MAY 21 2023 | The Gospel of John S1E5 | John the Confessor

Sea Change Church · The Gospel of John S1E5 · "John the Confessor" · May 21, 2023
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Good morning, church. Good morning. My name's Linda Rut Gard, and I'm representing Eyesight Missions today. Today's scripture reading is from John one 19 to 28. Now, this was John's testimony when the Jews of Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely. I am not the Christ.

They asked him then, who are you? Are you Elijah? He said, I am not. Are you the prophet? He answered, no. Finally, they said, who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself? John replied, in the words of Isaiah, the prophet, I am the voice of one calling in the desert, make straight the way for the Lord. Now, some Pharisees who had been sent questioned him.

Why then do you baptize if you are not the Christ nor Elijah, nor the prophet? I baptized with water, John replied, but among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing the word of the Lord.

Good morning. Uh, if you have your Bibles open up to John one. We're still in John, we're in episode six. We have two more episodes in this season of John. We're gonna be in John for multiple years. We have a, uh, curriculum we go through, we go through the prophets, we go through, uh, prophecy. We do the gospels, uh, every year. So, uh, you can find that online.

And we're gonna be in John chapter one for a couple more weeks. I thought we'd be in John chapter four by now. And, uh, it was just so deep and rich that I just made this entire first part of the series in season one, all about John one. But we are moving now from the mechanics of theology, which you see in John. And remember in John, he does things a little different than the rest of the gospels.

The rest of the gospels start out. Jesus and I were on a camping trip, or Jesus was born here, or the mother Mary was doing this. And it's all narrative. John starts out, uh, in a different direction. He starts out with all this understanding that Jesus has God pointing to the fact that Jesus is God. And from that place, God became, the word became flesh and dwelled among us.

And there's a real sense of presence. Now, we're getting to the point in John where the dwelling among us is seen tangibly. You're seeing someone who has come to the scene, John the Baptist. Now, if you're new to the Bible, John the Apostle was one of the disciples. He wrote this book. Now he's talking about John the Baptist.

John the Baptist is a character in the narrative who shows up before Jesus related to Jesus, uh, as a cousin, but shows up and begins to tell the world that Jesus is coming. And then when Jesus shows up on the scene, he begins to point to Jesus saying, this is Jesus. This is Jesus. This is Jesus. Let me just set the entire message by saying that this is our mission as believers, and this is a attribute of the core of our identity as children of God. And I wanna challenge you in this message, if you follow Jesus to begin to use His name and tell people about him as much as you can, as often as you can, without blinding them by the light.

I like exposing people to the light, but the light can blind you. So we want to actually share Jesus in a way that people can actually receive that light. We're in John chapter one, and here we're introduced to John the Baptist and his central role. As you'll see in your notes, a confessing waymaker circle, confessing waymaker keywords, confession. What is confession? It is to speak something. Remember, John says that the, he calls Jesus the word. It was a, a logas is a word. It means every word that could ever be said and and beyond.

It's just everything. He's, he encompasses all things. Now, this word has been shrunk down into bite-sized portions, spoken through a human being. Uh, and this model, this archetype of John the Baptist, is one that we want to follow. And John, just like us, is like anyone of you, anybody in the Bible could have been you. I always say that the Bible's just normal people that God equipped and used.

And we really want to see our identity starting as the same place from Moses, from John the Baptist, from John the Apostle, from Peter. It's just human beings that identified themselves as children of God and started working with that raw material to move forward. So this entire passage right here, as we're moving into the story, starts with the question.

And the question is one where the Levites and the priest have sent, excuse me, the Pharisees have sent Levites and priests to ask John a question. Go to verse 19. Now, this was John's testimony when the Jews of Jerusalem, it's an important group of Jewish leaders there, the Jews of Jerusalem sent priest and Levis to ask him. That's John the Baptist, who he was.

This entire passage is set up because of a question, and it was set up on the question of this asking someone, a group of people coming to John the Baptist and asking him, who are you? And the question was begged for a reason. It wasn't like the Pharisees were walking down the street and they see somebody and they just walk up and say, who are you? No, John was living in a way that created questions.

