The Word Became Flesh

Well, good morning. It's a real joy to be here today and share with you.

Um, I don't know a lot of you as well as, uh, especially some of you older ones, as, as well as some of the people I go to church with, uh, there at our church. They have walked with you and are part of your story. Um, but I just want to take a moment to thank you as a group for how you've impacted us. Um, there's, uh, a lot of things that, uh, have been handed down, um, uh, from, uh you might not like the term "the mother church," but, uh, I think you know what I mean. And, uh, and have been a blessing to us. And so thank you for that part. I in s in that in that sense, I feel like I maybe even know you better, um, than what you might realize.

Um, so, like, for one example, we were talking one time about how we do our prayer meeting, and it's like I asked the question, "So, like, how do we get started doing it this way?" And the answer was, "Well, that's the way they did it at Shippensburg." So, um and not just things like that, but some core values that have really been a blessing and, um, have helped us, uh, along the way. So thank you for your impact in our lives. Appreciate that. We love you all, and we, um, we want to all be people like Joshua, like we heard this morning, who are strong and courageous and don't give up, keep fighting, keep walking forward.

Let's bow our heads for a word of prayer. Dear Lord, I thank you for this opportunity to share your word, and I pray that you would be with me as I share. I pray that I would not say things that I ought not, and that I could say the things that you want me to share.

And give us open hearts. Help us to learn. Help us to be strong and courageous and ultimately follow you and become like you and, um, be your body here on this earth. In Jesus' name. Amen.

So I'm I like to read books, and one book I'm working on right now, um, is called Inside the Third Reich, which, uh, is the memoirs of Albert Speer. I don't know if there's any other Anabaptist brothers out there who like to read about World War II, but if, if you do, that'd be one to put on your list. And, uh, it's interesting because it's he's writing kind of as a firsthand observer, uh, in the Nazi Party there, and he one of the things I never realized, I always just thought of Hitler as this guy that woke up one morning and decided to hate on Jews, but he had big dreams for the German people.

His goal was to rebuild Germany in a way that would take it from being the scum of the world and make it kind of the, the envy of the world. He wanted to rebuild Berlin and put a Grand Avenue in there that would make, uh, Washington, D.C., look like a walk in the park, and, uh, build a, a huge, um, Arch of Triumph that would dwarf the one in Paris and a and a huge 400-foot-diameter dome in this great hall, just grander everywhere. That was his plans. Those were his dreams, and he had blueprints written up. Albert w Speer was his architect, so he was working with Hitler back and forth on these dreams, and that was Hitler's favorite thing to do.

He'd actually rather do that than fight a war, was dream about building big buildings. And, uh but then he got to pull it all off. He had to play some pretty high-stake hands, uh, with the rest of the world, and he was successful for a while. He got France, but if you know the story, um, he wasn't as successful in Russia. In 1942, things started to change, and we see Hitler kind of went from being Hitler the victor to Hitler the desperate, as his army sort of froze to death up there, and things just kept going from bad to worse, from bad to worse, from bad to worse. And now the legacy he's left is not one of grandeur.

It's one of scorched earth. We know that. We're, we're all familiar with that story somewhat. Somehow, the dreams didn't come off the way he had hoped. There's another story that comes a little closer home to my wife and I, um, especially to her, is the church that she was baptized in is an empty building today.

And we drive by it sometimes when we go up to New York, and it always kind of makes a sinking feeling in my heart. It shouldn't have ended up this way. It feels like a legacy of scorched earth. It was once thriving. There were people coming in from the community. My wife's family was one of them.

Um, there were good things going on, but something went wrong. And I'm not here to theorize what all went wrong. I don't know. When things go wrong, it's hard to hard to figure out what's actually going wrong sometimes.

But it, it challenges me. What's, what's our legacy? What's my legacy going to be? Is it going to be one of scorched earth, or is it going to be something vibrant and living? And I don't have all the answers for that, but I think that what I want to look at here in John, chapter 1, is part of the answer to what we're going to actually end up giving to our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. Brother Brannan talks likes to talk about his 200-year vision. That's, that's a lot of audacity in, in talking about that, but that's good. It's something we need to think about.

John 1, chapter 1.

I don't really have a lot of new things to bring today, but I maybe call up some old things and talk about maybe, uh, let's put some meaning uh, not put meaning into them, but talk about the original meaning and talk about some of the original core values, um, that have been a part of who we are.

