MAY 24 2015 | John 18

Sea Change Church · "John 18" · Adam Stadtmiller · May 24, 2015
John 18
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

John chapter 18, this morning. When he had finished praying, Jesus left with his disciples and crossed the Kidron Valley. And on the other side there was an olive grove, and he and his disciples went into it. Now Judas, who betrayed him, knew the place, because Jesus had often met there with his disciples. So Judas came into the grove, guiding a detachment of soldiers and some officials from the chief priests and Pharisees, and they were carrying torches, lanterns, weapons.

Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, Who is it you want? Jesus of Nazareth, they replied. I am he. Judas, the traitor, was with them. When Jesus said, I am he, they drew back and fell to the ground. And again he asked them, Who is it you want? Jesus of Nazareth, I told you, I am he. If you were looking for me, then let these men go.

This happened so that the words he had spoken would be fulfilled. I have not lost one of those you gave me. And then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it and struck the high priest's servant, cutting off his right ear. The servant's name was Malchus. Jesus commanded Peter, Put your sword away. Shall I not drink this cup the Father has given me?

Then the detachment of soldiers with its commander and the Jewish officials arrested Jesus. They bound him. They brought him first to Annas, who was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest that year. And Caiaphas was the one who had advised the Jews that it would be good if one man died for the people. This is the word of the Lord. We give thanks to God.

Thank you, my friend. All right. Jesus. Yeah. Just on the good day of Pentecost, to pray for the Holy Spirit, to fall afresh. That's the word that the Lord gave me as we were sitting there. Fall afresh. If you need the Holy Spirit to fall afresh on you right now, just ask. Fall afresh. You need a fresh dew of the Holy Spirit on us. Wipe away the dross.

God bless this sermon in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Well, you have your Bibles or you have your scripture there on your notes. And one of the things you're going to notice in verse 1, that Jesus returns to the scene of the crime. Now, in Jim's version, it was called an olive grove, but it's better known as what? The Garden of what? Gethsemane. We know that the Garden of Gethsemane, and we don't want to get lost in what God is trying to do in the scriptures right here.

You see, Jesus is a God of redemption, and he returns to the scene of the crime. And the scene of the crime was a garden that happened many thousands of years before. And Jesus returns to a garden, and in there he begins to redeem what had happened and the brokenness and the loss of his people. And so we see that in verse 1. It says, When he had finished praying, Jesus left his disciples and crossed the Kidron Valley.

On the other side there was a garden, and Jesus went into it. And what's interesting is one of the things we're going to talk about is the redemption. And if you need a garden in your life to be redeemed, there's going to be hope, and we're going to speak about the hope of that. I think that each of our lives in, you know, God in John 15, through his word, speaks about Jesus being the vine and we are the branches.

But he is in the business of gardening, of tending your life. He is in the business of bringing fruit into your life. If we serve a God who wants to bring not just some fruit, but like he says in John 15, 7, to bring a muchness of fruit in your life. He says, ask anything in my name that you might bear much fruit. You see, as a believer, if you're next to Christ, you're going to bear fruit.

It's impossible to be in Christ without bearing fruit. But how do we bear a muchness of fruit? Because sometimes there seems to be a difference between the amount of harvest we can have in our lives. And when I say, Jesus says in John 10, 10, I've come to give you life and give you what? More abundantly. See, abundant life is a super abundance.

And understand that we don't always feel like we're living in a super abundance. But Jesus wants your life to be full of abundance. That a muchness of life, of love, of joy, of peace, self-control. The fruit of what? The spirit. You are a garden. And God is the tender of your garden. And he wants to bring the fruit of those things into your life.

And so one of the things, in order to have a garden that produces, is we need to go back and we need to tend the garden. Now, I'm a gardener. I don't know if any of you know that, right? I'm an urban gardener. So urban gardening is really hipster. And I'm super into it. I don't grow, you know, macadamia nuts or anything cool or nutmeg. I don't carry my own organic nutmeg in my pocket so I can, you know, spritz it into my coffee.

