Latest / Faith at Work / Do Not Go and Do Not Tell

Transcript

Do Not Go and Do Not Tell · Faith at Work

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: So there is a place,
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: an actual place in northern Israel where the air actually tastes like spirituality.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: I stood in that place sometime in the mid to late 1990s as Beth and I were serving
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: in Sicily as missionaries.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: And we went with Roy and Florence Kreider along with some of the ministry team
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: at Cornerstone, Mennonite, and we took a two-week-long study tour of Israel.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it was absolutely wonderful.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Two weeks walking the actual dirt that Jesus walked.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Really, few things in my life have shaped how I read Scripture more than that trip did.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: You start understanding as you do something like that that the Bible happened
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: on real hillsides,
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: in real weather, In front of real buildings that real people built for real reasons.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: One afternoon we came to the far north of the country,
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: up near the base of Mount Hermon, to a place called Caesarea Philippi.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: And we stood in what was just a beautiful garden area above a natural cave
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: that had been hollowed out by the water.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the light face, light stone cliff face was just out there.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: And out of the cliff,
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: out of this grota,
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: flowed this beautiful stream of water at the base of the mountain.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: It was green.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was green.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Cool and had the sound of running water in a country that was very, very dry and arid.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it also once was one of the most spiritually loaded places in the entire Bible.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it is in this place,
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: this exact place,
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Caesarea Philippine,
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: in front of this Rhoda,
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: that Jesus asks one of the most important questions that we see in our scripture.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think that we can really understand the question nor the answer
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: that Jesus gives,
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: nor what follows after the answer is given,
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: unless we really fully understand the significance
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Where this question is being asked.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Matthew says, now,
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi,
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: he asked his disciples, who do people say the Son of Man is?
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Matthew mentions the location in a way that I think to us sort of feels insignificant.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: The way that we might tell our friends the room in which a conversation just happened
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: But nothing about this location is insignificant to what is going on in this narrative.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: Caesarea Philippi is located about 25 miles north of the Sea of Galilee at the foot
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: of Mount Haran,
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: as I said,
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: built around a cave and a spring that fed one of the main sources of
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: the ported river.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in the Old Testament era,
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: the ground was called Baal God,
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: or Baal Hermon, named after the Canaanite storm and fertility god, Baal.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, long before Jesus ever set foot here,
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: this was a place where people had gone to worship power.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: By the time the Greeks arrived, that cave had been rededicated to Pan, the God-footed
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: The goat-footed God, that's very hard to say, even though I practice.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: The goat-footed God of wild places and sudden fear.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: I just love to say that, wild places and sudden fear.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: And worship of him on this site is attested by inscriptions that we see written on the walls.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: The rock face around the cave was Carved into niches,
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: and in those niches,
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: it held statues of Pan, along with Echo, Hermes, and other minor deities.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And for generations,
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: people threw sacrifices into the cave,
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: into the water in the cave that was called the Gate of Hades,
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: as offerings to whatever lived underneath the water.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then Rome arrives.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Augustus Caesar handed this territory to Herod Great.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And Herod,
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: ever the political survivor,
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: built a gleaming marble temple to Caesar Augustus near the same cave,
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: roughly 20 years before Jesus was born.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: And when Herod died,
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: His son Philip the tetrarch expanded the town into his own administrative capital
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: and renamed it in 3 BC Caesarea to honor the emperor and Philippi
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: to put his own name on it and distinguish it from another Caesarea that was down
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: the road.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: And Jewish tradition of that same era reflected in the writings
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: of first Enoch Connected Mount Hermon itself with the fallen watchers of Genesis 6.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: The corrupted spiritual powers thought to have first descended to earth on that very mountain.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: So here in Caesarea Philippi,
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: we have old gods and new gods and emperors,
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: temples,
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: and a mountain with a door reputation stretched all the way back to Genesis.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: So, when Jesus walks his disciples into that district,
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: he is walking them into the most crowded intersection of rival claims
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: to ultimate power in the entire region.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Every stone around them is arguing for somebody's god or somebody's empire or both
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: at the very same time.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it is precisely there Standing in the middle of centuries of answers
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: that Jesus asks his question.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Who do people say that the Son of Man is?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and they said, well,
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: some say John the Baptist,
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: but others Elijah, and others Jeremiah, or maybe one of the prophets.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Notice, every one of these answers Is a flattery guess for Jesus.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: John the Baptist back from the dead.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Elijah the great prophet promised to return before the day of the Lord.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah weeping prophet who confronted kings.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody in the crowd is mocking Jesus.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: They were reaching for the highest categories of who he might be that they had.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And still,
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Every guess falls short because every one of them makes Jesus a very good example
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: of something that has already existed in the past.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: A prophet, a forerunner, a moral teacher in a long, honorable line.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then Jesus turns the question from the crowd to the twelve standing right before him.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: But who Do you say that I am?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Not what does mainstream religion say, not what does public opinion say this week.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: You, here, now,
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: in front of Pan's Cave and Caesar's Palace Temple,
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: both of them still claiming to be the most important thing on this hillside,
