Vince Vitale [00:00:42] There's also joy in the presence of the Lord. And so I want to start with possibly the weirdest thing that I've ever done in the context of a sermon, which is that I want to play a short game and I'm going to need some volunteers. So as I like quickly set this up, get all your courage, pray for courage if you need to pray for encourage so that I'll have a couple of volunteers here. I'm going to set up our field here for our game. All right, I got my cones. It just worked out quite well that I have a six and a five-year-old boy because I have lots of things to use for our game. This will be our field over here. I now need some brave volunteers to each come up and pick an item that will be part of our game and to enter the field of play. I promise I won't make you do anything too embarrassing. And if I do, you're doing it for the Lord. So it's okay. Yeah, feel free to volunteer friends. I promise there's not going to be anything that you need to do that's too weird. All right, a few people, just pop up out of your seats. Come up, come on up, before I start picking up people. Before I start picking up people. All right, both of you. This is good. We got a full on wrestling match. Here we go. 

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[00:02:09] All right, here you go, you take that guy. That's important. All right. Okay, you can pick anyone you want here. Anyone you want. That's a great choice. And guess what? It even makes a noise. Hold on. So we need a few more people here. Come on, come on, come on. There we go. There we go. All right. Pick an item. That's good. That's good. All right, come on few more. Few more. Few more. There you go, we got one. Okay, it's good. Two more. We can have three on three. All right. Yeah, come on. Yeah, good. Yeah, we've got room for more. Oh, okay. Oh, that was hard. That was hard. Walk halfway up and then push him in. Alright, this will work. This will work. This'll work. There you go. Pick your item. Pick your item. We got the monster truck, which has the Brian's kids' wand. Afterwards, you can have it. That's great. Hockey stick, good, okay. Everything's been picked except for the glove and the pink jump rope. That's right, we don't need those. Okay, all right. How about we do, okay, those three on this side. You three on this side in our field there. All right, go for it. Go for it, play. Play. Play the game. Play the game. Play the games. Come on, go, go go. Go, who's going to win? Who's going win, come on. Come on. Oh, okay, interesting, interesting. Interesting, interesting. Very good. Good. He's out in the field of play. He's out. He is out. What are we going to do? Okay, all right, can we give a round of applause? A round of applause to our brave contestants. Well done. Well done. Yes, thank you. You guys are so brave. That was excellent. That was really great. 

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[00:04:00] Who do you think won? Imagine being thrown into a game. You don't have to imagine because it actually happened, right? But imagine being thrown into a game. You show up and you're thrown into this game and nobody tells you when it started, when it's going to finish, what the objective of the game is, or I heard somebody say in the middle of it, "We need some rules or any of the rules." What would happen? Well, we saw what would happen. It would be chaos. And it's going to be really hard to engage in that game in any sort of meaningful way, right? To be successful at that game, whatever that was. Because I didn't tell you when it started, when it was going to finish, what the objective of the game is, or any of the rules. And here's the thing. This is what I just hope you'll remember from that. So many people are walking around life in exactly that way, without answers to actually the same exact four questions. Where did we come from? Where are we headed? What's the purpose of life? And therefore, how should we live? What's origin? What's the start? What's the finish? Where are we headed? What's the meaning of life and therefore what are the rules and how should walk around day to day? They're the same questions. And one of the things I find so interesting is that when I put you in the game up here, when we imagine a game without answers to those four questions, it is utterly obvious to us, immediately, of course you can't engage in that game in a meaningful, free, enjoyable-- wait, you seem to enjoy it a little bit. But in a meaningful or free way. 

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[00:05:52] But now when we turn to life, it's amazing to me how many people walk around for 70, 80, 90 years without the answers to the same questions and just thinking that somehow we can engage in life in a meaning and successful way. Each one of us needs a story of reality. A story we tell that answers those fundamental questions of life and allows us to engage in this meaningful way, in a free way, with peace, in a way that's successful. I didn't start with a story of reality that answered those questions. Showed up at Princeton, freshman year, no story of realities, skeptical philosophy student, two teammates, soccer teammates of mine, invited me to a meeting. Not that different from this one, walked in a few minutes late through the back door and people were already singing and I just saw worship to the Lord for the first time. I just saw people, these peers of mine, otherwise people who I thought I could connect with, Princeton students, athletes, same as me, and they're singing their hearts out to this invisible God. And it was so disorienting. I had no idea what to make of it. And then I started to like read some of the lyrics and realized they're singing to this God because He's so far beyond, so much greater than they could ever be. And it was so disorienting to me because I just thought life was about being the best. Life was about earning rewards. Life was getting into Princeton, whatever it was. 