I'm not that much of a hipster, okay? By the way, that's funny, okay? Where are you guys? That's funny. I don't ride a single-speed bicycle around town. My pants aren't that tight. Sometimes they are. They're skinny jeans. Actually, well, we won't say who shrunk them, but I had some jeans that weren't skinny. And I put them on yesterday. Kerry goes, oh, you're wearing skinny jeans today.

I said, well, I didn't buy them. They weren't skinny jeans when I got them. I only washed them in cold. I only washed them in cold. Well, thank you for washing them for me. But somehow cold water turned them into skinny jeans. So I'm a gardener. And one of the things I realized the other day is that my tomatoes, which I've counted more than 90 tomatoes on my three plants at the moment, okay?

I'm harvesting. I'm going to actually tithe off my – I think it's so cool to tithe off your gardening. It feels so Israeli, you know what I mean? Like it's just Old Testament style. So I'll be bringing in some tomatoes for the potluck here soon. But I counted my 90 tomatoes the other day. And I noticed there was a little bit of mildew on it, okay?

Anybody know how to get rid of mildew on – anybody have a clue how to get rid of mildew on tomatoes? Glenda, you raised your hand. The what? Oh, they said pixie dust. No, that could work, though. I use neem oil, okay? But that stuff might work as well. But neem oil will work. And all of a sudden, a day later, it's completely gone. I want to say one of the things that Jesus wants to do is he wants to come into the garden of your life.

And in order for it to produce fruit, he's got to tend it. He's got to hack it back where it needs to be hacked back. He needs to restore it where it needs to be restored. He needs to get the mildew out of your life. One of the things I've learned about mildew is that if you're cutting a plant that has a little bit of mildew and you don't wash the clippers and you use it on the next, you're going to get mildew on the next thing.

I want to say this is like sin in our lives. I believe it's impossible to have sin, to have a secret sin in one little area of our life that doesn't start affecting all the other areas of your life. Let's say, so Jesus here returns to the scene of the crime because the scene of the crime was a garden thousands of years before where God's children came to him and said, we no longer want to be your children.

We want to be like you. And see, if you can fall to the temptation of being like God, you step out of being able to be sons and daughters of God. See, God has called us to be sons and daughters. The enemy, Satan, did not want to be and was jealous of seeing the relationship between the father and the son. And he wanted to become God and take over heaven.

And he offered the same temptation to be like God to Adam and Eve. And in that scripture, they stepped out of sonship, which is an endowed sonship. I've spoken about how there's a difference between being entitled and being endowed. No one likes people that are entitled, right? You feel this, they're entitled. They step in front of you in line.

They just feel like they should get first. They cut you off on the road, whatever it is. But there's a difference between being entitled and being endowed. When you're an endowed son of God, it just is. There is a blessing that exists that you don't have to strive for. You don't have to push to have. You become a person who walks in the blessing of God and it is just available to you.

And it's not something you have to fight for, although we do have to fight against the world. And so we see often that people will have secret sins in their lives and it infects and contaminates all the other areas of your life. I want to say Jesus is not afraid of the disease in your life, the disease of sin in your life. He's not afraid. He's not afraid to touch lepers.

He's not afraid of your wounds. And when we expose our wounds to him, he will expose his to us because he was wounded on the cross. And the scripture says that there is a mutuality of sharing of wounds together. And it says by his wounds we are what? Healed. You see, when Jesus sees the lepers and they show their wounds to him, he touches their wounds.

But then Jesus says to Thomas later on, he shows them his what? His wounds. And he says, touch my wounds. And it is the mutuality when we come between exposing our wounds to Jesus that he will expose his wounds to us. And it is in the chemistry of that spiritual reaction that we are healed. It is by his wounds that we are healed. So think about the garden of your life and where it needs to be tended.

And what I would say is, how can you allow Jesus into that garden? You see, Jesus knew where to go when it was time to redeem. And so Jesus knew where to go when it was time to redeem. And the question is, are you willing to let him into the garden of your life? Jesus shows up into this garden here and we see that he returns to the scene of the crime.

