From His Heart

Jeff Schreve: Religious ritual will never fill you up. They'll always leave you empty. You can't get the deep longings of your soul filled up by doing a bunch of religious things, by coming to church, by saying your prayers. God is not interested in religion. He's interested in a relationship with you.

So people do all this religious stuff. They come to church, they do all the religion, they kneel and stand and do all the gyrations, and then they leave just as empty as they came. They say, "I guess this religion doesn't work." Religion doesn't work. Jesus works. It's all about Jesus.

Larry Nobles: Is religion working for you? Maybe you're one who's tired of the religious thing, and it just doesn't work. Well, as Pastor Jeff Schreve will teach us today on From His Heart, there's good reason that religion doesn't work. In fact, religious ritual for ritual's sake just leaves you feeling empty.

Thank you for joining us today for part two of the lesson, "The Answer to an Empty Life." It's from Pastor Jeff's series, "It's All About Jesus." We're continuing to look today at the first miracle Jesus performed that was recorded in the book of John. If you can, now turn to chapter two of that book, and let's discover the answer to an empty life.

Jeff Schreve: If you're empty today, this message is especially for you. I want you to listen extra close to three encouragements from this passage that will help you in your emptiness. Encouragement number one: Jesus cares about your emptiness. He really cares.

The background of this story is that there's a wedding. They had wine, and they ran out of wine. Is it really that big of a deal if you run out of wine? It was to that couple. You know what that tells me? It tells me Jesus cares. Your problems are not insignificant to Jesus. What problem do you have today? What emptiness do you have today? Jesus cares.

He cares about that problem in your marriage. He cares about that business problem you have. He cares about that physical problem you have. Your problems are not insignificant to Jesus. That's the first encouragement: Jesus cares about your emptiness.

Encouragement number two: Jesus wants you to exercise faith in the face of your emptiness. Faith in the face of emptiness. That's what Mary does. Mary doesn't look at verse four and say, "Oh, Jesus, I guess You don't want to do that." She tells those servants, "Whatever He says to you, do it. Whatever He says to you, do it." What a great statement.

Mary had a heart of faith. There's a reason that the Father chose Mary to be the mother of His Son. She was a person, not a perfect person, not a person who had never sinned—she's a human being—but she's a person of tremendous faith. God wants you in the midst of your emptiness to exercise faith.

Faith is what moves mountains. Faith is what changes situations. Faith is what brings the God of the universe to bear on your problem and on your situation. Without faith, it's impossible to please Him. Jesus said to those two blind men, "Be it done to you according to your faith." Faith is so critical.

What exactly is faith? Let me tell you what it's not. Faith is not having it all figured out. It's not knowing what God is going to do. It is knowing that God is going to do. Think about Mary's situation. Did she know what Jesus was going to do? No way. You have to remember something. Jesus had never done a miracle before. This was His very first miracle.

Here's a situation, and it's not an earth-shattering issue. They ran out of wine. They're going to be embarrassed, and people are going to talk about it for a while. It's a rough way to start your marriage with that kind of a social faux pas on your record, but it's not life and death. You ran out of wine. Okay, people can forgive you for that.

Mary comes to Him with this problem that doesn't seem all that earth-shattering, and she doesn't know what He's going to do. She just had faith that He was going to do. She knew who Jesus was. She knew that He was the Son of the Most High God. She knew who He was, she knew that He cared, and she knew that He was able in this situation.

She brought that situation to Him. When He put up that test that said, "Woman, what do I have to do with you? My hour has not yet come," she took that and she said to those servants, "You look to Him. Whatever He says to you, you do it. You do it." I love that. That takes all the pressure off.

You don't have to have God figured out, and you won't have God figured out, because His ways are higher than your ways and His thoughts higher than your thoughts. We don't have to have God all figured out. We don't have to know what He's going to do, just that He's going to do. It's exactly what Jehoshaphat, King of Judah, prayed when all the enemies were coming against him.

He said in 2 Chronicles chapter 20 and verse 12, "O our God, we are powerless before this great multitude who are coming against us, nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are on You." Our eyes are on You. Wow. Faith is not having it all figured out. Faith is doing what He says to do.

