Latest / The TakeAway / John 12:44-50 Has God Shown Enough?
Transcript
- 0:10SPEAKER_00: Has God shown enough to believe?
- 0:12SPEAKER_00: Many people assume that if God would only make himself more obvious, if he would give one undeniable sign, answer one lingering question, or provide one unmistakable moment, then belief would follow.
- 0:25SPEAKER_00: But in John chapter 12, Jesus brings his public ministry to a close before people who had already seen extraordinary signs, heard the scriptures, and even witnessed a man raised from the dead, and still many refused to believe.
- 0:40SPEAKER_00: In his final public words before the cross, Jesus explains why the revelation God has already given is enough.
- 0:47SPEAKER_00: Not only to offer eternal life, but also to leave us accountable for what we do with his word.
- 0:54SPEAKER_00: Join Pastor Harry as he unpacks verses 44 through 50 of John chapter 12 and asks the question every listener must eventually answer.
- 1:03SPEAKER_00: What are you doing with what God has already shown you?
- 1:07SPEAKER_00: Here's Pastor Harry Barens with today's message.
- 1:15SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome again to the takeaway.
- 1:17SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Pastor Harry Barens.
- 1:19SPEAKER_01: And today we're going to be finishing up John chapter 12, looking at the very last time in this gospel that Jesus speaks publicly before he goes to the cross.
- 1:28SPEAKER_01: So before we move into chapter 13 and start walking toward that cross, we're going to pull together everything we've studied up to this point.
- 1:37SPEAKER_01: And we're going to ask the one question that resides underneath all the other questions we've been asking.
- 1:43SPEAKER_01: Now, we've asked hard questions all the way through this gospel about the drawing and the choosing, about suffering, about why God sometimes seems hidden.
- 1:53SPEAKER_01: And every time we've let the text answer instead of answering it for ourselves.
- 1:59SPEAKER_01: And after all of that, John chapter 12 leaves us standing in front of one more question.
- 2:07SPEAKER_01: Has God shown us enough?
- 2:11SPEAKER_01: Now, before we can answer that, we have to remember something we've been saying since the very beginning of this series.
- 2:18SPEAKER_01: Because it changes what the question even means.
- 2:22SPEAKER_01: Understanding has never been enough.
- 2:27SPEAKER_01: Intellectual agreement has never been enough.
- 2:32SPEAKER_01: It wasn't enough in chapter three when Jesus told Nicodemus, a man who knew the scriptures better than most, that unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
- 2:45SPEAKER_01: So the chain we've been watching connect starts back in chapter three, where Jesus says, You must be born from above.
- 2:53SPEAKER_01: Then belief itself, named as the work of God and the Father doing the drawing, both in chapter six.
- 3:00SPEAKER_01: And then in chapter 12, where a crowd watches a man walk out of a grave and still does not believe.
- 3:06SPEAKER_01: And remember what we said back when we started walking through all this.
- 3:11SPEAKER_01: A baby is fully alive the moment it's born.
- 3:14SPEAKER_01: It doesn't understand anything about its own life yet.
- 3:17SPEAKER_01: And it will spend decades growing into that understanding.
- 3:22SPEAKER_01: But the life came first.
- 3:24SPEAKER_01: That's exactly how this works.
- 3:27SPEAKER_01: It was never about understanding enough to receive new life.
- 3:31SPEAKER_01: It was always about being given new life and then spending the rest of our days understanding it from the inside of it.
- 3:40SPEAKER_01: And Peter uses that very same picture in his first letter, chapter 2, verse 2, when he tells believers, like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation.
- 3:58SPEAKER_01: Now notice the order there.
- 4:25SPEAKER_01: They received full revelation in the flesh with the clearest evidence that has ever been given to anyone, and it was rejected anyway.
- 4:36SPEAKER_01: And the words he spoke explain the revelation they were shown, which is precisely why no one will be able to stand on that day and say they were never told.
- 4:50SPEAKER_01: But that raises the objection almost immediately.
- 4:54SPEAKER_01: And it's one every one of us has felt at some point when we say, Surely, if God did something undeniable enough, people would believe.
- 5:05SPEAKER_01: But Jesus already answered that objection months before this crowd ever stood in front of him.
- 5:12SPEAKER_01: In a parable, most of us have heard our whole lives without ever noticing what happened to it afterward.
