A Head-On Collision with Religion

0:43 Good morning to you. Turn in your Bibles, please, to the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 2. The Gospel of Mark, Chapter 2. So from time to time I do this. How many of you actually have a Bible with you? Hold that up. Okay, so that's a lot of people with Bibles. And I think that's a good thing. If you didn't bring one, the guy who just clapped up here will give you his. No, I'm just kidding.

1:12 There is one in the pocket seat in front of you, somewhere around or underneath. There should be a Bible to follow along with. here's why I think it's good to have an actual analog Bible rather than a digital Bible like your phone or iPad. Here's why. It's okay if you have one. No shame, no shade, no condemnation. But when you have a Bible, that's all you have. You have no distractions. You can't get a text message on it. You can't get an email on it. The only text message you get is from heaven. You get the pure Word of God, and that's all you get. And that's why it's good from time to time to just get rid of every other device and focus in on the analog Bible, the real Bible. So if you don't have one, you may want to think about getting one or share with the person next to you or use that Bible that is somewhere close to you in your vicinity.

2:09 But we're in Mark chapter 2, and in a moment, we're going to be reading verse 18 down to verse 22. But let me tell you about Bubba. Bubba was from Alabama. And Bubba was a good old boy. And Bubba was a good old Southern Baptist boy. But from time to time, Bubba liked to sneak off to the racetrack and bet on horses. And one day when he was at the horse track, he noticed a priest stepping onto the racetrack and blessed the forehead of a horse. Anointed it, blessed it. And Bubba knew that horse and knew that horse didn't have a chance of winning at all. It was a long shot that it could ever get very far. But that horse won the race.

3:05 So that got Bubba's attention. And the very next race, the priest walked out on the track again and blessed a different horse. And Baba thought, okay, I'm going to bet on that horse. And he did. And he won. And this made Baba really happy. And this continued all day long. So Baba's making money hand over fist. the very last race of the day the priest walks out onto the track stands in front of a horse and anoints blesses the forehead the ears the eyes and the hooves of the horse so baba decides i'm going to put everything i have on that horse so he goes to the ATM gets all the money out of his accounts, bets it all on that one horse. And what ended up happening is the horse lost the race. In fact, came in dead last. Well, Baba was very upset because he's just lost everything. He walked and found the priest and he said, what happened? All day long, you've been blessing horses and I've been betting on them and I was winning. And now I bet on this horse that you bless all these different ways. And I lost my entire life savings because of you. And the priest smiled and he said, that's the problem with you Protestants.

4:35 You can't tell the difference between a simple blessing and the last rites. like Bubba, some people bet everything on a religion, a tradition, a heritage, a system that they have trusted in, that they have grown up in, that is familiar to them. They bet everything on it, and they lose. there are about 10,000 different religions worldwide. That's quite a figure, 10,000 religions worldwide. 85% of all people on the earth claim to be religious, attached to one of those 10,000 different religions. They identify with it. Of course, there are the big contenders, the big categories of religion. That would be Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism, and Sikhism. Those are the big seven religious affiliations. Under the umbrella of just Christianity, there are several subcategories. It's a very broad category. Not everybody in that category is, I believe, a genuine Christian, but there are different ideas and systems of belief within Christianity or Christendom. In fact, there are 34,000 different Christian denominations. Now, I'm guessing that most of you, most of us, most evangelicals shy away from the word religious. We don't like to be termed as religious. I know I don't. When people say, oh, you're a religious figure. I say, I'm as far away from a religious figure as you can get.

6:35 We, rather than calling it religion, we like to focus on the relationship part, right? The personal relationship. No, it's not religion. I have a personal relationship with God. We want the authentic thing. We want the real thing. And when I'm talking here about religion, I am speaking of rules without reason. Rules without reason. That is rules without biblical reason. It's saying things like, well, we do this because we've always done this. Yeah, but what does the Bible say about that? Well, I don't know, but this is just what we've always done. Rules without reason. So religion is rules without reason, programs without purpose, systems without substance form without function. Or to put it in Jesus' words, a wineskin without wine.

