I have a confession to make. I TEND to ignore the lights on my dashboard - probably because I can't tell you what half of these lights mean. And turns out lights can stay on for a long time before bad things happen - at least in my experience... 🙂Now, you probably know that there are certain lights on the dashboard of your car that you can ignore for a little while. The little light that tells you the windshield washer fluid is low? You can probably make it home. The light reminding you that it's time for an oil change? You probably don't need to pull over immediately. And because of that, I kind of operate with that same attitude for all lights.

People with more common sense than I have know that on the other hand, there are some lights that come on that you really shouldn't ignore. Oil pressure. Engine temperature. Brake warning. When one of those lights comes on, the smartest thing you can do is pay attention. But that's not what I do.

Now to my credit I've never done what I know some people do. There are some, if the light really bothers them, they just put a little piece of electrical tape over it. Problem solved!

You understand, right? HOWEVER - the issue was never the LIGHT, was it? In fact, you could even say that the light was actually an act of mercy. That little light was trying to tell you that something was wrong before something much worse happened. The warning wasn't there to ruin your day. The warning was there to save your engine—or perhaps even save your life.

And sometimes I wonder if we misunderstand the warnings of God in exactly the same way. We read a passage of Scripture and it makes us uncomfortable. Someone who loves us confronts us about something. Our conscience begins bothering us. The Holy Spirit presses upon an area of our lives that we would really rather leave alone. And our first reaction is sometimes, “I wish that feeling would go away.” But what if the warning itself is mercy? What if conviction is one of God's gifts? Because there comes a point when the warning light has been ignored for so long that the warning gives way to consequences.

And that's where we are when we come to 1 Samuel 3. We have been watching this story unfold in our series, The Rise of a King, and we have already seen that something is terribly wrong in Israel.

SOMETHING ABOUT FANTASY FOOTBALL. There is something fascinating about the way we choose people. I hated the way dodgeball or kickball teams were chosen back in Elementary School! When you choose your Fantasy Football team, you can base your choice a BIT on what happened last year - but more often than not you're kind of just playing the odds.

Ever wonder how GOD chooses people? I mean God looks at this old man, Abram, and says, "I'm going to make a nation out of you." He looks at a stuttering washed-up fugitive hiding out in the desert and says, "You will lead my people out of slavery." And later in this study in 1 Samuel, we will see God weeding through some really great guys - strong guys, talented, good-looking - just to find the kid brother who hadn't even been invited to the family meeting and says: "That's the one!"

It makes me sit up and take note as to what God must think is most important. But even as we pointed out last week, this study of the rise of a king does not begin with that story; but rather with a woman crying out to the Lord, praying for a baby.

We all know that feeling, don’t we? You want to sleep so badly, but it just doesn’t seem to be in the cards. You drift off, and the phone rings, the kids wake you up, or the preacher raises his voice.

Here’s another one for you. How many of you use the snooze on the alarm on your phone? There are times when I have hit the snooze on my phone - but I KNOW it going to go off again in, like, 10 minutes...and instead of actually going back to sleep, I keep thinking about the alarm for the next several minutes as I lay there in a state of half-conscious anxiety!

But here is the problem: as Christians, many of us are walking around in that exact same state. We are spiritually "half-asleep." We are hitting the snooze button on our faith. We are comfortable, we are drowsy, and we have no idea that the enemy is right outside the window, knocking.

As we continue in our series, "Questions Jesus Asked (And We Must Answer)," we come to a moment where Jesus’ closest friends couldn’t seem to stay awake. And the problem was, this was not the time to sleep.

There are certain questions people ask when you immediately know what they're really asking. If your spouse looks at you and says, "Do you know what today is?" you know that isn't really a question about the calendar. It's a question about whether you've remembered something important. Suddenly you're mentally flipping through anniversaries, birthdays, and every promise you've made over the last month, hoping you've remembered the right one. Sometimes the question itself isn't the point. The question is designed to lead you somewhere.

