Seeing Jesus: Undivided

Okay, we've been in the book of Matthew, so we're going to continue on the book of Matthew.

So open it up in your Bibles. That's the first chapter, our first book of the New Testament. So it's somewhat towards the back, but go ahead and open up the book of Matthew. We're going to be wrapping up chapter 10. So we've been in this series for, I think it's been like eight or nine weeks right now, just plowing through the book of Matthew, chapter by chapter, verse by verse.

And what we're going to do is we're going to finish up chapter 10 today, and then we're going to put a little pause on our series through Matthew. Do a couple other things. And we'll come back to it sometime after Easter. Easter is the 20th of April, by the way, make your plans. It's going to be a good time here. And we're planning a baptism service this Sunday before, so the 13th. So if you've never been baptized and you've been thinking about it,

or you know someone who'd like to be baptized, just go ahead and email me. I'd love to get you. I have like a quick sit down with you just to make sure you understand what baptism is and why you're doing it and stuff like that, but not a big formal thing. But if you'd like to be baptized, we're going to do it inside. Yes, do it inside somehow. We have a collapsible baptism. And so we'll bring that out and excited for that. So that's going to be the

13th. So just reach out to me if you want to be baptized.

So I trust that you found Matthew chapter 10, and we'll keep going. We're going to open up. We're going to be in verse 29, picking up in verse 29. So just some context, just getting us up and running. We've talked about, this is kind of a transitional chapter in the book, right? The book of Matthew is not like a lot of other biblical books. It's a narrative, right? It's telling us the story of Jesus's ministry.

It's giving us a glimpse of who he is. And so that's why we're calling this series Seeing Jesus, because we are getting a painted picture of who Jesus is, painted through words. We covered in chapters one through four, like the origin story of Jesus, why he was born, how he was born, what were the circumstances, how did he grow up? And then in chapters five through nine, we have this extended look at his early ministry, his first year on the scene.

We looked at his teachings and the Sermon on the Mount. And then the last couple of chapters we've looked at, we've looked at his miraculous healings. Like Jesus went around healing. He went around preaching and healing, and he got a lot of attention for all of those things. And now here in chapter 10, we're starting to focus on the next stage of Jesus's ministry in Israel, kind of his maturing phase, his personal ministry, like it begins to grow and expand, right?

From here on out, it really picks up steam. And it's not really because, only because of his popularity. Jesus has been really popular up to this point. I mean, people have been flocking from all around to come to see him. But here in chapter 10, we actually see in Jesus's ministry, a significant strategic shift going on.

See, at the end of chapter nine, Jesus having healed and having done all these things all throughout Israel, he just looks around and he sees that people continue to come to him from all over the place. They're flocking to him. They're traveling up to Galilee, the northern part of Israel, where he's mostly been located up to this point.

And those who need healing and those who want to learn from him, from his great wisdom, they've been traveling up to him and just wherever he goes, they just mob him. And it's an amazing scene. And we looked at it before the last couple of weeks, but I just don't get tired of it. So I want to just keep giving you this picture of Jesus's response. We read about it in Matthew 9, 36.

And this is kind of the summary. When he saw the crowds, he felt compassion for them because they were distressed and dejected like sheep without a shepherd. And then he said to his disciples, the harvest is abundant, but the workers are few. Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest.

See, Jesus, having healed and cared for so many and taught so much, he recognizes something and it's transformative for the rest of not only Jesus's life and his ministry, but for all that would come after for the church. It's not merely that Jesus is saying, he's not just being utilitarian here. He's not just saying, oh, well, there's all these people, they have so many needs, and I can only be at one place at a time. He actually could handle it. But he's not just saying that.

So he isn't just saying, well, I just need to get the job done, and so I should just ask for extra help. I need to hire some extra help. Actually, what Jesus envisions in this prayer, and then in Acts, by giving his disciples authority and sending them out, it's just so much better than that. It's so much better than a mere transaction. like it's so much better than just hiring people into the work it's really paradigm shifting.

