So for most of my life, when it came to eating cake, there was
only one kind of cake that you actually ate, and that was white
cake, vanilla cake. And if some, if I were to come
to your house and you were to offer me chocolate cake, I would
say no because I'm a Christian. And when I decided to give my
life to Jesus, I gave all satanic things up, including
chocolate cake. How many of you guys, you're
Satan followers and you like chocolate cake?
OK, well, we're going to miss you.
And that was just kind of how it was always been.
And, and I liked, I liked vanilla icing.
In fact, when I'd go to Dairy Queen, I'd be really sweet to
the people at Dairy Queen and I'd try to get them to take the
icing off of their ice cream cakes and put it in the cookie
jar Blizzard, which is a cookie jar Blizzard.
It's not on the menu. You have to be a certain size
before they even make you aware of this special part.
And you can get a cookie jar, which is chocolate chip cookie
dough Blizzard and cookies and cream Blizzard.
And then you'd get the icing off the ice cream cake.
And it basically, you do this if you want your doctor to give you
cholesterol medication, this is this is how you get it.
You're like, I've been doing this.
So you're going to have to do something because I'm not giving
this up. And there's kind of how I live
my whole life. My mom has the world's best
icing that she puts on her sugar cookies.
I kind of just live my whole life in this space.
But during COVID, a friend who was living in her house, he
wanted to go to his brother's wedding.
He wasn't allowed to go to the wedding because of all the COVID
stuff. So we were going to drive all
the way up to Chicago and kind of wave from outside the fence.
And so we drove up there to wave outside the fence.
And I've heard a lot of people talk about a restaurant called
Portillo's. You guys know you've heard of
it. Yeah.
So one of you should start one here in town and or actually at
any of our locations because I'll drive.
I'd love to see that. So anyhow, we go through the
drive through because you can't go into the restaurant.
And I see on the menu that they have a shake with cake bites.
And I was like, I mean, I'll try it, you know, But I knew it was
chocolate cake. And I'm like, yeah, So we go
through Portillo's for the first time ever in my entire life.
And while I'm driving through Chicago traffic, I'm sipping on
this shake. And I'm like, that is, that is a
really tasty cake bite. And the guy in in the car said,
did you know that they make whole cakes?
So 15 minutes after I went to my first Portillo's restaurant, I
went to my second Portillo's restaurant of all time.
I was like, put it in the GPS. We're finding another one and I
bought a cake. It turned out to be a chocolate
cake and I got to be honest with you guys, I fell in love.
I have never liked a cake more than I like a Portillo's cake
and the fact that it is chocolate.
I still haven't gotten over it. And something that I knew that I
hated my whole life, I ended up falling in love with.
We are in the middle of a sermon series called Decisions in the
Desert. Because every single one of you
are going to find yourself in the desert at some point in
time. And the decisions that you make
in the desert will define you. They will end up determining
your destiny. And for the next 4 weeks, it's
specifically the next, the next three weeks, we are going to be
exploring the parts of the Bible that you probably thought you
hated. The parts of the Bible you
actually wanted to skip over, but I think at the end of
especially the next three weeks, you're going to find out that
you were about to fall in love with something you previously
thought. You hate it.
I think at the end of it, you're going to see yourself.
You're going to see God and you're going to see Jesus in a
whole new way. That's why I want to welcome
those of you joining at all of our different locations, those
of you who are part of the online family, and especially
those of you who are part of the crossing Inside celebrating 4
baptisms this past month. We love it.
We had an opportunity this week to hang out with some pastors
from the state of Iowa. And one of the pastors was
actually blown away by our inside ministry because he
actually spent three years in jail, got his heart completely
sold out for Jesus, went into full time ministry, went to
Bible college and has doubled the size of his church up in
Atlantic, Iowa. And he just loved the fact that
we're doing minister on the inside.
So if you're on the inside and you have a chance of getting out
one day, we know not all of you have that opportunity.
But for those of you who have a chance to get out and what you
know, God could do some pretty radical stuff through you on the
outside. And those of you who are going
to be stuck in the inside for forever, we hate that for you,
but God and use you too. I also want to welcome those of
you joining us for the first time or the first time in a long
time. And I hope that before you
leave, you'll take advantage of either the QR code on the seat
in front of you, or you'll swing by the new here booth out in the
lobby. Let's get into it.
