NOV 10 2019 | Grace on the Galilee S1E1 | Bending the Natural

Sea Change Church · Grace on the Galilee · "Bending the Natural" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · November 10, 2019
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

I'm putting that seminary education to work right now. Let's do it. I kind of wanted to read it anyway, to tell the truth. The reason I don't read, you know the reason they don't let me read the scripture is because I can't read the scripture without preaching it. So I stop, like I read a sentence and then I stop and then I read it. Pretty soon they were like, hey, can you like just read the scripture and straight through?

So I'm going to read it straight through. I'm going to do my best. But I get these little insights and I want to talk about them so we can do it right on. All right. Well, first of all, let's pray, right? Lord Jesus, I want to thank you, God, for your goodness and your grace. I love the Bible, Lord. I love the word of God. Not as much as I love you, Jesus. You are a good God and I would bless you as we jump into this new series.

We need a miracle, God. We need a miracle in our world, in our nation, in our city, in our own hearts. And the greatest miracle is the resurrection of Jesus from the dead that we might have life and know you more. So we just bless you in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. And I'm going to read these with my glasses, which I left over here. And we are on point today. I'm going to be mowing the lawn after the service, so you'll see me out there doing that.

All right. Verse 38. Let's start with it. Jesus left the synagogue. Circle left the synagogue and went. Circle went to the home of Simon. Now, Simon's mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever. Circle suffering. And they asked Jesus to help her. I want to preach, see? So he bent over her and rebuked the fever and it left her. It left her. Circle it. She got up once and began to wait on them. At sunset, the people brought to Jesus all who had various kinds of sickness.

And laying his hands on each of them, he healed them. Moreover, demons came out of many people, shouting, you are the Son of God. But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak because they knew he was the Messiah. That's called the divine secret. We'll talk about that another time. At daybreak, Jesus went out to a solitary place. Circle went out. The people were looking for him. And when they came to him where he was, they tried to keep him from leaving them.

But he said, I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom. Circle good news of the kingdom of God. To the other towns also because that is why I was sent. And he kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea. Word of the Lord. Powerful scripture. We are moving in now. After being in the Old Testament for a very long time, I've been missing Jesus. I want to preach about Jesus for a while. So we're jumping into this series six weeks about miracles.

We are not a miracle-chasing church. But we are a church that believes in miracles. A long history of miracles. And we do see miracles here on a somewhat regular basis. We'll talk about what that means and what that is. And we'll look at that. But we're jumping into this idea of the relationships Jesus had with people alongside the miracle. Jesus never did miracles for his own sake. One of the reasons that the Gospel of Thomas is not put into the canon of the Bible canon is because it has certain stories in it that are kind of antithetical to who we think Jesus was.

So one of the Gospel of Thomas, which was books that were written around the same time as the Bible was written. And there's a story of when Jesus was a child and he makes these clay doves. And the clay doves, he turns them into little real birds and they come alive and fly away. It's a cute little story. It's a great story. But we never see Jesus doing something for no reason just to awe and give people awe and wonder.

The majority of the miracles had a very personal nature to them. And we're going to look at that. That these miracles were meant to create and form relationship. And so Jesus is all about relationship. And Jesus is a relational God who wants to introduce you to his Father. And the entire meaning of the kingdom of God on earth is to create a pathway for relationships. I would say that miracles are one of the stones that are cobbled into the road that leads to heaven.

Let me say that again. Miracles are one of the stones that is cobbled in to the road that leads to at least relationship with God in heaven. That we are not meant to base our entire faith on miracles or be miracle seekers or people that are just chasing after these things. But Jesus used them for a reason. Well, look at that reason. But then also to show and back up with power what he was saying verbally. Jesus said oftentimes if you don't believe what I said, well then look at these miracles.

But I am a believer that if you chase miracles, you'll never be satisfied. I do believe if you chase relationship with Jesus, you will be satisfied. And so if you chase miracles, you'll never be satisfied. One, because you can never prove a miracle happened, if that makes sense. Miracles like faith are something that cannot be proved. And if Jesus came to you with a ton of angels and stood at your bedside with a flaming sword out of his mouth like you see in the book of Revelation, that probably in two years you would ask yourself, you know, did that really happen?

