WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.120 Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a classic, and it's actually, in my opinion, 00:00:08.120 --> 00:00:14.120 more timely now, even maybe than it was 15, 20 years ago. So if you've never read it, I'd encourage 00:00:14.120 --> 00:00:19.679 you to pick it up. It's about a man who spent his life chasing the things that most people 00:00:19.679 --> 00:00:26.519 think that we should spend our lives chasing, the things that our society tends to value most. 00:00:26.519 --> 00:00:33.859 So he's gone after status and career. He's achieved financial security. He has family. 00:00:34.320 --> 00:00:40.740 He has cultural refinement. He has sort of all of the markers of a life well-lived, of a successful 00:00:40.740 --> 00:00:46.500 life. And he thinks at the beginning of the story that he's figured it all out. But then he gets 00:00:46.500 --> 00:00:51.000 injured. It's a minor injury, but then it doesn't get better, and that injury turns into a sickness, 00:00:51.000 --> 00:00:58.799 and then that sickness, doctors can't cure it, and it becomes terminal. And as death draws near, 00:00:58.960 --> 00:01:04.579 Ivan has this agonizing realization. He says this, kind of a famous quote from this book, 00:01:05.700 --> 00:01:13.099 "'Can it be that I have not lived as one ought?' Suddenly came into his head. But how not so, 00:01:13.099 --> 00:01:21.459 when I've done everything as it should be done?' Ivan had been living by all of the social scripts, 00:01:21.679 --> 00:01:28.939 all of the social plans that he had grown up around, and he assumed that if he had done those 00:01:28.939 --> 00:01:34.179 things, if he checked those boxes, then at the end of his life, he would realize, I've lived a good 00:01:34.179 --> 00:01:40.099 life. I've done things as they ought to have been done. But then he realizes that even though he thought 00:01:40.099 --> 00:01:45.459 he knew what life was all about, that he's completely missed it. And so, he begins to wonder, 00:01:45.599 --> 00:01:51.640 what is all this really for? And in John chapter 17, we just heard a little snippet of it read, 00:01:51.699 --> 00:01:57.619 the beginning of it read by Hillary, but it's a much longer chapter. We see the exact opposite. 00:01:58.639 --> 00:02:04.399 We see another man, Jesus, who's also on the verge of death. At this point in the story, he's hours away 00:02:04.400 --> 00:02:09.800 from an agonizing and brutal death, and he's praying to his heavenly Father. And so, we get this 00:02:09.800 --> 00:02:16.719 very rare glimpse into the relationship between Jesus and his heavenly Father, and what we see is 00:02:16.719 --> 00:02:28.480 astounding. Unlike Tolstoy's character, Jesus is a man who has lived a perfect life. He's able to say, 00:02:28.479 --> 00:02:35.000 at the end of his life, I've done all that I was sent here to do. I've accomplished my mission. I've 00:02:35.000 --> 00:02:43.199 lived out everything that the Father gave me to do. And then, remarkably, he prays in this prayer that we 00:02:43.199 --> 00:02:48.839 would do the same. He prays that at the end of our life, we would be able to look back and say something 00:02:48.839 --> 00:02:56.459 similar. And so, John 17 is essentially about the kind of life that Jesus wants us to have. 00:02:57.420 --> 00:03:03.120 It's about the life that we were made for. And there are a whole number of themes in this. It 00:03:03.120 --> 00:03:08.620 really would merit its own sermon series to look at this chapter in detail. So, there's some themes 00:03:08.620 --> 00:03:12.460 that we're not going to have time to get into. What we are going to do this morning is focus on 00:03:12.460 --> 00:03:18.260 the first 11 verses, and we're going to really tease out the most important, the sort of driving theme 00:03:18.260 --> 00:03:24.659 of the whole chapter. What does it mean to live life as we ought to live it? All right, what