[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason, and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 5pm or Wednesdays at 7pm if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us
[email protected] be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast, Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Oh, well, thank you all so much for having me here today.
Oh, I may have just messed it all up. I'm sorry. Hold on. Someone who knows Max is gonna have to save me. Hi, my name's Patty. I'm an Android guy and a PC guy. So now that we've introduced each other, first of all, let me in. All sincerity, thank you all for being here. I know I sound like an air. An airplane stewardess or flight attendant when I say you really did have a choice if you wanted to be here tonight and what you were going to do with your Monday night. And you said, I want to come get a really good nap. Okay, and so I got you. I'm going to take care of business tonight. We are going to be good.
It is exciting. I love all the stuff going on. In all seriousness, like, there's so many great things y' all are doing here with translating things. I've done some cool things in life, but I've never done three microphones at the same time cool either. And so this is all new to me, but I just love how y' all are like, let's push this. Let's find a way to make this happen and really make this work. So thanks for being here and thank you all because.
Which, as mentioned with Brandon, first of all, my family has a lot of history here. My mom's been going here probably 15 years, and the rest of Melissa's family has been here for ever. And so we've got so many people here that we love and who we feel support. And I don't just mean even in the church sense. When I look around, when I was greeting y' all beforehand, so many of you individually outside of church walls have said, I want to take care of this kid. And y' all have done so much for me and my Family. And I thank you all so very much for that. It means the world to us. I always say. I say this, especially with my little girls, but I mean this in the whole world. The people who take care of my family say the loudest things to me. They're the ones that really impact my life. And I can. I feel how you care for family, I think, is what you say about someone is how you take care of their family. And so thank you for doing that. It is a blessing to be here. I've been preaching out at Owens Crossroads now about eight, a little over eight years. We love the work out there. It's a wonderful place and a great place to be. And so we were talking earlier, if you know someone on that whole other side of town and you're like, hey, I want to get them plugged in, in their community. We are a wonderful place. We're open. We like to make the gospel approachable. And that's really my goal, is to make the gospel approachable. The same thing you guys do here and your ministers do is to make the gospel approachable and to show that it's real to our lives and just how important it can be. So today, if you have your Bibles, we will be in Matthew, chapter nine in just a little bit as we continue. David kicked y' all off last night. I couldn't be here. I had to preach at my home congregation. I wish I could have heard it because I know he did a great job. You see, when I get a week off, when I take a Wednesday off or a Sunday off and I get to visit around, I come to David's class. Like, I'm in his class on Wednesday nights when I get a Wednesday off. And so I love his classes and it's an honor to be here with you.
I want you to think about your homes, right? We're talking about, can Jesus fix what I cannot. That's where we're going to be here in a minute. Turn this and hope I don't mess up all the plugs. There we go. Can Jesus fix what I cannot? And I want you to think, and I took a picture this afternoon real quick of my junk drawer. Who here has a junk drawer? Don't lie. Don't lie. There's too many clouds outside to be lying, right? You know you have a junk drawer now. I was really tempted, honestly. It's on my phone and on the original PowerPoint that I deleted, I was gonna show you Melissa's junk drawer because, let me tell you, hers is like, it has Dividers in it, and everything's moving in the same direction. And when you need something, you can find it in there. It's beautiful. But I thought, no, we need to be real today. So this is my junk drawer. And I hope there's nothing too telling in here. We got some old stamps going on. We've got some gorilla glue. We've got random Allen wrenches that came with furniture that I never used. You know how that goes. Guys, you've got blue tape, You've got regular tape. You've got a tape measure. You got pliers. What else? A lighter in there. Lots of sticky notes, Random school stuff. I mean, a bike light. Why is the bike light in here? I don't know. Instead of attached to my bike.
So many random things.
But I feel like, as a dad, this makes sense. Because if you're a dad, especially, and I think we all fit into this. But if you're a dad, you know why super glue is the first thing that you can grab out of that drawer. I will always know where the super glue is.
