Latest / Wesley at FSU & TSC / "Peace" | Sunday Service | December 8, 2024

Transcript

"Peace" | Sunday Service | December 8, 2024 · Wesley at FSU & TSC

• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Hi everybody, it's Bryant.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: I just wanted to uh drop a quick note here for two things before we get into our sermon.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: First, there is uh a moment where I had to go to our backup recording uh for the sermon recording because I got cut off by the computer.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so I just wanted you to know that you're gonna hear the sound shift there, and that's why um I've been trying to do, you know, we've been we've been we have some growth opportunities in the way in which we record these things.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh secondly, we are gonna take a big break for the rest of December, and we will be back on January 10th.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just wanted you to know that these aren't gonna be there every week.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and that's an important time for our students to get some some rest and for our staff to take a little break, too.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: We are in the midst of Advent as I'm recording this, uh, but I just hope that everybody has a very peace, peaceful, and safe uh Christmas uh vacation and holiday.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's a very meaningful time for so many of us.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for listening.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for uh staying with us on this podcast, and I appreciate all of the effort that you've put into uh staying with Wesley and all the support you've given us.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: All right, Merry Christmas.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: All right, now we can go to our sermon.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: I want to give a message this morning just entitled Peace, because it is the second Sunday of Advent.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: And in the second Sunday of Advent, we talk about peace.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so I want to point us toward this passage, which is gonna be Isaiah 11.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna, there we go.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 11, we're gonna look at this passage and a little bit more, but let's start here.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Here now the reading of God's word.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: The wolf will live with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: The calf and the young lion will feed together, and a little child will lead them.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: The cow and the bear will graze, their young will lie down together, and a lion will eat straw like an ox.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: A nursing child will play over the snake's hole.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Toddlers will reach right over the serpent's den.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: They won't harm or destroy anywhere on my holy mountain.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: The earth will surely be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, just as the water covers the sea.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray over the preaching of God's word.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Oh God, your word is a lamp into our feet and a light into our path.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: May it speak to us, may it speak through us for the establishment of your kingdom on this earth.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: O God, we give you all honor, praise, and glory.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight and in your sight alone, O God, you are our rock, you are our redeemer, and we love you because you first loved us.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: We pray this in your name.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: All right, listen, if you've been here over the past couple months, you'll know that I referenced Gracie Abrams.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: I referenced Wicked.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And on today, December the 8th, 2024, the time has finally come because it is the last day of the Eras Tour to reference a certain person named Taylor.
• 4:23
  unknown: Woo!
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you are not a Taylor Swift fan, you're gonna be okay.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you are a Taylor Swift fan, try to love your neighbor.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so in 2020, though, in March of 2020, the world shut down.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: You're probably familiar with this.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody said, hey, we're just gonna go home for two weeks and everything's gonna slow and it'll be awesome, right?
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then we'll all come back to work.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then two weeks went by and they were like, maybe we need another week.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Three weeks went by, four weeks went by, six weeks went by, and college students started making decisions about how they were gonna finish out the semester because all of your things, and you most of you weren't here at the time, but if you were in college at the time, your things were at campus or at your apartment, but you were not, and so you had to figure out how you're gonna get all of that stuff back.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was a chaotic time, was it not?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: It was a chaotic, crazy time, and it went way further than six weeks, it went, you know, about a year or two years.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: I had the joy of moving here in them in the Tallahassee too, Wesley, in that time frame, not an ideal time.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: But our good friend, she decided at that point to do what she knew how to do best, which was write songs.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's all she can do.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't mean that as a as a dig.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's one of the things she does best.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Is that better?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: She she writes songs that are mostly good.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't expect that.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: You should for those of you who can see the page's just absolute the travesty on her face.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: How dare you! Paige, you probably should have talked to your therapist about that.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so um, I'm just kidding.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just kidding.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Taylor wrote songs, and she did it a little differently than she's done it in the past, because if we're being honest, the way Taylor has written songs in the past is about her relationships, right?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, I mean, we're being broad here, but she would write about her relationships.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then this time, because she was quarantined like the rest of us, she was just going through it a little bit more.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: So she started to storytell in different ways.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: She started to write uh about different people and different situations and characters and kind of put herself in those shoes, which is, I think, a pretty cool way to do it.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: And she released the first of what ended up being two albums called Folklore.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, folklore.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: On that album, there's a song at the very end.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it's like track 15 or something, and it's called Peace.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it literally has almost no instrumentation.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: It has this like repeating synth part from Justin Vernon.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Who's Justin Vernon?
