Andy Stanley - Ninety Part 3 Fish Tricks

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Now, when you begin reading the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John, the four Accounts of jesus life. When you
begin reading the Gospels, one thing it becomes abundantly, abundantly clear,
which is really good news for all of us. And
what is abundantly clear when you read the accounts of
Jesus' life is this that being a sinner does not
disqualify you from following Jesus. In fact, it is a prerequisite.

(00:26):
Can I get an amen on that? Okay, yeah, we
don't usually do that. Yeah, exactly. So if you're going
to be a Jesus follower and you're thinking, yeah, but
my past and what I've done and what I think
about and where I've been, the good news is this
when you read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and you
meet his followers and we're going to meet a couple today.
When you meet his followers, you realize that being a
sinner and having a past and stuff you're embarrassed about

(00:47):
and hope nobody ever finds out and wonder if you'll
ever be in a meaningful relationship because of your baggage
or whatever, it doesn't disqualify you. It's actually a prerequisite,
and it even gets any better. It gets better because
being an unbeliever are not believing or not knowing what
to believe, or not sure you believe what everybody is
saying about Jesus. Being an unbeliever doesn't disqualify you from
following Jesus either, because all of his followers, all of

(01:11):
his followers, and will see this in a few weeks,
all of his followers unbelieved. In the end, they believe
and they disbelieve. And there's a scene in John chapter
six where they decide, I don't think we can do
this anymore, and Jesus called them on it. They're like,
all right, you know, we'll give it one more shot.
So they're in and they're out, and they're questioning and
they're doubting. In the end, they all press unfollow, every

(01:31):
single one of them. So as yet, seriously, you're gonna
see as you're deciding where you stand with Jesus, and
as you're deciding, you know, what do I believe? But
what do I not believe? The good news is this,
with your doubts, with your questions, you can begin following Jesus.
That's great news. Now in terms of Jesus, first century followers.
It was quite an assortment of people as we're going
to see today. There were small business owners, a couple

(01:54):
of irs agents, some patriots, some people that just were
all for Israel and all against Rome and wanted Rome
to be gone and thought, maybe Jesus is going to
help us, you know, kind of get a movement going
that expels Rome. There were men, there were women. There
were a blue collar, there were a white collar. They
were not so educated. And then I highlighted this, there
were some very very educated people that follow Jesus. And

(02:16):
the reason this is a big deal is because in
college you were told. One of the reasons that we
know for certain that the apostles and eyewitnesses did not
write Matthew, Martin, Luke, and John is because it's written
in Greek. These were poor, ignorant fishermen who wrote Who's
spoken Aramaic. They couldn't even write in their own language.
They couldn't even write in the language of their people, Hebrews.
So how in the world did they write these sophisticated

(02:38):
texts in Greek? Therefore we know they didn't actually write them.
And this is not information that can be trusted, and
it wasn't written till many, many generations after the events.
The problem is, when you actually read the Gospels, you
discover some very educated people follow Jesus. In fact, in Matthew,
here's something we just completely get so overlooked. One day
a guy comes to Matthew. The guy sees me. One
day a guy comes to Jesus. Matthew records this, and

(03:00):
he says to Jesus, I'm a scribe. I will follow
you everywhere you go. Well, a scribe was an educated
person that actually could read and write and generally knew
at least two languages, in maybe three. So this whole
idea is just a bunch of ignorant people following Jesus.
And so consequently the literature we have in the New
Testament can't be trusted. I'm telling you that is old, old, old,
and there's really nothing to substantiate that. We'll talk about

(03:22):
that at a different day. So you have all kinds
of people following Jesus, and so today we're going to
meet some of his earliest followers, and we're gonna meet
some of his most famous followers. Now, if this is
your first time to tune in or to watch this series,
let me catch you up real quick. Previously on ninety
John the Baptist shows up on the banks of the
Jordan River. He draws a big crowd, and then he

(03:45):
draws that big crowd's attention to Jesus. And just when
we think Jesus is going to start this big public
ministry with this big crowd, Jesus disappears into the wilderness
and wrestles with the tempter, with the accuser, with Satan,
and basically wrestles with something he would wrestle with his
entire ministry. And that's this Whose kingdom? Is this about?
Am I going to truly embrace the values of the

(04:07):
Kingdom of God? Or am I going to embrace the
values of the kingdoms of this world? And then after
that season of being tempted that would continue throughout his
time on planet Earth. The text tells us that he
went back up north to Galilee, closer to where he
was from, and news about him spread through the whole countryside,
and he was teaching in their synagogues and everyone praised him.