God calls Moses up onto the mountain, and while he's there,
God reveals to him the law. The 1st 10 laws become
incredibly famous. We call them the 10
commandments. Here's what they are.
Exodus chapter 20. And God spoke all these words.
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of
the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods
before me. You shall not make for yourself
an image in the form of anything in heaven above, or on the earth
beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them
or worship them. For I the Lord your God and may
jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the
parents to the third and 4th generation of those who hate me,
but showing love to 1000 generations of those who love Me
and keep My commandments. You shall not misuse the name of
the Lord your God. For the Lord will not hold
anyone guiltless who misuses his name.
This is more than just a God fill in the blank or Oh my God,
this is more than that. In my house, since my family has
my DNA, we joke a lot and sometimes it's hard to know are
you messing with me or you telling the truth?
Dad, the toilet's broken. It's running, you know, and what
we used to, what we say in my house is before God.
Like you tell me the truth, hand to God.
That's taking the Lord's name in vain.
I'm now invoking God's name over a practical joke in my house.
My yes should be yes, my no should be no.
You guys know this stuff. Remember the Sabbath day by
keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do
all your work. But the 7th day is a Sabbath to
the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work,
neither you nor your son or daughter, nor your male or
female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner
residing in your towns. For the 6th day is the is the
day the Lord made the heavens and the earth and the sea and
all that is in them, but he rested on the 7th day.
Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
Honor your father and mother, so that you may live long in the
land that you like the Lord your God is giving you.
You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall
not steal, you shall not give false testimony against your
neighbor. You shall not covet your
neighbor's house. You shall not covet your
neighbor's wife or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey
or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
And some of you are going, I'm glad he put that ox and donkey
stuff in there because that's the only one I haven't messed
up. You're going.
I mean, I've never once seen an Amish guy on an on a donkey and
said, man, I wish that donkey was mine.
Of all the 10 commandments, that's the one I'm the safest
on. I've never once, not once, ever
I've contemplated murdering somebody, but I've never once,
never once been like, man, if that donkey was mine, my, I've
just never had that. Well, it didn't stop there.
By the time God was done, he gave 613 laws.
Some of these laws were about how to worship him.
Some of them were about what to do when you had messed up and
how do you make things right? How do you provide restitution
for the sins that you have committed?
Some were about how to behave morally.
Some were about what their calendar should look like.
Some of the laws were about what their diet should look like. 248
of these laws were positive laws.
You should do this, for instance, when you're raising
your kids, parents, you're like, listen, The Dirty laundry, you
should put it in The Dirty laundry basket.
This is a positive law. Some of them were like honor
your father and mother. You should do this.
There were 365 of them that were negative laws.
Don't do this parents. You guys get this.
Part of parenting is not just positive laws.
Part of parenting is negative laws.
Don't hit your brother right? Or stop hitting your brother.
So when it comes to the to the Old Testament, some of them were
negative laws. Don't steal, don't lie, don't
murder. What made the 10 commandments so
unique and so powerful is that almost every single duty and sin
known to man can be summed up in them.
However, God was doing so much more through the giving of the
Law. One of the primary purposes of
the law was for God to reveal to the people how holy He is.
Another word for holy is separate, completely different.
God is not just somebody that you can throw in the car and go
on a road trip with. He is perfect in every way.
His thoughts are not your thoughts.
His purity is faultless and His Holiness.
He is so separate and different from you that being in His
presence would destroy you, which we're going to unpack next
week. In other words, the law showed
us how God behaved and how God expected His people to behave.
Holy. It's just another way of saying
all together different. So when you were reading the
law, you were going, God is completely different than me.
The second purpose of the law was to show people their
sinfulness. It was to reveal to you and me.
As you're going through the law, it doesn't take long before you
realize you can't keep the law. You can't do all the things that
you were supposed to do to be holy like God.
You are recognizing that it identifies sin at every turn in
your life. And before you start going,
well, I'm doing a pretty good job of keeping this law and this
law and this law. We realize James actually gives
us some insight into what happens in the law.
