June 4, 2025 • 51 mins
In this TNC podcast episode, Pastor Joe Liles and his team explore the "I Found Jesus" series, diving into Jesus's transformative ministry around the Sea of Galilee. The hosts - Roseann Bowlin, Tom Helmich, and Tevo Christmann - unpack where they each seek Jesus and break down three powerful biblical passages that reveal the essence of discipleship.
Key Takeaways:
- Personal Invitation: Jesus calls disciples personally, demonstrating that faith is fundamentally relational, not programmatic.
- Finding Jesus Everywhere: The team shares unique spaces where they encounter God - from quiet backyards and walking trails to old churches and mountain tops.
- Growing Faith Through Challenges: Storms and uncertainties are opportunities to deepen trust and understanding of Jesus's presence.
- Imperfect Faith is Okay: The disciples' struggles reveal that doubt and fear are part of the spiritual journey, not disqualifiers.
- Trust Over Performance: Following Jesus is about relationship, not perfection - He meets us where we are and continues to guide us.
The podcast offers an inside look at exploring what it means to be a disciple, encouraging listeners to "take a little Jesus" with them wherever they go.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Pastor Joe Liles (00:00):
You may be seated. So we are starting a new
series today, and it's going togo through the month of June.
And the series is called I foundJesus. And what the series is
about was originally titledJesus was here, and it was a
series meant to reallyunderstand that wherever we go
(00:21):
that Jesus is going to be withus, and that we can find Jesus
in any reality that we findourselves in, and what it meant
is to follow us on our journeysthrough summer, right? So as we
journeyed on vacation, how manyof you are taking a vacation
this summer, right? How many ofyou are now jealous of the
people that raised their handthat are taking a vacation this
summer? Okay, that's great.
Didn't mean to make you angrythis morning, but that's a part
of it. But with that, whereveryou go, right? How many of you
(00:44):
separate having time with familylike and then having a vacation?
Do we separate that out there?
Okay, a couple of you out there.
Okay, that's good. We want tofind out in ways how we can know
that we are always walking withJesus. So we titled The series
Jesus was here, and the seriesis going to walk through five
different areas that Jesus wasliterally, which means that
(01:07):
we're going to go into thesegeographic locations, and we're
going to look at the geographywhere Jesus walked. And part of
the reason I want to do that isthere's a little bit of teaching
here, in the sense of we hearthese stories all the time. But
how many of us can relate towhere they actually exist in the
world? Like to bring thishistorical person of Jesus into
the reality of what we knowtoday, and as we're going
(01:28):
through this, I'm like, we cando all these series about all
these different places, but itwould be wonderful to see where
they're at today and what itmeans. And how many of you would
be ever interested in a holyland trip if we did something
like that? Do we have somepeople out there? Oh, dang.
Okay, alright, that's great.
That was like 20 people. Okay,maybe we'll plan that for
sometime in the future when it'ssafe, and then we'll keep on
(01:50):
going. So we've had that on thedocket for a couple years, with
that, and so we're going to gothrough this series. But here's
what happened on Easter we werewe had a whole bunch of eggs in
the back for the kids. We hadabout 1000 eggs back there for
the kids. And it was awesome.
They were having fun, and wethey were all empty. It was a
horrible surprise for the kids.
(02:11):
Um, they were all empty, except,like, 50 of them, which had
little mini Jesuses in them,right? So the goal was the empty
tomb, find Jesus, right? Like,oh, everyone, 1230, that's
really great. See, we putthought into all these things.
It's really wonderful. And so,and then we had egg baskets for
them in their classrooms as asurprise. It was really
wonderful. And so what we didn'texpect is that one is that kids
(02:35):
would take multiple Jesuses. Wedidn't realize that because we
kind of put one out for everychild. Well, as soon as they
found a Jesus, they would pocketa Jesus, and then they would go
find more Jesus's, which didn'tleave enough Jesus for everyone
in the room. So we had to learnreally quick between first and
second service, right? And theonly way we figured that out is
(02:55):
a child came out and it was thecutest thing. And this is why we
changed our series title. Achild comes out and runs up
after kid city, because afterthe message, they come back in.
We do noisy coin offering, theylift it up and they say, man.
And that's really it. They say,Amen. They come up and talk to
me a little bit about the thingsthat they did. It's really
wonderful. And this child cameup ecstatic. Super excited,
right? Super excited. The firstchild comes up and goes, Oh, I
(03:19):
found Jesus. And I'm like, oh,and I'm like, Oh, well that, oh,
that's really cute. I guess wedidn't expect that they would be
like, super excited to findJesus, right? And their language
was, I found Jesus, right? And Iwas like, it just kind of melted
my heart as a pastor, right?
Because we plan a whole bunch ofcool things. We didn't plan for
them to say I found Jesus. Wedidn't teach them back there to
go back and say, I found Jesusright? That was just how that
(03:42):
came out. And then the nextchild as excited, I found three
Jesuses. And I was like, Uh, no,you stole two Jesus's and you
found one. Is what happened. So,so that's how that changed, real
quick between two services wewere running back there and
doing different things. So, um,things. So But with that, it was
(04:02):
the best reality for thosechildren to come up and say, I
found Jesus. And so thishistorical series of Jesus was
here is still applicable, right?
It's how we find Jesus in ourlife, in every situation that
we're in, right? And to makesure that is but the language of
I found Jesus is very important.
And if you guys have seen it,have you seen the little mini
Jesus? Little mini Jesuses thatare around everywhere now? So
(04:24):
they got these little miniJesuses. If you guys see them
out there, we got orange Jesus,right? So, like, we pick because
our colors are orange, it'sreally wonderful. And then we
got all the different colors. Incase anyone's like, I don't want
an orange Jesus. Don't be pickyabout Jesus. Okay, so with that,
we have these hidden all aroundthe church. And what we want you
to do is we want you to take thegrab one, one, Jesus. One,
Jesus. Okay, kids are gettingtheir own Jesus is back there.
(04:47):
But we want you to have a littleJesus and take a little Jesus
with you to wherever you go,this somewhere, and then leave
some Jesus where you end up,alright, and then take a
picture. And. Post it with youand say, Hey, neighborhood
church, send us out with alittle bit of Jesus. I left a
little bit of Jesus in Colorado.
They needed it in this town. No,I'm just kidding. Don't say,
(05:08):
like, yeah, I left a littleJesus on this car after they cut
me off. You can do that greatstory. Not necessarily the
intention how you want to leaveJesus where, but we want you to
take little Jesus out, and wewant you to go out with little
Jesus and really kind of capturethe story of the life extending
beyond the church. And this isreally important. Let me just
kind of set Jesus up here. Thisis really important, and we're
(05:30):
going to learn this today.
There's an important, reallyreason for this series. Jesus's
ministry was not just in asynagogue where everyone came to
listen to Him teach. Think aboutall the stories that you know
about Jesus. How many times itwas like, Hey, he went and
taught in the synagogue once ortwice. But what you don't hear
is, oh, all the people came tothe synagogue. All the people
came to the synagogue. Know whatyou hear is the religious
(05:52):
leaders came to the synagogue tobattle with Jesus and argue with
Jesus about what he was sayingin his divinity. What you have
with the teaching is when Jesuswent outside the walls of the
church into the world and movedaround all the spaces right in
the middle east, and said, Hey,I'm going to go to all these
different areas on his journeythroughout Israel, right? And
went to all these differentplaces to teach. And people
would show up on themountainside, they would show up
(06:13):
on the shores. They would go tothe towns that he was in. The
ministry of Jesus was not insidethe synagogue, it was out in the
world, and we've kept theministry of Jesus inside the
church a little bit. So we wantto broaden that perspective, and
we want you to imagine that youcan find Jesus anywhere. So I
want to start with a question aswe begin this message. And
here's it's one of twoquestions. The first question is
(06:37):
this, and I want you to thinkabout it and not want some
answers from this. Where do youlook for Jesus in your life
right now? Where do you look forJesus in your life right now?
Where do we look for Jesus? Youcan say it out loud. It's okay.
It's a participatory message.
Today. We can say it out loud.
Where do we look for Jesus? Forguidance. Okay. Are there
(06:59):
physical places that we look forJesus nature? Okay, we look for
Jesus nature. I do that too.
That's wonderful. Yeah, work.
Okay, try to find Jesus at work.
Some are like, there ain't noJesus in my work. That's a
struggle. That's a struggle.
Where else do we find Jesus?
(07:20):
Relationships in the car, okay,the backyard, that's great. The
shower, yeah, shower is true.
That's true. There's a lot ofthinking going on, right?
Church, can we say it out loud?
Church, Scripture is great. Youcan turn to Scripture anytime.
There's a lot of places that welook for Jesus. Now, if that was
(07:42):
hard for you to say it's aresponse to the next question, I
want you to think about how hardit was for you to think about
the places that you seek Jesus.
Now I want you to think aboutall the places that you don't
look for Jesus in your life.
Same question, just nuanced in adifferent way. I want you to
think about your life and whereall the spaces that you go that
you don't think about lookingfor Jesus, where do you show up
(08:05):
and Jesus never crosses yourmind out in the world,
those spaces kind of outweighthe places that we look for
Jesus, don't they? Walmart,okay, that's great, yeah, okay,
someone said it out loud. Ishouldn't have repeated that out
loud on the camera now. Sosorry, no, I was kidding, but
it's true, right? It's true.
