All right, destination. We are in this series called Who is Jesus. And we're going through the Gospel of John, which is really exciting. I love this book of the Bible. But the big idea of this message series, if you haven't been around, is in a world where everybody can kind of make up their own definition of truth, it can be really easy to get a distorted view of who Jesus actually is.

And so, , what we've been looking at is all of these big questions about life and how those big questions are, , to be answered with Jesus. With Jesus as the forerunner of the answer to all of life's big questions. And in John chapter 7, which is where we're going to be today, there's a lot of arguing about to happen.

There's about a a lot of arguing about who Jesus is, what he's done, what he can accomplish, all of these things about opinions and theories. And we know nothing about that in today's age, right. There's no kind of opinions about who Jesus is. But it it's true that you and I consume so many different thoughts and opinions and things online and in the world that we actually don't even know what's real anymore. Have you been on social media lately.

And have you been I know somebody in this room has cuz we had this conversation which inspired this part. , have you been tricked by an AI article or picture or something yet on AI. Okay, I have. I' I've gotten sucked into so many sports articles and different things that are like, "What.

They're doing what now. " And the looking at the video and then you pull up the comment section and what is it. It's like a bunch of people arguing about whether or not it's AI. And so now every single video, every single thing that I see an article there there it has to go through the AI filter.

So to start today, I want to test your AI filter. Can we have a little fun this morning. I'm going to test your AI filter. I'm going to show you two images and one of them is AI and one of them is not.

And so I want you to to know that one of them is AI, one is not. And so we have a bear here and I want to just ask who thinks by show of hands this one right here is AI is the AI generated image. Who thinks this one is the AI generated image.

All right, I have a smart church. That one is the AI generated image. This one is not. All right, let's do old school radio.

And we have the silver one and we have the red one. Hopefully I remember which one is actually AI. Who thinks this one is AI.

Who thinks the red one is AI. Anybody want to change their vote. The the silver one is AI.

There we go. I had to remember it was the one with the cord. I I swear I'll get better at this one.

All right, this one. Tricky one, especially on this screen. All right, who thinks this one AI. Who thinks this one is AI. Oh, you're all wrong.

All right, let's do another one. This This one should be easy. Oh, go back to the other one.

Which one is AI. This one is AI. >> This one is This one is AI.

Okay, next one. I said it backwards, didn't I. All right, sunflower.

Who thinks this one is AI. Is AI >> is AI. Who thinks this one is AI. Okay, you're right.

This one is AI. Okay, last and final one. Did Destination Church use AI for their message series. Okay, I'm going to I'm going to judge all of you guys cuz you you're judging me here and my wife who is the designer.

Do you think we would use AI for an image. Who thinks this image is AI. I'm just kidding.

Who thinks this image is AI. You guys are so easy. This one is AI. Okay, we didn't use AI. We haven't used AI in images as a church except for maybe one.

And if you figure out what that one is, I'll give you a prize. , but like here's the thing. I could do videos and pictures and different like writings even and I could eventually trick you into thinking what is and what is not AI.

And if we can be that easily fooled online by just an image, think about how easily fooled we can be about who Jesus is. And so that is the heart of this series and that is the heart of how we can be influenced. And so that's what we're going to talk about today is how are we influenced about who Jesus is. And to do that, we're going to open the word of God.

John chapter 7. As I said, it's on page 918. If you don't have a Bible, take this one home with you.

As I said, it's our gift to you to open up the word of God and just be transformed by it. , and I want to look at this from the perspective of this crowd and these people that are having this argument about who Jesus is. I want to look at their influence and how they're being influenced about Jesus and how we run the same risk. So, starting in verse one, it says this. After this, by the way, what's this.

, if you're new to this series, go back and check out some of the prior messages. What's happening right now is Jesus's ministry is taking off. He's healing people. He's feeding crowds of 5,000 plus people. And now everybody's starting to hear about who Jesus is or who they think that he is.

So Jesus went around in Galilee. He did not want to walk go about in Judea because the Jewish leaders were there and looking for a way to kill him. Usually you and I try to avoid people that are trying to kill us, right.

That's what Jesus is doing here. But when the Jewish festival of tabernacles was near, Jesus's brothers said to him, "Leave Galilee and go to Judea so that your disciples there may see the works that you do. No one that wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.

For even his own brothers did not believe him. " We'll get back to that in a second. Therefore, Jesus told him, "My time has not is not yet here.

For you any time will do. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that its works are evil. You go to the festival.

I'm not going up to the festival. " That's how I read this, by the way. But because my time has not yet fully come after this, he he after he said this, he stayed in Galilee. Okay, so here's the big idea of what's happening. Jesus is with his brothers.