(04:30):
I mean, everybody came out to see Jesus. Because everybody
had come out to see John the Baptist, and John
the Baptist said here he is. So everybody that thought
John the Baptist was a big deal, now they're like,
this is the one that John the Baptist told us about.
So now Jesus is a really, really, really big deal.
So one day after church or after synagogue, a guy

(04:50):
named Simon Peter, who's not famous at the time, he's
just a guy in the community, invites Jesus of Nazareth
home for lunch, and on their way home for lunch,
he said, Jesus, oh, yeah, I have a little bit
of an agenda. My mother in law has a fever
and it just won't go away. We're wondering if you could,
you know, could you address that. And Jesus goes to
Simon Peter's house and heals his mother in law on

(05:13):
the Sabbath. But it's a big secret because you're not
supposed to do work on the Sabbath. Well, news begins
to leak out in the community, and that night, when
the sun went down and Sabbath was officially over, the
text tells us at sunset, the people brought Jesus all
who had various kinds of sicknesses, and laying his hands
on each one, and again we read right past this.
But this was so significant because in this day and age,

(05:35):
in this generation, in this faith system, you were not
supposed to touch sick, especially dying people, especially people who had
physical manifestations of an illness. You were not supposed to
touch them because the idea was you would be contaminated. Now,
they didn't understand germs, but there was a little bit
of truth to that. Jesus, on the other hand, would
intentionally touch sick people and instead of him receiving the

(05:58):
ill illness, they would receive healing. This was overwhelming and
the reason we'll talk about this later if we have time.
The reason Jesus healed people wasn't just to make people well.
The reason that Jesus healed people is because in that culture,
as is the case in our culture, people associated sin
with sickness, sin with sickness. How can you tell if

(06:21):
a person has the power to forgive sin, You can't tell.
But if someone can touch a person who is sick
and sin is related to sickness, if you can heal
someone and make them physically well, then you have just
given me a big clue that you might have the
power to heal my relationship with my heavenly Father, because
sin and sickness all went together. So Jesus begins healing people,

(06:43):
laying his hands on each one of them, and this
sets the stage for what's next. Okay, now there's two
versions of what comes next. Matthew gives us a version
and Luke gives us a version, and they both tell
us the truth. But Luke gives us a little bit
more detail about how Jesus called his very first followers,
the four guys that you know, were, you know, the

(07:03):
sort of the top of the rank and ranking in
terms of Jesus' early followers. Matthew's version goes kind of
like this. One day, Jesus is walking beside the Sea
of Galilee. He sees a guy named Peter and Andrew
who are fishing, and he says to Peter and Andrew,
come follow me, and all at once, with you know,
no further kind of invitation or inclination that he was
going to make this call at once, they left their

(07:25):
nets and they followed him. So they're walking along and
then they see James and John and they're out in
a boat fishing with their father, and Jesus says, follow me,
and Matthew says, and immediately they left the boat and
their father and followed him, like, hey, dad'd have fun
storm in the castle. You know, we're leaving. Good luck
with the fishing business. I know you raised us to

(07:47):
take the business over one day, but we're actually leaving.
We hope that works out for you. And when you
read Matthew's account, not only is it unrealistic, it's actually
it seems kind of irresponsible. And yet I grew up
some here and preachers kind of make a big deal
out of this. You just need to follow Jesus and
just give up everything and just follow Jesus. And if
he's not Lord of all, he's not lord at all.

(08:09):
And there was kind of always this guilt trip. You know,
you just need to give up everything and follow Jesus.
And look what these guys did. They just gave up
everything and follow Jesus. But honestly, who would do that?
And Luke, who wrote to us more of a non
Jewish audience, realized we may have some questions. And so Luke,
who gives us extraordinary detail, Luke is a historian's dream.

