Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 11/5/23 Based On a True Story: The Gospel of God

Episode Date: November 4, 2023

To join in the mission of bulldogCatholic through this year's Give to the Max campaign, please donate here: https://www.givemn.org/organization/Newman-Catholic-Campus-Ministries-At-Umd Homily from the Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time. Am I basing my life on the gospel of the world or the Gospel of God? We are surrounded by stories. Stories that try to make sense of the world. But not every story is true. In fact, there are many stories that are false. We are called to base our lives on the true story… The story of the Gospel of God. Mass Readings from November 5, 2023: Malachi 1:14-2:2, 8-10 Psalms 131:1-31 Thessalonians 2:7-9, 13 Matthew 23:1-12

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz. You know, years ago, back in 2007, we started this homily podcast every single week as an opportunity to extend the ministry that we do up here at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, the Newman Center, Bolda Catholic, were called to our students who had graduated, our students over summer break, over Christmas break. And then, now since then, here we are in 2023 to the world or to whoever, whoever wants to listen to these homilies. We are so grateful that I'm so grateful that you have listened to these homilies. Hopefully they're a blessing to you. And they are truly an extension of our ministry up here at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. If you've been blessed by these homilies, if they have touched your life, if they've offered you some kind of

support, some kind of solace, some kind of direction in your life, if they've helped you get closer to the Lord, or maybe they're the kind of thing that you've passed them on to your children or your grandchildren, maybe you pass them on to siblings or your parents. And they've helped them, if this ministry has blessed you in any way, I would just ask you, invite you to consider blessing this ministry. On November 16th, that's this upcoming November 16th, it's a Thursday. There's a thing here in Minnesota called Give to the Max Day. And basically what that is is an opportunity. It's kind of the one day of the year that we ask people who have been blessed by our ministry to,

I don't want to say return the favor, but to consider a financial offering. Now, yes, we have other things going on and bigger projects that are going to be happening in the next couple of months and years, but this is kind of for the ongoing ministry of reaching out to evangelize college students on the campus up here in Duluth, actually multiple campuses up here in Duluth. If you're interested at all, you can follow the link in the notes. You can go to boldoc-catholic. org. You could go to give-m-n.org, that's give-minnesota.org. And you can just find Newman Catholic Campus Ministries at UMD, and you could donate. It would be an incredible blessing for us. Again, go to bulldogcatholic.org or go to give-M-N-Soto.com.

or either place has a link to donate it would be incredible we also have will have a a live streaming kind of situation on november 16th that thursday at 7 p.m. Central time if you want to go online you can go to like Ascension presents I believe that's where it's going to be hosted go online at seven o'clock central standard time on November 16th there would an opportunity for Q&A if you want to have if you have any questions like maybe this maybe it's a Bible in the year question maybe it's a catechism in your question maybe it's a homily question maybe it's just a you question, just feel free. You are invited to join us on November 16th at 7 p.m. All that day, though, we will have the opportunity to not only give, but also we have, once again, I think this might be

the third year in a row. We have someone who's willing to match your gift up to a quarter of a million $250,000, which again, gets us reaching out to as many college students as we possibly can, and by extension, reaching out to people across the country and around the world. Please keep us in your prayers and please consider supporting us Thursday, November 16th. God bless. Welcome to Sunday homilies with me, Father Mike Schmitz. I hope today's homily inspires and motivates you, and I also hope that it leaves you hungry for the one who gave everything to feed you. If you want to get this in other Sunday Mass resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up at ascensionpress.com slash Sunday or by texting Sunday to 33777. You can also follow

or subscribe on your podcast app for weekly. notifications. God bless. The Lord be with you. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew chapter 23 verses 1 through 12. Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples saying, The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe everything whatsoever they tell you. But do not follow their example. For they preach, but they do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens hard to carry and lay them on people's shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them. All their works are performed to be seen. They widen their philacteries and lengthen their tassels. They love places of honor at

banquets, seats of honor in synagogues, greetings and marketplaces, and the salutation rabbi. As for you, do not be called rabbi. You have but one teacher, and you are all brothers. Call no one on earth your father. You have but one father in heaven. Do not be called master. you have but one master the Christ the greatest among you must be your servant whoever exalts himself will be humbled but whoever humbles himself will be exalted

the gospel of the Lord so here's a quick question what do the following movies have in common here's a little list the sound of music Braveheart the 300 the Revenant the Amityville horror the exorcist

the pursuit of happiness and Fargo. Clock is going. I asked this question of Jack and Anna before Matt started, and they're like, I don't know, these are all movies with people, movies with actors in them. Yes, they are. They're movies with people, actors. They're all movies that made it to the big screen.

