All right.
Well, hey guys, welcome across all of our locations, man. Really excited that you're here today. This is cool for me. I don't know this 100%.
So somebody wouldn't fact check me on this. I'm not totally sure, but I do believe that today is the first time I'm ever going to have preached on Luke 9 and the transfiguration of Jesus.
Okay. And so I am really pumped. I feel like from Thursday and then also from the sermon this morning. Man, the Lord has really moved in my own heart through this message, and I pray that he will through our congregation. I think some of us are going to need to get rattled out of sort of just the routine that we have with, man, we love to read the Bible and we pray and that's just kind of our routine and we need to get a real glimpse of who it is that we're worshiping and allow that to change us.
And I also think there's some others of us here at the Ridge, also at our campuses today. And the reality is that you don't have a relationship with Jesus because you have never seen him for who he actually is. And today in the transfiguration story. You're going to be able to see him and his divinity sort of break through his humanity, and then we're all going to have some decisions to make, all right?
So, if you have a copy of scripture, Luke chapter 9 is where we're going to be today. The cool thing about Luke 9 is that we get a chance to see the true identity of Jesus as his divinity begins to break through his humanity, and we get a glimpse of who he is. I think one of the cool things about Luke 9 is the idea of Jesus' identity coming from the inside out rather than the outside in. I know that many of us, myself included, have probably gone through phases in life. Maybe when you were young, high school, middle school, you kind of went, you know, sometimes at that age, you go through sort of an identity crisis, you're trying to figure out who you are, or whatever.
I think many of us that are my age are really glad there was no social media during those times, so that there's no record of it, right? But we have, I remember I started playing the guitar.
So I decided I was going to be a rocker, you know, rock music, you know, rock band and all that. I know you guys are waiting on a picture to come up. It's not coming up, okay? Just so you know, I'm not doing that to myself. I'm not doing that to my family and my kids, okay?
So then, and I'm not advocating for this at all. I'm just telling you what happened.
So you don't send me an email, okay? But I'm just telling you what happened. Rocker phase gave way to some kind of way. I ended up seeing in maybe seventh grade or something the movie White Men Can't Jump.
Okay, so now all of a sudden I'm into the hip-hop phase. All right.
And now it's basketball and it's rap music and this kind of stuff. Of course, if you've ever gone through something like that, it lasts for like a month because it's not really you, right? And then, you know, it just doesn't match up with actually what's on the inside. Many of us try to put an identity on from the outside. This is what's awesome about the story of the Transfiguration.
We see a glimpse of Jesus, not from the outside in, something that he's trying to put on, or something that's being put onto him. We get a chance to see who he is from the inside out. And who he is, and this is the big idea, is Jesus is the Son of God. That is what this passage is about. There are so many applications of it.
As the Son of God, resurrection awaits. As the Son of God, glorification awaits. As the Son of God, if you and I are joined with Him, then we await those things as well. There's so much courage in that. Man, the fear of death can be removed.
You kill me. You plant me and see what I become in the kingdom. Why? Why do I know that? Because I saw what happened to Jesus.
on the transfiguration. a prefiguring of resurrection. A taste of the glorification that would happen and the glorified body that we will look forward to if we are believers. In other words, there's a lot that happens in the Transfiguration that you and I get a chance to anchor into as believers.
So much so, this is funny. You know, in the West, all we do is celebrate Christmas and Easter, basically, right? The Eastern Orthodox tradition, though, they celebrate Easter and Christmas and the Feast of Transfiguration. Why is the Feast of Transfiguration? Because there is so much for you and I, as believers, to anchor into in this story and to see that's who we follow, and that is what is going to become of us if we continue to follow Him and we persevere to the end and prove ourselves to be who He has called us to be and to be children of the King.
Hey, others of us, though, in the Transfiguration, are going to see very clearly who Jesus is, and maybe this is an opportunity for you to make a decision today. Maybe at our campuses, some of you need to make a decision. Maybe tragedy is what has brought you here today. Maybe something that you're dealing with in terms of one of your kids, or something with a job, or a diagnosis, and tragedy has sent you looking hard. for truth and for Christ and for God and and maybe that's where you're at.
Maybe others of you today are like some of those, hey, 91 first-time guests last week in a random summer weekend.
Okay, God is moving. We're excited about that. Maybe that was you. We have a lot of families that come back to church. You know when they come back to church?
