Episode Transcript
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Hi, my name is Andrea Bumpstead and I am a member at Restore Temecula. If you are new, we want to welcome you and thank you for tuning in. We believe the church is not an event, but a family that you belong to. So. So we would love the opportunity to connect with you. If you want to learn more about our church or if we can help in any way, please visit our website at www.restoretomecula.com and click on contact.
We also have a mobile app with resources, including our Sunday messages, information about upcoming events, and other ways to connect. You can download our app on the Apple or Android App Store.
With all of that said, we hope you enjoy the message.
[00:01:02] Speaker B: All right.
Love it.
Love it.
I see some of you have made some beautiful looking bouquets there, man. Wow. That is cool.
Well done.
Yeah. I want to echo what Eric said so beautifully.
Ladies, we honor you.
Mothers, we honor you. I know this can be both a beautiful day and a challenging day, and so we just recognize that. But we also, man, God has a way of just meeting us right where we're at and to the degree that we can slow down and join him at his pace in life, I feel like he just reveals more and more of his goodness to us.
Now, I was thinking about this morning of just the reality of, like, he owes me nothing.
Like, it's wild, but yet he's kind and he's generous and he's gracious and he's faithful.
And so, yeah, Happy Mother's Day. We honor all of you ladies.
I want to start my timer.
So this week.
This week, I was up in the Pacific Northwest. I was just outside of Seattle in. Yeah, there you go. Paulie's from Seattle. That's right. Forgotten until just now. I was like, oh, yeah. When I was up there, I thought about. I was like, I'm gonna go check out West Seattle. I didn't have time, but so I was in Olympia, Washington, if you're familiar with the area, and I was meeting with a group of pastors.
It was really fruitful time. I'm really glad that I made the time to do it, but. So I fly into SeaTac, which is the airport there, and I was meeting up with the guys, but I needed to get there, and so I hopped in an Uber. And I have this. If you know me, you know that I'm fairly introverted, but I have this habit of striking up conversations with Uber drivers. And I don't know why, I just do it.
And so this wonderful guy picks me up at the airport and he Is he's a really unique dude. And I start, like, asking him questions. I can tell, like, English is definitely a second language.
And so I'm asking him, like, hey, man, where are you from? And he's like, I'm from Somalia.
And if you're not familiar with Somalia, that's like East Africa, right? And so he's from Somalia, and, you know, we're kind of chit chatting, and he goes.
He goes, what do you want to listen to? He pulls out his phone. He's like, what do you want to listen to on the drive? And I was like, hey, man, you're driving. Like, you pick.
So the dude throws on this music.
And the music's beautiful, but it's kind of. It's just singing. And I'm like, oh, man, what is this? I could tell pretty quickly, like, it's. It's Arabic. And I'm like, oh, I wonder what this is. And so I'm listening to, and he's like, he's singing along, like. And he's not just like.
Like, he's full on, like, going for it, singing along. And he had. He had a wonderful voice. I was like, this is actually really pleasant right now, which is kind of weird, but my Somalian Uber driver is singing in Arabic. And I'm like, hey, man, like, can you translate this for me? Like, what are you singing?
And he goes, ah, I don't know if I could translate it. Not really. But he goes. He goes, do you know what the Holy Quran.
I was like, yeah. And he's like, it's like the Holy Bible, but it's the Holy Quran, you know? And I'm like, yeah, I'm familiar with it, you know? And we start talking a bit, and he's singing, and it turns out he's singing the Quran.
And, you know, he couldn't translate it for me because I asked him to. And he goes, well, give me a second. And I'm like thinking, what's he gonna do? Is he gonna, like, use some app or something?
So he pulls out his phone, and he goes on YouTube and he pulls up a Muslim sermon in English for me, and he puts it on in place of the singing of the Quran, right? And so I'm listening to this message, and this is my first Muslim sermon, okay? I've never really heard a Muslim sermon before. I'm familiar with the religion. I'm familiar with the faith and all that stuff, but so I'm listening to this Muslim sermon, and it's all about being a good Muslim.
It's like, the tone, the content was very much like, come on, guys, do better.
And I mean, it's sad because that's, in essence, what all world religions are about. It's, here's what you need to do to make yourself right with the divine, which is different than Christianity. Christianity is, here's what God did to make you right with the divine. Right? So I'm listening to this message, and I could tell this guy is earnestly, like, giving himself over to the Muslim faith.
And the message is just continually, do better, try harder. You know?
And so I'm listening to this, and it was a short ride. It was like, maybe 15 minutes. But I'm listening to this, and I'm just praying for my Uber driver the whole time.
