WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.719 We're going to read together from John chapter 15 verses 8 to 17 and Flynn is going to come re-force. 00:00:13.200 --> 00:00:18.800 By this my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. 00:00:19.600 --> 00:00:26.640 As the Father has loved me so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments 00:00:26.640 --> 00:00:31.359 you will abide in my love just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. 00:00:32.560 --> 00:00:37.840 These things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. 00:00:39.280 --> 00:00:42.960 This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. 00:00:43.760 --> 00:00:48.079 Greater love has no one than this that someone lay down his life for his friends. 00:00:48.960 --> 00:00:54.400 You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants for the servant 00:00:54.399 --> 00:01:00.719 does not know what his master is doing but I have called you friends for all that I have heard from 00:01:00.719 --> 00:01:07.039 my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me but I chose you and appointed you that 00:01:07.039 --> 00:01:12.319 you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide so that whatever you ask the Father 00:01:12.319 --> 00:01:18.400 in my name he may give it to you. These things I command you so that you will love one another. 00:01:18.400 --> 00:01:24.960 All right this Christmas season we are looking at a series called Wonderful Counselor. 00:01:26.160 --> 00:01:32.160 We looked last week at the prophecy from Isaiah chapter 9 that one day a Messiah would come, 00:01:32.160 --> 00:01:37.520 a Savior would come and his name would be Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace. 00:01:38.240 --> 00:01:44.880 And so we're looking at places in the gospels where Jesus speaks to disciples, to Christians, 00:01:44.879 --> 00:01:52.079 and gives counseling. He comes alongside and talks to believers about their inner lives, 00:01:52.079 --> 00:01:57.519 their souls. He comes to bring the treasures of wisdom and knowledge that he has, that only he 00:01:57.519 --> 00:02:04.000 has and he comes to be our counselor. And so we just read from John chapter 15 and it's the very 00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:09.919 last moments of Jesus' life. It's called the farewell speech, the farewell discourse of Christ 00:02:09.919 --> 00:02:15.280 and he gives a whole host of instructions. It's when you know he's going to his deathbed, 00:02:16.079 --> 00:02:22.399 Jesus is going right after this to be executed and this is the very last thing he said. You know 00:02:22.399 --> 00:02:27.599 the very last thing you say before you're going to die has got to be something important. 00:02:27.599 --> 00:02:33.039 It better be something important. And when we read Jesus' last words before he goes to die 00:02:33.039 --> 00:02:37.359 they're really important and he's giving instruction to his disciples counseling 00:02:37.360 --> 00:02:44.000 about what he wants for them. He says, I want joy for you. I came so that you might have joy. 00:02:44.000 --> 00:02:51.120 Now last week we looked at Jesus' very explicit command, do not be anxious. This week we're thinking 00:02:51.120 --> 00:02:58.160 about boredom but there is no command here in John 15 or anywhere in the gospels or anywhere in the 00:02:58.160 --> 00:03:06.000 entire Bible. Not once is there a command that says don't be bored. There's no mention of the word 00:03:06.000 --> 00:03:12.800 boredom. The closest thing we have is a couple references and ecclesiastes to vanity, to feeling 00:03:12.800 --> 00:03:18.400 like life is meaningless or to the concept of sloth in the Old Testament which is very closely 00:03:18.400 --> 00:03:24.639 related to being bored. But the Bible deals with boredom constantly. I should say the Bible 00:03:24.639 --> 00:03:30.719 doesn't deal with boredom and the reason is because boredom is a very modern problem. But we can 00:03:30.719 --> 00:03:36.879 look at the ancient wisdom of the Bible and the wisdom of Jesus and learn how to deal with the 00:03:36.879 --> 00:03:43.120 problem of boredom that we face. There's no command here, do not be bored. But there are a lot of 00:03:43.120 --> 00:03:49.680 commands in John 15 and we just read a sample of them. Let me just summarize them. Jesus says here, 00:03:50.240 --> 00:03:59.039 glorify God, bear fruit, prove that you're a disciple, abide in my love, keep my commandments, 00:03:59.039 --> 00:04:04.319 love on another. And he says, and I want you to do all that so that you can glorify God on the one 00:04:04.319 --> 00:04:09.439 hand and have joy in your life and the other. Now these commandments deal with boredom, 00:04:11.199 --> 00:04:16.719 not explicitly but implicitly, not explicitly but because joy is the opposite of boredom. 