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Boni Vert, there we go.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it has this repeating synth part that Justin Vernon did, which he got a lot of credit for, but it probably took him about six, six seconds, you know, to put together in Pro Tools.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then and then some cool little bass lines, and it's a very peaceful track, but the lyrics are not like that at all, which is kind of cool.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's artistic, it's as artistic as pop music can get, I think, right?
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so you've got this really peaceful instrumental track, and then these non-peaceful lyrics that are about her being in a relationship, okay, she is in a relationship with people who she cannot provide peace to because her life is insane.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because if she dates somebody, even if she wants to keep it a secret, a paparazzi grabs a$20,000 lens and they stand up on a hill and they try to capture her on a beach so they can sell the photos.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: And as soon as it comes out that she's dating that person, that person's life is transformed.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: She was dating at the time a guy named Joe.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Joe was famous in his own right, but not near, he's no Travis Kelsey, you know.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: They're not nearly to the level that he was at the time.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: And she said to him, you know, hey, I can't bring you the peace that you need.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because my life is terrible.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: I have no control over the chaos that exists around my life.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's a brilliant line in the song, which I think uh summarizes where she was.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: It says, There are robbers in the east.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's a direct reference to Scooter Braun, who bought her music and wouldn't sell it to her, because he's a real nice guy.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then that's a joke.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's why she remade them all if you didn't follow.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: The second line of that, which I, if you follow Taylor at all, is there are cl- so there's robbers in the east and clowns in the West.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Clowns in the West.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Whose last name is West?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: So she has a life that has no peace to it.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of controversy behind that over time.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of celebrities who deal with this their entire life.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of people say, well, you know, they're making so much money.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like, can you can you really blame them?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like, or can you can you really like have any sympathy for them?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: But I do have sympathy for people who can't find peace in their life.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: You can't buy it.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's impossible.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: You can't purchase it.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: She has more money than God.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: She cannot purchase it.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think it also hits with us, it resonates a little bit because all of us go through a little bit of uneasiness and chaos and lack of peace in our lives.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know the people in your life that are uh drama queens?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know the people who like things are going great, and then you're like, man, did you have to stir that up?
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: And you're not nodding your head right now because you're thinking of the name.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: You have a name of a person in your life right now who you can think of.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Why were you stirring that up when you didn't have to?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: There are plenty of people who do that.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can't think of that person in your life who does that, guess who it is?
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: You.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Super hard to find that.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: I get the joy as a campus minister to see all of it and hear about all of it.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, at least most of it.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure there's stuff you guys hide.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Most of it.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: If somebody asked me the other day, like, how are things going?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: This is a crazy time of year for campus ministry.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: We've I was here four out of five week nights last week.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: We're here over the weekend.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: We've got events all this next week, and then I'm taking a group of us to go see seminaries a week after that, and then I get to breathe.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I said to that person, I said, Yeah, I think they're all ready for a break from each other.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody said yes.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: The semester is almost over.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've been paying attention to the national uh realm, but it's really hard to find peace.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's fascinating to me that in the United States, uh, so often it like chaos follows chaos, follows chaos.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: You might get a little glimmer of peace and hope, and then it just follows chaos and follows chaos, follows chaos.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Let me take you back to when before most of you were born.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: In the year 2000, uh there was a very contentious election between Al Gore and George W.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Bush, and it came down to Florida to make the decision.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, people were on different sides of the aisle, and that's always the case, uh, but it was a very, very tight, very contentious election, and of course ended up in the court system.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we didn't know that night who won, and we didn't know for a long time, and then there was a lot of debate about whether they had actually won or they hadn't.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so there was a really contentious time, a chaotic time in the in that place.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh September of 2001, we were attacked for the first time on our mainland.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: We'd been attacked at Pearl Harbor before, but for the first time on our mainland, we were attacked, and all of a sudden, everybody who disliked each other for a split second got on the same page because we were America United, and it was all over the TV and the media and all that until the war in Afghanistan and Iraq started, and then the chaos just continued again.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: We eventually elected our first black president, uh, which was exciting for a lot of people and frustrating for some people, and uh there were differing ideologies, and then it started to get more divided.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have to tell you what we've been going through the last few years.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Just complete division and chaos.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really hard to find peace in the middle of that.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody just turns on each other.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Watch cable news if you don't believe me.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody just turns on each other.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: As I was thinking about this week, uh I talked with a few of you and I was just asking basic questions like, are you excited?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Are you excited to go home?
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: Are you excited to get some time off?