James chapter 2, verse 10, For whoever keeps the whole law and
yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.
For he who said you shall not commit adultery also said you
shall not murder if you do not commit adultery, but you do
commit murder, you have become a law breaker.
So there might be part of you that's going, hey, I'm doing a
pretty good job. I'm not a cheater and you might
be going, hey, I'm doing a pretty good job.
I'm not a murderer like some of you, many of you, hopefully most
of you have had 0 murders and you're going, I'm doing pretty
good. And some of you are going, you
know, when it comes to adultery, I've only got like, you know,
single digit adultery. I'm doing pretty good.
And what the law says, if the law is not asking are you an
adulterer or are you a murderer, it's asking, are you a law
breaker? You don't get to get puffed up
about the one area where you're doing right.
It's looking at at you holistically.
And when you were under the law, you became aware very quickly
that you were not worthy, that you are not holy.
The third thing that God does in the law, and you're not going to
like this, is he elevates the treatment of people to your
treatment of God. The 10 commandments are a
perfect example of this. The 1st 4 are about how you love
God. The next 6 are about how you
love His people. The fourth major thing that God
does through the giving of the law is that He creates for
Himself a people. The law became a constitution
and a calendar. And if you have a constitution
and a calendar, you create a culture.
And when you create a culture, you create a people.
Let me give you an example. Here in America, we have a
constitution and we have a calendar that creates a culture
that makes us different from other people.
For instance, on July 4th, how many fireworks are they letting
off in England? A 0 Because that is how many
wars that they have won against us suckas right?
We win. We have the same colors on our
flag, except our our colors don't run, we win.
And so they have the same they have their own constitution and
they have their own calendar and it separates us.
And what they were doing is God was wanting people to recognize
that these people with their constitution, with their
calendar, have their own culture, that they were his
people, and that other people would see the interaction
between God and his people, and they would see something about
God. This is in broad strokes, the
summary of the part of your Bible called the Old Testament
or the Old Covenant or another word, the old agreement that God
made with the nation of Israel. And whenever you're reading the
Bible in the Old Testament, you are reading the story of God's
interaction with the nation of Israel, the Jews, the children
of Abraham. And at the end of this covenant,
at the end of this Testament, God makes an agreement, a
promise to the people. And this is the promise.
Keep my commands, obey my commands, and I will bless you.
Run from my commands, ignore my commands, rebelled from my
commands, and you will be punished.
Then Jesus walks on to the scene and Jesus, guess what he does?
He goes up on a mountain and he gives a sermon and we call it
the Sermon on the Mount. You can read it in Matthew
chapter 5-6 and seven. And as you're reading through
it, he says things like this. You have heard it said, You have
heard it said. Do you know where they heard it
said in the Old Testament, the law?
Except Jesus finished the you have heard it said with another
phrase. You have heard it said, but I
tell you, you've heard it said in the law.
But I tell you, and you know what?
We were all thinking the law was impossible to keep.
Jesus is going to be super awesome right here.
He's going to make it so much easier on us.
But he doesn't. You're like, are you kidding me
Jesus? Let me explain.
Jesus says you have heard it said you shall not commit
murder. But I tell you, if you have hate
in your heart, you're like what? Jesus, here I am with 0 murders
on my record. He's like, OK, well, how much,
how many people do you hate in your heart?
You're like Jesus, you know, I have a mother-in-law.
How that is unfair. I texted her.
She was fine with it. McCombs just like Clayton.
Give Judy a break. Judy will be fine.
Now he goes, all right, you've already said don't commit
adultery and you're going, I have committed 0 adulteries.
OK, well if you look at someone lustfully, you've committed
adultery in your heart. Like Jesus, I have lusted at
least twice this year. What are you doing now?
Jesus is raising the bar. Now, when you look at the law or
when you look at the teachings of Jesus, but specifically when
you're looking at the law, there were three options people had.
The first one is they could just say I'm rejecting it.
I'm not going to do what you told me to do.
I don't care about it. I'm done with it.
The second option is you could repent over it.
The law would reveal to you that you are a sinful, fallen, jacked
up, messed up person and you'd go, I need saved, I need helped,
I got, I need somebody outside of me to get me through.
