The King of Restoration | Broken Things Restored

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Join us as Gabe & Caleb Kolstad bring us a message about The King of Restoration.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Well, happy Sunday, everybody. We hope you are doing real, real well. And uh I want you to know what weekend it is. It's the end of spring break, right? And uh so some of you are maybe just squeaked back into town and you're getting ready for everything to start back up. But it's also the beginning of something called Holy Week. And we are pressing into this at West Side. We've been teaching our way to Easter, really, through this series Broken Things Restored. And today is, as Erica said on the video, it's the finale of the series. What I want you to think about right now is have you noticed that God is moving in special ways in your life, in our community, in our city, in our nation, in the world, um, in our church for sure. And I wanna, I wanna just kind of let you know that that's not, you're not making that up. If that's in your head, you're not making that up. Actually, the latest report that just came out says something fantastic. And I'm gonna tell you what it is, but I want you to react in some way. Because when I read this, I was like, whoa! And so, you know, something like that. It's just like anything you could do to react so that I can realize that you also think this is a big deal. Are you in with me? Would you do that for me? Yes. Okay, here it is. Here's the thing, okay? Portlanders, this is a study, this is a real data. Portlanders are now more likely than the national average to want to have a spiritual conversation. Wow. Can you believe that's crazy? I mean, that's different, okay? That's new, that's a big switcheroo. And what's going on is God is at work in special ways. And so we want to press into this as we here on Palm Sunday start to look forward to Easter. It's it's the beginning of Holy Week, and we see all this movement happening. We call it movement because we see people moving into new phases of their spiritual journey. You might have heard of the mountain range. Let me show you this graphic. This is how we really think about it at Westside as we move through phases. We call them mountains. The Jesus Mountain is the J, the Community Mountain is the C, and the Mission Mountain is the M. And I was thinking about how do we illustrate this? Well, last weekend we got to see all these people take the step of baptism. A whole bunch of people. Some of you were baptized last week. It was such a great weekend. And that's the that's the Jesus Mountain. That's that beginning. You know, the relationship with Jesus begins our whole journey. And coming to this place of going public with your faith is something that happens on the Jesus Mountain. Then on the community mountain, I was thinking about my growth group. Growth groups are places where people get together, and Community Mountain is all about community. And I got this guy in my growth group named Dave. He is like the poster child for community right now. He's leaning in so hard to this. He loves it. He's showing up, he's hungry, he's asking questions, he's reading his Bible, he's learning and growing, and he's leading his family. And it's a beautiful thing to see happening. And then on the Mission Mountain, we see the things like Rachel, who last week there was a memorial service that happened from somebody that beloved person in our church who passed away. And Rachel was a part of the team that got this thing together and was there to extend God's love to people who needed to remember his comfort in a time like this, and even to hear the good news about Jesus. Rachel was used in her journey on mission, actually. She's on the mission mountain, out there extending the love of God. A beautiful thing. And so the question that I want to have for you today is what's your next move as we think about how we really work our way to Easter. Now, you might not know what your next move is. That might be your dilemma. Well, we have a solution for you, and I'm excited to have Caleb up here with me. Caleb, I'm so glad you get to teach with me today. Okay. And I get to teach with you. Let's welcome Caleb. He's going to show us something brand new. Thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Yes, we do. We have the solution for you. Now we created something called the JCM assessment because we had so many people coming to us, literally going, I don't know where I'm at in the mountain range. Or they self-diagnosed and were and and they diagnosed wrong. And we're like, duh, you're not there. Or they know where they're at, but they go, I want resources. How do I move forward, right? How do I get to the next part of the mountain range? So we created something. It's a resource called the JCM assessment. And so watch this video on the screen. What you can do is you can grab your phone right now, tap