Death of John the Baptist - Impossible to Possible - Matthew S5E2

Amen and amen. Hello, 1122, how are you? Fantastic. Fantastic. How many of you have been just absolutely blessed by this sermon series that we've been in in the book of Matthew? Yeah? Incredible. It's been such a blessing to me. I'm so thankful for Pastor Joby and his faithfulness, not just in execution, but in preparation. I'm hearing testimony after testimony of all that God is doing in our movement, and so praise God for all of that. If you have a Bible, meet me in Matthew chapter 14. Matthew chapter 14 is where we will be. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to pray. I'm going to pray for you. I ask that you pray for me, that God would do a work that only he can do, and that is save many today. And so with eyes closed and heads bowed, let's pray. Father, thank you so much for your word. I'm praying that you would soften our hearts so that we might hear you ever so clearly. God, I pray against the evil one whose desire is to steal, kill, and destroy. And so I ask that you would stand in my body, think through my mind, speak through my vocal cords those things you'd have us know, say, and do. Jesus, would you come and bring abundant life to this place? God, you are our king. You are our redeemer. Would you have your way here? In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Now, our text today is what we would call a literary flashback. I think your favorite TV show, season five, episode two, it begins with something shockingly gripping.

And before you can connect the dots, the screen goes black, and then in big white letters it reads two weeks earlier. That's what Matthew does in chapter 14. The first two verses are the present, and then the rest of the verses is him taking us to the past so that we can understand what's going on here. And so let's read the present. Verse one says, at that time, Herod the Tetrarch heard about the fame of Jesus. Now, Herod is not his name. It's a dynasty. It's a title. In fact, you might be sitting here going, I feel like I've heard that name before. Well, you have. If you've been journeying with us through the book of Matthew, you would remember this name, Herod, all the way back in Matthew chapter two. We read about Herod the Great. See, Herod the Great had heard about this baby that would become the king of the Jews from the wise men. And because he did not want that to happen, he believed himself to be the only king. He set in motion a plan to have Jesus killed. That was Herod the Great. This Herod is his son. It's safe to say that the family tree is not a great one. And so at that time, Herod the Tetrarch heard about the fame of Jesus. And he said to his servants, this is John the Baptist. He's been raised from the dead. That is why these miraculous powers are at work in him. Now, just to be clear, John and Jesus were alive at the same time. And so Herod, thinking that John the Baptist, who is dead, and we'll get to that in a moment. Thinking that John the Baptist, who is dead, has now come back from the grave and is going by the name Jesus. Him thinking that is not confusion. It is not a mistake. No, friends, this is what happens when an unrepentant heart does not surrender to Jesus. This is what happens when unrepentant sin is left alone for too long. It creates narratives that feel completely real to the person living inside them,

and completely irrational to everyone watching from outside. It's like, you know, when you go into the office kitchen, and you reach into the fridge, and you take a bite out of a dessert that clearly has someone else's name on it. And now when everybody asks you, are you hungry, you're thinking, they know. You've told yourself that there are hidden cameras all over the workplace, and they're just waiting for the office Christmas party to put your face on every single TV screen, and then say, beloved, we have gathered to expose the dessert thief. In an unrelated matter, the banana pudding that I had did not have anybody's name on it. It was delicious, though. Or maybe on your phone, you've been to places that you shouldn't have gone. You're speaking to people that you shouldn't be speaking to. And now your spouse reaches for your phone to take a look at a picture that you took two weeks ago and you think, oh no, they know. And not only that, you're going, they've told their entire discipleship group. In fact, it's made its way all the way to the leadership. And so now when Pastor Joby is preaching on purity and looks in your direction, you're thinking, I'm about to become the illustration to the sermon. See friends, this is what guilt does. Guilt that has never been dealt with will make a sane person say foolish things with full conviction. This is Herod. But we need to talk about this moment for a little bit because this is one of the most powerful men in the region. He has a palace, he has a court full of servants, he has an army, all that power, and it's at the name of Jesus that he is sent back

