Good morning, guys. It's good to be with you this morning. If we have not met... Oh, I like that you guys said good morning back. That's so nice. If we haven't met yet, I'm Diego, this is Joel. We get to serve on the pastoral team here. We're on the last week of our More Than You Think series today. Yeah. And it's been a great series, too. If you were here with us a couple of weeks ago, Pastor Ben Horseman kind of kicked the whole thing off, really with a verse from John, which is one of my favorites. Jesus says that He came so that we may have life and have it to the full. This life with Jesus is more than you think. Yeah. He also mentioned that God's forgiveness and grace is supposed to change the way that we now handle our relationships. Yeah. Shapes it. I thought that was so great. That is good. And then last week, Pastor Kimberly, she talked about how Jesus is the greatest of all time. He's the GOAT. Which I just love. Yeah. And because of how great He is, we should depend on Him. Yeah. And then also serve like Him in the humble, with great compassion for other people. Yeah. So this weekend, we are wrapping up this More Than You Think series, and it's such a sad. Here we are, the last weekend in July. Oh, my gosh. And sooner rather than later, summer itself will be wrapping up as well. Don't say that, Joel. Don't say it. I am one of those people that my heart just breaks at the thought of summer ending. I know there's a lot of us in here. School's going to start, the daylight's going to go away. I'm a young parent with a toddler, and it means the splash pads are closing. I am not okay. You need to pray for me also because it's going to be tough. But I also know that there are some of you here who are not like me, and you cannot wait for the heat to go away, the leaves to change, for the snow to show up. So, I think we should just air all this out. Let's talk about it with each other. Turn to each other. What's your favorite season and why? Okay, Becca, I think I know your answer. Yeah. But what's your favorite season? Well, I don't think there's four seasons, right? That's fair. So, I like the season where you don't have to have the air or heat on because I like to be cold. Cold, yeah. And also, I don't like an AC bill. There you go. Yeah. There's a couple of times- Yes ... where you can just open the windows and just, yeah. And you may get a couple extra spurts of it. Yeah. So, you just never know when you're going to get that treat. Yeah. But we're actually about to head into your favorite season- My- ... and it's not technically fall. My favorite season is college football season. So that's about to start. We're a little over a month away, and I cannot wait. It's a little bit of fall easing into the winter months there, but that's mine. So, yeah. And it's really just extending throughout the week now. That's right. That's right. Well, what's yours? Turn to your neighbor who you're watching with, and can't wait to see where these guys are going. Glad you guys are here. All right. So, my answer is I am a summer boy through and through, like I said. I am from Florida. I was born in a tropical climate, so the heat is like my home. It's nostalgic. I think of the beach. If I close my eyes really hard, I'm at the beach. And also, I'm going to sound crazy for saying this, Joel, but I don't mind just a mild sweat all the time. Constantly? Yeah. It makes me feel like I'm alive. Oh, man. I feel like I'm in. I am the exact opposite. When somebody asks me what's my favorite part of summer, my typical answer is, "The end." Yeah. I am a winter guy. Give me the peace in the air when there's snow on the ground or just that cool, crisp intake in my lungs when I walk outside. There's absolutely nobody at the stream when I go fishing. Give me that every single day. Okay. So, I will say, I love summer, but when August comes around, I am kind of ready for the heat wave to be done. And I think all of us, we have our favorite season, but we still get very excited when that next season's about to change. There's almost a longing for it. Like, oh, the leaves are about to change, the cool air is about to come in. Oh, Christmas festivities are going to start. Oh, the cold's going to go away, and the sun's going to come up. The splash pads are going to open up again. So, we all have that. Yeah, and I think sometimes we probably can get caught up in looking to the future and being like, "Oh, man, things are going to be better when these..." But it's not just the seasons of weather- Right ... is it? There's seasons of life where we can do that as well. I know you have a two-year-old son, and I know that you and Madeline probably feel a little like, "Oh, man, the constant supervision is just exhausting. I can't wait until he can just tell me what he wants or swim in the pool by himself." Or cook dinner for us. Cook dinner for us. That's right. Yeah. I'm in this season of life right now. I have a 10-year-old, a 13-year-old, and a 15-year-old, and I'm looking at the family calendar, and it is marching band and competitions and soccer and gymnastics and friends' houses and youth groups. I'm pretty sure I put about 50,000 miles on my truck every month. And I'm looking forward to when there's