7:33 Religion is man looking for God. The gospel is God looking for us. religion originates on earth the gospel comes from heaven religion may have good views the gospel is good news for every sinner who believes now we're going to be looking at mark chapter 2 in verse 18, it says, the disciples of John, the disciples of John and of the Pharisees were fasting. They were withholding food from themselves. Then they came and they said to him, him being Christ, why do the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast. Jesus said to them, can the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment or else the new piece pulls away from the old and the tear is made worse and no one puts new wine into old wineskins or else the new wine bursts and the wineskins burst the wineskins the wine is spilled and the wineskins are ruined, but new wine must be put into new wineskins. Two groups come to Christ, two groups, two religious groups. Now I have discovered that religious people are the hardest people to share the gospel with. And here's why. They don't need anything. They think, I've got religion. I don't need. That's not for me. That's why I sometimes prefer a garden variety

9:46 pagan. Somebody who just knows I don't have God. Or somebody who's morally bankrupt but honest. They just admit it. No, I'm so far away from that gospel you just preached. But religious people are hard to reach because they don't see their need for Christ. and religion can become a mask that is worn by the hypocrite, a thin veneer that covers up all sorts of stuff. Let me tell you about two friends that I had in high school. One was named Richard, one was named Raymond. Richard was the guy your parents told you about, warned you about. And everything they warned you about him was true. He was bad news. He was bad news from the get-go. He was a liar. He was a manipulator. He was a thief. He was a troublemaker.

10:45 Richard had sinner written all over him. I mean, most people who spent any amount of time with Richard just at the beginning knew. But then there was Raymond. Raymond was different. Raymond was the all-American kid. Raymond was the guy you would want your daughter to marry, you think. He was at church every Sunday. He had this warm, broad, winsome smile. He was very polite. Yes, sir, no, sir, yes, ma'am, no, ma'am. But he was an actor. I mean, he was a literal actor. He was in drama club. And he was a good actor. But he was not just an actor in drama club. He was an actor in life. He played the good guy so well. But I knew him. Underneath that clever, shiny veneer was a wretch. Two very different people. Here we have two religious groups that confront Jesus about an issue, the issue of fasting. It is a collision. Eventually, there will be a head-on collision between this religious system and Jesus himself until they manage to see him eliminated.

12:07 If I were to describe the story that we just read in three words, these are the three words I would pick. Fasting, feasting, festering. The question they have is about fasting. Jesus gives an explanation as to why he and his disciples are feasting. But there's a festering issue going on underneath the surface. the core issue, the real issue that Jesus gets to. So we're going to look at it in three sections. First of all, the question they bring to him, a religious question. Verse 18, the disciples of John, I'll get to them in a minute, and of the Pharisees were fasting. They came to him and they said, why do the disciples of John, that is us, and the Pharisees, that also is us, fast, but your disciples do not fast. Okay. This story follows the previous story. The previous story is Jesus calling Matthew to be one of his disciples and Matthew inviting Jesus and all the bad publicans and sinners, tax collectors, riffraff, to his house for a party, right? And it was at that party that the Pharisees followed along, stood outside, and were bad-mouthing the disciples for Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners. So they see Jesus having a feast, partying, laughing it up, inviting people to follow him. And many did follow him and believe in him. And these two groups saying, well, we fast. Why don't your guys fast? These are the religious elite. And they're coming to a very, very important understanding about Jesus. And it's simply this, Jesus will not dance to their tune. In fact, not only will he not dance to their tune, Jesus' message is completely incompatible with their religious system. And to try to mix them is like trying to mix oil and

14:20 water, vastly different. So they have a question about fasting. It sounds pretty reasonable, right? We do it. How come you don't do it? Now, this is not a question of inquiry. This is an accusatory question. It's a rhetorical question. It is meant to put down, we do it, you don't do it. Let me tell you a little bit about what's going on here. In Judaism, there were three things that were practiced that were considered sort of the bar, the measurement of true spirituality. Three exercises every spiritual person did. Number one, prayer. Number two, almsgiving, giving alms, giving money to the poor. And the third was fasting. So prayer, almsgiving, and fasting. Those were expressions of devotion. But here's the thing. All three of those disciplines, they practice publicly rather than privately. And that's a problem. It is such a problem that Jesus has already addressed that problem in the Sermon on the Mount. He addressed all three of those.