By the way, these are not like friend brothers. These are his biological brothers. Mary and Joseph had more kids. Jesus was not an only child. And so his family, look at verse 5, his family, for his own brothers didn't even believe in him.

They're basically telling Jesus, "Look, if you're going to go through with this whole Messiah thing, this whole savior thing that you're doing, you should go off and show yourself off to the world. " It's like the equivalent of saying, "Hey, you want to be a social media influencer, you got to post on social media. " And so, that's kind of this pressure that they're putting on Jesus to conform to their idea of who they think that he should be.

By the way, Jesus is no stranger to this. He's had crowds do this. He's had religious leaders do this.

He's even had the devil himself do this in in the gospels so far. And so he's not a stranger to this outside influence, but this time it is coming specifically from his family and you and I are influenced the same. We are influenced by our family. No matter what background that we had, good or bad, tragic or not tragic, we've all been influenced some way spiritually in some way about who Jesus is on the basis of our family.

And if we are parents either to, you know, children right now or even adult children, guess what. We are influencers to our kids. And so what can happen is for us it affects some of the things that we learn growing up affects the way in which we believe.

And I just want to like kind of point out some of them and some of the ways that we're influenced by our family. The first way is that we may believe what our family believes. I call this a borrowed faith. This is the faith that says, "Well, mom always told me. " Or, you know, they had that one lynchpin grandma in the family that always prayed, always read the Bible, always did all of the things.

And we he kind of almost lived off the faith of grandma in the family. And so, you would say, "Well, she's she's the prayer of the family. She's the one who reads the Bible in the family.

" And actually Barno research kind of put out that 56% of US adults still recognize with the religious background that they were brought up in. And usually this shows itself in the way that families will plan weddings or funerals or talk about baptism and things that are really significant milestones. And a borrowed faith is good if it's empowering some of the right truthful teachings about Jesus.

But it can be a bad thing because as soon as that family member that is the lynchpin or whoever you're borrowing the faith from inevitably sins cuz we're all sinners in need of a savior. When that inevitably happens then some of that borrowed faith starts to fall apart. Another way that could happen or the another thing that could happen as a child is you could question everything that your parents believe.

This is a skeptic faith. This is a faith that says, "I don't really know what to believe because everything was kind of inconsistent or apathetic and then so am I. " Now, questioning can be a good thing because questioning can bring us closer to the person of who Jesus is. But questioning can also lead us into a skeptic faith.

I'm just gonna kind of like keep Jesus and this whole God thing and church thing at arms length. I'll do it when it feels comfortable to me, but if it doesn't, then I'm going to push it away. The other way is through rebellion. That we do the opposite of everything that our parents believe.

Now, hear me. There is a positive and a negative to all of these. Are you catching it. So there are some families where it's like hey mom and dad were not Christian and then kid becomes Christian.

And then there is the opposite where mom and dad did every single thing right and that kid walks away from Jesus. Now all of these as I said have this contrast right. Because no parent is perfect.

We're all falling short and we're all trying to figure this thing out. But the determining factor here is that did your family of origin influence you to be a good person or a god person. I'm going to say that again.

Did your family of origin influence you to be a good person or a god person. Because a god person will inevitably become a good person. But if our aim is just to raise good children, we've missed the mark of the gospel, which is to train our children up in the way that they should go.

Now, what happens if they don't go that way. What happens if we have prodal children. I'm going to talk to all of you in the room that are prodal parents.

And if you don't know what a prodal parent is, that means you did all of the right things and still your son, your daughter is not it's not clicking. They want to believe the opposite of what you believe. I need you to hear me. It's not because of anything that you failed to do. In some instances that does happen, but for the most part you are imparting faith onto your kids and them not believing somehow then becomes your responsibility.

Like man, I really missed it. I should have done something different. I should have acted different. And let me just say to you, your job now for your prodal son or daughter is to say, I'm going to pray for them and at every opportunity I get, I'm going to try and introduce them to Jesus. Now, hear what I'm saying here.

It is not let's clean them up and get all their habits right and get them to church. No, it's to show them who Jesus is. Because it is our job to not clean people up and introduce them to Jesus. It is our job to introduce them to Jesus and he does the cleaning. And so for you prodal parent, I'm praying for you.

I'm there and I I understand. I know the battles that you're facing. But for all of you who are parents, you need to know that you have not only been influenced as a child, but you are an influencer to children and to the next generation. And so take the opportunity that you have right now to disciple your kids, to point them not just to the good habits, but to who Jesus is.

