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"Here as in Heaven."
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You're listening to GARDEN CHURCH Podcast. We're in a series called church on fire, a journey through the book of Acts. This is the story of ordinary people filled with the spirit carrying the presence of Jesus into every corner of the world. The same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is alive and in us today. Join us as we step into the call to be people set on fire for his mission.
Darren Rouanzoin:I can't get this song out of my head. I'm gonna try to sing it. It goes, he is jealous for me. Love like a hurricane. I am a tree bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.
Darren Rouanzoin:I've cried a lot of snot tears from that song because there's something about how he loves us that really undoes me. I'm a three enneagram, if you don't know what that is, I just get my identity through achievement and performance and when it comes to Christianity, I checked all the boxes, only to discover when you check all the boxes in Christianity, you find yourself in the wrong category. And so today, I get to present to you the first recorded sermon of Paul's teaching. It's his first attempt to preach the gospel. So it's in Acts 13.
Darren Rouanzoin:Go to your Bibles to Acts 13. All week long, as I read this, I was getting wrecked because it offends me so much as Enneagram three, as a person who loves the lists. But I was reading this and I was like, you know, of all the sermons, this is the one that so resonates with the movie, The Sixth Sense. And if you haven't seen The Sixth Sense, you've had twenty years to watch it and I'm gonna spoil it, so cover your ears now because the other service, they were completely offended that I gave the ending away, even though I'm pretty sure this came out in the nineteen hundreds. No.
Darren Rouanzoin:The Sixth Sense, you watch this film and you get to the ending reveal, and it changes the entire movie. The whole time you're like, wait, what? No. Because then you go back and you're like, the basement, the ring, the fact that he doesn't talk to his wife on their anniversary and he lets her pay for the meal, it now all makes sense because he was dead the whole time. That was the ending, now you're screwed.
Darren Rouanzoin:So many of us read the Bible like we're re watching The Sixth Sense for the first time, like this casual buildup. Only we get to this moment, Jesus, and it changes everything. And what I wanna reveal to you in this text is Paul, a tired missionary from climbing up a mountain to a city, preaches a sermon to a community that already knew the story. They had already heard and already read Sabbath after Sabbath, the same story, only he gets to the end and it changes everything. And my hope even for those of you that know the good news of Jesus, today, you'd be reminded of the good news.
Darren Rouanzoin:Acts 13, ready? Okay, 12 of us, let's go. All I need is 12. Alright, so check out all the Ps. From Paphos, Paul and his companions sailed to Perga and Pamphylia, where John left them to return to Jerusalem.
Darren Rouanzoin:From Perga, they went to Pisidian Antioch. On the Sabbath, they entered the synagogue and sat down. After reading the law and the prophets, the leaders of the synagogue sent word to them saying, brothers, if you have a word of exhortation for the people, please speak. Then standing up, Paul motioned with his hands, he had something to say, Fellow Israelites, and you Gentiles who worship God, listen to me. Alright, the story begins, and I just wanna give you context because this matters.
Darren Rouanzoin:In two verses, from verse 12 to verse 13, lots have taken place. We don't get the story, Luke doesn't give us the reason, but before those verses, it was Barnabas and Saul, now it's Paul and his companions. Something's happened to make Paul the primary leader, that's why it's written that way. That's how it's written in ancient antiquity. It was Aquila and Priscilla and then Paul gets to know and Luke gets to know Priscilla and Aquila and he changes it from the guy to the wife because the wife is clearly leading the charge in educating Apollos.
Darren Rouanzoin:That's in Acts, just so you know. Ladies, do we have an amen? I know it's Father's Day, don't worry, we'll get there. But that's important, those are important details, not just that John left. And we don't get why, but Paul will basically say something happened with John Mark.
Darren Rouanzoin:He deserted them. He abandoned them. And because of that conflict within ministry between John Mark, who wrote the gospel of Mark, and Barnabas, the spiritual father of Paul, Paul and Barnabas no longer journey together. We'll see that that conflict caused them to split. All I wanna say, and not just that, let me say one more thing, because Paul's about to preach, but he preaches on tired legs, because he went from the coastline to Pisidian Antioch, is a 3,600 foot climb, a 100 miles from the coast, four to five days of hard rucking, not a weight vest, rucking your stuff.
