The Consequential Gospel

Matter of fact, I would go as far as to say this: that doubt is a good thing in the life of a believer.

Not if you stay there, but if you process through.

This podcast is a Ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church, helping people to know, enjoy, and glorify God.

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Let's pray together.

Lord, we've come to warm our lives around this flame that was lit a long time ago.

It's gonna burn for all of eternity.

Nothing is going to extinguish it, nothing is gonna put it out.

We serve a king that man did not elect, therefore he cannot dethrone.

So let us live and speak and act with confidence today, God.

Uh Lord, melt away all the unnecessary.

Burn the dross out of our lives, Lord, until we see, you see your reflection of you in us, in the way we love, in the way we lead, in the way we initiate, and the way we engage, and the way we do nothing to the glory of God.

And so, Holy Spirit, again, we've come to warm our lives around this flame that was lit a long time ago by you.

This was all your idea, and so you get all the credit, and one day you'll get all the glory.

So let us live lives that glorify you in the meantime, in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

Amen.

You can have a seat.

If you've got a Bible, I invite you to take it and open up to John chapter 20.

John 20 · chapter mention

John chapter 20.

John 20 · chapter mention

If you're our guest, we're going through the Gospel of John.

And I'm sad to announce this morning we've only got two more sermons after today in the Gospel of John.

And everybody said, Yeah.

Jerks.

Anyway, uh, if you're our guest, I'm not talking to you.

I'm just talking to the people that are here all the time.

Jerks.

Anyway, I want to talk to you this morning.

I'll start reading.

When we start in chapter 1, verse 1.

We started it on September 17th of 2017, and we've gone verse by verse all the way through, which is what we do most of the time.

After the first of the year, we'll I'll do a couple topical series to speak to some things I think in the life of our church need to be spoken to.

Uh, and then we'll go through the book of Daniel.

Uh uh, and then after that, we're gonna Yeah, yeah.

And I'll explain it all to you.

Uh anyway.

Uh, and then after that, we're gonna go through the because people always say what to do.

After that, we're gonna go through the book of 1 John, uh, the the epistle.

But right now, I want to start, I'll start reading where Blake left off last week.

I'll start reading in chapter 20, verse 19.

Uh, and I'll talk to you today about the consequential gospel.

The consequential gospel.

Why does the gospel, the good news, that means good the good news of Christianity have so much consequence for us today.

Let's read the Bible and understand this.

Verse 19 of John 20.

On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, Peace be with you.

When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.

And his disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.

Jesus said to them again, Peace be with you.

As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.

When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit.

If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven.

If you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.

Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the twin, was not with them when Jesus came.

So the other disciples told him, We have seen the Lord.

But he said to them, Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.

Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them.

Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you.

Then he said to Thomas, Put your finger here and see my hands, and put out your hand and place it in my side.

Do not disbelieve, but believe.

Thomas answered him, My Lord and my God.

Jesus said to him, Have you believed because you have seen me?

Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.

Uh the consequential gospel.

There's four things I want to point to in the text today.

And the first one is simply this this is what makes the gospel so consequential.

Uh, the first thing is this that peace with God is now available.

It's verse 19 and 20.

Uh, I I I read this and I was struck by the simplicity.

Now just go with me for a moment and think about this.

If you had done all that Jesus has done up to this point, is this what you would lead with?

And let me back up.

Uh he's born of a virgin, he lives a sinless life, he performs uh in the Gospel of John many signs and wonders.

Matter of fact, he did so many things that the Bible says if we were trying to record them all, the libraries would be filled to overflowing.

You couldn't record them all because every moment of every day, he was doing something incredibly consequential.

He goes to the cross, like he said, his disciples didn't understand.

Uh the doubt of Thomas is not the doubt of faith, it is the doubt of unbelief.

Thomas is a disciple, he's one of the twelve, but he still to this point does not believe.

And so he gets up, Jesus dies on the cross, he's buried, he rises from the dead, and this is what he leads with when he sees his disciples.

Peace be with you.

Say that to your kids this week.

And they'll just look at you kind of like, that's all you got?

Peace be with you.

What's for supper?

Where's my allowance?

What are we doing next weekend?

But yet Jesus is telling us something because he says it three times in his passage.

Twice here in the beginning, once kind of toward the end.

So Thomas, same thing.

Walks through the wall, stop right there.

Did you know that?

He walked through the wall.

I told my wife, I can't wait to get a resurrected body.

I'm gonna come back and spy on you.

And she's like, You're a strange little man.

Yes, and so peace with God is now available.