To point them to this scripture and to get them to really fall in love with who Jesus is. This is why every single week in kids ministry, if you're a parent here, I'm talking to you. Every single week we have questions that you and your family can talk about, that you and your family can explore, and you can talk about the lessons cuz they're learning the exact same things that we're learning in here.

And that's on purpose so that it's easy for you to disciple your kids. The main point of this section is this. Your family can shape your faith, but they don't get to define it.

You get to define your faith. And to be able to use the positive influence from your family of origin into who Jesus is is the aim. But sometimes we can be influenced negatively.

And so this is the pressure that Jesus is getting. Now, by the way, I love this. I you have to find the humor in this passage because Jesus says, "No, I'm not going to the festival. You can't tell me what to do. " Like that's just such the brotherly thing to do.

Like you would do that to your brother, right. And now here's the thing. Jesus goes to the festival and he does speak.

So it's like he was just egging them on. He knew what he was going to do. So look at verse 10.

It says, "However, after his brothers had left the festival, he went also, not publicly, but in secret. " Now at the festival, the Jewish leaders were watching for Jesus, asking, "Where is he. " Among the crowds, there were widespread whispering about him.

Some said, "He was a good man. " Others replied, "No, he deceives the people. " But no one would say anything publicly about him for fear of the leaders.

So this is basically what's happening. Have you ever walked into a room and people are talking about you and they didn't know you were in the room. Like that's what's going on here, okay.

Jesus is walking around this festival incognito and he's like hearing all of these whispers and murmurss about who he is. And the crowd is being manipulated either positively or negatively towards who Jesus is. And this is the influence that we get too. We get the influence from the culture around us.

We have a culture that's built up around us here in Minnesota, here in America, here in our present world that influences our thinking about who Jesus is. And we're living now in this age full of information with the absence of good godly wisdom. So then what happens is we are fed kind of I I call it the algorithm of life. And it says that we can choose what we subscribe to.

We can choose actually by liking, commenting and interacting with posts. It actually trains our social media on what to show us, to show us similar things. And whether we like to admit it or not, we gravitate towards the things that validate our thoughts and our feelings and our beliefs.

Now listen, this can be a good thing because this could be a good thing because when we are trying to rid ourselves of some of the sin and some of the things in the world, having a good positive like feed and algorithm in our life is good. But on the other side of things, we can get fed really poor information and it can translate into something very negatively about who Jesus is. So for those of us who are Christian and we're interacting on Christian content, we're going to keep getting Christian content.

But for those who maybe are far from Christ, they're not getting that content. They're not getting that same thing because the world has told them what to think about money, about power, about sex, about God. And it's telling them all of these things that don't point to Jesus.

And so our job is to not just be in the world, but to be above and to rise above that influence that doesn't point towards Jesus. Now look at verse 14. Not until halfway through the festival did Jesus go to the temple court and begin to teach.

The Jews were amazed and asked, "How did this man get such learning without being taught. " Jesus answered, "My teaching is not of my own. It comes from the one who sent me.

Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own. Whoever speaks on their own does so to gain what does it say here. Personal glory.

But he who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is a man of truth. There is nothing false about him. Has not Moses given you the law.

Yet not one of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me. Okay, let's summarize what's going on here. If you're lost, Jesus is trying to reason with these people in the crowd.

He's trying to say, "Look, I'm coming. I'm sent from the Father in heaven from God, which you say that you believe in. And so, if you believe in God, then you will believe in the words that I am delivering from God.

" That is what Jesus is saying. He doesn't understand. Why are you trying to kill me. We're on the same team. But the the crowd is being influenced not just by random people in the crowd, but by the religious leaders.

Whether we want to admit it or not, all of us have a spiritual influence from a leader in our lives. Whether it's a pastor, a mentor, somebody that has walked with you in your family, anybody that shapes a part of your walk with Jesus is this leader. And here's my plea to you.

Don't let just anybody sit in the spot of spiritual influence in and over your life. There are a lot of resources out there. There's a lot of podcasts. There's a lot of books.

There's a lot of sermons that you can stream. There's a lot of different things that you can do. And yes, you need those things. I encourage those things. You need people that that inform you about Jesus.

But you need people who also know you, who know you, who know your heart, who know your struggles, and can help you with your walk with Jesus. That are not just feeding you information for you con to consume and buy for personal glory but for God's glory. People like your growth group leaders who are just going to sit with you and help you, right. And so this is the spiritual influence that we need in and through our life.

And let me just say as your pastor, thank you for trusting me with this. Okay, this is something that I take very very seriously. This is probably the third time I've said it from stage.