There's a lot of spaces that wedon't look for Jesus in our
(08:27):
life. When we go out into theworld, what we're going to see
today is that a fully devotedfollower of Christ, you live
your life towards Christ, notportions of your life. You have
a fully devoted follower ofJesus Christ, which means you
walk in every space that you'rein, and you are a messenger for
the kingdom of God everywherethat you go, in any situation
(08:50):
that you're in. You are amessenger, and we're gonna learn
about that today. So here's whatwe're gonna do. We're gonna open
up scripture. We love scripturein the church. Couple notes. One
you have these on your chairs.
It says, Hello June. These arethe Sundays coming up in June,
and what's going on in life ofthe church. You can take a look
at that. We got our new memberclass after today, we'll share a
(09:11):
little bit more about that, butit's got some things coming up.
On the back of that is messagenotes. So if you want to take
notes today, there's notes onthe back of this card. You can
write down your notes. You cantake this home with you. That's
great. And then we got a plentyfor the whole month. So take
this home with you. You can putit on your fridge. Know what's
coming up for the life of thechurch, and so you can take a
look at that. But we're also onthe Bible app. So if you got the
Bible app, you can open that youcan follow along with scripture.
(09:33):
That is an app. There's a chairback card. There's a link in the
description that says that also.
So take a look for that. So youcan definitely look at the Bible
app today as we're followingthrough Scripture. And then with
that, we're going to be in theGospel of Matthew, the gospel of
Matthew. And if you got Bibles,we love Bibles in the church.
Our mission is that every singleperson would bring a Bible to
church, whether you're on theBible app or you're bringing the
good book. We want to see Biblesin your hand. And so how many
(09:55):
people got Bibles today in theChurch? We love some Bibles.
Yes. Love Bibles in the. Church.
Great. Bring your Bible. If youdon't have one, we have Bible
boxes around the church. You cangrab a Bible and take it home
with you, which is reallyincredible. We want you to have
scripture with you so you don'thave to worry about it. Take it
home, write your name in it.
That is for you. And so we'regoing to be in the Gospel of
Matthew. And I just want to walkthrough a little bit of what the
Gospel of Matthew is about,because we're going to stay in
(10:18):
the Gospel of Matthew throughoutthis whole series, is what we're
going to do. And so the Gospelof Matthew really talks about a
little bit of the historicalperson of Jesus. And it's really
written kind of biographical, iswhat we're going to say. It's
written from a perspective wherethey want to take the Old
Testament prophecies, what wasthe law, right? And take this
(10:38):
and then they want to move itinto the New Testament, right?
And the New Testament startswith the gospels, Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John. This is the firstgospel. They're not really in
order that way, right? But atthe same time, this is the first
gospel. And then in that, whatwant to do is we want to see
Jesus as the fulfillment ofthese Old Testament prophecies.
So what you get a lot throughoutthe Gospel of Matthew is this,
(11:00):
this nature of this veryhistorical person, Jesus, moving
through all these differentspaces, doing a lot of different
teaching about the differencebetween the law and the Gospel,
or the two kingdoms, the kingdomon earth and the kingdom of
heaven. And then you get all ofthe religious leaders of the day
challenging him, which is why Iappreciated Heidi so much when
she said that Jesus was apersecuted, misunderstood
(11:20):
person. It's true like theGospel of Matthew rings true for
that sentiment alone as we walkthrough that so what our hope is
is that through the month ofJune, you would take time every
single day to read through theGospel of Matthew. We're going
to be in different parts of theGospel of Matthew, and we'll
talk through where we're at, butwe're gonna be in specific
areas, geographic locations ofJesus's ministry. So that'll
(11:43):
find us in different spots, notjust moving through the gospel.
So we want you to take thishome, and we want you to be able
to read through the Gospel ofMatthew this month. That's our
goal, when we do a book alignedwith the series, is that you
would read through it. So we'regonna start right in the
beginning of the gospel ofMatthew, and it begins with the
genealogy of Jesus. That's astart. So good luck on that.
(12:03):
Just kind of work through it.
It's gonna be wonderful. Take itin. Once you've powered through
that, you've kind of earned yourway into the gospel, which is
really wonderful. And then itbegins with the birth of Jesus,
the visit of the wise men. Andthen we're gonna move all the
way to chapter four, right? SoJesus's ministry is beginning.
It. Right before this, you havethe proclamation of John the
Baptist, which is proclaimingthe way Jesus is coming, one who
(12:27):
is greater than I, who baptizeswith the Holy Spirit. He's
paving the way for Jesus. Johnhas his own disciples, but he's
moving all his disciples toJesus. And he's saying, I've
been talking about this personwho's coming into ministry. And
then we have the baptism ofJesus by John that begins the
ministry. Now, what you're goingto find is that it leads right
into the ministry of Jesus,beginning with temptation,
(12:48):
right, where he goes into thewilderness for 40 days. So
imagine that right when you comeinto the church, if you're
starting a new life in Christ,and you find Jesus 40 days of
temptation. That's how Jesusstarted. Anyone want that to the
start of their lovely life inChrist? Yeah, that's a tough
one. That's a tough start. Thatwas the beginning of Jesus's
ministry 40 days. But in thatthere was an opportunity to
(13:08):
claim God as the foundation foreverything that Jesus was going
to do in his ministry. Andthat's what happened. So we find
ourselves now the ministry inGalilee is beginning. So today
we're going to read throughverses 18 through 22 but we're
going to be talking about theSea of Galilee. There are many
different things that happenaround the Sea of Galilee. And
(13:28):
if you look up there, that's anactual picture of the Sea of
Galilee. And so you can kind ofstart to see what the Sea of
Galilee looks like. And beforewe get into this, to just give
you a concept of what the Sea ofGalilee is like, I want to give
you a location of the Sea ofGalilee. So I want to paint a
picture for you of where Jesuswas moving in ministry. Has
anyone ever done this before?
Kind of look at where Jesus wasactually at in ministry. Okay,
this is great. How many of youbeen studying Scripture all your
(13:51):
lives and you're like, yes, andlike, this is the first time
we're gonna see it. Like, thisis good. I'm excited. So this is
the Sea of Galilee. This is whatit looks like. You There it is.
It's exciting.
Yeah, that's about it. Okay, sothat's the Sea of Galilee.
That's modern day Sea of Galileedoesn't look much different from
(14:12):
when it was here's the depthchart about the Sea of Galilee,
so you can see kind of what wasthere. You get Tiberius in
there. That's going to beimportant, because it's also
called the Sea of Tiberius,right? Or the sea of cannessare.
It usually became the sea ofwhatever town occupied and had
the most commerce at the timewhen it was taken over every
other century, right? So itbecame something different. So
(14:34):
you actually hear about itreferenced in three or four
different ways in Scripture, allthe way from the Old Testament
to the New Testament, which isreally interesting. But as you
can see, it gets really deep inthe really deep in the middle.
Those are meters, right? So it'sreally sitting about 150 feet
deep in the middle, right? So itgoes pretty deep, right? It's
also like 800 feet below sealevel, which is interesting. The
Dead Sea is the only other lakethat is lower than the Sea of
(14:56):
Galilee, right? That is the DeadSea, the salt sea, that is the.
Only one that's lower in theentire world, right from the
Dead Sea, which is reallyinteresting. So now that's gonna
be a point, because the Dead Seais just south of the Sea of
Galilee, if you didn't know. Andwe're gonna see that in a
second. So let's blow it out alittle bit and find out where
we're at. So where we're at, asyou can see over there at the
little red outline, that's theSea of Galilee over there by
(15:18):
Nazareth, right? And then yousee Damascus, Lebanon, Amman,
Tel Aviv, right, starting topaint a little picture. How many
of you are not good withgeography? So, like, I need to
blow the map up more, becauseI'm like, look great. Throw me a
little bit farther. Like, whereare we at in the world? You
know? Like, I get it MiddleEast, around Jerusalem. Okay,
great. So here's a little bitfarther out. So now you can see
(15:40):
Israel, Jordan, Cairo, Egypt. Sonow you can see Israelites
coming out of Egypt, how theymade their way out right into
the promised land, and what thatmeans. And so you start to see,
now the red dots over there byHaifa, right in the West Bank,
right? There's Damascus Cyprusis over there too. And then if
you go to the next one, right,ah, now, now we can see where
(16:00):
we're at in the world. This iswhere we're at in the world. So
you see the dot, that's wherethe Sea of Galilee is, right?
Now, what you get is, you cansee that you got Greece, right?
You got Algeria, Saudi Arabia,Egypt, Iran, right? You can
start to see where we're at inthe Middle East, where the Sea
of Galilee is, that little spotis where we follow Jesus
throughout his ministry in thatpart of the world. It kind of
(16:23):
makes it an important narrative.