(08:33):
Luke gives us the backstory as to why this happened
and how it happened, and he confirms Matthew's story, but
again he gives us a little bit of the backstory.
So here's Luke's account of what Matthew just told us.
One day, as Jesus was standing by the lake of Gennesaret,
which is the Sea of Galilee, just a different name.
One day, is he standing there by the lake, people

(08:55):
were crowding around him, because everywhere Jesus went there was
a crowd crowding around him listening to the Word of God.
And we stumble upon something that's very, very very important,
especially if you're new to faith, considering faith, or aren't
sure you ever want to consider faith. And that's simply
this that Christian faith not all religious faith and not
all religions. But when it comes to Christianity, Christian faith

(09:18):
begins with information. It does not begin with faith. It
doesn't begin with faith. Christianity is an informed, evidence based faith.
In fact, I would say to this, and I realize
I'm kind of meddling, But if you're in any kind
of church or any kind of religious system, maybe another religion,
but even in a Christian church, if you can't question it,

(09:40):
you should probably consider leaving it. If you can't question it.
You should probably consider leaving it, even if it's a
Christian church, because the authentic version of Christianity can be
questioned because it began with information. It didn't begin with faith.
You become a Christian by faith. Do not become a

(10:01):
Christian because of faith. Following Jesus does not begin with faith.
It does not begin with belief. Remember John the Baptist.
Week one, John the Baptist is teaching and preaching, and
Jesus shows up. And remember what John the Baptist said.
I've gone over this twice. This will be the third time.
He doesn't say believe, he says, what did he say?
Come on, start to the now, look, thank you? He said, Look,

(10:24):
here comes Jesus. I just want you to look. I
want you to look, and I want you to begin
to follow. And if you look, and if you follow,
and if you pay attention, perhaps one day it will
dawn on you that this is something you can believe.
So Jesus is teaching, people are getting information, but they're crowding,
crowd and crowding. He's stepping back. He's stepping back. The

(10:47):
crowd is closer, closer, closer. Next thing, you know, he's
standing in the edge of the lake and he's thinking,
this isn't gonna work too well. I'm not ready to
do that walk on water thing yet, so we need
to make an adjustment. So he saw at the water's
edge two boats left there by fishermen who were washing
their nets. The reason they're washing their nets is because
they'd already been fishing. This was mid morning, maybe late morning.

(11:08):
You fish at night because the water's cool, the fish
come to the surface to feed on the surface. When
the sun rises, that water gets warm and the fish
go deeper. So you fish with nets at night. So
they have already been fishing. They are, you know, pulling
out their nets. They're taking out on the beer cans
and all the junk out of the nets, stretching them out,
drying the nets. Then they roll them up. They've been
out fishing all night. Then they take a break cleaning
and drying the net. So he got into one of

(11:29):
the boats, the one belonging to Simon Simon Peter, and
he asked him to put out a little from the shore. Hey,
let's just you know, eight ten, twelve yards from the shore.
And he sat down and he taught the people from
the boat, so now they can come right to the
water's edge. He's got a little distance. You know. They're
on the bank of the Sea of Galilee, and it's
kind of a cool teaching environment. And Luke gives us
all these details. And it's not just Peter who's listening.

(11:52):
We know that Andrew, James, and John are also listening.
And when Jesus finishes his sermon, he gives an invitation,
but he doesn't give a come forward invitation. He gives
a let's go fishing invitation, and he says this. The
text says this when he had finished speaking, so they've
heard and heard. There's all this information. When he had
finished speaking, he said to Simon and he makes a

(12:14):
very unexpected, somewhat irrational, but doable request, something that Simon
was absolutely capable of doing, even though it was a
little odd. And he doesn't say, I want you to
abandon your family and abandon the family business and follow me.
He gives Simon Peter a baby step. He says, hey,

(12:35):
since we're already out here, let's put out into the
deep water and let's let down the nets for catch,
which is simple. I mean, this is something he can do,
except that we just cleaned and are drying the nets.
And Simon answered him, probably like we would, and he
uses this very interesting term. And Luke is the only

(12:55):
one that uses this term I think to refer to Jesus.
It's not Rabbi, it's not Lord. We get to that later.
It's a sign of respect. Okay, master, master, We just
you know, so you know, we've worked hard all night.
In other words, we're tired. We're at the end, we're
not at the beginning. And you notice we have washed
our nets. If we drop them into the water, we're
gonna have to re wash them and start all over,