is a life 00:03:24.659 --> 00:03:29.120 well-lived? Well, what we're going to see this morning is that it is a life that is fully aimed 00:03:29.120 --> 00:03:35.620 at the glory of God. So, let's pray, and then we'll get started. Lord, we thank You this morning 00:03:35.620 --> 00:03:43.800 for Your Word. And as always, we pray that as we read Your Word, Your Word would read us. As we seek 00:03:43.800 --> 00:03:50.819 to understand Your Word, that we would come to understand and know You better. And then, we would 00:03:50.819 --> 00:03:56.039 come to understand and know ourselves better. And we pray that as we open Your written Word, 00:03:56.099 --> 00:04:00.819 we would come face to face with Your living Word, Jesus Christ. And it's in His name that we pray. 00:04:01.259 --> 00:04:09.240 Amen. So, first, we're going to look at what is true glory, as we see here, the thing that we're 00:04:09.240 --> 00:04:14.240 supposed to be aiming at, and then what difference this makes for us in how we live our lives. So, 00:04:14.240 --> 00:04:19.100 what is true glory? There is something in every human being that longs for glory. 00:04:21.079 --> 00:04:24.519 I've never met a person who didn't in some way, shape, or form long for glory. Now, 00:04:24.560 --> 00:04:28.460 we don't use that word. It's like, unless you're a Viking, you don't talk about longing for glory. 00:04:29.480 --> 00:04:33.660 So, we don't use the word, but we all long for it. You know, most people I know want their lives 00:04:33.660 --> 00:04:39.780 to matter. I mean, most of you do what you do. A lot of people move here because it's a kind of 00:04:39.779 --> 00:04:45.199 place where people live because they want their lives to matter. You know, we want to be seen and 00:04:45.199 --> 00:04:51.959 valued. We had a great conversation in the adult ed time before worship this morning on being known 00:04:51.959 --> 00:04:58.079 and being seen and being valued. Most people want that. Most people want to leave something behind. 00:04:58.219 --> 00:05:01.859 You know, some of us are getting to the stage of life where we're starting to think about that more. 00:05:02.819 --> 00:05:07.500 When you're like 16, 17, you're not really thinking about that. But when you're in the middle 00:05:07.500 --> 00:05:13.000 stages of your life or further, you're like, what am I going to leave behind? You know, 00:05:13.220 --> 00:05:21.240 all those are longings for glory. And I want you to hear me say this, that desire for glory is not evil. 00:05:23.279 --> 00:05:29.180 I would say if we read Scripture accurately, human beings were made for glory. We were created for 00:05:29.180 --> 00:05:35.560 that. The problem is that we tend to look for glory in all the wrong places. The world that Jesus lived 00:05:35.560 --> 00:05:41.360 in was the first century Greco-Roman world, and that was an honor-shame culture. And so, glory was 00:05:41.360 --> 00:05:48.019 paramount. Your social standing, your public reputation, those were central measures of a 00:05:48.019 --> 00:05:53.480 person's worth. And so, the aim of life in the first century was to seek glory for yourself. 00:05:54.279 --> 00:06:03.100 It was to amass glory. And in modern times, I would argue that with all of our social media platforms 00:06:03.100 --> 00:06:08.760 and the rise of influencer culture, arguably not much has changed in the seeking of glory. 00:06:09.879 --> 00:06:20.120 There was a 2023 survey done of Gen Z where 57% of respondents said that their first chosen career 00:06:20.120 --> 00:06:29.580 path was to become an influencer. 