We're going to get to it in a moment. And I love, I just love the title of this. Jesus is arrested, but I put, don't bring a knife to a gunfight. Okay. Peter has no idea what is happening. Do you see the larger picture here? Jesus understands when he walks into a garden what he is doing. He understands that the enemy has no clue. I don't think the enemy understood what he was doing when he crucified Jesus.

We give Satan way too much credit. Okay. He's a great mastermind that understands everything. You know, he is not the great mastermind that understands everything. He is so limited in his understanding. Now he's brilliant in regard to how to try to attack God, but he regularly makes mistakes. We often think that the enemy can never make a mistake.

I recently was talking to somebody and they said something. And then when they said it, it was, it was, um, and what they said, all of a sudden I realized just in my mind, that is what the enemy wants me to believe. And when they said it, I all of a sudden had a truth of understanding how the enemy was trying to attack me in my mind and in my heart.

I believe the enemy made a mistake. I believe that this person who was saying this one thing said this in order to accomplish what they wanted to accomplish. The enemy wanted to accomplish something in my life to have me buy into an ungodly truth and begin to build my life upon it. But as soon as I saw it, the truth of the Holy Spirit said, that's the enemy's lie.

He overshowed his hand to me and it encouraged me. And that was months ago, you know, months and months ago, but it encouraged me and it gave me hope. And actually it was a day where things really changed in the direction of this one area of my life where I began to walk in godly truth. And we see Peter shows up and Peter shows up to this idea or to this garden and he has no idea what's happening.

And when he does so, he shows up and he brings a sword to fight this battle. But Jesus is fighting a bigger battle. You see, when Jesus walked in that garden, he thought of Adam and Eve. He knew the scriptures. He thought of what had happened between his father and their children and when they were separated from him. And when he stepped into that garden, he knew he was doing so for the point of redemption.

And what I want to say is this, let Jesus into the garden of your life. Invite him into the deepest, darkest pain of your life. Don't run and hide. The enemy wants us to believe that when we make mistakes, when we have things in our life to forget about them, to bury them, to make them secret, to step away that God doesn't want to know about those things and we can have this other life.

We show up to church, we have spiritual conversations, but there's this one dark little secret like Gollum with his ring in a cave and the Lord of the Rings and we just hold it to ourselves. And that's the enemy's plan. That you would hide in the bushes away from your father. Jesus didn't die on the cross so you could go hide in the bushes in the garden.

Jesus died on the cross to give you access to the throne of God and there is no condemnation. And when you go there, you will find kindness and mercy in your time of need, it says in Hebrews chapter 4, verse 16. That you will find mercy in your time of need. Go to God. God. The enemy wants to get you to go away from God. He wanted to get them to become like God so that they would lose their sonship.

And so we see Jesus returning to the scene of the crime and we serve a God who is not afraid, as you'll see in the notes, who are past failures and he desires to redeem them. He wants to redeem your past failures. But let me ask you this, do you want to be redeemed? John chapter 5, Jesus goes up to the man that's been crippled 38 years. What does he ask him?

Do you want to be healed? What a foolish question. If I'm with Jesus and I'm his handler, okay? Let's just say I'm Jesus' handler because we all are kind of Jesus' handler sometimes, right? I'd be like, Jesus, dumb question. Walk in, you know, there's better questions than that, you know? Foolish question. It's a great question. Do you want to be redeemed?

Do you actually want to go where Jesus might lead you? Are you willing? What Jesus says in John 15, 7, ask for anything that you want. It also, the word phthalo, I've said it multiple times in here, the Greek word phthalo means anything that you are willing. There is a difference between what you want and what you are willing to ask for. What you want is limited.

It's limited to what? Your wants. What you are willing to ask for can go beyond your wants. And so when Jesus, we look at that and go, oh, Jesus wants us to ask for whatever I want, Lord. That's awesome. He says whatever you're willing. Are you willing to ask for humility? Are you willing to ask to forgive that person? Are you willing to ask to have that addiction that you love so much taken away?