Because sometimes you gotta fix things and you gotta have tape. Because sometimes you gotta tape things back together while they glue, by the way, right? Unicorn horns require a little bit of support. And I've glued more unicorn horns onto things than I can count in my life. We like this because the moment comes in our lives where we, whether we're guys or girls or young or old, at some point we say, something needs fixing. And the first place I go is this drawer because I want to be able to fix things.
I want to be able to say, when my little girls come up and they go, dad, the unicorn horn broke off for the 18th time of it, I want to say, I got you, girl. Just give me overnight and I'll have it fixed by the time you wake up tomorrow. Right? We like to be the hero. We like to look at it when the dresser drawer doesn't shut correctly, or the cabinet drawer, I have one that's not shutting correctly right now. We like to be able to say, don't worry, I got this. I can fix this. I can get in there, I can readjust it, realign everything, and by the time I'm done with it, it will be working and in order again. When you know if your car, depending on if it's a newer or older one, the check engine light comes on, you run the little scanner. It's a thermostat. You go, I can fix that. I can fix the thermostat, right? It's going to be Messy, but we're going to do it and you can fix it.
We like to be able to say, here's a problem and I can fix that problem.
I had this today. I mentioned it to Andrew in my email because I was late getting my PowerPoint in because I got into my office today and I don't know when you. I don't know if it was the lesson. I don't know what it was that I had had it. I was done with my office chair. My office chair showing its age and instead of replacing it, I'm like, no, let's not replace it, let's just keep fixing it. And so we started this process at a course first thing this morning. That's what I've got to do is fix my office chair. And next thing you know, the secretary is like, hey, Patty, why do you have an impact driver out in your office? I'm like, don't worry, it's gonna, it makes sense.
And in my life, by the way, anytime there's an impact driver in my hand, if you knew Don Gross, he always said the same thing to me. Every time I picked up an impact driver, he goes, patty, don't overdo it. Because I've been known to overdo a few things. I tore a bed apart, one of my daughters putting it together with an impact driver. And I fixed that because I wanted it done. I wanted it fixed. I didn't want to go get another one. I wanted it.
But have you ever got in over your head on a project?
You ever thought, I've got this an example from my life. A few months ago, I had a very simple problem with my car that should have been literally a 20 minute fix. Should have been 20 minutes, 10 bucks probably, and we're out of there and we're done. No big problem, no harm, no foul. With my car before the process was over because the previous owner had some creative things they did to the vehicle, it took three weeks and hundreds of dollars by the time it was done to fix this simple. What should have just been a 10 minute project. You ever had one of those where you think, I've got it or do you get in over your head?
And I'll tell you what I do when I get in over my head. I won't mention his name, who I call here, but it's Cathy's husband. I call him up, right?
And I'm like, dude, I do not know what I've done with this. I have no idea. I can't even tell you what the problem is because it was this one thing and now it's completely worse. Okay, so I'm so sorry, come bail me out. And so we like it, but we get in these situations and we think, okay, it's done. It's so much.
There's situations where we do realize we're in over our heads. And if we're being honest, when we look out at the world, we realize even as much as we want to, as much as we want to be the hero, as much as we want to fix things, there are going to be some problems out in the world that are so much heavier and above what we can fix.
There's so many broken things that we realize it's not just super glue anymore. It's not like gluing a unicorn back together or My Little Pony head back on. It's something much deeper.
Maybe it's a relationship that you had and you know, it got broken. You know, this relationship used to be something, but now it's broken apart and it's been that way. Maybe it's a romantic relationship, maybe it's a family, maybe it's a friend, maybe it's a co worker, some relationship that is broken. And as much as you want to fix it, you realize all by yourself, you cannot fix it.
Maybe it's a situation you've gotten yourself into and you've done made some bad decisions and you found yourself in a situation and you really, really wish it was just as easy as throwing some super glue on it to fix it, but you're still dealing with the consequences of that bad decision years later.
