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

I'm here to rescue you. What makes you think I need rescuing? Your aunt and uncle hired me to find you. Yeah, I see. Well, thank you, but I don't require rescuing. Tomorrow's the last match in my contract, and after that, my debt will be paid. I'll be a free agent. Pay too. What's your name? It doesn't take it. Who do you have to pay? Who do you have to pay? I don't know the name. You should. He runs the syndicate on all the moons of Shikari. He signed me to his stable, he bankrolled my board and training. He keeps you in a cage.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

I think that for most of us, seeing people in our lives who find themselves in a bad situation and they think, I have to get out of this, I have to move on, I have to get past whatever this terrible scenario is that I find myself in. And you watch their actions and you maybe even counsel them on the direction that they could take or the path that they could or maybe even should follow. Only to watch them kind of careen directly into another situation that is just as bad, if not worse, than the situation they were in before. Now, for Rada, he didn't want to grow up in his father's shadow. He didn't want to be a gangster, he didn't want to inherit his criminal empire. But simultaneously, his solution for what looks better is actually being kept in a cage and being pulled out to be a pit fighter as basically indentured servitude for another person on another planet. The situation he finds himself in isn't great. So he finds another person to kind of surround himself with in Lord Janu, but he didn't make the right choice. He made a really bad call. So the key that we can kind of take from this is when you're seeking people to kind of bring into your circle, when you're seeking the people to kind of bring in close to you, you have to choose incredibly wisely. Because there are people that you will bring into your midst that don't want what's best for you. There will be people that you bring into your midst that will possibly encourage you to go a direction that is opposite of what God has for you. Sometimes it's simply accidental. Sometimes it's intentional. Because not everyone has your best motives or your best scenario in mind. And when that happens, you have to look at those moments and say, I need to be growing better than what I was before. I need to be going further down this road than what I've experienced before. I need to walk a path that takes me from who I was to a better version of myself that absolutely exists. Because that's what we're trying to achieve as Jesus followers, is to continue growing all along the way. And if you bring people into your midst that don't have that in mind for you, they're never going to be able to follow or further God's agenda for your life. And that's critically important to recognize. So we've got Rada in this cell, and Mando is trying his best to help him understand. Hey, this is not the best scenario for you. He continues on here in a moment, and he's gonna tell him, I am here to rescue you. I want to help you. But Rada's not having it because he's convinced he's right. He's convinced the path that he went from to the path he's on now is the right place to be. And Mando's got an uphill battle to fight to convince him. Take a peek.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

He treats me well, and after tomorrow night I'll be my own man. And with the following he got me as a promoter, not only will my debt be paid, but I'll be rich by the solstice.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Heal.