Are you willing to step into a deeper level of the cross to know and understand the fellowship of his suffering, like it says in Philippians chapter 3, that we might know the power of what? His resurrection. Realize on the back end of all of your suffering is always a deeper understanding of the power of the resurrection. Philippians chapter 3, it says, Paul says, that I might know the fellowship of his suffering, that I might come to know the power of what?

His resurrection. And his resurrection is full of power. It shook the universe. It shakes eternity. And so what I see interesting here is that Jesus steps in this garden to redeem the past. What is interesting is that he invites, if you look at the story, he invites his disciples along for the ride. Okay? But he also doesn't ask his disciples to do the redeeming.

He lets his disciples go free. His disciples, while it says, Paul says later on that we are crucified with Jesus symbolically as we go through suffering in our life, he doesn't ask them to literally hang on the cross. What Jesus is showing is that the work of redemption is 100% about Jesus. Now, you are invited to be a part of that. And he wants to co-labor and partner with you in the redeeming of your life, in the purchasing of your life.

He wants you to be a part of it and to stand beside him. But you don't have to do it. You know, the enemy constantly wants us to feel like we have to work to get salvation, that we have to work to get his approval, that we have to work to become the beloved. None of those things. And so we see Jesus inviting the disciples to come with him. But Jesus goes to the cross alone.

Check that. He goes to the cross with his father. And we know in the scripture that he never loses contact with his father. Throughout the entire scriptural narrative, even though God as God and judge turns his back on Jesus, he never loses contact with the father. And he speaks to the father all the way through. And in our sufferings, that's a good word.

That's a good word. And wherever you are in your sufferings right now, wherever you are in the difficult things of your life, let Jesus do the work of redemption. You do the work of rest and believing that he will do the work in that and go to the father regularly because Jesus did as well. And so we're not called to redeem, as you'll see in the notes, our past sins and failures.

Isn't that a blessing? I met with somebody this week. They called me. It was great. They said, hey, I am just struggling. I'm going down a pit. I need, I don't know, you know, I can go to all these other addictions in my life, but I chose to call you instead. And when I met with him, I said, you're a man of God. I said, that's a man of God that's willing to say, hey, I'm going to call myself.

I'm going to turn the light on. I'm struggling in this area. I had this past sin and I can't let it go. He goes, I'm being tormented with this sin. Over. Have you ever been, I'm not asking you to raise your hand, but have you ever been tormented? But the enemy loves to torment, to get you on a thought, to get you fixated. I want to say one of the enemy's plan is to get you fixated on something.

He doesn't care what it is as long as it's not God. To get you fixated. I want to say, change your fixation. Change what's in the scope. Change what's in the rear view mirror or in the, you know, on the movie screen of your life. You know, you have a choice. Scripture says no one can steal your what? Joy. Joy. You can give it away. If you want to give it away, you can.

And I want to say that that fixation that we have in our mind, that thing that we, whether it's stress or fear or worry, whatever it is, if you want to change it with the weapons of our warfare that are worship, turn worship on. In your car, just purchase worship. Just spend money on worship or scripture. Get a CD of the scriptures. Just inculcate, I love that word, inculcate your life with the things of God and watch your fixation change.

You know what the enemy wants us to fixate on? Right. And when we fixate on ourselves, we're called to fix your eyes on who? The author and what? Of our faith. Our faith is perfected when we fixate on Jesus. But when we fixate on ourselves, we become God. Bingo. Why does the enemy want to give you fears, worries, concern? So that you will fixate on yourself instead of what we are called to, to always fixate on God, once again, to make you like God.

And when we become like God, we step out of being able to be sons and step out of being able to be daughters. Stop fixating on yourself. And trust me, I'm preaching to the choir and myself. It is so easy to fixate on yourself. But when we fixate on ourself, then we fixate on becoming like God and we move our eyes to us. Where's your fixation? Where's the focus of your intent?

Where's the focus of your desire? I tell you, Jesus is such a loving God who wants you to fixate on him. Change your fixation. And so we see that. Now, this just stuck out to me. Go to verse 8. This is super interesting. It's really interesting. Jesus answered to them, I told you that I am he. If you are looking for me, then let these men go. Now, I told you that he allowed them to be free and not be captured, killed, and crucified with him to show that the total work of redemption is on God and he meant to set us free.