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[00:07:29] And here were these people, so joyful on their faces because they're singing to someone who's far better than they can ever be. I didn't know what to make of it. I walked out. I remember walking back to my dorm room that night and praying a sort of seeker's prayer, maybe the first sincere prayer of my life. I just remember saying, "God, I don't know if I'm talking to anyone, but if I am, I would really like to know about you." And God honored that prayer in my life. I got to pray that prayer with the guy at Stanford two days ago. If that's the place that you're in, pray that prayer. Pray it every day. If there's a God big enough that he made this universe and relational enough that he loves you the way that Pastor Brian was having us sing about, he will honor that prayer. He will honor that prayer. And I had lots of questions. I was challenged to read the Bible by the same teammates and I took the challenge but I would cross things out. I would add things. I'd actually write a big BS in the margin wherever I disagreed. Yeah. Which was not for Bible study, unfortunately. That was my starting point. But this community of Christians, they journeyed with me in such a gracious way. It was like every time I raised an objection or a question about their faith; they acted like I had given them a gift. They acted like I had really blessed them in some way. And I found it so weird, but I also found it very attractive. 

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[00:08:59] There was security about them. They were curious. They were secure. They weren't worried that maybe their God wasn't big enough to deal with my questions or my objections. They had a personal experience of God that was strong enough that they weren't shaken by anything I could throw at them. And before I just get to the main topic for today, I just say be a community like that. Welcomes people's questions. Welcome even their objections. Don't be scared about them. As Christians, you should love. Those of you who are Christians in the room, you should love people's questions. Every question has a true answer. And from my Christian perspective, all truth is grounded in God. All right, so two steps. There has to be a connection. Whatever someone's question is, it has a truth answer and all truth is grounded in God. So a question is a gift because if we're thinking creatively enough and prayerfully enough, and in community enough, there has to be a connection between someone's questions and the God that you believe in and Jesus believe in. 

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[00:10:04] Questions are also how you get to know a person. If I want to get to you, I ask you questions about yourself. And then I'm not satisfied with just the superficial answers. I ask further questions, deeper questions. I even ask questions about those parts of your story and your history that other people shy away from. Questions are how you get to know someone, anyone. And therefore, if God is personal, questions are how to get know him as well. The Christians who were journeying with me. They didn't convince me on every point, but they did convince me on some key points that their story of reality was true and beautiful and they convinced me that they were a community with which I could wrestle through the deep questions of life for years to come. And I hope you'll be that community to many as well. Much longer story, maybe I'll tell you a bit more of it later, but eventually I wound up on my knees in my dorm room at the end of my freshman year, 122 Jolene Hall, telling Jesus that I wanted him to be right at the center of my story of reality. And this morning I want to invite you into that story of realities. Some of you are further into that story, maybe some of you are into that story for the first time. I believe it's one that's true, but also one that beautiful. 

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[00:11:17] So I want to look basically at those four categories that we didn't have in that game, but I hope you're going to have in life. Where did we come from? Where are we headed? Our origin. Our destiny. What's the purpose of life? Does it have meaning? And therefore, what are the rules? How should we live? Morality. We're going to start at the beginning and we'll start with origin. Where did all of this come from? And I don't know if you've ever just taken a step back and just thought about just the universe. I'm sure you have. It always amazes me how people walk around without realizing how ridiculous it is. That right now you're sitting here listening to me. Like you are currently rotating at 1,000 miles an hour. You're flying around the sun at 67,000 miles an hour while you're being hurled through the universe as part of a galaxy at over a million miles an hour, and you're just sitting here comfortably like nothing's going on, listening and processing what I'm saying. It's just incredible. As you sit in this chair, which is 99.999999% immaterial. It's always so weird, it blows my mind. There's part of a universe where something like 95% of the universe is dark energy or dark matter. And we don't really know what those things are, but it's also intricately designed that the DNA from your 37 trillion cells, if they were stretched end to end, they would reach to the sun and back 200 times. 

