The Most Influential Man in the World

Grab your message notes that look like this that say Jesus Journey. If this is your first weekend visiting TLC, you chose a great time to start. Really, as Mark said, because we're about to start a 40-day virtual journey back in time, back in space to the Holy Land. Happens from now till Thanksgiving. If you like Discovery Channel or Travel Channel or National Geographic stuff, this is for you because every week we're going to go to a new place and discover a new insight or two about the life and times of Jesus Christ and you will find yourself drawn closer and closer to Him.

Now, the series actually starts next weekend, but this morning what I want to do is I'm going to do something kind of risky because this morning we're actually not talking about felt needs. Usually the first five minutes or so in the introduction I talk about, you know, do you feel lonely, tired, or burned out today? I'm actually not going to talk about your needs or my needs today. That's a little risky, but here we are with a sermon that's actually just going to be about Jesus. Imagine that in church, but you're going to discover that it is so relevant to your life and the life of all of the billions of people on this planet.

And I want to set up this series by asking this question, why do that? Why should we spend time actually studying the life and times of Jesus Christ? Well, let me put it this way. You know those commercials where they talk about the most interesting man in the world? How many of you have ever heard those? You know what I'm talking about? All right. Well, in a way, Jesus could be described as the most influential man in the world.

Now you might be thinking, wait a minute, aren't there other contenders for that title? I mean, there's been a lot of influential people in history and in our society even these days there are. There are some very influential people, for example, almost exactly one year ago this weekend. Steve Jobs passed away, obviously a very influential man, and we've lost a lot of our luminaries just in the last couple of years. In fact, somebody wrote that just a few years ago, our world still had Steve Jobs, Johnny Cash, and Bob Hope. And now we have no Jobs, no Cash, and no Hope.

Now, but the truth behind that joke is really this, the impact of even famous people. These guys were at the top of their fields, but their impact begins to wane not very soon after they're dead. But Jesus Christ turned that whole thing upside down because at the moment of his death, he was not the most influential man in the world. Those other guys were in their fields, not Jesus. At the moment of Jesus Christ's crucifixion, his movement was at an all-time low ebb. As somebody once said, if you had to elect somebody to most likely posthumously succeed, Jesus at the moment of his death probably would have been the lowest candidate, right?

But instead, every year after his death, his influence has just kept growing and growing and growing and growing. In fact, there's a great quote from Yale historian Yaroslav Pelikan. I don't even know where this guy's faith is at, but he's a renowned historian, has a great book about Jesus. He says, "Regardless of what anyone may personally think or believe about him, Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant figure in the history of western culture for almost 20 centuries." He says, "If it were possible with some sort of super magnet to pull up out of history, every scrap of metal bearing, at least a trace of his name, how much would be left? What's he talking about? The historical influence of Jesus Christ, the most influential man in the world."

This is really the theme of the brand new book, "Who is this Man?" by John Orpberg, one of my pastoral heroes, as you know, the pastor up at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church here in the Bay Area. This is a great book. I've just been riveted this week as I've been diving into this, but the whole book, every single chapter, is another example of Jesus Christ's influence on our culture that often we take for granted. And I've listed just six of these things on the cover of your notes there on page one.

For example, equality. Here in America, land of the free, home of the brave, right? We tend to think that equality is a given. It's self-evident. Everybody thinks everybody should be equal, right? Not so. In the Greco-Roman world, the opposite was true. Aristotle wrote, "From the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection and others for rule." Really, what this meant was their whole society was broken up into, you could call it, first class, business class, and coach. How many of you have ever flown coach? Can I see that show of hands? How many of you, perhaps because of a mistake, like some overbooking thing, you got bumped up, you got to fly first class or business class? Anybody ever had that experience?