Because he's not just scaling like you would if you were an owner of a business, right? This isn't a scaling strategy. He's not franchising. He's not hiring a bunch of contractors and the disciples or even employees, right? In response to the great need of the world, and with an understanding that he has something for people that they so desperately need. And out of a sense of compassion, what does Jesus do? He mobilizes a people,

a nation, a family. And it's not just like, well, we need to get the work done, so let's get some people, train them up and send them out. Jesus begins to call a family together in the disciples and then following on in the church. Much later, Peter describes with this language like what the church is.

He says, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. You had not received mercy, but now you've received mercy.

See, in response to the great needs of the world, Jesus shapes a people. That's his solution. Form a people, a people for his possession. And these people, this is it. They're not just a tool to accomplish something. It's not just a means to an end. They are simultaneously the object of his love and care. As well as the means by which the gospel is going to go out and more people will know his love, right? He says, I love you. I care for you. You're my people.

I'm going to adopt you into my family. I'm going to call you like you're my own possession. And that love, that expression, that love is going to make you the kind of people who just go out proclaiming who I am, how I called you out of darkness into light. Like both of those things are accomplished. It's not just one or the other, right? In other words, to know his love for you is to be equipped as a witness.

Like, I mean, all witness, anyone who wants to share anything about Jesus in the world, if you're like somebody who's concerned about like, well, how do we go participate with what Jesus is doing? Well, it begins with this. You know his love for you. You know that he's adopted you in and made you a part of his family. All witness comes from that fundamental thing. There are no witnesses who have not known the love of Jesus because that's what we attest to.

That's what we speak of, that our God cares for us.

And he looks at us in all of our brokenness with compassion and not just, ew, icky. Ew, these people need to get better. They need to do better. He begins by forming a people, showering his love and grace upon them. And those people just quite naturally are the witnesses sent out, proclaiming of his love, proclaiming of how he's adopted them, brought them in from darkness into light. But Jesus doesn't, I mean, the content of chapter 10, like it's pretty serious stuff.

I mean, we looked at it last week. Jesus is not pulling punches. Jesus understands that as he sends out these witnesses, these people who were adopted into his family, who he loves and cares for, he sends them out in Paris to go town to town all throughout Israel. He understands that they're going to meet opposition, significant opposition even. He describes them, we looked at last week, as like sheep among wolves. So like sheep is a vulnerable animal. Wolves are obviously the predatory type

of animal. They go out and they hunt the sheep. And so he says, that's what it's like as I send you out to be witnesses in Israel in this moment and in this time. And so he prepares his disciples to know that they're going to face not only opposition, opposition but like they're going to be meeting people who are going to be subverting justice in order to stop them they're going to be organized and organized opposition. And here at the end of his marching orders, though, Jesus assures them,

right? He gives them the bad news first. You're going to be like sheep among the wolves, right? But then he comforts them with really good news, news that can stand up against the challenges that they face. So picking up in 26, sorry, I told you 29 before. I meant 26. He says this, Therefore, do not be afraid of them, since there's nothing covered that won't be uncovered, and nothing hidden that won't be made known.

What I tell you in the dark, speak in the light, what you hear in a whisper, proclaim on the housetops. Don't fear those who kill the body but are not able to kill the soul. Rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Aren't two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your father's consent. But even the hairs on your head have been counted. So don't be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows.

So Jesus, sending them out, gives them some comfort. And it's interesting. It takes some thinking to wrap our minds around what Jesus is saying. He tells them not to fear, but to fear. Right? He says, don't be afraid of this. Be afraid of this other thing. I like how Augustine, the third century saint, explains it. He says, fear so that we may not be afraid. Fear is often associated with cowardice and seen as a trait of the weak rather than the strong. but consider what scripture says.

In the fear of the Lord, one has strong confidence. So let us fear wisely so that we do not fear needlessly. Fear like most things that we feel. I mean, I feel a lot of things. You feel a lot of things. We don't always know what to do with those things. I feel afraid sometimes. Fear like most things that we feel, it actually has a proper place in your life. It's not something that you need to stamp out and get rid of. You actually need to direct it well.