to the worst thing that he has ever done. That's the thing about power without peace. It's its own prison. Power without peace, it's its own prison because you're going, I know how I obtained this power and it wasn't right. Or maybe you're going, I know how I'm maintaining this power and it's not right. Power without peace is its own prison and this man is in it. Herod is scared, at the very least worried, which raises the question, what did he do? Why can he not shake it? Well, to answer that, we need to know who John the Baptist was. Because if you're new here today, if you are new to the Bible and you've just walked in, you have found yourself in the middle of something that's been building for a very long time, in fact, centuries. And so we need to go back all the way to the Old Testament. Let's go to Isaiah, the prophet who had written 700 years before this moment that a voice crying in the wilderness would come to make the way of the Lord. Then Malachi, the last prophet who wrote the last book in the Old Testament, he closes the Old Testament with a promise that God would send a messenger before that great and awesome day of the Lord. John the Baptist is that voice. John the Baptist is that messenger. He is the hinge between the entire Old Testament

and the arrival of Jesus. He is the last prophet of the old order and the first to herald the new. He was born for one purpose, to announce the arrival of Jesus. He preached, he called people to repentance, he even baptized Jesus in the waters of the Jordan. This man was fearless, some might say uncomfortably so. He did not tailor his message to fit the narrative so that the powerful people would feel comfortable. He did not soften what needed to be said because of those who were in the room. In fact, that's exactly what got him in trouble with Herod. You see, Herod had divorced his wife, taken Herodias, his own brother's wife, illegal, yes, immoral, absolutely, and John named it publicly and directly. Named it publicly and directly. And that, that's what cost him his freedom. Herod had him arrested. But here's where things get a little strange. You see, Herod actually liked John. He low-key respected him, he enjoyed listening to him preach. He just didn't want to be changed by the message that John was declaring, sound familiar? Then came the birthday party. Then the dance, then a promise made in public. A young girl coached by her mother, stepping forward to ask for one thing,

the head of John the Baptist on a platter. And now weeks later, the name Jesus is moving across the region, and Herod cannot hear it without the weight of what he did pressing down on him. That is the man at the center of our passage today. But now, let's take a look at the past to understand what's really going on. Verse three, for Herod had seized John and bound him and put him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife. If we read Mark chapter six, verse 19, we can actually see that Herodias had a heavy hand, played a heavy hand in making this all happen. Look with me, verse four. Because John had been saying to him, it is not lawful for you to have her. And that's all there is to it. No need for elaboration, no softening of the point, no careful management of the tone, just the truth placed in front of the most powerful man in the world. Oh, 11-22, what I want us to understand is this. John did not speak because he had conquered fear. He spoke because he feared someone more than he feared Herod. And there is only one fear that makes every other fear small. And John had it. John was gripped by the fear of God.

And the fear of God is not a cowering fear, it's not a frightened fear, no, no, no. It is a fear that a person has who has stood in the presence of something holy, of something weighty, of something powerful. That when they are in every room, and there's anyone else in that room, it all pales in comparison to the one who is seated on the throne. Now, look, Herod was powerful, let's make no mistake about it. But John, John, John was in the presence of the one who had made Herod. John could boldly speak because his fear was in the Lord and not in man. But look at Herod. Look at Herod, verse five. And though he wanted to put him to death, he feared the people because they held him to be a prophet. You see, Herod, like I said, had respect for John. He feared the people, but he feared Herodias more. Herod had power. He had power, but he just lacked the courage to use it for the right thing. And John, John was not the first prophet to stand in front of a corrupt leader and tell the truth. In fact, centuries before, Elijah stood before King Ahab, the most wicked of kings that all of Israel had ever known. And he stands in front of him

and he names this king's sin without flinching. We covered this last year in the sermon series, Elijah, the life of a prophet. You see, that same prophetic tradition that sent Elijah to Ahab sent John to Herod. There is no coincidence. And just as Elijah's confrontation of Ahab came at a great personal cost, John's confrontation of Herod cost him everything. That's what this prophetic tradition does. Now, you might be sitting and going, well, what is this prophetic tradition? Would you name it? No problem. This prophetic tradition is when we speak God's Word boldly and truthfully and without apology, no matter what it costs us. And so the question is never whether speaking the truth will cost you something. No, friends, it will. The question is whether what you believe is worth paying for. Silence in the face of wrong is not the absence of a choice. Hear me, it is the choice. And that silence has already declared whose side you are on. And so I ask the question, are there places in your life where you have gone quiet because you have not heard God's Word? Where you have gone quiet

