Come to Me: The Fixer of the Broken

I want to start off with an illustration. I grew up as a pre-teen learning to play the piano.

I am not good at it today, and I wasn't even great at it then. It wasn't my gift. Too many keys, too many not enough fingers, and I get really nervous, pointed by myself and everybody's eyes. You wouldn't think it because I'm a pastor, right? I get up in front of you guys. But when it came to music, that instrument right there was my nemesis. It was my enemy. I told you that one time that Troy and I, my brother Troy and I played a duet, like this was in a recital, and I was all on him because he was messing up in practice and not doing his part. But then when it came to the duet time, the recital, my mind went blank, and Troy ended up playing pretty much the whole duet by himself. And then my brother, my older brother, which all older brothers should do, when I sat down, leaned over and said, great job! This is hard. Even though I started on the piano, it was a challenge, unlike anything that I, some of the, my greatest challenge as a kid. But thankfully, my parents gave me options to play other instruments, and in fifth grade, I started playing the trumpet for the first time. My sister, Rhonda, had a trumpet. She was 11 years older than me. We owned it. It was in our family, and so it made sense just to start playing the trumpet. And that went great for a couple years until I got braces. And anybody who's played the trumpet and got braces realizes that's not fun. And so in seventh grade, I quit band and just registered for the other classes, and band wasn't on there. And thankfully, and it was probably a godsend, looking back, the band instructor who knew me from elementary school reached out and said, why are you not in band anymore? And so I explained, it's I got braces, I can't play the trumpet. And thankfully, he led me to another brass instrument and said, well, would you consider playing the baritone or the euphonium, which is like kind of a mini tuba? Sounds like a trombone, but it has a larger mouthpiece. And I said, well, I'll give it a try. And it was a huge blessing, because for the next eight years, I was able to play that instrument both in middle school, high school, and then two years in college. And I was much better at the baritone than I am at the piano. And so it gave me an avenue to continue to be in music, to be part of a larger band and orchestra, and to do a lot of things that continued to be fun for me, even still like the musical gifts that I was able to learn and to utilize. But what's interesting is if you're part of a band or you're part of a chorale, if you're singing in a chorus, it's not about just you when you're doing this. You're listening to other instruments. If you're playing instruments, you're wanting to make sure you're balanced with the other instruments. You're not overpowering them, and you're in tune, you're in time with the other instruments. And so you have to develop an ear to tune into the other instruments around you. And the same thing if you're in a choir and you're singing as a choir, you're not a soloist. You're not just the loudest one in the choir. You got to balance yourself, and you've got to make sure you're in tune with the other voices around you. And so it takes a keen ear, and it takes work to hear those other voices around you.

Anytime we've gone to an orchestra, if you've gone to an orchestra concert, sometimes for fun, I like to try to pick one instrument and work to listen to that just one instrument, because somebody is playing their heart out. And in the blending of all the music, sometimes it's beautiful played together, but sometimes you can't pick out individual pieces. But to pick out a small instrument like a piccolo or an oboe, oboes have a unique sound that's usually pretty easy to pick up on in an orchestra. But often the brass or the drums overpower a lot of the other instruments if they're not being balanced, if they're not holding back what is of their full potential. And so the imagery of this and the illustration, which we didn't use at camp, but I think fits so beautifully with the sermon and following me, is there's a lot of noise that we battle in life. We've talked about noise over the years. The noise comes from all sorts of areas in our life, right? From emails and text messages that we get, from the notifications that pop up on my phone, like every day, it's like boom! And they seem to keep coming all day long. And then I get a ding or something, I look over and there's another whatever. It's a news article, or it's a message, or it's something. And sometimes we wish we could just turn them all off, right? Or sometimes we do. We flip our phone down, we turn it off, we mute everything. At camp, I was getting them still, and I just told the campers, it's great, I've just been swiping everything because I don't care. This is my focus right now. My wife and daughter are here. My other family has people to look after them. You guys had elders. I'm like, my focus is here. And so I'm swiping everything. I'm like, I'll worry about it when I get home. And there's some relief in being able to do that, knowing that I can look at it later, I can do other things. But for right now, I'm clearing the noise out of my life for this moment. The noise is at home sometimes, right? Our jobs create noise. Health challenges create noise. Financial issues, even relationships with one another, can create noise that is often overpowering and just all consuming. And to hear God's voice for you and me today amidst the noise is the legitimate challenge that we all face. On a similar train of thought, I also thought of another analogy or imagery, and that is of a lighthouse. It's one of my favorite when you get into spiritual analogies. Lighthouses just have so many touch points with how God is working with us in our life. When we consider the conditions under which a lighthouse is most useful, we often picture a dense or heavy fog that is engulfed a coast, or a raging storm that is tossing a ship back and forth, creating stress for sailors that are just trying to make their way home. A lighthouse, it never shouts. All it does is shine, right? The light cuts through the fog of the storm, providing direction for the lost and for the weary. A lighthouse doesn't move towards the one in need of its services, but rather remains solid on a firm foundation doing its job. On a sea of troubled or uncertain waters, the ships find their way home as they go towards that light. And in those storms and in the darkness, that light pierces through everything else that is creating confusion or difficulty for those sailors. And we could call that difficulty noise because a ship on a rough sea or a ship stuck in the fog has a lot of things that are confusing the sailors and can make that journey difficult, but then that beacon of light shines right through all the noise and the sailors see it and they know that's a safe harbor to go home to. That's the direction I need to go.