When you think how much Jesusaccomplished in ministry to grow
the kingdom of God from that onespot around there. Now there's a
couple things that happen aroundthe Sea of Galilee, which is
very interesting. And so therewas a really cool map that I
found. So check this out. Sothese are some of the things
that happened around the Sea ofGalilee. So in the Sea of
Galilee, you're gonna get overhere beside a right. And so you
(16:43):
got the multiplication of theloaves and the fishes, right? So
you remember the 5000 feeding inthe 5000 that happened around
the Sea of Galilee. If you go,keep on going around. You have
over here, maritime of hippos.
You have the capital of Antipas,the home of Mary Magdalene,
right? The Sermon on the Mountwas on the other side, which is
really nice. And then Jesusperforms many miracles his own
(17:06):
city, right? So you get a lot ofdifferent things that are
happening around the sea. Thisis also the sea where the
disciples kept on Crossing, andthere were storms, if you
remember that. So the stormsthat kept on hitting and they
were in boats. This is that seaalso. So there's a lot of great
things that happen in this text.
And then also the Sermon on theMount, where you get this big,
long discourse where they sat onthe hillside that was
(17:27):
overlooking the Sea of Galilee.
So now you start to get a placein scripture where you're seeing
some of these go on a couplepictures. So take a look at
this. This is, right. This is,this is literally from
Capernaum, right? So a lot ofJesus's ministry was done in
Capernaum. This is Capernaumlooking out over the sea of
Galilee. And then this is righthere, the modern day city of
(17:48):
Capernaum, right? So, oh, sorry,modern day city of Tiberius,
right? So you're going to seeTiberius here, so you can kind
of see what that looks like now,overlooking the Sea of Galilee.
And then now I want to walk youthrough where you see Jesus's
ministry, where you see Jesuswalking. And I want you to think
about this as we talk about youdoing ministry yourselves, and
(18:09):
that you are messengers of thekingdom. What this means is that
you are not meant to do ministryin this church alone. Wherever
you go, there is going to be anopportunity to do to share the
message of Jesus Christ, thatwill be the point of every part
of the series. And you have tounderstand that when you move,
when you go to a different city,you are still carrying what it
(18:30):
means to be a Christian intothat city. So watch what Jesus
did. So here is the Dead Sea,and up top is the Sea of
Galilee, right? That's theminute Jesus's ministry largely
existed in that span. This isthe whole area of Jesus's
ministry, right? That existedall in different areas. And if
you see the baptismal side ofJesus Christ, right, that's the
(18:51):
little red dot right there. Sonow you can see where we're at
in the text, where Jesus wasjust baptized, and then he ends
up at the Galilean sea. So Jesuswas baptized there and then made
his way up the river Jordan intothe Sea of Galilee, right, where
we get the calling of the firstdisciples. Now take a look at
this. Here are the spots ofJesus's ministry, which is
really interesting. So you cantake the Sea of Galilee. You
(19:12):
start to see Jesus pronounce hisjudgment. Jesus feeds the 5000
up on the top, Peter says Jesusis the Messiah. You start to see
this branching out, Jesus healsthe Canaanite women, right?
Jesus turns water to wine inCana Nazareth, Jesus's hometown.
So you see this expansion ofJesus's ministry around the Sea
of Galilee, and then all the waydown to the next slide, which is
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now into the Dead Sea, right?
Where you get now South. And yousee that this is Jerusalem. So
imagine that Jesus's whole walkis towards Jerusalem, right? And
this whole ministry is towardsJerusalem. And then you start to
see Jesus's ministry down here,the healing, the talking. And
then you see what happens inJerusalem. Jesus speaks, Jesus
heals, Jesus restores, a manborn blind. You see the ministry
developing. This is what itmeans to follow Jesus, that we
(19:56):
too, have. Ministry when we walkoutside of this church. Now I
want you to hear what that lookslike from Jesus. And there's two
ways this is going to go. Thereare times that Jesus met people
in ministry, right? Met peoplewhere they're at, and there are
times that people found Jesusand worked with them. And so
(20:17):
we're going to read these textstoday and see what we can get
out of Scripture today as welook through them. So turn to
Matthew chapter four. We'regonna be in verses 18 through
2218 through 22 and this isJesus calls the first disciples
right after the ministry hasbegun in Galilee so. And here's
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what it says. As he walked bythe Sea of Galilee, he saw two
brothers, Simon, who was calledPeter, and Andrew, his brother,
casting a net into the sea, forthey were fishermen. And he said
to them, follow me, and I willmake you fish for people.
Immediately they left their netsand followed him. As he went
(21:00):
from there, he saw two otherbrothers, James, son of Zebedee,
and his brother John, in theboat with their father, Zebedee,
mending their nets, and hecalled to them, and immediately
they left the boat and theirfather and they followed him.
This is at the Sea of Galilee.
(21:21):
Do you know that this callingstory the disciples is in every
gospel, and it's not the same?
Oh, exciting. Interestinglyenough, this gospel places this
story and this narrative atdifferent times in Scripture. So
before this, we have that Jesus,beginning ministry, walks into
Peter's house right, which isnear the Sea of Galilee and
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heals his mother in law. Some ofthe Gospels placed that before
the time when they were met onthe seashore, and some of them
place it after the time they'remet on the seashore. And
generally, Theologicallyspeaking, they're like, ah,
could have been the same day,just depending where it was at
and how things were working andthings were going on. But
they're like, that's not thepoint of why we're in Scripture,
though. And other gospels tell alittle bit longer story about
the calling of the disciples.
(22:04):
And if you heard another storyfrom one of the other gospels,
it starts by saying, you know,the disciples were fishing, and
they hadn't caught anything allday, and they had come in and
they had pulled in their nets.
They weren't mending nets. Theyhad pulled in their nets, and
they were done for the day. AndJesus comes up to the disciples
in the same story, and he says,hey, I want you to go cast your
nets deeper over there. AndPeter says, Jesus. And now they
(22:27):
know Jesus. They've heard of theministry. The ministry has
begun. They know what'shappening. He says, Jesus, we've
been fishing all night, and wecaught nothing, nothing at all.
And he goes, Great, cast yournets deeper. And he goes, I
(22:47):
can't believe we would do this.
And so they go back out, andthey cast the nets, and they
pull in so much fish that theyhave to bring all the other
fishermen off the shore,including James and John, right?
And they have to pull that andthey pull it all up the shore,
and they pull it off the shore.
And they're so amazed that Peterfollows at Jesus' feet. And he's
like, Oh my gosh, I will followyou. And he goes, give me. I'll
(23:08):
make you a fisher of men. Followme. And he says, but I can't
follow you, because I'm a sinfulperson. I'm a sinful person. And
Jesus says, Follow me, and I'llmake you fish for people. And we
learn a couple very key thingsin this text looking at what's
going on. One is that Peter didnot have a good day fishing.
(23:29):
Have you ever had a bad day atwork? Anyone ever have a bad day
at work? Right? Okay, all right.
I just want you to think aboutthis for a second. Have you ever
had another boss come in andsay, Hey, saw what you're doing
today. Awesome. I'd love topromote you, and I'd love for
you to come with me based onyour work today. Has that ever
happened? Can you imagine Jesuscoming to Peter and Andrea and
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saying, Hey, I saw that you guysdidn't catch anything last
night, right? I would love toraise you up to be on my key
team and my core team of peopleas we go forward into ministry.
One is that Jesus is not callingyou because of what you do in
this world.
Jesus is not calling you tofollow Jesus because of the work
that you do in the world here.
Here's the second part of thisstory. Is that Jesus said, hey,
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you need to go out and you needto go deeper into the unknown.
You need to go deeper intoplaces you have not been yet in
order to follow me. And that'swhat we learn from the first
text of following Jesus. It'snot that we have to immediately
drop everything and followJesus. Now I will say this. If
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Jesus speaks to you personallyon a seashore and says, Follow
me, drop everything and followJesus, right? That is probably
the one condition where it'slike, drop everything, follow
Jesus, make sure it's Jesusfirst. Follow Jesus. Okay, have
a couple questions, right? Askthem about Scripture. It's gonna
be great. Follow Jesus. Rightoutside of that, it's really
difficult, which is what weexperience from Andrew and
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Peter, is that it's verydifficult just to follow Jesus.
I'm a sinner. I didn't do well,I can't believe I didn't catch
anything out here. You don'twant me to follow you. Is the
same thing that we would say,I'm not worthy to follow you.
But here's the part of this isthat Jesus is not calling you
for who you are today. Jesus iscalling you for who you're
becoming in the kingdom. Jesusknows who you're becoming. He
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wants you to follow him so youcan become the person that he
created you to be, and yet westand still in the moment and
say, Hey, I'm comfortable justsitting in church on this
Sunday, not going back out intothe world with your message,
because I don't do everythingright, Jesus. We know that, and
so does Jesus. There is notgoing to be a single day where
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you get everything right, whereit's going to make you worthy of
the cross. Jesus, and thatsacrifice makes you worthy of
the cross. And we hear thatstory right here. Now, I want
you to move forward a littlebit. I want you to go in chapter
eight, verses 23 through 27 nowthis is a little bit harder one
as we get into it. This is whenhe's sitting with the disciples,
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and he's just cleansed a leper.