00:04:17.360 --> 00:04:23.920 And so let's think about that together. We've got a grand purpose in life, a big meaning in life, 00:04:23.920 --> 00:04:29.199 a huge calling, abide in my love, Jesus says. That's the calling. If you're doing that, if we're 00:04:29.199 --> 00:04:33.520 doing that, we don't have time to be bored. And so let's think about it. What is boredom? 00:04:34.480 --> 00:04:39.120 And then the two big things Jesus tells us here to fight it. Okay, so first, what's boredom? 00:04:40.800 --> 00:04:44.400 Boredom is very hard to define. That's what I learned this week. 00:04:45.280 --> 00:04:49.040 Reading about boredom and there's a lot more literature than you would think about boredom 00:04:49.040 --> 00:04:56.240 out there. Boredom is apathy. That's one way to think about it. In the old world, there wasn't as 00:04:56.240 --> 00:05:02.080 much boredom, the pre-modern world. But in the pre-modern world, there was a word for boredom 00:05:02.080 --> 00:05:07.920 that was often used and it was called the noonday demon. Have you ever experienced the noonday demon? 00:05:08.960 --> 00:05:15.439 It's called the noonday demon. You know, from 12 p.m. to 3 30 every day, you want to do anything in 00:05:15.439 --> 00:05:20.560 life but the thing you're supposed to be doing. It's the noonday demon. It strikes. You just want 00:05:20.560 --> 00:05:27.680 to take a nap. And people have been experiencing that for all the centuries. Another way, a more 00:05:27.680 --> 00:05:35.199 philosophical way to put it is boredom is a desire for desire. It's that moment where you think, 00:05:35.199 --> 00:05:42.399 I wish I cared. I want to care, but I just don't. I'm apathetic. And so after all the reading, 00:05:42.399 --> 00:05:47.679 different sources I looked at this week, this is the definition that I came up with for what 00:05:47.679 --> 00:05:54.159 boredom is. Boredom, and I'm putting it in a more extreme way. Boredom is disgust for the now 00:05:55.359 --> 00:06:02.159 for today because of an indifference to God, to other people, and to the work God has given us 00:06:02.159 --> 00:06:11.919 today. Boredom is a disgust, a hatred for the now for the moment because of a denial of the 00:06:11.920 --> 00:06:16.480 responsibility that we've been given by God to love other people, to love Him right here, right 00:06:16.480 --> 00:06:23.600 now. Now, Dorothy Sayers, the great writer of detective novels, Lord Peter Wimsey in the 20th 00:06:23.600 --> 00:06:29.439 century, she put it like this, boredom is the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, 00:06:29.439 --> 00:06:35.040 seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in 00:06:35.040 --> 00:06:42.720 nothing, lives for nothing, and only remains alive because there is nothing it would die for. 00:06:43.360 --> 00:06:48.960 I don't know if you've gotten to see the movie Inside Out 2. It's a great, great film, a great 00:06:48.960 --> 00:06:55.120 series. Riley is the young girl, she's the star in the film, and it's about her inner life, her 00:06:55.120 --> 00:07:00.560 soul, what's going on in her mind. And when she was a kid, and Inside Out 1, the two great emotions 00:07:00.560 --> 00:07:06.319 she was always bouncing back and forth between were joy and anger, but in Inside Out 2 she's a 00:07:06.319 --> 00:07:14.000 teenager, and now the two emotions she has most often are anxiety and ennui. Ennui is the French 00:07:14.000 --> 00:07:19.279 word for boredom. The French come up with all the best emotion names and emotion words. It's not 00:07:19.279 --> 00:07:25.840 boredom, it's ennui, you know? And in Riley's life she has ennui all of a sudden enter into her mind, 00:07:25.839 --> 00:07:33.439 and ennui, the character, is this tall French accented character who's always draped over this 00:07:33.439 --> 00:07:40.000 Freudian therapy couch, you know, laying out, and ennui is disgusted with commitment, 00:07:41.359 --> 00:07:47.919 hates every moment that Riley is called to responsibility, and ennui dispassionately 00:07:47.919 --> 00:07:54.559 stares at her phone all day on the couch. Boredom is the teenager's masterpiece, you know? 00:07:54.560 --> 00:08:01.199 The teenager can paint boredom better as an absolute masterpiece, a work of art, you know? 00:08:01.199 --> 00:08:07.519 Effortless carelessness, they do it so well, you know, you're so effortless in how little you care, 00:08:08.240 --> 00:08:15.759 and yet it sticks with all of us throughout all of life. It carries through, you know, 00:08:15.759 --> 00:08:23.439 the eye roll, the deep sigh, the yawn, the disinterested apathy that comes upon us. So there 00:08:23.439 --> 00:08:28.160 are scholars of boredom, there are theologians who spend their careers thinking about things like 00:08:28.160 --> 00:08:34.639 sloth and boredom. I discovered that this week. And they, let me just give you