15:36 He said, first, when you pray, don't be like the hypocrites who stand in the synagogue and on the street corners to be seen by men. For I tell you, they already have their reward. What is their reward? To be seen by men. And then he said, when you do a charitable deed, this is almsgiving, don't sound a trumpet like the hypocrite. In fact, don't even let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. And then he addressed the third. When you fast, do not be like the hypocrites with a sad countenance and they disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting. They already have their reward. Here's what he was addressing. When they fasted, they tried to look miserable. They not only did it publicly, but they would put ashes or white powder on their faces so their faces looked pale and sickly. And they put on old tattered clothes and they went in public so people would go, wow, that dude is spiritual.

16:52 I mean, look how ugly he is. Look how miserable he looks. He must be devoted to God. Verily, they have their reward, Jesus said. Now, let me tell you a little more about fasting. Did you know that fasting was required in the Old Testament only once a year, one day a year? and that is the day of atonement, Yom Kippur, Leviticus 16. One day a year, God said, for the case of national repentance, you shall afflict your souls. And they interpreted afflict your souls as to mean withholding food, fasting. So one day a year was the only day God mandated a fast in the Old Testament. But by the time of Jesus Christ, the Pharisees decreed that fasting should be done not once a year, but twice a week. Twice a week. Mondays, Thursdays, second day, and fifth day, which happened to be, by the way, the market days when people would go to the market. So on Mondays and on Thursdays, if they went outside into the streets, those are the market days, they're going to have a big audience. There's going to be more people to notice how awesome they are and how miserable they look because they are fasting. In fact, do you remember the story Jesus told about this? He told about two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, one a tax collector. And the Pharisee prayed thus with himself. And he said, God, I thank you that I'm not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.

18:48 Then he said this. Do you remember it? You remember it? He said, I fast twice a week and I give tithes of all that I possess. Here's a guy bragging that he is doing all the things his religion says to do to be awesome, to be holy. I fast twice a week on these two market days. So here's the bottom line. Religion had become a joyless, solemn enterprise. The more miserable you look, that misery was next to godliness.

19:30 Irma Bombeck said, some people come to church looking like they just read the will of their rich aunt and learned that she had given everything to her pet hamster. no joy john wesley said sour godliness is the devil's religion that's what they had sour godliness we fast you don't this is the problem with religious people they are self-righteous and the reason they are self-righteous is because their measuring stick, their yardstick is external. We do this or we don't do that. That's the basis of their religion. My question, our question should be, what are the disciples of John doing with the Pharisees? Verse 18. Now, of course, this is John the Baptist.

20:32 And that's puzzling because, you know, John the Baptist, he was the forerunner of Jesus, right? He pointed people to Jesus. He said that Christ was the Messiah. He said, behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. John the Baptist was there that day Jesus came, and the Spirit came down like a dove descending upon Jesus. God the Father spoke from heaven, said, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Moreover, John the Baptist, when the Pharisees came to him, rebuked them, confronted them. Don't think that you're something special because you're sons of Abraham. God can make people like you out of these rocks. I mean, he just excoriated them. So what are they doing there, these disciples of John? Well, you know, not everybody who goes to a church is the best representative of that church. we're John's disciples. Well, John had a lot of disciples. He preached for months at the Jordan River. It says all from Jerusalem and Judea came to hear him preach.

21:36 So that means if he's there for months, they weren't all there of John's disciples on the one day that Jesus showed up at the Jordan River and the heavens opened and John the Baptist said, behold the Lamb of God. So there were a lot of different Jewish people that heard John preach a message of repentance who did not know the fullness of Christ. In fact, there's a group of them that seem to survive into the ministry of Paul the Apostle. When Paul was at Ephesus of all places in Asia Minor, he goes to Ephesus and he sees a group of disciples and he says, have you received the Holy Spirit since you believed? And their answer was very interesting. They said, we haven't even heard that there is such a thing as a Holy Spirit. So Paul said, really? Well then, into what were you baptized? And they said, into John's baptism. That's all they knew, John's baptism. That a guy named John came along and said, the Messiah is coming, the Messiah is coming, the Messiah is coming. This is in the days of Paul the apostle, they're still waiting for the Messiah. So not all of John's disciples were Christ followers.

