Crossing family I am so. Excited to tell you.
That we are bringing one of our favorite communicators back.
That's right, Josh Howard. Is coming back to preach to us
again. He helped us on the very
beginning of our First Corinthian series, and he's back
to deliver another impactful. Word I love.
How he has been leveraging his life to help disciples, make
disciples make disciples, not just across the.
World. But he's also helped us as a
church do a better job. Of reaching those that we love
in our region. He, like us, wants to make
wherever he is, playing to the hardest place on planet earth to
get to hell from. And I cannot wait for the word
that he is going to bring us this weekend.
So would you give another incredible crossing?
Welcome to our preacher this weekend, Josh Howard.
It is. It is a privilege and an honor
to be back with you. Honestly, it's, it's only been 8
weeks since I was here last and it, it feels like it was just
last week. I'm, I'm so excited to be with
you guys. Clayton.
Thank you, buddy, for those incredibly kind words.
Love you, bro, as always. I mean, you guys have just an
incredible man leading the charge here.
Amen. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.
All right, God is moving, man, the, the stories that I keep
hearing from this church are just unbelievable to see what
God is doing in this place through each and every one of
you reaching people far from God, bringing them to Jesus,
starting discovery Bible studies with friends and neighbors and
coworkers. Man, God is moving in Quincy, IL
and it is getting attention all across the all across the
country right now. And so it's incredible to see.
And so it is again, an honor and a privilege to be here with you
guys. My wife Lashi, since her love
and greetings, there is a quick thing that I'd love to ask your
prayers about my wife's brother's father-in-law.
OK, So I know that's like I'm on grandpa kind of stuff, OK.
But my wife's brother's father-in-law was just arrested
in India last week. He was basically the, the
government has been coming hard against the work that we've been
doing in South Asia. And he didn't even know that his
name was on any list. He didn't even know that there
was going to be an issue. And police came literally while
he was at the mall in plain clothes and took him away and
arrested him. They've kept him for the last
week and we are praying for a miraculous intervention.
And so if you could please pray for us.
His name is Vijay. Vijay, if you guys could pray
for that because there is tremendous persecution breaking
out all over India right now, and we really would love your
prayers. But here's the good news, OK?
And before I get into the message, I want to share with
you an update on what God has done in the last three months
through ordinary everyday people in India.
So although persecution is increasing, I want you to hear
what our church planners and disciple makers have seen happen
through their boldness and courage.
Literally just in the last three months.
We're talking right July, August and September.
This is what the Lord has done. Listen to this.
We have seen in the last three months 19,585 people come to
Jesus for the first time in their lives.
Isn't that amazing? Like God is moving in crazy
amazing ways. Not only that, but we saw 2892
new house churches started just in those three months.
Amen. Isn't that incredible?
And so guys, we, even though persecution is being rampant,
God is breathing His spirit across the world right now, and
we are seeing just God do unbelievable, amazing things.
So please continue to pray with us that God would continue to
move in spite of the challenges and difficulties.
Amen. All right, guys, listen, let's
pray. And we're going to jump right
into First Corinthians chapter 10.
So if you've got a Bible, that's where we're going to be.
Please open up there. I, I don't know if you all
remember the line that I'd love you to say, Hey, come on,
somebody. Thank you, man.
You guys are so good. You guys are so.
So if there's anything you like, I'd love to hear a come on,
somebody. OK, at any time, shout it out.
If I don't hear any of the whole message, I'll get the hint.
OK, I'll get the idea. All right, let's pray, guys, and
we'll jump right in together. OK, let's pray.
Oh, Jesus, you were so good, You were so beautiful.
And we have a chance right now to open your word and hear your
voice. And so, Jesus, we ask that you
would move in power. We asked, Holy Spirit, that you
would come and that you would be in our midst and that you would
speak to us. Lord, help us to hear your voice
clearly. We desperately need you.
We need to hear from you more than anything.
We need to touch from you. We need to hear your voice, and
no other voice will do. We need to hear you and straight
from your mouth, Father. And so we ask that you would be
the one on stage, that you would be the one preaching, and that
you would be the one that opens our hearts and touches our
hearts. And so Jesus, we ask that you
would move in power tonight and that you'd be here in our midst.