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Excited to go spend some time with your family?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: And a few of you, I won't mention who, a few of you just kind of looked at me with deer in the headlights, like, please send me anywhere else but home.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because peace is really hard for many of you to find at home.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: School represents freedom, school represents joy, ownership, empowerment, and home for many of you for an assortment of different reasons.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: It does not.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's really hard to find that peace.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: What the world has always needed was peace.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: I want to go to Isaiah 11:1.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is later on.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't realize Taylor was still up there, but congrats to her.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you were a Bible study on Wednesday night, you heard this passage.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I'll walk through a little bit of that here.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: I won't go into too much detail because we're gonna get to verse 6 in a second, but this is out of the prophet Isaiah.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: A prophet is the voice of God, the voice speaking a truth into the world that the world needs to hear, speaking into the Israelite people in the way that they need to hear.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's friendly and sometimes it's not.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's hopeful and sometimes it's critical.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of those hopeful times.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: The Israelites had uh, they were, they were being, they were facing some persecution from the Assyrians.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: They were about to be attacked, and things were not gonna go super well for them.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: And here's what Isaiah says: a shoot will grow up from the stump of Jesse.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Jesse is the father of David.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: The stump represents a dead life that's going to be raised up again.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's a common theme in our faith.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: A shoot will grow up from the stump of Jesse, a branch will spout from its roots.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Next verse.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord's spirit will rest upon him, a spirit of wisdom and understanding, a spirit of planning and strength, a spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Next verse.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: He will delight in fearing the Lord.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: He won't judge by appearances, nor decide by hearsay.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: He will judge the needy with righteousness and decide with equity for those who suffer in the land.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: He's talking about Jesus, if you haven't picked up on it.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: He will strike the violent with the rod of his mouth.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: By the breath of his lips he will kill the wicked.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: Righteousness will be the belt around his hips, and faithfulness the belt around his waist.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: And you've heard this part.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: The wolf will live with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the young lion will feed together.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: A little child will lead them.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder who that could be.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: The cow and the bear will graze.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Their young will lie down together, and a lion will eat straw like an ox.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's a died.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Go to eight.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Bye-bye.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: A nursing child will play over the snake's hole.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: I am a father of two children.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: If they ever play over a snake's hole, I like it makes it makes me cringe just thinking about it.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Toddlers will reach right over the serpent's den.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Next verse.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: They won't harm or destroy anywhere on my holy mountain.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: I want to read that section again.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: They won't harm or destroy anywhere on my holy mountain.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: The earth will surely be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, just as the waters cover the sea.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: When God comes over the world, he talks about the spirit.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: And this is Genesis 1.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Talks about the Spirit coming over the waters.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: As a spirit was moving over the waters, spirit come move over us.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: Moving over the waters.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: And here Isaiah brings in this hope.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: This hope of a person.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in Isaiah 9, uh verse 6, he he calls that person the Prince of Peace.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: A child is born to us.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: You probably heard this on Christmas Eve sometime.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: A child is born to us, a son is given to us, and authority will be on his shoulders.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: He will be named wonderful counselor, mighty God, eternal father, prince of peace.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And did you hear the way in verses 6 and 9, he describes what that piece is going to look like?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: He talks about the the stump and the shoot coming up from the stump, and that's going to be Jesus.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: But then, you know, sometimes we need a little more explanation.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: So he gives us one metaphor and then follows it up and follows it up and follows it up.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: He says, the wolf will live with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the young lion will feed together.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: A little child will lead them.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when I first was reading this, back to verse six for a second, Karen.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: When I first was reading this, the wolf will live with the lamb.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: They seem to me like opposites.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Can we agree?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: They seem like opposites.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: The wolf and the lamb.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: And the leopard will lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the young lion will feed together.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: The opposites will live in harmony, peace, and joy.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing, awesome.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's the way I read it.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's pretty shallow of a reading.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: What is a wolf to a lamb?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: A predator.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the lamb is the prey.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: The leopard will lie down with the young goat.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: The calf and the young lion will feed together, and a little child will lead them.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: The predator and the prey will live together.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: The cow and the bear will graze.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Their young will lie down together, and a lion will eat straw like an ox.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: A nursing child will play over the snake's hole.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: I hate to think of a snake as a predator over our child, but I'm with it.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Toddlers will reach right over the serpent's den.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then the key, they won't harm or destroy anywhere on my holy mountain.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: So at first I read this as like, Democrats can live with Republicans.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Haters can live with Seminoles.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Never puzzle.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: But the truth is, it's way deeper than that.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: The predator will live with the prey.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: And bonus, keep reading, won't cause harm.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: Harm won't be done.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: What does a peace look like in the realm of the savior?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: A lack of harm.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Where the predator and the prey may live together.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: You've seen Ming Girls.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's a scene, particularly in the movie, where they actually describe the social dynamic that happens in schools as predator and prey.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: There are so many predators in our world.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: There are the obvious ones, the one you see on the evening news.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Sexual predators.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's a real predator in our world.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: There are the less obvious ones.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like a parent who won't love their child because she's green.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: There are friends who smile to your face and talk bad about you behind your back.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Predator and prey.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: There are people who want a job that you have.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Predator prey.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: How do we achieve easy?