22:48 They had just sort of been awakened to their need of a deeper form of spirituality. And they are with the Pharisees and they are fasting probably two days a week. So that's the question. That's the religious question. Now we have the answer. We have the reasonable explanation. Verse 19, Jesus said to them, I love his answer, because he answers with a very simple analogy. Can the friends of the bridegroom, he being the bridegroom, can the friends, that's the disciples of the bridegroom, fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, notice this, they cannot fast. But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then in those days they will fast. Basically what Jesus is saying to them is you guys have it totally backwards. You have it all wrong. You guys cannot tell time. You haven't figured out what time it is. It's Messiah time. I've come. The bridegroom is here. And it is time for my friends to celebrate. Feasting, not fasting. You're into fasting. They're feasting. Here's why. The bridegroom's here. The bridegroom's here. So he answers with a very simple wedding analogy based upon the ancient customs of a Jewish wedding.

24:26 So get this. When a Jewish young couple got married, they did not go on a honeymoon. You know, couples today, when they get married, or before they get married, they save up for some exotic honeymoon somewhere. Jews did exactly the opposite. They didn't go anywhere. They got married and they stayed home for a week. And they dressed up and they kept an open house for people to come by every day, every day, every day. And the bride and groom would dress up and they were treated like kings and queens. Sometimes they even wore crowns on their head for that week. There was continual feasting and celebration as friends would drop by and then relatives would come by. It was a seven-day party. I know if you're newly married, you're going, this does not sound fun. Certainly not relaxing. But in that world, in a blue-collar world, it was considered the happiest week of a man's life. All my friends are there.

25:34 My relatives are there. And they're celebrating us. So, the rabbis, this is very important to the story, the rabbis actually gave a command about weddings. And this is what they said. That all guests at a wedding are exempt, listen, exempt from fasting. Quote, all in attendance on the bridegroom are relieved of all religious observances which would lessen their joy, end quote. You know why they gave that command? Because you'd have some numbskull showing up at a wedding trying to be holier than everybody else, and he's there going, well, have a meal with us. No, I'm fasting. Yeah, okay. So the rabbis just said, nobody fasts at a wedding. You just have fun. You have joy. Nothing that would lessen their joy. So then Jesus uses this analogy. Look, it's wedding time. And to mourn at a wedding is rude and disrespectful and inappropriate. I'm the bridegroom. I'm the Messiah. The Messiah has come.

26:43 He's been anticipated. I've been anticipated for centuries. So this is a time of feasting, celebration, joy. Why? Because Jesus is there with them. Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God. It is a badge of ownership. How can you tell a person is owned by God? What stamp is on their lives? J-O-Y, joy, joy. E. Stanley Jones, the great missionary to India, He said, when I met Christ, I felt as though I had swallowed sunshine.

27:27 What a description. Swallowed sunshine. I'm going to put a quote up on the board. I just got to explain the quote. This is by a guy by the name of Helmut Thielecki. And I'm guessing that not a lot of you know that name. Unless you have a theological background, you wouldn't know the name. He was a German theologian. And I just want to explain that because you don't associate joy necessarily with a German theologian. But he was indeed a German theologian, professor at Heidelberg, Germany, until the Nazis booted him out. Helmut Thielecki said this, should we not see that lines of laughter about the eyes are just as much marks of faith as are the lines of care and seriousness? Is it only earnestness that is baptized? Is laughter pagan? we have already allowed too much that is good to be lost to the church and cast many pearls before swine. A church is in a bad way when it banishes laughter from the sanctuary and leaves it to the cabaret, the nightclub, and the toast masters. That's a good quote. Nothing is more attractive than a believer with genuine joy.

28:48 You know why? Because when somebody has genuine joy, other people around want to know why. Right? They want to know why. Conversely, pessimism, gloom, unhappiness are all poor advertisements for the gospel. People want to know why is that person so miserable. Oh, well, it's because he's a Christian.

29:12 Makes sense. you know when I told my friends I was saved I'm following Jesus some of them thought that they put their hand on me one guy put his hand on me and said I'm so sorry a gloomy Christian is a contradiction. Do you want Eeyore the donkey as your mascot?