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[00:12:57] And it's just ridiculous to me when you just start to just view out a few of the facts about the universe that so many people just walk around like things are just normal. Like the story of reality, things are normal, mundane, un-extraordinary. Just taking my 37 trillion cells for a walk while I rotate at 1000 miles an hour, nothing much going on here. What's going on? Not much. Same old stuff. Our universe is incredible, and it should fill us. Like our starting point, as we think about our story of reality, it should just fill us with awe and wonder just to think there must be more. I remember being in a taxi one time and saying to the driver, do you think there's a God? And he said, of course, there's a God. If not, where did all of this come from? And it was just like a decisive, almost defiant response. But I just thought, yeah, that's a rational response. If there's not a God, where did all of this complexity come from? And then to take it a step further, not only is our universe incredible in terms of its complexity and its mystery, but it's also incredibly designed or fine-tuned to be able to produce life. 

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[00:14:07] For example, we consider the regularity of the universe, the strength of gravity, the universal gravitational constant, it's a pretty specific number. Again, we just walk through life not thinking about these things, but this is the foundation for any sort of coherent life, that this number stays the same. You're not going to wake up tomorrow and it'd be 6.68. You're not going to wake tomorrow and it'd be 6.66. It stays the same second after second, day after day, year after year. And we walk through and we never ask the question, why? Why should this number stay the same second after second for thousands of years? If the universe is just random, there's an infinite number of different logical possibilities that that number should take. And somebody will reply and say, well, that's the way it's always been. Well, yes, but that's not an answer to the question. That is the question. Why has it always been like that? If it were 6.66, if it was just a slightest bit weaker the universe just disperses into thin air and nothing holds anything together, you just wind up with cold simple molecules, no complex chemistry, you could never have life. If it's just the slightest bit stronger, the universe just collapses, completely collapses back in on itself, immediately. Why is that number the same? 

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[00:15:33] If you take God out of the equation, I'm not sure that there's an answer to that question. If the universe is just random, why shouldn't it fluctuate? There's an infinite number of different numbers, different exact measurements it could take. My answer from my story of reality is that only God explains the regularity of the universe. Only God explains why the fundamental constants of the Universe remain constant second after second, day after day, year after year. And not just any God, but a God who cares about us. A God who cares about us living coherent and meaningful lives that we can actually make sense of. How specific does it have to be? Sir Roger Penrose, the Oxford mathematician, Nobel laureate, he said the difference that you could have in the fundamental constants of the universe while still making it possible to have life is one part in 10 to the power of 10 raised in 10 again to the power of 123. That is a minuscule number. Like if you wanted to write that out as a percentage you couldn't because even if you turned all the matter in the universe into paper you would need more zeroes than there are particles in the Universe to write that out as a percentage. These are the sorts of odds that we're talking about. 

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[00:16:47] Sir Fred Hoyle, the Cambridge astronomer, he said that the possibility of life in the universe, just based on randomness, is akin to having a tornado blow through a junkyard and just happening to produce a perfect Boeing 747 airplane. These are the sorts of odds that we're talking about. The universe is fine-tuned on a razor's edge to produce life. You can think about it this way, to take a simple analogy. Imagine that at this point you're like, okay, too many numbers and too much science for me. I'm getting bored. So you break out a deck of cards and you start playing poker with Pastor Sarah. Not for money, of course. And in the first 12 rounds, she gets 12 straight royal flushes. What do you think's happening? Oh, man, they threw you under the bus pretty quickly there. Yes, that's right. She's cheating. Why? Well, because the probability based on chance alone is so ridiculously small that someone has to be messing with the cards. There has to some sort of intelligence and intentionality around 12 straight royal flushes. And it would be completely irrational for you to watch that, watch that game of poker, see 12 straight royal flushes and just keep going, "Wow, she's so lucky. Wow, she's so great." That would not be rational. 