You wish it was easy, but it's not.
Or maybe it's a sin. You know, those sins that we all think, you know, we all say, oh, I can manage my own sin. It's not that bad.
It doesn't have. And I can kick this anytime I want to that we keep going back to and we keep finding ourselves in. You see the. Since Genesis 3, since the beginning in the garden when things fell apart, we've lived in a broken world. And sometimes most of the time, it's broken so bad that we just can't walk in there and fix it, man. We want to.
It's our culture, it's our mentality, it's everything that we want to be able to just say, I can walk back into this and I can fix this situation.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: But.
[00:11:01] Speaker B: But it's not always the case.
We've tried the things we've, you know, if in the real world, what do we do? We watch YouTube videos, right? But we've tried other things to fix these relationships, to fix these problems. We've, we've watched, we've read the books, right? We've reached out, we've tried the different things, and we find out that, look, there's just something about this that is too much.
And so today I want us to get ourselves to that point because I want us to recognize there are some things that we cannot fix on our own. No matter how bad I want, you know, how passionately I go, no matter how much willpower I bring into the equation, no matter how much money I throw at the problem, no matter how much time I throw at it, there are just some things I cannot fix myself.
And you're sitting here and it may be you're thinking of somebody else, and that's really good. But. But for most of us, I think we're thinking about ourselves, that there's just something I cannot fix that I've done to myself. And that gets us to our question today that we're going to look at here in Matthew, chapter nine, it's can Jesus fix what I cannot?
Because if we think we can control everything, if we think that, oh, I've got this and I can fix it, and I don't have a real problem, then, okay, this, this isn't for you. You know what? If you think you can fix it, this is your. You can go get a cookie, you can take a nap, you can do whatever you need to. But if you're like me and you're like, no, there's some things that I wish were right, but they're actually very wrong, then maybe this is what we need to hear tonight together. Not just you, but for me. I'm preaching to myself here. And so we're gonna look at this tonight and we're gonna see. We're gonna pick up in Matthew chapter nine here in a minute. We're going to meet. We're going to look at two quick encounters with Jesus. And there are two situations with three total individuals, okay, that we're going to see. And what we're going to realize is there's these three men that we meet under their own abilities. They are unable to fix their problems that they run into. They just cannot do it. And I want us to look at them and see their approaches to how they deal with things. And I want us to look and see how Jesus responds to what they're doing. And we can learn so much, much from these three guys in Scripture. So if you have your Bibles, we're in Matthew, chapter nine, I'm going to see if I can balance all this together, all this great, cool technology that we've got. But we're going to pick up in verse 27 here it says, and as Jesus passed on from there, two blind men followed him, crying aloud, have mercy on us, Son of David.
And when he entered the house, the blind men came to him. And Jesus said to them, do you believe that I'm able to do this?
And they said to him, yes, Lord.
Then he touched their eyes, saying, according to your faith, be it done to you. And their eyes were opened.
All right, we'll pause there for a little bit. Let's think about what's really going on here. What's kind of the depth of what's going on. We have two blind men that we start with. And in the first century, we have to realize that blindness is. Which is never a great thing. It was even harder on people back then, because today we have a few things that can help. First of all, we have wonderful accessibility. Laws and regulations and codes. Right. I don't know if you realize this, but I was in Mexico with our congregation about a month ago, and I realized how blessed we are with our accessibility, because I was looking. And even in the schools, their idea of a. Of a handicap ramp would go from, like, the floor to the back of your chair in about five feet. And I'm like, that's never going to cut it. You've ever seen someone in a wheelchair tried to help them up a ramp or someone on crutches or a walker? You know that that's not going to do it. And so this is first century. They don't have little bumpy things on the roads. I don't remember what they're called, but the little bumpy things on the road before you cross the street to let you know you're about to cross, they didn't have those things. They didn't have high visibility. They didn't have lights. They didn't have the cool technology we have now where you can wear your phone and you can actually hear what's going on around you with your phone. They didn't have dogs trained for this stuff. They didn't have anything.