Like I'm just wondering. You doubt yourself. Maybe it happened. Maybe it didn't. We believe that the greatest miracle happens in the relationships of people when their lives are changed. It is very easy to doubt a miracle. It is more difficult to doubt someone who has a long-term invested change in their life. When you look at somebody who for the last 30 years, everyone knew them 30 years ago when, you know, they were, you know, a drunken sailor, no offense to the sailors in the crowd, you know, wandering the wharfs of San Diego.

And then 30 years later, they have had their lives completely changed around, you know, completely turned in, you know, around. It is hard to doubt that. And so the greatest proof of the gospel is a changed life. I like what Riley was speaking about. I drive her to surf practice with my daughter every week. I'm the assistant surf coach, assistant to the assistant vice president of the surf team of Maryland. And she was saying, you know, one of the things I know is I don't cry as much anymore.

And I thought, wow, what a powerful thing that she said. She goes, in my life, since I, and this is, I love this. She goes, since I got Jesus and surfing in my life, I was like, yeah, there we go. She goes, because that's two, you kind of need the two to really get it sorted out. She goes, my life has completely changed. So that's why we have a surf church here. It's all about the people. And so as we talk about these miracles, the underlying story that we're looking at is the relationships of the people behind it.

Jesus didn't need to do miracles to impress himself or anyone else. He did them to create and form relationship. And so we believe in miracles, but we're not going to go chasing miracles around. Now, in this story, Jesus is teaching at a synagogue. The Pharisees of the day would go into these different synagogues and preach. And many, Jesus was not a Pharisee, but many of the religious leaders of the day were trying to get a cult following, a cult of personality.

And one of the things that they would say is, you know, whose dust, which rabbi's dust are you walking in? This was a saying from the day, to walk in a great rabbi's dust. And it was not some form of shame. The dust that you had on your clothing, and if you've had walked where there's not pavement, and I was just in Israel, and you're walking around these geological sites, you can get dusty very quick. And so this is why they washed their feet.

They had these ceremonial washings and all the things. But to have the dust of a great rabbi on you was something that you wanted. So you would say, I walk in the dust of Gamaliel or one of these other, you know, great rabbis of the day. Well, Jesus was getting very popular. And the reason he was getting very popular is not only because he had some great things to say, because they were a religion of orthodoxy, not orthopraxy.

Orthodoxy was meaning that they knew lots of stuff about the Bible. They knew the Bible of God better than they knew God of the Bible. And you have a lot of people that are Bible lovers but don't know God. And then you have orthopraxy, which has to do with praxis. Jesus got both right, and he had praxis where his life actually proved out what he believed. Many of the people that didn't have the power of heaven available to them, like Jesus did, were just all about orthodoxy.

If we can just get a better teaching, a more strident teaching. If you can just hold to the principles of the word and understand them a little bit better, and then you don't make any mistakes. This is why they built this entire law in Judaism, so you could prove your faith. Faith was proved by, well, you didn't wash or you didn't do this. Jesus kept breaking all of these man-made laws, but he came with power. This made the religious leaders very upset because they were creating cults of personality.

One of the things that is so interesting about Jesus is the way that he lived his life was antithetical to being an Instagram influencer. If you were an Instagram influencer, you want to have a social profile that makes more and more people commit their hearts to you, commit their likes to you, commit their attention to you so that you can benefit from it. Jesus isn't that way. In the scripture, what did he do after he had done the miracle?

Did he go post it on Instagram? No, he went to a solitary place. As a matter of fact, he bounced from the entire situation because he wasn't trying to create a cult of personality. He didn't come to do miracles. Miracles would be done as they would be cobbled into the road that led to heaven, but Jesus came that others might be saved, and miracles came and happened along the way. He was getting very popular, and this made religious leaders mad.

He also spoke about being the son of God and forgiving sins, which is the greatest miracle, which we'll see in a moment. Well, first of all, let's look at miracles. What are miracles? It says that a miracle is a... Now, this is a secular definition. I Googled it. I think this might have been on the Wikipedia, and I love looking at the secular definitions and then seeing if they go with the biblical definition. This one actually did.