Two weeks ago, again, we encouraged the campers and staff to heed Jesus' words when he says, follow me. And those words are just two simple words, but they will be some of the hardest things that we try to implement in our lives for the rest of our lives. And as I mentioned, in preparation for this year's theme, I had the blessing to be able to dive into his own words when he said, come to me. Come to me. Again, three simple words. We don't need a dictionary or a biblical lexicon to understand what Jesus meant when he said these words, right? Come to me. It's very easy to understand. We know exactly what is meant here, but it's the exercise, it's the practice, it's the doing. That is the challenge. It's when we have been unsettled in our life, uncertain of the direction to go, we have sometimes spun our wheels stuck in the mud of life without being able to feel like we have a proper way or a direction to go. But as we practice these words, we recognize the transforming power of the come to me in a Christian's life. And these words, three simple words, can bring healing to broken lives.

When we go all the way back to the beginning of Scripture and the beginning of man's time with our God, it was in a beautiful place that God had created for Adam and Eve. And what is beautiful in that as well is he was with them. He walked among the garden. They walked in his presence. They could talk to God. He knew them. They knew him. There was a relationship that was beautiful and it was perfect until sin entered in and with it corruption. And at that point, it created difficulty for mankind to be one with God. But this did not change God's desire or his intention to have an intimate relationship with mankind. And it didn't change that he wanted us to have a hope and to live blessed lives. This is one of the things that he wanted us to continue to go forward in. God has blessed us by making us in his image and he's given us the ability to have physical life. And with it comes a lot of fun and beautiful aspects. We can talk about the challenges that comes with physical life as well, but I want to focus in on right now just on the beauty of what God has given us. There are so many joys that we can have, so many things that we can do that are amazing. He wants us to live abundant lives, not just eke our way through life or somehow just fight and struggle our way to the end without enjoying the journey. He wants us to enjoy this journey as we continue to go through as much as we can as we stay within the framework of his word and guidance. Let's open our Bibles to John 10 verse 10. John 10 and verse 10. We're going to break into the context here, but John 10 is a passage where Jesus Christ is painting a picture for the listeners about himself and his role of being a good shepherd.

We know the analogy was sheep and needing a shepherd, and the shepherd loves his sheep, guides, knows their sheep. Jesus also talks about the hireling who doesn't love his intently, and he also talks about the one who wants to harm the sheep, the thief who wants to come and steal the sheep. We know who that is referring to as our adversary and our enemy, but he's painting this picture because he wants to drive home a point of how passionately he cares for his sheep, how passionately God cares for you and for me. So diving into John 10 verse 10, it says, The thief does not come except to steal and to kill and to destroy. I have come that they may have life. If we finish the sentence right there, if there was a period and that was all that Jesus said, it would be a beautiful passage. It would be complete. It would be accurate that he wants us to have life. But notice what he goes on to say, and that they may have it more abundantly.