They're dependent on other people.
They're stuck.
They're a little helpless in this moment.
These gentlemen have tried and tried, but there's nothing they are going to do. They're stuck begging by the roadside there. And it's all about the guys who pass by, the girls who come by, the people, the travelers. They're purely Dependent upon what they will give them just to survive.
But notice what happens when they hear that Jesus is passing. So they're going to hear obviously that Jesus is passing by. And it says they were crying aloud.
Now, I don't know what your translation maybe says, but mine says crying aloud, the esv. And when I think about that, there's probably not enough emphasis that we can kind of get from this. There's even more emphasis than this. This is not just a calm, you know, charitable. Hey, excuse me. You know, do you have one of those people in your life who really has a need? And they just sit in the back like, hey, excuse me. One of my daughters is like, that. Her leg could be chopped off, and she'd be in the backseat of the car like, dad. Hey, dad, excuse me, I'm bleeding. You know, no joke. She once jumped off her bed onto a toy and put a hole in her foot like an inch deep. And she was just like, hey, guys, I'm bleeding everywhere. And I'm like, I'm about to pass out. She's bleeding everywhere on the floor. I'm like, hold it together, Tills. And she's like, you hold it together, dad.
But it's not that. It's not just this cute. Oh, excuse me, sir, if you. I hate to bother you. No, this is a. Deep down, this is a cry. This is a desperate cry for help. The type of cry that you only have when something is very wrong and you know, you need someone to help. And so it says, they were crying aloud. This is a desperate, raw, emotional moment for these guys.
But look at what they say.
They say, have mercy on us. We'll start here.
Son of David.
Now, this is really cool. It doesn't jump right off the page, but this is the first time in Matthew's account of the Gospel that anyone calls Jesus the Son of David. And we need to think about the implications of what they're saying here.
You see, the Son of David is there, calling him the Messiah. The Son of David. They're saying this is the promised one that Isaiah wrote about. By Son of David. They're saying, he's the anointed one. He's the Christ. He's the one.
Now, we're gonna get there later, but let's just skip around real quick. If you were to look at the end of this encounter, you'd realize that while these men are physically blind, spiritually, they can see something. And while these men are spiritually. Excuse me, physically blind, the Pharisees are the ones that are spiritually. Blind. The Pharisees that are around them are the ones who can't accept it. They can't see what these blind men can see when they call Jesus the son of David. And so they're talking, they know there's something really special about this individual here. And look at what they said. We'll kind of back up here. Have mercy on us.
What did they say and what did they not. They said, have mercy on us.
They didn't say, look how hard I tried. They didn't say, look how good I've been, Jesus. They didn't say, I've been to the synagogue every day. They didn't say that.
They said, have mercy on us.
Remember when Jesus is talking about two individuals and he's given a comparison about two people praying, and he says, you have one guy, the religious elite, in that. He comes up and he's praying, and he's thanking the Lord that he's so blessed. And he's thanking the Lord that he has all the great education and all the great spiritual things and that he's so good. And he's thanking the Lord that he's got his life figured out and that he's not like this other guy over there.
And then the other guy, Jesus, says, well, he's the one that says. He's beating his chest, saying, I don't have anything, Jesus. You see, these guys aren't leaning in saying, you owe this to me, Jesus. They're not saying, look at me. Look how impressive I am. Look at how spiritually. Look at my degrees, Jesus. No, they're saying, have mercy.
Now, mercy is one of my favorite words that I've unknowingly just traced for about, I don't know, nine years through Scripture.
And you can follow it through the Old Testament and the New Testament and the Hebrew and the Greek, and you can get into some really cool stuff. But let me tell you, when I see mercy in scripture, as I followed it from beginning to end, my working definition of the word mercy, this isn't. You're not going to find this in your theological dictionaries. This is just Patty Flanagan's opinion.