because faithfulness felt too costly? You say that you've surrendered your life to Jesus. You say that you are a Christian. You say that you love Him with everything, but are there places in your life where you've gone quiet? Maybe your workplace, maybe the classroom, maybe your circle of friends, maybe your family. We are called to speak boldly and truthfully and without apology. Now, I know I say this and some of you might get excited. You might be going, yes, thankfully, on and now I can be fully released into my gift. That's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying that you need to go into every single situation and say every single thing. No, you need to check yourself. Check your heart. To quote the old West Coast philosopher, check yourself before you wreck yourself. You see, John's boldness was not personality. It was assignment. We must know the difference. There is one. There is a difference between speaking the truth which has been entrusted to you and then deputizing yourself with things that God never put in your hand. There is a difference. You see, the one is faithfulness. The other is just noise with a spiritual label on it.

Know the difference. Silence in the face of what God has called you to address is disobedience. But speaking into everything that bothers you and calling it conviction, well, that's just pride. We should know the difference. But in verse six it says, but when Herod's birthday came, the daughter of Herodias danced before the company and pleased him. This is no innocent dance. Many commentators will say this was kind of like a nice, cute ballet performance. No, no, no, this was no innocent dance. Please Herod, so that he promised with an oath to give her whatever she might ask. Prompted by her mother, she said, give me the head of John the Baptist here on a platter. And the king was sorry, but because of his oaths and his guests, he commanded it to be given. He sent and had John beheaded in the prison and his head was brought on a platter and given to the girl and she brought it to her mother. This is the kind of scene that we've come to expect in movies. We sit through it on the screen and we don't even flinch. But here I want us maybe to be thinking the bachelor meets survivor, meets the Kardashians, meets the Hunger Games, all directed by Quentin Tarantino himself.

And the laughing makes me wonder if you understand the illustration or maybe what are you watching? But this is not a movie. This is not a parable. This is not a story constructed to make a point. This is the very word of God. It's recording a real event that happens to real people, a real king, a real girl, a real man who lost his real life at a real dinner party. God did not construct this for dramatic effect. He preserved it. Why? Because God does not want to sanitize what sin actually produces in our lives. A king so drunk on the moment that he makes a public promise he cannot take back. Whatever you want said out loud to a teenager. I mean, that alone, friends, you should know, like this is gonna end badly. And all of this in front of witnesses. And so she leaves the room and comes back and asks for a man's head on a platter. God leaves every detail in so we don't miss what we are capable of becoming. This is what the fear of man looks like when it's been given enough time and enough room to become the thing that ruins your life. And look what verse nine tells us. The king was sorry.

He was sorry, he was sorry. And yet he gave the order anyway. Why? Because of his oaths and his guests. Because of his oaths and his guests. Two traps, two reasons. These two things that many of us still fall into. The first trap was his mouth. He made a promise in a moment of pride. Drunk on applause, performing for the room. And he gave his word on something he had no authority to give. I mean, that's how it starts. It's not with a decision, but with a sentence. Jesus said it plainly. Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. Which means your words are not accidents. They are confessions. Every reckless promise reveals what you are actually worshiping in that moment. Hear this. Herod's mouth, watch this. Herod's mouth told the truth about Herod's heart before Herod even knew what was coming. Pastor Jobe likes to say, nothing ever just spills, it reveals. That throwaway comment, that promise you made to look generous, that commitment you made to look strong. That yes, you gave, because approval in the room matters way more to you than the integrity in your chest.

And now, those words own you. This is what reckless words do. They feel like power in the moment, but they imprison you in the aftermath. Herod opened his mouth to impress a room and handed a teenager the keys to a godly man's life. That's the first trap, his mouth. The second trap was his audience, the eyes in that room. You see, he was performing for people who would forget his name before the decade was out. This is the trap of the audience. It promises you belonging. It promises you safety. It promises you that if you just give the room what it wants, you'll be okay. But let me tell you the truth. It never pays out. Oh, it never pays out. It just keeps asking and asking and asking and asking and asking until there's nothing left of you. See, Herod did not lose his conscience in one dramatic moment. He had been building these traps for years. Every careless promise, every crowd he played to, every time the approval of the room felt more urgent than the voice of God. Until the night came when both traps shut at the same time. And a man died because of it. Oh, when we read things like this, we have the tendency to distance ourselves from them,

