John: Head & Heart Followers

Pastor Fletcher preaches from John 7:11-52 about Jesus’s declaration during the festival of booths. Discussion points: Christianity is not a “check your brain at the door” religion; Jesus declares that he is the living water that the water pouring ceremony symbolized; we receive abundant life from Jesus alone, not the things of this world.

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  Scripture reader: [John 7:11-52] The Jews were looking for him at the feast and saying, where is he? And there was much muttering about him among the people. While some said, he is a good man. Others said, no, he is leading the people astray. Yet for fear of the Jews, no one spoke openly of him about the middle of the feast. Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching the Jews. Therefore marveled saying, how is it that this man has learning when he has never studied? So Jesus answered them, my teaching is not mine but his who sent me if anyone's will is to do God's will. He will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory, but the one who seeks the glory of Him, who sent him is true. And in Him, there is no falsehood.

  On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out. If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Now this he said about the spirit whom those who believed in him were to receive. For as yet, the spirit had not been given because Jesus was not yet glorified when they heard these words, some of the people said this really is the prophet. Others said this is the Christ, but some said is the Christ to come from Galilee has not. The scripture said that the Christ comes from the offspring of David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was. So there was a division among the people over him. Some of them wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him.

  This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

  Preacher: Belief. The Christian life following Jesus. These are all things that not only require a head knowledge and understanding of who Jesus is and a belief in him, but also require a heart knowledge, a knowing him intimately as a friend, as a lover, as a savior, as a father. There's many illustrations that we can use to have head knowledge without heart knowledge would leave someone cold and lacking the emotional furnace necessary to get through the dark nights of the soul. But to have heart knowledge, without head knowledge would leave someone with maybe some bright flames of passionate love. But without the theological foundation necessary to properly handle life's toughest questions and needless to say our friend's toughest questions.

  In today's passage, we see both senses of following Jesus. We see people following Jesus with both their heads and with their hearts. And I think that it explains to us what's necessary for us to follow Jesus, what it means for us to know him. And in today's passage, we're going to continue in the book of John, we've been working our way through the book of John, since August September, something like that. And we're in the chapter seven, there's 21 chapters. So we'll be here for a little while. And it's our second message in chapter seven.

  Last week, we were introduced to the festival of booths. And so we gave the whole background with the festival of booths. How this is a festival that's celebrated the time when the Israelite people were walking through the wilderness. And so they would build these booths and they would sleep in them outside. It was a time to remember that they once lived in tents such as that. And it was coordinate with the time of year during which the the grape harvest was and the olive harvest. So it was a big party. In fact, it was the biggest party ever year in Jerusalem. It's like Mardi Gras for Jerusalem. OK. This is a, a big time. Everybody's coming in town and they've got fresh grapes and those are delicious and they're celebrating together. And so this is a big festival.

  His brothers last week were trying to get Jesus to go down to the festival of boots, but Jesus refused to go on in their timing. He went in his own timing. And so today we pick up the story with Jesus making his way down to the festival of booths. And what happens while he's there now, next week and probably a week after that, we're going to continue through the festival of booths. This is not all, this is a big portion of John. We're gonna be walking through the festival of the booths for a little while. But today I want us to study this idea that following Jesus requires both your head and your heart. So let's handle them one at a time. OK.

  Following Jesus requires your head. How do we see that in today's passage here today? What does it mean to follow Jesus with your head? Christianity is a religion of thinking. It always has been modern science was invented by Christians. So many different Christians people who are theistic who believed in God invented. What we know is modern empiricism. Contrary to what many stand up comics might say, Christianity is not the sort of thing where you're asked to check your brain in at the door. You know, no one, no one checked you as you were coming in this morning and asked you to put your brain in the locker as you're coming in, in fact, in our church, we are in this unique Camber area where there's just a ton of phd s around. There's a lot of smart brain power in this room. IQ we're, we're, we're going up high around here. Ok? And that's because Christianity is a religion that invites you to consider it, to consider it with your heads. And not just to feel it, in fact, to be a Christian actually requires that you use your head. That's what we see the people in this passage doing.