They were at church maybe when they were a kid, then they get off the path, then they have kids. And their kids are little angels for the first three or four years, and then they turn into little. I'm not gonna say it, okay? I'm not gonna say what they turn into, but you understand. And all of a sudden, parents are like, oh my.
These kids aren't naturally going to follow the Lord. They're not natural. Yeah, you're right. They need supernatural influence for that. Maybe you're coming back to church for that.
I don't know. But maybe some of you guys do not have a real clear picture and don't have a real clear resolve around your relationship with Christ. And today is the day to decide that. We have an opportunity. You're going to see the answer that the scripture gives for the question.
Who is this? then you get a chance to decide. Look what it says in verse 28.
Now, about eight days after these sayings, he took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered, and his clothing became dazzling white. And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah. Who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure. An interesting word there.
The word departure, actually, literally in Greek, is the word Exodus.
So he's speaking of Jesus' Exodus, which he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem.
Now, clearly, this passage is about what we see in verse 29: the appearance of his face was altered, and then the appearance of his clothes is altered, and we see the divinity break through the humanity. But. Can I do one small point here that is specifically targeted for the perseverance of the saints and the preservation of the faith of our young people, our middle school, high school, and college-age students? Can I do one thing really quick? All right, so here's the thing: I want you to see this.
High school students, college students.
Sometimes you guys enter a hostile environment where people are looking to destroy your faith. And they want to do that through simplistic arguments that they pull from Scripture one being in this passage. And here's what I want to tell you, real quick. And I'm going to move on to the more meaty part of this passage.
Now about eight days after these sayings, he took with him Peter, John, and James. That was Luke chapter 9, verse 28. Eight days after these sayings, here's the problem: the book of Mark says six days.
Now, here's what I want you to remember, okay? If you're young, if you're in that kind of throes of potentially someone trying to bring something up like this, here's what you're gonna find. Many times in our culture, people will bring up a simplistic argument that looks contradictory in the scripture. But it resolves in about two seconds.
Okay, and I'm going to resolve it for you in about two seconds.
Okay? But here's the thing. What people will do is... They will take a contradiction like this and they will say, Look, see, all the Christians in the world, they didn't realize this was in the Bible. It's clearly contradictory.
Look how dumb they are. Here's what I want you to understand. I don't know if they're all believers. There's over 2.5 billion people that claim Christianity on this planet. They are not all that stupid.
Not an amen, thank you. I was waiting. All right.
I mean seriously. People will throw out an argument, like, oh, look at how dumb all these Christians are. And you gotta just think, like, really? I mean, that's funny. People have been reading the Bible for thousands of years.
You don't think anybody noticed that Luke said eight and Mark said six, and yet we all still believe the Bible is divinely inspired and perfect? Why? Because almost in every case, These things resolve incredibly quickly, like this. One person is speaking to the Greek, one person is speaking to the Hebrew. One person is saying full days, the other person is counting travel days.
It's really that simple.
Okay, it's kind of like this. It's like if I went to student, if I asked our students how many days were you at student camp, some of them might say, man, we were there three full days, three full days. Others might say we were there five days because they're counting the day that they got there and the day that they left. Luke says eight, Mark says six, there's not a contradiction. Man, don't, when you see something that.
that quick and fast and that contradict like. Think about it for like one more minute, okay? And realize that it's probably not what is being portrayed as. Of course, the point here is not that. The point is what we see in the transfiguration.
Look with me again at verse 29. The appearance of his face was altered, and his clothing became dazzling white. It was his face, then his clothes. That's important. And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah.
Y'all, in the faith, these are absolute mountains in the Old Testament.
Okay, the law is really like summed up in Moses. The prophets, you could say, is summed up in Elijah. who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which I already mentioned was the word Exodus, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.
Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, But when they were become fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. If you've been reading the Bible very much, you know this. For whatever reason, Peter falls asleep a lot, okay? He must be very tired from all the walking. And all the stuff.
But they wake up, they see Moses and Elijah, they realize they're not dreaming, and here's what he says. And this is so good, okay? Because listen, Peter, as he normally does, he's gonna put his foot in his big fat mouth, okay?
Now, here's the thing: we're not gonna throw rocks at Peter. We just don't want to do the same thing that he did. All right, we don't want to make the same mistake. And I'm going to tell you today: after I've studied this, I feel like the mistake he made is actually pretty understandable. It's something that I think many of us probably would have made in the same boat.