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: who do you say that I am?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, Simon Peter just loves this.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now remember,
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: they are standing in front of niches carved for gods who were,
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: in every sense that matters, dead.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Statutes do not breathe.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Emperors, however powerful they might have been, died.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: And Augustus himself had been dead for decades.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: By this point,
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: the cave behind them was worshiped precisely because people believed
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: the dead lived down in the darkness under the water and the earth.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And into that, Peter says, the living God.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Not a story about God, not a monument to God.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: The son of the living God standing in front of him in the shape of a Galilean carpenter's son.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus' response matters just as much as Peter's confession.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Blessed are you, Simon,
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: son of Jonah,
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that every empire needs from its subjects is agreement about
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: who holds ultimate power in the world.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: And in this place,
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Caesarea Philippi,
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: You could see the statues, you could read the inscriptions on Herod's temple.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: You could not, however, arrive at Peter's confession by looking harder at any of that.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: That kind of knowing is not information gathered from the world.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: It is given.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: It is revealed,
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: which means the very realm the disciples are standing on,
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: built up stone by stone to make ultimate power visible and impressive,
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: cannot actually produce the truth Peter just spoke.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Only God can give that.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then Jesus says, and I tell you, You are Peter.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there's a play of words,
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you know,
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: sitting right in the Greek that our English language just doesn't name,
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: doesn't put out in front of us unless we do a bit of study.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Peter's name, Petros, And the word for rock, Petra, sit right next to each other.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: Here.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: You are rock.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: And on this rock.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Or, my version, well done, Rocky.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: You rock.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: But, back to the place where they are standing.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Think about it.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then the word play gets bigger than just
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is looking at an actual cliff face,
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: a building built out of rock,
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: an actual cave mouth that generations of people had treated as a doorway to
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: the underworld.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: And he chooses that exact spot to say out loud,
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: The gates of Hades will not prevail against what Hades is about to build in
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: the world.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: That phrase, again, gate of Hades, was not new to the disciples.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: It shows up already in the Old Testament in Isaiah and in Job as a way of talking
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: about death itself.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: The gate you pass through and do not walk back from So there are two things true all
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: at once here, not one instead of the other.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is standing at a literal cave that his listeners already associated with
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: the underworld and called the gates of Hades.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: And he is also reaching back into a familiar Hebrew idiom for death.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Both readings point in the same direction, and it is not a pun.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Gates.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: By their very nature, do not attack.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody has ever seen a gate go on a march.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: Gates defend.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Gates hold something back.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: So when Jesus says the gates of Hades will not prevail against his mission,
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: I do not think that the picture is the church as an army stormy hell's front door.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: As much as we love that image in our hands.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think the picture is closer to this.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Death itself for all its ancient cave mouth underworld menace will not be able
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: to hold the mission of Jesus back.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: It will not be able to keep it in Whatever door death has always been able to close,
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: it will not be able to close this one.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: That is resurrection power at promise.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Spoken in front of one landmark in the whole region built to memorialize
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: that death is permanent.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then he says, I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: And whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: And whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Again, notice where they are standing.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is Philip the Tetrarch's capital.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: A town built on a project that Rome's authority is trying to claim and name.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: And perpetuate in Jewish territory.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Keys, binding, loosing.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is the vocabulary of who gets to open doors and who gets to shut them.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Spoken directly across the valley from the people
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: who would genuinely believe they had the authority over this land.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is not handing Peter a sword or a legion.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: He is handing him keys, stewardship, Not conquest.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: A completely different kind of authority than every other kind on display that day.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: And he chooses to announce it in the one place built to make Rome's version
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: of authority look unanswerable.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think the most interesting thing in the whole narrative here,
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: then Jesus,
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Sternly ordered,
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: And here's where the sermon gets it titled.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Do not go, do not tell.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: After arguably the highest confession,
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: any human being had yet spoken about Jesus,
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: standing in front of every god and every emperor's temple that could have One,
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus tells his closest friends to be quiet.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, here's what I think.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Peter and the others did not yet have the whole picture of Jesus.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: They had the right word, Messiah.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Messiah.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: But they didn't understand the whole mission underneath it yet.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: If we would have kept reading, we would have noticed something in the next verses.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Go just past that this morning.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus starts to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer, be killed, and then be raised.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And Peter,
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: the same man who just spoke the truest sentence in this chapter,
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: pulls Jesus aside and rebukes him for saying it.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: He still expected a conquering king, not a suffering savior.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: If the disciples had gone out that same week and told everyone in Caesarea Philippi
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: that the Messiah had come,