  In, in John chapter seven, we see them using their head if you'll look with me. Chapter seven, verse 11. The first one that we wrote, the Jews were looking for Jesus looking for him at the feast and saying, where is he? And there was much muttering about him among the people while some said he's a good man. Others said, no, he's leading people astray yet for fear of the Jews, no one spoke openly of him. Now, when it says for fear of the Jews, we said this last week, but I'm just gonna recap real quick when it says for fear of the Jews, it's not talking about all the Jews. Everyone there is Jewish, ok. The, the Jews are talking amongst themselves about Jesus. It's talking about the Saint Hedron, the Jewish leaders that have it out for Jesus. They've been wanting to, to arrest Jesus and, and probably kill him for quite a while now. And so they don't really want to talk about Jesus openly.

  But you see these people, they're trying to put the pieces together. Who is this Jesus character? Is he going to show up? Who is he? Is he a good teacher? Is he leading people astray? What are we to make of him? Maybe you yourself come today with similar kinds of questions. You're trying to figure out who is this Jesus character? I know that many people worship him but who is he really? What was he like? You're trying to put together the pieces and discern who this man is now when it comes to Jesus. Actually, these people, this this is really great. They're kind of narrowing down the choices because there aren't a lot of choices when it comes to Jesus, you really only have three choices and they're kind of all outlined here.

  One, he was a good man. He was a good man. He walked around, he taught good things too. He's leading people astray. He was a liar. He wasn't who he said he was three. He is the Christ. We'll see some of them arrive at this idea that he is the Christ or the word I actually prefer, but it's the Greek version of the word Messiah is Christ. So Christ is not Jesus' last name. OK? I know that many of us might be thinking that OK, Christ is not Jesus last name, it's Jesus is Messiah and Christ is the Greek version of the word Messia.h So Jesus is the promised one of God sent from heaven. And then more popular today is the fourth option that I will give you, which is Jesus is just a legend that he never actually existed. But the ideas they portrayed are might be good for humanity.

  So let's walk through each of these briefly and I'll explain just a little bit. First, I'm gonna start on the Jesus is a legend thing. This happens. Actually, it pops up pretty often like in my reels or something, I guess, like Instagram has me figured out that I'm a Christian. It's like basketball, basketball. Jesus was a legend, basketball that's like my, my reels on my Instagram feed. But with this idea that Jesus is a legend and what are we to make of this? People assert that all the time they say, you know, I don't believe that Jesus was even a real person, which is a difficult thing to argue with. I mean, how am I gonna change your mind about that? And I guess it's a lot easier to think that, but it's just intellectually lazy.

  Honestly, you can kind of say I don't believe anything exists and anything in history, it's kind of hard to prove. Oftentimes, how do we know anything in history exists? There's a group of people out there that deny that the holocaust existed just because it would be easier. And look, I don't wanna believe the holocaust cost happened. That's terrible. It's a terrible thing. I don't wanna believe it happened, but just because I don't want to believe it doesn't mean it didn't happen. Of course it happened. There's people alive today who saw it. I was officiating a web, a wedding this summer. I talked to someone, one of, one of your grandmothers who lived through Nazi occupation in Europe who saw the Nazis walking through her street and could tell me the story about it. People are still alive who witnessed such terrible things and we can talk to them more than that. There's been books written, there's documentation, we know that these things happened.

