He Meets You In Your Mess

Grab your message notes that look like this. You can download them at TLC.org/notes if you're joining us on the live stream. We begin a series called Seven Signs today. They say that out loud with me. Seven signs. And so since it's about signs, I thought we'd start with some fun signs that people have taken photographs of recently. For example, just this week at Community Presbyterian Church, God does not have favorites. Sign Guy does, go Rams. As a Niner fan, that is completely inappropriate in church.

All right, here's one at a synagogue, Adam and Eve. First one's to ignore Apple terms and conditions. At this hotel, now pet friendly, except for bears. We're not making that mistake again. Some of these you gotta think about a little bit. Caution, low flying aircraft. I kinda like the passive aggressive nature of this next one. Push to open, if that does not work, pull. If both do not work, try the actual entrance to your left.

And yet there's a story behind some of these. Some are a little bit awkward, like Abby, you need to show up for work. Ouch, awkward. Or this one, this work center has been accidents free since Joe left. All right, just two more. People write congrats because they can't spell congratulations. And finally, some people take signs very literally. If your dog poops, pick it up, please, okay.

All right, moving on to some many more important signs in that, seven signs is this series. What are the seven signs in the Bible and the Gospel of John? What do they mean and where can we find them and how can they actually positively affect your life today? This is very exciting. I'm gonna give you an overview today and then we're gonna look at each of the seven signs each week leading up to Easter.

The way they're designed in the Bible is that as you see more and more of these signs, they reveal more about the mystery of Jesus and the tension kind of builds and the content ratchets up until it reaches its climax at Easter. So I hope you're able to join us in person or online every single week as we lead up to Easter.

Now, excuse me, really should go to not whole milk anymore on those lattes but this is kind of a digression of the other day I was reading an article by a psychologist professor at Harvard Medical School and she has a concern right now about America and the world really. She said she is observing what she calls a news pandemic within the COVID pandemic. Do you understand what she's talking about in terms of its impact on mental health?

She says endlessly reading a million news articles can lead to sleep deprivation, anxiety, depression and reduce the chances that you'll do health of things that reduce stress and anxiety, right? 'Cause you're using up all your time reading up all those news articles. So what are you gonna do about this? Can you relate to that? Kind of like sometimes your thoughts are like a hamster on a wheel and all you can think about is just negative stuff all the time, you're doom scrolling, right? So what's the solution?

Well she says the solution is to find ways to focus your mind, to lengthen your attention span, since that's not jumping from scary thing to scary thing and to focus on things that are positive. Well you cannot find anything more positive to focus on than the gospel truth in the word of God and so what we try to do every time we start a series here, you may have noticed it, is we try to make it very accessible for us as a community to make this study fully immersive so that you're immersing yourself in these themes every day so that you have extra tools, not just the weekend sermons to really dig into this material.

For example, this series we're making available for you, the Max Lucado book, "You Are Never Alone." This book is also on the seven signs in the gospel of John so it follows the same arc as the sermon series. So if you grab this book, we've got available in the bookstore, you can read this kind of devotionally along with the sermon series. In the back it's got discussion questions, you can use those for your own personal devotional reflection or family devotional time or you can use them for your small group and we've got Wednesday night classes kicking off this week that are also doing a deeper dive on the same material and we have daily video devotionals that you can get texted to you for free.

I'll talk more about this later. Also on this same material so that you can just immerse yourself in this, lengthen your attention span and stop that hamster on a wheel so you can kill the hamster is what I'm talking about. Say that out loud with me, kill the hamster. All right, seven signs, let's dig into this. Here's what this is all about. This week an overview, then each week a different sign.

They're based, this is all based in the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John, for those of you who are new to the whole Bible thing is one of four gospels in the Bible, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and there's a few things that make John, the Gospel of John different. The author of the Gospel of John knew Jesus well. He was one of Jesus Christ's best friends. He traveled with Jesus and by the time he's an old man, he decides to write down his memories of Jesus and he does something really interesting.