And there's some things that you need to understand. And in order for something to be a miracle, it has to have some interesting characteristics to it, some of which I didn't understand until I started studying this in the last couple weeks. First of all, it's surprising and welcomed event. Surprising and welcomed event. It catches you by surprise, which is interesting. It's unique. And it's something that's always welcomed.

A miracle that is not welcomed is not a miracle. You would say miracles would be the opposite of curses. A curse would be an unwelcomed event, and it might be surprising, but it isn't something that you would want. And it's not explicable by natural or scientific law, which means it is not within the natural order of things. Now, we live within, even scientists, even evolutionary scientists will tell you that we live in a universe that can somewhat be measured, meaning that they believe that the universe started expanding, that it is still expanding, but it has an end to it.

Meaning if you were fast enough and you could get, as it's still expanding, you could get to the end of the universe, you would get to the place where it's expanding into whatever that thing is supposed to be. I've always wondered what's on the other side of the universe as it is expanding. Once again, this is an evolutionary teaching, that it is expanding from the Big Bang, basically. It expands. The question is, what is on the other side of the natural universe?

The natural universe means anything that is within, according to evolutionary science, that circle or that ball of expansion. So as it explodes and goes out, on the outside of it would be the unnatural world or just nothingness. But they would say that it is expanding into nothingness and taking it over. So the natural order, when we speak of being a naturalist, if you are a naturalist, you believe that the only things that are true are things that can be proven within that circle of the created universe.

A miracle, as you'll see, has to be something that cannot be proven or scientifically proven within the natural universe because then it would automatically just be part of that mechanism. Granted, we might not understand why it happened or how it happened, but once it can be proven, it's no longer a miracle because a miracle has to break the laws of scientific natural happenings. So if it can be proven, it's within that mechanism.

So if you would say, and you also have to believe that God is outside of that natural universe. The reason being is because if God was inside the natural universe and his powers to do things were part of the natural universe, then he would just be a part of the system. So what it is saying is that it is something that happens outside of the system. I hope that that makes sense. I know that's a pretty heavy, if you want to get the book by miracles on C.S. Lewis, if there's some in the back, it'll go into that a little bit deeper.

But first of all, here's three things about them. A welcomed event. It's always welcomed. Miracles are full of hope. We look for miracles. Jesus, when he brings a miracle, brings hope. He brought hope to Peter's mother-in-law here. A miracle is a change that brings hope to a life, that brings hope to a world. And you can sell a lot on hope. Hope goes a long way. And one of the reasons we survive, one of the reasons cancer patients continue to take another day, why people continue to fight in battles, because they have hope.

And when a person loses hope, it is a very dangerous place. In a world that loses hope is a very dangerous place. And so, the belief in something beyond this natural order, a divine being beyond this natural order, we call him God. I think others might call it an intelligent being. But believes that there is a God outside of this natural order that cares for it and wants to bring hope into it through divine action. We'll talk about that in a second.

So, also, it's not explainable by natural scientific law. We mentioned that. Because if it was in something you could explain, it would be within the clockwork. It would be a mechanism within the system. It has to be something that cannot happen within the system on its own. It has to break the laws of the system. Now, this is interesting. One of the things C.S. Lewis says, is that we live in this natural world that is like a clock.

And imagine a clock that has all these working, and it's natural to this clock. When a miracle comes in, it actually changes, it does something that the natural clock cannot do on its own. The mechanism cannot do on its own. We tend to believe that it is something that is anti-natural, that breaks nature. What C.S. Lewis said, I thought it was a phenomenal thought, is that there is a created order that God created, and it has an order.

But God also created heaven. Now, if you've not known this, heaven is a created place. Heaven has not always existed. In the scriptures, it says that heaven and the earth was created by God. Because God is eternal. Heaven is a place, okay, that is a created place, that he built for himself, just like you would buy a house, where he dwells. And that system has a natural order to it, just like this system. But these two systems are opposite of each other.

The whole point of the kingdom of God on earth, and what God is trying to do, because the natural order was broke. They used to overlay each other. But because of human sin, it broke, and there was a separation that separated God's natural order from here, if that makes sense. C.S. Lewis says that when supernatural things happen, they're not actually supernatural, they're just other natural. That there is a place that is opposite of here, which would be heaven, a separate clock, and that place comes into this place, and supersedes the nature of this place, but it's still completely natural.