Or the third option you could do is you could become
self-righteous through it. And here's how you became
self-righteous. Instead of using God as your
standard for holiness, and instead of using God's Word as
your standard for holiness, the law, you use the failures of
other people as your standard of holiness.
That's what the Pharisees and the Sadducees did.
What they did is they looked at how other people were keeping
the law and made the decision about how holy they were by how
everybody else was doing it. That's why Jesus, if you read in
the Bible anytime Jesus is saying a pretty hard thing, he
is usually talking to the self-righteous people in the
Bible. He looks at them and says you
are a whitewashed tomb, which means you are really pretty on
the outside, but you are dead on the inside.
You're impressed in everybody else.
Everybody else thinks you are so much holier than everybody else,
but on the inside you are rotten to the core.
Because they were self-righteous.
They weren't using God as their standard.
They were not using God's word as their standard.
They were using the failures of other people.
Have you ever done that? You don't have to raise your
hand for this one, but you don't evaluate yourself on God or
God's Word. You evaluate yourself on other
people, which is how you come to the conclusion that you are a
good person because you can think of people that are worse
than you. And so when you look at people
that are worse than you, you come to the conclusion that you
are pretty good. But losers are not supposed to
be your standard. Failures are not supposed to be
your standard. If your standard is God and
God's word, you would come to the conclusion that I'm a pretty
bad person. But if you look at the failures
of other people, you will come to the conclusion that you're a
pretty good person. And a pretty good person doesn't
need save. They just need some help now and
then. But a person who uses God in
God's word as their standard, they recognize that they are in
desperate need of a Savior. Jesus goes a step further.
He articulates an overview of the Old Testament.
You actually know the answer to this question.
Here's what happens in Matthew chapter 22.
Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees and the Pharisees.
Sadducees and Pharisees, these are the self-righteous people
got together. One of them, an expert in the
law, tested him with this question.
Can you imagine testing Jesus? I bet that was a riot.
Let's see how it turned out for him.
Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?
Fair question, Jesus replied. Love the Lord your God with all
your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.
This is the first and greatest commandment.
Oh, what is he doing here? And the second is like it.
Love your neighbor as yourself. You see what Jesus is doing?
Same thing God did. He's elevating your treatment of
God and your treatment of others into the same area.
How you love God will impact how you treat people.
How you treat people will impact how you love God.
And then he says this. All the law and the prophets
hang on these two commandments. Jesus is saying take the entire
Old Testament. If you want to get a lens
through which to read the Old Testament, it's this love God
and love people. If you want to understand the
reason behind the Old Testament, law in the Old Testament and the
Old Covenant, He takes our treatment of other people and he
relates it to God. In fact, one of the hallmarks of
an early Christianity, you know, one of the things that early
Christians were known for is how many of them are Republicans?
How many of them were Democrats? Nope, neither of those.
You know what early Christians were known for?
Enemy love. They took this so seriously that
they were known for loving people that didn't treat them
right, loving people that didn't treat them well, loving people
who were their enemies. What else does Jesus do on this
mount? He makes himself a people.
He creates a culture. Look what it says in Matthew
chapter 5, verses 13 through 16. You are the salt of the earth.
But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made
salty again? It is no longer good for
anything except to be thrown out and trampled under foot.
You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be
hidden, neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl.
Instead, they put it on the stand, and it gives light to
everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light
shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and
glorify your Father in heaven. This was the desire behind our
men's conference. Uncommon was for us to be
different because ordinary wasn't working.
Christians were never designed to blend in.
We were supposed to stand out in the way that we operated and the
way that we lived and the way that we loved would identify us
as Jesus. People and other people would
see it and be drawn to it and glorify God through it.
You know what Jesus does at the very end of this Sermon on the
Mount? He does the same thing God does.
He makes a promise. He tells a story of a wise man
and a foolish man this way. He says, The wise man hears my
words and puts them into practice, and he builds his
house on a solid foundation. But the foolish man hears my
words and does not put them into practice.
And this man builds his life on a faulty foundation.
