He Is Who He Is - Acts 17:1-15

That's pretty cool. Sometimes I love what I do. That was a cool moment to be a part of. I just want to say every time that we hit this point in the service, we always take this opportunity to remind you that we, in our church, we continue our worship of God through our giving of tithes and offerings. It's an extension of worship, and it's a way for us to say thank you to God for the ways that He's been generous to us. And so, there's a couple of ways for you to do that. Number one, if you want to give in the building as you exit, there are black metal boxes mounted on the walls by every exit. You can drop whatever you want to in there. Or you can jump online, Southeastcc.org/give, or you can jump on our app and give that way as well, any way you want to do that.

And I just want to say, I know that for many of you, giving to the Lord as a sacrifice. It's not easy. It's hard. And I want to ensure for you, or encourage you that we take that very, very seriously in our churches. One example of how we do that, do you guys remember way back before COVID, we used to pass communion trays. Right? Remember that? The annual budget for communion, and you're like, "The numbers are astronomical." Listen, when you're dealing with this many people, this is the scale of business. $4,000 a year it costs us to do communion that way. With those prepackaged little lovelies that you guys get, $25,000 a year. I know. Right? And they taste like styrofoam. They're the worst. They're the worst.

And so, we are moving, we're making preparations now to move back towards passing those trays, because we want to steward the... So we just want you to know that, in the grand scheme of things, maybe you're like, "That's not very much money to make." Every decision that we make, we want to make sure that we maximize kingdom dollars for kingdom purposes. And so we want you to know that we care very much about that. So that'll be coming. Take that, global pandemic.

Happy Mother's Day. Mothers are important. We wouldn't be here without them. Right? And so, make sure that you love up on your mom well today. And yeah, if you're a mom, thank you for what you do. I just want to say for the record, nobody knows the sacrifices that you make except for God. Nobody knows what you do as a mom except for the Lord. And I believe that, and He sees. And so, we want to honor you, especially today in light of the conversations going on around the country.

It's important for us also to remember that Mother's Day isn't always a joyous day. For some, it's very, very hard for a number of reasons. And so, if you're struggling with Mother's Day, either you lost a mom, or you're battling infertility, and the idea of Mother's Day is just difficult for you, we want you to know that we see you and we love you, and we want to join with you as you join through that. So I just want to pray for our moms and then we'll jump into our sermon. Okay? Let's pray.

Lord, we love you, and God, thank you for moms and how they represent your heart for us. God, would you bless the moms in this room for all the ways that they sacrifice in ways that we'll never know, but they faithfully do it anyway. And God, for those that are here today grieving what this day means, would you just comfort their hearts, help us to join them well. In Jesus' name. Amen.

All right. Only 15 verses today, so the good news is, still plenty of content. It's weird how the Word of God just has so many layers. So here we go. Acts chapter 17. This is number 19 in the series. You believe that? I'm not even tired of it yet. It's been so good. Acts has been so good, so much good stuff in it. And hard stuff and stuff we need to wrestle with, but good stuff in helping us really kind of flesh out what it looks like to be the church in today's world as well. And I love that, that the Bible is still so relevant. In fact, the more that I read the Bible, the more that I'm like, "Oh, my word, this is probably the most relevant book ever written. It's like God had to write it or something." Seriously. All right.

Acts 17:1-15, here we go. We're going to compare two groups of God followers. These are Jewish God followers, not Jesus' followers, but I want to compare them, and then we're going to draw some faith lessons out of them. Okay? "Now, when they passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days, he reasoned with them, from the scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for Christ to come and suffer and then rise from the dead." Three Sabbath days, three in a row. He just keeps coming back, and they keep engaging him in the conversation, which I think is important because it shows us kind of where they're at.

They don't want to be bitter and belligerent with Paul. They're like, "Wait. Tell us, help us. Let's wrestle this." It's one of the fundamental premises of the Jewish culture is this idea of wrestling. "I don't have to agree with you. I want to wrestle with you so that we get to the thing below the thing below the thing." They're always unraveling the deeper layers of things. And so, they're like, "Man, keep coming back, because this is hard stuff."

"And saying, 'This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you is the Christ.' And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul in Silas, as did many of the devout Greeks," excuse me, "and not a few of the leading women. But the Jews were jealous, and taking some wicked men of the rebel." So let's stop right there. "Leading women, men of the rebel." I just think that we're going to see this actually show up again, so I think Luke is trying to make a point. I'm not going to try to dispute what his point is. I'm just saying I think he's trying to make a point.