Okay, how many of you were in that cabin and you felt like, "This is cool, but I am not one of the beautiful people here." Have you ever felt that? I felt that for sure one time when it happened to me. Well, that was Roman society, right? First class and business class was about 2% of the population, the senators, the equestrians, and the decurians they were called. The other 98% were the rabble, but even within the rabble, it was all stratified, right? As Cicero said, "Rank must be preserved." Rank, preserving rank, that was so important to the whole Greco-Roman world, and yet it's to that world that Jesus Christ comes in and says, "When you give a dinner party, I want you to sit the lowest ranking person at the best spot at the dinner table."

What did that mean to this culture? In those days, listen to this, in those days, rank determined your seating at every public event. If you went to the theater, you were seated by rank. In those days, if you invited guests over for dinner, they were seated by rank in your house, and you fed them by rank. That didn't just mean in order. That meant that the lower ranking people got more and more inferior food until the lowest ranking person there got dog food or something. I don't know, but can you imagine that? And to that culture, Jesus says, "Now, you put the lowest ranking person at the head of the table. When you're invited, you take the lower ranking spot. You turn that whole thing upside down, and when you give a dinner party, you invite people who maybe might never pay you back, so that's not like your guests have a debt of obligation to you now." And he preached equality.

One of his followers, not many years after his death, an apostle, the Apostle Paul, said that in Christ, there is absolutely no slave or free, Jew or Greek, male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And today, you and I live in a society that sees equality as a virtue, largely because of the upside down change in thinking that was started by the most influential man in the world.

What about children? We treasure children in our world. The ancient world did not. The Roman philosopher Seneca said, "Yeah, we drown children at birth when they are weak and abnormal." That was just normal. That was how they rolled back in the Roman society. The ancient writer Plutarch said, "Small babies are more like a plant than a human." And in fact, kind of a dirty secret of first century archaeology is that archaeologists know if they're excavating a Roman city, when they go into the sewers of that city, they are going to find hundreds of bodies of small infants, because in Roman society, it was just like, "Oh, we don't want that kid away with them."

Into that world comes Jesus Christ, who when asked, "Who's the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" calls, it says, "a small child," and says, "I'll tell you something, unless you become like this little kid, you won't even enter the kingdom of heaven." Into that world comes Jesus, who says, "You know what? If you welcome a child, you welcome me, the Son of God." And now, two thousand years later, every time you see a ministry to small children or disabled children or abandoned children, you are seeing the ripple effect of the most influential man in the world.

Now, we're on a roll now. What about women? Did you know that in the first century Greco-Roman world, there was a huge shortage of women? That's right, there was a woman shortage. You've lived through gas shortages, right? Oil. There was a woman shortage. You say, "What are you talking about?" The ancient people who studied the ancient world who are sociologists and demographers, they know that they were about, check this out, 140 males for every 100 women in the ancient Roman world. This is the world of Jesus Christ. 140 males for every 100 women. Now, how do you possibly get that kind of gender disparity? There's only one way. What is it? You are killing female babies. Through abortion and infanticide based on gender. And in fact, that is exactly what happened.

We have one surviving Roman letter from the first century where a soldier writes to his wife, "If you are deliberate of a child, if it's a boy, keep it. If it's a girl, discard it." And this was common. And even after they were born, women could not be formally educated. Women didn't have civil rights. Women were considered to be children. And we've already seen how little they valued children. No matter how high their IQ was, no matter how old they were, they had the same class legally as children. Now into that world along comes Jesus, who chooses women as disciples, who allows women to sit at his feet in the front row of his classroom along with the men, who chooses women to be witnesses of the resurrection first, who chooses as his first missionary, a Samaritan woman. In the ancient world, she's the wrong gender and the wrong ethnicity. And she has the wrong sexual history because she's living with a guy and she's been married to divorce five times. Jesus says, "I pick you as my first evangelist." And the earthquake tremors that were caused by Jesus Christ's attitude toward women rocked the ancient world.

