John 17 The high priestly prayer.
When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted his eyes to
heaven and said, Father, the hour has come, Glorify your Son,
that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him
authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom
you have given Him. And this is eternal life, that
they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you
have sent. I glorified you on earth, having
accomplished the work that you gave me to do.
And now, Father, glorify me in Your own presence with the glory
that I had with You before the world existed.
I have manifested Your name to the people whom You gave me out
of the world. Yours they were, and You gave
them to me, and they have kept their word.
Now they know that everything that You have given me is from
You, for I have given them the words that You gave me, and they
have received them and have come to know in truth that I came
from You, and they have believed that You sent me.
I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world,
but for those whom You have given me.
For they are Yours. All mine are yours, and Yours
are mine, and I am glorified in them.
And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I
am coming to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your
name which You have given me, that they may be 1 even as we
are one. While I was with them, I kept
them in Your name, which You have given me.
I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost, except
for the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be
fulfilled. But now I'm coming to you, and
these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy
fulfilled in themselves. I have given them Your word, and
the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just
as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them
out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil. 1 They
are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth.
As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the
world, and for their sake I consecrate myself that they also
may be sanctified. In truth.
I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe
in Me through their word, that they may all be one.
Just as You, Father, are in me, and I in You, that they may also
be in us, so the world may believe that you have sent me
the glory that you have given me.
I have given to them that they may be 1 even as we are one, I
and them and you and me, that they may become perfectly 1, so
that the world may know that you've sent me and loved them
even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also
whom you have given me, may be with me where I am to see my
glory that you have given me because you have loved me before
the foundation of the world. Oh, righteous Father, even
though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know
that you have sent me. I made known to them your name,
and I will continue to make it known that the love with which
You've loved me be in them and I in them.
Amen. Good morning.
Thank you for braving the 2026 Hunger Games, Oh, I mean the
Bakersfield Marathon to get here this morning.
Welcome to Resurrection Church. My name is Daniel.
I'm a lead pastor here. We're continuing in our series
in the book of John. We're going to be at John 17
today. In 1974, the last soldier of
World War 2 surrendered. Now, if you're a little confused
by that date because Japan actually surrendered in 1945,
good, because it should, you should be a little bit confused
of why it took an extra 29 years for the last soldier to actually
surrender. There was a man named Hiru
Onata. He was a Japanese soldier who
had been stationed on Lubang Island in the Philippians, and
he'd gotten his orders one year before the surrender in 1944.
And explicitly his His orders were never surrender in case
they try to trick you. So the next year, when Japan
actually surrendered as a country, he didn't get the memo.
He survived in the jungle of that island, conducting
guerrilla raids, shooting at the locals and the police.
Convinced the war was still going on.
They dropped Flyers over the jungle.
They delivered family letters and he concluded they were all
tricks. He fought the wrong enemy for
another 29 years until finally Japan went and found his now
retired former commanding officer, flew him to the island
and formally relieved him of duty.
He wasted 30 years of his life. He wasn't weak, he wasn't a
coward. He was devoted to fighting the
wrong enemy. Wrong enemy, wrong energy.
It's our big idea today. And The funny thing is that
that's the story of every human on earth before we meet Jesus.
Wrong enemy, wrong energy. Today we're going to spend some
time talking about what happens when you change sides from God's
enemy to God's child when Jesus saves you.
And we're also going to talk a little bit about this thing that
some of times we do after we get saved, which is forget which
side we're on and shoot the wrong people.
When Jessica was reading John 17, that is called the high
priestly prayer. It is the longest recorded
prayer that we have of Jesus. And it's it's also one of the
few times Jesus prays out loud. We know he prays a lot in
private. And he is at the Last Supper
with his disciples, which the last few weeks we've all this
has been about the Last Supper. There's 12 disciples and he's
about a couple hours away from being arrested and ultimately
going to the cross to die for our sins.
