Last weekend was a special weekend here at the crossing.
And to those of you who served, and when I say served, if you
are a greeter and tech and worship and kids ministry,
parking lot, coffee bar, new gear booth, section leaders, you
know who you are If you served. You know who you are.
If you parked far away, if you give financially support, the
ministry of the Crossing. If you are a person who was
inviting people. To those of you who are part of
the 3:00 PM prayer club, I just got a quick update for you.
God did it. We had 15,000 191 people on site
or inside at one of our locations and thousands more
John joined online. Our goal is to make this region
the hardest place on planet earth to get the help from and
we are taking ground and it is such a joy to do ministry
alongside each and every single one of you is we try to help
other people find what we found in an intimate personal
relationship with Jesus Christ. I also want to update those of
you who have been praying for our Weaver location.
They had 410 people on Easter weekend.
We are so proud of you guys and the team that God has assembled
up there and can't wait to see what God does next.
And in addition to all of that, we are celebrating 39 baptisms
from this past weekend, which brings us to 420 for the year.
God is up to something, and that means it is not a time for us to
let off the gas. Keep praying, keep inviting, and
let's find out what happens when we have a can't stop, won't stop
attitude for the Kingdom of God. I want to welcome all of our
different locations, those of you here at 48th St. all of our
different locations across this region, those of you watching
online, and those of you who are a part of the crossing inside.
Last week we started a sermon series called Unexpected, and we
began the series with a story about Zacchaeus and how Jesus
dealt with a person that other people would have called the
worst of the worst, sinners like you and me.
And we learned that Jesus came to seek and save those who are
lost. Well, today we're going to jump
all the way to the other end of the social religious spectrum
and see how Jesus interacts with somebody that everybody would
have said is the best of the best.
John chapter 3, verse one. Now there was a Pharisee, a man
named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council.
Quick background, Nicodemus is a Pharisee.
He is 1 of the 71 most powerful men in the nation of Israel by
being a part of the Sanhedrin. When you think of him, I want
you to think of him as part Supreme Court Justice, part US
senator, and part Bishop. He had dedicated himself to the
word of God. He was a respected teacher.
He was somebody that everybody looked up to.
Little Jewish moms would talk to their little Jewish boys and say
one day, I hope you end up like Nick John, chapter 3, verse two.
He came to Jesus at night and said, Rabbi, we know that you
are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can perform the
signs that you are doing if God were not with him.
Lots have been said and speculated about the fact that
Nicodemus shows up to talk to Jesus at night.
It could have been that Nicodemus, because he was a very
important person, had a very busy schedule and this was the
only time that worked. And it makes perfect sense that
he could have been sent by the other members of the ruling
council to investigate this Jesus be who was doing all kinds
of things. And so he was simply just
waiting for the right time for his calendar and Jesus calendar
to collide. But others have wondered, and
I'm in agreement with them, that perhaps the fact that this took
place at night was on purpose. It was deliberate.
He didn't want to be seen. He didn't want to admit that
there was something special and different about Jesus that was
stirring in his soul. Part of the reason why I feel
this way is when you read the Gospel of John and you read
first, second, and third John, all written by the same guy.
He goes out of his way all throughout those books and
letters that he writes to highlight the contrast between
light and darkness. Light has come into the world,
but darkness has not has not understood it.
We are to be children of the light and we are to put away the
deeds that are done in darkness. And Nicodemus shows up at night.
Maybe part of the reason he was coming at night is he had way
too much to lose by being associated with the one who was
turning the religious world upside down.
John chapter 3 verse 3. Jesus replied very truly.
I tell you, no one can see the Kingdom of God unless they are
born again. Now Jesus answers a question
that Nicodemus is not asking. Nicodemus shows up and Jesus
almost cuts him off and goes in a completely different
direction. Now there is way more going on
here but you have to back up to see it.
Quick reminder, when you are reading your Bible, when it's
like John chapter 3 verse 3, the chapter 3 and the verse three
are not inspired, they're not from God.
