Life's Spiritual Highlight Reel

In sports, they call it the highlight reel. Now, that comes back when they used to do everything on film. And you would take film and you would splice it together. All the great plays of a game, or all the great plays of a...maybe someone's career. All the great plays of a game. You know, you could take a game and put it into 30 minutes. By looking at the highlights, they'd splice it together. Today, of course, they don't use film, but many times it's still called the highlight reel. It's the highlights of this person's career, this person's game, or this team's game. What would your highlight reel look like of your life?

You're going to create a highlight reel of your life. It might be your wedding, it might be when you graduated from high school, it might be some friendships, it might be having your children. I mean, you think of all the things you would put in a highlight reel. It would be your baptism, it would be on your highlight reel.

Well, today we're going to look at some highlight reels of three people in the Bible. When I could look at all their highlight reels, just a couple instances of their highlight reels and learn something from it. This sermon, the idea for it was my wife's because I had this prophecy sermon I was going to give. She said, oh, we need something more positive. Oh, okay. So I was preparing a sermon on the heretics of Jude, and she said, Gary, that's not positive. I said, okay, I'll give them later. So I'm going to do highlight reels. And when we go through this, it may change what you would put on your highlight reel of your life. The first example I'm going to use is of Jeremiah. I mean, we all know of Jeremiah. He's one of the great prophets of all time, and God used him in a dramatic way. He did an enormous work through Jeremiah that lasted for decades. He actually appeared before five kings of Judah. Now, let's look at a piece of his highlight reel. Let's go to Jeremiah 1. Jeremiah 1. And verse 4. Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying... So Jeremiah is writing this, although probably Baruch is writing it down. He was his scribe.

He is telling him, or maybe he's writing this part himself, but it's in the first person. God actually came and talked to him. Now, that's a highlight, right? None of us have had God come and talk personally to us. I mean, that's like... and this is the beginning of the reel. This is the beginning of the film. This is the highlight. Or God comes and talks to him. And God says to him...

And verse 5. Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I sanctified you. I ordained you a prophet to the nations. Now, God comes and doesn't say... Jeremiah, I've come to you. I want to help you in your life. I want to work out your marriage problems. I chose you before you were born. I've been working with you all your life. And now, as a young man, I'm going to send you as a prophet to the nations. And of course, his response would be like most of us. And then he said, I love that...

Lord God, behold, I cannot speak for I am but a youth. He says, oh, wait a minute, I'm still a young man here. You can't ask me to do this. I don't even know how to do this. How would I... what would I say? How would I do things? I can't do this. But the Lord said to me, do not say I am a youth, for you should go to all whom I send you. He said, don't worry about this. I am sending you. I am working in your life. And whatever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of their faces, for I am with you. To deliver you, says the Lord. And then the Lord poured forth his hand, and he touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me, behold, I have put my words in your mouth. See, I have this day set you over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out and pull down, to destroy and throw down, to build into plant. Wow! Now that's a highlight, right? Now what am I going to do? Well, I'm going to go out and I'm going to speak. And I'm going to say what God says, and I'm going to affect the nations. And people are going to turn to God, and the Jewish nation will finally go back to God. And all these amazing things are going to happen. I mean, this is just the beginning of the highlight reel. Well, that's not exactly what happened. Over those decades, only one king tried to bring Judah back to God. The rest of the time was Jeremiah saying what God told him to say, and Jeremiah getting in trouble. Let's just say there's only one thing on his highlight reel, if we look at this in the human way of doing things. There's only one. There's this enormous highlight where God comes and talks to him and says, you're going to pull down nations and set up nations, and the rest of his life is persecution, problems, and especially from the people he loved. Jeremiah never gave up on the Jewish people. He loved them so much, he would not give up on them, no matter what. So, let me just list some of the highlights of Jeremiah's life over the next few decades. In Jeremiah 11, he's rejected by his neighbors. In Jeremiah 12, he's rejected by his family. In Jeremiah 20 and 28, he's rejected by false teachers who actually tried to make him look bad so that many people begin to reject him all through Judah because the false teachers make him look bad. They say things against him. They actually slander him and ruin his reputation. Also in Jeremiah 20, he's rejected by numerous of his friends. Finally, in Jeremiah 36, he's rejected by the king.