He has healed the centurionsservant, and then he heals at
Peter's house again. And thenhe's talking about the would be
followers of Jesus. Would be,could be, should be followers of
Jesus. Is literally the title ofthe section scripture. And this
is verses 18 through 27 we'regoing to start at 23 though, and
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listen to what happens when hegot into the boat. His disciples
followed Him. And I want you toimagine that he was just
teaching on the Sea of Galilee.
They were all gathered aroundhim. They were sitting there,
and he was trying to find aplace where, once he had taught,
that he had now move on. And sothey were getting into the boat
on the Sea of Galilee, andthey're going to move on. And
when he got into the boat, hisdisciples followed Him. A
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windstorm arose on the sea sogreat that the boat was being
swamped by the waves. But he wasasleep, and they went and woke
him up, saying, Lord, save us.
We are perishing. And He said tothem, Why are you afraid? You of
little faith. Then he got up andrebuked the winds and the sea,
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and there was a dead calm. Theywere amazed, saying, what sort
of man is this that even thewinds and the sea obey him? I
it. Here's the hard part in thisnarrative. These are the
disciples that are in the boatwith Jesus. They've seen Jesus
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heal, they've seen Jesus feed5000 they've seen Jesus speak
about the ministry and theprophecies and the divinity.
He's been called the Messiah.
They've claimed that they aredevout followers of him, and yet
they are in the boat going, whatare we going to do about the
storm? I mean, I know you didall those things, but what are
we going to do about this? Arewe any different as a people
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that Jesus can show us time andtime and time and time again,
that it's going to be okay, andthat he has us, and that he's
going to be next to us, and Hewill never leave us, and yet,
the next thing hits him. What dowe do? Like Jesus? What are you
going to do about this? Thisone's not like the other ones. I
don't know what to do with thisone. This one's different. I
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don't know what to claim. And soyou have the disciples in the
boat, and they're seeing thestorm arise, and here's Jesus
sitting there, and Jesus iscalm, just like the storm that
he calms, and they wake him upin a panic. And what we learn
from this text is that justbecause you are a follower of
Jesus Christ does not mean thatyou are not going to go through
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storms in your life. You youwill go through storms in your
life, and in this text, you knowwhen this storm happens right
after they sat on the seashoreteaching hundreds and 1000s of
people listening to Jesus, theyget into a boat, and now they're
fearing for their lives. Ithought everything would be fine
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when I follow Jesus. When youfollow Jesus, it does not mean
that you won't go throughstorms, but it does mean that
Jesus will be with you in thestorm right there the whole
time. And what I want you tothink about is that if Jesus is
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always teaching, if everythingthat Jesus did was a message for
the kingdom of God, think aboutthis, every moment that Jesus
walks is the teaching narrative,then we are always learning,
even in the midst of the storm.
But the lesson might not be forright now, you might be going
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through something that is notmeant for today. It's meant for
down the road. So guess what?
Did you know The disciples findthemselves in the Sea of Galilee
in a storm, again, in a boat.
Same. See same disciples, maybethe same boat. Let's read that
story. Listen to this. I wantyou to turn over to chapter 14,
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verses 22 through 33 and I wantyou to listen to this story now.
I want you to remember thatJesus, that the disciples were
just with Jesus in a boat, andhe did, what? When the storm was
raging, what happened? He calmedthe storm. Calmed the storm. He
stilled the waves, and there wasa dead calm. He didn't just
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comment. There was a dead calm.
You know that eerie quiet whennothing's moving, it's so
peaceful. They call the waterglass, right? You know that?
Imagine that it changed from atumultuous storm to glass. Now I
want you to paint that picturefor this. Here's verses 22
through 33 in chapter 14 ofMatthew in the Sea of Galilee.
Immediately, he made thedisciples get into the boat
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again. Disciples like no not theboat and go on ahead to the
other side, while he dismissedthe crowds again from teaching,
always teaching. And after hedismissed the crowds, he went up
the mountain by Himself to pray.
When evening came, he was therealone. But by this time, the
boat, battered by the waves, wasfar from the land, for the wind
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was against them, and early inthe morning, he came walking
towards them on the sea. Butwhen the disciples saw him
walking on the sea, they wereterrified, saying it is a ghost.
And they cried out in fear. Butimmediately Jesus spoke to them
and said, Take heart. It is I donot be afraid. And Peter
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answered, love. Peter Peter isthe first man get it. Peter.
Peter answered, Lord, if it isyou command me to come to you on
the water. And he said, Come soPeter got out of the boat,
started walking on the water andcame towards Jesus, but when he
noticed the strong wind, hebecame frightened and beginning
to sink, he cried out, Lord,save me. And Jesus immediately
reached out his hand and caughthim, saying to him, you this is
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great. You can't get away fromthis statement. You of little
faith. Why did you doubt? Andwhen they got into the boat,
what happened? The wind ceased,and those in the boat worshiped
and saying, truly, now werecognize you are the Son of
God. When you read those storiestogether, it's a little bit
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interesting, isn't it? Kind ofseems like the same story they
were in before. Kind of seemslike the same way they cried out
frightened before. Kind of seemslike the same thing Jesus said
before. How many of you had torepeat things in your life to
people? Okay? How does that feelwhen you repeat things to
people? Does it feel awesome?
Wonderful? Feels awesome? Feelsso good. Now all you need to say
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is, you of little faith. That'sall you need to say, right? You
just look at him like you oflittle faith. I've already said
this to you. I love this story,and I loved it in juxtaposition
of the Sea of Galilee the firsttime the storm hit, because
they're in the situation again.
But now mind you, I think thatwe've leveled up a little bit in
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this narrative. The first timethey were in the boat with
Jesus, and Jesus was in theboat. This time, Jesus not in
the boat. You gotta trust alittle bit more in this
scenario, right? Jesus on theboat, and Peter says, Look, if
I'm trusting you, I want to walkon the water. One, I don't think
you should ever test God,because if you're going to say I
want to walk on the water, Godis like, come on, out 150 feet
deep. Let's just imagine they'rein the deep part, right? They're
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going fishing deep, right? Sothey're out there walking on
water, and those waves sittingand I, what I love about this
story is that there there are acouple small things that mean so
much in it. That means so muchin it. One is, they've been here
before. They've been herebefore, and they were taught to
trust the Lord, and they fellaway again. I want to tell you,
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it's okay. That's the first partof the story. It's okay if
you trust God, and the next timeyou question God again and are
frightened when you go throughsomething, even if it's similar,
it's okay. We're human. We comeback to God over and over and
over again. The next story isthis is, no matter how far you
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feel God is away, or you feelJesus is away in your life,
Jesus is always right there. Ifyou go back and read this story,
and I'm not going to do it now,but it now, but I want you to do
it later. I want you to read itagain, because it said he was so
far away that they thought itwas a ghost, which means they
just see a little faint figurein the distance. And then Peter
walked out a couple steps andsank and cried out, and the Lord
was there. That distance thatGod covers in Jesus Christ,
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across the Sea of Galilee to bewith Peter is the distance that
Jesus will cover in your life.
When you are frightened and youcall out, it is the same
distance. It's okay to call outagain, and Jesus will cover that
distance. You don't need to walkthe whole way. If you are
frightened and scared, you cancall out for God, and Jesus will
cover that gap. It is importantfor you to know that. In your
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life. But the point of the storyis not that. The point of this
story, as we read through thisis that the situations that we
go through today, the situationsthat we go through today, teach
us to trust God tomorrow. If youare not recognizing that you are
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walking with Jesus and thatJesus is always teaching you
through your life, then you willnot take what you've learned
today and realize that God isgoing to trust you with that
tomorrow. And when you gothrough the situation again, or
someone's in your life with thatsimilar situation, God is going
to move you into their life,because you've been there and
you've trusted God through italready. But what we need to
understand is that today mightnot be the story for us. It
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could be a trusting scenario forwhat comes tomorrow, and we need
to trust God in that everysingle situation you go through
might not be for today. But inorder to teach us to trust God
for tomorrow, if the discipleshad learned from the first time
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on the Sea of Galilee, theywould all got out of the boat
and started walking. It's kindof interesting when you think
that even if you trust God, youmight not even need a boat in
order to walk towards Jesus.
This is the beginning of Jesus'sministry. This is the beginning
of us walking around all ofIsrael with Jesus, between the
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Sea of Galilee and the Dead Seabetween Capernaum and Nazareth.
We are going to journey withJesus this whole month, and
we're going to explore all thesedifferent places to understand
that wherever you go, you are amessenger for the kingdom of
God. Trust God today for thesituations that you're in
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tomorrow. And all God's peoplesaid, Amen, let us pray heavenly
and gracious, Father, we comebefore you today knowing that it
is hard to trust you some days,not because you are not there,
Lord, but because we questionand we doubt and we go through
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really hard things in our life.