We can never lose sight that this is God's desire not just to have life, not just to eke our way through, not just to enjoy a few things. He wants us to live abundant lives today, right now, in all aspects of our lives, to live abundantly, not just life, but to live it abundantly. And he goes on and says, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his wife for the sheep, of course, symbolizing and portraying his eventual death that he would give on behalf of the world. Verse 14, he says, I am the good shepherd, repeating it again, and I know my sheep, and I am known by my own. And so Jesus is emphasizing this desire that we live life and to live it abundantly, and that he is the one who leads our life as that good shepherd of the sheep. But we recognize there's a challenge, there's challenges to live an abundant life in God. And one of the greatest challenges is hearing his voice amidst the noise. I think every week we come to services and we ask, when we see somebody for the first time, we ask them a question that I've asked you a thousand times, and you've asked me a thousand times. And when we walk in the door and we see somebody for the first time, normally we say, how are you doing? How was your week? Right? And I'll get you reply. What's our normal reply?

Fine. It was good. Yeah, it wasn't bad. Yeah, I'm doing well. But I'm going to challenge you on this one. And the campers challenged me as the week went on.

Are we really that okay? Was everything fine? Did we have some hard things that we had to deal with? I had some hard things this week. I told you those who said, how was your week? It was good. I had some hard things this week. Some of them were matters that came across my plate that needed some support. Others were personal, personal sins, words that I use that I wish I could take back. Thoughts I thought that got the better of me. Things like that that go through life. There's times where we are kind of mad at ourselves because the choices we made could have been better choices. Or we become frustrated with ourselves because why am I still struggling with filling the blank? Now granted, I mean, we don't want to come here and just say, oh, sit down. I'm going to unload my whole week, right? There's a balance. But we also shouldn't be surprised if we ask somebody, how was your week? And they said, you know what? It was pretty bad. Or it was challenging. I got pressed this week more than I have in a while. And sometimes we're like, oh boy, this could be we could be here for a while. But also as family, shouldn't that be okay? Shouldn't that be okay? Like if somebody opens up and says, can I share something with you? Yeah.

The campers challenged me because they kept every day after this, after I shared that example, they would come up to me and say, Mr. Phelps, how are you doing? I'm like, I'm good. Are you really?

And I said, you know what? No, you're right. There are some challenges. You can tell my hair is on fire right now. I'm running to and from sweating. So obviously, I'm not just chill. And so it's the reality that when we go through life, our weeks are normally not great, right? Our weeks have challenges in them. Our weeks have times where we have an unresolved sin that we are still working on in our life, or where we talk to someone in a way that we wish we wouldn't have, and it has strained our relationship. Or maybe we zoned out too much. We, because of life's noise and struggles, we veged out on Netflix or Prime, watching video after video, and we binge watched more than we probably should, playing maybe video games or other things much more instead of getting more task oriented than we should and then we want to be. Or maybe we made a personal choice and brought something into our life that we thought would fix or add some joy into our life that actually just kind of numbed things for a bit. It didn't really do anything that we wanted it to do.

The reality is, and the honest answer is, we may be functioning okay on the outside and appear okay to everyone around us. But if we're really honest, there's parts of our life every week that feels unsettled or even troubled. I think that's a fair statement to make. And when we're unsettled or we're troubled, we don't like that feeling. That's not some place that we want to stay in very long. So when we're troubled, we want to seek a resolution or a way out of that feeling. And that's where these coping mechanisms, as some people call them, that's where distractions can enter in. That's where we're replacing things that are making us troubled and replacing them with things that then make us feel in that moment better occurs in our lives. And this is a natural reaction. We all do it, and sometimes we make good choices that are actually beneficial to that troubled and can actually fix it. And other times, and this is where we got to be honest again, we pick a lot of things in our life that are not the solution. It's kind of like putting a band-aid on a large wound. It's not going to fix it. It may help a little bit, or it may feel better for a moment, but then we wake up the next day and that same challenge sits in front of us, and it's unresolved, and we feel troubled again. And so we go through this process of having these emotions, these feelings, these experiences, and they leave us troubled and unsettled, and then we don't always choose the right path. In preparing this message months ago, I was doing a lot of study and a lot of study and reflection, and I came across a quote or a phrase that someone used saying that, troubled hearts become searching hearts. And when I heard the person use that phrase, it made me pause, because it made me think back, what do I do when I have a troubled heart? I search for things to make it feel better. I search for answers. I search for something to maybe soothe the pain or the discomfort, and then it made me pause and say, okay, what am I searching for?