another driver- ... that can help get everybody to where they need to go every week. Yeah. Or maybe you might be single, and all of your friends right now are getting married, and they're having families, and you're thinking, "Life will be so much better when I get to experience that." Or maybe you're an empty nester, and you're used to having kids all in the house, and now they're all gone, and you're just waiting for the grandkids to show up again. Waiting, hoping that life will be so much better then. Yeah, I think every one of us, at one point or another, is looking to the future and hoping that it will be better. There's almost this longing that we have for something different, something- More. Yeah. And I would say, Joel, to take it a step further, it goes past just a milestone or a season of life. It is this thing that is actually way deeper than that. Ecclesiastes says that God has set eternity on the human heart. So there is a longing and understanding in all of our hearts for something more. That's what this series has been about, that Jesus came to fulfill those longings. Yeah, and I love that because if God truly has planted eternity in our hearts, then that means that we were made for eternity. We were made- Yeah ... for more. And that might even help kind of explain this longing that we have. Yeah. And so, what we're going to do today is we're going to open up God's word and we're going to see what it tells us. And so, whether you're here in this room or you're joining us online or you're at one of our sites at Grants Trail or Fenton or Mid Rivers, hello to all of my friends that are at all of those sites. We're so glad that you're here. But just to say this out loud, whether you have been following Jesus for a really long time, or this is the first time that you've been to church, we believe that this book, the Bible, really is the word of God, and he still speaks to us today through his word. Yeah. Right. So Diego, would you pray for us? And then let's jump in. Yeah, I'd love to. Father, we are incredibly grateful, Lord, to be able to gather together in this way with each other, and God for your word. The fact that you still speak to us is a blessing, Lord. So I ask that you would, that you would speak through us, that you would speak to us. Reveal something to us, God, and help us grasp onto something that we can now use in our life. We're grateful for you, for your love, for your patience, your kindness towards us. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. All right, so if you have your Bibles with you, you can go ahead and turn to the Gospel of Matthew. It's the first book in the New Testament. And while you're getting there, one of the things that we hope to do today is to give you just some really good handles that you can hang on to, to read scripture well. Mm-hmm. And so don't be surprised if we take a detour or two to really kind of help us understand what scripture's saying, because in turn, that will help us better understand how we can apply it to our lives. Right. So if you're at the Book of Matthew, we're going to start reading in chapter 9, which is the big, bold number, and verse 9, which is the smaller number. And we'll have it on the screens in case you don't have a Bible. But it says, "As Jesus went from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector's booth. 'Follow me,' he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, 'Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?' On hearing this, Jesus said, 'It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means. I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.'" Mm-hmm. So one of the things that we want you to know in order to read scripture well is, don't be afraid to ask questions. And there's plenty of them here. So let's just start with a basic one, Diego. Yeah. Who is Matthew? Yeah. Great question to start with. So according to scripture, we see that he is one of the 12 apostles of Jesus. That's in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It's found in there. It's also found in the Book of Acts. And from this story that we just read, he is also a tax collector. So we know that about him. Now, speaking of this story, if you've read through scripture, you might notice that in two other Gospels, Mark and Luke, this same story shows up. But Matthew's name isn't Matthew, it's Levi. Now, when I first read this, I was like, "Oh, no! What's happening? Not good." But it's okay. There are plenty of reasons for why this actually is okay. For example, all the time during this period of time, businesses, they would cross over lingual lines. So they would be speaking different languages in different cultures. And so it'd be very common for people to have different names depending on the culture. So the Paul that we know from scripture, his Hebrew name was Saul, his Greek name was Paul. And so it could've been very likely that Matthew, his Hebrew name was Levi and his Greek name was Matthew. But on top of that, there's also moments in scripture where we see people having an encounter with God, and he changes their name. Mm-hmm. So Abram goes to Abraham, and Sarai goes to Sarah, and Simon goes to Peter. It's very likely that that could've