David Stockton 4/4/21 David Stockton 4/4/21

Stories of Defiance

Yes, Jesus, we praise you. We thank you. We turn our eyes toward you. And Lord, we just really want you to be lifted high. We want you to be honored in this place. Let’s shout it out one more time. Jesus! Jesus!

Series; Easter

April 4, 2021 - David Stockton

Yes, Jesus, we praise you. We thank you. We turn our eyes toward you. And Lord, we just really want you to be lifted high. We want you to be honored in this place. Let’s shout it out one more time. Jesus! Jesus!
Lord, we need you now more than ever. We know that you are alive and we know that the grave has no victory and death has no sting anymore. We want to be able to live in the truth that to live is Christ and to die is gain. Lord, we need your help. We need your Spirit to come and help our fear give way to faith and our heartbreak give way to hope.
And so we look to you, because there is no one else who can do it. You alone can turn graves into gardens, Lord. You alone are the rescuer, the redeemer. And so we do, we run to you. We leave everything else. We even leave our own pride, independence, self-centeredness. Lord we leave all that behind and we run to you.
Jesus, we do pray that this would be a great morning. Lord, I thank you for those who are getting baptized today. I pray that they would just really sense your Spirit and you would seal their hearts for you. Give them the strength that they need for the journey. I pray that there might be some others that would be willing to just surrender their lives to you this morning. That they would feel you knocking on the door of their hearts and they would say yes to you, and they would get to know what it means to have your hope, your defiant hope, your defiant joy and your defiant love. Thank you, Lord Jesus. I pray all these things in your name.

And everybody said ‘Amen.” You can have a seat. Make yourself comfortable. If you’re online at home, make yourself comfortable. It’s great to have you. Thanks to al the Living Streams family that are here. Thanks for coming at 8 o’clock and not 9:30. Been through that before. Thanks for all the visitors who here. Thanks for coming out and joining us, whether that’s online or in person. It’s great to have you. You’re welcome in this place. It’s a good day to be here.

We had a service last night, which was like a pretend Easter service. I mean, it was like full on Easter service, but it was just on a Saturday. We had Good Friday services, and some interesting times, but really good times. It’s been awesome.

I love this church. This is a great place. I love what the Lord’s doing here. And I’ve just been so encouraged because I really do think there is a turning away from Jesus that is happening in our society, whether it’s post-Christian, secularization, whatever you want to call it. I do see that and you hear about that. But there is also a great turning toward the Lord. There is a great hunger that is being stirred up within the Bride of Christ, within the Church, but there is also a great hunger being stirred up with people who are just kind of sick and tired of what the world has to offer. And they are hungry for Jesus.

So don’t miss them, you know, getting caught up in all the people turning away. Just look, because the Lord is bringing people right to you that are just ready to receive what he has for them. That’s what we want to do today is receive what he has for us.

Easter is a great time to party. Easter Sunday service should be like a party. It should be fun. Everybody’s dressed up. Everybody is gathered together. It is a little early in the morning, so it is weird in that regard, like an early morning party. But it’s a great time to party. There are other great times to party, whenever you’ve conquered something, you’ve finished something, you’ve overcome something, it’s a great time to party.

I think of graduation. Anybody going to graduate soon? Yeah? Nice! Very nice. You’ve kind of thrown off. You’re like, “Hey, teacher, leave those kids alone,” kind of deal. You’ve overcome. There’s no more testing. You just can throw that thing off. Throw it behind you and move forward.

Retirement I think is another one of those things. Anybody retired? Yeah! You show-offs! Yeah. Retirement. I just image that being a time when you’ve conquered this journey. You’re at this place and you can kind of say to everyone, “Take this job and shove it. I ain’t working here no more.” The old song.

Then I also think of when Baylor is going to win the championship tomorrow. I mean, Gonzaga is going to win the championship tomorrow. You’ve conquered all the teams. There’s no one left to conquer. You’ve beat everybody and it’s all behind you. It’s good time to celebrate.

But there is no time like Easter to party. Because this is the time where the two foes of humanity, sin and death, who have never been defeated, our greatest champion, Adam, succumbed to it all. And we’ve been living under the curse. And the devil and the flesh and the world have been in authority from that day on.

Yet, Jesus came as the second Adam. He came as our Champion. And he came to take on sin and death. And he took on sin every single moment of his life, as he was tempted in every way that we are, yet never succumbing. Ultimately the world, the devil and the flesh threw everything they could at him on the cross. And all of man’s evil and wickedness, all summoned together and they fired their guns as the same time. And man’s unrighteousness was on its fullest display.

