Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Almighty God, you welcome you. Hey there.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: If you're new to Restored Church, we want to welcome you and thank you for tuning in. You're listening to a portion of our Sunday worship gathering. We believe the church is not an event, but a family you belong to. So we would love the opportunity to connect with you. If you want to learn more about our church or if we can help you in any way, please Visit our website, www.restoredtemecula.church and click on Contact. With all that said, we, we hope you enjoy the message.
[00:00:35] Speaker A: It's good to see your faces.
It's good to be with you.
I'm going to go ahead and pray. I want to kick off with prayer this morning.
Oh, by the way, I'm Herrick. If I haven't a chance to meet you. Hi. I'm one of the elders here. So glad that you're here.
And I have the privilege of sharing this morning's message with you. And if you'll pray for me, for us, for our time, I would really appreciate it. Father, I want to thank you.
I want to thank you that you know what you're doing always.
I want to thank you that your word will ultimately not fail, that your word will accomplish the purpose that you've set for it.
And I'm excited because I think there's great things that are going to happen this morning. Great things have already happened this morning.
And so I want to ask for your help to partner with you even in the moment, because you know best.
God, we love you.
We trust you. Develop and strengthen our trust.
It's in your name we pray.
Amen.
In January of 2006, I shared in an enchanted moment.
Sparks flew.
I felt butterflies in my stomach and my heart skipped a beat.
It was one of those, you know, like, you felt it too kind of moments.
Fast forward a few weeks. Valentine's Day, 2006.
It was nighttime, it was crisp and the stars are out.
There's music in the air from a well known opera singer.
In fact, a crowd was singing along with it. And it was the moment I knew I'm in love.
Guys, you're not going to believe this, but I found audio from that time.
I don't think it was from the same night, but it was a recurring thing for a while. And I'm going to play some of it for you so you can share in the moment that sealed my love. Hit it, Everett.
That was a moment. That was the moment I knew I'm in love with Real Madrid.
It's a tale as old as Time.
So that night, Real Madrid, the greatest team in the world.
If you don't know it's a soccer team. I mean, it's more than a soccer team. It's really a philosophy, a way of life.
That night, Real Madrid was in the semifinals of Spain's domestic cup.
I was living in Madrid at the time, and they suffered a historic defeat in the first leg and would need a historic reversal in the second leg in order to actually move forward and avoid elimination. They had to win five nothing. If you're not familiar with soccer, haven't watched it in a while, or maybe never watched it, that's like being down 18 to nothing in baseball or being down 40 points heading into the fourth quarter of basketball. Basketball has quarters, right?
Periods, whatever, doesn't matter. There's only one sport, there's room for two. Soccer and baseball. That's about it.
And this person, they had to win 5 nil. And so I was in the stadium. The stadium was electric.
I've never heard a baseline roar from a crowd like that. And I've been to two World Series games. It was deafening.
There was a belief in that crowd that Madrid could rise, even though that first leg had just about buried them. And where was I?
I had a front row seat, literally to this moment. Madrid was coming at me when they were attacking, and if you can imagine, like, they're down five, they need to score five goals. They're going to attack in that first half and they're like, they're coming my way.
It was so fun. I was in the front row and I was going to witness history one way or the other. It's going to be either historic triumph or historic defeat.
Today we're going to read a passage that actually places you, you and me, all of us, in a front row seat to the clash that determines the future. And it's not of a club or of a fan base of supporters, but of creation and its inhabitants.
This has massive implications for you and for me. So I'm just going to encourage you to stick with me. We're going to move this morning. Grab your Bibles if you have it. Turn over to Matthew 16, Matthew 16, 13, 20. If you don't have your Bible, that is okay.
We're going to be putting the slides on the screen up there and you can follow along there.
So if you're new, we've been going through the Gospel of Matthew for a while now. It's a biography of the life of Jesus. It's a remarkable, deep, rich story that keys into thousands of years of history of the Jewish people before Christ and in Christ, you see the fulfillment of a lot of these threads and strands that were present at the time of the faith of the Jewish people fulfilled in Christ. Pretty remarkable. And so today we're going to pick up on verse number 13, Matthew, chapter 16, verse 13.