57%, the majority. And, you know, most people think that this is what 00:06:29.579 --> 00:06:35.979 life is all about. Most people think that life is about optimizing for attention. It's about optimizing 00:06:35.979 --> 00:06:41.839 for influence. It's about optimizing for impact and recognition. And most people would assume that 00:06:41.839 --> 00:06:49.620 would be success. But what we see again and again and again is it does not work. There was research done 00:06:49.620 --> 00:06:53.899 at Harvard last year, this is not going to surprise many of us in this room, that found there's a massive 00:06:53.899 --> 00:07:01.799 mental health crisis among online content creators. Online content creators and influencers are more 00:07:01.799 --> 00:07:07.500 than twice as likely to be suicidal compared to the general population. So, something is not working 00:07:07.500 --> 00:07:14.399 in that form. The math is not adding up. It's not mathing, right? Jim Carrey, I love this example. Jim 00:07:14.399 --> 00:07:21.000 Carrey in his 2016 Golden Globe acceptance speech sort of rocks the room a bit. He comes up to 00:07:21.000 --> 00:07:28.040 to actually to present an award at the Golden Globes. And here's what he says. He comes up there and 00:07:28.040 --> 00:07:32.500 there's all these people in their suits and their dresses and everybody's looking good and everybody's 00:07:32.500 --> 00:07:38.319 kind of done up, you know, and it's a big night and people's careers are sort of hanging on this and 00:07:38.319 --> 00:07:42.220 they're all, you know, waiting to see who gets the award. And he comes up and he says this, 00:07:43.360 --> 00:07:50.519 I am two-time Golden Globe award winner Jim Carrey. And everybody laughs. He says, and when I go to sleep at 00:07:50.519 --> 00:07:57.379 night, I'm not just a guy going to sleep. I'm two-time Golden Globe award winner Jim Carrey 00:07:57.379 --> 00:08:03.680 getting some well-needed shut-eye. And everybody continues to laugh. And he says, and when I dream, 00:08:04.219 --> 00:08:11.719 I don't dream any old dream. No, sir. I dream about being three-time Golden Globe award winner 00:08:11.719 --> 00:08:19.539 Jim Carrey. And then he goes on and everybody's laughing and he says this, because then I would be enough. 00:08:20.519 --> 00:08:27.699 It would finally be true. And I can stop this terrible search for what I know ultimately won't 00:08:27.699 --> 00:08:34.659 fulfill me, right? And at this point, if you watch the clip, which you should, everybody in the crowd 00:08:34.659 --> 00:08:40.779 is laughing, but it very strongly turns to this uncomfortable laugh. Everybody's kind of like 00:08:40.779 --> 00:08:45.879 laughing and like also like, ooh, and they're all, everybody's kind of looking at people that they know 00:08:45.879 --> 00:08:50.600 in the room and they're kind of like giving these, you know, he just, you know, shots fired. He just, 00:08:50.600 --> 00:08:57.940 he just kind of went under the surface unexpectedly. And it's essentially this amazing moment where Jim 00:08:57.940 --> 00:09:05.779 Carrey is pulling back the curtain and exposing the emptiness of the whole thing, right? And people 00:09:05.779 --> 00:09:11.940 don't know what to do with that. The old Christian word for the kind of glory that we seek for ourselves 00:09:11.940 --> 00:09:19.660 is vain glory, which is an old way of saying empty glory. It's glory that looks solid from a distance, 00:09:19.659 --> 00:09:24.860 but the closer you get, the more you try to put weight on it, like the weight of your life or the 00:09:24.860 --> 00:09:30.199 weight of your soul, you realize there's nothing there. It's empty, it's vapor. It's not real. 00:09:30.939 --> 00:09:36.439 And it's a symptom of spiritual brokenness. You know, at the root of sin is really the desire to 00:09:36.439 --> 00:09:44.159 displace God. And one of the ways that manifests is that we want to actually seek our own glory instead 00:09:44.159 --> 00:09:51.199 of His glory. But what we figure out is that the more we try to glorify ourselves, the more we lose 00:09:51.199 --> 00:10:00.360 ourselves. The more we try to puff ourselves up, the more empty we become. And so, by contrast, Jesus 00:10:00.360 --> 00:10:07.759 shows us what real glory looks like. It says in verse 1, after Jesus said this, He looked toward heaven and 00:10:07.759 --> 00:10:15.740 prayed, Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son that Your Son may glorify You. And then if you look 00:10:15.740 --> 00:10:23.059 at verse 4, I have brought You glory on earth by finishing the work You gave Me to do. And now, 00:10:23.059 --> 00:10:30.019 Father, glorify Me in Your presence with the glory I had with You before the world began. 