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April of 2025, something rather unusual happened on Mt. Fuji in Japan. A 27-year-old Chinese university student decided to climb the mountain in the off-season, when climbing is more treacherous. Mt. Fuji is 12,000 ft. above sea-level; the highest peak in Japan. Things didn't go according to plan. He developed altitude sickness, had trouble with his climbing equipment, and eventually had to be rescued by helicopter on April 22. Now, you'd think that being airlifted off a mountain would be enough excitement for one week, right? You might think he'd learned a valuable lesson about respecting the mountain and knowing your limitations. But apparently, he had left something behind...his cell phone. So four days later, on April 26, he went BACK on Mt Fuji, attempting to retrieve his phone. And again, he got into trouble. AGAIN, he developed altitude sickness. And AGAIN, emergency responders had to rescue him from the mountain! Twice in four days, from the same mountain, all over a cell phone! It's an almost unbelievable story, but it raises a question: What good is being rescued if you simply go right back to the thing that put you in danger in the first place? And as crazy as that story sounds, I wonder if we sometimes do something very similar in our relationship with God. We cry out to Him when we're in trouble. We ask Him to deliver us from the consequences of our choices. We rejoice when He answers our prayers. But sometimes, once the crisis has passed, we go right back to living the way we were living before. And then we wonder why we keep finding ourselves in trouble!

Everyone has a cell phone, right? In fact, if you DON'T - first of all, way to go; I respect the heck outta you! Secondly, raise your hand proudly. These things are now such a huge part of life, it's kinda scary. Now, for those who DO have a cell phone ,how many of you have had that cell phone that recently did an update? A little inconvenient, right? It seems like every time I turn around, my phone is telling me there's a new update available. And apparently, this update is going to make my phone faster, safer, smarter, and improve the quality of my life! HOWEVER, when I do all the things you gotta do to get the update, when my phone restarts, everything pretty much looks the same - except they've moved three buttons and now I can't figure out how to set my alarm! And it's not just our phones. Computers are constantly updating, too. You sit down at the computer to get some work done, and Windows announces that it's time for an update. And it doesn't ASK - it just tells you, "This may take a while." And suddenly what was working five minutes ago will be unavailable for the next 2 hours, it seems. Software updates are only part of the problem. Every year, the companies that make these things announce that they've developed something even better. There's a new phone, a new computer, a new tv, a new smartwatch. And each new model comes with features that apparently make the one we bought last year hopelessly inadequate. But wait - my phone was FINE yesterday. It made calls. It sent messages. It took pictures. It gave me directions. I could get online with it. So why do I NEED an upgrade? It's because they TELL me I need one. Did you know there's actually a term for the idea that products are designed or marketed with a limited useful lifespan. It's called planned obsolescence. We are living in a culture where products are more easily replaced than repaired, where newer models are constantly being introduced, EVEN IF THE OLD MODEL STILL WORKS. Now I bring that up because if we're not careful, this upgrade mindset - the "I need the 2.0 or the 3.0" way of thinking - influences the way we think about everything, even our relationship with God. What do I mean?

The story we're looking at today has two interesting bookends. These bookends are two names. Now, names are funny things. Parents can spend an enormous amount of time deciding what to name a child. You want something you both like, something that sounds good with the last name, something meaningful, and preferably something the child won't spend the rest of his life having to explain or be teased about. Every year the Social Security Administration releases a list of the most popular baby names in America. We don't have the official list for 2026 yet because, apparently, they insist on letting the year finish before they count all the babies. But the most recent list tells us that the most popular names for boys include Liam, Noah, Oliver, Theodore, and Henry. For girls, it's Olivia, Charlotte, Emma, Amelia, and Sophia. Those are good names. Solid names. Names you can imagine being used on a playground without feeling that you've made a horrible mistake. Of course, choosing a name at times is complicated because of a bad experience one of the parents had. “How about Frank?” “Absolutely not." “Why not?” “I knew a Frank in high school.” Apparently Frank did something so terrible in 1985 that the name is now permanently banned from the family bloodline! My daughter teaches first grade and refuses to name a child anything with an X in it. Why? Because names carry associations, memories. They carry history and experience. In the Bible, names oftentimes carry meaning. Abraham's name tells a story. Isaac's name - "Laughter," reminds us of joy at the arrival of a long-awaited son. Jacob wrestles with God and becomes Israel. Jesus is given a name that means “Jehovah saves,” because, as the angel told Joseph, “He will save his people from their sins.” So at times a name doesn't merely identify you; sometimes a name tells a story, and again, the story we're looking at today is bookended by two names. One of them belongs to a baby. The other one belongs to a rock. Now, neither one made the Social Security Administration's top ten. The baby is named Ichabod. The rock is named Ebenezer. Two very literary names, right? Unusual names for our time, for sure. But those two names tell us the whole story we're going to look at today.

