So, one of my, I wish it were a true hobby, I'm fascinated by astronomy, but so many meteor showers and astronomical events take place after 9.30, it's really hard for me to see them, and so I'm excited about them, but I typically don't get to really witness them. But a few years ago, I was just kind of glancing at my phone, and it was in August during the Perseid meteor shower, and I saw that it was going to be just spectacular. There was going to be over 100 meteors an hour visible to the naked eye, there was going to be three or four fireballs, which are really big ones, an hour, and it was just going to be spectacular. And so, I stayed up late, and I got my kids, and we went out, if you drive down 71st, far enough east, it becomes an RV park, if I didn't know, it was a little campground. And so, you're just kind of way out of town where it's good and dark, and we set up our chairs, and we waited, and set there a good hour, which is hard with young boys, and it's all nothing. I was like, this is, oh, he's all one or two, you'll always see one or two, but far from spectacular. And I got my phone out, I was like, hmm, I got my phone out, and I noticed that the article I had read was four years old, and I missed it, I missed it about good four years, and there was nothing coming, and we went home, that's how all my camping stories end. We went home, we went to bed, and so, you know, sometimes we do that, we just get the dates long, and I think we do that a lot in our reading of prophecy. We just kind of read the Old Testament prophecies like, the hills and the mountains will break forth into singing, and the trees of the field will clap their hands, and we go, can't wait to see that happen? And I want to remind you that we see that every year at Palm Sunday, that's the trees of the field clapping their hands. Jesus has come, we don't live a life like we're waiting for Jesus to come, he has come. The prophecies are not completely fulfilled yet, and we do wait for him not only to come into our hearts, but for him to appear and to see the prophecies complete, but we are living in the age where he has started keeping these promises, and he is continuing to, and that is why he taught us to pray, that kingdom come, that will be done on earth as it is in heaven. It is coming, it is in the process, we are the benefactors of it, and we need to celebrate that, and continue to do what we can to be part of this fulfillment. That's why I chose this theme this year, that Jesus changes everything, this changes everything. What do I mean when I say everything? I mean that the world you live in would be unrecognizable, had Jesus not come. Charity, healthcare, education, marriage, friendship, music, art, science, literature, human rights, not a single thing that we just take for granted would be what it is had Jesus not come. Has test changed everything? And the question that forces upon us is, has it changed you? Has it changed me? Is it changing in process me? So please stand as we read this beautiful text from Isaiah chapter 11. Yes, it's my favorite prophecy, and we read it a lot, live with it. Here are the words of the Lord, there should come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit, and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and the might, the Spirit of knowledge, and the fear of the Lord, and his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eye see or decide to spute by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth, and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist and faithfulness the belt of his loins, the wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together, and the little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young lions shall lie down together, the lions shall eat straw like the ox, the nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hands in the adder's den, and they shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Thus far the reading of God's word all men are like grass, and all of our glories like the flowers of the field, and the grass withers and flowers fall, but not God's word. God's word stands forever. You may be seated. The world we live in would be unrecognizable had Jesus not come. Let's play a game. Let's play. It's a wonderful life. Remember it's wonderful. The greatest movie of all time. Let's just go on and be honest. It's your favorite movie. It's my favorite movie. If it's not your favorite movie, I don't really want to be friends with you. It's just a beautiful picture of friendship and how our lives touch each other. If you don't remember the story, it's about George Bailey, he thinks he's lost everything, and he's pushed to the point of committing suicide, and Angel comes to prevent him from doing that. He says, you never want to commit suicide. I think about what that would do to your children, your wife, and he's like, you're right. I don't want to kill myself. I just wish I'd never been born. The angel gives George the gift to see what life would be like. He never been born. All the people that he's influenced. It's a wonderful story. But let's play it with Jesus. Let's just imagine the world if Jesus had never come. Let's work through some things. If Jesus had never come, there would be no such thing as charity. The idea of taking care of a complete stranger who's poor did not exist. Jesus taught his disciples that the way they treated the least of the brethren is how they treat him, and they took that to heart when James wrote his letter. He said the pure and undefiled religion before God, the fathers, have visited