a few things that 00:08:34.639 --> 00:08:41.039 they talk about. They say, one, boredom is a hatred of responsibility, the responsibility that God 00:08:41.039 --> 00:08:50.960 has given us today, this very day. It is the old, it's a more modern concept for the old word sloth, 00:08:50.960 --> 00:08:57.360 but we come to the Old Testament, we read about sloth, and we think sloth is just laziness, you 00:08:57.360 --> 00:09:02.400 know, it's couch potato mentality. And actually, sloth is more than that, boredom is more than that. 00:09:03.120 --> 00:09:12.800 It can be that, but it can also be frenzied activity. Boredom can be expressed in relentless activity, 00:09:13.600 --> 00:09:18.639 but it's activity that's trying to avoid the main things that God has called you to do in life. 00:09:18.639 --> 00:09:26.799 Frenzied activity, relentless hustle, but to avoid the most important things in life, to get away from 00:09:26.799 --> 00:09:35.279 them. Have you ever found yourself doing, being incredibly productive, but only to avoid the one 00:09:35.279 --> 00:09:40.559 thing you really needed to do that day? You know, you, you were supposed to be studying, but you 00:09:40.559 --> 00:09:49.839 color-coded your closet. Boredom, that's boredom. Another way the theologians and scholars will 00:09:49.839 --> 00:09:54.239 talk about boredom is that it's a product of our addiction to entertainment stimulation. 00:09:54.879 --> 00:10:01.599 So we are addicted to stimulants, the most common liturgy habit we do every day is put our hands 00:10:01.599 --> 00:10:06.799 in our pockets and pull out our phones, right? And that's an addiction to entertainment stimulation. 00:10:06.799 --> 00:10:12.079 Parents in the room, I don't know if you've ever gone through the difficult experience of throwing 00:10:12.079 --> 00:10:19.759 your child a birthday party. You know, you think God has given me this responsibility to parent my 00:10:19.759 --> 00:10:24.559 children and I, today it's my, it's my child's birthday. We come to the birthday party, I'm 00:10:24.559 --> 00:10:29.919 going to give it my all. I'm going to jump on the bounty castle. I'm going to get on the trampoline. 00:10:29.919 --> 00:10:35.039 The loner kid that shows up at the party, I'm going to pursue that kid and bring him back into 00:10:35.039 --> 00:10:40.240 friendship with everybody else. I'm going to do everything I can to make sure my, my son, my 00:10:40.240 --> 00:10:46.240 daughter's birthday is meaningful. And the birthday party starts at 2 p.m. You give it your all. 00:10:47.519 --> 00:10:54.639 And you look up and it's 2 o'clock. And you desperately just want to stick your hand in your 00:10:54.639 --> 00:11:00.799 pocket and pull your phone out and look at the football scores or send that meme to your friend 00:11:00.799 --> 00:11:05.199 or whatever it is that you like to do on your phone. And you know, we're addicted to stimulants. 00:11:06.479 --> 00:11:11.679 And so we replace the things God has given us to do that are most meaningful in life with 00:11:11.679 --> 00:11:17.599 other things and that's, that's a definition of boredom. The Noonday, the Noonday demon, Jesus 00:11:17.599 --> 00:11:24.240 says here that we have a calling in life to take up the joy that's been given us by Jesus. 00:11:24.240 --> 00:11:29.919 He says joy is a gift and when you abide in Christ, when you're united to Jesus, he gives you joy 00:11:29.919 --> 00:11:35.680 that can never be taken away and simultaneously there is a call to take up the responsibility 00:11:35.680 --> 00:11:42.240 to have joy, to take up joy, to have a bigger purpose and a bigger meaning in your life. And so 00:11:43.120 --> 00:11:48.960 joy is the opposite of boredom and it is a product of discipleship and Sam Storm's one 00:11:48.960 --> 00:11:54.240 contemporary theologian, he puts it this way, one of the most serious threats to the human spirit 00:11:54.240 --> 00:12:02.080 is boredom. Boredom is the breeding ground for wickedness. Bored people are easy targets of the 00:12:02.080 --> 00:12:07.280 flesh in the devil. Do you find that when you're bored, those are the moments where you're most 00:12:07.280 --> 00:12:13.680 tempted? It is like putting a bull's eye on your chest with a sign that says tempt me, I'm easy. 00:12:13.679 --> 00:12:20.159 Why? Because boredom is contrary to the natural God given impulse for fascination, excitement, 00:12:20.159 --> 00:12:27.599 pleasure, wonder and exhilaration. In other words, Jesus is saying here, I've made you for joy. 00:12:28.559 --> 00:12:32.719 If you abide in me, if you're my disciple, I've given you this gift and it's joy and it means 00:12:32.719 --> 00:12:37.839 there's no time for boredom. There's just so much meaning in life. There's so much work to do to 00:12:37.840 --> 00:12:43.920 chase the gifts I've given you that you don't have any time to be bored. So let's think about that. 00:12:43.920 --> 00:12:50.639 Two things Jesus gives us to fight boredom. First, Jesus says here, there's no time for boredom in 00:12:50.639 --> 00:12:58.879 verses 8 to 11. He says, by this my father is glorified that you bear fruit, improve to be a 00:12:58.879 --> 00:13:05.120 disciple. And he says, as God loves me, as the father loves me, I love you and I give you a 00:13:05.120 --> 00:13:10.639 command to abide in me. Bear fruit, abide in me, keep my commandments, love one another. 