Triangles and 153 Fish

[00:00:09] Wow, look at us this morning. Okay, so we need to gather around so that. [00:00:15] So that you can see what I'm doing on the floor in the middle. So we're kind of making a half circle. Yep. And then you guys, Jonathan and Ezekiel and Esmeralda, come on up here. Okay, so. All right, now maybe gather around so that you can see what I'm doing here. Okay. [00:00:38] All right. [00:00:41] Elmer, can you get a little here. James, can you come over here? [00:00:45] Elmer, scoot in. [00:00:48] Okay, great, great. Okay, can everybody see this piece of paper? [00:00:53] Alright, so here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to put three pebbles on here. [00:01:01] And what shape can we make with three pebbles? [00:01:06] A triangle. Good. Does anybody want to make the triangle? [00:01:09] Okay, let's start with Michael. You can make the triangle. All right, great. Hey, that's pretty good. Now I'm just going to move it over here. Okay. [00:01:27] Okay. Now, you know what if I give you three more pebbles, okay. We can make a bigger triangle. [00:01:34] Anybody want to add the three pebbles? Okay, Lucas, you give it a shot. [00:01:39] Here you go. Here's your three pebbles. Can you make a bigger triangle with this? [00:01:48] Hey, you could make a diamond with that. Something like that. Here, we're going to arrange it like this. Do you see how That's a triangle still. [00:01:58] Okay, now so we had here at the top of the triangle, we have one and then we have two, and then we have three in the third row. You see that? [00:02:11] Alright, now. Okay, so triangle. Why is a triangle special? What makes it a triangle? [00:02:18] Anybody? [00:02:21] Simeon? [00:02:23] Three points. Yep. And three sides. [00:02:27] Good. All right. Now we are called Trinity Lutheran Church. Do you know why? [00:02:34] What's Trinity? [00:02:36] Yeah, Virginia. [00:02:40] Yeah. What's Trinity? [00:02:45] Three crosses. That's true. We do have. Yep. We have three crosses. Okay. And Trinity is related to three. Right. Okay. [00:02:56] Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Right. So. So God is three persons, one God. Right. Three in one. Alright. So three represents God. And you can think about that like a triangle. [00:03:09] All right, now we're going to add another four. So now we have a triangle made of six pebbles. [00:03:18] Does that work? [00:03:28] Maybe, maybe not. [00:03:31] It's a nice idea, but you're just going to have to picture it. [00:03:37] So we've got a triangle made of six pebbles. One on top, two then two, then three. That's six. Okay, so we're going to add four pebbles. [00:03:46] James, you want to add four pebbles. So what you can do is just make a bottom row with four pebble. [00:03:55] Yeah, yeah. So we could just keep making this triangle bigger and Bigger by adding a bigger number on the bottom. So one at the top, then two, then three. Now we put on four and that makes ten. That's right. Okay. Which is kind of significant. Okay, so we could put another one on and that's going to be a row of five. And then what's the next row going to be? [00:04:22] Six. Right. And we just have a triangle that's getting bigger and bigger. Okay, so Elmer, you want to put. I think that's five for the next row. [00:04:39] Okay. And then we've got six. [00:04:43] All right, see this? [00:04:47] And seven. And this is as many as I brought. Okay, who can figure out how many pebbles that is that we've put down? [00:05:03] David? [00:05:05] There are seven on the bottom row. Yep. Okay, now here's the thing. This triangle now that has 28 pebbles is it has sides that are all seven. Okay, seven sides, seven sides, seven sides and it makes 28. Okay, so 28 is. You call it a triangular number. I think actually my brother in law is somewhere here. Although he might have stepped out with a kit. Ah, there he is. [00:05:31] Right. Do you call it a triangular number? Yeah. Okay, just like a square number. Right? Like 144 is a square number. Right. Because 12 times 12 is 100. 144. You can arrange it with pebbles into a square. Right. So this is a 28 is a triangular number. And it's kind of cool that it has seven as the sides. Seven is a special number in the Bible. Did you know that our reading in Revelation there were seven seals and seven spirits? And also in Revelation there are seven churches and the earth was made in how many days? [00:06:08] Right, Seven, including the day of rest, Creation. Seven days. Okay. [00:06:13] All right. So the reason I did this is because you know what would happen if we kept adding rows until the bottom row was 17? [00:06:25] We would get 153. Who heard 153 today? [00:06:32] Yeah, yeah. What is it, Malachi? [00:06:37] 153 fish. It's a triangular number which is kind of cool. Alright. With sides of 17. Okay, 17, which is 7 and 10. Okay. But all of it a triangle which has three sides. All right. And what does the triangle represent? The three sides. What do we think of. [00:07:01] That's right, that's right. So all right, so numbers, numbers mean something. And they, they're also, they're shapes. Isn't that cool? Don't you want to go home and play with pebbles and numbers? [00:07:16] Okay. Yep. All right, so the fish 153. Listen for, for it in the sermon. Okay, we're going to Talk about it. Okay. All right, let's pray. [00:07:30] Heavenly Father, you made numbers, which is pretty cool. You made patterns, and you made us and all of creation, and then you put those numbers into Scripture. [00:07:42] Give us wisdom to understand what it means. But also, Lord, thank you for making things make sense and thanks for. [00:07:53] Well, for taking care of us through Jesus in his name. Amen. All right, to be continued. You guys can go to your seats. [00:08:27] Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. [00:08:34] Am I mic'd? [00:08:38] Can you hear me? Just fine. Oh, okay. All right. Oh, there we go. Sounds a little louder now. [00:08:44] All right. [00:08:46] Oh. So triangles and numbers and, you know, y. But the real question is, why 153? I think it was Mrs. James class especially that asked the question this week. And, well, it's good to ask a question of a text of scripture. [00:09:06] Well, maybe especially something written by John. You know, Revelation was written by John, and so was the Gospel of John. And so while Revelation is full of numbers, I mentioned 144. You know, the church is represented by 144,000. It's like, well, why 144? Well, it's a square number. 