Darren Rouanzoin:And he writes in Galatians that he was most likely sick from the travel, so he's tired, he's sick, he's dealing with conflict and he's about to preach his first sermon. How we doing church? So if you're in ministry or if you hang around the church long enough, can I just say, there will be conflict? There will be church hurt, of course. There's gonna be church hurt because every church is led by imperfect people.
Darren Rouanzoin:And you're like, I just wanna get back to the New Testament. Which New Testament church do wanna be like? The one where if you don't give, you die? Chapter six? Chapter five?
Darren Rouanzoin:The one where people are sleeping with their mother-in-law? Corinthians? What kind of church do you wanna be? The one that forgot the gospel? The one that forgot their first love?
Darren Rouanzoin:I don't know. There's no perfect church. Amen. Hallelujah. Stay in it long enough and there will be heartbreak.
Darren Rouanzoin:You're in good company because the ministry always travels on tired legs. That's just for me today. Now, let's dive into this. So Paul stands up in verse 17, he says, the God of the now, let me just say this because it didn't go very well in the last service. So let me, Lord Jesus, anoint this.
Darren Rouanzoin:Open your hearts to what the message that that Paul carries is. You've read Romans, you've read Galatians, you've read it. This is the crux of the gospel from Paul. And you're gonna see what he builds out in those letters in this text. Context is he's in a synagogue with Jewish people and Gentiles who are God fearing, so they follow the Jewish belief system.
Darren Rouanzoin:So he's preaching to the religious folks. He goes like this, the God of the people of Israel chose our ancestors. He made the people prosper during their stay in Egypt. With mighty power, he led them out of the country. For about forty years, he endured their conduct.
Darren Rouanzoin:Whose conduct? The people's conduct in the wilderness. And he overthrew seven nations in Canaan, giving their land to his people as their inheritance. All this took place about four hundred and fifty years. After this, God gave them judges until the time of Samuel the prophet, then he asked for a king and they gave him Saul, son of Kish, from the tribe of Benjamin, who ruled for forty years.
Darren Rouanzoin:After removing Saul, he made David their king. God testified concerning him, I have found David, son of Jesse, a man after my own heart. He will do everything I want him to do. From this man's descendants, God has brought to Israel the savior, Jesus, as he promised. So notice what he does.
Darren Rouanzoin:He takes let me get there. There we go. Matthew. He takes all of that. Alright.
Darren Rouanzoin:I wanna make sure this side sees it real quick. Hold on. Genesis to Malachi. And there's some like, you know, table of context in there too. And he says, that story was all pointing to Jesus because Jesus is the story.
Darren Rouanzoin:Paul starts with Abraham. He starts in Genesis and he moves from Genesis to to what comes after Exodus and he goes to Moses and he goes to Egypt and then he goes to Joshua and then he goes to Samuel and then he goes to Saul and then he gets to David and he camps out on David because there's all these Old Testament prophecies and it says that they're reading the law and the prophets. They had read the law and the prophets in his sitting. He heard the law and the prophets and what I need you to understand is Paul did not teach or preach abstractions or creeds. He preached the story of Jesus.
Darren Rouanzoin:He hands them a story and says, the face of this story is Jesus of Nazareth. And this is so important for our faith because as a Jewish gathering, they were gathering every Saturday, and they would have read the prophets, they would have read the scrolls, they would have had the genealogies, they would have had a library, and he simply says, the library points to Jesus. This is that sixth sense moment. He gets to the end and he says, now, in view of Jesus, reread all of the stories. And you guys, I went through, I did this during my week, I went through it.
Darren Rouanzoin:And I gave you my cliff notes because if you cannot read the Old Testament, once you understand that Bruce Willis is dead the whole time, you cannot see anything else. And when you get to Jesus, you cannot read anything in the Old Testament. Here's the cliff notes of how everything in the Old Testament points to Jesus because Jesus is, check this out. Go to the list of the Jesus is, these are just the cliff notes. I mean, is the the seed of the woman who crushes the serpent's head.
Darren Rouanzoin:He is the son a father does not spare on the mountain. He is the ram caught in the thicket. He is the Passover lamb. The blood on the door that turns death away. He is the prophet greater than Moses.
