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Why is it so Hard for Christians to Believe in Grace? · Red Couch Theology

• 0:00
  Hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of the Red Couch
• 0:03
  Theology podcast. Hey, this week, Alex and I talk
• 0:06
  about diving back into the book of John.
• 0:09
  We talk about what true freedom looks like, and we make an
• 0:13
  announcement about the kind of content and nature of this
• 0:16
  podcast going forward because there's going to be some tweaks,
• 0:19
  at least for a short period of time.
• 0:21
  So, TuneIn to find out a little bit more about what's changing
• 0:25
  on the show, let's dive right in.
• 0:31
  We're. Live.
• 0:33
  We're live. We're live, and Alex is reading
• 0:36
  the passage with gusto. To remind myself of what I said.
• 0:42
  Indeed. And I'm being decapitated by our
• 0:45
  camera. You.
• 0:46
  Want me to fix that for you? No, I'll fix it, but we have a
• 0:51
  big announcement to make. Are you nervous?
• 0:57
  Yeah, I'm gonna make Alex make the announcement.
• 1:01
  He doesn't even know what I'm talking about.
• 1:05
  Oh. The podcast content is going to
• 1:08
  be shifting. Can you explain that while I fix
• 1:10
  the camera? Yes.
• 1:11
  So over the next, well, starting from the middle of January
• 1:18
  onwards, we are introducing a course, that's how.
• 1:23
  So we're going to be doing Alpha and offering that to the
• 1:26
  community. Alpha is an amazing course for a
• 1:31
  couple of things. I think really, if you are brand
• 1:33
  new and have no concepts of the Christian faith, or if you're
• 1:36
  someone that would say, I don't know how this happened, but I
• 1:38
  kind of ended up at church without any real basis of like
• 1:44
  understanding, you know, some of these things I like, I believe
• 1:47
  in Jesus. But if you ask me some of those
• 1:50
  theological questions like, well, why did he do this or how
• 1:54
  does this thing work that then I'd actually maybe start looking
• 1:58
  pretty embarrassed and, and blush a little bit.
• 2:01
  Yeah. And it and it does that
• 2:04
  wonderfully well. So here's the challenge with
• 2:07
  Alpha, though, that we find all the time for some people,
• 2:10
  they're like, oh, this hit the spot.
• 2:12
  This is exactly what I needed and other people like I would
• 2:16
  love you to just dive a little bit deeper into some of the
• 2:23
  questions that this raises. Yeah.
• 2:25
  So we thought, well, we have a podcast that's right, and maybe
• 2:30
  this podcast would be a great Ave. to be able to do that some
• 2:34
  of the time alpha. So it probably won't be every
• 2:36
  week is I guess right? Yeah, I mean, maybe I think most
• 2:40
  weeks, but it may not be the entire podcast.
• 2:43
  Yeah, every week. So if you send in questions for
• 2:46
  sermons, we'll still find ways to answer those.
• 2:48
  Yeah, we'll try our best to address the sermons from
• 2:50
  question or the questions from sermons as well.
• 2:53
  I'll also be inviting our Alpha class attenders to send in
• 2:56
  questions. God, I think the content will
• 2:59
  still be great. I think yes.
• 3:02
  Yeah, I'm actually getting really excited about it.
• 3:04
  I think yeah, Alex already shared some of the heartbeat
• 3:09
  behind it, but it's like it's a really so just you guys get a
• 3:14
  sneak like a peek behind the curtain of our strategy when it
• 3:18
  comes to adult formation at South briefly here on the show
• 3:22
  it our midweek classes I see are two we have two mainstay classes
• 3:29
  unless one of them goes horribly wrong.
• 3:31
  The first one was emotionally healthy spirituality and that
• 3:35
  really does an exceptional job of deep heart soul.
• 3:39
  Totally, Yeah, Yeah, we were talking actually with some
• 3:41
  people in our small group and they were saying like that has
• 3:43
  given us a real taste for those kind of conversations.
• 3:47
  Yeah, like the vulnerable honest conversations which when you
• 3:50
  jump in that can be that can you can be nut.
• 3:54
  I mean that's. Kind of scary, yeah.
• 3:55
  Kind of, yeah. Intense.
• 3:57
  Yeah. And then Alpha, which is a
• 4:02
  little bit more theological, it's about foundations of our
• 4:05
  faith, of how does the Christian faith function theologically and
• 4:12
  morally and all of those sorts of things.
• 4:14
  And why did this happen in the Bible?
• 4:18
  And what is the Bible actually legit all these like hard
• 4:21
  theological questions that just allow us to really explore.
• 4:25
  Now here's the beautiful part. We have this big thing on our
• 4:29
  wall in the lobby that says living in the way of Jesus with
• 4:32
  the heart of Jesus. And so the way I see it, we have
• 4:39
  living in the way of Jesus. This is AA starts to unpack some
• 4:45
  of the way of Jesus, some of the theology about what are the
• 4:48
  things that it means to be a Christian.
• 4:51
  What do we believe about the Holy Spirit, about the
• 4:52
  Scriptures, about the church, about healing about all these
• 4:57
  sorts of things. And then emotionally healthy
• 5:00
  spirituality is heart of Jesus like how do we be at the from
• 5:06
  the inside out. I love it in the way of Jesus
• 5:09
  and. I think both of them like to
• 5:10
  take them as a whole. They do help you go into a
• 5:13
  deeper place in your faith. I, you know, sometimes faith
• 5:16
  journeys remind me of this. Like I, I actually really love
• 5:20
  snorkeling. Like if I can go out and to like
• 5:22
  a beach and like, you know, I can just like get a mask and
• 5:25
  just, you know, go around. But I have a whole bunch of
• 5:28
  friends that are scuba divers and they're like, oh, it's a
• 5:31
  different world down there. Like you have no idea.
