What's Weighing You Down? - LIVE

[APPLAUSE] [MUSIC] >> Oh, hey, good morning. Good morning. A couple of weeks ago, I got a chance to be hosting up here. And I asked all of you to do me a favor. And just again, I'm going to see who's reckless and risky out here right now. How many of you would like to do a little experiment once again? If you do, I need to raise your head. I need at least 50% participation. I see about 30%, 45% about-- what about this group in here? Are you guys ready for the experiment? We're not going to do it if you're not going to participate, okay? I don't want-- it's not a democracy, let's make sure it's sheer. All right, so a few weeks ago, I asked you to kind of give me a scale of one to five, how your week was going. I don't know if you were here, but we were asking like, hey, one would be like, barely made it through the week five best week ever. And one thing that I got from that was my little piphany. Was that I thought everyone around me was at a five. And it was really helpful to know the transparency and honesty that not all of us were there. And I also realized that when I speak and people ask me like, how are you doing Tim? Right away, I go like, I'm fine. I don't really take inventory on myself. So I'm wondering if today we could do something that-- oh, Psalm 4610 is one of my favorite passages. And it says this, be still and know that I am not. And this is kind of an experiment where I like this to do what I call open heart surgery. So right there where you are at, if you could just be still. If you could just like lighten your seat, feel just-- just be fully present. Feel the back of your seat, put your feet on the ground. Yeah, like imagine like if there's like roots coming from the ground, be like enveloping your feet right now. And if you could, put your palms up. There's just something about our posture when we do that. And close your eyes and take a deep breath in. Hold it in the exhale. And just keep on doing that because I don't want you to hold your breath and pass out. But I want you to savor as you breathe in deeper, a little slower. What a miracle that is. Your mind, your body, your soul is all connected. And as you just go ahead, we're just going to do this for 10 seconds to be still. Close your eyes with me and just do that. It's a great reminder that you have a soul. Your lungs are filling up with oxygen. That you are fearfully, as a soulmate says, you are fearfully and wonderfully made. So let's just be still for 10 seconds here. And with your eyes still closed, I want to ask you something. How's your heart? What's the heaviest thing in your life right now? Is it a debt? Is it a performance review that's hanging over your head? Is there a relationship that's gone sideways? Or could it be that it's a quite realization that you've achieved everything you thought was going to do? Everything you thought you wanted, and yet you still feel empty, not weighted, unsettled. Let's pray together. Father, we just asked that in this time that you would just speak to us as only you can. Through your word, through the Holy Spirit, Father, we're listening. Thank you, Lord. You're just name it. Amen. Well, many of you may know that I have been Christian education for many years, but over 25 years. And I had the pleasure of working with thousands. No, not that big of you. You had to hold off on that. Yeah, thank you. Okay. So, over a thousand -- I had the pleasure of working with over like a thousand students serving, loving them, just delighting in them. And oftentimes I would get this question. Tim, what's your favorite type of student to work with? And people would think like it's the Valley Victorian, right? The one that always turns on paper in time, gets everything done. Or it's maybe the star athlete, gets us to the playoff game, and when a person's character gets at full-right scholarship. But actually, my heart has always been for the struggling student. Now, here in the Bay Area, we may be thinking like, oh, struggling person. Hmm, when I think of a struggling person, it's that person that's making all the noise, you know, asking for a handout, getting pulled aside, or failing out. But, often, the deepest struggle shows up when a person is still. And who is that person? That person is often the highly productive, but performance-exhausted person. You know, the one that's hitting all the KPIs, posting that wonderful weekend, snow weekend up at Tahoe. Or driving that car that everyone desires, I think like the Rivian. But -- (Laughter) But who internally really cannot stand the silence, because in the silence, that the weight of it all finally catches up. I know that student, because I was that student. All right, senior year, high school. Now you can show the picture. So, I was starting on the basketball team at my high school, and we're getting ready for the play-house, right? Now, you're probably going like, wait a minute, Tim. You're not even six feet tall. Yeah, I was that good. You know? Yeah. Yeah, before I went to San Diego, there was Tim San Diego. I'm kidding. Sorry, Jeremy. I didn't -- just joking. I know, I said I was starting player, but I didn't say for the varsity team, I was starting for what they called the lightweight division, which is a politically correct way of saying vertically challenged. Okay? You know, it's kind of funny. You look at that picture. You're looking at the uniform. I think the uniforms were from 1960, because when was the last time you saw shorts with a belt? Okay? I remember we got those. We were like, what in the world is this? So, nonetheless, you