In Jeremiah 37, he's thrown into prison. In Jeremiah 38, he's thrown into a cistern and left to die. Just basically a sewer. Thrown into a sewer and left to die. Then he lives through the Babylonian destruction of Judah. After that, a group of Jews basically kidnap him and take him to Egypt. That's how the book of Jeremiah ends.

What a highlight reel!

You know, there must have been times where Jeremiah believed there was nothing on his highlight reel. Because humanly speaking, nothing was what he thought it would be.

He was sent by the power of God, talked to by God himself, to bring the nation of Judah to repentance. And the man gave everything he had his whole life to do it.

And if you always highlight reel, it was about three minutes long by human standards. As he watched his country just degenerate deeper and deeper into sin and rebellion against God, fewer and fewer people listened to him. At first, people listened to him. Fewer and fewer people listened to him. Life became more difficult. He began to believe there were no highlights.

He remembered the one. And, well, there were highlights. God came and talked to him. Whenever God talked to him, he had a highlight. Then everything else was, well, we wouldn't even put that on the film. We don't want to put that on the film. But I want you to think about everything he thought was not a highlight is recorded in the Bible by God.

There's a reason for that.

Let's look at Jeremiah 20. Jeremiah has always been one of my favorite personages. Poor Jeremiah. He takes everything so personal. He takes everything personal.

In verse 7, he's being hated by everybody. Even the people who supported him don't support him anymore. Even members of his own family. He says, Oh, Lord, you induced me and I was persuaded. You came along and you told me I got a life of highlights.

And you convinced me of that. You are stronger than I and have prevailed. He said, so you're stronger than I, so you keep making me do this.

This isn't bitterness, but it is despair. We'll see it's not bitterness by what he says.

He says, I am in derision daily and everyone mocks me. He said, all the people of God put me down.

They mock me. He says, I was supposed to set up nations and bring down nations. He says, I can't do anything because of what's happening. For when I spoke, I cried out, I shouted, violence and plunder. He says, I told them that the violence in their nation was wrong. I told them that their greed and stealing was wrong. You'd think someone would listen, but no one listened because the word of the Lord was made to me. A reproach in a derision daily. The word of God caused people to despise him. And it wasn't just like they didn't like him and left him alone. People were trying to constantly put him down, make fun of him. You know, his teachings were destroyed. We'll even look at that. Excuse me. I know my wife is saying, but Gary, I asked for something positive here. Well, let's wait a little bit. Let's see where this goes, where God takes this. Then I said, I will not make mention of him. I love this. He finally said, you know what? I've had enough of this. Here's what I'm going to do. God, I'm not even going to tell anybody about you anymore. I'm going to give up this profit business that you put me into, and I'm going to go make a different kind of profit. I'm going to go do something else because I'm not going to tell anybody. But he didn't say he didn't believe in God. He didn't say he wasn't going to follow God in his life. What he said was, I'm not involved in this interaction anymore. I just give it up. I'm not going to do it anymore. Nor speak anymore in his name. I'm not going to tell me, okay, God, you come give me more words to say. I'm just going to tell anybody. I'm just going to hide out in my house. I'm not looking for highlights anymore. I'm just looking for escape, getting away from all this every day. But his word was in my heart like a burning fire. Shut up in my bones. I was weary of holding it back, and I could not. But you know what? I couldn't do that. That's what I said I was going to do, but I couldn't.

Jeremiah said God was in me too much. God was working with me too much, and I couldn't give it up. Even though part of me wanted to. Because nothing was what I thought it was going to be.

So, does it look like he has much of a highlight reel, does it?

First time is pretty good. After a while he says don't even come talk to me anymore. Because every time you do, my life gets really bad. We're going to go back to Jeremiah. I'm going to go to the second case here. This second example. This is another one of the people in the Bible I really like. I understand him. That is Baruch, who was Jeremiah's faithful scribe. Baruch was from, we do know from the book of Jeremiah, he was from a prominent family. He was a scribe. Now understand, in that society, scribes were held with great honor. He comes from a prominent family and he's a scribe. Because a scribe could read and write. Not only read and write, they were given the job of writing things. They were hired. They had to take a very complicated Hebrew alphabet and they had to write it down letter by letter exactly right.