This popped out to me. I'd never seen it before when I was preaching. If you look at the synoptic gospel account, or the one, I guess it wouldn't be in the synoptics, but if you look at Mark 14, verse 51, where it tells this story, it talks about whom we consider John running away when Jesus says, let these guys go. And the disciples are like, yes, let us go.

They are ready to go. They are struck with fear and they bolt. Okay? When they leave in Mark 14, verse 51, it says a young man wearing, and we assume that's John, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind. He fled and he was free, and he fled naked from the garden. When Adam and Eve left the garden, they left condemned and clothed.

And I'd never seen that before, that there was a redemption. I'm like, why is that verse in there? Like, he runs out naked? Like, I just don't, it's always just kind of struck me. Why is that in there? And the Lord said, because the redemption had begun. Because this time when they left the garden, they were going to be leaving naked and free. And God wants us to be naked and free before him.

Naked and free. I remember when one of my daughters, I won't say which one, was two years old, three years old. She would run out. I'd be sitting there reading or doing something pious. Just kidding. Thank you, Carol. I'm so glad you're here. Thank you. Everyone else just looking at me today, but... That's job security, Carol. That's amazing. Somebody said that to me the other day.

He says, you have problems with your church? I said, we all have problems. He goes, job security, man. Job security. I said, great. My daughter, I'd be out there reading or doing something, and my daughter would run out naked. And I'd see these little cheeks running around the house, you know. And she'd be yelling, naked baby! Naked baby! Naked baby!

Naked baby! Like it's an alarm or something, you know what I mean? Like I need to call that cops. Naked baby! Just love coming out of the shower with a little hood on. Come out, throw it off, naked and unashamed. Just naked baby. Now, if you've had babies, they love being naked. They just, I don't know, they just love it. There's just something about it.

I won't go any further with that. I want to say that, but I'm not going to say that. Five years ago, you would have got it. Thank you, Mom. Gosh, it's good too. But, uh... People come up to me afterwards. What were you going to say? Naked and free. There's freedom. Jesus wants us to be free. Why did Jesus set you free? Scripture says. Why did he set you free?

It says, I have set you free. It is for freedom that I have set you free. The reason Jesus set you free is so you can be free. Is that redundancy? No. He wants you to live free. Let me say, are you living free? Do you feel love, joy, peace? And when you look at the fruits of the Spirit, do you realize the order that they go in? There's a reason in the order that they go in.

What's the first one? Love. Now, we cannot have any of the other fruits, I believe, until it isn't in... I don't think it starts with that we are loving other people, although that's part of it. I think it's that we're experiencing love. You can't give away what you don't have. The more you steep yourself in understanding the love of God for you, the easier it is to be give away.

It just gets easier. Everything gets easier. Forgiveness gets easier. So it starts with love. The first is love, the fruit of the Spirit. The next is what? Joy. When you feel God's love, trust me, you're going to start having moments of joy and building a stronghold of joy. What I've been experiencing over the last year is a movement from happiness to joy.

We're like, happiness is great, but it's such a cheap form of joy. I mean, it doesn't even compare. But to have moments where you actually experience true joy in your life, because when you know you're loved by a Father, then you can experience joy. And when you have joy, it's easy to be what? Peace. Love, joy, peace. When you have peace, you can be patient.

How easy? Figure it out. You know what I mean? I looked at it the other day. But it all starts with knowing how much God loves you and having a download of love, a download of the Father's love. I want to say, you know, it's just God's going to do that in each of our lives differently. I don't think there's a magic button. Go to this conference. Do this.

Do that. But just keep asking God. Show me how much you love me. And don't be embarrassed to ask. If there's anything John 15, 7 says to ask for anything in his name, ask this. Show me how much you love me. Show me how much you love me. I want to say, knowing how to love the world is going to get a lot easier when you know how much God loves you. How are we going to reach the world?

