Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / April 18, 2021 | True Story - Failure: The Back Door to Success

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April 18, 2021 | True Story - Failure: The Back Door to Success · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Grab a Bible if you would.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Turn to the last chapter of the Gospel of John.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: True story.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: And what that is, is we're telling resurrection stories this month.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it's nice to be preaching a message about a resurrection story in this room because our Topeka Bible Church has stained glass windows here in our Mulvaine building.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope those of you in College Avenue watching this, or those who are watching online, will someday come and see that window.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's our signature window.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's up high on the east side of this auditorium.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it's an amazing stained glass representation of the resurrection.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Feel free to swivel around, take a look at it.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: When the newspaper, a couple times in my 40 years, has put that picture on the front page of its Easter newspaper, brought over cameras.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's their favorite picture.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's my favorite picture.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's the picture of the resurrection.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so this month, uh the three of us, Alex, Connor, and I, decided that we would preach a continuing series on the resurrection.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: So uh Good Friday was a true story, the crucifixion.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Easter morning, true story, the resurrection story.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Then came um it had to be Connor.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Was that Connor last week?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 4th, 11th.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is the 18th, right?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: So uh you need to retire me or something.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: So the 11th.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Connor preached on doubt, which is the last story in John 20.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna take the very next story, which is the first story in John chapter 21 today.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh one of my favorite stories in the Bible, and I have preached something like it on at least four continents, and I love this story.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Failure, the back door to success.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Open your Bible, John 21, 1 through 14.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: The story goes like this.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: After this, Jesus revealed himself again to his disciples by the Sea of Tiberius.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's the Sea of Galilee, the Romans called it Tiberius, based on the large city, Tiberius, which is still on the western shore, uh, named after the first the emperor of Rome, Sea of Tiberius.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And he revealed himself in this way.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Simon Peter Thomas called twin, Didymus means twin.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Nathanael from Cana of Galilee, Zebedee's sons, and two others of his disciples were together.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: How many does that add up to?
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Come on.
• 2:51
  unknown: Seven.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Seven.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: You bet.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: You could have guessed that in John.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Gospel John's full of the number seven.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going fishing, Simon Peter said to them.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Makes me like him so much.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Immediately.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Fishing's next to godliness.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Fishing's next to carpentry is next to godliness, right?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I love fishing.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: And in just a couple of weeks, I'll be out on the uh near the Oregon coast fishing for spring chinook salmon.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Love fishing, and uh those of you that fish know there's a lot of lessons you can learn from fish.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: And one of them is lessons about patience and failure, because most fishing is a story of failure.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'll never forget the day I was so excited about fishing, coerced my sons to go out with me fishing years ago when they were young, kept them for five hours, and we only got two nibbles, and two of them I think swore they would never fish again.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: But I was excited about the nibbles.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we're coming with you, they told him.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Other than the fact it includes this line, and they got into the boat.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: As if to say, well, of course they'll got out of the boat, but it's like that was the last thing they did.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Any action.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, they had no action that whole night.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Night's the best time to catch fish on the Sea of Galilee.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: You still see boats going out at night on the Sea of Galilee.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: And let's remind ourselves, this is not fishing poles, fishing line.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is not the ugly stick.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's a Shakespeare rod and reel.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is um, these are nets.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: They fish with nets.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: So they stand in the boat and they throw out nets.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, but they they caught nothing.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you go, Well, how can you catch nothing when you're throwing a net in?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: So that's how bad it was.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was a story of fishing failure.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: He called to them, Boys, don't you have any fish?
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you hate it when you're fishing and you haven't caught any?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: And someone calls out and goes, Have you caught any fish?