It's never attainable through our own efforts, but because what Jesus has done on the cross, he rises from the dead, his first words seem inconsequential, but they are hugely consequential because it's basically saying, Hey, peace be with you.

This phrase is so important.

He says it twice here, later to later to Thomas.

Now, this doesn't strike us like it should because we fail to believe that we by nature are God's enemies.

Let me say that again.

This doesn't strike us like it should because we fail to believe that we by nature are God's enemies.

We're we're not born.

People say, oh, we're all we're all God's children.

No, no, no, no.

You're created by God, but you by nature, I by nature am not a Christian.

I'm not God's child, I'm God's creation.

I by nature am God's enemy.

I I have turned aside and gone to my own way.

That is the that is the depravity of human nature.

Now, there's two expressions of peace that I want you to understand this morning.

First of all, there's a military expression, and then there's a spiritual expression.

The military expression of peace sounds like it is defined like this exemption from the rage and the havoc of war.

Exemption from the rage and the havoc of war.

That's this military understanding of peace.

The spiritual understanding or definition of peace is this the tranquil state of a soul assured of its salvation through Christ.

And so fearing nothing from God and content with its earthly lot.

The tranquil state of a soul assured of its salvation through Christ, and so fearing nothing from God and content with its earthly lot.

This is when Jesus, this is why Jesus says, peace be with you, because something, because of who he is and what he's accomplished, something is now available that was never available before.

Let me give you an experiential definition of peace.

I grew up on a farm.

I grew up with an old school dad who wore red wing work boots and tucked his pants down inside of him every day.

He did not like to repeat himself.

He would say, Do this.

And if you didn't do that, you did not get a participation trophy, you did not get put in timeout.

You got the pop quiz where my dad would say to me and my brothers, what did I tell you to do?

Now, while he's saying that, he's unbuckling that belt.

And then the rattlesnake is coming out.

The rattlesnake is when you pull the belt by the buckle and it hits the belt loops on the way out, it goes, my dad, while he's going, What did I tell you to do?

And you'd tell him, and then he'd say, What'd you do?

And you had to confess your shortcomings that I have transgressed the law of Leon, and now the wrath is coming down.

And my dad would, next thing he would say was bend over.

And you were just like, and we had to hold our ankles.

And my dad took a belt and hit us on the backside.

Can you believe that?

And the whole time with a Salem cigarette in the corner of his mouth, jiggling up and down, while he's talking like Clint Eastwood from Gran Torino, get off my lawn.

And he would whip one, throw them down, grab another, and whip that one.

I always wanted to go first.

Because my brothers would start squirreling around, and my dad's like, I'm gonna get to you in just a minute.

And so maybe we'd whip all of us and we'd get done, and then we'd like.

And my wife's like, Did you cry because you wanted them to stop?

No, I cried because it hurt.

It hurt.

See what my mom, sometimes, my mom, it didn't even hurt.

I never had that thought.

I never got a whipping from my dad when I thought, that didn't hurt.

The fear of God seized me when my dad said, Hey, boy, come here.

What I tell you to do, oh Jesus, come back right now.

Oh, my dad ain't happy.

And my dad, he never said, I'm so disappointed.

You go to your room and think about what you did.

He thought, I'll tell you what, blood God, don't be an idiot your whole life.

And we just got whipped.

Now, I'm not endorsing corporal punishment.

Don't send me emails.

Oh, you shouldn't talk about that.

No, we just got whipped.

But I knew right and wrong, and my dad was so abusive, he used to, as he's whipping you, he'd throw you to the wayside and go, You should be ashamed of yourself.

Can you believe that?

And I would say back to him, I'm really dysregulated on the inside, Father, when you bring shame to bear on me.

I ask what your kids say.

Because they've been raised in the therapeutic.

Oh, I'm so dysregulated.

It didn't matter what I said.

If I said something like that, my dad's like, You want some more?

Because he would whip you.

You'd be over there.

Me and my brother would be like, one time my dad whipped a whole Little League baseball team.

Fifteen of them.

He paused in the middle, smoked a cigarette, and whipped the other six.

Uh I mean, so we're over there, and then my dad would say this.

Quit scrying, boy.

I'll give you something to cry about.

And I'm thinking, you've already given me something to cry about, okay?

I can't sit down for a week, you jerk.

But I didn't say that.

I would try harder and not cry.

You ever tried hard not to cry?

That's about enough of that.

We got work to do.

Now, at this point, you should be thinking right now, what's this got to do with peace?

Can you bring back the guy from last week who was calm and stood right here?

Where do we get this over-caffeinated chihuahua?

Here's what it has to do with peace.