So it could be read. It was tedious work. To be a scribe, you had to be very good at what you did. He was a scribe. This is what he did. And so he was honored in society. He came from a prominent family. He had some influence in society. And Jeremiah comes along and says, Baruch, you are my scribe. Oh, now he's a scribe to one of God's great prophets. Boy, is my highlight reel going to contain a lot of neat stuff. Prominent man, incredibly educated man, well-known, honored, and now he's the scribe of one of God's great prophets.

Yeah, my highlight reel is going to be long. Let's go to Jeremiah 36.

Jeremiah 36. And let's pick up the story in verse 4.

Then Jeremiah called Baruch the son of Neoriah. And the son of Neoriah is mentioned quite a bit. That's one of the reasons why it is believed that his family was well-known. You know, his father is mentioned all the time. This family is an important family. And Baruch wrote on a scroll of a book at the instruction of Jeremiah, All the words of the Lord which he had spoken to him. So that's a pretty important job.

He's writing down the words God gives to Jeremiah. That's a highlight. I mean, you go home at night and your wife says, What'd you do today? Well, I spent all day with God's prophet writing down the words of God.

That's a pretty good job, right? And Jeremiah commanded Baruch, saying, I am confined. I cannot go into the house of the Lord. It doesn't explain why. There must have been either some ceremonial uncleanness or some illness or something, but he couldn't go there. You go, therefore, and read from the scroll which you have written at my instruction, the words of the Lord, in the hearing of the people, in the Lord's house on the day of fasting. And you shall also read them in the hearing of all of Judah who come out from the cities.

And it may be that they will present their supplications before the Lord and everyone will turn from their evil way.

Now, he has suddenly asked, not only to write down the words of God, Jeremiah says, here it is the day of atonement, I want you to go into the temple, stand up in front of everybody, which the priests would be there, there would be all this stuff going on, open the scroll and say, Jeremiah says, these are the words from God, and you read them. Wow, what a highlight! I mean, okay, I'm well known and well honored, but to go read that for the great prophet in the temple?

Man, I'll be really somebody now.

And he goes in and he reads it, and you know what happens? The people listen to him.

The people actually listen to him.

And then... Well, let's go to verse 16.

He actually reads it, and people listen to him.

So you know what? The leaders of Judah say, you need to come read this to all the leaders of Judah. Now he finds himself walking into all the leaders of Judah, opening up the scroll of Jeremiah with the words of God, and reading it to them.

And so we have in verse 16, Now, it happened when they had heard all the words, okay, these are the leaders of Judah, that they looked in fear from one another and said to Baruch, we will surely tell the king of all these words.

And they asked Baruch, saying, tell us now, how did you write all these words? At his instruction? I mean, did God tell you this? This is Jeremiah, actually told you this. So Baruch answered them. He proclaimed with his mouth all these words to me, and I wrote them in ink in the book. And he says, yes, these are the exact words of Jeremiah that came from God.

Now, wow, the people listened in the temple, the Jewish leaders listened.

Can it even get any better? They're going to take it to the king. Verse 19, Then the princess said to Baruch, Go and hide you and Jeremiah, and let no one know where you are at.

In other words, the king is now going to hunt you down and kill you.

Wait a minute, this is my highlight film. This is my moment of glory. I mean, I'm the star of the game, right? Now, run and hide, because the king won't listen to these words, and he's going to kill you.

So Baruch goes back to Jeremiah. The king takes the scroll and burns it. Burns it. So Baruch has all the work he's done, all the work he did for Jeremiah, writing all this down, all the work he did in presenting it in the temple, all the work he did in going to the leaders of Judah, and now they even burned it. He has nothing left. Now, Jeremiah's response is very interesting to Baruch. Let's go to verse 28. Now, after the king had burned the scroll with the words which Baruch had written at the instruction of Jeremiah, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, saying, Take yet another scroll and write on it the former words which were in the first scroll, which Jehoakim, the king of Judah, has burned.

And if you read it, he basically now says, and write other things too, like, Okay, you think you can rebel against me? I am going to punish you. He burned the first one because he had to tell the people to repent, and now he's going to get a second one, and of course, Baruch's writing them down. And then verse 32, Then Jeremiah took another scroll and gave it to Baruch, the scribe, the son of Neoriah, who wrote on it at the instruction of Jeremiah, all the words of the book which Jehoakim of Judah had burned.

