Luke 2:29-32 | A Song of Seeing | Alex Culpepper

Which side of the car the gas tank is on, the gas cap. I just never know which side it's on. And so I get to the gas station and for me it was always a 50, 50 shot, right? Like maybe I'm gonna end up on the right side, maybe not. Or maybe I'll have to get out and repark my car or whatever.

And until about five years ago, my wife showed me something amazing that actually, when you look at the dash, there's a little arrow next to the gas symbol that tells you which side of the car your gas cap is on. And she's like, you didn't know that? No, I didn't know that. Like, I've just been spending my whole life just trying to guess and make my best effort at this. And since that time, I have literally never had that problem again.

It was a gift. It changed my life. The second one I'll show you, is a little bit more serious than that. So when I first started taking seriously reading the Bible for myself, I found it hard to understand at times. And maybe you can relate to this experience as well.

And so when I was 18, somebody showed me something that changed my life. They came and did a two day seminar at our church on something called the inductive Bible Study method. I had never heard of this before, I had never experienced this before. But the inductive Bible Study method is built on three big concepts. Observation, interpretation and application.

Observation. You look at a passage and you just get the biggest picture of what's going on here. What do you see, what do you notice? Interpretation then is focused on, okay, well, there are specific words and those words mean specific things, right? And so there's a way you could just like sit down and if you don't recognize a word in scripture, you don't just have to go like, I don't know what that means.

You know, we have these things called dictionaries, right? And they can tell you what words mean, right? And so I was like, oh, I didn't realize that that's something that I should do or think to do when I sit down to read the Bible. And then application is the understanding that, hey, if I'm reading God's word, it's not just meant for me something for me to hear, something for me to know, but it's something for me to implement into my life. And it's interesting, you get to doing that enough times.

If you practice kind of the hard labor of going through inductive Bible study enough times, you just like, you read the Bible and you start to understand it through that framework. It's amazing. And that changed the way that I interacted with scripture when showed, somebody showed me that it made scripture relatable and understandable. I share those two stories because today we are telling the story of the dedication of Jesus. And surrounding the dedication of Jesus is this theme of revelation, of showing people something that they did not previously realize or understand.

And so as we get started this morning, I just want to define that word revelation. For us, revelation is the act of showing something that was previously hidden, right? Now you've heard of the book of Revelation, right? And we think of like Revelation as end times. Actually, the book of Revelation is literally, it's saying the revealing, the revealing of things that are hidden, the revealing of things that are unknown.

The word apocalypse, it doesn't mean the end of the world. The word apocalypse means revealing the word revealing of things that are hidden. And so those concepts are what come forward. And so just to give you an idea of what we're talking about when we talk about revelation, God's word, the Bible is God's revelation. God is revealing himself to us.

The idea is there are things about God that we couldn't know, right? But then he decided to show them to us. He decided to tell us things about himself that we could not previously know. And when Jesus, who is, by the way, called the Word of God in some places when he comes to, you know, be dedicated in the temple, this theme of revelation comes forward from a man named Simeon, a revealing of things that were previously unknown. And so we're finishing up a series.

When Christmas first sang. We've been looking at all of the first Christmas songs that God's people ever sang in regards to the arrival of the Messiah. And in our text this morning, this is a song that was sung at Jesus's temple dedication. So we are right now, 40 days after the birth of Jesus, there is a Jewish ritual in which Mary and Joseph and Jesus come to the temple for Mary's kind of post birth purification, but also a ritual that all Jewish babies go through in order to become a part of God's people. And so in Luke 2.

25, we meet a man named Simeon. And just so you know, there are like eight different Simeons in the Bible or Simons, right? So this is one of them. And this is the only time he shows up. We never see this guy again.

And so this is what it says in verse 25 of Luke chapter 2. Now, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. And this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel. And the Holy Spirit was. Was upon him.

Simeon bears a character similar to what we would see of most of the Old Testament prophets and what's described here, at least. He's a man who is committed to God's law, to God's word, to doing the things that God says. But he doesn't do these things just to check the boxes. He does these things out of a sincere heart. He does this to display love for God.

He does this to abandon his own preferences and his own agenda. And so he is devoted to God. And specifically, his devotion to God is related to one category of something that God was going to do, the consolation of Israel. That word consolation means comfort, the comfort of Israel. And that specific term relates to the coming of the Messiah.