Here's what he says. Master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you, and one for Moses and one for Elijah. The Bible shows us he put his foot in his mouth because it says not knowing. what he said.
Now let's just talk about this for a moment, all right? The biggest thing I think we need to see is, if I could say this the right way, That Peter really doesn't understand that this story is not about Moses and Elijah and Jesus. It's not a story about three, it's a story about one. I think what the Bible wants us to see is that maybe his first inkling. Of this not being about the three, but it being about the one, should have happened when he realized, and this is what it says in verse 29.
that as Jesus is transfigured, as his face is changed, That happens first, and then his clothes become dazzling white. It's actually a white that you couldn't make this kind of white by detergent and all that kind of stuff, is one of the points of the words that are being used here. But my point to you is, and I think Peter maybe should have seen this. Is that the transfiguration and the radiation of God's glory, the radiance of His glory? It came from the inside out, not the outside in.
That's a big deal.
Okay? You could say it like this. Jesus' glory comes from the inside out. You see other parts of Scripture where the glory of God rests upon somebody. It is given from the outside and it gets all over them.
The difference in this story, of course, is that it's not the glory of God descending upon Jesus. You got to understand, in this story, the glory doesn't come down, the glory goes out. It's the radiance of God's glory emanating from the true identity of Christ. Listen, you might have put a rocker phase on, you might have put a hip-hop phase on, okay? You might have put some kind of identity that you slap on at some point in your life.
Maybe we've had that experience. This is the opposite. This is not an identity coming from the outside in. This is us getting a glimpse of the true nature of who Jesus is. Which is a huge deal.
We are getting a chance to see what Hebrews says in Hebrews 1:3, that Jesus is the radiance of the glory of God. Listen. He is the exact imprint. Of God's very nature.
Now I want you to think about that for a moment. Y'all, there are symbols in the Old Testament. There are times when God shows up. Actually, there's a lot of allusions to Him in this very story. We're going to see it in a minute.
You see the glory cloud in the Old Testament. You see things like the burning bush in the Old Testament. Oh, they're an imprint of the nature of God. They are something of the nature of God. They are not an exact imprint.
An exact imprint of the nature of God is Jesus Christ in the flesh that we can see. The radiance of God's glory goes from the inside out. This is the mistake that Peter made. Look at verse thirty three. Peter said, Master, it's good that we are here.
Let us make three tents. Of course, another word for tent is tabernacle. Let's make three tabernacles. One for Moses because he's that big a deal. One for Elijah because he's that big a deal.
And one for Jesus because he's that big a deal. And here's the problem with what Peter was doing: Peter was equating Jesus with Moses and Elijah. He didn't realize this is not a story about three. It's a story about one. Moses and Elijah are there.
To be eclipsed by the glory of Jesus, not to be equated with the glory of Jesus. They are there so that everybody who has read the Old Testament will realize, wait a minute, if Moses and Elijah are here to testify to his greatness and his glory, this must be some kind of dude. This must be something different. Because this is not equal. This is them being eclipsed by him.
I think it's funny when you think about Peter. It's like Peter just wakes up from this sleep. And all of a sudden, Moses is there, and Elijah's there, and Jesus is there, and all of a sudden, he's thinking. This is the Hebrew Hall of Fame.
Okay? I mean, we've got them all here. The band is together, you know? And we're going to, what are we going to do? Let's celebrate the moment.
Let's commemorate the moment. Let's throw the tents up and have these guys in. I mean, you think about the Hebrew kind of tradition and where he would have been coming from. They're constantly looking. Listen, prophet, priest, and king.
And now they're all here. We have Moses, we have Elijah, and we have King Jesus, and now this is. And he got it totally wrong. He made the same mistake that some of us are going to make today.
Now, I don't throw rocks at him, okay? Because here's the deal: many of us are, you know, we want to throw rocks at Peter. Here's what we would say: listen, we would say something like this: we would say, Peter, How in the world could you not have remembered that just last week in our sermon, okay? that Jesus rose Jairus' daughter from the dead. And you're going to equate him with Elijah and Moses.
Of course. That makes a lot of sense until you go back and read your Bible in the Old Testament and you realize, you know, Elijah. had somebody raised from the dead under his ministry too. Go back and look it up. It happened.