the tap connect in front of you on the chair in front of you. It's on the back. And then you're gonna be led to here. You'll click JCM assessment, and then it leads you on to the JCM assessment. You can actually tell it, hey, which describes you better? New to faith or been in church for a long time? You can say, hey, I'm a student or I'm not a student, and then you'll scroll down and you'll click begin assessment. And then you're in the assessment. Now it takes you through a variety of questions, and it takes you through through the whole process so that it then gives you the result of where you're at in the mountain range, and it gives you a bunch of resources for how to grow in your spiritual journey. So I'm right now, grab your phone. Everyone here, grab your phone. Grab your phone. You don't have to listen to me anymore. We'll wait. I'm fine with this. We'll wait for you. Go ahead. Grab your phone though. Grab your phone and tap it on the chair in front of you. If you have an iPhone, it's at right here. If you have an Android, it's on the back. But you need to tap your phone on that right in front of you. That tap connect system will lead you through a process where you fill out your information and then it leads you to a page where you can click the JCM assessment. The JCML, it will be valuable. I want to I want you guys to know that. It will be valuable for you. It will give you new resources you never knew about. It will give you answers that you didn't know about yourself, and it will be amazing. So make sure to do that. It's really awesome.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

Yeah. I mean, we are here, our mission is to help people find and follow Jesus. We do that one move at a time. So the question is, how do we help you make your next move? And this is really gonna help you. So we hope you'll take advantage of this. We'll keep putting this in front of you. But it's exciting to know that there's more and more tools coming out to help us to really grow in our faith, and that's what we're here to help you do, okay? So I uh am very thrilled to have my son Caleb, who's gonna co-teach this message with me. We're talking about broken things restored, and today's message is about the king of restoration. So, Caleb, take us away.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

So I want to tell you a little story. When I was younger, my best friend Noble and I, we were absolute bike junkies, as you can see. We're bike junkies, we're also adrenaline junkies. You could refer to it any way you want. I don't know if any of you guys have kids that are obsessed with bikes. Do you? Okay, I see people nodding. Yes, you did. Yeah. But we were obsessed with bikes. We we loved to go off ramps that were bigger than us. Who knows why? But we loved going off ramps that were bigger than us. And and when I was younger, right, my parents have the house down at a cul-de-sac. And so to get to that cul-de-sac, you have to go down a massive hill. And so Noble and I would place that ramp at the very end of the hill so that we could start at the top of the hill and go down. And so it was awesome. Now, my parents told me many times I would get hurt. And I told them, I don't care. I don't care. I do not care at all, right? And and so I I would go off that ramp and I would love it. And I got hurt many times though. I mean, many times I got hurt. I'm sure that my parents have full-on PTSD because of how many massive wounds they had to repair on me. Right. But I didn't listen, right? I closed I closed my ears and I got hurt. And my my parents tried to save me from the hurt, but I chose not to listen and proceed with str with the stunts anyways. I didn't care. But that's how I responded, right? That's how I responded to when they gave me an option to save myself. When they when they extended a hand of saving and advice, I said, no, I want to do it on my own. I did not accept it. Right? And so maybe you have a story like this where someone offered you wisdom and you you shunned it. You said, no, I don't I don't want to listen to you. Most of our pain in life doesn't come from what we didn't know. It comes from it comes from really ignoring what we did know. Would you agree with that? That most of our pain doesn't come from what we didn't know, it comes from ignoring what we did know. Little Caleb knew the jump wouldn't go well, I'll admit. I was at the top of the hill looking at the jump, going, yeah, I'll probably fall right off this thing. And I'm gonna slide for a long time. This is really gonna hurt. But I wanted to have fun and probably wanted to, me and Noble wanted to show off to each other. Let's be real, right? I wanted to go off that jump and be like, I made it further than you, right? But studies show over 90% of people ignore advice that they later admit was right. 90%? That means 10% of you guys in the crowd right now listen to advice. Do you realize that? 10% of you. So, like what how many how many people are in one row, right? 