unknown 13:41

Don't worry.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

I'm not my father. You know how hard it is to be your own man when your father's job of the hut? You see them cheering for me out there? For me. It's the first time I'm not living in his shadow. That's why I fight in the pits. They feared him, but they cheer for me. So no. I don't need to be rescued.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Again, you can hear that and say, how many times have I seen people throughout my life that know that where they are is not great, but they are unwilling to take a step into something that could be better. See, for Radha, this is all about having sought out acceptance. It's all for the idea of having trying to go down this road where he's going to be able to have himself surrounded by people who look at him and say, I know what your story is, but that doesn't matter to me. That's what it should be in a group of people like this, where you've got a past, you've got a history, you've got things that you've lived through, gone through, and done. We're not holding you in front of us reading down a list of everything you've ever gotten wrong. But the thing is, there are other groups of people that feel that same way, but again, don't have clear-cut motives. We seek acceptance so badly at times that we will take it from wherever we can get it. If that means that we can get it at the bar down the street, that's where we're gonna go for acceptance. If it means that we can get it from another area, we will go there for acceptance. We want to be included with people that will look at us and say, I will accept you as you are right now. Which sounds like church, but with the church, it's we'll take you as you are right now, but we love you too much to leave you there. We want to be able to see growth in your life. But ultimately, rejection and wrong choices will always create bitterness every single time. If you've been rejected by a spouse, a girlfriend, a boyfriend, someone who said, I love you, I care about you, and then later just ups and walks away, you become bitter and angry and frustrated. If you've got a job that said, Hey, you've been doing a great job over here, everything you've been doing, it has been great. But we're going through some layoffs, and you are the first one who's gonna get cut. That's hard. It creates bitterness because you got rejected from your career. There are people who feel the same way about church. They came in expecting to be able to be welcomed, expecting to be able to be loved and feel the compassion that they've heard that the church offers. But because the church they walked into didn't practice any of the things that Christianity often demands and that Jesus Christ demonstrated, they walked away feeling yet again rejected. And it created bitterness, not just between them and the church this time, but between them and God. When that happens, it's terrible because they're just trying to find a group of people who say, we care. So what is the job of the church? What is the job of the people that we find ourselves interacting with on a day-by-day basis? It's simply this. It's in Hebrews 12. It says, Work at living in peace with everyone, and work at living a holy life. For those who are not holy will not see the Lord. He continues on. Let's try that one more time. Root of bitterness grows up to trouble you, corrupting many. So here's the thing: when you've experienced that rejection from one place or from another, there's two different ways to look at it. You can look at it and you can see that little seedling of bitterness kind of right down in there, ready to grow. And you can grab your shovel and you can cut that thing out and dig it out and say, I'm not allowing that to happen. Or you can be the person who comes along every day with a watering can and miracle grow, and you're like, I'm just gonna keep on feeding this thing. And there are times that there'll be people in your life that are supplying you the miracle grow and the water canister, where you're just getting more and more bitter about all of the things that you've endured and the things that you've experienced. There's a man named Jim Rohn, and Jim actually had coined a phrase where maybe you've heard it before, maybe you haven't, but you are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. So I want you to think for a minute of the five people, maybe outside of your spouse, that you are the closest to. Think about all five, whoever they might be, whether they're neighbors, friends, co-workers, think of who those five people are. How many of them could you look at right now and say, those five all have my back? They are all Jesus followers. Whenever I am going down a road that I should not be walking down, they're gonna look at me and they're gonna say, We've got a thing to talk about here. This is a problem. We need to have a conversation. I want to help you, I want to make you better in this moment. And how many of them would you say, Matt, they're not a good influence for me? For some of you, maybe it's one that is good, four that are bad. There's so many different people in your life to look at, think about the five you spend the most time with. Now, I'm not saying that you shouldn't have relationships with people who are not Jesus followers. I'm just saying that if you give them enough of a voice in your life where they are going to be constantly kind of giving you all of the stuff or how you respond to life, that's maybe not the best source. Because if they're kind of helping to foster that bitterness, there's a problem with that. Because bitterness is always seeking someone else to blame, it's always looking for a person to target and say, that's the reason why I'm so upset. That's the thing that went wrong for me. Now we're gonna look at a story in the Old Testament. It's in the book of Ruth. There's a woman named Ruth. She is the daughter-in-law to a woman named Naomi. Now, Naomi was married and had two sons. So there was this famine that had taken place that had claimed the life of her husband and both of her sons. They both got they all got sick and they died. So Naomi is left with only her two daughters-in-law that are kind of around her and kind of in her orbit at the time. But that's not enough for her. It's not enough that there are people who kind of stood beside her. She's angry, she's grief-ridden, and she is bitter about the things that are happening. Take a look at what it says here. Don't call me Naomi, she responded. Instead, call me Mara, for the Almighty has made has made life very bitter for me. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me home empty. Why call me Naomi when the Lord has caused me to suffer and the Almighty has sent such tragedy upon me? You can become so enshrouded by bitterness and frustration and anger and grief and depression that you can fail to see those people who are around you that want better for you, that want good for you, that want to spur you on to doing the good things that you are capable of. Of pulling off as a Jesus follower. When you surround yourself with the right people, they can encourage you, they can give you what you need. And that's exactly what Ruth tries to do for Naomi. Here's a conversation that she had with her. But Ruth replied, Don't ask me to leave you and turn back. Wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Wherever you die, there we go, wherever you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord punish me severely if I allow anything but death to separate us. When Naomi saw that Ruth was determined to go with her, she had not, she said nothing more. Ruth was right there the whole time. She was trying to be that positive influence. She was trying to be the one who's like, hey, there's more going on for the rest of your life. Yes, you lost your husband. Yes, you lost both your sons. But you are not forever alone and isolated with nobody else left in your life. I will stay beside you through thick and thin because I want to be there for you and to help you move forward. Those are the kinds of people that we need to surround ourselves with. Those are the ones we need to bring into our circle and let them help influence and shape the things that we're doing because they've got a godly motivation at the heart of it. Life just works better when you are able and willing to let the right people in. So Radha notices this between the relationship that Mando has with Grogu. He looks at him and he's like, You guys, you're so good for each other. He's able to look at that situation and give Mando a little bit of a shot in the arm to say, Hey, you're doing all right with your little kid here. You're getting by. You're doing okay. This is good. Take a look at this clip.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