They're just simply a tool to make sure that you and I are
looking at the exact same verse in a relatively efficient period
of time. So if you were to write a letter
to your wife, you wouldn't go baby chapter 3 verse one, like
you just write it and it just be one big letter.
And that's what these were. So if you want to see what's
happening, sometimes when you're reading this and you get chapter
headings and you get verses, it can kind of interrupt a train of
thought. So if you were to peel all of it
off and you're to back up just a little bit, it sets the stage a
little bit differently. John chapter 2, verse 23.
Now while Jesus was in Jerusalem at the Passover festival, many
people saw the signs that Jesus was performing and believed in
Jesus name. But Jesus would not entrust
himself to them, for he knew all about people.
He did not need any testimony about mankind, for He knew what
was in each man. Now there was a man, a Pharisee
named Nicodemus. There's a, You guys have
probably done this, you're at a different place and you're on,
you're travelling and you decide that you're hungry and you're
going to go get something to eat.
And what do we do? We look at the reviews.
We kind of have an idea of the type of restaurant we want to go
to. We see how expensive it is.
And then we kind of look at the reviews and we allow the reviews
to tell us whether or not we are going to trust that restaurant
with our digestive tract, right? Like, you know what, this place
has got some sketchy reviews, but we're in the mood for sushi,
so let's pick the one that's closest to the hotel.
We're not wanting an away game, so you're looking in there.
Well, if it's your hometown restaurants, you know, all the
restaurants you go to and all the ones that you avoid, you
don't need a review because you know what to expect.
Jesus doesn't need any reviews from anybody.
He knows exactly what's going on in a person's heart.
He knows exactly what's going through their mind.
He doesn't need anybody to tell him anything about anyone,
because He knows absolutely everything there is to know
about absolutely every single person.
Jesus did not entrust Himself to them because He knew what was in
a man. Now, there was a man named
Nicodemus. Jesus knows exactly what's going
on in Nicodemus's heart, exactly what's going on in Nicodemus's
mind. Nothing is off limits.
That's kind of comforting about Jesus and scary.
If you've ever done something and you were doing the right
thing, but everybody took it wrong, you kind of like the fact
that Jesus knows you were trying to do the good thing.
You just screwed it up. You like that He knows your
heart. You like that He knows that your
intentions were good and your intentions were pure.
It's comforting to know in those times that Jesus knows what's
going on in our heart and what's going on in our mind at the same
time. Sometimes you did the good
thing, but you did it for bad reasons.
You can fool other people, but you can't fool God.
He knows exactly what's going through your heart, exactly
what's going through your mind. He knows how dark it can
actually be. Nicodemus shows up.
Now there was a man and he shows up and he acknowledges that
Jesus is a great teacher. And today there are people all
over the globe who will acknowledge that Jesus was
indeed a historical person in the 1st century and that his
teachings were indeed spectacular.
Something special about him, something different about this
man named Jesus. And they'll say, you know what?
Those teachings were good. And we could even put these into
our life. They're powerful.
They're worth following. And Jesus was a great teacher.
But Jesus did not show up to teach.
He did not show up to further our educational pursuits.
Jesus came to save and he looks at Nicodemus and he says you
will not see the Kingdom of God unless you are born again.
This would have hit Nicodemus like a ton of bricks.
He was one of the most respected religious people of his day.
Very few people knew the scriptures like Nicodemus knew
the scriptures. Very few lived a more devoted
life than Nicodemus lived. However, it is not knowledge
that saves, nor is it religious adherence.
He tells Nicodemus that he must be born again, that he must be
born from above, that he must have a spiritual birth.
And Nicodemus took it like a donkey learning French.
He I don't want to demonstrate that because I don't know how
that would go, but you get the idea.
It's not computing, so Jesus unpacks it like this.
John chapter 3 verses 4 through 5.