00:10:30.019 --> 00:10:42.139 John 17 is amazing because we see, we catch a little snippet of a conversation that has been 00:10:42.139 --> 00:10:49.439 happening within the heart of God for all of eternity. We catch this glimpse of this eternal 00:10:49.439 --> 00:10:56.720 conversation. And what it shows us, one of the things it shows us is the nature of true glory, 00:10:56.720 --> 00:11:05.040 that within the life of God, there is no grasping after glory, there is no rivalry, there is no 00:11:05.040 --> 00:11:13.800 insecurity, there is no self-promotion. Each person of the Trinity is focused on the glory of another, 00:11:14.519 --> 00:11:23.720 which is amazing. The Father glorifies the Son, the Son glorifies the Father, the Holy Spirit glorifies 00:11:23.720 --> 00:11:30.680 the Son, and through Him the Father. And so, each member of the Trinity, each person is focused on the 00:11:30.680 --> 00:11:39.899 glory of another. That's a really big clue that seeking one's own glory somehow doesn't work. 00:11:40.279 --> 00:11:47.139 Moreover, when Jesus says, Father, the hour has come in John's gospel, that's a very clear reference. 00:11:47.139 --> 00:11:53.559 He's talking about the cross. He's talking about the cross. The hour has come. My death is imminent. 00:11:54.500 --> 00:11:59.019 He's talking about the fact that He's about to endure humiliation and torture and death. 00:12:00.059 --> 00:12:07.480 And He's about to do that in order to set the world free, in order to reconcile the world to God. 00:12:08.340 --> 00:12:14.500 And so, when Jesus says, Father, the hour has come, He's saying, I'm about to give up my life 00:12:14.500 --> 00:12:24.120 in order to give life to the world. So, here's what we learn about true glory from this prayer. 00:12:24.620 --> 00:12:33.399 Just think about this. At the heart of reality, at the heart of reality, there is no such thing as rivalry 00:12:33.399 --> 00:12:43.820 or competition or insecurity or self-promotion. At the heart of reality, there is an eternal communion 00:12:43.820 --> 00:12:50.720 of other glorifying self-giving love. That sits at the very heart of the universe. 00:12:52.300 --> 00:12:57.480 And so, what that means, if you follow out the implications, is that self-glorification 00:12:57.480 --> 00:13:09.540 is not just wrong, it's a lie about reality. It runs against the grain of the universe. When any being 00:13:09.539 --> 00:13:16.000 seeks to glorify itself, it is running against the grain of the universe. 00:13:17.459 --> 00:13:25.559 So, self-exaltation is unnatural, right? In the deepest sense of the word, it is unnatural. It's 00:13:25.559 --> 00:13:31.539 a perversion of reality. It's not the way things are supposed to be. And that's why it doesn't work. 00:13:31.539 --> 00:13:39.199 That's why Jim Carrey gets such a strong reaction from the crowd, because deep down, I think we all 00:13:39.199 --> 00:13:45.500 know, and a lot of people wouldn't admit this, but I think deep down, we all know that there's a certain 00:13:45.500 --> 00:13:53.039 amount of absurdity in a bunch of human beings sitting around giving each other awards in a world 00:13:53.039 --> 00:14:00.259 that God created, in bodies and lives that God created, right? To sit in a room and to bank your 00:14:00.259 --> 00:14:07.039 life and your self-worth on some other human being giving you a piece of metal, that somehow there's 00:14:07.039 --> 00:14:10.939 an absurdity to it. And for a moment, Jim Carrey pulls back the curtain, and everybody sees it, and 00:14:10.939 --> 00:14:17.699 then everybody looks away. Because what does that mean about the choices I've made? Right? So, Jesus 00:14:17.700 --> 00:14:25.560 shows us, here's what aligns with the heart of reality. Pouring yourself out to God and other 00:14:25.560 --> 00:14:33.980 people. Now, so this is true glory. Why does this matter? Second question that we're going to ask. 00:14:35.040 --> 00:14:43.200 This matters because in this prayer, amazingly, Jesus is inviting us into this dance of glory. If you 00:14:43.200 --> 00:14:49.820 think about the Trinity as this eternal, right, other glorifying, self-giving dance of glory, right, 00:14:50.080 --> 00:14:57.600 then Jesus is inviting us into that dance of glory. He says in verse 10, all glory has come to me, to 00:14:57.600 --> 00:15:05.900 Jesus, through my disciples who receive and obey His Word. He's saying, so when we receive and obey His Word, 00:15:05.960 --> 00:15:12.360 we are glorifying Him. But then, amazingly, down in verse 22, He says, of His disciples, of current and 00:15:12.360 --> 00:15:19.779 future, including us, I have given them the glory that You gave Me, that they may be one as we are 00:15:19.779 --> 00:15:25.220 one. So, then we glorify Jesus, but then He turns around and He shares that glory with us. 00:15:26.680 --> 00:15:33.740 And the main thrust of this prayer is that even though He is ascending, that we as His people would 00:15:33.740 --> 00:15:41.519 continue that dance of glory on earth, so that we would continue to emulate this in our lives, 00:15:42.480 --> 00:15:46.940 and so that we would continue to be people who glorify Him and pour ourselves out for the life 00:15:46.940 --> 00:15:52.480 of the world the way He did. And He's saying that when we do that, we share in His glory. 00:15:53.799 --> 00:15:59.820 And here's something really beautiful. When we live lives focused not on ourselves, but on the glory of 00:15:59.820 --> 00:16:07.460 God, and when we recognize that life is about other-glorifying, self-giving love, that's actually 00:16:07.460 --> 00:16:14.220 where we find the most joy, right? The more we try to amass for ourselves, the more we lose our sense 00:16:14.220 --> 00:16:21.280 of self. The more we actually focus on those around us, on giving away, the more we actually find 00:16:21.280 --> 00:16:28.020 ourselves. That sounds vaguely biblical. And this is where we find the most joy, and He says in verse 13, 00:16:28.019 --> 00:16:33.519 to the Father, I'm coming to you now, but I say these things while I'm still in the world. In other words, 00:16:33.779 --> 00:16:38.439 this whole discourse, including this prayer, He's praying in front of His disciples. So rather than praying 00:16:38.439 --> 00:16:43.899 on a mountain by Himself, He chose in this moment to pray in a room surrounded by His disciples. He's praying 00:16:43.899 --> 00:16:49.639 to His Father out loud for His disciples to hear. And so He says, I say these things while I'm still in the world 00:16:49.639 --> 00:16:56.340 so that they may have the full measure of My joy within them. So He's saying, I want My disciples 00:16:56.340 --> 00:17:03.399 to understand this is how reality works. This is what your life is meant to be aimed at. And once you 00:17:03.399 --> 00:17:11.120 figure that out, then you will experience the fullness of joy. So bringing it all together, 00:17:12.380 --> 00:17:17.960 just kind of pulling all this together, you and I, there's a reason that you long for glory. 00:17:18.740 --> 00:17:22.539 There's a reason you want your life to matter. There's a reason that you want to be seen and valued. 00:17:22.539 --> 00:17:27.920 There's a reason that you want to leave something behind. The reason is because you were made for 00:17:27.920 --> 00:17:35.799 glory. You were made to participate in this dance of glory. True glory, though, not the counterfeit 00:17:35.799 --> 00:17:43.440 glory of the world. Returning to the story, the death of Ivan Ilyich, at the very end of the story, 00:17:43.680 --> 00:17:49.599 Ivan has a kind of spiritual awakening. And it's just the beginnings of a spiritual awakening. 