Is it God? I think a lot of times it is, but it's not always. That's just the reality of this human experience, because often we like to find these things that bring a little bit of healing to our troubled heart. As we're searching for answers, as we're searching for comfort or to soothe our pain, we'll find these other avenues that are very prevalent and always around us in society. This is part of what Satan has done in creating and stacking a deck against humanity, in creating these distractions, this noise, these things that people run to, to soothe their pain, instead of going to God. And so this concept again, troubled hearts lead to searching hearts, is the core of this come-to-me message that Jesus has invited the listener to experience in this life.

Jesus understood that this is a common reaction and feeling that humanity has. This is not just some kind of big idea that God was like, oh, that's a wonderful concept. This is why I'm going to have to... God knew that through life there would be times where we are troubled, and He wanted us to be at peace. He wanted us to live life abundantly, and so He provided the perfect solution to this when Jesus said, come to me. Come to me.

We often use a term broken, or brokenness, as it refers to our Christian walk and our life journey.

And when you use the word broken, it can go a really negative direction, right? Because when something is broken, sometimes we view it as unfixable. There's many things that is broken in my house that went into the trash bin, right? That went into the garbage. I'm not going to go back to the garbage can and pull it back out and later decide to fix it, or after it's gone to the dump, go over there and ask me if I can have my broken item back. It's gone. It's wasted. It's ruined. It's over. That is one term of broken that we can use when we're comparing it to things and other things around us in society. But when it comes to brokenness in the life of a Christian, none of us are wasted. None of us are ruined. None of us are broken beyond repair. And this is an important mindset shift to have, because sometimes people can view themselves as so broken that I can't be fixed. Or, I'm not, God's not going to be able to do this work in me in this life. It's too much. I keep messing up. I pray for His help, and then I go and do the same thing again.

My mouth, I just can't control it. My emotions get the better of me more times than I can count.

And we refer to that as our brokenness, right? Because it is. It's why we can't fix ourselves, why we need Christ to fix us from the inside out. We need God's Spirit to work in our lives to fix our broken hearts. And so, as we recognize our brokenness, as we recognize our troubled hearts, we have to also recognize there's one direction to go with that. Turn with me to John 14 in verse 1. Jesus understood about brokenness. He understood about troubled hearts. He sought the troubled person out more times than we can count, more times than are even recorded in Scripture. And he recognizes that when we are unsettled, that we become, or when we are searched, when we're troubled, we become searching for a life raft, or a place to save ourselves, or a place of comfort, of healing. And Jesus spent a lot of time with His disciples, and He knew He wasn't going to remain with them permanently. And when He recognized His time on this earth was starting to run short, He knew that His departure would leave them unsettled and to leave them troubled. And He said as much in John 14 verse 1. He says, Let not your heart be troubled. He says this to His disciples, You believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house, or many mansions, if it were not so, I would have told you I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, He says, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. And so Jesus in doing this says, Listen, I recognize you're going to be unsettled here in about five minutes. It's going to be really tough for you. You're going to have a wave of emotions, you're going to have all kinds of thoughts enter into your mind about where do I go here, or here, or here? What's my future? My Savior has just given His life, He's gone.

They wanted more time with Jesus. They were hoping that He'd be around for a whole bunch of years, and they could just keep learning and gleaning. But He knew that when He departed, which was the plan, and why He would be depart was so that they could receive, have a Savior, and to have their sins forgiven, and to have the Holy Spirit come within them. He told them, I'm going to come back.

Don't be troubled with this. Don't get overwhelmed with this, but also don't take your focus off of me. He goes on to say in verse 4, In where I go, you know, in the way you know. And then I think Thomas, we all appreciate Thomas's in our life. It's kind of like when you're sitting in math class, and the teacher's going on, and you're thoroughly confused. And then the teacher asks, everybody get this, and you're too afraid to raise your hand to be the one guy. And then your friend in class raises their hand. You got Thomas raises his hand, says, I got no idea what we're doing here. And you're like, thank you, Thomas. This is what we have here with Thomas, because Thomas said to him, Lord, we do not know where you are going, and how can we know the way? And I'm sure the rest of the disciples are like, thanks, Thomas. Like, because he says, we don't know. I'm sure they're all quite confused. And Jesus said to him, and this is going back to, do not let your heart be troubled. Notice, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Troubled hearts are going to be seeking hearts.