The answer is they're all movies based on a true story. Like every one of these, everyone's movies. The Shawnee Music, we know the story of the postulant Maria, who went to work for Mr. Von Trop or whatever. and she ended up marrying him. They had a whole singing thing. We know that. The 300, yep, there's this band of 300 Spartans

who fought at the gates of Thermopyla against King Xerxes. If we know that, we know Braveheart. Yes, there's a guy named William Wallace and again I'm Robert the Bruce and this battle between Scotland and England. All these things, Pursuit of Happiness, Will Smith. Fargo is a town in North Dakota. These are all movies that are based on a true story.

But the remarkable thing about all of these movies that I just mentioned is they are very loosely based on a true story. Because we know this, right? When something says it's based on a true story, the true story, the idea we kind of look at it and say, okay, it might not be incredibly accurate, but something like this happened. For example, Braveheart, yeah, it might not be entirely accurate that William Wallace led this group of Scottish people, freedom fighters against England.

But something like that happened. Or the same thing with the Battle of, you know, at Thermopylae, the Gates of Thermopylae with 300, 300, 300 Spartans. Yes, that's the story. That's the legend. Something like the movie happened. The crazy thing is, is there's a lot in the movies that didn't happen at all. It's only based on a true story. In fact, the worst example is the movie Fargo, where it says at the very beginning of the movie, it says something along the lines of,

these events happened in 1987 in Minnesota. And it's completely made up, just completely false. It's not based on a true story. It's based on a false story. And yet it's compelling because we think, like, okay, this is based on a true story. Even if it's not actually true, it's based on a false story,

tell me a story. because we all want, I think a lot of us, we want the story to be true. When it's not, like when it's based off a false story, there's something disappointing. And the reality, of course, is there's nothing like a true story. But every one of us, I'll say this, and they make this next step, every one of us are basing our lives off of some kind of a story. And we might be basing our lives off of a true story. We also might be basing our lives off of a story that's not true, a story that's false. We might actually be basing how we interact with each other, how we look at God,

how we look at this world, we might be basing that off of a false story. What we're going to do for the next four weeks leading up to Advent is we're going to start this new series. The series is called Based on a True Story. And what we're going to look at? We're going to look at, okay, what is the story that is Christians we are living by? What's the story? What's the lens?

Another way to say it is, what is the lens? What's the worldview that Christians are saying, okay, when it comes to looking how I look at God, how I look at life, how I look at accidents, how I look at miracles, how I look at myself, how I look at other people, how we look at suffering, how I look at joy. The question is, is how I look, is that based on a true story or is that based on a false story? Because every one of us, every one of us, we're living in such a way that we're basing our lives on some kind of a story.

You know, that story back in the ancient world in Rome, there was a story, and the story was that he was the Caesar. And Caesar, what he established is he conquered the known world and he established. and he established peace, he actually established a thing called the Paxramana. And that was the story that was declared from Caesar to the rest of the Roman Empire. The Pachshramana, like the peace of Rome would reign. And that Caesar, he called that, he called that the Ewan Gelion. He called it the good news.

That was the good news of Rome. The good news of Rome, the good news of Caesar was that, hey, listen, you're at peace. The world's at peace, which might be true if you were wealthy. It might be true if you were Caesar. It might be true if you were a man. But you couldn't base your life off of that story because it wasn't completely true. That word Iwangelion, right?

Again, it means good news. We would say that word in English, we would say gospel. It was the gospel of Caesar. The gospel of Caesar was, there's the Pax Romana. You can base your life off this story, but you actually couldn't because if you tried to live that way as if they had this piece of Rome, the Paxramana, there's a lot of things, there's a lot of holes in it.

A lot of places where there'd be brokenness that couldn't be healed. A lot of places where there would be incredible sorrow that couldn't be soothed. A lot of trouble that wouldn't be dealt with. And in that middle of that Ewangelian, the Pax Romana, the good news according to Caesar, along come Christians. In particular here, Paul, in the second reading today, and he says, what does he say in the second reading? his letter to the Thessalonians.