Darren Rouanzoin:He is the commander of the Lord's army. In Ruth, he is the kinsman redeemer who pays the price to take a bride. He is the son of David whose throne never ends. He's the wisdom of God from before the world in Proverbs. He is Emmanuel, God with us.
Darren Rouanzoin:He is the servant pierced for our transgressions. He is the stone cut without hands that breaks every empire. And Daniel, he is the ruler born in Bethlehem, Malach, Micah. He is the humble king riding in on a donkey. Zechariah nine chapter nine.
Darren Rouanzoin:He is the son of righteousness rising with healing in his wings, Malachi. That is Genesis to the end of the Old Testament. This is what we believe. This is the story. This is the person that Paul preaches.
Darren Rouanzoin:He preaches Jesus. The message he carried up a mountainside is not a theory. It's not the start of religion. It's a person that all scriptures point to at all times because Jesus is our story. And let me just say this before we keep going.
Darren Rouanzoin:In our world, we live in a time where most Christians don't have the right Jesus. And I need to make it very plain today. If your Jesus looks and votes and acts like you, it is made out of the image of America, out of the image of an idol, out of image of your own doing, and if it doesn't offend you, if it doesn't tear down the idols, if it doesn't cause you to change directions to repent, then you're worshiping the wrong image of Jesus. And I need you to go through the Old Testament and look, and look at the New Testament and say, does my life match what he says? What he invites me to be?
Darren Rouanzoin:Who he invites me to be? This isn't about doing more. This is about alignment with reality. I love what pastor Bill says. He's like, blessing and curse are the same side, different sides of the same coin.
Darren Rouanzoin:If you align your life with God and his ways, you'll experience the life as blessing. You're going with the flow of current, which is reality from heaven. But if you change directions, that same blessing is now a curse Because it challenges you what to do with your body, what to do with your mind, what to do with your finances, what to do with your belief systems, what to do with your language, what to do with your relationships. It challenges those things. And when you're misaligned, the way of God's blessing is seen as a curse, and I wanna say, so many of you have followed a Jesus the life coach, a Jesus the self help, a Jesus, who's uninterested, and you need to get back to the real Jesus.
Darren Rouanzoin:Okay, let me keep going. Verse 26. Paul preaches his sermon. He keeps going. He talks about David.
Darren Rouanzoin:And then he says in verse 26, fellow children of Abraham and you God fearing Gentiles, It is to us that this message of salvation has been sent. The people of Jerusalem and their rulers did not recognize Jesus. I need you to highlight, did not recognize Jesus. Yet, in condemning him, they fulfilled the words of the prophets that they read every Sunday. Oh, this hits.
Darren Rouanzoin:They did not recognize Jesus. That word in the Greek is not that they lacked information, but they chose to unsee. Which many of you do. And this is how you do it. I love this section of God's blessing and prospering my finances and wealth, but I don't like the section about what to do with my sexual body.
Darren Rouanzoin:I love when you go after the, you know, sexual identity stuff in politics but I wanna disregard gluttony and greed. I fail to recognize what's been given. Plain sight, you have access, but you choose to ignore it. And before I keep going, I just wanna add to it. This is so important because Paul will write about this in two Corinthians.
Darren Rouanzoin:He'll say, even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts, but whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now, the Lord is spirit, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. Let me make sure you understand this. When you read scriptures, and he's referring to the Old Testament, there's a veil that covers your heart. Until you identify, till you become your sole allegiance turns to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Darren Rouanzoin:The problem is, we don't turn to Jesus as Lord. Lord means we surrender our way. Lord means we are aligned to his kingdom strategy, not my kingdom strategy. What we've done is we say, yeah, I follow Jesus, I prayed that prayer, but I live as though he is an accessory to my busy life. I just clip him on when it's convenient and I just take it off when I'm walking in to date night.
Darren Rouanzoin:That was not in my notes, so I'm just gonna sit with that one. I put them on for Sunday church and maybe afterwards because, you know, there might be Christians around, but then when I get to work and how I talk with my friends and my my other employees and my coworkers, my language does not sound like Christian anymore. My online browser history doesn't look like Jesus anymore because he's an accessory, not Lord. But wherever the spirit of the Lord is, and here's the thing you're looking for, according to second Corinthians. Whenever there is he's Lord of my life, then the spirit is there.