been the case for Matthew as well. So all the evidence points to Matthew and Levi being the same person, that being the same story, him being an apostle and a tax collector. Joel, tell us about the tax collector piece. That could be another question, right? Yeah, right. Yeah. So, what I'm about to say pertains to tax collectors in the ancient Near East. I am not talking about IRS agents in today's world. If you're out there, we're good. Yeah. Okay? Yeah. No hard feelings. Tax collectors were employed by the government, in this case it was Rome, to collect taxes for that government. Mm-hmm. Now, Matthew was a Jewish man who was collecting taxes from his Jewish people in order to keep a despised ruler happy and an oppressive empire going. Not the best way to make friends. And so, in fact Many of the Jewish people detested these tax collectors. They weren't allowed to be witnesses in a court case, and in many times, they were excommunicated from the synagogue. Mm. So Matthew and these other tax collectors that were at this dinner were not the most popular people in town. Yeah. And they're not the only ones either, because it also tells us that there's sinners that are there. Who are they? Yeah. Why are they there? Yeah. So, when we say sinners or hear that word now, we just think of someone who sins against God, which last I checked, is all of us, right? But in the New Testament, it was actually a social category. So sinners could've referred to people who were just non-Jewish in a broad sense. It could've been Jewish people who didn't observe the law, or it could've been people who just were living an outright immoral life. Any one of those groups could have been present at dinner with Jesus. Now, why they were there, it could've been that Jesus simply just personally invited them, or it could have been that Matthew did, or a combination of both. I know for me, if I heard Jesus was having dinner somewhere, I'm going. Right? I'm going to be there. It could've been that as well. And regardless, that kind of situation happening, that dinner was causing all kinds of attention. Sinners were hearing about it. People who needed Jesus were showing up and being there. But also, another group heard about this, too, and that was the Pharisees. They were present in this story as well. Joel, tell us about the Pharisees. Tell us about that. Yeah. Well, and they kind of had a problem with this. Yeah. Because rabbis and teachers and religious leaders at the time were supposed to distance themselves from those type of people. And here, Jesus is causing all kinds of commotion. Right. Now, the Pharisees were really the top religious leaders of the day, and they took their devotion to God very seriously. They did everything they could to follow the laws and the commands that God has in Torah. And so, in fact, they took it so seriously that they started setting up extra guardrails in order to not break one of the laws. For example, the Ten Commandments says that you can't work on the Sabbath. Well, that's great. But what does that mean? Who defines work? And so the Pharisees came up with a whole bunch of things that were considered work, and pretty soon, you couldn't even put out a fire on the Sabbath because it was considered work. But that's how seriously that they- Yeah ... they took this. That's right. And as far as why they were there, well, you can just look throughout scripture to see many moments when the Pharisees were following Jesus, and it wasn't for good reasons, but they usually were there to try to trap him, to catch him, to make other people see he's not the Messiah. He's not who you think he is. And so for Jesus to be a rabbi, a teacher, sitting with sinners, that was the perfect opportunity for them to show up and say, "Look. He's not supposed to be doing that." Mm-hmm. "He's not supposed to be doing that." And so they try. They show up, and they make an attempt. And then Jesus' response is so interesting. Yeah. Right? He says, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." Yeah. That's, yeah. And tells them to go learn what it means. And so I think this is another handle- Mm-hmm ... that we can have as we hold on and try to read scripture well, because in just about all of your Bibles, next to this verse, there'll be a little letter s- right next to it. And so you can see it here, there's a little letter A. Pay attention to that, because it's telling you something. So what we want to do then is find that little letter A somewhere else on the page. For some of your Bibles, there's a column in the middle that'll have some of this. Here, it's kind of down at the bottom. And you see right there, there's another scripture reference, Hosea 6:6, which means that Jesus is quoting Hosea 6:6 in this instance. And one of the things that all of us can do is turn to Hosea and read what it says. And Hosea 6:6 says, "For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings." So, there it is. Any questions? Is that helpful? Are we good? What does it tell us? Well, first of all, it tells us that Jesus knew the Old Testament, and he assumes that the people that he's talking to know it as well. Mm-hmm. And honestly, that's kind of a safe assumption. Historians will tell us that when Jewish people heard a line like that, they didn't just hear the line. They would recall the story or the book that it came from. And these Pharisees that Jesus is directly talking to, many scholars say that it's possible they had the entire Old Testament memorized. And so when Jesus says, "For I desire mercy, not sacrifice," they immediately would've been able to recall the entire story of Hosea. Yeah. Now, that might sound impressive, but honestly, don't be that impressed because I think, honestly, you all could do the same exact thing. So, we're going to do that right now. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to play a soundbite, and you're going to tell us where it's from. Okay? So let's do the first one. To infinity and beyond! Where's it from? "Toy Story." "Toy Story." Buzz Lightyear. Come on, that was a great start. Yeah. Really good. If you had a kid or if you were a kid or had a kid who had a kid or you just love this movie, you know where this is from. Whole movie downloaded just from one quote. That's right. That's right. Go ahead. Next one. Yeah. Next one. On Wednesdays, we wear pink. "Girls." I heard it. I knew you guys were going to have my back on this one. You at the sides, you were shouting it out. Here's the deal. Girl dads in the room, it's okay to admit that you know exactly where that movie came from. And these "old movies," I'm putting it in quotes because a lot of them came out when I was growing up, they're all making a comeback, and this is one of them. It's from "Mean Girls." All right, let's do the last one. Yeah. No, I am your father. "Star Wars." "Star Wars," yeah. Listen, I know there are some of you here who, you heard that, and you didn't just download "Empire Strikes Back," you downloaded "A New Hope" and "Return of the Jedi," maybe even all the other 15 billion Star Wars movies. And obviously, I'm one of those people. But look at that, just one quote and you've got three whole movies already in your head as to how the whole story goes. Yeah. And that's really the point, right? Right. All you had to do was hear one line and the entire movie downloaded into your minds, and it was the same way for them back then, too. Right. All they heard was, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice," and the entire story of Hosea would've downloaded in their minds. Now, the question becomes, well, why is that important? So let's take one of those detours here for a minute now. Because Hosea was a prophet, and a prophet wasn't really a job that you wanted to sign up for. They had some really tough assignments. They were supposed to vividly demonstrate God's message to His people, and sometimes that meant living these things out, and that was the case for Hosea. Hosea's assignment was to marry a prostitute, and this is the kind of woman, Derek Kidner, one scholar, he says that she was a shallow, mercenary woman, the kind that might walk out on him the moment that it suited her. And so the overall message of Hosea is fairly easy to grasp. Although God and His people were supposed to be enjoying this intimate, loving, covenant relationship, God's people were treating Him as a prostitute would treat her husband, betraying Him at every step and not even really caring about the pain and the heartache that they were causing. And Hosea is about to live this out. He's about to feel all of the things, from sadness and anger to frustration and heartache and pain, but also forgiveness and mercy and redemption. You see, at one point in the story, Hosea's wife leaves him completely, and she is with somebody else, and this is blatant betrayal. She's not even trying to hide it at this point. And God tells Hosea, "Go find her, show her love, and bring her back." So when Jesus quotes this line, "I desire mercy," some people think that this is the whole point of the message. The word in Hebrew for mercy is hesed, and it's a notoriously hard word to translate, but it's in our Old Testament some 250 times. And depending on the context, it's translated as mercy, faithfulness, love, kindness, goodness, loyal love, steadfast love, loving, kind. You kind of see all that there. But in Hosea, it's typically coupled with another Hebrew phrase, "da'ath Elohim," which is the knowledge of God. In other words, these two go hand-in-hand, and I think that's something that the Israelites were missing. And honestly, I think it's one of the things that the- Yeah ... Pharisees were missing in our story here. Mm-hmm. To truly know God is to practice hesed. They go hand-in-hand. Have you ever seen true hesed in action? Some of you have. I have. The word practically defines my wife. Throughout her life, she has had friendships that for me, I'd have been out. The things that were said, the way things that were handled, I'd have said bye-bye a long time ago. But she didn't. She sticks with them. And when I ask her, "Why do you still bother with them?" And she'll say, "Well, I can't just leave them. I can't just give up on them." And it took me a while, but eventually, I saw why. Even though it was painful, even though it was messy and caused stress and frustration, because she stuck with that person and didn't give up on that relationship, I saw these