(13:16):
and it kind of interrupts the whole thing. And besides that,
just say, you know, we've worked hard all night and
we haven't caught anything. We haven't caught anything when you're
supposed to fish. What are the odds of us catching
anything when you're not supposed to fish? And if my
recollection is correct, you're a carpenter, right, so I'm sure

(13:37):
you know all about being a carpenter. And it's okay,
I'm not being critical that you don't know anything about fishing.
And besides that, Jesus, you've drawn quite a crowd people
are watching. They're going to watch me fish in the
middle of the day and catch nothing. And then here's

(13:59):
the transit point. And if I could invite all of
you on the edge, all of you who've walked away
but are considering coming back, all of you, your christianity's
gotten a little flat, a little boring. You know the songs,
and everything's going fine, but there's no there's no grit anymore.
This is this is the this is the tension. This

(14:20):
is the transition point. This would change everything for Peter.
It's inconvenient. I don't understand. There's no guarantee this is
gonna work out. But because you say so, I mean,
you healed my mother in law, I probably owe you this.
Because you say so, this doesn't make any sense. But

(14:43):
because you say so, it's gonna cost me. It's probably
gonna cost me a day, which means it's gonna probably
cost me some money. It's gonna cost me a little reputation.
But because you say so, okay, I will let down
the nets. Now this is the big pause in the story. Okay,
so look up here if you haven't paid attention, but
come back. Okay, look this is amazing. Okay, think of

(15:07):
what they didn't know. They had no idea. And I
know I say this all the time, I'm gonna continue
saying it all the time. They had no idea what
hung in the balance of this decision. Right if they
had not met and decided to follow Jesus, these guys
would just be forgotten, nameless first century fishermen that amounted
to nothing other than they just you know now, and

(15:29):
I say nothing, I mean, nobody would know their name,
They wouldn't be remembered. They would just be somebody else
who came and went in the first century. Peter didn't
know about this. Check this out. Peter didn't know about this.
Have you been to this the Basilica of Saint Peter
in Rome? Okay, let me just tell you. I've been
three times every time I go there. Let's go to

(15:50):
that next picture. I literally, I literally, when I can,
I lay down on the floor and look up. And
they don't like you to do that, Like, sir, you're
gonna have to get off the floor. And I know
I can't speak, you know I it's I'm telling you.
If you ever go there, I promise, if you've been there,
you know what I'm talking about. You want to lay
down on the floor and you look up at this
magnificent building and you think to yourself, I don't know
how they could construct such a building. Now, I can't

(16:13):
imagine how they did it at the beginning of the
sixteenth century. It took one hundred and twenty years to
build this building. This is over supposedly the tomb of
Saint Peter. There was already a little basilica, a little
kind of cathedral, really more of a little church there,
and then they came along the sixteenth century and they
built this. I mean, it's just beyond the word magnificent.
And the other cool thing about this it's built right

(16:35):
over Nero's circus. Nero's circus was the arena where Nero
fed Christians the lions, wrapped them in animal clothes and
fed them to wild beasts, and paled them on steaks,
put tar in their hair, lit them on fire. I mean,
this was sort of the first almost official persecution of Christians.
And this building is built on that side, probably in

(16:56):
the vicinity where both Peter and possibly all we're executed. Now,
Peter didn't know anything about that. Peter's like, oh man,
I'm gonna lose a day of wages. People are gonna
think I'm crazy. He had no idea what hung in
the balance to take not follow me, leave everything. Just

(17:17):
take me fishing. That's all I'm asking. Just take me fishing.
I know it didn't make a lot of sense, it's weird,
but just trust me. Will you trust me with this, Peter?
Will you take me fishing? You've heard me teach you know,
I'm you know, probably from God. I'm at least a prophet.
Would you trust me with this little iddy bitty thing.
Now here's what I would say to you, And then
we're gonna get back to the story. Here's what I
know for sure about you and for me. We we

(17:42):
we have no idea what hangs in the balance of
our decision to say yes to whatever it is that
God wants us to do next. Not only do we
not know what hangs in the balance, we don't know
who hangs in the balance. We don't know what relationship
you will never have. You don't know what relationship you

(18:03):
will miss. You don't know what joy that you'll never
participate in by saying no to a simple invitation to
take the next step. And that's true for all of us.
And that's true for all of us, our entire lives.
In fact, some of you come on your Christianity is

(18:24):
a little flat. It's a little boring. You got it
all under control, you know, you got it all work
and everything's fine, but it's a little boring. And every
once in a while you're challenged to get out of
your comfort zone and you talk yourself out of it.
You have no idea what hangs in the balance of
your decision to do something uncomfortable that you feel prompted
in your heart to do. Okay, back to the story.