orphans and widows in their affliction. When John wrote his letter, he said, if anyone claims to know God, but sees his brother in need and closes his heart off, that person is a liar. He doesn't know God. When Paul was just absolutely planning his flag on the gospel, in the book of Galatians, where the book of Galatians has one purpose and one purpose only to save the doctrine of salvation by faith alone, and he's saying, if he teaches any other gospel, be a Nathema, and he says, when I went to Jerusalem to get the gospel, to make sure that the apostles were teaching the same gospel I did, they had nothing to add. They sent me to the Gentiles. They agreed that God had given me this message, and they only asked that I remember the poor. Not fascinating. Even today, two thousand years later, we are tempted to try to drive a wedge between those who preached the pure gospel and those who remember the poor, and those two things are what God has put together, and we should never separate them. You can't separate them. The idea of taking care of someone else's poor drove Julie in the apostate crazy, Julie in the apostate. He didn't call himself that. He didn't give himself that name. He was an emperor of Rome, the 4th century, 360, whatever that century that is. And I'm never really understood of. I think that's the 4th. He said, he was trying to bring Rome back to pure religion, you know, worshipping Mars, and pure religion, and many gods, and get rid of this crazy cult called Christianity, and he wrote a letter to the high priest of Galatia, and he said that these Christians, they're tricking people. They're taking care of the poor so they'll become Christians. He likened us to pirates who had put out pieces of cake, and give cake to children so they could kidnap them. He thought we were trying to fool people and get them to come to church by giving money and pretending to be nice at first. And he said then, he goes, we will never put an end to Christianity as long as they take care of their poor and ours. They take care of their own, and they take care of ours. And he said, it was a great shame to us that they take care of our poor better than we do. James, Christianity would not exist. Healthcare, the idea of taking care of a complete stranger who was sick, foreign. Maybe if somebody was in your house, you would take care of them, but the idea of trying to help someone else who was sick, would not exist. There would certainly not be, you know, St. John Hospital, and St. Francis Hospital, and St. Jude Hospital, and Baptist Hospital. There's a reason these buildings have Christian names, because taking care of the sick is a Christian thing. It's what Jesus did. He went around healing, and it's what his people have done. There would be no such thing as adoption the way it works today. We have two new adoptions in our church this week to grandchildren, and it's a beautiful thing. But in Rome, adoption happened, but it happened when a man had no air. And if it was clear he was going to have no male air, he would typically adopt a young slave in his household, so that his name and his property would live on, and his wives would be taken care of. The idea of adopting a complete stranger as a baby, that started as Christians began responding to the infant fantaside that was all over Rome. They would roam the streets picking up chilled babies, and they would have been thrown out typically girls that were unwanted and adopt them. Education Martin Luther was not only a fan of free education, but he thought it should be compulsory in any parent. He refused to teach their children, it should be disciplined. He thought it was the only way to escape. The superstition of the age was to teach people to read the Bible. Without Jesus there would be no Oxford, no Cambridge, no Harvard, no Yale, no Dartmouth, all of which were founded by Puritans, and people they were all founded to teach Christians to be pastors, no Princeton, no Rutgers, no University of Tulsa. Without Jesus, there's no Sistine Chapel, there's no David, music, without the coming of Jesus, there's no Handels Messiah, there's no Saint Matthew's Passion, there's no Mozart's Requiem, and you think, I don't like that music anyway. Okay. Well, did you know that the roots of pop and country and hip hop and jazz all go back to slave quarters and slave singing gospel songs and singing scripture to each other to keep themselves encouraged through their struggles? There's no pop music either. Literature, there's no Dickens, no Milton, no Dante, which became the standard for Italian grammar, no Tolstoy. Tolstoy became the great influence on Gandhi. The last letter that Tolstoy wrote outside of his family was to Gandhi, and he became an inspiration to him as Gandhi led his nonviolent revolution. Let's talk about reform. Without Christianity, without the Jesus coming to earth, there's no John Newton who teamed together with William Wilberforce and tirelessly led the campaign to end the slave trade and the British kingdom. There's no Harriet Beecher Stowe and Lyman Beecher and the abolitionist to put an end to the slave to slavery in America. There's no Nelson Mandela, there's no Bishop Tutu, there's no Martin Luther King. The world without the influence of Jesus without Jesus coming would be unrecognizable. And that's just the big stuff. That's the history making stuff. But the funny thing is Jesus didn't do all that stuff fast. And he told us he wasn't going to be quick, right? He said it's going to be like yeast working its way through the dough. Slow and invisible. I mean, making dough rise