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[00:18:20] And scientists are telling us that's exactly what's going on in the universe. One royal flush after another. And it's not rational to just continue to say, whoa, it's so lucky that life could be possible. The rational conclusion is that there is intelligence and intentionality. The rational inclusion, I believe, is that the heavens declare the glory of God and the skies proclaim his handiwork. Day unto day they pour forth speech and night unto night they reveal knowledge. Only God explains, I believe, the origin of life. What about meaning? I'll talk for a few minutes about meaning in life. Holocaust survivor Victor Frankel, someone who had a really keen awareness of the human condition, he said we have enough to live by but nothing to live for. We have the means but no meaning. Does this collection of letters have meaning? Well, it depends. It depends on whether or not that's a word. It depends whether or not someone intentionally put those letters side by side in order to communicate something. Or if that's just a random collection of letters. Meaning relies on intentionality and intelligence. My son's first words were, dada. And I remember I heard him say dada for the first time, and I was still proud. I was in the room. Like, dada. That's it. That was the first word, dada. And then my brother walked into the room and he went da, da, da, da. And then the dog walked into to the room and he went da, da, da, da, and I was no longer so proud. 

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[00:20:05] Because it was just random. He wasn't yet referring to me with that sound. This sound was randomly coming out of his mouth, but he was identifying it with me and with my brother and with the dog and with everything else. Randomness is the enemy of meaning. Even if something appears to have meaning, it might not. Even if it looks intentional, it might not be if it wasn't actually the intention of an intelligent being. Earlier I mentioned that I came to faith, I dropped to my knees in my dorm room, 122 Jolene Hall, this point at which my journey to faith went beyond just the analysis I had done in my head, and I encountered Jesus in a very personal way in my heart. You know you're getting old when you have to do the calculation. That was about 25 years ago. And then just about three years ago, I was speaking somewhere and I told someone my story, and I never used to mention 122 Jolene Hall, very specific detail, but I happened to mention that detail. 

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[00:21:16] And about three years ago, I finished speaking and a woman came forward and she looked quite emotional. And she said, "Did you say 122, Jolene Hall?" She said, "Well, I'm about 15 years older than you, and I spent my time in college in 121 Jolene Hall, just next door." She said, "And I spend my four years in college praying for the salvation of the guys in 122 Jolene Hall." She said, "All these years I felt like God didn't hear that prayer, but as you were speaking, I just knew in my spirit that he had heard my prayer word for word for the Salvation of the Guys in 122 Jolene Hall." And then I was so moved to think that 15 years before I even thought to turn my attention towards God, he had a woman literally praying for the floor on which I dropped to my knees and gave my life to him. Maybe there's a couple of people who are here this morning and going, that's just coincidence. It's just random. It depends on your story of reality. It depends of your story of reality. But I'm telling you, I can tell you story after story after story like that. And it gets harder and harder to say that's just coincidence and my story of reality is that we are God's handiwork. Workmanship. One translation of that word is masterpiece. Created in Christ Jesus for a good life, for good works, which God prepared beforehand Even 15 years before there's a woman praying for the floor on which I drop to my knees and give my life to him. And far before that, he chose for me to exist. He chose you to exist before the foundation of the world that we would walk in his ways. 

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[00:22:58] That word right here for handiwork, it's the Greek word poem. So, it's where we get our word poem from. The Bible says that each one of us is a poem. A poem that's been carefully crafted by God. And interestingly, the Bible only speaks about two things with that word. And one is the universe, the heavens that declare the glory of God. The intricacy and majesty of the universe that we just spoke about. And the other is you and me. God's two poems, the universe and you and me. What's your story of reality? Are you a random collection of genetic letters that just happens to have been thrown together in an accidental universe, or are you a poem being intentionally crafted, beautifully crafted by a God who loves you? Or are you as Sestina, which is a type of poem. That's the question behind the question of the meaning of life. Origin. Meaning. About morality, I was thinking about this moment a couple years ago where I was with my brother and some other friends and we were watching this one bird was violently chasing another bird and really looked like it was viciously trying to attack the other bird. And a few of us were standing there watching and one person said, "That's evil." And then the next person said, "That's not evil. It's just nature.". 