We might be the ones that say, well, wait a minute, how could you equate Jesus with Moses? Jesus is speaking authoritatively about the law and reinterpreting it. And he is saying, I'm the fulfillment of the law. And how could that not be better than Moses? And if I'm sitting there and I'm Peter, it's like, man, Jesus is doing a lot of cool stuff with the law.
But you gotta remember, God gave the law to Moses. I, for one, don't throw rocks at Peter here. Elijah raised somebody from the dead. Moses was given the law by God.
Okay? But Just because maybe it's understandable doesn't mean that we need to fall into the same trap. The trap is we equate Jesus with greatness, but we don't go so far as to call him the absolute Son of God. And that's a mistake that we can make, but listen, this is very important. It's not a mistake that Peter, James, and John made again.
Now I'm not saying they never made mistakes. I'm not saying they never messed up and sinned. But here's the deal: the book of Luke is constantly concerned, and many of the Gospels are as well, with the question of who is Jesus? Who is He? Who is this?
Man, the waves and the wind obey him. Who could this be? People are raised from the dead under his ministry. Who could this be? Peter, James, and John undoubtedly were asking the same question: Who is this man?
They're not asking that question after Transfiguration. The deity of Christ breaks through his humanity, and as we're going to see, Man, God speaks to them in a way that they can understand. And he's going to say, He is my son, he is my chosen one. The glory cloud surrounds him on this mountain. We're going to see these things in just a second.
Here's what I want you to see, though, first. Let me set this up, and then we're going to read the rest of this passage. Because here's the deal. We're about to see the answer. In Peter's life, that changed everything for him.
I fear today. that some of us are not in the heart posture to hear it. Then some of us on our campus are not in the heart posture to hear it. Peter's gonna hear news and it's gonna change everything about his life. I don't need to ask who is this anymore.
I understand this is the divine Son of God.
Some of you, God is knocking on the door, He is drawing your heart to Himself, but you are so committed to non-commitment when it comes to the idea of Christ and His kingdom. that you're not going to be willing to hear it. And that's my prayer today: that people would move in a decisive manner. What if you're about to hear something as you finish this story that could change every single thing in your life? But we're so committed to sitting on the fence.
We're so committed to a non-committal culture, man, that we can't make a decision. Guys, you know, we live in the most non-committal culture in the world. I shared this before, it's kind of a joke, but it's actually sort of sad, too. You know, like you'll ask somebody, do you want to come to dinner Saturday night? And they'll say something like, sounds awesome.
Maybe that can work. What does that mean? Do we cook dinner? Do we not cook dinner? Are you coming?
Are you not coming? Right? Th this is where we live. The notion of an RSVP is almost not even a thing anymore. I mean, people just can't even There's a little girl clapping for that.
And you know what? You're exactly right. You are exactly right, baby. Because that is where we are as a society, okay? People can't just say yes or no, they really can't.
You know a mark of maturity is decisiveness. A mark of maturity is the ability to say yes or no. And here's what we have, man. We live in a baby culture. A baby culture is a maybe culture.
All right, we want to say maybe, maybe, maybe. And that's because we're not that mature. What I'm going to ask you to do today is to make a decision. Man, Peter, James, John, they saw something in this story that changed everything for them. What about for you?
Or are you going to stay on the fence? You know, my son sent me a little YouTube kind of reel thing the other day, showed it to me. It was so good, man. These things that they have where it's like a sermon illustration or somebody's giving a kind of spiritual insight. And it's obviously a fictional story, but it kind of sums up where our culture is.
All right, it's a guy, and he gets approached by Satan, and it's kind of like the kingdom of darkness is on one side of this fence in a big field, and the kingdom of God is in the other. One is filled with light, one is filled with darkness. There's a fence that runs right through the middle. And Satan comes to him and basically says, Hey, you need to make a decision. Do you want the kingdom of darkness or do you want the kingdom of light?
Come to the kingdom of darkness, almost like Jesus in the temptation. I'll give you anything you want. I'll give you everything in the world. Everything that your heart desires, you can have, or you can chase after God and go live in His kingdom, and it's the kingdom of light and the kingdom of fullness. And you can chase God, and you can have God, or you can have me, but you need to make a decision today.
And the guy who I'm thinking was absolutely an American.
Okay. He decides, well, you know what? I'm going to have the best of both worlds. I'm going to go, and I don't, man, I don't want darkness. I don't want hell.