That's what Mary told those guys. "Hey, servants, you just look to Him. Whatever He says, do it." That is faith. You do what He says to do. Now, are you living your life by faith? Paul said we walk by faith and not sight. If I ask you that question, "Are you living your life by faith?" you might say faith is just kind of nebulous. I'm not sure. Maybe I am. I hope I am.

Well, let's put it this way: Are you doing what He says to do? Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Whatever He says to you, do it. That is faith. He tells you to do something and you do it. Are you walking by faith? Are you obeying God? When He says do something, do you do it? Or do you reason it out?

Do you think it out and say, "That doesn't sound right to me, Lord. I don't think You know what's going on, Lord. I think I know the situation a lot better than You do, Lord." He says, "Oh, really? I'm God, who are you? You're nothing compared to Me. Listen to Me." Oh, as it says in Psalm 81, "Oh, that My people would listen to Me, that Israel would walk in My ways."

Faith is doing what He says to do, and you do it even if it is tedious and tiresome. Sometimes what the Lord tells us to do is tedious, and sometimes it's tiresome. Think about this situation. Whatever He says to you, do it. Now, there were six stone waterpots set there for the Jewish custom of purification, containing 20 or 30 gallons each.

Jesus said to them, "Fill the waterpots with water," and they filled them up to the brim. Okay, you've got these waterpots just sitting there. They're big. They contain 20 to 30 gallons, and they're empty, obviously, because He tells them to fill them up. Okay, here are the servants. One servant says to the other, "Hey, Joe, go get the hose." Hose? We don't have a hose.

Well, go turn on the faucet. Faucet? What's a faucet? We don't have a faucet. Well, we've got to fill up these six stone waterpots. This one contains 20, this one's 30, this one's 25. On average, it's 25 gallons. That's 150 gallons of water. We've got to get 150 gallons of water to fill these up to the brim. Yeah, start walking. There's a spring down there about a quarter of a mile.

Think about it. You know how much water weighs? 8.34 pounds per gallon. I know that because I was in water treatment for almost 10 years and we had to know how much water weighed. I'm not just a good guy at Jeopardy. 8.34 pounds per gallon. You know how much that is to fill up 150 gallons? 1251 pounds of water that you have to go get. And there's no faucet and there's no hose. You've got to haul it.

Well, listen, that's not hard to do. Any of us could do that. Even if you did it just with a liter jug, you're going to be walking to the spring a lot to bring that back. But He's not asking them to run a three-minute mile. They can't do that, but they can go and get water and fill up the jugs. But it takes time, and it's tedious.

Faith sometimes takes some time, and it is sometimes tiresome and tedious. But whatever He says to you, do it. If the Lord tells you today, "I want you to get in your car, and I want you to drive to Dallas and talk to that friend that you haven't spoken to in years that you wronged, that you lied about, and ask that guy to forgive you," can anybody do that?

You've got a car. You can do it, right? It'll take you some time. Take you three hours to get there for a 15-minute conversation, and three hours to get back. Whatever He says to you, do it. Sometimes it's tiresome and sometimes it's tedious, but you do it and you do it even if it seems crazy. That's what He told them: "Fill the waterpots with water," and they filled them up to the brim.

In verse eight, He said to them, "Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter," and they took it to him. Now, can you imagine you're one of the servants? Okay, we filled the waterpots with water. What's in the waterpots? Water. Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter. Why do I want to do that? This isn't even good water. He might get dysentery. Agua is not purificada here, Jesus. I don't want to take the water to him.

Do it. Whatever He says to you, do it. Well, that's dumb. Why? I'm not going to do that. That doesn't make sense to me. And remember this about Jesus: Anytime He did a miracle, He didn't pull out His magic wand. He didn't go up to the pots and say, "Abracadabra, alakazam, hocus pocus, boom!" He didn't do that.

If He wanted to, and that would have been pretty cool if we had been Jesus with all the power that He had, we would have said the water's going to become wine. This is how I'm going to do it. There are going to be lightning bolts that hit each one of those pots, and you guys are going to know. Then the pots are going to go up in the air and they're going to spin around. I'm going to spin all six of them on my fingers just like this. Wow, you guys are going to be flipped out.

Then I'm going to put them down. Now draw some out and take it to the headwaiter. Yes! Wow! He didn't do that. Fill them up with water. They filled them up with water. Draw some out. They drew some out. Take it to the headwaiter. And the guy did it. Man, that took faith to do that because it's just water. They knew where it came from.