John 1, verse 1. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." By the way, hopefully you're not offended by the King James version. That's my native tongue. Um, that's what I grew up with. I know there's different ideas about versions, so hopefully it's not too hard for everyone to understand. "The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light.

That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." So we think of that. That's a powerful verse there. The light of a human is Christ, the Word. Hmm. He that was the what made everything. The Word made everything.

There's a big difference between a body that has light in it and one that's dead. It's a warm feeling to come into a room full of living people. It's a different feeling you get walking into a morgue, right?

That's that light is saying here, "That's Jesus. That's the Creator. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not.

But as many as received him" can you imagine that? Come into your own, your own creation, and they didn't receive him. They didn't recognize the one who had given them that light to begin with. "But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the world and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us."

And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Amen. That's the gospel right there, isn't it? "And we beheld his glory, and the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace, power, life, and truth.

John bare witness of him and cried, saying, 'This was he of whom I spake. He that cometh after me is preferred before me, for he was before me. And of his fullness have all we received, and grace for grace.' For the law, a legal system, was given by Moses, but grace, power, new life, rebirth, reincarnation, and truth." Uh, the knowledge of the way and what by reincarnation I mean, like, Jesus coming into a person and making him a new creature came by Jesus Christ. "No man hath seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." And this is the record of John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, "Who art thou?"

And he confessed and denied, not but confessed, "I am not the Christ." And they asked him, "What then? Art thou Elias?" And he saith, "I am not." "Art thou that prophet?" And he answered, "No." "Then said they unto them unto him, 'Who art thou, that we may give an answer to them that sent us? What sayest thou thyself?' He said, 'I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Isaiah.'

And they which were sent for were of the Pharisees." And they asked him and said unto him, "Why baptizest thou then, if thou be not that Christ, nor Elias, neither that prophet?" John answered them, saying, "I baptize with water, for there standeth one among you whom ye know not. He it is who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose shoes latcheth I'm not worthy to unloose."

These things were done in Bethlehem beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing. "The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him and saith, 'Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. This is whom a he of whom I said, 'After me cometh a man,' which is preferred before me. For he was before me, and I knew him not, but that he should be made manifest to Israel. Therefore am I come baptizing with water.' And John bare record, saying, 'I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him. And I knew him not, but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, 'Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, the same as who is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.'

And I saw and bare record that that this is the Son of God." So I think we're and we're Christians. We know the story of the gospel, right?

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. So but we know that story's not over. It's a live a living story. So where is the Word becoming flesh today? Right now, right here, where is the Word in the flesh?

Shouldn't it be us? Isn't that what Jesus Jesus came to, to have sons and daughters? And wouldn't that be the Word in the flesh? I want to think about that today because that there's something about that that, um, I guess I could say that I want that to be my legacy, um, if I handle on anything. We want to hand off the Word in the flesh, not just some big idea somewhere, not just some kind of theological construct that we say, "Yes, we agree to," but actually the Word in the flesh.

"We are the body of Christ. You are my disciples. You are my body."

Matthew 16:24 says, you don't need to turn there, but, "Jesus said unto his disciples, 'If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.'" Following Christ as part of being the body of Christ, right? That's what we want to do. Isn't that following Christ, following Jesus? Isn't that a phrase we've used a good bit around here?

So that's a I want to pull that out and dust it off and talk about that a little bit here. I'm not saying it got dust on it, but sometimes when we use a phrase long enough, it does get a little dusty.

So following Christ,

that's our goal. And I just want to talk not, not exhaustively, but just about a couple of things I think about, um, with that come to mind practically following Christ. So there's other things that you could say are the most important thing. I'm not saying these are the most important things, but there are things that, um, I guess are burdens on my heart, and I think there are also things that our times call us to think about, um, that things that are under attack maybe in our times. The spirit of the age hates them.

And so I want to think of that in kind of two aspects. Um, the one is authority, the chain of command, and the other one is, um, the content. So in a in my business where I work there, they talk about authority. We have flow charts, and we talk about who answers to who, and we try to keep things organized because that makes you more efficient, right? And when you're more efficient, you can get more work done.