10 people in this front row? That means Taylor, right there, you're the only one that actually listens to anything. You're the only one the rest of the rest, just ignore it. That's insane. And here's what's crazy the thing that could have saved you, it's often the thing that you resisted. You look at it, oh, that thing could probably save me. No, I don't want it to. I don't know if you have a story, right, that connects to that, but I think of a conversation that you you avoided that later blew up. I think of the habit that you knew was unhealthy, but you kept it anyways. I think of the nudge from God that you pushed off. And did you know that psychology or research in psychology actually shows that people are two to three times more likely to reject input that challenges their current behavior even when they know it's right? That was little Caleb. No, don't tell me what to do, right? Because I was already in that behavior. And you guys might agree, but when help shows up, do we all respond the same way? No, not at all. We all respond way different, right? Some people surrender immediately, which is rare, right? Oh, you're right. I surrender. Some people get excited in the moment, but they don't change anything. Some people criticize and push back. Don't tell me what to do. Some people actually repent and change everything. Wouldn't that be a wonderful world if we all did that? If we said, wow, you're right. I should probably turn around and change my life. Or change what I'm doing right now, or not go off that jump. The jumps were kind of fun though. They were fun. No. But how yeah, exactly. But but however you respond, today we're gonna be talking about the four responses that we see in Luke 19 to God's efforts to rescue us.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

Absolutely, Leah. Let's get your notes out right now. If you didn't already do that, I want to say welcome to everybody who's here with us online. So glad you're joining us from wherever you are. There's notes there for you in the notes tab. You can click the link there for the Tab Connect system, and we want to get you connected. And also for those of you in person, you got that note sheet in your program. We'd love to have you grab that. And I want to I want to continue teaching our way to Easter, okay? We know that Jesus is in the restoration business. That's what he came to do. And when we open Holy Week, which starts this weekend, we are working our way toward Easter. And uh, I want to share with you some of the significance that you may or may not know is attached to this weekend, that I think really powerfully changes the way we can view who Jesus is to us and who he came to be to the world. Because restoration, no matter how you look at it, as Caleb already explained it, it requires a response. And so we want to look at different reactions that, even in Luke chapter 19, which we're gonna study today, Luke chapter 19 has multiple responses, four responses to restoration. Now, Jesus is coming into the city of Jerusalem here in Luke 19. So you know the setting, is he's now moving toward Jerusalem, the city that he loved so much. This passage and this historical event is called the triumphal entry, and it traditionally took place on Palm Sunday, and that's why we we celebrate it in this way. So, different responses to the same savior coming into the city. The first response, you can write this down in your notes, okay, is the donkey. You can write that down. The donkey. We're not suggesting that anybody here is a donkey, okay? But somebody last night after the service said the one I really related to the most was the ass. And um, that's I did not say that, somebody else said that. The donkey. There was a donkey involved. And you might know this, you might know that Jesus rode a donkey into the city of Jerusalem. And I was looking at like all the options that he had. Why did he pick a donkey and realized that the reason was because they didn't have Uber drivers at that point? You know, he couldn't just pull it up on his phone and order an Uber. He needed, he rode a donkey into the city of Jerusalem. Actually, it was quite intentional. In Luke 9, 51, which is not in your notes, it says this It says, as the time drew near for him, Jesus, to ascend to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. He knew he needed to get Jerusalem. That passage said, as he as the time drew near for him to ascend to heaven, I had to double take that because when I first read it, I was thinking it was gonna say, as the time drew near for him to be crucified, but it didn't say that. It went, it overshot the crucifixion and said, as the time drew near for him to ascend to heaven, which means that he knew what was coming. Jesus knew he was there in Jerusalem, he knew it was holy week, he knew he was gonna be crucified, he knew he was gonna be buried, and he was gonna rise again, he