He said, we came to you proclaiming the gospel, not of Caesar. He said, we came to you proclaiming the gospel of God. Remember, that word gospel means anemal and Gaelian, the good news of God. He said, I love this because he describes it. He doesn't actually describe it. He just says, remember, when we showed up, we proclaimed the good news of God. So what's the goodness of God? In fact, I think it's really fascinating because when you read this letter up to St. Paul to the

Thessalonians, you can go back to the Acts of the Apostles, and you can read in Acts chapter 17, where it was that St. Paul went to Thessalonica. Like, how is it described in the Acts of the Apostles? He says this. It says, basically, Paul went to Thessalonica where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And what he did was he followed his usual custom and he joined them.

And for three Sabbaths, he entered into discussion with them from the scriptures, expounding and demonstrating that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead and that this is the Messiah. Jesus. Jesus is the Messiah who might proclaim to you. So he went to the synagogues.

And he proclaimed, he said, this is the true story. And this is the story that you can base your life on this true story. That this is the true story. You can base a relationship with the Lord on this true story. You can base everything for the rest of your life into eternity to be based on this true story. That Jesus Christ is the Messiah, that he died and that he conquered death, that he rose from the dead.

And that goes on to say this. It goes on to say, many of the Jews, some of them were convinced and joined Paul and Silas, and so too a great number of Greeks who were worshippers. A great number of Greeks who were worshippers. And this is so fascinating because I want to pause on this for a second. Let's ask the question, because we're going to be talking about this for the next four weeks. Based on a true story, do you know the story? Another way to say it, ask it is, do you know the Ewangelian?

Do you know the good news? Do you know the gospel? If someone asked you, so what is it that you are basing your life on? Your life is based on something. There's a story that guides your life and drives your life and gives it vision, gives it focus. Tell me that story.

The question we have to ask is, would I be able to tell that story? Would I be able to, as a Christian, as a Catholic? Would I be able to say, oh, here is the Evangelion, here is the good news, this is the gospel, this is the story, the true story that I based my life on, would be able to do that. I don't know that all of us would be able to do that. That's why for the next four weeks, we're going to be looking at what is the gospel.

In fact, now again, not the gospel of Caesar, but what St. Paul says to the Thessalonians, what is the gospel of God? Now, I think this is fascinating. Not only Jews came to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, not only did Jews come to believe that, yes, Jesus suffered and he had to suffer, that he died, he had to die, and then he rose from the dead, and he had to rise from the dead. But also it says not a few, of great many, in fact, of Greeks came to believe. What's fascinating is, if you were a Greek living back in the day, or if you were a Roman,

living back to Gentiles, it says Gentiles, not Greeks, if you were a Roman, a Gentile, a non-Jewish believer living back in the day, what was the story that you based your life on? Like, what was the lens to which you looked at the world? I think we probably know this. there's a book called the apostolic traditions that comes from the first centuries of Christianity. And it describes how, if you were going to become a Christian, that becoming a Christian was not a quick thing. It was a three-year process.

That if you're going to become a Christian, you had that first year where you had to be taught the basics of the Christian faith. Because, again, you're approaching God in an entirely new way. You're approaching the world in a new way. You're approaching other people in an entirely new way. If you were a Greco-Roman person, right? You believed in what? You probably believed in the pagan gods. We all read Percy Jackson, so we know.

Like, you believed in Zeus and Hera and Athena and all these kind of things. Aphrodite. The common thing about these gods and goddesses, though, is that if you ever pause to think about this, none of those gods are good. Absolutely none of them are just. They don't care about you. They definitely don't. They don't know your name. It definitely don't love you. So how do you approach a god like this? Well, a couple things. You don't. In fact, the only reason why you would ever approach one of these gods or goddesses is for one of two reasons. One is because you were so desperate for the thing, whatever the thing is you needed, whether that be victory in war or your crops to succeed or to become pregnant, whatever the kind of,

you were so desperate that you were willing to risk getting the God's attention because, remember, gods, they don't care about you, they're not just, they're not good, they're very fickle. So they might as easily curse you as they would bless you. But you were so desperate, the one reason is you're so desperate that you're willing to risk being cursed by the God for the chance you might be blessed by the God. That's one reason. The other reason is you're going to go worship God. because, or the goddess, because you want to keep them off your back, right?

You want to keep them out of your life. And I think this is fascinating because we might think, like, that's ridiculous. Who would ever do that? Well, we do. As Catholic Christians, we do that. How many times have we? Again, this might be the story that you and I are living right now. Where it's like, why do you go to Sunday Mass?