(18:47):
When they had done so, so they do this, it's like, okay,
we'll go fishing. They get out there, it's like, hey, y'all, ya, Jesus,
could you at least dismiss the crowd before we do?
This is just embarrassing. Okay, everybody in this community, this
is a fishing community, they know this is crazy. They
dropped the nets. And when they had done so, when
they had done so, not when they had believed so,

(19:08):
not when they had considered, not when they thought, not
when they felt guilty about, not when they prayed about it,
when they acted on what Jesus asked them to do.
Because through out his teaching ministry. Jesus says, it's not
enough to listen. It's not enough to listen. It's not
enough to listen listen. Listening makes no difference. Doing makes
all the difference. Listening is like unapplied paint. It doesn't
help anything. It's the application. It's applying the paint that

(19:31):
makes the difference. It's applying the teaching that makes the difference.
And Jesus says, and the text says, when they had
done so, when their faith, okay, we're going to give
this a shot. When their faith intersected with the character
and the faithfulness of Jesus, everything changed. The text says,
they caught you heard this story. They cast such a
large number of fish that their nets begin to break.

(19:53):
So they signaled for their partners, the other two guys.
They signal for their partners in the other boat to
come and help them, and they came and filled both boats,
both boats so full of fish that both boats began
to sink with all the weight. And when Simon Peter
saw this, he cried out, we are rich. We won't

(20:14):
have to work for weeks. And immediately immediately Peter offered
Jesus a seven year contract thirty percent ownership of the company,
with a seven year non compete upon termination of the
contract by either party. Peter's only concern, Peter's only concern

(20:38):
would was will this model? Scale? Get it? You got
it scale? Okay? I just want to keep everybody. You're like,
I should read the Bible. No, I made all that up.
It's not in the Bible. Some of you are like, wow,
come on, before we look at this, what would you do?

(21:03):
Peter does exactly what I would do. Peter does exactly
what I think what you would do. When Simon Peter
saw this, he fell Jesus needs Suddenly. Fish is the
furthest thing from his mind. That's like he fell at
Jesus needs and he said And he didn't say, Oh

(21:23):
that's so cool. You know who's going to clean all
these now? He didn't say that. He said, go away
from me. New title? Lord? Why a new title? Did
Jesus become something that Jesus wasn't before? And one sense no,
and one sence yes, Suddenly it's a title of authority.

(21:46):
Suddenly it's it's a title of ownership. And why would
he say go away from me? Lord? Well, Peter tells us,
He says, because I am a sinful man. I mean,
we may be inches apart, but we're nowhere close. Because
his assumption was the assumption of the community. His assumption

(22:06):
was the assumption of first century Judaism. His assumption was
that God distances himself and keeps himself distant from sinners.
And Peter is suddenly confronted with this. Isn't just a
great teacher, He's not even just a great miracle worker.
This person, whoever this is, is somehow from God, and
he's way closer to God than he is to me.

(22:27):
And I have no business even being in the presence,
much less in the boat with this man. Because God
distances himself from sinners, the religious leaders of that day
and age certainly distance themselves from sinners. Jesus had come
to reverse all of that. This was brand new, because

(22:50):
Jesus had come to establish a brand new kind of
relationship between God and mankind, and being a sinner was
a pre requisite. And little did Peter know that Jesus
had come to establish a brand new covenant, governed by
a brand new ethic that would be part of this
brand new movement, and Peter himself would actually be the

(23:15):
first person in history to speak the definition, the rallying point,
the thing that everyone would have in common in this
brand new movement that would eventually be called the Church.
I'm not even worthy to be in your presence. For
he and all of his companions, Duh were astonished at

(23:39):
the catcherfish. They take it, and so were James and John,
the sons of Zebedees, Simon's partners. And then Jesus said
to Simon was something he would say to these guys
over and over and over and over, and they would
usually be on the water when he said it. Do
not be afraid. Do not be afraid. Now that you've
seen me heal. Now that you have seen me control nature.