00:17:49.599 --> 00:17:58.579 And the key is that his gaze finally turns outward. He finally stops focusing on himself. 00:17:59.159 --> 00:18:04.639 So after an entire life curved inward on status and comfort, and then as he gets sick, self-pity, 00:18:06.019 --> 00:18:12.639 he finally sees the suffering of his wife and his son. And for the first time in the story, 00:18:12.719 --> 00:18:19.119 he feels genuine compassion. And for the first time, he wants not merely to be relieved of his own pain, 00:18:19.119 --> 00:18:26.639 but he wants to relieve their pain. And so he begins to move from a kind of self-glory to a 00:18:26.639 --> 00:18:35.279 self-giving love. And the good news is we don't have to wait until we're on our deathbed to make this 00:18:35.279 --> 00:18:40.779 shift in our own lives. The good news is we can actually decide right now, right? Whatever choices 00:18:40.779 --> 00:18:47.500 we've made up to this point, we can decide right now, I'm going to begin to figure out what it looks 00:18:47.500 --> 00:18:53.319 like, to aim my life. Because we're all aiming somewhere, to aim my life at the glory of God, 00:18:54.079 --> 00:18:59.579 right? So to begin to choose to honor God above all else, right? I'm going to begin to choose to 00:18:59.579 --> 00:19:05.980 build my life on His Word, to seek to put His will above my own. That's the first thing. 00:19:07.019 --> 00:19:13.480 We can also begin to recognize that when I reflect this love of God into the world, 00:19:13.480 --> 00:19:20.660 as I seek to love and serve others, that's a way of glorifying God. But that's radically 00:19:20.660 --> 00:19:24.740 countercultural, right? What does that mean? I'm a person who realizes this is what life is about. 00:19:25.019 --> 00:19:30.539 It's about pouring out for the life of the world. To put it as practically as we can, 00:19:31.240 --> 00:19:35.500 if the world says, optimize your life for attention and recognition, 00:19:35.500 --> 00:19:44.559 this means optimizing my life for love and service, right? The world says optimize for attention, 00:19:45.099 --> 00:19:50.000 Jesus would say optimize for love and service. You know, I heard one person put it this way, 00:19:50.059 --> 00:19:54.759 not a Christian, not talking about this, but I thought the word, I thought this actually helps 00:19:54.759 --> 00:20:02.039 us understand on a practical level what this would mean. Make it your goal to add surplus value to the 00:20:02.039 --> 00:20:09.079 world. In other words, to give more than you take, to pour out more than you receive. Because most of us 00:20:09.079 --> 00:20:14.079 have a kind of counter in our brain, and we're like, what am I getting versus what am I adding? And we want 00:20:14.079 --> 00:20:19.019 it to be even, and there's a sense of justice in that. We want it to be fair. But living this way, 00:20:19.139 --> 00:20:25.180 optimizing our life for love and service means we throw out the counter, right? And you say, 00:20:25.180 --> 00:20:32.000 my goal is just to pour out and to give more than I take. So, seeking to be a better friend than someone 00:20:32.000 --> 00:20:38.779 else is to you. I'm going to seek to be a better friend. It's seeking to love your spouse more than 00:20:38.779 --> 00:20:44.960 they love you and refusing to keep score. It's starting, you know, and again, we talked about 00:20:44.960 --> 00:20:49.420 this downstairs a little bit before the service at the adult ed time. It's a really great discussion. 