This is Nicodemus talking. How can someone be born when
they are old? Nicodemus asked.
Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother's
womb to be born. Jesus answered very truly.
I tell you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God unless they are
born of water and the Spirit. No one has ever gone into heaven
except the one who came from heaven, the Son of Man.
That's Jesus. Just as Moses lifted up the
snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up
that everyone who say this next word believes may have eternal
life in Him. Lots have been said about being
born of water and of the Spirit. I will just tell you that
baptism in the water accompanies the Spirit Jesus.
When he was baptized in the water, the Holy Spirit descended
upon him like a dove. In Acts chapter 2, verse 38, the
very first gospel message, it says that we are to be baptized
and then we will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Just like you needed a physical birth to arrive on earth, you
need a spiritual birth to be in the spiritual Kingdom of God.
Then he takes Nicodemus all the way back to the Old Testament
and he mentions the snake lifted on a pole.
He goes all the way back to the Israelites and those of you who
remember decisions in the desert that we were doing last year,
you guys might remember this, but quick recap, the Israelites
are in slavery in Egypt. God sends Moses and 10 plagues
to deliver the people from slavery from the Egyptians and
they leave Egypt and they're going through the desert.
They come to the Red Sea. God parched the Red Sea, they
walk through on dry ground. When they're thirsty, He gives
them water to drink in the middle of the desert when
there's no food, He gives them food every single day in the
desert. And when they need a place to
go, he gives them the pillar of cloud by day, in the pillar of
fire by night to guide them. And then they get all the way to
the edge of the promised land. And God says go into the
promised land. But because there are people in
the promised land that the Israelites were afraid of, they
had more fear about man than they had faith in God.
And so God said, I'm going to punish you because a good father
punishes his children. And he says, listen, if you
don't have faith to trust me to go in here.
If you don't believe that I'll take care of you there.
Even though I've taken you through all these other areas,
you're going to wander in the desert for 40 years.
So now the people are going back into the to the desert and
they're wandering around and like most kids, they get mad at
their parent for the discipline that they're experiencing.
And so they start popping off at the mouth to God.
And they're going, it would have been better if you hadn't even
rescued us if you'd never delivered us, if you'd have just
left us back there. So God said, all right, I'm
going to punish you again. I know this is going to be tough
to hear. Just track with me.
So God sends poisonous snakes out to bite the people and they
begin to die. And then all of a sudden, when
the people start experiencing the poisonous snakes, they all
of a sudden become believers in God again because they go, hey,
God, we believe in you and would you stop this?
So now they believe that God can actually take care of the
snakes, even though they didn't believe that God would take care
of them in the promised land. And so God says, OK, take a
snake, make it out of bronze and put it on a staff and hoist it
high. Put it on a pole, hoist it high.
And if you get bit, all you have to do is look at the snake in
faith and you will be healed. So when little Johnny got bit by
the snake, he would go, Oh my goodness, I'm dying.
And then little Johnny would look up and he'd see the snake
and in faith he'd believe that if he saw the bronze snake
lifted on the pole, that he would be healed, that he would
be saved. And today, if you were to go to,
you know, at least they used to do this.
If you were to go to the doctor's office or you would go
to the veterinary's office, most times they'd have a little
embroidered thing back when embroidery was cool.
And if you're an embroidery person, I'm not trying to hate
on you because I'm sure that that's like a whole like
quilters. You guys have your own little
hierarchy. You'll see a snake on a staff
that when you see, when you go to a place that has the snake on
a staff, it's where you get better.
It's where you get healed. God was teaching the people of
Israel about faith, about believing that God is who He
says He is and will do what He says He will do.
Nicodemus or Jesus is looking at Nicodemus and he's talking to
him about faith. Jesus is saying the Kingdom of
God that you care about. I've been there.
I'm from there. And you know, the Old Testament,
which it wasn't technically the Old Testament at that point in
time. It was just the Testament
because the New Testament hadn't been written yet.