And when the storms come, when the winds blow, when the waters
rise and beat against the house, the wise man will be saved, and
the foolish man, his house will be destroyed.
Jesus says this. You are not getting any brownie
points for knowledge. You are saved.
You are not destroyed when you obey my commands.
Women, you know this, right? Does your husband get brownie
points for knowing where he's supposed to put the dishes when
he's done with them? No, he does not.
When he gets done with that
glass and he puts it on his end table and you go, what are you
doing? And he goes, I know where it's
supposed to go, I just didn't do it.
Do you go? God, thank you so much for this
knowledgeable husband that you've blessed me with.
No. And he goes, all right, fine.
And he goes, And he puts it on the counter.
You go. No.
And he goes And he puts it in the sink.
You go No, he goes, I know it goes in the dishwasher.
No wife is giving their husband brownie points for knowing where
they're supposed to put the dishes when they're done.
Husbands, pay attention. I am blessing you.
The blessing comes from the obedience of you actually doing
what you're supposed to do, right when your kids, when you
tell them this is where your dirty clothes go and you go into
the room and their clothes are everywhere and you go, hi, what
are you doing? You're like, don't worry, I know
where they're supposed to go. In the hamper.
You would go, then put them there.
Whatever Jesus is saying, hey, so you know what I want you to
do? The wise person puts it into
practice. The foolish person doesn't.
You and I are not loving God when we know we are loving God
when we obey what we know. Obedience is the love language
of God and Jesus. With that being said, let me
answer a top 20 question that I get asked as a pastor.
People will come to me and they will say, do the 10 commandments
still apply to me today? Am I still under the law?
Does it still apply? The answer in short is no.
You are no longer under the law. You are under grace.
Let me explain it to you this way.
Some of you just imagine, if you will for a second that you were
driving somewhere and you were speeding.
I know it'll be hard for you guys to fathom it, but just just
try to get there. Like what would that be like if
you were going faster than you're supposed to go?
When you see the speed limit sign, which is the law, does it
make you go faster or slower? Neither.
The speed limit sign has no bearing on how fast you go.
It reveals to you how fast you're supposed to go.
Does that make sense? It can't change how fast you
drive. It informs how fast you drive.
And some of us, we only talk about whether or not we were
speeding when we get pulled over.
And then we only really identify whether or not we were speeding
by whether or not we got a ticket.
And when we get pulled over, we try to justify the behavior that
we know we've been doing for a really long time and just
haven't been pulled over for. And so we when we're talking to
the officer, we're acting like this is our first time at 75.
Who it really got away from me, what the officer should look at
and go listen, look at me straight.
Have you been speeding for the last two years, since the last
time you got pulled over? And we would go, yeah, 100%.
I'm just paying the fast tax here.
That's all I'm trying to deal. Right.
And So what we think is that if we can keep the sin of our
speeding and reduce it to only the times that we get caught,
that that's the extent of our sin.
What the law does is it reveals to us our sin.
Some of your sin you wouldn't know about if it wasn't for the
Law. The law revealed sin in our
lives. You didn't realize you were
speeding until you saw the speed limits.
It reveals sin. The second thing that it does is
there's certain sins that you know about that other people
don't know about. But what the law also does is it
shows us that God sees every sin.
None are hidden from Him. You can hide it from your
friends, you can hide it from your spouse, but you can't hide
your sin from God. Look what it says in Hebrews
chapter 4 verse 13. Nothing in all creation is
hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid
bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account.
So there is a payment that must be paid for every sin that you
have ever committed. And if you broke the law
anywhere, you broke the law everywhere.
The law was simply a mirror to show us the condition of our
soul. Ladies, I'm going to do an
illustration here. I mean no harm, but I think
you'll be able to track with me. Men, just be gentle, OK, ladies
hope I'm guessing that you looked in a mirror before you
walked out of the house today and you know that a mirror
cannot fix your face. It can just reveal the face you
have. Tracking with me and then what
we like to do is we look in the mirror, we realize that there's
some fixing that needs to take place and then we pull out the
drywall mud and we like that person has no wrinkles at all.
You're like, well, she's got drywall in there.