I don't want that. But I also don't really want to become a Jesus freak type person and go running after Jesus, and I don't really want that. What I want is to sit in the middle, and so in all of his smarts, he runs up and he jumps on the fence and he makes his call. I'm going to sit right here. And as soon as he does, the sky goes dark and everything begins to swirl, and Satan comes up.
And the guy's looking at him and says, Man, you told me I could choose which way I wanted to go. And Satan says, But what I didn't tell you is that I own the fence. Not making a choice. is making a choice. What you don't see in the scripture Is milquetoast, middle of the road, sort of half in, sort of half out believers.
That's not what you see. You see people that are either sold out. or they reject fully. And my question for you is. Today, as we get into this last answer here of who is this?
Man, is your heart ready to receive what God may be doing? and helping you make a decision today. Here it is, verse 34. I mean, this is the answer. I want you to understand the rest of the Jesus story in all the Bible flows downhill from this moment.
This is the moment. sets his feet and his face to Jerusalem. He's going to the cross. Moses and Elijah, they're already talking about it with him. He's going to the cross to bring the people out.
Everything flows from this moment. As he was saying these things, Peter was A cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. You know what? If you got your Old Testament down, I know some of us are brand new. We need to go back and listen to that Exodus series again, okay?
And that's fine. If you're new, go track this stuff down. But some of you guys have been in church your whole life. Why do you think they were afraid of the cloud? I'm going to tell you why.
They were starting to put this whole thing together. They were starting to get it figured out. Jesus On the mountain. With Moses. being transfigured And now there is a glory cloud.
Okay, this is looking like a whole lot of stories that are getting wrapped up together in the Old Testament, but here's what they knew. You know, when Moses went up on Sinai, If you even touched the mountain you were dead. And now the glory cloud is descending upon us. I bet you they were afraid. But then, instead of dying.
A voice comes. God is speaking. What does he say? This is my son. My chosen one, that is a citation from Isaiah.
Listen to him. Verse 36. And when the voice had spoken, this is so important: Jesus was found alone. This ain't a story about Moses, it ain't a story about Elijah. They're only here to make sure we understand that their glory was eclipsed by the Son of God.
Because in the end of this story, Jesus is alone. And they kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen. Y'all, this story, it's kind of a card I've been holding in my back pocket. This story is a retelling of the story of Moses. That's what it is.
Except, what we see is there is a greater Moses with a greater glory with a greater Exodus. that you and I get a chance to be all wrapped up in. Amen. This is our salvation. You know, Moses goes up on a mountain and God.
Shines his glory upon Moses' face, and Moses was transfigured in a sense. And you know what happened when he came down, his face was so bright people couldn't even look at it. But here's what you got to understand. And if you're trying to look for what is like the very core of this story, I'm going to give it to you. Moses was a moon.
He reflected the glory of God. Jesus is a son. who radiates the glory of God himself. Moses had the glory of God come upon him. Jesus has the radiance of God's glory that goes out from him.
One is a sun, one is a moon. And you know what? He is greater in every way. Jesus Christ has come as a second Moses in a sense, a greater Moses in a sense, to give us a greater Exodus. Moses came and God used him for what?
To bring the people out of slavery in Egypt and into the promised land. What does God send Jesus to do? Jesus, the Son of God, a member of the Trinity, comes incarnate in the flesh. You see his divinity breaking forth. He is 100% God and 100% man.
What did he come to do? He came to take us from slavery as well. But it's not the slavery to Egypt. It's a slavery to sin and death. You and I, every single one of us, have made mistakes.
We have all rebelled against God. And for that, we deserve death, hell, and separation from God forever. That's what we deserve. That's the economy of God's kingdom. But God, in his love for us, he sends a greater Moses with a greater glory to bring a greater Exodus.
And that is Jesus Christ who brings us not out of Egypt. But he brings us out of the slavery to sin and death and into the ultimate promised land of heaven. But you know what? The Red Sea wasn't something that was just going to part. Jesus was going to part it.
in terms of our story. by going all the way into the belly of death itself. Jesus went to the cross because he lived a life we didn't live. He lived sinless, we lived sinful. But he went to the cross to trade places, to take death for us, so that if we would believe in what he has done.
that in his resurrection He would not be alone, but he would be the first fruits of many that would follow. And we get a chance to be wrapped up in that. And that is what is so glorious about the Transfiguration. It shows us who He is. And it shows us who we can become by being joined to Him.