Jesus was a master at asking those kinds of questions. That's why we've been spending this summer looking at Questions Jesus Asked (And We Must Answer). Jesus often taught by asking questions because questions have a way of reaching places that lectures never can. A question forces us to examine our own hearts. It reveals what we believe, what we fear, and where our faith really is.

Today's question seems almost unnecessary at first. Jesus looks at His disciples and asks, "How many loaves do you have?" It almost sounds as though He's simply taking inventory, but that's not what He's doing at all. Jesus isn't asking because He needs information. He's asking because He wants to teach His disciples something they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.

So we are deep into our summer series, "Questions Jesus Asked (And We Must Answer)." And today's question hits us right between the eyes. It's from Mark 8, and Jesus asks: "What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?"

Now before we dive in, I want to start with a story.

Christopher McCandless. Some of you know the story - it was made into a book and later a movie called Into the Wild. This kid was brilliant. College grad. Good family. Had the whole world open to him. But he was suffocating. He felt like society was a trap, like success was a cage. So he did what a lot of people dream about doing - gave it all up, his money, his savings, his car, and headed into the Alaskan wilderness with nothing but a backpack, a rifle, and a copy of Tolstoy.

He wanted to live free. No bills. No bosses. No expectations. Just him and the raw, untamed wild.

What happened? Four months later, he starved to death in an abandoned bus. Just 24 years old. His last journal entry read: "I've had a happy life and thank the Lord. Goodbye and may God bless all."

Now, I share that story because there's something in all of us that gets what he was trying for. We feel that itch too - the sense that life is more than a rat race, more than mortgages and the meetings and the never-ending to-do list. But here's the thing: McCandless went looking for life and found death. He went looking for freedom and found a trap. He gained...what? Freedom from money? Freedom from responsibility? Yes, but in the end, he lost everything.

That's exactly what Jesus is getting at here in our passage.

As we continue our summer series on Questions Jesus Asked (And We Must Answer), we come this week to what might be the most personal question Jesus ever posed. It's a question that cuts through all our religious performance, through our theological correctness, through our church attendance and spiritual busyness, and gets right to the heart of everything. The question is simply this: "Do you love me?"

Now, at first glance, that might seem like an easy question to answer. Of course we love Jesus. We're here on a Sunday morning, aren't we? We've said the prayers, sung the songs, maybe even nodded along during the sermon. We could all raise our hands and say, "Yes, Lord, I love you. Absolutely. No question about it."

But here's the thing I want us to wrestle with today: Jesus isn't looking for people who merely say they love Him. He's looking for disciples whose love can be seen. The answer He's seeking isn't just a verbal affirmation—Peter already gives that three times in our text. The answer Jesus is looking for is a life that proves it. So, let's see what we can learn from this very pointed question Jesus asks..

Welcome. It's good you are here today, because today's question is, without a doubt, the most important one Jesus ever asked.

There are many important questions in life. Where will you go to school? What career will you pursue? Who will you marry? Where will you live? How will you raise your children? Those are significant questions because they shape the course of your earthly life.

But there is one question that determines far more than the next few decades. It determines your eternity. The question is found in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 16.

"Who do YOU say that I am?" Everything about faith rises or falls on the answer to that question. Throughout history people have wrestled with that question. Maybe you're here today and that question still lingers in your life. WHO is Jesus?

Throughout this series, we have been examining some of the questions Jesus asked during His earthly ministry. That may seem a little unusual at first because we often think of Jesus as the One who provides answers. People came to Him with questions about God, life, eternity, forgiveness, marriage, money, and countless other subjects. Yet when you read the Gospels carefully, you discover that Jesus frequently responded to questions by asking questions of His own. In fact, one scholar estimated that Jesus asked more than 300 questions during His ministry. He understood something that every good teacher understands: answers can inform the mind, but questions have a way of revealing the heart.

When Jesus asked a question, it was never because He lacked information. He already knew the answer. Instead, His questions invited people to examine themselves. They exposed assumptions, uncovered motives, and forced individuals to confront truths they might otherwise avoid. And the same is true today. The questions Jesus asked two thousand years ago continue to echo into our lives because they are not merely questions for the people in the story; they are questions for us.