That's what she has. She's spackling and said you
walk around with other people and are like, she has a great
complexion and the husband's like, I saw her paint it this
morning. Now what we do is, is we try to
make it look like there are no faults and cracks in our lives.
And then we rate ourselves on how we look in in relationship
with other people. The law reveals that work needs
done. Men, when you're in front of a
mirror, the law does not give you a better haircut.
It just tells you that you need one.
It doesn't help you grow more hair.
It reveals that you've lost hair.
And what hypocrites do is that they would use the makeup to
cover up their flaws. But the power was never in the
mirror. The power was never in the law.
It just revealed what was. And what the law was supposed to
do was not to get you to fix your face, but to reveal to you
that you needed a new face. The law was not designed to get
you to fix your heart. It was to reveal to you that you
needed a new heart. And so Jesus walks onto the
stage, perfect and every way, and through what He did, the law
was nullified. It lost all of its power and it
was wiped out. When He was nailed on the cross,
the law was nailed to the cross. The penalty revealed in the law
was nailed to the cross. And when Jesus cried out, it is
finished. He is saying that the righteous
requirement of the law has been met in Him and our sins.
The debt that we have stacked up, the debt that we know about,
the debt that we didn't know about, the stuff that we've kept
hidden has all been nailed, put on his shoulders and nailed to
the cross. And He has paid in full the
righteous requirement that needed to be met for my sin and
for your sin. So that by our salvation.
Yeah, yeah. No.
Watch this. So that means that our salvation
is not based on works. Your salvation is not based on
what you are able to do. Your salvation is by grace that
Jesus poured out on your behalf. By grace he paid what you
couldn't pay. By grace he did what you
couldn't do. And we access that grace through
faith, believing that what Jesus did on the cross is available to
you and me. You might die one day and you're
standing in a long line waiting to get to the judgment seat of
God. And you're next to some buddies
and friends from high school and maybe some, some brilliant
theologians. And you're walking there.
They're going, how do you think you're going to get into heaven?
And you're like, well, you, you know, you're trying to talk
like, well, well, let me ask you some questions.
How did you do it honoring your father and mother?
And you'll be like, if you're being honest, you'd be like,
listen, B plus, like, what do you mean B plus?
Well, I was pretty good except for, you know, junior high, high
school and college, right. OK.
How did you do at loving your neighbors?
Well, I did a pretty good job of loving three of them, but the
4th one, no, that was a no go. We forked their yard a lot.
We we just never never got that figure.
OK. How did you do it loving people?
Well, I'll be honest, a pretty, pretty decent job.
How did you do it? Loving your enemies?
Not good. Not good at all.
I didn't do a real good job of enemy love.
Really. Ever.
Did you ever commit adultery? I'll be honest with you, I got
zero. I got a zero body count there
and 0 adultery's awesome. And lust.
Not good. Did you did you ever did you
ever cheat? Yeah.
Had a class at 10:00 AM and I didn't study for it, but the
person I sat next to did. And together we both got A's.
That's how did you ever. Did you ever steal?
Yeah. Kit Kat from a Casey's.
I was real hungry and it was a hot day and I was like, I want.
I want a Kit Kat. Did you ever lie?
Yep. I did lie.
Did you did? Yeah.
My wife asked me if she looked good.
And we were running behind, so I said yeah, get in the car.
Let's go. How did How did you?
And they're going to look at you baffled because when you start
going through that list, they're going to go, you're a pretty
jacked up, messed up, despicable human being.
What makes you think you're getting into heaven?
And you'll say, well, you as well, you don't understand.
I'm not getting into heaven based on what I've done, I'm
getting into heaven based on what Jesus has done on my
behalf. I don't get in here because of
me, I get in there because of him.
And then you might be thinking, well, if Jesus is grace
increases every time I sin, I should send more.
So that way the grace of God can be displayed even more.
And if you were to think that you'd be an idiot.
Paul says, should we keep on sinning so that grace can
abound? By no means, when you come into
contact with that kind of love, with that kind of excellence,
with that kind of purity, with that kind of holiness, with that
kind of sacrifice, the natural response is not to sin more,
it's to want to sin less. It motivates you to want to do
the things that He's called you to do.