He picks seven miracles that Jesus did which he calls signs and that's a very interesting word we're gonna dive into in just a minute but the interesting thing is he just picked seven and the other gospels, there are many more miracles listed, at least 40. But John doesn't pick 40, doesn't pick 30, doesn't pick 20, doesn't pick 10. He whittles it down to seven and some of these miracles Jesus even did in private, only a few people saw them including his most intimate friends like John and most of these miracles John includes aren't even in the other gospels at all.

So in this overview today, as we prepare to dig into each one of these, I wanna talk about these three things. Why does he pick these miracles? What do they show and how should we respond? Why these miracles, what do they show and how should we respond? What we're gonna do today is this, are you ready to play detective? We're gonna go into the Bible and pick clues to answer these questions and for each of these three points, really we're gonna focus on one single word and if you understand what these three words mean, it's just gonna open up the whole rest of the series to you.

So let's get ready. Plus, if you feel weak today or if you feel overwhelmed or if you feel a little lonely or a little burned out, you'll see that these will inspire you and these seven signs are going to just build up your faith. So first, why these miracles? Well, the first clue I wanna look at as to why John picked these seven is almost at the very end of the Gospel of John. In John 20:30–31, and we're gonna spend most of our time in these two verses today, it says this, read this verse out loud with me, here we go. Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples which are not recorded in this book, right? Just as I explained to you.

Now, John picks the word signs to describe the miracles of Jesus Christ. He does not use the word that the other Gospel writers use. When they're talking about miracles, they call them wonders and they were wonders. But John says, I'm picking these because they're signs. Signs point somewhere, right? So where are these seven signs all pointing? Well, John tips his hand in the next verse, verse 31. He says, but these, these seven are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

So the first word that I really wanna do a deep dive on is the word Messiah. Say that word out loud with me, Messiah. In fact, John adds an article. He says Jesus is the Messiah. Say that, the Messiah. What does this mean? If his whole Gospel, if each of the seven signs, if the ultimate point is to convince you of something about Jesus, specifically these, the Messiah, if that's the point, if that is so important, well, then we need to be crystal clear about what this means or we might all be missing something super important about Jesus.

So let's clarify this. First, in some Bibles, some of your Bible translations, that word is translated Christ. Why is that? Well, it's the same exact thing only in two different languages. It's Christ in Greek and Messiah in Hebrew. It's like, say, meat in English is carne in Spanish, right? Same exact thing, just two different languages. Christ and Messiah are the same exact thing. Now, here's how important this is. Jesus is called Christ or Messiah 500 times in the New Testament. 500 times! So would you say that it's a pretty important word to understand if you're gonna understand the whole point of Jesus Christ according to the Bible? Absolutely.

But, I suspect that most people probably even most Christians couldn't really define what this word means according to the Bible. What is this all about? Well, first, Christ is not Jesus' last name. Christ is a title. What does it mean? Messiah or Christ means the anointed one. To anoint somebody, right? You know what that means? To put water or oil or incense on somebody's head as part of a ceremony. That's what it means to Christ someone, to Messiah someone, is you anoint them.

For example, in some Christian traditions, babies are christened when they're dedicated, right? The pastor or the priest puts water on their heads and we call it christening. You know, you see the root word Christ? That doesn't relate to Jesus Christ other than that word simply means they are anointed. It's the same root word. In ancient Jewish tradition, all through the Bible, people were anointed with oil for special purposes. I'm gonna show you a 1900 year old fresco, a painting from the wall of an ancient synagogue in Syria. And this shows David being anointed with oil. There's oil coming out of this horn being held by Samuel the Prophet. He's standing with his brothers. He's being anointed, that's the same exact word as christened.