And I can. And I'm bummed. Cause I'm like, by the time we get to that point, the ride's almost over. I'm like, man, I wish I had more time to talk to this dude about Jesus.
Well, there wasn't the time.
But on that drive. Short drive. But on that short drive, I actually learned quite a bit about my Uber driver, right? I learned that he's Somalian. I learned that he's Muslim. I learned that he spent the last two years in the US and he's working really hard to save up money so he can get an education. He's trying to go to school.
I learned a lot about who was driving me.
Friends, your spiritual life has a driver.
Okay. And my hope for this morning is that you might learn more about your driver, about who or what is behind the wheel of your life, spiritually speaking.
Because hear me, your driver is taking you somewhere.
Go ahead and grab your Bibles. We're gonna be in Matthew, chapter 14.
Matthew, chapter 14. If you don't have a Bible with you, we'll have the words on the screen for you. I'll be in the csb as per usual, the Christian Standard Bible.
We are gonna continue our series going through Matthew, the King, and his kingdom. This morning, we're learning as much as we can about the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God.
Those two phrases are synonymous.
We're learning as much as we can about the King, Jesus, and what his kingdom is like. What does it look like when God gets his way? That's. When we say kingdom, that's what we mean. The rule and the reign of God. What does it look like when he gets his way?
And so that's what we've been giving ourselves over to for, get this 70 weeks. This is the 70th message in Matthew, which is wild.
So hopefully you've found Matthew chapter 14 by now. But before I read this, I want to pray, okay? So I'd love it if you'd join me. Let's pray together.
Father, before we open your word, we just want to come before you and open our hearts and minds.
We just want to slow down a bit.
Yeah, I don't know. I feel led to pray for anybody in the room who is just feeling a little anxious right now.
For whatever reason, there's things you have to do or for whatever reason you're having a hard time right now. This morning, I just pray the peace of Jesus over this room.
And Holy Spirit, we invite you and we humble ourselves before you. We want you to teach us.
We want you to teach us. Would you show us more about your kingdom, God?
Show us more about your rule and your reign and your way.
Show us more about Jesus.
Jesus, we honor you.
We bless you, Spirit, we want you.
Father, we need you. So help us, we pray. We love you. We're grateful to be together this morning. We pray these things in your name. Amen.
Okay, so the first three words of this passage, can you see them at that time?
Let me give you a little bit of context.
We're picking up in the middle of the movie right now, okay? So I want you to know where we're picking things up at that time. What does that mean? So at that time, Jesus was. Was teaching and ministering around the region of Galilee. Okay, you're familiar with the Sea of Galilee. It's where Jesus walked on water. So think like a big lake, and the region around that lake, Jesus, he's teaching and he's ministering and he's performing all these miracles in and around that area, okay? And then he. What he does is he goes back to his hometown in Nazareth, which is in that same region.
And when he goes back, he experiences, frankly, he experiences rejection, okay? He's rejected by many of the people in his hometown. And remember, he uses that famous phrase, he says, a prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his household.
All right? So Jesus, he experiences that kind of rejection from people that are close to him, people that are familiar with him.
And so this is a season of ministry where Jesus, he's facing increased hostility and increased rejection. All right? So that's the. At this time, Jesus ministry right in the middle of his ministry. Okay? Now there's two characters that we're gonna read about in this passage that you just gotta have a bit of a pulse on. You gotta understand who they are. Okay? The first one is Herod the Tetrarch. Everybody say Herod.
Okay? There's several Herods that show up in the Bible, but this one, maybe you're familiar with Herod the Great.
Herod the Tetrarch that we read here is Herod the Great's son, one of his sons.
Do you remember the story Baby Jesus in Bethlehem, and Herod tries to kill all the babies to get rid of and eliminate Jesus? Remember that story? That's Herod the Great. So Herod the Tetrarch is Herod the Great's son, okay?
Now, when Herod the Great died, his kingdom, he's a king. His kingdom is divided between his three sons, one of which is Herod the Tetrarch here. Okay?
Now, maybe you guessed it, but Herod the Tetrarch, the region that he is given to rule over, is the region of Galilee, which is where Jesus was kind of raised and where he's ministering now. Okay, now a little bit of a history lesson I want you to. It can kind of be confusing because you're like, who are all these kings and what does their rule look like? Rome. Think Rome for a second. Rome's an empire, right?
So Rome is ruling over a bunch of different kingdoms that have their own kings that are subject to Rome. So think of Rome as, like, the umbrella, the empire over all these other kingdoms, right? And so if you're familiar with world history, you know that Caesar was, what Lord?