We pray this in Jesus name, Amen.
All right, First Corinthians
chapter 10. Open up there with me now.
Now here's what we're going to do.
We are going to start at the very end of the chapter.
I'm going to read one verse, but then we're going to back up and
go through. And the reason why I'm reading
this verse up front is because this is kind of going to be the
culmination of the message. And we're going to keep going
back and forth between this decision that we've got to make
tonight. And so I, I want to lay my cards
out on the table very quickly and say there's going to be a
choice that the Holy Spirit is going to nudge you to make
tonight. And you're going to need to
choose between two paths or between two cups or two tables.
And so I want you to just kind of get yourself ready for that
tonight as we read this verse. Like I said, it's at the very
end of the section that we're going to talk about tonight, and
it's in verse 21. And so I want you to read with
me First Corinthians 10/21. This is what Paul says.
You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too.
You cannot have parts in both the Lord's table and the table
of demons. So there are two cups and two
tables, and you're going to need to make a choice.
Now listen, I'm going to be really clear up front, guys.
I know what you're thinking. When we read that verse, you're
like, well, of course I'm not going to drink the cup of
demons. That's crazy.
And I'm not going to sit at the table with demons either.
Like who in the world would even do that?
And who's going to make that choice?
But what we're going to see through the very beginning of
the chapter is that demons are crafty, they're scheming, they
lie. And pretty soon you drink from
cups that you don't even realize they're being handed to you by
the enemy. OK?
Are you with me here? And so it's not that a demon is
going to come in his full form like Halloween and hands you a
cup and be like, please drink like it's never going to be like
that. It will be a a case in a moment
in your life where you don't even understand that you're
drinking from a poisoned cup. You won't understand that you're
drinking from a table that is going to lead to your
destruction. And so that's what we're going
to talk about leading into this. OK, now at the beginning here,
here's what I want to do. Chuck, can you hand me that
really quick? What we're going to see in the
first few verses of this is that they keep going back.
Paul continues to keep going back to the Israelites in the
Old Testament, and we are going to learn from their example
tonight. And So what we need to look at
first is the cup of the past in order to understand what we may
face today and what the enemy may do in our lives so that we
can choose the right way. But in order to set this up, I
want to tell you one of the stories from Moses in the Old
Testament to lead us into the first part of 1st Corinthians
10. You with me on that.
Hey, come on. Thank you.
You have no idea how good my heart does it just it just warms
me inside. OK, here we go.
This is what happened. Moses, right?
He's leading the Israelites out of Egypt and they are
experiencing miracle after miracle after miracle.
I mean, we are talking crazy, amazing things like the Red Sea
parting. Prior to that, 10 plagues fell
on Egypt in order to encourage Pharaoh to let God's people go.
And then they go through the waters of the Red Sea and then
every day, and we're going to see Paul mention all these
things. They are being led by a cloud
during the day and a pillar of fire at night.
Could you imagine? And then not only that, they
didn't have food out in the desert.
God is raining down bread from heaven, OK, Which probably had
to be Olive Garden breadsticks, OK, but but they're raining down
bread from heaven, and that's what they're eating every day,
and they got sick of it. I don't know about you.
I wouldn't get sick of the Olive Garden breadsticks.
I don't know. I don't know.
But they were getting sick of it.
But then they rained down quail when they started complaining
about the bread, and God gave them birds to eat.
And so God is literally feeding them with his own hand.
They're going through miracle after miracle.
Then they get to a mountain where Moses goes up to meet with
God. After they've seen all these
miracles, God gives him the 10 commandments written with his
own hand. And Moses come down, comes down
with these 10 commandments with his staff in his hand.
And all of a sudden he sees that he's only been gone for 40 days.
And the Israelites have already built a golden calf that they
are worshipping instead of God who brought them out of Egypt.
Crazy people, right? Like schizophrenia, split
personality, like who are these people and what is happening?
