Crossing Nation, How you doing? Are you doing good, man?
It's good to be with you. And if you don't get anything
out of today's message, I just want you to know this.
Our church loves you. I loves you.
I'm trying coffee, guys.
I started 2 weeks ago. I'm on the drip and who knows
what's going to happen today? OK.
But I do know this. I hate my breath because I don't
even want to talk to me. All right.
That being said, we, I want to welcome all of you joining from
our different locations, those of you watching online and those
of you who are part of our inside family.
I'm so glad that you're here today.
We are going to be talking about probably the second most famous
story in all of Scripture. You know, there's the story
about Jesus kind of a big deal, but then there's this one and
almost everybody. Even if you're not a Christian,
and if you're here today and you're not a Christian, you
probably have heard this story, which is a bit of a challenge as
a communicator, because how do you tell somebody something that
they probably already know? But what you guys are going to
do is you're going to pretend to be really attentive listeners.
And I'm going to pretend that you haven't heard this story
ever before. And I'm going to walk you
through it. And I believe, if you'll stay
with me all the way to the very end, that God will do a
transformative work in your life.
And at least one of three areas, the story we're talking about
today is the story of David and Goliath.
The scene is set up with the Philistine army on one hillside
and then there's a valley, the valley of Elah.
And then on the other side is the Israelite army.
And in in the middle of this valley is a small Ur valley.
And inside of this small Ur valley, eventually David will
reach down where there's some water running through it and he
will pick up some stones. We were going to be going to
Israel in about 6 weeks. When I went to Israel the first
time, I was in the valley of Elah and while the guides were
talking and people were conversing, I I bent down in
that very valley and pretended to tie my shoe.
And I picked up a rock and I put it in my pocket.
And then I was like, well, David picked up five smooth stones.
I picked up about 20, put them in different people's bags, got
them back to the states. I'm selling them.
If you guys want them, $1000 as where we're starting the bid, I
have them. I'm just going to say because
you never know when you're going to face your giant.
So there are these two opposing forces gathered on opposite
hillsides and a battle is about to take place from the
Philistine camp. There's there's a warrior.
Let's look at them. 17, Chapter 17, verse four.
A champion named Goliath. He was from Gath, came out of
the Philistine camp. The word champion here means man
of the interspaces. Turn to your neighbor, say
interspaces. It refers to a man who stood in
between 2 armies, a man who was willing to engage in single
combat for his army. Now let's take a deeper look
into this champion and what it would have been like to stand
against him. First Samuel, chapter 17, verses
4 through 7 give us a deep dive. This is what it has to say.
His height was 6 cubits in a span and you guys are all going
Yeah, of course it is. And he had a bronze helmet on
his head and he wore a coat of scale armor of bronze weighing
5000 shekels On his legs he wore bronze Greaves and a bronze
javelin was slung on his back. His spear chef was like a
weaver's rod and an iron point weighed 600 shekels, and the
shield bear went ahead of him. And those of you guys, you guys,
you're all going well. We're big, you know, into
ancient weights and measures. We already get the picture.
But for the two of you who don't know, let me unpack a little bit
of this. Goliath stood 9 feet tall.
In other words, if I was standing on a 24 inch stool,
that's how tall Goliath was. In fact, when I was growing up
for church and they did the school plays or the little
church plays, I never they never picked me to be Jesus.
Never. No, they never picked me to be
the Apostle Paul. Guess who I've always been in
every church play. Hey, Clayton, how about you play
Goliath? Yeah, the guy who dies.
OK. His attack weapons were all of
bronze or were all of iron and his defense weapons were all of
iron. The bronze helmet would go on
his head and then he had a coat of scale armor.
So think of like an Arctic Bass. And then how all of those scales
covered on the back and it weighed 125 pounds.
And he would just put this on and it would protect, completely
protect him. Then he had a spear that was the
size of a Weaver's Rod. And all of you guys, when you're
at Home Depot picking out your wife, a brand new Weaver's Rod,
you're going, boy, that's a pretty big Weaver's Rod.
Think about 10 feet long. And then on the end there was a
2 foot long point that weighed an additional £15.00.