You see, to be messiah'd, to be christened, to be anointed, that's the same exact word. And he's being anointed as the next king. Now, here is something that might surprise you, perhaps scandalize you. There are over three dozen messiahs in the Bible. And I'll repeat that in case you didn't catch it. There are over three dozen different messiahs in the Bible. In fact, 39 times in the Hebrew scriptures, the Old Testament people are anointed, christened, messiahd. Specifically, there are three groups that were christened or anointed in the Old Testament. Kings were anointed with oil to signify that God chose them to rule and protect. Priests were anointed, chosen by God to connect the people to God. And then prophets were anointed to signify their authority to speak.

Gods were to be anointed, to be christened, to be messiahd. Meant that you were chosen by God, you had authority from God, you were empowered by God to do one of these three things. They were all messiahs, in the sense that they were anointed by God. That's the same exact word that's used here. Now, none of them is ever called savior. None of them is ever called the Lord. None of them is ever called the messiah. But there were prophets, priests, and kings that were chosen as messiahs throughout the Bible.

Then, there's like a rumor that begins to start in the pages of the Bible. A promise begins to be whispered that one day God will choose, God will anoint the messiah, the ultimate messiah who will combine being a king because he's gonna rule and protect us, being a priest because he's gonna connect us to God, being a prophet because he's gonna speak the pure, inspired word of God to us. And when that final messiah comes, then we won't need any other messiahs. And people start to look forward to this. They're so excited about this. But the question becomes, how are we gonna spot this person? How will we know when the final messiah, the final anointed one of God is here?

Well, there's a prophecy. Well, there's prophecies all throughout the Bible, but there's one specific one in Isaiah 35 where Isaiah says, here's how you'll know. One day God is going to anoint the messiah. And here's how you'll be able to tell. He says, then that day, the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap like a deer in the tongue of the mute, sing for joy. That's how you're gonna spot him. That's gonna be the sign. He's gonna do amazing miracles for these people who are disabled. See, people who are in tough spots. And that's what John's calling back to when he says, I picked these because these prove that Jesus is, say these two words again with me, the messiah.

Are you getting the flow here? Now, here's why this is so important. It changes your life when you believe that the ultimate, consummate, complete messiah is here, whose king overall rules over everything. And he connects me with God. And he speaks the word of God to me and I don't need anybody else but him. And he loves me. Man, when you believe that, you're a lawyer, your whole life changes. Let me show you how. This last week, World Outreach Week, right? I spoke to Jamal Hashway, among many of our other global partners. Jamal does amazing work with refugees in Jordan. He's from Amman, Jordan himself. He's his family's Palestinian. Our church supports him. By the way, didn't Paul and Robin Spurlock do a wonderful job with World Outreach Week this last week? Just fantastic.

Let's thank them for doing a great job. So I'm talking with Jamal over at Loft this week because a few months ago, Jamal had COVID, like really bad. In fact, he ends up in the hospital for 11 days. And toward the end of his stay there, the doctors tell him and his family, well, you're not gonna survive until morning. Just medically, everything's shutting down here. Well, the whole people around the world were praying for Jamal and thank God, Jamal is now completely well as you're about to see, completely healed, praise God. But yeah, thank God.

But you know, he said that something, I asked him, what was that like facing death? In that moment, you're like, well, I've only got a few hours left on earth. What was that like? And here's part of what he told me, watch this. I had no fear. It was just amazing. I'm sure it's the prayers of many people. I had such peace in my heart and the real miracle was that deep peace that surpasses all understanding. That peace that made it just, I would say even enjoyable. It may sound very strange. That peace is priceless, so enjoyable. And I pray that each one of you would have it.

The complete conversation is going to be on the daily video Devo on Thursday. And again, you can get there completely free. You can subscribe to them or view them at TLC.org/Devo if you'd like to. But here's my question. And in fact, I just wanna show you the URL just so that you can grab them. TLC.org/Devo in case you wanna view the whole thing. Again, his comes up on Thursday. But how is it possible for somebody to be facing death like that? And he said, there was so much peace. Did you catch it? He said, it was, well, frankly, it was enjoyable. How's that possible?