Like most human experience, fear is helpful to us to the extent that we direct it where it ought to go. That is to fear the Lord in a healthy kind of way. We could dance around the way we frame fear, but we ought to respect and care for and revere the Lord above all things. I really believe that he's either a fool or a liar who says he fears nothing. Somebody who goes around saying, oh, I've got nothing to worry about.

I'm not afraid of anything is either just being blind to the realities of life or is just not being honest. But fearing the right things actually makes us bold in other things. Directing our fear where it ought to be to what is ultimate and what is true and what is most valuable and what is most worth being concerned for actually steadies us in the rest of our lives.

Look, if you've been adopted into God's family, and if you've given your life to Jesus, you have been, if you've done that, then you have been assured of his promises. Like these kind of promises that he knows every hair on your head, and he knows, he cares about sparrows, right? They have enough food, they have enough things in the world, and he cares more about you.

You, if you've trusted in Jesus, you've been adopted into his family, you are his special, you're part of his special nation, his special people. And you've been filled with the Holy Spirit and he promises you that he's going to complete whatever he's begun in you. So then the question is, what is the worst thing that could happen to me in life? If it's true that God watches over all things, including me, and he cares for me, even when my life is difficult, then I can face great challenge.

I can face great opposition and disappointment in life and yet not be undone. What is the worst that can happen to us? Honestly, like if it's true that God loves us and cares for us and he has a great plan for us, then the honest answer is that the worst thing that could happen to us is that we waste our life, being concerned with and consumed with and fearful of things that just really aren't that important, which isn't that bad, but it's not great.

In fact, we're, I think, invited to better things than that. I don't think Jesus here is saying, Oh, watch out, because God might change his mind about you if you don't ship up. What he's saying is, Man, we ought to consider if it isn't more prudent to fear the greater thing than the lesser thing. What he's saying is like God who created all things and is judging the whole world and who has sent Christ Jesus to minister his gospel to the world in mercy and in care.

Like that God, like he's so much more worthy of fearing than people, right? And if he's for you, then who could be against you? This is not Jesus threatening the disciples, right? He's saying God is all powerful. He is the one who has the ultimate say in all things. So direct your fear to him and be confident of his love for you because that'll make you fearless of other things, right?

God has given us, if we trust him, if you fall after him, he's given his disciples an invitation into the kingdom. He's opened the way for this abundant life, this joy, this peace that surpasses understanding. That is our inheritance as his children. You know, it's open and free to anyone who would have it, anyone who would trust him. So who are we to leave that on the table? You know, like clinical anxiety is a real thing, right?

This isn't fear and anxiety. We have this way of like criticizing people who are fearful and anxious and everything. And like, I'm not a psychologist, so I'm not going to get into parsing those things out. Right. So, so first of all, I'll just say, like, if you're an anxious person, if you suffer from an anxious temperament, I'm kind of an anxious person. You can kind of tell, cause I'm super like, you see how my hands move like this all the time?

Yeah. Cause I have a lot of anxious energy, right? It's not a problem to be naturally, temperamentally inclined to anxiety. The question is, what do you do with it? You know, I mean, and not like, do you guilt yourself enough to stop doing it? No, that's not it. It's do you remind yourself that God is the one who's truly watching over your life? That's what you do with your anxiety. We shouldn't leave the joy and the peace on the table. Yeah, it's gonna take a lot to grow into

this kind of confidence and hopeful expectation in life. Yes, it will. It will especially be challenging when we are having our worst day or when we're in the midst of grief and tragedy or when we feel like the world is falling apart around us. It will be very difficult.

And yet we can remember it's probably better that I should fear God above all these circumstances and all these things that feel so immediate to me. Jesus tells his disciples, not just not to be afraid, but to be unafraid in light of God's love. The advice is not just stop it. It's, well, consider that you would be afraid of what's true and good and ultimate, like that you would fear missing out on the promises of God. That's something to fear. And if you do that, like everything else will begin

to line up. You are loved by God. That is the basis of your fearlessness. Jesus Christ died for you. He forgave you, not just forgiving you of your guilt, but adopting you into his family so that you can have a relationship with him, an ongoing sort of thing where he's going to get you all the way where you need to go every day until your last day, which will be the first one in heaven.