Yet, Jesus rose from the dead, proving forevermore that the unrighteousness of man is not more powerful than the righteousness of God. And that is such great hope for us. Because all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory. But the righteousness of God is enough to bring cleansing, forgiveness and redemption to even us. And sin and death, they have no claim. They have no authority on the people of God anymore. It’s a great, great day to party.

Luke 24 is the story of the first Easter and the party that was thrown in honor of what Jesus did and all that he accomplished. It wasn’t a great party, by the way.

1 On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. 5 In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? 6 He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 7 ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ ” 8 Then they remembered his words.

So here we have the beginnings of the party. Mary and some of the other women have gathered the spices and they’re going to the tomb where Jeuss has been buried. Now Jesus has already told them, “I’m going to die at the hands of sinful men, but then I’m going to rise. It’s going to be awesome.”

So they’re coming to the tomb with the expectation that Jesus is going to be risen, because he told them that. No. False statement. Not true at all. They knew what Jesus was going to do. He had told them. And when he said things that happened, he had never given them any reason to mistrust what he said. So when they come to the tomb with the spices to mourn and to grieve, and when they’re met with a stone rolled away, which was a miracle, and they’re met with the body not being there, which is a miracle, what it says is they were troubled and then they’re met with these men, angels, whose clothes look like lightning, and they’re going, “What are you doing here? Why are you looking for the living among the dead? Remember? Jesus told you what was going to happen. This is why you come to the party?”

And it says that they were very frightened by these guys. “Oh, this is even worse.” And he says “Don’t you remember? Jesus told you this, that this was going to be the greatest day in history. He told you all about it.” And then they remembered his words. That’s the summation of that part of the party. But maybe it gets better. At least you know, the disciples will get this right.

9 When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven …

Judas wasn’t there. He had taken his life.

…and to all the others. 10 It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles.

So these are Jesus’ guys. They’re ready to party. They know what Jesus said.

11 But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.

Jesus had told them. In fact, Jesus had been so clear on this fact that, actually, when Jesus went through all the different courts where he stood before all the different people, before going to the cross, as they were trying to figure out something wrong with him, as they were trying to pin crimes against him, one of the things they brought up is that he counted to talk about how, if you destroy the temple of his body that in three days he was gong to rebuild the temple. It was troubling. Even they knew what he was claiming to do. And here the eleven hear what these women have to say, they hear the message, the gospel being preached for the first time, and they’re like, “These women are crazy. These women don’t know what they’re talkinga about. They’re troubled. They’re blubbering, crying all the time.” I don’t know what they’re saying.

12 Peter, however,…

Come on now! Peter. He gets it right all the time.

… got up and ran to the tomb.

He was so moved. He’s like, “Let’s go to the party!”

Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.

That’s what he must have done. And we know by their actions what the disciples did. They went into hiding. They were like, “This is not good. People are going to think we stole the body and they’re going to come after us. And they’re going to do to us what they did to Jesus.” And they hid. They were scared. They ran away.

When I read this and I think about today and what we’re supposed to do. It’s Easter. We’re celebrating that Jesus conquered sin and death. We’re celebrating that the gates of heaven got flung open wide to pieces of junk like you and me. All of our sin and all of our failing — what the resurrection was is Jesus saying, “I want all of you.” And the gates of heaven were flung wide open to you and me. No matter what we’ve done, no matter what we’re going to do, his righteousness can overcome all of our unrighteousness if we let him. This is a great day and we’re supposed to celebrate.

Like these disciples, we have the same problem. We are conditioned in this life against faith, against hope, and against joy. The heartbreaks that we experience in this life have caused our hearts to be so hardened. Sometimes we can even miss Jesus. Sometimes we can miss what he wants to do. Like I said, our fear does not give way to faith, it just stays as fear. And our heartbreak does not find its way to hope, it just remains heartbreak. Even with all the evidence that they saw, even though they were face to face with an empty tomb, they were face to face with angels declaring this, reminding them of what Jesus had already told them, they still had so much trouble believing.

I’ve been thinking about some images that came to mind as we were preparing for our Easter weekend, you know, some months ago. Trying to figure out what the Lord was wanting us to say and how to frame it all. One of the images that came to mind when we were thinking about it was I was remembering going with my family to QT one time. We were going to get some health food and stuff. It was by our house. We were walking down the sidewalk by Greenway. It was a busy street. It was summertime and it was hot. It was this concrete and asphalt everywhere.