00:20:49.420 --> 00:20:56.640 Being the kind of person who listens more than you expect others to listen to you. So, I'm going to 00:20:56.640 --> 00:21:00.800 talk less. I'm going to listen more. I'm going to ask more questions, right? I'm going to pour out. 00:21:00.980 --> 00:21:05.080 So, the point of all these examples is we're not talking about some pie in the sky, move across the 00:21:05.080 --> 00:21:09.080 world and go, you know, you can do that if you want. But this is the kind of stuff that you can 00:21:09.080 --> 00:21:16.660 just start doing this afternoon over lunch. Because often love and service sound romantic and ideal 00:21:16.660 --> 00:21:21.480 when you think about doing it in some far-off place in some big way. But that's also a kind of 00:21:21.480 --> 00:21:28.380 self-glorification, right? The real true stuff of the kind of glory we're talking about is found in 00:21:28.380 --> 00:21:34.860 the most mundane, thankless, often unseen, unrecognized acts of daily love and obedience. 00:21:35.360 --> 00:21:42.360 The kind of behavior you would do over lunch in an hour that nobody would even notice, right? 00:21:42.359 --> 00:21:46.399 It's choosing to invest in people who have nothing to offer you in return. 00:21:47.939 --> 00:21:53.639 And I want to press this home just a little more. This can start right here in our church community. 00:21:55.079 --> 00:21:59.099 You know, church is a kind of laboratory where the things that we're talking about, 00:21:59.539 --> 00:22:03.579 we first have an opportunity to practice these things in this community. It's one of the big 00:22:03.579 --> 00:22:08.939 reasons why we need a church community. So, again, I'm just going to push this a little further. 00:22:08.940 --> 00:22:12.440 If you think that church is mainly a place to come and take, 00:22:14.500 --> 00:22:20.360 I'm sorry, you've completely missed the point. And if you're newer, let's, you know, let's go ahead 00:22:20.360 --> 00:22:24.460 and have this conversation now. If you think that this church is mainly a place to come and take, 00:22:24.519 --> 00:22:28.759 you've missed the point. People who go to church with that attitude, kind of primarily, 00:22:28.900 --> 00:22:32.460 what am I going to get out of it? They tend to be perpetually dissatisfied. I've been doing this for 00:22:32.460 --> 00:22:36.840 18 years, and that's a very clear pattern. The people who kind of come in with that attitude, 00:22:36.839 --> 00:22:40.379 they tend to be dissatisfied. They tend to not last very long, and they tend to just, 00:22:40.480 --> 00:22:46.939 if they go to church, they just kind of go from church to church. By design, church is about being 00:22:46.939 --> 00:22:52.379 a part of a community where we are serving one another, right? So, if you're not actively doing 00:22:52.379 --> 00:22:58.519 that in some way, you're kind of missing the whole thing. When we do that, we become a community that 00:22:58.519 --> 00:23:04.379 glorifies God, and we begin to experience the kind of joy that Jesus desires for us. I've seen people 00:23:04.380 --> 00:23:08.300 who've been a part of our church for years, kind of on the periphery, and finally, they kind of make 00:23:08.300 --> 00:23:13.900 the turn in, and they respond when there's a call out for, we need this or that, and people step up. 00:23:14.040 --> 00:23:18.140 And I've heard and seen people say after that, you know, I didn't think there was community here. 00:23:18.300 --> 00:23:22.140 I wasn't sure if I was going to stick around, and then I started doing that. I just kind of responded 00:23:22.140 --> 00:23:27.240 to that email that went out, and now I get it. And you see that happen again and again. And many of 00:23:27.240 --> 00:23:31.300 you understand this, and this is one of the things that makes our church so great, is that many of you get 00:23:31.299 --> 00:23:36.359 this. In many ways, I'm preaching to the choir. But the point is simply this, you know, when the 00:23:36.359 --> 00:23:43.119 word goes out, we need more men to get involved in youth ministry, right? We need more people to 00:23:43.119 --> 00:23:46.139 serve in children's ministry, or we're not going to have children's ministry this summer. 