knew he was gonna spend 40 days with the disciples after he rose again, and he knew he was gonna ascend to heaven after that. And so he's looking all the way to the victory, but he knows in the in the near future is the crucifixion. And what you may or may not know about the specific day, Palm Sunday, the specific event of the triumphal entry, is that this marks a day that is still recognized as Lamb Selection Day. Okay, Jesus Christ is referred to as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And he's depicted as a lamb because, like a lamb led to the slaughter, as Isaiah chapter 53 says, uh, he laid down his life for us. And everyone in Jerusalem that day, back in the that first century A.D., would have been looking for their lamb. They had to pick out a lamb. The date was specifically the 10th of Nisan. Nisan was the first month of the Jewish year, and it was redemption month. It was the same month that back in Exodus chapter 12, God had instituted the first Passover and then had led his people out of Egypt into freedom. And so this depicts the first Passover when God would would provide a substitute for the people and then would lead them to freedom. So now we got Lamb's selection day happening in Jerusalem, and Jesus Christ, the Lamb, comes into Jerusalem on Lamb's selection day, the 10th of Nisan, and he begins to work his restoration there. So I want to read you from Luke chapter 19, verses 29 to 35. Here's what actually happened. It says, as he came to the towns of Bethpage and Bethany on the Mount of Olives, just opposite Jerusalem, he sent two disciples ahead. Go into that village over there, he told them. As you enter it, you'll see a young donkey tied there that no one has ever ridden. Untie it, he said, and bring it here. If anyone asks, why are you untying the colt? Just say the Lord needs it. So they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their garments over it for him to ride on. So he was coming in as the Savior, and he rode on a donkey. They were recognizing him as a king. Part of what happened here is, you know, they call it Palm Sunday, actually, because in a different account, um, uh the other one of the other gospels talks about the palm branches, right? Where they were waving these palm branches and they had these different responses that they would say, and they were they were treating him as a king as he came in. And I find it fascinating that this had been predicted, by the way, 500 years before this happened. Zachariah the prophet said, Rejoice, O people of Zion, shout in triumph, O people of Jerusalem, look, he said, Your king is coming to you, he's righteous and victorious, yet he is humble, riding on a donkey, riding on a donkey's colt. I mean, Jesus came in as a king, but he came in not on a horse, because I would think, you know, king, ride in on a white horse, make it impressive, right? The same king who was born in Bethlehem and came as a helpless baby comes now on not a white horse, but on a donkey. Horse in those days meant war. Donkey in those days meant peace. Jesus comes in like Solomon had, like David had. Now the king Jesus comes into Jerusalem declaring peace, declaring that he is the Prince of Peace. And the point here, I think, is that God is on a mission of restoration, and he's looking for people to restore, but he's also looking for someone to take him where he needs to go. The reason why the first response here is about a donkey is because the donkey was willing to transport the message of the Prince of Peace into the city where it needed to be heard. And that's the same opportunity that you and I have is to be a person that God would use to bring this peace to the people that he loves so much. A while back, as about 10, 12 years ago, actually, I got to be part of this training. It was in Philadelphia, and it was with a really well-known leader that I admired very much. I'd read a lot of his books, and so I wanted to go to this. It was kind of a small training, not a ton of people. I remember at the end of it, this guy, Larry, he looked around the room and he he locked eyes with me. He said, Hey, will you take me to the airport? And I was like, Yeah, I'll take you to the airport. That means I get to ask you more questions. And it's a one-on-one session I don't have to pay for, you know? And so I was super excited. I got to take him and I had learned a lot on that little drive. And the whole time I'm kind of a little bit, you know, starstruck, kind of giddy, like I get to take Larry Osborne to the airport. You know, I was so excited. And um I feel like that's the same privilege, but so much more with Jesus. Think about it. If if if you're willing to be the donkey, you get to deliver. You get to deliver the Prince of Peace and his message to those around you. And that's one of the responses that we see in this Palm Sunday, this Lamb Selection Day, this beginning of the Holy Week, the triumphal entry of Jesus in Luke 19.