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[00:24:39] And it was just really interesting. Like so concisely thinking, okay, different stories of reality how you see that. But here's the thing, once you start talking about human people and not birds, it becomes even clearer, right? When you start thinking about human people viciously attacking each other, viciously pursuing one another, it then becomes very hard to say that's just nature. Then most people at their deepest level are going to say, that's evil. Morality becomes almost unavoidable, this sense of good and evil, right and wrong. And the most fundamental premise of morality is that every person is equally valuable. The starting point for our morality, that every person has equal value, that's why we think we can say that every person should be treated with respect and dignity and fairness. Why fairness? Well, because each person is equally valuable. But then there's a really interesting question that most people never ask. If you agree with me that every single is equally valuable, there has to be something which is equally true of every single person. There has to be something that's equally true of every one of us in this room in virtue of which we're equally valuable, in virtue of which there can be a morality where we can say things are good and evil right and wrong and we can't just viciously pursue each other and attack each other. Well, what is it? 

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[00:26:06] What's the thing that's equal true of every single person in this room? And as soon as you take God out of the picture, it gets really hard to answer that question, right? Some of us are taller than others, stronger than others, more intelligent than others, produce more value for society, better at passing on our genes. Whatever it is, all of our natural features are distributed along a spectrum, not equal. What is the one thing that's equally true of every single one of us in virtue of which we can all be equally valuable in virtue of which there is a foundation for us to say things are evil and things are good? I thought about it for a long time. All I can come up with is the love of God. The no ifs, unconditional, extravagant love of God that is for every single person and that you cannot earn and that you cannot lose. It is equal for each one of us because God is longing for each of us to be his children, sons, and daughters. And so even when somebody brings an objection to the faith, how could God exist if there's this suffering in the world? How could God exist if there is this unfairness? How could God exist if these people never heard about him? Interestingly, so many of those questions are objections from fairness. They're objections from morality, grounded in fairness, which is grounded in the equal value of every single person, which therefore has to mean that there's something equally true of all of us, and actually it circles back to God because it's only his love that's equally true of every single one of us. 

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[00:27:43] And nobody lived out that love like Jesus did; who said love even your enemies. Boy, do we need more of that in our country today, in our culture? Jesus who said, pray, pray for those who persecute you. We take for granted how foreign that was and still is. Nobody said things like this until Jesus walked the earth. If you had to summarize Jesus's message, you could do it in many ways, but this would be one decent way to do it. If you only had three words. I think if Jesus wrote a PhD and they're saying, hey, give me your thesis statement. Keep it concise. Love everyone, always. Which includes his justice. Why is he just? Why does there have to be consequences for sin? Because he loves people, he loves those who are hurt when we hurt each other. Love everyone always, no matter what, even when it cost him dearly. And when faith is deep and authentic, Christians strive to live and to love like Jesus. I don't know if you know this, but one of the reasons that the Christian faith spread in the first place is because in the plagues of the early centuries, in the second and the third centuries, the Antonine and the Cyprian plagues, Christians did not run for the hills. That's where that phrase comes from. You want to get out of the city and run to the hills so you don't get infected by the plague. 

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[00:29:22] And we have texts from that time with the most incredible passages saying that many of the Christians didn't run for the hills. They stayed because their neighbors were sick and they stayed though they were healthy to nurse their neighbors back to health. And one passage even says that they in a sense had the sickness transferred to them in a literal sense because they're there nursing their neighbors back to health and some of them actually getting infected in the process and dying in their stead. Is that not what Jesus did for us? And these are Christians living it out in the most concrete way. You are statistically more likely to survive the plagues of the early centuries if you had a Christian as a neighbor. Lord, may that be true of this church. When a Christian in this church moves in, when you move in next door to someone, wouldn't it be awesome if that person's going, "Oh, our new neighbors are Christian. That is so awesome. I'm not sure if I believe what they believe. I think it's all a bit wacky and a bit weird, but you know what? If our family needs somebody to serve them, if our family need support, if our families need a serious sacrifice at some point, because we're going through something really hard, we know those Christians are going to be there for us because that's what their God did, because that's what their gospel says." 