, I do not take studying this book lightly. I do not take delivering the content of these lightly. I am praying for you and I know that it is such a big important thing and responsibility and honor to care for this flock that we call Destination Church spiritually.

And so, thank you for entrusting me with that and helping and just supporting me and being your pastor. And I I think that this is the bottom line of this section too is that for any one of us if we are here at destination or somewhere else you need people that are pointing towards the truth of scripture towards Jesus as the ultimate authority more than dishonest gain. And so look for people that are spiritled who are pointing towards Jesus.

And so this is now where the crowd is at. They're faced with this choice of are we going to be influenced by the leaders or by Jesus. This is how they respond. Verse 20, it says, "You are demonpossessed. " The crowd answered, "Who is trying to kill you.

" Jesus said to them, "I did one miracle and you're all amazed. Yet because Moses gave you circumcision, you circumcised a boy on the Sabbath. Now, if a boy can be circumcised on the Sabbath, so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry with me for healing a man's whole body on the Sabbath.

Stop judging me by mere appearances, but instead judge me correctly. All right, did that one lose you. You ready to talk about circumcision. I'm just kidding.

No, here here's what's happening here. , if you got a question about what circumcision is, you can ask your growth group leader. That's how we do it around here. , so, , here here's the thing that's going on here is Jesus is being called out because a couple of chapters ago he was asked, , why did you heal somebody on the Sabbath.

It was unlawful for Jesus to heal somebody on the Sabbath. And what Jesus does is he turns it back around on these religious leaders and says, "Hey, you circumcise on the Sabbath, too, which is also work. " Now, the way that Jewish law works is that a a child would get circumcised on the eighth day.

It wasn't the seventh day. It wasn't the ninth day. It was the eighth day. And so, if the eighth day just happened to fall on Sabbath, they would perform a circumcision. And so Jesus is saying, 'Look, you're trying to use scripture against me.

Well, what about this. And they're really going back and forth with a debate about the interpretation of scripture. And this is the last one of how you and I can be influenced.

We can be influenced by improper interpretation of scripture. Okay, don't hate the mailman on this one. I got to ask you a question.

How's your Bible reading going. How's your Bible reading going. And listen, when I say that, this is my heart. I don't think anybody actually has ever said in the history of ever, , man, I just read way too much of my Bible this week. I just prayed way too much.

I got carried away and I am just over the No, you will. You always feel convicted. I feel convicted when I ask myself that because we always feel like what we're doing inside of scripture and prayer and connection with God is not enough.

But let me just really break it down for you like this. The danger is when we get integrated into a church system or into our reading rhythms where we're only getting surface level scripture. Now, what I mean by that is we can go to a church and there is, by the way, a time and place for these messages. I got saved off of one of these type of messages. These are important where it's one big topic and it's like three or four or five little verses that are kind of sprinkled in.

But here's the thing, if that is the only thing that we are consuming, then we are not getting the whole context and the whole impact of scripture like we're doing as we walk through the book of John. The other danger that we face is when we're doing this with devotionals. And so we'll have a devotional that has one verse and then we'll have a bunch of the author's thoughts. Again, these are not wrong thinking, but I want you to think about it like this. These are an appetizer to an actual meal that Jesus wants to invite you to.

These are an appetizer. These are just things that get you into the word. And I if you are doing those things, keep doing them. But then start to pray that you would go deeper into knowing this book and knowing the character of Christ and who he is. Because what can happen is verses start to become weaponized.

Can I have a little fun this morning and pick on some Bible verses. Can we do that together. What happens is when we go through these kind of churches and these kind of Bible studies is we'll get heavy hitter Bible verses is what I call them.

They're the verses that you'd find on all the pillows at Hobby Lobby. Okay, that's that's how you know what these verses are. Jeremiah , John.

They're great verses. Let me pick on one this morning. Philippians.

>> I'm just looking around the room making sure no guys have tattoos of it. Okay, this is a big one. Okay, and this Bible verse says what.

I can do all things through him who gives me strength. This is a true statement. You can do all things through Christ and he will give you strength.

That is truth. But here's the thing. I can also do all things through a verse taken out of context.

Watch me, okay. I can tell you that tomorrow morning I am going to resign effective immediately from being the lead pastor of Destination Church because I am going to pursue being the starting quarterback of the Vikings cuz God knows they need a quarterback right now. Why was that the thing that got the round of applause.

Let's pray for that really quick. We we need one, right. And here's the thing though.

, I'll be I'll be honest with you. I've never played a down of football in my life. There are middle schoolers in here.

I'm looking at you guys more qualified than me to go try out for the Vikings. So, you would say that that's a terrible idea, Josh. Don't be the quarterback of the Vikings. This is where God placed you. But then I can say, "But I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.