SPEAKER_01 19:25

Yeah. Now the second response that we see in Luke 19 is the crowds. You can put that in your notes. The crowds is the second response that we see. Now, Luke 19, 36 through 40 says, as he rode along, the crowd spread out their garments on the road ahead of him. When he reached the place where the road started down the Mount of Olives, all of his followers began to shout and sing as they walked along, praising God for all the wonderful miracles they had seen. They said, Blessings on the king who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace be in heaven and glory in the highest heaven. But some of the Pharisees among the crowd said, Teacher, rebuke your followers for saying things like that. Jesus replied, If he if they kept quiet, the stones along the road would burst into cheers. The stones along the road would burst into cheers. If they weren't, the stones would. Right. Now they thought in this time that Jesus was coming to become the King of Jerusalem, because the entire nation was really waiting for some military conqueror to come and overthrow the Roman Empire. And so that's what they were wanting was that. But Jesus knew that he would be crucified to save the world, which I would say is much better. They did not know that yet. Now they thought, right, the people of Jerusalem, they thought that Jesus was going to make the world better through politics and external forces. While he knew that he was going to make it better by dying for their sins and saving them. They said, blessings on the king who comes in the name of the Lord. They said, Blessings on the king, right? His followers were initially very thankful and excited for the restoration to come, but then just five days later, on Good Friday, we would see his prior followers shout, Crucify Him! They were shouting that, right? His prior followers, because their expectations were not met as they thought, and he didn't rescue them as they thought he would. But now that the Pharisees, they downplayed the whole situation. They said, Rebuke your followers for saying things like that. Now they rebuked him because they thought that he was not Lord. And so they didn't believe he was God, and they believed he was blasphemous for claiming that. What I think is hilarious is in just a few days they'd be proven completely wrong when he died and rose again and ascended to heaven, right? But that's for next week, so come to Easter. This story's juicy, though. This story is juicy. Now the crowd is indifferent, right? The Pharisees rebuked the followers, got excited, but didn't have any follow-through. And so I'm not sure if you you might relate to one of these, but I do want you to be ultra honest with yourself, right? The Pharisees are the ones where if someone tries saving them, they would rebel and push back. Don't tell me what to do. Often their ego would get in the way of being saved. That's sad. And the followers here are people that get excited in the moment, but then days later they turn on him and retaliate when it doesn't go their way.

SPEAKER_00 23:02

Well, you just let that sit there like that. Now I'm thinking about which one I am. Yeah, you probably are too. Wow, yeah. I mean, how do you respond to this Jesus that wants to restore you? But what that means is that he's saying there's something broken in you. And that's the humility piece, right? To go, wow, I mean, like to acknowledge that I need restoring is sometimes the hardest part. And we're gonna talk about how he does that, but here's the third response that we see is the Savior himself. You can write that down in your notes. The Savior. He responds to the situation. He's the one coming in. I mean, he's the one that was sent, right? He was on mission and he arrives on this scene looking into Jerusalem. What he sees is certainly a lot of brokenness. And what he knows is that he wants so much to restore the city, but uh they have to be willing. And I remember when Melissa and I, uh many, many years ago, there was a girl uh who had twins. Her name was Melissa. She had twins, their names were Aubrey and Jordan. Aubrey and Jordan are part of our church today, and they've grown up beautiful young adults, and Aubrey is singing on our team. But when they were born, they were they were premies. They were very born very premature. And so they were in the incubators in the in the NICU. And we got to go in and and pray with Melissa and her family, and we got to to pray for the babies, but we had to look through the window, you know, to the incubator. We wanted so bad, just like just get them out of there. We want to hold them, we want to love them, we want to pray for them, you know. But we couldn't do anything. We felt so helpless because they just, you know, they were they were locked away in the incubators and beyond our help. I think Jesus would have been looking into Jerusalem with that same longing for helping. And it says in Luke 19, 41, it says, but as he came closer to Jerusalem and saw the city ahead, it says, He began to weep. How I wish today that you, Jerusalem, of all people, would understand the way to peace. I mean, this is the city that had history, right? Of all people. They they should have known it was Lamb's selection day. They should have known this was predicted. They should have known God had called them to repentance so many times. Like, how I wish. I looked this a little deeper, and it says that he began to weep, literally means to sob or wail aloud. This was not the quiet kind of crying. He was he was sobbing and wailing like a parent who's lost a child. Deep, loud, ugly grief. For you and for me, for the city of Jerusalem, for all who would come after Jerusalem, to to go, the brokenness. I could repair, I could restore, but you have to be willing. He said, How I wish, you know, how I wish you would, he wants to do that. And the question is, what would restoration look like? And in a little bit, we're gonna have communion, where we're gonna we're gonna talk about what the body and the blood of the Lord mean and how he restores through the gift that he gave. But he said, I want you to understand the way to peace. Peace literally means wholeness, to be made whole again. You know, whatever the brokenness is that we experience, to have God put us back together. Yesterday, Melissa and I, we went on a walk, and it was a beautiful day, wasn't it? Yesterday, if you're in Portland, it was a beautiful day. So we decided to go walking. And so I had taken in the car with us on the way to the trail, I'd taken my favorite