As we were walking, I remember seeing through this tiny little crack there was this flower that had come up. Like, in the midst of the summer heat, so oppressive, in the midst of this concrete jungle and asphalt laid over everything, this flower was like, “What’s up?” And it was in full bloom. We have an image, and obviously this is more beautiful than the one that I saw. There was no filter on the one I saw.

I just was looking at it and it struck me like, “What a defiant little flower!” We did our best to just say, “You will not grow here.” And we laid out our concrete and asphalt just to make sure no life, nothing could get in the way. Yet this flower just had the audacity to just believe that what God had made it to do could happen in the midst of whatever situation it found itself in. And it just popped right up. And it was shining bright and it was beautiful.

God used that little flower to give me a little hope, that no matter what kind of hardness, no matter what I feel buried under, with Christ all things are possible. And the resurrection declares that it does not matter what the world, the devil and the flesh throw at me. What God has put in me can come into full bloom.

That’s the message for you. I don’t know what you’re buried under. Addiction, debt, heartbreak. If you allow Jesus in, he will come and you will experience this defiant hope rise up. This defiant faith in the midst of fear. A defiant joy at times.

There was another image that came to mind as I was thinking about this. I remember making a decision in my life that really just kind of ruined everything. I thought I was doing the right thing. I had done something and it really put me in a place where I was about to lose everything that I held dear. It was very heavy. I remember I was in a seminary class. I should have been listening but I didn’t listen that much in those classes. And I just started drawing this tree. I was so troubled, I just felt like all I could do was draw this tree. I drew this tree and making it as barren and dead looking as possible. Like, “This is how my soul feels.” As I was doing this, the one thing that I did learn in seminary is to hear God’s voice. I felt as I was drawing this tree with no leaves, I was making sure there wasn’t a leaf on it I kept hearing the Spirit of God saying, “:ut a leaf on that tree.” And I was like, “No. I’m not putting a leaf on this tree. I’m not feeling good about anything right now.” I was feeling the, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And it was real. It was like, “Put a leaf on it” I was like “No.” I was fighting with God . In the end, I was like, “Oh man.” And I had to put a leaf on. It was true. Even though outwardly and inwardly I was feeling crushed and so unsure and so uncertain and so insecure, I just still had this defiant drop of hope that I could not quite shake. It’s weird that I was even trying to. But I just could not shake it

I found this image later on. This is not what I drew. My tree was really lame looking. But I have this in my office to remember that moment where God wouldn’t let me give in. What is cool is I love this bird in this tree too, because it was like the Holy Spirit saying, “Put a leaf on that tree.” I had to wrestle with God but are enough, you know, hanging onto Jesus and allowing his hope to grow, that decision I made has actually turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. And God knew that. I did not. But he knew what was on the other side.

Then, even just more recently I was thinking at the beginning of this year, we had gotten through 2020. Whew. There’s a little celebration right there. 2020 you can’t come back (I don’t think). And 2021, we kicked it off and did our fasting season where we were just trying to get a hunger and a vision for the righteousness of God.

By the way, next week we’re starting a whole sermon series on the Sermon on the Mount. We’re going to hear from Jesus what he thinks justice and beauty is. So, if you aren’t going to a church somewhere, it’s time to get in here and get the word of God into you. And, oh, it’s going to be good.

I got done with that kickoff of the year and I remember going home, and, I’m always wiped out after Sunday mornings. And I usually about Monday afternoon start to bounce back. But this time, Monday afternoon came and went and there was no bounce. Then Tuesday, then Wednesday, then Thursday, and I was like, “Huh. This is different.” I was numb. Even in m prayer life there was no passion, no excitement. Thinking about preaching another message felt like death. I was just kind of stuck.

I had a picture. You know that bottle cap, once it’s pressed down, it stays down. I was depressed. I was like pressed down and couldn’t find any bounce back. It just kept going. Then what was crazy was, at some point, I thought, What if I never bounce back? And I know some of you who deal with depression, that’s kind of the cycle. Then once you get to that point where, Maybe I’ll never bounce back, there’s kind of a new level of depression that sets in.

It continued on for a few weeks. All I knew to do was to keep hanging on to Jesus. Then sure enough, I did bounce back. But I know some of you have been in that spot for a long time. But the resurrection’s message is there will always be a bounce back. There will always be a leaf on the tree. It doesn’t matter what kind of a thing you are buried under, Jesus can always bring out beauty and flowers.

That’s kind of been a little bit of a theme for our whole church. My daughter Bella, who’s had to overcome a lot of adversity, she was praying about this year 2021, and she said she still felt there was a lot of adversity, but there were flowers everywhere. So that’s been something we’ve continued to talk about. We’re looking for the flowers in the midst of the pain.