know, it was competitive. It was fun. And we had the chance to make the playoffs. All we had to do was beat cappuccino high school. All right? But, at the same time of doing that, I was trying to prepare for AP courses. I had -- I started struggling in calculus. I'm also stressing about SATs, you know, and of course, I'm also struggling with every student struggling with. And that is just trying to fit in. That school. At home, my parents were fighting. We were living way beyond our means. And let's just say there was a lot of drama. So, how did I deal with this? Not very well. Let's just say that I was self-medicating my anxieties, which of course led to guilt, which is should, because I was doing things I shouldn't be doing, which of course led to shame. That's a whole other topic we can say for another time. But you know the drill. It removed the "stress of the silence" from just a little while. But then it waxed you later on, because it's exponentially worse. Why? Because, you know, the deadline is even more impossible to meet. The workload is even greater. And then now my morale is at an all-time low. How many of you guys can relate to that? You guys are self-medicating on anything, right? Okay. But so here I am. I'm putting all my -- well, so I'm trying to get this paper done. And I remember sitting at my desk. And again, it was in the quiet that all of this started just hitting me. And I could not write this paper. You know, I put all my weights on my performance, my grades, my stats, and my relationships. You know, not bad things, but they couldn't anchor me in. In fact, like, I don't know if anyone have ever done free diving or diving anything. They tell you to put on these weight straps. It's supposed to help you. So one time my friend Dennis invited me to go dive for Abelone. You know, I'm like, "Ooh, Abelone. Those things are worth a lot." So you put on the weight straps and it's supposed to help you. But I would say that these weights were too heavy for me. And it started pulling me in. And it started -- I had to fight against it. And it just reminded me that that was sort of the same feeling this was. It was supposed to help me. Instead, it was sucking me in. And to the point where I couldn't even breathe. So what happened? Yeah, I finally got the paper done. But it was late. So because it was late, I had to miss -- well, I had to miss practice to get the paper done. So I didn't start in that game. And so I had to miss practice. So then, you know, I didn't show up for the game. And because we didn't win, we didn't get to go to the playoffs. And that whole year I struggled as a senior. So maybe you graduated. but you are still that student. You've still been carrying that quiet weight around with you all week. And if you have to, I just want to let you know that you're not alone. In fact, Jesus is not just, sometimes you feel like Jesus is like on the sideline, but no, he's with you. And in fact, he's for you. And I like to invite Maggie to come up. She's going to read a passage for us. But as she comes up, we're going to hear from the passage. We've been going through John 12 during this time. And again, just a reminder, John is an apostle. One of those who were closest to Jesus. And I love John because he had a reputation of being a hothead. He was affectionately called like a son of thunder. But he traded that identity to be a diligent, faithful follower of Jesus who became known as the disciple that Jesus loved. So here's John's account, Jesus speaking. [INAUDIBLE] [INAUDIBLE] [INAUDIBLE] [INAUDIBLE] Thank you. Thank you, Maggie. Thank you so much. And if you haven't had a chance to meet Maggie, she's a wonderful member of everything. Thank you, Maggie. [APPLAUSE] She has a smile that lights up the whole room, and she's just a wonderful prayer warrior, and a huge heart for the Lord and for others. Thank you. To understand why Jesus says this, we have to rewind about 45 seconds here. You know, a couple of weeks ago, Pastor Jonathan talked about Jesus coming into Jerusalem, entering on a donkey. It's his triumphant entry. And the brand engagement, if Jesus was on LinkedIn, his mentions would be just blowing up the algorithm right now. And so it's kind of interesting that as this is happening, we start seeing that everyone wants to see him be a certain king, a certain person that they want him to be, but he's not that. Jesus knows the why behind the what. He knows that he wasn't looking for a crown made of gold. He was looking for a cross made of wood. He just told his followers that a grain of wheat is what Pastor Terry shared last week, that a grain of wheat has to die to produce fruit. And then it hits him completely. Hit on. Now my soul is troubled. Now, I want to pause here for a second for my friends who might be skeptics. You value logic. Okay, we're going to be logical here. When you look at verse 27, you kind of hit a snack. You go, wait, did Jesus just say that? You might be thinking like, wait, if this is the creator of the universe, why is he falling apart? Isn't God supposed to be unflappable? The ancient Greeks love the idea of apathy up. That God is incapable of feeling emotion, because emotion implies God can be affected or changed. Now what does apathy sound like? Apathy, yeah, right. And apathy today means, I don't care, I'm lazy. Apathy event, though, meant freedom from suffering. It was a goal of a philosopher to be so heavy and so centered that no external tragedy, like being hung on across, could move them. So in Jesus' days, there was this group called the Stoics, who could be described as the