Every time, every time we would get a whipped, I'd be like, And then there's that first deep breath where you're like, and it's over.

You survived.

That's what the peace of God feels like.

I didn't fear my dad.

Now my dad would come put my dad's like cigarette smoking brook cream.

He'd put his hand on, he'd put his hand on the back of my neck and go, hey, we good?

We good?

Alright, let's get to work.

It was over.

But it was over when I got that first thing.

And then I was my inside's calm down.

I'm like.

And my dad didn't hold a grudge.

Now, why do I tell you all that?

When Jesus walks through the wall, don't miss that.

Hello?

If I walk through the wall, I'm not saying peace with you.

I'm like, check me out.

Today.

Who bringing it now?

But he walks through the wall.

The doors are locked.

He walks through the wall and he doesn't talk about himself.

He talks about what he's done and made available to you.

He's like, hey, I just took a whip and on the cross.

Take a deep breath.

You can now be at peace with God.

So the question becomes for you and I today in 2019, why are you not at peace with God?

Why are you still trying to I'm very dysregulated on the inside?

He says, peace with God is now available.

Secondly, the story's not over.

Look at verse 22.

Why did I say the story's not over?

Actually, verse 21.

Jesus said to them again, Peace be with you.

There it is again.

He thinks a lot about this.

Peace be with you.

As the Father has sent me, even so I'm sending you.

When he said this, he breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit.

Why do I say the story is not over?

I say it's not over because in the next chapter, Peter, verse chapter 21, which will start next Sunday, Peter says to his buddies, Hey, I'm going fishing.

Now, what did Peter do before Jesus called him?

He was a fisherman.

He said basically it's kind of like, hey, this was fun while it lasted.

This is great.

Jesus did some magic tricks.

You know, he healed some people, and people, oh, but you know, man's got to make a living, so let's go back fishing.

Peter says, I'm going fishing, and some of these other guys joined him.

You know why?

Because they didn't believe either up to this point.

A lot of the disciples did not come to faith until after the resurrection.

And they have this aha moment where they're like, oh my God, it's really true.

And so when I say the story's not over, Jesus says to them, look what he says.

As the Father sent me, even so I'm sending you.

He sends them.

He sends them as he was sent, as they are now an extension of his ministry.

And this they cannot do in their own power.

So he says to them, receive the Holy Spirit.

He breathes on them and says, Receive the Holy Spirit.

Now keep this in mind.

John's gospel is theological.

It's not chronological.

He's not like having a junior version of Pentecost right here.

Pentecost is a big church word for when the Holy Spirit was given.

And because Jesus has told them back in John 14, he says, I'm going to go.

And it's necessary that I go so that the comforter, the paraclete, the Holy Spirit will come.

Because God's never going to leave you.

We're never going to leave you as orphans.

There's always going to be the presence of God in your life.

And the disciples are like, okay, that's cool.

And so there can be no Holy Spirit coming unless Jesus is ascending into heaven.

It's Acts chapter 1.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

He tells them, Hey, wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit, and you'll receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.

And you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the othermost parts of the earth.

Now, if you look at the end of Matthew's gospel, one of the things you see is that Matthew 28, verses about 18 to 20, Jesus says to the disciples, Go and make disciples of all nations, baptized in their name of the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you, even to the end of the age.

Now, earlier in that verse 18, he says, Hey, where are they going to go?

He doesn't just say go just indiscriminately.

He says, I want you to go in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth.

He commands them to go to the places God empowers them to go.

Jesus says to them, Hey, it's not over yet.

So when this reality comes down, John's just kind of summarizing.

It's not chronological, like this happened on Monday, this happened on Tuesday, this happened on Wednesday, and I'm writing every jot and title of everything every Jesus ever did because he couldn't.

It would overwhelm every library in the world.

So he says, Hey, Jesus breathes on them and says, Receive the Holy Spirit.

Now, some TV preachers like Benny Hinn, they use this, and they, if you go to a Benny Hinn conference, he breathes on people and says, Receive the Holy Spirit.

And I have to talk back to the TV and go, it's not yours to give.

It's not yours to give.

Why are these people duped by this nonsense and this charlatan?

Like, oh, receive the Holy Spirit.

I wish somebody would go, use mouthwash.

How about that?

No, so when I say the story's not over, maybe this will help us get at it.

The first time I went with my kids, I like to go to my kids to do stuff, hang out with them.

They like being with their dad.

I don't know why, but I enjoy it.

One of the things they love to do is go to movies.

So when they were 13, 12, 13, 14, hey, let's go to movies, let's go to movies.

