Well, if you're just joining us, we're in the series called Who Is Jesus. This is our second to last week of this series. It has been a really great series. And just to kind of summarize it, we're looking at all of these really big questions, these life questions that you and I will get hung up on. Why life is so difficult, what about healing and forgiveness and all of these different things.

So go back and check out one of those messages. But if you are new here, you picked a really really good week to be here. Because this is kind of the the difficulty is just increasing with these questions.

At least for me. I think of it kind of like as I'm preparing, it's kind of like a video game. Each each time I prepare, the difficulty gets a little bit more with each level. , I I'm not a big video gamer, but I like video games.

, and this kind of date back dates back all the way to when we had a Sega in our house. Anybody Sega or maybe we got a Nintendo church. I don't know.

, but I would go to Blockbuster. You guys remember Blockbuster, right. Every kid that's in this space right now is like, "What's a Blockbuster.

" , a Blockbuster was a good Friday night. Let's just say that. , and I would go to Blockbuster and I would rent games and it would be like, you know, Sonic, Aladdin, Lion King, which was the worst game to try and beat because all the games that I would rent, I could not get past level two. And here's the thing about Sega that you kids, I'm looking at you middle schoolers, that you kids don't realize. You couldn't save the game.

You can't save the game on a Sega. And so if you wanted to try and get past level two, you could not save the game to, you know, continue on. You had to like keep your Sega on or whatever. And furthermore, there was none of this like change the difficulty thing. Do you guys know this is a thing now with video games.

You get to choose your difficulty. So let me tell you, a couple years ago, I got into Madden, which is a football game, and I found out that this is really easy to do. And so anytime I play a hard team, you know what I do.

Change the difficulty to easy. You know what I do when I play a hard team. I or a easy team. I change the difficulty a little bit to hard. And that would just make me feel really good about myself, right.

And and here's the thing. Wouldn't it be so cool if life had that option. Like if life was less like Sega and more like video games today where you could change and manipulate the difficulty, right.

And so that's what I want to look at as our big question today is why is life so difficult. Do you see why this is a difficult topic for me. So, we're going to do what we do every week, open the word of God for the big questions in life.

And the word of God is going to point us towards who Jesus is. We are in John chapter 10, one of my all-time favorite chapters in the Bible. It's on page 922.

Now, as you find your way there, there are three really important things that do to kind of set up this message today. So, I need you to kind of lock in on these three things. The first thing is that I want to answer this question for you today. I want to answer the question why is life so difficult but each of us have our own unique struggles our own unique journeys.

So we have to kind of accept that this is a little bit of a blanket kind of message or way of answering these questions. Now, not only do I want to tell you why life is so difficult, but I want to go beyond that because that would be a really depressing message, by the way. Like, can you imagine, hey, life is difficult.

Like, I don't need to convince you of that, right. We can kind of agree there. And so, I want to give you some practical things that you can leave with today to really kind of own life circumstances and and difficulties.

Secondly, I want to tell you where we're at in the book of John. Now, in the book of John, people are arguing about the most important question, which is who is Jesus. We've seen Jesus do healing after healing, miracles, all of these things, and he kind of goes into this discussion with all of these people trying to figure out who this person is, who is Jesus. And so, there's some arguing going on.

And today, Jesus is going to speak in a what the Bible because it's a figure of speech. It's kind of what we would call a metaphor. And what you're going to see is you're going to see a couple of different characters. Now, I found that if you know the characters, the impact of this scripture holds a little bit more.

So, here's who you need to know. Number one, you need to know the gate. The gate represents Jesus and that Jesus is the way to heaven. He says that I am the gate. You're going to see that.

The second thing is the good shepherd. Jesus is also the good shepherd. He will say, "I am the good shepherd. " And we're going to get into all of these, but I just want you to know them up front. Sheep are cute and they're us.

The we'll see sheep and then we'll see the hired hand, which is supposed to be in place of the shepherd as a hired hand. And finally, we will meet the thief. Which we will talk about all of these, but let's dive in.

Verse one, Jesus says this. Very truly I tell you Pharisees, these are the people that are arguing about who Jesus is. Anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in some other way, is a thief and a robber.

The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name, leads them out, and leads them out.

When he has brought out all of his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because why. Because they know his voice. But they will not follow a stranger. In fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize the stranger's voice. Jesus used this figure of speech, but the Pharisees did not understand what he was telling them.

So, hopefully you get to understand what Jesus is telling you this morning because he's speaking to you the same words here. And what he's saying is there are people that follow my voice and know my voice and there there are people that do not. And this brings us to our first reason of why life is so difficult is because you're following the wrong voice.