That’s that defiant hope, that defiant faith, that defiant joy that show up. And, sure enough, for the apostles, as they continued, they didn’t get it right away. They didn’t come to the party very well prepared. But Jesus showed up to them multiple times. Eventually they allowed their faith to overcome their fear. They allowed that hope to once gain come into that place where disappointment reigned. They allowed his joy to come and be his strength. And these men and women, because of that fact, not only were the now fearless, not only were they walking in triumph and victory in a very adverse situation, but their lives even became evidence to the resurrection.

Those that got to be around them and discipled by them, they followed suit, and their lives became evidence that Jesus is alive. And on and on and on and further and wider, until the gospel, the message that Jesus was alive had spread over the entire Roman Empire And there have been saints that have come throughout every generation from all over this world that have witnessed for themselves the evidence that Jesus is alive. And they have received it into themselves, experiencing a defiant hope and joy and love and peace that he brings. And one and on until today.

I’m just one person who can tell you stories of when my dad took his life and how the hope of God held like an anchor in my soul. And when my mom died of cancer way too young, and how the presence of God and the peace of God came. And how over time my heartbreak has turned into hope. It’s given way. And as the challenges continue to come, the presence of Christ in my life, the living Christ that I walk with day after day, that I carry my burdens to, that I receive from, it has given me what I need to continue to overcome in my battle with sin and temptation, to continue to overcome when fear comes banging down the door .

Last year it was so awesome to see all the people in this fellowship who were unwavered by all of the disruption and uncertainty that came upon us. So the offering is to you today. If you don't know Jesus, today is a great day to look at the evidence and to receive him, to allow your fear to give way to faith, to allow your pride to give way to surrender, so that he can come in and he can lead you on that path of the just that shines every brighter to the perfect day. And then, ultimately, the greatest joy of all is that one day, because of what Jesus did, we will die but that will only be giving us access to resurrection life.

Death no longer ends man’s story. But death is actually something that helps us get to fullness of life that Christ is preparing for us even now. And all of that can be yours. If you hear Jesus knocking on your heart, you can let him in and receive all that he has.

Let’s do that now. Let’s pray. If you’re on line or if you’re in person, I’m going to say a quick prayer and you can repeat it after me if you’re ready to say, “Jesus I need you. Jesus take control. Just repeat these words after me:

Lord Jesus, thank you for loving me. Thank you for dying for me. Thank you for rising from the dead for me. Please come and wash away all my sins. Please come and fill me with your Spirit. And help my heartbreak turn to hope. And help my fear turn to faith. And help my pride turn to holy surrender. And when I die, Jesus, please take me to be with you. Amen.

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Pledge of Allegiance

John Chapter 2. Let’s read this and let the word of God just wash over us to quiet everything else in our minds and hearts and see what John the Apostle is saying about Jesus in this chapter:

On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”
“Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”

David Stockton
Series: John
Chapter 2

(Starting at 1:50)

John Chapter 2. Let’s read this and let the word of God just wash over us to quiet everything else in our minds and hearts and see what John the Apostle is saying about Jesus in this chapter:

On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”
“Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”
His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.
Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim.
Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”
They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”
What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days.

This is the word of the Lord. This is John writing as he’s thinking back, as he’s accounting the life of Jesus and the interactions he had with Jesus in the flesh, in the body, in Israel at that time. And John is at the end of his life. He’s been through a lot. He’s probably around 85-90 years old. He’s writing up close to the end of the first century. He’s recounting and writing to us, trying to give an account for why he believes in Jesus.

There is debate as to who he was writing to or who he had in mind. To me it seems that he might have had Hellenistic people in mind. Both the Greco Roman world that he was probably interacting with up in Ephesis and the way that he starts out calling Jesus the Logos, which is a Greek word. It’s more than a Greek word, it’s a Greek concept. It has a lot of depth and meaning in the Greco Roman world. So you can check last week’s message if you want to know more about that.

He introduces Jesus as the logos and he goes on to talk to us about this guy John the Baptist. John the Apostle, which we’ll call John A, then you’ve got John the Baptist, exhibit John B. John the Baptist was this really neat individual who, in his day and age was able to exemplify walking in the world but not of the world. I mean, in some drastic ways. John was wearing camel skins. He was eating locusts and honey. He lived out in the wilderness as far as we know. He was baptizing people. He was calling people to come out of the religious system of the day. He was calling people to come out of the greed, out of their selfishness, out of all of the different things that are sinful. He was calling them out and saying, “Please come and return to God.”