You want to go help? Do you promise to play nice? All right.

unknown 24:12

Go.

SPEAKER_01 24:19

Don't worry about him. Little guy's gonna be okay. Sorry, I found these in your kitchen. I was alone when I was his age. I had to defend for myself. He's lucky he has you. Life's messy, but we do the best we can.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

It kind of summarizes life in general, doesn't it? That it's messy, but we do the best that we can. There are people in this room right now that if you don't have a crew, if you don't have a group of people, you don't have your people that you can depend on and rely on and look toward, maybe you don't have that group that you would call family. They would love to connect with you on this. But what does this mean for you? What are the next actionable steps that you would need to take to be able to allow this to happen? The next thing you would need to do is you have to give the group around you permission to speak into your life. You would have to give them the ability to be able to say, hey, this is what's going on, this is what's going on, this is what I see as a positive or a negative in your life. That's what you have to start by doing. I'm gonna tell you a story about our favorite Viking worship leader here at HODL, Cody Moorhead. And I want to tell you an experience that I had with him. We first met in 2010. I met Cody and Kyle both in 2010. And I became fast friends with them for a whole lot of different reasons. But we started doing ministry together, and Cody and I had built a relationship where he at one point had gone to Kyle and said, Hey, I want to talk to you about Matt for a minute. I'm worried about him. I love him, I want to talk to him about this. He's like, but I don't really know what to do. Well, at the time, I was right around 600 pounds. You're gonna see a picture of me on the screen here in a second. And Cody looked at me and he's like, I love him, I want to talk to him, but this is gonna be a hard conversation. I've been battling with weight issues for years, and most of the time those discussions came up, they were not flattering or something that was necessarily fun. So Cody said to Kyle, what do I do here? Kyle said, if you want to talk to him, talk to him. He's aware that he's overweight. You're not gonna surprise him, just tell him what you're thinking and what you're feeling, and see how it goes. So Cody called me over to come and play video games, and he said, Man, I want you to know something. I'm not judging you, I'm not angry at you, I don't dislike anything about you or your life. I love you. And because I love you, I want to be able to have more time with you. And by 2012, I still hadn't really lost any weight. You're gonna see it here. Cody looked at me and he's like, I need you to hear this from me. Now he didn't know that I'd been struggling with years, I'd been trying to get bariatric surgery, that I've been trying to do all of these different things. He stepped out on faith and looked at me and said, I love you enough, and I think God's plan for you is great enough that I want to be able to have this conversation because I want you to hear how much I care. I want you to hear how much I love you, I want you to hear what this means, that you matter to me and that you're important. Because if you don't have people that are able to step into your life and say those things, it is a very lonely existence. Cody took everything we said in Proverbs directly to heart. We're gonna put it back up on the screen where it said, There are friends who destroy each other, but a real friend sticks closer than a brother. Kyla Cody are my family. I will die on that hill because even though we're not blood related, I know that they've got my back and they know that I've got theirs. If you're a person in this room right now who isn't able to say that there's people like that in your life, please, please hear me when I say find those people. Because what Cody was really saying to me in the midst of all of this was you matter too much for me to walk away. You matter too much for me to walk away and not have this conversation. You matter too much for me to walk away and not tell you how I feel, not tell you what I'm worried about, not tell you my concerns for you and my concerns for your life. You matter too much. Do you have people right now that are in that closed circle, in that five people, that that's not their mentality? Please take some time and think through what that looks like. Because in this room right now, surrounding you, I don't know how many of you are