You can be assured that he's watching over you. John Chrysostom, another old school preacher, fourth century, comments on this passage this way. He says, if he is aware of everything that happens to us and loves us more deeply than a father, so much so that he's even numbered the hairs on our heads, then we should not be afraid. He did not say this to suggest that God literally counts our hairs, but to emphasize his complete knowledge and deep care for us.

God knows you and he cares for you. If you walk away with one thing this morning, I hope it is that. I hope that you can understand that. Jesus was so clear on this and it is like. Jesus annoys people because they would ask a question and he'd be like, let me tell you about the love and openness of the kingdom and the care of God. And they'd be like, well, that's not relevant. And Jesus would be like, yes, it is.

It really is. You don't see it because the whole Christian life hangs on knowing the love of God. Everything, all maturity in the Christian life doesn't come from being more serious, but being more confident in the power and care and love of God in all things for you and for everyone else. You want to drive out and I want to be someone who witnesses and does great things for God. Well, then I just do that because I'm operating from a sense that God is God looks at the crowds and has compassion.

And so who am I to withhold compassion? You know, not kind of compassion that says, do whatever you want. It's totally fine. But compassion that invites people to wake up from their blindness and their apathy and their, you know, just walking down a path that leads nowhere. From our salvation for the moment that you're saved to your maturity, to your eternal destiny, like worshiping Jesus for the rest of your life, all of it is wrapped up and rooted in coming to know the love of Christ.

That's what we'll do eternally in heaven. Just seeing how good and beautiful and awesome he is and you will never bore of it. And this point, if you're cynical, you'll say, eh, I don't know. And I mean, sometimes I'm cynical. Like I think, well, it's so silly that to think about maturity in terms of just apprehending or understanding the love of God, like how can that be it? Shouldn't it be that I grow up and put my big boy pants on? Shouldn't that be what Christian maturity looks like?

And I think no. I think it's all wrapped up in coming to know the love of God. I think that's why Paul prays in Ephesians for the church. He says this, I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width and height and depth of God's love, and to know Christ's love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Paul isn't saying, Paul, who was a very serious person, he's way more serious than you about faith, I promise you. Very serious person says, I want so much for you to just have in your mind this full comprehensive picture of the mighty and vast love of God. He knows it's not possible, right? He knows that you couldn't wrap your head around it for all of your trying, but I want you to try, right?

Not because, oh man, it'll blow your mind, right? No, but because this is how we're rooted and firmly established. As we comprehend the love of God, we get caught up into his life and his life begins to work in us. The fullness of God begins to work its way out as we apprehend his love for us. It all begins with what he does. Anything on the road to Christian maturity hangs on knowing the love of God.

You, the person sitting here in this room, the various people sitting here in this room or listening later on, if you're listening later on, you are the object of God's love. That's a heart of the gospel. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Like while we were just the worst on our worst day, in our worst moments, God looks at us with compassion and love and grace, which is pouring out undeserved kindness to people.

You are objects of God's love. Your sin doesn't actually make you less loved by God. You can't add anything to his love because it is so huge and so vast. You could never deserve it more because it was never about what you deserved in the first place. Nor could you, through your rebellion or your sin, diminish his love for you. And faith is simply responding to that love. It's simply responding to what he's done.

See, Paul, who is a serious dude, prescribes the Ephesians not that they would be good and then be loved more. He wants them to pursue maturity through comprehension of the beautiful, generous, and freely given love of God. He says, when you understand that, then actually maturity will spring up in your life because all the fruit of the Christian life comes from his love. And in fact being secure in his love leads us to integrity in our lives. It leads us to integrity.

I think that's what Jesus is getting at back here in 10.32, picking up back in the verse. Therefore, everyone who will acknowledge me before others, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever denies me before others, I will also deny him before my Father in heaven. Don't assume that I came to bring peace on the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.

For I came to turn a man against his father and a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law and a man's enemies will be the members of his own household. The one who loves a father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. And the one who loves a son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

Anyone who finds his life will lose it. And anyone who loses his life because of me will find it.