So he's like the Scriptures that you're really smart in.
Guess what, You're an expert in all these areas.
You know, the snake on the pole in the desert.
Yeah. Watch when those people looked
at the snake and they were healed.
I'm going to be lifted up and everybody who looks on me in
faith, who believes in me, will be saved.
Nicodemus's mind had to have been racing because Nicodemus
had the right upbringing. He had the right job, the right
disciplines, the right pedigree, the right relationships, the
right approval of man, the right behaviors.
Nicodemus had every reason to have faith in himself and his
good works. But it doesn't matter how good
you are, you are not good enough.
After all this talk about faith, do you know what happens next?
In this night time conversation with Nicodemus, do you know what
comes right after the verses we just talked about about faith
and belief? For those of you who are smart,
do you know what comes right after John 315?
John 316 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and
only Son, that whoever in him shall not perish, but have
eternal life. For God did not send His Son
into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world
through him, whoever in him is not condemned, but whoever does
not, stands condemned already, because they have not believed
in the name of God's one and only Son.
Watch this for God so loved the world or for God loved the world
in this way. Wives, there might be times
where you're going, you know what, how do I just love my
husband better? Like I'm going to love my
husband in this way and you, you might go, you know what I'm
going to do? I'm going to go out there and
I'm going to organize and just straighten up his garage.
He'll love that. I, I want you to know, don't you
just stay inside, stay out of there.
You can't be helpful out there. You can broom, you can take a
broom, you can sweep. Don't touch anything.
We have a system. Husbands, there may have been
times where you've said, you know what, I'm going to love my
wife in this way and you've went looking for where the dishwasher
is in the house. You've heard about it.
You don't know exactly where it is, but you've heard that you
have one, you might have two, you're not completely sure.
And you're supposed to load it. And so you've got all the
clothes. OK, you're get.
Listen, you're trying to help out.
You grab a vacuum, you plug it in.
You start moving around. Sometimes you don't plug it in,
you just move it around. When she comes in the house,
she'll love that. Just seeing you with that
vacuum, she loves it. You love your wife in this way.
How did God love us? In what way did God love us that
he sent his one and only son? You've heard me talk about this
before. I think Rick Warren's the one
who said it first. You can give without loving, but
you can't love without giving. Some of you you're like, I love
America, but during tax season people aren't as American as
they used to be. Like we need a break before July
14th. I mean not July 14th.
What? No, no.
I was thinking July, June 14th, that's Flag Day and July 4th
which is Independence Day. But after on tax day, nobody's
really a big fan of America. Like, I can give, I just don't
love it as much right now. A dad who doesn't provide for
his kids, doesn't love his kids all that well.
You can. You can give without loving, but
you cannot love without giving. And what does God give?
Not some podunk, rinky dink knockoff gift.
He gives us his one and only son.
I remember Zane was young and we I was in Macomb and I had the
garage door up and he was kind of playing and I remember
looking at him and being overwhelmed by how much I loved
him. And then something flipped
inside of me. I realized for the first time
how much my dad loved me. Like my dad had told me he loved
me his whole life. But it was when I was looking at
my son through a father's eyes that I realized how my own
father looked at me. And I called my dad and I said,
I get it. I finally understand how much
you love me because I'm looking at my son and I realized how
much I love him. That's why Paul, he goes out of
his way. It's like he is screaming in
Ephesians like people sometimes say you can.
I mean, you can believe a lot of things about God, but don't you
ever, ever for a second believe that God doesn't love you?
Look what it says in Ephesians chapter 3.
This is Paul. He goes and I pray that you
being rooted and established in love may have power.
So you need some kind of supernatural strength to do what
together with all the people to grasp, to lay hold of, to
understand. You need a superpower or
supernatural power to understand, to understand what
this is. What He says, to grasp how wide
and long and high and deep is the love of Christ.
Don't ever doubt how much God loved you through Jesus.
And who does he give this gift to?
