You Matter
Speaker
Guest speaker Mark Boeker. Juniper Church - Knoxville, TN.
Scripture References
2 Corinthians 4: 8-9, Exodus 14: 10-12, Romans 8:28
Key Takeaways
Our hope, your hope is not on worldly things, but something much bigger, Jesus. Life is a short clip, it is an Instagram reel or TikTok video in length, but Jesus is eternity. No matter what you are facing, no matter how large or small, Jesus is with you, this church and people are with you. Together, as one body, one church, following Jesus, lives will be transformed including our own.
Its up to us to use our story, our purpose, our life to change lives through Christ.
Keep going forward. It says in the book of Romans, Nothing can separate us from Gods love.
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All right, we came down on Friday, and I'm gonna be honest, I didn't know if we were gonna make it. Usually, it doesn't take that long. We left at 1 .28 p .m., 28 minutes late. That is very good for us.
We were supposed to arrive at 6, I think it was 6 .16. We arrived at almost nine o 'clock at night. Needless to say, Mark was being tested for all that time. All right, so if you've seen or heard me before, I like to say something funny to start.
Thanks to my wife, she said, you've gotta continue this. So here we go. Shortly after tying the knot, a young, a married couple started arguing over who should make the coffee. Being a good Christian woman, the wife went to the Scriptures for her answer.
She said the Bible specifically stated that men should be the ones to make coffee. Puzzled, the husband said, absolutely, that's not correct. Where in the world did you find that? Very confidently, the wife opened the Bible and said, it's right here.
Clearly, Hebrews. We're just gonna move on. Ha ha, who knows the fast, yeah. So last January, a few months ago we came, I talked about one person at a time. How can we reach everyone one person at a time?
It's that simple. Life is easy. You reach one person at a time, it grows and grows and grows from there. So today we're gonna build off of that. Today it's gonna be how you matter. You as a person individually matter and can change.
So we're almost five months into 2024. Some are gonna say it's been the best year ever. Sales are up, job is just going perfect, the family is great, everything is just absolutely wonderful. Others are gonna say it's going way too fast, I'm just busy.
How's life busy? Others are gonna say the world is corrupt, it's an election year, this is gonna be awful. Maybe cancer's back, maybe anxiety or depression's back, maybe you lost your job, maybe everyone just came.
You thought you were getting the job promotion, it didn't happen. But what does that look for everyone here? Of course, we're all going through something that, positive, negatives, we're all going through that.
The world's broken. Hurtful stuff happens and we all wanna just give up. It's that simple. Can we just give up, move on, stay in our own world. So this morning we're gonna begin in 2 Corinthians chapter four, in the town of Corinth.
So if you know about the town of Corinth, these were first Christians. These were people who thought if I follow Jesus, this thing is gonna be simple. It's gonna be easy, you just follow Jesus, be like him.
How hard can it be? But they soon realized that life is very tough. It's tough when you follow Jesus. You're gonna have challenges. Jesus is not gonna just make everything just easy for you. So the people of Corinth were feeling like many are today.
They were losing their faith because everything was not falling into place for them. Things got hard, so they started losing their faith. They're like, what is going on here? So Paul writes in verse seven, using a metaphor, a jar of clay.
I'm sure you've read this before, but this just stuck out to me. A jar of clay, how could he use that? Well, the town of Corinth was known for clay, for being and making. I'm sure you have some type of clay at home and different things there that are made from it.
It's fragile, it's delicate. It can be stunningly ornate, but your child may touch it, it falls off the counter and it's broken. It's just that delicate. As humans, are we like a jar of clay? Are we really just that fragile, easy to break?
Maybe we get chipped from time to time. Things may happen to us, but when we get busted or chipped or broken, we feel like giving up, just like clay. When it's broken, what do we normally do with it?
Put it aside, do something with it. putting the pieces back together is always tough. We don't want to be fragile to the outside world. We want to show the outside world we have everything together. And that's simple most of the time.
But on the inside, what's it really like? Was there a time you gave up on God? What caused it to happen? Was it a season of life or are you still there? What does that look like? Or did you pray and nothing happened in a time where you wanted something to happen?
Maybe you just quit praying. Maybe there's a set time in your life where you're like, today's the day I'm done praying. I'm giving up because this is not working. So you start just believing in your own life.
That's it. That's all I need is me, myself. So this causes me to think of a date. On Memorial weekend, June 6th, 1944. Some will know that date. Others will be like, I haven't learned about that in history yet.
World War II was going on. It was not going too well. It's been going on for years. Something had to happen. If not, where? What was going to happen? So early on the morning of June 6th, under night skies, a mission started.