Uncomfortable hearts are going to start searching hearts, become searching hearts. And Jesus says, I don't want you to be troubled, but if you are, I am the way, the truth, and the life. I'm that lighthouse. I'm that beacon in the storm of life. When you're uncomfortable and unsettled, I'm that beacon. Focus in on this light and come to me. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. We all have our challenges. We all have our hurts. We all want the pain to stop. We all want our hearts soothed, right? We want to search for peace. We want to search for clarity. We want to search for a way out. We want to search for something solid. We want to search for a truth that we can rely on. That's how we're wired and how we're designed, because we want help. And so Jesus, knowing that the road for the disciples is about to get much harder for them, he says, don't let your heart be troubled and points them to himself. I am the way, the truth, and the life. So much of Jesus' ministry and his time on earth, again, was focused on those who were struggling. Those who were hurt, those who were stuck in their sins, those who were troubled. He maintained a focus on those who needed his healing to help and to overcome the struggle.

He knew there was no way that humanity could fix their own lives, right? Because we can't fix our problems. We need help by being fixed from the inside out. We need our healers help. We need the great physician to mend our hearts, and we need God to forgive our sins, change our hearts, and help us to live according to his truth. Turn with me to Matthew 9.

This is one of those passages that I did not have in the outline, and so those of you who are at camp, your presenter probably didn't turn to this scripture, so this is a new one. You could write in your notes or keep in mind Matthew 9 and verse 9.

This is a story of Matthew's calling. Again, Matthew's a tax collector, as we know. He was a Jew among his relatives and among his national citizens, fellow Jews. But he was despised, because he agreed to work for the enemy. He was a tax collector for Rome, which meant that he would not only collect their taxes that was due to Rome, but the tax collector overlooked the aspect that the tax collector would charge a little bit more and skim that off the top for their own livelihood.

Nothing has changed. We still don't like the tax man, do we? But because he was one of their own, his family would have probably rejected him, because out of embarrassment, and this is just not what we do in our family, his fellow countrymen would have wanted nothing to do with him, because you're working for the enemy, and I don't like the tax man. And so here's Matthew that doesn't have a lot going for him, other than he's probably doing pretty well for himself.

He's got fellow friends who are probably also tax collectors, because what? Misery loves company, right? And here comes Jesus passing by in Matthew 9, and Jesus passed on from there, and he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office, and he said to him, follow me. Two words, two simple words to Matthew, and I'm sure Matthew was like, wow! I can only imagine he became completely overwhelmed in this instance, because it says, so he arose and followed him. I don't know, if you were sitting at a Starbucks, and somebody came up to you and said, follow me, I don't know what my, I'm pretty sure what my reaction would be is, I don't know this guy. And it says going on, verse 10, now what happened is Jesus sat at the table in the house that behold many tax collectors and sinners came, and sat down with him and his disciples, and these are the the ones who are troubled, the ones who are searching, the ones who are trying to figure out the next steps in their life, and here Jesus is in the midst.

And when the Pharisees saw, they said to his disciples, they didn't say it to Jesus, they weren't that strong, that bold, they went over to his disciples, this rabbi that you're following, this one that you call Jesus. Do you notice who he's sitting with and eating with right now?

Isn't this a little bit of a peculiar group?

Because he says, why does, they said, why do you, as your teacher, eat with tax collectors and sinners?

And when Jesus heard that, he said to them, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I think sometimes in the church, we can look around and see the brokenness that exists in our midst, right? Sometimes we can look through and be like, wow, that person's really struggling, or they've got this sin or that problem, or keep the eyes on ourselves and say, I know my problems, right? But we have been drawn to find healing.

We have been drawn to find help, and we have been drawn to follow Jesus.

And when we read a passage like this, we are in good company. If you feel broken, or if you feel disappointed, you feel troubled, you feel a little uncertain about how your relationship with God is right now, you're in the best place you can be. Because Jesus said, those who need a physician, go and find that physician, right? They find that helper, they find that healing, and that's who He came to help. And so you and I should be in a group of struggling people, because we need help, and we realize we can't do this on our own. And so we're here today to worship, and to praise, and to draw closer to the one who can heal, the one who can help.

Jesus goes on and says, but go and learn, because so these Pharisees with their wrong heart and attitude, He says, go and learn what this means, guys. He says, I desire mercy and not sacrifice.