How are we going to reach the world? By knowing how much God loves you. Because it will flow out one fruit after another. And your garden, you'll have a muchness of fruit in your life. So he runs away, naked and free. And Adam and Eve left the garden clothed and condemned. And so then we see Peter here. And Peter in this work of redemption. I want to say it is really, look, I believe in counseling.

Okay? I believe in good books. I believe in all the tools that we can use to become who God is allowing you to be. To walk into your true identity. I believe in all those things. Go for it. But I also believe that sometimes those things are like bringing a knife to a gunfight. Okay? That if we are going to do the cataclysmic work of redemption in our life and to see the redemption of this world.

Look at the world. Okay? A book ain't going to change. Ain't. The book ain't going to change what's going on in the world right now. The world's terminally ill. It's a mess. I mean, it's probably been around 45 years. It's a mess. I mean, there's been some times before, obviously, but, like, people are at a loss. I want to say what's going to change the world.

It is things beyond our understanding. It is heavenly things in the spirit realm that will change the world. You know what Peter thought was going to change the world? That Israel would be a kingdom again. That's what he thought. There's a lot of Christians today that feel that if Israel's a kingdom again, the whole world's going to change. Okay?

They're still focusing on the same thing Peter was. Do you get that? Now, look, the prophetic things that are going to happen with Israel are going to happen. Why? Because God said they're going to happen. Okay? Nothing is going to stop that. And the Scripture says we need to bless Israel. But one of the things I want to do, and I've said it over and over again, is I don't want to bless the nation of Israel and forget about the souls of the people.

The souls of the people. I'll tell you who's important in Israel to God. The Israelis. It's the people. And Peter wasn't fixated on the people. He was fixated on a government. And he was bringing a knife to a gunfight because Jesus had more important plans in the moment than restoring the kingdom of Israel. Because if he didn't, he would have restored the kingdom of Israel.

Jesus was restoring his children to a father. And I want to say it was a much bigger work. And Peter shows up with a sword to fight that battle. And it is not a weapon worthy of that. And the redemption in your life, the things that we need, the cataclysmic shifts that we need in our lives, the things that are strongholds right now that the enemy, it started out as a foothold in your life, right?

But it became a stronghold. I want to say the enemy always wants to turn a foothold into a stronghold. You know? You give him an inch, he'll take an eternity. The same with God. Give God an inch back into those things in your life. And we need to begin to show up and realize and stop and put our swords down. You see, Jesus looks at Peter in verse, let me tell you what verse it is.

11. Jesus commanded Peter, put your sword away. I want to say that Jesus has commanded me many times, put your sword away. You know? We're so quick to go to the swords of our own consolation. Right? We have the swords of our own consolation. Maybe it's anger. Maybe you're really good at anger and that's your deal. Or it's, you know, just distancing yourselves.

I mean, there's proper boundaries. Sometimes we need to distance ourselves a little bit. But when you use that as a weapon to control, manipulate people to get accomplished what you want. Or maybe it's a zinger in an email. Or maybe it's sarcasm. Or maybe it's control of one form or another. So we begin to use the swords. And Jesus has said to me so many times, In this area of your life, just think about the thing that's bugging you right now.

It'll probably change in a year. Right? That's what I realize about my things. I'm really fixated on something. And then a year, I'm not even remembering it anymore. But I start picking up these swords of my own consolation. And I begin to fight them. And when I do that, I'm bringing a knife to a gunfight. It says that our battle is not against what?

Flesh and butter. But against who? That fly around basically where? In the heavens. Can you? Look, a scathing email that you feel really good about sending is not going to change that. The things of our own control are not going to change that realm. How does that realm get changed? By the things of God. By letting Jesus do the work and just showing up to the garden with him and not sleeping.

Showing up and saying, God, I want to be here with you. Partner with this. I give it to you. It is submission. It is the opposite of what witchcraft would be. Witchcraft is a spirit of control. Do you get that? The spirit of control. And that's why prayer is not witchcraft. That God is against witchcraft. Because witchcraft is taking control. Once again, saying, I want to be God.