Because if you believe Jesus loves you and is the ultimate king and priest and prophet, what can scare you? What can intimidate you? If you really own that, then every day of your life is going to be vibrant, including potentially the last day of your life. That's the difference it makes to believe what we're talking about. And that's what John experienced this himself. That's why he says, these are signs that you may believe.

Okay, what signs? What are we gonna be talking about in this series? Snake Peak, here are the seven signs coming up. I'm gonna list them for you. We're gonna go through one of these each week. But as you listen to this list, I want you to do something for me. I want you to listen and ask yourself, what do all of these signs have in common? Listen to this. The caterers at a wedding run out of wine. And so Jesus quietly turns water into the best vintage the sommelier at the reception has ever tasted in his life. I love that miracle.

A government official is desperate about his sick son, and Jesus heals him long distance. At the pool of Bethesda, which is a pool full of pagan superstition, a man who has for 39 long years been placing his hope and superstition for healing, is discovered by Jesus. And with barely a mustard seed of faith, this man is healed. The lame man dances. Jesus feeds thousands of people who forgot to bring lunch from one little picnic basket.

Jesus' friends are in a storm fearing unto death. And like the first standup paddleboarder in history, only without a board and without a paddle, Jesus walks to them on water and rescues them. Jesus heals a man who was born blind. Jesus raises a friend from the dead. What do these signs all have in common? Well, that's the next question. What do they show? What's the point of these particular seven hand-picked by John to be signs of something about Jesus? Let's go to the next clue.

Watch this very first verse of John, John 1:1. Let's read this together. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word was God, and then something amazing happens. In verse 14, the Word became flesh, and made His dwelling among us. That's amazing. God actually came to earth. Now, what would it be like for God, boom, to come down here and meet us and walk around with us? John says, well, I'll tell you what it was like because we have seen His, say this word out loud with me, glory, the what? Glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father full of grace and truth.

Glory is the next word I wanna take a deep dive into. That's a very important word for John. In fact, he repeats the word several times like you'll see next weekend. When he describes the first sign making water and wine, John says, when Jesus, what Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which He revealed His glory and His disciples believed in Him. So if you wanna understand these seven signs, you have to understand the concept of glory. Say that word again out loud with me. Glory. Say it like you mean it. Glory.

What's glory? It's hard to define, but you know it when you experience it, don't you? Sunset at the Grand Canyon. The sunrise at Yosemite. Morning mist in a redwood forest. The Monterey Bay when the humpbacks are breaching. That's all glorious, right? Well, behind all of that glory is the glory of God. That's the ultimate glory that all those glories point to. I love the way Paul David Tripp puts it. God intentionally placed us in a world jam-packed with glory. From trees to flowers to mountains. From mashed potatoes to steak to lemonade. From thunderstorms to sunsets to snowfalls. All of these things were designed by God to tingle our glory sensors.

Every created glory is meant by God to function as a spiritual GPS that points us to the only glory that will ever satisfy our hearts, the glory of God. The glory of God in creation is a what? It's a sign directing you to the source. So we've probably all experienced that, right? You see glory in nature and you feel in your heart, this is a sign that's pointing me to God and you just kind of go, wow, you worship God, even if you don't understand what you're experiencing, creation's glories lead you to the ultimate glory of God.

But what is the ultimate glory of God? Is the glory of God just, boom, I'm super powerful, I'm the most powerful being in the universe? Is that the glory of God? Here's the glory of God according to the Bible. Remember last summer we did a series called God's Guide to God. We spent eight weeks just in two verses in Exodus 34. And they were set up by Moses saying to God, show me your what? Your glory. Like God, I wanna see your glory. And you can tell in context, Moses is expecting like thunder and lightning, some stupendous light show. And God says, okay, I'll show you my glory. Go stand on the cliff and the God comes by and he whispers this.

He says, here's my glory. The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God. Slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness and rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished. Now wait a minute, this stuff's all great. And then the last sentence kind of ruins it all, doesn't it? Kind of sounds like I'm forgiving, but not really. And this remains attention all throughout the Bible until we see it all coming together in Jesus.