It's compassion in action.
Mercy is where your compassion meets action. It's where you say, I feel for this person. I see their situation. I hurt for them. This is terrible. And I don't wanna. I don't like it. And then you don't just say, too bad and keep walking. Mercy is where you say, I hate this situation. It's so painful. Let's do something about it.
And that's what they're asking Jesus to do. They're saying, see our situation. See what's going on. And when you see it now, Jesus, do something about it.
They're crying out to him now, when they get to the house, we don't know exactly why and how the house comes into this. That's probably another study for another day.
But look what Jesus doesn't ask.
He doesn't ask, hey, you know, can you fill out this questionnaire to see where you really are with your faith? I want to know before I do anything. That's not what happens. When they get to the house. Jesus doesn't say, hey, let's go through. No, there's none of that. He has a simple question. He says, do you believe that I can?
Do you believe?
You see, that's the question we started with. Can Jesus fix what I cannot?
They knew they could not fix their situation. They knew they were helpless to solve this. They were. At best. Well, at best, Jesus was going to do something. At worst, they were going to stay in the situation they were in. But they were saying, look, he's not saying, do you deserve this? He's not saying, do you have the credentials? What are you going to. He doesn't say, what are you going to do for me after I fix this for you? We don't see any of that.
He just says, look, the same question.
Do you believe I'm going to be able to do this?
He's saying, do you trust.
Do you really, honestly trust that I have the power and the abilities? You're saying the right things. But now I want to know, do you really, really believe?
And of course their answer is, yes, Lord, and that is. So that is the right answer there. And then with the touch of his hand, Jesus brings relief to him. And that is. And we stop there for the first encounter that we see. Again, guys couldn't do anything about their situation. They were helpless. And they had to cry out with a deep, emotional cry, jesus, please have mercy on us. And Jesus does.
Let's move on to the next encounter just a little bit farther down in scripture, the next kind of paragraph in Scripture, if you're following along, because Matthew doesn't stop there. As soon as this scene closes and he opens us up to another encounter with Jesus, and it's a little bit different. We got these guys rejoicing with their new sight, but we still see someone who has the ability.
Let's go here to Matthew, chapter nine. Now we're going to look a little bit below we'll be in verse 32 if you're following along.
And as they were going away, behold a demon oppressed man who was mute was brought to him.
And when the demon had been cast out, the mute man spoke and the crowds marveled.
Never was anything like this seen in Israel.
But the Pharisees said he cast out demons by the prince of demons.
All right, so the second encounter that we see, and we're talking about brokenness now, we've got a different type of brokenness. The first two individuals, they could not see. They had a physical disability there. This person we see, kind of a 1, 2 hit. He's unable to speak. But it mentions that he's also demon oppressed. Okay, so there's a couple of different things going on here. And let's just remember again his situation. Let's put ourselves slow down and think about what it would be like in this culture to not be able to speak. So he could see, he could bring himself away, he could do things. But remember what the. The two blind men did when they came up to Jesus? What did they do? They cried aloud.
They used their words.
This gentleman cannot use his words.
That means he can't.
He can't say the right things.
He can't advocate for himself. He can't plead on his own behalf for Jesus to help him. He's at the mercy of something else that we actually see here when we get into it, because he can't share his pain. He can't share what's going on. He can't share what he's feeling inside. He can't tell Jesus what he's thinking.
Look at there in verse 32.
What's incredible is that he was brought to Jesus.
Someone brought him.
Someone said, look, you can't be your own advocate in this situation.
I'll be your advocate. I'll bring you to Jesus. I'll tell him what's going on. I'll help him understand the situation.
He couldn't shout Son of David. He needed someone to kind of intervene here.