I have a confession to make. I TEND to ignore the lights on my dashboard - probably because I can't tell you what half of these lights mean. And turns out lights can stay on for a long time before bad things happen - at least in my experience... 🙂Now, you probably know that there are certain lights on the dashboard of your car that you can ignore for a little while. The little light that tells you the windshield washer fluid is low? You can probably make it home. The light reminding you that it's time for an oil change? You probably don't need to pull over immediately. And because of that, I kind of operate with that same attitude for all lights. People with more common sense than I have know that on the other hand, there are some lights that come on that you really shouldn't ignore. Oil pressure. Engine temperature. Brake warning. When one of those lights comes on, the smartest thing you can do is pay attention. But that's not what I do. Now to my credit I've never done what I know some people do. There are some, if the light really bothers them, they just put a little piece of electrical tape over it. Problem solved! You understand, right? HOWEVER - the issue was never the LIGHT, was it? In fact, you could even say that the light was actually an act of mercy. That little light was trying to tell you that something was wrong before something much worse happened. The warning wasn't there to ruin your day. The warning was there to save your engine—or perhaps even save your life. And sometimes I wonder if we misunderstand the warnings of God in exactly the same way. We read a passage of Scripture and it makes us uncomfortable. Someone who loves us confronts us about something. Our conscience begins bothering us. The Holy Spirit presses upon an area of our lives that we would really rather leave alone. And our first reaction is sometimes, “I wish that feeling would go away.” But what if the warning itself is mercy? What if conviction is one of God's gifts? Because there comes a point when the warning light has been ignored for so long that the warning gives way to consequences. And that's where we are when we come to 1 Samuel 3. We have been watching this story unfold in our series, The Rise of a King, and we have already seen that something is terribly wrong in Israel.

SOMETHING ABOUT FANTASY FOOTBALL. There is something fascinating about the way we choose people. I hated the way dodgeball or kickball teams were chosen back in Elementary School! When you choose your Fantasy Football team, you can base your choice a BIT on what happened last year - but more often than not you're kind of just playing the odds. Ever wonder how GOD chooses people? I mean God looks at this old man, Abram, and says, "I'm going to make a nation out of you." He looks at a stuttering washed-up fugitive hiding out in the desert and says, "You will lead my people out of slavery." And later in this study in 1 Samuel, we will see God weeding through some really great guys - strong guys, talented, good-looking - just to find the kid brother who hadn't even been invited to the family meeting and says: "That's the one!" It makes me sit up and take note as to what God must think is most important. But even as we pointed out last week, this study of the rise of a king does not begin with that story; but rather with a woman crying out to the Lord, praying for a baby.

We all know that feeling, don’t we? You want to sleep so badly, but it just doesn’t seem to be in the cards. You drift off, and the phone rings, the kids wake you up, or the preacher raises his voice. Here’s another one for you. How many of you use the snooze on the alarm on your phone? There are times when I have hit the snooze on my phone - but I KNOW it going to go off again in, like, 10 minutes...and instead of actually going back to sleep, I keep thinking about the alarm for the next several minutes as I lay there in a state of half-conscious anxiety! But here is the problem: as Christians, many of us are walking around in that exact same state. We are spiritually "half-asleep." We are hitting the snooze button on our faith. We are comfortable, we are drowsy, and we have no idea that the enemy is right outside the window, knocking. As we continue in our series, "Questions Jesus Asked (And We Must Answer)," we come to a moment where Jesus’ closest friends couldn’t seem to stay awake. And the problem was, this was not the time to sleep.

There are certain questions people ask when you immediately know what they're really asking. If your spouse looks at you and says, "Do you know what today is?" you know that isn't really a question about the calendar. It's a question about whether you've remembered something important. Suddenly you're mentally flipping through anniversaries, birthdays, and every promise you've made over the last month, hoping you've remembered the right one. Sometimes the question itself isn't the point. The question is designed to lead you somewhere. Jesus was a master at asking those kinds of questions. That's why we've been spending this summer looking at Questions Jesus Asked (And We Must Answer). Jesus often taught by asking questions because questions have a way of reaching places that lectures never can. A question forces us to examine our own hearts. It reveals what we believe, what we fear, and where our faith really is. Today's question seems almost unnecessary at first. Jesus looks at His disciples and asks, "How many loaves do you have?" It almost sounds as though He's simply taking inventory, but that's not what He's doing at all. Jesus isn't asking because He needs information. He's asking because He wants to teach His disciples something they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.