These are hard passages. They're infinitely difficult passages, especially when you have children. And honestly, they only make sense when we understand what Jesus is up to more broadly. Because Jesus is not—I don't think that we could look at the rest of Jesus' life and ministry and character and think that he's like an authoritarian kind of guy. But he is super clear about how following him will actually disrupt things in your life.

Jesus warns his disciples over and over again throughout the gospel. He says, if you're going to follow me, it's going to cost you something. So count the cost before you step out here. And that's because, like we're talking about, to experience his love, I mean, to be adopted into his family, to know his grace and his salvation. This is the thing. Because it's so vast, it touches every part of your life.

And it reorders every part of your life. And so it has a way of just messing with settled things. It has a way of messing with careers and with families and with your character and your personality. People change when they start to follow Jesus and when they start to know the love and grace and kindness of God.

You get caught up in his love to the point where all those markers of yourself, like the ends, like you have this conception of who you are and where you begin and end, and they start to get blurry because you start to realize, like I was so holding on to who I thought I was and what made me good and what made me smart and what made me accomplished and why I was valuable. And then Jesus says, I don't care about any of that. I just love you with a compassionate, merciful kind of love.

And so who are you trying to impress in the first place? And so all of these things that we used to define as ourselves, we start to lose those things because they become seriously less important over time. And so how much money you have, how smart are you? What do other people think of you? You just say, well, that's not that important to me anymore. And people get upset. People get upset by this stuff. And Jesus talks about family in particular here.

I think that we really have to think, just to make sense of this, because as he's talking about family, if he were speaking, I think in culture now, he'd be talking about identity. But back then, family was identity. In ancient Jewish culture, right now, if I ask you who you are, you might tell me something about your career. You might tell me something about your hobbies. You might tell me where you're born, right? How you grew up.

You might tell me a little bit about probably, maybe if you're married, you'd tell me about your spouse. And if you had kids, you'd tell me about your kids. In ancient Israel, if you ask someone who they are, you say, my father is this, my grandfather is this. Because it was all about not who you are as like, they didn't look at the self as like an individual person with different things.

They looked at yourself and your role and your identity as where you came from and what parts you play in the family. And if you wanted to bring shame on your family, you would shirk your responsibilities as a son of whoever and a grandson of whoever.

Everything was about family. And so Jesus is talking particularly about family because he understands that to be adopted into his family will begin to recast your allegiances, and it'll start to mess with all these things that you thought you had to do.

And Jesus is not super interested in the things, the impositions that the world and people put around you. He calls us to follow him. And so you lose your old self, the self that was defined by who your father on earth was. And you, when you get adopted into this new generation, you get a new self, one defined by who your heavenly father is.

And so Jesus is warning his disciples, as you go out and you preach this, people are going to get upset because you are going to be threatening their sense of who they are. And Jesus' point is driven home by this idea that, man, if you acknowledge him before others, he will acknowledge you. And if not, he won't. And this is all tied up into identity. I think we can relate to this actually pretty well.

See, in the modern world, I am, and you are, and we all are, way too comfortable with the idea of being one way in one context and another way in another context. Like, who's the work self that you have? And who's the self you are at home and who's the self you are among your friends. You feel that way? Anyone else? Just me? Like I can be a different person. I like slip into that in different places.

And what Jesus is saying is like, look, if I've snatched you out of darkness and into life, I'm actually inviting you into like a kind of wholeness and an integrated kind of life where if I saved you here in your religious life, then I saved you everywhere. Because I didn't save just religious you. I saved the person that you are in your all your fullness.

And so if you want to just come around certain groups and just talk about me here, but then you want to go out among your friends, you want to go out to the clubs like you do, you know, I don't I don't know. I don't know, guys. Some people do that. Some of you guys are cool. You know, you do all your stuff. He's saying, he says, that's just not the way this works.