If you were to Google, by the way, I highly suggest this Google and and look up a video of a shepherd calling his sheep. This is so beautiful because back in Jesus's time there was no like big pen and kind of ways that you could bring sheep and heard them and different things. They knew where to go by the shepherd's voice. And some of these videos what they'll do is they'll bring a a guy or a girl out and they'll teach them all of the calls for the sheep.

They'll, you know, they have different, you know, ways of of summoning the sheep, different noises, different dialogue, and each person will go through and they'll try to call the sheep to them. And the sheep will not move at all. But when the shepherd does those noises, guess what the sheep do. They go darting towards that shepherd because they know that that's who they go to in times of difficulty, in times of danger. And so what Jesus is saying here is you need to be able to recognize this voice.

But then our question or at least my inner dialogue goes to okay if I need to recognize Jesus's voice in difficult times how do I hear the voice of God. And this could be a whole message series in itself which by the way it's going to be later this year. So stick around. But I want to just summarize it for you. And I think the fastest way to summarize this is that we need to follow Jesus and you will hear from Jesus.

Now, most of the time hearing Jesus isn't about an audible voice. Although he does speak that way. It would be nice if we could just be there and like, "God, what do I do about buying this car. You should buy the different car.

" Like, it doesn't really It'd be nice, but it doesn't work like that. Most of the time Jesus is is speaking to you through his word, through his spirit, through his leading that you then hear audibly. And some for some of us who have found Jesus, some of us have found the person who is Jesus, but we still are not following in a way that hears his voice.

Think about this. Today is Palm Sunday and in Palm Sunday, you had a bunch of people. It was like a parade as Jesus walked in in this triumphant entry and everybody was praising God and saying hosana hosana which is means glory to God. They were all like lifting up the name of Jesus.

Guess what that crowd did not only a couple of days later they were the same crowd that were saying crucify him. Crucify him. And that is a crazy thought that somebody can switch that quickly.

And that is the difference between acknowledging Jesus and accepting and following Jesus. There is a different level of depth when we start to follow Jesus in this way that recognizes his voice. But how do we hear Jesus in that way.

We have to have time with Jesus. This is so important. If you were to grow any relationship, friend, romantic person, someone in your family, if you wanted to grow the relationship, what does it take.

It takes time with that person. You don't have a lot of time, right. And so what happens is is the thief, who's that robber that the scripture points out, is going to do everything that he can to keep us busy and distracted and confused on our priorities. And that's what Jesus is going to go into.

Look at verse seven. It says, "Therefore Jesus said again, very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them.

I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved. They come in and go out and find pasture. " I'm gonna get really excited, guys, because this is my favorite Bible verse. The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy, but I have come so they may have life and have it to the full.

This is such an important truth for this morning. This Bible verse I have preached on more than any other Bible verse. I was a part of a band who we did evangelism. Every single show we would share about Jesus in cars in really just downtrodded kind of places. And this would be the scripture that I would bring every single week because I wanted everybody in that audience to know that you are in threat of your soul being stolen and killed and destroyed.

But there is a way here right now that you can have a full life in Jesus. And I did this because of what I had experienced. What I had experienced prior to me sharing this message is that my wife at the time left me for my best friend. And I had to figure out how to be a single father by myself. I did not have money.

I didn't have a lot of money. I did not have a really high regard for life at that time. I didn't like my job and the worst part of all was that my church that I was a part of at the time was closing its doors. So this was a really tough season of my life, the toughest season of my life where I felt like something had came in and stolen and killed and destroyed. But on that very last message of this church, the pastor shared this scripture, John.

And I said, "Well, if my life has been stolen and killed and destroyed, but Jesus's promise is that I may have life and have it to the full, that's where the good news is. That's what I have to go towards. " And so, I pushed towards that full life that Jesus promises.

And let me tell you, if you're in a season right now where your life is being stolen and it feels like, you know, that that same thing, Jesus has life and life to the full for you. And that is really good news. But we need to be aware of this that why life is so difficult is because your life is in threat of being stolen.

Okay, we're going to camp here for a while. You guys ready for that. Are are you with me right now. We we because we haven't and by the way happy sixmon old destination we are six months today I forgot to mention that during announcements but in six months we haven't talked about spiritual warfare and this is a really important thing that while God is so alive and so moving in this place you need to know that you and I are at war with what comes up against you growing closer to Jesus. And there are three important things you need to know about the thief, about this person as you walk in this pasture so your life is not stolen and killed and destroyed.

Three things you might want to write these down, too. Number one, everything God creates, Satan counterfeits. Which this means that that Satan, the thief, he's not a creative personever. Whatever God creates, Satan takes and he makes the Great Value version.

It's cheaper. It's got crappier ingredients. It's not as good.

Everybody who buys Great Value is like, "Crap. " , don't worry. I buy Great Value, too. , that's not the point. The point is is that everything that is created, what Satan tries to do is he tries to take those desires, those things that we so long for and he tries to give us something different.