And besides, they were added to them many similar words. So Baruch's like, What? We're not going to run and hide? No, you're going to send him another one. God's talked to me, write this down, and he wrote it down. Baruch found himself ostracized the way Jeremiah was. He found himself by his family, his friends, no longer accepted in the Jewish community. This was the highlight. This is it? And he became very despondent over it.

Let's go to Jeremiah 45. Because God actually gave him a message. Now, he didn't directly to Baruch. He gave it to Jeremiah. And he told Jeremiah, You go tell Baruch this. So, you know, wouldn't it be great? If you don't get the message directly from God, wouldn't it be great to have somebody send you a message? Or give you a message and say, You know God told him, I've come to tell you this because God told me to tell you.

That's another sort of highlight here, right? Well, let's see what God told him. Verse 1. The word that Jeremiah the prophet spoke to Baruch, the son of Neoriah, when he had written these words in a book at the instruction of Jeremiah, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, the king of Judah, saying, Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, to you, O Baruch, you said, Woe is me, for the Lord has added grief to my sorrow, I fainted in my sighing, and I can find no rest.

He says, I understand you can't even sleep at night, because of what you're under, the anxiety, the stress, and what's happening in the world around you. And people see you as the cause. They saw Jeremiah, you know, they saw Jeremiah and Baruch as the cause of their problems, because they were pointing out things, and they needed to repent, and they just didn't want to. And he couldn't even sleep at night, because like Jeremiah, Baruch wasn't, he's not like Amos.

Amos says, hey, if you're not going to repent, you're going to get punished. I'm going to go back to work. That was Amos. Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet, or a reason. He identified with his people so much. He just tore him up. And Baruch was the same way. He just tore him up. And then it tore him up that he was being so mistreated by everybody. I mean, he was an important man before. He was well known. He's educated. Now he's nothing. Verse 4, Thus you so say to him, so this is then what the message directly from God to Baruch.

Thus says the Lord, behold, what I have built I will break down, what I have planted I will pluck up, and this is the whole land. And do not seek great things, and do you seek great things for yourself? Do you seek them? For behold, I will bring adversary in all flesh, says the Lord. But I will give you your life to you as a prize in all places, wherever you go.

Now we're going to come back to those two verses. So now we have Baruch. Nothing else in the rest of his life from a human standpoint seemed like a highlight. Jeremiah is one of the great men of God. Baruch is a great man of God. Their highlight reels are actually very, from a human viewpoint, are very short. Very short.

This isn't the end of the story, by the way. It's very interesting that God saved both Jeremiah and Baruch from the Babylonian captivity.

They watched their country be absolutely devastated. The Babylonians came in and they burned Jerusalem. They killed many people. They took the rest into slavery. There was only a small number left. Let's go to Jeremiah 40. Just go back to Jeremiah for a minute and talk about him, because the same thing basically happened to Baruch in that he was protected. Verse 1 of Jeremiah 40. The word of the Lord that came to Jeremiah from the Lord after Nebuzaradon, which is hyphenated. Captain of the guard had let him go from Ramah. When he had taken him bound in chains among all who were carried away captive from Jerusalem and Judah, who were carried away captive to Babylon. And the captain of the guard took Jeremiah and said to him, The Lord your God has pronounced this doom on this place. Now the Lord has brought it, and he has done it just as he said, because you people have sinned against the Lord and not obeyed his voice. Therefore this thing has come upon you. And now look, I free you this day from the chains that were on your hand. If it seems good to you to come with me to Babylon, come, and I will look after you. But it seems wrong to you to come to Babylon, then stay here. See, the whole land is before you. The basic is you do what you believe is right before God. Now Jeremiah is standing there, looking over his devastated land. And this Babylonian officer says, you're a man of God, so I release you. Now if you want to come to Babylon, I will take care of you. You're not going to be a slave like everybody else. I'm going to take care of you. And if you wish to stay here, that's fine. You decide what you want. And he decided to stay. Now you think, oh, there's another great highlight. I want you to think about Jeremiah walking through the devastated burnt remains of Jerusalem. I want you to think about looking at the burnt farms and looking out where whole towns, and there's nobody there. Just some dogs running around in the streets. And in his mind, what's he saying? I told you, I told you, I told you, and you wouldn't listen.

