Crossing family, I want to welcome you joining at all of
our different locations, those of you watching online and those
of you who are part of our inside family.
And I also want to welcome those of you who are new to the
crossing, whether it's your first time or your first time in
a long time, We are so glad that you are here.
And I hope that before you leave today, if you've never swung by
the new here booth in all of our lobbies, that you would do so.
And if you're watching online, type something up in the chat
and say, hey, I'm new. Pay attention to me.
I had an opportunity last night just to meet some people who are
part of our church that watch online.
And we're just so thankful for the stories that God is writing
in your life, wherever you are at.
Before I get into the sermon, I just want to kind of, I know
that for many of you, this past week was painful and troubling
and disheartening. And I know between the 24th
anniversary of 911 and the assassination of Charlie Kirk
that there is just a lot that you are processing.
Karl Barth said that a good preacher should have the Bible
in one hand and a newspaper in the other.
So that way he is speaking biblical truth over present day
realities and that is really good coaching.
The challenge is that a newspaper had editors and it had
ideally an approval process, which is something that's kind
of gone by the wayside recently. And now that has been replaced
with social media, which means that on a regular basis you're
inundated from stuff all across the globe all the time.
And so as a church, I it is impossible for us to do what we
want to do and hit absolutely everything that happens
absolutely everywhere in the world, absolutely all the time
being reported by absolutely everybody.
And so the reason why I'm saying that is I'm, I'm going to do my
best when there's a cultural moment to kind of step into it
and try to lead us, guide us and pastor us.
And no doubt, what happened this past week with Charlie Kirk is
indeed a cultural moment for Gen.
Z Charlie Kirk became their older brother and was trying to
help them understand the complexities of life and faith
and government. And for many of them, it was
heartbreaking to watch them lose their digital older brother.
For others of us, we kind of saw Charlie as a person who was
speaking wisdom and counsel to people who would kind of lost
sight of that. And I know that many of you are
feeling a heavyweight, as am I. And So what I want to do is I
just want to kind of say 6 things to you, OK?
The first thing I want to say to you is I am so very glad that
Charlie Kirk had a relationship with Jesus Christ because any
loss of life that does not have the hope of eternal life with
Jesus is a tremendous loss #2 how you behave on social media
could limit your ability to tell somebody about Jesus.
And right now, when you are highly emotive, you should be
profoundly quiet because you want wisdom to catch up with
your feelings. And how you respond and how you
comment and how you post could limit your ability to speak
godly truth to people that need Jesus.
That unlike Charlie, have not yet found Jesus #3 our fight is
not against flesh and blood, but a demonic and sinful fight.
It is not on social media. It is not in Washington.
It is in you, it is in me, it is in US.
Pay attention to this. Any unchecked sin in our lives
will grow and cause unspeakable harm.
The Christian response when something like this happens is
mourning. It's brokenness.
It's pain. It is not just a hatred of sin
in other people, but a hatred of our own sin because our sin
unchecked could lead us to places we never wanted to go #4
The shooter has parents. They took him home from the
hospital just like I took my boys.
They took pictures, probably prayed prayers.
They fought with them over what outfit they were going to.
He was going to wear it on school picture day.
And never in their wildest imagination did they Would they
think that their son would end up doing what their son did?
And hear me, the Christian response can both be angry that
he did this and love the family and pray for them.
So if I can just issue a kind word of rebuke before you post,
can you be people who pray? Can you pray for this kid who
has a period of time left on this earth before he meets his
Maker that he would actually be prepared for that day, repent
over his sins and find the same relationship with Jesus Christ
that we found that saved us? Let me say this, it seems like
recently people are taking shots.
This is number 5. If any of you guys are taking
notes, which you probably don't need to take notes on this part
because there's a lot coming in the sermon.
There's people taking shots at thoughts and prayers right now.
And I understand the sentiment like thoughts and prayers and
policy or thoughts and prayers and something else.
But I want you to know there is only one undefeated power, and
that is the power of the Holy Spirit that is released through
the prayers of the Saints. And if you're at men's
conference this year, I kind of let you into a sneak peek in my
life. I'm becoming more and more and
more and more and more and more convinced in the unstoppable
power of prayer. And I would love for our church
to be a church that wakes up on its knees, that is begging for a
move of God, begging for God to blow on your life and on this
ministry and on this region with an unquenchable fire that the
Holy Spirit can't put out. And number six, the church is
the hope of the world through the spread of the gospel of
Jesus Christ. And if you are sitting on the
sidelines and not doing everything in your power to
advance the Kingdom of God, you are allowing the enemy to win.
So if you've not found a place for you to serve, give
sacrifice, lead, disciple, baptize, get in the game because
it is a spiritual game that is advanced by spiritual people
doing spiritual things. If I had a rule, it would be
you're only allowed to comment as many people as you baptize
annually. That would shut most of you up.
But what it really should do is it should convict us.
We know the hope. We know that there is a name
above every other name, and by that name is salvation found and
sin defeated. And if we do not embrace that
oath, we will cling to idols and imposters.
And when you and I get radically serious to the point where we
would give whatever we have to advance that Kingdom 'cause we
would actually see the world that we're wanting, the world
we're longing to see. Heavenly Father, I love this
church, I love this region. I love the stories that you're
writing and I want more. I want more stories of life
change. I want more stories of
sacrifice. I want more people finding you.
We are not satisfied. We do not believe that you are
done. Got to pray that you would speak
peace over not just Charlie's family, but also the family of
the shooter. Got to pray that you would raise
up more people to speak godly truth, not just to our
generation, but to the generations that are coming
after us. Yeah, that you'd put a holy
conviction on our hearts to be about your business because
that's what your Spirit's about. And so if we are not about your
business, that means that the Spirit is not guiding and
directing us. And God, we know what happens
when we are not guided and directed by you.
God, I pray that you would use today to draw people closer to
you. In your name, I pray.
Amen. I asked my boys, how do you know
that someone loves you? We're in the car driving to see
some things as a family. And I told Jennifer to pull out
her phone and start, you know, capturing their responses.
And they said you approach us with gentleness, which Jennifer
and I were not expecting that one.
We were like, hey, OK, apparently they can take more
than we were those, but we were surprised.
They also said we are slow to anger, which, you know, I guess
they were drunk. I don't know how because I was
like, I feel like we get pretty angry.
They said you want good things for us.
That's true. They said you pray over us every
day. They said you take care of our
needs. They say you teach us
responsibility, how to take care of stuff.
You prepare us to be a good spouse one day.
That's true. Then they said, sometimes you
withhold from us what we want because it's for our own good.
Then they said, sometimes you don't give us what we want
because you know that we don't need it or aren't ready for it.
Sometimes you say things we don't want to hear that we don't
appreciate, but we know it's for our good.
How do you know that someone loves you?
What would you add to the list? Maybe some of you go I know that
someone loves me because they listen to me.
They make time for me. What do you want to do today?
Maybe it's because you've seen them serve you or sacrifice on
your behalf. How do you know that Somebody
Loves You? Maybe you'd say they encourage
you. What are the things that you
would add to that list? Well, today we are going to look
at one of the most loving things that we can do that is often
times overlooked. We are in the series in First
Corinthians where it is a letter written by Paul to the church in
Corinth through the power of the Holy Spirit to a church that
Paul loves. Paul loves these people and
today we're in chapter 5 and tucked away inside of this short
chapter with only 13 verses is a powerful tool in the life of
every believer who wants to love God and love people well, which
by the way is the 1st and 2nd great commandments.
However, as good as it is, I'm going to tell you up front, it
is not easy. The goal of the crossing, you
guys have heard us talk about this before, is to help people
find an intimate, personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
We want, we have this big audacious goal that we want to
make this region where we do life in ministry the hardest
place on planet earth to get the hell from.
And I think if you were to ask the church in Corinth, they
would have had a similar idea, a similar ambition.
However, something was getting in the way of it happening.
It seems like the ways of the city and the culture of the day
were making their way into the church.
The boundaries between the ways of God and the ways of the world
had disappeared. The distinction between saved
people and lost people had dissolved.
We pick up in verses one through 5.
It is actually reported that there is a sexual immorality
among you and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate.
A man is sleeping with his father's wife.
Let's pause for just a second, OK?
The Bible lays out that sex is 1 good.
Two, it is for married people of the opposite sex.
And any sex that is not that is not good sex.
So if you're having sex with somebody who doesn't have
different chromosomes than you and is not married to you, you
are outside of God's best for you.
So you might go, oh, oh, so you're like, man, I should have
thought about that before I came here today because wasn't
planned on that. But hear me.
God is a good father and has a good gift to give you.
And one of the gifts that God gives you in sex is that it
happens inside of the way that God designed it to be.
A fire in the fireplace is fantastic.
A fire on the stairs of your house, not good.
Or in the living room, not good or in the kitchen, Even though
you can have a fire in the kitchen, it's not the best place
to have a real fire. God says sex is a great thing
when it is contained inside of a biblical marriage.
It can be a disastrous thing when it is anywhere other than
that. And he says, and you are proud,
shouldn't you rather have gone into mourning and have put out
of your fellowship the man who has been doing this?
We'll circle back to that. For my part, even though I'm not
physically present, I am with you in spirit as one who is
present with you in this way, I have already passed judgment in
the name of our Lord Jesus on the one who has been doing this.
So when you are assembled and I am with you in spirit and the
power of our Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to
Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that his spirit may be
saved on the day of the Lord. This is bad.
There is a guy in the church who is having sex with his stepmom.
Like how did he get there? Well, more than likely he had a
mom and dad and either through death or divorce, the mom is out
of the picture. Dad now has a new wife and
through either death or divorce, the dad is out of the picture.
And so the son is kind of like, you know, let's just stay in the
same house. And then it kind of led to them
playing house. And now you have a son having
sex with his stepmom. And Paul says this is not OK.
And the fact that you think this is OK is not OK.
In fact, the city that we live in, Corinth, which celebrates
people having all kinds of different kinds of sex, where
there are no rules, no consequences, nobody cares who
you're having sex with, even this culture says that that is
not OK. And the fact that you say that
it is OK is not OK. And so Paul looks at this church
in Corinth that he loves and gives them a reality check and a
heart assignment. The 1st is the reality check.
Paul looks at him and says stop being proud of what you
tolerate. Tolerance is not the Christian
ethic and instead of being tolerant of sin, mourn it.
You should see this sin going on and you should be grieved about
it instead of proud of what you are permitting.
You should have a broken heart. One of the signs that the Holy
Spirit is working on your life is that your heart breaks for
the same things that God's heart breaks for.
And sin is no laughing matter. It is sin, all sin, that caused
the Son of God to die a brutal death on the cross on behalf of
us. Great or small, they nailed them
or they nailed Him to the cross. And then Paul gives them a
really hard assignment. You saw and went, oh, no, it's
going to be one of those kind of days.
Oh, yeah, Look what he says. Put out of your fellowship the
man who has been doing this. And I know what some of you are
thinking. I thought Christians were not
supposed to judge. And I got to be honest, Clayton,
this sounds kind of judgy. And you're right.
So let's dive into it. One of like the favorite verses
of people who are not Christians is Matthew Chapter 7 verse one.
They don't know what's Matthew Chapter 7 verse one?
US Bible nerds do, but they have quoted this phrase.
Judge not or you 2 will be judged.
How many of you have heard somebody tell that to you?
Oh yeah. That's like the John 316 of
people who don't go to church. The problem is, is that the
people in the church don't have an answer for that.
And so then they're like, well, maybe I shouldn't say anything.
Maybe I shouldn't step into this conversation.
So let's actually see what the Bible says.
Let's start Matthew Chapter 7 verse.
One does indeed say do not judge.
Therefore you also will be judged.
And that's Jesus talking. And a general rule for
Christians is if Jesus says it, you should pay attention.
Let's start there. So Jesus said it and we should
pay attention. But Jesus has actually a lot of
things to say. In fact, in the very same
chapter, verses 15 through 20, look what it says.
Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's
clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.
By their fruit you will recognize them.
Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles?
Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears
bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad
fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.
Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and
thrown into the fire. Thus by their fruit you will
recognize them. Same chapter, same author Jesus,
same sermon. Question.
How can you and I look out and watch out for false prophets if
we cannot judge the content of their teaching or evaluate the
fruit in their lives? If you're to go to the book of
John, John Chapter 7. Apparently Chapter 7 has a lot
to say about judging people. Look what Jesus says in John
Chapter 7. Jesus here stop judging by mere
appearances, but instead judge say it.
Hold on a second here Jesus you're confusing me.
I thought you said do not judge and now you're telling me don't
judge by mere appearances. I'm supposed to judge correctly.
Galatians chapter 6, verse one through 2, Paul teaching here to
the church in Galatia says this. Brothers and sisters, I'm going
to circle back to that. If someone is caught in a sin,
you who live by the Spirit should restore that person
gently, but watch yourselves or you also may be tempted.
Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the
law of Christ. How can I restore a person
caught in sin if I cannot judge whether or not they have sinned?
Furthermore, it appears that one of the things that spiritual
people do is acknowledge sinful behavior and step into those
moments to restore people gently.
Now let's go back to Matthew Chapter 7, the one that
everybody quotes, and let's do something radical.
You ready? Keep reading.
Anytime you find yourself with a with a verse that you don't get,
the solution is keep reading. OK Matthew Chapter 7 do not
judge or you 2 will be judged for in the same way you judge
others. You will be judged, and with the
measure you use it will be measured to you.
Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye
and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?
How can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of
your eye, when all the time there is a plank in your own
eye? Now watch this.
Jesus gives instructions, you hypocrite.
First take the plank out of your own eye, then you will see
clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.
Jesus isn't saying we don't get to deal with the specs in our
brother's eyes. He's saying before you get to
their speck, deal with your plank.
Jesus is not saying that there is no place for judging or that
judging should not take place. He's saying before you deal with
the small things in somebody else's life, make sure you're
dealing with the big things in your own life.
And if we don't deal with our own stuff first, we become
hypocrites and our message becomes too hard for our hearer
to receive. But if we don't deal with their
stuff, we are not loving a fellow brother or sister in
Christ. Let me say this to you, OK?
You will never be confronted by a perfect person, no matter who
comes to you outside of the conviction of the Holy Spirit.
Every person who comes to you and says, hey, this is not good,
there's going to be plenty of stuff that you could fire back
at them because they are not perfect.
They are saved, but they are in the process of being sanctified.
It's appears from the text that Jesus does not have a problem
with people being judged. He just wants it done with the
right posture. And for Jesus, it's more than
just having the right posture, it's also following the right
process. And Jesus actually lays out a
process for how to point out the sin in other people.
It's in Matthew chapter 18. Look what he has to say.
This is still Jesus talking. If your brother or sister,
you'll keep noticing. Brother and sister, brother and
sister, I promise I'll get to it.
If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault
just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have
won them over. But if they will not listen,
take one or two others along, so that every matter may be
established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.
If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church.
And if they refuse to listen, even to the church, treat them
as you would a Pagan or a tax collector.
So the right posture is, I'm going to be dealing with my
stuff. But I still see this.
I'm going to enter into this conversation gently.
I know that I'm not perfect, but I just want you to know I'm
seeing this in your life. And one thing's better.
I'm going to go to you personally.
If that doesn't work, I'm going to bring some other people.
If that doesn't work, I'm going to bring it to the church.
If that doesn't work, I don't think we're on the same team
anymore. It becomes corporate.
We're wearing different jerseys. Now, why does this matter to
Paul? Why is he telling the church
that he loves about this? It gets explained in verses 6-7
and eight. Your boasting is not good.
Don't you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of
dough? Get rid of the old yeast so that
you may be a new unleavened batch, as you really are.
For Christ, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed.
Therefore let us keep the festival, not with the old bread
leavened with mouse and wickedness, but with unleavened
bread of sincerity and truth. He's talking about two kinds of
breads. There's like the the Ritz
crackers, which is like the unleavened bread.
And then there's the I'm not a bread person.
Well, I mean, I eat bread. What?
Texas Roadhouse rolls. OK.
And in this context, here's what Jesus is saying.
I want you to be more like what you take for communion, which is
actually where the whole unleavened thing became a deal.
Then the, you know, Subs, same, whatever the what is it called,
Jenny? Regular bread, bread.
OK, you guys get it. I'm just thinking like there's a
junior higher out there. Like I don't.
I thought there was just bread. What you got Wonder bread and
communion bread and Jesus saying I want you to be communion
bread, not Wonder bread. Now why is he saying this?
Because the way you make the difference between comedian
bread and Wonder bread is just a little bit of yeast.
And if you allow just a little bit of yeast and it makes its
way through the whole batch, if I were to make you all brownies
and put just a little bit of poop in it, you would not call
them mostly good brownies. You know what you would call
them? Poop brownies.
And if I were to say, you know, I, I, I mean, I'm, it's it, I
kid you not, it was just, I was, it's a little bit, I don't think
any of you would be like, all right, it'll be OK.
You would go hold on a second. You tell me that there's poop in
those brownies. I want nothing to do with the
poop brownies. This is what Paul's trying to
create in the church. That just a little bit of sin
isn't worth it. I don't want it.
I don't want it in my life, and I don't want a little bit of sin
in your life. And John Wesley famously said
that what one generation tolerates, the next generation
will embrace. The sin that you were excusing
and allowing in your home will become habitual in those that
come after you. And if you and I don't stand for
truth and speak out against sin, it will consume those that we
love the most that will follow us.
Now, while Paul's telling this to these people, he says as you
really are, he's looking at them and saying, look, you're
navigating sin issues, but I want to remind you who you are.
He's acknowledging that this group of people who are
struggling with sin and tolerating sin are people who've
been washed by the blood of Jesus, who've been redeemed by
the blood of Jesus, who have been saved by the blood of
Jesus. And at the same time, he's
saying this is who you are in him.
Sin is taking back the ground that the cross of Jesus Christ
has claimed over your life. When you and I step into a
relationship with Jesus Christ in the area of salvation, we
become set apart, holy, made new, and sin loses its power and
its dominion over your life. You no longer have to be ruled
and governed by it. You don't have to worry about
the penalty of it because the penalty was paid in Jesus.
But what should happen in the life of a believer is our
appetite and our affections change.
Where before we wanted to sin, now we don't want to sin.
And while you and I are never going to become sinless, this is
you and I in heaven. This is when you and I will be
sinless. Right now we are saved but
sinful. But over time, we will sin less
and less as our appetite for Him outpaces our appetite for the
flesh and the world. And so when we sin, the natural
response for a Christian is to repent.
I don't want to do that anymore. Mourn, I'm sorry I did it.
Confess. I want somebody to help me make
sure that I don't do it again. However, if we are caught
sinning or caught up in sinning, we need people to point it out
to us. And when they point out a sin to
us, you and I have two options. We can either receive it and
repent, or we can reject it. That's why there's a process
that someone comes along to you and says, hey, do you see this
in your life? And you go, forget you.
I'm going to keep doing me. And then they're like, OK, well,
one-on-one didn't work. So now we're going to tag team
it. We're going to bring some other
people in that care about you and care about God.
And if that still doesn't work, then we're going to let other
people come in. And then eventually we're going
hold on a second. So you, you actually do not want
to be a part of the Kingdom of light.
You want to live your life in darkness.
We are wearing different jerseys.
Look what it says in verses 9 through 13.
I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually
immoral people. Not at all.
Meaning the people of this world who are immoral or the greedy
and the swindlers and idolaters. In that case, you have to leave
the world. Let me pause for just a second.
Paul starts off with the sin of the one guy, and I'm assuming
that there's nobody here today at any of our locations who's
having sex with his stepmom. If you were, you're thinking,
wow, this church has data like, yeah, this is my first time.
And they emailed Clayton. You're like, what?
And it'd be really easy for us to, like, look at that guy and
go, yeah, you got to stop your thing.
But Paul's saying, hold on a second, you got a thing, too?
What's the sin that you've allowed?
What's the sin that you've said? Yeah, that's just going to be
who I am. Paul starts listening off.
You know our sins. Sexually immoral, greedy,
idolaters, slanders, drunkards, swindlers.
Do not even eat with such people.
What business? What business is it of mine to
judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those
inside? God will judge those outside.
Expel the wicked person from among you.
He's saying this person is claiming to be a Christian but
refuses, refuses to acknowledge their sin and turn from their
sin. And he's saying that person you
do not have fellowship with. I'm not saying that your job is
to go around and judge everybody in the world because the world
has a different standard than Christians.
Christians have a king, and his name is Jesus, and we follow
him. We submit to him.
We believe that God's way is best for us.
He goes, but you cannot hold the world to the standard of
Christians. Now, as we've been going through
this, you've kind of seen this over and over again.
It's the phrase, brothers and sisters, confronting sin is
something we do for each other because we believe that we have
the same goal and the same ambition that we want to move
into the direction and the likeness of Him.
It's something we do for each other.
This is not the standard that we are holding the world to.
You can't do church discipline on people who aren't a part of
the church. You can't hold people to the
standard of Jesus who have yet not yet submitted their lives to
Jesus. At the very beginning, I asked
you a question. How do you know that you are
loved? May I submit to you that one of
the ways that you know you are loved and one of the ways you
know you truly love somebody is through discipline.
Pointing out sin and saying this needs to stop.
Most of you guys, you grew up with parents that disciplined
you. Some of you are gone.
No, I never experienced any kind of discipline.
You don't have to raise your hand.
We know who you are. Parents, you know this.
One of the most unloving things that you can do is not
discipline your children. Show me a kid that no one
corrects, no one disciplines, and I will show you a kid that
nobody truly loves. You see, discipline is done out
of love. It is a sign of love and it is a
sign of belonging. Do you know how many neighbor
kids I've yelled and screamed at?
Zero. Do you know how many of my kids
I have disciplined? I'm batting 100%.
OK. You disciplining your kids,
you're like, yeah, that makes total sense.
You doing that same discipline. You can't ground somebody else's
kid, right? It's a sign that you're in the
family. When you get disciplined by dad.
Watch what? Watch what?
Watch what the Bible has to say. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 6.
The Lord disciplines the ones he loves, and he chastens or
punishes everyone he accepts as his son.
Part of being in the family of God is God care enough about you
to say stop, you're better than that.
I've put something in you that is better than that.
You see, discipline is a sign of love and restoration is the
goal. We are not punishing to get a
pound of flesh. We are disciplining them so that
they can be restored into fellowship.
I want to speak to two groups of people for a second.
To those of you who have had somebody point something out in
you that needs to change. I know that Satan in that moment
fills you with all kinds of emotions and all kinds of
arguments, but I want you to hear me say this.
You were being loved. As you and I get older and
older, there are less people that we actually submit to.
We get to a point where we can kind of do whatever we want,
whenever we want. And so we run out of people who
we allow into our lives to speak truth over us and to speak hard
truths to us that are actually good for us.
Hear me, the person who pointed something out to you, they may
have said it wrong. They may even have had a plank
in their own eye. And their motives may not have
been perfect, but they just might have been loving you.
And it is unrealistic to think that you are doing everything
right. If you're walking through life
thinking you're doing nothing wrong, you think you're Jesus.
You're not. Which means that there are areas
of your life that you cannot see, that you are not aware of,
that you need somebody to speak into and go.
There's a blind spot in your life.
And if we're on the same team and we're both wanting to be
more like Jesus, your responses, Thank you for pointing that out
because I cannot know all the areas where I fall short.
For those of you who've been going through the 1st
Corinthians book, I didn't write a lick of it.
There's a guy who is on staff at our church.
He doesn't live in the area anymore.
His name is Walt. Walt has done 1000 beautiful
things for this church. And we are what we are in part
because of his service and his sacrifice.
And anybody who knows Walt knows that Walt will actually point
stuff out to you. And so as you're reading the
First Corinthians, that is Walt pastoring our church.
And one time I was in a meeting and I did something I didn't
know that I did that was wrong, but it was wrong.
And in a Walt fashion, I get an e-mail and it outlines all of
the areas where I had failed. And the problem is when you get
it from Walt, you're like, yeah, I guess that's 100% what
happened. And so he just blistered me in
this e-mail. And when I was done reading it,
I realized that I had sinned and I had failed.
And so the appropriate response is I emailed all the people that
were in the room and I said, I am so sorry.
This is what I did. Walt pointed this out to me.
I'm sorry. I should be better.
You deserve better. And I have shamed myself and my
family and I have not represented you or our Jesus
well. And guess what happened to the
way the people in that room viewed me?
They did not view me as less. They viewed me as more because
somebody pointed out a sin and I responded to it through
repentance. Do you know why you didn't hear
about this until right now? It's because after Walt brought
it to me, I said, you're exactly stinking, right?
If I had said, you know what, Walt, here's all the sins in
your life, you know what would have said Fairpoint?
I'll bring somebody else in. And Walt's one of those guys who
would have pulled up a group of people, sat down in my office
and said, OK, I tried the e-mail work, but you did sin.
I saw you need to repent. And if that didn't work, they'd
have brought it to the board. And eventually you all would
have had somebody up here on this stage reading an e-mail
about a sin in my life that I refused to repent over.
And then if the others were doing their job, they'd have
kicked me out, fired me. Why?
I'll tell you why. Because if we don't grieve sin,
we don't have the same God. If we don't want more of Jesus
in us, we are not on the same team anymore.
And so Walt loved me enough to speak into my life and help me
become a better follower of Jesus.
Now I want to talk to the second group of people.
There are some of you who you see people going through a
sinful situation or a sinful season.
And I want you to hear me say this.
One of the most loving things that you can do is to step into
it. It's going to be one of the most
scary things you can do, but it's also one of the most loving
things you can do. And I want to expose something
to you. You might be concerned with what
they are going to think about you, how it could change your
relationship with them. And I want you to know that
those thoughts are of Satan because he is subtly creating in
you idolatry where you are worshiping yourself and your
position and how people view you over how God views you.
You see, discipline is a sign of love and its goal is
restoration. Look what happens in First
Corinthians verse 5, verse 5. Why is Paul saying do this to
the guy? Hand this man over to Satan for
the destruction of the flesh so that his spirit may be saved on
the day of the Lord. The goal of telling somebody,
hey, there is sin in your life is that way Sin does not retake
control over their life. So they can turn from their life
of sin and live the life that God has called him to in a
posture of humility, covered in grace, following the godly
process with our eyes set on the goal of restoration, we need to
lovingly embrace discipline because we don't want to get to
heaven by ourselves. We want to get to heaven with
other people with us. And the truth is we live in a
world that would much rather tolerate sin, celebrate sin,
then be people who confront it and go I sent to I don't know if
you know that you just did this, but let's work this out with
Jesus together. That's actually the kind of
people that we want to be and we're afraid to be.