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, we can't do it ourselves.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: We've been trying for a long time.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: And we're very bad at it.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Predator, pray.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: You ever notice how it's impossible for Congress to make an ethical decision?
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Predator, pray.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever noticed how politics have no morals?
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: Predator, pray.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because as soon as you're weak, I can step in and be a predator.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: What Jesus says is all that is going away.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the lion will live with the lamb.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: One of the coolest parts about the way in which we describe Jesus is he has a lot of titles.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: You saw them in chapter 9, verse 6.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: Prince of Peace, Lord of Lords, King of Kings, Eternal Father.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: We also call him the Lion and the Lamb.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: It seems weird because we live in a world, we have a brain that is set in the paradigm of predator prey.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: What he says is the two shall live together.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: He's lion because he's king, and he's lamb because he's humble.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: Do you see that juxtaposition?
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: The lion and the lamb.
• 23:01
  unknown: Peace.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: There's a Hebrew word for peace.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: I am scooting this because I broke it on the way over here.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's a Hebrew word for peace called shalom.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's a greeting.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's how, it's how uh both people in modern-day Hebrew greet each other, and also in ancient Hebrew would greet each other with peace to you.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's a way of saying, what's up?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how you doing?
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Everything going great?
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, yeah, you know, it's like we do where there's shalom is this big, encompassing word that means peace to you.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: And we don't mean peace like hope, peace, peace out.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, cool, cool, cool.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, peace to you and wholesome.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that in your life is peace.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: I hope in your life you will see peace, particularly for a people who have been beat down, struck, attacked for the history.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Peace to you.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think that one might be helpful for us as we greet each other, as we say goodbye to each other.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: Shalom to you, peace.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that would stop some of the predator prey.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's also my prayer this morning over you.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of you are in different places.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know where you are specifically.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you I do, some of you I don't.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: You might be in an amazing academic place, and you may be like, oh, this semester didn't go like I wanted it to.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: You might be like knowing what's the future for you, and you might be like, uh you might be really worried about the time you're gonna have to split at home.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't just mean between parents, but that may be the case.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: It also may be between friends and parents.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: Often uh they have differing opinions about how you should spend your time.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: Here's my prayer over you.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: In the same way that the Israelites would greet each other and say goodbye to each other.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: Shalom.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: Peace to you.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: May over this next month you recognize a peace within you that only comes from the Father.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't come from the world, it doesn't come from the nation, it doesn't come from your friends, it only comes from the one who can give you pure shalom.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: Peace be upon you.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: We have an opportunity this morning to come forward to the communion table.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: We do this every week here at Wesling.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because we believe that this is a place where Jesus gives us that shalom.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you think chaos or your life is chaos, imagine Jesus' the day before he's about to be murdered.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Murdered by the government, brought to them by his own people.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: Chaos.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: He goes into the garden to pray.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: He comes out of the garden and, or is, you know, coming out of his prayer in the garden, and he is turned over to the authorities by a friend of his.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: Talk about smiling in your face and backstabbing you afterward.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: The night before he did all that, he sat with all of them, including Judas, sat with all of them in the upper room.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: They enjoyed life together, they ate together, they prayed together, and then he took the bread that they were eating together, and he said, This is my body.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: He gave thanks to God for it, and he broke it.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Take, eat, all of you, every single one of you, take and eat this.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like he's saying, May this be the shalom over your life.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: And he took the bread or the cup.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: And he gave thanks to God for it.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, This is the blood of the new covenant poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: As often as you drink this, he said, Remember me.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost as if he would say, As often as you drink this, may shalom be over your life.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray over these elements.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: Holy God, pour out your Holy Spirit on these gifts of bread and the cup, make them be for us the body and blood of Christ, that we might be for the world, the body of Christ redeemed by your blood.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: Make us one with Christ in one in unity to all the world, at peace with all the world.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: Until you come in your final victory, and we feast at a peaceful, heavenly banquet.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: To you, God, we give all honor, praise, and glory.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.