by yeast slowest way possible. It's so much faster just to grab that dough and pull it up. Make it big. It's ugly and hideous and won't face good, but it's fast. And that kind of suits me. That's why I buy pre-made rolls. Sister Schubert's. But Jesus says it's going to be slow. Why is it so slow? Because he does it one hard at a time. One relationship at a time. One person at a time. And through that person becomes the relationship and through the relationship he changes the culture. I mean, Jesus, the first way he changes our relationships, think of marriage. Modern marriage, unrecognizable without Jesus. No more big of me, no more polygamy. Pretty funny when you look at the standards that the New Testament gets for an elder. It doesn't say you have to be a good husband. He just says husband of one wife. That's it. You have more than one. You're out. Polygamy. And then he peter says that men should be kind or otherwise as to the weaker ones. And women in the 21st century take umbrace to that. Who said we're weak? Okay, you're thinking about it too hard. All Peter's saying there is it's not okay to bully your wife. It's not okay to hit her. It's not okay to force her to do what you want. That's so obvious to you that you're like surely that's not what it means. It wasn't obvious back then. When the apostle Paul says that a husband should love his wife about shocking. Now that I know where. Marriage was business transaction. Intimacy came with the temple prostitutes. And the idea of one wife of monogamy of sexual purity was just foreign. Look at what was going on in the Corinthian church. And that was the church. And I thought it was okay. Better than what's going on out there.
It's changed marriage. It's changed all of our relationships. I didn't know this. I learned this this week. There was a rider. I've got her name written out somewhere. I'm looking for it. Hannah Arendt. Hannah Arendt was a German philosopher and psychologist. And she wrote a lot about human relationships. She was during World War II. She escaped Nazi Germany and she worked in refugee camps for a while and then got into the university. And she wrote this about relationships. She wrote about how relationships are impossible without forgiveness. And she was no friend of Christianity by far. And she said this. The discoverer of forgiveness and the realm of human affairs was Jesus of Nazareth. Is that funny? The forgiveness had to be discovered. And then she goes on to make to excuse herself. She says, Now the fact that he made this discovery in a religious context and articulated in religious language is no reason to take it any less seriously. Just because he's religious, we don't have to reject this one. We know that he believed in like crazy stuff. But this doctrine of forgiveness that no one else in the history of the world had talked about, that's important. And that's why Jesus taught us to say, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. He was the first person to teach that. That was not the rule. The rule is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. And if you don't believe it, go to the Old Testament and just start paying attention to what forgiveness looked like. One of the great examples is when David was being cast out of Jerusalem, this guy named Shemiah came in and salted him and hurled insults on him. And David's men wanted to go kill him. And he's like, no, no, no, no. God himself has cast me out. Well, I can take this. And then after the battle, and when David was coming back in, Shemiah comes, Oh, forgive me, forgive me. I don't know what I was saying. And David's just fine. You go stay on your farm. And it looks like he's forgiven him. Do you know what, David's last worst to saw him in the war? You don't let his gray hair go to the grave. You bring him down in blood. There's no forgiveness. The rule was to feature enemies. The greatest joy came from revenge. Ginghis Khan says this. The greatest joy for a man is to defeat his enemies, to drive them before him, to take from them all they possess, to see those they love and tears, to ride their horses, and to hold their wives and daughters in his arms. That's as good as it gets. And on the other side you have Jesus saying, forgive your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Pray for those who despitefully use you. The world would be unrecognizable without him. Marriage is unrecognizable. And then institutions become unrecognizable. There's a great story about coming out of the first great awakening when George Whitfield was preaching in the minds of Wales. And he said that he could see the tear mark. He says these strong rugged men with cold dust all over their face would begin to leap during this preaching of the gospel. He can see these white streaks coming down their faces. And what happened is more and more people got converted. The minds became less and less efficient. To the point that they almost shut down. And the reason was the mules weren't getting cursed at and hit as much. And these mules have been trained to only function under profanity and violence. And so as the people became Christian, the mules stopped. They had to retrain their mules. That's a silly but of example of how Christianity changes things. It's slow. It's person by person. And that's reason why sometimes as we grow older, it seems like things are working backwards, doesn't it? As we grow older, it seems like the world's getting worse. And I want to encourage this, not true. The reason it feels that way is because when you were young, you were dumb. And you're like, yay! Worlds! Great