So I've seen so many movies I care nothing about.

I like a film.

A film, it has a story, and it doesn't need a bunch of CGI and sex and stuff blowing up.

Movies have all that stuff.

A film tells a story that's interesting enough.

And so uh we go, and one of the things we started doing, I didn't realize it was a big deal.

We went and saw, I remember the very first Avengers movie we went and saw, okay?

I'm like an old man.

I'm 55, but I'm really 85.

I want to park and I strategically park where I can get out as soon as it's over and avoid traffic.

And when something's over, I'm ready to go.

So at the first Avengers movie, I didn't know there's like a national secret.

The movie's over, and I get up and I scoot down the aisle and I go down the stairs and I hang the left around the little thing and I'm walking out.

Look, there's no family with me.

And I'm like, and my mom, let's go.

We're gonna beat all these fools.

Everybody's just standing there watching the credits roll.

And I'm like, I do not need to know who the key grip in the movie is, okay?

I don't even know what that is, but I see it all the time.

I'm looking at them back at my family.

I'm like, let's go.

And they're like, sit down, sit down.

And finally, my oldest goes, there's more to come.

I'm like, yeah, you know, there's not more to come.

Let's go.

Because people are getting out, and now my sense of injustice is kicked in.

People are beating me out of the parking lot.

Archie Bunker has to win.

And I'm like, what are you doing?

Oh, get back over here, come back.

And so I tromped back up the stairs and I scoop back by because I watched, I'm like, watch nothing.

I'm like, what are you doing?

Let's go.

It's not over.

We're not staying to watch this.

All these music's playing, and then all of a sudden, boop, something comes up on the screen.

And it's a little tease as to who the next bad guy's gonna be.

And I sit back down, I'm like, oh, I didn't know about this.

Hey everybody, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I was forgiven, right?

And I'm like, oh, and then all the way home, that's all they can talk about.

Oh, you know, that's so and so.

Now I don't go see a movie without just sitting there to the very end.

Credits are roll, God's sweeping up popcorn.

It's not Avengers, just in case.

Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me twice, shame on me.

Why do I tell you that?

Because when Jesus breathes on them and says, receive the Holy Spirit, he's saying, Hey, it's not over.

Don't go fishing because I called and created you to be a fisher of men, so don't settle for just fishing.

It's not over.

The Holy Spirit, I'm sending you, and who I'm sending you to, and what I'm sending you to do, you're going to need the power of the Holy Spirit in your life.

And so it's not over.

Thirdly, this consequential gospel says that the responsibility is ours.

The responsibility is ours.

Verse 23 if you forgive the sins of any, they're forgiven them.

If you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.

You ever withhold forgiveness from anybody because you don't think they deserve it?

Hello.

Yes, me and this guy right here.

Thank you.

And guy in the front.

The rest of you are liars.

You say things like, oh, I forgive you.

Why every time does it come up?

Does your heart beat a little faster?

Your heart's like Juni B.

Jones.

It gets a little pumpy inside.

You're like, ooh, yeah.

Now, when I say the responsibility is ours, I'm not saying what you might think I'm saying.

Sometimes you can say the words the Bible says and not mean what the Bible means.

And so let's just drill down a little bit on verse 23, uh, because this is where many get the idea of what's called absolution in the church.

Uh, absolution is where the church or the priest have the power to forgive or not forgive your sins, which is radically unbiblical.

Uh, let me give you a dep, I brought you a definition for absolution.

Absolution is the pronouncement of remission or forgiveness of sins to the penitent.

Penance is a sacrament, and the power to absolve lies with the priest, who can grant release from guilt of sin to the sinner, who is truly contrite, confesses the sin, and promises to perform satisfaction to God.

Now look at that just for a second.

This is what a lot of churches teach.

They say, hey, you know what?

Penance is a sacrament, and the power to absolve lies with the priest.

That would be me, everybody.

Yes, I know you're comforted by that, aren't you?

Who can grant release from the guilt of sin to the sinner who's truly contrite.

You see, I gotta I get to decide if you're really meaning or not.

Are you truly contrite or you're just faking it?

You confess your sin and you promise.

Here's the part I want you to focus on.

And you promise to perform satisfaction to God.

Yes, you've got to.

And by the way, don't kid yourself.

We do that to people.

When my wife sins against me, I want her to demonstrate.

Do you understand the degree to which you've inconvenienced me?

And I want you to demonstrate.

God, see, you see, promises to perform satisfaction to God.

You the Christian life is not trying to satisfy God for all the sin that you've ever done.

Because if it was, I brought you some pictures.