here today, but a few hundred. When you're thinking about this, if you don't have that, it's time to find it. Now here's the thing. Typically, at this point, we would pull out a bulletin and I would tell you, hey, on the back of your connection card, go ahead and write family. But we're not gonna do that. We're not gonna do that yet. I want to actually kill like three or four birds with one stone here. This is my actual phone number. Like the phone that is in my back pocket right now, if you dial that, it will ring. I would love for you to pull out your phones right now. And if you are hearing what I'm saying and you're landing with this in such a way where you're like, Matt, I really need someone to just give me a call or talk to me because I don't have the group of people surrounding me that I need. Just text me the word family. That's all you got to do. Text the word family, and I will reach out to you and we can have a conversation this week. You will get a phone call from me. But maybe you're a person who says, Matt, my family's great. Like we're super close-knit, we love each other, we're constantly there for one another. I've never had a bad experience, I've never had anything that's gone horribly off the rails. I would say to you that it sounds like maybe you could bring into your family a few more people. So you should also go ahead and text family to that phone number. And I will reach out to you as well, and we can have that conversation and be able to see what that looks like going forward. Now, here's the tricky part about this. Usually, whenever Kyle does this part, he says, if you go ahead and write something on the back of here, Matt's gonna reach out to you. Since most of you have never saved my number, you answer the phone when I call, like I am trying to sell you insurance or an extended warranty on your car. I wish that was actually a joke. Add my number to your phone. Stick it in there. There's actually the numbers of all the pastors on the back of your bulletin. Put all of our numbers in your phone. Don't ever go another day without looking at what we can do for you to help build your group of people, to help push you along and further you on to the plan that God has for you. That's why we're here. That's what we want to do in each and every one of your lives. I tell you that story about Cody, not so that it makes him look super great, not so that it makes me look super bad or super needy or super fat or any of those things. I tell you that story because the people that are here, by and large, we live out the things that we tell you. We don't just stand up here and say, hey, this is a really neat idea. You should guys should kind of go out and do this, without saying first, we do it as well. And we don't do it just because it's fun, just because we don't get messy, just because it's really cool to spend time with people. We do it because we're following the leadership of Jesus Christ, who looked at every single one of us and said, You matter too much to walk away. That there cannot be that gap that separates for any of us. So the last option is this. Maybe you don't want to take down the number, maybe you don't want to send the text, maybe you don't want to do any of those things. On the back of this, where you would typically write baptism or whatever, just go ahead and write down family. I mean, you're still gonna see my number either way, but still go ahead and write down family because we want to be able to be there for you, even if it's just in prayer, as a staff, we will pray through all of the things that we see coming in on the connection cards because we care about you, we love you, and we want God's best for your life. So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna pray, we're gonna tear these off, and then we'll find out how many times Grogu jumped. God, we just want to say, thank you for being there for us. Thank you for inviting us into your family. God, let us be there for one another. Let us be able to take those steps out in faith and say, I'm going to start surrounding myself with people who want God's best for my life and will help me down the road to get closer and closer to whatever that may look like. They'll be there for me in the hard times, they'll be there for me in the good times. God, just continue to allow us to support one another in both growing your kingdom and growing deeper in our relationship with you. We are forever grateful for all of the things that you have blessed us with. Thank you so much for this time together today. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.