So this guy was hurling a 25 pound death instrument at his
enemies. And add to all of this there was
a shield bearer who was going in front of him First Samuel 17.
Eight through 11, Goliath stood and shouted to the ranks of
Israel. Why do you come out and line up
for battle? Am I not a Philistine?
And are you not servants of Saul?
Choose a man and have him come down to me.
If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your
subjects. But if I overcome him and kill
him, you will become our subjects and serve us.
Then the Philistines said This day I defy the armies of Israel.
Give me a man, and let us fight each other.
On hearing the Philistines words, Saul and all the
Israelites were dismayed and terrified.
The people were dismayed and terrified for obvious reasons.
Who is going to fight this giant?
And if they fight this giant, will they win?
The good news is if we go out and we find someone who can
fight this guy and we win, nobody else has to die.
I like that part. Bad news.
If we find a guy who's willing to fight Goliath and he loses,
good news is only one person has to die, because if we all go off
to war, there's a chance that some of us are going to die in
the fight. Worst news, if the guy we pick
goes out to fight Goliath and he loses, we all become slaves.
As the story unfolds, Jesse, David's father, is too old to be
out to war. And so he's been sending David
back and forth to the war to get reports about how his oldest
three sons are doing in the battle.
And then he has David come back, give a report, take care of the
sheep for a while. Then Jesse's going, I got to
know what's going on with the war.
And so he sends David, and David has been going back and forth.
So Jesse brings David in and says, David, I want you to go
back to the front lines. I want you to take this food
that I've gathered together, and I want you to give it to your
brothers. And then I've got this pile of
cheese that I want you to give to the commanding officer
because, you know, every boss wants a bunch of cheese.
And so maybe he'll be like, hey, this cheese is so good, let's
keep these guys at the back of the line.
And so he sends David out to bring back a report on how
everybody is holding up. Well, David leaves and he
arrives at the war camp just as the Army was getting ready to go
out to their battle lines. And Goliath issued his
challenge, and everybody hears this challenge.
And every time he issues this challenge, the Israelites would
flee from him in great fear. But David has a different
perspective. While everybody else is
frustrated and scared and dismayed, he's looking at
Goliath and going, who is this guy making such claims about the
armies of the living God? Who would dare come against the
people of God? And not just any God, a living
God. And so he's paying attention to
what everybody's saying. And David learns that Saul is
offering an incredible reward to whoever goes and fights Goliath
and wins. It's a threefold reward.
The first one is you will get great wealth.
Pretty nice. The second thing is you get to
marry one of his daughters, which if you're tired of being
single now you got a girl who you don't have to ask out, she's
just your wife now. And then the third thing is, and
this is where it gets really good, your family is exempt from
taxes. This is where all of our
campuses in Illinois are like, I understand now one of us is
going to go fight. We have got to deal with this.
You know, those of you who are part of our Iowa campus and our
our two Missouri campuses, Like, I don't get that part.
I don't understand why the tax thing's such a big deal.
But those of us in Illinois were like, we need a Goliath right
now. And I'm already signing up to
fight him. I don't care how big he is.
Saul is trying to incentivize someone to go out and fight the
Goliath. And so far there have been pay
attention to this zero takers, no matter how good the reward
is. Nobody is saying, Yep, I'm going
to go out and fight this giant. But word eventually reaches Saul
that David seems to be having a different feeling about this
entire set up, that David might be the guy who's willing to go
and fight the giant. So Saul sends for David.
This is their interaction, David said to Saul, let no one lose
heart on account of this Philistine.
Your servant will go and fight him, Saul replied.
You are not able to go out against this Philistine and
fight him. You are only a young man and he
has been a warrior from his youth.
David volunteers to go and fight, but Saul's like you know
what? You don't stand a chance and
David doesn't take no for an answer.
He starts to walk Saul through his resume, and his resume is
pretty impressive. I'm going to walk through this
part slowly. I just want you to feel the
imagery that we get here, verses 34 through 36.
But David said to Saul, your servant has been keeping his
father's sheep. When a lion or a bear came and
carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it as you
do, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth.