00:13:11.360 --> 00:13:15.840 So he gives us this list of commands, what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. 00:13:16.560 --> 00:13:21.600 And if you think about those commands for just a minute, they're all encapsulated in this metaphor, 00:13:21.600 --> 00:13:27.679 abide in my love. And there he's appealing to this image of a vine. And he's saying that when 00:13:27.679 --> 00:13:32.480 the gospel gets ahold of you, you become a follower of Jesus. And he's saying that when the gospel 00:13:32.480 --> 00:13:39.039 gets ahold of you, you become a follower of Jesus. And you are now engrafted, stuck into the living 00:13:39.039 --> 00:13:44.800 tree that is the life of Jesus himself. You're united to Jesus. And from there he says, now, 00:13:46.800 --> 00:13:52.639 you don't get in to the vine. You don't attach yourself to the vine by keeping the commandments 00:13:52.639 --> 00:14:00.159 of God. You get attached to the vine. He says in verse 16, I chose you. I've appointed you. 00:14:00.159 --> 00:14:05.439 I've come to rescue you. But now that I've done that, now it is time to be a disciple. 00:14:06.639 --> 00:14:12.159 So you don't get in to God's grace by keeping his commandments. But once you are in God's grace, 00:14:12.719 --> 00:14:17.839 once you follow Christ, you've been attached, he says you have an enormous responsibility. And 00:14:17.839 --> 00:14:25.439 that's to take up the call in your life to grow, to change. When he says, abide in my love, what he 00:14:25.440 --> 00:14:33.600 means is it is your mission in life to change, to grow from a person who struggles to love people, 00:14:33.600 --> 00:14:39.920 into a person who loves people, to grow from a person who's impatient into patience, to grow from 00:14:39.920 --> 00:14:45.440 a person who struggles to have joy because we're so bored into a person who's full of joy and wonder 00:14:45.440 --> 00:14:52.320 all the time and struggles to be bored. He says there is a real calling in your life to change, 00:14:52.320 --> 00:15:00.480 to grow. It's the calling of a disciple. Are you walking in discipleship? Are you pursuing 00:15:00.480 --> 00:15:05.600 change in your life? Are you looking down and asking, do I have love, joy, peace, patience, 00:15:05.600 --> 00:15:11.040 kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in my life? And what do I need to 00:15:11.040 --> 00:15:16.000 work on? What do I need the wonderful counselor to come into my life and change about me? Are we 00:15:16.000 --> 00:15:22.879 pursuing it? Are we pursuing the call that Jesus gives us here to change? In other words, he's saying, 00:15:22.879 --> 00:15:28.480 I want to take you from apathy to joy. I want to take you from purposelessness to enormous 00:15:28.480 --> 00:15:33.200 purpose in your life. So full of meaning, I've appointed you for this. So that's what Jesus 00:15:33.200 --> 00:15:41.840 does here. Now, I heard this illustration from somebody else recently. How do you get up an 00:15:41.840 --> 00:15:48.320 escalator that's going down? All of you, if you've been, and if you live in Edinburgh, 00:15:49.040 --> 00:15:53.840 you've probably been to St. James' Quarter, the mall, and you know, they have very nice 00:15:53.840 --> 00:15:57.519 escalators and lifts. I don't know if you've gotten to ride the lifts at St. James' Quarter, 00:15:57.519 --> 00:16:03.680 but they're phenomenal. And the escalators are quite nice as well. And how do you get up an 00:16:03.680 --> 00:16:09.680 escalator that's going down? You've been there. You've seen the 14-year-olds that run up the 00:16:09.679 --> 00:16:15.039 escalators that are going down. Who among us has not been that person? You know, at one time in life 00:16:15.039 --> 00:16:20.000 that wanted to sprint up the down escalator. How do you get up it? Well, the only way you can get 00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:28.319 up it is if you run, if you really push for it. If you stand still, if you stand still, you will 00:16:28.319 --> 00:16:33.679 do nothing but go down. And in the same way, if you were here last week, if you're not identifying 00:16:33.679 --> 00:16:38.959 the idols in your life and pulling up those weeds of idolatry, they would just continue to grow and 00:16:38.960 --> 00:16:45.120 grow. The only way to grow as a disciple of Jesus is to realize you're