29:36 Cloud seems to follow wherever he goes. No, you want joy to be the badge. You know, Buckingham Palace in London, England, whenever the king or queen is in residence there, there was the queen, but now there's the king. Whenever the sovereign of the nation is in residence, they fly what they call the royal standard. There's a flag. Everybody knows when they see this flag flown that the king's present.

30:05 Joy is the flag flown over our lives that indicates Jesus is in residence here. That's what joy is. And so Nehemiah said to the workers on the wall, do you remember the story of Nehemiah. He said, do not be dejected and sad for the joy of the Lord is your strength. So Jesus says, look, it's party time. I'm here. It's a time for feasting. I'm here. The bridegroom is here. They can't fast. They're exempt. But the days will come, verse 20, when the bridegroom will be taken away. This is the very first hint in the entire gospel of Mark, the very first time he hints at his crucifixion. That's what this is. The days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them. The word taken away means to be taken away suddenly and violently.

31:02 in those days they will fast. And I imagine they did. The third little movement here is what's going on below the surface, the real consideration. What is festering? Go to verse 21 and notice he continues with analogies. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment or else the new piece pulls away from the old. The terror is made worse. No one puts new wine into old wineskins or else the new wine bursts the wineskins. The wine is spilled and the wineskins are ruined, but new wine must be put into new wineskins. Now, these two analogies of the patch and the wineskins, these analogies show the difference between him, Jesus, and them, the religious folks. They show the difference between what he is offering and what they have been offering. In the first analogy of the unshrunk cloth or the patch, it's pretty simple. If anybody has worked with fabric before the days of synthetics, you get this. If you have a tear in a garment, you have a hole, you don't put a patch of new cloth on top because the moment you wash it, that little new cloth will shrink more than the already shrunken, already washed garment, and the tear will be made worse. So new cloth doesn't work on old material. Likewise, you can't patch the new covenant into an old system.

32:47 you can't have a religion by patching the best of this and the best of that together. Jesus did not come to patch up an old system. He came to replace it. He came to replace it. That's the prophecy of the new covenant, Jeremiah 31. Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, while I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, not like the old one.

33:17 The second analogy is the wineskin analogy. And that is, in those days, they would store wine in goat skins. They would take a goat, kill it, take the legs and head off, clean it out, turn it inside out, tan it, so you get rid of the residue and the flavor. And they would sew up the leg openings, and they would use the neck opening for the spout. It would become a wineskin. They would pour wine into it, and the wine in the wineskin begins to ferment. And the fermentation cycle, which lasts a few weeks or months, gases are released. Carbon dioxide is released. And as that carbon dioxide is released, those gases build up pressure, and the wineskin, there's an elasticity to it, so it stretches. and eventually once it stretches it begins to get hard and brittle and unyielding it loses its ability to stretch its elasticity and so they would need a new skin for new wine now sometimes they would take the old skins and they would soak them in oil and they would use it to store water or already fermented wine, but you would never put new wine into an old wineskin because it would crack open.

34:45 Judaism had become brittle, hard, unyielding. It could not contain the message of grace, unmerited favor by faith. And so these religionists collide with Jesus. And this is one of many collisions until finally they want to get rid of him. And you'll see in the very next story we get into, a plot is afoot to destroy his life. Why? Because they are holding tightly to their old, brittle, hard wineskins. They're clinging to religious tradition. Jesus is offering transformation. They're clinging to impersonal ritual. Jesus is offering personal relationship. Think of it like an operating system.

35:40 If you try to put a new program on an old operating system on your computer, or for that matter, an older computer, you know what'll happen? System crash. Can't hold it. Can't handle it. So you need a whole new system. Jesus did not come to patch up a system. This strikes a blow to a prevailing ideology, cultural ideology. And it's the idea that you can just blend all the religions together. You can just take the best of this religion, the best of that religion, because after all, they're just describing the same God with different terms, right? So we'll take a little bit of this and we'll just make a patchwork religion. In fact, we'll make a bumper sticker.

36:33 And it'll say, coexist. And that'll just make everybody ride his reign. Everybody will now settle down and be happy and get along if we just get this bumper sticker, coexist. The gospel cannot coexist. It is singular. It is divisive. There is no other name given under heaven by which men must be saved. Now, we have to be careful here. We have to be careful because not all tradition is wrong. You don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. You know, some people who are non-traditional is going, yeah, preach it. But some tradition is good. In fact, did you know Paul said, 2 Thessalonians 2, we've been studying this Wednesday nights. brethren stand fast and hold on to the traditions which you have been taught whether by word or our epistle you see there is apostolic tradition biblical tradition to hold on to guard it and i find when it comes to tradition there's like two basic groups of people One group says, if it's new, it can't be good.