If you look at everything the enemy does, it will almost always take you back, take human beings back to becoming God themselves. I'm going to say, put down the swords of your own warfare. Whatever it is you're using to fight. And begin to pray. Begin to worship. Begin to give God thanksgiving. What would it look like if you did 30 minutes? You know, we could do, you know, two hours of TV like that.

You know, Alaskan State Troopers. Whatever it is. Home and Garden. Property. You guys all watch that, I guess? I hit one there. Property Brothers. Internet. What's the international property one? What is it? House Hunters International. Yeah. I'm always in Brussels buying a house, you know. Paris. We can do two hours of that so easily. But what would it look like if you just said, hey, for the next week, I'm going to sit and I'm just going to do a half hour of thanksgiving.

Where you just begin to build a stronghold of thanksgiving. I began to just, I didn't do a half hour, but I did, you know, a few minutes here and there this week. And I began to realize how blessed we are. How blessed. How much blessing. I mean, we've had our ups and downs. We've had hard times. But I look around at the blessing. I look around at the blessing of this church.

This church is so blessed. It is, look, it is blessed. There is a blessing of God. And I'm not just, you know, I only know all the churches I'm in at the moment. There is a blessing here with the people. There's a blessing with what God's doing. There's a peace. There's a spirit. People keep telling me I feel something when I come in here. I feel it too.

And there's other churches as well. We don't have the secret sauce. Okay. I'm not saying we have the secret sauce, but God's blessing is abundant and it's eternal and there's enough to go around. And we want to continue to walk in it because where there is unity, God commands Psalm 131, a blessing. And that's one of the things we have right now is a blessing.

So Peter, it says, Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it back and struck the high priest servant off, cutting off his right ear. His name was Malchus. Peter thought he was restoring the kingdom of Israel, but Jesus was fighting a much greater battle. Jesus says, put away your sword. And then I have the scripture there, 2 Corinthians 10, 4, that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty.

Every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. Now this is key. It says, it says, casting down every argument. Sorry, I got lost there. Excuse me. Let me go to the beginning. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for the pulling down of strongholds. I love that. What does it look like to pull down a stronghold?

What would it look like if the stronghold in your life got pulled down? I want to say God's weapons can pull down. Thanksgiving is a weapon that can pull down a stronghold in your life. We know that worship out of the book of Joshua, okay, pulled down what? The walls of Jericho. It pulled down the mightiest walls that it said that they could do chariot races around the top of the walls.

You know all they did? Worship the Lord, cry out, blow a horn. Down came the walls. I want to say, you know, some of the ways you've been fighting, put your sword away and pick up the weapons of your warfare and begin to attack them from a different angle. I was listening to David in the scriptures and it says, now this time, there's a second time they'd attacked the Philistines.

And the first time they just went down there and they beat them up. They lost 19 guys and they killed 365, I think is what it said. But the next time David said, I'm going to go fight them again. Will you give them into our hands? And the Lord said, yes, but I want you to do something different. Do you know anywhere? No, where he told them to go.

Go stand by what? The balsam trees. And he says, when you hear what? The sound of marching in the leaves of the trees, you will know that I have given your enemy Philistines into your hands and then march. Problem is I want to march before I hear the balsam trees blow. Sometimes we just need to sit back and wait to hear the balsam trees and the marching.

Let God march in your life. Let him go before you. I said, if you want to know something about spiritual maturity, let God fight your battles. What does that look like? You know, some of us, myself included, have become so intent and it's become a habit to fight our own battles. That's why you're worn out. That's why I get worn out. You know, when you let God fight your battles, you can go and rest.

You know, when we die, the scripture says we enter into what? Rest. If the kingdom of God is supposed to be like the king on earth, Jesus said, bring the kingdom of God to earth, right? In Matthew chapter six, one of the ways we're going to do that is begin to emulate the kingdom of God on earth. And one of the ways to do that is to rest. Let God fight your battles.

What's your battle right now? Let God fight it. And you show up and you worship and you pray and you read God's word and just get a scripture book, find scriptures. I found 17 scriptures recently that are really, that I feel like I'm, God's building a stronghold of these scriptures in my life. And I just went and copied and pasted them into a Google document.