  Any historian would tell you that there is more historical proof for the existence of Jesus Christ as a man than there is for the existence of the current emperor of Rome during the time of Jesus' life. A man named Tiberius. Jesus has plenty of historical reliable data. Not only do we have the gospels, I mean, the gospels super reliable. They were written in order to give an eyewitness testimony of who Jesus is a, a scholar named Richard Baum wrote a book that I was forced to read in seminary. I hated it at the time and I'm thankful for it now. You know, it's that, that medicine that you have to take sometimes called Jesus and eyewitnesses. And with it, he combed through the New Testament and especially the Gospels and he documented every time that the gospel would use someone's name. And then he had an entirely other chart, another chart that how often these names are found in other Greek historical literature. And what he found is that what the gospel writers were trying to do when they would use a name is, they were actually giving their sources, they were citing who they're getting this information from. So, because many of these names are not very common and when they do use a name that's common, they usually tell them where, say where this person's from or who this person's parent is so that you could go and talk to the person because these gospel accounts were written while people who witnessed the accounts, we're still alive, they were written to be eyewitness accounts of what actually happened.

  Not only do we have the four gospels written in the New Testament, we have extra biblical evidence. We have Josephus talking about Jesus. We have all of this evidence, Jesus ever. Like I it, you'd be hard pressed to find many historians who would say that Jesus was not a real person. Most historians do believe that Jesus was a real person. And if you want more on that, I'd be glad I have plenty of information. We could do the whole sermon on this, but I'm not gonna do that. So I'd lose some of you, but it's important. All right.

  So with that one out of the way who is Jesus? Maybe this Jesus, he's just a good man as they were saying, Jesus was a good man. He certainly was a good man. He taught us to love our neighbors and to forgive our enemies and that's, that, those are great things. But then there's a big problem if he was just a good teacher. Let's imagine that there's a seminar this afternoon over at Harvard University and we're all invited. We all go and we hear the speaker talk and he is just brilliant. A good, a good man speaking, just very worldwide acclaimed speaking at Harvard. And at the very end of his talk, he says, and if you liked everything I have to say today, I'm also the Messiah and the son of God and it followed me and you could have eternal life. Well, all of a sudden, many of us will start second guessing all the things we heard during the talk. We'd stop thinking he's such a brilliant speaker. Maybe this guy is a lunatic would be what we have to draw the conclusion to you.

  See, you cannot just be a good teacher and make the claims that Jesus made Jesus claimed to be God. He claimed to be the son of God, the light of the world sent down from heaven to save the world of their sins. You cannot claim to be a good teacher while claiming to be God. You just can't hold those two together. So maybe he was a liar, maybe he was leading people astray as some people were saying, this would be fair if Jesus didn't back up everything he said. If there wasn't historical reliable data to show that he actually was res raised from the dead after he told them that he's going to be crucified and raised from the dead. Jesus backed up everything that he did. He predicted the crucifixion, the resurrection and he was.

  And so that leaves us with only one option. And it's this idea that Jesus is Messiah as the people in this passage. They get to this, this point. They, they say in verse 40 when they heard these words that Jesus had taught, we're gonna go back and look at these words. Some of the people said this really is the prophet. Others said, this is the Christ, the Messiah and prophet. You guys are crazy. This is the Messiah, but some said is the Christ to come from Galilee. That's not the scripture said that Christ comes from the offspring of David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was. And so there was division among the people over him. Wow, that seems like a simple one to fix. We just have to teach them the song, right? This little town of Bethlehem. We unfortunately, it wasn't written back then. They just didn't know that Jesus' parents were called by the census when he was delivered when he was, when he was born in a manger and laid in a manger.

  And so, what does it mean to believe that Jesus is the Messiah? It means that Jesus is first the son of God, that he is the son of God come down from heaven, having spent eternity past with God, the father and the Holy Spirit in blessed unity in heaven. He's come and made himself fully human, taking on full human form. And he has incarnated here on earth. He lived as a human about 2000 years ago. It also means that he lived a sinless life and he died the death of a sinner for our substitution, atonement as a substitution sacrifice. He took on the sins of the world and paid the penalty for those sins on the cross. And one day he will return to restore the world to proper working order, to eliminate sin and to destroy the evil one. This is what it means to trust that Jesus is the Messiah that he did these three things that he was incarnated, that he wa was our substitution sacrifice. And that one day he will restore the world following Jesus requires that you use your head.