"They formed a mob, set the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jason, seeking to bring them out to the crowd. And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, shouting, 'These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also.'" Have you ever noticed how when you want somebody to pay for something, you really start speaking in a lot of superlatives? "They've turned the world upside down." Okay. That's aggressive. "'And Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.'"

"And the people and the city authorities were disturbed when they heard these things. And when they had taken their money out as a security from Jason and the rest, they let them go. The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. And when they arrived, they went into the Jewish synagogue." So they were in Thessalonica, and they had this big thing happen, so they get exported to Berea. And they go into the Jewish synagogue again, gluttons for punishment.

"Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica. They received the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so." So here's the key difference between the Jews in Thessalonica and the Jews in Berea. The Jews in Thessalonica were like, "We're going to debate ideas." The Jews in Berea were like, "Let's wrestle the text." And they were more noble because of it. I don't know. As you engage conversations in our world, where do you land?

"Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men." Here we go again, important women, a bunch of yahoos. "When the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was proclaimed by Paul at Berea also, they came there too." Zealous bunch. I'm sure Paul is like, "Gosh guys, leave me alone. Go back to Thessalonica."

"Agitating and stirring up the crowds. And then the brothers immediately sent Paul off on his way to the sea. But Silas and Timothy remained there. Those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens. And after receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible, they departed."

So there's several things going on in this passage, and I want to look at four kind of questions from Acts chapter 17. What can we learn from these two synagogues of people? Number one question that I want to wrestle with is this: What is the Messiah to you? Who is the Messiah to you? How you answer this question actually really matters. Because the Jewish people in the first century had a perception, an awareness of who they wanted Messiah to be. They wanted, and we've often been like, "Well, they wanted a liberator from Rome. They wanted a great military leader." They didn't want a great military leader. They didn't want a king to dominate. They wanted a righteous judge. They wanted somebody to come in and judge Rome for their oppression.

Now, you can't think judge like in our modern world, you've got to think judge like the book of Judges. They wanted somebody to execute God's judgment on the Romans. And so, they wanted this person to show up. Jesus didn't fit that bill. And so, they start really having a problem with it. Why? Because Jesus doesn't fit the mold of what Messiah is supposed to be. They're so entrenched in their own perceptions about who Jesus is, that they missed the scriptures. The Berea didn't. Why? Because they know the scriptures. They searched the scriptures. But Thessalonica did, because they wanted to debate ideas, philosophies, ideologies.

Matthew 11:28-30. This is what Jesus says. "Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart." We do not like that. You're like, "Oh, it's so sweet." Nope. You do not like that. I'll tell you why in just a second. "You'll find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

Here's the thing. When He's talking about a yoke, what's He talking about? By way of review, we've talked about this before, but if you were not here or if you've missed it or whatever, I just want to review this. 613 rules and laws and commands in Torah, and you can't obey all of them all the time. Sometimes there's scenarios where you have to violate one command to uphold another one. It's just the way that they're worded.

A quick example, the Torah says that if your neighbor's donkey falls in a ditch, you have to help them get it out. It also says that you can't work on the Sabbath. Well, what if your neighbor's donkey falls in a ditch on the Sabbath? You have to violate one command to uphold the other one. So what happens is, in the rabbinic world, they start to prioritize the commands. "This one is more important than this one. So if you come against a scenario where you've got to choose, pick this one, because this one is more important." Now, they weren't all organized the same way by every rabbi. There were different reasons why they organized them the way they did. But when you went and studied under that rabbi, you took on their prioritization of the commands. This is called the rabbi's yoke. You take on his yoke as a way of understanding how the commands get ordered. Which one is more important? Which one is less important?

When you come under a rabbi, your goal is not to know what the rabbi knows. This is so important for us to grab a hold of, because Jesus' invitation to follow Him as our rabbi isn't about learning what He's teaching only. It's about becoming who the rabbi is. You want to, in your very being, be what the rabbi is. Now, in our educational system, it's not the same way. We want to know what the teacher knows, so the teacher teaches and we learn. Right? How do we know that we learned? Tests. Is there any possible way to beat that system? Yes. You did it, because the goal wasn't to actually learn, the goal was to get a diploma. Are you with me?