John was living in a way that begged questions. Now granted, he was unique. He was in a different culture. There was prophets in the day, and that was part of the culture he was wearing. Um, you know, all these animal skins. And he was out in the desert and he was eating locust and honey, it seems like we're going back to that. I actually see now and he's eating. No, no one gets that. Okay. All right. So, so of you're laughing, eat the bugs, eat the bugs, save the planet.

And so he's out there and he's doing something in a way that actually causes people to leave Jerusalem pretty comfy and Jerusalem back at the time, and go to the wilderness to ask him a question, because he's living in a way that begs that question, how often are you asked What's different about you because of the way you live?

How often are you living in a way for Christ in a way that it, that begs a question? Does your life beg a question or do you just blend in? Or do they see something in you where people come to you and say, Hey, there's something different about you. I know there's something different about you. I want to be like or understand what that thing is.

That is what happened with John here. And a question that I think as confessing, if we take seriously the archetype and the role of John being a confessing waymaker, that probably will start happening to you more. But it has to be intentional. If you have your notes, write intentional, you're gonna see this is important. Evangelism just doesn't happen on a along, you know, uh, happenstance. Sometimes it does.

It happens because we intentionally are doing what John did of making Jesus known. This is what we want to do, is making Jesus known. And so the passage is a result of the question, who are you? There's two main ideas. Today, I am the master of the two point sermon. And so I don't know anybody else that does a two point sermon, but here we go, usually three. So hopefully you enjoy that. Um, get you to lunch a little quicker. Number one, I don't want to go to lunch quicker, Adam, I just want you to speak for hours, please, anyone, okay?

Becoming a confessor is number one. First one is this the idea we're gonna, we're gonna extricate from this passage. Is this becoming a confessor? Are you one who confesses regularly? Who Jesus is in wherever you can, whenever you can, taking every opportunity to make a way to confess Jesus? And number two is becoming a waymaker. How do we make a way?

How do we create a way not only for ourselves? Bible talks about making straight paths. I've been phenomenal at making crooked paths for myself, for one reason or another. How do we make a straight path for ourself? How do we trust that God will make our way straight? Because there is that, um, back and forth in the Bible. It says, make straight paths for yourself, but it also says that he will make your paths straight.

So these two things that are happening there as we see it. And so how do we make those ways? And where does that pathway lead to for John the path, the way making always ended in making Jesus known. The pathway always ended in making Jesus known. Well go, let's go to one. Number one, becoming a confessor. There's a CS Lewis quote, I don't think it's in your notes. I think I put it in last night. Says this, the church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christ. If they're not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became man for no other purpose.

Everything that we are doing becomes a waste of time. Go to verse 20 again. Let's or go, go to verse 19. Let's once again, frame this up and set it up of what John is doing as the sole purpose of his life. The ultimate purpose. Everything else is a pen. Ultimate purpose in verse 19. Now, this was John's testimony when the Jews of Jerusalem sent priests and levies to ask him who he was. He did not fail. Circle the word, fail to confess, but confess freely, I am not the Christ. And then he goes on later, as you'll see in passages to say, that's the Christ. That's who Jesus is.

He was obsessed with the idea of making Jesus known. He did not fail to confess freely. One of the things that I, I realize is how easy it is to start making our lives about everything. But Jesus recently, I was, um, looking at all the things that have happened at our church around the Easter time. I kind of surmise what's happened at the beginning of the year.

Where are we we're heading, you know, we all look at our lives that way. We had a dream summit. I looked at the Dream summit and I realized, okay, this is going really well. And, and all these components. We have all these components of church. We have mission, we have children, we have counseling, we have all these things.

And I realize it's really easy for me personally to start focusing on individual elements of the church and start pushing them all forward. But I realize that you can have all this quote, success if you want to call it that, or move forward or take the organization where you want it to go and forget where you're going. And so I began to think about the question just personally, where am I going and why am I going there?