Sociologist Rodney Stark says, "One of the reasons Christianity grew amazingly fast in the Roman world was because of how highly women were valued by the most influential man ever in the world." We could go on. What about compassion? In the ancient world, there were no hospitals. You were left to die. The sick and the poor were neglected. But Jesus comes to that world and touches lepers and heals the sick. And his early followers remembered that and did you know Christians started the world's first hospices, the world's first hospitals, the first homes for orphans, the first homes for widows, and then there's forgiveness.

We live in a world where we take forgiveness for granted. Everybody knows forgiving is good, right? Ancient world, not so much. In the ancient world, what was valued was rewarding your friends and severely punishing your enemies. You wanted to see your enemies right. Forgiveness only weak people forgave. And into that world comes Jesus Christ who says on the cross, "Father, forgive them." And who says to his disciples, "You have heard it said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." And in the first century world, they had interpreted that as meaning vengeance is mandatory. But Jesus says, "No, I say to you, forgive your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Bless those who hate you." Rocking the world. And we live in a world today where forgiveness is seen as a virtue because of the most influential man in the world.

Hannah Arendt, a fascinating person. She was the first woman appointed to a full professorship at Princeton University. And I don't think she was a believer in a religious sense in Jesus Christ, but she charted out in a book how you just don't hear about anybody in ancient world saying, "Forgive your enemies until Jesus Christ preaches this as a virtue." Check out this quote. She says, "The discoverer of the role of forgiveness in the realm of human affairs was Jesus of Nazareth." The most influential man in the world.

Finally, think of literature and culture. The most translated literature of all time, by far the Bible, especially the Gospels. The four books of the Bible that talk about Jesus Christ in story form. The Gospels have been translated at, as you see, 2,527 languages. Don Quixote is a distant second at 60 languages. And now think of all the authors who wrote masterpieces inspired by Jesus Christ. People like Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and Madeline L'Engle and Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. Now think of the musical works by Bach and Handel and Mozart. And now think of the works of art by Rembrandt and Michelangelo and so many more. All of these geniuses were fascinated by somebody that they saw as head and shoulders above even their monumental Jesus, fascinated, they were, by the most influential man in the world. And people continue to be so today.

It didn't just happen in, you know, the middle ages. You might have seen this clip. The famous comedian and new Christian, Steve Harvey, now closes all of his stand-up shows like this. Watch the screen. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor to introduce a man who needs no introduction. His credits are too long to list. He has done the impossible time after time. He has, out of a manger in Bethlehem Jerusalem by way of heaven. His mother is still headlining in the Catholic church today. His daddy is the author of a book that has been on the bestseller list since the beginning of time. He holds the record for the world's greatest fish fry. He fed 5,000 hungry souls with two fish, five loaves of bread. He can walk on water, turn water into wine, no special effects, no camera tricks. He has a headshot on every church fan across the country. Even before the kings of comedy, he was held the king of all kings. Of the universe, Alpha and Omega beginning at the end, the bright and the morning star. Some say he's the rose of Sharon and some say he's the Prince of Peace. Get up on your feet, put your hands together and show your love for the second coming of the one and only.

That's pretty cool, isn't it? I think you ought to be preaching, not doing stand-up. Well, I want to ask a question in so many ways. What you see there on page one of your notes is all the different ways that Jesus Christ has influenced our world. So much so that in 2012, stand-up comics are still fascinated and enamored by him and want to follow him. Who was this guy? Well, that's what we're going to be talking about in Jesus' journey.

If these are all ripples in the pond that we're still seeing 2,000 years after the pebble dropped in the pond, it is obvious to go, how could that first century personage still be influencing us today? Like nobody else in the first century is, that's for sure. Who was he? What I want to do in this series is go back in time and space to the moment that pebble first went, "boink," into the pond and ask, "Who was that pebble?" And what was the pond like? Who was Jesus? And why did he and his message hold so much resonance for so many people so that we still sense the echoes even down to our day today?

I'm very excited about this and I have to tell you as your pastor, I know, I know that as you discover more about the historical context of Jesus so that you can follow him and get to know him better and see what he really meant by what he said, you too are going to find yourselves just more fascinated and enamored and in love with and compelled by Jesus of Nazareth than I think maybe you ever have been before in your life. So are you ready to plunge into this? Are you ready for this? I am ready for this. In Steve Harvey's church they'd be waving handkerchiefs right now.