Now, I know none of you are like this, but what we're going to
see is that Paul makes direct correlation between the
craziness that that sounds when we say it out loud, and how
often we go between the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons
every single day of our lives. And how schizophrenic our lives
begin to look as we go back and forth like that.
And this is what happens. Moses comes down the mountain,
he sees what happens and he gets incredibly upset.
He breaks the tablets and he goes out to the front of the
camp. And this is what I picture him
doing. He takes his staff, the same
staff that God used to part the Red Sea to, to draw water out of
the rock. Again, Paul's going to mention
all of these things and he stands at the front of the camp
and this is what I picture. I picture him putting his his
staff in the ground and drawing a line like this slowly, with a
little bit of anger, frustration, and then he calls
out this phrase and this is what he says.
May those who are on the Lord's side come to me.
What's Moses saying? There has been a line drawn in
the sand, and you need to make a decision today whom you're going
to serve. And if you're on the Lord's
side, you need to come to me. If you want to stay with the
idols and the demons and all the the cups that you're talking
about drinking, if you want to keep going back to Egypt, then
you need to stay on that side. But if you're willing to go all
in and be consecrated to the Lord the way he's called you to,
then you need to come to me. And the Bible says that many of
them, especially the Levites, came to Moses and crossed the
line. Now, why am I telling you this
story at the beginning of the message?
It's because tonight, friends, just like Moses, when we look at
their example, God is going to be drawing a line in the sand
tonight where we need to. We need to decide what side of
the fence we're going to be on. Because I heard an old preacher
once that said, listen, if you're going to sit on the
fence, the the fence belongs to the enemy.
And so you've already made a decision if you're trying to be
in the middle or as the old farmers used to say, you can't
have your feet in two boats because they will split and
you'll fall in the water, right? And so tonight we're going to be
making a decision and he is going to be putting his staff in
the ground, drawing a line. And you and I are going to be
asked what cup we're going to drink from, what side of the
line we're going to stand on and what table we're going to sit
at. And we need to be prepared to
answer that question. You with me.
Hey, come on, come on, somebody. There you go.
First Corinthians chapter 10. Let's start at the top and we'll
go through it. Verse one, for I do not want you
to be ignorant of the fat brothers and sisters that our
ancestors remember. I've just told you the story.
Our ancestors were all under the cloud and they all pass through
the sea. He's reminding them of the
miracles that the Israelites encountered.
They were all baptized. Verse 2.
They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the
sea. They all ate the same spiritual
food. Remember, God fed them with
spiritual food. They drank from the spiritual
rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.
Paul is literally saying that Jesus in the Old Testament.
Basically it was an image of Christ, the rock being poured
out as living water for them to drink.
So the rock that they were drinking of was an image of
Jesus providing spiritual water for us.
And then he says this nevertheless, verse 5, God was
not pleased with most of them. Their bodies were scattered in
the wilderness. Why is Paul saying this?
He's reminding us that even though we have may, we may have
had incredible encounters with the Lord, we may have been
baptized, we may even have seen miracles.
You may have been healed, your family may be may have been
delivered. Your marriage could have been
saved. You could have been had chains
of addiction broken off, broken off of your life.
There could have been many amazing encounters with God, and
yet it is still possible for us to forget the miraculous and
still choose the cup of demons every day of our lives.
And Paul is trying to say here, that's actually really scary and
we need to pay attention at the past to learn from their
mistakes so that we don't make the same mistakes.
And so then Paul starts going through what mistakes they made.
Verse 6. Now these things occurred as
examples. Remember, these are examples for
you and I. They occurred as examples to
keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did.
Verse 7. Do not be idolaters as some of
them were. As it is written, the people sat
down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.
So the first example he says here is idolatry.
And I know what many of you are thinking like there's no way
Josh, that we're going to be like bowing our knee to idols or
anything like that, right? But guys, we need to understand
that in our day and age in 2025, idols are usually in America,
not, are not going to come in the form of little mini God or
goddess statues or Buddha statues or whatever.
They are going to come in the spiritual world where we are
bowing our knee constantly to sex, money, power, applause,
approval. The the things around us become
idols in our lives where they get more affection than Jesus
does out of our lives. Do do you get what I'm saying?