So Caesar was the king over all of the other kings.
That's why when Christians came along and they said, actually, Caesar's not Lord. Jesus is Lord. Jesus is the king of all the kings. But that was treason, right? Cause that was Caesar's role.
All right, so that's Herod the Tetrarch. He's the ruler, if you will. He's the king of that region of Galilee where Jesus ministry is happening. You with me? Okay, get the picture. Now, the other character that you need to know here is John the Baptist.
Okay? John the Baptist was a prophet, right? He was. His whole message was, repent, Turn.
Turn away from sin.
Turn, because the King of Heaven is coming.
The king is on his way. He's bringing his kingdom. So therefore, turn away from things that he does not approve of and embrace his rule and reign. Repent, because the kingdom of heaven is near. That was John's whole message, right? John, he's known as the forerunner of the Messiah, the savior king, the promised one, Jesus, right?
The God man coming, right? So he's.
He's. The forerunner. He's the one who goes before Jesus to announce his arrival. Right? Now, if you've watched the Chosen, you probably picked this up, but Jesus and John the Baptist are most likely cousins, right?
But they are definitely partners in the mission and the message of the kingdom of God.
They want to see them. They want to see the message of the kingdom go forth, and they want to see the mission of advancing that kingdom happen on the earth.
In fact, Jesus goes as far as to say, speaking about John the Baptist, he says, there isn't a man who's been born of a woman who's greater than John the Baptist.
A lot of respect, partnership, if you will.
Right? So John the Baptist, he preached repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Why? Because the king's coming, the Messiah's coming. That's where we pick up in the story, okay? Matthew, chapter 14, starting in verse one. At that time, right? Jesus is facing increased hostility and rejection.
Herod the tetrarch, you know who that is, he heard the report about Jesus, so he hears about Jesus teachings. He hears about the miracles that Jesus is performing. He's hearing about Jesus ministry. Okay?
Verse 2.
So he hears about Jesus and he goes, this is John the Baptist. He told his servants he's been raised from the dead, and that's why miraculous powers are at work in him. We'll get to John's death in just a second. Verse 3. For Herod had arrested John, chained him and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip's wife, since John had been telling him, it's not lawful for you to have her.
Though Herod wanted to kill John, he feared the crowd since they regarded John as a prophet. Okay, pause for a second. I want you to understand what's happening here. So Herod is.
He's not a great guy.
What Herod does is he unlawfully divorces his wife and then he steals his brother's wife, Herodias, and he marries her. Okay, Sounds like a classy dude, right?
Now, we know from other chapters in the Bible, Mark chapter six specifically, that Herod liked to. To listen to John the Baptist.
Somewhere in that relationship, John the Baptist tells Herod. He goes, your marriage to your brother's wife is not lawful.
In other words, it violates God's way.
Okay?
You can imagine how much Herod enjoyed to hear that from John, okay? Cause he ends up putting him in prison, right?
Now, he couldn't kill John the Baptist. I mean, he could have, but he decided not to kill John the Baptist because John the Baptist had a lot of influence with the people. They thought he's a prophet. So he's going, I don't like what he's saying.
It's implicating me, and I'm gonna do something about it. But if I kill this guy, he has so much influence, all these people, they're gonna now turn on me. You get the picture? Yes. You with me? Okay, cool.
Now we know that Herod does end up killing John the Baptist. We're gonna see that here in just a second.
So when Herod hears about what Jesus is up to, he freaks out a little bit, okay? He gets a little paranoid because he thinks it's John the Baptist coming back from the dead and doing all these signs and wonders.
Now we're gonna see how John the Baptist's death goes down. Look back at verse six.
Here's how it goes down. When Herod's birthday celebration came.
Herodias daughter, this is. Keep in mind, this is.
This is Herod's niece, right? He married his brother's wife. This is her daughter. This is Herod's niece. You with me?
Herodias daughter danced before them and pleased Herod. Pause for a second.
All the biblical scholars agree on this. This dancing was not pure, it was not innocent.
William Barclay, one scholar says this quote. I didn't give you this quote, by the way. It's just quick. This is what he says. He goes, here was a royal princess who acted as a dancing girl.
The dances which these girls danced were suggestive and immoral.
Okay?
And this is his niece.
Let's keep reading. Verse 7.
So he, Herod promised with an oath to give her whatever she asked. He basically hands her a blank check, okay? Prompted by her mother, she answered, give me John the Baptist's head here on a platter.