intellectual elites. They would say, also, I was pictured like they had this like snobbish little accident, right? But they would think like, the rapids in the storms in a world can't be controlled. So you must control your internal responses. In San Francisco, we worship a modern version of this, the unflappable executive. You know, the person that stays calm while the startup is in total chaos, we think strength is the absence of emotion or struggle. The same CEO would probably be reading meditations by Marcus O'Reillius and trying to, quote, optimize their emotions to be productive. But the intellectual rigor of the gospel says something completely different. Jesus isn't trouble because he's weak. He's troubled because he is present. If Jesus faced across the concentration of all human cruelty, your shame, my failures, and the weight of the world, and felt nothing, he wouldn't be holy. He'd be like a sociopath. To be perfectly human and to be perfectly revolted by the brokenness of death, Jesus' distress proves he isn't cold like some marble statue or something. He is a living, breathing 100% human, 100% God, who takes on the full weight of our sins and our brokenness. He feels the rush of the rapids just as we do and becomes our anchor in the middle of the storm. The stoics would offer you a stone so that you won't feel the pain. But, of course, you won't feel anything good either. You won't feel the beauty, the awe, the wonder, the sweetness, the preciousness of life. Jesus offers you a heart of flesh, anchor to him so that you can weather the storm. How do we know that? When Jesus says, "Father, glorify your name." He's using a word that changed the world. Glory isn't just like some sort of religious buzzword. It has two dimensions, both weight and beauty. First, we'll start with weight. As author, pastor, theologian, Dr. Timothy Keller pointed out, the Hebrew word for glory is "cavod," which literally means heaviness. Imagine a class for river in the seeras. If you throw a handful of dry leaves into the current, they're gone, in seconds. That's how many of us feel living here in the Bay Area. We're tossed by the currents of the housing market, the digital loneliness, and political anxiety. We feel light, like we might be swept away. But, contrast that, if you place a ten-ton granite boulder in that stream, it ain't gonna budge. It's going nowhere. It has more weight than the current. When Jesus says, "Glorify your name." He's asking the weight of who he is and all that he is, become realized in our hearts and in our lives. But here's the thing. Sometimes you, me, can use God like an apple on my phone. I go ahead and I use it whenever I need it. I need a blessing? Okay. I'll go ahead and get that. But, other than that, I put it away. In fact, I want to turn it off notifications. Yeah, I know. But the second part is besides weight is beauty. In the Greek, the word for glory is "doxa," which also carries the meaning of radiance, splendor, supreme worth. How can I explain this? You should be enthralled. You guys were here last year? So, why both meanings? Because it describes what the cross brings forth. Jesus willing to die on the cross for us is a crazy display of glory, of tremendous weight, proof that we can anchor ourselves to Him, and also of beauty, an extraordinary expression of love and sacrifice. So, as John 12, let's just read this again. Now my soul is troubled and what's shall I say, Father, save me from this hour, but for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name. Then a voice came from heaven. I have glorified it and I will glorify it again. When Jesus says your name, He's referring to everything about God, His reputation, His character, His words, His presence. Jesus is asking God to reveal the beauty and strength of everything He is to us. And then verse 32, when it says, "And I, when I'm lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." He said this to show by what kind of death He was going to die. Obviously, when it's talking about when I'm lifted up, He's referring to the cross. It crosses the demonstration of both weight and beauty. It's why it will draw all people to Him. Not just the Jews, but all people from all nations. This was the plan. So, here's one thing that I want to make sure that you walk away with. If you get nothing else from my conversation today, is this. The world's weight will make us weary. Jesus gives us a glory that anchors us down and makes us unshakable. Do you want to be unshakable? Anchor yourself to the glory that only God can give. The world asks you and me to build our own glory. It says, "Make a name for yourself. Build your resume. Negotiate that job title. Boost your LinkedIn profile. Be heavy. Be important. Get noticed." And that hustle is exhausting. Why? Because you're playing a role. You were never designed to be. You're not designed to be God. Let's see where my hair is. These notes are just too small. My eyes are going bad. At least to burnout, we see from Marin County to Silicon Valley. It's so evident because we're just so easily tossed around and swept up by the rapids of life. Or maybe you just want to make good things, ultimate things, like health, finance, family. Yeah, nothing wrong with them, but they're not anchors. Health. We know what direction that's ultimately going. Despite modern technology and trying to freeze every little thing we possibly can, everything still has an expiration date on it. Finances. The world tells us we need it. We should live way beyond our means. Everything is important to make you a better person. But we're so