mug with coffee in it. And on the way back home, I got out of the car, I got all my stuff, I had my arms pretty full, I opened the door like with my elbow, you know how sometimes you do. And what do you think I dropped? My favorite mug. I dropped it, shattered on the ground. And I'm thinking, ugh, I got it, I got the pieces. I went over to the garbage can, I started to put it in the garbage can and I remembered something. Gorilla glue. You should see how many mugs in our cupboard have gorilla glue on them, okay? Um, so I'm like, I'll I'll fix it. You know, it's not gonna look like I like it does, but it'll still be functional. Um, there's actually a Japanese tradition. It's called kinksuki kinsuki. And what happens with this tradition is that when you break pottery, you don't have to throw it away. In fact, let me show you a picture of a kintsugi bowl. Here's a beautiful kintsugi bowl, okay? So what happens is that they believe that you shouldn't throw it away. In fact, you can restore this by gluing it back together with gold. This is this is gold. And the gold is mixed with epoxy. And the point of that is that not only does this become a beautiful piece of art, right? It also is stronger than before it got broken. And I believe that what Jesus wants to do and why he was weeping was because he wants to restore you. And he looks at your life and he goes, I could, I could restore you. And you know how beautiful that would be if I restore you. You know what? You you know what you'd be stronger after than when you started? Will you let me restore you? I think this is the king who comes saying, Please let me restore you.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

Yeah. Now we have the donkey, we have the crowds, the Pharisees and the followers. We have the Savior, and now we're on number four. The fourth response that we see it is the sinner. That is in your notes, the sinner. This one is one of my favorites because who can relate to being a sinner? Raise your hand. That was like 50% of the crowd. Who can relate to being a sinner? Raise your hand. Sweet. Cool. I'm glad we can agree. Good. No, so this this is the story of Jesus and Zacchaeus, right? And so this is actually called back in scripture. We went through, we went through all that scripture, and now we're actually going back. Because this is this is when Jesus didn't even start his adventure to Jerusalem yet. And he was in Jericho with Zacchaeus, and he goes into Zacchaeus' home, and he is on mission in Zacchaeus' home. Jesus is. Now, Zacchaeus, just to give you a little bit of context to that time, Zacchaeus was a very hated man. Um, he was the chief tax collector in Jericho. And and that was a hated man because that meant he was a stealer, he was a liar, he was a cheater, right? The tax collectors of that time would cheat people on their taxes and then take what they what they cheated them on. And so they would just take whatever was left over, and it made them very wealthy. And so he was a villain at this time. If you can place him now, he would literally be like a modern-day villain that everyone hated and no one wanted to steal to see around. But Jesus goes into his home, right? So this is Luke 19, 8 through 9. It says, Meanwhile, Zacchaeus stood before the Lord and said, I will give half my wealth to the poor, Lord, and I have cheat, and if I have cheated people on their taxes, I will give them back four times as much. Jesus responded, Salvation has come to this home today, for this man has shown himself to be a true son of Abraham. So after he stole and all did all this bad stuff with it with his career as a chief tax collector, he he has the Lord in front of him, and before the Lord, he goes, Hey, I'll give half my wealth to those to the poor, and I will pay back those I have cheated times four. Zacchaeus, right? A dishonest stealer, a greedy person that would cheat all his neighbors just to for his own wealth and gain. He repented before the Lord. Meaning, repent, right? Meaning, in this moment before the Lord, he died to himself, showed remorse for his wrongdoing, turned 180 degrees, and made it right. Now that's letting Jesus take the wheel. It showed showed Zacchaeus the path to right, right? I think of it like remodeling a home, right? Have any of you guys had home remodels? I lived in my parents' house when they did, and it is a long process. But the first phase is destruction. The walls are getting torn out, the floors are getting ripped up, the cabinets come off, right? I I'm sure that giving away that much of his wealth was wealth was absolutely agonizing, right? This was the demolition of his old identity, though. And so, yes, giving away all that was absolutely agonizing for him. But he was aware that this was the demolition of that old identity so that he can step into the new. That's the first phase of restoration, though, right? When the construction workers are repairing your house, remodeling your house, you don't take the hammer from the construction workers after they just did the demo. They haven't even made it beautiful yet, right? You have to let the restorer do the hard work of making it beautiful. And so this hurt Zacchaeus. This took sacrifice. I'm sure it was not his original plan when he started stealing, right? He didn't think, okay, I'm gonna start stealing and take all this money from all the poor and all the needy and all the people around me, and then at some point I'll give my life to Jesus and then I'll make it all right. I just I don't think that was what he was thinking when he started. He gave half his wealth to the poor and paid people back four times. I I does that make sense to you guys how much that is? Take your entire life's money and go, okay, split that in half, plus, okay, if I stole maybe another half of that, now I need to pay them back four times. How did he even do that in the first place? That's insane how much that is. But the beautiful part is when he was convicted and he found what right was, which was Jesus, he turned around his life. Right? And this in this moment, his his reputation was renewed, his life was made new, and that was literally through the power of Jesus. What we see is Zacchaeus's heart is completely restored, not by external aggressive power, though, like they thought, right? But by the humble love of Jesus. And so this story, Jesus and Zacchaeus, it closes out with Jesus saying this line to Zacchaeus in Luke 19, 10. For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost. And I know this that is me, and that is you.