And so let me give you a very simple definition of idolatry.
It's anything that you love more than Jesus.
Let me say that again. It's anything you love more than
Christ. It is anything that you will bow
the proverbial need to over the kingship and lordship of Jesus
in your life, right? And so here's the question,
friends. When everyone else around you is
bowing their knee to the idols of the world, will you stand
while everyone else is bowing? Remember the story of Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego, right? They were three young men who
were challenged by the King of their day to bow their knee to a
giant idol. And when the entire nation bowed
their knee, only three of them stood in defiance of the King.
Why? Because they loved God more than
anything else in their lives. Therefore, it created boldness,
courage, and a direct heart to the Father because of their
dedication to Him. And so friends, I know it's not
easy to talk about tonight, but here's the question we've got to
ask if Paul's asking us, hey, guys, remember where they fell
so that you won't fall. The first example he uses is
idolatry. And so we need to open up our
hearts tonight and say in in all reality, man, what do I love?
If I'm honest, what gets my time more than Jesus?
What gets my attention more than Jesus?
What gets my love and affection more than Jesus?
What are the things in my life that are actually drawing more
of my energy, more of my affection, and more of my
worship than Jesus himself and man tonight we need to like
Moses did. He is drawing a line in the
sand. We need to break the idols the
way that they did and bring our hearts back to King Jesus as the
true Lord and Savior of everything because He's the only
one worthy of sitting on the throne of our hearts.
Amen. Hey, come on.
Next verse He gives another example.
Verse 8. We should not commit sexual
immorality as some of them did. And in one day, 23,000 of them
died. Do you realize that the
Israelites who were let out of Egypt by God in Numbers chapter
25, we don't have time to read the whole thing, but I just want
you to read. I just want you to hear out loud
the first couple of verses. These people were slaves in
Egypt, guys, slaves in chains. And God miraculously broke the
chains, set them free. And this is literally just a few
years later. And this is what they're doing
as thanks to God for freeing them from slavery.
Listen to this while Israel, This is Numbers 25.
We don't have it up on the screen, but it's Numbers 25,
verses 1 and 2. Just hear it out loud.
While Israel was staying in shitham, the men began to
indulge in sexual immorality with the Moabite women who
invited them to the sacrifices to their gods.
And the people ate the sacrificial meal and bowed
before these gods. Guys, listen once again, it goes
back to idolatry. It goes back to the affections
of your heart. None of you in this room, I
would probably venture to guess, is willing to bow your knee to
an actual idol. I saw millions of people doing
it in a place like India. We rarely see it in a place like
America. But how many of us are bowing
our knee to the sexy woman that we really want to give
everything to, or the the really good looking guy that we really
want to give our heart and our attention to?
And so we will bow our knee at the bed of sexual immorality.
Or we are. We will bow our knee at the
click of a mouse or the. Swipe of our phone.
We will bow our knee to the things of this world constantly
and consistently that get our affection and our attention more
than Jesus does. And rather than living with Him
being Lord, we are enslaved to the addictions of the United
States. It is idolatry, it's sexual
immorality and he's trying to get our attention.
Listen, you are given a chance to drink of the cup of freedom
to drink of the cup of broken chains being shaken off of your
life. The cup that Jesus offers is
freedom and purity and and and and conviction and a guilt free
life of forgiveness and grace and lordship.
But instead of accepting that, we continually reach to a broken
cistern that is poisoned, that will literally destroy our
souls, but we keep reaching for it anyway.
And Paul is saying, man, look at the example.
He's drawing that line in the sand and saying, man, listen, it
is time for us to look at the past, to look at what's
happening and then get out of it right here, right now.
Amen. And so some of you here, guys,
listen, I am not here to preach at you at all.
I'm not here to try to bring some sort of guilt or shame or
condemnation on you. I'm literally here to offer a a
cup of freedom and a cup of forgiveness and a cup of grace
that has only been purchased by the blood of Jesus.
This is the cup that caught his blood.
It is the cup that he offered at the Lord's Supper.