So as long as I carry that piece of paper, it doesn't really matter that I actually learned anything. I can just, "Look. I graduated high school or college or whatever." I graduated kindergarten, still got it on my fridge at home. It's framed. This is what we do in our education system. We can cheat the system because we can cram for the test, because the goal of passing the test isn't to prove that we learned anything, it's to get the diploma.

For them, it's very, very different. If you don't actually show that you know well enough to live out what's being taught to you, you're booted. They don't get a diploma. There's no diploma at the end of the Jewish education system. There's you go as far as you can. When you're incapable of going further, you go back and work with your dad. So you know exactly where you stack up academically with everybody else. And if you're like, "Well that would make me feel bad." They don't care about that. They don't care about how you feel. They want you to show proficiency in what you're doing, how you are living, because the goal is to become who the rabbi is, not just to know what they know. So you don't need to feel good about your education, you need to live it. Right?

I'll tell you a funny story. This is bonus material. The first time I tried to learn Hebrew, I picked this program from this gal who was a native Israeli, and it was an online course. And I was like, "Gosh, if there's anybody that could teach me how to do Hebrew, it's her." Right? So I get this binder and all these assignments, da, da, da. And I was not getting my assignments done. I wasn't turning them in to her. Well, she happened to be coming through town, and she called me. She said, "Hey, I'm going to be in town. Would you like me to do some teaching for your people?" And I was like, "Yes, absolutely. That'd be fantastic."

So she comes and spends an evening teaching some of our people in our church. And it was great, it was wonderful. And at the end of the evening, I'm walking her and her husband out to their car, we're just visiting. And she's like, "Why haven't you turned your assignments in?" I said, "I really want to learn Hebrew. I do." She goes, "No you don't." But she wasn't joking. She's like, "No, you don't. If you wanted to learn it, you'd turn your assignments in."

"I don't feel good about myself." She didn't care. She said, "From a Jewish perspective, you don't want to learn Hebrew. So either do it or don't." This is just the world that they're in. And you have to understand that, because when Jesus says, "Come to me because I'm meek and lowly in heart," live that way or don't, but I promise you this. Being in the world, the culture that we live in, you don't like that. We don't like meek and lowly. We value power and dominance and winning and competition and victory and bigger, faster, stronger. We don't like meekness and loneliness. Neither did the Thessalonican Jews, by the way. They don't like that kind of Messiah. "We don't want him. We want a different kind of Messiah."

Here's the problem. God doesn't care what kind of Messiah you want. He knows the kind of Messiah you need, and that matters more. Who is the Messiah to you? Because if you keep waiting for God to swoop in and swing a sword on anybody that thinks differently than you, you are missing Messiah completely. You're missing Him completely.

The second question, "What makes you special to God?" Now I want to pull the layers back, and I know that you know the right answers, but we don't live like we know the right answers. Right? We know that we can't earn God's approval, and yet we keep trying.

Here's what makes you special. Psalm 139:13-14. Here's what it says. "For you formed me in my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works. My soul knows that very well." By the way, it may be a relevant verse to the conversation going on in our country right now. God knit you together before you were born. He knit you together before you were born.

Here's another interesting verse. It feels disconnected, but it isn't. Proverbs 16:9 says this, "The heart of a man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps." You can plan all your plans. You know how it is when you make your plans. And you're like, "Look, God, my plans." And He's like, "Aw, look at your weak plans." Not because He wants to control you, but because His plans for you are so much better. His plans for you are so much better. Why would you want your plans? Your plans suck compared to God's plan, they just do. Am I allowed to use that word? I did. Jeff.percival@southeastcc.org. I've been sad to say that for a while.

All right. So here's my thought. If God is as smart as you think He is, I think these two verses are connected, that God knit you together in your mother's womb, and that He establishes your steps. It's almost like God made you to be a thing, and that He creates a path for you to walk in this life that maximizes the potential of what He created.

Now think about this for just a second. And this is what we told our kids this. "When you were conceived, God searched the whole world and asked himself this question, 'What does the world need?' And then he went inside your mother's womb and made it. You are a gift that God gave the world. You're not a mistake. You're not the sum total of your sin. You are a gift that God gave the world."

So why are you special to him? Because you're really important. I don't know if you know this, but you are a big deal. Think about creation. Right? It's good. It's good. It's good. He says this over and over again. Then He makes man and woman, He goes, "Oh, that's very good. That is Tov Meod."