Messiah was going to be the comforter for Israel. Christ was going to be the comforter for Israel. And as a Jewish person, he was deeply expectant of God to deliver on the promises that he had made. And this was one of the characteristics of his life. If you knew Simeon, you knew one of the things that he was always thinking about is, when is God going to bring his Messiah?

When is God going to do? When is God going to fulfill his promise? This is what was going on. And then the other thing that it says about Simeon is that the Holy Spirit was upon him. Simeon was unique in this way, in the sense that you don't see really the Holy Spirit being upon many people.

It's interesting that the way that the Word says that it was upon him. Normally when the Holy Spirit is spoken of as acting through another person, it will say, like, the Holy Spirit rushed upon that person, or the Holy Spirit came upon that person. But this says the Holy Spirit was upon Simeon, which implies that the state of his life was a life that consistently involved the activity and action of the Holy Spirit. He just knew Simeon. And you know, you were gonna like, Simeon was hearing from God and listening to God and interacting with God.

This was his life. And then it says, in 2:26, it had been revealed to him. So as part of this interaction, that he is constantly. The Holy Spirit is constantly upon him. As part of this interaction, the Holy Spirit shows him something that he did not previously know.

He revealed to him something that Simeon would not die until he saw the Lord's Christ or the Messiah. Right? So the Holy Spirit's promise to Simeon is, hey, all the promises that you've read for your whole life, you are going to see the person who fulfills those promises. You Will before you die, Simeon, you will see the Messiah. And so he.

Not only did he live his life in anticipation of these things that were written in Scripture, but the anticipation increased because the Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he was going to have this great opportunity. So verse 27, he says, he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him according to the custom of the law. So in the Spirit, when somebody is being described as in the Spirit, the idea is that they are not directing themselves, but they are responding to the direction of God, right? So they are under the influence or the direction of God. So presumably Simeon has been perhaps in his own home or somewhere in the city of Jerusalem, praying and meditating on Scripture.

And Simeon realizes in the midst of his time with the Lord, as the Holy Spirit is upon him, he realizes that God is directing him to do something, to go somewhere. He. He gets the. The unction of the Holy Spirit to go, to get up and go to the temple. And at this point, he doesn't know why, or at least I would assume he doesn't know why or what for.

He's just responding to how God is directing him, because this was the nature of his life. He spent his life responding to how God is directing him. And, and so you may ask, well, how did he know God's direction? Like, how did he experience that? And my short answer for you is, I don't know.

The text doesn't say, right? Did he have a vision from God about something? Did he hear the audible voice of God in relation to something? Or did he experience more of like a spiritual or an internal hearing? Or maybe he just knew.

He knew he had to go, or he perceived something. I don't know what it was, but in his, the Holy Spirit being upon him, he was at one point in the Spirit and knew that he had to go. And so verse 28, Simeon comes into the temple, and it says he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said so. You. You may have lots of questions.

I have at least one. Mary is a mother of a new child, and a stranger has just walked into her space in the temple and taken her baby out of her arms. And so why was Mary willing to let Simeon pick up her kid? I don't know. Simeon seems to play no official role in temple life.

But from the text, there are two things that seem really clear. First of all, Simeon seems to have had a reputation in Jerusalem, right? Like something like a bit of, like a national treasure or at least a treasure of the city. So we think of. Think of people like Billy Graham or Mother Teresa, right?

People who. People would make pilgrimages to go and listen to what these people had to say. Like, if you were a spiritual leader somewhere in the world and you wanted a word from God, you would make a pilgrimage to go see Mother Teresa, to see what word from God that she might give to you. I think this is kind of the quality of who Simeon is. Simeon was recognized as a man who was very devout, and the Holy Spirit was upon him.

And that's not just the text that is saying that Luke is noting. People were aware of this reality. So that's the first thing to notice. Simeon had a reputation in Jerusalem. And the second thing to notice is that Simeon is still in this moment in the Spirit.

He has not left being in the Spirit. He is still in the Spirit. And so questions again that you may have. How did Simeon recognize when he walked into the temple that, okay, that baby is important and I need to go to that baby, and Jesus is the Messiah, and how did Simeon. How was he able to find them in the temple courtyard?