We serve a God who wants mercy, wants to be merciful towards us. He recognizes our sins. He's not blind to it, but He says, I want you to be free of your brokenness. I want you to be free of your burdens. I want you to find Me, so you'll stop searching for other solutions that society says, or that you've developed a practice of using, that says this will be better for you. Because Jesus says, for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

That's you and me, right? We're the sinners who were drawn to repentance, to go in a new direction in our life. This was Jesus's message, and if you want to, in a way, encapsulate His ministry, this was it. To come to those who were troubled, to come to those who were broken, to come to those who needed help, and then direct them to the one who could do it, which was Himself and the Father. Turn with me to Matthew 11, verse 28. As you're turning there, it's just a couple of chapters in our Bible. You would think maybe the timeline is kind of close. Maybe this is a week later or two months later. So I did a little bit of research. It's kind of hard to nail down exactly the timeline between Matthew 9 and Matthew 11, but I believe it's probably about a year has passed. A year has gone on in Jesus's ministry of His time with the disciples, of moving from one city to another, moving through the region of Galilee and some others of that area. And notice, though, that His message hasn't changed. His purpose hasn't changed, because many times, as interactions with those around Him, He continued to encourage Him to walk towards and to walk alongside the One Himself who could change their lives. And He continues to do this throughout His ministry. Notice Matthew 11, verse 28. Jesus says, "'Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.'" We're not just talking about the guy working at the construction site with the heavy equipment, are we? Or the person who is trudging through their job that is, like, in the sweltering heat that is oppressive, or this week with the smoke that is affecting our lungs and is difficult to do things outside. We're not—Jesus isn't talking about physical work, right? Those who are laboring hard, those who are working hard. He's talking about those who are working hard at life.

Have you ever felt like you were laboring through life to make the right choices?

Laboring through life to find an answer? Laboring through life to search for solutions to your problems or a way to soothe the pain? Do you feel that weight, that heavy burden that just walks with you wherever you go because of an unresolved sin, a life choice that you're making that you know you shouldn't be because of what God says we should, how we should handle things? And at the end of the day, those searching hearts, or those troubled hearts become searching hearts. Why? Because they want to rest. They want to find peace.

They want to find a place to rest. So Jesus says, come to me, all you who are struggling.

And he says, I will give you rest. I will give you peace. I'll fill in that gap that you can't find from any book, self-help book, or any podcast, or your best friend's advice. Apart from me, he's saying, you won't find it. He goes on to say, take my yoke upon you and learn from me.

This sounds kind of negative. This sounds heavy at first, right? Because a yoke is what they would put around two locks in to help them pull together and work more effectively and to do more work, right? Carry more of a load, get more work done. We keep going back to work, hard loads, things like that. And so at first, we're like, oh, I got to take this yoke on this big, heavy piece of wood and put it around my neck. But that's not what Jesus is getting at here. He says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me. Because he says, for I am gentle and lowly of heart. I want to walk alongside you. I want to be the two ox that are connected together by this yoke. Jesus says, I want to be one of those with you. You're one on side. I want to, I want to, let's get under my yoke together. And then I'll lead you. I'll walk with you. I'll show you where we need to turn at times. And I'll show you what we can accomplish together. Because he says, and if we do this, you'll find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is white. This is where he contradicts or counteracts that thought process that, oh, that yoke is heavy. That yoke is too much. Or I've got to, now I've got to trudge through life. Me and Jesus trudge through life. No, he's saying my yoke is easy. My burden is light. The weight that you're going to feel is not weight. It's actually relief. You'll find rest for your souls.

The rest that Jesus mentioned comes from this full belief and trust that he knows what's best for our lives. He wants us, going back to the beginning, to live these abundant lives.

So he says, come to me. And in a sense, he says, because I can give you the words of life. I can give you the bread of life. I can give you real life.

And that's what we ultimately want, isn't it? We want real life. Jesus understands our troubles because he lived and experienced physical life like me and you.

He suffered unjustly, didn't he? He was made fun of. He suffered loss for following God. People turned their backs on him and didn't want to be around him anymore.

So he gets us. He gets what we're going through, and he understands our troubles. And he says, I want to help. I want to encourage you. I want to bring peace into your life. And he says, but you're going to have to do something. You're going to have to come to me.

And coming to Christ also includes other aspects of repentance, of course, right? Turning away from our sins and choosing to live God's way. It allows him room to direct our path forward.

Sometimes we become ill in this world and we seek out a doctor to help us understand our illness or our bodies better. And sometimes you go with a friend, right? You'll take a friend along with you because maybe you're not feeling well enough to drive. And so they drive you. You see your doctor, and the doctor does some work and some blood work, and it comes back and says, okay, this is what I need to do, or this is what you need to do, and it'll get better.