(24:00):
There is nothing to be afraid of if you are
with me. And then Jesus, I think, he breaks out
into this giant grin and he says, from now on,
from now on, I've got plans for you. Boys. You
have no idea, but from now on you will fish

(24:22):
for people. Let's go change the world together. So they
pulled up their boats to shore, and they left everything,
and these four guys would die with nothing including regret. Wow.

(24:50):
And they followed him, and they followed him and you
would have to and I would have to, and your
mom and dad would have said, no, serious, We'll go
go follow him and according and the tenent for us is, well, yeah,
if if God or Jesus would do something like that

(25:13):
for me, I would follow him. And here's what Peter
would say to us today, I'm sure of it. Peter
would say what we say, No, Peter, see if Peter,
if Jesus did something like that for me or for us,
we would follow him too. And Peter would be like, seriously, wait,
wait what Yeah, Peter, if if we experienced something like that,
we would follow Jesus. Peter would look at us and say,

(25:38):
what he did a fish trick for me? That's all
he did. He did a fish trick for me. Do
you know what he did for you? You should know
what he did for you. I dictated a letter to you.
Have you read my letter? In fact, I dictated two

(25:59):
letters to you. Have have you read my letters? Not
the Bible that's three hundred years later, the letters that
Peter who decided to follow Jesus not because Jesus had
followed me and they had nothing better to do. Who
followed Jesus because Jesus did something so amazing. Who wouldn't
follow him? The Jesus who said, let me give you

(26:19):
some evidence. Look, look, look, look, look, watch watch watch, watch, listen, listen, listen.
You got enough evidence, then take a baby step and
take me fishing. Okay, you got a little bit more evidence.
Follow me. That very Saint Peter wrote a letter to
first century Christians, and the first century Christians thought it
was so valuable. Guess what they did with it. They
meticulously use their name and password, carefully copied it down.

(26:44):
And if you have a Bible, you have a letter
from this guy. And he would look at you and
look at me and say, seriously, you're not following Jesus.
Are you kidding? He did a fish trip for me.
Do you know what he has done for you? Let
me tell you, and he maybe he would read from
to us from his letter, so I will. When when

(27:06):
they had hurled their insults at him, he Jesus did
not retaliate. Peter would say, I saw this with my
own eyes. I saw this with my own eyes. I
saw him taken, I saw him arrested, I saw him beaten,
I saw him crucified. And maybe Peter would say, have
you ever seen a crucifixion, to which we would say no,
have you ever smelled a crucifixion, to which we would

(27:27):
say to have you ever heard the screaming of a
fully grown man who knows that it's gonna take hours
for him to hang here and die? Have you ever
seen that? Have you ever experienced that? To which we
would say no, We're not even sure. We want to
know the details. Peter say, look at me. I've been
there and I've seen it. I saw my friend Jesus crucified,

(27:47):
and when he suffered, he made no threats. I'm telling you,
you would say this is unbelievable. Nobody did this. They
screamed to die, They screamed, they hurled insults at every
the vicinity, they called for their mothers. And my friend
Jesus hung there and did none of that. I saw this. Instead,

(28:11):
he entrusted himself. He entrusted himself to him who judges justly,
and to us. It was the most unjust act imaginable.
But it was as if he just somehow knew this
was part of some master plan. And then later not
in the moment, because it was too emotional and we
were so embarrassed and Peter would say it does. And

(28:32):
I was the most embarrassed of all because I ran
when he was arrested. I ran, And when somebody thought
I might be one of his followers, I denied that
I even knew his name. And now I'm on the
edge of the crowd with my hoodie up, watching, hoping
I'm not recognized, and I'm watching this man that was
no mere man die. And later it dawned on us

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that he bore our sins in his body on that
cross so that we might die. We, as in all
of us, would have the opportunity to die to sins.
What does that mean? It means this, This is so powerful.