It is the cup that he continually offers to us every
single day. That when we surrender our
hearts before him, when we confess what we've done and we
open our hearts to him, he offers offers us a cup that will
never run dry, that will always be there with forgiveness and
grace. And when the Bible literally
says that when we repent of our sins, we will be set free,
forgiven, and have a new heart placed inside of us.
And so this is a cup of grace and forgiveness, man.
This is a cup of freedom. This is a cup where chains of
addiction are broken. This is a cup where marriages
are satisfied and completely redeemed and set free.
This is a cup where divorces are canceled and and and marriages
are reconciled. This is a cup where lost
children run home to their families because they have
received the grace and mercy of the King.
And so guys, quit going to the table that just leads to
destruction and guilt and shame. Quit going on Saturday night to
stuff that makes you feel like crap the next morning, and then
you wake up wanting and wishing that you hadn't done it.
Like go to the cup that will never run dry.
Go to the water that always satisfies.
Go to the rock of Jesus, for instance.
This is so important because we are living in a world where
depression is worse than it's ever been, suicidal rates are
higher than they've ever been. Addiction is higher than it's
ever been. And it's because we continue to
take the cup of demons rather than the cup of our Lord.
And it has been lied to us about.
It has been. Man, there's so many promises in
that cup. There's so many wonderful
feelings in that cup. There's so many pleasurable
experiences in that cup. But then once you drink it, it
is an addiction to your soul that you can no longer do
without. And then all of a sudden it
destroys who you are, rips away your identity, and leaves you
broken and crumbled at the bottom.
And here's the false narrative that will be preached to you.
And here's the lie of Satan. Just like the cup of Jesus never
runs dry, Satan will always have another lie to put in that cup
for you to drink. Everything.
He gives his counterfeit to what God promises and he's going to
lie, cheat, and steal until he has destroyed every part of who
you are and you no longer even feel like life is worth a living
anymore. He uses the next example here
verse 9. We should not test Christ as
some of them did and were killed by snakes.
And don't grumble as some of them did and were killed by the
destroying Angel. Listen, this is what he's
reminding us of is that over and over again, they would take the
promises of God, say Gee, thanks God, and then grumble and
complain about all the problems and issues they were having when
in all reality, God was providing for them every single
day. I want you to think about this
guys. Do you know why he had a cloud
over them in the day guiding them?
It was not only just to guide them by cloud.
It was always it was also to cover them from the harshness of
the weather in the desert and give them shade and refreshing
coolness of the day. Do you get what I'm saying?
Like have you ever been out in the sun where it's just beating
down on you and then a massive cloud covers it where man,
there's there's like a breeze and it feels nice and cool every
day in the desert. God was covering the sun to give
them a, a, a sense of just coolness in the in the middle of
the day. And then at night when it gets
cold in the desert, if you've ever been out in a really hot
place at night, the temperatures drop.
He's guiding them by fire. Why?
In order to warm their hearts and souls in the night.
It's not just a guiding light, guys.
It is to comfort them and warm their soul.
We have a God that will give you cloud by day and fire by night.
No matter how dark and and damp and difficult your soul is, He
is willing to provide you refreshments and encouragement
even in the midst of difficult circumstances.
And this is what it says in verse 11.
Actually, let me go back one verse.
Actually, I don't have time. Let's let's go to verse 11.
These things happen to them as examples and were written down
as warnings for us. OK, It's a warning on whom the
culmination of the ages has come.
So if you think you're standing firm, listen to this warning
from Paul. If you think you're doing great,
if you think you're right in the middle of God's plan, if you
think that you're never going to fall, take heed.
Be careful that you don't fall. No temptation has overtaken you
except what is common to mankind.
But God is faithful and He'll not let you be tempted beyond
what you can bear. Listen, this is a warning for
each and every one of us. There are seasons of our life
where we think that nothing is going to happen.
No problem is going to come our way.
No issue is going to happen. We're we're doing our quiet
time, we're praying. And all of a sudden pride begins
to seep in our soul. And we think, you know what, I
can handle this. This temptation is no big deal.