Darren Rouanzoin:And where the spirit of the Lord is, guess what? The thing you long for, there's freedom. This is the thing we want in Southern California. More than anything, autonomy and freedom. And let me just say this, you've been lied to church because freedom without meaning and purpose is bondage.
Darren Rouanzoin:And you've been pursuing freedom without responsibility and meaning and purpose found in the Christian perspective. And that freedom that's been given to you has destroyed your life because it's not freedom. It's indulgence. Yeah. It's gluttony.
Darren Rouanzoin:But where Jesus is Lord, the spirit of the Lord brings about your freedom. Are you with me? That's a freebie. Let's keep going through the text. They did not recognize.
Darren Rouanzoin:They fulfilled the words of the prophets that they read every Sabbath. Isn't that frustrating? That as they condemn Jesus, they fulfill the very scriptures they read, not knowing they were part of the story. They just missed. Luke will write, they did not recognize the coming of the Messiah.
Darren Rouanzoin:Jesus says this, I long that to welcome you in like a chicken mother welcomes in its babes, Jesus says this as he looks to Jerusalem and weeps. But you fail to recognize the coming of the day of the Lord, the Messiah. Though they found no proper ground for a death sentence, they asked Pilate to have him executed. So now Paul's explaining what happened. When they carried out all that was written about him, they took him down from the cross and laid him into tomb.
Darren Rouanzoin:And there it is again. But God, remember this? Peter was in prison, but the church was praying. But God raised him from the dead. But God raised him from the dead and for many days he was seen by those who had traveled with him from Galilee to Jerusalem.
Darren Rouanzoin:They're, they are now witnesses to our people. We tell you the good news, the gospel. What God promised our ancestors, he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus. This is the this is the essence of the gospel. Jesus died on the cross and he was raised from the dead.
Darren Rouanzoin:This is the fulfillment of the old testament. This is everything that the old testament was pointing to. All the promises that you long for, all of it is found in the person of Jesus. And and then he's gonna go off and name the tragedy. They, like the people in Jerusalem who read every single Sabbath, did not recognize what the prophets promised.
Darren Rouanzoin:And the verb that's used for the center of the message is this word, to raise in Greek, which it shows up six times in a few sentences, and it's the resurrection of Jesus. This is the message of Paul, death and resurrection of Jesus. And why do we know it's his message? Because the next section of scripture, verse 36, I wanna read this. He goes off on David, because everyone loved the one true King David, the man after God's own heart.
Darren Rouanzoin:But he says this, now when David had served God's purposes in his own generation, he fell asleep. He was buried with his ancestors, and his body decayed, but the one whom God raised from the dead did not see decay. Therefore, my friends, I want you to know that through Jesus, the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Through him, everyone who believes is set free from every sin. A justification you are not able to obtain under the law of Moses.
Darren Rouanzoin:Oh, this is it. And we don't get it because we don't live in a time where we have to live every single day based on the Old Testament commands that had 613 commandments in the Old Testament. And everything in the Old Testament was about right standing with God. There was a way for you to live a holy life. God gave you that way.
Darren Rouanzoin:That's the beauty of Exodus 19, when God descended on the mountain with fire and smoke. He gave his people a way to live out covenantal faithfulness. 613 commands in the Torah, in the Old Testament. And then the Pharisees added 1,500 more oral traditions. So, was a way for you to live in right standing.
Darren Rouanzoin:Only every mistake you made, you had to offer a sacrifice. Every casual sin, every intentional sin, every misspoken word, every single day, you went back to the sacrifice to provide a sacrificial covering to be made right with God. Only Paul comes and says, all that law, all of the Old Testament, guess what? It didn't work. How do we know?
Darren Rouanzoin:Because Abraham died. Moses died. Samuel died. Joshua died. David died.
Darren Rouanzoin:You can visit his tomb. Only Jesus is raised from the dead. And we know this because he's, there's eyewitnesses to the reality. This isn't something that you debate in a TED Talk. This isn't a podcast that you scroll through.
