Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Gonna have to start manuscripting my sermon and letting Byron read them.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: He's got a good voice.
[00:00:10] Speaker A: And now you have to spend time with this voice.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: It's fine. Yeah, Larry the cucumber's your preacher. That's fine.
So I am.
I saw recently that the lottery got really, really big.
[00:00:33] Speaker A: Like billions big.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Do you all know what the lottery is? So the lottery is just hope for people who are bad at math.
And it's by.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: But someone won it in Arkansas, which.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: Is where I'm from. I don't know them.
We don't all know each other, but someone won it in Arkansas. And the lottery, it's one of those things where you don't know. I don't know if any of you do this, where you don't ever, ever play the lottery until it starts with a B.
And you're like, well.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: I mean, why not? Right at this point?
[00:01:25] Speaker B: Now, the reason you never played it in the first place is you know the odds. Like, you are more likely to get struck by lightning twice than to win the lottery.
It's just a frivolous spending of money. You're buying some hope for a day.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: Or two, but when you have it.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: You'Re like, oh, but what you should have you already. You've already started paying off some stuff, haven't you? You're like, well, you know what I'm gonna do? You know what I'm gonna do with first. First thing I'm gonna do with this first thing, okay, throw it away.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: That's the last thing you'll do with it.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: But the reason people do that is they think, oh, well, maybe if. Maybe just there's. Maybe there's this little. It's a little, minute, tiny little chance that I might win and wouldn't that change and shape everything but you might win.
And we take that risk.
You know, I don't know how much it costs, I'm guessing a couple of dollars to just take a risk.
That's why it's interesting to me where.
[00:02:45] Speaker A: There are times where my faith has had a limp for sure.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: Where the.
[00:02:52] Speaker A: Way I understand God and, like, the frustration I have with the world around.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: Me, the frustration I've had with church.
[00:03:01] Speaker A: Has been real and has affected me negatively.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: And there's times I've looked to the heavens and thought, is any of this even real?
[00:03:13] Speaker A: And if it's real, is it worth it?
[00:03:18] Speaker B: And there's been times when it's been hard to pray.
[00:03:25] Speaker A: Times when it's hard to know what.
[00:03:29] Speaker B: Like, should I even talk to God now? I grew up in a very conservative.
[00:03:40] Speaker A: Church.
[00:03:42] Speaker B: And they encouraged prayer, my church encouraged prayer. But they also put a high value on getting things right.
And I always felt a little wobbly.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: Going before God because I wasn't quite.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: Sure if I was on correct footing.
You know what I mean? Like, you just, you think, well, if I. I can't do this wrong.
If God gets super angry when we.
[00:04:13] Speaker A: Get communion out of order at church.
[00:04:17] Speaker B: We accidentally served the cup first, and.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: Then that brimstone came.
[00:04:26] Speaker B: If God gets super angry with a piano, if God gets super angry, if that's the real God and I show up and misspeak, what's God going to do when I show up with my failure?
[00:04:42] Speaker A: What's that God like?
[00:04:46] Speaker B: And so sometimes it was just easier not to pray, not to go before God and fail.
And maybe you've been there, maybe you've.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: Sat in that exact spot where it's.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: Just easier not to pray. But guys, listen, if we're willing to spend $2 on the hope of a bunch of paying a bunch of taxes, if we're willing to invest a couple of bucks in the hope that I might get some money, that none of.
[00:05:22] Speaker A: It goes with me, when I d.
[00:05:27] Speaker B: Maybe we could spend just a couple of minutes going to this God who loves us, if we just have an ounce of faith, we go before God and say, God, I don't know.
[00:05:42] Speaker A: I don't know if you're.
[00:05:44] Speaker B: Are you there?
Is this real?
And sometimes we're looking for guidance, and sometimes we're looking for hope, and sometimes we're looking for comfort.
But is God the God we can be free to go to? Yes, but not just that.
[00:06:09] Speaker A: He is.