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[00:30:44] I think about Elisabeth Elliot. Some of you may know the name Jim Elliot. Elisabeth and Jim, they were young, in their 20s, they were trying to reach a people group in eastern Ecuador with the gospel. And when Jim tried to make contact, he was speared to death. So what does Elizabeth do? She goes and she spends years learning the language of this people group. And then she goes back and she lives with them for two years with her three-year-old daughter. And she's thinking, these people, of all people, need to know the truth of Jesus. I mean, that's not human love. There's something supernatural there. I think about Maximilian Kolbe. I don't agree with all of his theology, but he was a believer who was in Auschwitz in a concentration camp. And it should have been a context of just like everybody for themselves, right? Survive at any cost. Every person for himself. And one of the prisoners escaped. And then one of the guards decided that in order to deter any future escapes, what he's going to do is just read out randomly 10 numbers of the prisoners, and then those 10 prisoners were going to be starved to death in an underground bunker. 

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[00:32:13] And so Maximilian stood there as these 10 numbers were called, and his number was not called, but the man next to him, his number was called. And he slumped to his knees and he said, my wife, my children. And instinctively, Maximilian stepped forward and said, "Can I take this man's place?" Total stranger. Can I this man's place? And he was allowed to. And he went down to that bunker and ministered to the other nine people who were being starved for the next two weeks until he died and that man actually made it through World War II. And spent the rest of his life traveling around telling people about the sacrifice that Maximillian had made on his behalf. Why would someone do that? Only if you have a God who loves as extravagantly as the Christian God. Only if you really believe that that has been done for you, that our number was called and Jesus said, "Can I step forward? Can I take that man's place? Can I that woman's place?" And he was allowed to. This is the life that Jesus invites us into. It's a radical life of love. And if you're sitting there right now and thinking, I cannot imagine making any of those choices, I can't imagine that being in my heart, that is perfectly okay and right because it's actually not natural. It's supernatural. That is a miraculous gift that you can be given. When you say to the Lord-- maybe you want to ask him for that today. When you say to him, would you fill me not with the love that I have myself, but with your love, that your love would come and be poured into my heart. 

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[00:33:53] Origin. Meaning. Morality. Finally, let me say something about destiny. Where is all of this headed? How does the story of life end? I saw a commercial a while back, really weird commercial, and started out with a baby being born, and then you're like in the hospital, you see this baby born, and then the baby shoots up into the sky, like out the roof of the hospital and flies through the sky at altitude. And as the baby's flying through, and this arc through the sky, it goes through all the progression of life. So it starts out as an infant, and then the baby toddler, and then kind of becomes an adolescent, and then an adult. And then as the arc begins to descend, starts to get older, starts to get gray hair like me, and hunched over, and then at the end of the commercial, crashes into a grave. Dead. And then the screen goes black and words appear across the screen, "Life is short, play more Xbox." And I responded exactly like you did, right? I laughed and thought that's really funny, very creative, but then I also sort of caught myself. I thought it's really fun, but it's also devastating. Like really? On some stories of reality, that's all we've got. Is that really all we got in this universe of brokenness and death and injustice? Well, there's just nothing we can do about it anyway, so just try to distract yourself, try not to think about it, spend more time on Instagram and Xbox. Is that really the best that we've got? 

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[00:35:35] And never was I more thankful to have more to offer than Xbox than when I sat at the bedside of my best friend's father, Joe, at his hospital bedside while he was dying of cancer. This is Joe, and so I got to go and spend time with Joe. And Joe told me that although he had always believed in God in some sense, he was getting increasingly scared of what comes next. And as I spoke with Joe, what became clear to me was that his fundamental understanding of Christianity was that you should try to do more good than bad in life and then hope at the end that you've done enough. And if those scales balance and you've done more good than bad, then something wonderful awaits. But if it tips in the other direction, then you're in trouble. And as he soberly and honestly reflected over his life, he knew that if that was the case, he would be in trouble. I was never so incredibly thankful to be sitting before someone as a Christian because every other way of seeing the world would have had nothing to say. If I were an atheist, I would basically have had to tell Joe that he was right. There is no hope beyond the grave. And he had reason to be scared. If I adhered to almost any other religion, again, I would have had to tell Joe that he was basically right. At the most fundamental level, it was about whether he had done enough to earn God's approval. And he had every reason to fear. 