- 5:19SPEAKER_01: Now, to find it, we have to leave John's gospel for a few minutes and go back to Luke chapter 16.
- 5:26SPEAKER_01: And I want you to notice the timing here, because this parable falls inside the long stretch of Luke's gospel, where Jesus has set his face toward Jerusalem, walking toward the cross.
- 5:36SPEAKER_01: And that puts it before the week we've been sitting in for the last several episodes, before the triumphal entry, before the crowd asking who this Son of Man is, and as we'll see in a moment, before something else also.
- 5:52SPEAKER_01: Now in Luke chapter 16, Jesus tells the story of a rich man who dies and finds himself in torment, and a beggar named Lazarus, who dies and is carried to Abraham's side.
- 6:03SPEAKER_01: And the rich man, realizing where he is, makes a request.
- 6:09SPEAKER_01: He asks Abraham to send Lazarus back to his five brothers to warn them so they don't end up where he is also.
- 6:17SPEAKER_01: And in verse 29, Abraham answers him.
- 6:21SPEAKER_01: He says, They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.
- 6:26SPEAKER_01: Now Abraham doesn't say the brothers need more information.
- 6:30SPEAKER_01: He says they already have what they need.
- 6:34SPEAKER_01: Moses and the prophets, the scriptures they had been raised on, the same scriptures.
- 6:39SPEAKER_01: We watched this crowd quote back to Jesus two episodes ago, and he says, that's enough.
- 6:45SPEAKER_01: And this isn't the first time we've run into that claim either.
- 6:48SPEAKER_01: Way back in episode 20, when we walk through John chapter 5, verses 30 through 47, in what we call the courtroom of the Son, Jesus laid out five witnesses testifying to who he is.
- 7:00SPEAKER_01: John the Baptist in verse 33, the works themselves in verse 36, the Father in verse 37, standing right in the center as the load-bearing witness that holds the whole case together.
- 7:12SPEAKER_01: The scriptures in verse 39 and Moses himself in verses 45 and 46.
- 7:18SPEAKER_01: Five witnesses.
- 7:19SPEAKER_01: And Jesus says to the men who rejected him anyway, you refuse to come to me that you may have life.
- 7:27SPEAKER_01: So when Abraham says they have Moses and the prophets, he's saying exactly what Jesus said in that courtroom.
- 7:34SPEAKER_01: The testimony was already sufficient, the evidence was never the problem.
- 7:39SPEAKER_01: But the rich man in Jesus' parable pushes back in verse 30.
- 7:43SPEAKER_01: And he says what all of us have said in one form or another.
- 7:48SPEAKER_01: He says, No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.
- 7:57SPEAKER_01: And there it is, word for word, the very thing we said in our last episode.
- 8:03SPEAKER_01: One undeniable moment.
- 8:06SPEAKER_01: If God would just do the thing nobody could argue with, then they would all believe.
- 8:13SPEAKER_01: And notice who's saying it.
- 8:15SPEAKER_01: This isn't a skeptic dismissing God from a distance.
- 8:19SPEAKER_01: This is a man already in torment who knows exactly what's at stake, who is past the point of doubting anything at all.
- 8:28SPEAKER_01: And he still believes the problem is insufficient evidence.
- 8:34SPEAKER_01: And then Abraham's answer in verse 31 is one of the most sobering sentences in the Gospels when he says, If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.
- 8:53SPEAKER_01: Now, this is where it gets interesting.
- 8:56SPEAKER_01: Months after Jesus tells that parable, we get to John chapter 11, and a man dies, and his name is Lazarus.
- 9:05SPEAKER_01: Now, I want to be careful here because we are not told anywhere in Scripture that this is the same Lazarus from the parable, and we shouldn't claim what the text doesn't say.
- 9:14SPEAKER_01: It may be the same name and nothing more.
- 9:17SPEAKER_01: But what happened is not in question at all, because the very thing Abraham said would not work is exactly what God did.
- 9:25SPEAKER_01: A man was dead for four days.
- 9:28SPEAKER_01: Jesus called him out of the tomb, and he walked out in front of witnesses in broad daylight, close enough to Jerusalem, that the whole city heard about it within days.
- 9:39SPEAKER_01: So the objection got tested.
- 9:42SPEAKER_01: Someone did rise from the dead.
- 9:44SPEAKER_01: And what happened?