And so each day we come back toyou, Lord, we ask for
forgiveness for the times thatwe doubted again. And Lord, ask
for grace as we step back intothat relationship with you,
Lord, I would ask for you toremind us and to whisper us that
we have been through situationsbefore, to remind us when we've
walked with you before, toremind us in the situations
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where we never thought we'd getthrough it only to find
ourselves here today, my hope,Lord, is that we can journey
with you and recognizes theplace of the church is a place
that we're sent from, not aplace we're sent to. It's a
place that we will always besending out into the world and
that we never do this alone. SoLord today, send us with each
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send each of us with your HolySpirit, each of us to a place,
into a person that needs to hearof the kingdom of God, and send
us with a grace and a joy todeliver that is good news for
the sake of the world. And wepray these things in your holy
and precious name. And all God'speople said, Amen. Do you guys
enjoy the start of our series? Ifound Jesus. So this is going to
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be.
You may be seated. So we are starting a new
series today, and it's going togo through the month of June.
And the series is called I foundJesus. And what the series is
about was originally titledJesus was here, and it was a
series meant to reallyunderstand that wherever we go
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that Jesus is going to be withus, and that we can find Jesus
in any reality that we findourselves in, and what it meant
is to follow us on our journeysthrough summer, right? So as we
journeyed on vacation, how manyof you are taking a vacation
this summer, right? How many ofyou are now jealous of the
people that raised their handthat are taking a vacation this
summer? Okay, that's great.
Didn't mean to make you angrythis morning, but that's a part
of it. But with that, whereveryou go, right? How many of you
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separate having time with familylike and then having a vacation?
Do we separate that out there?
Okay, a couple of you out there.
Okay, that's good. We want tofind out in ways how we can know
that we are always walking withJesus. So we titled The series
Jesus was here, and the seriesis going to walk through five
different areas that Jesus wasliterally, which means that
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we're going to go into thesegeographic locations, and we're
going to look at the geographywhere Jesus walked. And part of
the reason I want to do that isthere's a little bit of teaching
here, in the sense of we hearthese stories all the time. But
how many of us can relate towhere they actually exist in the
world? Like to bring thishistorical person of Jesus into
the reality of what we knowtoday, and as we're going
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through this, I'm like, we cando all these series about all
these different places, but itwould be wonderful to see where
they're at today and what itmeans. And how many of you would
be ever interested in a holyland trip if we did something
like that? Do we have somepeople out there? Oh, dang.
Okay, alright, that's great.
That was like 20 people. Okay,maybe we'll plan that for
sometime in the future when it'ssafe, and then we'll keep on
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going. So we've had that on thedocket for a couple years, with
that, and so we're going to gothrough this series. But here's
what happened on Easter we werewe had a whole bunch of eggs in
the back for the kids. We hadabout 1000 eggs back there for
the kids. And it was awesome.
They were having fun, and wethey were all empty. It was a
horrible surprise for the kids.
(02:11):
Um, they were all empty, except,like, 50 of them, which had
little mini Jesuses in them,right? So the goal was the empty
tomb, find Jesus, right? Like,oh, everyone, 1230, that's
really great. See, we putthought into all these things.
It's really wonderful. And so,and then we had egg baskets for
them in their classrooms as asurprise. It was really
wonderful. And so what we didn'texpect is that one is that kids
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would take multiple Jesuses. Wedidn't realize that because we
kind of put one out for everychild. Well, as soon as they
found a Jesus, they would pocketa Jesus, and then they would go
find more Jesus's, which didn'tleave enough Jesus for everyone
in the room. So we had to learnreally quick between first and
second service, right? And theonly way we figured that out is
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a child came out and it was thecutest thing. And this is why we
changed our series title. Achild comes out and runs up
after kid city, because afterthe message, they come back in.
We do noisy coin offering, theylift it up and they say, man.
And that's really it. They say,Amen. They come up and talk to
me a little bit about the thingsthat they did. It's really
wonderful. And this child cameup ecstatic. Super excited,
right? Super excited. The firstchild comes up and goes, Oh, I
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found Jesus. And I'm like, oh,and I'm like, Oh, well that, oh,
that's really cute. I guess wedidn't expect that they would be
like, super excited to findJesus, right? And their language
was, I found Jesus, right? And Iwas like, it just kind of melted
my heart as a pastor, right?
Because we plan a whole bunch ofcool things. We didn't plan for
them to say I found Jesus. Wedidn't teach them back there to
go back and say, I found Jesusright? That was just how that
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came out. And then the nextchild as excited, I found three
Jesuses. And I was like, Uh, no,you stole two Jesus's and you
found one. Is what happened. So,so that's how that changed, real
quick between two services wewere running back there and
doing different things. So, um,things. So But with that, it was
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the best reality for thosechildren to come up and say, I
found Jesus. And so thishistorical series of Jesus was
here is still applicable, right?
It's how we find Jesus in ourlife, in every situation that
we're in, right? And to makesure that is but the language of
I found Jesus is very important.
And if you guys have seen it,have you seen the little mini
Jesus? Little mini Jesuses thatare around everywhere now? So
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they got these little miniJesuses. If you guys see them
out there, we got orange Jesus,right? So, like, we pick because
our colors are orange, it'sreally wonderful. And then we
got all the different colors. Incase anyone's like, I don't want
an orange Jesus. Don't be pickyabout Jesus. Okay, so with that,
we have these hidden all aroundthe church. And what we want you
to do is we want you to take thegrab one, one, Jesus. One,
Jesus. Okay, kids are gettingtheir own Jesus is back there.
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But we want you to have a littleJesus and take a little Jesus
with you to wherever you go,this somewhere, and then leave
some Jesus where you end up,alright, and then take a
picture. And. Post it with youand say, Hey, neighborhood
church, send us out with alittle bit of Jesus. I left a
little bit of Jesus in Colorado.
They needed it in this town. No,I'm just kidding. Don't say,
(05:08):
like, yeah, I left a littleJesus on this car after they cut
me off. You can do that greatstory. Not necessarily the
intention how you want to leaveJesus where, but we want you to
take little Jesus out, and wewant you to go out with little
Jesus and really kind of capturethe story of the life extending
beyond the church. And this isreally important. Let me just
kind of set Jesus up here. Thisis really important, and we're
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going to learn this today.
There's an important, reallyreason for this series. Jesus's
ministry was not just in asynagogue where everyone came to
listen to Him teach. Think aboutall the stories that you know
about Jesus. How many times itwas like, Hey, he went and
taught in the synagogue once ortwice. But what you don't hear
is, oh, all the people came tothe synagogue. All the people
came to the synagogue. Know whatyou hear is the religious
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leaders came to the synagogue tobattle with Jesus and argue with
Jesus about what he was sayingin his divinity. What you have
with the teaching is when Jesuswent outside the walls of the
church into the world and movedaround all the spaces right in
the middle east, and said, Hey,I'm going to go to all these
different areas on his journeythroughout Israel, right? And
went to all these differentplaces to teach. And people
would show up on themountainside, they would show up
(06:13):
on the shores. They would go tothe towns that he was in. The
ministry of Jesus was not insidethe synagogue, it was out in the
world, and we've kept theministry of Jesus inside the
church a little bit. So we wantto broaden that perspective, and
we want you to imagine that youcan find Jesus anywhere. So I
want to start with a question aswe begin this message. And
here's it's one of twoquestions. The first question is
(06:37):
this, and I want you to thinkabout it and not want some
answers from this. Where do youlook for Jesus in your life
right now? Where do you look forJesus in your life right now?
Where do we look for Jesus? Youcan say it out loud. It's okay.
It's a participatory message.
Today. We can say it out loud.
Where do we look for Jesus? Forguidance. Okay. Are there
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physical places that we look forJesus nature? Okay, we look for
Jesus nature. I do that too.
That's wonderful. Yeah, work.
Okay, try to find Jesus at work.
Some are like, there ain't noJesus in my work. That's a
struggle. That's a struggle.
Where else do we find Jesus?
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Relationships in the car, okay,the backyard, that's great. The
shower, yeah, shower is true.
That's true. There's a lot ofthinking going on, right?
Church, can we say it out loud?
Church, Scripture is great. Youcan turn to Scripture anytime.
There's a lot of places that welook for Jesus. Now, if that was
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hard for you to say it's aresponse to the next question, I
want you to think about how hardit was for you to think about
the places that you seek Jesus.
Now I want you to think aboutall the places that you don't
look for Jesus in your life.
Same question, just nuanced in adifferent way. I want you to
think about your life and whereall the spaces that you go that
you don't think about lookingfor Jesus, where do you show up
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and Jesus never crosses yourmind out in the world,
those spaces kind of outweighthe places that we look for
Jesus, don't they? Walmart,okay, that's great, yeah, okay,
someone said it out loud. Ishouldn't have repeated that out
loud on the camera now. Sosorry, no, I was kidding, but
it's true, right? It's true.
There's a lot of spaces that wedon't look for Jesus in our
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life. When we go out into theworld, what we're going to see
today is that a fully devotedfollower of Christ, you live
your life towards Christ, notportions of your life. You have
a fully devoted follower ofJesus Christ, which means you
walk in every space that you'rein, and you are a messenger for
the kingdom of God everywherethat you go, in any situation
(08:50):
that you're in. You are amessenger, and we're gonna learn
about that today. So here's whatwe're gonna do. We're gonna open
up scripture. We love scripturein the church. Couple notes. One
you have these on your chairs.
It says, Hello June. These arethe Sundays coming up in June,
and what's going on in life ofthe church. You can take a look
at that. We got our new memberclass after today, we'll share a
(09:11):
little bit more about that, butit's got some things coming up.