When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair.
He fights like a girl struck it and killed it.
Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear.
Did you see all of this? He's not taking care of his
father's sheep. A bunch of sheep out there, lion
or a bear, show up, grab one of the little sheep sees, starts
running off with it. And you know what he doesn't do?
He doesn't go well. You win some, you lose some, he
says. Oh no, not today.
He chases down a lion, smacks it, grabs it out of its mouth.
No, if the lion or the bear turns on him, grabs it by the
hair, whacks it and kills it. How many of you guys have been
to a zoo? Yeah, Yeah.
And from a distance, you know how they set it up where it
feels like you're close but you're just not like that's
where you go to. Like most zoos, you kind of feel
close to the animals, but you're you're really not.
Now, if you want the opposite experience, go to the Peoria Zoo
because that's where we went. We went to the Peoria Zoo and
they have a tiger. And most places have like the
the railing and then a big valley and then, you know, the
tiger. Not the Peoria Zoo.
The Peoria Zoo has like a broken railing and chicken wire.
And I'm assuming there's been some budget cuts because that
tiger looked hungry and we were kind of walking along and I was
going, you don't stand a chance, 0% chance that if this thing
decided it wanted out, that you could stop it.
And if it got a hold of you, so I mean, I I knew that it was
like a lower end one. So we took my mother-in-law in
case it did get out, you know, shook her hand with some sweet
baby rays on it, said it's so good you're here, wiped in her
hair and said you go first. Right.
This is the David is seeing this and he's going, yeah, I've
killed lions and bears. And he's not doing this from
afar. He's doing this from up close.
David was built different. I'm guessing he didn't have like
cool Instagram filters. I'm guessing he was horrible at
Minecraft. He's like, yeah, I'm not really
good at at those things. I'm I'm more into killing lions
and bears with my bare hands. I mean like it.
I always have like an exit strategy in case things go
South, right? Like I sit.
And how many of you guys, when you, me and my wife fight over
this, when you go to a restaurant, how many of you want
to make sure you can see the door in case somebody crazy you
want to see it first? Yeah.
The rest of you savages are just sitting there going.
Somebody else is going to save me.
But those of us, we're reading our Mexican.
We want to see the front door in case someone comes in.
And if if you're navigating like a lion or a bear, you got to
have a strategy. My strategy?
Well, you guys know the strategy.
You always invite a fat friend, right?
Like if you're camping with a bunch of friends and you're
hanging around the campfire and you notice that you're the only
fat guy, your trip insurance. These aren't your friends.
If an animal shows up that tries to kill him, you're the
sacrifice. You're the you are going to play
the role of Jesus, OK? You always reminded me of Jesus.
You're going to die for our sins because we're out of here.
David doesn't allow himself that kind of position.
He goes out and he kills a lion and a bear, and then David draws
a connection. A connection That's a pretty
profound one. Look at verse 36.
This uncircumcised Philistine Goliath will be like one of
them, the lion or the bear, because he has defied the armies
of the living God. The Lord, who rescued me from
the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear, will rescue me from
the hand of this Philistine Saul said to David, Go, and the Lord
be with you. This is what David says.
I've been in difficult situations before, and in those
difficult situations, the Lord rescued me.
So this issue with Goliath is just another difficult situation
that I'm going to find myself in, and it's just another
opportunity for God to deliver me.
He's not boasting in his abilities, he's boasting in
God's Now Saul tries to help David prepare for this battle,
and he puts his own armor on David and David's like, I can't
walk around and all of this stuff, this doesn't fit me and
I'm not used to it. I'm going to go out and I'm
going to fight this giant in the same outfit that I protect my
father's sheep in verse 40. Then he took his staff in his
hand. He chose 5 smooth stones from
the stream. He put them in the pouch of his
shepherd's bag and with his sling in his hand approached the
Philistine. Meanwhile, the Philistine, with
his shield bearer in front of him, kept coming closer to
David. He looked David over and saw
that he was a little more than a boy glowing with health and
handsome. You know, I understand David,
and he despised him. OK?