SPEAKER_00 33:59

Beautiful words. The Son of Man came to seek and save those who were lost. And that's that's today. I think that's it's Palm Sunday. I mean, it's Lamb Selection Day. We are looking for word at this point in history. We'd be looking forward to the great sacrifice and then the ultimate victory of our Savior, giving us new life. And so He's here. He wants to be the restorer. And my question for us as we wrap this message up, and before we celebrate communion together, my question for us is what would restoration look like for you right now? Because the truth is, whether you're here and you'd say I'm already a follower of Jesus, and maybe you've had some faith experience, and maybe you've grown in your faith, and maybe you're even leading spiritually. You know, and I know that we all still need restoration in our lives. There's, we're always gonna need restoration in our lives. He's always, it's it's kind of an ongoing thing for us, isn't it? Because you go through these seasons, and sometimes there's a setback, and sometimes there's a hurt, and sometimes there's a sin and a detour. And maybe for you, that's you. Maybe it's something else. Maybe you're on the very, very beginning. You're asking those hard questions, and maybe you've never yet really wrestled through. You know, who is Jesus to me? Is he is he the king that came to restore me? And if that's true, what does restoration look like for you? So I would love for you to bow your heads with me right now as we pray and just wrestle through what does restoration mean to each one of us today, Father, we pray that you would show us, just like you showed Zacchaeus. Thank you that you didn't stay away, but you came into his house. You approached this person that probably most of us would have stayed away from. And you said, I'm coming to your house today. And he listened and he allowed you to change what was happening in his heart. He submitted to that, he received your grace that day. And Lord, I pray for my friends who are here right now that maybe need that touch from you in that same way. I pray that you would give us the courage to allow you to start piecing us back together. Father, I lift up my friends who are here that are maybe you've never said your own yes to Jesus. You've never made your own personal peace with your creator, and today you need to do that. He's he's right there at the gate, he's right there at the door. He said, I'm standing at the door of your heart and I'm knocking, and I want to come in. And he said, I want to make my life with you, I want to give you new life, I want to forgive you, I want to, I want to restore you, I want to give you my spirit, I want to be with you, I want to answer your prayers, I want to love you, I want to guide you, I want to, I want to fill you with joy every day. This is the restorer. It's what he wants to do in us, and he's ready, he's ready if you're ready. And if you're ready to have that kind of savior, I want to invite you, right where you're at, if you're online with us, if you're here in person, I want to invite you to say yes to Jesus. And you can do that. You can do that by simply telling him. Tell him that you believe. Tell him that you you you invite him in. Make that admission that you need a savior. And so, with your heads bowed and your eyes closed, right now, if that's you, I want to just say some words. You could tell him this in your mind and heart. Say, Jesus, I give you my life. Thank you for saving me. I believe in you, your life, your death on the cross, and your resurrection. Forgive me of my sins, fill me with your Holy Spirit, lead me, and teach me to follow you. And I ask it in Jesus' name.