So meaning when healing comes, healing is part of the natural clock makeup, so to speak, the natural design of heaven. Healing is part of that. When healing comes into this place, it actually just overlays the natural order of the world, not the United States, of the universe, and brings a different nature into it. But it's not anti-natural. It is just nature from a different place coming over. Now this is what the Bible talks about.

The Bible talks about having a thin, semi-permeable membrane, basically, between heaven and earth. And there is an ability for the nature of heaven through the actions of humankind, through God's divine revelation, through God's design, to take the nature of heaven and overlay it on top of this nature because it supersedes, it's a better nature and supersedes this one. And that is how natural things happen. I hope that supernatural things happen.

I hope that makes sense. All that to say is that when the supernatural happens, something that breaks modern scientific understanding, it's coming from a very natural place. It just happens to be made of a different nature, the nature of heaven and the nature of God. It is full of hope, healings. And then the final is, it's a work of divine agency. If something is coming from the outside system, that comes into a system from the outside that is good and beneficial, it can't just happen on its own.

Someone had to decide to make that miracle happen. Thus, in order to believe in miracles, you have to believe in a deity who is, or an intelligent being who is separate from this system, who makes a decision from outside of this system to step into the system and break its laws or to bring its other nature in. You have to believe in God. It's impossible, according to Lewis and others, and even the secular Wikipedia definition, it is impossible to believe in miracles if you don't believe in a God outside of a system.

Because an intelligent being had to make a decision had to make a decision to step into this world. If it is something that happens within the world and can't happen, then it is just part of the system. It doesn't need a divine being outside. So, you have to believe in God or an intelligent designed being from a different nature in order to believe in miracles. Jesus had this debate with people all the time. We'll talk more about that in other agencies.

And I want to get to the personal story here in just a second. And the first, before we get to that, three more things about miracles. Jesus had three types of miracles, okay, that he worked with. The first is cures. Jesus was a physician. He healed people that had no way to be healed within natural causes. The greatest healing was the resurrection from the dead. Now, next week, we are going to talk about the man who was born blind and Jesus healed.

We're going to show a video from Jeff Ruthgard, who goes to our church. He's one of our missionaries, who goes and does cataract surgeries. And it's such a powerful video. You're going to have to see it. They have like a Vaseline on their eyes as they're healing. It's like 20 minutes after the surgery. And he comes and he wipes the Vaseline away. And all of a sudden, people who haven't ever seen in their life, their whole life, like you watch their faces.

It's like, oh, it's amazing. Like, you know, and they're like, you know, they're in Africa or somewhere. They're like, Jesus, it's a miracle. Jesus, that actually isn't a miracle. It's actually divine intervention. God is sending a doctor there, but it's using medical science to actually just remove cataracts. You might want to say it's a miracle, but it's not a miracle. It doesn't break any laws, but it's powerful to see what God can do.

And I think blind people don't care if it's a miracle or just a divine intervention. They can see. I was blind, but now I can see, right? So next week, we're going to talk about that and show you that video as we talk about the blind receiving their sight. But the first type of miracle is a physical cure. The next is exorcisms. Now, what is really interesting is so much of the emotional and mental instability in Jesus' time had to do, when they talk about it, a lot of it had to do with spiritual influences.

A lot of it had to do with the demonic. A lot of it had to do with Jesus stepping in and casting out unclean spirits. That's not a diagnosis you're going to get these days a lot. But I do have a feeling that some of the mental instability we see in our nation and in the world might not just be about the world going too fast in social media. Some of it might be spiritual. And one of the answers that Jesus had for mental instability, emotional instability was actually a spiritual solution where he would remove negative spiritual forces that are influencing people.

And so you see this over and over again and it's easy to read about Jesus and kind of not pay attention to that. But one of the main miracles he did on a regular basis was clearing demons out of people's lives or being attacked by demons. Now, here's the deal. We're not going to be a church that's a bunch of demon chasers. I've gone to churches where, and I've been part of churches where there's this huge movement of that there's a devil behind every rock and every stone and every angel and Jesus wasn't about that.

We circled earlier in the notes that he didn't come, he did come to destroy the works of the devil but he didn't come to be a demon chaser. We do believe that, I still believe because if you're going to take Jesus seriously and at his word that you have to believe that there is spiritual forces outside of just the natural that we cannot believe but that Jesus also cast demons out of people and I think that that is part of it.