12 times 12. [00:09:29] Well, 12 is a significant number, and that's kind of natural. It's a little, I think, a little bit more out of left field to talk about a triangular number. [00:09:40] But these were recognized more in the ancient world than we do today. Like their math, when they learned math, it was a lot more sort of hands on, like thinking of numbers actually as shapes and patterns more than just as concepts to do formulas, that kind of thing. All right, so 153, why is it special? Well, one reason is it's a triangular number and specifically a number with 17 as its sides and then containing 153. So why does all this matter? Right. To continue the question, why 153 fish? [00:10:24] Well, why fish? Why fish at all? So we're going to start with fish, and then we're going to come back to 153, and hopefully it'll mean something to you because that's what God's word is meant for, Right? [00:10:39] In the Gospel of John, John has just said, you know, a whole lot of things happened. Jesus did a whole lot of things. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. John says, the purpose of all this, the reason I've included what I've Included is so that you would believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that you would have life in his name by believing. [00:11:05] And then he tells us that there were 153 fish. It's like, well, okay, how does that help me believe that Jesus is right? Okay, so all the details matter. [00:11:18] So Jesus said that his disciples would be fishers of men. Well, that makes us fish because we've been fished into the net of the church. We've been fished out of the water and into life. [00:11:34] We talked about this a year ago when this was the text. But it bears repeating. [00:11:40] The life of a fish is completely backwards from our life. [00:11:46] Like Tolkien said in Riddles in the Dark, in the Hobbit through the Mouth of Smeagol, I suppose. [00:11:55] A fish is alive without breath, as cold as death. It's alive without breath. Well, that's the opposite from us. [00:12:04] So a fish lives in opposite world. A fish is at home in the water and lives in the water without breathing, so to speak. We live out of the water and need air to breathe. [00:12:20] Fish is comfortable down there in the dark where we can't see. Total mystery. You look out, you're fishing. You don't see those fish. Sometimes you do, but you can't catch those. [00:12:30] You know, as much as you might try, memories are coming back. [00:12:37] It just doesn't work that way. So the sea is this place of mystery. You know, things live under there. You throw a line and you might get something. [00:12:47] But it's this strange, mysterious place where things live completely differently than we do. It's an opposite kind of life. It's like opposite world. [00:13:00] You see opposite world at play in the first reading from Acts where Saul becomes Paul, where Saul is thinking, I know what's up. These Christians are a problem. [00:13:16] The followers of Jesus, they need to be stopped. He's on his way to Damascus to persecute them, to put them in prison. Men and women like ruthlessly looking to oppose Jesus and his followers and thinking all the time that it's righteousness. He's doing this because he's zealous for the truth. What he thinks is the truth, but he's actually persecuting the truth. Jesus Christ, he's living in opposite world. [00:13:46] And then Jesus comes to him and fishes him out of that opposite life. He draws him up and gives him the Holy Spirit. [00:13:55] It starts with being blinded like he thought he saw, he thought he understood. Now he's blind. He was a man on a mission, zealous for what he thought was the truth. And now he's stopped in his tracks. He's led by the hand to Damascus, blind, needing help. [00:14:14] He was strong and zealous. Now he's weak, he can't see. [00:14:22] Then he's baptized and receives the Holy Spirit. And things completely turn around. He becomes Jesus instrument for Jesus mission. He was on a mission. It was totally the wrong mission. Now he's on mission for Christ. Christ has drawn him up into his own life, into his mission. [00:14:43] His life has been turned around completely. He was in opposite world. Now he's living true life in Jesus Christ. [00:14:53] Alright, so that's what the fish is about. You and I, through sin, chose life without the spirit. Adam and Eve, right there in the beginning, God breathed into them the breath of life and they became a living creature. [00:15:11] Adam meant to live by God's spirit. Breath is spirit in Hebrew. [00:15:18] That was what was intended. But they turned away from God's word and chose otherwise. They chose a different kind of life. They looked for life where life was not. They entered opposite world. [00:15:30] But God in His mercy has come after us. Not content to let us live that kind of life devoid of his spirit, his breath. He came to his disciples after his resurrection and he breathed on them and said, receive the Holy Spirit. He brought them up into a different kind of life. But not just them. [00:15:52] He. He didn't just come back for his disciples. He came back for you and for me to breathe on us and to give us the Spirit to take us up into his life. He sent out his disciples now apostles, which means sent ones, people who are sent. He sent them out, his apostles to the ends of the earth to fish up you and me. To draw