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  And once you've done that, you'll probably never go back.
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  Like there's just a richness to life.
• 5:41
  It's going to take a lot of convincing for me to agree with
• 5:44
  them because the first time I ever put on a mask in the.
• 5:47
  Ocean, don't kill the metaphor. Sorry.
• 5:51
  Carry on. No.
• 5:52
  Tell us your story. I remember the first time I
• 5:55
  actually like put on a mask in the ocean that I remember like,
• 5:59
  no, there was one other time when I was younger and we was
• 6:01
  just on a, on a reef or whatever, but we were doing some
• 6:04
  Cliff jumping in in California. And you know, I jumped off this
• 6:07
  Cliff like a dozen times and someone's like, you want to swim
• 6:11
  around for a while. And, and it tossed me a mask and
• 6:14
  I threw it on and I, and I popped my head under and there
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  was a, a fish about the size of me.
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  I didn't want to be in the ocean ever again.
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  Do you know what kind of fish it was?
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  No, no, I don't care. I am terrified.
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  I. Mean did it like, you know, did
• 6:33
  it speak in an Australian accent like, you know, fish?
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  I don't. I don't care.
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  All I know is large fish scare me.
• 6:41
  OK. Yeah.
• 6:42
  So. Well, there you go.
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  Don't sign up for Alpha then don't sign up for the other
• 6:47
  spirituality because. Then don't listen to me about
• 6:49
  the ocean so I'm weird when it comes.
• 6:53
  You and my wife would get them. Well, she's she's like what you
• 6:55
  obviously do as well because you know each other.
• 6:56
  But she, she, she, I always tease her, you know, and say
• 6:59
  like she thinks that every shark in 100 miles when she gets in
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  the ocean is like, oh, food. I used to swim in the ocean
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  constantly as a kid. I'm like, I've never seen
• 7:09
  anything interesting. Yeah.
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  Like it's, you know, the mysteries.
• 7:14
  Yeah. Anyway.
• 7:16
  Anyway, so that's, uh, a shift for this podcast that I think is
• 7:20
  coming up now. That means only a portion of the
• 7:23
  content will be related to the sermons.
• 7:25
  And you know, who knows, maybe a particular week in Alpha isn't
• 7:29
  that heavy. And so we'll spend more time in
• 7:32
  the sermon, but I think this will allow us to go through even
• 7:35
  on the podcast, some of the curriculum of Alpha.
• 7:37
  And I'm super excited about this.
• 7:39
  I think for Alex made an announcement about two services.
• 7:44
  Yeah. I thought originally your
• 7:46
  announcement might be that you've decided 2 services isn't
• 7:48
  enough, so we're going to three services.
• 7:50
  No, no thank you. Not yet, no.
• 7:56
  So Alex announced the two service thing, but some of the
• 7:58
  things you said about that is that we are just sensing that
• 8:03
  God is sort of opening the arms of our community to, to more
• 8:08
  people to experience the way of Jesus in the heart of Jesus, the
• 8:11
  way some of us have here. And Alpha is a huge, huge part
• 8:17
  of that. And not only for the it's not
• 8:20
  only a great place to invite your friends to encounter Jesus,
• 8:25
  which I'd encourage you to do sign up for Alpha and bring a
• 8:27
  friend, but it's also a great place for our community, who may
• 8:32
  have been walking with Jesus for years, to learn a posture of how
• 8:37
  to have these kinds of conversations with their friends
• 8:40
  and colleagues. So come learn about having an
• 8:43
  open armed posture towards people exploring.
• 8:45
  And what what, what post Easter, which is after alpha, we're
• 8:49
  going to be talking about neighboring and sharing stories,
• 8:53
  you know, doing that after a whole bunch of other things,
• 8:56
  praying for your neighbors, enjoying meals at their house,
• 8:59
  at your house, doing that community thing, and then
• 9:03
  actually finally having the courage to to share how God has
• 9:07
  impacted your life. Yeah.
• 9:09
  And and when those questions come, sure, Alfa is a is a gift,
• 9:12
  right? And when and in an effort to
• 9:15
  make you guys think that we're more organized than we actually
• 9:17
  are, no, we're, we're trying to be actually, I have some people
• 9:20
  on my team that are making me more organized than I actually.
• 9:23
  AM feels pretty organized. We have one of the sessions in
• 9:26
  Alpha is about Neighboring, which we are pulling because of
• 9:30
  Alex's series. So we are the the sermons, the
• 9:35
  the alpha. It's almost like we talk to each
• 9:37
  other. Yeah, we are all simpatico in
• 9:42
  in. This show on the other hand, I
• 9:48
  sit down as the host and ask the person I'm interviewing to share
• 9:52
  the big news and he doesn't even know that's coming.
• 9:54
  So I'm. The person that you asked in the
• 9:56
  show, we sat down and said I actually have forgotten
• 9:59
  everything about last week so. So we're just trying to fill up
• 10:03
  time so you don't recognize we're so organized here.
• 10:08
  So this week that was one thing I wanted to share with upfront.
• 10:12
  This week we have a couple things we want to talk about on
• 10:15
  the show, and then we'll actually dive into it.
• 10:17
  One is you. It was a large passage you
• 10:22
  preached and and it was sort of unique how maybe for better, for
• 10:31
  worse, we're gonna run into more texts like this in the book of
• 10:34
  John. It's a lot more dialogue.
• 10:36
  It is a lot more dialogue. And less narrative movements of
• 10:40
  spaces and environments. I think the advantage of some of
• 10:43
  the other passages, though, is that they are better known.
• 10:47
  Yeah. Now, of course, though, some of
• 10:49
  you might say, like, I've never come across this past before.