[00:06:10] Speaker B: The God that we should feel free to go into his presence.
[00:06:13] Speaker A: But John tells us that Jesus tells his disciples that not only is God.
[00:06:21] Speaker B: The God who is.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: Who welcomes us into his throne room as we pray, but our God is the God who chases us down as we walk, who comes to us.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: It's not like buying a lottery ticket.
It's like we've been walking around and there's just this person chasing us with.
[00:06:50] Speaker A: Blessing.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: Who wants to bless us, who wants. Whether it's a briefcase full of money.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: You can always tell if it has money. It's always handcuffed to the wrist.
[00:07:04] Speaker B: Whether it's a briefcase full of money or it's. There's someone chasing us and we're just like, ah, maybe later.
Our God is not only welcoming. Our God is initiating relationship.
Our God is not only welcoming us into his throne room. Our God initiates this relationship. The very fact that I can say, and Jesus said, is the fact that God showed up first.
God invited us to the table. God invited us to the throne room. God invited us to let him walk alongside us. And so when Jesus says, I am sending an advocate, as he says in verse 14, and that advocate will be present with you, that advocate will teach you.
But then in chapter 15, verse 26, he says, when the advocate comes, whom I will send, send you from the Father, the spirit of truth, the one who comes from the Father. Let's stop there.
Let's just say who he is, the one who comes from the Father. The Spirit of God chases us down, and we choose oftentimes to live in anxiety and worry. And we live in anger, and we live in, like, in this anxious place that has no peace.
We are irritated and judgmental.
We live. That is all darkness.
That is all darkness of the world. We live in that. We choose that because that is choice.
Because God is not at the end of some maze or through a bunch of hoops. God is not around a couple of corners, and he is not asking us to jump hurdles. God is chasing us down.
And when he chases us down, when he gets to us, and we're just saying, okay, maybe in a second.
[00:09:23] Speaker A: I was leaving a gym yesterday.
Made me think of this. I was, you know, had the sermon in my head, and I was. I always. I always had my sermon in my head long enough to know. I just see kids talking, and I think, oh, I should.
There it went.
I was leaving a gym, and this mom was walking.
And sometimes, not all the time, but I'm going to do an impression of some parents walking with their kids.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: Ready?
And the kid is saying out loud.
[00:10:04] Speaker A: To the mom, the kid is saying.
[00:10:09] Speaker B: Why is that guy leaving? She's talking about me.
[00:10:14] Speaker A: I loved it.
[00:10:15] Speaker B: Why is that guy leaving?
[00:10:17] Speaker A: Why? I'd forgotten the basketballs in the car. I had to go out and get it.
The mom said nothing.
I look around the room. We don't have a ton of young parents, but I would like to say.
Take three minutes.
Just pick any random three minutes with your kid, put your phone down and watch them and count in that span of three minutes how many times they look up at you.
It's gonna be a lot.
Sometimes I feel like.
[00:11:11] Speaker B: God is chasing.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: Us down and he's got all sorts of interesting questions, But we haven't looked up from our phone, from our worry, from our anxiety, from our judgment of others. And sometimes all of that's just on the phone.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: We haven't looked up from that long.
[00:11:38] Speaker A: Enough to hear what God is trying.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: To get to us, what God is trying to offer.
And don't get me wrong, there is not some. And I mean, sometimes, maybe, yes, maybe sometimes God will jump into your life.
[00:11:57] Speaker A: And give you a sign that this is the thing you need to do sometimes. Absolutely. Sure.
[00:12:03] Speaker B: But it is not God's regular practice to micromanage his disciples.
[00:12:10] Speaker A: It is.
[00:12:11] Speaker B: God's regular practice is to spur us along to look like Jesus. And so we are not having to wait on a sign from God to make any sort of decision.
We are not waiting on signs. We don't need to be paralyzed by the fear that we might step some way wrong and violate the will. Like God's will for my life.
God's will for your life is that you look like Jesus. Where' er you trot?