to go, well, Herod's a bad person. That's not me. Oh, we should be not too quick to distance ourselves from this man. Because the traps he fell into are the same ones you and I are building right now with our words and with our need to be seen. One reckless promise at a time, one audience at a time. Until the moment comes and you find out who you really are. That's how evil works. It does not force its way in. It uses your words and your need for approval to let itself in through the door, quietly over days and months and years. And here's the thing, we never see it coming. Isn't that true? We never see it coming. We're so good at seeing it in other people's lives. It's like, oh, I see something happening in your life. You're about to fall off the edge. But man, we first need to take the scriptures and hold them up to ourselves. They need to be mirrors to our own lives. That's what Matthew does. He puts it right in front of us. So please, please, please don't miss it. Let me tell you something about evil. Evil did not walk into the party that day. It was already there. That's right, yeah, that's right.

See, that's what happens when you let sin sit comfortably in your life. And here's the thing about sin. It never sits still. No, no, no. Sin never sits still. It brews, it ferments. It ferments to the point where a man's severed head is put on a platter and brought into a crowded room. And that's just the intermission. Sin never just sits. It ferments. Unforgiveness ferments to the point where it poisons the soul and wrecks relationships. Sin never just sits. Greed ferments to the place where it sacrifices people and integrity at the altar of accumulation. Sin never sits. Lust ferments to the point where it commodifies image bearers and will pay whatever to satisfy a sick and twisted appetite. Jealousy ferments into sabotage dressed up as concern. Sin never sits. Prejudice ferments into contempt where the only categories that you will have left for people is lesser than or a threat. Sin never just sits. Bitterness ferments into rage that has forgotten its original address. I mean, it started somewhere, but now it lives everywhere.

It lives in your tone. It lives in your reactions. It lives in the way that you see every situation. You get to that point where everything now is an attack on you because sin never just sits. And none of this, none of this ever announces itself in the beginning. No, it lives rent-free in your life, sitting comfortably, quietly, getting stronger until that moment it all comes out. Herod did not decide to become a murderer that night. He had been becoming one for years. Every time he chose his reputation over his conscience, every time the room mattered more to him than what God is saying. None of those moments felt like much. None of them looked like evil. They looked like ordinary compromises that everybody makes until they do not. Not one dramatic fall, but a thousand small steps in the wrong direction, each one feeling almost reasonable. Then one day, it wrecks you and everyone around you. This is what happens when ordinary compromises become extraordinary damages. Let me say that again. This is what happens when. Ordinary compromises become extraordinary damages because you never just fall into who you are becoming. We've got to get this language out of the church, or I just, I fell into that sin, I

fell into adultery, I just fell into that situation. No, no, no, no, no. You drift there one comfortable compromise at a time. One comfortable compromise at a time until the drift becomes the direction. And so I have to ask the question, are you in a Herod moment? Are you in a Herod moment? A promise you made when you were trying to impress someone and now it owns you. A room full of people whose opinion has become louder than God's voice. A compromise that felt small when you made it, but now you live with the echo that tries to justify it by saying, but everybody's doing it. A word you should have never spoken, are you in a Herod moment? And I'm not trying to judge. I'm not trying to judge because we all have a Herod moment, all of us, and so the question is not whether you have a Herod moment, the question is what are you going to do when it arrives? What are you going to do when it arrives? When that Herod moment arrives, what are you going to do? Oh, and because you're asking so earnestly, let me go ahead and tell you. Here's what I hope that you would do. This is what I plead and I pray that you and I would do, is that we would be courageous. Oh, that we would be courageous, but it's not the way that you think because the most courageous thing that you can do in that moment is not push through, is not do better, manage harder. No, no, no. It's not that. The most courageous thing that you can do in that moment is to confess. Oh, I hope that we would build this into the culture of who we are at 1122, a people who know that confession is courageous. Confession is courageous because when you confess, it means that you are done performing. It means that you are done pretending.