And amazingly, this wild haired, wild guy had a lot of people coming out to be baptized by him, to hear what he had to say. Jesus called him a prophet later on. His prophecy, the words that he spoke, were able to cut through the confusion of that day and really land in people’s hearts. It was drawing people out of the worldly systems, out of all of that into kind of a more fresh beginning with God. Even these people that were steeped in religious things in the Jewish world.

I’ve been praying that we’re going to have a lot more John the Baptists rise up in our time, in our day, as we have so much noise, dissension and actual pain and confusion. We really need the prophetic voice to come on strong and cut through it all and speak to our hearts so we’ll know how to be in the world but not of the world—how to navigate this challenging dynamic that we’re in, with all of the political tensions, with all of the shouts and screams. Even with deciding how we’re going to navigate these racial issues and this racial pain. And other things as well.

I love the John Baptists. We talked about him last week as well. He was a fighter. He stood up in the face of injustice, oppression and immorality. His intense morality and simplicity gave his message intense credibility and clarity. I’m praying for some more of that in our day and age as well.So now we’re moving on to John Chapter 2. I want to spend a little time unpacking a few things here, but really focus on verse 11.

I was a camp counselor one summer, actually a counselor in training. They gave us camp names. They called me Spelunk. Spelunk is obviously referring to cave exploration because I had done a little of that in my time. It’s always fun to go exploring in caves. You through maybe a little hole, crawling through and it’s not that good; but then it opens up into kind of a bigger cavern. And you can go and there are lots of different places to explore. There are lots of places that, as you go through it, it opens up into these broad things.

As you’re reading the book of John, he has so many phrases that you could spend the rest of your life just chewing on and diving into. So, as we read here in Chapter 2, it’s just like that.

As we go on, I want to talk to the kids for a second, that are still awake, that haven’t left the room, that may be upside down on your couch by now—I totally understand that. No problem. But, kids, if you would draw me a picture of what it looks like to explore a cave, a spelunker. Someone who is going into a cave, exploring. That would be a fun drawing for me to see this week. Thanks for the ones that have been coming. Make sure you put your address with them so that I can make sure something shows up in your mailbox. There you go kids: Spelunking. That’s what you’re going for today.

So let’s dive in and do some exploration in John 2. Here are some phrases. He starts out chapter 2 with “On the third day.” Now, for those of us who know about the resurrection of Jesus, for John, who obviously did, that phrase “on the third day” is such a big deal. He uses this phrase and we don’t know if he’s talking about the third day that he had been with Jesus as one of his disciples. We don’t know if this is three days later from when he had that interaction with Nathaniel. Or we don’t know if he’s just kind of saying, “Hey, on the third day Jesus always does cool stuff.” We’re not sure. Again, loaded question. We don’t have time to unpack too much.

He talks about going to a wedding in Cana. A wedding in this day and age is a very big deal. A wedding for the Hebrew people is a very big deal. There’s a year-long lead to a wedding. There are all these traditions, all these things that happen, it’s a real communal thing, getting people together. When you are a people who are being oppressed, when you are a people who have no privileges, no rights as Roman citizens, it was a really big deal to have these moments where people could come together and have this special time of rejoicing and feeling human in the midst of all of this. So this was a wedding that Jesus was invited to and it was in Cana.

Now we don’t know where Cana was or anything like that. It’s a town that didn’t make the cut in a lot of ways for our maps. It was such a small village and very insignificant in a lot of ways. But here it is that John is mentioning Cana as a place where Jesus did something really cool. I just love that about Jesus. I love how different he is than our day and age. Anything we do cool we make sure and post it and make sure everyone knows how we cool we are and all these things. But when Jesus was doing the first miracle, the first time he was really revealing to humanity who he was, he was doing it in a way that very few people were going to know about it. In fact, really just his family, his village and his disciples.

That’s the emphasis we’re trying to make as we go through all of this. What are we going to do to heal the world, to bring real change into our world? I think the Jesus model is to just first take care of the ones that God has given you. I think that’s the most important thing. In addition to that, make sure you’re taking care of the ones he’s asking you to give yourself to. Not just the ones he’s given you, but the ones he’s asking you to give yourself to.

So that’s what Jesus was doing here. When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him… so there’s this other phrase. Jesus had this interaction with his mom. She said, “They have no more wine.” We don’t have time to dive into it. But I wonder what made her think Jesus could do something about this. What in the thirty years of her living with Jesus made her think Jesus could do something about this, that we don’t know about? The only thing we know Jesus did between zero and thirty was he spent the night at church one time and was asking some questions when he was twelve. So I just think it’s so interesting to think about their relationship there and what is being implied in this.