So you should say to yourself, every day in the mirror, you should stand up there and go, "Tov Meod.". If you're like, "I can't even do that and take myself seriously." Whatever, put a blanket on, whatever you got to do, "Tov Meod." Why? Because that's what God says you are. Why are you special? Because you are a beautiful gift that God gave the world. Not because you earn it. Not because you achieved something. Not because you felt like you did something extra special that nobody else could. "Look at my achievement. Look at my production." That's what the world values. The world values production. The world values achievement. The world values those things. God doesn't value that. God just values you because you're you, because He made you.

By the way, that's true for everybody. And by everybody, I mean everybody. Your gift that God gave the world, I'll tell you what it's not about. You're not special to God because you follow the rules better. Some of us are just natural rule followers. Some of us are not natural rule followers, but we've got more grit than other people, and so we're able to follow the rules better. But it's not because we follow the rules.

Romans 11:28-31, here's what it says. "As regards to the gospel, they are enemies for your sake." Paul is talking about God's relationship to the Jews and God's relationship to the Gentiles, and then the Jews and Gentiles' relationship to one another. "As regards to the gospel, they," the Jews, "are enemies for your sake. But as regards to election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers, for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable."

You know what that means? You can't mess up bad enough to change the gift that you are to the world. You can't. Your call, what God made you for, is irrevocable. That's a lot of syllables. Here's what it means. It can't go away. It can't go away. "But I've really blown it."

"Yeah, you did, way worse than me." I doubt it. I tried really hard to be a non-Christian. I just wasn't any good at it. I kept feeling guilty and stuff. I got tired of that. Here's the thing. You can't change it by messing it up.

"For just as you were at one time disobedient to God, but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient to other, in order that by the mercy shown to you, they also may now receive mercy." You know what the next verse says? "God has bound all men over to disobedience, so that He may have mercy on them all." There is no amount of your awesome earning it that will make God like you more. He'd be like, "Oh, that's amazing what you just did. I'm bounding you over to disobedience." Because it's hard to be humble when you're perfect in every way. You know the song. Right?

You're important to God because He says so, because He made you to matter in the world. And by the way, you can fight that, but why would you want to? You're made to only be fulfilled in doing what God made you to do. You won't actually be happy doing anything else, so why not figure that out and live into it? Why not do that? That's the only way you're going to be happy. "But I've got to make a living." You got to work. You got to work. That's biblical. But to say, "But I have to achieve a certain lifestyle." Why? What statement are you trying to make?

Next question, third question. "How do we determine truth?" The first question, "Who's the Messiah to you?" It's actually really important. Very different answers between Thessalonica and Berea, very different answers. Number two, "What makes you special to God?" What makes you special is very different answers between Thessalonica and Berea. Number three, "How do we determine truth?"

For many of us, we use sage advice, we use discernment. "The Spirit just laid something on my heart."

"Really? Let me ask you a question. Was it consistent with the Word of God?"

"Well, I don't know."

"Let me give you some sage advice. If you have something that you think God may have laid on your heart and you don't know if it's consistent with the Bible, shut up until you know."

The problem for most of us is that we don't have a clue what the Word of God says. We want to feel. "I prayed and I got this feeling." It could have been the Holy Spirit, very well could have been. Right? It could have been gas. You don't know. You don't know. It also could have been the devil.

"Well, the devil doesn't work on me."

"Really? If the devil's not trying to get at you, then you're not walking close enough to the Lord, because you're not a threat. Start walking close to Jesus, and see what happens. Unbelievable, the spiritual warfare that will happen around you." Now here's the deal. You're an overcomer. You don't got to fear it. Right? And I don't know if you guys know this, we have an amazing prayer team in our church. They pray, and stuff happens. It's the weirdest. I pray, and God's like, "Hey, you should get the prayer team to pray for that." I don't know why that is. He's like, "I made you a teacher. You do you, let them do them."

How do we determine truth? Senses and hunches are not safe alone. That doesn't mean that the Holy Spirit doesn't do that. The Holy Spirit does do that, but never inconsistent with the Word of God. And the problem for most of us is that we don't know the Word of God. Understand this, in the first century Jewish world that Jesus stepped into, by the age of 10, the least academic of them, the ones who were the least smart of them, had Torah memorized, memorized. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And I know you guys were all busy memorizing Leviticus this morning before you came here, preparing your hearts for worship. By the age of 10.