[00:12:44] Speaker A: That's a hymn, right? No, where you trot.
I enjoyed it.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: God's will for your life is that you pay attention to that teaching, to that presence.
You pay attention to this spirit, this Jesus who is with you, this God who sent it, this God who chased you down.
And he says, this spirit who we send to you, not that you have to come and get the spirit that we send to you. He will testify on my behalf.
[00:13:26] Speaker A: Testify is a big theme throughout John.
[00:13:31] Speaker B: This Greek word testify here appears once.
[00:13:37] Speaker A: In Matthew, zero times in Mark, once in Luke, over 30 times in John.
[00:13:47] Speaker B: And it all comes back. It's a lot of John the Baptist. John the Baptist did a lot of testifying. He actually probably did more testifying than he did baptizing.
[00:13:57] Speaker A: So we failed at the nickname.
[00:14:02] Speaker B: So he does a lot of testifying. He testifies that Jesus is the one to come. And he testifies plainly. John 1 says that I am not the one who is to come, but Jesus is the one who's gonna show up.
He testifies that Jesus is the son of God. He testifies to that.
The woman at the well finds out that Jesus is the Messiah. And she goes and she testifies.
The word here is the same word we get martyr from.
[00:14:35] Speaker A: So martyr is someone who remembers and recalls until their death.
And a witness, a testifier, is someone.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: Who remembers and recalls as they go about.
And so that she recalls what Jesus taught her, told her. And she goes into the Samaritan village and she testifies the people, John says, that saw Lazarus raised from the dead. Even though the leaders were wanting to kill Jesus because of it, they continued.
[00:15:11] Speaker A: John says to testify about him.
[00:15:16] Speaker B: Jesus says, my own works testify about Me, the things I do. And I can testify about myself.
[00:15:24] Speaker A: He says.
[00:15:27] Speaker B: The testimony of Jesus about Jesus to us is incredibly important to the book of John.
And so when he says, the Spirit will be present with you, the Spirit will teach you. This advocate will teach you when he says that the Spirit will walk alongside you and God will send that Spirit to testify to you, to testify about Jesus on Jesus behalf.
And then, therefore, we know that this is an important message we need to hear in a moment of just nonsense out in the world.
And I'm not talking about. I don't want to be that preacher who's like, the world's evil, world's awful. Yeah, okay. Yes.
You get better.
Like, quit.
Like, when your doctor tells you to.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: Go on a diet, you don't go. Well, buildings are heavier than I am.
Buildings are fine.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: No, I mean, obviously, that would be incredibly dumb. So we're not comparing people who don't have Jesus to people who have Jesus. That's insane.
Like, don't compare their life to your life.
You straighten up.
But the world is crazy out there.
There are a lot of people who believe that all birds are robots.
That's real.
This could be your accountant.
There are real people out now.
I've never cracked open a bird.
[00:17:43] Speaker A: Y' all seemed really surprised by that.
I've never.
[00:17:47] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:17:49] Speaker A: But my guess is robots would hurt my window a lot more when they ran into it.
[00:17:58] Speaker B: But it's just nonsense out there. It's just absolute nonsense. You can want to believe anything and find it.
And it all makes me worse. It all makes me more anxious. It all makes me more.
Less at peace. It makes me more irritable.
And then I've got this spirit who's been chasing me down trying to testify.
[00:18:26] Speaker A: About this Jesus who brings peace to the hurting, hope to the dead, forgiveness for the sinner, unity to the divided.
[00:18:44] Speaker B: This Jesus who brings us this, this is the message of all messages.
He is testifying to us regularly because we need to hear it regularly. And the question is, are we listening? Do we think the message is worth listening to?
Because it's being testified to you.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: Now.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: Have I broken the record for saying testify more than any Church of Christ preacher ever?
[00:19:23] Speaker A: I'm close.
That record's held by Roger McCowan back in 1984.
Yeah.
Not gonna get there.