And so I talked to our, uh, head elder, um, Chris Fromm about it. I talked to our, um, um, operations, uh, minister Drea about it. My wife and I talked about it for the Dream Summit. We were talking about this. And I began to think, God, why am I doing all this? Like, it's just a bunch of stuff. Like there's, it's, it's all good. Like it's, it's, you can look around and see, okay, hey, some kids had a great time at summer camp and some made a decision to do this.

Or they went on a mission trip. We built some houses in Mexico. There's all this good stuff, right? So it's easy to kind of get into the lull of good stuffiness. If I can say. You just kinda look around and go, that's good stuff. That's all happening. Yeah, that's good stuff. Oh, the adventurers had a 50, a 1950s party. That's good stuff. We had a great time. That's all good stuff.

And pretty soon I just realized like, I feel like I could just disappear from this whole thing and somebody else could come and just keep doing good stuff. Like why am I doing it? And so I began to seek the Lord. And I was out at a lunch last week with a friend of mine, and, um, he's a, a closet charismatic like myself, um, kind of in the shadows of charisma. And he has a word for me. He says, oh, I'm the drive here.

Cause this is if you hang out with like Pentecostals and charismatics, this is how we speak, you know? So he comes up to me and we, we sit down, he goes, oh, by the way, I was driving here and I got a word. Now I know what he, I speak charismatic, so I understand what he said. And he says, yeah, the Lord told me to ask you.

And I just had this conversation with my wife, Andrea, in the office before I drove to the lunch. He said, Lord told me to ask you, where are you going and why do you want to get there? And I was like, strange. That's the weirdest thing. It's a sign. And so as opposed to doubting a sign, I just thought it was a sign. And I spent the next week kind of thinking about it, and I started hearkening back to when I was like 19, when everything was about Jesus. Everything was about Jesus.

We would go down to Rosecrans and we would go get, um, the muffins and hot coffee that was left over from soup plantation at 10 30 when they closed. And then we would go sit on the back of my truck, we'd open the back of my truck, like four or five of us. And as the, you know, the sex trade workers would walk by, we would tell 'em, we would hand them these coffees and a pastry and say, this is in the name of Jesus. This is what we did. And went down to the, we would pack lunches and we would go down to the pier and hand out lunches.

And it was always like, in the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus, it's really easy to make our lives about kids. Uh, your daughter's soccer practice, uh, the new house you want to buy, uh, your business, your marriage. Oh, we can just, oh, you can have a great marriage and, and, and, and kind of just give a nod to Jesus everywhere you go.

But forget that the tip of the spear is Jesus and becoming a confessor about who Jesus was. Let me go back to the scripture before we forget it. Verse 19. Now, this was John's testimony. John had a testimony, he testified when the Jews of Jerusalem sent priests and Levis to ask him who he was. He did not fail to confess, but confess freely, I am not the Christ. And it goes on to later, throughout the next scripture is confess. That is Jesus.

When I was thinking about the question of why am I doing what I'm doing, I thought I, I need to get back to one reason. There's one reason I do everything I do. One reason I'm married, one reason I have children, one reason I work in ministry. One reason we put on 1950s parties at, with the adventurers group, there's one reason Joe does unity for orphans.

There's one reason to make Jesus known, to let people know who Jesus is. And to be a church who points people to Jesus. I realize that it's easy to forget that. And the tip of the spear has to be the person of Jesus. Not even the Holy Spirit. No, I'm sorry, charismatics, sorry. Um, it says in John one that Jesus is gonna basically, uh, that, that the Holy Spirit is gonna flow through Jesus. So if you point to Jesus, they're gonna get the Holy Spirit. It says that, it says in John one at the end there, that he's going to make the Father known.

And so it, it isn't so much about making the Father known. First of all, it's about making Jesus known, because then he's going to point them so that the, like I said, the tip of the spear, the opening place is to make Jesus known. How's that going? How is that going for John in this passage? That's all he did. Everything he did was about Jesus.

And it is so easy to get lost. In the midst of that, we see that he did not fail to consist, um, confess did not fail. I like that word, fail. Not that was graded on a curve. I don't think our faith, when we get to heaven is gonna be graded on a curve. Well, you know, the best human being did this. No, it's gonna be based, I think on kind of some past fail stuff. Some of it is, did you confess Jesus Christ?