If you're not familiar with the word sins, if that's something
new to you, it's simply the Bible's word for rebellion
against God. And So what he's doing is he's
preparing these disciples for the fact that because they
believe in Jesus, and because Jesus is about to go pay for our
rebellion on the cross, they are about to be saved.
They will cross from being humans rebelling against God, to
being on his team, to being called his children.
Now if you've never heard that that concept before, or maybe
that's a little bit confusing to you, it is explicitly stated in
another letter to an early church in Ephesus.
In Ephesians 2, the apostle Paul will write a very clear
understanding of what it looks like to go from God's enemy to
God's child. It sounds like this, and you
were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked,
following the course of this world, following the Prince of
the power of the air. That's Satan, the spirit that is
now in work, at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we
all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the
desires of the flesh and the mind.
And we're by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.
What what that says is it's not just the disciples in the upper
room that were enemies of God before Jesus.
It's every single one of us enemies lost, stuck in rebellion
against God. Verse 4 But God, being rich in
mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even
when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive
together with Christ. By grace you have been saved.
The story of the Bible is that the commander comes into enemy
territory, gives his life for us and drafts us into his army, but
we never leave the battlefield. We never went and found God at
all. It says, For while we were yet
sinners, say me, we were reconciled to God by the death
of his Son. Now, why all this background?
Well, because John 17 is actually a prayer of protection
over the disciples. Jesus knows that they're about
to change teams. And so he spends this entire
chapter praying for them. And if you read the end of the
chapter, actually praying for us, because he says those that
come later and he does this out loud, unlike most of his prayers
that are all in private and he does it out loud for our benefit
so that we would get to read it. What he says is he's going to
leave the disciples in the battlefield, but all of a sudden
they're going to be on a new team.
And so there's a couple of things that Jesus is attempting
to prepare them for and he's attempting to prepare us for
because when you change teams, three things are going to
happen. And I think they're really
important. They're all kind of nested in
this letter. Here's the first.
Changing sides means new enemies.
It also means new teammates. And the third thing, it's the
same old war. It's actually not all that new,
new enemies, new team mates, but the same old war.
Now, now, what do I mean by three enemies?
Well, in the Bible, God has three enemies that are
constantly mentioned. They're mentioned in Ephesians 2
that we just read. They're actually mentioned in
John 17 as well. And when you and I go from being
an enemy of God to being a child of God, His enemies become our
enemies. And so Jesus spends an entire
chapter praying protection over the disciples because he knows
these are about to be your enemies.
And listen, I don't want you to miss this.
I think this is a really important chapter in the Bible.
It's a really important concept for us in the church.
And here's why. If you're in a fight, it's
really important to know who the enemy is.
Amen. If not, you might be shooting a
friend. So let's look at it.
Who are three God's three enemies?
Who are these new enemies? Satan, the world and the flesh.
Before God saved me, I was on
the team of the world. I was on the team of Satan.
But now that God has saved me, all three of these enemies are
working against me. Who is Satan?
Satan is the enemy commander. In John 1715, Jesus says this in
this prayer. I do not ask that you take them
out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil 1, the
evil 1. Now that Greek word is paneros,
PONEROS paneros. It does not mean.
It doesn't mean abstract evil. Oh, yeah.
Bad things. No, no, it's, it's personal.
It's very specific, That word. He's naming an adversary that
has a strategy. Now, in the Bible, we know Satan
as the devil. We know him as Lucifer.
He has some different names. At this moment when Jesus is
praying, this Satan is active on the earth.
He has minions. They're called demons or fallen
angels and they're referred to throughout all of Scripture and,
and Jesus believes that this is so important that he has to
pray. He needs to pray protection over
us from these spiritual forces. The Bible tells us the demons
are real, that they have an an agenda, that they are the
enemies of God, that they are unredeemable, that they are
destined for eternal punishment and that if you're saved,
they're after you. That's what the Bible says.