• 10:51
  Maybe you never read John before, or maybe you're new to
• 10:52
  faith, all those things. But for a lot of people, like
• 10:55
  this week we hit the story of Jesus healing the blind man.
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  Lot of well known quotes that come in that I was what I once
• 11:03
  was blind, but now I see next week we get to I am the Good
• 11:08
  Shepherd, like the tie in with Psalm 23, all those different
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  things. And and so we get a lot more of
• 11:15
  that. This passage, I think I kind of
• 11:19
  looked at it and said I think this might be the hardest
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  passage I've taught in John to pull a cohesive idea out of.
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  Does that make sense? Yeah, You know, it just it
• 11:32
  meanders across different subjects to track what's
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  happening is challenging to get what the point this.
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  Coming week. No, this this.
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  Last one, yeah, that's what I was.
• 11:44
  Thought I was like, yeah next week is like hard because
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  there's like 3 distinct point. It could be 3 sermons.
• 11:54
  We ain't got no time for that. This is the challenge for those
• 11:58
  of you that are interested in this kind of thing.
• 11:59
  This is the challenge of like, you know, one hand, someone
• 12:02
  might say, well, why don't we just go longer in John when we
• 12:06
  just extended out. But what I wanted to do,
• 12:09
  especially with John, was to have the magic of going through
• 12:12
  John over here and then landing in Easter at John 19, John 20,
• 12:19
  John 21, these like crucifixion, resurrection stories to feel
• 12:23
  like we're walking with Jesus towards Jerusalem.
• 12:27
  And so as we get closer, that starts to amp up.
• 12:30
  And another reason we try not to just extend a series randomly in
• 12:36
  the middle is because we do try to coordinate some of these
• 12:40
  things, like there's certain events that we're running as a
• 12:46
  formations department that coordinate with certain weeks of
• 12:50
  sermons and so on and so forth. We, we actually do try to do
• 12:54
  some of these things. And so if we are arbitrarily
• 12:57
  just keep extending it because it it feels good in the moment,
• 13:00
  it sends some of those beautiful alignments out of out of whack.
• 13:05
  So, but all that to say this this passage did have a a lot of
• 13:09
  dialogue and and movement and. You reading it like?
• 13:13
  How long did it take for me to read it like?
• 13:14
  4 1/2 minutes, yeah, something like that.
• 13:18
  You. Know it just meanders.
• 13:20
  Now it was, it was beautiful, but you actually made a comment
• 13:24
  in the message. I don't know if you remember
• 13:25
  this. One of our questions came in.
• 13:28
  I will read it to you. It references it.
• 13:34
  Oops, that was the wrong one. That was just all compliments.
• 13:36
  It's great, but Alex? You're not going to read the
• 13:39
  compliments. I will read it later.
• 13:42
  Alex had to cut the discussion of the passage short due to
• 13:45
  time. Yeah, what did he want to
• 13:47
  emphasize in the rest of the passage?
• 13:50
  That he didn't have time. For so sorry, I mean I I think
• 13:53
  the the rest of the passage should.
• 13:56
  We pull it up here. Yeah, you can.
• 13:57
  You can do. Where did we, where did you
• 13:59
  start to cut it? Off.
• 14:00
  I think I cut off around 54. Was it 40?
• 14:07
  Hey, was it that early? Might be.
• 14:11
  I think, I think I didn't have chance to really get into 48
• 14:15
  through 50. Eight, OK, well, I think just so
• 14:18
  people have a little bit of context, can we, can you at
• 14:21
  least just skip across the surface of the chapter and give
• 14:25
  us like the main topics of conversation?
• 14:27
  There's a lot of dialogue back in.
• 14:28
  Yeah, there really is. Yeah.
• 14:30
  And so the passage starts with Jesus saying, think close to
• 14:34
  what he's already said. So he kind of introduces this
• 14:38
  idea again of like, I won't be here much longer.
• 14:40
  He just said that in the chapter before, but now he adds this
• 14:44
  other element that's that's much more direct.
• 14:47
  He says you are you, you are steeped in sin.
• 14:51
  Is that his word? I'm trying to remember.
• 14:52
  It's something like that. It's like you are.
• 14:54
  You are. You are. 21 you.
• 14:59
  Would die in your sin. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 15:01
  Steve Jensen is John Knight. That's right.
• 15:02
  Yeah. How's that for an introduction
• 15:04
  to a dialogue? Yeah, and you will die in your
• 15:06
  sin. Where I go, you cannot come.
• 15:08
  And the Jews reply, will he kill himself?
• 15:10
  Which makes sense in terms. Of this does feel like a chap
• 15:14
  the chapter of non sequiturs. Oh, totally does.
• 15:16
  Unless you really. Yeah, yeah.
• 15:18
  Follow each sort of nugget lead back into other conversations
• 15:23
  throughout the book of Job. You're just like, yeah, he's
• 15:25
  like, I'm going away, you're going to die and you're sin.
• 15:27
  You're like, where did that come from?
• 15:29
  And then, yeah, you're going to kill yourself.
• 15:31
  Well, why would you think that? Yeah, I think in that verse
• 15:35
  before or the chapter before it said, will he go to the Greeks
• 15:39
  and teach the Greeks? So having ruled that out there
• 15:41
  now, like, you know, now, now maybe he's going to kill
• 15:43
  himself. Maybe that's why we can't follow
• 15:45
  him. And then he talks about I am
• 15:47
  from below. You are from below.
• 15:48
  I am from above, you know, it gives this classic Jewish
• 15:52
  worldview of like, you know, there's the the heavenly spaces
• 15:55
  where God dwells. And so Jesus is saying very
• 15:57
  clearly, I'm from those kind of spaces.
• 16:01
  And then there's the earthly spaces.