And where did Simeon get the words that he's about to speak over Jesus from? And how did Simeon go about this process of prophesying? And how did he know he even had the right family when it came to all of this? And Luke has one answer for all of those questions. And it is simply that Simeon was in the Spirit.

And we want more of those answers. But Luke's answer is that he was in the Spirit. He was in a state of receiving and responding to the active direction of God. And so under the Holy Spirit's power and direction, Simeon identifies the baby Jesus as Mary and Joseph. Bring him to the dedication.

And Simeon comes and he wants to speak a blessing over Jesus. He has a blessing to speak over Jesus. And this blessing is our final song of Christmas. So Luke 2:29 to 32. Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace according to your word.

For my eyes have seen your salvation, that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel. I want you to imagine for a second that Simeon becomes very vulnerable. I can imagine that the very first time that Simeon speaks these words, that perhaps he even did sing them because they have the pattern of Old Testament prophecy. And in the synagogue they would sing Old Testament prophecy. And so in this very vulnerable moment, Simeon's there and he is, at the very least, speaking this poetic Blessing, if not singing it over Jesus.

And there's a theme to everything that Simeon says. Your word according to your word, right? According to the things that you have revealed to me, right? My eyes have seen your salvation, right now with my own eyes, I can tell that the one you have promised is right here. Again, you've revealed something to me that you have prepared in the presence of all people, a light for revealing, for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people, Israel.

And so from this song of Simeon, there are three things that are pulled out. Three things that Jesus will be. Jesus will be number one, salvation for all. So sometimes with prophetic words, the people who are speaking the words out, they don't necessarily know the fullness of what they mean as they're speaking them or as they're writing them. And so did Simeon know that the salvation that Jesus was bringing wasn't a salvation from Rome, but a salvation from sin?

We don't know. We don't know what he knew. But Simeon knew one thing for certain. In one way or another, this baby will not just save Israel, but this baby was going to save all people everywhere. Now, Israel was aware that they needed salvation.

Israel was aware that the Messiah was bringing salvation for both kind of Rome, right? They're in captivity to another nation, right? That's a kind of salvation that the Messiah was supposed to bring and that the Messiah was also supposed to bring salvation from sin. And people in Israel knew this. They expected that the Messiah would usher both of these things in at one time.

But God had a different plan. God had a plan to provide salvation from sin first and then salvation from our the sinful governments and institutions that exist. So that's the first thing that Simeon says. The second thing that Simeon says Jesus will be is that he will be revelation to those who only know false gods. The word Gentile, when you read the word gentile, it's a way for Jewish people to say non Jewish people.

And when Jewish people are saying non Jewish people, what they're saying is people who do not worship the one true God, implication in the Roman world at that day and time is these are people who worship false gods, right? Gods who are not true. Right. And so when revelation, the word revelation says it's saying some, showing something that was previously hidden or unknown, right? So those nations worship false gods.

They don't know who the true God is. But the Messiah will be a revealing to those worshipers of false gods who the true God is. Here's the thing. Only the Jews knew The one true God. The Jews are such a small number of people in the whole world, and yet somehow, through the God that the Jews know, all people would come to know who the one true God is.

So Simeon knew that with Messiah, God's emphasis was going to shift from one people group to all people groups, from one family to all families, from one nation to all nations. And so to the extent that like right now in this very moment, the prophecy that Simeon spoke out is being fulfilled right now, because I, a Gentile, am speaking to you. A room full of Gentiles, right? If anybody's Jewish, I would love to talk to you after this, but I think we're a room full of Gentiles right now. And so this is being fulfilled in this very moment as I'm speaking.

And so the third thing that Jesus will be is this will be glory to Israel. So I think that the population of Jewish people on the earth is something like.01% of all the people in the earth. The nation, the amount of space that they take up in the world is so small. There's just a very, very little plot of land in the middle of a desert right next to a sea, right? And think of the stories that people all throughout the world know about the things that have happened to that very small people group and that very little plot of land on the other side of the world, right?

We know the story about the exodus, about the Passover, about how God saved his people out of Egypt and drew them out and took them to a promised land. You know the story, most of us know the story of David and Goliath, right? A giant that was brought down at the hands of a man who would later become king in Israel. Maybe you know the story of Elijah and the 400 prophets of Baal, where, you know, Elijah shows that the one true God is more mighty than the, than the God that those many prophets worshiped. But even think about this, your understanding, the understanding that you have have of the creation story, even if you do not believe the creation story, the understanding that you have of how the world was created is a unique creation story.