When Jesus calls you and he gives you this new identity, this new kind of self, you have to lose your old self and you have to have this new one. But you have to have it all. Jesus doesn't do halfway. And I'm not saying that to guilt you. I'm not saying like, oh, you better work hard for Jesus and you better take it on. I'm just saying that if he saved you, that's going to overflow into every part of your life. It doesn't have to look exactly the same every way. There's such a thing as

like a proper way to be in a professional environment. We all get that. Not gonna go around, you know, with a megaphone at work. That's okay. But you have to be the self that you are. You have to be the person, an undivided person for the sake of Jesus. And that's hard. Honestly, it is hard for us to think through these things because we're so used to putting on faces. We're so used to being divided people.

And what Jesus is telling him here, he's like, it's like, not to earn it, but he's saying like, but if I've really done this huge saving work in you, it's going to come out into every spot. And it is an unworthy thing for us to just be like, Jesus, I'll give you like 35% of my life. That's just not how it works. You can't be half Jesus's. Jesus gave his whole self, holding nothing back, dying for us. And I don't say that to guilt trip you, right? Because if you're feeling guilty

right now, stop it. That's not going to lead you anywhere. That's not the way of maturity. It's not feeling more guilt about all the things and all your failings. That's not how it works. That's not why he gave his whole self to make you feel bad about the ways that you don't reciprocate. He gave his whole self because that is what love does. Love does not consider its own needs, right? It's not self-serving. Doesn't consider the self, it considers others.

And Jesus looked at us and he understood that the only thing for us is that if he gave all of himself. And so like, not in a moment, not in like a light switch moment, do we give our whole selves like over to Jesus? But the way of love, the way of pursuing love for Jesus is figuring out what are the locked rooms? What are the areas where I've kept Jesus out of? And slowly, sometimes picking a lock is difficult. Right? But opening them up and just saying, all right, Jesus,

I want you in this part of my life too. I want to be a whole person. Because honestly, like the weight of being a divided person is a lot. I've spent enough of my life trying to like, trying to manage how people perceive me, right? And trying to be Christian enough here, but not too Christian over here. It just doesn't work. So if we're finding our life in him, then we are finding that God loves all of us. And he calls us to wholeness.

Calls us to be people who are undividedly his. Because dividedness always keeps us from the fullness of God. Ezekiel 11, 19 through 20. Ezekiel is a prophet in Israel like about, what is that, like 1600 years before Jesus. And he's telling the people, you know, to turn to the Lord, to return to him. That math could be wrong, by the way. I'm sorry. And he tells them this. He says, I will give them integrity of heart, anticipating what God is going to do.

He says, I'm going to give them integrity of heart and put a new spirit within them. I will remove their hearts of stone from their bodies and give them a heart of flesh so that they will follow my statutes and keep my ordinances and practice them and they will be my people and I will be their God. See what Peter understood is that God is doing this stuff now. He's fulfilling these Old Testament promises to put his spirit in his people.

And we're the beneficiaries of this. So this new generation, this holy priesthood, this called out ones, people of his own special possession, that's us now because of what God is doing. And it's a work of integrity of heart. But it involves surrender, right? Like when God puts his spirit within us, when we come to be saved, when we come to apprehend his great love for us and his grace and his kindness to us, it's going to involve a transplant of heart.

And so we have to give ourselves over to this work. God is going to put a new integrated whole kind of person, a whole self in you, right? It takes time, but he wants to do that and he wants to make us fully his. And I just love it. This resounding refrain that we see in Peter and then here, they will be my people, I will be their God. This is the hope of Israel. It's our hope right now that he'll be ours and will be his. This total identification with Jesus, with God, with the Father.

And Jesus, I mean, he goes on and explains here in verse 40, Jesus sees that identification with him as so thorough and complete, that he tells the disciples that for all intents and purposes, how people treat them is how they're treating him. He explains it in verse 40. He says, The one who welcomes you welcomes me, and the one who welcomes me welcomes him who sent me. And anyone who welcomes a prophet because he's a prophet will receive a prophet's reward.

And anyone who welcomes a righteous person because he's righteous will receive a righteous person's reward. and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he's a disciple, truly I tell you, he will never lose his reward. See, Jesus is sending him out. He's saying like, not only, you're just not only my representatives, right? He says, but I am so connected with you to the point where you're my people, you're my people of my possession.