called to grow. 00:16:46.560 --> 00:16:53.200 Otherwise, you'll always be moving down into vice, not up into virtue, down into boredom, 00:16:53.200 --> 00:16:59.440 not up into joy and love. When Jesus says, I've got to give you my disciples, I've got to give 00:16:59.440 --> 00:17:08.480 you a command that says, actively pursue me, abide in my love, seek my face, seek to obey my 00:17:08.480 --> 00:17:13.759 commandments. Obedience is a big deal. It's a real calling. You don't get in by obedience, 00:17:13.759 --> 00:17:18.720 but boy, once you've experienced the gospel of Jesus, he says, now it's time to change. It's 00:17:18.720 --> 00:17:26.079 time to grow. It's time to become like me. Otherwise, you're going down the escalator 00:17:26.079 --> 00:17:31.519 towards purposelessness. You're going down towards boredom. And so one of the vital things to say, 00:17:31.519 --> 00:17:36.559 I think, is that that means for all of us Christians today in the room, it's the little 00:17:36.559 --> 00:17:42.000 moments of life that are so important. The little moments are the moments where we're bored. The 00:17:42.000 --> 00:17:47.039 little moments are the moments where we seek that stimulation to pull the phone out and doom 00:17:47.039 --> 00:17:51.519 scroll for 45 minutes, for 90 minutes, and you don't know where your time is going. 00:17:53.200 --> 00:17:59.440 It's those little moments that are most vital for our change, for our character building, 00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:05.519 for becoming like Jesus more and more. I love the way Jesus puts it in this passage. He says, 00:18:05.519 --> 00:18:13.279 pray. Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5 says, rejoice always, pray without ceasing, be grateful in all 00:18:13.279 --> 00:18:17.839 circumstances. In other words, he's saying in the little moments, there's no time for boredom if 00:18:17.839 --> 00:18:24.319 we're pursuing, rejoice always, pray without ceasing, be grateful in all circumstances. In 00:18:24.319 --> 00:18:30.480 other words, he's saying you've got to seek joy, reinvigorate your life with wonder in the little 00:18:30.480 --> 00:18:35.119 moments, in the moments where we're so tempted just to look at our phones all the time. He's 00:18:35.119 --> 00:18:45.279 saying, in other words, boredom is despising the weight of the small moment. It's not willing to 00:18:45.279 --> 00:18:53.519 see how important it is for our Christian growth. The scholars on boredom, they talk about how in 00:18:53.519 --> 00:19:00.959 the 19th century, boredom really came to the fore. It became a real thing in a way that you don't see 00:19:00.960 --> 00:19:05.519 as often in the pre-modern world. Then of course, in the 20th century, it got worse. Then in the 00:19:05.519 --> 00:19:13.680 21st century, we've reached peak boredom. They talk about how pre-modern people had far more 00:19:13.680 --> 00:19:19.519 downtime than we do today. We're much busier than pre-modern people were. Pre-modern people did 00:19:19.519 --> 00:19:24.000 their work, their physical labor, but quite often they had huge moments of the day, long moments of 00:19:24.000 --> 00:19:29.519 the day where there was a lot of leisure, a lot of moments just to sit around, but they were not bored. 00:19:29.519 --> 00:19:34.400 Instead, a pre-modern person could look up at the sun and the moon and the stars, 00:19:35.680 --> 00:19:41.279 and they would write songs about it. They would look up at the sun in a moment where they were 00:19:41.279 --> 00:19:48.960 finished with their work and write poetry and think, I can't believe I exist. We modern people, 00:19:48.960 --> 00:19:54.160 boy, we're more like Pumba. You remember what Pumba said about the sun, moon, and stars? 00:19:54.160 --> 00:19:59.840 You know, Timon said, Pumba, this is the Lion King if you don't know. You should know, but if you don't, 00:20:00.720 --> 00:20:04.960 the Lion King, he said, Timon said, what do you suppose those stars are? And Pumba said, 00:20:04.960 --> 00:20:09.680 I've always thought of them as big burning balls of gas millions and billions of miles away. 00:20:10.960 --> 00:20:15.279 And now we know that they are, and we say, you know, I'm bored by that. I look up at the sun 00:20:15.279 --> 00:20:19.920 moon and the stars, I just don't care. We already figured that out. Science has already gotten there. 00:20:19.920 --> 00:20:26.640 We don't operate in the little moments with wonder. And so we like joy in our lives. 00:20:28.560 --> 00:20:31.600 Have you ever said, look, have you ever said it maybe more practically? 