Jesus, in him the mercy and justice of God meet because he loves us, he's compassionate, he's gracious to everybody. And he doesn't leave sin unpunished because he takes the punishment for our sin on himself, on the cross. That's ultimate way he's compassionate and gracious and loving and forgiving because he takes our sin on himself. This is what John means when he says, we have seen his glory. Moses heard about it. He heard that description and couldn't figure out how it all fit together. Then we saw it. And we got it. When we saw Jesus.

And that's what all these seven signs that John picked have in common. Have you figured it out yet? You could put it this way. They're all about one thing. God meets me in my mess. They're all a bunch of people who are just messed up for large and small reasons. And Jesus comes into their mess and meets them there. He doesn't have a throne room somewhere where he's like, you gotta go through the protocols before you can ever meet me. No, he descends down into their mess. And this means God meets you in your mess.

Sometimes as a pastor, I meet people and they go, I could never come to church because I gotta clean up my act first. The ceiling would cave in if I ever came to church. I've heard that a hundred times. Jesus is saying, you don't have to clean up your act. I meet you in your mess. There for you. And I transform you from the inside out. You know, think of all the other miracles that Jesus could have done. If Jesus only wanted to reveal the power of God, if Jesus only wanted to prove he was supernaturally divine, he could have done other stuff, right?

Watch, I'm gonna make that horse sprout wings. There goes flying away. Look, I'm gonna make all my enemies explode. Or as he was tempted to do, look, I'm gonna float down from the temple mount without stubbing a toe, worship me, knaves, but he doesn't do anything like that. He shows his power by meeting us in our mess. You got a mess, you messed up in some way. You feel like that's keeping you from Jesus. That's drawing Jesus to you.

You could put it this way. All these signs point to God's power being expressed in love. Max Locator tells a story about a little guy named Kevin. Kevin was in high school, and as Max Locator puts it, Kevin learned a little bit more slowly than most of his peers. But Kevin still loved high school, and he especially loved basketball. And in fact, every day after school, Kevin's high school basketball coach would see Kevin out at the blacktop at the school practicing free throws, one after another after another.

Now, most of the time, Kevin wouldn't make the free throws, but every time he made one, Kevin would do the same exact thing. Every time, he'd pop his fists in the air and yell, I won, I won! So the basketball coach sees this week after week and finally decides, you know what? I bet Kevin would have a blast being a part of the basketball team, just sitting on the bench, you know, and watching the rest of us play. And so he invites him to join Kevin's delighted.

And so for the whole season, Kevin is sitting there on the bench, just digging, being a part of the scene. Well, it was a terrible season for that team. In fact, they only won one game. And that game, they only won because the other team had to forfeit. So not a great season. And as fate would have it, their final game is played against the best team in the league who was undefeated.

So they're playing this team and they go down by 30 points and 40 points and midway through the fourth quarter, I mean, the game's as good as over, right? And then something unusual happens. A player on that great team of glory walks over to the bench, calls a timeout and goes over to Kevin's team's coach and says, "You know, we've been talking, we got an idea." Every player in the league now knows Kevin. And we all love Kevin. We see him here every week. We've all heard about Kevin. And we think it would be a great idea since this is the last game, to put Kevin in.

And the coach is like, "That's a good idea." So after the timeout, he puts Kevin in and they foul him right away. And so he goes to the free throw line and he misses both baskets. So the other team gets the possession. They go back, they make a layup. They give it back to the losing team. They foul Kevin and he goes to the free throw line and misses both baskets. And the other team gets possession and very quickly they stop trying to do layups. They just start handing the ball right back to Kevin. Just foul him, just hand it right back to him, right?

And so Kevin's there at the line throwing and he still hasn't made a free throw. And now both teams are circling him and they're cheering for him. And soon all the parents are standing cheering for Kevin and soon the whole stadium standing cheering, "Kevin, Kevin, Kevin!" Who keeps trying to make baskets and not making baskets. Finally, the opposing coach thinks, "Surely this game is over by now." And he looks up at the clock and it's stuck at 4.3 seconds. And he realizes even the timekeeper is in on this.