We did a uh a service project across the street, then what this is is sinners earning back forgiveness.

That guy right there holding the paper, that's Greg Wilson.

What a wicked sinner he is.

He designed this, he's a landscape architect.

He designed the whole thing.

How much sin has he committed, huh?

Look, there's more pictures.

More sinners trying to earn God.

That kid, well, I bet he smokes pot.

Don't you think?

Just looking at him, I mean, just look at him.

And then there's a guy knee deep in dirt.

He's knee-deep in sin.

That same kid's in there.

Oh, look there.

That kid in the right in the hat, that's uh uh that's Sam Hardcastle.

He just came from a land's end catalog shoot.

He don't like to get his boots dirty.

Uh oh, look, that's the preacher's kid in the middle.

You know how they are.

Ray Carter, sister, you're in deep water.

Oh, and then there's this kid wearing the Texas shirt.

He clearly doesn't watch college football.

Uh how much sin is that guy committed?

He's got to carry that around all day.

That's Matthew Jr.

That's a wicked sinner there.

If what we're doing is penance and we're trying to earn back and oh now, wait a minute.

This

That's the front in the front of the school right across the street.

It looks nothing like that.

It looked nothing like that before last Saturday.

Now, what would motivate all these people if you believe in penance and you believe in absolution, that all those people went wheelbarrowed all those flats of grass around just to pay God back for the fact that they had sinned and they just needed God to, hey, I'm demonstrating to you, God, that I'm really serious and I'm performing satisfaction because you need to be satisfied, which is not the gospel at all.

If you're visiting today, that is not what Christianity is at all.

Which is why those men and women and students that helped out last Saturday can just look at everybody at that school, Dr.

Quadry, the principal, and just say, Hey, we want to bless you.

We have four core values as a church: gospel, community, mission, and blessing.

We want to bless you.

We want to beautify the front of this school.

When you walk in, we want you all to think, now there's a God in this world, and He so acts in people's lives that they don't value their time and their money and their freedom like they used to.

They don't use it all themselves, they use it to bless other people.

And so it didn't cost them anything.

Money you put in these boxes when you give paid for all that.

Or those are just wicked sinners trying to pay God back.

Of course, it's not that.

Here's the problem with penance.

Uh, our absolution.

Number one, man doesn't have the authority to pronounce forgiveness of sins, man has the responsibility to announce forgiveness.

Big difference in the two.

Secondly, forgiveness doesn't depend on contrition or how bad we feel.

Now look at me.

Forgiveness doesn't depend on contrition or how bad we feel.

You say, How do you know?

Here's why.

Because many of you in this room have felt bad for a sin.

You've told God you're sorry, you cried, you swore you'd never do it again, and two days later you were doing the same thing.

Yes or no?

Yes.

And you, and by the way, you meant it when you were sorry.

You meant it when you're like, oh God, I never want to do that again.

Oh, okay.

Well, it's happy hour.

God didn't want me to sit at home and be sad, does He?

No, go out with your friends.

Okay, woohoo! Here we go.

Yeah, and I I'm not mocking you, I'm pointing out the insufficiency of contrition.

Thirdly, man is incapable of satisfying God through performance.

Only Jesus can satisfy God, and he has.

And so because God is satisfied by Jesus, and peace is now available to humanity, and the story's not over, and there's still more to come, this responsibility is ours.

Now, it's the responsibility is to announce to everybody you can be forgiven.

When Jesus says right here in verse 23, hey, if you forgive the sins of any, they're forgiven them.

It's not like, hey, it's up to you guys to decide.

You say, how do you know that?

Because the Bible was originally written in Greek, and the perfect tense, the two phrases, uh, when it says uh uh the two phrases that if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them.

If you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.

Those are in the perfect tense in the Greek.

What does that mean?

The perfect tense emphasizes the present ongoing result of a completed action.

Let me say that again.

The perfect tense in the Greek refers to the present ongoing results of something that happened a long time ago.

And so when I say the responsibility is ours, we get to say to people in everyday conversations, neighbors, friends, co-workers, hey man, because of what Christ has done on the cross and that he was buried and rose from the dead, uh, to say, see, I am who I said I was, you can be forgiven.

So I say on the authority of God's word in the life of Jesus, that there's nobody in this room that's done anything for which God can't forgive you, won't forgive you, and doesn't want to forgive you.

But, listen carefully, we also have the responsibility uh uh to warn people if they just kind of continue to live in deliberate sin that hey, that that's not a forgiveness issue.

This is not about forgiveness.