Although the king. This is Herod. Although the king regretted it, he commanded that it be granted because of his oaths and his guests underline that. His oaths and his guests. Verse 10. So he sent orders and had John beheaded in the prison.
His head was brought on a platter and given to the girl who carried it to her mother.
Then his John the Baptist's disciples came, removed the corpse, buried it, and went and reported to Jesus.
When Jesus heard about it, he withdrew from there by boat to a remote place to be alone.
When the crowds heard this, they followed him on foot from the towns. Okay, that's our passage.
That's our passage.
If you're a note taker, here's my first point. My first point is this Your fears drive your life.
What you fear is sitting in the driver's seat of your life, and it is taking you somewhere.
Okay, let's look at Herod really quickly. Okay? In verse five, the reason that Herod put John the Baptist in prison instead of killing him was. What did you catch?
Says he feared the crowd.
Okay. And then in verse nine, it says, because of his oaths and his guests. Remember? How'd you underline that? Herod then commands the murder.
Okay, so I want you to see something. In both of these cases, Herod is driven by the same fear.
Fear of man.
The most helpful illustration for me that I can come up with in trying to understand the biblical concept of fear is the idea of, like, a scale and weights.
So if you have, like, a traditional scale, you have on one end, you put something on and on the other end, and you can tip the scales by what weighs the most. You with me.
Right. And so the greater the fear, the greater the weight on the scale. All right, so when the opinion of people weighs more, that means that God's opinion weighs less.
You get in the picture here. That's fear of man.
The opinion of people is what weighs the most, instead of God's opinion weighing more than people's opinion. Right.
And this plays out in so many ways, guys. I'm sure that you're already thinking of ways that this plays out in your life. I'm just gonna share you a few ways that it's played out in my life.
I remember when I was in college, so I started getting kind of serious about following Jesus as a late teenager.
And then I go to school, I go to college, and I remember sitting in college courses and discovering really quickly that it wasn't the coolest thing in the world to identify as a Christian.
I remember hearing professors speak about Christianity in, like, really not good ways. I remember. I remember fellow students. I mean, even in classroom discussions, both professors and students just ripping Christianity. And I remember it was foreign to me. I was like, what is. Wow, there's like, a hostility here to Christianity. And I remember seeing that really quickly, and I remember thinking like, oh, I don't want these people to know that I'm a Christian.
I don't want them to label me. You know, like, all the things that you could label a Christian.
Maybe some unfair, maybe some kind of fair.
Christians aren't perfect. But I didn't want them to label me. I didn't want them to criticize me. I didn't want them to know why.
Fear of man, the tipping of the scale, something weighed more the opinion of man.
I remember the first couple years of being in vocational ministry. So my job, my vocation is to pastor his ministry. Right? And I remember the first couple years of that. And I remember, I mean, whenever you meet new people, what's one of the first questions they ask you?
You knew it. Yeah. What do you do? Right? Because in our culture, like, who you are is really determined by what you do, which is just not a biblical concept. But either way, it's part of. Part of the water we're swimming in. And so it inevitably comes up. And fairly quickly it will come up. What do you do? And I remember the first couple years I tried to avoid that question. I don't avoid it now, actually. I'm like, waiting for it. Now I'm like, come on, ask me. Come on, ask me. So I can talk to them about Jesus.
I can get to Jesus way quicker. But early on I was like, I don't want them to ask me.
I don't want them to ask me why feared man.
And I could think of several examples in my life where I saw people that I was in relationship with engaging in, like, destructive behavior or sinful behavior.
And I avoided talking to them about it.
Like, I don't want to experience that rejection. Like, what if it ruins the relationship? Right. Maybe you felt that way before.
Why did I avoid talking to them about it?
Fear of man.
See, the Bible has a lot to say about fear of man. And I believe that it has a lot to say about fear of man because it's something that we all slip into probably more regularly than we are aware.
But the Bible has a lot to say. Proverbs 29:25 says this.
The fear of mankind is a snare.
You know what a snare is? Not a snare drum.
It's a dangerous trap.
So the fear of man is a dangerous trap, but the one who trusts in the Lord is protected.
Galatians, chapter 1, verse 10. This is Paul writing to Christians, like ancient Christians, like us in Galatia. He says, for am I now trying to persuade people or God, or am I striving to please people?
Listen to what he says. If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.
So Paul says that fear of man and serving God, they can't coexist.
One end of the scale weighs more than the other.
He's basically saying, there's only one steering wheel.
There's only one friend. Your fears, they drive your life.
For Herod, it was fear of man. Clearly. Okay, let's check out John the Baptist.
John the Baptist, on the other hand, verse 4, it says that John confronted Herod, okay?