His answer to her is, “Woman, why do you involve me?” He’s basically saying, “Hey, you’re not really in line with what I feel like my Father is telling me to do here.” And he says, “My hour has not yet come.” He knew there was a timing to his life. He knew there was moment where he was supposed to step out. But at this point he knew it wasn’t time to do that. And yet still he does in a small way show his glory to those that were there.

And then a bunch of things go on. But I want to focus in on verse 11. Verse 11 says, “What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory and his disciples believe in him.”

So again, John is writing, end of his life, probably trying to speak into the Greco Roman world that he was feeling like an evangelist towards, or feeling a mission to go and preach to. And he was sharing about what sign Jesus gave him in his process of believing, and the disciples as well.

This is the first of seven signs. In the gospel of John there are seven signs. There are seven miraculous things that Jesus does that are sometimes included in the other three gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. Sometimes they are not. But here they are:

The changing of water into wine.
The healing of the royal official’s son.
The healing of a disabled man.
The feeding of the five thousand.
The walking on the water.
The healing of the man born blind.
The raising of Lazarus.
And, obviously, the resurrection would be another sign as well.

These are the signs that John gives us in his gospel. And I feel like John’s probably letting us know these are the most significant moments in his journey of faith as he was interacting with Jesus and coming to a full understanding of who this man, this small town man really was. And that, ultimately, he was the Son of God, or as we talked about, he was the logos. He was God’s who plan, agenda, politic. He was everything. He was there in the beginning.

So John went from a place of just interacting with this person who was kind of John the Baptist for all he knew, to ultimately seeing Jesus as God in the beginning. Forever. And writing about that.

So this was the first sign. This was a significant sign for John. And I like what he says here. He says that Jesus revealed his glory in this way and his disciples believed in him. John’s trying to do something significant there. We know that the whole theme of the book of John , again, we talked about it last week, John chapter 20 says that “Jesus performed many other signs [than the seven or eight that I’ve given you], in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written so that you may believe in him. So that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” Life in his name.

Basically John is writing this whole book so that you and I will believe in him, will believe in Jesus. So that’s our whole goal. As we read this, we will continue to believe in Jesus. Those who don’t believe in Jesus, or don’t have any kind of connection with Jesus, that after reading this, they’ll take start to take Jesus seriously and they’ll begin a relationship with him. For those of us that have a relationship with Jesus, that this will foster and build and nourish our faith so that we’ll continue to believe in Jesus, even against all of the other shouts that come our way and all of the other things that are trying to demand our affections, our attention, and our belief.

I want to start to unpack what it means to believe. All of my life I was raised in a Christian home. My parents believed in God and believed in Jesus and they had their own reasons and they would share some of those testimonies with me from time to time. I remember one time actually it was interesting, but it was really significant because I know who my dad is. My dad was this big, strong guy. My dad did not like to rely on other people, did not like to make other people have to help him. He was very strong. He was very stout and he helped a lot of people all over. It was a very tough thing for him to allow someone to help him.

He told me a story about when he and my mom were first dating. They actually went to this Christian conference of some sort. There was someone there speaking and he had spent time growing up in a home where his mom and dad were very Pentecostal, like, “Hey, Jesus is the best.” And telling people about Jesus and really believing in miracles. But my dad had grown up and became maybe a little jaded in that direction. He had spent a lot of time living in the world. Then when he met my mom and my mom started actually came into full faith in Jesus, he started to think more about it again.

He said they went to this conference. At the end of it, they were going to pray that people could receive the Spirit of God. He was watching people being slain in the Spirit. Please don’t get caught up in “slain in the Spirit,” this is not the point of this message. I don’t see it in the scriptures and all of those things, so I’m not trying to make it a proponent of when the Spirit shows up. I’m just telling you a story that my dad told me of an experience in his life that helped him believe.

So he and my mom went forward. He, again, was this big, strong football player guy and there was this little lady that was praying for people. It wasn’t that everybody was falling over when she prayed for them. But he was just standing there, and when she prayed for him, he fell over. Again, this is not the important thing. Please don’t get caught up on this. But for my dad, it was the Lord showing up to my dad in a significant way saying, “Hey. I am here. I am real. And I do have a plan for you.” It was something that helped my dad believe. It helped my dad go, ‘Okay.” And my dad never talked about being slain in the Spirit and didn’t start thinking this important. But he did really start thinking it was important to believe in Jesus.