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: You did you just hate that.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, and that happens to me all the time.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: But but actually, this question in the Greek starts off with a two-letter indicator that he actually uses the word you haven't, have you?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of know that you haven't.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you have any fish?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: You don't, do you?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: No, they answered.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna talk about that question.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Cast it out of the right side of the boat, he told them, and you'll find some.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't recognize yet that it was Jesus.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, they're out in the boat, he's on the shore, he's a long ways away, they need contact lenses, but uh, whatever.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, and they're thinking, how crazy is that?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: So they cast there and they were unable to holler down because of a large number of fish.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: The disciple, the one Jesus loved, who's that?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: John, said to Peter, It is the Lord.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: And when Simon and Peter heard that it was the Lord, he tied his outer clothing around him and he plunged into the sea.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Since they were not far from the land, about a hundred yards away.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's a long swim, isn't it?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: A hundred yards.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Just thought about that.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: Not for some people who know, but the other disciples came in the boat dragging the net full of fish.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: The other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: It had to be heavy.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: When they got out of land, they saw a charcoal fire there with fish lying on it and bread.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Bring some of the fish you've just caught, Jesus told them.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's the second command he's given.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Bring some of the fish you've just caught.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: So Simon Peter climbed up.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Simon Peter is so pumped about this.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Notice it took the boat and all the rest of the other six, lugging the net full of fish.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Simon Peter, we know we call him the big fisherman for a reason.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: He's strong, and now he's his adrenaline is flowing.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: He climbed up and he hauled that net ashore full of large fish.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: 153 of them.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Those of you that love mathematics may know about this number.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's gotten a special article in Scientific American.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: It is a perfect number, it is a pyramid number, it is a number that was well known to the Greeks in that day as being sort of a magic, a pure number.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I could discuss all the ways it's a perfect number, but they were aware of that number, and it was the number of perfection.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that this represents all of the people who will trust Jesus Christ as their Savior.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because we now know that when the disciples catch fish, it is a picture of what?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right, three years ago, in the beginning, when Jesus called the disciples and they were fishing, he said, and he told them the other story when he told them to cast on the other side and catch fish.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: He said, But from now on, you will be fishing for men or people.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: So ever since then, fishing is a symbol of the work that Christians are supposed to do.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: The Great Commission, our whole Christian lives, is a symbol of our whole Christian lives, and this is a symbol of perfection, this is a symbol of everything that you and I and the Christian church will do.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: 153 of them.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: And even though there were so many, the net was not torn.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Come and have breakfast, Jesus told them his third command.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Come and have fellowship with me, come and eat.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that a great story?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the one thing I think that, the two things that I think God wants us to see from this passage, and that Jesus wanted the disciples to see were two simple, simple facts, two simple truisms, and that is there was no Jesus when they were up there fishing and they had no success.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Some people will say they were, you know, the fact they had no success is because they shouldn't have been fishing in the first place.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's an unspiritual thing to do.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a good thing to say to someone like me.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: So no, I mean, Jesus told them to go up to Galilee, and he said, You go on up there and I'll meet you later.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure when they went up there and saw their wives again, their wives go, listen, you've been gone for three years.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: Would you get your rear end out there in the lake and do what you're good at doing and catch some fish for the table?
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm they had to eat.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: So there's no hint in this text that they did anything wrong.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: No, this is a teaching opportunity for our Lord, who wants them to see again, to hear again in picture the key lesson that he had taught them.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's now six chapters before that in John 15.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: At the very center of the upper room discourse, Jesus had taught them the single greatest lesson that he's perhaps ever taught any disciples.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: He taught them the lesson in John 15 about the vine and the branches.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: He taught them the lesson that apart from me, you can do.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: You don't know this one?