And I know that your parents are like, "My kids can't remember how to tie their shoes." Right? Go turn on their music collection. See if they don't sing along every word. Go watch and play video games. See if they don't memorize every map. See if they don't memorize every button pattern to kill every monster. You remember stuff. You can remember stuff.

Listen, to make it even further complicated, that was in a world where none of them had the Bible in their own home. The scrolls were too expensive. In order to even read the Bible, they had to go to the synagogue and get the scrolls there. And they couldn't take them home, they had to read them in the synagogue. And they're still by the age of 10 memorizing Leviticus, Numbers.

Listen, it's not that you don't know the Word because you don't have access to it. We don't know the Word because we don't make it a priority. And we wonder why the church in America is impotent. We can't discern God's leading without the Word. We can't, in this world where we're like, "Gosh, this is so complex. How do we deal with this issue and that issue? And what about this and that and the other thing? I don't know. I just don't feel. I don't know how to feel about this."

"What does God's Word say?"

"I don't know."

Maybe we should start there, and then let the hunches submit themselves to the authority of God's Word. Maybe we should do that. Psalm 119:9-10. I'm not going to read the whole Psalm, because it's got a lot of verses. Here's what it says. "How can a young man keep his way pure?" How can a young man keep his way pure? "By guarding it according to your Word. With my whole heart, I seek you. Let me not wander from your commandments."

This is so simple, it's painful. But people think, "I don't like reading the Bible."

"Then you are doing it wrong."

"I don't like reading the Bible. It's so boring."

"Really? Because I think when I read the Bible, it's the living Word. It's alive. It's what Hebrews says. It's alive. Every time you read the same passage, it means something new and fresh to us, because it hits us through the Holy Spirit, right where we're at."

"I don't like reading the Bible. So many words, no pictures."

"X, X, Y, Y, square, up, down, up, down, trigger."

"What I love doing is wasting my life shooting video games."

And I'm not anti-video games. I have one. I beat Uncharted 4 yesterday. It was great. It was great. But not before I spent an hour with my Jesus. Priorities. We don't have a Bible problem, we have a priority problem.

"I don't know how to unlock my kids."

"Get in the Word."

There's a lot more I'd like to say about that. John 8, Jesus is talking to some people who started to believe in Him. And it says, "As he was saying these things, many believed in Him. So Jesus said to the Jews who have believed in Him, 'If you abide in my Word, you are truly my disciples.'" Don't tell me what you believe.

"Yeah, I believe in Jesus."

"So does the devil."

"Abide in my Word. If you abide in my Word, you are truly my disciples. And you'll know the truth, and the truth will set you free." If you want freedom in your life, freedom comes from the truth. It doesn't come from living a sage wisdom. It doesn't come from living in hedonism. It comes from knowing the truth, and the truth is in God's Word. That's the way it is.

We've got this raging debate in the country right now. I read a news article yesterday. It was an interview with a group of women who were really upset, because if the Supreme Court overturns Roe versus Wade, they said it would decimate the hookup culture. Now, some of you are like, "What's hookup culture?" Going out and finding somebody for a one night stand. It would decimate our ability to do that. I was like, "Okay. First of all... But second of all.."

Let me speak to the men in the room, women. You think, "I'm not plugging my ears now." Be a man in how you treat women. Stop gawking. Stop objectifying other humans. Stop trying to get lucky. Stop trying to use other people to stroke your own ego. Be a man. There's so much in our... Let me go on a soapbox for just a second.

There's so much in our culture about toxic masculinity. That's what makes masculinity toxic. Masculinity in and of itself is not inherently toxic, but when you use it to manipulate and distort people, that's toxic. Masculinity, real masculinity, is rooted in honor and character. It's rooted in something where I value other people. It's rooted in something where I'm not trying to make my own life better, I want to make your life better, and in the process, we're all better together. That's masculinity. Not "I'm the boss of you." That's how children act.

You have single women in our church that say they'll date single men, even men from our church, and the expectation is that they're going to have sex on the first date. I don't even know where to begin with that. I don't know why if we hit a certain age, sex outside of marriage is okay. It's not okay for teenagers, but it's okay when we're an adult. No. Do it right. The Bible says what it says. The truth sets you free. God's Word didn't change because you turned 35. "The biological clock is ticking." Men don't have a biological clock, allegedly.

