Let me start with a confession. I like being independent. I really do. I like making decisions without asking for help. I like solving my own problems. And at times I see that tendency creeping into how I do ministry. I mean, I'm the pastor --- I should be able to do all these things on my own. It doesn't impose upon other people, it's just easier for me to do it by myself, me and God, man, we got this covered.

Sounds holy, doesn't it? Problem is… it's not biblical. It's not beneficial. And it's not sustainable.

Years ago, when communism fell in Romania, the world was introduced to something heartbreaking. There were thousands of children living in overcrowded orphanages. Their basic needs were technically being met — food, clothing, shelter — but they were rarely held. Rarely touched. Rarely spoken to. There was no consistent love. No family. And doctors began to notice something; they called it “failure to thrive.”

These children were alive… but they weren’t developing. Months would go by, even years, and they still functioned like infants. Not because they lacked nutrition, but because they lacked connection. They didn’t just need food. They needed family.

And in a very real way, the same thing can happen spiritually. A person can come to faith in Jesus… be genuinely saved… and yet, if they try to live the Christian life in isolation, disconnected from other believers, they begin to stall out. They don’t grow. They don’t mature. They struggle to persevere. They begin to experience a kind of spiritual “failure to thrive.”

So today, as we continue our CONNECT series, we're going to see that connecting to Christ is first—but connecting to each other is how we grow up.

There are moments in history when everything seems to be falling apart, and yet at the very same time, God is quietly at work doing something that changes everything.

You can see it in different places and different times. In the 1700s, both Britain and America were facing deep social and moral decline. Tensions were rising, and in France those tensions eventually erupted into violent revolution. But in Britain and in the American colonies, something very different happened. Instead of a political uprising, there was a spiritual awakening. A series of Christian revivals swept through the churches and permanently affected Christianity in the Protestant denominations primarily. Evangelicalism became a movement in many denominations and ordinary people began turning to Christ in massive numbers. Lives were changed. Families were restored. Society itself began to shift—not from the top down, but from the inside out. It became known as the Great Awakening.

There's a movie out right now in theaters that highlights the relationship between one of the major leaders of the revival - a man named George Whitefield and Benjamin Franklin. Revival leaders like Whitefield and John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards presented a theology that changed people's hearts as they relied on the power of the Holy Spirit - which brought about a deep personal conviction of the need for salvation through Jesus, and a new standard, then, of personal morality.

It was an incredible movement - but it wasn't the first time something like that had happened.

The very first "great awakening" actually took place in the Roman Empire, in a small and seemingly insignificant corner of the world, in the city of Jerusalem. There was no political power, no cultural influence, no economic strength — it was just a small group of about 120 people gathering together in prayer. And yet within a couple of centuries, the message that began with that small group had spread throughout the entire empire.

That’s the story that the New Testament Book of Acts tells. It is the story of how God takes a small group of ordinary, often broken people, draws them into connection with Himself, fills them with His presence and His power, and then works through them to change the world.

There’s something in all of us that drifts toward making things about us, even when they weren’t designed that way. Have you ever noticed that? You go somewhere beautiful—a sunset, the beach, the mountains—and instead of just taking it in, what do we do? We pull out our phones. We take a picture. And then we end up looking at the sunset through the screen. And without even realizing it, the moment that was supposed to be about the beauty in front of us becomes about capturing something for ourselves. We end up looking at the screen instead of the sunset. And the crazy thing is, we can walk away and say, “That was amazing,” and never have REALLY looked at the real thing.

And I wonder if sometimes, without even realizing it, we can do the same thing with the church. Because the church is a beautiful thing. It’s meaningful. It’s powerful. It matters deeply. But it was never meant to be the end of the story. It was always meant to point to something greater. So the question I want us to wrestle with this morning is not just, “What does the church do?” The better question is, “Why does the church exist at all?”

You know, there are certain words in life that carry more weight than others. Not because they’re long. Not because they’re complicated. But because of what they settle.

Just a single word - or a simple phrase for that matter - can change everything.

A judge leans forward and says one word: “Guilty.” and everything changes.

A doctor walks into the room and says: “All Clear.” And suddenly, a family that’s been holding its breath for weeks can finally exhale.

A coach looks at the team and says: "We're in." And a small school gets their first shot at the big tournament.

At a wedding, two people stand before family and friends, and one simple phrase seals the covenant:

“I do.” And let’s be honest, that’s a moment where one word carries a lot of weight! Neither of those two people standing before the preacher in that room at that moment is thinking, “Well, we’ll just circle back in a few weeks and see how this goes.”

No, “I do” means something is settled.

Or even something as simple as: “Done," which is essentially what Jesus said at the end of his life there on the cross: Tetalestai. Done. Completed. Nothing more to add.

For some of you, the most powerful word you can think of is "Dinner!!" That’s a spiritual moment right there.

When you hear those words… you don’t ask a lot of questions - you just respond.

All these are small words or very brief phrases -- and yet they carry enormous weight because they bring certainty. They take something that was in question and settle it once and for all.

And then there’s a word we don’t use very often anymore, but when we do, it carries a unique kind of weight. That word is “Indeed.”

It’s not flashy. It’s not loud. It does sound almost British, I know. 🙂

But one thing is certain: it's final. It conveys truth. It says, "This is settled." It's no longer up for debate. Indeed. And for over 2,000 years, on this day - Resurrection Sunday - the Church has declared: “He is risen!” And the response has come back across generations, across cultures, across languages:

“He is risen… indeed.”

Not maybe. Not hopefully. Not metaphorically. But IN DEED (it's right there in the word!) Not in theory. Not in word. It's certain. It's true. Indeed.

There’s something about “last things” that just carry a different kind of weight.