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Apart from me, you can do nothing.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the vine.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: You are the branches, he said.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is the key word.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Stay home in me and I in you, because apart from me, you can do nothing.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same Jesus who had told them in chapters 8 and chapter 12, you know, you guys think I'm something.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: I need to tell you, apart from my father, I can do nothing.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: I say, I can't say anything.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: No great message here, apart from the Father.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: And now he turns to them and says, apart from me, you can do nothing.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I just want you to know, because it'll it'll it's one of the great words in the Greek New Testament, and it's, I'm going to mention it closer to the end.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: The Greek word here, the root of it is em- as in men, women, men, whatever.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the root of this great word.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: And in John chapter 1, we know that the root meaning, the first time a word is used in the Bible, usually tells us its meaning.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's used in a picturesque way.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: The disciples come to Jesus when they meet him, and Jesus, they say, Where are you, where do you stay?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Men.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Where is your home?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Is what they're asking.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Men.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: And now Jesus turns to them and says, disciples, famously, you know this in the King James, abide in me.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's the word men.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Stay in me, remain in me, says the NIV.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Make your home in me and I in you, because if you make your home in me and I in you, then wonderful things are going to happen.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: I like drinking tea, especially on Sunday morning rather than caffeine, for I won't explain why.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, um, so so different people drink tea different ways.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Some people are dippers.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they you see them, they have a cup of hot water and they get it and they dip it in until it's just the right color.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a dipper.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: I just leave the teabag in.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope it gets really as dark as possible.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say uh some people are dippers when it comes to Jesus as well.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: They dip into Jesus on Sunday morning and then they dip out during the week, right?
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus' point here is don't be a dipper.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: I you need you need to be the kind of a person who has me inside of you like a teabag, and the water's in the teabag, and the teabag's in the water.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to make your home in me all seven days of the week 24-7.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's his point, and that's his point in John 15.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: But he's just told them that in the upper room the night before he died.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's weeks later.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: He's afraid they'll forget it, and I think he deliberately sends them up to Galilee, and of course, omniscience knows that they're going to go fishing, and he's going to make sure that they catch nothing so that they can learn this great lesson.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Apart from Christ, I can do nothing.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Apart from Christ, I can do nothing.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's no chance that you will say this line to yourself too many times in life.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Apart from Christ, I can do nothing.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I made it part of my prayer for Connor.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, give him the humility to realize that apart from you, apart from your son Jesus Christ, he can do nothing.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, based upon the vine of the branches, Jesus was saying, you know, you're going to wither unless you're connected.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to wither unless you're connected to me.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: You'll never bear grapes.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Or in another simple way of putting it, here's a Christian.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: He appears to be successful, but you take Christ out of his life, and what's left is, of course, I am nothing.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a simple way of reflecting the fact that apart from Christ, you and I really are nothing.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: If the Lord doesn't build the house, the work of the builders is useless.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: We read in the Old Testament, if the Lord doesn't protect the city, it's useless for the centuries to stand guard.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: When I was, everybody knows that when that four-year-old boys and lawn tractors have this magnet, magnetic attraction for each other.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: And when my boys were young, and even now with my grandsons, you know, they just love to ride to drive the lawn tractor.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're wise, you won't let them drive it by themselves.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Fortunately, the seats need about an extra hundred pounds, you know, for the lawn tractor to go.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: So taking them on the lawn tractor, and every once in a while, you know, they'll go, Papa, let me drive it by myself.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: And they keep saying that, and then you take your hands off, right?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then they drive for a little while, but with unerring aim, they find the one tree in the lawn, and they drive right into that tree, unless, you know, at the last minute, you take over control again.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: And there's something about uh walking and living with the Lord Jesus Christ.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's just something about the Christian.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: What is it about us that makes us just want to do it ourselves?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Want to do things in our own flesh, because we can do good things in the flesh.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: We can do great things in the flesh.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: We can pray, we can witness in the flesh, we can teach Sunday school classes or serve on the board or even preach sermons.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the point here is that you know what?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Without me, that's that's worthless.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's in the flesh.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: You simply mustn't become independent of me.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: In a verse that you really need to memorize.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Luis Palau has just passed away not long ago last year.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: This was his favorite verse.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: He was a friend of our family.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's no longer I who live.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: He says, but Christ lives in me.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's another line that you cannot repeat to yourself too often in life.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: It is the central line of the Christian life.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: I've been crucified with Christ.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: The life I live by the flesh, or in the flesh, or in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, we have to deal with something that at least people who haven't been Christians for 40 years or 50 years will have thought of immediately.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that is that this is really hard to believe.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: This statement by our Lord Jesus Christ or by me that somehow without Christ I can do nothing just seems to be counterintuitive.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: Really, apart from Christ, you can do nothing.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: The reality seems just the opposite, doesn't it?