And I've been trying to read them every day and just go over these scriptures that God is building up a theology for my life. It's not a private theology that I'm saying that I'm going to build a cult upon, but it's in my life. These are important to me. And I've begun to read over those over and over again. And they are building a stronghold. And I have found where I'm getting, instead of like a good half a day, I'll get five or six days of joy and peace.

Now I've never experienced that before. Why? Because God is building a stronghold. I'm going to let him fight his, I'm going to let him fight the battles. Rest. Relax. Put your sword down. You know, Peter was cutting off ears, but God called him to pierce hearts. If you look later on when Peter finally got it right, and I was thinking, gosh, I was thinking if I was going to write again, I would love to write a book called Swimming in Galilee.

Because Peter, remember, he's on the boat after he's denied Jesus and Jesus is gone and he doesn't know what's happened. And Peter is full of shame. And all of a sudden he's there. And who comes up on the shore? And we're going to get there in John 21 because it's my favorite scripture and we'll be preaching it soon. And who's on the shore outside?

Jesus. And what does he do? Peter jumps in the water. And in that moment of whatever it was, those eight minutes that it took him to swim from the boat to the shore, everything was right for Peter. He understood. He was going to love. I mean, everything made, everything made sense. He stripped down, it said naked, and he swam in the Galilee. And I say, that's what I want to do.

I want to swim in Galilee. I want to rest. I want to find my savior on the beach. You know, there was a whole world to be one. And Jesus didn't sit and say, okay, Peter, okay, we got everything sorted out now. Let's have a game plan. Now, you know, 2,000 years from now, this is going to happen and that's going to happen. You got this movement and you got the Maccabeans and da, da, da, da.

Thank you. Thank you. I'll be here all week. Try the chicken. He said, hey, come sup with me. Here's some fish. Sit down and eat. You know what? Do you love me? And he asked him again, do you love me? And he asked him again, do you love me? He said, feed my lambs. Feed my lambs. What a great plan. What a great plan. You know, the world's a mess right now.

And there's a lot of strategies we can use to fix it. But I think Jesus would say, feed my lambs. Feed my lambs. Just, we're shepherds. Let's be a shepherd. And so we see Jesus, we see Peter here. And in that moment in the Galilee, his life was changed. And we see that when Peter finally gets it right, I love it in Acts 2 through 37. We're coming in for a landing.

This is when Peter stands up in front of the people. And it's on the day of Pentecost. And the Holy Spirit had come now from Pentecost. And Peter is standing up to speak. And it says, when the people heard him speak. And he spoke the gospel. Because he wasn't caring so much about a kingdom of Israel anymore. He was caring about the people. And he says, when the people heard this, they were cut to the heart.

And said to Peter and the other apostles, brothers, what shall we do? What shall we do? They'd come to the end of themselves. Peter knew what he was talking about now. And he spoke to the people. And no longer, he put his sword away. See, Peter wasn't called to cut off ears. He was called to cut to the heart. And he was able to do that through the preaching of the gospel.

With that said, you know what? I'm just going to finish there because I feel like that's enough. I'm going to ask the worship team to come up. And in this time of worship, if there's a garden in your life that needs some restoration, this is Pentecost Sunday. And the word that I felt like the Lord gave me. And when I say word, I think that God speaks to all of us according to who he's created us to be.

And I'll just get a lot of thoughts. And he'll give me thoughts. And I try to, okay, does that sound like scripture to me? But one of the things when we were singing there was, you know, Holy Spirit, fall fresh on me. I'd like you guys to play that again if you would. And look, put your sword down. Just put it down today. Just, if you can leave here, every week I want to give us an opportunity to rest.

To let God know that he loves you. If you've got a financial concern, you've got a, you're angry at someone. You maybe even say you think you hate someone. Let God fight that battle for you. Let's just stand. Let's stand. And we're going to let the spirit on this Pentecost Sunday do the work. He's a big enough God to work individually with you right now.

Even with all these people in here, he wants to work with you. Amen. Amen.