This is easy to say, oh, look, God saved him. But to Jeremiah at that moment, what was that experience like? I told you, and you wouldn't listen. Baruch, by the way, is going through the same thing. He told you, I wrote it all down. I wrote it all down, and nobody would listen.

One of the most interesting things is that the survivors that were still there came to Jeremiah and said, okay, we'll obey God. Jeremiah continued to minister to them. And then one day, they all got together and said, we're going to go to Egypt. You know, it's a good, rich country. We can go there and survive and do better than we can here. Our country's been ruined. And Jeremiah, God came to Jeremiah and said, tell them they can't go. They shouldn't go. And Jeremiah wasn't said, you shouldn't go. So basically, they kidnapped Jeremiah and Baruch and took him with him. And that's how the Bible ends with the highlights of Jeremiah, is he and Baruch are serving the Jews in Egypt because they were kidnapped.

Doesn't seem like much of a highlight reel. Okay, we'll come back to Baruch also in just a minute. A third example. This example's been used so many times. We miss the power of it. Imagine that you're on a boat, okay, in a storm.

Now imagine you're in that same storm at home in your house with the shutters up and a good roof over your head, and you and your family are sitting there eating a meal. You know, we can weather this storm. We have plenty of food, plenty of water, you know, nice, good house we've built, and we're okay.

Then you've got a group of men out on a boat in the middle of a huge lake in the same storm. And the mast is broken, and water's coming in, and they're going to die. And they know they're going to die. They have no way out. They look at it, they don't have to say anything. These men in this boat look at each other, they know they're going to die. There's water coming in, they can't patch it up. They're too far from shore, the waves are too high. There's nothing they could do. Now where would you rather be? Right? In the house where it's warm and safe, and you're okay. Let's go to Matthew 14. Matthew 14. We have to fill in a few details here, a few things about... We're actually learning from these three examples, because there's something real important in the stories of these three people. Matthew 14, verse 24. Well, let's start in verse 22. Immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side. Well, he sent the multitudes away. Now, I want you to understand, Jesus put him in the boat. Okay? You go on without me. And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. Now when the evening came, he was alone there. But the boat was now in the middle of the sea, tossed by the waves, for the wind was contrary. And on the fourth watch of the night, Jesus went to them, walking on the sea.

And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, it's a ghost. And they cried out with fear. It's some kind of... it's a demon or something. I mean, what is that out there? Walking on the sea. Being in this boat is a bad place to be at this time. Humanly, this is not a highlight.

In fact, Peter probably will be... He probably wasn't alive when Matthew was written. He would be really upset to find out we're reading about this, because this isn't the highlight of his life from a human viewpoint. It's a real low time, right? And Peter immediately spoke to them, saying, be of good cheer, as I be not afraid. And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you across the water. You just tell me and I'll walk on this water just like you, because I know who you are.

So he said, come. And when Peter came out of the boat, he walked on the water to go to Jesus. But when he saw that the wind was boisterous, he was afraid. And beginning to sink, he cried out, saying, Lord, save me! He just started to sink right into the water. And immediately Jesus stretched out his hand and caught him and said to him, O you of little faith, why did you doubt?

And when he got into the boat, the wind ceased. Then those who were in the boat came and worshipped him, saying, truly you are the son of God. Peter has to look in this if he would have, wouldn't have. Well, I say it wasn't in Matthew yet, but I can guarantee this story was talked about over and over and over again in the church. I mean, they verbally passed things on. That's how Luke got his accounts.

He got all kinds of verbal accounts and put them together. And that's what we have. Luke, the Gospel of Luke, because he wasn't there. What an incredible thing! Peter's probably saying, don't tell anybody about that. That's not a highlight. What is it we learn from these three examples? Because these three people are on the highlight reel of what God does with humanity.

I'm not sure they saw that and what they were going through. Because we tend to see highlight reels about what we do. You make the buzzer, you make the shot at the buzzer and win the game. And the guy's screaming and he's jumping up and down and he's looking at the camera and it'll be on his highlight reel. The guy makes the touchdown. The guy kicks the shoulder and wins the game.