And if people mistreat you, they're mistreating me. And if they love you, they're loving me.

What undeserved kindness. it's like this is not a perfect analogy but it's like drew coming up and giving me his credit card and just say buy whatever you want right for just i'm gonna erase the cid on the back right, right uh but it's like it's like just just total like whatever i have is yours my whole self my whole character is yours god is not withholding anything from you, he's not holding anything back from you and the christian life is knowing that

more and more his great love, his great kindness. Team is going to come up, but I actually wanted to read you a little quote from a Danish philosopher named Soren Kierkegaard, because of course he's named Soren Kierkegaard. It's kind of old school, but I really love it because he understands. He has this phrase that's kind of danced around here. Purity of heart is to will one thing, to want one thing.

What Jesus is calling his disciples here to, I think more than anything, is just have a pure-hearted clarity about what they're about. And Jesus sends them out proclaiming, not just to do the work, but to proclaim what's been done in them. They've been brought into the kingdom of God. Their whole self, all their sin, all their difficulty, Jesus says, come on in. Partake in a relationship with me. Be loved by me. Know my kindness. Know my care for you, right?

And there's lots of reasons that the disciples could say, I'm not sure if I'm ready for that kind of relationship, Jesus, right? I'm not sure if you know that much about me? And Jesus, Jesus like knew everything about his disciples. And yet he still said, with all your flaws and with all your difficulties, just, just like come in, I'm going to embrace you.

And slowly as, as I love you and as I care for you, like the stuff, the difficulties, the problems, your, your, your dividedness is going to, to get work itself out. Right. As you just really clearly understand you are secure in my love that I in fact died for to prove my love to you, that when you understand that, then you're going to have this kind of like transformative thing in your life. You're going to have this purity of heart. So this is what Soren Kierkegaard says. It's a prayer.

So may you give to the intellect wisdom to comprehend that one thing, To the heart, sincerity to receive this understanding. The will, purity that wills only one thing. In prosperity, may you grant perseverance to will one thing. Amid distractions, collectedness to will one thing. In suffering, patience to will one thing. You that gives both the beginning and the completion, may you early at the dawn of day give to the young the resolution to will one thing.

As the day wanes, may you give to the old a renewed remembrance of their first resolution, that the first may be like the last, that the last like the first, in possession of a life that has willed only one thing. Lord, make our hearts your temple in which you live. Grant that every impure thought, every earthly desire might be like the idol Dagon, each morning broken at the feet of the Ark of the Covenant. It's an Old Testament story.

Teach us to master flesh and blood and let this mastery of ourselves be our bloody sacrifice in order that we might be able to say with the apostles, I die every day. You know, Jesus is telling his disciples, right, this very difficult thing that whoever wants to save his life will lose it and whoever will lose his life for my sake will gain it. And it calls for trading. I mean, it calls for exchanging, right? The self I think I am and my obsessions and all my anxieties.

I have to get rid of those things and I have to say, who am I now? Who am I now that I've known the love of God? And it changes things. We become undivided. We become clear. We become more determined to seek the things that are most important in life. But I want to reemphasize this. I feel like I've said this four or five times right now. I want to let you understand this. Healing a divided heart is not something that you just need to muscle your way through.

Like, yeah, I'm divided. You're divided. We pray to the Lord to heal our divisions. And he does that by giving us this greater sense of the massiveness of his love and the massiveness of the supply of grace that he's given to us. 1 John says, we love him because he first loved us. So everything in the Christian life stands on what has already been given, already done.

And any love that I have for Jesus, any resolution, any maturity, any unity of heart, undividedness, it comes as the love demonstrated in the gospel of Jesus Christ begins to knit us back together, begins to bring us back together. And so don't step away from this thinking, Oh, okay, I want to be undivided, Lord. I'm just going to try harder.

Effort is okay but it's not something you could ever earn, you know I mean like giving our attention to Jesus involves some work I mean it's a work to say I'm going to pay attention to this one thing but understand it that what we need to do is not pay attention to our failings but to his great love his great love that he has for us, it's from that place that we become full people.

So let's take some time. We're going to worship and then I probably will come back. Music.