  Now, if, if I were to just leave this point right here, which I'm about ready to move on and I get really excited about the next point even more than this one. But I need to say that following Jesus isn't a one time head decision. OK? It's not like you decide that Jesus is the Messiah and then you move on from using your head and you graduate to using your heart. Now, we have to continue to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. We have to continue to, to hold on to who Jesus is. This is why it's helpful for me to share with you about the, the liar lunatic or Lord choices before you and Jesus. It's also why it's helpful when we go to the scriptures and we read them and we say, oh man, this is hard. Well, Christianity requires that you use your head, it requires that you think about it. It requires that you think about literary genres and that you continue to study the scripture and you continue to look for Christ in the scripture.

  It's, it's like a gold mine. Oftentimes when you go to a gold mine, it's not like all the gold is just sitting on top. OK? You have to go in there and you have to dig and sometimes it takes a little bit of work with your head to get there, but it is so worth it. And Christianity requires that you work with your head and use your head. Unfortunately, I think that too many of us stop right there. And that is our Christianity. That is not how Jesus presents it in this passage. But for too many of us. We say, OK, I'm convinced that Jesus is the Messiah. I trusted him to forgive me of my sins. Maybe I walked down front to an aisle one time when I was a young child, maybe I had an experience where I trusted him and I made him the Messiah of my life. But that is where our Christianity ends. We have this head knowledge that we don't know what to do with. But Jesus tells us that there's so much more to what he came to do. And this is where I'm gonna talk about what it means to follow Jesus with your heart.

  Point number two, following Jesus with your heart. As John is describing the what happened at the festival of booths. Actually, it's, it's kind of a good history. John has written as a history book. He doesn't write it as just a literary device. He's not giving us all the details. He expects that his readers will actually kind of know what the festival of booths is, but I don't know about you. I've never, I've never celebrated the festival of booths. So therefore I had to go and do a bunch of research on what is the festival of booths and what was it like? And how did they practice it? And so what happened with the Festival of the Boots is it was a typically seven day festival where they were celebrating and on the eighth day they would kind of have a huge culmination feast that was like the to sum everything up. And it happened on the Sabbath day, which was the eighth day of the festival.

  And on this last day, Jesus got up and he said something quite shocking. I mean, if you were there, you would have been flabbergasted by what Jesus says because we have to kind of understand the traditions of, of the festival. One of the traditions of the festival is that they would have a water pouring festival, a water pouring tradition. And what they would do is they would take this pitcher of water, a pitcher of a golden pitcher and they would fill it up with water and they would walk it to the altar. And as they did this, the priest would be carrying the pitcher and they would be trumpets all around him and people blowing on horns, the shofars and all the stuff. Everybody's wearing their, their ceremonial robes and all the people of Israel have gathered around the temple to watch this water pouring ceremony as the priest takes the water picture and pours it on the altar. And he's saying this is to do two things. One is to point back to the way that God provided water in the wilderness when there was no water to be found, God provided it. But it also pointed forward to the ethological rivers that we will enjoy that the books of Ezekiel.

  Tell the, the book of Ezekiel tells us about how heaven will be a place with a river and the waters of God will be flowing. And so the, the priest would pour the picture of water and the people would celebrate. And it's within this context. And maybe within this moment, even when Jesus stands up and he declares to everyone, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink, whoever believes in me as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Now that's powerful. What is Jesus doing? He's saying you have this great festival, you have this great feast. You do this water pouring ceremony. I am the fulfillment of the water pouring ceremony. If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.

  And those words have been captured and pass down to Christian generation after generation and the invitation is open to you today. Jesus is still saying if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Jesus is the true water given by God that can satisfy the desires of humanity because Jesus knows that the natural state of our hearts is of spiritual drought. Does anybody feel that you feel like your heart is in an arid place? Spiritual drought is what our hearts are used to. We're like the, the the plants around your house that you forget about and when you give them water, you're like, oh, there was a plant here and the water suddenly sparks perks up. That's kind of how our hearts are just these arid places. And we have these deep longings that we hope that the world can satisfy. But that we don't, I actually believe can we are spiritually thirsty people in this regard?