00:23:47.839 --> 00:23:53.779 When that goes, we're not asking you to do anyone a favor, right? We're giving you an opportunity to 00:23:53.779 --> 00:23:58.259 experience everything that we're talking about this morning, right? If you don't jump in, it's actually 00:23:58.259 --> 00:24:05.700 your loss. Because this is really what life is all about. This is the whole point. This is true glory. 00:24:06.079 --> 00:24:10.400 And in a community where people are actively seeking to serve each other in all of these ways, 00:24:10.640 --> 00:24:18.259 that's a God-glorifying community. The final point I want to make is that the first two points I made 00:24:18.259 --> 00:24:25.259 are pretty difficult. Just deciding I'm going to make God's glory my aim, I'm going to optimize for 00:24:25.259 --> 00:24:30.220 service, and I'm going to begin pouring out for the life of the world. That does not come naturally to 00:24:30.220 --> 00:24:35.940 the human heart. It does not come naturally to my heart. And that's why the gospel, friends, is such 00:24:35.940 --> 00:24:45.079 profoundly good news. This is the chapter I was reading when I was 22 years old when I came to faith. 00:24:45.619 --> 00:24:52.400 It was John chapter 17. And so, it's always had a special place in my heart. And part of why, 00:24:52.400 --> 00:25:00.560 part of what led to something in me coming sort of unhinged, loose, breaking open, 00:25:01.360 --> 00:25:08.140 to begin to believe this in a real way, it was this realization. You know, when people are on their 00:25:08.140 --> 00:25:14.340 deathbed, if you've ever been around anybody who is close to death, there's not a lot of small talk. 00:25:14.339 --> 00:25:21.919 People tend to focus on and think about what really matters, right? People on the verge of death, 00:25:22.079 --> 00:25:28.899 they're thinking about what matters most. And in this prayer, just hours from his own death, 00:25:29.079 --> 00:25:30.639 what is Jesus thinking about? 00:25:33.939 --> 00:25:41.279 He's thinking about you. He's thinking about me. That's his concern. He's praying for us, 00:25:41.279 --> 00:25:48.039 moments from his death. And I remember that hitting me like a hammer and just realizing that kind of love 00:25:48.039 --> 00:25:56.200 changes you, right? And Jesus is saying, when you're willing to simply receive this love that is on 00:25:56.200 --> 00:26:03.279 offer, you glorify me. You glorify me just by receiving it because we're receiving something 00:26:03.279 --> 00:26:10.619 that he purchased with his life, right? So, we glorify him and we glorify what he did for us. 00:26:10.619 --> 00:26:15.239 And that, friends, is the kind of love that can soften hearts. It's the kind of love that makes 00:26:15.239 --> 00:26:19.419 you want to make your life about God's glory. And it's the kind of love that makes you want to pour 00:26:19.419 --> 00:26:26.099 yourself out for the life of the world because you can't imagine any other response. Let's pray. 00:26:28.659 --> 00:26:35.119 Our Lord in heaven, we thank you for your word, and we thank you where it needs to comfort us, 00:26:35.199 --> 00:26:38.619 Lord, we pray that it would do that. Where it needs to hit us like a hammer between the eyes, 00:26:38.619 --> 00:26:43.299 we pray that it would do that. Lord, we pray that in all the ways that we've talked about, we would 00:26:43.299 --> 00:26:49.199 be a community that puts you on display, where your heart is evident for all who see it, 00:26:50.139 --> 00:26:54.379 Lord. And we pray that that wouldn't be just by the force of our own willpower. We pray that it's 00:26:54.379 --> 00:26:59.179 because we're people who first and foremost know and receive and experience your love, 00:26:59.699 --> 00:27:05.559 that as you pour into us, we would seek to pour into others, Lord. And we pray that in that way, 00:27:05.559 --> 00:27:10.980 we would put your glory on display for the world to see. We pray this in Jesus' holy name. Amen.