So let's do this. Let's apply it this way, all right? I want to apply it by just simply saying this: surrender your life to the Son of God. That's it, man. Surrender your life to the Son of God.
Whether you are a believer today and you need to do that in greater ways. And there's things that God is moving around in your heart. And he's putting his finger on something. Surrender to him or surrender to him for the very first time. Y'all, I know for me, let me talk to the believer, then I'll talk to the unbeliever, then I'll be done.
All right.
For me, I know that many times in my life, even though I'm a believer, I've been walking with Jesus for a long time, like many of you. Man, I see veteran saints. I see people in this room right now that I look up to. I look up to your faith. Man, there's many of us that are younger that are following you, and there's some of you that are younger than me, and you guys are following my generation, and it's kind of marching on.
I don't know where you're at on that spectrum, but wherever you are, All of us, I think, go through times where things can get a little bit on autopilot. You know? Man, giving can get a little bit routine. I hadn't even thought about it. You know, yeah, we're doing it, but it's just kind of tucked away in our bank account some kind of way with automation, and I don't even think about it.
And I'm doing my Bible reading, and I'm praying, and I've got a journal, and we're doing the thing. And I come to church and we're doing the thing, and don't hear me denigrate that. We need to keep doing the thing, even when sometimes it's dry. But here's what I know for me: there are times in my life. Where sometimes my relationship with God feels like just another step in my wellness routine.
Maybe some of you guys feel that. Man, there are times where it's like, hey, man, I'm trying to be healthy, trying to eat the right things, trying to work out, trying to have financial margin, and I'm going to read my Bible and pray every day, and it's part of the holistic me. And I want you to know stories like this at times I think are given to us to shake us out of that. To help us to remember, you old-hat, mature believers that I respect, or you young believers that are new. Or somebody like me who's been walking with Jesus for a long time, listen, these stories are given so that we would remember.
The one we are following is the Son of God. And his resurrection and his glorification are what waits for us if we are joined with him and persevere to the end, and in so doing show that we were his. And man, that changes. It's like, well, that ain't really part of the wellness routine anymore. Right?
Like that that's something different, man. I mean, that's like a whole life-changing thing.
Some of us at times, I know I do, I just need to remember what Jesus has done for me. Man, where he has gone to take me where he is going for all eternity. You know, I've shared this story one time before, but I think it's so interesting. You know, I would imagine the very first sport that ever happened in the history of the world had to have been a race, right? I mean, people have got I just imagine God creates the world, creates humans, and then they wake up one day, you know, a couple days later, and they're like, there's a tree, let's see who can run there faster.
Okay, I mean, you would just think, right? People have been running races since time began. Seventeen hundreds come along and gamblers start running on a race called the Mile. And for 250 years, people all over the world are running the mile race, same race that we know today, one of the most exciting races in terms of just, man, what humans can do and all that kind of stuff. And for 250, well, for all of human existence, and then for the 250 years that it was in existence in terms of an official race that people would run, nobody had ever broken the four-minute mile.
And then. One day May 6th. 1954 In an obscure track outside of Oxford, England, in a nonchalant, Not huge of it. A pre-med student named Roger Bannister lines up to run the mile, and about three minutes and thirty seconds in, the whole stands realize this could happen. For whatever reason, he wasn't even in the best shape of his life.
I mean, it was just stars aligned. And the man crossed the finish line three minutes fifty nine point four seconds. It was the first time in human history, thousands of years, that anybody had broken the four-minute mile. Do you know how long it took for the next person? Thousands of years, 250 years of running the mile.
Do you know how long it took for the next person to break the four-minute mile? It took 46 days. You know, since 1954, over 2,000 athletes. Nobody had done it for thousands of years, and now in the last seventy years, over 2,000 athletes have broken the four-minute mile. Roger Bannister.
broke a barrier. You know what? He was the first. But he wasn't the last. You know what the Bible says about Jesus?
Jesus was the firstborn from the dead. He is the first fruits of many that are going to follow. I don't know what the application, believer, I don't know what application you need today, okay? Maybe you need to just get shook up. Maybe you need courage.