Let's be honest, all of us are adults here. We've probably been in hospital rooms with people who are really sick. And you know just as well as I do how important it is to have an advocate in that room with someone.
I was talking to a sweet lady at church yesterday, and she was talking to me and she was like, yeah. And I got out of the hospital on Thursday and I really would. She actually said, I really wish you would have come visit me. And then I said, oh, do you do you not remember I was there.
I was like. We had a long conversation on Tuesday. Like, we really. It was great.
You were obviously medicated, by the way. I won't tell you, you know, but, you know, that's a vulnerable situation to be in when you're out of it, when you're medicated, when you're going through a procedure. But you know what she had with her in that hospital room?
She had a friend, someone who sat there beside her. Someone who, when I came in, we talked, and when we talked, she laughed, you know, and someone who, when the doctors came in, she remembered the instructions that were given to her. And someone who could stand up for her when she couldn't remember what was going on or what medication she needed. We all need those advocates in life, and we know that we're all old enough here to know how important that is. And this gentleman needed someone like that, someone who could say, look, you can't speak for yourself, but I'm bringing you.
[00:27:10] Speaker A: I remember.
[00:27:11] Speaker B: It makes me think about the four gentlemen who brought their friend to Jesus who couldn't walk.
You remember those guys?
They brought Jesus. They brought their friend to Jesus. And the house was too full. There are people standing around. The crowd was in the way. Wonderful thing to think about another day that the crowds were there. But they didn't care about this gentleman enough to let him through another talk for another day. But these four friends say, you know what?
We're gonna bring our friend to Jesus and we're gonna not stop at anything. We don't care how crowded it is. We don't care how uncomfortable it is. We don't care whose house this is. We're gonna rip it apart because we're going to do whatever it takes to get our friend to Jesus.
I hope you have friends like that, by the way. I hope you have them.
This gentleman had one. He had a friend who said, look, I'm going to bring you. I'm going to be your advocate here.
Look, this.
This simple thing that we've seen. This is a beautiful picture of what the church is called to be.
Now, I don't know your exact situation. I don't know if you. Other than your red shirts, I don't know if you go to church here. I don't know if you go to church anywhere. I don't know if you're brand new to faith, but let me tell you, that's what a body of believers is supposed to be.
This is a huge thing.
I think we all need it.
Back in my days of Youth ministry. This was one of my main points, is I want my kids to have four people who will drag them to Jesus even when they don't want to, even when they can't themselves, even. And I wonder if you have four people who would do that for you.
Because sometimes we're like these two different groups of people we've seen. Sometimes we're like the blind men who we talked about here. Sometimes we're there and we have the ability to cry out. We have the ability to say the things we need to say. But we know we need Jesus, but we have to come in and we have to say him. And we have that ability. And we can come to Jesus and we can say, I'm helpless and I need your help and I can't do it myself. And. And we can say those things sometimes, but sometimes we can't.
Let's just be honest.
Sometimes the anxiety that you're facing is so powerful you can't even say it.
Sometimes the depression you're in is so dark that you can't get the words together. Sometimes the emotional pain of whatever grief or situation we're in leaves us sitting there without the right words.
That's a bad place to be.
But it's not completely hopeless if we have each other.
If you have the people near you, if you have the people around you who say, look, when your situation gets so dark, when it hurts so bad that you can't express it because you lost a family member suddenly because something fell apart in your life because of a situation, you made a mistake. All those things we talked about at the beginning, when all those things, you know, they all go crazy and we can't really figure it out. We don't have the words. We need each other to have those words so we can support.
We need someone who'll say, look, I know you can't. I can tell you can't. I know you well enough, and I'm going to take you to the Lord myself. You can't pray. I can pray for you. You may not be able to, but I can. I'm going to do everything I can to bring you back to the Lord.
I really. I hope you have somebody like that.