Makes an impossible play. They're all in the highlight reel. And it's all about me. The highlight reels, spiritually. Now we all have our physical things we've accomplished, are the people we've had relationships with, the things we've done. It's part of our sort of personal highlight reel in our head. And that's okay. But God's highlight reel of you is not what you think. In every one of these cases, the highlight reel was about God.

It was about God. It's God's highlight reel that should matter to us. What's He doing in your life? You know, I talked about Jeremiah. I read part of Jeremiah 20. Let's go back to Jeremiah 20. Jeremiah was being persecuted by the people he loved. Jeremiah felt like he had failed. Jeremiah reached the point where he said, I'm not even going to talk about you anymore, God. I'll worship you. I'll obey you. But I'm not leaving my house. I'm just going to stay here and never talk to anybody about you. Because you know what? Every time I talk to somebody about you, somebody's trying to hurt me.

No one likes me. And He says that. And then remember at the end of verse 9, He said, I was weary of holding it back and I could not. He says, I wanted to do something, but you did something. And then look at this and say, wow, how could Jeremiah be struggling so much? And the whole point of this highlight, this is in the highlight room, is God says, no, no, no, no, no. I'm with you. I've been working with you. You will accomplish this. Not because of you, Jeremiah, but because of me.

And that's why He says in verse 10, if I heard many mocking fear on every side, in other words, people were saying, oh, you're just a doomsday guy. All you see is fear. All you do is create these scenarios where everything's bad. You're just a grumpy guy, Jeremiah. That's not... God loves us. God doesn't bring any negative messages along the way. He says, report, they say. And He will report it. In other words, just give Him any piece of bad news and He'll tell everybody that. All my acquaintances watch for my stumbling. He says, everybody I know wants me to fail.

Saying, perhaps He can be induced, then we will prevail against Him and we will take our revenge on Him. People actually wanted to hurt Him. But notice verse 11. Notice where this all takes Him. But the Lord is with me as a mighty and awesome one. Therefore my persecutors will stumble and will not prevail. This is here as a highlight, part of the highlight reel of what God does in the life of Jeremiah. It's there to actually encourage us. It's there to show us, yeah, if you were in Jeremiah's shoes, you'd probably been exactly the same place. But God got Him through that. Remember whose highlight reel we're on?

This just isn't our personal highlight reel. This is God's highlight reel and you're a part of it. You're a part of it. How about Baruch? Let's go back to Jeremiah 45 because there's something here I read through that's easy to miss. See, we find out with Jeremiah, he loved people and people mistreating him, abusing him, hurt him. That hurt him deeply because he just, that was, he just loved people. What we find in Baruch here, remember he said he just, he couldn't even sleep.

He could find no rest. So verse 4, thus you shall say to him, this is God's message, thus is the Lord. Behold, what I have built I will break down. What I have planted I will pluck up. That is the whole land. God said, tell Baruch this is my people and they are not going to repent and I am going to bring them down. Why was Baruch having a problem with that? Verse 5, and do you seek great things for yourself?

Baruch must have believed he was going to change the fate of Judah. If I can just get Jeremiah's message, if I can get out there, we can get it to everybody, they'll repent and this calamity that God says is going to happen won't happen. He tried to fix it himself. Now, his motive wasn't wrong, but the idea that he could fix it, he could fix Judah, was impossible, but he comes from a prominent family. He's educated. He's respected. And God chose him to be the scribe for Jeremiah.

And he was going to make this work. And he couldn't. And God said, you can't make it work. I am doing what I am doing. Just come along. Just follow. And then he says, do not seek them. He says, don't try to fix all this. For behold, I will bring adversary on all flesh, says the Lord. But I will give your life to you as a prize in all places wherever you go. That's a remarkable statement because Baruch, not long after this, finds himself in his land with a handful of survivors and everything he knows is gone. Even the temple. Everything he knows is gone. And then he finds himself in Egypt. Not because he wants to go there. God said, don't go there. But the people basically kidnapped him. See, God's statement to him. Once again, let me do the highlights. Baruch, you're not going to catch any touchdown passes, but you're going to have an important part in the game. That's what he's telling him. He's telling him, you have an important part in the game, but you're not going to do what you think you're going to do, because you're going to have to let me do it. Wow. And Baruch is in God's highlight film. But he had to learn something. Third thing I thought I brought up was about Peter. I don't think Peter felt like walking on water a few steps, that's highlights. Sinking is not a highlight. It's like catching the ball and running the wrong way and making a touchdown for the other side.