So the first is cures. The second was exorcisms or spiritual, breaking spiritual things of off people and I've actually seen this by the way. I've actually prayed over people and seen people, I've actually been a part of exorcisms and prayed for people and seen demons actually leave and talk to me and yell and scream at me and it's like in the movies you know. I think that's the first time I've ever mentioned it in seven years of being here so it's not something like I'm trying to whoop up all the time but I definitely have seen that and I've seen people's lives completely change when they got prayed for.

The world has a lot of spiritual darkness in it and it has a lot of spiritual life and not everyone's possessed that has an issue, I'm not saying that but the enemy will take any foothold he can and cause oppression and if we open ourselves up to dark things on a regular basis then we give a welcome to these things as well. The final one is nature, often climatic. That Jesus was, had power over nature. He was able to walk on water, he was able to, you see this in the Old Testament where God would rain stones from heaven.

Now just in regard to miracles real quick, to beat an army, if fire rains from heaven, that's a miracle. If God causes a volcano or if a volcano goes off in the natural order and the volcano hits the enemy, that would not be considered a miracle. You see the difference? One is within the natural system, one is not. Here's one thing I couldn't find that I thought was interesting. I didn't see any miracles that had to do with finance.

Now I hear all the time, we need a financial miracle. If you just, we're going to, you know, you call in, I'm going to send you this handkerchief and you are going to get that financial miracle. I'd never see Jesus walking up to somebody and saying, oh you can't pay your rent? I'm going to hook you up. Dude, here's a boom, bowl of money. You know? I believe that God has divine intervention. He cares about finances. There is one place in the New Testament where Jesus didn't pay, he had to pay his taxes.

You know that story? Peter's like, where are we going to get the money to pay our taxes? That's a great question, right? For all of us. And Jesus is like, well go down and you'll find a fish and catch the fish and in the fish is like this coin in its mouth. And I thought, oh there's my miracle. But the more I thought about it, it's actually not a miracle. A fish can eat a coin any time and Jesus can just happen to know where it is.

So actually that's just perhaps divine intervention. I just thought it was interesting that I never saw financial miracles. Now there is, I think it's Elijah that causes like oil to come into a bowl and the woman has all this and there's some financial gain in that. But I'm still in the midst of studying it. But at least with Jesus, you don't see financial miracles, which is so interesting. But I see financial miracles preached about a lot.

Now I do believe that God wants to intervene and give us prosperity in these things. But be careful when you see people promising financial miracles because I don't see a lot of biblical support for it. Okay, moving into the verses that I think matter the most. Verse 38, Jesus left the synagogue, I ask you to circle that, and went to the home of Simon. I just got to say, the intimate nature of the gospels and of Jesus and of the Christian scriptures that show a God who will leave where he is and go to you where you are is a big deal.

Matter of fact, Jesus left heaven to come to earth. Jesus is in the synagogue. If you are a powerful rabbi on the day, you don't leave the synagogue. You have swag in the synagogue. Synagogue, ! Especially if you're doing miracles of healing, they're coming to you. You don't need to go anywhere. And many of the rabbis of the day were all about creating a cult of personality. Jesus leaves the synagogue and he goes to Peter's mother-in-law.

I think it's so easy to miss the intimate nature of Jesus and how much he cares for people and why he does miracles. If Jesus does a miracle, it's because he loves you. If Jesus does a miracle, it's because he wants to create a relationship with you and he's willing to leave where he is and go to you and regularly coming to us and asking us to come home. I had a woman who was, for invitation Sunday, thank you to all of you who invited people today.

I met so many visitors today. I met a woman earlier today and she says, you know, I grew up in a certain type of church and you didn't get Jesus without the shame. So she said, I haven't been to church for 35 years because you don't get Jesus without the guilt. And she goes, I didn't feel that here. And I said, well, I said, you know, keep coming because we want to open up that relationship. But I said, you know, we might have guilt, but we do have love.