Be a man. We lack men in our country, healthy masculinity, not masculinity rooted in dominance and control and manipulation. That's what they're calling masculinity, but that's not masculinity. That's acting like a child. Toddlers do that. We try to teach that out of our children. So what we do, is because we don't have a good alternative, men just kind of wilt, and now they're afraid to say anything. And if I can get a witness from my sisters, wouldn't it be nice to be around a group of men who had an opinion, but were healthy?

Yes.

It's all in the Word. It's all there. It's all in the Bible. How do we do that? It's all there. Second Timothy 3. Here's what Paul says. You want to look at what masculinity looks like? Here we go. "You however have followed my life, my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me in Antioch, and Iconium, and Lystra," If you want to develop masculinity, develop those characteristics, "which persecutions I endured. Yet from them all, the Lord rescued me. Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ will be persecuted, while evil people and imposters will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you've been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus."

All scripture. How much of scripture?

All.

I would go so far as to say this. Not just the words, not even just the letters, but the spaces between the letters, dripping with the presence of God. "All scripture is breathed out by God, and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training and righteousness."

Let me say this one piece about this, and then I'll jump off this soap box. The Word corrects. Your opinions and ideologies don't. So when we're debating with one another, and we're trying to make a point so that they know they're wrong, they need to see it my way, you better use the Word to make your point, because it's the Word that corrects, not your opinion. It's the Word. Even if your opinion feels consistent with God's Word, if you don't know that, the Word corrects, not your opinion. We just want to be right so bad, and we lose how to be godly in the process.

Fourth lesson, we're moving quick. We're not moving quick at all. We're going to move quicker. When we're following God only, we will most likely upset two groups of people: the religious people and the people in the world. So there's that.

Now let me tell you what I mean by religious people. In the church world, there's two kinds of people: there's Christians, and then there's church people. Christians are passionate followers of Jesus. They spend time developing their relationship with God. They move forward and they have evidence, the fruit of the Spirit, the evidence of the Spirit is in them. You can see that they're a passionate follower of Jesus just by the way that they interact with people, specifically, people who think differently than them. You can see it.

And then there's church people, people who need the boxes, and, "No, it needs to function this way."

"Why?"

"Because it's safe."

It's safe when we know and we can predict, and we understand, and we don't mess with the system. And God's like, "Oh, your system, your system's so pretty." But we lose when we're focused on upholding the system. We lose the God that the system was supposed to lead us to.

"But it's safe."

It's like the beavers in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Right? The kids ask him, "Is he safe?" And they're like, "Nope. But he's good."

God's not safe. Why? If you're going to be in God's hip pocket, He's going to keep pushing you to the edge of your faith. Every step that follows God is a step of faith. And here's the great thing about steps of faith. No matter how many you've taken before, the next step of faith, guess what it requires? Faith. Because if it didn't, it would be a step of knowing. And if you know everything that there is to know about God, I gladly surrender my position to you. You deserve to be here if you've got them all figured out. I just don't think any of us do, even though a lot of us want to act that way, when we act like we have them all figured out.

That's what I mean when I'm talking about religious people. This is the synagogue in Thessalonica. They need their system. The Bereans didn't. They just wanted to know that they were following the scriptures, which raises this really interesting question for you and me. "Does the Bible dictate your doctrine and practice, or does your doctrine and practice in ideology dictate what the Bible says?" And that is a line that we will all fight. We will fight it. I fight that.

We all fight that, because we have these subtle worldviews and ideologies that creep in, and we don't even realize how far they took root. And then somebody comes in and they teach something that's like, "Eh, that's in conflict." But what do we do? Do we go, "No, that's dumb." Or do we go to the scriptures? What do we do in those moments? The Bereans were more noble.

Look at this in Matthew chapter 11, Jesus does a miracle, but it's on the Sabbath. This guy comes into the synagogue, and he's got a wilted hand. And it says, "Then He said to the man, 'Stretch out your hand.'" Bloop. "And the man stretched it out, and it was restored, healthy like the other. But the Pharisees went out and conspired against Him, how to destroy Him."

A miracle just happened, and the only thing they can care about is, "This doesn't fit with our system." So they not only want to not celebrate what God did, but they want to destroy the one who brought it. Ah. How is that possible? Right? Be careful, because I don't think we're so far off from that.