On the back of that is messagenotes. So if you want to take
notes today, there's notes onthe back of this card. You can
write down your notes. You cantake this home with you. That's
great. And then we got a plentyfor the whole month. So take
this home with you. You can putit on your fridge. Know what's
coming up for the life of thechurch, and so you can take a
look at that. But we're also onthe Bible app. So if you got the
Bible app, you can open that youcan follow along with scripture.
(09:33):
That is an app. There's a chairback card. There's a link in the
description that says that also.
So take a look for that. So youcan definitely look at the Bible
app today as we're followingthrough Scripture. And then with
that, we're going to be in theGospel of Matthew, the gospel of
Matthew. And if you got Bibles,we love Bibles in the church.
Our mission is that every singleperson would bring a Bible to
church, whether you're on theBible app or you're bringing the
good book. We want to see Biblesin your hand. And so how many
(09:55):
people got Bibles today in theChurch? We love some Bibles.
Yes. Love Bibles in the. Church.
Great. Bring your Bible. If youdon't have one, we have Bible
boxes around the church. You cangrab a Bible and take it home
with you, which is reallyincredible. We want you to have
scripture with you so you don'thave to worry about it. Take it
home, write your name in it.
That is for you. And so we'regoing to be in the Gospel of
Matthew. And I just want to walkthrough a little bit of what the
Gospel of Matthew is about,because we're going to stay in
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the Gospel of Matthew throughoutthis whole series, is what we're
going to do. And so the Gospelof Matthew really talks about a
little bit of the historicalperson of Jesus. And it's really
written kind of biographical, iswhat we're going to say. It's
written from a perspective wherethey want to take the Old
Testament prophecies, what wasthe law, right? And take this
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and then they want to move itinto the New Testament, right?
And the New Testament startswith the gospels, Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John. This is the firstgospel. They're not really in
order that way, right? But atthe same time, this is the first
gospel. And then in that, whatwant to do is we want to see
Jesus as the fulfillment ofthese Old Testament prophecies.
So what you get a lot throughoutthe Gospel of Matthew is this,
(11:00):
this nature of this veryhistorical person, Jesus, moving
through all these differentspaces, doing a lot of different
teaching about the differencebetween the law and the Gospel,
or the two kingdoms, the kingdomon earth and the kingdom of
heaven. And then you get all ofthe religious leaders of the day
challenging him, which is why Iappreciated Heidi so much when
she said that Jesus was apersecuted, misunderstood
(11:20):
person. It's true like theGospel of Matthew rings true for
that sentiment alone as we walkthrough that so what our hope is
is that through the month ofJune, you would take time every
single day to read through theGospel of Matthew. We're going
to be in different parts of theGospel of Matthew, and we'll
talk through where we're at, butwe're gonna be in specific
areas, geographic locations ofJesus's ministry. So that'll
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find us in different spots, notjust moving through the gospel.
So we want you to take thishome, and we want you to be able
to read through the Gospel ofMatthew this month. That's our
goal, when we do a book alignedwith the series, is that you
would read through it. So we'regonna start right in the
beginning of the gospel ofMatthew, and it begins with the
genealogy of Jesus. That's astart. So good luck on that.
(12:03):
Just kind of work through it.
It's gonna be wonderful. Take itin. Once you've powered through
that, you've kind of earned yourway into the gospel, which is
really wonderful. And then itbegins with the birth of Jesus,
the visit of the wise men. Andthen we're gonna move all the
way to chapter four, right? SoJesus's ministry is beginning.
It. Right before this, you havethe proclamation of John the
Baptist, which is proclaimingthe way Jesus is coming, one who
(12:27):
is greater than I, who baptizeswith the Holy Spirit. He's
paving the way for Jesus. Johnhas his own disciples, but he's
moving all his disciples toJesus. And he's saying, I've
been talking about this personwho's coming into ministry. And
then we have the baptism ofJesus by John that begins the
ministry. Now, what you're goingto find is that it leads right
into the ministry of Jesus,beginning with temptation,
(12:48):
right, where he goes into thewilderness for 40 days. So
imagine that right when you comeinto the church, if you're
starting a new life in Christ,and you find Jesus 40 days of
temptation. That's how Jesusstarted. Anyone want that to the
start of their lovely life inChrist? Yeah, that's a tough
one. That's a tough start. Thatwas the beginning of Jesus's
ministry 40 days. But in thatthere was an opportunity to
(13:08):
claim God as the foundation foreverything that Jesus was going
to do in his ministry. Andthat's what happened. So we find
ourselves now the ministry inGalilee is beginning. So today
we're going to read throughverses 18 through 22 but we're
going to be talking about theSea of Galilee. There are many
different things that happenaround the Sea of Galilee. And
(13:28):
if you look up there, that's anactual picture of the Sea of
Galilee. And so you can kind ofstart to see what the Sea of
Galilee looks like. And beforewe get into this, to just give
you a concept of what the Sea ofGalilee is like, I want to give
you a location of the Sea ofGalilee. So I want to paint a
picture for you of where Jesuswas moving in ministry. Has
anyone ever done this before?
Kind of look at where Jesus wasactually at in ministry. Okay,
this is great. How many of youbeen studying Scripture all your
(13:51):
lives and you're like, yes, andlike, this is the first time
we're gonna see it. Like, thisis good. I'm excited. So this is
the Sea of Galilee. This is whatit looks like. You There it is.
It's exciting.
Yeah, that's about it. Okay, sothat's the Sea of Galilee.
That's modern day Sea of Galileedoesn't look much different from
(14:12):
when it was here's the depthchart about the Sea of Galilee,
so you can see kind of what wasthere. You get Tiberius in
there. That's going to beimportant, because it's also
called the Sea of Tiberius,right? Or the sea of cannessare.
It usually became the sea ofwhatever town occupied and had
the most commerce at the timewhen it was taken over every
other century, right? So itbecame something different. So
(14:34):
you actually hear about itreferenced in three or four
different ways in Scripture, allthe way from the Old Testament
to the New Testament, which isreally interesting. But as you
can see, it gets really deep inthe really deep in the middle.
Those are meters, right? So it'sreally sitting about 150 feet
deep in the middle, right? So itgoes pretty deep, right? It's
also like 800 feet below sealevel, which is interesting. The
Dead Sea is the only other lakethat is lower than the Sea of
(14:56):
Galilee, right? That is the DeadSea, the salt sea, that is the.
Only one that's lower in theentire world, right from the
Dead Sea, which is reallyinteresting. So now that's gonna
be a point, because the Dead Seais just south of the Sea of
Galilee, if you didn't know. Andwe're gonna see that in a
second. So let's blow it out alittle bit and find out where
we're at. So where we're at, asyou can see over there at the
little red outline, that's theSea of Galilee over there by
(15:18):
Nazareth, right? And then yousee Damascus, Lebanon, Amman,
Tel Aviv, right, starting topaint a little picture. How many
of you are not good withgeography? So, like, I need to
blow the map up more, becauseI'm like, look great. Throw me a
little bit farther. Like, whereare we at in the world? You
know? Like, I get it MiddleEast, around Jerusalem. Okay,
great. So here's a little bitfarther out. So now you can see
(15:40):
Israel, Jordan, Cairo, Egypt. Sonow you can see Israelites
coming out of Egypt, how theymade their way out right into
the promised land, and what thatmeans. And so you start to see,
now the red dots over there byHaifa, right in the West Bank,
right? There's Damascus Cyprusis over there too. And then if
you go to the next one, right,ah, now, now we can see where
(16:00):
we're at in the world. This iswhere we're at in the world. So
you see the dot, that's wherethe Sea of Galilee is, right?
Now, what you get is, you cansee that you got Greece, right?
You got Algeria, Saudi Arabia,Egypt, Iran, right? You can
start to see where we're at inthe Middle East, where the Sea
of Galilee is, that little spotis where we follow Jesus
throughout his ministry in thatpart of the world. It kind of
(16:23):
makes it an important narrative.
When you think how much Jesusaccomplished in ministry to grow
the kingdom of God from that onespot around there. Now there's a
couple things that happen aroundthe Sea of Galilee, which is
very interesting. And so therewas a really cool map that I
found. So check this out. Sothese are some of the things
that happened around the Sea ofGalilee. So in the Sea of
Galilee, you're gonna get overhere beside a right. And so you
(16:43):
got the multiplication of theloaves and the fishes, right? So
you remember the 5000 feeding inthe 5000 that happened around
the Sea of Galilee. If you go,keep on going around. You have
over here, maritime of hippos.
You have the capital of Antipas,the home of Mary Magdalene,
right? The Sermon on the Mountwas on the other side, which is
really nice. And then Jesusperforms many miracles his own
(17:06):
city, right? So you get a lot ofdifferent things that are
happening around the sea. Thisis also the sea where the
disciples kept on Crossing, andthere were storms, if you
remember that. So the stormsthat kept on hitting and they
were in boats. This is that seaalso. So there's a lot of great
things that happen in this text.
And then also the Sermon on theMount, where you get this big,
long discourse where they sat onthe hillside that was
(17:27):
overlooking the Sea of Galilee.