If you're like, oh well, I just, you know, I know it's wrong, but hey, God wants me to be happier, just fill in the blank.

I hear it all the time in counseling.

I was talking to a lady not long ago.

She doesn't go to our church.

Uh, somebody said to me the other day at our Wednesday meal, they said, You see, it sounds when you talk about counseling, it's it's you're pretty harsh.

Yes, you should probably go see Blake and Wade.

They're really nice.

They say things like, you know, they cross their legs like this and they say, Well, have you ever had rapid-eye desensitation treatment or whatever?

Now, I think counseling is great.

I refer people to counseling.

When people come to me, here's what I'm looking and listening for.

All right, how do we get to the gospel?

And is the evidence of the gospel manifest in this person's life, okay?

Again, let me be real clear.

I'm off for counseling.

I think counseling is great, and there's people that are much that are real counselors, okay?

We practice here what's called spiritual direction.

But I meet with a lady, she's I said, tell me about you.

I don't know you from Adam.

She said, I'm 38, I got two kids, I'm not happy in my marriage, and I just want to know.

I said, Why are you here?

She goes, I just want to know what the Bible says if I leave my husband.

And I said, What the Bible says if you leave your husband, I said, now is your husband beating you?

Has he abandoned you?

Has he been unfaithful?

No, no, no.

He's a good man.

I'm just not having that much fun.

And I said, Okay, you don't know me.

I said, I'm a kind person, but sometimes I have to say things in a real direct way.

She goes, I bring it, big boy.

Oh, you called me fat.

Okay.

Oh, we're gonna take these gloves off right now.

We're gonna have to get at it.

Uh I said, You're 38.

You should probably have a bigger word than fun to describe your life.

Because it ain't fun.

Okay, how old are your kids?

How many of your kids' age?

We have friends, they have three kids under the age of six.

I'm so full of compassion.

I said to them the other day, I said, When I see y'all, I'm so glad my kids aren't that age anymore.

And then they goes, What do you mean?

I said, Well, they're just sucking the life out of you.

He's just like, God, get off of me.

My kids can fin for themselves.

Sometimes my wife's so lazy she doesn't cook, and she goes, We're just gonna fend for ourselves, find something in the fridge.

And my kids are like, No, that's cool.

Nobody gets offended.

I eat cereal every night, every time my wife says that.

Oh, frosted mini weeks for stepword, God loves me.

Now my friends got little kids, they're just crawling all over them, and I'm like, ah, I remember those days.

Hold me, how me, how come me, hold yourself?

And now, and they're like, I said, hey, it's it's it's not, but I mean, you you do the hard work now and it gets better.

And I'm like, oh, but I'm talking to this lady, I just I said, hey, let me ask you a question.

Where are the things that accompany salvation in your life?

Because she told me earlier, I said, how do you commit this?

What worldview do you bring?

Are you do you consider yourself a Christian?

Are you a secularist?

Are you a progressive liberal?

What are you?

She says, Well, I mean, I think I'm a Christian.

People ever say things, and the way they say it, you're like, eh.

Yeah, it's like it's like your wife.

You know, hey, do you like that?

It was good.

What do you mean it was good?

Oh, I said it was good, yeah, but you said it was good.

Kind of went up on the end.

Excuse me, Darth Vader, don't read my mind.

Uh but I said, You I said, where are the things that are coming to salvation?

She goes, I don't, I don't know what you mean.

I said, I want to read from the Bible.

And so I said, she goes, I mean, if you need to, I'm like, oh, uh, are you aware of how you talk?

It's very dismissive, and it's gonna make people, you're gonna have to pay somebody to pursue you because people aren't gonna want to pursue you, they're gonna want to wound you with their words.

And she said, Yeah, I have a lot of short friendships.

Yeah, because you're kind of sassy.

She says, Well, that doesn't feel very good.

No, it doesn't feel good for me to say it.

I mean, it doesn't feel too bad, but anyway.

I said, let me just read from the Bible.

I said, because again, the question was, what are the things, where are the things that accompany salvation in your life?

Some things ought to be kind of manifest in your life that weren't your idea.

Like one of my neighbors said the other day, hey, where you been?

Uh it's it's Saturday, aren't you off on Saturday?

Yeah, but I have some folks in my church that live in Seeley, and they're like, wait a minute, people drive from Sealy, yeah, it's like an hour and seven minutes to their house, and they need some work done at their house, they have a little back deck on the back of their house.

And my neighbor's just like, he goes, How do you get in these things?

I said, I don't know.

It's not me.

It's just I try to live up my faith, and pretty soon I'm over here and I'm there and I'm there and I'm there, and I'm back over there.