So we are to resist demonic attacks.
We are to resist the devil. Now on a spin, just a few
moments, I'm going to give you 2 things about Satan that I think
are really important to note for John 17 and just for you as you
follow Jesus. And here's the first thing.
A lot of us will fall into one of two camps.
We're going to either overreact or we're going to under react.
We're going to overreact to spiritual things or we're going
to maybe underestimate them. And we see both of those like,
you can overreact to this. You can label everything as a
spiritual attack. That's not correct.
First of all, God has three enemies.
So often times the thing that happens is not Satan at all.
Listen, a lot of my problems don't have to do with Satan.
They have to be. They have to do with me being
dumb. It would not be accurate to call
that Satan. I could make better choices.
Amen. So we can overreact.
And everywhere we look, it's a spiritual ward.
It's a spiritual this, and it's demons this and it's Satan this,
and it's not accurate. That's an overreaction.
But we can also underestimate this in the Western world that
we live in now, in Western civilization in 2026, man, we
love to minimize the spiritual realm.
We love to dismiss things like Satan and demons.
And we just just, that's just what crazy people talk about.
That's just an excuse people give to justify their own
mistakes. You know, the famous author and
theologian CS Lewis wrote a bunch of beautiful books, but he
also wrote a book called The Screw Tape Letters.
It's a fictional account of two demons strategizing how to get
you. It's fascinating.
And in the preface to that book, he says something before you
read the book. It says this There are two equal
and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the
devil's One is to disbelieve in their existence.
The other is to believe and to feel an excessive and unhealthy
interest in them. You can overreact or you can
under react, and for the most part in the Western world, we
under react. We underestimate one of the
themes in the screw tape letters is later used in a movie that
became incredibly famous, became one of the most famous movie
quotes in this last century. An actor named Kevin Spacey says
this. The greatest trick the devil
ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist under
reacting, under estimating. If you find yourself cynical
about the demonic, but you, you, you follow Christ, you would
call yourself a Christian. I would just challenge you with
this. If you're easy to dismiss the
influence in the attack of Satan that the Bible says is a real
battle, I would just ask you. You know, it must be difficult
to justify believing in an invisible God if you don't
believe in his enemies that he tells you he has, whether you
can see them or not. So Satan, the second enemy of
God that is now our enemy is the world.
That's the enemy's territory. In John 1714, which Jesus is
praying, he says the world has hated them because they are not
of the world. Now, when Jesus is praying a
protection over us for the world, he does not mean the
earth, the world. Actually here in John, the Word
is cosmos in Greek that starts with AK and it it's not
referring to the physical world at all.
It's actually referring to the organized system of rebellion
against God that not not people, the system culture, values,
pressure, comfort, distraction. This is Satan's operational
headquarters. I remember years ago I was
driving into Las Vegas. Anyone ever driven in at night
to Las Vegas? OK, you're driving in and the,
and like the light show is like nothing you've ever seen.
I I can't explain. If you've never done this, you
know, they're just neon. And there's the now there's
these LED signs and and it's and it's and it's, they built like a
mini Eiffel Tower and a mini like New York, Manhattan thing
and A and A and a castles and, and, and all like it just.
And I remember driving in and also there's so much there's
like hedonism rising these naked people everywhere.
You're trying to cover your kids eyes and but I remember driving
in and just thinking like the folly of mankind that we would
build this and, and, and, and then thumb our nose at God.
The Bible says the world broke and it is it is against God.
I feel like all you have to do is drive to Las Vegas at night
to know that the world was Satan's playground.
And so, you know, before I was saved, I could live in the world
and I and I could breathe in the world and it was like a fish in
water. But the moment I got saved,
everything pushed back because I was no longer of this world in
it, but not of it. In verse 18, Jesus says, as you
sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.
Jesus does not pray that we get removed from here.
He prays that we're protected inside of it because he sent you
into it. You are a soldier behind enemy
lines by design. This is not an accident.