And you can look through the Bible and start at Adam and Eve and see that the enemy uses the same tactics in Adam and Eve that he does with Jesus in the wilderness. And then John who wrote this book gives us a warning of this. He says look listen the the thief the enemy is really not creative. He has three tactics.

The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. And that means the lust of the flesh that's your desires. The lust of the eyes that's the things you want.

And the pride of life that's the things that you think you deserve. And what Satan does is he will take those things and he will do whatever he can to use those things to pull you away from God's goodness. And that brings us to number two then that Satan doesn't show or Satan shows up with a plan more than a pitchfork.

What this means is the misconception is that the thief has come only to destroy. That is the end goal. What does he do first. Steals and kills.

So, we may think when we think of Satan, we might think of him like a nuclear bomb, but he's less like a nuclear bomb and more like cancer. It's slowly killing from the inside out. And so we'll take minor things that become small and they will become larger in our life as they compound and grow.

And so missing some time with God is not a bad thing. But no time with God, that's his goal. You know, having unfulfilled relationships is his goal.

Making you feel not good enough is the plan. And so he's going to bring stuff in that makes you feel this way and come in with a plan. And it's to take you away and lead you away slowly from the treasure slowly from God's blessing that God so wants to give you in your life. CS Lewis says it like this in an amazing book called The Screw Tape Letters. He says, "Indeed, the safest road to hell is a gradual one.

The gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts. " That's the tactic. That's the plan to make you see and feel like nothing is wrong until it is.

And so, it's like it works like cracks in a foundation of a house, which by the way is our next series that I want to plug really quick. It's a series called Foundations and it's about how to build relationships, build faith in a way that lasts. So that's coming after Easter.

But the point of all of this is that I I think actually the the most important part of all of this in in one and two is probably the third thing that we need to know about spiritual warfare and our war against Satan is that Satan has no authority over Jesus and those who belong to him. I was hoping that some would applaud, but let me say it again. Satan has no authority over Jesus who runs this church and over you who believe in him.

This is good news. Okay, this is applauseworthy because what we do is we play Satan up like he's so crafty and so awesome and we read the word and we say, "Oh, it says that he's waiting to pounce like a lion. " But guess what. He doesn't have the power of a lion.

He's just waiting to pounce like a lion. He's got the power of a mosquito. He might annoy you and it might itch a little bit, but for the most part, it has no power next to the power of God.

And that is so good. That is good news for us believer. Think about this, too. We're going to hear about the resurrection story next week. We're going to hear about how Jesus came back and raised from the dead.

And Paul says the same power that rose Jesus from the grave now lives in you believer. So that means all the power that Jesus is carrying that means we are armed. We have this gate around all of the spiritual warfare. We have this armor that we put on every day that guards us from all of these attacks.

All of these you're not good enough, you're not smart enough, you don't have enough money. All of those things we have protection from those through Jesus. And then he gives us one offensive weapon.

You know what it is. It is the sword of the spirit which is the word of God. There is a weapon on every single seat. So don't use it to hit your neighbor.

You've never heard of churches giving away weapons. We're giving away weapons. Here's the point. The difficulty that you are in is not the final destination. Depression doesn't have the final word.

Anxiety doesn't have the final word. Financial struggles don't have the final word. None of that is unredeemable for God. The enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy. Well, God comes to bring life and bring it to the full for you and I.

So, here's the point. Come to Jesus for a full life. If you feel like your life is being stolen and killed and destroyed, I implore you, do everything that you can to come to Jesus, to spend time with Jesus, to spend time with those who believe in Jesus. Let's go on to to verse 11. This is why we do this.

This is why we need to come to Jesus. Look at verse 11. I am the good shepherd.

The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away.

Then the wolf attacks in the flock and it scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for his sheep. So let's look at the hired hand and then let's look at the shepherd.

First of all, this hired kind of shows us why life could be so difficult for us is because instead of trusting Jesus the good shepherd, we are trusting a hired hand. I'm going to make this real plain, okay. Just in case you're kind of like dragging here for a second. , a hired hand in our life in 2026 is whatever is bringing you comfort.

It is whatever you run to when the gets difficult. We in Christian circles call that an idol. It's the thing that comes before God. Maybe you're like, Josh, how do I know what an idol is. How do I know what an idol is in my life.

Ask yourself this question. When life is difficult, what or whom do you rent to. It could be a person, which could be good or could be bad. It could be food.

It could be a vacation, the next trip, an addiction, a hobby. Good things can become God things really fast. They can become our source of comfort. But other than people in relationships, all of those things that I listed, you know what they want from you. They want money.