In all of the creation stories of the world, the one that most of the world is most familiar with, came from the writings of a very tiny people group in a very tiny plot of land on the other side of the world.

That's what Glory to Israel is. Look at what has come about in our culture. Look at the knowledge that we have and the things that we are aware of because of Jesus. Glory to your people, Israel. And So the big idea in the entirety of this blessing that this holy man Simeon, speaks over the Son of God is this.

There are people who do not know the one true God, who don't even have in themselves the capacity to have faith in him. Because other gods have gotten a hold of them. They've been ensnared by other gods. They've been trapped in the darkness of other gods. And God will not let that be the end of the story.

Right? He's not. I mean, he could just hang out with his one tiny people group and one tiny land on the other side of the world, but he's not content that he wants everyone to know him. He wants every false God to be shamed. He wants every demonic power to be overcome.

He wants every kind of person to encounter and experience that he is a God of revealing, of revelation.

So I really love living at the point in history that we live revolution right now because Simeon sang that song on that side of Jesus's death and resurrection. And we are now 2000 years on the other side of Jesus's death and resurrection. And we now have the ability to give testimony to the multiplicity of ways that the revelation of Jesus, the Messiah is coming to every nation. So I want to give you just this morning, six major ways that Jesus is being revealed. I want to do this for the encouragement of your heart, and I want to also do this for the sake of understanding what is it that we as a church are here for?

What are we seeking to accomplish in our community? What is the thing that Jesus has called us to? And so six major ways that Jesus is being revealed. The first major way is, is through family influence. How do people come to know Jesus?

The most significant way that people come to know Jesus is because of the influence of their family. And did you know God said this is the way that it would be? God said in Genesis 12, verse 3, when he promised to Abraham, hey, Abraham, I'm going to make you a great nation. And then he said, and through you, all the families of the earth will be blessed. Meaning individuals who are a part of a family will come to know who the one true God is.

And then they will pass that knowledge into their families so that their entire generations can be blessed in the knowledge of God. Right? So Christian parents and grandparents, your families will learn much of what they learn about the Christian faith by what they learn and observe in you. They will observe and learn and draw conclusions about the faith based on how they see you live out that faith. Now, you cannot control what they do with that experience.

This is the really hard part. They're going to learn from you, but then they're going to do with it what they're going to do. You can't control what they do with that experience, but you nonetheless, you play the most formative role in their lives of understanding what a Christian faith, genuinely lived out should look like. And so when one individual in a family comes to Christ, it then provides opportunity to reflect what following Jesus looks like through generations. The second major way that Jesus is being reflected, revealed is through friends and social networks.

22% of people who come to believe in Jesus come to Jesus because of the influence of a friend of theirs, right? That they can point out a friend who played a significant role in their faith formation or in their being drawn to or interested in Jesus. And so the regular spiritual conversations in the context of genuine friendship are one of the most common pathways to people coming to Christ. So, I mean, there are major testament, have been for years, major testimonies in this church of the ripple effect of the gospel moving through friend groups and people being redeemed and coming to faith in Jesus because of that. And in the next year, we plan to do more training around this because it is like our vision.

We are stories. God is writing about Jesus, making things new. We want our lives to be read and to reveal Jesus to others. And so we put the word bless up out on the wall and we put it on little bookmarks. And we want you to know, what does it look like to live out this faith that we have?

We begin with prayer. We listen to others really well because we want them to know that they're loved and we want to understand their lives. We eat with them and we share taste tables. We serve them right, and we just be involved in their lives and giving of ourselves for their sake. And then we share stories, share Jesus story with them, share our own story of how Jesus saved us and what he's doing in our life.

We want to bless others. And this is one of the most significant ways that people come to understand who Jesus is. The third way, third major way that Jesus is being revealed is through the planting of healthy churches. Healthy churches do two things. Healthy churches train and send workers who can show people who Jesus is.

Crossroads is one of the ways that we do this right? We train and send people into public schools who can carry the gospel into public schools and carry a love for kids into public schools and help them get some kind of context for what it looks like to follow Jesus. We do this through life on life discipleship, right? So we, we train and send workers in healthy churches, and you don't learn how to trade and send workers without having a local body of believers who can invest in each other and love each other and provide context for the gospel in that space. But the second thing that healthy churches do is healthy churches provide a place, a physical location that people can go to and discover who Jesus is.