There is a verbal component in the scripture that it says, if you believe in your hearts and confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord, you will be saved. It says that faith is what saves us, but it's also believing in faith. And then being a confessing witness. I realize how little I mentioned the name of Jesus in conversations outside of this building. I just do. I just don't, I mean, I just don't talk.

I don't use Jesus name. And as I was preparing for this, this passage this week and looking at this archetype of John who was constantly begins to point to Jesus and make him known, I thought to myself, I I want to use the name of Jesus more. I used to do that a lot. Um, and so for one reason or another, I haven't done that.

And so there was a person, a woman who was walking by the church this week, and I just, you know, I I, I wasn't gonna do it awkwardly or whatever, but if it came up, I was just gonna use the name of Jesus more. I thought, I'm gonna use this name. Bible seems to say it's a name above every name. Bible tells me that there's power in the name of Jesus. We sing songs about it.

The name of Jesus actually has more power than you saying. Um, you know, I, yeah, I was saved from alcohol because I went to church and had a relationship with God. The name of Jesus has an inherent power to it that the Bible says has a power. Um, it is a weapon of warfare. Spiritual, the name of Jesus is actually this thing, um, that actually has power.

And so I thought, I'm gonna use this. And so this woman was walking by and I've seen her a bunch of times, said hi to her. And then we started talking. We started talking about climate and talking about, you know, weather and different things like that. And I said, you know, as a church, I said, we frame it as creation care. I mean, we were talking about saving the planet and whatever. Cause I, I told her we had gotten solar and we were gonna get solar. She goes, really, really? You're a church, you're gonna get solar? I'm like, yeah, we're gonna get, why wouldn't we get? I thought I'm anti-solar, you know what I mean? Um, I'm like starting oil fires around her feet and things like that. Just no, we, we just ruined the environment. No, I said, I said, actually, we believe that the entire, through John one, uh, the entire creation was created through Jesus. And, um, because of that, we care deeply.

And we're called in Genesis to care for the creation because Jesus said, none of my commandments, he goes, I haven't avoided any of the commandments. So the commandment to care for our earth is still very real and prevalent for Christians, no matter what your thoughts are on the toxic arguments around climate that we see in our culture. And so I said, yeah, because we love Jesus.

We want to take care of his earth that he created and, and so we're gonna do different things. And sh she, she says, well, I'm, I'm I do, I write grants for solar companies and da, da da da da. She goes, maybe we should collaborate on something together. And she said, she goes, I'm not a Christian, I don't like go to church or anything, but she goes, maybe we can. And I was like, but, but I said, Jesus, no, you're supposed to run, remember, you're supposed to run for the hills.

Like when I ah, ah, it's funny that when you're not a kook and you just have a normal conversation with people espousing well, who God is to you in a normal way, how people would be like, oh cool, we should do something together and work together. I was like, yeah. So texted me and ended up, you know, uh, getting a job for my daughter as her babysitter as well.

So there's a little blessing on top of that. Are you confessing Jesus? How much do you use the name of, do you speak the name of Jesus? I just wanna do that more. It's kind of fun. It's kind of awesome. Like, hey, you know, hey, just, hey, be blessed or whatever. But, but find an artistic way to do it. Find a creative way because every person is a different canvas.

And that conversation wouldn't work with somebody else. You might meet at a concert. That conversation wouldn't maybe meet with an artist that wouldn't meet with somebody who's at your, in the swim lane next to you. You, the Holy Spirit will guide you. But I'm saying don't fail to confess. Think you get convinced by the devil. Like, don't use that name cuz you're gonna offend people forgetting that that name opens the door to everything in God's kingdom.

That name has power, that name has the ability to knock down doors. People don't even know that when you use it, that God uses it and it has power. Let's be a confessor. The next thing we see is this becoming a waymaker Lord. Verse 23, John replied in the word of the prophet Isaiah, I am the voice of the one calling in the desert. Make circle, make straight the way of the Lord. What does it mean to make straight paths?