But we could and it actually takes a lot of time to talk about it. We're going to be unorganized. You can put a lot of energy into that. If, if we only put energy into that, but we didn't actually go out and pour concrete that's what we do, um, you would pretty soon have to shut other business because you're not actually so content's important. But then on the other hand, if you just went out and poured concrete and it was totally a disorganized, chaos, mess, everybody was just doing whatever they jolly well felt like, pretty soon you wouldn't get much concrete poured, and that would create its own set of problems. So, um, authority, chain of command, and then what we actually do, those are two important things to even think about, I think, in the church.

So chain of command. And it's actually if you turn to First Corinthians 11:1, there it is. There's the flow chart.

It's pretty simple, isn't it?

It says in First Corinthians 11:1 or 11:3. Let's start in 11:3. "But I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ, and head of the woman is the man, and head of Christ is God."

There it is. We have man, woman. Now, in a business, when somebody is subject to somebody else, does that make them less important, less valuable? Then why do we think that that somehow means these people are less valuable over here because the Bible says that you're subject to the man, you're you answer to him? It shouldn't at all. As a matter of fact, if you're working in a business and you're subject to someone else, you make yourself extremely valuable by learning how to answer to that person, by learning understanding what that person's going for and helping to support that and, and build it up. And you become very valuable. And that person's going to take you wherever he goes, you know?

So this is beautiful. Um, and then we have Christ who's the head of man. This is a really important part. I have you know I would have you know that the head of some men is Christ. I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ. The head of Christ is God.

If you look look at Ephesians, we get another little component down here that's not in Corinthians. Ephesians 6:1 through 3, um, says that children, "Obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right." So we could put children down here yet.

And there's there's our authority, our, our, uh, flow chart.

Are you okay with that? Some people aren't. As a matter of fact, the spirit of our the our age is to not be okay with this at all. That's the spirit of the age. And I believe that a lot of the problems we deal with today go simply back to rejecting God's design there. Um, I am not a baby boomer. There's probably some here that can remember the 1950s. How many people can actually remember the 1950s here? Just curious. John, okay.

All right. A couple of you. So I guess you're baby boomers. Is that the label that goes to your generation? Okay. All right. Well, I don't you know more about it than I do because you were there, but all I know is what I've read and theorized a little bit. But it seems like so the 1950s, the men came home from the war, and they started they got married. They started having babies. That's what I call the baby boomers. And there were some things that started happening. There was a couple of things we learned in the war. The one was that women can work. Um, and so we talk about the 1960s as being the cultural revolution.

There was a lot of experimenting going on in the 1950s with redesigning this thing a little bit. Um, the family farm was not as much of a a thing. So the country we kind of got into this suburban, uh, model. That's when the big developments that are so common today were starting to really become the thing, uh, a house, little cracker box on a third of an acre. But it what didn't matter that the children didn't have anything to do because now we had a television set too. So we plant them in front of the TV. And and then, you know, we found out if Mom and Dad both work, wow, you could bring in some more money maybe.

And so I'm wondering if the 1950s with the generation that was starting to grow up without a mom at home set the stage for some of what went on in the 1960s. I'm sure there were a lot of other factors there. But we do know one thing we do know, I think no one would disagree with, is that reinventing the home has happened quite a bit from then till now. And that you go across the whole list of stuff that are big, hot topic items today, the LGBTQA+ I actually got all the letters straight that time, um, which is basically men and women saying, "I have no idea who I am.

I don't know what I was designed to be. So I'm going to try to figure it out myself." Um, abortion.

Children are inconvenient. Well, of course they're inconvenient. If we don't have moms for the children, children are very inconvenient. We need moms.

But if you got a mom that's devoted to her children, children are a huge blessing. Um, they're not inconvenient at all. They're the future. We have labor shortages today. Isn't that weird?

Why? Do you think it has anything to do with our demographics?

And do you think those demographics have anything to do with a generation that have loved their dog more than their children?

Maybe.

There's some ideas. I wish I could say all those spirits of the world were out there and they never came in here to us sterile Mennonites. But those ideas have come a little too close home sometimes, I think. And I think we need a we need a sound alarm and hold up God's ways. We need men who understand that the head of every man is Christ.

Um, emasculating men, men who have lost their manhood, that's a real problem. We need men. We need mothers. We also need men. Um, this is another thing I'll kind of call out core value. Um, I think it's fair to say that we've had some skepticism in our circles and our churches about huge Christian bureaucracies, for lack of a better term, but big, uh, spiritual edifices, uh, um, authority structures. And I mean, case in point, put the pulpit on the ground, right?