Darren Rouanzoin:This is something that's declaring historical evidence. He walked out of the tomb and because of that, guess what? The thing you long for, peace with God is available, not through a sacrificial system. That's been fulfilled in the one true Passover lamb, Jesus Christ. Through believing in him, the thing that kept you from him is wife clean.
Darren Rouanzoin:You are justified, and that's the word that the entire book of Romans is written about. Justified. This idea that you stand guilty in a court like this with a judge that's ready to condemn you, only Jesus says, this one's mine. And so the verdict that he carries is not guilty. So there's no performance.
Darren Rouanzoin:There's no climbing up the mountain. There's no religious ladder that you have to figure out. Nothing can prove that you earned salvation. It's a gift because of the cross. It's on this side at the other campus, so we just gotta move it.
Darren Rouanzoin:The drummer's over there too, super weird. This is the beauty of the good news of Jesus walking up to a bunch of religious folks, tired from the mountain journey, he stands and announces that the peace they long for is available in Christ. The forgiveness of sins is available now, not through works of righteousness, but the one who is righteous. Isn't this amazing? Yes.
Darren Rouanzoin:The problem is, we don't live in a generation today that gets guilt. A few years ago, when I was learning apologetics is very easy because of modernism. Gen X, baby boomers, they know guilt. But we got millennials participation trophies. We did.
Darren Rouanzoin:Everything was like, I don't wanna hurt your feelings. So I'm not gonna say anything that offends your individual self expression. That that idea created this soft society and in the church, we took crosses out because it's too offensive. This is a true story. Let's welcome in the seekers.
Darren Rouanzoin:Get rid of the cross and don't say anything that sounds harsh. Except the only way you can be saved is through relationship with Jesus Christ. That's the reality. But we wanna give you steps for your anxiety. Wanna really help you walk this path and just add it, just say the prayer in silence.
Darren Rouanzoin:We're not gonna demand that you get baptized and start giving and give your life away like he demands. We're gonna make it easy as you seek. Forget that God has been seeking you from the beginning of time. But let me go back to an illustration real quick. Maybe you don't get the word justified.
Darren Rouanzoin:If you're a lawyer, you get it. This word is also could be connected to another metaphor that Paul will use over and over again and it's something that millennials and Gen Z know lots about, debt. I gotcha. The verdict, your pardon, because Jesus is your pardon, is your debt being canceled. A debt that you could never repay.
Darren Rouanzoin:There's a story my friend from Michigan shares at his church in 2008 and it's the most amazing story of the gospel presentation today. So I wanna share it from his from his story. In 2008, for those of you that weren't around then, it was a there was a big thing that happened in the economy. We went through a big crisis financially and a lot of people lost a lot of jobs and it was significant. I was I was already poor and planning a church at that point, so it didn't really impact me but I was just out of college.
Darren Rouanzoin:Millennials, you know, just out of college, here you go, financial crisis. Right when you're starting to gain some traction and maybe buy a house, COVID. It's like, throw the opposition at us, we'll figure it out. 2008, he tells a story, there's a family in his church that the father lost his job in 2007 and they were struggling and the wife lost their job and they were sitting at a table eating canned food and the wife began to cry because she recognized that the food they were eating now is now a symbol of what they lacked, of what they used to have. They used to eat great food, they had great jobs, but now, they're sitting at a table that symbolized the brokenness of their situation because of their debt.
Darren Rouanzoin:They didn't have money to pay for things and along the way, things got worse. And I remember what it was like to grow up in a house where you didn't have enough and you got these phone calls because we had house phones that would ring all the time at any point in the night. Maybe for the mortgage, maybe it was for the credit card bills they couldn't pay for, or the medical debt because one of their sons had a health crisis, so they couldn't afford the medical treatment, so they maxed out credit cards to pay for the medical. So there they are, about to get evicted, eating canned food, and a neighbor across the street, who also went to their church, carrying loads of groceries, barges into their dinner and limps in because she had a limp and places all of the groceries on the table and pulls up a chair and sits down. And she says to them, I've been watching you.
Darren Rouanzoin:I know you're going through a hard time. The wife began to talk pleasantries like, no, we're not, we're doing good. But then she just begins to cry because sometimes the outside validation of what you're walking through is enough to break you. The husband starts talking. At this point, she interrupts and pulls out a checkbook and says, how much do you owe?