And Jesus has been doing some remarkable things. He's been healing people. He has been preaching, he's been doing incredible things. He's been multiplying filet o fish sandwiches for thousands of years. He's doing things that have never been seen before in this world.
And so we're going to pick up in the story and we're going to see a dramatic confrontation. Verse 13. Here we go. When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, who do people say the Son of man is?
They replied, some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah, one of the prophets. But you, he asked them, who do you say I am?
Great move if you're leading a discussion going broad and then about you making it personal.
So big question here. Who do you say that I am?
And at this point in the story, we've had ideas. There's people that have called Jesus the son of David. There's stuff that's in the air. But this is the first time in Matthew's gospel that we get this kind of clarity from Peter. Specifically, verse 16, it says, Simon Peter answered, you are the Messiah, the son of the living God.
Jesus responded, blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven. And then naturally, Jesus says, don't tell anybody.
Okay, scene, let's pick up what's happening here. Okay, so Jesus goes into enemy territory.
When you hear Caesarea Philippi, that probably means nothing to you unless you've been there. Who's been to Caesarea Philippi? Yeah. Okay, so we've got a few people that are going to understand this right away. But for the rest of us, Caesarea Philippi is enemy territory. This is not a place that's friendly to the faith of the Jewish people. This is a place where this God called Pan was worshiped. This was also a place where there was essentially A devotion to Caesar and his disciples go with Jesus right here to have this little, almost like gospel community conversation around the identity of Jesus.
These are fighting words, if you like.
This is a confrontation. This is a showdown.
And so they have this group discussion about Jesus identity. They start broad, they get personal. Wonderful move.
And the thing that becomes clear, maybe not clear to us in the first reading, but what is clear, is that the crowds don't quite get who Jesus is.
It's like a case of mistaken identity. They think he's a prophet and they name different prophets, if you like.
And so they think he's one thing, but that's not quite it.
It's not quite who he is. And so the crowds misunderstand who Jesus is. Peter, though, who is a part of Jesus, inner circle gets it and Jesus goes ballistic. I don't know if that's the right term, but he goes wild. It's effusive, praise lavish, extraordinary. He makes stunning pronouncements about Jesus, about Peter.
He makes extraordinary promises.
And he makes.
Essentially, he gives us a preview of the rest of the movie right in that moment of what's to come. So it's a joyous moment. It's a hopeful moment. It's pregnant with promise, which is, I think, was really refreshing for me to capture this this week, as this is a passage where I'm not going to get into the scholarly debates, but there's a lot of scholarly debates. This is one of the most. This is one of the passages where scholars disagree the most.
And it makes me kind of bummed because I think it misses the beauty of it in some ways.
Okay, so what's happening here? I want you to imagine something. I'm going to use an analogy. I want you to imagine Florentino Perez, which all of you are like, who is that? He's the president of Real Madrid. We're going to go back.
I want you to imagine him taking his players.
He gathers his players at the gates of the Camp Nou, which is the home of Barcelona, Real Madrid's eternal rivals. Okay, so imagine that a team president outside the gates of their rivals. This is hostile territory. And he decides, I want to have a little pow wow with my players.
And then he asks, who do people in Madrid say that I am?
Which to us sounds egotistical and crazy, right? But who do people in Madrid say that I am? And then Raul, kind of the leader of the team, gets up and says.
Or no, the players say, some say you're a powerful businessman. Some say you're A politician. Others feel like you're a mover and shaker in Spanish culture and beyond.
Real estate mogul. All these different things.
And then Florentino says, but who. Who do you say that I am? He turns to his players and says that. And then Raul, who's sort of the leader of the group, says, you're the man who's going to lead us to sporting glory.
And then lavish praise.
There's so much noise around me, it's hard for people to hear me. Imagine Florentino saying this. The president. There's so many distortions, it's hard to see me. Like a picture that's out of focus. But, Raul, in your ears, the beat is crisp.