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It means instead of being dead to, instead of being
dead to, instead of being separated from God. Like we'd
always been told that sin separates from from God. It
forever separates from God. That God is so holy. We're
so not holy. And you know, we can pray to
God and hope the best, but we can never we
can never have actual intimacy or relationship with God. He said,
because of Jesus, because he took our sin, we died

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to separation from God. We are now dead to the
being separated. We're dead to the separating power of sin.
And so now we have an opportunity not only to
have a relationship with God. Peter takes it one step further,
and he says this and to live for righteousness. That
we now have the invitation and permission to live fear

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lef lee, because when your best friend, when your savior
has harnessed the power of nature and has overcome the
power of disease, what is there to fear? And now
with fearless living, facing life with no fear, we can
live right, We can live good, We can live others. First,

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we can live out and embrace the values of the
Kingdom of God, he says. And that's not all. Since
you didn't read it, let me read it to you.
By his wounds, by his wounds, by his physical wounds.
You you, you me, Peter says, you should know by

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his wounds you have been healed. That is, you've been restored,
you have been made right with God. Fish tricks, that's nothing.
Surrendering to crucifixion for the sins of other people. Massive

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and you on the other side of all that, aren't following.
I mean, come on, no, mere mortal, I'm telling you
would say I was there when Judas showed up with
the temple guard. We knew it was a big deal.
We knew it was trouble. We knew for sure, maybe
we're gonna run for our lives. And I watched Jesus
walk up to his betrayer and turn himself in, knowing

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where it would lead. No mere mortal would do that,
fish tricks nothing. He gave his life for you. You
should follow him. When Peter, when Peter made that simple

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I can do this baby step decision to put his
to get in the boat and say, okay, we're gonna
drop the next This is this is this is the
Jesus way. What I'm about to explain, This is the Gospels,
this is throughout. It was a baby step. His faith Okay,
I'm gonna take a chance, intersected with God's faithfulness, with
Jesus faithfulness, and everything changed. That is the way it works.
It is small steps, small steps, baby steps. And so

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I have to ask you. I think Peter would ask you.
I mean, I think Peter would be like, what I mean,
You're on the other side of the resurrection and you're
still not following this guy? Who are you following? I
mean Come on, who's made you a better offer? Jesus
Peter would say. One day I was about to leave
and I realized, like, who's offering me eternal life? That
would be no one? And yeah, this is difficult and challenging.

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So what's your next step? For some of you, it's
just coming back to faith. You've just been putting it
off and putting it off, and you're embarrassed. What are
you gonna tell your friends? Come on, you know your
next step? You just need to come back to faith.
For some of you, you got you. There's somebody out
there and there's a broken relationship, and you know it's
enough of your fault. That's your time. You gotta deal

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with that. You gotta confess all your fault. It's never
all our fault. But every time you pray and every
time you kind of do the God thing, it's like,
oh yeah, her, oh yeah, Heim, you just need to
go do that. You need to go take care of that.
For some of you is reconciling a relationship. You just
need to take care of it, quit putting it off.
For some of you, it's moral purity. You have so
embraced that the sexual ethic of this culture and it

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is eating you alive. Come on, you are not happy.
I mean you're having fun, but you are not happy,
and it is eating away on the inside. And your
heavenly father who loves you saying, come on, I want
you to follow me, and I want you to walk
away from all that. You need to take a year
off of dating. You just need to not date for
a year. You've been thinking about that anyway. You've heard
us talk about that, and it's like, okay that Jesus think.

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Come on, I'm not asking you to leave the family business.
I'm just asking you to take a year off and
get your heart and your mind recentered what I want
for you. For some of you, it's serving because life
is so comfortable for you, and it's kind of Christian.
Life's kind of got boring for you, and you need
to get out of your comfort zone and to do

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something unusual that's gonna stretch you and make you pray hard.
And for some of you, your life is stuff and
you have such a hard time letting go of your stuff,
and you felt it for a long time. It's time
for me to figure out how to be more of
a giver, not necessarily to a local church, just in
my life. I've got everything I need, I've got more

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than I need, and I'm so afraid something bad's gonna happen.
And you're having Father's going You're afraid something's bad is
gonna happen. You know who has control over bad things happening? Okay,
come on, what are you afraid of? What are you afraid?
Are You're gonna live your whole life afraid or something
you have no control over? Jesus is come on, come
on follow me. Because you don't know. You don't know

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what hangs in the balance of your decision to say yes.
You don't know what hangs in the balance of your
decision to say yes to the next thing your heavenly
Father is prompting you to do.