This is our mission field. Christian.
Christian, would you stop being shocked when the world pushes
back against you? It's not new.
The world has pushed against Christianity since it started.
We should not be surprised any longer.
People are like, I'm going to move to Tennessee.
It's still in the world. It's it's at the edge, but it's
enemy territory. Satan, the world and the flesh,
that's the enemy within. The Bible says that once sin
entered the world all the way at the beginning of the story in
the Garden of Eden when the first humans, Adam and Eve
rebelled against God, that since that happened, every human born
since then, that's you say me has been born with a sin nature.
That's why we need God. So God saves us.
We are a new creation and yet there's still this old nature
that we are battling with. Romans 7.
And so in John 17, Jesus prays for the disciples to have unity
7 times. It is the request He asks for.
The most in that chapter in this prayer is unity.
Unity 7 times. Why?
Why would he do that?
Well, what causes disunity between US and the church?
James. James who is Jesus half brother
becomes an elder in the Church of Jerusalem and he writes a
letter and here's what he says causes disunity in the church.
What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you?
Is it not this that your passions are at war within you,
that that new creation and that old sin nature are still
fighting? You see, disunity is not a
relational problem, it's a sin nature problem.
So Jesus prays that you and I as believers would have a unity
that looks like the Trinity. Now if you're not familiar with
that word, that is God the Father, God the Son, and God the
Holy Spirit. And they have a relationship
that is so intimate and so perfect that Jesus says, I pray
that the unity between believers in the church will be like this,
a unity, a relationship with no sin nature.
That's perfect. And the reason he asks 7 times,
unity, unity, give them unity unity, unity, unity, unity is He
knows. Listen, most of you already know
what God's three enemies are. You already knew that these
things existed. And yet we spend most of our
time and our emotion fighting our boss at work, or our spouse,
or people in our church or our neighbor, the flesh
manufacturers enemies out of the people standing right next to
you. Wrong enemy, wrong energy.
And just like our Japanese soldier, you can lose 30 years
fighting with somebody that was never a threat.
So the the reason that Jesus spends an entire prayer asking
the Father to protect you from these three enemies is he knows
what's coming and he loves you far too much to leave you
unwarned or unprotected. Satan, the world in the flesh.
Now I told you this means 3 new things.
One of them is new enemies. The second thing is it means a
new team. Now a couple weeks ago I had an
opportunity to, to preach on in, in John, this idea that we had
become, because Jesus saved us, a royal priesthood, a holy
nation. And so I don't, I'm not going to
spend a ton of time on the new team.
But what I'm trying to tell you is that if, if if you have been
saved, you're all on the same team, turn to your neighbor and
say, I'm glad you're on my team. Come on, let him know to let him
know. The Bible speaks about this over
and over again, the New Testament about what this looks
like to be on the same team in Revelation 59 and 10, which is a
picture of what heaven's going to look like.
They're singing to Jesus and it says they sang a new song saying
worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals.
For you were slain. And by your blood, you ransom
people for God from every tribe and language and people and
nation. And you have made them a
Kingdom. And priests are God, and they
shall reign on earth. If you follow Jesus, you are in
the most decorated elite combat unit in history.
SEAL Team Six ain't got nothing on you, brother.
We've been fighting for thousands of years.
And I want you to consider this. I want you to think about this
for a minute. If you're saved, you have more
in common with a Christian from Iran, from Yemen, from North
Korea than you do with a conservative American atheist
because you're on new team. Think about that.
It's not about a political party.
It's not about patriotism. It's not about demographics or
or ethnicity. It's not about a sports team.
Go Bears. It's not about a job or a hobby
or anything else that unites us other than being bought by the
blood of Christ. We are one in him.
Turn to that person that you just told you you were glad.
You just turn over there and say, I would have picked you
anyway. Go ahead.
I'm earning you points. Husbands, come on.