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we know good and well that it seems that in society the people that score the most baskets or hit the most home runs are oftentimes doing it completely apart from Christ.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: The people who have the biggest businesses, the people who are the biggest successes in life, are people who seem to be doing it completely without Christ.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: And even sometimes the people who have the biggest churches.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: One of the megachurch pastors who had a TV program and something got thrown in prison for his financial frauds and so forth.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: And when interviewed in prison, you know what he said about that?
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: He said, you know what?
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: They asked, how could you be so successful and speak like that on television so often?
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: And Jim Baker said, Well, I was like one of those stone lions.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: I was like one of those stone lions in the park that the water flows through.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I was dead inside.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: I was just faking it.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: But the water was flowing out.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's what it can, that's what it really is.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the fact of the matter is, Jesus did not say you can never say it can never seem as though you're highly successful apart from me.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: It can never seem as though.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: It can seem as though apart from me you can do incredible things.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the largest churches in our country, perhaps.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: In some cases, seem to be pastored by people who do it apart from Christ, or at least apart from preaching the message of Jesus Christ.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: So what is the explanation for the fact that Jesus' words seem not to be true?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: That sometimes the people who are catching the biggest fish of all, apparently, are doing it completely apart from Christ.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it seems to me that's just my idea, but thinking back over the fact that, you know, especially they're using nets, I think the solution is that only with Christ can you catch.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: He says that they caught 153 large fish.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Can you catch the real fish, the large fish?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Without Christ, I think you're just catching minnows.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, admittedly, minnows sometimes seem to be real fish.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: On that day when I fished for five hours and there were just a couple nibbles, we looked down and one of my boys yelled out, Dad, it's a minnow.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: But that was the fightinest minnow that I ever caught.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: It felt like a real fish.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I was excited for a moment, just because there was something on the line.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: At times, minnows can feel like real fish.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: But the truth is that, especially if you're net fishing, if you looked at those nets, you know, those uh you know, you can see that those nets are great for big fish, but the nets you're gonna find on the Sea of Galilee that they throw out have these holes in them, and there's no way that minnows can stay in there.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: And if it's down in the water, there may be a thousand minnows in that net.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: But on that final day, when the Lord Jesus comes back and we stand before him and he tells us to pull up our nets and show him what we've done with our lives, then I can what's gonna happen is the same thing that happens when you pull up the nets on the Sea of Galilee.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: All of the minnows just fall right on through, and the only things that are left are the fish that really matter, are the ones that you caught in Christ.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Only with Christ, I say, can you catch large fish without Christ?
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: You're just catching minnows.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't feel that way, doesn't look that way.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: We can sometimes be envious of other people who seem to have far more business or church or financial success.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: But the fact of the matter is, what matters is what's gonna stay in the net on that final day.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: I sometimes think if you had been able to interview Abraham at this certain point in his life after Ishmael had been born, you know, the interviewer would have said, uh, so Abraham, how are you doing?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh looks like you're really enjoying uh your baby.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man, we're praising the Lord for this baby.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: So excited about this baby, this baby's an answer to prayer, really.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh, I I see that this is a baby with you and Hagar, right?