It means that you are done letting the room own you. It means that you are choosing the fear of God over the fear of man. Herod had a door every single time John preached. He had an opportunity to confess. Every time he heard the word preached, he just chose to stay in the room. I want you to know today, you have a door to confess, to lay it all at the feet of Jesus and to say, I cannot do this anymore. I am in desperate need of a savior. You have that opportunity, but that's Herod. Let's now take a look at John. Proverbs 10 says this, he sent and had John beheaded in the prison. John did not die heroically on a battlefield. He did not die mid-sermon. There is no dignity in the mechanics of his death. It is brutal and deeply grotesque. It is unjust. And in all of that, God did not stop it. That is not a comfortable sentence to say, and I will never pretend that it is. But stay with me. Stay with me, because what looks like silence is not the same as God's absence. What looks like abandonment is not the end of the story. Let me tell you a story. In 1886, King Mwanga of the Buganda Kingdom, a place that still exists today in Uganda, East Africa, he summons about 30 to 40 of his male servants and slaves and tells them to renounce their faith, to deny Jesus. You see, they had recently surrendered their lives to Jesus as Lord and Savior. And he didn't want that. He didn't want people in his kingdom bending the knee to another king, pledging their allegiance to another kingdom. And so he calls them to renounce their faith.

And so those teenagers, some even younger, they disobey this earthly king so that they might obey the king of kings. And so King Mwanga... sets them on fire. History tells us that you could hear their praises and their prayers as they transitioned from this life into glory. And you might hear this and go, well, I guess then that was the end of the church in Uganda. No, no, no, you would be wrong. You see, King Mwanga didn't realize that as he was setting light to those young men in God's sovereignty, he was using him to spread the church. Oh, the church did not shrink that day. In fact, it exploded. Within a generation, Christianity had spread across the region in ways that no missionary strategy had produced. And in all of that, God was not trying to make these young men comfortable. He was doing something way bigger in their lives, something that they could not produce in their lives, but was accomplished in their death. I was talking to my friend, B. Dubs. He leads an incredible church in Kampala, Uganda, about this story, and then he goes on to say, hey, let me tell you something. The descendant of King Mwanga today who sits on the throne, he now professes Jesus as Lord and Savior. Oh, God is not done.

You see, faithfulness is not a guarantee of protection from pain. It is the commitment to keep walking through it, even when the fire is real. Friends, we have to sit with what all of this means, because many of us, if we're being honest, we carry a quiet arrangement with God that goes something like this. If I am faithful, he will protect me from pain. Or maybe it sounds a little bit like this. If I keep my end of the deal, he will keep the worst outcomes away from my door, and then yet John's life dismantles that arrangement completely. And Paul understood this, the apostle Paul. In Romans 8, he writes that God is working all things together for good, for those who love him, for those called according to his purpose, and then he tells us what that good actually is. And let me go ahead and tell you, it's not comfort. It's not comfort. It's not the removal of difficulty. In fact, verse 29 of Romans 8 tells us, it says, to be conformed to the image of his son. That is the goal. That is what God is after. And sometimes, sometimes, the path toward that goal runs straight through the thing you were hoping he would take away. Oh, can I be honest for a moment?

Can I be honest for a moment? I know we've been pretending and performing up until now, but can I just be honest for a moment? You see, sometimes, the silence that you are experiencing is not God. Sometimes, the silence that you are experiencing is us. Because the thing we asked for has not come. The spouse has not come. The child has not come. The job has not come. The finances has not come. The healing has not come. The door that will not open, no matter how long we stand in front of it, and somewhere along the way, we made a quiet decision. Not a dramatic one. It wasn't publicly announced. There was no moment where you stood back and you just said, God, I'm done with you. You just kept showing up, singing the songs, serving in the ministry, doing what saved people do, but you had pulled back just a little bit. Just a little bit. Internally, you withdrew. You stopped expecting. You stopped pressing in. You stopped bringing the thing to him because bringing it and not receiving it because bringing it and not receiving it

hurts more than just carrying it quietly. And now you're here, but you're not really here. I mean, you're in the room, but you're not really in the room. You're not trusting him with that thing that is breaking you anymore. This is not faith under pressure. This is faith on pause. Now, I don't know what God has written for you, this side of heaven. I don't, but let me tell you what I do know is that every broken thing you have brought to him in faith will be made whole, either in time or in eternity. He is going to heal you in this life or he's going to heal you in the next. But hear me, he is going to heal you. He is going to make you whole. That is not a maybe, friends, that is a promise. And please, please don't let an answered prayer push you away from the one who holds the answer. Why? Because he is enough. God is enough. He has always been enough. Sometimes this broken world will wanna roll the credits on your life before the real director has yelled cut. The prognosis, the diagnosis, the people who've written you off, the circumstances where it just feels like it's all done.