And so rather than really taking it seriously and going hard
after the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, we begin to flirt with
the cup of of the demons, thinking that it may satisfy or
we may feel good for a moments and we think we can handle the
temptation. And pretty soon it snags us and
rips us back down into brokenness.
This reminds me of my very first sermon.
Guys, it was terrible. I was 13 years old.
I literally had a big stick with a rat on the end of it.
And I preached on 1st Corinthians 1013 and I had a big
rat trap on stage and I said Satan will tempt to you and you
he'll want you to get the cheese.
And then bam. And this rat trap snapped.
And that was literally my entire sermon.
That was it. I was supposed to preach for 20
minutes. I was done in like 3, maybe
five. OK, And I was done, but the
image is still true, right? It's like Satan is going to lie
to you about what the Cup offers and he's going to give you just
enough to think, I'm OK, I can handle this, it's not that big
of a deal. And then he drags you in in
order to compromise your heart and your soul.
Will you throw me that shirt please?
I'm going to end with a quick story, guys.
Listen in the 1980s there was a a bridge in Tampa FL.
I forget what the bridge is called if anyone knows that you
can yell it out. It's like the sun, sunshine
something bridge. It's literally 5 miles long.
OK, it is massive over the Bay and Tampa and there was a guy
that woke up 1 morning and he loved to ride his motorcycle up
to that bridge, get right in the middle of it and then just kind
of get off of his bike, off on the shoulder and just look out
over the water. It was the most peaceful place
he could go. And so one morning he got up, he
had a day off, he got on his motorcycle all by himself.
His wife had other plans and he just wanted to go out there and
enjoy the sunshine and look out over the water.
So when he got there, he pulled off like he always does, got on
the shoulder, stepped off of his bike and begin to look out over
the water. His eyes began to go to the
oncoming traffic, which was on the other side of the bridge.
There's a there's a huge break in the middle of the bridge, so
one side of the bridge goes this way, the other comes that way,
but there's no way to get from one to the other.
He sees the car coming and all of a sudden the car disappeared.
It was gone. And he was like, what just
happened? Like, is there a portal?
Like what's going on? And so we ran over to the other
side, got up on the ledge and looked over and there was a
massive hole in the middle of the bridge.
And the car literally went off into the water.
What had happened was a massive barge had accidentally bumped
the pillar of the of the bridge and it made an entirely huge
hole that nobody could see when they were coming across it.
And so we started jumping up and down screaming and nobody could
hear him or see him. The the bridge was 5 miles long.
He had no time to get on his bike and go all the way around
to try to warn people. He didn't know what to do.
Another car came and drove off the ledge.
Another car came, drove off the ledge.
He saw a massive semi truck coming.
He ran to his bike and he always kept an extra shirt in case he
got sweaty. And just so happened that day,
he put a red shirt in his bag and he ran over to the edge of
the of the of the of the bridge and started jumping up and down
waving the shirt and basically saying listen, there is danger
ahead, you need to stop as quickly as you can.
And by God's grace, because the semi was sitting up quite a bit
higher than the rest of the cars, he saw the guy with the
shirt saw the hole in the ground, slammed on his brakes.
The truck kind of came to a tee and and and slid to a stop
literally blocking the whole Rd. so that no other car could come
through. This guy by jumping up and down
waving his shirts saved literally hundreds of lives.
Right behind the semi was a school bus fully loaded with
kids and they saved the school bus, saved the car, saved the
bus. Like literally saved hundreds of
people because this guy just so happened to be in the right
place at the right time jumping up and down.
Why at the end of the sermon am I telling you the story?
Listen, if I can be anything for you today, it is going to be a
man jumping up and down on the stage raising a red shirt
saying, listen, the enemy is lying to you.
You're going in the wrong direction.
It's time to take the cup that Christ is offering so that it
doesn't lead you to destruction that Satan hopes that you will
have. We have got to be people.
And listen, if you're already on the right path, dude, you got to
pick up the red shirt and warn as many other people as possible
so that we spend eternity with Jesus.
Amen. And so today, hear me out very
clearly, friends, you are being offered every moment of your
life, every day of your life, two cups and two tables.