He said to David. Am IA dog, that you will come at
me with sticks. And the Philistine cursed David
by his gods. Come here, he said, and I'll
give your flesh to the birds and the wild animals.
David said to the Philistine. You come against me with sword
and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of
the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel whom you
have defied. This day, the Lord will deliver
you into my hands, and I'll strike you down and cut off your
head. This very day I will give the
carcass of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild
animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in
Israel. And those gathered here will
know that it is not my sword or spear that the Lord saves, for
the battle is the Lord's, and he will give all of you into our
hands as David steps into the interspaces.
Goliath is caught off guard for 40 days and for 40 nights he has
stepped out from the ranks of the Philistine army and he has
issued this challenge. And for 40 days and for 40
nights, no one has accepted. And all of a sudden a small boy
emerges to fight him. Who is this that they are
sending to fight me? A boy?
He's insulted and he has issued these threats, and they're more
than idle threats. We're told that he's been a
warrior from his youth. How many times has Goliath stood
in this very spot? We know he's undefeated because
if he had been defeated, he wouldn't have been issuing the
challenge. And the warrior that they send
is a boy. He would not be standing in
front of the Israelite army if he hadn't won every single time.
But David's reply is so incredibly strong.
This is what David is saying to Goliath.
You are coming at me with a sword and a spear and a javelin,
but I am coming at you in the name of the Almighty God, and
you can't cut him. You can't throw a spear at him,
You can't put a javelin through him.
You are fighting against my God, and he is going to put you into
my hands. Verse 48.
As the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly
toward the battle line to meet him.
Reaching into his bag and taking out a stone, he slung it and
struck the Philistine on the forehead.
The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell face down
on the ground. So David triumphed over the
Philistine with a sling and a stone.
Without a sword in his hand, he struck down the Philistine and
killed him. David ran, stood over him.
He took hold of the Philistine sword and drew it from the
sheath. After he killed him, he cut off
his head with. The sword.
I got a couple takeaways for you.
Take away #1. Sometimes you are going to have
to fight a battle that belongs to someone else who should have
been fighting Goliath that that day.
It wasn't David. There was an obvious choice in
Israel as to who should fight Goliath.
Why wasn't Saul fighting Goliath?
The Bible goes out of its way to tell us some special physical
features about Saul. Look what it says, like go all
the way back to Chapter 9. Kish had a son named Saul, as
handsome as a young man as could be found anywhere in Israel, and
he was a head taller than anyone else.
It doesn't just bring this up once, it brings this up again.
Look at verse chapter 10, verse 23.
They ran and brought him. This is Saul out.
And as he stood among the people, he was a head taller
than any of the others. Who was Israel's champion?
Who was the one who was bigger than everybody else?
It was Saul. If you were picking based on
physical features, who would be the champion For Israel it would
have been him. But for 40 days and for 40
nights, nobody stepped forward, not even Saul.
But check this out. Saul wasn't just big, he was
accomplished in battle. Look what it says in 1st 14
verses 47 through 48. After Saul had assumed rule over
Israel, he fought against their enemies inside Moab, the
Ammonites, Edom, the kings of Zoba, and the Philistines.
Wherever he turned, he inflicted punishment on them.
He fought valiantly and defeated the Amalekites, delivering
Israel from the hands of those who had plundered them.
Saul was the obvious choice. He was head and shoulders above
everybody else, and he was accomplished in battle.
But. He didn't have the faith that
God would deliver him if he faced a giant.
There are some of you that are going to have to fight a battle
that belongs to somebody else. Right now, all across our
locations, there are some of you who are going to have to fight a
battle that somebody else should have fought.
You're going to have to step into an area that you never
thought you were going to have to face.
For some of you, it's going to be raising grandkids.
You didn't see that one coming. For some of you, you're going to
have to have tough conversations with managers or leaders in the
organization about ethics, and it shouldn't have been on you to
do it. Some of you, You're going to end
up raising a child by yourself because your spouse walked out.
And you're going to find yourself fighting a battle that
you never thought you'd have to fight.