Now, we get a choice in this, right? What if you were to say, or how silly would it be if you said, thank you for your time, but I think I'm going to do something different?

Like, if you are along with somebody, and the doctor said this, and it seemed reasonable, it seems balanced, it seems, yeah, this sounds like they've done all the blood work, all the tests, everything's pointing to this, you can maybe take this antibiotic, it'll clear it up, and then your friend says, I think I know better. Thanks, but no thanks. That might work for some people. It's not going to work for me. I mean, would we slap our friend?

Shake him a little bit, and said, are you kidding me right now? Like, you're not going to listen? This is the answer. So, it's not just coming to Jesus, right? It's also heating his voice to recognize how far we've gone off track, and we need to turn back to him. How we need to repent and go in a new direction. But the first critical step is simply to come, and that leads to these next steps. I think a beautiful analogy that we see in our lives is if you've had children, or you're an aunt and uncle, or a grandparent. If you've been around little kids, and I'm talking a little toddler age and stuff, and they're playing, or they're doing something, and they're pushing the limits of what their body can handle in the environment, and they have a spill, and they fall, and they scrape their hands and knees, and the tears just start pouring down their face. The beauty in that is, who do they normally look to? What's their first reaction after having something like that? They usually try to get up, or they try to figure out where's mom and dad. The beautiful part is when they find mom, right? Mom's kisses fix everything.

Dad's, I don't know what gene we didn't get, but the mom's kisses are the greatest.

They get up, and they make that beeline with the tears streaming down their face, right towards mom. The beauty of this is, the moms usually and the dads get down on their level. You squat down, and you're there for them, and the children run into their mom's arms or their dad's arms. They usually stay maybe hunkered down low, and they kind of take them into their lap.

Then they start clearing up those tears and wiping the tears, and maybe even dusting off their hands a little bit, right? Because our hearts are moved to welcome this child back in, and then maybe provide a little bit of guidance. That's why we don't stand on the tall chairs in the kitchen, because they topple easy, and then you get banged up, right? But it's the beauty of just welcoming that child into our arms, right? We see this example of Christ wanting to be that perfect parent. Or if we see a child frustrated or upset, which we've had those as parents or as aunts and uncles, we see that where one of our nephews or nieces or one of our children's upset, they're mad.

They're frustrated with something. We say, well, come here. Come here. What's going on right now? They come up, and they're upset, and we start learning, well, what's going on? Well, they won't let me play with their toy right now. I want to play with it, and I let them play with my toy. Then we're like, okay, let's redirect a little bit here. Why do you feel this way? It's like, well, it's their toy. Did you ask them? No, but they should just let me have it. And so we start helping them work through this anger or this frustration or this emotion that they're feeling, right?

Why? Because we care for them. We're the good parent that wants to help and wants to redirect. If we know what is good for our children to do, why would God be any different in His interactions with us? How sad would it be? And we probably have seen this from time, that a child is crying. They're hurt, and they're looking around for somebody who can help them. And because of brokenness in their family's lives, mom and dad are not there for them. Sometimes we see this in, like, maybe a grocery store, or maybe a park where the parents are not paying attention like they should.

And maybe it's brokenness in the family that both parents are not there. And we see this child kind of sitting there by themselves hurting and struggling with the tears. And when we see this, often our hearts are moved because we're like, somebody has to help this child. And so I'm not going to pretend that coming to Jesus is always a simple thing to do, because there are times and cases in your life and in other people's lives where the brokenness that they have experienced in their own home has led them to not understand how a good parent is supposed to love their children.

And if that's a situation that you are in where you're like, yeah, Jesus has come to me, but I don't know what that looks like. I don't know what that feels like. I don't know that I can trust Jesus, because when I've trusted other people in my life, I've been hurt or let down. I get it. And that's a legitimate reaction that some people have to the hard experiences that they experience in this life. Another challenge that sometimes people don't know or can't understand how they can come to Christ is that Satan has put, again, as we talked about at the beginning, he's put other ideas in our minds and in society's mind that there's these other solutions to our problems, other ways to fix the pain, other ways to soothe our hurts and our troubles and our brokenness.