25% of people who say they came to faith when they stepped across a line of encountering Jesus for the first time did it because they found a church on their own and they walked through the doors of that church. 25% of people who followed Jesus did not have a relationship with somebody, but they came to a physical location and they heard somebody proclaim the gospel and they believed in Jesus. So planting healthy churches is significant. We are developing here, Nathan and Janna Farr, to be able to send them out to the other side of the world. In June, they're going to Portugal, right?

And they're going to go with Access. Access is the church planting arm of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. They're going to establish a physical presence in a neighborhood, in a city, in a village, so that they can build relationship with people and provide a gathering of people where people can come and discover who Jesus is and what it's like to know and follow Jesus.

Access to a Bible, that's the fourth way that Jesus is being revealed. The word of God is living and active faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word about Jesus. So those who are living out a profound faith in Jesus, right, If you would consider yourself in that category, if you survey people who are living out a profound faith in Jesus, significant is that early on in their spiritual development, they picked up a Bible and they started reading it in their own language. Bible translation. Access to a translation of the Bible that you can understand is one of the most significant ways that people come to see and know who Jesus is.

And right, they think, oh, they hear about Jesus, right? Maybe they hear about it from a friend, about him from a friend. Maybe they hear about him from somewhere else. But then they sit down, they open the Bible because they say to themselves, I have to figure out who this Jesus guy is.

Number five, supernatural encounters. This is one of my favorite. This gets me very excited. In Joel, chapter two, the prophet Joel speaks about a great harvest that is going to take place in which people all over the world are coming to know the Lord in great numbers. And Joel records God's words as I'm going to in the Last days, pour out my spirit on all flesh.

And your young ones will see visions and your old ones will dream dreams. And right now, all over the world, there is ever increasing testimony of people encountering Jesus supernaturally through dreams and visions. There are people in this church who know and follow Jesus or learned to start following Jesus because Jesus showed up to them in a dream or showed up to them in some kind of a vision. Because God loves Muslim people very much and wants their families to know Him. God is showing up in massive numbers to Muslims in dreams and visions.

Jesus is showing up in their dreams to say, hey, follow me. Or hey, go to that church down the street that you would never walk in into in a million years. Go walk in there and talk to the guy there. He has something to tell you about who I am.

So I've heard stories of Jesus interrupting literal satanic rituals and appearing to the people who are performing the ritual so that he can tell them, I love you. Follow me. Jesus appearing in the midst of Buddhist meditation sessions, people trying to empty the their mind so that they can be open to the universe. And Jesus butts himself into that little meditation session and say, hey, will you follow me? Telling people to follow him.

And these people respond and they do it. And the last one I'll point out to you is Christian media. I put media in quotes because it comes in so many different forms. This can be books, this can be videos, podcasts, digital content, gospel pamphlets, stuff. This doesn't do everything.

If you put all of your energy into pushing Christian content out there, it's not gonna yield a great harvest, but it still plays a role. I wanted to share with you two stories at Horizon we go and we do Crossroads there. And I have met a teacher there at Crossroads, and he came up to me while we were leading Crossroads. And every, every time we do Crossroads at Horizon, he talked to me for maybe 15 or 20 minutes. He came to me.

He just started following Jesus like two years ago and had no context for faith, anything of faith before that. The way that he began to start being interested in following Jesus is that in the bathroom of an Aldi, somebody left a gospel tract sitting on the corner of the sink. And he was broken down in tears and had a very real sense that God saw him and God loves him and that is the thing that caused him to start pursuing Jesus. So that's the first story I'll share with you. The second story I'll share with you is one of the kids in this church I don't want to share her name.

I don't want to embarrass her, but we put the books, the Pursuit of God by A.W. tozer out there for this past fall. And she wanted to get one of those books and start reading it. And she took it to class with her. And she's sitting there in her class and her teacher walks up and she says, you know, that book looks really interesting.

Could I get a copy of that book? Would you let me read that book? And that's happened through one of our kids who came up through crossroads. That's cool. This is what is happening.

Jesus is being revealed. And there I would tell you there's more than this, but why would I take all the time to walk through all of that?

Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace according to your word. For my eyes have seen your salvation. You have prepared in the presence of all people, a light for revelation to the nations and for glory to your people. Israel Church Our main point this morning is this. Jesus was blessed to be God's revelation to every kind of person.

We are living in a time of great revelation. And I don't know how many more days Jesus is going to give us.

But I want to do everything I can to be a revelation of who he is to the people around me so that they can experience his salvation. So, so that they can know and love the one true God more than anything else. And so that they can discover the power of God revealed throughout history. Because a few people in a tiny nation called Israel on the other side of the world were willing to trust him at various points in their life.

So what?

So what? So for Jesus followers, there's an activity on your seats. There was a piece of paper when you came in and I'm looking for information, I'm looking for data.

So I need you to fill this out. So in the next year, what two changes would make the greatest difference in you being able to to reveal Jesus to others? This is a personal spiritual growth survey. The end result is more of my life. Like after these things change, Jesus is more visible in my life.

I'm better able to reveal Jesus to others. So what two changes would make the greatest difference in me being able to reveal Jesus to others? Don't write your name on it. I'm not interested in coming to you and say, hey, a year ago you circled this. How's that going?

That's not what this is about. Our elders have responsibility to shepherd and lead and disciple this church. And this church is here to you are here a part of this church to reveal who Jesus is in your spheres of influence. And so we need to know what is going to be most helpful, Right. What tools can we give you?

What next steps can we help you take so that what we do here becomes a better revelation of who Jesus is to our community? So I want to encourage you, I'm going to give you. And if you're at home, you can do this too. If you want to send your answers, that's fine. That's not as big of a deal.

But everybody should participate in this. So take some time. This is not up here for you to write down. All of that on the screen is on the papers that are on your seat. Take a couple of minutes, circle the two things that stand out.

I'm going to give you some time to do this and some space to do this. There might be a little bit of awkward silence up here. It's okay. After you finish and we get to communion, you're going to fold the paper and you're just going to put it in the basket up here during communion. But take, take a few minutes.

We'll have some time of silence. Circle the two things on the paper, the two biggest changes that would most help you reveal Jesus to others.

All right, I'm going to move on. And if you want more time, just don't pay attention to anything I say for the next three minutes.

So what number two for Jesus followers? We did this last year for Vision Sunday. We will do this this year for the Vision Sunday. I would just encourage you. Who's your one?

Who is the one person in your life that you know God is calling you to play a role in revealing Jesus to them. Who is it? Right. And know it. And then write their name somewhere in your Bible or, you know, somewhere that you are going to be referring to constantly.

And would you commit yourself to praying for them daily? Would you. Would you commit yourself to. To pursuing, building a better relationship with them more effectively, loving them? Right?

Because we are. Our vision as a church is to be a conversion community. Now, statistically, last year, we crossed that line for the first time in a long time. Conversion community is a community where 10% or more of the people in the church are new to the faith within the last year. Year.

Okay? And so statistically, in our church, we cross that line. But, but what that means at a large scale, what that looks like is that every 10 years, every single person in the church will have helped at least one person across the line of faith. At least one person across the line of faith. Now, I would love to be far more ambitious.

I would love to see, like, everybody, like one person a year. Come on, like, let's bring it in, right? But who's your one, right? Like, who is the person that you, you can see maybe over the course of the next two or three years, you making a faithful investment in them to reveal to them who Jesus is. And then the third.

So what for everyone else, what will you do with God's revelation? I realize that you may be in here this morning and I may be talking about Jesus and you may be like, okay, that's great. I don't even know if I know Jesus.

And listen, here's the thing. Every person, when we are faced with hearing the truth about who Jesus is and what he is, revealing what he is inviting you into, we have to decide how we're going to respond. We're either going to accept him or we're going to leave him. We're going to say, no, thanks, it's not for me right now. What will you do with Jesus?

He is indeed the one who has come. He has come to prove to you that God loves you in your heart. You have rebelled against God, right? You have sinned. You pursue your own preferences.

You don't much care about what he thinks. And yet God sent his son down to earth to prove to you that he still wants you, that he still loves you. And so Jesus came and he died for you. He died the death that you deserve to die so that you could be redeemed, so that you could be brought to God and that you could have relationship with him and you can know what it means to be loved by God and that you can know what it means to have a new life. And if you want that new life, you will have an opportunity today to respond to what Jesus has done.