I would have picked you anyway. You're on a new team, guys.
That's why it's crazy when you hear someone talking bad about
another church. Those are your team mates.
We love those guys. You know those guys are Valley
Baptist. They're amazing.
We tell them that all the time. You know the guys doing Pastor
Jeff over at the Bridge? Awesome.
I am constantly texting him. I am so proud of them and I
appreciate them so much. Why?
They're our teammates. Why wouldn't we?
That's crazy. The third thing is that's not
new is the war. It's just the same old war.
New enemies, new team, but this is the same old war.
It's an ancient battle. Now we might have a new
perspective or a new power, but you all, this battle ain't new.
It started in the Garden of Eden in the beginning of the Bible.
Now you may not have realized you were in it before.
Before salvation, you couldn't see it.
You get saved and all the sudden you can.
It's always been there. We were just blind.
And now we see from the first book of the Bible, Genesis, to
the last book of the Bible, Revelation, it is talking about
this battle, this problem. Now I do want to remind you that
the end has already been written.
Jesus wins. The only question is whether you
show up to the battle or sleep through it like that Japanese
soldier did, mixed up, loyal to the wrong side, exhausted from
fighting the wrong war. Now listen, if you really want
to be encouraged, and I, I highly recommend doing this.
I do this. I, if you want to be encouraged,
read some of our church fathers. Read, read preachers and
theologians and pastors from like 400 years ago, 600 years
ago, 800 years ago. And here's why.
We'll encourage you. They were having the same
problem. Your problems are not new.
Every time you're like, oh, I can't believe.
Open up something like 1640 and you're like, huh, that sounds
familiar. They have a new problem.
It's the problem. Now I'm spending a ton of time
talking to you about this. Why?
Well, Jesus thought this was
important enough to pray an entire chapter specifically over
these things in our lives. And so this next part when we
talk about how we actually apply this, I think is, is like one of
the most important things that you're ever going to learn about
doing life in church. So give me a for for the last
couple seconds here, lean forward.
You won't fall over. Go ahead.
You can lean forward. I want you to pay attention to
this, this part. This is really important.
Listen to me. Some of you are exhausted.
Some of you are overwhelmed, some of you are even angry, and
I want you to know that Jesus Prayer in John 17 is exactly
what you need to hear. When I look at our church, when
I look at American churches, I think there are two things that
if you read John 17, it should help wake us up to.
And here's the first. Some of y'all forgot we were in
a war. Like Jesus is really clear.
The Bible is super clear that when he saved us, he
intentionally left us an enemy territory, commissioned us for
battle, equipped us in the Spirit, gave us teammates and
and trainers and and wrote out an entire battle plan.
And what you know, we do with all of that, we do what I am
really good at. We forget when my wife at the
beginning of the week goes through the whole calendar and
she's like, and then the kids have this and they have the
orthodontist appointment and don't forget that you got the
PTA thing and you got to go to this and then take guy to
swimming. And we go through the entire
thing and I look at her and I'm like, OK, I got it, but just in
case, tell me the whole thing again.
I wasn't listening. We forgot, we forgot.
Now that's just frustrating if you're married to me, but but
it's deadly if you're forgetting what Jesus has been trying to
tell us for years. It's you're in a war.
It's deadly. It's deadly because what will
happen is we'll get this unrealistic expectations.
We start to expect it to be easy You we start to expect to the
Christian life's going to be like a vacation, not a
battlefield. So, so so then you can't find
any joy in the battle. Christian, listen, this is a
battleship, not a Disney cruise. There's not a single part of
Scripture that tells you this is going to be easy.
It doesn't exist, so stop expecting it to get easy.
The second thing is actually worse than the first.
Some of it is forgetting, but some of it here, here, we see
this. You know what?
We've lived it. In the midst of what is a cosmic
battle against spiritual forces, we turn and start fighting one
another. That's why Jesus prays for unity
seven times in this prayer and in church after church.