I think it’s interesting, however we come to this concept or this phrase “believing in him.” We all come with baggage. Some of us come with stories in our life of Jesus’ faithfulness that have been passed down for generations and maybe even shown up in our own life. Awesome. Wonderful. Hallelujah. That’s great. Some of us come to this message and this moment right now—you’ve never seen Jesus do anything. In fact, the times you’ve prayed, or the times you’ve tried to lean in and say, “Okay, God, I need you,” nothing has happened and nothing’s shown up.

So we all come to this phrase differently. I understand that. What I’m trying to do is just to show you the way John is sharing this is what’s helped him believe. And yet I need to unpack this word believe a little bit for us Faith is a hard word to conceptualize and make practical and embody. Belief is the same thing.

So believing in him. I want to start out to tell you what I think John the Apostle is trying to communicate when he says that “I began to believe in him.” A picture of that, I think, comes where, in the book of John, John never uses his name but he refers to himself as “the disciple that Jesus loved.” And he refers to himself as “the one who leaned against Jesus’ breast,” particularly on that night of communion he was kind of leaning on Jesus.

When I would try to encapsulate what John the Apostle would define faith as, I think he would define it as complete trust—or trust over time is another phrase that I have heard. It’s the idea of just kind of leaning on Jesus because you know he’s got you. And John, for whatever reason, it’s interesting because he was originally called one the of the Sons of Thunder. There was something about him and his brother James that was just passionate and wild, and maybe abrasive ,and maybe explosive. They were fighters. They wanted to call down fire on people at some point. But as we see John who has spent time with Jesus and been formed into the image of Christ, later in life we see John as this one who just wants us to love one another. He writes so much about how important it is that we care for one another, that really the law of God is fulfilled when we love each other.

So here one of the Sons of Thunder has been totally formed into this trusting, caring, compassionate person. I just love what Jesus can do in our lives. That’s what John is saying. We need to trust him. He leaned on his breast. Totally at ease because of Jesus’ sovereignty. What I want to do is to bring to us that concept today. Where are we? Are totally at ease in the knowledge of Jesus’ sovereignty when our world is getting shaken, or our own souls are getting shaken, when our community is getting shaken, when our nation is getting shaken, when our health is getting shaken?

What Jesus wants to prove to you and demonstrate to you is that he really is sovereign. You can completely trust in him. It’s not a blind trust, but a trust over time and time and time again. Jesus showing up. It’s the substance that shows up for the things you’re hoping for, as Hebrews would say.

So that’s John’s definition. It’s a complete trust. When John is referring to this miracle that happened at Cana in a small town, small village way, he’s saying that that was the beginning of my complete trust in Jesus. I think that’s where we need to start walking with Jesus and seeing where our complete trust is these days.

Secondly we have Paul. Paul the Apostle wrote most the New Testament. He’s actually called the Apostle of Faith like John would be called the Apostle of Love. When Paul defines faith, it’s more of a pledge of allegiance in a lot of ways. It’s Independence Day weekend, where we celebrate the freedoms that we have as Americans, and those who have brought us to this point, and the fight to continually maintain these freedoms for all people. It’s good and right. We have this pledge where we make our kids do, where they put their hand over their heart and they pledge allegiance to this country and all that.

For Paul, faith is really a pledge of allegiance. He refers in Romans 10 that we need to confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and we need to believe in our heart that he rose from the dead. In some ways, to sum that up, Paul is speaking about this confession of our mouths and this pledge, believing in our hearts that we confess that he is sovereign over creation. He is Lord. We believe in our hearts that he is the only one that can save us from death. Or the only one that can give us God-life. That is who we believe in for the resurrection.

So for Paul it really is this kind of allegiance. It’s not just a moral or intellectual ascent of like, “Oh, I say the right things, now I’ve got it.” But it’s this pledge of allegiance. “For the rest of my life, for the rest of my days, for the rest of my breaths, I’m going to do what is in the best interest of Jesus and his kingdom.” It’s basically coming out of one kingdom and pledging allegiance to another kingdom.

It’s basically, “Denying the citizenships of all of my life, that I’ve always been, all the identities that I’ve ever had prior,” and now saying, “There’s one identity, one citizenship that I really am pledging allegiance to, and that is the kingdom of Jesus Christ, both now and forever.”

There is this author, Matthew Bates, that I’ve been reading a little bit about. I like what he says. He breaks it down into three different sections. He says faith, or believing, is a mental assent. There is a reality there. There is sworn fidelity. That’s this kind of allegiance concept of really kind of changing where we did have allegiance and making a new allegiance and being faithful to it consistently over time. And he also talks about embodied loyalty. I like that because now it’s the word becoming flesh. Now it’s faith and works. It kind of brings the whole thing together. Where our faith should cause our feet and hands to do different things. Our faith should cause us to go different places and be with different people that, maybe without faith in Jesus we wouldn’t have.

I like that. Mental assent, sworn fidelity, embodied loyalty. Mental assent. We need to take care of what we read and listen to and watch and fill our minds with. Absolutely. We live in the information age, not the truth age. Don’t forget that. Our saving faith comes by the hearing of the Word of God. That’s what Romans teaches. As we take in information, knowledge, understanding, it creates faith. It might create faith in Jesus, or it might create faith and allegiance to other things besides Jesus. Sometimes those allegiances can be a challenge where the Bible teaches we can’t really serve two masters. So we have to watch what comes in because it can produce faith and allegiance in a wrong direction.

Sworn fidelity. We need to take care what we pledge allegiance to. No one can serve two masters. There are powerful political forces clamoring for our attention and devotion. We need to make sure our allegiance to Jesus is not compromised or in competition with anything else.

As I was praying this morning about this message, the image of Revelation 18 came to mind. In there, again, I don’t want to go real deep into it, but in there you have this call from the angels of God at the end of this kind of shaking that’s gone on in the world. And it says, “I want you to come out of her.” And it’s talking about the whore of Babylon. The world system. The world’s order or whatever it might be. It’s this call to the people of God at that time to come out of her. She is going to be ruined and exposed and destroyed. And you need to come out of her. Speaking to this challenge for Christians that we need to be in the world but not of the world. We need to serve this world and care for this world and try to bring healing to this world, but we’ve got to make sure we don’t get caught up in worldly ways in the process, or become worldly in the process.

Embodied loyalty. Your calendar, your phone usage app, your banks statements, your family—they are all proof to see where your loyalties lie. For most of us, it’s not that we are loyal to bad things, even though it’s tricky these days. You know, the devil shows up as an angel of light, we’re told. And marketers can make things look so good these days that we do have to watch out what we’re becoming loyal to.

The other thing I want to address is that, not only are we loyal to bad things, but sometimes we’re just so passive to God things. God’s callings on our life. God’s guidance. We need to make sure our faith actually is embodied in some way. It shows up on the ground. It shows up in practical life. It shows up in this world. It shows up in our relationships with those around us. It shows upon the way that we use the resources that we have. It shows up in those places.

So there you have mental assent, sworn fidelity and embodied loyalty. So just to wrap up how it’s working its way in my life right now. I was sitting in a direction team meeting. We’re obviously trying to figure out what to do as a Living Streams organization. I’m always trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do as just a follower of Jesus, as well. We just spent some time listening. I could picture Jesus there, like, in front of me, looking at me. And he was just kind of ready to say something. I was, like, “Jesus, just say it. Just say what you want me to do and—bam—we’re going to do it. We’re going to go all out. It doesn’t matter what anyone says. We’re just doing it.”

And I really had a sense—I wrote about it in my weekly email—this is what Jesus said, “I don’t want to tell you what to do. I want to see what you’re going to do. I’ve invested in your life. I’ve taught you my ways. I’ve given you my Spirit.” It was almost like he had this joyful anticipation. Like a father who in some ways knows his children are going to do something great, like he’s excited to see. He was just, “I just want to see what you’re going to do.”

I felt that message was helpful because it freed me up from feeling like I might make a mistake. It made me start wanting to do things that I know Jesus is going to think is beautiful. That’s really my challenge to each one of us. Twofold:

1) we’ve got to figure out how to make sure we’re not getting caught up in the world, or secular humanism, or some sort of Marxist approach. We’re going to have to make sure and not get caught up in this world and the world systems. We’ve got to realize where we are already caught up in the world systems and we’ve got to figure out how to pull out, how to come out and be separate—being in the world but not of the world.

2) At the same time, we’ve got to figure out then how we can serve this world, how we can walk in this world in a way that gives our Heavenly Father a lot of joy. I’ve shared some of those ideas. We’ll share some more of those ideas at the Congregational Meeting July 9 at 6:30. Don’t miss it.

That’s really what it’s all about. As we sit here as Americans. As we sit here as whatever ethnicity we might have, whatever political party we have. I think it’s really important to make sure that, above it all, first and foremost, every day our affection, our devotion and our allegiance is to the One who conquered death and showed us how to live. To really be there first and foremost. And then to go into this world and engage in society’s pain. Absolutely. Do the things that really do help bring changes in our world like John the Baptist did and like we need to today.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

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