Isn't that a I'm not sure what how much how much actual intention went into that when the structure was built, but that's our that's our heart, right? We want people to we want men to be called to this responsibility to Christ. We want men to understand that Christ is their head.

And one of the things that happens whenever you you create this this huge bureaucracy or whatever of people that you got to go through to get to Christ is, um, you're actually anytime you create a big authority structure, you're taking authority away from somebody, and you're actually taking it away from man, what God has called him to, his authority, and you're also taking it away from Christ, unfortunately.

Um, and so if you find, you know, find me a church where there's only a couple of people that matter, it's probably also going to be a church where there's a lot of men that have found other ways of feeling their manhood and fulfilling their manhood and and finding significance. So that's just a core value I want to uphold as good that I'm not saying it always works itself out perfect. It doesn't I'm not saying it doesn't ever have its problems, but it's a good thing. I think it's been good for me, um, to be, uh, in a in a group that says, "Hey, Jonathan, you got responsibility in your life. You answer to Christ.

What you're going to answer to Christ about this," you know? That's that's been really good for me. So let's keep doing that.

Um, you add feminism to that and women wanting to fulfill, do the jobs that men do or and all that. And after a while, men are out of a job, and that's horrible when you have men that are called to be people like Joshua, be strong and courageous.

And, um, they just really don't know what to do. They're just putting in time and finding other ways to make life fun.

That's another spirit of our age.

But have you know that the head of every man is Christ? Men are to be leaders. Men are to be providers. Mothers shouldn't have to leave their children and go and work. It's our job. Children need mothers to always be there for them at home.

Men are administrators. Um, I think probably a lot of you all homeschool. Maybe you all homeschool. I don't know. Um, but that's quite a challenge. And we it seems like our wives end up doing most of the work there. We probably feel like they do all the work sometimes, but we need to be that's we're responsible for that. We're responsible for what happens there. We're the administrator. Um, we we need to be responsible for what's going on in our children's education and know what's going on. Uh, we need to be visionaries. Where are we going? What do what's God calling us to?

And, um, just along with that, women need to be sympathetic dreamers, but, um, don't panic. Probably all his dreams won't come true. Um, my wife has had to learn that. Uh, she's married to a dreamer, and I think I've tried to throttle that down a little bit, but, uh, yeah, just work together at that. Don't shoot all his ideas down, though, either. That's really hard.

Um, we need to be protectors, lovers of our wives. We need to be prophets, whistleblowers. There's a problem here.

Call it out. Generous, givers, sharing what God has given us, church builders with their gifts. And that was one thing I did that's maybe missing here. Um, if Christ is the head and the body's well, I had children to that too. The body's made up of these people. And then, yeah, there are definitely there's other scriptures that talk about how to work that out. We have different gifts. I know y'all have had an ordination the last year, probably. So that what you're doing, you're calling a brother out and saying, "Hey, brother, you got a gift. Exercise it and use it in this capacity." So we have these different gifts. Um, we have so these are some of the things that help the body work together, gifts.

There's, uh, different levels of maturity too, and that matters a lot. You don't get you older men have had to work for your gray hair. You don't just get that. There's no shortcuts, you know? And that means that you have experienced, you've seen more of life, and less younger guys, and you'll learn to respect that even and, you know, and, um, learn from them, hear from them. Gray hair matters. Elders the Bible talks about elders.

I'm kind of getting ahead in my notes here.

There we go.

Let the elders that rule be counteworthy of double honor.

And then with gifts, it's for he gave we're familiar with that list, the apostles, the prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, for the perfecting of saints, work of ministry, edifying the body of Christ to welcome the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man and the measure of the stature and the fullness of Christ.

The gifts are for that. And we I believe we all have one. I believe your sisters have gifts. And bring that all together into the body, and good things should come of it. And then there's love, a word we're all familiar with.

Um, we're supposed to love each other as friends. Jesus called us friends. Isn't that amazing? He didn't say, "You slaves, you servants." We are servants of Christ, but he called us friends. If Jesus calls us friends, shouldn't we all call each other friends too?

We're friends, companions. The golden rule that Jesus called us friends here in John 15, "I've called you friends." And he says, "Not servants. The servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth." I can just tell you, "Go do that." And you say, "Why?" You don't need to know why. Go do it, right? That's what a slave-servant relationship but Jesus told us everything. He showed us everything. He says, "You're my friends." Complete openness.