So now you start to get a placein scripture where you're seeing
some of these go on a couplepictures. So take a look at
this. This is, right. This is,this is literally from
Capernaum, right? So a lot ofJesus's ministry was done in
Capernaum. This is Capernaumlooking out over the sea of
Galilee. And then this is righthere, the modern day city of
(17:48):
Capernaum, right? So, oh, sorry,modern day city of Tiberius,
right? So you're going to seeTiberius here, so you can kind
of see what that looks like now,overlooking the Sea of Galilee.
And then now I want to walk youthrough where you see Jesus's
ministry, where you see Jesuswalking. And I want you to think
about this as we talk about youdoing ministry yourselves, and
(18:09):
that you are messengers of thekingdom. What this means is that
you are not meant to do ministryin this church alone. Wherever
you go, there is going to be anopportunity to do to share the
message of Jesus Christ, thatwill be the point of every part
of the series. And you have tounderstand that when you move,
when you go to a different city,you are still carrying what it
(18:30):
means to be a Christian intothat city. So watch what Jesus
did. So here is the Dead Sea,and up top is the Sea of
Galilee, right? That's theminute Jesus's ministry largely
existed in that span. This isthe whole area of Jesus's
ministry, right? That existedall in different areas. And if
you see the baptismal side ofJesus Christ, right, that's the
(18:51):
little red dot right there. Sonow you can see where we're at
in the text, where Jesus wasjust baptized, and then he ends
up at the Galilean sea. So Jesuswas baptized there and then made
his way up the river Jordan intothe Sea of Galilee, right, where
we get the calling of the firstdisciples. Now take a look at
this. Here are the spots ofJesus's ministry, which is
really interesting. So you cantake the Sea of Galilee. You
(19:12):
start to see Jesus pronounce hisjudgment. Jesus feeds the 5000
up on the top, Peter says Jesusis the Messiah. You start to see
this branching out, Jesus healsthe Canaanite women, right?
Jesus turns water to wine inCana Nazareth, Jesus's hometown.
So you see this expansion ofJesus's ministry around the Sea
of Galilee, and then all the waydown to the next slide, which is
(19:33):
now into the Dead Sea, right?
Where you get now South. And yousee that this is Jerusalem. So
imagine that Jesus's whole walkis towards Jerusalem, right? And
this whole ministry is towardsJerusalem. And then you start to
see Jesus's ministry down here,the healing, the talking. And
then you see what happens inJerusalem. Jesus speaks, Jesus
heals, Jesus restores, a manborn blind. You see the ministry
developing. This is what itmeans to follow Jesus, that we
(19:56):
too, have. Ministry when we walkoutside of this church. Now I
want you to hear what that lookslike from Jesus. And there's two
ways this is going to go. Thereare times that Jesus met people
in ministry, right? Met peoplewhere they're at, and there are
times that people found Jesusand worked with them. And so
(20:17):
we're going to read these textstoday and see what we can get
out of Scripture today as welook through them. So turn to
Matthew chapter four. We'regonna be in verses 18 through
2218 through 22 and this isJesus calls the first disciples
right after the ministry hasbegun in Galilee so. And here's
(20:37):
what it says. As he walked bythe Sea of Galilee, he saw two
brothers, Simon, who was calledPeter, and Andrew, his brother,
casting a net into the sea, forthey were fishermen. And he said
to them, follow me, and I willmake you fish for people.
Immediately they left their netsand followed him. As he went
(21:00):
from there, he saw two otherbrothers, James, son of Zebedee,
and his brother John, in theboat with their father, Zebedee,
mending their nets, and hecalled to them, and immediately
they left the boat and theirfather and they followed him.
This is at the Sea of Galilee.
(21:21):
Do you know that this callingstory the disciples is in every
gospel, and it's not the same?
Oh, exciting. Interestinglyenough, this gospel places this
story and this narrative atdifferent times in Scripture. So
before this, we have that Jesus,beginning ministry, walks into
Peter's house right, which isnear the Sea of Galilee and
(21:41):
heals his mother in law. Some ofthe Gospels placed that before
the time when they were met onthe seashore, and some of them
place it after the time they'remet on the seashore. And
generally, Theologicallyspeaking, they're like, ah,
could have been the same day,just depending where it was at
and how things were working andthings were going on. But
they're like, that's not thepoint of why we're in Scripture,
though. And other gospels tell alittle bit longer story about
the calling of the disciples.
(22:04):
And if you heard another storyfrom one of the other gospels,
it starts by saying, you know,the disciples were fishing, and
they hadn't caught anything allday, and they had come in and
they had pulled in their nets.
They weren't mending nets. Theyhad pulled in their nets, and
they were done for the day. AndJesus comes up to the disciples
in the same story, and he says,hey, I want you to go cast your
nets deeper over there. AndPeter says, Jesus. And now they
(22:27):
know Jesus. They've heard of theministry. The ministry has
begun. They know what'shappening. He says, Jesus, we've
been fishing all night, and wecaught nothing, nothing at all.
And he goes, Great, cast yournets deeper. And he goes, I
(22:47):
can't believe we would do this.
And so they go back out, andthey cast the nets, and they
pull in so much fish that theyhave to bring all the other
fishermen off the shore,including James and John, right?
And they have to pull that andthey pull it all up the shore,
and they pull it off the shore.
And they're so amazed that Peterfollows at Jesus' feet. And he's
like, Oh my gosh, I will followyou. And he goes, give me. I'll
(23:08):
make you a fisher of men. Followme. And he says, but I can't
follow you, because I'm a sinfulperson. I'm a sinful person. And
Jesus says, Follow me, and I'llmake you fish for people. And we
learn a couple very key thingsin this text looking at what's
going on. One is that Peter didnot have a good day fishing.
(23:29):
Have you ever had a bad day atwork? Anyone ever have a bad day
at work? Right? Okay, all right.
I just want you to think aboutthis for a second. Have you ever
had another boss come in andsay, Hey, saw what you're doing
today. Awesome. I'd love topromote you, and I'd love for
you to come with me based onyour work today. Has that ever
happened? Can you imagine Jesuscoming to Peter and Andrea and
(23:49):
saying, Hey, I saw that you guysdidn't catch anything last
night, right? I would love toraise you up to be on my key
team and my core team of peopleas we go forward into ministry.
One is that Jesus is not callingyou because of what you do in
this world.
Jesus is not calling you tofollow Jesus because of the work
that you do in the world here.
Here's the second part of thisstory. Is that Jesus said, hey,
(24:12):
you need to go out and you needto go deeper into the unknown.
You need to go deeper intoplaces you have not been yet in
order to follow me. And that'swhat we learn from the first
text of following Jesus. It'snot that we have to immediately
drop everything and followJesus. Now I will say this. If
(24:32):
Jesus speaks to you personallyon a seashore and says, Follow
me, drop everything and followJesus, right? That is probably
the one condition where it'slike, drop everything, follow
Jesus, make sure it's Jesusfirst. Follow Jesus. Okay, have
a couple questions, right? Askthem about Scripture. It's gonna
be great. Follow Jesus. Rightoutside of that, it's really
difficult, which is what weexperience from Andrew and
(24:54):
Peter, is that it's verydifficult just to follow Jesus.
I'm a sinner. I didn't do well,I can't believe I didn't catch
anything out here. You don'twant me to follow you. Is the
same thing that we would say,I'm not worthy to follow you.
But here's the part of this isthat Jesus is not calling you
for who you are today. Jesus iscalling you for who you're
becoming in the kingdom. Jesusknows who you're becoming. He
(25:15):
wants you to follow him so youcan become the person that he
created you to be, and yet westand still in the moment and
say, Hey, I'm comfortable justsitting in church on this
Sunday, not going back out intothe world with your message,
because I don't do everythingright, Jesus. We know that, and
so does Jesus. There is notgoing to be a single day where
(25:36):
you get everything right, whereit's going to make you worthy of
the cross. Jesus, and thatsacrifice makes you worthy of
the cross. And we hear thatstory right here. Now, I want
you to move forward a littlebit. I want you to go in chapter
eight, verses 23 through 27 nowthis is a little bit harder one
as we get into it. This is whenhe's sitting with the disciples,
(25:59):
and he's just cleansed a leper.
He has healed the centurionsservant, and then he heals at
Peter's house again. And thenhe's talking about the would be
followers of Jesus. Would be,could be, should be followers of
Jesus. Is literally the title ofthe section scripture. And this
is verses 18 through 27 we'regoing to start at 23 though, and
(26:24):
listen to what happens when hegot into the boat. His disciples
followed Him. And I want you toimagine that he was just
teaching on the Sea of Galilee.
They were all gathered aroundhim. They were sitting there,
and he was trying to find aplace where, once he had taught,
that he had now move on. And sothey were getting into the boat
on the Sea of Galilee, andthey're going to move on. And
when he got into the boat, hisdisciples followed Him. A
(26:45):
windstorm arose on the sea sogreat that the boat was being
swamped by the waves. But he wasasleep, and they went and woke
him up, saying, Lord, save us.