Because his behavior was not consistent with God's ways. I asked you kind of earlier, I alluded to it earlier, but have you ever witnessed someone in your life that you have a relationship with engaging in ungodly behavior?
The answer for all of us is yes, right? 100%. We have.
What do you do?
Maybe the better question is why do you do what you do?
Do you dismiss it?
Do you confront it?
Maybe something else.
You know, I referenced it earlier, but in Mark 6 it tells us that Herod liked to listen to John.
So there was a relationship there, right?
There was a respect level to a certain degree there. Okay, listen, please don't hear what I'm not saying here about this confronting thing. Being a Christian is not licensed to be a jerk to other people.
We already have that rap sewn up. Like, we don't need to add to that, okay? The hypocrite. Going to somebody else and confronting them with their sin. Like, no. Jesus had a lot to say about that. He said, pull the plank out of your own eye. Deal with the plank in here before you get to the speck in your brother or sister's eye, right? So I'm not talking about like a license to be a jerk or confronting people that you don't have a relationship with, as though John the Baptist walks up to King Herod and goes, stop what you're doing. It's unlawful. That's not what's happening here.
Disciples of Jesus are not the sin police, right?
Listen, what's important to see here, friends, is that John the Baptist, hear me, did not compromise.
Because, listen, when you fear man more than you fear God, you will make compromises.
That's where the danger comes in. That's why in Proverbs, it's like, it's a dangerous trap because you will make compromises that have effects. They have consequences for you and for other people.
If you're familiar with the Apostle Peter's story, listen, just to kinda let, like, nobody's perfect, right?
The Apostle Peter dealt with this in a spectacular, a spectacular and public way. If you've ever read the book of Galatians, like I just referenced earlier, what happens is Peter, he stops eating Gentiles or non Jews, he stops eating with the Gentile believers, the Christians, out of fear of his Jewish critics.
So some of the Jews were like criticizing that. So Peter's like, okay, I'm going to stop eating with The Gentiles. Right. And the result is Paul in the letter, publicly rebukes Peter for his hypocrisy.
In this instance, someone as, quote, unquote, great as Peter, he compromised.
He compromised the fear of man. It weighed more on the scales, and it did damage to the unity of the church, and it did damage his credibility, and it probably did damage to the credibility of the message of the gospel.
And that's why Paul publicly in the letter goes, uh, that's not the way your fears drive your life.
What you fear most is sitting in the driver's seat of your life. And it is taking you somewhere either to a life of compromise that results in foolish behavior, foolish living, or to a life of worship that results in wise living. Okay, that's basically a summary of the book of Proverbs right there.
The fear of man will drive you to destructive destinations.
So just a moment of reflection.
I was thinking a lot about my life this week as I was prepping this.
What would you say is behind the wheel for you?
Fear of man or fear of God?
And it changes too, doesn't it?
Man? Oh, man, sometimes there's that moment where you're just like, I am so, like, in step with God's spirit. I see him clearly. I'm yielding to his leadership in my life with delight and with purpose and with hope. And then the next minute, like, oh, gosh, what does he think about me? What does she think about me? What if they get upset? What if I'm misunderstood? What if I'm rejected?
Yada, yada, the list goes on and on and on.
Might there be areas right now, friend, in your life where you might be making compromises because you're afraid of what others might?
Your fears drive your life, and you know that's not the way that you were designed to live.
Robs you of joy. Peace, squashes out the fruit of the Spirit in you.
You feel it. You know it. Your fears drive your life. Okay, on to my next point. Look back at verse 13.
When Jesus heard about what happened to John the Baptist.
He withdrew from there by boat to a remote place to be alone.
Okay, what's happening here?
What's happening here is Jesus is pausing.
Jesus is pausing his ministry.
He's pausing his work, friends. He's pausing everything.
He's pausing to pray and process the pain with his Father.
I think one of the blessings and privileges that is equally a challenge like when I preach is I can see all of you. I love looking at you. I really do.
I have such affection in my Heart for you.
I know what many of you are going through, the ups and the downs, right?
And it's such a privilege, but if we just made a list of the pains and the fears and the anxieties and the worries and the frustrations just in this room right now, that list would be long.
I think one of the most remarkable things about Jesus, if not the most remarkable thing about Jesus, was that he was fully God and fully man.
Fully God, fully man. Sometimes I think we minimize Jesus humanity. Like, yeah, it's God. He's God in the flesh. And, you know, he could do all these crazy things because he's God and.
But the Bible says he is fully God, and yet he emptied himself, took on the form of a servant.