So if you know how to, uh it's not a big project.

I need a six by eight wooden deck with four by four posts, seaming it in the ground.

I've got the money to pay for it.

I'll buy all the concrete, all the wood.

I just need somebody who knows how to build it.

And we got to put a uh the T-post fence around an aunt's little trailer and put a gate on there so her dog can't get out.

And I said to them, Absolutely, we'll do that.

We're your church.

And they were like, Oh, okay.

Well, she says, Well, I I I can save some money.

And I said, No, no, King Rat's always got cheese.

So my neighbor is like, so you're gonna go to see the I said, Yeah, sometimes you come to church and sometimes the church goes to you.

And then I was like, Why are we doing this?

He goes, Well, I need to borrow your truck.

Oh, that's why you're here.

You don't care.

You're like, Where have you been?

Yeah, I kept looking out the window and your white truck wasn't out here.

Uh so back to the lady.

Again, here's the thing: you've got to get to the gospel because of this responsibility that is ours.

Hebrews chapter 6, verse 1.

Hebrews 6:1

Therefore, let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith towards God and of instruction about washings, what's too far on a date?

Is it wrong to go to a party?

Can I leave my husband because it's not fun anymore?

The laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and the eternal judgment.

Y'all are like, I don't have that translation.

I don't think.

Look at me, and this is from a heart of compassion.

There's always going to be something that we want to point to that excuses our behavior.

Verse 3, and this we will do if God permits, for it is impossible in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the Word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God, to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.

For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it and produces a crop useful to those for whom sake it is cultivated receives a blessing from God.

But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned.

Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things, things that belong to salvation.

And so I said to this lady, where are the better things that belong to salvation manifesting themselves in your life?

And she said, I have no idea what you're talking about.

I said, Okay, that's great.

I said, That informs the dialogue.

I said, see how thought-provoking the Bible is.

I'm not trying to condemn you.

I'm inviting you to think about your life in light of the gospel, not think about the light the gospel in light of your life.

Because if our life is always the standard, the gospel's always diminished.

It's always like, well, that's just inconvenient.

I mean, oh, the church wants me to give money.

Well, oh, the church wants me to volunteer.

Yes, we want you to stop coming and getting incredible ministry to your children and then act like we're cutting your hands off when we say it's your turn to show up and volunteer.

Yeah.

See how selfish we are?

All of a sudden I feel like I'm the only one having fun.

Did you feel that?

It was kind of like nobody make eye contact with him.

You know, like, where's the guy from last week?

He was really nice.

What am I saying?

Because you got to understand, it's not my place or your place to decide if people are contrived.

We had to tell the truth, the truth that sets people free, but we get to announce to everybody.

We don't pronounce, we announce.

Christ died for sin.

And there's nothing you've done that God cannot and will not forgive.

But if you're like, oh, let's just, I don't care, then it's not an issue of forgiveness.

It's an issue of obedience.

And does the power and the reality of the gospel manifest itself in my life?

Here's the last thing about this consequential gospel: God knows what we doubt.

God knows what we doubt.

It's verses 24 to 29.

I mean, Thomas, one of the 12, Jesus appears to the disciples and he sounds disrespectful.

Listen carefully.

This is not the doubt of a jaded Christian.

This is the doubt of a man that does not believe God or the gospel at this point.

He said, Hey, unless I could place my finger into the mark of the nails and place my hand to his side, I will never believe.

Eight days later, Jesus shows up.

And it's not like taxi driver.

Jesus doesn't show up and go, Are you talking to me?

You're talking to me?

Say it again.

Say it to my face.

No, it's none of that.

Jesus is so, so not threatened by all your doubt, all your intellectual questions, all your whatever, he's not threatened by it.

Matter of fact, I would go as far as to say this that doubt is a good thing in the life of a believer.

Not if you stay there, but if you process through it.

And what do you mean?

A man named Tim Keller wrote a book called The Reason for God: Belief in an age of skepticism.

Great book, highly recommended.

And in the book, he makes this great statement about doubt.

He says a faith about some doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it.

People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic.

A person's faith can collapse almost overnight if she has failed over the years to listen to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after a long reflection.

Believers should acknowledge and wrestle with doubts, not only their own, but their friends and their neighbors.

Yes.

Just, I love that first part.

A faith without some doubts is like a human body without antibodies in it.

Jesus didn't lead his disciples like we parent our kids.

He didn't baptize them in purail and hand out participation trophies and say, hey, I want to protect you from the rigorous realities that are to come.

No.

He's not.

Thomas is like, hey, unless I see it, I ain't, I will never believe.

Eight days later, Jesus walks through the wall, and look what he does.

He doesn't accuse him, he doesn't condemn him.

He doesn't say, How dare you?

Do you know how how hard this was for me?

No, he invites him.

Hear it again.

We're just about done.

You still with me?

He doesn't, Jesus is not mad.

He's not like, you know, the one that cooks the meal and and and no one's helping get the water or whatever, and banging pots and sits down, and then in two minutes in, they're not going, This is the greatest thing I've ever eaten in my life.

Jesus doesn't have this sense of entitlement.

He's just like, I'm sorry, baby.

That was my fault.

Look at me.

He's not threatened.

What does he do?

He invites.

He says, Hey, to Thomas, right here in the Bible.

He says, Hey, put your finger here.

Peace be with you.

Then he said to Thomas, put your finger here and see my hands and put out your hand and place it into my side.

Do not disbelieve, but believe.

He goes from doubting, because a lot of people use doubt to protect them, to this crisis of faith.

This is what you said had to happen for you to believe.

Now that it's happened, Jesus says, do not disbelieve, but believe.

Here's the question I'm asking you this morning.

More importantly, I think the gospel's asking us this morning, what is Jesus inviting you to right now?

What is he inviting you to?

Just in the course of this sermon.

What do you see?

The 31 minutes you've been sitting here listening, what has he invited you to?

What has your intellect kind of said?

Man, I want to think more about that.

What has your face say?

Hmm, man.

Is that true of me?

This is why at the end of our sermons here at Grand Parkway, we like to give you some little space.

We call it soul space, just to kind of think and meditate on what you've heard.

So let me voice a prayer.

Some questions come up on the screen.

Uh you can just take a snap a picture of them with your phone, uh, and then we'll be dismissed for the morning.

Let me let me pray.

Father, thanks for the reality of the gospel.

That it is comfort and it's causality, it's consequential, it's intellectually consequential.

And so when we doubt things, we're not being bad people.

It's not like God doesn't know.

We've got to sneak over here on the side and research on the internet.

We can come to you and say, you know what?

I have a hard time getting my head around this.

And because you're not threatened, you don't threaten.

You invite.

You say, Hey, put your hand here.

Touch this, see this, experience this.

Thank you that you're so gracious with us.

God, let that graciousness just kind of flow over us as we just kind of sit and ponder for a moment what you've said today.

And God, because you're a God who's not threatened by doubt, we want to be a church that's not threatened by it either.

So we say to the cynic or the skeptic, the atheist, the agnostic, the jaded Christian who's still barely holding on, all your doubt is welcome here.

You should call some people and say, hey, let's go to breakfast or lunch this week.

Here's some things I'm doubting, and I just want to process that with you.

We're not here to fix each other, God.

We're here to listen to each other and to comfort each other with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.

And so, Lord, thank you that uh because you're not threatened, you don't threaten.

We're humbled by that.

Let us emulate that in our own lives, in our own relationships.

This is our prayer, God.

We we make it our experience in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

Amen.

If you're a guest today, let me say thanks for being part of our service.

Uh, hopefully you've had a chance to fill out the guest card that's in the seat back pocket in your row.

And on your way out here in just a moment, if you just drop that in the wooden box by the door, uh, we would be grateful.

Uh, and for the rest of everybody, if that's uh if you come today to be obedient when it comes to giving, and that's where you take care of that as well.

There's a few things we want to make you aware of in the life of our church.

So give your attention to the video screens now.

Here's a look at what's happening at Grand Parkway Baptist Church.

They say our greatest fear should not be a failure, but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.

More than 146 million.

That's how many kids have received the message of hope through a simple gift that changed everything.

I see their faces.

I see the joy and impact a shoebox gift brings to them.

It's a tangible expression of God's love.

I want to bring that light to others.

If you're prepared to do your part, Operation Christmas Child boxes are available at the front of the stage.

Be sure and grab one, read the instructions, and have it back to the church by Wednesday, November 20th, so we can get them where they need to go.

If your child is in first through fourth grade, they can pack boxes and more at our Kids with a Mission Act.

Register online.

If you're new, be sure and check out our website at grandparkway.org.

If you're on social media, you can find us there too.

If you would like someone to pray with you or you have a question about anything you have seen or heard today, some of our pastors and elders will be available at the front of the stage after our service.

We'd like to conclude our service with a spoken blessing.

So would you stand to your feet, please hold your hands out.

May the love of God, the peace of Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit adorn your lives as you come to enjoy all that you were created for.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Bless you.