You're going to find yourself fighting a battle that belonged
to somebody else. I just want you to know, if you
find yourself in that spot, God sees you and he's with you, and
the battle belongs to the Lord. Take away #2.
Faith is a muscle. I'm going to break this down in
two parts, so just stay with me. Saul didn't have to let David
fight Goliath. David proved that he was ready
to fight Goliath because he had brought receipts.
He had a track record of faithfulness.
He had killed the lion, he had killed the bear, and he believed
that God would protect him in the fight against Goliath.
People will sometimes come up to me at church and say that they
want to go into full time ministry.
And you know what I like to do inside of my head?
I don't say this out loud because that would be rude.
But in my head I go, where's the lion or the bear?
If you haven't already been faithful in your walk with the
Lord personally, what makes you think that you're ready to
navigate it organizationally? There's people who want to be
leaders in the church, and I just kind of want to look
around. Look for the bear skin.
Look for the lion skin. Some of you, how many of you
bought your kid an absolutely brand new car when they turned
16? Like just like, yeah, we're
we're idiots. So we kind of we're so rich.
We were like, we want to wreck a new vehicle, right.
What do you do? You give your kid, You know, I
don't want to say a car because then someone's going to be like,
you hurt my feelings. I saved so long for this car.
But you know, the car that you're like, OK, that'll be his
first car. Like, God bless Honda's, right.
And it's got 300,000 miles. It doesn't even need oil, which
is good because she's not going to change it.
And you just give it to him and let it ride, right?
And once they're faithful with the old car, over time you allow
them to have a nicer car when they're paying for it.
Your kid, your kid wants a cell phone.
Well, have you been faithful with your comforter?
And have you learned to make your bed?
Are you doing a good job with your iPad?
Are you being nice to your mom? Are you getting yourself ready
in the morning before I'm going to trust you?
The bigger thing You need to be faithful in smaller things.
You have to learn to be faithful and trustworthy in smaller
areas, and when you do that, your faith and your faithfulness
grows. Faith is a muscle.
Which leads me to this point. God is the one who did the work.
David's job was to have the faith.
You might be wondering, how did David know that God was going to
deliver him, That he was going to win against Goliath?
It's because of the lion and the bear.
Faith is a muscle because David had turned over the situation
against the lion to God, and he had turned over the situation
against the bear to God. He was used to turning things
over to God, and he had built up confidence.
His faith had been strengthened. And so when it came to the
Giant, it wasn't about what he was facing, It was about who he
was facing it with. His faith in God had grown.
Faith is a muscle, and the more you use it, the stronger it
becomes. Here's what I mean.
The more areas of your life that you turn over to Jesus, the more
areas of your life you will want to turn over to Jesus.
Because after you see his faithfulness in these areas,
you'd be like, well, I want to see his faithfulness in this
area and I want to see his faithfulness in this area.
More than likely, one of the reasons why you are struggling
in a particular area you keep hitting a lid is because you
don't believe that God has the solution for the challenge that
you're facing. So you keep bumping up against
it. You keep thinking I'm going to
try all these other ways because you don't have enough faith that
you haven't developed a track record.
That God took care of me here, God took care of me here.
God took care of me here, God took care of me here.
And when you face this, you'll have the faith to believe that
God will take care of you in this situation too.
David's courage came from knowing that God was faithful in
his past and would be faithful in his present and.
This is one of the tough challenges.
Because God always chooses to work through people with faith,
it is impossible to please him without it.
And God does His mighty works through people of faith.
Let me explain to you. God is the one who freed the
people from Pharaoh, but Moses is the one who had to stand and
defy the oppressors. God was the one who parted the
Red Sea, but Moses had to stand on the banks.
God was the one who parted the Jordan River, but the people
still had to put their feet out when the waters were waging.
God was the one who brought the walls of Jericho down, but the
people still had to do The Walking.
God was the one who delivered the midnights into the hands of
Gideon, but they still had to blow the trumpets and break the
jars. God was the one who made Peter
walk on water, but Peter was the one who had to step out of the
boat. God was the one who fed the
5000, but the boy was the one who had to give up his lunch.