Supposedly, across the country, churches across America are going to be full of protestors. I don't know why churches got picked on in this process, but this was supposed to happen. I don't think we have any, there wasn't any reports of that happening in Douglas County, but you never know. Let me ask you a question. How do you think those protestors are going to be treated?

Here's the deal. When you leave the parking lot today, if there's protestors, I don't think there is, but if there are, don't be mean to them. Don't ignore them. Go buy them lunch. They've been standing out there all day, they're probably hungry. Pizza is always good. Why? Because God knit them together in their mother's womb, too. And He marked their steps, too. And He has a plan for them, too. And that call is irrevocable, and they'll never find it when Christians act like jerks. What a golden opportunity to say, "Your perception of Christianity, you've got it all wrong." What a golden opportunity.

I've got to quit. Here's some implications. Number one, Jesus Christ does not need to be what we think He should be. He is who He is. Our job is to know that. I'll just tell you this. One of my dear friends who studies with a group of Jewish rabbis, they weekly study the scriptures together, and they said, "Jesus must be the worst rabbi in history, because your people don't do anything that He said." They said this. They said, "How can you say that you really love Jesus and His teaching without reading the gospels every week, all four of them weekly?"

I did it for two years straight. I did it, 16 chapters a day. I did it because I was like, "I'll find out why." Unbelievable, unbelievably rewarding, stuff that I learned about who Jesus is and what He cares about and what He doesn't care about is astounding, astounding.

Number two implication, you have value and worth before the Lord because He says so, and He made you, and He has the right to say so. You don't have value and worth because you achieve, you have value and worth because God says so. You, no matter where you've been, no matter what you've done, no matter where you come from, no matter how much money you make or don't make, you are a gift that God gave the world.

Number three, scripture is God-breathed, timeless, and true for all people, in all places, at all times. That's a really important book. I think we should know it. And I'll just tell you this, the Bible doesn't give up its secrets easy. Don't expect to just gloss over and have some profound new truth given to you. That's taking God for granted. Do the work.

I've had a number of people say, "I wish I knew the Bible like you do."

"No you don't, or you would do it." That's what my Hebrew teacher taught me, so I'm just sharing the misery. Listen, if we're going to have answers for this world, it's not going to come because we got to hunch from the Spirit. It's going to come being rooted and grounded in our diligent study of the text.

Last implication, our goal is the glory of God, not the approval of man. You've got to be okay with that. You've got to be okay with that. Our goal is the glory of God, not the approval of man. And that does push on some buttons. Right? I think as we move towards our communion time, I think that we get caught up in playing it safe, figuring out the system, and kind of functioning within the system, and finding this place of, "Yeah, I believe." And it's easy and it's comforting and it's okay. And we do this and it's all good, and we don't get too ruffled, we don't get too rattled. That just doesn't feel very alive. That doesn't feel very fulfilled.

I think God is inviting us through Christ and through what communion represents for us, God is inviting us to this space of vibrant, alive, edgy Christianity, not edgy in the sense of morally edgy, but edgy in the sense of, "Oh my gosh, this could colossally fail. And yeah, let's do it." It could fail, but at least we know we're living instead of coasting, zombificating our way through life. What kind of life is that? I don't know.

When I stand before God and God says, "Hey Aaron, do you got anything left?" I want to go, "Nope, nothing left, all poured out. I don't have an ounce left in me. Why would I waste it?" What box are you stuck in? What comfort zone are you living in, that the diligence of the scripture study would call you out of? Let's spend some time talking with the Lord about that as we prepare hearts for communion.

On the night Jesus was betrayed, He took bread and He broke it and He said, "This is my body, which is given for you. So whenever you eat this bread, do it in remembrance of me." And then after the dinner, He took a cup and He said, "This cup, this is the blood of the Covenant, which is shed for you. So whenever you drink this cup, do it in remembrance of me."

Let's pray. Lord, by your Holy Spirit and through the power of your Word, set us free. God, give us wisdom to know through the study of your Word, through the diligent work in your Word, give us the wisdom to know how to love people with your heart, and to see people with your eyes, and to uphold your truth in the world that we live in right here, right now. God, we exist for your glory, so Lord, would you show us how to live that out to its fullest potential? In Jesus' name, amen.