So shouldn't I be able to go be the quarterback. " You see how it can so easily be twisted. That's what's going on here between Jesus and between the crowds is they're just taking the same well-meaning scripture and kind of twisting it into into what they want it to believe. Da Carson says it like this. Let's see if you can follow this quote.

A text without context is a pretext for a proof text. Okay, what that means is read your Bible and get the full story. Okay, get the full story. And how do you do that. Get into a growth group.

Okay, get into a study and start to ask questions. Get into something more than than just the verse of the day, but get into something that really points you towards the character of who Jesus is and the truth of this word because it will transform you from the inside out. And then you won't have these four influences.

Look at these four influence again. You have influence from your family, influence from culture around you, influence from different leaders, and influence from improper interpretation of scripture. Now, when I look at this list, I hope that you're with me so far that you can agree that we can be influenced by these things. And so, the question of this message is not whether or not we are influenced because we are. The real question of this message is how do we rise above that influence.

And to answer that, I want to just point to one teaching from John, not found in John chapter 7, but found later. John writes the Gospel of John, but then he writes additionally three letters. And in first John chapter 4, he says this, it'll be on the screen behind me. Says, "Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether or not they are from God. Because many false prophets have gone out into the world to use their influence.

" And this is how you can recognize the spirit of God. This is how you know every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. But then John takes it a step further. Verse three, he says, "But every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard is coming and now is already in the world.

" Here's your encouragement. Verse four, you dear children are from God and you have overcome them because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. And so what that means is for us Jesus followers, we have this awesome amazing gift of the Holy Spirit.

And he gives us the spirit of discernment to be able to go above this influence that is out and moving around the world. And in order to do that, we need to fully go into who Jesus is. What this what this verse tells us to acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the hero.

He is the one that we look towards. Can I just like end by telling you a real story about this. I was with my four-year-old daughter and we were doing our devotional together. And Jaci is kind of really good at holding me accountable to pray.

I'll just put it that way. She's the one now at the dinner table who's like, ", we need to pray, Dad. I know you're hungry, but you know, and the thing is about her is she won't she hasn't really prayed out loud yet.

And so I asked her, , Jaci, she said to me during the devotional, she said, "I'm afraid to pray in front of people. " And I said, "Where do you think that fear comes from. " And they know that when I ask them a question, usually like the right answer is God.

That's how kids work. And so she said, "God. " And I said, "No, honey, because God doesn't give us the spirit of fear. Fear comes from the devil. And what do we know about the devil.

" And she said, "He's a liar. That's from a Colton Dixon song. If you don't know that, so we call the devil a liar around our house. And then she asked me this question.

She said, "But how does the devil get into my head. I don't have any holes in my head. " It's four-year-old logic, remember. And I said,"Well, you have ears, don't you. " And she thought about it for a second.

And I said, "That's how some of these thoughts, maybe not necessarily this thought, but some of these thoughts can get into your head is you can hear from the world around you that you should be scared to pray in front of people. " And so she said, "So that the the devil can get into my head from the things I hear. " And I said, "He can It is so important to know the voice of God, to know who Jesus is, to be able to come fully into who Jesus is so that you can recognize his voice above all of the other voices in this world. And that is my prayer for you. So, would you just bow your heads and close your eyes.

I'm going to have the worship team come up. And I just want to invite you into this space. I talked about a lot of different influences and I'm sure that all of them like they did for me is is a hard thing to think about. When you think about your past, you think about your family, you think about spiritual influences, you think about the culture around you and what you're doing for Bible reading. It can really feel overwhelming.

It can really feel overwhelming. But here's my heart for you this morning. My heart for you is that first and foremost you would look to the person of Jesus for every answer.

Now, if you're in here today and you haven't said yes to Jesus, maybe you haven't had this influence in your life or maybe you've been living off borrowed faith or whatever it is, Jesus wants a relationship with you. He wants you to come to him first. And so if you're in this room and and you want to give your life to Christ, I just want to invite you to the next steps table after service, take some bold steps over there.

And we'll have a couple of people over there that would love to pray with you and connect with you and help you with your next steps. But for the rest of us, I just want to pray for you. So God, would you just help us as we live in this world in 2026. Would you help us to look towards you as the ultimate truth, as the ultimate way, and as the ultimate life.

God, when all of the other voices get to be so loud in our world, help us to acknowledge you because we are your children and we can overcome the voices of the world because he who is in us is greater than the one who is in the world. And so Jesus, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your spirit and we thank you for what you did on the cross. In Jesus awesome and precious and holy name we pray.