• 16:02
  That's humanity. And actually in their thinking,
• 16:05
  the devil, the fallen angels occupy that space as well,
• 16:09
  which, you know, is a whole other topic that I touched on
• 16:12
  briefly and that I think that every time I've come across
• 16:17
  Christians there, this this people I meet that have the
• 16:21
  temptation to overemphasize. And then there's those that say
• 16:26
  because they can't deal with pitchforks and like the cartoon
• 16:30
  like character. Yeah.
• 16:31
  Yeah. You know, I, I can't believe in
• 16:33
  anything that's opposing Garden yet.
• 16:35
  I mean, when we look at the world, it seems full of
• 16:39
  opposition to God. Yeah.
• 16:40
  Yeah. Comes from somewhere, right?
• 16:42
  Yeah. So then there's that piece and
• 16:45
  then there's this moment where he starts to convince some of
• 16:50
  them. So he keeps talking about how,
• 16:53
  you know, I'm showing what the father taught me.
• 16:57
  I'm come from this other world to teach you about this other
• 16:59
  world. And it says, even though we
• 17:01
  spoke verse 30, then he believed in him.
• 17:05
  And then he says something that seems to just throw them off
• 17:09
  completely like and and again, same thing happened in John 7.
• 17:13
  Same thing will happen in John 9 as well.
• 17:15
  In this case, it's like it's he says if you hold my teachings,
• 17:19
  you really are my disciples, then you will know the truth and
• 17:24
  the truth will set you free. And that's the thing that seems
• 17:28
  to them like after being told they're full of sin, after being
• 17:32
  told that they're from below and Jesus from his is from above,
• 17:36
  above, and there's all this like, OK, yeah, we actually
• 17:39
  believe that suddenly being told that they might need to be free.
• 17:43
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 17:43
  Is the thing that convinces them although, the thing that tips
• 17:47
  them over the edge, and suddenly they start raging at him.
• 17:49
  No, yeah. And yeah, we don't want no
• 17:52
  freedom. Think that of that in a context
• 17:55
  of like the American Civil rights movement, Yeah, you
• 17:59
  imagine this guy like, you know, perhaps a plantation owner from
• 18:03
  the, you know, the early 9th to 20th century who's has someone
• 18:08
  come to him and say, oh, you need to be made free.
• 18:11
  He's like, I'm a slave owner. Yeah, I'm.
• 18:14
  I'm not, I'm the opposite of not free.
• 18:17
  I'm I've always been free. Like, no, no, they're they're
• 18:20
  not. You know, the Jewish people
• 18:21
  actually had a fairly, they were fairly early civil rights on
• 18:28
  slavery compared to lots of other religions of the day.
• 18:31
  You know, there were actually rules around it, which in the
• 18:33
  ancient Near East there almost never were.
• 18:36
  But they do think of themselves as a free people.
• 18:39
  Yes, even when they're in captivity, they say it's a
• 18:43
  little bit like you can take my life, but you can't take my
• 18:46
  freedom. Right.
• 18:47
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's, it's a spiritual or
• 18:50
  a soul state or whatever like this like posture of like we're
• 18:54
  a. Well, they always actually had a
• 18:55
  get out for the idea that they were not free.
• 18:59
  It was God. The God was punishing them.
• 19:02
  So if they found themselves in captivity, it's not that we're
• 19:04
  not free. It's not that we're God's
• 19:05
  people. God's rebuking us.
• 19:08
  So we go back to being what we should be, but we're still free.
• 19:12
  Like that's maybe one of the angles that you could take.
• 19:14
  Maybe they take the very specific angle.
• 19:16
  Well, right now I'm actually free interesting, but but there
• 19:19
  is a level to which it seems a little absurd that they.
• 19:23
  This isn't Rome's doing or Assyria or Babylon.
• 19:27
  This is God's doing, which and he still loves us, so we're
• 19:31
  good. But again, like you look at
• 19:33
  Egypt, which? Is kind of a beautiful posture.
• 19:35
  To some extent there is, yeah. Yeah, But there's on the
• 19:38
  surface, there's been a lot of captivity for these people over
• 19:41
  here to say we've never been captive to anyone.
• 19:44
  They've never been slave to anyone.
• 19:46
  A little bit like. So.
• 19:47
  Yeah. And, and they really tie that
• 19:49
  back to what Abraham's descendants, you know, we've got
• 19:53
  this long spiritual lineage that goes back a couple of 1000
• 19:56
  years, you know, and Abraham is, is the person we all come from.
• 20:02
  And then Jesus counter counters that and says, yeah, if you were
• 20:05
  Abraham's children, then you would do what Abraham did and.
• 20:11
  And I think I, I think I actually phrased that.
• 20:12
  This is almost like the the book of James of within John.
• 20:18
  You know what I'm saying? What I mean by that is the book
• 20:21
  of James kind of has this flavor of like faith.
• 20:25
  Faith without works is dead as a direct quote out of the book of
• 20:27
  James, and this is kind of Jesus's state in at least in
• 20:31
  this section where he's like, yeah, lineage without modeling
• 20:37
  yourself after the patriarch is kind of useless.
• 20:40
  And I think there's this nice little twist on that.
• 20:42
  Like what he, he seems to say, really is like, well, you're
• 20:46
  Abraham's descendants. Sure, yeah.
• 20:48
  But you're not Abraham's children.
• 20:51
  Like if you're Abraham's children, like that means being
• 20:54
  like Abraham, you know, but, but you don't live like him.
• 20:58
  You've got the lineage on paper, but you don't have the
• 21:01
  character, You don't have the lifestyle of Abraham, which
• 21:05
  would be similar to us today calling ourselves Christians if
• 21:08
  our lives look nothing like how Jesus lived.
• 21:11
  It's one of the things we tried to take really seriously that,
• 21:15
  you know, I, I actually was reading an article today that
• 21:19
  drove me a little nuts where this person said, you know, how
• 21:21
  do you know someone's a real Christian?