  And I love the way that Pastor Tony Evans puts it. He says this, the thirst in the soul is manifested by a life of dissatisfaction, discontentment, unforgiveness, or sin domination. If you find yourself in one of those categories, you are not alone. We are all there one more time. The thirst in the soul is manifested by a life of dissatisfaction, discontentment, unforgiveness or sin domination. This is the natural start the natural spot of the arid heart that we all find ourselves. And Jesus says, if anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink. If you have desires, this world do doesn't satisfy Jesus is inviting you to come. Every night, my wife and I, well, usually one of us and it's usually my wife prepares the coffee for the next morning. It's just part of our routine because we don't want to wake up and in a caffeine like stupor like not be able to make coffee. I, I think that we're afraid that we won't remember how it works or something in, in that regard. And so we prepare the coffee for the night before Megan's better at it than I am. Um, and, but in the morning we wake up, we have the coffee pot already set coffee brews. We just get our coffee. Life is good.

  Um, couple weeks ago I prepared the coffee. I was serving my wife and said, you know what, I'll do it tonight and the morning came and the coffee was brewed and I went and, and, and she woke up before me and she had her coffee, she was drinking. So I went and got my coffee and I poured it in my mug and I looked, and it is not coffee at all. It is just murky nasty water that had been run through our machine. I forgot to put the grounds in the hopper. The hopper. Yeah. I forgot to put the coffee grounds in the hopper. So the water just went through the machine and filled up my my, my pitcher. What is that thing? I don't carafe. Yeah. Sorry, I'm not good at the anatomy of a coffee maker. But I poured it in my cup and I was disgusted because that tells me I don't wash my carafe well enough, first of all, and I just looked at the water. I took one look at the water and I was like, that's gross. I could smell it the second I poured it out. I was like, mm That's not coffee. That's nasty water. That's like murky tainted, muddy nasty water. And I went and was like, Megan the coffee. I forgot to put the grounds in it and she's like, oh, you did? She, like, didn't even notice she was just like, oh, yeah, I was just drinking it. Like I could put motor oil in the craft and you wouldn't even notice a thing. She's like, nope. And, you know, my wife, she's got her career. She's a mom. I don't blame her. Ok? She's got a lot going on and she's like you know, a little bit of caffeine. I might get like 1 mg out of this or something.

  So I went and made more coffee. How many of us are settling for the murky tainted water that this world can provide when Jesus says, come to me, all you who are thirsty and I will give you streams of living water. We turn to the things of the world thinking that they're gonna make us happy thinking that we're gonna be satisfied. But we know, you know, I know we all know that they leave us with a caffeine induced headache. They leave us longing for the real thing that Jesus says. If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink, he's inviting you church. Whoever believes in me as the scripture has said out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Whoever believes in me, whoever trusts and me, you see first you have to use your head. You do. You have to believe in Christ.

  But when you do out of your heart will come, will flow rivers of living water. But you also have to go to him with your heart. You can't just acknowledge him as savior. You have to go to him and let him satisfy the deepest longings of your heart through the rivers of living water. When he talks about the rivers of living water, what's he talking about? Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit. It says it in the next verse that he was talking about the Holy Spirit. I'm not just making that up.

  Who is the Holy Spirit, but the presence of Christ given to every believer that they might have Christ living with them each and every day. You can say the Holy Spirit is the spirit of Christ totally fine. The Bible describes, it describes him that way. The Holy Spirit is not a force, it is not a force that lives around us. That is the force from Star Wars. The Holy Spirit is a person who lives among you and who has power of God, the power of God because he is God. And Jesus says that when we come to Christ, that he fills us with the Holy Spirit, which is like rivers of living satisfaction, rivers of living water, that is who he is the spirit of Christ with us. Each and every day Jesus is sending into heaven, but he gave us the gift of the spirit that we might live each and every day in abundance with him. These rivers of living water are so much better than what the world has to offer.