If you’ve ever been with someone near the end of their life, you know what I mean. The conversations change. People don’t talk about trivial things anymore. They don’t waste time on surface-level stuff. They start saying what really matters. Sometimes it’s simple—“I love you.” Sometimes it’s clarifying—“Don’t forget this.” Sometimes it’s relational—“Take care of each other.”

I remember reading an interview with Billy Graham when he was 92 years old. He was being asked to look back over his life—decades of ministry, traveling the world, preaching to millions of people—and the interviewer asked him a simple question: “What would you do differently?”

And his answer was striking. He said, “I would study more, I would pray more, travel less, take less speaking engagements.” He went on to say that if he had it to do over again, he would spend more time in meditation and prayer, just telling the Lord how much he loved Him and how much he was looking forward to eternity.

And when you hear that, you realize—you’re not listening to a casual opinion. You’re listening to clarity that comes at the end of a life. You’re hearing what mattered most when everything else was stripped away.

That’s why we lean in when someone is speaking from that place, because we understand—this is what they want remembered.

And when we come to John chapter 13, that’s the moment we’re stepping into. Jesus knows the cross is just hours away. He knows exactly what’s coming. And so when He gathers His disciples in that upper room, He’s not filling space with random conversation. He’s giving them what matters most.

Not just something to remember… but something to live.

"The next time someone asks you 'What Would Jesus Do?' remember that flipping over tables and chasing people with a whip is within the realm of possibilities."

It's funny because it shatters our image of Jesus. We like the gentle Jesus holding lambs. We like the compassionate Jesus healing lepers. But this Jesus—the one with a whip cord, overturning furniture, shouting in the temple courts—this Jesus makes us uncomfortable.

But here's what we miss if we're not careful. We turn Jesus into an action hero. We celebrate the anger without understanding the reason for the anger. We cheer the table-flipping without noticing what happens after the tables are flipped. And it's actually what happens AFTER this scene that is, to me, the most beautiful part of the story.

So we are walking with Jesus through Holy Week. Last week we looked at Sunday, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey as the humble King. This morning we will be looking at Monday, the day Jesus went into the temple, which was the very heart of the Jewish faith, the dwelling place of God's name. And what he sees breaks his heart.

Let me read from two Gospels today, weaving together Mark's account with Matthew's, because together they tell us the full story of what Jesus came to do.

You know, there are moments in life when expectations collide with reality in ways that aren’t just disappointing, but heart-wrenching.

Most of us have experienced that at some point. Maybe it’s something small, like ordering something online that looked incredible in the picture, only to open the box and discover it’s not quite what you imagined. Maybe it’s one of those moments when you finally meet someone you’ve admired for years and the experience just doesn’t match the picture you had in your mind.

They say be careful about meeting your heroes - because they tend to not measure up to the image you have in your head about who they’ll be, how they’ll treat you, etc. And far too often people leave the encounter they had with this hero figure and wind up thinking: That wasn’t what I expected at all.

Sometimes the people we admire don’t live up to the expectations we’ve built in our minds. But sometimes…SOMETIMES something even more surprising happens. Because sometimes the person DOES show up - but in a way that may not have been anticipated, but which is infinitely better than what we were expecting.

That’s what happened on Palm Sunday.

When Jesus entered Jerusalem on the Sunday which began what is now known as Holy Week, the city erupted with excitement. Crowds gathered along the road. People spread their cloaks on the ground in front of Him. Others cut branches from the palm trees and waved them in the air. It was a majestic scene - one of intense anticipation for sure.

This was not a quiet moment. This was a parade. It was loud. It was joyful. It was a celebration. The people believed their long-awaited King had finally arrived. But there was a problem. Not that they were celebrating the arrival of the King, but that they had misunderstood the kind of King Jesus was.

This past week, with the Olympics just behind us, Pastor Ethan brought up one of the greatest sports movies in history: Miracle, about the true story of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team and their player-turned-coach, Herb Brooks, who led them to victory over the seemingly invincible Soviet squad.

That truly is one of the best. I think that victory spawned the idea to make another pretty good hockey movie, The Mighty Ducks. Again, great movie about the underdog achieving the seemingly impossible. The clip you just saw was from the sequel. And though it wasn't as good as the first, I do believe this scene at the end is one of the most joy-filled I can think of.

The championship game is over. The pressure gone. The fight is finished. And as they gather around the campfire, relishing in the victory, notice no one gives a speech. No one organizes a party. There's just that one kid who begins singing softly, "We are the champions, my friend..."

And slowly — one by one — the rest of the team joins in...Not because it was planned. Not because it was rehearsed. But because sometimes, when you’ve fought hard for something, singing is the natural reaction.

And consider this: nobody sings like that before the game, typically. There's too much focus on the task ahead. And rarely will people sing like this in the middle of the third period (that's how hockey works for those who don't know 🙂), especially when you're down by two.

But AFTER the victory? "We are the champions, my friend..."

And that's Exodus 15. Israel is on the other side of the Red Sea, protected from Pharaoh's chariots and horsemen. God has rescued them from the impossible - or we could even say from the impassable. And what do they do? HALLELUJAH!

If you've been following our series on Hallelujah, you've seen that there are different kinds of hallelujahs.

There’s the hallelujah you sing when the worship team plays your favorite song. There’s the hallelujah you sing when your week was good, the coffee was strong, the kids behaved.

But then there’s the hallelujah you sing when you didn’t think you were going to make it.

The kind that comes out cracked, tear-stained, a little shaky. It's truly a Hard-Fought Hallelujah.

But there is this amazing period we experience from time to time when after we get through the sea or the storm, and we look back and - WOW! - we can see more clearly what God has done.

And though praise is praise, I can see how this kind of Hallelujah sounds a bit different. And that's what we're seeing here in Exodus 15.