And finally Kevin shoots and the ball rolls around the rim and tips into the net and the whole place just erupts and they carry Kevin around the gym and he is just beaming with joy. Now that undefeated team went on to win state champions. State champions. You think I'd be telling their story if that's all they did? They were a powerful team, but their glory was what they did for Kevin.

We serve a powerful God, but his glory is the fact that he sees you sitting on the bench in your mess and he comes over to you and he says, "Come on, get back in the game because I am with you the whole way." That's the glory of God, but John says, "I saw it. I saw it happen over and over and over again. The Messiah is here and he's a little different than we expected and he's way better than we expected. So how do I respond to that?"

Well, let's go back to John 20:31. Remember John says, "These are written, I picked these seven signs for one reason, that you may believe," that's the third word I want to look at, say that word out loud with me, "believe." Listen, when John says believe, he doesn't just mean mental assent. Sometimes people tell me, "I'm a believer. Like I believe in God. I believe Jesus existed." John's like, "Okay, but what I mean by believe is trust. Like you trust Jesus because when you do, you have life. Life just opens up to you.

It's kind of like this. I was reading Max Lucado talk about how he was teaching his daughter Jenna when she was three to swim. And it reminded me of something that happened to us. When our daughter Elizabeth was just two and a half years old, we visited her grandma and grandpa in Phoenix, Arizona, and the place they lived had a pool. And Elizabeth had never really been swimming before. And so I was trying to get her to come into the pool. And I was in the water and Elizabeth's toes were on the edge of the pool. I'll never forget this plump little curly haired two and a half year old. And she had her inflatable ducky swim ring around her. And she's standing there scared to go into the pool.

And have you ever been here? I was lifting up my hands. Come on, sweetheart. You'll love it. I'll catch you. Come on. I'm splashing her. See, it's not cold. And I'm pretending I'm a whale and I'm a dolphin and I'm a submarine and I'm a diver and I'm a mermaid. And what was happening is she was looking down and I could see the calculus going on in her head. She's asking herself, "Do I trust this guy?" Right? Like, I know he's my daddy, but how much do I trust him? Is this really going to be okay? Is he really going to catch me? And she's putting two and two together. She's looking at me going, and I'm just like, I don't know, I felt like 20 minutes. I'm standing there. Come on, come on, come on.

And she's going, well, mommy trusts him and Jonathan trusts him. So I'm going to trust him. And suddenly she leapt at me so quickly that she bashed in my nose and it got bloody. But that's another story. And we spent the rest of the vacation in that swimming pool. When John says, I want you to know Jesus is the Messiah. And I hope you believe. What he's saying is Jesus is standing in an ocean of blessings. And he's inviting you to take the plunge. And the question isn't, do you believe in him that he existed? The question isn't, do you have all your questions answered about Christianity? The question is just, do you trust him? Do you trust him enough to take the plunge? Because that leads to life, life now and life forever. It opens doors. It changes everything. Changes your perspective when you know he's the Messiah and you trust him.

So are you ready to take the plunge? Let's pray together. Would you bow your head with me? With your heads bowed and your eyes closed, let me just speak to you for a moment. A man came up to me after the Saturday night service. And he said, René, for the very first time, the light bulb went off for me. The light bulb went on, rather. Something clicked. And I understood. And I trusted in Jesus. And maybe this is your moment. In just a minute or two, we're going to close the service with a couple of songs and communion. This could be your first communion as a believer in Jesus. Or maybe you've been going to church your whole life and this is a chance to renew your trust in him.

Either way, if that reflects your heart, would you pray with me? Jesus, I don't understand at all. But I get that the miracles are there so I can trust the miracle worker. And I'm a mess in some ways. So meet me in my mess. I trust in you. I take the plunge. I'm not sure what it means exactly, but I trust you. And so I'm placing my faith in you today, the Messiah who meets me in my mess. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen.