Welcome to our Together on Mission podcast where we seek to be with and like Jesus as we begin a conversation with Jesus in the morning, scripture, prayer and meditation, and then continue that conversation with him throughout your day. Your host is Travis Twynian, the pastor at the Inland Vineyard Church in Corona, California. In this season of the podcast, we're going to be talking about scripture as an epic. An epic that invites unique men and women to play their crucial role within the unfolding story that is the case with Esther, Isaiah, Mary and Paul, and you and I.
Good morning everyone, and welcome to this new season of the podcast where we are talking about the epic, the epic that is scripture. The epic that God is telling the story. And as G.K. chesterton famously said, and it's rightly famous because it's so good, if we feel life as a story, then there must be a storyteller.
And there is a storyteller. And what we have called scripture for generations and generations and generations is the product of a group of people walking with God and believing that there is a storyteller and that storyteller is telling a story. And that like any story, we are, we have the opportunity to be caught up within the larger story, to discover who we are and what we're about and why were we, why we were created. And the Mark Twain quote, One of my favorite Mark Twain quotes just popped into my mind.
Mark Twain said that they're the two most important days in our life. Number one, the day we were born. And number two, the day we realize why we were born. And Chesterton and Twain and so many others are working with this idea that there really is a story and it really is a grand story and there really is a storyteller.
And so I am going to embark on a four or five part podcast and it's going to be a bit of a journey and today will be part one. And we are going to title today's podcast the Call the Call. And we're going to be in Luke chapter three and four over the next four or five or so podcasts. And so I'm just going to ask this question.
What is a call? What is a call? How do we realize that we've been called? How do we know it's a call?
Let's just think for a minute about call and what that means and whether that's happened. And in the scriptures there is an act that is often accompanying a call and that's the act of baptism. And so that brings us to our stories. We're kind of thinking about calling Luke, chapter three, beginning verse 21.
When all of the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, the heavens were opened and the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, descended upon Jesus in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven. You are my son with whom I love, and with you I am well pleased.
Now, Jesus himself was about 30 years old when he began his ministry, and he was the Son. So it was thought of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Mathat, the son of Levi, the son of Melchi, the son of Jani, the son of Joseph, the son of. And it goes on and on and on and on. So there's a story, there's what we're going to call the call of Jesus where Jesus says, I want to be baptized in the Jordan River.
And of course, there's significance to the Jordan river because that's the river that was crossed to get into the promised land. So in the Old Testament, there's the Exodus and then the crossing of the Jordan, going into the Jordan. When you come out of the Jordan, you're into the promised land. So it wasn't that John the Baptist was baptizing in the Jordan, it was that John the Baptist was baptizing in the Jordan.
That was the point. And the Spirit of God descends upon Jesus, the voice of the Father, you are my son with whom I loved, with whom I love your. I'm well pleased with you. And so Jesus was about 30 years old when he started his ministry, and he was the Son.
So it was thought of Joseph. Remember, Joseph was not Jesus's biological father. Now we just. I want to ponder for a minute, because this is the call and the baptism of Jesus.
And that's where it begins. That is move one, if you will, or act one this, this call, this, this moment which could be a season where our eyes are opened to the larger story. And this is not something different than dating or parenting or marriage. This is not something different than normal life.
That would be a category mistake. This is what life is meant to be. See, this call involves marriage, but transcends marriage. It involves parenting, but it transcends parenting, involves friends, but it transcends friends, involves church attendance, but it transcends church attendance.
It involves Bible reading and prayer and some fasting, but transcends that. It invol. But when we think about Job through the lens of call, then we have to actually no longer call it the job, but call it a vocation. A vocation.
Something we do with purpose and something we do with Meaning whatever it might be, whatever part we're playing within God's world, to be the kind of person that we're called to be. Yes, this call is going to involve character and the development of character, but sometimes we. And you can't see me. I know that I just got my right hand hanging out over here.
Sometimes we have like, oh, I've got my job and my money and my marriage, my friendship and my fiance and my, you know, my church attendant. I got that over here. And Travis is talking about this call, this call, this big call. It's in some way different than all this stuff.
No. A call is baptizing our life in the purposes of God. That's a call. When we are baptized, our life is baptized, our wallet is baptized, our job is baptized, and it either becomes a vocation or we have to lay it down and go find our vocation.
Some of us, when we experience a call, we see our job in a new light, and some of us need to lay that job down and go after what it is that God has called us to do. When we're baptized, we're. Our marriage is baptized and our parenting is baptized and our grandparenting is baptized. And that's what happens to Jesus here.
And we hear the validation of the Father, the affirmation of the Father, the unconditional, unfathomable, unbeatable, unbreakable love of the father. Jesus was 30 years old when he started his ministry as a result of his call. I don't know how old you are listening to this podcast. Maybe you're 20, 30, 40, 70.
Age is just a number, but a call. Life is in the call. And Jesus said yes. And what we are to say on the heels of a call, when our eyes are open to the larger story and to the storyteller and what he's about, what he's created us to be about.
The answer is yes. Yes, God, yes. And that's the first step. Because in the next podcast, we'll have to look at the next step, which is a little bit more difficult.
But this morning, let's just read over the story a few times. Every move of it, every word of it. Let's focus on what God is saying to you specifically. Not as in, you know, this is going to be completely different than your life right now.
No, this is what happens within a life. A call happens within a life. And of course it changes the life, but it happens within the life. Because when we come up out of those waters of baptism, everything that we touch, everything that we do and everything that we say is different because the Holy Spirit has descended upon us in bodily form.
We'll talk soon. Thanks for listening to the Together on Mission podcast. We truly hope that you were blessed and encouraged by it today. If you had any questions about the Inland Vineyard Church, our ministries or our Sunday services, feel free to connect with us on our brand new app which you can find in the Google Play and the App Store and check out our social media pages like Facebook and Instagram, or even check out our [email protected].