So he signed up for the human experience. He signed up for the limitations of what it means to be a man, right? God, the spirit, omnipresent everywhere. God, the man, right here. And this is all there. Like, he's right here, right now, one spot. Because he's a human.
That's just one of several examples. But I think it's important for us to really give our attention to the humanity of Jesus here. It's remarkable, guys. He was human. He chose to take on every part of the human experience. He experienced pain.
He signed up for it. He experienced pain. He experienced heartache. He experienced suffering.
The big things, the really crazy and the small things that hurt, just like you.
He can identify you.
He can identify with you.
Friends, if Jesus needed to get alone with the Father to pray and process the pain, how much more do we.
If Jesus needed to get alone with his Father to pray and process the painful things that he experienced, how much more do I.
How much more do you.
Some of you have gotten really, really good at shoving the hurts back down.
Nope. Yeah, that hurts. Now, we're going to set that there. We're going to put that in the closet, lock the door. The hard part is that when that closet starts to overflow, then what?
Another thing here. How long did Jesus delay before pausing?
He didn't.
How much do we delay before pausing?
And no doubt, maybe some of you are here and you're like, cool, Tom, I know where you're going with this, but, like, not everybody's a pastor.
Not everybody has the kind of lifestyle where they can just press pause. Like, I got stuff. I. I have responsibilities on my plate. I can't pause. I don't have time right now. Right now. I don't have the margin to press pause.
I hear you.
If that's. You can I just remind you, your fears drive your life.
Listen, if you cannot pause to pray and process the pain with God, what does that say about who's behind the wheel of your life?
What you fear is sitting in the driver's seat of your life, and it's taking you somewhere, friend. So my final point for us this morning is Jesus paused to process the pain with the Father, and so should we.
Jesus paused to process the pain with the Father, and so should we.
Can I just take a moment, talk to the men in the room?
Our culture has conditioned us to be the shove it down thing.
Because there's responsibilities on your shoulders, there's weight that you carry that you can't set your pack down, keep on trucking. Okay? Your culture has conditioned you. I'm just as guilty as anybody else. I've been conditioned, too.
Shove the. That hurts. Nope, I don't have time to deal with that. It'll go away eventually.
Rub dirt on it and get back in the game.
Okay, listen, I'm not opposed to, like, you shouldn't let pain rule your life. However, the shove it down stuff, that's not the way of Jesus.
Your culture tells you that's, quote, manly.
There's nobody tougher than Jesus.
No one even comes close.
The courage, the bravery, the love, the strength.
I just don't want you to believe the lie.
I spent decades of my life believing that lie.
And I suspect that some of you in the room are still maybe deceived by it, too.
And to be fair, men, you know, it's not just you. The women deal with it, too. You in the room, you deal with it, too. It's not just the men. We all do it shoving it down, right? And I just want to say this too, like, there's a difference between acknowledging the pain, processing with God and then rising above it, right? That's different than shoving it down.
Some of you, right now, you are dealing with deep hurts in your life, maybe not dealing with.
You are carrying deep hurts.
And I need you to hear me say the Father wants to get you alone.
He wants to get alone with you so he can father you.
Some things are meant to be personal.
I think one of the things that has been interesting to watch the last, I don't know, I think it's fairly, fairly recent, last few years, maybe decade or so, is there's this rise in therapy being accepted in Christian circles, which I think is great. Like, God bless skilled, good therapist. I have been significantly blessed in my life by a good clinical therapist. I'm not anti Therapy, I'm pro therapy. But I've seen this kind of like overly therapeutic thing crop up to where, like, you just stay in the same space and you never actually change.
You get a good understanding of what's going on in you, but they're stuck there.
I don't think it's all the fault of therapy, but we're just in this overly therapeutic time.
And I've just heard so many times where people will say things like, hey, have you tried therapy? Some hurt will crop up and they're like, hey, have you tried therapy? Great question to ask again. I am not anti therapy. I am pro therapy. I'm a product of good therapy, blessing my life. But I've heard this question get asked quite a bit whenever you're confronted with some brokenness and pain. Have you tried therapy?
What if we're asking not the wrong question?
What if we're asking a question that's a little too hasty?
What if instead of have you tried therapy? What if it was, have you tried pausing to pray and process the pain with your heavenly father?
And not just like once for 10 minutes and then you don't know what to do so you get bored and you move on. But like, I'm not talking about a moment, I'm talking about a lifestyle.
I say all this again, I just wanna be clear. I'm not anti therapy at all.
I just think we underestimate the power of God.
I think we underestimate the power of God to heal and to restore us.