• 21:23
  And the first thing they had on the list was sound doctrine.
• 21:26
  I'm like, well, I mean, some of the early Christians, Jesus
• 21:30
  first followers doctrine, I don't know about that.
• 21:35
  But they were very practically trying to live how Jesus lived.
• 21:39
  And it's not that I I do think that doctrine is important.
• 21:42
  Yeah, we're running a whole class that's got some Doctrine
• 21:44
  stuff, but. I think there's been seasons of
• 21:47
  the church we're having the right doctrine has been a get
• 21:50
  out for living a life that looks remotely.
• 21:53
  Like I believe the right things, therefore I do whatever I want,
• 21:56
  yeah. Yeah, I, I, I believe who Jesus
• 21:59
  was, but, but forget the Sermon on the Mount.
• 22:02
  I'm not going to do what he taught.
• 22:04
  So, so that that seems to be the tenor of this conversation.
• 22:08
  It's like nudging on that. Like, no, you're not.
• 22:10
  You're not really like Abraham at all.
• 22:12
  Yeah, I was telling. I was had chat with my dad
• 22:15
  recently and I was telling him about particular professor I had
• 22:19
  once where I was like the guy's very confusing to me because I
• 22:23
  agree with everything he says, but he doesn't behave like he
• 22:27
  doesn't give me Jesus like vibes where I'm like I'm like it makes
• 22:32
  me question my beliefs more than anything else because I agree
• 22:36
  with him theologically and he's a jerk and I'm like oh man,
• 22:42
  maybe I'm wrong. So that's a little bit of what's
• 22:45
  going on. Yeah, totally.
• 22:48
  Yeah. And and then he Jesus, really
• 22:50
  comes out and says, well, actually, you know, you belong
• 22:53
  to your father the devil, which is like, I mean, for them, the
• 22:58
  low point of the conversation. No, no punch is pulled in this
• 23:02
  point. Yeah.
• 23:02
  Let's be honest, yeah, Jesus is spicy in the book of John
• 23:06
  totally is. Yeah, I had someone approached
• 23:08
  me recently and just and reminded me of something I said
• 23:13
  in the pulpit a few months back where I told the story about how
• 23:16
  I spent six years in the Gospels.
• 23:18
  Yeah, just trying to get to know the personality of Jesus.
• 23:20
  And they're like, they just asked a few questions about, you
• 23:24
  know, hey, do you have, did you have a guide you were going
• 23:26
  through or like a plan or whatever it was?
• 23:28
  It was good, great conversation. But then I was reflecting on
• 23:33
  they're like, we're going to start in the book of John.
• 23:35
  I was like, that's awesome. That's where I started.
• 23:36
  I spent almost 2 1/2 years just in the book of John.
• 23:39
  And then as they walked to, I was like, sorry, because the
• 23:44
  book of John is a doozy. Like if you read and let some of
• 23:47
  these passages, you're like, wow, Jesus.
• 23:50
  A little bit edgier than I was kind of expecting.
• 23:53
  And one of the things that we've we've we talked about when this
• 23:56
  series began is that if you are looking for Jesus to give you
• 24:00
  instruction on how to live, that's not really what John is
• 24:05
  about. Yeah, like Matthew, Mark and
• 24:07
  Luke or do a perfectly good job of doing that.
• 24:10
  And so in in, in John, Jesus in John.
• 24:15
  John seems to change the the language a little bit.
• 24:20
  He wants you to believe who Jesus is.
• 24:23
  But if you're looking for those places where Jesus, that's
• 24:26
  actually why it's so hard to preach.
• 24:28
  You don't really have any week where you come out and Jesus
• 24:31
  says, oh, I want you to do this. We did the Sermon on the Mount
• 24:34
  in our in our last big series and and Jesus like love your
• 24:38
  neighbor. He's like, you know, don't lust,
• 24:42
  don't do this, don't do that. You've actually got some
• 24:45
  practical things like so satisfying.
• 24:47
  For list makers, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 24:48
  There's a list. That's what I'm gonna try.
• 24:50
  You're making. A list from the Book of John.
• 24:51
  It's like 1 gigantic checkbox. Believe in Jesus in huge.
• 24:56
  Letters and it takes. 35 weeks to check.
• 24:59
  Yeah, it. Really is a, you know, it's a,
• 25:02
  it's a repetitive message. So.
• 25:04
  So it's. It's a great, but I.
• 25:07
  Mean it's one of my favorite books yeah and I always think
• 25:10
  that about every book I end up studying in detail so yeah and
• 25:13
  it's actually. Sort of Johani, I mean, if you
• 25:15
  want to say it that way, Like the Book of Revelation kind of
• 25:18
  felt that way too. You're kind of like, Oh my
• 25:19
  goodness, oh man, I forgot. We did.
• 25:21
  Revelation right before John. I know we've been.
• 25:24
  Living with suckers for punishment I.
• 25:26
  Know. Yeah, and John is?
• 25:28
  So like biblically literate, imagine what it could have done
• 25:31
  if. We'd preach 10 ways to amp up
• 25:33
  your spiritual whatever, Yeah. That'd have been way easier.
• 25:39
  We should do that soon. I don't even know what that.
• 25:42
  Series is so anyway that so then the end seems to go back and
• 25:47
  emphasize who Jesus is and it seems to give this one piece of
• 25:53
  language where for the first time I think Jesus starts to
• 26:00
  talk about himself as is described in John chapter 1.
• 26:03
  So you know in John chapter 1, the word was with God.
• 26:06
  The word was God. You know all these different
• 26:08
  like beautiful pieces of language that suggests that
• 26:12
  before a baby in a Manger. Jesus is this pre existent son
• 26:16
  of God. This is the first time I think
• 26:19
  that Jesus really starts to describe himself in that way
• 26:24
  like those little touches of the ego.