00:20:33.279 --> 00:20:38.560 Like me, have you ever said, you know, if I could get my schedule, if I could take this off of my 00:20:38.560 --> 00:20:47.519 schedule, I would, I would pray more. And the truth is, no, we wouldn't, we don't. Why? Because 00:20:47.519 --> 00:20:56.480 it's not an issue of schedule. It's an addiction to entertainment simulation. It's the fact that, 00:20:56.480 --> 00:21:02.160 that we don't see the call in our lives that says, you've got such big purpose of Biden me. 00:21:03.359 --> 00:21:09.680 Take up the responsibility to seize joy, move from impatience to patience, love people, commit. 00:21:11.440 --> 00:21:17.359 We trade the big purposes for small entertainment simulations. That's the real issue. 00:21:17.359 --> 00:21:22.559 At the heart of boredom. So let's move on. But let me say that this could be the most important 00:21:23.199 --> 00:21:28.159 couple of sentences paragraph I think C.S. Lewis ever wrote. He writes this, 00:21:29.519 --> 00:21:38.559 good and evil both increase in our lives at compound interest. That is why the little decisions 00:21:38.559 --> 00:21:45.519 you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the 00:21:45.519 --> 00:21:52.639 capture of a strategic point from which a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories 00:21:52.639 --> 00:22:01.039 you never dreamed of. And apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger or impatience today 00:22:02.400 --> 00:22:10.480 is the loss of a ridge, a railway, a bridgehead from which now the enemy may launch an attack 00:22:10.480 --> 00:22:15.519 that would have otherwise been impossible. Don't despise the little moments when you touch your 00:22:15.519 --> 00:22:25.120 phone every day, trade it with prayer, with wonder, with taking up joy, with thanking God that you 00:22:25.120 --> 00:22:32.319 exist. That's the call to abide in me. Lastly, the second thing Jesus gives us here. And finally, 00:22:33.200 --> 00:22:38.079 Jesus says, we don't have time for boredom in our lives as Christians because we've been offered 00:22:38.079 --> 00:22:45.359 friendship with God. Boredom in other words is a rejection of the highest joy that we've been 00:22:45.359 --> 00:22:51.359 offered, which is to be friends with the living God. So Jesus here says greater love in verse 13 00:22:51.359 --> 00:22:57.279 has nobody than this than to lay down one's life for a friend. And then he turns and says, and today 00:22:58.319 --> 00:23:03.439 his hour had come. He was about to go to the cross and he says, today, tonight, I no longer 00:23:03.440 --> 00:23:10.480 simply call you my servants. Tonight, you are also my friends. Jesus said in that moment 00:23:11.440 --> 00:23:15.360 that the greatest thing that we can ever get in this life, the greatest purpose we can have, 00:23:15.360 --> 00:23:20.880 the biggest meaning is to be friends with God. It's the thing that's deep down in the bottom of 00:23:20.880 --> 00:23:26.320 our souls that we want so much as friendship with the living God. What is friendship? Jesus says, 00:23:26.320 --> 00:23:31.440 I don't just call you servant and we are the servants of God, but he says, because I'm going 00:23:31.440 --> 00:23:36.000 to go to the cross for you tonight, I'm going to offer you a shoulder to shoulder relationship. 00:23:36.559 --> 00:23:40.799 And a friendship is where you stand shoulder to shoulder with somebody, walking with them 00:23:41.360 --> 00:23:49.519 in partnership, knowing them, seeking the same things. And Jesus says, I want to walk. I don't, 00:23:49.519 --> 00:23:53.519 I just, I don't just want you to bow down and worship me. I want to walk. I also want to walk 00:23:53.519 --> 00:24:00.400 shoulder to shoulder with you. He's talking here about a depth of relationship. One that is a 00:24:00.400 --> 00:24:06.160 sound, one that is scandalous, one that is hard to imagine that you friend, the incarnation, 00:24:06.160 --> 00:24:11.920 Advent means today you can be friends with the living God. That's what's on offer for you. 00:24:12.560 --> 00:24:19.600 Now, you'll be able to fight boredom in this life by instead of turning to the stimulations that we 00:24:19.600 --> 00:24:24.800 all are addicted to constantly to say, you know, the biggest meaning I have in life is friendship 00:24:24.800 --> 00:24:29.360 with God. I want to adore God. I want to know more of Jesus. I want to seek a deep relationship. 