Some of us, we want our marriage to get better.
But we want our spouse to be the one who does the repenting.
Oh, you're like, I like this sermon.
Until then, OK, stay with me. It gets worse.
We want Jesus to change our work environment and reduce the
drama, but we want them to do the changing.
We want our families and friends to know about Jesus, but we want
somebody else to do the praying, the inviting, and the
discipling. We want a closer walk with
Jesus, but we want somebody else to do the praying.
We lack the courage to believe that God will show up and bring
about change. We want God to do the work and
everybody else. Instead of believing that God
could do the work in us, if you want to see God, move.
And if you want to see God do something, it starts with you
moving out of the ranks and in front of the giant giant,
believing that God will get you through.
I don't know why this happened, but a while back I just started
kind of having soundtracks to my sermons.
It makes me a complete dork. And late 1 night I was going, I
was on my phone and I came across this like 30 second clip.
And of worship. And it hit me in such a profound
way the next day I searched and searched and searched until I
could find it again. I have to issue a disclaimer.
This style of worship is not ideal.
There's things about the the worship that I'm not necessarily
OK with theologically. But there was something about
the way that they were singing it that moved me in a profound
way. I don't understand these
artists. Their songs are like 50 minute
songs. So, like, imagine if they were
leading worship at our church. Guys, we're just going to have
three songs. Then we're going to get right
into the sermon. You're like, Oh my goodness, you
better order some food. And because we're going to be
here a while, like 3 hours later, everybody's asleep, then
I get up. Well, that's about what it is,
OK. But I was in a season where it
just kind of felt like there were a bunch of challenges.
Giants if you will. And the way that they were
singing this one part of the song impacted me in a profound
way. And I would say for the last 6
to 8 months, this song, this 50 minute song, and I'm not going
to play the whole thing for you, has been the soundtrack of the
sermons that I've preached and I want to share it with you.
Watch this video. If I ever needed you, I.
Need you now if I ever wanted you.
I want you. That's no better time.
I If I ever needed you, I need you now.
There's no better time. If I ever needed you.
I need you if I ever wanted you. Oh, I want you now.
If I ever needed you, I need you.
If I ever needed you, I I need you now.
If I ever knew dead. I need you now.
If I ever need night, I need you.
Now I want to play it again too, and I just want to kind of want
to take you through what I think about when I think about you in
this song. There's some of you.
You haven't felt God in a really long time.
You haven't seen him, you haven't experienced him, and
you're kind of wondering where he is.
But you won't experience God when you're standing among the
ranks, because you don't need him when you're hiding.
But when you decide to take a step out and say this giant in
my life needs addressed, needs dealt with, if you were to pick
a prayer, it would be this one. If I ever needed you, I need you
right now. God, my parenting is falling
apart, and no matter what I try, it's not working.
I don't know what to do. I don't know how to get through.
If I ever needed you, I need you right now.
My marriage. My spiritual walk.
My finances. God, this giant is too big.
And I don't know what to do and I don't know how to proceed.
I don't know what I'm supposed to do.
God, I need you. And I know I'm going to need you
next month. And I know I'm going to need you
next week. And I know I'm going to need you
tomorrow. But God, I'm not so much worried
about an hour from now. I'm worried about right now.
My addiction doesn't need you tomorrow.
It needs you now. If I ever needed you, I need.
I need you now. And you are going to have to
take a step, a step of faith to believe that God will meet you
in the battle. Now, I don't want to make every
single thing that you're facing out to be a Goliath, and I don't
want you all walking out of here thinking that you are warriors.
But the bottom line is, is every single day you are going to face
a challenge, and you have two choices.
To stay in the ranks or to believe that God we'll see you
through. And there are people who need
you to take down the giants and the challenges and the fears and
the worries and the anxieties and the uncomfortablest nature
of sharing your faith. But you also need to know this
4th take away Goliath was not the biggest giant that God
defeated. There has always been a giant A3
headed dragon, if you will. Satan sin and death, and Satan
tries to steal and kill and destroy all that God has for his
people. Sin brings pain and envy and
strife and evil into every relationship and every
experience, and the inevitable result is death.