friendships heal and be redeemed in a way that I didn't even think was possible. And when you see that, maybe you've been on the receiving end of that, you don't forget it because that's something else that we long for, this unconditional, unshakable, always there for you no matter what. It's hesed, and that's something that we should strive for. When we hear that and we think about the story of Hosea, and we put ourselves in his shoes, it can be very inspiring. Yes, it might be a tough go. God might be calling you to do something that you'd rather not do, but like Hosea, I'm going to do it because I'm following Him. And that's good, and we should strive for that. However, I think the message of Hosea is the exact opposite. Yeah. Here's the hard truth about you and about me We are not Hosea in the story. Right. We are the betrayers. We are the deserters. We are the ones that are going to walk out on Him the minute that it suits us. And yet, God still pursues you. How much does He love us anyway? Through the messes that we create ourselves or the storms that we never asked for, God enters in, promises to never leave, and if we allow Him, begins to heal and redeem. Now, I know that there are some of you who are in the middle of something right now that you can't see the way out of. Some of you are in the fight of your life and you're wondering where God is. Maybe you just came out of that season, or you see it on the horizon and it is coming quick. Something that we can learn from Hosea is that God's love, God's hesed, always pursues you and never fails. So right now, let's just take a moment and let that truth settle in. Some of you might want to sing this song, and we'll have the lyrics up. Others of you are going to find it difficult to get the words out because things are still so fresh, and that's okay. But let's just take a moment and let this truth settle into the deep parts of our soul. He is jealous for me. He loves like a hurricane. I am a tree bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy. When all of a sudden, I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory. And I realize just how beautiful You are and how great Your affections are for me. And oh, how He loves us so. Oh, how He loves us. How He loves us so. He is jealous for me. He loves like a hurricane. And I am a tree bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy. When all of a sudden, I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory. And I realize just how beautiful You are and how great Your affections are for me. And oh, how He loves us so. Oh, how He loves us. How He loves us so. Oh, He loves us. Oh, how He loves us. Oh, how He loves us. Oh, how He loves. He loves us. Oh, how He loves us. Oh, how He loves us. Oh, how He loves. Amen. I hope that you cling onto those words in good and in hard times, that God's love truly never fails. His hesed never fails. It's always steady, always chasing after you. Yeah. And just to kind of connect a couple of the dots here, we do believe that the Old Testament is anticipating and pointing to Jesus. Right. Yeah. And so I told you that Hosea's, at one point, his wife has left, and God told him to go find her, show her love, and bring her back. Well, he does, but when he finds her, he has to pay a price. Even though she was the one that betrayed him, she was the one that broke the covenant, Hosea, acting out the hesed of God, pays the price to bring her back. Mm-hmm. This whole story is pointing to Jesus, and the Pharisees don't see it. Mm-hmm. But I believe that Jesus wants them to. You see, when He says, "Go and learn what this means," I don't think He's trying to pick a fight. I don't think He's trying to start- Yeah ... a theological debate. I truly believe that He is inviting even the Pharisees to see Him for who He truly is and to know Him more. Right. But they're reluctant Now, if the Pharisees are reluctant about Jesus, Diego, Matthew certainly wasn't. No. I mean- Yeah. Immediately ... talk to us about that because it was like an- Yeah ... immediate, "Come follow me," and he was quick. Yeah. It's almost like you have to ask the question why? Why did we just see him just get up like nothing? And I think if we take this story and we just look at it at face value, if we just read it normally as is, well, it's easy to just move past that question like, "I don't know. The text doesn't say it." But we're talking about how to read scripture well and what handles we can grab onto for that. So Joel, you gave us context on Hosea 6. I think we should get some context on Matthew 9. Now, we're not going to go that far back. We're just going to go a little far back. So, Genesis 1:1 is where we're going to start. Just kidding. A little Bible joke. No. We're going to be in Matthew 5, and I want to show you guys just how the story unfolds from Matthew 5 to 9, and how that's going to give us a better picture of this. So, I'm going to go quick, but keep up with me. All right? So Matthew 5 to 7 contains Jesus' sermon on the mount, and it is this powerful sermon that he gives, and I would say, if you haven't read it, please read it. It's amazing. And the crowds reacted that way, too. At the very end of that sermon, we see that the crowds