• 26:26
  Amy I am but but not in this kind of way.
• 26:31
  So as soon as you say things like Abraham rejoiced to see my
• 26:35
  day, like you were watching it happen, and then finish with,
• 26:41
  you know, with the conversation, like you're not 50 years old,
• 26:45
  How have you seen Abraham? Yeah, before.
• 26:47
  Abraham. Was I am.
• 26:49
  I am. I mean like that.
• 26:52
  That is is magical language. It it's powerful.
• 26:57
  And you can imagine the audience going like, oh, no, he didn't.
• 27:01
  What? What?
• 27:02
  What did he say? Which?
• 27:04
  Which without overprompting this week is is similar to this week
• 27:08
  when he takes mud or dirt or dust and puts it on someone's
• 27:12
  eyes. It's a creation.
• 27:14
  Act like all of this part of the book is nudging towards like,
• 27:19
  you know, when we get to John 10, I am the Good Shepherd.
• 27:23
  Well, what does Psalm 23 say? The Lord is my shepherd.
• 27:28
  Yeah. Everything is nudging towards
• 27:30
  Jesus, saying when you see these things about my Father, they're
• 27:34
  also about me. Yeah.
• 27:36
  That that's. When you think about it from the
• 27:38
  perspective of his first listener, yeah, there's a few.
• 27:42
  Apologists from some other faith traditions that try to make the
• 27:46
  case that Jesus didn't think he was God.
• 27:49
  It's you're pretty hard pressed from John because not only does
• 27:54
  he say it explicitly, if you if you know anything about the
• 27:59
  historical context of what he's saying, he's shouting it in the
• 28:03
  streets in his day like his, his audience would would have been
• 28:08
  like, oh, he is shouting in the streets.
• 28:12
  I am God. I am the son of God.
• 28:14
  I am the Messiah. I am the one to come.
• 28:16
  I created the universe. Yeah.
• 28:18
  I, I all these things. And there would have been no
• 28:21
  doubt in their minds what he was trying to communicate.
• 28:24
  Yeah. So.
• 28:27
  Yeah. So this so you kind of started
• 28:29
  already covering the section you ended up cutting, which is that
• 28:31
  some of that identity piece, right.
• 28:33
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 28:33
  So verse text on screen. So this verse 48, the Jews
• 28:38
  answered him. Aren't you are aren't we right
• 28:41
  in saying that was the last verse.
• 28:42
  I actually. Did yeah.
• 28:43
  You're, you're a Samaritan. You're demon possessed.
• 28:46
  Yep. I'm not possessed by a demon,
• 28:47
  but I honor my father. You dishonor me.
• 28:49
  So I think we got it. Really.
• 28:50
  I mean, I think that's the heartbeat.
• 28:52
  Like their their confusion is like, you know, everyone we
• 28:56
  think is a central figure died like.
• 28:59
  Are you really? Saying you're different to them,
• 29:01
  not similar. Like it's one thing to come and
• 29:04
  say I'm like Moses. That would be a lot to take for
• 29:09
  these guys. I'm like Abraham.
• 29:11
  That would be, but to say qualitatively, I'm different.
• 29:16
  I'm way beyond these guys. Not only am I, you know, not
• 29:20
  going to to die and stay dead, I also was there watching them as
• 29:26
  they did what they did. Which is why.
• 29:28
  It's going to be fun. Spoiler alert without Alex
• 29:31
  already said this, which is why it's going to be so fun doing
• 29:36
  Lent and Holy Week and Resurrection Sunday in this vein
• 29:42
  is because. It's almost the the.
• 29:46
  Audience. Jesus's audience in the book of
• 29:48
  John versus his claims. They're like, oh, he died, Yeah.
• 29:53
  Just did everything. That, you know, all Abraham
• 29:55
  died. He is.
• 29:56
  So at best, Jesus was a pretty nifty prophet.
• 30:01
  Yeah. And then resurrection happens.
• 30:03
  He's and he's like mic drop. Yeah, I am, I told.
• 30:06
  You. Guys, so I am, I always said it
• 30:08
  reminds. Me of actually Jeff you heard
• 30:10
  that story about Babe Ruth where he like theoretic the the rumour
• 30:16
  is that he goes out to to hit and he points to this spot in
• 30:21
  the bleachers and then he hits the wall exactly on that spot
• 30:24
  yeah yeah and they call it the. Call chart.
• 30:26
  Yeah, and I'm like, I mean on a completely different level.
• 30:30
  That's what Jesus says. Like he's all the time.
• 30:33
  He's like death and then resurrection and no one really
• 30:35
  understands it. And there's like, yeah, we'll
• 30:37
  see. And then?
• 30:37
  When he dies, they're like, yeah, just another guy.
• 30:40
  Yeah. And then he rises again and it's
• 30:41
  like they're like, oh, yeah, he was on to something.
• 30:45
  But one of my favorite quotes. Around Resurrection is is from a
• 30:48
  guy called blanking on his first name.
• 30:53
  Now, his last name's Clowny. And he says, you know, I think
• 30:57
  one of the things that we forget with resurrection is that
• 31:00
  because we live 2000 years after this event, we look back at this
• 31:03
  different period and say, like, oh, well, they probably expected
• 31:08
  that kind of thing, or they thought about those things in
• 31:11
  in, you know, 2000 years ago. And it has this great line where
• 31:14
  he says the dead stayed dead with the same monotony 2000
• 31:19
  years ago as they do today. But that's so great.
• 31:22
  Yeah. This was not something that was
• 31:24
  more normal in that time. Yeah, well.
• 31:28
  We got another question, which is our favorite kind of
• 31:30
  question, which is actually just a comment saying how awesome we
• 31:33
  are, man. Send us.