We are eating each other alive for petty differences.
It's so common the Bible actually leaves us a detailed
instruction about how to go tackle internal conflict, and we
rarely use it. In fact, it's so common, it's
launched a new phrase in our culture called Church Hurt.
You guys heard that? You ever heard Church Hurt?
Barna did a study about American Christians, said that one in
every three Christians that leaves the church points to a
conflict with someone in the church.
That's why they left. You're, I don't want you to miss
what I just said. I want you to think about in a
military conflict if 33% of the casualties were from friendly
fire. I would say we have a problem.
Let me tell you how else I know that it's really common because
I've done it, because I've done it.
My wife and I at our last church had been there about 10 years
when we begin to feel like we were being called to to go
somewhere, but we couldn't figure out what it was.
And so we're what we did it. We went to a pastor's and our
family, our parents and we just asked them to all start in our
group and just pray for us. And so I don't know about you,
but I have this weird thing where I think if I pray for it
that God has like a 24 hour timer, like he's going to, he'll
be telling me in about a day, like 2 days maybe a year went by
of praying and we still didn't have any clarity.
And I was so frustrated because I knew we were being called and
I couldn't figure out where. And so I had a choice.
In that moment, I could have taken that discontentment and it
could have been holy discontentment, but I didn't.
Instead, what I did is I, I turned it on my pastor, Pastor
Tim. Now Pastor Tim had discipled me,
mentored me, loved me, walked through me with a lot for during
the loss of a child. And in that moment, because I
was frustrated, I turned my angst and my anger on him and,
and the Lord was very gracious to me in that season.
Like I never never really burned that relationship by by losing
it. But let me tell you something.
I thought some very terrible things about him and I said some
things I shouldn't have said. And I'm, and I, again, it was by
the grace of God that it never got really bad.
And then later, as God actually gave us clarity on where he was
sending us and where we were supposed to go when we went
there, I looked back and went, Oh no, I was, I was so ashamed I
had to go and talk to him. I'm so sorry.
And you know, Pastor Jamie, he was here like 2 weeks ago
commissioning the Heimburgers that he sent.
He preached here in January. He was very gracious to me,
thankfully. Church, I'm begging you to stop
forgetting that we're at war. So remember who the enemy is and
stop eating our own. And if in this moment you're
beginning to realize that, man, we all struggle with this,
that's why Jesus left us an entire prayer.
And you're thinking, how do I go about doing that?
Well, here's the good news. Jesus actually left us
everything we need. He's pretty good like that.
And so I printed these into your insert.
They're directly out of scripture.
Let's go over them. They're the things that we do.
They're the battlefield advice. And I want you to take it home
on your on your insert. And I want you to, I want you to
put the magnet on it on the fridge up next to Bobby's report
card that you're proud of. And I want you to keep it up
there. And I want you to look at it
every single day. Three things.
Here's the first reorient. Every morning, Colossians 32
says set your minds on things that are above, not on things
that are on the earth. So before you pick up your
phone, before you check the news, before you do whatever it
is, it's going to start to bother you or doom scrolling or
I don't. Just spend 60 seconds telling
yourself the truth about who you are and who the enemy is.
Soldiers don't stumble out of the barracks and wander into the
battle. They have a briefing.
So, so, so before your feet hit the ground and you begin to race
off into your day, your Bible, your prayer journal, some some
moments actually reorienting you before the world gets a hold of
you and tries to disorient you. IA couple of us actually listen
to this, but we have Bible reading plans.
We're doing a Bible in the year plan here as a church.
And so, but it's about 4:15 AMI start my Bible plan.
Not because I want to check a box because I need to be
reoriented before the day starts as I have a tendency to drift.
Secondly, reorient daily. Refuel often.
Matthew 44, Jesus says man shall
not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the
mouth of God. Jesus, when he says this is
being attacked by Satan in the wilderness and he doesn't fight
back with willpower. He refuels with the word.
That's what he's telling you. You cannot sustain a fight
you're not eating for. This doesn't have to be
complicated. Open your Bible app, start a
reading plan, get in a group somewhere centered around the
word of God where you have people asking you, hey man, what
has God been telling you this week?
Hey, what's God been teaching you this week?
Hey, what are you convicted of this week?
Hey, where has God encouraged you this week?
What are you doing? You're refueling.
The enemy loves a hungry soldier and some of y'all are starving.
Reorient daily, refuel often. And lastly, remember that the
end is already written in Revelation 1911 when we get a
picture of what heaven's going to be like.
It says. Then I saw heaven opened, and
behold, a White Horse. The one sitting on it is called
faithful and true. And in righteousness he judges
and makes war. Jesus wins when the battle feels
like it's going the wrong direction, and it will feel like
that. You are allowed to skip forward
and read the last chapter. It's not a cliffhanger.
The king rides out. Every enemy falls.
Every knee will bow. You're not fighting toward an
uncertain outcome. You're fighting toward a settled
one. This is the the Bible's formula
to fix our battlefield problems, and we don't do any of it in our
own strength. Jesus actually told us you will
receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.
That's not motivational language.
That is the power to fight this fight.
You're not doing it on your own. So brother, sister in Christ,
who is exhausted today, who's been fighting the wrong enemies,
stop shooting at your brothers and sisters.
Stop surrendering to this world. It's against you.
Stop collaborating with your flesh.
Jesus has been praying this prayer for you since before you
were born, and he is still praying it over you.
And he is not disappointed. If you get confused about who
the enemy is, that's why he has this prayer.
This is why he's explained all these things to us, precisely
because he knew this would be difficult.
And this prayer is still active. Wrong enemy, wrong energy.
We can end that today. Perhaps there's another person
that's listening to this, maybe, maybe online, maybe here in the
room and and you, you don't know the God of the Bible.
Now, maybe you're here today and you're still on the wrong side
of this battle. You've been in the jungle your
whole life, fighting for the wrong things, loyal to a side
that is never going to win, and exhausted from a war that was
never yours to fight. That's not a character flaw, by
the way. That's called the human
condition. The Bible says that every single
one of us was born behind enemy lines, Children of wrath,
serving a system that was working against us.
And most of us don't know it. But the commander didn't send a
memo this time. Jesus came himself while you
were still his enemy. He died for you.
That's not a recruitment pitch for a religion.
That's a rescue operation for a soul.
And today he's offering you a new life, a full pardon, a new
team, a new identity, and a new name.
Child of God. So as we close, will you bow
your heads and close your eyes? Because I want to give you that
invitation from the Bible right now.
If you would like to surrender your life to Christ and follow
him as King, simply repeat this prayer after me.
Jesus, I know I'm a Sinner who can't save myself.
I want you to save me and adopt me into your family.
I surrender everything to you, be my Lord.
Please Jesus, if you prayed that prayer for the very first time,
will you raise your hand for me to see?
Thank you, thank you. You put your hands down in Jesus
name, Amen. Real quick.
He gave your life to Christ moments ago.
Welcome to the family. In just a second we're going to
respond to this sermon. We're going to sing a song and
there's some tables in the back. They say I raised my hand as we
sing. I want you to just find your way
back there. We want to celebrate with you.
We're excited for you, especially if you've given your
life to Christ recently and haven't told anyone about it,
come tell someone about it. If you're online and you just
gave your life to Christ, you just put it in the chat.
There are people waiting to celebrate with you.
I can guarantee you. Will you stand?
We're going to close with a song and some announcements.
Our prayer team is going to come up if you need prayer for any
reason. We actually really love praying
with you and for you, so we'll sing.
If you gave your life to Christ, you go to one of those tables in
the back. You move as the Lord leads you.
We love you, Church.