And I hope you will also be somebody who will do that for other people as well. You'll be close enough. Because what I want you to do is I want you to think about who around you needs your help, who needs to see God that's around you. Who's the. Like the blind men. Who are those people who are so Close. And they just need to see God. And you have the ability to get them to that situation, and you have the ability to bring them whatever that looks like, whether it's a one on one study, whether it's bringing them here, whether it's talking to somebody else, you have the ability to get them to the Lord. But then who needs you to speak for them?
Who needs you to help someone put some cares and concerns into words? Who do you have? Who can you be that for?
We need to make sure that we're, we're working on that. As a body.
God may be calling you. We talk about being the hands and feet of Jesus.
Last night I preached on being the hands, the feet, the mouthpiece, all those things. We need to be those things in real practical ways when that's what comes.
And so think about it.
When Jesus heals that man again, there's no delay. He immediately does it. The silence is broken. He and the joy is restored to his life.
So here we go. Let's circle back. Let's wrap this thing up a little bit with some real life application. Can Jesus fix what I cannot? According to Matthew chapter nine? Absolutely not. Sometimes not. Maybe not when I do this. No. Absolutely is the thing. We're not talking about a project at the house anymore. We're talking about the messiest moments of our lives.
And so I want us to experience this. I want us to really think about this as we think about how we take this. Because it's cool to just sit here and be like, you got it, man. You kept me awake for 30 minutes. Congratulations, you did it. No, no, no. I want us to walk this out the doors, okay? I want us to make sure we take this and we do something with it. So first, let's stop trying to do it all ourselves, okay?
I'm not gonna have you talk to each other tonight. I might tomorrow because I'm feeling it, okay? But let's stop trying to solve all these problems ourselves. Let's be honest. Let's stop pretending that we have life all under control.
Let's quit pretending that we are the ones who can fix everything.
You may be able to fix a lot of things. Your job may be to fix things. I know you're in this room. You're the person they come to. And it may be something simple. It may be Dave when I'm like, hey, my teeth are messed up. And he's like, I got you, right? I can fix this. It may be somebody over there. And you say, man, I messed up this dishwasher can you help me? I got you.
You may be the guy when they're counting down on Artemis and they're like, we got a problem. And you're like, okay, let me check.
We like to be able to fix things, but we've got to quit pretending like we can do it all ourselves, that we have the ability to do it, because we can't. We never will. We have to admit, lord, I can't do this. I can't. And that's the first step. If you haven't recognized yet, that is the first step to saying, lord, I cannot do this myself. The second is to cry out for mercy.
Don't come to Jesus and say, lord, you know how good I've been. Lord, you know I've been at church three times a week.
I've been coming to church. I've been tithing, I've been giving. My money. I donated to the new facility. I came to vbs. Lord, don't come like that. No, no, no. He doesn't want your resume. He wants your weakness.
He doesn't want you to spout off all the things you've got, right. He wants to know your needs. He wants you to admit your needs.
In fact, if you were to rewind from, like, this stage and this situation, probably, I don't know, 10ish years ago, I was asked to speak to your youth about why we pray. Why do we pray? That was the topic I was given. Why do we pray if God already knows my need? You ever thought about that? Ten years ago, I was standing on the same stage speaking to your youth group about it.
And when I came to the conclusion through Scripture is that we pray to admit our dependence on God.
He already knows what we need, but we need to come to him and admit that dependence. And so cry out, say, lord, I need your compassion. I need you to feel what the situation I'm in and not just feel it. I need something done here. And then trust his capabilities.
When Jesus asks you, do you believe that I'm able to do this? Do you think I have the ability?
We need to honestly say yes. Yes, Lord, I do. I really do. I trust you're able. I don't know how you're going to do it. I don't know how it's going to look. I don't know what it's going to look like in the end, but I know you have that ability.
And then finally bring others along.
We're not in life by ourselves.
We're never meant to be alone.
We mentioned everything fell Apart in Genesis, chapter three. Let's scoot back a little bit. Go back to Genesis, chapter two, verse 18.