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[00:37:06] It was only as a Christian that I could say to Joe that being right with God has nothing to do with what he earns. It has nothing do with what he has or hasn't done, but it has everything to do with what Jesus has done on his behalf once and in full and for all. And I explained the beauty of the gospel to Joe at length, of a God who does not ask us to climb our way up to him, but who comes down to us, of a god who took our punishment and so we have nothing to fear, of a guy who died in agony so that we could live in peace. And then I asked Joe, I said, "Does that make sense?" And in classic New Jersey fashion, he said. "That's a hell of a realization." He said, "69 years, and I've never thought of that." He said, "I thought Christianity was one thing, but it was something else entirely." And then he said, "This turns everything upside down." I asked Joe if he wanted to pray with me to put his trust in Jesus. He said that he did and he confidently thrust his arm out to me and we clasped arms and we wept and we prayed for him to give his life to Jesus. And then when we were finished praying, he exclaimed this loud, amen. And his exact words, he said, "You spend your whole life trying to make up for your mess ups, but this finally explains how we can deal with guilt."

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[00:38:40] He then immediately turned and said to me, "Does your wife, Jo, know this incredible news about Jesus?" And I thought, it's just beautiful, right? Because he's so focused on himself when I walked in the hospital. Now as soon as he received Jesus, the immediate reaction was a change in the heart to now concern for other people. And I said, "Yes, she does." And he said, "It must be a happy life." And then he had this thoughtful pause, just like peaceful on his face, and then he said, "Now I'm actually looking forward to what's next." My best friend and family came in the next day. Up until that point, Joe had just been bitter and resentful and angry. They came the day and they said, how are you? He said, "I'm wonderful." Nothing in this world can do that other than Jesus. With Jesus, no matter what we go through, we are never beyond hope. We are never beyond hope, even when we go through the hardest things in life. One of the hardest thing that my wife Jo and I have gone through is a miscarriage, and that may be true for a few people in the room as well. I didn't realize how devastating that experience would feel, but going into the doctor's office and being so excited to hear the heartbeat of your child, and then this deafening silence. And then we walked out to the car in a fog. We sat in the car, we wept, we prayed. We decided in that moment in the card to name the baby Luca, means light. It was a name that we had liked, but we hadn't made that decision yet. And we decided, yeah, let's name the baby right now. Named the baby Luca. 

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[00:40:22] And then Jo said, "Can we just grab a pizza or something on the way home? I really don't want to go home and have to cook." I said, of course. So I was driving, she went on her phone and looked up pizza places in the area and she just clicked on the first recommendation whatever was closest without looking at the name. So we drove about five minutes down the road and I made a right-hand turn into this parking lot and this is what we saw, a big sign with the name of the restaurant Luca pizzeria. Coincidence? Depends on your story of reality, but again, I can tell you story after story like that. I believe that God's loving kindness, making sure that we knew that he was with us. Making sure we remembered that he's the only God who can understand the depths and the details of what we go through, the only God who literally, Father God, knows what it is to have a child's heart stop beating, literally listened to the last beat of Jesus' heart before it stopped beating. The only God who knows what it is to have to bury a child. And yet also reminding us that because the Father's Son, Jesus' heart now beats again, so too can Luca's. God is that big because Jesus has risen. She could rise, too, and there could be a day when I run to her and put my head on her chest and hear her thumping heart. 

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[00:41:53] Adding a present grace to that future hope, this is my younger son, J.J. And the amazing thing is that J. J. was conceived at a time when Joe still would have been carrying Luca. And so, in this sort of mind-blowing way, this little guy couldn't have existed if not for the loss of his sister. And he carries the name Lucian as his middle name, as a reference to her. In recognizing this kind of poetic gospel truth even that through her death, life was made possible for him. And when we conceive of our family, we conceive of our family as a family of five and that one day we'll be together. And that's how J.J conceives of our families. I'm just saying that to say that is how concrete and real and tangible the hope is when we put our trust in Jesus, because we believe that our life is a poem. It's a poem. And the different stanzas of the poem may express very different emotions, right? And some of those stanzas are going to be really hard and really heavy, but we know that it's all going to hold together and it's going to end well because the poet, because the author, is very good at what he does. And he loves us. And he only writes masterpieces. And the masterpiece of my life, the masterpiece of your life, if we will just let him in and allow him to be in charge. 