I'm desperate. Like, why do you go to pray? Because I really need help right now. So either I go to pray because I'm desperate enough to pray. Or I'm going to have Sunday Mass, put in my time on Sunday. day, and then I get the rest of my time. I get my one hour to God, and then I get the rest of the week from me. Isn't it fascinating that that could be our story? That could be the story that we're basing our life on. I don't get close to God. I don't trust in God. I pray for one

of three reasons, either because I'm so desperate or because I just want to keep him out of my life. Either I avoid God or I'm trying to appease God. The other thing, the reason why they have the apostolic traditions, that book, we take three years to go become a Christian, is because not only how you look to God would be radically changed that the story you're basing your life on, but also how do you look at life? I mean, honestly, in that case,

life, the whole world, creation, would be the result of either struggle or sex. Essentially, if you ever read any of the early creation stories, the creation myths, all of them are basically, here's one God word against another God, or one God had sex with another God, and then the creation came forth. It's all incidental, it's all accidental,

it's all the result of just pain and chaos in domination and battle. That's where this world came from. And therefore, when you experience life, you experience pain and chaos and domination and battle, yeah, that's because that's what life is. That's how life started, the gods and the goddesses as they made this world.

That's how life is. Therefore, your life, and this is the third thing, how you see other people. Like, no, they're just, In fact, you know, if you actually go back to the ancient creation stories, the only reason why the gods and goddesses made human beings is because they needed slaves. They wanted slaves.

They didn't make them because they loved them. They didn't make them because they cared about them. They made them because the gods and goddesses are saying, we're saying, we want someone else to do the work so we can have a life of leisure. If this is the story you're basing your life on, the consequence is there's no purpose to life. no purpose to family, there's no purpose to friendship, there's no purpose to your existence.

If there's anything worth living for, it is either power or pleasure, and that's it. And if you don't have either of those things, then why even go on? That fascinating thing is that's the story they were basing their lives on 2,000 years ago. And I think in many, many ways we're just like them. I think in many, many ways, in our culture, in our country, we are just like them. I think this is the story we're basing our lives off. There's a man in Christian Smith. I talk about him all the time.

He's a sociologist. He used to be out of Chapel Hill in North Carolina. Now he works at Notre Dame. A number of years ago, Christian Smith did this nationwide study on the faith life of American adolescents. And he studied people across the board. He studied people who raised atheist, who raised Jewish, who were raised mainland Protestant, made an evangelical Protestant, who were raised Catholic, across the board.

surveyed all these people. But he said, the fascinating thing that they discovered at the end of this survey was something they never expected. He said that all of these American adolescents, regardless of how they were raised, they all believed in the same one religion. That he termed moralistic, therapeutic deism. He said, yeah, even if they were atheists, they were more agnostic along these lines, or if they were Catholic, or if they were Protestant, or if they were Jewish, they all kind of believed more or less sort of the same things. And some of those tenets where basically that God is there, but he's kind of uninterested. He's kind of uninvolved and he's completely irrelevant.

Unless, unless you have some kind of crisis. But think about this, this is the story that in our modern world, so many young people and so many old people are basing their lives on. They're basing their lives off a false story that God is uninvolved, he is uninterested and that he is completely irrelevant unless you need him to solve some kind of a problem. And so it goes on to say that they believe that life is some kind of cosmic accident. I mean, think about this.

This is the story that many of us are basing our lives on here in 2023. That there's no purpose. Life just kind of happened. It is the result of random chance. And so are you. You're the result of random chance. And because of that, your life is. relatively disposable. You are disposable. Imagine living in a world like this. I remember

my friend Nick, I was talking about them all the time. He and his wife, Jaislin, were missionaries in China for two years after they graduated Bible College. And as they were trying to bring the gospel, right, the good news of God, to China, a place that had been stripped of the ability to talk about God. He said one of the more tragic moments was in a conversation with a young Chinese man and they were trying to reveal to him the great dignity of the human person and he said, oh no, I don't mean anything.

I am irrelevant because you get rid of me there are 90 million people just like me. I'm not special. That's the worldview that we're walking through and that worldview has consequences. Again, if I'm basing my life on this false story that has consequences.