So we are deep into our summer series, "Questions Jesus Asked (And We Must Answer)." And today's question hits us right between the eyes. It's from Mark 8, and Jesus asks: "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?" Now before we dive in, I want to start with a story. Christopher McCandless. Some of you know the story - it was made into a book and later a movie called Into the Wild. This kid was brilliant. College grad. Good family. Had the whole world open to him. But he was suffocating. He felt like society was a trap, like success was a cage. So he did what a lot of people dream about doing - gave it all up, his money, his savings, his car, and headed into the Alaskan wilderness with nothing but a backpack, a rifle, and a copy of Tolstoy. He wanted to live free. No bills. No bosses. No expectations. Just him and the raw, untamed wild. What happened? Four months later, he starved to death in an abandoned bus. Just 24 years old. His last journal entry read: "I've had a happy life and thank the Lord. Goodbye and may God bless all." Now, I share that story because there's something in all of us that gets what he was trying for. We feel that itch too - the sense that life is more than a rat race, more than mortgages and the meetings and the never-ending to-do list. But here's the thing: McCandless went looking for life and found death. He went looking for freedom and found a trap. He gained...what? Freedom from money? Freedom from responsibility? Yes, but in the end, he lost everything. That's exactly what Jesus is getting at here in our passage.

As we continue our summer series on Questions Jesus Asked (And We Must Answer), we come this week to what might be the most personal question Jesus ever posed. It's a question that cuts through all our religious performance, through our theological correctness, through our church attendance and spiritual busyness, and gets right to the heart of everything. The question is simply this: "Do you love me?" Now, at first glance, that might seem like an easy question to answer. Of course we love Jesus. We're here on a Sunday morning, aren't we? We've said the prayers, sung the songs, maybe even nodded along during the sermon. We could all raise our hands and say, "Yes, Lord, I love you. Absolutely. No question about it." But here's the thing I want us to wrestle with today: Jesus isn't looking for people who merely say they love Him. He's looking for disciples whose love can be seen. The answer He's seeking isn't just a verbal affirmation—Peter already gives that three times in our text. The answer Jesus is looking for is a life that proves it. So, let's see what we can learn from this very pointed question Jesus asks..

Welcome. It's good you are here today, because today's question is, without a doubt, the most important one Jesus ever asked. There are many important questions in life. Where will you go to school? What career will you pursue? Who will you marry? Where will you live? How will you raise your children? Those are significant questions because they shape the course of your earthly life. But there is one question that determines far more than the next few decades. It determines your eternity. The question is found in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 16.  "Who do YOU say that I am?" Everything about faith rises or falls on the answer to that question. Throughout history people have wrestled with that question. Maybe you're here today and that question still lingers in your life. WHO is Jesus?

Throughout this series, we have been examining some of the questions Jesus asked during His earthly ministry. That may seem a little unusual at first because we often think of Jesus as the One who provides answers. People came to Him with questions about God, life, eternity, forgiveness, marriage, money, and countless other subjects. Yet when you read the Gospels carefully, you discover that Jesus frequently responded to questions by asking questions of His own. In fact, one scholar estimated that Jesus asked more than 300 questions during His ministry. He understood something that every good teacher understands: answers can inform the mind, but questions have a way of revealing the heart. When Jesus asked a question, it was never because He lacked information. He already knew the answer. Instead, His questions invited people to examine themselves. They exposed assumptions, uncovered motives, and forced individuals to confront truths they might otherwise avoid. And the same is true today. The questions Jesus asked two thousand years ago continue to echo into our lives because they are not merely questions for the people in the story; they are questions for us.