So listen, in the few minutes that we have left, I just want to give you a preview, a taste of what we're talking about here. How knowing the historical context of Jesus Christ can change your appreciation of his message. So I want to ask quickly on page two, what was the world of Christ like? Ever wonder why did Jesus come to this planet at the time and place he came? Why there? Why then? Why didn't God choose some other time and place?

Well, I got four questions about the life and times of Christ. First, why there? Well, check this out. What the Romans called Judea, what we call the Holy Land or Israel, is really unique geographically in the entire world. How? It is a land bridge between all the major empires of Western civilization. Because look at the continents represented here. You got Europe, Asia, Arabia, Africa, and then you have all the kingdoms on all those continents from Rome, Persia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Greece, Babylon, all over the place. And so you've got all these merchants from all these different kingdoms and empires and continents, and they want to be able to trade, right? Well, only one land route connects them all.

You could say there's a tiny little thin strip of land. It's about as tall as the Bay Area and about as narrow as the Bay Area from Oakland to the beach. And this tiny little strip of land connects all those continents. It's a feature of geography that put it on the fault lines of human history. Because on one side you have the Mediterranean Sea, on the other side you have the desert, and this thin little strip of green in between that's Judea or Israel. So if you're a merchant traveling with a caravan full of merchandise to sell, there's only one way to travel between all these continents and one way only.

And that means if you're a king, you're going to want to control this route because you're going to be filthy rich if you do. And so the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, up to the Crusaders, the Ottomans, the Turks, the British, they all wanted this spot. No oil there, no gold there, no diamonds there, but it's the one place on planet earth where all those kingdoms have to cross in this narrow little land bridge. And check this out. The very narrowest part of this narrow land bridge is right up here, the top of the Sea of Galilee, and there's one spot at the Sea of Galilee where the ancient trade route that went through Israel narrows down to a choke point about two city blocks wide because there's a lake on one side, steep slopes of the mountains on the other.

And you know what that little narrow choke point is called? It was a little sleepy town called Capernaum. Does that sound familiar? The Bible says that this is the spot Jesus Christ chooses to base his ministry. We went there, I'm going to talk to you more about week two's video in the small groups, talks more about this, but that town is where Jesus taught in this synagogue every single week. Now why do you think he chose that town? Because now he doesn't have to go travel all over the world because literally the merchants and the soldiers and the ambassadors of the world are walking right back and forth on his front porch every single week. It's genius on the part of the most influential man in the world.

The bottom line is there is no better spot on the planet from which to influence the whole world than this spot right here because you're far away from any big city bureaucracy that's going to want to shut you up and arrest you and yet you have this incredible platform to reach the planet. So that's why there, unique spot geographically on the globe. But why then? If God was to come with a mission, why not earlier, why not later, why then ever ask yourself that? Lots of reasons, three biggies.

First Greek language was the international language. A few hundred years before Christ, a young general you might have heard of named Alexander the Great conquered the whole world and decided the whole world needed to learn Greek. And so he, they don't call it Greekify, he Hellenized, named after Helen of Troy, he Hellenized the whole world and taught the whole world Greek. Couple hundred years later in Jesus' time, now every Greek has spread to the whole world. Anybody who's living in the entire western world knows the Greek language so that they can all communicate. In fact, here's a little factoid for you, they've found a lot of inscriptions from the first century Galilee area where Jesus lived and taught. 80% of those inscriptions are in Greek, not in Hebrew, not in Aramaic. So it was really the dominant and the international language.

Okay, second, Roman roads. Roman roads. Check this out, when we were in the Holy Land this year, we walked on ancient Roman roads. This is a road that was built 2,000 years ago. Look at these, they are in amazing shape. By contrast, this is a Santa Cruz road today. Need I say more? But you see the point of a Roman road building was done by craftsmen. They were perfectionists. They actually had secret guilds where they wouldn't even share the secrets of how they came up with these amazing roads that still are so good even to this day. So you have this network of roads connecting the whole known world, so travel is easy, it is safe.