One that had been delayed for weeks because the mission had to go with the exact right time. Had to have the moon right. Had to have the wind right. Had to have everything exactly correct. But on this night, Allied forces parachuted into drop zones across northern France.
Ground troops then landed across five different beaches. By the end of the operation, Allied forces had established a foothold along the coast and began to advance in France. The mission was codenamed Operation Neptune.
This was the largest seaborne invasion in history and a turning point of World War II. What most don't realize is the parachutors that went down, they completely missed their zone. They were actually behind enemy lines.
We know this today as D -Day. So I recently read about Chaplain John Buckhalter. He landed on Omaha Beach and wrote this letter to his wife that was later published. In the letter, he said, when my part of the division landed, there were impressions made on my mind that will never, ever leave it.
Just before landing, we could see heavy artillery shells bursting all up and down the beach on the water's edge under well -directed fire. As I stood in line waiting to get off the beach, off the LCI to a smaller craft to go to shore, I was looking toward land, and all I saw was large shells fall right on the landing craft full of men.
I had been praying quite a bit through the night as we approached the French coast, but now I began praying more earnestly than ever. The danger was everywhere. Death was not far off. I knew that God alone was the maker and preserver of life who loves to hear and answer prayer.
We finally landed and our assault craft was miraculously spared. For we landed and no shells hitting our boat. To me, this makes me think, is God really in this or was this pure luck? Why did thousands of men have to die for this?
And the destruction, these were young men going off to war. They were drafted. They had no choice. How could any good come from this? But we also asked, why is this happening? Something much worse was not going to happen.
And so does that happen in your life? You're thinking, man, that was good. Only this happened. It could have been that. In the end, do we just question and bring doubt into God? Do we just want to blame?
We don't believe God now. How about we maybe think His existence is there in everything, no matter what is going on? Help us like we want and need, and are open to this help from God. Do we ever ask ourselves that?
Do we ever ask, how can He just help us? No matter what's going on, can He just help us? So in 2 Corinthians chapter four, verses eight and nine, Paul talks about a different truth. He brings a different way of thinking about giving up on and our faith.
And the verse says, we are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed.
So in verse eight, it says, we are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. You see, the pressures cannot crush us. We feel pressure. We're always surrounded by pressure every single day, no matter what we do.
Some pressures are stronger than others, but it's always around us, and we feel it. But right here it says, you will not be crushed, because that's the hope of Jesus. The hope of Jesus changes everything.
While studying for the sermon, an individual reminded me of an example of pressure in the book of Exodus. Moses leads people out of slavery. He gets them on this journey. So Pharaoh sends an army after them.
The army reaches Moses at the Red Sea. Red Sea on one side, army on the other. This is not good. Absolutely awful timing here. So in Exodus 14, 10 through 12, it says, as Pharaoh approached, the people of Israel looked up and panicked when they saw the Egyptians overtaking them.
They cried out to the Lord and they said to Moses, why did you bring us here to die in the wilderness? Weren't there enough graves for us in Egypt? What have you done to us? Why did you make us leave Egypt?
Didn't we tell you this would happen while we were still in Egypt? We said, leave us alone. Let us be slaves to the Egyptians. It is better to be a slave in Egypt than a corpse in the wilderness. So what happened here?
They panicked, then started to blame and complain. Do we do this today? Do we blame and complain? When something gets tough, it gets tough and this keeps getting more tough. Do we feel like we're the victim?
Do we forget how far God brought us in our story? Is it easier just to blame? We forget about everything that we have already come through in life to get to where we are. But by doing this, we can quit.
But we can quit but not deem ourselves a quitter. You might say, how is that even possible? We don't wanna give up but rather we say, do we have a choice in this matter? When I was younger, if I had a decision and man, if I was raised differently, my whole life would have been changed.
I wouldn't be in this scenario. If I had this job and I didn't move, ah, I wouldn't be here right now. If I would have never gotten cancer, if I never would have had a miscarriage, if I never would have had that, then I wouldn't be here at this spot.
Life would be so much easier. Oh my gosh. So then we're just gonna say, I just don't have a choice in this. What else is there for me to do? It's easy to then just bow out silently. But we have to not give in to these temptations and these thoughts.
Not give in to that right there and that thing is the end. So in verses 13 and 14, Moses answered to the people, do not be afraid, stand firm and you will see the deliverance of the Lord will bring you today.
The Egyptians, you see, today. You will never see again. The Lord will fight for you. You need only to be still. You see it here, just read the end of it. It says you need to be still. Doesn't say you go run around.
Doesn't say you go run it over here. Do this, do that. It says you need to be still. We have to just calm down, be still, and God is gonna fight for you. Here's the major problem though. We live in a world where we are always in a hurry.