Anytime the Lord asks us things to do, anytime there's faith involved, faith always has legs on it and faith always requires you stepping out of the boat and faith always sounds kind of crazy. It's not something that we would normally do. The things that God tells us to do, they don't make sense to us. Whatever He says to you, do it. Don't argue with Him. Just do it, and you'll see a miracle take place.

And remember this about miracles; it is so critical. Miracles are never one-sided. They always require a step of faith. Be it done to you according to your faith. Was Jesus going to go get the water and fill up the waterpots? No. Was Jesus going to draw the water out and give it to the headwaiter? No. They were going to do that.

One of the maxims of my life is this: God will not do what you can do, and you cannot do what He can do. God will not do what you can do and you cannot do what He can do. Jesus wasn't going to fill up the waterpots with water, and Jesus wasn't going to draw some out and give it to the headwaiter. What He was going to do was turn the water into wine just like that without abracadabra, without a magic wand, without any kind of sensationalism.

He was just going to do it through the power of His Word. That's how a miracle works. It's your part, it's God's part. God does the miracle, but He doesn't do the miracle until you take a step of faith. Jesus wants you to exercise faith in the face of emptiness. Encouragement number three: He wants to fill your emptiness.

That's what He did in this situation. He filled the emptiness. He took a terrible, horrible situation for this family and for this bride and groom, and He turned it into something so wonderful. They went from no wine to having 150 gallons of the best wine the headwaiter had ever tasted. Wow.

He takes the water from the waterpots that were there for the Jewish custom of purification. They were big on washing. They would wash their feet, they'd wash their hands, they'd do all this stuff. They didn't eat unless they washed. Everything was about external washing because that was the law of Moses.

Interesting: Moses' first miracle, what does he do? He turns water to blood. Jesus' first miracle: He turns water to wine. Moses' ministry in Egypt: all judgment. Jesus' ministry: He's full of grace and truth. He is salvation. He wants to take your water and not turn it to blood; He wants to turn it to wine.

The six stone waterpots are representations of the religious rituals that you and I can do. Listen, religious ritual will never fill you up. They'll always leave you empty. You can't get the deep longings of your soul filled up by doing a bunch of religious things, by coming to church, by saying your prayers, by going through the motions, by checking the box. Well, I did this and I did this.

I talked to one guy one day, and he was really struggling. He was just so empty in life. I said, "Well, how are things going in your relationship with the Lord?" He said, "Well, you know, I say my prayers every night." I could tell just by talking to the guy that saying his prayers was like just reading something, where you put your mind in neutral and you're thinking about something else, but you're just going on. You know how people do that?

That's how a lot of people pray. You listen to people. They say, "Well, I'm saying my prayers." What in the world is that? Saying your prayers. We don't say prayers. You pray prayers. Prayer is having a conversation with God. And if you're just praying prayers thinking that there are some kind of magic words that you say to God and if God hears those, like your abracadabra, then God's going to do something because He heard me say abracadabra. It doesn't work like that.

Prayer is talking from your heart to God. It's a relationship. God is not interested in religion. He's interested in a relationship with you. When you talk to somebody on the phone or when you get together with someone, do you have a script that you're reading to them? "Hi, Jeff. How are you today? Oh, I'm fine. What's going on?" Do you do that? No. You say, "Hey, what's going on? Tell me what's up. Boy, I'm struggling with this. Jeff, will you help me? Will you give me some insight on what to do here?"

You talk out of your heart, because that's what prayer is. So people do all this religious stuff. They come to church, they do all the religion, they kneel and stand and do all the gyrations, and then they leave just as empty as they came. They say, "What's up? I guess this religion doesn't work." Religion doesn't work. Jesus works. Jesus works. It's all about Jesus.

You know Moses came and God delivered the law through Moses. Galatians 3:24 says the law is our tutor to lead us to Christ. The law just shows you're empty. Six stone empty waterpots. That's what the law gives you. Just emptiness. It's to show you that you have a longing in your heart and it's never going to be filled by keeping Jewish commandments. It's going to be filled in Jesus Christ.