- 9:46SPEAKER_01: Well, look at John chapter 12, verses 10 and 11, where John tells us the chief priests made plans to put Lazarus to death as well, because on account of him, many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus.
- 9:59SPEAKER_01: That's the response.
- 10:01SPEAKER_01: It wasn't repentance, but a murder plot aimed at the evidence itself, just like Abraham said that they would not be convinced, even if someone rose from the dead.
- 10:12SPEAKER_01: And when someone actually rose from the dead, they tried to put him back in the grave.
- 10:18SPEAKER_01: So now let's look at verses 44 through 46, where it says, And Jesus cried out and said, Whoever believes in me believes not in me, but in him who sent me.
- 10:30SPEAKER_01: And whoever sees me sees him who sent me.
- 10:33SPEAKER_01: I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.
- 10:40SPEAKER_01: Now, notice something about how John stages this because it's unusual.
- 10:45SPEAKER_01: Back in verse 36, John already told us that Jesus departed and hid himself from them.
- 10:51SPEAKER_01: Then John gave us his own commentary in verses 37 through 43.
- 10:57SPEAKER_01: And now, suddenly in verse 44, we see that Jesus cries out with no location given, no audience named, and no scene set at all.
- 11:06SPEAKER_01: So what John appears to be doing here is lifting these words out of any single moment and setting them down as the closing summary of everything Jesus said publicly, as this is the last thing the public hears from him in this gospel.
- 11:20SPEAKER_01: And from chapter 13 forward, every word Jesus speaks is spoken behind closed doors to the men he's about to prepare for what's coming.
- 11:30SPEAKER_01: So out of everything John could have chosen to end the public ministry on, he chose this.
- 11:37SPEAKER_01: And in verse 44, he says, Whoever believes in me believes not in me, but in him who sent me.
- 11:46SPEAKER_01: Now that's a stunning thing to say because Jesus is telling this crowd that faith placed in him doesn't stop at him, it passes straight through him and lands on the Father.
- 11:59SPEAKER_01: What we see is that he isn't presenting himself as one more religious teacher collecting followers for himself.
- 12:06SPEAKER_01: He's saying that trusting him is trusting God, because he and the Father cannot be separated in that way.
- 12:15SPEAKER_01: And then in verse 45, he makes the same point from the other direction.
- 12:20SPEAKER_01: Whoever sees me sees him who sent me.
- 12:25SPEAKER_01: Now that's the same thing he later says to Philip in chapter 14, verse 9, when Philip asks him to show them the Father, and Jesus answers, Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.
- 12:37SPEAKER_01: It's the same thing John has been telling us since the very first chapter of this gospel, when he wrote in chapter 1, verse 18, no one has ever seen God, the only God, who is at the Father's side.
- 12:54SPEAKER_01: Now, here's why that matters so much for what's coming in verse 48.
- 12:59SPEAKER_01: If seeing Jesus is seeing the Father, then what this crowd did was not reject a messenger.
- 13:07SPEAKER_01: They didn't turn away a prophet with an unpopular message or dismiss a teacher whose interpretation they disagreed with.
- 13:15SPEAKER_01: They stood in front of God made visible in the flesh, close enough to touch, and they turned away.
- 13:23SPEAKER_01: That's what makes the judgment in verse 48 land the way that it does.
- 13:27SPEAKER_01: There's no layer of separation to hide behind.
- 13:31SPEAKER_01: There's no claim that the message got garbled somewhere between God and them, because the one delivering it was God Himself.
- 13:39SPEAKER_01: And then in verse 46, Jesus says, I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.
- 13:50SPEAKER_01: Now, this is the last time the public will ever hear that word from him.
- 13:55SPEAKER_01: And John has been running it since the opening lines of this gospel.
- 13:59SPEAKER_01: In chapter 1, verse 4, John said, The life was the light of men.
- 14:04SPEAKER_01: And then in chapter 8, verse 12, Jesus said, I am the light of the world.
- 14:08SPEAKER_01: In chapter 9, we saw that a man born blind receives his sight while the men who could see stayed blind.
- 14:15SPEAKER_01: And then just a few verses ago in our last episode, we heard him say, Walk while you have the light, before the darkness overtakes you.
- 14:25SPEAKER_01: Now here's what I don't want you to miss.
- 14:28SPEAKER_01: He doesn't say, I have come so that those who reject me might be plunged into darkness.