He gives it to a sinful world, one that has rebelled against
him, rejected him, disobeyed him, a world that has been his
enemy. And who is this gift for?
Whoever do you guys know? Whoever, if you're here today,
whoever is rich and whoever is poor, whoever's a winner and
whoever is a loser, Whoever is married, whoever is divorced,
whoever is single, whoever's a newlywed and whoever's widowed.
It's for whoever's sick and whoever is healthy.
It's whoever is young and whoever is old.
It's for whoever has a white collar and whoever has a blue
collar job. It's for the whoever's.
It's for whoever is addicted and whoever's in recovery.
It's whoever is a Satan. I, you know, I wrote stripper.
So whoever's a stripper, if you're here, God bless you.
We don't mind the glitter. We're just glad you're here.
Whoever's a stripper, whoever's abused and whoever's the abuser.
It's whoever you love and whoever you hate.
It's whoever are your friends and whoever are your enemies.
Raise your hand if you're a whoever, that's who it's for
Whoever. But what do they get?
They get eternal life. What a gift.
We just lose sight of this so often.
We get so used to it. People can be saved.
They don't have to perish. They can have a redeemed life in
the present and a resurrected life for all of eternity.
And for those who do not accept this gift, this world, with all
of its pain and suffering and disappointment for them, becomes
as good as it gets. And when this life is over, it
only gets worse. However, those who do accept
this gift, this temporary earthly tent gets filled with
the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit, so that even
though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
we will fear no evil, for He is with us no matter what we face.
We're able to claim the promises in Romans 831 and 837 in first
John 4/4 that we are more than conquerors through God, and if
God is for us, who can be against us, and greater that is
in US than He that is in the world.
Can I get an Amen for that? And more than that, when this
life is over, we get to be resurrected, reunited with the
Creator, the pursuer and great lover of our souls, and share in
the new heaven and the new earth in His holy presence.
Amen. That is all available.
However, there is a limitation to whoever believes who in faith
take hold of the gift of God that is in Jesus Christ.
Hear me Nicodemus thought he was a Christian.
He thought he was in. Why?
Well, because of what he had done, he thought he had access
to the Kingdom of God because of his efforts instead of because
of Jesus. He looked at salvation and he
figured he was already in the in crowd.
But hear me, you and I are not Christians because of what we
have done. We are Christians because of
what Jesus has done on our behalf.
When Jesus was lifted up on the cross like the snake on a pole
in the desert, the penalty of our sins was upon him and on in
faith we look upon him and we are healed, we are saved.
There's a lot of jokes about showing up at the pearly gates.
And so when you die and you stand in front of the pearly
gates and there's, you know, 2 angels there with their 6 packs
look very similar to me, and they ask you this question, why
should we let you in? I'm going to give you an English
lesson. Don't use first person pronouns.
Use third person pronouns, first person pronouns.
Why should we let you in? I'm glad you asked.
I've been a Christian my whole life.
I, I went to the crossing. I stayed awake during most of
Clayton's sermons. I didn't laugh at the things
that he said that he shouldn't have said.
I, I went on mission trips as long as there was a beach.
And if there was a mission trip that wasn't on a beach, I gave
people money to go on that mission trip.
Clayton didn't have to explain to me why there were chapter and
verses in the Bible. I already knew that.
I even, and I don't want to bring this up, but I've
memorized a couple of those verses and I was a pretty good
person and I gave from time to time.
And you may have seen me, I served in the kids ministry and
I parked pretty far away And when we were, when it was at
worship time, I don't want to bring this one up, but I mean,
I'm going to just that way you kind of know who you're talking
to. When the rest of my row was
worshipping, most of the time my hand was a little bit higher
than everybody else's in my row. You want to avoid first person
pronouns at all costs when you're at the pearly gates
because if you are using first person pronouns, if you were
talking about all the things that you have done, you are not
getting in. Those are the wrong answers.