Oh, it's a physical death, and it's a spiritual death, but it's
also an emotional death, a relational death.
But the good news of the gospel is that we too have a champion.
A man of the interspaces, he is 100% human, and so he
understands the human experience.
But he's 100% God, who has power over life and death.
He comes from miraculous beginnings, Born of a virgin,
his birth heralded by angels, visited by wise men from a
distant country. Grew up in Nazareth.
Ministered along the Sea of Galilee, the confounder of
religious elites. He's a friend of sinners.
He's a water walking, miracle working, demon casting, cross
caring, resurrecting, king. And he hung in the inner spaces.
For you and for me to make a way, when there was no way, to
bring about freedom to you and to me.
However, to experience it, to receive it, and to pass it on
requires you to take the step of faith to receive it and share
it. And I hope you'll do just that.
We're moving to a time of decision.
One of the things I love about this church is that every single
week there is somebody who chooses to start an intimate,
personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
And sometimes we know who it is, and sometimes we have no clue
who it is. But right now, here at our 48th
St. location, and to those of you who are watching online,
there is somebody who has never said yes to Jesus.
And if I could put this sermon in your spiritual context.
Here's what you need to know. You can't earn your salvation.
You can't stack up against the giant that faces you.
You don't stand a chance against Satan.
You don't stand a chance against sin, and you don't stand a
chance against death. You've already messed it up.
You've already disqualified yourself from the fight.
But Jesus was our warrior who stood in the interspace on your
behalf. See, the only way that you are
getting to heaven is if you are righteous and you're not.
But when Jesus died on the cross for your sins, he took our sin
on himself and he gave us his righteousness.
That's why the Bible screams by his stripes, we are healed.
And if you're here today, or watching online and you've never
started an intimate, personal relationship with Jesus Christ,
you need to be saved. You need salvation.
And salvation, the Bible tells us, Jesus tells us, is only
found in him that if you want to be in heaven, if you want to be
with the Father, there was only one way to the Father.
Jesus is the way and the truth and the life, and no one comes
to the Father except through him.
You might You might have a really good metabolism.
It's not going to do. You any good?
You might give to a lot of charities.
Not going to do you a bit of good.
You might be extra nice to your dog.
You might even have a cat. And none of those good works
matter. You could have been faithful to
your wife your whole life. You could have, you know, been a
really good employee. You could have prayed 10 times a
day before you even got to work outside of a relationship with
Jesus Christ. Where you receive His work on
the cross in your life, there is a 0% chance that you enter into
the glories of heaven. Jesus stepped in and fought the
battle that we could never win. All you have to do is say I'm
ready to receive it and accept it, be changed by it, and live
differently because of it. And if you're here today and you
have questions about what happens after you die and you're
not sure where you stand. There's somebody right over
there by the Baptistery in just a second, who'd love a chance to
talk to you about that. To the rest of you in the room,
you're wanting to see a move of God.
You're wanting to see him do something in your life.
You've been bumping up against the same challenge, the same
addiction, the same sin, the same situation.
You've got a proverbial Goliath in front of you.
It is not going away. And it might not even be yours
to fight, but it is in your. Way so I'm going to.
Encourage you to do whatever it is.
Would you spend some time on the steps praying that God would use
you to address it? Would you spend some time on
your knees saying, God, I can't fight this on my own.
You are going to have to fight this battle.
You are going to have to deliver the victory and hear me.
There are people all around you that need people who've been
transformed by that kind of faith to point them to Jesus,
and he wants to use you. We pray those kind of prayers.
Would you stand with me, God? I'm asking you to do a work
today, a work that only you can do in ways that only you can do
it. God, You know, the full extent
of the pain and the heartache and the sorrow and the fear and
the anxiety that people are facing.
God, you know, for every single person in this room at all of
our locations, exactly what they're going through and
exactly what they need God give. Us the humility to receive your
guidance, your counsel to recognize that we can't do this
on our own. But God give us the courage to
step out and believe that you will be faithful.
And you name my praying. Amen.