- 14:35SPEAKER_01: He says, Whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.
- 14:41SPEAKER_01: Now, did you catch that?
- 14:43SPEAKER_01: He said, Remain, because darkness is where every one of us already was.
- 14:49SPEAKER_01: It's not a threat about where you're going to end up, it's a description of where you already are and an offer to be brought out of it, which means his very last public word to a crowd that had already refused him is still an invitation.
- 15:08SPEAKER_01: Now those two verses and verses 47 and 48 look like they contradict each other until you see what Jesus is actually doing here.
- 15:16SPEAKER_01: He says, If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him.
- 15:23SPEAKER_01: For I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world.
- 15:27SPEAKER_01: The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge.
- 15:33SPEAKER_01: The word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day.
- 15:39SPEAKER_01: Now, on the surface, that sounds like two different answers when he says, I do not judge him, and then that he has a judge.
- 15:46SPEAKER_01: But before we resolve that, I want to show you that the tension actually runs deeper than it looks, because Jesus has already said something in this gospel that seems to cut against this entirely.
- 15:58SPEAKER_01: Go back to that courtroom in John chapter 5 we talked about earlier.
- 16:02SPEAKER_01: In verse 22, where Jesus says, the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son.
- 16:09SPEAKER_01: And then a few verses later in verse 27, he says, The Father has given him authority to execute judgment because he is the Son of Man.
- 16:17SPEAKER_01: So in chapter 5, all judgment belongs to Jesus.
- 16:21SPEAKER_01: And here in chapter 12, he says, I do not judge him.
- 16:25SPEAKER_01: Now, which is it?
- 16:26SPEAKER_01: Well, the answer is in the timing, because both are true, just not at the same moment.
- 16:32SPEAKER_01: Jesus is telling this crowd what the first coming was for.
- 16:36SPEAKER_01: And he already said this back in John chapter 3, verse 17, when he told Nicodemus that God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
- 16:49SPEAKER_01: That was the mission he came to save.
- 16:52SPEAKER_01: He did not come the first time holding a gavel, which means every person standing in front of him that day was standing in front of mercy, not a verdict.
- 17:01SPEAKER_01: But refusing that mission doesn't cancel judgment.
- 17:04SPEAKER_01: It just settles what you'll be judged by.
- 17:07SPEAKER_01: And it moves the judgment to the day John chapter 5 was pointing at all along.
- 17:13SPEAKER_01: Now notice something else in verse 47, because it's easy to skip.
- 17:17SPEAKER_01: He says, If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, which means the people he's describing are people who already heard him.
- 17:25SPEAKER_01: This crowd wasn't standing outside the sound of his voice, wondering what he had said.
- 17:30SPEAKER_01: They heard every word of it and they left it right where it fell.
- 17:35SPEAKER_01: So what verse 47 is describing isn't a failure of delivery, it's a refusal of what was already delivered.
- 17:43SPEAKER_01: And once that's clear, the next thing Jesus says lands with everything it's supposed to carry.
- 17:50SPEAKER_01: So let's look at verse 48.
- 17:52SPEAKER_01: And this is the sentence this entire episode has been building toward, where he says, the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day.
- 18:01SPEAKER_01: Now take that in because there is no second standard coming here.
- 18:06SPEAKER_01: There's no hidden criteria nobody had access to, no secret decree revealed at the end that people never had a chance to hear.
- 18:14SPEAKER_01: The word already spoken publicly, fully, in front of everyone, is the very thing that stands as the standard on the last day.
- 18:25SPEAKER_01: Which means revelation wasn't just enough to make belief possible.
- 18:28SPEAKER_01: It was enough to make judgment just.
- 18:33SPEAKER_01: And here's the other side of that sitting right there in the same courtroom in chapter 5, in verse 24, where Jesus says, Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.
- 18:47SPEAKER_01: He does not come into judgment, but is passed from death to life, which means the same word that stands as the judge in verse 48 is the very thing that carries a person straight past judgment altogether.
- 19:01SPEAKER_01: Same word, same voice, same day, and one person is judged by it while another never faces judgment at all.
- 19:10SPEAKER_01: The word didn't change.
- 19:13SPEAKER_01: What changed is what it landed on.
- 19:16SPEAKER_01: And that's exactly what Paul is answering in Romans chapter 9, verse 19, when he raises the objection that every one of us has felt somewhere in this series when he says, You will say to me then, why does he still find fault for who can resist his will?