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[00:43:37] As I start to come to a close, I want to show you a four minute video of my boys. They're six and five now. They're five and four in the video. And it was just a great encouragement to me because it's basically my boys sharing their story of reality. They're at the park. They had met a friend, a new friend. They never met this kid before. They were doing some scooter races for about 20 minutes. And then they were just sitting down. And I was just sitting about 30 feet away, just letting them have a conversation. We got a couple of things to work on. The head slap kind of halfway through, a little argument between my two boys in the beginning. He's not in heaven. He is in heaven! A couple of things to work there, but it's just they have a story of reality. They have a story of reality and there's a conviction about it and they're excited to share it with other people and they look at this world and there is awe, right? There's awe and wonder and it's not just what they see and they realize there's so much more. Every one of us has a choice about our story of reality. 

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[00:44:45] Is our story reality just going to be that we're molecules that are just crashing about in an accidental way and somehow manage to produce all of this, but there's not really good and evil, it's just nature? Or even at that age like five and four, they should just be thinking about Xbox or like whatever, but they've got a real story of reality, and it's available to me, it's a available to them, it's available to you because it's not something that we manifest or make up or earn. It's a gift and it's just something that we receive. And how do we know that story of a reality is true? That it is actually reality. I love what GK Chesterton said. He said, "There's two ways to choose a coat, a jacket." And he said, "One of those ways is you can look down on the rack and look at all the dimensions and say, okay, it's a medium with these shoulders and that inseam. Yeah, that looks like about the right size." And I think that's important that we've done some of that this morning, where we're looking at the history and the science and the philosophy. That was important for me because if the dimensions were not in the vicinity of truth, I don't think I ever would have picked up the jacket and tried it on. 

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[00:45:57] But at the end of the day, there is no substitute for actually picking up that coat and trying it on by actually beginning to come to Jesus in prayer and seeing if he responds. If I had to summarize everything that we have spoken about this morning, just in one verse, I'd probably pick "I'm the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Because it's very similar to what we've been talking about. I need to know the way of life. I need to know if it's true. I need to know life. What decisions do I need to make? What's the way? How should I live? What's morality? Where did all this come from? I need to know about origin. I need to know about destiny. What is life? And does it just end at the end of this life? Or does it continue beyond? And what difference does that make? And just the wonderful, comforting, freeing news of how Jesus puts all of this is that it's not about us just trying as hard as we can to figure it out. It's not ultimately about us saying, I'm just going to just do more and more study, more and research until I figure out the way, until I figured out the truth. I'm going to try more and more things until I figure out what is actually life-giving and real. 

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[00:47:13] Instead, Jesus says, I am these things. I am this thing. And if you want to come to the Father, if you want to come to The Way, The Truth, and The Life, how do you do it? You do it by coming to me. And those are not just ancient words, because I have seen those words be proven true time and time again. I think of one guy named Tom who he looked into the measurements, he looked down at the rack, and he was studying some of the science and the philosophy and the history, and he came to the point where he thought, "I see that this is in the vicinity of truth. This looks right." And then he was ready to say, "I want to take a step towards a personal encounter with Jesus to see if this is really real." And I always remember he bowed his head in prayer, probably the first time that he was sincerely praying to the Lord. And he prayed to give his life to Jesus and asked Jesus to meet with him in a personal way. And then when he opened his eyes, the very first words out of his mouth were, "I have always felt alone like I had to wear a mask, but now this is the first time in my life that I can take off that mask and be fully myself and fully alive." 

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[00:48:24] Very first words that he spoke as a new believer. He had been wearing a mask, didn't have the answers to the fundamental questions of life. He was just over here on this field hoping nobody would notice that he was just pretending. Pretending to know what was real. And then he came to Jesus in a personal way and he opened his eyes and said, "I've always felt alone like I had to wear a mask, but now this is the first time in my life I can take off that mask and be fully myself and fully alive." I don't know anything in this universe that can do that other than Jesus.

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