Oh, but God, but God. Now I know some of you are listening and going, I heard him hammer on but God the last time he preached. Yes, get comfortable with it. I am the but God preacher. I am the but God preacher, but the only reason I'm a but God preacher is because I'm a but God believer. I'm a but God believer. I was heading in the direction of death and condemnation, but God pulled me out of the depth of my own depravity into his marvelous light, but God. I'm not just a but God believer for my salvation, I'm a but God believer for sanctification. Oh, how many in here know that we have an enemy? And even though we've crossed the line of faith, he's always there in our ear whispering, whispering, whispering, whispering. Oh, you're still sinning. You're still doing that thing. You're still jealous. You're still envious. You're still gonna run back to God and say, I'll never do it again. And you know what we need to do? We need to be those believers who stand and go, okay, let me hear you. I did this and this and this. In fact, you don't even know the half of this other thing, but God.

Oh, but God. You see, the blood that saves me still works to cleanse me and to wash me and to make me whole. God is committed to your formation for his glory. He is not finished with you yet. He is still directing, and he does not take his hands off what he is making until it's finished. And that is exactly what John's life shows us. John kept walking all the way to the end. John finished what he was given to do. He spent his entire life saying by word and by deed that Jesus was worth everything. And in the end, he proved it with the only thing that he had left. His life itself became the final sermon. John says of himself, he says, he must increase, but I must decrease. John did not only preach that, he lived it till his final breath. I said again, God is not primarily committed to your comfort. He is committed to your formation and to his own glory, and those two commitments, if you will take your relationship with God seriously, they will cost you something. The depth of a life of faith is not measured by what God protected you from. It is measured by how faithfully you walked through what he did not remove.

With your eyes still on him, trusting in him, holding on to the one, hear me, who has been holding on to you the entire time. Even in moments like this. I mean, look at John's disciples, verse 12 tells us, and his disciples came and took the body and buried it, and they went and told Jesus. These men, they bury their teacher. That's what all of this culminates to. They bury their teacher. A man who died because another man had too much to drink and made a promise he should have never made to a girl coached by her mother at a party that should have never mattered. And now they're standing at a grave holding nothing. They're standing at a grave holding nothing, no explanation, no theology that this makes sense, no angel appeared, no loud word from heaven, no reason that justifies what just happened to a godly man who spent his entire life pointing people to Jesus. Just a grave and silence. Just a grave and silence. Have you ever stood at that grave? Not necessarily a physical one, but that place where you believed what you believed about God does not seem to account for what just happened to you. Where your theology runs out before your pain does.

Where you prayed the right prayers, you did all the right things, and still ended up in the grave. And you're still standing there, you did all the right things, and still ended up standing over something that you cannot explain. This is where the disciples were. And what they did next matters more than the entire passage. In fact, this is the pastoral moment of our text. What they did next matters. It's something that we should follow. Let me tell you this way. When our girls were small, still finding their legs, I took them to a kid's birthday party. Why? Because every now and then I like to inject a little chaos in my life. And so I go, hey, let me be around some little kids, balloons and sugar that they shouldn't be eating. I told my wife, don't worry, I got this, you stay at home. But the reality is I never have it, never have it. And so our youngest was at this party and she was running. The way small children run when they've just discovered their legs work and nobody has told them yet to be afraid. It's pure freedom, no hesitation. And so she's running and then she falls. And then a cry comes out of her that's more than just pain. It's a specific cry. It's the one that every parent knows

the moment they hear it. She cried, Papa! You do not have to see it happen. You don't have to be watching. That cry will find you across a crowded park and your body will start moving in that direction before your mind has caught up. I mean, there were people closer to her than I was, good people, capable people. People already reaching toward her. But she ran past every single one of them. She was channeling her traverse ETN, just juking left, right, and center. Either that or she's just learning how to salsa, you know what I mean? She's got the moves. She ran past every single one of them. She's not evaluating the options. She's not looking for the most qualified person in the park. No, she was looking for one thing. The arms she knew. And nothing else would do. I mean, someone even tried to hold her and still she was pulling. Still she was crying. Still she was moving in one direction because she knew the way children know things before they have words for them, that there is no better place in the world