  When you, when you think of a river, what do you think of? I grew up on the Mississippi river. That's a slow moving huge muddy river. But I think that the rivers that most of us might think of are the ones that are like streams of clean and refreshing water coming from fresh mountain mountain snow. that's melted snow, melt. A river has abundant clean water as opposed to a reservoir. A river isn't supposed to run dry. A river continues to have more and more water. The water continues to flow. You can return to him over and over and over again. You don't just go once and collect your water, you return to Christ and get your water. He delights to receive you again. He does not grow weary of our coming. When our souls are thirsty. Have you felt like maybe you've worn God's patience a little thin like you've gone to him a few too many times like you're a needy child, asking for loans from your parents. It's like I got two of them in me. But you know, I don't know about this third one here.

  That is not Jesus' perspective whatsoever. It's rivers of abundant living water. He is like a chef that's moved into a neighborhood whose dream was always to give good gourmet food to anyone who would come. But instead of going to the chef, we decide to live in our self sufficiency and we just make boxed mac and cheese every night. That stuff is disgusting. Ok, I'm just gonna name it. That is my kids love it and I don't understand. It's bad. Would the chef be annoyed at you coming? No, he would delight in you coming and receiving his food is what he most wants. He wants to see the look on your face when you delight in the food that he is provided because it's so much better than what you can provide yourself. Would he be frustrated if you came every day? No, he would not. That is why he is there. He wants to give away the good food and that is Christ. He wants to satisfy us with rivers of living water.

  We have to become return customers of Jesus. I need to be a return customer of Jesus. When I woke up this morning, my heart was grumpy. I was fixing my eyes on the things of this world and I needed to return back to the loving arms of Christ. We had to go over and over. Jesus is giving us living water. He's giving us abundant life. We have to receive it. We have to receive abundant life from Jesus. Let me just make this really clear. You can't provide abundant life for yourself earlier. This week. I I guess I have more things that pop up my reels. This is a very Instagram reel influence sermon here. But my barber was actually on there and I have a really good relationship with my barber. Maybe he'll watch this. We'll see. Hey, Larry.

  But he was talking about manifesting and, and what manifesting is and I was like, what is manifesting? Do you guys know manifesting? Many of us do? And so I had to Google it and find out that it turns out I'm just really behind. OK. So like most people know what this is. And then later on, I actually noticed other people talking about it within like that week. And so I, I realized it was popular. But Manifesting is the idea that was popularized in the book, The Secret. Early two thousands. Oprah loved it. The Secret. The Secret has sold 35 million copies. That's the same number as The Great Gatsby. OK. This is a popular, popular book that many people have read. And this idea of Manifesting, I looked it up and this is how one website defined it. Manifesting is cultivating the experience of what it is that you want to feel and then living and believing in that experience so that you can allow it to come into form. You can practice manifesting to attract whatever you want, whether that's a successful business, better health, a relationship or even a material object.

  So basically, what manifesting is is if you set your mind on it, if you think positive thoughts, those things will be attracted to you. If you set your mind on success and think positive success thoughts, a success, be attracted to you. A business venture would be attracted to you. A spouse can be attracted to you. The only problem is that manifesting is not the way that Jesus tells us that we can have abundant life is basically the exact opposite of what Jesus tells us is the way to have abundant life. Jesus says that you have to receive abundant life from Him that you can't create abundant life by having positive thoughts. When you receive abundant life from Him, where do your thoughts go? They don't go to the things of this world. Your thoughts go to the things above, set your mind on things above not on earthly things. Seek the kingdom of God above all this and God will bless you here. Sure. But it might not be in the way that you think. Manifesting in this sense is just the Prosperity Gospel in a Halloween costume. It's just a secular Halloween costume saying if you believe it, name it and claim it, let's go baby. That's, that's manifesting. That's not the Gospel.