Darren Rouanzoin:And he's being polite, we can't take your money, thank you so much. He's like, no, no, you don't understand, I'm not leaving until I know what you owe. So he throws out a number and she says, what's that for? Is that for a credit card or the house? And then she's like, how much do you owe on the house?
Darren Rouanzoin:He spits out a number. How much do you owe on the credit cards? All of the credit cards. And he looks back and forth at the wife and the husband. All of the credit cards.
Darren Rouanzoin:And how much does Johnny owe for his medical expenses? And she calculates it up, she adds a zero and says, if my calculations are correct, this should cover it, puts the check on the table and walks out saying, have a nice meal. That feeling that you have, that unmerited favor expressed through the kind act of generosity by a person in a a family that cannot possibly pay back or give back or earn that cancellation of debt is exactly what Paul means when he says justified. Amen? Jesus is your pardon.
Darren Rouanzoin:The story continues and for the sake of time, wanna get to my ending. Verse 44, on the next Sabbath, almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord. Wouldn't that be amazing? I'll just say as a church planner, I dreamt of that, never happened. But if you dream of that, look what happens next.
Darren Rouanzoin:When the Jews saw the crowds, were filled with jealousy. And let me just say this real quick because oftentimes, jealousy dresses up as theology. But the spirit can always tell the difference. You see, I think a lot of people, jealousy shows up as conviction. They'll quote scripture but really they want their own thing satisfied.
Darren Rouanzoin:So they began to contradict what Paul was saying and heaped abuse on him. That's fun. When Paul and Barnabas answered them boldly, we had to speak the word of God to you first since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles. How's that? Not here to make you happy, I'm here to tell you the truth and if you don't receive it, I'm gonna go to the people who are hungry.
Darren Rouanzoin:For this is what the Lord commanded us, I have made you a light for the Gentiles that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth. When the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and honored the word of the Lord and all who were appointed for eternal life believed and the word of the Lord spread through the whole region. Now, the word of God's spreading through the Gentiles. But the Jewish leaders incited the God fearing women of high standing and the leaders and the men of the city, and they stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas and expelled them from their region. So now they're kicked out.
Darren Rouanzoin:So they shook the dust off their feet warning them, as a warning against them, they went to Iconium and the disciples that were left without the apostles were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit. So when the gospel is preached, I just wanna say, when you live faithfully to the gospel, two things will happen. People will get interested and they'll be hungry to know what you have. What is this thing that you carry? That's what the world's looking for.
Darren Rouanzoin:And there will be people that carry hostility towards you. So just, this is what happens. I said this from the beginning in Acts chapter two. I said, this is what you'll see anytime God moves forward. You'll see hostility and hunger in the same room.
Darren Rouanzoin:The wheat and the tares will grow together. When God pours out, what's the kingdom of God like? It's like God moving and there's gonna be people that are carrying the real thing and people that have the imitation. Don't start judging the imitation. Don't start throwing pearls to swine.
Darren Rouanzoin:Don't start trying to make it your business to police the false prophet. Eventually, when the age to come happens, the angels will sort it out, and he will be judged, and you will know the difference from the sheep and the goats. For the rest of us, get off social media, don't worry about it. Instead, be marked by joy. Not intensity, joy fueled from the Holy Spirit.
Darren Rouanzoin:And here's what I know brothers and sisters sitting in this room, a lot of you lost joy. You don't even know what that is because all you've been taught is happiness that's based on circumstances, you haven't met the Jesus who becomes your fulfillment. The Jesus who even when things are not going as planned, can hold you afloat with this joyful depth in your soul that keeps you buoyant in the watery chaos that is your life. I know that joy and I know that suffering and I promise you, it's not found in practices, it's found in the person of Jesus Christ. It's not found in performance, it's found in the person of Jesus Christ.
Darren Rouanzoin:And it's the Jesus of the scriptures, not the Jesus of your own imagination. It's the one true God that's been revealed throughout history, creation and through the scriptures and you, that you have, those of you that have lost joy, stop running to the self help fix its, run to Jesus as the person that he's in. He's in this room. Some of you have missed Jesus and it's time to recognize who he is. Some of you are still trying to behave your way into heaven.