than to be in the arms of your father. That's exactly what the disciples do. They did not go to the Pharisees. They did not go to Rome. They did not sit in a circle and argue over doctrine. No, no. They went to Jesus. They went to Jesus because John the Baptist, their teacher, had spent his entire life telling them to do that very thing. John pointed at Jesus and said, "'Behold, the Lamb of God "'who takes away the sin of the world.'" I mean, Jesus himself would go on to say in John 14, verse six, "'I am the way, the truth, the life. "'Nobody comes to the Father except through me.'" I mean, Philip, in John 14, verse eight, looks at Jesus and goes, "'Show us the Father and that'll be enough.'" Other translations say, "'Show us the Father and we'll be satisfied.'" And then Jesus looks at him and says, "'If you've seen me, you've seen the Father.'" That the way to the Father is not around Jesus. It's not beside Jesus. It's not near Jesus. It's through Jesus. And it has always been through Jesus. This is why the disciples went to Jesus. They wanted to be in the presence of the Father

because they knew he is the one that comforts. He is the one that heals. He is the one that satisfies. And so sometimes the most honest prayer you'll ever pray is not an eloquent one. It's not a theologically sophisticated one. The most important and honest prayer is, "'Lord, I have nothing. "'I do not understand what you are doing, "'but I am here, I came, I need you.' And that is enough. He has never turned anyone away who came with that." Why? Why do we go to Jesus when we are breaking on the inside? Well, Hebrews 4, 15, verse 16 says this, "'For we do not have a high priest "'who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, "'but one who in every respect,' say every respect, "'say every respect, "'has been tempted as we are yet without sin. "'Let us then with confidence "'draw near to the throne of grace "'that we may receive mercy "'and find grace to help in time of need.'" This is not poetic language. This is a promise that is yes and amen in Jesus Christ. Jesus did not observe human suffering from a safe distance and have an opinion about it. He entered into it fully, without reservation. He wept at a grave.

He sweat blood in a garden. He cried out from a cross, quoting a psalm of abandonment because he knows what it feels like when heaven goes silent. He has been to the bottom, not near the bottom, not close enough that he can see it, no, all the way down in the darkest place this life can take a human being. And then three days later, he came back. Three days later, he came back. This is why we go to Jesus. And so I don't know what it is that you're carrying today. I don't know what's sitting in your chest. I don't know what grave you're standing at. I don't know what guilt has been following you from room to room. I don't know what compromise has been building quietly in your life, whatever door will not open no matter how long you've been standing in front of it. There is a place that you can take it. It's not a religion. It's not a program. It's not a set of principles to try harder. It's a person and his name is Jesus. And so I'm gonna pray. Maybe for some of you, you've been around Jesus. You've been close to him, but you know that you've never fully surrendered your life. Now is the opportunity to not pretend and perform anymore.

Now is an opportunity to just simply come to him for salvation. And so with eyes closed and heads bowed, if you know that you've never surrendered your life to Jesus as Lord and Savior, you know it. You've heard the things, you've sang the songs, but you've never given it all to him. I'm gonna ask you to raise your hand up real high and keep it there. Because I'm gonna lead you in a prayer, a prayer that I believe Jesus answers 100% of the time, every time. And that prayer is, Jesus, save me. Save me. I need you. And so Father God, I'm praying for every single person who has their hand raised, would you by the power of the Spirit, pull them out of darkness into your marvelous light. Would you move them from being an orphan to being a child of God? Would you save them? And would we welcome them into the kingdom, knowing that they have a father who loves them more than they could ever imagine. Have your Spirit bring them upon the cross, and let them stance upon him. And would you also see them, and

because the tomb isn't empty. Thank you for the salvation in this place. And we're gonna sing. We're gonna sing to everyone who is seated on his throne, who is fully in control. And when our lives don't make sense, we're saying, God, we trust your heart, even in the times we don't quite see your hand, and so we're gonna sing. And then we bring, we bring our first and best, because God gave us his first and best in Jesus Christ. It's our act of worship. And then we pray. This is an opportunity for you to come to the altar and do the most courageous thing that you can do, and say, I don't have this together. I don't know what's going on. I'm tired of trying harder and doing better. I'm here to confess and to surrender it at your feet, and let his grace pour over us. And so let's sing. Let's bring, and let's pray.