us up out of death into life. [00:16:20] Which is why we prayed this morning, O God, through the humiliation of your son, you raised up the fallen world. And you just think of that like those fish coming out of the water. [00:16:33] Now if you think about the logic of that, it's a little concerning, because the fish are going to die. [00:16:40] You pull those fish up out of the water and they're going to die. How does that work? [00:16:44] But this turnaround, it requires a certain kind of death. The kind of death that Saul experienced. He was alive and headed completely in the wrong direction. Living a living death, fighting life itself. Jesus Christ, he had to die to that life. He had to lose everything that he valued. A few weeks ago we had that reading where Paul says, says, yeah, I had it all. I was a Pharisee of Pharisees and zealous. [00:17:17] But all those things I now count as loss for the sake of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, I died to all those things for the sake of having life in Jesus Christ. [00:17:30] You and I also have died in Jesus Christ. Being united to him in his death and resurrection, being drawn up out of our former feudal life. [00:17:42] We have new life in Christ. The old is gone, the new has come. We're new creatures, part of the new creation through Jesus Christ, who's the first fruits of those raised from the dead and recreated restored in Him. [00:17:58] We are. Well, we are the 153 fish. [00:18:05] One of the neat things about 153 being a triangle. Just that like just think of, just picture that, okay? We've got a triangle with 153 pebbles. [00:18:18] 153 of you and me and all the church. [00:18:24] 17 being kind of a number of completeness. We've just been talking about how we're a new creation, we're created anew, right? And so, well, seven kind of works with that, with the creation. But then 10 is like completeness added to it just kind of compounds the 7. So we've got like new creation in all its fullness and it's contained in a triangle. [00:18:52] Kind of like in leaving God. In the beginning we were going off the reservation. We were leaving home like, ah, we don't need you God. [00:19:04] We're going to try this on ourselves. Kind of like the prodigal son leaving home and going to a far country. [00:19:11] But in being drawn up out of death into life, into God's life, we're restored to God's family. So you see the church there contained in a triangle. [00:19:26] Our life is in God. In fact, Peter says we participate in the divine nature. We've been brought into God's family as his children in Jesus Christ. [00:19:41] Now we don't always live like that or think like that, do we? When I consider my identity, not always thinking of myself as a child of God and in my selfish moments I'm thinking of myself as an isolated individual with my own thoughts and desires straight back to the garden. [00:20:05] So the struggle of faith is to look to Jesus Christ and desire to be found in him. [00:20:12] Having his righteousness as my own, not wanting that life apart from God, that's a living death in opposite world where all my desires are fulfilled, or at least I'm pursuing that. [00:20:27] But to want to be found in Christ, having my life in God, that's the struggle for faith. [00:20:36] Think about it that way. Think about your life in a triangle and not alone, but with others. All of us. God's family, Christ's body You know, the net with the 153 fish, the triangle of God's people. [00:20:52] The net didn't break, even though there were so many. [00:20:58] God's people are unbreakable because of what holds them together. We are Christ's body now. That's stability, strength and unbreakable identity. Unbreakable unity. [00:21:16] Jesus Christ holding us together. [00:21:20] Another implication of that is that it's God's doing. We all contained in God's family, contained by Christ. Christ, like a fortress around us. Well, let's say the Holy Trinity, like a fortress around us. God is my refuge and strength. [00:21:39] Think of those sides of the triangle holding us in, holding us together in his life. [00:21:46] Our life is in Christ. It's in God. And it's not anywhere else. [00:21:54] Not in our own desires or fears or attempts to deal with our problems apart from God. [00:22:01] It's in God. And that's a real gift. Because think of a passage like, who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall danger or sword or famine or any of those things? No. [00:22:17] No one will be able to separate us from Jesus Christ our Lord, from the love of God, Jesus Christ our Lord. [00:22:27] But it takes remembering, and that's faith. That was the theme throughout the season of Lent. So let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. Because to fix our eyes anywhere else is to. Well, to look away from God and to seek something else. [00:22:48] Our life in God is such a gift. And again, we live that together, you and I, all of us. And not just us, but God's church throughout time and space. [00:23:01] Actually, Carl Langley, early this morning, passed away. [00:23:08] He was called home by our Heavenly Father and died in faith. [00:23:17] That's him. He's part of that. 153 we walk this. We live in God's family, as his people. Together. And not even just us, but with those who have gone before us and with those who come after us. We have the example of saints of old, family members who have led the way in faith. The apostles. [00:23:43] And with those to come, the children that we're raising up in the faith in this triangle of faith in God's family, giving them foundation and strength in God's life, teaching them their identity in Christ, pointing them to Jesus to fix their eyes on Jesus. Not just them, but the generations that they're going to raise up. [00:24:09] Think of your life as in that triangle. [00:24:13] Think of your life as. As in God. Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus, in His name, Amen.