They want to convince you that this one thing can bring you comfort if you keep doing it. If you go on vacation, if you do drink this thing or watch this thing or eat this thing, whatever it is that brings you comfort, that is the hired hand. And what happens to the hired hand when stuff gets dangerous or when the money runs out. It's gone, right. And so so often what we do is we run to different things that are comforting for us and we replace the seat of God, the seat of Jesus that he should hold in our hearts and in our lives with something that is just a hired hand.

By the way, this is why your wallet has such a tie to your heart. Because you think the more money I have, the more peace and comfort that I have. Friends, have we seen rich, miserable people. Yes, we have. We see it more and more nowadays now than than we used to.

It's not about money to give you comfort. It's about Jesus. Because this is what Jesus says.

This is the real comfort. Verse 11, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. See, Jesus won't leave you when everything else does. Not only will he not leave you, but he will lay down his life for you.

So as you start trusting other things for your comfort, I'll ask you to remember this. Remember that Jesus died for you. That Jesus died for you.

Now in this passage, Jesus gives two of the big I am statements. There's several of them throughout the book of John, and we get two of them in this particular part of scripture. He says that I am the gate and that means like he is the way to heaven. There is only one way to heaven and that is through Jesus.

The second one he says is I am the good shepherd and you are the sheep. The sheep follow the shepherd. Now listen listen this is so good because we might think sheep are just these like cute little fuzzy furry animals that we get to pet and see at petting zoos, right. But back in Jesus's time, you know what sheep were.

They were in constant danger. They were in constant danger of being attacked on every side. Do you know what else sheep were prone to do. They were prone to wander. You guys ever hear that in a song before.

They were prone to wander. And they would wander away from the shepherd from the safety and they would find somewhere where they were in constant danger. So then this gives us a new framework for thinking about Jesus that while we are prone to wander, while we were are in a world where the enemy is so at work trying to steal and kill and destroy, there is a good shepherd.

There is a savior that we can follow when life is difficult. And that doesn't mean that we don't go through the difficult valleys. We're going to go through them. But it means that we're doing it with the shepherd.

And that is good news. Am I the only one who's excited about this. I just like, man, I don't I'm not looking for the applause, but man, I I hope that this energizes you because that means you don't need a life that's less difficult.

You don't need a life that's that's playing on a different difficulty. You need a shepherd to follow through it. So, here's the question. Are you following the good shepherd.

Are you running to the comfort thing or are you running to Jesus. Are you running to to, you know, you're seeing your life being stolen and killed and destroyed or are you going to Jesus. Are you trusting God. Are you listening to his voice. Are you going to Jesus.

Are you following the good shepherd. I want you to sit with that question for a second. So, I just want to invite you in your spots right now, every eye closed, head bowed, this is something that we do every week at Destination.

I'm going to invite the worship team up. And if this is new to you, it's not supposed to be like this weird moment. It's supposed to be a moment where we pause and just reflect.

There's not a lot of time for this kind of reflection because, as I said before, and I want to just reiterate this for a second because I feel like some of us need this this morning. Is that so often the enemy just tries to distract us. To keep us too busy to spend time with him, to keep us too distracted to worship him, to keep us too blind to not see the goodness in our lives. And for some of us, maybe we've walked through some of these difficulties.

We've felt like our lives have been stolen and killed and destroyed. But the good news for this morning is that Jesus has come so you may have life and have it to the full. That doesn't just mean life and good life in heaven and eternity.

That means good life now through Jesus. That's the promise that he has for you. Maybe you've never tried following Jesus through difficulties.

Maybe you've acknowledged Jesus but never really accepted Jesus. And so I want to give you an opportunity to do so. If you are here in this room and you just feel that nudge in your heart to say, "God, I want to know you. I want to come to you first.

I'm tired of my life being stolen and killed and destroyed. I want the full life that you promise at whatever the cost is to follow you. If that is you in this room, would you just so boldly raise your hand in this moment just so I can pray for you. All right, you can put your hands down.

For those of you who just raise your hands, I just want to really encourage you as you sit with that decision, just know that this is this is day one. That you may have sat in church before, that you may have done the whole church thing before or done the the whole this whole Christian thing before, but make today different. Make today new. Make today about going for Jesus in all parts of your life. And so I just want to invite you to pray this prayer in your heart.

This prayer doesn't save you. It's just you talking to God. So pray this with me. God, I confess I'm a sinner in need of a savior. And I believe that you sent your son to pay the price of my sin and to give me hope.

God, forgive me and make me new. Jesus, you are Lord and I give my life to follow you in Jesus name. Hey, can we give a round of applause to those who are now in the family of Jesus.

, I just want to encourage you if you are one of the people that have raised your hand, , and you want to get into your next steps of following Jesus, find some of us here at the next steps table. We want to give you tools and, , help you move forward in your relationship with God. But for the rest of us, let's stand and let's worship the mighty name of Jesus together.