Billy Graham was arguably one of the most respected Christian leaders of the twentieth century. When he passed away, during his funeral service, his son, Franklin Graham shared something significant to those of us whose vocation and calling is to preach. He said one of the defining characteristics of his father's ministry was his absolute confidence in the Word of God. He recalled countless occasions when his father would stand before thousands of people, hold up his Bible, and simply declare, "The Bible says..." For generations of Christians, that phrase was the foundation of preaching. The preacher's authority wasn't found in his personality or his opinions. It wasn't found in his education. It wasn't even found in his experience. The authority came from one simple conviction: "The Bible says." And yet today, there are rising voices - even from those who preach - suggesting that this phrase "The Bible says" should be cast aside because it is essentially outdated. Some preachers claim that since modern people are suspicious of authority, when we appeal to Scripture AS authoritative in one's life, we are in danger of creating barriers rather than bridges to faith. There is one prominent modern-day preacher who has even suggested that portions of the Bible, particularly the OT, are outdated, embarrassing, or largely irrelevant to modern believers. So which is it? Is the Bible still relevant? Does it still matter? Can we still confidently say, "The Bible says"? Or has the Bible become little more than a religious artifact that we respect but rarely open?

This morning we are beginning a brand-new summer sermon series that we're calling "Questions Jesus Asked* (And We Must Answer)." When most people think about Jesus, they think about His answers. They think about His teaching, His miracles, His parables, and the incredible wisdom He shared with those around Him. And certainly, Jesus gave some remarkable answers. But what many people don't realize is that Jesus was also a master question-asker. In fact, when you read through the Gospels, you discover that Jesus asked questions everywhere He went. Some of them were simple questions. Some were uncomfortable questions. Some were questions that cut straight to the heart. He asked questions like, "Why are you afraid?" "Who do you say that I am?" "Do you want to get well?" "Where is your faith?" and "Do you love me?" And here's what makes those questions so powerful: Jesus wasn't asking because He needed information.  Jesus' questions are rarely about information. They are about revelation. He asks questions not because HE needs answers, but because WE do. And Jesus' questions are powerful in that they reveal what is happening in our hearts. They expose our fears, our assumptions, our priorities, and sometimes even our idols. In many ways, spiritual growth begins when we become willing to answer honestly the questions Jesus asks. So throughout this summer, we're going to sit at the feet of Jesus and listen carefully to some of His questions. Because if we're willing to wrestle with them honestly, they have the power to transform us.

Have you ever noticed that one of the very first words children learn is the word "mine"? Mine; my toy. Mine; my blanket. Mine; my cookie. Mine; my seat. Nobody has to teach a child to say "mine." In fact, my dad did NOT do me any favors when he himself taught my kids that word. (Thanks, Dad!) It seems to come naturally, our obsession of ME. What takes years to learn is another word: "ours." Some people never really learn that word, I'd say. We live in a culture that constantly teaches me to think about ME. My career. My house. My plans. My retirement. My comfort. My happiness. Couples who go through pre-marital counseling with me learn that one of the biggest helps for a healthy marriage is being willing to turn the M upside down, from ME to WE, where our decisions and paths we forge aren't only about ourselves alone anymore. God put us into communities like families and tribes and congregations so that we can experience the power of WE, OUR, US. The concept of turning the M upside down can be easily played out in Christian communities called "The Church." I'm going to make the statement that it's absolutely crucial for us to learn it, in fact, because it's easy to see that churches can fall into exactly the same trap. We can become focused on our worship, our programs, our budget, our building, our ministries, and our preferences. And before long, the church exists primarily for the people already inside it rather than the people Jesus wants to reach outside it.

In football, they have the huddle. The whole purpose of the huddle is to give the team about thirty seconds to call the next play. That’s it. Now, here’s what’s funny—sixty thousand people might be watching that huddle. And they don’t mind. They understand. You’ve got to get organized. The quarterback needs to know where he’s going. The ends need to know their route. The backs need to know their assignment. But let me tell you something obvious: nobody pays between 250 and 1000 bucks just to watch the huddle. People come to see the team break the huddle, snap the ball, and move down the field against a defense doing its darnedest to stop them. The 60,000 plus Number 12s ("fans", for the uninitiated) want to know: did your practice actually make a difference? Will it work? Now, here’s where we as Christians get into trouble. We get high on our huddles. Sunday morning, Worship Nights, Sunrise Services — we go nuts over the huddle. “Man, worship today was amazing!” “Our quarterback calls plays better than any other quarterback in the league!” We end up critiquing the music, the sermon length, whether or not people were friendly. But the huddle only exists so we can play the game. The effectiveness of your church cannot be measured by how well you do on Sunday morning. It's when you get out there - in the world - in your own unique harvest field, if you will. THIS is what we see in the Book of Acts, chapter 8.