It stirs things in you so that way other people can find what
you have found in him. It motivates you to live a life
doing the things He's called you to do it.
It ushers you into a life of obedience so that way other
people can find what you have found in Him.
We're moving to a time of decision.
So there are some of you in this room and watching online.
And right now, if you were to kind of describe yourself, you
would say that you don't have an intimate personal relationship
with Jesus Christ. And that is the heartbeat of our
church is for people to find that.
I'm just going to be honest with you.
When you die, you will stand before God.
And you will either stand on your own account and what you
have done, or you can stand and have Christ stand in your
behalf. And you can stand there on
account of what Jesus has done. And you can kind of wrap
yourself in your own works and you can compare yourself to
other people, but that is not the standard that you will be
measured by. You can stand there and go,
yeah, I was kind of nice a couple times, or you can stand
there, the Bible says, wrapped, clothed in Christ.
Another way I've heard it said is you can stand before God and
he can either see your sin or he can see his Son.
That's what we do when we come into an intimate, personal
relationship with Jesus Christ. We allow the blood of Christ to
wash over us, to cover us. We become clothed in Christ,
We're forgiven in Christ, and God promises that he will
remember our sins no more. As far as the East is from the
West is how far he will separate us from our sin.
And so if you're here today and you've never started an
intimate, personal relationship with Jesus Christ, I got to ask
you, why in the world are you putting it off?
So I'm going to encourage you in just a few moments when the
people in this room stand and sing and come, some of them come
to the steps and pray. I'm going to encourage you.
If you're watching on the chat, would you click that link?
That opens you up to a chance to go into a private chat where
people can talk to you about what that looks like.
And if you're here in this room, you should walk right over there
underneath that screen right next to the baptistry and begin
asking questions about how to begin the relationship that
changes everything. To the rest of you in the room,
I got something really spiritual to talk to you about.
Do you know what the secret ingredient in a Portillo's
chocolate cake is? You're not.
Some of you are not going to believe this mayonnaise.
If I invited you over to my house and you saw a big old jar
of mayonnaise and what's that for?
Well, I'm making cake. Like, I think this guy's a
little sick in the head, all right?
It makes no sense. You put mayonnaise in a cake,
but that is the special ingredient that makes a
Portillo's cake so good. And I have to say this, I'm
already fat enough, so I don't want you guys going out and
getting me Portillo's cake. I want to live to at least 47.
OK, But the secret ingredient in a Portillo's cake is mayonnaise.
Who'd have thought? And some of you are sitting here
and you're kind of going through your Christian life.
And if you were to be honest with yourself, you're like, I
don't really experience God's power in my life.
I don't feel him like I used to. Can I tell you something?
It might be because you're missing the secret ingredient,
obedience. You do not need the Holy
Spirit's power in your life to be complacent.
You don't need the Holy Spirit's power in your life to love
people that aren't nice to you. And if you're wondering why you
don't feel him or you're not experiencing him or you're not
seeing him move, it's because you don't need the Spirit of God
to just know what God wants you to do.
You need the Spirit and the power of God to do what he has
called you to do. And that is released when you
are obedient, when you find yourself in a situation and he
says, love those who persecute you, love your enemies, you're
going, there's no way I could do that.
And Jesus goes, you're exactly stinking, right?
There's no way you can do that on your own.
But in my power and in my strength, you're able to do it.
You see, you're thinking, God, how am I going to fix my heart?
God's going, I'm not here to fix your heart.
I'm here to give you my heart. And my heart is capable of
things that your heart cannot possibly imagine.
So if you're wondering what might be missing in your walk
with the Lord, it just might be obedience that unlocks the
things that you've been missing. Would you stand with me?
God? When I think about this church,
I can't help but think about how much I love it.
I love the people. I love what you're doing here.
And God, I know when I think about how much I love them, it
doesn't even get in the same Galaxy of how much you love
them. You know what they're capable
of. You know what they're struggling
with. You know their hurts, you know
their doubts. And so, God, I'm asking that you
would interact with every person in this room and every person
who's watching online. Yeah, that you would clearly
reveal the very thing that you want them to do, and, God, that
you'd give them the courage and the strength to do it.
In your name I pray. Amen.