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, yes.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's just so great.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, we've uh we we've named him, uh we've named him God Hears, because God heard our prayers for a baby and so forth.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, just a second, Abraham.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: I I thought that God made you this promise years ago for you and Sarah.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, he did, but actually we had to change that one little part of the plan because Sarah was getting older and it wasn't working.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: We tried for decades and so forth.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it was Sarah, Sarah was fine with this.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so then we went with Hagar, her maid, and man, thank God.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, it's just amazing.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: We finally got the descendant that God has always promised us, the descendant Ishmael.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the newsman goes back and turns, I just imagine turns back to the audiences, another success story, apart from Christ here in Israel.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: But because the fact is, what we know is that is that Ishmael turns out to be a minnow.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: And Isaac is the real fish.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that Abraham and Sarah and Hagar did this in the flesh.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because apart from God's plan, apart from obeying the Lord Jesus Christ, all that you can earn, all that you can achieve in life is nothing more than a minnow.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: Apart from Christ, I can do nothing.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Which moves us to the second point, which is when I face my failure apart from Christ, then I'm ready to receive his blessing.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: When I face, when I see my futility apart from Christ, empty nets, whatever, at that moment I'm in the perfect place to receive his blessing.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Oswald Chambers, in my utmost for his highest, put it this way.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Every now and again, our Lord lets us see what we would be like if it were not for himself to prove what he said that with us.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Me, you can do nothing.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that I take it is the real point of this story that Jesus wants his disciples to never forget the lesson, apart from me, you can do nothing, by sending them up there and letting them labor through the night, hour after hour after hour, trying to get some fish to feed their families and so forth, and finding themselves with nothing, nothing, nothing.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: To let them know and let us know if you're not experiencing God's presence and power in your life, you may not be empty enough.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: You may not be empty enough.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because the fact of the matter is we really are empty people.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus in Revelation 3 says, You say, I'm rich.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: I've become wealthy and I need nothing.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: And you don't realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: Look, I stand at the door and knock.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: If anyone will respond and come and invite me in, then I'll come into him and I'll eat with him and we'll have fellowship.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: But you have to first realize that you're empty apart for me and that you're absolutely desperate.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Walt Henriksen, who's spoken here at our church, a navigator, wrote a little uh uh devotional book that I've read a number of times called Thoughts from the Diary of a Desperate Man, one of the navigators, Walt Henriksen.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: And in there he writes, Christianity is a religion designed for the desperate.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: A feeling of desperation, brokenness, dependence is the heart of the believer's life in Christ.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's, I think, a really, really critical part here because in this story, I think Jesus tells us what God is looking for.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: He's looking, when you work your way through the gospels, he wants us to feel the desperation of the parents of the bride at a wedding in Cana of Galilee, whose vessels are empty, who've run out of wine, and the people and the and the folks at the wedding reception are crying out for more.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: And they're desperate, and it's at that point where Mary comes to Jesus and tells him, and he says, What do you want from me?
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: He asks her a question, What's going on?
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: What's the problem?
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: He asked us these questions so that he can scratch off the scab and help us to see our desperate need.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: He wants us to feel the desperation of a smeared woman who comes all alone to a well that is deeper than she knows with an empty bucket.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: And what does he say to her?
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: He asked her a question Where's your husband?
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: Go get your husband.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: And he does that so that she will have to answer him and see her need.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: On a hillside, as 5,000 people are desperately hungry.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: What does he do?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: They're knocking, they're shaking the disciples and saying, You've got to give us food.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus goes up to Philip and he says, Philip, where are we going to find food to feed all of these people?
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: Why would Jesus ask a nasty question like that?
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: The reason he asked a question like that is because he really, really, really wants us to see our desperate need, our emptiness apart from him.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because when we see our desperation and our emptiness apart from him, then we're in the perfect place to receive his blessing.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: And in chapter 15, he wants us to feel the desperation of a branch that's separated from the vine and slowly withering and unable to bear grapes.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: Or in chapter 15 of another book, he wants us to feel the empty stomach of the prodigal son who's in a pig pen and says, Wow, I need to go back and see my father.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: And now in chapter 21 of John, he wants you and he wants me to feel the desperation of disciples who've been working all night and have nothing but an empty net to show for it.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: He wants us to feel this desperation because that's when we're ready.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's when we're in the perfect spot to receive his blessing.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, let me tell you one other story.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: I love the fact that Chuck Colson was uh was uh was sitting at a banker once, and he wrote, he said, I sat there and I thought, I thought back over all of my years of honors when I was winning all these court cases and appearing before the Supreme Court, and I thought about all the awards I had won.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: I thought about working for Richard Nixon, I thought about when I was, you know, one of the top powers in the entire country, and I thought back over that, and I thought to where I am right now.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: He said, sitting here at this banquet, just about ready to speak at the president prayer breakfast.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, I thought, you know, it's none of those honors that have gotten me to this place.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: It was instead the fact that I went to jail.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that when I was in jail, I came to the utter end of myself, and in desperation and emptiness and brokenness, I reached out to God.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the secret of my real success.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're ever going to be able to achieve anything for God, you're going to have to get to that place, right?