That's who he is, right? It's what he does.
He's an expert at it.
And I just know some of you, you've experienced pain and you haven't yet let God's spirit drive you to getting alone with God.
And instead, maybe what you do is you throw yourself more into your work.
Or maybe you grab, you go for the extra beer or two or more.
Or maybe you escape into entertainment or travel.
I've been guilty of probably all of that. By the way, friend, you might not need a vacation as much as you think you do.
You might not need the extra beer as much as you think you do. You might not need the new outfit as much as you think you do. You might not just need that time at the end of the day so I can just scroll for a bit on my phone. You might not need that as much as you think you do. You might just need to pause to pray and process the pain with your heavenly father?
Jesus paused to process the pain with the Father, and so should we.
Okay?
I'm going to call the band up. I'm going to close here in just a minute. We're doing outstanding on time.
So if I have my way this morning, if I got my way, it would look something like this.
You would have, at the end of our time this morning, you would have at least a decent understanding of who's sitting in the driver's seat in your life spiritually, right? Your fears, they drive your life.
You would have at least like a. I'm starting to see a little bit more about what fear is, sitting in the driver's seat of my life.
We saw it with Herod, right?
It's not just for him, but for Herod and for many of us. It really is at times, the fear of man.
It's the fear of man.
Here's my message to you this morning.
If that's you, you don't have to live that way.
You don't have to live that way.
And an intelligent person would say, okay, Tom, but, like, look at John the Baptist in your own sermon, in this passage. Look at John the Baptist. He feared the Lord, and look where it got him.
I don't know about you, but I'm not really looking to get my head chopped off after being put in prison because I rubbed someone in authority the wrong way.
So cool. But, like, where are you going with this, right?
He gets imprisoned, he gets killed.
Look where it got him.
To that I would say, yeah, look where it got him.
He didn't compromise.
He didn't compromise. And as a result, listen to me. He fulfilled his purpose.
Not everybody's called to be the forerunner of the Messiah. Okay? John was.
Not everybody's called to be the forerunner of the Messiah. Not everybody's called to die for their faith, but everyone is called to die to self.
Everyone to let Jesus take the wheel of your life.
Cue Carrie Underwood.
At this time, I'd love it if you guys would sing Jesus, Take the Wheel. Okay, let's go.
That was such a bad joke, but I had to take it all the way through. You know, I know it's silly. I know it's cheesy, I know it's cliche, but it's biblical.
The chances of someone in this room being called to die for their faith is probably slim, especially intimaculin.
But we're all called to die to self.
It's part of your purpose.
It's really important.
What you fear is sitting in the driver's seat of your life, and it's taking you somewhere, friend.
Do you know where you're headed currently.
Do you know the trajectory that you're on?
That's my goal this morning.
Is if nothing else, the spirit of God might enlighten you to come to grips with the trajectory that you're on. And if it's not God's trajectory for your life, you're in danger.
And the truth is, nobody's perfect. Right?
Nobody's perfect. We all blow it. Can I get an amen?
Yeah. I blow it all the time.
So if you're here and you're like me and you blow it all the time, and whether it's fear of man or some other lesser fear has more weight in your life than fearing the Lord.
If you're like me, can I just close by encouraging you this morning?
I'm going to let you in on how God encouraged me this week.
Hebrews, chapter 7, verses 25 through 27.
The context here is the writer of the Hebrews. A writer of Hebrews here. He's basically making the case. Or she. We don't know that Jesus is our great high priest.
Listen to what they say, verse 25.
Therefore, he is able to save completely those who come to God through him. Listen to this. Since he always lives to intercede for them.
For this is the kind of high priest we need.
Holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.
He doesn't need to offer sacrifices every day as high priests do, first for their own sins, then for those of the people.
He did this once for all time when he offered what?
Himself.
If it.
If by chance, if you're. If you're in the room and you're not a Christian, I need you to know, like, he offered himself for you. It's really personal. Please, if you don't hear me say anything else, just walk away going.
The guy with the gray hair said that Jesus offered himself for me. Okay, if you're a Christian in the room, it says that. Ooh. It says that Jesus always lives to intercede for you. Do you have any idea what that means?
I'm gonna give you two examples really quickly from the scriptures. Luke, chapter 22, verse 31 and 32.
This is describing how Jesus intercedes for Peter. Remember we talked about how he blew it?
Right?
Compromised fear of man got to him.
This is Jesus interceding for Peter. Simon. Simon. That's Peter.
Look out.
Sometimes the most loving thing that someone can do is go, look out.
Look out.
Simon. Simon, look out. Satan has asked to sift you like wheat.