seldom grateful or content with what we have. And we all know we can't take it with us. Family. That's probably the most difficult thing for us to talk about here. Because whether it be your parents, your spouse, your children, or your friends, it's so good and important to keep these relationships healthy and growing. Yet they too will eventually let you down. Or you'll let them down. Why? Because again, as we have shared earlier, we all have an expiration date. It's a weight that can't be carried. We often think that glorifying God is something that we do when we have our act together. You know, when we won the big game. Always ends like, "Oh, glory to God." Yeah, you know. But look at Jesus. He glorifies the Father right in the middle of being troubled. He doesn't wait for the storm to pass to find his anchor. No. Instead, he finds his anchor to navigate the storm. So how do we move from being worn out to being anchored? Five steps. One, admit the ache. Jesus says, "My soul is troubled." He owns it. In our utilitarian culture, we think submitting or admitting struggle is a sign of bad return on investment. Jesus says, "It's the beginning of honesty and it's the beginning of growth." Number two, assert your agency. Jesus asks, "What shall I say?" "Father save me." He realizes that he has a choice. You are not a victim of your mid-level management job or of your family circumstances. You have the agency to choose your response and your focus. Three, abide in him. He remembers the why. For this purpose, I have come. Are you meditating on his word or you just doom scrolling through images on your feet? Meditate on John 15, where Jesus gives us this great parable of the vine and the branches and how important it is for us to abide in him. Four, acknowledge. Jesus talks to the Father. I'm a father. Man, I love when one of my children gives me a call. I'm delighted, excited, every single time. If I'm a father that feels that way and I'm imperfect, can you imagine how God feels every time you reach out to Him with something that you may need? Ask Him. Ask, "Father, I need help." Live out, Proverbs 3, 4, and 5, where it says this, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. But in all your ways submit to Him and He will make your past great." Five, action. Commit to your convictions. Jesus followed through with his convictions as he said he would only be with them for a little while longer. He was also kind of giving a quiet nudge to say, "Hey, follow me while I'm still here." So what do you do when the storm sits? Again, you want to go ahead and admit the ache, assert your agency, abide in him, acknowledge, and turn it into action. So, what does this matter? Because if you don't, you're going to find your weight. If you don't find your weight in the glory of God, you're going to go ahead and find the glory in self. You'll try to make your career, your social activism, or your relationships the bolder in your stream. But those things are thin. They're leaves. When the market crashes, when the relationship ends, or when you realize you can't save the world on your own, you're going to be swept away. The thriving life isn't a life without trouble. Jesus was deeply troubled. The thriving life is a life where you are anchored, anchored to the beauty and the grace of Jesus. Who walked the earth, lived a sinless life, suffered, died on the cross, and as he predicted and proclaimed, was resurrected and walked amongst us, appearing to over 500 eyewitnesses as 1 Corinthians 156 counted. So, I want you to kind of take from today a couple practical and gracious steps. For those of you that might be skeptics, look at the trouble Jesus. If he was just a moral teacher, he'd tell you to try hard, a man, buckle up. But because he is God, he looks at the weight of the cross, he took on the full weight of the cross so you wouldn't have to carry the weight of your own perfection. This week I want to encourage you to read John 12 and ask, "Is Jesus who He claims Himself to be could He be the perfect sacrifice for my brokenness?" For those who are wrestling with weights on your belt, if God is like during this time revealed to you, "Mmm, there's a few things that I'm really putting my weight on." If you don't know what that is already, I want you to kind of ask yourself, "Is there anything that you're kind of hustling for that is making your soul feel thin? Is it a promotion? Is it a certain social status in your friends group?" Ask yourself and ask the Lord, "What is really my anchor? Will it withstand the storms and the rapids of this world?" And if needed, I want to encourage you to confess that to God, ask God to be your weight instead. Stop trying to earn grace that Jesus has already given and finished for you. For those of you who are mature believers, and you're constantly in the world, you're walking with Him for a long time, you've pretty much done everything that's put on the checklist to be a follower or a Christian. I want you to make sure that you're being honest with yourself too. Has God just become another healthy, ritual? There I say, "Religion?" A way to please or please God in a sort of sort of a transaction where God, if I do this, I should be getting this, or I'm pretty much ticked off at you. This week I challenge you to take a 15-minute time. For the next few days, give God the 15 minutes of your day. Just 15 minutes. Where there's no phone, no slack, no news, just sit and talk, which is also known as prayer. Talk with God. Be open to His leading. Does He want you to read more of His Word? Call a friend. Just to give maybe hear