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: But when I'm, and this is the third and last lesson, when I'm with Christ, not apart from him, amazing things happen.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: In John 15, he says you want to see power in prayer.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: You want to see answers to prayer and power in prayer.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: You can't do that if you're separated from the vine.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: You're a branch.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: And as long as you make your home with me and stay with me, teabag and water, constantly, if you're fellowshipping with me, everything you do is done in me and through me.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: You'll see amazing things happen in your life.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's why Paul repeatedly said things like this I can do all things.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: Through Christ who strengthens me.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: Immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine in Ephesians chapter 3, so long as it's Christ doing it through me.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: So you can see why this is just an incredible lesson for me, especially at this point in my career.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: But really, for the last 20 years of my career, I have oftentimes, like many of you, sensed a desperate need.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like, have I really what am I doing in life that really matters?
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: Have I done anything in life that matters?
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone asks that question.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: And especially ask that question, I think, the older you get.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: When you're young, you're going, well, there's a chance I'll accomplish great things.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: I hope so.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: And later on you go, what have I, you know, you all we ask ourselves, what have I done that really matters?
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer to the question is, well, it may not be the things that you think really matter.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: What's going to remain in the net when you pull up your net on that final day when Jesus Christ returns?
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: The answer is all of the minnows will swim right through all of those great awards and all of that income and all of that praise and so forth.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: But the things that remain are those things that you did not do in the flesh.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: You did not do by yourself.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the things that Christ did through you.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because you'd made your home with him, and he'd made his home in you.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: Some years ago, uh, we were on vacation.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember if it was Disney World or whatever it was, we're taking the boys down there.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what it's like.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: You parents are taking your kids off vacation.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter if you took them to heaven itself.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, they're gonna get tired of it.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: But in Florida, it gets really hot and you're sweaty, and you're waiting in long lines for rides or whatever else.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it was it was middle of the afternoon, and one of my sons looked at me and said, Daddy, he was pretty young, Daddy, when are we going home?
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought he meant the hotel.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so I said, hang on, just a couple more hours.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: We gotta milk this for all it's worth, so that you'll never ask me to come back here again, you know.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: A couple more hours we'll go back.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, No, no, Daddy, what I meant is when were we when are we gonna go?
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: Home, home.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I knew what he meant, and so do you.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: And what he meant was not home to the hotel.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: He meant home to his home here in Topeka, Kansas.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's something about going to your home home that makes all the difference.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's where you want to be, that's where you can relax.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: We live in a world that is crazy, right?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: She used to be called a Christian nation up through the 60s.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: By the end of the 60s, Vietnam War, all other crazy things happening, all you know, music had changed, movies had changed, all these things.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: It started being called in all the literature, starting about 1970, a post-Christian.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: America was a post-Christian world.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: Am I right?
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: That was 50 years ago.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm reading now and what someone said down in Dallas last week in front of thousands of people, he said, folks, we're no longer in a post-Christian generation here in America.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: We now live in a pagan generation.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: Although the fact of the matter is, even the pagans don't redefine what's a male and a female and what marriage is, but we live in that kind of a world today, don't we?
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: That seems utterly lost from its moorings and utterly floating away from what we used to know as our home here in America.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it's at this point, more important at this point, at this moment in history than any other moments, you hear the Lord Jesus Christ saying, I've got a home home for you right here.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: Would you come and stay home with me and I with you?
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: Without me, you can't do anything.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: But it's when you see that without me, you've done nothing, that you're in the perfect place, the perfect place to do great things.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then with me to do things you won't even believe.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: Bow your head with me in prayer.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for this lesson, this resurrection lesson from the lake.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: I ask for these dear folks, I ask for myself that uh as long as we live and until the day we die, we would recognize that our home is not in America, our home is not in Topeka, our home, our true home, is in you.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: And when you are in us and we are in you, that's the way we're meant to be.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: Bless us, Heavenly Father, so long as we stay close to you in Jesus' name.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Father.