That's the way friends should be. And the golden rule is pretty simple. If we just stop and think in our actions, "How would I want how would I want my brother if I was in those shoes? How would I want it to be done to me?"

I've gotten that wrong many times, but let's learn the golden rule. Stop and think, "How would that feel to me? What server you would that men would do to you due to them?" Okay.

I was going through some of the different things men and women are called to, and I got sidetracked. Okay, women, um, supporters, good stewards of your husband's income. If you're not going to get a job, there are things you can do to help make it reach. Um, my wife's really good at that. I'm thankful for that.

Um, but learn how you're you're think about it as your husband's doing his best to bring it in. You do it your best to to be a good steward or however you work that out. So I know some men do the shopping. I'm glad I don't have to. Um, but work it out and do what you can to help with that. Um, you're the on-the-ground teacher, especially if you homeschool, um, and work through that. And that's a real commitment. It's a real commitment, and it's hard work. It's not easy at all. It's hard work.

Learn to support your husband's dreams. I already mentioned that. Um,

be a supporter. There's sometimes maybe you'll be the only person standing with him. He might go through seasons like that where he needs you really bad because you're the only you might be the only one standing there.

Um, be prayer warriors, praying mothers, love your children. You're be security guards. Um, you're the one they're at home all the time. Also, women tend to be more perceptive than men. I don't know. At least that's the way it is with us. I just miss a lot of stuff, and she picks up on those kinds of things. And so that you're a good person to be a security guard just to, um, keep your eye out for influences, things that are happening. Maybe call them to your husband's attention.

Uh, givers, generosity. We read about women in the Bible who are huge givers. That's a huge way to bless the church, and you can build the church with your gifts as well. I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God. When we work in that order, we find a blessing. When we reject that and say, "You know what? We can figure it out better ourselves," we're asking trouble to come to our doorstep. The trouble that the world deals with every day is going to come right here if we reject God's plan.

I'm not I forgot to how many hours do I have?

When do you usually like to wrap up your messages?

Okay. We got started a little early at 11:30 at our church. You know you're going to be battling with people's attention spans because that's when it's supposed to be. You're supposed to be getting wrapped up, you know? So thank you for the free pass.

I don't think we'll need all that time. All right.

See where we're at. Okay.

Second part here, I want to talk about some content. And this is a new thought to me that I've been working through and kind of trying to put together. So I probably don't have it all put together right. I always invite some pushback when anything that I don't think it's just like totally out left field, but it's been some new thoughts I've been working through in relation to Jesus being the way, the truth, and the life.

I'm not going to ask for a raise of hands, but there's a good chance, if you're like us, that there's a good bit of people here that have come from another church at one point in your life, and that makes, just for better or for worse, us a certain kind of people, it seems. We're fairly opinionated and, uh, have our ideas and our reasons why we did the things we did and all of that. And it's not all bad, but it's probably not all good either. Um, and so I'm just calling that out, and I cast my lot with that group as well. But if we would ask ourselves, um, like, why? What were some of the things that we're looking at?

If I would ask myself that, um, as weak of an answer as this might sound, probably balance would be one of the things that I've been looking for. Do you like that word? I don't. It feels weak, doesn't it? Balance. We got to be balanced people. And we all think we are balanced.

Most of us do because we can always look that way and see somebody that's out of balance and that way. So we must be in the middle, right? Um, there's different ways to think about balance. Uh, the one way, if you ever read, uh, Gary's book, Church Matters, it's a good book, good read.

Um, you probably are familiar with two different pastors. Does anybody remember what their names were? Nobody read did any of you read the book? Need More Outreach. What was the other name of the other one? Firmone Tradition. Okay. Thank you, Wendell. So we have two pastors, Need More Outreach, Firmone Tradition, and by their names, you can imagine what their emphasis, uh, is.

And they were having a hard time getting along and, uh, harmonizing their visions. And so they eventually split. And Need More Outreach went and did his church, and Firmone Tradition went and did his church. And the book kind of the chapter kind of concludes that they sort of ended up as two fairly imbalanced ends of the pole, yeah, or ends of a continuum. And so, yeah, there's actually a chart in there then that shows the continuum. You have this on this side and this on this side. And so then the assumption is that somehow truth must lie in the middle somewhere. But the reason I don't like that is because, like, where is that middle?