But I have prayed for you. That your faith may not fail.
Jesus prayed for Peter.
Jesus interceded for Peter because he knew Peter was going to blow it.
One more for you.
One chapter later. Luke 23, verse 34. This is Jesus interceding for the people, executing him.
Then Jesus said, father, forgive them because they do not know what they're doing.
If you're a Christian, if you've given your life to Jesus, if you said, jesus, I want you to be the driver.
I fear you. I have more reverence for you. You carry the most weight in my life than anybody else.
I yield to you. You're Lord, I want to follow you. If you've given your life to Jesus and you blow it, if you give in to fear of man, if something weighs more on the scale than God does, can I just encourage you with something? The truth of the Scriptures is he always lives to intercede for you.
I can't tell you what that did in my heart this week.
Jesus is praying for you every time you blow it.
Father, forgive them. They don't know what they do.
They don't know the ripple effects. They don't get the big picture.
They've just handed over the wheel for a moment.
I think we need to come to grips with the truth that we're really crummy drivers.
And actually the lie is that we're even the ones driving.
Because your fears drive your life.
He always lives to intercede for you.
Isn't he awesome?
Isn't he wonderful that even, and especially when you blow it, he's interceding for you.
Always.
Your fears drive your life.
May we be people who above all, fear the Lord.
Stand with me if you're able to pray for us.
We just right now, in this moment, God, we direct all of our attention to you.
Jesus, there's nobody like you.
You don't just give us instruction and guidance on what we ought to do.
You show us the way. You model it.
There's no other leader like you.
Nobody comes close to you. Jesus, you are supreme.
You are holy.
The scriptures. When you taught your disciples to pray, you said, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. It's that supremacy.
And you also told your disciples that you and the Father are one.
If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. Jesus, you're supreme.
Jesus, you are supreme. There's nobody like you.
You're so faithful, you're so kind, you're so patient.
Long suffering.
The reality that you would sign up for the human experience so that you could save and rescue humans is bananas.
And I pray that for people like me and people like us in the room that sometimes that becomes kind of a stale thing. I pray that you would repersonalize it for us this morning. Holy Spirit, I pray that you would help, that you in your. In your loving kindness, that you would convict us and reveal to us the lesser fears that were. That are weighing more on the scale than our reverence for you.
You're the only one worthy.
You're the only one worthy to sit in the driver's seat of our life.
And so I pray for anybody in the room who's battling feelings of condemnation. I just renounce that now in the name of Jesus.
Jesus is interceding for you right now.
And so, Father, I pray that you'd help us to put on the righteousness of Christ, to receive it and to live out of that place. Place not to earn your love, but from a place of already being loved. Not to earn approval, but from a place of already being approved of in Christ. Help us all to put on Jesus. I pray.
And for those that are just crippled by fear of man in their life, I pray have that broken off now in the name of Jesus.
Instead of people being so big and God being so small, I pray a reversal of that. Holy Spirit, enlighten our eyes to see the majesty and the bigness of God which puts other people in their rightful place where we don't use them for approval, but we love them and we serve them.
I just pray that you'd have your way in my life, Jesus, in our lives. Make us the people that you've. You've designed and saved us to be.
No condemnation, just freedom, healthy fear of the Lord.
That is the beginning of knowledge.
And I pray for those who are starving for alone time with you, who spent way too much of their life buying the lie to shove down the pain. And maybe, or maybe, maybe, just maybe, it'll go away. It doesn't go away.
I pray that you give them what they need to pause to pray and process the pain with you, Father.
And that you would touch them and heal them and restore them.
It's what you do. It's who you are.
Thank you for this morning. We honor you, we bless you, and we pray these things in your holy name, Jesus.
Amen.
If you're on the prayer team this morning, would you mind making your way to the front?
There's gonna be trusted men and women up here that would love to pray for you. If anything that I've. That I've talked about, if anything that we've read here, if anything sparking anything in you, I suspect that the Holy Spirit wants to bless you and more often than not he uses his people as his instruments of blessing.
These trusted and trained men would love to pray over you. Whatever it is, something that I said, something that I didn't, something that sparked in you, a desire in your heart. Maybe there's some pain, maybe somebody you know, you're watching them and it's hard on you. Whatever it is, like come receive prayer. I think God wants to touch you, wants to help you, wants to follow you. Okay, we're going to fill this room with praise in response to God's goodness because of who he is and what he's done in Jesus.
And we're going to respond with faith by coming forward for prayer. You can do that at any time. And then JB will pastor us to close. Okay? Love you guys very much.