And I said, you know, keep seeking and looking for Jesus. He's reaching out for you. And maybe it's time you can dive into that love. It's just awesome. I just love talking to people that haven't been to church for like 35 years. It's so awesome. And then they show up and they're like, I didn't know it could be like this. That's so weird. I thought you were going to hit me or whip me, you know? No, no. I'm just going to as we go through these, whether we get miracles here or not, whether God, and I think we had one recently, I'm going to have Chris and Dave Peterson.

He had a stroke a week and a half ago and we've had some miraculous things happen. He had the stroke within three days. He had a blood caught at his home within three days. It's like crazy. I'm going to have them share the testimony. I do believe we're seeing miracles happen on a regular basis if we're open to them. The other thing besides Jesus being intimate and personal is this. Jesus is not a magician. Okay? He didn't come to wow you.

He's God. He is self-sufficient and he didn't come to wow you with his little tricks and pulling rabbits out of his hat. He came to overwhelm you with his love. And so many people in the Bible wanted the tricks of Jesus but not the heart of Jesus. And Jesus wants to give you his heart if you want it. If you want it. But he will go to you. His miracles have a purpose beyond producing awe and wonder. They are deeply personal.

And we see that he is introducing him. He goes I want to go back to that verse 38 if I can read it again. Jesus left the synagogue and went to the home of Simon. Now Simon's mother in law was suffering suffering from a high fever. Many people are suffering today. People are suffering. And they asked Jesus to help her. I love that. You know what Jesus answer was? Absolutely. Did you notice that the reason he went to her house is because someone asked?

A lot of people come to church. We came to church because someone asked us to come. The intermediary nature to be someone who stands in the gap is so important to scripture. Maybe you're going to be the person who stands in the gap for someone who is suffering and you invite them or you do something. You become the bridge to that person. Maybe you're the bridge between this church and the beach or this church or your home and your work.

You're that person becomes that bridge. Somebody came who cared and asked Jesus can you help? My favorite four letter prayer. Help. Jesus can you help? Are we aware of the people that are suffering around us or do we only cry for ourselves? You know if we're only crying for ourselves we're leading a very shallow life. I think somebody asked me one time when was the last time you cried for someone besides yourself? That's a great story.

I want to care. I want to go say hey I have a friend Jesus I have a friend. Will you help them? And Jesus says yes. Jesus says that he they asked Jesus to help her so he bent over her. Which if you had a fever back in the day you knew that they you know you didn't know how it worked probably with the viruses but you don't get close to the person. But it says that he bends over her and he rebuked the fever as if it was a person making it anthropomorphic.

And we'll get to this in a second. The fever didn't belong to Peter's mother-in-law. The fever was a symptom of the brokenness of the world that came in with sin that will die away and has the ability to be rebuked and sent away. It didn't belong there. Sickness does not belong in your body. FYI. You were not created none of us were created in the natural order in heaven before sin to have sickness. sickness and death picked up on the scraps of a broken world that decided to walk away from God.

And so it does not belong there. And it is a it is a I don't know if it's a created thing but it is an aberration of the creation if that makes sense. So that when we sin things broke down and they begin to break down and to deteriorate. Jesus spoke to the fever as if it was an other being that didn't belong there as if it was a thing that actually existed. Look into this and I know I'm moving ahead. This is a little bit later in my notes but I just want to I'm going to say it now because I've already started it.

It says that so he bent over her and rebuked the fever and what it left her. It could just say and he was well but it actually left her. Now I've spent more time in the in the radiation unit than I wanted to lately with my mom and she's cancer free now which is great but we went every week twice a week for no five days a week for six weeks four weeks five weeks enough time to be there a lot. It's interesting. I encourage you there's a radiation center up at UCSD or go to the cancer just go to the hospital every so often and sit there and watch the cancer place is really interesting as people come in and just lots of people there's a lot of hope there and it's just a really it was really inspiring to be there and one of the things things that I heard a lot was people saying they'd say well you know when you got cancer they'd say something like it's not my cancer or they speak to it like it's not theirs.

One of the ways people heal is understanding that this thing that they have they don't accept it. I will not call this my cancer. I will not call this my alcoholism. It is something that I've accepted but I am willing to rebuke it as if it is something that does not belong here. This is how Jesus treats sickness. He realizes that it isn't something that belongs there and if you have anxiety, depression, fear, the common cold whatever it is I don't think it's a bad pattern to follow.