Darren Rouanzoin:Some of you've lost joy but I wanna end with this. I got a closer that I wrote on a prayer walk this morning. I'm just gonna read it and hopefully it resonates and then pastor Luis will minister in prayer time. A couple minutes here, Luis. I wanna talk to somebody in this room, someone that's come here today and you've heard all this before and what you've heard today is more.
Darren Rouanzoin:Do more, experience more. So before you leave, I wanna invite you into the motive behind everything you've heard here, everything that you read here, every missionary that's ever preached or climbed a mountain, you understand that it comes from something else. It's behind the story of God. It's the motive that has moved history forward and that motive has always been love. For God so loved the world, he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Darren Rouanzoin:What broke in Genesis three did not end the story. It started God's loving rescue plan. The moment it all fell apart in the garden, God set his face towards reconciling all things back to what was lost and the love driving that rescue is so great, there's nothing that can compare to it. I've tried to explain this. I've tried to explain love and as a son, I love my mom, I love my dad, I've learned to love, but something changed when I became a dad.
Darren Rouanzoin:Something new opened up inside of me, this is, there's no other way to explain this. Something else took place in me when I became a dad to Ezra and Amos. I could argue with the boys all the time about this because this is what happens in our household almost every day. I'll say something like, I love you, and Ezra will bounce back, I love you more. And I say, that's great, bud, but there's no way you can love me more.
Darren Rouanzoin:One day you will understand that it is impossible to outlove dad. And I can argue this, I can make the biblical case, I'm so good at making it because the principle first mention. The principle first mention becomes the way the word is understood for the rest of scripture. And guess what? The first time the word love is used is in Genesis when God says to Abraham, take the one and only son, the one you love.
Darren Rouanzoin:So the greatest in the Jewish imagination, the greatest concept for love according to the Bible is a father's love for his son. But even with that Jewish imagination, even with that biblical argument, it doesn't make sense because here's what I've learned. As a father, I can say the words and I do all the time at breakfast table, at lunch, at dinner, every morning, every night, I kiss them and put them to bed. The words that I share will not express the weight that I experience for them. My boys will know how much their dad loves them, not because of the words but because of something heavier that's present in their life.
Darren Rouanzoin:Maybe it was the sleepless nights when they were babies. Maybe it was the trip to the hospital. I'm sorry, the lots of trips to the hospitals. Maybe it was the nights, the night I stayed up for two the two nights I stayed up when my son couldn't breathe in the hospital at CHURCH and I prayed for two days straight for his life. Maybe it was, you know, the fact that I have been to almost every practice, every game, every performance, every recital, every chapel award, even if it's ten minutes, I show up.
Darren Rouanzoin:Maybe it's countless invitations that I've turned down in the last ten years because it collided with school drop off. It collided with me putting them down every single night. Maybe it's all the ways people said, this is how you should build a church and build a career, and I just said, no, because I didn't wanna miss being home. But all of those things stacked up, every sleepless night, every hospital hallway, every flight I cancel, every recital, every game I refuse to miss, all of it together would still be a candle held up against this blazing sun that is the Father's love. Because that same mountain Moriah that that God asked Abraham to climb, he put his hand out and said, don't lay a finger on your boy.
Darren Rouanzoin:And then, just down the way, in the same region, in the same area, God himself climbed up that mountain. And this time, no hand reached down to stop it. This time, there was no ram caught in the thicket because this time the son was the sacrifice. God did the one thing he spared Abraham from doing. He did not withhold his only son.
Darren Rouanzoin:That is the love underneath the entire story. That is the motive under every page that you've ever heard in the scriptures. Not a God standing over you saying, do more, but a father who's given everything so that you can be with him. I tell my boys it's impossible to outlove their dad, but I'm wrong because there is a father who loves him more than I could ever love them. He did not prove it with his words.
Darren Rouanzoin:He proved it the only way love can be proven. He got up on a cross, he died and he raced back to life. So brothers and sisters, if you're tired, if you're exhausted from this religious game, let me tell you some good news. You were never once asked to climb a mountain. He already climbed it for you.
Darren Rouanzoin:So sit down and enjoy his presence. Amen? Amen. Can we all stand?
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