[00:19:36] Speaker B: But this message has been proclaimed to us.
And we've gotta decide, is it a message not just worth listening to, but is it a message worth absolutely reshaping our whole entire life around?
Absolutely reshaping.
Our interactions with others around.
He, this spirit will testify on my behalf. And he says you in verse 27, you also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning. I think sometimes we can get so wallowed into our Christian life, we have a hard time getting out of it. And we don't even know what it.
[00:20:27] Speaker A: Means at that point.
[00:20:29] Speaker B: We're so used to it. We're so used to.
[00:20:31] Speaker A: I go to church and I go to Bible class. I read my Bible, I say my prayers.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: And we assume everyone else does too.
But have you seen peace in the world?
Forget the world. Have you seen peace in church?
Have you seen peace? Have you seen love?
Absolutely.
[00:20:58] Speaker A: But it's always shocking when you see it, isn't it?
[00:21:03] Speaker B: The world needs our testimony about this Jesus.
This is why we do Friends Day, because we as a people have to get better at showing, telling the world.
[00:21:22] Speaker A: That there is a place that celebrates this Jesus, who celebrates us enough to want us, as Jim said, with us, wants to be with us. He celebrated that.
And so we are called to testify to the world about this Jesus and the kingdom this Jesus calls us to.
I got a birthday invitation from my grandmother.
She's turning 80 this year, which that's in a row. She's done 80 years in a row.
That's great. We're all so proud.
And they said, come.
We're actually leaving. You might not see us in the foyer because we're gonna head up to Arkansas pretty quickly after services.
But we.
We're going to go celebrate her.
[00:22:35] Speaker B: But the fact that we got an.
[00:22:37] Speaker A: Invitation made us want to travel the three hours.
Sometimes people need your testimony to feel like they're going to be welcome in a church.
Because I guarantee you there are people in this world.
[00:22:58] Speaker B: There's people in my circles who do.
[00:23:00] Speaker A: Not feel welcome in churches.
They feel welcome with me, but it's going to take some work on them for them to feel welcome in this place.
Is there somebody in your life that you have loved well, that needs an invite.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: That needs to be testified to about this is very real God, who has this very deep love. God's love is so real that we aren't as real as it.
[00:23:41] Speaker A: We're almost imaginary compared to God's love.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: God's love is so concrete and unbreakable that we have a hard time living up to it.
And so if we can show this world what God has to offer, we are testifying on his behalf. You don't have to know it all.
Good thing there's only like two of you who do?
You don't have to know everything, but you do have to know that this Jesus is chasing you.
[00:24:21] Speaker A: And then look out in the world and think, you know what?
Jesus is probably chasing them too.
Why don't I join him?
So go do some testifying now. Maybe you need to listen to the Spirit first.
[00:24:41] Speaker B: Let the Spirit.
[00:24:44] Speaker A: Let the Spirit tell you about Jesus.
Spend some time in prayer. Spend some time in silence.
I guarantee you. I guarantee you, if you sit in silence this week in the presence of God, somebody's gonna come to mind.
And then you've gotta decide whether or not you're going to listen.
It's a tough thing to do. It's an awkward conversation to start.
But if God is real and if Jesus is alive and then the Spirit is with us, there is nothing else that matters more than this kingdom in which we live.
There's nothing else that matters more than the hope that we have, than the grace we enjoy.
So maybe our feet and hands and our mouth need to start replicating what we've claimed in our brains for so long, that if this Jesus is real, if he's alive, and the Spirit, if what he says is true, then my silence is sin.
And I'm called to testify in the power of the Spirit.
I am sin. Ling.
Obviously, if you need prayers and you want to come talk to me or you want to grab somebody at the back and they want to pray with you, go for it. But your response to this sermon starts at the parking lot in the restaurant. Your response to the message. Today is a week long celebration of the testimony you've been given and the one that you get to share with the world. Whatever you need this morning, please come forward while we stand and while we sing.