That's what He was trying to communicate to those guys. Religious ritual will never fill you up, but Jesus will fill you with the very best. That's what that headwaiter said when they brought him that wine. Usually, this is how it works in a wedding. You have the best wine at the first, the sweetest tasting, the most robust, the good stuff. That's what you start out with. Then after people have drunk freely, then you give them the cheaper stuff, the poorer stuff, the stuff that doesn't taste so great, because you just hope by now their taste buds are kind of not thinking about it. But he said, "You've kept the best until last." That's the way the Lord works. He wants to give you the best.

Larry Nobles: Pastor Jeff Schreve returns to share with you what that best is when he zeros in on these thoughts in just a moment. Our passion at From His Heart is to proclaim real truth, real love, and real hope to a lost and a hurting world, and to help them find an authentic, dynamic relationship with Jesus.

We do this by proclaiming the good news of Jesus on radio, television, and online around the world. As Pastor Jeff speaks the truth in love, lives are transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit. But none of this is possible without the incredible support of our regular monthly Vision Partners—our VPs—people who give faithfully every month, allowing this ministry to grow and expand with confidence that God's provisions will be available.

To become a VP and help us impact the world—and I mean the whole world—go to FromHisHeart.org, click our special offer this month, which is Pastor Jeff's new book, "The Devil's Newsroom: Muting Satan's Fake News and Tuning into God's Truth." It's available for a gift of any amount. When you do that, you can click the button that says "I want to become a VP" and then follow the prompts.

Again, go to FromHisHeart.org or simply call 866-40-BIBLE. That's 866-40-BIBLE. God bless you for investing in impactful and purposeful Christian broadcasting this month through From His Heart. Now, let's conclude the lesson called "The Answer to an Empty Life." Here again is Pastor Jeff.

Jeff Schreve: Psalm 81, where the Lord says, "If you would obey Me, I would feed you with the finest of the wheat and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you. If you would do what I say, you'd get the best. The very best." The Lord God is a sun and shield. The Lord gives grace and glory. No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly.

What does Jesus want to do in your life today, in your marriage today, in your situation today? He wants to fill your soul to the brim, that out of your innermost being would flow rivers of living water. In Paul's prayer in Ephesians chapter three, he talks about how the Lord wants us to know the length and breadth and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

Filled up. In your heart, in your soul, filled up to all the fullness of God. That's what God wants to do in your life. That's what He wants to do in my life—to fill us up to all the fullness of God.

Maybe you came to this place today empty inside, empty in your marriage. Did you know, guys, there are a lot of wives and they're so empty? They're so down and hurting because they feel like everything else is more important to you than they are, and they're just hurting inside. They don't feel like they can share that with you because anytime they talk to you about it, you get mad at them.

The Lord wants to fill the emptiness in every heart. He wants to do a miracle in every marriage. He wants to turn your emptiness to fullness. He wants to take the water in your life and turn it to wine and sweetness and joy. And the question is this: Will you let Him do it? Will you come to Him? Will you do whatever He says?

Larry Nobles: Maybe the sweet wine of joy in your marriage has run out today. Whatever the source of your emptiness might be, are you willing to allow Jesus to perform a miracle in your life, to obey Him and to do whatever He says? The truth is, if it ultimately dawns on you what He has already done for you on the cross, your desire to please Him will skyrocket as your heart surrenders more of you to Him.

Let me encourage you to go to FromHisHeart.org and click the "Why Jesus" section to get your questions answered and find some free materials from Pastor Jeff that you can download that will guide you and comfort you and give you courage to turn to Him in faith. Again, go to FromHisHeart.org, click the "Why Jesus" link.

Well, I'm Larry Nobles. Thank you for being with us today, and we hope you'll join us for the next lesson that will explain that there are actually two kinds of faith, one you want and the other you don't. Here's a sneak peek.

Jeff Schreve: Did you know that there are people who have faith, but they don't have saving faith? The vast majority of people, they believe in Jesus like they believe in George Washington, just in their head. They just believe facts about him. Let me tell you something. The Scripture says, "Do you believe in God? Whoop-de-do. The devil also believes and trembles."

Doesn't really say "whoop-de-do," that's kind of in my version, but it basically says that. So what? You believe in God. Big whoop. The demons believe and they tremble. They have a knowledge of God. They don't have true faith.

Larry Nobles: That's on Friday right here on From His Heart, when Pastor Jeff Schreve will speak truth, love, and hope to a lost and a hurting world who need to know that no matter what, God loves them and has a wonderful plan for their lives. You can do that when you go to FromHisHeart.org.