Universal language. Third reason, the Jewish dispersion. In the first century, Jews were dispersed all over the world. You say, "How is that different from today?" Well, they would return at least once a year for pilgrimages to Jerusalem. Why? Because Herod had remodeled the temple so that it was spectacular, and literally, according to Josephus, a first century historian, millions of Jews from around the world would come to the temple in Jerusalem on their annual pilgrimages. And guess where Jesus goes when he's not up in Galilee? During the Jewish festivals, he heads down to Jerusalem, where the Bible says he teaches on the steps to the temple. We're going to go to those steps in this series.

Now, why do you think he did that? I thought Galilee was the perfect spot to reach the world, because during the festivals, those steps were the perfect spot, because those millions of Jews would go back to their synagogues all over the world with these ideas that they'd been hearing. And those synagogues they went back to were the perfect pre-existing network, where as Christians began to disperse throughout the world, they found a platform from which to preach the gospel. Now, check this out. All of these conditions only overlap for about 70 years, from about 4 BC to about 68 AD. Before this, there was a war and unrest. And after this, same thing, the temple was destroyed, so there were no more pilgrimages after this.

But during this short little window, there was the Pax Romana in Judea, the peace enforced by Rome. So Jesus came to the perfect spot at the perfect time to become the most influential man in the world. Yet still, a lot of other people lived at that time and in those places. Why didn't they become so influential? Because Jesus had a message that resonated and still resonates today. Why? Why did he come? What was his message? Why was it so sticky?

Well, the gospel say that when Jesus started to teach, this was his message from Mark 1:15. And I'd like us to all read this out loud together. Let me hear you say this. "The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news." That phrase, "the kingdom of God," circle that in your notes. You may not know this, but that was by far and away the most common theme of Jesus Christ. Check this out. There's a pastor named Scott Scruggs who's actually done the math. Jesus uses the word gospel six times. Salvation or saved 10 times. The word for church three times. And he talks about the kingdom 80 to 100 times, depending on how you count stories that are similar in different gospels. Far, far more than anything else.

Why were people so riveted by this? Well, again, remember where they lived. There you are on this thin, stripple land where your whole history for a thousand years has been one of these big empires of the world after another coming in and just beating you into submission. In one little hill that we were at when we traveled over there, archaeologists have found 32 different layers of different civilizations. There's no other spot on planet earth where you find that. Most places you go and you find the Mayan ruins, where you find the Greek ruins. In Israel you go and you find Roman and Greek and Persian and Babylonian and Assyrian. All these different civilizations washing up over this land one after another. And the poor people are just knocked down, knocked down, knocked down.

And so they came to believe that one day God would set his representative the Messiah. And on that day God would start his empire. God would start his kingdom and he'd start by kicking out all of the oppressive foreign empires. And the Jewish people had prophecies about this. All of the later books of the Old Testament, the Hebrew scriptures, are filled with poetic descriptions of what the reign of the kingdom of God would be like. And it wasn't just the Jews. There's a great historian and Bible scholar N.T. Wright who has a new book out. And in part of the book he talks about how the Greeks and the Romans also had what you could call messianic expectations. That one day somebody would come who would perfect and purify the empire.

In fact a Roman poet named Virgil spoke a prophecy about 25 years before Jesus was born. "A new order of the ages will arrive," he wrote. "Earth, sea, and heaven will rejoice at the child now to be born." Now nobody knows who Virgil thought he was referring to, but we do know this. In the first century a lot of Roman Christians quoted Virgil's prophecy as evidence that Jesus came not just for the Jews but also for the Romans. Isn't that fascinating? So you have all this longing, all this anticipation, all this building up, and then Jesus arrives and he says, "The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news."