were amazed at his teaching because he spoke with a different kind of authority. And then right after that sermon finishes, is we get into chapter eight, and in chapter eight, we see these instances of Jesus just doing so much. I mean, he gets off the mountain and he heals a leper, and then he goes and heals a Roman centurion's servant. He heals Peter's mother-in-law. He goes on to heal many more on that same evening. And then if that wasn't enough, he goes into a boat, takes a nap in the middle of a hurricane, gets out, and just calms the storm like it's nothing. After that, he gets to the other side of the lake, and then he heals two demon-possessed men, and that brings us over to chapter nine, where Jesus gets on a new boat to a new city, gets there, and it says the first thing he does is he forgives the sins of a paralyzed man. Now, this is a big deal for a lot of reasons, but particularly because up until this point, only Yahweh had the power and authority to forgive sins. Mm-hmm. So when Jesus does it, he is making a statement. And so he does it. He heals this man, and he forgives his sins. We read, the man gets up and walks, and the crowds were terrified. They were afraid, but they gave God glory because he saw that he had given such authority to man. And then right after that, this is what we read. "After Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting in a tax booth." So could it be, by the way that this is written, that maybe Matthew witnessed this with his own eyes? He was right there. He saw Jesus heal this man and then forgive his sins, and you have to wonder what was going through his own mind when he saw that happen. Like, "Oh, my gosh. He can forgive sins. Is there hope for me? Do I have a chance?" Mm-hmm. Imagine that longing that he felt. Does that feel relatable at all? I wonder if we didn't feel that way when we were in the tax booth of our lives and Jesus got introduced to us. And so when this happens, Matthew absolutely has to decide to go. Now, I know you probably didn't expect to become an expert on Matthew today. I know it was a lot, but I think that's kind of Matthew's point in his gospel. If you're reading this, it does feel like a lot. You see Jesus doing a lot. He's speaking with transformational words. He is healing. He is ruling over the wind and the water. He is forgiving sins, and all of that, I think, brings us to this question and how Matthew is answering it. If Jesus is more than any old rabbi, he speaks with God's words. He has his authority and his power and his forgiveness. So why would he be so quick to follow him? Because of those reasons. See, the thing is, Matthew understood that this is who he was signing up to follow. He just had to say yes immediately to Jesus. Now, here's the thing. A lot of us, we might say, "Well, if I was Matthew, I would say yes, too. It's Jesus. It'd be an easy yes for me, no problem." But I think that a lot of us, sometimes, we treat Jesus' invitation like an invitation to a dinner party or a conference or a retreat where we say, "Yes, we're in," but we know we're going to get to go back home afterwards. We know there's an end date. We know that the comfort of our own bed is waiting for us, and it's going to end at some point. And the challenge for us is that we want to have one foot in each world. We want to be close to Jesus to experience his blessing, but we also want a foot where it's comfortable in case Jesus starts asking us to do things that are uncomfortable. Mm-hmm. And then we can go back to what's easy. And Matthew understood that when he said yes to Jesus, he was leaving something behind. That's what makes his response so remarkable. You see, Jesus isn't inviting us to just add him to our lives. He is inviting us to an entirely new life. And imagine that life for a second is this dresser. Okay? And in this dresser, there are drawers, and imagine these drawers are the things about your life that are just incredibly important to you. So it could be family, friends, work, exercise, hobbies. You might add exercise in here again if you're like a gym bro or something like that. But regardless, these are the things that matter to you, and then at some point, maybe you give your life over to Jesus, commit to following him, and he gets added in, and he goes straight to the top, to the tippy top of your life. And you and him are tight. In youth ministry, we talk about summer camp and how sometimes our students would get this camp high, like, "Oh, camp is so great. I love Jesus. I'm so in." And I think we get that sometimes, too. But then what happens is life just does its thing. Things get in the way, schedules get crazy, and all of a sudden Jesus starts falling down the stack a little bit. He might end up in the middle, maybe even at the very bottom of the list. And we've just chosen now to follow him from a distance. See, this is what happens when we get to decide how our life looks like. And the thing is, I will say that I want Jesus to be my priority most often than not. I think a lot of us would say that. But if, again, we get to choose, well, it's based off circumstance. It's based off availability. It puts Jesus in a corner on our little kitchen table in the living room that