We are perishing. And He said tothem, Why are you afraid? You of
little faith. Then he got up andrebuked the winds and the sea,
(27:08):
and there was a dead calm. Theywere amazed, saying, what sort
of man is this that even thewinds and the sea obey him? I
it. Here's the hard part in thisnarrative. These are the
disciples that are in the boatwith Jesus. They've seen Jesus
(27:31):
heal, they've seen Jesus feed5000 they've seen Jesus speak
about the ministry and theprophecies and the divinity.
He's been called the Messiah.
They've claimed that they aredevout followers of him, and yet
they are in the boat going, whatare we going to do about the
storm? I mean, I know you didall those things, but what are
we going to do about this? Arewe any different as a people
(27:53):
that Jesus can show us time andtime and time and time again,
that it's going to be okay, andthat he has us, and that he's
going to be next to us, and Hewill never leave us, and yet,
the next thing hits him. What dowe do? Like Jesus? What are you
going to do about this? Thisone's not like the other ones. I
don't know what to do with thisone. This one's different. I
(28:17):
don't know what to claim. And soyou have the disciples in the
boat, and they're seeing thestorm arise, and here's Jesus
sitting there, and Jesus iscalm, just like the storm that
he calms, and they wake him upin a panic. And what we learn
from this text is that justbecause you are a follower of
Jesus Christ does not mean thatyou are not going to go through
(28:37):
storms in your life. You youwill go through storms in your
life, and in this text, you knowwhen this storm happens right
after they sat on the seashoreteaching hundreds and 1000s of
people listening to Jesus, theyget into a boat, and now they're
fearing for their lives. Ithought everything would be fine
(28:59):
when I follow Jesus. When youfollow Jesus, it does not mean
that you won't go throughstorms, but it does mean that
Jesus will be with you in thestorm right there the whole
time. And what I want you tothink about is that if Jesus is
(29:22):
always teaching, if everythingthat Jesus did was a message for
the kingdom of God, think aboutthis, every moment that Jesus
walks is the teaching narrative,then we are always learning,
even in the midst of the storm.
But the lesson might not be forright now, you might be going
(29:46):
through something that is notmeant for today. It's meant for
down the road. So guess what?
Did you know The disciples findthemselves in the Sea of Galilee
in a storm, again, in a boat.
Same. See same disciples, maybethe same boat. Let's read that
story. Listen to this. I wantyou to turn over to chapter 14,
(30:09):
verses 22 through 33 and I wantyou to listen to this story now.
I want you to remember thatJesus, that the disciples were
just with Jesus in a boat, andhe did, what? When the storm was
raging, what happened? He calmedthe storm. Calmed the storm. He
stilled the waves, and there wasa dead calm. He didn't just
(30:30):
comment. There was a dead calm.
You know that eerie quiet whennothing's moving, it's so
peaceful. They call the waterglass, right? You know that?
Imagine that it changed from atumultuous storm to glass. Now I
want you to paint that picturefor this. Here's verses 22
through 33 in chapter 14 ofMatthew in the Sea of Galilee.
Immediately, he made thedisciples get into the boat
(30:51):
again. Disciples like no not theboat and go on ahead to the
other side, while he dismissedthe crowds again from teaching,
always teaching. And after hedismissed the crowds, he went up
the mountain by Himself to pray.
When evening came, he was therealone. But by this time, the
boat, battered by the waves, wasfar from the land, for the wind
(31:15):
was against them, and early inthe morning, he came walking
towards them on the sea. Butwhen the disciples saw him
walking on the sea, they wereterrified, saying it is a ghost.
And they cried out in fear. Butimmediately Jesus spoke to them
and said, Take heart. It is I donot be afraid. And Peter
(31:35):
answered, love. Peter Peter isthe first man get it. Peter.
Peter answered, Lord, if it isyou command me to come to you on
the water. And he said, Come soPeter got out of the boat,
started walking on the water andcame towards Jesus, but when he
noticed the strong wind, hebecame frightened and beginning
to sink, he cried out, Lord,save me. And Jesus immediately
reached out his hand and caughthim, saying to him, you this is
(31:59):
great. You can't get away fromthis statement. You of little
faith. Why did you doubt? Andwhen they got into the boat,
what happened? The wind ceased,and those in the boat worshiped
and saying, truly, now werecognize you are the Son of
God. When you read those storiestogether, it's a little bit
(32:22):
interesting, isn't it? Kind ofseems like the same story they
were in before. Kind of seemslike the same way they cried out
frightened before. Kind of seemslike the same thing Jesus said
before. How many of you had torepeat things in your life to
people? Okay? How does that feelwhen you repeat things to
people? Does it feel awesome?
Wonderful? Feels awesome? Feelsso good. Now all you need to say
(32:49):
is, you of little faith. That'sall you need to say, right? You
just look at him like you oflittle faith. I've already said
this to you. I love this story,and I loved it in juxtaposition
of the Sea of Galilee the firsttime the storm hit, because
they're in the situation again.
But now mind you, I think thatwe've leveled up a little bit in
(33:11):
this narrative. The first timethey were in the boat with
Jesus, and Jesus was in theboat. This time, Jesus not in
the boat. You gotta trust alittle bit more in this
scenario, right? Jesus on theboat, and Peter says, Look, if
I'm trusting you, I want to walkon the water. One, I don't think
you should ever test God,because if you're going to say I
want to walk on the water, Godis like, come on, out 150 feet
deep. Let's just imagine they'rein the deep part, right? They're
(33:32):
going fishing deep, right? Sothey're out there walking on
water, and those waves sittingand I, what I love about this
story is that there there are acouple small things that mean so
much in it. That means so muchin it. One is, they've been here
before. They've been herebefore, and they were taught to
trust the Lord, and they fellaway again. I want to tell you,
(33:54):
it's okay. That's the first partof the story. It's okay if
you trust God, and the next timeyou question God again and are
frightened when you go throughsomething, even if it's similar,
it's okay. We're human. We comeback to God over and over and
over again. The next story isthis is, no matter how far you
(34:15):
feel God is away, or you feelJesus is away in your life,
Jesus is always right there. Ifyou go back and read this story,
and I'm not going to do it now,but it now, but I want you to do
it later. I want you to read itagain, because it said he was so
far away that they thought itwas a ghost, which means they
just see a little faint figurein the distance. And then Peter
walked out a couple steps andsank and cried out, and the Lord
was there. That distance thatGod covers in Jesus Christ,
(34:37):
across the Sea of Galilee to bewith Peter is the distance that
Jesus will cover in your life.
When you are frightened and youcall out, it is the same
distance. It's okay to call outagain, and Jesus will cover that
distance. You don't need to walkthe whole way. If you are
frightened and scared, you cancall out for God, and Jesus will
cover that gap. It is importantfor you to know that. In your
(34:59):
life. But the point of the storyis not that. The point of this
story, as we read through thisis that the situations that we
go through today, the situationsthat we go through today, teach
us to trust God tomorrow. If youare not recognizing that you are
(35:24):
walking with Jesus and thatJesus is always teaching you
through your life, then you willnot take what you've learned
today and realize that God isgoing to trust you with that
tomorrow. And when you gothrough the situation again, or
someone's in your life with thatsimilar situation, God is going
to move you into their life,because you've been there and
you've trusted God through italready. But what we need to
understand is that today mightnot be the story for us. It
(35:47):
could be a trusting scenario forwhat comes tomorrow, and we need
to trust God in that everysingle situation you go through
might not be for today. But inorder to teach us to trust God
for tomorrow, if the discipleshad learned from the first time
(36:09):
on the Sea of Galilee, theywould all got out of the boat
and started walking. It's kindof interesting when you think
that even if you trust God, youmight not even need a boat in
order to walk towards Jesus.
This is the beginning of Jesus'sministry. This is the beginning
of us walking around all ofIsrael with Jesus, between the
(36:32):
Sea of Galilee and the Dead Seabetween Capernaum and Nazareth.
We are going to journey withJesus this whole month, and
we're going to explore all thesedifferent places to understand
that wherever you go, you are amessenger for the kingdom of
God. Trust God today for thesituations that you're in
(36:53):
tomorrow. And all God's peoplesaid, Amen, let us pray heavenly
and gracious, Father, we comebefore you today knowing that it
is hard to trust you some days,not because you are not there,
Lord, but because we questionand we doubt and we go through
(37:14):
really hard things in our life.
And so each day we come back toyou, Lord, we ask for
forgiveness for the times thatwe doubted again. And Lord, ask
for grace as we step back intothat relationship with you,
Lord, I would ask for you toremind us and to whisper us that
we have been through situationsbefore, to remind us when we've
walked with you before, toremind us in the situations
(37:36):
where we never thought we'd getthrough it only to find
ourselves here today, my hope,Lord, is that we can journey
with you and recognizes theplace of the church is a place
that we're sent from, not aplace we're sent to. It's a
place that we will always besending out into the world and
that we never do this alone. SoLord today, send us with each
(37:58):
send each of us with your HolySpirit, each of us to a place,
into a person that needs to hearof the kingdom of God, and send
us with a grace and a joy todeliver that is good news for
the sake of the world. And wepray these things in your holy
and precious name. And all God'speople said, Amen. Do you guys
enjoy the start of our series? Ifound Jesus. So this is going to
(38:21):
be.
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