It's giving studio vibes.
In your eyes, it's crystal. You know, 4K vibes. No blur, no cap.
Okay?
If you are a millennial or if you are a boomer, he hears well and he sees everything.
Okay?
And Florentino says, you're going to be team captain on this belief that you have, I'm building a dynasty without end.
Raul, you're going to hand out jerseys. You're going to help create the culture that will sustain this movement. You're going to help determine what's in bounds, what's out of bounds, what's acceptable, what's not on this team. You see those gates?
That's where we're going to celebrate our greatest moments.
Keep it quiet for now.
Scene.
That's essentially what's happening here. It's a beautiful moment. Beautiful moment for Peter and Raul, in my analogy and the church, believe it or not, I know Peter. If you read the Bible, you know Peter. You know Peter puts his foot in his mouth a lot, makes a lot of mistakes. We'll get to that next time that we preach. In Matthew. It's like his biggest, brightest moments and his deepest blunders are like one following the other.
And so. But I want to just focus in on, like, this beautiful moment for Peter in the church. Peter had them, and this was one of the brightest, like Peter when he preached. There's a moment in the Book of Acts where he preaches and thousands of people come to faith in Jesus. He was handing out jerseys like crazy. Peter's pronouncements would see faithful people raised from the dead.
He actually raised someone from the dead.
And he would also. His pronouncements would actually send fake people into their grave.
Ananias and Sapphira. You ever read that one?
Scary.
He had these crazy moments. The stuff that Jesus said happened. It actually happened. It's like Jesus knew what he was talking about.
Peter would play a key role in seeing Gentiles accepted into table fellowship with Jews, which for the vast majority of us, that's our thank God.
Right?
You'd have to become Jewish. Otherwise, guys, I'm not even going to get into it.
Right? So he opened the door for millions of people like you and me to find our place in the story.
That's Peter. That's what happened with these pronouncements. It's incredible. Peter wrote scripture.
Peter finished his race well, if you know the end of the story. Peter finished his race well. And I'm really grateful for Peter's faith, and I'm grateful beyond that that this is giving us hope because Peter was human, that all disciples are going to have beautiful moments.
I was thinking about my own life and story, and I was recently in San Diego, and I pulled up to Friars Road across the street from. From Fashion Valley. If you've ever been down there before, there's a little apartment building there. And I pulled into the parking lot, which wasn't weird, you know, just a guy pulling into a parking lot, crying. Because I'm just remembering, this is where God met me. This is where I became.
This is where I literally took my first steps as a disciple. Just incredible. There's beautiful things that happened in my life.
Starting to follow Jesus, beginning to share the gospel with people, beginning to serve, beginning to see more clearly what it is that God had called me to. To do. I mean, there's just so much beauty in my story.
And it's not just me.
Every disciple, if you're a follower of Jesus, there's beauty in your story. One of my favorite things, actually, is to call that out.
Not always. I have my moments where I just want to nitpick and.
And just like anybody else, I have my moments where I'm a little more testy and a little more agitated and irritated. But I love.
On the whole, I love calling out what's true of people, the beauty in people's stories.
And this is what happened with Peter. This is a moment of beauty. This is a moment of hope. This is a moment of joy.
And so I just want to ask a question.
As you reflect on your own life, if you're a follower of Jesus, is there beauty that you can thank God for today?
Are there things that have happened in your life that don't. You don't have to deny what's true. We're flawed, we're broken. We make mistakes, we screw things up all the time.
But do you see the way that Jesus has set you apart for himself?
Do you see the beauty that's involved in your story?
If you don't, I think part of today is to remind you that there is beauty in your story whether you see it or not.
And sometimes what we need is to slow down and reflect to start to see it.
Sometimes you might need to get into a car and drive.
You might need to go back to the beginning.
And this in some ways is Peter's beginning. Not the first time that he demonstrated faith by any means. He was called, he responded to Jesus call to follow him.
So we've seen all that already. But this was a moment that Peter would never forget.
And what's fascinating about this is that, is that Jesus said, peter, you are the rock. And I'm going to on this rock I will build my church. Right is what Jesus says.
And there's a lot of debate. Again, I'm not going to get into the scholarsly debate. You guys can do that on your own. There's much smarter people that can break that all down for you. But there's really two main ways that this is understood.
One is that the rock is Peter, which makes a lot of sense in light of the wordplay in the Greek and even underneath that in the Aramaic, petros Petra. Petros is Peter, Petra is a rock. And so Jesus has to play around because of the. It's a feminine word and you don't want to call Peter feminine. And so that's one way to look at it, the rock is Peter. But another way to look at it is that the confession is the rock. It's Peter's faith.
And so again, without getting too deep into the weeds there, what I really see here is this beautiful reminder that Jesus builds on people's faith. And I think that is, that is a huge part of this text.
Jesus could have said, peter, I'm going to build on you.
But he says on this rock there are other ways he could have said it.
And so that's my first point, if you're taking notes. Jesus builds on people's faith. And I debated this. I could have literally written this.
Jesus builds on the faith of Peter or Jesus builds on Peter's faith. I think ultimately there's broader than that. Jesus builds on people's faith. And there's a quote that I have, if you guys can throw up the quote from Craig Keener, again, just smarter people that can say this succinctly, the one from Craig Keener, the IVP Bible commentary, he says in context, the point appears to be that Peter is the rock in his role as Confessor, verse 16. And others build on the foundation by their proclamation of the same confession.
So in other words, this beautiful faith that Peter had, that's your faith. Jesus builds on your faith as well.
We just had this beautiful moment. Tom revisited the life of the church, the history of the church, and I think it is. It's built on the faith of people like you, who have invested in this community, who have made this community your home, who have taken, like the Harrelsons, these leaps of faith.
My wife and I, we moved up here from Temecula, from San Diego, from North park to be here.
And so many of you have invested significantly in this community. I just want you to know, why does this matter? Why care about this? Because Jesus is working through you and you don't have to be perfect.
Peter showed it over and over again. So flawed.
Peter could be summed up with big moments and big misses, if you like. Here are some of his biggest, biggest misses.
We'll get to this in a couple weeks.
Peter the Rock, if you like, the team captain, tried to stop Jesus from going to the cross.
Shucks.
He got scared and fled from Jesus side at Jesus lowest moments.
Oops.
And he screwed up that Jew gentile table fellowship thing so bad that Paul had to kind of slap him around a little bit to slap some sense into him. Ah, strike three.
Big ones. Big, huge, profound misses that thankfully have been recorded for us to help us to flesh this out. Imagine if Peter was, like, called the rock and it's his faith and he was flawless. Would give us no hope. We'd be like, I can't be that. This is stupid. Why even try?
It would lead to resignation. I quit.
But there's beauty.
There's big moments and then there's big misses. There's fumbling, there's flaws. But ultimately, what defined Peter is that he was faithful.
Without putting too fine a point on it, he was a real believer.
And so I just want you guys to know I think Jesus really cares about this faith.
And I don't know if you notice, like, just how he just. He was effused. He just. Oh, man, Peter this, Peter that. Like, just so much praise for him. Could you imagine some of us live with these words that have been spoken over us, Negative words or voids or things that have really hurt us or things that people have said or done to us?
What if this was what was resonating in our ears, the joy of Jesus in our faith?
The satisfaction of our Lord in our imperfect, flawed, yet faithful discipleship.
Man, Jesus builds on this kind of faith.
And I just want you to know, like, there's beauty in your story. Are you aware of it?
Do you see it?
I don't think we can be actually effective evangelists if we don't know what our story is, if we're not aware of the beauty in our story.
Oftentimes it's common to be very aware of the brokenness in our story. And we need to be. We need to be able to look in the mirror and look. We need to be able to step on that scale and be like, okay, this is where I'm starting. You know, we have to have some level of honesty with ourselves about where the starting point is, and that's an important thing.
But there's so much beauty.
You're part of a story. You're part of a family. I don't know what your family story is like, your family history, by nature of being human. Most likely it's really messy.
Some families are more stable than others growing up. But I need you to know, like, Jesus called you into his family, and it wasn't because of your strength.
It wasn't because of your innate talent, although you probably have both.
It was a gift.
How was it that Peter came to this realization of faith? Did you guys catch that? What's the source?
God the Father? Yeah.
This was not something that Peter figured out. It was a revelation.
It was given to him.
That's part of the reason why I was in tears in San Diego at the bottom of that apartment complex is because I realized, like, I didn't figure this out.
I had a moment of revelation where God showed me, hey, you're really aware of how screwed up and flawed you are, which was totally my story.
But what you didn't know is how faithful I am and how gracious I am and how forgiving I am.
You didn't know that I am the Christ, the Messiah. Messiah means Christ, or Christ means Messiah, means anointed one. That's ultimately what it means. I had no idea as a younger person that Jesus was God's king who came to rescue me. There was an enemy that was greater than me. That enemy was death.
And Jesus went to the gates of death and said, this will not prevail.
I win.
That's what was going on in the story.
The gates of Hades, if you like.
The place of the dead is not going to win. I'm going to win. And I'm going to do this by building on the faith of people like Peter, people like you.
Your story really deeply matters.
I was.
I've thought a lot about that day, the day I fell in love with Real Madrid. Over the years, I've actually watched the videos. You can find those videos back from 2006. I have watched the highlights, I've watched the full match, and I've tried over and over again to find myself. I don't know why. This may not be interesting to anybody else, but anytime I was at some place, I went to wrestling when I was a kid, WWF action a few times, and I sat close to the front, and I would watch the replays and be like, where am I in the crowd? Has anybody ever done this before? You ever look for yourself in a crowd? I'm the only one Dorian has. Yeah, Dorian's done it. Okay. Thanks, Dorian. Not alone. So I'd done this with wrestling. I did this in the World Series when I went. Couldn't find myself. And then I did it. I was in the first row, guys of this game.
First row. I was so close to David Beckham that I could have had a conversation with him, like, how's Tori? How are the babies?
I could have asked him that.
And because he didn't speak Spanish, he probably would have loved to hear some English, actually.
And I didn't. I let him play because there were bigger things happening, more important things than what I thought.
But that's how close I was, and I have never been able to find myself.
Can you put up the picture of where I think I am in this crowd?
Right there.
Okay. So I've looked at kind of where we sat, all the things, and I've narrowed it down to that little. That first row right there. That's where we sat. Do you know what kind of stinks about this?
It's pixelated.
You can't see anything. It's like a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's David Beckham right there. Could you tell?
No.
It's fuzzy. It's so, so fuzzy.
And as I've been thinking about this message, this text, I've just been thinking about how fuzzy Jesus was to so many people.
He was right there.
It was.
He was doing what he was doing. He was doing healings, he was doing miracles. He was preaching in ways that blew people's minds. They're like, I've never heard anything like this before, is what they would say when they'd hear Jesus. He preaches with authority. Who is he?
I don't know.
A prophet, one of the prophets.
Just categories that they had just leaning on their own understanding.
Fuzzy. If you put that picture back up again, like, I think just fuzzy.
And the truth was the disciples were fuzzy too.
Especially if you read Mark's gospel, Mark's account, it's like, oh, man, these guys.
And if you watch the Chosen, you can see at times Jesus gets frustrated with his disciples. He's really loving, he's very gentle. But sometimes he's just like, he talks to his mom and probably like, ah, my students, they don't get it.
And naturally it can be very easy to become arrogant and be like those stupid disciples until you again.
God will then be like, hey, check this out.
And then you're like, oh, it's a mirror.
Of course, at best it's a mirror.
What's my point in saying all this? I think it's important to remember, and this is the last thing I'm going to say to just about this first point about beauty, because there's so much beauty in this text.
Jesus is fuzzy until the Father reveals him to you and to me.
In order to have focus, the Father has to give you a revelation of Jesus.
And so if you have experienced Jesus, I just want you to know, like, you are blessed as Peter was.
God's word to you is like you, you're blessed, blessed, but you have some content there. Hashtag blessed is too broad to be helpful, I think.
I don't know why I'm going off on this. Doesn't matter.
It's specific. There's a blessing here. God has revealed Jesus to you. He's helped you not only see Jesus, but he helps you find yourself in the story.
Like, I have just a general idea. If you put up the picture one last time, I have a general idea. This is where I think I am in the story. I'm right there somewhere.
But Jesus has the power to help you see, like, what your specific part in the story is because he wants to build on your faith. Did you know Jesus wants to take your story and integrate it into his bigger story?
He wants to tell his story through you.
That story's not about you, but your story is a revelation of Jesus in some ways to people as you find your place in the story.
And what's fascinating, like in that picture, I'm a spectator, right? I don't have a. I do have a jersey on which I think I was 22 at the time. So I think I'm within the bounds of what, you know, is fashion wise acceptable. I don't know when, like, guys need to stop wearing Jersey when they're too old to pull off the jersey.
Never.
Okay. No.
Dorian's got style, though.
I look at those jerseys and I'm like, uh, not only do I not fit in them, but I'm like, is this a fit for this stage of life?
I'm so out of this.
So clearly not able to step on the field and play.
I digress. I did have a jersey on. I was there, but I was spectating. I think part of what God wants to do today is to remind you, like, you're not a spectator in this story.
You actually have a specific role to play, and Jesus wants to build on that. Do you know what your part is in this story?
We just saw a picture of that here with the Harrelsons where there's been an intentional, thoughtful evaluation of the workings and the words of God in their life and what it is that God is calling them to do.
But I'm just. This is fresh in everybody's mind.
The same is true for you. It may not involve eldership. It won't for most people, and that's okay. Eldership has its own set of pros and cons. You know, everything in life has pros and cons. Everything. Every gift casts shadows, right?
Do you know what your story is if you don't? If you're fuzzy on that, that's gonna have an important effect on your life.
You can't be really effective if you don't know what your story is and what part of Jesus story he wants you to play.
I want to be clear. I think that life, in and of itself pixelates, makes the picture fuzzy.
We suffer, we go through losses. We have expectations that aren't met.
All of us deal with disappointments. And I think if you're anything like me, it's really hard to see who Jesus is and what he's doing in the midst of that. It makes things fuzzy. Are you guys following what I'm saying? It makes the spiritual outlook very fuzzy when you go through hard things.
And what I see in this text is that sometimes what we just need most is a revelation from God.
Information isn't always necessarily what you most need.
These people that Jesus was dealing with and interacting with knew their Bibles better than we do. Much better. It was just a matter of the habits and practices of the Jewish people.
They memorized scripture. They were steeped in it. They knew it left and right.
They prayed it. They sang it into their hearts.
And yet information was not enough. Revelation is what was necessary. And so I'm Just I want to ask you, like, do you know what part of the story. Do you know what part of God's story you are supposed to play?
Do you know what your role is in his story?
And if not, do you want a fresh revelation of it? Because I think that he's ready to give it to anybody who asks him. Okay. The second thing, if you're taking notes that I want to point out from this passage, and this is the last part, is that Jesus will not be defeated.
Jesus will not be defeated.
What does Jesus say in the text? If you go back to verse number 18, it says in the second part of that verse, the gates of Hades will not overpower the church.
The gates of Hades will not overpower the church.
And I just want you to know that as I've thought about this, this has struck me in a fresh way, because at that point in time, who was Jesus? To most people? He was somebody special, certainly. But he was a craftsman, right? He was an itinerant preacher. He was a rabbi.
He wasn't a king to the human eye.
This was just soccer again. There was recently a club World Cup. Did anybody watch it?
Yep. Man, this really didn't land in the US it was literally here. We hosted it. Our nation hosted the best teams in the world. In our country, apparently, nobody watched it. It's cool.
There was this small team, I think, from New Zealand that played, and it was a bunch of people who had jobs.
They weren't dedicated players. They weren't playing. Like, the other teams had some of the payrolls on some of these teams, like a billion dollars. These were guys who had jobs. They just happened to wind up in this tournament. They're going to obviously have to relook at classifications because that was ridiculous. It's like a semi pro team winding up playing against Realm, you know, like it. It doesn't make sense, but I just want you to imagine for a second with me what it would be like if a semi pro team went to the gates of Real Madrid and said, this is where we're going to take this place.
What I'm talking about was more like that Jesus, a craftsman, a preacher, a good one, no doubt, who did some impressive things. What hope is there against Rome?
Seriously?
Caesar. This is like this was the Caesarea Philippi.
What hope is there against Rome?
None, humanly speaking.
It's ridiculous. Honestly, this is nuts if it's not true, Like, Jesus was a lunatic.
C.S. lewis famously said, Jesus is either a lie, lunatic, a liar, a lunatic, or he's Lord, you Gotta decide what you believe about Jesus, first of all. Second of all, like I said earlier, the Father needs to reveal it to you. But if he's a liar, then we should disperse because we are wasting our time.
If he's a lunatic, then we are literally following a madman into the pit and making huge sacrifices to do that.
But if he is Lord to do you know what that means?
Your story ends in victory.
The Church will not be defeated.
Now, does that mean that we're going to win every battle? No Church history, Peter. Does that mean Peter is always going to nail it? No.
The keys of the kingdom, all this authority. Does that mean heaven's just going to rubber stamp everything Peter did? No, Peter. Heaven intervened regularly. One time, actually, it was so bad. And we're going to get to this soon. In the transfiguration that God was like, shut up, Peter.
After this moment, okay, this is what we ought to.
Incredible moments, beauty, big moments and big misses.
But you have to understand, in the end, we win.
And it's not culture wars that we're winning. It's not reforming Rome.
It's a kingdom that will have no end with a king that looks nothing like the emperor.
And so I want to just land on this. I'm going to invite you to stand.
Your life may currently feel fuzzy.
The picture for you might feel pixelated.
You might be going through hardship, you might be going through significant struggle.
By the way, if you're stoked on Jesus, bless God.
That's a great thing.
It's a gift, I would say. And it's a sign that God's hand is on your life.
And if you're struggling, it doesn't mean God's hand is not on your life.
Okay?
But whatever you're going through, whatever's making things fuzzy, I just want you to know that Jesus knows what that's like.
Jesus, victory. He proclaimed his victory in front of those gates that represented death.
Did you know that his victory came through defeat?
Jesus didn't smash his opponents into the ground.
His opponents smashed him into the ground, if you like.
And it looked lost.
It looked lost. If you look at it from a human perspective, again, if you don't have the resurrection, Jesus is a liar and a lunatic because the stuff that he said didn't make any. It was. Didn't hold true.
Or on the flip side, if Jesus had used violence, he would have denied his own teachings. And again, he would have been a liar.
But here's what ended up happening instead.
Jesus, who made these promises, was speaking the truth.
He was telling us what was to come. He was previewing the rest of the movie. And here's what the rest of the movie holds. Spoiler alert.
I've got a quote from Joshua Tilton. If you guys want to throw this up. Here's the gospel. The good news.
Jesus, even though it looked lost when his disciples abandoned him when he went to the cross, it wasn't by raising Jesus from the dead, God had defeated Jesus enemies.
Through Jesus resurrection, God defeated the chief priests who conspired with the Roman authorities to execute Jesus.
Through Jesus resurrection, God defeated the emperor in Rome in whose name Jesus was crucified.
So all the opposition, the opponents of God, looked like they won.
And sometimes in life, it looks like the enemy is winning, right? Sometimes it feels like we're just constantly losing ground.
Sometimes it constantly feels like sin is getting the better of us. That anger problem that you have, losing it with your kids, that desire to embellish or present yourself in a way that doesn't match with reality, sometimes it really feels like that's winning.
And it's easy to believe lies in those moments. But here's what you have to understand.
Jesus knows what it's like to lose, but that is the way to life.
Because on the other side of life is resurrection. On the other side of death is resurrection.
Through Jesus resurrection, the Lord God of Israel defeated the diabolical powers that stood behind Caesar's Rome.
Sin and fear, hatred, pain and disease, weakness, physical and spiritual and economic. Oppression, ignorance, cruelty, violence and death. I think that sums up humanity the worst.
That's what Jesus defeated.
For this is what we call when an enemy hurls his worst, most dreadful and most potent weapons, exhausting his arsenal and his fury. And yet the one the enemy sought to destroy is still standing, victorious.
We call that the defeat of the enemy.
Lastly, fear could not daunt him. Sin could not tempt him. Pain could not sway him. Death could not swallow him. Jesus remained faithful to God, and the Lord in his power raised Jesus from the dead.
The diabolical powers did their worst to Jesus, but it was they who were vanquished.
Jesus faithfulness and Jesus gospel were both vindicated when God raised Jesus from the dead.
Sometimes when life gets fuzzy, when we lose sight of who we are in the story, when we lose sight of who Jesus is in the story, we really need the Father to bring him back into focus.
Sometimes, like Peter for the first time, where it's like, I've never actually confessed Jesus as the king. You might need to do that today if that's you. But I think for a lot of us, what we need to do is to bring our fuzziness to the Father and ask him to bring us focus.
Because disease, weakness, physical and spiritual losses, ignorance, cruelty, violence, death, sin itself don't have the final say in your story.
Jesus does if you bring him those things.
And so I want to pray for us, and we're going to go into a time of response.
We're going to have prayer ministers. If you're on the prayer team, I'm going to invite you to come forward.
We're going to have some prayer ministry available.
And I just want to ask you, like, is there something that Jesus is stirring up in you?
Are there things you're not seeing clearly? Are there things that you'd like God to bring focus to in your life?
Maybe it's Jesus himself. You just need to see him at work. Maybe you just need to remember what he's like and who he is.
Maybe you're just struggling in a cycle that needs to be broken. Jesus came to redeem people, which means to release people from bondage. If you're in bondage today, you can be freed. You can be liberated.
If you feel defeated, it's a feeling, it's not a fact.
Feelings aren't bad.
Maybe you just need to remember, in the end, we win.
But the things you're going through, you just need to remember, like, this isn't the end of my story.
That night when I fell in love, Real Madrid lost.
They needed to score five. They scored four. They scored three. In the first 10 minutes, the stadium was going bananas. I thought we were going to win.
But do you know what ended up happening?
In the long term, Defeat didn't embarrass them, it emboldened them.
And I went back to the same place of defeat one year later and saw them lift the trophy in person.
It instilled in me this sense of defiance. Not in the sinful defiance, but in this, like, let's go.
We may lose this one, but we'll get you next time.
And that's what makes Real Madrid a great team. I'm not talking about soccer today. I am, but I'm not.
What makes the church great is that even if we're down, we remember this. Jesus will not be defeated.
We go through losses. Tom talked about it during family time. You guys, we've been through a lot of losses, haven't we?
And we're still here.
Some of us just need to thank God for that.
You've been through a lot of losses, and you're still here.
It's a gift that you see Jesus. Thank God for it. Some of you may just need to praise, but others of you, your window is foggy. Maybe you need the defroster turned on. Maybe you need to put the windshield wipers on because it's been rainy, spiritually speaking. And I think God wants to help you with that as well. So, Father, we thank you. We love you. We honor you.
We want to take the next few minutes to respond to what you're saying and what you're doing.
We honor and bless you and your son for what he did for us on the cross.
Would you make these things real to us, Fill us with joy and. And where there's heartbreak and sorrow, would you move us to act, to experience you and your victory, Even where we feel defeated, it's in your name we pray. Amen.
Let's sing.