has our Bible on it, and that's it. And the truth is, that invitation is more than that. See, we need to come to a point where we accept that Jesus is not simply a drawer in the dresser, but that he becomes the dresser. Mm. And now every single part of our life is fully surrendered to him. The invitation isn't to make Jesus just your priority, but to surrender every part of your life to him, to make him the center of your life. And that means every outcome, every possibility is now given completely over to him. So, if it's your work life, well, that's completely surrendered over to Jesus. It means that now you no longer pursue maybe success and wealth and status and find purpose in that, but you find purpose in Jesus and who he is and what he's called you to. You no longer participate in office gossip. You deal with people honestly, in maybe in a not so honest environment. You don't sacrifice your values because you're surrendered to Jesus at work. And if it's your family, well, if you're a parent, maybe it means you let go of control of your family's future and give it over to him. See what he wants to do with it. And if you're a child, this is just the youth pastor coming out in me, trust your parents. Open up to them. Don't go through everything on your own. And regardless of what role you have in your family, you live with patience and kindness and humility and forgiveness, and that is now an example of Christ's character showing up in your life to your parents, your siblings, your grandparents, your aunts and uncles, your children, your spouse, everybody. If it's your friends, well, now you choose people that bring you closer to him and not further away. And the people that you do choose, you have great compassion for them, you care for them, you stand up for them. You care for people in a different way. You become more inclusive and less judgmental. You don't participate in gossip either. Here's a biggie. You start opening up. And you become the one to rely on other people, and not always be the person who is helping everybody else. How you think about yourself, how you treat yourself, that can change. You might desire to now live a whole, fulfilled life. You seek out opportunities to grow. You ask for help when life is hard. Your confidence, it comes from being a child of God. You believe in his opinion more than everybody else's. If there's things that you're longing for in this life that maybe God hasn't given you yet, you hold onto him as your strength, day after day after day. It's a daily surrender. Your hobbies might change. Your interests might change. All of this, your whole life is now his, and this is what Paul is talking about in Colossians when he says, "For you have died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God." Mm. So now I know that a lot of this is a lot easier said than done. And I know you might be thinking, "Diego, it's so easy for you to say this stuff, and it's great and all, but that is really difficult." And I will just tell you, with love, I don't think surrender is meant to be an easy thing. Mm. Because you are leaving something behind. Because you are trusting in a future that you do not see. But what I can tell you is that Matthew, when he said yes to Jesus, he had no idea where Jesus was going to take him. He didn't know what his life was going to look like. He just knew he had to be close to him because maybe he had seen what he had just done for that man, and he just said, "I have to be with this guy." He knew that what Jesus could do with our life is way better than what we could do with it ourselves. Yeah, and I love this picture because it really is, this is a picture of a surrendered life. And if you're anything like me, I've done this. I have surrendered my life to Jesus. I went public through baptism, and I know many of you have done the same thing. But sometimes I still find myself, you know what, Jesus, this drawer, I got it. This one's mine. You can have all of those, but don't worry about this one because I'll take care of it. Mm. And if this is you, at least for me, the messes that I create in my life usually start right here. So the invitation is the same- Yeah ... to surrender even the parts that you're hiding from Jesus and keeping secret from everybody else. It is the invitation to surrender even that to him. So I don't know where you're at with Jesus. I don't know where you're at on your journey with him. Whether you are an outcast like Matthew, reluctant like the Pharisees, or a sinner like the rest of us, Jesus is inviting you to know him more, and it's so much more than an invitation to a dinner party. This is an invitation to a completely different life. A life where we find hope in the heartache, and promise in the pain, and mercy in the mess. It's a life that is being redeemed and restored, and one day there will be no evil and all of the wrongs will be made right. This is the life that Jesus is inviting you to. It's the life that we long for, and it's the life that we were made for. Yeah. So as you go now here, and you go throughout your week, may these words ring in your ears just like they did for Matthew, because Jesus is saying to you, "Follow me." Mm-hmm. We'll see you guys next week.