It's a very positive hope-filled pattern to follow and even in our families to say this does not belong here. This anger in our household does not belong here and I'm going to treat you like an unwelcomed guest because you are a separate thing that does not belong here and I rebuke you. Now if you pray bring my mom up I bring you up an awful lot mom I apologize if I embarrass you. But if you pray with my mom on a regular basis she does a lot of identifying and personifying things that don't belong here.

So she will say to that cancer I rebuke you in the name of Jesus you don't belong here. I take authority over you and cast you out in the name of Jesus and go to the you know it's like I like praying my mom is like straight up you know like you're in the south you know. They go to a prayer meeting in the south or something. But I love praying with those people that pray with that authority and that power. I take hold of you.

I bind you and you know there's like whoa death doesn't have a chance when these people pray you know what I'm saying. This is how Jesus was. He looked at these things and says you don't have a place here. This doesn't mean that certain that people won't die of cancer. This doesn't mean that God sometimes just says you know what I want them to come home. This doesn't mean that every miracle when a miracle doesn't happen that God isn't true because God wants to find you despite the miracle.

Despite whether you get the miracle or whether you don't get the miracle. He wants to be part of the system and of that relationship. He has a relationship here. So Jesus rebukes the unnatural. Verse 2 it says according to the scripture disease is an aberration of the universe original nature. It says it left her. Now the second third thing as we come in for landing I'm circling the tower now. Jesus miracles are meant to draw people into the kingdom.

Verse 43 but he said I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to other towns because this is why I was sent. Now Jesus was not trying to create a cult of personality. It was something that he could have easily done. Matter of fact if you were one of Jesus handlers or you were his marketing director you would tell him 6 a.m. be back at the synagogue. Be there. You can see by evening it says by evening. So basically I was just at the synagogue where this was.

I was sitting in that synagogue in Israel in May and then the house is like a stone's throw away. Like Peter's and Mary his mother-in-law's house is like I don't know literally you throw a baseball to it. It's like really close. And so we walked over there they have like a little museum there that's over in the whole thing. And as we looked at this place where Jesus went to it says by evening people had brought all various sick people to them.

So he must have done the miracle midday and then word got out people bounced and they would have to run like the next city over was you know probably like a I don't know about an hour and a half walk hour I think about what it was but by evening he had brought all these people to him. He could have easily created this cult of personality. But Jesus wasn't about creating a cult of personality. He was about bringing the good news of the gospel to people.

I said this in the first service. You know as churches we need to be very careful that we're not putting on a show that attracts people. That we're blowing your minds with amazing worship which you do Chris. You know great Folgers coffee. It was like I heard it was a Folgers U band mix at blend I actually think. You know where the things that we are doing is why you're coming. And when people talk about churches I often hear all the worship you will love the world or all the pastor speaks really good speaking and but what I would love to hear is you know I go to that church.

They proclaim the good news of the gospel. People are coming there and getting saved and getting healed and people are getting free from addiction and their marriages are getting better and they're staying together and their kids are getting better and a person who wanted to commit suicide didn't. Lives are being changed the gospel and the good news and they start talking about the good news. Too often when we talk about churches and we talk about religious movements we're not talking about the good news.

We're talking about the good stuff. All that cool stuff that they do. Great marketing. Good website. Easy to use app. Great coffee. You should see their coffee house. They make amazing espresso. You know this is not what Jesus was about. Jesus was about changing lives and when the cult of personality got too big he would either say something to winnow it down or he would go to a different place so he could preach to those people too because he's like hey my work here is done.

I preach the good news of the gospel. I guess the question to myself as a church builder I'm a church mechanic. This is what I do. I build churches. That's what I'm called to. And I've said it over and over again. It's something I enjoy and it's something I have to regularly be careful that I'm not creating a spiritual machine that's that meets all of its numeric goals but misses the heart of the gospel. You know I it's pretty easy to know what how churches grow.

It's not hard. But do we have a church the harder thing is to have a kingdom based church where people's lives are being changed and you are the testimony. And I have to say we over the last few weeks we've had a lot of things behind the scenes that have just been we've been struggling like I was you know just stuff like I that's what I made a joke about mowing the lawn earlier. We're just we're scrambling behind the scenes over the last week.