Well, the first thing I think we need to make straight paths for ourselves. And so sometimes we start living in identities or ways of being that are not true to who we are called to be or who we actually are. And so I like how John, when he identifies who he is, he starts with who he's not. I am not this, maybe someone has spoken a word over you and they've said something negative, or you're living with a self-loathing or there's some kind of thing that is inhibiting you think, what I like about John and the ability for us to do is to say, no, that is not me. That is, you know, oh, you're, you're just this, you're just that. No, that is not who I am.

By knowing who you are not will inform who you are. Somebody asked Mother Teresa once they came to her in calcu, and she was says in the, when I was reading that she was down washing the wounds of a leper. That's where you're gonna find Mother Teresa. So they walk up to Mother Teresa and it was a priest, and he said to her, Hey, where, um, like, I'm looking for direction. I don't know where to go.

I need help. You know what? Whatever I just need, I need to know the right thing to do. And she says two things and you'll be fine. She says, number one, worship and a door. Jesus, one hour a day, spend a day of wor, uh, one hour a day worshiping an A dooring Jesus. And number two, never do anything that you know to be wrong. Do that.

You'll be fine on your way. He's like, that's it. He was looking for something more like, oh, oh no dude. She's like, no, that's it, that's all I got for you. Head on. Knowing who you're not and, and getting to a place where you're not living in those things that you're not will lead you to who you are. I tell people all the time, I never hear from God.

And, and I say, you know, well, if you ever have anything in your life you feel like God has told you not to do, oh yeah, sure. Do you obey it? No. Well, okay, let's start there. You know what I mean? If you just, if you just remove, you know, make anathema anything in your life that you know shouldn't be there, when you do that, you'll become who you're supposed to be because you're getting rid of all the things you're not. John says, no, I'm not this, no, I'm not that, not that, not that. But I know who I am. Then he gets into know, I am from a place, a place of identity that was not based on the attributes of identity.

What do I mean by that? Attributes are identity or this, uh, I'm a married man. Is that my identity? No, it's an attribute of my identity. It flows out of me being a child of God. Um, I don't want to, uh, make my identity about anything that is not eternal. So, um, the thing that we find out, there's certain things that will not make the cut in heaven. You being married, Jesus said there's no marriages in heaven. Your identity, your sexual identity, your maleness, your femaleness, those are attributes.

So we want to live into those, but we want to inform everything about us from a more core eternal identity. The eternal identity is that you are a spiritual being, a son and daughter of God, created by God to do his work in the world. Everything else is an attribute of those things. When we start living out of a different place than that is when we start going sideways. If you look in culture today, one of the things you're gonna see is they're living from the opposite.

The the other way in. They're looking at everything that is an attribute, things that won't be eternal. The Bible says you're not even, you know, you're not gonna be married when you get to heaven. I can't make my entire like life about being a husband. You see that sometime in, in Christian marriage culture. Like it's, oh, just about our marriage. You just start worshiping your marriage.

It's all about our marriage and our marriage and keeping our marriage sacred. And, and that's awesome. That's awesome. But sometimes we lose the, the fact that that's just a thing we do. Marriage is a thing I do to glorify the identity that God has given within me. That I'm a child of God, filled with the Holy Spirit, known in eternity by God.

This is what John understood. He understood who he wasn't, and then he lived out of actually his calling of who he was called to be. Making straight straight means this extending continuously in the same direction without curving. What in your life causes your life to curve Greek euth nail means the steersmen or the helmsman of a ship or a charioteer.

I feel like a chariot tear sometimes. Got all those, you're up there. Got, you know, remember Ben, her the movie? Most of you don't remember that. Nonetheless, everyone 50 and over remembers it. He's sitting there and, and it's like, you got these chariot races and the horses are going everywhere. Their job is to keep the horses aligned, to keep the horses straight of where they were going.

Make straight paths for yourself. The Bible says there's a lot about path making in the Bible. Now, the term way, as you see wayI making, there is a verb when it says the word way, it's easy to see. The way is a noun, but it's actually a verb. It is a thing that you go upon. And so when we are making ways, it's actually something you have to make. Remember it said he, he became flesh. We talked about it a few weeks ago.