When you are standing there and you, they go, why should we let
you in? You will say because He did it,
because he made a way, because He made it happen.
Let me show you how Isaiah 53 explains your and my salvation.
Look what it says. He grew up before him like a
tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in
his appearance that we should desire Him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind.
A man of suffering and familiar with pain, like one from whom
people hide their faces. He was despised, and we held him
in low esteem. Surely He took up our pain, bore
our suffering. Yet we considered him punished
by God and stricken by him and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed
for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us
peace was on him, and by His wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray.
Each of us has turned to our our own way.
The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not open his mouth.
He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before
it's sheer is silent, so He did not open his mouth.
By oppression and judgement he was taken away.
Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living.
For the transgression of my people he was punished.
He was assigned a grave with the wicked and with the rich.
In his death will circle back, Though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth, yet it was the Lord's will to
crush him and cause him to suffer.
And through the Lord makes his lie, or though the Lord makes
his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and
prolong his days. And the will of the Lord will
prosper in his hand. But after he has suffered, he
will see the light of life and be satisfied by his knowledge.
My righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear
their iniquities. Therefore I will give him a
portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the
strong, because He poured out his life unto death, and was
numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and
made intercession for the transgressors.
He, he, He is how you and I have access to the Kingdom of God.
He is the reason salvation is possible.
He is the one who did it on our behalf.
By his stripes, we are healed. Now you're going by Clayton.
What about all the stuff we're supposed to do?
The things that you and I do are a response to our salvation, not
in order to earn our salvation. If you, if your life has been
transformed and saved and made new and right and fiddled the
Holy Spirit, how can you not be about his good work?
And a person that has had all of this happen to them, that does
not go about doing the things that God has called them to do,
might not have had this thing happen to them because it is the
natural response to a saved and redeemed life.
But hear me. The things that we do for God,
they are not for our salvation. They are because of our
salvation. The things we do are the fruit
of our salvation, not the root of our salvation.
Nicodemus shows up again in an unexpected place.
He shows up with a fellow man, a rich man by the name of Joseph
of Arimathea, on Good Friday. And they go to the authorities
and they make an unexpected request.
Can we have the body of Jesus? And they take his body and they
wrap it in linen, and they cover it with pounds of spices, and
they lay Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea's grave.
And I wonder, as Nicodemus was carrying Jesus's body, I wonder
if he got to take him off the cross.
I wonder if he was remembering that conversation they had late
one night when Jesus said, if I be lifted up, I wonder if
Nicodemus believed and in faith was saved.
And that is the exact same question that I want to ask you.
Will you believe that Jesus is who he says he is and will allow
you? Or will you allow Him to do what
only He can do, which is bring salvation into your life today.
And the only way you can have it is through faith.
We're moving to a time of decision.
To those of you in here that do not have an intimate personal
relationship with Jesus Christ, I've got really, really good
news for you. You can have it today.
God will make up his dwelling in your heart and in your life.
You can be saved. If you are a whoever today, you
can become a child of God. So you might be going.
You know, I like all this stuff that we're learning here at the
Crossing. It's really, really good.
And I really love the teachings of Jesus.
And maybe you have a little bit of Nicodemus in you, like you
just like him as a teacher, but Jesus.
And listen, Jesus was one of the best teachers, the best.
But Jesus didn't come to just teach.
He came to save and he came to rule.
Jesus is not something you just add to your life.
Do you remember? I don't know if they still do
this. When I went to school, they had
those, those plates, cafeteria plates at school lunches, and
they had all those different sections in there, right?
Like they had a section. They had a section for the
regular dessert, and then they had a section for the other
dessert. Then they had a section for the
friend who was sitting next to his dessert.
They had all those. And then the square pizza.
Like they had all those, yeah, you guys ate where I ate.
And you're like, I think I know where his problem is.
There isn't in your life like one container, one spot where
Jesus goes. We get this twisted because you,
you know, you hear about a marriage that's falling apart
and you're like, man, it'd be awesome if I could let Jesus
into my marriage. Super true.