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: they would have been technically right But functionally, wrong.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: They would have handed people a partial Jesus.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And in the same breath, a distorted image of God.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because whatever picture of Jesus we carry is also the picture
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: of God we quietly hand to everyone watching us.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: I have met a lot of Christians like that over the years,
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: sincere,
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Confident and still carrying a bent or partial picture of
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: who Jesus actually presented himself to be.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: That is part of why I stepped away from vocational ministry for a season.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: Not because I stopped believing,
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: because instead I kept running into people who did believe loudly at times.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: While embodying something that did not look much like the Jesus of the Gospels.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: I am convinced,
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm afraid to say,
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: that the biggest obstacle facing the church today is not that people don't know
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: a Christian.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, it is that they do know a Christian.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: And what they see, they do not want any part of.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it has nothing to do with their view of Jesus.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: The Barna Group,
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: I read a lot of studies,
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: if you haven't noticed yet, and they put actual numbers on that feeling recently.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: In a survey of adults and teens across the country,
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: 71% still view Jesus himself
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: But as the same people about Christianity as a faith,
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: the kind that people like us carry around, only 15% say they respect it.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: Nearly half call it judgmental.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Nearly half call it hypocritical.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: When they asked why they hesitate to embrace what we believe,
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: the single most common answer is not doubt about the resurrection or the miracles
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: or anything that the text tells us.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: It is the hypocrisy of religious people.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is really, really important, friends.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is still winning.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: We're just the link of the boat.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Every one of us who says we follow Jesus is telling somebody every week who he is,
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: whether we're getting it right or not.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: So let me say the hard part as directly as I can and hopefully as unoffensively as I can.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: Based on what I'm reading here in this text,
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: based on what Jesus actually says to Jesus and his disciples,
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: There are just some people who should not be talking about Jesus yet.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Not because they're bad people and not because God has given up on them,
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: but because they do not yet get it fully.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: And every word they seek about him while still in that condition chips away
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: a little more of who he really is and who he really is.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Said he was.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus himself apparently believed that.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: He's standing there with his own hand-picked, 12 men he loved and had trained for three years.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: And he still tells them, not yet.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Not you, not this week.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: If Jesus was willing to silence his own inner circle rather than let
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: an Finished understanding of him loose on the world.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: That ought to sober every single one of us.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: It should make us think a little bit more about when we open our mouths and when we don't.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: What we comment on on social media.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, the reason Jesus tells his folks to be quiet is simply this.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: A half-formed messiah Spoken too soon does more damage than good news of
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: a Savior spoken a little later.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Once it is that time to become home in us.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: So what do we do with all of this sitting here in the valley instead of standing in that garden?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm going to offer you three things, and then I'll be available all week.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: Take the heat.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: First, take the question, who do you say that I am, home,
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: before you take it anywhere else.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: Before you post it,
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: argue about it,
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: or hand it over to your kids at supper, Sit with it yourself this week.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: Who do you say that he is?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Not who did your parents say that he is?
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: Not who does a congregation say that he is?
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: Not who does the pastor say that he is?
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: Sit with it long enough.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: Sit with that question and quiet long enough until it really settles within you.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: And ask yourself,
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: Does that jive with who Jesus says he is?
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: Second, think of one person,
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: just one,
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: who may have met a smaller or more bent Jesus than the real one because
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: of something you said or did before you had a better understanding of
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: who he really is.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: And don't worry, not suggesting that you need to track them down.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: And rectify the situation.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you do, maybe you don't.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: But I think we need to think about it a little bit.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think we need to let that sink in a little bit.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: And if all we do is pray for that person tonight before we go to bed,
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: then I thank God we'll be pleased.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: And third,
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: and this is a very brethren way to close,
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: let your answer show up in your hands before it shows up in your mouth.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Notice somebody before they ask.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Show up with a meal before it is requested.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Sit in the waiting room before the call.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Let people meet a fuller Jesus in what you do for them quietly and let your words,
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: whenever they finally come, only confirm what your life has already told them.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Peter, Well, he eventually got to preach.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: And as the story goes, he preached pretty well.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: But first,
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: he had to learn to serve, to wash feet, to break bread, and to be broken himself.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: Before his words can carry the whole truth about Jesus instead of just a piece of it.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: We all still walk into our Caesarea Philippi most weeks of our lives.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a cave in the northern part of Israel,
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: but it is a noisy intersection of rival claims that
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: Call out for our attention and our loyalty.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Just the same.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: Money says it is the living God.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: Fear says it is.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: Politicians,
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: platforms,
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: versions of success,
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: they all say it loudly with their own temples built right out in the open.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: And into all of that noise, Jesus still asks the same question he asked on that hillside.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: Not who does the crowd say that I am, but who do you say that I am?