00:24:29.359 --> 00:24:37.199 So, um, Zephaniah chapter three verse 17 in the Old Testament, God gives this prophecy about the 00:24:37.199 --> 00:24:43.599 Advent, about the coming of the Messiah. And this is what he says. The Lord your God is with you, 00:24:43.599 --> 00:24:50.079 the mighty warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you and his love. He will no longer 00:24:50.079 --> 00:24:57.279 rebuke you. He will rejoice over you with singing. In this moment when Jesus says tonight, when I go 00:24:57.279 --> 00:25:02.240 to the tomorrow, I'm about to go to the cross. And that means that I'm going to, I'm going to make a 00:25:02.240 --> 00:25:10.639 friendship with you. I'm going to offer you friendship. The, the incarnation, the Son of God, 00:25:10.639 --> 00:25:18.160 the maker of heaven and earth has become dependent. He became a little bitty baby because he wants to 00:25:18.160 --> 00:25:25.519 be close to you. He nursed, you know, the Son of God, the creator of the universe came and nursed 00:25:25.519 --> 00:25:31.920 like a, as a little baby does, he, he became so helpless, so dependent because he said, I want 00:25:31.920 --> 00:25:39.279 to be friends with you. And that means that Zephaniah three 17 when God says, don't you know that I 00:25:39.279 --> 00:25:45.039 delight over you? I take joy in you. I sing over you. What does it mean? It means that when Jesus 00:25:45.039 --> 00:25:52.160 Christ went to the cross, he was pronouncing that he is not bored of you. You know, have you ever 00:25:52.160 --> 00:25:57.279 heard the experience to say, you're in a group of friends, maybe this has happened in St. Columbus 00:25:57.279 --> 00:26:03.120 after worship and you're talking and you realize all of a sudden kind of everybody has drifted away 00:26:03.120 --> 00:26:09.840 from listening to what you were saying. It's never happened to me. It happens to me all the time, 00:26:09.840 --> 00:26:19.040 actually. I don't know. And you realize, you know what? I am boring. The cross of Jesus Christ 00:26:19.039 --> 00:26:27.599 says, God says, I sing over you. You are never boring to me. The incarnation says, I want friendship 00:26:27.599 --> 00:26:33.279 with you so badly. God says that I will go to the greatest of lengths to enter into your darkness 00:26:33.920 --> 00:26:40.079 to make friends with you. How can we be bored? We have friendship with the living God on offer today. 00:26:42.000 --> 00:26:47.599 If you are always finding that you are bored, maybe today you need to see that there's such a 00:26:47.599 --> 00:26:52.000 grand purpose that's being offered to you in Christmas season and it is friendship with the 00:26:52.000 --> 00:27:00.480 living God. Let me close with this. I know that we all come to church and sometimes we're bored at 00:27:00.480 --> 00:27:08.319 church. There's no secret there, right? And we're sometimes bored even more broadly than the experience 00:27:08.319 --> 00:27:12.959 of the local church worship. We're bored with Jesus. We're bored with the gospel. We're bored 00:27:12.960 --> 00:27:20.319 with the Bible. We're bored with the things of God. Dorothy Sayers, she wrote so well on this. She says, 00:27:20.319 --> 00:27:26.960 the people who hanged Jesus Christ never to do them justice accused him of being boring. On the 00:27:26.960 --> 00:27:34.400 contrary, they fought him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle 00:27:34.400 --> 00:27:41.600 up that shattering personality and surround him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have efficiently 00:27:41.599 --> 00:27:49.199 paired the claws of the lion and Judah. We've certified him meek and mild and we've recommended him 00:27:49.759 --> 00:27:57.439 as a fitting household pet for pale priests. Sometimes I think people come here on a Sunday. 00:27:57.439 --> 00:28:01.679 Maybe this is you today and you're not a Christian. You're curious. You're skeptic. You're looking 00:28:03.119 --> 00:28:08.000 and you come here and you check it out and I've heard from others before you walk away and say, 00:28:08.000 --> 00:28:12.799 you know, I enjoyed it. Thanks for having me. This is not for me. Traditional religion is not for me. 00:28:13.519 --> 00:28:18.960 And the same issue that's at the heart of that, I think is the one we experience as 00:28:18.960 --> 00:28:24.240 Christians when we come and we say, I'm just bored with Jesus, bored with worship. What's going on 00:28:24.240 --> 00:28:30.000 there? You need a person might come here and say, I just, I'm just not sure that traditional religion 00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:35.759 is going to be able to meet my needs. Is it going to be able to give me the emotions that I'm looking 00:28:35.759 --> 00:28:42.240 for? The therapy. We come and say I'm bored as a Christian on board with worship on board 00:28:42.240 --> 00:28:48.319 with this space on board with Jesus on board with the gospel because we're coming to look for stimulants. 00:28:49.759 --> 00:28:56.799 We're coming for all the fields. You know, you can, you can have the greatest, the greatest 00:28:56.799 --> 00:29:01.359 lyric ever written in him in world history, the most beautiful lyric, the most important weighty 00:29:01.359 --> 00:29:08.959 lyric, but we pass right by it because we didn't like the tune. We don't feel it. And feeling is 00:29:08.959 --> 00:29:14.559 important. Emotion is important. It really is. But here's, here's, here's what's underneath 00:29:14.559 --> 00:29:24.319 both those experiences. It's this. I think I didn't come to the space today to say, I am a rebel. 