There's a, Father John Ricardo is this great priest out in Michigan. And he cited this article that was in the Detroit Press by a man named Mitch Album. And the article was entitled, Why is Living Shorter and Dying Sooner the New Trend? It's from 2019, so a couple of years ago, four years ago. But in this Mitch Album highlighted the fact that 2018 was the first time in over a hundred years when life expectancy had declined in Americans for three years in a row.

That life expectancy hadn't declined like this in 100 years. What was going on 100 years ago? World War I and the Spanish flu. And World War I where people were just like massively decimated and Spanish flu where 50 million people died. This is the first time since then when life expectancy in America was decreased three years in a row. The crazy thing is that the primary cause of these deaths.

or what they termed deaths by despair. And deaths by despair can fall in three categories, suicide, cirrhosis of the liver, and opioids. When it comes to suicide, I just think this is remarkable. The CDC just did a recent study where they discovered that 25% of 18 to 24-year-olds reported that they had seriously considered taking their own life in the past month.

25% of 18-to-24-year-olds. so they seriously consider taking their own life in the last month. That suicide in our country has increased every year for the past 13 years. If there's a 30% increase in suicide, a 40% increase in suicide in rural America. I don't know if you know this, but children ages 10 to 14 years old, suicide is the second leading cause of death for kids in our country between 10 years old and 14 years old. And that is tripled over the last 15 years.

In a country where things are getting better and better, we have more and more stuff. More and more people are taking their own lives. So suicide, cirrhosis of the liver is another one. And this especially is growing amongst young adults, ages 25 to 34 years old. That actually the number of those in that age range from 25 to 34 years old,

who died annually has tripled over the last 20 years. That with the average annual increase of 10%. And even over COVID, that has increased even more significantly. This is from 2019. Over COVID, it increased even more significantly, particularly among young women. And of course, lastly, is the opioid addiction. The United States, we're 5% of the world's population,

but we consume 80% of the world's opioids. Why? I believe that it has something to do with the reality that we are basing our lives off of a false story, off of a story that is not true, off of a false gospel, a gospel that says that God is distant, he's irrelevant, he is indifferent to you, a gospel that says that life is an accident, a gospel that says that you don't ultimately matter. All that matters is pleasure and power. If you don't have either, you might as well give up.

But what is St. Paul saying? St. Paul says to the Thessalonians, we came to you proclaiming the gospel of God an entirely new good news, entirely new story. A true story that you can base your life on. And one of the pieces of this true story is, yeah, you heard that there were a bunch of gods and that they were fickle and that they were unjust

and that they weren't good. Here's I need you to know. God is one. Here's what you need to know. God is not just one. He's good. that God is just. Not only is God just and he's good,

but he knows your name. In fact, what Jesus had said is that he doesn't just know your name. He's counted every single hair on your head. He knows everything about you, and he actually cares. He cares so much that he actually loves you. And not only that, but here's the story of creation. It's not a story of struggle or sex that created this chaotic world. It's a story.

If you go back to Genesis 1 and Genesis chapter 2, what you see is a story of here's this one God who is a good God, who's all powerful, and he just simply says, let there be light. And let there be stars in the sky and a moon. Let there be planet, let there be water and land, let there be animals and birds of the air and creatures that crawl on the ground.

And then here's a God. He created this world, and he kept saying every time he created something, you know this part of the story. This is part of the gospel. This is part of the story you can base your life on. Every time he created something, He said, this is good. So not only is God good, he made a world that is good.

And at the peak of his creating, what does he do? He says, let us make man in our own image and likeness. And so he made man in his image and likeness. Male and female, he created them. So not only is God good, not only is this world good, but here you are. Here every person on this planet is made good, not just made good, not disposable, not irrelevant, but made in God's very image and likeness. This is what St. Paul, when he went to Thessalonica and he preached the gospel of God,

this is what he had to start out with. And this is just the first page. This is simply the first page of the gospel. But here's the thing about the gospel. St. Paul wrote this in his letter to the Romans. He said, the gospel is the power of God. And there's more to the gospel. We're going to talk about that for the next three weeks.