37:54 We've always done it this way. Don't you dare introduce anything new into our system. Then there's the other group who says, it can't be good unless it's new. We have to have a new song. We have to have a new idea. We have to have a new book. We have to have a new system of whatever. I do not care about preserving human tradition. I do care about preserving biblical tradition. What that means is we need to learn how to differentiate between what is essential and non-essential. What is primary? What is secondary? The gospel is primary. Man-made traditions that restrict the gospel, get rid of them. Secondary. Secondary. Now, at the very beginning of this message, I mentioned there's 10,000 different religions out there. 85% of the world claims to be religious. Most people, when they hear the word religion, I know what they're thinking of.

38:52 They're thinking of a faith that people have, a very generic kind of a term. I looked it up in the dictionary. Religion is defined as a set of beliefs and practices, usually involving devotional and ritual observances. And usually a person is content with being that religious. In fact, they don't even talk much about God, many of them. They just want to talk about my faith, people of faith, those of us who practice our faith. You know, it's just so third hands-off, third party, not me and God are walking together and he and I, and we, we have a relationship. It's just my belief system, my faith. I'll give you a simpler definition of religion. It's me coming to God on my terms.

39:50 me coming to God on my terms. I set the agenda. I say things like, well, I've always pictured God as being this or that, and that's the God I choose to worship. Okay, you have just come to God based on your imagination rather than on his revelation. and that will always lead you astray. You've just made up your own God. Congratulations, you have entered into idolatry. there are really only, not 10,000, there are really only two religions in the entire world. Number one, the religion of human achievement. This is what I do. This is what I work at. This is what I labor for. This is what I am earning.

40:42 And the other one is the religion of divine accomplishment. And that's the gospel. all religious systems in the world fall under the first category human achievement only the gospel follows under the second category divine accomplishment all religion it's all about my works the gospel is all about his work religion is all about i continue to do this i continue to do that i'm going to fast and alms and the gospel says no it's his work and it's done it's finished It's over. A finished work on the cross.

41:21 So, religion is essentially Jesus plus something. You fill in the blank. Jesus plus ceremony. Jesus plus church membership. Jesus plus fasting. Jesus plus almsgiving. Jesus plus mystical experiences. listen Jesus plus anything equals nothing Jesus plus nothing equals everything. So all you need is Jesus. The kingdom of God, Paul said in Romans 14, the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. Their issue is eating and drinking. We fast, you don't.

42:14 Kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. So let me give you a few things to do on the way out. Very simple. Number one, evaluate your joy. Are you like Eeyore the donkey? Is that your main disposition? Are you turning people off to the gospel? Evaluate your joy. Have you swallowed sunshine? Or are you like the guy who just found out his aunt gave everything to her pet hamster? Evaluate your joy, number one. Number two, evaluate your spiritual life. Are you more religious than you are relational? Are you more relational than you are religious?

43:08 Are you more traditional or transformational? You've come into contact with God. Now, you cannot come into contact with God and stay the same. Right? You put new wine in a wineskin, you know what's going to happen? It's going to move. It's going to expand. It's going to stretch. So if the life of Christ is in you, you're going to stretch. You're going to expand. You're going to grow.

43:39 If your religion hasn't changed you, maybe it's time for you to change your religion. so evaluate your spiritual life. Evaluate your joy. Evaluate your spiritual life. Third, are you growing now or have you started to stagnate? The Bible says grow. 2 Peter 3, 18. Grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Not just once, not just the first few months, but continue to grow. Thank you, Father, for your word. Thank you for your son. Thank you, Lord, for how unafraid he represented heaven to the people he was with, his disciples, the tax collectors and the sinners, the disciples of John and the religious Pharisees.

44:40 thank you that he always presented the dividing line between what's important and what's not important between what they had to offer and what he was offering so that we walk away understanding this guy's different his message is incompatible with every other system Thank you, Lord, for providing a personal relationship.