And you need to decide today that the father is literally
drawing that line in the sand with the staff.
And he's asking you, are you going to be on my side?
Are you going to accept the cup that I'm offering or you can
going to continue to drink the cup of poison.
He's waving the red shirt and saying, listen, you're going the
wrong way. You just need to turn around and
come back to me. And here's the beautiful image
of the gospel, friends. No matter how far you've run in
the wrong direction, the moment you turn around, the Father is
standing right there in front of you because he's been chasing
you the entire time. And so it's time for us to turn
around and give him all that we have.
Pick up his cup, drink it with all you got every day, and let's
give our lives back to the King of Kings and destroy the idols
in our hearts. And so we're going to move to a
time of decision now. What a good word.
And so if you're in this room or you're watching online, I'm just
going to ask you a couple questions.
The first one is which cup are you drinking from?
And if you're here today and you're drinking from the wrong
cup, it's a good day to put it down and drink from the cup that
will never run dry. And you can start that today.
I got a phone call at about 11:00 today saying, hey, we go
to the McComb campus. My grandpa is in the hospital.
Would you please come meet with us?
He's in ICU. And I just had a really tight
window. And I was like, I'm going to,
I'll be there. I show up the hoses and
Everything Everywhere and I got a sense of why they wanted me
there. Guy's 84 years old, doesn't have
a lot of time left on the clock. This morning when he woke up, he
was kind of motion of the family unplugged me.
He wants to go, but you could tell that the family, they need
some answers. And so I'm trying to figure out
how I'm bold to be in that moment because.
And so I asked the, you know, what's his favorite Bible verse
to his wife of 40 some years? And she goes, I'm not sure.
And I go, do you did you go to church?
Well, my grandson wants me to come, wants us to come to
church. So I realized that I'm, I'm
sitting in a place where they don't know where grandpa's
going. And I just talked as loud as I
could without destroying the whole ICU with my voice.
And I just said, hey there, I need you to know there's some
things that I believe. I believe that God has really
created you. He loves you.
He cares for you so much so that he sent his son to die on the
cross to pay sins for all the things that we've done wrong so
that we, we could be made right. And I just got to know, do you
believe in God? He gave a thumbs up and I said,
do you believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins
and my sins? He gave a thumbs up.
I go, do you believe that he is your Lord and Savior?
He gave a thumbs up and I said, then you don't have anything to
worry about. And if you're here today and you
can't answer those questions the right way, don't leave here
until you can. And in just a few moments, the
people around you are going to stand and sing, and some of them
are going to come to the steps and pray.
And I want to encourage you if you're watching online, to say,
hey, I need to talk to somebody in the chatter.
Walk right over there underneath that screen next to the
baptistry and start getting some of the questions answered that
you need to answer. To the rest of you in the room,
to those of you who call yourself a Christian, maybe it's
time for us to be honest and go, you know what?
We're drinking from two cups. We know the right cup, but we
keep sipping on the wrong one. Maybe today in an act of
repentance, you just come down, get down your knees and say God
remove the desire for the bad cup, removing me the desire for
the wrong cup. And I also want to say this, the
guy, and if you're watching, I mean no shame by this, but the
guy who's probably going to go to be with the Lord very soon on
some level believes the gospel but did a really bad job of
sharing it. He never gets the honor of
telling somebody about what it means to have an intimate
personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
He's not going to get to do what you and I are going to get to
do. God willing, when we wake up
tomorrow, we get to carry the red shirt and walk into our
workplace and walk into our home going.
There is hope. There's a chance there's still
time, and you and I need to have hearts that are ready to steward
those moments well. Would you stand with me?
Heavenly Father, change our affections through the power of
Your Holy Spirit. Guide us and direct us into the
things that are of you. Remove in us the desire for sin,
for the taste of the flesh. Help us to be people that yearn
for you, that desire you, that are devoted to you.
God help us to go with purpose everywhere we go, recognizing
that eternity hangs in the balance.
God help us to drink from your cup and from your cup only in
your name I pray. Amen.