But think about this. Think about the power of just this first part of the story. That if you were living your life based on a false story and all of a sudden you heard even just a taste, you could actually live your life based on a true story. That would have power. The gospel is the power of God. It has the power not only to change our hearts,

not only had the power to change those people in Thessalonica, Cecilanaica said that they could leave a life of despair and start beginning to live a life of hope. But this gospel is so powerful that it has changed the world. In the early, I think, 19th century, there was a man named William Wilberforce in England. William Wilberforce, he was baptized, I think baptized Methodist, but then he quickly became atheist. But I think by the age of 12, he became atheist. He graduated from, I think, Cambridge, and he was the youngest person ever to be elected to Parliament. And he started working

in Parliament. At one point, he took a little vacation. And the vacation, he took a pilgrimage down, I think, to Rome. And on the pilgrimage, he, or the location, he went with a man named Isaac Milner. And Isaac Milner was an incredible scientific mind. He was, in fact, the occasion chair at Oxford. On the trip, William Wilberforce quickly learned, soon learned that Isaac Milner was a Christian,

like a Christian who actually believed, he believed that the story was true. And he actually lived like the story was true. And so they had this, in their whole travels, like hours and hours, hundreds of hours, from England down to Italy and back to England in their debates and their arguments and the presentation of the gospel,

William Wilberforce's mind and heart was transformed and he began to base his life on this true story. He got back to England and he said to go back to Parliament and he said, I don't know what to do with this. Now that I have this newfound faith, now I actually going to base my life on this true story, do I leave Parliament because it's a mess of a place? Do I stay there? If I say, what do I do?

He went into deep prayer. And at one point, after praying for a long time, came to the conclusion, he would stay in Parliament, but he would devote his life to two causes. One was the abolition of the slave trade in Europe and the other was the reform of manners in England. Why? Because here, if he's going to base his life on the true story, the true story is God is good.

The true story is that this world is good. The true story is that people are made in God's image and likeness and therefore slavery has no place in this world at all. But again, he said not only the abolition of the slave trade, but the reform of manners. like, what is the Reformer of Manners? The Reformal Manners doesn't mean that he's like, people are not drinking with their pinky out.

Like, no, reformer manners was the fact that England was, had, they had based their life, they had based their culture on a false story. They had forgotten the gospel of God. Because of that, child labor was everywhere. With kids as young as four years old working in factories, alcoholism was rampant. In fact, there are stories of entire sessions of parts,

Parliament where everyone in Parliament is just completely drunk. They had based their lives off a false story that life doesn't mean anything, just pursuit of pleasure and power. So they resorted to their entertainment was a thing called bear baiting or bull baiting, where basically you have a bear in the city center or a bull in the city center, and you just slowly torture that bear, slowly torture that bull to death. And if that became kind of too tame, they had public executions. That was just another source of entertainment for the people.

And if that became but tame, then they actually had public dissections or public autopsies, essentially. Because again, what is human life? At the time William Wilberforce was in Parliament, it's estimated that 25% of all single women in London were prostitutes. With the average age being 16 years old, they had based their culture on a false story. But William Wilberforce had hope. that they could turn around, they could base their culture on a true story, that he could base his life on a true story.

The true story, that God is good, that he made this world good, that people are worth more than they can imagine, that they're made for relationship. Two weeks before William Wilberforce died, slavery was abolished in Europe. After William Wilberforce left his legacy, more and more people followed his example and more and more people based their life on this true story

that God is good. He made this world good and he made you and I for a relationship with him is the last thing. You and I have been made for a relationship with God and we've been made for relationship with each other. Remember how when Paul went to Thessalonica and he talked to some of those Gentiles,

their image of God would be this. Their image of God would be, you have to fight for God's attention. Remember, if you're desperate enough or you want to keep them off your back, you have to fight for the God's attention. In fact, there's stories. Not only people offering sacrifices

to try to get God's favor, not only people offering sacrifices to try to get God's attention, but people even who are going up to war who were so desperate for victory in war that they would not only offer a sacrifice, they would offer themselves. They would slash themselves with swords with spears.

They'd make themselves bleed in order to get this God of war's attention, to get this God of war's favor. because that's the story they'd based their life on. And then comes Paul. And what did he declare to them? He said, I came among you. And I showed you how necessary it was for the Christ, Jesus himself, God himself,

to suffer and to die. Imagine having based your life on this false story that in order to get the God's attention, you would have to suffer, you would have to bleed. And then realizing, The true story is that God so desires your attention, that God so desires to fight for your heart, that He's the one who's willing to suffer, that he's the one who's willing to bleed for you.

This is the Evangelion. This is the good news. This is the gospel of God. And this is the gospel. This is the story that has changed the world. And it's the story that we're going to talk about. for the next four weeks because this is the story that has the potential, that has the power to change your life.

He gives you the power, the ability and the chance to base your life on a true story.