And here's a news flash for you. God does not care. You know when he's gonna show up? When he wants to show up. And that is rarely, if ever, number one when we want it to be, number two, early. This is why I tell Megan it's always fine if we are a little bit late.
She does not buy that. She thinks we gotta be early everywhere. Still working on that. God works on his time though. Which is the best time? If God answered all of our prayers, where would we be? We would be lost.
Because God's time has this really, really unique tendency to show up at the right time. He shows up when you need it the most. The most important times ever. When you look back and you're like, oh, yep, God played a joke on me today and he showed up when I needed him to.
Because he does not care about our plans. In verse 18 of the story it continues and it says, the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I gain glory through Pharaoh his chariots and his horsemen.
There's something about pressure in God. He loves pressure. You put him in a corner and he's going to win. But we have to let him. Is this not like a jar of clay? When the pressure is there and we have nowhere to go, what do we tend to?
That's when we sit in the corner and say, God, will you please show up? Will you please help me? I don't know how I got here, but just help me. Typically, he shows up completely unexpected along that way.
Look at the chaplains on the battlefield during World War II. If you know anything about a chaplain during wartime, they're not exactly what I would say well -equipped. They have the gear on. They usually have like a pistol.
They're not carrying anything more than that. They're not directly on the front lines, but they are still in harm's way right there. Chaplains were the last person that most people saw. They read the last rites.
They provided emotional support. They gave support to every single soldier. A chaplain in the military, they don't look at the dog tags and be like, man, this guy is an atheist. This person over here is Muslim.
This person, oh, that's a Muslim. That's a Christian. The chaplains, they don't care. You know what they did? They started praying for the individual. They started moving upon them because they were a human life.
What was most important to them is they helped those soldiers with dignity. They comforted them. They gave them peace. They gave them a hope of something greater than their own good. The chaplains right there on the battlefield.
Bullets are flying by. Them bombs are going off. They could have ran. They could have said, this is not for me. Instead, they were the hands and feet of Christ right there on the battlefield. I was reminded of this this week.
There's a group of churches in our town. They supported a ministry along with others. I'm sure you've already seen this, but in Haiti, there was mission work going on. It's been going on for 20 years at this exact spot.
In their 20s, a couple was helping kids, teaching them about Jesus. They walked outside after they did everything where they did hundreds of times. Instead, what happened on that day, instead of going home, gangs right there took them, got away from the first group, went and tried to hide.
Word got out, gangs, more came. They ended up being beat and then killed. Is that not like the chaplains? Is that not like people going out in the world? Back to the original verses, 2 Corinthians 4, verse 9, it says, we are perplexed, but not driven to despair.
We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We always get knocked down, always, but we are not destroyed. That's not the end of our story, not being destroyed. We are always gonna be perplexed, but we're not driven to despair.
We are always in a sense of this, but that's not the end when we have hope of something bigger than our own good, something that we just don't even understand or just cannot get the answer to, but God already knows, He's already working when we let Him.
He knows stuff, He's there, but we have to let Him. We have to understand that sometimes that comes with being uneasy, not knowing where the next step is going to be. We must have the faith even when we do not think it is even remotely possible.
As humans in our faith, we struggle because we live in this fast -paced world. We want the answers. We can easily get on the phone and Google. I hate to tell you, sometimes God's not on Google. It's much like when you have a child and you go on to WebMD.
I hate to tell you, do not do that. Annabelle one time had an illness, and we did that after we said to ourselves, do not do that. And in the matter of about two minutes, we thought Annabelle was gonna die in 20 minutes.
She had the common cold. We don't have a picture or a map of our life, but that's okay. We do not know what's gonna happen next. We want to be in control of everything. Whenever you let God in control, your life becomes much more simple.
Some things that you go to the store and think you need, you're gonna put it back on the shelf because you don't really need it. Faith is not knowing what's next, what's around the corner. We never have an ending of our life, what it's gonna look like.
We don't have a picture of what's next. We don't know the ending of anything. But we do know how everything, or we do not know how everything fits together, but that's completely fine. Who likes puzzles?
Annabelle's named after an individual that I grew up with, and we reconnected. It's really a remarkable story. It'll go into it more in depth at another day. But her sister lives, literally, probably three miles from our house.
She is in their 90s. She does puzzles all the time. Just for fun one day, she said, yeah, my brother and his wife came over, and we decided to flip the puzzle over. In case you're wanting to know, there's no picture on the back of a puzzle.
It's all brown or whatever the color is. How in the world is that fun? She said, yeah, it was like fun Wednesday afternoon. I said, that sounds miserable. But sure enough, after a few hours, they did a 500 -piece puzzle like that.