But years later, what story was told in the church? What story was told throughout the church? Even Peter failed. Either he faltered, he didn't fail, he faltered. Jesus was really hard on him. But who was the center of the story, not Peter? We make Peter the center of that story. He's not the center of the story. It's not a highlight of Peter's life. He just happened to be in a highlight of the life of Jesus Christ. Jeremiah was chosen to be in the highlight of God's life. Baruch was chosen to be in the highlight film of God's life. Peter was chosen to be in the highlight film of God's life. Once we understand that, there's a whole lot more that we learn from what the Scripture's telling us. And a whole lot more we learn about our interaction with God on a personal level. Because where would you have rather been that night? Now think about it. Of course, you know the outcome. They didn't. Would you rather have been in a nice, warm house, having dinner with your family, with a good roof over your head? Or would you have rather been on that boat? Cold, wet, boat falling apart, looking at your friends, saying goodbye. Because you're gonna die. Now we know the story. I'd rather be on the boat. But I'd rather be on the boat because I know the end of the story. At that moment, I wouldn't want to be on that boat. Because that's quite a highlight reel. There is no highlights in the story of God about the people who were at their home. Now there was nothing wrong with them doing that, but they're not in the highlight reel. We don't know any of them by name. We don't know what they were doing. They were at home, sitting out the storm. Right? But in his highlight reel, Jesus Christ is the center.

Many times God's highlight reels of our lives are in the cisterns, like Jeremiah. God got him out. Right? But the highlight reels of our lives are being dragged off to Egypt when we don't want to go. Like Baruch. By his own countrymen. Or it's trying to walk on water in the storm and not quite doing it. That's our highlight reels. And we think, why would God show those? Or why did God record these? Because they're his highlights. And we have this remarkable privilege to be involved in his highlights. That's a remarkable privilege you've been given. To be involved in God's highlights. What he does. What he accomplishes. And what he achieves. When you study these and you understand them, there's something that Paul says that really makes sense. And Paul himself. What's a lot of his highlights? Oh! Jesus talked to him personally. The resurrected Jesus. That's pretty big. He was healed when his eyes were blind for a while, right? That's a big healing. He was also stoned and left for dead. Went into many places where the people beat him up and threw him out of the town. He was shipwrecked for three days. He wouldn't think those would be on his highlights. But they are. They're all recorded about him. Because it's all about what God was doing through Paul. Paul's importance comes from what God is doing, not because of Paul. Now, he had to obviously subject himself to God. He had to give himself to God. He obeyed. He had faith. That's true. But in the end, who is it that does the things? Who is it that it's his highlights? It's God's. And we look at these people. We admire them. We identify with them. I admire Peter. I admire Jeremiah. I admire Baruch. And I identify with all three of them. But in the end, it's God's highlights. So, let's finish by going to Romans chapter 8. Romans chapter 8. A simple statement made by Paul. Actually, there's three verses here. If you read all three verses, it's a whole sermon in itself. Verse 28. And we know. You know, we know, but there's times we don't know. I mean, when Jeremiah was in the prison, when Jeremiah had times in his life when he said, I'm just going to mention your name anymore. Because I don't know. None of this is what it seems it should be. When Baruch was told, you stop trying to fix things. Let me fix things. When Peter said, I can do this. And he couldn't. Or just minutes before that, he was saying goodbye to James and John and saying, this is it, boys. We're going down.

We forget. And we see God do something. And when God does it, and we know. And we can't forget that we do forget this. We have to keep going back. And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God. And to those who are called according to his purpose. The three individuals we looked at were called according to his purpose. We are called according to his purpose. For whom he foreknew, he also predestined, to be formed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. God has called you and given you a destiny. Given you a destiny. And in that journey towards that destiny, we have to look at all, what we look at as the highlights of our lives. Isn't always what God says the highlights are. Because when we see from his viewpoint, the highlights of our lives is when he does this. He works everything out for your good. Everything that happens, good, bad, he works out for your good. And that is a highlight reel worth being on.