Now, slight problem, anybody who hears these words is expecting him to start a war. A bloody rebellion. They're thinking he's going to draft soldiers, make weapons, foment unrest. And so Jesus spends his whole ministry basically saying, "No, here is what the kingdom of God is going to look like. Here is what it looks like when God's in charge." You know what it looks like? It looks like the front page of your notes. He says, "Here's what the kingdom of God looks like. It looks like a place where little kids are welcomed and honored. It looks like a place where lepers are touched and healed. It looks like a place where women can sit with men and learn together. It looks like a place where the hungry get fed." And then he says, "It looks like this." And he dies on the cross. Major plot twist there for the Messiah.

But he was saying, "Here's the kingdom of God. The king becomes the servant of all. And the kingdom looks like a place where sins are all forgiven. It looks like a place where failures get grace. It looks like a place where the lost are found. In short, the kingdom of God means up there is coming down here. May your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That's the dream of Jesus. Heaven is invading earth. In Jesus, the invasion began in him, God with us, in the flesh. And now through his body, the church up there keeps coming down here. Forgivers, sins are forgiven and the hungry are fed and the poor are taken care of. And then one day the Son of God will return in glory and restore the kingdom in perfection.

Folks, this is the captivating, the electrifying, the world-changing, the life-altering message of Jesus Christ and his kingdom. And this is why he has become the most influential man in the world. I'll tell you, the most famous speech of the 20th century, probably, was given by a Christian preacher by the name of Martin Luther King Jr. All high school students now in America study this speech and it's known as what? What's it known as? "I have a dream." Did you know that that speech was about Jesus Christ and the Old Testament prophet's vision of the kingdom of God?

John Orpberg also writes about this. Martin Luther King Jr., if you watch the video, he's speaking from a prepared text on this date. And then at one point he leaves his prepared text, which you can read online at the archives at Stanford University, and he abandons his prepared text and he throws in a quote from the Old Testament prophet Amos. And Amos is talking about the Messiah's kingdom and Dr. King says, "We will not be satisfied till justice rolls like waters. We will not be satisfied until righteousness rolls like a mighty stream." That's a quote directly from Amos. And the crowd can't keep silent. They start looking like a Steve Harvey audience. They're waving handkerchiefs and they're going, "Preach it." And if you watch it in the background, the famous singer Mahalia Jackson stands up and she starts going, "Preach it, Dr. King! Preach it!" And Martin Luther King Jr. never goes back to his prepared text.

For the rest of his message, he's ad libbing and he's quoting scripture 100% of the time. He's throwing in quotes from Isaiah and other Old Testament prophets about what the kingdom of God will look like. He says, "I have a dream today." And then he quotes scripture, "I have a dream that every valley will be raised up and every mountain will be brought down and the glory of God will be revealed and all flesh will see it together. I have a dream." Question, why does that speech move people to this day? Because that was Jesus's dream. Because that's a description of the kingdom of God. Because Jesus said, "Lord, may your will be done, may your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven."

My question for you is, don't you want to be part of that? Don't you want to catch that vision? Can you think of anything better to do with your life than to be part of the ripple effect of that dream? And can you think of anything better to do with the next 40 days than plunge into this world of Jesus and learn what he meant by the kingdom of God is now among you? You know, he never explained that in three-point bullet prose. When people would come up to him and would ask him questions, "Are you now going to restore the kingdom?" He'd say, "Follow me. Watch what I do. Listen to the stories I tell you. And you're going to learn about me and about the kingdom." And the next 40 days are about, "Let's just follow him. Let's follow him to the cities he went and to the villages he went and to the lakes he boated on. And let's see what we can learn about our role in the kingdom of God here today.

And of course, the cool thing is that Jesus did not just exist 2,000 years ago. The Bible says he rose from the dead and he's alive right now, today. And he's still calling disciples to follow him today in a very real sense. I'll close with this story. Show of hands, how many of you have ever read any books by Anne Lamont? Can I see a show of hands? All right, several of you. She's a New York Times bestselling, Marin County author, lives on a houseboat in Sausalito, very liberal, agnostic, never ever even considered becoming a Christian. But she writes in one book about how she found herself strangely attracted to a church in her neighborhood.