Maybe you need to grab something from the future of resurrection and glorification and bring it into the present. Maybe there's something hard going on in your life. Maybe there's a mission endeavor that you're just not taking up. Maybe you know God's calling you to start a group or to do a city project or starting you to jump in with chosen ministries or go on a mission trip and you're just not doing it. I have no, there's a thousand applications.
Here's the deal. Man, Jesus and this whole thing, it's not just part of your wellness routine. He is the Son of the living God. Who has come to bring you into the family? And if you're a believer, what an absolute blessing that is.
What does that change? about your life today. All right? If you're not a believer, Some of us have gazed upon the identity of Christ today maybe for the first time. And I'm going to ask you to mark a moment in maturity and to decide.
We need to be deciders. We live in a culture of maybe. Baby is maybe, okay? Let's decide some things. Either you're in.
or you're out. You've seen his identity. You've seen what he's come to do. Are you in or are you out? You know one of the coolest things about God?
God authored your heart. And he knows how to speak to it. He knows exactly what you need, man. He knows. I love this as a parent, me and Anna.
We'll try to motivate our kids. You know, you got your thing as a parent, I know how to motivate them, okay? I thought this was funny. Anna, so when my daughter plays soccer in high school before games, we'll text her a lot of times. And it's so funny to see the different ways that we motivate.
This is Anna's text to my daughter before a soccer game. Good afternoon, sweetheart. We love you. And we hope you give it your best. Love mom.
Okay. My text is You are a warrior Viking queen. Put someone on their butt in the first one minute, and if you don't get a yellow card, don't come home.
Okay. That's why. Thank you. No, I don't know.
Now I don't know which one is more motivating. You'll have to ask the kids, okay? The greatest thing. You know, as a parent, you're trying, here's the coolest thing. I can try to motivate them.
And I do. I didn't author their hearts. God is a father. who authored the human heart and then speaks to it. And look at what he says.
Look at what he says. Luke and I am And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found. Alone. That might be what you need to hear today. Man, it's not Jesus plus Moses.
It ain't Jesus plus morality. It ain't Jesus plus getting free from that addiction. It ain't Jesus plus getting over that depression. It's not Jesus plus cleaning yourself up. It's Jesus.
Alone. He meets you right where you are. He's not going to keep you there. But he meets you there.
Some of you today tragedy has sent you looking. For truth, man, he is here. Don't miss him. Don't clean yourself up before coming to him. It will never work.
It will always be a prideful Moralistic endeavor without him. Man, come to him. Surrender to him. And allow him to take those reins in your life.
Some of you are on a hamster wheel right now of a works-based righteousness that is exhausting. Every day, try to be morally better so that one day God will accept me, and yet you're here. and you're not sure if you're doing enough, let me clear that up for you. You're not. And you never could.
Because it doesn't work that way. Man, you can't do prideful works to try to save yourself. From sin And from the penalty of it. I mean, all they are is more sin, all it is is more pride. Right, you can't dig yourself out of a hole you dug yourself in.
It doesn't work that way. Jesus alone. He eclipses Moses. He eclipses Elijah. I pray you would come to him today.
Would you bow your heads with me for just a moment? Listen, if you are here. You've never placed faith in Christ, but God has been after you. The hound of heaven, they say. It's chasing you down.
Do not resist him today. Man, if the Holy Spirit is knocking on the door, if he is drawing your heart, then today is the day of salvation for you. What an absolute prideful thing. To think, well, I don't have to do this today, I'll do this tomorrow. As if you get to choose when you come to God, as if it's on your terms.
If he's drawing you today, there is no guarantee he will draw you tomorrow. That's secret things. That's deep things. Those are Deuteronomy 29:29 things. Those things belong to the Lord.
If He is calling you today, come to Him today. And if today's the day, I pray that you will just follow me in this prayer in your heart. You just pray something like this. God, I admit that I'm a sinner. Fallen away from you.
But I believe that Jesus has done everything necessary. To save me. He lived the life I didn't live, died for me. And I want to walk in the newness of life and his resurrection. And I confess him as Lord.
That means boss. He is the Lord of my life. You say that to God in your own words. You say something along those lines. Admit you're a sinner.
Believe in what Jesus has done. Jesus in my place. Confess him as the Lord of your life. Father, I pray for those that are praying to receive you right now. God, I pray it's in the dozens, maybe hundreds across our church.
And Lord, I pray that they will take the next step of baptism. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Uh