your voice. Could it be He wants you just to crawl into His embrace and rest in His arms? I know that for all of us, we have someplace that we know we can get a little bit closer to our Heavenly Father because there's just so many things in this world right now that distracts us from doing that and says it's more important, more urgent, more of a priority. But is it? Hey, I just want to share with you that for me driving has always been a great therapy for me. I love driving with my car windows down. I actually love driving a stick shift so manual transmission makes it even feel better. I've had some of my best conversations with my bride Lynn, with God, and so I think all of this started my junior year at Cal. I had visions of my junior year at Cal. I'm an upper classman, I'm in the business school, I'm involved with clubs, business fraternity, sports, and I'm actually surprisingly kind of getting a little popularity. But you see, I also just dedicated my life to Christ in the middle of the storm. But the storm went from a category two to at least for me, it seemed like a category four. We were in trouble. How messy? Here's a quick snapshot. So our store, which was like a jewelry business, in two years we had two million dollars stolen. My father was struggling with faithfulness to my mom. He also self-medicating decided to start gambling and we had this huge gambling den. And then he was convicted, not totally of his own fault, but most of it was of white quality crimes that led him to lose a very successful insurance business. A business that we could have just retired on. And just to add a little icing on the cake, here's the lawyer fees, which were six figures. Now this is back in late '80s, so adjusted for inflation. It means it's a whole heck of a lot of money. So and it was determined that I needed to take a semester off to work with the family, because all we had left was a jewelry company. And if you know, if you were around during that time, you know, late '80s, great recession, nothing better and more lucrative than to be in a jewelry business. I'm joking. So we just had also these properties and I'm going, of course, you only can hire me because who else can we trust. So I'm looking at taking a semester off. And the truth was, my college and my home life were two different worlds. I kind of use colleges being my, my escape, right? And I think you can sort of understand that. And if you guys are sign-filled friends, like it was my George Costanza's, you know, college world versus this personal world. Those two worlds can't can lie. But God, in his infinite wisdom, said, no, you can't be two different people. So here I am driving down Highway 5 down to Barstow that isn't my dad. And the big question was, how am I going to face him? Was that going to be angry? Was that going to just have a great deal of disdain? Or worse yet, was I going to simply ignore him? And I'm having this conversation with God and I was praying and God just whispered back to me. Don't ask me why. I still get emotional about this. And he was just saying, like, you were like your dad. You were lost. You were struggling. If all of this would bring your dad to know me as his personal Lord and Savior, Tim would it be worth it? And I said, yeah, yeah, I would. And I think that's the first time I ever really gave, put all my weights, all my accolades, all my efforts, all the things I thought I really wanted. He said, God, I would put it at the cross. You know me better than I do. I know these things won't hold me. You will. In the middle of this storm, I have no idea. I'm going to get out. How we're going to get out mathematically, no way. So, I have feelings. What am I thinking? All right. All right. So my visit. Yeah, I realized I really couldn't carry it. And so my visit was actually very special with my dad. Not just for him, but for me. Jesus was with me then, and he's always been there for me since. Jesus knew the cross was coming. He knew the weight of the world's sin was about to be placed on him and yet, and yet. He leaned into the Father's glory so that we could find our rest in him. Once again, I'm going to show that what your one takeaway is. The world's weight makes us weary. Jesus gives us the glory that anchors us, anchors us down, and makes us unshakable. So I want to encourage you today. Are you listening for his voice in this moment? You know, later on that passage, people, there's only three times that God's voice was accounted for in the gospel that was, that it was heard. One was Jesus' baptism. The other was his transfiguration. The third time was right here. And some people thought it was thunder. Other people heard the voice. I just want to encourage you. What are you ready to hear the voice, or you just can hear thunder? As I shared earlier, Jesus wasn't looking for a crown of gold, but for the cross of wood. Why? Because the cross is where the weight of our sin met the beauty of his grace. And I'm going to ask the worship team to come on up. And as we prepare our hearts, can we give a little background on the song that we're going to end with? Written by Isaac Watts. We can also update it a little bit. Isaac Watts was a father of modern hymns, captured it perfectly when he asked this. Did heur such love and sorrow meet, or thorns, or thorns compose such a rich crown? That is the glory of our king. A crown of thorns and a throne of wood. As we prepare our hearts for worship, let's fix our eyes on the Prince of Glory who gave everything so that we might give him our arm. Would you please stand with us as we close the song? Thank you.