You see, in Genesis chapter one, as we go through the creation account, you may recall that after the first five days, everything was good.
God created this and it was good. God created that, and it was good. And on the sixth day, he created man, and it was very good.
Well, if you flip about a half page in your Bible over To Genesis chapter 2, verse 18, you recognize something. All of a sudden, something is not good for the first time in Scripture.
What's not good? That man should be alone.
It's not good. We're never meant to do this all by ourselves. We were never meant to be all alone in this Christian walk. And so if you're feeling strong today, more power to you. But you need to be looking around and say, who needs me? Because don't be their Savior. By the way, don't get me wrong, don't think you're going to come in there and rescue them. No, no, no. You bring them to the Savior, okay? You're not trying to do, like, field medicine out here. No, you bring them to the hospital, okay? They don't need you applying tourniquets to their life and not knowing what you're doing. Bring them to the Savior, okay? Bring them to him. Drag your friend. Say, I'm going to be the friend who. If you can't speak, I'm going to speak for you. If you can't walk yourself to Jesus, I'm going to carry you and I will tear roofs off of houses if I have to, to get you back to the Lord, because you and your soul are that valuable to me. Be that guy, okay?
Bring others along.
Let's wrap up with a little attitude. Make sure our attitude's in the right place. I mentioned at the very end of this, we saw how things go. Remember, we have a couple of choices here. With our attitude. It says the crowds marveled when Jesus did these things. When he said these things. They said, we'd never seen anything like this. They were just amazed.
But the Pharisees, we could almost leave it there because we know what the Pharisees are thinking, right? But the Pharisees always.
They're always coming in with this stuff. Their attitude's always wrong. The crowd saying, this guy is so special. There's something unique about him and I'm so thankful for. And they're amazed. And then the Pharisees come in and go, oh, no, no, no, no. He's using it. He's A demon. He's doing some weird stuff.
They're grumbling, they're cynical about this whole thing. And we have the choice.
That's really what we need to think about, our choice.
When we come to the Lord and say, look, I'm broken, or when other people come to the Lord and say, look, I'm broken and I can't do this by myself, are we going to marvel at what the Lord does?
Are we going to be cynical?
Brag a little bit on my home congregation? You know, we're just a little country church on the other side of the mountain, but we average a response about every other week so far this year. It's pretty cool stuff. And it'll change the way you preach, by the way, when you start to see that. But you've got to recognize that's. You got to break through that barrier. You got to break it through on a congregation level, but you've got to break it through on an individual level, because you'll never make changes congregationally that you don't make personally. And so when someone comes, whether it's to you one on one or whether it's in front of the whole congregation or whatever your situation looks like, we can't be cynical about it.
We need to be happy about it. We need to praise the one who's actually doing the healing there.
You can either marvel at the mercy of the Savior who opens eyes and opens mouths and gives the silent the ability to talk, or you can be cynical about it. Let me tell you, I don't know you all, but I know you well enough to know you're not cynical about it. You wouldn't spend your Monday night down here in a basement. You're not here for the cookies, right? I am, but you're not.
You're not here for that.
So keep doing what you're doing.
Really, you've got to ask yourself, is it all up to me or is it all up to Him? And that's kind of where we have to wrestle with this ourselves. Let's close out with a quick prayer.
Father, we thank you so much for this wonderful evening. I thank you for this body of believers here, those who are gathered here and those who call this place home. We're thankful for the impact they have on their community. We're thankful for the kingdom work they do.
Father, just for the kingdom investment and growth that's occurring here. Father, we thank you for it. I ask you to be with each of us, Father, myself and everyone here.
Help us to realize that we cannot fix everything.
But you can. And we bring you our broken lives.
We bring you our big messes that we've created on our own. And we bring you our deepest despairs if we just ask. Have mercy on us.
Thank you for your mercy. Thank you for the hope and the promise that it brings. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen. Thank y'. All.