And so we've tried those or we use them. They become maybe even part of our life as a way to help soothe the pain. And so we have these band-aids that we are thinking are going to help, but they're not doing anything for our life. And we remain troubled and we remain searching. So again, it's not always as simple. I could just say here and say, just come to Jesus, right? Just come to me as he says. Sometimes it's much harder than that. But again, it doesn't change the admonition we've been given. It doesn't change what you and I are supposed to do.

It ultimately comes down to trusting and believing that our Father and His Son understand the things and the difficulties that we go through in life and that they have a better way for us to live our lives if we'll walk with them. This is again why we can't fix ourselves, but we need God to fix our brokenness from the inside out. This is why Jesus invites us to come to me. If we were to summarize the Bible down to one overarching concept, it would be restoration. Restoration. From the initial story of mankind's existence in the Garden of Eden, that was a perfect, beautiful place where man and God existed to be able to know each other and to talk and to relate. And then from that point, things got derailed, as we already talked about a little bit. But at the very end of the story, in our Bibles and God's plans, comes a time where everything will be restored.

That relationships will be healed. That the oneness that God has desired all the way back to the Garden of Eden will be right in front of His people and in front of mankind again. And that will be that oneness will be restored. And that's when eternal life enters in, and that's when an existence with God forever will be made available. So from the beginning of our Bibles to the end of Revelation, the Bible demonstrates that God is in the process of restoring all humanity into a right relationship with Him. He wants to heal our internal brokenness, and He wants to rebuild the broken relationship that we have with Him. And as a wonderful parent, He wants us to come to Him for the help and the healing we need when our hearts become troubled or burdened. And He wants to bring His healing so that our minds can rest and be at peace. There's passage after passage that speaks to the way that God is working in man's lives, how He wants to be their God and He wants us to be His people.

He talks countless times in Scripture how He's merciful toward those who will turn towards Him, and that His grace is not limited. His goodness is not with an end. He talks about how He wants us to live at peace throughout Scripture, how He wants us to rest. And He talks multiple times in the Old Testament and New Testament that He doesn't want us to be troubled. He actually says, My peace, Jesus says, I give to you. And He says, Let not your hearts be troubled.

I love lighthouses, and we're very blessed to live in a state with a lot. We were able to see some already this summer, new ones that we'd never explored. If you're a lighthouse geek, this is the place to live. But a lighthouse serves a simple function. But one of the most critical ones for those people stranded. I want to walk back to that boat analogy, that ship analogy.

You're in the midst of a storm. I've never experienced anything like what we've seen on TV in the books or the stories or the documentaries. But they're out uncertain if they're going to live through the night. The darkness has enveloped them. The waves are crashing the boat left and right. Nobody on board is sleeping. Everybody's wondering, will I ever see my loved ones again?

The captain is sweating bullets with the responsibility to hopefully get this ship into harbor and everybody on board safe home. You can envelop in your mind. You can put yourself in that situation. Hope is running out. A path to go is cloudy. And then there's this burst of light that shoots through the storm.

How good does that light feel? For the first time in maybe a while, hope is coming back in.

We finally see it. I can't imagine the captain's like, oh yep, there's just another light from the lighthouse. He's probably telling everybody else, we can see it now. What's our heading? Where do we need to go? What's our direction? The other sailors have a renewed hope that they're going to make it home. We now know the way forward. We can put ourselves in the shoes of what it's like to be lost, stuck at sea, without hope, thinking this is the end. And that's the beauty of what Jesus says when he says, come to me. There can be no doubt that Jesus wants us to come to him.

He's extended this invitation to you personally, and he wants to give you rest from the freedom and your burdens and your troubles of life. Satan, yeah, on the counter side, he wants us to feel hopeless. He wants us to feel separated from God under the weight of life's heavy loads. He wants us to be stuck out at sea for eternity. Whatever your heavy load is, Jesus wants us to walk towards him so that we can find rest and peace. He says you don't have to do this alone. You don't have to figure out life by yourself, and you don't have to be hurt or afraid. God intends that our journey leads to repentance, baptism, receiving God's Spirit to begin a new life of walking with him, and he's provided everything necessary to make that happen. And while many of us do already have God's Spirit, it doesn't mean our journey is over or we no longer need to come to him. Jesus invites us, come to me. Three simple words, right? No dictionaries or no lexicons are needed to understand what he means, but three simple words that can completely turn our whole life around, and three simple words that can open our hearts and our minds to this abundant life that our Lord and our Savior wants us to live.