If that's not part of life, what else is? There's no picture to this thing we call life, but there's God. That's like putting the pieces together, and that's what He does. Romans 8 .28 says, and we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.
In verse nine, back to 2 Corinthians, it says we are perplexed, but not driven to despair. The next sentence though, we are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed.
If God is for us, then who can be against us? If God is for you, why give up? He's there, why give up? We're not gonna stop now and quit. Keep going forward. No matter how big the step is, you may take three forward and two backwards.
You're still going forward. Keep doing it. It says in the book of Romans, nothing can separate us from God's love. Hold that thought. Nothing can separate us. Doesn't matter. Nothing can separate us.
So thinking of nothing being able to separate us, I think of a friend that Meghan and I have gotten to know. He was a chaplain outside of Washington, D .C. During September 11th, 2001. What a time to be a chaplain outside of Washington, D .C.
Jeff was the lead chaplain of Prince William County Fire and Rescue Suburban, D .C. Not much happened on that Tuesday. He strolled to work on a nice clear day, and then yeah, things took a turn. As a chaplain, he told me he supported first responders who rushed to the Pentagon.
He was there for them, supported them. He was also there for all of those individuals who backfilled stations, whose first responders were the first ones called to the terrorist attacks. Then as you remember, the Pentagon remained on fire and smoldered for days and weeks after.
During that whole time, different individuals would rotate around. People from his group would go to different areas all the way to downtown D .C. Through rotating, they returned to the county with all these incredible stories.
As a chaplain, he was there to help debrief and support, but what he said next is truly what mattered most in what he told me. He said, I have witnessed the absolute worst and sat with those impacted, victims, families, and first responders, helping to make sense of the situation.
Some were good, some were bad, but I had to be there to help make sense of it. I could tell you countless stories, but most importantly, he said, some stories are almost unbearable to hear, while others will strengthen your hope and our common humanity.
This was the worst day in their lives. Thousands have lost lives to a terrorist attack. Lives still today are impacted directly. But is this like a jar of clay in its simplest form? This is being pressured on all sides like you've never been before.
This is being perplexed. This is being knocked down, but not knocked out. They kept showing up. How can I help is what they asked. They didn't say, man, I'm not going today there. The Bible states, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength, the very hairs on you.
Jesus knows, he has them numbered. Jesus knows you, he knows your story more than you even are aware of. True, you may be chipped, you may be broken, you may be a little bit different, just like clay.
But Jesus cares. It may be abuse, addiction, trafficking. Broken relationships, a tough season of life. Fill in the blank on what that means to you. But no, you are not knocked down. You're not out, the fight is not over.
This was a boxing match, you're not KO'd right now. You're just in the middle of it going on. Jesus is there for you. Because our hope, your hope directly is not in worldly things. It's in something much bigger.
Whenever we take away the worldly things and talk about things that are bigger, Jesus is there. That's when life gets changed. This life right now is a small clip. It's like an Instagram reel. It's like a TikTok video.
You're just scrolling, you're right there. Those things end shortly. You can change that, you can move. No matter what you're facing, no matter how large or small, Jesus is always there. You have to just be aware, open your eyes.
Sometimes when it's difficult, you give Him the power. You say, you know what, I am not ready for this. You've got to help. So together, one body, one church right here. This is where change happens.
It's one person at a time. But you know how that happens? Because you matter. Each of us, we all matter. Because Jesus loves you more than you already know. He's there. It's up to us to use our story, our purpose, our life, to change lives through Christ.
Christian author Max Likato says, the people who make a difference, they are not the ones with credentials. They're not the ones with all the degrees. The people that are truly making a difference are the ones with a concern.
Jesus is there with His arms ready to help. He doesn't care what the credentials are. He does not care whatsoever. What He cares is, are you gonna say, yes, I'm here, Jesus. Help me, let's do this. Let's go right now.
So the time is right now. So when we pray here, just bow your heads, kinda close your eyes. Jesus, we know we're broken. We know we have things going on right now that we think we're alone on. We think there's no way forward.
We think this is the end, but really, it's just a snippet. We're waiting for you to move upon us, move like we've never seen before, because we're gonna give all of our strength, all of our hope, and we're gonna have a mustard seed of faith right now that you're gonna do something.
Because we know that you're gonna do something that's unexpected, because you're the only one that can move mountains and transform lives. Not us, not the worldly things, but something much, much greater than us.
So just open our minds as we worship together, and then we come back for one final prayer and time together. And then we pray for those that are lost. Maybe they're just kind of on the outside, but they need that nudge to go back.
They've been broken, they came back, but then human nature came in, and then off again. We know you're there with our arms open, waiting for us like only you know how to love. Thank you for being the hope of the world.
In Jesus' name, amen.