big Disneyland. And as you get older, you realize that everybody dies. And this world is broken. And you just begin to see it with adult eyes. But if you look at the long term picture, there is no question which direction we are trending. As a world, as a culture, no idea. I'm sorry. Slow down, Ricky. There is no question that the earth is trending toward justice and peace. There was a massive Harvard study gun in 2010. And the conclusion of it was that there were fewer deaths by violence. Fewer deaths by war, homicide. Fewer deaths worldwide by violence between 20 and 2010 than in any decade in human history. I mean, honestly, yes, there are a lot of people living in terrible poverty today. Would you rather be poor today or in the 1500s? There is no question. Would you rather be poor today when you get bothered by bill collectors? Or would you rather be thrown into debtors' prison and forced to be there until your children can work off your debt? There is no question. There is no question. The world is changing. Jesus coming into the world has changed everything. And the only question that brings up is has it changed you? Is it in the process of changing you? I have a friend who's a pastor and he threw this question out to a little list serve. And he overheard one of his members teaching a Sunday school class. And the Sunday school teacher said, you know, as I've grown in Christ, I sin less. And the guy just comes throughout the question, is that accurate? Is it accurate to say that as you grow in Christ, you sin less? Of course you sin less. Please tell me you sin less. You don't steal as much as you used to steal when you were a child. You don't lie as much as you used to lie. If you've been a Christian for 20 years, you are making progress. You're killing less people than you used to. If you're not, please see me in my office on Monday. But I wrote back and I said, that's really not the standard. That's not the old testament standard, maybe. But Jesus gave us a whole new standard. The question is, are you more generous now than you were 20 years ago? Are you more hopeful? Are you growing in hope? Are you less cynical? Are you more loving? Are you kinder? Please tell me you're kinder than you were when the Holy Spirit found you. Please tell me you're slower to anger. You're slower to criticize. You're faster to encourage. You're faster to apologize. There's no worse feeling in the world than a good apology. I had to... Bianca required one. She's put it that way the other last week. Apologize. I just sat there. I just sat there in my... Yes. That was bad. I should not have done that. Period. End of sentence. In the back of my mind is rolling this. We should sing a song called 10,000 Reasons. I've got a lot of reasons. I'm not going to say one of them. Just take it. Faster to do that. You used to never do that. Faster to serve. Jesus said... He said, you know what it's like out there among the unbelievers, the pagans? Man, they love their titles. I love to throw their titles around. You know, I'm a... I'm a lawyer. I'm a doctor. I'm a... I'm a... I'm a professor. I'm an elder. I'm a deacon. I love to throw those titles around. It's not going to be that way among you. If you want to be great in the church, make yourself small. If you want to be the greatest, make yourself the servant. For the son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. That's what it's going to be like among you. It's still that way, right? In the world, out there amongst the unbelievers, you mark greatness for how many employees you have, about how many people serve you, how many students, how many people are under you, in the kingdom of God? There's only one way to mount greatness, and that's how many people have you served? How many people have you served today? That's greatness in the kingdom of God. Are you moving like that? Is that becoming more natural to you to be a servant? Is it coming faster when you're sitting around a circle of people, and you're mentioning a job that any of you could do, and none of you wants to do? Are you faster to say, I'll take care of that? That's what it means to grow in the kingdom of God. That's what it means to see that Jesus has moved in and that He is making us like Him. We are less paralyzed by shame. We're no longer defined by the things that we have done or the things that have been done to us, and we are faster to claim our identity in Christ. And to show the world what Jesus is like, show the world. I'll stop down on the sidewalk earlier after the first sermon, and I said, you know, that's not convincing. No, that stuff is convincing to the atheist. If he was right, the only thing an atheist is interested in seeing is you. Did I see that Jesus has truly come to you? Because He made you different. That's where we start. That's why we begin every worship service with the invitation. Jesus, I know you want to come in. You've made it clear that you want to. We're going to open the door. Please pray with me. Father in heaven, we praise you for setting the table and for knocking on the door and promising that you would come and die in with us. Father, we open the door of our hearts, and invite you to come in and to make us look more like Jesus, more gracious, more generous, more hopeful, more joyful, kinder, more patient, more loving, more serving. And Father, we confess that we are not yet what we long to be, and we ask you that to not let us grow discouraged and do good, but to keep working, to knowing that you see every act and that our reward is waiting. And Jesus, precious name we pray. Amen.