• 31:35
  Those questions all the time. Yeah, no, that was great.
• 31:40
  Thank you so much for the encouragement.
• 31:41
  It just says, just wanted to say that you guys are doing an
• 31:43
  incredible job. Really appreciate you all and
• 31:46
  what you do would love to do a question but can't keep up with
• 31:50
  you guys Just know that the last Sunday and the last several
• 31:54
  weeks have been so great. Well, we.
• 31:56
  We. Loved the Advent season, right?
• 31:59
  Yes, it was a gift I I loved. It so much and in on like 5
• 32:05
  different levels yeah there was like this artist in me that came
• 32:08
  out that I just oh man yeah. That song you played of your
• 32:12
  own? Beautiful, I mean.
• 32:14
  I love having a mandolin up there on an upright bass and,
• 32:18
  like, a choir and, like, oh, just handle.
• 32:22
  Yeah. I mean, Handle snuck his way
• 32:24
  into our congregation and, like, blessed us with some beautiful
• 32:28
  lyric. Yeah.
• 32:29
  So. And it was fun.
• 32:31
  So thank you for the encouragement.
• 32:35
  Yes. So.
• 32:39
  That's all our questions. Brilliant.
• 32:43
  But I thought I have one. Question.
• 32:45
  Oh well, that's great too. So towards the end of your.
• 32:49
  Message if you remember hopefully you remember I'm
• 32:52
  putting you on the spot think of gay it's all coming back.
• 32:53
  It's. All coming back, All right,
• 32:55
  good. Which means next week's sermons
• 32:58
  erased. That's what I'm worried about.
• 33:00
  Because I've got to. Preach it for a bunch of guys in
• 33:02
  a minute. So, yeah, yeah.
• 33:05
  So towards the end, you move this to a little bit more
• 33:08
  practical place. Can you just remind us, you
• 33:12
  know, again, it's midweek, maybe that touched some people's
• 33:16
  hearts and they had some intentions.
• 33:19
  Yeah, going out of the sermon to engage this.
• 33:23
  Can you just remind the congregation?
• 33:25
  Well, I I think the. Verse that stood.
• 33:27
  Out for me as an. Invite is.
• 33:31
  If the sun sets you. Free.
• 33:32
  You will be free indeed. Yeah, and.
• 33:36
  Then you. Talk to people and you live a
• 33:38
  life of faith and and. I would probably.
• 33:43
  Say, for me, freedom has felt more complex than that.
• 33:48
  Verse on the surface suggests that.
• 33:52
  Now, of course, that works on two different levels.
• 33:56
  So on one level what Jesus is saying is when you're free, all
• 34:01
  obligations are gone. So it's not that I don't believe
• 34:05
  what Jesus said intellectually, I believe it every time.
• 34:10
  It's just that there's definitely been times in my life
• 34:13
  where my internal experience of that.
• 34:19
  Has been different. My.
• 34:21
  Sense of what it is. To live free from guilt for the
• 34:24
  past of the sense of still trying to please God, perhaps in
• 34:29
  the presence in the present has been has maybe affected how I
• 34:35
  experienced that freedom. And I know just from talking to
• 34:38
  people, not alone actually that I there was a survey done not
• 34:41
  long ago of pastors and, and the question was how many of you as
• 34:44
  pastors still feel like you try to earn God's favour?
• 34:48
  And the answer was 50%. And I was surprised it wasn't
• 34:51
  higher, you know, so. So.
• 34:53
  I think it's not. It's certainly not.
• 34:55
  That means 50% of the. People told the truth.
• 34:58
  Yeah, yeah, 50. Percent were lying right.
• 35:01
  And so there's I'm going to see if I can pull it up because I
• 35:03
  don't have it on my, I don't think I have it right here.
• 35:12
  But I had this amazing. Quote by Henry now and that
• 35:14
  really stuck out to me. Yeah.
• 35:16
  Let me see if I can that that's based.
• 35:27
  On a show I know, yeah, it's a. It's a.
• 35:29
  Terrible thing, isn't it? So I might just have to give it
• 35:30
  up. We're preparing for the show.
• 35:32
  As we speak, Yeah, yeah, yeah. But.
• 35:36
  I can't grab it, but that that the idea he presents is this
• 35:41
  idea that like I am walking a journey back to God all
• 35:45
  throughout my life and it's so filled with spaces where I, you
• 35:51
  know, know I've lived a life less worthy than a son.
• 35:58
  And yet it's hard for me to hold on to the fact that God's grace
• 36:02
  is greater than any of the failures that I might have might
• 36:09
  have, any of the failures, any of my failures, I guess.
• 36:12
  Yeah, like, like, I think that's what I spoke to about people
• 36:16
  afterwards. It seemed to resonate, that
• 36:18
  sense of, oh, that's a reminder that often, like freedom is won
• 36:24
  by Jesus but not fully held on to or lived into by his
• 36:29
  followers. And so I think that's the invite
• 36:32
  for us of that passage, for those of us that would say,
• 36:34
  well, we're very different to the Pharisees.
• 36:36
  We're not saying we don't need your freedom, we don't want your
• 36:38
  freedom. We have Abraham in the next
• 36:41
  chapter will become, we have Moses.
• 36:43
  Yeah, I, I think. Actually.
• 36:46
  We just, it's such good news, it's hard to believe at times,
• 36:50
  Yeah. And we we don't have ways of
• 36:56
  like quantifying that. And freedom's actually a very.
• 37:02
  I don't know if humans. Encounter true freedom other
• 37:05
  than in Christ? Well, we don't.
• 37:07
  We certainly don't. Because like.
• 37:10
  For example, you don't have maximum freedom within your own
• 37:15
  nature. Like, you're not free to be a
• 37:16
  bird. Sorry.