00:29:24.319 --> 00:29:34.079 I'm a rebel to the living God walking against his will and woe is me. A man of unclean lips. 00:29:35.439 --> 00:29:39.200 And if it was not for God's mercy right now in this moment, I wouldn't be breathing. 00:29:40.720 --> 00:29:45.039 I come here not to first say, I need to get all the feels. I come here first to say, I'm here to bow 00:29:45.039 --> 00:29:55.440 the knee to say that this is God's world and he's gifted me. He's offered me friendship to not look 00:29:55.440 --> 00:30:01.839 for stimulants, but to look for God himself, to adore God, to see God. Truly the final thing here 00:30:01.839 --> 00:30:10.720 in verse 13 and 14, Jesus says, the son of God came. He said, I have come to lay down my life. 00:30:10.720 --> 00:30:16.480 I've come to go to the cross for you. I've come to enter into your darkness in order to make friends 00:30:16.480 --> 00:30:22.319 with you. And he's saying that to all these guys who are about to betray him, who are about to turn 00:30:22.319 --> 00:30:29.200 their backs on him. He's saying to people who would betray him moments later, it's you that I've 00:30:29.200 --> 00:30:35.039 come to make friends with. And I will become friends with you by and through your betrayal, 00:30:35.039 --> 00:30:43.359 through you putting me on the cross. It's something like this. It's like the experience 00:30:43.359 --> 00:30:49.759 that you may have had if you go to watch an indie film. Have you ever done that? You go to the cinema 00:30:49.759 --> 00:30:56.159 to see an indie film. It's the kind of film that has a con film festival logo on the opening screen 00:30:56.159 --> 00:31:03.039 with the two leaves, you know. And you go to the indie film because you say, I'm going to be a 00:31:03.039 --> 00:31:11.519 sophisticated person. No more Avengers for me. You know, I go to all the blockbusters, but now 00:31:11.519 --> 00:31:15.599 I'm going, I'm a city, you know, I'm in Edinburgh, this great city of learning. I'm going to go 00:31:15.599 --> 00:31:25.839 watch independent films. And you go and you watch and you try your best, you know. But you're so 00:31:25.839 --> 00:31:32.159 bored. And you're sad. And you're depressed. Because the beginning of the indie film is sad 00:31:32.160 --> 00:31:38.160 and the middle is sad and the ending is sad. And they say it's realistic and it won all the awards 00:31:38.160 --> 00:31:43.440 for that reason. But the whole time you're there, you think, I just want to be at Indiana Jones. 00:31:44.560 --> 00:31:50.880 I just want to be watching the Avengers Endgame. You know, I just want the Lion King. Why? Why is 00:31:50.880 --> 00:31:58.240 it? Why do people, why can the, why will the masses never go to those movies? And the critics will 00:31:58.240 --> 00:32:05.440 say it's because they're derivative. And they are derivative. But why? Because there is one story 00:32:05.440 --> 00:32:10.000 at the center of all of human existence that we desperately want to be true. And that's that there 00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:16.480 is a hero, a friend, one who would come, mighty God, wonderful counselor, Prince of Peace, and 00:32:16.480 --> 00:32:22.720 enter into the darkness and stand next to you and say, you will betray me and I will rescue you 00:32:22.720 --> 00:32:29.200 anyway. We want a hero. We want somebody who would come and fight the ultimate darkness, be defeated 00:32:29.200 --> 00:32:36.160 by it, and yet rise up an ultimate victory. Every blockbuster, every great story comes back to that 00:32:36.160 --> 00:32:42.799 story. Why? Because as C.S. Lewis borrowed from Dorothy Sayers, Jesus Christ's gospel is the myth 00:32:42.799 --> 00:32:49.680 that became a fact. There's nothing boring about it. It is why every great movie centers its plot 00:32:49.680 --> 00:32:55.920 on a hero like that. Ultimate self-sacrifice, giving themselves to the darkness to win. 00:32:57.120 --> 00:33:00.560 And when you know that, when you've taken that up, when you know that friendship with God is on 00:33:00.560 --> 00:33:06.400 offer in that story, you can take your boredom this week and pray in that moment and say, 00:33:06.400 --> 00:33:14.560 Lord Jesus, replace my deep desire to touch my phone right now with affection for you, 00:33:14.559 --> 00:33:21.119 with friendship with you. Let's pray. Father, we ask that you would teach us what it means to be your 00:33:21.119 --> 00:33:26.240 friend, and we thank you so much, Lord Jesus, that you've come and made us friends with you. And so 00:33:26.240 --> 00:33:32.799 today, forgive us for our purposelessness, our apathy, our lack of commitment, our unwillingness 00:33:32.799 --> 00:33:39.679 to take up responsibility and replace it, Lord, with joy. Do it by the power of the gospel, we pray, 00:33:39.680 --> 00:33:45.680 in Jesus' name. Amen.