Jesus in your marriage is a great thing.
Some of you may know somebody who's been going through some
parenting stuff and you heard that they allowed Jesus into
their parenting and like it did some pretty cool stuff.
Completely true. Completely true.
There's people who have been navigating, you know, mental
health issues and they're they let Jesus into some of those
areas of their life and it got better and they're like, man,
this is awesome. Jesus is, but I need you to hear
me say this. Jesus is for all of you.
Jesus will enter through any part, but he wants the whole
thing. Like if you were drowning right
now and I was like a fat Hasselhoff coming to rescue you,
OK, On my own, on my own flotation device, OK.
And I come up to you and you're like, Clayton, save my pinky.
Just keep, keep that pinky out of the water, man.
No, you want all of you to be saved.
You want every part of you to be rescued and redeemed.
You want every part of you to be safe and secure.
You want all of you to be rescued.
And what happens, this weird thing is we know that things are
not right and we try to turn our lives over one bit at a time,
like we're in this long negotiation.
All right? God, I trusted you with my
marriage and I trusted you with the 1st 15 minutes of my day.
And I trusted you this And every area that you've turned over to
him is better. Not not necessarily easy the
better and all the areas that you keep for yourself, you suck
in. You are getting an F in the
areas where you are in control and Jesus is getting an A+.
But it's not until things go from like AD plus to an F minus
do they do F minuses. You wouldn't know you were a
good student. You're like, I'm going to keep a
hold of this. And it's like things have to
completely fall apart before we turn it over to him.
Jesus came to save all of you and to be in charge, to rule, to
be the King of all of you. So today, if you were here and
you have never started an intimate, personal relationship
with Jesus Christ, hear me. This is the good news.
He wants all of you. And the reason why maybe you've
been giving him bits and pieces is because that's all you know
is that the people who love you only get to love you in bits and
pieces because if they knew all of it, they wouldn't want
anything to do with you. But Jesus, who knows every
thought that ever passes through your head and every feeling you
have in your heart says, I want it all.
So just a few moments when the people around you stand and sing
and some of them come to the steps and pray, I want to
encourage you to walk right over there underneath that screen
next to that baptistery and talk to somebody.
My experience, people have a desire to turn their life over
to Jesus. But in between them having that
desire and them doing it, there are questions that need asked
and it costs you nothing to ask that question.
If you don't want to do it over there, bring it or bring it up
to the person who brought you or a person that you saw here.
But don't put it off any longer. To those of you have a
relationship with Jesus Christ. I just want to remind you, you
are not saved because of what you have done, but because of
what Jesus Christ has done for you on our behalf.
But Paul shouts in Ephesians chapter 2, watch this for it is
by grace, something you did not earn that you have been saved
through. Check this out faith.
We access our salvation through faith and this is not from
yourselves. It is a gift of God, not by
works so that no one can boast, for we are God's handiwork
created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in
advance for us to do. What he's saying is, is when you
come into faith, you and I come through the exact same door.
Belief. And now that we are in Him, He
has something in store for us to do.
Since God is always moving, always reaching, always changing
people, we must be people who are always moving.
Like the Israelites, we just follow the cloud.
Wherever He leads, we follow. There are no spectators on God's
team, only participants. And maybe it's time for us to
fully participate in the mission that God has given us.
Would you stand with me, Heavenly Father?
I'm asking you to do something that only you can do today, God.
Would you change hearts and change lives?
God, I know there's some people who are thinking there's no way
that they could ever turn their life over to you, that there's
no way that you would ever want them.
But God, I pray that you would win the war in their mind and in
their heart today. God, that you'd reveal to us
what it is that you want us to do, and that you'd give us the
strength and the courage to do it.
But this wouldn't just be another weekend, another day on
the calendar. But God, that every single
person would draw closer to you. And your name, I pray.
Amen.