• 37:17
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you are not free to sprout
• 37:20
  wings and fly. Yeah.
• 37:21
  So it's not you. You're always constrained by
• 37:25
  something. And then we also don't.
• 37:27
  Encounter grace in many other places.
• 37:30
  I remember Philip Bianci, I think it was said that grace is
• 37:33
  much more present in language than it is in life.
• 37:38
  So like, we actually use that language.
• 37:40
  Like we talk about gratis. We talk about people being
• 37:43
  persona non grata, which actually means a person without
• 37:46
  grace. Like, the world comes up a lot.
• 37:49
  Yeah, but. You very.
• 37:50
  Rarely see it anywhere else. Very few of us have had jobs
• 37:54
  where we've said we're not doing that job anymore and the the
• 37:57
  employer has said, well I want to pay you anyway.
• 37:59
  Yeah, that's a rarity. Like so, so because our everyday
• 38:04
  life very rarely gives us an experience of grace, actually
• 38:10
  holding on to Jesus, incredible grace, I think, I think becomes
• 38:14
  more challenging. It's it's a it's a gift from a
• 38:17
  different world. Absolutely.
• 38:19
  And that's why. Jesus comes from a different
• 38:21
  world to bring it, because we don't.
• 38:22
  Our world doesn't operate in that way.
• 38:25
  Yeah. You.
• 38:26
  Know even like you look at father child relationships which
• 38:29
  are probably the closest in resemblance to our.
• 38:33
  Relationship with. God, how many times do we as a
• 38:36
  parent say like, well, I'm just so mad at you, I don't want to
• 38:39
  talk to you for the next few minutes.
• 38:41
  Like, well, what does that teach a kid?
• 38:43
  Well, eventually, like, God will stop being mad at you and he'll
• 38:46
  want to talk to you, but you're certainly going to have to
• 38:51
  behave well for the next few minutes or few hours or few
• 38:54
  days. Like everywhere, our world gets
• 38:57
  coloured with graceless tones. And it's only in in Jesus that
• 39:03
  we get that, that picture of grace.
• 39:05
  Yeah. And.
• 39:07
  The other thing is I I think because we're so unfamiliar with
• 39:11
  true freedom, true grace, that when it's offered, we don't
• 39:16
  even, even if we want to intellectually acknowledge it.
• 39:21
  We don't know how to swim. In the waters of grace.
• 39:26
  We'd actually. It, it actually would be safer
• 39:30
  if there was some harder boundaries for us to swim in
• 39:35
  because that gives our brains the sense of security and
• 39:39
  safety. Excuse me.
• 39:43
  And then it's like just being thrown from the kiddie pool into
• 39:49
  the wide ocean of grace. That's the first profound image
• 39:53
  of grace that I ever encountered.
• 39:55
  That blew me away. Was Romans 5 because I'd done.
• 40:00
  I'd done this study on on faith and grace, and I determined, you
• 40:06
  know, what I need in my life is more grace.
• 40:11
  Sorry, I need some. Water, but I don't have any.
• 40:14
  So I decided I found this definition of grace that said
• 40:18
  something along the lines of like grace is the power of God
• 40:22
  that fuels the life of the believer.
• 40:25
  And I was like, all right. Well, I know that I don't have
• 40:28
  enough power because I'm screwing.
• 40:30
  Up this way. And I'm a loser in this way and
• 40:32
  loser in that way. So how do I get this grace?
• 40:34
  So I started doing this word study through and I landed in
• 40:37
  this passage and I've been hunting for weeks in like in a
• 40:42
  fervent way, 10 to to 12 hours a day at Bible College of study
• 40:47
  through grace. Every passage in detail word for
• 40:50
  word for word, word and I read this passage.
• 40:52
  Therefore, since we've been justified by through faith, we
• 40:56
  have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom
• 40:59
  we have gained access by faith in the grace.
• 41:02
  And that's the reason why I was in this passage.
• 41:04
  I just searched the word for for karis, which is the Greek word
• 41:07
  grace, through whom we have gained access by faith into this
• 41:12
  grace in which we stand. And suddenly I had this image
• 41:17
  pop into my mind that I was this, I was standing in the
• 41:23
  stuff. So here I'd spent hours of my of
• 41:27
  every day for three or four weeks studying Grace, feeling
• 41:32
  like this frantic child running around trying to find this lost
• 41:36
  object that I desperately needed.
• 41:38
  And then this passage. Hit me and I'm standing and I
• 41:42
  pictured this ocean and I'm standing on the surface of an
• 41:46
  ocean and I cannot see the end of grace from as far behind me
• 41:50
  as I can imagine and as far forward as I can imagine and as
• 41:54
  far below me as I could ever possibly imagine.
• 41:56
  I'm standing in this grace. And I was like, oh.
• 42:02
  There's not a certain I. Can't even, I I thought I
• 42:06
  couldn't find grace and I can't find the end of it.
• 42:10
  And it like I just started weeping there in my little at my
• 42:13
  little desk in the lunch room at a Bible college with my Bible
• 42:18
  open. And I just was like, I'm
• 42:19
  standing in grace. Yeah, it's overwhelming
• 42:23
  beautiful. All.
• 42:25
  Right. Well, on.
• 42:26
  That bombshell. Oh well.
• 42:28
  I. Miss that show so much on that
• 42:30
  bombshell. We'll call it a day.
• 42:32
  Thank you. They didn't use it anymore, so.
• 42:33
  We've just stolen it. Yeah, perfect.
• 42:35
  And we at. Least have one of us who's
• 42:37
  qualified to say it well on that bombshell.
• 42:40
  That's right to say when you do that, you're looking for the
• 42:43
  button. And on that bombshell, bye.
• 42:46
  See ya.