That word became the act of becoming and then made his dwelling among us. What are you making everywhere you go? The scripture says, we should be aware, at least of the opportunity to become a waymaker, to make a way to make, to do something active. This is a proactive word this way. Making. We lived in, in, um, uh, Carlsbad for a long time. And when the kids were little, we always we're Trader Joe's people.

We've always gone to Trader Joe's since the early nineties. I used to build a shop there in for 120 bucks and now it's like twice as much now when I go. But we go there and, and I don't know what, early on when we had our children, we decided not just to make it about frozen tca, mola and non bread and you know, dark chocolate, peanut butter, you know, all the little goodies that they have there that we all get right, or goji berries or whatever it is.

We decided that we were gonna go and try to give it a purpose and be on mission. And so with our children, my kids are here, um, our children, we would stop not all the time, but regularly in the parking lot. And we would pray before we went in and say, God, give us an opportunity to make a difference here. And then we'd go shop.

99% of the times we went there, it was about, Hey, how you doing? Oh, you've been riding your bike? Oh, great, good to see you. Oh yeah. Oh, where, where's, where's the, where's the barbecue chicken at? Okay, great. Aisle six. Okay. Uh, like that was it. That's all we did. But we made an admission to know people's names, um, let them know who we were.

So we weren't, uh, unabashed about saying that we're a pastor, um, or whatever it was. And about, we were there about eight years, nine years. Same Trader Joe's over and over and over. And as we got ready to leave the last year we lived there before we moved down here to La Jolla. And it was hard because we really made a, an, I tried to make an impact there of just being present, knowing people's names, smiling, not walking again with my to-do list of shopping, but like seeing people, we intentionally went there. Um, about a six, eight months, a guy named Mike came up to my wife and she was shopping and he said to her, Hey, um, you know, I don't like follow God, but I know you people.

I know you pray. And I think it was his girlfriend, my girlfriend's really sick. Would you pray for her? That was a massive open door that came from, Hey, where's the chicken? How was your bike ride? I mean, but with intentionality, trying to make a difference there. The last time we shopped there and we didn't do anything. I'm telling you, we didn't do anything special. We're not heroes. Or we didn't, I'm not Billy Graham. We just bought rice and tried to smile and talk to people.

I'm trying to show you how normal this was. We were walking out and Mike and about three or four other people in the manager, we told 'em this, our last day were moving to La Jolla, they were at the door with flowers and as we walked out, they said, Hey, we wanted to give these to you guys and thank you for being just great customers. We really appreciate you. And I was like really blown away.

Literally, it was rice and beans. I'm telling you how simple, like we didn't do anything except make a decision with the kids in the parking lot, that when we went in, we were gonna try to make a way that is way making. Um, and I really didn't realize how impactful it was even until I share the story now, but it, but it mattered to them. And so there's a, there's a, a quote by Stuart Briscoe, he's a friend of ours.

He passed away this last year. He was a pastor from Wisconsin. And um, he said, A witness is someone who by ex explanation and demonstration gives audible and visible evidence of what he has seen and heard without being deterred by the consequences of his or her actions. Lemme say that again. A witness is someone who by ex explanation, but speaking and demonstration gives audible and visible evidence of what he has seen and heard without being deterred by the consequences of his actions. Maybe you saw Elon Musk this week, um, intriguing figure. I just really intriguing listening to him and somebody said, Hey, you said this thing online, it's gonna ruin your profits.

I dunno if you saw this. And, uh, they said, you know, it's gonna, why do you, why do you keep saying things online? They're gonna take money away. And he goes, and he stops and he, he has like a 45 second pause. It's, and you're like, speak. And he is going do, and then he stops and he goes, if I say what I think is true and I lose money for it, so be it. It doesn't matter.

And I was like, facts. You know what I'm saying? Like the, the most dangerous person in the world, they say is somebody has nothing to lose. You know what I mean? Like, that's a dude. I'm not, I'm not vouching for him saying, Hey, he's amazing. But I'm just saying that's a guy who doesn't care, who's a billionaire, who lives on a floor on a mattress. I've seen his, the picture of his little roomie, he lives in, he lives on a floor, on a mattress. He's got other things he's concerned about.