But with the power of the Holy Spirit.
It's possible we're moving to a time of decision to those of you
who are in here and you've never started an intimate personal
relationship with Jesus Christ. Let me just let me kind of take
this sermon and like boil it down to just something real
small for you to think through. You have two choices.
Sin and shame can be your master or truth and grace.
You can either live a life of sin and try to cover it in
shame, or you can allow the truth of Jesus to speak over
your life and experience the grace that was purchased through
his life. And if you have a choice, if you
want to know what happens if you follow one of those two masters,
you walk down that road. Sin and shame leads to death and
destruction and pain and isolation.
But the truth and grace of Jesus will take you to a place you
never thought possible. It is impossible to tell the
story of Jesus without truth and grace.
Jesus shows up as the sinless Son of God and lives a sinless
life. We didn't.
What does Jesus do? He tells us that we are sinners
who have ran away from the heart of God and our intended created
destiny. Jesus shows up on the scene and
he says look man, you failed. He speaks truth and at the same
time he is speaking truth. He says there is no way that you
could ever be saved. You are too bad.
You are too far gone. I know everything about you.
You're a Sinner. But because I love you, I moved
on your behalf. I paid a price that you could
not pay. I lived a life that you could
not live. And so not only are you a
Sinner, I'm a Savior. And sinners who encounter A
Savior can be saved. And so Jesus shows up, radically
exposing the sin in our lives and at the same time making a
way for us to be changed and redeemed.
And if you're here today, can I just tell you if you've never
started a relationship with Jesus, that's why this church
sings the songs we sing. That's why this church gets down
on our knees and pray. That's why we boldly proclaim
the truth of God's Word because we believe there's no better
place than life in Jesus. And we want that for every
person in here. And so in just a few moments,
when the people around you stand and sing and some of them come
to the steps and pray, I would encourage you to walk right over
there next to the baptistery or talk to a friend and say, what
do I need to do to get that kind of relationship today to the
rest of you in the room, to those of you who are Jesus
followers, two things and I'm going to be super
confrontational about it. One, is there a sin in your life
that needs to be destroyed? Is there a sin in your life that
is growing right now? When we're going through pain
and trauma and we're frustrated and we feel off balance because
of what's happening in the world, it can be so easy to
focus all of our attention on the sin in others than in the
sin that is in US. Deal ruthlessly through the
power of the Holy Spirit with the sin that is in your life.
Develop a godly brokenness over the areas where you fall short
or the areas where you have not yet claimed victory through the
power of Jesus Christ. Deal radically with the sin in
our own lives. And secondly, there's some of
you who through idolatry have been OK watching the lives of
other people spiritually burn to the ground because you're
worshiping yourself instead of worshiping a king.
And maybe it's time for you to go, man.
I don't know if you know this about you, but I just want you
to know I'm seeing this in you and I care about this.
And can I walk with you gently through it?
Are there conversations that you've been putting off that you
finally need to have? I'm going to be upfront with
you. This is First Corinthians
chapter 5. Since I know my Bible, I know
that we got to go through chapter 6, Chapter 7, chapter 8,
Chapter 9, chapter 10, Chapter 11, and chapter 12 before we get
to chapter 13. Love is patient.
We got a road ahead of us. Not an easy Rd. but I actually
think it's the road we need. So would you bathe it in prayer?
Would you stand with me? Heavenly Father, the only thing
we want is a work of your Holy Spirit in our lives and in this
place. We don't want anything that we
can manufacture. We don't want anything that we
can leap through. We don't want anything that we
can manipulate. We want to move of your spirit
in our hearts, in our families, in our community and in this
region got right now we are at our best.
And so God, would you use the momentum created by this moment
right here to draw us further into you to push us further into
your word and to the expansion of your Kingdom.
And you know, I pray. Amen.