And she would go there every Sunday for the music only. She'd go, "Maybe I just need more live music in my life and it's free here." And she'd split before the sermon every single time. Steadfast in her determination not to ever believe any of this religious Christian nonsense, but the living most influential man in the world met her during her grief following an abortion. A couple of days after the abortion, she was in severe depression at home on her houseboat and she writes, "I turned off the light. After a while, as I laid there, I became aware of someone with me. The feeling was so strong that I actually turned on light for a moment just to make sure no one was there. Of course, there wasn't.

But after a while, in the dark again, I knew beyond any doubt it was Jesus. I felt him as surely as I feel my dog lying nearby as I write this." And I loved what she writes next. "And I was appalled. I thought about my life and my brilliant, hilarious progressive friends. I thought about what everyone would think of me if I became a Christian. And it seemed an utterly impossible thing that simply could not be allowed to happen. And so I turned to the wall and said out loud, 'I would rather die.' But I felt him just watching me with patience and love. And I squinched my eyes shut. But that didn't help because that's not what I was seeing him with. This experience spooked me badly, but I thought it was born of fear and self-loathing and booze and loss of blood and that's all.

But then everywhere I went, I had the feeling that a little cat was following me, wanting me to reach down and pick it up, wanting me to open the door and let it in. But I knew what would happen. You let in a cat just one time. You give it a little milk and it stays forever. And then one week later when I went back to church, I felt like something was rocking me in its bosom, holding me like a scared kid. I tentatively opened up to it and love washed over me. I began to cry and I left and I raced home to the houseboat and I felt the little cat running along at my heels and I opened the door and I stood there a minute. And then I hung my head and said, 'Expletive deleted.' I quit. I took a long deep breath and said out loud, 'All right, you can come in.' And as she says, 'So this was the beautiful moment of my conversion.' Isn't that a great story?

Man, I experienced something like that myself. But see, here's the thing. Jesus doesn't just announce the good news of the kingdom of God 2,000 years ago. Just as he was there for her, alive and real, he's here now. And he's announcing it to you. And maybe for years and years you've let the wrong guy be your king. You've been ruled by career or pleasure or some addiction or some other drive or by somebody's approval. And Jesus in compassion and love and mercy and a desire to give you purpose for your life is saying, 'Listen, the time is now. You've lived like that for long enough, being trampled by other empires. You have a chance now to repent and believe it. The kingdom of God is here. You can have a new administration. You can have somebody new in control of and ruling your life now. And the same Jesus who changed the world can change you.'

That's exciting. That's what it's all about. And I think that as we study this fascinating, electrifying, influential man, you will, just as Anne Lamont discovered, just as Peter and Andrew and Matthew discovered, and everybody in between for 2,000 years, the billion plus followers of Jesus, you'll discover somebody who you will want to follow and love and would get everything for for the rest of your lives. I'm stoked about this. Are you excited about this too? I'm excited about just following after Jesus.

So would you stand with me? Let's just stand together and I'd like to pray kind of a dedicatory prayer for the next 40 days because the book could be nice, the videos and the small group leaders could be great, but unless the Lord blesses this, nothing's going to happen. So let's ask his blessing upon these next 40 days.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for sending your son, the most influential man in the world to influence us. And God, I believe that you have drawn every single person who is in this room here today to hear an announcement. And the announcement is this, your kingdom is here. The time can be now to remake our world, to remake our lives, to remake our minds, to remake our hearts, to remake our will so that our lives in this world might be a preview of what the fulfilled kingdom of God will be like. So God, help us to repent and believe whatever that means for every one of us, whatever that means for each one of us, help us to know how to this week, repent and believe this is true. Bless our Jesus journey together these 40 days. And we pray this in the great name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Everybody say it together. Amen.