And I love that with our faith as well. You just don't care. I just, I just don't care what you call me. I don't care if you gimme a name, if you, you know, a favorite term or whatever you say, I want to make Jesus known. I'm gonna ask you as we close question, what do Carl Mark Sigmund Freud, Melvin Einstein have in common? You don't have to answer out loud, it's rhetorical. What do Sigmund Freud, Carl Barks and Albert Einstein have in common? Well, one, they're on the list. I think it was Time Magazine, one of those magazines of the, of the top 23, of the Top 20 Influencers of the 20th Century. And I mean, look how Freud influenced the 20th century marks.

I mean, Freud in regard to psychology, uh, I don't think for the better, uh, marks in regard to sociology. Some of it's okay. I don't think a lot of it is for the better, uh, Einstein. I mean he, scientific theory, relativity, uh, you know, obviously, uh, was, was, uh, important in, um, you know, nuclear and, and understanding all those things. Um, one thing is, so there are, there are three of the 20 most in imagine look at their influence.

Imagine if you removed what they brought to our society together, just removed it. How would our society, it'd be very different society we live in, just three people, just like you, three normal people. The other thing I found out that was interesting as I was reading a, a devotional was all of them are actually like John the Baptist Jewish, I didn't know that they were Jewish except unlike John the Baptist.

They were agnostics and atheist, all three of 'em. Uh, the closest to God would probably be Einstein, who was, uh, uh, uh, an agnostic for the most part. And I thought to myself, imagine if like John the Baptist, who was related to them far back, but a, a Jewish man who accepted crisis Messiah. Imagine if they had the same amount of influence in society, but it was completely different.

It was Einstein in regard to faith-based science marks as in, as in, you know, uh, faith-based, you know, societal living, uh, or Freud in regard to psychology and faith. Imagine what the world would look like if they had made the decision to follow Jesus like John had and become a confessor. I was really overwhelmed by that as I thought about it, because I thought, these are three guys who, you know, the Bible, the, the gospel comes to the Jew first and then to the Gentile who did not, didn't have the ability or for one reason or another, didn't make decisions to follow Jesus. But you can't, let's say Carl, mark Sigmund Freud, Einstein, they're, they're normal people. They have certain Einstein obviously some gifts for sure.

Um, but ultimately they're just human beings like you that have the ability to influence and had the ability to influence an entire, not an entire world. We, I want to challenge you to take the mantle, the calling of being a confessing witness to Jesus Christ, wherever you are, and begin to make Jesus known. This is the tip of the spear.

I see business people sitting here for your business. This is the tip of the spear. This is why you're in business. To make Jesus known. I see soccer dads and moms here and parents, why are you in the parenting game? It's to make Jesus known. There's chefs here, real estate agents. Why are you selling houses to make Jesus home known?

Why are you teachers? Why are you policemen? Why are you in the military? Why are you cooks? Why are you anything to make Jesus known? That's it. That's why you're doing it. We have to reframe that because I thank God he had the grace to stop me 10, almost 10 years in now at this church to say, Hey, it's going really, really good. It's going great. It's fantastic.

We had almost 800 people show up to Easter. Woohoo. I I went to bed on Sunday night, Easter night. I was like, tired. But I'm like, yeah, I feel awesome about it. You know what I mean? It's great to feel awesome when things Yeah, cuz in my world you grow a church from 45 people to 800 people. Let's Yeah, you're amazing. Yeah. Why? I'm gonna make Jesus known.

That's it. And that's what, you know, if I'm here another 10, that's what we're gonna keep. That's what we're gonna do. We're gonna refocus now as a church in everything we do, whether it be go to Mexico, whether it be make a movie, whether it be Build a School, whether it be disciple people. We are going to make Jesus known.

And I want to invite you on the ride with us and to have you be our satellite campuses all over San Diego making Jesus known. Let's reframe, let's get back to the basics. Let's get back to confessing Jesus with our mouth and letting people know that he's Lord. Amen.