- 19:33SPEAKER_01: Now we said in our last episode that Paul lands that argument on worship rather than a complete explanation, and that's still true.
- 19:41SPEAKER_01: But he doesn't leave the justice question hanging, and neither does Jesus, because the answer is sitting right there in verse 48, as we see that God finds fault justly because nothing was withheld.
- 19:54SPEAKER_01: The word went out, it was sufficient, it was refused, and it will be the judge.
- 20:02SPEAKER_01: Then in verse 49 to 50, close it out when he says, For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment, what to say and what to speak.
- 20:14SPEAKER_01: And I know that his commandment is eternal life.
- 20:18SPEAKER_01: What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me.
- 20:22SPEAKER_01: Now look at what Jesus does with this last public sentence in this entire gospel.
- 20:27SPEAKER_01: He points away from himself back to the Father when he says, I have not spoken on my own authority, which means every word this crowd heard him speak, they heard because the Father gave it to him to say.
- 20:42SPEAKER_01: And that means the word in verse 48, the word that will judge on the last day, isn't merely the word of a teacher from Nazareth that a crowd found unconvincing.
- 20:52SPEAKER_01: It's the Father's own word spoken through the Son, delivered in full to people standing close enough to touch him.
- 20:59SPEAKER_01: So when Jesus says his commandment is eternal life, he's telling us that the very same word carries both.
- 21:07SPEAKER_01: Received, it is life.
- 21:09SPEAKER_01: Refused, it is the judge.
- 21:12SPEAKER_01: It's the same word with two outcomes and nothing hidden either way.
- 21:17SPEAKER_01: Now, I don't want us to move past that phrase too quickly because it's a strange way to say it.
- 21:22SPEAKER_01: He doesn't say the Father's commandment leads to eternal life or points toward eternal life or earns eternal life.
- 21:30SPEAKER_01: He says his commandment is eternal life.
- 21:34SPEAKER_01: And Jesus tells us exactly what he means by that a few chapters later in his prayer in John chapter 17, verse 3, when he says, and this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
- 21:52SPEAKER_01: Eternal life isn't a reward handed out at the end for getting the answer right.
- 21:58SPEAKER_01: It's no Knowing him.
- 22:01SPEAKER_01: And the Father's word is the thing that makes him known, which is why receiving that word and having eternal life are not two separate events.
- 22:12SPEAKER_01: They're the same event described from two directions.
- 22:18SPEAKER_01: And that's exactly where the writer of Hebrews begins his letter in chapter one, verse one through three, when he says, Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.
- 22:46SPEAKER_01: He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.
- 22:55SPEAKER_01: So what we see is that God had been speaking for centuries in pieces through prophets, and then he spoke finally and fully in a person.
- 23:04SPEAKER_01: Paul says the same thing to the Colossians in chapter 1, verse 26, when he calls it the mystery hidden for ages and generations, but now revealed to his saints.
- 23:14SPEAKER_01: What was concealed is now out in the open.
- 23:19SPEAKER_01: So the excuse that we heard something, but nobody ever made it clear to us doesn't survive these verses.
- 23:25SPEAKER_01: Jesus gave the Father's word and explained it as he went, and nothing was left undone or hidden, which is exactly why nobody has an excuse.
- 23:37SPEAKER_01: Now, let's go back to the question we started with today Has God shown us enough?
- 23:44SPEAKER_01: Well, here's the answer spoken by Jesus himself with his last public breath in this gospel.
- 23:50SPEAKER_01: Yes, he has.
- 23:53SPEAKER_01: He gave Moses and the prophets, he gave five witnesses in his own defense, he gave signs no one could explain away.
- 24:05SPEAKER_01: He sent his own son to stand in front of them in the flesh and speak the Father's own words to their faces.
- 24:12SPEAKER_01: And then he told them plainly that those words would be the standard on the last day, which means nobody will stand on that day and say they were condemned by something they were never shown.
- 24:27SPEAKER_01: So the question was never whether God had shown enough.
- 24:31SPEAKER_01: The question has always been what do we do with what He already showed us?
- 24:39SPEAKER_01: And I know some of you are listening right now and you're still waiting on the sign, still waiting on the one moment that would settle it, still telling yourself that if God would just do this one thing, then you would know.
- 24:53SPEAKER_01: But here's what this whole chapter has been showing us.
- 24:57SPEAKER_01: That crowd had the moment.
- 25:00SPEAKER_01: They had the raised man walking around the city, they had the Son of God speaking in their streets.
- 25:08SPEAKER_01: And what more evidence produced in them was not belief, but a plan to bury the evidence, which means the thing you're waiting for was never the thing standing between you and God.
- 25:20SPEAKER_01: So let me ask you the question this chapter has been asking all along.
- 25:24SPEAKER_01: What are you doing with what he has already spoken?
- 25:28SPEAKER_01: Because the word that has already come to you, the word that you have heard today, is the same word that will stand on the last day.
- 25:36SPEAKER_01: And what we see is that the word that judges is the very same word that gives eternal life.
- 25:42SPEAKER_01: It's the same word.
- 25:43SPEAKER_01: It only depends on what you do with it.
- 25:46SPEAKER_01: And that brings us back to you sitting here listening to this episode today.
- 25:50SPEAKER_01: Because the question is, what do you do with the word you are hearing right now?
- 25:55SPEAKER_01: What do you do with everything we've been walking through across this entire series, all the way through John's gospel?
- 26:02SPEAKER_01: And I have to ask you, has something been stirring in you through all of this?
- 26:07SPEAKER_01: Have you ever actually responded to the gospel?
- 26:10SPEAKER_01: Because what we keep seeing in this text is that a response is necessary for judgment to pass over you and for you to receive eternal life.
- 26:18SPEAKER_01: But I want to be careful because saying I believe in Jesus was never meant to be something you do to avoid eternal condemnation.
- 26:28SPEAKER_01: It's something you do because you genuinely want to know God.
- 26:33SPEAKER_01: Remember what Jesus Himself said eternal life is knowing the Father and knowing the Son whom he has sent.
- 26:40SPEAKER_01: He never once said eternal life is escaping hell.
- 26:44SPEAKER_01: He said it's knowing him.
- 26:46SPEAKER_01: So I'm inviting you today to pray with me right now, to ask Jesus into your life and to spend the rest of your days seeking him, coming to know him, praising him, and living for his glory.
- 27:00SPEAKER_01: So if that's you, I want you to pray with me right now.
- 27:04SPEAKER_01: Just follow along and let these words be yours.
- 27:08SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
- 27:09SPEAKER_01: Father, thank you that you do not hold yourself back from us.
- 27:14SPEAKER_01: Thank you for Moses and the prophets, for the signs, for the empty tomb, and most of all, for your son, who spoke nothing but what you gave him to speak.
- 27:26SPEAKER_01: And Lord, for the one listening right now who is coming to you for the very first time, hear them as they pray this with me.
- 27:34SPEAKER_01: Father, I know that I have fallen short of your glory.
- 27:39SPEAKER_01: I believe that you sent your son to die in my place, and that you raised him from the dead.
- 27:47SPEAKER_01: I'm not coming to you because I figured it all out.
- 27:51SPEAKER_01: I'm coming because you have shown me enough and I can't walk away from it.
- 27:58SPEAKER_01: So take my life, lead me, reveal yourself to me, and keep revealing yourself to me for all my days.
- 28:09SPEAKER_01: That I will live for your glory and know the fullness of joy you promise to everyone who does.
- 28:18SPEAKER_01: In Jesus' name.
- 28:19SPEAKER_01: Amen.
- 28:21SPEAKER_01: Now I want to thank you again for joining me today.
- 28:23SPEAKER_01: And I hope today's message has helped you take a step closer in knowing just how much God loves you and wants you to know Him.
- 28:29SPEAKER_01: And if you prayed that prayer with me today, I really do want to hear from you.
- 28:34SPEAKER_01: So please reach out at thetaway.faith and send us an email because you shouldn't walk this out alone.
- 28:41SPEAKER_01: And we would count it all joy to walk it with you.
- 28:45SPEAKER_01: Now, if anything else today resonated with you, or if you have any questions or comments, you can click on the text us link in the episode description as well, as we would truly love to hear from you.
- 28:54SPEAKER_01: Now, on our next episode, we're going to open up John chapter 13, where the public ministry is behind him, the doors closed, and Jesus kneels down with a towel and a basin to begin preparing the men he loves for what's about to happen next.
- 29:08SPEAKER_01: God bless, and we'll see you next time on the takeaway.