  The Gospel says, seek the things above, seek God above all things. Jesus says that we have to receive abundant life from Him. Friends. We have to follow Jesus with both our head and our heart is never enough to simply believe true things about God. You must also draw near and allow Him to satisfy your innermost desires. The more you draw near, the more you learn about Him and the more you learn about Him, the more you wanna draw near to his mor embrace, you see head and heart, they're not opposed to each other. The more you learn about Christ as, as you learn, the real Christ, the more you're drawn to his warm embrace, embrace and the more you're drawn to his warm embrace, the more you want to know about him. And it's the cycle of delightful love that you get to live in for the rest of your life.

  That is Christianity, a deepening cycle, beautiful dance of joy and love. And what happens when you get a group of people together who have had knowledge of Jesus and heart, knowledge of Jesus stick with me here. OK? But it creates a smell, a smell stronger than the YMCA locker room, the aroma of Christ when we come to Christ each individually and then we come together the same Christ that I delight in you delight in. Isn't that amazing? Like, have you ever seen a good movie? But no one else has seen it. And then you're like, I gotta find that person that's seen the movie. There were people doing this a, a few years ago with the Korean movie Parasite. They're like, I gotta find someone that has seen Parasite and then they talk about it and I'm like, I don't understand what you're talking about. I don't do that stuff. I don't do horror. Ok. It's just not my thing. The same God that I interact with you interact with. Isn't it a joy to talk about? The deepest loves of your heart with someone that understands those deepest loves, which is your church family, which is the aroma of Christ.

  You see the gospel is not just something that you should hear, taught here and preached here at this church. The gospel is something that you should be experiencing here at this church through the relationships, the common love, the vibes that we have with one another as we experience this joy of Christ, let us share it with one another and be the aroma of Christ, the culture, the feel this is what we're going for. That's gonna look different for each and every one of us. So if, if you are one of these people that has really exuberant joy, just know that that's not everyone. OK? I don't like showing that much joy usually. I, I'm more like mild mannered. You know, keep it even, I'm very happy. I'm just keeping it even. Ok. So don't judge me based upon that. All right, but we can still delight and have this grace of God together friends. Let us go to him again, together the streams of living water. The one who says, come to me all you who thirst and I will give you a drink, a stream of living water, flowing out of your heart into a joy and satisfaction. That is what Jesus has to offer today.

  And as we go to him in these final songs at this communion meal, let's take our, the loves of this world and let's lay them aside and let's say it won't satisfy just tainted mu murky nasty water out of Fletcher's dirty carafe. I need the real thing. I need Jesus. So would you go to him today and say, I need you Jesus. I need you to satisfy the desires of my heart.

  Each week we practice a sacred meal called communion. And this is just a, a reminder that we're called to relationship with God and relationship with one another. We celebrate it together. We're all invited to the wedding feast. If you think about your relationship with Christ, it's just you and Christ, you're wrong. The, your relationship with Christ is meant to be had in the church body. And this is one of the times where we come to the table of Christ together and we enjoy the meal that he has to offer. With that being said, let me invite you to stand as we pray and prepare our hearts to receive the sacred meal.

  God, you, you satisfy us. We, we come to you as people who have been satisfied. Only in part, we long for the day when you come to satisfy the desires that we have, we long for the day that we get to be with you and to live with you. And so today, you, we know that you satisfy us about as much as this communion meal satisfies our hunger. But God, we, we also have tasted of it and it is good. Your satisfaction is good and we will return over and over and the, the, the invitations open. So Jesus, we pray for anyone here who needs to go to you that they might drink deeply of the love and affirmation that you offer them and that they might delight in who you are that they might encounter the real Christ, the risen Lord. Today we ask this in Christ's name. Amen.