But you know what has been amazing to realize as I looked at you people as I listened to you speak that you guys are picking us up because when we fail to put on a great show or the mic doesn't work or some other thing doesn't happen you guys are changing lives and I walk around and I thought our team is picking us up today over and over again the good news of the gospel. This is what Jesus said. The miracles are a stone that are cobbled into the road that leads us to proclaiming the kingdom of God.

Do you proclaim the kingdom of God? That's why today we had baptisms in both services and both Riley and James who was here in the first service and had his daughter baby dedicated at the same time testified. James said I'm sober now. I wasn't sober before. I got sober. Jesus has made me sober. I felt empty thinking that there was only a dark universe because I actually began to make me feel terrible. I'm terrorized that there was a universe with no one who loved me and when I began to experience God and in this church and got invited all of a sudden I love of God came in.

This is what we're doing here. But we also believe in miracles. We want to see people healed to prove but we also want to see it proved in the way in how Christ changes lives. The final thing now. Jesus is not interested in creating a cult of personality based around miracle secrets and that was in John 4 48. He says unless you people see signs and wonders Jesus said you will never believe. He's chastising people here.

You just want signs and wonders. He's chastising people. It's not about that. He could have had such a huge following but instead he left heaven just like he left the synagogue went to the home. He went to our home. He died on the cross. It's not a great plan for popularity. As a matter of fact anybody that was killed like that it was supposed this is why one of the reasons the Jews wanted to kill him. The Jewish leaders religious leaders wanted to kill him.

Not all the Jews because many most of the Jews that were following him they were Jewish obviously. But the religious leaders that were Jewish wanted to kill him because of the power and authority that he walked in. But not because of that so much. Because he said I am God and it says that he had the power to forgive sins. The one verse that I put in here that I wanted to hit just one saying that's why I was sinned. Oh verse 10 13 when he's in Luke 10 13 if you have it up there.

He says woe to you Chorazin woe to you Bethsaida for if the miracles that were performed and you had been performed in Tyron and Sidon you would have repented long ago sitting in sackcloth and ash. This is just one thing I wanted to say as a word before we finish to us as a church. Almost every miracle that is in that I'm finding as I'm studying these miracles not only mention the miracle they mention where it happened.

Really interesting. And Jesus over and over again mentions hey this city I did a bunch of miracles in this city but if you if this other city would have seen you they would have done this. And then he says in the scripture says another one Jesus didn't do many miracles here because the people's hearts didn't believe. Really interesting. I'm like why do you mention the exact city so much and then why do you speak to cities.

Woe to you chorus. He's mentioning cities from like he's throwing big time shade on all these other cities because of one reason or another are he saying these guys would have done this. Look at it. I am seeing a divine connection between the actual earth creation because mankind right is created out of the earth. It says we were created out of the dust. So there is a connection there. And as humankind goes it actually has an effect.

There is a connection between that and the natural order and the terra firma. Jesus says that the that the entire creation the created order can be changed. Miracles can be released in a certain place because of the hearts of the people. people and us as a church in La Jolla. Is it possible that La Jolla moving on to Claremont moving on to Oceanside to San Diego as a whole that if we start changing our hearts if we start to want that relationship that we can we actually become that city that opens up that pipeline that semi permeable layer between heaven and earth becomes even more permeable.

It becomes almost translucent where the kingdom of heaven and the things of God begin raining down on a city because of a place and because of a people's hearts. I guess that's what I want to see in these six weeks. What would it look like if we prayed for miracles? What does it look like if we begin to believe and say God we want the miracle worker more than we want the miracle. We want the God of the Bible more than just the Bible of God.

We're not Bible worshipers. We're God worshipers. We're not miracle worshipers. We're God worshipers and we need a miracle. Maybe you need a miracle and here's my challenge over the next five weeks six weeks we got five more after this begin to pray for a miracle begin to pray for miracles of healing begin to pray for all types of miracles and ask God into it but in the midst of that begin to pray for relationship God in the midst of this I want to know you because you might not get your miracle but you will get a relationship with God if you dive in and seek him.

So for the next six weeks I invite you come on back if this is your first time come on back hear about six people that met Jesus and lives were changed. Amen. Let's stand. Chris is going to lead us in a song a final song and then I'm going to bless you and then we're going to be out.