Um, and so I like to think about balance a little different. Think about cookies. You're going to make cookies, and you leave the sugar out. Do you have cookies? It might be food, but it's not cookies. Um, why? Because something's missing. It's out of balance. And so whenever we talk about balance, we should always be able to ask the question, "What's missing?"

If it feels like we're out of balance, what's missing? Because if it's all there, it should be in balance. And usually when something's out of balance, something's missing. So I want to think about that in terms of Jesus. We're following Jesus, following Jesus Christ, and he said himself that he is the way, he's the truth, and he's the life.

I'm not trying to make a false dichotomy here because they're not really they're not necessarily in tension with each other, but there are different things, I think. And so I want to just maybe unpackage that a little bit.

Bear with me.

So if we're following Christ, Christ is our head. We're following Christ as the way, the truth, and the life.

Yeah, and let's assume that this healthy body is in here, following Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life.

So the way, a road, a course of conduct, and I came up with one structured living, intentional structures.

That's a part of it, isn't it?

At some point, the rubber needs to meet the road.

Um, the truth, our understanding reality, is it easy? Do we just all know it? It's a process, isn't it? It takes some work. That's what a body dialogues about. That's why we have preaching this morning, to learn the truth, right? So truth. Um, and I'm putting up here this is all encompassing. This is brothers' meetings, messages, talking, prophetic teaching.

I say prophetic because it's not just to teach for the sake of teaching. It's to learn truth, to learn God's word, to learn what God has to say, prophetic teaching. And then the life. Now, this is one I'm still struggling with to put completely into thought here. When I think of life, I think of zeal, power, grace, vision, a compelling vision.

And they each kind of answer different questions. The question down here is, how should we do it? The question up here, I would put, is more, why? Why are we doing it? And the question down here is more, or what does it mean? It was what? No, I got that wrong.

Sarah, there we go.

Let's try that again. I had it written down. Okay. What does it mean?

So remember when the children of Israel crossed the Jordan, they were told to stack up 12 stones, the structure. And generations down the road, the children are going to say, "Dad, what's up with the stones?" And Dad's going to say, "I don't know. They've always been there. Just don't move them."

No, that's not what Dad was supposed to say. Dad was supposed to say, "Sit down, son. I'm going to tell your story."

And so that's where this is why, or what does it mean? This is what it means. And then the one down here, let's see here, the way.

Okay. I'm getting this mixed up. Where are we going? This is just like, where are we going to be 200 years from now, right?

And that inspires. That's what makes us get up and go. Nobody's going to feel like fighting a war if you think you're going to lose it. But if you believe you're going to win the war, people feel like fighting.

People even feel like dying for it. They don't even need to see the win. They just need to know they died for a win. Okay? We got to know where we're going. We need to know what it means. And the question down here is the really this is the really audacious one, and this is often where we become divisive.

How do we get there? Because this is really practical. I mean, this is in shoe leather. This is skin and bone.

How do we get there?

Jesus was having a very nice, cordial conversation with a young man one day. It was going along quite well. The man had all kinds of spiritual questions to ask. He seemed very interested in spiritual things. He was even asking how to live, how to find eternal life. And Jesus went and bombed the whole conversation by telling him, "Okay, this is what it's going to mean, brother.

Go sell your rich, your money. If you want to follow me, go sell it and then come and follow me." He gave him a structure. And at that point, the young man was done. It was too hard. All of a sudden, it wasn't a bunch of nice, thoughtful spiritual discussion. It was all of a sudden stepping on his toes.

Does that happen in church sometimes? We need our toes stepped on. Like, let's I've had my toes stepped on before, and it hurts, and I don't like it. Sometimes I feel like running away like that young man. And yet, iron sharpens iron, right? How do you do that? You beat on it.

Yeah, that's part of growing into being part of a healthy body. Being a healthy member in a healthy body is being willing to structure it out. And that's hard, but it's worth trying. I just thought of another just an illustration to another way to illustrate this is like an issue that's pretty pertinent. We've talked if we logged up the hours we talked on this issue in brothers' meetings, I don't know how many it would be, but it would be a lot.

I'm not sure if it's an issue you'd all talk about here or not, but it seems like it's an issue of our age. And even the people in Silicon Valley who don't want anything to do with God and made the thing themselves are scared of it and say, "What did we do?" And that's tech. Okay? Tech, social media, you know the whole gamut.

So how do we deal with it? I'm not saying we're doing it perfectly at all. I'm not saying we've always came to the same the right conclusions about it, but we do recognize that it's something that could keep us from reaching our vision, which is the body of Christ, a healthy body of Christ, healthy families, men that love the Lord and accept Christ as their head, good relationships. We just had some teaching recently about tech. Some of you all came down for it. And one of the biggest things he brought out, and this is a guy that's brother Harry, Argo. He studied this a lot. And one of the things that even the world I'm not just talking about stuffy conservative Mennonites that are saying, "Oh, that's a problem."

I'm talking about the world themselves are saying, "This is changing us. It's fragmenting our culture." But one of the biggest things is relationships. It's hurting relationships. It's a medium that's coming in. And so how do we deal with that? And yet it seems like we can't get away from it. We have to almost learn how to live with it and adapt. But how far do we adapt? How far do we? They're hard questions.

They're hard questions. So we can say, "Well, it's not an issue. Just forget." Or we can say, "As a body, we want to try to work this out. Let's bring some structure in." And there's structures, and I'm not saying the structures are all perfect, but we have some filters that we're trying to encourage everybody to use, and some accountability. We have a survey right now we're supposed to fill out. So those are structures that they're not an end in themselves, but they hopefully are a means to an end of walking this way. And the thing is, you can talk about it. You can teach about it. You can go round and round in circles. You can spend hours discussing it.

But unless you're willing to actually hit the ground, you might as well go home.

It's part of following Christ.

You read the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus was not just giving tickling people's minds. It's practical, practical stuff. And we need to walk that out. It's a different time. We're in the 21st century. The issues aren't all the same. I don't remember the last time I heard a sermon on eating meat offered to idols. Do you?

And why we should avoid that. Well, we have different issues today, right? So we need to learn how to walk and follow Christ in our times.

Okay.

Okay. The next kind of aspect of this is out of balanceness. That's not a word, I don't think, but you know what it means. So out here, we have all these isms in this world. And what happens with an ism, I think, is when we just neglect part of this truth, life, way thing, part of when we neglect prophetic teaching, compelling vision, or intentional structures. And this is just my there's many ways to fall. There's only one way to stand straight. So this is just an example. This is not exhaustive at all. But when the emphasis becomes structures and we neglect teaching and we make no connection to our end goal, it tends to legalism.

I don't know if you like that word or not. It's a word that's been abused a good bit. If you want to shut someone up, call them a legalist or a gossiper or somebody with an ego problem, and then you've got them shut down, right?

But so it's been abused, but it's a real thing that is a real problem. Jesus talked about it. He was addressing the scribes and the Pharisees, and he said, "The problem with you guys is this. You're beautiful, but you're dead.

Inside, there's all kinds of corruption and stinky stuff that you're hiding from everybody, but you got" So when I think of legalism, I think of where we've adapted a certain kind of inadequate, incomplete set of structures, and we're that's everything to us.

If you abide by that, you're okay. And we look the other way at the hard issues, and it becomes a safe haven for all kinds of sin. That's the problem. And because it's just about meeting up with these certain things. I really think I don't know. It's just an idea. We don't know what Jesus wrote on the ground when he was with those scribes and Pharisees that had brought the women in adultery, but I think he was calling out some of the stuff inside their tombs.

And he's saying, "Look, guys. This is who you are." And they all just they said, "If you don't have sin, cast the first stone." There was none there to do it. So that's a danger because it becomes a safe haven.

It can accommodate hypocrisy and apostasy. We have to still be teaching the truth. We have to be it has to be a changed life. It has to be a new birth in Christ that changes all of us. And then prophetic teaching, there's some people that focus a lot on teaching and truth and don't ever flesh it out in structures. And there's maybe not a lot of long-term vision. It's just they like to talk and think, and that becomes an end in itself.

And the word I would have for that is intellectualism, which God calls us to use our minds to glorify Him. We're supposed to love God with our whole mind, right? So we are supposed to use our mind for Him. But when that becomes unmoored from actually working it out in a real way or where we want to be 200 years from now, it's a loose cannon, and it could end up anywhere. I mean, look at universities that have started out as conservative Anabaptist universities and where they're at a couple of years later. And it seems like I'm not saying it always has to be that way. I'm not making a blank statement, but it seems like once you unmoor this intellectual pursuit from a real life working together shoulder to shoulder with brothers in a church, it just ends up anywhere.